So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part V - Infallibility

Tied closely with the need for promoting division, the idea that the cult leader is infallible is an essential ingredient in cultishness. You'll probably never hear a cult leader unambiguously claim to be infallible, and often they will insist that they're not, but their action belie their words.

In the cult that I was a part of for many years, one of the attractions was that the cult leader was insistent that he would teach us how to read and interpret the Bible for ourselves and would not be subject to any man's interpretation. He preached that the Bible in fact interpreted itself, and if you just kept in mind several "keys to interpretation", everything in the Bible was crystal clear and unambiguous. This, as I later realized, was bullshit. Even if you accept the idea that there is a way to glean the Bible's meaning without any ambiguity or contradictions, the shear number of groups, all insisting on different interpretations should put that idea to bed. 

When I first became involved in this cult there were few churches who claimed to encourage their members to study the Bible, rather than merely listen to what the pastor had to say about it on Sunday. Anyone who was saying that study of the Bible would result in understanding the Bible was rare, if not virtually unique. This is no longer the case, evangelical and fundamentalist churches and their members have multiplied across the land, and they all believe that their interpretation is the right one, despite multitudes of differing interpretations, all insisting that they're right. It's not so different in the political realm. Everyone is a Constitutional scholar these days, and anyone who thinks that the Constitution is clear and not open to interpretation is engaged in wishful thinking. But I digress.

In any cult that professes to show the way by allowing self-study, you'll sooner or later run up against a disagreement with the cult leader. And the cult leader always wins the argument. Have you been studying as long as the leader? No? Then how can you even consider disagreeing with his conclusions? Do you have the spiritual connections that the leader has? No? Maybe come back when you do. Or perhaps the rebukes are a little softer. It's suggested that you should hold your objection "in abeyance", put it "on hold" until you are spiritually mature enough to understand. It doesn't take long, if you stick around, for you to simply stop questioning and accept whatever is presented to you. Interpretations and explanations by the leader that are clearly unsupported start to sound logical. You start spouting them yourself, even though you really can't explain them. You internalize what you've been told and convince yourself that it all makes sense. You eventually reach the point where you can barely tolerate differing opinions, because in your mind, what you believe is so self-evidently true, that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. 

I'm sure you can see how this applies to politics. Social media is full of people who are against Critical Race Theory but have no idea what it is. They just "know" it's bad. They mindlessly repeat everything that their leaders say, but have convinced themselves that they have reasoned it through for themselves. They're convinced that there's evidence for massive election fraud, yet only believe that there was election fraud because somebody, without evidence, told them that there was election fraud. Not all cults are religious cults. 

In order for a cult to maintain control whatever the leader says has to be treated as Truth (with a capital "T"). The core beliefs have to be treated as beyond question and dissenting views as ridiculous or even dangerous. 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part IV - Division

"Can't we all just get along?"

If you're running a cult, or just in a cult, the answer is an emphatic "NO". Cult don't maintain their allure by being like everybody else, they do it by pointing out, without equivocation, that they are most certainly different, in all ways, from everybody else. An atmosphere of isolation, if not physical, than assuredly mental, is cultivated to accomplish two related goals. The first goal is to instill a feeling of uniqueness, of being special, set apart, in the followers. A second goal derives from the first - to portray anyone outside the group as being deficient in some way; ignorant, weak, stupid, or even evil. 

The goal of instilling a feeling of being special is often accomplished by presenting the followers with a supposedly secret knowledge. People want to feel like they know something that nobody else knows, that they are privy to information that is not widely known. Consider how popular what we generally call conspiracy theories are. The Moon landings were fake; Obama was born in Kenya; 9-11 was an inside job and a plane really didn't hit the Pentagon that day; a Democratic Party run pedophile ring is being run out of a pizza restaurant basement (that doesn't have a basement) in D.C.; and of course, Trump (and Kari Lake) won their elections by a landslide. The cult that I was a part of accomplished this by finding the weak points in what most Christians believed about the Bible and pointing out what appeared to be contradictions. They then provided explanations that appeared to make more sense than what most denominations taught. This approach served to undermine any confidence in what orthodox Christians believed and cement the reputation of the cult leader as a teacher of The Truth. 

Once the reputation for promoting "accuracy" is established cult control takes two parallel paths: one is the demonizing of outsiders by claiming that what the cult teaches is godly, so everything else must be devilish, evil; the other path promotes the idea that the cult leader is never wrong in his pronouncements. I'll tackle infallibility in my next post, but this demonization is critical to maintaining division between the cult and "the world", i.e. everybody not in the cult. 

Once the idea of this sharp division between the cult and "the world" in solidified, loyalty to the cult and its leader becomes the only option, even in the face of red flags and even irrefutable evidence of abuses. Cult members may recognize that something is wrong, that they are being taken advantage of or abused, but they believe that the alternative, returning to the evil outside world, is worse. True believers don't even get as far as doubting - they simply refuse to accept that anything bad has occurred and chalk it up to attacks from demonic forces trying to "take down" the cult and its leader. 

Anyone who is even minimally politically engaged will notice how this describes the supporters of former president Donald Trump. From the beginning of his political career, promoting division was his method of securing loyal followers. Democrats and liberals have been assigned the role that Satan normally plays in religious cults, and Trumpists credulously believe whatever their leader tells them to believe. They ignore clear criminal activity, preferring to think (I use the word "think" very loosely) that the "Deep State" or the Media the media is out to "take him out". Any evidence that refutes what their cult leader says is called "fake news". Trumpism is a cult, and appears to have taken on a life of its own even if Trump himself appears to be losing influence. 

A side effect of the division that is promoted in a cult is that even personal relationships get redefined in this good vs. evil paradigm. If there is a disagreement between friends or family members or spouses, the argument can quickly become seen as a reflection of cult vs. the evil, demonic world. The individual who is more locked into the cult mindset, convinced that they are right, views the other person as evil in some way, "devil possessed", and incapable of being right. There is no place for consensus or compromise in a cult. The cult that I was part of went through a long period of purges, where strict adherence to the cult's beliefs were more important than recruitment; purity was valued above growth. People became quick to accuse others of being possessed, rather than work out their problems. 

An enforced division between "us" and "them" is essential to a cult maintaining its control of its members.