Read here the full transcript of mental health professional Steve Hassan’s talk titled “How To Tell If You’re Brainwashed?” at TEDxBoston 2022 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Dangers of Mind Control and Undue Influence
How could you tell if your mind has been brainwashed, or your mind has been hacked, or you’ve been subjected to mind control, or hypnosis, or undue influence? The people who want to persuade want you to stay ignorant. The authoritarian cults, including Putin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, which was a political cult, and I’m happy to talk about that. The psychology of influence has morphed in decades, and I’m here to share with you.
A Personal Journey into a Cult
It was February 1974. My girlfriend dumped me. I was an upper junior at Queens College, the youngest of three kids of Milton and Estelle Hassan, from Flushing, Queens, New York. Yes, I grew up 1.3 miles from cult 45, DT, and these women approached me in the student union and deceptively recruited me into a front group of what turned out to be a cult.
Within two weeks, I was believing that World War III was about to happen, that Armageddon was coming, that Moon was the greatest man in human history, he was sinless, and for those of you who are too young to know about the Moonies, he’s best known for the mass wedding ceremonies. He did 30,000 couples at one time, total strangers, but who believed in him as the Messiah.
Within two weeks, I left my Judaism and I’m bowing to an altar with Moon’s picture on it, reciting a pledge to fight with my life or kill for Korea. I’m not joking. And I was elevated to leadership very quickly.
I guess they saw me as a nice American, tall, whatever. And so I was privy to these secret leadership meetings with Moon about how he talked about democracy being satanic. He talked about taking over America and amending the Constitution and making it a capital offense for people who don’t do what he says regarding the marriages.
The Depths of Indoctrination
And I was a fanatic. My family freaked. My friends freaked. “Steve, it’s a cult. You’re being brainwashed.” I knew I wasn’t brainwashed because I’m smart. I’m educated. I’m from a good family. I didn’t feel brainwashed. I was having a religious experience.
And guess what? When Moon said, “We’re all going to the capital steps to fast for three days for Nixon because God wants him to be president despite Watergate,” I called my father, who had voted for Nixon. I voted for McGovern. I said, “Hey, Dad, I’m fasting for Richard Nixon to be president,” thinking he would love it. He said, “Steve, you are right. He’s a crook.” I said, “Dad, you don’t understand. God is working.” He said, “Steve, now I know you’re brainwashed.”
The Turning Point
My father got his chance. Within two years, I fell asleep at the wheel of a van due to sleep exhaustion. I should say I was sleeping three to four hours a night, seven days a week for no pay. Working for father. And I fell asleep at the wheel of a van, drove into the back of a tractor-trailer truck at 80 miles an hour and nearly died and was trapped for 30 minutes while the rescue workers saved my life.
And there I was in a hospital for two weeks away from the cult. And by the way, this was 1976. So there were no cell phones, right? So I was away from the constant indoctrination. And I called my sister, actually broke a rule. I called my sister Thea and she said, “You have a nephew. I want him to know his Uncle Stevie. You’ve got to visit.” I’m like, “Don’t tell the parents. I think I can arrange it because I’m a leader.” And she did tell my parents. And they arranged the deprogramming.
The Deprogramming Process
It’s a long story. But my father cried and he said, “How would you feel if it was your son who met a controversial group, dropped out of college, quit his job, donated his bank account and disappeared from your life? How would you feel?” And he cried. And it got me right here. And I said, “I’d probably do what you’re doing now.” But I thought he was brainwashed by the communist media. That’s how I was indoctrinated.
So I said, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “Just listen to these ex-members, learn about brainwashing and mind control. If you want to go back at the end of five days, I’ll drive you there myself.” I said, “Done.” Because I was so fanatical, I was so confident that I had the truth.
The Realization
Little did I know on day four, when I learned about Chinese communist brainwashing from former military intelligence people who had studied it in the 50s, it ticked off every box. But wait a minute. We were God and communism was Satan. But it was the same brainwashing techniques. But that still wasn’t enough to get me out.
The following day, the programmers asked me to read one of Moon’s speeches and said, “What do you think, Steve?” And I read it. And for the first time in two and a half years, I had a negative thought. I thought, “What a liar.” Moon was talking to congressmen and senators saying how much he loved America and respected Americans and he was surprised he was being accused of brainwashing Americans. And I had heard him speak in person at least a hundred times how stupid Americans were.
But once I had that thought, “He’s a liar,” that means he’s not trustworthy. That means he can’t be of God. And it was like a house of cards going plop, plop, plop, plop, plop in my mind. And I cried for three hours.
And here I am, 45 years later, trying to share my experience with the planet because everyone needs to understand this is not a mystical thing. You’ve heard of MK Ultra, the CIA research into mind control. The Russians were doing it. There was a Cold War run-up. I was MK Ultra 3.0. I would have died on command, killed on command. And thank God my family rescued me.
So I’m here to tell you there’s a dual identity that happens. There was Steve Hassan of Flushing, Queens, and then Steve Hassan, the son of Moon and his wife, the true parents of the universe. The real Steve reacted to my father’s tears.
The Importance of Approach
Now I want to tell a fast story. I know I’m running out of time. Fast story. My father called me up when I was in the cult thinking that he could get me out by just giving me facts. Sounds familiar? He said, “Steve, what kind of Messiah has an M-16 gun factory?” Little did he know I was trained to do thought stopping, which is a cognitive behavioral technique. I was “Crush to eat and crush to eat and glory to heaven, peace on earth, glory to heaven, peace on earth, crush to eat and crush to eat.” So my father’s intention was to get me to think, but he drove me deeper in.
A Reality Testing Strategy
And I have a little party prop that I want to share. It’s actually called Chinese handcuffs. Have you ever seen this? The harder you pull, the tighter it gets. But if you explain to the person, you know, you can get out of it by just putting your fingers together, using your thumbs to push and voila.
So what I’m here to share in my remaining time is a reality testing strategy. It’s remarkably simple. And it’s based on my doctoral dissertation on the BITE model of authoritarian control and my influence continuum.
Step one, disconnect. We are addicted to our cell phones and people who were in mind control cults are constantly being reinforced. So we need to take, I’m challenging anyone who’s listening to this. If you’re sure you weren’t brainwashed, like I was, take a time out, turn off your phone, turn off your screens for a week, okay?
Step two, learn about Chinese communist brainwashing and the major models. And I’m here to tell you that I did for my doctoral program the first quantitative study on the BITE model of authoritarian control. And the B is behavior control. The I is information control. The T is thought control and the E is emotional control.
Step three, seek out deliberately the best critics and former and most high-level former members you can find. Why? Because if you’re in a mind control cult, you’re programmed, don’t listen to the media. The media is the enemy of the people. Don’t talk to apostates. They don’t know anything. Take the position. Hey, I’m an adult. It’s my mind. And I get to decide. I can look at the evidence and think for myself, and it’s the version of this, encouraging people to think for themselves as opposed to yelling at them, calling names.
Step four is honest self-reflection. Think back to your first exposure to the group. And for those of you born into authoritarian families or religious groups, there’s a special variation of this for you. Or if you were born in North Korea or China, it’s a little bit different. But honest self-reflection, for me, I had to think back. I was writing poetry. I wanted to teach English, right? And I wasn’t interested in money. I wasn’t interested in power. And the higher I got up in the cult, I was being told things like, “Hey, Steve, you should think what country you want to run when we take over the world.” I was 21 years old. But that was my Moony self, not the real Steve.
Honestly self-reflect, using the BITE model, thinking over key experiences, and then ask yourself if I knew then what I know now, would I have ever gotten involved? The women lied to me. They said they were students. If I knew they were Moonies, I would have told them to get lost. I would have called security. Wake up honest self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror. It’s your life. It’s your mind. You should control it, right?
I’m part of a group of colleagues and friends who are trying to do a “me too” moment. This is the call to action. If you are ever in an abusive relationship, a cult of any type, a company that was abusing you, and I haven’t mentioned trafficking, trafficking is illegal worldwide, fraud, force, or coercion. And fraud and coercion forms my whole model.
So I did my dissertation connecting the dots with all of these theories, and I say there are millions of us, but we need to get educated, help yourself first, really learn about cults and mind control, and then tell your story. Reach out to your family and friends. If you’ve cut off people that you care about in your family or friends, there are methods, and it’s basically respectful curiosity and asking a good question and being quiet while you wait for the person to think for an answer.
