Destroying the world to save it
Subtitle: Aum Shinrikyō, apocalyptic violence, and the the new global terrorism
By: Robert Jay Lifton.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; Metropolitan Books
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 374
Subjects: Asahara, Shōkō; Oumu Shinrikyō (Religious organization)
Description: "With unusual access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult, offering a subtle portrait of how guru and disciples reinforce each other's wildest destructive fantasies.

Lifton offers a sobering exploration of how Aum's guru, Shoko Asahara - charismatic leader, con man, madman - created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient religious practices, and apocalyptic science fiction; of how he recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing the "poor man's atomic bomb" (chemical and biological weapons).

Through Aum, Lifton explores a historically unprecedented phenomenon, a twenty-first century in which cults and terrorists may be able to create their own holocausts."--BOOK JACKET. "Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, the Heaven's Gate cult, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton argues that Aum Shinrikyo was not just a "nightmare of Japanese religion," but a global nightmare that revealed a world unexpectedly at risk."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-358) and index.