How does one get sucked into a cult? Amanda Montell posits that language plays a major part in attracting people to cults and keeping them in — a “conquest of vocabulary”. Language, she says, is the foundation cults are built on, forming the reality by which their members operate in. For example, Jim Jones adopted paranoid “us versus them” terminology, called his followers his “children”, defectors “traitors”, and himself “God in the Body” seemingly to foster a community that drew close to him and shunned outsiders out. Read full article here
