3 Things Never to Say to Someone Involved With a Cult
A follower entrenched in cultish ideology will not respond well to these phrases
“My brother got caught up with QAnon, and now he won’t speak to me.”
“My best friend is obsessed with this sketchy New Age guru, and I don’t know how to talk to her anymore.”
“I think my dad is in a cult. How do I convince him to leave?”
These are some of the most frequently asked questions folks have posed to me, ever since I started researching the social science of cult influence. Partly inspired by my father’s childhood in a notorious cult called Synanon, I’ve spent the past two years writing a book about the language of cults: how cultish leaders — from notorious villains like Jim Jones to more quotidien figures like CEOs, SoulCycle master instructors, and scammy spiritual influencers — use a systematic pattern of language techniques to condition and coerce their followers. (The book is called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, and it comes out in June.)
Equally important is the conversation about how we as a society talk about cults and their believers. What I’ve learned after interviewing scores of sociologists and psychologists, religion scholars, and cult survivors themselves is that cultish influence isn’t…
