Media &amp; public opinion

Cults, Moral Panic, and the Press: How to Construct a Perfect Enemy

Argentine journalist Alejandro Agostinelli revisits his own 1991 anti-cult article and the Valentina de Andrade affair to show how the press manufactures a moral panic, and how the Konstantin Rudnev case repeats the pattern.

19 September 2026

A Textbook Case: Jean-Luc Delarue's "Ça se discute"

Éric Bouzou dissects the 19 September 2007 France 2 programme on cults and gurus as three manipulations in one show: the pretence of treating a social issue, the simulacrum of balance, and a set turned popular tribunal. A 2010 postscript notes the presenter's own fall.

The CICNS's Letters to the Media Following the 2008 MIVILUDES Report

Twenty letters sent in May and June 2009 to La Croix, Libération, AFP, France 2 and the rest of the media landscape that relayed the 2008 MIVILUDES report: the same request each time, that journalists carry the opinions they leave out, and a right of reply asked of France 2.

QED, or the "State Spanking"

Claude-Gérard Sarrazin's polemical epistemology lesson: acts of faith beneath scientific knowledge, measuring instruments that cannot measure what they deny, the placebo as unexplained process, and the argument from authority that rules the paranormal inadmissible.

Eckankar and the St Paul Affair: Interview with Jean Maunick

The press interview in which the head of Eckankar Mauritius answers the accusations after the St Paul tragedy: one former member among the ten dead, medallions that prove nothing, a fifty-member group with a few chairs and books, and teachings that condemn suicide without reserve.

Editorials: All the Editorials Since the CICNS's First Newsletter

The complete archive of the CICNS's editorials from the founding letter of January 2005 to January 2008: a running, month-by-month primary record of the anti-cult scene as the association watched it, from the Hidalgo cult map and the Outreau shock to the third parliamentary commission, the FECRIS question and the Sarkozy laïcité debate.

All Cults Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal than Others: Freemasonry and the Double Standard

Valérie Dole sets the masonic obediences' own descriptions of themselves - an initiatory order with rites, grades, secrecy, proselytism and a monthly slot on France Culture - beside the ten criteria of dangerousness applied to the spiritual minorities, and asks not that Freemasonry lose its treatment but that everyone be granted it.

Interview with Janine Tavernier (1)

The outgoing UNADFI president tells Technikart in 2001 that people now see cults everywhere, that the Steiner schools her grandchildren attend are wrongly catalogued, and that she is leaving as more dogmatic voices arrive.

"They Did Not Save My Life", a Scandalous Anti-Cult Docu-Fiction

CICNS reads the 2009 book in which a TF1 news executive writes in the first person as a deceased woman, against the 80-page record of the appeal trial that acquitted the doctor the book targets, and against the journalists' charter its author signed.

Hatred and the Scapegoats: The Same Mechanism, a New Target Each Generation

From the Indian Removal Act and the demonic Indian carved into the Capitol, through McCarthyism and Peter Watkins's Punishment Park, to a Father Christmas whose red hat is swapped for a turban: the CICNS traces one mechanism of manufactured hatred and asks what it is doing today to the spiritual minorities.

Laïcité, Cults: Is There an Alternative to the Foot-in-the-Dish Politics?

Éric Bouzou surveys the storm around Sarkozy's Latran and Riyadh speeches and the Mignon 'non-problem' episode, from Baubérot and Debray to the Protestant federation, and asks why France cannot debate laïcité calmly.

LCP Channel - "Beware of the Gurus"

CICNS's running commentary on the parliamentary channel's October 2011 report marking ten years of the About-Picard law: Waco and Solar Temple images out of context, a poll figure misattributed to Ipsos, an ongoing trial prejudged, and 'mental manipulation' presented as technical science.

La peur des sectes: Kristoff Talin Reviews the Duhaime and Saint-Arnaud Colloquium

A review from the Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale of the 2001 Montreal volume: Jean-François Mayer on the researcher caught between public security and science, Alain Bouchard on how the media metaphorise the Raëlians, Jean Duhaime on religious diversity in the Canadian armed forces, and a legal chapter finding French law more nuanced case by case than its public policy suggests.

Cults, Media and Single-Track Thinking

Éric Bouzou's enquiry into the France 2 hidden-camera programme Les infiltrés: why CICNS declined the panel, the three-to-one ratio of anti-cult voices, and what Chomsky, Bourdieu and the profession's own critics say about a journalism that cries wolf.

Media and Spirituality: The Journalism of Denunciation

Jean-Luc Delfin's essay from the magazine Les trois mondes: why nothing is more opposed to the tempo of the media than a spiritual path, how cult coverage recycles anti-cult files without verification, and what Zola knew about buried truth.

The Impossible Mediation: How the UNADFI Argues That Dialogue Cannot Happen

André Tarassi takes the ADFI's own bulletin editorial of late 2003 line by line: the follower who says he is free proves he is not, the brainwashing that is selective enough to leave him absolutely normal before a judge, the cult compared to a drug dealer and a pimp so that no mediation need ever be attempted - and the Camus quotation on true dialogue with which the editorial closes.

The Media Treatment of the "Cults"

Anne Morelli, historian of religions at the ULB, recounts from the inside how a France 2 'debate' on cults was built: names banned, invited witnesses barred at the MIVILUDES's request, a guest walked off the set, and her own microphone switched off.

The New Age as Seen by the Written Press in Quebec

CICNS's reading digest of Eric Forgues's essay: page by page, how Quebec's French-language press covered the new age from outside, as catch-all, plague and infiltration, and what that says about an elite estranged from a quarter of its readership.

"Plus belle la vie"?

When France's most-watched soap ran a ten-week cult storyline in 2008, CICNS traced the plot beat by beat: every anti-cult archetype rendered as realism, down to a judge doing something no French judge can legally do.

Les radis de la colère: Jean-Pierre Joseph on What He Believes the Hunt for Cults Is Really For

A chapter reprinted from the lawyer Jean-Pierre Joseph's book, arguing that the anti-cult campaign exists to neutralise anyone - farmer, craftsman, homeopath, agrarian community - who escapes a centralised economy: with a detailed account of how television reports are edited to manufacture menace, and a six-point indictment of the 1995 parliamentary commission that classified 172 movements in fifty minutes.

Hide That Religion I Do Not Wish to See

Alain Bouchard, sociologist of religion at Université Laval, on the 'religiously correct': the implicit norm that religion be private, rational and undemonstrative, and how the mediatised church and the mediatised cult are its two mirror images in Quebec.

Government inquiries

The Renseignements Généraux (3): RG, the Scandal Machine

Extracts from former RG officer Patrick Rougelet's book: the unprovable white notes, 53,000 occult journalist files, the rushed 1995 cult report copied from the gendarmes, and why he concludes the service cannot be reformed.

The Sacrificial Rumour: Why the Scapegoat Is Chosen, and What the Trance Does

Jean-Luc Delfin reads rumour as a survival of the sacrificial ritual: an archaic mechanism whose three phases - derealisation, fascination, sacrifice - map onto Edgar Morin's incubation, propagation and metastasis, and whose modern form is the media lynching. With Girard, Lempert, Voyé and Rosnow, and a note on what it does to those who cannot recover from it.

France Fights Minority Groups, Not Dérives Sectaires: a Demonstration in Quotations

CICNS assembles the record in the actors' own words: Fenech affirming and denying the fight against cults in the same fortnight, ministers promising a pitiless hunt, and journalists dropping the official euphemism entirely.

A Wretched and Fearful Society That Seeks to Smother the Spiritual Impulse

A neighbour who would kill Jehovah's Witnesses in the street, bombs outside a church, an ADFI representative saying on Europe 1 that she understands people who plant them: the CICNS takes the measure of twenty years of conditioning, then answers, one by one, the objections its own readers send in - the cults exist all the same, there are dangerous groups, I have a right to protect my children.

Sociology of the Cults in France: A France Culture Discussion with Esquerre, Iacub and Favret-Saada

Extracts from La suite dans les idées of 7 July 2009: how the point of support for naming a cult shifted from the Bible to mental manipulation, and with it who does the naming; the ethnologist of witchcraft on a phenomenon constituted entirely by its accusers; the jurist on a State that protects citizens from their own choices; and the finding that the article introduced to fight the cults is applied almost everywhere except to them.

Journey to the Heart of French Specificity

Christian Decoeur turns the argument from French specificity back on itself: from the Chevalier de La Barre beheaded for keeping his hat on to two schoolgirls expelled for keeping their scarves on, and through a catalogue of what that specificity has actually produced - record psychotropic consumption, a justice system under the executive, a medicine that hurls anathemas, and a list of therapies that all end at the same guillotine word.

La société des victimes by Guillaume Erner: When Compassion Becomes a Principle of Government

The CICNS's reading report on Erner's study of victimism, with long extracts: the victim as a social category rather than a biological fact, suffering as a secularised sacredness, moral harassment and the psychologisation of pain, and the argument that compassion, precious in private life, is at best an imposture as a principle of government - read against a French anti-cult policy built entirely on the victim's account.

Landmark Education - Right of Reply - France 3

Landmark Education's reply to the May 2004 Pièces à Conviction broadcast, as compiled by CICNS: the unnotified listing it could never be struck off, the promises France 3 made and broke, the experts the channel declined to consult, and a viewer's comment from the channel's own forum.

The Tragedy of St Paul

Ten deaths in Mauritius in August 2004, two EK medallions, and within days a whole religious minority under suspicion: Emile d'Albret traces how the French anti-cult template travelled to the Indian Ocean press, and defends nothing but the presumption of innocence.

The Theme of the "Cults" in Broadcast Debates (chapter 1: 2004-2007)

CICNS's running dossier on four years of French cult television: C dans l'air, the Landmark exposé, Karl Zéro, Teva, Jonestown and Waco documentaries, and the full email exchange in which a Ça se discute journalist promised an open debate that never was.

Teachers' Points of View on the Anti-Cult Fight and the Real Dangers for Minors

Two education professionals write to CICNS about the MIVILUDES minors guide: a support-network teacher who finds the targeted families the least worrying third, and a principal who in 33 years found nothing.

The Gettliffe / Grant Affair

CICNS's dossier on the Gettliffe/Grant custody affair (2001-2009): the annotated Thémis-Phonetag blog debate over Nathalie Gettliffe's removal of her children from Canada, the court rulings on both sides of the Atlantic, and the October 2010 addendum.

The Dr Guéniot Affair

CICNS's case file on Dr Gérard Guéniot: the 2006 Lille conviction, the full 2009 Douai appeal acquittal, and how the media, ADFI/UNADFI and the MIVILUDES treated the 'Grail' cult affair.

The Beatitudes Community Affair

CICNS's chronology of the Beatitudes community affair: the complaints and judicial proceedings, MIVILUDES's cautious handling, and the media's role in building the group's negative image.

Is French Justice Really Independent?

Starting from the 2007 Lisieux 'Parc d'accueil' affair, CICNS asks whether French justice can remain independent of rumor, media pressure and political influence, with extracts from Charles Debbasch and Jean-Louis Nadal.

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

Drawing on file 45 of Maître Paturel's archives and historian Pierre Barrucand's 1996 study, CICNS traces the parallel between pre-war anti-Jewish caricatures and 1990s anti-cult imagery, and dissects the reflex answer 'I am not a cult'.

The CICNS Interviews: A Guide to the Video Archive, 2006 to 2014

A guide to the roughly fifty-six interviews published on the CICNS YouTube channel between 2006 and 2014: scholars, journalists, practitioners and CICNS's own reports, grouped by voice.

17 July 2026

Raphaël Liogier on the French Cult Question: A Guide to the 2013 CICNS Interviews

A guide to the four-part 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier: the struggle inside the French State, why dissent on the cult question costs, why television forbids nuance, and his individuo-globalism thesis.

17 July 2026

Now They Come for Jesus: Anti-Cultist Admits She Aims to Destroy Christianity

Massimo Introvigne reviews Be Scofield’s “The Savior Complex,” which brands Jesus a “cult leader,” and argues that anti-cult models of coercive control and trafficking ultimately target mainline Christianity, not only new religious movements.

16 July 2026

Christiane Singer on Spiritual Freedom: The Full CICNS Interview

English translation of the full CICNS interview with writer Christiane Singer (Paris, May 2006): society as socially programmed hypnosis, the French anti-cult witch-hunt, and spiritual experience as an inalienable freedom.

19 November 2014

Is There Still a Place for Spirituality in Our Society?

Asked what spirituality means, the French answer moral values, love, the inner life and the beauty of nature; ninety per cent say they still feel wonder. André Tarassi sets those survey findings beside a public conversation in which the places where enchantment is sought are described as dangerous, and beside the record mistrust the same public reports towards those doing the describing.

1 July 2013

The Wrong Camp: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (2/4)

Part 2 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: how asking why people believe gets read on French television as siding with evil, and the political cost Emmanuelle Mignon paid for questioning the anti-cult consensus.

1 July 2013

The Impossible Debate: 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (3/4)

Part 3 of the 2013 CICNS interview with sociologist Raphaël Liogier, in English: why the cults debate is impossible on television. Anti-cult positioning is a cost-free political resource, and the thirty-second format forbids nuance.

1 July 2013

Health and the "Cult" Label: Interview with Sylvie Simon (2012)

English translation of the 2012 CICNS health interview with journalist Sylvie Simon on the "cult" label, non-conventional medicine, and the media in France.

22 January 2013

Cults and Free Expression: Ivan Rioufol on France's "Absurd and Useless Inquisition"

English translation of the CICNS interview with French journalist Ivan Rioufol on France's anti-cult campaign, MIVILUDES figures and media conformism.

21 January 2013

Interview with Robert Ménard on the Media and the "Cults" Question

English translation of the CICNS interview with Robert Ménard, co-founder of Reporters sans frontières, on French newsrooms, press freedom and the treatment of "cults".

19 December 2012

When a Commune Is Called a 'Cult': Mayor Caroline Yaffée's CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with Caroline Yaffée, a Drôme mayor, on the 'cult' label, alternative medicine and Steiner schooling in France.

5 November 2012

Gilles Farcet on "Cults", Mental Manipulation and Spiritual Freedom: The CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with writer Gilles Farcet: media-fed fear of "cults", the ambiguity of mental manipulation, and spiritual freedom.

5 November 2012

A Fifth of the French Suspected by Those Close to Them of Being in a Cult

Denis Mathieu dissects the 2011 MIVILUDES/IPSOS poll and Georges Fenech's use of it, arguing that thirty years of state and media anti-cult propaganda have installed a suspicion no study, statistic or court record supports.

1 October 2012

Georges Fenech, Hardline Excess and Pulp Fiction

CICNS reviews Fenech's 2012 apocalypse book and walks through his Figaro interview question by question, noting the unquantified victim count and the journalist's silence at each unproven claim.

1 September 2012

Abus de faiblesse et autres manipulations: Four Criticisms of Marie-France Hirigoyen's Book

The CICNS reads the victimologist's 2012 book on abuse of weakness and finds a chapter on the hold of the cults that reproduces the MIVILUDES's own checklist. It tests each criterion against the army, the monastery, the Buddhist retreat and the CAC 40 company, and proposes self-knowledge in place of the victim-manipulator model.

1 June 2012

The Ordre des Médecins Displays Its Partnership with the MIVILUDES

CICNS reads the January 2012 bulletin of France's medical council: a yoga-class cover captioned as danger, the Solar Temple invoked for a health dossier, and 258,000 copies met with silence.

1 April 2012

La laïcité falsifiée by Jean Baubérot: What the Book Says, and the 500,000 It Leaves Out

The CICNS's March 2012 reading report on Jean Baubérot's account of the new laïcité - a tele-visual construction, a magic word rebaptising a debate on Islam - accompanied by long extracts, and by two criticisms: the spiritual minorities are never mentioned, and without that omission the book's left-right thesis would not hold.

1 March 2012

A Comparison of the Financial Demands of the Said Cults and of More Conventional Courses

CICNS prices a day of 'new spirituality' training against approved providers and the MIVILUDES's own 150 € course, finding the accused groups charge a fraction of what State-approved training bodies do.

1 February 2012

Professional Training Bodies and Cults: the Usual Fanciful Figures of the MIVILUDES

CICNS reconstructs the arithmetic behind Fenech's claim that 1,200 to 1,500 training bodies are cult-linked, and sets it against the DGEFP's own controls: almost 800 checks, one body assimilable to a cult.

1 February 2012

Cults and Religions, a Double Standard: Anne Morelli at the CICNS Round Table

English translation of historian Anne Morelli's CICNS round-table remarks on the double standard between "cults" and recognised religions.

28 October 2011

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

CICNS's June 2011 survey of the coverage of the 2010 MIVILUDES report, outlet by outlet: France Inter's chill down the spine, the one interviewer who pushed back (the full Fenech/Ménard exchange transcribed), an LCP panel with no other side, and the report's own annex admitting Europe sees no problem.

1 June 2011

The CSA Replies to the CICNS about a Programme on "the Cults"

CICNS's December 2010 letter to the French broadcasting regulator over a France 2 programme on people 'snatched by a cult': the unnamed-but-recognisable subterfuge, the 500,000-follower figure, and the association's May 2011 commentary on the reply it received.

1 May 2011

In Search of the Good Psychotherapist

CICNS reads a January 2011 LCP broadcast against itself: Georges Fenech places dependence at the heart of the dérive sectaire, Serge Hefez places it at the heart of healing, and the state diploma stands in for ethics. With a partial transcript of the exchange.

1 February 2011

Comments on the Notion of "Emprise" and the "Me"

André Tarassi reads Sarah Chiche's novel L'emprise as a safe bet on the anti-cult literary wave, then turns to the phrase that leapt out at him, a victim 'emptied of her me', and asks what the modern self being protected from the cults actually is.

1 August 2010

Scientism, Beliefs and the Fight against Dérives Sectaires

Denis Mathieu on the unnamed scientism in French education - Comte, Renan, the popular-science magazines - and how it lends tacit authority to anti-cult journalism: a close reading of one investigation that lists facts under the heading "the facts" and demonstrates nothing, and of a Sciences et Avenir dossier that treats scholarly caution as mere academic reserve.

1 August 2010

"Yes, but All the Same...": The Argument That Ends Every Debate on the Cults

Raphaël Liogier's phrase for how intellectuals concede the anti-cult case without evidence. The CICNS answers it with a reasoning by the absurd - dissolve the two or three groups everyone names, and the fight is still unjustified - and then applies the MIVILUDES's own criteria of dérives sectaires, point by point, to France Télécom and its forty-five suicides.

1 June 2010

Cults: "Anti-Cult France: State of Play", Part 3

English translation of part 3 of the CICNS documentary « La France antisectes »: TV talk shows, staged testimony and the 2008 Mignon controversy.

1 April 2010

The Anti-Cult Fight, or the Bankruptcy of the Media Counter-Power

CICNS surveys the French media's coverage of the 2009 MIVILUDES report, channel by channel and headline by headline: platforms without debate, figures without questions, and a press that copies the report's own summaries as news.

1 April 2010

The MIVILUDES Descends on the Moulin des Vallées, Accused of Being a "Cult"

Residents of the Moulin des Vallées monastery recount a 2009 MIVILUDES raid led by its president and the media coverage that followed. Translated CICNS report.

23 December 2009

The Guéniot Affair and the Accusation of "Cult": CICNS on France 2's "Prise directe"

CICNS counter-investigation of France 2's "Prise directe" (17 Nov 2009): the Guéniot affair, a physician acquitted on appeal, and trial by television.

6 December 2009

The Guéniot Affair: A Right to Know or a Right to Smear? A CICNS Counter-Investigation

English translation of the CICNS report contrasting TV and book coverage of the Guéniot "cult" affair with the Douai appeal court's full acquittal.

14 November 2009

Interview with Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with journalist Jean-Luc Martin-Lagardette on France's anti-cult policy, the MIVILUDES, and the role of the media.

1 October 2009

What Motivates the Anti-Cult Militants? The Question Nobody in France Asks

André Tarassi turns the hypercritical gaze around: on the atrocity tales of Bromley and Shupe, Melton's divorce analogy, Galanter's finding that a third of one group's leavers had sought psychiatric help before joining, Kliever on the bitter leaver who magnifies flaws into threats, and the absence of any French study of the militants themselves.

1 October 2009

Interview with Susan Palmer on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Susan Palmer, Canadian sociologist, on her fieldwork among France's listed "cults" and the About-Picard law.

3 July 2009

Money: Our Society's Relationship to It, and "the Cults"

Éric Bouzou sets the parliamentary litany on 'the cults and money' against the 2009 financial system itself: the derivatives casino, debt money, the G20's mystification, and a thought experiment in which the MIVILUDES's own criteria are applied to finance.

1 May 2009

Interview with Philippe Dargère on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with naturopath Philippe Dargère on administrative pressure, the anti-cult climate and alternative health in France.

9 January 2009

The World as a "Juxtaposition of Cults"

CICNS catalogues how the word 'cult' escaped its cage in France: politicians, prosecutors, sports captains, archbishops, brand strategists and bloggers all reaching for the same pejorative, sector by sector, quote by quote.

1 December 2008

Parental Controls on the Internet and the "Cults"

CICNS tests Orange's 2008 parental-control filter and finds a hidden proscription list: 'cults' the only named category, entries that contradict the operator's own stated precautions, and no source anyone can check. The remedy proposed is an independent observatory.

1 August 2008

Waco: What Really Happened?

CICNS's account of the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel: the ATF raid, the 51-day standoff, the final assault, and the media narrative.

1 January 2008

Interview with Laurent Ladouce on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Laurent Ladouce of the Unification Church on the "Moon cult" media campaigns, deprogramming and the MIVILUDES.

12 February 2007

Christiane Singer on the Anti-Cult 'Witch-Hunt': The Short CICNS Interview

English translation of the short CICNS interview (2006) with writer Christiane Singer: the French anti-cult witch-hunt as a passing fever of morbid rationalism.

12 November 2006

Interview with Bernard Montaud on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Bernard Montaud, founder of psychanalyse corporelle, on France's post-Solar-Temple climate around "cults".

11 November 2006

The "Cults" Debate Seen from Québec: Eugénie Francoeur's CICNS Interview

English translation of the CICNS interview with Québec journalist Eugénie Francoeur on new spiritualities in Canada, Britain and France.

11 November 2006

Interview with Jean-Claude Guyard on the Theme of "Cults"

Kinesiology school head Jean-Claude Guyard on the Brittany trial, UNADFI and the anti-cult climate in France, in his 2006 CICNS interview.

11 November 2006

Interview with Bernard Renaud on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS interview with Bernard Renaud, esoteric bookseller and publisher, on how France's 1990s anti-cult campaign hit publishing.

10 November 2006

The Incredible Case of L'Essentiel: Report on a French "Cult Case"

Unnamed members of the publishing venture in France's L'Essentiel affair recount the raid, custody, house arrest and years of proceedings in this translated CICNS report.

10 November 2006

Interview with Michel Maffesoli on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the CICNS video interview with sociologist Michel Maffesoli on postmodern religiosity, the wild sacred, and France's anti-cult scapegoating.

10 November 2006

Interview with Sylvie Simon on the Theme of "Cults"

English translation of the 2006 CICNS video interview with French journalist Sylvie Simon on the branding of alternative health practices as 'cults' in France.

4 November 2006

Sex and Power: Politicians and Spiritual Leaders, an Unequal Treatment

The companion essay to Tarassi's abuse dossier: why French media consign politicians' escapades to oblivion while blowing up the gurus', and what a taboo domain offers a society in search of scapegoats.

1 January 2006

Interview with Anne Morelli: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with historian Anne Morelli (ULB) on who decides the label 'cult', media treatment of religious minorities, and freedom of conscience.

1 November 2005

The Kinesiology Affair

Éric Bouzou's May 2005 article on the Moëlan-sur-Mer trial: five people in the dock, but Kinesiology itself pointed at, and behind the amalgam a question of fear and power. With the AFP dispatch on the verdict reproduced and annotated.

1 May 2005

The Right to the Audacity to Think

Alain Chevillat of Terre du Ciel recounts the press barrage that greeted one invited speaker at his Aix-les-Bains forum, dismantles the parliamentary report the censors brandished, and claims for the individual the right to think differently, including the right to be wrong.

1 March 2005

Interview with Maurice Duval: Full Transcript

Full transcript of the CICNS interview with ethnologist Maurice Duval, in English: his four-year field study of the Mandarom, the censorship that followed, why the word 'cult' has no sociological meaning, and the manufacture of collective fear.

1 March 2005

Suicide and the Cults

Valérie Dole assembles what the serious research actually says about suicide in France, from the WHO figures to the prisons to Durkheim, and finds spiritual membership nowhere among the causes; the parallel drawn by anti-cultism runs the other way.

1 January 2005

Amalgames: The Elements of a Manipulation

A CICNS essay of pointed questions about conflation: why acts found across all of society are treated as defining crimes when they occur in spiritual minorities.

1 January 2004