Local Authorities Facing Dérives Sectaires: the New MIVILUDES Guide

Local Authorities Facing Dérives Sectaires: the New MIVILUDES “Guide”

A commentary by Éric Bouzou

In a now-famous formula, Benjamin Franklin said: ” Those who are ready to give up a fundamental liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither the one nor the other ”.

That is the conclusion we might draw on reading the latest opus of the MIVILUDES: “Local authorities facing dérives sectaires”, so thoroughly does paranoia impregnate the text: ” The cult movement knows how to find the slightest loophole in legislation or regulation to pursue its harmful activities with complete impunity. It also understands very quickly how to disturb the serenity of the debate by invoking arguments of bad faith, by proceeding to simplistic amalgams between freedom of belief and the freedom to carry on activities far removed from any spiritual concern ”.

Of course this guide is written in the name of the defence of the true republican values and of liberty, which the cults flout while daring, moreover, to appeal to them: ” the cult phenomenon, far from fading, has grown and diversified at the same time as the organisations or groups in question were becoming more and more litigious and did not hesitate, often by invoking questionable grounds, to attack head-on the Republic and its structures, presented as a liberticidal and discriminating machine ”

The ” cult movement ” is the enemy. It is everywhere, infiltrates everywhere, with a single objective: to enslave as many followers as possible, take their money, abuse them sexually and use them to destabilise the country. The proofs of the omnipresence of this enemy are not given; it is an established fact, there is no point going back over it. In the same way, the designation “cult movement” seems to belong to those who have arrogated the right to it to themselves: the MIVILUDES and the anti-cult associations declared to be of public utility and financed by the State. That this designation is without legal foundation and does not respect adversarial process makes no difference.

The authors specify that ” the present study does not claim to be an academic legal work: its vocation is to be a practical guide for the use of elected officials and territorial civil servants ”. They could have added that the work is not scientific either, despite the inevitable theory of mental manipulation, which has now become the bedrock of the dérive sectaire. Is not this popularisation of a pseudo-psychological thesis, which is the object of no consensus in the scientific community, an attempt at indoctrination by dint of being hammered ad nauseum into the inattentive reader?

The territorial civil servant is forewarned. He is himself a prize prey for the cults, by his proximity to the administration destined to be infiltrated. Cultural affairs, sport, economic support, education, training, social assistance, religious associations, town planning: he must be at the peak of vigilance against the cult invasion. Let him make no mistake, the rules and laws which protect fundamental liberties (some still exist) and which must be applied are often ” pitfalls ” preventing the villains from being flushed out. He will have to make the best of a bad job and get round as well as he can these laws outrageously invoked by the ” cult movement ”; in certain cases, alas, it will not be possible…

This new MIVILUDES guide forms part of the security excess which characterises French society, as described by Jean-Marc Fédida in his work ” L’horreur sécuritaire - Les trente honteuses ”. The consequences will be disastrous, short of a salutary awakening. Where stepping back and a little common sense would be of a nature to help the action of the public agent, excess and partiality can only disturb that action.

The authors lament: ” How can a well-adjusted and lucid person – “Mr or Mrs Everyman” – come to accept the unacceptable, to believe in the unbelievable, to live the unbearable ?” That is indeed the question we ask ourselves when we deplore the presence of a body like the MIVILUDES in France.

A document to be read, then, sparingly, and with a sense of proportion, which, we are convinced, most mayors who have taken the time to weave ties with their constituents will know how to do.