Cult members and the attack-dog syndrome

Here is yet another warning about what can happen when dealing with cult members.

They may automatically attack, with varying levels of viciousness, people who say or do something unacceptable to them, their ideology or their organisation. They may behave like attack dogs, sometimes just growling or snapping at people and sometimes going straight for the jugular.

I have already written about the phenomenon known as the attack-dog syndrome in this article, but want to add something to my original ideas and go into the topic more deeply and in greater detail.

Games, tricks and techniques

When cult members don’t want to talk about something or listen to what people are trying to tell them, they will use one or more of the standard techniques in their repertoire.

It is all automatic, and the goal is to silence people.

For example, cult members often avoid people who ask awkward questions and even cut off contact completely; they immediately change the subject when someone raises an unwelcome issue, ignoring what was said and talking very quickly about something else; they use robotic slogans and repeat official propaganda instead of having a real discussion; they use denial and dismissal to close the subject.

I have experienced all this for myself: “I am very busy”; “We must make sacrifices for the cause”; “They are lying”; “He is a traitor”; “You shouldn’t take any notice of these rumours” and much more of the same.

The use of these techniques demonstrates what sort of person the recipient is dealing with. An uncontrolled, on-the-level decent human being does not behave like this; people who habitually play these games may be prisoners and hostages. And what does the need to play them say about the cause and people that are being promoted and defended?

Georgette Heyer and Stella Gibbons: some coincidences

For me, even the best of Georgette Heyer’s books are, or rather were, mere escape material and comfort reading. I have not read any of them for a very long time as they have lost much of their earlier appeal. I don’t remember seeing anything in any of them that would be relevant to the themes of this blog.

Stella Gibbons’s novels are primarily a source of material for articles about unseen influences: there are references to Stella Gibbons and her books in a few articles on here.

These two novelists have more elements of their lives in common than I would have expected, considering how very different their novels are. I looked at the major similarities and differences in their lives and personalities to see if I could see any patterns and detect any unseen influences at work. Although I found much fascinating and informative material, most of it is not very relevant to this blog. I did find a few interesting coincidences however. 

It is customary to leave the best till last, but I want to start with the most bizarre and unexpected material that I found while researching the two authors:

Novels and the Nazis
It is quite a coincidence that the names of both writers were known to the Nazi regime - for very different reasons.

Georgette Heyer had some of her books banned in Nazi Germany, whereas one of Stella Gibbons’s was translated into German and presented to Adolf Hitler!

There is little information available about which of Georgette Heyer’s books were banned and why. All we know is that Georgette Heyer considered it rather a compliment to be banned and said that it was ‘grand’!

Today is Charlotte Brontë’s birthday

Charlotte Brontë was born in Yorkshire 202 years ago today.

She came into this world on April 21st 1816, in Thornton in Yorkshire.

She appears in many articles on this blog, as both her novels and her life are of great interest and relevance. Innumerable articles and reviews and some biographies were already in existence, but the unseen influences and connections that I detected have inspired some original material.

To mark the occasion, here is a quotation from Villette that I particularly like because it mentions London:

"I did well to come," I said ... "I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?"

She also mentions St. Paul’s Cathedral in a descriptive paragraph that reminds me of the essence of London near the river on a fine spring morning:

“Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. Finding myself before St. Paul's, I went in; I mounted to the dome: I saw thence London, with its river, and its bridges, and its churches; I saw antique Westminster, and the green Temple Gardens, with sun upon them, and a glad, blue sky, of early spring above; and between them and it, not too dense, a cloud of haze.”

St. Paul’s with Victorian visitors in 1848, a year in which Charlotte and Anne Brontë visited London together:

Cults and the sole supplier syndrome

This article contains a few thoughts about a feature of many cults and cult-like organisations, a feature that I think of as the sole supplier syndrome.

Cult leaders and members may push the message that they and their organisation are the sole source of something - for example, information, hope for the future, democracy for an oppressed nation or even salvation. You will never get what you want without their help; only they can inform you about and explain something; only they have the answers; they are the elite and nothing and no one else is any good to you.

It is best to beware of anyone who tries to attract your interest and recruit you by playing the sole supplier game. You can expect to hear a lot of this sort of thing:

“We are your only hope.”  “We are the only ones who can tell you what is really going on.” “Without us, the evil regime will never be overthrown.” “When civilisation collapses, you will die unless you join us now and learn survival skills.”

It is important to understand that this is what they all say. It is a case of same game, different players.

If you buy their messages, they may try to get you to support or even commit everything that you have to their cause or movement.

Cults and their representatives want your money; they want to fool, manipulate and intimidate you. If you seem suitable for membership, they will want to draw you in and control you, your life and your thoughts. They will want you to reply on them for everything and depend on them alone.

In order to avoid being taken advantage of, it is essential to research everything and to expose the implied messages, subject them to reality testing and determine what the ulterior motives and hidden agenda are.

Dealing with cult members: some beneficial by-products

Some of the warnings I have been giving about what to expect when dealing with cult members and cult-like organisations apply to and can be useful for dealing with other, often very different, people and organisations.

There may not be a cult in the case, but some people speak and behave in similar ways to cult members.

For example, I have recently encountered some very familiar elements while engaged in a war with my local council:

Lying and hypocrisy, cover stories, tricking people, treating people as if they were theirs to command, denying allegations, dismissing complaints, ignoring people’s views and points they make, inviting people to meetings under false pretences, harassing people, talking like script-ridden robots, leaving people stranded ... I have seen it all before: same game, different players!

It was devastating the first time around, but the work I did afterwards has definitely helped me to cope better with the current, potentially devastating, situation.

Understanding what I am up against and knowing what to expect has helped me to stay on top of things and even get ahead of the game.

Dealing with cult members: yet more warnings

More crucially important points to bear in mind:

- 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.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part X: Plus X and Bad Medicine

There are two very amusing short stories that I feel impelled to re-read from time to time. One is Plus X by Eric Frank Russell, the other is Bad Medicine by Robert Sheckley.

Plus X was written by an Englishman, Bad Medicine by an American. Both stories were first published in 1956, in the classic pulp science fiction magazines Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy respectively.

Plus X is about a human prisoner of war on an alien planet; Bad Medicine is about a homicidal maniac in New York. Both men use psychological methods to escape their condition. 

I don’t want to be a spoiler, so will say only a little more about the stories.

Plus X by Eric Frank Russell
John Leeming is the hero of this story. He is a prisoner of war, captured by a reptilian race. He escapes by fooling the enemy, persuading the reptilians that earthmen and their alien allies have invisible, and dangerous, companions.

For me, one of the best scenes is when one of the enemy aliens interrogates another earthman prisoner - who knows nothing about Leeming’s lies - about these companions to get some independent confirmation. This man has no idea what his captor is talking about, but manages to give very good answers that confirm the story. 

He says, “Where did you get this information?”, and when asked whether the invisible companions might manage to take over some of the reptilians, says with great menace, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

It is all very amusing and very clever.