The Sacred Lie: Why Cults, Corporations, and MAGA Abandon the Truth

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Why are Trump and Maga always lying?

[00:00:02]Right? And such obvious lies. Well, this is an example of what I call ends justifies the means mentality. I think lying is a very good example of it.

[00:00:11]Doing anything that it takes, even bad things, to get to your good end goal. In this case, of course, they want their Christian theocracy. I've written all about this in my new book, The Culting of America.

[00:00:24]We're going to read some.

[00:00:26]Examples of ends justifies the means are everywhere. Trump supporters accepted or actively spread false claims about the 2020 elections being stolen, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, because keeping Trump in power was seen as essential to saving America.

[00:00:43]The violent storming of the Capitol on January 6th was rationalized as necessary patriotism, a defense of the nation rather than an attack on democracy.

[00:00:53]Personal scandals that would have ended other political careers were overlooked because the policies Trump promised, such as judicial appointments, immigration crackdowns, and fighting wokeness, were seen as more important than integrity. Harsh immigration practices, like the separation of families at the border, were accepted as unfortunate but necessary deterrents.

[00:01:16]Disinformation, conspiracy theories, and doctored memes were willingly spread to damage political opponents and reinforce the movement's narrative.

[00:01:25]Authoritarian calls for investigations into political enemies, often without clear basis, were cheered as righteous efforts to drain the swamp. In each case, people abandoned traditional moral or democratic principles in service of a larger goal. In each case, the mentality is the same. The stakes are too high to play fair.

[00:01:48]When America itself is seen as being on the brink of destruction, anything is justifiable to prevent that outcome, even destroying the democratic principles Trump's followers claim to defend.

[00:02:01]But this phenomenon isn't unique to Maga. It is a pattern deeply rooted in how extremist groups grow.

[00:02:08]Willingness to abandon the truth is not incidental. It's foundational.

[00:02:12]In high-control groups, lying to outsiders is considered morally righteous.

[00:02:18]In The Children of God, these lies were called deceivers yet true, a warped belief that lying was virtuous if it protected the mission. And the chapter from my first book, Uncultured, that talks about the children being programmed to lie to outsiders, is published in Rolling Stone magazine. You can read it anytime.

[00:02:38]Systemites, y'all, weren't worthy of the truth. Telling you the whole story might confuse you.

[00:02:46]Or worse, you'd find a way to twist it against us. So, we spun stories, omitted details, and sometimes outright lied about, for instance, where donations were really going.

[00:02:57]It didn't count as deception if it was serving God.

[00:03:01]As described by Singer and Lalich in Cults in Our Midst, other groups use different names for lying. In some evangelical circles, it's called heavenly deception or transcendental trickery. Others justify lying when talking to the Babylonians, cautioning followers not to cast your pearls before swine.

[00:03:23]In Mormon splinter groups, it's known as lying for the Lord. Among mainstream Mormons, it's framed more gently. It's not secret, it's sacred.

[00:03:32]Whatever the term, the message is the same. Some people don't deserve the truth. This kind of lying reinforces us versus them thinking and turns secrecy into a virtue.

[00:03:44]When you're convinced you're one of the few who truly gets it, every act of concealment feels like proof of your specialness. And that kind of secrecy binds you more tightly to the group, making it even harder to leave or trust anyone on the outside.

[00:04:00]As Janja Lalich explains, deception in cults isn't aimed only at outsiders. It becomes internalized. Members are often deliberately kept in the dark about leadership misconduct, inner conflict, the actual size of the group, and how the outside world truly sees them.

[00:04:18]Over time, the group begins lying to itself as much as it lies to everyone else.

[00:04:23]This bubble of misinformation is reinforced by leadership and inner circles to ensure people can't make real assessments about what's happening.

[00:04:32]And when the whole group is repeating the same myths, those myths start to feel like reality.

[00:04:38]Fake news is the only news they hear.

[00:04:41]Truth becomes subjective, loyalty replaces honesty, and secrecy becomes sacred.

[00:04:48]In the military, secrecy is institutionalized.

[00:04:52]Need-to-know briefings, redacted missions, because too much transparency could jeopardize the mission.

[00:04:59]Secrecy extends to interactions with families and civilians, where leaders soften facts about deployments, injuries, or mental health to protect the team or maintain morale.

[00:05:10]Everyone knows no unit completes every required training every year, and yet those sign-offs roll up the chain.

[00:05:19]It's not always lying in the traditional sense, but it's a learned manipulation of information, where shaping the truth becomes second nature.

[00:05:28]In corporate America, the same dynamics play out with a shinier gloss. Steve Jobs famously used his reality distortion field to bend inconvenient facts and shape perceptions to match his vision.

[00:05:41]As Emily Chang wrote in Brotopia, acceptable lying, especially in startup culture, is often seen as part of the game.

[00:05:50]Elizabeth Holmes was treated as a cautionary tale, but she was really a sacrificial lamb for the collective lie all startups tell to survive and scale.

[00:06:00]Across industries and ideologies, the pattern repeats. Protect the mission, even if it means bending the truth.

[00:06:08]Lying becomes holy, deception becomes virtue, and the first compromises of integrity are cloaked in righteousness.

[00:06:16]Nietzsche's concept of pia fraus, or pious fraud, is disturbingly at home in these worlds of startup myth and charismatic leadership. He used the term to describe the lies told in service of a supposedly justified greater moral or spiritual truth.

[00:06:34]Deceptions that are justified because they preserve the illusion necessary for maintaining order or belief.

[00:06:40]In cults, religions, and increasingly in corporations, pia fraus becomes the sacred glue holding the whole thing together.

[00:06:49]The story is massaged, the numbers fudged, the device doesn't quite work, but the pitch deck says otherwise. What matters is that you believe the mission.

[00:06:59]That's why a reality distortion field can be hailed as visionary leadership, and why an Elizabeth Holmes can channel her inner prophet, faking the miracle until it's too late to admit it never existed.

[00:07:11]Pia fraus is why so many people in tech and startup idealize Peter Thiel, who in his book Zero to One, Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future, openly embraces strategic misdirection as a business practice, alongside monopolistic ideology and the founder as savior archetype, describing startups as small, cult-like tribes, all in glowing terms.

[00:07:37]In these systems, the fraud is the faith, and the more people you can get to believe in the righteousness of your deception, the holier the lie becomes.

[00:07:47]History shows us that no cult, no authoritarian movement starts with obvious extremism. It begins with a shared mission, a feeling of righteousness, and an us-versus-them worldview. From there, small ethical compromises accumulate.

[00:08:04]Members are told their sacrifices are necessary for the greater good. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the group crosses lines its members once swore they would never cross.

[00:08:16]As my friend and manager, Lizzie Friedman, perfectly put it, the defining feature of a line in the sand is that it is easily erased. By the time the line is crossed, whether it's lying to outsiders, participating in violence, endorsing abuse, or willfully ignoring harm, it doesn't feel like a line at all. It feels like loyalty, purpose, and righteousness.

[00:08:39]And that's why the slow descent into extremism is so terrifying. It happens so gradually that by the time you look back, you can't recognize who you were before.

[00:08:51]You can get signed copies of The Culting of America attached here, or listen to me read it to you anywhere you get your audiobooks.