A distressing article that I came across recently reminded me of yet another feature that is often found in cults of all kinds.
This is the discouragement or even prohibition of the reading of unauthorised material. In some extreme cases, members are allowed to read only a few 'bibles' or the writings of the founder.
By imposing such rules and practices, cult leaders make themselves into Sole Suppliers of information.
Censorship of a few controversial works is one thing; not permitting members to read anything much apart from the organisation's propaganda and other material that the cult is based on, generates, approves of, endorses and promotes is something else. It is criminal when any information Not Invented Here is banned because it is considered to be useless, irrelevant, distracting, dangerous or corrupting.
Discouraged from reading literature
First, some past coverage. This is from one of my cult-related posts on the old CC Forum:
This extract from an old blog by an ex-member is very upsetting:
“When I was a young girl, I was very interested in literature and poetry and I loved reading everything by many different authors, which, over time, gave me a lot in terms of maturation and culture. I wanted to talk a lot about this and I remember when, at one of my first meetings with pre-GEN (when I did not know to be a pre-GEN), I told that I read one of these books. I think it was a text by Erich Fromm.
The girl who was the "white" smiled, almost casually, then dropped the subject and immediately turned to another girl. Over time, I realized that this was the way they were taking control of our interests. They encouraged us to read books by Chiara and the other members of the movement, while they subtly discouraged all the others.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20200920023204/http://blogfocolare.blogspot.com/
This has been translated from Italian, but the meaning is very clear. This is evil, just like their insistence that an enquiring mind is a handicap.
Luckily the author got out at the age of 24, so there was plenty of time for her to make a life for herself in the real world and catch up with her reading.
Changing or dropping the subject and ignoring what was said are very familiar techniques.
Not allowed to go inside the school library
The very depressing article that I read recently was written by someone who for the first six years of her life was a member of the Exclusive Brethren, a Christian fundamentalist sect who go much further than subtly discouraging the reading of unauthorised material.
This is what she says about classes that they were forbidden from attending at their school in Brighton:
“No classes about poetry or fiction. No science that conflicted with the creation story."
Brethren children were not allowed to borrow library books; the school library was off-limits too:
"One day my teacher told me that when I got to the end of a worksheet I could go to the library for independent reading if there was time left before the bell rang. I still don’t know if she realised what she was saying. I nearly told her but swallowed the words. When my classmates had library time I had to sit on a faded, red plastic chair outside the door. I’d peer in from time to time, astonished that there were so many books, that someone had thought to put them all in one room and that they came in so many shiny colours.
There had been books in our house once, I discovered later – my mother’s adored, beautifully leather-bound Jane Austen collection, my father’s Shakespeare and poetry. But in 1962, when JT Junior ordered all Brethren to cleanse themselves, my father had boxed up all the books and packed them into the boot of the car.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-4515352/Real-lives-told-world-outside-evil.html
I have always been a great reader myself and have always been able to choose what I read, so this censorship seems terrible to me. The author mentions shoplifting books for years and I don't really blame her!
Another example, this time from a college prayer group in the US:
”I was forbidden from reading and writing, prohibited from having serious conversations with the girls...”
I believe these stories because I know from experience that such things happen. For example, hard-core members of a certain political organisation were permitted to use the Internet only when essential – and in pairs. They were expected to read only their leader’s writings where possible.
There are many other examples of the restricted reading and banning anything Not Invented Here scenarios to be found in accounts of life inside cults and cult-like organisations, not to mention some families.
