Speaker 1: Bushki, this is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. For a moment,
Speaker 1: I thought I heard glass breaking around me. Physically, it
Speaker 1: was my entire identity crumbled. It was just devastating. Dianne
Speaker 1: ben Scoter's life changed when she left the Mooneyes. It
Speaker 1: wasn't easy. The cult provided connection and meaning, and while
Speaker 1: she was a member, it was hard to imagine a
Speaker 1: life outside of it. Dianne was a victim of psychological manipulation,
Speaker 1: a technique practiced by cults of very different kinds, ranging
Speaker 1: from the People's Temple which ended in the Jonestown tragedy,
Speaker 1: to Nexium to qan On. Radicalization can happen because not
Speaker 1: enough people understand how psychological manipulation works. And I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any other way to solve it than to
Speaker 1: take a public health approach to it. It's like mole whacking.
Speaker 1: Until we get to that tipping point of enough people
Speaker 1: understanding it, it's just going to show up in different
Speaker 1: ways and in different packaging, and we'll just be programming
Speaker 1: someone from this calt and that calt in one person
Speaker 1: at a time, and that is just not going to
Speaker 1: solve the problem. It'll just keep getting worse. Diane Benscoter
Speaker 1: is the founder of Antidote dot NGO. Her organization provides
Speaker 1: resources the families looking for support and individuals looking to
Speaker 1: make a change. I just, you know, I could imagine
Speaker 1: myself just feeling immense frustration and a failure of empathy
Speaker 1: because it's their own stupidity. It does seem like that,
Speaker 1: I know, and I struggle with those feelings myself, even
Speaker 1: after a lifetime of trying to understand this speaking of it,
Speaker 1: if you can step over, jump over the belief system,
Speaker 1: if you can go back to the person that you
Speaker 1: love and remember that they're a good person, remind them
Speaker 1: that you love them because they are a good person,
Speaker 1: and that you want to try to improve the relationship.
Speaker 1: Focus on the relationship and see if you can start
Speaker 1: building from there. Denscoder is hopeful. I believe we can
Speaker 1: solve the very dangerous problem of psychological manipulation and how
Speaker 1: it affects so many people in society. Dan, you are
Speaker 1: a cult d programmer. You're someone who helps people get
Speaker 1: out of cults and break out of cult thinking. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if just to begin, you could tell us
Speaker 1: a little about your own history in a particular cult,
Speaker 1: the Unification Church, sometimes known as the Mooneyes. I joined
Speaker 1: that group when I was seventeen years old. I was
Speaker 1: really confused about what was going on in the world.
Speaker 1: The Vietnam War was going on, and I was listening
Speaker 1: to the music of our time that was inspiring me
Speaker 1: to want to do something about the war and to
Speaker 1: make the world better. And so I went on what
Speaker 1: I thought was a walk for world peace, and as
Speaker 1: it turns out, it was the Mooney's and I was
Speaker 1: recruited and soon understood that the Messiah was on the earth,
Speaker 1: and it was sun round moon, and that I was
Speaker 1: born to be a disciple of Christ. That was my
Speaker 1: mission in life, and so for the next five years
Speaker 1: I dedicated myself wholly to that task of serving God
Speaker 1: in that way. In a lot of ways, you fit
Speaker 1: the stereotype. You were young, impressionable, teenager adolescent going through
Speaker 1: change life, feeling alienated. That's how you got in. How
Speaker 1: did you get out? Did someone? Did someone help you?
Speaker 1: Was there a deep programmer who was involved in helping
Speaker 1: you get out of that? Called there was? My family
Speaker 1: hired someone to come and talk to me, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a situation where I thought that I
Speaker 1: would be able to help bring them back into the fold.
Speaker 1: I thought, here's a former member who's gone astray, and
Speaker 1: I'll be able to bring them back in. Unfortunately for
Speaker 1: my belief system at that time, they started making a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, and I started to understand that what
Speaker 1: had happened to me was that I had been manipulated
Speaker 1: and taken advantage of, and that this whole thing was
Speaker 1: a big lie. It was one of the most painful
Speaker 1: things I've ever experienced in my life to realize that
Speaker 1: it took a long time to recover from it. And
Speaker 1: then after you left, how did you start to become
Speaker 1: a deep programmer yourself. I had the unique opportunity there
Speaker 1: was a rehab house for people leaving various cults. This
Speaker 1: woman had opened up her home and had people from
Speaker 1: whatever cult they were in come there and stay as
Speaker 1: a time of transition. And she offered me a job
Speaker 1: there and saw people coming through from High Christiana and
Speaker 1: Guruma Haraj He's called There's half a dozen Children of God,
Speaker 1: different groups that people would come and stay there for
Speaker 1: a while during their recovery. That was a really important
Speaker 1: time for me and understanding how psychological manipulation works, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't just that the Mooneyes were this unique situation,
Speaker 1: but I started getting asked to go out on cases
Speaker 1: where families needed someone to come and talk to their
Speaker 1: loved one. They would hold the person against their will.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the old style to programming back
Speaker 1: in the eighties. They would the family would say, you're
Speaker 1: not leaving until you talk to this person. It was
Speaker 1: an intervention type of situation, and I went on many
Speaker 1: cases like that until I was eventually arrested for kidnapping.
Speaker 1: Everything went wrong, She went out the bathroom window and
Speaker 1: went to the police, and we're all arrested. It's a
Speaker 1: little longer story than them. So it was that point
Speaker 1: that I stopped doing those kind of interventions and started
Speaker 1: really thinking about what all this meant and what I
Speaker 1: really could do to make a difference. You know, even
Speaker 1: that term deep program suggests that there is a distinction
Speaker 1: between someone who has been manipulated, as you say, and
Speaker 1: someone who has legitimate beliefs, and that points to the distinction,
Speaker 1: you know, between cult and religion, or between cult and
Speaker 1: political movement. And how do we draw that line? How
Speaker 1: do we define a cult which is a set of
Speaker 1: beliefs that will require something like kind of deprogramming that
Speaker 1: you've become very skilled in doing, as opposed to something
Speaker 1: that is just someone's religion. It's such an important point
Speaker 1: you're bringing up, Jacob. It's it's really something that I
Speaker 1: think most people point in the wrong direction. They're trying
Speaker 1: to define is this a cult or not? And I
Speaker 1: think that while that's interesting and it can be done,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cult experts that do that. I
Speaker 1: think the important question is psychological manipulation being used to
Speaker 1: try to influence someone's decision making processes, and that is
Speaker 1: the solvable thing that radicalization can happen because not enough
Speaker 1: people understand how psychological manipulation works. It can take the
Speaker 1: form of a religious called someone in a self helped
Speaker 1: thing like Nexium, Keith Ornary, that whole thing, or scientology.
Speaker 1: It can happen in what happened recently. This last year
Speaker 1: was my biggest fear that a large number of people
Speaker 1: would be radicalized, and the perfect storm happened. People were isolated,
Speaker 1: people were scared, wondering what was true, They didn't know
Speaker 1: what news sources to trust, and it was the perfect
Speaker 1: opportunity to take advantage of those psychological situations, and it
Speaker 1: works every time. Yeah, so I think you're maybe referring
Speaker 1: partly to QAnon, people who reject factual information about how
Speaker 1: the election was decided. You know, QAnon really interesting example.
Speaker 1: It's not a religion. It's a crazy political conspiracy, sort
Speaker 1: of not exactly clear how it spreads. It happens to
Speaker 1: be on the right. You know, what makes that a cult?
Speaker 1: And what how specifically do we deal with that cult?
Speaker 1: Which is I think from the perspective of our politics,
Speaker 1: from the perspective the country is, in a way the
Speaker 1: most dangerous one we're dealing with right now. Is it
Speaker 1: a cult? There are people that would say that it is,
Speaker 1: but I think again what's important is that in order
Speaker 1: to solve this problem, a large number of people, the
Speaker 1: majority of people, Much like herd immunity, we really need
Speaker 1: to have the majority of people understand the trickery of
Speaker 1: psychological manipulation, because I don't think there's any other way
Speaker 1: to solve it than to take a public health approach
Speaker 1: to it. It's like mole whacking. Until we get to
Speaker 1: that tipping point of enough people understanding it, it's just
Speaker 1: going to show up in different ways and in different packaging,
Speaker 1: and we'll just be programming someone from this cult and
Speaker 1: that cult in one person at a time, and that
Speaker 1: is just not going to solve the problem. It'll just
Speaker 1: keep getting worse. So it's interesting to think about the
Speaker 1: public health approach. You know, what you can do to
Speaker 1: make people less vulnerable to manipulate. What's the first step.
Speaker 1: What you have to do is educate people about the tactics,
Speaker 1: build curriculum for educators so that they can teach young
Speaker 1: people from an early age how this works. We have
Speaker 1: to use influencers to spread information and we have to
Speaker 1: do everything we can to try to get to that
Speaker 1: herd immunity point. Much like with cigarettes as a problem
Speaker 1: that people didn't understand that they were harmful, there had
Speaker 1: to be a massive education campaign to educate everyone possible
Speaker 1: about the danger. And now most people if you would
Speaker 1: ask them, do you understand that cigarette smoking is dangerous?
Speaker 1: They would say yes. And we have to get to
Speaker 1: that point with psychological manipulation. Yeah, I mean in the
Speaker 1: classic called there's a leader Reverend Moon or in the
Speaker 1: Nexium story that you referred to, who's driving the manipulation
Speaker 1: of the adherents. But QAnon doesn't seem to quite conform
Speaker 1: to that. I mean, whether there's some wizard of All
Speaker 1: figure who's planting the seeds of Q I don't know,
Speaker 1: but there's no publicly identified leader who's getting people to
Speaker 1: follow him or her. It's kind of a peer to
Speaker 1: peer cult in that way. Does a cult have to
Speaker 1: have a leader? And is that a distinctive thing about
Speaker 1: q and On that it doesn't. It is an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about q and On for sure. And I think
Speaker 1: it could be argued that Donald Trump was the leader
Speaker 1: in some way, that that was the goal. But what's
Speaker 1: more important, I think is that there were efforts to
Speaker 1: create an enemy by creating a US into them. You
Speaker 1: have to have an enemy because if you want people
Speaker 1: to just believe one source of information, because that's how
Speaker 1: you control people. If you want people to do what
Speaker 1: you want them to do, then you have to convince
Speaker 1: them that all sources of information outside of that group,
Speaker 1: outside of that source of information are lies and untrust
Speaker 1: worthy or even evil satan whatever. You know. That's how
Speaker 1: cults do it, and that's how it was done on
Speaker 1: this larger political spectrum. And so that's how it works.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that with technology like it is,
Speaker 1: it's not that expensive to create media that looks really believable.
Speaker 1: And so here's a group of people isolated on Facebook
Speaker 1: and somebody that they like and respect in their circle
Speaker 1: says something really radical, and it seems to me it
Speaker 1: rings true. It might be about it might be a
Speaker 1: racist statement, it might be something about the left being
Speaker 1: evil or whatever, and it rings true to you. And
Speaker 1: then you click and click and click, and pretty soon
Speaker 1: this is all making sense and you're thinking, this explains everything.
Speaker 1: Now I understand the evil on the left is trying
Speaker 1: to take over the world, and I have to join forces,
Speaker 1: and this is war, you know, and it grows like that,
Speaker 1: it's perpetuating. Well, it's a reaction to the intellectual freedom
Speaker 1: of modern society, isn't it. I mean, in traditional societies,
Speaker 1: presumably called there less of an issue because people don't
Speaker 1: have that search for what to believe in and how
Speaker 1: the world works. That's given to you, and there's a
Speaker 1: structure to the society and a prescribed set of beliefs
Speaker 1: and a cosmology, and the actual belief might be wacky,
Speaker 1: but they're held by everybody. Whereas in modern society you
Speaker 1: can believe whatever you want, and all the things you
Speaker 1: say about the vulnerability to psychological manipulation, people's deep need
Speaker 1: to understand and have a belief system. That's a void
Speaker 1: that can be filled. But given that, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you agree with that particular explanation, but
Speaker 1: given that, is psychological manipulation a problem that can be solved?
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's something the human beings are just
Speaker 1: fundamentally looking for and missing in modern society, how do
Speaker 1: you fill that space in a way that wouldn't leave
Speaker 1: them vulnerable to the cults in the way so many
Speaker 1: people clearly are. I mean, what do you do when
Speaker 1: someone is already in and you want to help them
Speaker 1: get out? What's the first step? In my organization, what
Speaker 1: we're doing is setting up off ramps basically for people.
Speaker 1: And the people that come to us as seeking help
Speaker 1: are almost always family members. They're the loved ones of
Speaker 1: people who they've noticed that they've completely changed. They can't
Speaker 1: talk to them anymore, they don't know how to communicate
Speaker 1: with them, and they feel like their loved one has
Speaker 1: joined a cult. What we do is try to work
Speaker 1: with them to help them understand how this has happened,
Speaker 1: What the trickery of psychological manipulation is so that they
Speaker 1: can gain empathy, because you have to have empathy toward
Speaker 1: the person if you're going to help them at all.
Speaker 1: They have to agree that they are willing to have
Speaker 1: a conversation about the possibility that maybe they've been taken advantage.
Speaker 1: Then it's just a matter of kind of unpeeling the onion.
Speaker 1: But they have to want to talk to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: as you said, you can't kid and have them anymore.
Speaker 1: It's voluntary, So you know, there has to be at
Speaker 1: least some openness to see, whether it's because of pressure
Speaker 1: from family members who they still care about, or some
Speaker 1: nagging feeling that something's wrong. They have to be open
Speaker 1: to changing their tanking. Yeah, and most people's approach is,
Speaker 1: here are a million facts, can't you just look at
Speaker 1: them and see? But that doesn't work because it's not
Speaker 1: about the facts, it's about their psychological situation. They need
Speaker 1: this to be true. They want it to be true.
Speaker 1: They'll do anything for it to be true because they're
Speaker 1: getting something from it on a psychological level, and so
Speaker 1: for them to be willing to let go of that,
Speaker 1: there has to be something bigger in it. For them,
Speaker 1: and the bigger is that they have to want their
Speaker 1: relations ship back with their loved ones, for instance. And
Speaker 1: so if you can approach them with I know you're
Speaker 1: a good person. I know you're involved in this because
Speaker 1: you care so much about the world and because you
Speaker 1: want America to be a great place or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they sincerely do care about, and
Speaker 1: get them to agree perhaps that we both agree that
Speaker 1: this isn't working, our relationship isn't working. We have to
Speaker 1: find a way. Will you at least consider some family
Speaker 1: therapy or someone that can help us learn to talk
Speaker 1: with each other again and try to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of what happened here, And if there are trained
Speaker 1: mental health professionals that can help look at the family
Speaker 1: system and help the person feel safe enough to look
Speaker 1: at the possibility that maybe they've been taken advantage of
Speaker 1: and maybe that's what's going on here that allows them
Speaker 1: to still believe that they're a good person. And pretty
Speaker 1: much anyone that I have talked with and helped exit
Speaker 1: any kind of an extremist group, there's that point where
Speaker 1: they get it, where they understand that they've been taken
Speaker 1: advantage of intentionally. Then it's very devastating. At that moment
Speaker 1: when I realized that, for a moment, I thought I
Speaker 1: heard glass breaking around me. Physically, it was my entire
Speaker 1: identity crumbled. It was just devastating. And I think that
Speaker 1: you have to be very gentle and empathetic towards someone
Speaker 1: who has been radicalized, because it often takes over your
Speaker 1: entire identity, and so what you believe, the music, you like,
Speaker 1: everything has become part of that identity. Your political views,
Speaker 1: your world views completely are tied up in that. Your community,
Speaker 1: who you consider your friends. It's an identity crisis and
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to recover from that. So
Speaker 1: they have to trust that you have their best interest
Speaker 1: in mind and that you're not just wanting to argue
Speaker 1: about what's right and wrong, because that just does not work.
Speaker 1: It does seem that it might be harder to have
Speaker 1: empathy for someone who's fallen prey to q Andon beliefs
Speaker 1: than someone who would you join the Hari Krishna's I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, in the one case, the with QAnon, the
Speaker 1: views are so noxious and they're adopted by choice. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: there's psychological manipulation, but there are people who come through this,
Speaker 1: you know, just reading stuff and watching Fox News and
Speaker 1: absorbing bad sources of information. At one level, I can
Speaker 1: certainly have sympathy for them, But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it I just, you know, I could imagine myself just
Speaker 1: feeling immense frustration and a failure of empathy because it's
Speaker 1: their own stupidity. It does seem like that, I know,
Speaker 1: and I struggle with those feelings myself, even after a
Speaker 1: lifetime of trying to understand this and speaking of it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I would have said that I completely
Speaker 1: joined the Moonies out of choice, and all of the
Speaker 1: you know, Keith Rnary, a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: were involved in that, the women who got branded with
Speaker 1: his initials, they all said I did it out a
Speaker 1: choice until they understood and then there's that devastating moment
Speaker 1: where you realize you've been taken advantage of. But it
Speaker 1: choice is a confusing word sometimes when you're talking about
Speaker 1: this topic, and yeah, it does seem noxious. And I
Speaker 1: have a lot of friends who are former white supremaists
Speaker 1: and are now trying to pull people out of that.
Speaker 1: It's a similar kind of how could you possibly be
Speaker 1: so hateful? But they were just normal people who bought
Speaker 1: into the idea. It seems horrible, and it is, but
Speaker 1: and it's what happened with Hitler youth. They weren't born
Speaker 1: evil Hitler youth. They were radicalized and terrorists. People who
Speaker 1: strap bombs on their body, people who fed poison to
Speaker 1: the children and their children in Jonestown. It's it is.
Speaker 1: It's horrible when you try to talk to them and
Speaker 1: they are spouting these horrible things, but no one wants
Speaker 1: to play the fool. And if we can help people
Speaker 1: understand this trickery, I really do think we can get
Speaker 1: to the point where this doesn't work anymore. The people
Speaker 1: that try to use these tactics won't have the same
Speaker 1: ability to do so. Yeah, it's it's a moment when, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: cults are seemed to be thriving in America, and stories
Speaker 1: about cults seem to be thriving in America. I mean
Speaker 1: these you know, like the document multiple documentaries about Nexium,
Speaker 1: and you know, people just people just love these stories. Now,
Speaker 1: presumably it's not people who are in cults who like
Speaker 1: the stories about cults so much, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's something a little cult like about the absorption in cults.
Speaker 1: I mean what do you make of the you know,
Speaker 1: popular cults as sort of an aspect of popular culture.
Speaker 1: People are fascinated by it, and I think everybody wants
Speaker 1: to believe that it could never happen to them, and
Speaker 1: so it's something they can point to and say, Wow,
Speaker 1: isn't that something that would never happen to me? But boy,
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating, and it is fascinating how someone can
Speaker 1: be completely taken into something like that kind of a cult.
Speaker 1: And cults are always more prevalent during times of when
Speaker 1: there's a sidal unrest, during times when there's confusion about
Speaker 1: the world. It's uncomfortable to feel confused, and it's uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to feel afraid. I mean, I was really afraid during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. I'm sure we all were. And or during
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic. Appreciate you're talking about it
Speaker 1: in the past tense, They say, yeah, kidden, but especially
Speaker 1: in the beginning. I know that I My anxiety was
Speaker 1: so so very high, and in times of anxiety and confusion,
Speaker 1: and also because of technology, all the changes, the exponential change,
Speaker 1: the speed of technology change being so fast that oh,
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel very scared and confused and
Speaker 1: like they don't fit in, and so those are the
Speaker 1: perfect conditions. So, Diane, I think the old model that
Speaker 1: people have in their heads of deep programming is that
Speaker 1: ends are trying to get their children out of cults.
Speaker 1: But more and more we hear these stories about children
Speaker 1: who are losing a parent or their parents to cults,
Speaker 1: and again about QAnon and Trump and these stories we've
Speaker 1: been reading. You know, is there anything that's different about it?
Speaker 1: And there are things you've learned about trying to deal
Speaker 1: with older people in cults and families, whether you're trying
Speaker 1: to get parents or grandparents out. My inbox at Antidote
Speaker 1: is just filled with those kinds of stories. Typically, my
Speaker 1: work has been trying to help disaffected youth because that
Speaker 1: is a vulnerability. But now it's young people writing from
Speaker 1: their college dorm rooms and saying I can't talk to
Speaker 1: my parents anymore. I don't know what to do, and
Speaker 1: so it is a different demographic. It's the same on
Speaker 1: a psychological level, it's just a different demographic. And so
Speaker 1: what we're doing is creating support groups and webinars and
Speaker 1: ways for people to learn some tactics to help build
Speaker 1: bridges with their loved ones and to help diffuse the
Speaker 1: anger that's going on between the two. It's very vult volatile,
Speaker 1: and that's been taught. It's part of it. If you
Speaker 1: want control over someone, it's really helpful to have an enemy.
Speaker 1: You've got to diffuse that intense feeling of anger for
Speaker 1: the other, hatred toward the other, and it comes from
Speaker 1: both sides. It's really hard on both sides because you
Speaker 1: feel so frustrated and it feels so evil on the
Speaker 1: other side, and so that has to be diffused and
Speaker 1: broken down so that you can learn to talk with
Speaker 1: each other again. That's the first step. If first you
Speaker 1: have to start getting to the place where you can
Speaker 1: remember that things you love about that person so that
Speaker 1: you can start meeting them there and reminding them that
Speaker 1: you want that relationship back. Build from there, Diane, we
Speaker 1: usually wrap up by asking what listeners can do, and
Speaker 1: in this case I would bifurcate the question. First, what
Speaker 1: can listeners do about the problem of cults in general
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to stop cults before they start,
Speaker 1: the kind of public health approach you were talking about,
Speaker 1: But separately, what can people do as individuals dealing with
Speaker 1: other individuals they may know, and their families who are
Speaker 1: vulnerable or have succumbed to a cult. I think the
Speaker 1: answer to both of those questions is the same, and
Speaker 1: that is to educate yourself about the trickery of psychological manipulation.
Speaker 1: Understand that intersection between just human conditions, those things that
Speaker 1: cause us pain, psychological pain, not feeling lonely or not
Speaker 1: fitting in, feeling confused or or angry about the changes
Speaker 1: in the world, fears, those kind of things, and how
Speaker 1: someone can take advantage of those things and they do so.
Speaker 1: If you have someone that has clearly been radicalized in
Speaker 1: some way, I think the first thing to do is
Speaker 1: educate yourself. There's lots of ways to do that, and
Speaker 1: I can point people in that direction. We do webinars
Speaker 1: and support groups and things. And then also to really
Speaker 1: reach for that empathy, really try to understand if you
Speaker 1: can go step over, jump over the belief system, if
Speaker 1: you can, and go back to the person that you
Speaker 1: love and remember that they're a good person. Remind them
Speaker 1: that you love them because they are a good person,
Speaker 1: and that you want to try to improve the relationship.
Speaker 1: Focus on the relationship and see if you can start
Speaker 1: building from there. If you're just arguing about doctrine. You're
Speaker 1: just not going to get anywhere. Diane ben Scoter is
Speaker 1: the founder of Antidote dot ngo and the author of
Speaker 1: Shoes of a Servant, My Unconditional Devotion to a Lie.
Speaker 1: To learn more about psychological manipulation and to find resources,
Speaker 1: please check out the links in our show notes. Next
Speaker 1: week on the show, I'll talk with an award winning
Speaker 1: medical innovator, Deja Taylor. She's a senior in high school.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll join us. Solvable Senior producer is Jocelyn Frank.
Speaker 1: Research in booking by Lisa Don. Catherine Girardo is our
Speaker 1: managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Loebell. Solvable
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review it. It really
Speaker 1: helps us get the word out. You can find Pushkin
Speaker 1: Podcasts wherever you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. I'm Jacob Weisberg five