Cult expert who compares Trump to cult founders: Who is Steven Hassan?
Steven Hassan is one of America's most famous cult experts. Hassan's latest book, a former cult member who chooses to use his experiences for those who want to get rid of harmful cults, is about a political cult.
The name of the book is The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. According to Hassan, US President Donald Trump has great similarities with cult leaders such as Moon Cult founder Sun Myung Moon, Scientology founder Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, and Jim Jones, who killed 909 of his followers with poison.
In his view, Trump's presidency, which frequently references fake news, builds walls, and frequently invokes the "us versus them" divide, is not much different from a destructive cult.
Steven Alan Hassan (born 1954) is an American writer and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of cults and new religious movements. He worked as a deprogrammer in the late 1970s, but since then has advocated a non-coercive form of exit counseling. Hassan has written several books on the subject of mind control and is sometimes described in the media as an expert on mind control and cults. Some researchers in the sociology of religion, however, are critical of his application of mind-control theory to new religious movements.
In his book, in which Trump is suing, he explains how the US president uses similar methods with cult leaders and says: "The need to deny alternative news, the insistence on constantly feeding his ego are exactly the same as the characteristics of famous cult leaders."