True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Part VII (Wattys2025)

Cults: A Definition Part II

Workers Revolutionary Party

In Britain, the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), a Trotskyist group which was led by Gerry Healy and strongly supported by actress Vanessa Redgrave, has been described by others, who have been involved in the Trotskyist movement, as having been a cult or a group which displayed cult-like characteristics during the 1970s and 1980s. It is also described as such by Wohlforth and Tourish, to whom Bob Pitt, a former member of the WRP, concedes that it had a "cult-like character" though arguing that rather than being typical of the far left, this feature actually made the WRP atypical and "led to its being treated as a pariah within the revolutionary left itself."

Other political groups

Gino Perente's National Labor Federation (NATLFED) and Marlene Dixon's now-defunct Democratic Workers Party are examples of political groups that have been described as "cults". A critical history of the DWP is given in Bounded Choice by Janja Lalich, a sociologist and former DWP member. Lutte Ouvrière (LO; "Workers' Struggle") in France, publicly headed by Arlette Laguiller but revealed in the 1990s to be directed by Robert Barcia, has often been criticized as a cult, for example, by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his older brother Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, as well as by L'Humanité and Libération.

In his book Les Sectes Politiques: 1965–1995 (Political cults: 1965–1995), French writer Cyril Le Tallec considers some religious groups that were involved in politics at that time. He included the Cultural Office of Cluny, New Acropolis, the Divine Light Mission, Tradition Family Property (TFP), Longo Maï, the Supermen Club, and the Association for Promotion of the Industrial Arts (Solazaref).

Several former leaders of the Groyper movement – an alt-right faction that infuses white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and Incel ideology – have accused Nick Fuentes of leading it like a cult, describing him as abusing and demanding absolute loyalty from his followers. Fuentes praised having a "cult-like... mentality" and admitted to "ironically" describing his own movement as a cult.

Polygamist cults

Cults that teach and practice polygamy, marriage between more than two people, most often polygyny, one man having multiple wives, have long been noted, although they are a minority. It has been estimated that there are around 50,000 members of polygamist cults in North America. Often, polygamist cults are viewed negatively by both legal authorities and mainstream society, and this view sometimes includes negative perceptions of related mainstream denominations, because of their perceived links to possible domestic violence and child abuse.

From the 1830s to 1904, members of Mormonism's largest denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), performed polygamous marriages. These were called plural marriages by the church. In 1890, the president of the LDS Church, Wilford Woodruff, issued a public manifesto announcing the cessation of new plural marriages. Anti-Mormon sentiment waned, as did opposition to statehood for Utah.

The Smoot Hearings in 1904, which documented that members of the LDS Church were still performing new polygamous marriages, spurred the church to issue a Second Manifesto, again claiming that it had ceased the practice. By 1910, the LDS Church excommunicated those who entered into or performed new polygamous marriages. Enforcement of the 1890 Manifesto caused various splinter groups to leave the LDS Church in order to continue the practice of religious polygamy. Such groups are known as Mormon fundamentalists. For example, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is often described as a polygamist cult.

Racist cults

Sociologist and historian Orlando Patterson has described the Ku Klux Klan, which arose in the American South after the Civil War, as a heretical Christian cult, and he has also described its persecution of African Americans and others as a form of human sacrifice. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the existence of secret Aryan cults in Germany and Austria strongly influenced the Völkisch movement and the rise of Nazism. Modern-day white power skinhead groups in the United States tend to use the same recruitment techniques as groups which are characterized as destructive cults.