Cultic power

By Perry Diaz

FROM the time Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, he targeted a group of Americans – about 30 percent — to be his base of support. Predominantly poor, undereducated, and white, Trump indoctrinated them in his way of thinking. He called upon them to support his “America First’ policy and to “Make America Great Again” or Maga. These are patriotic slogans that he used from the very beginning of his political adventure. He captured the loyalty of a large number of Americans. And from this base, he built a formidable army of followers. He once boasted at a campaign rally, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” His supporters loved him… fanatically. He realized then that he had cultic power and he’ll use it in his presidency.

Every night, he’d send tweets to millions of supporters. Those are his marching orders. But his tweets are full of lies. But he could care less. As long as they believe what he says; that’s all that matters. They’ve been brainwashed by a cultist who preaches his brand of fanaticism. He lies constantly and never admits when he is wrong. He decides what’s “fake news” and what’s the truth. He’s authoritarian and yet his followers blindly follow him. He’s a megalomaniac and loves to be adored. He’s like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon, and other infamous cultic leaders.  

Recently, a book was published by Steven Hassan entitled, “Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control.” Hassan wrote about his first-hand experience escaping from the Unification Church back in the ’70s. He’s decided to write the book because he believes there is something seriously wrong with American politics today. Hassan emphasized concepts like indoctrination, blind devotion, authoritarianism, and of course — in the subtitle — mind control.

In February, the Rev. John Pavlovitz, a progressive Christian leader, wrote a short blog entitled, “The Cult of Trump.” He said, “America is in a cultic crisis, and Trumpism is the cult. There is no other way to approach these days.” He peppered his essay with a heart-wrenching anecdote of a friend’s attempt to rescue his brainwashed mother, who was reduced to posting bigoted memes on her social media account. Indeed, the number of news outlets and public figures who have compared Trump to a cult leader and his political movement to a cult is ever-growing, And last weekend, in the Washington Post, Trump critic and Republican Strategist John Weaver said the GOP is not a party anymore in the traditional sense, it’s a cult.

Hassan wrote, “Uniting all these positions. is the claim that the category of ‘cult’ can be distinguished from other social or religious movements, that cults are united by sharing charismatic leaders, and that followers have been manipulated, psychologically coerced, or simply brainwashed into their adherence to the cult’s ideology. This brainwashing or mind-control claim seems to underlie most if not all of the ‘Trump cult’ rhetoric, often explicitly.

“The problem is that scholars like me who study new religious movements (NRMs)—the groups generally called cults—have concluded that such groups often share very little in common besides being new, small, or otherwise socially stigmatized. Importantly, religious studies scholars, sociologists, and social psychologists have over the past three decades nearly unanimously rejected the cultic brainwashing model, which is both circular and inherently subjective. Repeated empirical studies have disproven brainwashing as an explanation for recruitment and membership in NRMs, though it lingers among those associated with anti-cult groups. Neither the American Psychiatric Association nor American courts accept brainwashing as a credible scientific concept, and major academic journals no longer publish papers on the concept. (This isn’t to say that all such new religious groups are harmless—many are not—but brainwashing does not explain why people join.) Given that most researchers consider brainwashing and mind-control to be pseudoscientific at best, what is the appeal of comparing Donald Trump to a cult leader, and those who support him to brainwashed cultists?

“The answer to this question requires delving into both the specific reasons why such commentators have employed the ‘cult rhetoric,’ as well as the nearly 50 years of collected academic research on cults produced by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and scholars of comparative religion.

“Behind these claims lurks the assumption that Donald Trump possesses charisma, or the unique ability to lead and manipulate followers. The history of the modern concept of charisma can be traced to German social theorist Max Weber, who in the early twentieth century explained that charisma is the ability to lead-based not on rational persuasion or technocratic skill, but based on the power of personality and a claim to possess uncanny and remarkable personal characteristics.

“Yet several generations of scholars researching NRMs have found that charisma is very much a relative concept, and that rather than envision charisma as an inborn quality of a leader, charisma is produced by the interplay of the leader and his or her followers. Followers invest their leader with charisma and the leader, in turn, builds off his or her (usually his) followers. The interplay between President Trump and his supporters at his political rallies shows how this occurs. This process certainly involves psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic, and it isn’t mind-control. Trump tells his followers at the rallies that they face crises (immigration, globalization, etc.) and only he can resolve these crises, that they, therefore, need him, and that in turn, he needs them.

“Donald Trump has amassed a colossal political movement, capturing nearly 63 million votes. Granted that many individuals voted for Trump while holding their noses, or out of the shrewd political calculation, yet still millions are committed followers. How do you explain that? The reason cannot be brainwashing or mind-control disputed pseudoscientific concepts that lack any empirical support. His success rates are vastly higher than any cult or NRM. The actual reasons for his political success require careful analysis by political scientists, not pseudoscientific concepts such as mind-control. I think Trump’s rise must be assessed by the way he appeals to the power of tribalism and with it the fears of others benefiting at America’s expense. It’s a simultaneous appeal to the communal solidarity of patriotism and American exceptionalism, and the resultant desire for isolationism and retrenchment of Us against the menacing Them. Others view Trump’s appeal differently, but the fact is, it’s not mind-control or brainwashing. However, it does parallel the sort of dualistic worldview of us/them, good/evil, insider/outsider seen in many new religions.”

MSNBC host Joy Reid slammed Republicans as President Trump’s “racial and religious cult” after a poll showed that a majority of them view Trump as a better president than Abraham Lincoln. 

“There’s a lot of ways if you look at like the public religion research institute numbers that, you know, it isn’t just a pejorative to say that it’s a cult,” Reid said Saturday on her show. “There’s a lot of evidence that is a racial and religious cult of personality in which his base is solidly among the white evangelicals that almost worship him and say that he’s the chosen one of God.” However, the vast majority of independents and Democrats considered Lincoln to be the superior president. 

Trump had jokingly referred to himself as “the chosen one” in August when talking about the US trade war with China. His outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry also used the title to refer to the president. Since then, a lot of Republicans supporting Trump have referred to him in a godly manner. And this is where the biggest danger of Trump’s cultic power comes from.

E-mail: PerryDiaz@gmail.com