Douglas Murray can fair turn a phrase:
…group should be caught out in a dodgy money-making scheme. It is another that people should be seeing through their influence-peddling operations. Yet it is far worse when a clerical class cannot explain the doctrines of their own faith. A faith they have been busy trying to spew out across the whole of society, but which is so baseless, that even the priestly class doesn’t know what they are talking about. It is the end of the faith.
Murray makes several points that tie in with Robert Lifton's criteria for thought reform (aka brainwashing and coercive control of prisoners of war or tightly controlled communities).
I've quoted all 8 criteria here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?msgid=111900052
2 of the interesting ones for this discussion are:
Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating clichés, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking.
The language is being changed around us and it's making it fraught to have conversations in some contexts or to scrutinise policies and legislation in far too many areas. Cohen was lamentable when he was gently pushed to explain the sacred terms of the sacred science. He still tried to take recourse to loaded language and thought terminating clichés and it's a comment on how compromised the ideological community that he represents has so willingly outsourced their thinking that this seemed adequate to them.