Characteristics of Cults (Part VIII)

(This is a slightly revised version of material from Chapter 9 of Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?)

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19. Deceptive Recruiting Techniques Some cults routinely deceive potential recruits, which is understandable: most potential recruits would not find attractive the prospect of slavishly following the orders of a guru-figure while working 16 to 18 hours a day for little or no pay. The Unification Church in particular is notorious for deceptive recruitment tactics. The primary recruitment targets for the Moonies are unattached young people. They usually have a member of the opposite sex approach the target and invite her or him to dinner. According to those who have attended such dinners, no mention of Moon or the Unification Church is made. Rather, there is general talk of a “family” and improving the world. Next follows an invitation to spend a weekend at a retreat. Those who accept are “love bombed” (showered with attention) by members and are invited to a longer retreat. If they accept, they’re again “love bombed,” kept constantly occupied, accompanied by a Moonie at all times (even while going to the toilet), and denied adequate sleep. And before they know it, they’re selling flowers 18 hours a day for room and board.

Another tactic of the Unification Church is the setting up of front groups, such as the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), and having members like about their association with the Unification Church if asked. In the late 1970s, CARP appeared on the campus of Boise State University, and I investigated it for the school newspaper, the BSU Arbiter. Even though CARP’s address was the same as that of the local Unification Church, and its literature was distributed by members of that Church, the Moonies staunchly maintained that there was “no connection” between the Unification Church and CARP.

Other cults also employ front groups. The LaRouchites in particular are notorious for this practice. This amoeba-like cult spawns front groups so often that it’s difficult to follow its permutations. Some of the names it has operated under include the U.S. Labor Party, National Caucus of Labor Committees, International Caucus of Labor Committees, Fusion Energy Foundation, the Schiller Institute, the National Anti-Drug Coalition, the National Democratic Policy Committee, Executive Intelligence Review Press Service, and at least three dozen other names.

Since the 1990s, this political cult, which continues to operate largely through front groups,  has turned its attention to both of the major political parties. In 2010, it took part in the Tea Party disruptions of congressional town halls, and was responsible for the iconic image from those infamous episodes: the widely distributed doctored photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache. Its primary major-party target, however,  has been the Democratic Party;  it sometimes runs candidates in Democratic primaries, especially in solidly Republican districts where its candidates occasionally nab a nomination because they’re unopposed.

 

All Posts in this Series

• Characteristics of Cults (part 1)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 2)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 3)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 4)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 5)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 6)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 7)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 8)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 9)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 10)

 

 

Related articles

• I Was Born and Raised Within Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church And Real Life Is a Struggle

Characteristics of Cults (Part VI)

(This is a slightly revised version of material from Chapter 9 of Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?)

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 16. Self-Absorption. The primary focus of a cult is the cult itself. Whatever its ostensible aims, in reality a cult is overhwelmingly self-absorbed. Cults are prone to extreme gradiosity, to what could be termed organizational narcissism; and so a cult’s primary concerns are its own survival and expansion, with the ends justifying the means.

As an example, the Mormon Church, according to Robert Bridgstock in The Youngest Bishop in England: Beneath the Surface of Mormonism, spends approximately 1% of its estimated $5 billion to $6 billion per year annual income on “actual charitable giving.” (p. 184) The situation is similar in many, almost certainly most, other cults and mainstream religions, though a good many of these tax-exempt (in the U.S.) organizations  do no “charitable giving.”

17. Dual Purposes. This extreme self-absorption leads to what Margaret Singer [author of Cults In Our Midst] terms dual purposes–in other words, cults have their stated purposes and their real purposes. As regards individual members, cults present themselves as ways for members to meet their own needs, grow personally or spiritually, and/or to realize high social or spiritual goals. In reality, Singer notes, the purposes of cults is to subject their members to mind control techniques in order to control and exploit them.

The dual-purpose aspect of cults is also noticeable in their dealings with outsiders, and it’s particularly noticeable in their fundraising activities. Cults frequently raise huge sums of money which they allege will be used to alleviate social problems such as alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, and abandoned or abused children, when in relaity they spend all, or nearly all, of the money raised to support the cult. For example, in its fundraising materials, the People’s Temple routinely represented itself as a do-good organization caring for abandoned children.

Secular cults are every bit as self-absorbed as religious cults. Political cults have long been notorious for infiltrating social change groups and manipulating them for the benefit of the cults (usually for the purpose of recruitment), often destroying the social change groups in the process. In the 1960s, the trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (itself heavily infiltrated by the FBI) and the stalinist Progressive Labor Party wreaked havoc in the anti-war movement through this tactic; in the 1970s, the International Socialists and other sects targeted the women’s movement; and in the 1980s and 1990s, the New Alliance Party and the Humanist Party infiltrated environmental and other progressive groups. More recently, the LaRouche cult infiltrated the Tea Party disruptions of congressional town hall meetings in 2010 prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act; the LaRouchites were not there out of altruism.

Whether religious or political, the stated purposes of cults are not their actual purposes.

 

All Posts in this Series

• Characteristics of Cults (part 1)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 2)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 3)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 4)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 5)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 6)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 7)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 8)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 9)
• Characteristics of Cults (part 10)