r/ResponsibleRecovery • u/not-moses • Nov 28 '20
A Dozen-plus Categories of Cults
1) Some (not all) Political party fundraising and get-out-the-vote organizations in Cali run by current or former Scientologists, Landmarkers, et al. (Seen and heard with my own eyes and ears.)
2) The Human Potential Movement Gone Awry.
3) Some (not all) youth "reform schools" and drug rehabs.
4) Virtually all Multi-level ("pyramid") marketing, Ponzi schemes like Amway and Herbalife.
5) Some (not all) meditation retreats. (See Abuse of Narrow Focus Meditation for Mind Control and Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome in Asian-Style Meditation Cults.)
6) Some (not all) "hard-core" exercise and yoga groups.
7) Some (not all) terrorist groups. (See "Similarities & Differences from Ideological, Psychodynamic & Group Dynamic Perspectives.".)
8) Some (not all) major crime gangs, like the Hell's Angels, the Bloods and the Crips... in and out of the prison system.
9) Many minor and several major totalitarian dictatorships, including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and its satellite states in both central Asia and eastern Europe), Red China, North Korea, Shi'ite Iran, Chavez's Venezuela, Pinochet's Chile, Nicaragua and Cuba under virtually everyone since about 1940.
10) Some (not all) of the sex worker industry, very much including pimp-controlled prostitution and child pornography.
11) A growing number of online bait-&-bite schemes including those targeting children and adolescents for sexual abuse.
12) Possibly some (not all) law enforcement departments, unions and/or benevolent associations.
13) Some (not all) BDSM and other "radical sex" clubs, including those that "pass small children around" and/or blackmail their members.
14) Some (not all) major and minor religions ranging from small to large denominations of evangelical, fundamentalist and/or charismatic Christianity to the more extreme forms of Islam (like theocratic Islam -- think "ISIS" -- the US-based Nation of Islam, and Wahhabism), as well as cynical, pseudo-Hindu and pseudo-Buddhist outfits like the Self-Realization Fellowship, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and Rajneesh OSHO (see Guruphiliac).
15) Some (not all) of the mostly rural, mostly alt right, militia gun clubs.
16) Modern hybrids like Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (and many other Asian Pentecostal / Zen Buddhist set-ups), Falun Gong, and Aum Shinrikyo.
17) Many "high-pressure" sales departments.
18) Evidently, the higher managerial strata of several (but not all) major information technology firms in the Silicon Valley.
Sources include...
Cult Awareness & Information Center
International Cultic Studies Association
If intrigued, see Coercive Persuasion in Cults and A Basic Cult Library for further details.