The 2009 MIVILUDES Report

Viewpoint and commentary from CICNS (April 2010).

“The Assembly has come to the conclusion that it is not necessary to define what cults are, nor to decide whether or not they are a religion. The groups designated by that name do, however, arouse a certain disquiet (…) and this must be taken into consideration (…) That said, there is nothing to prevent sociologists of religion from pursuing, within their field of competence, this interesting reflection begun nearly thirty years ago” p. 19 of the report.

The effectiveness of MIVILUDES?

The word that “comes to mind” for Georges Fenech, President of MIVILUDES, from the very first lines of his report, is “effectiveness”. We do not know what he is referring to: are MIVILUDES’s assaults on communities such as the Moulin des Vallées (without legal framework, without respect for individual liberties, without reason, in a word) effective action? Is the creation of a blacklist of cults in France, disguised under the term “referential”, effective action, despite the obvious and legitimate criticisms such lists have attracted in the past? Are Mr Fenech’s costly winter visits to the overseas islands, suspected of being “more permeable to superstitious beliefs”, effective actions? Is the growing and indiscriminate stigmatisation of spiritual minorities effective, when MIVILUDES was supposed to avoid discrimination by combating real “dérives” and not “cults”? Is the expansion of the anti-cult arsenal effective action, when the very existence of the scourge that spiritual and therapeutic minorities are said to constitute is contradicted by the figures? The questions are many, and the effectiveness of such a structure therefore appears to be nil.

“The Miviludes has designed a practical guide to child protection in the face of dérives sectaires, which will see the light of day this year”. We fear the worst. “Child protection” is a compelling theme which could be legitimate under the responsibility of a structure other than MIVILUDES, which has demonstrated in the past its manipulation of figures in order to alarm the population, its intrusion into individual liberties and in particular into parents’ lawful educational choices (which it wishes to control). The section devoted to minors is full of innuendo (nothing is substantiated) supporting a sort of MIVILUDES intuition that spiritual minorities would be a danger to children.

“It is at the Council of Europe that the idea of an observatory, or of an independent structure for analysis and information, is taking shape”. Mr Fenech’s proposal bears no resemblance to that of CICNS, which was a pioneer in drawing up a detailed project for a genuinely independent observatory. Mr Fenech’s observatory would be a sort of “super MIVILUDES”, an organ of repression composed exclusively of secularist anti-cult figures, as its woolly title indicates: “European programme of studies on dérives sectaires and their dangers for fundamental Rights”.

An incongruous study of shamanism

“It must be acknowledged that dérives exist in the matter of shamanism. Testimonies prove it, legal proceedings have already been brought in France and abroad, and three reports of serious facts, received by the Miviludes in 2009, gave rise to referrals to the judicial authorities.”

A large part of this report is devoted to what MIVILUDES presents as an “in-depth study” of shamanism. Dozens of pages are given over to describing these practices in various countries of the world, with a declared attempt to respect these beliefs (one finds, for example, passages as astonishing in such a report as this one: “A shaman, after a long initiation, is able to communicate with the spirits. He is thus charged with establishing this link between men and the spirits of nature, for the good of his community”). Such efforts on the part of MIVILUDES would be praiseworthy were they not contradicted daily by the actions of this outfit, which displays contempt and a will to repress without discernment (which means, to be perfectly clear, that if excesses genuinely exist, they can be dealt with within the framework of the existing laws, without stigmatising particular currents). In this surreal section, another passage caught our attention. MIVILUDES accuses the media of being responsible for the “trivialisation of dérives”: “(These last remarks) pose the problem of the responsibility of certain media in the trivialisation of shamanic dérives, presumed to be harmless because “natural”. The mainstream press and the audiovisual media may at times be reproached with a certain negligence and a lack of vigilance in their reporting (p. 63)”. A way of “biting the hand that feeds you”, when one knows the use MIVILUDES makes of media hype, of which this report is a good example, since the media were the first to learn its contents, thereby securing it wide coverage before organisations such as CICNS could comment on it.

Still on shamanism, on page 92 the report presents a table of the psychoactive plants used by shamans and (a pleasant surprise for those who dislike cigarettes) tobacco is pinned down under the scientific name Nicotiana. The cultivation of tobacco should therefore be swiftly banned on French soil, since shamans are liable to use it.

“Anything natural may conceal dérives sectaires”

The report then takes aim at kinesiology, the Grail Movement, instinctotherapy, naturopathy, vegetarianism and (an invention for the occasion) “hygiene therapy”, all thrown into the same bag, conflating spiritual movements, therapies, a different diet and ways of life. In the case of naturopathy, it is interesting to note that the description given of it is broadly positive, with insinuations about the potential risk of not using the remedies of conventional medicine. This continual dilution, throughout the report, of positive facts with insinuations and unfounded allegations is a trademark of MIVILUDES’s recent reports. The report indeed concludes: “This presentation places naturopathy unambiguously among the alternative medicines”. The mere fact of being an alternative medicine constitutes a danger. Mr Fenech has said so unambiguously: “Opinion must be alerted: anything natural may in part conceal dérives sectaires (source)”

The height of hypocrisy

After the attack on the media cited above comes the attack on judges: “As a preliminary, we must mention here, the better to set it aside at once, the poor use sometimes made by the judge of the notion of “dangerous cult movement”. (…) But above all, it is regrettable that judges have ventured onto this terrain, at once slippery and sterile, because on the one hand, what legitimacy has the judge to issue a certificate of harmlessness or to endorse the dangerousness of a movement, relying moreover on a parliamentary report with no normative force, and on the other hand this single element, without explanation, could not justify the infringement the judge might consider he must make on the rights of parents in the event of “danger”. pp. 190-191”. That judges tend to be subjected to media hype and end up receptive to certain theses is a reality we have already underlined, but for MIVILUDES (which bears the greatest share of responsibility for propagating the most revolting liberticidal theses) to permit itself to accuse judges of a sort of drift is at once comic and dramatic.

No mention of alternative voices on the anti-cult campaign in this report

The only allusion is found in this sentence, in the middle of a paragraph relating to MIVILUDES’s presence at the OSCE: “To the attacks of certain NGOs concerning the policy of vigilance and of combating dérives sectaires (reproaches about the subsidies granted to associations, the action of the Miviludes, etc.), the French delegation, through the voice of the adviser for religious affairs, justified France’s attitude, notably as regards the protection of victims.”

An account very different from our own observation.

Training courses at risk

“Training courses”… a recurrent theme for MIVILUDES. The declared wish is to “identify the activities which are not “formative” by nature, to spot the practices described as “charlatanesque”, or indeed the dérives sectaires”. Considered at risk are training courses on alternative medicines, the development of behavioural and relational capacities, psychotherapy, spiritual search, alternative medical practices, processes of individual change, self-knowledge and self-esteem, harmonious communication, and the relation to others (p. 258). The list speaks for itself.

One may, moreover, wonder about MIVILUDES’s capacity to deliver quality training to all those it claims to train, right down to the “trainers of the French Yoga Federation in Paris”. (p. 290).

Much ado about nothing

MIVILUDES is not very fond of figures, nor of statistics, because it knows they dis serve its propaganda (see the problem of the figures during hearings before certain parliamentary commissions). “In order to reflect the activity of the criminal courts in the matter of combating dérives sectaires, several public-prosecution files may usefully be mentioned”. As so often, much ado about nothing: only two are cited! But MIVILUDES seems to seek an appearance of seriousness and of “reason of State” when it declares: “It is fitting to mention, finally, our constant activity of collaboration with the intelligence, investigation and examining services, as well as with the organs of international cooperation. This dimension of our mission can be brought to the public’s knowledge only in a general and indicative manner.”

An unsurprising conclusion

If, in order to demonstrate our impartiality in the study of such a report, we had to find one positive point to underline in it, we would be hard pressed. We have noted that the reports of these last three years, by way of the “in-depth studies” (this year on traditional shamanism), had evolved somewhat compared with the earlier ones, which could allow themselves a crude anti-cult approach. But it must be acknowledged that these fine words, in a “sociological” tone, constitute an official cosmetic over MIVILUDES’s real action, whose true nature may be found in the regularly publicised remarks of its President Mr Fenech. The “mission” maintains its repressive approach, does not acknowledge its errors (discriminations), nor does it adopt an approach of knowledge on the subject of “dérives sectaires”. The waffle about traditional shamanism, in this year’s report, is for an informed reader nothing but a feeble attempt to soften officially the violent secularism of this State mission. All the fields singled out by MIVILUDES as susceptible to dérives sectaires correspond to a growing demand from the population for solutions on the educational, therapeutic and spiritual plane, to which the structures in place do not respond. MIVILUDES’s determination to stigmatise these alternatives reflects a will to divert attention from the general malaise of our society and from its own excesses.

Read the instructive analysis of the figures from MIVILUDES’s international survey!

The 2009 MIVILUDES Report

Sources