I have gone through some literature on cults and mass movements and found that often some ideas and themes are presented again and again or interesting variations come up.
Obviously this doesn't validate any particular view by itself but if we are interested in any of these ideas I think it is useful to both see the claims and who is making them so we can look further into their work if what is said or how it is said makes us curious.
I think that if we look at three of the following quotes about leaders of mass movements it becomes apparent that certain ideas are widespread on the topic.
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”
― George Orwell
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
― Eric Hoffer
Arendt, Orwell and Hoffer recognized that mass movement leaders need to be infallible, they need to act like they make no mistakes. Obviously Arendt gave us Origins of Totalitarianism, Hoffer gave us The True Believer and Orwell gave us Animal Farm, 1984 and several superb essays on political language.
We have Ronald Hubbard and current Scientology leader David Miscavige to compare and contrast with these descriptions but I think the trait of the follower not seeing flaws in the leader and the leader acting as if he is perfect and superhuman or godlike (and almost all cult leaders are men) is essential.
A follower can idealize a person who doesn't display cult leader behavior but I think it discourages zealous fanatics to have a leader encourage moderation, critical or independent thinking or followers displaying tolerance of everyone, and similar behavior serves to deflate fanatics and counter radicalization.
If a leader admits flaws and errors, defers to experts and more experienced people, admits ignorance and weaknesses and doesn't lie or offer exaggerated claims or promises they are discouraging cultic followers but you can still get some as some people are used to such relationships or some followers between the leader and other followers may encourage this.
“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
― Eric Hoffer
“When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”
― George Orwell
“For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality”
― Hannah Arendt
“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert
“Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.”
― Frank Herbert
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.”
― Frank Herbert
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”
― Frank Herbert
“motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.”
― Frank Herbert
“Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”
― Frank Herbert
“Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.”
― Frank Herbert
“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.”
― Frank Herbert
“The wise despot...maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”
― Frank Herbert
“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
― Noam Chomsky
“What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings.”
― Karl Popper
“If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men.”
― Karl Popper
“And it implies that if we respect truth, we must search for it by persistently searching for our errors: by indefatigable rational criticism, and self-criticism.”
― Karl Popper
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
― Noam Chomsky
“In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it onto motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them.”
― Hannah Arendt
Perhaps the following quote sums up Ron Hubbard's character and details of his cult and personal life as well as any I have ever seen:
"The overinflated narcissist is often someone much more like the original Narcissus of Ovid's Metamorphoses, as I understand the Narcissus myth: reveling in being wanted and adored by others, contemptuously deeming no one good enough, reinforcing his grandiose overvaluation of himself by sadistically negating the value and worth of others; and ultimately trapped and destroyed by his delusional obsession with what he perceives to be his own perfection. This narcissist in real life, a myth in his own mind, is so well defended against his developmental trauma, so skillful a disavower of the dependency and inadequacy that is so shameful to him, that he creates a delusional world in which he is a superior being in need of nothing he cannot provide for himself. To remain persuaded of his own perfection, he uses significant others whom he can subjugate. These spouses, siblings, children, or followers of the inflated narcissist strive anxiously to be what the narcissist wants them to be, for fear of being banished from his exalted presence. He is compelled to use those who depend on him to serve as hosts for his own disavowed and projected dependency, which for him signifies profound inadequacy and is laden with shame and humiliation. To the extent that he succeeds in keeping inadequacy and dependency external, he can sustain in his internal world his delusions of shame-free, self-sufficient superiority."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 11
Shaw went on to describe his opinion on the key difference between a psychopath and traumatizing narcissist in his concepts.
"When we say "pathological," what do we really mean ? When this term is used by psychoanalysts, it seems to me that some level of psychopathy is what is really being implied. However, the narcissist who seduces others in order to control and exploit them, who attacks and negates other's subjectivity in order to create hegemony for his own, and who does so while being firmly convinced of his unquestionable entitlement and righteousness, does not fit the meaning of psychopath as I understand it. The difference is the psychopath knows he breaks the law and behaves with no regard or empathy for others. The narcissist I am describing is very firmly convinced of his righteousness. This kind of narcissism involves a delusional sense of omnipotence, buttressed by the paranoid belief that all who question the narcissist's perfection are merely envious and malicious (paranoid in the sense that the malice and envy are disavowed and projected). The terms "pathological narcissist," often used to describe this set of character structures, is also used, problematically, to label and describe the people he typically exploits and victimizes, whose sense of self-esteem he has traumatically destabilized." Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 11
He sees the psychopath as knowing the difference between what others see as right and wrong and the psychopath knows he violates the standards of acceptable conduct and breaks the law and doesn't care, doesn't care about hurting people or breaking rules or what anyone thinks about it or him. The ultimate no fucks given attitude.
While in contrast the traumatic narcissist is deeply wounded and has tremendous unresolved trauma motivating him. He has to avoid it by erecting manic defenses. He perpetually uses denial of negative qualities regarding himself including behavior. This in my opinion is the genesis of profound hypocrisy. A traumatizing narcissist can do anything and find justification for it in his self-righteousness while condemning anything in others, particularly those who criticize him.
This is completely obvious with Hubbard who said his critics always had crimes in their pasts and to always meet criticism with attacks against the attacker and to ruthlessly and relentlessly ask "what are your crimes ?" of any critic.
Shaw goes on:
"Since, for the traumatizing narcissist, insufficiency is equated with mortifying dependency and the ensuing sense of impotence and inferiority, it is crucial for him to keep the destabilizing shame of these repudiated aspects of self from being released into consciousness."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 35
"Externalization of shame. Rather than feel self-loathing and the helplessness of unrequited dependency needs, the traumatizing narcissist arranges for dependency and its accompanying shame to be kept external, assigned to belong only to others, so as to protect himself from self-loathing and ultimately from decompensation-literally, mortification, or (psychic) death by shame."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 35
Eight Criteria for Thought Reform by Robert Jay Lifton excerpt
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
The University of North Carolina Press/Chapel Hill and London
By Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Obviously this doesn't validate any particular view by itself but if we are interested in any of these ideas I think it is useful to both see the claims and who is making them so we can look further into their work if what is said or how it is said makes us curious.
I think that if we look at three of the following quotes about leaders of mass movements it becomes apparent that certain ideas are widespread on the topic.
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”
― George Orwell
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
― Eric Hoffer
Arendt, Orwell and Hoffer recognized that mass movement leaders need to be infallible, they need to act like they make no mistakes. Obviously Arendt gave us Origins of Totalitarianism, Hoffer gave us The True Believer and Orwell gave us Animal Farm, 1984 and several superb essays on political language.
We have Ronald Hubbard and current Scientology leader David Miscavige to compare and contrast with these descriptions but I think the trait of the follower not seeing flaws in the leader and the leader acting as if he is perfect and superhuman or godlike (and almost all cult leaders are men) is essential.
A follower can idealize a person who doesn't display cult leader behavior but I think it discourages zealous fanatics to have a leader encourage moderation, critical or independent thinking or followers displaying tolerance of everyone, and similar behavior serves to deflate fanatics and counter radicalization.
If a leader admits flaws and errors, defers to experts and more experienced people, admits ignorance and weaknesses and doesn't lie or offer exaggerated claims or promises they are discouraging cultic followers but you can still get some as some people are used to such relationships or some followers between the leader and other followers may encourage this.
“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”
― Eric Hoffer
“When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.”
― Hannah Arendt
“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”
― George Orwell
“For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.”
― Eric Hoffer
“The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality”
― Hannah Arendt
“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert
“Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.”
― Frank Herbert
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.”
― Frank Herbert
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.”
― Frank Herbert
“motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.”
― Frank Herbert
“Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”
― Frank Herbert
“Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.”
― Frank Herbert
“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.”
― Frank Herbert
“The wise despot...maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”
― Frank Herbert
“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
― Noam Chomsky
“What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings.”
― Karl Popper
“If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men.”
― Karl Popper
“And it implies that if we respect truth, we must search for it by persistently searching for our errors: by indefatigable rational criticism, and self-criticism.”
― Karl Popper
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
― Noam Chomsky
“In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it onto motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them.”
― Hannah Arendt
Perhaps the following quote sums up Ron Hubbard's character and details of his cult and personal life as well as any I have ever seen:
"The overinflated narcissist is often someone much more like the original Narcissus of Ovid's Metamorphoses, as I understand the Narcissus myth: reveling in being wanted and adored by others, contemptuously deeming no one good enough, reinforcing his grandiose overvaluation of himself by sadistically negating the value and worth of others; and ultimately trapped and destroyed by his delusional obsession with what he perceives to be his own perfection. This narcissist in real life, a myth in his own mind, is so well defended against his developmental trauma, so skillful a disavower of the dependency and inadequacy that is so shameful to him, that he creates a delusional world in which he is a superior being in need of nothing he cannot provide for himself. To remain persuaded of his own perfection, he uses significant others whom he can subjugate. These spouses, siblings, children, or followers of the inflated narcissist strive anxiously to be what the narcissist wants them to be, for fear of being banished from his exalted presence. He is compelled to use those who depend on him to serve as hosts for his own disavowed and projected dependency, which for him signifies profound inadequacy and is laden with shame and humiliation. To the extent that he succeeds in keeping inadequacy and dependency external, he can sustain in his internal world his delusions of shame-free, self-sufficient superiority."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 11
Shaw went on to describe his opinion on the key difference between a psychopath and traumatizing narcissist in his concepts.
"When we say "pathological," what do we really mean ? When this term is used by psychoanalysts, it seems to me that some level of psychopathy is what is really being implied. However, the narcissist who seduces others in order to control and exploit them, who attacks and negates other's subjectivity in order to create hegemony for his own, and who does so while being firmly convinced of his unquestionable entitlement and righteousness, does not fit the meaning of psychopath as I understand it. The difference is the psychopath knows he breaks the law and behaves with no regard or empathy for others. The narcissist I am describing is very firmly convinced of his righteousness. This kind of narcissism involves a delusional sense of omnipotence, buttressed by the paranoid belief that all who question the narcissist's perfection are merely envious and malicious (paranoid in the sense that the malice and envy are disavowed and projected). The terms "pathological narcissist," often used to describe this set of character structures, is also used, problematically, to label and describe the people he typically exploits and victimizes, whose sense of self-esteem he has traumatically destabilized." Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 11
He sees the psychopath as knowing the difference between what others see as right and wrong and the psychopath knows he violates the standards of acceptable conduct and breaks the law and doesn't care, doesn't care about hurting people or breaking rules or what anyone thinks about it or him. The ultimate no fucks given attitude.
While in contrast the traumatic narcissist is deeply wounded and has tremendous unresolved trauma motivating him. He has to avoid it by erecting manic defenses. He perpetually uses denial of negative qualities regarding himself including behavior. This in my opinion is the genesis of profound hypocrisy. A traumatizing narcissist can do anything and find justification for it in his self-righteousness while condemning anything in others, particularly those who criticize him.
This is completely obvious with Hubbard who said his critics always had crimes in their pasts and to always meet criticism with attacks against the attacker and to ruthlessly and relentlessly ask "what are your crimes ?" of any critic.
Shaw goes on:
"Since, for the traumatizing narcissist, insufficiency is equated with mortifying dependency and the ensuing sense of impotence and inferiority, it is crucial for him to keep the destabilizing shame of these repudiated aspects of self from being released into consciousness."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 35
"Externalization of shame. Rather than feel self-loathing and the helplessness of unrequited dependency needs, the traumatizing narcissist arranges for dependency and its accompanying shame to be kept external, assigned to belong only to others, so as to protect himself from self-loathing and ultimately from decompensation-literally, mortification, or (psychic) death by shame."
Daniel Shaw
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation Page 35
Eight Criteria for Thought Reform by Robert Jay Lifton excerpt
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
The University of North Carolina Press/Chapel Hill and London
By Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
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