A Cult Is Not a Party
“It’s a cult,” Idaho grandmother Pam Hemphill told CNN, referring to the MAGA crowd that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. After spending two months in federal prison for her participation in the riot, she returned home and now admits that she had been “brainwashed.”
“It’s a cult,” said Michael Cohen, ex-President Trump’s ex-lawyer. He was referring to those Americans who still believe the lies of his former boss.
Echoing the real world, Netflix is promoting its new docuseries: “How To Become A Cult Leader.”
As we find ourselves approaching the 2024 elections, the question of cults is now front and center for one reason: our country has reached a turning point. Will our democracy be based on competition between political parties or on loyalty to a cult leader?
The difference between a party and a cult is clear.
A party is a “group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power.” Political parties spread throughout the world during the twentieth century in response to the rise of democracy. When the power of the king or a small aristocratic elite was distributed to “the people,” ordinary citizens and interest groups organized into parties. Their purpose, as their definition states, is “to exercise political power.” It is not to deify one man or woman.
In contrast, a cult is “devotion directed toward a particular figure” or “a misplaced and excessive admiration for a particular person.” The MAGA cohort, regardless of its size or influence, is not a political party. It has all the qualities of a cult.
Over the decades, cult leaders have been identified by the following behaviors:
lies and deceives others frequently and insistently even after the falsehoods are exposed and disproven;
shows no loyalty to those who work for him if they dare to hold opinions that differ from his own;
uses shaming and insults to reinforce his own power and to undermine critics or opponents;
attempts to keep his sexually abusive and exploitative behavior secret and, when exposed, denounces the accusers and their defenders;
is financially irresponsible and engages in illegal activities to benefit himself and/or his family;
seeks to punish those who try to leave the cult or question his authority;
believes that he (or she) alone can be the leader of the cult;
attacks those who seek a change in leadership as “traitors;”
and, finally, cannot accept losing his position of authority
To widely varying degrees, all of the Republican candidates seem to know the difference between a party and a cult. While some are still afraid to speak out, none of them are blind. They are running against ex-President Trump to be nominated as the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, not to become the new leader of his cult. While some Republican candidates — and President Biden as well — sometimes exhibit some of these behaviors, the only one who regularly, systematically, and unapologetically engages in all of them is the leader of the MAGA cult, Donald J. Trump.
American citizens have defended our democracy from cults before, both on the Right and Left. We refused to allow ardent communists, hostile to democracy, to operate within our borders. We resisted “religious extremists” whose primary loyalty was to their religious sect, not to our nation. We dismantled a Ku Klux Klan that sought to exercise a cult-like dominance through violence and intimidation. We used law enforcement to halt the growth of groups ranging from the Weathermen in the 1960s, to the Branch Davidians in the 1990s, to the Proud Boys in the 2020s. We have a long history of protecting democracy from dangerous cults. Paradoxically, as Orwell might have predicted, the most effective way to “Make America Great Again” is to ensure that MAGA, like other cults before it, withers away.
The true greatness of a free people is inversely related to cult-like hero worship. As Thomas Paine wrote in his 1776 bestseller Common Sense, monarchy is flawed because, by elevating one man, it diminishes all others. The same applies to cults. By elevating one cult leader to god-like status, it reduces the followers to unthinking fools. What we need is not a cult. It is two authentic, healthy political parties that are prepared to share competing visions of leadership and let the people decide to what degree each of the two will “exercise political power” starting in 2024.
So, let the two parties compete. Let them reach out to members of the cult and enroll them in their partisan cause. This will strengthen the two parties, weaken the MAGA cult, and reinvigorate our democracy.
