In Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA, the author John Lisle describes the worldview and culture of the CIA that led to unstructured and often unscientific mind control testing during the height of the Cold War and fears of communism. The most egregious tests drugged unsuspecting people with various dosages of LSD which could result in irrevocable personality changes, mental health issues such as paranoia, and even death. Very scary what can be done in the name of security!
BITE model
Though the CIA determined that effective and long-lasting mind control was not feasible through drugs, the epilogue describes how cults achieve a level of mind control using Steven Hassan‘s BITE model. Though it appears – in my limited, online research – that the model is respected, one can define almost anything as a cult: government structure, religion, politics, even software development processes.
Is Communism A Cult?
Let’s apply the BITE model to communism:
Behavior control involves dictating what someone can do, such as what they can eat, when they can sleep, how they can dress, where they can go, and with whom they can associate.
Communism favored societal gains over personal achievements, with centralized planning describing how those societal gains were to be achieved. Farms were collectivized. Redefining family. Young Pioneers and their red scarves. Internal passports. The (very) limited opportunities to travel to western/non-communist countries.
Information control involves restricting what someone can know, usually by preventing them from accessing – and teaching them to distrust – noncult sources of information, all the while feeding them a stead diet of cult propaganda.
All communist countries have/had government-controlled press that, in any number of ways, told their citizens what each should know and believe, emphasizing the achievements and benefits of communism while denigrating other, democratic governments. The Black Book of Polish Censorship is particularly enlightening, describing how the Polish government decided what newspaper articles, church bulletins, pamphlets, and books were approved/modified/rejected based on government beliefs and fears of the day. [And yes, I have a copy and have read it. Again, fascinating.]
Though control involves reinforcing what someone has been told to believe, usually through a combination of taking oaths, saying prayers, singing songs, reciting mantras, performing rituals, discouraging dissent, elevating faith over evidence, insisting on the infallibility of scripture, and inculcating a tribal mentality of “us versus them” or “good versus evil.”
In communist ideology, you either believed in the revolutions ultimate goal of a society without class divisions or government or you were a class enemy. Political dissent and opposition was not allowed. Stalin’s cult of personality. Of course, the grounds constantly shifted and a model communist today could be a non-person tomorrow and rehabilitated years down the road. Keeping opinions to yourself and a trusted group of like-minded friends – assuming they were in fact trustworthy – was the safest course of action.
Emotion control involves instilling in someone certain feelings to make them beholden to the cult: guilt, fear, shame, anger, loyalty, dependence. The mandatory confession of sins, donation of money, and proselytizing to others are common, as are the ideas that apostates should be shunned, deserve severe punishment, and are solely responsible for their failures.
Self-criticism was first discussed by Lenin:
Frankly admitting to a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the circumstances which gave rise to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it – that is the earmark of a serious party.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1928/06/26.html
Stalin elevated it to a normal, communist activity:
In order to be fully prepared for this turn, the Party had to be its moving spirit, and the leading role of the Party in the forthcoming elections had to be fully ensured. But this could be done only if the Party organizations themselves became thoroughly democratic in their everyday work, only if they fully observed the principles of democratic centralism in their inner-Party life, as the Party Rules demanded, only if all organs of the Party were elected, only if criticism and self-criticism in the Party were developed to the full, only if the responsibility of the Party bodies to the members of the Party were complete, and if the members of the Party themselves became thoroughly active.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/ch12.htm
Show trials during Stalin’s rule often concluded with the guilty making outlandish confessions in an often fruitless attempt to escape execution. Many innocent victims wrote Stalin from gulags or exile accepting their guilt, understanding their mistakes, and begging forgiveness.
Final Thoughts
Without a background in psychology or cults, I believe BITE could define almost anything social or professional group as a cult – nationalism, MAGA, Hollywood movie industry, AGILE methodology, sport teams’ fandom, home schooling – which makes the approach useless.
Image Credits
- Book cover from Macmillan Publishers web site.
