Trot Watcher All cults have a special vocabulary to cut off members from the outside world. Trotskyist cults use bizarre words and phrases to control the thinking patterns of their members. My experience in the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) involved precisely this sort of thing. ‘Comrade’ – a member of the organisation, ‘one of us’. Creates warm … Read more
IMT cultists have taken exception to my description of their organisation as a cult. They have raised some key objections to my analysis of the IMT. They are as follows: (a) cult analysis is a distraction from discussion of their political ideas, (b) cult analysis can describe such a wide variety of organisations so as … Read more
As a member of the IMT from October 2017 to March 2020, I was also part of the Marxist Student Federation (MSF). This was advertised as the youth and student wing of Socialist Appeal. From what I learned when I joined the organisation, it was originally designed to be one of the organisation’s many front … Read more
I think that my comments speak for themselves.
Dennis Tourish, Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of Sussex, has written at length about cults. Like many cult experts, he was in one – he worked as a full-timer for the Militant Tendency in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. In 1998, he wrote a paper entitled ‘Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism and … Read more
The BITE model is an extremely useful way of looking at cults and gauging the severity of cultic practices inflicted upon their members. Steven Hassan created an ‘influence continuum’, with traits belonging to destructive cults at one end, and those belonging to healthy organisations at another. The very worst cults are at the extreme cultic … Read more
For the past few days I have been reading a brilliant book by a man named Steven Hassan calling Combating Cult Mind Control. Hassan is an American mental health counselor and cult expert who was briefly a member of the Moonies in the 1970s, before being rescued by his concerned family. He thereafter dedicated his … Read more
As a former member of the International Marxist Tendency, I have come to the understanding that the sect I was a member of can best be defined as a political cult. Many people are offended by the term ‘cult’, seeing it as a term of insult or abuse. However, I insist that the term ‘cult’ … Read more
Trotskyism has so much wrong with it that a book would be needed to fully examine, analyse and refute its false claims. That will have to wait another day. For now, I will content myself with rebutting perhaps the central argument of Trotskyism. That is the claim Stalinism is not an essential product of Marxism. … Read more
This is the standard response from a cult member when they are called out on their organisation’s lies: This individual happens to be a member of the IMT. I believe I know his name and the fact that he belongs to the Canadian section. (He does not have the balls to use his real name … Read more