Puppetmasters: Cult Leaders vs Hoax Creators

        Who would start a hoax? Who would lead a cult? What’s the difference between these two types of people, and what do they have in common?

        Few things intrigue me more than parallels, so I intend to delve into the commonalities and contrasts between these two highly influential and highly deceptive personalities. 

        When researching the greatest hoaxes of history, it’s easy to become absorbed in the hoax itself, or the amount of money made off things like the Cardiff Giant, or the number of people fooled by the Piltdown Man or the Cottingley fairies. The names of the scam artists rarely rate the footnote of the general cultural consciousness. 

        Likewise, when it comes to cults and demagogues, the spectacle and the aftermath can prevent observers from focusing on the personality that brought it about. Admittedly, the conversation surrounding cults does drift more toward the person behind the escalation. When we see a drastic event like the Manson murders, we ask ourselves how a person could convince other people to do something like that. But I’ve observed that even in these cases, people have a tendency to sensationalize rather than rationalize or generalize. 

        After last week’s post discussing the ways demagogues can become cult leaders, I find a distinct difference between that personality type and the kind of person drawn to orchestrating a hoax. 

        Both personality types are able to gain a following and persuade people to act based on something they might already believe. 

        Cult leaders and demagogues often do this through a religious framing, positioning themself as a prophet or someone otherwise chosen by God. Hoax perpetrators will feed into a belief in anything from aliens to government conspiracies to fairies to, yes, even religion, like with the Cardiff Giant. The commonality here is that they don’t make something up wholesale; they draw from a source that already exists in the cultural zeitgeist to add to their own credibility. 

        A hoaxer is drawn to feeling clever. A demagogue is drawn to power over others. It’s the difference between “I know I’m lying” and “I’m creating a new truth for myself and my followers”. I think one of the biggest differences between a hoax leader and a cult leader is that hoaxers think of their targets as ‘them’, while cult leaders think of their followers as ‘us’. 

        Though hoax creators can be charismatic and cult leaders can be creative, I think the fundamental tenets of each role are fixed. A cult leader is someone charismatic enough to convince a group to follow wherever they lead. A hoax leader is creative and clever enough to fabricate something that’s believable to someone to whom they’ve never even spoken. In terms of art, the perpetrator of a great hoax is like a master painter whose work can become far-reaching long after it’s completed, while the man behind a cult of personality is more like a live performer – the show cannot go on without him. In this way, hoaxes tend to both outspread and outlast cults. Many hyper-religious groups fracture after the death of their one influential leader, whereas many hoaxes that began in the 1800s are alive and well today, long after the death of their creator. A cult is tied to its leader, while a hoax’s creator loses full control of the hoax the moment it is unleashed upon the world. 

        I think ultimately, a hoax’s perpetrator and a cult leader have one key fact in common: they are their own biggest weakness. Hoaxers show creativity, but also a level of fragility that demagogues tend not to reach. Their reputation is tied to a scam they know to be false, which can cause paranoia and desperation to maintain the heights achieved at the apex of their scam. 

        Demagogues, in contrast, often appear to buy into their own legend. However, this does little to protect them, and their hubris often causes them to escalate to the point of their own downfall. 

        In reading about the perpetrators of notable hoaxes, a sizable percentage died penniless or in relative obscurity because they doubled down on their hoax past the point of feasibility, or tried to replicate the success of one hoax with far less success. 

        Likewise, many cult leaders escalate their followers to the point of legal trouble or issues from within their organization. Like Manson and Jones and Koresh, this path can lead cult leaders to end up in prison or even dead. 

        The problem with operating in a go big or go home mindset is that when you go too big, you’re left with no option of turning back. The tenuous house of cards created by lies, exaggerations, and manipulation is all too easy to send tumbling down.