Step One: Manufacture a perception of injustice.
It doesn’t matter if the injustice is real; only its perception counts. Humans hate unfairness by instinct. Create dissatisfaction by making your followers imagine that they have been treated unfairly.
Step Two: Create a scapegoat.
Craft the imagery of a common enemy, a focal point for collective hatred. Create a scapegoat to blame for inflicting the injustice on your followers. The salvation of your cult thus lies in the complete and utter destruction of the enemy.
Step Three: Be the savior.
Declare war on the enemy. Present yourself as the singular proprietor of the magic bullet needed to kill him. Your followers must believe that salvation lies solely through you, their messiah. Reduce complex problems into simplistic solutions–solutions that only you possess. Justify your actions by twisting the standards of common morality to suit your agenda.
Step Four: Deploy symbols and slogans.
Bombard your followers with a propaganda of powerful visuals and pithy sayings. Omnipresent logos and crests evoke a sense of collective pride, constructing an all-encompassing cult identity, overwriting their individuality. Repetitive slogans penetrate the psyche of your followers and saturate their minds, blunting their ability to reason and question you.
Step Five: Weaponize your rhetoric.
Render your followers submissive by stoking their emotions. The three most powerful emotions to provoke are fear, pride and hate. When people are fearful, prideful and hateful, they are the easiest to persuade, to control, to manipulate, to indoctrinate.
§ Image: Dante and Virgile (William Bouguereau, 1836), depicting a scene from Dante’s Divine Comedy, narrating his journey to Hell as guided by Virgil.