There are many different types of destructive cults, and the diversity of cult beliefs and practices sometimes makes it hard for family members and friends to decide whether their loved one is in trouble or not. Although there are still groups whose followers cut their hair short and wear identical clothing, like the member of Heaven’s Gate, this is by no mean the case with most modern-day cults group. Today, for example, many cults require their members to wear business suits so that they blend in with their environment. All cult members may not look alike, but I have found that destructive cults follow specific behavior patterns that set them apart from other groups. By learning to identify the these patterns you will be better qualified to determine if someone you care about is actually involved with a cult. A group should not be considered a “cult” merely because of its unorthodox belief or practices. Instead, destructive cults are distinguished by their use of deception and mind control techniques to determine a person’s free will and make him dependent on the group’s leader. Authoritarian Leadership In essence a destructive cult is an authoritarian group that is headed by a
person or group of people that has near-complete control. Charismatic cult leaders often make extreme claims of divine or “otherworldly” power to exercise influence over their members. Many legitimate religions have had powerful figures who have inspired enormous dedication in people. Being a powerful leader is not inherently wrong , though it carries a high potential for abuse. A group becomes destructive when its leader actively uses such power to deceive members and to rob them of their individuality and free will. For example, I was told to surrender my free will (viewed as Satanic) to God’s representative, Moon, and his subleaders. Marshall Applewhite told followers that an alien entity was speaking through him, and used his message to justify his absolute control over their lives. Deception Destructive cults also use deception to recruit new members. When I was first approached by Moonie recruiters, they told me they were part f the “One World Crusade,” which I later learned was one of many front groups for the Unification Church . They claimed to be students who were involved with a small community of young people struggling to overcome cultural barriers. It was not until much later that I found what its members really believed, and what would be expected of me. What makes this all so insidious is that members often speak and act with the greatest sincerity because they have been subjected to the same mind control techniques that they used to recruit others. 
Destructive Mind Control Finally, destructive cults use mind control techniques to keep members dependent and obedient. You will learn the specific criteria that define mind control in later but, generally, speaking, cult mind control can be understood as a system of influence that is designed to disrupt a person’s authentic identity and replace it with a new identity. By immersing people in a tightly controlled, high pressure social environment, destructive cults gain control of their members’ behavior, thoughts, emotions and access to information. They take over their mind.
A cult, particularly a destructive one, is almost any kind of organization whose followers have been deceptively and unethically recruited and retained. They use manipulative techniques, which are imposed without the informed consent of the recruit and are designed to alter personality and behavior. These groups are only concerned about advancing the mission or business of the group, and not the well being of the individual members. They pose great dangers not only against the society among whom they live but also against their own followers. Our modern history contains records of cults’ threats and human tragedies that have shaken the world. Talking on the tragic end the followers of a destructive cult might be led to Margaret Thaler Singer has said: Twice in less than fifteen years we have been shown the deadly ends to which cult followers can be led. In 1978, aerial photos of 912 brightly clad followers of Jim Jones, dead by cyanidelaced drinks and gunshots in a steamy Guyanese jungle, were shown in magazines and on television, reappearing with each subsequent anniversary of the end of Jonestown. And in early 1993, television news programs showed the Koresh cult’s shoot-out, then several weeks later its flaming end on the Texas plains. 1 They are only an example of many countless instances. As reported recently, Texas police raided a gated compound outside the tiny Texas cattle town of Eldorado built and run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Reportedly, more than 400 children and teens had been rescued and taken into temporary state custody while the authorities continued investigating allegations that girls at the compound were being sexually abused by men. The number of active cults only in the US is estimated to range from 3,000 to 5,000. It is hard to get a precise number as cults change their names, splinter off into other groups, or shut down in one area only to open back up in another. Unfortunately, there are approximately 180,000 new cult recruits every year and the cults are developing more sophisticated techniques to form and establish new aliases. They originally start under religious and political covers and it is only after getting totally involved in the cults that the followers come to recognize the real intention of the cults. One way to avoid being entrapped by the cults is to learn to recognize common cult-recruitment tactics and situations. The people who have suffered tensions or are in search of Utopia are most vulnerable to be recruited by the cults. In general, cults follow nearly the same tactics for deception and misrepresentation to recruit, retain and achieve cult-related ends. Today, it is really a hard task to distinguish a cult from another legal group but in the past decades there have been attempts to help people in cult prevention. There are identical factors shared by majority of cults which can be of great help to recognize a cult. Referring to important characteristics of a cult Robert Jay Lifton observes: First, all cults have a charismatic leader, who himself or her- self increasingly becomes the object of worship, and in many cases, the dispenser of immortality. Spiritual ideas of a general kind give way to this deification of the leader. Second, in cults there occurs a series of psychological processes that can be associated with what has been called”coercive persuasion”or”thought reform,”as described in some detail in this book. And third, there is a pattern of manipulation and exploitation from above (by leaders and ruling coteries) and idealism from below (on the part of supplicants and recruits). 2 Thus, the characteristics to mark a cult are three: 1. Charismatic and self-appointed leader who claims divinity or special knowledge and demands his followers unquestioning and total loyalty and obedience. 2. An organized structure of totalitarian hegemony with the leader at the top
3. Planned thought reform and brainwashing techniques to induce a state of high suggestibility and dependency on the group and self-alienation.
To determine how dangerous a cult might be, Bonewits draws a Cult Danger Evaluation Frame which can be a good help to determine just how dangerous a cult or group might be in comparison with other groups. The factors indicated by Bonewits include:
1. INTERNAL CONTROL 2. WISDOM CLAIMED by leader(s3. WISDOM CREDITED to leader(s) by members 4. DOGMA 5. RECRUITING6. FRONT GROUPS 7. WEALTH 8. POLITICAL POWER 9. SEXUAL MANIPULATION 10. CENSORSHIP11. DROPOUT CONTROL 12. VIOLENCE13. PARANOIA 14. GRIMNESS 15. SURRENDER OF WILL16. HYPOCRISY 3
It seems that Bonewits has developed a good understanding of cults’ menace in the modern world which is shared with other researchers. A look at Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s criteria for a destructive cult is a precise approbation:
1. Authoritarian pyramid structure with authority at the top
2. Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (Messianic meaning they either say they are God or that they alone can interpret the scriptures the way God intended.
3. Deception in recruitment and/or fund raising
4. Isolation from society — not necessarily physical isolation, but this can be psychological isolation.
5. Use of mind control (Mileu Control, Mystical Manipulation, Demand for Purity, Confession, Sacred Science, Loading the Language, Doctrine Over Person, Dispensing of Existence) 4
Considering signs that distinguish a destructive cult, a precise evaluation of MKO well crystallizes it as one of the most destructive and visible examples of a cult that jeopardizes the security and thought well-being of the people among whom it takes refuge under the cover of a pro-democratic, political group. Far beyond being recognized as an alternative to Iranian regime as MKO claims, it is an alternative to a destructive cult sharing their characteristics. For sure, no sensible people consent to a dangerous cult to steer the country.
References: 1- Thaler Singer, Margaret; Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, p. 3.
2- Ibid, XII.
3- www.qed.net/bonewits/ABCDEF.HTML
4- www.refocus.org Research Bureau, Mojahedin.ws, April 9, 2008
Escape from a guerrilla-cult organisation blocked
In Europe, the Iranian Mojahedin presents itself as a democratic alternative to 
the mullahs in Tehran. But the camp, which the organization established in Saddam’s Iraq, is beset by reports of dissidents escaping the gulag. The Iraqi government wants to get rid of the former fighters, but find this avenue blocked. IRO. Baghdad, in early March Hoshiar Esmail says the biggest mistake of his life was to leave his safe exile in Switzerland and to return to the Mojahedin-e Khalgh (Volksmujahedin). In 1998, he went to Iraq, where the armed Iranian opposition group, equipped with weapons and money from the former Iraqi regime, led the struggle against the mullahs’ regime. But since then the political situation in Iraq has changed fundamentally. The Shiite and Kurdish-dominated government is pursuing a course of rapprochement with the former enemy Iran, which culminated in the recent visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian opposition members are regarded as terrorists who threaten Baghdad. Locked borders
Hoshiar separated from those [loyalists] interned in the Mojahedin-e Khalq camp. But the Iraqis make no difference between those who are loyal to the organization, and those who have separated. Equipped with Iraqi travel documents, he wanted to leave Iraq as soon as possible. In mid-December [2007], together with two other former Mojahedin-e Khalq fighters he made his way to the Turkish border. The journey, and with it the hope of a new beginning floundered at a checkpoint of the Kurdish state in northern Iraq. The Kurdish security forces monitor its border with the rest of Iraq, as if it were a state border. They took the three Iranians, and they were stuck in prison for nearly three weeks. Finally, the three were left stranded in Erbil. Hoshiar found temporary shelter in an inconspicuous building in a secluded quarter in Erbil. On the floor of his bare room is a carpet, in the corner a mattress, the curtains are also drawn in the bright daylight to fend off the curious glances of outsiders. Hoshiar crouches next to the stove. In the year 1979 – Iran had just won the Islamic revolution – he joined the Mojahedin-e Khalq. Fighting alongside the Ayatollah Khomeini against the Shah’s regime, and inspired by the revolutionary zeal of the time, these young Iranians believed in the Islamism and Marxism … doctrine of salvation that Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the group, preached. But early on in the revolution dissident voices were stifled as mercilessly as before under the Shah by the regime which came to power. The Mojahedin-e Khalq was again pushed back, thousands of its members were jailed or executed. Aged 17 years, Hoshiar landed in the Evin prison in Tehran, was later freed and was arrested again. After his release in 1984, he fled to Pakistan, from where he found his path led to Switzerland, which granted him political asylum. "The years in Switzerland were the best of my life," says Hoshiar in retrospect. But like so many exiles he felt torn between the comfort of his country and loyalty to the cause. And the propagandists of the beleaguered Mojahedin-e Khalq told him: If he really wants to change the political situation in Iran, he should go to Iraq. In the Mojahedin-e Khalq gulag
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime’s opponents struck a diabolical pact with Saddam Hussein, who supported it [Mojahedin] generously with weapons and money. In five bases the group planned and rehearsed the storming of Tehran. In Europe Massoud Rajavi’s charismatic wife Maryam acted the part of Jeanne d’Arc of Islam. In 1998, Hoshiar… went to Iraq where he was placed in Camp Ashraf in Baquba, the largest camp of the Mojahedin-e Khalq. Soon, he realized that their talk of an Islamic state with a democratic face was just hollow rhetoric.
The group was acting as a sect, Hoshiar reported. "All we got to hear and see was Rajavi this, Rajavi that," he recalls. But that was not enough. Couples were separated and … in rituals of self-criticism the fighters had to reveal intimate details about themselves before the camp leadership. In this way every individual has been made compliant. Whoever has not complied has felt humiliation. "One veteran fighter wanted to get out. He was with 400 of us in a locked room. We had to swear at and insult him,” Hoshiar reported. Another former fighter who does not want to be named, said: "It was like a Stalinist gulag." Leaving was out of the question. In the autumn of 2002 after the American attack on Iraq Hoshiar finally said he wanted to separate from the Mojahedin. "They promised me that I would go to Europe," he says, "but instead they threw me in a secret prison in the camp." He spent eleven months in solitary confinement… Twice the now 44-year-old tried to take his own life.
The arrest has left serious effects since he now suffers from chronic headaches and tinnitus. In June 2004, Hoshiar, together with several hundred fighters, had left [the group]… Rather than leave Iraq he was admitted again into a camp, this time run by the Americans. The Iraqi government says the Mojahedin-e Khalq are mercenaries of Saddam’s regime and accused it, along with Saddam’s elite units of suppressing the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in 1991. The Iraqis say they are terrorists, and Baghdad wants them sent back to Iran. But the leadership ranks of the Mojahedin-e Khalq handed their weapons to the Americans and offered them their services. [In 2003] The Americans interned the remaining Mojahedin-e Khalq in Camp Ashraf and put them under their protection.
Endless Odyssey?
Two years later, about 200 ex-fighters applied to become UN Refugees (UNHCR). Walpurga Engelbrecht of the UNHCR in Baghdad said, with the recognition of political persecution the ex-fighters were given refugee status. But no country was prepared to take the refugees. In European diplomatic circles in Baghdad, it is assumed that the Americans’ Camp Ashraf [TIPF and FOB Grizzly] will soon close and that they want to get rid of the separated Mojahedin-e Khalq fighters as quickly as possible. Now Hoshiar and several dozen former Mojahedin-e Khalq have travel documents. Some 50 of them are stranded in Kurdistan. One of them, Mohammed Rostam, has twice tried to get to Turkey but each time he was re-arrested and deported to Iraq where the Kurds also briefly put him into jail. His attempt to get to Baghdad also ended in prison. The security chief of Erbil, Ismet Ergushi, confirmed the arrests and gave assurance that the Government is trying to achieve a lasting solution.
Like many of their former comrades, Mohammed and Hoshiar fear not only the Kurdish authorities, but also the long arm Tehran… "We live in constant fear," says Hoshiar. While Maryam Rajavi poses in Europe as a democratic alternative to the present regime in Tehran, Hoshiar is looking for a new hiding place. The end of his temporary odyssey is not yet in sight.
NZZ online March 31, 2008 (Translated by Iran-Interlink)
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/international /ehemalige_iranische_volksmujahedin_im_irak_ohne_ausweg_1.694952.html
Cults are complex phenomenon in the modern world because of their dubious positions towards the media and the sophisticated communication technology. They, based on their natural potentiality, misuse the media and modern means 
for censure, persuasion, distortion, brainwashing and mind-control activities against their insiders and sympathizers. Cults show diverse and double reactions in their dealing with the media that draw substantial public attention to accomplish a variety of objectives. Besides, the media in any form play a key role in the formation of public opinion and thought, life-style, and even the depiction of a nation’s destiny. For sure so important, versatile phenomena of the modernity never escape the attention of the cults. In the same way that the media can give warning against the threat and the evil nature of the cults, they can also be at their service, depending on the amount of revenue and how influentially they can master them, to instil noxious ideas into a society. However, since the media can hardly be an exclusive medium for the cults and in many occasions it is too expensive a means for propagation with the least expected outcome, and sometimes inflicts irreparable damages, the cults prefer not to invest much trust in the media. The case is sometimes different with the political cults. If we consider deliberate isolation tactic as one of the cults’ most common mechanisms of control and enforced dependency, then the social persuasion is the identical definition of the mechanism. The recruits are encouraged to disrupt their common lifestyle and leave whatever they are attached to behind to adapt themselves to the cult’s milieu in isolation. In this process, what is considered to be a threat in neutralizing the effects of the social persuasion will be the media which the cults favour to avoid. That is mostly because cults’ prompt of black-and-white thinking fails to be functional and productive in the media which has to be repelled. However, cults are not so powerful as the governments that can have total control over the media for social persuasion and people’s mind-control if they will. Quoting Orwell reasoning the effectiveness of the media coming under the complete control of the governments, Singer states: Orwell reasoned that if a government could control all media and interpersonal communication while simultaneously forcing citizens to speak in a politically controlled jargon, it could blunt independent thinking. If thought could be controlled, then rebellious actions against a regime could be pre- vented. 1 Milieu control, that is total control of members’ communication in the cults, is a mechanism to keep members from communicating anything other than what the cults approve and often involves discouraging members from contacting relatives or friends outside the cult and from reading, watching and listening to anything unapproved by the cult or the organization. Consequently, the effectiveness of the media in illuminating facts about the cults and active organizations is actually neutralized and the insiders are told not to believe and trust in anything they see or hear reported by the media that has to be accounted as an agent in the enemy’s front. In this way, the cults’ leaders blindfold members about historical facts: Milieu control also often involves discouraging members from contacting relatives or friends outside the group and from reading anything not approved by the organization. They are sometimes told not to believe anything they see or hear reported by the media. One left-wing political cult, for example, maintains that the Berlin Wall is still standing and that the "bourgeois capitalist" press war people to think otherwise in order to discredit communism. 2 As a result, cults’ hostile position against the media decreases the influence of the media on the members to a zero degree. Furthermore, cults exploit a variety of approaches and legal levers in the war against the media. Sometimes they use violent tactics such as threatening, intimidation and harassment to frighten away the critics, reporters, journalists and authors and to compel them cease anti-cult productions and programs: A metropolitan newspaper’s desk editor was harassed after he ran a piece critical of a local cult. He and his family had to move out of their home after receiving seventy-two hours of continuous phone calls from cult members. 3 As mentioned earlier, if possible, cults will set up complex networks of public relations and radio-TV stations to make a direct channel of communication and contact with the sympathizers rather than letting them refer to public media for information. Such a biased medium works as sufficient to hold the followers hooked onto the cult. As Singer explains: Cults have found many ways to restrict and control public information about them. Some groups have brochures, handouts for the press, and written overviews and endorsements of the group, often prepared by sophisticated public relations firms. In essence, these materials imply that "you need go no further. Here is who we are. Here is all you need to know to understand us perfectly. Take this material and use it. Everything is fine." The implication is that the material is objectively represented and relatively comprehensive. 4 As a leftist cult, Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has adopted various tactics to muzzle and beat the media. It will be discussed in the following article. References: 1. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, introduction. 2. Ibid, p. 70. 3. Ibid, p. 224. 4. Ibid, p. 226.
The main goal of producing a new identity in cults is to make insiders dependant on the cult and to be obedient. The mechanisms the cults exploit to achieve the goal are interrelated but each can be discussed separately since they are all prerequisites for insiders’ persuasion and control and the final transformation of the recruits into real cultists. It will not be wrong to say that whatever the cults do is to cut the members off from the outside world to produce a new identity and belief totally different from what the members previously held as right and dear. The process finished, the insiders will adopt a new and reborn personality as Singer states: 
As part of the intense influence and change process in many cults, people take on a new social identity, which may or may not be obvious to an outsider. When groups refer to this new identity, they speak of members who are transformed, reborn, enlightened, empowered, rebirthed, or cleared. The group’ approved behavior is reinforced and reinterpreted as demonstrating the emergence of "the new person." Members are expected to display this new identity. 1 The new personality totally split from the outside world is manipulated for a variety of group tasks based on the objectives of the group and cult that consider the outsiders as the enemies who have to be confronted: The conflicts a mass movement seek and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium. 2 As Hoffer asserts, a cultist personality is formed to be submissive to the inner-cultic relations that have priority to outwardly demonstrated ambitions and goals. The members undergoing overall identity change easily consent to any means of changing behaviour and conduct. Thus, cults can successfully accomplish their goal of binding new members to the group. Considering the stages people will go through as their attitudes are changed by the group environment and the thought reform processes, Singer points to psychologist Edgar Schein’s second stages of three: During this second stage, you sense that the solutions offered by the group provide a path to follow. You feel that anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt can be reduced by adopting the concepts put forth by the group or leader. Additionally, you observe the behavior of the longer, term members, and you begin to emulate their ways. As social psychology experiments and observations have found for decades, once a person makes an open commitment before others to an idea, his or her subsequent behavior generally supports and reinforces the stated commitment. That is, if you say in front of others that you are making a commitment to be "pure," then you will feel pressured to follow what others define as the path of purity. 3 There are also the eight psychological themes that psychiatrist Robert Lifton has identified as central to totalistic environments and cults invoke these themes for the purpose of promoting behavioral and attitudinal changes in the members. The third theme, demand for purity, depicts two opposite world of black and white; the cult being an absolutely white and clean world versus the black and evil world of outside. Of course, the members with a new personality have no other choice but to think and act according to cult’s ideology and drawn strategy: An us-versus-them orientation is promoted by the all-or-nothing belief system of the group: we are right; they (outsiders, nonmembers) are wrong, evil, unenlightened, and so forth. Each idea or act is good or bad, pure or evil. Recruits gradually take in, or internalize, the critical, shaming essence of the cult environment, which builds up lots of guilt and shame. Most groups put forth that there is only one way to think, respond, or act in any given situation. There is no in between, and members are expected to judge themselves and others by this all-or-nothing standard. 4 The process of producing identity within MKO follows the same mechanism in the cults and its orientation began with the start of the internal ideological revolution. All the members undergoing the revolution process admitted their identity change, that there does exist a long distance between their organizational and personal identities. It was instilled into them that their identity would be prompted based on the extent of adherence to the ideological system of the group and denial of any personal identity. In a text written by a member of MKO in self-denial we read: Personality, egocentrism, self-reliance and individualism are all souvenirs of the bourgeoisie’s worthless humanism that distanced me from the organization as far as its degree of its impact on me. It was like a chaff that barred me to drink the pure, life-giving instructions of the organization and was leaving me alone in a desolate waste-land with no way out. I was enslaved by dominant ambiguities within me. When I failed to overcome the ongoing struggle inside me, I was even more vulnerable to the outside misfortunes and could not even face them. 5 The member’s confession well depicts his identity destabilization and what psychologists call an identity crisis. He looks back at his own world and values to find out that he has been wrong in the past. This process makes him uncertain about what is right, what to do, and which choices to make and of course, as he admits, only the cult-like instructions of the organization can lead him to what is inspired to be the right path. Consequently, he takes on a new organizational identity which he considers a change for the better. In the process, he, as the member of a cult, detaches from his most dear ideas and attachments which he discovers to have been nothing beyond a barren waste-land for the identity reborn, a utopia in the horizon he fails to dismiss easily. Masoud Banisadr, another separated member of MKO, in his memoir relates of the time when sat tearing whatever attached him to the past under the commands of the organization: This time I attacked my old photographs from my own childhood till marriage and up to then, my parents photographs as I wanted to deny all of them, my father who was perhaps responsible for my bourgeois tendencies and my mother who was responsible of my own ‘mild’ and ‘gentle’ behaviour known as liberal ones. Anna seeing me taking all those photographs and albums, with anger, was quietly crying, then when I attacked our marriage Album she start crying louder, and asked me to stop it. She said those are not just yours . . . but I was not listening to her and took everything and put them in a rubbish bag. 6 Quoting Lifton’s forth theme, through a cult’s instructions, members are told whatever connects them to their former lives is wrong and has to be avoided, a fact well affirmed by MKO’s ex-members: Through the confession process and by instruction in the group’s teachings, members learn that everything about their former lives, including friends, family, and nonmembers, is wrong and to be avoided. Outsiders will put you at risk of not attaining the purported goal: they will lessen your psychological awareness, hinder the group’s political advancement, obstruct your path toward ultimate knowledge, or allow you to become stuck in your past life and incorrect thinking. 7 That is why MKO refer to members’ solubility in the organizational identity as a “reborn” or “identity salvation”. The organization, being transformed into a cult, pursues the same cult mechanism of altering the members’ personal identity to produce a new identity. References: 1. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 78. 2. Eric Hoffer; The true believer, Harper &. Row, Publishers, New York, 1966, p. 112. 3. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 76. 4. Ibid, 71. 5. Mojahed, no. 252; Abdol-ali Maasoumi’s letter to the ideological revolution. 6. Masoud Banisadr; Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel. 7. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 72.
Researchers and the scientists of humanities have identified similar features in all contemporary cults one of which is application of mental and psychological control techniques mainly aimed at persuading cult members, and making them more and more obedient and passive. Considering the significance of the matter, finding out the nature and extent of members’ obedience in cults is one
of the major issues in internal cultist relations. The reasons why a person submits to be subjected to mental, physical , psychological, and financial misuse to the extent that he/she gives up job, family, and the individual freedom are very important issues for those interested in investigating cultist mechanisms and levers. In simple words, those outside cults, out of curiosity, strive for public awareness and preventing people’s deviation as well as discovering how in an age of scientific development and communication there people who easily fall in the cults’ trap and are are hoodwinked by their tricks. In order to understand such an issue we must look at the social and psychological techniques used by cults and cultic groups. This process of planned, convert coordinated influence-popularly called brainwashing or mind control or, more technically, thought reform-is the means by which the cult leader subjugates the followers.
The fact is that at first such mechanisms are raw materials based on psychological theories and assumptions and are to be put into action. Our discussion is around the brief study of such mechanisms by which people undergo full obedience and control and also comparing the programs exercised in cults like that of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) initially blacklisted as a terrorist organization. Mojahedin stand opposed to the allegations of being a cultist group abusing sophisticated scientific procedures to expand its hegemonic domination over the members. However, such a position taken by them does not affect theoretical and academic challenges put against them. What is of importance is the extent to which their relations and techniques are adaptable to that of other cults. First we’d better develop an understanding of through what mechanisms cults manage to survive.
Cults aim at creating drastic mental and psychological changes in all aspects of members’ life. They insist on saying that cultist values are significantly above those admired in the society and the first step to enter a cult is cutting all those values repelled by the cult. That is the prerequisite to prepare members to easily consent to cultist teachings that implant a completely different life-style. As Margaret Singer explains:
Cults tend to require members to undergo a major disruption or change in lifestyle. Many cults put great pressure on new members to leave their families, mends, and jobs to become immersed in the group’s major purpose. This isolation tactic is one of the cults’ most common mechanisms of control and enforced dependency. (1)
For the techniques to be accomplished in internal relation of Mojahedin, three stages has to be met; cleansing the mind of any non-organizational mental drifts, taking the individual mental, behavioral, and psychological functions under the control, and finally impose it on the individuals to be in a constant conflict of facing permanent contradiction between his/her personal values and the organization’s ideal world. The finally process results in full metamorphosis of members and molded as desired by the cult. They are under a never-ceasing watch to be found with the flaws they had hardly noticed in themselves for which they will be reproached in the presence of other members whom will have no escape from the strict criticism. They all try to adapt themselves to the new conditions to find a new identity and gain organizational legitimacy. Such procedures opted for as the mechanism of overcoming non-revolutionary features result in a total dependence of the individuals to cult. The main theme of all cults is mind control and gradual self-alteration, a factor that is explicitly observable in internal relations of Mojahedin under different pretexts as organizational discipline. Cults are known to dictate what members have to wear and eat and when and where they work, sleep, and bathe as well as what they should believe in, think, and say and even dream. Although such factors comprise the primary cultist instructions, they may set the ground for further destructive direction.
Most former MKO members as well as Mojahedin themselves acknowledge the implementation of these mind-control techniques. The main difference between Mojahedin and other cults is that the techniques are phased that are vehemently glorified and celebrated as unmatched turning points. Mojahedin’s internal ideological revolution is the best example. It is most likely that Mojahedin, because of feeling close strategic and ideological affinities, have been influenced by Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. However, according to Singer, Mao resorted to thought-reform programs under the influence of cultist relations:
Then in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the world witnessed personnel at Chinese revolutionary universities implement a thought-reform program that changed the beliefs and behaviors of the citizens of the largest nation in the world. This program, which Mao Tse-tung wrote about as early as the 1920s, was put into place when the Communist regime took power in China on October 1, 1949. Chairman Mao had long planned how to change people’s political selves-to achieve "ideological remolding," as he called it-through the use of a coordinated program of psychological, social, and political coercion. As a result, millions of Chinese citizens were induced to espouse new philosophies and exhibit new conduct (2).
Mao’s "Red Book" refers openly to the significance of such procedures for achieving what he calls revolution. Mehdi Abrishamchi defines it as adaptation and mental and conceptual balance. the mechanisms aim at reforming the basic values of a person distancing him from individual identity, persuasion and also absolute submission to organizational commands. In this regard, Eric Hofer writes:
To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, van, or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a German, a Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a member of a certain tribe or family, He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die. (3)
Mojahedin identify the individual identity to sealed boxes and believe that the main theme of the ideological revolution is to unlock these boxes:
To unlock the boxes (minds of members) is the main theme and the first stage of ideological revolution. (4)
By opening these boxes the first step is taken to change members’ attitudes and standpoints to adapt them to organizationally adopted values and principles that are in contradiction with the outside world.
References:
1. Singer, M. Cults in our midst. Coordinated programs of persuasion.
2. ibid.
3. Hofer, E. The True believer.
4. Niyabati, B; A different look at the internal ideological revolution within MKO, p.36
Research Bureau-Mojahedin.ws-February 22, 2008
Researchers and the scientists of humanities have identified similar features in all contemporary cults one of which is application of mental and psychological control techniques mainly aimed at persuading cult members, and making them
more and more obedient and passive. Considering the significance of the matter, finding out the nature and extent of members’ obedience in cults is one of the major issues in internal cultist relations. The reasons why a person submits to be subjected to mental, physical , psychological, and financial misuse to the extent that he/she gives up job, family, and the individual freedom are very important issues for those interested in investigating cultist mechanisms and levers. In simple words, those outside cults, out of curiosity, strive for public awareness and preventing people’s deviation as well as discovering how in an age of scientific development and communication there people who easily fall in the cults’ trap and are are hoodwinked by their tricks. In order to understand such an issue we must look at the social and psychological techniques used by cults and cultic groups. This process of planned, convert coordinated influence-popularly called brainwashing or mind control or, more technically, thought reform-is the means by which the cult leader subjugates the followers.
The fact is that at first such mechanisms are raw materials based on psychological theories and assumptions and are to be put into action. Our discussion is around the brief study of such mechanisms by which people undergo full obedience and control and also comparing the programs exercised in cults like that of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) initially blacklisted as a terrorist organization. Mojahedin stand opposed to the allegations of being a cultist group abusing sophisticated scientific procedures to expand its hegemonic domination over the members. However, such a position taken by them does not affect theoretical and academic challenges put against them. What is of importance is the extent to which their relations and techniques are adaptable to that of other cults. First we’d better develop an understanding of through what mechanisms cults manage to survive.
Cults aim at creating drastic mental and psychological changes in all aspects of members’ life. They insist on saying that cultist values are significantly above those admired in the society and the first step to enter a cult is cutting all those values repelled by the cult. That is the prerequisite to prepare members to easily consent to cultist teachings that implant a completely different life-style. As Margaret Singer explains:
Cults tend to require members to undergo a major disruption or change in lifestyle. Many cults put great pressure on new members to leave their families, mends, and jobs to become immersed in the group’s major purpose. This isolation tactic is one of the cults’ most common mechanisms of control and enforced dependency. (1)
For the techniques to be accomplished in internal relation of Mojahedin, three stages has to be met; cleansing the mind of any non-organizational mental drifts, taking the individual mental, behavioral, and psychological functions under the control, and finally impose it on the individuals to be in a constant conflict of facing permanent contradiction between his/her personal values and the organization’s ideal world. The finally process results in full metamorphosis of members and molded as desired by the cult. They are under a never-ceasing watch to be found with the flaws they had hardly noticed in themselves for which they will be reproached in the presence of other members whom will have no escape from the strict criticism. They all try to adapt themselves to the new conditions to find a new identity and gain organizational legitimacy. Such procedures opted for as the mechanism of overcoming non-revolutionary features result in a total dependence of the individuals to cult. The main theme of all cults is mind control and gradual self-alteration, a factor that is explicitly observable in internal relations of Mojahedin under different pretexts as organizational discipline. Cults are known to dictate what members have to wear and eat and when and where they work, sleep, and bathe as well as what they should believe in, think, and say and even dream. Although such factors comprise the primary cultist instructions, they may set the ground for further destructive direction.
Most former MKO members as well as Mojahedin themselves acknowledge the implementation of these mind-control techniques. The main difference between Mojahedin and other cults is that the techniques are phased that are vehemently glorified and celebrated as unmatched turning points. Mojahedin’s internal ideological revolution is the best example. It is most likely that Mojahedin, because of feeling close strategic and ideological affinities, have been influenced by Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China. However, according to Singer, Mao resorted to thought-reform programs under the influence of cultist relations:
Then in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the world witnessed personnel at Chinese revolutionary universities implement a thought-reform program that changed the beliefs and behaviors of the citizens of the largest nation in the world. This program, which Mao Tse-tung wrote about as early as the 1920s, was put into place when the Communist regime took power in China on October 1, 1949. Chairman Mao had long planned how to change people’s political selves-to achieve”ideological remolding,”as he called it-through the use of a coordinated program of psychological, social, and political coercion. As a result, millions of Chinese citizens were induced to espouse new philosophies and exhibit new conduct (2).
Mao’s”Red Book”refers openly to the significance of such procedures for achieving what he calls revolution. Mehdi Abrishamchi defines it as adaptation and mental and conceptual balance. the mechanisms aim at reforming the basic values of a person distancing him from individual identity, persuasion and also absolute submission to organizational commands. In this regard, Eric Hofer writes:
To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans, van, or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a German, a Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a member of a certain tribe or family, He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die. (3)
Mojahedin identify the individual identity to sealed boxes and believe that the main theme of the ideological revolution is to unlock these boxes:
To unlock the boxes (minds of members) is the main theme and the first stage of ideological revolution. (4)
By opening these boxes the first step is taken to change members’ attitudes and standpoints to adapt them to organizationally adopted values and principles that are in contradiction with the outside world. References: 1. Singer, M. Cults in our midst. Coordinated programs of persuasion. 2. ibid. 3. Hofer, E. The True believer. 4. Niyabati, B; A different look at the internal ideological revolution within MKO, p.36
Research Bureau-Mojahedin.ws-February 22, 2008
The ruling of the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) to remove the ban on MKO’s activities remains a serious challenge failing to convince the UK government that the organisation has really foresworn the terrorist tactics which continue to be a potential threat to civilians. Far beyond being an internal threat, terrorism stages a global threat that has to be fought by all the means. A globally proscribed terrorist organization, MKO may appeal to a variety of lawful judiciary bodies and take advantage of proficient lawyers and proponent parliamentarians to divert governments and international bodies from the potential terrorist threat of the organization. The advocates of MKO should be notified that to win a judicial decision in appeals process to de-proscribe a terrorist organization never implies that its terrorist threats have ever been curbed. It has to be noted that it is a tactic commonly exploited by MKO to alter its serious ideological and cultic challenges from an internal issue to a globally concerned judicial case, a ploy manipulated by majority of cults. A comparative study of some current cults reveals amazing results that never excludes MKO as an exception. The tactics employed by cults and a number of political groups to influence public perception and debate are considerable. I spite of countless suppressive measures to extend their hegemonic domination over the insiders, they escape any scrutiny and controls from the outside world. As Margaret Thaler Singer discusses in her Cults in Our Midst, “Despite a rather grim record of atrocious behavior, time and again cults escape the scrutiny and controls bestowed upon other organizations and activities”. To find out how cults benefit from legal leverages and influential individuals and authorities to circumvent law enforcement is possible only through a careful study of the approaches utilized by certain cults and groups. For instance, involving in lawsuits against respondents are generally costly affairs and time consuming but cults utilize a variety of approaches to overcome the problem. Explained by Thaler Singer, “Legal suits are costly affairs. But some cults have developed large in-house legal staffs, including huge numbers of paralegals to help the resident lawyers. Thus legal actions are not very costly for the cults to pursue, whereas the people who must defend themselves can easily go broke battling against such tactics”. It has also to be pointed out that not all advocates and supporters of a cult and political group are in total agreement with ideological tenets and objectives of the target group. A variety of factors like political and party interests as well as personal interests and financial concerns may involve. Brought to attention by Thaler Singer, “Some people committed to cultic groups become downright illogical in their support. For example, there is a small claque of social scientists who have become procult apologists. Some have been given trips to exotic places by large, wealthy cults; some fear revealing critical findings because certain cults have paid for research and underwritten trips to professional meetings”. As noted, in some cases, the laws not only fail to deter the threat of cults but also work as legal buffers defending them against opponents. The question is, are the learned Westerners who support MKO really unacquainted with the tactics employed by the cults? As many of them assert, they have been well acquainted with MKO activities since long and besides, English intelligence systems have long been monitoring the terrorist activities of the group and have already filled exactly recorded details which can help reaching a logical resolution about MKO. There are suppositions why the English fail to reach a consensus about MKO. A doubtful inference is that the group’s English advocates are initially kept in dark about the real nature and the past history of MKO. As mentioned, British intelligence bureaus as well as news agencies, BBC in particular, have a valuable record of MKO’s terrorist operations and atrocities perpetrated inside Iran against American personnel, British interests, regime’s authorities and innocent civilians since its formation. Then, it is doubtful that they have been uninformed of vital facts concerning the national security as people’s representatives. Looking it from a different angle, the English might be dealing with MKO as a psychotherapy case. That is to say, regarding the organization as a destructive cult that has enforced a variety of cult and mind control techniques on the members, they have to be treated with outmost care and caution. That is much because the English have learned any suppressive measure to repel cults may backfire seriously and cause irreparable social damages; they may be in some way following American’s paradoxical approach in dealing with MKO since they have once paid the price of MKO’s ideological hostility against the imperialism. Finally, the English may have concluded that MKO, as a political organization with a military infrastructure, has reached the end of its political life and must run a peaceful life of retirement. For sure, it takes time to instil the truth into old veterans, a responsibility some British factions have assumed on themselves. However, precautionary measures deem necessary concerning MKO; as a globally proscribed terrorist organization and a destructive cult, it has to be under constant, strict surveillance. Bahar Irani,Mojahedin.ws-February 11, 2008
Self-delusion is most apparent in those politicians who least consider their supporters and their people in the policies and strategies which they pursue. These are the kind of leaders who do not see the fear in the faces of the people under their autocracy. Rather they relate all such signs of disfavour to the external enemy. When they do find their internal opponents standing opposed to them, they become astonished and fail to analyse the situation realistically.
Self-delusion is the scourge of power that has no popular support. Self-delusion is the illness of those who are unable to evaluate their power and do not understand their true position in either the international or internal political scene. This inability means there is always a vast divergence between the minds of such politicians and real life. On the one hand they are arrogant of their growing power, and on the other hand pass their lives in fear of their enemies; and finally they become the victims of their own phobia. Their self-delusion directs them to only refer to their self-created fantasy. Disaster occurs when the realities of the outside world threaten to destroy their misinterpretation.
Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO) of Iran, is an example of an idealistic leader whose absolute power over his followers in the organisation has both shattered his ideals and increased his self-delusion. As Rajavi discovered his power over the organisation to be unlimited, he distanced himself from the realities of life in both his sayings and in his actions. To this end the picture of the social and political life of the people of Iran today is totally different from what he sees or talks about. He is miles away from today’s world.
Massoud Rajavi is so certain about the outcome of the manipulation of the members of his organisation with his ideas that he does not see the rows of people tired of his "ideological revolution" and those who are trying to escape the boundaries of Camp Ashraf in Iraq. He is, of course, not worried about the increasing critics and opponents to his policies and ideas. According to his so-called revolutionary criteria, those who leave him or turn against him are traitors who will sooner or later destroy themselves by their own hands.
Rajavi is a charismatic leader who enjoys the natural supremacy of all such leaders over his followers. He has managed to instil his own fear and paranoia in the minds of his followers so that they are also unable to see the truth of the outside world. Currently the world is deeply concerned about the outbreak of further wars and conflict here and there, and people are working hard everywhere to prevent this. But living in his own self-deluded world Massoud Rajavi is strongly disturbed that there is no war and that the US does not quickly launch a militarily attack on Iran.
Today Massoud Rajavi has gone into hiding and does not give public appearances – apparently for reasons of security. But he is in fact living in his own dream world of self-delusion and the nightmare of fear as all totalitarians of his kind must do.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, 15 November 2007
ebrahim_khodabandeh_2006@yahoo.com
Cults’ Methodology