In the mid-1990s, Introvigne testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon. After Introvigne was critical of the publication of the 1995 report on cults by the French government, journalists described Introvigne as a "cult apologist", saying he was tied to the Catholic Alliance and Silvio Berlusconi's then ruling party. Introvigne responded that his scholarly and political activities were not connected. Introvigne has written on the concept of brainwashing. Gandow refers to what he calls the "APA-Lie" (i.e. the way Introvigne presented the position of the American Psychological Association on brainwashing) as a scientific scandal. He published an Encyclopedia of Religion in Italy. Journalist and Scientology-critic Tony Ortega penned a series of 2018/19 articles criticizing The Journal of CESNUR as an unreliable "apologist journal". Popular culture and vampires Introvigne is also director of CESPOC, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He was the Italian director of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, which included the leading academic scholars in the field of the literary and historical study of the vampire myth. In 1997, J. Gordon Melton and Introvigne organized an event at the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles where 1,500 attendees came dressed as vampires for "creative writing contest, Gothic rock music and theatrical performances". Bibliography Books Le nuove Religioni, SugarCo (1989), . Il cappello del mago: i nuovi movimenti magici dallo spiritismo al satanismo, SugarCo (1990), . Il ritorno dello gnosticismo , SugarCo (1993), . Les Mormons, Brepols (December 30, 1996), . The Unification Church (Studies in Contemporary Religions, 2), Signature Books (September 1, 2000) . Rodney Stark and Massimo Introvigne, Dio è tornato. Indagine sulla rivincita delle religioni in Occidente, Piemme (2003), . Laurence R. Iannaccone and Massimo Introvigne, Il Mercato dei Martiri. L'industria del terrorismo suicida, Lindau (2004), . Satanism: A Social History, Brill (2016), . The Plymouth Brethren, Oxford University Press (2018), . Il libro nero della persecuzione religiosa in Cina, SugarCo (2019), . Inside The Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China, Oxford University Press (2020), See also New religious movement Theosophy and visual arts References External links 1955 births Living people Italian Roman Catholics Researchers of new religious movements and cults Writers from Turin 21st-century Italian philosophers Italian sociologists CESNUR Western esotericism scholars Jurists from Turin