The Politics of Cult Thinking | Daniella Mestyanek Young

Daniella Mestyanek Young grew up in the Children of God, left at fifteen, and went on to become a U.S. Army intelligence officer. She has spent her career since studying how high-control groups are built — and arguing that the tactics are the same whether the group is a commune, a military unit, or a political movement. In this conversation she and Jen Taylor-Skinner examine what separates a political movement from a cult, and why the distinction matters less than the tactics being used. They discuss the role race has played in American cults from the 1960s onward, the "validity mascot" — the woman brought in to make a leader look normal — and why cult leaders become fixated on birth rates and gender roles. Young explains what she calls trance talk: the deliberate cadence cult leaders use, and a simple test for hearing past it. They also discuss what it takes to leave. Young is direct about the limits: there is no reliable, ethical way to pull someone out of a cult, and the deprogramming of the 1970s amounted to soft torture. What works, she argues, is waiting for the crack — and knowing what to ask when it appears. Daniella Mestyanek Young is the author of *The Culting of America* and *Uncultured*. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices