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Political cult is a term used to describe some groups on what is generally considered to be the political fringe. Although the majority of groups to which the term "cult" (currently often used as a pejorative term according to some comparative religion scholars^{[1] [2]}) is sometimes applied are religious in nature, a number are non-religious and focus either on secular self-improvement^{[3] [4] [5] [6]} or on political action and ideology.^[7]

Contents 1 Background 2 Non-mainstream Religions and Politics 3 American Family Foundation Guidelines 4 Examples of groups that have been described as "political cults" 5 Armed movements 6 References 7 External links

Groups that some writers have termed as "political cults," mostly advocating far-left or far-right agendas, have received some attention from journalists and scholars. In their 2000 book On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth discuss about a dozen organizations in the United States and Great Britain that they characterize as cults.^[8] In a separate article Tourish explains that in his usage "The word cult is not a term of abuse, as this paper tries to explain. It is nothing more than a shorthand expression for a particular set of practices that have been observed in a variety of dysfunctional organisations."^[9]

The term "political cult" has also been used to describe the "cult of personality" in North Korea (in a context that clearly describes practices more extreme than those in most communist countries to which the term has been applied).^{[10] [11] [12] [13]}

Author and journalist Chip Berlet, the senior researcher at Political Research Associates (PRA) [22], compares political cults to totalitarian movements. In part, he bases this characterization on the writings of Hannah Arendt, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism^[14] It should be noted, however, that the historian Walter Laqueur has described the followers of Arendt as themselves forming a cult.^[15]

The term "cult" has also been used loosely and sometimes sarcastically to refer to tightly controlled or excessively fanatical political formations or movements without necessarily meaning that they fit the definition of a destructive cult in the sociological sense of the term. For instance, a Republican Party activist in Texas complained to writer Joe Conason that the local party had become "more religious cult than political organization."^[16]

Some religious groups that have been described variously as cults or new religious movements participate vigorously in politics, including the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon^[17] and Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation movement (which sponsors the Natural Law Party), but such groups often clearly identify themselves as being religious organizations that are motivated primarily by spiritual concerns.

Charges and counter-charges of cultism have been noted during political controversies. Falun Gong, a religious movement in China, was described as a cult by the Chinese government in the 1990s and has been subjected to harsh repression ever since. The China-Anti Cult Association (CACA) borrowed many of the concepts of the western Anti-Cult Movement in its polemic against Falun Gong, according to one scholarly article.^[18] Another report claims that the "brainwashing ideology" of the Western anti-cult movement has been a contibuting factor in the repression of the Falun Going by the chinese government.^[19] In an interview published by the Chinese embassy, American Family Foundation Board member Margaret T. Singer labeled the Falun Gong as a cult, and said she did not feel that the government crackdown on the group was “a religious freedom issue at all.”^[20] Singer told the Embassy reporter that the American public’s perception of the Falun Gong as a suppressed religious organization was a result of misunderstandings by the American public and a bias against the Chinese government. The American Family Foundation's then president, Herbert Rosedale, presented a paper at a CACA meeting in China in 2001^[21] and the following year hosted a meeting of the China Anti-Cult Association and "cult experts" associated with the AFF.^[22] Rosedale was criticized at the time for lending support to the Chinese government's suppression of the Falun Gong.^[23]

Falun Gong countered the arguments of the Chinese government with Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, a book-length attack on the entire history of Maoism. The book claims that Chinese communism is a cult that has used brainwashing, criticism and self-criticism, physical repression, isolation, paranoia, personality cultism and a full range of other cult-like manipulative methods to control the Chinese people, and further characterizes Chinese Communism as a distortion of Chinese culture that has reached deep into Chinese society.[23]

Guidelines have been developed by the American Family Foundation (AFF) ^[24] that claim to provide a basis for making a provisional judgment as to whether a particular group might be a "political cult" rather than simply an ideological sect that uses flamboyantly extreme rhetoric and/or elicits a high level of voluntary commitment from its core members.

1. The group is preoccupied with making money and often elevates money-making duties above the group's ostensible ideological or religious goals. In a political cult, this would include excessive fund raising, especially by illegal means such as electoral campaign-finance fraud.
2. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations). In a political context, this would apply to cult-of-personality dictators, as well as other political leaders who strive for a position of authority free from oversight.
3. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group. In a political context, this could include criminal activities, including unprovoked violence against opponents.
4. The group has an us-versus-them mentality that causes hostility towards, and/or conflict with, political opponents and the wider society to an irrational degree that usually undermines the cult's ostensible goals. Although non-cults, including mainstream political parties, also frequentlyencourage us-versus-them thinking, in the political cult it is carried to an extreme in which the entire world outside the cult is regarded either as the enemy or as pawns to be manipulated in the fight against the enemy; in turn, critics of the cult and other opponents are demonized in a manner that brooks no questioning from the cult's cadre.
5. The group not only requires members to adhere to particular doctrines or a particular "line" (a feature of many non-cultic groups as well) but also strongly discourages or even bans any questioning or criticism of the behavior or instructions of the group's leadership, and often harshly punishes any members who persist in criticism even if such members are loyal to the "line."
6. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. In the context of a political cult, this could be compared in some respects to Stalin's cult of personality or Nazism's Fuhrerprinzip.

The LaRouche Movement^{[25] [26]} and Gino Parente's National Labor Federation (NATLFED) ^{[27] [28]} are examples of political groups described as "cults" that are based in the United States; another is Marlene Dixon's now-defunct Democratic Workers Party (a critical history of the DWP is given in Bounded Choice by Janja A. Lalich, a sociologist and former DWP member).^[29]

The "O", a small Marxist group in Minneapolis, is the subject of a memoir by ex-member Alexandra Stein.^[30] Organizations headed by Fred Newman, such as the International Workers Party and the New Alliance Party, have been described as a cult by political critics such as Tourish and Wohlforth, Chip Berlet, and the Anti-Defamation League.^{[31] [32] [33]} Newman is involved in both politics and psychotherapy, and has described the cult claims as false and as politically motivated, destructive attacks by political opponents.^[34][35] The followers of Ayn Rand during her lifetime were characterized as a "cult" by economist Murray N. Rothbard and historian of science Michael Shermer.^{[36] [37]}. The core group around Rand was called the "Collective" and is now defunct (the chief group disseminating Rand's ideas today is the Ayn Rand Institute). Although the Collective advocated a decidedly libertarianism philosophy, Rothbard claimed they were organized in the manner of a "Leninist" organization.^[38]

In Britain, the Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist group led by the late Gerry Healy and strongly supported by actress Vanessa Redgrave, has been described by others, who have been involved in the Trotskyist movement, as having been a cult or as displaying cult-like characteristics in the 1970s and 1980s.^[39] It is also described as such by Tourish and Wohlforth in their writings.^[40] In his review of Tourish and Wohlforth's book, Bob Pitt, a former member of the WRP concedes that it had a "cult-like character" but argues that rather than being typical of the far left, this feature actually made the WRP atypical and "led to its being treated as a pariah within the revolutionary left itself."^[41]

Workers' Struggle (LO, Lutte ouvrière) in France, publicly headed by Arlette Laguiller but revealed in the 1990s to be directed by Robert Barcia, has often been criticized as a cult, for example by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his older brother Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, as well as L'Humanité and Libération.^[42]

The Shining Path guerrilla movement active in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s has been described variously as a "cult"^[43] and an intense "cult of personality."^[44] The Tamil Tigers have also been qualified as such (as well as one of the most effective guerrilla movement) ^[45]

The People's Mujahedin of Iran, a leftist guerrilla movement based in Iraq, has been controversially described as a political cult and as a movement that is abusive towards it own members. ^{[46] [47] [48]} [24].

• Characteristics of a cult checklist
• Theocracy Watch report on the expansion of religious influence - in the Republican Party in the United States

• Dennis King's web site on political cults
• Tourish and Wohlforth's On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left
• Anti-Fred Newman website with selective archive of critical material

Cults v • d • e
Definitions
Client cult · Cult apologist · Cults and governments ·Cult of personality · Cult suicide · Cult-watching group · Destructive cult · Political cult
Lists
Authors opposing cults · In literature and popular culture · Government reports · Groups referred to as cults Politicians opposing cults · Researchers
Organizations
CAN · CESNUR · FACTnet · FREECOG · ICSA · MIVILUDES · Reachout Trust · Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center
Opposition
Anti-Cult Movement · Christian countercult movement · Opposition to cults and new religious movements
Theories / Methodologies
APA Task Force (DIMPAC) · Brainwashing · Cult checklist · Deprogramming · Exit counseling · Mind control · Post-cult trauma
Related
Apostasy · Atrocity story · Bigotry · Charismatic authority · Freedom of Expression · Freedom of religion · Groupthink · Int'l Religious Freedom Act 1998 · Large Group Awareness Training · Minority religion · Occult · Project Megiddo · Religious intolerance · Religious persecution · True-believer syndrome · Witch hunt · Religious freedom by country · Universal Declaration of Human Rights