The Archives of Maître Paturel — Part 3: Caricatures and Dark Designs

The archives of Maître Paturel

Part 3

Caricatures and dark designs

The similarities between the two drawings above, one published in “Der Stürmer” before the Second World War, the second in a Dutch newspaper in 1991, both taken from file 45 of Me Paturel’s archives, do not stop at appearances (in the first, the bats are “the Jews”; in the second, “the cults”). They relate equally to the context of the two eras.

Pierre Barrucand, anthropologist and historian, underlined this in a 1996 publication:

“Hatreds of yesterday and today: anti-Jewish, anti-Masonic, anti-cult campaigns”

In it he describes, in a rigorous parallel, the repetition of a mechanism of discrimination revisited many times down the ages. He does so as a historian, and as a witness of integrity and responsibility.

Holder of the Resistance Medal, he was 19 years old in 1939. In the 1980s, he was struck by the bitter reminiscence of a phenomenon of exclusion within France itself, when spiritual minorities he had had occasion to frequent (1) began to suffer accusations along unshakeable axes: sex, money and power (in this case the supposed “mental manipulation”).

He therefore took it to heart to examine the question as a scientist and to study closely the underlying realities of what he considers a veritable aggression. Several extracts from his studies are published on our site.

We take up this comparative approach in order to underline one major difference between the current perception of the anti-Jewish or anti-Masonic persecutions and the persecution of the new spiritualities:

The people targeted by the persecution of the new spiritualities are often unaware, before becoming its actual target, that they are its object. And even then, most deny in good faith that they belong to the discriminated population.

“I am not a cult” is the almost inevitable answer as soon as the subject is raised with the people concerned, and in every case as soon as a person falls victim to this defamatory accusation. The denials continue with the assertion that they do not have the attributes of cults, since “we don’t ask for much money”, “we don’t proselytise”, “we are not cult-like”, or again, ever since the protection of children was put forward by the anti-cult activists, “we have no activities with children”.

This understandable attitude, a kind of “legitimate” self-defence, nevertheless reflects a worrying phenomenon, the result of a tour de force by the accusation, which has managed to divide the accused and to make them feel guilty, to the point that they defend themselves against things that are not even offences.

To assert “I am not a cult” implicitly means that “Cults exist”, or again, and this is a shortcut hard to accept, so widespread is the psychosis, that “the amalgam between spirituality and criminality is legitimate”. Indeed the word cult (secte), in its current pejorative connotation, was created for the sole use of this amalgam, just as the words “youpin” and “bougnoul” (French slurs for Jews and North Africans) were invented to imply defects intrinsic to the populations targeted.

Would we understand today the attitude of a Jew called a “youpin” who defended himself by saying that “he is not rich” or that he “does not have a hooked nose”? He would not do so, because the deception has been denounced and understood by public opinion, and anti-Jewish statements are now the doing of only a minority.

Moreover, this “mistaken identity” invoked by the victims of the accusation of cult is an illusion. Most of the people who are today victims of the accusation of cult are not so “by mistake” but because they belong to the population actually targeted by the anti-cult campaigns.

The Gest-Guyard report, which is still the “Bible” (or in any case the inspiration) of most of the media and of government action since its publication, published in 1995 a precise nomenclature grouping the terms:

“New Age”

“alternatives”

“evangelical and pseudo-Catholic”

“apocalyptic”

“neo-pagan”

“satanic”

“healers” (The report specifies: “Theories professing a mode of healing not recognised by current medical science may be described as healing ones”)

“orientalist”

“occultist”

“psychoanalytic”

“ufological”

“syncretic” (The report specifies: “movements presenting a synthesis of the various religions, including primitive ones, or even of Eastern and Western traditions”).

If you have an interest in a practice designated by one of these labels, you are liable to be accused of being a “cult”, notwithstanding the hypocritical promises scattered through the report and the good intentions of avoiding amalgam and discrimination.

The testimonies we receive daily demonstrate it.

Today, calling a Jew a “youpin” betrays antisemitism.

We suggest, if you are “accused of being a cult”, that you do not answer “I am not a cult”, but that you take part in our awareness campaign by denouncing the amalgam this word symbolises. Your accuser does not know what he is talking about. Tell him so. Recommend that he read our site. You will thus perform an act of solidarity and coherence in the effective defence of everyone’s right to live freely their spiritual, educational or therapeutic choices, beliefs and practices.

(1)

As a participant in colloquia of historians and sociologists of religions, and then driven by his curiosity, he met certain leaders and members of the main groups blacklisted at the time: “The Family of Love”, the Hare Krishna movement, Reverend Moon’s Unification Church, and the Church of Scientology. He testified, in the interview he granted us this week, that beyond beliefs he did not share, he appreciated the “human, intellectual and moral quality” of his interlocutors.

Read also: Part 4: The Horus case and that of the conscientious objectors.

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