The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

by Steven Hassan

Overview

A masterful and eye-opening examination of Trump and the coercive control tactics he uses to build a fanatical devotion in his supporters written by “an authority on breaking away from cults...an argument that...bears consideration as the next election cycle heats up” (Kirkus Reviews).

Since the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s behavior has become both more disturbing and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like, “fake news,” “build the wall,” and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us-vs.-them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings on to others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and a major Trump supporter, calls him one of the most persuasive people living. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders—cult leaders.

In The Cult of Trump, mind control and licensed mental health expert Steven Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult. He specifically details the ways in which people are influenced through an array of social psychology methods and how they become fiercely loyal and obedient. Hassan was a former “Moonie” himself, and he presents a “thoughtful and well-researched analysis of some of the most puzzling aspects of the current presidency, including the remarkable passivity of fellow Republicans [and] the gross pandering of many members of the press” (Thomas G. Gutheil, MD and professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School).

The Cult of Trump is an accessible and in-depth analysis of the president, showing that under the right circumstances, even sane, rational, well-adjusted people can be persuaded to believe the most outrageous ideas. “This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the current political climate” (Judith Stevens-Long, PhD and author of Living Well, Dying Well).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982127343
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	85,446
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Steven Hassan is a mental health professional who specializes in helping people to recover from mind control as well as helping loved ones to exit without coercion. He has been helping people leave destructive relationships and organizations since 1976 after he was rescued from the infamous cult, the Moonies. Hassan directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, a counseling and publishing organization outside of Boston, teaches at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and is pursuing a doctorate from Fielding University. He is the author of Combating Cult Mind Control and Releasing the Bonds and Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 What Is a Cult? 1

Chapter 2 The Making of a Cult Leader 22

Chapter 3 The Cult Leader Profile 39

Chapter 4 America, a Country Wired for Manipulation 64

Chapter 5 The Persuasiveness of Trump 88

Chapter 6 Manipulation of the Media 120

Chapter 7 The Influencers 141

Chapter 8 Trump's Followers 170

Chapter 9 How to Undo Mind Control 194

Chapter 10 The Future 218

Acknowledgments 235

Notes 241

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

09/23/2019

Brainwashing, not politics, explains Donald Trump’s presidency, according to this overwrought jeremiad. Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control), an anticult counselor who left Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church after being deprogrammed, argues that President Trump’s base constitutes a cult that the president—assisted by Fox News, the Christian right, the alt-right, and Russian agents—manipulates with mind-control techniques. These include flattering audiences; fear-mongering against immigrants and reporters to create an us-vs.-them mentality, using “hypnotically repetitious” slogans and chants at rallies; distributing MAGA hats to “anchor” approved thoughts, disorienting people with false or nonsensical tweets, seeking to “delegitimize” government through policies and judicial appointments, and forcing underlings to eat junk food and dress alike. Recasting politics as psychopathology, Hassan offers tips on deprogramming Trump supporters and recommends that aspiring presidential candidates undergo “a full neuropsychiatric, forensic evaluation” before being certified to run. Hassan’s concept of cultic mind control is so promiscuous—“alternating praise and criticism is a common technique in cults”—that virtually everything politicians normally do could qualify, and his caricature of brainwashed Trump voters doesn’t engage with their substantive policy concerns. Readers hoping for an illuminating analysis of Trump’s appeal will have to look elsewhere. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

[Hassan] is an authority on breaking away from cults...an argument that...bears consideration as the next election cycle heats up.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A brilliant analysis of a unique modern phenomenon. Readers will nod their head in recognition as Hassan expertly takes them through a fascinating, engaging exploration of the coercive control techniques that President Donald Trump uses daily to influence his followers.” –Dr. Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect and emeritus professor of psychology, Stanford University

“There is a growing recognition of an important cult-like element in Donald Trump’s many-sided destructiveness. Steve Hassan confronts this element and takes us to the far reaches of possible cultic influence. We learn still more about our dangerously unfit President, knowledge that can be of help to us in combating him and the social forces behind him.” –Robert Jay Lifton, author of Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry

“Donald Trump, who rose to the presidency through a conspiracy theory—“birtherism”—and pedaled lies in unprecedented ways for a president, needs to be considered as a cult figure. Practical cult expert Steven Hassan does this by explaining how brainwashing works, how the nation got to this place, and how we can get out of it. His book should become part of the compendium of essential reading on the Trump phenomenon.” —Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv, editor of the New York Times bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

“Hassan has been studying cult mind control for decades and his work is illuminating. This book explains how mind control stops people from thinking critically, thinking beyond what they are told.” –Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute

"This book is a fascinating tour through the ways people are recruited and retained by cults, the characteristics of cult leadership and the dimensions of undue influence. Point by point, Hassan shows how Trump and his followers meet each of the criteria that define a cult and how Trump's childhood and rise to the presidency shaped his imperious, narcissistic style and why his followers, both in the voting public and the congress, cannot make a rational evaluation of his words and actions. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the current political climate." –Judith Stevens-Long, Ph.D and author of Living Well, Dying Well

“Drawing on both his experiences as cult expert and ex-cult member, Hassan opens a wide-ranging, thoughtful and well-researched analysis of some of the most puzzling aspects of the current presidency, including the remarkable passivity of fellow Republicans, the gross pandering of many members of the press, the curious avoidance of clear labels that could and should be applied by the media. Quibbles and speculations about diagnosis do not play central roles. Instead, the current administration is best understood through cult analogies, including factors such as total authoritarianism and intolerance of any questioning or deviation from the “playbook.” This is both a clarifying and a terrifying book. Highly recommended.” –Thomas G. Gutheil, MD and professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

“The Cult of Trump, in step-by-step detail, examines the inner-workings of our current Presidential administration. Hassan masterfully parallels the psychological manipulation employed by cults over its members with the current administration’s distortion of reality by its twisting narratives and use of systematic techniques to influence our view of the country. The picture is much darker than mere buffoonery.” –Robin Boyle Laisure, J.D., advisory council member of International Cultic Studies Association, and author of “Employing Trafficking Laws to Capture Elusive Leaders of Destructive Cults”

“A brilliant book.” –Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications

From the Publisher

2019-08-18
A psychological portrait of the sitting president, whom the author considers a master of mind control.

Having been a longtime member of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and now an apostate, Hassan (Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs, 2012, etc.), the director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, is an authority on breaking away from cults. That there is a "cult of Trump" is something he takes as given; were there not, Evangelical Christians would not be allying with a man twice divorced and, by his own admission, many times adulterous, among other sins of the flesh and spirit. "Trump's over 500 rallies are far more choreographed and stage-managed than Moon's assemblies ever were," writes the author, going on to examine the techniques of gaslighting and outright lying that Trump has employed from the very beginning, "influence techniques with a need for attention and control over others." Even if one does not accept that Trump is a cult leader as such—all politicians, after all, have their core of true believers—Hassan makes it clear that he is a master of certain rhetorical devices that do not require much intelligence but speak to much practice: the repetition of words and phrases (e.g., "I'm a very stable genius, very smart") that, through "a primarily unconscious and memory-based process," lead the listener to think that they must be coming from more than one source and are therefore true, "crowding out analytical thinking and causing the mind to retreat into a kind of trance." Hassan also counsels that challenging a cult member about the veracity of his or her object of veneration is bound to produce only a defensive reaction; in its place, he offers a diet that includes a good dose of healthy skepticism about what we read and hear. The author's dark likening of Trump's followers to those who drank poison at Jonestown is, let us hope, hyperbolic.

An argument that, though seemingly from the fringe, bears consideration as the next election cycle heats up.

Kirkus Reviews