Some people play soothing sounds or calming music to help them reach dreamland. You choose cults. Why does this bring you solace? Watching the fanatical fringe is like slowing down on the highway to view a nasty car wreck—so bad that you can’t look away, and thank God it’s not you. But just like you, that driver was, moments prior, blissfully behind the wheel gaining ground on the road ahead. What makes them so different? Perhaps less than you think. That’s a viewpoint in Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, the second work of nonfiction from Amanda Montell, author of Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. While Wordslut examined gendered verbiage and its influence in shaping a sexist world, Cultish explores how power abusers and those seeking a following invoke language to lure potential acolytes in and away from the abominable, sinful or otherwise poisoned world they know—the same one you see, under covers with a remote in hand. “We take language for granted because it’s invisible and we grow up speaking it naturally and organically,” Montell says. “We don’t stop to realize that the words we speak, even our intonation, our pronunciation, everything from the broadest categories of conversation to the most microscopic unit of sound, influences how we perceive the world.” But that’s not all Cultish analyzes. Montell also points an inspector’s flashlight on the language used by modern exercise collectives chanting group mantras, multi-level marketers recruiting suburbanites, social media influencers and even QAnon. For more on how language informs our own communities—and the ones we love on TV—we asked the linguist about her keen eye for “cultish” practices, what sparked her interest in the invisible power of language and how even you, cozy and confident, are susceptible to its influence. Plus, she shares what you can do to avoid becoming a victim, whether that’s in your day-to-day activities, on your phone or as a plot point from the next cult doc in your queue.
Your book is largely about cults, but it also looks into what you call more mainstream “cultish” behavior. What kind of influence does language have on that—and on our day-to-day lives?
There’s this linguistic theory called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that while language does not determine thoughts, language does strongly influence thoughts. So if you join a group that comes up with this robust lexicon of terms, mantras and slogans to define the ideology and the systems of “truth” that are important to that group, your whole worldview is going to be reframed. Now, that will only be the case if you are amenable to those ideas. If you don’t want to believe something, no one can use language to “brainwash” you. But with just a little glimmer of willingness, language can do so much to shape your worldview, to obscure truths, to instill ideology, to create an us-them dichotomy—all the things that a cultish group really needs in order to gain and maintain power.
We view bigger groups like Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown as something so outside of ourselves. It’s easy for us to castigate the people who were in them. Is that an unfair assessment?
When we watch those documentaries, we’re like, “Holy shit, this thing is really dangerous. Am I at risk of getting involved?” And you desperately want the answer to be no, right? You want to think you would never, ever, wind up in a group like the People’s Temple or NXIVM or Scientology. And it feels really safe to, ironically, do what cults do and divide and create this rift between you—a normal, skeptical, intelligent person—and those brainwashed, mind-controlled minions, those desperate, naive, foolish people. It’s a self-protective measure. You’re like, “I’m nothing like that, and thus, this is not a threat to me.” But brainwashing, as I describe in the book, is not a satisfying explanation. It’s nothing but a metaphor and a pseudo-scientific concept. What’s really going on are these methods of conversion and conditioning and manipulation that all of us are susceptible to, to some degree. Now, it’s not to say that just anyone could wind up in a group like Scientology, but none of us are too smart to completely avoid cultish influence, and in the book, I talk about how that shows up in language and what we need to be aware of so we can avoid someone with ill intentions [from] manipulating us.
And what do you hope people learn from Cultish and its emphasis on language?
I want to implicate us all and show us that nobody is immune to cultish influence. Prevailing wisdom will tell us that cult followers are desperate or disturbed or naive, but that’s really not true. What I and many other scholars have found is that the people most likely to join cults or wind up in destructive groups are really intelligent, bright and cheerful. They’re optimistic. They’re idealistic in a way that can sometimes not be positive. Regardless of whether we find ourselves in an MLM or a group like NXIVM, or are just a general Instagram user following an influencer or happen to work at a startup [with a cultish] company culture—whatever it is, this stuff is everywhere. And I’m hoping that by reading this book, folks [will] sharpen their critical thinking skills and feel empowered to think a little bit more independently, but also feel more compassionate toward those who do wind up in dangerously cultish groups. I just hope people will rethink that definition of the word “cult” and see themselves in it.
You also talk about more commonplace institutions like popular multi-level marketing companies as being cultish. How do you make that distinction?
These are ideologically bound groups that are missionary in character. They’re promising these larger-than-life benefits that will come from your involvement with the company. They’re not just promising that you’re going to make a million dollars a year—they’re promising that—but they’re also promising that you are going to be a better mother by getting involved with the company, you’re going to be a better American. A lot of them are even Christian-affiliated; Mary Kay is a Christian MLM. So by being involved with this company, you’re going to be pleasing God. And these groups are helmed by charismatic leaders. They take up all of your time, you’re constantly trying to hustle to meet your quotas, and ultimately, it’s that pernicious, charismatic leader who’s hiding his or her intentions or the truth of what this company really is, in combination with the larger-than-life promises that cannot be delivered on. There’s so much pressure when you’re involved with an MLM because everybody’s success is dependent on everyone else’s success. I think of a scam as something that’s going to screw with your finances, but this is something that’s going to screw with your whole entire life and your perception of yourself, and that’s what makes it especially culty. It’s a predatory industry.
Your other book, Wordslut, studies gendered language and how it’s used against women and marginalized genders. Do you see any similarities to the power-abusive language that you write about in Cultish?
I’m really interested in the relationship between language and power. My first book talked about that in the context of gender, and this book talks about it in the context of cults, but the topics are quite similar. In Wordslut, I talk about how language in our culture is so often used in a way that invisibly reinforces sexist and misogynist power structures, and in Cultish, I talk about how pernicious leaders use language in order to mass-manipulate people’s beliefs. The common through-line is language is incredibly powerful, but it’s also totally invisible. My books shine a light on that darkness so that we can make better-informed decisions moving forward about what we want to believe and how we want to talk.
How do you think groups like Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate and Scientology abused their religious power, their cultish power, over their followers?
In groups like that, you’ll typically find a leader or a group in power at the top who promise that they have access to transcendent wisdom—the secret of life and afterlife, essentially—and that you have the power to access this information if you join [them]. That’s essentially the pitch, and they’ll use all of these strategies of conditioning and conversion and coercion, manipulation, to get you to believe that. This is what Keith Raniere at NXIVM did. This is what L. Ron Hubbard did. This is what Jim Jones did. Obviously, no cultish group leads with, “Oh, this is a cult, you should sign up and we’ll all kill ourselves [and] wreak havoc on each other.” The pitch at the beginning is, “We have the solutions to the world’s most urgent problems,” whether it’s poverty or racism or COVID-19, “and everything else you’ve been told is untrue and hasn’t worked so far. These are the answers.”
Where else does manipulation come into play?
Then they’ll make you feel really, really special. “You can be a part of this exclusive group.” When you build somebody up, it’s called love bombing. When you build someone up as a way to get them to join you and then later exchange that confidence for your own personal gain, that’s extremely manipulative. You see that in abusive one-on-one relationships, too; a toxic relationship is just a cult of one. But in a cultish atmosphere, they’re promising not romantic love or a life of partnership and happiness, they’re promising the answers to life itself. That’s why these groups can be really dangerous, especially a group like Scientology or the People’s Temple, because the stakes are so very high. And the people who are joining, probably have a lot to gain from this group. Maybe they’re lacking community or support, or they’ve lost trust in institutions that should have been there for them, and they optimistically join up with this person who’s promising a better way. When you combine a vulnerable population with a really power-hungry leader or group of people, destruction will follow inevitably.
How did your childhood inform your interest in cults?
My parents are research scientists and did their research for 25 years at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. It was a pretty typical suburban East Coast upbringing; I was very creative, so was my brother. I cherished the times when my whole family would be together, particularly on long car rides, and I would beg my dad to tell me stories from his childhood because his childhood was just totally batshit: He spent his teenage years in this notorious cult called Synanon, and that’s actually the least traumatic part of his childhood. He was impoverished, raising himself with a very mentally ill single mother in Spanish Harlem, New York. But I think the seed of my love of nonfiction was planted growing up on these stories that my dad would tell of his childhood, and I took a particular fascination with the cult stuff.
OK now here’s a more lighthearted question: What books are you reading now or have you read recently that you would recommend?
I’m totally late to this party, but I just started reading Hidden Valley Road. It’s a piece of investigative journalism by Robert Kolker about this family that had [12] kids, and six of the sons all had schizophrenia. This book is a bestseller, critically acclaimed, and the guy who wrote it is really nice. I also just started that very buzzy novel of the summer, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. She’s going to be moderating one of my events along my Cultish virtual book tour, so we’re reading each other’s books right now. Next up, the ultimate summer reading list: 25 books you’ll want to read this sizzling season.
