Liberalism is More of a Cult Than an Ideology
Liberalism as a cult.
I was a psychology major and one of the things I’ve always been interested in is why people do what they do. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious. For example, a once famous bank robber by the name of Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. His memorable response was, “Because that's where the money is.”
That’s why I’ve always found aberrant behavior particularly interesting. I was hoping that if I grew to understand why serial killers and mass murderers did what they did, it would help explain some fundamental truth about the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, I’ve concluded there’s not much there. Serial killers and mass murderers tend to be particularly narcissistic psychopaths with terrible home lives who, for whatever reason, become enamored with the idea of killing people or going out in a blaze of glory against a hated world. They’re not particularly interesting people other than in a gruesome “Can you believe someone actually did that?” kind of way and there doesn’t seem to be all that much to learn about the rest of humanity by studying them.
On the other hand, cults still have lessons to teach us about the human condition. For example, one thing that came to mind for me recently, while reading, Cults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them, was that an awful lot of what I was reading in the book seemed strangely familiar. The repeating patterns in these groups were also repeated somewhere else – in politics – among liberals.
Now, first of all, I am certainly not the first person to suggest that liberalism is closer to a religion than an ideology. The late, great David Horowitz, who lived a significant portion of his life before he became conservative as a devoted Communist, certainly talked about it in that way:
“(Liberalism is) a faith that seeks redemption in this life with itself as the savior. It’s such a beautiful dream, what lie would you not tell and what crime would you not commit to realize it?”
Additionally, Ann Coulter has beat this drum a lot over the years:
"Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals, and they can't stand the competition."
All that being said, if you’re comparing liberalism to a cult, you have to ask, “Who is the cult leader?” Typically, cults are run by charismatic, somewhat delusional narcissists or psychopaths with an endless need for control and self-gratification. Granted, there is no one Jim Jones ready to pass out the Kool-Aid to the whole Left (although ironically, Jim Jones was a diehard socialist who was a significant power player in California Democratic politics for a while), but this is a great description of liberalism. The object of worship in the center of everything is liberalism itself. Just as a Christian is taught to put God ahead of everything else, liberals are taught to put their liberalism ahead of everything else. If they’re a pastor, God comes second. If they’re a cop, the law comes second. If they run a corporation, making money comes second. If they’re a teacher, educating children comes second. The more political a liberal becomes, the more everything else becomes second to liberalism. It doesn’t matter whether they’re talking about God, their parents, their kids, or their country, liberalism has to come first for them to be a liberal in good standing. Just to name one of many examples, if you wonder how so many liberal parents could push their young children to be trans, this explains it. They’re willing to sacrifice their own children on the altar of liberalism.
Then, when you start to look at the tactics cults use to keep their members under control, you see parallel after parallel. Such as:
A coming doom: Cults frequently tell their members some apocalyptic event is coming in the future. Charles Manson was trying to kick off a race war between whites and blacks, which supposedly black Americans were going to win, leaving the Manson family in charge to rule them all. The Heaven’s Gate cult believed there was a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet that would take the worthy to the “Next Level” of humanity.
Of course, liberals have their own coming doomsday story. It’s the pseudo-scientific belief that manmade global warming is going to wreck the planet as foreseen by the great prophets Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.
Inappropriate sexual content around kids: One theme you will see crop up again and again with cults is the leader having a large sexual appetite that often includes, but isn’t limited to, underage girls. Is it because they’re pedos? Maybe, but a better explanation would be that they generally consider themselves to be so “special” that no moral code (like protecting children) matters to them and they like the idea of sleeping with young girls because they’re easier to brainwash and control.
Liberalism is also obsessed with putting inappropriate sexual material in front of kids. They have drag queens do gross, heavily sexual routines in front of children and read to them. They’ve fought tooth and nail to confuse kids about their sexuality while they expose them to gay porn in schools. There’s a reason liberals keep getting called “groomers.” It’s because they’re groomers:
Paradoxically, cults that demand more of their members, do better:
Psychologist Nigel Barber writes that cults last longer the more they demand of their members. This does not hold true for secular groups, but followers of strict religions are more likely to stay faithful. Believers are willing to tolerate great personal sacrifice in the name of a higher purpose. In a study of eighty-three religious communes that existed in the nineteenth century, sociologists Richard Sosis and Eric R. Bressler found that communes with only two costly requirements—such as celibacy or the surrendering of possessions—lasted an average of less than ten years. Communes with six to eight requirements lasted for fifty years, and those with more than eleven requirements lasted for sixty years. The more they demanded of followers, the longer they existed.
So, what does liberalism demand of its cult members? Well, it demands that white members accept that they’re racist by virtue of their skin color. It demands that they allow criminals to go unpunished, that they ignore homeless people defecating in the streets, and that they simultaneously vote for extremely high taxes that go along with extraordinarily poor government services. It demands that they allow criminals to shoplift, support murdering babies, that they destroy their country by opening their borders, and that the women allow men into their locker rooms and to compete against them in sporting events. To be liberal is to be forced to abandon the most obvious bits of common sense at every turn. The number of insane, monstrous, and counter-productive things liberals have to believe to remain in good standing is not small:
Arbitrary rules combined with brutal punishment designed to keep people too terrified to speak out: Cult leaders run their cults like personal fiefdoms and if someone displeases them, at any point that person will be told they ran afoul of some nebulous rule and needs to face punishment. The idea is to make the cultists too frightened to do anything other than keep their heads down and do as they’re told.
Liberals often use this same kind of process. Setting aside their weird, arbitrary policy of determining who wins certain arguments by default, “As a black woman, I feel like I don’t need to listen to a white woman telling me it’s wrong not to leave a tip after what my people suffered through in slavery” or, “You’re transphobic if you don’t support me flashing my genitalia at your six-year-old in a women’s locker room,” there are also a lot of horrible punishments that don’t fit the crimes. That is certainly what cancel culture is all about. Make a bad joke today and your life may be destroyed tomorrow. It’s also how the #metoo movement works. Any accusation, no matter how flimsy or ridiculous, could be enough to ruin you.
Separating people from their family members and people who care about them: Cult leaders tend to be control freaks and what they fear most is losing a hold on their followers. One of the keys to maintaining that control is isolating their members from people who might undermine their teaching. Liberalism has also become obsessive about this. It’s why the mainstream media has become little more than propaganda outlets for the Left and why merely allowing the other side to be heard or treated fairly often leads to outrage on the Left. Remember the left-wing howling when Republican Senator Tom Cotton was allowed to publish an op-ed in the New York Times?
The New York Times announced on Sunday that its editorial page editor had resigned after backlash from the public and the company’s own employees over a Republican senator’s op-ed that called for using military force against recent rioters.
Bitter complaints about conservative voices being “normalized” or “platformed” happen all the time on the Left. We’ve also seen a large uptick in this kind of thing:
Why do so many liberals push this? Because they don’t want to chance their members getting deprogrammed by people who care about them and can see they’re going down a dark and insane road.
So, you say liberalism is an ideology?
Then, why isn’t free thought encouraged? Why don’t they spend time openly debating it or put a lot of effort into trying to convince people what they believe is right as opposed to just claiming their opponents are evil? Why do they treat liberals who disagree on an issue or two like Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Joe Rogan, or J.K. Rowling as apostates to be shunned instead of generally liberal people who have some disagreements on a few issues? Why is simply disagreeing with prevailing liberal thought and suggesting a different approach considered completely unacceptable in so many areas? Why do they inevitably split the world into true believers and evil people?
It’s because liberalism has transformed from a misguided ideology that doesn’t jive with reality into a cult where reality doesn’t matter that much, only holding power and keeping everyone under control does. This is dangerous for the country because a lot of cults end up committing atrocities or suicide and in the case of liberalism, it could drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the abyss with them.
I think a cult is often empowered, in some people (esp the leaders), by genuine demonic possession. I know there are other reasons, too, but the extent to which these people are immune to doing right, speaking truth, or being open to discussion of facts, instead of feelings and emotion, makes me believe there is a rider or controller involved. I can't prove that, because we can't always be certain of other people's motives, but it fits the pattern. What's most terrible to me is when a clergyman goes "woke" and takes his congregation into the dangerous wilderness. They trust him because he comes in sheep's clothing. Thanks for posting this, John.
Your clear, well-resourced treatise of Liberalism as a Cult is welcome and needed on the nation's stage. We needed to see it all laid out to understand the enormity of the subject. Thank you, John.