The Psychology of Political Cults 

What sounds more cultish: "Andrewism" or "saintdrew"? I never really got the name of the channel. It seems that declaring one's self a saint or saying there is a political theory based on one person's thoughts sounds kinda cultish.

I just saw that Aaron Bushnell cited you as a big reason he was able to imagine a better world. That’s beautiful, dude. Thank you

If you ever find yourself afraid of information from more moderate sources, remember there's nothing dangerous about reading something that's wrong. If your beliefs cannot survive other perspectives, it's time for new beliefs.

I feel like a saying about scams is quite apropo for talking about cults. "If you can tell that it is a scam, it isn't a scam designed with someone like you in mind" = If you can tell that it's a cult, it isn't one designed with someone like you in mind. This doesn't mean that you won't be susceptible to a cult that is better designed for your ideals and personality.

our society primes us for cult abuse through everyday institutions. any institution that relies on us submitting to authority, dismissing our feelings and observations, isolating us, etc. does this. so it's no wonder that there are cults across the political spectrum. i think you're absolutely right that an anarchist, distributed approach to community building is the best defense against this. cults get people when they're vulnerable and at the lowest point in their lives.

I think the main thing is making sure you keep getting diverse voices in the mix. I went to a Marxist Leninist party meeting recently and it was one guy who spoke the entire time without any room for questions. I was not invited back after asking questions. I got involved in doing popular assembly style organising, they made sure everyone spoke with trained facilitators to make sure confident people didn't speak for too long and quiet people were encouraged to speak if they wanted to. So many more interesting ideas from so many different perspectives in the room. Political dogma is not only damaging because it becomes culty, but it's so rigid and usually only comes from 1 or 2 peoples' brains. I don't see why any self-respecting revolutionary wouldn't want ideas from as many different people as possible.

i literally rewatched midsommar last night; wild happenstance

Did my thesis on cults, namely Jim Jones and even got the opportunity to talk to an FBI agent (I was still a rightist) and listened to the audio files and read piles of paperwork related to the cult and the incident. It is in my opinion that 40 years after trump's death people will still be praying to him. That all being said, another amazing video, glad you made it. I personally keep myself from cults by using the BITE (behavioral, information, thought and emotional control) model and to always tell myself "I could be wrong and I need to self reflect". Thanks again.

“We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.” Alan Bennett, Getting On (1972), Act I

if you're in an org, make sure leadership is overturned on a regular basis. when one person sits at the top for too long, become suspicious.

I'll wait for what my favourite political streamer has to say before I have an opinion on this video. /s

I see a lot of ex-religious folks in leftist spaces (myself included) and sadly that baggage gets carried over. This may account for the similar attitudes between political & religious cults-- you leave the church's ideology behind, but the attitudes are less easy to shake off.

"More rigorous, less rigid" 👍👍 Another great upload, your storytelling and storyweaving is much appreciated as well as the leads to books I am definitely going to check all these out.

As a former political cult member, I can't thank you enough for this video and your It Could Happen Here episode about the same topic. Ive been processing what I experienced, and this kind of work truly helps to write the new narrative I need to make sense of that time of my life.

I doubt this matters much, but I write stories as a hobby, most of which i haven't shared- but I am trying to build up a science fiction setting that I am gradually sharing with people. Videos that you and others have made helped immensely to build up a star-trek-esque utopia that holds up to scrutiny within the setting in regards to stuff like urban planning, solar-punk elements and ecological-friendly ideas. More recently I discovered Anark's video on 'corruption isn't the problem' which introduced me to a Anarchism as a seriously developed ideology, and only afterwards did I find out you were one as well. It gave me an actual idea for how to implement a utopian system in the setting without writing it off as 'Oh well AI just makes all the government choices now.' Even if what I wrote isn't a 1-1 tranlation of what I've heard about Anarchism so far. In short, I'm very greatful for your work. It's made an important part of my journey to find better ideas in life.

It sells your point very well that you are a charismatic speaker that I find myself nodding to. "Remember you are vulnerable." "Yes, I am vulnerable . . . wait. . . I am vulnerable!"

high control group is the newer in vogue terminology used in place of cult in a lot of newer research and writings.

Wow! The tactics in here run so close to my personal story of being domestically abused that I had to take a few seconds to ground myself during the video.

Words spoken and heard. Killer work, and perfect timing. I had been down the ML path for some time now, but I could never get behind it, something always felt a bit off...the constant push towards idealising Marx, Lenin, the USSR, to read "On Authority" etc etc. It doesn't help that being black and queer makes fitting into these political spaces a lot harder...the left definitely has a whiteness issue. For context, I'm originally from Zimbabwe and only began engaging with politics in my 20s, but as I read more into the ML approach of orginisation it just reminds me of the origins of my country how it just became more authoritarian post revolution. The intentions, ideas, vision were all there, yet we came back to the same place: just a state with new masters. Your points just reminded me of when I was a kid and my parents telling me "they know best" and I shouldn't question certain things, yet that turning out to be completely false looking back at my childhood. I guess to some extent one could say this priming towards cultish behaviour could be traced back to the odd heirachys of family lmao. Appologies for the incoherence of all this, I'm just yapping ❤

This reminds me of when someone I knew from college ministry dropped out of school cuz they got involved with a cult. The ministry staff warned me that while not all churches are cults, they’re all cult-like to some degree that can vary over time. Of course churches seem like natural origin points of cults (claim to truth, clear in group out group, evangelizing, etc.). But you make good point that the danger is also in any kind of organization, even in moderate ones, if they start forming those cultlike behaviors. As someone who is trying to learn about collective organizing and leftist politics, thank you for this video, I learned a lot.

A very important issue to be mindful of, especially with endemic alienation compelling people to seek out a sense of belonging and human connection at most any price.

Good video. I've personally seen some local anarchist spaces / circles veer this way. Never really goes to the large-scale dangerous extremes that we see in some of the examples you cited, but still the paradigm is clear as day to an outsider looking in. Similarly to the "You are not immune to propaganda" meme, I think it's important for folks to remember that whatever your hyper niche microtendency happens to be on the constellation of the left, or whatever ideological / structural barriers you think exist to stop the formation of these malignant social relations, it not only *could* happen, it almost definitely *has* happened already to others ostensibly aligned with you. That is not to discourage, embrace defeatism or nihilism or whatever, but rather to emphasize the need for constant vigilance.

This topic is extremely important! It's disappointing that so many leftist movements have ended up becoming cults.

7:35 I think this is the most common cult like behaviour in political movements, that both stops them and makes them dangerous, or even regressive, like "twitter leftists" who want to exclude someone who has done something seen as bad, even if they have changed or want to change this is ofc an oversimplification but I think it makes sense

Those definitions of the word “cult” are practically drop-in replacements for the word “religion”.

This is really great work. Important too! It's all too easy to look across the aisle, see utter insanity, and think "that could _never_ happen to me!".. but it could, and convincing yourself that it _can't_ is the first step towards making sure it _does._ P.S. thank you SO MUCH for sourcing the artwork in the video (bottom left, if anyone didn't see it). There are some AMAZING pieces in here that I had never seen before :)

Thank you for talking about this. I became more scared that I might be joining a political cult as I realized people's hypocrisy and their misdeeds, and I'm glad I know a little bit more about what political cults are.

I think one of the reasons things like Maoism can be used for cults somewhat easily is because Marxism as a whole is very dense and hard to understand unless you dedicate a lot of time to studying it, which most people can't. But it still has some basic parts that are easy to understand that draw people to it meanwhile there are terms that can be misconstrued that they don't quite understand. Like the petite bourgeois example, it is literally just a word to describe someone's relation to the means of production, but it's meaning in several instances has been twisted to just mean someone that is/was better off than me and therefore bad or something along those lines, I found it interesting that something similar happened in China during the cultural revolution.

The use of the BG3 intro track is amazing

Aaron Bushnell's reddit comment history brought me here. I thank him for his sacrifice and his RU-vid recommendation. RIP

Aaron bushnell put on a redit stream that he listens to you and you helped him imagine concrete examples of a better world ❤️❤️❤️ much love and solidarity FREE PALESTINE

here because of aaron bushnell ❤ he had great taste

The skit is killing me. Makes an amazing shitpost out of context lmao

Thank you so much for making this video! This feels like a really important one and it's definitely going to require a re-watch or two to really digest. From first watch though, I can't help but be struck by how some of the things I've heard and internalized could be priming me for a cultish form of organizing.

25:40 self reliance, OK, nature, OK, animal rights, OK seems good so far. Opposition to modern medicine, science, and technology. Ah, there we go

"Oh, so that's why birds exist"... i'm sorry but something about that tickled me so much I had to pause the video to comment and applaud it lmao

Ahhh, the introductory description was a bit triggering because of my time in PSL. You described it exactly.

Love the BG3 theme music, it matches the contex so well. Great video!

This is an incredibly useful and well made video, thank you.

I cannot explain how unfathomably happy I am to have seen this. I want to address that I've had it happen so many times to me, be it in my interactions with a group or certain individuals, either just leftist or people in social justice groups, where I felt myself as an outsider or some sort of "feeling like I am a false ally", but now you've helped me see that maybe I wasn't this paranoid. Besides this, I'm also happy to see that someone spoke about the dangers and plausibility of "leftist cults". Last but not least, I'm glad, for once, to not feel like some broken or delusional person, for also being an anarchist, I do indeed feel like you're a voice for my thoughts, especially regarding "people over hierarchy" and the promotion of a sustainable, communal and bond-fostering perspective.

I really appreciate your use of art to visualize what you are speaking about, as a visual person and artist it is super helpful !

Great stuff again, Drew. Thanks for the specific things to watch for. I think the org I'm most heavily involved in is actually doing pretty well, but I'll continue to remain vigilant... :)

A lot of these videos tend to come up just when I need to hear them. Thanks for sharing. I really hope we all can build a better social infrastructure for dealing with cultic groups and pressures towards follow-the-leader behavior. The latter seems scarily pervasive to me in the way online instant messaging cliques take shape today. That's something I'd like to understand better.

Here because of the good and faithful Airman Aaron Bushnell.

Gotta say, i love the clean aesthetic you have with your videos. Very nice editing and art choices. Great content as always!

I've found that a good way to "stay aware" is by realizing how much of the society/culture you were already brought up in is cult-like. I was raised protestant christian in a white suburban town with family from a white rural town... I've come to learn that MOST of my upbringing was based in a cult (Christianity). From seeing girls/women as inherently lesser, to seeing boys/men as inherently being prone to temptation (and therefore excused when they fall into it), to believing that "idle hands are sinful" which is why these communities are so anti-government assistance in any way. Hand-outs are inherently seen as bad/sinful because it means you're lazy... if you'd just work you wouldn't need to beg. Once you realize how much of your current belief is already shaped by a cult (typically christianity... it's the largest cult on earth.) You then have to be careful to not fall into a cult that has similarities that make you feel comfortable because you subconsciously (or consciously) recognize them - but you think "well at least it's not that last cult I was in". NOR fall into a cult that swings hard in the opposite direction out of anger (like many people who fall into LaVeyan Satanism have essentially done) A simple way to guide yourself is by continuing to ask yourself "Who does this doctrine/belief/practice hurt and who does this doctrine/belief/practice benefit?" every time you encounter something new.

In fact, that I left a UFO cult previously, is a lot of what first drew into looking into anarchism as an alternative to traditional politics. One side effect of this this is I've grown more cautious about become close with people as some sections even in anarchism became cultish.

Another great video, thank you!

Outstanding as always and timely information

Very insightful video. Thank you for your hard work 🙏

Came here to subscribe to you thanks to Aaron's referral. Thank you for your work!

Found out about this because of Aaron Bushnell... R.I.Power ✊

Nice video! I find myself as a person with a strangely infectious personality growing up in a time of turmoil, so I think about this type of stuff a lot. I hold the personal belief that good must in some way be more effective than evil in nearly every situation. What that leads me to conclude is that being a chill, honest, genuinely kind, curious person who doesn't disrespect others isn't just good- but more effective. In a world of shouting and hate being some guy who's like "Hey! I'm no expert, but these are my thoughts on this. No hate to those who think otherwise :3" Is probably much more effective at getting people to actually listen to you and meaningfully change the world for the better instead of simply turning a bunch of people into a bunch of dead people.

another great and important video! thank you always for taking the time and all the work you put into research and the making itself (your skits are a nice touch) 😁💚 have a lovely day everyone and let's keep learning 💪

such a powerful video, thank you

This is a very good video. Great work.

I just learned about this channel because of Aaron Bushnell, and I'm looking forward to diving in to your videos. Deep gratitude and respect to you and to Aaron

Thanks for all you do and for sparking conversation :) I have been wanting to start a lil collectivist club/support group and I appreciate the warnings and potential pitfalls you share here.

This information is crucial. Thank you 🙏🏻

Super interesting and storytelling, much to reflect on! All power to all the people

You know you've been watching too many Americans when you're impressed that this guy actually said "criterion" (or was it criterium? doesn't matter) instead of trying to use "criteria" as a singular, lmao. Good job mate

This was very informative and interesting. I'm glad I subscribe to your channel.

I love this video and keeping awareness and accountability against cultism anywhere! And the intro title card and music was on point, Netflix documentaries eat your heart out! 😅

Great vid!

Nice video!

Man, this video really helped! I am glad that you pulled the wool off my eyes, Lord Andrew! 😂

Beautiful and much needed video

Big fan of this guy....it certainly can happen here... thanks for all your efforts.

Great video and great picture at 14:30

Starting a cult is a lot of work, but once you get in the flow it can be a beautiful thing.

lmaoooo the skit had me on floor 💀

Thank you for this, explanation.

what if the cult has catboys tho?

Ok but the BG3 intro almost made me spit out my water because I wasn’t expecting it😂 great video tho! Always enjoy your work

Excellent video

100 people makes it a cult. 1 billion people makes it a religion

I’m a big fan of Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame. Basically all groups of people score something on the evaluation frame but it gives us a handy way to break down which cults are just quirky groups of people and which ones are actually dangerous.

That intro music+video was *incredibly* creepy, I had to skip the last couple of seconds of it because it was having such an effect on me! Good work :) hopefully the rest is as engaging in less directly frightening fashion

Really, all cults are similar, just that political ones take a political theme.

I want to share some experiences I had with certains MLs groups. I live in the outskirt of Rome and, when I was in highschool, there was (and there still is to this day) a pretty prominent student movement linked to a particular leftist party here in Italy. I initially had a mixed-bag/quite positive opinion about them, I was tempted to be more involved with their group but this thought slowly fell apart after some of their actions and after I started to develop my political opinions. For example, during my time in highscool, they tended to hijack spontaneous student protests and take all the merit for them. This happened at leats two times in a short span, and in one of these two occasions, they organized a pubblic assembly in a park near the school. I partecipated and after finishing it, they said they were going to "explain the situation" to the younger students that were about to start school (these people were mostly young adults, this is important). I went home and, after a while, through the class chat came the news that they were doing a picket near the entrace, and this would still be ok, too bad that by "explaining the situation to the kids" they meant picking on the younger students, threatning them and not allowing them to go in by force. And they've done this in a branch of the highschool located in a middle school too, and they also picked on the middleschoolers. Fortunately things didn't escalate and none of the kids were really harmed, but this, for me, was unacceptable. Now I'm an university student and in my uni there is another group, they're literally the same people and are comnected to the same party, the only difference from what I could get is that they have a different name and it is the "university branch". I've partecipated in some demonstrations organised by them in the campus, mostly because they've been one of the few leftist groups that have been vocal about the palestinian g3n0c1d3 from the start in my uni, and a few months ago I had the occasion to talk with one of their members. From what I had heard and seen previously about the group, I already knew they had an authoritarian tendency and suspected they had a cult-like mentality, but I was curious to know a little more about them. At first this person seemed reasonable and, tbf, despite everything that happened during our confrontation, it was calm and collected. He asked me if I already knew about the movement and at first I just said I had some reservations because of some things they did, but I didn't hate them or anything like that. He then talked about his political growth, so I did the same, and after saying I'm starting to lean into anarchism, the smile he was wearing vanished and he proceeded to say "Look, I also was a libertarian marxist once, but know I know that anarchism is nothing but an illogical infantilism"... Like, alright, thank you for starting the conversation this way, I guess. During the whole thing, he confirmed they like and defend Stalin (which is a huge NOPE for me), they idolize Lenin and they literally base their whole theory and geopolitical thinking almost exclusively on Lenin's writings, applying them even when, in our contemporary contest, they have little sense, at least to me. He proceeded to defend and justify contemporary Russia and partially Iran, using the "greater good" rethoric, things like that and other classic auth-left stuff. At a certain moment, I don't remember exactly why, I mentioned my anxiety issues and he said basically this: "Look, I also was like that and there was a friend of mine that found themselves in an even worse situation. But then I started to see them at the head of the demonstrations, holding a megaphone and screaming. Because when you start to participate in political movements, you have no more fear, you have no more anxieties." And then: "You can't understand the feeling, at first you are all alone but then you find your comrades, like-minded people that share your views, you start to think that an alternative to this shi**y world is possible. Because communism is not a greater good, it is THE greater good." I don't know if these words, in written form, sound that much cultish, but these sentences, especially because of the way it was saying them, sent a shiver down my spine. The worst thing is, I've realized how bad some things he was saying really were only after our conversation ended, because some of them almost sounded reasonable to me. I've grown up with a fascist parent and other bigoted, far-right and conservative relatives, so not only I think I may have internalized some authoritarian thinking that I'm trying to "deprogram", but I also know that feeling of being alone and isolated because it seems that there is nobody that understands you. Then I started to see and make friends with more leftist and progressive people, some of which I myself now consider comrades, and that helped me to stray away even further from the fascistic views I've grown up with and also to feel more "home" and understood. But after thinking about it, the things this person was saying just felt wrong. Not to mention, at the end of our conversation I've said I was starting to frequent some political queer, especially anarcho-queer, spaces (I'm NB) and he said something like "Oh good, good. But they also sometimes concentrate on the finger when you're pointing at the moon, ahah" which... Like, I think he meant that queer people sometimes concentrate too much on the violations of their rights and can't see the bigger picture, the greater good or whatever...? I think?? Also also, he dropped the R word, he apologized and corrected himself but he also tried to justify it saying that sometimes he "tends to speak in a rough way" or something like that (by "rough" I think he meant "proletariat") and, in the group chat of our university course, he also proved to be ignorant about some aspects of mysoginy ("how the fuck dare you call me a machist, I'm not a machist, I'm 1.64m tall and I've never put my hands on anyone" one of my "favourite" quotes) and queerness, despite posing as a feminist and queer ally soooo, this is something. And I know that this is just one person, but I know for sure that this mentality is strong in the movements he is part of. I also have the strong feeling that he is suppressing the things about himself that may be seen as weaknesses by his "comrades", specifically the whole "no more anxiety" thing speaks volumes about this and, I don't know, I feel kinda bad for him. It also sucks because both the highschool and university branch of this movement go pretty strong, in my uni almost all political discourse has been hijacked by them because they are very vocal about Palestine, which is absolutely a good thing but I don't like that they are the ones "leading the way", if you know what I mean, especially now that I know for sure they have this cult-like attitude. It's just really sad and worrying to see. But anyway, sorry for this long thing I've written and my bad English lol, I really want to thank you for this video. It's really well made and it is nice to see someone breaking down this cultish mentality.

good video, thank you

I'm glad you made this video. A friend of a friend of mine was in a cult and a lot of his behavior makes more sense now.

Thanks for the guide, my cult will be the best there ever was.

Such a good video.

I’m a new fan ❤

gotta say, even as an avid ML, that skit was insanely funny 😁

At 22:40 the skit by Anark was awesome! Great taste to include one of my favorite creators!

Great video and some great art. God i love Gustave Doré

Just wanted chime in as a long-time anarchist organizer and say that Andrew, you're doing a really good job of organizing and educating in a transparent, self-critical, and anti-cultic way.

Incredible video 👏

If anyone else is trying to figure out where they've heard the music that accompanies the title, it's the BG3 music lol.

"I wouldn't join any group, that would have me as a member" ~Groucho Marks.

i appreciate the work you do so much! makes me wanna push myself harder for the beautiful, generous, collaborative, thoughtful, rebellious, totally liberated future we could all share

I appreciate the reworked Emo Phillips bridge joke. Nice.

I recently dropped out of uni and started working for a living as one needs to do in order to idk stay alive 😅 Anyway with me being very left-leaning, that big decision also led me down a bit of a socialist rabbithole where I got into listening to different creators talk about "capitalism bad, socialism good, we need a revolution", for instance I watched your video about revolution as well as creators like Second Thought and after a while I realised that none of what I'd taken on board about anti-capitalist thought had really been my own conclusion. So... I began to question literally everything I've ever learned about these kinds of things because I'm aware that it's very easy to fall for propaganda and if I'm gonna advocate for dismantling this capitalist system then I have to learn what it is first and I need to really believe that a socialist revolution is the right way forward. Where I'm at currently is that I'm trying to understand capitalism, where its strengths lie as well as its weaknesses. I'm trying to understand how the economy functions and why it would even need to be changed. I stopped consuming socialist content because honestly a lot of socialists in my experience tend to make claims about why capitalism is bad without actually providing examples of actual changes that need to be made. If you wanna advocate for a communist society, cool, what are the steps towards that? Especially if we still wanna maintain democracy, we can't just criticise without providing alternative solutions. I'd love to see more of these alternative solutions that also adress concerns that right-leaning folks have. Here in Finland there's a lot of concern about our current economic downturn and the solution of our right-wing government is to cut taxes on more middle class citizens to give them more spending power to get the economy going. A lot of leftists here seem to mainly talk about how this will affect low-income earners and we have a lot of strikes happening as well but no meaningful alternatives have really been proposed apart from one or two from what I've seen. A very esteemed finnish economist (who happens to lean more left actually) has had some ideas that I like but a lot of discourse is mostly criticism. Where am I going with this? I don't know anymore but I think my main point in all of this is to underscore the importance of trying to understand different perspectives so that we can more effectively make the change we want to see. We live in an age of political polarisation and there are 100% instances where there is only one right solution, like for example the litany of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ laws being passed in the US like jesus fucking christ those are pure human rights violations with no middle ground and my heart goes out to all queer folks who have been affected by those laws. But where questions surrounding things like the economy are concerned I think there can be multiple answers, even if I obviously favour some more than others. The bottomline to this slight rant is that challenging your own opinions is important to not fall victim to cult-like thoughts and while I don't view 99% of self-proclaimed socialists to be cult-like, I'd just like to see more nuanced discussions be had. People on the right are not gonna be convinced of left-leaning political solutions unless we can prove that we have good solutions. And I don't think we on the left can really push for our political projects unless we can make the case for them in a way that the right can understand. Listen, learn, empatise, and then provide an alternative. That goes for us all. And to steal the phrase Andrewism uses, all power to all the people :) (except for fascists, I don't wanna give them any power :pp)

So on a different note, something I'm curious about, if you can answer this with your knowledge, is what's your stance regarding spirituality? Namely, the growth of Christianity, and how its spread lead to the destruction and replacement (gradual or otherwise) of many, many other local religions all around the word that were deemed "uncultured", with constant conversion efforts & vast discrimination by Christian leaders towards non-Christian practices, including classist justifications like claiming Christianity as "cultured", and anything else as "uncultured", AKA Pagan/Heathen. Because the way I see it, that's something that definitely needs to be addressed. Like, you can't have a decolonization movement like Land Back without addressing monotheism, with stuff like the Abrahamic religions seeing & treating other spiritualities unfavorable (to put it very lightly) and, in cases like Christianity and Islam, active conversion efforts that seek to erase said other spiritualities and even cultures as well, in line with the actions of European colonialists of the time. To me, decolonization has to include dechristianization as well, promoting the regrowth of pre-Christian local religious beliefs, while also promoting the offgrowth of Christianity, reversing its spread across the world. Otherwise, it just comes across as hypocritical when folks advocate for decolonization, while also actively being a part of a religion that, in my mind, enables colonialist & imperialist actions to thrive.

I wasn't looking for an update to that one old "How to Start a Cult", but hell yeah. Thanks for another great video! Also, just asking because of the intro, are ya playing Baldur's Gate 3?

I always loved that joke from Emo Philips.

Finally found your own shit after loving your work on BHTB/ICHH. Awesome work!

31:15 Since I'm a non-Anarchist leftist, I'm already following your advice by listening to a source I don't fully agree with right now: You