How—And Why—Americans Become Susceptible to the Toxic Allure of Cults

[ramonmercado]

Interesting interview/discussion regarding the use of "Cultish Language", Cults in general and a new book.

How—and Why—Americans Become Susceptible to the Toxic Allure of Cults​

Dr. Kate Gale Talks to Amanda Montell, Author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism​

As someone who spent 15 years in a cult, I found, in Amanda Montell’s new book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, a way to understand something about cults that all my soul-crushing time there didn’t give me. I’ve long known that cults are a way of controlling people; Amanda Montell is interested in the larger topic of cultish behavior and the ways that those communities ask us to buy into a system—her book is about how cultish influence is all around us, in the form of language, and none of us are completely immune to it.

Amanda and I recently had a conversation to compare cult stories, debunk myths about cult members, and discuss why Americans in particular are so pulled to cultish affiliations.


Kate Gale: To start, I was intrigued in your book that you don’t just focus on what cults are, but what makes behavior cultish. As a cult survivor, I’ve always thought that the two elements of a cult are that cult leaders control your behavior and that they don’t provide an exit strategy. What else would you say are the elements of a cult?

Amanda Montell: It’s such an interesting question, and a challenging one to answer because I’ve found that cults really fall on a spectrum. That’s one of the key arguments in my book. Scholars and survivors tend to disagree about where to draw the line past which something is a “cult,” if that line exists at all. Because so often the word “cult” is simply used to denounce “deviant” religious and social groups, which may not be any more dangerous than culturally accepted ones. “You’re in a cult!” “No, you’re in a cult!”

Of course, that is not to say that some groups aren’t legitimately more dangerous, oppressive, or controlling than others. I am just not sure that the word “cult” is how we distinguish between them. We need more specificity than that. So I think, on the most destructive end of the cult spectrum, you’ll find a group like Jonestown, or Synanon, the cult where my dad spent his teen years. ...

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism is available from Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2021 by Amanda Montell.

https://lithub.com/how-and-why-americans-become-susceptible-to-the-toxic-allure-of-cults/

 

[JaneD]

Thanks for the info i will be tracking this down forthwith!

 

[ramonmercado]

This fits here as well, it goes beyond NXIVM.

What Makes a Cult a Cult?​

The line between delusion and what the rest of us believe may be blurrier than we think.

By Zoë Heller
July 5, 2021

Male cult leaders sometimes claim droit du seigneur over female followers or use physical violence to sexually exploit them. But, on the whole, they find it more efficient to dress up the exploitation as some sort of gift or therapy: an opportunity to serve God, an exorcism of “hangups,” a fast track to spiritual enlightenment. One stratagem favored by Keith Raniere, the leader of the New York-based self-help cult NXIVM, was to tell the female disciples in his inner circle that they had been high-ranking Nazis in their former lives, and that having yogic sex with him was a way to shift the residual bad energy lurking in their systems. ...

It is also striking that the degree of agency attributed to NXIVM members seems to differ depending on how reprehensible their behavior in the cult was. While brainwashing is seen to have nullified the consent of Raniere’s DOS “slaves,” it is generally not felt to have diminished the moral or legal responsibility of women who committed crimes at his behest. Lauren Salzman and the former television actor Allison Mack, two of the five NXIVM women who have pleaded guilty to crimes committed while in the cult, were both DOS members, and arguably more deeply in Raniere’s thrall than most. Yet the media have consistently portrayed them as wicked “lieutenants” who cast themselves beyond the pale of sympathy by “choosing” to deceive and harm other women. ...

If we accept that cult members have some degree of volition, the job of distinguishing cults from other belief-based organizations becomes a good deal more difficult. We may recoil from Keith Raniere’s brand of malevolent claptrap, but, if he hadn’t physically abused followers and committed crimes, would we be able to explain why NXIVM is inherently more coercive or exploitative than any of the “high demand” religions we tolerate? For this reason, many scholars choose to avoid the term “cult” altogether. Raniere may have set himself up as an unerring source of wisdom and sought to shut his minions off from outside influence, but apparently so did Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of Luke records him saying, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Religion, as the old joke has it, is just “a cult plus time.” ...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/12/what-makes-a-cult-a-cult

 

[NomDeGuerre]

Thanks for this - a fascinating concept that I hadn't considered previously.