Cults and Control

Steven Hassan, a cult expert and cult survivor, developed the BITE model of Authoritarian Control to describe how cults take and maintain control. This can help therapists to identify and support those exiting cults, as well as helping cult survivors identify and avoid cults in the future.

BITE stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion as categories which cult actions try to control. While, the site notes, some elements are elements of all cults. So we should not expect society that claims to be “free” expressing very many of these.

However, when we take the state and capitalism together as a singular system, the US can actually be pretty dark. We can check a lot of the “behavior” control elements. The most important function of the state is the enforcement of the property rights, that is the metaphysical assertions about where people are allowed to go and objects they’re allowed to possess. That’s the first two items on the “behavior” list. How d they do this? Kidnapping, beating, torture, separation of families, imprisonment, and murder (19-25 with the exception of 22) are all, essentially, the job of the criminal legal system. Rape, (22) is left as a threat, to be carried out by other prisoners, with the tacit consent or at the request of prison guards.

“Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet” is more commonly know as “school.” “Permission required for major decisions” will be familiar to anyone who has ever applied for a loan to buy a house. And how did they get into a position to buy that house, if not simply born to the right family it’s probably because of the use of “rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative.”

Information control sounds like something that would happen in China or under other authoritarian regimes, and it does. But the fact that 6 companies and merging, all themselves controlled by billionaires, control nearly all media in the US. What is the value of “freedom of the press” if only those aligned with the system can afford to own the presses? But social media has become the democratization of media, which would matter if not for algorithms that shape the conversation to maximize corporate profit and minimize systemic threats.

The use of “cult propaganda” to maintain control has become more blatant of late reactionaries rally around fighting “DEI” and “Critical Race Theory.” School books again claim that slavery wasn’t that bad and that the Civil War was about “States Rights.” But even in the most progressive areas, could you imagine a US history text book ever talking about the fact that Nazi race law was adapted from US race law, or that the German expansion across Europe and the holocaust were both drawn from Manifest Destiny and the genocide carried out by the US government against the indigenous population? Could you imagine any school teaching a history of capitalism that included historical critiques, such as those from the Diggers? Could you imagine an American public school throwing out their “History of Western Civilization” courses after acknowledging the reality that “Western Civilization” simply doesn’t exist? Imagine what people would say. You know it. “That’s Communism.” So we check off 1-3 and 5 from the Information Control list.

Perhaps we should go back to 2.d (Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate). Do I really need to talk about this, or can you fill it in for yourself?

Systemic control is easier to see, easier to call out, when it’s centralized. The true brilliance of this system is the way it’s able to embed information control into the fabric of interpersonal interaction. The phrase “don’t talk about politics” is itself a political statement. That which serves the interest of the dominant class is implicitly defined as “not political” while any opposition to this order, even pointing out the obvious existence of slavery or genocide, even pointing out the fact that this statement is political is itself defined as “political.” The “political” taboo is a political taboo against calling a thing by it’s name.

The interpersonal control starts to wonder it’s way into thought-stopping mantras cults often use to control thought. “Anarchism/Communism works on paper, but it doesn’t work in the real world.” I have heard this phrase, word for word, without critical analysis, again and again. It’s strange that it should be repeated with such close wording, as though character dialog. Yet capitalism, that always produces suffering and inequity, that is rapidly pushing humanity to collapse, somehow “works.”

The belief in alternative systems, such as anarchism, is “childish” or “naive.” It can be acceptable to arrest, torture, or kill someone simply on the assertion that they are anarchists. Questioning the justification for wars is “betraying the memory of the soldiers who died for our freedom.” Fascists harassing people into silence is “free speech” but calling them fascist is “violence.” It’s easy to go on, but we have one more category to touch on.

There the two most glaring elements of emotional control within this system are shifting blame and numbing. What better description is there than the function of the myth of upward mobility than to “[m]ake the person feel that problems are always their own fault.” We all recognize who’s responsible for predatory lending that blew up the economy in 2008, and yet it’s so common to imagine the debt that crushed so many as being the fault of the borrower. If only millennials would stop eating avocado toast, they could afford to move out of their parent’s basement. The climate induced flooding, fires, tornados, hurricanes that destroyed your home and bankrupted your insurance company wouldn’t have been a problem if only you’d chosen the location for your home more wisely. Speaking of which, what are you doing about your carbon footprint?

Oh, climate change, that infinite source of hopeless and rage. How much more challenging is it when you reject their blame, when you recognize that it’s caused by machinery beyond your control? What do you do when it’s too much? Perhaps it’s what were you doing before you read this. And what would you usually do after you finish reading something like? Was it doom scrolling, gorging on terrible facts so you don’t have to deal with the feelings those facts bring up?

Or perhaps you will you hide in reality TV, YouTube, video games? And can you function without medication, or does the reality of the horror randomly incapacitate you? The emotions have gotten so strong, we have to develop ways of stopping them or risk our jobs, our homes, our lives.

You can feel everything you’ve suppressed, for years, just under the skin, ready to explode. Is it any wonder there are so many mass shootings? Overwhelmed with emotion, with shame and anger, and nowhere to channel it, what else would you expect?

Am I seriously saying that the US is not what it seems, that elites control policy, that media and education control thought, that this free democracy, where we vote for our leaders, is really an authoritarian cult with parallels to Russia and China? Where’s your tin foil hat? Next you’re gonna tell me that the US literally trained South American death squads who used Nazi terror techniques, or that from 1932 through 1972 the US government performed medical experiments on people. It’s all too terrible to believe. Ever hear of Unit 731? No, surely that’s not real.

America are the good guys. These all sound like a conspiracy theories. Ever wonder why people believe that crazy shit?