Interview with cult expert Steven Hassan

On the Moonies, mind control and MAGA

If you consider yourself progressive, think of MAGA. If you consider yourself conservative, think of wokism. Now ask yourself:

• Does this group have its own clothing and hairstyle norms?

• Does this group encourage groupthink?

• Does this group have its own media sources and reject opposition media?

• Does this group think in black-and-white terms?

Now consider whether your group would pass this test.

It can be incredibly difficult to realize our own biases because no one wants to admit their views are largely shaped by outside sources, but they are.

It takes time to wake up to this fact. In some cases, a lifetime.

As a student studying poetry at Queens College in the 1970s, Steven Hassan, a young Jewish boy from Queens, New York, was recruited into the Unification Church, a South Korean cult whose members, known as “Moonies,” believe their leader Sun Myung Moon is the messiah.

Having lived as a journalist in South Korea for six years, I have covered Korean cults myself, including the Unification Church. As I noted in an analysis for The Interpreter titled “Cults, cabals and corruption in South Korea”:

Consider the Unification Church, which like Choi Tae-min’s cult began as a Christian anticommunist group that promoted Korean culture overseas […] Their leader, Sun Myung Moon, founded the Washington Times and used it to publish anticommunist propaganda. He was also involved in his own influence-peddling scandal involving ten members of US Congress, known as Koreagate.

Hassan remained in the cult for over two years. He helped recruit members, raise money, became assistant director at the national headquarters and met Moon himself. At one point, Hassan came to believe Richard Nixon was an archangel.

In 1976, Hassan crashed his van after doing Church work for two straight days without sleep. His parents hired counselors to help deprogram him and he returned to the Jewish faith and immediately began helping others exit cults. He has since become an expert in the field—Salon described him as “one of the world’s foremost experts on mind control, cults and similar destructive organizations.”

Hassan earned his master’s degree in counseling psychology from Cambridge College, studied hypnosis and is a member of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis as well as a member of the Harvard forensic think tank the Program in Psychiatry and the Law. He received his doctorate from Fielding Graduate University, where his dissertation focused on his now famous BITE model of authoritarian control—control of Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotion.

In 1999, Hassan founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, which has published research on Hare Krishnas, Al Qaeda and Opus Dei. Her has also delivered several TED talks over the years—on the use of technology in mind control, on dismantling QAnon and on how to tell if you’re brainwashed.

His books include the instructional guide Combating Cult Mind Control as well as his more recent book, The Cult of Trump, which explains how Donald Trump uses certain rhetorical techniques to build and maintain an unshakable base of support.

Hassan and I talked about his life story, the Moonies and their ties to the January 6 attack, the influence of the New Apostolic Reformation cult within Trump’s base and how it has sustained the belief that Trump won the 2020 election, plus the ways in which Putin, Saudi officials and others have learned to use social media and mass manipulation techniques to turn Americans against themselves, and much more.

As Hassan himself says, welcome to his world. Once you hear it, you can’t forget it.