Divide and Conquer

Comment now » // April 2nd, 2010

A while back I wrote this post about one of the ways cult leaders undermine the relationships between the people that follow them. Cult leaders and other abusers always make a point of ensuring that their followers mistrust everyone but the leader. It’s a genius move because it keeps cult followers in the position of having emotional ties to just the cult leader – therefore, it is extremely difficult to leave the cult and the cult leader.

CNN has recently been doing a several-part investigation of The Church of Scientology and has interviewed several ex-members who were very high up in the church who are speaking out about their experience and the abuse they encountered there. (You can watch one of the more recent segments here.)

While watching the segments on CNN I was struck by the fact that Scientology has a term, a label, for behaviour I’d seen my cult leader exhibit that ensured that those in the cult were not only divided against one another, but were cut off from those outside the cult. In Scientology, anyone who speaks against the church is called a “Suppressive” and those who are in the church are encouraged not to have any contact with these people. If your daughter, son, mother, father leaves the church and speaks out against its practices they are given this label and you, as a faithful Scientologist, are required not to have any contact with that person.

From personal experience with cults I can tell you that this type of coercion goes a long way toward creating the environment of “Us vs. Them” that psychologists and sociologists agree is necessary to control a group of people. I can also say that my experience with this type of behaviour had a heartbreaking affect on my life that lingers to this day.

Before I left the cult I was involved with, I was dating someone in the cult that I loved very much. Eventually, our cult leader realized she couldn’t have my lover’s loyalty divided between her and me. She made him choose between serving her (she told us she spoke for God) and loving me. He chose God.

But because my boyfriend and I loved each other so much and had such a strong connection to one another, the cult leader had to go one step further to ensure his loyalty to her. So she further convinced him that if he had any contact with me, if he tried to “help” me get closer to the “God” the cult leader was speaking for, that he would be damaging any chances I had for redemption. In other words, if he helped me he’d be hurting me. Naturally, because this man loved me, he didn’t want me to be forever trapped in the darkness that his guru had convinced him I was flirting with, so he broke all ties with me. Though both our hearts were broken by being instructed by “God” to end our relationship, he believed that by staying away from me he was actually helping me to find spiritual redemption.

Is that diabolical genius on the part of the cult leader or what?

To this day, more than ten years later, I think back to that time and marvel with deep regret at our cult leader’s manipulative brilliance. She deserves a PhD in coercion.