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Since all destructive cults believe that their ends justify any means, no matter how harmful, they typically believ...
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Briefly, a destructive cult is a group that violates its members’ rights and damages them through the abusive techniques of unethical mind control. 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 multi-level marketing business that makes its money not from selling products to buyers, but by misleading and recruiting ever more sales associates, is a marketing cult.
If I had not personally suffered from mind control for two and a half years, I would probably be a staunch defender of the rights of such groups to practice freely, unhindered by public scrutiny. I am extremely concerned about protecting personal liberty and defending the Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom. I fully support people’s rights to believe as they choose, no matter how unorthodox their beliefs. If people want to believe that Sun Myung Moon—or Charles Manson, or their dog—is the Messiah, that is their right. However—and this is a crucial point—people need to be protected
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If deception, hypnosis, or other mind control techniques are used to recruit and control followers, then people’s rights are being infringed upon.
Religious cults are the best known and most numerous. These groups focus on religious dogma.
Although most claim to involve the spiritual realm, or to follow a strict code of religious principles, it is more common than not for these cult leaders to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, with the groups owning millions of dollars of real estate, and/or running extensive business enterprises.
Political cults often make the news, usually with the word “fringe” or “extremist” attached.
These groups are organized around a particular political dogma.
Psychotherapy/educational cults hold expensive workshops and seminars that provide participants with “insight” and “enlightenment,” usually in a hotel conference room. These cults use many basic mind control techniques to provide participants with a peak experience—which is to say hypnotic euphoria,
That experience is all that happens to most customers, but others are manipulated to sign up for the more expensive advanced courses. Graduates of the advanced courses may then become enmeshed in the group. Once committed to the group, members are told to bring in friends, relatives, and co-workers, or else cut off relations with them. Recruiters are typically not allowed to disclose much about the program.
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. They also destroy their victims’ self-esteem so they will not complain. Success depends not on selling products or services, but on recruiting new people, who in turn recruit others.
The large cults know how to train their “salespeople” well. They indoctrinate members to show only the best sides of the organization. Members are taught to suppress any negative feelings they have about the group, and to always show a continually smiling, happy face. Recruiters are taught to size up each newcomer, and package and sell the cult in whatever way is most likely to succeed.
It was always amazing to me to realize how many people told us they had just been praying to God to reveal to them what He wanted them to do with their lives. Many believed they were spiritually led to meet one of our members. With them it was simply a matter of sharing our testimonies and we would convince them they had been led to us by God.
Why is there so much complacency about the threat of mind control cults? First, accepting that mind control can be effectively used on almost anybody challenges the age-old notion that human beings are rational, and responsible for (and in control of) all their actions. Such a worldview does not allow for any concept of mind control. Second, we all have a belief in our own invulnerability. It is too scary to think that someone could take control of our minds.
influence is a natural part of life, but undue influence is not.
First there is the idea that a human being is inherently rational. If people operate from such a viewpoint, they believe that cult members have rationally chosen to live a deviant lifestyle.
People try to ascribe a direct cause-and-effect relationship to what happened: if something bad happened to her, then she must have done something wrong. This kind of behavior is called blaming the victim.
Often people look at a cult victim and say mistakenly, “What a weak-minded person; he must have been looking for a way to escape responsibility and have someone control his life.” In that way people deny the reality that the same thing could happen to them.
People at the top of these organizations do not lead through wisdom, consensus, compassion, or even brainpower. They lead by making their followers frightened and dependent. They demand obedience and subservience. They often require their followers to dress, act, and think exactly alike.
BITE model. As I mentioned, this model looks at four aspects of potential control: behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotion control.
People are being incorrectly described as “self-radicalized” into becoming terrorists. These folks can be better understood as being on the fringes of a destructive cult—but in the “sphere of influence” of mind control. They are absolutely being recruited—by people in person and online.
Not surprisingly, a large number of sex trafficking victims were sexually abused as children, making them especially vulnerable to recruitment and continued abuse. This childhood mind control abuse set them up for being abused again and again.
In some cults, members are systematically made to be phobic about ever leaving the group. Today’s cults know how to effectively implant vivid negative images deep within members’ unconscious minds, making it impossible for them to even conceive of ever being happy and successful outside of the group. When the unconscious is programmed to accept such negative associations, it behaves as though they were true. The unconscious mind of the typical cult member contains a substantial image-bank of all of the bad things that will occur if they, or anyone, were to ever betray the group.
In the same way, cult phobias take away people’s choices. Members truly believe they will be destroyed if they leave the safety of the group. They think there is no way outside the group for them to grow—spiritually, intellectually, or emotionally.
mind control groups constantly change their doctrines and policies. Members are constantly exiting, and leaders need to keep lying and change policies to try to maintain control.
We have a certain degree of conscious control, but most matters are controlled unconsciously. The conscious mind has a narrow range of attention. The unconscious does all the rest, including regulating all body functions.
The unconscious mind is the primary manager of information.
It is not accidental that many destructive cults tell their members to “become like little children,” mimicking Christianity: “You must be as one of these to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Adults can easily be age-regressed to a time when they had little or no critical faculties. As children, we were helpless and dependent on our parents as the ultimate authority figures.
The mind, despite all of its strength and ability, has weaknesses too. It is dependent on a stream of coherent information to function properly. Put a person in a sensory deprivation chamber, and within minutes he will start to hallucinate and become incredibly suggestible. Likewise, put a person into a situation where his senses are overloaded with non-coherent information, and the mind will go “numb” as a protective mechanism. It gets confused and overwhelmed, and critical faculties no longer work properly. It is in this weakened state that people become very open to suggestion.
Like it or not, everyone is vulnerable to mind control. Everyone wants to be happy. Everyone needs affection and attention. Everyone is looking for something better in life: more wisdom, more knowledge, more money, more status, more meaning, better relationships, or better health. These basic human qualities and needs are exactly what cult recruiters prey upon. It is important to remember that, for the most part, people don’t join cults. Cults recruit people.
People being recruited by cults are approached in four basic ways: 1) by a friend or relative who is already a member; 2) by a stranger (often a member of the opposite sex) who befriends them; 3) through a cult-sponsored event, such as a lecture, symposium, or movie; or 4) through social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, websites, blogs, and so forth.
The friend or relative wants to share some incredible insights and experiences. Or they say they “just need your opinion,” in order to trick you into an indoctrination session.
Surveys of present and former cult members indicate that the majority of people recruited into destructive cults were approached at a vulnerable time of stress in their lives.
Other people are initially brought into contact with a cult through an impersonal medium. Some people begin by buying a cult book advertised on TV as a bestseller. Others receive in the mail an invitation to a seemingly harmless Bible-study session. Some people answer a want ad. Some are recruited when they take a job with a cult-owned business.
The elderly tend to be solicited for heavy financial contributions or public-relations endorsements. Many middle-aged people are recruited for their professional expertise, to help set up or run cult-owned businesses. Still, young people, for the most part, represent the core workers. They can sleep less, eat less and work harder.
Although the white middle class is still the main target of recruitment, several groups are now actively seeking out blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. As they gather individuals from these communities, they use them to design programs that will bring in others. The big cults have already developed indoctrination programs in Spanish, for example.
Interestingly, cults generally avoid recruiting people who will burden them, such as those with physical disabilities or severe emotional problems. They want people who will stand up to the grueling demands of cult life. If someone is recruited who uses illegal drugs, they are usually told to either stop using them or leave. To my knowledge, there are few people with disabilities recruited in cults, because it takes time, money, and effort to assist them. People born into cults who develop disabilities are often distanced and sent to government welfare programs.
JWs won't allow such people at Bethel, but they will recruit them as regular members and take their contributions, field service hours, and utilise any special skills.
People involved full-time in a destructive cult know what it is like to live under totalitarianism, but can’t objectively see what is happening to them.
People indoctrinated to perform excessive (hours-long) meditation or chanting techniques every day can become psychologically and physiologically addicted to the mind control technique. Such mind-stilling generates strong releases of brain chemicals which cause not only a dissociated mental state but also a “high” similar to that created by drugs and other addictions.
Cult members tend to spend all their time either recruiting more people, fundraising, or working on public relations projects.
People who worked devotedly for years, sometimes making hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group, are told that the group can’t afford to pay their medical bills. Often they are asked to leave the group until they have healed. A person who requires expensive treatment will often be asked to go back to their family, so that the family will pay the bills.
Many people have forgotten that nearly 300 children were murdered during the Jonestown massacre. Those children had no choice but to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid.
The children are taught to place their allegiance with the cult leader or the group as a whole, not with their parents.
Children typically receive an inferior education, if any. Like their parents, they are taught that the world is a hostile, evil place, and they are forced to depend on cult doctrine to understand reality.
Be a good consumer about any group that interests you, before you make any commitments. First and foremost, do careful research. One place to start is with my own free site, freedomofmind.com. Other helpful sites include icsahome.com, openmindsfoundation.org, and apologeticsindex.org.
In Google or some other search engine, type the name of the organization (with the entire name inside quotation marks) and the word cult; also try the name of the group (again, inside quotation marks) and the word scam or scandal. Try variations with the name of the leader of the group, and words like criminal, abuser or sex.
In the 21st century, when it comes to any group, it’s important to do at least as much background research as you would before buying a TV, computer or car.
After some reflection, most people realize that if they were under mind control, it would be impossible to determine it without some help from the outside.
Whenever people yelled at me and called me a “brainwashed robot,” I just took it as an expected persecution. It made me feel more committed to the group.
