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 VII)

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

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18. Economic Exploitation. Cults not only exploit their own members, but, when they can manage it, nonmembers as well. Some, such as the LaRouchites, Synanon, and the People’s Temple, have extensively targeted nonmembers.

Cults which target nonmembers solicit money by presenting themselves–or their front groups–as doing good works, such as fighting drug addiction, when in fact virtually all of the money that they raise is spent on their own operations and, often, on enriching their leaders. Synanon fundraisers, for example, routinely represented Synanon as a drug rehabilitation program for years after it had effectively abandoned working with drug abusers. The LaRouchites have gone further and have engaged in criminal fraud–under the guise of fighting drugs and other good works–on a massive scale. A a result, many of the top members of the cult, including founder Lyndon LaRouche, Jr., were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the late 1980s. Drug addiction programs remain a fundraising/recruiting tool with cults today, and the Church of Scientology’s Narconon program is currently engulfed in a sea of lawsuits filed by former clients and public agencies.

Direct economic exploitation of members by their cults is often even less subtle. Many cults, such as the People’s Temple, strip their members of assets. In the People’s Temple, the technique was crude: members were pressured to “donate” their possessions to the church. The Scientologists have taken a more sophisticated approach–potential members are lured by street recruiters and advertisements to take a “free personality test,” which, of course, shows personality defects, for which help is available. “Raw meat,” those who bite, then take low cost introductory courses leading to much higher priced courses, with many expensive “auditing” sessions along the way. The total Scientologists pay to go up “The Bridge” (to total freedom) commonly costs up to and over one hundred thousand dollars.

Another way in which cults exploit their members is by having them work long, exhausting hourse for little or no pay. Cults which employ(ed) such tactics included Synanon, the People’s Temple, the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishnas).

Finally, lest we forget, a good majority of cults in the United States are religious organizations, and enjoy all of the many public benefits showered on religious groups.  One of these benefits is exemption from paying property taxes. So, in a very real sense, all other Americans–through the taxes they pay–are picking up part of the tab for the Church of Scientology, Moonies, FLDS, Church Universal and Triumphant, and other cults.

 

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)

 

 

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)

 

 

Characteristics of Cults (Part V)

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

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13. A Charismatic Leader. Present in almost all cults, the leader can be living (Revolutionary Communist Party, FLDS, Larouchites) or dead (Synanon, Scientology, Unification Church). In cases where the leader dies, the cult either fades away (The Source, Synanon), is taken over by a direct relation of the deceased charismatic leader (Unification Church), or is taken over by a member of a pre-existing hierarchy (Scientology).

14. A Hierarchical, Authoritarian Structure. While this is a very common feature of cults, it should be noted that relatively new cults often have little structure. But as time passes, hierarchy and bureaucracy usually arise, as is to be expected in authoritarian setups. If a hierarchy does not arise–this sometimes happens because of the charismatic leader’s fear of take-over attempts–the cult will probably disintegrate upon the leader’s death, unless a new charismatic leader quickly arises to take his or her place.

15. Submission of the Individual to the “Will of God” or to some other abstraction, such as the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” This means abandonment of individual decision making in favor of obeying the “will” of the abstraction as interpreted by the cult. In practice, this means obeying the orders of the charismatic leader or the hierarchy which controls the group.

One outward sign of individual submission to the charismatic leader is the infantilization of members. In many instances, the People’s Temple and Unification Church being examples, members very often refer to and address the leader as “Father.” (In the relatively few cults with charismatic female leaders, such as the Church Universal and Triumphant, members often refer to the cult leader as “Mother.”)

In many cults the submission of the individual is so complete that the charismatic leader and/or hierarchy make all significant life decisions for the individual, up to and including choice of sex and marriage partners. In Synanon, the control of its founder, Charles Dederich, was so complete that he forced all of the male members of his cult, save himself, to undergo vasectomies. He later forced all members to switch sex partners. The leader in “The Source” cult, “Father Yod” also assigned new sex partners to members. And in the Unification Church, the hierarchy picks the marriage partners of members. In that church, it’s common for brides and grooms to meet for the first time at their weddings.

But perhaps the ultimate expressions of the submission of the individual to the “will of God” (that is, the cult) are mass murder, mass suicide. and self-mutilation. The prime example of mass murder and suicide is, of course, Jonestown. The Order of the Solar Temple provided more recent, though smaller scale, examples of such murder and suicide.

As for self-mutilation, the most memorable example was provided by the Heaven’s Gate cult. In it, a majority of the male members of that severely anti-sexual religious group–in order to remove themselves from temptations of the flesh–“voluntarily” submitted to castration prior to the cult’s mass suicide in 1997, in order to somehow join the (of course nonexistent) UFO that cult leader Marshall Applewhite said was in Comet Hale-Bopp’s tail.

 

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)

 

 

Characteristics of Cults (Part III)

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

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8. Special Knowledge. This is closely related to the concept of exclusivity. Many cults claim that they are the route to personal and/or social salvation, because they hold special, extremely valuable knowledge that’s unavailable to the uninitiated. As well, many cults only gradually reveal that “knowledge” to members in order to avoid early defections. (A great deal of this “knowledge” is so absurd that most people would walk away immediately were it to be revealed to them all at once.) As an example of this cult tendency, Margaret Singer, in Cults in Our Midst, cites a researcher who quotes L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, as follows: “[N]ew followers or potential converts should not be exposed to [the language and cosmology of Scientology] at too early a stage. ‘Talking whole track to raw meat’ is frowned upon.” (p. 71)

9. Mind Control Techniques. These involve such measures as keeping members malnourished and in a state of exhaustion. The classic example of this was the conduct of Jim Jones’ cult in its Jonestown settlement in Guyana prior to the mass murder/suicide in 1978. More sophisticated methods are also used, examples being “self-criticism” (in political cults), the use of chanting and various forms of “sensory overload” in groups like the Hare Krishnas, and the use of “therapy,” as in the New Alliance Party.

Another important mind control technique is the destruction of personal privacy. The Moonies, for example, normally do not even allow potential recruits at their retreats to go to the bathroom unless accompanied by a member of their cult. This is a way of never allowing new or potential recruits to regain their mental balance.

Still another important mind control technique is the humiliation and intimidation of members. In Synanon, this took the form of “the game,” a warped encounter session in which individuals were attacked by other members of the group. In the People’s Temple the technique was cruder, with members being, among other things, sexually humiliated in public.

10. Thought-Stopping Language. This is another mind-control technique, but [Robert Jay] Lifton considers it so important that he made it one of his eight criteria of “ideological totalism” [in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism]. As Lifton puts it, the way that these “thought-terminating cliche[s]” operate is that “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” (p. 429)

Put more broadly, thought-stopping phrases include any use of language, especially repeated phrases, to ward off forbidden thoughts. One common example of this is the admonition given to Catholic school children to recite the Hail Mary or rosary to ward off “impure thoughts.” The use of repetitive chanting by the Hare Krishnas serves the same thought-stopping purpose.

Another aspect of thought-stopping terms is that, as Ken Ragge points out [in More Revealed], “Loaded language, the language of non-thought, entails more than cliches. Individual words are given meanings or shades of meanings entirely separate from their normal usage.” (p. 136) To cite the most obvious example, the use of the word “Father” by members of many cults does not refer to a biological parent, but to the cult leader. These alternative meanings to common words serve to accentuate the separateness of cult members from “outsiders” or “normies” and–in the particular case cited here–infantilize members and discourage them from criticizing their “parent.”

 

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)

 

 

Characteristics of Cults (Part II)

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

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5) Ideology Over Experience, Observation, and Logic. Cults not only demonize doubt and doubters, but they are also nearly immune to experience, observation, and logic that contradict their claims. Cult leaders claim to have The Truth–and their followers believe them– so anything that contradicts that Truth must be wrong. The Catholic Church’s insistence that the Earth is the center of the universe, coupled with its persecution of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, and its attempted suppression of the Copernican view of the solar system (well supported by observational evidence, even in the early 17th century), provides but one famous example of this phenomenon.  To cite another, the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses–claiming inspiration directly from God–stated that doomsday would come in 1914, and then in 1925. Yet when the appointed days came and went, the Witnesses suffered relatively minor defections. When their claims are proven false, cult leaders normally either ignore the contradictory evidence or invoke the fathomless Will of God to explain the turn of events. Their flocks never seem to notice this.

6. Separatism. Cult members almost always view themselves as outsiders, as different from the rest of society. This sets up an “us versus them” mentality, and it’s common for cult members to believe that only they and their fellow cult members can understand each other.

One manifestation of separatism is the use of specialized terms; almost all cults develop a jargon peculiar to themselves. Another, though less common, manifestation of separatism is the abandonment of “old” personal names and the taking (usually the assigning by cult leaders) of “new” ones, as was done by The Source cult in Southern California. A third is the adoption of distinctive dress and/or other alterations in personal appearance. The practice of head-shaving among the Hare Krishnas and in Synanon, and the required wearing of read and orange hues by the Rajneeshees are examples of this.

And then there’s the matter of physical separation from the outer world. Many cults isolate their members in remote areas, making it physically difficult for members to leave. The People’s Temple Jonestown settlement is but the most lurid example of this. Other cults that have set up compounds in isolated areas include the Rajneeshees, the FLDS and other Mormon polygamous cults, the Moonies, Synanon, and the Church Universal and Triumphant.

7) Exclusivity. Cults invariably view themselves as the only path to salvation. Normally that salvation is spiritual, though, as with the LaRouchites and other political sects, it can be secular. Again, this leads to arrogance, dehumanization of nonbelievers, and an “ends justif the means” mentality. The Moonies have even adopted a “spiritual” term (for internal use only) for lying and cheating in pursuit of Church goals: “Heavenly Deception.”

 

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

• Synanon’s Sober Utopia: How a Drug Rehab Program Became a Violent Cult
• Cults Fascinate Me
• Jewish Cult Survivor Fights for Others’ Freedom
• Rajneesh’s crime-ridden sect gets spotlight at free UO symposium

Characteristics of Cults (Part I)

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

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There are almost as many definitions of the world “cult” as there are experts on the subject. One thing virtually all definitions of the word have in common is that they’re quite broad.

Two of the definitions given by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary are fairly typical: “a group of sect bound together by devotion to or veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.”; and “a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.”

Such definitions–as opposed to lists of attributes–could well apply to a great number of groups, many of which most people would never consider cults. Thus, the crucial question becomes what are the specific characteristics that distinguish cults, especially cults that are dangerous both to their own members and to society?

The following list of 23 cult characteristics are based in part on Robert Jay Lifton’s list in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (see Some Notes on Cults for the full list), to a much lesser extent on Margaret Singer’s list in Cults in Our Midst, and to a large extent on my own research into cults preparatory to writing this book, direct contact with several cults (Church of Scientology, Unification Church, Kerista Village, and the chameleon-like Larouche political cult), and considerable contact with ex-members of cults (primarily ex-members of the Church of Scientology and Transcendental Meditation). I would note, though, that not even the most obviously dangerous cults always exhibit all of the following characteristics, though a few do. (The most dangerous cults typically exhibit roughly 80% to 95% of these characteristics.)

1. Religious Orientation. Cults are usually centered around belief in a higher power; they often have elaborate religious rituals and emphasize prayer. Current and recent religious cults include the People’s Temple, Branch Davidians, International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishnas), Church of Scientology (which is primarily a therapy cult), The Way International, Children of God, Unification Church (Moonies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, the numerous Mormon polygamist cults (Church of the Blood of the Lamb of God, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, etc.), arguably the Mormon Church itself, Islamic religious cults, such as ISIS (ISIL), Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, the Moro Islamic Libertion Front, and arguably Islam itself.

While secular cults also exist, they are not as numerous as religious cults. The most obvious example of a secular cult is the Larouche organization (the group which in 2010 was responsible for the Obama/Hitler photo during the turmoil leading up to the Affordable Care Act; the oft-renamed group goes back to the 1970s). Another obvious example is the puritanical, dictatorially controlled Revolutionary Communist Party. Other examples include, arguably, multi-level marketing (MLM) organizations, though some, notably Amway, are religious and have a specifically Christian-conservative orientation. (Whether Amway, Herbalife, and other similar  MLM companies are commercial cults, pyramid schemes, or legitimate businesses is an open question.)

2. Irrationality. Cults discourage skepticism and rational thought. As James and Marcia Rudin note in Prison or Paradise: The New Religious Cults:

The groups are anti-intellectual, placing all emphasis on intuition or emotional experience. “Knowledge” is redefined as those  ideas or experiences dispensed by the group or its leader. One can only attain knowledge by joining the group and submitting to its doctrine. One cannot question this “knowledge.” If a follower shows signs of doubting he is made to feel that the fault lies within himself, not with the ideas… (p. 20)

It’s also common for cult leaders to tell their followers that doubt is the work of the devil. The Unification Church in particular has institutionalized the practices of equating doubt with sinfulness and satanic influence, and of attempting to stamp out independent thought. Some of the Church’s most common slogans (for internal use) are “Your Mind Is Fallen,” “Stamp Out Doubt,” and “No More Concepts” (cited in Crazy for God, by Christopher Edwards).

If members of cults persist in having doubts, they’re accused of being under satanic influence and excommunicated or, in extreme instances, murdered, as in Ervil LeBaron’s Lambs of God.

3. Dogmatism. Cults invariably have The Truth and are highly antagonistic to to those who question it. The Truth is invariably revealed in a cult’s sacred texts or in the pronouncements of its leader(s). It is beyond question, and to voice doubts is seen as, at best, a sign of being under satanic influence. This is clearly the case in the Unification Church, where doubts invariably come directly from Satan, and it’s common in secular cults. In Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton notes that Chinese Communist true believers attribute deviation from revealed Truth to “bourgeois influence.” (p. 432).

4. A Chosen-People Mentality. Given that cultists are alone in possessing a very precious commodity, The Truth, they almost always view themselves as better than other people, which means that nonbelievers and members of rival sects are frequently seen as less than human, if not outright tools of the devil. This attitude of superiority often manifests itself in an “ends justify the means” mentality and in the use of violence against outsiders or against heretics within the group. The most lurid examples of such violence are currently provided by Islamic cults such as Boko Haram and ISIS, though violence also occurs in both Christian and Mormon cults, such as The Church of the Blood of the Lamb of God.

 

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)