Anti-Cult Law: The Poisoned Remedy for an Imaginary Ill

Anti-Cult Law: The Poisoned Remedy for an Imaginary Ill

by Raphaël Verrier on the site Les mots sont importants (lmsi)

The hyperlinks were added by the webmaster

In the space of a decade or so, the cults have become a political problem, and their repression is today the object of a broad consensus. At the moment when a new bill has been tabled before the Senate, it is necessary to recall how the notion of the cult was manufactured, the better to understand how the anti-cult fight menaces both the associative world and public liberties.

A cheap tolerance

A few months ago, an advertising spot selling “thermal comfort” staged a Krishna devotee going door to door in the middle of winter. He was then warmly welcomed by a middle-aged couple, in a spacious and well-heated house. That is why the latter claimed to need no comfort, even a “spiritual” one, while our proselyte, subjugated by so much innovation, was at once converted to the joys of modern life.

Like so many others, this advertisement valorises differences so as to exclude no consumer: “whoever you are, you too will want to buy an efficient heater”. But this commercial version of freedom of conscience produces, moreover, dubious stereotypes. Thus, while priests and other monks are transformed into refined pleasure-seekers, the Krishna devotee is on the way to being incorporated into advertising iconography as the prototype of the crank cut off from modern comfort. In this advertisement, he thus represents the out-of-date and uninformed customer, always quick to marvel at the technological novelties offered him. He therefore embodies the imbecile our advertisers dissuade us from being (a naif outside the world of commercial consumption) at the same time as the one they urge us to become (a blissful consumer). Just as monastic life is not criticised for its enclosure, but because it authorises only a limited consumption, it is not the Krishna devotee’s credulity that serves as a foil, but his impossibility of following the general movement of consumption owing to his rupture with the world of commodities.

The fact is that our Krishna devotee follows the teachings of masters other than those dispensed by our advertisers and their employers, which leads him to cut himself off from the common values. Following and cutting are found in the two possible etymologies of the term sect: sequi and secare. One is forced to note that the advertisement clearly distinguishes these two aspects, since it valorises one, the following, and ridicules the other, the rupture. What it denounces, then, is the fact of not following its own teachings, which are mass teachings, in order to adopt minority practices and modes of thought. If it were established that the advertisement achieves its ends (modifying the public’s perception to induce a buying reflex), one could then legitimately worry about the lessons of tolerance it dispenses across the media and their effects on the population.

Metamorphosis of a private commitment into a political problem

The adoption, by the unanimous senators, of a bill aiming to create an offence of mental manipulation gives the measure of this formidable influence. It is in effect very rare, in a democratic country, for no elected representative to manifest opposition. A fortiori when public liberties are touched so closely. Is this to say that the cults are stigmatised to such a point that nobody dared any longer, on that 16 December 1999, to defend the most elementary republican principles?

To understand the emergence of this new intolerance, one must retrace the manner in which the notion of the cult took on meaning and the consensus [1] around its denunciation was manufactured. The recent affairs (collective suicides of the members of the OTS, disappearances of files during the fraud trial of the Church of Scientology…) are not the only causes of this renewed interest. Indeed, many others have already taken place, like the collective suicide of the followers of pastor Jim Jones in 1979, without ever leading to a political taking-in-hand of the cult question. For such a placing on the political agenda to be possible, the notion of the cult first had to be constructed in such a way that a private commitment should appear as a problem capable of being treated by the public authorities.

Three types of actor intervened in this elaboration: associations, to pose the problem, notably the Union Nationale des Associations pour les Défenses des Familles et des Individus (UNADFI) and the Centre de documentation, d’éducation et d’action Contre les Manipulations Mentales (CCMM); the police services, principally the Renseignements Généraux, to construct it; political leaders at the intersection of the political and the legislative, like M. Vivien, former minister and deputy, to submit it to public debate. The latter is the author of the first parliamentary report on the cult phenomenon, dating from 1985. The precocity of his commitment on this question earns him today the presidency of an Interministerial Mission for the Fight against the Cults (MILS) which is directly attached to the Prime Minister. Which shows the importance accorded today to this question at the highest level of the State.

Inflating the menace

Yet the attention paid to the so-called cult groups is not particularly motivated by their expansion. If this was indeed significant in the period 1960-70, the cult nebula has remained numerically stable for some fifteen years. Certain groups have even almost disappeared from the French landscape, like the Association for the Unification of World Christianity (Moon) or the International Association for Krishna Consciousness. One may thus remark that it is neither the appearance nor the multiplication of the cults that provokes the strongest reactions, but the halt of their growth accompanied by their durable installation on the market of ideological supply. Nevertheless, all the actors have an interest in inflating the phenomenon: the groups themselves, but also the family associations to justify their combat, the media [2] to make ratings, and the politicians to give themselves the fine role in the face of this “new” social scourge [3]. It must however be recalled that of the 175 “cult movements” catalogued in the Guyard report [4], only about ten present a dangerous character according to the MILS. In fact, these movements are essentially small associations: 57 have fewer than 50 followers, 80 have between 50 and 500 followers, only 24 have between 500 and 2,000 followers, and 13 have between 2,000 and 10,000 followers. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, with their 130,000 faithful, are the only group exceeding the threshold of 10,000 people. They alone represent two thirds of the disciples of all the “cults” catalogued in France.

All in the same bag. Well, almost?

With the Guyard report, a limit was crossed, since the parliamentary Commission of inquiry made public a nominative list of the associations it considers cult-like. One finds there pell-mell murderous groups, like the Order of the Solar Temple; associations convicted of fraud, like the Church of Scientology; totally inoffensive occultist and New Age groups; evangelical communities traditional in the United States; and even the association l’Arbre au milieu, which it was noticed, but too late, had been mentioned on the sole basis of calumnious denunciations.

Above all, one finds there no trace of Opus Dei. Yet this organisation, 80,000 members strong in the world and with 1,500 followers in France [5], would have deserved greater attention from our parliamentarians. Indeed, demanding unconditional obedience to its directors of conscience, the Work is said to be “psychologically dangerous for its own members” according to M. John Roche, former leader of the movement in Great Britain. Moreover, recruiting principally among the social elites, the Opus seems to implement a veritable strategy of infiltration of the international organisations (UN, UNESCO, OECD, European Commission), as well as of the public authorities of many countries. Its practice of clandestinity makes the evaluation of this influence difficult. Indeed, until their revelation in 1982, the organisation’s secret statutes stipulated “that the numerary and supernumerary members should know well that they must keep a prudent silence as to the names of the other associates, and that they must never reveal to anyone that they belong to Opus Dei”. It is however known that the first Juppé government included at least two persons close to the Opus, Hervé Gaymard and his wife Clara Gaymard-Lejeune. Moreover, the sympathies of M. Barre, former Prime Minister and current mayor of Lyon, have been no secret since he attested to the “signs of sainthood” of the founder of Opus Dei at the latter’s beatification trial.

But it is above all in Spain, and in Latin America, that the political weight of this organisation is most perceptible. Thus, the ninth Franco government counted twelve members of the Opus among nineteen ministers. Still today, eminent cadres of the PPE, like Ignacio Salfaranca, Juan Trillo, Loyola de Palacio or Isabel Tocino, are Opusians. Likewise, the high command of the Spanish army counts several adherents of the Work. One will thus not be surprised to learn that Juan Antonio Samaranch-Torello, former Francoist minister and current president of the International Olympic Committee, belongs to this organisation.

To assimilate Opus Dei to a cult would thus have angered a good number of our politicians and our European partners. But it is above all the Vatican as a whole that would then have been targeted. Indeed, John Paul II made this organisation, to which he owes his election, his personal prelature. Since then one counts numerous Opusians among the Pope’s close collaborators, like the chaplains Joachim Pacheco, Klaus Becker, Fernando Ocariz and Felipe Rodrigez, the Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Cardinal Martinez Somalo, the (ex-DC) deputy Alberto Michelini or the financial adviser Gianmario Rovero. A close presence which leads people to say that Opus Dei, a veritable “Church within the Church” according to John Roche, is henceforth all-powerful at the Vatican.

The constant practice of secrecy, justified by imperatives of Christian humility and apostolic effectiveness, above all allows Opus Dei to obtain public subsidies (like those granted by the European Commission to its newspaper Europe Today), to control a maze of limited companies (Saidec, Socofina, Acut, Sofico, Trifep…), of publishing houses (like the éditions du Laurier), of universities and professional schools (like the Institut Robert-Schuman, intended to supply “reliable Catholic journalists” to Eastern Europe and the Third World).

Thus, the fortune of Opus Dei is said to be considerable, even if it remains impossible to evaluate with precision. One can nevertheless form an idea of it by remembering that the Work’s bankers refloated, to the tune of 260 million dollars, the Institute for the Works of Religion - responsible for the scandalous bankruptcy of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982 and directed at the time by the Pope’s bodyguard, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. The financing of the Opus is itself also tainted by a few scandals, like the Matesa affair, in 1969, implicating Prince Jean de Broglie, an Opusian and treasurer of the very Giscardian Républicains Indépendants, since assassinated in circumstances never elucidated; or again the affair of José Maria Ruiz Mateos, head of the multinational consortium Rumasa, who confessed to having paid 300 million pesetas to Opus Dei and who was indicted, in 1982, for tax fraud and breach of exchange-control legislation. It seems that, in a general way, the Opus can count on the support of business circles, with which the organisation shares, among other things, very spiritual ideas about pensions. Thus, according to Le Monde Diplomatique [6], Claude Bébéar (AXA), Michel Albert (AGF), Didier Pineault-Valenciennnes (Schneider) and Louis Schweitzer (Renault) are said to have given lectures for the Opus at the Centre Garnelles in Paris.

This rapid overview shows that Opus Dei gathers almost the totality of the ten criteria retained by the parliamentary Commission for recognising the cult character of an association, criteria we shall examine in detail below. Yet one finds no mention of the Work among the organisations pinned in the Guyard report. The importance of the support the Opus enjoys is certainly not unconnected to such an omission. One may thus wager that if the Work had officially been put in the same bag as the Church of Scientology and the Sokka Gakkaï, the parliamentary unanimity around the anti-cult fight would have been more difficult to obtain. The question nevertheless arises of the real usefulness of this crusade, when those who conduct it consider it no grave matter to renounce combating the most influential of them.

When the opinion of the Renseignements Généraux substitutes itself for public opinion

That this blacklist proceeds by amalgams and arbitrary distinctions can only be understood on condition of grasping how the notion of the cult was constructed. The fact is that it is not easy to define it, to the point that many sociologists prefer to speak of “new religious movements”. But it is not this scientifically delimited object that the parliamentarians studied, since their list includes movements that are no longer so new, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Antoinist Cult, and even groups with no religious vocation like the International Federation for the Development of Instinctive Eating. The Commission of inquiry does not moreover evade the problem. According to it, “the difficulty of defining the notion of the cult, which will nevertheless be used in the remainder of the report, led the Commission to retain a bundle of indicators, each of which could lend itself to long discussions. It therefore preferred, at the risk of ruffling many sensibilities or of proceeding to a partial analysis of reality, to retain the common meaning that public opinion attributes to the notion”.

One can only admire the methodological rigour of our investigators. Thus, the Commission teaches us that the notion of the cult is not definable, but that it is nevertheless useless to equip oneself with a more appropriate concept. It would suffice, in effect, to trust the representation “public opinion” forms of it, without asking whether that representation actually corresponds to a reality. One would at least expect this public opinion to be formed by scientists or by associations fighting the cults. But the Commission mentions them only to dismiss them at once as too partial or too detached. Very prudently, it admits, for want of an incontestable definition, to having only a bundle of indicators for recognising cult associations. But it is to teach us a few lines further on that these indicators were elaborated by the Renseignements Généraux. Would these services be the depositaries of the “common meaning that public opinion attributes to the notion”?

The public opinion to which the parliamentarians very democratically refer turns out to be, in the Guyard report, only the common sense of the police services. In other words, the term cult is not universally definable for the simple reason that it is only the product of a system of representation proper to the Renseignements Généraux. The notion of the cult reveals itself here as the criminal denomination of freedom of conscience and worship. It is therefore nothing other than a police category intended to repress what the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, placed in the preamble of our constitution, formally guarantees.

To convince oneself of the arbitrarily repressive character of the notion of the cult, it suffices to examine the criteria suggested to the Commission by the Renseignements Généraux. They are ten in number, but nowhere is it specified how many must be gathered to be considered a cult movement. Moreover, as the Commission recognises, “each could lend itself to long discussions”. But it does not suffice to admit that the procedures by which opprobrium is cast on nearly 160,000 citizens are debatable; one must still know why. In the absence of an explanation from the Commission, we must examine for ourselves each of its famous indicators whose convergence is supposed to allow us to recognise the cult character of an association.

First indicator: “mental destabilisation”

Insofar as this notion has a meaning, it would require knowing whether the followers were “mentally stable” before entering the cult. Now, the Commission recognises elsewhere that the cults “offer answers to important needs”: the crisis of the development model of Western societies, the deregulation of the market in “spiritual goods”, the economic crisis, the upheaval of family structures, the need to improve individual performance and the shattering of social cohesion are said to contribute to arousing a desire to “transform oneself in order to transform the world”. But if one accepts that these factors explain the success of the “cults”, one is obliged to admit that they disturbed the psychic formation of individuals prior to their initiation. Mental destabilisation is thus logically anterior to entry into the “cult”, even if the latter can transform into illness what was still only a malaise.

One would still have to specify to what point the “cult” is to be incriminated in this process, since the desire to “transform oneself” is also necessarily a demand for “destabilisation” which is never without risk. Should one accuse a licensed psychotherapist of “mental destabilisation” if the troubles of a few of his patients worsened in the course of the cure? How to evaluate the improved well-being brought by a “cult” if not by the successes it meets as much as by its failures?

One therefore sees poorly how, in the absence of psychiatric assessments conducted on a large scale, the Commission was able to determine the mentally destabilising groups. This nevertheless did not prevent Senator About, and Deputy Picard, from drawing inspiration from this criterion to propose the creation of an offence of “mental manipulation” to their respective assemblies. The Ministry of the Interior had nevertheless manifested its opposition to this bill, qualifying it as “dangerous for public liberties” and as “legislation of exception”. The Place Beauvau considered notably that the imprecision of the meaning and scope of this notion opened the door to every excess, which history confirms. It is indeed with the help of a similar law that Mussolini liquidated the Italian Communist Party.

Moreover, this bill also menaced the “great religions”, which were not slow to express their worry. Thus, Mgr Jean Vernette, the episcopate’s delegate for the cults, asked [7]: “what will make the difference between spiritual direction and mental manipulation?”. While the president of the Protestant Federation asked just as lucidly: “where is the limit between convinced discourse, ardent oath and mental manipulation?”. All recalled moreover, with rabbi Haïm Korsia, that the first parliamentary Commission of inquiry had considered, in 1994, that the existing legal arsenal was sufficient for fighting the cults.

Faced with these oppositions, and with the sharp criticisms of the national consultative Commission on human rights as well as of the League of Human Rights, a new text was presented on 25 January 2001 to the Senate, where the terms “mental manipulation” disappeared. They were replaced by the notion of abuse of a “state of subjection”, which will amount to broadening article 313-4 of the penal code repressing “the fraudulent abuse of the state of ignorance or the situation of weakness”. But if the appellations change, the content remains the same. While the first draft defined mental manipulation as “the fact, within a cult grouping, of exerting on a person grave and reiterated pressures in order to create or exploit a state of dependence and to lead the person, against his will or not, to an act or an abstention gravely prejudicial to him”, the latest version makes the state of subjection result from “the exercise of grave and reiterated pressures or of techniques apt to alter judgement”.

But how then are these delinquent techniques going to be determined? The only ones recognised as incontestably effective arise from “brainwashing”. They consist in erasing the individual’s memories in order to re-form his personality. However, such practices require holding the victim physically prisoner, as certain American soldiers were in Korea. Now, nobody contests the fact that the cults rely on seduction, rather than on constraint, to recruit and form their followers. In other words, the “techniques” they employ, in a fashion more empirical than scientific, draw their effectiveness only from the consent of their “victim”. Consequently, the only way of detecting the use of manipulatory techniques is to note their effects, that is to say the alteration of judgement. The latter is recognised when a person is “led to an act or an abstention gravely prejudicial to him”. One would nevertheless have to add, and the parliamentarians strangely forgot to do so, acts or abstentions gravely prejudicial to others. However that may be, it will be when the act or abstention profits the “manipulator” while harming the “victim” (or perhaps also others) that mental manipulation, renamed abuse of a state of subjection, will be observable by the judge.

In other words, the legislator is going to prevent harming oneself for the profit of a third party, the latter then being deemed to have altered the judgement of the former with the help of “techniques” nobody is capable of designating a priori. One could long ponder the state of a society preparing to prohibit the sacrifice of oneself or one’s own interests. One is forced to note that such behaviour has become so foreign to our parliamentarians that they can no longer see in it anything but an alteration of judgement produced by mysterious techniques. The moral effects of such blindness are unfortunately foreseeable: the new law orders, in fact, every citizen to conduct himself as a perfect homo economicus on pain of being regarded as a victim. The fact that self-transcendence now inspires nothing but compassion could nevertheless have unexpected consequences. Should one not consider the resistance fighters as victims, not of Nazism, but of De Gaulle or Stalin?

But it will never come to that. Just as it will never come to condemning the beneficiaries of the techniques of psychological manipulation used both in human resources and in sales and communication [8]. These methods, the object of costly research, nevertheless have no other aim than to alter judgement for the profit of companies, the army, the State.

There is however no risk that these organisations will one day be considered “groups having as their aim or effect to create or exploit the psychological or physical dependence of the persons taking part in their activities”. For, though corresponding to this definition of the cult which the various legislative labours ended by producing, these organisations were not included in the blacklist of the Guyard report. Now, the About-Picard bill has the restrictive objective of “reinforcing prevention and repression against groups of a cult character” [9]. In judicial practice, the modified article 313-4 will therefore apply exclusively to the associations catalogued in the Guyard report [10], a report in which they were already accused of “mental destabilisation” when this notion had not yet acquired any determinate meaning. That is what is called closing the loop.

Second indicator: “the exorbitant character of the financial demands”

This indicator is supposed to reveal the venal character of certain associations presenting themselves as spiritual. Here, the fact that spirituality must appear disinterested is considered self-evident. Yet it occurred to no parliamentary investigator that the originality of certain religious movements could also reside in calling into question our traditional (and entirely ideal) separation of religion and money. Is it not inevitable that, where one finds what they themselves call “spiritual goods”, one also finds veritable worship enterprises to produce and commercialise them? The lessons in liberalism of our politicians are decidedly very selective. However, the parliamentarians’ problem seems not to be the existence of a market in “spiritual goods”, but the exorbitant price they can reach. But how to measure this exorbitant character, if not by relating it to the prices of equivalent goods and services on the market? Now such a comparison is impossible, since each “cult” offers a range of unique “products”: can the cost of becoming an “operating thetan” again among the Scientologists (about 500,000 francs) be compared with that needed by the Raelians to build an embassy intended to welcome the extraterrestrials (7% of net income)? It seems these prices appear exorbitant above all to those who do not share the same hopes.

Should one, in that case, include psychoanalysis in the list of the cults on the pretext that, by demanding a minimum of 200 francs per session, at the rate of two sessions a week payable even in case of absence, it often extracts far more than 7% of its patients’ net income for a result nobody can guarantee?

Third indicator: “The induced rupture with the environment of origin”

One must understand here the rupture of children with their parents, following their entry into an association. It is surprising that the milieu “of origin” has more value here than the environment created: no mention is made of induced ruptures with one’s own children, one’s spouse or one’s friends. However that may be, this criterion recognises as normal that children, even adult ones, belong to their family before belonging to themselves. It thus legitimises the parents’ associations fighting the “cults”, notably UNADFI, which was recognised as an association of public utility one year after the release of the Guyard report.

It is not useless to recall that at its creation, in 1974, it was called the Association for the Defence of Family Values and the Individual. Judged too “reactionary”, the appellation was quickly modified to Association for the Defences of Families and Individuals. However that may be, this new denomination leaves one pensive. What liberty remains to individuals if they do not have the choice of deciding their own influences, even at the cost of rejecting those of their “environment of origin”? Are such practices of rupture not moreover characteristic of certain monastic orders, without family associations or parliamentarians seeming moved by it? If certain groups do indeed “induce” such separations, is the responsible party not the one who finally made that choice, namely the adult child himself?

Finally, the parliamentarians do not take seriously the expression “environment of origin”, whose use dissimulates their agreement with the biblical commandment enjoining respect for one’s parents. For rigour would require including in the environment of origin the social and geographical milieu. Now the parliamentarians do not seem ready to consider as cult-like the practices of profitable companies which offer their employees the free choice between unemployment and work on a site far from their region, or country, “of origin”. In a general way, the valorisation of the environment of origin refers us to political practices far removed from democracy.

Finally, by speaking of “induced” ruptures, the parliamentarians open the door to the greatest arbitrariness. Indeed, the concept of induction is so indeterminate that it makes it possible to incriminate anything and everything by extending the chain of responsibilities indefinitely. Thus, what should we think of the practices of the French State, and of numerous national companies, when they “induce” entire populations to migrate by reducing them to misery? Would it not be legitimate to suppose that our deputies are inclined to point the finger at the effects “induced” by cult practices to make people momentarily forget the social ruptures “induced” by their own doings?

Fourth indicator: “Attacks on physical integrity”

Here again, the parliamentarians give no precision. Is it a matter of consented or imposed attacks? In the first case, they are assimilable to tattooing, piercing, scarifications and sado-masochistic practices between consenting adults, which do not as such interest the public authorities. If it is a matter of imposed attacks, are they mutilating or not? If an imposed but non-mutilating attack on physical integrity shocks the parliamentarians, why did they exclude Judaism from the cult movements when the circumcision of newborns is practised there? Finally, the parliamentarians do not distinguish, among attacks on physical integrity, those that are voluntary from those that are accidental, nor those that are systematic from those that are merely repeated. Such distinctions would nevertheless have their importance, without which one would have to consider as cult-like the companies where involuntary and repeated attacks on the physical integrity of employees are legion, as is the case in the construction sector.

If only groups voluntarily and systematically imposing mutilations on their members are to be considered cult-like, where does one find such associations in the list established by the Commission of inquiry? There is none, apart from the OTS. But in this last case, to speak of an attack on physical integrity, when it is death that is at issue, manifests a dubious sense of euphemism.

It emerges that the Guyard report attempts to discredit certain associations by claiming that they endanger the physical integrity of their members. But, on the other hand, it does not mention the groups that practise the traditional excision of young girls. The parliamentarians here give the unfortunate impression of having established the list of the cults in France before even having elaborated the criteria for recognising them.

Fifth indicator: “The regimentation of children”

It seems that in the eyes of the parliamentarians, regimentation consists in placing the child in a univocal educational structure, limiting as much as possible the penetration of outside elements (family, media, school knowledge…), so as to prevent the appearance of any critical distance from the dogmas and practices of the cult. One must however recognise that every education implies the necessarily selective imposition of values, practices, knowledge and social relations, since it aims at the insertion of the child into a society, which presupposes submission to the authority of adults. So that every education carries a part of regimentation, if one keeps to the definition the Petit Larousse gives of it: “to bring someone, by constraint or persuasion, into an association, a party, any group whatever”.

In fact, most children are led to join a social group identical to that of their parents, or close to it. Reproduction (of values, behaviours, inequalities…) is the rule and rupture the exception. If that were not the case, one could then reproach national education with “inducing ruptures with the environment of origin”, which one would find very hard to do. One sees here how the third indicator contradicts the fifth, since whoever does not induce a rupture of the child with his environment of origin falls automatically under the accusation of regimentation. It becomes very difficult not to be cult-like.

Above all, before speaking of regimenting behaviours, one would first have to compare the rate of former pupils of national education who have broken with their environment of origin (by joining a cult, for example) with the rate of children raised in a cult who have subsequently made the reverse journey. Given the relative stability of the cult phenomenon for some fifteen years, one may suppose the existence of a significant leakage rate (not counting those who, while remaining in the cult sphere, change affiliation): regimentation is thus perhaps not most effective where it is usually believed to be.

Moreover, it must be recalled that the law is supposed to prevent the total removal of the child from outside influences. France has notably ratified a series of international conventions on the rights of the child, bearing notably on the right to a normal education and the right to the family (which implies the possibility of seeing one’s grandparents, or one of the parents in case of divorce). Consequently, if the law were applied, and it is for the parliamentarians to give the executive the means to do so, there should no longer be, on the national territory, any regimentation of children in the sense understood by the Commission.

Finally, that a multinational like Vivendi finds itself at the head of one of the largest networks of private schools in France [11] obviously does not alert the parliamentarians, since a company so respectable and generous cannot engage in the “regimentation” of youth. For those who consider such a menace exaggerated, we can only recall the reaction of the firm Nike to the adhesion to the Workers’ Rights Consortium [12] of three American universities it subsidised. As for the stranglehold on the means of mass persuasion by a few Bouygues or other Lagardères, it presents, of course, no risk of indoctrination for children.

Sixth indicator: “The more or less antisocial discourse”

The “more or less” says much about the amplitude of the statements involved in this category. But what does the term “anti-social” mean when it applies to groups whose strong cohesion the Commission puts forward? It would be a matter of statements denouncing the dangerous or perverted character of society, and intended to accentuate the followers’ rupture with it. We might remind our parliamentarians that the French revolution, to which they owe their seats, would never have taken place had nobody been found to denounce the harmful and perverse character of monarchical society.

But above all, the 26 associations denounced by the Renseignements Généraux are far from being the only ones to maintain a besieged mentality. Thus, the apocalyptic discourses of many politicians on the subject of the banlieues (lawless zones where one should no longer have a right to tolerance), or of the young people of immigrant origin (unintegrable savages), have the direct effect of reinforcing the apartheid with these populations or neighbourhoods [13]. Anti-cult propaganda is also part of these demonising rhetorics, among which one finds again the denunciation of the Islamist peril (which yesterday was still red, and the day before yellow).

Is working to make minorities disquieting less antisocial than the paranoid fear maintained by a few often very small groups? It is all the less sure in that all these frights, distilled at will into opinion, have in common that they bear on the foreign (migratory, financial, cultural and worship flows), and consequently tend to make the rest of the planet be perceived as intrusive.

One may thus suppose that the foreign origin of most of the catalogued “cults”, notably among the largest, is not unconnected to the denunciation of which they are the object. That is the case for the New Age movements coming from the United States, like the evangelical churches and, of course, the Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as the Scientologists. It is also true of groups coming from South America (like the Association Nouvelle Acropole France or Tradition Family Property) or from Asia (notably the Association for the Unification of World Christianity, the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness and Sokka Gakkaï International France).

Seventh indicator: “Disturbances of public order”

This catch-all notion consists in respect, “in the broad sense, for public tranquillity, security, salubrity and morality”. This definition is so vague that it makes it possible to incriminate anyone according to the good pleasure of the authorities. It is thus that the Conseil d’Etat refused to recognise the status of worship association for the Christian Association of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, in an assembly ruling of 1 February 1985, on the ground that it did not have an activity in conformity with public order and the national interest [14]. It must be recognised that the Jehovah’s Witnesses openly profess pacifism and antimilitarism, which constituted, in the eyes of that jurisdiction, a grave disturbance of public order. A contrario, wars, and the armies that wage them, would never have provoked the slightest disturbance of public tranquillity, security, salubrity and morality.

With the same rigour, the Conseil d’Etat considered that the refusal of blood transfusion by the Jehovah’s Witnesses also constituted a disturbance of public order. It should nevertheless be recalled that nobody is obliged to seek treatment, and that the legal problem in fact arises only for minors. Now the question is not new, and the law already authorises doctors to relieve parents provisionally of their authority with a view to carrying out indispensable care, like transfusions for example [15]. Thus, in the facts, the doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the matter [16] disturbs public order less than the papal refusal of the use of the condom. Indeed, many children, born and dead with AIDS, are the direct consequence of that pontifical decision. Yet, of the 500 congregations legally recognised by the republic, almost all belong to the Catholic religion. And rare are the Catholic groups refused the advantageous status of worship association.

That the notion of public order was elaborated to give full latitude to administrative action is revealed also by the use that is not made of it. Thus, the DPS, the Front National’s security service, has never been sanctioned despite the menaces its armament and training pose to public security. Likewise, the Front National, instead of being sanctioned for non-respect of public morality (unless one considers racism in conformity with good morals), continues to receive State subsidies. Finally, while the hostels for immigrant workers are rarely in conformity with the legal provisions on hygiene and security, the associations in charge of their management have only very rarely been sanctioned for failure to respect public salubrity.

If considerations of expediency prevail over respect for the law, it is thus fitting to ask what reasons motivate the administration to discriminate against certain associations, in particular the 26 organisations denounced by the Renseignements Généraux as disturbing public order. Besides the very dangerous Jehovah’s Witnesses and the terrifying members of the French Federation for Krishna Consciousness, one finds the Nouvelle Acropole, of which the report says that it is “a cult with political aims, of a far-right and neo-fascist type (…) They are moreover declared enemies of democracy (…) For them, the end justifies the means”. The nullity of so noxious an association has nevertheless never been requested by the administration since then.

Eighth indicator: “The importance of judicial entanglements”

Here again, the parliamentarians handle vagueness and amalgam, for they draw no distinction between the legal actions brought at the initiative of the cult organisations and the trials brought against them. Thus, if the Scientologists are habitués of the courtrooms, it is because they are most often at the origin of the procedure. Yet their strategy, which consists in transforming into legal proceedings the slightest criticism addressed to them, in order to dissuade their adversaries, is used by many others: starting with the Front National, which the Guyard report does not mention on its blacklist.

Moreover, companies and political parties have far more legal disputes, and often for far graver motives. Above all, “the importance of judicial entanglements” is a criterion all the less pertinent in that it concerns only the associations with the least hold over their members. Indeed, to open a procedure one must first file a complaint, which supposes a critical distance incompatible with the regimentation and mental manipulation of which the cults are accused. One ought thus rather to consider the absence of judicial entanglements, notably with one’s own adherents, as a worrying sign.

Ninth indicator: “The possible diversion of traditional economic circuits”

The formulation of this indicator is revealing of the inquisitorial method of the Commission of inquiry. In the absence of established facts, one contents oneself with suspicions. It suffices, in effect, that the diversion of economic circuits be possible for the parliamentarians to consider they are dealing with a cult. Despite this procedure, the Guyard report considers that only 51 catalogued associations are liable to engage in these delinquent practices (recourse to clandestine labour, tax fraud, swindling…), which places the 134 others above all suspicion. Would the cults be abnormally honest? Indeed, how many companies, how many political parties or how many secret services have never engaged in “possible diversions of traditional economic circuits”? Our parliamentary investigators are particularly well placed to know that there are very few, indeed none - unless one considers the diversion of legal economic circuits traditional.

Tenth indicator: “Attempts to infiltrate the public authorities”

The Commission worries about the attribution of subsidies, and of certain public contracts, to bodies affiliated with “cults”. In theory, calls for tender are regulated in order to select the best service. To be alarmed that public contracts are attributed to “cults” means either that, despite their performance, one would wish to eliminate them from the competition (that is to say, discriminate against them relative to other companies), or that one considers that their penetration of the State apparatus would favour them unduly.

The menace is perhaps real, though it seems artificially inflated for the needs of our parliamentarians as much as of our police services. One may nevertheless wonder at the fact that the parliamentarians reduce it to a list of 175 associations, qualified as cults for the occasion, most of which do not exceed two thousand adherents. The causes of corruption of the administration are evidently far more numerous, and often much more powerful than these “cults”. The close links with certain large companies, and the connivances, informal or formalised by common affiliations (grandes écoles, political parties, Freemasonry and other clubs…), influence public decision-making far more strongly than all the cult movements put together.

Numerous companies, and not the least, have thus specialised in obtaining public subsidies in exchange for jobs that never saw the light of day. By way of illustration, La vie du rail [17], relying on declarations of SNCF managers, reports that the 12-billion cost of the new TGV-Nord line includes 750 million of undue expenses generated by the illicit agreements between the big construction companies. When these facts were discussed at the “transport and infrastructures” Commission of the Regional Council of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, on 31 March 2000, M. Percheron, vice-president (PS), is said to have defended these agreements which, according to him, had the aim of defending… employment [18]. Who infiltrates whom?

Faced with these practices, common enough for an elected official to dare defend them publicly, the attacks on the “cults” appear as a smokescreen laboriously dissimulating the true (dys)functionings of the State. The criterion of “infiltration of the public authorities” has in effect the advantage of preserving the image of an administration pure of all outside influence, commanding society with loftiness and independence. This children’s tale is probably believed by a number of parliamentarians, and perhaps still by a few senior officials. But, like Edgar Poe’s famous hidden letter, what should be sought has become so familiar that nobody sees it any more.

It is this long-standing intimacy with the State apparatus that the Church of Scientology still lacks. The latter, particularly targeted by this accusation of infiltration, appears as a convenient scapegoat, capable of revivifying in opinion the old demons of the plot which the secret services have always known how to manipulate [19]. Indeed, even if the Scientologists’ intention of infiltrating the State apparatus is hardly in doubt any longer for the police services, their organisation, which gathers about two thousand followers in France, cannot seriously be perceived as a major menace. A contrario, the “pantouflage” of senior officials into large companies is henceforth considered a normal practice, which no longer deserves to alert the public authorities to the infiltration of which they are the object.

One never hides better than in broad daylight. Thus, rather than tracking alleged occult powers, our parliamentarians would do better to open their eyes to the visible - and nevertheless quite real - powers.

We have seen that, taken one by one, none of the criteria retained by the Commission of inquiry has any real consistency. One thus sees all the more poorly how the convergence of these elements, devoid of the slightest cognitive value, could show anything whatever of the character of an association: the product of zero by zero being always just as null.

It is perhaps this observation that pushed the MILS, in its report for the year 2000, finally to produce a definition of the cult, that is to say of what it has claimed to be combating for several years. The cult would thus be an “association of totalitarian structure, declaring or not religious objectives, and whose behaviour infringes Human Rights and social equilibrium”.

By “totalitarian structure”, the Mission understands complete submission to an authority exercising itself without control. Yet, that individuals should freely desire such submission ought to concern only themselves, provided their alienation takes on no legal value. Indeed, if the law has the role of preventing anyone from renouncing his liberty, notably by a contract of servitude, it cannot however force anyone to exercise it. This type of association ought therefore not to interest the public authorities. On the other hand, the fact that many employees are forced, in order to live, to join companies endowed with “totalitarian structures” ought to worry the government strongly. The analyses of Christophe Dejours [20], director of the Laboratory of Work Psychology, have nevertheless received no echo from them.

The anti-cult fight makes us take the tree for the forest. In effect, the stigmatisation of the cults above all makes it possible to trace an official line of demarcation between the world of free labour and the world of enslaved labour, good professional training and indoctrinating training, as well as between good employees and dangerous employees. It thus spares the public authorities from calling into question the manipulative practices of the army, as well as of numerous companies, which manage to make their members act in a way they would ordinarily have condemned.

A society devoted to the cult of transparency but which finds at every level zones of persistent opacity, a society devoted to the cult of efficiency but which observes its devastating effects each day, a society devoted to the cult of liberty but which constantly experiences the implacable character of the liberty of the powerful alone - such a society can only be tempted by the denial of such manifest failures. In forming from whole cloth the notion of the cult, the parliamentary Commissions of inquiry and the MILS did not resist it. Indeed, as we have attempted to demonstrate, this notion catalyses ills present to various degrees in the whole of society, which is the very function of the scapegoat.

That is why the necessary excesses of the anti-cult fight ought to be of stronger concern. For example, in its report for the year 2000, the MILS suggests the necessity of applying, in the interest of the child, the “precautionary principle” against teachers whose membership of a “cult” has come to the knowledge of parents. These are teachers who could never be reproached with confusing professional activity and personal beliefs: the MILS thus endorses the reaction of parents of pupils who withdrew their children from the state school on the pretext that the schoolmistress was a Jehovah’s Witness. Already implementing the same principle, certain companies, like EDF, have received instructions concerning the recruitment of their personnel and recourse to subcontracting companies linked to Scientology and the Sokka Gakkaï. A system of discrimination founded on private convictions is thus in the process of progressively installing itself, in total contradiction with the code of the public service and the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen. This encouragement of the “witch-hunt” is thus in no way in conformity with the republican tradition the government intends to protect from the cult menace.

It is nevertheless this alleged French model that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invokes in the face of the numerous international reactions [21], notably American. But this proclaimed opposition between French-style laïcité and the Anglo-Saxon approach to religious liberty is purely rhetorical. For if there are many ways of enslaving, there is only one way of being free: it consists in living in conformity with one’s convictions while enjoying the same rights and duties as all other citizens.

In the matter, it must therefore be recalled that there can be only one principle: “The liberty of every adult individual, man and woman, must be absolute and complete: liberty to come and go, to profess openly every possible opinion, to be idle or active, immoral or moral, to dispose in a word of one’s own person and one’s property as one pleases, without accounting to anyone; liberty to live either honestly by one’s own labour or shamefully by exploiting private charity or trust, provided that charity and trust be voluntary and be lavished on him only by adult individuals. Unlimited liberty of every kind of propaganda by speech, by the press, in public and private meetings, with no other brake on that liberty than the natural salutary power of public opinion. Absolute liberty of associations, not excepting those which by their object are or appear immoral, and even those whose object would be the corruption and destruction of individual and public liberty. Liberty can and must defend itself only by liberty; and it is a dangerous contradiction to want to infringe it on the specious pretext of protecting it” [22].

[1] The consensus, of course, had already formed upstream of the vote. Thus, this bill was first presented by the centrist senator of the Yvelines (affiliated Républicains Indépendants), Nicolas About, then, after a few reworkings, at the National Assembly by the socialist deputy of the Eure, Catherine Picard. This latter bill, “tending to reinforce prevention and repression against groupings of a cult character”, was adopted, on 22 June 2000, at first reading by the deputies. The parliamentary shuttle thus resumed, and a new text, prepared jointly by M. About and Mme Picard, was presented to the Senate on 25 January 2001.

[2] The programme Envoyé spécial (France 2), for example, acquits itself with zeal of its mission of informing the public about the danger the cults are said to present. Several associations have thus paid the price of its way of presenting elements known to all as revelations, or of dramatising the most anodyne facts: the Jehovah’s Witnesses (1998, rebroadcast in 2000), the Sokka Gakkaï (Sokka Gakkaï, la secte du XXIe siècle, 08/06/2000 at 8:55 pm), or again the Raelians (21-12-2000).

[3] This information, and much else, is found in the article by F. Lenoir, “Controverses passionnées à propos des sectes”, in Le Monde diplomatique, May 1999.

[4] Les sectes en France, report no. 2468 of the Commission of inquiry of the National Assembly, A. Gest and J. Guyard, Paris, 1996.

[5] According to the Annuaire pontifical of 1994.

[6] “Garde blanche du Vatican, la troublante ascension de l’Opus Dei”, F. Normand in Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1995.

[7] La Croix, 22 June 2000.

[8] “L’irrésistible perversion du besoin, consommateurs sous influence”, F. Mazoyer in Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2000.

[9] The title of this bill is quite astonishing, since the parliamentarians claim to reinforce repression against the cults when it is the first legislative text specifically targeting this type of organisation. Although, strictly speaking, such a formulation is not mendacious, since one can only reinforce a non-existent legislation, it nevertheless leads one to presume a continuity where there is pure and simple rupture with the republican tradition. Unless our parliamentarians recognise here that the repression of the cults did not wait for the vote of a law to install itself. Which amounts to saying that certain groups have been the object of a deliberately more rigorous application of the existing laws than the others - which amounts to recognising officially the rupture of the fundamental principle of the equality of all before the law.

[10] Thus, French case law has already given value to the Guyard report by retaining it as an element capable of supporting the findings of the trial judge: O.c.C.-Cass Civ2-25.06.98 ruling no. 1064D.

[11] “In February 1995, Educinvest, which manages 250 private schools and then has an annual turnover of 850 million FF, becomes 70% owned by the Générale des Eaux (today Vivendi) through its subsidiary, the Compagnie immobilière Phénix (CIP)”. Source: Les Echos, 21 February 1995, cited in Tableau noir, résister à la privatisation de l’enseignement, G. de Sélys and Nico Hirtt, éditions EPO, Brussels, 1998.

[12] M. Knight, CEO of Nike, thus declared: “I was shocked to discover, on 14 April at 9 in the morning, that the University of Oregon had joined the Workers’ Rights Consortium. By this initiative, the University takes a position against the new global economy which allows me to earn my living. (…) Henceforth, as far as I am concerned, Nike will make no more donations, of any kind, to the University of Oregon. The bonds of trust we maintained have been cut.”

[13] Read Mots à maux, dictionnaire de la lepénisation des esprits, P. Tévanian and S. Tissot, Editions Dagorno, Paris, 1998.

[14] It must however be remarked, with the professor of public liberties Jacques Robert, that this decision of the Conseil d’Etat ought to have obliged the administration to refer the matter to the Public Prosecutor with a view to having the nullity of the ACTJ declared by the Tribunal de Grande Instance, in conformity with articles 3 and 7 of the law of 1 July 1901. Now it took good care not to do so, since such a restriction of the liberty of religions would have led to the reconstitution of the recognised religions to which the law of 9 December 1905 precisely intended to put an end. One may thus regret that the administration did not have the courage to carry its action through to the end, since the contradiction between the abusive use of the notion of public order and the principle of the separation of churches and State would thus have been made manifest.

[15] In two rulings delivered on 23 June 2000, the Conseil d’Etat reversed its case law concerning the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Conseil in effect recognised their character as a de facto worship association, which will allow them to benefit from the property-tax exemptions for places of worship under article 1382 of the Tax Code. On this occasion, the Conseil considered that the refusal of blood transfusion did not constitute an offence of “failure to assist a person in danger”. It thus considered that there was, in the case, no disturbance of public order. That the Conseil d’Etat had the courage to go back on its own judgments only demonstrates the better the totally arbitrary character of the notion of the disturbance of public order.

[16] The Jehovah’s Witnesses seem moreover to be beginning a timid revision of their doctrine in the matter of blood transfusion. Thus, in June 2000, the executive body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses decided that “the faithful of the Watch Tower who accepted blood transfusions will no longer be automatically excommunicated”.

[17] La vie du rail, 23 February 2000.

[18] Source: Bulletin des Conseillers Régionaux Lutte Ouvrière du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 5 May 2000.

[19] The model of the genre remains the drafting of the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion by an agent of the Okhrana (tsarist political police). Having become totally autonomous of its authors, this text is still widely diffused around the world, though the proofs of the mystification are no longer in question. On this subject: Une mystification mondiale, H. Rollin, éditions Allia.

[20] Read Souffrance en France, la banalisation de l’injustice sociale, Christophe Dejours, éditions du Seuil, collection Points, January 1998. The author poses the question of how ordinary men can commit evil without the slightest bad conscience. Relying both on his own fieldwork and on H. Arendt’s analyses of the banality of evil, he explains the weakness of moral resistance to the suffering inflicted in the world of work by the totalitarian structure of certain companies. Despite the scientific character of his research, the promoters and the user firms of the new modes of management have never been suspected of cult behaviour by the MILS.

[21] Let us recall that the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (an NGO affiliated to the OSCE) sharply criticised French policy, while the UN, in its report of 1 June 2000, condemns the About-Picard bill by which the government arrogates to itself the right “to dissolve or prohibit any unpopular association”. As for the American State Department, it has regularly called France into question for its “discriminatory” practices.

[22] Michel Bakunin, Catéchisme révolutionnaire, published by Daniel Guérin in Ni Dieu ni Maître, anthologie de l’anarchisme, p. 190, éditions La Découverte, June 1999.

Read also the article by maître Perollier on this law.