Cultish

Book Reviews

Jul 15

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
By: Amanda Montell

[Nominated for ‘Best Nonfiction’ category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]

“With a glimmer of willingness, language can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.”

When I saw this book I knew I had to read it. It’s becoming more and more clear to me how powerful language is. I was very curious to see how Montell handled this connection between language and cults.

I found this book to be thought-provoking and interesting. Plus I enjoyed her tongue-in-cheek talking about MLMs and health/wellness groups to be cultish.

She makes this perceptive remark:

“The reason millions of us binge cult documentaries or go down rabbit holes researching groups from Jonestown to QAnon is not that there’s some twisted voyeur inside us all that’s inexplicably attracted to darkness… We’re scanning for threats, on some level wondering, Is everyone susceptible to cultish influence? Could it happen to you? Could it happen to me? And if so, how?”

I think that’s true. When anything tragic happens we can’t help but think through how we avoid those situations and tell ourselves those things won’t happen to us.

I watched most of Leah Remini’s documentary exposing the goings-on of Scientology and was just flabbergasted by how people could get sucked into something so ridiculous. You wonder the same thing about Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate.

Well Montell puts forth a very important premise:

“What techniques do charismatic leaders use to exploit people’s fundamental needs for community and meaning? How do they cultivate that kind of power?..The real answer comes down to words. Delivery. From the crafty redefinition of existing words (and the invention of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, forced silence, even hashtags, language is the key means by which all degrees of cult-like influence occur.”

Montell’s background gives her a unique position to critique the power of language in ‘cultish’ groups. Her dad was brought into a cult called Synanon at a young age by his parents. He later escaped at the age of 17 and went on to become “a prolific neuroscientist.” She has grown up hearing the stories of what her dad went through and what helped him to leave.

What is a cult?

The tricky part about this book is the definition of cult. It has increasingly become used in a broad way.

People tend to throw around the word ‘cult’ to describe any group of people or organization they don’t like. If someone calls something a cult, when we hear or read it, we automatically know what to think about that group, whether it’s true or not.

We also have the more positive association of cult when we think of ‘cult-following’ and the marketing strategy companies use to brand themselves and create loyalty among their followers.

“A few scholars have tried to get more precise and identify ‘cult’ criteria: charismatic leaders, mind-altering behaviors, sexual and financial exploitation, an us-vs-them mentality toward nonmembers, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.”

Stephen Kent identifies “a power imbalance built on members’ devotion, hero worship, and absolute trust, which frequently facilitates abuse on the part of unaccountable leaders. The glue that keeps this trust intact is members’ belief that their leaders have a rare access to transcendent wisdom, which allows them to exercise control over their systems of rewards and punishments, both here on earth and in the afterlife.”

Even with criteria like this, it’s hard to identify when a community of people or a leadership team is destructive or just ‘not our cup of tea.’

Some of the groups Montell talks about are: Jonestown (People’s Temple), Heaven’s Gate, L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), Teal Swan, Synanon, Moonies, NXIVM, The Way International, The Children of God, MLMs (Optavia, LuLaRoe, Mary and Martha, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Amway), QAnon, Crossfit, and SoulCycle

The name of the book is ‘Cultish.’ So she’s not actually calling Crossfit and Tupperware cults but she’s identifying cultish methods of communicating with members. Language that manipulates people or envokes a certain behavior or loyalty.

Why does any of this matter?

Whether a group is an actual cult or just cultish, it’s hard to know when anyone should step in and call it or if we just let people make their own choices.

But Montell makes an important observation about our current culture and the increase of cultish groups. We are lonely people.

“It’s really no coincidence that ‘cults’ are having a proverbial moment.. [groups] who promise to provide answers that the conventional ones couldn’t supply seem freshly appealing. Add the development of social media and declining marriage rates, and culture-wide feelings of isolation are at an all-time high. Civic engagement is at a record-breaking low. Loneliness is an epidemic.”

Harvard researcher Robert Putnam found that “if you belong to no groups but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying the next year in half.”

I’m just going to point out the ‘declining marriage rates’ part. The institution of marriage is deteriorating. The more God is removed from society the less sense marriage makes. But that is not without consequences. There is a reason God designed marriage for people. I hadn’t realized that one of those protections of marriage is less susceptibility to cults so that’s a plus!

Interestingly, Montell says,

“All kinds of research points to the idea that humans are social and spiritual by design.”

To this I say- Yes! While she believes in an evolutionary origin to this conclusion, it seems obvious to me that it is God’s design. He created us to be in relationship with each other and with Him. We are not made for this world. The Bible says God has put eternity in our hearts.

So if they aren’t connecting with God, humans will try to fill that void with something else. We all seek our meaning and purpose. We want to know our worth, that who we are and what we do matters.

If there is a community that provides that meaning and purpose and makes a person feel worthy, a person will do a lot to keep that community.

Montell makes a compelling case for how specific language creates a bond for people. Having terminology other people don’t understand makes people feel like they’re part of something special and important. They’re part of the ‘inner-circle.’

Of course, to some degree jargon is common and necessary for a lot of jobs/situations and doesn’t automatically mean people are being manipulated. But Montell’s point in this book is for people to be aware of language and willing to evaluate how words and phrases are affecting us.

The Missing Cult

Of all the cultish groups Montell mentions, she is missing a very big one.

The Woke Left.

I’m not trying to turn this into political division. Her book is valuable for a lot of reasons but I just couldn’t help but notice a blindspot that has become quite pervasive.

One thing that made me very interested in this book is that I’ve noticed ways language has changed for the overall American population.

Based on her many jabs at Trump in this book and her self-proclaimed feminism, I can make an educated guess on her politics. And ironically, I wonder if she has failed to see the cultish behavior we’re seeing in the mainstream right now.

One of the criteria of cults that Montell regularly refers to in her book is the ‘us vs them mentality’. Hero worship. Redefining words. Buzzwords. Hashtags. All of these have been employed by the woke agenda to control the narrative around several hot topics.

This is intentional and goes largely unnoticed. People want to be part of something important or at least not associated with what’s ‘bad.’ So we adapt our language to fit the ‘us’ and avoid the ‘them.’

Intersectionality has become the ‘best way’ to identify people. But by nature it separates people into ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’ groups. Us vs them respectively.

There has been a push to view certain words as acts of violence. This is redefining what words mean and forcing people to live by them.

Much of this is covered in Johnathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s fantastic book The Coddling of the American Mind. They look at UC Berkeley— where free speech began— and how students are trying to shut down speech and justifying violence to do it.

Our cancel culture attests to the ‘punishment’ of members who do not use the right language.

Rod Dreher, in his book Live Not by Lies, compiles thoughts from people he interviewed who live in the US now but lived in Communist countries prior. People who have lived under communist regimes recognize some tactics happening now that were precursors they experienced to communism. One of those is reinvention and control of language.

“What unnerves those who lived under Soviet communism is this similarity: Elites and elite institutions are abandoning old-fashioned liberalism, based in defending the rights of the individual, and replacing it with a progressive creed that regards justice in terms of groups. It encourages people to identify with groups—ethnic, sexual, and otherwise—and to think of Good and Evil as a matter of power dynamics among the groups. A utopian vision drives these progressives, one that compels them to seek to rewrite history and reinvent language to reflect their ideals of social justice. Further, these utopian progressives are constantly changing the standards of thought, speech, and behavior.”

As he says, “language creates reality.”

In their enlightening book, Cynical Theories, the authors identify ‘the power of language’ as one of the main tenets of critical theory. Postmodernists viewed language as “dangerous and unreliable.” Throughout their book they reveal ways that critical theorists have attempted to control or deconstruct language and to perpetuate an us vs them reality.

I think we can also see the use of language in terms of the Covid pandemic and how people handled vaccines and mask mandates. The language surrounding these topics was so morally charged that to disagree or to choose not to get vaccinated or masked was equated to wanting people to die. I think a lot of people who resisted these things were tuning into the language of it and recognized red flags. Maybe they weren’t even against vaccines or masks but were countering the cultish rhetoric propping up the strong and morally charged ‘recommendations’ and attempts to control people’s actions and beliefs.

I think that Montell has made some excellent observations in her book. And we would do well to heed her advice:

“In every corner of life, business and otherwise, when you can tell deep down that something is ethically wrong but are having trouble pinpointing why, language is a good place to look for evidence.”

I know ‘woke left’ is a buzzword and is probably not the most helpful term to use if I hope people will read this entire sentence instead of giving me a big thumbs down and assuming all kinds of things about my personality and my beliefs, but it’s hard to deny that being ‘woke’ or politically and socially correct these days requires a specific language and definitions of terms.

In light of Montell’s book, it’s at least worth thinking about.

Some Interesting Things

Montell was speculating on why people are susceptible to joining cultish groups. We talked about loneliness. But she also talked about the paralysis of decision making. The younger generations have been told they can do whatever they want and be whoever they want. Montell ventures that the endless possibilities and “pressure to craft a strong ‘personal brand’” causes many people to feel lost. It is then appealing to them to be part of a group where someone will tell them what to do, think, say, believe.
Her thoughts on brainwashing were new to me. She posits that the term ‘brainwashing’ isn’t really a thing. “If brainwashing were real we would expect to see many more dangerous people running around, planning to carry out reprehensible schemes.” We can always make our own choices. We may be conditioned to think or act a certain way but we aren’t actually brainwashed and unable to think for ourselves.
Megan Goodwin says, “The political ramifications of identifying something as a cult are real and often violent.” I never really thought about this before. But Montell gave the example of the Waco fiasco when the FBI got into a standoff with the Branch Davidians and handled it poorly— many were killed. But because it was called a cult, people’s reaction to it was entirely different than if it were a church group that received government protection. The public dismissed the tragedy, essentially with the attitude that the people deserved it. Do I want groups like Scientology and Heaven’s Gate to have government protection? No. But it is a complicated thing to think about. When we call a group a cult, we dehumanize the people in our minds. And more often than not, it’s the leaders that are doing the ‘bad things.’ How do we balance wanting to stop cults from manipulating and hurting people but still show compassion. Can we still use the word cult?
[Side note to this comment: She seems to propose we stop calling groups cults but then proceeds to call groups cults for the rest of the book so I’m not sure what her final stance on this is.]
She talks about the loaded language cults use but also their use of thought-terminating cliches. "Catchphrases aimed at halting an argument from moving forward by discouraging critical thought… Expressions like ‘It is what it is,’ ‘It’s the media’s fault,’ ‘Everything happens for a reason,’… ‘Truth is a construct,’ ‘I hold space for multiple realities,’… You can’t engage in a dialogue with someone [like that]… These pithy mottos are effective because they alleviate cognitive dissonance…” If you want more examples of this, just read Facebook comment threads. People have these phrases they use that just prevent any intelligent dialogue. It shuts down conversation because you can’t reason with them. And it’s frustrating because they think it's a ‘mic drop’ moment but really it’s just avoiding talking about the evidence. It “squelches independent thinking.”
“Language doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to. Language…reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.” This was interesting for me to think about. I partially agree, but I think something important to consider is gradual transition. Someone may end up believing something that five years ago they would have said was ridiculous, but I would guess there were several smaller steps in between, not one giant leap from this belief to that belief because that would cause too much dissonance. It’s like the Milgram experiement or Hitler’s strategy to turn people against Jews. Small seemingly harmless steps until the end point is miles away from where you began.
Behavioral Economic Theory: “Irrationally, we tend to stay in negative situations, from crappy relationships to lousy investments to cults, telling ourselves that a win is just around the corner, so we don’t have to admit to ourselves that things just didn’t work out and we should cut our losses. It’s an emotional example of the sunk cost fallacy, or people’s tendency to think that resources already spent justify spending more. We’ve been in it this long, we might as well keep going.” I do this regularly with food that I buy that I don’t like. But I already spent the money on it so I’ll keep eating it. Ugh. Why do I do that?
It’s not dumb people that are the most susceptible to cults. I tend to tell myself- I’m too smart for that to happen to me. But actually smart people are not immune from manipulation. “Studies show that American test subjects with the lowest education levels have a higher probability of subscribing to certain paranormal beliefs, like haunted houses, Satanic possession, and UFO landings; but it’s test subjects with the most education who are likeliest to believe in New Age ideas, like the power of the mind to heal disease.” I thought this quote was funny: “'It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says Michael Shermer, it’s that smart people are better at ‘defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.’”

Protestant Christianity

I debated putting this section in here because she wasn’t really trying to argue for Christianity being a cult. She does mention certain terms found in churches that are a bit like ‘insider language’ and I can see that. Most people don’t use the word ‘sin’ or ‘propitiation’ or ‘in the Word’ regularly.

And I, too, question the emphasis and use of speaking in tongues.

She also rightly points out the dangers of the prosperity gospel which unfortunately finds its way into Protestant churches. However the basis for that is not a right reading of Scripture. Churches who preach the prosperity gospel are cultish and leading people astray. And yes, they’re doing it with their language.

It’s the language of God rewards obedience and faith with health and wealth. If you try hard enough and believe enough and pray enough, you will have everything you could ever want. The perfect life. If you experience suffering, it’s something you did that you need to rectify. Rachel Hollis preaches this message in her book Girl, Wash Your Face.

It’s indeed a dangerous message that is powered by words. People like to be in control of their lives. People like to be able to measure their success and worth. We are attracted to ideologies that puts us in the driver’s seat. But that’s not freedom and it doesn’t lead to success and feelings of worth. Because it’s not the message of the Bible.

There is no grace in the prosperity gospel. If you want to read more about that, check out this article and the resources connected to it.

So, yes there are critiques to be made of everyone. But I also must point out a few claims she makes about Protestants that I’m not sure are accurate or portrayed correctly.

She says,

“Religion has been intertwined with MLMs—and with American labor culture in general—since before the United States even existed. The marriage of godly blessings and monetary “blessings” go back half a millennium to the Protestant Reformation… French theologian John Calvin, conceived of the idea that God plays a role not just in human beings’ spiritual successes and failures but also in our financial ones. This helped create the “Protestant Ethic” marked by diligent work, individual effort, and accumulation of wealth, which aligned perfectly with Europe’s emerging capitalist economy.”

“The language of Protestant capitalism is everywhere…”

I have not studied capitalism. Maybe there is a connection to capitalism and Protestants, I don’t know. But this paragraph is surrounded by talk of the prosperity gospel as if she is tracing it back to John Calvin. There is no way John Calvin was preaching the prosperity gospel. There is actually even some dispute about Calvin’s view/support of capitalism. This article might be a good resource to study more if you’re interested. These quotes seemed a little exaggerated to me.

She also says,

“It’s also undeniable that American workout culture carries a strong Protestant charge of its own. Just look at the general vocabulary we use to talk about fitness: cleanse, detox, purify, obedience, discipline, perfection.”

Firstly, detox is not a biblical word haha. Secondly, we have to ask, did Protestants influence the workout culture with their language or did American workout culture take terminology from Protestant religion? I think we can critique the language that workout culture uses, yes, but I don’t know if we can call it ‘a strong Protestant charge’…

Lastly, she says,

“There’s a religious power in quotegrams that far predates social media. Our love of a pithy adage in square form is connected to… the Protestant Reformation, when there was a big shift in focus away from religious imagery. “There was an increasing discomfort with the ambiguity you get from images. So a Protestant valuing of the Bible made it a much more text-based religion.” Dr. Marika Rose. Ever since, our culture has looked to snack-size proverbs for guidance and gospel, convinced that when it comes to written quotes, what you read is what you get.”

I think it’s weird that she’s trying to connect the fact that people love to share pithy Pinteresty quotes because Protestants ‘shifted away from religious imagery’ and became a ‘more text-based religion.’ This doesn’t seem like a logical connection to me. Christianity has always been a text-based religion because it’s always acknowledged that the Bible is the very words of God. So yeah, they’re more important than the stained glass windows in the Vatican. I’m not sure we can point to that and say, and thus we shall share pretty little quotes that we believe are guiding our lives.

Is it worth wondering why people love to share those little quotes and believe they’re all honest and accurate? Yes, I wonder that myself. But her explanation for this doesn’t make sense to me. But at this point I’m wondering if she took a class called ‘How the Protestant Reformation has Infiltrated Every Aspect of our Lives’ in her research for this book.

Anyway, these comments were not the main drive of her book but if you’ve read any of my other book reviews, you know that I don’t usually let these things slide. Consistency, folks!

Conclusion

I think this is an important book. It’s hard to detect problems with language. We use it so much we often don’t realize that we’ve changed our terminology.

Montell does a compelling job of exposing the dangers of loaded language, reinvention of words, thought terminating phrases, and us vs them rhetoric. She reveals it in actual cults and also, less seriously, in places like MLMs and fitness groups.

She makes some comments or observations that I don’t agree with or have to roll my eyes a bit, but the overall message of her book is one I agree with.

One might come away from this wondering if we’re just supposed to avoid being part of groups of any kind if we’re so at risk of manipulation and cultish communication.

But no. We’ve already established our need for community and belonging.

She concludes with this:

“I don’t think the world would benefit from us all refusing to believe or participate in things. Too much wariness spoils the most enchanting parts of being human. If everyone feared the alternative to the point that they never took even small leaps of faith for the sake of connection and meaning, how lonely would that be?”

If you finish this book and decide to never join a group again, you’ve missed the point.

We just need to be more aware of language. We need to stay in tune with our logic, independent and critical thinking, and be willing to hold our beliefs up to scrutiny.

Here are two good pieces of advice she offers:

“If a form of language cues you to have an instant emotional response while also halting you from asking further questions, or makes you feel “chosen” just for showing up, or allows you to morally divorce yourself from some one-dimensionally inferior other, it’s language worth challenging.”

“When you’re experimenting with faith and belief, there has to be room to ask questions, express your misgivings, and seek outside information, both early in and deep into your membership. ‘The most important thing to remember is that if something is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny,’ Steven Hassan told me.”

Cultish is a book worth reading.

If you participate in something like Crossfit or are part of an MLM group, you may feel a little attacked, but even so, it may open your eyes to things you never realized.

And if this topic interests you, it would also be worth be worth reading the other books I’ve linked within it. (Except the Hollis one…)

If you want to turn this into a group book discussion, here are some questions to get you started.

Book Club Discussion Questions:

Have you had an experience with a cult? What criteria did it have to support the ‘cult’ label?
Should the word ‘cult’ be used? What are the potential consequences of your choice?
Can people be manipulated to believe things they don’t want to?
What does brainwashing mean and do you think it’s possible to do?
In what ways do you fall into using confirmation bias?
Have you ever been love-bombed?
Can you think of a time where certain words or the delivery of a message affected you deeply? Was it positive or negative? What do you think made it so impactful?
Have you ever stayed in a negative situation or investment too long because you couldn’t admit defeat? What do you think would have been the better decision?
Is it wrong to question your perceptions?
What are the benefits and dangers of MLMs?
What are the benefits and dangers of health/wellness/fitness groups?
Can positive rhetoric be toxic?
Social media platforms have ‘followers.’ In what ways does social media reflect cultish behaviors?
What communities are you part of? Where do you find your purpose and your meaning?