Cults, Conspiracies and Corruption

THE RISE AND EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN CULT MENTALITY Writing and graphic by Arella Warren, Deputy Editor

The mid to late 20th century was a time of historic and political turmoil in America. The 1945 victory of World War II was followed by domestic issues, renewing a sense of helplessness across the nation. At the same time, the ‘60s and ‘70s saw an increased interest in space and religion as a result of new technologies and media. With the rise of New Religious Movements and the massive expansion of media and news information, people were desperate for something to believe in, and the cult mentality quickly gained traction throughout various communities.

A cult is formally defined as “a system of religious beliefs and practices.”1 People tend to make a hard distinction between cults, often likened to New Religious Movements or NRMs, and religion, which is held in higher esteem. In reality, the line between cults, NRMs and religions is blurry—and each of these categories have seen their share of abuse and corruption.

Like religion, cults and NRMs generally venerate a saintly leader or God and preach stories about the end of the world and ways to attain spiritual enlightenment.2 Most world religions, however, follow set moral systems that have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, whereas cults and NRMs tend to be more sensational and less sustainable.

American journalist Tom Bissell explains, “At its core, the only difference between a cult and a religion is antiquity. But antiquity amounts to a lot. Among other things, it allows followers to live and believe within the parameters of a complex intellectual tra-

¹ “Definition of Cult,” Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. ² Tina Rodia, “Is it a cult, or a new religious movement?” Penn Today, Aug. 29, 2019. MODA | 16

dition. A human claiming to be God, and making concomitant demands of his or her community, falls into a much simpler intellectual tradition: the cult of personality.”3

This cult of personality that Bissell refers to, in which a figure is upheld as infallible, is what sets dedicated cult followings apart from organized religion. Likewise, German sociologist Max Weber suggested that an effective leader relies on and creates a form of charismatic authority in which they position themselves as a savior deserving of institutionalization—the exact leadership for which many Americans of the ‘60s were searching.4

This charismatic appeal is easily exemplified by one of the world’s most sensationalized cult followings: The Manson Family.5 Charles Manson is infamous for inspiring complete devotion in his “Manson Girls,” a group of young-adult female followers who lived communally and worshiped the psychedelic teachings and erratic behaviors of Manson. At the end of the ‘60s, Manson was sentenced for committing nine murders, and the girls were suspected of many more, plunging the media into a state of terror and paranoia for months.6

The ‘70s saw the rise of notorious Jim Jones, who directed his followers down a similarly dark path. Jones first opened the Peoples Temple church in the ‘50s as a charitable place of worship committed to racial and economic equity.7 Jones’ popularity soared from

³ Tom Bissell, “How Cults Made America,” The New Yorker, April 24, 2019. ⁴ Jonathan Bastian, “How ‘60s and ‘70s America gave rise to cult leaders,” KCRW, Aug. 21, 2021. ⁵ Fortesa Latifi, “Most Famous Cults in U.S. History,” Teen Vogue, Aug. 30, 2021. ⁶ Ibid. ⁷ “Jonestown,” History, Nov. 20, 2019. there, and in 1977, he persuaded nearly a thousand of his congregants to move to a settlement in Guyana called Jonestown. On the settlement, Jones became paranoid, convincing his followers to drink fruit juice mixed with cyanide in a ritual mass-suicide, leaving 900 dead.8 Just two years after the move to the settlement, the Jonestown Massacre went down in history as one of the largest non-natural losses of U.S. lives, sparking the morbid phrase “drinking the kool-aid.”9

Meanwhile, in Colorado, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles were slowly growing their following for Heaven’s Gate, a NRM preaching that extraterrestrial spacecraft would soon come to Earth to take the faithful to the kingdom of heaven.10 Applewhite convinced the community that their bodies were merely vessels holding them back from a higher form of spiritual existence. In 1997, with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, 39 members— dressed in matching black uniforms complete with Nike shoes to represent unity—drank a lethal potion in hopes of transcending their physical existence.11

The Manson Family murders and ritualistic suicides of the Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate live on as a few of the country’s most startling cult stories. Given their tragic outcomes, it’s easy to see how these instances gained notoriety, but it’s harder to understand how leaders come to hold such power and why people willingly follow erratic and harmful demands.

American psychoanalyst Daniel Shaw proposes that the real power of a cult lies in its mentality, whereby “Cult mem-

⁸ Ibid. ⁹ Ibid. 10 “Heaven’s Gate cult members found dead,” History, Feb. 9, 2010. 11 Ibid

bers” actually come to embrace and even glorify these kinds of mistreatment in part because their leaders, and their followers by proxy, have mastered the art of seduction, using techniques of undue influence.”12 Cult leaders—intentionally or not—prey on the anxieties, insecurities, traumas and need for acceptance that all humans share.

Manson, Jones and Applewhite were able to organize devoted followings, convincing innocent individuals to take drastic measures, in large part due to their charismatic, larger-than-life personalities that drew people to them, isolating their devotees from the rest of society like a toxic relationship. Manson and Jones were known to employ “love bombing,” in which they’d lavish new members with love and attention in order to gain their trust, making manipulation and mind-control flow naturally over time.13 Additionally, cults effectively draw on our psychological, in-group out-group biases, building an us versus them mentality, something that continues to threaten modern society today, facilitating racial, gender, sexual and other biases.14

Still, not every cult aims to manipulate or isolate. Sometimes, one’s power lies in the simple appeal to a community, especially as it pertains to social and spiritual needs. Claude “Raël” Vo-

12 Daniel Shaw, “Traumatic Abuse in Cults,” Spiritual Abuse Resources. 13 Mark D. Griffiths, “Love Bombing,” Psychology Today, Feb. 14, 2019. 14 “10 Things to Know About the Psychology of Cults,” Online Psychology Degree. rilhon founded Raëlism in the ‘70s on the view that humans spawned from an alien race known as the Elohim, who Raël prophesied will one day return to grant us intellectual prowess, free love and sexual liberation.15 As one of the largest UFO cults in history, Raelism remains a prominent New Religious Movement to this day, estimated to have over 100,000 followers.16 While Raelism has proven relatively harmless in its intentions and effects, and its followers lead typical lives, they’re nonetheless convinced that the extraterrestrial Elohim are gods and worship the teachings of Raël as dogma. This begs the question: Is any form of belief that encourages people to reject reasoning for cult-like teachings and dogma truly harmless?

NRMs and UFO conspiracy theories boomed in the ‘70s and ‘80s when people first gained access to the internet— today, the web has become an even more potent and foreboding breeding ground for niche cultures that facilitate in-group biases and give way to echo chambers of conspiracy theory.17 Most recently, perhaps, is the spread of QAnon, a modern-day cult that managed to draw in hundreds of thousands of supporters during what they claim is the nation’s first so-called internet election. Taken as isolated incidents, these events are easy to brush off as “fan theories,” but social media is far from

15 Ibid. 16 Stephanie Buck, “In this bizarre religion,” Timeline, Oct. 24, 2017. 17 Don Knapp, “The Internet as a god,” CNN. an isolated system—it has a major influence on the world that is only becoming more prevalent as illicit content continues to go largely unmoderated.

Today, misinformation and fake news dominate, spreading six times faster than true information, and people are more likely to accept fake information online than the truth.18 This is, of course, disturbing, as new media promotes the rapid spread of what might otherwise be considered nonsensical narratives— but it’s also rooted in a much larger ethical concern that has been brewing since the ‘70s around the lack of digital regulation. Social media platforms have created a massive echo chamber that allows for conspiracy theorizing and the cult mentality to thrive, yet no one is taking responsibility for this well of corrupted power.

The human propensity for subscribing to the cult mentality is, in part, derivative of our need to belong. But we as a collective need to take more accountability in our abilities and motivation to discern between a legitimate narrative and an unwarranted conspiracy theory or dogmatic rambling. Alternatively, we risk falling victim to a state of global, cult-minded chaos fueled by fantasy and misinformation, blurring the lines between fact and fiction to the point that the truth becomes entirely unattainable with the rise of digital information. ■