“What’s a cult?” It’s everybody’s favorite question when it comes to religion and true crime. I guess because it seems so unanswerable. Except that it’s very answerable. It’s just a boring answer. A cult is an unsuccessful religion. One too young and not big enough to absorb crime and controversy when it happens. One that hasn’t grown too big to fail. That failure can take the form of everything from criminal acts to public embarrassment to the death of a leader—all things bigger organizations can withstand with little issue.
I researched scores of not-yet-religions to get down to the thirty featured in my book Cult Following. That winnowing was necessary for practical reasons, but also because after a certain horizon, the stories of most cults get redundant. You see one UFO cult, you’ve seen them all. This doomsday cult is pretty much that doomsday cult. Self-help cults always seem to help themselves the same way. Still, even among the most unique cults that I could find, the ones featured in the book, they all seem to share basic commonalities…that will not at all help you avoid them.
1. The rules of the organization do not apply to its leader.
This red flag is appropriate for any organization—a political system, a corporation, a sports team. Sure, we know that the rich, famous, powerful, and talented can get away with far more than most, but we should all at least pretend that the rules apply to them and have some kind of limit for their shenanigans. But with cult leaders, there is often no pretense that their actions are bound by a common law, and their ability to act unencumbered by any rules is limitless. David Koresh of the Branch Davidians took all the wives as his own while enforcing chastity on everyone else. Pyotr Kuznetzov, who founded the Russian cult Heavenly Jerusalem, convinced his followers to seal themselves into a cave, but begged off doing it himself because he claimed a different destiny.
2. The leader sees themself as preternaturally unique and gifted.
Like most leaders, cult leaders have something that makes them stick out from the pack. It could be charisma, drive, passion, knowledge—but those are relatively common human traits. Cult leaders fetishize and aggrandize themselves far beyond mere characteristics. The leader of NXIVM was often described as a child prodigy, the world record holder for highest IQ, and the most ethical man in the world. And the number of cult leaders who fancied themselves the reincarnation of Christ is so great they could all get together and form their own cult.
3. The organization is isolated geographically or socially.
It’s the classic fishbowl tactic. Cult leaders, to maintain doctrinal purity and control of their followers, need to keep members separate from the world. Dissenting opinions, outside perspectives, and objective analyses are all dangers to extravagant ideologies and the manipulation of the vulnerable. Often, that isolation is a geographic strategy. That’s why communes are so popular for cults. The People’s Temple in Guyana. The Ant Hill Kids in the mountains of Quebec. Sometimes, it can be a social or psychological isolation, like with the Sullivanians, who managed to run a cult of white collar, active members of society in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
4. The organization acts according to urgent predictions of an impending world-changing event.
Nothing forces action like urgency. Politicians use it all the time to explain why they should be elected. Budget crises. Immigration crises. Climate crises. Crime crises. Cult leaders use the same tactic, but go bigger. They often prophesy the end of the world via natural apocalypse, alien invasion, or worldwide war. And then they’re audacious enough to establish a near-term date. Because that makes it even more urgent—the Millerites, Heaven’s Gate, the Planetary Activation Organization. When it doesn’t happen, sometimes the cult disbands or loses followers. But not always. Cognitive dissonance often keeps members of the cult going. In fact, the concept of cognitive dissonance was formulated by researchers who embedded themselves in a UFO cult called the Seekers to see what would happen when the aliens didn’t arrive.
5. The organization impoverishes members by fundraising intensely from their pockets and estates.
Poverty traps. Riches flow to the top. It’s that simple and has nothing to do with cults. But it happens in almost every cult. Bhagwan Rajneesh, who founded the Rajneesh Movement, owned close to 100 Rolls Royces. Hogen Fukunaga, who established Ho No Hana Sanpogyo in 1987, wore $5,000 suits. Dwight York, who established the Nuwaubian Nation and built an Egyptian-inspired commune in Georgia, told his son, “I don’t believe in any of this shit. If I had to dress up like a nun, if I had to be a Jew, I’d do it for this type of money.”
6. The organization expounds ideas that are an unoriginal mishmash of the teachings of other organizations.
Nobody has any original ideas. Most cult ideologies are predictable mashups of the tenants of religion or self-help programs or spiritualism. Even the advanced extraterrestrial entities proffered by UFO cults always seem to offer trite messages of peace and evolution of the sort most science fiction novelists wouldn’t even use as placeholders in their first drafts. This commonality is the most fascinating since it would be the best test of whether a cult harbors the ultimate truth of existence. Its deity or extraterrestrial overlords should be able to provide new, reality-shattering information that nobody could even guess at. A real revelation, in other words.
7. The organization has a boring name.
I don’t know why this is. Maybe marketers are less susceptible to joining cults. But cults generally are either named after their leader—such as the Koreshan Unity or Raëlism—or have a vaguely Christian/New Age-sounding names: Home of Truth, Children of God, Superior Universal Alignment, Remnant Fellowship Church, Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments. It’s gotta at least look good on a T-shirt.
If you see any or all of these seven red flags in a group, it’s probably a cult. And if they can survive the inevitable outcome of those flags and grow, they’ll graduate to religion. Whatever the case, these flags won’t stop you from joining a cult. That’s because there is no more human act than joining a cult. It’s not weird. Unless you just categorize the entire human species as weird. Which is a valid assertion. I mean, likeminded people searching for something join together under an impressive leader. That’s all we do in life, whether it’s in our families, our jobs, our societies. Cults are an extremely human enterprise. And that’s the most terrifying thing about them.
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