The Jordan Harbinger Show - 628: Amanda Montell | Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Amanda Montell (@amandamontell) is a language scholar and author of critically acclaimed Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Her latest book is Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, which explores how cults co-opt the words we use in order to control us and affect our behavior. What We Discuss with Amanda Montell: How the uncertainty of current times drives people toward the solace of community — and the sights of aspiring cult leaders and con artists. What personal experience drew Amanda, a language scholar, to explore how language is one of the most powerful tools of manipulation cults use to exploit their victims? What thought-terminating cliches are and why they're so effective at shaping behavior. How MLMs operate like cults and who they predominately target with empty promises of wealth and prestige. How to tell if your language is being taken over by cultish manipulators. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/628 Miss our conversation with the American photographer who survived seven months under captivity by Al-Qaeda? Catch up with episode 217: Matthew Schrier | How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Back in the good old days of cults, like you kind of had to have the charisma and just the organizational skills to get a bunch of people in the same room, to get up on a pulpit and preach at them for a few hours,

to compel them to keep coming back, IRL. Now, especially with the pandemic, I mean, speaking of like the perfect conditions for a cult, it's not really possible as much to meet in person. But what's also making this time so cultish is that you no longer have to be. able to manipulate an individual standing in front of you. You just have to be able to manipulate an algorithm, and that's a whole lot easier to do.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have high signal, low noise conversations with astronauts and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional mafia, national security advisor, or rocket scientist. In each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and I love it when you do that, we've got our episode starter packs.

These are collections of top episodes organized by topic. New listeners can find out what we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or, of course, to help somebody else get started, and those playlists are also available on Spotify. Today, y'all know I'm a fan of exposing cults, scams, manipulative, organizations and the way that they operate. Today's episode is no exception. Amanda Montel, author of Caltish, joins us to discuss how cults co-opt the words we use in order to control us and affect our behavior. We'll cover MLM scams, QAnon, Scientology, and all the usual suspects,

but with a focus on how these groups use language to confuse and control and what we can do to protect ourselves and those we love from the undue influence of these creepy cultish organizations. Now, just to note, when I refer to MLM here on the episode, I mean multi-level marketing organizations like Herbalife and Dutera and others that I think are toxic and scamy and also bad for society and, of course, very cult-like. If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over in our six-minute networking course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The course is all about improving your networking skills, your connection skills,

and inspiring others to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It'll also make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker, and it's decidedly not culty. That's Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Amanda Montel. So why are people so obsessed with cults? I can't help. but be a little bit obsessed with cults, whether it's multi-level marketing or Scientology or some what is it, O'Sho, Rajneesh on Netflix. Like I want to see all of that stuff and listen to all those podcasts.

And even though many of them are the same, I kind of can't get enough. And it's weird because I don't really care. I've never been in one. I don't know anyone outside of people that have come to me on the show that have been in one. And yet I can't help but Rubberneck. What's going on here? Yeah, I would just claim that we're all a bunch of twisted voyers who get off on

darkness and tragedy. But I think you named it. It's partially rubbernecking. We can enter fight or flight just sitting where we are reading a headline or watching a documentary. And I think on some level when we binge cult documentary after cult documentary, and every time I tell myself that like I've seen enough and I'm sick of talking about this stuff, another video, whether it's just of like overzealous Taylor Swift stands will just like suck me in. And I think when we binge that content, we're on some level scanning for threats to determine whether or not this group, this cellotry is a direct danger to us. And then we very quickly, as a self-protective mechanism, tell ourselves, like, no, I would never fall for something like that. I'm too skeptical. I'm

too confident. I have too strong a sense of self, or I'm too well-educated. But the fact of the matter is that we might not all fall for the same type of cultish influence, but these techniques of manipulation really spare no one. I kind of understand it and I have seen in the past and I was in my 20s. I was really into like certain self-help and dating stuff. And I saw it get culty and I stayed a little bit away from it. But then when I look back now at age 40, I'm like, okay, I did dip my toes a little bit

into those waters. Like I stayed away from the actual cult stuff. But I was really, I was still in the room with the people who would like run to the front to upgrade to the advance program. And I was like, I don't know why, but I'm not into this. And later I'm like, oh, because it was psycho and not really helpful. and totally weird. That's why.

And I look at the things where, like, these self-help cults have all these grown people crying about their childhood wounds, even though it's, like, day two in the afternoon. And you're hugging a 50-year-old man who's crying like a child in your lap. And you're like, I don't really, can't put my finger on it,

but something is not quite right about this business development seminar or, like, leadership training, or whatever I got suckered into. Totally. But I think it says so much about how badly human beings want to connect with one another and want to engage in sort of culty rituals, linguistic and otherwise, because especially when it comes to language,

which is the topic of my book, like we are so willing to do that chant. Like, we are so willing to do that call and response. We are so willing to pick up on that exclusive terminology because it just feels good to belong. But I like you, yeah,

I have a track record of like dropping out of slightly cultish groups and communities and clubs. Like I was a theater kid in my, childhood and I had this habit of dropping out of like theater communities because everybody was just too damn culty and everybody would like worship the theater teacher and just everybody wearing black and constantly singing rent. I was like I can't. That's funny because it's as far as cults go somewhat harmless to really like this teacher who's just a passionate guy and makes like probably not enough money to put up with the amount of crap he puts up with. Yeah. Well, debatable.

debatable because I mean who would be more vulnerable to cultish influence than like a young misfit kid who also kind of thinks maybe they could be famous. That's an easy person to take advantage of. Yeah, that's a good point. You don't think of high school theater teacher as a dangerous predator and most of them aren't to be fair, but you're right. It's kind of like a, what do you call it? Like it's like an unexplored niche. So if you're looking for a cult, maybe really what you want to be is a high school theater teacher. Theater kids, theater communities, that is a cultish topic that I plan to cover on my podcast sometime in the future because I'm very interested in these sort of niche groups that we might not all agree

our full-blown cults on the level of Scientology. Scientology is another group that definitely recruits theater kids and aspiring actors, but that we can all at least agree are cultish. Do you think people, especially young people now, are looking more for meaning, I guess maybe spirituality, but also just meaning and not getting it through regular faith because you see people leave churches and things like that, but instead maybe they like go to Soul Cycle one day and they're like, whoa, filling a need that I have that I didn't maybe even know I had. Totally. Well, I think that meaning, purpose, ritual community, these are

profoundly human drives that have existed since the earliest hominids, you know, like even early humans would gather with their tribes in circles and engaged in group song and group dance, even though there was no adaptive or survival benefit. It just felt good. It felt profoundly human. And I think right now is an interestingly cultish time because our sources of meaning and connection and community are changing. So increasingly young people in particular are losing trust in these traditional sites of spirituality like our churches and our synagogues that we maybe grew up in. We're also losing trust in larger institutions like the government, the health care system. But we're still craving those things and want to fill those voids. And so we look to alternative groups. Scholars at

the Harvard Divinity School, for example, have done studies finding that groups like SoulCycle and CrossFit are some of the sites that are filling this truly religious craving or spiritual craving that we continue to have. These are sort of like secular forms of religion. That sounds like an oxymoron, but I think it really can't exist. Wellness spaces, so many different spaces are serving this spiritual and community role in people's lives, and not all of them are destructive, but some of them are. And it's really like the Wild West

in terms of cultishness, particularly with social media. Yeah, we'll get into a little bit of that in a bit here. But I think cults seem to arise during times when people are maybe a little bit lost, or at least they arise in people's lives. But right now, look, a lot of people

might be looking for a savior. We have QAnon, which is like the sort of dumbest, but also largest example of that recently where people believe completely ridiculous things, and those things keep evolving in it. There's not even one doctrine, but it's also like, no, the world isn't this big, chaotic mess that I can't make sense of. It's all a secret plan, and I'm in on it, but everybody else is not. So actually, I'm the important one

that's doing well. And all these other people who looked like they were beating me in life are actually just sheep. Yes, exactly. So especially during times of sociopolitical turbulence, larger cultural tumult, we crave answers and closure and comfort. And there are plenty of megalomaniacal gurus in person and online, especially online nowadays, who are willing to take advantage of those cravings. QAnon is tricky because we tend to think of it as like this community of Maga bros and like their parents' basements following the cue drops. But as time has gone on, QAnon has really come to encapsulate every breed of.

of conspiratorial thinking that exists nowadays. It's like this spider web of Q&N denomination. So even if you're not willing to get on board with Pizza Gate type ideas or the global Hollywood elites like sex trafficking children or whatever, you might get on board with anti-vax rhetoric that could serve as an on-ramp to the more extreme stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting because another spike in cultural turbulence was during the 60s and 70s when we saw the emeritus. of so many new religious movements, the more politically correct term for cults, like

everything from Scientology to, you know, Jews for Jesus. What's different now is that we're seeing similar tumult, but the internet has made it such that there is now for better and for worse, a cult for everyone. You know, back in the good old days of cults, like you kind of had to have the charisma and just the organizational skills to get a bunch of people in the same room, to get up on a pulpit and preach at them for a few hours to compel them to keep coming back, IRL. Now, especially with the pandemic, I mean, speaking of like the perfect conditions for a cult, it's not really possible as much to meet in person. But what's also making this time so cultish is that you no longer have to be able to manipulate an individual standing in front of you.

You just have to be able to manipulate an algorithm. And that's a whole lot easier to do. Yeah, we've seen some of it. You mentioned in the book, Teal Swan, who's like this very, how do you even describe her, a bizarro influencer that in ways maybe or maybe not, allegedly convinces some people to just kill themselves because it's better that way. And she is like not somebody that I would follow because I just immediately cringe and sort of am not interested at all in somebody like that. But I can see the allure for somebody like that. She's almost like a siren.

Totally, right. So she has this sort of like divinely feminine energy. She is someone I would classify as like a spiritual influence. a new age influencer. These people are a dime a dozen now, but she got her start a little bit earlier, you know, 10 or 12 years ago. And she would exploit, you know,

SEO marketing, you know, other clever internet marketing tactics in order to capitalize on the lonely Googlings of people struggling with their mental health. And she would create these videos where she would combine the language of the DSM, you know, real mental health diagnoses like borderline or anxiety,

with spiritual, language, talk of frequencies and vibrations and the Akashic records. And what this vernacular would do, you know, suggest that she's tapped into a power higher than science, that she has this sort of prophetic power. And by aligning with her, whether you're watching her videos casually or signing up for her exclusive teal tribe or following her to, you know, one of her retreats in the wilderness, you can gain access to that transcendent wisdom. And definitely her delivery and her look create this charisma that really seem to resonate and continues to. Developed countries seem to have less culty behavior. And I'm going to actually take a little bit

of exception with that because I feel like if we count MLMs as cults, then maybe that's not true at all. But if we just talk about spiritual cults, developed countries tend to have less culty behavior. The United States is definitely an exception though. Why? So we tend to see this pattern where countries that have higher standards of living, longer life expectancies, higher education levels tend to just have fewer believers in religions, traditional, and alternative. But the U.S. is this glaring exception, as you mentioned, where we do have those comparatively high standards of living. And yet there are so many religious people here, people who believe in all kinds of spirituality, traditional, and otherwise. One of the potential answers for this or explanations for

this is that in places like Scandinavia and Japan, obviously these countries have their own problems, but there are these social safety nets in place such that if a person loses their job or becomes very ill, there will be institutional support to catch them when they fall so that they don't die or become destitute. And we don't have as many of those things here in the United States. And so that combined with our culture of individualism leaves people feeling pretty existentially high and dry, unmoored. And so they look to these alternative groups in order to find that support. And again, some of them are mostly harmless and some of them are profoundly unethical. But this seems to be the pattern throughout our culture. I know you're interested,

in part you're interested in cults because your dad had joined one and you, did you grow up in one? Is that, am I understanding that correctly, in a way, or grew up around one? I don't know how you would phrase it. Okay, so I guess my argument is that we're all a member of something cultish to some degree. I was in the cult of my community theater. I'm certainly now in the cult of Instagram. I lost my phone and didn't get another one for like a week. And I was in true withdrawal purely because I couldn't log into Instagram.

So my dad was forced to join a cult when he was 14. Oh, okay. Yeah, his dad was a card carrying communist. He considered himself an intellectual. And the year was 1969. He wanted in on the blossoming countercultural movement. And he heard of this group called Synanon, which started out as an alternative drug rehabilitation center for hard drug users and then grew to accommodate so-called lifestylers

or people who were interested in sort of this socialist utopian way of life. And so my dad's dad and my dad's new stepmother forced my dad and his two little toddler age half-sisters to move on to this compound in the Bay Area where kids lived, separate from their parents and weren't allowed to go to an outside school. And at a point, everyone shaved their heads and everybody, you know, dressed in this very conformist style. And my dad had up until that point grown up in Manhattan School of Hard Knocks in poverty in New York City. And he took a look around and he was like, this is a cult. This looks like a cult. And so he sort of flew under the radar. He broke the rules and hitched a ride into

San Francisco every day to go to an outside school, graduated from high school by the skin of his teeth, got into Berkeley, and then now he's a neuroscientist. So he, he worked out in his life. He's doing just fine. But he always identified throughout my entire childhood as anti-group. He was, you know, obviously like pretty triggered by groups. Yeah, I mean, starting in the communists and then going into a cult, it's like, you know what? I've had enough of organizations. Totally. He still, though, interestingly, thought it was important for me to have like a spiritual reference point. So I was raised in like a very, very reformed Jewish synagogue. Just, I guess, because community is still important.

I don't know. And this is the thing. We can't think of these things in such a binary fashion. It's like cult or not a cult. It's more nuanced than that. But anyway, I grew up on my dad's stories of Sinanon and the conformist milieu and all the wild rituals that went on there. For example, every night everyone in Sinan had to participate in an activity called

The Game, which was this extreme truth-telling event when people would gather around. Already creepy. Oh, yeah. The creepiest. And this same thing is done in a lot of groups from Jonestown all the way to Amazon, cult of Amazon, if you will. We can talk about that more later. But you gather around a circle and you basically have to subject yourself to vicious personal criticism by your peers. Like North Korea style.

I'm no expert in North Korea. But yeah. Yeah. And so you would like single out, you know, someone in the circle and you would be like, hey, Jordan, you son of a bitch. Like you're so lazy. I see you like moping around. Like don't you know how lucky you are to be here? You better like get your shit together.

And there was all of this like special terminology that they would use in synon to create that sense of solidarity and to shut down independent thinking. There was this phrase act as if that was this imperative that if someone wanted to question one of the leader, Chuck Deidrich's rules or protocols, you would just tell them act as if, which meant act as if you believe in this until you do because eventually you will. And so I was really fascinated to hear about all of this terminology and that kind of planted the seed of my fascination with cults and cultish language. The language is so crucial to the existence of a cult. And you write about this. This is the focus

of the book, but language obscures truth. It enhances bias. And you know, you can really tell when somebody is in some sort of culty thing because it's almost like they can no longer talk without using that language. Have you ever heard? I had a couple friend of mine and they were obsessed with Landmark at the time. And they would argue about things and I'm just like, what are you talking about? You're trying to make me wrong

about making you wrong. And now you're on this, and I'm like, is this English? What is even going on? Yeah. And I asked my friend, I'm like, Robbie,

what are you talking about with Allison? He's like, oh, we went to Landmark and so like being wrong, is it, and then he's explaining all this stuff. And I'm like,

but it's just as meaningless as anything else because now you're just arguing over semantic definitions instead of the problem that you guys were having. And he's like, yeah,

It's not very helpful. Totally. I mean, one of the things that cultish rhetoric, you know, these special buzzwords and labels does is it sort of, it's not saying anything that can't be said in plain English. It has these ulterior motives just to, you know, make you feel this sense of elitism. Like, who doesn't remember learning Pig Latin on the playground as a child and instantly feeling superior to all the kids who couldn't speak it? You feel like you're doing something right in life.

You feel like you're not only intellectually superior but morally superior. And so when a cult, say, gives you a new name, that helps you shed your identity. When they give you a set of buzzwords that no one else can understand, now all of a sudden you have that sense of belonging. When they use phrases like act as if, which is a thought terminating cliche, this is a cultish language technique that I talk about in the book, that causes you, you know, to stop thinking for yourself as critically. There are so many things that cultish language does that are essential for the power of

a cult leader, but because we take language for granted, because it's invisible and we grow up with phrases like sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you, we often don't stop to consider how powerful it can really be. Language is, I believe you wrote this verbatim in the book, and I just didn't put quotes around it, but let me paraphrase so that I don't just take your language here. Language is so important because speech is the first thing we're willing to change about ourselves, and one of the last things we will let go. You want to talk like you're in the club, and then after you're out of the club, maybe the habit dies hard. I don't know. Tell me about that. It's true. Yeah, I was touching on this a bit earlier, but let's say you go to an introductory

meeting for something like Landmark or, I don't know, some yoga group that one of your friends wanted you to come to, and they ask you to repeat a chant. You know, odds are you do it. They're not asking you to shave your head or relocate anywhere. It's seemingly harmless. But slowly and perniciously, a group can twist your understanding of the language that you've grown up speaking your whole life such that you start to feel this really intense level of internal conflict. Something that a lot of cults, Scientology is one that comes to mind will do is they'll take words that you thought you knew the definition of forever. You've been growing up speaking this language and they will slowly and deliberately warp

them to give them a new cult-specific meaning. Actually, a great example that comes to mind is one of the first interviews I did for the book was with this woman who for a few years was a member of a group called 3HO, the Happy, Healthy, Holy organization. It's a kundalini yoga cult. Fun fact, they own Yogi tea, the tea brand, grocery store tea brand. We probably all have it sitting in our kitchens. So she explained to me that this was a new age cult and used a lot of phrases like, you know, vibrations and Piscian consciousness and whatnot. But one phrase that they used was Old Soul. Old Soul to an average English speaker is almost to compliment. It means someone who's wise beyond their years. But in 3-HO, it meant someone who had

reincarnated life after life after life and could never get it right was still an old soul. And it could be framed as this threat. You could hang this phrase over someone's head as a way to manipulate their behavior, to control them. It's really a form of linguistic gaslighting when you cause someone to question the language that they've been using their whole entire life. And it's something that a lot of destructive cultish leaders take advantage of. Linguistic gaslighting, meaning maybe then you can't even speak into not being able to find the words. You then can't even find the words to describe something because all those words that you would normally use to describe maybe an abusive relationship now mean totally different things

and they've been co-opted by the cult. So you have no way of even really explaining to yourself what's going on because none of it makes sense anymore. Totally. I mean, Scientology has all these courses, right? The first ones you take are about like communication or ups and downs in life. They're really innocuous. At least they seem so. And then as you go on in Scientology, you've been in there for 10 years, you've invested half a million dollars in it. They get more and more and more extreme and more and more ridiculous and more and more monotonous. And I had an ex-Scientologist talked to me about how she took a course called Key to Life, where you would basically like look up all the most minuscule words in the English language, conjunctions, prepositions, words like, and, uh, whatever. And you would make sure

that you understood those words according to Scientology's specific definition. It was such a tedious thing, but it was considered quite prestigious because if you graduated from Ke to Life, it meant that you were so loyal, so committed to Scientology, that you were even willing to unpack your understanding of something as simple as a preposition or conjunction. So, yeah, Linguistic gas lining, meaning they're causing you to doubt your very perception of reality, your very ability to communicate in the way you've been communicating your whole life. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Amanda Montel. We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of those advertisers helps keep us going. To learn more and get links to all the great deals you heard so you can check them out for yourself, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. please consider supporting those who support us. Now, back to Amanda Montel. I know that you grew up in a reformed Jewish synagogue, and I'm a Christmas tree Jew,

meaning like I didn't even know I was Jewish until I was a teenager, and I was like, cool, whatever, Christmas is fine. Same. But like, you ever look into Kabbalah where it's like, we're going to spend six months talking about the Aleph symbol and like what it means, and it's totally not just a letter,

even though it, like, kind of is, right? And so these ultra-Orthodox Jews or whatever, will like study the history of these letters or these symbols and like where they appear and then they make patterns in the book if you have the right version of the book and then that's like magical stuff that's not just Torah it's like that's all hidden meanings are in there that's what that sounds like to me cabala expert over here no i mean i mean look i don't even know how to do honica yeah i uh cabala was one of the groups that ended up just kind of on the cutting room floor of cultish like there are truly okay thousands upon thousands of groups that could

be considered cultish that I could have included in the book. I know Kabbalah as far as like Madonna was into it or whatever. But I was like, maybe she's going to mention that. Yeah. But something that you remind me of just now is that, you know, now that so many young people are rejecting the religions that they grew up with, some scholars, including a theologian named Tara Isabella Burton, have spoken about how our spirituality of today has become more remixed. So everybody kind of creates their own bespoke version of religion. So maybe like in the morning you do a meditation app and in the afternoon you go to SoulCy cycle and in the evening you do like Shabbat with your friend that has kind of like a witchy aesthetic. You know, people are sort of playing fast and loose

with what is considered religion these days, which I think can be quite positive. But, you know, when you're putting spiritual stake in corporations and in groups that aren't vetted, it can always be risky, of course. The craving for, this is almost a throwaway line in your book, but I love it. The craving for belonging doesn't take someone broken or disturbed to take effect. We are wired for it. Like I said, it was just like one line in the book, but I think it's such an important point because what you're saying is you're not joining a cult necessarily because you had a terrible childhood and you were a homeless teenager who got addicted to drugs. This can affect anyone. This scaffolding for these beliefs is language, which we all have and we have. And we

all use unless you're like a feral child, right? So language is the foundation of what we use to think. Therefore, we already have the programming, really the basic operating system that a cult needs to infect. You don't have to be this sort of insane person. You fall into it slowly like people do with Scientology or multi-level marketing. Hey, I'm just selling protein shakes. Dot, dot, dot, you're on a cruise ship talking about it works if you work it or whatever slogans. And it's like, how did I get here? How did I end up spending all this money? Why did I leave my husband to do this? It doesn't make any sense.

It's so true. I mean, there's so much to touch on there. I mean, the media, particularly media coverage of cults like Jonestown and the Manson family murders and more recently nexium would lead you to believe that people. People who wind up in cults are desperate, disturbed, intellectually deficient. And I went in believing those same things. You know, I went into this research thinking like, I'm so skeptical. I'm better than these people. Okay, maybe not that extreme.

but I definitely went in with my preconceived notions. Well, when I got, I mean, being the daughter of research scientists, you definitely think like, oh, I'm above all this. My dad's really smart, so therefore I am very smart. I get it. Yeah, totally. I'm like, my daddy told me about you. Yeah.

But when I got on the phone with so many of these sources, they struck me as incredibly bright, service-oriented, the like fatal flaw, the pattern that I saw from cult survivor to cult survivor was not desperation, if anything, it was optimism. It was this overabundance of idealism and faith that solutions to the world's most urgent problems, whether that be poverty or racism or addiction or a mental health crisis, whatever it is, are able to be found. And you, by associating with this group or guru, can be a part of that change. Like, you're special.

You believe in this. You have what it takes. Who among us would not want to hear something like that? And so then, of course, you know, media coverage will tell you, like, oh, these were mind-controlled communicants who, like, willingly took their own life or willingly got branded or whatever it is. But, of course, nobody would sign up for a group out of the gate if that was presented from the jump. You know, you're presented with what seems to be the promise of a better world. And you're exactly right.

Like, language is the fabric that makes up our very existence without language. there are no beliefs, there are no ideologies, there are no cults. So while a cult can look like, you know, a bunch of people on a compound wearing robes and the shaved heads or looking like the Amish or whatever it is, the linchpin is what it sounds like. Let's talk about some of the, I don't even know, language concepts or am I even using the right terminology here? Now you got me in my head about language. Things like code switching, right? Let's talk about what this is because a lot of cult leaders most notably in your book, Jim Jones, used this a lot. Yeah, well, Jim Jones was a pretty diabolical practitioner of code switching. I mean, code switching is

essentially using every linguistic resource available to you in order to communicate most effectively. So code switching might look like alternating between different dialects, different languages, different language varieties in general in the space of a single sentence, in the space of a conversation. And the stakes can be, you know, as low as like, oh, I hear you're from Chicago. or whatever. I don't know where you're from. Where'd you grow up? Michigan. Michigan. Okay, sure. So like, let's say, you know, there are some, like, slang terms or whatever that everybody in Michigan uses, and I hear you using them or I hear your, like, spread A vowels or whatever. And I, let's say, I'm also from Michigan and I want to connect to you. So I slip into my Michigan accent, you know,

that's sort of a low stakes form of code switching. But then code switching can also be as, the stakes can be as high as someone who speaks a marginalized dialect, like African American English, deciding. to, or not even deciding, because it's almost always subconscious, slipping into so-called standard English in order to access opportunity or avoid persecution and so on. But Jim Jones used code switching in a much more Machiavellian way. He would change his lexicon according to what he knew the person standing in front of him wanted to hear. So Jim Jones was able to appear to a variety of people from all different walks of life, including, you know, young, white, socialist, college graduates, but also, you know, middle-aged black women who were active in San Francisco's

church scene. And so with them, he would use the sort of like familiar lilt of like a Baptist pastor, but with the like young white college grads, you know, he would quote Nietzsche and he would like wax philosophical. And sometimes he would do that in the single sentence. I mean, I had a Jonestown survivor say to me once that he could quote the Bible and then turn around and preach socialism. And because of innate biases that we's human beings already have, including confirmation bias or the penchant to seek out and hear and remember information that confirms what we already want to believe and to disregard information that controverts it, because of biases like that, you hear what you want to hear and you tune out the rest. So that sort of defies some of the

stereotypes that exist out there about what brainwashing is. You know, you can't really coerce someone into believing something that they are on no level open to believing you can just sort of radicalize and radicalize and radicalize from there with language. This stuff is so interesting. Looking at cults like Heaven's Gate, which I guess is like a 90s throwback cults, a little OG for internet era. I think they made a bunch of money designing websites. Like that's kind of how I vaguely remember this, right? They had like a GeoCities website, which have you used the internet in the 90s, you might know what that is. It was kind of like a

the equivalent of Squarespace or something like that way back then. Totally. You can still see the Heavens Gate website. Like, it's up and running and it is like a cluster fuck of comic sands and it's, yeah, it's a real, it is a throwback. Yeah. And all the members changed

their last names to some portmanteau of the leader's names, right? So it was like, you lose your identity by changing it and using the language of, oh, we're all a family because we all have the same last name, because we all changed it, and that's how we refer to each other. So it's just like an extra step of removing the person you were before you joined the suicide cult. Right. So in Heaven's Gate, everybody would drop the name that they had before and pick a new name, and they all had the same suffix,

which was Odie. So there was like, and Odie, Silv Odie, Chikodi. And some think that Odie was right, this portmanteau of tea and dough, which were the names of the two leaders of Heaven's Gate. But yeah, I mean, a lot of monastic religions, you know, will give you a new, a new religious name to represent your new identity. And, you know, that's done in a lot of groups, not just religious ones. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a massive red flag, but it does represent the sort of shedding of your own old identity and assuming of a new one. And in combination with other language tactics, you can start to put together a picture of, okay, this is a little too cultish for comfort. Some other fun language things that Heavens

Gate would do fun was obviously this was like this sort of sci-fi cult in the 90s when digital technology was up and coming and was presenting, you know, potential answers to the world's oldest questions. That is the language that Marshall Applewhite, who was the final leader of Heaven's Gate, would use. And so in Heaven's Gate, the kitchen was called the Nutra Lab. And the laundry room was called the fiber lab. And if you were in the mansion where everybody lived, that was referred to as incraft.

But if you were out in the real secular world, that was called out of craft. And so that language was not just gobbledygook. It was doing real religious work. It was putting members in this rhetorical headspace where they could envision themselves, you know, on this spacecraft, heading toward the kingdom of God, which is where they wanted to be. It also completely makes sense to rename people, right? It builds other bonds with the people in the in-group, and it breaks the bonds of people in the out-group. I mean, look at nicknames, I guess, like the folksiest way to lose your identity in a dangerous cult.

But really, like, you know, you're on a sports team and you start calling somebody by a nickname. Only the team uses it. The guy's got a different name inside his house with his family, but then, like, the teachers call him by a totally different name. So he's got almost like separate identities. He's Bubba at home and he's like Captain D on the football field. And at school, he's Russell, right? And that's a real example for my best friend in high school.

And he was, like, different people. You know, his mama's boy at home. At school, he was whatever. And on the football team, he was a animal. and it really worked well, and I can see why you'd want to do that. Football is so culty. Yeah, football's culty. That's for sure.

I mean, even high school football is cult. College football especially, I mean, the rituals and prayers and so many college groups are just the classic definition of a cult. It's just that they're a culturally accepted one. Right, that's true. Yeah, because they make a lot of money for a lot of different people, and it's popular. Widely, even the aspects that are not culty, right? you can sort of indulge in football without being in the cult part. And I don't know if that's true

for a lot of cults. I mean, maybe it is. I suppose you could always sell herbal life without being a part of all the other stuff, but that's certainly not what they encourage you to do. Yeah, that's why all these groups belong on this spectrum, right? Like, there's no such thing as this is a good cult, that's a bad called, or this is definitely a cult. That's not so many of the scholars I spoke to for this book disagreed slightly about what constituted a cult or even refused to use the word all together because it's so judgment-loaded, it's so subjective. Cultural normativity has so much to do with what's considered a cult versus a better-accepted religion versus another kind of tightly bound group.

You know, some scholars will say alternative religion or marginalized religion in order to seem less judgy. But while those terms, I think, work in more of an academic setting, I kind of just like to say cultish. Oh, that's cultish. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. euphemisms is another technique. And the example of this that comes to mind, of course, is speaking of communists, is re-education, right?

We don't say it's a torture camp or a hard labor camp. We say we're going to re-educate you. China is doing it right now at the Uyghurs. And it's like, oh, we have to teach you why our system is really great by making you do tedious things over and over and removing your identity and maybe pulling out your fingernails if you don't do what we want in the way we want you to do it. You know, that kind of stuff. You hear about it with North Korea as well. and you see these used, these types of euphemisms used to gloss over,

it's almost like the same thing with a gaslighting, right? It's used to gloss over terms that might be, that we want to avoid, but also it helps redefine things in ways so that we can't use the word for anything else. Totally. I mean, when we think of extreme groups like Jonestown and Heaven's Gate, we know about their tragic codas.

We know about the suicides. But the people who joined those groups did not join thinking their experience would end in death. They joined thinking their experience would end in transcendence or a better world. And then as the leaders became more powerful and more radical and more power hungry, the ideology changed. And that's a lot of what you see from cult to cult. Like they start out with one belief system.

And then the language is so vague that it's easy enough to switch the rules, to break the rules, to move the ideology according to whatever is convenient for the leader. So for Heavens Gators, like, I remember I talked to a Heavensgate survivor named Frank Lifford who ended up leaving long before the suicide. But when he joined, like transitioning to the next evolutionary level above human, which was one of the euphemisms that they would use for in the end, death, that didn't require you, like, exiting your vehicle, as they would call it. That didn't mean like killing your earthly body.

It could be done while you were still in your body. But then over time, Marshall Applewhite decided, no, we need to exit our vehicles, which, you know, this is the symbolism. We need to get rid of our earthly bodies so that we can transcend or whatever. And because the language was so euphemistic and lofty, that ideology was able to change more easily. Yeah, that certainly makes sense. Because if I'm sitting there and it goes, you know, I've decided to make a quick change. We're no longer just going to meditate a lot of.

lot, we have to kill ourselves. I'm like, okay, what? Say that again? I'm out. But if it's like, we have to exit our vehicle, I'm like, oh, okay, what does that mean shed preexisting beliefs? And over a period of years, I'm like, oh, we're just going to leave our bodies behind. I get it now. But if he's like, we have to kill, you have to drink cyanide. I'm like, okay, you know, I came here to make websites. I'm leaving. Yeah. Yeah. And oftentimes, like, the leaders at the top, we think of them as these like evil masterminds who had a grand plan the entire time. But oftentimes they're just spitballing. They're just following the power as it comes and making it up as they go along.

Even someone like Jim Jones, I mean, I think he was like slightly smarter and better read than someone like Marshall Applewhite, the leader of Heaven's Gate. But what uses it comparing the intelligence? He's like terrible people. But Jonestown started out as an integrationist church. Like it started out with these like really pure intentions and then evolved into this like sociopolitical movement. Then they moved to South America and, you know, it spun,

completely out of control, but no cult, right, starts out saying, like, this is what we're going to do. We're being very clear. If a cult does start out that way, that probably means it's like a more ethical cult and you should, you know, feel free to keep going. For people who don't know, by the way, probably should have done this earlier, but Jonestown was started as a sociopolitical move, or at least like you said, a church in the United States, sociopolitical movement, started getting a lot of heat from, I think, Congress or something like that, or maybe that came later, but they moved down to, was it Belize or Bolivia?

It was Guyana. Guyana. Okay. Move down to Guyana. And then they created their church slash camp down there. And then they started getting more and more heat from the U.S. government. A senator, I think, flew down there. They murdered him because he was like, what the hell is this?

I'm going back and I'm coming back with the Marines or something like that. Right. Tried to take a few members back with him. And they killed him because they wanted to avoid that. And then I think he realized, okay, I'm not, we're going to get assaulted by the army at this point. Like step two is they're coming down for us. So he had everyone drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, right? Was that it?

And that's where the phrase drinking the Kool-Aid comes from. Yeah. It actually wasn't even Kool-Aid. It was a generic brand called Flavor-Aid. But nobody cares about flavorade. Yeah, yeah. Sorry Kool-Aid brand suffering all these years. Yeah, no, speaking of brands whose names have been sullied by cult tragedies,

the Heavens Gators were all wearing these Nike decades when they died. And so Nike was like, God damn it. and like immediately struck the style, like pulled it from shelves because they were like, these were selling well too. Damn it. Yeah, but I have noticed that that style of black and white Nike is back,

oddly. I don't know if there's like some poetry there, some symbolism there. But yeah, right. So a lot of the, when they moved down to South America, became Jones Town down there.

Life there sucked. Like the ground wasn't fertile. It was not the promised land that they were expecting that they were promised. A lot of families were constructed. were concerned about, you know, their loved ones who were down there and suffering. And so they put pressure on Congressman Ryan to go down and see what was going on. And Jim Jones, charismatic figure that he was put on this whole show for Congressman Ryan and, you know, really tried to win him over.

But I think Jim Jones by then knew that they were screwed. Like, they were bound to be found out. Congressman Ryan went to leave and some people tried to escape with him. Like a lot of people were profoundly unhappy there. We think of the Jonestown victims as these. like brainwashed idiots who like lined up voluntarily and drank the Kool-Aid, but it was completely coerced. It was really more of a murder. A lot of people tried to escape, but it was the sort of thing where it was like, if you try to escape, we're going to kill you. Like Jim Jones had a military of his own. And so they opened fire. They shot a lot of people. A bunch of people died, including Congressman Ryan. And so by then, Jim Jones was like, okay, I'm going down. And if I'm going

down, everybody's going down with me. And so he, you know, gathered everyone in the pavilion. And he gave this speech that's incredibly eerie. You can listen to it. There's a recording of it. It's available online. It's called the Jonestown Death Tape. And you can hear this type of cultish language that he was preaching on the pulpit to, you know, try to create order, to try to prevent chaos. And he speaks very calmly and very euphemistically. He refers to death as the great translation, just a mere transition to the other side. He talks about how, you know, they had to kill themselves as a form of revolutionary suicide, which was a term co-opted by the Black Panthers that Jones then twisted to suit his own goals. Yeah, it was not at all the event that

a lot of us grow up believing it was. Certainly, I thought it was something completely different than what I discovered. Let's talk about thought terminating cliches, because these are everywhere and people often don't even know that they're using them or that people are using them around them because they can be, they can kind of sneak in onto the wire in a way. What are they first of all. Yeah. Well, I mentioned one earlier, act as if, but a thought terminating cliche, it's a phrase that was coined in the early 60s by a psychologist named Robert J. Lifton. It describes a sort of stock expression that's easily memorized, easily repeated, and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning. So scrutiny is obviously the enemy to any cultish group.

Like, they need to be able to shut down people when they try to express pushback or dissent. And if you have a repertoire of these like zingy stock expressions that can end people's cognitive dissonance, that's going to be really helpful to you. So thought terminating cliches can sound like, you know, dismissing a valid anxiety or doubt as a limiting belief. That's just a limiting belief in multi-level marketing companies. They'll often say like, oh, well, if you can't, you know, sell all these products, these like nasty creams and leggings or whatever, that's just a victim mindset.

No, don't be a victim. Oh, another new age thought terminating cliche that you will sometimes hear in QAnon circles is like, well, don't let yourself be ruled by fear. Q&on thought terminating cliche, another one would be trust the plan or do your research. And thought terminating cliches also show up in everyday life in the form of phrases like, well, boys will be boys or it's all in God's plan. It is what it is. And they're really compelling because it's work to think. Like it's work to have to reconcile two conflicting ideas in your mind. Like, this is my family.

I've been in this group or I've subscribed to this idea for 10 years. I want to believe it's true. But at the same time, I have this instinct that something is wrong. If someone says, well, that's a victim mindset or that's a limiting belief, you're like, okay. And it puts that cognitive dissonance to bed long enough that the person serving you, that line can remain in power. Right.

So it helps us alleviate that cognitive dissonance. It also says essentially to our brain, hey, don't think about what's going to happen next or don't think about these potential consequences of the action that you just took. Like, hey, look, I realize you just spent the money you needed for food for your kids and rent on your monthly re-up of crappy hair products that you still can't sell that you have a garage full of. But that's all part of the system. You've got to work the system.

Or like you said, don't be a victim. A good system always works. Right. Yeah. So if the system's not working. It's not the system. It's you. Oh, okay. It must be, now I'm blaming myself. That's a slightly different concept as well, but it also helps redirect your thinking. We do use these kinds of things all the time, and it's really infuriating. Even our friends will use it, right? I know somebody who like lost their

job during COVID and now they're losing their house. And he wrote into our feedback Friday, which is like our advice show. And his friends are all, well, everything happens for a reason. This is part of, you know, what the universe has in store for you. And he's like, no, I want to strangle you. I'm going through a hard time. Stop minimizing what I'm going through by being like, well, the universe provides, does it? There are dying people on the streets in other countries. Did the universe provide for them? Maybe I just have some shit luck right now and I'm screwed. Yeah, completely. I mean, even a phrase like, well, that person was just brainwashed can be a thought terminating cliche in and of itself because it so easily allows you to write off that

person, to shut down conversation, to prevent it from moving forward. Yeah, these phrases show up all the time. And I think they're, especially online, they're in large part responsible for so many of the ideological schisms that we're seeing nowadays. There are just these buzzwords and thought-terminating cliches that shut down conversation. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Amanda Montel. We'll be right back. By the way, you can now rate the show if you're listening to us on Spotify. That is a huge help.

It makes the show more visible. Search for us in your Spotify app. Click the dots on the upper right and make it happen. Now for the rest of my conversation with Amanda Montel. Asking for more information essentially is like kryptonite to a power abuser or a cult leader. So they have to use these cliches to shut it down. I think Jim Jones, his thing was like, well, it's all the media's fault, which is funny because where have we heard that recently? Right?

That's everywhere now. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? Oh, that's a classic. That's a classic. Like people have been blaming the media since the invention of the media. You know what I mean? Yes.

Classic. Yeah. I mean, Hitler did it, right? Hitler was like, oh, it's the media trying to whip everyone up. Really, it's not the guy who's got brown shirts running around, breaking Jewish businesses' windows? It's the media? Okay, whatever. The voice of God concept I found kind of interesting, like middle-aged white males have this

inbuilt authority, even if they're pseudo-intellectual buffoons like Billy McFarland of Firefest, Jim Jones, Jordan Harbinger, not that I'm as persuasive as Jim Jones. Yeah, you're putting yourself in quite the company. there. Yeah, I know. Not to, I'm fanning myself right now. Like, well, well, you know, go on. Yeah. This is kind of an interesting concept that I'd never thought of. But I suppose that there is an element of truth to that, right? I'm thinking about like my teachers and the voices of authority in my own life. We're kind of all that guy. Yeah, I mean, we give people the power that we've been conditioned to think they deserve. And what have we been conditioned to think the sound of authority is?

It's the voice of like a Walter Cronkite. It's the voice of these white men that have held positions of power for so long. We hear the voice of like a young woman, a young woman of color. We think there is an inherent like dittiness or lack of authority attributed to their voice. But it also depends on the context. So, you know, a lot of these sociopolitical cults and religious cults are helmed by white men. I mean, I sometimes joke that like Jim Jones, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, they could all be like identical twins. They just all

look same and sound the same. But let's say we're talking about like a wellness cult or a new age cult or a yoga cult. Well, what's the type of authority figure that we've been conditioned to trust in that space? It's someone more like Teal Swan, like a Gwyneth Paltrow look alike, you know? The voices that we've been conditioned over years and years and years to cue the signal of authority in our minds are the ones that we're going to automatically trust, whether they're talking about God or government or whatever we think they have the inherent right to talk about. Let's talk about MLMs a little bit. I don't want to focus too much on it because I am going to do a big expose with Robert Fitzpatrick who's like the MLM guy. But MLMs are so interesting to me.

They always kind of have been because they prey on certain groups. They like women or immigrants more because there's often like an element of vulnerability or at least economic vulnerability. Like, you're an immigrant. You want to get ahead. You're a woman. Maybe your husband works. You're in the middle of America. You want to feel more valuable now that your kids are in college or you want to bring in a little extra income on the side. And it's easy to recognize these people online because the groups themselves often look and sound the same to your point. But I went to, well, when we were a lot out of the house, I went to an event. And I saw this group that just looked, it looked like a meteor with a Forever 21 outlet on it. Just hit a trailer park at 600 miles an hour. And these

people were the result. And it was like they all looked the same and they were all like yelling and screaming and drunk. And I was like, what is that? And of course, one of them's like, it's color street. We're a business. And I googled it and I was like MLM knew it. And it's just like a snap on nails business of some kind. And it was just the most obvious thing in the world. I forget what my question was. But go ahead and speak to that. No, no. Yeah. I'll speak to that. I actually, I had a similar experience like over the summer when COVID restrictions were letting up one of my friends. and I went to a winery in Orange County, which is like the headquarters, one of the headquarters of the MLM industry.

The true headquarters is in Utah because MLMs and Mormonism go together like mac and cheese. But we were in Orange County, which is I guess like a satellite headquarters for the MLM industry. And we were at this winery. And yeah, and there were a bunch of like, you know, white women with the same hair extensions and like the wide brim hat and like the skinny jeans with the same ankle boots and the cardigan. And I was like, what do you think they sell? Do Terra or, you know, Arbon?

And we were being silly and making fun of them, which isn't nice. And I don't make fun of them in the book. But you can't begrudge me that just during a Georgia Lover interview. Anyways. No, fair. Yes, MLM during, ever since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry, MLMs have always targeted, particularly non-working, like middle class wives and mothers, but people who are locked out of the dignified labor market to some capacity.

It's pitched as this opportunity to make a full-time living from part-time work without ever having to leave your kids. Really, like one of the first and biggest MLMs was Tupperware. And there was this woman named Brownie Wise, her real name, who decided that the women who would be interested in buying this Tupperware would not only be a great, you know, customer base, but also a great sales force. She was, you know, one of the first people to really target them. And that's been the strategy the entire time. But the messaging changes, though, with the times. And so while in the 1940s and 50s, Tupperware was promised to be the best thing that happened to women since they got the vote, you know, the sort of pseudo-feminist message of that time. Now you hear more of this pseudo-feminist, commodified feminist girl boss, boss babe, rhetoric.

And now in particular, you'll hear this rhetoric combined with talk of like natural beauty, holistic beauty, essential oils. of course since like wellness and conspiratorial thinking have overlapped in such a profound way. But yeah, the Venn diagram of like MLMs and Q&on and anti-vaxxers. I've actually literally made that Venn diagram. It's on my Instagram. What's your Instagram? I know you want to say it you're just being classy and not saying it. No, I didn't mean to take us down this rabbit hole.

It is Amanda underscore Montel. But as I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, I am in the cult of Instagram. I'm trying to defect, pray for me. I mean, the only place to go is TikTok, which is worse. So maybe you should say. No, no. I don't know what to do. What kind of thought terminating cliches do we see with MLMs?

One I see all the time is it's not a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, as if, like, no one does illegal things or illegal things aren't allowed to exist or I would never do anything illegal. And it's like, I mean, it is a pyramid scheme, except for you have a product to cover up the fact that it's a pyramid scheme, the end. Yeah. No, that is a funny one because if you take the logic literally one step further, you'll discover that, like, just because something illegal doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even if you don't know it's illegal or the thing that you're doing is illegal, it doesn't mean that you're not doing it. It's like when marijuana was illegal, was I not smoking marijuana? No,

anyway, yes, that's a funny one. Another good one is, you know, this isn't a pyramid scheme. Corporate jobs or the real pyramid scheme. Right. And they'll like draw a pyramid and they'll be like employees, managers, CEO. That's a pyramid scheme. And it's like,

that's just a buzz phrase. That's literally just a thought terminating cliche because if you look up the math, which is fairly easy to do in terms of all the math there is out there, you'll quickly find that if all of the promises that they vehemently made about recruiting 10 people a month

and then those 10 people recruit 10 people a month Then at the end of a year, you very well could be a millionaire, as you were promised, but there would be over a trillion people in your downline. So, like, no, corporate jobs are problematic in many other ways, but they're not pyramid schemes. Right. It's like in that case, everything with a hierarchy is a pyramid scheme. The military, that's a pyramid scheme. General on top, private on the bottom.

Riddle me that one, Jordan, right? Like that, it just doesn't make any sense when you break it into other examples that have hierarchies. also the whole idea behind that they use the term like J.O.B. Right. pejoratively. And they'll say, oh, yeah, she's got a J.O.B. It's like, oh, you want to get away from that slash be totally dependent on this multi-level marketing thing for income. And it also sets up us versus them thinking, where it's like, oh, all your friends who have J-O-Bs, they're not in the cool kids club, they're still doing wage slave stuff. And I literally hear people say, use those terms. Wage slave, they have a J-O-B. It's like pejorative. It's bad to have.

have that. And it's like, well, wait a minute. So if I become totally dependent on the infrastructure that this MLM sets up, then you get a measure of approval from everyone else. Like, you have to go all in. Yeah. Well, cool, now you're screwed. Yeah, J.O.B, this is this term that Amway in particular will use, they'll say with disdain that anybody who works for an employer versus an upline has a job or a jack of a boss. What they're selling is not an entrepreneurial opportunity. It's hope. Like this is the business of hope and the promise is that, you know, this is not just a way to make money. This is a superior way of being in the world, like being involved with this company, which hawks what, like soap, whatever it is. And the products are always garbage and don't fulfill a true market need and don't abide by any of the rules of economics.

You know, by being involved with this company, you'll not just become a millionaire within a year, but you'll become a better mother. He'll become a better member of your family. you might even serve God. A lot of these companies are religiously affiliated, whether with Christianity or Mormonism, you'll become a better American. I mean, they really do preach some measure of the prosperity gospel or, you know, the rhetoric that, you know, monetary blessings and heavenly blessings are inherently connected. And so when the stakes are not just money, but you're standing with God, that's when you know that this is not just your average scam. It's more cultish than that. How can we tell if our language is being taken over by, I don't know, work or cults

or whatever? Like, how do we figure out if these terms start to invade our vocabulary? Is it as simple as just paying more attention to what we say and do? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think having self-awareness is important. I think if a form of language cues you to have a strong emotional reaction, while also queuing you to stop asking questions, if it makes you feel superior to everyone else in the world, just for the ability to speak it or use it. If it encourages you to talk like everyone else just for the sake of it, to disengage from those on the outside, that's a form of language worth challenging. Obviously, like, we crave this community, this sense of spirituality. But just to have that, like, skeptical twinkle in the back of your brain that tells you that there's some element of make-believe here.

And at the end of the day, you should be able to strip off that group's linguistics. uniform and return to an identity that is more complex than the ideology of just that group, just that guru. That's the best that we can do. And I've learned this lesson myself, like, just throughout the process of writing this book, you know, I have unfollowed with a lowercase F, some, you know, certain influencers who were having too cultish an impact on the way that I think. Of course, now in the age of social media, you can follow something without following it. Right. But yeah, just to not be so wary that you find yourself paranoid, but to be aware enough

that you can keep yourself safe. So I wanted to highlight how it's not always harmful, right? Because I mean, I can learn new things and new terms for things and not be in a cult of that thing. And it's important to know the difference, right? It's different if you are using a new term or something that might even be like your in-group's language versus I'm unable to function now because I can't talk outside of the Mooney cult, or I only use Scientology words now, and I can't even really form a coherent

thought with a normal person, then you're starting to run into problems, like if your entire pattern of thinking is taken over by that. We've been seeing this really sort of troubling bastardizing of science language recently online, and a lot of new age terminology for decades has always used phrases like frequency and vibration. I mean, those are technically physics terms to to talk about spirituality, but science is already like under threat these days. And so when you have so many of these influencers who really even like will warp the definition of the word research, like research to a lot of people online does not mean reviewing like peer reviewed studies and doing their due diligence, which granted like is hard. We can't all be expected to do a PhD level

worth of research every time we want to learn something new. But when you suggest that research is just going down a confirmation biased rabbit hole on Reddit or YouTube, providing fantasy explanations to things in the world that feel inexplicable, that is a problem. And that's what I see influencers doing. And the problem with these people being influencers and not sort of like in-person doctor quacks is that there's nothing to hold them accountable. I mean, you don't need any credentials to practice as an influencer, which is troubling.

Yeah, I'm looking at my influencer degree over there. And I think I might have got scammed. And it's just shocking that people believe this, but I guess, you know, when you take Voice of God, throw a PhD on there that doesn't exist, and then act like you know what you're doing and start selling seminars. And then you add in like, look how many YouTube views I've gotten. It's like, well, of course this guy must know what he's talking about, even if it's complete nonsense. And that's where this stuff gets even more dangerous because these are people who are offering essentially medical advice. Like, look, if you get ripped off in an MLM, it sucks, but it probably won't ruin your physical health long term. This on the other hand.

Oh, my God. I don't know, though, because in Lulero, the leggings MLM, like, they were getting gastric surgery for weight loss so that they could better conform. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot at stake, but I think you're right, you know, with these sort of like doctor death types, they're not influencers who are selling you maybe an ineffectual eye cream or like a poorly made shirt. like they're selling you your soul back to you. And I'm particularly concerned with those who claim to be mental health authorities because completely parisocially, having never met the people that they're influencing, they're able to convince them to go off their medication. And, you know, it makes sense that we're gravitating toward people like this during a time when we have so little trust

in the health care system, when there is so much panic surrounding our health and wellness, when accessing mental health care is more difficult and more expensive than ever, it really makes sense that this is like the perfect breeding ground for these, you know, pernicious figures to take advantage. Yeah, you mentioned in your book that I'm going to butcher this, but like low education folks often will believe in ghosts and other superstition and higher educated folks are actually more likely to believe new age nonsense. And I think as Michael Shermer, episode 492 of this show, said something along the lines of smart people are better at defending beliefs that they've come to for non-smart reasons. Yes, I love that quote. And it's true, you know,

again, I think out of self-protection or superciliousness or whatever, we tell ourselves, like, oh, only idiots would believe X, Y, and Z. And while studies have found that, you know, there is a correlation between your level of education, your literacy with the scientific method and the type of not smart belief you might hold, we all believe irrational things. I mean, who comes to any decision in life by making a big pros and cons list or, you know, consulting a bunch of textbooks. That's just simply not how human beings make decisions. Like we have limited time on earth. We take these mental shortcuts. We make decisions based on experiences, based on irrational things, and that's okay. That is human. But in this like ever complicating and ever cultish world, we just need to think a little bit more slowly, as the psychologist Daniel Conneman might say.

But I really like this fact that I learned while researching the book that when given personality tests, some of our smartest minds in recent history like the astronomer Carl Sagan will score off the charts in both conscientiousness and open-mindedness. So Carl Sagan was a person who was open-minded enough that in the 1970s when extraterrestrial life was considered like a totally wacky conspiratorial idea, he thought, no, I can acknowledge that that might be possible. But he was not so open-minded that he would consider that UFOs had already landed and we're like controlling our behavior. So I think having that balance is really important because being too skeptical, being too paranoid can stymie progress and can also, I don't know,

cause you to die alone. Yeah. Well, you just nailed the ending, I think, stuck the landing because I was going to ask you how we balance a healthy skepticism without becoming a total misanthrope who doesn't trust anyone, even when we should really be open to new ways of thinking. And I was going to use a Carl Sagan quote, which is how do we be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out. But there we go. You beat me to the punch. Yeah, there is no perfect answer. It is a sort of, like, day-to-day tango, but this is the ride that we're on on this earth. Like, no one has the answers to everything. We can just do our best to negotiate, like, head and heart day-to-day. Amanda Montel, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

I've got some thoughts on this episode. But before I get into that? Here's what you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Boom, this Silver Jeep Cherokee just cuts across from the oncoming lane and forces us to a stop. The doors popped open and they got out. The guy in the front seat, you know, it's cloaked head to toe in black. He had an AK in his hand, dude in the backseat, just this pock-faced guy sweater with a chrome pistol in his hand. They jumped out and I knew exactly what was going on. I was just like in shock. Dude in the black came over, opened the cab door, takes me out, Leads me over to the Cherokee, puts me in the back seat, he gets in after me, I looked at him,

he reaches up, he pulls the ski cap I was wearing because it's cold in Syria in December. This is New Year's Eve. He pulls it over my eyes and leads me forward and presses the barrel of the rifle to my head. And we took off a couple seconds later. I still didn't know who had me. So, you know, the way to figure out who has me was I asked for a cigarette because, like, pretty much everyone in the Free Syrian Army smokes and anyone in the gang will smoke. And when they told me I can't smoke, that's when I knew I was in really deep trouble.

with the El Nosa front, which is al-Qaeda. And they bring me up the hole into the boiler room, and that's where they torture people. There's kids everywhere. There's a guy hanging from a pipe by handcuffs. They sit me down with my knees bent up to my chin, and they force a car tire around your knees. And they take an iron rod,

and they slide it over the tire, but under your knees in the crook, and that locks it into place. And then they flip you over on your stomach, so you're cuffed, and your feet are in line. the air and you can't move them. And they take this thick cable and that's what they use. They start wailing on the bottoms of your feet. Let me tell you something. It freaking hurts.

And I got 115. That was the beginning of our punishment. What are you out of your mind? We're trying to escape from a terrorist prisoner. We have more to worry about to get our arm jam between a rock and a hard place for 127 hours. He's like, well, I never saw that movie. And I was just like, oh! To hear about how Matthew survived captivity and escaped being held hostage by Al Qaeda in Syria, check out episode 217 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Yeah, as we covered in the show, secular cults now are just so much easier to find because of the internet. So for better or for worse, it is much easier to find our group now, even if our group is a bunch of,

I don't know, controlling damaged weirdos. So have that it, folks. Now, QAnon is an interesting phenomenon. We didn't really touch on this too much, but QAnon, as we've done shows about this before, with Stephen Hassan and other cult experts, they change code words a lot. And part of that, part of changing the language is to confuse moderation and social media companies. But it also results in a weird phenomenon, kind of like cultsception, where there's cults

within cults because the language keeps changing and one crew is using these words and one crew is using different words. Of course, with QAnon, the plot is completely tired and goes back to cults since the dawn of time. Most people who believe in stuff like QAnon are, of course, ignorant of history, surprise, surprise, and a lot of Q lore is lifted from old books and OG conspiracy theories like the blood libel and a lot of thought terminating cliches like Amanda mentioned are also very common in Q&on circles, right? You go after somebody or somebody goes after you more likely and they go, do your research or trust the plan or all the regular mainstream media is propaganda because

they can't answer your arguments and they won't answer your arguments. So it really encourages a bunch of confirmation bias. This is the same cult-like nonsense that happens in any other cult. Q thinks they're different. They're not. Also, most cults, again, Q included, they use vague language to also help aid confirmation bias. This is called the Barnum effect. Our minds essentially fill in blanks with what we want to hear or see or with personal examples. And this is one reason why people think psychics work, because you'll get this vague statement and you'll say, huh, I did recently part ways with somebody important to me and you're filling in the blanks. They didn't guess it. They said something random and vague, and you're finding meaning in it. We are

meaning machines, pattern recognizing machines as humans. Now in this episode, I didn't want to spend too much time on Scientology. I've done a bunch of shows on cults before, one specifically on Scientology with Leah Remini. We'll link to that in the show notes. The episode is 485, and you can always go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash 485 if you want to get into that. Scientology is also really great with the language, right? They tell you that it's going to help you in Hollywood. In fact, it might actually help you in Hollywood. They name people who are outsiders, suppressive persons, right? They want to isolate you from others who have criticized Scientology, especially.

Amanda also mentioned the exercise of word clearing in Scientology. We touched on it. It's in the book. This is where you redefine just about every word in the English language. It keeps you from questioning anything in the future because it takes so much time. It's exhausting. It's expensive. Of course, Scientology is very expensive.

It ends up not being worth it. It's humiliating. not to mention confusing by design. So what this causes you to do is not educate yourself on the meaning of the words. What it causes you to do is not to question anything that you're reading or learning,

which is kind of brilliant in its own devious way. I also didn't want to spend too much time on multi-level marketing scams specifically because I'm doing an episode on them as well with Robert Fitzpatrick. We can, of course, see the cult overlap in our discussion here,

especially with respect to the use of language. I really enjoyed learning about cults. Of course, I enjoyed this episode as well. Links to all things Amanda Montel will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy books from any guest on the show. It does help support this program. Transcripts are in the show notes.

There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn. I love talking with you anywhere and everywhere. Speaking of connecting, I'm teaching you how to do just that. In our six-minute networking course, the course is free. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you can find. find it, I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty and create relationships

before you need them. Most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created an association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's into language, or, you know, into cults. Share this episode with them. I hope you find something great

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