CULT FOLLOWING
In view of the storming of the U.S. Capitol, I’ve got cults on the brain. Some people are now claiming to have had the best of intentions: It was in the interests of democracy that a violent mob was threatening to murder the elected representatives of that democracy, they say. By what hypnotic magic is a group hoping to save (fill in the blank) transformed into a cynical cult, run for the enrichment of a con-artist cult leader? Synanon, for instance, began as a genuine kick-addiction outfit, but ended as a failed version of Murder, Inc. In that case, power corrupted.
Unfortunately, we’re all vulnerable to appeals to our better natures. You don’t want babies to have their blood drunk in the cellars of pizza parlours, do you? Of course you don’t! Donate here! But how do we tell the sincere reformers from the phoney ones preying on the fearful and the gullible? It’s not always easy. (Hint: Check to see if there really is a cellar in the pizza parlour.)
Sometimes cults end in mass suicides; sometimes in the flight of the leader plus all the money; sometimes in jail sentences. And sometimes they just carry on, because once you’ve been brainwashed it’s hard to get un-brainwashed. Losing your personhood to the hive mind of the Borg has its appeal: You’re doing the will of your godlike leader or ideology, all in the service of the Greater Good.
Here is a clutch of books that address these experiences.
What do all cynical cults have in common? Nothing, ideologically. It’s not a matter of Left versus Right, or – to dial back a few centuries – of Cavaliers versus Roundheads. Any ism is capable of atrocities, and not all isms are run for profit by greedy megalomaniacs. But mandated sadism is certainly one of the touchstones of a cynical cult: struggle sessions in which you’re beaten to death with belt buckles by the self-righteous, egging one another on to demonstrate how pure they are.
How do you tell a con game from a just cause? Sometimes it’s a fine line. But when you peel the onion only to discover there’s no centre except for the self-interest of the leaders, you realize you’ve been had. The cruellest act of a phoney utopian scheme is the betrayal of its followers’ hopefulness and idealism. As Marianne Boucher’s deprogrammer explains to her, she thinks she’s been working selflessly to buy cans of tuna for starving children. But there are no cans of tuna.