[11] The Tactics Of The Disciplinarian Head Of The Martin Faith Fellowship

Martin exploits the desires for social activism and strong social cohesion to construct himself as an icon that his community members can rally around.

The way Martin constructs himself as icon is to identify himself with genuine role models of social activism, such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. For example, in Working with Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007), he makes much use of Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, and in case the reader does not automatically attribute Mandela's qualities to Martin, he makes the attribution explicit (p62):

His [Martin's] communion with Mandela, at such a distance in so many respects …

The way Martin constructs a socially bonded community around him is to invoke a 'siege mentality', both with regard to the SFL community in relation to the rest of the linguistic community, and with regard to his own community in relation to the rest of the SFL community. In the following post on Sysfling in November 2020, Martin referred to both states of siege, though through the voice of a colleague:

She communed by relaying her concern that we were indeed living in difficult times – times reminding her in fact of the 60s… but now with different strata and institutional struggles now in play.

This binding of his community to him is further reinforced by much of the work Martin has his students engaged in, focusing on commitment, social bonding, social affiliation, and 'bondicons' around which communities rally.

As Zimbardo (2007) points out, in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates that the need to belong can be 'perverted into excessive conformity, compliance, and in-group versus out-group hostility', and 'the need for autonomy and control can be perverted into an excessive exercise of power to dominate others or into learned helplessness'.

Related to this compliance and learned helplessness is the condition known as Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity.