Cult Recruitment Techniques Are Deceptive and Effective

By Liz Shaw

I have yet to meet the person who woke up one morning and said, “Today is the day that I join the perfect cult!”

What actually happens is the cult recruiter looks at you and thinks, “She would be perfect for the group!”

You didn’t see it coming. Out of the blue some smooth moves were made on you, and most likely the process felt really good. Just think about it. If cult recruitment techniques were painful, there would be a whole lot less cult recruiting going on.

How could you have known you were on the radar of a cult recruiter?

Stranger danger

I remember during the flower power years a little saying that we love and peace types liked to use.  “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet!” Nice sentiment, but in this day and age a little on the Pollyanna side, wouldn’t you agree? With regard to you being snagged by a cult, it should read more like this, “A cult recruiter is a stranger who wants to be your best friend really, really fast!”

I don’t know if most cult recruiters go to cult recruiting school, I never did, but I became very, very good at selling my group from a genuine passion for what we believed. That passion can be translated into wanting to share with the world the wonderful new truth you possess, and consequently you often wind up talking to a lot of people – some you don’t even know.

Now if cult recruiters were too pushy, the potential member would recoil and probably walk in the other direction. No, it is much more subtle than that. It is a matter of building a relationship first, albeit it really fast, and then sharing that wonderful truth.

Sometimes a recruiter will be a complete stranger and approach you innocently enough.

“Hey, I see you are waiting on the bus, too; mind if I share the bench with you?”

Being the polite adult your mother would be proud of, you remember your manners and move your briefcase so the stranger can share the bench.

A good recruiter is sizing you up before he or she ever approaches; maybe watching you read the newspaper and noticing you pouring over the sports page.

“I hope I am not late getting home. I’ve got tickets to the game tonight.”

You, of course would kill for tickets, but talking to someone who does is the next best thing. Pretty soon you both are chatting it up about  your favorite players and have exchanged at least first names and occupations. Maybe no more will happen today. Maybe the recruiter has even seen you at this bus stop a few times before as this is his territory. You can be sure he will not forget you or anything you have said.

Do you see where this is going?  A few days later he walks up and tells you all about the game….which he probably didn’t even attend, but read about in the paper. You start to disclose a little more information, and it is just a matter of a time before the two of you plan a golf game or tennis match or lunch or anything. The hook is in, and you are going to be fresh meat because very soon you will believe you have found your newest best friend.

You’ll find cult recruiters can also be in the guise of people you “sort of know” – your new hairdresser who wants to get to know you and invites you out for lunch, the sponsor of your child’s scout troop who asks you to come to his house for dinner so your families can meet, the new neighbors who stop to chat as they take their an evening stroll around the block.

Cult recruiters walk around everyday right in front of you, and no, I am not Chicken Little saying the sky in falling. They are policemen, florists, doctors, teachers, religious leaders, bank tellers, handy men, baby sitters, soccer coaches, your daughter’s prom date, get the idea?

But now that they are your new best friends, what happens next?

One size does not fit all

When I was gathering others into the fold, so to speak, I never really knew what I was doing or how I did it at the time. A friend says that I am just a good sales person, but it goes deeper than that. Yes, I am good at marketing and fundraising; I have generated millions of dollars for the cause of the cult victim, but I could not have done that unless I believed in the cause of the cult victim.

In the same way, when I was pitching my cult leader’s incredible healing powers and beating the drum for his books, I truly believed that what I was “selling” was the answer to some of humanity’s most tragic problems. And that is what made me, and other cult recruiters, so dangerous in terms of getting you to come along for the ride.

That deep sincerity in the eyes of the cult recruiter (aka your new best friend) is for real in terms of coming from a passionate place in their heart; however, it is counterfeit in terms of having anything to offer but pain and suffering for you. And, if they are like I was, most don’t even realize they were recruited into a cult themselves the very same way.

To better understand what I’m talking about, you might read the articles on this website about mind control. Mind control is a very powerful thing, and once you are fully subjected to it in the cult, you will put value on things that never before seemed valuable. For example you might make a new best friend at the bust stop for the sole purpose of getting your foot in the door so you can share this wonderful truth you now believe, but which in fact is not truth at all, but a scam.

So how did I actually go about selling it? I got to know you first, and then custom packaged my message just for you. One size did not fit all, and I was determined to size you up from the beginning. Now don’t you feel special?

If I had just met a fellow music lover, my jumping off place would, of course, be music. If I was recruiting a sophisticated woman, I became a sophisticated woman. If the person was all nuts and berries, I used my best granola head jargon. I never saw this as being disingenuous, but instead, as just speaking the language of my new recruit, or the way I saw it, the person who needed to have this wonderful truth.

I went totally into their world, gained their trust, and then grabbed them by the hand and led them into my world. This was done believing that what I had to share was worth any little white lies or deceptions that were necessary to get the job done. The means justified the ends because I passionately believed what I was telling them. And, I was brainwashed into going against my values by using deception. This is a very effective combination for cult recruitment – true belief fueled by the willingness to deceive someone for their own good.

I think back to those days, and sometimes become sick to my stomach. I gently tell myself that I was under a thought reform system and therefore regarded the message of the group, and getting others involved, as something that I honestly believed to be good, generous, and loving towards them.

Again, let me emphasize that passionate, genuine belief coupled with a willingness to deceive you is the most effective tool in a cult recruiter’s arsenal. They don’t play fairly.

Do unto others so they will feel indebted to you

The law of reciprocity is not on any books at your county courthouse, but you can be sure you are under it. Simply put, there is a law in human nature that, if put in a law book, would read like this:

“If I do something for you, I expect you to do something of equal or greater value for me, and you will be indebted to me until you come up with something of equal or greater value. PS. It doesn’t matter if you asked me to do this thing for you or not.”

Cult recruiters are masters at using the law of reciprocity and want to get you more and more indebted to them as quickly as possible.  And believe me, over the brief time of your new “friendship,” notes on your specific needs or weaknesses have been made!

Let’s walk through a scenario.

You are a senior citizen with no way to get to the grocery store. The cult recruiter is someone that answered your ad for help with housework. She volunteers to take you to the grocery store as well as to your doctor appointments, out to eat, and to get your hair cut. She will not accept any money for gas, and will even pay for your lunch. This goes on for a little while and you get the feeling God sent you this special angel as a new “friend,” and not as a housekeeper.

When that “friend” asks you to come to one of the cult’s meetings, a meeting the recruiter is calling “church,” you agree to go even though you attend your own church, which is within walking distance. You feel it is the least you can do after all the nice things she has done, so you go.

Guess what? Now you will be double, triple, or even group teamed! You will be made to feel like the most special person in the room, and once they find out you don’t drive you are getting invites to the shopping mall, the musical that is coming to town, and, of course, to the group’s meetings on Wednesday night and Saturday morning as well. Your debt is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Pretty soon, you are in over your head. You owe so many favors that the next steps of mind control will easily take over, and you will no longer be a potential recruit, but a new member.

Make your own conclusions for these scenarios.

You are a hungry, budget-stretched college student on a new campus and meet the cult recruiter in the student center. He invites you to a group meeting that is going to have a ton of free food.

You are a financially pressed new mother trying to work off the baby weight on the machines at the local gym. The cult recruiter, also exercising at the gym, chats it up with you for a couple of weeks and then shows up with a bag of adorable hand-me down newborn clothes and invites you out to a nice salad bar for lunch after the work-out.

Your divorce is final, and you console yourself at the local pub on the day you sign the papers. The cult recruiter starts a conversation at the bar and buys you a couple of rounds as one good ol’ boy to another. You get plastered together, and exchange phone numbers for a future racquetball game.

Bombs away

Very soon after you have gotten yourself indebted to the recruiter and other members of the group, you will be “love bombed,” and this will be the beginning of your first taste of an altered state of consciousness.

Love bombing is easy to do to someone. The goal is to make them feel very special and loved when they are with you and others in the group, and to feel very misunderstood and maligned by their friends and families.

In my own case, when I was love bombed by my group, I was soon encouraged to look at my family as insensitive to my needs, if not downright abusive at times. My friends were also the targets of disparaging remarks and I began to cut off contact with them because the group told me they were unsupportive of me.

Of course, here is the rub. What person doesn’t feel like they are misunderstood by family and friends from time to time? And there may even be some truth to it. However, it is an easy task to amplify any little flaw in the recruit’s eyes when it comes to viewing the less than perfect people that make up our families and friends, especially when the unconditional love (for now) of the group is slathered upon him.

Ex-cult members have described feeling euphoric or high during the love bombing stage. Some experts refer to it as a honeymoon stage and advise against trying to get someone out of the cult during this time, pointing to the lack of success caused by this altered state of consciousness. I know that if my own family had tried to convince me to curtail my time with my new “friends” during the love bombing phase, I would have strongly objected, and perhaps gotten in deeper with the group at an even faster rate.

There are biochemical explanations for some of this good feeling; beta-endorphins are being released, much the same way as in the brain of people with substance abuse problems. In fact when I left my group, even after having a very clear picture of the harm they did to me and my loved-ones, I temporarily experienced very unpleasant emotional symptoms that I can only describe as being akin to drug withdrawal.

Love bombing is a very powerful technique. You can compare the dreamy feeling to Dorothy falling asleep in the poppy field. It feels so good.

          “ ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ the girl asked, as she breathed in the spicy scent of the

             bright  flowers.”  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum

Time’s up

So let’s review.

You met someone that became a “friend” very quickly.

This “friend” was under the influence of a cult, and believed they had ultimate truth and you needed it, no matter how deceptive they had to be to give it to you.

This new “friend” used the law of reciprocity to get you indebted to him or her so you would increase your contact with them and others in the group.

This new “friend” and maybe many other new “friends” have now loved bombed you, and you are starting to feel really, really good as you begin pulling away from family and friends.

In your dreamy new state of being high on love, you have found yourself less involved with friends and family and more involved with your new “friends.” You have rearranged your schedule, had them over to your house, broken long standing dates with other people so you can meet the new “friends” for coffee, talked to your new “friends” on the phone at all hours of the night or day, and have generally become obsessed with these loving people…people that you owe so much to!

Little by little your new “friends” start calling in the debt.

“Can you help us with the potluck next week; you make such a good pound cake!”

“Would you mind watching the kids in the nursery during the services because we are short of helpers?”

“We are counting on you to show up at the meeting and help with the clean-up.”

 You feel like it is the least you can do, and you begin to do more, and more, and more. It isn’t long before the requests have turned into orders.

Pretty soon your time is completely monopolized by these new “friends” and you might even be losing sleep and eating poorly because you are on the run so much. You start defending these new “friends” to your family and old friends who say these new people in your life are taking advantage of you.

Eventually you just start cutting off more and more contact with anyone on the outside of the group, especially since the group told you those old people in your life would be that way, unsupportive of you doing the new things that you want to do.

The more the merrier

You are no longer a recruit, you are now a new member of a cult, and the

“fun” is just about to start. All of the mind control techniques are going to be unleashed on your sooner rather than later. The big guns are about to start firing.

Too late, you are in and don’t even know it. If you start to get a twinge of remorse, you talk yourself out of it by remembering the debt you owe them, and all the time, money and energy you have now invested in these people. To turn back now would be to admit you were a fool, and that this wonderful new truth you are starting to embrace is false!

And you can’t possibly let your family and old friends have the last word on this!

Your belief strengthens with each passing day of mind control bombardment, and you assuage your doubts by sharing your truth with others.

You are now recruiting; and it all began with you sharing your seat on a bus stop bench.