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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Inauguration Day was supposed to prove to the rest of us that the QAnon worldview was correct. Donald Trump was supposed to declare martial law, take another term as president and reveal the global cabal of satanic pedophiles working in the White House. When that didn't happen, QAnon adherents were faced with a choice: Reexamine and perhaps reject the prophecies of Q as false, or somehow dig in deeper.

Some followers now believe Trump will retake office on March 4th. My next guest is a mental health professional, who specializes in helping people leave cults and escape mind control. He says that for family members of QAnon followers, the cognitive dissonance of Inauguration Day, what was promised versus what actually happened, might present an opening for getting through to your loved one and helping them leave the conspiracy-fueled movement. Steven Hassan is a licensed mental health counselor and author of The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. Dr. Hassan, welcome to WNYC. Thank you very much for joining us.

Steven Hassan: Thanks Brian. I'm from Queens originally, so I'm a New Yorker. [laughs]

Brian: Well, good, a local boy. That's our third in a row, Queen's guest over the last hour. How do you define cult and is QAnon a cult?

Dr. Hassan: My definition about the word cult is that there's an influence continuum from ethical to unethical and destructive, and so there are cults that are benign or even productive, but what I'm concerned about are destructive, authoritarian cults which are typically deceptive in their recruitment, manipulate people's behavior, information, thoughts and emotions to make them dependent and obedient.

Often, there's a charismatic figure at the top that has malignant narcissistic qualities, but the bottom line is lack of informed consent. People are being lied to, to be inducted into a destructive cult and control of information and thinking, fears like phobias, and a punishment in their mind if they want to leave. In some cults they may think they're going to hell, in others they are threatened that they may be killed or might commit suicide, but in the mind of a cult member, they can't imagine leaving and being happy and fulfilled.

Brian: Where does QAnon fit in, if it does along that [inaudible 00:03:00]

Dr. Hassan: QAnon definitely does. I've been researching it extensively. I did include it in The Cult of Trump book, but I had no idea. I submitted the manuscript in April of 2019. I had no idea that it would continue to grow or much less have somebody in Congress who is a major promulgator. I do consider it an authoritarian destructive cult. I did a thorough BITE model analysis of it. BITE model stands for Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional control that I just mentioned earlier. It's on my website, at freedomofmind.com if people want to go through the specific criteria.

I have also done a 90-minute TEDx talk called Dismantling QAnon with Dave Troy, Jim Stewartson and Desiree Kane that is on my blog. The link to it is on my blog. If people really are concerned about a family member or a friend, they really want to do their homework first and get educated before they try to engage. Engagement is really important with anyone in an authoritarian cult because of this black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil mindset. Anyone who isn't a believer is viewed as evil. I think warm connection from family members and friends is really important to help.

Brian: Now listeners, have you lost a loved one to the QAnon conspiracy? Call in and tell us about it at (646) 435-7280. When did that person start believing in Q, and how has it affected your relationship? Have you tried talking to them about the conspiracy, expressing your concern or arguing with them about why those theories are incorrect? What were those conversations like? Did the seamless inauguration of Joe Biden, an event many Q believers thought would never happen, shake their beliefs? Have you talked to them since the inauguration and how are they processing it? (646) 435-7280.

You heard Dr. Hassan say how important the support of family members is to get people away from cults and he's defining this as a cult. Have you lost a loved one to the QAnon conspiracy, and do you want to share a story or do you want advice on how to talk to them? Call in. My guest is Dr. Steven Hassan, mental health professional and author of The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. (646) 435-7280.

I'd like to ask you to share a little bit of your own story, because you reveal that you were in a cult as a young man, I guess the Sun Myung Moon Group.

You write about a specific moment where you saw Moon lie on television. Maybe talk just very briefly about how you got into it, but more about how that moment of seeing him lie began to change things for you, and whether you see the inauguration as presenting the same sort of opportunity to get people out of the Q cult?

Dr. Hassan: Sure, Brian. I was 19 years old and an upper junior at Queens College. I was recruited in 1974, right after my girlfriend dumped me. I was in the student cafeteria and three attractive women started flirting with me and presenting themselves as students. There was a lot more about the lies and the manipulation, but I wound up in the cult for two and a half years. I should add that as a Moonie, I was instructed by Moon to go to the Capitol, fast for three days for Richard Nixon, because he thought God wanted Nixon to be president despite Watergate. I did that.

I should also add that I was trained to die on command for God or kill on command for God. Fortunately, I was deprogrammed by my family after a near fatal van crash, where they had access to me and I was away from the group and the constant indoctrination. It was actually on the fifth day of my deprogramming, which started involuntarily and then became voluntary. Not because I had doubts, but because I wanted to prove to my family I wasn't brainwashed and I wasn't in a cult, that I agreed to listen to the ex-Moonies.

Part of what helped me was learning about Chinese-communist brainwashing principles from an early book, 1961 book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. It was the final day where they handed me a speech that Moon was giving to-- That had been printed by the cult to congressmen and senators, where he was saying how much he respected Americans and he was surprised that anyone could imagine that a Korean could brainwash Americans, because he respects Americans so much.

I had heard Moon at least a hundred times in-person say how despicable Americans were, how pathetic we were, how the Koreans were the master race, but I had done thought stopping throughout my cult involvement, to think about he's putting down Americans and he was instructing me to lie to members as well for a number of activities.

It was when I was reading that speech in the context of the deprogramming after I had learned about brainwashing, that the thought that Moon was a liar and therefore was untrustworthy and therefore couldn't be the Messiah and an agent of God, broke through to my consciousness. I realized that I had been believing a delusion for two and a half years and recruiting people into the cult and helping the cult gain a foothold in the United States.

Brian: We're in kind of an opposite age of cults now from the 1970s and that story you just told about yourself, aren't we, because for you and for many other adherence to various 1970s cults, people were isolated, and that started it. It sounded like you were lonely after your girlfriend and you broke up, and then they would get physically isolated on physical cult compounds in some cases. Now, the internet makes indoctrination possible and recruitment possible anywhere. I'm curious how you would compare.

Dr. Hassan: Exactly. We're in a technological revolution and the digital age and the social media platforms and our smartphones, so people can be completely indoctrinated online in their own home using their cell phones. Unfortunately, with the pandemic and the economic problems, people have such high anxiety and stress and fear, that they're even more susceptible than ever before, especially because they don't understand how to discern what is ethical influence, what is unethical influence, what is a fact.

By the way, there's no such thing as an alternate fact. That was a propaganda term. It's called a lie or it's called disinformation or propaganda. We don't live in a post-truth world. Truth still matters and people who say you create your own reality and therefore if you believe it, it's true, this is the mindset of authoritarian cults.

Brian: Bobby in Williamsburg, you're on WNYC with Dr. Steven Hassan. Hi, Bobby.

Bobby: Hi there. My father got involved in QAnon very seriously over the last year, but it started out as a joke. He was looking at memes and he thought it was all fun. Then when Tom Hanks got caught in that trial, child sex trafficking rings that he's running with Meryl Streep, that's when things got crazy and my dad just completely joined the QAnon. Now all he wants to talk about is Howard Stern's penis. Baba Booey, Baba Booey, Baba Booey--

Brian: That was a prank call that included lies in and of itself about Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, right?

Dr. Hassan: Exactly. This is the propaganda war that we're faced by enemies of democracy and freedom, of people who want to sow chaos and conflict and turn Americans against each other. That's why it's really important to step back and look at what is happening from a bigger perspective and evaluate, who is this person? I understand on a radio show you don't know who they are. But online, it's critical to understand the sources for things before you start spending a lot of time watching videos or reading posts, et cetera, because it can get into your head without you realizing it.

Brian: Kristin in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kristin.

Kristin: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian: Sure can.

Kristin: Great. Thank you so much. This is not a prank call. My father is actually not in the QAnon rabbit hole, but he's in a similar rabbit hole. Dan Bongino I think his name is, is somebody who he obsessively follows on YouTube. I only know of all of this, it's actually not something he talks about. I only know about it because of seeing him obsessively watch YouTube and I've talked to other family and friends who are the recipients of a lot of stuff from him. It's affected his oldest friendship of almost 60 years. Sorry, this is--

Brian: It's hard, I know, it's emotional.

Kristin: I am very liberal, as is my mother. I've held off saying anything directly to him, quite honestly because I'm terrified about how it would impact our relationship and particularly during this pandemic time, just the thought of fracturing our relationship like that [unintelligible 00:14:48]

Brian: We're also isolated to begin with.

Kristin: I had been hoping, I actually reached out to my cousin who- my dad's whole family lives in Europe, because I know that his father and my father are in constant touch and I thought, well, maybe I can go through his dad because he would listen to him. But evidently his father has now drunk this kool aid and insisted to my cousin that there's lots of proofs about the election being a fraud and whatnot, which was shocking to me that being so physically far away and hopefully exposed to other kinds of news, he wouldn't have bought into it.

One thing that has occurred to me, and I apologize if this is long, but my father is actually a long-standing recovering alcoholic. He's been sober for, gosh, over 30 years now. This behavior feels like drinking to me and this kind of the secrecy and the like, "I'm hiding it from these people but I'm sharing it with these people and these people are facilitating it to me and these people aren't." All the stuff, that dynamic that I learned about when I became aware of his drinking as a teenager, that's what it brings up within me.

Brian: Do you think that our guest can offer you a particular advice? I think you were heading toward a question to ask him?

Kristin: I literally don't know what to do. I thought about writing a letter because that seems less confrontational, but just like any advice. His best friend has tried to talk to him. Not even so much challenging his beliefs, but just saying like, this isn't worth throwing away a friendship, this brotherhood over, but he's rejected that. Just any advice about how to even begin to approach it just given the fears of, again, losing a relationship entirely over it.

Brian: Dr. Hassan.

Dr. Hassan: Yes, please. There's far more that I'd like to share than I have time for on this particular interview. My website freedomofmind.com has blogs and blogs and blogs about what you need to know, my recommended approach how to help. Essentially, you want to start by educating yourself and building a network of family and friends. You were thinking the right way about reaching out to your uncle, but you want to find other people who are concerned and you want to do a deep dive on understanding, for example, my influence continuum, which is on my website. It's in my books, Combatting Cult Mind Control, Freedom of Mind, as well as my BITE model of authoritarian control.

You definitely want to have conversations with the impacted person, but you want to frame it in terms of the search for truth. You don't want to say, "That's ridiculous. Of course, Biden won the election." You want to say, "You're my dad or you're my brother," whoever it is. You want to say, "I love you no matter what and I respect you. I'm really wanting to understand how you came to adopt this worldview." Then you'll probably get a deluge of links and things and such. You want to slow that down [inaudible 00:18:40] boundary around, "I'm willing to look at something you share, and we can discuss it together, but would you be open for me to share something with you, and then we discuss it?"

Because honestly, if the truth is that Biden lost the election, you want to know that, but it seems to you so far that the burden of proof is on anyone who says that the election was stolen, so let's discuss it. The critical thing is coming from a place of love and curiosity, and not anger and condemnation and judgment or calling names or cutting off all contact, because without contact with non-influenced people, cult members will go deeper and deeper in, because that's who's influencing them all day long.

Another critical thing is it not only explain [inaudible 00:19:43] cults manipulate intelligent educated people. Find out from your father what group he would consider as a mind-control cult. If it's the Moonies or if it's Nxivm, the Keith Raniere cult that was in the media so much in New York.

Brian: And then draw some comparisons.

Dr. Hassan: Exactly, you want to educate them about mind control cults and their specific behaviors first, and then ask questions. That is the single most powerful technique is a thoughtful question, asked with respect, and then waiting a very long time of silence for an answer, and then having a back and forth with the person and controlling yourself from getting frustrated or angry. You want to stop the conversation if you feel like you're losing your resources, but the bottom line is understanding your father will get himself out if he has the tools for evaluation,

Brian: Kristin, I hope that's at least somewhat helpful. I heard how hard it is. We all did. Thank you for your call, and let's do one more before we run out of time, because a number of people are calling in for advice. Ann in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Ann, thank you so much for calling in.

Ann: Thank you. Steven Hassan, I just happened to have read your book Cult of Trump and 'm taking my time before confronting or having a conversation with my sibling, who is a frontline worker who appears to believe in a lot of these conspiracy theories, so I'm educating myself. I have a question.

I appreciate you revealing that if it was the deception that you found in Sun Myung Moon speeches that finally opened your eyes and brought you out of the cult. My question is for these QAnon followers, some of them are anti-choice, and in that situation, these people believe that they're saving babies. Whatever lies or deception I feel they think is okay because after all, they think they're saving babies. What on earth can I do about my sibling with that situation?

Dr. Hassan: You're bringing up an important point, which is that there are many people who have been drawn into the cult of Trump and into QAnon, so some people are very religious and pro-life, or what they call pro-life. Some people are into yoga and new-agey kinds of philosophies. It turns out QAnon is based largely on the I AM movement of the Ballards' based in Madame Blavatsky's beliefs from the 1800s. The point is you want to tune into the person that you care about and what matters most to them, and pick your frame that you think you can possibly have some value with.

For some people who are very religious, who is the best person to talk to is someone who's very religious, who is critical of Trump or critical of QAnon and there are such people out there. The bottom line is that the entire QAnon cult is basically a psy-op, a Psychological Warfare Operation. It is not just the theory but there are very powerful people and forces behind it, including Russia, including Mike Flynn and others, who is a former military intelligence person. So getting to the roots of it, like looking at the Dismantling QAnon TEDx that I was involved with would really help a lot to demystify what is actually going on here.

Brian: That's going to have to be the last word because we are out of time. We've given a lot of specifics, which is really helpful, I think, to a number of people who are calling in. I think it's representative of how prevalent this is, that we had no trouble getting a whole bunch of callers, some of whom we had time to take, some of whom we didn't, with really different versions of the same question. Help my father, my sibling, what do I do?

Thank you for being so specific and we hear you about that TEDx. That might be helpful for people to go and refer to, to continue to get more of your wisdom on this. Maybe you'll come back and do it again if it doesn't go away, or at least start to die on the vine, which some people are hoping that it will after the inauguration.

Steven Hassan is a mental health professional and author of The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Hassan: Thank you, Brian, for having me.

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