Interview with Pierre Barrucand on the Theme of "Cults"

Pierre Barrucand was an honorary senior researcher (maître de recherche honoraire) at the CNRS, France’s national centre for scientific research. In this short CICNS interview he places the French anti-cult campaigns in a longer historical lineage — the campaigns against the Jesuits under the Restoration, and against the Freemasons and the Jews at the end of the nineteenth century — and criticises the sourcing and accuracy of the French parliamentary report on “cults”.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 4 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Pierre Barrucand, anthropologist, honorary senior researcher at the CNRS, brings a certain perspective to the question of “cults”. The perspective of the scientist, who places the current persecutions in a historical frame, but also the perspective of age, since he took part in the Second World War, was decorated with the Resistance Medal, and was thus a direct witness of other campaigns of discrimination, anti-Semitic ones in particular.

He granted us a long interview, in the course of which he recalled many anecdotes and points of detail that we did not know about the first steps of the anti-cult struggle. Beyond the personal stories he recounted, he enabled us once again to put into perspective the impressions left in our memories by the speeches of anti-cult activists. A few excerpts from our conversation.

[Barrucand]: I observed how it was an almost word-for-word repetition of campaigns that had taken place before, first under the Restoration against the Jesuits, and then at the end of the nineteenth century against the Freemasons and, to a large extent, against the Jews.

Eventually, I was led to come into contact with other movements, notably Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna was only a branch of Hinduism, one that is perfectly accepted by Hindus. By Hindus, I mean “religion”. The Church of Scientology got in touch with me. At the outset I did not, a priori, have a favourable opinion. So many things had been said about it. But there again, I met people of very great quality, and in any case of absolute sincerity. I was also in fairly slight contact with a movement called “The Family”. I saw only pious people. Sincerely.

Now, the anti-cult campaigns seem to say that it is these so-called religious movements (I say “so-called” for them) that supposedly diminish people’s freedom. It is not true. It is not true. All the people I met were perfectly free people. Quite apart from that, I saw a few anti-cult militants, and I had the impression of people who were intoxicating themselves. You know, the difference is extremely perceptible when you see people who have a form of obsession, and others who apparently are fully free.

They had no vocation whatsoever to take an interest in minority religious movements. None. And I think that when they were asked to deal with this problem, they took their documentation from wherever they could conveniently find it, that is to say, in particular, from the ADFI, the UNADFI and the CCMM. They produced a synthesis (very badly done, moreover) and passed it on to the deputies. Yes. That is what they had been asked to do.

That report was very badly done, and it was repealed by Mr Raffarin, so many absurdities are to be found in it. Thus one finds mentioned cults that do not exist, or that do exist but have one or two members. I know of one that never had more than a single member.

Given that I have always tended to commit myself to the causes I believe in, I wanted, within my modest means, to denounce a campaign that seems to me absurd, and to have no justification of any kind. For even if one disagrees with this or that group, that is no reason to lump everyone together, and above all it is no reason to deny what is the right of every individual, that is, the right to freedom.