You can’t argue someone out of a cult. Once they’re fully committed, you can’t pull them back.
Most cults are religious, but many are political too, as we’re seeing more clearly in our own time and across the world.
Followers are trained never to doubt the leader. To question him is a sin, because he can never be wrong. If anyone points out an error, the follower sees it not as a correction but as an attack, and they push back with rabid zeal.
They are told to hear only the leader’s voice. Every other source is poison.
They are taught to reject all evidence that challenges the faith. No matter how clear the proof, it’s dismissed as fake. If the facts can’t be denied, then the facts themselves are folded into a conspiracy. Outsiders are liars by definition, unless they echo the leader.
When the leader contradicts himself, the faithful ignore it. If it can’t be ignored, then the contradiction is a stroke of genius, a clever tactic against enemies. Logic collapses under devotion, and pointing out the absurdity only hardens belief.
Those who oppose the leader are not rivals but monsters who are less than human. And if they’re not human, then no crime is too great against them.
Laws don’t restrain the leader. He is above them. But those outside must obey the laws as he defines them.
Once someone has surrendered their mind, reaching them is nearly impossible. Their entire self becomes fused with the belief and the leader. Their identity dissolves. All that remains is loyalty.
Sometimes cults implode. The leader dies, and the center cannot hold. Sometimes members choose death together, or lash out in violence and meet their end. The wreckage always pulls in innocent people, shattered lives, and shattered families.
Modern history is full of examples. In 1997, thirty-nine Heaven’s Gate members killed themselves under their leader’s orders. In 1993, more than seventy Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, died in fire and gun battles. In 1978, over nine hundred followers of Jim Jones died in Jonestown, Guyana, in one of history’s darkest chapters. Go further back, and you find smaller sects collapsing after their leaders were unmasked or died, leaving grief and ruin in their wake.
In the 1970s and 80s, “deprogrammers” offered a crude fix: kidnapping cult members and trying to break them through intimidation. Families paid thousands for these interventions. Most failed. And many so-called rescuers were exposed as profiteers. Ted Patrick, the most famous, was arrested and convicted for kidnapping. Others, like Galen Kelly, faced lawsuits and charges after botched jobs that left victims scarred for the rest of their lives.
The only real chance to save someone is before they’re swallowed whole. Once they sink too deep, they can only escape by their own will and effort. And that’s a miracle that almost never happens.