Cult Experts Warn That Trumpism Is Starting to Look Awfully Familiar

Calls to sacrifice life to the coronavirus “evoke memories of people lining up to drink cyanide.”

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

When President Trump floated the idea of reopening commerce to stimulate the economy, even at the cost of human lives lost to the coronavirus, he started repeating the phrase that “the cure can’t be worse than the problem itself.” After he used the words in a tweet on Sunday, March 22, some of his biggest backers went on cable news and wrote tweets over the next 48 hours about how they too were ready to die for the Dow, or at the very least sacrifice other peopleā€™s lives for it.

The remarks, from a broad range of commentators, illustrate the lengths that Trump supporters are willing to go to back the president, and have led some experts on deadly cults and so called “new religious” movements to note parallels between such organizations and rhetoric voiced by the president and his supporters.

That Monday night, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick seemed to go full Midsommarā€”a horror movie about a fictional Swedish death cult that sacrifices their eldersā€”by saying that ā€as a senior citizenā€ he was ā€œall inā€ on ā€œwilling to take a chance on [my] survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves.ā€

The next night Fox News’ Tucker Carlson discussed Patrickā€™s comments with analyst Brit Hume, who called Patrickā€™s comments ā€œan entirely reasonable viewpoint.ā€ Hume continued: ā€œWe donā€™t shut down the economy to save every single life thatā€™s threatened by a widespread disease. We just donā€™t.ā€

Another Fox News personality, Steve Hilton, said that social distancing and stay at home orders indeed meant that ā€œthe cure is worse than the disease,” adding, “you think it is just the coronavirus that kills people? This total economic shutdown will kill people.”

Right-wing internet commentator Jesse Kelly tweeted on Tuesday morning that, ā€œIf given the choice between dying and plunging the country I love into a Great Depression, Iā€™d happily die.ā€

Glenn Beck on Wednesday said that he too was ready to risk his life for the stock market, in a stream following a town hall in which Trump floated a return to reopening businesses and public gatherings by April 12, an ambition that Beck conceded could be a death sentence for thousands of Americansā€”himself included.

ā€œIā€™m in the danger zone. Iā€™m right at the edge, Iā€™m 56,ā€ he said while broadcasting from his home studio. ā€œI would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working, even if we all get sick, Iā€™d rather die than kill the country. ā€˜Cause itā€™s not the economy thatā€™s dying, itā€™s the country.ā€

If all that sounds to you like the dangerous, macabre ramblings of a movement willing to sacrifice human life for illusory gains, you’re not alone. ā€œI dealt with suicidal cults before. I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone elseā€™s 401k,ā€ tweeted Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who now runs an intelligence and security consultancy. ā€œThis is a whole new level of craziness.ā€

Formal experts on destructive cults agreed with Soufan’s diagnosis of Trump and his baseā€™s support for letting some die. When I reached him via a Zoom video call, Steve Hassan, a mental health professional and cult expert, started nodding immediately when I asked if he saw parallels between, say, the Jonestown Massacre and Trumpā€™s willingness to put the elderly on a near literal chopping block. Ben Zeller, a professor at Lake Forest University who focuses on new religions and Daniel Shaw, a New York-based psychoanalyst who has helped counsel people who have left cult religions, agreed with almost no hesitation. 

The mass suicides at Jonestown werenā€™t a necessary part of any prophecy or pre-existing belief system that their leader, Jim Jones, had laid down. Instead, it was a reaction to his power over the cult being threatened. U.S. Courts had ruled that he return the son of two former members; if he ended up surrendering the child, Jones would be compromising the appearance of his total power. The move could have galvanized others to try to get their loved ones out of his compound in Guyana.

ā€œA narcissist was forced to take down hundreds of people because that community was less important to him than the truth that he personally represented,ā€ Zeller said on the phone, describing both Jones’ decision to poison his followers, and Trump’s musings about scrapping social distancing precautions. ā€œThose were murders as well as suicides,ā€ Zeller explained of Jonestown. ā€œUltimately it was more important for Jones and some of the people at the top of the movement that they all go out rather than be taken down by outsiders.ā€ 

Zeller, Hassan, and Shaw noted that the coronavirusā€™s threat to Trumpā€™s power and presidency and his willingness to sacrifice the lives of his followers is not dissimilar. But while over 900 people died at Jonestown after drinking fruit-flavored punch spiked with poison, Trumpā€™s plan would likely result in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of which would come from one of the president’s core bloc of followers, the elderly.

ā€œSaying that older people should be ready to die for the sake of the economy… Kill grandpa for the Dow,ā€ Shaw said. ā€œThe fact that this is getting amplified. How does that not evoke memories of people lining up to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at Jim Jones’ compound?ā€

Zeller also compared Trumpā€™s bind and willingness to risk his followers’ lives to actions of David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidians through their siege in Waco, Texas that resulted in dozens of his group members’ deaths.

ā€œDavid Koresh wasnā€™t able to connect his own narrative to the way outsiders saw it. All he wanted to do was preach. From the FBIā€™s perspective, he was engaged in criminal activity. These two visions couldnā€™t square. He couldnā€™t wrap his head around it. It didnā€™t occur to him that his analysis wasnā€™t the correct one,ā€ Zeller says. This tension, Zeller explained, created an impasse where Koresh had no intention of ceding, making Waco’s fatal standoff inevitable. 

Zeller, Shaw, and Hassan all, with some differences, define a destructive cult or new religion as an organization led by a charismatic, usually narcissistic, leader who limits where followers get their information and operates with a sadistic level of disregard for others’ wellbeing. With that definition in mind, they think that the parallels between such groups and Trump’s relationship with his base donā€™t stop at a willingness to sacrifice lives. Prior to the coronavirus, they had noted similarities in the Presidentā€™s cult of personality, his seeming narcissism and self-centeredness, and how he brings in supporters and then spins a myth that he alone can bring solutions.

ā€œTo them, itā€™s ā€˜We have a higher truth. Weā€™re in the last days, so it doesnā€™t matter what will happen to the economy because weā€™re in the lord’s hands. But theyā€™re actually in human beings’ hands,ā€ Hassan says.

Trump paints other politicians and media outlets, unless they bend the knee to him, as worthless, Hassan pointed out. Hassan noted that this is similar to how information structures work within destructive new religions. Charismatic and dominating leaders attempt to control the flow of information to their followers by pushing the line that only they have access to the truth and that it canā€™t be found anywhere else. While other politicians and presidents have bashed the press, none have gone so far to say the media is fundamentally illegitimate and that the White House was the only source of correct information.

Of course, there are important differences between Trump, his base, and the worlds’ well-known destructive cults. While there is a lot of solidarity in the MAGA community, the group is far less tight-knit and socially reliant than true cults, with much lower barriers to leaving.

And Trumpā€”unlike Jones, Koresh, and Heavenā€™s Gate mass suicide leader Marshall Applewhiteā€”seemingly has no interest in harming himself or anyone close to him. ā€œThe sacrifices are to be made by other people,ā€ Zeller pointed out.

One wonders how much Jesse Kelly, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Glenn Beck, who have access to top medical care, and in Kellyā€™s and Beckā€™s case, the privilege to work from home indefinitely, would truly have to sacrifice if social distancing were to be widely suspended. As Catherine Wessinger, a professor of religious history who specializes in new religions, pointed out, such comments made by such Trump backers were the kind that are  ā€œeasy to say if youā€™re a white man.ā€

But more broadly, Wessinger said that more than anything resembling a niche religion, Trump’s behavior was indicative of a common patriarchal and privileged disregard for the lives of others. ā€œThe problem with the way the word cult gets used is that it can be anything,” Wessinger warns. “If you ask people what they mean by it, they define it any way they want.”

Megan Goodwin, a lecturer on new religions at Northeastern University, has a succinct diagnosis behind Trump’s musings of sacrificing human lives, not for religious ends, but for the stock market: ā€œThe problem is capitalism,ā€ she said. ā€œIt assumes infinite profit is possible. The goal to make as much money as possible is ultimately a genocidal system. Itā€™s not unrelated to how we run the government. We elected someone who doesnā€™t make our lives better. We elected someone who wants profit above all else.ā€

In some way, the exact cause and costs of Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t matter if people are willing to follow it to their own deaths, or push his ideas encouraging the deaths of others.

ā€œThe designation of Trumpers being cultish is insignificant,ā€ Shaw said. ā€œIf we accurately describe their behaviors, the evidence is overwhelming that there is a delusional leader who believes themself to be omnipotent with followers who are delusional and believe heā€™s omnipotent. And thatā€™s a problem.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate