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Doomsday cult

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Life inside a doomsday cult

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Doomsday cult couple in court facing charges of murdering two of their children

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Doomsday cult still in their underground hideout, MP comment

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SCARY DOOMSDAY CULT

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Videos inside Heaven's Gate house reveal those lured into cult: 20/20 ‘The Cult Next Door’ Preview

Doomsday cult is an expression used to describe cults who believe in apocalypticism and millenarianism, and can refer both to groups that predict disaster, and to those that attempt to bring it about. The expression was first used by sociologist John Lofland in his 1966 study of a group of members of the Unification Church of the United States in California, Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. A classic study of a group with cataclysmic predictions had previously been performed by Leon Festinger and other researchers, and was published in his book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.
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