Can You Be Brainwashed Without Knowing It? The Psychological Tactics Behind MAGA

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Tucker Carlson also believes in the Antichrist. He doesn't think it's Greta Tunberg the way Peter Teal does. He thinks it is Donald Trump now. He has proposed Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

[00:00:11]So like we should not be talking about these people. They should be babbling idiots by the side of the road. But they are making policy. They are making policy and they have enormous power and they have nukes. is a critical component to mind control >> being made over to be clones of the person who's at the top of the pyramid.

[00:00:31]>> Interested in this subject because of my own cult involvement. I was recruited in 1974 into a front group of the mooneyies.

[00:00:40]>> Welcome to cult culture and coercion where we uncover extremism, dangerous leaders to help make sense of today's political chaos. I'm your host Dr. Steve Hassan. Please subscribe, like, and share my work. We need your support.

[00:00:58]We're building a community. I am so thrilled to reconnect with a media spokesperson, ally. Um, so pleased.

[00:01:09]Virginia Hefernon writes regularly for the New Republic, hosts the podcast OmniShambles, has a Substack newsletter, Magic and Loss, where she covers politics for English majors. It's the 10th anniversary of her book called Magic and Loss.

[00:01:29]And yeah, I just before we start, I just want to say when I wrote when when the book was submitted to Simon and Schustster, the publicity department was like, "Everyone in the world, Steve, wants to interview you. We're going to push back the pub date from August 15th to October 15th because people will be back from vacation.

[00:01:53]Everybody wants to interview." October 15th came and it was crickets and I was like, "What the hell's going on?" And the Simon and Schustster um publicist said, "Well, my friend in TV says if Steve Hassan wants to say the president of the United States is a cult leader and the attorney general of the United States is in a cult of Opus Day and thinks he can get on TV, he's got another thing hand handed to them." And I was like, "Oh yeah." And then out of the blue, Virginia Hefernon came out in your LA Times article and on CNN, you said, "This book is the best explanatory framework for what's going on in in our country today." So, I want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And as I was mentioning to you before we started recording, after my Trevanoa interview, it hit the New York Times bestseller list for paperback. is non-fiction. So, my book agent and the and Simon is just so like now you're a New York Times bestselling author, Steve. Anyway, I'm thrilled and I want to thank you profoundly. Welcome >> to my work.

[00:03:08]>> I wish I could. It's great to see you again, Stephen. I I wish that I could say that it was just out of the goodness of my heart. Um but um but it was really because it was the best explanatory framework and you know I'm sure many of your listeners and viewers felt like we did in November of 2016 which was sort of not just psychologically devastated at Trump's first victory but kind of and morally but also intellectually devastated because we just it it it flooded everything that we thought America was committing And it was as though it felt very like I mean some of us had lost family members as they say to Fox News and to other right-wing propaganda but not enough of us that it really felt like well we're going to the actual leader of this cult is going to become the leader of this secular country. That was a connection.

[00:04:05]I don't buy it that anyone saw that coming. Right. And we are now 10 years later and you were there were very few people who were prepared for this. Some people one thing I one thing I always think about is uh Jeffrey Epstein's victims who had been shouting about this these kind of things for a long time.

[00:04:28]There is a network who would have believed it right. we would have thought they were crazy and people did think they were crazy of pedophiles who operate with impunity in this particular circle. And the other thing you had from your experience with the Mooney, from your experience studying cults, from your experience helping people out of cults was you knew a cult when you saw it and we needed your voice. We just needed your voice. And so I was trying to solve a problem in my mind which was how did we get here? How did we get here? and you came along with your book and I really wish I could tell you that I just like oh I wanted to do you a favor because you needed a boost for your book. No, I needed the favor of the framework.

[00:05:09]>> I I love it. I want to add May 11th uh is my 50th anniversary of my waking up moment of my deprogramming where I was learning about Chinese communist brainwashing and was really confused cuz I believed moon was doing God's will and China was Satan, right?

[00:05:32]>> But the eight criteria of Lifton fit the mooneyies. Like that doesn't make sense.

[00:05:38]But it still wasn't enough to get me out. And what got me out was the the exmoonies handed me one of Moon's published speeches to congressmen and senators saying there's a controversy that a me Reverend Moon a Korean could possibly brainwash American youth. And I know that I respect Americans very much and I'm so surprised. Yeah.

[00:06:04]>> And I'm reading this and they just said, "What do you think, Steve?" And I went, "What a snake." And all of a sudden, as soon as I allowed that he's a liar.

[00:06:14]>> Yes.

[00:06:15]>> Then I was like, "If he's a liar, he can't be the Messiah. He can't be a trustworthy person, >> right?

[00:06:24]>> What have I been doing the last two and a half years, 18 to 21 hours a day, seven days a week?"

[00:06:31]>> Yeah. subverting our country because I was in the room with him in 1974 saying, "We're going to infiltrate Congress.

[00:06:41]God hates democracy. We need a theocracy to rule the world." Amazing. When we take power in America, we'll amend the Constitution. Make it a capital offense for people who have sex outside of unification arranged marriages.

[00:06:55]>> Wow.

[00:06:56]>> And I was so brainwashed. I thought this was a great idea. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:00]>> Cuz God needs to take control of the earth and take it away from Satan.

[00:07:05]>> Yeah.

[00:07:05]>> So when I woke up, I was like, "What have I been doing? I've been subverting my own family. They didn't know where I was, my own country, my own religion. I believe the Holocaust was justified.

[00:07:20]Even though I went to Israel and went to Yadvashm and was educated about the Nazis, I'd become a Nazi. So, uh, for me, I wanted to repent and atone all the people I recruited in.

[00:07:36]>> Mhm.

[00:07:36]>> So, I never planned to spend 50 years full-time, become a mental health professional, and make this my life purpose. But I got chosen. And so, I've been saying, hey, people think only stupid people can be brainwashed. And it isn't. So from all of my studies and all the people I've been helping get out of cults, they want people who are passionate and smart and talented deliberately they would be recruited. So >> back to you and and the moment we're living in now, >> the moment we're living in now. I mean, I I love to hear really anyone in high control situations and cults talk about the moment they woke up or the moment they knew they needed to deconstruct their beliefs. Um, and it's different for everyone, right? Like there's there's and and but it is it's an extraordinary way to see the human brain at work. So, um I met a friend of a friend um we were she's works in a whole different profession. She's a podcast producer and we were talking somehow got to the subject religion and she said, "Well, I grew up in a Buddhist cult."

[00:08:47]She grew up in the Tibetan um Chyam Trumpia, you know, the um >> Oh, yes.

[00:08:52]>> Yeah. Shambala. Shambala, I think.

[00:08:55]>> Yeah.

[00:08:55]>> Um and >> Colorado.

[00:08:57]>> Colorado, right? And then I think maybe they had a place in Vermont or something.

[00:09:01]>> Oh, yeah. They were very famous. And the guy who took over after Chungpa died of alcoholism. I believe the guy was was gay and had HIV and was having sex with a lot of guys and and infecting them.

[00:09:17]It's a really bad story.

[00:09:19]>> And sometimes you will still see if you're, you know, in upstate New York, you go to get a massage, I've seen the little shrine to them still. I mean, there are definitely people still under their spell. But she told me that she was born into it. So that's you know that's not what happened to you but that um she had managed to kind of move out and she was in New York but she still believed all of it right but she just was sort of acting in a secular way but she still had all these sets of beliefs like a sort of ardent opus day person that like walks in secular world.

[00:09:53]>> Yeah. She knew that there were charges of sexual abuse, a really very bad rape against him and drug use and um but she believed that he was just a martyr and that he was just, you know, being anyway, >> she saw a story in the New York Times that detailed all the allegations against him.

[00:10:15]>> It was not the allegations against him that changed her mind. She she thought that that was just still, you know, the witch hunt. It was the headline and the headline said something like Buddhist king in in quotation marks accused of these crimes, right? Sexual offenses.

[00:10:34]The quotation marks were the thing that landed it for her. If they're using quotation marks around it, it is possible that this guy is not a king.

[00:10:45]And if he's not a king, it's like what you thought about Moon, right? if he's not the Messiah, then a lot of different things are now no longer make sense.

[00:10:56]>> And it was just the quotation marks that lifted her just a tiny crack of light.

[00:11:01]>> Yeah.

[00:11:01]>> That maybe he's not the king. And if he's not the king, then maybe he's lying. And if he's lying and not a king, maybe he actually didn't have the right to our bodies, >> right?

[00:11:13]>> And from then on, it unraveled for her.

[00:11:16]And I just I think it's really fascinating because we're seeing people come out of this with Trump and high-profile people. We're Tucker Carlson just spoke to the New York Times about this and the ways they get out are almost as interesting as the ways they get in.

[00:11:34]>> Yeah. So much to unpack there. I can tell you that uh as a clinician, as a mental health professional, we now understand it's a dissociative disorder.

[00:11:47]>> So, it's best understood as, you know, like the real Steve and then the Mooney identity. Steve got programmed to be like Father Moon, think like him, feel like him, walk like him, and talk like him. And it was this identity that was programmed through thousands of hours of indoctrination to believe that the real Steve was evil and satanic >> and my parents were and that Moon and his wife were my true parents.

[00:12:17]>> But I was still in there and once I got deprogrammed all these memories of things that would have should have gotten me out >> because they were so not my values etc. >> Yeah. That's where I developed my model, my bite model of authoritarian control to explain things like thought stopping where I was taught to chant if a doubt came in because it was a demon >> or phobia indoctrination that I was taken to see the exorcist movie and Moon gave a lecture how God made this movie and it was what would happen to us if we left the church.

[00:12:54]>> Amazing. So I unpacked all of this and I've been learning from my clients whether they're therapy cults or religious cults or political cults etc. And there are these patterns and I see Virginia the only way out of the mess that we're in in the world >> Yeah.

[00:13:15]>> And the authoritarians don't want this >> Yeah.

[00:13:19]>> is to teach everybody, hey, there's an influence continuum. Yes.

[00:13:24]>> Here's the characteristics of malignant narcissists. You want to never trust or follow any of people with these characteristics. They don't have empathy. They think they're above the law. They're pathological liars, sadistic, revengeful. Just teaching people >> a correct diagnosis of what's happening.

[00:13:45]And with this age of AI, there's another dimension where when I was recruited, I had to go to an isolated physical retreat, right? There were no cell phones in the 70s. There were payoneses.

[00:14:01]Now people are being brainwashed >> on their phones.

[00:14:06]>> Yes. AI psychosis.

[00:14:09]>> It really is real. And >> they're calling it AI psychosis. Sounds like the dissociative order that you said you suffered from.

[00:14:16]>> Yes. And if you know Tristan Harrison Aaraskin of humane.com who did the social dilemma do documentary. They just put out an AI doc recently. They interviewed me when their podcast first came out and I talked about when you're doomcrolling. That's a hypnotic state. When you lose time, when you say, "I'm gonna check Instagram for 10 minutes and two hours later you're like, I need sleep. What am I doing?"

[00:14:45]>> You're not critically analyzing these things that are going into your head at great neck speed.

[00:14:52]>> Yes.

[00:14:53]>> So, it's just it's imprinting and it's now being profiled using our personal data, >> right? So it's changing the messaging to people and it's here's another thing I want the public to understand.

[00:15:10]>> Russia, China, the US was doing it to other countries. We we we were the beginning of using these this technology and such but we have no data privacy here right >> intentionally by the bad actors. and they didn't want uh Paris to win because then there would be regulation on AI. So they >> use their platforms to manipulate minds on mass and drive people on the progressive left to more extreme positions and the right more extreme positions and to create chaos >> and demoralization. This is part of fourthg generation psychological warfare that I wrote about in the cult of Trump is to make people so overwhelmed and so confused they give up. They don't know who to trust anymore. They stop trusting any officials. And that's a big mistake because we need experts but we need to vet who actually knows what they're talking about and who's trustworthy.

[00:16:17]>> And it's a lot to um it's a lot to ask for citizens. It's just like a real burden of citizenship to wade through even one single Tik Tok or Instagram feed. Um and and you know and education can't keep up with it. Um I think one thing that the bite model does and your book does is clarify um how you can see the influence campaigns without having to fact check each little point in them, right?

[00:16:48]>> Because that is too much, right? And um and one thing that I've been thinking about is it's not falsehoods on which these arguments live or die like a Trumpian argument. It's not obviously he's getting all the facts wrong all the time and he's a huge liar, but it's something that philosophers call fallacies, right? So it's like connections that make no sense that ask that you supply and you see Tucker Carlson actually does this in this interview but asks that anyone listening supply a way to make meaning of these connections you know really like runic or sphinxlike statements you know the baff gab of the cult leader and instead he's not exactly lying right let's say that a cult leader says if you think something it can come true If God is living in you, right? You don't need a fact checker on that. You need someone to say, "These are these kind of fallacies. These are these kind of influential ways of talking and ignore all of it." Right? Shut all of it out.

[00:17:53]Don't pick and choose because there is nothing RFK will tell you about vaccines that is true or worth entertaining even.

[00:18:00]Correct. Don't take it in, >> you know.

[00:18:04]>> Correct. So what I want to also add and I wrote this in the cult of Trump and I observed this initially during the debates he was doing with the other GOP prime you know uh uh contenders for 2016 was he was using neural linguistic programming or NLP techniques that Anthony Robbins later said that he taught Trump uh these things which I put in the book but this was a major part of my research because I I learned NLP in 1980 and 81.

[00:18:38]>> This was four years after I got out of the Mooneyies because I had read all the literature on brainwashing, persuasion, social psychology, group psychology, and there was a missing ingredient.

[00:18:49]And it turned out it was hypnosis. And it turned out it was Milton Ericson explicitly who was actually consulted for MK Ultra >> who had this realization that if you do direct hypnotic suggestion as an authority figure your eyelids are getting heavy heavy heavy. Some people will close their eyes and a lot of people will keep them open and go screw you. I'm not closing my eyes for you.

[00:19:18]>> Right. Ericson said people are going in and out of trans states all day long.

[00:19:24]Yes, I remember >> the way to access trans states is linguistically by never giving them a chance to say yes or no, but making them search for meaning.

[00:19:36]>> Yes. Right. So that you've you've got your sweat in the mix. It's funny because I don't know if you saw this, but Richard Dawkins, right, the great atheist will not be fooled. Did you see that he got into AI psychosis and wrote about it? He fell in love with Claude anthropics large language model. Fell in love like decided that she he renamed her Claudia. It's very interesting because he's very anti-trans and renamed her it the LLM Claudia and now says I she's my friend. I spent all this magical time with her. She understands me. I believe she's conscious. And as talk about this can happen to anyone, right? I mean, he thinks the most minimal possible belief in God. I mean, just, you know, going to synagogue every now and then because it feels good to atone or what >> guilty, >> right?

[00:20:30]>> I belong to a community.

[00:20:32]>> So, I'm Jewish.

[00:20:34]>> He would say that that is just like ridiculous boulder dash. And yet he was, and this is for everyone who thinks that like they can't believe they got into a coercive relationship or they got into a cult. Richard Dawkins, the great skeptic of our time, fell in love with an AI. So like this can like people like if you're not watching these flanks at all times when you're in that translike potentially in that translike state. I will say I feel a little lucky. Not that I've never gotten into any coercive relationships, but I had a um I had a curriculum, an interesting curriculum taught by Holocaust survivors. It was called the Never Again curriculum. I went to a public school in New Hampshire. I don't know why there were so many survivors, but they and other uh World War II vets who had um you know had all kinds of trauma around the war and also wanted this never to happen again.

[00:21:34]>> Sure. talked taught taught us about coercive control. Now, the terms were different, right? We were worried about subliminal advertising and all kinds of things, but they I remember having explained to me and I feel very lucky as a sophomore in high school that sometimes and parenthetically this was also for women dating in case you were out with a guy that was like just trying to seduce you.

[00:21:58]>> Oh, there was a lot of that. The pickup artist.

[00:22:00]>> The pickup artist. Exactly. which turned them into the manosphere. But among the tiny tips they gave us, this is just a small one. It was um it was there are ways that a man sitting across the table and apologies for the datedness of this, but he might try to like entrain you.

[00:22:20]And one of the ways is to get you to move as he moves. So pick up your glass when he picks up his, you know, um mirroring mirror. Get you to mirror him.

[00:22:30]>> NLP. Yeah. And so at 15, I had it in my head that I would never I will be damned before I'm entrained. And so I had I've spent my life in crazy dates being like, if he puts down his glass, I'm holding mine up. Damn, I'm always going to be trying to confound the mirroring. And it became a habit. And I know other people that went to high school with me just almost paranoid about the pro prospect that someone was telling you lies or an advertisement was trying to trick you into something and that you had to be constantly on guard. I gotta say it was a great curriculum and it made you feel practically heroic because you were reading through it made you a good reader because you were reading trying to read through disinformation and also this was coming out of the 70s and we all had older babysitters. I I had a babysitter who went to the Mooneyies and just learning that you could people could get lost in cults and that this was something that it was our obligation to um avoid gave us confidence and strength. And I you know and the the the tiny tips which sound a little bit hilarious but they really did I still have a tendency to if someone uses a word I try not to use that word in my response.

[00:23:46]>> Interesting. Yes. You were inoculated in other words in your from that experience >> like they like deliberately lifted our immune system you know.

[00:23:57]>> Yeah. And former members telling their stories I believe has that effect for the population. That's right. You know there's a number one Netflix series called Trust Me the False Prophet right now.

[00:24:11]and seeing Christine Marie who's a friend and colleague who had herself been victimized by a prophet, someone she believed was a prophet and sex trafficked now is the heroine infiltrating a cult and liberating people and the number one wife. you see her transformation out and she's having a wonderful life now, etc. That helps other people go, "That's like my >> church that I grew up in or like that reminds me of this bad therapist or whatever." It starts to >> As I'm sure you know, Christian Marie's daughter is >> Lola Blank. Lola Blank has the podcast Trust Me that has been going on.

[00:24:58]>> Second person interviewed after he she interviewed her mom. Well, I don't know if you um I don't know if you put my name in her head, but believe it or not, I was also an early interview on Trust Me, not to talk outside a cult, but because Lola was the first to recognize the fact that I had joined a group that was sponsored by Jeffrey Epstein, a group of intellectuals and academics in Epstein circle called Edge. Epstein, as people now know from from the uh from the files, was in very close communication with a group of academics, many of them at Harvard and MIT. I also did a PhD at Harvard and I was also in that circle. Now, >> John Brockman.

[00:25:44]>> Exactly.

[00:25:44]>> No, I read your piece and I was I was like, "Wow, >> that was so crazy." I mean, the good thing about my time in Edge was that I was only there as a fig leaf because they didn't have any women because it was devoted to going to Epstein's Island and getting girls.

[00:26:05]>> So, they didn't want me at the parties or on the island because they didn't want like some school momm of their age telling them like maybe you shouldn't be having sex with that 14-year-old. Um, so I didn't actually see anything or have to like come to believe in the rape apologetics and race science that they got so into. But I mean, once again, talk about anyone can join a cult. These are Larry Summers, the Secretary of the Treasury, the president of Harvard College. I would say I would I would venture to say >> someone you would least expect to fall under a spell. And at by, you know, the end of the files or the end of Epstein's life, he's asking Epstein for advice on how to seduce a mentee in as if there's some And you know what Epstein says to him back? I don't know if you saw this in the files. He says, "Convince her that she's already doomed to be with you."

[00:27:00]>> Doomed. That's interesting word play.

[00:27:03]>> I mean, isn't that cultish? And like that you're already it's already done.

[00:27:08]Like she has no free will. she's already doomed to be with you. And I just thought, these are grown men who should know better. You at least were a young man seduced by a couple of cute loonies who came to your campus. I I think we can all understand that >> there were three of them to be Oh, just right. To be fair to you, three cute girls love bombing me. Yep. And I >> Yeah. Yeah, I was like, >> but the but you know these are people who should have done their homework and somehow came into the presence of Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump. People who from the outside like Reverend Moon look, right? Like that's the other thing is that they you're just like, you know, anybody who knew anything, you'd think you meet Jeffrey Epste and the guy's just a slimeball who knows where his money's from. He's got this stupid out of burough accent. He's a dropout like and he's trying to tell you who's the smartest man on earth and he can't spell a single word. Um you know and Donald Trump he's like greasy and he's covered with tanning whatever. He's an absurd person. Keith Reeri an absurd person but yet something in that makes it even more appealing.

[00:28:18]>> They all knew hypnosis. I can say that for sure.

[00:28:21]>> They all knew hypnosis. I'll say the one thing and I did a chapter with now my deceased law professor friend Alan Shefflin uh for a textbook on clinical hypnosis. We did two chapters together on the dark side of hypnosis and Allan wrote one of the first books on MK Ultra >> and he said the one thing that the CIA found that worked and Allan Dulles said this in writing was hypnosis. It was the superpower. I mean, >> do you think the public knows about this? Do you think any American official has ever been honest with the citizenry that Yeah, we know about brainwashing and mind control.

[00:29:02]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing I'll I'll say, Stephen, is and I really thought this after uh the Tucker Carlson interview, if you can bear to go through it, it's actually has some really interesting nuggets because he too is, as you would say, waking up from the cult of Trump and he's quite honest with it, whatever his politics, right? And some people, >> well, I think Russia has had an outside influence over him, so I'm a little dubious about anything he says. Well, maybe he could be getting into a new cult, right? Like >> or Russia could be directing him to Russia controlled opposition against Trump because Putin didn't want Trump to invade, you know, to attack Iran, their ally, >> right? I've certainly heard this and um and remain open to it. And you will never see me praising Tucker Carlson, who I've h is my sworn enemy and has trolled me within an inch of my life so many times. But anyway, what he does do is describe, and I think he may be one of the only people I've heard do this. I think Michael Cohen might have been the other one. The exact experience of physical and emotional experience of spending a day with Trump, right? Sounds to me like hell on earth. Sounds to you like hell on earth, probably. But to the wrong to the right or wrong person, Tucker Carlson, Michael Cohen, there's something transcendently exciting about being around him. Tucker calls it a spell he was under. And he says a supernatural spell. I And he said, "I'm not a theologian, but I mean a literal spell." So he is talking about and has otherwise talked about demonic possession in his life. And you know, I am putting all these things in quotation marks because, you know, as I said in a recent Substack, I don't think anyone's possessed by demons. I think they are possessed by the belief in demonic possession, right? They've like come away with some idea that they've given up so much for Trump, forfeited so much dignity, you know, um given away time and treasure, right, to this guy who is a complete con man. And so they have to explain that it must be a supernatural phenomenon that get made them give all this made them uh abase themselves like this instead of simply saying it is a actually quite secular even scientific or psychological process of influence.

[00:31:28]So now they're in this other wacko world where they're talking about demons.

[00:31:34]They're talking about I mean look at the stuff Pete Hegath talks about to justify going to war in Iran. These people are making policy based on demonology, the book of revelation, and the most outlandish beliefs. Nothing you believed in the mooneyies was could even I think rivaled what what what they believe when they're quoting Pulp Fiction, when they're citing the lamb with the seven eyes that's going to come to Armageddon with the Antichrist. You have Peter Teal lecturing the richest people in the world about the presence of the Antichrist.

[00:32:05]>> Antichrist. Yeah.

[00:32:06]>> And and whatever that is. And Carlson.

[00:32:09]Tucker Carlson also believes in the Antichrist. He doesn't think it's Greta Tunberg the way Peter Teal does. He thinks it is Donald Trump now. He has proposed Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

[00:32:20]So like we should not be talking about these people. They should be babbling idiots by the side of the road, but they are making policy. They are making policy and they have enormous power and they have nukes. So one thing that Yeah.

[00:32:34]>> Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say I listened to your podcast recently about the Iranian propaganda Lego thing and I love that you read >> Hex's mother's email.

[00:32:45]>> Yes.

[00:32:46]>> About how disappointed she is and how pathetic he is and he's ill and a guy should stand up to him and set him straight. If you haven't read read that or listen go and listen to the podcast with Virginia, it's um what's it called on Shambles?

[00:33:06]>> It's called Omni Shambles. Omni >> Shambles. Go listen to this podcast and especially pay attention to how China and Russia is using propaganda and AI to manipulate us emotionally and indoctrinate us into what is known as demoralization to make us give up >> as American citizens. There's no hope where this we're so terrible >> and and the world despises us. So just let them do what they're going to do.

[00:33:38]And it's like, no, I'm not giving up.

[00:33:42]>> Yeah.

[00:33:43]>> For my dead body. Thank you very much.

[00:33:45]>> You say that that that, you know, in some ways hope is a um a tool of well, I don't want to say resistance because that sounds like political resistance, but more like resistance to these kind of other forces. So, if someone is telling you that the Antichrist is around and you just want to be like, can we just, you know, get it together to, you know, help feed the hungry because we're now, uh, you know, some people are actually now officially going hungry in the United States thanks to inflation.

[00:34:16]Get a ride to someone who doesn't have a ride because gas prices are so high.

[00:34:20]These are ways that we can behave in the world if we are not sitting there being demoralized by invocations of completely cult forces like the Antichrist. I just want to emphasize over and over again normal ordinary people, the kind of people that if they were Republicans during the Iraq war, right, they would sound they were terrible of the neocons were terrible on their own, but at least they talked to you like an adult. They said, "Well, we we need to stabilize the region. We need to shore up Israel as a democracy. We need to, you know, make the world safe for this and that." And there, you know, before that, the domino effect. These are like Kissinger ideas.

[00:34:59]They're sort of realist foreign policy ideas. They are annoying in themselves.

[00:35:04]They are maybe fallacies in themselves, but at least they are not mentioning the lamb with the seven eyes. At least they are not mentioning the Antichrist because that is cultlike. I don't know anyone who fell under a cult-like spell under Donald Rumsfeld, however evil he may have been. He was not. No one was looking at him with starry eyes and waiting for him to bless them.

[00:35:25]>> You know, they were agreeing or disagreeing. uh is the infiltration into the religious right and they want to you know oppose the Iranian Islamist evil authoritarian regime with a Christian version Christian nationalist version >> yes >> to oppose that both are evil and they're not they're not fundamental American values we believe in separation of church and state >> well that is it and I that is one thing that I I just wrote this thing about Tucker Carlson on the magic and law substack and um and one thing I ended up concluding is man that separation of church and state that was a really good idea and partly because religious beliefs in themselves even the outlandish ones even the belief that you can pray and get a parking place or that like the god has or the universe has one true love for you those in themselves are not who knows what people believe like you know I happen to it it's it's I don't believe in astrology but it's not like I don't know that I'm a Leo you know what I mean like >> Gemini >> Gemini right exactly like I I mean people know their signs and you you take it you sort of take it ironically right you put it in quotation marks like king just like it's kind of something and if I happen to see my snag on my horoscope and it says like you know you're going to have a good that like might put a spring in my step. It is okay to believe stuff like that, right? That is completely okay.

[00:37:03]>> It is okay to go to Sunday school and like take in some measure of like God Jesus died for your sins, right? All of that is okay in its lane. You do not use that to make policy. You do not then run for Senate or become the the uh secretary of war and wage war, holy war, crusades like Pete Hagsath is doing on the on these pretexts and no nothing in American doctrine which has been a secular state from the beginning as we all know. None of the, you know, founders of the nation would have accepted an argument on these crazy metaphysical premises.

[00:37:44]>> Yeah. Or nor allow a Supreme Court to judge anticonstitutional when they were saying we're originalists. Like, no, we're throwing that out the window, right? We're going to do shadow docket stuff and give the president immunity to do whatever he freaking feels like. And as you have many times pointed out and and lean into another completely shady, abusive, terrible called Opus Day like to have members of his book is fabulous and I interviewed him and yeah, they put the Federalist Society extremist judges in place and they all swore that they were going to uphold the Constitution and support Roie Wade until they were given the orders. Okay, now it's time.

[00:38:32]>> We're going for it.

[00:38:33]>> Yeah. I mean, I will say I I just I guess I I also want to emphasize for people that you are not in a maha yoga nan cult if you want to avoid some kind of special dye in your food or if you do yoga, right? Because I think sometimes people think the anti-cult discourse says you're just doomed to this dry life without any um magic in it. But no, that is the genius of the church and state separation. So unlike in a communist country where you can't practice your religion and you you know have to suppress all those beliefs and you can't pray and you can't whatever but unlike a theocracy where all that stuff determines policy we have the American experiment that beautifully split them up so that I can live in New York and have my neighbors go to the mosque down the street quite literally which is on the same block as two synagogues and we are allowed to do that and then we are allowed to vote for policy that help all of us and that don't advance our religious interests.

[00:39:40]>> Exactly. So my influence continuum which I'm endeavoring to hold up. I talk about cults exists from the ethical side where you're a diehard Celtics fan even though they totally collapsed when they should have won the first round against Philadelphia.

[00:39:58]>> Where was their god?

[00:40:00]>> Or you're super into square dancing or coral music or whatever. As long as it respects your conscience, your individuality, your ability to choose what you read, who you associate with, there's no fear, guilt if you don't want to associate. And I put the the pointer on authoritarian brainwashing cults.

[00:40:22]>> Yes. many of which call themselves IRS designated religions when they're they're basically businesses that are labor trafficking their members and taking you know taking money away from our taxpaying base right have billions of dollars of property that they're not paying taxes on. I I have a criteria that I want to see implemented in the law that says if you're lying when you recruit people, if you're not giving them informed consent, you shouldn't have tax exemption status.

[00:40:56]>> And it freaked them out because they want their tax exemption status.

[00:41:00]>> That's it. I mean, it's amazing to me. I grew up in the Episcopal church where it's like very very difficult to become a priest. Like there's just all kinds of apostolic something something you have to go through. You know, you have to be ordained. you have to be whatever and you have to serve in all these different roles.

[00:41:18]Rabbi is the same thing, right? Lots of learning, lots of education. This thing where you can just crown yourself the like plant a church like meaning just like put a small brick building and call yourself a pastor um like the people around Trump and because you want to declare tax exempt status.

[00:41:38]>> Exactly. You know, you call your self-help thing, you call your diet program, you call it a religion, and then all of a sudden you pay no taxes. I mean, it's it's it's it's quite absurd.

[00:41:49]>> And it's such an abuse of the separation of church and state.

[00:41:52]>> Exactly. And these people around Trump, they're self-appointed apostles and prophets who say, "God told me, I have a mission."

[00:42:01]>> Yes.

[00:42:01]>> And I I can cast out demons. If you have doubts about being a member of my mega church, it's a demon. I can get rid of it for you. Yes.

[00:42:10]>> And do faith healings and do speaking in tongues, which is not a foreign language or an ancient language. It's known as glossalia.

[00:42:19]>> I don't care if people feel good speaking in tongues. I learned how to do it because I was getting people out of cults that were claiming this is a Holy Spirit. Only people with holy spirits.

[00:42:31]So I was like Hello. I'm not the in the Holy Spirit.

[00:42:42]I'm Jewish. I don't even believe in any of that. Right.

[00:42:45]>> Right. Yes.

[00:42:48]>> But if it makes you feel good and you have free will and you have meaningful relationships and you're able to function and work, if it go for it. I don't care. But when when the government is saying we're going to regulate what women can do with their health care or their bodies or tell people they shouldn't get vaccinations when we know that it saves lives.

[00:43:13]>> It's this is deliberate chaos making psychological warfare by enemies of American democracy.

[00:43:22]>> I mean I think to come full circle you had been very aware of cults for a long time. I had had some brushes with the moon the babysitter that went to the mooneyies or the lectures from the never again curriculum and still when Trump was elected I mean this would be like moon being elected of the you know in the United States we just had not had a cult leader we had had presidents with various degrees of charisma and influence and popularity we'd had um you know presidents who probably had abusive tendencies, but we didn't have a president who looked and acted like a cult, a cult leader. And that meant that we did hadn't had, this was the first time because I've had lots of presidents in my lifetime that I haven't liked. I don't mind being alienated from the president. I really don't like being alienated from the people of the United States. I don't like looking around and thinking why is one in three of us saying absolutely crazy things and seeming as you say disassociated and seeming slightly insane when they talk about politics. people who had no interest in politics before thinking, "Oh, now's the right great time to go march on the capital or now is a great time to inject bleach into your veins to treat." Like I just was so sad when I looked at people, you know, people in my family, people in and even even just little things like an actual very sane secular person, but he had sort of gotten into Fox News and he started to say, "I think climate change is just weather." Now, where did he get that expression? Why would he say that? What a strange thing to say. It's been a we've been warnings about climate change and and the climate crisis since the 1970s. He knows that. But something in Fox News, something in the ether had him saying things that were nutty.

[00:45:25]>> It's called the oil company lobby >> who are spending lots of money.

[00:45:30]>> That's right. There lots of denial. This is this is an industry >> and there were sociologists of religion hired to say there's no such thing as brainwashing. And Steve Hassan is on an anti-ult crusade. He's against all religion. I'm like, I'm not against religion. I just think religion should be based on love and kindness and compassion and service and helping the poor and helping the sick and, you know, doing the Abrahamic traditions.

[00:46:02]>> Yes. Right. What was so wrong with that?

[00:46:04]What was so right? And and and then also in its lane. And that's your point about, you know, I don't I might like square dancing. In my case, I like perfume. I like going to perfume meetups where we trade perfume and it might look a little culty to someone, right? I am not saying we need to hose down the population of the United States with Chanel number five, right? I will never say that. Um and um and I would never run for, you know, city council on the grounds that we all need more perfume.

[00:46:33]This is just my thing. It's my kink in my lane. and like God bless you. I hope you have square dancing or something that gives your life meaning and excitement the way that I have this.

[00:46:44]Right? I love finding out about people's, you know, attending uh Jew attending synagogue on the high holy days or every Saturday. It like sounds like just a wonderful thing to do. And what I think is great about your work is that you make room for spiritual longings, for religious fe feeling, for religious practice, for acts of service.

[00:47:09]You and but you distinguish them from this particular way of behaving that is cults. I think one thing I haven't heard you talk about is people leaving. So we have Trump at an all-time low. You know, he it was said he could never get below 40% approval. Now he's solidly some people have him low as 34 37. Now you and I think nobody in their right mind should ever support this guy and that is still millions of people but it is really obvious that the you know the Marjorie Taylor Greens the Tucker Carlson's the you know various people around him have be have begun to split with him. Popular opinion has split with him. He's extremely unpopular in all these ways.

[00:47:54]So, what do you think led to people sort of waking up out of the trance of him or Fox News or whatever had gotten into them?

[00:48:04]>> So, I'll say that because of my model of the dissociation, there's always the real self in in there. So if you were a good person who was a kind loving person and didn't hate was not in your playbook on a daily level etc. There's dissonance between how you've been programmed to think and feel and act and behave.

[00:48:32]>> And human beings we we operate with a lot of misconceptions about the human being experience. For example, most people walk around saying, "I'm too smart to ever be in a cult or to ever be brainwashed." That was one of my vulnerabilities.

[00:48:51]>> I tell people, be humble. You don't know what you don't know, >> right?

[00:48:55]>> And have a pod of trustworthy people who who know you your whole life that you trust >> and before you do any major decisions, reality test with them and have them be contrarian, etc., right?

[00:49:11]But we're social beings. We are not an island. We have senses and we have mirror neurons. So the people we're hanging out with or the social media we're on, it influences us, not necessarily consciously, but unconsciously.

[00:49:30]But as Conoran wrote in his book that won a Nobel Prize, thinking fast and slow, a lot of what's happening is on automatic pilot, what he calls system one thinking.

[00:49:42]>> But we have to make an effort to analyze that system two thinking.

[00:49:47]So to say all of that, what I want people to understand is to be human, we should be growing and outgrowing our previous beliefs as we have new experiences and new information that's coming to us. But if we're in an information silo and we're only friends with like-minded people and we're trained to reject anyone who isn't part of our click or our silo, >> that's where you get into a lot of trouble.

[00:50:23]>> But there's leakage. And here's I've been doing this trumpet call since Trump was first elected. Don't cut off with your family and friends who are Trumpers or MAGA people.

[00:50:37]>> Stop attacking them. Don't call them names. The worst thing you can do is attack the leader, doctrine, or policy because the cult identity is trained to reject you and feel persecuted, >> right?

[00:50:51]>> Don't do a frontal logic and fact approach. Be warm and ask questions.

[00:50:58]Help me step into your shoes. help me understand how you make sense of reality >> and find out what they think are cults that brainwash. And with most MAGA, it's Chinese communist brainwashing. And until very recently, people were in MAGA were very interested in pimps and traffickers when they were brainwashed into the QAnon conspiracy thing that it was all Democrats doing it. Now that they realize Trump is in the center of the Epstein files, now they don't want to talk about pimps and traffickers. But the model is the model. Control behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions.

[00:51:40]>> Yeah.

[00:51:40]>> And I say to stay sane, and that's why I like this app called Ground News. It's an aggregator >> uh app that will give you a story and tell you all of how it's covered on the progressive left and the right.

[00:51:57]>> So you can watch how the same story is being covered in many different flavors and understand >> that there are very powerful actors who are wanting you to believe a certain narrative that isn't in your best interest that doesn't support the values of America etc. And and so but the bottom line is is that I always said stay in touch with your family and friends. Say I miss you.

[00:52:26]If you if they say you called me names, you called me a Say I apologize.

[00:52:32]If I knew then what I know now, I would never have said it. Please forgive me.

[00:52:36]Let's do a redo. Let's do a reboot.

[00:52:40]>> Yeah. Show them photos when you're holding each other's hands or canoeing or playing raetball and bring back the old memories of the real self.

[00:52:51]>> Yep.

[00:52:52]>> And just say, "What do you think of?"

[00:52:54]Ask open in the question. What do you think of Iran and what we're doing in Iran? What do you think about gas prices? I just filled up and it's a$150 more than it was two weeks ago. What do you think?

[00:53:07]>> Right. And then people will then be like, "And then the the the killer question, not the killer, but the the powerful question is that people are starting to express doubts."

[00:53:21]>> Ask them questions like, "What's your first memory of Donald Trump?"

[00:53:25]>> When I ask people that question, they often say, "I I grew up in New York and he was an asshole." Like that's my personal story because I grew up one mile from him in Flushing, Queens. He was in Jamaica States on the other side of Union Turnpike.

[00:53:41]>> But or people will say, "I saw him on The Apprentice. What' you think?" I thought he was a jerk.

[00:53:46]>> Thought he was a bully. Or that's interesting. Help me understand how you came to believe he would make a good president.

[00:53:54]>> Yes.

[00:53:55]>> Who were you following? what what videos or what what was the media that you were listening to? And then the the powerful almost knockout question is if you knew then what you know now, >> would you have ever started supporting him?

[00:54:12]>> Yeah.

[00:54:13]>> And if the answer is no, then you're basically they're realizing it's time to leave.

[00:54:21]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:21]>> Right. because I I I voted based on the knowledge and experience I had then. Now I know more.

[00:54:28]>> Bad guy.

[00:54:29]>> And also it's you also sort of teach it's never too late to leave, right?

[00:54:34]Because I think sometimes there it feels like some people are acting on a sunk cost fallacy. So I >> I was going to say that you you beat me to it. Yes. people get invested and so they feel like they'll just stay there because it's too cost is too high. But if there's an exit ramp where they feel they're not going to be judged where they'll be welcomed.

[00:54:59]>> And when I got deprogrammed my nextdoor neighbor, my oldest childhood friend Monica baked me chocolate chip cookies and said, "Welcome home, Steve."

[00:55:10]>> Oh, that is so wonderful. What a great way to put it. What a great >> seriously it brings tears to my eyes because it it was so >> Monica just like welcome back to the to the community you know we missed you.

[00:55:30]>> Yes >> instead of I told you it was a cult. I told you 400 times that you were being brainwashed, which he tried.

[00:55:39]>> Yeah.

[00:55:39]>> But she realized it wasn't working. So wisely she stopped cuz she couldn't pay attention and realize it's driving him away from me. Let me stop that.

[00:55:49]>> Welcome home is wonderful too because I I I get the sense that some people and we talked before we came on about Michael Cohen who's fallen under yet another spell, but maybe that's another story. is that once you get out there's could be something really missing in your life. You had all this community.

[00:56:08]You had a purpose. You had a whole doctrine. You had something to believe.

[00:56:12]Maybe you even had something to live, you know, a place to live. You've lost your friends.

[00:56:16]>> So that that moment that you've come out is a potentially vulnerable time for another cult or a coercive relationship or some other kind of spell to overcome you. Unless you've built up someone else who says this is your home, right? That was the time where you were out wandering in the desert. Now you've come home and this is where you live in yourself because you've come home to your real self like you say and chocolate chip cookies, the people who love you and make that world really full for yourself on the other side. like the woman who's just gotten out of FLDS that you mentioned, Gnomes, >> um is has, you know, a soft landing with Christine Marie, a soft landing with her other friends who've come out of it. And it is really beginning to build step by step, trial and error, but build a life after the cult. And I feel like >> a new identity because it >> I was lucky. I was 19, so I had an identity, but I had all these false memories that I had to overcome. I needed Monica and my family to show me pictures and recall family trips to the museum that we did almost every weekend or plays. And I'd had a very enriched >> childhood, but in the Mooneyies, I believed I had a horrible childhood and it was miserable, etc., etc., right?

[00:57:46]>> So, there was that. But I really want to comment just leaving the cult physically because you were talking about your friend from the the Trunkpa cult leaving but still having the programming going on consciously. You really want to learn the model. People read my book, Combating Cult. It's still helping people put the pieces together. And then you need to go back and deconstruct how your mind got hacked. Yes. Yes. And what parts of your psyche got co-opted into the belief system of the group? And if you're born in the group, you need to start over again. And there's a technique I learned from one of my forensic psychologist mentors called the idealized parent figure.

[00:58:34]>> Oh.

[00:58:35]>> Uh healing strategy.

[00:58:38]And it's like if you had the ideal mother, you'll love this one, Virginia.

[00:58:42]Okay. If you if you had the ideal mother and ideal father unique to your personality and you go back in time to early childhood issues or traumas and you say if I had the ideal mother and father unique to my personality, what would I have wanted them to say and do differently? And then you imagine, you deliberately invoke your own imagination.

[00:59:10]>> That's great. And and so for me, part of my healing was that I had a dad who had an alcoholic father who never hugged him and was violent and was very unpredictable. My dad was the oldest child. He never knew how to hug me as a a son until I was in my 30s and demanding he hug me.

[00:59:36]>> Just stand there, Dad. I don't want to shake your hand when I see you anymore.

[00:59:40]I need a hug.

[00:59:42]>> And he would be like this. But over the years, and he died before his 93rd birthday, he wanted it and he was patting me.

[00:59:50]>> A >> But the point is is we can create our own idealized healthy mother and father and not just be angry that our parents neglected us or were abusive to us. We don't need to have we can acknowledge the facts, but we can walk around with loving parents in our heads that are like, "Good, Steve. You're doing good.

[01:00:14]Good."

[01:00:14]>> So, we're not trying to So, we're not looking to other people to be that to be that person. Yes. So, you're not like Keith Reeri, you're the dad I've always needed.

[01:00:24]>> Um, >> or Sunyang Moon, the true father of the universe. Not >> Wow. Wow. The grandiosity in them is just amazing. Well, so so you do that you did that sort of imagining of idealized parents.

[01:00:40]>> Yeah. And I teach it. I I mean my my tribe, if I dare to say it, are former members of authoritarian dictatorships, abusive family structures, religious cults, political cults, therapy cults of all kind. And there's a lot of us. There are tens of millions of Americans who said, "My family was like that." And it's like, "Okay, let's learn what the patterns are. Let's teach our children so we're not just unconsciously duplicating our our own dysfunctional childhoods."

[01:01:16]>> Yes.

[01:01:17]>> And let's I mean, I know what it's like to lose my freedom.

[01:01:21]>> Yeah. You know, when I got deprogrammed and I didn't have to ask permission to take a day off, >> you know, or to go to the bathroom, >> I I can decide. I can kiss a woman and not have the indoctrination that Satan is trying to seduce me out a garden of Eden. I could actually kiss a girl and enjoy it for what it was.

[01:01:44]>> There are a couple people leaving Trumpism who really interest me. Um, one of them and they they're chronicling their deconstruction. One of them is Carter Brown. I don't know if you've run into her, but she's doing she's been interviewed a few places. She's on Tik Tok. People can find her at Carter as Carter Brown. Um, and obviously Tik Tok is also filled with disinformation, no longer Chinese disinformation, but Ellison disinformation. So, you know, be on guard there. But you can probably find her videos in some >> I love Monty Mater. I don't know if you've come across Monty, but she grew up a Christian nationalist MAGA person and >> she rocks it.

[01:02:22]>> She's moving out. So, and then the other one is Ashley Stlair, who worked at um Turning Point and had a baby with Elon Musk even and was really really in deep on anti-trans and she's >> saw a beginning of her being interviewed. Yeah, I would be interested in talking with her. But I >> it's fascinating and but just seeing how >> people change their minds is really just people able to change is an really amazing thing to see. It's like people get sober. It's like seeing people, you know, take up marathon running. It just that shows the sort of plasticity and and courage of individual minds. And that I think is very is very very moving. Um >> Yeah. in inspirational frankly and >> inspirational because we all get into ruts. We also all get into ruts and questioning our thoughts is not the worst thing that you can do at any given time. Just any set of beliefs, even I must be thinner so my mother thinks I look better, right? You can one day that belief can evaporate. I don't know if I've ever told you this, Stephen, but >> it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but there was a time right after my divorce where it was an article of faith in my head. I must get remarried. I just couldn't imagine not being married and I just thought I must get remarried. It was in my head the way that like someone might believe, you know, I'm filled with sin or something like that, a religious belief.

[01:03:51]>> I was walking along one day. I don't know what happened. It was a beautiful day. I can remember exactly where I was walking down the street, lots of people in New York passing me on the street and I just thought, I don't have to get remarried. What if I don't have to get remarried? And I looked at every man that was passing me. And I felt like I not only was liberated myself, but I had liberated them. That I was just like, guess what? It's your lucky day. You do not have to marry me and neither do you.

[01:04:17]And you can go on your way with your wife as it is or you're not or you're gay. You do not have to marry me.

[01:04:22]Everybody is free. And it felt just to drop a belief that is killing you. you know, my kid has to get to Yale or my, you know, all my parenting is for not or whatever.

[01:04:35]>> People have secular beliefs that they need to challenge. A lot of them to do with striving, a lot of them to do with, you know, body fascism. I mean, just the the things that haunt you and keep you up at night, just asking yourself, what if that just wasn't true? You know, >> I love it. And I that I'll just underscore that and then we'll wrap up.

[01:04:56]We have to do this again. But I when I was younger person I couldn't imagine being 70 >> right >> years old. I thought 30 was an old fogy.

[01:05:08]>> Yes.

[01:05:09]>> You know and I couldn't imagine I'll have a New York Times best-selling book and have a PhD and be teaching you know psychiatry grand rounds at Cleveland Clinic and Harvard Medical School.

[01:05:26]And it's been a great life. And it ain't over. I'm >> I have a lot more I want to do and share with people. And I love to hang out with people different than me because I want to learn. I don't want to hear myself talk. I know what I know. I want to I want to meet people like you and I want you to teach me, >> you know, and >> I just I hope we are to some extent popping out of these like very sterile debates in the culture. And one thing you brought when I had you on Trumpcast to talk about the book was we I had heard from basically what became woke and anti-woke arguments and it started to seem like pickle ball. It was just like bam bam bam bam. You need someone just with a whole new perspective that said like this is right and >> secured a blind faith as perspective.

[01:06:22]>> Yes. Yes.

[01:06:23]>> On both sides perspective.

[01:06:26]>> But I mean the thing is I didn't even want to hear from those sides anymore.

[01:06:30]Both sides seem sterile to me. It seemed like also truth doesn't have just sides facets. It's a kaleidoscope. There's so many different um different ways you can see something. And by the way, it isn't just out of goodness of my heart. It's because I really want to know. I just actively want to know like what is going on in our world. And every time something blows my mind, every small thing. I just saw some women in in full hijab all the way, whatever, covering their bodies, playing American football with each other, hiking the ball, throwing it in a spiral in the park near me. And I just it's opened up whole new ideas. I just thought like how did like when do Muslim women learn to play American football? What is this about?

[01:07:17]How do you play in a dress like that?

[01:07:18]You know, an hour of my life was spent just trying to metabolize this other belief and practice system. And that seems to be, you know, one of the real reasons to reach outside your bubble.

[01:07:30]>> Yeah, for sure. Virginia Hefernon, 10th anniversary of Magic and Loss. Your substack is Magic and Loss. Please subscribe. Uh, Virginia, this has been just a pleasure. I love I love your mind. Thank you for reminding me because I had forgotten. I read your piece about Brockman and the Edge and Epstein. I want people to keep in mind, yes, there was a global conspiracy to rape and traffic underage girls and boys and and the all the judge and everyone who said we should release all the information ain't happening right now and we have to keep trumpeting trumpeting that no pun.

[01:08:18]>> Trumpeting that absolutely. Um, Stephen, thank you so much for your work and for having me.

[01:08:23]>> Thank you. And take care now.

[01:08:25]>> Take care.