Even as the Duggar family rages over Shiny Happy People, the Amazon Prime documentary is garnering more attention.
This isn’t only about the horror story of the Duggars. IBLP has countless victims.
And they are only one portion of a broader, insidious network that seeks to undermine human rights. That of their children, but also of their neighbors — all across America.
As much as Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets covers, there’s so much more. And none of it’s pretty.
The scandal surrounding Josh Duggar is not, and was never, just an isolated incident.
Josh grew up in a sinister cult, one whose founder resigned after numerous women accused him of sexual misconduct.
The now-imprisoned Duggar son was not an aberration. The culture of deliberate ignorance, of victim-blaming, and more was working as intended.
The docuseries does focus a lot upon Josh.
But it also features a lot of chilling details about the Duggar family as a whole, and about the Institute in Basic Life Principles.
The docuseries is out now in its entirety. But the producer is opening up about how they could easily produce more with the material that they uncovered.
Cori Shepherd spoke to People about how “there’s definitely enough for another solid, crazy episode that I think people would eat up.”
Shepherd added: “There is some stuff that we shot that I would love to have it see the light of the day.”
Fellow executive producer Blye Faust added: “I think we could have spent multiple more episodes on the Duggars, and also the larger story at play.”
“There’s always a conversation going on of should we do more,” Faust commented. “And I think we’ll continue to have that conversation [once] the series comes out.”
Shepherd admitted: “There were things like the whole section about the Joshua Generation was really made a lot shorter.”
Generation Joshua is a movement that aims to have Christian Dominionists (primarily white homeschooled young men) infiltrate the United States government at various levels. Their purpose, to “conquer” the United States as the biblical Joshua conquered Canaan in their religious texts.
“We could do an entire documentary on that, and I hope people will go and do a really deep dive on that,” Shepherd continued.
She explained “because to me, this is how this affects every American. In fact, [it] is affecting the world.”
She emphasized that “It wasn’t entirely Bill Gothard that created the Joshua Generation. But certainly, a lot of really key people were heavily influenced by him and his teachings. And so to me, that was just criminal that we had to leave that part out.”
“Also, one of the more intense pieces for me was finding out how Gothard’s teachings really went deep into not just communities but cities,” Shepherd remarked.
“Like municipal governments where, in certain cities, they printed quotes from his work on the checks of the city employees,” she cited. “That didn’t make it into the doc.”
Shepherd added: “There were these things called God Pod in prisons because there was a whole amount of funding to do character training in prisons.”
“And women in female prison units joined these God Pods,” Shepherd detailed.
These were units “where they were given better housing and food if they would study the teachings of Bill Gothard. That included authoritarianism.”
Shepherd pointed out: “These were women who had been abused, all kinds of terrible things. And they were told, you need to obey a man. So those were some of the things. Sorry, I could go for hours, of course, about that.”
Meanwhile, Faust noted the “amazing” timing of releasing this docuseries. After all, a lot of people like Jim Bob have done a lot of damage. But multiple outlets are exposing them.
“There was a Washington Post article that just dropped [on May 29] about the world of fundamental homeschooling,” Faust cited. “It was really revealing and, actually, very moving, too.”
Faust added: “I think there’s something out there right now. This conversation is starting to take place as to looking at some of these fundamental institutions, belief systems. And how they’ve been allowed to flourish and the impact that it has on not just kids and homeschool, but also for women.”
“I think this will definitely open people’s eyes and, hopefully, start a larger conversation about a lot of those things,” she then added.
And she concluded: “‘Cause it’s not just the Duggars and it’s not just IBLP. There’s a much bigger system at play here.”
We can see the hand of these malefactors in politics, in terrorist threats aimed at corporations and celebrations. The indoctrination and infiltration has been going on for years.