Q & A on COERCIVE PERSUASION
l.) WHAT
KIND OF GROUPS USE COERCIVE PERSUASION?
2.) WHAT ARE
THE CRITERIA OF A COERCIVE PERSUASION PROGRAM?
3.) HOW
DO YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COERCIVE PERSUASION AND
PEACEFUL PERSUASION?
4.) WHAT ARE THE MAIN VARIABLES
WHICH CAUSE SOME PEOPLE TO BE AFFECTED LESS THAN OTHERS IN A
COERCIVE PERSUASION PROGRAM?
5.) WHY DO SO FEW VICTIMS
SPEAK OUT OR WAIT SO LONG TO GET HELP?
6.) WHY HAVEN'T
MORE FORMER MEMBERS SPOKEN OUT AND BECOME MORE ACTIVE IN
EDUCATING THE PUBLIC AND STOPPING THE ABUSES?
l.) WHAT
KIND OF GROUPS USE COERCIVE PERSUASION?
Groups that exhibit great or excessive devotion or
dedication to some person, idea, or thing and demand an
unquestioning commitment, may potentially rationalize using
the "means" of coercive persuasion to advance the "ends" of
their group.
Groups which use coercive persuasion often involve
selection and culling techniques to identify the most
suggestible or malleable, and to isolate and remove the least
suggestible or malleable. Some large groups have detailed
manuals to train designated specialists in sales or recruiting
on who are the best targets. Others use psychological testing
to isolate the easiest subjects to manipulate. The subjects
easiest to influence are usually young, trusting, gullible,
and non-critical people from protective backgrounds or people
who may be particularly vulnerable because of some recent
unsettled transition.
In this highly calculated process, the rejects are
likely to be individuals who have easy access to accurate,
critical, or counterbalancing information. Insolent,
self-centered, street-wise, highly critical or recalcitrant
individuals are generally culled out because they are too
labor intensive, difficult, and cost ineffective.
It is possible to distinguish dangerous groups which
use coercive persuasion from peaceful persuasion groups by
de-emphasizing their coincidental similarities and focusing on
the methods of coercive persuasion. The beliefs of any group
are no clue to whether it uses coercive persuasion.
2.) WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA OF A COERCIVE PERSUASION
PROGRAM?
To decide if a coercive persuasion program was
responsible for an observed change in behavior, it is
necessary to determine a) if the subject individual held
enough knowledge and volitional capacity to make the decision
to change his ideas or beliefs, and b) if that individual did
in fact adopt, affirm, or reject those ideas or beliefs on his
own.
All that should be examined is the behavioral processes
used, not ideological content. For example, one does not have
to examine the truth or falsity of communism to find that an
individual was subjected to a program of brainwashing. One
needs to examine only the behavioral processes used in the
"conversion." It is not necessary to question the beliefs of
an individual's faith or have them explain it rationally.
Each alleged coercive persuasion situation should be
reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The characteristics of
coercive persuasion programs are severe, well understood, and
they are not accidental.
3.) HOW DO YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COERCIVE
PERSUASION AND PEACEFUL PERSUASION?
It may be possible
to think of benign or less severe examples of any of the
"seven tactics" which by themselves may not be coercive. But
random individual examples do not exemplify the comprehensive
criteria that need to be present to decide that a planned
program of coercive persuasion was used.
The relationship between the person and the coercive
persuasion tactics is dynamic in that, while the force of the
pressures, rewards, and punishments brought to bear on the
person are considerable, they do not lead to a stable,
meaningful, self-chosen reorganization of beliefs or values.
They lead to a coerced compliance and a situationally required
rationalization. To maintain the new attitudes or "decisions"
and sustain the rationalization, the program must be applied
almost continuously.
While a squirt gun might be a benign example of a gun,
it would not be included under regulations designed to protect
the public from handguns. Likewise, religions which use
peaceful persuasion have nothing to fear nor would they be
affected by the regulation of coercive persuasion.
4.) WHAT ARE THE MAIN VARIABLES WHICH CAUSE SOME PEOPLE
TO BE AFFECTED LESS THAN OTHERS IN A COERCIVE PERSUASION
PROGRAM?
Not all tactics used in a coercive persuasion
program are coercive. Some tactics of an innocuous, alluring,
or cloaking nature will be mixed in.
Coercive persuasion is sufficiently effective to assure
the recruitment of many of those approached and to retain many
of those enlisted. But not all individuals exposed to a
coercive persuasion program are effectively coerced. Coercive
persuasion is not magic nor is it so technologically developed
that it is infallible.
Individual personality., suggestibility, genetic
physiological and psychological strengths, weaknesses, and
differences, and life experiences all make a difference. These
variables interact with the degree of severity,
continuousness, and comprehensiveness of the coercive group's
practices. All of these factors determine the program's
effectiveness and the degree of damage caused to its victims.
This is not to suggest that only weak people are
influenced by coercive persuasion programs. A common
misconception is that the victims were from bad families, were
weak, or did something that was responsible for getting them
into that situation.
No one "joins a cult." People recruited into
destructive groups think they are doing something else,
something beneficial and worthwhile. Anyone can be recruited
given the right sales pitch and the right conditions in one's
life. We are all potential victims. The convenient
rationalization that the person himself was responsible for
bringing on the harm allows one to feel different from the
victim and somehow more in control and safer from such random
harm.
5.) WHY DO SO FEW VICTIMS SPEAK OUT OR WAIT SO LONG TO
GET HELP?
It is very hard for former members,
especially high level and long term members, to admit they
have been thoroughly deceived and speak up about what they
know. The group has rocked and tranced them into believing
that they are totally and completely responsible for
everything that happens to them and the group is never
responsible.
The result is victims tricked into believing they were
completely responsible for their decision to get into
Scientology so they blame themselves. Sometimes they are
completely unable to conceive that they have been had. They
might deny they have been fooled, because that would make them
a tremendous fool on the most major decisions they had made to
this point made in their lives, or they deny that they have
been hurt because it's too hard to face that pain.
To mistrust one's own major decisions and perceptions
of reality is frighteningly close to that ultimate terror:
insanity. Without the information which was unavailable to
them in the cult and professional counseling, this level of
denial of past reality is difficult to overcome.
The trap is not an accident. Along with other such
tactics, cults deliberately inculcate self-protecting, secrecy
insuring, and liability redirecting catch-22 denial mechanisms
into their members. The organization is always right, the
individual always wrong and responsible, bad things happen to
those who break the code of silence, etc.
6.) WHY HAVEN'T MORE FORMER MEMBERS SPOKEN OUT AND
BECOME MORE ACTIVE IN EDUCATING THE PUBLIC AND STOPPING THE
ABUSES?
Most victims do not get the information and
counseling they need to combat the thought reform and phobia
induction they received in the cult. They need information to
know that there is reason to speak out and perhaps counseling
to become strong enough mentally to speak out. Those who have
been in for years probably have impaired or at least
unpracticed critical thinking faculties, and so may continue
to believe as good victims are supposed to believe, that the
cult is always good and right and they are always bad and
wrong.
While suggestible in trance they were thoroughly
tricked into sincerely believing it was all their
responsibility. They are victims who do not know they are
victims yet. This is the rule with thought reform victims
rather than the exception.
Former members who have been around for a while fear
what happens to defectors and the families of defectors who
stand up. It's not worth it to them or they believe someone
else will take responsibility for them for the continuing pain
that the cult causes in people's lives.
Many are so burned and burned out on the organization
that they can face no more of it.