Anti-cult movements

Cults, Moral Panic, and the Press: How to Construct a Perfect Enemy

Argentine journalist Alejandro Agostinelli revisits his own 1991 anti-cult article and the Valentina de Andrade affair to show how the press manufactures a moral panic, and how the Konstantin Rudnev case repeats the pattern.

19 September 2026

CICNS Questions and Answers: The Association's English FAQ

Nineteen questions and answers in which the CICNS sets out, in its own English, what it does and does not claim: that abuses exist but are rare and are matters for the courts, that the word applied to spiritual minorities is the instrument of their stigmatisation, that brainwashing is a demagogic concept, and who exactly is behind the association.

To Win a Case, the Magic Word: Cult

Grenoble lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph on how the word cult functions in French courtrooms: an accusation that needs no proof, that no judge goes to verify, and that turns ordinary choices into offences.

Anti-Cultism Is a Decoy

Guy Delaunay's long essay arguing that anti-cultism does not fight the cults but constructs the cult object, from Coupat's account of antiterrorism to the 2006 commission's 80,000-children figure that its own civil servants refuted on camera.

A Textbook Case: Jean-Luc Delarue's "Ça se discute"

Éric Bouzou dissects the 19 September 2007 France 2 programme on cults and gurus as three manipulations in one show: the pretence of treating a social issue, the simulacrum of balance, and a set turned popular tribunal. A 2010 postscript notes the presenter's own fall.

Selected Extracts from Our Interviews

CICNS's own anthology of its interview archive: Morelli on who awards the label, Duval on the French axis of evil, Baubérot on asking the manipulation question of everyone, lawyers Biro, Florand, Canonici, Pérollier and Joseph on the legal machinery, and a dozen more voices, in their spoken language.

The Witch-Hunt Is Open

Olivier Golinvaux's Québécois Libre essay on the French cult panic: from sequi and secare to Weber and Troeltsch, how the word was secularised into 'dangerousness', why the ten Gest criteria self-destruct, and what the State's hold on the market in beliefs really protects.

Letters to the Government on the Reappearance of Deprogramming in France

CICNS's December 2009 letters to the Interior and Health ministers over Maître Picotin's Aquitaine exit counseling cell, tying it to the banned deprogramming lineage and asking what legal framework covers it. Unanswered as of April 2011.

The CICNS's Letters to the Media Following the 2008 MIVILUDES Report

Twenty letters sent in May and June 2009 to La Croix, Libération, AFP, France 2 and the rest of the media landscape that relayed the 2008 MIVILUDES report: the same request each time, that journalists carry the opinions they leave out, and a right of reply asked of France 2.

Correspondence between CICNS and the MIVILUDES, 2005-2007

The full exchange: CICNS's requests for dialogue, the discriminations file, the copyright misattribution in the 2006 report, Roulet's replies, the withdrawn interview after Nathalie Luca's departure, and the account of the one meeting held.

Irrelevant and Arbitrary Criteria for Denouncing Dérives Sectaires

CICNS contrasts the Amour et Miséricorde community, dissolved under media pressure after a Fenech visit, with France 24's respectful coverage of a Buddhist three-year retreat that would tick the same criteria.

State Cynicism or Political Pragmatism Facing the Spiritual Minorities

Émile D'Albret dissects MIVILUDES council anthropologist Nathalie Luca's colloquium paper: a definition of the cult that studies the state's vulnerabilities, a Jonestown retold with five dead, and prevention as politics.

Cult and Democracy

Sociologist Françoise Champion, co-editor of the reference volume Sectes et démocratie, interviewed in Les trois mondes: politicians who privately admit the phenomenon is marginal and publicly forget it, media that no longer know what religion is, and the case-by-case method that would depassion the debate.

A Certain Feeling of Desolation

Daniel Fradette, president of Montreal's CINR, interviewed in Les 3 mondes on the French exception seen from Quebec: a witch-hunt conducted in the name of rationality, a repressed religion-State dispute resurfacing, and the mediation experience Quebec could lend.

On the Refusal of Difference: Nostalgia for the Inquisition and Vichy?

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin sets his own Quebec experiences, from the Mensa school project to the charismatic group that made him a 'sorcerer', against a history of the refusal of difference: Inquisition, Terror, Vichy, Hitler, Stalin, and today's secular fundamentalism.

Editorials: All the Editorials Since the CICNS's First Newsletter

The complete archive of the CICNS's editorials from the founding letter of January 2005 to January 2008: a running, month-by-month primary record of the anti-cult scene as the association watched it, from the Hidalgo cult map and the Outreau shock to the third parliamentary commission, the FECRIS question and the Sarkozy laïcité debate.

The State Is a Cult: Hervé Duray Applies the Parliamentary Criteria to the State

A contributed essay from La Page Libérale, republished by the CICNS with an explicit disagreement note: Hervé Duray takes the parliamentary commission's seven cult indicators - mental destabilisation, exorbitant financial demands, indoctrination of children and the rest - and applies each one, point by point, to the French State itself, before dissecting the About-Picard extension of the abuse-of-weakness offence.

Sociological Study of a Pentecostal Assembly Labelled a 'Cult': The Porte Ouverte Chrétienne Case

The CICNS's reading report on the 2004 Willaime and Amiotte-Suchet study of the Mulhouse Pentecostal assembly Mission du Plein Évangile - La Porte Ouverte Chrétienne: how a theological quarrel and some disappointed members were transformed, by the CCMM, the AVIPOC and a national anti-cult climate the sociologists call paranoid, into a full stigmatisation process, with long extracts on the semantic career of the word 'secte'.

All Cults Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal than Others: Freemasonry and the Double Standard

Valérie Dole sets the masonic obediences' own descriptions of themselves - an initiatory order with rites, grades, secrecy, proselytism and a monthly slot on France Culture - beside the ten criteria of dangerousness applied to the spiritual minorities, and asks not that Freemasonry lose its treatment but that everyone be granted it.

Interview with Janine Tavernier (1)

The outgoing UNADFI president tells Technikart in 2001 that people now see cults everywhere, that the Steiner schools her grandchildren attend are wrongly catalogued, and that she is leaving as more dogmatic voices arrive.

Le phénomène des sectes: The CICNS Reads Quebec's Info-Secte

The CICNS presents and criticises the Info-Secte book by Mike Kropveld and Marie-Andrée Pelland - the most balanced French-language treatment it has found, and still, it argues, marked by cult-phobia - then reprints long extracts on why people join groups, on Quebec's law of religious freedom, and on the difference between a good guru and an infantilising, abusing or swindling one.

Hatred and the Scapegoats: The Same Mechanism, a New Target Each Generation

From the Indian Removal Act and the demonic Indian carved into the Capitol, through McCarthyism and Peter Watkins's Punishment Park, to a Father Christmas whose red hat is swapped for a turban: the CICNS traces one mechanism of manufactured hatred and asks what it is doing today to the spiritual minorities.

La peur des sectes: Kristoff Talin Reviews the Duhaime and Saint-Arnaud Colloquium

A review from the Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale of the 2001 Montreal volume: Jean-François Mayer on the researcher caught between public security and science, Alain Bouchard on how the media metaphorise the Raëlians, Jean Duhaime on religious diversity in the Canadian armed forces, and a legal chapter finding French law more nuanced case by case than its public policy suggests.

Individus et pouvoirs face aux sectes: Nathalie Luca on Why the Threatening Movements Change from Country to Country

The anthropologist who resigned from the MIVILUDES steering council argues that a group's dangerousness is read from a state's symbolic frontiers rather than from the group itself: the same movements, a different threat in each country. Long extracts on Germany's refusal to publish a list, Britain's case-by-case approach and the Accoyer witness law, with the CICNS's own commentary of March 2009.

An Ethnologist at the Mandarom: Maurice Duval on the Pressures of Studying a Group France Had Already Judged

A condensed reading of Un ethnologue au Mandarom: the only French ethnologist to have lived inside the group recounts the CNRS letter warning that his relativism might banalise it, a journal's demand that he not say the rumour was unfounded and that he audit the group's finances, a university refusing his colloquium, and what he actually found on the accusations of confined children, drugs and rape.

Cults, Media and Single-Track Thinking

Éric Bouzou's enquiry into the France 2 hidden-camera programme Les infiltrés: why CICNS declined the panel, the three-to-one ratio of anti-cult voices, and what Chomsky, Bourdieu and the profession's own critics say about a journalism that cries wolf.

Media and Spirituality: The Journalism of Denunciation

Jean-Luc Delfin's essay from the magazine Les trois mondes: why nothing is more opposed to the tempo of the media than a spiritual path, how cult coverage recycles anti-cult files without verification, and what Zola knew about buried truth.

The Impossible Mediation: How the UNADFI Argues That Dialogue Cannot Happen

André Tarassi takes the ADFI's own bulletin editorial of late 2003 line by line: the follower who says he is free proves he is not, the brainwashing that is selective enough to leave him absolutely normal before a judge, the cult compared to a drug dealer and a pimp so that no mediation need ever be attempted - and the Camus quotation on true dialogue with which the editorial closes.

The Impossible Tolerance? The Mariani Thesis on French Cult Policy

CICNS reviews Lionel Mariani's IEP thesis on French political responses to the cult question, saluting its balance while contesting its acceptance of the intrinsic-dangerousness frame and its refusal of the word 'hardening'.

Local Authorities Facing Dérives Sectaires: the New MIVILUDES Guide

Éric Bouzou reads the MIVILUDES guide for local authorities as a paranoid manual that treats the 'cult movement' as an omnipresent enemy and legal protections as pitfalls, quoting the guide against itself.

The Unification Church of Sun Myong Moon

Laurent Ladouce's history of thirty years of his movement in France, introduced by CICNS: how Ouest-France coined 'la secte Moon' in 1975, how Boyer's 'Empire Moon' replaced it under Mitterrand, and how brainwashing, deprogramming and State harassment mirrored the thing they denounced.

The Media Treatment of the "Cults"

Anne Morelli, historian of religions at the ULB, recounts from the inside how a France 2 'debate' on cults was built: names banned, invited witnesses barred at the MIVILUDES's request, a guest walked off the set, and her own microphone switched off.

Anne Morelli: Extracts from Lettre ouverte à la secte des adversaires des sectes

The historian of Christianity who served as an expert to the parliamentary commission sets religions and cults side by side term for term - priest and guru, catechesis and indoctrination - and finds no objective criterion separating them: on work, money, sexuality, conversion, the courts, politics and harmfulness measured in deaths.

MIVILUDES Descent on the Moulin des Vallées

CICNS documents the October 2009 MIVILUDES visit to an ecumenical monastery in Ille-et-Vilaine, reproducing the residents' letter to their prefect describing an intrusion conducted with journalists in tow.

"Plus belle la vie"?

When France's most-watched soap ran a ten-week cult storyline in 2008, CICNS traced the plot beat by beat: every anti-cult archetype rendered as realism, down to a judge doing something no French judge can legally do.

The Current Policy of the MIVILUDES Is Condemned to Fail

CICNS's 2009 assessment turns Roulet's own exit balance sheet against the mission: no credible victim inquiry ever done, discriminations institutionalised, the secular pact breached by doctrine evaluation, and a groundswell misread.

The Question of the Cults: Institutional Deregulation or French Singularity?

Baubérot and Milot's ASSR 2002 discussion of Hervieu-Léger's book: the cult fight as public-hygiene campaign, the allergy to pluralism behind French regulation, and the Canadian counter-model where ordinary law suffices.

Elections 2007: The CICNS Test Bench

CICNS scores the 2007 second-round candidates on spiritual liberty: Sarkozy's book against his muscular formulas, Royal's 1999 anti-cult school plan and her ADFI-lawyer spokesman. Neither answered the questionnaire.

Les radis de la colère: Jean-Pierre Joseph on What He Believes the Hunt for Cults Is Really For

A chapter reprinted from the lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph's book, arguing that the anti-cult campaign exists to neutralise anyone - farmer, craftsman, homeopath, agrarian community - who escapes a centralised economy: with a detailed account of how television reports are edited to manufacture menace, and a six-point indictment of the 1995 parliamentary commission that classified 172 movements in fifty minutes.

Reductionists and Enlargers: Two Forms of Intelligence, and What Happens When One Wins

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin's chapter on the ontological frontier between those who admit only matter and those who admit more: how the free-thinkers were right against religious hegemony, and how their heirs, he argues, are now taking up the torch of the fundamentalists they defeated - by refusing publication, by dismissing intelligence tests, and finally by curtailing the right to live according to one's conscience.

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

Raphaël Verrier's lmsi.net essay dismantles the ten Renseignements Généraux criteria behind the Guyard list one by one, asks why Opus Dei escaped it, and reads the About-Picard bill as a menace to the associative world itself.

The Sacrificial Rumour: Why the Scapegoat Is Chosen, and What the Trance Does

Jean-Luc Delfin reads rumour as a survival of the sacrificial ritual: an archaic mechanism whose three phases - derealisation, fascination, sacrifice - map onto Edgar Morin's incubation, propagation and metastasis, and whose modern form is the media lynching. With Girard, Lempert, Voyé and Rosnow, and a note on what it does to those who cannot recover from it.

France Fights Minority Groups, Not Dérives Sectaires: a Demonstration in Quotations

CICNS assembles the record in the actors' own words: Fenech affirming and denying the fight against cults in the same fortnight, ministers promising a pitiless hunt, and journalists dropping the official euphemism entirely.

France in the Time of the Witch Hunt: Christian Singer on the 2001 Law

Extracts from a fiercely polemical account of the About-Picard law and the climate that produced it: a text at once very precise and very vague, the two execrable faces of French laïcité, the checklist of habits that will mark a relative as being under a cult's hold, and the parliamentary debate in which one deputy's own warnings dissolve into reassurance.

A Wretched and Fearful Society That Seeks to Smother the Spiritual Impulse

A neighbour who would kill Jehovah's Witnesses in the street, bombs outside a church, an ADFI representative saying on Europe 1 that she understands people who plant them: the CICNS takes the measure of twenty years of conditioning, then answers, one by one, the objections its own readers send in - the cults exist all the same, there are dangerous groups, I have a right to protect my children.

Régis Dericquebourg: The Sociologist's Point of View

An interview with the Lille psycho-sociologist on the church-sect distinction, on why there is no legal definition of a sect and why a pluralist State should not supply one, on the five sociological conditions that lead someone into a minority religious group, and on the turnover that sees followers stay four or five years.

Sociology of the Cults in France: A France Culture Discussion with Esquerre, Iacub and Favret-Saada

Extracts from La suite dans les idées of 7 July 2009: how the point of support for naming a cult shifted from the Bible to mental manipulation, and with it who does the naming; the ethnologist of witchcraft on a phenomenon constituted entirely by its accusers; the jurist on a State that protects citizens from their own choices; and the finding that the article introduced to fight the cults is applied almost everywhere except to them.

The Uncertain Fruits of a Historical Journey through France after 1789

Historian Paul Airiau's paper from the MIVILUDES 'Sectes et laïcité' seminar: a BnF catalogue chronology of the cult question, the associations and laws that built it, and laïcité arriving late, partly as an answer to America.

La société des victimes by Guillaume Erner: When Compassion Becomes a Principle of Government

The CICNS's reading report on Erner's study of victimism, with long extracts: the victim as a social category rather than a biological fact, suffering as a secularised sacredness, moral harassment and the psychologisation of pain, and the argument that compassion, precious in private life, is at best an imposture as a principle of government - read against a French anti-cult policy built entirely on the victim's account.

The Theme of the "Cults" in Broadcast Debates (chapter 1: 2004-2007)

CICNS's running dossier on four years of French cult television: C dans l'air, the Landmark exposé, Karl Zéro, Teva, Jonestown and Waco documentaries, and the full email exchange in which a Ça se discute journalist promised an open debate that never was.

Teachers' Points of View on the Anti-Cult Fight and the Real Dangers for Minors

Two education professionals write to CICNS about the MIVILUDES minors guide: a support-network teacher who finds the targeted families the least worrying third, and a principal who in 33 years found nothing.

From the MILS to the MIVILUDES: French Cult Policy after the Socialist Government

Régis Dericquebourg's CESNUR 2003 Vilnius paper: the 1905 framework, the Vivien and Guyard reports, the About-Picard law, the new mission's contested composition, and what fifteen minority groups expected of the right.

Investigation into the ADFI, Part 2: The Victims of the ADFI

An anonymous dossier republished by the CICNS setting out five cases attributed to France's ADFI/UNADFI anti-cult network, from a 1982 suicide to the 2000 death of Doctor Yves Jullien.

Investigation into the ADFIs, Part 1

A dossier on France's ADFI/UNADFI anti-cult network republished by the CICNS, gathering an ex-member's testimony, book extracts by Paturel, Barrucand and Anne Morelli, and two 1999 newspaper reports.

The CCMM

CICNS profile of the CCMM, the anti-cult association founded in 1981 by Roger Ikor, with quotations from Ikor's own articles and speeches of the 1980s.

The Case of FECRIS

Rudolf Vis's memorandum to the Parliamentary Assembly arguing against consultative status for FECRIS, republished with a CICNS introduction, and taking each of the federation's six stated objectives in turn.

Government inquiries

Georges Fenech's Illusionist Act before the Parliamentary Commission on Cults in the Field of Health

CICNS fact-check of Georges Fenech's 30 October 2012 Senate hearing: 13 million claimed victims against the Justice Ministry's own count of 192 reports over three years.

The Gettliffe / Grant Affair

CICNS's dossier on the Gettliffe/Grant custody affair (2001-2009): the annotated Thémis-Phonetag blog debate over Nathalie Gettliffe's removal of her children from Canada, the court rulings on both sides of the Atlantic, and the October 2010 addendum.

The Trial of the Order of the Solar Temple

CICNS's press dossier on the Order of the Solar Temple trial: Michel Tabachnik's 2001 acquittal and 2006 appeal acquittal, the victims' families' fight to reopen the investigation, and the unanswered questions around the 74 deaths.

Jean-Pierre Brard's Run-Ins with the Law

CICNS dossier on deputy Jean-Pierre Brard's legal entanglements: his defamation conviction over the Jehovah's Witnesses upheld in cassation, the Chouraqui and Jasmeen rulings, and his clashes with the Protestant federations.

The Law of 12 June 2001 against Cult Movements Infringing Human Rights

Patrice Rolland's scholarly anatomy of the About-Picard law's legislative debate: a law explicitly directed against cults that never names or defines them, and what that paradox reveals about French fear of the cult phenomenon.

Analysis of the Law of 12 June 2001 Concerning "Cults"

Marseille lawyer Philippe Perollier's clause-by-clause commentary on France's 2001 About-Picard law: how the abandoned offence of mental manipulation returned as abuse of weakness, and the power the law's vagueness hands to the judges.

Me, Anne, a Mother: Children Held Hostage by French-Style Anti-Cultism

A mother's first-person account of losing custody of her two daughters after her ex-husband, backed by an anti-cult association, branded her community, the Gens de Bernard, a cult.

The Archives of Maître Paturel, Part 2: The 'Blunders' of the Gest-Guyard Report

From Maître Paturel's archives, CICNS re-examines the 1996 Gest-Guyard parliamentary report on cults: its factual blunders, its unsourced claim of 'numerous illegalities', and the fifteen court cases cited in its support.

The Archives of Maître Paturel, Part 3: Caricatures and Dark Designs

Drawing on file 45 of Maître Paturel's archives and historian Pierre Barrucand's 1996 study, CICNS traces the parallel between pre-war anti-Jewish caricatures and 1990s anti-cult imagery, and dissects the reflex answer 'I am not a cult'.

A Psychoanalyst in Prison!

Guy Delaunay's 2007 defense dossier on psychoanalyst Claude David, jailed amid cult-manipulation accusations, tracing the Fondation PI's history, the rumor campaigns against it, and the machinery of the French anti-cult fight.

Shincheonji and the Victoria, Australia Inquiry on “Cults”: Apostates, Moral Panics, and Campus Fears

Rosita Šorytė argues the Victorian Parliament's cult inquiry imported anti-cult vocabulary and leaned on uncorroborated apostate testimony, making it one node in a transnational campaign against Shincheonji.

24 July 2026

The CICNS Charter

The CICNS's own statement of what it is, why it was formed, and what its members pledge. Republished as provenance for the CICNS material archived on this site.

The CICNS Interviews: A Guide to the Video Archive, 2006 to 2014

A guide to the roughly fifty-six interviews published on the CICNS YouTube channel between 2006 and 2014: scholars, journalists, practitioners and CICNS's own reports, grouped by voice.

17 July 2026

Raphaël Liogier on the French Cult Question: A Guide to the 2013 CICNS Interviews

A guide to the four-part 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier: the struggle inside the French State, why dissent on the cult question costs, why television forbids nuance, and his individuo-globalism thesis.

17 July 2026

Now They Come for Jesus: Anti-Cultist Admits She Aims to Destroy Christianity

Massimo Introvigne reviews Be Scofield’s “The Savior Complex,” which brands Jesus a “cult leader,” and argues that anti-cult models of coercive control and trafficking ultimately target mainline Christianity, not only new religious movements.

16 July 2026

Global Anti-Cultism and the Return of “Brainwashing” Theories

Massimo Introvigne traces three pathways (expanded coercive-control laws, the judicialization of “spiritual abuse,” and reinterpreted trafficking statutes) through which discredited brainwashing theories are re-entering courts and legislation worldwide.

6 July 2026

Christiane Singer on Spiritual Freedom: The Full CICNS Interview

English translation of the full CICNS interview with writer Christiane Singer (Paris, May 2006): society as socially programmed hypnosis, the French anti-cult witch-hunt, and spiritual experience as an inalienable freedom.

19 November 2014

Anti-Cult France: Taking Stock (Part 2 of the CICNS Documentary)

Part 2 of the CICNS documentary: the 2006 'Enfance volée' report tested against its own hearings, and testimony from people accused of being in cults.

16 August 2014

Can the Notion of Dérive Sectaire Be Useful?

Éric Bouzou argues the state's own dérive sectaire category is incoherent: applied evenhandedly it would indict the family, the workplace and the school first.

1 August 2013

Is There Still a Place for Spirituality in Our Society?

Asked what spirituality means, the French answer moral values, love, the inner life and the beauty of nature; ninety per cent say they still feel wonder. André Tarassi sets those survey findings beside a public conversation in which the places where enchantment is sought are described as dangerous, and beside the record mistrust the same public reports towards those doing the describing.

1 July 2013

Laïcité, a Struggle at the Summit — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (1/4)

Part 1 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: the struggle inside the French State between the field ministries and the laïcité ideologues at Matignon, and the proposal of an independent observatory of spiritual minorities.

1 July 2013

The Wrong Camp: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (2/4)

Part 2 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: how asking why people believe gets read on French television as siding with evil, and the political cost Emmanuelle Mignon paid for questioning the anti-cult consensus.

1 July 2013

The Impossible Debate: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (3/4)

Part 3 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: why the cults debate is impossible on television. Anti-cult positioning is a cost-free political resource, and the thirty-second format forbids nuance.

1 July 2013

Individuo-Globalism — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (4/4)

Part 4 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: his individuo-globalism thesis — every age rests on a mythic ground, secularization does not mean less religion, and new religious movements draw on the emerging individual-global mythic soil.

1 July 2013

Health and the "Cult" Label: Interview with Sylvie Simon (2012)

English translation of the 2012 CICNS health interview with journalist Sylvie Simon on the "cult" label, non-conventional medicine, and the media in France.

22 January 2013

Cults and Free Expression: Ivan Rioufol on France's "Absurd and Useless Inquisition"

English translation of the CICNS interview with French journalist Ivan Rioufol on France's anti-cult campaign, MIVILUDES figures and media conformism.

21 January 2013

Interview with Robert Ménard on the Media and the "Cults" Question

English translation of the CICNS interview with Robert Ménard, co-founder of Reporters sans frontières, on French newsrooms, press freedom and the treatment of "cults".

19 December 2012

Gilles Farcet on "Cults", Mental Manipulation and Spiritual Freedom: The CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with writer Gilles Farcet: media-fed fear of "cults", the ambiguity of mental manipulation, and spiritual freedom.

5 November 2012

Interview with Patrick Le Berre: A "Cult" Rumour at the CEA

English translation of the CICNS interview with Patrick Le Berre, a former CEA research scientist, on the "cult" rumour and harassment he says he endured.

5 November 2012

A Fifth of the French Suspected by Those Close to Them of Being in a Cult

Denis Mathieu dissects the 2011 MIVILUDES/IPSOS poll and Georges Fenech's use of it, arguing that thirty years of state and media anti-cult propaganda have installed a suspicion no study, statistic or court record supports.

1 October 2012

Georges Fenech, Hardline Excess and Pulp Fiction

CICNS reviews Fenech's 2012 apocalypse book and walks through his Figaro interview question by question, noting the unquantified victim count and the journalist's silence at each unproven claim.

1 September 2012

A Catastrophic Meeting for M. Fenech's Anti-Cult Theses

CICNS sets Fenech's cordial account of his 2011 meeting with Bishop Konstantin Bendas against the bishop's own published verdict: armed guards, gold watches, undefined menaces, and a translator's parting line.

1 July 2012

Abus de faiblesse et autres manipulations: Four Criticisms of Marie-France Hirigoyen's Book

The CICNS reads the victimologist's 2012 book on abuse of weakness and finds a chapter on the hold of the cults that reproduces the MIVILUDES's own checklist. It tests each criterion against the army, the monastery, the Buddhist retreat and the CAC 40 company, and proposes self-knowledge in place of the victim-manipulator model.

1 June 2012

The Ordre des Médecins Displays Its Partnership with the MIVILUDES

CICNS reads the January 2012 bulletin of France's medical council: a yoga-class cover captioned as danger, the Solar Temple invoked for a health dossier, and 258,000 copies met with silence.

1 April 2012

The Approach to the Question of the Cults in France

André Tarassi's Reflets article: an exclusive laïcité, a mission run like a militant grouplet, figures that swing from 8 children a year to 80,000 in danger, and the case for a neutral observatory instead.

1 April 2012

A Comparison of the Financial Demands of the Said Cults and of More Conventional Courses

CICNS prices a day of 'new spirituality' training against approved providers and the MIVILUDES's own 150 € course, finding the accused groups charge a fraction of what State-approved training bodies do.

1 February 2012

Professional Training Bodies and Cults: the Usual Fanciful Figures of the MIVILUDES

CICNS reconstructs the arithmetic behind Fenech's claim that 1,200 to 1,500 training bodies are cult-linked, and sets it against the DGEFP's own controls: almost 800 checks, one body assimilable to a cult.

1 February 2012

France Has Been Fighting Minorities Obsessively for Thirty Years, without Safeguards

Éric Bouzou's history of the terminology shifts from MILS to MIVILUDES, the new subjection-based definition of dérive sectaire, the online denunciation form, and why a few hundred activists outweigh half a million citizens.

1 February 2012

History of the Anti-Cult Struggle in France

CICNS's year-by-year chronicle of the anti-cult struggle in France: laws, parliamentary reports, court cases and media campaigns from 1893 to the 2010s.

21 December 2011

Cults: Social Scourge or Scapegoat? Jean Baubérot at the CICNS Colloquium

English translation of Jean Baubérot's address at the CICNS colloquium: laïcité's Gallican roots, the 1905 law, medicine and school as sites of conflict with minorities of conviction, and the risk of charismatic domination everywhere.

24 November 2011

Claude Guéant's Anti-Cult Code of Laïcité

CICNS reads the Interior Minister's 2011 compendium of laïcité law: ten pages on dérives sectaires, an undefined 'cult movement' at their centre, and questions Guéant is never asked about the About-Picard law and the MIVILUDES list.

1 November 2011

Laïcité, a "Neutralizing Neutrality"? The French State and "Cults"

English translation of a CICNS-published talk on laïcité as "neutralizing neutrality", the 1905 law, and the French state's treatment of "cults".

29 October 2011

"The Judicial System Is Sick" — Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Round Table

English translation of Raphaël Liogier's round-table extract at the CICNS colloquium: the arbitrary versus the authoritarian, unenforceable-yet-enforced parliamentary reports, and his first-hand account of testifying as an expert in a Soka Gakkai discrimination case.

29 October 2011

Cults and Religions, a Double Standard: Anne Morelli at the CICNS Round Table

English translation of historian Anne Morelli's CICNS round-table remarks on the double standard between "cults" and recognised religions.

28 October 2011

From Homosexuality to the Cults: Scourges, State Repression and History on a Loop

In 1960 the Mirguet amendment classed homosexuality among the social scourges, and an official repression followed that lasted until 1981. The CICNS sets that forgotten episode beside the 1995 Gest-Guyard report's use of the same word, and the 2004 description of cult membership as a pathology to be treated with or without consent.

1 September 2011

Accused of 'Dérive Sectaire': Sabine, a Doula, on Her Police Questioning

A French doula's first-person account of a two-hour judicial-police questioning in Montpellier over suspected 'dérive sectaire' — CICNS testimony in English.

4 July 2011

The Media and the MIVILUDES: Bankruptcy of a Counter-Power

CICNS's June 2011 survey of the coverage of the 2010 MIVILUDES report, outlet by outlet: France Inter's chill down the spine, the one interviewer who pushed back (the full Fenech/Ménard exchange transcribed), an LCP panel with no other side, and the report's own annex admitting Europe sees no problem.

1 June 2011

Anti-Cult France: The State of Play (CICNS Documentary, Short Version)

English translation of the short version of the 2011 CICNS documentary on France's anti-cult apparatus, the 2006 parliamentary inquiry and its unheard victims.

29 April 2011

Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (1/2): Defining "Cult", Defining Laïcité

First half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: how Western Buddhism became a good religion while Soka Gakkai did not, three definitions of the word cult, and laïcité as a contested neutrality caught in a struggle of classifications.

19 April 2011

Raphaël Liogier at the CICNS Colloquium (2/2): Why "Cults" Became France's Scapegoat

Second half of Raphaël Liogier's talk at the CICNS colloquium, in English: liberty defined from above (Rousseau vs Locke), education and medicine as the privileged conflict domains, the Longo Maï case, and the declamatory function of the anti-cult law.

19 April 2011

Cults: Social Scourge or Scapegoat? Laurent Hincker at the CICNS Colloquium

English translation of Laurent Hincker's address at the CICNS colloquium: defamation trials over the word 'cult', the 1995 criteria, the About-Picard law.

4 April 2011

Seven Years: Moral Balance Sheet and Perspectives of the CICNS's Action

André Tarassi's March 2011 stocktaking of the association's first seven years, and the strategic turn it announces: dialogue with the authorities having gone unanswered, 'stop complaining, file complaints' becomes the new direction.

1 March 2011

Is the Refusal of Care "Symptomatic of a Mental Pathology"?

The CICNS reads the proceedings of a GEMPPI colloquium on refusals of care for ideological causes and finds the professionals answering the associations' question in the negative: a prison psychiatrist explains that the obligation to undergo care cannot apply and that religious refusal is not a psychiatric pathology, and the National Consultative Ethics Committee's opinion 87 holds that one has the right to be mad so long as that madness harms no one else.

1 March 2011

In Search of the Good Psychotherapist

CICNS reads a January 2011 LCP broadcast against itself: Georges Fenech places dependence at the heart of the dérive sectaire, Serge Hefez places it at the heart of healing, and the state diploma stands in for ethics. With a partial transcript of the exchange.

1 February 2011

What Do I Know? Mental Manipulation: The Concept, Its Origin and Why It Should Not Be in Law

Éric Bouzou traces the notion from the CIA's failed behaviourist experiments and Schein and Lifton's refutation, through Margaret Singer's defeat in an American court, to its French rebirth as mental manipulation and then as the psychological subjection written into the About-Picard law, and sets out the three questions the MIVILUDES has never answered.

1 September 2010

Comments on the Notion of "Emprise" and the "Me"

André Tarassi reads Sarah Chiche's novel L'emprise as a safe bet on the anti-cult literary wave, then turns to the phrase that leapt out at him, a victim 'emptied of her me', and asks what the modern self being protected from the cults actually is.

1 August 2010

Scientism, Beliefs and the Fight against Dérives Sectaires

Denis Mathieu on the unnamed scientism in French education - Comte, Renan, the popular-science magazines - and how it lends tacit authority to anti-cult journalism: a close reading of one investigation that lists facts under the heading "the facts" and demonstrates nothing, and of a Sciences et Avenir dossier that treats scholarly caution as mere academic reserve.

1 August 2010

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

Raphaël Liogier's phrase for how intellectuals concede the anti-cult case without evidence. The CICNS answers it with a reasoning by the absurd - dissolve the two or three groups everyone names, and the fight is still unjustified - and then applies the MIVILUDES's own criteria of dérives sectaires, point by point, to France Télécom and its forty-five suicides.

1 June 2010

Anti-Cult France: The State of Play (CICNS Documentary, Part 1)

English translation of part 1 of the CICNS documentary tracing the French anti-cult movement's origins, from Jonestown to the 1996 parliamentary report.

4 April 2010

Cults: "Anti-Cult France: State of Play", Part 3

English translation of part 3 of the CICNS documentary « La France antisectes »: TV talk shows, staged testimony and the 2008 Mignon controversy.

1 April 2010

The Figures of the MIVILUDES 2009 International Inquiry, Recounted

CICNS re-tallies the 57-country chapter of the 2009 report question by question: 274 No against 11 Yes, three countries resembling France, four convictions worldwide, and a bold conclusion the body of the text contradicts.

1 April 2010

The Anti-Cult Fight, or the Bankruptcy of the Media Counter-Power

CICNS surveys the French media's coverage of the 2009 MIVILUDES report, channel by channel and headline by headline: platforms without debate, figures without questions, and a press that copies the report's own summaries as news.

1 April 2010

Interview with the Brahma Kumaris: Living on France's "Cult" List

Brahma Kumaris members in France describe fiscal audits, lost jobs, surveillance and an arson attempt after the 1996 parliamentary 'cult' list — CICNS video.

24 January 2010

Police Descent on Terre du Ciel at the Chardenoux Estate

CICNS documents the January 2010 police search of the Terre du Ciel centre in Saône-et-Loire, its letter campaign to the authorities, Janine Tavernier's statement of support, and the abandonment of the cult line of inquiry.

1 January 2010

The MIVILUDES Descends on the Moulin des Vallées, Accused of Being a "Cult"

Residents of the Moulin des Vallées monastery recount a 2009 MIVILUDES raid led by its president and the media coverage that followed. Translated CICNS report.

23 December 2009

The Guéniot Affair and the Accusation of "Cult": CICNS on France 2's "Prise directe"

CICNS counter-investigation of France 2's "Prise directe" (17 Nov 2009): the Guéniot affair, a physician acquitted on appeal, and trial by television.

6 December 2009

The Anti-Cult Fight: a Black Mark on Our National Identity

Éric Bouzou's 2009 essay on the Fenech offensive: the propaganda mechanics, the veil mission and France Télécom as the cases the MIVILUDES was kept away from, the science of brainwashing revisited, and the About-Picard law's avowed hypocrisy.

1 December 2009

On the Importance of Understanding Beliefs in Assessing Spiritual Minorities

André Tarassi dismantles the anti-cult movement's proudest claim, 'we judge acts, not beliefs': beliefs determine acts, rituals are unreadable without the inner experience that founded them, and the belief/act division is a discrediting device.

1 December 2009

The Guéniot Affair: A Right to Know or a Right to Smear? A CICNS Counter-Investigation

English translation of the CICNS report contrasting TV and book coverage of the Guéniot "cult" affair with the Douai appeal court's full acquittal.

14 November 2009

Interview with Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with journalist Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette on France's anti-cult policy, the MIVILUDES, and the role of the media.

1 October 2009

What Motivates the Anti-Cult Militants? The Question Nobody in France Asks

André Tarassi turns the hypercritical gaze around: on the atrocity tales of Bromley and Shupe, Melton's divorce analogy, Galanter's finding that a third of one group's leavers had sought psychiatric help before joining, Kliever on the bitter leaver who magnifies flaws into threats, and the absence of any French study of the militants themselves.

1 October 2009

Freemasonry and the Cults: An Order That Was Once the Sect Now Helps Name Them

The CICNS reads the masonic obediences' own websites, communiqués and press against the history of the accusations once made against them by Leo XIII and the anti-masonic literature of the nineteenth century, then applies the MIVILUDES's own criteria of dérives sectaires to the lodges and finds at least three of them fit.

1 September 2009

Interview with Stuart Wright on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with American sociologist Stuart Wright on leaving new religious movements, apostates, and the 1993 Waco standoff.

3 July 2009

Interview with Susan Palmer on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Susan Palmer, Canadian sociologist, on her fieldwork among France's listed "cults" and the About-Picard law.

3 July 2009

La manipulation mentale by Arnaud Esquerre: A Sociology of the Accusation Itself

The CICNS's June 2009 reading report on Esquerre's Fayard study, with long extracts: how the totalitarian, mentally manipulating cult was a French collective invention of the 1970s and 80s, how the About-Picard law created a state of psychological subjection that has never dissolved anyone, and what the Interior Ministry's own head of the bureau of religions says he cannot find to control.

1 June 2009

Money: Our Society's Relationship to It, and "the Cults"

Éric Bouzou sets the parliamentary litany on 'the cults and money' against the 2009 financial system itself: the derivatives casino, debt money, the G20's mystification, and a thought experiment in which the MIVILUDES's own criteria are applied to finance.

1 May 2009

Cults: Immunity, Impunity, Anti-Cult Action, a Tailor-Made Law? A CICNS Clip

English translation of a 2009 CICNS clip arguing that France's 2008 witness-immunity law reinforces the impunity of parliamentary anti-cult commissions.

9 January 2009

Interview with Philippe Dargère on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with naturopath Philippe Dargère on administrative pressure, the anti-cult climate and alternative health in France.

9 January 2009

The World as a "Juxtaposition of Cults"

CICNS catalogues how the word 'cult' escaped its cage in France: politicians, prosecutors, sports captains, archbishops, brand strategists and bloggers all reaching for the same pejorative, sector by sector, quote by quote.

1 December 2008

The Springs of the Anti-Cult Fight in France

On Fenech's 2008 appointment, CICNS assembles what Baubérot, Liogier, Morelli, Duval and Maffesoli told it drives the French fight against cults: Gallican surveillance, a classification struggle, a shared cake, and manufactured fear.

1 October 2008

Scientology in the Anti-Cult Hunt in France

CICNS's 2008 dossier on the scarecrow role assigned to Scientology: how the fear terminology was built, what the accusations amount to, the full list of French convictions on the record, and what a dissolution would risk.

1 September 2008

Letter to My Brothers Said to Be “Under Influence”

Guy Delaunay of the Gens de Bernard community answers the January 2007 raid and the imprisonment of Claude David with a meditation on influence, reference points, guilt and freedom.

27 November 2007

The Spectre of the "Cult" in French Divorce Judgments: Three Mothers Testify

Three divorced mothers and three lawyers describe how "cult" accusations were used in French divorce and custody proceedings, in a 2007 CICNS documentary.

10 June 2007

Interview with Laurent Ladouce on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Laurent Ladouce of the Unification Church on the "Moon cult" media campaigns, deprogramming and the MIVILUDES.

12 February 2007

Politics and Spirituality: Was Anti-Cultism Born on the Left?

André Tarassi traces French anti-cultism to 1981 and the Vivien mission, names its most committed actors on the left, surveys the 'without-religion' half of France, and reads the 1999 party-funding proposals as anti-democratic.

1 February 2007

Dialogue Between a "Free Thinker" and the Founder of the CICNS

The full January 2007 exchange between Michel Thys, Belgian free thinker and Grand Orient mason, and André Tarassi of the CICNS: twenty questions on belief and choice, the suicide and child-protection figures, the iceberg argument, and two spiritualities talking across the divide.

1 January 2007

Christiane Singer on the Anti-Cult 'Witch-Hunt': The Short CICNS Interview

English translation of the short CICNS interview (2006) with writer Christiane Singer: the French anti-cult witch-hunt as a passing fever of morbid rationalism.

12 November 2006

Interview with Bernard Montaud on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Bernard Montaud, founder of psychanalyse corporelle, on France's post-Solar-Temple climate around "cults".

11 November 2006

Interview with Bernard Biro on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with French lawyer Bernard Biro on 'cult' accusations in the courts, the About-Picard law and defamation remedies.

11 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Pierre Joseph on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Grenoble lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph on the 1995 French parliamentary report on "cults" and the events around it.

11 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Claude Guyard on the Theme of "Cults"

Kinesiology school head Jean-Claude Guyard on the Brittany trial, UNADFI and the anti-cult climate in France, in his 2006 CICNS interview.

11 November 2006

Interview with Christian Tal Schaller on the Theme of "Cults"

Christian Tal Schaller's CICNS interview: the 1997 gendarmerie raid on his health institute, the trials that followed, and the "cult deviance" label.

11 November 2006

Interview with Bernard Renaud on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Bernard Renaud, esoteric bookseller and publisher, on how France's 1990s anti-cult campaign hit publishing.

10 November 2006

Interview with Christian Paturel on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS video interview with Christian Paturel, the jurist vindicated by the European Court of Human Rights in Paturel v. France (2005).

10 November 2006

Interview with Michel Maffesoli on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS video interview with sociologist Michel Maffesoli on postmodern religiosity, the wild sacred, and France's anti-cult scapegoating.

10 November 2006

Interview with Philippe Pérollier on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Marseille lawyer Philippe Pérollier on French anti-cult case law, the 1996 list and the About-Picard law.

10 November 2006

Interview with Régis Dericquebourg on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with sociologist Régis Dericquebourg on fieldwork among healing churches and France's anti-cult climate.

10 November 2006

Interview with Pastor Dominique Kounkou on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with pastor and jurist Dominique Kounkou on the "cult" label, African-expression churches and the About-Picard law.

9 November 2006

Interview with Jean Baubérot on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Jean Baubérot on the 1905 law, the MILS, the MIVILUDES, and religious minorities in France.

9 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Marc Florand on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with lawyer Jean-Marc Florand on the legal void around "cults", the About-Picard law and France's anti-cult bodies.

9 November 2006

Interview with Pierre Barrucand on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Pierre Barrucand, CNRS researcher, on the history of French anti-cult campaigns.

4 November 2006

Interview with Sylvie Simon on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the 2006 CICNS video interview with French journalist Sylvie Simon on the branding of alternative health practices as 'cults' in France.

4 November 2006

Interview with Massimo Introvigne: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with sociologist Massimo Introvigne on the history of brainwashing theory, MK-ULTRA, deprogramming, and anti-cult laws.

1 November 2006

A Former UNADFI President Writes the Preface: Janine Tavernier on the A.M.O.R.C. Injustice

Janine Tavernier, president of the UNADFI from 1993 to 2001, prefaces the Rose-Cross Grand Master's book: she recalls the criterion she insisted on - harmfulness, never doctrine - reports hearing an anti-cult figure say the idea of God must be eradicated, and calls for the official rehabilitation of A.M.O.R.C.

1 May 2006

Interview with Raphaël Liogier: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier on French laïcité, state neutrality as intervention, and how 'good' and 'bad' religions are classified.

1 May 2006

Sex and Power: Politicians and Spiritual Leaders, an Unequal Treatment

The companion essay to Tarassi's abuse dossier: why French media consign politicians' escapades to oblivion while blowing up the gurus', and what a taboo domain offers a society in search of scapegoats.

1 January 2006

Spiritual Minorities and Sexual Abuse?

André Tarassi's 2006 dossier on the great sexual-abuse affairs involving spiritual leaders, from Chopra's ten-minute acquittal to the Mandarom defamation rulings: what survived the courts, what remained rumour, and the invisible abuse of score-settling behind the stigmatisation campaign.

1 January 2006

Interview with Anne Morelli: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with historian Anne Morelli (ULB) on who decides the label 'cult', media treatment of religious minorities, and freedom of conscience.

1 November 2005

The Right to the Audacity to Think

Alain Chevillat of Terre du Ciel recounts the press barrage that greeted one invited speaker at his Aix-les-Bains forum, dismantles the parliamentary report the censors brandished, and claims for the individual the right to think differently, including the right to be wrong.

1 March 2005

Interview with Maurice Duval: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with ethnologist Maurice Duval, in English: his four-year field study of the Mandarom, the censorship that followed, why the word 'cult' has no sociological meaning, and the manufacture of collective fear.

1 March 2005

The Anti-Cult Discourse as a Support of Neoliberal Ideology

Maurice Duval's 2005 article for L'Homme et la Société: a Montpellier by-law banning all proselytism on the public highway used against a Trotskyist paper seller, alternative groups listed as cults in the 1996 report, the Weberian typology tested on the Mandarom, and fear tracked as it moves from the nuclear industry to the foreigner to the cults - the bedrock, he argues, of a security ideology that makes neoliberal policy acceptable.

1 January 2005

What Is a Spiritual Minority? And What Is Held Against It?

The CICNS's founding definitional essay of January 2005: where the new spiritual currents came from, why gathering around a shared view of human destiny is an ordinary social act, and why the hostility they meet is aimed not at criminality but at a whole dimension of life.

1 January 2005

Suicide and the Cults

Valérie Dole assembles what the serious research actually says about suicide in France, from the WHO figures to the prisons to Durkheim, and finds spiritual membership nowhere among the causes; the parallel drawn by anti-cultism runs the other way.

1 January 2005

Amalgames: The Elements of a Manipulation

A CICNS essay of pointed questions about conflation: why acts found across all of society are treated as defining crimes when they occur in spiritual minorities.

1 January 2004