Friends Don’t Let Friends Join Cults

By Cindy Gomez
Editor

It’s difficult to get someone you love out of a cult.

Cults are deceptive. The con of a cult is that it takes our human weaknesses and turns them against us.

Most people who get sucked into cults or gangs have a void they need to fill. They feel marginalized and isolated from society (haven’t we all). The cult or gang fills our need to belong and be part of a group or family. New members are filled with a sense of purpose and instant status that they otherwise lack.

Cults are hard to fight because those entranced by them are too brainwashed or embarrassed to ask for help. You see, cults frequently tap into a person’s deepest emotions. And logic is thrown out the window when dealing with human emotions.

The origins of cults are tied to religious movements. Frequently, religious movements and cults go hand in hand. Shifting something as personal as religious beliefs is difficult, if not impossible.

Once a loved one or friend points out flaws in the reasoning of cult mentality, cult members frequently will cut off ties to anyone who questions their new “family” because they can’t or don’t want to explain themselves or the groups they are associating with. No one wants to explain their “religion” or admit that they know little about the cult’s history or the reasoning for strange new behaviors they exhibit.

Unfortunately for victims and their families, cults are most commonly exposed through tragedy: Jonestown, Branch Dravidians, the KKK.

Not all cults and gangs die upon exposure. Some simply rename themselves, repackage their ideologies, and begin again. The danger is that the unsuspecting public will not get wind of what’s happening until it’s too late.

Nowadays, cults must be very careful in order to fly under our collective radar. They have to appeal to the same human needs that cults always have, and yet seem mainstream enough to pass through our BS detectors without arousing suspicion.

That is exactly what extremist right-wing groups like the John Birch Society (JBS) are doing right here in North Dakota. Even William F. Buckley, who championed McCarthyism—an embarrassing blight in U.S. history—condemned Robert Welch, the founder of the JBS as “idiotic” and “paranoid.”

But the JBS has reached the mainstream status that any effective cult needs these days. No self-respecting right wing conservative would knowingly associate themselves with the KKK, for example. Yet they do so unwittingly through cults posing as conservative political groups.

The JBS’s roots in crazed ideologies and its similarity to the KKK are clear. The JBS founder claimed that president Dwight D. Eisenhower was a government agent of the communists. The JBS has openly supported well known neo-Nazis, like Carol Elizabeth Howe (aka Amanda Byrnes Collins), and housed members like Tom Metzger, founder and leader of the White Aryan Nation.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the JBS as a hate group. JBS has repeatedly stated that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was a communist, and has worked to discredit him. But how do you tell mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa, that the group they are currently associated with, is essentially, a nicely repackaged version of the KKK?

Even exposure by national media groups, such as ABC, may not sway them. Check out what ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported earlier this year about JBS: tiny.cc/ABCJBS

No one said pulling a loved one out of a cult would be easy. Here is why you have to try.

The HPR has received information that the JBS is working its special brand of political brainwashing on our locals. They, through a local man from Hickson, N.D., Daniel Rugroden, are spreading their message of hate in our state. A well known blog, “North Decoder,” criticised and debunked the nonsense that Rugroden submitted through the Fargo Forum. http://tiny.cc/Decoder.

And Rugroden is not shy about his association with JBS. JBS’s own website proudly proclaims that Rugroden acquired special permission from the local GOP headquarters to host a JBS booth at a tea party event where Grover Norquist, Gov. Hoeven and Michelle Bachman all spoke.

Rugroden and JBS are also quoted in the latest action this group is taking in our area: petitions to Earl Pomeroy demanding, among other things, that we denounce amnesty for illegal “immigrates” (sic); and withdraw from the United Nations. The JBS, by the way, is against fluoridated water—since it’s a form of mind control.

It is one thing to victimize people who unknowingly join movements. It is quite another to give the aggressors power to destroy our local democracy! We cannot allow our local representatives to be swayed by the converts of cults such as the JBS.

Check in with your family and friends. If they have signed this petition or if you are now realizing you did, call Rep. Pomeroy and tell him that you do not support furthering the grasp of hate groups on North Dakota, and neither should he!

U.S. Representative Earl Pomeroy’s local phone number is 701-235-9760.

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