By: Alex Eubanks, Nonfiction Reviewer
My mom’s in a cult. At least, that’s what Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism seems to say. Cultish touches on a wide variety of topics – from the classic “drink the Kool-Aid” cults to social media posts with the end goal of educating the viewer about the language of being in the “in-group.” Amanda Montell’s book tells the cautionary tale of how language can plant the lure and hook any susceptible person desiring love and community.
Anyways, back to the “my mom being in a cult” thing. My mom is in a multi level marketing scheme (MLM), also known plainly as a pyramid scheme. She’s a life insurance agent and was hired by the person above her, who gets a percentage of her sales, and everyone she hires will also have a percentage taken from them. I’ve been to some of the retreats, seen her CEO stand up on a pedestal and espouse the millions he’s made in his personable southern drawl, urging the peons that they too can be just like him. It’s creepy – and oddly compelling. In that way, I understand the danger that Amanda Montell warns about in Cultish. I have firsthand experience at how MLMs use their – as Montell puts it – “#Bossbabe” language to get people to invest, to spend, to give their all to achieve the goal of becoming a multimillionaire. While I wasn’t convinced by my mom’s CEO “Spend-less time-with-your-son-now-so-that-you-can-buy-him-a-Corvette-later” attitude, I understand how someone can be sucked up into the idealized American Dream from another person saying the right words.
On the other hand, Cultish creates a frankly irresponsible narrative concerning the definition of a cult. Amanda Montell has a level of self-awareness about the material she discusses but is a hair’s breadth short of the revelation that maybe she is oversimplifying the discussion. Early on she states that, “Though ‘cult language’ comes in varieties, all charismatic leaders – from Jim Jones to Jeff Bezos to SoulCycle instructors – use the same basic linguistic tools. This is a book about the language of fanaticism in its many forms…” Frankly, I believe if she presented this book in a university, the first thing the professor would do is send her to the local writing center with notes on specifying her thesis. As Montell knows all too well, language has power. Her entire book is about how language can manipulate. With that knowledge, it is incredibly aggravating that she compares SoulCycle and Jim Jones in the same sentence. The most SoulCycle will do is develop an unhealthy relationship with your body; Jim Jones made sure that almost nine hundred people no longer had a body to inhabit. She discusses people getting into yoga a little too much before shifting to discuss the mysterious disappearances within NXIVM and Scientology. It’s a whiplash I am frankly not comfortable with experiencing.
There’s other aspects of this book that give off a too-casual impression. Amanda Montell’s Cultish is 90% personal anecdotes and 10% quotes from actual professionals in respective fields. Her notes section is a mere twenty pages, and it shows. Her constant references to Trump’s fanatical language throughout the entire book give off the impression of someone with a personal vendetta.
If you’ve been looking at picking this book up because it’s free on Kindle Unlimited (just like I had), it might be better to pass this one up. If you have a fascination with cults, there are certainly other options that treat the topic with more respect and grace. If it wasn’t for the fact I was reading this book during particularly boring weekly lectures, I’m not sure if this read would have been something I ever completed. If you’re thinking of giving this book a shot, adopt the attitude that Amanda Montell took when writing: turn your brain off, be casual, and don’t take it seriously.