Cult News

By Brian Birmingham

Slate recently reported about Steve Hassan’s “crusade” against what he calls the “Cult of Trump.”

However, the article at times calls into question Hassan’s claims and expertise concerning his determination of what exactly constitutes a “cult.” It also states, “some wonder if he’s gone too far.”

Slate concludes that Hassan, who is a former “Moonie” or follower of Rev. Moon’s Unification Church, was once on a mission to save the world for Reverend Moon. But now it appears, after leaving the Moonies through deprogramming he has now switched to a new crusade.

Almost half a century has passed since Hassan’s exit from the Moon cult, but he is still on a mission to save the world.

This time instead of saving the world for Reverend Moon in the name of “world peace and unification” Hassan is on much more personal self-promotional mission of his own. His crusade now is to deliver “Freedom of Mind” to those unfortunates victimized by Donald Trump.

Slate reports that “self-promotion leaks into his sermons. He sometimes sounds as eager to publicize himself (‘I scratch my head why everyone who cares hasn’t read The Cult of Trump book?’ he tweeted recently in response to a CNN segment on Trump and the Republican Party).”

According to Steve Hassan apparently almost anyone that doesn’t see things according to his political and social perspective must be a “victim” of “undue influence” and in need of “deprogramming.” Then they will be persuaded to see the world properly per his point of view.

Please keep in mind that Slate is one of the most liberal media outlets in America and certainly no friend of Donald Trump.

Even though the Slate piece was respectful, it was not always exactly complimentary concerning Steve Hassan and his work.

Slate reported that “Hassan’s definition of cult-like behavior can seem particularly wide-ranging.” For example, he seems to imply that British royal family might be a bit like a cult. Referring to the royal family’s treatment of Meghan Markle, Hassan wrote on his blog, “Any organization willing to maintain its public image by sacrificing the well-being of its members relies on many of the same psychological theories and tactics used by authoritarian cults.”

Does this mean that Steve Hassan thinks Queen Elizabeth II is a “cult leader” and the royal family might be a family cult?

If so, why?

If not, why not?

It seems Hassan is projecting and seeking validation from others.

Even his “mentor,” attorney and expert witness Alan Scheflin, doesn’t appear to take Steve’s perspective very seriously.

Scheflin told Slate, “I would say that Steve has a tendency in some ways to see everything as undue influence because he’s primed to see it that way. I feel that he’s still the victim of the cult. I think that one of the things that happens when you come out of a cult is you have tremendous distrust. You have to become the center of your own universe,” Scheflin concluded.

Interestingly, Alan Scheflin, who Steve has worked with and who he says mentored him, also did not think Hassan would make a good expert witness in court.

“I don’t know that’s the best forum for Steve,” Scheflin said. “I see him as a media person,” he concluded.

Apparently, Hassan has aspirations to be a recognized court expert, but Scheflin seems to think he should stick with the role of a talking head on TV.

Steve Hassan did testify once decades ago in a Boston custody battle (Kendall v. Kendall 1996).

However, according the court record, “the judge specifically stated that she did not rely on Dr. Hassan’s testimony in making her ruling.”

The Slate article also seemingly categorizes Steve Hassan as something of an “ambulance chaser” pursuing clients.

Slate reports, “Hassan hopes to establish his BITE model as a way of evaluating undue influence in the legal system. He thinks he could be an expert witness for the defense of some of the [January 6th] insurrectionists, particularly given that one of the lawyers compared the insurrectionists to ‘followers of Jim Jones’ while another referred to Trump as a ‘cult leader.’ Hassan said he offered on Twitter a few months ago to talk with Jacob Chansley, the insurrectionist known for wearing a fur helmet and horns, but did not receive a reply.”

So, Steve tried to hook up with so-called “QAnon Shaman”?

In many ways Steve Hassan operates like a cult leader himself. He inhabits a solipsistic cognitive universe in which his decidedly liberal bias and political opinions become repeatedly confused with objective reality. Those that reject him may be labeled victims of “mind control.”

Apparently, Steve is now a type of self-styled guru, leading his flock of “Freedom of Mind” supporters or what can be seen as a “cult following.”

The late Dr. Cathleen Mann, who testified successfully in numerous proceedings across the United States as a judicially qualified court forensic expert called Steve Hassan’s teachings simply “Hassanology.”

Specifically Mann wrote, “This composite philosophical approach as now devised by Mr. Hassan might be called ‘Hassanology’. In the world of cults Hassanology essentially depicts Steve Hassan as the ultimate savior. He is a hammer, and there is an ever-expanding list of groups to be seen as nails. As they say, ‘When you are a hammer everything looks like a nail.’ Of course, this might once again simply reflect a convenient marketing strategy.”

Note: Brian Birmingham is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a BA in Psychology and Sociology. He is a native of Dallas, Texas and was once a member of the Trinity Foundation community. He later worked for Steven Hassan at Freedom of Mind.

By Brian Birmingham

I am a former member of an abusive authoritarian group, or “cult.”

As a teenager I was placed, by my parents, in a “troubled teens” program,” which is now defunct. The program was not religious, but it did use behavioral modification techniques and employed coercive persuasion to gain undue influence over its participants. The stated objective was to mold us into adults that would stay sober and adhere to the program’s principles.

In my opinion this was a generally toxic and harmful program. It took me almost fifteen years to begin to recognize the harm that occurred there. This program included confrontational and humiliating pseudo-therapies. Instead of helping people the program hurt me and the other teens subjected to it.

As an adult in my 30s I read Steve Hassan’s book “Combatting Cult Mind Control.” At that time, I was involved in yet another authoritarian organization called a “cult” in Dallas, Texas. After leaving this group, known as the Trinity Foundation, in August of 2006, someone recommended Steve Hassan’s book to me.

This is when I learned about what Steve Hassan calls the BITE model of mind control.

Reading the book was helpful in processing what had happened to me. Subsequently, I experienced a period of intense self-examination and went through a recovery program at a place called Meadow Haven, in Lakeville, Massachusetts. While at Meadow Haven I unraveled the effects of the program for troubled teens as well as my other cultic experience. I was also diagnosed as being within the autism spectrum. I was finally diagnosed definitively with Asperger’s syndrome. Learning this helped me to better understand my life and introverted nature.

The combination of undiagnosed autism and the trauma of going through an abusive authoritarian group as a teen profoundly affected my life and made me vulnerable.

In July of 2010 I was introduced to Steve Hassan by a mutual friend at a conference about cults. At the time I lived in the Boston area not far from him. Steve gave me his business card and told me to contact him when I got back to Boston. I did and he offered me a job at Freedom of Mind (FOM). I became his research assistant, performing various tasks for FOM for almost three years. I quit in 2013, which ended my association with Steve Hassan.

Today, I see and understand Steve in a whole new light and want to share those insights. I feel that he often exploits fragile former cult members for his own personal benefit.

In the early stages of my recovery Steve’s BITE model introduced me to psychological concepts which I’d never known about before. The ideas in his first book “Combating Cult Mind Control” helped me realize, that contrary to what I’d believed about myself for so long, it was not so much a matter of what was wrong with me, but rather what was done to me that was wrong.

There are different types of cults. They are not all religious in nature.

Steve Hassan, through his work, taught me these things.

But I now know that Steve did not originate the ideas he wrote about. Instead, his BITE model is derivative and the relabeled ideas of others. Steve simply rebranded those ideas and he presents them essentially as his own without meaningful detailed attribution. This seems to me to be dishonest and deliberately misleading.

The BITE model is actually a composite of the work and original research of psychologist Margaret Singer, communication experts Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, and psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton.

Let me spell this out specifically.

“B,” for behavior control, is based upon the work of Lifton and Singer, accomplished decades before Steve’s first book was published.

“I,” for information control, is predicated upon what Conway and Siegelman first identified as “information disease” within their book “Snapping” published in 1978.

“T,” for the control of thinking, is derived from Lifton’s book “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism” published in 1961.

“E,” for emotional control, also is based upon the previous work of Conway and Siegelman in their book “Holy Terror” published in 1982.

Steve Hassan did not identify or originate these specific principles of understanding and identifying how authoritarian groups and leaders dominate and control people. He merely studied them, collected and copied them and then rebranded them for himself. Steve presents the BITE model as his own, but it is not his original thought, even though he attempts to pass it off as such to the public.

Steve is very good at marketing and sales and he’s managed to make a lot of money from his books, cult interventions and consulting work. He is certainly a wealthy man. But the BITE model, which he promotes as the foundation for his work was never really his own original work. Steve just cobbled it together as a marketing ploy based upon the work of others. And to claim otherwise is academically dishonest and inherently wrong.

The BITE model in my opinion is also deeply flawed, at least in the way Steve loosely applies it. For anyone with an agenda it is fairly easy to use it to indict almost any group or person you don’t like.

For example, someone who doesn’t like Christians could use the BITE model to indict Jesus by selectively going through the New Testament to prove that Jesus was a “cult leader.” Or use the BITE model to do the same thing with the words of Paul.

Moreover, a person with a political or social bias can use the BITE model to frame a politician as a “cult leader” or call a political party a “cult.”

And someone manipulating this same BITE model can then claim that all those who disagree with him are somehow the “victims” of “mind control.”

This can also be seen as an effective marketing scheme to sell your services to “deprogram” all those perceived “victims.”

In my opinion this turns “Freedom of Mind” fairly upside down into a state of mind based upon a selective worldview and specific ideas that conform to those of what Steve Hassan thinks is acceptable.

Steve Hassan in his book “The Cult of Trump” contends that Donald Trump supporters don’t REALLY like Donald Trump, but are somehow instead the victims of “thought reform techniques” employed by the former president. And anyone that isn’t being so manipulated must be a bad person with racist or anti-Semitic sentiments. Or perhaps they may be psychologically or intellectually impaired.

It is important to recognize that cult experts don’t universally endorse Steve’s notions about Donald Trump and his supporters. Robert Jay Lifton noted, “Trump is not totalistic like [Shoko Asahara] the leader of [the Japanese cult] Aum Shinrikyo.” Michael Langone, Executive Director of the International Cultic Studies Association stated, “I can understand why people don’t like Trump,” However, Langone concluded “But to jump from not liking Trump to Trump as cult leader, I think, is a bit of a leap.”

Steve seems to think it’s his job to straighten everyone out so that they truly have genuine “freedom of mind” (pages 7, and 216 “The Cult of Trump”).

But here is the problem. What really is “freedom of mind” according to Steve Hassan?

It seems to me that when someone has such freedom Steve surmises that they will then pretty much see and interact with the world just like he does.

In his book Steve implies that authentically liberated minds will see the world just like him.

Is Steve trying to clone himself and become some sort of guru determining what is the right and wrong way to think and feel?

Isn’t that the typical behavior of a “cult leader”?

On page 231 of his book Steve suggests that we might need a new set of commandments in addition to the original Ten Commandments.

Steve writes, “People consensually abide by rules for the common good. That is also true of our social behavior–the Ten Commandments were established thousands of years ago as a mechanism for helping people get along in groups. They were also established as a form of social control, with their focus on worshiping ‘the one true God’. What we may need now are commandments that guide our ethical behavior as citizens, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or sexual or religious preference.”

Who will write these new commandments?

Will Steve be our new Moses?

Will Steve’s new commandments replace or supplement the existing ones?

Don’t we have enough commandments already?

​Steve apparently wants something new that reflects his own worldview. All of this seems somewhat reminiscent of what Robert Jay Lifton calls a “Sacred Science.”

Lifton writes, “The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute ‘scientific’ precision. Thus, the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also ‘unscientific.’ In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science.”

For most of 2005, I was in Baghdad serving as a medic in Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a medic, from time to time I was called upon to participate in patrols outside of our base perimeter. One day while patrolling, we had dismounted from our vehicles and were walking through a neighborhood. At one point, we stopped to take a rest. There was a group of young Iraqi boys playing soccer in a vacant lot across the street. The soccer ball was kicked into our midst. A little kid about ten or twelve years old asked our permission to retrieve the ball. We said yes, and then when he got the ball, I asked him if the people in his neighborhood liked the Americans. He said “No”. I asked, “Why not?” He said, “Because you’re all Jews” in a very matter-of-fact way, and ran off. All this child knew about America and the people who live there was what he learned from Saddam Hussein’s propaganda, and the anti-American, anti-Semitic culture in which he was raised. In a way, the boy lived in a type of bubble, from which he derived a distorted view of America and Americans.

Steve Hassan comes across as someone living in a bubble of his own. Just like the Iraqi kid I met in Baghdad, with his distorted view of America and Americans. Steve has his own ideological echo chamber that he inhabits and others that entertain alternative ideas and different views are summarily dismissed or labeled negatively.

“The Cult of Trump”​ also appears to dismiss or disregard that alternative ideas have a right to exist. This can be seen as a reflection of what Lifton calls the “dispensing of existence.”

Lifton writes, “Are not men presumptuous to appoint themselves the dispensers of human existence? Surely this is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant man making himself God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed.”

Steve’s book raises some larger questions that need to be asked by its readers, which are applicable to everyone.

Is there such a thing as objective truth or must everything be based upon the bias of the believer?

Don’t we all need to be fact based and objective regardless of our political bias and world view and not allow our subjective sentiments cause us to negatively label others?

Isn’t hard objective evidence preferable to politicized characterizations like those within Steve’s often polemical book “The Cult of Trump”?

And finally, is it really useful to politicize the word “cult” turning it into a derisive pejorative label used to dismiss the existence of alternative political ideas?

In my opinion politicizing the word “cult” in this way serves no useful or factual purpose, but rather portrays a deeply distorted view of politics in America today.

Note: Brian Birmingham is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a BA in Psychology and Sociology. He is a native of Dallas, Texas and was once a member of the Trinity Foundation community. He later worked for Steven Hassan at Freedom of Mind.

BITE model, Donald Trump, Steven Hassan

By Brian Birmingham

Following my interview with Sawyer, a former member of the Heaven’s Gate cult, I interviewed a man named Steven Hill, who is also a former member of Heaven’s Gate.

Steven Hill was the husband of Yvonne McCurdy-Hill (known as Dvvody in the group). Yvonne McCurdy-Hill and her husband joined Heaven’s Gate together in the fall of 1996. Steven Hill left the group after just one month. But the cult destroyed his family and scarred Hill’s life forever.

His wife Yvonne remained with the group and ultimately died with them. She was identified as one of the thirty-nine bodies found March of 1997 inside a Rancho Sante Fe mansion, which was the cult’s last home.

At the time of her death, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill was the most junior member of the group. She spent a little less than six months as a cult member.

There were two questions I wanted to ask Steven Hill.

First, could he corroborate what Sawyer said about minor children recruited and hidden by the group back in the 1970s.

Second, did he have any idea that the group was planning on dying together to make their “exit” to “The Next Level”? And if he DID know what they were planning, why didn’t he try to stop them?

Steven Hill’s answers to these questions is revealing.

He concurs that minor children were included within the group during the 1970s and that they were hidden. Hill totally corroborated Sawyer’s account.

Hill also said that while he was a member of Heaven’s Gate, he spent a lot of time reading in the group’s library. Apparently, cult leader Marshall Applewhite liked to collect any media reports about the group over the years. Hill saw old news clippings about Ti (aka Bonnie Nettles) and Do (aka Marshall Applewhite), which included magazine articles, old flyers advertising meetings the group held and various other media that Applewhite collected. It seems that every time the cult or its leaders were somehow mentioned in the news Marshall Applewhite added it to his archives. Within the group’s growing library were books about UFOs, channeling, and various other New Age-type topics. Hill specifically came across news articles that reported minor children ran away from home to join the cult and that they were subsequently hidden by the group from the authorities and their families.

Steven Hill and his wife left their newborn twin daughters behind with family when they abandoned their old lives to join the cult. Yvonne McCurdy-Hill was suffering from postpartum depression at the time she moved in with the group at Rancho Santa Fe. Hill was later asked to leave the group due to an illness. Mrs. Hill wanted to leave too. But she learned from her mother that her twins would never be returned to her custody. She ultimately concluded that without her children there was nothing meaningful left for her outside of the group.

Chuck Shramek then released the first image of the so-called “companion,” which was somehow supposedly trailing the Hale-Bopp comet, through Art Bell’s radio show.

When Applewhite learned about the “companion” he surmised that it was “marker,” a sign that he had been waiting for to begin the planning for the “exit,” which would take place four months later.

The deaths of the members of Heaven’s Gate were the largest mass suicide ever on United States soil.

Steven Hill was probably out of the group by the time the “companion” to the Hale-Bopp comet was widely known about publicly.

Hill said that he was monitoring the group’s website when he saw the “RED ALERT” warning, which began flashing in early 1997.

But he had no idea that the group was planning to die together.

Hill instead expected his wife to come home.

When Steven Hill learned about a mass suicide in California and realized that his wife was among the dead, his life was shattered.

And to this day Hill has no relationship whatsoever with the twin daughters, left behind when he and his wife joined the doomsday cult known as “Heaven’s Gate.”

By Brian Birmingham

In an effort to let Ole Anthony explain himself here is an excerpt from a “Primetime Live” interview he did with Dianne Sawyer November 21, 1991. Here Anthony discusses with Sawyer the problems he sees inherently with TV ministries.

Ole Anthony: “The longing of a man’s heart is for community, for a sense of being able to lay down his life for something important. That can’t happen with a television tube.”

Diane Sawyer: “But there are people who come forward and say, ‘I got a miracle because of, what, because of the money I gave, because I watched, I did get a miracle.’”

Ole: “Did you ever see ‘The Wizard of Oz?’ Dorothy got her heart’s desire, the tin man received his heart’s desire, the lion received his heart’s desire, and the Tin Man received his heart’s desire, even though the Wizard was a charlatan. Why? The God of the Universe was already resident within them, he just had to be let out!”

Diane Sawyer: “So, what do you say to the person sitting at home, watching?”

Ole: “Let’s open your eyes, and look at the need around you. Give to that need instead of to some faraway evangelist that’s talking you into playing a heavenly lottery, or a heavenly slot machine.”

Diane Sawyer: “And they’ll get those miracles they want?”

Ole Anthony

Ole (interrupting): -They’ll get all the miracles that are promised. They’ll get a hundredfold blessing returned unto them.”

That was Ole Anthony some thirty years ago. Ole Anthony died last week at the age 82.

It has been said that no bad person has all bad qualities, and no good person has all good qualities.

Everybody, all of us, has a mixture of what can be seen as perhaps saintly and conversely diabolical attributes.

And so, it was with Ole Anthony, founder and elder of the Trinity Foundation, of Dallas, Texas.

Trinity Foundation is best known for its work in monitoring and exposing various “televangelist” ministries. In doing so, Trinity Foundation and Ole Anthony probably did some good.

However, former members of Trinity Foundation have also spoken and written of a “dark side” to Ole Anthony and the Trinity Foundation. Trinity Foundation has been described by some as a “cult”.

Ole Anthony also lied extensively about his background. He has claimed that he was (before founding Trinity Foundation in 1972) a broadcaster, a spy, a wealthy industrialist, a political strategist and candidate. In fact, he was none of those things.

Trinity Foundation has been described by former members as employing a number of cult-like, abusive practices. For example, notorious “hot seat” confrontational group encounter sessions, which broke down members’ personal boundaries and fostered an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. Though this practice ended in the early 1990s.

Ole Anthony taught that everything in ones’ natural mind was an enemy of God, and that ones’ mind is actually the Antichrist. And according to Anthony unless one is living in community one cannot become free of one’s Antichrist nature.

If that is true, why then would anyone listen to Ole Anthony? After all, these ideas were all products of his own mind.

But Ole Anthony believed that he had discovered things, some spiritual truths, which other Christians had somehow missed for the last 2,000 years.

However, Ole Anthony was hardly an original thinker.

Many of the founders and leaders of controversial Bible-based groups, some called “cults,” believed that they too were totally unique and special.

Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS (Mormon) church taught that he was the latter-day prophet of “the restored Gospel.”

Gene Spriggs, founder of the so-called “Twelve Tribes” communities, taught that the Holy Spirit had been absent from the face of the Earth until he founded a truly authentic community.

Sun Myung Moon taught the same thing about his supposedly unique Unification church. Moon went so far as to claim to be the Second Coming of Christ.

There are so many examples of various Bible-based thinkers that taught, whether implicitly or explicitly, that they’d figured something out that nobody had every really understood before for 2,000 years.

Ole Anthony was yet another self-proclaimed latter-day prophet, and in many ways, not unlike Moon, Spriggs, and all the rest.

What then is the legacy of Ole Anthony?

Trinity Foundation served to highlight the excesses and frauds of various radio and TV preachers and their ministries. This served the public good.

But behind his good work, and largely unknown to the general public, Ole Anthony held an inordinate amount of power and control over the lives of his followers within the Trinity Foundation. He’d deny his disciples permission to marry. And he ruled through fear and intimidation. Anthony often punished those who would dare to question him or his authority.

Those who focus only on what Ole Anthony did through his well-publicized activities regarding unscrupulous evangelical ministries, may be unaware of the issues surrounding accountability concerning his own behavior, and the authoritarian way in which he ran Trinity Foundation.

For all of Ole Anthony’s preaching about accountability he himself was accountable to no one. And in many ways the personality-driven Trinity Foundation existed to support Anthony’s own pretentious posturing and narcissistic needs.

Note: Brian Birmingham is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a BA in Psychology and Sociology. He is a native of Dallas, Texas and was once a member of the Trinity Foundation community.

Ole Anthony, televangelist, televangelists, Trinity Foundation, TV preachers