OK, let's let's just jump right in. There's a
word out there that honestly, it acts like a
conversational grenade. Oh, absolutely. You drop
it into a discussion. Maybe you're at dinner.
Maybe you're just chatting with coworkers and
everything just stops. The whole temperature
of the room changes. It does. And everyone thinks
they know exactly what you mean. The word immediately
brings up these, you know, these really vivid,
usually. Pretty terrifying images. Matching robes
for sure. Matching robes, isolated compounds
out in the middle of nowhere. Charismatic leaders
who, for some reason, are always wearing sunglasses
indoors. And maybe a spaceship hiding behind
a comet. That's a classic. Right. It's arguably
one of the most loaded words we have. It carries
a weight that very few other words do. I'm talking,
of course, about the word cult. It is the bread
and butter of true crime, of endless podcast
series, of hushed gossip. If you call something
a cult, you're not just describing it. No, you're
condemning it. You're condemning it. You're saying
this thing is dangerous, it's irrational, and
the people inside have completely lost their
minds. But here's the thing that gets really
complicated and honestly a little frustrating
when you dig in. When you actually try to pin
down what a cult is, I mean, from a strict legal
or sociological standpoint, the whole concept.
It just starts to slip through your fingers.
It does. It's incredibly elusive. Right. And
that's not just because the groups themselves
can be secretive, though that's part of it. Right.
It's because the word cult itself is what the
scholar Susanna Crockford calls a shapeshifter.
Shapeshifter. Yeah. She argues that, you know,
as an analytical term, it resists any kind of
rigorous definition. It just semantically morphs
depending on who's using it and why. OK, that's
a great image. Let's drill into that for a second.
A shapeshifter changes its. form to suit its
needs so you're saying the word cult puts on
a different costume depending on who's shouting
it precisely just think about the different people
involved for a concerned parent a cult is this
group that's taking their kid away right changing
their personality convincing them to drop out
of school the family is the victim right but
for a government a cult might be a group that's
uh challenging state authority. They're not paying
taxes. Maybe they're stockpiling weapons. A threat
to the state. A threat to the state. And then
for a theologian, a pastor, a cult is something
else entirely. It's heresy. It's a group that's
misinterpreting the holy book. So the parent
sees danger, the government sees sedition, and
the priest sees a theological error. But they're
all using the same four -letter word. Exactly.
And that's the central tension we're going to
explore. Cult is almost never a neutral, descriptive
label. It's a weapon. It's a weapon. When you
use it, you're trying to delegitimize something.
You're pushing it outside the circle of what
we consider normal or acceptable. Which makes
our job today pretty difficult. The whole mission
for this deep dive is to try and disarm that
weapon. Or at least, you know, take it apart
to see how it works. Lay the pieces out on the
table. Yeah. We're going to try to strip away
all the sensationalism, the whole Netflix documentary
vibe, and actually look at the sociology, the
psychology, and the really fascinating legal
battles that surround these high control groups.
We've got a huge stack of sources today. I mean,
everything from the history of the word itself
to how governments from the U .S. to China classify
these groups. And we're going to look at some
unexpected places this logic shows up. Because
if we just stick to the robes and compounds image,
we miss the bigger picture. We're going to talk
about political movements and I think most surprisingly
for a lot of people, the corporate world. OK,
that's the part that really made me stop and
reread the notes. The idea that my, you know,
standard fluorescent lit nine to five job. might,
under certain definitions, actually qualify.
Or at the very least, it might be using some
of the exact same psychological mechanisms to
keep you loyal and productive. That's terrifying.
But okay, before we get to the boardroom, we
have to start with a history. Because this word,
believe it or not, did not always mean scary
group of brainwashed people. Not at all. If we
go back far enough, calling someone part of a
cult was... What? A compliment? Or at least just
a neutral description. If we go all the way back,
the Latin root is cultus. And cultus simply means
worship. It's related to words like cultivate,
as in a garden or culture. Cultivate. That sounds
so benign. It sounds like you're just tending
to something. And that's essentially what it
meant. Care, tending, devotion. In ancient Rome,
being part of a cult was completely normal. In
fact, it was often your civic duty. Really? Yeah,
you had the imperial cult, which was the set
of rituals and devotional practices directed
at the emperor. So I feel Roman senator. I wake
up, put on my toga, and I say, honey, I'm off
to the cult. You wouldn't use the English word,
but yeah, essentially. You were going to perform
your cultus. It didn't mean you were deviant
or on the fringe. It just meant you were participating
in the state -sanctioned religion. So the cult
was the mainstream. It was the mainstream. You
got into trouble if you didn't participate in
the imperial cult. That was seen as subversive.
Okay, so when did the vibe shift? I mean, obviously
we are not using it that way anymore. When did
it go from devotional practice to excessive dangerous
devotion? That shift really starts picking up
steam in the 19th century. That's when you start
to see the word used to mean excessive demotion.
And it wasn't always religious. You might hear
about a cult of beauty or a cult of personality.
Okay, so more metaphorical use. Exactly. But
the real weaponization of the term, the way we
use it today to label a group as deviant and
dangerous, that's largely a 20th century thing.
It became a convenient way for society to draw
a line in the sand. On this side is religion,
which is good and safe. And on that side is cult,
which is weird and foreign and threatening. But
that line, I mean, if you look at it objectively,
it's incredibly blurry, isn't it? One person's
intense spiritual experience is another person's
creepy ritual. That's the million dollar question.
And because it's so subjective, it's a huge problem
for scholars. Benjamin E. Zeller, who's a prominent
researcher in this area, has a really scathing
critique of how we use the word. What's he saying?
He basically says. Labeling any group with which
one disagrees and considers deviant as a cult
is not scholarship. He's just calling it name
calling. It's not science. It is. He's saying
if you can't define it objectively, you can't
study it objectively. If cult just means religion
I don't like, then we're not learning anything
about how these groups actually work. We're just
learning about the prejudices of the person speaking.
So if the word is basically useless for scholars,
why are we still talking about it? Does it have
any utility left at all? Well, Susanna Crockford,
who we mentioned earlier, she suggests what she
calls the least subjective definition. And I
think this is pretty useful. She says a cult
is a group that is self -consciously building
a new form of society, which the rest of the
existing society rejects. Building a new form
of society. OK, that puts a different spin on
it. It's not just about worshiping a guy in a
robe. It's about a total rejection of the status
quo. Right. They're trying to opt out of the
current world and build their own distinct version.
And because they're rejecting the existing society,
well, the existing society naturally rejects
them right back. It's a feedback loop. A total
feedback loop. The more the group withdraws,
the more society attacks it. The more society
attacks, the more the group withdraws and becomes
more extreme. But because the word cult became
so radioactive, scholars in the... what, the
70s, they mostly abandoned it, right? They just
realized they couldn't have a serious conversation.
Using was basically an insult. They did. You'll
almost never hear a modern sociologist use the
word cult without heavy air quotes. The term
that took over in academia is new religious movement.
Or NRM. NRM. It sounds so sterile. It does. Mom,
dad, I'm not joining a cult. I'm joining a new
religious movement. It sounds like something
you'd file paperwork for. It is clinical, but
that's entirely the point. It's supposed to be
neutral. It allows you to study a group's beliefs
and behaviors without starting from the assumption
that they're evil. And this isn't just about
being polite or academic, is it? The label itself
can have real world dangerous consequences. Oh,
absolutely. The religious scholar Catherine Wessinger
argues that the cult label is dehumanizing and
that dehumanization can be fatal. You're talking
about Waco, aren't you? Waco is the prime example.
The siege of the Branch Davidians in 1993. Wessinger
and other scholars argue that because the media,
the government, everyone labeled them a cult,
it created this narrative that the people inside
were not rational human beings. They were brainwashed
zombies. And you don't negotiate with zombies.
You don't. If you believe the people inside are
mind controlled automatons, you assume they can't
be reasoned with. You stop seeing them as families,
as mothers and children with non -mainstream
beliefs, and you start seeing them as a threat
to be neutralized. And that mindset, that escalation.
contributed directly to the tragedy that led
to so many deaths, including many children. That's
a sobering thought. The label itself can become
a catalyst for violence because it strips away
all legitimacy. If they're a cult, they don't
have rights. They have programming. It creates
a permission structure for extreme action, whether
that action is a government raid or on a smaller
scale, a family. kidnapping their adult child
for deprogramming. Okay, let me play devil's
advocate for a second. Please. I get the academic
need for neutrality. New religious movement is
safer. But if I'm walking down the street and
someone in a robe tries to sell me a flower and
tells me the world is ending next Tuesday unless
I sign over my house, I'm not thinking, what
a fascinating NRM. Right, you're thinking cult.
I'm thinking cult. So if the experts aren't using
the C word, how do they organize these groups?
Because they're not all the same, right? A bunch
of UFO enthusiasts isn't the same as a group
stockpiling nerve gas. You're absolutely right.
And sociology has some really fascinating ways
of categorizing them that go beyond just good
or bad. The classic model goes all the way back
to the early 20th century with Max Weber and
Ernst Troeltsch. They developed what's called
the church sect typology. All right, lay it on
us. What's the difference between a church, a
sect, and a cult in this sociological view? Okay,
so imagine a continuum of tension with society.
On one end, with very low tension, you have the
church. The establishment. The establishment.
It's large. It's bureaucratic. It's comfortable
with the surrounding culture. You're usually
born into it. Think the Catholic Church or the
Church of England. Got it. Mainstream. Then you
have the sect. Now, a sect is a splinter group.
It breaks away from a main church because it
believes the church has become too lenient, too
worldly, too corrupt. So a sect is like a remix.
It's using the same source material, the same
holy book, but it's making it stricter, more
intense. You guys aren't doing it right. We are
the true believers. That is a perfect analogy.
A sect maintains continuity with the traditional
beliefs. It's a protest movement within that
tradition. Okay, so where does the cult fit in?
A cult, in this sociological definition, doesn't
break off from anything. It starts fresh. It
arises spontaneously around totally novel beliefs
and a charismatic leader. So if the sect is a
remix, the cult is a completely original composition.
Yes. And usually a pretty avant -garde one that
most people find strange. It introduces something
new, a new revelation, a new prophet from another
planet, a new technique. Its inspiration comes
from outside the dominant religious culture.
And because of that, there's very high tension
with society. That makes perfect sense. If you
say, I'm interpreting the Bible more strictly,
people might think you're intense, but they recognize
the book. Right. But if you say, I'm interpreting
messages from the planet Clarion that I received
through automatic writing. Yeah. People are going
to back away slowly. Exactly. And that novelty
is what defines them. Now, there's another typology
that I find even more useful for understanding
how these groups actually function day to day.
It comes from the sociologists Bainbridge and
Stark. They broke cults down into three specific
types based on how much they demand from you.
And this really helps distinguish the harmless
stuff from the really high control stuff. I love
a good classification system. Let's hear it.
OK, the first and lowest commitment type is the
audience cult. This is really loose. There's
no formal membership. It's mostly spread through
media books, lectures, you know, YouTube channels
or TikToks today. So this is like people who
are really into astrology or. Follow a specific
self -help guru's books but never actually go
to a meeting. Exactly. You are an audience. You
might believe in crystal healing or ancient aliens,
but you're not moving to a compound. You're just
buying the book or watching the videos. The commitment
level is very low. Got it. You're a fan, not
a member. What's the next level? Level two is
the client cult. Now the relationship becomes
transactional. You are a client paying for a
specific service. So this would be like paying
for a psychic reading or a meditation course
or some kind of... therapy that promises to unlock
your hidden potential. Precisely. It's a provider
-client relationship. They promise you a specific
reward, or what they call a compensator, in exchange
for your money. And this is where something like
early Scientology would fit in. That is the classic
example. It began as a client cult. You paid
for auditing services to improve your life. It
was a transaction. You went in, got your auditing,
and then you went home. But it obviously grew
into something more than that. It did. It evolved
into the third and most demanding type, the cult
movement. This is the full package. It's a complete
organization. It doesn't just offer you a service.
It offers a total religious structure, a complete
way of life. It demands high loyalty and wants
to encompass every part of your world. So that's
the progression. You go from buying the book,
which is the audience, to booking an appointment,
the client, to moving into the dorms, the movement.
In a way, yes. And Bainbridge and Stark noted
one type can evolve into another. But here's
a fascinating little footnote to all this. What's
that? William Sims Bainbridge, one of the guys
who created this really useful system, later
said he regretted ever using the word cult at
all. Seriously. Even the guy who wrote the rule
book on how to classify them gave up on the word.
Yeah. He realized that no matter how carefully
you define it in an academic paper, the toxic
popular stigma of the label just overpowers everything.
You can't wash the stink off the word. But. And
I have to push back on this again. Isn't there
a reason for the stink? I mean, we're being very
academic and polite, calling them NRMs and movements.
But some of these groups do hurt people. They
destroy lives. We can't just pretend every group
is a misunderstood gardening club. No, you're
absolutely right. We cannot and should not ignore
that. Yeah. While sociologists fight for neutral
terms, it's undeniable that some groups engage
in serious abuse. And this leads us to the concept
of the destructive cult. OK, now we're getting
into the territory that most people think of
when they hear the word. separates a destructive
cult from just a weird one. The focus here shifts
from what they believe to how they behave. Michael
Langone, who is a major figure in the anti -cult
movement, defines a destructive cult as a group
that is highly manipulative and exploits its
members, causing psychological, financial, and
sometimes physical harm. So it doesn't matter
if they believe the moon is made of cheese. That's
fine. But if the group's leader, the Cheese King,
forces you to cut off your family and sign over
your life savings? That's destructive. Exactly.
The belief is irrelevant. The harm is the issue.
Eli Shapiro lists characteristics like loss of
personal identity, estrangement from family and
pronounced mental control. It's effectively a
sociopathic system. But even here with a term
like destructive, the label is legally tricky,
isn't it? I remember reading in the notes about
a case in Germany. Yes, with the Osho movement.
That's a fascinating legal precedent. In 2002,
the German government was actually found by their
highest court to have defamed the Osho movement.
The government had put out these official warnings
calling them a destructive cult. And the court
ruled that there was no factual basis to support
that specific claim of being destructive. That's
wild. So the government said, watch out for these
dangerous guys. And the court said, actually,
you can't say that unless you can prove it. It
shows that destructive can't just be a vibe you
get. It has to be a provable fact. And that burden
of proof is high. But when we talk about destructive
outcomes, nothing captures the public imagination
or illustrates the psychology of belief quite
like a doomsday cult. The end of the world. The
ultimate high stakes belief. It is. And the study
of doomsday cults gave us one of the most famous
theories in the history of social psychology.
I'm talking about Leon Festinger's work on a
group he called the Seekers in the 1950s. I love
this story. It reads like a movie. Set the scene
for us. Okay, so it's 1954. You've got this small
group in the Midwest led by a woman named Dorothy
Martin, though Festinger called her Marion Keech
in his book, When Prophecy Fails, to protect
her identity. Right. She claimed she was receiving
messages through automatic writing from these
superior beings on a planet called Clarion. Planet
Clarion. Got it. And what did the good people
of Clarion have to say? They said that a massive
world -ending flood was coming before dawn on
December 21st, 1954. But... The true believers,
the members of her little group, would be rescued
by a flying saucer that would land in her backyard
at midnight. So Festinger and his colleagues
did something pretty bold. They didn't just observe
from afar. No, they infiltrated the group. Wow.
They pretended to be believers. They wanted to
be in the room to see what would happen at 12
.01 a .m. when the spaceship didn't show up.
So take us there. It's December 20th. It's freezing
cold. They're all gathered in this house. The
tension is just unbearable. These people have
quit their jobs. They've given away their possessions.
They're saving. Some of them left their families.
They're all sitting there in the living room
waiting. And midnight comes. Nothing. Silence.
No spaceship. No knock on the door. Just the
ticking of the clock. 12 .05. 12 .8. People are
starting to look at each other. One member points
out another clock in the room is a few minutes
faster, so maybe that's the right one. Grasping
at straws. Totally. 1 .00 a .m. 2 .0 a .m. The
despair starts to set in. People are crying.
They are facing the total and complete collapse
of their entire reality. This is the moment where
logic would say they should just pack up and
go home. Well, we were wrong. Dorby's crazy.
Let's try to get our jobs back. Logically, yes.
But that's not how psychology works. At 4 .45
in the morning, Dorothy Martin gets a new message
from Clarion. Of course she does. And the message
says that the little group, by sitting there
all night long with so much faith, had spread
so much light that God had decided to call off
the flood and save the world. Wow. What a pivot.
We didn't fail. We succeeded so hard that we
changed the plan. Exactly. And here is the truly
incredible part. Instead of realizing they had
been duped, the members became more committed.
More. Before this night, they were secretive.
They avoided the press. After this new message,
they started calling the newspapers. They went
out to proselytize. They doubled down. Why? Why
on earth would you double down when you've just
been proven so spectacularly wrong? This is where
Festinger coined his famous theory of cognitive
dissonance. Right. The psychological tension
between these two thoughts, one, I gave up my
job, my money, and my reputation for this belief,
and two, the belief was just proven false, is
too painful for the mind to hold at the same
time. So you have to change one of them. You
have to change one of them. And it's much easier
to change your interpretation of reality than
it is to admit you're a fool who just destroyed
your own life for nothing. So you invent a new
belief. We weren't wrong. We were so right that
we saved the entire world. That is fascinating.
It's kind of ego preservation. The more you've
invested, the higher the cost, the harder it
is to admit you were wrong. Precisely. The cost
of exit is just too high. And this psychological
pattern repeats over and over. But this naturally
leads us to the reaction from society. When all
these groups started exploding in the 60s and
70s, the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas people, didn't
just sit back and take academic notes like Festinger.
No, they freaked out. It was a full -blown moral
panic. You have to remember the context. The
60s counterculture had already shaken up the
American family, and now parents were seeing
their kids drop out of college, shave their heads,
wear robes, and chants in airports. This gave
rise to the anti -cult movement, or ACM. But
the ACM wasn't just one monolithic thing, was
it? The notes break it down into two very different
camps. Right. First, you had the Christian countercult
movement. their objection was purely theological
they saw these groups as cults because of heresy
so their problem was you have the wrong beliefs
about god basically yeah if a group denied the
trinity or the inerrancy of the bible it was
a cult and they cast a very wide net it wasn't
just the moonies it included groups like mormons
and jehovah's witnesses and even major world
religions like hinduism for them it wasn't about
danger it was about doctrinal truth okay so that's
a religious debate but what about the parents
who didn't care about theology they just wanted
their kid back from the commune. That was the
secular anti -cult movement. They didn't care
if you worshipped a toaster. They cared about
autonomy. And their central argument was that
these groups used brainwashing or mind control.
Brainwashing. There's another one of those huge
loaded movie villain terms. The Manchurian candidate.
It was the core belief of the secular ACM. These
families just could not believe their children
would have changed so drastically of their own
free will. My son was a pre -med student. Now
he's selling incense. He would never choose that.
Right. So the conclusion they came to was he
must have been programmed against his will. It
was a comforting explanation in a way because
it meant their child wasn't responsible. He didn't
choose to leave me. His mind was stolen. But...
Does brainwashing actually exist? I mean, scientifically,
is it a real thing or is it just a metaphor we
use? Well, that's the huge controversy. Sociologists,
for the most part, reject the classic brainwashing
theory. They do. But wait, I mean, I've seen
the documentaries. I've seen the people with
the blank stares. You're telling me there's no
manipulation? Oh, there's definitely influence.
There's manipulation, deception, intense social
pressure. But brainwashing? The idea that you
can just erase someone's personality and install
a new one like software is largely considered
pseudoscience by the academic and legal communities.
So how do they explain the conversions then?
There's a famous study by John Laughland on the
unification church, the Moonies, back in the
60s. Right. They were the poster children for
this whole brainwashing idea. They were. But
Laughland found that contrary to the myth of
them being these master manipulators, the Moonies
were actually terrible at recruiting strangers.
off the street. Their brainwashing techniques
almost never work. So they weren't hypnotic wizards?
No. Laughlin found that almost all successful
recruits joined because of pre -existing relationships.
They had a friend or family member already in
the group. It wasn't some mystical mind control.
It was social bonding. You feel lonely. These
people are nice to you. You like them. And eventually
you adopt their beliefs to remain part of the
group. That sounds disturbingly normal. It's
like how people join a CrossFit gym. Your buddy
goes, and three months later, you're talking
about WODs and eating paleo, and you've adopted
a whole new identity. It is the exact same social
mechanism. But because the consequences in a
high -control group are so much more severe,
the secular ACM took these extreme measures.
They started practicing deprogramming. Which
was, let's be honest, kidnapping. Legally, yes.
Parents would hire these guys to physically snatch
their adult children off the street, throw them
in a van, take them to a motel room, and basically
badger them for days or weeks until they renounced
their faith. That's just unbelievable. Committing
a felony to save someone from a group you think
is, like, immoral. It was a chaotic, legally
murky time. But before we get into the court
battles this all created, I want to widen the
lens a bit. We've been talking almost exclusively
about religion. But can a cult exist without
a god? This is where I think this deep dive gets
really relevant for a lot of our listeners. The
idea of joining a religious compound feels very
distant. But joining a movement or a company?
That feels much closer to home. Absolutely. Because
the structures of high control, the charismatic
leader, the us versus them worldview, the demand
for purity, they aren't unique to religion. We
see them very clearly in political cults. And
the notes mention this happens on both the far
left and the far right. It does. A political
cult's main interest is ideology and political
action, but the internal dynamic is identical.
You have a leader who cannot be questioned. If
you disagree with the party line, you're not
just wrong, you're a traitor. You're a counter
-revolutionary or a rhino or whatever the insult
of the day is. You're encouraged to cut ties
with friends and family who aren't pure. It's
the same playbook, just different costumes. Instead
of robes, it might be Maggie hats or black block
gear. The demand is total unquestioning loyalty.
Dennis Tourish and Tim Woolforth wrote a great
book about this called On the Edge, and they
argue that it's the rigidity that makes it cult
-like, not the specific political goal. But here's
the one that really made me sit up straight.
Corporate cultism. The idea that a company can
be a cult and not a scam company. We're talking
successful blue chip companies. This comes from
some really surprising research. Jim Collins
and Jerry Porras wrote a hugely famous business
book called Built to Last. Oh, yeah, I know that
book. It's like a Bible in the business world.
It's all about how to build a great, enduring
company. It is. But if you read it closely, they
studied these visionary companies, you know,
Disney, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and they found
that many of these hyper -successful companies
have what Collins and Porras explicitly call
cult -like cultures. Wait, wait. So the book
is saying being cult -like is a good thing for
business. In terms of longevity and profit, they
argue yes. They identified these key traits.
A fervently held ideology, intense indoctrination
for new hires, a sense of elite. and what they
call tightness of fit. Tightness of fit. That
sounds like some terrifying HR jargon. Break
that down for me. It means you either belong
or you don't. There's no middle ground. If you
fit the culture, you're embraced, you're promoted,
you feel a sense of purpose. If you don't fit,
you are ejected like a virus. Okay. Think about
the onboarding process at some of these places.
It's not just filling out forms. It's Disney
University. It's learning the company songs,
which IBM literally used to have. It's learning
a whole special vocabulary that only insiders
understand. Like at Disney, you're not an employee.
You're a cast member. You're not at work. You're...
Exactly. Or at Amazon, where there's an obsession
with the leadership principles. Or some of these
tech startups where you're expected to sleep
under your desk and talk constantly about changing
the world when you're really just, you know,
optimizing ad clicks. I'm thinking of WeWork
here. The whole We generation. The mandatory
summer camps. The charismatic leader Adam Neumann
walking around barefoot telling everyone they
were elevating the world's consciousness by subletting
office space. A perfect modern example of a corporate
cult. It's cultism applied directly to capitalism.
The company engineers devotion to boost productivity.
Instead of promising you salvation in the next
life, they promise you stock options and impact
in this one. And the control mechanism is social
pressure. Totally. If you leave at 5 p .m., you're
not just an employee with good work -life balance.
You are not committed to the mission. You're
letting the family down. That is so insidious.
Because in a religion, you kind of expect a demand
for your soul. But in a job, it's supposed to
be a transaction. Time for money. These companies
want your soul and your time. And Built to Last
argues this cult -like culture creates this intense
sense of elitism. We are the best. Everyone else
is mediocre. That binds people together and makes
them work harder. But it also makes them blind
to any outside criticism. Which explains why
so many of these companies have massive scandals
or eventually implode. Everyone inside is drinking
the Kool -Aid or the free cold brew on tap. And
nobody's willing to question the leader. It's
the dark side of a strong community. The very
things that make a group cohesive and effective
are the same things that can make it controlling
and dangerous. So if these dynamics are everywhere
in our religions, our politics, our offices,
how do governments even begin to handle them?
You can't just ban being really into your job,
but you also have to protect people. And this
is where we see a complete global patchwork of
policies. Every country handles the cult problem
differently based on its own unique history and
values. Let's start with the United States. We've
got the First Amendment. Yeah. Freedom of belief
is a pretty big deal here. The U .S. approach
is almost entirely defined by the First Amendment.
Freedom of belief is absolute. You can believe
the flying spaghetti monster is God. You can
believe the world ends tomorrow. The government
cannot touch you for your thoughts. But they
can touch you if you break the law, right? If
your belief system involves tax fraud. They can
still come after you for tax fraud. Correct.
Your belief is protected. Your conduct is regulated.
If you commit fraud or abuse, you get prosecuted
for that crime, not for being in a cult. But
there was a huge turning point regarding that
brainwashing defense we talked about. In 1990,
there was a landmark case called United States
v. Fishman. What happened there? This was a pivotal
moment. Stephen Fishman was a member of the Church
of Scientology accused of mail fraud. And his
defense was going to be that he wasn't responsible
because he had been brainwashed by the church.
The devil made me do it. But the devil in this
case is L. Ron Hubbard. Pretty much. His lawyers
wanted to bring in expert witnesses to testify
about the power of brainwashing, but the court
had to decide. Is brainwashing a scientifically
accepted theory? And what was the verdict? The
court said no. They looked at the consensus from
the American Psychological Association and the
American Sociological Association, and they found
that the overwhelming majority of scholars did
not accept brainwashing as a valid scientific
concept, so they ruled the testimony inadmissible.
That is a massive decision. It basically killed
the Iowa's brainwashed defense in America. It
did. It essentially established that in the eyes
of U .S. law, you can't use brainwashing as a
legal defense and the state can't use it to prosecute
a group. The law operates on the assumption that
you have free will, even if you're in a high
pressure environment. So in the U .S., you have
the freedom to join and you have the responsibility
for what you do once you're in. Yes. But if we
hop over to Europe, the story is completely different.
Europe is very divided on this. So who are the
hardliners? France and Belgium. They took a very
aggressive state -led approach. France created
a government agency, Mivaludes, specifically
to monitor and combat what they call sectarian
aberrations. They've even published lists of
groups they consider dangerous. Why are they
so much stricter than the U .S.? A lot of it
comes down to historical trauma, specifically
the Order of the Solar Temple tragedies in the
mid-'90s. That was a group that had mass suicides
and murders in Switzerland and Canada. But it
had very strong French connections. It deeply
shocked the Francophone world. And the state
decided it had a duty to protect its citizens
from mental manipulation. So in France, the government
basically says, we will decide what's a safe
religion and what's a dangerous sect. It's a
much more paternalistic approach. Exactly. They
prioritize protection from harm over freedom
of belief in that particular balance. Whereas
countries like Sweden and Italy have taken a
much more cautious U .S. style stance. Now let's
pivot to China because there the language is
totally different and the stakes are incredibly
high. We're not talking about lawsuits. We're
talking about prison camps. Right. In China,
the key term is geijiao. This often gets translated
in Western media as evil cult, but that's a bit
of a mistranslation. A more accurate rendering
is heterodox teachings. Heterodox. So different
from the standard, the orthodox. Exactly. And
in the context of imperial China and now the
Communist Party, heterodox doesn't necessarily
mean the religion is spiritually false. It means
it is unauthorized by the state. So it's a political
label, not a religious one. It's about who has
the official stamp of approval. 100 percent.
If a religious group isn't approved by the state
or if it's seen as a potential challenge to the
party's authority, it can be labeled Ziajiao.
The most famous modern example of this is Falun
Gong. Right, the Kaigong practice. I remember
seeing people practicing it in parks in the 90s.
It just looked like Tai Chi. In the mid -90s,
it was incredibly popular with millions of practitioners.
It was even supported by some government bodies
as a healthy traditional practice. But as it
grew huge, we're talking maybe 70 million people,
potentially more members than the Communist Party
itself, the state started to see it as a threat.
It's the numbers game. You have too many followers,
so now you're a rival. Precisely. In 1999, the
crackdown began. The government retrospectively
labeled Falun Gong a Zizhou to justify this massive
suppression campaign. But do international scholars
agree? From a sociological perspective, is Falun
Gong a cult? Most Western scholars would say
no, it doesn't fit the typical sociological definition
of a destructive cult. There's no communal living.
It doesn't generally break up families in the
way other high control groups do. But the Zijiao
label gives the Chinese government the legal
framework it needs to ban it, arrest practitioners
and suppress the movement entirely. It's the
ultimate example of the word being used as a
tool of raw state power. It really just shows
how much your geography determines your reality.
Being a Jehovah's Witness in Ohio is just part
of the landscape. But being a Jehovah's Witness
in Russia. In Russia, you're an extremist. Since
2008, they've had a list of extremist organizations
and they lump groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses
right in there with pagan cults and actual terrorist
organizations. They view them as a threat to
the social fabric and traditional Russian values.
Wow. OK, so we have covered. A lot of ground.
We've gone from the Roman cultists being a good
citizen to the church sect continuum. We've looked
at the psychology of doomsday beliefs and cognitive
dissonance. We've looked at corporate cults where
your boss is your guru and the legal chaos as
governments all over the world try to figure
this out. We have. And if there is one single
thread connecting all of it. It's that cult is
almost never just a descriptive word. It's an
accusation. It's a boundary marker. It's a way
of saying you are not one of us. Whether it's
a church saying it to a heretic, a government
saying it to a dissident group, or a society
saying it to a strange new movement. And that's
why understanding this is so important, I think.
We live in an era of information bubbles, of
intense political polarization. We see movements
that demand total, unwavering devotion. We work
in corporate cultures that want our souls. It
brings it back to that critical thinking skill.
If we can learn to spot the mechanisms of high
control, the us versus them thinking, the intolerance
of questions. charismatic authority figure, we
can see them anywhere, not just in a compound
out in the desert, but maybe in our Twitter feed
or our political party or even our office Slack
channel. Exactly. Don't just look for the label
cult. Look at the behaviors. Is this group allowing
me to think freely? Am I allowed to question
things? Can I leave with my dignity and my relationships
intact? Or is the cost of exit the complete destruction
of my life? That's the real test, isn't it? Not
do they wear funny clothes, but can I walk away?
Freedom to leave is the ultimate proof of freedom.
Before we wrap this up, I want to leave our listeners
with one final thought that was kind of lurking
in the background of all this sociology. We talked
about how cults are, by definition, new religions.
The original compositions. Well, sociologists
often suggest that cults or NRMs are basically
the research and development department of religion.
That is a brilliant way to put it. Most startups
fail, right? Most new products fail. And most
cults fail. They fizzle out, the leader dies,
something tragic happens. But the ones that succeed,
the ones that manage to survive the death of
the founder, that institutionalize, that stick
around for a few generations. They become the
churches of tomorrow. Every single major world
religion, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, started
as a cult. by that sociological definition. A
small, high -tension group around a charismatic
leader with a new, radical message that society
rejected. So the only difference between a crazy
cult and a respected world religion is what?
Just time. Time. And numbers. I always ask this
question. At what specific number of followers
does crazy become tradition? If you have 10 followers,
you're a cult leader. If you have a billion,
you're a prophet. Something to think about the
next time you see a headline about a dangerous
new cult. Are you looking at a threat or are
you just looking at a religion that hasn't gone
public yet? Thanks for taking this deep dive
with us. My pleasure. Stay curious.