Is Trumpism a cult? Cult expert Steven Hassan;

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Vox; Sean Illing
How do you define a cult?

Cult expert Steven Hassan;
I define cults along a continuum of what I call ethical or unethical influence. There can be cults where people know what they’re getting into and have access to alternative opinions and are free to leave without threats. That’s what you might call an ethical cult.

And then on the unethical side, there are cults that are essentially based on authoritarian pyramid structures, usually with somebody at the top that claims to have total power and total wisdom, and they use deception in recruitment, which is crucial.

Sean Illing
Are there meaningful differences between a political cult and a religious cult (or any other kind of cult)?

Steven Hassan
There are differences, but the core influence techniques are basically the same no matter the purpose or structure of the cult. And there’s almost always a core deception at the center of the cult, which is that the leader is the only [one] who has the keys to saving the planet, who has access to the truth.

Sean Illing
Do the majority of cult members recognize themselves as being members of cults?

Steven Hassan
No, most people would laugh at the idea of being in a “cult.” But that’s crucial to the sort of mind control you find in a cult. When people are being brainwashed, they think they’re making their own decisions, they think they’re doing God’s work, they think they’re saving the world. And above all, they think they made a conscious decision to do all these things all on their own.

Sean Illing
And how do you distinguish a cult leader from what we’d normally consider a charismatic leader?

Steven Hassan
I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.

But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior.

Sean Illing
Well, let’s get to the book. Why are you calling a Trumpism a cult?

Steven Hassan
I began this book with the assumption that Trump is a malignant narcissist. Actually, watching him and listening to him reminded me of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the cult I joined in college, in that both have a kind of God complex where they’re the only one with the answers, the only one who can fix things. Moon was going to create a theocracy and Trump was going to “drain the swamp.” But the way they carry themselves is similar.

But what really made me think of Trump as a cult was the way the groups who supported him were behaving, especially religious groups who believed that God had chosen Trump or was using Trump. There are actual pro-Trump religious groups, like the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders were saying, “We’re of God. The rest of the world is of Satan, and we need to follow our chosen leaders who are connected to God.”

There was this blind-faith aspect to the whole thing and an unwillingness to look at any inconvenient facts. That’s all very cult-like.

Sean Illing
Politics is all about persuasion, all about influencing people. What is it that makes Trump’s approach fundamentally different from non-cultish politicians?

Steven Hassan
First, a lot of people don’t know that Trump was raised by an authoritarian father in what I’d call a cultic church, where you’re taught to believe 100 percent in yourself, that magical things are going to happen, and that the only sin is doubting yourself.

Sean Illing
Wait, what? A cultic church?

Steven Hassan
Yeah, Trump was part of Norman Vincent Peale’s church growing up. [You can read about that here.] Peale was an important figure in his life. He even presided over some of Trump’s marriages, I believe. But Peale preached a cultish prosperity gospel, where everything’s about how God is going to bless you with material rewards. It’s not about spirituality or Christ or anything like that. It’s all about turning self-confidence into a religion.

Sean Illing
I don’t know anything about that, so I can’t speak to it. So, what else distinguishes Trump in your mind?

Steven Hassan
The bottom line is that I see very sophisticated mind-control techniques being used through the media, through religious broadcasters and radio talk-show hosts. It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality that is mostly fear-based. And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the image of the leader.

These are universal mind-control techniques common to all destructive cults, and something I call “phobia introduction.” Irrational fears are drilled into people’s minds so that they can’t even imagine leaving the group or questioning the leader without terrible things happening to them.

But that doesn’t really map onto our political reality. No one is being forced to be a Trump supporter in that way. I guess I’m having a hard time seeing how Trump is all that different from other politicians who speak in repetitive clichés and use slogans and platitudes to manipulate voters. I mean, that’s just mass politics.

Steven Hassan
Well, the cult of Trump is definitely the fruit of decades of issues and problems that have never really surfaced. But I do think he shows, in a way we haven’t quite seen before — at least in modern history — how people can be recruited and indoctrinated to do things completely contrary to their belief system and value system. And he’s exceptionally good at using the media to amplify his messaging techniques.

Sean Illing
I’ll try to get at this another way. So, I kept thinking about a politician like Barack Obama while reading your book. Obama is the opposite of Trump in every sense imaginable, and yet he exercised a similar pull on many of his followers.

The big difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump lies and insults and projects weakness onto others, and that seems more straightforwardly cultish, and maybe that’s where we cross the line into cult territory. But Obama still had something like a cult of personality, although many people don’t see it that way because he was a good man with benign intentions and he didn’t use his influence over people for malicious purposes.

Steven Hassan
I think that’s very true. If you’re going to run for president of the United States, you’ve got to have some narcissistic qualities. But it’s the amorality piece that distinguishes Trump from Barack Obama.

Beyond that, Obama was brilliant and he was someone who liked to learn, who wanted to hear different opinions and make reasonable decisions, as opposed to Trump, who says “I use my gut” and insists he knows more than his generals.

Sean Illing
But that doesn’t necessarily make Trump a cult leader ...

Steven Hassan
Right, but for people to believe in him and follow him religiously and not question anything he says even when it’s obvious that he’s lying, that’s where I stop and go, “Wait, this is very cult-like.”

I really want to make the point that not everyone who voted for Trump is in a cult, and not everyone who supports the Republican Party is a mindless follower of Trump. But those who buy everything he says, who think he’s some kind of savior or a gift from God, whose loyalty is both unquestionable and irrational, I do think they’re behaving more or less like cult members.

Sean Illing
Couldn’t everything you’re saying about Trumpism also be explained as simple partisanship? Republicans basically supported Trump at virtually the same rate they supported previous GOP presidential candidates. I’d argue that’s a much simpler account of the dynamics here than attributing everything to cult-like brainwashing.

Steven Hassan
So, I would take the word “brainwashing,” put it aside, and think about the science of social influence and all the research that’s being done, especially about online influence. Modern tech companies are learning how to make their platforms sticky, how to gather data from our “likes” and “retweets” and use it to quietly manipulate us.

My reason for doing this book wasn’t really about Trump or Republicans or Democrats. It was to take everything I’ve learned about how vulnerable human minds are and how psychology works. We’re living in a very different world where the conventional idea of “brainwashing” is really obsolete and the idea of a cult as a small group of people sharing physical space is outdated.

The internet has changed things, and I think Trump is an example of what a 21st-century cult leader looks like.

_________________

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Published 2 mins ago on December 15, 2019

How to take down a cult leader

Do you focus on shaming them for the damage they’re doing?
Do you try to expose their lies and hypocrisies?
Do you remind them of our common values?
Do you try to prevail with your values?
Do you try to prove that they’re factually incorrect? Do you curse them for being bad people?

Any of these moves could be useful for swaying onlookers to resist the cult, but that’s a different matter. The question here is how to cut them, making the cult and its leaders show blood.

That’s what cutting looks like. In each case, the cut bled support. Trump has yet to be cut.

Our inability to cut Trump is his cult’s core appeal. We know that he’s a loser but look at his track record through the eyes of someone who doesn’t follow politics, or has views so aligned with Trump’s pandering that they fall for it, or the education-deprived citizen who doesn’t have well-trained political BS detectors.

From their perspectives, Trump is a winner. He hasn’t lost a single argument. At most he’s suffered a tie. He remains uncut.
He swaggers away from all dust ups, never apologizing, always accusing, always playing umpire declaring himself winner, always getting the last word.
That’s the essence of cult charisma:
The appearance of invincibility through proud incorrigibility.

Our inability to cut Trump is his cult’s core appeal. We know that he’s a loser but look at his track record through the eyes of someone who doesn’t follow politics, or has views so aligned with Trump’s pandering that they fall for it, or the education-deprived citizen who doesn’t have well-trained political BS detectors. From their perspectives, Trump is a winner.
He hasn’t lost a single argument. At most he’s suffered a tie. He remains uncut.
He swaggers away from all dust ups, never apologizing, always accusing, always playing umpire declaring himself winner, always getting the last word.
That’s the essence of cult charisma: The appearance of invincibility through proud incorrigibility.

The appearance of invincibility can be maintained on the cheap:
If you never apologize, always accuse more relentlessly than your challengers, the gullible with think you’re a saint and then you can get away with anything. A cult leader needs no more strategy than that.
Just run it as long as you can get away with it. So long as your holding or gaining power, your cult members will think you’re invincible.
That alone is sufficient to explain the Trump cult’s rise.

So how do you cut someone who has achieved that cult status? If their sole strategy is never apologize always out-accuse, none of the options above will work.

Do you focus on shaming them for the damage they’re doing?
They’ll deflect, deny and accuse you of doing the damage.
Do you try to expose their every lie and hypocrisy?
They’ll deflect, deny and accuse you of lying and hypocrisy.
Do you remind them of our common values?
They’ll deflect, deny and accuse you of betraying common values.
Do you try to trump them with your values?
They’ll deflect, deny and accuse you of having bad values.
Do you try to prove that they’re factually incorrect?
They’ll deflect, deny and accuse you of being factually incorrect.
Do you curse them for being bad people?
They’ll accuse you of being upset, irrational, hurt, angry and immoral and then curse you for being bad people.

It doesn’t take much imagination to predict their responses. That’s the point. Cult leaders are one-trick phonies:
Never apologize, always out-accuse, get as far as you can and don’t get cut.

So how do you cut them?
By exposing their one-trick: Never apologize, always accuse. Pretend to be infallible and thus become incorrigible.

How would they respond?
More of the same, since it’s all they know.
Their responses will confirm your accusation, so don’t let up; don’t get distracted. Control the debate and keep it focused on their one trick.

Of course, they won’t back down. They’ll just deny, deflect, never apologize, always accuse, saying in so many words,
“no, you’re the one who never apologizes and always accuses.”
To which you respond
“there he goes again.”
Over and over, never following their lead into the weeds and distractions.

Still, I don’t see an alternative. Our best shot at cutting a cult leader is a relentless focus on exposing their whole MO, not pulling moral rank on it, just pointing out that that’s all they’ve got.
And then, to his face, using that sharp tongue to lash him not at the minutia but the whole MO, the whole generic never-apologize, always-accuse one-trick phony cult leader strategy.

Because that’s all he’s got. And despite us scrambling to counter it in the minutia, it’s still working. His fake-infallibility run is still running strong.

Regular Member Posts : 190 Join date : 2014-07-29

Yes. All that stuff about "when they go low, we go high" doesn't work. The Klingons don't want to join the Federation, and photon torpedos are needed.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

January 7, 2020

‘All cults come to an end’: Journalist outlines what will ultimately befall Trump’s lapdogs

Rich stresses, Trump sycophants who rally around the president will be treated like pariahs for rallying around him so slavishly.

“All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult,” Rich warns. “While cult leaders are generally incapable of remorse — whether they be totalitarian rulers, sexual Svengalis or the self-declared messiahs of crackpot religions — their followers almost always pay a human and reputational price once the leader is toppled.”

President Richard Nixon, like President Donald Trump, had his share of unwavering loyalists and supporters — and no matter how damning the Watergate scandal became in 1974, they refused to say a word against Nixon.
Those Nixon loyalists, offer some valuable insights on what will ultimately befall Trump’s “toadies.”

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