This is in response to this announcement:
Steve had quite a crowd and met a lot of people. The synagogue brought him out to educate the large congregation in downtown LA area. and I picked him up and took him to the airport this morning. Brought him back to our place for some of my homemade potato soup made with goat's milk and feta cheese from Israel. :-))
We caught up on the last few years and he is as cheery as ever; always working on new things.
One thing we discussed is how much we miss the old Cult Awareness Network (CAN), where ex-members of all kinds of cults got together for lectures and workshops in various parts of the country several times a year. It struck me how much ex-Witnesses miss out on hearing testimonies from other former cult members of other groups, and what a large part of important cult education you really miss out on by not doing so.
But ever since Scientology bankrupted CAN years ago, there has not been a group that has taken its same place. ICSA with Michael Langone is one of the only ones that has really educated speakers and researchers, but they are not local to me. Sure, there are the Christian gatherings (which are also slowly becoming non-existent - how sad about the Blue Mountain Christian retreat burning down a few days ago!)
Those were also great times with Bill and Joan Cetnar, but it is just not the same because it is all too homogenous and predictable to be around. Everyone that has Jesus badges as the only answer to all life's problems is just a little boring at times. God and the devil don't cause all the world's events, and they don't fix them all either.
Instead, we used to have EXPERTS in their field speak - masters like Margaret Singer from Berkeley, Christian magician Danny Korem, Robert J. Lifton, Robert Cialdini, Carol Giambalvo and some very high-level former Scientologists (Sea Org - Monica Pignotti) and also a few very good counselors, Christian and non-Christian, and University lecturers that specialized in psychology. You could meet Ted Patrick, the first notable deprogrammer who decided to go to a "weekend retreat" of a Moonie-type group where such tremendous physical and psychological pressure was put on him that he had to get out or he knew he would end up becoming one of them; the persuasion and confusion became so strong. He went to get a kid out, and almost ended up one himself. His experiences and those of Danny's magic tricks clearly showed that ANYONE can be at least temporarily coerced or brainwashed into a cult. These were the Jonestown years, the Charlie Manson years, the Children of God years. Former Hare Krishnas, Moonies (like Steve) and survivors of small Bible-based churches gone bad due to egotistical pastors or mental conditions. You had ex-Elizabeth Claire Prophet followers, who built bomb shelters in Montana and stocked weapons.
By the way, to the troll who tried to put Lady Lee down for making a big deal about her writings re: Lifton and cults, including her video on how the eight points apply to modern cults, saying Lifton had no intention of applying them to a religious cult or cults (but who really used this board as a platform to put Lady Lee down) and also his accusation of me "plagiarizing" Robert J. Lifton's Eight Points of Mind Control, applying it to Jehovah's Witnesses in my books and writings... I asked Steve about R.J. Lifton and how he remembered the involvement of Lifton in these cult conferences.
Steve, who had attended CAN meetings before I did, said that Lifton was all about giving lectures on how his work in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China
applied to religious cults on numerous occasions at CAN meetings, and his writings on this can also be found on the ICSA website.
No one to my rememberance at CAN thought of Witnesses as a cult when I started attending, including Steve (which was why he didn't mention Witnesses in his first book "Combatting Cult Mind Control," and later gave me credit for what I taught him about them in his second book, "Releasing the Bonds", and THAT WAS WHY I WROTE MY BOOK, to apply Lifton's study to the Witnesses, because no one else had. My "Understanding Cult Mind Control Among Jehovah's Witnesses" was written really as an extension of Steve's book, applied to us ex-Witnesses.
Steve and I did several interventions on JWs together (as well as other Bible-based groups). I consider him one of the greatest mentors of my life; one of seven mentioned on the back cover of the latest Free Minds Journal.
Steve took time to visit with Tory Christman (my favorite ex-Scientologist, my counterpart from that cult, 30 years going) and did a two-part interview with her as you see below. Tory is very funny, sweet and a lot of fun. I have been to her ex-Sci meetings at her house in L.A. as well. So I wanted to end on a good and light-hearted note by sharing the videos (now on Vimeo).
Maybe I will soon get Steve's presentation from the Synagogue and put it up, too.
Part One. Ex 30 yr Scientologist Tory Christman with Steve Hassan 11-20-10 http://vimeo.com/17042250 and Part Two: Ex 30 yr Scientologist Tory Christman and Steve Hassan 11-20-10 http://vimeo.com/17044043
More on this later, but I wanted to share this. I also wanted to say that Lee knows a hell of a lot more than some of you think she does.
Randy Watters