A cult can be defined as a group that uses unethical, manipulative, and abusive techniques to influence and control its members. We decided to explore the differences and similarities between fox hunts and cults.
Unlike hunters, we’re reasonable people. We’ve taken a fair and balanced approach.
Is fox hunting a cult?
Experts have given cults a set of identifying characteristics. The respected BITE Model, for example, breaks cult control into four sections, which we’re looking at here.
Behaviour Control
First Behaviour Control, which regulates where cult members live, what they eat, how they dress, and even how they sleep.
Cults typically use rituals to suppress independence and prevent critical thinking, punishing disobedience and rewarding conformity. In all fairness, hunts don’t exercise quite this sort of behaviour control, but there’s still a level of controlling behaviour going on.
Imagine you’re from a hunting family and disagree with your family’s criminal ways. It can wreck relationships. Children and young people are indoctrinated into a life of crime by their hunty parents, not given a choice. It’s clear that few if any members of the hunting fraternity bother to apply critical thinking to their actions. As far as the way members dress, hunt costumes are harmless enough. Just an unpleasant nod to an obsolete, widely disliked ruling class.
Information Control
Second, Information Control. This is where things get more interesting. Like cults, hunters deliberately deceive new recruits about their true beliefs and goals. The ‘trail hunting’ lie is a good example, as is the curious way that young hunters don’t even seem to realise they’re committing crimes.
Restricting access to outside information isn’t a problem with hunts as far as we know. Hunters, like the rest of us, use the internet so there’s no excuse for them to be as ignorant about the law as they are.
Hunters, like cults, encourage an ‘us versus them’ mentality. And like cults they portray anyone who disagrees with them as evil, sinful, dangerous or stupid. Whether hunts encourage their own members to spy on each other, like cults do, is debatable, but they’re certainly disloyal. Do you remember the time when the Stevenstone Hunt shopped the location of the Torrington Farmers Hunt to Devon County Hunt Saboteurs? So much for solidarity, so much for ‘honour amongst thieves’.
Thought Control
Third, Thought Control. Like cults, hunts teach an absolute ‘black and white’ doctrine that’s the only ‘truth’ they recognise. Thankfully, unlike cults, they’re not likely to force people to use special language and cliches to control and limit complex thought. Nor do they instil irrational fears of eternal damnation and apocalyptic catastrophe to those who want to leave. And while they might not use meditation, chanting and praying to stop destructive thoughts, they are apparently drunk on horseback often enough to be potentially destructive.
Emotional Control
Emotional Control is the fourth method cults use to keep people in line. It involves manipulating feelings, claiming negative emotions like doubt are selfish or evil, love bombing people to recruit them, shunning those who ask awkward questions, and generally creating a constant sense of fear, guilt and dependency. Let’s just hope hunters don’t, in their increasing desperation to survive, engage in any of it.
And the rest…
Charismatic, authoritarian leadership is the name of the game with cults and hunts. Only sociopaths enjoy frightening, hurting and killing animals. The goons at the top of the hunting tree are highly likely to be high-functioning sociopaths while the hunters themselves and their servants are probably lower-functioning sociopaths, strange conscience-less people who consider themselves infallible, just like cult leaders.
Apocalyptic beliefs are also relevant to hunts as well as cults. Hunters claim that if they stop the slaughter, rural life will completely fall apart. It’s a lie. In reality they can keep on dressing up, riding, owning packs of hounds, meeting up and having fun. The only thing they need to stop is the chasing and killing side of their bizarre hobby.
Last but not least, cults are difficult to leave. We can only imagine the psychological pressure put on people who might have hunted in the past but have seen the light and decided to stop. If that’s you, we salute you.
