I can't say this too strongly. Trump has turned his party into a personal Death Cult. His acolytes not only threaten violence against the rest of us, but risk death as a political statement. There is a cure, but there aren't enough of us to apply it to all of them, even if we all knew how.
Steven Hassan, the author of The Cult of Trump, was a cultist himself, a Moonie (Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church). After being rescued by his family, he set himself to understand the thousands of cults that plague us, and to find the most effective methods of protecting ourselves from them, and rescuing other victims. He has written a densely packed book, with far too much genuine information for me to summarize here. Please get this book and read it, and take time to absorb and apply it.
Hassan is explaining "how the President uses mind control".
Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies, and the cultlike aspects of his presidency, have become too obvious to ignore. Trump was exhibiting many of the same behaviors that I had seen in the late Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon, whom I had worshipped as the Messiah in the mid-seventies. Moon had promised to make America—indeed the entire world—great.
You know what we are talking about. Cults often make the news for getting their followers to believe nonsense, and worse.
- L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology
- Lyndon LaRouche
- The flying saucer cult in When Prophecy Fails
- Snake handlers who get bitten and die
- The Moonie
newspaperpropaganda rag, the Washington Times
But certain cults make even bigger news, either for suicide or murder, due to the narcissism and paranoia and mind control methods of their leaders.
- Jim Jones making his followers drink cyanide
- David Koresh's Branch Davidians refusing to leave their burning compound
- The Heaven's Gate suicides, In the delusion that they would thus get on the flying saucers
- The Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack in Tokyo
- Charles Manson directing multiple murders
- The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping and brainwashing Patty Hearst
- Assorted White Supremacist murders, going back to the days of ceremonial public lynchings
This is not a new phenomenon. We have records of destructive cults and insane cult leaders from Greek and Roman times, and from India, China, Africa, and around the world. In the worst case, a genocidal cult can become a national government.
And then nations and individuals can recover. That is what we most need to understand and apply.
Nations recover from cultish government by the defeat of the cult in war or politics. Then we find that a few years later nobody will admit to actually having been a member. A Truth and Reconciliation process can help. Reworking education helps a lot.
The next bad case is terrorist plots to overthrow the government in the name of various ideologies, notably White Supremacism. WaPo, republished at Newsday without the paywall: The plot against Whitmer won't be the last White supremacist threat
The prevalence of cults tells us that something in our brains predisposes us to believe arrant, vicious, destructive nonsense, as long as someone presumed to be in authority, who knows how to work our emotional triggers, tells us so. We can speculate that these brain functions evolved as a matter of tribal survival in hostile environments, but however that may be, here we are.
We have to be educated and nurtured out of it in order have the least immunity, which frequently turns out not to be enough. But a large fraction of the population goes to great lengths to educate its children into it, with the exact opposite of nurturing. Donald Trump got just that from his distant mother and racist, authoritarian father. In particular, Fred Trump taught young Donald to trust no one, not even him.
We saw one version in Raising Racists, a version that goes back to the enslavement of millions of Native Americans and Africans all over the Americas, resulting in the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the enduring Lost Cause mythology. In Grokking Republicans we previously looked at The Authoritarians, The Lucifer Effect, and Obedience to Authority, and will soon get an update in Authoritarian Nightmare, by John Dean and Robert Altemeyer.
Evangelical churches are another strain, telling themselves that they are doing the work of God by abandoning Biblical teachings in favor of Dominionism and the notion that religious liberty applies only to them. Their susceptibility to cult-style leaders, once in revival meetings, but now in megachurches and on TV, is notorious. Bill Barr is one such leader, in the US branch of the Catholic cult Opus Dei.
Trump's way was smoothed by all of the existing cults that he could draw on.
- Evangelical pseudo-Christians
- White Supremacists
- The Tea Parties
- The NRA
Trump uses all kinds of cult tactics.
- Lying
- Insulting opponents
- Projecting his weaknesses onto others
- Deflecting
- Distracting
- Presenting "alternative facts"
to confuse, disorient, and ultimately coerce his followers. Repetition programs the beliefs into the unconscious. But fearmongering tops the list.
In my experience, phobia indoctrination—the creation of fearful thoughts to promote and reinforce a desired set of belies or behaviors in followers—is one of the most powerful and universal techniques in the cult leader's arsenal.
The same techniques are used by pimps and human traffickers to keep their victims in line.
There is a great deal more detail here on the leading cults of our times, and on the research into their methods carried out by responsible scientists and by unethical actors in the CIA, in marketing, and in politics. New cults have arisen on the basis of this new understanding.
But you know about these techniques. You see them in action every day, in our more benighted schools, in Wrong-Wing media, and especially on the Internet, the greatest tool in history for genuine information, but at the same time a powerful recruitment tool for every kind of insanity.
So what is the cure? A direct attack on cult beliefs will fail. They are programmed against it. Insults will have drive them further into delusion.
A guiding principle of my approach is to act with respect, warmth, and integrity.
You have to actually care about the victims in order to make genuine human contact.
After getting to knew them better, I share my story of how I got interested in the subject of mind control, brainwashing, and cults. I then share stories of other situations and groups. I ask questions, allowing for long silences afterward. I want to encourage the person to think, and hopefully draw comparison to other high-demand groups.
Hassan has developed an effective process in several steps.
- Help people get in touch with their authentic self
- Work on developing a good relationship
- Help them see from different perspectives
- Help undo their phobias
So what can we do about our cranky uncles and Trumpish neighbors and those pushing conspiracies on us on the Net? Don't argue, and don't insult. Try to find common ground outside of politics, and talk about something where the other person can accept facts. Then you can lead the conversation around to some of the other cults that anyone not a member would regard as foolish, and discuss how to protect yourself from those, or how to rescue their victims.
in favorable cases, after days or weeks or months, the light will come on.
