The Media and the MIVILUDES: Bankruptcy of a Counter-Power

The Media and the MIVILUDES: Bankruptcy of a Counter-Power

CICNS (June 2011)

In April 2010 we wrote an article with an identical title, “the bankruptcy of the media counter-power”, following the media’s treatment of the 2009 MIVILUDES report. A year on, the same alarming conclusion imposes itself after the “reports/debates/articles” that accompanied the release of the 2010 report of that same Mission. The media as a whole, as usual, rolled out a red carpet for the president of the MIVILUDES, Georges Fenech, to present his anti-cult action, without any adversarial voice in the “best” of cases, but also frequently endorsing his words without any neutrality. A single point of progress this year: certain newspapers briefly mentioned our opinion on the policy conducted by Georges Fenech. It is probable that our repeated press releases, throughout these last five years, have finally cracked the leaden shroud that surrounds the question of the “cults”. But after thirty years of an outrageous anti-cult fight, it is no longer simply a matter of vaguely mentioning a position contradicting government policy in this field, but of really demanding a precise accounting from the president of the MIVILUDES on the foundations of his action and the proof of his slapdash allegations concerning more than 500,000 citizens (by his own account).

The question of the cults is the object of a broad (quasi-unanimous) consensus in the political, media and intellectual class, which can be summed up thus: “Even if we don’t quite know what they are, the ‘cults’ are everywhere, these ‘people’ are dangerous and they must be fought, full stop”. It is a textbook example of large-scale manipulation in which the repetition ad nauseam of the same slogans has replaced reflection. We invite the schools of journalism, moreover, to consider it as such: a model theme on mass disinformation.

If one confined oneself to the question of the cults, one could easily conclude that journalism is a stricken profession - some would doubtless reach the same conclusion on other subjects treated by the media - but it is never too late to do better.

Detail of our analysis

This analysis is based on information found on the Internet. Our comments are not exhaustive (we may have omitted certain articles or programmes deserving mention) but sufficient, in our view, to illustrate the chronic deficit of journalistic investigation on the question of the said “cults”.

Let us recall as a preamble that the CICNS proposes the establishment of an independent and competent Observatory of spiritual, therapeutic and educational minorities, in place of the MIVILUDES, and that our position on victims of abuse is set out explicitly.

If you were to read only one part, do not miss the sketch of the Fenech/Ménard dialogue on ITélé

1- France Inter - 1 pm news - presented by Claire Servajean - 15 June 2011

Claire Servajean introduces the subject as follows: “The MIVILUDES (…) publishes its annual report today, and the least one can say is that it sends a chill down the spine, without there being any real novelties, the damage caused by the cults being still roughly of the same order, but what worries is the scale taken on by certain phenomena as the year 2012 approaches, which for some quite simply announces the end of the world, so let us say it plainly, vigilance is in order because, as the MIVILUDES underlines, the victims of the cults look like Mr and Mrs Everyman, an example with Isabelle and Dominique, a couple from the Agen region, they were indoctrinated by the guru of a cult movement, Robert Lé Dinh, who has since been convicted, they spent 22 years under his hold”.

When one is president of the MIVILUDES, under the authority of the Prime Minister, it must be very gratifying to see one’s work thus supported by a public radio station. If the journalist has read the mission’s report (we assume she did so beyond the introduction), let us grant her that it is quite natural to feel a “chill down the spine”, for that is what this report is made for: to alarm the population on a subject for which the regular hammering, through the media, of false data and alarmist slogans makes it possible to consolidate the idea of a social scourge without any need to supply proof of it. This year again, two or three sensitive cases packaged in the “buzz” format suffice to pillory the 500,000 people accused of dérives sectaires. But Claire Servajean is not just any reader of the MIVILUDES report, she officiates on one of the leading national radio stations, and one expects from her a little more than a frightened and servile commentary on an indigent report.

Concerning the example cited by the journalist to support her anti-cult positioning, the Lé Dinh case, this affair is ongoing. According to our information, Robert Lé Dinh has appealed against the first-instance judgment which did indeed convict him; he is not “definitively” convicted and is therefore still “not guilty” in French law; this point ought to have been mentioned by the journalist, and we invite her, moreover, to read a few extracts from the pleadings of Robert Lé Dinh’s lawyers to understand how the anti-cult phobia, in which she participates unconsciously, assuredly, can influence an assize trial. It is clear that in anti-cult France, if the outcome of the judicial proceedings clears Robert Lé Dinh, he will remain guilty in the public’s eyes. And even if he is, in the end, definitively convicted, throwing his case to the listeners as the sole illustrated justification of the MIVILUDES’s action is irresponsible.

C. Servajean continues her news bulletin by interviewing Georges Fenech, who has only to unroll a well-oiled argument in the paternalistic voice of the civil servant watching over our cottages menaced by the cultic movement.

France Inter offers us here a sad moment of anti-journalism. If the social scourge that dérives sectaires are supposed to constitute is a myth, the media’s disinformation on this theme is a distressing reality.

C. Servajean: “Does that mean the cult movements hide everywhere, behind certain organisations, what advice would you give to those listening to us, and notably to parents, for escaping these groups?”.

G. Fenech: “The advice is first of all, I would say, to pay attention to the content of the discourse; because at the start, obviously, nobody says to you ‘we are a cult, come along, etc.’, no, ‘come to our eco-village, return to nature, treatments with natural medicines, you will have personal development, etc.’, so it is very enticing, very warm, and then one thing leading to another, as happened for the Lorenzato spouses [Cicns: Isabelle and Dominique, cited above], well, there is a mental hold exercised by a guru who, for his part, knows very well where he is heading, that is to say exercising a hold, a power which can be, depending on the case, sexual, financial, and so one must be very prudent with regard to the content of the discourse”.

C. Servajean: (…) “Are there enough resources deployed for this fight against the cults?”.

G. Fenech: “Oh, there will never be enough resources, but you should know that in France, first of all we have a MIVILUDES, which is much envied elsewhere because we are the only ones in the world to have an interministerial mission (…) I am satisfied with the resources currently given by the Prime Minister, and I assure you we do not have a minute to ourselves, so much are these questions of ever greater importance”.

[Cicns]: If Claire Servajean had read the MIVILUDES report correctly, she would have observed that G. Fenech is romancing when he claims that the European countries, to cite only them, envy us our MIVILUDES (see in the annex some extracts from the report on this subject).

C. Servajean: (…) “Does that mean the cults can attack anyone and that nobody is safe?”.

G. Fenech: “Nobody, nobody is safe”.

C. Servajean: (…) “And wariness, I imagine, above all for the young, since the Internet is their favourite tool?”.

G. Fenech: “The young are a privileged target too, quite obviously, parents must be very vigilant about that”.

G. Fenech: (…) “Today there are 4 to 600 movements we keep watch on (…)”.

2- ITélé - Ménard sans interdits, presented by Robert Ménard, 15 June 2011

Robert Ménard is, to our knowledge, the only journalist who managed to question the substance of the MIVILUDES’s action when its 2010 report was delivered. Georges Fenech, little accustomed to this lack of allegiance, was disconcerted by it, and his remarks became incoherent and grotesque. Nor could he use his favourite accusation of “defender of the cults”, fired at anyone who proposes a reflection alternative to his own, for Robert Ménard spoke in rather contemptuous terms of the few “cranks” and “raving madmen” the MIVILUDES attacks, thus cutting the grass from under the feet of the Mission’s president. The journalist was nevertheless clear in his defence of freedom of conscience, and brought out the hypocritical posture of Georges Fenech when the latter claims to respect beliefs and individual liberties.

R. Ménard: (…) “Broadly, on 21 December 2012 it’s the end of the world, and so you are saying, watch out, if I have understood correctly, that there shouldn’t be people who take that seriously and who tell themselves, I don’t know, collective suicides, follies like that. Aren’t you overdoing it a bit for four raving madmen, honestly?”

G. Fenech: “Robert Ménard, the Order of the Solar Temple in 1995, 16 dead…”.

R. Ménard: “I remember, yes”.

G. Fenech: “In the Vercors, departed for the star Sirius”.

R. Ménard: “Do you really believe we could relive something like that?”.

G. Fenech: “The Peoples Temple in Guyana, 900 dead, including 274 children, 1,000 dead in Uganda, 12 dead in the Tokyo metro. When one is dealing with cranks who exploit these fears, the end of the world, you know, is the 183rd since the fall of the Roman Empire”.

R. Ménard: “There are always madmen, what are you going to do, are you going to plant yourself there to stop them?”.

G. Fenech: “The mercantile exploitation of this 2012 phenomenon, of this media Internet buzz based on the Mayan calendar to exploit these fears. You have people who let themselves be taken in. It is their right to believe in the end of the world. What I watch over, right,…”.

R. Ménard: “What, is that they don’t drag a certain number of people along with them”.

G. Fenech: “I am a little, not on the road to Compostela, but on the road that leads to Bugarach (…) to take a comparison, I am a bit like the pedagogical speed radar on that road, or the notices on a packet of cigarettes: you have the right to smoke but you know what you are exposing yourself to. You have the right to go into these cultic training courses (…) but know that at a certain moment, you are risking a great deal”.

R. Ménard: “Second part of the report then, that seems to me altogether more serious, if I may, the therapeutic gurus, in short all the charlatans!, who tell people they are going to cure cancer with lemon juice or whatever else, are there many of them in France?”.

G. Fenech: “There are many, there are thousands of them. There are thousands of them today”.

R. Ménard: “But who come on top of traditional medicine or who, faced with people’s fear, which one understands when one no longer knows where one is going, propose alternatives, and so the risks that represents”.

G. Fenech: “Here too we are on the terrain of liberties, everyone has the freedom to treat themselves as they wish, to let themselves die if they wish, that’s the Kouchner law. We, what we do, we warn the citizens together with the Ministry of Health. Watch out, you have therapeutic gurus who will exploit a suffering, a fear, cancer frightens people, the first cause of mortality in France. (…) Well, you have these gurus who say: ‘Medicine, give it up, give up chemotherapy, it will do you harm, we know where your cancer comes from (…)’. That is what we fight against”.

R. Ménard: “Absolutely, and I feel like applauding you three times when you say that. All the same, aren’t you overdoing it? Because I do remember, at one moment it was coaching that posed a problem, afterwards it was the psychoanalysts”.

G. Fenech: “It still poses a problem”.

R. Ménard: “But surely not everything, there are serious things, there are dangerous things, you have said so, and there are things that are stupidity in its pure state (…). You are not going to imprison all the idiots”.

G. Fenech: “Er, no, because we would have to build a lot…”.

R. Ménard: “No, seriously, aren’t you overdoing it?”.

G. Fenech: “Listen, what I believe is that we live in a system of liberty which we respect, freedom of belief, of association… The yellow line, my guiding line, is everything that disturbs public order, everything that breaks the law, everything that is a risk to public health, and above all the children who are concerned”.

R. Ménard: “Coaching and children, what’s that about?”

G. Fenech: “Coaching is very good, self-development, etc. Simply, what draws our attention in these professional training organisations: you are not told that, behind it, you are going to be drip-fed the principles of Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, for example”.

R. Ménard: “Let’s go there, precisely. So, that’s where there is a problem, all the same. (…) The Jehovah’s Witnesses, is that a cult for you? You have them on your list”.

G. Fenech: “Me, I don’t know what a cult is, I have no list, you ask questions, I answer you. There is no legal definition of a cult, I do not fight against the cults”.

R. Ménard: “Do you consider that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are dangerous people?”.

G. Fenech: “I consider that the Jehovah’s Witnesses pose real problems to public order”.

R. Ménard: “How did you react to the fact that now in the prisons, you saw it, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to obtain chaplains? Is it a cult or not a cult, one ought to know? You, you are interministerial and you say: ‘It’s a cult’, whatever prudence you show here, and we see the Ministry of Justice get itself condemned because up to now there have been no Jehovah’s Witness chaplains. Are you not there stepping outside your job to go onto the terrain of people’s beliefs? And I have the right to believe, if I want, in whatever I want”.

G. Fenech: “Your question is legitimate, but to understand this problem you must first know that this condemnation decision, which is real, is not definitive…”.

R. Ménard: “We shall see, we shall see, but it is the sign of an unease, all the same, that it is not as simple as you say”.

G. Fenech: “I am not against a minister of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faith going to meet a Jehovah’s Witness who wishes it in a worship visiting room. Where I am much more reserved is in giving a chaplain’s status, which is a status…”.

R. Ménard: “Why?”.

G. Fenech: “…where one has the keys of the prison, because it is an organisation that proselytises and a disorder risks occurring”.

R. Ménard: “Wait, there are Catholics who proselytise…”

G. Fenech: “No”.

R. Ménard: “There are Protestants, you’re joking. Are there no Protestant groupings that proselytise? Those gaining the most followers at the moment are the Protestant sects!”.

G. Fenech: “Have you never seen two people arrive at your door? (…) Have you seen Catholics or Protestants?”

R. Ménard: “And does that bother you?”

G. Fenech: “But it doesn’t bother me, except that when one is in prison it is a protected place, we have a population of fragile detainees and they must be protected. So I am for the exercise of worship… It is the modalities…”

R. Ménard: “But if they feel like believing in that; it’s like the Scientologists, it’s their right, it’s another cult”.

G. Fenech: “If people want to let themselves die and refuse a blood transfusion, it’s their right. Me, it shocks me, I’ll tell you frankly, above all when it concerns children, moreover…”.

R. Ménard: “Wait, there are ways of fighting against that. No, but what I mean is that calling the Church of Scientology a ‘cult’, they may seem complete crackpots, at the same time, at the same time, Nicolas Sarkozy, I remind you that he received Tom Cruise, who is after all the ambassador of the Church of Scientology. There too, then, is it a cult or not? There again, are you not meddling, at bottom, in what does not concern you?”.

G. Fenech: “I am not a police of thought”.

R. Ménard: “A little bit”.

G. Fenech: “I am not a police of the mind”.

R. Ménard: “A little bit”.

G. Fenech: “Of criminal minds, yes”.

R. Ménard: “No, but wait, there…”

G. Fenech: “Those who break the law, yes”.

R. Ménard: “There, yes, but we sanction them as we sanction, you, if you do something not right”.

G. Fenech: “Of course, of course, but I am not there to sanction, I am an institution…”

R. Ménard: “Well, when you point the finger, it stigmatises…”.

G. Fenech: “I do prevention. Yes, it happens that I stigmatise certain movements because they are carriers of danger”.

R. Ménard: “I remember in 1995, it wasn’t you, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had been pointed at, there were halls that had been burned, Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been assaulted”.

G. Fenech: “That is regrettable”.

R. Ménard: “Well yes but no, it’s because people had said ‘it’s a cult, they must be hit’”.

G. Fenech: “It is regrettable, it is regrettable, we hit nobody, we denounce dangers”.

R. Ménard: “But even at the United Nations they don’t agree with you, remember, they asked questions, I remember United Nations resolutions, positions taken saying: ‘Watch out, in France they have an odd conception of the cults”.

G. Fenech: “Those are NGOs which are false noses of these cultic organisations, which are accredited to the United Nations”.

R. Ménard: “Now that, that’s too easy when it’s the United Nations calling you into question”.

G. Fenech: “No, it’s not the United Nations…”.

R. Ménard: “What, they’re infiltrated by the cults?”.

G. Fenech: ”…They are NGOs which are false noses, once again, which are accredited to the Council of Europe, to the UN, to the international bodies, they do an extraordinary lobbying. Once again I respect the rule of law and liberties, what matters to me is protecting vulnerable populations against charlatans!, who promise you the moon and in the end you lose everything, including your life”.

R. Ménard: “Georges Fenech, thank you, I no longer know who it was who said: ‘A Church is a cult that has succeeded’, but that is not your point of view (…)”.

3- LCP (the parliamentary channel) - Ça vous regarde, presented by Arnaud Ardoin - 16 June 2011

A 50-minute programme, deplorable in substance and form.

A. Ardoin’s guests are: Georges Fenech, Catherine Picard, president of the UNADFI, Antoine Guélaud, director of the TF1 newsroom, author of the testimony-book “Ils ne m’ont pas sauvé la vie”, and Agnès Buzyn, oncologist and president of the National Cancer Institute.

A. Ardoin introduces the programme as follows: “This evening we are talking about the cults, the MIVILUDES report was delivered yesterday to the Prime Minister; [these cult movements] exploit the business of the apocalypse (…) and they also exploit the business of cancer, at any rate of those people suffering from serious illnesses (…) there are immense financial stakes behind it”. Note that the journalist sees the MIVILUDES report as a report on the cults. His introduction takes up the cause of the mission’s conclusions, he takes no distance from the MIVILUDES’s positions. Indeed, his panel is entirely composed of virulent organic anti-cult actors, with the exception of Agnès Buzyn, who contents herself with espousing the dominant anti-cult attitude; the guest by webcam also proving to be a citizen peremptory in his condemnations of the “cults”, though ignorant of everything about the subject. The theme of the apocalypse will not be taken up, the programme being entirely devoted to alternative therapies.

With such a panel, it is clear that the fate of the alternative therapies is sealed: they will be steamrollered. A. Ardoin is not a beginner, he knows perfectly well that such a panel cannot produce balanced information on a delicate subject. His choice of guests defies all the ethical rules of journalism. To compensate for this evident deficiency, he chooses, whether by tactic or by personal positioning, and either one is as serious as the other, to present the question of the cults as so evident that it deserves no discussion of its foundation. Indeed, he and A. Guélaud hammer home liberticidal anti-cult statements and proposals, notably on the necessity of establishing a list of the cults.

The director of the TF1 newsroom uses the case of Evelyne Marsaleix, who died of cancer and is the subject of his book “Ils ne m’ont pas sauvé la vie”, as the guiding thread of his argument. This “journalist” has no legitimacy to speak in cold blood on the theme of alternative therapies, so patent is his emotional and affective involvement with Evelyne Marsaleix (see our commentary on his book and on the Dr Guéniot affair, whom A. Guélaud accuses of being one of those responsible for the death of Evelyne Marsaleix, though he was acquitted by the courts). He does not hesitate to press the cultic lead by mentioning the Grail movement Evelyne Marsaleix is said to have crossed paths with, even though this lead was clearly set aside by the courts.

Two journalists thus discredit themselves before our eyes, along with their profession, visibly without knowing it. Let us recall that there exists a partnership agreement between LCP and the MIVILUDES, but in no case should this partnership lead to depreciating journalistic reflexes to this point.

G. Fenech is of course not to be outdone but, coming from him, the ideological positions are not surprising; he is however bound by a quite relative duty of reserve, obliging him to prudence on the question of lists in particular. As for Catherine Picard, her contribution is indigent, hesitating between what she would like to say but cannot really say for fear of putting Georges Fenech in the wrong, since she sits on the Orientation Council of the MIVILUDES. She will admit to being in favour of a “preventive and pedagogical” list of cults. As pedagogical as those of the parliamentary reports of 1996 and 1999 were, non-opposable and enabling the discrimination, for 15 years, of the minorities targeted?

Agnès Buzyn generally stays in the background on the question of the cults, her objective being to manage to keep patients within the fold of conventional medicine while adding to it proven “complementary” therapies. She cannot however claim complete competence on what the alternative therapies cover. She could have pointed out that the programme’s panel was not competent to cover the subject, and could also have remarked that “the technical support group on non-conventional practices with a therapeutic aim (PNCVT)”, set up at the Ministry of Health to evaluate alternative therapies, at the MIVILUDES’s initiative, is made up of an equally incompetent panel, since it is composed solely of conventional practitioners and a representative of the MIVILUDES.

The programme’s first “buzz”-format report is a shapeless concentrate of expressions that strike the imagination: “lemon juice”, “charlatans”, “unproven methods”, garnished with images whose link with the argument is not established. These mini-reports, pretending to summarise a situation, in fact seek emotional shock and are instruments of stupefaction, confusing, knowingly or not, amalgam and simplism with concision.

The second “buzz” is a prosecution-minded testimony against Dr Hamer, resting on the death of a patient who had used this German practitioner’s therapeutic technique. It is not for us to give an opinion on this technique. But an affair involving several parties cannot be treated seriously in a report presenting only one facet of the facts.

The financial stakes, of which the gurus and cults are supposedly so fond, as A. Ardoin claims, are not “enormous” for the alternative therapists, it is the potential shortfall for the medical industry, organised into lobbies, that is substantial. In these conditions, the structures evaluating the alternative therapies must be combed through to test their impartiality and their competence. G. Fenech specifies, during the exchanges, that the technical support group’s evaluations will be scientific: will the evaluation methodology be public and reviewed by experts in the alternative therapies (recall that the Servier laboratory’s reports on Mediator, to take only one example among dozens, were also described as scientific)? These are themes a lucid journalist ought to have taken up.

We propose to A. Ardoin a few elements of a debate that could have moved reflection forward constructively on the alternative therapies: -Reread the journalism-school course notes if necessary, hoping the ABC is taught there. -Invite a balanced and competent panel, notably representatives of the alternative therapies, but also contributors capable of assessing the PNCVT analysis methodology; G. Fenech, C. Picard, A. Guélaud and A. Buzyn are, on their own, incompetent to speak of it. -Propose reports in which the positive and problematic aspects of the alternative therapies are illustrated; systematising a negative image of these practices is a mark of contempt towards the thousands of people who use them and are satisfied with them, and a denial of their therapeutic freedom. -For each point of reflection, propose an analysis of the positioning of the other European countries on the same subject, in order to avoid that very characteristic French autism.

G. Fenech: (…) “There is an enthusiasm for everything that is natural, gentle medicines, about which we have strictly nothing to say against”.

[Cicns] The CICNS would like to know the list of these “gentle medicines” about which the MIVILUDES has nothing to say against.

G. Fenech: (…) “Cancer is an incurable illness for a certain number of cancers. It is after all 900,000 French people suffering from cancer; it is 350,000 more each year; and it is the first cause of mortality: 145,000 deaths. So, when one is facing an illness, in certain forms incurable, one understands that people want to go looking for something else”.

[Cicns] If cancer is often incurable, why is the use of an alternative therapy that does not succeed systematically declared responsible for a patient’s death? The “loss of chances” of being cured by conventional medicine, of which G. Fenech speaks in his interventions, is an extremely debatable notion and cannot be the object of a generalised condemnation of the use of alternative therapeutic practices.

C. Picard: (…) “The technique of hold over terrains of vulnerability, which are really at the heart of the subject, is a subject that is long to explain, long to make understood”.

[Cicns] See our dossier on mental manipulation (or mental hold).

G. Fenech: (…) “The health problematic, the question of health, is underlying in all the cultic organisations because there is a search for greater well-being, indeed even for a higher being (…). It has become for us at the MIVILUDES the majority of our work. (…) I congratulate myself (…) on the work the Ministry of Health has done these last years, we have created a technical support group (…), we are cataloguing all these methods, we have lifted a taboo, we are in the process of cataloguing them, of evaluating them. (…) There are roughly 400 of them in France, well, it moves every day. So, we are going to evaluate them, we are going to say, for example, Reiki, kinesiology, family constellations, reflexology, we are going to say, there you are, it’s dangerous, it’s not dangerous (…) and we will then inform the citizens on a website”.

C. Picard: (…) “Indeed, the health movement is necessary to the cult movements because it is the means of also going to draw from the individual everything that belongs to the order of the intimate, of making him, I was going to say, confess things, of entering into the deepest part of what he never says elsewhere, because we are all vulnerable with regard to health situations”.

A. Buzyn: (…) “We want above all to insist on the frontier between those alternative medicines which are part of the dérives sectaires and which move money around, and what patients have a right to, which are complementary medicines and supportive care that must be taken into account”.

G. Fenech: (…) “There is something very important to say, and it will probably be one of my next combats at the head of the MIVILUDES on this question, which is that we are not dealing solely with isolated therapeutic gurus. There are being constituted in France, as you know very well, faculties! Faculties of medicine, in which one even sees doctors teaching, which are developing everywhere in France, there are some in Paris, faculties of natural medicine, where bogus diplomas of health educators are delivered, it costs about 4,000 euros to obtain one, and students in natural medicine are trained like that (…) kinesiology, reiki, family constellations, so I have asked the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Health to find out how we can prevent this kind of thing. (…) You see how serious it is”.

C. Picard: (…) “There is also a very, very important work to be done, with hospital staff, because it is not rare to see among hospital staff nurses, care assistants who, because they themselves belong to a movement that exploits these techniques, attempt through their professional proximity to introduce it even into the public hospital”.

G. Fenech: (…) “The problem of the cults, too, is that we are in the domain of liberty, the liberty of care. You know that the Kouchner law, the law of the patient’s liberty, one is not obliged to be treated, one is not obliged to be transfused, that is how the Jehovah’s Witnesses use this liberty, so all that, we are in the process of bringing down a taboo because we are on an extremely important public-health domain”.

G. Fenech: (…) “There will be a third stage, after the evaluation, after the informing of the public, the third logical stage would be to legally prohibit a certain number of these most dangerous practices. The answer is here [the National Assembly], in some time, as quickly as possible, to prohibit certain practices, so that those who would then amuse themselves proposing biological decoding would be committing an offence liable to put them in prison, let us not be afraid of words”.

A. Guélaud: (…) “On prevention, I remain persuaded that the public must be informed still more and that a list of the cult movements absolutely must be established. (…) The cults today are everywhere and people must know it. It is no longer the Mandarom with people circling a pylon and shut away. Unfortunately, the cult movements are everywhere, to make money but not only, to condition minds, and I find that this list is indispensable”.

A. Ardoin: (…) “Excuse me, Catherine Picard, is there not a little ideology in the fact that people no longer want to catalogue these movements?”.

G. Fenech: (…) “It is a sensitive subject. (…) First, we have no legal definition of a cult. Secondly, not all the cults are to be put in the same basket. There are cults, it is their right to exist, it is freedom of association, we are not there to prohibit the cults in France, right, we would no longer be in a democracy if we did, can you imagine? We, what interests us are the movements that are carriers of danger, there you are. And for those, I can guarantee you that at the MIVILUDES we have a filing office, every time we consider there is a danger somewhere, not only a report, we open a file, and from that file we inform the public authorities, the citizens, the associations, that is our role. So, call it a list, as you like, in any case we have files at our place which are indexed according to the dangers”.

A. Ardoin: (…) “You run the INCa, you are a doctor, it would help you a bit all the same, a list like that, very clear, very identified, that you could show your patients saying: the list is clear and clean, those movements there, not possible, it would be more practical? I don’t want to embarrass you, Agnès Buzyn”.

A. Buzyn: “When they are in those movements, they have already escaped the hospital, so my duty is really upstream, I do not deny the usefulness for the citizens of knowing these cults, and even for the families, but my work is upstream, to alert cancer patients very early (…) to say: there you are, at the moment when you are offered such-and-such a type of medicine, alert, it is perhaps a dérive sectaire and your treatment risks suffering for it, be vigilant”.

C. Picard: (…) “I would be for making a new list, preventive, pedagogical”.

G. Fenech: (…) “I have appeared, very often summoned like a defendant before the correctional court, for having cited names in the report, Catherine Picard likewise, and so you see, that poses other problems”.

4- France 2

The public television channel offers a summary of the MIVILUDES report and three reports in “buzz” form.

The first illustrates the dangers of end-of-the-world theses, insisting on the financial windfall this “event” represents for the cults. The Bugarach site is evoked as the epicentre of the phenomenon. The voice-over commentary is alarmist, the link between the images and the argument often impossible to establish.

The second takes up the alternative therapies. It repeats the same example as the second report presented on LCP (see above) about a deceased patient who had used Dr Hamer’s techniques, and adds to it a further segment on a fasting practice criticised by the Order of Physicians.

The third takes up in summary both the “2012” theme and that of the alternative therapies.

The script of these three reports is the MIVILUDES report. No critical distance, no serious investigation is offered, no contrary argument is evoked, the “buzz” format in any case makes that impossible.

5- TF1

Laurence Ferrari covered the release of the MIVILUDES report in the 8 pm news of 15 June 2011 in the form of a report: “According to the report, the gurus’ privileged target is the 900,000 cancer patients. Among this weakened and therefore vulnerable population, 60% of patients have recourse to alternative medicines. The risk is the deviances proposed by supposed specialists; the report has identified 4,000 self-proclaimed psychotherapists; their sessions are often exorbitantly priced and their methods, if not effective, do not lack imagination (…)”. This introduction gives Georges Fenech, interviewed in the report, the occasion to evoke “lemon juice” - his mantra for the release of this report -, urinotherapy, etc.

As with France 2, the script of this report is the MIVILUDES report. Journalistic reflection is totally absent from it.

6- Europe 1

Aurélie Frex’s article, like many other articles, can be summed up thus: “the MIVILUDES says that…, the MIVILUDES thinks that…”, etc. An interministerial mission employing a dozen people, with a substantial budget, with relays in every ministry, in every prefecture, has for 8 years deployed an anti-cult policy unique in the world (with reference to the Western democracies, that is) which, for that very reason, ought to appear suspect or at the very least questionable, and the journalists have nothing else to offer than “the MIVILUDES says that…, the MIVILUDES thinks that…”?

In a second article, Fabienne Le Moal takes up the themes of the MIVILUDES report while offering a mini-clip testimony of a brother whose sister, who died of cancer, had decided to follow Dr Hamer’s method: “My sister believed in it, she was completely into it, she said to me: ‘Don’t worry, brother, I am in the process of healing’ (…) She begged me not to take her to the hospital, those were her words, she held my hand and said to me ‘At the hospital, they will make me die’”.

Does Fabienne Le Moal think, with such a testimony offered against the backdrop of the delivery of the MIVILUDES report, that she is significantly advancing the questions of mourning, of therapeutic freedom and of the alternative therapies?

If it is a matter of counting the dead, then conventional medicine beats the alternative therapies hands down. If it is a matter of fighting the charlatans, then the proportion must be the same in both camps. If it is a matter of evaluating the alternative therapies, then it is necessary to launch an open and public reflection. The principal question posed is therefore whether the bodies in charge of this evaluation today, the MIVILUDES and the technical support unit at the Ministry of Health, provide the necessary guarantees in a country where conventional medicine is sacralised (see Sacrée médecine - Histoire et devenir d’un sanctuaire de la raison, Jean Baubérot and Raphaël Liogier, Entrelacs)? This essential question is taken up by no medium.

7- Le Monde

Le Monde offers a brief article in the form of an account of the report’s content. No perspective is presented, no analysis of the MIVILUDES’s policy is contemplated.

During a conversation with Stéphanie Le Bars (in charge of religious and worship questions), the journalist had explained to us that the editorial management did not wish to take up the question of the cults, too “difficult” in France. We agree that this question is difficult, but above all if the courage is lacking to take it head on. A newspaper of record like Le Monde should not be able to hide behind the difficulty of a subject in order not to treat it. Recently, Stéphanie Le Bars covered the question of the Jehovah’s Witness chaplains (Le Monde, 31 May 2011). Why stop on such a good path and not go and demand a much more thorough accounting from Georges Fenech?

8- Le Monde des religions

Le Monde des religions treats the subject in a manner similar to Le Monde’s. For probably identical reasons too, Frédéric Lenoir’s staff had explained to us that he did not wish to take up the question of the cults in this medium. We therefore address to Le Monde des religions the same remarks as to Le Monde: if this theme generates visceral reactions, that is one more reason to take it up and demystify the fear of the “cults”. Moreover, in the French anti-cult climate, a “neutral” account of the MIVILUDES report is in fact no longer neutral, it falls in with the single-track thinking that smothers this social question.

9- Le Figaro

Le Figaro entitles its article: “End of the world: the alert of the anti-cult mission”. Le Figaro has at least understood that the MIVILUDES does not fight dérives sectaires but the cults. This article relays Georges Fenech’s worries by taking up the sledgehammer argument of the deaths of the Order of the Solar Temple: “Sixteen people, members of the OTS, the Order of the Solar Temple, had been immolated by fire”. The article’s author, Angélique Négroni, does not seek to find out who immolated these people, even though for a decade the media (and probably Le Figaro too) asserted that the members of the Order of the Solar Temple had committed suicide, and though the courts closed the OTS trial with a dismissal.

The Lé Dinh affair is also evoked. The journalist specifies that R. Lé Dinh has appealed, but the words used leave no doubt as to this man’s final guilt. It is true that a common cult guru cannot benefit from the oratorical precautions that surrounded the person of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, rightly, on the subject of his presumption of innocence (Robert Lé Dinh was steamrollered by the press before the verdict of the first-instance trial), and it is clear that if DSK is declared guilty and appeals (insofar as that possibility is offered him), many in the press will know how to recall that before his definitive conviction, he is not guilty.

At the end of the article, Angélique Négroni cites Georges Fenech, without perceiving the senior civil servant’s double language: “It is obviously not a matter of creating a psychosis, but we are within our role in sensitising the public authorities to possible dangers and in proposing preventive measures”.

10- Les Inrockuptibles

Laure Adolphe’s article is more balanced than most of those we consulted.

Nevertheless, what impulse drove the page’s designer to insert an illustrative image taken from the film Eyes Wide Shut, a scene in which Tom Cruise is introduced into a secret society, without any link to the content of the MIVILUDES report, unless with the aim of establishing an association, conscious or not, between the cults and the attraction of a certain form of lust evoked in Stanley Kubrick’s film?

300 pages of report are summed up in 10 lines. This type of exercise, without any distance and without any substantive reflection on the French anti-cult policy to which reference could have been made, is necessarily a dead end. The journalist presents what she calls the response of the “apocalyptic cults facing the accusations present in the report” and cites pell-mell: the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology (which has nothing to do with the apocalypse), the CICNS (which is not a spiritual group but an information association).

This article, despite its laudable search for balance, illustrates the generalised media ignorance on the question of the “cults”, which is nevertheless a media perennial.

11- La Croix

On the theme of dérives sectaires, the newspaper La Croix generally adopts a more measured position than that of the dominant discourse. That critical reflection seems to have disappeared for the account of this 2010 edition of the MIVILUDES report, apart from a timid reference to the sociologist Jean-François Meyer: “According to him, one cannot rule out that with 2012 ‘one or two small groups may go astray’, but ‘many predictions evoke above all a process of renewal, which puts the worries in perspective’.”

12- Le JDD

The JDD article begins thus: “On Wednesday, the MIVILUDES, the Interministerial mission for the fight against the cults, published its annual report”. As in the case of Le Figaro, it is at once comforting and thought-provoking to observe that the JDD sees in the MIVILUDES a mission to fight the cults. For that is indeed what it is about. But if the hypocrisy is denounced (cults versus dérives sectaires), the fact remains that a journalist incapable of verifying the meaning of the MIVILUDES acronym has probably read its report superficially, to say nothing of the way that journalist can evaluate the MIVILUDES’s action in general. One of two things: either the subject has no interest for the editorial team, and why then not decide not to speak of it at all (or only laconically, mentioning a link to the MIVILUDES site)?; or the subject has an interest for the editorial team, and it must be worked on a little more.

13- L’Express

By way of an evaluation of the MIVILUDES report, L’Express chooses to interview Charline Delporte, president of the ADFI Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie. Knowing that the UNADFI, in the person of its president Catherine Picard, sits on the Orientation Council of the MIVILUDES, it is a little as if a newspaper went to interview Christophe Barbier to find out what he thinks of L’Express’s editorial line. As, moreover, Charline Delporte is not bound by any hypocritical duty of reserve, she lets loose shamelessly: “We wish for the establishment of a national campaign against dérives sectaires on the same footing as other dependencies such as alcohol, drugs or tobacco”.

14- Le Point

Le Point takes up the elements of the MIVILUDES report on the “health” aspect, without critical analysis, either of the elements presented in the report or of the MIVILUDES’s action as a whole. Nevertheless, a paragraph entitled “feeling oneself an actor in one’s treatment” presents the benefits of alternative/complementary medicines, citing Dr Etienne Brain: “In Europe, we still have great difficulty entering into this approach. Doctors must not be categorically closed to these complementary medicines, for that is the best way to let patients rush into them in a disorderly manner”. The journalist Chloé Durand-Parenti could have qualified the words of Dr Etienne Brain, who seems to generalise a little quickly to Europe a very French attitude of ostracism towards the alternative therapies (Switzerland has already integrated them into the Faculty of Medicine).

15- Libération, Nouvel Observateur

Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur (this last magazine has written several equivalent articles on the subject) cite, among other things, an AFP dispatch. As we remarked with regard to Le Monde, an apparently neutral dispatch on the content of the MIVILUDES report, in a context where every adversarial voice has been suppressed, is no longer neutral, it validates the dominant thinking.

16- Paris Match

Paris Match treats the subject like the other media, without any perspective: “The MIVILUDES annual report, made public this Wednesday, warns against the ‘pseudo-therapists’ and their miracle methods supposed to cure cancers and other incurable diseases”. If these diseases are incurable, what imperative need would there be to remain within the fold of conventional medicine, which no longer answers the demands of ever more numerous patients? This reflex writing illustrates the lack of deepening of the questions evoked.

17- Ouest France

“Cults. Lemon juice does not cure cancer and 2012 is not the end of the world”. An article without surprises. It is probable that “lemon juice” had its hour of glory with the release of the 2010 MIVILUDES report. The compulsive repetition of the same expressions and slogans, of which Georges Fenech knows very well how to make use, contributes to the shipwreck of reflection on the question of the spiritual, therapeutic and educational minorities.

18- La Dépêche

La Dépêche comments on the release of the report by devoting a complete article to the R. Lé Dinh affair (probably because he is from the region). Another article contains an interview with G. Fenech, who knows the pitch of his report well.

19- AFP

The AFP contacted us for our point of view on the MIVILUDES report and circulated a new article mentioning our opinion (while making a mistake in our association’s acronym: CNIS instead of CICNS). This article and our comments were then taken up by a certain number of newspapers: Nouvel Obs, La Dépêche, L’Indépendant, Midi Libre, Ouest France, Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, ActuOrange, Tribune de Genève.

As we specified in the introduction, if the taking into account of our voice is a progress, journalistic reflection cannot stop there. The way the AFP dispatches are copied and pasted illustrates, moreover, the journalistic mimicry.

Annex - Extracts from the 2010 MIVILUDES report concerning action in the other European countries

These extracts demonstrate that France is the only country to opt for an institutionalised fight against the cults. The media would be well advised to observe our neighbours in order to analyse the French situation.

Switzerland

“In Switzerland, where religious questions fall above all within cantonal competence, the federal authorities hardly concern themselves with dérives sectaires.

The Intercantonal Centre of Information on Beliefs (CIC) - which is, in Switzerland, the only institution in a position to supply elements of information on a potential threat of dérive sectaire - displays the greatest serenity on this subject.

(…) The cantonal authorities of Geneva, Vaud, Valais and Ticino have not drafted any report on apocalyptic messages favouring phenomena of mental hold”.

Spain

“Although there are no significant phenomena of mental hold linked to apocalyptic messages in Spain, there exists one organised group active in this field: El grupo de supervivencia de España 2012”.

Netherlands

“The State services admit the absence of any official taking into account of this phenomenon. Historically, Dutch regulation has never framed the cultic phenomenon.

Local criminal law can frame only very marginally the deviances that might be linked to it. A very meagre case law testifies to this lack of interest on the part of the public authorities. As a corollary, neither the police services of the KLPD (National Criminal Police Corps) nor the intelligence services (AIVD) have carried out any impact study on the ‘2012 phenomenon’.

(…) In conclusion, if incidents or disturbances of public order are always possible, they would fall, in the Netherlands, according to the local authorities consulted, within approaches that are more individual than collective”.

Belgium

“Belgium is not experiencing any appreciable development of millenarian movements, but remains vigilant towards them.

The activities of the ‘Centre of Information and Advice on Harmful Cultic Organisations’ (CIAOSN) are largely determined by the solicitations of the public that has recourse to it. Individuals and associations refer matters to the Centre according to the problems encountered, which over the long term retain, in the eyes of its president, largely similar characteristics. In this context, the Centre has not noted any appreciable rise in the millenarian phenomenon”.

Germany

“No other measure or initiative is planned within the framework of ‘apocalypse’ prevention because, although this subject deserves the authorities’ full attention, they do not contemplate setting up a specific ‘working group’ in the absence of concrete elements of danger”.

Italy

“In Italy, the threat of large-scale actions by groups or active ideology of the apocalyptic type does not seem to constitute an effective risk, in view of the current databases, even if the expectation of the prophetic date of 2012, accompanied by pseudo-scientific fears relating to the arrival of imminent planetary catastrophes, is present in these milieux”.

Norway

“There are no messages of the apocalyptic type currently circulating in Norway as the year 2012 approaches”.

Finland

“While the media in Finland have indeed echoed the various ‘predictions’ around the year 2012, these do not seem to have aroused any particular interest in the population”.

Denmark

“The French embassy in Denmark indicates that the cataloguing of movements of a ‘millenarian’ or ‘apocalyptic’ nature liable to be at the origin of a mental hold over people has produced no result in this country, which observes a very great tolerance towards the ‘spiritual movements’”.

Sweden

“Likewise, no group of a millenarian nature has been catalogued in Sweden. This country traditionally displays a very great tolerance towards the ‘spiritual movements’.

The authorities proceed to keep watch on them only in cases where criminal offences might be committed within them”.

Portugal

“In Portugal, the Ministry of the Interior, approached by the embassy, indicated - after consulting the various security forces - that there exists no information, no event, no complaint in relation to the phenomenon of apocalyptic messages”.

Poland

“In Poland, in the absence of public structures, only the Polish Church attempts to ensure a monitoring of millenarian messages”.

Russia

“In Russia more than elsewhere, the apocalyptic idea occupies a place apart in history. Diffuse in Russian thought and in the Russian unconscious, this idea goes well beyond movements of a cultic character, of which it is not the monopoly. Its historical hold doubtless explains why the approach of the year 2012 does not crystallise irrational fears as much as in the United States or Western Europe”.