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 practices of elusive leader Theo Smith and his unique concepts for building better advocates. Before long, The O controlled virtually every aspect of Stein’s life with memos that instructed her actions, from 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 Alexandra had known what to look for. There was near total isolation from the world outside her 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. 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 in her character that needed to be broken. She sees now that she was miserable, yet still committed to changing the world for the better. It would take a decade for her to escape and realize the ways she and other members of The O been abused for a cause that 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" hosted by a support group, Free Minds. When she called them, they sent a packet of info including Robert J. Lifton's 8 criteria of 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 for as long as I can recall, it’s not difficult for me to perceive how I could’ve defended the mission if it were a contemporary group or worse, joined myself. So often when I hear a cult story, the reasons people join are 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 radar.
There is a truth about cults in their diverse incarnations, that should be considered by those who think an organization with their values couldn’t be destructive or 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 be unrecognizable as a destructive force. As indicated at the jump, 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.
A religious person is more likely to find themselves in a religious cult than a nonbeliever. An exercise enthusiast is more likely to find themselves in 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 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 favorite 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 as nefarious.
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.
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 and change the world. It’s a seemingly virtuosic story of an animal savior entering the picture fully 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 cult status 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, that 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.
Despite 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.
Will the Pope come to the aid of DxE?
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 will 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 and the singularity of the vision. 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 marketing tactic.
I did some cursory scanning of other modern activist groups and couldn’t find a forecast like DxE’s in any of them. Goals, 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 to do so would be unethical. DxE’s roadmap is borderline prophetic, and the theory is, of course, unproven. Is it optimistic or deceptive is the question. This is something I’d think about if I’m wondering if DxE is a cult.
DxE protesters.
Another thing an outsider could point to is the pledge DxE encourages its members to make. This is a hard line promise not to dine with meat eaters that comes with a bracelet to identify the bold. This kind of thing could lead to isolation. It’s also fair to wonder why members are keeping track of their interactions and whereabouts in in a bizarre sort of merit system called DxE Connections. It’s fair to wonder how this could be abused.
The problem with these inquiries into the organization is that they can be explained away easily with a “for the animals” defense. What’s more difficult to explain is what other vegan activists and former members are saying.
“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 this 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 this is, there’s no dancing around the subject with a joinder like “possibly” or any of the other linguistic tricks you hear when people talk about litigious organizations like DxE and use the “c” word.
Adams then goes on to list a few questions she wanted current DxE members to contemplate. These are the kinds of things 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 thing most often indicated in these questions that registers on the cult-o-meter, is the theme of isolation. Something all cults do is pull members towards the pack while pushing away healthier relationships. In DxE, members are encouraged to live together. Preferably in Berkeley. Having a job is discouraged, so it can be all DxE, all the time. Taking a pledge to not eat with meat eaters? Well, that seems like it would limit one from outside opinions and push them towards more quality time with their ilk.
Carol put her letter together after DxE defectors came to her with their stories. Collecting those kinds of single star reviews can be a path to understanding the ethical core of an organization, with or without cult assignment. It removes the ambiguous caveats like the ones peppered in this article and replaces them with Survivor Stories.
It wouldn’t be surprising if DxE dismissed Carol’s statement as a second-hand smear. It’s true that she was never in the group and the allegations are sensational. In her defense, it’s not like Adams has a history of writing salacious stories attacking members of her own community. She’s in good standing with many denominations of animal rights groups. My opinion is that she’s a trustworthy source. It would be better, however, to talk to one of the individuals who prompted the missive.
I decided to get in touch with Adams and, as luck would have it, she responded and 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 in unambiguous terms.
Open rescue.
The story starts with Samantha searching for a higher form of vegan activism than what she was used to. Back in 2015, Samantha was feeling a little lonely in her pursuit. She didn’t really know people who shared her values and was seeking to connect with likeminded individuals. Samantha attended vegan festivals and animal rights conferences, but being fairly reserved she had yet to commit to a group. That changed when she was introduced to a few women in Direct Action Everywhere. It 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 my concerns with Samantha about Wayne’s specific brand of open rescue. It seemed to me the process was exploiting members, on account of how participants were more or less required to show their faces and name themselves, which seems like a huge request for any organization to ask of its members. Samantha says she still supports open rescue, though she agreed it could 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.
What Samantha saw as the flaw in this particular system was not the rescuing of animals 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 take in these animals will not work with them anymore because they have screwed them over.”
I ran some more open rescue scenarios by Samantha but I didn’t make much ground, so I shifted the focus of the danger from the legal to the physical. What if a farmer came out with a shotgun and felt strongly about getting their chicken back? The scenario I imagined didn’t do much to spook Samantha, but it jogged her memory of a story she’d heard.
“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.
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 workers at this place who might not even speak English or might not have legal status turned on that machine to try and hurt an activist like this.” They think it was a plant from leadership.”
Samantha was quick to add that the story is unconfirmed and unknowable. Personally, I was less interested in whether the story was true or not, and more interested in what it 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 publicity is the kind of thing you could only imagine if your faith in the powers that be was non-existent.
Activists with bike locks around their necks.
I had another question about DxE’s 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 talk about small potatoes or dissect the mission.
The conversation was steered back to the beginning. 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 before she came to her own realization that the group was checking off some classic boxes, she had only heard the word in regards to the pledge. Thinking back on it, she saw why that might have been the case.
“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 members to take the pledge. She says there were frequent meetings that ended with the identification of who had and had not decided if they’d no longer dine with meat eaters. From her point of view, people who hadn’t taken the pledge 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 in DxE and she says she didn’t, but that it was obvious to her that it was happening 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.”
I hadn’t heard about the living arrangements before, but it still registered as familiar. This brought to mind the dwellings of The O that Dr. Stein had written about from when she first joined. She described a shotgun apartment and how it was arranged to fit an extra body. What Samantha described was even more extreme. Six people in a one-bedroom apartment is not conducive to anyone’s mental health, to say nothing of its cultiness. To DxE’s credit, rent in Berkeley is stiff, so it saves resources to have the living quarters packed. However, finances are not what Samantha is describing. She’s speaking to the step in the cult process where the group totally engulfs its members. 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. It’s also a situation that fosters mind control, if that’s what’s going on here.
From there our conversation shifted to the state of operations as they exist today, after reports of abuse came about. Samantha makes a long list of events and conferences that DxE has been banned from. She says this was happening long before Carol Adams’ letter. It’s wild to think of vegan festivals banning a vegan organization, if slightly less so than imagining a vegan cult in the first place.
An image found on the internet.
That was the lighter stuff. My talk with Samantha got darker when we started talking about why all the bans came to be slapped on the progressive group. DxE found itself with a reputation of fostering abuse. It was no longer a safe space for activists. This was before people were calling it a cult. As we moved towards the smearing and silencing part of the story, Samantha paused and became emotional. Clearly, there was something in this story that was more serious than what I had heard about. Leadership had failed to protect its own members, she said. There were multiple people at the top who dropped the ball, 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 that should have been 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 a far more serious version of something that had previously crossed my desk. I heard that he said some unsavory things about a journalist from Carol Adams 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. The tone of Wayne’s screed is that of someone having a breakdown in front of their keyboard. Obviously, smearing a rape victim and gagging them from speaking is a much more serious accusation, but it shows a potential pattern. 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 talent. In light of Samantha’s story, it seemed the talent Hsiung brought to the table might now be the reason others in the community considered him a liability.
An attack on another former member is what caused Samantha to see the light. She was at a meeting she presumed was going to be about saving animals, but Wayne had a totally different agenda. Wayne wanted to make sure everyone had the story straight about someone who had been in his inner orbit. He was the victim, and to prove it, he’d dug up dirt on his rival. Fitting for a potential leftist cult, one of Wayne’s many jabs against the woman was that she’d once been 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 like 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 this frustration. The other people at the meeting acted much differently.
“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 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 character flaws. We then 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, but I’m not going to make that determination. It’s 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. Who knows? Maybe in 50 years there will be a federal holiday in Wayne’s honor like we have for MLK.
I can say that I’d approach with caution if I were a vegan activist and felt personally invested in saving the animals. Carol Adams made a point of calling DxE “counterproductive.” Samantha said the organization was “harming the movement.”
Could the situation go from the promise of animal liberation in a generation to something that pushes the entire cause backwards? History says things like this have happened before. While I might not be comfortable coming out and saying DxE is a cult, I’m far more educated about The O, which was definitely a left-wing cult, and in that situation the community was left with a hole to fill by the time they disintegrated. At least, if you believe Dr. Alexandra Stein.
“It did destroy the left in the Twin Cities for many years. It disabled the whole generation, in a way, of leftist.”
This is the fear I have of a leftist cult. All the work put into the cause, all the progress made, can go up in smoke and take the movement backward. For that reason alone, activists should consider their options when it comes to where their efforts are going. There are many organizations that want to change the world as much as DxE claims to. Give them a look. See what their defectors have to say.
