Educational tool only. All groups exist on a spectrum of control. Individual experiences vary. Based on publicly available reports, ex-member accounts, court records, and expert analyses — not medical or legal advice.
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When does a political-religious movement become a cult? The BITE Model applies to Boko Haram, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Hizb ut-Tahrir — but treating them only as 'terror groups' or 'political movements' obscures the coercive-control mechanics.
Robert Jay Lifton's 1961 Eight Criteria of Thought Reform and Steven Hassan's 1988 BITE Model describe the same phenomenon at different resolutions. This guide explains where they overlap, where they diverge, and why CLCI Hub uses BITE as its scoring scaffold while surfacing Lifton's criteria as a secondary annotation.