Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to be speaking with Amanda Montell, who's a linguist,
also author of the book Cultish The Language of Fanaticism and co-host of
the podcast Sounds like a cult. Amanda, great having you on. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: So we've talked with cult experts sort
of in the context of whether some of the followers of former President Trump are a cult. We've talked
with cult experts about sort of like what pulls people into cults and how can you get people out
of cults and the concept of like a deprogramming. And one of the things that always happens when we
talk about it is I get emails from people saying only certain people are susceptible to cults only.
It would never happen to me, which may be true, but there's this idea that there's something
specific and some people just like they can't be hypnotized.
They would never be susceptible to a cult. Is that true? Is there something about the types
of people that would even fall prey to cults? Speaker 3: Sure. Well, I was absolutely one
of those people who thought I would never fall prey to a cult. I grew up with a cult survivor
in the family. My dad was forced to join a cult consonant on when he was a teenager. My parents,
a research scientist. I grew up in a home of skepticism and independent thinking. I thought,
never would I join a fanatical fringe group or fall prey to the charms of a charismatic guru.
But then, very quickly, after researching this book, I found that the mythology surrounding
the type of person who would join a cult, a word that really has no hard and fast, fast definition.
Those stereotypes aren't exactly true. We tend to think of the sort of person who would wind
up in a cult like Heaven's Gate or the People's Temple, a.k.a. Jonestown, as someone desperate
and disturbed intellectually deficient. But first of all, why would a cult want someone like that?
Why would they want someone who's liable to break down quickly? They want someone with
an overabundance of idealism and with resources and privileges and connections and stars in their
eyes. Someone who believes that solutions to the world's most urgent problems are able to be found,
and by affiliating with this group that they can be a part of that change. They want people who
are going to quit after things invariably turn sour quite soon. So. Yeah, the cult survivors
that I spoke to survivors of everything from Jonestown to SoulCycle, they didn't fit
this mold of the desperate cult follower. They were actually quite wise and service oriented.
Speaker 1: You mentioned SoulCycle, which I think is interesting. Are cults necessarily
bad in the sense of, I mean, some people might say, like the Peloton world is sort of cultish.
CrossFit is another one, SoulCycle, et cetera. Are cults necessarily bad?
Speaker 3: Sure. Well, this is why I decided to title the book cultish, and it's why I
often hedge my language when I talk about this wide spectrum of cultish, cult like cultish
groups. Our reputation that or the reputation that cults have as inherently sinister and nefarious,
is in large part shaped by the media coverage of major cult tragedies like Jonestown and the Manson
family murders before those events. The word cult was not really on the mainstream cultural radar,
and in fact, the earliest forms of this word didn't even have really negative meanings at all.
The word evolved over time, exactly line in line with how our culture evolved. So at this point,
the word cult can really be used depending on the context to refer to everything from
a group as deadly and destructive as Q and on to a widely followed wellness brand or SoulCycle.
And that really reflects something about how fraught our cultures relationship
is with ideas of community and spirituality and identity and meaning. But the definition
of the word cult has so much to do with cultural normative. What separates a cult from a religion
from another kind of socially accepted group that all cults that have been called cults or could be
called cults are inherently criminal or dangerous. So the word cult isn't really enough to identify
what particular dangers are on the table. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it might
be interesting to hear a little more about evaluating maybe the parameters, you know,
thinking back to the 2020 Democratic primary. I commented on there seems to be
kind of a cult ish thing happening around Andrew Yang, for example,
who I like and is going to be on this show next week. I was a supporter of Bernie Sanders,
but there was some cultish ness. If you looked on Reddit and Twitter around Bernie, certainly around
this candidate named Tulsi Gabbard, who you may or may not be familiar with, how can what are the
parameters we should sort of be looking at? Speaker 3: Sure. Well, in some contexts,
certainly in this one, I don't find this always useful to strive to identify, Oh,
this is definitively a cult, and thus it is wildly dangerous. But right? Yes, it's good
to be aware of certain red flags, if you will, that can signify that something is cultish. And in
the book, I outline what these. And flags sounds like rather than what they look like, cult imagery
often involves shaved heads and long robes, and sometimes a cold is actually a bunch of people in
T-shirts or leggings or, you know, it doesn't look like the cult we've been conditioned to see.
So I outlined many of these linguistic red flags in the book,
and these can include super emotionally charged us versus them labels when everybody inside the
group is uplifted with terminology that love bombs them, if you will, that makes them feel special
and elite. While there are these super loaded terms that lambaste everybody on the outside as
fundamentally inferior and a super black and white way, even just the creation of a ton
of specialized terminology can be a sign that something cultish is going on here. We all love
the feeling of speaking a secret language, you know, like pig Latin on the playground who didn't
love learning that and being able to talk in a way that other kids couldn't understand. It makes us
feel like we're putting on a uniform, if you will, like we're doing something right, even if we're
not saying anything that can't be said in plain English, even if we don't ourselves understand
what we're saying exactly or couldn't define it for an outsider, that specialized terminology
encourages conformity, in some cases discourages independent thinking. And then there's this phrase
that once you will understand that, you won't be able to hear it. That is often used in cultish
groups. It's called a thought terminating cliche. It's a linguistic technique that all cultish
leaders from Jim Jones to Jeff Bezos use, and it describes a sort of stark expression that's
easily memorized, easily repeated and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning.
So thought terminating cliches also show up in our everyday lives in the form of things like,
Well, it is what it is, or it's all in God's plan. Boys will be boys in Q and on. It might sound like
trust the plan or, well, I did my research. Close research to a Q and order doesn't involve peer
reviewed studies, but those are some examples. Speaker 1: I, as I'm hearing you lay this out.
My mind just can't get away from Jordan Peterson. And I, you know, one of the I'm curious about
another aspect, which is whenever I've I've made criticisms of Jordan Peterson in the past,
a lot of the emails I get are I am not accurately criticizing what he really is saying that that
actually I'm I'm only criticizing what I wrongly believe him to be saying and that there really is
no true criticism because what he's saying is different than what I'm saying, which is sort
of indefensible, like if I can never if you're always going to tell me I'm misunderstanding
what he's saying, but you're actually saying sometimes the difficulty of understanding what's
being said is a feature and not a bug, right? Speaker 3: Absolutely. To use sort of circular
language, misleading euphemisms that can be really disorienting. I would venture to think that some
of his followers are confused some of the time, but they just have this sort of unquestioned
worshiping of him. And yeah, that completely sounds like a form of a thought terminating
cliche. It sounds not unlike when New Agers or Keith Ranieri of those were familiar with
Nexium would dismiss a valid doubt or concern as a limiting belief. Oh, that's just your
mind limiting you from being able to understand. Speaker 1: Yeah, or that's a suppressive thought
from the Church of Scientology, or there's a lot of analogies to that. So, yes, in the world of
changing people's minds, there's this idea that just giving people facts doesn't get them to
change their minds. It often kind of makes them plant their their feet in the sand or dig their
head in the sand, whatever metaphor analogy you want to use. Yeah. What? When it comes to
getting someone out of a cult, particularly the more serious ones that are more dangerous,
I guess we would say what? What works and what doesn't work, it seems just saying you're in
a cult is not likely to be very effective. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So I'm not a d programmer
or a mental health counselor. This isn't my expertize actually like shaking people and
snapping them out of it. Yeah, but yes, from talking to so many experts, what I can more
easily say is what's not effective. As tempting as it is to look someone in the eye and tell them,
you're going to cults, you're brainwashed. Those things are not effective. That just works to
alienate that person because of course, they think that you're in a cult and you're brainwashed.
Brainwashed is also really nothing but a metaphor and is a term that's often used as
a thought turning cliche that sells, sometimes just to write off someone as hopeless and mind
controlled. So as tempting as it is to use phrases like that, they're not super effective. And also,
if you're talking to like a Q and on her own anti-vax or a spiritualist, if folks
are familiar with that term, the portmanteau of conspiracy theory and spirituality, if you try to
unpack their logic by citing some of these more peer-reviewed studies or
studies. From an institution that they've been led to believe is fundamentally flawed or controlled
by this evil cabal of elites, they're going to feel fundamentally misunderstood by you.
So if it feels like safe and healthy for you to keep this person in your life, I would say
you have as much or as little of an outside influence on them as you can just by existing.
Maybe use the Socratic method to poke holes in their logic via questions. Yep, but in the end,
like facts don't change people's minds. And so you just have to hope that they'll come to reality
on their own and eventually come safely home. Speaker 1: In terms of the motivation or what
can be appealing about being in cults or cultish groups, when we think about conspiracy theories,
it seems one of the things that's often appealing to people is that the conspiracy theory is
a simpler explanation that often points to more control over what happens in our lives,
rather than less where like, if there's random, unpredictable, horrible events
that can be a lot scarier than someone planned this thing. And it's just like,
this is the person that did it and we knew it was going to happen. They knew it was going to happen.
It's just that's what it is. Is there an aspect of that that applies to the attractiveness of cults?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, cult and conspiracy theories really go hand in hand because they
create that us versus them binary, and they do a lot of simplifying of logic and rhetoric.
But absolutely, I mean, cultish ness and conspiratorial belief. These things tend
to spike during times of cultural turbulence and turmoil. That's what we saw in the 60s
and 70s with the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassinations,
people were feeling sort of existentially high and dry. And the reason why the United States,
even though it's a developed country, is so religious compared to other nations that have high
life expectancies and high education levels, is in part because we have so few safety net social
safety nets that are there to catch us. When we get sick or lose our jobs, we're left feeling
very much all on our own in this culture. And so we end up mistrusting mainstream institutions and
turning toward alternative groups for closure and answers and security. And some of those groups are
relatively harmless or even positive, but there are a lot of people who are willing to step in
and take advantage of people's vulnerabilities. Speaker 1: That's interesting. And so the it
seems that a lot of the same emotional circumstances and economic circumstances
that we talk about in connection with so many different aspects of society
point in this in this very same direction, it goes back to some of that
underlying structure, so to speak. Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. I mean,
there's a reason why the United States and cultish ness tend to have this pretty
consistent relationship we always have. Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
The book is cultish the language of fanaticism. We've been speaking with author of the book,
Amanda Montell, who also co-hosts the podcast. Sounds like a cult. Amanda, really a pleasure
having you on. I appreciate your time today. Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. Thank you so
much for having me.