Top 5 Facts about Cults
Group meetings can sometimes be a productive process, but there are some groups out there with some sinister ulterior motives. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 Facts. Today we're counting down the five most fascinating, surprising and frightening facts about the world of cults, which can be loosely described as a political or religious organization whose beliefs or practices are largely considered by the populous to be strange, deviant or dangerous.
Special thanks to our user Tataomodale for submitting the idea using our interactive suggestion tool at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest
#5: Cults Often Have One Charismatic Leader
A confident person with a radical political or religious idea can appear to be quite attractive and even revolutionary to someone who's searching for a place to belong, and cult founders know this. This is why many of them actively seek out to recruit the lonely, angry and disenfranchised. Add in a propensity for deceit and manipulation, plus a thirst for power, and it becomes easy to imagine how a group of individuals who feel outcast from society could then find themselves enthralled by a powerful and opportunistic leader.
#4: Cult Leaders Often Use Sex to Control Devotees
If the members of a cult believe that their leader is absolutely infallible, it goes without saying that an unscrupulous cult leader could then parlay that belief into just about anything they desire. Cases in point? The news reports that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh held multiple wives when overseeing his Waco compound during the early nineties, or the reports that Charles Manson's hippie followers were ordered into drug-fueled orgies with each other when living with Manson at the Spahn Ranch in California. In Koresh's case, however, the impregnation of cult members by the cult leader made it even more difficult for scared members to escape, for fear of harm coming to their children.
#3: Cults Don’t Let Their Members Leave
Cults will often do everything in their power to retain all of their members. After all, if any of them left and spoke out against the cult in the media, this could make it more difficult for the leaders to maintain their power. For this reason, cults often collect all the damaging personal information they can about their members to use as blackmail should the need arise. Some cults may resort to physical violence, harassment or smear campaigns in order to achieve vengeance or otherwise stop a member attempting to leave. It can take prospective escapees months of careful, secretive planning to facilitate the first steps of severing ties from a cult.
#2: Cultists Are Often Brainwashed
It takes more than just an idea and a smile for a potential cult leader to transition from outcast to supreme ruler. Sadly, many former cult members have reported rampant instances of brainwashing and indoctrination tactics, so much so that the victims of these tactics often have little to no memory about their lives prior to joining the cult. An example of these tactics include isolation, restraint and bombarding them with visual or audio stimuli according to the cult's wishes. There are also less physical, though equally effective effective methods of brainwashing, which could include misleading media, verbal debasement or aggressive rhetoric.
#1: Cultists Can Be Deprogrammed
Thankfully, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There have been countless reports of former cult members who've managed to escape the pervasive influence of their group, and have gone on to lead healthy and successful lives. The practice of forcing someone to abandon a certain set of beliefs, also known as deprogramming, can be a slippery slope, however, usually because it tends to involve the physical removal, which is to say kidnapping, of the intended target, or at the very least a planned confrontation. An example of this was the "Back in Control Training Center," which “deprogrammed” fans of the punk rock and heavy metal during the 1980s, and allegedly reprogrammed them with fundamentalist Christian beliefs. Nowadays, deprogramming, has been largely replaced by a kinder, more passive strategy of "exit counseling.”
So, what do you think? Are you fascinated by the world of cults? Are you glad your parents didn't send you to be "deprogrammed" of your musical taste? For more obsessive top tens, and eye-opening top fives, please subscribe to WatchMojo.com!
