Conference ended today, and the papers aren't up yet. Title of Elli's paper is Terrorism and Religion, but in spite of the title similarity I don't think he's any relation to Paul Berman (Terror and Liberalism). Elli has been studying cults for a long time, including the relatively benign ones like DLM. Working in Israeli Intelligence for a number of years he found that all cult groups (including Jewish Orthodox groups as well as Hamas, etc.) shared certain attributes in common. Other interesting stuff too at the conference, including a study (an upcoming book, actually) by Ronald Wintrobe. It's very geeky though, with lots of economics graphs, but his thesis is that the "rewards curve" (which is a "sigmoid" or "S" curve) of any group seeking exceptional changes in society virtually demands a "slippery slope" to extremism. That's because the early rewards give members of the group the impression that with just a little bit more group solidarity they're very close to achieving their ultimate goal. They therefore eschew "moderation" as an inefficient waste of time. Basically, why be moderate, if victory is so close?

He develops scenarios for Hamas, Marxism and another extremist groups. He refers specifically to Divine Light Mission, and even quotes some premies. The slippery slope involves a function wherebay the values related to individual autonomy are traded for values of group solidarity defined by a leader, but because of the "solidarity multiplier" people who sign on to a cult ultimately end up sacrificing virtually all of their autonomy to the leader, even if they didn't intend to do so.

Most of the other stuff was specifically related to terrorism, but these two papers were general cult treatises with a terrorism focus. The name of Wintrobe's paper is Suicide Terrorism and Autocracy.