{"id":11921,"date":"2024-09-19T10:44:17","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T17:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=11921"},"modified":"2024-09-21T15:49:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T22:49:44","slug":"the-professor-that-escaped-a-political-cult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=11921","title":{"rendered":"The professor that escaped a political cult"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Wired magazine interviewed Dr. Janja Lalich \u2013 a former left-wing political cult member turned sociologist. She escaped the radical Marxist-Leninist&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Democratic_Workers_Party\">Democratic Workers Party<\/a>&nbsp;cult in California &#8211; and now speaks about cult behavior as a sociologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to see how easy it is to be pulled into a cult, she talks about how she finally recognized the group for what it was. She tells us that cult members are almost never mentally ill. In fact, cults want high functioning people with money\/skills\/connections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They attract idealistic people that are looking to change the world or do something important but fall under the manipulation of a charismatic cult leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FghSUttp6Lc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wired magazine interviewed Dr. Janja Lalich \u2013 a former left-wing political cult member turned sociologist. She escaped the radical Marxist-Leninist&nbsp;Democratic Workers Party&nbsp;cult in California &#8211; and now speaks about cult behavior as a sociologist. If you want to see how easy it is to be pulled into a cult, she talks about how she finally recognized the group for what it was. She tells us that cult members are almost never mentally ill. In fact, cults want high functioning people&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=11921\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-36h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11921"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12312,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11921\/revisions\/12312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}