72 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 8, 2017
military action to come was going to be a battle
between Christianity and Islam. Al Qaeda and
other organizations were inundated with
volunteers.
Well-chosen quotes from George Orwell’s 1984
made me wish I had paid more attention when I
had been forced to read it in high school. I could
have avoided a lot of pain. The author admits
that, looking back, he could identify as Orwell’s
“unperson,” while at the time, he believed he
“was becoming a better person, even a
superman,” when “in fact” he “was becoming a
nobody,” acting only out of loyalty in “absolute
obedience” to his leader (p. 1). He contrasts
escaped slaves of old who at least had scars on
their bodies from their masters’ lashes or from
the chains on their wrists and ankles to remind
them of the injustice perpetrated against them.
Former members of cults bear no signs to show
how they were captured, imprisoned, tortured,
and held against their will. They cannot explain
their invisible psychological lashes, chains, and
cages.
Although his contrasts and comparisons between
cult membership and historical slavery may not
play well on this side of the Atlantic, Banisadr
demonstrates that the relationship between a cult
leader and a member is closer “to the old slavery
than to any other kind of membership or
allegiance, such as among followers of a faith,
members of a political party, members of a club
or the workforce of a factory” (p. 14).
He parses the term free will to explain. He
argues that the will-power of members of cults
tends to strengthen. This is because they are no
longer bound by the concerns of ordinary life
such as personal and family safety and security,
or planning for the future. Will may be
strengthened, but individuality has been
suppressed to the point that it no longer plays a
role in the exercise of willpower. Members can
exercise willpower but are not free to gather the
information they need to make informed
decisions.
Freedom does not exist when all the self-
confidence and self-esteem have been snapped
out of persons on the pretext that such qualities
are ugly or selfish. Cult members are filled with
overwhelming will to do something for the cause
and, at the same time, emptied of the means to
choose what to do. Now dependent on the leader
for direction, they are ready to do almost
anything the leader asks. Those who hold back
face the most powerful tool for suppressing
personality, guilt:
Members who were working in Europe
and America were made to feel guilty
for not being in Iraq fighting the Iranian
revolutionary guards and those in Iraq
felt guilty for ‘not begging from the
bourgeois’ on the streets of European
and American cities, braving the cold in
countries such as Norway. If you had
given up your wealth, you were
expected to feel guilty for not giving up
your family, and if you had given up
your family, you felt guilty for being
free in Europe or Iraq and not in Iran in
prison and subject to torture whereas if
you were being tortured in prison, you
were made to feel guilty for being alive
and not a martyr. Only death could bring
relief from guilt—and then MeK could
hold you up as a martyr in front of
others and make them feel guilty.
(p. 346)
At first, I was relieved when the author
compared MeK to famously horrific groups.
Groups such as mine are different, surely. MeK
used a mixture of Islam and socialism. Jim Jones
mixed liberal Christianity and socialism. MeK’s
leader, Rajavi, married the wife of one of his
closest friends. Members were then required to
engage in self-condemnation for thinking the
marriage was motivated by sexual desire. The
similarity to David Koresh’s sexual proclivity
for preteens and his deft but twisted Bible
teaching was not lost on the author. MeK’s
“order to members to divorce their spouses,
leave their children and accept celibacy for life
and afterlife recalls, for him, the edicts of” the
eleventh-century cult leader “Hassan Sabah,
who ordered members of the Assassins to be
castrated, or Marshall Applewhite, founder of
the Heaven’s Gate group, whose male members
underwent voluntary castration inn order to
maintain their extreme ascetic lifestyle” (p. 10).
Surely these groups were different. Terrorist
groups have similarities to famously horrific
military action to come was going to be a battle
between Christianity and Islam. Al Qaeda and
other organizations were inundated with
volunteers.
Well-chosen quotes from George Orwell’s 1984
made me wish I had paid more attention when I
had been forced to read it in high school. I could
have avoided a lot of pain. The author admits
that, looking back, he could identify as Orwell’s
“unperson,” while at the time, he believed he
“was becoming a better person, even a
superman,” when “in fact” he “was becoming a
nobody,” acting only out of loyalty in “absolute
obedience” to his leader (p. 1). He contrasts
escaped slaves of old who at least had scars on
their bodies from their masters’ lashes or from
the chains on their wrists and ankles to remind
them of the injustice perpetrated against them.
Former members of cults bear no signs to show
how they were captured, imprisoned, tortured,
and held against their will. They cannot explain
their invisible psychological lashes, chains, and
cages.
Although his contrasts and comparisons between
cult membership and historical slavery may not
play well on this side of the Atlantic, Banisadr
demonstrates that the relationship between a cult
leader and a member is closer “to the old slavery
than to any other kind of membership or
allegiance, such as among followers of a faith,
members of a political party, members of a club
or the workforce of a factory” (p. 14).
He parses the term free will to explain. He
argues that the will-power of members of cults
tends to strengthen. This is because they are no
longer bound by the concerns of ordinary life
such as personal and family safety and security,
or planning for the future. Will may be
strengthened, but individuality has been
suppressed to the point that it no longer plays a
role in the exercise of willpower. Members can
exercise willpower but are not free to gather the
information they need to make informed
decisions.
Freedom does not exist when all the self-
confidence and self-esteem have been snapped
out of persons on the pretext that such qualities
are ugly or selfish. Cult members are filled with
overwhelming will to do something for the cause
and, at the same time, emptied of the means to
choose what to do. Now dependent on the leader
for direction, they are ready to do almost
anything the leader asks. Those who hold back
face the most powerful tool for suppressing
personality, guilt:
Members who were working in Europe
and America were made to feel guilty
for not being in Iraq fighting the Iranian
revolutionary guards and those in Iraq
felt guilty for ‘not begging from the
bourgeois’ on the streets of European
and American cities, braving the cold in
countries such as Norway. If you had
given up your wealth, you were
expected to feel guilty for not giving up
your family, and if you had given up
your family, you felt guilty for being
free in Europe or Iraq and not in Iran in
prison and subject to torture whereas if
you were being tortured in prison, you
were made to feel guilty for being alive
and not a martyr. Only death could bring
relief from guilt—and then MeK could
hold you up as a martyr in front of
others and make them feel guilty.
(p. 346)
At first, I was relieved when the author
compared MeK to famously horrific groups.
Groups such as mine are different, surely. MeK
used a mixture of Islam and socialism. Jim Jones
mixed liberal Christianity and socialism. MeK’s
leader, Rajavi, married the wife of one of his
closest friends. Members were then required to
engage in self-condemnation for thinking the
marriage was motivated by sexual desire. The
similarity to David Koresh’s sexual proclivity
for preteens and his deft but twisted Bible
teaching was not lost on the author. MeK’s
“order to members to divorce their spouses,
leave their children and accept celibacy for life
and afterlife recalls, for him, the edicts of” the
eleventh-century cult leader “Hassan Sabah,
who ordered members of the Assassins to be
castrated, or Marshall Applewhite, founder of
the Heaven’s Gate group, whose male members
underwent voluntary castration inn order to
maintain their extreme ascetic lifestyle” (p. 10).
Surely these groups were different. Terrorist
groups have similarities to famously horrific
