I am embarrassed to say that I had the personal acquaintance of Canadian members of the International Marxist Tendency, whose section is known as Fightback/La Riposte. I was, after all, part of a large, global network of IMT members on Facebook. The Canadian comrades were among the loudest and most entertaining. Needless to say, any … Read more
When I joined the IMT, I was soon appraised of the potential dangers of the Internet. The Internet, for us, had its uses. It was useful for promoting our propaganda on social media, encouraging traffic to our website and winning ‘contacts’ and new comrades. However, we were also warned to be ‘disciplined’ in our use … Read more
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