Was I in a Cult?

**NOTE: This episode originally aired in 2024, but a LOT has happened inside this cult since then. None of it surprising, all of it sick, and we'll fill you in on all of it.
 
 
Jason Christian was born into Gloriavale — a self-proclaimed utopic Christian community of more than 500 people on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. His grandfather, Hopeful Christian, was the leader. Shut out from the outside world and forced to work on the farm at the age of six, Jason was primed to live a life without actual freedom, as this group of true believers was all he knew. But when it was time for him to marry a woman in the community that was chosen for him, Jason made a different choice.  
 
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Everyone gathered on the deck the day Yo promised the mothership was finally coming. They waited… but alas, it never came. 
In PART 2, the magical fairy tale capsizes. Laurien becomes one of Yo's chosen women, and soon finds out exactly what that costs.
And when she finally tries to leave, they abandon her at a foreign train station with a stolen passport, no money, and 25 cents for a phone call.
She got out. But getting out wasn't the end. Decades later, the experience still leaves her caught somewhere between grief and longing, showing us all just how powerful belief can be.  Especially when it's backlit by yachts, beautiful people and the glistening sea.
The group, by the way, is still going strong, but mostly on land now, in an apartment complex in Ibiza. Cult paella anyone?? 


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FOLLOW LAURIEN
Her book, The Golden Shawl → Brave New Books
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Laurien had already been in one cult before she was old enough to understand what a cult was.
At 22, she was invited onto a fleet of white "pleasure" yachts traveling the rivers of Europe, not knowing the warm, beautiful, angelic fairies gazing deep into her eyes would become her new family. And then she met the 60-year-old Frenchman leading this pleasure cruise who called himself "Yo." Yo claimed he channeled messages from extraterrestrials, and taught that beauty was the path to enlightenment, which was rich coming from a man with a belly, an open blouse and ridiculous facial hair. The rules? No meat, no coffee, no alcohol, and no sex.
Unless, of course... it was with him (how original).
In PART 1, Laurien takes us inside a French UFO-tantric-doomsday-alien-fairy-angel sex cult. A cult she knows was filled with abuse and coercion, and yet still sees as one of the greatest adventures of her life.
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FOLLOW LAURIEN
Her book, The Golden Shawl → Brave New Books
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Before Stevie Nicks. Before Lindsey Buckingham. Before Rumours.
There was another Fleetwood Mac. And one of its lead singers was a young guitarist named Jeremy Spencer.
This week, we goes deep into a strange, dark, and almost unbelievable chapter of rock-and-roll history involving early Fleetwood Mac, Los Angeles in the '70s… 
And, of course, a cult.
Oh, and F-you, Uncle Jerry. 
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In 2007, at 19-years-old, Hella had a boss who molested her at work, and no one to turn to. Then one day, walking through her university square in Amsterdam, she met a group of people full of conviction. Passionate about the injustices in the world. And passionate about doing something about it.
They were a far-left political group. A Trotskyist splinter organization called the International Socialists (aka Internationale Socialisten). They knew who was to blame (the capitalists). And they knew what it would take to fix it...
...a goddamn revolution.
14 years later, after giving them her money, her twenties, and her autonomy… after the tragic death of a fellow female comrade… Hella woke up to something she couldn't unsee: 
The exact thing she'd been fighting against was running rampant inside the group that claimed to be against it.
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FIND HELLA
You can find Hella on Facebook (Hella Baan). She said if you'd like to send her an email, go for it! ISculty@proton.me
HELLA'S WRITINGS DURING HER TIME IN THE GROUP

Hella's article archive at socialisme.nu (in Dutch) — the articles she published as a comrade, a rare window into her voice from inside the organization
REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini 
The Guardian's 2013 coverage of the SWP / Comrade Delta case -- Shiv Malik and Nick Cohen's reporting on the Martin Smith rape allegations and the party's internal cover-up
Monty Python's "Splitters!" scene -- the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front
Monty Python's "meeting" scene -- where the People's Front of Judea proves you can have all the feminist rhetoric in the world and still be an all-boys club
IF YOU WANT TO GO DEEPER
 "The SWP Crisis: Some Reflections" -- a widely-cited insider account of the 2013 crisis at the SWP, written as it was happening
"Apology Not Accepted" -- a 2024 follow-up from ex-members proving the pattern Hella describes is alive and well today
The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism by Aidan Beatty -- the definitive account of the abuse and authoritarianism inside one of the most infamous British Trotskyist groups, and the lineage Hella's organization descends from
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