Steven Hassan - 15 Oct

Free Press

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Copyright 2019 by Steven Hassan

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First Free Press hardcover edition October 2019

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-2733-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-2735-0 (ebook)

I dedicate this book to all those who have suffered from abusive mind control in the hope that it helps them heal. Freedom of mindwhich includes critical thinking, pursuing facts, listening to ones conscience, and acting with integrityis the foundation of all our other freedoms, including freedom of religion.

I was nineteen and attending Queens College when I was recruitedtrickedinto joining a dangerous mind-controlling cult: Sun Myung Moons Unification Church. During my time in the group, I experienced a radical personality change, fervently believing and spreading the cults doctrine. I felt totally in control of my mind and thoughtssomething I can now confidently say was not the case. It was only through luck, and some clever maneuvering on my familys part, that I was able to free myself. I was a cult member for only two and a half years. Im one of the fortunate ones. Since then, Ive become a mental health professional and have devoted my life to helping people break free from destructive cults, passing on the lessons learned through my own deprogramming. Over the past forty years, Ive gotten a close look at hundreds of dangerous groupsas well as individual relationshipsand know what, exactly, makes them destructive and cultish. I have spoken out publicly about cults and have faced a lot of backlash from some pretty scary and powerful organizations. Ive faced lawsuits, death threats, and slander upon my character. Still, I feel privileged to do the work that I do.

I talk to a lot of people, some of whom disagree with me, and its important for meboth personally and professionallyto be as unbiased and trustworthy as possible. The people whom I helpalong with their familiesneed to trust that I am telling the truth. I have always sought to be nonpartisan and keep politics out of my work. But Donald Trumps authoritarian tendencies, and the cultlike aspects of his presidency, have become too obvious to ignore. I realize that the title of this book, The Cult of Trump, and its central argumentthat the president of the United States may be viewed as the leader of a cultmay be off-putting, if not outrageous, to some. I hope that my expertise, which I have gained through decades of work, will persuade you to continue with an open mind. My goal is not to write a political book about Trumpmany have already been writtenbut instead to look at the Trump presidency through the lens of psychology, and in particular the psychology of mind manipulation and influence. I believe that the ultimate weapon against mind control is knowledge and awareness. That is what I try to provide in this book.

I have done my best to ensure that the material in this book is as accurate and verifiable as possible. Of course, when writing about another person, there is always a certain amount of subjectivity, and many opportunities for bias to creep in. I have no doubt that some will take issue with what I have written. I ask you to take the wider view. I also invite you to differ with me. My goal is to empower people to think for themselves, which may mean moving outside of our ideological bubbles.

This is a book about an area of human behavior that I liken to a dark forest. As a former cult member, I personally have seen the trees, as have millions of people who have escaped destructive groups and found their way to freedom. As a mental health professional, Ive also spent decades mapping the contours of the cult mind control phenomenon. My hope is that this book may help point a way out of the dark forest of authoritarianism.

Steven Hassan

April 2019

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

Antoine de Saint-Exupry

W hen Donald J. Trump announced he was running for the presidency of the United States, I had a hard time taking him seriously. Like many Americans, I could not imagine that a reality TV starespecially one so brash and controversialmight soon become the most powerful person on Earth. Trump and I grew up about a mile from each other in Queens, New York, but I knew little about him. I once watched about ten minutes of an episode of The Apprentice and switched stations. I was surprised by the intensity of Trumps support, especially from evangelical Christians. He was a casino mogul and a notorious playboy and philanderer, who marriedand fathered children withthree different women. He regularly told outright lies and, when challenged, would stubbornly double down on them. How could he possibly gain enough support among the conservative Christians who would be so important for him to be elected?

As I watched him pick off, one by one, his fellow GOP contenders, I had no choice but to take him seriously. I have spent many years studying influencehow people systematically use psychological and social techniques for their own ends. It became clear to me that Trump was exploiting those methods to great effect. He certainly was not playing by traditional political rules. He was a master media manipulator, calling media outlets like Fox News to insult his opponents and brag about his own accomplishments, attracting the attention of other cable networks like CNN and MSNBC with his circuslike behaviorand gaining an estimated $2 billion worth of free publicity. He was an entertaining, if blustery, speaker who used simplistic, almost hypnotically repetitious, terms. He gave insulting but catchy nicknames to his opponentsCrooked Hillary, Lying Ted, Low Energy Jeband used slogans that became rousing anthems at his ralliesLock her up and Build the Wall.

I had a bizarre kind of dj vu. It struck me that Trump was exhibiting many of the same behaviors that I had seen in the late Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon, whom I had worshipped as the messiah in the mid-seventies. Moon had promised to make Americaindeed the entire worldgreat. He promised a re-creation of the Garden of Eden. No wars, poverty, crime. Everyone would live in harmony together in Gods paradise on earth. Moon, of course, was not a messiah, nor were his aims beneficent. That is the case with many cult leadersthey promise something that people want to believe in but that they can never actually deliver. They do so by utilizing a set of influence techniques that can be likened to a cult leaders playbook.