My blog has received an enormous amount of views in the past day or two, in part thanks to a former member of a Marxist-Leninist cult sharing it on Twitter. A young man named Eoin, an acquaintance of mine in the IMT (though it is unclear whether he is still a member) posted the following tweet aiming to discredit this blog:
It is a common accusation that former members who speak openly about their experiences are ‘obsessed’. It is true that I have been writing about the organisation for a fairly long time – this blog is approaching three years old. (Time flies!) The allegation that former members who vent about their traumatic experiences in these disgusting groups are mentally unwell is a smear as old as time. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that I am indeed mentally unwell. Whose fault is that? Is it not the fault of the organisation that groomed me into membership and proceeded to manipulate, abuse and torment me for the next two and a half years? Is writing about it not part of the healing process, of the journey towards mental health?
It is perfectly legitimate for people who have had a horrific experience such as membership in a cult to talk openly about their experiences at whatever point they feel comfortable doing so and for however long they wish to. Compared to other anti-cult activists, I am hardly ‘obsessed’ with the IMT. Leah Remini and Mike Rinder have spent years speaking about their experiences in Scientology, day in, day out, giving interviews, writing books and making podcasts, sharing news on social media and spreading the word about this wretched groupuscule and its deceitful practices. They have shone a light on evil, and so many lives have been changed as a result. If this is ‘obsessive’ behaviour, I’m all for it.
I joined the IMT at eighteen. At the same age, Steven Hassan joined the Moonies. We were both members of our respective groups for two and a half years before getting out. Hassan’s deconversion was considerably more traumatic than mine. From that time until now, Hassan has written extensively about his former group and other cults, and helped countless people escape from the clutches of destructive organisations like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology. Lloyd Evans has spent years and years creating YouTube videos about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and educating people about the cult he was a part of. That is far more dedication than I have shown with this humble blog. He has certainly reached far more people.
I joined the organisation as a vulnerable young man barely out of secondary school. It is perfectly natural that the organisation would leave a very deep impact on me (it dominated my entire time at university) and it is perfectly legitimate for me to write about my experiences, regardless of what some cynical communist on Twitter says. No doubt he has written me off as a bitter renegade whose criticisms are not worth reading, which is his prerogative, but his arguments are utterly fallacious. He has posted a follow-up tweet saying that he is privy to information about the circumstances of my departure. No doubt he has been given the cult’s version of events which he is likely to repeat uncritically to anyone wanting to hear it. A cursory look at his profile shows that he may not even be a member of the organisation anymore. If he is still in, he is certainly on his way out, as the increasingly critical tweets and retweets he has been making would suggest. If so, then it makes his parroting of the organisation’s line where I am concerned even more pathetic. Anyone who would like to see my side of the story can consult the many posts I have written about it, particularly the ones here, here, and here.
But there is something inherently hypocritical and even sadistic about this line of argument. Cults appeal to the obsessive side of the human personality. They demand mindless conformism, ceaseless activity, uncritical obedience and constant proselytism. They demand fanatics, not critical thinkers. They actively seek out obsessives to populate their group. Without this, they could not continue their parasitical existence. When people leave, and this obsessive devotion inevitably turns to bitter hatred when they realise they’ve been conned, they are ridiculed by their former friends in the cult for so being. This is just blatant gaslighting of the highest order. Obsession is seen as a good thing when it’s in the service of the cult. It becomes something to be traduced and mocked when it is employed in the service of fighting cults. I am proud to be an obsessive enemy of cultism and totalitarianism in all its forms, including in the form of the IMT. That is no bad thing at all.
It is also worth mentioning that I have actually been less active on this blog as time has gone on and the organisation has become less and less interesting to me. Eoin believes me to be obsessed because all he sees of my Internet activity is IMT criticism. I am happy to disabuse him of that notion. Thanks to leaving the IMT, I now have lots of free time which I have been employing usefully – reading lots of literature that I have never read before, pursuing a career in music, learning foreign languages, going abroad by myself for the first time in my life – activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with the IMT. (As a member, this time would have been wasted on reading Wellred books, ‘interventions’, branch meetings, paper sales, contact work and other nonsense.) I have even posted about some of it on here. I am certainly in a much better place than I was when I was a member of his cult, or immediately after leaving it. I am less obsessed with the IMT at this point in my life than I have been in the last six years. (Six years of my life in which these thugs and bullies have cast a large but now shrinking shadow. Thank goodness I am out.)
My political leanings have been mentioned. I no longer know where I stand politically these days, except that I am no longer a Marxist or a socialist, and probably never will be again. If my experience has taught me anything, it is that I value individual freedom more than belonging to any group, which invariably places me closer to liberalism than socialism. The most left-wing I could see myself being is some sort of reformist social democrat. The only form of revolutionary socialism that appeals to me is post-left anarchism, but I don’t have enough faith in human nature to believe that an anarchist society would work any better than an authoritarian socialist version. Everything I see of the way leftists behave on social media simply repulses me further from involving myself in that circus anymore. It reminds me of the horrors I experienced in the IMT. I don’t want to live in a society where I am one wrong tweet away from being sent to a gulag. Maybe liberal democracy is the best we can hope for. Leszek Kolakowski, Roger Scruton, Dostoevsky and other ‘reactionary’ thinkers have convinced me of the utter naivety inherent in socialist thinking. I am probably some sort of liberal-conservative. If this biases left-wing people who read this blog from considering my cult criticisms, then that is a shame, but I see no use in hiding my political views. That said, I believe my cult analysis is correct regardless of my political leanings, and many people have been intellectually honest enough to see that. I know that it has helped many doubting members and ex-members, and if continuing to do this is ‘obsession’, then long may this obsession continue.
Postscript: Someone on that thread erroneously described me as a ‘Christian Nietzschean Neocon’. To being a ‘Nietzschean’, I plead guilty, insofar as one can call oneself that, given the fact that Nietzsche was all about thinking for yourself and not blindly following a particular thinker. Not do I mind being called a ‘neocon’ if that means being strongly in favour of Western liberal democracy and its export to other countries, and a militant foreign policy against its enemies, like the fascist regime in the Kremlin. I am not, however, a Christian. I have been an atheist since I was fourteen. I do, however, prefer Christianity to Marxism, and have talked openly about this on this blog. I would sooner become a Christian again than rejoin the IMT. Certainly if I rejoined the church, I would not be subjected to the disgusting treatment I was as an IMT member. I have more in common with the average Christian than the average Marxist. If nothing else, my upbringing as a Christian at least gives us a common language to work with. There is a reason why I spent so much time when I was in the sect listening to the gospel recordings my dad used to play of the American country singer Jim Reeves, which I preferred to listening to socialist music. (I am sure this will be used as proof that I was a secret Christian all along, and never a true Marxist!) I obviously found the former more soothing for my soul. One’s thing for sure – I never want to have to hear cultish words like ‘lead-off’, ‘comrade’, ‘solidarity’, ‘ultra-left’, ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘contact’, ‘cadre’ etc, or to hear a baying mob of people singing the Internationale, ever again.