Dr. Alexandra Stein on Political Cults, II

Dr. Alexandra Stein

In this article, we continue the interview with Dr. Alexandra Stein, who spent years in a political cult in the United States. After she left, she got a Ph.D. in Sociology and has made a career studying ideological extremism. Her latest book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in cults and totalitarian systems, was published in 2021.

Alexandra Stein, Ph.D. is a writer and educator specializing in the social psychology of ideological extremism and other dangerous social relationships. She has held academic posts at the University of Birkbeck, London, the University of Westminster, the University of Minnesota, and was until recently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sussex.

Dr. Alexandra Stein

Hannah Arendt says that these belief systems are ideologies, as we call them, and have two different faces.

The internal world of a cult or a totalitarian group or nation or whatever it is, and then you have the propaganda which faces outwards into the non-cultic world.

The outward-facing propaganda is still vaguely sane and connected to reality. It has that kind of ideology, but has to have what she calls a foot in reality. It can't be completely nuts, OK? Because otherwise people wouldn't listen at all.