How Good Causes Transform Into Totalitarian Cults

Alexandra Stein, a researcher specializing in cults, wrote this essay to introduce her newest book on totalitarian cults and ideologies.

In this essay, she describes in great detail the inner workings of cults from the outside inwards. She takes time to name all the basic techniques that cult leaders employ: their own charisma and authoritarian rule; isolation of cult members — from the outside world, from one another, and from their own rational thinking; total control of their lives, including who do they live with and whether they have children; total ideology — the belief system intricately connected with the leader's persona; fear — of the enemies outside, the Apocalypse, or anything else; finally, exhaustion — fully indoctrinated cult members barely have time to think about what is going on in their lives. Together, these elements create the atmosphere that isolates the cult members from the outside world, ties them together so closely that they lose their own identities, and confuses them to such an extent that they are no longer able to return to normal life unless they make an extraordinary effort to leave their cult.

What is interesting — and important — in this essay is that the author does not make a difference between extremist political groups and religious cults. Only showing that the most honorable causes like social justice can be used for wrong ends.