Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. Rolling on the full. Loafing
Speaker 1: is a thing I can. I've seen We've all seen
Speaker 1: people do it. I've done it. I've kiddies for me.
Speaker 1: Now the work is to warrant what I have, even
Speaker 1: kind of shinny stuff. You know, that's my work. It's imperfect.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question about actors because
Speaker 1: you are Yeah, me too. We are old, funny duddies.
Speaker 1: We go to sleep at ten, we wake up at six,
Speaker 1: we go to bed at eight, So there are more
Speaker 1: funny duddies than you. You are the funny duddiest. Yes,
Speaker 1: welcome to go ask Alli. I'm Alle Wentworth. I've always
Speaker 1: been fascinated by cult. I think when I was in
Speaker 1: college in Upstate, New York, the whole Moon cult was
Speaker 1: living all around us, and I didn't understand what it
Speaker 1: was and I was afraid I was going to be
Speaker 1: kidnapped by them and had so many questions. And ever
Speaker 1: since then, whenever I see a cult documentary or some
Speaker 1: kind of a streamer about cults, I'm always tuning in.
Speaker 1: So what is it about cults that were so fascinated
Speaker 1: by Are we afraid of becoming engulfed in one, getting
Speaker 1: lost in one, being brainwashed by one? There's no better
Speaker 1: person to talk to about cults, about brainwashing, mind control,
Speaker 1: all of it than doctor Stephen Hassen. He's a PhD.
Speaker 1: He's a mental health professional and expert in an educator
Speaker 1: in cult and undue influenced tactics. A former member of
Speaker 1: the Moon Cult himself, doctor Hassen was d programmed when
Speaker 1: he was twenty two. Doctor Hassen has been working in
Speaker 1: the field of cults now for over forty years and
Speaker 1: has developed models to identify control tactics. He's a founding
Speaker 1: director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, and he's
Speaker 1: the author of four books on cult and mind control,
Speaker 1: and also hosts his own podcast, The Influence Continuum. Hello,
Speaker 1: doctor Hassen. I there's a wealth of information in your podcasts,
Speaker 1: in your ted talk, so I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: hit your greatest hits. Thank you. So, doctor Hassen, it
Speaker 1: is not every day that somebody wants to study brainwashing,
Speaker 1: my manipulation cults. And there's a reason that you sort
Speaker 1: of started delving into this world. So you have to
Speaker 1: tell that story because you've walked a few miles in
Speaker 1: the shoes of the cult, so tell my listeners about that. Sure,
Speaker 1: So go back to February of nineteen seventy four. I
Speaker 1: was nineteen. I was an upper junior at Queen's College,
Speaker 1: studying creative writing poetry in particular, and my girlfriend dumped
Speaker 1: me abruptly, and I was kind of blue, and the
Speaker 1: new semester was starting, and three women came up to
Speaker 1: me while I was sitting in the cafeteria and flirted
Speaker 1: with me and asked if they could join me at
Speaker 1: my table. And I was a nineteen year old, healthy
Speaker 1: male who thought he got lucky that day. And they
Speaker 1: said they were students. They said they weren't part of
Speaker 1: a religious group, but it turned out they were recruiters
Speaker 1: for the Moon Organization, Korean messiah who wants to take
Speaker 1: over the world and thinks that democracy is satanic. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of this. And I grew up
Speaker 1: in a middle class Jewish family. My dad had a
Speaker 1: hardware store, my mom was an art teacher. In eighth grade,
Speaker 1: two older sisters extra honor student, and I was not
Speaker 1: a joiner, but I was bright, and I want to
Speaker 1: improve myself and didn't want to be closed minded, and
Speaker 1: so they were flirting. They said, we lived together with
Speaker 1: people from all over the world. You have to come
Speaker 1: and meet our friends. And two and a half years
Speaker 1: later I was waking up on the Baltimore Beltway driving
Speaker 1: into the back of a tractor trailer truck at eighty
Speaker 1: miles an hour due to sleep deprivation. And in between that,
Speaker 1: I was made a leader in the Moon cult and
Speaker 1: was recruiting and doing crazy things like fasting for Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon during Watergate because God said he should be president.
Speaker 1: And I had hated Nixon before I've met the cult
Speaker 1: and been indoctrinated in mind control. Anyway, what happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six was this near fatal van crash in
Speaker 1: the hospital away from the group, sleeping a lot, and
Speaker 1: I called my sister, who I was always very close with,
Speaker 1: and she persuaded me to visit her and my nephew
Speaker 1: and she said on him to know his uncle Stevie
Speaker 1: come home. So I said, if you don't tell the parents,
Speaker 1: and you don't tell Steph, my oldest sister, who had
Speaker 1: all said I was in a cult and I was brainwashed,
Speaker 1: and I knew that was evil and satanic. I did go,
Speaker 1: and she did tell, and they had hired some ex moonies,
Speaker 1: one of whom was a woman I had recruited myself
Speaker 1: into the cult and I was very fond of and
Speaker 1: I was program to kill rather than betray the Messiah.
Speaker 1: And I actually almost snapped my father's neck while he
Speaker 1: was driving in the Long Island Expressway, but I didn't
Speaker 1: kill him, thank goodness. We get to the point of
Speaker 1: the dprogramming place and a big burly guy is going
Speaker 1: to come and help me go in there with my
Speaker 1: big long cast and I basically said to my father,
Speaker 1: who knew I was very very strong. I'm six feet tall.
Speaker 1: I said, if you try to make me go in there,
Speaker 1: I will be very violent and I will kill everybody
Speaker 1: or they will kill me, and my blood will be
Speaker 1: on your conscience forever. And my father cried and say,
Speaker 1: what would you do if it was your son, your
Speaker 1: only son? How would you feel? And it was the
Speaker 1: tears that got to the real me, and I switched
Speaker 1: into what I imagined was his perspective, thinking how crazy
Speaker 1: it must have looked to him that I had dropped
Speaker 1: out of college, quit my job, donated my bank account,
Speaker 1: and was fasting for Nixon. So anyway, I said, what
Speaker 1: do you want me to do? He said, just listen
Speaker 1: with an open mind. If you want to go back,
Speaker 1: at least your mother and I will be able to
Speaker 1: sleep at night knowing we did the responsible thing. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to prove I wasn't brainwashed or mind control,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to show that I had free will
Speaker 1: by the end, because they were showing me things like
Speaker 1: Chinese communist brainwashing studies of Robert Lifton, and basically my
Speaker 1: mind opened where I realized Moon was a liar. I
Speaker 1: had heard him personally tell us to lie so many times,
Speaker 1: and how could he be a man of God if
Speaker 1: he's a liar if we're teaching that God is a
Speaker 1: god of truth. So the wheels, the creaky wheels, started going,
Speaker 1: and then it just felt like a house of cards
Speaker 1: was going plap, plap pop, and I and I went.
Speaker 1: I just cried for three hours, like what was I
Speaker 1: been doing for two and a half years? And at
Speaker 1: that point I just needed to understand what happened to me.
Speaker 1: I bet because I'm you know, just a few minutes
Speaker 1: that I'm looking at you and talking to you, You're
Speaker 1: incredibly smart man, and I can't imagine you were any
Speaker 1: less smart when you were a eighteen nineteen year old man. No,
Speaker 1: I was reading postgraduate level when I was eight years old. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not an idiot as a teenager. As my point,
Speaker 1: you seem to have a caring, loving family. So definitely,
Speaker 1: what is it that these women, Okay, aside from hormones,
Speaker 1: how how did they infiltrate you in this way? How
Speaker 1: could they manipulate your mind? I mean to me, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of you know, I have friends whose children
Speaker 1: were addicts, and they literally had to have somebody come
Speaker 1: in at three in the morning and take them away
Speaker 1: and kind of break them all down and rebuild them again.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you kind of have to do
Speaker 1: that when somebody has been seeked in a cult. I'm
Speaker 1: not a fan of the three AM boot camp interventions.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some have saved people's lives, but also a
Speaker 1: lot of them are run by people who are not
Speaker 1: mental health professionals. Well, yes, I agree with you. The
Speaker 1: bottom line is that I that people are situationally vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Breakup of a relationship, death of a loved one, illness movie.
Speaker 1: So your breakup is your vulnerability. The girlfriend that broke
Speaker 1: up with it was the biggest vulnerability, if I can
Speaker 1: be honest, allay was that I thought I was too
Speaker 1: smart and only dumb people get into cults. I thought
Speaker 1: I was too smart. I had bicycle cross country when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen. My father taught me in the hardware store.
Speaker 1: When he brought me in to train me, he said,
Speaker 1: you can tell if someone's lying by their eyes. Steve
Speaker 1: and I looked at their eyes and they were completely
Speaker 1: convincing that they were sincere. They were students, they weren't
Speaker 1: part of a religious group. And I later became a
Speaker 1: top recruiter doing the same techniques to get people in
Speaker 1: believing that the world was satanic and I needed to
Speaker 1: save their souls and all their ancestors. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you this very quickly. Sure, so let's define cult. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what I'm my work is around authoritarian cults and
Speaker 1: a way of thinking about it as a pyramid structured
Speaker 1: organization with someone or some group or some ideology that's
Speaker 1: controlling and the deceptive recruitment and the behavior, information, thought,
Speaker 1: and emotional control to make a new identity where their
Speaker 1: dependent and obedient on the group and some people say
Speaker 1: you need a living guru or leader to have a cult,
Speaker 1: and that's not my knowledge or research, because you can
Speaker 1: have ideological cults right right. So, for example, the right
Speaker 1: wing sovereign citizens, the racist, the neo Nazis, they were
Speaker 1: doing leaderless resistance was the term. In other words, they
Speaker 1: put an isis was doing this. Um. They put out
Speaker 1: the ideology, they they they they give videos and for
Speaker 1: people to indoctrinate, but they leave it up to people
Speaker 1: to decide how they're going to act out right. Um.
Speaker 1: And I went on to develop my own model based
Speaker 1: on an influence continuum from ethical to unethical and what
Speaker 1: I call the BITE model of authoritaring control. Yeah, behavior,
Speaker 1: behavior control, information controls, and emotions emotional. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you can control those four variables including where the persons
Speaker 1: sleeping and eating, and their clothing and their language, and
Speaker 1: give them rigid rules and regulations and put them through
Speaker 1: a process where they're confused, disoriented, and hypnosis is a
Speaker 1: major factor, but not the the watch kind of hypnosis.
Speaker 1: It's a much more DVOS this kind of process level
Speaker 1: of hypnosis. It's something that I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: times learning about because it helps me and my work
Speaker 1: to coach families how to help love ones and to
Speaker 1: help people recover from these types of cases. And it's
Speaker 1: been a journey. I was persuaded to get my doctorate
Speaker 1: a few years ago because I got involved with a
Speaker 1: forensic think tank at Harvard Medical School, because I realized
Speaker 1: the law is about a hundred years out of date
Speaker 1: with understanding neuroscience and social psychology. And if you're young,
Speaker 1: you can be unduly influenced automatically by your age. If
Speaker 1: you're older and have dementia, that but the middle ground
Speaker 1: is called a slippery slope, and for me, it's not
Speaker 1: a slippery slope if you have these four components in
Speaker 1: the context of a lack of informed consent and installing phobias,
Speaker 1: for example, to make people rationally afraid to question the
Speaker 1: leader or the group, or irrationally afraid to exit the
Speaker 1: group because terrible things will happen to you. I was
Speaker 1: literally taken to the Exorcist movie alley in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four and Moon said, personally, God made the Exorcist movie,
Speaker 1: this is what will happen if anyone leaves the Unification Church.
Speaker 1: And at that point I had no critical thing you'll
Speaker 1: start throwing up and spinning around. Wow, it was scary, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, And so obviously I think about Patty Hurst.
Speaker 1: She was made into Tania and she robbed banks and yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people didn't believe she was brainwashed.
Speaker 1: They thought she was a wealthy little kid acting out.
Speaker 1: And in my opinion, she was absolutely a victim of brainwashing.
Speaker 1: She was put in a closet, she was sexually abused.
Speaker 1: So for me, it was just bad legal defense and
Speaker 1: lack of the public's awareness and understanding that it doesn't
Speaker 1: just happen to stupid people, weak people, people from bad families, etc. Right,
Speaker 1: the right conditions, almost everybody can be hurt this way,
Speaker 1: and so and can you create those conditions, Meaning with
Speaker 1: Patty Hurst, they locked her in a closet, they sexually
Speaker 1: abused her. I'm sure they starved her. I mean, so
Speaker 1: you can also as a cult leader, you can create
Speaker 1: all those conditions with which to get people embedded in
Speaker 1: your sort of philosophies and your agenda. Basically, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: traffickers and pimps do this, And trafficking is illegal in
Speaker 1: the US and most civilized countries of the world. It's
Speaker 1: defined as fraud, force, or coercion, and most every mind
Speaker 1: control cult has the fraud, the lack of informed consent,
Speaker 1: and the coercion, which is granularly explained by the control
Speaker 1: of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. And in fact, labor
Speaker 1: trafficking experts are using my model, and sex trafficking experts
Speaker 1: who are helping people get out of that type of
Speaker 1: mind control are using it because it makes sense. So
Speaker 1: with the sex trafficking and labor trafficking, it's very fear based, right,
Speaker 1: It's much more about if you try to leave, you
Speaker 1: will be killed or will kill your family or right, yes,
Speaker 1: so that's where the force comes in. If somebody holds
Speaker 1: a knife up, like Larry Ray of the Sarah Lawrence cult,
Speaker 1: he was just convicted of trafficking, if he holds a
Speaker 1: big knife up and starts to coerce you to make
Speaker 1: a false confession, you repeated enough times, you start believing it,
Speaker 1: because that's the way the mind works and memory works,
Speaker 1: is you can reprogram people's memories and people can have
Speaker 1: false memories of experiences that never happened. And so Charles
Speaker 1: Manson was kind of the genius of this too. Correct. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to give him that much credit. I
Speaker 1: don't think genius is a right word. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was a genius, but he was. He was definitely
Speaker 1: involved with scientology and he also used psychedelics. So psychedelics
Speaker 1: is another method that can be used to subvert people's
Speaker 1: critical thinking and reality testing. If you're tripping on acid
Speaker 1: and somebody is telling you we were married in the
Speaker 1: past life, don't you remember, you know, we were walking
Speaker 1: down the river of the Nile and we were fishing.
Speaker 1: Don't you remember, and you're tripping, you know, it's going
Speaker 1: to go in your head somewhere. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to come after the short break and we're back.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you think you equate sex trafficking with a cult,
Speaker 1: because most people think sex trafficking is they go after
Speaker 1: vulnerable children or women, They kidnap them, and then they
Speaker 1: use threats and fear to keep them there, same with pimps.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that it's it's more than that, No,
Speaker 1: it's it really is a systematic social influence process where
Speaker 1: people's behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions are manipulated to create
Speaker 1: a new identity that's the pendant and obedient on the
Speaker 1: pimp or the trafficker. So they frequently will change the name,
Speaker 1: change the clothing, change the language system, and people have
Speaker 1: an alternate life and belief about themselves. And so I
Speaker 1: do want to clarify something. So I have something called
Speaker 1: the influence continuum ethical to unethical, and this is all
Speaker 1: on my Freedom of mind dot com website under learn
Speaker 1: about undue influence. So I say there are cults along
Speaker 1: the entire continuum, but the difference between healthy cults as
Speaker 1: you choose. You can think you have your own critical faculties.
Speaker 1: You can leave without threats or fear or harassment. You
Speaker 1: can be fanatically into something, but it's your own choice
Speaker 1: versus having a new identity. I mean, one could say
Speaker 1: that there are abusive and horrific relationships that are that
Speaker 1: model this cult thing. I mean, I have some friends
Speaker 1: whose son has gotten involved with a woman and he
Speaker 1: doesn't speak to his parents and he's moved far away,
Speaker 1: and I keep saying to them, God, it's like he's
Speaker 1: in a cult, But no one looks at it that
Speaker 1: way because it's a relationship one cult to one. No,
Speaker 1: you're right, yeah, you're one hundred percent correct. And men
Speaker 1: controlling women and in fact, in the UK they have
Speaker 1: a new law called course of control where a man
Speaker 1: is controlling a woman and isolating her from her family
Speaker 1: and controlling her finances. It's not yet recognizing women controlling men.
Speaker 1: But in the United States I do a lot of
Speaker 1: cases one on one controlling and they're typically malignant narcissists,
Speaker 1: by the way, so it's another way of saying it
Speaker 1: is a narcissist who's a psychopath who are isolating a
Speaker 1: person and taking their money and wanting to exert power
Speaker 1: over them and sex. So we can talk about political cults,
Speaker 1: therapy cults, multi level marketing cults, psychotherapeutic cults, boot camp cults,
Speaker 1: which you mentioned something about friends who brought their kids
Speaker 1: who are addicts to a closed environment to break them
Speaker 1: down and create a new identity presumably, but a lot
Speaker 1: of those groups make the person dependent on the cult well,
Speaker 1: especially because they get kickbacks, and that whole system in
Speaker 1: Utah so corrupt, but yes, exactly, Utah is one of
Speaker 1: the worst states for these systems, and Paris Hilton is
Speaker 1: probably the most famous person who survived that. And so
Speaker 1: when you talk about like communist China, brainwashing and some
Speaker 1: of these techniques whether they're used on an educated adult.
Speaker 1: When it comes to let's say, sex trafficking, isn't it
Speaker 1: all fear based? Well, people don't understand. Most young people,
Speaker 1: mostly women or girls rather or boys, are recruited around
Speaker 1: twelve to fourteen years of age, and so it starts
Speaker 1: with what's called grooming, and the right wing is now
Speaker 1: using that term and flipping it on its head. But
Speaker 1: the real grooming of perverts and pedophiles and traffickers is
Speaker 1: giving food, buying a gift, walking with them, paying attention
Speaker 1: to them, maybe playing video games with them online where
Speaker 1: the person thinks they're their own age. And by the way,
Speaker 1: neuroscience has now told us that when someone is playing
Speaker 1: a video game online, the brain starts acting like it's
Speaker 1: a friend, even though you have no idea who's on
Speaker 1: the other side, and it could be a Chinese agent
Speaker 1: or a Russian agent, or the porn industry. It's exactly.
Speaker 1: It's typically a love thing where the young people think
Speaker 1: that that's a boyfriend, and they step by step get
Speaker 1: them involved with sex and do a favor for me.
Speaker 1: My best friend is coming over. He's really lonely, he
Speaker 1: needs attention. Give him a back rub, you know now
Speaker 1: pull down his shirt and rub his back that way.
Speaker 1: And it's just step by step. And and it's unfortunate
Speaker 1: that everybody who walks around thinking it's only someone else's kid,
Speaker 1: it's only weak people or stupid people. They're the most vulnerable. Really,
Speaker 1: it's way better to be humble and go. It could
Speaker 1: happen to me. And that's why you always want to
Speaker 1: stay in touch with your intuition, your gut, and you
Speaker 1: want to always have a red flag go off in
Speaker 1: your mind. If someone is saying don't tell your parents
Speaker 1: or don't don't share this with your husband or your wife.
Speaker 1: That should be like an immediate information control, right, danger, danger,
Speaker 1: you know what I've The bottom line is there's some
Speaker 1: people who are exceptionally vulnerable. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: people on the spectrum, very smart, high functioning folks on
Speaker 1: the spectrum, are exceptionally vulnerable to recruitment by mind control cults.
Speaker 1: Why because they're love bombed. They have an instant community
Speaker 1: where they have meaning and everyone's saying, oh, oh, Allie,
Speaker 1: you're so special, you're so smart, we're so glad to
Speaker 1: have you. So I did a chapter for an Oxford
Speaker 1: University Press textbook on loan actor terrorism, and mine was
Speaker 1: the only chapter on online indoctrination. And I used the
Speaker 1: case example of someone on the spectrum who was moved
Speaker 1: to violence because they were manipulated to feel like they
Speaker 1: have to act out either against women because women are evil,
Speaker 1: because they could never get a girlfriend, or they want
Speaker 1: to tear down America because America is evil, so they
Speaker 1: want to create anarchy. So the thing that I want
Speaker 1: so desperately, and why I'm so grateful that you asked
Speaker 1: me to be on your show, is I want people
Speaker 1: to step back and understand we're living in the age
Speaker 1: of influence, and in particular digital influence. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about all of that because
Speaker 1: it's very scary and COVID has sped everything up and
Speaker 1: people are believing stupid, crazy conspiracy theories because they've been programmed.
Speaker 1: Let's just throw qan on out there, let's take them.
Speaker 1: That is, to me an authoritarian cult in itself exactly.
Speaker 1: I did a bite model analysis actually of QAnon on
Speaker 1: my website. I was invited by Dave Troy, who does
Speaker 1: ted X mid Atlantic, to do a program called Dismantling QAnon,
Speaker 1: and it was there that I learned for the first
Speaker 1: time that QAnon was based on alternate reality gaming technology,
Speaker 1: and I was I'm old, right, So I did pack
Speaker 1: Man oh too? Yeah, yeah, I never did. I never did,
Speaker 1: you know, video games like so many people do. But
Speaker 1: this is based on the idea that you can go
Speaker 1: on treasure hunts and figure things out and clues with
Speaker 1: these bread drops and this and that, and it engages people.
Speaker 1: And the other side of this that I want to
Speaker 1: state for your listeners is this is a PSI up.
Speaker 1: This is a psychological warfare operation. And we know for
Speaker 1: a fact Michael Flynn, General Flynn did this for our
Speaker 1: country against people in other countries for a long time.
Speaker 1: And he's already proclaimed the digital Soldier oath and he's
Speaker 1: definitely not a person who loves the rule of law. Okay,
Speaker 1: And now I have to throw Trump out too, because
Speaker 1: he's clearly was given a few handbooks and models for this.
Speaker 1: So I wrote the book called The Cult of Trump
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster, and my thesis essentially is that they're
Speaker 1: authoritarian cults whose leaders were directing people to believe in Trump.
Speaker 1: And so chapter seven is all about the puppeteers as
Speaker 1: I research them, including Putin. I put him first in
Speaker 1: the list. The Family, which is a cult that used
Speaker 1: to do the National Prayer breakfasts and everything, and Michael
Speaker 1: Pence is in that group. So that's another cult. Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Charlotte has written two good books and there's a Netflix
Speaker 1: series about the Family, and that cult recruits Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 1: By the way. Then we have Opus Day, which is
Speaker 1: a right wing cult in my professional opinion of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church that thinks the Pope is Satanic and they
Speaker 1: want to break down the separation of church and state.
Speaker 1: The biggest threat, and the media has missed this in
Speaker 1: my opinion, is what's called new Apostolic Reformation churches and
Speaker 1: what these are. The media said, these are white Christian evangelicals. Well,
Speaker 1: I know white Christian evangelicals, and they're like, this is
Speaker 1: not Jesus's teachings, this is not biblical. The leaders of
Speaker 1: these groups, they say, I'm an apostle or I'm a
Speaker 1: prophet of God. I talk directly to God and get
Speaker 1: direct revelations, and I speak in tongues and cast out
Speaker 1: demons like the Exorcists, and I can do faith feelings.
Speaker 1: And their followers are called spiritual warriors because they're gonna
Speaker 1: get rid of all the satanic libtards me and people
Speaker 1: in the Cult of Sorrows presumably me, right, But there's
Speaker 1: forty million in the United States in this body of
Speaker 1: different cults, and an estimated six hundred and fifty million worldwide,
Speaker 1: and people are reporting, oh their popularist movements around the world.
Speaker 1: These are psyops by authoritarian governments or people who are
Speaker 1: promoting fossil fuels to divert people from global climate crisis
Speaker 1: legislation and action, and to keep the prices of oil high.
Speaker 1: So we're in we're in a World War three type
Speaker 1: information warfare. Of course, there's kinetic warfare in Ukraine right now,
Speaker 1: as everybody knows so well. But we have to wake
Speaker 1: up and realize if we love our country, if we
Speaker 1: want rule of law, if we want human rights, women's rights,
Speaker 1: gay rights, indigenous rights, we have to take action and
Speaker 1: not just be reactive, but we have to proactively think
Speaker 1: about how to reclaim and how to reinstitute laws that
Speaker 1: have been systematically broken down over the last forty years.
Speaker 1: Do you connect any dots with school shootings and cults?
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. There's something called social learning theory and people
Speaker 1: who study terrorism, it's a version of contagion effect or
Speaker 1: copycat things, and they would literally, I believe bad actors
Speaker 1: recruiting young vulnerable men to think that they will be
Speaker 1: immortal if they go into a mosque and kill a
Speaker 1: lot of people in live stream it or any number
Speaker 1: of variables of that. And I actually put the NR
Speaker 1: in the Cult of Trump because when I was researching it,
Speaker 1: there were five million people. And this is a group
Speaker 1: that is by the way, you remember, is it Marina Boutina?
Speaker 1: Remember the Russian agent who's now in the parliament in Russia.
Speaker 1: She infiltrated the NRA. She was at the national prayer
Speaker 1: breakfast of a family cult. Putin doesn't allow citizens to
Speaker 1: have assault rifles in Russia, but he wants us to
Speaker 1: have twenty million AR fifteens. Why he wants us to
Speaker 1: kill each other. And my former cult has a gun
Speaker 1: factory making AR fifteens. The Moonees and another son of
Speaker 1: Sun Young Moon has a crown of golden bullets, calls
Speaker 1: himself the king and his cult is called the Rod
Speaker 1: of Iron Ministry, saying that the revelations in the Bible,
Speaker 1: it says that we should have ar fifteen. So he
Speaker 1: has two compounds, one in Texas and one in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: hiring vets to train people how to use these weapons.
Speaker 1: And this is happening right now in our country. And
Speaker 1: I have to believe that law enforcement, now that Biden
Speaker 1: has come in, is trying to clean up the mess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's been made in the Cult of Trump era. Well,
Speaker 1: and there's also sort of small things we can do.
Speaker 1: Certainly the media cannot, and they've started to stop showing
Speaker 1: faces of shooters and not giving out their name and
Speaker 1: not using any platforms so that they do feel immortalized
Speaker 1: or sainted and focus on the victims, and focus on
Speaker 1: the victims exactly. Yeah, and it's time for a short break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to go ask Galley. Technology. I mean that
Speaker 1: is sort of the greatest enemy to trying to stop
Speaker 1: all this because you know, I always say on my podcast,
Speaker 1: it's it's just the wild West. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: recruit extremists, you can create cults online without leaving your
Speaker 1: living room now exactly. And to me, I mean that
Speaker 1: seems like an incredibly difficult thing to fight to battle,
Speaker 1: you know, because the laws for you know, all these
Speaker 1: techno highways have not even been implemented. So how can
Speaker 1: somebody like me take action? What should we do? The
Speaker 1: problem was the the infiltration through the Federalist Society of
Speaker 1: our Supreme Court and courts around the land. But we
Speaker 1: need digital protection legislation because there's five estimated five thousand
Speaker 1: data points on every voting American that's been collected, every
Speaker 1: website you've gone to, everylike, every dislike what food you
Speaker 1: like to eat. There are AI algorithms to understand which
Speaker 1: buttons to push for which people in order to manipulate them.
Speaker 1: And then the other part of it. I've been interviewed
Speaker 1: by Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology, the
Speaker 1: person who is very involved with the Social Dilemma documentary,
Speaker 1: which is a must see in my opinion for everyone.
Speaker 1: So we need to understand that billionaires who have platforms
Speaker 1: and their goal is money and selling ad by capturing
Speaker 1: people's attention. The rule of thumb is if it's free,
Speaker 1: then you're the product, right right, So you have to
Speaker 1: understand that there are great benefits from virtual technology. You
Speaker 1: can surgeons can do surgery remotely who are highly skilled
Speaker 1: and save somebody's life. However, bad actors who want to
Speaker 1: subvert America's power and prestige and subvert democracy. Are for example,
Speaker 1: the second biggest owner of Twitter of the Saudis or
Speaker 1: at least the Middle Eastern oil barrens if Elon musk
Speaker 1: Is so into electric cars, an electric solar Why would
Speaker 1: oil barons want to be on this platform. By the way,
Speaker 1: QAnon's back, Neo Nazis are back on Twitter. It's really terrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is hope. But we need to pass legislation.
Speaker 1: And I've been saying we should have open hearings on
Speaker 1: QAnon sy ops, information warfare, propaganda, brainwashing by top experts,
Speaker 1: educate American citizens and the world for what we know
Speaker 1: is being done right now. But there are all these
Speaker 1: politicians who've been given donations and have other kinds of corruption,
Speaker 1: maybe from Russia infiltration, and they're gonna undermine that effort.
Speaker 1: So right now, it just feels like citizens like you,
Speaker 1: Ali and me and others who genuinely care, we need
Speaker 1: to think outside the box for how how to get
Speaker 1: this done. So, doctor Hasson, does it really all come
Speaker 1: down to money? Is it just greed? So in my
Speaker 1: work when people ask me what's in it for cult
Speaker 1: leaders or what's it all about. It seems to me
Speaker 1: power is number one. Money is number two, which gives
Speaker 1: you more power, and sex is number three, which can
Speaker 1: also be used. Because you yes, because you hear about
Speaker 1: authoritarian cults. You hear, I mean these are the ones
Speaker 1: that are sort of on Hulu and Netflix, the political halts,
Speaker 1: and then cults that are sort of built from the
Speaker 1: base up by people that that it's just greed, they
Speaker 1: just want money. Um, you know, I would say that
Speaker 1: there are cults of people who you know, rip off
Speaker 1: grandmothers because they have dementias. Right, So there's a difference
Speaker 1: between con artists and cult leaders. The con artists just
Speaker 1: want the quick in and out, get the money and
Speaker 1: move on to the next victim. It's the people who
Speaker 1: want to literally create slaves, right, people who want the
Speaker 1: long controlled expansion of power. But I put them in
Speaker 1: with the sex cults, the slave cults, so I put
Speaker 1: I put them in the same category. And that's all power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I mean, the sex to me is power.
Speaker 1: I find those to be the same. Not love. No,
Speaker 1: it's not love. And I'm a love guy, I say too.
Speaker 1: And I've been saying this for years. If you have
Speaker 1: a friend or a family member who's gone down the
Speaker 1: Magar road, you know, the qan On road. The worst
Speaker 1: thing to do is cuttle off from them, or call
Speaker 1: them names or say their brainwash, just like my family
Speaker 1: did to me in seventy four. It just makes the
Speaker 1: person dig in more and feel persecuted. The best technique
Speaker 1: is a warm technique, inviting people to remember that you
Speaker 1: were brothers and sisters or aunts and uncles or best friends,
Speaker 1: and saying, listen, you're intelligent, I respect you. You seem
Speaker 1: very fervent. I want to understand how you've come to
Speaker 1: believe this. Please, let's spend the time. Go back in
Speaker 1: time and tell me your first memory of QAnon, for example,
Speaker 1: and what did you think? And they almost always ali
Speaker 1: say I thought it was crazy or I thought it
Speaker 1: was stupid, and then they say, oh, that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So tell me what was it if you can think back,
Speaker 1: what was it that made you start taking it seriously
Speaker 1: and made as one of these propaganda documentaries, or maybe
Speaker 1: one of the girlfriend that they're with, the boyfriend that
Speaker 1: they're with who they fall in love with, is into it.
Speaker 1: But the point is is educating them, not saying you're
Speaker 1: an occult, but educating them about other groups that use
Speaker 1: mind control, Chinese communist brainwashing techniques, which is what was
Speaker 1: helpful to me to get out of the Moone fascist
Speaker 1: cult or traffickers, sex traffickers in particular of children. They're
Speaker 1: very interested to learn about that. Yeah, So here's my
Speaker 1: big question to you. How do you sleep at night? Truly?
Speaker 1: Like how do you digest all the stuff all day long?
Speaker 1: And how do you sleep? And do you take anything
Speaker 1: to make yourself go to sleep? Because I would be
Speaker 1: so anxious and so scared all the time. It's really
Speaker 1: a burden. My wife of twenty almost twenty five years
Speaker 1: has really been incredible support and she helped me in
Speaker 1: researching and writing of the Cult of Trump. She's a
Speaker 1: professional writer. But the truth is I often don't sleep
Speaker 1: at night, and I don't like sleeping pills. My go
Speaker 1: to self hypnosis and I've been to clinical interesting mental
Speaker 1: health professionals trained and hypnosis and it helps me get
Speaker 1: my agitation my cortsol levels down. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I did have cancer, and my heart goes out to
Speaker 1: Jamie Raskin. I had them FOMA two because I was
Speaker 1: working too hard and traveling and not sleeping enough. My
Speaker 1: heart goes out to Jamie. I hope he has a
Speaker 1: fast recovery. But the bottom line is I really am
Speaker 1: trying to train more people to understand how to help
Speaker 1: these victims. That's why I created an online course plug
Speaker 1: Plug No good for mental health professionals, but for anyone
Speaker 1: who wants a deeper dive to understand how do you
Speaker 1: help people heal from their identity being given an associative disorder?
Speaker 1: Are you worried about the future. I mean for somebody
Speaker 1: that is so immersed in this, but I mean really worried.
Speaker 1: I was worried about the mid terms, whether I would
Speaker 1: have to move to another country, honestly, but I was
Speaker 1: so relieved when we saved the Senate that the bottom
Speaker 1: line is I'm an optimist because there's no option but
Speaker 1: to believe, have hope, inspire other people, and to educate
Speaker 1: people how to protect their own minds, their friends and
Speaker 1: families minds, but also to stand up against these authoritarians
Speaker 1: and say no, we want human rights, we want rule
Speaker 1: of law. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much for doing
Speaker 1: this podcast. I said, there's so much, and we have
Speaker 1: in our show notes all your books, and your podcast.
Speaker 1: So I do direct all my listeners to everything because
Speaker 1: it's so important and it's so informative, and at a
Speaker 1: certain point we a lot of us have to do
Speaker 1: some of the work that you're doing now as well,
Speaker 1: because there are people in our friend world and our
Speaker 1: family that need this. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: So can I ask you a question? Yes, I was
Speaker 1: just going to get to that. What's your favorite cupcake? Oh?
Speaker 1: What is my favorite cupcake? It's chocolate with vanilla frosting.
Speaker 1: I'm a traditionalist. I can do that or I can
Speaker 1: do vanilla with chocolate frosting. But it has to be
Speaker 1: one or the other. I'm not a red velvet fan. Huh. Okay,
Speaker 1: And you like milk with it or of course milk, yes,
Speaker 1: and milk with my cookies, and yes, I'm all about dairy.
Speaker 1: You dunk your cookies and do not do that. I
Speaker 1: do it more of the way people who drink do
Speaker 1: a shot and then they have a chaser. It's more
Speaker 1: like that. I don't like to mix. So okay, okay,
Speaker 1: there you go. That's great. Thank you your pleasure, Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to go Ask Alli if you'd like
Speaker 1: to learn more about cults and undo influence. Check out
Speaker 1: our show notes and visit Freedom of Mind dot com
Speaker 1: to access tons of resources, services, and doctor Hasson's podcast,
Speaker 1: The Influence Continuum. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review
Speaker 1: Go Ask Alli and follow me on social media on
Speaker 1: Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth Now. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to ask me a question or suggest a guest or
Speaker 1: a topic to dig into, I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, and there's a bunch of ways you can
Speaker 1: do it. You can call or text me at three
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