A lot of readers might not know this, but for years I was in a cult.

With the perspective of time I can now see it clearly. How could I have been so easily duped? This cult was so subversive that its own leadership, which was diffuse, was largely not aware that it was heading a cult. Leaders, in fact, often suffered the most from the cult’s abusive practices, which, as true believers, they still endorsed. Anyone who openly resisted this cult was threatened with ostracism and destitution, to be cast out from the fellowship and to fend for themselves in the outside world. It was a pretty bleak cult, and it is hard now from this distance to understand its allure.

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