🧅 What Do Onions and the Borg Have in Common with Cults and Coercive Control?

Borgs are like onions too!

At first glance, it sounds absurd. What do onions — humble, tear-inducing vegetables — and the Borg — Star Trek’s most chilling alien collective — have in common?

Let's take a look!

Both represent something layered, invasive, and ultimately transformative — not in a good way. The onion offers a perfect metaphor for how cultic harm can be peeled back in layers, in a way that demonstrates that these groups don't just affect individuals but entire social systems. And the Borg? This shows us what happens when personal autonomy is consumed by a collective will, and the terrifying consequences of not resisting.

Before peeling back the onion Borg — and, in doing so, exploring how this mirrors real-world cults' mission of assimilation — let's quickly review what the onion and Borg are.

🧅 What’s the Onion Metaphor?

When we talk about cult harm as an “onion,” we mean it’s layered — not always obvious at first glance. On the surface, it might seem like one person making a strange or personal choice. But as you peel back each layer — the family distress, the institutional failure, the societal spread — a much more complex and disturbing picture revealed. And like peeling a real onion, each layer can sting.

🤖 And Who Are the Borg?

In the Star Trek universe, the Borg are a terrifying alien species that absorb individuals into a single, hive-like consciousness. Once assimilated, people lose their identities, becoming drones who follow a collective will. The Borg motto: “Resistance is futile,” is a chilling foreshadowing to victims who lose their autonomy to the machine.

The Borg are often seen as a metaphor for totalitarianism, cults, or even technological control — any force that strips away individual freedom in the name of unity or perfection. Which I believe was also Gene Roddenberry's intention when invented this alien being.

Okay, now to move onto how these metaphors apply to cults and the impact their coercive control has on individuals and society.

🧅 Layer 1: The Individual – Resistance Is (Supposedly) Futile

The Borg strips individuals of identity, folding them into a singular hive mind. Cults do the same — only their tools are more subtle: love-bombing, certainty, spiritual promises.

At this layer, people don’t feel like they’re losing themselves. They feel like they’ve found truth, a community that aligns with their values. But what’s really happening is the early phase of assimilation — where isolation from the rest from friends and families is the byproduct of having a sense of belonging.

Like the newly assimilated drone in the Borg collective, the cult member begins to speak not as “I,” but as “we.” Their individual voice starts to erode beneath a flood of shared language, slogans, and doctrine. Independent thought becomes suspect — a sign of spiritual weakness, ego, or rebellion. Critical thinking is silently surrendered, replaced by a belief system that frames questions as threats and unquestionable certainty as a virtue.

This is not just ideological agreement — it’s a cognitive fusion. The group’s values overwrite personal ones. Members begin to preemptively censor their thoughts to avoid internal and external conflict. They adapt to the groups way of thinking, sometimes even adopting the group’s rhythm of speech, and eventually, uncertainty is eradicated, as assimilation into the group identity overrides individual identity.

Just as the Borg strip away individuality to create a seamless, obedient machine, cultic systems do the same through psychological control. The result is a person who may look the same on the outside but is no longer guided by their own internal compass.

This layer represents harm done to an individual.

🧅 Layer 2: The Family – One Becomes Many

When someone joins a cult — or is assimilated by the Borg — it’s never just about one person. That person now becomes a mouthpiece for the collective, a recruiter, a transmitter of ideology. Their withdrawal from loved ones isn’t just emotional; it’s strategic.

The Borg expand by taking one, and then another — until resistance feels not only futile, but lonely. Similarly, cult members often draw in others or fracture families in the process.

Every family torn apart is a quiet victory for the collective.

Cults vs The Borg: A Comparison

🧅 Layer 3: Institutions – Exploited and Undermined

The Borg’s strength lies in how quickly they adapt to resistance. You develop a defense? They overcome it. Cults do the same with our systems:

• They exploit religious protections.

• They circumvent child safety laws.

• They know how to speak the language of therapy, faith, freedom, and personal choice — all while eroding them from within.

  
  

By the time institutions realise what’s happening, they’re often too compromised, too confused, or too afraid to act. Just like Starfleet in its early encounters with the Borg, society finds itself outmatched by an enemy it doesn’t fully understand.

🧅 Layer 4: Society – The Hive Mentality Spreads

The Borg don’t just assimilate bodies — they overwrite cultures.Cults, too, don’t stay contained in communes or back rooms. Their thinking — binary, authoritarian, anti-questioning — begins to infect public discourse.

• “You’re either with us or against us.”

• “The truth is dangerous — trust only us.”

• “Others just don’t get it.”

  
  

These ideas spread, especially online, turning public conversation into ideological battlegrounds. The hive mind grows louder, more influential, more mainstream.

And worst of all — it doesn’t always look like a cult anymore. It looks like politics. Like “truth.” Like community.

🧅 Layer 5: The Core – Humanity at Risk

At the centre of it all lies a simple question:What does it mean to be free?

In Star Trek, the Borg threaten humanity not with death, but with a life without choice, without individuality, without soul. That’s what cults threaten too — not just on a personal level, but on a cultural one.

A society that tolerates coercion, glorifies obedience, and punishes dissent becomes fertile ground for future Borgs — whether they’re spiritual, ideological, or political.

This is the core of the onion: the deepest wound. A culture that forgets how to resist.

💥 Resistance Is Not Futile: The Road to Recovery

In Star Trek lore, the Borg are eventually defeated — not just through firepower, but through reconnection to identity. Individual drones remember who they are. Autonomy returns. Healing begins.

The same is true for cult survivors and the communities around them.

Recovery doesn’t happen overnight. It happens as layers of belief and control are peeled back, revealing grief, trauma, and truth. It happens in therapy rooms, at kitchen tables, in late-night internet searches, and courtrooms. It happens in laws changed, in voices raised, and in systems that finally learn to say: “This is coercion. This is harm. This is not okay.”

🛡️ Final Thought: Understanding Cults and Coercive Control

The onion reminds us that cult harm is never just skin-deep. The Borg remind us what happens when we fail to protect autonomy. Together, they teach us this:

Individual freedom is never just a personal matter. It is a social responsibility. If we want to live in a society that values independent thought, empathy, and consent — we must be willing to resist the hive. And we must be brave enough to peel the onion in order to understand that cults and coercive control are issues that everyone needs to be aware of.

If you have been impacted by cults and coercive control and would like support re-establishing your identity, Recover From Coercive Control offers online counselling services.