When I walked out of the International Marxist Tendency after two and a half years of vicious abuse and mental torment, I knew that it would take me a long time to recover. I may never fully recover, but I have to try.
In the days after leaving, I was disoriented and devastated. I wondered whether I had done the right thing, but I knew that my mental and physical survival required me to desert this abusive organisation. I went on a walk around the centre of Coventry one afternoon, thinking deeply about my decision and its implications. I mourned for the lost two and a half years I had spent in this sect. I mourned for the relationships I had thrown away. I mourned for the end of an illusion. I felt bereft and empty, walking in a spiritual desert, without guidance or human sympathy of any kind. I was wandering through unbroken grounds of human existence, making my way through the barren wilderness of abandonment and isolation. Something that had been at the centre of my life as a university student came to a sudden end, vanishing as quickly as the sunshine at the precipitous onset of autumn.
I spent one of my very last evenings in Coventry during my final undergraduate year in the local pub, where I had both lunch and dinner. I was too drained to cook myself a meal, and I needed to be out of the house. I watched a video on YouTube of two former ISO members, who discussed their own experiences in a Trotskyist cult. Their own ordeal mirrored my own experiences in the IMT. I was confirmed in my belief that all Trotskyist organisations were irredeemably corrupt. That evening I found myself watching old clips of Christopher Hitchens over some good old-fashioned bangers and mash. My old hero, who I had been taught to view as an evil reactionary, was once again in my purview. Incidentally, the video in question was of him defending the war in Afghanistan and the fight against totalitarianism. That was precisely the fight that I was engaged in at that very moment. It wasn’t unlettered religious fundamentalist barbarians hiding in the mountains that were my chief foes, but a totalitarian far-left sect that had colonised my mind for the last two years, and had held me hostage psychologically.
I packed up my belongings that week and went back home to London for the spring break. Covid, and the subsequent lockdown, meant that I would never return to finish my final year. I now had to deal with the emotional fallout of having left the cult from the comfort of home, without the risk of bumping into my former comrades on campus – which I am somewhat grateful for. On my way home, my mind turned again and again on my decision to exit. The grief soon gave way to relief and even excitement. I was free. I was no longer shackled to this sect, and my mind was free to wander away from the rigid orthodoxy demanded by ‘the Organisation’. I was thrilled at the prospect of the boundless arena of intellectual freedom now open to me, once the ferocious winds of my rebellious fury and the irrepressible desire for independence had blown down the psychological barriers that stood in my way. All the obstacles to reclaiming my freedom had been in my head. Now, I had overcome them.
But the trauma still remains. Over the weeks and months my anger and hatred grew, as I realised just what had been taken from me. For hours a day I would stew with rage. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think about would be the sect, and what it did to me. I would go to bed that night still angry. Even now, that is still my state of being. My ability to sleep restfully was almost certainly affected, and my sleeping pattern went haywire. Going on walks and listening to music helps, but only a bit. So does reading and studying what was done to my mind in those two and a half wretched years. I cursed it over and over again for destroying my life – for ruining my relationships, both real and potential, for ruining my education, for ruining my intellectual development – and I found that only reading and watching videos served to distract me somewhat. Doing nothing, I would inevitably shake with righteous anger. During the Covid pandemic, I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if the loathsome cult leader, Alan Woods, and his cult leader brother, Rob Sewell, were both carried off by the virus. I still stand by those sentiments, given what loathsome individuals they both are.
I have nightmares about the sect. In my first nightmare, I dreamt that I was attending my last IMT event ever. In the dream, Alan Woods gave me a microphone to come on stage and announce my defection, telling me ‘This is the last speech you will ever make here.’ As I was making my speech, the lights were turned off and stuff unplugged so no one could hear me, humiliating me before the hostile audience. I was then driven out of the room. This is an accurate picture of what happens to dissidents in the organisation.
I still have moments of feeling very low and very frustrated at my sudden isolation. However, I know that any ‘community’ I got from the sect was of an entirely false kind, and I have no desire to return to their vile company. I would rather die alone on a desert island than ever be in a position of dependence, emotional or intellectual, on these scoundrels. I deserve better than a few crumbs of affection or a pat on the head as one would give to a dog after a good day’s hunting. I existed to be used and abused and exploited, and I do not intend to place myself at their mercy again. I still feel uncomfortable whenever I go on their loathsome website, which is very occasionally these days. Perhaps my fear is that one day they will write a full-length article on me slandering me and denouncing me before the entire world. This is highly unlikely to happen, but it is a phobia of mine, and one I wouldn’t put past them, knowing how cults love to slander, blackmail and use personal information against former members. It certainly hasn’t stopped and won’t stop me from speaking out.
I feel guilt over the nonsense that I believed and defended when in the sect, like our monstrous claims that anti-Semitism in Labour was a Zionist fabrication. I feel anxiety that I will bump into a former comrade on the street and either have them shout abuse, or cross the street to avoid me (and quite frankly, I would probably do the same). I think about all the people I left behind, and about certain individuals I knew well in the sect. I wonder if they have managed to escape, or are still brainwashed. I run over conversations I had with people, and the damaging and hurtful things many people in the organisation said to me. I think about how I responded to it, what I should have done or said differently. In an ideal world, I would never have thrown in my lot with this band of criminals in the first place.
Despite occasional moments of doubt, I have never looked back and desired to return to the IMT. The more I have read about this organisation from ex-members, and the more I have studied other Trotskyist groups and cults like Scientology and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the more I am convinced that I am very lucky to have abandoned this cult when I did. I cannot begin to imagine what another two and a half years in this awful groupuscule would have been like. I am so happy to have survived. I am happier alone than I would be in that mess.
I am a victim of monstrous abuse and oppression. I hate being a victim, because it has connotations of powerlessness, and I am nothing if not an inveterate individualist. But I must accept that I was victimised by this despicable enterprise that calls itself a revolutionary organisation. For all its talk of liberating the masses from capitalist oppression, they are some of the worst oppressors and tyrants in human existence. Their apparently noble goals (which are not even that, as I have demonstrated on this blog) are cancelled out by the degenerate and distorted means that they seek to use to attain said ends. Accepting the dialectical relationship between means and ends, we are forced to accept that the means they use guarantee that they will not achieve the noble ends they seek, but the exact opposite.
I am still not over the experience. The anger lives with me every day. I still brood on some of the more horrible experiences of the sect, which at the time made me consider suicide. I am much better nowadays, but the horror of these episodes will not be effaced from my mind. At the very least, the experience with this cult has helped to clarify my mind and refocus my efforts on what I need and want out of life, rather than what this sect wants.
I remember talking to my ex-comrade, Jack (the guy who is now slandering me on Reddit) about my frustrations at my bigoted, religious fundamentalist family. I recall him telling me with all sincerity about how wonderful it is that I had found a new ‘family’ in the organisation. Some ‘family’ that hounds you out and slanders you when you disagree with it! I think I’ll take my biological family over them any day of the week.
The road to recovery continues.