#680 - Steven Hassan

[0] Boom.

[1] What was the original pronunciation?

[2] Well, my standing is back in the old days.

[3] It was Sam the Butcher and Joe the Barber.

[4] And my great -grandfather was a chasin, which is a singer of holy songs.

[5] Like canter would be the term now.

[6] And when my grandfather came to Ellis Island, he didn't speak English, and they wrote it up as H -A -S -S -A -N.

[7] And so I've lived my life being thought of as an Arab, being persecuted at times.

[8] times by Jews.

[9] I'm actually Jewish, and I belong to a Jewish.

[10] The Jews persecuted you?

[11] I've had experiences where people made, yes, racial.

[12] Because of your name.

[13] Because of the spelling of my name.

[14] And did you have to let him, hey, you asshole?

[15] I'm one of you.

[16] Well, first I'd say you're, you know, being a bigot, and then I'd say, by the way, I'm Jewish.

[17] What did they say?

[18] I'm so sorry.

[19] They would look at me, and then they'd say, you don't look Sephardic.

[20] I'm Ashkenazi, but anyway, you know, like act with some dignity and compassion and kindness.

[21] Yeah, especially for no reason.

[22] It's not like you did something anti -Semitic, right?

[23] The first time I was actually physically assaulted was during the six -day war back in the 60s when I was in elementary school on a stairwell in Queens, New York.

[24] You were assaulted because of your ethnicity?

[25] I was assaulted by Jews who thought I was an Arab.

[26] Jesus Christ.

[27] And they attacked me and I threw them down.

[28] I grew up in my father's hardware business, so I kind of, like, knew how to pick up 100 -pound bags of rock salt and stuff.

[29] Oh.

[30] So they, like, fell on the floor, and then I said, you schmuck, so I'm Jewish.

[31] I like how you schmuck.

[32] That way you let them know.

[33] But isn't, isn't Judaism sort of a cult?

[34] So let me just explain what Steve does anyway.

[35] Steve Hassan, Hassan.

[36] Hassan.

[37] Hassan.

[38] Yes.

[39] Yes.

[40] You wrote a book Combating Cult Mind Control I got a hold of you because of my friend Nate Quarry Who used to fight for the UFC And he is one who Connected me to you And he was a Jehovah's Witness for a while And You grew up in it Yes, yes he did And he wrote me a really interesting email About the mind Control process of that particular cult Your book combating cult mind control is right here it says number one best -selling guide to protection rescue and recovery from destructive cults is Judaism a cult so first let me just say that book first came out in 1988 and it had a fellow on the front cover who looked a little bit like you like me but but clean shaven and he had a padlock and a chain around his forehead I hated it I told the publisher I hated it oh they they created the artwork for you.

[41] They did the artwork.

[42] And anyway, it's been out for 25, 27 years now in Hardback, and I've finally bought the rights back, and I've updated it post -internet, including terrorists and human trafficking and including people born into cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

[43] So that said, I grew up in a conservative Jewish family, the youngest of three.

[44] My mom was an art teacher.

[45] My dad had a hardware story.

[46] I was a musician before that.

[47] And after that.

[48] And I really didn't like the Judaism that I was taught, but I was very close to my mom and my maternal grandfather.

[49] He was orthodox.

[50] And I grew up with a spiritual feeling and connection, and I still feel that connection.

[51] And I'm actually part of an alternative Jewish community for the last 17 years.

[52] But the point that I want to say is that there's a whole range.

[53] And I actually gave you a blow up of a graphic.

[54] I don't know if you're going to use it.

[55] But of ethical influence and unethical influence, and the idea is that one can look at specific behavioral components and determine whether or not it's a destructive cult or a benign cult or a constructive cult.

[56] So the word cult in and of itself tends to be pejorative, but as someone who is quoted in the book called the Cult of Mac as a disciple, myself, in the book.

[57] Colt of Mac, Mac being Apple?

[58] Yeah.

[59] That was literally interviewed by this writer who actually has a website called The Cult of Mac, and he said, your editor, my editor said, I have to interview you.

[60] And I said, what about writing a book about computers?

[61] I said, that's weird.

[62] That's not the typical interview.

[63] What's the title?

[64] He said, The Cult of Mac.

[65] And I laughed.

[66] I said, I've been using Apple since 1982, and I have five Macs right now.

[67] But if you still want me to do an interview, I'll be at.

[68] I do believe that people, there are certain people that are in a cult of Mac, 100%.

[69] I noticed it in the 90s when I was on news radio.

[70] All the people on the staff, all the people that work behind the scenes, they would get so excited when a new OS operating system came out, a new Apple OS, and they would talk about it.

[71] Like, we've got a new one now.

[72] It's going to be better than Windows.

[73] It's going to be amazing.

[74] Yeah, there's a science.

[75] There's a social science to creating a cult.

[76] But again, I cite the byte model and cite that, you know, you know, you.

[77] If there's deception, so there's lack of informed consent, if there's extreme use of fear and guilt, if there's information control where people are being told you can't talk to critics or defectors or you need to cut off from family or friends who are questioning you, I'm concerned about human rights.

[78] I think the easiest way to understand what I do as a former cult member myself.

[79] It's really in support of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[80] So you're not necessarily anti -cult.

[81] You are anti -negative cults that have a detrimental effect on a person's life.

[82] Yeah, and I would actually blow the frame up a little bit bigger since I've been doing this work for 39 years.

[83] And I would say I'm against undue influence.

[84] Undo.

[85] How would you...

[86] It's a legal term for exploitative influence as compared to ethical influence where like a therapist is trying to help somebody to confront their.

[87] fears or his influence of helping somebody who's addicted to something that's killing them.

[88] But wouldn't you put a lot of religions in that category then, that classification of undue influence?

[89] Right.

[90] So you asked me, is Judaism a cult?

[91] The answer is there are Jewish cults, for sure, and there are lots of other Jewish temples and affiliations that are not destructive cults.

[92] So what would you consider them?

[93] Them meaning.

[94] The positive ones.

[95] The positive ones, I belong to Temple, Beth Zion, and Brookline, Massachusetts.

[96] Powerful Brookline.

[97] You would appreciate that my rabbi wrote the big book of Jewish humor, and he was a comedian for most of his adult career.

[98] He became a rabbi later on.

[99] What's his name?

[100] Moshe Waldox.

[101] And he cracks jokes even during Yom Kippur.

[102] And he's my kind of rabbi.

[103] It's gay -friendly, women -centered, social justice, but we love to.

[104] to sing.

[105] We love to chant.

[106] We love to daven.

[107] We love to do good.

[108] What's a daven?

[109] Davening is religious prayer.

[110] Oh, okay.

[111] Going through the Sidor and learning Torah.

[112] I love to go to Torah study.

[113] It resonates for me in terms of my spiritual path.

[114] That said, I've also studied Buddhism, and I have a teacher who's teaching me a Korean form of meditation and movement.

[115] He's a martial artist, by the way.

[116] Oh, yeah?

[117] Korean martial arts?

[118] martial arts what kind he's a swordsman swordsman so he does like kendo or something something like a real version of it like the real sword thing well kendo is a real art of sword they just use bamboo sticks because they don't want to cut each other's legs off it is yes yeah um I learned a little bit of that in the moonies they would teach you in the moonies they teach a kendo really hmm exciting it's nice they teach a little zombie it's probably just in case they have to take over the world and everybody's out of bullets well I hope we have a chance to chat about the Moonies at some point.

[119] Oh, we will definitely chat about the Moonies.

[120] So would you say by doing this being involved in an organized religion, an ancient organized religion in a sect that you feel is positive, would it be just more of a community of philosophy and maybe just a nice group of people that like to philosophize?

[121] And we are independent, although we're influenced by the renewal movement of Zalman Schachter Sholomey.

[122] But we're trying to...

[123] What does that mean?

[124] That's the name of a spiritual leader, rabbi who passed away, who basically said, and he liked the smoke pot, by the way.

[125] I like him already.

[126] He talked about, like, updating the traditions for the modern time, and that we need...

[127] The whole point is growth and connection to other beings.

[128] in a loving, compassionate way.

[129] It's not about being exclusive.

[130] It's not about putting other people down to be on your path.

[131] It's about awareness and consciousness.

[132] Well, that sounds like a very healthy perspective.

[133] I don't think I would be part of a spiritual community after everything I've been through that wasn't super healthy and giving me more than I was taking from me. Are you allowed to eat bacon in that group?

[134] People eat bacon.

[135] I personally don't eat bacon.

[136] loves bacon, but we're not, we drive to temple.

[137] I live several miles away.

[138] My rabbi drives to temple.

[139] Even on Saturday?

[140] On Shabbat.

[141] Whoa.

[142] But, you know, it's more important to show up at temple than to, you know, than to miss temple.

[143] Than to follow some mystical ancient view of cars.

[144] All of the rules should serve the spiritual purpose and not the other way around.

[145] Isn't that people are just compressed into this.

[146] rigidity of conformity and obedience and guilt and shame.

[147] We are not into guilt and shame.

[148] We're into joy and love and laughter and helping one another.

[149] That sounds very ideal as far as cults go.

[150] I think so.

[151] So it's a cult.

[152] It's just a really good one.

[153] It's a good.

[154] Some people in Boston call it a cult and I'm like I'm a happily say I've been there for 17 years from the very beginning of his his invitation to become a rabbi there.

[155] And we've had our ups and downs, but it's healthy, it's accountable, the membership make the agenda.

[156] It's not top -down, you know, a dictatorship type thing.

[157] It's the membership.

[158] And what's the downs?

[159] What's the downs?

[160] There was some personality, power conflicts between an assistant rabbi and Moshe.

[161] There was some other, yeah.

[162] Isn't that always how it works?

[163] There's always some power struggle.

[164] You know, human beings, we're, you know, imperfect.

[165] And the key is, you know, if somebody calls you on your shit, that you step back and you listen and you reflect and you either correct your behavior or you don't.

[166] And if you don't and if you're a part of a community like that in a leadership role, then they ask you to leave.

[167] Hmm.

[168] And so that was what was going on there.

[169] Uh, in that particular case, I think she wanted more say so.

[170] She didn't want to be the assistant rabbi.

[171] I don't know all the...

[172] Can chicks be rabbis?

[173] Oh, yeah.

[174] We have an, we have an assistant rabbi right now, Rob Claudia, who's amazing.

[175] Is Rob, like, the form of like doctor?

[176] I'm sorry, yeah, it's like rabbi.

[177] Uh, rabbi means teacher.

[178] Okay.

[179] But a female you call Rob, or is it a distinction for a male as well?

[180] Uh, no, you can call a male a rave also.

[181] See, it's so weird to me that you're like an anti -cult guy, but this is clearly, at the very least, a very strong ideology with some pretty rigid sort of classifications of things.

[182] Is that fair to say?

[183] I mean, Judaism as I practice it.

[184] It seems like a weird way to get this started.

[185] Nobody makes me, it's fine.

[186] It's not the typical interview that I'm asked to do, but then again, I didn't.

[187] expect us to be typically.

[188] Well, it's not just conversation, really.

[189] Try not to interview people.

[190] Okay.

[191] For me, I just want to grow, and I like being part of a group that's bigger than myself, particularly one that's interested in helping Boston, where members of the greater Boston interfaith organization, where we're fighting for justice to raise minimum wage, to help get rid of egregious banking fees on immigrants.

[192] We bring in pro -Palestinian peace activists to speak.

[193] We bring in Steve Hassan to speak about cults.

[194] We do all kinds of interesting programming.

[195] And I love being part of a community.

[196] And on a personal note, when I had cancer nine years ago, at Hatchkins' lymphoma, people were offering to drive me to the hospital make us meals and it was just great to feel like we weren't alone facing that that's great and that's what i always hear from people that are in christian churches that really really enjoy it they really enjoy the community and they really enjoy the bond that they have with all these folks and that it seems like coming together and sitting together on sunday or whenever you do it and worshiping that really in fact a part of Part of what's going on there is you're all making this sort of agreement to look at the possibility of there being a higher good for all of us and that you all join together in this.

[197] And then you get this bonding, this feeling of community that we kind of don't really have that much in this world.

[198] A lot of folks don't know their neighbors.

[199] They don't, you know, they just, I have a buddy who lives in an apartment building.

[200] It's like 50 floors.

[201] He doesn't know a fucking single person in the entire building.

[202] I'm like, that's so crazy.

[203] You live with hundreds and hundreds of people.

[204] You don't even know who they are.

[205] Right.

[206] And that's part of what needs to be changed, in my opinion, and make the world a healthier place where people do know their neighbors and they do offer help if somebody needs help.

[207] Well, that's the beauty of small towns.

[208] The beauty of less people is those people get appreciated more.

[209] It's sort of like, you know, you can have too much stuff, and then that stuff doesn't have any value anymore.

[210] Or you can have one cherished item that like, wow, this is the baseball glove my dad gave me when I was 10 and I will cherish it forever.

[211] Instead of like a fucking warehouse full of baseball gloves, they don't mean jack shit to you.

[212] And I think human beings are kind of a warehouse full of baseball gloves.

[213] It's just so many of us that we sort of lose value, lose an appreciation for us because there's so many of us.

[214] That's part of it.

[215] I also think that, you know, modern, culture and civilization and technology has created a false construct of what's important and what's real where being this and being part of a family or a community or a tribe mattered as a central theme of our identity.

[216] Now it's consumerism and what status you have at your job or how much you're making or what car you're driving and where you're going on vacation.

[217] and this information overload and sleep deprivation that is very troubling.

[218] Sleep deprivation?

[219] Mm -hmm.

[220] How so?

[221] It's probably one of the most studied phenomenon, the effects on the mind and on the brain, lack of sleep.

[222] And it's one of the classic techniques used by destructive cults, by the way, sleep deprivation.

[223] But if one analyzes American society, my understanding is that, the average American is sleep -deprived.

[224] Isn't that one of the things that Scientology supposedly does to those folks that they have that work for pennies, what do they call them, the C -Corps?

[225] It's the, it's a C -org.

[226] A billion -year contract.

[227] Billion, isn't that hilarious?

[228] You sign a billion -year contract.

[229] Yeah.

[230] And I want to mention that I was part of a five -day seminar in Toronto a few weeks ago called Getting Clear.

[231] and some of the top former officials of Scientology were interviewed on stage.

[232] I was on stage talking about hypnosis because Hubbard was a hypnotist, and a lot of the processes in Scientology are straight out of a hypnosis textbook from the 20s and 30s, which is when Hubbard was reading about it.

[233] The processes like during auditing, is what you mean?

[234] Yeah, so to sit with your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap and you're closing your eyes and just being there, not reacting for 20 minutes.

[235] The Scientologist will tell you, oh, Joe, you just licked your lips or your knee quivered.

[236] No, you've got to just freeze for 20 minutes.

[237] It's creating an altered state of consciousness known as trance.

[238] And I know we're going to talk more about trance.

[239] I'm sure there's nothing wrong with trans states, but when you're in a trans state, you're more suggestible to someone who has authority, and who has an agenda to implant ideas in your head because you're not in your critical analytic part of your mind.

[240] Really?

[241] So just sitting for 20 minutes with your hands in your lap and your feet flat would lead you to be more influenced by someone's suggestions.

[242] That's the first one.

[243] The next one is sitting opposite a Scientologist three feet away, staring into the Scientologist's eyes for 20 minutes.

[244] That's the next That's the next one.

[245] Jimmy, it's really hot in here.

[246] Is A -C -on?

[247] Turn out.

[248] And the next one after that is bull -baiting, where you have to stare straight forward, and the Scientologist tries to get you to react or respond.

[249] It's like a bull with a red cape.

[250] Really?

[251] Yeah.

[252] So they are training, obedience.

[253] They're desensitizing people from normal, social cues and interactions, and they're cultivating a compliant, obedient, trans -identity as a Scientologist.

[254] I didn't know that just staring at someone, just staring into someone's eyes can create an altered state of consciousness.

[255] A bunch of kids are going to listen to this.

[256] Staring, actually staring at a candle, staring at a spot on a wall that's known in hypnosis language as an eye -fixation technique is a very, very common technique for inducing an altered state of consciousness.

[257] Why?

[258] Because the eyes are pretty wired to move and scan.

[259] And I should also say hypnosis is not sleep.

[260] It's an altered state of consciousness that's best characterized as concentration or absorption.

[261] And I just want to say one more time, there's nothing wrong with that state.

[262] I like that state.

[263] I do self -hypict.

[264] I do self -hypict.

[265] I do meditation.

[266] I do many different altered states techniques.

[267] The point is I'm in control.

[268] I'm deciding.

[269] I don't have somebody who's alienating me from my own inner voice and my own self and trying to imprint me with a totalistic ideology that's black and white us versus them, good versus evil.

[270] So let's talk about you.

[271] You got into the Moonies.

[272] And you were there for two years.

[273] Is that what it was?

[274] Yeah, two and a half years.

[275] Two and a half years.

[276] And that led you to try to get a greater understanding of cults, the cult mind control, and to help people.

[277] What was your experience?

[278] How old were?

[279] You were 19?

[280] Is that what you were?

[281] Yeah, I was, I skipped eighth grade.

[282] I was an extra honor student.

[283] I was a creative writing major, Queens College.

[284] Humble brag.

[285] See that?

[286] Just kidding.

[287] So you were an honor student?

[288] I was reading Plato when I was eight.

[289] I was into utopian novels when I was nine.

[290] But aside from that...

[291] Utopian novels.

[292] Yeah, I was wanting an ideal world and looking around at what I saw in the media and the Russians were going to nuke us and already I was sensitized to global climate change way back then.

[293] I was in the last draft lottery to go to Vietnam.

[294] Anyway, I had been basically dumped by my girlfriend's at 19.

[295] Chicks.

[296] They do it every time.

[297] And I was kind of bummed, and I was sitting in the cafeteria waiting for the new semester to start, and three women pretending to be students, dressed like students, carrying books like students, asked if they can share my table.

[298] And they started asking me about the books that I had from my course.

[299] And they weren't students?

[300] No, they were Moonies.

[301] Wow.

[302] And it was a deceptive, systematic, which I later learned how to do as a leader.

[303] I learned how to recruit people.

[304] And I had a similar situation in college.

[305] Did you?

[306] Yeah.

[307] Tell me. Well, there was this Italian class that I was taking.

[308] It was this beautiful Puerto Rican girl.

[309] She had glasses.

[310] She was so hot.

[311] And she was always asking me to go to these parties.

[312] She's always inviting me to these parties.

[313] Like, come to this, come.

[314] We're going to the Cape for the weekend.

[315] You should come.

[316] I was like, whoa.

[317] Oh, my God.

[318] But I was always busy.

[319] I was so mad.

[320] I was like, fuck, I've got to find a date where I was.

[321] busy too I was a waiter on the weekends what year is this I graduated high school in 85 um I took a year off before I went to UMass Boston and wasted three years just fucking around there that was uh so it was probably 86 okay 86 87 i don't know what church of christ I don't know what church they were in because they were hot and heavy in that period of time it could be in Boston they were inviting me to these retreats and they had invited me to more than one and I couldn't go.

[322] I was still competing in martial arts tournaments back then.

[323] I was always busy, but I really like this girl.

[324] She was pretty hot.

[325] And she's very friendly, too.

[326] I was like, wow, maybe she's the one.

[327] Really friendly, loving, cute, flirty.

[328] This is how it goes down.

[329] There was an airplane crash in Boston, and it was one of those weird plane crashes where the, did Trump have an airplane at one time?

[330] Did Donald Trump have an airline?

[331] Maybe.

[332] I don't know why I would connect him to it.

[333] it in some strange way but whatever it was this airline um the the wheels wouldn't come down you know how sometimes they make those crazy landings where they skid across the one way and sparks fly and everything like that so i sat down with these uh girls and um we're at lunch in the cafeteria and uh i go do you guys hear about the plane crash and they go no what happened and i said yeah well some uh the the wheels wouldn't it was trump airlines yeah that's what it was i'm pretty sure it was his you could probably find the actual date that this happened find the actual date that Trump Airlines wheels wouldn't come down so anyway it said Logan Airport in Boston skids sparks the whole might have been Boston it might have been somewhere else but I was living in Boston anyway boy am I getting off track these uh I tell them the whole story I was in Boston that then too by the way so they go what happened and I said well the wheels didn't come down and they had a skid across it one way was anyone hurt I go no no no one was hurt they go oh praise God praise God and I just went what it was just it was weird they all clasped their hands together like this praise God it wasn't like wow who thank God nobody was hurt you know which is like a normal expression but it was it was a very pious like a devoutly religious praise God oh praise God and I looked around I go pray okay I go what do you guys do and then and then I started realizing fuck man she didn't really want me to come to a party like There's something going on here.

[334] Just trying to save your soul, man. Yeah.

[335] Well, and then I started to ask them.

[336] I said, so do you think God, like, saved that?

[337] Oh, absolutely.

[338] I go, well, why didn't God just make the wheels come down?

[339] Why freak everybody out?

[340] And then it got weird.

[341] And then it got ugly.

[342] And, you know, I mean, then they never talked to me again.

[343] I forget where it went.

[344] I was a dick back then.

[345] I probably said something stupid.

[346] Well, a lot of Bible cults.

[347] Jewish, Christian, and Muslim are into Armageddon.

[348] You know, the apocalypse is coming any moment.

[349] Well, it's a good way to get people to sign up.

[350] Exactly.

[351] The heavy pressure, scarcity, times running out.

[352] If the world ended tomorrow, are you ready?

[353] I'm definitely ready.

[354] I'm going to hell for the rest.

[355] It doesn't matter if you're ready or not.

[356] The world's going to end, you know?

[357] It's like, are you ready?

[358] But sign over your real estate and your bar.

[359] So you're sitting at this table.

[360] These girls come over.

[361] There weren't even students, right?

[362] So what are they doing in the school?

[363] How did they get in?

[364] They lied.

[365] They just walked in.

[366] Queens College was City University.

[367] Damn, shitty security.

[368] Probably can't do that today.

[369] And not only that, but later when I got recruited into the group, I was told to drop out of Queens College from the cult sent back to Queens College to start a student group on campus to get people into the student group so they would drop out of Queens College.

[370] That's adorable.

[371] It's very slick So you're sitting there at this table You're bummed out You're broken -hearted What was the girl who broke up with you?

[372] What was her name?

[373] Let's call her Debbie Fucking Debbie She was a shoe model That's all I remember A shoe model She had great legs And I have no recollection Of what her name is Oh, okay Let's call her Debbie So Debbie tears your heart apart And just leaves you there At this cafeteria Alone and vulnerable Poor Steve You're like What?

[374] What now?

[375] Well, now I thought she was going to be the one.

[376] And these gals come over, and were they hot?

[377] They were cute, and they were very flirtatious.

[378] They didn't say, by the way, masturbation is a sin, and father's going to line us up with thousands of people in a sign who you're going to marry, and you have to wait four years to have sex with them.

[379] Is that the Moonies?

[380] Is that how they do it?

[381] Yeah.

[382] Four years.

[383] They didn't say anything about that.

[384] What?

[385] And I said it.

[386] You part of some religious group.

[387] Oh, no, not.

[388] at all.

[389] We're just a group of students care, you know, who are concerned about modern issues.

[390] So what was their approach to you?

[391] They sat down, they started talking to you.

[392] What did they open up with?

[393] Hey, nice classes.

[394] No, I think I had, it was a spring semester.

[395] I had a pile of books.

[396] I was taking philosophy, psychology, and writing.

[397] I think I had the Upanishads.

[398] I think I had high diggers being in time and they're like why being in time is that thick.

[399] Oh, wow, you must be really smart.

[400] Ah.

[401] What is, what is that about?

[402] Oh, so they start flattering you, buttering you up.

[403] Oh, serious.

[404] Serious.

[405] The cult is known, and other cults are known as love bombing.

[406] Pretty sure that's a Puerto Rican girl did to me, too.

[407] Damn, she was hot, Steve.

[408] It's all about saving the person's soul and, you know, step -by -step incremental recruitment, finding out as much as you can about the person, saying almost nothing about what you are about and what the group is about.

[409] Well, unlike you, I wasn't particularly vulnerable at the time.

[410] So it was a good time for them to get after me because I was in the middle of some pretty intense stuff.

[411] I had a goal.

[412] I was pretty focused.

[413] I was going to get roped up in some religion.

[414] But if they got me a couple of years earlier, I think they could have got me. I was real vulnerable when I was like 18.

[415] So the reality is, as human beings, we have life cycle events where we're situationally vulnerable, death of a loved one, breakup of a relationship, you know, moving to a new city, state, or country, illness.

[416] There are things that every human being goes through.

[417] And for me, is an overwhelming ignorance of the public to kind of blame the victims, like you were stupid for believing in this, like what was.

[418] wrong with you.

[419] You are weak for falling for this, as opposed to tell me about your experience and tell me what, you know, what happened.

[420] You know, there's a principle in social psychology called the fundamental attribution error.

[421] I know that's a lot of syllables.

[422] But it basically is the single most important principle of social psychology.

[423] And what it means is what I was basically saying before.

[424] When people try to understand why other people, people are doing what they do, they over -attribute individual variables and they under -attribute social environmental variables.

[425] Social environmental variables are gigantic.

[426] I think one of the things about a person being older and wiser, like you always hear their expression, older and wiser.

[427] But if you really look at it like mathematically, well, what is it?

[428] It's data.

[429] It's accumulation of data and the understanding of the relationships between events, reactions, And when you're 18 years old, you don't have a lot of data.

[430] You only have a few things that are going on.

[431] And for me when I was 18, it was the breakup of me and this girl that I was dating and the all of a sudden becoming a man, being responsible, having to go to college or get some sort of a job or some sort of a career in just the, just the overwhelming possibilities of the future.

[432] And not having any clue as to how it was all going to play out.

[433] I was terrified.

[434] And if someone came along right then, I feel like they could have got me. I feel like I was real vulnerable around 18.

[435] But I met this hot Puerto Rican girl.

[436] I think I was about 20.

[437] And I was pretty determined at that time.

[438] So I was okay.

[439] Well, and that said, there are so many different types of destructive cults.

[440] So they're not just all religious cults.

[441] There can be a therapy cult, a political cult, can be a cult of personality.

[442] That's very important.

[443] That's very important because there's a lot of different.

[444] things that can lock you in and then start to control you and start to suck money off of you and start to really dictate your behavior in a very unhealthy way.

[445] And that is so common.

[446] There's so many different versions of it.

[447] It almost seems to be like a pattern of human behavior in thinking, like a code that you can kind of crack, like a cheat code in people.

[448] We've experienced a revolution in science and medicine and in psychology, and in particular social psychology.

[449] There's been so many, you know, pivotal experiments in the last 50 to 100 years that give us windows into understanding our vulnerabilities.

[450] So, for example, when I'm counseling someone who's involved with a destructive cult, I don't start out by saying, hey, you're in a cult.

[451] let me liberate you or something.

[452] In fact, my whole approach is empowering people a thing for themselves.

[453] So I asked them questions with respect because I really want them to think about it.

[454] In any case, I show them the Ash Conformity Study, Solomon Ash.

[455] What is that?

[456] So the Solomon Ash Conformity Study was framed to the people coming into it as a visual perception experiment.

[457] Basically, they'd be brought into a room with several people.

[458] in a semicircle, and there'd be a person in the front with a card with four lines on it, a sample line, and then three other lines of different sizes.

[459] Okay.

[460] Let's say a three -inch sample line, a three -inch, a four -inch, and a five -inch.

[461] But everyone isn't on the experiment except the person in seat six.

[462] And after going around twice giving the correct answer, everyone confidently starts giving the wrong same answer.

[463] And the test is how many people will start to conform to giving the wrong answer, even though they can see what their own eyes, what the correct answer is.

[464] And that study's been replicated thousands of times.

[465] And the answer is two -thirds start giving the wrong answer, even though they know intellectually that it's the wrong answer because it feels too uncomfortable to be in the room.

[466] And is that the testimony that they give when they were asked, did they, I'm assuming they interview these people.

[467] Oh, absolutely.

[468] They say it's uncomfortable.

[469] And I even show a dateline, an old dateline episode where they asked Anthony Prakkanis, who's one of the foremost social psychologists to actually do the study so they could film it.

[470] And this, they start out with this Asian woman who is the heroic resistor, who gives the correct answer.

[471] But she's grimacing as she's giving the royal.

[472] answer, even though she knows it's the right answer.

[473] But because of the social forces, we have mirror neurons.

[474] We want to fit into the people in the room.

[475] It's just human nature.

[476] Well, it's how people survive.

[477] It's clan behavior.

[478] Exactly.

[479] But it's hardwired.

[480] So I show that video, that experiment.

[481] And I always like to ask people, so tell me something you could do if you were in that situation to scientifically reality test that situation.

[482] Scientifically reality test, what meaning, meaning what?

[483] You're in this room.

[484] Everyone's saying a five -inch line is a three -inch line.

[485] Well, let me ask you.

[486] Let me ask you, what would you do?

[487] Because you have the data now, okay?

[488] You're a cult expert.

[489] I get up and measure it.

[490] Right.

[491] But you would obviously understand what's going on.

[492] Right.

[493] Exactly, but if you asked me prior to my induction into the Mooney's, did I understand the ash conformity study or the power of being?

[494] I would have said, no, I'm an individualist.

[495] Right.

[496] I'm a non -conformist.

[497] I had the bumper sticker question authority.

[498] Right.

[499] You know, I had the ponytail and, you know, the work boots.

[500] You were typically unique.

[501] You fit right in, you rebel.

[502] Totally.

[503] So anyway, after the Ash Conformity study, the Milgram obedience study, study.

[504] Stanley Milgram did a test.

[505] At the time, the dominant theory in psychology for explaining how the Nazis could do what they did was called the authoritarian personality.

[506] And Milgram said, I wonder if Americans would do the very same thing.

[507] And he developed this ingenious shock box, which really was set of switches that had no electricity at all, but it sounded electrical.

[508] and he basically would bring people and tell them they're doing a scientific experiment that's very important that tests memory and punishment and learning and set people up into a situation where they thought they were giving an electrical shock to the person in the next room and it was all tape recorded with and it would increase 15 volts from mild to moderate to severe to extreme to XXXXX and there'd be a guy in a white lab coat acting very proper, who happened to be a high school teacher who was moonlighting for a few extra bucks.

[509] And the test was how many people would electrocute a fellow human being in an hour because an authority figure told them they had to because they had made a commitment to do a scientific experiment.

[510] And the answer was two -thirds.

[511] Yeah, I saw a radio lab or listened rather to a radio lab podcast.

[512] on that very thing It's in fact There's a movie that's coming out about it called The Experimenter and the next study that I'm about to mention the movie just came out a week or two ago called the Stanford Prison Experiment of Phil Zimbardo Who was one of my mentors I was trying to get him on the podcast But I was out of the country When he wanted to come on I was really bummed out Well Try to get him back again Yeah I'm gonna fly him in He's amazing He taught a course at Stanford called the psychology of mind control for 15 years and used two chapters of my original book in it.

[513] And he was also president of the American Psychological Association.

[514] But he, so in his experiment, he randomly divided guys into guards and prisoners, and he did basically control behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions.

[515] And people started having nervous breakdowns, and some of the guards started becoming sadistic.

[516] And instead of saying, you know what, I don't want to do the experiment anymore.

[517] They had gotten so sucked into the experience that they, that their only out was to have a nervous breakdown.

[518] Wow.

[519] It was extraordinary.

[520] So when I'm helping people understand what happens in the Scientology cult, the Mooney cult, the TM cult, or any number of other destructive cults, I want them to first.

[521] What's a TM cult?

[522] Transcendental Meditation.

[523] That's a cult?

[524] Oh, yeah.

[525] Really?

[526] Big time.

[527] I thought that was just like a method of like cleansing your mind.

[528] I didn't know that there was even a cult behind it.

[529] Oh, Maharishi, Maheshiyogi.

[530] Oh, yeah.

[531] This is not.

[532] But people practice it.

[533] They practice techniques of transcendental meditation alone by themselves.

[534] Are they in a cult?

[535] So the answer is you don't need to be in a room with other people to be in a mind control cult.

[536] But it can get inside your head and create a new cult identity.

[537] that suppresses your real identity, and it's not healthy.

[538] Well, I have a very cursory understanding of transcendental meditation, so if you could, please tell me what exactly does that mean?

[539] So, and I have the story of a woman who was raised in TM in Chapter 6 of the new book, Gina Katania.

[540] So first of all, there's a thousand or more ways to meditate, and there's not one way that Everyone has to meditate.

[541] In fact, neurologically, it's very detrimental for some people to do, for some people to do a mantra meditation where they're repeating it over and over.

[542] It actually increases anxiety.

[543] Really?

[544] So like Buddhist meditations, where they, home?

[545] Oh, so breath meditation.

[546] The point is that it's a tool for training consciousness.

[547] And ultimately, depending on your level of training, you want to not be a victim of your thoughts or your feelings.

[548] You want to not only develop a perspective and a wisdom consciousness, you want to also get out of the entire frame of self -dialogue and just in total beingness.

[549] But any group that says you have to do it our way or else or if you're having bad reactions, they say that's good.

[550] You're unstressing.

[551] Keep doing it.

[552] Is that what Transcendental Meditation says?

[553] I'm afraid so.

[554] Well, when you say bad reactions, how so?

[555] Ticks, headaches, barking like a dog.

[556] I've heard from some people who are meditating.

[557] Persinger wrote a book about TM and some of the negative after effects.

[558] And what you need to understand about a destructive cult is that there are many levels.

[559] If you're just doing a meditation and you're not doing the advanced and the next advanced and then becoming celibate.

[560] And then...

[561] Oh, that's all in transcendental meditation as well?

[562] And Maharishi was saying if they didn't have 40 ,000 cities, which meant people were hopping around thinking they were levitating, that the world would blow up.

[563] So he was using the whole fear trip thing to raise a lot of money to get people to be these devotees.

[564] Yeah, this yogi flying.

[565] It's a BS, buddy.

[566] Well, how dare you?

[567] How dare you?

[568] These people are flying and you're claiming BS?

[569] You're very rude.

[570] No, they're hopping on mattresses.

[571] Dude, I've seen it.

[572] And they take a picture when they're on the up.

[573] See, they're flying.

[574] We got it.

[575] We got the proof.

[576] Someone is just like, you're poo -pooing magic.

[577] Have you ever seen it?

[578] Jamie, you've seen it?

[579] Have you seen yogic flying?

[580] It's adorable.

[581] It's hilarious, these fools.

[582] So I want to plug a document.

[583] Look at this.

[584] Here it goes.

[585] Look at this.

[586] I mean, no effort at all, right?

[587] You know, Phil Donahue, actually, I did a show on this, and Phil put his legs in lotus and hopped.

[588] Well, what's really funny is, wow, amazing that Phil can put his legs in lotus.

[589] But what's amazing is...

[590] Way back when...

[591] This guy is getting tired, so his hops...

[592] Let's go back to the beginning, Jamie.

[593] His hops in the beginning were much higher because he was fresh.

[594] See, look at that.

[595] Kids getting some air.

[596] Now let's go a little bit further, Jamie.

[597] Look, look, see right there.

[598] He's getting tired.

[599] I'm a fight commentator.

[600] I understand what people are fatiguing.

[601] This guy's getting lactic acid.

[602] This isn't flying.

[603] But Maharishi said, you know, this raises the energy level of the planet Earth so that there are fewer automobile accidents and less war.

[604] I feel for all these people.

[605] I really do.

[606] Me too.

[607] I feel for that guy right there with the glasses in front of this cat because he's fucked.

[608] All these people, they're fucked.

[609] And it's like social anxiety and a lack of friends.

[610] and a lack of community and there's so many different things that can lead someone to want to seek comfort in these ideologies or they could have been born into it or they could have been deceptively recruited by a hot chick or a cafeteria let's get back to that guy but the the thing is is emotions if you're having doubts or if you're having bad feelings they're like it's telling you to like look at what's happening and maybe you're Maybe you need to make a change.

[611] But if you're in the TM movement and you're having bad feelings about the group, you're told that you need to meditate to get rid of that.

[612] And that's known as thought stopping.

[613] That's one of the techniques in the T of the Bight model to shut down any reality testing.

[614] In the Moonies, we were taught to chant, crush Satan, crush Satan.

[615] Crush Satan.

[616] Crush Satan.

[617] So Satan's real?

[618] Peace on Earth.

[619] Glory to heaven, peace on earth, cross Satan.

[620] I want to tell you a true story, Joe Rogan.

[621] Better not be about Satan.

[622] It is.

[623] So I'm raised in a Jewish family.

[624] We don't believe in Satan at all.

[625] Do you believe in God in the Jewish family?

[626] Yeah.

[627] Well, wait a minute.

[628] Yeah, I believe in God.

[629] But hold on.

[630] If you believe in God, then you have to believe in the God of the Bible.

[631] Is that what you're defining God as?

[632] Now, you're asking me to define what I was believing as a child.

[633] Yes.

[634] As a conservative Jew, yes, I guess so.

[635] The God of the Bible.

[636] Well, isn't Satan in the Bible as well?

[637] No. Satan's not in the Bible.

[638] No. Not in the Torah.

[639] Oh, that's a Torah.

[640] The New Testament was an invention later.

[641] Of course.

[642] Constantine.

[643] How many bishops?

[644] Didn't he put it in?

[645] 300 AD, I believe it was.

[646] Right.

[647] So here's the story.

[648] So I'm in the frickin' moonies, if I may curse.

[649] I don't think you said Frick.

[650] Frickin is not a curse.

[651] Okay, good.

[652] I don't think you said a curse.

[653] Okay, good.

[654] The Exorcist movie comes out.

[655] Oh, boy.

[656] Buses, 300 members, including myself, into Greenwich Village, to watch the Exorcist.

[657] Party.

[658] We watch the movie.

[659] We all get in our vans, go to Tarry Town to the palatial estate.

[660] They have a palatial estate?

[661] They have multiple ones.

[662] This one particular one at Tarry Town is where I got a lot of my indoctrination.

[663] It used to be owned by the Seagram's family.

[664] Moon gets up and he says, God made the exorcist.

[665] This movie is a prophecy of what will happen if people leave the Unification Church.

[666] Okay.

[667] Now, before he gave that speech, we were singing holy songs for three hours.

[668] That's after watching this crazy exorcist movie.

[669] And I only remembered the Exorcist movie four years after I got out of the cult and I was studying psychology and we were learning about phobias.

[670] And I was thinking back, so what was, how was I installed with phobias?

[671] And then I remembered this movie and this lecture.

[672] And it's like, holy crap.

[673] I believed it.

[674] A hundred percent.

[675] Satan was everywhere and only by being in God's holy family.

[676] Yep, that's And the head just zips around and it levitates.

[677] It's a great movie.

[678] A lot of fun.

[679] It's scared.

[680] That's just too sucked, though.

[681] And anyway, so how can an intelligent person from a intact family who is going to be a professional writer and be a college professor get sucked into a cult that wants to take over the world, make an automatic theocracy, abolish a satanic democracy, abolish a satanic democracy?

[682] Mm -hmm.

[683] Kill everyone that doesn't believe.

[684] It was literally what we were pretty much told by Moon that, you know, we needed to reclaim the earth for God, not unlike ISIS and a few other cults out there.

[685] I was told the Holocaust was necessary because the Jews didn't accept Jesus.

[686] I had been educated about the Holocaust.

[687] I had been to Israel to the Holocaust.

[688] Holocaust Museum.

[689] When you heard that, what was your reaction?

[690] You're 19 at the time.

[691] I had been so, so mind control in the extreme cult example is a dissociative disorder.

[692] I'm speaking as a mental health professional.

[693] And Steve Hassan, son of Milton and Estelle Hassan from Flushing Queens, became Steve Hassan son of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Jahan, the true parents of the universe.

[694] and he needed to be a clone of Moon, and he was evil.

[695] And my whole time in the group was suppressing who I was, totally shutting down any element of me. I was sleeping three to four hours a night.

[696] I was working seven days a week for no pay.

[697] I was recruiting people.

[698] I was indoctrinating people.

[699] I was doing political events for Moon, including fasting for Nixon during the Watergate.

[700] Fasting for Nixon.

[701] Fasting for Nixon because God wanted him to be present.

[702] That's how you know you're in the wrong cult.

[703] So I'll tell you a quick, funny story.

[704] So my father voted for Nixon.

[705] I voted for McGovern.

[706] My father was a business owner.

[707] He thought Nixon was good.

[708] I said, Dad, he's a crook.

[709] How could you vote for him?

[710] He's pathetic.

[711] I'm in the cult.

[712] I call him up.

[713] I say, Dad, we're fasting for Nixon.

[714] We're in the Capitol.

[715] And he says, Stephen, you are right.

[716] he's a crook i said dad you don't understand god wants nixon to be president he said now i know you're brainwashed he's a crook i said dad you just don't understand and how will do you at the time when this was i was 1920 yeah so i want to take you back to um the cafeteria if you don't mind so you're sitting in this cafeteria these girls come up to you they start flattering you They're flirting with you.

[717] And then what's the next step?

[718] So they're part of an international group of students who are trying to make the world a better place.

[719] They happen to have a house, kind of like a commune, which was kind of interesting.

[720] Would I like to come over for dinner?

[721] So it was the free dinner.

[722] Would they cook?

[723] I have no recollection.

[724] And it's interesting because back then, I was feeding them all the information about myself, how I thought, what my values were, what my interests were.

[725] So I was telling them how to manipulate me. In this day and age, you can go on the Internet and read people's Facebooks and all their posts, and you don't even need to ask them about.

[726] You say this, right, but I'm assuming the girls you're talking about are not much older than you, right?

[727] Right.

[728] So weren't they being manipulated themselves?

[729] Weren't they essentially a part of this whole thing?

[730] And in that they were really victims along the same way they were making you a victim.

[731] Like they were bitten by the vampire.

[732] It's the victim victimizer model and their cult identities were suppressing.

[733] They were sent away from Japan from their family and friends.

[734] Oh, they were Japanese chicks?

[735] Yeah, they were Japanese chicks.

[736] Asian chicks.

[737] That's what's up.

[738] So, but here again.

[739] But they knew that they would have to.

[740] to report each other if anyone deviated.

[741] So that's why they would not send people out individually.

[742] It's like this tattletale system.

[743] I get it.

[744] But my point being is if they were not much old than you, if at all, and they were also victims of the same ideology, cult, whatever you want to call it, why would they be looking to manipulate you?

[745] Wouldn't they be a part of it?

[746] No. So members were taught to believe, as they still are, in large, that the world is headlong into an Armageddon situation of any moment judgment day is happening.

[747] And as much as you can to bring people into God and save their soul, saving a person in the Mooney is meant saving 10 generations of their father's ancestors that are in the spirit world and their mother's ancestors in the spirit world.

[748] And they're all looking at you all the time, hoping you're going to make good decisions because if you do good things, for God, you're going to make good vitality elements that will feed them in the spirit world.

[749] And every cult has its own convoluted, yet internally totalistic system.

[750] But unlike Scientology, the Moonies are like save others.

[751] Scientology is like, you know, become a God and control everybody.

[752] Control matter, energy, space, and time and get people to do what you want.

[753] them to do.

[754] Right.

[755] But my point was that they, these people were also manipulated.

[756] So they knew that they were manipulating you, but they didn't think that they were being manipulated themselves by the same cult?

[757] Like they were trying to find information.

[758] When you're in a cult, Joe, you're not having that reflective, you know, observer looking back and going, hey, what just happened just then?

[759] There's no meta -commenting.

[760] It's like you're programmed to think the right way, feel the right way, act the right way, and you're self -censoring.

[761] And in my particular case, I guess because I'm somewhat competitive in some level, I know you have no relationship to understanding what feels like to be competitive.

[762] I wanted to be the best moon he I could be, and I was chosen by Moon and one of his right -hand people to be the model leader in America.

[763] So I was hand -groomed to help take over America and the world.

[764] You were only in it for two years.

[765] So this had to be a very quick transition from you, Steve Hassan, normal college student, to boom, full -on fasting for Nixon.

[766] Yeah.

[767] It was very fast.

[768] It was about two weeks after my first contact to me having what I thought was a spiritual experience.

[769] and believing that I was being directed by God to this organization.

[770] Wow.

[771] Yeah.

[772] So this misattribution happens a lot.

[773] Now, for some of my clients, they're literally at a vulnerable point in their life.

[774] Maybe they're religious, and they're praying, dear God, tell me what to do.

[775] You know, should I leave my marriage?

[776] What, you know, what should I do?

[777] And the next thing they know, the doorbell is ringing, and it's a Jehovah's Witnesses who want to study the Bible and they're like misattributing thinking God just rang the doorbell as opposed to these people are going ringing every single doorbell within a six block radio of course yeah it's like my friend Gary he hits on every girl he meets and his idea is that if you swing enough pitches you never know ruth you never know you're gonna it's like he hits on girls way hotter than him just way above his head and he never works out but he's like you just got to keep swinging you never know Well, he's hopeful.

[778] Yep.

[779] So that's what they're doing.

[780] They're swinging at every pitch, essentially.

[781] They're knocking on every door.

[782] And every now and then they get that one ball that's in the strike zone.

[783] And that's Steve Hasson sitting there with a pile of books.

[784] Well, in my case, so I went to this three -day workshop.

[785] I didn't want to stay.

[786] I was a waiter on the weekends.

[787] I was busy.

[788] I can't go away on a weekend.

[789] And they just kept saying it's going to be so great.

[790] I didn't even know it was a workshop.

[791] And after two years of working at the Holiday Inn in Hempstead as a banquet waiter on the weekends, I call up to find out when I'm supposed to report in.

[792] He says, Steve, you won't believe it, but the wedding was canceled.

[793] So take the weekend off.

[794] I mean, I had just had these women working on me all week, and I was like, well, maybe I'm meant to.

[795] Well, I did give them my word, but I gave them my word thinking I was never going to have a weekend off.

[796] And then I was kind of like, well, maybe I'm meant to go.

[797] Maybe I should do this.

[798] So I say, okay, I'm free for the weekend.

[799] Let's go.

[800] And we're driving up.

[801] It's the middle of the winter through this palatial estate.

[802] And they say, by the way, this weekend we're having a joint workshop with the Unification Church.

[803] And I said, what?

[804] Church.

[805] Nobody said anything about church and workshop.

[806] Nobody said anything about a workshop.

[807] What's up with that?

[808] And they did the typical turn it around on you technique of, Steve, what's, do you have issues with Christians?

[809] Do you, are you, are you biased against Christian?

[810] And all of a sudden now, I'm on the defensive.

[811] Right.

[812] But there were no cell phones back then in 1974.

[813] It's the middle of the night.

[814] I have an option of getting out in the snow and trying to hitchhike.

[815] I'm like, what am I?

[816] Well, just wait for the morning.

[817] Just stay here and we'll drive you back in the morning.

[818] They slither around your bed like sirens while you sleep.

[819] Well, I was in a room where I wasn't sleeping.

[820] Yeah, so you've learned a little hypnosis there, Joe.

[821] In any case, the morning comes, the van is left.

[822] Now what I'm, you know.

[823] Right.

[824] So now you're fucked.

[825] Well, let's just go in and see what you think.

[826] And it was all orchestrated because I later learned how to orchestrated.

[827] And how many people were in there with you that were also new recruits?

[828] So that was another trick, a little bit of a scam, because they had people there that were acting like they were newcomers, but they weren't.

[829] Oh, no. So creating small groups where there's the illusion of.

[830] So essentially a lot like the study, where they have the one person that's not in on the study.

[831] Yeah.

[832] It was very systematic.

[833] Wow.

[834] How did this guy get so good at that?

[835] With this Mooney character, how did he create all this?

[836] You want the long?

[837] Short.

[838] The short, real answer?

[839] Okay, Drumroll.

[840] Did he have a background in psychology or something?

[841] Drumroll.

[842] So Moon himself was apparently an occult in North Korea, and it turns out that most cult leaders were in a cult themselves, So they didn't learn the techniques out of thin air.

[843] But the interesting thing about my former cult was that the CIA set up the Korean CIA because there had been two coups in South Korea to that point.

[844] And they were very worried about North Korean brainwashing.

[845] And they thought, you know, we need to do something to stabilize South Korea.

[846] So they had this brilliant idea of creating a private group that would help to re -edict.

[847] educate political dissonance.

[848] It's called Victory over Communism.

[849] And I only know about this because there was a Korea Gate investigation from 76 to 78 where the founder of the Korean CIA was interviewed.

[850] And he said, he, quote, organized and utilized the Unification Church for use as a political tool, unquote.

[851] Wow.

[852] And this was at the point where Americans were getting fed up with Vietnam.

[853] wanting us to withdraw.

[854] The hawks were very worried about, like, needing a stronger stance against communism.

[855] So they thought, oh, you know, we need to have student groups on campus saying we need to have a military response to communists.

[856] We should be in Vietnam.

[857] And the Moonies were used for that, too.

[858] Later, I was part of the fasting for Nixon thing.

[859] So there was a whole political, very shady.

[860] piece here.

[861] So you go from this, you get out.

[862] How did you get out?

[863] How did you figure out that it was all bad?

[864] I was rescued by my family, essentially.

[865] They didn't know where I was for a year.

[866] I drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck on the Baltimore Beltway at 80 miles an hour and basically nearly died, broke my leg really badly.

[867] Did you fall asleep behind the wheel or something?

[868] I fell asleep.

[869] Three days, no sleep.

[870] And two weeks in the hospital, sleeping, eating away from the group, I missed my sister, Thea, who was the only person in my previous life that didn't say I was in a cult or brainwashed.

[871] She was always just like, I love you and I don't understand.

[872] This doesn't seem like you, Steve.

[873] I reached out to her, not because I wanted to leave, but because I missed her.

[874] And she was like, you have two nephews.

[875] I want them to know their Uncle Steve.

[876] Come and visit.

[877] it.

[878] And I'm like, if you promise not to tell the parents, I can arrange it because I'm a leader.

[879] And she promised.

[880] And fortunately, she broke her promise.

[881] And she told my parents, and they hired some ex -members.

[882] And they did a deprogramming intervention with me. X members of the Moonies.

[883] Yeah.

[884] Wow.

[885] So your parents went deep with this.

[886] They knew exactly what they were dealing with.

[887] They put everything on the table because they knew they could have gone to jail, too, if it didn't work.

[888] One of the, one of the team was a woman I had recruited.

[889] They could have gone to jail.

[890] Yeah.

[891] Why?

[892] Because it's illegal to abduct an adult.

[893] You abduct?

[894] They were abducted?

[895] In my case, they just took my crutches away.

[896] I had a cast from my toes to my groin.

[897] That's not abduction.

[898] Correct.

[899] But at the point that I said, I want to leave, and they wouldn't let me leave, I could have been something about false imprisonment.

[900] But the long and the short of it is, is I was so confident that what I was doing was correct in that I wasn't brainwashed and at a critical juncture where they were moving locations because the cult was coming after me to rescue me my father's weeped he just started crying and said what would you do if it was your son who quit you dropped out of school quit his job and doing his bank account and got involved with a controversial group how would you feel and he was crying and I never saw my father cry and it just touched the real me and my cult self thought he was brainwashed by the communist media against father, but the real me was like, Dad really loves me, and I want to prove to him that I'm not brainwashed.

[901] So I said, what do you want me to do?

[902] He said, I just want you to talk with him for another four days, like have an open mind.

[903] And if you want to go back, at least your mother and I will be able to sleep at night knowing we did the responsible thing.

[904] And I agreed.

[905] And I had this four days where they were teaching me about thought reform and the psychology of totalism, which was a book by Robert J. Lifton, about Chinese communist brainwashing of the 50s.

[906] I had all of these experiences that were starting to surface that had been suppressed during my leadership.

[907] It's the same mechanism that allows people to be inspired, the same mechanism that allows people to be manipulated.

[908] You know, that mechanism being you see something that's, there's something about it that makes you excited, like a great performance, a great concert or an athletic performance where you get out of there, you just feel inspired, a great book that inspires you, it manipulates your brain waves, it manipulates your consciousness, and it steers you into a certain direction.

[909] Is that same sort of mechanism that allows people to be influenced by others, what allows people to be manipulated by others in this form, where you can actually, literally change the way they think and view the world.

[910] That's a big piece of it, I would say.

[911] So is it sort of a flaw in the beautiful thing about inspiration?

[912] Is it a flaw in that?

[913] Because inspiration is beautiful.

[914] It's fuel, right?

[915] Well, I think you need to have the analytic part of your mind.

[916] And a consciousness that just because it sounds great and looks great doesn't mean that it isn't great.

[917] But you know what I'm saying?

[918] Like, you know how sometimes things happen and you're just carried away by them?

[919] like you go see a movie and you're like god damn i just want to go do something i just feel so good just like it got you you know like did you see brave heart i have i saw brave heart man for like two hours i wanted a sword fight after that movie was over i wanted to join i'm like freedom you know it's like there's there's those moments i grew up with watching combat on tv and and and just you know anti -nazi and you know that i don't mean i really wanted to fight what i'm trying to get at is there's, when you see things, and when information and data gets into your mind, it influences you in this very strange way that can be positive and it can be inspirational, like whether it's seeing Michael Jordan put on an incredible performance or Ronda Rousey, you know, beaten someone or, you know, those moments where someone does something truly great and you, you have, it's fuel for you, it's fuel.

[920] Is that the same sort of mechanism that they kind of tap into to change your mind?

[921] Definitely.

[922] It's a piece of the emotional and the brain stimulation.

[923] So it's like they hack your mind.

[924] It's kind of like hacking.

[925] I talk about in the book, like a virus that gets in and corrupts your operating system.

[926] You still have your original one, but now this malware has been inserted.

[927] And now you're working.

[928] You think that it's you.

[929] And I thought it was Steve, just the true Steve, and that the old Steve was the fallen Steve.

[930] but stepping back and getting perspective and seeing the patterns of mind control and manipulation in other groups and then reflecting back on your own experience is one of the basic tenets of what I do in my work, helping family members to rescue loved ones or helping people who were either born in a cult or recruited into a cult.

[931] So in a sense that this experience that you had when you were 19 was incredibly beneficial for your career, Yeah.

[932] I have mixed emotions when I hear you say that because I didn't I don't want to do this work to be completely honest.

[933] Really?

[934] Really?

[935] Really?

[936] You don't want it because you don't want it to be work that could be done.

[937] It's traumatic.

[938] It's helping people who are suffering.

[939] But don't you get a benefit out of that?

[940] I get a fulfillment that I'm doing something really helpful to individuals.

[941] I'm trying to help people around the world to understand this phenomenon.

[942] I'm trying to counter some of the major forces against totalitarianism, but to suggest that, you know, wow, you know, you have the Moonies to thank for doing this career.

[943] I'm saying it's beneficial for you having a negative experience.

[944] You don't have anyone to think.

[945] So it's a wounded healer model, yes.

[946] Yes.

[947] It definitely deepened me in a way that I could not have been deepened before.

[948] Because when you wake up from being in a group like this, the shame, the embarrassment, the confusion, I felt like I didn't know who I was.

[949] Right.

[950] I didn't know what was real.

[951] Yeah.

[952] I literally had to have my family and my friends show me videos of who I was before to remind me. Wow.

[953] what, go to places that I used to go to.

[954] Like, I had a belief, and this is very common, and I want to touch on Stefan Molinou, which is how I learned about you, seeing your interview with him.

[955] But I believed I had an abused childhood.

[956] It was part of how they conditioned this new cult identity, suppressed my old identity, was they poisoned me against my past and recoded everything.

[957] So what did they tell you how?

[958] happened about your childhood?

[959] It wasn't that someone stood over me and told me, but it was part of the whole indoctrination system, listening to other people talking about abuses in their families, et cetera.

[960] But I literally, when I first got out of the group, I thought I was miserable, depressed, that my father was physically abusive.

[961] And when I said to my sister, well, dad was physically abusive, she went, what?

[962] You really thought it.

[963] I believed it.

[964] Yes.

[965] Wow.

[966] But did you have an actual image in your mind of your father doing it?

[967] So I had one real memory that everything else was built off of.

[968] And it was an actual event that happened.

[969] I think I was 11 or 12.

[970] My father wanted to know where the change was for lunch.

[971] And I had bought baseball cards or something.

[972] And I lied.

[973] And my father slapped my face.

[974] That was the one true, that was the one time my father hit me. But I really believed it.

[975] And my sisters were like, Dad never hit us because his father beat the crap out of him.

[976] He never, you know, that issue was, and you didn't want to hug us or hold us, but Dad was not physically abusive.

[977] So just one moment where he lost his patience with you and you formed false memories based on that.

[978] Right.

[979] And what Scientology does is they have you go back.

[980] and and remember abuse from the past.

[981] And once you're done remembering whatever, then you go into your past lives to remember all the abuse.

[982] That's where it's really, and it keeps going on and on.

[983] But don't they, when they're doing that in that auditing process, aren't they trying to get you to let it go?

[984] Like, isn't the idea that you repeat a traumatic event so many times that it means nothing to you?

[985] Like, if you've ever been around someone who doesn't swear, like your grandma or something like that, and she says, fuck, you're like, whoa, what that?

[986] hell like your grandma doesn't swear but if you're around one like Jamie this kid's got a total potty mouth just comes flying out of them you know what I mean like if you're around certain people they swear all the time it seems normal and then the word loses its meaning it just becomes a part of the normal vernacular but if you're around someone and it's very very very rare it becomes like this this big moment that the idea being that you repeat this thing this event over and over and over and over again so it loses its meaning it loses its impact So there's a qualitative difference between the sensitization around the word or something and actually trauma processing.

[987] Harvard was using a very old model of catharsis that you have to remember the abuse and you have to re -experience the abuse over and over and over again.

[988] And that's been thrown out by the mental health profession decades ago.

[989] Why?

[990] Because you're revictimizing people, having them.

[991] suffer the experience over and over and over again.

[992] If I want to help someone who's been abused, I tell them you have to be in your body in the here and now and you have a window or a TV screen seeing the younger you, but you're safe, you're here, the abuse happened over there.

[993] And I don't want them to have associated memories of abuse.

[994] I want them to know that they're safe, that that did happen.

[995] But it's not, it's just, incorrect to think the brain and the emotions are a battery and all you need to do is drain it and then it's gone it's just not true isn't but doesn't work these these theories about how to approach various past traumas traumatic incidences these theories are essentially a variable right like what work with one person might not necessarily work with another person and a lot of these ideas that you put into practice i mean don't they i mean aren't they i mean are they they flexible?

[996] There have been therapy cults.

[997] We open this up by talking about different types of cults.

[998] And if any ideology that's black and white in that you're trying to compress human experience into the ideology is worrisome because no model is true.

[999] Everyone's different.

[1000] Everyone's different.

[1001] But the goal as a therapist is do no harm and empower the person to be functional, right?

[1002] The goal isn't to trauma process.

[1003] So in the last few years, I've been trained in a form of attachment therapy where people who have personality disorders, which were hitherto believed to be, like, permanent, can actually be cured in two to three years.

[1004] And the technique is basically using hypnotherapy technique where you're asking the person to go back to a key traumatic moment in their childhood and asking them to imagine if they had the ideal mother or the ideal father that was uniquely suited to them and they did exactly what you wanted them to do in that situation and ask their imagination to fill in the scene.

[1005] You do it.

[1006] The person literally can create a positive arrangement.

[1007] reference point of safety, of security, of love, of connection, all the things that children need to experience, to have a healthy sense of self.

[1008] And people know that they were abused, but they're reparenting, to use another term.

[1009] They're internally using their imagination.

[1010] They're reparenting themselves.

[1011] And what we is now proven neuroscientifically is there's There's neurogenesis and neuroplasticity to the point where people can know that they were abused, remember it, but they can act as if they had that healthy mother and their healthy father and a healthy childhood and be functional.

[1012] Doesn't that seem delusional?

[1013] I mean, you say it works.

[1014] It works.

[1015] Act as if they believe?

[1016] I mean, this sounds like fantasy.

[1017] Am I reading it wrong?

[1018] Well, it's interesting for me to hear you frame it like that.

[1019] People are not coming out of a therapy like that, thinking that they had a great childhood.

[1020] But they're no longer walking around, bleeding all over the place, afraid to trust somebody, having self -doubt, unable to touch and have sexual contact that feels good.

[1021] because they've created these reference experiential states for themselves.

[1022] Now, these reference experiential states that they create, these theories and these practices of therapy, someone has to invent these.

[1023] Like, someone has to look at the problems.

[1024] They have to figure out what's the best way to approach these things and come up with an idea and hope that it works.

[1025] And as you said, there's like the El Ron Hubbard methods that he was using that were really ancient.

[1026] they thought that was going to work, and it didn't work.

[1027] Yeah, and he was never a mental health professional, but he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license, and they did call it a religion to try to insert that.

[1028] But these ideas, there are essentially people come up with ideas of how to treat people that have various ailments, right?

[1029] And then they apply them to people.

[1030] I mean, how do they practice this stuff?

[1031] I mean, this is not like something like, hmm, I need to figure out how to chop this tree down.

[1032] I'm going to try to invent an axe.

[1033] Like, you know what I'm saying?

[1034] In my case, I was out of the cult for four years when I first saw a formal hypnotist do a trance on somebody.

[1035] And my reaction was, I used to do that when I was doing lectures.

[1036] Like, I had no awareness that I had been taught to do hypnotic methods.

[1037] I was told to model the older brothers, and it was kind of a behavioral model.

[1038] kind of thing.

[1039] And I started wanting to learn hypnosis.

[1040] I wanted to understand what it was, what it wasn't, how to do it ethically.

[1041] And essentially, there has been a lot of trial and error and a lot of people have gotten hurt by the misuse of it.

[1042] But if you're in a professional organization where there's a strict code of ethics where there are clear boundaries and people can trust that you're, there just to help them.

[1043] It's not about keeping you as a client forever.

[1044] It's like the faster you can get out of treatment and just live your life, the happier the therapist is.

[1045] And the more you can teach the person about how to know themselves and how to control their feelings or control their thoughts, et cetera, the better.

[1046] What is happening right now in Europe because of socialized medicine is they really are testing a lot of these approaches and demonstrating that people, for example, with narcissistic personality disorder actually get cured after two to three years.

[1047] That's Jamie.

[1048] But it's, but coming back to my work, when I was, when I was first doing this work and I was struck by people who was saying, but you were recruited at 19, you had a. an identity before.

[1049] I was born into the group.

[1050] I don't have a pre -cult self.

[1051] What do I do?

[1052] I didn't know what to say to them other than make one up.

[1053] Right.

[1054] And that is...

[1055] And they started doing that.

[1056] Now, 39 years later, it's actually a treatment modality.

[1057] I'm not taking credit for it.

[1058] I'm just saying...

[1059] So they make up a successful, happy, positive childhood free of this ridiculous, confining ideology?

[1060] Well, it's like if if you're, if you're, if you're Your real life is this story line.

[1061] You're making, he's making some.

[1062] And you create an alternate one that you use as a default where instead of a parent beating you, beating you when you're asking for help or saying you're being a sissy.

[1063] But you have someone saying, tell me what's wrong.

[1064] You know, you need a hug.

[1065] And they're visualizing that and feeling like there's someone who's.

[1066] really there for them that's an anchor that's a good role model for them it really can enable them at the point that they're parenting their children to not just reenact the the the modeling that they learned and beat the crap out of their kid but actually behave like a healthy uh person would want to act it seems to me it's it's beautiful that all these theories uh are being developed and tested and applied it's beautiful but it seems to me like it's all work in progress Is that incorrect?

[1067] It's not like there's any hard, fast method for definitely curing people of weird psychological ailments or cult -like thinking.

[1068] I think the human species isn't evolving.

[1069] I think we're at a very low level of evolution in terms of our understanding of things.

[1070] However, people are able to get out of the most horrendous abuse of childhoods and be functional and not just commit suicide or be drug addicts or be psychotic in a mental ward, but they're able to function.

[1071] And what we're learning about the brain is just wonderful.

[1072] I'm excited about the future in terms of that.

[1073] That said, there's a huge potential for abuse of the techniques.

[1074] By you saying that you don't like doing it, and is it just because it's too taxing on you, or is it because you really wish that this wasn't something that you really needed to do?

[1075] Correct.

[1076] Yeah.

[1077] Right.

[1078] Yeah, I mean, we can all sort of empathize with that.

[1079] Of course, anybody who has children will look at, you love your children, you look at people who were abused as children or abused, especially by their parents.

[1080] And it's just this unbelievably painful thing to hear.

[1081] Forget about witness or be a part of, but to hear about someone being beaten by their parents or, you know, abused in some sort of a way.

[1082] I had my friend Barry Crimmons on the podcast yesterday, a great stand -up comedian from Boston, and he has a new movie that's out today.

[1083] It's called Call Me Lucky that Bob Goldthwaite directed, and it's about his, he was raped when he was four by his babysitter's boyfriend.

[1084] It would, you know, multiple times.

[1085] There's this horrible, horrible, horrible traumatic story, and a big part of his life is his perseverance and overcoming this thing that happened to him when he's four.

[1086] He's 62 years old now.

[1087] Right.

[1088] You know, I mean, this trauma has sort of, like, defined him in some ways and strengthened him in other ways that he, his ability to overcome it showing his perseverance, but fuck, man. Right.

[1089] And often people who've been suffering a trauma like that, if they become comedians, they're compensating to try to counterbalance the pain.

[1090] And maybe cult members.

[1091] Right?

[1092] Because that would be someone who would be vulnerable for someone who, you know, would have some reaching for a utopian view of the world or some better way because you know the horror of the abuse.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] So the truth is is that the bigger cults don't want people who are seriously, emotionally disturbed because they can't control them.

[1095] If they're seriously disturbed, they don't want them.

[1096] They want your money, but they don't want you on staff, and they don't want you to be part of the pyramid.

[1097] So do they, oh, okay, so do they have, like, hierarchies?

[1098] Like, say if you, so if you joined Scientology or something like that, here's your book.

[1099] Graph, I'll show you there.

[1100] If you go to Scientology and they give you one of those personality tests, which I took, by the way, it's hilarious.

[1101] They make you hold on these Folgers coffee cans, and this is the pyramid.

[1102] Right.

[1103] So if you're in the C -org, you're in the upper quadrant of the pyramid.

[1104] If you're at Tom Cruise, you're in the fringe.

[1105] He's a fringe?

[1106] He's on the leader?

[1107] I think he's a leader.

[1108] I think you're wrong.

[1109] I think he got a metal, dude.

[1110] I saw his gold medal.

[1111] Yeah, but he's not staff.

[1112] He's more like a symbol, and he gives tons of money, and he's good for recruiting, but he's not running the group.

[1113] What do you think's going on with that?

[1114] You think he's gay?

[1115] I've yet to hear anything but by, I would say.

[1116] John Travolta apparently is very gay.

[1117] John's gay and he's by, Tom's by.

[1118] That's my impression, but I've not heard from any former Scientology.

[1119] If we could all just accept people being gay, would Scientology go away immediately?

[1120] Well, it's homophobic.

[1121] It's totally homophobic.

[1122] Scientology is?

[1123] Oh, yeah.

[1124] It's a degraded human being if you're gay.

[1125] In fact, Hubbard's son Clinton was gay.

[1126] And he either killed himself or was murdered.

[1127] So when you saw going clear, were you happy that I'm in the middle of the book right now.

[1128] It's goddamn amazing.

[1129] It's amazing when you go over Elron Hubbard's past and how absolutely ridiculous it was.

[1130] How many times he lied about things, all the nonsense that he said, and all the different times he was caught lying and all the different people in his life that he would just make up crazy stories about being this World War II hero.

[1131] nuclear physicist and he was blind and he's fucking completely crazy he's completely crazy yeah it's amazing that a guy that's that damaged could get that many people to buy his nonsense yeah and it is so um larry wright and hboh did a documentary based on that yes larry wright janet right man they all took their material from my friend john a tech who was a former member o t5 who wrote a book called a piece of blue sky and John put together this conference in Toronto called Getting Clear.

[1132] The website is Getting Clear .com.

[1133] And we debunked not only Hubbard, but the entire policies inside the organization.

[1134] I was explaining mind control, and it's going to be made live on the Internet that people can watch all of this.

[1135] The reason that he did this and why I encouraged him to do this was people, were leaving David Miscavage's Church of Scientology, but starting their own splinter group of Scientology, where they were still idolizing Hubbard and still doing the tech.

[1136] And we wanted to debunk the whole thing from start to finish.

[1137] And I think it was done very masterfully.

[1138] So they were starting like subgroups where they came up with their own stuff?

[1139] No, they were doing, they were taking, they were on automatic pilot of all the indoctrination.

[1140] He's trying to get you to bring that microphone closer up to your face.

[1141] Sorry about that.

[1142] No worries.

[1143] So, for example, the number two man and number three man, Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, had left the group and were spilling all the secrets of what, you know, all the criminal activities that were being done.

[1144] They were creating independent Scientologists and trying to keep doing auditing and keep doing the processing.

[1145] And it's like, dudes, come on, like, wake up.

[1146] Wow.

[1147] The whole system was warped and weird and, like, get free.

[1148] Were they trying to, like, find some beneficial aspects of what they had based most of their life on?

[1149] Is that what it was?

[1150] I'm trying to, like, salvage some of it.

[1151] Right.

[1152] But, like, to use the cult identity thing, their cult identity was trying to, you know, redo things.

[1153] That Miss Cavage guy is a trip.

[1154] Mm -hmm.

[1155] Listen to him to talk and those conversations.

[1156] And especially that giant speech that he gave, you know, when they got tax -free, status?

[1157] Like, wow, that was amazing.

[1158] So there's a really good book by Tony Ortega as a V -Blog.

[1159] If anyone listening wants to know about Scientology, it's Tonyortega .org.

[1160] He wrote a book called The Unbreakable Miss Lovely about Paulette Cooper, who was a friend of mine when I left the Mooney's in 1976.

[1161] She wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology.

[1162] And the book is all about her life story and how this group harassed the hell out of her.

[1163] Scientology.

[1164] Yes, because she told the truth about Hubbard and the organization.

[1165] And Hubbard said, never defend, always attack.

[1166] And they did all these criminal activities systematically, which still goes on to this day.

[1167] By the way, I'm having a book release party after this, and you're invited if you want to meet some of the people in the going clear.

[1168] I don't know if I can handle it.

[1169] I don't know if I can handle it.

[1170] I'm too busy today.

[1171] No worries.

[1172] But you're doing that.

[1173] You're doing something at the Steve Allen Theater?

[1174] Yes.

[1175] Tomorrow night, the Steve Allen theater.

[1176] Steve Allen, by the way, son was in a cult for 11 years, and he was a big supporter.

[1177] I watched you on the Steve Allen show.

[1178] That was one of the first things I saw of you.

[1179] Yeah, he was a substitute host on CNN back in 88 when the book first came out, and he gave me a big plug, and I love him for it.

[1180] And now I get to be at the theater named after him talking about the last.

[1181] book again, but the new edition.

[1182] And these days, I'm particularly focused on helping victims of pimps and traffickers.

[1183] Pimps and traffickers.

[1184] Is that like sort of a form of a cult in some ways?

[1185] It is a commercial cult.

[1186] They do all the bite model, the behavior control, information control, thought control, emotional control, make people over into a new identity and their dependence and obedient.

[1187] And I've co -developed a curriculum to help survivors to end the game to understand, because that's what pimps call what they do, the game.

[1188] So to basically understand that they don't love, you know, the women in their stable, that they're products for exploitation.

[1189] And the only way to win the game is to end it and get out and have a life.

[1190] It's fascinating that you equate those because it makes sense, but I've never done it.

[1191] before.

[1192] I've never put it in my head and thought of a pimp and a prostitute being like the pimp runs a cult.

[1193] So if you read some of the manuals online by pimps, how to brainwash the hose, is their terminology for women.

[1194] I actually tell the story in Chapter 6 of Rachel Thomas, who was recruited while she was a junior at Emory College.

[1195] She's a beautiful black woman, and she was recruited by a pimp who basically said, you're beautiful, you should be a model, I want to take your picture, put you in some rap music videos, which he did.

[1196] And then he started beating her up and farming her out for sex and threatening to kill her family if she told anybody.

[1197] Fortunately, she turned to the FBI.

[1198] He's in jail.

[1199] She's doing a project to help young girls.

[1200] And we've co -developed this because she read my book.

[1201] She said, this really helps me to understand how he did it to me. Have you ever seen those documentaries like Pimp's Up, Hose Down, or American Pimp?

[1202] Yes.

[1203] Yeah.

[1204] That's a big part of it is they would talk about how they would find people that came from broken homes or that had daddy issues and they would foster this feeling of family.

[1205] Right, right.

[1206] Well, and the cult that I was most experienced with helping victims of was a cult called the Children of God, which the leader was Moses David Berg.

[1207] And he was a pedophile, and he had to lead the U .S. because he was going to be arrested.

[1208] and he in his in his cult he had women be happy hookers for Jesus and he basically told people they had to have sex with with two -year -olds three -year -olds four -year -olds so it was a sex cult and when people would be either kicked out of that cult or run away my theory is that pimps found them on the streets and and started learning from them with a religious terminology the family, et cetera.

[1209] And so the sex trafficking.

[1210] And then the other thing that is occupying a lot of people's consciousness is terrorist cults like ISIS in Boko Haram, which are trafficking women, by the way.

[1211] And they're taking not just weak stupid people, but, for example, one of the architects of ISIS's social media recruiting network was the...

[1212] a son of an endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital, someone who was raised in Boston, went to Catholic high school, and unfortunately, or fortunately, he was killed by a drone strike a few months ago, this kid.

[1213] But my heart goes out to them.

[1214] People who get deceptively recruited and mind -controlled, because it happened to me. And if I hadn't been deprogrammed, I could have done horrible acts of violence, that's how I was trained.

[1215] Wow.

[1216] So they were training you to sword fight, you said.

[1217] Yeah, they basically trained me to die or kill on command, and they trained me that if I allowed a doubt when I was given an order by my superior, that Satan was going to be invading me a la exorcist.

[1218] And so, you know, whatever I was told to do, I did.

[1219] And it's incredible.

[1220] incredibly frightening.

[1221] Literally, when I saw the bodies face down at Jonestown, my first thought was I could have done that.

[1222] And when I saw the planes going into the World Trade Center, I thought, yeah, I could have done that too.

[1223] That's part of my passion and what propels me so many years later, because the problem hasn't gone away.

[1224] It's gotten worse.

[1225] Have documentaries, like, going clear, the HBO documentary, has that helped?

[1226] Definitely.

[1227] It's been great.

[1228] My gripe about his book and the documentary is that it didn't deal at all with mind control or brainwashing.

[1229] It didn't give anyone who was watching the documentary or reading the book tools for how to protect themselves or if they were in a cult to self -reflect and analyze what was happening.

[1230] Well, he's only got enough time to just fill an hour and a half or whatever it was, two hours.

[1231] Right.

[1232] But there's so much information.

[1233] So my rant, Joe, when Wright's book first came out, I did a short video amp.

[1234] I said, saying going clear is the definitive book on Scientology is like saying you've written a definitive book on cars and leaving out gas combustion engines.

[1235] That was what I said.

[1236] So I was frustrated in other words.

[1237] Because you have brilliant people like Paul Haggis, who has incredible Hollywood career saying I was stupid for all.

[1238] believing this for 30 years and giving so much money to them.

[1239] And what has happened?

[1240] And he's not stupid.

[1241] Right.

[1242] What has happened to those guys?

[1243] Are they being attacked?

[1244] The group has changed dramatically because of former leaders coming out and speaking out.

[1245] The group Anonymous helped a lot initially by...

[1246] Powerful Anonymous.

[1247] By wearing masks and saying, come on, let's protest.

[1248] It scared them.

[1249] And it created a culture where people were more empowered to speak out against.

[1250] them right now we want the the tax exemption to be stripped there's no reason in the world we should be subsidizing a group that's paying millions of dollars to harass former members that was one of the most disturbing aspects of the movie when you find out that they how they achieve tax exempt status by a litany of lawsuits right they propelled against the IRS and also hiring pIs to dig up dirt on the IRS commissioners and hiring powerful lobbyists and it's dirty the whole thing is dirty It just seems too easy.

[1251] Like, how can they be so easily influenced to give these?

[1252] I mean, all I have to do is read one of his fucking books.

[1253] Right.

[1254] And you go, this guy, this guy wrote Scientology, the guy wrote Battlefield Earth.

[1255] Like, fucking Christ.

[1256] Right.

[1257] So, but the bottom line is that if there's a totalist group that has a black and white, us versus them, good versus evil, simplistic ideology that says, is that, you know, we have the vision for how the world has to be, or we have the tools for how to be, you know, the best person you can be.

[1258] One needs to operate with some consumer awareness and say, who is this person?

[1259] What of his background?

[1260] Is he trustworthy?

[1261] And whatever it is, seek critics and ex -members and know that if it's true, it will stand up to scrutiny.

[1262] And if it isn't, you know if it isn't true why would you want to invest your time and your energy and your money and something that's not real don't you think people are just searching for meaning i mean that's what a lot of this is people are searching for meaning to make their life a better place to suck you in right i mean they suck you in with dionetics when i was uh living in uh california for the first time in 94 uh there was no internet or i hadn't been on yet it was just it was just starting to get on i think I might have gotten a computer around then.

[1263] There was a late -night television commercial for Dianetics, and the volcano, remember the volcano?

[1264] Of course, the OT3 story of Zeno and the Galactic dictatorship.

[1265] Yeah, well, the volcano just looked like, you know, unleashing your potential to me. Like, yes, Dionetics, powerful.

[1266] I had, you know, listen to some Anthony Robbins books on tape, and I was ready to rock and roll, you know.

[1267] I was trying to benefit myself.

[1268] He was studying Erickson and NLP, and that is basically covert.

[1269] Hypnotic.

[1270] Can you have a happier marriage in 1989, page 111?

[1271] How can you have more job satisfaction in 1989?

[1272] Page 227.

[1273] Yeah, this was the commercial.

[1274] So I bought the book.

[1275] I ordered it online.

[1276] I don't even remember how I paid.

[1277] I guess I had a credit card.

[1278] And these fucking people would not stop sending me things.

[1279] I mean for years.

[1280] Like every week or so, every month or so, whatever it was, I would get something in the mail inviting me to this, inviting me to that.

[1281] I mean, it was just amazing how persistent they were.

[1282] You were counted as one of the 8 million followers, even though there's really 20 ,000 or less.

[1283] I was a follower?

[1284] You were counted, because your name somewhere?

[1285] Your name, exactly.

[1286] Am I in database?

[1287] Like a Dianetics member or Scientology?

[1288] So am I in Scientology?

[1289] Was I at one point in time?

[1290] No, man. How would I count it then?

[1291] Because they, cults like to fudge statistics and claim that they're much bigger than they really are.

[1292] So what is the actual number of Scientologists?

[1293] I think the number that my friends tell me is it's 20 ,000 or less.

[1294] That's not that many.

[1295] In the world.

[1296] That's it?

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] So how do they have so much real estate?

[1299] They have billions of dollars.

[1300] They've sucked a lot of wealthy people dry.

[1301] That's incredible.

[1302] Paul Haggis paid a shitload of money, right?

[1303] That's one of the things he talked about.

[1304] Yeah.

[1305] Hubbard was into money and power.

[1306] Money and power.

[1307] Sex is the three universals, with all dispensuals.

[1308] constructive cults.

[1309] Yeah, like the Waco thing, right?

[1310] They always want to have sex with everybody's wife.

[1311] Yeah, power, money, sex.

[1312] Interestingly, I met Byron Sage last December, who was the lead FBI negotiator with David Koresh at Waco.

[1313] Is he the guy that sent the tanks in to burn everybody up?

[1314] I'm afraid so.

[1315] Or somebody.

[1316] Not such a good negotiator.

[1317] No, he was clearly unhappy.

[1318] And he more or less said that we didn't know what we were doing, and we wish that you had, you know, we had known what to do.

[1319] We were, he was clearly unhappy with the result.

[1320] Yeah, he, he knew that they screwed up.

[1321] Well, that's a nice way of saying they murdered a bunch of people.

[1322] Mm -hmm.

[1323] Because that's what they did.

[1324] Mm -hmm.

[1325] The videos, well, they should never have gone in, you know, they should never have gone in with guns in the first place.

[1326] David Koresh was molesting miners and they were, you know, making automatic weapons.

[1327] but they could have lured him into town and arrested him, and they could have taken away the guns.

[1328] They were sure that he molested minors?

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] How old were the miners?

[1331] Ten.

[1332] Oh, God.

[1333] Perry Jewell testified before Congress.

[1334] Yeah.

[1335] It's one of his victims.

[1336] But I just, I guess because of the, I want to come back to how I learned about you and your good work with Stefan Molanoe, if I may, and free domain radio.

[1337] Well, you could say good work.

[1338] It was just a conversation where I asked him some questions.

[1339] But it helped a lot of members wake up because they respect you.

[1340] And they got to listen to their divine leader lie, you know.

[1341] And it was powerful to hear him say, oh, no, I don't tell people to defoe.

[1342] I always tell people to go to therapists before they cut off from all their family and friends.

[1343] And people knew that that was a blatant lie.

[1344] And it took a chink out of the mysticism of people who were true believers because you held your own with him.

[1345] You know, he didn't, you know, wrap you around his finger as he's used to doing with the followers and their respect for you.

[1346] So I, my hats off to you for that.

[1347] Well, thanks.

[1348] It wasn't my intention.

[1349] My intention was just to have a conversation with him.

[1350] trying to figure out what he's doing or what his thought process is he's got some really good ideas about things it's it's fascinating he's a very eloquent guy and he's very smart obviously and he has some really interesting concepts but he's very firm in his belief about certain things as well to the point where like one of the things that i talked to him about we played a video of him yelling about someone if you believe in the state that you want him killed you want me killed and that you should get rid of all of your friends that believe in the state, you know, and this, the idea of anarcho -capitalism or anarchism, like, you don't want any government whatsoever, like, who's going to fix the streets?

[1351] And there was no answers to those.

[1352] Who's going to pay for anything?

[1353] Who's going to organize?

[1354] Where, what do you, how are you going to, like, this is not like a well -thought -out thing.

[1355] This is like this, someone said it best that he's an incredibly eloquent man that is screaming north while pretending to be holding a compass.

[1356] That's interesting.

[1357] Well, he's another one of those, you know, anti -corporations while he's owning a corporation -type people and, you know, saying that he's liberating people and he's, in fact, enslaving people into a totalistic belief system.

[1358] Do you think that he's, do you think this is just something that sort of happened along the way, like, as he was, you know, doing his...

[1359] philosophy and I don't know enough about him.

[1360] I was hired by a family to consult to help a young man who was getting sucked in and they were worried about that he would try to cut off contact.

[1361] And fortunately, he's okay.

[1362] So it was a relatively new phenomenon for me, but it was particularly interesting about this particular cult was that he was recruiting over the internet.

[1363] And that's how ISIS is largely recruiting as well.

[1364] So it was an interesting.

[1365] Well, you say recruiting, though.

[1366] How does he recruit?

[1367] He just does videos where he kind of talks about his ideas, right?

[1368] Right.

[1369] And he gets followers to tell other people to watch the videos.

[1370] And they watch for hours and hours and hours.

[1371] And he rewires their thought processes to the point where he gets them to question their own belief systems, their own value systems.

[1372] And because he's a bully and he's a loudmouth and he talks.

[1373] talk so confidently about a lot of things that he doesn't really know very well.

[1374] Like what?

[1375] We talked a little bit before about Robin Williams.

[1376] Yeah.

[1377] And that has just one small example.

[1378] Yeah, the Robin Williams one really disturbed me. It's one of the things that I questioned him on because he said that he believed that Robin William, he made a video.

[1379] We're saying that Rob Williams killed himself because of all the women that were addicted to free shit, I think is the way he described it.

[1380] that these women who were addicted to getting money from him, they sucked him dry.

[1381] Robin and I had the same agent.

[1382] He was worth millions of dollars when he died.

[1383] He was not broke in any way, shape, or form.

[1384] He certainly was diminishing in his ability, or his ability to earn money was diminishing as he was getting older.

[1385] But that's just normal for actors.

[1386] Right.

[1387] You know, he was, he had real depression.

[1388] And he also had Parkinson's, and the Parkinson's medication that he was on.

[1389] One of the side effects was severe depression.

[1390] Also, there's a good friend of mine, Dr. Mark Gordon, who he's done a lot of work with people with traumatic brain injuries.

[1391] He wrote a paper on surgery and how people who have undergone large, very traumatic surgeries like Robin when had open heart surgery, oftentimes experience post -surgery depression and that it's a physiological.

[1392] psychological response to your body being under and anesthesia for long periods of time, plus the physical trauma of the actual surgery itself, the injury and your body's healing.

[1393] And especially as you're older, that is a massive task to heal a heart that has been cut open and stitched up and your chest plate has been spread apart.

[1394] It's very traumatic, physically traumatic, and that oftentimes can lead to a diminished state.

[1395] of consciousness and then depression sets in also the reality of mortality sets in on a lot of people so I was upset at that because I just didn't understand why he would do that but I didn't I didn't have that conversation with him like trying to expose him I had that conversation with him just ask him questions and then after it was over that's when all these videos started coming out and that's when I realized that he was deceptive about a few things in the conversation yeah I was initially fantasized that you would invite him back and I would be here and then some families who have been cut off from their loved one would be here and we could be like, you know, dude, tell all your followers to get a therapist and reconnect with their families.

[1396] Wow.

[1397] Like if you really care, like do something.

[1398] Yeah, the defoeing thing was one of the things that he said.

[1399] Fooing is family of origin, F -O -O, family of origin.

[1400] And he apparently is fond of telling certain people to get rid of all of his followers.

[1401] And not just your family, though, your friends, your childhood friends that have nothing to do with your family.

[1402] Because he wants people not to have other influences in their life that can say, hey, dude, what are you doing?

[1403] But do you think this is conscious?

[1404] Do you think this is a conscious thing or do you think this is a natural state of someone trying to achieve power?

[1405] I mean, what is the mechanism behind that?

[1406] I don't know about him specifically.

[1407] I would say most cult leaders are not cold calculating con artists.

[1408] They're delusional.

[1409] They often were victims of mind control themselves and are kind of playing out of an identification with the aggressor type scenario.

[1410] I don't know enough about him to comment intelligently, But for me, it's about wanting people to reclaim their personal power.

[1411] And I want to say to anyone who's involved with Malinu, who may be listening to this, is take time out, step back, learn about mind control, learn about cults, talk to former leaders, talk to former members, reflect over your own experience.

[1412] Ask yourself, when you were first getting involved with Malinu, what did you think you were getting into?

[1413] When you were first getting involved, did you believe you were going to be cutting off from your family, your friends, your life, dropping out of school, turning over your trust funds?

[1414] And if the answer was no. Turning over your trust funds.

[1415] Who's turning over your money?

[1416] What do you mean?

[1417] And who's turning over money?

[1418] I can't quote a particular person, but that's the pattern with all these groups, is if they know that you have money, they want it.

[1419] Yeah, but as far as I know, they need it more than you.

[1420] He's not asking people to give them all their money.

[1421] He's not doing that.

[1422] He's not asking people to turn over their trust fund.

[1423] He might ask for, like, small donations, but I don't think it's fair to say that he's asking people to turn over trust funds.

[1424] I don't want to misspeak.

[1425] So if you are sure about that, I will...

[1426] Yeah, I've never heard that.

[1427] I've never heard that accusation.

[1428] But my impression from him when I first met him is that he's very intelligent.

[1429] And oftentimes very intelligent people are frustrated by really stupid people that are around them.

[1430] And when he has solutions for particular issues that are in society, or particular behavior patterns.

[1431] He speaks about them very confidently and people become enthralled with that.

[1432] And then I think that's a very addictive process, the addictive process of offering solutions, having people praise you for those solutions, and then having people come to you for advice.

[1433] And sometimes you get ahead of yourself.

[1434] You just, there's momentum in that, and sometimes you get in front of the wheel and you can't stop it.

[1435] And then you're just spouting off about everything.

[1436] Like you would do these videos, the truth about this or the truth about that, the truth about people that died.

[1437] And you're talking about, like, people that had very complex lives.

[1438] They lived a hundred years or whatever the fuck they lived.

[1439] And you can't just boil that down into one video with very little research, especially when you're doing 100 other videos a week and you're doing all these interviews and doing podcasts and doing all these things.

[1440] You're talking about someone's life, man. You can't say the truth about Lincoln, unless you fucking study Lincoln for a long period of time.

[1441] And even then, like, Dan Carlin is my favorite historian.

[1442] He doesn't even call himself an historian, but as a podcaster, he's brilliant in his podcast, hardcore history.

[1443] One of the best things about it, he will offer opposing points of view.

[1444] He will say some people believe that this is what happens.

[1445] There's some dispute about this because it seems to be that there's certain schools of thought about why this took place.

[1446] I think that's super important.

[1447] So whenever he starts saying the truth about something like, man, you're just, you're just, You just can't do that, you know?

[1448] And that's why the truth about Robin Williams, as a professional stand -of -comedian, right, was particularly offensive to me because I'm like, come on, man. You know, you're talking about this beloved guy who had this incredibly complex relationship, not just with his ex -wives, but with show business, with life, with depression, with drugs.

[1449] Like, this is not something you can just boil down to a one -hour podcast or a one -hour YouTube video and just call the truth about someone.

[1450] Right.

[1451] So I want to mention there's a retired child protective agency social worker named David Cooperson, who wrote a book about corporal punishment, because that's one of Molinu's claims, et cetera.

[1452] And Cooperson has studied a number of Molyneux videos and the whole ideology, and he's written a great book, by the way.

[1453] It's on Stop Legal Child Abuse .com is David's website.

[1454] and he just more or less says, as someone who's worked with children who've been traumatized, whether it was beaten by their parents or their foster parents or sexually abused, the best thing is not to cut off contact with the abuse of family.

[1455] It's to have therapists and to have a healthy frame to work within it and not just to impose from the outside or by some authority figure who says that they know what's better for them because even kids who are being abused still have feelings towards their mother or father that are positive because of the way we're wired.

[1456] So anyway, I wanted to get a plug -in for his book and the fact that, and then I wanted to mention Molly Koch, Molly B. Koch, K -O -C -H dot com, wrote a book on parenting called 27 Secrets for Raising Amazing Children, and she, too, when I asked her to comment as an expert on parenting about what Malinu was saying, was saying this is not going to help people to be healthier human beings to cut off contact from family and friends no matter what happened in their childhood.

[1457] But the best thing is with therapy and ideally with a family therapist to approach it to the extent that people are protected so they're not further abused by their family of origin.

[1458] Well, this seems very black and white to me. Because if you're coming from an incredibly abusive family and your family was brutal and they beat you and they did horrible things to you, which I know people have come from, I think cutting them off is a great idea.

[1459] I disagree.

[1460] Really?

[1461] So you think if your father sexually abused you, rapes you, beats you up, comes home in an alcoholic rage and breaks your skull, you should still call that guy.

[1462] I didn't say that.

[1463] But what do you mean?

[1464] If you're in that scenario.

[1465] But if you're in that scenario.

[1466] I'm saying you should be in therapy if that's happened to.

[1467] you and your therapist should consider, depending on the course of treatment, approaching the father or the mother and getting them into therapy.

[1468] Maybe they need to get off of alcohol or drugs, or maybe they need therapy.

[1469] But just cutting off your entire background and past as a chop it off for me is really not a healthy long -term solution.

[1470] But I'm not even saying cutting off your entire past.

[1471] I'm saying don't have contact with someone who is horrible to you.

[1472] You don't.

[1473] So what I'm trying to say, Joe, as a therapist, and I've seen these situations, I'm also involved with parental alienation cases where there's a divorce and the custodial parent brainwashes the children against the father or against the mother, which is horrendous.

[1474] people can grow, people can change, people can evolve, and whatever is, also there's false memory syndrome where people were getting with not good therapists or using hypnosis or getting into cults and being like I was, believing I had this horrible childhood, just cutting off and saying I can't ever talk with them again is not a healthy choice in my opinion.

[1475] being with an ethical therapist and finding a way to evaluate what's happening with them, getting them into treatment, and then potentially to have some type of family therapy situation, if it's not going to be helpful ultimately, then of course don't re -victimize yourself, don't allow yourself to continue to be abused.

[1476] But this kind of this notion of lopping off your father, your mother, your sister, your brother, because they were shitty to you 20 years ago or 40 years ago, I think, is a mistake as a therapist.

[1477] Do you think it's a mistake across the board?

[1478] I do.

[1479] But there are got to be scenarios where you shouldn't be hanging out with your brother, because your brother used to rape you, or your brother used to beat you up.

[1480] I'm not talking about hanging out.

[1481] I'm not talking about.

[1482] I mean, even communicating with them.

[1483] Why have any contact with someone who horribly abused you?

[1484] Just because they're family?

[1485] Would you do that to a friend?

[1486] So this idea that blood and DNA somehow or another make you inexorably connected to some person that was horribly abusive to you.

[1487] If you had a friend that you grew up with and your friend used to rape you and beat the fuck out of you, are you supposed to still contact them because they were your friend and they'll always be in your life?

[1488] I think a friend who raped me is a different category than a father, a mother, or sister, a brother.

[1489] How is it different?

[1490] Because it's blood, I guess.

[1491] That seems crazy.

[1492] family.

[1493] That seems like ape thinking.

[1494] That's like monkey thinking.

[1495] That doesn't make any sense.

[1496] Well, I mean, if someone is horribly abusive to you and they're an evil person, and we both agree that there are evil people in the world, right?

[1497] Yeah.

[1498] If someone was evil to you 30 years ago, the question is, are they still evil today?

[1499] Why find out?

[1500] Why?

[1501] Why not?

[1502] Because it's not enough time.

[1503] You have 100 years if you're lucky.

[1504] You know, I mean, if you, if you, do you want to really try to fix someone who raped you and beat you up most of your childhood?

[1505] Or would you rather I work with people who were like raised in the children of God and they were raped by their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers.

[1506] And they want to have a healthy relationship with their children because they realize that's the past.

[1507] It's not now.

[1508] And that they were doing the best they could under those circumstances because that's how they were indoctrinated to be.

[1509] Right.

[1510] But this is a different thing.

[1511] You're talking about people having – you just said people having a relationship with their own children.

[1512] You're not talking about people that – the people that raped them in a business.

[1513] abuse them.

[1514] You're not talking about people having a relationship with those people.

[1515] So, for example, I mean, when they were in, for example, a cult, like the children of God, they weren't thinking that their father and mother were raping them and their aunt and their uncle were raping them.

[1516] But they were having abusive sex.

[1517] Right.

[1518] That was not something that they were ready for or wanted to have and it hurt, et cetera.

[1519] Now they're out.

[1520] And for me to just say, look, you know, cut off all.

[1521] contact and assume there's no possibility that they could grow, they can change, they could evolve, they could apologize, they could make it up to you.

[1522] For me, that's not the ideal.

[1523] It's not what my position as a healer, as someone who's worked with so many other people.

[1524] Now, what I'm not saying is if you've been hurt by someone to just call them up and then have them hurt you, I'm not saying that.

[1525] I'm saying use professionals as mediators to see what's possible in terms of constructive, healthy change.

[1526] But you're putting this in this family context, and this is where it confuses me. Like, you should do that because they're your family, but you shouldn't do that if they were your friend.

[1527] I guess I'm not meaning to sound so absolute, and every case should be evaluated individually.

[1528] But I do have, I guess I've had too many cases where it was the same.

[1529] kind of total cutoff.

[1530] Right.

[1531] I see what you're saying.

[1532] And maybe it's justified, but maybe it's not.

[1533] Maybe the person really, you know, got great therapy and they are incredibly remorseful and they want to apologize and they're a decent human being.

[1534] You can keep carrying the pain and the judgment and say, no, I'll never talk with you again or try to accept them for where they are now and see whether or not they're going to be beneficial to your ongoing life path.

[1535] But shouldn't the onus be on the person who victimized you?

[1536] If someone raped you and beat you, shouldn't the onness be on them to come and apologize to you or attempt to apologize to you?

[1537] I agree.

[1538] And bring them to therapy and try to hash it out with them.

[1539] I would agree with that.

[1540] Yeah.

[1541] I would agree with that.

[1542] I think everyone ultimately has to take responsibility for their own lives and their own actions.

[1543] I mean, I felt terrible for a lot of the things that I did in the Moonies.

[1544] and I did my best to reach out to people I had recruited, whose lives I had interfered with.

[1545] And it was a burden for many, many years as long as they continue to be in the group.

[1546] And they're all out now, but virtually no one wants to talk with me. I think they still harbor really bad feelings towards me. Wow, that's got to be so strange for you to be in the position that you're in now to have these people that look at you as someone who victimize them and the very way you're trying to share.

[1547] shield people from today.

[1548] So that's probably flavoring this idea that you're, you know, you want people to always try to hash it out or work it out because of your own personal experiences.

[1549] Well, and they think people can grow and people can change.

[1550] They can, or they cannot.

[1551] Right.

[1552] But I'm an advocate for change.

[1553] I am too.

[1554] But I also believe there's some people that are just beyond fucked up and there's nothing you can do about them.

[1555] And it's not a bad idea to cut them off.

[1556] I know a lot of people cut their parents off and they're very happy because of it because their parents were evil and their parents were fucked up.

[1557] I mean, and every time they would be with them or communicate with them would just be incredibly damaging and they would have to deal with it for months on end and the stress and the pain were just not worth it.

[1558] And ultimately they felt better to, you know, to forgive that person but not communicate with them.

[1559] See, here's where we differ.

[1560] I guess I have more the Jewish angle on forgiveness.

[1561] Like, I don't believe in forgiving people who don't apologize and don't offer compensation and don't promise never to do it again and then never do it again.

[1562] That's kind of the Jewish formula.

[1563] And only then is the person who is wrong in a position to forgive.

[1564] But I'm not of the thing of just forgive.

[1565] But I guess I think ultimately the more sense of fullness, of wholeness, of knowing that we do everything that's within our power, our sphere of influence to do, to be a good person to bring goodness to the planet is the way to operate.

[1566] And I think that for me with my father, he didn't beat me, but he didn't hug me. he didn't give me a lot of praise when I was growing up because his father never gave him that and instead of when I was in therapy instead of being angry at him me stepping into his shoes as a child realizing he was doing the best that he could and at 30 I just when I saw him I just started hugging him and he'd be like a board and I'd be I'd just say stand there because I need a hug and by the time he was in his 80s he was actually wanting the hug and he took 50 years yeah yeah it took 50 years he actually said I love you and I'm proud of you he died at 92 but I got to to see my father evolve but there's a big difference between that and someone who beat the shit out of you and raped you that's a lot of people's reality when they're dealing with their parents I mean your dad doesn't sound abusive he just sounded like he's the victim of his own upbringing He wasn't abusive.

[1567] And I had a relatively normal, you know, boring in many ways because they didn't smoke.

[1568] They didn't drink.

[1569] They didn't have affairs.

[1570] I lived in the same house.

[1571] I wasn't like moving all over.

[1572] You know, it wasn't a child of divorce.

[1573] But I guess I want to just come back to everyone needs to kind of be in touch with their inner voice, their inner intuition.

[1574] and instead of holding a frozen frame in their mind of what happened 30 years ago and just keeping that, I can't be with him because of that, find out what's going on.

[1575] And I'm not saying put yourself in a position where you can be harmed, but you can use third parties to find out what's going on there.

[1576] And there could be some really radical positive changes that happen.

[1577] that could be a really good thing.

[1578] I see your point in up to a certain degree.

[1579] There's a certain degree of abuse that I think some parents have enacted on their children.

[1580] There was a story that someone told me recently about this brother that was raping his sister.

[1581] And this went on for years.

[1582] And then the dad found out about it and the dad joined in.

[1583] And this went on for more years.

[1584] Those people can both go fuck themselves.

[1585] If I was that girl and if I knew that girl, I would tell them, to never never contact them never talk to them there's no need you don't just because they're your blood that doesn't mean anything that's nonsense your family you know you can have family that's not related to you the people that you love and trust and if you treat them like their family they'll treat you like family too i think you you choose the people that you can be in contact with and that's the problem that a lot of people have with this whole idea of family is that you're born into them you know it's like just you just get a random hand of cards right You know, and that's your family.

[1586] And you just have to accept that for the rest of your life.

[1587] And then when they fuck up, you have to keep trying to forgive them or help them or bring them together.

[1588] Or not.

[1589] I say not.

[1590] I say with certain people like that girl whose brother and dad raped her, there's no fucking need to bring those people into your life.

[1591] If you can get away from them, stay away from them.

[1592] Hopefully they're in jail now.

[1593] I don't know what happened in that particular situation.

[1594] But I grew up with a father that beat the fuck out of my mother.

[1595] And I saw it a bunch of times when I was little.

[1596] And I was five years old and my mom left.

[1597] So these images are very old and they're very distorted, but they're 100 % real.

[1598] There's certain things that were undeniable about the physical abuse.

[1599] And I have had no desire to talk to that person ever since.

[1600] And I don't ever want to.

[1601] I don't need it.

[1602] You know, this idea of blood that this, because this person had sex with my mom and made me, that I have to forgive this dummy and spend time with him and try to work out why I beat fuck out of my mom in front of me. I don't need that.

[1603] And I don't think you need that to heal and grow.

[1604] I don't think it's necessary.

[1605] And I'm not imposing my point of view on you.

[1606] I'm just sharing my point of view as a therapist who's seen literally hundreds and hundreds of different cases and people can change.

[1607] I also want to come back to the false memory point because there's a lot of people who went into therapy or they got into a cult and they came to have the belief that they were in a satanic cult or they were beaten and tortured by their family and it's not true.

[1608] Right.

[1609] But they're still acting as if it is.

[1610] And there's no effort to reality tests to actually talk to the siblings or talk with the neighbors or see if there's a, most sexual predators have multiple victims.

[1611] They're usually not just enacting on one particular.

[1612] person.

[1613] And what I've been saying from the beginning is, you know, find a good therapist who's experience with trauma and sexual abuse and such.

[1614] And do it, do your process.

[1615] And consider, and especially if there's anyone listening who's a follower of Stefan Malinu, who's caught off contact with their brothers and their sisters and their mothers and their father.

[1616] How many people have done that?

[1617] Is this an epidemic?

[1618] I think there are hundreds.

[1619] Really?

[1620] I think there are hundreds.

[1621] And I'm just saying, take a time out from Malinu, stop listening to his podcast for a few weeks, learn about mind control, learn about cults, read the book.

[1622] I watched a video that was put online by a follower of Malinu who was, you know, had just left.

[1623] And I reached out to him.

[1624] I said, I've got free videos on my Freedom of Mind website, check out my book.

[1625] And he just emailed me literally.

[1626] yesterday was this morning saying, you know, it's given me a new understanding about everything.

[1627] Thank you so much.

[1628] And if you have cut off contact for years and years and years, find someone to reach out to your family and create a way back because a lot of people are afraid to even reach out and they're confused still.

[1629] Because they're embarrassed or they're.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] I've had some people who've left son Scientology, for example, come to me because they, many years of being in the cult, didn't go to mom when she was dying in the hospital, or they didn't go to their brother's wedding.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] And they were supposed to be the best man, or they borrowed money over and over and over again.

[1634] The family's like, screw you, we never want to hear from you again.

[1635] Now the person's woken up.

[1636] They've left Scientology, and nobody in the family wants anything to do with them.

[1637] And I feel like I at least should make an effort to say to them, you know, there is such a thing as mind control.

[1638] And they were doing what they thought they were supposed to do by being in the cult.

[1639] And, you know, you were right to be angry at them for not being there for mom and for not being there.

[1640] However, it doesn't mean that they're bad people and that there isn't some value in reconnecting again.

[1641] It was one of the more disturbing parts of going clear was seeing the people that were just emotional.

[1642] devastated by the fact their family wouldn't talk to them anymore because they had been excommunicated.

[1643] Right.

[1644] So this disconnection, the J .W. is called it this fellowshiping.

[1645] It's a common mind -controlled technique to manipulate people to cut them off from family and friends if people are breaking rules or questioning the authority, etc. It's not something that should be done by any legitimate religion, certainly not any legitimate organization.

[1646] telling people you can't talk to your sister, your brother, your mother, your father because some authority figure says God doesn't want it or that you violated the rules.

[1647] They're taking it to another level, right?

[1648] They're saying you can't talk to them.

[1649] It is against the rules to talk to them.

[1650] They're not encouraging, defoeing, you know, getting rid of your family of original origin.

[1651] They're encouraging, they're saying there's no rule.

[1652] There's a rule.

[1653] I mean, it's not encouraging.

[1654] They're actually saying, like, you can't talk to them.

[1655] Right.

[1656] And if you do talk with them, then you risk being kicked out of the group, too.

[1657] Right.

[1658] That's the threat.

[1659] Now, one of the things about mind control cults is, like, I was shown the exorcist.

[1660] If I was going to leave the Mooney's part of my unconscious saw that little girl with the, etc. In the mind of someone under mind control, they can't visualize themselves out of the group being happy and fulfilled.

[1661] And in the mind of Scientologists, if you leave, you're going to go insane, you're going to commit suicide, you're going to become a drug addict.

[1662] There's no possibility, and they put phobias in members' minds against any mental health professional.

[1663] So if you're feeling suicidal, if you're having major migraines, only do auditing, only do Scientology techniques, and at the point that I think it was Paul Haggis that, you know, refused to, you know, refute his gay daughter when he learned that Scientology came out against the bill in California.

[1664] That was his wake -up call because his love for his daughter trumped the cult ideology.

[1665] How bizarre is that that Scientology has anti -homosexual, ideas.

[1666] I think it's very bizarre, but a lot of cults are very anti.

[1667] But why?

[1668] What is, what a...

[1669] Because Hubbard was a homophobe.

[1670] Is that what it is?

[1671] Yeah.

[1672] Probably he had sexual drives towards men that he couldn't deal with, so he decided to make a rule and make it into a horrible thing.

[1673] So how does it fit with a guy like John Travolta, who's allegedly gay?

[1674] That seems so bizarre.

[1675] It's incredibly horrible.

[1676] Because essentially, you can't, the cult identity does not want to acknowledge the person's true self.

[1677] And every time he acts out his true nature, he feels bad.

[1678] But the speculation is that they have some dirt on him.

[1679] The speculation is that through the auditing process or the files that they keep on you, that was what they implied in the documentary, that they have these stacks of files on weird massages.

[1680] And they do.

[1681] P .C. folders, etc. They said that in the Time magazine cover story.

[1682] 1990, there's a huge amount of fear and threat that if you leave the group or speak out against a group, they're going to come after you and ruin your life.

[1683] And unfortunately, a lot of people have fear.

[1684] And for me and other people who've left, you kind of have to rise above it and say, screw you, I'm not going to live like that.

[1685] You go and tell whatever you want to tell, but screw you.

[1686] For certain people, though, the ideology.

[1687] of Scientology, the tenets or the, you know, the principles seem to help them give them some sort of structure.

[1688] I mean, is there any way that there's anything beneficial to, like, the way they, I mean, there's a lot of successful people that are Scientologists, and they seem like ambitious and motivated.

[1689] Like, it seems like there's part of it, and I'm not trying to support Scientology, but I'm trying to look at this in a balanced perspective.

[1690] It seems like at least some of what they're doing is trying to enhance your ability to find.

[1691] function as a person, right?

[1692] Is that not true?

[1693] They say one thing, and what they do is another thing.

[1694] They say that they're going to give you power over your mind, over your body, over matter, energy, time, and space.

[1695] But a lot of it comes down to the belief that's programmed into the Scientology identity, that you have this higher truth, that you understand the nature of reality, that a certain technique is going to work.

[1696] But what We know from the placebo effect, the power of authority and the power of suggestion is what's happening here.

[1697] It's not the techniques itself.

[1698] It's not the ideology.

[1699] And also the feeling of being empowered by being a part of a successful group, a successful group and the motivation that they give you...

[1700] You got a boogie?

[1701] Yeah, it's pretty late.

[1702] It's 5 .30.

[1703] We're supposed to end this half an hour ago.

[1704] Your bladder's talking?

[1705] Go ahead, man. There's a bathroom right over there.

[1706] And we'll just wrap this up and I'll tell everybody.

[1707] all right that's uh we're going to wrap this up here combating cult mind control steve asan um and you can get a hold of steve on twitter his twitter handle is hold on one second it is uh cult expert at cult expert on twitter um fascinating conversation i don't know if i agree with them on everything but but obviously a very knowledgeable guy and a very nice guy so uh that's uh that's wrap you fucks we'll be back tomorrow that's right bitches the fight companion returns tomorrow 7 p .m pacific time eddie bravo brennan shaw brian callan the full boat god damn it and it'll be fun all right we'll see you soon much love bye bye