Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

Montell examines the American obsession with cults and the language used around them to build a basis for further exploration of the phenomenon in subsequent chapters. She argues that people are fascinated by cults because their mechanisms evade our understanding. This inability to grasp what makes a cult, and especially what makes a person join one, drives interest. Humans need communication, and language wields incredible power. The slipperiness of what qualifies as a cult and the negative connotation attached to the word makes the discussion murky. Cult leaders often rely on omission and the distortion of truth to create a reality. To move forward with the conversation, Montell rejects the notion of brainwashing and describes indicators of “cultish” topics rather than a formal denotation of a “cult.”

Cults inspire interest not only because people seek to understand what makes someone join one but also because the modern era faces existential challenges, sociopolitical upheaval, general instability, and a distrust of major institutions. This is also a time where individualism has flourished, and more opportunities are available now than ever. Due to the combined factors of overwhelming choices, increasing isolation, lack of institutional support, and a drive to have an identity, the United States is saturated with groups that qualify as cultish.

The United States has a long history of cults, due to the country’s foundation in alternative spiritual and religious offerings in the 1600s. By the 1800s, the United States was seeing all kinds of offshoots of religions and new ideologies. The cult movement peaked in the 1970s, an era considered by some scholars the Fourth Great Awakening, when religious cults were on the rise due to social and political turmoil. By the 1980s, cults had gained a negative reputation, which led to the paranoia of the Satanic Panic, but they also had a moment in countercultural movements. By the 1990s, cult participation was largely regarded as deviant, but recently there has been another emergence of cults.

Montell carefully works to unpack our language around cults by dispelling ideas like brainwashing and applying the idea of a cult to common, socially acceptable groups like those practicing mainstream religions and even the military. She argues, “We don’t say that soldiers are brainwashed to kill other people; that’s basic training” (34). The language around cults shapes our understanding of them, and cults aren’t inherently good or bad, although the feedback loop created by the media giving the most problematic cults headlines reinforces the negative connotations associated with cults.

This negative connotation has real-world consequences, like the FBI raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, during the 51-day standoff that led to the deaths of 80 people. An FBI raid on a formally recognized religious institution would likely be seen as horrifying, and Montell offers the half joke that religions are just cults that have grown over time. Because cults carry this negative weight, their followers are “instantly relegated to a subclass of human” (37). This attitude toward cults shifts the narrative away from real conversations and critical thought about what it means to be in a cult and why people join them.

Montell shares how her father was forced into a cult by his father and stepmother when he was 14 years old. The cult, known as Synanon, engaged in some troubling practices, including extreme truth-telling in the Game, during which members verbally abused each other and forged traumatic bonds. During his time in the cult, her father worked in the lab, where he fostered a love for real science. He eventually escaped, but his experiences colored Montell’s upbringing by making her wary of all things cultish.

Montell examines how language works to manipulate members and minimize the traumatic, controlling impact of the cult through terms like “the Game,” which sounds playful and voluntary but is ultimately neither. Montell extends this analysis to other cults and offers the thesis that language has an ability to create identities and shape reality and is therefore a critical part of cults. Another example of this is Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a more positive cultish group with a vocabulary all its own that enables members to label their experiences with clear, specific terminology, even if that jargon sounds strange or confusing to outsiders.

Montell then offers a high-level overview of the rest of the book, focusing in Part 2 on suicide cults, in Part 3 on religious cults, in Part 4 on MLMs, in Part 5 on cult fitness, and in Part 6 on social-media gurus. She wants to unmask language’s role in how cults work and how we engage with cultish mechanisms around us.