ANTICULT MOVEMENTS are the complementary reverse side of the coin to new religious movements (NRMs). Anticult movements may be focused on one group, as was the nineteenth-century anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party or the various anti-Mormon efforts. Anticult movements may also be more inclusive in their focus, as with the nativist antiblack, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan of the twentieth century. In modern terms, most anticult movements are multidimensional and espouse a dislike (and often a nonunderstanding) of nontraditional religions. This opposition includes the belief that NRMs are subversive of revered social institutions, the prediction of imminent danger from such groups, and claims that such groups do not "legitimately" attract willing converts but rather employ beguiling means to build a slavelike membership base. Anticult groups often make appeals to civic values and patriotism to justify their opposition to NRMs. Historians show that such countermovements, either secular or...