Did you have to take part in this in any way or just observe?

I've had to take training sessions that left me feeling ...hateful, to be honest.

In the Chinese-Maoist sense, a struggle session is where you are essentially forced to take part in some ritual denunciations of self or of your friends/family with the threat of violence or violence applied or looming in the background.

In the American version of this today the threat of violence isn't there but firing and shaming by coworkers/friends; And therein career/social death.

Your session doesn't sound like a struggle session per se (unless you had to take part), it sounds like a "training" where the professional victims shared their stories. But yes, it's a growing industry and they're paid handsomely to embellish their stories.

And that, right there, is how the history books end up filled with horrors like the gassing of Jews. Couldn't happen again? Well, that's the mechanism as to how such things occur. Probably not Jews next time, but some Other; like white men.

I heard an anecdote from a monk once. He knew someone into activism, trying to save something-or-other, I don't remember what. Then, one day, the monk opened a book, and to his utter astonishment there was a picture of the guy. He was in charge of executions.

Great atrocities are perpetrated in the name of righteous anger.

To quote Nietzsche: if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.