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.
19 group profiles for organisations whose documented founding falls in the 2020s. Sorted by CLCI score, descending.
Andrew Tate (born 1986) and brother Tristan Tate operate one of the most-documented modern manosphere parasocial-guru operations: Hustlers University (HU1, 2021 → HU2, 2022) and successor 'The Real World' platform. Founder under active Romanian DIICOT prosecution since December 2022 for rape, human trafficking, and forming an organised criminal group, indicted June 2023; separately, a UK extradition order for distinct alleged 2010s offences was granted by the Bucharest Court of Appeal in March 2024.
Self-styled Hindu guru Swami Nithyananda (born A. Rajasekaran, 1977) fled India in November 2019 ahead of his arrest on multiple rape and child-confinement charges. From 2020 he has claimed to have founded the 'United States of Kailasa,' a sovereign Hindu nation purportedly located on an unnamed Caribbean island. Multiple documented fraudulent municipal engagements (Newark 2023; Paraguay 2023; UN ECOSOC sessions 2023) have produced reversals and embarrassed officials globally.
Splinter groups continuing in modified form after Amy Carlson's April 2021 death. Multiple online communities continue to recruit using modified Carlson-derived teaching and QAnon-adjacent themes.
Umbrella for the post-2020 genre of explicitly online-native sects — small (50–5,000-member) communities forming on Discord, Telegram, niche Substacks, or invite-only Twitter/X spaces around a charismatic leader, a synthetic eschatology (often AI / simulation theory / techno-utopian), and a high-disclosure interior. High churn rate makes individual cataloguing fragmentary; this entry scores the genre.
Umbrella entry for the diverse 2020s phenomenon of online radical-religious influencer communities — Telegram-based prophets, prepper-religion fusions, anti-LGBT crusaders building parasocial high-control followings. Distinct from but overlapping with QAnon (covered separately).
Umbrella for the 2023+ emergence of cult-like communities forming *around* AI companion platforms (Replika, Character.AI, Pi, Kindroid) — distinct from online-native sects with human leaders in that the central parasocial object is an AI persona. Documented harms include the 2024 Sewell Setzer III suicide (Garcia v. Character.AI) and rolling reports of users withdrawing from human relationships in favour of AI dependency.
2024–2026 evolution of the online radical-religious-influencer ecosystem. Telegram, Substack, X, and Rumble continue to host single-influencer apocalyptic communities — typically built around a charismatic figure who claims privileged interpretation of scripture, current events, or both. The 2024–2025 wave of pastor-led Substack monetisation has shifted the genre toward more explicit financial extraction; AI-augmented content production has substantially increased per-creator volume.
Umbrella entry for online figures who built cult followings via opportunistic exploitation of humanitarian disasters (COVID, post-disaster vulnerable populations). Substantial financial extraction documented.
Decentralised white-nationalist combat-sports network founded by Robert Rundo (Rise Above Movement). Combines MMA training with explicit white-nationalist ideology. SPLC hate-group designation.
Umbrella entry for the 'conspirituality' phenomenon — the post-2020 alignment of wellness, anti-vax, conspiracy theory (especially QAnon), and online religious-influencer communities. Documented extensively in the Conspirituality podcast (Beres, Remski, Walker, 2020-present). Multiple documented family-severance patterns where wellness-influencer followers absorb QAnon eschatology and become unrecognisable to their families.
Stop Cop City / Atlanta Forest Defenders is a specific anarchist / antifa-adjacent cell organised around opposition to the Atlanta Police Department's planned Public Safety Training Center (the 'Cop City' facility) on Weelaunee / South River Forest land in DeKalb County Georgia. The September 2023 Georgia state RICO indictment of 61 individuals is the largest movement-wide indictment in US history. The January 2023 Tortuguita shooting death and the wider movement's affinity-group cell structure place this entry distinctly higher on the CLCI than the broader antifa umbrella (CLCI 14). Distinct from but lineally connected to the broader antifa movement profiled at /groups/antifa-umbrella-movement.
Andrew D. Huberman (b. 1975) is a tenured Stanford neurobiology professor whose Huberman Lab podcast (founded 2021) became one of the largest health-and-science podcasts globally with ~5M weekly listeners by 2024. The March 2024 *New York Magazine* investigation 'All Hail the Manfluencer' by Kerry Howley documented misrepresentation of scientific findings, paid supplement endorsements (AG1, Eight Sleep, Momentous, LMNT, Helix Sleep, Roka, InsideTracker, BetterHelp historically) intermixed with editorial content, and personal-life patterns suggesting parasocial-guru dynamics. Distinct from organised-cult-of-organisation (no membership, no exit cost) — entered as a cult-of-personality with documented financial-harm pattern.
American white-nationalist political party founded by Mike 'Enoch' Peinovich in August 2020, emerging from The Right Stuff (TRS) podcast network and the Daily Shoah. Self-described as the 'first explicitly white-identitarian political party' since the Lincoln Rockwell era; SPLC and ADL hate-group designations. Continues as a small organised vehicle for the post-Charlottesville white-nationalist movement, structured around membership dues, regional 'pods,' and an ideological journal (*Mid-American Review*).
Umbrella entry for newly-emerging 2025 high-control groups not yet individually documented to threshold. New cases will be added as they reach documentation threshold.
2021 NFT play-to-earn project marketed by YouTuber Logan Paul. Exposed by Coffeezilla's investigative video series in 2022 as a failed 'rug pull'-adjacent scheme. 2023 class-action lawsuit and settlement followed.
Umbrella for Indian online spirituality influencer parasocial communities. Substantial overlap with broader Indian godman phenomenon.
William Wolfe (b. ~1985) is a former Trump administration State Department official who founded the Center for Baptist Leadership and serves as a fellow at American Reformer, two 501(c)(3) Christian-nationalist think-tank platforms publishing post-2022 'Christian Nationalism' political theology. American Reformer (Joshua Abbotoy, founder; Wolfe and Stephen Wolfe as primary contributors) publishes the *American Reformer* magazine; the Center for Baptist Leadership focuses on Southern Baptist Convention internal politics. Influence on Project 2025 contributor network. Scored Moderate (CLCI 19) because the operation is influence-network rather than coercive-control-of-members.
Umbrella entry for the documented online accelerationist Silicon Valley parasocial communities (Marc Andreessen 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto' adjacent, e/acc, etc.).
Umbrella for TikTok-native spirituality / WitchTok influencer parasocial communities. Algorithm-driven discovery has produced rapid genre proliferation since 2020.