A Fifth of the French Suspected by Those Close to Them of Being in a Cult
Denis Mathieu · 1 October 2012
A Fifth of the French Suspected by Those Close to Them of Being in a Cult
By Denis Mathieu (October 2012)
According to an IPSOS poll commissioned by the MIVILUDES in 2011[1], a fifth of the French are said to be suspected by those close to them of being in a cult (victims of dérive sectaire). This kind of enormity is one of the consequences of 30 years of anti-cult propaganda.
Let us briefly recall that, despite the anxiety-inducing discourse relayed tirelessly by the media, despite the gesticulations (annual reports, guides, brochures) of the MIVILUDES on the subject, no probative element, sociological study, judicial statistic or scientific demonstration has yet come to prove that there exists a social scourge, a genuine danger, associated with the practices and groups commonly designated as “cults” or suspected of “dérives sectaires”. Nothing to date invalidates the option[2] taken by the rest of the world (excluding China and, to a lesser degree, Belgium) of not particularly worrying about these same groups and practices and of considering them a priori as inoffensive.
The “victim of dérive sectaire”, according to the criteria common today in France and according to the anti-cult definitions, is a victim of “mental manipulation”[3], a notion without scientific validation or legal definition, which one might describe as an emotional argument. Without denying the existence of certain forms of manipulation in human relations, it is unacceptable that minorities should be designated as the sole homes of this kind of practice. The idea that spiritual, therapeutic or educational minorities, devoid of means compared with the great opinion-forming groups, should have the power to seize minds, to transform and alienate them, belongs more simply to superstition. The CIA, and probably many other secret services around the world, have worked on the alienation of individuals, without probative result apart from those obtained by violent and illegal methods (incarceration, administration of drugs, threats, forced hypnosis…). Studies[4] show that in reality, within the minorities suspected of “dérives sectaires”, those suspected of knowing how to “capture minds”, the proportion of people who leave the group compared with those who stay is very large.
How then has a great part of the French population come to adhere to such a superstition?
The first answer is tangible, historical: the French State (essentially the National Assembly and the government), relayed by the major media, has deployed over thirty years the effort necessary to establish a veritable psychosis. A long-haul effort, discreet (according to the poll cited above, three quarters of the French still do not know what the MIVILUDES is), obstinate (whatever the governments, and despite the European and international challenges) and taking care never to confront serious arguments, but to use an emotional rhetoric of proven impact.
Another answer is the disconcerting docility and passivity of the media on the subject which, not content with never having given the floor (with two or three exceptions) to contradictory analyses of French policy on “cults”, serve and re-serve cyclically each year dozens of articles, dossiers, programmes and reports unilaterally relaying the Manichean anti-cult vision, erroneous in its figures and its facts. There is something of a blind spot there, an almost total abstention from true journalism.
Georges Fenech, former president of the MIVILUDES, puts forward the poll in question every time he can, to conclude that a fifth (indeed a quarter!)[5] of the French are actually victims of dérives sectaires. It is as though he were making the “suspicious relatives” into experts, when they are more surely disinformed by the good offices of the MIVILUDES and maintained in a secular superstition. On the other hand, Georges Fenech accepts being himself designated as the French expert on a question he describes as “very delicate”, when he has never shown the slightest subtlety in approaching it. It is this superstitious and mendacious vision that is taught to civil servants, gendarmes, magistrates, who cannot have understood the lesson very well, since none of them has ever brought proof that there really was a wolf in the public forest.
[1] http://www.data-publica.com/opendata/12164—perception-par-l-opinion-du-phenomene-sectaire-etape-n-2
[2] http://www.cicns.net/enquete_internationale_miviludes_2009.htm
[3] /library/cicns/manipulation-mentale-resume/
[4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0vKTpH3rUY
Sources
- Un cinquième des français soupçonnés par leurs proches d'être dans une secte (archived copy of http://www.cicns.net/20_pour_cent_de_francais_dans_une_secte.htm)
English translation of Un cinquième des français soupçonnés par leurs proches d'être dans une secte (French), originally by Denis Mathieu.