Fear Of The Leftist Cult
By Syran Warner
“It would have been very hard to get me to join a religious cult,” Dr. Alexandra Stein admits. “I’m a fourth-generation atheist but I’m also fourth-generation left-wing, far left, I’m still left. But I’m a different kind of leftist than I was. Very different.”
Dr. Stein is intimately familiar with the phenomenon of left-wing political cults. About forty years ago, long before she became an ace in the world of social psychology, Alexandra got involved with a group of communist “activists” called The O that, once put under the microscope, had all the characteristics of a destructive cult.
At the dawn of the 1980’s, Stein made the trip to Minneapolis from San Francisco to join an underground political group that promised a social revolution, and soon found herself following the rules of elusive leader Theo Smith. He had unique concepts for building better advocates.
Before long, The O controlled virtually every aspect of Stein’s life through a series of memos that instructed actions from her work to her daily routines to her sexual life. Smith even wrote a memo attempting to control his members flatulence. What do you imagine that had to do with empowering the working class? Like virtually all of the leader’s tactics, it was arbitrary to the goals his activists signed up to achieve.
“I’m very concerned about young progressive people going down the same road I went down,” Dr. Stein says. “They should know the signs of a cult, so the same thing doesn’t happen to them.”
A photo of Alexandra from her days in The O
In the case of The O, warning signs would’ve been abundant from the start if Alex had known what to look for. There was near total isolation from the world outside of her internal contacts. The schedule was grueling to the point of not having the time or energy to analyze what, if any, progress was being made. There were personality tests and criticisms of her “defects” to break her down. The shadowy leadership was clearly authoritarian in reflection. The beliefs, totalistic. Stein voiced criticisms of the group only for her concerns to fall on deaf ears. If she got a response, the analysis would lead to indications of her own faults.
Once indoctrinated, Stein was conditioned to view herself as someone who needed the discipline The O offered and was convinced through non-scientific assessments that she had a flaw that needed to be broken. She sees now that she was miserable, yet still committed to changing the world.
It would take a decade for Alex to escape. She eventually realized the ways she and other members of The O been abused. The great cause was, in reality, the fantasy of a psychopath.
One of the things Alexandra credits to her recovery was seeing a small listing in The Star Tribune for a talk by Steve Hassan on "Combatting Cult Mind Control" that was hosted by the support group Free Minds. When she responded to the listing, they sent a packet of info including Robert J. Lifton's 8 criteria of the signs cults are known to display. The O, which was supposed to be a direct form of advocacy that championed human rights and empowered workers, checked every box.
[You can read Lifton’s warning signs on Alexandra’s website here.]
From there, having already left the group, her experience started making sense. In the years after she found freedom, Stein would go down a path of advocacy for cult awareness. Skills learned as an organizer were used to prevent others from similar fates. However, not everyone adjusts to life after cultic abuse so easily. “Some people find it difficult to believe in anything ever again,” she says. As an exit councilor, she’s knows there are many paths on the way out.
What I find chilling about the story of The O is how closely some of their stated goals reflect political concepts I believe in myself. Having been a leftist since I was in middle school, it’s not difficult for me to perceive how I could’ve defended the mission if it were a contemporary group or if I’d been at the wrong place and time, joined myself. So often when I hear a cult story, the reasons people join are a little mysterious from the Godless, cynical vista I occupy. However, my interests being what they are, a left-wing organization with a powerful message might camouflage itself from my cultdar.
There is a truth about cults in their diverse incarnations that should be considered by those who think an organization with some of their values couldn’t be destructive. Many people assume that they’re too savvy to be deceived in the first place.
One cult might not appeal to your ideology and be easily recognized for what it is. Another might advertise something that fixes to your desires and is unrecognizable as a destructive force. Cults don’t advertise the things we learn about them in documentaries.
Dr. Stein wouldn’t have been all that likely to join the Westboro Baptists or any of the thousands of Christian cults out there. She’s an atheist. The O was a different story.
An exercise enthusiast is more likely to be seduced by a yoga cult than a couch potato. Someone with little work experience is more likely to find themselves in a mid-level marketing scheme than an industry veteran. A right-wing conservative is more likely to be seduced be QAnon and, yes, a hardline leftist is more likely to join a group like The O. These aren’t absolute rules but illustrate the diversity of groups and they jive with the line cult experts want everyone to know- without education everyone has vulnerabilities that could be exploited.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not what most cults look like.
Finding out about the existence of left-wing cults as a dyed-in-the-wool progressive was a little like finding out Santa was a hoax or hearing that a great actor is a rapist. It disturbed me at the core and caused me to actually realize I could be vulnerable too. That I might not recognize something I believed in wasn’t real.
Most everyone shares the idea that they’re somehow immune to coercive control, despite heaps of research suggesting otherwise. There’s also an idea that cults prey on the weak-minded but that doesn’t really stand up when you look at someone like Dr. Stein and the PhD on her wall. Stein was strong willed and highly intelligent when she joined The O. Her story doesn’t square with the idea of cult members being cow-eyed, gullible fools.
“People do have critical thinking skills when they join. I think you get a range of people who get into cults, but a cult doesn't want people who are unproductive. What’s the use of people who can’t be productive for you? These are your PR people, and they help run the organization or whatever the things are that [the cult leader is] looking for. It's often intelligent, energetic people with meaning who want to contribute to society who wind up in cults.”
I thought about Alexandra and The O this spring when I heard about an animal rights organization in Berkley, California called Direct Action Everywhere or, more commonly, DxE.
I had received an email from someone who claimed to have had run-ins with the group through their own work as an activist in San Francisco. They claimed stories were circulating about these militant vegans that set off alarm bells in their mind.
Now a claim doesn’t mean a group is a cult, and may be dangerous in and of itself (as has been previously explored on this website). But the story I heard piqued my interest. Could there be such thing as a vegan cult?
At a glance- Direct Action Everywhere is a group that seeks to affect animal liberation globally through extremely assertive means, like open rescue and theatrical disruptions that break the fourth wall. Subtlety is not in the organization’s nature.
The group was founded by wunderkind Wayne Hsiung in 2013, laying down roots in the liberal hub of Berkeley, California. Since it’s inception DxE has made inroads on its “Everywhere” promise, with divisions in over 20 countries.
Hsiung
Wayne Hsiung has always been an overachiever. As a young man, he created himself in record time. Wayne excelled in academia and shortly after he left college, he became a law professor at Northwestern. Wayne was already an activist of sorts, but his “come to Jesus” moment occurred when he visited a slaughterhouse, walked out horrified, and decided to form DxE. He wanted to change the world. It’s a seemingly virtuosic story of an animal savior entering the picture radicalized by empathy. So why are people calling Wayne’s organization a cult and him a cult leader?
One explanation is that it’s simply a radical group with a bold mission, so incendiary and so far ahead of its time, it’s being unfairly maligned with the cult label by its own otherness. Maybe Wayne is more of an eccentric leader than a malignant one. Or maybe it has something to do with the perception or misperception of magical thinking associated with its goals. They are ambitious to say the least.
A glance at the handsome website of Direct Action Everywhere makes clear the organization’s outward mission is to achieve the liberation of all animals in a single generation. A lofty and magnanimous goal, with great appeal for those who feel the movement isn’t progressing fast enough. How they plan to make this a reality is explained in the following video contained in their “about” section. If you skip by, know that the tactic emphasized is physical liberation or “open rescue” which is prohibited by law pretty much everywhere. I’m a little skeptical of any organization that puts its members in that kind of jeopardy, but I understand it. If you want to disrupt the system, it could be argued, you’ve got to make some sacrifices.
In spite of my dietary failures, I don’t have to go through a lot of mental gymnastics to think there’s nobility in this pursuit. Animals suffer when we commoditize them. Suffering is bad. I’d prefer animals not suffer. This group appears to be doing more to expedite the process of animal liberation than any other group. So, what’s the problem?
There are stories of control and smearing that have led some activists to allege DxE has cult characteristics, but it’s prudent to observe the group broadly as a malignant organization, which usually will have a few cracks outside Human Resources. There’s a manifesto of sorts, so we’ll start there.
According to the timeline, by 2040 animal farming in the US will come to a close. Heads of State will publicly support open rescue despite its “theft” association by 2030. Some of the supporters listed are: the Clintons, Obamas, and Merkels, with The Pope rounding out the bunch.
These are lofty goals, but Wayne has concocted a unique plan to realize them. Through his studies in economics and law, the skilled organizer is tackling the issue of animal liberation with a new rubric that posits the way we’ve been approaching social change is outdated. The direct-action method is how we see the end of animal farms by 2040. The world is supposed to change its philosophy about meat, and quickly, through means like open rescue.
I’m not going to theorize about the viability of these goals. The focus should be on the pitch itself and the singularity of the vision it spawned from.
First, what has been the effect of DxE pitching itself as the organization with the solution to end the suffering of animals so expediently? Tremendous enthusiasm in the vegan community, expansive growth, activists flocking to Berkeley, etc. The appeal is in the promise. What I think should be considered is if this is the solution it purports to be or a cult marketing tactic.
I did some cursory scanning of other modern activist groups and couldn’t find a forecast like DxE is promising in any of them. Goals are available, yes, but the specificity was absent, the promises down to earth. From my point of view, the reason other groups leave the hard-lines out of their pitches is that they might imagine doing so would be unethical, should the goal rely on magical thinking. DxE’s roadmap is borderline prophetic, and the theory is, of course, unproven. Is it optimistic or deceptive? Is DxE is a cult?
DxE protesters.
An outsider could point to the pledge DxE encourages its members to make. This is a hard line promise to not dine with meat eaters and it comes with a bracelet to identify the brave. This kind of thing could, if you eat food, lead to isolation. It’s also fair to wonder why members are keeping track of their interactions and whereabouts in a bizarre sort of merit system that’s called DxE Connections. It’s not a survey but a tool that helps you self report on your life. How could a system like this be abused?
The problem with these inquiries into the organization is that virtually anything can be explained away with a “it’s for the animals” defense. ISIS has something like that too.
What’s hard to explain to a militant vegan is why other vegan activists and former DxE members are talking about the issues the same way former Branch Davidians were before their house was on fire.
“To any present DxE members who are reading this: I know it is difficult to consider that DxE is both a counterproductive organization for your activism as well as cult. Your experience and your commitment will make you want to reject criticism of the group…”
Activist, author and known vegan intellectual Carol Adams wrote those words in her public boycott of events featuring DxE. She’s got legitimate stature in the vegan community, so this turned a few heads. What’s remarkable about that quote is there’s no PC dancing around the subject with a joinder like “possibly” or any of the other linguistic tricks you see when cautious people talk about litigious organizations like DxE and use the “c” word. CULT.
Adams goes on to list a few questions she wanted current DxE members to contemplate. These are questions that should be asked when trying to reason with someone who might be in a vegan cult.
Carol Adams
“Is there a sense that there's so much work to be done for the animals, that you feel pressured to spend most of your free time working on DxE projects and attending DxE events?”
“Are you spending most or all of your free time with other DxE members, either working or socializing?”
“Have you put aside your discomfort with some actions/activities or tactics you believe you must do that are "for the animals"? Are the events you attend really about the animals or about obedience to the organization?”
“Have you set aside your own gut feelings in favor of the judgment of the group's leaders?”
“Have you come to believe that only this group can “save” the animals?”
“How is the leader referred to? Is any one leader seen as essential to the animal liberation movement? Is any one leader called an “angel,” or “the key to animal liberation?” Is it thought the DxE cannot function without this specific leader?”
“Do you spend time with friends who are not in DxE? Did you take the Liberation Pledge (that you would not eat with people eating flesh), and did this result in you not seeing friends and family you otherwise loved?”
The theme most often indicated in these questions is isolation.
Something all cults do is pull members towards the pack while pushing away healthier relationships and functional family systems. In DxE, members are encouraged to live together. Live with people who understand you. Preferably in Berkeley.
Having a job is discouraged, so it might be all DxE all the time. Taking a pledge to not eat with meat eaters? Well, that seems easy though risky because it would limit the pledger from outside opinions and push them deeper into quality time with an ilk thats been fed the same granola.
Carol put her letter together after DxE defectors came to her with their own stories. Collecting single star reviews can be one path to understanding the ethical core of an organization, with or without cult assignment. Independent reviews remove ambiguous caveats like the ones I’ve peppered in this article, and they have a tendency replace bullshit with Survivor Stories, which are authentic, if believed.
Is this a second-hand smear? It’s true that Carol was never in the group and it’s true that her allegations are sensational.
But a thinking person might notice that Adams has no other history of writing salacious stories about vegans. She doesn’t cover cults in any of her other musings. She doesn’t attack members of the community that she shares a bond with, it’s just DxE. She’s in good standing with all other denominations of animal rights groups.
It’s my opinion that Carol is a trustworthy source but, of course, it would be better to talk to one of the individuals who prompted her missive.
These are real ideas from real people who experience complex emotions, unlike plants, which are understood to be unthinking by science.
I decided to get in touch with Adams and she allowed me to poach one of her sources. A few days later, I found myself in contact with a woman I’ll be referring to as Samantha. We spoke at length about what she saw inside the machine.
Open rescue.
The story started with Samantha searching for a higher form of vegan activism. Back in 2015, Samantha was feeling a little lonely in her pursuit. She didn’t have friends who shared her values and was seeking to connect with likeminded individuals. Samantha attended vegan festivals and animal rights conferences, but being fairly reserved and independant, she had yet to commit to a group.
That changed when Sam was introduced to a few women in Direct Action Everywhere. The concept appealed to her right away.
“To meet other ethical vegans and feel like there was a community was kind of wonderful.”
Early on, I shared concerns with Samantha about Wayne’s brand of open rescue. It seemed to me the process was exploiting members because all participants were more or less required to show their faces and name themselves while breaking the law. In my opinion, this seems like a massive commitment for any organization to ask of members.
Samantha says she still supports open rescue, though she agreed it could probably be tweaked for safety. The mission and tactics weren’t the problem as far as she was concerned. Samantha also mentioned there was a benefit for the open rescuers in the respect it brings members. “They’re seen as heroes,” she says. That tracks.
What Samantha saw as the flaw in this particular system was not anything about the risk of the rescuing of animals on members but how DxE was handling the sanctuary stage of the rescue.
“They don't use the money [they generate] for animal care. They have lied to sanctuaries. They have promised money and not given it. They've smeared sanctuary operators who speak out against them. Most of the sanctuaries in Northern California that used to partner with them, and [they won’t] take in these animals. [They] will not work with them anymore because they have screwed them over.”
What if a farmer came out with a shotgun and felt strongly about getting their chicken back? The scenario I imagined didn’t spook Samantha, but it jogged her memory.
“There was an action in Sonoma County a couple of years ago in Petaluma where one person, basically, they chained themselves with a bike lock at this factory and then the conveyor belt started moving and he was injured and hospitalized from that. He could have died because the DxE people couldn't find the key.”
What if things get fucked up?
“I've talked to people who work at sanctuaries and stuff in that industry who were like, There's no way these workers who are low wage at this place who might not even speak English or might not have legal status turned on that machine to [tried] and hurt an activist like this. They think it was a plant from leadership.”
Samantha was quick to add that the story is lore and unknowable. I didn’t care much either way, but was interested in what the story said about the dire nature of Samantha’s faith in leadership. To entertain the idea that management would put a member in that kind of danger for the sake of publicity is the kind of thing I typically only see in faith practitioners.
Activists with bike locks around their necks.
I had more questions about DxE’s internet-famous stunts but Samantha was done with the topic.
“I usually don't talk about their tactics when I [speak out.] I try to more talk about that they're abusing activists, that it’s harming the movement. Because it's abusive, because it's fraud. That's my take on it.”
Shaming, isolation, brainwashing, narcissism; Samantha wanted to talk about DxE in cult terms. We weren’t going to dissect the mission.
How does Samantha feel about the good times when she reflects?
“In retrospect that community and connection, I realized after I left that it’s really false, it was a really false sense of community and connection that you had, but at the time, yes, I did believe that it connected me and made me part of the community.”
I wondered if the word “cult” came up in DxE before the stories of survivors came out online. Samantha said that the group was checking off some classic boxes in retrospect, but she had only heard the word in regards to the pledge. It got real when outside opinions were added to the mix.
“At some point my brother was like, “oh, [you’re in] this militant cult” and I was surprised he said that. But, you know, they did ask you to take this pledge of not eating with people who ate meat. And I did do that at some point. That definitely caused separation; a little bit more separation.”
Samantha describes the process of getting other members to take the pledge. She says there were frequent meetings that ended with the identification of who had and had not decided. From her point of view, people who hadn’t pledged were singled out. “They say it’s [the member’s] choice, they don't have to take the pledge, but there was such enormous pressure. Like you had to raise your hand and then whoever's not doing it, we need to talk to them afterwards.”
DxE members in solidarity.
I asked Samantha if she found herself more closed off from others as she got deeper into DxE and she says she didn’t herself, but that it was obvious to her that what I was talking about happened with other members.
“I had a full-time job that wasn't in animal rights, I wasn't there all the time, but they had multiple things going on every day, all day. And so, for a lot of people, especially the younger people, it's just DxE all the time. They live in these activist houses where they have, 10 people living in a house. One house had 15 people. They had six people in a one-bedroom apartment. So, they're living with only DXE people. DxE has all these social events, all these committees, all this stuff going on all the time. They were just always with DxE people.”
It’s familiar. This brought to mind the dwellings of The O that Dr. Stein had wrote about. She described a shotgun apartment and how it was arranged to fit an extra body when space was thin. What Samantha described was even more extreme.
Six people in a one-bedroom apartment is not conducive to anyone’s mental health or psysical health, to say nothing of the overt cultiness. To DxE’s credit, rent in Berkeley is expensive, so it saves resources to have the living quarters packed tight. Finances are not what Samantha is describing though. She’s speaking to the step in the process where the group totally engulfs its prey. You don’t have any privacy when you’re living with 5 other people in a one bedroom and you’re not going to get any outside opinions. All you see is what you see. That would be a situation that fosters mind control, if that’s what’s going on.
We talked about the state of operations as they exist today, after reports of abuse came about. Samantha made a long list of events and conferences that DxE has been banned from. Banned, by other vegans. She says this was happening long before Carol Adams’ letter. It’s wild* to think of (numerous) vegan festivals banning a vegan organization that progresses the mission positively, right?
*If slightly less wild than imagining a vegan cult in the first place.
An image found on the internet.
That was lighter stuff. The talk with Samantha intensified when we started talking about why all the vegan bans came to be slapped on the most progressive group in the ecosystem.
DxE found a reputation of fostering abuse according to the past. It was no longer a safe space for activists according to the past. This was before people were referring to DxE as a cult.
As we moved closer to the smearing and silencing, Samantha paused and became emotional. Clearly, there was something in this story that was more serious. Leadership had failed to protect its own members, she said. There were multiple people at the top who dropped the ball, Samantha said, but she made it clear she was singling out Wayne.
“I'm usually very calm about this, but he's abused a lot of people, some people I care about. So, I apologize. I shouldn't get so emotional, but it's very disturbing to me now that I know what's been caused and continues to be caused.”
What Samantha was talking about was a nightmare HR system sold as a means of keeping its members safe. It’s the kind of thing that makes it very difficult to give DxE the benefit of the doubt when having the cult conversation.
“So, when I joined DxE, I'm like, this is a great organization. They have a conflict resolution team and when they have two activists who are in conflict with each other they help them resolve it. Doesn't that sound lovely… Well, yeah, but it's not lovely. It's a way to silence people. You go through the conflict resolution team and you have to promise to keep things confidential and you're not allowed to talk about it outside of that. And so, if somebody came and said they were sexually assaulted, they weren't allowed to announce that outside of [conflict resolution.] It was definitely a way to keep victims quiet. That's how I see it. A young woman came forward at a meeting and said, ‘I was raped by another activist, I went through the conflict resolution team and I don't like the way it was handled.’ She named [the perpetrator] and said she didn't like the way Wayne handled it, and later this guy then got promoted. The meeting was on a Friday. By Wednesday she had a cease and desist in the mail and a couple of months later she got a lawsuit. She was sued for defamation. A lot of people had submitted conflict resolution claims against Wayne too, but nobody knew that other people had done it that they were experiencing the same thing. He would smear them. It was just such a manipulative thing.”
This was serious. I heard that Wayne had said some unsavory things about a journalist from Carol Adams. It was when we discussed my plan to write an article about DxE.
In response to a bit of negative press, Wayne indicated the journalist was a racist, then called him a drug addict, then indicated the reporter was paying sources to defame him. The tone of Wayne’s screed is that of someone on drugs having a breakdown in front of their keyboard. Not that this was the case, it’s just an example of what Wayne’s quotes set off in my mind.
Obviously, smearing a rape victim after placing them in a bad situation and then gagging the victim from speaking is an even more serious accusation. When Wayne first came on the scene, his background as a law professor gave him credibility. It seemed like he was doing something good with his education. In light of Samantha’s story, it seemed the talent Hsiung brought to the table in the beginning might now be the reason others in the vegan community consider him a liability.
Samantha was at a meeting she presumed was going to be about events, but Wayne had a totally different agenda. Hsiung wanted to make sure everyone had the story straight about a dangerous man who’d been in the inner orbit. The man by proxy Wayne were the real victims, and to prove it, Wayne told the room that the woman who dared to speak out was once a Republican. Samantha put the pieces together in her mind and knew this would be her last meeting.
“I recognized it was a cult in a particular moment when I was sitting in a denunciation session. I was in shock and I just remember my head spinning and thinking, ‘this is a cult,’ what the heck is this? He had dug up some dirt on [the woman] and he had twisted it. I just knew this was wrong. He was standing there, shaming her. I actually got up and said, this is not our community. This is not how we treat members of a community. None of us are safe. I said to everybody else in the room, do you all realize that if he can do this to her, that nobody else is safe? It has nothing to do with saving animals.”
What might have disturbed Samantha most was that she was the sole voice of frustration.
“I thought he was having a mental breakdown. I didn't realize he was just a narcissist, like sociopath, psychopath cult leader. In the moment I was like, this is a cult and he's having a nervous breakdown. But the reason I thought it was a cult was because all the other people were saying, ‘Oh, thank you, Wayne. You're an angel. Oh, thanks for letting us know that we can't trust [her.]’ Nobody's questioning why he was digging up dirt from her past. It's very hard for me to speak out, but I did.”
Cult members?
Having heard Samantha’s story about her final straw, I wanted to know more about the disconnect in perceptions between her and the individuals who were more deeply involved. “Angel” wasn’t the only thing his devotees said of Wayne she said. Many thought he was the next MLK. The MLK for animals. Samantha thought that was beyond the pale. She said, even in the beginning, when she had rosy feelings about DxE, she thought Wayne was arrogant. Not that she thought he was malicious, but that she registered hypocrisy.
We discussed if DxE could be fixed. Samantha, who would love to see animal farms gone from the US by 2040, said it would just be better if the organization no longer existed, even if Wayne was out of the picture.
“It should be gone. They say they’ve resolved their issues but that’s just not true. Somebody contacted me at the end of last year who had just left. She had been in leadership on a full-time paid salary from them. Deep, deep, deep in it. And she was like, ‘I realized it was a cult.’ She was going to a cult support group that was helping her a lot.”
At the close of our conversation, I asked Samantha what she’d learned from her experience and what she’d tell vegan activists to look for as an alternative to the group she felt was a cult.
“I thought I just need to step out of my comfort zone. I don't do that anymore. I try and stick with only ethical groups and activities that I think are ethical and aligned with my values. And I would recommend people to volunteer at sanctuaries. They could volunteer for food empowerment projects.”
It seems like there’s a compelling case that Direct Action Everywhere is a leftist cult. It’s also possible that the whole cult story is an elaborate smear itself. Maybe Carol was slighted by Wayne. Maybe Samantha is making up her whole story after being paid off. Maybe in 50 years there will be a federal holiday in Wayne’s honor like we have for MLK.
To be safe, I’d approach DxE with caution if I were a vegan activist and felt personally invested in the mission. Carol Adams made a point of calling DxE “counterproductive.” Samantha said the organization was “harming the movement.” Like a lot of cults, DxE might be moving the good cause backwards.
History says things like this have happened before. Dr. Alexandra Stein reflected on the real impact of her 10 years in The O.
“It did destroy the left in the Twin Cities for many years. It disabled the whole generation, in a way, of leftist.”
All the work put into the cause, all the progress made, can go up in smoke. For that reason alone, activists should consider their options when it comes to where they place their efforts. There are many organizations that want to change the world as much as Wayne claims to. Give them a look. See what their defectors have to say.
