Cultists always attack a recruit’s belief system and “sense of self”
Cults invariably adopt certain lingo that they find effective in attracting recruits and convincing them to stay locked in the cramped intellectual cell of the cultic creed.
Thus, we can quickly identify a cultic group by its use of certain key rhetorical markers.
For instance, the trope of “doing the work” or “doing this work” has served cults well for decades, and it serves the “antiracism” cult today.
“Doing the work” is ubiquitous in the antiracism oeuvre, used almost reflexively. Cults have long used “doing the work” as a coercive trope. So much so, that when you here a person reciting this mantra, you can feel confident that you’re in the presence of a cultist.
At the very least, it’s enough to call into suspicion the rest of the person’s patter, which likely exhibits cult characteristics as well. Cult and cultist characteristics are expressed and witnessed in clusters, not in one-offs.
In addition to the wheedling of recruits to do “the work” of the cult, note the attacks on the “sense of self” and “sense of reality” characteristic of so-called social justice education. This example below is from Margaret Singer’s “Therapy, thought reform, and cults.”
The cited section is from page 19 of Singer’s piece that appeared in Transactional Analysis Journal, 26(1), 1996: 15–22.
The entire article appears below. It is incredibly rich in detail and identifying cult markers.