- Spend enough time with cult members and they
may come to think of you as one of them, behave as if you are theirs to command
and expect you to abide by their rules. They may even try to stop or punish you
if you speak or behave in ways that they find unacceptable.
- You may become public enemy no.1 if you are
seen as a threat or start to confront them.
Being lied to and left stranded, both
literally and metaphorically, is bad enough; being let down and betrayed when a
favour is needed and being dropped and avoided by someone you thought was a
friend is even worse. Worse still is being turned against and attacked by cult
members because they consider you insubordinate or a criminal, traitor and enemy
- and this only because you are standing up for the truth and speaking out
against evil.
Theirs to command: an example
I stopped going to demonstrations, meetings
etc. after a last-straw incident in Vienna. It took a long time before the
invitations to go to further gatherings stopped coming. My refusals to attend
caused obvious bewilderment and possible suppressed anger because I was not
obeying orders. I had to keep saying that I was not part of their organisation
and that I no longer had any reason for going. I was very angry about the way I
had been treated too.
They did eventually get the message.
The invitations came through one person in
particular, someone else who could easily have returned the many favours I had
done for her and her family. She was the one who got me to attend various
events under false pretences just to get the numbers of apparent supporters up
and who left me stranded in Vienna.
As for eventually getting the message, the
requests slowly died down over the years but there was one final invitation
that was another last straw.
There was an incident that got into the news.
This woman phoned to ask me to come to a demonstration outside an embassy - as
if we had never had such conversations before, as if I had not refused her
requests many times.
This was more than three years after I went
to a gathering for the last time! By
then, opting out was not just for personal reasons, it was also because of what
I had learned about cult-like organisations in general and the activities of this
one in particular.
Of course I said I would not go, and things turned
very nasty. She became abusive. She shouted that I was an enemy, and a supporter
of the fundamentalist regime that they were demonstrating against!
Several years before the Vienna incident, this
woman had tried to get me to stop seeing certain people and to coerce me into
spending time with others. She made arrangements on my behalf without
consulting me. I was not in a good state at the time; I was not operating from
a position of strength and had few options, but I still managed to stand up for
myself and give her the message that my life was not hers to command.
In both cases, I was treated as a misbehaving
member would have been.
Another example, about which I may go into
more detail some other time, was when another, more hard-core, member phoned
and said she was coming round. She ignored my protest that it was not a good
time, and was very offended when I wouldn’t see her. She too behaved as if I were hers to command.
Becoming a criminal and an enemy
Over many years, I moved from believing what
I was told to asking whether certain allegations were true to saying that I now
believed what opponents of and defectors from the cult-like organisation were
saying.
I should have known better than to confront
cult members, or at least been much more careful, but I did not know then what
I know now.
The disappointment and disapproval I
experienced from the woman featured above when I wouldn’t go to gatherings were
nothing to what I got when I started to speak out against her organisation and
try to discuss certain horrific allegations with her. There was much obvious
fury, and, although I did not think of this at the time, possible suppressed
terror.
I mentioned an abusive phone call from her. It
started out with harmless chitchat about her children; it turned sour when I
refused to go to a demonstration; it ended up being far more abusive than ever
before.
The worst offensiveness began when I tried to
tell this woman why I would not go to the demonstration, citing various recent
allegations that I had seen online or been told about. As usual, she didn’t
listen, didn’t take in what I said, and just shouted the same old robotic slogans
and propaganda.
She wasn’t open to the idea that I wouldn’t
come because I was appalled by all the information now available. Her premise
was that anyone who didn’t support her leaders must be a friend of the evil
oppressive regime.
She kept saying that I was closing my eyes. I did manage to slip in a few responses such
as, “That’s ridiculous”, “That’s crazy” and, “Exactly what am I closing my eyes
to?”, but it is impossible to get through to such people at such times. She was
the one who was closing her eyes!
I had been meeting some defectors. Although I
did not tell her this because they asked me not to, I did mention their names
as there was a lot about them online. I got a lot more screaming abuse in
return.
I had broken many rules and become a
criminal, an enemy, a threat and a traitor.
This is what people who befriend cult members
should be aware can happen. There is more to come about all this.
