1B Notes

Why do People Join NRMs?

• Belonging to groups is a natural human activity. We all belong to various groups throughout our lifetimes.

  • Some examples include: political parties, hobby groups, study groups, sports clubs, etc. Membership in some groups is easy, membership in other groups is more difficult or more demanding

• People belong to religious groups for essentially the same reasons they belong to other groups: They are born into them, they elect to join, they join through networks of relatives or friends.

  • When someone joins a new group, they often adopt new ideas or new practices. So, too when someone joins a new religion.

  • Although belief may play a role, it is not necessarily the main reason for joining a NRM. Lots of people who join new religions are not attracted by beliefs, but join for other reasons.

  • Sometimes people who join NRMs are simply experimenting with different belief systems or different lifestyles.

  • They may be seeking personal growth and new experiences with an aim to transform their lives.

  • Others may be attracted because some of their friends are members or they may be seeking a larger and newer community that reflects their particular lifestyle priorities.

  • In many cases membership in an NRM is tentative and experimental.

• Two common explanations for why people join that are particularly prevalent in literature about NRMS: Brainwashing and the Deprivation.

  • Both of these explanations emphasize the problems of those who join NRM's. In the case of brainwashing, new members are depicted as helpless subjects or victims of a process that is beyond their control.

  • In the case of deprivation, new members join because there is something lacking in their lives.

  • Neither brainwashing nor deprivation allows for an individual to choose freely to belong to one of these movements.

• One should be careful in assuming that there is something lacking in an individual (in the case of deprivation) or that there is something insidious about the recruitment strategies of NRMs (in the case of brainwashing). Probably a combination of factors including free will are required to satisfactorily explain why people join NRMs.

• There is a great deal of opposition from mainstream society to the belief systems and lifestyles of many New Religions. Much of the literature on NRMs reflects this bias.

  • Two movements that are particularly relevant in this context and that we will be studying in this unit are the Counter Cult Movement and the Anti Cult movement.

Brainwashing

• One assumption of the brainwashing thesis is that conversion to the NRM is not real or authentic. Rather, it is a sort of pseudo conversion.

  • True conversion, it is argued, requires a person to consciously and rationally make a decision to change their faith.

  • The individual in this case is fully informed of the various ramifications of his or her decision.

  • The question is: who decides what is a rational or authentic conversion? For example, when someone converts to my faith, I am likely to view it as authentic and genuine. When someone converts to a faith that is ideologically distant from my own I am likely to see the conversion as: insincere, the result of immaturity, gullibility, manipulation, and even foul play.

• the brainwashing thesis as it is often applied to NRMS is that membership is essentially involuntary and that the individual who joins is unambiguously under someone else's control, as is a physical captive. Involuntary conversion usually involves some of the following: loss of freewill; conditioning (deprivation, constant repetition), and /or hypnosis or induced trance states.

• we can trace the idea of brainwashing/thought reform to WWII and to the Korean war.

  • Brainwashing explained why some Canadian and American soldiers became sympathetic to their wartime enemies.

  • Thought reform consists of two basic elements:

    • Confession—the exposure and renunciation of past and present "evil"; and

    • re-education—the remaking of a man in a new image.

    • Brainwashing seemed to have an intuitively self-evident and self-confirming meaning that quickly caught on and became a part of popular culture. Mass media helped to promote this sentiment.

Deprivation

• The deprivation model holds that certain people are predisposed by various social, economic and psychological problems to seek refuge in religious cults. The source of the deprivation varies - psychiatric problems, social conditions that cause stress, and/or economic difficulties.

• This explanation assumes that people who join NRMs, even if they are intelligent, have some psychological deficiency or emotional complex.

• a convert is of low social status and has negative sense of self-worth, the group gives him/her titles, purpose, and a new elevated in group status.

  • If the convert was lonely, the groups love him/her. If he/she was unattractive, the group redefines the convert as beautiful.

• However, becoming a member of a NRM is a gradual process and there are lots of reasons for joining a group including:

  • desire to escape an intolerable life situation

  • desire to escape an unwanted "ego" or "self"

  • quest for a sense of community: personal social bonds are one key to joining movements. People draw people they know to groups.

  • pursuit of truth; ultimate meaning in life

  • seeking new ways to live and new interpretations of life

  • Are people who join NRMs more emotionally unstable or mentally ill than those who belong to traditional religious denominations?

Counter cultists and Anti cultists

Counter Cultists

• Counter cult usually describes the position of Christian organizations that hold that they represent the one true faith.

• Faiths that are non-Christian need to be countered (hence the term counter cultist).

• They have legitimate rights in a society that separates church and state, but potential adherents need to be warned about the wrong beliefs and practices such groups promote.

Anti Cultists

• Anti cultists are rather more diverse in their approach; generally, they hold that “cults” are pathological organizations run by pathological leaders who prey on and manipulate their often-innocent, misguided followers.

• Some anti cultists have religious convictions of their own; others simply see a need to fight what they perceive to be a social evil.

• Counter cultists and Anti cultists generally charge the movements they oppose with a variety of typical misbehaviors: brainwashing or mind control are the most common charges.

• They also charge that “cults” are led by persons who are power-hungry, seeking to control the lives of followers and to accumulate large amounts of money.

• NRMS are often accused of destroying family ties, of cutting off communication between young adult members and their birth families.

Deprogramming

• Counter cultists of the 1970s and 1980s argued that members of NRMS were pathologically depersonalized, dissociated, regressed to psychological infancy and that they had been brainwashed, losing all free will and free thought.

• This led to a strategy of deprogramming, an effort to free the mind and break the faith in the NRM.

  • Members were forcibly coerced into renouncing their membership in an NRM.

  • The person was often kidnapped and subjected to threats, deprivation, and violence until they accepted the views of the deprogrammer and returned to their normal family life.

  • The process was often commissioned by the parents of children who joined NRMS.

Exit Counselling

• By the end of 1980s deprogramming had fallen out of favour and a more benign approach called 'exit counselling' became popular.

• Exit counselling is more of an intervention that tries to persuade an individual to leave a group that is perceived to be a cult.

• It is voluntary and the individual decides whether to stay with the group or leave. Most often, the person is given information about the group and about mind control, and testimonies of former members which the counsellor believes will convince and individual to renounce his/her membership in the group.

Online Radicalization

• Online radicalization is now a key factor in many New Religions that develop online. Strategies from the era of deprogramming and exit counselling are resurfacing to deal with those who have been radicalized.

Q Anon

• QAnon is a far right-wing, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of conspiratorial ideas, many of which have been repackaged.

• These views center on the idea that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles—mainly consisting of what they see as elitist Democrats, politicians, journalists, entertainment moguls and other institutional figures—have long controlled much of the so-called deep state government, which they say sought to undermine Mr. Trump, mostly with aid of media and entertainment outlets.

• While initially easy to view the beliefs associated with QAnon and conspiracy theory groups as absurd, their strong ingroup identity and overwhelming sense of outgroup threats (especially during times of polarizing political ideologies within society) makes the investigation of their presence incredibly significant.

Origins

• On December 4, 2016 a North Carolina man by the name of Edgar Maddison Welch drove to Washington D.C., and armed with an AR-15, entered the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop under the belief that the shop was housing a child sex ring.

• In the incident now known as “Pizzagate,” Welch claimed to be responding to an internet conspiracy claim that the restaurant was involved in a pedophile ring run by Democrats.

• Though the claims were clearly false, the incident was the beginning of a series of conspiratorial beliefs linked to QAnon regarding something “evil” and corrupt going on within the U.S. government

• Over the next few years QAnon would be discussed by various media outlets regarding these conspiratorial beliefs, and would be attached to a variety of incidents, including the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021 that resulted in the death of five.

• While conspiracy theories are often met with air of ridicule and are perceived as nonsensical ideas held by the ill-informed, the consequences of these beliefs held by QAnon illustrate the need for us to take this movement seriously in the context of conspiracy theory groups.

Q

• In October 2017, an anonymous user put a series of posts on the message board 4chan. The user signed off as "Q" and claimed to have a level of US security approval known as "Q clearance".

  • Online posts surrounding QAnon conspiracy theories have often described “Q” as a patriot or saint.

• These messages became known as "Q drops" or "breadcrumbs", often written in cryptic language peppered with slogans, pledges and pro-Trump themes.

• Those aligned with QAnon believe it to be not a singular person, but rather a United States military operation consisting of “a team of high-ranking persons with ‘Q’ level security clearance,” working directly with former President Trump.

• Many of the ideologies associated with QAnon would begin to appear during the 2016 Presidential Election, and garnered attention on online platforms.

• The ideas presented, which emerged initially on 4chan message boards and consisted of a series of threads and comments, initially centred around the alleged soon-to-occur arrest of Hilary Clinton for her involvement in a child sex trafficking ring.

• This initial post garnered support by “claiming to possess top security clearance and an affiliation with the government,” and posts would continue to appear on 4chan before migrating to 8chan and a variety of social media outlets.

  • False source and authority figure manipulation strategy (ME)

Goals:

• While various ideologies have been associated with the group, the QAnon Alerts Website lists the following as their primary objectives:

  • 1.  A massive information dissemination program meant to:

    • expose massive global corruption and conspiracy to people,

    • cause the people to research further to aid further in their “great awakening.”

  • 2. Root out corruption, fraud and human rights violations worldwide.

  • 3. Return the Republic of the United States to the Constitutional rule of law and also return “the People” worldwide to their own rule.

Unification Church / Moonies

Reverend Moon & His Message of Love

• Members are sometimes called moonies after the founder of this movement, the Korean evangelical Sun Myung Moon.

• The biography of Moon is similar in many respects to the biographies of many religious founders: he undergoes hardship and opposition; he received revelations; and he performs miracles.

• The main message of the Unification Church is love.

  • One way in which this message of love is played out in Unification theology is the representation of Reverend Moon and his wife as the True Parents of all humanity.

  • As the True Parents, the Moons oversee the lives of their children (i.e., their followers).

  • A unique feature of the Unification Church in this respect is Moon's practice of arranged marriages and the ritual of "the Blessing" (the marrying of numerous couples at one time and place).

Unification Church in North America

• The Unification Church has a long history in the USA and Canada. Why was Reverend Moon's message so appealing to young people in North America?

• Reverend Moon's appeal for a true Christian renewal of America was initially welcomed in the USA.

• However, as the Church became stronger and drew a substantial number of new members, resistance to the Church began to grow.

• It has been alleged that potential converts to Reverend Moons movement were induced to accept church doctrine by being subjected to mind control techniques.

Moon and Business

• Descriptions of the Unification church sometimes focus on Moon's various business holdings.

  • These include: Paragon House; Dialogue and Alliance quarterly; various hotels and automotive companies.

• This amassing of wealth drew a great deal of criticism culminating when the United States government launched a series of official investigations of Reverend Moon involving nearly twenty federal agencies.

• Some say that these investigations violated the basic rights to religious freedom.

READINGS

The Moonies and the Anti-Cultists: Movement and Countermovement in Conflict

• fundamentalist Christian groups and a coterie of "new" religions and quasi-religions -such as the Children of God, Hare Krishna, Transcendental Meditation, Scientology, and the Unification Church-have experienced rapid growth. (2)

• While the ACM has gained a great deal of visibility from its most sensational (although relatively infrequently employed) tactic, coercive deprogramming, there has been virtually no examination of the ACM's emergence, structure and operation from a social movements perspective. (2)

• after 1975 ACM leaders agreed to focus their oppositional known of the "cults" with the hope that victories against it would serve as precedents for attacking other groups and finally, because the UM was archetypical of the characteristics the ACM most virulently condemned. (2)

• Not all of the "new" religions and quasi-religious groups that emerged (or re-emerged) in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s have been the objects of social repression to the same extent

  • Movements such as the Hare Krishna, the Children of God, and the UM have experienced the greatest negative reaction. These movements have sought to initiate sweeping, structural change of the society in which they were located (3)

  • By contrast, other movements of this period, such as Transcendental meditation, EST (Erhard Seminar Training), Meher Baba and Scientology, have engendered considerably less controversy because they promote limited, individual change and indeed, have functioned in many respects to adapt their members to society as it is. (3)

• The former type of movement, which we shall refer to here as "world-transforming," is our central concern since the ACM was formed largely in response to the current wave of such movement (3)

• it is important to identify four sources of conflict that typically have emerged as world-transforming movements (in general), and the UM (in particular), attempt to mobilize resources to pursue their goals:

  • (1) ideology

    • If sweeping social change is to be justified, the movement must offer some new; unique solution to a central human problem or dilemma (3)

    • world-transforming movements challenge important assumptions underpinning the social order

    • According to UM scripture, all previous religions provided only partial insight into God's purpose for mankind.

      • For example, Moon's reformulation of Biblical history directly challenged orthodox Christian theology by asserting that Jesus had failed to accomplish his divinely commissioned task of establishing God's heavenly kingdom on earth: uniting humanity and marrying to form the first "Perfect Family."

      • Indeed, although Moon acknowledged Jesus to be a Son of God, he was merely one in a historical series of individuals who had (3) sought, but failed, to restore man to God.

      • Christ thus became a role (rather than a unique personage) to which Moon himself now aspired.

      • These and other UM claims essentially reduced other religions to a status inferior to Moon's UM which alone possessed the unique gnosis necessary for restoring man to God. (4)

  • (2) organizational style,

    • World-transforming movements by definition are pan-institutional in their orientation in that they usually resist the confinement of their activities to any one institutional (4)

    • world-transformation implies a reordering of social priorities and institutional relationship (4)

    • For example, the UM as a religious organization violated the sharp boundaries between church and state

      • by lobbying in Washington to foster anti-communism among federal leaders as part of its own struggle against Godless communism

      • by opposing former President Nixon's removal from office during the Watergate scandal.

      • Further, Moon's vision of a reformed world was essentially that of a socialist theocracy, which would have unified the political, religious and economic institutions. (4)

    • Thus it is not surprising that Moon's vision for reasserting religious primacy provoked a series of governmental investigations probing activities alleged to be inappropriate to the group's religious status or potentially illegal

      • centuries of struggle to reach the delicately balanced accommodation of science and religion, on the one hand, and government and religion, on the other. (4)

  • (3) economic resources

    • The necessities of amassing resources on a large scale, retaining members' full-time commitment to the pursuit of the movement's goals, and segregating them from the corrupting influence of the larger society generally push such movements toward an economic base that draws on the resources of the larger society without implicating members in that economic system (4)

    • Operationally this implies techniques such as selling a highly valued, communally produced commodity or soliciting charitable donations.

    • In either case, only highly ritualized encounters between members and outsiders were permitted, and both techniques were organized in such a way as to reinforce communal solidarity

    • Since its membership for the most part lacked saleable skills or goods, the UM turned to solicitation for accruing financial resources.

      • For a considerable part of at least their early years in the movement, members engaged in continuous "witnessing"/fund-raising activity in areas of heavy human traffic and rapid turnover.

      • This led to charges that the UM was interested solely in building a financial empire for its elite leaders, while masking their pecuniary ambitions under the guise of religion, and that they were exploiting naive individual members' labor and idealism for their own economic and political ends (4)

        • Modern Cult Definition (Power & Money Hungry)

  • (4) recruitment and socialization practices

    • World-transforming movements anticipate imminent, cataclysmic social change as the old order is swept away and replaced by a new and better world.

    • Such movements begin their awesome task with only a small coterie of followers.

      • In order to enlarge rapidly the band of committed followers it is therefore necessary for the movement to recruit members from the larger society which it simultaneously condemns and relies upon for the raw material of the transformative process

      • The combination of imminent change, its cosmic significance and the sharp contrast between the evil of the present world and the purity of the new order makes it imperative that members commit themselves totally to the movement and segregate themselves from the corrupting influence of the larger society (4)

        • Fear about Brainwashing

      • In order to build membership rapidly the UM directed its appeal to that group most receptive to young adults, and utilized recruitment/socialization techniques designed to effect swift "'conversions" and intense commitment. Members resided in communal groups which both offered continuous emotional support and reinforcement and segregated them from all but highly ritualized contact with outsiders, including families (5)

      • For most parents, who did not share either Moon's basic ideological premises or his visionary goals, their offsprings' personal sacrifices were seen as a tragic, pointless waste of their lives. Since for many individuals membership in the UM represented a sharp discontinuity with former lifestyles, parents were suspicious and apprehensive about the techniques used to produce these "apparent" conversions. (5)

• As we shall show, it was precisely these issues which stimulated the formation of the ACM and around which the conflict between the UM and ACM revolved (3)

  • Family. While the UM's pan-institutional orientation had significant implications for changing all institutions, it was the family and religion for which these implications were greatest (5)

  • the UM's theology was directed at creating spiritually perfect families which were to be the building blocks of the heavenly kingdom on earth. It was thus the focus of the communally organized groups referred to by members as "families” (5)

• The "loss" of families' young members to the UM and other religions was experienced at several levels. (5)

  • First, as a world-transforming movement the UM required full-time commitment of its members, necessitating a communal lifestyle and wholesale abandonment of former careers, obligations, and associations, often including the biological family (5)

  • Second, the consuming demands of the UM on members' energies and the revised priority of goals accepted in conversion left little time for frequent or regular communica- tions with families (5)

  • an alien rationale meant that there was little common ground in the content of communications (5)

  • Third, the breach of reciprocity (at least from the parents' perspectives) implicit in the rejection and condemnation of their values and lifestyles contributed to their sense of "loss." (5)

• The social embarrassment of having a child in a strange "cult," the confusion and hurt at being suddenly the object of his (5) or her rejection and even outright scorn, further mixed with his/her well-being, all combined to provide families with powerful motives to locate and restore young family members to their former lifestyle and values (6)

• Despite the fact that many families felt a great sense of threat and outrage toward the movement, they lacked effective recourse within conventional institutional channels (6)

  • No legal rights bc they’re adults

  • No social control bc of UM’s state as a religious group

  • Since individual family units were decentralized, there was no existing organizational structure through which they could act collectively (6)

Dark Religion and Conspiracy Theories

QAnon as a Cult: Supporting Argument

• QAnon displays many traits that align with cultic behavior, primarily in its appeal to archetypal beliefs and moral absolutism. Šolc argues that conspiracy theories like QAnon have quasi-religious functions, serving as replacements for traditional symbols of spirituality. He writes:

• This mirrors how cults give members a clear sense of purpose and an explanation for their struggles.

  • For QAnon adherents, this purpose is rooted in the fight against an alleged global cabal of elites, which they believe they are uniquely equipped to expose.

  • Šolc notes that conspiracy adherents often feel "chosen to see the truth," holding their beliefs with "unshakable faith" and engaging in "defensive selectivity" to reject alternative narratives (p. 24).

• QAnon also fits the mold of a cult in its apocalyptic worldview.

  • The movement anticipates a "Great Awakening" and a "Storm" that will unveil truth and punish perceived enemies.

  • Šolc links this millenarian vision to fundamentalist religion, asserting that conspiracy theories frame "the battle between Good and Evil" and often result in a "righteousness" that validates the group's position as morally superior (p. 24).

  • This rigid dualism aligns with cultic patterns of ideological exclusivity.

QAnon as Not a Cult: Counterargument

• While QAnon exhibits cult-like features, it diverges from traditional definitions of cults, particularly in its decentralized structure and reliance on digital platforms.

• Šolc highlights that conspiracy theories differ from religious movements by being more fragmented and less centralized. He writes:

• Unlike cults with defined hierarchies and leadership (e.g., the Unification Church under Rev. Moon), QAnon lacks a visible, central figure. The anonymity of "Q" and the decentralized nature of the movement mean there is no single authority guiding its adherents, making it less cohesive than a conventional cult.

• Šolc also emphasizes that the appeal of conspiracy theories stems from "existential drive" and a need for security in a complex world (p. 17). This dynamic explains why QAnon spreads virally through social media rather than relying on deliberate recruitment or indoctrination.

• He notes that conspiracy theories function as "quasi-religious, seemingly rational myths" that simplify complex realities, but they do so in ways that are often fluid and adaptable, unlike the fixed dogma of traditional cults (p. 29).

Brainwashing

• Most people find certain actions, such as becoming a member of a fringe political or religious group, both shocking and unexplainable. The Romans believed that only witchcraft could explain why anybody would join such a bizarre cult as Christianity; later, when in power, Christians applied the same rationale to so-called heretics. In later centuries, the theory, which attributed conversion to ‘strange’ religions to witchcraft, became somehow secularized under the scientific name of mesmerism or hypnotism. Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and the more enthusiastic among the Protestant revival movements were among the religions accused of ‘mesmerizing’ converts. For Sigmund Freud (1856– 1939), religion is the attempt to remain at a childish stage fixated on pleasure, rejecting pain and, with it, the real world. The religious illusion, however, does not arise spontaneously. On the contrary, Freud insisted that religion is instilled through manipulatory techniques that fix an individual in a permanent state of infantilism. Around 1920, three members of the innermost circle of Freud’s students, Paul Federn (1871– 1950), Wilhelm Reich (1897– 1957), and Erich Fromm (1900– 1980), extended their teacher’s critique of religious indoctrination methods to conservative politics and national-socialism. For these authors, belief in a totalitarian worldview is the product of a combination of three factors: authoritarian childhood education, the influence of popular culture and religion, and a cunning ideological indoctrination process that relies on this influence to manipulate followers for its own purposes. The debate on how the working classes could be indoctrinated into fascism was crucial for the formation of the Frankfurt School, a fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxism. The Nazi regime persecuted the leaders of the Frankfurt School both because they were political antagonists and because they were Jews; most of them migrated to the United States and continued their research there. After the United States had replaced its anti-Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union with the Cold War, research on indoctrination focused on Communism. Frankfurt School theories on the authoritarian personality were further developed by Erik Homburger Erikson (1902– 94), another Austrian-born psychoanalyst who coined the word ‘totalismo’ (totalism), in order to designate a black-and-white vision of the world divided between ‘us’ and ‘them’. According to Erikson, the unresolved crises of childhood development, coupled to an authoritarian education and ideological manipulation, play a key role in the origin of totalism. American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (1926–) a friend and student of Erikson, published in 1961 Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China, the results of his study of twenty-five Westerners who had been detained in Chinese Communist jails, and of fifteen Chinese who had also undergone ‘thought reform’ processes, although outside of prison. Lifton did not present the Chinese Communist results as infallible, or even magical. Out of the forty subjects he studied, only two retained, after their release, a more favorable attitude toward Chinese Communism than they had before their indoctrination. Lifton also applied the result of his study of Chinese Communist indoctrination to religious ‘cults’, concluding that the roots of conversion to both these religions and Communism are to be found in the interaction of three elements: a ‘philosophical motivation’, a psychological predisposition, and totalitarian manipulation techniques. In addition to Lifton, the work of Edgar H.Schein (1928–) was also influential. A US army psychologist, Schein was sent to Korea in 1953 to examine US prisoners of war who allegedly had been subjected to brainwashing (a word both he and Lifton eventually rejected). Schein concluded that most prisoners had only stated that they believed in Communism, simply in order to survive, without experiencing a ‘genuine’ conversion. Schein’s main work on the topic was published in 1961 under the title Coercive Persuasion, and included Chinese thought reform processes together with Korean POW cases. The book discussed whether ‘coercive persuasion’ as practised in China or (North) Korea, differs from forms of indoctrination that are customarily accepted and practised in the West in schools, prisons, military academies, Catholic convents, the marketing of certain products, and corporate life. For Schein, in fact, the difference revolves around the contents of indoctrination much more than around the method of persuasion. ‘Chinese Communist coercive persuasion’ Schein concluded ‘is not too different a process in its basic structure from coercive persuasion in institutions in our own society which are in the business of changing fundamental beliefs and values’ (Schein et al. 1961:282). Faced with Chinese practices, we claim to disapprove of a method of indoctrination, while in fact what we disapprove of is actually the doctrine inculcated through this method. The word ‘brainwashing’ was coined during CIA efforts to use its own popular version of the totalitarian influence theory for Cold War propaganda, based on the reference to ‘washing clean’ the minds of the citizens in the well-known novel 1984 by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, 1903– 50). Orwell’s fictional account made a deep impression on Edward Hunter (1902– 78), later a CIA agent whose cover job was that of reporter, first with English-language publications in China and later at the Miami Daily News . The expression brainwashing was first used by Hunter in the Miami Daily News on 24 September 1950, and later expanded on in many books. As Schein demonstrated in his 1961 book, ‘brainwashing’ does not translate from any Chinese expression related to thought reform, and Hunter coined it based on his reading of Orwell. For Hunter, there is no defense against brainwashing, and it can change anybody’s ideology. The CIA was aware that it needed scientific justification for theories originally put forth by a simple newspaper reporter. It researched the publications of European psychologists and psychoanalysts, such as Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo (1903– 76) from the Netherlands, and directly supported further research on the subject, inter alia by psychiatrist Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West (1924– 99,) who later served as a link with the anticult movement. Although researchers such as Meerloo tried to be careful, the CIA simply claimed that it had obtained ‘scientific’ confirmation of its propaganda. The CIA also commissioned expensive experiments in anticipation of a possible military and intelligence use of brainwashing, led by Donald Ewen Cameron (1901– 67), a distinguished Montreal psychiatrist. In 1963, however, the CIA ended the controversial project, having concluded that by using the ‘brainwashing’ techniques, it was only possible to create individuals suffering from constant amnesia, who spent most of the day in a state of psycho-motor block, these ‘vegetables’ being thus totally useless for espionage or counterespionage purposes. Indeed, it might be possible to ‘wash’ the brain until it loses its ‘color’ and becomes ‘white’, but it is not possible to ‘recolor’ it with new ideas contrary to the previous ones. English psychiatrist William Walters Sargant (1907– 88) first applied brainwashing models to religion in his 1957 book The Battle for the Mind . According to Sargant, the leading precursor of modern brainwashing techniques was John Wesley (1703– 91), the founder of Methodism. Sargant also offered other examples from both Catholic and Protestant preachers. He was interested in religious conversion in general, rather than in differentiating between mainline religions and ‘cults’. In the late 1960s, however, the Anti-Cult Movement quickly adopted brainwashing as a convenient explanation of why apparently normal young Americans were joining ‘bizarre’ cults. Prominent in this campaign was Margaret Thaler Singer, a clinical psychologist who had collaborated with Schein, and was adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She often appeared in court cases and, in a sense, invented a new profession as a psychologist in the service, for several years almost full-time, of anti-cult lawsuits and initiatives. Based on the brainwashing arguments, private vigilantes started kidnapping adult members of NRMs on behalf of their families, and subjected them to a sort of ‘counter-brainwashing’ technique which they called Deprogramming . The largest organization of the American anti-cult movement, the Cult Awareness Network, was often accused of referring families to deprogrammers, although courts were initially comparatively tolerant of the practice. A frequent counter-expert (in the opposite camp of Singer’s) in US court cases, forensic psychiatrist and NRM scholar Dick Anthony, persuasively demonstrated that while Singer claimed to apply to ‘cults’ the controversial but scholarly Lifton and Schein theories of totalitarian influence, she was in fact using the discredited CIA ‘robot’ model of brainwashing. Anthony was joined by the large majority of NRMs scholars, including Eileen Barker, who in 1984 offered an influential critique of brainwashing theories with respect to the Unification Church (see Unification Church/Moonies ) in her book The Making of a Moonie . Criticism of the brainwashing model was also offered by the American Sociological Association and the American Psychological Association (APA). In 1983, APA accepted Singer’s proposal of forming a task force, DIM-PAC (Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control) for the pur-pose of assessing the scientific status of these theories. On 11 May 1987 the BSERP (Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology) of the APA, issued a Memorandum rejecting the DIMPAC report on the grounds that it ‘lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur’. This rejection, and scholarly criticism in general, even-tually reversed the trend in US courts. The decisive battle between the two camps took place in the US District Court for the Northern District of Cali-fornia in 1990, in the Fishman case, where a defendant in a fraud case offered as a defense that at the relevant time he had been subjected to Scientol-ogy ‘brainwashing’ (although Scientology had nothing whatsoever to do with Fishman’s fraudulent activities). On 13 April 1990, Judge D.Lowell Jensen rejected the testimony of Singer and anti-cult sociologist Richard Ofshe from the case, quoting the APA position and Anthony’s research. Jensen concluded that, while Margaret Singer claimed to derive her brainwashing theory from Lifton and Schein, in truth she was much closer to the non-scientific CIA and Hunter theories. Although some later decisions devia-ted in varying degrees from it, so that the Fishman ruling did not spell out once and for all the death of the brain-washing theory, an important precedent (still relevant today) had been set in the United States that later triggered a chain of events which led to the end of deprogramming and even of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Caught red-handed in the act of referring a family to deprogrammers, CAN was sentenced to such a heavy fine that it was forced to file for bankruptcy. In 1996, the court-appointed trustee-inbankruptcy sold by auction CAN’s files, its name and its logo to a coalition of religious liberty activists led by Church of Scientology members. Whilst in US courts the brainwashing theory lost its momentum in the 1990s, the suicides and homicides of the Solar Temple in 1994– 5 gave it new impetus in Europe, where it influenced parliamentary reports (largely unaware of the complicated history of the US controversy) and even resulted in a controversial amendment to the French criminal code in 2001. In North America, a vocal minority of scholars who supported the anti-cult movement to varying degrees, including sociologists Stephen Kent and Benjamin Zablocki, tried to create a new respectability for the word ‘brainwashing’ by referring it not to conversion, but to difficulties created by NRMs for those wishing to leave them, by means of maximizing their exit costs. Although only a handful of academics accepted these theories, brainwashing explanations remain popular in some European political milieus and among the media, while acquiring a new currency to explain suicide terrorism in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001.