I'm cult deprogrammer Rick Alan Ross.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

This is Cult Support.

[upbeat music]

@joysfree11 asks, What are the signs I'm in a cult?

Social isolation, being cut off from family

and old friends, unable to ask critical questions

regarding the leader of the group or the group's behavior.

A feeling that if I leave, I must be wrong.

And there's just no checks and balances

to the leader's power,

or transparency regarding the group's finances

and many of its actions.

If you begin to get that kind of gut feeling

that you're in a cult, maybe you are,

and it's time to take a step back, unplug,

and look over those warning signs.

@creation247 asks, What makes a cult, a cult?

There are three primary core characteristics

that form the nucleus for virtually any definition

of a destructive cult.

Number one, that there is an absolute totalitarian leader

that is the defining element and driving force of the group.

And that leader becomes an object of worship.

Number two, the leader uses identifiable techniques

of coercive persuasion to gain undue influence.

And number three, having acquired undue influence,

the leader uses it to exploit

and do harm to his or her followers.

It's important at this point to understand

that not all cults are religious.

For example, Charles Diedrich led a group called Synanon,

which was a drug rehabilitation community.

It wasn't about religion,

but Diedrich had absolute power and control.

A corporation like Apple could be seen as a cult,

but a benign cult.

Steve Jobs, when he was alive,

was the defining element and driving force

of the corporation.

The followers of Taylor Swift can be seen

as a cult following,

but Taylor Swift is not using coercive persuasion

to gain undue influence over her following.

In the case of North Korea,

the leader is worshiped as a virtual god on earth,

and he is the defining element

and driving force of the entire country.

And the people are locked in a kind of social isolation.

There has been starvation, deprivation.

So I see North Korea as an example

of how an entire country can become a destructive cult.

noseypeach5 asks, Can a family be a cult?

Yes, there can be family cults,

typically being dominated by a father figure

who has absolute control over the family,

who literally never lets his children grow up.

They stay in the family, they work,

bring their paychecks to the family leader,

and the marriages and the dating

and everything is controlled

by that parent who leads the family cult.

A cult only requires at least one follower.

So you can have an abusive controlling relationship,

where the abusive partner is in the role of a cult leader.

For example, Tina Turner and Ike Turner.

Tina Turner was isolated.

She was cut off from friends, until she finally left.

@bug_hates_hugs asks,

Why do cults believe the end is near?

If I had a cult, I'd just be like,

'Let's all just have fun,

I don't know when the end will be.'

That's an interesting thought.

But if you're a cult leader,

what you're looking for is a leverage point.

So if you tell people that the end is near,

and the only safety they can be sure

of is within your group,

you now have a means to get them to cleave closer to you.

So doomsday becomes a coercive persuasion technique.

An example of a doomsday cult would be the Waco Davidians,

led by David Koresh.

Koresh said that the end was eminent,

that he would judge the world,

and that only those that were with him,

in what was at one time called Ranch Apocalypse,

would be safe.

When I did deprogrammings of Waco Davidians,

they were frantic at times to get into the compound

to be with Koresh so that they would be protected.

They made weapons illegally in the compound,

arming themselves to defend themselves

against what he said was Satan.

The compound was rated by the BATF,

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms,

and there was a shootout.

People died.

The FBI encircled the compound. There was a 51-day standoff.

David Koresh decided it was time for the end,

and the place was burned down.

All the members, dead.

@eastofthewood asks, How are cults different,

in any way, from religion?

First of all, religious organizations typically have

democratic governance, checks and balances,

transparency, and accountability.

You are not made to feel that you've turned

against God simply by leaving a particular church.

It has been said that religions began as cults.

And in some sense you can see that,

in the case of the Mormon Church or Jehovah's Witnesses

or Seventh-day Adventism.

It began with an absolute charismatic leader

that was the defining element

and driving force of the group.

If we look at Mormonism,

we see that first there was Joseph Smith,

then there was Brigham Young.

But over a period of time,

the group evolved beyond that point,

to governance of many people,

and the group moved closer and closer to the mainstream.

@msresii asked,

Do cult leaders know they are cult leaders?

A cult leader can be seen as very much like a conman,

except they run the same con

on the same people indefinitely.

Do they know that they're manipulating?

Yes, I think they do.

But they feel that anything they do is justified.

The ends justify the means,

and they determine what ends are just.

@mariasghost asks,

Which cults have a good online presence?

Might [beep] around and get indoctrinated.

All of the major groups have an online presence.

They have YouTube channels.

They have followers on Twitter/X.

They have Facebook pages.

They have search engine optimize themselves

so that they will insinuate themselves in searches.

People can become completely indoctrinated in a cult

without ever meeting the leader.

They can do this by watching the leader's YouTube videos

and communicating with people online.

One example of a well-known cult online would be

a group called the TikTok Cult.

They follow a minister by the name of Shinn,

who put together a church online,

and according to complaints,

exploited people who are dancers

in the entertainment industry

to create very popular clips for TikTok, to make money.

And they would actually live in a community,

in group housing, and be controlled by this group.

But everything would be based on

what they were doing, in large part, online.

@skinthefool says,

I still think about the scene in 'Midsommar.'

The Harga women surrounding and holding Dani

and wailing with her in empathy, sharing her pain.

So beautiful, yet so horrifying.

I've seen Midsommar,

and I would say that it's really not about empathy.

It's about quelling Dani's feelings.

The group wants to essentially anesthetize her

so that she no longer will be a problem.

So by surrounding her, they have encapsulated her,

and it's almost as if they're saying,

Dani, you no longer have your own individual feelings.

There is just the group.

I think the best film that you can watch

to see how cults really work is a 2011 film,

Martha Marcy May Marlene.

It directly mirrors what it would be like to be in a cult

and leave a cult, and how difficult the recovery might be.

@grgsvo asked, How do cult leaders get people

to believe they are god-in-the-flesh,

when I can't get my children

to wear shoes when they leave the house?

It's all about cutting people off

from any outside frame of reference

or accurate feedback about what's going on.

When was the last time that you were in a theater

and there was a standing ovation,

and you sat and did nothing?

Didn't the people around you cause you

to stand up and clap too?

Well, that is what goes on in cults,

only on a much more intense level.

I have met cult leaders face-to-face,

some of them quite charismatic, others really not at all.

But what they all share in common

is that they are malignant, narcissistic people.

I feel like I'm meeting the same person over and over again

because their personalities are so similar.

ChoiceCheck3900 asks,

Do cults recruit based on appearance?

I think I was recruited because, to be blunt,

I'm ugly as [beep],

and people probably think I'm easy to extort from.

Typically, what cults want are people that are healthy,

relatively young, that can work for the group.

They're not interested in anyone based on appearance

other than are you able to produce for the group.

@MxHedroom asked, Why do all cults get so weird

and crazy about sex?

Well, not necessarily all of them.

Some of them may demand celibacy.

Marshall Applewhite, Heaven's Gate,

the people were celibate,

even castrated to ensure that celibacy.

But sex is power.

And in many groups,

the leader will use sex to control people.

And much like a rapist,

he will dominate members of the group sexually.

Charlie Manson did that. David Koresh did that.

It wasn't about sex, it was about power and control.

@jeudikale asked, Is there a cult that isn't problematic?

My favorite example is Arcosanti.

This is an experimental city/community being built north

of Phoenix, Arizona.

And it was initially led by the architect Paulo Soleri,

who was the driving force and defining element

of what he called arcology,

a philosophy based on building cities

where there was no urban sprawl.

And I think that Paulo Soleri meant to be good.

I received no complaints about him over the years,

and when he died,

he left everything to a foundation

to continue to build Arcosanti,

which is known for its famous Cosanti bronze bells.

Arcosanti is really an example of what can be seen

as a benign cult,

a personality-driven group that does no harm.

@MatBurnz asks,

Can Trumpism as a whole be considered a cult?

Well, I don't think so. It's a political faction.

And I think that for us

to use the word cult in a derogatory sense,

just to denigrate some group,

is an abuse of using that word.

He could be seen as a very shrewd salesman,

who has honed a message that appeals

to a large group of people.

Those people already had those beliefs and concerns

that made them responsive to that message.

One time Donald Trump was on a speaking tour,

and he encouraged people to get vaccinated, regarding COVID,

and the crowd booed him.

And then he walked back what he said,

and the audience kind of changed.

I don't know cult leaders that get booed.

And I don't know cult leaders that walk their beliefs back

and morph in order to please their followers.

It's the other way around.

Qanon, I think, is a destructive cult,

but it's a really strange one,

in that the leader is anonymous.

We really don't know who does the Q drops.

QAnon believers, I think,

by the way they're embedded online,

are very much in line with cult followers.

@ZEBIEzebs asks, Is Scientology a cult? I don't get it.

In my opinion,

Scientology fits the profile of a destructive cult.

I think the brilliance of L. Ron Hubbard was

to create this machine filled with redundancies of control.

There's training,

and then there's supervision of that training.

Information gathered on people.

And it's very difficult for people

to navigate their way out, as some celebrities have,

like Leah Remini or Lisa Marie Presley.

One of the things that Scientologists believe is

that there are people called SPs, suppressive persons.

Those are people that are trying

to suppress your road to success.

If someone is an SP in your life,

you may be asked to disconnect from them.

And this is Scientology's way

of controlling social interaction,

by declaring people SPs, by also saying,

Well, this person is a potential trouble source, a PTS.

Hubbard really established a model

that would be copied by many people

that have been called cult leaders

to perpetuate their own control

over their respective groups.

@bestofluckesha asks, I really want to know

what makes America so unusually susceptible to cults.

Well, nothing really.

I mean, cults are a global phenomenon.

They're in Asia, they're in the Middle East,

they're in Europe.

But I think what makes the United States unique

is the protection that we afford groups

that claim to be a religion.

We in the United States have the First Amendment

to protect religion,

and groups called cults have used that protection

in a way that benefits them.

You get 501c3 tax-exempt status.

What groups understand is that if I set up shop in the US,

I can make money and have very little accountability.

It's been reported that L. Ron Hubbard once said,

If you really want to make money, start a religion.

At any rate, Scientology didn't start out

as a religion but became one.

@mankattan asked, What is the craziest cult

you've ever learned about, famous or not?

This guy. Marshall Applewhite.

His students were discipled by him to believe

that he was essentially the reincarnation

of an extraterrestrial being that would take his people

to a kingdom beyond this world.

And they were sequestered,

held within a mansion in southern California,

where he controlled their every move.

What they wore, their haircuts.

He himself castrated himself

and encouraged other members to do the same.

And a number of the male members were castrated.

Marshall Applewhite told his followers

that the end of the world was coming

and that they had to prepare for it.

But what really probably caused the end was the death

of his beloved Bonnie Nettles.

When she died, he felt that he had nothing left to live for.

Ultimately, they all died together at his orders;

there were 39 bodies found in shrouds in this house, dead.

@andreawaves asked, A friend has a loved one in a cult,

and we are at a loss for how to help this person,

and there aren't super clear steps.

Have you helped someone leave a cult? Do you have advice?

I've done over 500 interventions

to get people out of destructive cults.

First of all, in responding to someone who's involved,

don't be critical.

Don't have arguments with them.

Don't say, Oh, you're in a cult,

because the group may coach them to cut off communication

with you if you do that.

So instead, be a good listener.

And also, keep your lines of communication going.

Let them know that you care about them.

Now, an intervention may be the way you go eventually,

but initially it's important

to find out more about the group, the leader,

and what's actually going on.

@call_me_Deeee asked, So how does cult deprogramming work?

Can we get started now?

A deprogramming begins as a surprise.

Someone comes to visit with their family.

There's some type of get-together.

In the beginning, the person may be rather upset about that.

Why did you not tell me this was coming?

Well, the reason is because then you would share that

with other people in the group,

and they very likely would keep you from participating.

You're asking them to unplug

from the group during that period of time,

which means all electronic devices,

all access to the internet, no texting with other members.

There are four blocks of conversation

in a cult deprogramming intervention.

The first one is defining what is a destructive cult,

and looking historically back to, say,

terrible cult tragedies in which people died,

and then saying, What do all of these groups share

and have in common?

And how would that parallel the group that you are in?

Second, what is coercive persuasion?

What is thought reform?

And how do those steps parallel again

to what you're experiencing in the group

that you now belong?

And then number three, what has the group hidden from you?

Is there information that the group doesn't share readily

that you should know to make a more informed decision

about continuing in that group?

And so then I present research

that I've gathered about the group's history:

its finances, lawsuits for personal injuries,

criminal complaints, et cetera.

At the end of a cult intervention,

which could last three to four days,

the person who is the focus

of the intervention will make their choice:

to continue with the group,

not to continue with the group, to take a break.

That's up to them.

About 70% of the people I work with will decide

to take a break or leave the group completely.

@EkomsPark says,

Somewhere, in some random Airbnb,

some cult is about to do some weird [beep] today.

Welcome to the world online that cults often populate.

There is an example of a cult leader using an Airbnb

to create a cult compound.

Eligio Bishop had a group called Carbon Nation.

He had 35,000 followers on Twitter/X alone.

He also was on Facebook.

He would create compounds by booking Airbnbs online

and then reel people in.

These would be located in relatively isolated places,

in Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico.

Eventually, he would be prosecuted in the United States

for rape and unlawful imprisonment,

and he's now serving a life sentence

without parole in Georgia.

@606_hae asked, Now,

how did Mother God even accumulate followers?

Like, other cults seem at least somewhat convincing.

When Mother God, who I knew as Amy Carlson, died,

she had hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash

and probably over a million dollars in real estate holdings.

How did she do it? The internet.

She had followers online through social media.

She would stream online, which would garner attention.

And then she had a small group that was devoted to her,

that lived with her.

It was the inner circle that really was being abused,

not the people that were online.

They were, if you will,

the cash flow that provided her with money

in which she could buy property and finance her group.

How could they believe what Amy Carlson said?

Because they were isolated.

They were cut off from the outside world,

the immediate followers.

Amy Carlson, Mother God, said that she was,

in a previous life, Marilyn Monroe and other famous people.

She claimed to be God literally on earth,

and that's why her followers called her Mother God.

@vaporwavedad asked, When will we talk about

how astrology can sometimes be a gateway to either knowingly

or unknowingly joining a cult?

Some groups do use astrology.

For example, the Kabbalah Centre.

They will do astrological charts in an effort

to influence people and how they view the world

and what they do in the future.

And they will base that chart

on what they know about the individual,

which will make the person feel that, well,

it must be something cosmic,

because how did they know that?

But in reality,

they know your secrets through their process of recruitment,

indoctrination, and examination.

Astrology is an interesting art.

Read all of the zodiac signs,

what they say about Sagittarius, Capricorn,

and ask yourself, Does that apply to me?

You might conclude that they all apply to you.

The person writing the astrological chart

is writing cleverly,

generalizing and writing something

that would apply to anyone,

to convince people that it has validity.

But when cults use astrology,

they use it as a mechanism of control:

to persuade people that this is

how they should behave in the future,

and that this is their destiny.

Michy pooh wants to know, I'm sorry,

but how the [beep] are you falling for MLM schemes

and accidentally joining cults in 2024?

Like, what?

Well, michy pooh, people don't join cults.

They join movements/groups that they think are very good.

And MLMs are pitching themselves as a way

to become successful, to provide for your family.

An example of an MLM is Amway,

basically a scheme to recruit people in

who will buy product, pay money to the person above them,

and it keeps going on and on.

And what MLMs have in common with destructive cults,

though I don't consider them cults per se,

is that they rely on coercive persuasion

and identifiable influence techniques

to gain undue influence over participants

to take advantage of them.

In this case, to make money off of them.

The dream is the scheme.

It's not about the business,

it's about recruiting people

who recruit people who recruit people.

The people at the top are the ones that really make out.

@epcol asked, Do you think people who are susceptible

to being in a cult have different brain structure?

Or is it a lack of questioning attitude?

Gee, epcol, you're being really harsh.

In reality, it could be anyone.

What we are dealing with are predatory groups

who target people and pull them in

without their consent or their knowledge.

Because frequently, it's a bait-and-switch con,

where what you think you're getting into

is not what it's about at all.

Eric Hoffer wrote The True Believer,

and he said, basically, If you're happy,

you're not up for change, but if you're unhappy, you are.

When we're in distress, we overlook things.

We're looking for a way to get out.

I have deprogrammed five medical doctors.

One was a orthopedic surgeon, another an anesthesiologist.

They were highly educated,

very knowledgeable, intelligent people,

and yet they got caught in a destructive cult.

@Mile_by_Mile asked, Do cults have to end in violence?

No. Most cults don't end in violence.

In fact, it's only a very small minority of groups

that become violent and have a tragic end.

In most cases, the leader just keeps making money,

benefiting from low-cost labor,

donations from people in the group,

and exploiting the members.

Cults vary by degree in their destructiveness.

But sadly, the ones that we read about,

that we see in documentaries, are some of the worst,

and some of the most violent.

@alixg1 asked, Can you explain NXIVM in a tweet? Please.

I don't know about a tweet, but here we go.

NXIVM was a self-help company that sold courses,

retreats that would take a week, two weeks,

in which you were supposedly being trained

to become a more successful, aware person,

led by Keith Raniere, a former Amway distributor.

NXIVM devolved into a stable for Keith Raniere

to exploit women.

And he created a cult within the cult that he called DOS.

Women were branded, literally, with a cauterizing iron

to denote that they were sex slaves.

Raniere would go to trial,

and now he's serving what amounts

to a life sentence in prison.

I would meet him in court-ordered mediation hearings,

and I can tell you that he was a strange little man.

He looked like a garden dwarf. Quite frankly, he stank.

I don't know if he ever took a shower

or how often he took a shower.

Because when he walked into the courtroom, he had an aura.

But it wasn't anything charismatic.

It was just a bad aroma.

What Raniere possessed was a savant-like understanding

of people's weaknesses,

and how to leverage them for control.

And through his training programs, people would confess.

They would divulge everything about themselves.

But when cults solicit confession,

typically what happens is they learn all your secrets,

which they then can use as leverage

to essentially force you to comply with whatever they want.

And Raniere was an expert at employing confession

to control his flock, which at one point was thousands

and thousands of people.

@missalliejean asked, Just took Bikram yoga

for the first time and maybe I joined a cult?

This man, Choudhury, founded Bikram yoga.

This is an example of an organization

that is not about religion.

It's about exercise.

But because it was controlled completely by Choudhury,

and because Choudhury used coercive persuasion techniques

to exploit women in the group that he sexually abused,

it became known as a cult.

@zsamm asked,

So I'm watching 'Escaping the Twin Flames Universe.'

I'm fascinated by how easy it is

to take advantage of people.

Does loneliness make people as vulnerable as poverty?

Well, the Twin Flames Universe is a group led by a couple,

and they say that they can find

your true spiritual counterpart.

They call that your Twin Flame.

According to complaints from families,

they manipulate and exploit the people that become involved.

In some cases,

members have actually changed their sex,

thinking that it's the only way

to find their true spiritual mate.

It's been devastating to families, and it's been coercive.

@3FormsRpowrHows asks, Who are the Moonies?

The Moonies, as they have been called,

are the followers of Reverend Sun Myung Moon,

who died not long ago in his 90s.

And he created a group called the Unification Church,

which was nicknamed the Moonies,

to reflect how he was its defining element

and driving force.

He claimed to be the Messiah

and that he alone could bring the world to peace.

Reverend Moon became a very wealthy man.

At one point, Reverend Moon had a media empire

that included The Washington Times'

United Press International.

He controlled 1/3 of the American fishing fleet,

responsible for about 50% of the wholesale sushi market

in large cities like Chicago and New York.

The labor for those businesses was provided

by dedicated members/followers of the Unification Church.

They would even submit in their weddings to Reverend Moon.

This is a picture of a mass wedding

in which people that may not have even met each other

are married by Reverend Moon.

Here is a picture of Reverend Moon with his wife,

who now is the titular head of the Unification Church,

which is managed by his children.

@BenPo234 asked, Can people born into

or raised in cults be deprogrammed?

It's gotta be so much harder, right?

This can be done, but it's a difficult process.

Children are dependent upon their parents

to protect them and keep them safe.

And when parents are themselves overwhelmed

and controlled by a cult,

who is there to protect these children?

And there have been many cults

that have horribly abused children.

There is a man, Paul Mackenzie,

going through a criminal trial in Kenya.

He is responsible for over 400 deaths.

Almost 200 were children.

He told his followers in the Good News International Church

the end was near and that they needed to pray and fast.

And they fasted to death.

Over 200 children were led to their deaths

by this man, Jim Jones, in 1978.

He ordered mass suicide by poisoning,

and almost 1,000 people died.

There are groups that believe

that faith healing is the only answer to illness,

and they prohibit their members

from taking their children to a doctor.

As we're talking about this,

there are millions of people involved in destructive cults.

And many of these people have children, they have families,

and those children are subject to the whims of cult leaders.

@PoliticalAnt asks, Is involuntary deprogramming legal?

It's only legal if it's a minor child,

under the direct supervision

of a custodial parent or guardian.

There have been involuntary deprogrammings with adults.

I myself participated in facilitating such interventions.

However, the last one I did was in 1990.

In involuntary deprogramming with adults,

in some extreme cases, people were picked up

while they were fundraising or outside of the group,

and then they'd be brought to a safe house,

where the deprogramming would commence.

It can be very daunting to many families,

who feel they have no other means

of helping someone they love.

But the courts have made it clear that this type

of deprogramming cannot be done.

So those are all the questions for today.

If you're concerned about a group, be careful.

Don't just believe what you're being told.

And if you're a family

that is concerned about someone in a cult,

keep your communication open.

Make sure that they know you're there for them

and that you love them.

Don't think that it can't happen to you.

Use your critical thinking and your ability to research

and protect yourself.

Thanks for watching Cult Support.

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