INTERVIEW — Aug 11, 20:11
Interviewee: 32 years old, female, main language Italian, speaking in English, lives in Germany, Italian nationality.
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Interviewer: Well, there's basically just one main question, and the question is: when you hear the word cult, what comes to your mind?
Interviewee: To my mind comes the image of, kind of, a group of people that decide to choose to join, let's say, a community based on dogmatic beliefs. And, to me, the concept of cult also comes with the idea of a lack of freedom
Interviewee: so I have the feeling that when someone decides to join a cult, they might not even call it a cult, actually — because I also feel the name itself comes with a negative connotation. So I don't know if people who join actually say "they belong to a cult" or something — it's more like a word given from outside, by outsiders, to address this group.
Interviewee: So it's a group of people based on very specific beliefs, maybe goals, maybe a project — maybe there's a common project that people decide to commit to — but it comes with, like, compromising: once you're in, you leave something outside, you have to give up something else to be part of that community that's then called a cult. But I have more the feeling it's a name that's given to this group from outsiders.
Interviewer: And would you have specific examples of groups that would fit this definition you gave?
Interviewee: The first thing that comes to my mind, if I think about — Jehovah's Witnesses, yes, to me, I would say that sounds a bit like a "culty" community group. And also, the things that make me address them as such is the fact that they keep trying to include more and more people, and they exert pressure on people to make them join their group — which, I take for granted, comes also with a financial commitment, for example, I don't know.
Interviewee: Cult, for me, also means a lack of freedom. It means committing to rules, committing to maybe a financial engagement, and it comes with giving up some individual freedoms, let's say.
Interviewer: Do you feel like the Jehovah's Witnesses verify all the criteria that you gave, or do you have other examples — and if not, do you have other examples of a group that would fit these criteria?
Interviewee: No, I don't have much personal experience. I think it's Jehovah's Witnesses, because I've happened to interact with them. I also happened to interact with another — like, some other girls proselytizing, they stopped me on the street once, in Mitte, and they were, I think, kind of Mormons — so, a U.S.-based Christian community, "the New Jesus something", I don't know — but they looked like they were, like, 20 years old and 18, and they were sent on a mission to spread the word. And, for me, this sounds like a cult, because they were way too young to have a concrete, individual opinion about such a big topic as spirituality can be. And so, for me, this sounds like a bit of brainwashing that's been done at an age where there wasn't even yet self-consciousness and self-awareness — and the fact that they were going around, having come from another state far away to spread the word, it didn't feel like it was the result of their own decision, a choice, or the result of research — because, when it comes to spirituality, it should be the result of an individual's own search.
Interviewee: So — I'm not sure of the name of this community, maybe "the New Garden," "the New Jesus," something — I think they were Mormons, they were dressed like members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, something like this, yeah. This comes to my mind. I also met other people coming from more, like — what we can call, like, "new age" kinds of things — so, like, '60s, '70s kind of spiritual movements. So there is always, like, a connection with spirituality in what "cult" means to me, because often those communities, as far as I know, develop around — I mean, spirituality, let's say. It also happened, we had to talk with someone who was there at the beginning, in the '60s-'70s, of this Human Design kind of thing — yeah, talking to this person, it felt like — you know, for me, it's not about having strong beliefs and following them out of personal resonance, it's the fact of trying to convince others when there's no question, when there's an explicit demand. This, to me, starts to sound like a cult — and it starts to sound like, they want me in also because they need something from me, which may turn out to be money.
Interviewer: Do you think a cult needs this aspect to be a cult? Can you be a cult without trying to get new people in?
Interviewee: Probably, yes — because "cult" comes, it goes together with this perception of cult meaning also a lack of personal freedom that you give up by joining something, at a price — in exchange, they give you something greater, but at a price.
Interviewee: For me, "cult" has a negative connotation. but I might be wrong. Society for its own reasons, has been selling the term "cult" with a negative connotation, you know. I'm quite sure — and I never did research on this — I'm quite sure that "cult" itself doesn't have a negative connotation.
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