Cultish / Amanda Montell / 2021
I read Cultish mostly because the line between cult and an organization being held together by a powerful magnetic leader can get blurry. I am curious how cult dynamics play out in a variety of different political, activist, and organizing settings, and figured Montell’s book might be a decent place to start. Overall, Cultish covers a broad swath of different leaders and settings, looking at each with a decent amount of attention and rigor. What she calls linguistics, I’m pretty sure is just a commonplace rhetorical analysis, but whatever. The rhetorical analyses and descriptions of different cultlike settings was moderately interesting, though not really relevant to my interests directly. She identifies common cult tactics, like the creation and enforcement of in-group lingo, as well as the severe consequences community members face when they attempt to leave. The narration, level of research, and so forth, felt more surface level, akin to a podcast-level, and less worthy of a whole book. Montell has been running her “Sounds Like a Cult” podcast for over four years now, so it seems like once she figured out the formula, she ran with it. Montell rightly hedges a lot, acknowledging that academic research is pretty allergic to the term “cult” because the term mostly exists to stigmatize organizations one dislikes for a number of fair or unfair reasons. A lot of the tactics toxic organizations use could be really healthy in a different context. The book was fine, just not the cup of tea I was looking for.
I also met Montell once for the Utah Humanities Book Festival, and she was very warm and considerate, so I generally feel the need to tell people, she seems like a genuine, thoughtful, interesting person. 3 out of 5.