There are six traits of totalitarian cults:
1) Control of the environment
2) A system of rewards and punishments
3) Creating a sense of powerlessness
4) Fear and dependency
5) Reforming the follower’s behavior and attitudes
6) Closed system of logic.
These were described by Margaret Singer’s Cults in Our Midst (1996).
In 1952, Asch wrote: ‘The greater man’s ignorance of the principles of his social surroundings, the more subject is he to their control; and the greater his knowledge of their operations and of their necessary consequences, the freer he can become with regard to them.’
Sources and additional resources:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-cult-leaders-brainwash-followers-for-total-control
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