One of the more interesting books I ever read was Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s Snapping. It is on the subject of mind-control cults, some of which are religious and some of which aren’t.
After reading it I was certain I could tell the difference between a cult and an everyday religion. The funny part is that it’s hard to tell in simple terms what the difference is, although you can generally tell pretty quickly from the warning signs: strong efforts to permanently isolate members from everyday interaction with mainstream society, refusing to allow questioning, authoritarian dictates of almost every aspect of daily life, work and ritual requirements so demanding that an individual has almost no free time at any time, sleep deprivation, dietary restrictions that lead to cognitive impairment (such as starvation or intentional infliction of vitamin or mineral deficiencies over protracted lengths of time), secret teachings only known by a tiny elite few, and (usually) a single charismatic individual who is treated in a Godlike fashion.
Some reading this will no doubt attempt to fit their least-favorite religion in to that mold, but most of the time the fit isn’t there. You could, for example, say that the Catholic Church has some of these characteristics, but that would be a shallow comparison: the church doesn’t mandate months or years of malnutrition, doesn’t forbid members from asking questions or engaging in debate, doesn’t force members to work 7 days a week for 12-18 hours a day, doesn’t forbid members from having non-Catholic friends, and so on. Cults are very specific that way, and use very well-defined brainwashing techniques that make it extremely difficult for the average person to escape.
I’m not doing the subject justice–I again recommend Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s Snapping for a detailed and rational treatment–but I must say that as I read this recent blog-posting by Chris Short, who grew up in and later escaped a very cultlike organization, I saw many of the same hallmarks of a cult that I read in that book. Not all of them–I’m not sure sure if Chris has given us enough detail to be sure–but it’s sure got the underpinnings there.
There’s a group active in my own neighborhood, claiming to be Christian, that I at time suspect. I may have to scribble down their name some time and see if others recognize who they are.
(Via Jeff Quinton.)
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True enough. But what I find interesting is that some of the monastic orders have some of those elements. I never thought about the orders as cults within the church before, but it makes me wonder.
There’s some truth to that. The more I have read about Mother Theresa’s order, the more cultish (and less benign) it seems. But even still, one can walk away from it and still be considered a faithful member of the Catholic church.
Dean,
You’ve hit on the secret weapon to win the GWOT. This is from a piece I’m working ong:
Islamofascism is no different than other cult-like religious movements we seen before e.g. David Koresch, Jim Jones and his “Cool-Aid” bunch and our own homegrown KKK. They only problem is the House of Saud has funded to the tune of billions of dollars radical madrassahs to acculturate young impressionable minds around the world into this ideology of hate and evil. They are “hardwired” or brainwashed by the purveyors of this evil ideology.
They generally don’t “program” women. They treat them like dogs. This is the Achilles Heel. Give women economic power over the men and the craziness will stop.
See this empowerment program:
*****
FYI
My wife just sent me this great link.
What a fantastic way to counter the male dominated hegemonies of radical Islamofascism that are fueling the GWOT.
As I have said before the women of the world are the secret weapon to winning the GWOT.
Ron
*****
From: Marilyn Wright
TO: Ron Wright
Date: Sat Jun 04, 2005 10:23:17 AM PDT
Subject: Afghan Women
Check this out.
Link Here
I found out about them through Lion Brand Yarns, the yarn Martha was wearing [sweater she was wearing when released from prision]
I don’t think religions like to have secret teachings (only the Druze come to mind). They generally prefer to talk about their teachings in public.
For instance, Kabbalists were secretive once, but now they’re chasing after every Hollywood shiksa they can get.
Folks, I would recommend a book by John Krakuer, titled “Under The Banner Of Heaven”, which is an examination of the cult-like, secretive, fundamentalist, groups that have splintered off from the mainstream, official Mormon Church. Great book
I’m glad to finally see a precise, even scientific definition of “cult”, which is a word I almost never use, as it is almost always used in such a slipshod way to mean nothing more than “a religion I don’t like”. Islam and Calvinism are religions I don’t like, but I’ve never referred to them as “cults” and I’m not going to. If a religion doesn’t resort to the brainwashing* methods you describe (i.e., the methods which the Communists used on American P.O.W.’s during the Korean War*), then I’m not going to call it a “cult”, no matter how much I hate its doctrines. Words mean things.
(*The word “brainwashing” was coined by Edward Hunter to describe those methods.)
I don’t believe in God, but it is amusing to contemplate a creature who could create the universe and yet find himself outwitted, his hand forced, by some Ag students breeding a red calf.
Thus spake the Lord: “Well, they got the calf, I have no choice but to call ‘game over’ on this whole deal.”
For me, the signs of a cult…
1. Vegetarianism..not a sure hit, but a marker for worry.
2. Pretty daughters and young wives get the privilege of sleeping with the pastor or deacons (thats sarcasm btw).
3. Disrespect of teh Bible (see Jim Jones jumping up and down on the Bible, and telling people to listen to him, and not it. The reverse of Biblical teaching which commended the Bereans for checking the Scriptures after a preaching to ‘see if these things were so’.”
4. Also, a lot of people I’ve heard say that a sign of a cult is whether they treat Jesus as the Christ as the God/Man. Of course, this wouldn’t apply to a non-Christian based cult, imo.
And you’re right, Michael, boxing the Infinite and Eternal into a corner, is well, impossible. Unless he wants to be boxed in.
All systems of beliefs wind up acting like cults. Some other systems of philosophy too. Including objectivism, which I admire so greatly. (Try arguing with my guys, and see where it gets you.)
Hey, out there. Read enough of my shit, and I’d wind up a cult like all the others. Ask L Ron Hubbard if you can’t make that happen.
But the nice thing about living in a vaguely secular constitutional republic is that all of us learn to keep our paws off the other guys’ cults and not act as if they were all nuts. We’re all nuts in any case, of course. But that’s another argument.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Something that few people in the West realize is that Islam was very egalitarian until the rise of Arab nationalism and, more recently, Islamofasicm (labelled as “fundamentalism” but which in fact is really anything but fundamental Islam). The caliphs were certainly not totalitarian and definitely not a Church in the sense we think of; they were more of a religious militia, and minority Jews were well-tolerated.
Now, that’s not to say they were a particularly free or enlightened society by modern standards, because they weren’t. But the really telling thing is, as pointed out above the modern “fundamentalist” terrorist sects of Islam fit the “cult brainwashing” definition to a t. They truly are cults of death.
Tall Dave,
At least there is someone sane in this thread. I agree with you.
It’s my understanding things got corrupted after the move into Spain.
Before this the ruling regilious elite allowed and it was expected that they would take input from the community in making their decisions.
The decline started when power began to be centered in just a few who then of course became dictatorial/repressive of alternative views. The golden age of Islam was in the 6th to the 12th Century. The realm reached from West Africa to the Eastern Pacific.
Done thru history we have witnessed this time after time e.g. power corrupts absolutely – Hitler.
Oftentimes these dictators have “final solutions” that involve scape goats for their followers lot and in life and in the world to cover their own pillaging. Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Does the Big Satan and the Little Satan ring any bells.
This latest rise of fundamentalism or whatever you want to call – Islamofascism came out of the deserts of Saudi and Egypt. They were pretty much left alone there to continue with their madness.
No one really cared. Modern society had little interaction with them. They had nothing that brought them into contact with the merchant trading world.
The Muslim Botherhood had some interaction with the Nazi between WWI and WWII.
With the world’s dependence on oil these folks then again became involved with the modern world. The Sauds in particular greatly benefited from the riches of the sales of their oil. They basically made an agreement with the Wahabi Sect to leave them alone in exchange for funding their Madrassahs worldwide which spread this madness. The Sauds also paid Arafat the Rat about $30M a month to leave them alone.
The Sauds are the biggest hypocrites of all as it’s well known they can party and womenize with the best in the casinos of Europe. That’s about the only thing that OBL got right. The Sauds are now running scared and need us for their protection. Good time to get real reform there.
The Palastinians have been a ship without a rudder. Everyone has taken advantage of them and diverted money to improve their lot. How is it the Israelis have been able to prosper in the region and the Palestinians continue with the “woe is me line.” As Dr. Phil says “Now how’s that workin for ya?”
Could it be the ideology just plains sucks!
I’m glad I’m not and have never been involved in any cult, especially one run by a guy named Derwyn Lackey. What a creep. Sounds like a sort of dime-store Ellsworth Toohey (except that Toohey was a lot smarter). “Human Services Alliance”. I was wondering why, in all my years in California, I never encountered this “California Fresh Buffet” — it’s in north Carolina! Hmmm…. about it all.
Anyway, I’m going to stick to the strict definition that Dean gave of what constitutes a “cult” and not go around flinging the word at anything I don’t like. Words have to mean definite things or else they mean nothing at all.
Objectivism is not a cult. Many people such as myself admire the writings of Ayn Rand but do not call themselves Objectivists. Others call themselves Objectivists because that is the most logical, comprehensive, and humanistic philosophy there is, nearly all the other contemporary secular philosophies being nihilistic philosophies of despair. For many, Objectivism is indeed a religion, worshipping man, the ideal man, or Rand herself. In her introduction to The Fountainhead, Rand spoke of reverence, worship, exaltation, and the sacred as belonging to man (as in Howard Roark’s Temple to the Human Spirit), and she deified man in all of her other works. But it is not a cult in the sense of using brainwashing techniques such as Dean described.
I’m well aware of the viciously distorted accounts of Murray Rothbard and Jeff Walker which attempt to portray Objectivism as a cult, as well as of the far more balanced account in Barbara Branden’s The Passion of Ayn Rand. One book I’m going to get and read soon is James Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics.
Catholicism is not at all a cult, as anybody who knows Catholics and/or the history of Catholicism and its impact on the West would know. Neither are most other Christian denominations. Fundamental Protestantism is not a cult at all either. It is simply a strict adherence to the Bible. I don’t like the doctrines of Calvinism, but it’s not a cult. Mormonism (a.k.a. the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is not a cult, though perhaps some offshoots of it are.
Asatru or Odinism is not a cult. It is extremely conservative men and women, usually of Northern European descent, who have chosen to go back to the old Norse Gods and Goddesses.
Islam is not a cult. I don’t like it, but they don’t use those brainwashing techniques Dean describes. Islamic terrorist groups are probably cults in that sense.
There are a lot of religions from the Far East which are being taken up as fads here in the West, much like the various Near Eastern religions in the late Roman Empire, but only some of them have taken the form of cults in the sense defined in this post.
This cult phenomenon sounds quite new, having sprung up around the 1970s. Obviously the tinfoil “gurus” or “fuhrers” leading these outfits have studied that Communist brainwashing techniques were used on our P.O.W.s during the Korean War and described by Edward Hunter and other authors. Communists specialized in such brainwashing. It is a central part of Communist doctrine that the individual can be re-molded to become a total slave of the collective through such methods. Politically Correct “sensitivity training” in our universities is obviously based on this as well.
The Nazis used propaganda and artistically orchestrated mass rallies to inspire their followers, but they didn’t use this kind of brainwashing in their camps, since their prisoners were deemed fit only for extermination. So, even the Nazis weren’t a cult in the exact sense.
I don’t know whether or not Scientology is a cult. The Unification Church (“Moonies”) is a cult, but the many conservatives who write in, read, and/or link to articles in Sun Myung Moon’s newspaper The Washington Times are not members of any cult at all.
Steven,
Perhaps as you say the religion of Islam is not a cult.
But I would make the distinction that the fundamentialistic sect and or Islamofascism as practiced and expoused by AQ is most definitely a cult.
AQ follows mainline IRA terrorist training techs with Islamfascisim thrown into the mix.
Those engrained in this madness by the radical madrassehs in my opinion have been “programed” in the strict sense of a cult as Dean led off.
Leaders of this movement seek out other young diseffected Mulsim youth and recruit them to their cause. They connect via the Internet.
The radicial white supremist groups in the US do the exact samething to recruit new members into their groups. They hang around high schools and bars where young people gather. They look for those they know they can recurit by building their self-estem and other little techniques.
Once brought in as a new recruit in the terrorist training camps, they are arranged into groups of 4 to 6 members with a leader. I’m not kidding they eat, sleep, train, and do their religious training together. You get the big picture. They are told about the Big Satan and the Little Satan as being the root of all evil for all wrongs and their lack of status in life.
See my problem is the radical religious leaders are empowered to make rulings based on their own interpretations of the religious text. There is no debate of alternative interpretations. Do you see where this is going. They make their own rules and enforce them. There is no debate. Without alternative sources of information to show these members that perhaps that there are alternative realities they’re FU#$!. Especially if they are “groomed” in the Madrassahs before the age of 8 when human personality becomes somewhat hardwired.
The control of information and the stiffling of debate are key. This is the point that Hugh Hewitt was trying to make in his book Blog. We are entering a transformational period as great or greater that Martin Luther’s time and the Prostestant Reformation. The printing press and moveable typs allowed the masses for the first time to see and read the religious text for themselves. Up until that time the aristocracy and the Catholic Church controlled the interpretation of the news/thought/religion of the day.
Let’s go a little further – cells are generally grouped into operational, financial, and logistics. The cells operate independently of each other. Only the leader has a point of contact to receive instructions. This is done for operational security and it is damned hard to infiltrate the cell. Mind you sympathetic supporters probably know who in their Mosque they probably are however the outside world has no clue.
These cells are then sent abroad. Again for OPSEC they travel, sleep, train, study et al as a group. They read the religious text together at the leader’s direction. You see they are somewhat fish out of water in a Western society. There is the danger a member “flip” if left alone too long by themselves because the “big lie” tends to fade.
If you saw the “Hunt for Red October” didn’t you notice who Sean C killed first on the submarine? It was the Russian political officer that keeps everyone in line ideologically!
These are cults in my book.
Eric R. Ashley wrote:
“4. Also, a lot of people I’ve heard say that a sign of a cult is whether they treat Jesus as the Christ as the God/Man.”
I’m not exactly clear on what you are referring to here and I don’t want to misinterpret you, but, at least since Athanasius, it has long been the historic doctrine of the Catholic and other Christian churches, including most Protestant churches, that Jesus the Christ is both wholly God and wholly Man. John 1:1-14
SMA,
Yes, that was what I was trying to say. Jesus is both God and Man.
I’ve heard, that one sign of a cult is treating Jesus as not God (I suspect this may be throwing the term ‘cult’ around too loosely, but I also suspect that a lot of real cults that are Christian off-shoots do adhere to some version of Jesus is not God.)
And while I’m at it, I’m not really a fan of Objectivism, but I wouldn’t have called them a cult. Its interesting, Arnold said in a previous thread that Objectivists don’t need Saints, just rational thinkers, and now he’s slamming them as cultists(albeit, along with most everyone).
I wouldn’t regard the demotion of Jesus to less than God as cultic, but it has long been regarded by most Christians as heretical, specifically, the Arian heresy. Unitarians believe that Jesus was only a man, but they are as far from being a cult as you could get, hardly a religion at all, in fact, merely a loose fellowship.
Objectivists such as Leonard Peikoff are often dogmatic or doctrinaire in their beliefs, but that doesn’t make them a cult.
Ron Wright:
As I said, Catholicism, the Catholic church, is not nor ever has been a cult. Nor did it, as Protestants like to believe, keep the masses in darkness. To the contrary, the Catholic church was the one institution after the fall of the Roman Empire that kept the light of civilization burning. There was a great deal of free thought and intellectual debate among the Scholastic philosophers such as Abelard, Anselm, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas, as well as among the Jesuits later on (the Counter-Reformation). The Scholastics established the first universities. There was at least as much free thought in a Dominican monastery as there was in Calvin’s Geneva.
And by the way, the Scholastic philosophers did not sit around debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. For one thing, the answer was obvious to them: an infinite number, since angels, being purely spiritual beings, do not occupy space. I don’t know when that canard started or who started it, probably somebody in the 19th century.
Excuse my language. I should have said: ….probably some blockhead in the 19th century. That would have been a bit more accurate.
I believe that the reference to cults treating Jesus as “the god/man” was a way of noting how many cults deny the trinity and instead adopt such beliefs as: he was 50% God, 50% man, or, a man who was A god but not THE God, or, he was a man who ACHIEVED godhood, or stuff like that. Those are all considered heresies done away with in the early centuries of Christianity, but a lot of modern cults have revived them.
But I think this is besides the point–it sort of waters down what makes a cult. Many cults have no real Christian basis at all, or even really pretend to it.
This is why it’s also wrong to refer to the worst of the Randite people as “cultists” in the strictest sense. Nobody forces anyone to read Ayn Rand; nobody who goes to a meeting of Objectivists feels in any way compelled to attend any further meetings. Donations are rarely solicited and if they are it’s for pretty obvious exchange (newsletter subscription being most common). And, while the Randites might well lose patience for many types of debate, most of them will argue doctrine endlessly with anyone interested. And the idea that one Randite would browbeat another into malnutrition, sleep deprivation, abandonment of their family and friends, etc. is just silly.
As I say: we should be careful with the word “cult.” The real thing–real cults–are pretty damned dangerous.
One criterion for being a cult might be physically preventing members from leaving.
To me, this is the most freaky thing about Communist countries.
Maor:
Exactly. Communism is what these cult leaders dream of, on a massive scale.
Steven,
That’s my point. Didn’t mean to infer that the Catholic Church was a cult. It’s just the masses until the printing presses had to rely on the aristocracy and the church for meaning of the Word, thought of the day, and other news.
Problem is when you have that kind of control of info it gives power to those who will do the interpretion. It’s when that power corrupts which in time it will, alternative thoughts and opinions are band and only one true meaning is allowed. The problem is the one true meaning is generally what those in power choose it to be.
The Spanish Inquisition was alittle overboard in my book.
The Salem Witchtrials were a little excessive by the Protestants.
VDH has an excellent essay out today on Islam Fascism that is definitely a must read.
See my flip comment over at LGF for the link re the BBC’s lunacy re the London bombings:
LGF Link
Call the enemy what you may. Understand their ideology because it will predict their actions that then can be exploited.
In short don’t waste too much time on trying to understand them – just whoop their a$$e$.
Ron Wright:
Very good. Thank you. Victor Davis Hanson is great.
You wrote:
“That’s my point. Didn’t mean to infer that the Catholic Church was a cult. It’s just the masses until the printing presses had to rely on the aristocracy and the church for meaning of the Word, thought of the day, and other news.”
True. Much as, today, the majority tend to rely on mass-circulation newspapers, magazines, and TV for their news, and their churches for their moral values. I prefer the churches.
“Problem is when you have that kind of control of info it gives power to those who will do the interpretion. It’s when that power corrupts which in time it will, alternative thoughts and opinions are band and only one true meaning is allowed. The problem is the one true meaning is generally what those in power choose it to be.”
Very true.
“The Spanish Inquisition was alittle overboard in my book.”
All too true.
“The Salem Witchtrials were a little excessive by the Protestants.”
All too true.
I have no intention of justifying the cruelties of the Middle Ages or of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation era, including the persecution of the Jews. I only reject the view of history as a linear “Progress”. The “scientific” ideologies of the 19th century gave rise to the 20th century, with its totalitarian states (including monolithic control of all media), concentration camps, planned genocides and democides (into the hundreds of millions of deaths), etc.. I have concluded that the 20th century will go down as the darkest age in human history.
Steven,
I can see we can agree on some things.
On another note for all of us who seem to have unlimited time to comment here and elsewhere on these mind bending abstract concepts, may I inject some reality while we all are playing hooking on our employer’s time.
Dr. Zin and I believe we have a very limited strategic window of opportunity to topple the regime of the Mad Mullahs of Iran.
The people of Iran will do this on their own if they get the message that the Am people and the free world will support them in their struggle for freedom.
The fall of the Iranian regime would deliver a crushing if not fatal blow to the enemy in the GWOT.
I don’t think for one minute that this current administration will blink for one moment and allow the Mad Mullahs to go nuclear. It’s just better and cheaper in the long run if the regime change is done by the people themselves.
We can all help here by mirroring info from Dr Zin. The Mullahs are doing a pretty good job at blocking outside information.
In order to pull off the world’s first digital revolutions we must tear down these walls.
For further info go to Dr. Zin’s site and also put some money in his tip jar. He is financing this largely out of his own pocket.
http://www.regimechangeiran.com
If your familiar with the new book 1776 it only takes the dedication for a few determined folks to pull something off like this.
from the Cult Information Centre.
The point of Under the Banner of Heaven is not that Mormons are cultists but that a particular type of religion can become a breeding ground for cults. Mormons are more subject to this problem than, say, Protestant denominations because one of the key elements of the Latter-Day Saints is that anyone can become a prophet. That’s part of its appeal; any member may get a direct line to God.
That’s also the danger, because it becomes very difficult to tell if the charismatic person you are following has a direct line to God or is merely faking it.
Krakauer’s text alludes to the fact some religions around the world breed cults more than others, and it is those where anyone can speak with the voice of God where such societies tend to form the most. (It is hard, for example for cults to form in the Catholic Church because the chain of command tends to snuff them out. Likewise, Buddhists, who look within rather than without, tend to be safer.)
So— imams, anyone?
Islam isn’t cult-friendly. Most cults would be considered heretical or at least highly suspect, and at present Muslim society is highly intolerant of that sort of stuff.
The US probably gets a lot of cults because it is very tolerant.
Japan is even more tolerant. It is common to adhere to more than one religion. Japan gets quite a few cults.
I’m just glad my name isn’t Derwyn Lackey, ha! ha!
The Mahdi, who besieged and then slew General Charles George “Chinese” Gordon at the end of the 19th century. Hmmm…. A fascinating episode that was. The War of East vs. West….
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