Michael Moore writes:
A cult is an organization that enslaves minds and destroys families using cult mind control. Cult mind control involves orchestrated deception, social pressure, psychological abuse, and repetitive indoctrination (brainwashing) centering around an unchallengeable ideology enforced in a totalitarian way in a closed socially-separatist community setting. (Not all cults have live-in campuses, but all are socially separatist.) Each of these four tactics by themselves are ancient, but combined simultaneously, they cause the subject to throw up their hands and give up mentally resisting. That “secret sauce” uncovered by experimentation in the mid-1800’s is what’s new. That is mind control.
Michael adds:
Published cult researchers tend to agree on these characteristics, making this the only definition that is both concise and accurate, though a bit simplistic. But you will not recognize cult activities in the field armed only with this one-paragraph definition. Study is required in order to recognize cults and protect yourself.
Yes, Jehovah’s Witnesses are the quintessential Christian cult, for they fully meet this definition.
The size, popularity, or trending of a given organization is not evidence pro or con as to whether that organization is a cult. Whether they perpetrate cult mind control is the only litmus test. Larger or smaller organizations can perpetrate cult mind control.
There are many myths and false definitions about cults, including “a cult is a small organization centering around a single leader”. No, it is the use of cult mind control that makes an organization a cult.
I was a Jehovah’s Witness for 28 years, after which I spent 14 years in active self-directed recovery. If they were not a cult, then those 14 years of recovery work would not have been necessary or productive, yet they were.
The best evidence is the testimony of the millions of former recovering or recovered cult members. Current cult members do not know how mind control works, for mind control does not work on people who know.
No one who is being subjected to mind control recognizes that they are. No one admits that their organization is a cult, except tongue-in-cheek, or where using a false definition.
"No topic is more buried in myth, disinformation, and prejudice than cults and mind control. Discernment is necessary. Intellectual discipline is necessary. Overcoming personal biases is necessary.
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