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6 Tactics Cults Use To Keep Followers Hooked · The Lucas Bean Show

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  SPEAKER_00: In 1961, psychiatrist Robert Lifton at Harvard Medical School
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  Map the exact mechanisms used to replace a person's independent
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  reality with the
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  SPEAKER_00: leader's reality.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it thought reform.
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  Jim Jones used every single one of these mechanisms to
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  indoctrinate his followers.
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  SPEAKER_00: So does Donald Trump.
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  Here are the six mechanisms that explains how one man convinces
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  thousands of people
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  SPEAKER_00: that moving to the jungle and dying for him makes sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: 1.
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  SPEAKER_00: The creation of a savior.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones didn't start by demanding loyalty.
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  SPEAKER_00: He started by giving people something they never had before.
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  Jones built one of the first racially integrated congregations
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  in Indiana.
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  SPEAKER_00: He fed the poor.
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  SPEAKER_00: He marched for civil rights.
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  He pulled tumors out of people that were actually just chicken
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  parts wrapped in tissue.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they believed him anyway.
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  SPEAKER_00: Psychologist William Swan,
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  SPEAKER_00: at the University of Texas at Austin,
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  studied what happens when a person's identity merges completely
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  with a leader.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it identity fusion.
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  SPEAKER_00: His enemies become your enemies.
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  SPEAKER_00: His survival becomes your survival.
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  SPEAKER_00: An attack on him feels like an attack on your own body.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once that happens, facts become irrelevant.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are not just disagreeing with their politics.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are threatening their very existence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump did the same thing.
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  He told forgotten Americans that the system had failed them and
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  only he could fix it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The mega cult was not a political position.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a personality.
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  When you criticize Trump,
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  you are telling his followers their own judgment was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: That their own instincts are broken.
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  SPEAKER_00: That their own identity was a mistake.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones didn't build followers.
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  SPEAKER_00: He built extensions of himself.
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  SPEAKER_00: And those people don't leave.
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  SPEAKER_00: They don't question.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they don't doubt.
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  SPEAKER_00: They just follow.
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  SPEAKER_00: All the way to the end.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just like some of the most fanatical MAGA supporters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until there's nothing left.
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  SPEAKER_00: 2.
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  SPEAKER_00: Invented Enemies Once Jones had followers, he needed to keep them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The most powerful way to keep people is not love.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's fear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Psychologist Jeff Greenberg at the University of Arizona said,
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  developed a landmark study in 1986 on what happens to people
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  when they feel their
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  SPEAKER_00: survival is under threat.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it terror management theory.
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  SPEAKER_00: When people believe they're in danger,
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  their brain stops evaluating information and starts looking for
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  protection.
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  SPEAKER_00: They cluster around their leader.
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  SPEAKER_00: They reject outsiders.
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  SPEAKER_00: They become more extreme.
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  SPEAKER_00: The more scared they are, the more loyal they become.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones invented enemies everywhere.
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  SPEAKER_00: The government was watching.
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  SPEAKER_00: The CIA was plotting.
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  SPEAKER_00: People who defected were traitors.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every piece of negative press was proof of a conspiracy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar?
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  The more dangerous the outside world seemed,
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  the tighter his followers held on.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump runs the same machine,
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  SPEAKER_00: immigrants are invading,
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  SPEAKER_00: the deep state is plotting,
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  SPEAKER_00: the media is lying,
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  every institution that produces evidence against him is part of
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  the conspiracy.
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  A leader who makes followers feel like their survival is under
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  constant threat does
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  SPEAKER_00: not need to earn loyalty every day.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fear does that for him.
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  SPEAKER_00: 3.
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  The staged persecution Jones did not just tell followers they
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  were under attack.
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  SPEAKER_00: He showed them.
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  He staged fake assassination attempts with bloodstained shirts
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  and miraculous recoveries.
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  He ran drills where followers were handed cups and told the
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  liquid was poison.
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  SPEAKER_00: When they didn't die, he told them it was a loyalty test.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1961,
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  psychiatrist Robert Lifton at Harvard Medical School identified
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  the mechanism that
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  SPEAKER_00: makes manufactured chaos so effective.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it milieu control,
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  SPEAKER_00: the deliberate manipulation of the environment,
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  SPEAKER_00: so the leader becomes the only stable point.
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  SPEAKER_00: When everything outside feels dangerous and unpredictable,
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  SPEAKER_00: the leader becomes the only thing that makes sense.
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  His followers believe that if this many powerful people want
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  him dead,
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  he must matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: and surviving together bonded them in a way nothing else could.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump ran the same playbook.
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  In 2011,
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  Barack Obama mocked him at the White House Correspondents'
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  Dinner.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump has said himself that night motivated him to run for president.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then came 91 felony counts,
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  SPEAKER_00: a bullet in Butler,
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  SPEAKER_00: Pennsylvania,
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  SPEAKER_00: a second attempt on a golf course,
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  SPEAKER_00: a third attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every single time his polls went up,
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  SPEAKER_00: every single time his followers said,
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  SPEAKER_00: see,
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  SPEAKER_00: they are terrified of him.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones staged his persecution.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some of Trump's were real.
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  SPEAKER_00: The result was identical.
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  SPEAKER_00: The more powerful the enemy, the more important the leader must be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Four.
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  SPEAKER_00: The collapse of reality.
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  Once Jim Jones had his followers isolated and afraid,
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  he made himself the only source of truth.
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  Ari Kraglanski at the University of Maryland studied what
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  happens when people stop
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  SPEAKER_00: tolerating uncertainty.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it the need for cognitive closure.
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  SPEAKER_00: When people feel threatened,
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  their brain locks onto one clear answer and rejects everything
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  that contradicts it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Uncertainty feels dangerous.
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  SPEAKER_00: Certainty feels safe.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even when the certainty is a lie.
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  SPEAKER_00: And once the brain commits to that one answer, it builds walls around it.
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  SPEAKER_00: New information doesn't update the belief.
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  SPEAKER_00: It gets rejected as a threat.
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  SPEAKER_00: Followers in Jonestown had no access to outside news.
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  SPEAKER_00: Letters to and from home were monitored.
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  SPEAKER_00: Visitors were controlled.
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  SPEAKER_00: Defectors from Jonestown were called traitors.
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  When followers heard something that contradicted Jim Jones,
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  they were taught one response.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is what the enemy wants you to think.
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  SPEAKER_00: Contradictions were not problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were proof the conspiracy was bigger than anyone knew.
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  The more evidence that mounted against Jim Jones,
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  the more convinced his followers became.
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  That powerful forces were trying to destroy the only man
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  telling them the truth
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  This is how desperate the need for cognitive closure is Trump
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  built the same
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  SPEAKER_00: fortress Fake news,
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  enemy of the people Every judge who rules against him is
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  corrupt Every witness is a
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  SPEAKER_00: plant Every Republican who turns on him is a traitor
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  SPEAKER_00: His followers do not evaluate the evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: They reject it all before it lands.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones needed a jungle in South America to build that fortress.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump built that same fortress inside people's phones.
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  SPEAKER_00: 5.
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  Why People Stay By the time followers realized something was
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  wrong in Jonestown,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was too late to admit it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Psychologist Barry Staw,
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  SPEAKER_00: at the University of California,
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  SPEAKER_00: Berkeley,
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  studied what happens when people invest heavily in a decision
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  that turns out to be
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  SPEAKER_00: wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it escalation of commitment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most people know it as the sunk cost fallacy.
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  SPEAKER_00: But in a cult, it becomes something darker.
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes what I call the sunk cost of shame.
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  The more a person invests in something,
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  the harder it becomes to walk away.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because walking away means admitting everything was wasted.
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  SPEAKER_00: The money, the time, the relationships, the identity.
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  SPEAKER_00: The brain will do almost anything to avoid that pain and that conclusion.
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  SPEAKER_00: So instead of leaving, his followers doubled down.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jim Jones' followers had to sign over their bank accounts,
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  SPEAKER_00: signed false confessions,
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  SPEAKER_00: cut off their families,
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  SPEAKER_00: moved to the jungle in South America.
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  To admit Jones was wrong meant admitting they had destroyed
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  their own lives for a lie.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they stayed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the longer they stayed, the more they had to lose by leaving.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump's followers are in the same trap.
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  They defended him at Thanksgiving They cut off friends They put
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  the flag on their
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  truck Wear the hat A decade of loyalty publicly performed in
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  front of everyone they
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  know To admit Trump is a fraud means admitting they were the
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  problem for the last
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  10 years Jones did not need guards to keep people at Jonestown
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  The shame kept them
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  there Trump does not need to threaten his followers The shame
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  keeps them in the
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  SPEAKER_00: cult 6.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Jungle
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  SPEAKER_00: When outside pressure became too great, Jones made one move.
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  SPEAKER_00: He took his followers somewhere no outside force could reach them.
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  SPEAKER_00: He moved his followers to French Guyana.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones' town was not a commune.
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  It was a controlled environment where Jones' psychology became
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  the movement's psychology.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sleep deprivation, forced labor, public humiliation, armed guards.
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  Jones became paranoid and unstable,
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  and his paranoia became their paranoia.
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  SPEAKER_00: Albert Bandura at Stanford University
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  studied how ordinary people commit extraordinary harm without
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  feeling like monsters.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called it moral disengagement.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each small step feels justified.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each line crossed makes the next one easier.
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  SPEAKER_00: The brain doesn't experience a single catastrophic moral failure.
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  It experiences a thousand tiny ones that each feel reasonable
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  in the moment.
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  Joan's followers did not wake up one day and decide to drink
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  the flavor aid.
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  SPEAKER_00: They arrived at the moment through a thousand small surrenders,
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  SPEAKER_00: each one feeling more normal than the last.
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  SPEAKER_00: When Congressman Leo Ryan flew to Jonestown to investigate,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones ordered his assassination at the airstrip.
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  Then he ordered everyone to drink the flavor aid he had his men
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  make up in vats.
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  SPEAKER_00: Over 900 people died.
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  SPEAKER_00: 304 of them were children.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is how cult leaders work.
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  SPEAKER_00: A savior appears,
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  SPEAKER_00: enemies are invented,
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  SPEAKER_00: reality collapses,
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  SPEAKER_00: the exits close,
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  SPEAKER_00: and by the time they realize they're in a cult,
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  SPEAKER_00: they have given too much to walk away.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jones built his cult in the jungle with armed guards.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump is doing the same thing with a phone and a Wi-Fi connection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Both of them built cults.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every manipulation Jones used has been studied, named, and documented.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump is using every single one of his tactics.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of these cults ended in a jungle in South America.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other one is collapsing in front of us.