"Yes, but All the Same...": The Argument That Ends Every Debate on the Cults

Excesses of the Anti-Cult Fight? “Yes, but all the same…”

By the CICNS (June 2010)

In the interview given to the CICNS, the sociologist Raphaël Liogier sums up in a simple phrase the adherence of certain intellectuals to the French anti-cult fight: “Yes, but all the same!”. Faced with the patent absence of evidence of the cult danger as it is presented by the parliamentarians and the MIVILUDES, relayed by the media, their definitive argument reduces to: “Yes, but all the same!”.

Despite the abundance of facts presented on our site demonstrating the excesses of the French anti-cult arsenal, we are often confronted with the same type of reaction. In the anxiety-inducing climate generated around the spiritual minorities, this posture is scarcely surprising among the public far removed from the alternative spiritual and therapeutic currents. It is more so among the broad public, interested closely or distantly in these new currents, whom some have grouped under the name “the cultural creatives”[1]. If a growing majority of them have well understood the urgency of an impulse of solidarity to defend fundamental liberties, numerous are those who still, at worst, give credit to the action of the MIVILUDES, at best prefer to adopt the anti-cult rhetoric in order to extract themselves (illusorily) from the accusation of being a “cult”. This article is addressed principally to those people, who may also usefully consult our FAQ.

Our argument

Our objective is indeed to establish a healthy debate on the question of alternative spiritual or therapeutic practices (let us recall that we have no link with any of the groups designated as “cults”).

What is a healthy debate? It is a debate that is established in a propitious context: respect for the interlocutors, respect for the adversarial principle, respect for legality, adoption of an approach of knowledge. Is the debate on the cults in France healthy? The answer is evidently no: there can be no respect for the interlocutors when a part of them is designated by the very pejorative term “cult”; there can be no respect for the adversarial principle when the groups arbitrarily designated as “cults” are systematically kept away from parliamentary work, from the reflective work of the MIVILUDES, and when the media coverage has for thirty years resembled a full-scale lynching against them; there can be no respect for legality (worthy of that of a state governed by law) when the “cults” are systematically in the position of “accused”, outside any legal context, when a discriminatory legislation is put in place (the About-Picard law) and when rumour, amalgams and a climate of generalised psychosis are preferred to the strict observation of possible offences; there can be no approach of knowledge when the MIVILUDES is not in a position to propose the slightest methodology for analysing the “cult question”, when it dispenses with university research and allows itself to diffuse in complaisant media fanciful alarmist figures.

For the most part, this argument is understood among the “cultural creatives”, but a significant number of them always end up saying: “Yes, but Scientology”, “yes, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses”…

That Scientology and the Jehovah’s Witnesses or a few other minorities given media coverage should be on everyone’s lips when one pronounces the term “cult” is no surprise, the media coverage having methodically transformed them into bogeymen. Is that legitimate?

Let us observe that the fabrication of bogeymen, whatever they may be, takes us out of the democratic field, since democratic debate, which is its basis, is then replaced by a discourse of exclusion and of fear.

The media and political anti-cult posture is all the more perverse in that it accompanies, and most of the time even anticipates, a possible judicial treatment, by statements that fall within the competence of the judiciary. Indeed, the term “cult” being synonymous with “criminal group” today, to ask oneself whether such and such a movement is a “cult” (or, in the hypocritically watered-down official French version, whether such and such a movement commits “dérives sectaires”) is a way of substituting a popular tribunal for the Court of justice. In every case, this attitude is unacceptable, and if the Scientology affairs have a national resonance, all “cult” affairs are affected, at least locally, by this deleterious climate.

In this context, the few judicial proceedings concerning dérives sectaires undergo a very strong media and political pressure. And if it must be recognised that the judicial institution knows how to keep its independence (in many respects, it remains the last rampart against a generalised anti-cult hysteria), it nonetheless undergoes the steamroller of rumour: the magistrates are not always unaffected by it.

The “yes, but Scientology…”, “yes, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses…” are therefore complaisant positions with regard to a power that has decided, in the name of the secular State moreover, to prevent spiritual diversity from expressing itself.

A spiritual group can be criticised (even severely), like any other group, within the framework of a balanced debate as we have described above. The only way to condemn a movement, whatever it may be, on the other hand, is through judicial proceedings, the condemnation being established when all the avenues of appeal have been used or abandoned (these including the ECHR, since France seems to make a point of honour of being one of the most condemned countries in Europe for non-respect of human rights). If this approach is not that of the MIVILUDES, which has chosen to found its action on rumour and an exacerbated victim policy, it is, it seems, the reasonable position adopted by the Ministry of the Interior and in particular that of the Central Bureau of Religions. It is also ours. In these conditions, the CICNS will take note of any final judicial decision against a spiritual minority.

Reasoning by the absurd

This argument does not necessarily overcome the “yes, but all the same!”. Let us then propose, to those who always have two or three names of “cults” in mind, a reasoning by the absurd.

Let us suppose that two or three of these groups given media coverage were finally dissolved (following the most objective legal procedure possible). Would the anti-cult fight, which puts 500,000 people, 500 to 600 movements, a third of psychotherapists and almost all alternative therapies beyond the pale of society, then still be necessary? The answer is again no. And even if a few additional names come to the minds of our interlocutors, it will be possible to include them in the reasoning and to arrive finally at the non-pertinence of the current anti-cult fight. Why validate the anti-cult psychosis in the name of an inapplicable precautionary principle, very dangerous for the preservation of public liberties, where the application of the law would be sufficient? For the media and political lynching of the “cults”, if it can have an effect on a few judicial decisions, has no effect on the course of judicial proceedings, very fortunately: a complaint, where appropriate, will always be dealt with. The logical conclusion is therefore that the anti-cult policy as it is conducted in France is not justified for any group.

Reason versus emotion

This “logical” and common-sense conclusion is not always convincing in the eyes of some, because what is at stake in the positions taken on the cult question has nothing to do with reason but is of the order of emotion and in particular of fear. The fear of “the other”, which is principally a fear for oneself and rarely for a third party one would wish to protect without expectation for oneself, is not resolved by ostracising “the other” or by getting rid of him (because there will always be an “other” who will be seen as a danger) but by overcoming in oneself the germs of fear. More globally, a society that is afraid and fabricates scapegoats for its survival as it is (so it believes) does nothing but undergo, instead of accompanying, changes that are beyond it in any case.

There are no “cults”, because any group can be designated as a “cult”

A final line of argument consists in showing that any group whatever can be designated as a “cult”: on the basis of a simple denunciation, because the group has been arbitrarily put on the 1996 list of cults or in the MIVILUDES referential, or because the criteria of dérives sectaires adopted by the interministerial mission (and by the anti-cult associations) are applied to it.

By way of example, we have already illustrated the application of the criteria of dérives sectaires to Freemasonry, which pitifully defends itself against being a “cult” while being a major actor of the anti-cult fight.

Let us take the example of France Télécom. More than forty suicides have been recorded (“Between the beginning of 2008 and March 2010, the group’s management counted 45 suicides of employees”), linked closely or distantly to working conditions. Let us wager that such a situation in a spiritual minority, equivalent in number to the company cited, would unfailingly have led to the dissolution of the group; yet the MIVILUDES has not been involved in the evaluation of the telecom operator. Let us nevertheless apply the criteria of “dérives sectaires” advocated by the mission:

– mental destabilisation: an intense and repeated psychological pressure from management led dozens of workers to lose their confidence and their bearings, to the point of suicide; several witnesses attest to this psychological pressure;

– the exorbitant character of financial demands: the blackmail over promotion, indeed over remaining in the company, and therefore a blackmail over the means of survival in a context of crisis for fathers and mothers of families, may be seen as an implacable financial pressure;

– the rupture with the original environment: officially regulated hours but a pressure for output oblige employees to an ever greater investment in the company, ending in destroying or seriously deteriorating their family life or their personal life;

– the existence of attacks on physical integrity: can a person’s suicide be considered an indirect attack on physical integrity? The answer is contained in the question;

– the indoctrination of children, the antisocial discourse, disturbances of public order: forty suicides — is that a situation capable of constituting a disturbance of public order and morals? The answer is contained in the question;

– the importance of judicial entanglements: not applicable; (note that a judicial investigation was opened for “moral harassment” concerning the suicides at France Télécom);

– the possible diversion of traditional economic circuits: for many years the product of labour has been diverted to the profit of capital; this appraisal, which could until recently have been charged with being a “political” vision, nevertheless takes on an apolitical accent in the face of the unimaginable but nevertheless real turpitudes of globalised finance;

– attempts to infiltrate the public authorities: the public authorities encourage this type of “high-performing” company despite their probably sincere but hypocritical dismay at the state of the world;

Of course, we have applied the criteria of dérives sectaires in a superficial fashion, without any real stepping back or reflection, in the manner of the MIVILUDES and of the anti-cult associations. By remaining superficial and demagogic, our commentaries deceptively seem full of common sense, and there is no doubt that if the identity of the company had been hidden from members of the MIVILUDES with a simple description of the context (allowing it to be supposed that it might be a spiritual minority), the verdict would have been the same as ours. There is a certain compromise on our part in applying the criteria of dérives sectaires as a charge against France Télécom. We in fact have no prejudice about this company (it is for the courts to decide) and we lent ourselves to this game because it makes convincing the demonstration of the inanity of the criteria of dérives sectaires.

Through the action of the MIVILUDES, no group is today safe from such arbitrariness (the criteria of “dérives sectaires” are the very tool of that arbitrariness). And if certain companies in the spotlight (but we could equally take the example of the Catholic Church with the question of paedophilia) avoid (for the moment) the qualifier “cult”, it is solely because the anti-cult fight targets particular groups or currents and not drifts, contrary to what the MIVILUDES claims.

Returning to a mature debate

On the basis of such an observation, there are only two ways of returning to a mature debate: to favour an approach of knowledge through the creation of an independent observatory of the spiritual minorities in place of the MIVILUDES, and to return to a strict application of the ordinary law for the offences that may be committed within the spiritual or therapeutic minorities.

[1] See Yves Michel’s study on the cultural creatives: http://www.yvesmichel.org/admin/etes-vous-creatif-culturel/les-creatifs-culturels