How can I become a Cult Follower?

You feel lonely in your daily life, your job is boring, well all your life is uninteresting, you need something different, something new…
If you think that the society is a den of iniquity, that medicine is futile, that the psychiatry is dangerous, that religion is out of date and that politic is outdated I just want to say “welcome to our cult!”.
For the others who do not recognize them in these lines don’t worry there is a place for everyone! You just have to leave your friends, all your entourage because they won’t believe you they will persecute you which mean that you are in the truth. If you are unable to break the link with the society you won’t be able to reach our aim. And we need you! We need your intelligence, your capacity to involve yourself for the happiness of the world! We are your family and we will be the masters of the universe, your life will become useful, God give us a life to accomplish a mission…we are the future, and the future is yours!

A cult? What are you babbling about?

Yes, cult, quite a large concept that I will reduce to a shortened definition. Here, a cult is a kind of small (or not-so-small) religious or “philosophical” group that imposes unhealthy control on its member life and thoughts. The group is often cut from society and lives in autarchy by using its member resources, meaning that members are ready to give up everything they have for the sake of the group. Most of the time they are just seen as weird people, quite idealistic, who tries to purify themselves from lot of things (including having too much money) by practising new relaxation techniques, or yoga, and by reciting priers or chanting. But sometimes one of those happy-freaky groups does not concentrate on meditation but rather on the best way to kill each other: those are called destructive cults. Rape, paedophilia, murder inside or outside the group, and massive suicide… Yeah, destructive cult’s members have an extensive schedule.

Okay, but now… how do you recognize a cult from a Boy Scout organization? In fact, cults are rather hard to identify, mostly because there is no precise definition of what is a cult, and partly because they rarely come to say “hi dude we’d like to brainwash you!” Nevertheless a cult has some key characteristics and if a group includes most or all of them, you can identify it as one.

• First of all, the members are always right; they have the right face, the right philosophy, and the right science. Even if they are only two, they are the only ones right and everyone else is wrong, they are the only one living according to God’s will, anyone else is heretic.
  
• Secondly, they use manipulation, brainwashing techniques, and psychological pressure to recruit members and keep them inside the group.
  
• Third, they have a self-appointed leader, with a nice name, a nice smile, and your nice money in his nice pocket. Very charismatic, he had a hard / wonderful life (depending on what he decided to invent). He is the one who wrote the doctrine they recite day after day, he is heaven-sent, a prophet, a doctor, a lawyer… He has supreme power because all he wants is human happiness, he wants peace all over the world, and he wants you to improve / to evolve. He is called a guru.
  
• Fourth, there is a strong hierarchy inside the group. The organisation is well thought-out, so that you might never know how deep the organization is, or how many member there are.
  
• Fifths, the cult cut all communication and relationships with the outside. They may advice you not to see your family or old friends, stating that those will not understand you. If you decide to live inside the group, you are always with old initiate member, so that the only one you can speak to completely trust the leader. No phone, no post… they sometimes uses a private e-mail box that can be delete by he guru in case of any problem.
  
• Sixth: the may ask you to share something with them. They offer free literature, free meals or free hugs, so that you feel obliged to pay, to help them or to hug them in return. But strangely all that you pay do not seem to benefit the group which continues to live poorly: all that you gave goes to the leader.
  

There are lots and lots of other “cultic” habits, but those are the more recurrent. So, did you find out that your Harry Potter fan club was a cult? ;)

More?

"...if you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps 'the' religion; and if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect;but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult." Leo Pfeffer

http://www.spiritwatch.org/cultdef.htm

Cult - mind control

Mind Control Made Easy, or How to Become a Cult Leader -a film by Carey Burtt

This 12 minute 35 second film from You Tube spoofs most aspect of cults, and their techniques of brainwashing in a rather ironic tone. A quite funny short film which contains a lot of references to real cultic groups.

Another weblog has already linked to this video (The Truth about Human Potential Seminar )and did what I wanted to do by quoting the examples of covering troops given in the film and link it with real cultic groups…

Same tone, same aims, a book by Gabrielle Guichard to show you how cults work so that you can't be deceived by that kind of fraud: “How To Create Your Sect In 10 Lessons And Become A Rich Guru - Comment Créer Votre Secte En 10 Leçons Et Devenir Un Riche Gourou.” Note that it is a bilingual book by a French author, and has been written so that people can improve they vocabulary in both languages: as a result, the author style is not very literary but relatively simple to understand ( i.e. sometimes fairly poor).

A figure of speech

Within a cult, the guru lays down a different vocabulary from the exterior world. In fact, the followers have to appropriate a serious, scientific or religious language according to the cult but which have a meaning only inside this one. The followers feel unique, valorised and so they think they will be able to reach their goal. However this technique is a way to stop the communication with the exterior world and to impoverish the mind. It is an effect that allows anesthetizing the critic spirit and the members’ personality.

A Brief Treaty on Manipulation…

From now, it is understood that cults use different techniques of manipulation, but don’t you want to learn more about some of the strings of self-controlling? “Petit traité de manipulation à l’usage des honnêtes gens” is the book you absolutely need. It was written by two university searchers, Joule and Beauvois, and aimed at anyone from parents to teachers, from worker to chief managers. Even if it is a psychology book, it is quite easy to understand and… amazingly invention-full!

Have a look!

I Want Blood !

Most of the time, when someone speaks about cults (okay, that sort of conversation is quite rare), it reminds people about mass suicides or murder committed by fanatical cult members. But in fact not all cults are this dangerous; it’s just that people have a nasty tendency to remember only the bloody pages of the story. Those sects often tends to be apocalyptical, their members strongly believe that this world is going to disappear tomorrow…
So, let’s have a look at one those destructive cults Identity Card.

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Destructive Cult #1:

Cult’s Name: Peoples Temple

Leader’s Name: James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978)

Number of followers: estimated 20,000 in the 70s [1] / about 990 in Jonestown

Date of creation: 1950s in Indianapolis, Indiana

Description of their Beliefs: People in Jonestown (i.e. the place where Peoples Temple’s most important member lived altogether in what they believed as a utopic community) believed in socialism. They considered that it was the Bible’s message to share everything and to support each other and that the kingdom of God could be established on earth by life in an apostolic community. They also were partisans of racial equality.
Some sites tell that they assumed that a nuclear holocaust was going to destruct the world, but I did not find any valuable document that corroborates this idea.

End: "Nine hundred and nine people died at Jonestown including 294 children under the age of 18" (Wessinger 2000, p. 31). Eighty-five members survived either because they hid, ran into the jungle, or were not in Jonestown that day. Jones himself "died of gunshot wounds" (Wessinger 2000, p. 31).

Sources:

• 
  
  Wessinger, Catherine. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000.


• 
  
  http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/


• 
  
  [1] Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, "Inside Peoples Temple;” New West Magazine; August 1, 1977 edition

Other:
People's Temple movie, released 1973
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234446/

_____________________________________________


Other well-known destructive cults:

Cult’s Name: Branch Davidians
Leader’s Name: David Koresh (Vernon Wayne Howell) (1959 -1993)
Famous for...: the Waco Tragedy. On 19th of April 1993, 82 persons died, including 21 children and David Koresh himself. The cause of the death is still under question, some says that they died in the fire provoked by the Us armed Forces dubble attack, other that they committed suicide.

Sources:

http://www.fountain.btinternet.co.uk/koresh/history.html

http://www.carolmoore.net/waco/

More :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/19/newsid_2489000/2489769.stm

And a film by Rick Van Vleet, Stephen M. Novak, Michael McNulty & Jason Van Vleet; Waco - A New Revelation

____

Cult’s Name: Heaven's Gate

Leader's Name: Marshall Herff "Do" Applewhite and Bonnie "Ti" Lu Trusdale Nettles, a.k.a. "The Two."

Famous for...: the suicide of 39 of its 40 members. "They had each drunk a lethal cocktail of drugs mixed with vodka in a deluded attempt to leave earth and board an alien spaceship. [1]"

Sources:

http://www.rickross.com/groups/heavensgate.html

People’s favorite cult! – Scientology

How can we speak about cult without talking about Scientology? It is one of the most cults important in the USA with its 55.000 followers in 2001; and all over the world with for example 6.000 scientologists in Germany and about 1.500 in Canada.
They even have their dedicated South Park episode (the twelfth episode of the ninth season)!
Enjoy…!

Name: scientology
Leader’s Name: L. Ron Hubbard
Number of followers:55.000 in the USA, 6.000 in Germany, etc…
Date of creation: 1952
Website: http://www.scientology.org/

Description of their belief: "The Scientology religion attempts to explain the origin of negative spiritual forces in the world and advances techniques for improving one's own spiritual well-being. Scientologists believe that most human problems can be traced to lingering spirits of an extraterrestrial people massacred by their ruler, Xenu, over 75 million years ago. These spirits attach themselves by "clusters" to individuals in the contemporary world, causing spiritual harm and negatively influencing the lives of their hosts." - Judge Leonie Brinkema; US DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, Alexandria Division, Civil Action No 95-1107-A

Their goal: Bring people to understand their own life as well as themselves, in order to make all the improvements they find necessary.


The quotations’ box:
L. Ron Hubbard: “You have to neglect illness, and the body, and so forth, to improve man. “
L. Ron Hubbard: “Psychiatry has to do with the insane, and we have nothing to do with the insane whatsoever. The insane -- well, uh, they're insane.”

From Introduction to Scientology (1984) (Video), a televised interview given by L. Ron Hubbard

Ressources on scientology :
http://www.xenu.net/archive/COS_members.html
http://www.lermanet.com/howmany.htm
http://www.scientology-lies.com/

Pray in the USA

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
First Amendment in the Bill of Rights; December 15, 1791.

“(a) In General: Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b).
(b) Exception: Government may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person--
(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”
Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993

In the USA, you shall be free to express your faith towards any god. But a problem has been born from this freedom: the guaranteed religious tolerance changed the USA into a “spiritual marketplace[1]”. New Religious Movements are blooming serially; if you look only at bible-based religion, the number of options is unbelievable and if you are not happy with any of them, you just have to go on and create your own branch. But behind this, new ultra-fundamentalist Christian sects are growing, dominated by leaders who exercise virtually unlimited control over members' lives and thoughts. Gurus are protecting their industry behind religious freedom. In Europe, particularly in France and in Germany, governments have taken measures against religious movement considered as dangerous and extremist. Paternalist, they choose to protect people from cult’s abuses of weakness. The 30 of May 2001 the French senate voted a low prohibiting “mental manipulation” that included the possibility to dissolve or ban a cult considered as criminal. The criminal offences include personal violence, illegal use of medicines or misleading publicity, but also offences such as breach of privacy or using the likeness of a person without its consent.

Those measures have been wildly commented, shown as anti democratic: after all, people have the right to be exploited. Yeah yeah, a country dominated by silly UFO’s fanatics is far freer… Anyway, finding a middle ground between religious liberty and open place for cults is still a debating subject.


[1] Wade Clark Roof; Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion; Princeton University Press, 2001

See also:

• Bruno Fouchereau; Les sectes, le cheval de troie des Etats-Unis en europe, Le monde diplomatique, may 2001.


• Dr Gregory Baum; The Limits of Religious Liberty in France, at <http://www.aumisme.org/>

Image from Valparaiso Universy's website at http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/geo/courses/geo200/religion.html

Cult Test!

Now that you know a little more about cults, I’m sure you want to know what kind of cult member would you be, don’t you? So, we’ve prepared you a little personality test… Don’t cheat!


Walk in Light

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Etc...

Websites talking about cult & cults websites :

A Path.org: resources for the pagan community website // General information about religion.

Cult Information Centre (London’s): general information about cult

Brainwashing & mind control techniques: the title is quite clear


F.A.C.T.net: Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network Since 1993
On this site I found a testimony from a woman who used to be a member of “The family” (Children of God).

Cult FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about cults, sects, and related issues

Guru! : A game based on the cult system… (I need it!)

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Jehovah’s Witnesses website: http://www.watchtower.org/

Mormons Website: http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=e419fb40e21cef00VgnVCM1000001f5e340aRCRD

The Family (Children of God) website: http://www.thefamily.org/about/