The Joe Rogan Experience - #680 - Steven Hassan

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

Steven Hassan is an American licensed mental health counselor who has written extensively on the subject of cults.

Boom. What was the original pronunciation? Well, my understanding is back in the old days, it was Sam the Butcher and Joe the Barber. And my great-grandfather was a chazan, which is a singer of holy songs, like a cantor would be the term now. 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. And so I've lived my life being thought of as an Arab, being persecuted at times by Jews. I'm actually Jewish and I belong to a Jewish... The Jews persecuted you? I've had experiences where people made, yes. Because of your name? Because of the spelling of my name. And did you have to let them, hey, you asshole, I'm one of you. Well, first they'd say you're, you know, being a bigot.

And then I'd say, by the way, I'm Jewish. What did they say? I'm so sorry. They would look at me and then they'd say, you don't look Sephardic. I'm Ashkenazi. But anyway, you know, like act with some dignity and compassion and kindness. Yeah, especially for no reason. It's not like you did something anti-Semitic, right?

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. You were assaulted because of your ethnicity? I was assaulted by Jews who thought I was an Arab. Jesus Christ. And they attacked me, and I threw them down. 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. So they like fell on the floor and then I said, you schmuck, so I'm Jewish.

I like how you use schmuck, that way you let them know. Isn't Judaism sort of a cult? Let me just explain what Steve does anyway. Steve Hassan. Hassan? Hassan. Hassan. Hassan.

Yes. Yes. 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 he 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 clean-shaven. And he had a fellow on the front cover who looked a little bit like you. Like me? 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 created the artwork for you?

They did the artwork. 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. So that said, I grew up in a conservative Jewish family, the youngest of three. My mom was an art teacher. My dad had a hardware store. He was a musician before that and after that.

My dad had a hardware store. He was a musician before that and after that. And I really didn't like the Judaism that I was taught, but I was very close to my mom and my maternal grandfather. He was Orthodox. And I grew up with a spiritual feeling and connection, and I still feel that connection. And I'm actually part of an alternative Jewish community for the last 17 years. But the point that I want to say is that there's a whole range, and I actually gave you a blow-up of a graphic, I don't know if you're going to use it, 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. So the word cult in and of itself tends to be pejorative, but as someone who was quoted in the book called The Cult of Mac as a disciple, myself in the book... Cult of Mac? Mac being Apple? Yeah. I was literally interviewed by this writer who actually has a website called The Cult of Mac, and he said,

my editor said I have to interview you. And I said, what about? I'm writing a book about computers. I said, that's weird. That's not the typical interview. What's the title? He said, The Cult of Mac. And I laughed.

I said, I've been using Apple since 1982, and I have five Macs right now. But if you still want me to do an interview, I'll be happy to do it. I do believe that there are certain people that are in a cult of Mac, 100%. I noticed it in the 90s when I was on news radio. 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 like, we've got a new one now. It's going to be better than Windows.

It's going to be amazing. Yeah, there's a science, there's a social science to creating a cult. But again, I cite the Byte model and cite that, you know, if there's deception, so there's lack of informed consent, if there's extreme use of fear and guilt, 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. I think the easiest way to understand what I do as a former cult member myself. It's really in support of the

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So you're not necessarily anti-cult. You are anti-negative cults that have a detrimental effect on a person's life. Yeah, and I would actually blow the frame up a little bit bigger since I've been doing this work for 39 years years and I would say I'm against undue influence. Undue? How would you? 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 fears or is influence of helping somebody who's addicted to something that's killing them. But wouldn't you put a lot of religions in that category then, that classification of undue influence? Right. So you asked me, is Judaism a cult? The answer is there are Jewish cults, for sure. And there are lots of other Jewish temples and affiliations that are not destructive cults. So what would you consider them? Them meaning? The positive ones.

The positive ones? I belong to Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts. Powerful Brookline. You would appreciate that. My rabbi wrote the big book of Jewish humor, and he was a comedian for most of his adult career. He became a rabbi later on. What's his name?

Moshe Waldachs. And he cracks jokes even during Yom Kippur. And he's my kind of rabbi. It's gay-friendly, women-centered, social justice, but we love to sing, we love to chant, we love to daven, we love to do good deeds. What's a daven? Davening is religious prayer. Oh, okay.

Going through the Siddur and learning Torah. I love to go to Torah study. It resonates for me in terms of my spiritual path. That said, I've also studied Buddhism, and I have a teacher who's teaching me a Korean form of meditation and movement. He's a martial artist, by the way. Oh, yeah? Korean martial arts? What kind?

He's a swordsman. Swordsman? So he does like kendo or something? Something along those lines? Korean 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. I learned a little bit of that in the Moonies. They would use bamboo sticks because they don't want to cut each other's legs off. It is, yes. I learned a little bit of that in the Moonies. In the Moonies? They teach a kendo? Really? It's nice they teach a little something. It's probably just in case they have to take over the world and everybody's out of books. Well, I hope we have a chance to chat about the Moonies

at some point. Oh, we will definitely chat about the Moonies. So, would you say by doing this, being involved in an organized religion, an ancient organized religion, 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. Well, it is a nice group of people, and we are independent, although we're influenced by the renewal movement of Zalman Schachter Sholomi. What does that mean? That's the name of a spiritual leader rabbi who passed away who basically said,

and he liked to smoke pot, by the way. I like them already. He talked about updating the traditions for the modern time and that we need, the whole point is growth and connection to other beings in a loving, compassionate way. It's not about being exclusive. It's not about putting other people down to be on your path. It's about about being exclusive. It's not about putting other people down to be on your path. It's about awareness and consciousness. Well, that sounds like a very healthy perspective.

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? People eat bacon. I personally don't eat bacon. My wife loves bacon. But we drive to Temple. I live several miles away. My rabbi drives to Temple. Even on Saturday?

On Shabbat. Whoa. But, you know, it's more important to show up at Temple than to, you know, than to miss temple. Than to follow some mystical ancient view of cars. So all of the rules should serve the spiritual purpose and not the other way around. That people are just compressed into this rigidity of conformity and obedience and guilt and shame. We are not into guilt and shame.

We're into joy and love and laughter and helping one another. That sounds very ideal as far as cults go. I think so. So it's a cult. It's just a really good one. It's a good... Some people in Boston call it a cult, and I'm going to happily say I've been there for 17 years from the very beginning of his invitation to become a rabbi there. And we've had our ups and downs, but it's healthy.

It's accountable. The membership make the agenda. It's not top-down, you know, a dictatorship-type thing. It's the membership. What's the downs? What's the downs? What's the downs? There was some personality power conflicts between an assistant rabbi and Moshe. There was some other, yeah.

Isn't that always how it works? There's always some power struggle. You know, human beings, we're, you know, imperfect. You know, human beings, we're, you know, imperfect. And the key is, 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, your, your behavior, or you don't. And if you don't, and you're, and if you're a part of a community like that in a leadership role, then they ask you to leave. Hmm. And so that was what was going on there. In that particular case, I think she wanted more say-so. She didn't want to be the assistant rabbi. Can chicks be rabbis?

Oh, yeah. We have an assistant rabbi right now, Rav Claudia, who's amazing. Is Rav like the formal doctor? I'm sorry, yeah. It's like rabbi. Rabbi means teacher. Okay. But a female you call Rav, or is it a distinction for a male as well?

No, you can call a male a Rav also. 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. Is that fair to say? You mean Judaism as I practice it? The one that you, yeah. Hmm. It seems like a weird way to get this started. Nobody makes me, it's fine.

It's not the typical interview that I'm asked to do. But then again, I didn't expect this to be. What is it? Well, it's just conversation, Boston. We're 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. We bring in pro-Palestinian peace activists to speak. We bring in Steve Hassan to speak about cults, all kinds of interesting programming. And I love being part of a community. And on a personal note, when I had cancer nine years ago, I had Hodgkin's 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, 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. And then you get this, this bonding, this feeling of community that we kind of don't really have that much in this world a lot of folks don't know their neighbors they don't you know they just I have a buddy lives in an

apartment building it's like 50 floors he doesn't know a fucking single person entire building yeah like that's so crazy isolated hundreds and hundreds of people you don't even know who they are right and that's part of what needs to be changed, in my opinion, to make the world a healthier place where people do know their neighbors and they do offer help if somebody needs help.

Well, that's the beauty of small towns. The beauty of less people is those people get appreciated more. It's sort of like, you know, you can have too much stuff and then that stuff doesn't have any value anymore or you can have one cherished item that like well this is the baseball glove my dad gave me when I

was 10 and I will cherish it forever instead of like a fucking warehouse full of baseball gloves they don't mean jack shit to you and I think human beings are kind of a warehouse full of baseball gloves it 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. That's part of it. I also think that modern culture and civilization and technology has created a false construct of what's important and what's real, where beingness and being part of a family or a community or a tribe mattered as a central theme of our identity. 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. And this information overload and sleep deprivation that is very troubling. Sleep deprivation. How so? It's probably one of the most studied phenomenon, the effects on the mind and on the brain, lack of sleep. And it's one of the classic techniques used by destructive cults, by the way, sleep deprivation. But if one analyzes American society, my understanding is that the average American is sleep deprived. 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-Core? It's a C-Org, a billion-year contract. Billion, isn't that hilarious? You sign a billion-year contract. Yeah. And I want to mention that I was part of a five-day seminar in Toronto a few weeks ago called Getting Clear. And some of the top former officials of Scientology were interviewed on stage. 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. The processes like doing auditing, is that what you mean?

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. The Scientologist will tell you, oh, Joe, you just licked your lips or your knee quivered. No, you've got to just freeze for 20 minutes. It's creating an altered state of consciousness known as trance. And I know we're going to talk more about trance, I'm sure. There's nothing wrong with trance states, but when you're in a trance 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. So just sitting for 20 minutes with your hands on your lap and your feet flat would lead you to be more influenced by someone's suggestions. That's the first one. The next one is sitting opposite a Scientologist three feet away, staring into the Scientologist's eyes for 20 minutes. That's the next one.

Jamie, it's really hot in here. Is the AC on? Turn it off. 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. It's like a bull with a red cape. Really? Yeah. So they are training obedience.

They're desensitizing people from normal social cues and interactions. And they're cultivating a compliant, obedient, tranced identity as a Scientologist. I didn't know that just staring at someone, just staring into someone's eyes can create an altered state of consciousness. A bunch of kids are going to listen to this. Actually, staring at a candle, staring at a spot on a wall, it's known in hypnosis language as an eye fixation technique. It's a very, very common technique for inducing an altered state of consciousness. Why? Because the eyes are pretty wired to move and scan. And I should also say hypnosis is not sleep. It's an altered state of consciousness

that's best characterized as concentration or absorption. And I just want to say one more time, there's nothing wrong with that state. I like that state. I do self-hypnosis. I do meditation. I do many different altered states techniques. The point is I'm in control. I'm deciding. 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. So let's talk about you. You got into the Moonies,

and you were there for two years, is that what it was? Yeah, two and a half years. Two and a half years. And that led you to try to get a greater understanding of cults, the cult mind control, and to help people. What was your experience? How old were you? You were 19? Is that what you were? Yeah. I'd skipped eighth grade. I was an extra honors student.

I was a creative writing major at Queens College. Humble brag. See that? Just kidding. So you were an honors student. I was reading Plato when I was eight. I was into utopian novels when I was nine. Wow.

But aside from that. Utopian novels. 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. I was in the last draft lottery to go to Vietnam. then. I was in the last draft lottery to go to Vietnam. Anyway, I had been basically dumped by my girlfriends at 19. Ah, chicks. They do it every time. 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, and they started asking me about the books that I had from my course. And they weren't students? No, they were Moonies. Wow. And it was a deceptive, systematic, which I later learned how to do as a leader. I learned how to recruit people. I had a similar situation college to

do yeah me well there was this Italian class that I was taking is this beautiful Puerto Rican girl check glasses you're so hot and she was always asking me to go to these parties she's always inviting me to these parties like come to this come we're going to the Cape for the weekend you should come I was like whoa oh my god but I was always busy i was so mad i was like fuck i gotta find a date where i was 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, so it was probably 86. Okay.

86, 87. Boston Church of Christ? I don't know what church they were in because this is. They were hot and heavy in that period of time. 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.

I was still competing in martial arts tournaments back then. I was always busy. But I really liked this girl. She was pretty hot. And she's very friendly too. I was like competing in martial arts tournaments back then. I was always busy. But I really like this girl. She's pretty hot. And she's very friendly, too. I was like, wow, maybe she's the one. Really friendly, loving, cute, flirty. This is how it goes down.

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? Did Donald Trump have an airline? Maybe. I don't know why I would connect him to it in some strange way. But whatever it was, this airline, 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 girls and we're at lunch in the cafeteria. And I go, did you guys hear about the plane crash? And they go, no, what happened? And I said, yeah, well, some, 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 uh wheels wouldn't come down so

anyway it's at logan airport in boston skids parks 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 i was in boston that then too by the way so they go what happened and i said well the wheels uh didn't come down and uh they had a skid across the runway 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 whoo 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 and trying to save your soul man yeah well and then and then i started to ask them i said so do you think god like saved that oh absolutely i go well why didn't god just make the wheels come down why freak everybody out and then quick question and then it got weird and then it got ugly and you know i mean then they never talked to me again i forget where it went i was a dick back then i probably said something stupid well a lot of Bible cults, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim are into Armageddon. You know, the apocalypse is coming any moment. That's a good way to get people to sign up.

Exactly. The heavy pressure, scarcity, time's running out. Fear. If the world ended tomorrow, are you ready? I'm definitely ready. Or are you going to hell for the rest of your life? It doesn't matter if you're ready or not. The world's going to end. You know? It's like, are you ready?

But sign over your real estate and your bonds. So you're sitting at this table. These girls come over. They weren't even students. What are they doing in the school? How'd they get in? They lied. They just walked in. Queens College was a city university. Goddamn shitty security. Probably can't do that today. 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. That's adorable. 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?

What was her name? 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, vulnerable. Poor Steve. You're like, what now? What now? I thought she was going to be the one. And these gals come over, and were they hot?

They were cute, and they were very flirtatious. They were cute, and they were very flirtatious. 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. Is that the Moonies? Is that how they do it? Yeah. Four years. They didn't say anything about that. And I said, are you part of some religious group?

Oh, no, not at all. We're just a group of students who are concerned about modern issues. So what was their approach to you? They sat down, they started talking to you. What did they open up with? Hey, nice glasses. No, I think I had, it was the spring semester, I had a pile of books. I was taking philosophy, psychology, and writing.

I think I had the Upanishads. I think I had high diggers being in time. And they were like, why being in time is that thick? Oh, wow, you must be really smart. What is that about? So they start flattering you, buttering you up. Oh, serious they start flattering you, buttering you up. Oh, serious. Serious.

The cult is known and other cults are known as love bombing. Pretty sure it's a Puerto Rican girl did to me too. Damn, she was hot, Steve. It's all about saving the person's soul and 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. Well, unlike you, I wasn't particularly vulnerable at the time,

so it was a good time for them to get after me because I was in the middle of some pretty intense stuff. I had a goal. I was pretty focused. I wasn't going to get roped up in some religion. But if they had got me a couple of years earlier, I think they could have got me. I was real vulnerable when I was like 18.

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, moving to a new city, state, or country, illness. There are things that every human being goes through. And for me, it's an overwhelming ignorance of the public to kind of blame the victims, like, you were stupid for believing in this, like, what was wrong with you? You were weak for falling for this? As opposed to, tell me about your experience and tell me what, you know, what happened. You know, there's a principle in social psychology called the fundamental attribution error.

I know that's a lot of syllables, but it basically is the single most important principle of social psychology. And what it means is what I was basically saying before. When people try to understand why other people are doing what they do, they over-attribute individual variables. And they under-attribute social environmental variables. Social environmental variables are gigantic. That's correct. I think one of the things about a person being older and wiser like that you always hear that expression older and wiser but if you really look at it like mathematically well what is it it's data it's

accumulation of data and the understanding of the relationships between events reactions and consequences and when you're 18 years old, you don't have a lot of data. You only have a few things that are going on. And for me when I was 18, it was the breakup of me and this girl that I was dating and 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 and just the, just the overwhelming possibilities of the future and not having any clue as to how it was all going to play out. I was terrified. And if someone came along right then, I feel like they could have got me. I feel like I was real vulnerable around 18. But I met this hot Puerto Rican girl, I think I was about

20 and I was pretty, I was pretty determined at that time. So I was okay. But- Well, and that said, there are so many different types of destructive cults. So they're not just all religious cults. There can be a therapy cult, a political cult, can be a cult of personality. That's very important. That's very important because there's a lot of different 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. And that is so common. There's so many different versions of it. It almost seems to be like a pattern of human behavior and thinking, like a code that you can kind of crack, like a cheat code in people. We've experienced a revolution in science and medicine and in psychology, and in particular, social psychology. There's been so many pivotal experiments in the last 50 to 100 years that give us windows into understanding our vulnerabilities. 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, let me liberate you or something. In fact, my whole approach is empowering people to think for themselves. So I ask them questions with respect, because I really want them to think about themselves. So I asked them questions with respect, because I really want them to think about it. In any case, I show them the Ash Conformity Study, Solomon Ash. What is that? So the Solomon Ash Conformity Study was framed to the people coming into it as a visual perception experiment. Basically, they'd be brought into a room with several people 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. Okay, let's say a three-inch

sample line, a three-inch, a four-inch, and a five-inch. But everyone is in on the experiment except the person in seat six. And after going around twice giving the correct answer, everyone confidently starts giving the wrong same answer. And the test is how many people will start to conform to giving the wrong answer, even though they can see with their own eyes what the correct answer is. And that study's been replicated thousands of times, 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. And is that the testimony that they give when they're asked? I'm assuming they interview these people. Oh, absolutely. They say it's uncomfortable. And I even show a Dateline, an old Dateline episode where they asked Anthony Pratkanis, who's one of the foremost social psychologists, to actually do the study so they could film it. And they start out with this Asian woman who is the heroic resistor

Who gives the correct answer but she's grimacing as she's giving the wrong answer even though she knows it's the right answer But because of the social forces we are have mirror neurons. We want to fit in to the people in the room It's just human nature. Well, it's how people survive. It's clan behavior. Exactly. But it's hardwired. So I show that video, that experiment. 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. Scientifically reality test that situation scientifically reality test yeah meaning meaning what you're in this room everyone's saying a five inch line is a three inch line

what could you do let me ask you what would you do because you you have the data now okay you're you're a cult expert you would obviously measure it right but you would obviously understand what's going on right Right. Exactly. But if you asked me prior to my induction into the Moonies, did I understand the Ash Conformity Study or the power of being? I would have said, no, I'm an individualist. Right. I'm a non-conformist. I had the bumper sticker question authority.

Right. I had the ponytail and, you know, the work boots. You were typically unique. You fit right in, you rebel. Totally. So anyway, after the Ash Conformity Study, the Milgram Obedience Study, Stanley Milgram did a test. At the time, the dominant theory in psychology for explaining how the Nazis could do what they did was called the authoritarian personality. And Milgram said, I wonder if Americans would do the very same thing. And he developed this ingenious shock box, which really was a set of switches that had no electricity at all,

but it sounded electrical. And he basically would bring people in, 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 XXXX. 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. 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.

And the answer was two-thirds. Yeah, I saw a radio lab, or listened, rather, to a radio lab podcast on that very thing. 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. Philip Zimbardo. Philip Zimbardo, yeah. Who is 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 going to fly 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. And he was also president of the American Psychological Association. So in his experiment, he randomly divided guys into guards and prisoners. And he did basically controlled behavior, guards and prisoners, and he did basically control

behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. And people started having nervous breakdowns, and some of the guards started becoming sadistic. And instead of saying, you know what, I don't want to do the experiment anymore, they had gotten so sucked into the experience that their only out was to have a nervous breakdown. Wow. It was extraordinary. 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... What's a TM cult?

Transcendental Meditation. That's a cult? Oh, yeah. Really? Big time. cults i want them to first tm cult transcendental meditation that's a cult oh yeah really big time i thought that was just like a method of like cleansing your mind i didn't know that there was even a cult behind it oh maharishi masha shogi oh yeah this is not but people practice it they practice techniques of transcendental meditation alone by themselves? Are they in a cult? So the answer is you don't need to be in a room with other people to be in a mind control cult, but it can get inside your head and create a new cult identity that suppresses your real identity and it's not healthy. Well, I have a

very cursory understanding of transcendental meditation. So if you could, please tell me what exactly does that mean? So, and I have the story of a woman who was raised in TM in Chapter 6 of the new book, Gina Catania. So first of all, there's a thousand or more ways to meditate. And there's not one way that everyone has to meditate. In fact, neurologically, it's very detrimental for people to do, for some people to do a mantric meditation where they're repeating it over and over. It actually increases anxiety. Really? So like Buddhist meditations, were they? So breath meditation, the point is, is that it's a tool for training consciousness.

And ultimately, depending on your level of training, you want to not be a victim of your thoughts or your feelings. 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 total beingness. 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. You're unstressing. Keep doing it. Is that what Transcendental Meditation says?

I'm afraid so. Well, when you say bad reactions, how so? Tics, headaches, barking like a dog. Is that common? I've heard from some people who are meditating. Persinger wrote a book about TM and some of the negative after effects. And what you need to understand about a destructive cult is that there are many levels. If you're just doing a meditation and you're not doing the advanced and the next advanced and then becoming celibate and then—

Oh, that's all in Transcendental Meditation as well? Oh, yeah. And Maharishi was saying if they didn't have 40,000 cities, which meant people were hopping around thinking they were levitating. That's hilarious. That the world would blow up. So he was using the whole fear trip thing to raise a lot of money to get people to be these devotees.

Yeah, this yogi flying. It's such BS, buddy. First of all, how dare you? How dare you? These people are flying and you're claiming BS? You're very rude. No, they're hopping on mattresses. Dude, I've seen it.

And they take a picture when they're in the up. See, they're flying. We got it. We got the proof. Someone is just like, you're poo-pooing magic. Have you ever seen it? Jamie, have you seen it? Have you seen yogi flying?

It's adorable. It's hilarious, these fools. So I want to plug a document. Look at this. Here it goes. Look at this. I mean, no effort at all, right? Phil Donahue actually did a show on this and Phil put his legs in Lotus and hopped. Well, what's really funny is, wow, amazing that Phil can put his legs in Lotus. But what's amazing is this guy is getting tired so his hops, let's go back to the beginning, Jamie. His hops in the beginning were much higher

because he was fresh. See, look at that. Kid's getting some air. Now let's go a little bit further, Jamie. Look, see right there. He's getting tired. I'm a fight commentator. I understand why people are fatiguing. This guy is getting lactic acid. This fight commentator. I understand what people are fatiguing this guy's getting lactic acid This isn't flying. It's but but Maharishi said you know this

Raises the energy level of the planet Earth so that there are fewer automobile accidents and less war I feel for all these people I really do I feel for that guy right there with the glasses in front of this cat because he's fucked. All these people, they're fucked and it's like social anxiety and a lack of friends 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. In a cafeteria. Let's get back to that. Or a hot guy.

But the thing is, is emotions, if you're having doubts or if you're having bad feelings, it's telling you to look at what's happening and maybe you need to make a change. 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. And that's known as thought stopping. That's one of the techniques in the T of the BITE model to shut down any reality testing. In the Moonies, we were taught to chant, crush Satan, crush Satan, crush Satan.

So Satan's real? Glory to heaven, peace on earth, crush Satan. I want to tell you a true story, Joe Rogan. Better not be about Satan. It is. So I'm raised in a Jewish family. We don't believe in Satan at all. Do you believe in God in the Jewish family?

Yeah. Well, wait a minute. Yeah, I believe in God. But hold on. If you believe in God, then you have to believe in the God of the Bible? Is that what you're defining God as? Now, you're asking me to define what I was believing as a child? Yes.

As a conservative Jew? Yes, I guess so. Yes, the God of the Bible. Well, isn't Satan in the Bible as well? the bible well isn't satan in the bible as well no no satan's not in the bible no not in the not in the torah no oh that's the torah the the new testament was an invention later of course yeah constantine and how many bishops right didn't he put it 300 ad i believe it was yeah Right. So here's the story. So I'm in the frickin' Moonies, if I may curse, because I've watched a few of your podcasts.

I don't think you said frickin'. Frickin' is not a curse. Okay, good. I don't think you said a curse. Okay, good. The Exorcist movie comes out. Oh, boy. It buses 300 members, including myself, into Greenwich Village to watch The Exorcist.

Party. Watch the movie. We all get in our vans, go to Tarrytown to the palatial estate. They have a palatial estate? They have multiple ones. This one particular one at Tarrytown is where I got a lot of my indoctrination. It used to be owned by the Seagram's family. Moon gets up and he says,

God made The Exorcist. This movie is a prophecy of what will happen if people leave the Unification Church. Okay. Now, before he gave that speech, we were singing holy songs for three hours. That's after watching this crazy exorcist movie. 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. And I was thinking back, so what was, how was I installed with phobias? And then I remembered this movie and this lecture. And it's like, holy crap. I believed it. Wow.

100%. Satan was everywhere. And only by being in God's holy family. Yep, that's it. And the head zips around and levitates. Great movie. A lot of fun. It's scared.

Actually, it's just too sucked, though. In any way. So how can an intelligent person from an 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 satanic democracy, kill everyone that doesn't believe. It was literally what we were pretty much told by Moon that we needed to reclaim the earth for God, not unlike ISIS and a few other cults out there. I was told the Holocaust was necessary because the Jews didn't accept Jesus. I had been educated about the Holocaust.

I had been to Israel to the Holocaust Museum. When you heard that, what was your reaction? You're 19 at the time. I had been so... So mind control in the extreme cult example is a dissociative disorder. I'm speaking as a mental health professional. And Steve Hassan, son of Milton and Estelle Hassan from Flushing, Queens, became Steve Hassan, son of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, the true parents

of the universe. And he needed to be a clone of Moon, and he was evil. 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. I was working seven days a week for no pay. I was recruiting people. I was indoctrinating people. I was doing political events for Moon, including fasting for Nixon during the Watergate. Fasting for Nixon? Fasting for Nixon because God wanted him to be president. That's how you know you're in the wrong cult. for Nixon because God wanted him to be president. That's how you know you're in the wrong cult.

So I'll tell you a quick funny story. So my father voted for Nixon. I voted for McGovern. My father was a business owner. He thought Nixon was good. I said, Dad, he's a crook. How could you vote for him? He's pathetic. I'm in the cult. I call him up. I say, Dad, we're fasting for Nixon. I say, Dad, we're fasting for Nixon. We're in the Capitol. And he says, Stephen, you are right. 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 old were you at the time when this was going on? I was 1920. So I want to take you back to 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. And then what's the next step? So they're part of an international group of students who are trying to make the world a better place. They happen to have a house, kind of like a commune, which was kind of interesting. Would I like to come over for dinner? So it was the free dinner. Would they cook?

I have no recollection. 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. 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. You say this, right, but I'm assuming the girls you're talking about are not much older than you, right? Right. So weren't they being manipulated themselves?

Weren't they essentially a part of this whole thing in that they were really victims along the same way they were making you a victim? Like they were bitten by the vampire. Victim-victimizer model. And their cult identities were suppressing they were sent away from japan from their family and friends and they were japanese chicks they were japanese chicks asian chicks that's what's up so but here again um but they were knew that they would have to report each other if anyone deviated. So that's why they would not send people out individually. It's like this tattletale system.

I get it. But my point being is if they were not much older 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? Wouldn't they be a part of it? 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. And as much as you can to bring people into God and save their soul, saving a person in the moon 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. 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. And every cult has its own convoluted yet internally totalistic system. But unlike Scientology, the Moonies are like save others. Scientology is like become a god and control everybody. Control matter, energy, space, and time.

Get people to do what you want them to do. Right. But my point was that these people were also manipulated. So they knew that they were manipulating you, but they didn't think that they were being manipulated themselves by the same cult? Like they were trying to find information about you. In a cult, Joe, you're not having that reflective observer looking back and going, hey, what just happened just then? There's no meta-commenting.

It's like you're programmed to think the right way, feel the right way, act the right way, and you're self-censoring. And in my particular case, I guess because I'm somewhat competitive on some level, I know you have no relationship to understanding what it feels like to be competitive, I wanted to be the best Moonie I could be, and I was chosen by Moon and one of his right-hand people to be the model leader in America. So I was hand-groomed to help take over America and the world.

You were only in it for two years. So this had to be a very quick transition from you, Steve Hassan, normal college student, to boom, full-on fasting for Nixon. Yeah. It was very fast. It was about two weeks after my first contact to me having what I thought was a spiritual experience and believing that I was being directed by God to this organization. Wow.

Yeah. So this misattribution happens a lot. Now, for some of my clients, they're literally at a vulnerable point in their life. Maybe they're religious and they're praying, dear God, tell me what to do. You know, should I leave my marriage? What, you know, what should I do? 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 ran the doorbell as opposed to these people are going ringing every single doorbell

Within a six block course. Yeah, it's like my friend Gary. He hits on every girl He meets his idea is that if you swing enough pitches in every Ruth you never know you're gonna His idea is that if you swing enough pitches, you never know. The Babe Ruth. You never know. 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. Yep. So that's what they're doing. They're swinging at every pitch, essentially. They're knocking on every door. And every now and then, they get that one ball that's in the strike zone. And that's Steve Hassan sitting there with his pile of books. Well, in my case, so I went to this three-day workshop.

I didn't want to stay. I was a waiter on the weekends. I was busy. I can't go away on a weekend. And they just kept saying it's going to be so great. I didn't even know it was a workshop. 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. And he says, Steve, you won't believe it, but the wedding was canceled. So take the weekend off. And I had just had this, these women working on me all week. And I was like, well, maybe I'm meant to. Well, I did give them my word. But I gave them my word thinking I was never going to have a weekend off. And then I was kind of like, well, maybe I'm meant to go. Maybe I should do this. So I say, okay, I'm free for the weekend. Let's go.

And we're driving up. It's the middle of the winter through this palatial estate. And they say, by the way, this weekend we're having a joint workshop with the Unification Church. And I said, what? Church? Nobody said anything about church and workshop. Nobody said anything about a workshop. What's up with that?

And they did the typical turn it around on you technique of, Steve, do you have issues with Christians? Are you biased against Christians? And all of a sudden now I'm on the defensive. But there were no cell phones back then in 1974. It's the middle of the night. I have an option of getting out in the snow and trying to hitchhike. in 1974. It's the middle of the night. I have an option of getting out in the snow and trying to hitchhike. I'm like, what am I?

Well, just wait for the morning. Just stay here, and we'll drive you back in the morning. They slither around your bed like sirens while you sleep. Well, I was in a room where I wasn't sleeping. Yeah, so you've learned a little where I wasn't sleeping. Yeah. So you've learned a little hypnosis there, Joe.

In any case, the morning comes, the van has left. Now what? Right. So now you're fucked. Well, let's just go in and see what you think. And it was all orchestrated because I later learned how to orchestrate it. And how many people were in there with you that were also new recruits? 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.

Oh, no. So creating small groups where there's the illusion of. So essentially a lot like the study where they have the one person that's not in on the study. Yeah, it was very systematic. Wow. How'd this guy get so good at that? With this Mooney character, how did he create all this? You want the long?

Short. The short, real answer? Okay, drumroll. Did he have a background in psychology or something? Drumroll. So Moon himself was apparently in a cult 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. 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. And they were very worried about North Korean brainwashing.

And they thought, you know, we need to do something to stabilize South Korea. So they had this brilliant idea of creating a private group that would help to re-educate political dissonance. It's called Victory Over Communism. And I only know about this because there was a Koreagate investigation from 76 to 78, where the founder of the Korean CIA was interviewed. And he said he, quote, organized and utilized the Unification Church for use as a political tool, unquote. Wow. And this was at the point where Americans were getting fed up with Vietnam, wanting us to withdraw. The hawks were very worried about like needing a stronger stance against communism. So they thought, oh, yeah, we need to have student groups on campus

saying we need to have a military response to communists. We should be in Vietnam. And the Moonies were used for that, too. Later, I was part of the Fasting for Nixon thing. So there was a whole political, very shady piece here. So you go from this, you get out. How did you get out? How'd you figure out that it was all bad? I was rescued by my family, essentially. They didn't know where I was for a year. 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. Did you fall asleep behind the wheel or something? Fell asleep. Three days, no sleep. 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. She was always just like, I love you and I don't understand. This doesn't seem like you, Steve. I reached out to her, not because I wanted to leave, but because I missed her. And she was like, you have two nephews.

I want them to know their Uncle Steve. Come and visit. And I'm like, if you promise not to tell the parents, I can arrange it because I'm a leader. And she promised. And fortunately, she broke her promise. And she told my parents. And they hired some ex-members. And they did a deprogramming intervention with me.

Ex-members of the Moonies? Yeah. Wow. So your parents went deep with this. They knew exactly what they were dealing with. They put everything on the table because they knew they could have gone to jail, too, if it didn't work. One of the team was a woman I had recruited. They could have gone to jail.

Yeah. Why? Because it's illegal to abduct an adult. You abducted? They were abducted? In my case, they just took my crutches away. I had a cast from my toes to my groin. That's not abduction. Correct. 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. But the long and the short of it is I was so confident that what I was doing was correct and 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 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 donated 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. So I said, what do you want me to do? He said, I just want you to talk with him for another four days. Like, have an open mind. 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. And I agreed. 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. I had all of these experiences that were starting to surface that had been suppressed during my leadership.

It's the same mechanism that allows people to be inspired, the same mechanism that allows people to be manipulated. You know, that mechanism being you see something that's there's something about it that makes you excited like 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 your brain waves it manipulates your consciousness and it steers you in a certain direction 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 that's a big piece of it i would say is it sort of a flaw in the the beautiful thing about inspiration is it a flaw in that? Because inspiration is beautiful. It's fuel, right? Well, I think you need to have the analytic part of your mind and a consciousness that just because it sounds great and looks great doesn't mean that it isn't great. But you know what I'm saying? Like, you know how sometimes things happen

and you're just carried away by them? Like, you go see a movie and you're like, God damn, I just want to go do something. I just feel so good. It's just like away by them 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 braveheart i have i saw braveheart 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, 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.

positive and it can be inspirational like whether it's seeing Michael Jordan put on an incredible performance or Ronda Rousey You know beating someone or you know those those moments where someone does something truly great and you you have its fuel for you It's right rule. Is that the same sort of mechanism that they kind of tap into to change your mind? Definitely It's it's a piece of the emotional and the brain stimulation so it's like they hack your mind it's kind of like hacking i talk about in the book the vi like a virus that gets in and corrupts your operating system you still have your original one but the now this malware has been inserted and now you're working you think that it's you but it's and you you know i thought it was ste, just the true Steve, and that the old Steve was the fallen Steve. 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. So in a sense that this experience that you had when you were 19 was incredibly beneficial for your career. Oh, yeah. I have mixed emotions when I hear you say that because I don't want to do this work, to be completely honest. Really?

Really. Really? You don't want it because you don't want it to be work that could be done. It's traumatic. It's helping people who are suffering. But don't you get a benefit out of that? I get a fulfillment that I'm doing something really helpful to individuals. I'm trying to help people around the world to understand this phenomenon. 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.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it's beneficial for you having a negative experience. You don't have anyone to thank. So it's a wounded healer model, yes. Yes. Yes. It definitely deepened me in a way that I could not have been deepened before because when you wake up from being in a group like this,

the shame, the embarrassment, the shame the embarrassment the confusion I felt like I didn't know who I was right I didn't know what was real yeah I literally had to have my family and my friends show me videos of who I was before to remind me Wow what you need to go to places that I used to go to like I had a belief and this is very common, and I want to touch on Stefan Molyneux, which is how I learned about you, seeing your interview with him. But I believed I had an abused childhood.

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. So what did they tell you happened about your childhood? 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. But I literally, when I first got out of the group, I thought I was miserable, depressed,

that my father was physically abusive. And when I said to my sister, well, dad was physically abusive, she went, what? You really thought it? So you have false memories? Yes. Wow. Yes. But did you have an actual image in your

mind of your father doing it so i had one real memory that everything else was built off of and and it was a an actual event that happened i think i was 11 or 12 my father wanted to know where the change was for lunch and i had bought baseball cards or something and I lied and my father slapped my face that was the one true that was the one time my father hit me um but I really believed it and my sisters were like dad never hit us because his father beat the crap out of him he never you know that dad's issue wasn't he didn't want to hug us or hold us, but that was not physically abusive. So just one moment where he lost his patience with you and you formed false memories based on that. Right. And what Scientology does is they have you go back and remember abuse

from the past. And once you're done remembering whatever happened, then you go into your past lives to remember all the abuse. That's where it's really at. And it keeps going on and on. But don't they, when they're doing that, in that auditing process, aren't they trying to get you to let it go? Like, isn't the idea that you repeat a traumatic event so many times that it means nothing to you? 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 the hell? Like, your grandma doesn't swear.

But if you're around one, like Jamie, this kid, he's got a total potty mouth. It just comes flying out of him. 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 big moment. 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. Is that what they do? So there's a qualitative difference between desensitization around a word or something and actually trauma processing. 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. And that's been thrown out by the mental health profession decades ago. Why? health profession decades ago. Why? Because you're re-victimizing people, having them suffer the experience over and over and over again. 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. And I don't want them to have associated memories of abuse. I want them to know that they're safe, that that did happen. But 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, uh, 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, mean don't they I mean aren't they flexible there have been therapy cults we were open this up by talking about different types of cults and if any ideology that's black and white and that you're trying to compress human experience into the ideology is worrisome because no model is true. Because everyone's different.

Everyone's different. But the goal as a therapist is do no harm and empower the person to be functional, right? The goal isn't to trauma process. So in the last few years, I've been trained in a form of attachment therapy I've been trained in a form of attachment therapy where people who have personality disorders, which were hitherto believed to be permanent, can actually be cured in two to three years. 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 imagining 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. You do it. The person literally can create a positive 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. And people know that they were abused, but they're reparenting, to use another term. They're internally using their imagination. They're reparenting themselves. And what is now proven neuroscientifically is there's 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. Doesn't that seem delusional? And it works. I mean, you say it works.

It works. You act as if they believe. I mean, you say it works. It works. You act as if they believe. I mean, this sounds like fantasy. Am I reading it wrong? Well, it's interesting for me to hear you frame it like that. People are not coming out of a therapy like that thinking that they had a great Right. 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 because they've created these reference experiential states for themselves. Now, these reference experiential states that they create, these theories and these practices of therapy,

someone has to invent these. Like, someone has to look at the problems. 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. And as you said, there's like the L. Ron Hubbard methods that he was using that were really ancient. They thought that was going to work and it didn't work. 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-

Right. But these ideas, they're essentially people come up with ideas of how to treat people that have various ailments, right? And then they apply them to people. I mean, how do they practice this stuff? I mean, this is not like something like, hmm, I need to figure out how to chop this tree down. I'm going to try to invent an axe. You know what I'm saying? In my case, I was out of the cult for four years when I first saw a formal hypnotist do a trance on somebody. And my reaction was I used to do that when I was doing lectures. Like I had no awareness that I had been taught to do hypnotic methods.

I was told to model the older brothers, and it was kind of a behavioral modeling kind of thing. And I started wanting to learn hypnosis. I wanted to understand what it was, what it wasn't, how to do it ethically. And essentially, there has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of people have gotten hurt by the misuse of it. 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, it's not about keeping you as a client forever. It's like the faster you can get out of treatment and just live your life, the happier the therapist is. 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. 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. That's Jamie.

Just kidding. But coming back to my work, when I was first doing this work and I was struck by people who were saying, but you were recruited at 19. You had an identity before. I was born into the group. I don't have a pre-cult self. What do I do? I didn't know what to say to them other than make one up. Right.

And that is. And they started doing that. Now, 39 years later, it's actually a treatment modality. I'm not taking credit for it. So they make up a successful, happy, positive childhood free of this ridiculous confining ideology well it's like if if you're if your real life is this story line you're making and you create an alternate one that you use as a as a default where instead of a parent beating beating you when you're asking for help or saying you're being a sissy, but you have someone saying, tell me what's wrong, you need a hug, and they're visualizing that and feeling like there's someone who's 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 modeling that they learned and beat the crap out of their kid, but actually behave like a healthy person would want to act. It seems to me that it's beautiful that all these theories are being developed and tested and applied. It's beautiful. But it seems to me like it's all a work in progress. Is that incorrect? It's not like there's any hard, fast method for definitely curing people of weird psychological ailments or cult-like thinking.

I think the human species is evolving. I think we're at a very low level of evolution in terms of our understanding of things. 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. And what we're learning about the brain is just wonderful. I'm excited about the future in terms of that. That said, there's a huge potential for abuse. Now, by you saying that you don't like doing it, 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?

Correct. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, we can all sort of empathize with that. Of course, anybody who has children will look at, if you love your children, you look at people who were abused as children or abused especially by their parents,

and it's just this unbelievably painful thing to hear hear and 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 i had my friend uh barry crimmons on the podcast yesterday uh great stand-up comedian from boston and he has a new movie that's out today it's called call me lucky that uh bob goldthwaite directed and it's about his uh he was raped when he was four by his babysitter's boyfriend they would multiple times this is horrible horrible horrible traumatic story and a big part of his life is his his perseverance and overcoming this thing that happened to him when he was four. He's 62 years old now. Right.

You know, I mean, this trauma has sort of like defined him in some ways and strengthened him in other ways, his ability to overcome it, showing his perseverance. But fuck, man. Right. And often people who've been suffering a trauma like that, if they become comedians, they're compensating to try to counterbalance the pain.

And maybe cult members, right? Because that would be someone who would be vulnerable for someone who would have some reaching for a utopian view of the world or some better way because you know the horror of the abuse. Yeah. So the truth is, is that the bigger cults don't want people who are seriously emotionally disturbed because they can't control them. If they're seriously disturbed, they don't want them.

Okay. So if you're a signpost. seriously disturbed, they don't want them. They want your money, but they don't want you on staff and they don't want you to be part of the pyramid. So do they have hierarchies? Totally. So if you join Scientology or something like that, here's your book. I'll show you that.

If you go to Scientology and they give you one of those personality tests, which I took, by the way, it was hilarious. They make you hold on these Folgers coffee cans and this is the pyramid. Right. So if you're in the Sea Org, you're in the upper quadrant of the pyramid. The leaders. If you're a Tom Cruise, you're in the fringe.

He's a fringe? He's not a leader? I think he's a leader. I think you're wrong. I think he got a medal, dude. He did. He did. I saw his gold medal.

Yeah. But he's not staff. He's more like a symbol, saw his gold medal. Yeah, but he's not staff. 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. What do you think is going on with that? You think he's gay? I've yet to hear anything but bi, I would say. John Travolta apparently is very gay. John's gay and he's bi? Tom's bi?

That's my impression, but I've not heard from any former Scientologist. If we could all just accept people being gay, would Scientology go away immediately? Well, it's homophobic. It's totally homophobic. Scientology is? As is the Moonies. Oh, yeah. It's a degraded human being if you're gay.

In fact, Hubbard's son, Quentin, was gay, and he either killed himself or was murdered. So when you saw Going Clear, were you happy that—I'm in the middle of the book right now. It's goddamn amazing. It's amazing when you go over L. Ron Hubbard's past and how absolutely ridiculous it was, how many times he lied about things, all the nonsense that he said, and all the different times he was caught lying. Right. And all the different people in his life that he would just make up crazy stories about being this World War II hero. Nuclear physicist.

Oh, God. He was blind. 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. It is. So Larry Wright and HBO did a documentary based on that book.

Larry Wright, Janet Reitman. They all took their material from my friend John Atack, who was a former member, OT5, who wrote a book called A Piece of Blue Sky. And John put together this conference in Toronto called Getting Clear. The website is gettingclear.co. And we debunked not only Hubbard but the entire policies inside the organization. I was explaining mind control, and it's going to be made live on the Internet that people can watch all of this. The reason that he did this and why I encouraged him to do this

was people were leaving David Miscavige's Church of Scientology but starting their own splinter group of Scientology where they were still idolizing Hubbard and still doing the tech. And we wanted to debunk the whole thing from start to finish. And I think it was done very masterfully. So they were starting like subgroups where they came up with their own stuff? No, they were doing, they were taking, they were on automatic pilot of all the indoctrinations. He's trying to get you to bring that microphone closer up to your face.

Yeah, sorry about that. No worries. 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 – all the criminal activities that were being done. you know, all the criminal activities that were being done, they were creating independent Scientologists and trying to keep doing auditing and keep doing the processing. And it's like, dudes, come on, like, wake up. Wow. The whole system was warped and weird and, like, get free.

So were they trying to, like, find some beneficial aspects of what they had based most of their life on? Is that what it was? Right. Trying to salvage some of it? Right. But to use the cult identity thing, their cult identity was trying to redo things. That Miss Cabbage guy is a trip.

Mm-hmm. Listen to him talk in those conversations, and especially that giant speech that he, when they got tax-free status. Like, wow. That was amazing. So there's a really good book by Tony Ortega. It has a V blog. If anyone listening wants to know about Scientology, it's TonyOrtega.org. He wrote a book called The Unbreakable Miss Lovely about Paulette Cooper,

who was a friend of mine when I left the Moonies in 1976. She wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology. And the book is all about her life story and how this group harassed the hell out of her. Scientology. Yes, because she told the truth about Hubbard and the organization. And Hubbard said, never defend, always attack. And they did all these criminal activities systematically, which still goes on to this day. 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.

I don't know if I can handle it. I don't know if I can handle it. I'm too busy today. No worries. But you're doing that. You're doing something at the Steve Allen Theater? Yes. Tomorrow night, the Steve Allen Theater.

Steve Allen, by the way, his son was in a cult for 11 years, and he was a big supporter. I watched you on the Steve Allen Show. That was one of the first things I saw of you. 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 loved I love him for it and now I get to be at the theater named after him talking about the book again but the new edition and these days I'm particularly focused on helping victims of pimps and traffickers. Pimps? Pimps and traffickers.

Is that like sort of a form of cult in some ways? It is a commercial cult. They do all the bite model, the behavior control, information control, thought control, emotional control, make people over into a new identity. And they are dependent and obedient. 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. So to basically understand that they don't love the women in their stable, that they're products for exploitation. And the only way to win the game is to end it and get out

and have a life. It's fascinating that you equate those because it makes sense, but I've never done it before. I've never put it in my head and thought of a pimp and a prostitute being like the pimp runs a cult. So if you read some of the manuals online by pimps, how to brainwash the hose is their terminology for women. I actually tell the story in Chapter 6 of Rachel Thomas, who was recruited while she was a junior at Emory College. 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. And then he started beating her up and farming her out for sex and threatening to kill her family if she told anybody. Fortunately, she turned to the FBI. He's in jail. She's doing a project to help young girls. And we've co-developed this because she read my book. She said that this really helps me to understand how he did it to me. Have you ever seen those documentaries like Pimps Up, Hosed Down, or American Pimp? Yes, yes.

Yeah, 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. Right, right. 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. And he was a pedophile, and he had to leave the U.S. because he was going to be arrested. And 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, the religious terminology, the family, et cetera. And so sex trafficking. And then the other thing that is occupying a lot of people's consciousness is terrorist cults like ISIS and Boko Haram, which are trafficking women, by the way. which are trafficking women, by the way. 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 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. But my heart goes out to them,

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. Wow. So they were training you to sword fight, you said? 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. And so, you know, whatever I was told to do, I did. And it's incredibly frightening. Literally, when I saw the bodies face down at Jonestown, my first thought was, I could have done that. And when I saw the planes going into the

World Trade Center, I thought, yeah, I could have done that too. That's part of my passion and what propels me so many years later, because the problem hasn't gone away. It's gotten worse. Have documentaries like Going Clear, the HBO documentary, has that helped? Definitely. It's been great. My gripe about his book and the documentary is that it didn't deal at all with mind control or brainwashing 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. Well, he's only got enough time to just fill an hour and a half or whatever it was, two hours. There's so much information.

So my rant, Joe, when Wright's book first came out, I did a short video rant. 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. That was what I said. So I was frustrated, in other words. Because you have brilliant people like Paul Haggis, who has an incredible Hollywood career, saying I was stupid for believing this for 30 years and giving so much money to them. And what has happened to those guys?

And he's not stupid. Right. What has happened to those guys? And he's not stupid. Right. What has happened to those guys? Are they being attacked? The group has changed dramatically because of former leaders coming out and speaking out. The group Anonymous helped a lot initially by wearing masks and saying, come on, let's protest. It scared them, and it created a culture where people were more empowered to speak out against them. Right now, we want 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 how they achieved tax-exempt status by a litany of lawsuits. 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.

How can they be so easily influenced to give these... I mean, all you have to do is read one of his fucking books. Right. And you go, this guy? This guy wrote Scientology? The guy wrote Battlefield Earth? Like, fucking Christ. Right.

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 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. be the best person you can be. One needs to operate with some consumer awareness and say, who is this person? What is his background? Is he trustworthy? And whatever it is, seek critics and ex-members and know that if it's true, it will stand up to scrutiny. 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 in 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. Well, that's how they suck you in, right? I mean, they suck you in with Dianetics. When I was living in California for the first time in 94, there was no internet or I hadn't been on yet. It was just starting to get on.

I think I might have gotten a computer around then. There was a late night television commercial for Dianetics and it was the volcano. Remember the volcano? Of course, the OT3 story of Xenu and the galactic dictatorship. Yeah. Well, the volcano just looked like, you know, unleashing your potential to me.

Like, yes, Dianetics, powerful. I had, you know, listened to some Anthony Robbins books on tape, and I was ready to rock and roll, you know, I was trying to benefit myself. He was studying Erickson and NLP, and that is basically covert hypnotic. Can you have a happier marriage in 1989? Page 111. How can you have more job satisfaction in 1989? Page 227. Yeah, this was the commercial. So I bought the book. I ordered it online.

I don't even remember how I paid. I guess I had a credit card. And these fucking people would not stop sending me things. I mean, for years. 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 i mean it was just amazing how persistent you were counted as one of the eight million followers even though there's really 20 000 or less i was a follower so like you were counted because your name your name exactly am i in a database like a

dianetics member or so i? So am I in Scientology? Was I at one point in time? No, man. Well, how would I count it then? Because cults like to fudge statistics and claim that they're much bigger than they really are. So what is the actual number of Scientologists? The number that my friends tell me is it's 20,000 or less. That's not that many.

In the world. That's it that many. In the world. That's it? Yeah. So how do they have so much real estate? They have billions of dollars. They've sucked a lot of wealthy people dry. That's incredible. Paul Haggis paid a shitload of money, right?

That's one of the things he talked about. Yeah. Hubbard was into money and power. Money and power. Sex. Sex. It's the three universals with all destructive cults. Yeah, like the Waco thing, right?

They always want to have sex with everybody's wife. Yeah, power, money, sex. Interestingly, I met Byron Sage last December, who was the lead FBI negotiator with David Koresh at Waco. Is he the guy that sent the tanks in to burn everybody up? I'm afraid so. Or somebody. Not such a good negotiator. In the FBI.

No, he was clearly unhappy. And he more or less said that we didn't know what we were doing. And we wish that we had known what to do. He was clearly unhappy with the result? Yeah, he knew that they screwed up. Well, that's a nice way of saying they murdered a bunch of people. Because that's what they did. The videos were clearly established.

Well, they should never have gone in with guns in the first place. David Koresh was molesting minors, and they were making automatic weapons. But they could have lured him into town and arrested him, and they could have taken away the guns. They were sure that he molested minors? Oh, yeah. Yeah? How old were the minors? Ten.

Oh, God. Kerry Jewell testified before Congress as one of his victims. Barry Jewell testified before Congress as one of his victims. But I guess because of the – I want to come back to how I learned about you and your good work with Stefan Molyneux, if I may, and Free Domain Radio. You can say good work. It was just a conversation where I asked him some questions. But it helped a lot of members wake up because they respect you and they got to listen to their divine leader lie. And it was powerful to hear him say, oh, no, I don't tell people to defoo. I always tell people to go to therapists before they cut off from all their family and friends. And people knew that that was a blatant lie.

And it took a chink out of the mysticism of people who were true believers because you held your own with him. 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. So my hat's off to you for that. It wasn't my intention. My intention was just to have a conversation with him and try to figure out what he's doing or what his thought process is. He's got some really good ideas about things.

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 a narco capitalism or anarchism like you you don't want any government whatsoever like who's gonna fix the streets so

there was and there was no answers to the right who's gonna pay for anything who's gonna who's gonna organize where what do you how you gonna like this is not like a well thought out thing this is like this someone someone said it best that he's an incredibly eloquent man that is screaming north while pretending to be holding a compass that's interesting 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 when he's in fact enslaving people into a totalistic belief system. 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 philosophy and... I don't know enough about him. I was hired by a family to consult to help a young man who was getting sucked in. And they were worried that he would try to cut off contact. And fortunately, he's okay. So it was a relatively new phenomenon for me. But what was particularly interesting about this particular cult was that he was recruiting over over the internet and that's how isis is largely recruiting as well so it was an interesting well

you say recruiting though how does he how does he recruit he just does videos where he kind of talks about his ideas right right and he gets followers to tell other people to watch the videos. And they watch for hours and hours and hours. And he rewires their thought processes to the point where he gets them to question their own belief systems, their own value systems. And because he's a bully and he's a loudmouth and he talks so confidently about a lot of things that he doesn't really know very well. Like what? We talked a little bit before about Robin Williams. Yeah. And that as just one small example.

Yeah, the Robin Williams, he made a video where he was saying that Robin Williams killed himself because of all the women that were addicted to free shit, I think is the way he described it, that these women

who were addicted to getting money from him, they sucked him dry. Robin and I had the same agent. He was worth millions of dollars when he died.

He was not broke in any way, shape, or form. He certainly was diminishing in his ability or his form. He certainly was diminishing in his ability or his ability to earn money was diminishing as he was getting older, but that's just normal for actors. Right. You know, he, he was, he had real depression and he also had, um, Parkinson's and the Parkinson's medication that he was on, one of the side effects was severe depression.

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. He wrote a paper on surgery and how people who have undergone large, very traumatic surgeries like Robin when he had open heart surgery, oftentimes experience post-surgery depression and that it's a physiological response to your body being under in anesthesia for long periods of time, plus the physical trauma of the actual surgery itself, the injury and your body's healing. Right. surgery itself the injury and your body's healing 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 your chest plate has been spread apart it's very traumatic physically traumatic and that oftentimes can lead to a diminished state 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 have that conversation with him, like trying to expose him. I had that conversation with him, just asking 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

fantasizing that you would invite him back and i would be here and then some families who've been cut off from their loved one would be here and we could be like, dude, tell all your followers to get a therapist and reconnect with their families. Like if you really care, do something. The defooing thing was one of the things that he said. Fooing is family of origin. F-O-O, family of origin. And he apparently is fond of telling certain people to get rid of... All of his followers, and not just your family, though, your friends, your childhood friends that have nothing to do with your family.

Because he wants people not to have other influences in their life that can say, hey, dude, what are you doing? But do you think this is conscious? Do you think this is a conscious thing, or do you think this is a natural state of someone trying to achieve power? I mean, what is the mechanism behind that? I don't know about him specifically. I would say most cult leaders are not cold, calculating con artists. They're delusional. They're delusional. They often were victims of mind control themselves and are kind of playing out of an identification with the aggressor type scenario.

I don't know enough about him to comment intelligently, but for me, it's about wanting people to reclaim their personal power. Right. And I want to say to anyone who's involved with Molyneux 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. Ask yourself when you were first getting involved with Molyneux, what did you think you were getting into? When you were first getting involved with Molyneux, what did you think you were getting into? 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? And if the answer was no...

What do you mean, turning over your trust funds? Turning over your money. What do you mean? And who's turning over money? Money. What do you mean? And who's turning over money? 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. Because they need it more than you.

He's not asking people to give them all their money. He's not doing that. He's not asking people to turn over their trust fund. 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. I don't want to misspeak. So if you are sure about that, I will go with you. Yeah, I've over trust funds. I don't want to misspeak. So if you are sure about that, I will go with you. Yeah, I've never heard that. I've never heard that accusation. But my impression from him when I first met him is that he's very intelligent.

And oftentimes very intelligent people are frustrated by really stupid people that are around them. And when he has solutions for particular issues that are in society or particular behavior patterns. He speaks about them very confidently, and people become enthralled with that. 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. And sometimes you get ahead of yourself. There's momentum in that, and sometimes you get in front of the wheel And you can't stop it

And then you're just spouting off about everything like you would do these videos the truth about this or the truth about that The truth about people that died and you're talking about like people that had very complex lives They lived a hundred years or whatever the fuck they lived. And you can't just boil that down into one video with very little research, especially when you're doing a hundred other videos a week and you're doing all these interviews and doing podcasts and doing all these things. 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. And even then, like Dan Carlin is my favorite historian. He doesn't even call himself an historian, but as a podcaster, he's brilliant in his podcast, Hardcore History.

One of the best things about it, he will offer opposing points of view. He will say some people believe that this is what happens. There's some dispute about this because it seems to be that there's certain schools of thought about why this took place I think that's super important. So whenever you start saying the truth about something like man that you're just You just can't do that You know and that's why the truth about Robin Williams as a person as a professional stand-up 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. 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. Right. 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 Molyneux's claims, etc. And Cooperson has studied a number of Molyneux videos and the whole ideology. And he's written a great book, by the way. It's

on stoplegalchildabuse.com is David's website. 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 abusive family. 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. So anyway, I wanted to get a plug in for his book and the fact that, and then I wanted to mention Molly Koch, mollybkoch.com wrote a book on

parenting called 27 Secrets to Raising Amazing Children. And she too, when I asked her to comment as an expert on parenting about what Molyneux 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. 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. 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 from me too cutting them off is a great idea

i disagree really 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 i didn't say that but what do you mean if that if you're in that scenario. But if you're in that scenario. I'm saying you should be in therapy if that's happened to you. And your therapist should consider, depending on the course of treatment, approaching the father or the mother and getting them into therapy. Maybe they need to get off of alcohol or drugs. Or maybe they need to get off of alcohol or drugs, or maybe they need therapy. But just cutting off your entire background and past, chop it off, for me, is really not a healthy long-term solution.

But I'm not even saying cutting off your entire past. I'm saying don't have contact with someone who is horrible to you. You don't. 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. against the mother, which is horrendous. 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. Being with an ethical therapist and finding a way to evaluate

what's happening with them and 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 don't re victimize yourself, don't allow yourself to continue to be abused. 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. Do you think it's a mistake across the board?

I do. But there have 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. I'm not talking about hanging out. Well, I mean, even communicating with them. Why have any contact with someone who horribly abused you? Just because they're family? Would you do that to a friend? communicating with them why have any contact with someone who horribly abused you just because they're family would you do that to a friend so this idea that blood and dna somehow or another

make you inexorably connected to some person that was horribly abusive to you 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 they'll always be in your life uh i think a friend who raped me uh is a different category than a father a brother sister a brother well how is it different um because it's blood i guess that seems crazy that seems like ape thinking that's like monkey thinking that doesn't make any sense well i mean if someone if someone was horribly abusive to you and they're an evil person and we we both agree that there are evil people in the world, right? Yeah.

Okay. If someone was evil to you 30 years ago, the question is, are they still evil today? Why find out? Why not? Because it's not enough time. A hundred years if you're lucky. You know, I mean, do you want to really try to fix someone who raped you and beat you

up most of your childhood? I don't know. I work with people who were raised in the children of God, and they were raped by their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. And they want to have a healthy relationship with their children because they realize that's the past. It's not now. And that they were doing the best they could under those circumstances because that's how they were indoctrinated to be. Right, but this is a different thing. You're talking about people having, you just said people having a relationship with their own children. You're not talking about people that, the people that raped them and abused them.

You're not talking about people having a relationship with those people. 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. But they were having abusive sex. Right. That was not something that they were ready for or wanted to have and it hurt, etc. Now they're out. And for me to just say, look, cut off all 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. For me, that's not the ideal. It's not my position as a healer, as someone who's worked with so many other people. But my position as a healer, as someone who's worked with so many other people – 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. I'm saying use professionals as mediators to see what's possible in terms of constructive, healthy change. 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. I guess I'm not meaning to sound so absolute, and every case should be evaluated individually. But I do have, I guess I've had too many cases where it was this kind of total cutoff. Right. I see what you're saying.

And maybe it's justified, but maybe it's not. 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. You can keep carrying the pain and the judgment and say oh 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 but shouldn't the onus be on the person who victimized you if someone raped you and beat you shouldn't the onus be on them to come and apologize to you or attempt to apologize to you not to seek them out and bring them to therapy and try to hash it out with them.

I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think everyone ultimately has to take responsibility for their own lives and their own actions. I mean, I felt terrible for a lot of the things that I did in the Moonies. And I did my best to reach out to people I had recruited whose lives I had interfered with. And it was a burden for many, many years, as long as they continue to be in the group. 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 victimized them and the very way you're trying to shield

people from today 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 well and i think people can grow and people can change. They can or they cannot. Right. They can also stagnate. But I'm an advocate for change. I am too.

But I also believe there's some people that are just beyond fucked up and there's nothing you can do about them. And it's not a bad idea to cut them off. 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. 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. And ultimately, they felt better to, you know, to forgive that person but not communicate with them.

See, here's where we differ. See, here's where we differ. I guess I have more of the Jewish angle on forgiveness. 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. That's kind of the Jewish formula. And only then is the person who is wronged in a position to forgive. But I'm not of the thing of just forgive. 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. 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 at the when

I was in therapy instead of being angry at him me under 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 just say, stand there, because I need a hug. And by the time he was in his 80s, he was actually wanting the hug. 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 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.

And I had a relatively normal, boring in many ways because they didn't smoke. He wasn't abusive. And I had a relatively normal child, you know, boring in many ways, because they didn't smoke, they didn't drink, they didn't have affairs. I lived in the same house. I wasn't like moving all over that, you know, wasn't a child of divorce. 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. 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. 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.

And there could be some really radical, positive changes that happen. That could be a really good thing. I see your point in up to a certain degree. There's a certain degree of abuse that i think some parents have enacted on their children there was a story that someone told me recently about this brother that was raping his sister and the you know this went on for years and then the dad found out about it and the dad joined in and this went on for more years those people can both go themselves if i was that girl and if i knew that girl i would tell them them to 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 they're family, they'll treat you like family too. I think 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 don't, it's like just, you just get a random hand of cards, you know,

and that's your family. And you just have to accept that for the rest of your life. And then when they fuck up, you have to keep trying to forgive them or help them or bring them together or not. say not 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 if you can get away from them stay away from them hopefully they're in jail now i don't know what happened in that particular situation but i grew up with a father that beat the fuck out of my mother and i saw it it a bunch of times when I was little. And I was five years old and my mom left. So these images are very old and they're very distorted.

But they're 100% real. There's certain things that were undeniable about the physical abuse. And I have had no desire to talk to that person ever since. And I don't ever want to. I don't need it 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 the fuck out of my mom in front of me i don't need that and i don't think i don't think you need that to heal and grow i don't

think it's necessary and i'm not imposing my point of view on you. 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. 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. Right. But they're still acting as if it is. And there's no effort to reality test, to actually talk to the siblings or talk with the neighbors or see if there's a – most sexual predators have multiple victims.

They're usually not just enacting on one particular person. And what I've been saying from the beginning is, you know, find a good therapist who's experienced with trauma and sexual abuse and such. And do it. Do your process. and such and do it. Do your process and consider, and especially if there's anyone listening who's a follower of Stefan Molyneux, who's cut off contact with their brothers and their sisters and their mothers and their fathers. How many people have done that? Is this an epidemic? I think there are hundreds.

Really? I think there are hundreds. And I'm just saying, take a time out from Molyneux. Stop listening to his podcasts for a few weeks. Learn about mind control. Learn about cults. Read the book. I watched a video that was put online by a follower of Molyneux who had just left. And I reached out to him. I said I've got free videos on my Freedom of Mind

website. Check out my book. And he just emailed me literally yesterday, it was this morning, saying, you know, it's given me a new understanding about everything. Thank you so much. 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. Because they're embarrassed. Yeah. 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,

and they were supposed to be the best man, or they borrowed money over and over and over again. The family's like, screw you. We never want to hear from you again. Now the person's woken up. They've left Scientology, and nobody in the family wants anything to do with them. 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. And they were doing what they thought they were supposed to do by being in the cult. And, you know, you were right to be angry at them for not being there for mom and for not being there. However, it doesn't mean that they're bad, bad people and that there isn't some value in reconnecting again. It was one of the

more disturbing parts of going clear was seeing the people that were just emotionally devastated by the fact their family wouldn't talk to them anymore because they had been excommunicated. Right. So this disconnection, the JWs call it disfellowshipping, 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. legitimate religion, certainly not any legitimate organization, 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. They're taking it to another level, right? They're saying you can't talk to them. It is against the rules to talk to them.

They're not encouraging, defooing, you know, getting rid of your family of original origin. They're encouraging. No, they are. They're saying essentially there's no rule. There's a rule. I mean, it's not encouraging. They're actually saying, like, you can't talk to them. Right.

And if you do talk with them, then you risk being kicked out of the group, too. Right. That's the threat. Now, one of the things about mind control cults is, like I was shown The Exorcist. If I was going to leave the moonies, part of my unconscious saw that little girl with the, et cetera. In the mind of someone under mind control, they can't visualize themselves out of the group being happy and fulfilled. 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.

And they put phobias in members' minds against any mental health professional. 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 refused to refute his gay daughter when he learned that Scientology came out against the bill in California. That was his wake-up call because his love for his daughter trumped the cult ideology. How bizarre is that, that Scientology has anti-homosexual ideas? I think it's very bizarre, but a lot of cults are very anti. But why? Because Hubbard

was a homophobe. Is that what it is? Yeah. 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. So how does it fit with a guy like John Travolta, who's allegedly gay? How does it fit with a guy like John Travolta, who's allegedly gay? That seems so bizarre. It's incredibly horrible. Because essentially, the cult identity does not want to acknowledge the person's true self. And every time he acts out his true nature, he feels bad.

But the speculation is that they have some dirt on him. 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. And they do. PC folders, et cetera. They said that in the Time magazine cover story. In 1990, there's a huge amount of fear and threat that if you leave the group or speak out against the group, they're going to come after you and ruin your life. And unfortunately, a lot of people

have fear. 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. Go and tell whatever you want to tell, but screw you i'm not going to live like that go and tell whatever you want to tell that screw you for certain people though the the ideology of scientology the the the the the tenants or the you know the principles seem to help them give them some sort of structure 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 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 seems like at least

some of what they're doing is trying to enhance your ability to function as a person right is that not true uh they say one thing and what they do is another thing. They say that they're going to give you power over your mind, over your body, over matter, energy, time, and space. 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. But what we know from the placebo effect, the power of authority and the power of suggestion is what's happening here. It's not the techniques itself. It's not the ideology. 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. You got a boogie? Yeah, it's pretty late, 530. We're supposed to end this half an hour ago. Your bladder's talking? Go ahead, man. There's a bathroom right over there, and we'll just wrap this up, and I'll tell everybody.

All right. We're going to wrap this up here. Combating Cult Mind Control, Steve Hassan. And you can get a hold of steve on twitter his twitter handle is hold on one second it is a cult expert at cult expert on twitter um fascinating conversation i don't know if i agree with him on everything but but obviously a very knowledgeable guy and a very nice guy. So that's a 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 Callen, the full boat. God damn it. And it'll be fun. All right. We'll see you soon much love bye