Communities often ask how trusted institutions begin to feel increasingly rigid or ideologically narrow. The change is rarely dramatic. It is gradual, relational, and strategic.

High-control movements rarely begin with extreme demands. They begin with ideas most people support: protecting children, strengthening families, restoring values. From there, emotionally resonant language builds trust. Once influence is secured in institutions that shape young minds and moral life — classrooms, congregations, libraries — access to information can narrow, critics may be reframed as threats, and complex issues reduced to moral absolutes.

Research on coercive persuasion offers an important insight: you cannot reason someone out of a belief built primarily through identity and belonging. Facts alone often reinforce commitment. When disagreement feels like attack, “us versus them” thinking deepens.

Mental health counselor and cult expert Steven Hassan — a former member of the Unification Church who later earned a doctorate studying authoritarian influence — recommends a tool called reality testing. In Combating Cult Mind Control, he draws on studies of Chinese communist “thought reform” to show how behavior, information, thought, and emotion can be shaped gradually.

Looking at historical systems of indoctrination — including Chinese communist reeducation methods — from today’s vantage point helps us ask: Are dissenters isolated? Is language simplified into slogans? Are outside sources dismissed as corrupt? Is loyalty to the group elevated above independent verification?

Reality testing means pausing to verify original sources, seek multiple credible perspectives, and ask whether conclusions would still hold if roles were reversed.

Healthy communities welcome scrutiny. They encourage pluralism, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.

The strongest safeguard for our civic and educational institutions is informed, steady, and vigilant engagement — before gradual influence becomes entrenched.

Molly Stepanski

Posen