What Is a Cult?
Amanda Montell, linguist and author of “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism,” concludes that the United States has a relationship with cults well beyond that found in other developed countries. “The U.S. is an exception … and full of believers” compared to other countries with high living standards, strong education levels, and long life expectancies.
Prominent U.S. examples of cults over the last half-century include the Manson family, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Peoples Temple, and the Branch Davidians. Charles Manson was leader of a commune in California beginning in the late 1960s. Manson claimed he was Jesus; he predicted an apocalyptic race war in the U.S. and carried out several murders in 1969 in an effort to instigate it.
The Symbionese Liberation Army was a militant far-left organization active from 1973 to 1975. Its spokesman Donald DeFreeze espoused Marxist and Black nationalist ideology in committing a series of murders, armed bank robberies, attempted bombings, and the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst
Jim Jones led a Christian religious movement known as Peoples Temple, active in California in the late 1960’s. He introduced his followers to a belief he called Apostolic Socialism influenced by Marxism. Accusations of fraud and abuse caused Jones to relocate to his Jonestown compound in Guyana. Relatives of Jones’ followers called for an investigation into their welfare. A group including a U.S. Congressman visited Jonestown in November 1978. Following the visit, Jones ordered his followers to commit a mass murder-suicide, killing over 900 men, women, and children.
David Koresh was an apocalypse believer who led a group that had its origins in the Seventh Day Adventist church. He assumed control of an offshoot called the Branch Davidians located in Waco, Texas, in 1983. Accusations of child abuse led to a trial and an ATF raid in February 1993. A two-month standoff ended in a fire that destroyed the compound and resulted in the deaths of 76 members of Koresh’s group.
These four narratives illustrate characteristics commonly shared by cults. Each had a self-appointed charismatic leader directing them. Followers accepted authoritarian control by an idealized leader. Followers adhere to their leader’s doctrinaire beliefs and may not question those beliefs without fear of reprisal. Followers share the same language and talking points. Followers become isolated from family and friends who do not share the leader’s beliefs.
Turning to the elephant in the room, is today’s MAGA Republican party a cult? In her book, Montell cites oratorical similarities between Donald Trump and Jim Jones. Both loved “coining zingy, incendiary nicknames for their opponents,” comparing Trump’s “Fake News” and “Crooked Hillary” to Jones’s “Hidden Rulers.” Catchy phrases could win over an audience “even when their statements didn’t contain any rational substance…. It’s riveting to watch someone on a podium speak from a place so animalistic that most of us don’t let ourselves behave that way even with our closest friends.” Phrases acquire emotional power that “a leader can exploit to steer followers’ behavior.”
Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Washington Post, said it this way: “The problem is that since Trump’s takeover of the party, the mainstream GOP position – on any given topic, at any given moment – is his position. This is true even if it means Republicans must say the opposite of what they said yesterday, and even if it means saying things that are demonstrably untrue.”
Today’s Republican Party displays elements common to cults. That is important to understand inasmuch as the United States has produced cults over the past 60 years that have ended in violence and mass deaths.