Cults Like Us

Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America

De: Jane Borden

Narrado por: Jane Borden

An “engrossing, unputdownable” (Amanda Montell, New York Times bestselling author) pop history that explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders are still driving American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in far-right extremism as a natural result of our latent indoctrination, and proposes that the United States is the largest cult of all.

Since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, journalist Jane Borden argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away; it went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our allegiance to influencers and self-help, susceptibility to advertising, and undying devotion to the self-made man, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult-like thinking.

With in-depth research and compelling insight, Borden uncovers the American history you didn’t learn in school, including how we are still being brainwashed, making us a nation of easy marks for con artists and strong men. Along the way, she also revisits some of the most fascinating cults in this country—including, the Mankind United and Love Has Won—presenting them as integral parts of our national psyche rather than aberrations.

©2025 Jane Borden (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

Absolutely Essential Reading

I've been studying coercive control/authoritarian influence (aka, cults) for 2 decades now, and this book is essential reading. It explains a lot about the different authoritarian groups (heads' up, it doesn't have to look like Jonestown to be a cult!) and why America is uniquely susceptible to this kind of influence.

Jane kicks arse

intelligent funny enlightening historical scientific. Jane is a treasure. I loved learning more about this subject and she offered so much more in a philosophical sense.

Perfect for the times we live in, necessary even.

This book was amazing. The author is so clear. I just loved it. It gave me a new perspective in trying to understand the “evil” that I’m seeing our country go through right now. In quotes because I just listened to the conclusion!

Fascinating Topic

This books was riveting. I had never heard this subject matter presented in this way. I would highly recommend.

Insightful and balanced

I love any book that inspires critical thinking and balances it with humor. Love this book !

Depth

Very interesting. Looks at organizations I wouldn’t have thought of as a cult, yet they are. In every sense of the word. Very enlightening.

Essential listening for anyone interested in understanding America’s past and present

This book does an excellent job of helping the listener make sense of what lies behind (and beneath) so many of the senseless atrocities of American history. It is scholarly and insightful and should be listened to or read by anyone who has ever wondered why the same toxic situations and lying demagogues recur again and again in this nation’s history.

Excellent!

Phenomenally researched and so well written. Highly recommend this book for anyone interested in cults and how we got to this point in America.

Great and informative ideas

a great explainer of where the country is now based on the cults we have seen and lived with.

Identifies multi-level marketing as cult movement

My perspective on "Cults Like Us" by Jane Borden is likely narrower, deeper and more personal than that of most readers. I have written three books on the subject of cultism in America and actively combatted, in particular, the largest of all cults, called multi-level marketing (MLM), for more than 20 years. My books, "Ponzinomics" and "False Profits" and the non-profit website, “PyramidSchemeAlert.org” that I have managed since 2000 are quoted or referenced in the book. The author also interviewed me personally.

The media has largely ignored or side-lined the alarming reality of a cult epidemic on Main Street America. In particular, the cult of multi-level marketing, e.g., Amway, Herbalife, Mary Kay, Avon and a thousand more such schemes, involving more than 18 million people in the US each year, continues to be treated as “legitimate direct selling.” The “business” identity is maintained despite the easily verified fact – cited in the book – that 99% of all people in MLM lose money and virtually none of the “salespeople” profitably sells any products. The frightening and delusional behavior observed among millions of MLM participants over many decades – obsessive and intrusive recruiting, quitting jobs, ending education, ruined credit, bankruptcy, abandoning friends and family – has also been ignored.

For this reason, the great importance of this book, in my view, is that it is the first from a major publisher to specifically identify multi-level marketing as part of the self-destructive cultism sweeping across America. It includes MLM with the hallmark cult identifiers – leader-worship, demand of total loyalty and unquestioning belief, claims to secret or esoteric knowledge, utopian promises, authoritarian, coercive mind-control, financial or sexual exploitation. "Cults Like Us" hopefully opens recognition to media, publishing, academia and law enforcement to address MLM as the national threat it is. Atria Publishing, a division of Simon & Schuster, and Audible deserve credit for bringing this book to the public.

Beyond its enormous scale, MLM’s significance is further amplified by its corrupting influence on government, also recognized in "Cults Like Us." For more than a decade leading up to his first presidential election, Donald Trump was paid millions as the most famous endorser of MLM. After election, Trump placed Betsy DeVos of Amway, the largest and oldest of MLMs, over the nation’s schools. Recently, he put Mehmet Oz in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. MLM is the most aggressive promoter of snake oil “pills, potions, and lotions” as medical remedies. “Dr. Oz” gained fame and fortune as an MLM “wellness” champion. MLM has also leveraged the power of the US government to globally spread its pyramid recruiting scheme. Two of its highly paid “ambassadors,” Alexander Haig and Madeleine Albright, were previously U.S. Secretaries of State. As the book chronicles, Bill Clinton also was a highly paid MLM promoter after his term as US President.

As "Cults Like Us" acknowledges, modern cults such as MLM are not alien forces or anomalous phenomena. They are home-grown responses, predictable outgrowths of core beliefs and values on which America was founded. MLMs, for instance, promote themselves as the “last best hope” for ordinary people to achieve the American Dream. Foundational American values and beliefs conflate transcendent faith with insatiable and predatory commercialism. They reduce life to the standards of commodity trading, measure human worth on a financial ledger, and equate financial wealth with virtue and divine reward, thereby turning lack of wealth into a failing, a sin. Wielding these distorted dogmas and employing cult coercion, MLMs instill fear and self-blame to dominate and silence victims.

As the book details, some cults promise a safe haven or utopian deliverance. Others claim to be the sole pathway to survival and success in a terrifying jungle of society. All cults claim to hold secrets for thriving and “winning” in a world they ominously depict with menacing enemies, immoral non-believers, negative thinkers and “pathetic losers.” Far from pathways to prosperity and happiness, cults, such as multi-level marketing, are the gross expressions of the dehumanized, hyper-commercialized values and beliefs they claim to transcend.

MLM is not only the largest American cult but also the most direct expression of how commercial values can become a cultic national ideology, turning the American Dream into living nightmare. In "Ponzinomics," I describe multi-level marketing as the “cult of capitalism.” Author Jane Borden expands this perspective to show that MLM is part of the “cult of America.”