The new book, CULTS LIKE US by Jane Borden, published by Simon & Schuster, identifies multi-level marketing (MLM) as an American cult movement that employs coercive mind control and exhibits all other dangerous traits associated with destructive cults. The book affirms the analysis of PONZINOMICS that MLM is a pyramid scheme causing loss to 99% of participants and its “direct selling” identity is a fraudulent disguise. Cults Like Us breaks new ground as the first book from a major publisher to document MLM’s cultic status and methods. The following is a review submitted by Robert FitzPatrick to distributors, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Audible.
A Review of CULTS LIKE US
by Robert L. FitzPatrick, author of PONZINOMICS, the Untold Story of Multi-Level Marketing
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 false “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. The delusional claim of the MLM “industry” to sell an infinite number of “distributorships” is not challenged by academia, law schools, regulators or mainstream media.
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, deserves 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 scam. 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 daily life. 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 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 a living nightmare. In PONZINOMICS, I describe multi-level marketing as the “cult of capitalism.” In Cults Like Us, author Jane Borden expands this perspective to show that MLM is part of the “cult of America.”
