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Two years ago today: Warren Jeffs ordered to stand trial on charge of rape as an accomplice, Self-taught historian offers in-depth views of FLDS and Archbishop Gilbert Deya is released on bail
A fearful mother reveals: The internet cult that stole my son
Online ‘philosopher’ encourages people to rid themselves of their ‘family of origin’
Even by the internet’s murky standards, it’s deeply sinister – a website that brainwashes youngsters into disowning their families and vanishing into thin air. Here, one mother tells her chilling story.
One Wednesday afternoon in May, when Barbara Weed’s 18-year-old son Tom was right in the middle of his A-levels, he abruptly left home. ‘Dear Family,’ said the note he left on the doormat. ‘I need to take an indefinite amount of time away from the family, so I’ve moved in with a friend. Please do not contact me. Tom.’
He has not been in touch with any of his relatives since.
But Tom is not a missing person: his family know roughly where he is. It’s just that he won’t talk to them - and they suspect he never will.
Cult FAQCultFAQ.org: Frequently Asked Questions About Cults, Sects, and Related IssuesIncludes definitions of terms (e.g. cult, sect, anticult, countercult, new religious movement, cult apologist, etcetera)Plus research resources: articles, books, websites, etc.Listing of recommended cult experts, plus guidelines to help select a counselor/cult expertCultFAQ is provided by Apologetics Index, publishers of Religion News BlogApologetics Index: Apologetics Research Resources on Religious Cults, Sects, Religions, Doctrines, Etc.Comments & resources by ReligionNewsBlog.com‘He got hooked in by an online cult,’ says Barbara. ‘The website convinces vulnerable people that they should hate their parents and leave their family.’
Even the wording of Tom’s letter is from the website. Its founder says: ‘The letter should buy you six to 12 months before your family come looking for you, and that will give you time to get used to living without them.’
Barbara did not wait that long. ‘I tried to respect Tom’s wishes and leave him alone, but once I discovered that the website was responsible for him leaving, I visited him at a cafe where he was working part-time,’ she says.
She worked out that if she ordered a cup of tea, he would have to listen to her for about a minute. She told him that if he ever wanted to come home, he could. ‘He just looked at me, shaking his head, as if to say: “You fool.”‘
What baffled her was how a website could have such a dramatic effect on an ordinary family, and in such a short space of time.
Barbara and her husband already had two sons - Nick, two, and John, four - when Tom was born. ‘I adored Tom,’ says Barbara. ‘Nick was the mischievous one, and sometimes I did get cross with him, but I didn’t need to get cross with Tom. He was such a joy to be with and had long, serious conversations with everyone. I always thought he would be the last one to leave home - that at 40 he might even still be here, which is ironic.’
[...]Tom and his girlfriend, meanwhile, had become increasingly interested in an online community called Freedomain Radio (FDR), which invites discussion about philosophy, politics and personal freedom.
Unbeknown to Barbara at that time, a key topic of the site - whose members seem to be mostly in their teens and 20s - is the idea that ultimate personal freedom can be gained by cutting yourself off from any involuntary relationships (ie your family) and entering into completely voluntary ones (ie your new mates online).
‘I think once you get these corrupt people out of your life, you will for sure have enough room for all the new awesome, virtuous friends in the world,’ said one member to another recently.
For members unsure about such drastic measures, there are podcasts with titles such as ‘But my parents were really nice!’; and there is a chatroom in which members discuss how so many families are unjust.
There is also a Sunday call-in show in which the website’s founder counsels callers. Often the subject is leaving your family.
Barbara recalls Tom and his girlfriend looking forward to the Sunday call-ins and spending more and more time on the FDR website.
‘Tom did mention it at the time - although not their ideas about family - and I can remember alarm bells ringing when he said the man who ran it was giving him advice. I warned him that on the internet you don’t know who you are talking to.’
By November 2007, Tom’s behaviour had changed noticeably. ‘He wasn’t spending time in his room just because he wanted to be with his girlfriend or on the computer, but because he didn’t want to be with us,’ says Barbara.
‘One night he blurted out that when he left home he wouldn’t come back and that I’d never see him again.
[...]Barbara says she tried everything - persuasion, negotiation, compromise.
‘But Tom didn’t seem interested in communicating, merely in throwing accusations - for instance, that his brother John and me were fond of laughing at him, which wasn’t true.
‘I also began to notice that he was interpreting all family interactions as abusive.
[...]Then one day in May, when Barbara got in from work, Tom had gone.
She read the note and was devastated. For a moment, she wondered if he had run away with his girlfriend (who has also since cut off her family to devote herself to FDR), but she and Tom had recently split up.
Then Barbara thought of the website and began to investigate. She quickly found references to something called ‘deFOO’ - the name the website gives to ridding yourself of your ‘family of origin’ (FOO). Then she came across Tom’s thoughts posted on the site during the months leading up to his own decision to deFOO.
[...]The Cult Information Centre, which says that several people have been in contact recently about family members recruited into cult-like organisations via chatrooms or other online means, recommends that such families try to keep up some form of contact.
‘So I sent Tom a text message to wish him luck at university and tell him that I’m thinking of him,’ says Barbara. ‘I don’t know if he would have read the message or whether he just deleted it when he saw it was from me.’
Because Tom’s new ‘family’ is online, Barbara has - at least until recently - been able to see what he is up to. It’s how she knew what A-level grades he got and it’s how she knows at which university he is studying.
‘I spend far too much time on the site,’ she says. She logs on as soon as she gets in from work, and often doesn’t switch off her computer until the early hours.
‘It’s a bit like he’s sitting at the next table. I hear everything he’s saying, but I’m not in the conversation.’
This month, however, the chatroom has been restricted to members only. ‘I can’t go in as a visitor any more,’ she says. ‘I’ve lost the only remaining glimpse I had of him. I don’t know how he’s feeling or if he needs help.’
Stefan Molyneux, the founder of FDR, who attracts many people to his website through YouTube, tells me that he simply reminds people ‘that our family relationships are voluntary and you should really work, if you’re unhappy in these relationships, to improve the quality of those relationships - but to remember that they do remain voluntary.
‘And that gives people the motivation, I think, to try to improve them. But if you can’t improve them - and we can’t change other people, as we all know - for sure you should have the option to disengage.’
Molyneux, a 42-year-old former actor and IT worker, assures me that what he calls deFOO is ‘actually quite rare’.
And although he and his wife (both of whom have deFOOd) are expecting a baby in December, he says on the website: ‘Deep down I do not believe there are any really good parents out there - the same way I do not believe there were any really good doctors in the 10th century.’
Molyneux, whose Canadian home also hosts member get-togethers, brings up the word ‘cult’ before I do.
‘It’s the furthest thing from a cult,’ he laughs. ‘First of all, I don’t charge anything for what it is I do. And cults isolate people.
‘What I’m talking about, what I strongly suggest to people, is that they should get closer to the people they’re with.
‘And, of course, cults don’t suggest people go to therapy to deal with their issues.’
Critics - parents predominantly from the U.S. and Canada, where most members come from - say people do pay. There’s a $10 (?6.40) monthly subscription fee and you get special levels of access, according to how much more you donate, with $500 buying you the status of ‘Philosopher King’. They say deFOO proves FDR does isolate people - the only people members get closer to are each other.
Some FDR members have indisputably horrific childhood stories. Some say that were beaten, others that they were sexually abused. To cut off their parents may well be their only hope for happiness.
But if you consider people of Tom’s age, who invariably feel their parents don’t understand them and couple this with a youthful thirst for neat philosophical answers to life’s problems, then you can see the attraction and dangers of FDR.
[...]The advice from experts is that when a parent attacks or criticises a cult, it may drive their family member further away.
I discover this for myself when I see Molyneux in the chatroom telling Tom: ‘She [Barbara] misses having a victim around and so she is using the media to victimise you . . .Totally evil.’
Barbara is unfazed, saying that things had already reached rock bottom the moment Tom left home. Her marriage has since broken down, and the only good thing that has come out of all this is her relationship with her son Nick.
‘We used to talk in terms of “I’ve got post for you” or “Can I have some money?” Now we show affection and we’re really talking,’ she says.
[...]
How a cyber-philosopher convinced followers to cut off family
As Barbara Weed remembers it, when relations with her youngest son turned quarrelsome a year ago, 17-year-old Tom spent hours listening to podcasts from a Canadian website.
[...]Unbeknownst to Ms. Weed, Tom had been writing on the message boards of a website based in the Greater Toronto Area, Freedomain Radio, comparing family life to a prison.
The man running the website, a Mississauga resident named Stefan Molyneux, encourages people to cut contact with their parents, even outlining scripts they can follow in the breakup. Tom’s case is one of several in Europe and North America that appear to have been influenced by the FDR script. “It makes no sense,” said Ms. Weed.
Mr. Molyneux is a one-man Internet hub, churning out hundreds of online messages, essays, books, podcasts and videos of himself staring into a camera and talking intensely about relationships, politics or the economy. He isn’t shy about his accomplishments. His website is “a Canadian success story,” the most popular philosophy site in the world, he says. In a podcast, he said of one of his works that “100 years from now they’ll remember this book.” He says he knows of 20 cases where supporters left their relatives.
Having sat through hundreds of podcasts and videos, his supporters bond online, sharing tales of alienation.
The confessional tone, the loyalty of his supporters, their family estrangements, and Mr. Molyneux’s self-appointed, unaccountable role has all led parents and former members to charge that FDR is a cyber-version of a therapy cult.
“The C-word?” Mr. Molyneux says with a smile when asked if there are misconceptions about FDR.
“I’m sure a few marriages broke up because of feminism. It doesn’t make feminism a cult.”
He is a self-assured 42-year-old whose verbal agility comes from being a radio DJ and debater at university. He has a master’s degree in history from the University of Toronto but he says his lifelong calling is philosophy.
He works from his home in a bedroom community under the flight paths of Pearson International Airport, taking donations, selling subscriptions, even dishing advice on a weekly online call-in show.
He won’t say how much revenue FDR generates. At one point, he thought wrongly that someone had leaked subscribers-only material to The Globe and Mail. “I cannot allow for the discussion or dissemination of any contents of any Premium Podcasts, since those are bonus conversations specifically reserved for donators, which of course I rely on for my income,” he wrote in an e-mail.
A search on the website shows that 67 people subscribed to the “Philosopher King” $50 monthly plan. Another 58 signed up for the $20 plan and 46 for the $10 plan. This would work out to $59,640 a year.
His critics say he is a meddler with an inflated sense of self-worth, a manipulator who aggravates problems and drives vulnerable people away from their kin.
“I was using FDR as an escape from reality . . . It was an addiction,” said Rob Griesbach, a former supporter from Virginia, who began reading FDR at the age of 16.
“He always tries to pick out abuses, reasons to be angry. Whatever problem you have, he’ll track it back to your parents,” said Dylan Boswell, a former member from Arizona.
Many parents fear that complaining publicly will further alienate their children.
“The members have been taught to perceive any criticism of [FDR] by a parent as a personal attack on the child, and it drives them further away,” said a New York businessman whose child broke off contact, leaving only a two-sentence note: “I need to take a break from the family for a few months to sort out some issues. Please do not try to contact me.”
Another father, Ray, a Tennessee retiree, said his daughter, who studies psychology at Princeton University, just stopped answering their calls and e-mails. “We didn’t know if she was sick or dead.”
Why intervene?
Mr. Molyneux justifies his intervening in other people’s lives by saying, “It’s like stepping over someone on the sidewalk who’s collapsed and saying, ‘I don’t want to get involved.’ ”
He argues that relations with parents are artificial, a falsehood from biology rather than one’s choice. The parents’ inability to understand their children shows their love is phony, he writes.
He talks of the dread that people feel when Mother calls. “What are you afraid of? . . . You are afraid of being revealed as a slave – not to your mother, who already knows – but to yourself.”
Mr. Molyneux is estranged from his parents. He says he grew up with an absentee father. His mother is “crazy as a bat hound,” he said in a podcast. In some podcasts, he is joined by his wife, Christina Papadopoulos, a psychological associate. Two years after they married, she stopped contact with her parents.
The philosophy behind this system is codified and has its own lingo. Members talk about FOO (family of origin) and deFOOing (leaving the family of origin).
Mr. Molyneux estimates about 20 FDR members have “deFOO’d” their families.
His writings outline various parental reactions that followers can expect, explaining that those reactions are forms of denials or defensive behaviour.
[...]
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