Eve Di Potenza

It is -20 °C today. I’m not really in the mood to be fabulous. I’ve thrown a leopard print blanket over my plain black couch to zhuzh it up a bit, but I have been binge-watching shows on my days off. First of all, it’s Black Friday weekend, and if you’ve ever worked retail -which I have- you likely want to stay as far away from door-crasher type sales as possible. Secondly, the weather is far too Canadian for this person with Mediterranean genes (even though I was born here), so I’m not going outside unless I have to. Thirdly, my cats miss me, so I’m putting off my eccentricity quest this weekend, because it is undoubtedly snuggy time.  

We have been bingeing the Waco standoff miniseries. My partner looked at me at one point and asked why anyone would follow David Koresh. How did he have such a hold on people? Did he ever really believe he was the messiah, or was he just conning people? How did he have the ability to get people to lose their common sense so completely?

[Before we get into my relatively uneducated thoughts on his personality, let me just talk about what an unfortunate situation that standoff was. Just poor leadership and lack of humanity all around and an absolute tragedy.]

How did Koresh have such a hold on people? I think it comes down to something as simple as charisma. I do not feel that Koresh was naturally charismatic, but he grew it. Some people think charisma is something you are born with, but I believe you can build it. I think he developed charisma because he believed in his BS so thoroughly. I don’t feel it was a con. It was definitely method acting rather than a caricature. I think of people on the set of The Godfather watching Brando turn into the Godfather, stuffing cotton into the sides of his mouth and slowly descending, like he was on winding stairs, from Brando into the don. His voice changed as he went, his demeanour, posture and gait. Similarly, I feel Koresh descended into his new messiah role, methodically building himself into what he needed to be for his task. His task of being the ultimate salesman, selling himself and what he genuinely felt was a new hope and the word of god. He found faith in himself and built his charismatic character from there. Charisma is basically just unabashed confidence mixed with enthusiasm. This is why I think you can build it in yourself. You can get really excited about something you really believe in, and the charisma just shows up naturally.  

As I mentioned earlier, I have worked in retail. Every really good salesperson I’ve ever worked with was at the top of their game because they fully believed in the product. This natural confidence came over them, coupled with a contagious enthusiasm towards what they were selling. I have seen nerdy, quiet people enthusiastically delivering the sales performance of their life without any training. Similarly, I feel Koresh was so in love with his product that he naturally sold it to people because he believed in it so thoroughly. Is there anything more charming than someone fully charged up about something they love? No. In an unnerving way, he and other cult leaders are an excellent study for sales tactics. How the heck Koresh convinced husbands that it was god’s will for him to father a child with *their* wives is a remarkable sales tactic. I can’t say I envy it, but it does make me marvel. How does one cultivate that kind of magnetism but use it for good?

Why did they follow him? My heart breaks for those people. Imagine the living conditions they had before. It must have been quite bad for them to buy in hook, line, and sinker. The depression and the isolation they must have felt prior to joining, it makes me sad just thinking about it. I went to camp as a kid, and I hated every minute of it, from the communal sleeping to the cold bunk bed, the lines for the bathrooms and cold showers, to the sappy ritualistic singing before meals and before bed. These people thrived in that same kind of environment and chose to live that way for years. I could barely stand two weeks. I don’t think it was a con. I think it was a mutualistic symbiosis. He needed them, and they needed him.

I have lived on the outside of the norm for most of my life and recognized that at the points in my life when I did ‘fit in,’ I was acting in a role someone else wrote. I wasn’t being myself. There must be a breakdown of the self prior to assimilating into the norm, or in their case, the cult. I guess in the same way how Koresh rebuilt himself into what he wanted, he also built his followers into what both he and they wanted. I don’t understand people needing to fit in more than needing to feel real. Clearly, it happens.

There is a guy in my neighbourhood who drives around on a giant tricycle pulling a wagon with a sandwich sign that says ‘repent!’ and ‘end of times!’ He has a bullhorn and angily shouts bible verses at people like they were obscenities, and I gotta say, he comes across as pretty nutty. Funny enough, though, the only difference between him and Koresh is charisma. This tricycle messiah could lead a cult if he just spruced up his demeanour a bit more and worked on his personal skills. I just simply don’t like that. Nope, not one single bit. Maybe he doesn’t fully believe in himself or his message, and I’m thankful for that.

Charisma is a powerful tool. To quote the Spiderman comics, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. It can take a normal wacko and turn them into a monster. This gives me great concern. Small religious cults are one thing. Political cults are quite another, and history seems to have had its share. How does one navigate their way through all that? One kick against the pricks when the cult is in power.