By Joe Hagan
Writer
Vanity Fair
The term “cult” gets thrown around a lot to describe the intense passion of Donald Trump’s followers—but is it accurate? For Steven Hassan, a former Moonie turned cult expert and author of The Cult of Trump, the answer is decidedly yes. Trump, he holds, has all the characteristics of a cult leader, and his followers the qualities of a cult, from the all-consuming devotion to a single malignant narcissist to the daily consumption of “alternative facts” to immunize them against cognitive dissonance (a.k.a. reality).
It’s a frightening prospect to consider millions of Americans being brainwashed by a reality-TV celebrity with a now defunct Twitter feed. Though his departure from office has certainly shaken some of his most conspiracy-addled devotees, others are doubling down, insistent that Joe Biden’s inauguration is all part of Trump’s plan, or determined to follow him as he promises to “be back in some form.” And certainly not all of them will appreciate the somewhat condescending designation of “cult member.” The question is whether Trump’s followers can be “deprogrammed” the same way that, say, followers of Sun Myung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard have been.
Hassan says they can be, but the process will require not only empathy and individual family involvement but a wholesale change in how social media and information systems separate fact from dangerous fictions. “I would put undue influence or mind control as the number-two most important thing that we address for the planet,” he says. “Because otherwise authoritarianism, using social media, is a threat.” What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
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