Do Cult Leaders Believe Their Own Bullshit?

Back in the 1980s, a famous west-coast cult led by an Indian guy named "Bagwan Sri Rajneesh" broke up under pressure from governments for its nefarious activities. The cult was large and had lots of money and real estate all over the world. The cult leader had a collection of Rolls Royce cars. That aspect of the cult was featured on a 60 Minutes piece about it back in the early 80s. I remember watching it when I was a kid.

One of the persistent questions about cults is do the leaders of a cult believe their own bullshit? In the 60 Minutes piece, Rajneesh came across as a very cynical scammer. Whatever words he said were betrayed by his mannerisms and owning a collection of expensive cars, at least that's what I thought when I was maybe 12 years old or so.

 

The Rajneesh cult was just starting to go down the full crazy trail just like Heaven's Gate, or Jonestown cult or Aum Shinrikyo did by the time the Rajneeshies came under legal pressure. For example, they poisoned the local townspeople near their Oregon cult HQ with salmonella in 1984.

The prevalence of cultish behavior and beliefs is lost on many people. For example, in the image above of Rajneesh in a Rolls includes a bunch of people in "asian" style garb and many people associate cult behavior with things "asiatic" or from "the east". However, there are plenty of jews in cults, or european descended people in western style cults. You can find scenes of mobs of jews worshipping various messiah type figures wearing their particular garb which is just some version of the robes warn by the Rajneeshies.

Here's a picture of Trump visiting the grave of Schneerson, the guy pictured above, who led a large cult that apparently is running the US government now.

One model of the cult leader is they are a cynical scammer who knows the ideas they sell to their believers are all imaginary. That is, if they were to have a discussion with an outsider about their cult's beliefs, they'd acknowledge the cult beliefs are just a bunch of nonsense and stories. Another model of the cult leader type is they are also "committed" to their stories. Often they invent a third party, aka "god" who gave them a "revelation".

I think the second type of cult leader is actually the most common and it's the current model in charge of Israel, or the model of the neocons in the United States, which actually seems based on Germanic romantic philosophy and the overall "anti-rationalist" theme of it.