Cult of Personality
- The threat made by cults must be taken as serious because this methodology requires a large-scale complicated recruitment and manipulation process to which no one is immune. Ann Singleton the British woman who was once a member of Rajavi’s cult( MKO/PMOI) believes that “the irony was that I was in a state of modern slavery. I was mentally chained to the Mujahedin… Psychological manipulation can happen to anyone, any time. If you’re lucky, you end up with a timeshare”
Since all the cults function the same way, the website Howcultswork.com gives a very helpful definition of cults and their tricks to recruit and keep members:
Cults, wonderful on the outside but on the inside are very manipulating. Cult leaders are desperate to trick you into joining. They are after your obedience, your time and your money.
Cults use sophisticated mind control and recruitment techniques that have been refined over time. Beware of thinking that you are immune from cult involvement, the cults have millions of members around the world who once thought they were immune, and still don’t know they are in a cult! To spot a cult you need to know how they work and you need to understand the techniques they use. Teaching you these things is what this article is all about.
This article exposes the secret techniques cults will use to try and trick and control you. Cult leaders will not want you to read this, but read it anyway. Once you understand How Cults Work you will be better able to spot and avoid cult recruiters, and protect your family and friends.
The term cult seems strange to most people. They think that it is something far from their normal life, so they often have some misconceptions about the cults. In the second part of the article on howcultswork.com, the author clarifies some misunderstandings that are common among public about the cults:
Let’s eliminate some misconceptions about cults:
Cults are easy to spot, they wear strange clothes and live in communes.
Well some do. But most are everyday people like you and me. They live in houses. They wear the same clothes. They eat the same food. Cult leaders don’t want you to know that you are being recruited into a cult and so they order their recruiters to dress, talk and act in a way that will put you at ease. One cult has even invented a phrase to describe this, they call it”being relatable”.Since our focus here is the destructive cult of Rajavi, it should be said that “yes” some of MKO members are now living in castles like camp Ashraf or Camp Maryam but another large number who are mainly the recruiters and lobbying activists have apparently normal people who appear to be so good looking and friendly so it is very hard to spot them in the society due to their pleasant appearance.
Cults are full of the weak, weird and emotionally unstable.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skilled. The reality is that all sorts of people are involved in cults. One of the few common denominators is that they were often recruited at a low point in their life — more about that later.
Most of the members and ex-members of MKO are well educated people. Also the experts believe that the individuals with complicated minds who are eventually intelligent, talented people are more likely to be recruited by a cult because of their curiosity and interest in unknown adventures. The members and former members of MKO cult mostly master two or three languages. They have different skills such as computer work, arts, IT, political and technical science.
Cults are just a bunch of religious nut cases.
This is a common mistake people make thinking that cults are purely religious groups. The modern definition of a mind control cult refers to all groups that use mind control and the devious recruiting techniques that this article exposes. The belief system of a religion is often warped to become a container for these techniques, but it is the techniques themselves that make it a cult. In a free society people can believe what they want, but most people would agree that it is wrong for anyone to try to trick and control people.
About MKO, religion is only a mean to justify some of their activities. Relying on religion depends on their situation, for example to recruit a religious Iranian they claim to be a religious opposition but to deceive a Western politician they pretend to advocate a secular regime.
Refrence: Howcultswork.com
By Mazdak Parsi
Throughout history, there have always been numerous cults of personality which are often found in dictatorships. As we have studied the stories of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt or Roman Empire, etc. the kings had a divine right and they were sometimes considered or in better words worshiped as god-kings.
Also, in our time, personality cults are common in the monarchist, totalitarian systems with revolutionary opinions such as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot of Cambodia who all slaughtered a lot of innocent civilians during their ruling period.
The leader of the cult of personality usually seeks to minimize the public power and influence. The members of this type of system gradually loose their power of thinking, choosing and acting instead they submit to the absolute obedience to the person on the head.
In Mujahedin-Khalq Organization (the cult of Rajavi) as well as many other destructive cults, the leaders Masud Rajavi and his third wife Maryam Rajavi have turned the group – which was only a guerrilla force against Iranian regime – into a cult of personality where the members are manipulated to worship their leader as the messenger of God who gets his instruction directly from God. These members who are the victims of a destructive cult are so seriously brainwashed who are always ready to scarify themselves for the leaders by committing self-immolations and suicide terrorist operations. The examples of those operations are simply found in the history of MKO personality cult.
The heroic image that MKO shows to the members to provoke their praise and admiration have turned the group from an armed guerrilla opposition into a terrorist destructive cult which is much more dangerous. When a fighter of an armed guerrilla struggles for his cause he is likely to suffer some physical difficulties but when you are a captive of a cult of personality you are always under mental and physical torture and likely to become an anti-social person who might violate social norms without any sense of guilt or regret.
Arash Sametipour, spokesman for a Tehran-funded organisation called Nejat (rescue), which helps the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) defectors, left the MEK in 2001 after being arrested in Tehran when an attempt to kill the city’s police chief went wrong. Sametipour lost his hand while trying to kill himself by 
exploding a grenade. He spent nearly four years in prison.
"I was recruited by MEK as a student of computer engineering in northern Virginia in 1999," he told the Guardian. "They convinced me that if I wanted to be a fighter for jihad I had to abandon my parents and give up my education."
After months of training he was sent to Jordan and crossed into Iraq to Camp Ashraf.
"I had to watch videos of [MEK leader Massoud] Rajavi and write reports on my feelings. There were also meetings for self-criticism. They said you have to put away any love for belongings and for family.
"At first I resisted but you have no way out. You have no other news. I started to change in the way they wanted me to change.
"Finally in 2001 they gave me a mission. I was taken to Basra and, with the support of the Iraqi security service, was brought across the border."
He argues that closing Camp Ashraf will give MEK people the chance to escape from cult pressures and have a free choice of where to live.
Mahmoud Tabrizi, a UK-trained engineer who left Iran during the Shah’s time and joined the MEK, spent three years at Camp Ashraf in the 1990s. "You have to be totally dedicated. If you have the smallest doubt, you have to leave. I decided to go, even though I still support their activities. It’s the only army which treats deserters in the same way as its members. They paid my ticket to return to Britain," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/02/camp-ashraf-closure-iran-mek
Basically, the robots are built to help human being live an easier, more comfortable life aiding him to reach his goals. Man can get closer to his ambitions or ideals by using the robots. 
The leaders of MKO, as well as the leaders of the other destructive cults have chosen a simpler solution to their problems. They try to make robots out of the human beings who are under their rule in order to get their ambitions.
Now, after three decades of the existence of Camp Ashraf in Diala Province, Iraq and Camp Maryam in Auvers-sur-Oise France, the two bases have turned into the cities of robots:
In the city of robots everyday is like the other day. Any event, revolution and change happen around the world, no change happens in robots’ schedule. The ability of making a decision, choosing and changing is a gift that the robots miss. Indeed change is something necessary that makes the life more interesting and makes the hope blossom in the heart of people.
For the human-like robots of camp Ashraf and even Camp Maryam, in the heart of modern Europe, everyday is the same as yesterday. They get up at a certain time early in the morning; they eat at a certain time, in a certain place. They do the same thing everyday for example watering a garden or cleaning a tank…. They go to bed at certain time every night. While they are asleep, they should care about their dreams and nightmares because they shouldn’t be against the organization’s ideology. If so, the member has to write the contradictions and submit to his or her official and accept the consequences.
They should attend the manipulation meetings everyday to reveal their internal thoughts so as nothing of their thought remain hidden to their leaders. Therefore in the city of robots no one has individuality. Everybody belongs to the leader and has to devote his entire life to him.
But the robots of MKO are not equipped with remote control because they sometimes remember their owns and their belongings like the mothers including Batoul Soltani who had kept her children’s photos for years and watched them in the bathroom under heavy fear and anxiety, to keep the least hope in her heart.
But the leaders of MKO go further to kill the hope and will. They force the women in the cult to have hysterectomy surgery because the robots do not substantially have the power of reproduction or giving birth to the other people. This is the way the destructive cult of Rajavi uses along with its process of building robots.
With the growth of globalization and immigration, it has become clear that modern forms of slavery are growing in the world. The definition of slavery,
according to Joseph Rowntree Foundation includes three principal elements of the exploitive relationship:
– Sever economic exploitation
– Lack of a human rights framework
– Control of one person over another by the prospect or reality of violence.
There are more than 27 million slaves in the world more than the number of people extracted from Africa throughout the 400 years of the slave trade.
The very important factor that makes a difference between poor working condition and slavery is that the enslaved person has no real alternative but to submit to the abusive relationship.
The withdrawal of passports or ID documents, deceit and abuse of power, the use of physical and psychological pressure are the functions of all abusive slavery structures. The crucial point is that anyone who do protest against such conditions may be beaten, abused, raped, deported, tortured or even killed. These attacks can result in serious physical and psychological trauma.
All the above-mentioned criteria of modern slavery are perfectly functioned by Mujahedin Khalq terrorist cult. Unfortunately slavery is a problem people think we solved long ago but in fact, it’s still alive. It has simply taken a new form. People in Auvers-sur-Oise in a Parisian suburb are living next door to slaves without knowing it. The MKO members in Camp Maryam, France and Camp Ashraf, Iraq, are suffering the same poor conditions of the enslaved captives. These victims who are kept in a strange land can grow dependent on their captors, if only to survive. The leaders of MKO cult use a range of crimes-fraud, coercion, physical and psychological violence to hold their victims captive. They confiscate passports and during Saddam Hussein’s leadership threatened to turn their captives over to the Iraqi authorities if they refused to obey. Even if victims can escape, they often fear leaving because they are not able to deal with local difficulties. But since the American invasion to Iraq in 2003 and the disarmament of MKO by the US army, the victims found an opportunity to leave the cult. More than 600 have left Camp Ashraf so far. The 3300 members remaining in Ashraf and others who are residing in Auvers-sur-Oise are still victims of serious human rights violations. A broad-based awareness campaign should be launched to improve the supervision of Human Rights Organizations to strengthen protections for the modern slaves captured by the cult of Rajavi. Our former comrades who are victims of modern slavery need urgent help. We can make a tangible contribution to change their condition. The international community should get involved in liberating all slaves around the world especially those who are suffering the poor condition of living in cult of personality under the rule of the dictatorship of the Rajavis.
Unlike the past that the term slavery could easily be defined and discerned, definition of slavery, or better to say modern slavery, is disputed today. But as the unanimous opinion reigns, modern slavery is an institution whereby human beings are divested of their freedom and personal rights and describes a number of conditions involving control of a person against his or her will enforced to surrender to the wills of a master by violence or other forms of coercion. Defined in this way, the slave is wholly subject to the will of another and it has been practiced, in varying degrees, since the earliest of ages into the modern world.
According to some drawn common characteristics that distinguish slavery from other human rights violations, a slave is:
· forced to work — through mental or physical threat;
· owned or controlled by an ’employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse;
· dehumanized, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’;
· physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement. [1]
The public opinion assumes that slavery, the legal ownership of a person before the abolishment of slavery, is now illegal in all countries. Actually, the trade was legally abolished in the early 1800s. It is also prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Despite the fact that slavery is banned in most of the countries, it exists today and is usually ignored by most of people in the world and the media as well because it is practiced under a variety of forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.
Can it be called anything else but slavery when extreme poverty forces parents to offer themselves or their own children to toil in the fields as a guarantee against a loan that they hardly afford to pay? Or when individuals are lured by the promise of a good job but instead find themselves subjected to working without payment while enduring physical abuse, often in harsh and hazardous conditions? Or when the indebted, abducted and trafficked women and children are intimidated by crime families and mafia gangs into any disdainful and reprehensible activity? Or even when people are illegally lured and recruited by individuals, political parties, militia groups, freedom fighters and cults to work, usually under threat of violence or other penalties, in order to accomplish intended ambitions and objectives?
You do not need to be too smart to indicate instances of practiced slavery in the modern world. Endless, mushroom-like emergence of cults that physically and mentally enslave the recruits is one among many nightmares of the modern man. In fact, man’s hope and struggle to find out the right that is in many circumstances identical with the wrong and the false, sets him on a path at the end of which is a gateway at which a man stands to push them through as slaves. As Steven Hassan, the liberated member of a cult, puts it into words:
Throughout the world, people are stressed out, sleep-deprived, and disillusioned with existing political, social, and religious institutions. They are hungry for hope. Charismatic cult leaders with delusions of grandeur or an appetite for power and money are eager to take advantage of this situation by recruiting and indoctrinating people into a form of mental slavery. 2
There are countless unscrupulous religious and political leaders who today use a variety of cultic mind control techniques to deceive and enslave followers and deprive them of their freedom among other worldly possessions. Soon after drawn into the cult, the recruits lose their resistance and accent to be manipulated under the dangers and threats manufactured by manipulators who have sought to silence their courage. In fact, many are of the opinion that among many dangers man is exposed to by his fellow creatures, the mind control techniques practiced by majority of the cults to enslave the recruits are the greatest because they empower the evil men to carry out any evil deed that continue mostly undetected.
Enslaved by political cults, the members are mostly bought and sold in political bargains for the fulfillment of certain political interests. Speaking of one instance in particular, for more than three decades some free Iranian people have been enslaved in the clutches of a terrorist cult globally recognized under a variety of alias. Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCRI, NLA, … ) is a notorious political cult that nobody but those in its bound can possibly give details of the rough, cult-like life they have long experienced within it. The victimized insiders of the organization that have managed to tear the bounds are the sole evidences of modern slaves enslaved within the organization’s slave camp located in the heart of a scorching desert in Iraq the group refers to as Ashraf City. It is easy to prove that, according to the above state characteristics of a slave, the members of MKO are indeed modern slaves who are spending their life slaving in its camps mastered under the Rajavis.
References:
www.antislavery.org
Steven Hassan; Releasing the bonds, Freedom of Mind Press Somerville, MA, 2000, p. 10.
Two leading Mojahedin-e Khalq members, Hadi Roshanravani (62) and Mohammad-Ali Jaberzadeh Ansari (60) have been arrested by Interpol on entering Finland some days ago.
The Iranian government has asked for their extradition to face criminal charges.
At this moment Iran-Interlink believes that extradition of the men to Iran will not serve anybody’s interests. However, we do believe that as members of a destructive cult (the Mojahedin-e Khalq) they must not be handed back to the MKO on their release. We urge the Finnish authorities to put aside the political rhetoric which surrounds the arrest of these victims and look at the evidence of psychological manipulation used by the cult to coerce and control its membership.
Before any criminal charges are considered against them, the two men need to be given urgent psychological and medical attention. It is necessary to establish whether their past actions came of their own free will or whether they have been acting under the influence of mind control imposed by the Rajavi cult.
We urge the Finnish authorities to allow these men some time without any interference from outside influences, that is, visits by the cult’s operatives.
Past experience has shown that spending only a short time outside the direct influence of cult manipulation allows victims to regain some normal perspective. Once the ability to think critically returns, cult victims are able to make informed decisions about their involvement in the destructive practices of their organisation.
The experts and scientists are trying to build human-like robots that would be able to express feelings, emotions and love, meanwhile there are some people who are trying to turn human beings into robots. They definitely have to empty the individual of his feelings so as he would lose his will and individuality and then his control over his activities. In such a condition in which they commit any inhuman act to change the individual into a machine, the way is paved for further exploitation. It’s clear that some others are always ready to abuse these robot-like humans (as it’s obvious in the MEK-Israel relations)
Since the MEK found out that their bases in Iraq and France are under special focus, they have been launching further efforts to increase the number of their European bases. Maryam Rajavi’s trips to Italy, Germany and other European countries might be partly to achieve such goals.
It seems reasonable that foreign elements view the MEK as an opportunity (not an alternative), something that caused the Rajavis to remain in this illusion that the MEK appears important to West! The foreign side acts cautiously to use the MEK to pressure the regime of Tehran; between the both sides, there are the forces who have been taken as hostages by the MEK. They are the toys in the hands of Western politicians and the selfish Rajavis and if they are released of their mental and physical prisons, they will join those who criticize MEK policies, fighting the inhuman acts of the cult trying to stop the machine making factory of the Rajavis in Camp Ashraf and Auver Sur d’Oise.
Mental capture = psychological manipulation = Mind control = crimes against human beings
Although the number of cults mounts to a large quantity, they follow a unique regulation in their internal and external relations. According to the recent manipulation techniques, they deny the individual identity, instead they consider an organizational (cult –like) identity for the individual. The MEK try to deny their cult-like entity by attacking the others!
They claim it as a label and can not accept the fact that they represent a cult; however they have to work according to their cult-like regulations. They continually chant the slogan:”contradiction is not tolerated.” The Stalinism of Rajavi and his cult-like machiavelism does not prevent the defection of a lot of members.
Given the facts around MEK nature, does the foreign element receive Maryam Rajavi? Does he ever ask about the violation of basic human rights in MKO? Do they ever ask Maryam Rajavi why she ordered the hysterectomy surgery on women? Do they ever ask the Rajavis according to which rules the marriage is forbidden in MKO? Do the European parliamentarians who claim to be democratic, ask Mrs. Rajavi about the catastrophic situation of children of MEK members? It was better to ask her, while she was visiting Holocaust museum, why she came to such a museum despite her participation in the massacre of Kurdish Iraqis? Is there any other definition for the instrumental abuse?
Davood – London
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.