Loading summary
Transcript209 lines
- [00:00]
Monty
One of the hardest things about deconstruction was how humbling it was to realize that I got played. I grew up thinking that the Democrats worship demons. Had I still been in the Christian nationalist cult, I probably would have believed in QAnon and Pizzagate and even things like I thought after birth abortions were not only legal, but that they were common practice. And as I find out more information, it was deeply humiliating to find out all these things I'd believed in, even about God. The Bible translations were so utterly wrong, it left me feeling really stupid. And I didn't wanna talk about it. Cause I've always been proud of how smart I am. Well, today's guest is here to take away some of the stigma of talking about what it's like to be in a cult. Dr. Steve Hasson is a PhD in psychotherapy and a worldwide cult expert. He's developed models about influence and how control is really the key to a successful cult. Not only is he credentialed academically, why would he study this in the first place? Well, Dr. Steve Hassan used to be a Mooney. He was recruited into the cult at the age of 19, got out two and a half years later, deeply traumatized by the experience. And as someone who he didn't grow up in a religious upbringing, someone who you wouldn't think would be susceptible to this type of indoctrination. And he has spent his life helping people not just escape cults, but heal from them, understand them, and help continue the conversation around how to fight back against a cult like mindset, especially when now technology is being used to promote cult tactics. So we're going to talk brainwashing, hypnosis, cult, sleep deprivation, all on today's episode of Flipping Tables. And we're live. Dr. Steve Hassan, thank you for being on the episode today. I'm very excited about this conversation.
- [01:52]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah, me too. This is the first time we're talking and I've been following you on Instagram and all your little short ditties that are so spot on. And so I followed you and, and then I realized you asked me to be on your podcast a month later after you invited me. And I was like, oops, nobody's responding to invitations. I want to do this show. I really wanted to meet you.
- [02:21]
Monty
Yeah, this is great. And actually I ended up, I saw a comment you left and I was able to then reply to the comment, say, check your messages. I want you to be on here. And I' given you. I've already talked, given a little bit of an intro to the listener about who you are and what your expertise is. But I would love for you to just start with what you know, what your expertise is, what your work is in, and then we'll kind of dive into how you ended up in that work.
- [02:46]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Sure. Well, like you, I had an experience. Unlike you, I wasn't raised in a cult. I had a pretty normal childhood growing up in Flushing, Queens. And I might add, I grew up 1.3 miles from Donald Trump, who was in the. The Jamaica Estates, which was the wealthy area. I was on the other side of Union Turnpike in the attached small houses. But I grew up knowing about Donald Trump and I wrote poetry and I was an extra honor student, played basketball like girls, very normal. And I got recruited into a front group of the Moonies while a student at Queens College in February of 1974. And that was the same month that Patty Hearst was physically abducted by the left wing called the Symbionese Liberation Army. But my recruitment was more love bombing or what, what, you know, what's known, you know, as women flirting, you know, lying their faces off that they were students, which they weren't, or that they weren't part of a religious group, which they were. But I was just flattered. Three women. I thought I could get lucky with one of them. They were all really cute. But remember 19, I had a lot of hormones going on and it was right after my girlfriend had dumped me, so I was feeling lonely and. And they just lied. And it was a systematic, step by step recruitment and indoctrination into this right wing fascist cult that was headed by a man who claimed to be 10 times greater than Jesus Christ. Sun Myung Moon, who claimed that Jesus came to him in a vision when he was 16 saying that he needed him to, to finish his unfinished mission to save the world and to bring about the Garden of Eden on Earth because Satan invaded. The plan, which was to have an idyllic Garden of Eden and other parts of the story. But to cut to the chase, nobody knew about the Moonies in February of 74. They didn't hit the media till that summer when they started a fasting for Richard Nixon during Watergate. And I was involved actually in a three day fast on the Capitol stairs as a Mooney. And my family flipped out because they knew I hated Richard Nixon. My father voted for him. I would argue at the dinner table, how could you support, you know, he's a crook. I was anti Vietnam War, et cetera. And I became a right wing fascist. And because I guess because I'm six feet tall and you know, I was bright, I guess, et cetera. I was selected by one of the top people to be groomed to be one of the top leaders in the world of this cult. So I got to be in on leadership meetings with Moon when he said things like we're going to infiltrate the government, we're going to put people to volunteer in congressmen and senators offices. We, you know that democracy is satanic.
- [06:31]
Monty
God wants a theocracy just like Christian nationalists.
- [06:36]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Exactly. The point of why. Why I've. Why I am still so energized about talking about this because I really believed it. Like I would have taken a bullet, I would have killed on command. I was so indoctrinated that Satan was the God of this world and all of my generations of ancestors were stuck at low level depending on me to do good acts on earth to blah blah, blah. So I was radicalized and I was, you know, dropped out of college, quit my job. They even asked me to throw away my original poetry, citing the Abraham and Isaac story, the famous story sacrifice and they asking me to prove my, my faith and what's my Isaac. And we think it's your poetry. Do you love God enough to. Here's the garbage can. And I threw out my poetry. But it was all part of getting rid of my real identity in order for this cult pseudo identity to have full reign over my body. And I was sleeping three to four hours a night. So long story short, I had all these experiences and I'll dip back in, but to answer your question, I nearly died in a van crash on the Baltimore Beltway in April of 76. So a little over two years later I fell asleep at the wheel of a van, drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck at 80 miles an hour and they had to close the highway down. They thought it would blow up because I was leaking gas. I was completely trapped and in more pain than I've ever been in. But that led to my rescue from by the rescue workers. Two weeks in the hospital away from the cult, they visited me once for an hour. They gave me one cassette tape of one of Father's speeches. They called Moon Father. True Father. So I had all this time, I had all this sleep and I reached out to my sister Thea, who I was always very close with growing up. She was my older sister, I have two older sisters. And I told her I was in the hospital and she's like, oh, I want to take care of you and you have a nephew you haven't Met yet. Come home and I'll take care of you. And I said, well, I'm a leader. I could probably get permission, but you can't tell the parents or Steph, our eldest sister, because they were satanic, because they said I was in a cult and brainwashed. So my dear sister promised that she wouldn't tell them, but thankfully she broke that promise and told them. And they hired my father, hired a number of ex Mooney's. I'm at my sister's house with a cast from my toes to my groin on crutches. And I'm sitting on the sofa with my leg up. And my father shows up and takes my crutches and puts it on the other side of the room. And then in what march, all these ex Moonies. And I was like, satan, Satan. You know? And anyway, long story short. And I really. There's a long story, but for the purpose of this question, I'll just say I did realize after learning about Chinese Communist brainwashing, talking with ex members, one of whom I had actually recruited into the Moon east cult and gotten out, I realized Moon wasn't the Messiah because he was a liar and therefore couldn't be an agent of God, couldn't be trustworthy. And once I allowed that doubt to enter my consciousness, it felt, Monty, like a house of cards going plop, plop, plop, plop, plop. In my mind, it just takes one piece. I just. I realized the whole thing was based on one presupposition, that Moon was the Messiah. If you take that one thing out, it's like, what. What was I doing? I was working 18 to 21 hours a day for no pay to help a multi millionaire become a billionaire who wanted to influence politics. That. That was giving money to Falwell and Liberty and all these other things. All of the things started just collapsing and I just cried. And I was just like, I can't believe that I believe this. Like, what happened to me that led to. And I know I've been listening to you, Monty. You're deconstructing everything from your childhood. You're like, no, this verse is completely opposite of what I was taught as a child. So that's what I had to do. I read the Divine Principle, which is their Bible. I read the Old Test Torah, the Old Testament, the New Testament again. And I just had to deconstruct the entire thing. But I needed to understand social psychology. I wanted to understand how intelligent, educated people from good homes could be taken over so completely. And one of the books that Helped me the most. Monty was in. My deprogramming was called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton.
- [12:30]
Monty
I'm going to put this in the show.
- [12:31]
Dr. Steve Hassan
This was a 1961 book, and as a Mooney, we were told Communism was Satan's army. So when I was asked, do you want to know about Chinese Communist brainwashing? I said, why not? Of course.
- [12:44]
Monty
Yeah.
- [12:45]
Dr. Steve Hassan
But when we went through all eight criteria, it applied to the Moonies.
- [12:49]
Monty
What were those criteria?
- [12:53]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Milieu control, loaded language, mystical manipulation, demand for purity, sacred science, cult of confession, dispensing of existence. I think I got. Did I. Did I say loaded language? Yep, I think I got it. But the point is, is that, you know, I. I didn't feel brainwashed. I didn't think I was in a cult. Every time people told me I was brainwashed, it was, like, obvious that I'm still bright and talented and knowing what I'm doing. Except, like a computer gets hacked by malware.
- [13:35]
Monty
Yeah.
- [13:36]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Your operating system got taken over. Mine got taken over. So after my deprogramming, I just was like, I want to know what the hell happened to me. And I had all these speeches, internal documents, and there was a congressional subcommittee investigation that had started because the number two man in the South Korean embassy defected, saying, my country has a plan for covert operations in your country. And so there was this whole subcommittee investigation, and Congressman Leo Ryan, who was murdered at Jonestown, was on that inquiry, I should add. And I became a whistleblower because I had these documents and I'd been at all these meetings, but I was afraid I was going to be assassinated, honestly, because that's what they said in the leadership meetings, that anyone betrayed us, you know, they needed to be taken from their physical bodies and sent to the spirit world.
- [14:41]
Monty
As God's true love commands, obviously.
- [14:44]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah, exactly. And. And so I went to see Robert Lift and I called him up, you know, he was at Yale, and, And I said, Dr. Lift in your book saved my life. He. Which book? Because he's written many. And I said, thought Reform. He said, that old book because it was published in 61. And that was 76 that I called him and I. And I said I was in this cult and your book saved my life. And. But what I experienced was more than what you described. He said, come and talk to me. So there I am with my, my, my cast and my crutches at his Central park west penthouse with wall hard covered books from the ceiling to the floor.
- [15:39]
Monty
That's a dream.
- [15:40]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And he's like, got his white hair, you know, an Einsteinian way. And I'm telling him my story and how the moon is operating. He said, well, you know, I just studied it secondhand. But you've lived it. They did it to you and you did it to other people. And what you're describing is so much more sophisticated than what the Chinese were doing. You need to study psychology and explain it to people like me. And I'm sitting there, this college dropout, ashamed, embarrassed, confused, 22 year old, being told that one of the world authorities on brainwashing is saying I can teach him stuff. And I was like, yeah, I can do that.
- [16:32]
Monty
It's like, okay.
- [16:33]
Dr. Steve Hassan
So I switched my major from creative writing to psychology and just. And I reached out to Phil Zimbardo of Stanford, of the famous Stanford prison study. I reached out to Margaret Singer, Edgar Schein, Lewis West. These were all people studying Chinese Communist brainwashing. And they all were very encouraging of me, like, tell us more and explain your story. And so my deconstruction wound up becoming combating cult mind control. Well, it became my, my, my master's thesis first in 85 and in 88 my book came out and people read it and they started leaving cults just from reading my book. So I knew that I had described what needed to be described. And interestingly, Monty, that early edition, which I've since bought back the rights and updated it a lot, but that early edition had the four components of, of, of brainwashing or mind control. But it wasn't called bite. It was, that was a later recommendation of actually a minister friend of mine from Texas who said, you know Steve, you can change the order and call it bite and then people can remember it. And I was like, buddy, can I use it that? And he said, yeah, please.
- [18:03]
Monty
And what are those four things?
- [18:06]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Behavior control, information control, thought control and emotional control. And what I, what how I came up with that model based on Lifton's model, Singer's model, West's model was when I read the 1957 book by Leon Festinger about a UFO cult that he called When Prophecies Failed. This is the man who came up with cognitive dissonance theory who said we have thoughts, feelings and behaviors and people want to have congruence between our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. And when something happens that's really incongruent, like you do a behavior that's out of line of everything else, we have a justifying, rationalizing to feel better about it, to fit in mechanism. So I started thinking Thoughts, feelings, behaviors. Let me go through all of these models and just write down the Moonies and how they controlled thoughts, how they controlled feelings, how they control behaviors. So I started a laundry list that became a long list that I did my dissertation on, the full list. And. But I said, there's something else. And basically what I realized was information is the food we use to figure out what reality is. And if you lie, if you withhold information, distort it, you can co opt people's beliefs, behaviors, you can trick them emotionally, etc. So these four overlapping components, when people were reading Combating, they were like, oh, the Moonies are obviously occult. And for your audience, because I know you have younger folks then my generation, Everybody knew the Moonies back in the 80s and 90s because they were doing these mass weddings.
- [20:17]
Monty
Yes. And they were huge. They had strangers numbers.
- [20:22]
Dr. Steve Hassan
His record was 35,000 couples at one time. And he would line up the women and the men and he'd go, you and you, you and you. Because he supposedly was clairvoyant and clairaudience.
- [20:38]
Monty
Who needed to be matched. And these people never met each other. And it would be mass weddings in, like, convention centers.
- [20:45]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And Madison Square Garden or Robert Kennedy Stadium, etc. And. And I should say most of these marriages have since failed utterly. There are people who were born into the cult who have now left and are doing podcasts and other things like that. But, yeah, so the point is, people would read my going, oh, the Moonies are a cult. Let me read about that. And then as they're reading, they're like, wait a minute, we do that. You know, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons are my two biggest followers, if you will, because they grew up in it. And they're like, but this is exactly what we do.
- [21:35]
Monty
Yeah. And so my question is, like, obviously you're someone who's so intelligent and you didn't grow up in this. When I went through my deconstruction or my deprogramming, I had grown up in it from as long as I could remember. Can you walk us through how? So you met the girls at school. They looked like students, invited you to come out. But how did they get you to the point where that summer you're doing a fast for Richard Nixon, what were the steps that happened?
- [22:07]
Dr. Steve Hassan
So it's important to understand that the way cults recruited then is now being supercharged on the Internet. So back then, we had to. When we were witnessing where we were recruiting people, we had to find out their history. While their parents married, was there alcohol? We had to find out how to identify them and how to figure out how to get to them. And the model that I was taught back in 74 as a leader was to categorize people as thinkers, feelers, doers, or believers.
- [22:49]
Monty
Oh, I've, I'm so, I'm so excited. Go ahead.
- [22:53]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Well, it, it's a version of the bite model with the exception of the believers. But the idea is if someone has had a spiritual, religious background, you would change the way you approach them, pray with them, or study the Bible with them. Whereas if someone said, I'm an atheist, but the world's so screwed up, but nobody seems to have a solution, then we would pitch the doers that way or the intellects that we would talk about the Nobel Prize winning science conferences the Moonies would have and all these geniuses, people showing up and we would do a very intellectual approach to them. And the people who were looking for love, looking for community. We love what the term was called love bombing. Oh, Monty, you're so special. You're so bright. God has a special role for you or whatever. Or not.
- [23:56]
Monty
And we're here for you and we're going to support you and come to this meeting and.
- [24:01]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right. So what I want to, what I, I really want this interview to help your listeners in 2025, because all of the same principles that I've described over five decades now are getting supercharged online because of 5,000 data points on every voting American that's been collected without our, without our agreement, largely because there's no data privacy collection in the protection in the United States and with algorithms. Yeah, people's minds are getting hacked and they're getting nudged to becoming more extreme on the right, more extreme on the left, or confused or hopeless or suicidal or anxious or whatever that I'm, I'm trying to tell people. It's your mind, you need to control it. You shouldn't be dependent on the screens. You shouldn't be doing, you know, saying, I want to check my, my, my social media for 10 minutes and two hours later you're waking up going, wait a minute, I only wanted to do 10 minutes. That's, that's a hypnotic phenomenon, by the way. It's called time distortion.
- [25:24]
Monty
Is that also a cult tactic, is using that kind of hypnotic time distortion? How would a cult do that in a real life setting?
- [25:34]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Great question. So I want to say, first of all that I spent years studying everything I could find on persuasion, attitude change, brainwashing, social psychology, textbooks, et, Cetera went back to college and there was a missing and something missing and I didn't know what it was until 1980. So four years later I went to an NLP workshop. What is NLP? Neuro Linguistic Programming. Well, what's that? Well, it's a formula created by Bandler and Grinder based on Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist who pioneered a unique process oriented approach to doing hypnosis.
- [26:26]
Monty
Wow.
- [26:27]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Only Erickson was a psychiatrist who did this to help his patients, who couldn't be helped by anyone else. And prior to Erickson, hypnosis was very much considered a direct suggestion by an authority figure who would order you to have your eyes feel heavy, heavy, heavy, and I won't do the voice. And either people complied and they went into trance or they didn't. And if they didn't, then they weren't hypnotizable. So went the theory. And Erickson said, wait a minute. People are going into, in and out of trance all day long if you pay attention.
- [27:11]
Monty
That's true.
- [27:12]
Dr. Steve Hassan
If you watch their faces, if you look at their pupils and et cetera, people go off into daydreams and they're fantasizing about this or that they're in an altered state. And what I want to say about hypnosis is it's neither good or bad, it's just an altered state. And we need to be able to focus and concentrate, which is how you're a musician, musicians, artists, artists, sports figures, writers, etc. They concentrate, they get into a flow, right? So there's that. It can be very positive. And I go into, I happily go into altered states regularly, but I want to be in control of it where it's dangerous. Where we're talking about hacking is when somebody or some group has an ulterior agenda that you would not agree with if you knew up front who they were and what they believed and what they wanted to get out of you. And when you're in that focused flow state, your critical analytic mind isn't on. So that's where unconscious programming can be done on the Internet. And there is subliminal visual capabilities on the Internet. The whole ASMR phenomenon, that's trancy, right? So coming back to the story, and how did they do what they did? When I. When I look outside at Steve Hasson's experience, I had one weird event happened that changed the trajectory of my whole life. And I'll tell you what it was. So when I met the women and I went over for dinner and I met the people and they're like, oh, we're going away for a weekend. It's going to be so much fun. You know, you. You'll love. I want to introduce you to all our friends and love Bomby, right? I was like, I work on the weekends. I was working as a banquet waiter at a Holiday Inn in Hempstead, Long island, and I made my money as a college student doing banquet waitering. So I had worked at that job for two years, and I never had a weekend off, and I made good money. So I was like, I can't go. I can't go. I can't go. But you have to come. It's so great. I'm like. And then finally, after the 400th time, I said, if I don't have to work some weekend, I'll go. And that was the mistake, because two days later, I called up my boss, what time do you need me? He said, you won't believe it, but the wedding was called off. Take the weekend off. And this is what comes into. It's called mystical manipulation experience, where you're like, I wonder if I'm meant to go with these people for this weekend, because this has never happened before. And I did give my word, and I was very, very committed to be having integrity and not lying and honoring my word. So I promised I would go. So that's that weekend. They scrambled my brain.
- [30:55]
Monty
What happened that weekend?
- [30:57]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Well, everything was organized and routinized, but I wasn't sleeping because they put us in, you know, bulk sleeping accommodations and lots of noises, and I'm a light sleeper anyway, so I wasn't sleeping. But the. The. They. They organized people into groups, subgroups, and everything was organized to break you down and build you up in the eyes of the group. And I remember sitting for the first two days with my arms folded. Everyone's around me, scribbling notes like their life depended on it. And I'm like, this is kind of simplistic. This is kind of childish or whatever. But it started getting into my head in a way that I. I didn't understand. And this is what I want your listeners to understand. Human beings, we adapt unconsciously. And that's part of what we can learn from social psychology with the ASH conformity study and the Milgram obedience study and the Zimbardo prison study and all these other studies. We're starting to adapt. And what I realized was that one Mooney lecture would be very up, and the next one would be very down. The next one would be very up, Next one was being down. But What I didn't understand was that hypnosis was being used because we really wanted to be spiritual. And I later became a lecturer and I learned how to talk in a very powerful way.
- [32:53]
Monty
Wow.
- [32:54]
Dr. Steve Hassan
That would really, really help people get what they need to understand and on and on and on. So. But that was four years after I got out going, wait a minute. And then I. And this is again the deconstructing of my own experiences. Like I remember now. They told me that the eyes were the windows of the soul and that I. When I'm looking at a person, I should imagine a point where my. The fingers intersect in the person's skull. Not doing it correctly on the video, but. So I would look into people's eyes as a good Mooney. And nobody looks at another human being that way.
- [33:47]
Monty
That's so strange.
- [33:49]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Unless you're in love.
- [33:50]
Monty
Right.
- [33:52]
Dr. Steve Hassan
You might go into it like that. Right. But again, it's about understanding how the human experience can be altered intentionally by bad actors to program new beliefs, attitudes, behaviors into people's minds. And I want to just jump ahead for a second or jump backward and say, Monty. I was raised Jewish, so I didn't believe in demons or Satan or whatever. But the thing that flipped me into true Believerville was all the members in New York were taken to a theater in Greenwich Village where the whole theater was rented by the Moonies. And we were shown the Exorcist movie. And then we were brought up in vans to Tarrytown to meet the Messiah who said, God created this movie. This movie is a prophecy of what will happen to you if you leave the Unification Church.
- [35:02]
Monty
Wow. And the Exorcist was very. What year did it come out? It was very new.
- [35:07]
Dr. Steve Hassan
74, I believe.
- [35:08]
Monty
74.
- [35:09]
Dr. Steve Hassan
It was the first movie with, we know had subliminals in it too, of the devil and very fear provoking.
- [35:20]
Monty
But.
- [35:21]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And that's where I can say I was programmed with a phobia that I didn't have before the Moonies to distrust doubts. Because now a doubt wasn't me thinking there's something wrong with this doctrine or there's some hypocritical behavior going on. Any. Anything negative was a demon trying to possess me. And I had to do thought, stopping, chanting, praying, humming, singing one of the Mooney songs. To be pure, to stay pure, to stay centered in the Moonies. So again, going back to my story and how it connects to yours and so many of your listeners, I'm imagining is people need to understand these same principles of behavior, information, thought, and emotional control are being put inside of us by what we're doing online. And for a lot of people, it's very confusing, it's very overloading.
- [36:34]
Monty
Yeah. Can you give some examples of that as far as how social media is, is kind of enforcing these control patterns? And I see your book behind you, the Cult of Trump. Can you talk about how these recent movements have really used the online space to introduce us in a way that we haven't seen with cults before? Because the technology wasn't there.
- [36:55]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right. So one of the big things was Cambridge Analytic is hack of Facebook and I was hacked. I got a little notification a few months later, but they, they, they got people's personal information. They developed models, six, six factor models of people. And, and these algorithms would shift based on what you like, what you don't like, how long you stay on a particular video that you're watching. All of these get computed with supercomputers. So they have, there's a formula if they, and they're doing this in mass, but they're also targeting influencers, people that if they can co op them, they'll get all their followers. So it's a networked, what's known as complex systems theory approach, very scientific and mathematical, I might add, where again, we're under psychological warfare right now by Russia, China, Iran, Christian nationalists are involved. The new Apostolic Reformation is very digitally successful. And, and one of my theses in the Cult of Trump was that first of all, Trump is a malignant narcissist, which is a term that Eric Fromm came up with in analyzing Hitler. It's the stereotypical profile of all cult leaders I've studied in 50 years. And so I did chapter three of the book comparing Trump with my former cult leader, Sun Myung Moon, Hubbard of Scientology and Jim Jones of the People's Temple. But what I didn't know when I started the book project was that there are actual authoritarian cults influencing Trump and bringing their followers. And all of these new Apostolic Reformation churches that have a leader that says they're a prophet or apostle who can speak to God and some of them speak in tongues and claim to cast out demons, etc. Right. They do the bite model on their followers. They program them to be digital warriors, high tech, and the, and just demonizing the oppositions. And, and, and this is another NLP technique. And I, and I know of one thing that I cited of Tony Robbins, who's the biggest teacher of NLP on Earth that I'm aware of. He made a deal with Bandler and gringer to not call it nlp. But that's what he learned, taught Donald Trump. And when I was watching the Republican nominees back in 2015, I was watching how Trump was operating. I'm like, oh, he knows nlp. And I wasn't the only one who had studied nlp. I got disillusioned, I should say, with NLP back in the early 80s when I realized it was amoral.
- [40:24]
Monty
Yeah.
- [40:24]
Dr. Steve Hassan
It was like do what works and not what's, you know, honest and following the law. So it was being used to rape women on dates. It was that. That whole, you know, Andrew Tate esque thing has been going on for years.
- [40:42]
Monty
Oh, yeah. It's been a really common practice of like, you say whatever you got to say, do whatever you got to do to get what you want, and then you can run off.
- [40:50]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right.
- [40:50]
Monty
As fast as you want.
- [40:51]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right. And so for your followers, I really want them to check out my influence Continuum graphic. It's on my website, freedomofmind.com but it's a way of organizing how to think about influence. There's healthy ethical influence, healthy ethical groups and followers respecting conscience, creativity, critical thinking, free will appear, ethical leadership, ethical organizations that give informed consent when they're recruiting, checks and balances all the way to the authoritarian side of the continuum, which does the behavior, information, thought and emotional control. So this is the framework for the bite model, but it's a way for people to navigate in reality, test online what they're hearing. If someone's inviting them to something, it's like, wait a minute, who is this person?
- [41:53]
Monty
Yeah.
- [41:54]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Do they have credentials?
- [41:57]
Monty
Yeah. And who are they and what are they? Is there something that's being sold? I have a lot of people reach out on my platform saying, well, how do I know, you know, if this religious leader is someone that I can trust? And I'll have your website in the show notes for that reason. But one of the things, and you mentioned it, I tell people, I'm like, as soon as someone claims that they are either God or have a direct line with God, run away. That's an immediate red flag. If they tell you that they have better access to know what God's actually saying than you do, it's really problematic. And one of the things I'm seeing in the Christian nationalist movement, I mean, Mike Johnson gave a speech about how well God came to me and, you know, I wasn't going to run for speaker of the House, but he told me I'm the New Moses. I was immediately like, nope, no, that's that's not true.
- [42:51]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And the same with Indian gurus, you know, who, who claim to be God or do fake magic tricks manifesting Rolex watches out of thin air, except they took it out of their pocket because they're using sleight of hand techniques. I, you know, I really want people to understand if something is true, it will stand up to scrutiny.
- [43:15]
Monty
Amen.
- [43:16]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And if somebody is legitimate and they have a criminal past, doesn't mean they haven't reformed. It's possible. But if they have a criminal past, that should be more skepticism.
- [43:30]
Monty
I'm going to be even a little more cautious with you.
- [43:33]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And when I see websites where people are advertising workshops and seminars and very multi level marketing. Crypto is another thing I'm very critical of. If there's not government regulation that's attached to it that, you know, with checks and balances, which is not what Trump is pushing, by the way.
- [43:54]
Monty
Yeah. And I mean well, and it's so clearly in his case, like just a corruption scheme. It's. If you buy enough of my crypto, I'm gonna do you special favors. Was it, Is it Justin's son is his name, where he bought a certain amount of crypto. He gets invited to dinner and now all the charges he was facing with like the Federal Trade Commission and stuff like that are all gone.
- [44:15]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And one, the guy who did Silk Road was in jail and he pardoned him and he pardoned all the January 6th criminals as well, you know, and just let all the Capitol Police who were harmed. He just said, doesn't matter. This, it wasn't, it wasn't violent. It wasn't an attempt to subvert the elections. So these big lies. And the, the public needs to understand there's a methodology that's being employed, and the only defense is to understand it and what's called name it and claim it. Because if you can name it. Oh, Trump's projecting his own bad behavior on Bruce Springsteen.
- [45:05]
Monty
Bruce, Good luck getting Bruce Springsteen to be quiet. He's like, he's, that's what I'm saying. He's always been like that. I mean, anyone who was surprised by that has not listened to Bruce. Oh, my God.
- [45:17]
Dr. Steve Hassan
I dug out this Pulitzer Prize winning photographer friend of mine's picture. This is the Boston Garden and he's tuning up before a show. I had to pull it out in honor of him. Speaking truth to power.
- [45:31]
Monty
Yep. And he always has. He has always been active and always been a voice. He's not gonna stop now. And I think one of the Things for me, growing up in looking at this and seeing, you know, very much what's happening around Trump is a cult. And just like when you and I were in cults, we didn't wanna hear it, and we wouldn't listen to people telling us that this was it. But one of the biggest things for me with Trump is that everything is a lie and everything is duplicitous and everything is a projection. You know, even they.
- [46:02]
Dr. Steve Hassan
He's the victim.
- [46:03]
Monty
Yeah. And everyone's out to get me. And, you know, these forces are working against me. But he also. And I don't know who taught him this because I know he's not a religious man. He knows just enough religious jargon to tripwire people who have Christian backgrounds, him and his administration, and they'll say things like, it's spiritual warfare and Satan's attacking Trump and, you know, demonic forces almost got him assassinated. When we know that that was staged, you know, you have people commenting, they're like, cartilage doesn't heal in a week. There's no way. He wouldn't let people. Like, no one was allowed in the hospital. No one could see him after. It's so clearly a lie. But there's just enough sprinkling of this religion that so many people are familiar with.
- [46:48]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right.
- [46:48]
Monty
That they. It's enough. It's enough to get them to bite on sometimes.
- [46:52]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Well, the thing, though, is that people don't like to be lied to, they don't like to be exploited. And eventually there's a tipping point for each person. And the critical thing, because I wrote a whole book called Freedom of How to Help Loved Ones and Family and Friends to Get out of Controlling Relationships and cults and beliefs. The critical thing is warm relations with non believers. Yeah, warm relations. And I've been saying to all the people who are against Trump, who blocked their brother, sister, uncle, mother, father, or call them names, etc. Apologize, say you miss them, get back in their life. Because once you're back in their life, you can say, I'm curious. I'd love to get your opinion. What did you think about this comment? You know, or what this person said? Because everyone has their own formula for what's going to help them get. Get out. The final straw that broke the camel's back for me in my deprogramming wasn't the ex members telling me what to think. They handed me one of moon speeches. It was to congressmen and senators. They just handed it to me. They said, read this and tell us what you think, Steve. And I knew it was a publication by the group. Again, I was a leader. So I was aware of all of these publications. And I read it. And Moon was saying, I am surprised that people could imagine that me, Reverend Moon, a Korean, could brainwash American youth. I mean, I respect Americans very much, and I am surprised that such accusations.
- [48:54]
Monty
Wow.
- [48:54]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And when I read it, I was like, what a liar. It was the first doubt that surfaced I had remembered, and I later came to remember so many more things that should have gotten me out if I wasn't in a brainwashed cult that was surrounding me. But once I could say, he's a liar, then I could say, he can't be a man of God, he can't be the Messiah, and he's not trustworthy.
- [49:25]
Monty
Yep.
- [49:26]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And once I could connect those rusty wheels in my head, it was like, immediately.
- [49:35]
Monty
And that for me, that was also my. Because I say the same to my followers. I tell them, you know, don't stay around family or relationships that may cause you physical or mental harm. Like, if it's so damaging or so violent, whether that's verbal or physical, get out. But with the rest of your family, have those conversations and have the conversation without the expectation that you're gonna change their mind. All that is needed is at some point, you're gonna plant the right seed of doubt. And once doubt can crack through and they can start asking questions, then that changes everything. Cause I always had little doubts growing up. And I was in really for 25 years. 23 to 25 was when I started a deprogram. And you're taught, oh, my gosh, the doubts are the devil. It's spiritual warfare. It's demons. It's my own sinful nature. And it wasn't until When I was 23, my fiance at the time his half sister got pregnant, she was 12. And we find out that she had been being molested by her mom's boyfriend for three years. So this had started when she was nine. And I was faced. I had been told my whole life that pregnancies from rape never occur. It's a lie that Democrats use to kill babies. That's what I was told. I was told it didn't happen. I was told that incest and rape weren't really that common, so there shouldn't be exceptions for them. And then to tack onto the end of that, two wrongs don't make a right. So when this happens and it's in front of me, it's this little girl who didn't do anything wrong.
- [51:15]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right.
- [51:15]
Monty
I'M immediately like, whoa, this is wrong. Like, first of all, you lied. Apparently this does happen. It's right in front of me. And it was, I mean, it was a court case investigation, proving paternity, the whole thing. And when I went and I, it was just enough for me to be like, I don't really know anything about abortion. I'm just gonna go look it up. And someone like you, very smart, very book smart, very good intellectually, I had never thought to ask those questions. Cause it would have been sinful. It would have been, oh, you're trying to justify this demonic belief. And I look at these numbers and I find out 93% of abortions are before 14 weeks blown away. Up until that point, I thought that after birth abortions were real. I thought that that was something that was regular practice. And it just took that moment of that's not true. And same as everything fell down.
- [52:11]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's different for every person. So if I may, Monty, I'll just say from my almost 50 years of experience, now what doesn't work is trying to attack the leader, the doctrine or the policy head on with, with logic, with facts. Because it doubles down the cult identity to be defensive and view you as the persecutor, as you as the devil. What does work though, is to talk about other groups or situations that the person would agree is a cult. For example, Chinese Communist brainwashing is easy with MAGA folks or pimps and traffickers is also something I found people are curious and responsive to. When I ask, do you understand how pimps recruit and indoctrinate people to give them a new identity to become sex slaves or labor slaves? Do you understand the techniques? And then they're like, no. Especially if they got into QAnon and Pizzagate and all of that crap. But the point is finding something that isn't a direct threat to what they're into. Educating them about the bite model and not necessarily saying bite, but controlling behavior, deconstructing it for them, but asking them questions. And when I, like with a lot of people is, what do you think about a pregnant mother who's about to give birth, who's told that if she doesn't get a blood transfusion, she's going to die and her child is going to be motherless? And this woman having so much faith in the Watchtower and their doctrine that misunderstands Kashrut laws, which is you have to drain the blood of animals before you eat it. It's like, has nothing to do with Judaism or the Bible, but these men made it up. But these people are dying.
- [54:29]
Monty
Yeah.
- [54:31]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And when I tell them that, they're like, people are dying because they are told by the governing body, I'm like, yeah, like a lot of people are dying for no reason. What would make them sacrifice their life to this? Believing in these authority figures instead of using their common sense, like, my kid needs a mother.
- [54:55]
Monty
Yeah. And also, if I need a blood transfusion to survive, I should get the blood transfusion.
- [55:01]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And. But in this cult, the Jehovah's Witnesses, you'll be excommunicated. They call disfellowshipped if you, if you get one and your whole family won't talk to you, blah, blah, blah. But showing it in other groups, people, the wheels are like, oh, that's obviously wrong. Nexium branding women without anesthesia near their genitals bad. You know, Larry Ray and, and, and. And the Sarah Lawrence students bad. You know, beating and torturing them as a Hulu docu series. So the point is, though, that there really are good examples, but each person ideally will, Will, Will do it to themselves. If you're, if you're warm, if you're asking questions, if you're exposing them to other information about other groups other than what they're into. And in the end, love is stronger than mind control. I keep saying that if you love somebody and you're just patient and kind and listening, you know, you're my sister. No matter what, I'm always be your brother. Whatever the relationship is, they will come around. Because there are a lot of people leaving the cult of Trump now because they see the truth, their benefits.
- [56:32]
Monty
Yes. And how. So when you're having these conversations with people like, let's, let's stay, we'll use the Jehovah's Witness example. How would you, if you're having this conversation, how would you massage it in a way to get them to come up with those answers or to get them to start to ask those questions? How would you approach that? Because sometimes, you know, I feel like conversations like that can sometimes be like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. But how. How have you seen this actually start to change people's minds when you use an example like that?
- [57:06]
Dr. Steve Hassan
This is where I really want to teach brilliant young people like you how I do what I do because it needs to get transmitted. We need, We. We need to. And it's not something that. I could give you one thing that it's really a. An understanding that you have to Dial that person. Now, when families hire me, how do I help my son or daughter? They've gotten, you know, radicalized. They're into the extreme this or extreme that. I want to understand who they were before.
- [57:46]
Monty
Yeah.
- [57:47]
Dr. Steve Hassan
So the more I can understand who they were before, then I can ask my family members or friends to describe how they got recruited and what they said were the important points. Now, this is different than someone born into a group.
- [58:04]
Monty
Yes, very different.
- [58:05]
Dr. Steve Hassan
It's a stretch for someone like yourself, but you could take your experience and be very effective with people born in other groups, I might add. They would particularly relate to the way you. But in describing your journey.
- [58:23]
Monty
Yep.
- [58:24]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Describing it. You have a tendency to teach. You can be a professor if you wanted to get a PhD. You have a tendency to say it as it is, as you come to understand it. But it's a different form when you're engaging in conversation and asking them questions and reading their reactions to what it is you're saying. And I'd like to propose another time, you be the old Monty and I.
- [59:02]
Monty
Can have a conversation that would be so much fun.
- [59:05]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And we could. We could videotape it and maybe even make it into a course that people can sign on to, like the do's and the don'ts.
- [59:15]
Monty
I would love that because I think that that is something even for me growing up in it. It's still hard to have those conversations sometimes. Cause you're right, I tend to be very. Once I have the data, I go into teach mode and I'm like, well, why don't you understand this? The numbers don't line up with what you're saying. But when I step back, Monty, it took something coming really personal to you for you to change your mind. It took something really emotional for you to change your mind. And there were these key people along my journey who were just willing to have conversations with me. One of the first people was my friend Brian from Maine. When I went to Liberty first year, I used to walk around with a Confederate flag keychain. Cause I was taught it was States rights and this America's exceptional and you know, et cetera.
- [60:03]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right.
- [60:03]
Monty
And he, you know, I remember him kind of looking at it and he knew, he was like, monty, where are you from? I was like, wyoming. Why do you. Why do you carry that? And it was just like. It was very nice, it was very non combative. And I went on my whole spiel about states rights and all these things. He's like, okay, how do you think that black people feel when they See that on your bag? And it just stopped me dead. And again, at no point was he combative or aggressive with me. It was just this very empathetic of how do you think they feel when they see that? What does that mean to them?
- [60:43]
Dr. Steve Hassan
So the warmth, the curious, the act of listening and what he was doing is what I describe as a change perspective pattern.
- [60:54]
Monty
Yeah.
- [60:55]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Like step into the shoes of a black person. How do you think they feel?
- [61:01]
Monty
Yep.
- [61:02]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And you're an empathetic person. So if it's asked in a warm, curious way, it did.
- [61:09]
Monty
I took the keychain off that night.
- [61:11]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah, you could do, you could do that thought experiment and go, yeah, I probably wouldn't like that. People don't understand how much impact they can have even with a stranger that they meet on the street. Like, there are JWs that have to be out in twos to recruit.
- [61:30]
Monty
Yeah.
- [61:31]
Dr. Steve Hassan
You know, they have to tattle on each other if anyone is doing the wrong thing. Just like Mormon missionaries on their mission, etc. But, but if I have five, ten minutes, I'll say, hi, what's your name? And you know, tell me, were you raised in the Jehovah's Witnesses or did you get converted? Did you get baptized? Tell me what you like about it. Tell me what you don't like about it.
- [61:58]
Monty
I love that.
- [61:59]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Then, then you watch their faces because they're not allowed to say anything negative, right?
- [62:04]
Monty
Of course not.
- [62:05]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And then I say, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I. You, you strike me as someone who's a very genuine person, who really is a true believer. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And I believe in God too. And if something is legitimate, it will stand up to scrutiny. How do you, how do you feel about what I just said? Oh, yeah, it will stand up to scrutiny. It's like, okay, so I'm curious then. This is the zinger for Witnesses. What do you think of the Raymond Franz and his book Crisis of Conscience? Well, who's Raymond Franz? Oh, well, he was born in the Witnesses. He rose to the highest level. He was a member of the governing body. And he had a crisis of conscience and left.
- [63:01]
Monty
What?
- [63:02]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Like, no, nobody left the governing body. And I'm like, well, I've talked with the guy and I read his book.
- [63:11]
Monty
As he did, you know, you know.
- [63:13]
Dr. Steve Hassan
It'S, it's something that you may want to look into if you are out on the street trying to bring people into the group. Why not hear why, you know, a 60 year top leader decided to leave because he Wanted to follow the Bible and not the Watchtower Society. Have a good day.
- [63:34]
Monty
Yeah. And I'd walk and they're sitting there like, what just happened?
- [63:39]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Or yeah, who was that? Or whatever.
- [63:43]
Monty
And one of the things I want to ask you as well, and I'm absolutely in to do a video with you where we go through those techniques. And I will be Old Monte, I remember her very well. But as we as individuals are, I was, and I was so smart. I was whip crack smart. And I knew all the talking points and I knew all the rebuttals and I could really back people into a corner. That was very effective. I see some of the big influencers even. It's pains me to make this comparison. Charlie Kirk, he knows the talking points. He knows how to back you in the corner or talk over you. And he typically doesn't challenge people other than college students. But he's effective at apologetics. So it's not discussion, it's not debate, it's apologetics. And that's how I was very good. But I could back adults into corners. And so that would be a very interesting video. But as we as a culture, I mean, part of the reason I have such a big following is because people get their information from social media. How do we start to put up barriers to make sure that we're not being unduly influenced by the culture of social media?
- [65:03]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Well, I guess my first reaction is like, you need to know yourself and you need to know your values. Like, for me, honesty was always important. Integrity is always important. Not doing harm to others, you know, don't do to others what you don't want done to you. The golden rule. So really knowing yourself is really critical. But there really is a learning curve to understanding social psychology. And some of the big myths that people are walking around with is what's known as the myth of invulnerability.
- [65:43]
Monty
It won't happen to me.
- [65:45]
Dr. Steve Hassan
People in cults, they were weak, they were stupid, they were uneducated. I'm too smart. It would never happen to me. So if you think it could never happen to you, you're a sitting duck. Yes, in my professional opinion. And when people tell me, oh, no one could hypnotize me, then I. And because I'm a licensed therapist, I don't do hypnotherapy because I want people to trust me, but I explain it. And I've done, I've done two chapters in an academic textbook on the dark side of hypnosis. But trust me, people can be manipulated. Artfully and skillfully without understanding. And that's where I say to people, if you're in the public and some stranger touches you, like you should go alarm bells. Because it could be just a boo boo in a crowd. Someone wasn't watching where they were going. But that's an example of really protecting yourself. Better to, to, you know, get distance from the person, then let them explain and apologize and ask for directions, et cetera, et cetera. I often show people in my, in my client work, the hypnotist Darren Brown. Have you ever heard of the. I'm not familiar D E R R E N Brown? And he's done a bunch of specials you might enjoy. The one where he pretends to be a faith healer and says, I'm gay, I'm an atheist, but let me tell you how they do it. And then he literally brings people up on stage and heals them and they get healed. But he's using trance suggestions on people.
- [67:50]
Monty
That's what Jim Jones did. Plus, you know, some chicken bones and chicken blood sometimes.
- [67:55]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And, and, and. Exactly, exactly. But what I'm trying to say to so thinking you're invulnerable, thinking that we are rational beings when in fact we're emotional beings who rationalize.
- [68:11]
Monty
Oh, that's a good distinction.
- [68:15]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And what's happening on social media a lot is emotional manipulation making you super fall in love or motivated to buy X, Y or Z or disgusted and angry and fearful. But if you can control emotional regulation, it's the key to subverting critical thinking. Avoid any fast. You need to make a decision right away. Appeals and I cite Robert Cialdini's work Influence, famous book and Pre Suasion is about framing. The more we understand, the more we can protect ourselves and our friends and our families. And the big picture is have real friends in real life and don't spend your life online with strangers. You know, it's, it's. You need to sleep, like turn off your phone an hour or two before bedtime.
- [69:23]
Monty
And that's turn off your. You mentioned that, you know, when you were in the Moonies, you were sleeping three to four hours a night. I've done a lot of independent study on cults because I think it's fascinating. But sleep deprivation is a very common tool, especially if it's a cult that has like a. Some kind of community or I'm losing the word, but where they have a specific center where they all live. It's very common.
- [69:47]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Communal.
- [69:47]
Monty
Yeah, there we go. Like very communal. And, and one of the things I realized as you were talking about this connection between cults and the same type of cult manipulation happening online is that we're sleep depriving ourselves. It's creating this addiction. It's creating this cycle, this wormhole. And then like you said before, and I've done it. I actually bought myself a lockbox for my phone that. My phone goes in there and I lock it and then I put it away. Cause then I. And I needed it to break the habit because I get up early in the morning. I still work in fitness part time and so I have to work at 6am I can't be up till midnight one o' clock, scrolling on my phone, watching cat videos. No matter how important rescuing the kitten is, you know. But that's what happens and I never connected that the sleep deprivation tool of a cult is happening. We're doing it to ourselves. And they've been able to manufacture content in a way that gets us to do that. And the thing. Because the thing that keeps me up the most are the political talking point stuff that make me upset. And that works for the right or the left.
- [70:59]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Exactly. So we need seven to nine hours of sleep. Seven to nine hours of sleep. And the best sleep is going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time. Cold dark rooms. There's a whole protocol for. For good sleep and a lot of. And I do one on one abusing relationships too. Where women get taken over by men or. Or romance scams or men get.
- [71:31]
Monty
I was going to ask you about that. The correlation between an abusive relationship and.
- [71:37]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Same same model except it's a one on one. It's a mini cult of one versus a religious cult, a therapy cult, a political cult, a large group awareness psychotherapy cult. There are all these different variations but you can be with a person and they can gaslight you and confuse you and make you dependent and obedient.
- [72:03]
Monty
Or like why narcissists tend to. They'll disrupt your sleep before an important event or before an important test or if you're fighting. They'll keep you.
- [72:12]
Dr. Steve Hassan
They'll keep you up all night.
- [72:14]
Monty
Yep.
- [72:14]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Keep you up on the phone or texting.
- [72:16]
Monty
I don't want to hang up. Yeah, I don't want to do this.
- [72:19]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Good boundaries is what I teach people. I say it's your mind, it's your body. You are in control. You need to be sovereign. I say it's your mind only. You should control it. I'll send you a T shirt if you want.
- [72:34]
Monty
I would love that. I'm all about representing the T shirt.
- [72:37]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Whether it's large or whatever you like. Just let us know in an address and we'll mail it to you. I'd be honored for you to wear it.
- [72:44]
Monty
Oh, I'd to love to. I'll wear it. I'll wear it in one of my.
- [72:46]
Dr. Steve Hassan
The thing is, is I don't know everything. And I. With curiosity. I want to learn new things. I want to expand my mind. And I don't want to just know psychology. I want to study physics. I want to know biology. I want. Because they're all connected ultimately.
- [73:08]
Monty
Yep.
- [73:09]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And I want to be the best person I can be. And I want to share my experiences so people don't have to live through the nightmares that many of my clients have had to live through. I got off easy. It was only two and a half years. Most of the people that come to me for recovery, they were born or raised in groups that were beaten, tortured, sexually raped, you know, on and on and on. And so I have to teach them how to make their own identity.
- [73:44]
Monty
Yeah. Because the. The group relies on you not having one. They give. They tell you what your. Your God given purpose is. They strip you of all those things. You know, in your case, they took your poetry. When I was growing up, it's. You can't do music because that doesn't serve God. And so you. One of the things that helped me really deprogram was learning the language of abuse because I had been in a very physically abusive relationship towards the end of my time within the cult. And when I learned what gaslighting was and I learned what a narcissist is or manipulation, all of a sudden I had words for what was happening to me that I didn't have before.
- [74:26]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right.
- [74:27]
Monty
And my curiosity as well. I actually have curious tattooed on my wrist because it's so important to me. Because I got to this point where I said, okay, it's not possible for me to know everything, but I can always have a question to ask.
- [74:43]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah.
- [74:43]
Monty
And that helped a lot.
- [74:46]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. So I want to reference Adam Grant's book. Think again. If you haven't read it. I know you love to read. I listen to his podcast religiously. That's a joke. But it's true. I listened to them, all of them. He's a business. He's an organizational psychologist. But the theme of the book really cuts to the heart of the scientific method, which has been systematically attacked as part of fourth and fifth generation psychological warfare. We won't have time to get into that. And Paul, weyrich and William Lind. But what the scientific method says is there's no truth with a capital table. We have hypotheses that we test and we're happy to get rid of a hypotheses if there's a better hypothesis. And it's not just solo, there's a community. So when I come up, when someone comes up with a new hypothesis like let's define undue influence by looking at these four variables, the community can look at my research, go through the numbers, test it false, attempt to falsify it, etc.
- [76:03]
Monty
Can I repeat it better?
- [76:05]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Can I repeat it? And, and, and we're working now on bytemodel.com we have an anonymous free survey for any of your listeners. We do have a drop down list of groups. Some of them are authoritarian cult, some are not. We don't want just bad groups on there. But you can say how, how, where you were in the pyramid of the group. You can label the number and it's 40 of the highest factor loading questions that you can say doesn't apply or applies a lot and get a number on the influence continuum of how authoritarian your relationship is or the group that you're involved with. It'll just give you a number and no one will know who you are or what the result is. I mean we'll, we'll have the numbers but we won't know who you are unless you self identify and want to share specific things. But the idea is to give a tool for people to reality test.
- [77:08]
Monty
Like am I in it like authoritarian situation?
- [77:11]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. Am I allowed to question the leader? What happens if I want to leave? Will I, will I be, will I hey, stay in touch or will they say you're going to hell.
- [77:23]
Monty
Yeah you can't come back here, yeah.
- [77:26]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Satan is going to possess you, etc. And, and so you were mentioning poetry. I want to tell you also another thing that's happening is an assault on boys and men and the for me, I grew up with two sisters, my mom and my grandma. My dad was around but he worked in the hardware store. I grew up hanging out with women. I love women and I'm in the Moonies and now I'm being indoctrinated that Satan had sex with Eve who, who seduced Adam sexually and that's how the fall happened. So I was not allowed to hug a women be in a room alone with a woman. Like I had to wow, every, every woman I was with was going to seduce me and make me fall, you know, and that was where the mass weddings came in, you were going to get matched divinely and have purified.
- [78:29]
Monty
You would sin and it would be pure.
- [78:31]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Right. So imagine now I'm deprogrammed and now I'm like back in college and there are girls all around me. I'm like, like, what do I do? The lectures that were in my head because I was a lecturer too. Like, I really had to deconstruct all that crap and realize Moon didn't come up with that theory of sexual seduction was the origin of, of the fall of man. He stole it. I, I needed to understand the history.
- [79:04]
Monty
Yeah. And then a lot of these lies have been like repackaged, rebranded, and then sold over and over and over again for whatever that particular leader wants you to be into, you know? Exactly. I think of Joseph Smith when I was studying Mormonism and I read the Book of Mormon and I'm looking at this guy's life and I'm like, this man is such a con artist.
- [79:29]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah.
- [79:29]
Monty
Like, he's such a. But you can see, you know, for him the pursuit was kind of rebranding marriage and love towards polygamy because that's what he wanted. He wanted to have multiple wives. He wanted to be able to marry minors.
- [79:43]
Dr. Steve Hassan
He was a pedophile.
- [79:44]
Monty
He was a pedophile. And so that's what he built his, his doctrine around.
- [79:49]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yep. Yeah. So true. And I'll just point out quickly, I know we're going to wrap up, but I, I, I, I became friends with a former sixth generation Mormon.
- [80:01]
Monty
Wow.
- [80:01]
Dr. Steve Hassan
John Delin, who is a psychologist and who, who is excommunicated because he started criticizing the Mormons. Anti gay, you know, homophobic, anti trans. He was just saying people are committing suicide and these people are being sent to conversion therapy, which is brainwashing.
- [80:23]
Monty
Yeah. And abuse.
- [80:25]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And abuse. But anyway, John said his, his moment of awakening in his journey was being working in a corporate job and befriending a gay man and realizing the gay man had a gay man partner. And they were lovely people and they were smart as hell and they loved each other.
- [80:49]
Monty
Wait a minute. How do you spell his last name? John Delin.
- [80:51]
Dr. Steve Hassan
E H L I N. He has been doing Mormon Stories podcast for a really long time. He does long form interviews. When I went out to Utah a couple of years ago, the guy sat me down with a cold for three and a half hours, two days in a row. There's seven hours of yours truly that John. But he wanted, he wanted to get my story done and he did. But former Mormons Love my work. Because, hey, the Moonies are a cult and they read my stuff and they're.
- [81:30]
Monty
Like, damn, that feels familiar.
- [81:33]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah, exactly. And so parting words. I want to just say we have millions of former cult members in the United States right now. Yes, there are millions still in cults that are supporting the Cult of Trump, but there are many of us that if we could get past the stigma and like yourself, tell the public, hey, I believe this stuff. And I came out the other side because I realized it wasn't true. And there's life after cult. You know, there's survival success stories. Like a lot of really famous people are, are still afraid to tell their story.
- [82:17]
Monty
Yeah.
- [82:18]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And I want to normalize it. I want to destigmatize it. I want people to know, hey, we're humans, we can trust the wrong people.
- [82:27]
Monty
And also that these are like predatory tactics that are intentional, you know, to. And you know, I, I just did an episode talking about the Children of God sex cult. And Joaquin Phoenix's parents were in that cult a very long time. And it wasn't until things got very extreme that they pulled their kids out of it. But, but it's. People don't realize how common it is because they think cult and they only think of like Satanic Panic cult or they think of Jim Jones. And cults are on a spectrum. They're not all that extreme.
- [83:01]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Exactly.
- [83:02]
Monty
For someone who's coming out of a cult or wanting to know more about this, what are three books? And you are welcome to make all three books yours because you are the expert on this. What three books would you recommend people read if they're really trying to understand this, whether it's for their own deprogramming or to have conversations with others?
- [83:22]
Dr. Steve Hassan
I am going to just start with my work and then mention some others, if you don't mind. I would start with Combating Cult Mind Control. Then I would read Freedom of Mind, which as a three step phobia intervention. And it's all about how to talk to people who are still involved with a closed system. The Cult of Trump. And I have a new volume that just came out, Understanding a Workbook. And that accompanies a course, a nine hour course that I taught that's online. It was initially intentioned for clinicians, so you can get CEU credits for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors. But we have a version for anyone else and it will give you a deeper dive. And the course workbook has links to all my substack interviews.
- [84:18]
Monty
Oh, that's great.
- [84:19]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Like I have ex children of God people. Faith Jones, who was very high up, who's now an attorney, is a former member. Maria Esquea Square is an Australian psychologist. I interviewed her many other cults and the more you can understand other people's stories, it helps you go, that was just like my experience or that wasn't like my. So it, it will speed up your, your healing and recovery process. I definitely like John Atak. He's one of my best friends. He's an ex Scientologist. He wrote the definitive book on Hubbard. He has a great book called Opening Minds, which is a small book, but summarizes a lot of really vital stuff. I like Lalitches. Take back your life. That's a good book that I recommend. The bottom line is be a good consumer. Check out people. Check out if you resonate with them many times. Many books are on audio. All of my books are on audio except for the new workbook. I haven't done that one yet. We're doing it in Spanish. An updated Combating and the bite model and influence continuum. My dissertation is in Spanish. It's on my website. Just know you're not alone. You're not crazy. You're gonna be okay.
- [85:59]
Monty
There's a whole lot of us and we all got out.
- [86:02]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And we're in an environment where there's a lot of doomsday or people who are. And they want. And Trump and his people want to terrorize and make people afraid. And the thing about fear is versus a phobia is you have to use your intellect to analyze is there actual danger or is an imagined danger. And, and honestly, there are some people in some cults with this honest danger. You need to change your name and move to another location and have a new identity and maybe, maybe, you know, go witness protection if you've testified against a cult. But for most people, they don't, you know, they're spending a lot of time in fear and anxiety. And here's another thing as we're wrapping up, I tell my clients, think about what's within control and what's outside of your control. And 95% of your time and energy should be on things you can do something about.
- [87:08]
Monty
Yes.
- [87:10]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And, and you can spend 5% of the time thinking about things you can't do, asking yourself, is there something I can do to bring that one in within my sphere of control? And you don't have to do it all. Pick one thing that you're passionate about and do it well and, and help one person at a time. And build a local community of real friends. And a lot of people are starting book clubs.
- [87:39]
Monty
Yep. Book clubs, board game clubs, trivia clubs. It's coming. It's been great. I'm noticing a huge shift because people want to be in person and that's the most important thing we could do right now.
- [87:50]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And. And I'm a hugger. I know with people who've had sexual violence, they're not comfortable. Maybe get body work with a trauma informed massage therapist till you're comfortable again in your body and then you can use your brain to analyze is it safe to hug this person?
- [88:10]
Monty
Yeah.
- [88:11]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Or not.
- [88:11]
Monty
I'm always walking up to everyone. Do you like hugs?
- [88:14]
Dr. Steve Hassan
And then, and then listen to your intuition. If you have a bad intuition, don't do it.
- [88:20]
Monty
Yeah.
- [88:20]
Dr. Steve Hassan
If you, if it feels good. I think it's, it's part of the human experience of just, just feel awe and love and connection and being with like minded people. But not where it's black and white, all or nothing, good versus evil. Like minded. Like we want to learn and grow and play and dance and enjoy the arts and music, nature, all of those things.
- [88:49]
Monty
This has been incredible. I cannot wait to do a video with you. Kind of role playing this might have to do. We could do a whole other segment on the history of mind control. But Dr. Hasson, I am so thankful that you've been on with me today and I can't wait to have you back on because I feel like there's gonna be more topics that come up.
- [89:09]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Thanks, Moni. Call me Steve. And if any of your voluminous followers want to follow me, I would. Welcome.
- [89:17]
Monty
And where can they find you?
- [89:19]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Well, I'm at Cult expert on Instagram at the moment. I'm up to 138k on Instagram. My, my Twitter has gone down since Musk bought it, but it's still somewhere around 70k.
- [89:34]
Monty
Wow.
- [89:35]
Dr. Steve Hassan
But I have a substack. I'm developing a YouTube channel where we're going to be doing more recording premium stuff because honestly, I want to create more content. I think that's the best use of my expertise.
- [89:49]
Monty
That's the way people will access it.
- [89:52]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. And, and my courses, I want to do more courses. I want to teach people how to talk to people in MAGA or the extreme left. That and, and, and it's the same principles of learning, active listening, asking, you know, questions that are curious, not trying to persuade anyone and, and saying I'm open to being persuaded, but you need to explain it to me in a way that makes sense. So tell me your journey.
- [90:26]
Monty
Yeah. What happened with you?
- [90:28]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Yeah. Help me step into your shoes.
- [90:31]
Monty
I love it. Thank you so much. And thank you for all your work. And I can't wait to have you on again.
- [90:36]
Dr. Steve Hassan
Thanks for reaching out. Look forward to the next one.
- [90:41]
Monty
Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope you found it as informative as I did. All of Dr. Steve Hassan's. I always want to say Hassan. Hassan's information will be in the show notes. As always, if you would like to get these episodes ad free, you can sign up for my Patreon for $1 a week. That's also in the show notes. And I will see you next week on Flipping Tables. Sam.