The path of antii-Semitism leads to Auschwitz every time. The path of the cults leads to Jonestown and we watch it at our peril. They are present in all cultures. Cults and sects are different from the past, but they are different in the ways that the culture is different. There is no evidence to support the proposition that they are different in ways that render them dangerous as claimed by adversaries.
People join new religious for different reasons.
They remain members only as long as the group fulfills a meaningful purpose. Although cult leaders do use techniques of social influence to manipulate members, these techniques of influence are employed very broadly in virtually all social groups. All religions were new at some point in time. And few places do we find such an articulate explication of this principle as we find in Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail . If religion may be viewed as the foundation of human freedom and libery, it is also capable of being the source of oppression and human suffering.