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Cult Deprogrammer: Do Cult Leaders Believe Their Own Lies?

Alex O'Connor | August 9, 2025



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– VIDEO NOTES

Rick Alan Ross is an American deprogrammer, cult specialist, and founder and executive director of the non-profit Cult Education Institute. Frequently appearing in the news and other media, discussing groups some consider cults. Ross has intervened in more than 500 deprogramming cases in various countries.

– LINKS

Get Rick’s book, “Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out”: https://amzn.to/4kD471c

– TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – Are All Cults Bad?
5:50 – Is Christianity Just a Big Cult?
22:21 – Do Cult Leaders Actually Believe It?
27:26 – When Rick Met a Cult Leader
32:54 – Which People are Most Susceptible to Cults?
38:06 – Are the Charles Manson Followers Victims?
44:45 – Are Bigger or Smaller Cults More Dangerous?
57:36 – What are the Signs Someone is Joining a Destructive Cult?
1:00:18 – What Destructive Cults are Active Now?
1:05:36 – Is the Manosphere a Cult?
1:12:12 – What Makes People Leave Cults?
1:20:23 – Staging Interventions for Cult Members
1:25:23 – Are Involuntary Cult Interventions Ethical?
1:34:47 – Where Do Interventions Go Wrong?
1:37:56 – Groups Commonly Mistaken for Cults
1:40:16 – Is Donald Trump a Cult Leader?
1:45:40 – What is the John Frum Cargo Cult?

– CONNECT

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The Within Reason Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/within-reason/id1458675168

– CONTACT

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Written by Alex O'Connor

Comments

This post currently has 48 comments.

  4. @brittneyfinck5286

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    As someone raised SDA and spent a lot of time in the conservative end of it, I don't think it's honest to label these religions as "benign". Children also die from lack of abortion care for premature pregnancy, people are sexually traumatized by abstinence ideology in a post-birth control world, and not to mention, SDAs require pastors to preach that all people should give 10% of their income despite income level-damages there I think are obvious. I'm surprised how much he thinks religions founded in the 1800s are benign. I would say, any religion that refuses to adapt to improved health science and discourages modern methods of health leave incredibly real damages on people's physical AND mental health. So maybe not modern liberal Christianity, but certainly the many factions of Christianity that are responsible for spreading dangerous and false health messages.

  5. @lifetaketwo7662

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Former Mormon and cult expert myself. The mormon church is still a cult and Mormons worship the prophet, and also take an oath on our lives in the temple to this day. It’s still entirely a personality driven cult and lives are destroyed and lost by this group.

  12. @ImDrewby

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Why is he making a distinction between cults and harmful cults? We don’t use the word cult to mean a random following anymore! There’s a component of separation and isolation that he completely leaves out. And to say that harmful cults are only harmful if they physically kill or hurt someone is nonsense. What about psychological harm? That alone puts this guys credibility at a 0 for me.

  14. @lifewithklc

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    The definition and characteristics of a cult absolutely describes MAGA. If he doesn’t see that then his credibility is suspect. Trump IS their deity.

  16. @edwardlittle6544

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    I am related to a person who knew someone personally from the cult in Australia he briefly mentioned. She was not aware how bad things were and had been friendly to this cult member through mutual school attendance. May have even been invited to attend although I can't remember if this was so, but certainly thought the group was relatively normal and inline with a typical Christian gathering although some differences were present that certainly would have raised more conscern had a deeper look been taken.

    The group was quite small, less than 20 and stayed in a single residence where the young girl was found. They had been obviously deluded and had such expectations of supernatural health for the girl that they all simply ignored her plight as it got worse in favour of prayer interventions occasionally over several days. By which point it was tragically far too late.

    I drive past the house regularly.

    It's a stark reminder to something I've always believed, that we (collectively) are not as far from gross error as we think if we are willing to suspend judgement on bad practice and unfounded beliefs in favour of a preferred reality or in a state of deceived confidence.

    As a religious person myself it's heartbreaking that a perversion of the truth can often be the most powerful tool in harming others…

  19. @huckthatdish

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Jim Jones calling his mass murder/suicide an act of revolutionary suicide is such a gross twisting of the term. Given the era, he was almost certainly referencing Huey P Newton's book Revolutionary Suicide, published 5 or 6 years earlier. The thing is Huey makes it clear in chapter 1, killing yourself is reactionary suicide. Revolutionary suicide is resisting an oppressive force knowing they will kill you in response. You do not kill yourself. You fight for what's right til the very end, knowing that doing so will end in your death at the hands of those you're resisting, which is why he calls it a form of suicide.

  20. @ajal5959

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Not even 15 minutes in and it’s clear this man is biased towards religions. He seemed openly offended that Alex would even ask that lol

  21. @Erilsont

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    My mother is in JW and she increasingly grows more judgmental, and closed minded. Refuses to watch certain movies. Doesn’t hangout with people who aren’t part of JW and is constantly trying to convert by trying connect everything back to scripture. Can’t take a joke sometimes.

    JW people are always trying to get you to come to meetings and “save” you.

  22. @ItsMe-cp8xc

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    1:43:20 this has already happened and he is still followed. The one and only thing that Trump has done that’s ever gotten mass criticism is the Epstein files and even with that, many of his followers are still dismissing them and saying the Epstein files don’t matter anymore.

  23. @Baker311

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Liar who repeats its own lies, can come to believe it's own lies as the truth, as a self crafted illusions, for the mind can hide away the lies into the corners of the mind and replace them, with illusions.

  24. @FeralWomanOver50-MadisonPaige

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    I’m sorry but Trump hits all the hallmarks of a cult. Are you kidding? And no, not everyone who supports him is in the cult but there’s a definite cult like following and it’s large. If incels are a cult then how is maga not? But I get it. If you speak against him your life gets threatened. So. I get it.

  25. @emperorugbert

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Cult= 1. Worshiped Leader, typically totalitarian
    2. Uses thought reform to gain undue influence
    3. If destructive cult it does harm

    The obvious conclusion: Any group that utilizes undue influence toward thought reform is harmful. Any group with 1 and 2 is necessarily 3; a destructive cult and causes harm (bad).

    I miss the old format where you were more outspoken and would more proactively lead people to these basic but elusive deductions instead of leaving them to waffle into deeper delusion.

  26. @SebGurYou

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Ok so you define cults (non destructive ones) without requiring at all that the followers suffer for the leader.

    Then following your definition, early Christianity would be a cult. So suddenly you add the new criterion that followers must suffer for the leader.

    That feels awfully articlficial. Feels like you're adjusting the definition to make sure that Christianity doesn't fit.

  27. @falxonPSN

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Ross makes some good comments, but he definitely seems to give religion and some religious groups way too easy of a pass. For example Jehovah's witnesses and Mormons could very easily fall into the cult mentality when you look at their leadership definitions, as many others here have said. Also his comments about religious indoctrination as a child knowing what you're getting into is completely absurd since almost no child I've ever heard of has been given positives and negatives of every major religion and atheism and given a free choice when they are old enough to make a rational choice without social implications from their friend and parent group. Then his people get older, that religious indoctrination becomes part of their personality which is why they stick with it, which is of course how religions continue to infect and spread to new people.

  31. @dominiqueubersfeld2282

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    I lived a long time in Switzerland, so I read a lot about the story of a local Swiss cult known as the Order of Sun Temple. In 1994 the cult leader ordered his followers to kill themselves and they obeyed him. He also killed himself so I think he really believed what he said.

  32. @josealbarran7202

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Now, I am afraid to go to California 😂. Almost every time he gives an example of a cult leader, they happen to be from California. Is that state full of psychopaths? 😂😅 Just "joking."

  34. @therealjenso

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    After hearing some staunch Trump supporters being interviewed, I think it is definitely a cult. When Trump walks stuff back it's because he has to consider those people who haven''t been fully indoctrinated into the cult. I have to disagree with your guest on this one.

  38. @nadebob1519

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Mohammed was a charismatic leader of Islam.
    – He was authoritarian, making up laws at will through convenient “revelations.”
    – He granted himself all kinds of privileges, sexual favors (including concubines), minors, and even his own son’s wives, justified through these so-called “revelations.”

    – took up-to 20% of war booty.

    – He limited his followers to four wives, yet broke his own law by taking thirteen or more for himself.

    – The icing on the cake? A death penalty for anyone who left his religion. And brutally punished his critics even Poets of his time.

    And yet, these so-called intellectuals dare to bring it up . No- it’s not that they’re ignorant of the facts. They’re either intellectually dishonest or intellectual cowards. Which is it?
    Can any member of the cult of Alex answer that? 😆

  42. @dr.yannis.karrer

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    When he describes the definition of a (destructive) cult, Trump comes to my mind. And the whole MAGA movement it fits perfectly well into the definition of a cult…

  46. @Taco4CaT

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    1:42:50 Au con·traire, he literally said this about immigrants a couple weeks ago and the next day it was the new republican talking point on social media and all over his sycophantic opinion stations. I don’t think this guy understands the true depth of MAGAs devotion to the orange demon. He’s getting them to agree to support Ghislaine Maxwells pardon, reframing her as a victim and reversing on one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the MAGA conspiracy ecosystem, are you kidding me? LMAO. Nah bro, it’s a cult.

  47. @collyernicholasjohn

    August 9, 2025 at 1:32 am

    Analog analysis but delusional authoritarianism movements’ve gone digital, global and centre-less. Pro-Ana or Genda-woo don’t have leaders, but arguably the human costs r exponentially greater.

Comments are closed.

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