The Cult of Trump

by Steven Hassan

  When I first encountered NLP in 1980, I was fascinated—I was so impressed that I moved out to Santa Cruz to study with Grinder. What he and Bandler did was to identify and explain many of the techniques I had used in the Moonies to recruit and indoctrinate people—and that had been used on me. In a sense, NLP teaches in a systematic way what many cult leaders and con artists do. Though it was originally developed for therapists and educators to help people, its techniques have been used to influence people in destructive ways.

  Of course, influence techniques have been used by persuaders for thousands of years. With NLP, they just became systematized in such a way that they could be taught on a mass scale. Let’s look at some of the more common techniques.

  HYPNOTIC TRANCES AND HALLUCINATIONS

  People go in and out of trance all day long. It’s a natural feature of consciousness. We daydream. We get in a car and realize we spaced out for the last ten miles while driving. Our attention is not always in the here and now, with our analytic mind engaged. Milton Erickson found that he could help his patients overcome psychological problems through a dynamic process of naturalistic hypnosis, in which he monitored when patients went in and out of consciousness. He believed that the unconscious mind was always listening and that, through his own careful and strategic use of words and suggestions, he could help patients change unhealthy beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. Whether or not a person was in trance, suggestions could be made that would have a hypnotic influence as long as they found resonance at the unconscious level.

  Of course, Erickson was a psychiatrist—people were coming to him for help. He had a therapeutic ethical frame but his work on hypnosis provided an extremely important addition to the mind-control arsenal. Hypnotic mind control techniques are not in themselves negative. In fact, they can be very beneficial as long as the locus of control is inside the person and the external influencer does not have an agenda to impose their own beliefs and expectations.

  Cult leaders and high-demand groups always have an agenda—they seek to control people for power, money, and sex. An ethical mental health professional might use hypnotic suggestions to help you be your most effective and authentic self and will tell you that they are doing so. Unethical people and cults almost never tell members they are using hypnotic techniques, which makes it easier for them to enact their agenda. In a high-demand group or cult, the external influencer wants to make you into a true believer, one who has internalized the new ideology and code of conduct. They want you to die to your old self and be reborn. This is true in many cults—Scientology, Hare Krishnas, Moonies, and NXIVM, Christian shepherding groups, and others.

  Scientology is notorious for its use of hypnosis. It employs hypnotic techniques in its initial communications course all the way through to its more advanced Training Routines, or TRs, which are part of what Scientologists call the “Bridge to Total Freedom.”11 The first hypnotic step is to make a person sit for long periods of time without moving; next they are commanded to stare into the eyes of another Scientologist, possibly for hours. At some point, the other Scientologist will try to get them to react—it is a sign of advancement to be able to sit there maintaining the stare but what it requires is a dissociation from themselves. Essentially they are being pushed into an altered state of deep trance where the goal is to develop a Scientology self that is obedient to Hubbard and the group. Members are indoctrinated to believe that the Training Routines will help them be more effective in their lives—earn more money, be better communicators, get better jobs. Later they are told that by performing these routines they will help clear the planet of poverty, crime, disease—indeed, of all of humanity’s problems. At the highest level, members are told that they can control matter, energy, space, and time. The truth is, they are the ones being controlled.12

  In extreme hypnotic states, people might see things that aren’t there or make things disappear. These are referred to as positive and negative hallucinations, respectively. They are especially common in some Bible and shepherding cults, and in particular in the ministries belonging to the Christian right movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which believes in demon possession and puts a heavy emphasis on Satan. Believers are taught to perform visualizations and undergo various altered states and hypnotic experiences that can lead them to believe that they are being attacked by evil entities. Likewise, they can believe that they are being filled with the holy spirit and act “drunken for God.” You can see videos online of people looking like they drank a fifth of scotch but it’s their belief in the holy spirit that allegedly animates them. It turns out the NAR—with its millions of adherents—has become one of Trump’s biggest supporters. They are told, and many believe, that Trump was picked by God to lead the nation. They are Trump’s true believers. They view themselves as “spiritual warriors” who think they are helping Trump carry out his God-given mission.

  Some hypnotic mind control hallucinations can have positive effects. Before I was recruited into the Moon cult, I was introverted and very uncomfortable doing public speaking. In the group, I was taught to use a variation of a hypnotic technique that included praying and telling myself that God was using me as a vessel. I imagined God was speaking through me, so I had no ego. After I left the cult, I needed to reconfigure my belief system, but realized I could still behave confidently, as I had as a Moonie leader. Also, I started applying some techniques when I started giving lectures about my cult involvement. For example, I would use another positive hallucination technique: I would imagine my family and friends in the audience. This way, I wouldn’t feel alone talking to strangers. When I did my first few television interviews, I used a negative hallucination technique to make the cameras in front of me disappear. All I saw was the interviewer.

  Hypnotic techniques are not inherently good or bad. It depends on who is using them and for what purpose. Norman Vincent Peale—Trump’s mentor during his childhood—taught hypnotic techniques in his church and in his book The Power of Positive Thinking. There is an aspect to Trump’s positive self-talk that sounds almost self-hypnotic. During the campaign, after the second Republican debate, when Trump was slipping in the polls, he would talk about all the positive signs—referring only to polls that showed him gaining ground, and talking about how “amazing” things were going. He was so insistent on the hugeness of his inaugural crowd that one might wonder if he actually hallucinated that it was that huge.

  While Peale’s methods might be a boon for some, they can also lead to psychological problems. I worked with a young man who was a true believer in the art of positive thinking—he was a high school football player and was practicing Peale’s techniques, visualizing himself in a particular football position and being successful. It turns out his coach didn’t want him to play that position and told him to do another. The young man did the program and believed 100 percent and thought if he just kept believing, the coach would magically change his mind. Instead the coach kicked him off the team. He had a breakdown and thought there was something wrong with him.

  One needs to be able to use reality-testing strategies and be open to feedback and adjust accordingly. Believe all you want, but if you don’t have the talent, no matter how much positive thinking you do, you are not going to become a baseball legend, a rock star, or a computer genius.

  So far, I have mostly talked about techniques that are used one-on-one but hypnotic techniques can be used on large crowds, like at a Trump rally. Of course, all political rallies—or rock concerts—have the potential for inducing a kind of trance state, but Trump’s repetitions, his rhythmic vocal cadences, his vivid imagery are unusual. He keeps returning at his rallies to the same images—of the Wall, dangerous foes, and even now, the size of his inaugural crowd. None of these exist and yet some of his followers believe that they do—they can even visualize them. They have become real in many people’s minds.

  It is a fact that some people are more susceptible to trance and may even be born with that ability.
Hypnosis experts call them “high hypnotizables.” These people have a high capacity for imagination and concentration, so much so that some can intentionally change their skin temperature just by imagining holding ice cubes. We’ve all felt ice, many of us have made snowballs, so we carry in our memory and in our neuronal patterns what it feels like to be cold. It’s really about accessing your imagination and your reservoir of experiences and applying them in a concentrated way. An ethical therapeutic treatment by health-care professionals trained in hypnosis can help people avoid migraine headaches. People are taught to visualize as well as have kinesthetic hallucinations that can dilate and constrict the blood vessels in their heads. They practice first with making their hands warm and cold.

  Hypnosis is a powerful method almost anyone can learn if they want to invest the time and effort. Ethical professional groups will not train just anyone. Two organizations that I belong to, The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and The International Society of Hypnosis, require at least a master’s level in health care. But it’s important to be careful. There are countless videos online by dubious individuals with no credentials or code of ethics.

  There is a famous British entertainer named Derren Brown who delights his audiences by performing what I consider unethical social influence experiments. On his TV series Mind Control he has demonstrated some amazing feats—fooling people into turning over their watch, cell phone, and wallet within minutes of talking to him.13 Brown has also done several potentially dangerous hypnotic experiments as part of his show, like making someone believe they had no choice but to kill a kitten or creating a “Manchurian Candidate.” The volunteer, believing a toy gun to be real, was commanded to shoot a famous actor onstage. A hidden red dye pack exploded when the trigger was pulled. The actor collapsed, frightening everyone in the audience. The hypnotic subject had no memory of the act until he was shown the video recording later.14

  The hugely popular self-help guru Tony Robbins15 has built a media empire of bestselling books, sold-out retreats and seminars, and infomercials by optimizing what he learned from NLP methods of persuasion. He’s done seminars for top corporate executives around the world, as well as former president Bill Clinton16 and tennis star Serena Williams, who is a Jehovah’s Witness. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams said Robbins is the “best working hypnotist in the world.” He is most probably among the richest and most influential. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Robbins said that he was the first person to give Trump his first big speaking gig. “He’d never done a big speech before and he thought he was coming to give it for 300 people but it was 10,000. And he got hooked.”17

  A BRIEF WORD ABOUT MEDITATION

  There are hundreds if not thousands of ways to meditate—no one way is best for everyone. I have done a number of different meditation practices with a variety of teachers. My understanding is that the fundamental goal of meditation is to train the mind to overcome restless and unsettling thoughts—what meditation teachers call “monkey mind”—and, in some practices, to let go of ordinary consciousness and reach a higher state of awareness. Some meditation practices involve sitting still and watching your thoughts, or attending to the inflow and outflow of your breath, or walking and focusing on your steps. The locus of control is inside you. Focusing on a flame or repeating a word, or mantra, are also forms of meditation.

  In my opinion, guided meditation and visualization are not, strictly speaking, forms of meditation. Listening to someone prompt you through a series of thoughts, feelings, and experiences is closer to a hypnotic, trance-inducing process than it is to meditation. Guided visualizations can be healthy and therapeutic, depending on who is doing it and why. For example, if at the end of a yoga class, you are lying on your mat, and the instructor asks you to visualize walking on warm sand at a beach or to feel your body melting into the mat and you feel better, that is fine. If it is ethical and empowers people to think for themselves and be more functional, with an internal locus of control, I am all for it. Be careful! So much of what is being promoted on the Web as meditation is actually hypnosis.

  Some forms of meditation can actually be detrimental for certain people, provoking feelings of anxiety and even panic. This can be especially true if a person gets drawn deeply into a meditation-based group like Transcendental Meditation (TM), which encourages its members to meditate for hours at a stretch. In his book Transcendental Deception: Behind the TM Curtain, former ten-year TM teacher Aryeh Siegel describes how the group uses a “veneer of science” and celebrity endorsements—from people like filmmaker David Lynch—to peddle their own brand of Hinduism. According to Siegel, TM claims to promote a science-backed form of meditation, but members can be drawn into a whole set of beliefs and practices which they are told will lead to supernatural powers—flying, invisibility, and immortality—all for a price.

  I have met and worked with many people who have been harmed by TM. One young man I counseled told me he had intense headaches, involuntary tics, and even began barking like a dog while a member of TM. He went to his supervisor, who told him that he was de-stressing and should meditate more. After suffering a serious breakdown, he stopped doing TM and sought my help. I taught him about cults and mind control and explained the history of the group—that the late founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who claimed to be an enlightened master, was a womanizer and a fraud. Maharishi said he was ordained by a group of holy gurus in India, known as Shankaracharaya, but the ordination never happened. He claimed to give people their own special mantras but in fact assigned them based on the year a person was born.18 He also claimed that for three thousand dollars he could teach someone to levitate, which no one ever experienced. The best they managed was a cross-legged version of hopping. Ex-member Robert Kropinski—who suffered from an anxiety and dissociative disorder after practicing TM for more than eleven years—visited the Shankaracharaya in India to ask about Maharishi. They effectively said that anyone who charges money for a spiritual practice is a fraud.19

  I have encountered many ex-members of meditation cults over the decades. Often they are afraid to try a meditation practice of any type again. After they understand cult mind control and process their experiences, they come to trust their ability to evaluate healthy and unhealthy practices, people, and organizations.

  ANCHORING

  Anchoring is essentially using a cue—a touch, sound, a visual image—to trigger an associated thought or feeling. The cue, or anchor, can come from any of the five senses so long as it connects to an experience or a memory. Words can be anchors, so too a tone of voice or a touch. A gesture, a saying, an image—all of these serve as anchors when they are used purposefully to trigger an emotional response in someone. These triggers can be used quite intentionally and right in the open without people even realizing it. Once you are made aware of these techniques, you are far more likely to identify them when they are being used. To me, they seem obvious and pop into my conscious mind like a waving red flag. Much like the conditioning experiment conducted by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov on his dogs, a person who is subjected to the trigger is “trained” to respond in a prescribed way. As the famous case goes, Pavlov’s dogs would hear a bell ring when given food, and the dog would salivate seeing the food. After several meals, Pavlov noticed that the dog would salivate just hearing the bell. As the psychologist B. F. Skinner showed, a similar kind of conditioning can be effective with humans who are capable of learning faster than dogs, even if they are unaware of the trigger.

  There are thousands of anchoring examples—think of really successful logos like the Nike Swoosh, or the Apple’s iconic partially eaten apple, or the American flag and the patriotism it conjures up. The pink hats made for the Women’s March of January 2017 in Washington, D.C., elicit an emotional response for its participants.

  For Trump supporters, red MAGA hats or T-shirts may act as anchors. They bring about a feeling of identity and solidarity and may elicit memories of past Trump rallies. Make America Great Again is a
linguistic anchor. This phrase triggers a kind of positive nostalgia and idealization of a moment in history that may never have happened—an imaginary golden age. Each person might have a different image or movie in their mind when they hear this phrase. For some people, it may have less benign associations, possibly harkening back to a time when America was a less diverse, more repressive country. They hear the phrase and may think, Make America White Again.20

  FRAMING

  As we have already seen, framing occurs when we set a psychological context for an experience in a way that biases the outcome—like a person’s willingness to eat chocolate-covered ants, as we saw earlier. Trump also uses it to identify his rally audiences as loyal followers. It’s a way to direct and focus attention and, for Trump, to gain the upper hand. In the Fox presidential debate in 2015, moderator Megyn Kelly said to Trump: “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”21 He cut her off: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” Trump turned the tables and reframed Kelly’s accusation, taking all the power out of her statement and getting a chuckle out of the crowd to boot.

  Trump also sets the linguistic frame for whoever happens to be his nemesis at the moment—calling Marco Rubio “Little Marco” and Ted Cruz “Lying Ted.” It’s what Scott Adams calls the “linguistic kill shot,” like Low-Energy Jeb Bush, Crooked Hillary Clinton, Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff. Once you hear the nicknames, you can’t help but focus on Bush’s energy levels, or Schiff’s neck. They are difficult to get out of your mind.

  Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, Trump called climate change a “hoax” and redirected attention to China and India, who he claimed were the real winners in the accord. He reframed the debate from saving the planet to an economic and political contest with two superpowers.