Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults

by Steven Hassan

Orwell depicted a world where “thought police” maintain complete control over people’s mental and emotional lives, and where it is a crime to act or think independently, or even to fall in love. Unfortunately, such places do exist right now, all over the world. They are mind control cults.

Individuals become totally dependent on the group and lose the ability to act or think on their own. They are typically exploited for the sake of the group’s economic or political ends.

Different cults appeal to the many different human impulses: such as desire to belong; to improve oneself and others; to understand the meaning and purpose of life.

Political cults, often in the news, are organized around a simplistic political theory, sometimes with a religious cloak.

Commercial cults play on people’s desires to make money. They typically promise riches but actually enslave people, and compel them to turn money over to the group.

It distinguishes itself from a normal, healthy social or religious group by subjecting its members to systematic control of behavior, information, thoughts and emotions (BITE) to keep them dependent and obedient.

A pimp with four women (or men) under his control forms a cult of five. A sweatshop of foreign workers who have been economically lured there, and who now cannot leave, is a labor trafficking cult.

Religious cults are the best known and most numerous. These groups focus on religious dogma. Some use the Bible or Koran; some are based on an Eastern religion; others draw on occult lore; and some are purely the inventions of their leaders.

Political cults often make the news, usually with the word “fringe” or “extremist” attached.

Psychotherapy/educational cults hold expensive workshops and seminars that provide participants with “insight” and “enlightenment,” usually in a hotel conference room.

Commercial cults believe in the dogma of greed. They deceive and manipulate people to work for little or no pay in the hope of getting rich. Many such pyramid-scheme or multi-level marketing organizations promise big money, but in fact fleece their victims.

Many cults deliberately seek out people who are intelligent, talented, and successful. As a result, its members are often powerfully persuasive and seductive to newcomers.

The average person doesn’t understand mind control; doesn’t know how cults operate, doesn’t know what questions to ask and what behaviors to watch out for, and doesn’t believe they could ever be sucked in. That’s why so many ordinary people are prime candidates for cult recruiters.