I don’t know whether David Remnick conceived of the August 26 New Yorker as cult-themed. But I think it is, after reading two long, riveting pieces of journalism, each about a nightmarish movement, one in our country, one in Kenya.
The articles delve deeply into two separate groups, each of which reads, to me, as a cult. David D. Kirkpatrick tells the story of The Infiltrators: Who’s leading the way in investigating far-right extremists: F.B.I. agents or leftist vigilantes?
The central cult element in The Infiltrators is violence, the sort of violence that has been polluting the United States for decades. And maybe the cultural (not cultish) influence that sparks the eponymous characters is TV — crime shows and reality shows. The central characters operate under aliases and camouflage themselves in alien colors to become moles in violent and paranoid extremist groups. Unaffiliated with and unprotected by any law enforcement agency, they are renegades who put themselves at great risk to collect evidence which they do turn over to law enforcement.
The other article is Letter From Kenya: A Cult In The Forest: A pastor led his followers into the woods. Hundreds have since been found dead. A different sort of nightmare story told by a remarkable journalist, Alexis Okeowo, who traveled into the guts of this deadly cult which sprang out of the workings of a charismatic sociopath named Paul Mackenzie, who offered his death cult as a path to Christian salvation. (Among his possible influences was an American “doomsday” preacher, William Branham, whose big triumph was as a mentor to Jim Jones, the Kool-Aid messiah.)
Sit down and read both stories. I think you’ll be struck by the similarities of cults in general, whether based in the worship of violence or or the direct worship of a god. And you’ll learn yet again why so many people, including members of our families, become possessed, and how difficult it is for them to escape.
This is great journalism.