When most people hear the word "cult," their minds leap to dramatic images. Hooded figures, isolated camps, charismatic gurus in flowing robes. But the reality of cults today is far more ordinary, and far more unsettling. They live in suburban semis, in office blocks, in WhatsApp groups, and on Instagram feeds. They are, quite possibly, closer to you than you think.
Cults are a hidden epidemic in the UK
People are often shocked to learn how widespread the problem is on home soil. According to reporting in The Independent in 2022, there are an estimated 2,000 active cults operating in the UK, a figure that experts have described as a "hidden epidemic" that successive governments have largely failed to confront.
Two thousand groups! Quietly recruiting, retaining, and harming people in towns and cities across the country. Most of them you have never heard of, and that is precisely the point. Cults thrive in the absence of public attention.
The UK has no specific anti cult legislation, no central register, and no statutory body responsible for tracking these groups. Charities like the Family Survival Trust and Reachout Trust do what they can, but the burden of recognising and resisting cultic abuse still falls largely on individuals and families.
What actually is a cult?
The word "cult" is thrown around so loosely that it has almost lost its meaning. Football fans are called cult-like. So are Apple users and CrossFiters. But genuine cults, the kind that cause psychological, financial, and sometimes physical harm, are something far more specific.
A cult is a group that uses systematic manipulation and psychological coercion to control its members for the benefit of the leader or the organisation. It typically forms around a charismatic figure who claims unique authority, special knowledge, or a divine mission, and it demands an unhealthy level of devotion in exchange.
Steven Hassan, in Combating Cult Mind Control, describes this dynamic through what he calls the BITE model. Groups that exert undue Behavioural, Informational, Thought, and Emotional control over their members. Rick Alan Ross, author of Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out, draws on decades as an intervention specialist to make a similar point. What defines a cult is not its beliefs, but its structure and tactics.
How to Recognise One
Cults rarely make their intentions clear from the beginning. Almost no one wakes up and decides to join a cult. Recruitment is usually slow, friendly, and warm, what former members often describe as "love bombing." The warning signs tend to emerge gradually:
A leader treated as beyond question. The figure at the top is positioned as uniquely enlightened, gifted, or chosen. Criticism of them is totally unacceptable.
Us versus them thinking. Outsiders, including family and old friends, are framed as ignorant, dangerous, worldly or spiritually contaminated.
Information control. Members are discouraged from reading critical material or any material in general not published by the organisation, talking to former members, or asking certain questions.
Loaded language. The group develops its own jargon that subtly reframes ordinary experiences and shuts down critical thinking.
Escalating commitment. What begins as a free seminar becomes a weekend retreat, then a paid course, then your time, your money, your relationships, your life.
No graceful exit. Leaving carries social, spiritual, or financial penalties. Former members are shunned, demonised, or harassed.
A gap between public face and private reality. What outsiders see is polished and welcoming. What insiders experience is something else entirely.
Though one or two of these on their own don’t necessarily make a cult, caution is advice as the rest of the patterns will also appear sooner or later.
Cults Aren't always Religious
This is the biggest and most dangerous myth. While religious cults attract the most headlines, they are only one branch of a much larger family. Anywhere there is a charismatic leader, a closed system, and unchecked power, a cult can grow. Some of the most common non-religious varieties are:
Political cults. Built around an ideology and a leader who claims to embody it, these groups demand absolute loyalty to the cause. The "Workers' Institute" run by Aravindan Balakrishnan in South London, which kept a woman captive for over thirty years, is a chilling British example.
Therapy and self-help cults. Often called Large Group Awareness Trainings, these groups promise transformation through intense weekend seminars and ever deeper paid programmes. Members are pushed to confront, confess, and convert others. NXIVM (reads Nexium) in the United States is the textbook case.
Commercial cults. Some multi level marketing schemes operate with cult-like dynamics. Idolised founders, scripted language, the demonisation of "negative" friends and family who question the business, and crushing financial pressure dressed up as personal growth.
Personality cults. Built around a single influencer, coach, or guru, often online. The leader dispenses wisdom, the followers defend them ferociously. The manosphere influencers are a good example of them.
Wellness and fitness cults. Yoga schools, breathwork communities, and extreme diet movements have all produced groups where the leader's authority becomes total and questioning practices is treated as moral failure.
Therapeutic and "healing" communities. Some trauma recovery or alternative medicine collectives slide into coercive control, particularly when they isolate members from mainstream medicine and conventional support networks.
Same mechanics, different colour packaging.
What This Means for the Rest of Us
If you have read this far and felt a flicker of recognition, about a friend, a relative, a partner, a group yourself once belonged to, that flicker matters. Cults rely on isolation and silence. Naming what you are seeing is the first act of resistance.
In a follow up post, I'll be writing about what to do if you suspect someone you know is in a cult. It is a question with no easy answer, but there are approaches that work and approaches that almost always backfire, and the difference is worth knowing before you act.
Cults are not a relic of the 1970s or a problem confined to faraway camps. They are here, now, dressed in ordinary clothes. Learning to see them clearly is the first step in keeping ourselves, and the people we love, free.
George Papachristodoulou