More than two decades ago when Massoud Rajavi informed of the great change and ideological revolution within Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), still believing to be active as a political group, hardly anybody first came to assume that it was actually the beginning of a long path leading the organization into the abyss of internal and external challenges. Although Rajavi’s marriage with his comrade’s wife received appreciations of a novel move in the group’s internal relations, soon the magnitude of the marriage itself was faded in comparison with other significant consequences of the move that required time to be actualized. The intended personality change in the insiders could not take effect overnight ant it really consumed time to accomplish Rajavi’s plotted ideological principles. Even Rajavi himself anticipated prolongation of the process when he said: “If you fail to comprehend now, be patient. I do not know, maybe you come to understand in one, five or ten years”.
It was in no way an overstated assertion since he knew well what would come out of his initiated revolution. Still many aspects of his devised ideological ploy and its profound effects remain concealed and beyond the scope of the world. Only in the recent years, and following the disclosures made by many defected members, the outside world has been to some extent informed of the organization’s cultic aspects and internal human tragedies. Interestingly enough, the modern world was even shocked to a great degree to learn about horrible, deplorable stories related by the ex-members about what passes inside the organization.
Of the most outrageous, scandalous cult records recently revealed are hysterectomy operations and Rajavi’s sex scandal, his polygamous marriage with the female cadres of the Leadership Council. Being under the constant influence of cultic behaviors that show most abnormal to the outsiders, the insiders and even the separated members consider them as typically normal. As expounded by Thaler Singer “If you spend enough time in any environment, you will develop a personal history of experience and interaction in it. When that environment is constructed and managed in a certain way, then the experiences, interactions, and peer relations will be consistent with whatever public identity is fostered by the environment and will incorporate the values and opinions promulgated in that environment”. 1
It is of great importance to perceive to what extent the detached members of MKO have come to incorporate abnormal experiences and interactions of the group’s cultic environment now out of that milieu. Long being engaged in cooperative activities with other comrades in an environment that hardly could they realize its cultic structure under the cover of political campaign, these members fail to perceive that they had been coerced into many abnormalities. It has to be pointed out that it is a fact most cult members have experienced and as Singer explains “when you engage in cooperative activity with peers in an environment that you do not realize is artificially constructed, you do not perceive your interactions to be coerced. And when you are encouraged but not forced to make verbal claims to "truly under- standing the ideology and having been transformed," these inter. actions with your peers will tend to lead you to conclude that you hold beliefs consistent with your actions. In other words, you will think that you came upon the belief and behaviors yourself”. 2
So explicitly explained by cult experts, the insiders and newly defected members are unaware of the change in them while in the cult and which are regarded bizarre behaviors by the outside onlookers. The defectors should know that whatever they consider as the mist ordinary, normal and unimportant are much objectionable, bizarre and abnormal to the outside societies. Then, it is best recommended that the defected members of MKO be sensitive to whatever monotonous regularity they were putting up with in the cult and to disclose them to the world to judge for itself.
References:
1. Thaler Singer, Margaret, Cults in our midst, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; A Wiley Imprint, p.76.
2. Ibid.
As part of the intense influence and change process in many cults, people take on a new social identity, which may or may not be obvious to an outsider. When groups refer to this new identity, they speak of members who are transformed, reborn, enlightened, empowered, rebirthed, or cleared. The group’ approved behavior is reinforced and reinterpreted as demonstrating the emergence of "the new person." Members are expected to display this new identity. 1 The new personality totally split from the outside world is manipulated for a variety of group tasks based on the objectives of the group and cult that consider the outsiders as the enemies who have to be confronted: The conflicts a mass movement seek and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium. 2 As Hoffer asserts, a cultist personality is formed to be submissive to the inner-cultic relations that have priority to outwardly demonstrated ambitions and goals. The members undergoing overall identity change easily consent to any means of changing behaviour and conduct. Thus, cults can successfully accomplish their goal of binding new members to the group. Considering the stages people will go through as their attitudes are changed by the group environment and the thought reform processes, Singer points to psychologist Edgar Schein’s second stages of three: During this second stage, you sense that the solutions offered by the group provide a path to follow. You feel that anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt can be reduced by adopting the concepts put forth by the group or leader. Additionally, you observe the behavior of the longer, term members, and you begin to emulate their ways. As social psychology experiments and observations have found for decades, once a person makes an open commitment before others to an idea, his or her subsequent behavior generally supports and reinforces the stated commitment. That is, if you say in front of others that you are making a commitment to be "pure," then you will feel pressured to follow what others define as the path of purity. 3 There are also the eight psychological themes that psychiatrist Robert Lifton has identified as central to totalistic environments and cults invoke these themes for the purpose of promoting behavioral and attitudinal changes in the members. The third theme, demand for purity, depicts two opposite world of black and white; the cult being an absolutely white and clean world versus the black and evil world of outside. Of course, the members with a new personality have no other choice but to think and act according to cult’s ideology and drawn strategy: An us-versus-them orientation is promoted by the all-or-nothing belief system of the group: we are right; they (outsiders, nonmembers) are wrong, evil, unenlightened, and so forth. Each idea or act is good or bad, pure or evil. Recruits gradually take in, or internalize, the critical, shaming essence of the cult environment, which builds up lots of guilt and shame. Most groups put forth that there is only one way to think, respond, or act in any given situation. There is no in between, and members are expected to judge themselves and others by this all-or-nothing standard. 4 The process of producing identity within MKO follows the same mechanism in the cults and its orientation began with the start of the internal ideological revolution. All the members undergoing the revolution process admitted their identity change, that there does exist a long distance between their organizational and personal identities. It was instilled into them that their identity would be prompted based on the extent of adherence to the ideological system of the group and denial of any personal identity. In a text written by a member of MKO in self-denial we read: Personality, egocentrism, self-reliance and individualism are all souvenirs of the bourgeoisie’s worthless humanism that distanced me from the organization as far as its degree of its impact on me. It was like a chaff that barred me to drink the pure, life-giving instructions of the organization and was leaving me alone in a desolate waste-land with no way out. I was enslaved by dominant ambiguities within me. When I failed to overcome the ongoing struggle inside me, I was even more vulnerable to the outside misfortunes and could not even face them. 5 The member’s confession well depicts his identity destabilization and what psychologists call an identity crisis. He looks back at his own world and values to find out that he has been wrong in the past. This process makes him uncertain about what is right, what to do, and which choices to make and of course, as he admits, only the cult-like instructions of the organization can lead him to what is inspired to be the right path. Consequently, he takes on a new organizational identity which he considers a change for the better. In the process, he, as the member of a cult, detaches from his most dear ideas and attachments which he discovers to have been nothing beyond a barren waste-land for the identity reborn, a utopia in the horizon he fails to dismiss easily. Masoud Banisadr, another separated member of MKO, in his memoir relates of the time when sat tearing whatever attached him to the past under the commands of the organization: This time I attacked my old photographs from my own childhood till marriage and up to then, my parents photographs as I wanted to deny all of them, my father who was perhaps responsible for my bourgeois tendencies and my mother who was responsible of my own ‘mild’ and ‘gentle’ behaviour known as liberal ones. Anna seeing me taking all those photographs and albums, with anger, was quietly crying, then when I attacked our marriage Album she start crying louder, and asked me to stop it. She said those are not just yours . . . but I was not listening to her and took everything and put them in a rubbish bag. 6 Quoting Lifton’s forth theme, through a cult’s instructions, members are told whatever connects them to their former lives is wrong and has to be avoided, a fact well affirmed by MKO’s ex-members: Through the confession process and by instruction in the group’s teachings, members learn that everything about their former lives, including friends, family, and nonmembers, is wrong and to be avoided. Outsiders will put you at risk of not attaining the purported goal: they will lessen your psychological awareness, hinder the group’s political advancement, obstruct your path toward ultimate knowledge, or allow you to become stuck in your past life and incorrect thinking. 7 That is why MKO refer to members’ solubility in the organizational identity as a “reborn” or “identity salvation”. The organization, being transformed into a cult, pursues the same cult mechanism of altering the members’ personal identity to produce a new identity. References: 1. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 78. 2. Eric Hoffer; The true believer, Harper &. Row, Publishers, New York, 1966, p. 112. 3. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 76. 4. Ibid, 71. 5. Mojahed, no. 252; Abdol-ali Maasoumi’s letter to the ideological revolution. 6. Masoud Banisadr; Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel. 7. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 72.