Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Emancipate Yourselves From Mental Slavery

Bob Marley had some sensible universal advice: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.” Jesus had been slightly more explicit when he said, “The truth shall make you free.” Martin Luther King probably summarised the issue best, however: “No one is free until we all are free.”

Amanda Montell, like Marley, Jesus, and MLK wants us to be free. She wants to liberate us from the covert linguistic manipulation of QAnon, Trump, and the hundreds of other conspiracy theorists, politicians, religious leaders, and exploitative commercial ventures that are after our attention, our money, and our souls.

Montell has a lot to say about the most obvious instances of such manipulation, from the Jonestown self-immolation of over 900 hundred people to the aggressively threatening tactics of Scientologists. But she also argues effectively that the linguistic activities of commercial ventures like SoulCycle and 3HO are just less lethal forms of the same techniques. Her intention is to alert us all to the range of possible traps we might fall into:

“From the crafty redefinition of existing words (and the invention of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, “speaking in tongues,” forced silence, even hashtags, language is the key means by which all degrees of cultlike influence occur.”

Montell is confident that simply knowing about these linguistic tactics, we will be safe from their insidious effects. “Once you understand what the language of ‘Cultish’ sounds like, you won’t be able to unhear it,” she assures us.

But Montell has a problem which is obvious from her own research: Cults speak to those who need them. The need could be friendship, attention, money, sex, a sense of belonging, a sense of superiority, spiritual completion, or literally thousands of other human cravings, many without names. So her claim to be able to unhear potentially destructive language may be valid right up to the point at which it is needed.

Face it: human beings are neurotic. It’s probably language that makes them so. We all have psychic deficiencies, flat sides, perversions, unwanted traits, gaps in our abilities, and unfulfilled aspirations. We are likely to be immune to the cultist palaver until it strikes home in one of these personal, and likely unconscious, flaws. Then, bingo, we may not be off to Jonestown but that rather pricey contract with SoulCycle looks awfully inviting.

So while I admire Montell’s epistemological ambitions, I think it only right to point out the self-referential character of her thesis. She’s likely to appeal most to just those folk who already have a horror of becoming any kind of groupie (You know who you are!). But Bob Marley’s follow-up line in the chorus of Real Situation is also an apt critique:

Well, it seems like: total destruction the only solution
And there aren't no use: no one can stop them now
Ain't no use: nobody can stop them now

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