 Hardcover edition | |
| Author | Dennis Tourish, Tim Wohlforth |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | cults, political cults, politics |
| Publisher | M.E. Sharpe |
Publication date | September 2000 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 246 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7656-0639-6 |
| OCLC | 43434639 |
| 303.48/4 21 | |
| LC Class | HN17 .T69 2000 |
On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left is a 2000 non-fiction book about political cults, written by Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth.
On the Edge discusses the role of 'cults' and political cults in politics, as well as describing some of the history involving individuals such as Lyndon LaRouche and Fred Newman. Other individuals and groups discussed include Marlene Dixon, the Christian Identity movement, Posse Comitatus, Re-evaluation Counseling, Synanon, and Aryan Nation. [1] Additionally, the book discusses actions of Trotskyist groups, such as the CWI in the United Kingdom particularly those led by Ted Grant and Gerry Healy.
Tourish is a professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and was a leading member of the Irish wing of Militant group from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. He has recently published a new book: 'The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective', in which he revisits some of his earlier criticisms of the Militant group. [2] Wohlforth was the author of The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left (1995) about his experiences in American Trotskyism from the 1950s through the 1970s; he was also an author of detective fiction. [3] He was the leader from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s of a United States Trotskyist group, the Workers League, which was affiliated with the UK-based Workers Revolutionary Party (one of the groups profiled in On the Edge). [2]
In his review [2] of On the Edge, Bob Pitt, editor of the online Marxist journal WhatNext and a former member of one of the groups profiled in the book, the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), stated that the "central purpose of the book is to mount a slanderous attack on the revolutionary left, which often goes further than anything you might read in even the most anti-socialist sections of the bourgeois press." Pitt describes the authors as "two embittered former members of far left groups." [2]
Pitt states that the authors "seem immune to the idea that far left sects – even the most cult-like – can occasionally play some kind of progressive role in wider society." [2]
In the same review, however, Pitt stated that in the case of one leftist group profiled in the book, his own former WRP, "there are grounds for viewing it as a type of cult. It featured a ruthlessly authoritarian internal regime presided over by an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, who maintained his position by subjecting cadres to psychological manipulation and physical and sexual abuse." Pitt also termed the Lyndon LaRouche organization an "actual cult."
In 2003, WhatNext? republished the 1998 article by Tourish from the Cultic Studies Journal which had served as the basis for the chapter of On the Edge on one of the leaders of Militant tendency, Ted Grant (The Lonely Passion of Ted Grant). Pitt criticized this On the Edge chapter in his review by stating: "When it comes to the Militant Tendency, the authors’ attempt to apply the cult paradigm breaks down. A moment’s consideration would reveal that the notion of Ted Grant presiding over a regime comparable to Healy’s is laughable." [2]
The What Next? reprint [4] of Tourish included a lengthy new introduction by him defending On the Edge and stating: "Some people have objected to the term "cult", even if they agreed with the substantive points that the paper makes about the Militant tendency's internal regime. This is unfortunate. The word cult is not a term of abuse, as this paper tries to explain. It is nothing more than a shorthand expression for a particular set of practices that have been observed in a variety of dysfunctional organisations. [5] "
Nevertheless, Pitt argues that Tourish's application of the word cult "expands the definition of the term to the point where it becomes pretty well useless." [2]
Cult academic Janja Lalich positively reviewed the book. [6]
The term large-group awareness training (LGAT) refers to activities—usually offered by groups with links to the human potential movement—which claim to increase self-awareness and to bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives. LGATs are unconventional; they often take place over several days, and may compromise participants' mental wellbeing.
Eileen Vartan Barker is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has written studies about cults and new religious movements.
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization, the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate. He began in far-left politics in the 1940s and later supported the civil rights movement, but in the 1970s he moved to the far-right. His movement is sometimes described as, or likened to, a cult. Convicted of fraud, he served five years in prison from 1989 to 1994.
Peter Taaffe is a British Marxist Trotskyist political activist and former leader of the Socialist Party.
The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) is a political organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche until his 2019 death. LaRouche sometimes described the NCLC as a "philosophical association". It is the main organization within the LaRouche movement. LaRouche was the association's leader, and the political views of the NCLC are virtually indistinguishable from those of LaRouche.
Timothy Andrew Wohlforth, was a United States Trotskyist leader. On leaving the Trotskyist movement he became a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction.
Cult is a lay term for a group perceived as requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant outside the norms of society. Such groups are typically perceived as being led by a charismatic leader who tightly controls its members. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, also used for new religious movements and other social groups which are defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or their common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
The Socialist Labour Group was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1979 and 1989.
Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships is a study of cults and abusive relationships by Madeleine Landau Tobias, Janja Lalich, and Michael Langone. It was published by Hunter House Publishers in 1994. In 2006, the book was reissued as Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships.
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults is a 2004 psychology and sociology book on cults by Janja Lalich. It was published by University of California Press.
Janja Lalich is an American sociologist and writer. Lalich is an expert on cults and coercion, charismatic authority, power relations, ideology and social control. She is a professor emerita of sociology at the California State University, Chico.
Clouds Blur the Rainbow: The Other Side of New Alliance Party is a non-fiction report by Chip Berlet, published in 1987 by Political Research Associates (PRA). Berlet presents his view that Lenora Fulani and her campaign manager and tactician Fred Newman "use totalitarian deception to manipulate social and political activists, and describe Newman and Fulani's therapeutic approach, Social Therapy, as "totalitarian cultism".
On the Edge may refer to:
The Democratic Workers Party was a United States Marxist–Leninist party based in California headed by former professor Marlene Dixon, lasting from 1974–1987. One member, Janja Lalich, later became a widely cited researcher on cults. Lalich characterized the DWP as a political cult with Dixon serving as its charismatic leader. She estimated that the Democratic Workers Party at one point had 125-150 full-time members and 300-1,000 members with various degrees of affiliation.
Under a variety of names and within a number of organizations over at least 17 years, the group around Harry Turner, or Turnerites was a presence within Trotskyism in the United States.
The Revolutionary Tendency within the American Socialist Workers Party was an internal faction that disagreed with the direction the leadership was taking the party on several important issues. Many groups and movements would have their roots in the RT, both in the United States and internationally, including the Socialist Equality Party and the world Spartacist and LaRouche movements and their various splinters.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953. Today, two Trotskyist internationals claim to be the continuations of the ICFI; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.
Thomas Gerard Healy was an Irish-born British political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the leader of the Socialist Labour League and later the Workers Revolutionary Party.
Edward Grant was a South African Trotskyist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He was a founding member of the group Militant and later Socialist Appeal.
Michael Banda, born Michael Alexander Van Der Poorten, was a Sri Lankan communist activist best known as the General Secretary of the British Workers Revolutionary Party.