The BITE model applied to a Trotskyist cult (IMT)

 

In Chapter 4 of his book, Hassan explains the BITE model for analysing cults. He borrows this from the psychologist Leon Festinger who was the founder of what is known as “cognitive dissonance theory”. Festinger defines three components of this method of analysis – control of behaviour, control of thoughts and control of emotions. Hassan adds a fourth – control of information. In this post I will apply this formula to the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), which I have written about previously.

Behaviour control

Steve Hassan defines behaviour control thus: ‘Behavior control is the regulation of an individual’s physical reality. It includes the control of their environment – where they live, what clothes they wear, what food they eat, how much sleep they get, and what jobs, rituals and other actions they perform.

This need for behavior control is the reason most cults prescribe a very rigid schedule for their members. Each day a significant amount of time is devoted to cult rituals and indoctrination activities. Members are also typically assigned to accomplish specific goals and tasks, thus restricting their free time- and their behavior. In destructive cults there is always something to do.’

In the IMT, behaviour was strongly regulated. We were pressured to attend weekly paper sales, branch meetings and meetings of the Marxist Society on campus. When recruiting, we would downplay how much time they had to give to the organisation, but once in, we would pressure them to do more. Eventually they would be expected to attend demonstrations and ‘contact meetings’ with potential recruits. In our ‘spare’ time, we were supposed to be reading and re-reading the ‘sacred texts’ of Trotskyism, as well as the fortnightly paper. At a certain point it was expected that we would write for the paper, but always in a way that reflected the line of the organisation. We were expected to pay a certain amount of money as part of our membership, a payment which was known as ‘subs’. We were pressured at every branch meeting to think about increasing our subs payments. We were also made to subscribe to the paper and our theoretical magazine, which were separate from our subs payments. We were expected to uncritically share all the articles of the IMT and Socialist Appeal website on social media. At our ‘interventions’ in the labour movement or at society meetings, we were instructed on what to say and on how to approach potential recruits. Every week we would receive an ‘internal bulletin’ from one of the full-timers, which contained reports from branches across the country concerning their activity and commands from the ‘Centre’ (the leadership) about what action to take over the coming weeks and months.

Hassan goes on to explain:

‘…Behavior is often controlled by the requirement that everyone act as a group. In many cults, people eat together, work together, have group meetings and sometimes sleep together in the same dormitory. Individualism is fiercely discouraged. People may be assigned a constant “buddy” or be placed in a small unit of half dozen members.’

I know members of the organisation that actually lived in the same house. I was always uncomfortable at that idea, and for good reason. Since we were supposed to act as one body, there was no question of individualism or critical thinking. Whenever we went on demonstrations, we were told to always have the paper on us because it served as a ‘uniform’ or ‘badge’ showing who we were and what we belonged to. It was always impressed upon us that we were not intervening as individuals, but as ‘the Marxists’. 

‘The chain of command in cults is usually authoritarian, flowing from the leader, through their lieutenants, to their sub-leaders, down to the rank and file. In such a well-regulated environment, all behaviors can be either rewarded or punished. If a person performs well, they will be given public praise from higher-ups, and sometimes gifts or a promotion. If the person performs poorly, they may be publicly singled out and criticized, or forced to do manual labour such as cleaning toilets or polishing other members’ shoes…Those who actively participate in their own punishment will eventually come to believe they deserve it.’

I personally experienced this with my branch secretary and regional full-timer. They would vacillate from lavishing me with praise, to blindsiding me with the most hideous insults or attempts to belittle me. The last time they did this, I was furious enough to leave and resign.

Hassan continues:

‘Each particular group has its own distinctive set of ritual behaviors that help bind it together. These typically include mannerisms of speech, specific posture and facial expressions, as well as the more traditional ways of representing group belief. In the Moonies, for instance, we followed many Asian customs, such as taking off our shoes when entering a Moonie center, kneeling and bowing when greeting older members. Doing these little things helped make us feel we were special and superior. Psychologists call this “social proof”.

In ‘the Organisation’, we would call each other ‘comrade’. This is a term which is used generally by people on the left as a term of endearment, but we only used it for people in our cult. It made us feel special. We were part of an exclusive revolutionary army which would save mankind. To be a ‘comrade’ was a great honour indeed. Conversely, ex-comrades (like I now am) would be demonised. They were ‘renegades’, ‘confused’, ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘infected with alien class ideas’, etc. Contacts would be gossiped about and would be the target of bigoted backbiting if we felt their ideas diverged from ours. Cliques existed in the organisation in which some comrades would gossip about and backbite against other comrades. We would discuss which texts we were reading and exchange cliquey in-jokes about dialectics. We would speculate about what we would do when we seized power and were in a position to build gulags for all our enemies.

Hassan again:

‘If a member is not behaving sufficiently enthusiastically, they may be confronted by a leader and accused of being selfish or impure, or of not trying hard enough. They will be urged to become like an older group member, even to the extent of mimicking that person’s tone of voice.’

I remember how in ‘the Organisation’, we were supposed to show optimism and enthusiasm at all times. After all, ‘Marxists are meant to be optimists.’ We had history on our side! The seizure of power would not be long in coming. Anyone who showed any pessimism or scepticism was subjected to shaming and accused of ’empiricism’ and having an ‘undialectical’ attitude. My branch secretary in particular was overboard with his optimism. He thought anyone could be won over and talked into joining the organisation, and that if we failed to win them over, it must be because we were putting them off in some way. We then had to examine ourselves and see where we had failed in terms of winning over the contact in question. He once shamed me for admiring the ‘reactionary’ philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and discouraged me from reading him.

Information control

The second component is information control. All cults control what information their members receive and deny them information that might make them think twice about the cult. As Steve Hassan puts it: ‘Certain information may be forbidden and labeled as unhealthy: apostate literature, entheta (negative information), satanic, bourgeoisie propaganda, and so on. Members are also kept so busy that they don’t have to think and seek outside answers to questions. When they do read, it is primarily cult-generated propaganda or material that has been censored to keep members focused.’

This is a perfect description of the attitude of our organisation. Contacts and new comrades joining our ranks were bombarded with our organisation’s literature. This included our paper, our theoretical magazine, our books, articles on our website, recorded lectures on YouTube. They were thus deprived of the time to read any information outside the cult’s doctrine. Critical information was demonised as ‘bourgeois propaganda’. When I joined the cult, I was shamed for liking Nietzsche, and, due to peer pressure, I stopped reading his works. For the next two and a half years, almost everything I read was IMT stuff. I would read the website religiously. I would diligently make notes on what I read. 

‘Information control also extends across all relationships. People are not allowed to talk to each other about anything critical of the leader, doctrine or organization. Members must spy on each other and report improper activities or comments to leaders, often in the form of written reports (a technique pioneered by the Nazis, with the Hitler Youth). New converts are discouraged from sharing doubts with anyone other than a superior. Newbies are typically chaperoned, until they prove their devotion and loyalty. Most importantly, people are told to avoid contact with ex-members and critics. Those people who could provide the most outside – that is, real – information are to be completely shunned. Some groups even go so far as to screen members’ letters and phone calls.’

This describes the internal regime in the IMT to a T. Not only was criticism forbidden, but we were encouraged to gossip about each other. It was usually the more senior members gossiping about the doubtful political level of the new recruits. New recruits were encouraged to share any doubts with a more ‘advanced’ comrade with a higher ‘political level’, who could answer any questions they had with relative ease.

‘Destructive organizations also control information by having many levels of “truth”. Cult ideologies often have “outsider” doctrines and “insider” doctrines. The outsider material is relatively bland stuff for the general public or new converts. The inner doctrines are gradually unveiled, as the person is more deeply involved and only when the person is deemed “ready” by superiors.’

The IMT was precisely like this. In our recruitment, we kept certain information ‘internal’ and away from prying eyes, whilst giving contacts only a slice of the bigger picture. We claimed that we supported the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, and that we represented the ‘Marxist wing’ of Labour. Privately we acknowledged this to be a tactic to win over the ‘best’ and most radical elements of the Labour Party to Marxism. Once they were closer to our organisation and looked like they could be persuaded to join, we would be more open about what we actually were. We would admit that we saw the Labour Party as at best a footbridge to a superior political formation that would be led by our comrades. We hoped to split the party, kick out the Blairites and establish a pure, socialist party that would lead the revolution and bring down the capitalist class. In our internal discussions and documents we would sharply criticise the left for its weakness and reformism, but publicly we would tone it down, not wishing to alienate the people we were seeking to win over. The ‘left-reformists’, as we called them, were seen as being temporary allies of convenience, whom we would throw overboard as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Needless to say, none of this was in our paper. Indeed, our paper was a dull affair filled with platitudes and slogans and lacking any real intellectual content. Its purpose was agitation. It was designed to be sold to the man or woman on the street and rile them up at the state of things. If you wanted more intellectual content, you would have to read our theoretical magazine or website, and even that wasn’t amazing.

Another example of ‘internal’ vs ‘external’ information is how we advertised our Marxist Society meetings on campus. Publicly, we were open to one and all, from Trot to Tory. Internally, we would carefully discuss the preparation of these meetings in branch beforehand to ensure that we could maximise recruitment out of it. In truth, these meetings were carefully choreographed to ensure that they were echo chambers in which our ideas could predominate. We would thus win over the minds of the largely bemused and ignorant students who took time out of their evenings to attend them. When they entered the meetings, they would be love-bombed, pushed to buy our literature and asked to give their contact details. 

Some things, I now realise, were never properly explained to us. Instead, I had to figure things out for myself. Upon joining, I was never told about how the leadership was elected. I later learned from attending the National Conference in person that leaders were elected ‘unanimously’ via the slate system. They were not open elections. If a new person ended up on the Central Committee, it was because they had been privately co-opted by a group of full-timers, a reward for their loyalty and dedication. New full-timers were recruited the same way. If the Executive Committee thought highly of a particular comrade, they were hired and then triumphantly announced at the next conference as the latest full-timer of the organisation. 

We were never handed a ‘rule book’ giving us a clear account of the regulations of the organisation in terms of elections, raising of disputes, etc. It is possible that it was written down somewhere, but only the full-time leadership had access to it. Of course, this meant that they could just make up rules on the spot. They could even insist that certain practices were valid because they constituted ‘tradition’, even if they had not been formulated in any systematic way in a constitution of some sort. This also allowed them to conceal from members mechanisms that could potentially be used against them. I would find out to my cost the consequences of the organisation not having a systematic procedure for things like political discussions, etc. When I joined, I was falsely told that the best place to have political discussions and raise disagreements was branch. Yet when I first raised my disagreements with the organisation prior to my leaving, I was told not to do this in branch as I would ‘miseducate’ new comrades. The fear was that the new comrades, with a ‘low political level’, might be won over by my ‘incorrect’ ideas. They needed to be shielded from the infection of heresy. In the past I had known some of the leading comrades to grumble about this or that comrade raising disagreements in branch, which they saw as ‘disruptive’. Not only was I discouraged from raising disagreements in branch, but I was told not to share my doubts with any member of the branch or organisation. Indeed, the full-timer impressed upon me the fact that I was under ‘party discipline’ in this regard. This was a veiled threat that if I defied this command I would be unceremoniously expelled. There was an experiment with a reading group consisting of myself, the branch secretary, the full-timer and another comrade deemed ‘advanced’ enough to participate. After this, it was decided that I should write a document of my criticisms and send it to the leadership for examination as part of a ‘democratic debate’. When I read about the experiences of ex-members of the IMT, Militant and other Trotskyist sects, it was clear that this was a trap. There would be no such ‘democratic debate’. In most cases, the leadership would ignore the document or make a curt response denouncing it as heresy and shutting down any further discussion. Indeed, critics (myself included) have even been attacked on the basis that they are ‘wasting the time of the organisation’. This is the same organisation which supposedly prides itself on believing in debate and discussion of political ideas. In the rare event that the leadership agreed to a full discussion, what usually happened was as follows:

There would be a secret debate among the members of the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee would come to a collective decision, each member bound by ‘party discipline’ and ‘democratic centralism’ to abide by whatever position was agreed. This was presented to the Central Committee, which would do likewise. Anyone who could not abide by the unanimity of the collective decision-making process had to resign from the leadership body. The leadership would then proceed to present its ‘unanimous’ position to the rank-and-file. The members, in their turn, were expected to ‘unanimously’ agree to whatever the leadership demanded. Anyone who disagreed either had to shut up and put up, or leave. You can see why such a rigid formula for settling disputes has led to splits and bitter recriminations among the leaderships of Trotskyist groups. No one wants to be bound by ‘party discipline’ to take positions he or she does not believe in. It is an insult to one’s integrity. After all, didn’t we all join a revolutionary organisation because we believed that capitalism was guilty of precisely this sin – the violation of people’s basic humanity? 

Knowing I was going to be publicly humiliated, demonised, ridiculed and ostracised anyway, I decided to resign. The truth is that in the absence of a publicly-accessible rulebook, there is no set formula for raising disputes. Whatever you do is wrong. You cannot talk to other members about your disagreements one-on-one. You cannot raise them in branch (despite the lie told to me when I joined the IMT that I could). And if you try to raise the issue through the ‘official structures’, you are ‘wasting the time of the organisation’ and are driven out with abuse and slander. As Dennis Tourish recounts of his experience in Militant:

‘Now, this case is not terribly significant in itself. It is only important in that many, many ex-members could tell similar stories – moreover, the ex-members of innumerable Marxist-Leninist organisations could do the same. Please note the pattern. There is never is a right way to go about raising dissent in the CWI, or any similar organisation. You inquire about how to openly raise an issue, but the big guns of the leadership try to talk you out of it, and tell you that you risk the destruction of your political credibility if you carry it forward. You talk to people informally (a perfectly normal activity) – this is a conspiracy. You write to them instead – you are by-passing official structures. You raise it on a committee – you should have informally discussed it first, rather than risk disorientating the membership. You submit a critical article to the Internal Bulletin, but are denounced for not discussing it informally (at the risk of starting a conspiracy!), before committing your views to writing. But whatever you do, it will be wrong. The trick is to make your despicable behaviour in how you express your dissent the issue, rather than engage with the dissent itself. The full weight of the apparatus is then mobilised to destroy the person concerned. Unless you are Peter Taaffe, Hadden or some other Leader, in which case whatever you want to do goes. I am certain that Finn and Clem faced similar pressures, and as busy people with a real life and above all a sense of proportion figured they had better things to do. I personally just felt demoralised, and left for a breather which has thankfully turned into a long and more satisfying alternative life.’

The secretive nature of the leadership is something seen in all Trotskyist sects and part and parcel of information control. This extends to major decisions in terms of switching tactics or updating aspects of doctrine. Instead of open debate, the leadership comes to its decisions in secret and presents its conclusions to the members to accept without real discussion. Disagreements within the leadership are suppressed for as long as possible, until they burst to the surface with great force and tear the organisation apart, as was the case with Militant. Steve Hassan puts it well in his book:

‘…often there are many inner levels or layers of belief. Often an advanced member who thinks they know a cult’s complete doctrine is still several layers away from what the higher ups know. Questioners who insist on knowing too much too fast, of course, are redirected toward an external goal until they forget their objections or they object too loudly and are kicked out and vilified.’

Thought control

We then come to thought control, the third element of BITE. As Hassan explains it, ‘A destructive cult inevitably has its own “loaded language” of unique words and expressions. Since language provides the symbols we use for thinking, using only certain words serves to control thoughts. Cult language is totalistic and therefore condenses complex situations, labels them, and reduces them to cult cliches. This simplistic label then governs how the members think in any situation.’

In the IMT, we had a form of ‘loaded language’ borrowed from Marxist philosophy and the writings of Trotsky that was meant to put a stop to any inkling of doubt or scepticism. Anyone who demonstrated even a whiff of pessimism was accused of ’empiricism’ – a buzzword which meant that someone wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. Instead, they were exhorted to think ‘dialectically’. We were reminded that according to dialectical materialism, the only constant is change. Just because the class struggle seemed to have temporarily lulled, that didn’t indicate that it would always be that way. Of course, it is a banality to say that things are constantly changing. It did not follow from this that our fantasies of revolution were going to come true. If I ever felt myself having pessimistic thoughts, I told myself ‘Remember dialectics! Things are always changing!” If things weren’t going well politically, we would rarely blame Trotskyist doctrine. Instead we would blame the ‘objective conditions’. This was a vague term that Trotsky liked to use to distinguish socio-economic ‘facts’, which Marxists take to be the primary form of reality, from the ‘subjective factor’, or the role played by individuals and ideas. A common trick Trotskyists engage in is to emphasise the ‘subjective factor’ when it makes their organisation seem important and indispensable, and blame the ‘objective conditions’ when things don’t go to plan. This is unless, of course, there is a heretic within the organisation that can be singled out and blamed. Trotsky used a similar excuse to explain the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. It was not the fault of the ‘subjective factor’ of Bolshevik ideology or individuals like Lenin and Trotsky. Rather, it was the difficult ‘objective conditions’ the Soviet Union faced that created Stalinism.

Here is an example of how effective these thought-stopping techniques were. I remember that just before the general election of 2019, the leadership of the organisation told us the following. It didn’t matter whether Corbyn won or lost – either way, our organisation would benefit. If he won, he would not be able to implement his program and the disappointment would spur radicalisation. If he lost, the anger at the betrayal of the Blairites would fuel radicalisation and create potential recruits among the population. If Labour lost, it would only be because of the divisions in the working-class caused by Brexit, Blairite betrayal and sabotage and the right-wing media. We were exhorted to ‘Remember dialectics’ and not give in to feelings of doubt, despair or pessimism. As Labour officer for my branch it was my responsibility to steel the other comrades politically in this direction. Myself and the other leading members of the branch did precisely this. When election night came and the terrible results poured in, we were on cue with the line – that yes, this was a grievous defeat, but this was not the end. The class struggle was not over. The battle would only intensify. This setback was merely a prelude to what would be, ultimately, a great triumph for the working-class.

This was complete nonsense. But I genuinely believed it, and in fact, when the dreadful results came in, I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t even feel particularly devastated or upset. Part of me felt exhilarated. Yes, this is bad, I thought, but at least loads of Blairites lost their seats. This is how cognitive dissonance works. My emotions came to align with my thinking process, and this expressed itself in my behaviour, which was to jeer in our Marxist Society group chat about Blairite MPs being knocked out of Parliament.

Hassan goes on:

‘The cult’s cliches and loaded language also put up an invisible wall between believers and outsiders. The language helps to make members feel special, and separates them from the general public. It also serves to confuse newcomers, who want to understand what members are talking about. The newbies think they merely have to study harder in order to understand the truth, which they believe is precisely expressed in this new language. In reality, though, loaded language helps them learn how not to think or understand. They learn that “understanding” means accepting and believing.’

Our ‘loaded language’ in the IMT had precisely the effect Hassan talks of. We created our own special jargon which served to isolate us from the outside world. This bizarre vocabulary consisted of all sorts of words like the following: ‘comrade’, meaning a member of our organisation or ‘one of us’, ‘full-timer’/leading comrade, meaning a full-time employee of the organisation who was associated with moral authority, self-sacrifice and a superior political level. Or ‘the Centre’, the name we gave to our headquarters, but which also served as a metonym for the leadership in general. The mere mention of ‘the Centre’ indicated that whatever we were talking about was a serious business. We spoke of the cult as ‘the Organisation’. We spoke endlessly of the need to ‘build the organisation’, ‘build the Tendency’, ‘build a Bolshevik organisation’, and variations on that theme. We were trained to think of ourselves as ‘cadres’, officers in the future revolutionary army that would take the world by storm. Our obligatory membership payments were ‘subs’. Our treasury was called ‘the Fighting Fund’ (a wonderful use of alliteration). Potential recruits were ‘contacts’. The lowest cells of our organisation were ‘branches’ which held ‘branch meetings’ every week (or ‘branch’, for short). Our theoretical magazines had the same name as our website, ‘In Defence of Marxism’ (borrowed from Trotsky’s work of the same name) and were described as IDOMs for short. ‘Lead-offs’ were the name given to the lectures that we would hear at national events, branch meetings and campus meetings. These were given on various themes from a Marxist point of view – a ‘lead-off’ on Syria, a ‘lead-off’ on black struggle, a ‘lead-off’ on the Green New Deal, etc. Every national conference we were given ‘perspectives’ documents, our organisation’s ‘analysis’ of the political situation and how it was likely to unfold. These were usually full of catastrophist nonsense. ‘Political education’ was the misnomer given to the process of indoctrination. This had nothing to do with actually educating people – that is, getting them to think for themselves – but everything to do with corrupting their minds. Someone’s ‘political level’ was based on how well they had internalised the doctrine. Leading comrades of course had the highest ‘political level’ of all, whilst contacts and new comrades had a relatively low level. The more you affirmed your belief in the orthodoxy, and the more you read and seemed to have understood (or pretended to understand) of the doctrine, the higher your ‘political level’ was deemed to be. Actually you could be completely ignorant of what the organisation was really about (which, let’s face it, almost everyone but the very top layer of the leadership is), but if you were good at sounding the part, you could fool anyone. Recruitment, we were told, was all about finding ‘the ones and twos’, to quote Ted Grant. This was meant to stop us from being demoralised at not being able to recruit as many people as we would prefer. The key was to start small, recruiting the best people to be cadres, so that when the ‘objective conditions’ heated up, we would grow by ‘leaps and bounds’.

Hassan goes on to explain the following:

‘Another key aspect of thought control involves training members to block out any information that is critical of the group…If information transmitted to a cult member is perceived as an attack on either the leader, the doctrine or the group, a defensive wall goes up. Members are trained to disbelieve any criticism. Critical words have been explained away in advance – for instance, as “the lies about us that Satan puts in people’s minds” or “the lies that the World Conspiracy prints in the news media to discredit us, because they know we’re onto them.” Paradoxically, criticism of the group is used to confirm that the cult’s view of the world is correct. Because of thought control, factual information that challenges the cult worldview does not register properly.

We had a simple way of challenging any criticism of our organisation. It was ‘bourgeois propaganda’, or, if it was written by ex-members, they were simply acting out of malice. It was explained that their departure was due to their ‘low political level’, their ‘petty-bourgeois’ nature, their ‘Labour Party fetishism’, or something else that was wrong with them. It was never the fault of the organisation. They were ‘unserious’, they weren’t cut out to be part of the vanguard, they weren’t committed enough, weren’t dedicated enough, weren’t intelligent enough. There were variations of all these themes.

Hassan says something particularly poignant further down the page:

‘Through the use of thought-stopping, members think they are growing, when in reality they are just turning themselves into thought-stopping addicts. After leaving a cult that employs extensive thought-stopping techniques, a person normally goes through a difficult withdrawal process before they can overcome this addiction.’

When I was in the cult, I was convinced that I was enjoying a period of ‘personal growth’, that thanks to my Marxist faith I was leaving behind my ‘reactionary’ past of pessimism and despair at the human condition, and becoming a happier, healthier and more optimistic human being. In fact I was the victim of thought-stopping techniques. After leaving I plunged the depths of demoralisation. All my hope had been invested in this cult, and now it was gone. There is a distinction to be made between healthy, organic feelings of optimism and hope for the future, and the chiliastic vision encouraged in a far-left cult like the IMT. That is not a healthy optimism but a destructive, apocalyptic vision that encourages members to put blind faith and trust in a few, chosen leaders, and ignore the unpleasant reality outside their ranks.

Emotional control

The last component to discuss is emotional control. This involves the emotional manipulation we are victims of in the cult. As Hassan explains: ‘Either you feel wonderful as a “chosen” member of the elite, someone really special and loved and part of a wonderful movement; or you are broken, unspiritual, have bad karma, are guilty of overts, are sinful and need to repent, try harder and become a better, more devoted member. Guilt and fear figure mightily. However, most cult members can’t see that guilt and fear are being used to control them. They are both essential tools to keep people under control.’

My experience in the organisation mirrored precisely what Hassan is talking about. I vacillated from feeling incredibly honoured and exhilarated to be a member of the chosen few that would save humanity, to feeling inadequate and frustrated at not being the best comrade I could possibly be. I also felt shame for my ‘reactionary’ past, and was constantly striving to make up for it. The cult of confession within the organisation did not help matters. I confessed to past heresies and errors, and assured myself and others that I was a changed man. I felt constant guilt and shame over past mistakes, and always felt under pressure to do more. I felt pressure to give more money, give more time, recruit more people, read more, re-read this or that text. We were trained never to give in to feelings of pessimism or despair, but to always be optimistic and excited about the future. After all, history was on our side! I never allowed myself to feel despair at the future of humanity. If I ever uttered a pessimistic word about a contact in branch, I felt guilty. Maybe the branch secretary was right. Maybe I was being too pessimistic about our chances of winning him over. I was not being dialectical.

At national conferences, the ‘perspectives’ were designed in such a way as to instill the maximum amount of chiliastic fervour in the members. We were encouraged to look forward to renewed crises, renewed radicalisation, further destabilisation of capitalism, and then, one glorious day, a revolution, led by our sect. This emotional frenzy was the basis of frantic attempts at ‘building the organisation’ before time ran out and capitalism destroyed the planet – and humanity with it. This further deprived us of the ability to exercise our critical thinking skills.

It did not help matters that I was subjected to love-bombing from leading members, especially my branch secretary. I could also expect harsh criticism if I did not toe the line. For example, I was shamed for reading Nietzsche, and I once felt so bad about having ‘reactionary’ books on my shelf that one summer I sold them all. When I presented the criticisms of Trotsky that led to my resignation, I was charged with ‘formalism’, ‘subjectivism’ – accusations which stung. This time, however, I had had enough. I fought back and ended up leaving.

All four components of BITE apply very well to the IMT. The fact is, myself and others were subjected to mind control. There is no better way to describe the IMT than ‘political cult’.