Credits<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAbe\u2019s apology was commendable, but it would seem to refer to atrocities of a remote past. Or perhaps not. Scholars such as James T. Richardson and Wu Junqing have noted that not much has changed from the times when witches were burned in the West and \u201cevil cults\u201d were bloodily persecuted in Imperial China and Japan. The only difference is that black magic has been secularized into brainwashing, a pseudo-scientific concept implying that \u201ccults\u201d now bewitch their followers through mysterious psychological techniques.<\/p>\n
Ironically, while Abe apologized for the persecution of Christianity in Japan as an \u201cevil cult\u201d that used black magic, his assassination is being used to label the Unification Church\/Family Federation as a \u201ccult\u201d that obtains donations through brainwashing, the modern version of black magic, and call for a crackdown on \u201ccults\u201d in general. The twisted logic supporting these claims is based on the fact that Abe\u2019s assassin hated the Unification Church because his mother made heavy donations to it twenty years ago. He killed Abe to punish him for attending via videos events of an organization connected with that Church. Rather than blaming the assassin, and the hate campaigns against the Unification Church that may have excited him, the victims are put on trial in a spectacular reversal of both logic and fairness.<\/p>\n
But what is a \u201ccult\u201d? A large majority of scholars of religions agree that there are no cults. \u201cCult\u201d is just a label used to discriminate against groups that powerful lobbies, for whatever reasons, do not like. It was not always so. \u201cCult\u201d and its functional equivalents in other languages derived from the Latin word \u201csecta\u201d such as the French \u201csecte\u201d\u2014to be translated \u201ccult\u201d rather than \u201csect\u201d\u2014had a precise meaning in early-20th-century sociology. They indicated young religions, where most or all members had converted as adults rather than being born in the faith. The example used by the early sociologists was that Jesus and the apostles were part of a \u201ccult\u201d as none of them was born as a Christian; they were all converted Jews. After some centuries, those born Christians became the majority, and Christianity evolved from \u201ccult\u201d (or \u201csecte\u201d in French) to church. Most of the scholars who used this terminology were themselves Christians, and clearly for them the word \u201ccult\u201d had no negative implications.<\/p>\nTypical sensational coverage of \u201ccults\u201d (sectes) in the French media.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHowever, during the course of the 20th century, with some older precedents, a new science, criminology, started using the word \u201ccult\u201d with a very different meaning. A \u201ccult\u201d was a religious group that systematically committed crimes or would likely commit crimes in the future. This meaning of \u201ccult\u201d was similar to the expression \u201cevil cult\u201d used to persecute and crucify Christians in Imperial Japan. It also created a confusion. A sociologist in the 1960s, asked whether Jesus and the apostles were part of a \u201ccult,\u201d should have answered yes based on traditional sociological categories but, since the criminological use of the term was conquering the media as well, would risk to be misunderstood and accused of having labeled the first Christians as criminals.<\/p>\n
For this reason, since at least the 1980s, international scholars of religion, led by British sociologist Eileen Barker, abandoned the word \u201ccult\u201d and adopted \u201cnew religious movements\u201d for the newly established groups where most members were first generation converts. They were aware of the use of \u201ccult\u201d by criminologists, and did not deny the existence of groups that routinely commit crimes in the name of religion, among \u201cnew\u201d but also among \u201cold\u201d religious traditions\u2014such as networks of pedophile Catholic priests or terrorists who use or misuse the name of Islam. Since the word \u201ccult\u201d would only create confusion, they adopted other expressions, which later included \u201ccriminal religious movements,\u201d suggested by the undersigned.<\/p>\nWith her 1984 book on conversions to the Unification Church, Eileen Barker debunked the theory that \u201ccults\u201d were different from \u201creligions\u201d because they used \u201cbrainwashing\u201d to convert their followers.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriminal religious movements are groups that systematically commit or at least incite to commit common crimes such as physical violence, rape, child abuse, or murder. Since the late 1960s, activist \u201canti-cult\u201d groups appeared that called for limiting the activities of \u201ccults.\u201d They defined them not as movements committing common crimes such as homicide or sexual abuse but as groups guilty of an imaginary crime, brainwashing. The word \u201cbrainwashing\u201d was coined during the Cold War by the CIA to designate mysterious techniques allegedly used by the Chinese Maoists \u00a0and the Soviets to turn almost instantly otherwise \u201cnormal\u201d citizens into Communists. It was later applied to \u201ccults.\u201d By 1990, it had been debunked by religious scholars, as pseudo-science simply used to discriminate against certain groups, and rejected by courts of law, at least in the United States.<\/p>\n
The Abe assassination is now used for reviving the dead horse of brainwashing and of theories claiming that bad \u201ccults,\u201d unlike good \u201creligions,\u201d recruit members and donors through mental manipulation. Just as it happened during the European witch hunts and the Japanese persecution of Christians for which Abe apologized, accusations of black magic\u2014of which brainwashing is only the secularized version\u2014and of operating an \u201cevil cult\u201d lead to dehumanize, discriminate and persecute those so accused. Today, they come for the Unification Church. Tomorrow, they may come for any religion that has among its enemies lobbies powerful enough to persuade the media it is a \u201ccult.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/bitterwinter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/member-of-the-Unification-ChurchFamily-Federation.jpeg\")
<\/source><\/source><\/picture>![\"Christians](\"https:\/\/bitterwinter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Christians-crucified-in-Nagasaki.jpeg\")
<\/source><\/source><\/picture>![\"Typical](\"https:\/\/bitterwinter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/coverage-of-cults-in-the-French-media.jpeg\")
<\/source><\/source><\/picture>![\"With](\"https:\/\/bitterwinter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Eileen-Barker.jpeg\")
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