Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out
This week’s book of the week joined my library after I read Don’t Call it a Cult, and the author, cult expert Rick Alan Ross, was mentioned in that book, making this week’s book of the week Cults Inside and Out: How People Get in and Can Get Out.
Ross got his start with cult intervention when a cult tried to infiltrate his grandmother’s retirement home. She complained to him about this very unpleasant woman who told her she was going to hell if she didn’t convert from Judaism to…whatever the cult was. Ross got with the home director, expelled all the cult members, who were posing as staff, and his career was born.
The book is laid out fairly methodically, opening with several chapters on the different types of cults, starting with the largest and most infamous, Jonestown, Unification Church, Falun Gong, Aum Shinrikyo, moving into the smaller but no less infamous al Qaeda, Branch Davidians, Charles Manson, and even explaining how a cult can be a single family unit, highlighting the Winnfred Everett Wright Murders in 2002 as an example, where a man and four women faced criminal charges in the malnutrition death of a nineteen month old boy. The leader of this cult, Winnfred Everett Wright, fathered 13 children with the four women, coming to dominate “The Family” through manipulation and “white guilt.” See, Wright was African American, and the four women were not, and Wright convinced them that they had to work off karma because of white men being so cruel to black man over the ages. That was in 2002, and if those talking points being used politically today don’t turn your blood to ice in your veins…well, you might just be a member of a cult.
He then goes on to explain what a destructive cult is, and this is particularly informative, given that the automatic clap back of most religious cults today is that most modern religions started out as a fringe cult movement. Christianity, Islam, Lutherism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Judaism…all of these started out pretty dang small and only grew in size over hundreds of years. But as Ross points out, not all destructive cults are religious based organizations, they can be political, health focused, business driven, and yes religious. “Cults can be based on some form of training, therapy, business plan, philosophy, diet, or exercise.” Cults can be an extremely abusive cult of two, and at the end of the book, when he’s going over interventions he’s guided, he applies the principles of a cult to a woman who was headed into an abusive and controlling relationship.
So, what are some of the things that define a destructive cult? He pulls information from psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton and provides three characteristics as distinctive to destructive cults.
1. A destructive cult will have a charismatic leader who becomes an object of worship and the sort of founding ideals of the group lose their power. Basically, it becomes all about the head honcho.
2. Destructive cults will include coercive persuasion or thought reform, aka brainwashing
3. A destructive cult will use economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and ruling coterie.
Additionally, psychologist Margaret Singer includes that when evaluating a group as a whole to determine if they meet the criteria for cult, we should consider the origin of the group and the role of the leader, the power structure or relationship between the leader and the followers, and the use of a coordinated program of persuasion, i.e. thought reform, i.e. brainwashing.
The leaders will almost always meet the clinical definition of narcissistic personality disorder or even psychopathy. The list included in the book, sort of reconfirms my opinion on Aleister Crowley, by the way…One more reason to read, knowledge builds on itself. And I’m now pretty convinced that Crowley was a sociopath. Back to cults…although Crowley is apropos to this conversation, as he certainly did his best to found a cult.
The charisma of a leader is a double edged sword. It’s great if the leader is charismatic and NOT a psychopath or narcissist. That is sort of a foundational pillar for cults. If the leader is not a secret bastard, you might not be in a cult. Of course, it’s the secret part that’s a bitch to find out about, and most people don’t know about the narcissistic psychopathy until well after the damage is done.
How about that brainwashing? It starts with “reliance on intense, interpersonal, and psychological attack to destabilize an individual’s sense of self to promote compliance.” Basically, break em down to build em back up. That, incidentally, does tie in to the NXIVM program as discussed in Don’t Call it a Cult. And yes, Keith Raniere, NXIVM and Executive Success Program are mentioned in this book. After you break someone down, you use an organized peer group to build them up and mold them into the accepted group image, using the peer group to promote conformity. Sort of monkey see monkey do method of leadership. And then the final step is manipulation of a person’s environment to stabilize the modified behavior. This is why Reverend Jones wanted his church to relocate to South America with him. If he can control the environment, he can control the people in the environment much easier.
And once the person has been broken down and rebuilt into an acceptable facsimile of themselves, it’s much easier to convince them to sign over their life savings, or that it’s a great honor to have sex with exalted leader or have sex with that person because exalted leader says it would be good for you.
After analyzing the leader and how recruits are treated, you can analyze the group at large. Does the group display zealous and unquestioning commitment to the leader and regard what the leader says as the law? Are questioning the leader, doubt, and dissent discouraged or punished? Does the group use mind-altering practices, which are used in excess? Please note: It’s the used in excess that’s the concern here, as these mind-altering practices can include meditation and chanting, possibly even yoga…but if it’s done to debilitation, or if the mind-altering practice includes things like denunciation sessions or speaking in tongues…well, you might be looking at a cult. If the leadership dictates how members should think, act or feel, if the group is elitist or claims exalted status for its leader, or uses an us-vs-them mentality…well, it might be a cult. In all, there are like fifteen things to look for, although the author points out that not all cults will use all 15, all cults will display at least some of these traits. I could absolutely see how our modern-day political discourse falls into cultish ways of thought.
There is a full chapter on brainwashing and how, exactly, does one get brainwashed? And more importantly, covered in depth, is how to un-brainwash a person. I thought, as I was reading this book, that a degree in psychology, focusing on cognitive behavioral therapy, might be really useful. But as I kept reading, and as Ross explained all the steps that go into undoing the damage a cult, more than therapy, education is what’s important. Although therapy can help with recovery once one is out of a cult. But educating the person involved is how you get them out. Sounds simple, right? Just sit em down and tell em what you know. Ever tried having a political debate on Facebook? How’d that go for you?
That’s about what it’s like just trying to talk to a cult victim. The steps are specifically laid out, starting with who will be involved in the intervention. Anyone antagonistic to the person involved should not be there. It’s a three-to-five-day process, so anyone involved needs to know when they will be joining the party, whether it’s day one or day three, and agree to be in for the long haul. Absolute honesty is key. No prevarication, no pretending to see their point. They’ve been lied to enough; honesty is what is needed. The facilitator (i.e. Ross), his job is to keep everyone on track and to keep the conversation moving forward.
The internet and connection of everything has made his job both easier and harder. Easier because information on individual cults is much easier to come by now, and harder because communication is always possible. One of the things that is required in the intervention is that the person being intervened has to agree to no communication with the cult or members of the cult. These days, that means no cell phone, no internet connection, no telephones. This, I think, serves two purposes.
Primarily, it’s to ensure that the person doesn’t contact the cult and to get coached. Contacting can include reviewing the cults website, as pointed out in one of Ross’s failed intervention stories. The spouse in that story failed to disconnect the internet as promised, leaving his wife free to surf the web. She did not consider it breaking her promise, because she did not speak with someone at the cult. But even reviewing their website made her rethink her conversation with Ross, ultimately leading to a failed intervention. But the second purpose, I think, although this is not explicitly outlined in the book, is that the evenings at home, with just the family, no outside distractions, serves to reconnect the person with the world and people outside of the cult that matter to that person.
During the intervention, you need one point of contact to talk the person back into the room if they want to leave. This is because, and this is very important to understand, the days of forced deprogramming are long gone. Snagging someone off the street, taking them to a hotel room, and talking to them for days until they agree you’re right…that’s called kidnapping. You will be arrested. They will throw you in jail if you do this. So, the only way to deprogram someone is by facilitating a voluntary meeting with them. On the plus side, meetings undertaken voluntarily, have a much higher success rate of getting the person out, and having them stay out. So, there is that. Ultimately, if the person wants to leave, there is no legal way to stop them. So, keeping it civilized and friendly is in everyone’s best interest.
I think reading through his intervention case studies helps to really drive home why his format works as well as it does, with a 75% success rate. It’s because what you or I might think is the most critical element, the thing that would snap us back to reality, may not be what pulls the cult victims’ interest. And whatever point from the gathered information on the specific cult grabs the victims’ interest, that’s the one you want to explore with them. For one person, it might be the narcissism of the leader. For another, it might be exploring the finances of the group. For another, it might be control and cutoff from their family that had them concerned. All you can do is present the information and see where the victim takes it, follow them down the rabbit hole of their concern.
One of the most interesting comments in the book came literally at the end, in the postscript. This book was written in 2014. This is relevant because here’s the quote “Nevertheless an unsettling aspect of our modern information age and the advent of social media is the potential for cultlike cocooning, which can take place whenever groups or individuals either intentionally or unintentionally filter their world.” He then specifically describes the self-selection that goes into creating the online echo chamber that is social media, and how very few of use seek out alternate points of view. Then he says “This virtual bubble of relative isolation, which only “true believers” inhabit while reinforcing groups and people, can become relatively resistant and rather watertight to any outside frame of reference, alternate ideas, or perspectives, regardless of the facts. This cocooning can promote what can be seen as a kind of cultlike mind-set, which includes an inherent “we vs. them” mentality. This cocooning phenomenon may explain the growing societal polarization that now appears to be intensifying in the United States.”
That was 8 years ago. Have things improved, even slightly, in that polarization? Or have they gotten exponentially worse since those words were written? Each side thinks the other has been encased in a cult…which was the problem I had with Cultish last year. It was so clearly one sided, very much written, without a shred of irony, delineating the right as being members of a cult, without ever acknowledging the same behavior on the left. And here I am…. stuck in the middle, looking at both sides going, you all need to be deprogrammed. So, I panned Cultish pretty bad, although in retrospect, with Rick Alan Ross’s book as guidance, she didn’t entirely miss the mark. But the panning still stands, and here’s why.
Amanda Montell made it seem like white middle-class women were most likely to be pulled in to cults. And given that the cults she was looking at were Lularoe, yoga, and crossfit, sure…that’s those “businesses” target demographic. Which was quickly disabused by Rick Alan Ross. As Ross points out, destructive cults historically target college campuses for recruitment, but that in reality, “a cult can target and recruit anyone, regardless of education or social background. No one is invulnerable or somehow immune.” And, having read this book, thinking you are somehow immune because of your education or social status, might actually make you more vulnerable. Hubris will make you vulnerable.
Montell also tried to say modern cults are the making of white men. But as Ross points out, cults are literally a global phenomenon. The Hare Krishna’s are a cult, one that filed bankruptcy following allegations of child sexual abuse. The Unification Church was founded and headed by the reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea, the Falun Gong was founded by Li Hongzhi in China, Aum Shinrikyo is a Japanese cult founded by Shoko Asahara. One of the earliest cult-led terrorist attacks in the United States occurred in Oregon in 1984 when Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh convinced his followers to poison ten restaurants in The Dalles with salmonella. In 1990, Yahweh ben Yahweh, who preached a doctrine of racism against the white devils, was ultimately indicted for racketeering and conspiracy, and linked to fourteen murders, two attempted murders, and a bombing. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments was a Ugandan cult run by Joseph Kibwetere. And in 2002, Malachi York, who founded the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors was arrested for transporting minors across stateliness for sex. Now, all of these were specifically mentioned in this book as cults, using methods specifically identified by Ross as cultish to maintain control of their followers. All had the requisite charismatic leader. All were mentioned side by side with the better-known Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, and Marshall Applewhite. All were identified by one of the worlds foremost leading experts on cults as cult leaders. And, quite clearly, not all of them were white.
This book was very readable, the quick rundown on what is a cult, the information on different cults, the case studies on interventions he’s done, all very quick reading, sandwiching the central premise of here’s how you get someone out.
This review was originally posted on YouTube on November 6, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.
