The Cult of Trump

by Steven Hassan

  In their book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors of government at Harvard, show us how democratically elected leaders can gradually undermine democratic norms, and set the stage for authoritarian regimes.6

  Experts in social influence such as Robert Jay Lifton, Philip Zimbardo, Margaret Singer, Kathleen Taylor, Robert Cialdini, and Anthony Pratkanis have revealed our susceptibility to influence and authority. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that though we often rationalize, we are often not rational creatures and that the unconscious mind works off heuristics, which are subject to error and bias. Neuroscientists and psychologists since then have made great headway in the scientific study of the mind. Influence is inevitable—it’s part of the human condition—but we can distinguish between ethical and unethical forms. The more we understand how influence works, the better able we will be to inoculate ourselves—as well as our families, communities, institutions, and country—against undue forms and sense when we are being duped, controlled, deceived, or coerced by individuals, organizations, and governments.

  European countries, including Germany, France, and Belgium, have recently recognized the dangers posed by undue influence, and in particular mind control cults, and have created task forces to investigate them. There has been no such visible effort in any part of the U.S. government, despite the threat that terrorist and hate organizations have posed to our national safety. The U.S. government actively pursued a program of mind control research for decades and yet there has been no official government statement on the existence—let alone the dangers—of mind control.

  PRESIDENTIAL MENTAL HEALTH

  The federal goverment was founded on the concept of a separation of powers, one that uses operational checks and balances between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches to ensure that policies are made with due consideration and to prevent any trend toward tyranny. Those checks and balances have been disrupted by President Trump, who appears to view these branches as extensions of—and answerable to—the White House. Also, while Congress and the judiciary are comprised of hundreds of people, many with significant power, the focus of the executive branch is a single person. It is all the more imperative that the person filling that office be of sound mind. Going forward, we need to have standards and legal mechanisms that safeguard our democracy from psychologically unstable leaders and would-be authoritarians. In their book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Bandy X. Lee and her colleagues argue that anyone who runs for the office of the president should be required to have a full neuropsychiatric, forensic evaluation by a bipartisan—or apolitical—committee of professionals to establish a baseline of mental competence. That person should then also undergo routine follow-ups. The World Mental Health Coalition has been set up as a nonprofit to work toward creating practical solutions to having fit leadership.7

  THE LEGAL SYSTEM

  After many years of helping those under mind control, I have come to realize how much more could be done if the legal system’s definition of undue influence were updated to take into account scientific advances in understanding how the mind works. As it now stands, destructive cults, especially if they have IRS designation as a religion, are often not held accountable for violating their members’ rights. Nor are websites—or the media—held responsible for inciting people to violence. Part of the problem is the lack of a clear, scientifically supported legal definition of undue influence. Santa Clara University emeritus law professor Alan Scheflin has proposed a theoretically grounded framework to evaluate undue influence in courts of law.8 According to his Social Influence Model, there are three aspects of undue influence—the influencer, the influencee, and the motives, goals, and methods used to influence. Each of these could be evaluated by an expert; together they would constitute a kind of forensic analysis. The framework could be applied on a case-by-case basis. It would ultimately be up to a judge or a jury to decide if a particular case involved undue influence and to what extent. It’s a start, but clearly we have a long way to go to create the legal tools we need to keep up with the needs of the twenty-first century.

  Part of the challenge is that our legal system needs to get a better grip on how undue influence operates on the internet. We could learn from Germany and other European governments in this regard. In 2017, Germany implemented a law requiring the biggest social media networks—those with more than two million users—to take down blatantly illegal hate speech within twenty-four hours of its being reported.9 China, one of the most authoritarian societies, monitors, controls, and collects data on all internet activity. Programs of data collection now include facial recognition of people as well. Of course, we do not want totalitarian surveillance. On the other hand, the internet should not be a “wild, wild west,” where companies can do whatever they want to draw in users and make money, with virtually no legal or moral accountability. Companies like Facebook and Google should move out of a business model of selling data to third parties—laws to that effect should be written and enforced. Data firms, like the now-disgraced and defunct Cambridge Analytica—which gained access to more than 87 million Facebook users for the purpose of targeting them with political ads—need to be held accountable.10 Across the board, social media and app companies need to be vetted and responsible standards established to protect citizens’ private information.

  RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

  Freedom of religion is called the “first freedom” for several reasons. It is the first part of the First Amendment to the Constitution—it precedes freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In order for people to be able to speak and publish freely, they must be able to think freely—to believe differently from the government and powerful religious institutions. Freedom of religion is not just about religion—it’s about the right to think for ourselves, to change our minds in a way that is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage to our status as citizens. While the Constitution protects beliefs, it does not necessarily protect all actions and behaviors stemming from those beliefs. Human sacrifice to the gods may be part of a person’s religious belief system, as it was in earlier times, but if carried out anywhere in the United States today, it is homicide. Courts have routinely banned snake-handling rituals, because of the many deaths that have resulted from that practice. It has famously been said that “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

  In his 1997 book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Frederick Clarkson shows how the men who shaped our nation’s approach to religious freedom tried to make clear its limitations. And yet as we have seen in chapter 7, factions on the Christian right have interpreted religious freedom to mean that they may violate the Constitution if it is in keeping with their religious, and ultimately theocratic, beliefs or practices. They are pushing state-level legislation that would carve out religious exemptions to civil rights and labor laws under the banner of Project Blitz—which Trump has supported. It is a slippery slope from proposals that would allow heath care providers to deny services to LGBTQ people, which is bad enough. The Trump administration is now allowing state and federally funded adoption and foster care agencies to refuse prospective parents who are single, divorced, LGBTQ, Jewish, or belong to other religions. If these policies are upheld in court, it may become open season for forms of discrimination that a few years ago, many would not have thought possible.

  According to Clarkson, religious freedom is one of the central issues of our time. He is not alone. There is a movement of civil rights groups and religious and nonreligious organizations, from American Atheists to the National Council of Churches, that is rising to confront the challenge posed by these theocratic movements. “It has taken time, but organized opposition is mounting,” Clarkson said.11 Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a broad coalition of forty-three prominent religious, civil rights, secular, LGBTQ, and reproductive freedom organizations have issued a joint national statement warning about Pro
ject Blitz.12 An overlapping coalition of a dozen groups has created a website called BlitzWatch to monitor the campaign and provide resources for opponents.13

  Putting these efforts to advance theocratic ideas under the rubric of religious freedom aside, the underlying issue of mind control ought to be a religious freedom issue of concern to everyone. If there are laws that protect people from being conned out of their property, there should be laws that protect people from being conned out of their opinions, thoughts, and beliefs. At the point that the Moonie recruiters lied to me, telling me they were college students, not a religious group, and failed to disclose that they worshipped a Korean billionaire they thought was the messiah—and that they were members of a group that used deception and mind control techniques—they were infringing on my religious freedom as a young Jewish man. My point is not to diminish or disparage a particular religion, but instead to ensure that the rights of others to believe or not believe as they choose, without undue influence or coercion, are upheld. “Respect for religious freedom means respect for the integrity of the conscience of the individual,” Clarkson writes.

  A final note on the subject of religion: I believe that tax-exempt status should not be granted to just any group that says they are a religious organization. I would like to see a governmental body set up that acts as a consumer clearinghouse, linked to the FBI and the IRS, that has the power to investigate and prosecute any tax-exempt group or entity that systematically violates people’s rights. If such an entity is found to be deceptively recruiting, thereby violating people’s civil and religious rights; or to be using high-pressure methods of mind control to keep them from seeking the health care or education they need; or to be preventing them from being able to meet with people outside the group, the entity should lose its tax-exempt status. Any group whose aim is to subvert the Constitution or commit crimes should be held accountable.

  THE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSION

  Buried deep inside the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) is a special designation for victims of cult brainwashing and undue influence. It is labeled Other Specified Dissociative Disorder 300.15 (F44.9). It is defined as an identity disturbance “due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion. Individuals who have been subjected to intense coercive persuasion (e.g., brainwashing, thought reform, indoctrination while captive, torture, long-term political imprisonment, recruitment by sects/cults or by terror organizations) may present with prolonged changes in, or conscious questioning of, their identity.” Though the DSM-5 is used by clinicians, researchers, drug companies, health insurance companies, the courts, and policy makers, very few have learned about this category, or about the clinical tool known as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-V for Dissociative Disorders (SCIDV-D), which is considered the gold standard for assessing dissociative disorders.

  TRAINING HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

  I wish I could say that most mental health professionals were even aware of the DSM category that pertains to brainwashing and mind control. In fact, only a small percentage of psychiatrists, therapists, and other practitioners have received any training in working with this population. Most are largely unaware that an assessment of mind control can be made and are unfamiliar with the specialized approaches that have been developed to address it. Meanwhile, they may have patients in their practice who continue to suffer as a result of their cult involvement. Curricula that explain undue influence and mind control, and show practitioners what to look for in patients, need to be developed and incorporated into all mental health training programs.

  MENTAL HEALTH AND PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH

  Millions of people are born or brought into cults of all sorts—religious, political, sex trafficking. Often they are haunted by undiagnosed mental and emotional scars that can lead to addiction, depression, even suicide as a result of their cult involvement. They may undergo multiple medical evaluations and treatments, with little benefit and often at great expense. A starting place to help these people—and our health care system—would be to conduct an epidemiological study to determine the public health risks and the costs of treating such patients using traditional approaches—drug and alcohol addiction programs, psychotherapy, medications, and hospitalizations. Getting to the root problem, the cult involvement, can be a much more effective, and less expensive approach.

  A few years ago, I worked with a woman who had walked out of a destructive discipling Bible group, the International Churches of Christ, after a thirteen-year involvement. She was misdiagnosed, given a laundry list of medications, and hospitalized several times over eleven years, and she still had self-harm and suicidal impulses. She read my book Combating Cult Mind Control and contacted me for help. I worked with her intensively over several days, at the end of which she felt dramatically better. She had a much better understanding of why she was suffering and how to help herself. She returned to her psychiatrist, who helped wean her off her medications entirely. I put her in touch with a local therapist, who was properly trained for follow-up. She went on to fully reclaim her life, received a Ph.D., and is in a fulfilling relationship. We made a presentation together in Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Judith Herman’s seminar on Victims of Violence Trauma where she taught about all of the errors made in her treatment.

  The diagnosis—and treatment—could also extend to people who have been recruited by human trafficking and extremist terrorist organizations. Many former terrorists are ostracized and thrown in jail and yet in most cases they are the victims of coercive mind control recruiting and indoctrination. I have long believed that counseling such people—helping them understand what happened to them—and then having them teach others would be a great deterrent to future terrorist recruitment efforts.

  Jennifer Panning, a contributor to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, coined the name for a new type of anxiety disorder—Trump Anxiety Disorder—which pinpoints symptoms “specific to the election of Trump and the resultant unpredictable sociopolitical climate.” In an interview with Politico Magazine, Panning said the disorder is marked by “increased worry, obsessive thought patterns, muscle tension and obsessive preoccupation with the news.”14 It also includes feelings of loss of control and helplessness, and even excessive time spent on social media.15

  According to a 2018 survey by the American Psychiatric Association, 39 percent of people said their anxiety level had risen over the previous year. Fifty-six percent were extremely anxious or somewhat anxious about “the impact of politics on daily life.” A 2017 APA study found that two-thirds of Americans see the nation’s future as a “very or somewhat significant source of stress.”16

  THE MEDIA

  In their book, Network Propaganda, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts suggest that an independent apparatus be set up to independently verify sources and perform fact checks of the news—especially in the face of the overwhelming amount of disinformation and propaganda being circulated, especially by the right-wing media. There are lots of good ideas out there, though it remains to be seen which will gain traction. The point is there are serious conversations going on among scholars, journalists, and legislators to try to find solutions. Let’s hope they find some soon.

  Whatever solutions may be found, we need to be resolute in our insistence that we also need to protect journalists who report on governments and powerful interests everywhere, including dictators and authoritarian regimes. They help maintain our country’s commitment to combating coercive and destructive regimes around the world. At the same time, their reports—about crackdowns on freedom of the press or the abrogation of civil liberties—can provide a basis for comparison to see if there are ways that our own country veers into such territory. Yet investigative journalists have been kidnapped or killed in shocking numbers.17 Most recently and horribly, The Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi was killed by agents in the Saudi Arabian government and yet no American sanction was levied against its leadership.

  In 19
69, the philanthropist Philip M. Stern established the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which gave its first grant—of $250—to journalist Seymour Hersh, who used it to begin investigating a tip about a U.S. Army massacre at the Vietnamese village of My Lai. The story turned into a huge exposé of Army wrong-doing. The Fund for Investigative Journalism has since awarded grants totaling $1.5 million to scores of investigative journalists, resulting in over 700 stories and some fifty books.18 There are similar organizations, including the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica, whose mission is to “expose abuses of power and betrayals of public trust by government, business, and other institutions.”19 If every American holding a driver’s license were to donate a dollar a year, we could fund important centers like these to the tune of $225 million annually.20

  INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY

  Whatever has the power to help has the power to hurt. That has been abundantly clear with the internet, and especially platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It was through these social media platforms that Russia entered the fray of the 2016 presidential elections and may seek to do so in the future, along with Iran, China, and other nations that have historically sought to influence American elections. How can we ensure that future innovations—like artificial intelligence—adhere to ethical standards? After the 2019 New Zealand massacre, prime minister Jacinda Ardern immediately banned the circulation of the video that the gunman made. Social media platforms need to find ways to prevent such videos and other hate-filled and inflammatory materials from being circulated in the first place. YouTube took a step in this direction when, in January 2019, it announced that it was changing its algorithms for recommending videos in a way that would reduce the spread of “borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways.” It was very specific about what that content would include—“videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”21 Facebook has also promised to be more accountable, in part as a face-saving gesture for having played a role in spreading false information during the 2016 election season.22 They announced in March 2019 they were banning content that glorifies white nationalism and separatism.23