All of the critical ingredients of what has widely been identified by experts as the content of cult behavior toward both its own participants and the outside world are abundantly present in the operations of the Trump and MAGA movements.

There is hardly a member of Trump’s cabinet who is not a cultist, as official definitions go, who are insulated from reality in some profoundly destructive way that is beyond the political differences, say, that can emerge even as they may be grounded in a shared appreciation of reality, of basic scientific facts and an allegiance to the government to which they are sworn to serve.  

Among the more predominant among the scholars who have researched and written extensively on the subject of cults is an acquaintance of mine, Steven Hassan. His interest arose from having been trapped in a cult, himself, and then freed. His work has focused mainly on how to handle the often difficult situations of friends or family members that have been sucked into cults.

One of Hassan’s more important recent works, “The Cult of Trump,” shows how Trump’s MAGA movement bears all the trappings of a classic mind-control cult. 

Hassan defines a cult as a group that uses mind control to exert undue influence over its members, often resulting in destructive behavior and the suppression of individual identity. He categorizes cults into religious, political, psychotherapy/ educational, and commercial groups.

His definition emphasizes the manipulation and control of members’ thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, leading to a replacement of their authentic identity with a fabricated one. 

Hassan views mind control as a system that disrupts an individual’s healthy Identity development by manipulating their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Cults often exhibit behaviors that harm individuals or society, such as manipulating members into making harmful decisions or isolating them from their families. Cults seek to replace an individual’s authentic self with a group-approved identity, often through indoctrination and manipulation. He identifies four key components of mind control: behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.

Hassan extends the concept of cults to include certain behaviors that can be found in various organizations, including those with a strong emphasis on loyalty and control. Hassan’s expertise is rooted in his personal experience as a former member of the Moonies cult and his subsequent work as a cult deprogrammer and researcher. 

Generally he does not extend his definitions to identify malicious outside efforts to extend and use cults for devious purposes. However, a somewhat broader context is provided in a famous book by William Sargant, “Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing — How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change YourBeliefs and Behavior.”

A promo for that book asks, “How can an evangelist convert a hardboiled sophisticate? Why does a POW sign a ‘confession’ that he knows is false? How is a criminal pressured into admitting his guilt? Do the evangelist, the POW’s captor and the policeman use similar methods to gain their ends? These and other compelling questions are discussed in this definitive work by William Sargant. Sargant explains and illustrates the basic techniques used by evangelists, psychiatrists and brainwashers to dissolve existing, established patterns of belief and then to substitute new beliefs and behaviors.”

These works seek to offer ways not only to identify cult behavior, but to counter it and to liberate persons seen captive in them to break them away.

One of the more famous cases of cults are the Jonestown cult of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple that wound up self-destructing in the jungles of Guyana, resulting in the suicides or murders of almost 1,000 mostly U.S. citizens who were lured under cultlike influence down there in November 1978.

One of the most gruesome and compelling accounts of what happened has come in the form of an eyewitness book by Deborah Layton entitled “Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of the Life and Death of the People’s Temple.”

In this account, along with the film footage of the actual suicide ritual and the murderous incidents that followed at the nearby airport hint that the Soviet KGB likely was the controlling factor in the operation of this cult.