Suicide cults & leader trigger: searching for sources/research
Date: July 10, 2020 11:52PM
Hope this is relevant. I'm an independent researcher, and I'm looking for sources about cult leadership rather than membership. Specifically I'm interested in the question of what triggers the move toward group suicide. Here I do not so much mean groups like Heaven's Gate, where group suicide is baked in at the start, but more the Jim Jones or David Koresh model, where the community is relatively stable, but then there's a precipitating event that triggers the leader to swerve to group suicide. I can surmise how it works, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure there must be sources that look at this side of the phenomenon directly as opposed to examining it from the victim/follower p.o.v. I'm finding lots of the latter but not much of the former. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.