CAN (Cult Awareness Network) is the largest and most visible organ of the so-called +quot;

WARNING: The Cult Awareness Network was destroyed by the Scientology
crime syndicate in court and, when CAN went bankrupt, the Scientology
criminal enterprise acquired the use and title of the Cult Awareness
network.  Now, if you call CAN, you will find yourself talking to
the Scientology crime syndicate!  This gross injustice was due to a
massive frame up concocted by Scientology to destroy CAN and it
worked, prompting a Judge to order all of CAN's records handed over
to the very same criminal enterprise that most people contacted the
real CAN to complain about and to acquire help fighting.  Spread
the word that the new Cult Awareness Network is now a Scientology
crime syndicate front! - flr, feb 2003

CAN (Cult Awareness Network) is the largest and most visible organ of the
so-called "anti-cult" movement. These people got started in the early 1970s
when Ted Partick began "de-programming" young adults from a group called the
"Children of God." "De-programming" soon brought Patrick more money than he
had ever seen in his life and he eagerly applied his "deprogramming" technique
to other groups, including the UC, the Krishnas, the Way, Anada Marga,
Scientology, Divine Light, TM, and dozens of lesser-known organizations.

Twenty years later, CAN and its front groups are more sophisticated than
Patrick ever was, but the basic premise remains the same: duping parents into
paying to have their adult children kidnapped and de-converted from some group
that the deprogrammers have pronounced a "cult." CAN acts as the
deprogrammers' advance man, sowing the seeds of fear that will ripen into
profits for the deprogrammers.

Why then do some Pagans work with CAN? I can think of a number of possible
reasons.

First, although the center of CAN is closely tied to deprogramming, many
CAN members and supporters don't realize how close the connection is. Whenever
these links are exposed, CAN dismisses it as "cult propaganda." When
independent academics, civil libertarians, etc. point to CAN's support of
deprogramming, CAN stigmatizes them as "cult apologists." These statements are
belived by naive ("brainwashed," by your definition) CAN supporters who are
themselves good people. Pagans, and others, can mistake these mislead people
for the real organization.

Second, members of persecuted groups often tend to look for others to
persucute, as compensation for their own feelings of rejection. I can
remember when Ted Patrick first went after the Children of God, most UC
members thought it was a good thing that he was getting people out of that
awful group. After all, we had nothing to fear because we know that we
weren't a cult! Just as light-skinned blacks once discriminated against
darker-skinned blacks, some Pagans jump on the anti-cult bandwagon to prove
that they are not at the bottom of the social pecking order.

Finally, Paganism has a fixation on Christianity as the source of all evil.
If an organization isn't Christian, many Pagans think it must be on their
side. CAN has a Christian minority, but its dominant thrust is secularist,
treating all serious religion as psychological disorder. I can remember when
the worst problem facing the UC was attack by Christian fundamentalists. At
the time it seemed bad, but it was nothing compared to the later attack by CAN
and the deprogrammers. When the deprogrammers get around to going after
Paganism in earnest, it will make the worst of File 18 look like the good old
days.

I say "when" rather than "if" because I think that the attack is
inevitable. Most deprogrammers are in it for the money, they would (and some
have) kidnap Catholics so long as they get paid. At the same time, File 18 and
its ilk have created a climate of hysteria in which it will be easy to
persuade parents that kidnapping is the only way to save their son or daughter
from the "satanic pagan cult." Finally, once the deprogrammers start in on
Pagans in a significant way, CAN will back them up (it always has) and put
the newly-deprogrammed ex-pagans on its propaganda circuit. Then those Pagans
who supported CAN will be left feeling much like some Christians who supported
CAN in the 1970s, only to find their own churches added to CAN's hit list in
the 1980s.