In its annual report published on Wednesday, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes) lists the “issues of concern” that emerged in 2021 or are still relevant. A first observation, first: the number of referrals (reports made most often by relatives of supposed victims) jumped by 33% compared to 2020 to reach the record number of 4020.
“The health crisis has certainly been fertile ground,” said Sonia Backès, Secretary of State for Citizenship. This period, marked by several confinements and difficult economic and social situations, favored the emergence of discourse exploiting isolation. An analysis completed by the president of Miviludes: “This crisis has been a catalyst through a proliferation of new players, more discreet, mastering the Web and its codes, knowing how to control minds, by exploiting fears, the loss of bearings , the search for simple solutions in the face of existential questions”, contextualizes Christian Gravel.
If the “multinationals of spirituality”, Church of Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the lead, still occupy the top of the pavement in France, other movements of Christian inspiration, such as the Family, an enclave of several hundred members in Eastern Paris living in a closed circuit for decades, where the Plymouth Brothers, a group of rigorous evangelicals, remain under observation due to heavy suspicions of sectarian aberrations.
PODCAST. The family: investigation of a secret religious community in eastern Paris (Part 1)
“Eco-villages” that would promote “possible indoctrination”
Apart from these well-rooted religious movements, the Miviludes, a structure now attached to the Ministry of the Interior, after having been under the authority of Matignon, also points to “new trends” inscribed in the spirit of the times. Thus the “eco-villages”, described in the report as “community and autarkic places of life where the inhabitants maintain a strong relationship with nature, agriculture and self-sufficiency”, would be the breeding ground for conspiracy theories aimed at to emancipate individuals, qualified as “sovereign beings” and where the authorities of the State would be perceived as “illegitimate, authoritarian and undemocratic”.
An ideology that flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021, against a backdrop of “health dictatorship”, driven in particular by the One Nation conspiracy movement. It is in this context, emphasizes Miviludes, that “a spiritualization of ecology” and “a greening of religion” have developed over the past two years. But how then to make the distinction between what comes under freedom of opinion and sectarian aberrations? By developing in “eco-villages”, autarkic by nature, these mystical ferments would favor “a possible indoctrination”, is content to underline Miviludes.
Like the past five years, “pseudo-healers” are also singled out, such as the Belgian Jean-Jacques Crèvecœur or the Frenchman Thierry Casasnovas. The latter was targeted in 2021 by 54 referrals made by people believing that one of their relatives or friends would be in danger, under the influence of this supposed “guru”. Having no diploma, Thierry Casasnovas, living in the Pyrénées-Orientales, presents himself as “a naturopath, follower of fasting and raw food diet”. He would push his clients, recruited mainly via his YouTube channel (nearly 600,000 subscribers), to turn away from traditional medicine and stop their current treatments.
Its audience and its potential nuisance power would have increased considerably in the context of the Covid crisis. “It thus emerges that the mental influence that this individual would exercise on fragile people, the isolation induced by his remarks, the break with the previous environment, the antisocial discourse and the exorbitant nature of the financial demands are observable criteria in this situation and are likely to encourage a sectarian drift”, decide the specialists of Miviludes on this subject.
The drift of masculinists
Other trends, still emerging and more marginal, are mentioned in the 2022 report. It is thus a question of the “masculinist” ideology, carried by groups of men upset by a supposed crisis of virility. In the background, the idea that women would benefit from “over-attention” in the context of a quest for equality between the sexes. In response to this movement in society, the French branch of the international movement ManKind Project (MKP) organizes meetings, “initiation courses in masculinity” and weekends called “initiatory adventure of new warriors”.
According to the testimony of a participant collected by Miviludes, the food would then be limited to a few bowls of raisins and almonds. Above all, participants would be asked to move around naked for several hours, including when the temperature does not exceed 5°C. “One of the highlights of these weekends is the event that takes place on Saturday afternoon, a stage that I would describe as forced public confessions in front of everyone, explains this witness. The stated objective of the MKP team is to reactivate old wounds of the insider to help him overcome them and thus become a new man. »
At the end of this weekend, participants are instructed to keep its content secret and can only discuss it with a mentor appointed by the organizers. “The reported isolation, the induced rupture with relatives, the methods of intimidation, exhaustion and submission, the will to to break the individual to reshape it according to values considered positive, the structured organization of the movement as well as its particularly strong and violent ideological corpus are all elements likely to favor a process of mental influence on the participants”, considers the Miviludes , which has already been entered 13 times between 2020 and 2021 by wives or relatives of MKP members. These relatives describe sudden behavioral changes in men who now want to “control everything, decide everything, impose everything”.
In a fairly symmetrical although dissimilar manner, feminism, like “masculinism”, does not seem immune to the risk of sectarian aberrations. Miviludes thus points the finger at the British therapist Miranda Gray, theorist of the “blessing of the uterus”, who advises women to synchronize their daily life with the cycle of the moon and their menstruation. However, these tips would be presented, according to the criticism of Miviludes, as “imperative rules for female happiness”.
Sudden changes in behavior have thus been observed in certain French followers, who have been inundated with books and videos on this subject to the point of cutting themselves off from their family environment. Miviludes recommends “particular vigilance with regard to this type of movement which essentializes women by reducing them to genital organs or reproductive faculties, even though it is presented as a feminist movement intended for their development and encouraging more freedom”.