The recruiting language of a range of 'cults', or marginal movements, is here examined in detail in the context of a popular conception that such organizations may 'brainwash' people into membership and adherence through abusive use of rhetoric. Annabelle Mooney shows that, there is little to distinguish the strategies and language used in the recruitment literature of such organizations from that employed by anti-cult organizations, or indeed corporate and other kinds of recruitment. These findings therefore question why it is that society fears such marginal movements. While the values of the 'cults' examined here may differ significantly from mainstream society, it seems that the term 'cult' as applied to them may be unjust and itself abusive