Is the “Church of Scientology” a fundamentalist organization?
In my view, it is. And if you read the criteria for fundamentalism above, there is not much doubt that the hard core members of the church fit right in to these 5 points.
I was prompted to write this by an interesting post on Marty’s blog a little while ago entitled Trained To Lie.
I posted a comment in response which I repeat here:
Marty — the corollary to this is the fact that these people will do anything to “protect the church” and believe that this is “the greatest good.” Thus, telling a lie is not a harmful act if it going to ensure the continued existence of “Scientology” because that “benefits everyone.” And of course, these days, the church and Miscavige are A=A.
This is extremely pervasive in Scientology. And it is not even limited to those who face the Hole or being declared for failing to “protect” the church or Miscavige, nor is it limited to Sea Org members. Even public Scientologists have this attitude.
When my brother was flown in to try and intimidate me along with Jenny Linson, Bloomberg, Guillaume etc etc in the doctor’s parking lot I finally had a conversation with my brother once Jenny Linson and Co had fled when the doctor called the sheriff’s department. I told him he did not know what was really going on and that he didnt know how people were being abused or the extravagances of Miscavige. His response was to tell me that “COB could do whatever he wanted and he deserved 1,000 times more than what he may be given in exchange for his brilliant leadership of the church.” It is SO ingrained into Koolaid drinkers it is hard to fathom.
But this is what underpins the ability to lie. They convince themselves either that it is in their own self-interest to lie (like how I was with the BBC) and/or it is the “greatest good” to lie.
They get away with it often because it is hard for normal people to understand that someone would just lie to their face.
I think this is a subject that deserves some further attention. See also my recent post The Big Scientology Lie.
Lying in Fundamentalist Scientology is such a given that it has become an accepted part of the “religion.”
The Dear Leader of Scientology stands on stage and tells lie after lie and the crowds cheer and applaud and proclaim with tears running down their cheeks how lucky they are to have Him to lead them to the promised land. Even when what he is saying is obviously untrue — they can observe for themselves in their own orgs. He tells them expansion is “straight up and vertical” and that there are 10 million Scientologists and 11,000 orgs, missions and groups. He tells them He has gotten everything “on Source” and all that is required is to pay again to redo everything you did previously. Virtually everything that comes out of his mouth proclaiming “good news” is a fabrication of one sort or another.
Church spokespuppets follow in His footsteps. “There is no such thing as disconnection.” “There was never a place called The Hole.” “We are the largest humanitarian organization on earth.” It is almost a given that any official statement from the church is a lie.
Regges do it routinely. “Your money is needed now to help the relief efforts in the Philippines.” “Your money will get books into libraries.” “We follow LRH policy on returning donations to dissatisfied students and pcs.” “If you give us your money, your income will increase.”
Public do it as a matter of course. “This was the greatest service EVER.” “This was the greatest event EVER.”
And when it comes to dealing with external situations — the media, governments or court cases — there is no limit on the lies that are told. And the lies become over the top when it concerns Dear Leader.
If the media indicates any angle that might reflect badly on him, the church deluges them with sworn declarations from people in the Hole asserting he is the kindest, most hard-working, compassionate man on earth who single-handedly does everything of note in Scientology. That he is a leader of men and stands above all others (Exh 1 Tom Cruise IAS acceptance speech).
But then if there is some threat in a legal case, the same people are trotted out to proclaim that Mr. Miscavige has NOTHING to do with anything anywhere, anywhere, any time, ever. Period. Put them in deposition or in front of a court and they lie with similar alacrity “No, we never claimed to be a residential drug rehab facility.” They even suborn their lawyers to tell outright lies to the court (though the lawyers may not in fact be apprised of the truth, themselves having been lied to) “Mr. Miscavige has no idea what Mr. Rathbun does and doesn’t care.”
These days they don’t have any spokespeople to appear in the media, so all of their tall tales are sent in emails under the name of Karin Pouw.
And too often the lies fly over the heads of the recipients. People really do find it hard to believe (or perhaps to confront) that someone would simply tell a provable lie.
This is more than following the dictates of telling an “acceptable truth” or “shore story” (themselves pretty strange concepts for any religion that is supposedly predicated on truth).
No, this is pathological lying. Just out and out invented assertions and “facts.” Why?
Part of it is the bunker mentality — we are engaged in a war and acceptable behavior towards the “enemy” is whatever we deem it to be. And when the very survival of the planet and every man, woman and child on it is at stake, well, what’s a few lies if it protects the most important thing on earth?
Part of it is arrogance – we are “above wog law” or “the media are merchants of chaos (SP) so its not an overt to lie to them as they lie all the time anyway.” “We are not going to submit to the whims of the SP’s to try and destroy us.”
Part of it is the inculcated mindset that anything is justified when it is the “greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.” (Of course the 3D counts for 8 — as “benefiting the church” means benefiting all dynamics because the church is the only entity that can truly salvage everyone’s eternity and of course David Miscavige is Scientology).
A big part of it is being afraid of not “following the party line” — the consequences for SO Members may be the Hole or RPF and endless sec checks. Non SO may be sec checked and declared and have their family disconnect. Or lose their job.
So, lying is part and parcel of the “game where everyone wins (as long as you are one of us).”
But does it stop at lying for the greatest good?
Someone recently reported to me that they were told by Marion Pouw (one of Dear Leader’s personal emissaries to “handle disaffection”) that “there are 10,000 sea org members that would do whatever it takes to protect DM.” This was a threat to toe the line or there may be dire consequences. “You don’t want to cross Command Intention.”
Which brings me to this anonymous email that I recently received from “seeyarinder@fuckoff.com”:
“Donate”, “Friends of LRH” LOL. Do you realize that you have pronounced yourself to be the enemy of several million very dedicated Scientologists? Honestly, this is your product. Its Final, that’s for sure. How about Valuable? Hahaha. What have you done for LRH? What are you doing for LRH? You honestly think he’d “be on your side”? He would roast you on a spit. You live on a planet where you have created millions of enemies, MILLIONS. You are skating on microscopically thin ice. You are actively seeking to destroy the church and organizations LRH worked his ass off to build. This is LRH’s Church. So you have disagreements. This is how you handle it? There is no way you’re dumb enough to think this is the correct thing to do. You just can’t be. I’ve seen you speak at past events. You’re not stupid – I mean in terms of IQ.
The best thing you can do is go away quietly and hope next life no one recognizes you. Because this life, you’re done. There is no going back. You will never be accepted back. Its over, totally.
So since you’re not stupid – then what are you? That was fast. Why would anyone run to the press, post videos, start a blog, and ramble on and on and on and on, compulsively, unable to get your attention off COB or the Church? Why? Why Mike Rinder? Can’t you just shut up and leave, go do something else? You can’t honestly think LRH would approve or forgive you. No, you’re not stupid. You know.
If you don’t want to be part of the Church, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t care. We don’t care. I don’t care if people like you or Ortega or Rathburn don’t want to participate. Who gives a shit? It makes no difference. But yet you have to sit hiding in the bushes making crude remarks constantly, the brotherhood of cowards afraid to show your faces for fear of retaliation from the Church. Can’t take it I suppose. At this point the best thing for you to do is cut ties completely, forget about the Church of Scientology, forget about LRH, forget about COB, and move on with your life, and take your new 2D with you. Honestly. Do something else, develop a new career and don’t ever bring it up again. Show us you really mean it, and go, for real.
For if you and your new group are not suppressives, then who is?
This is Fundamentalist Scientology in all its nonsensical bluster.
…you have created millions of enemies, MILLIONS. I guess He buys His own bs about how many church members there are.
You are skating on microscopically thin ice. Hmmmm — doesnt seem thin to me, in fact it seems a lot more solid than the quicksand the RCS is floating on.
The best thing you can do is go away quietly and hope next life no one recognizes you. I grew back my beard, does that count?
… the brotherhood of cowards afraid to show your faces for fear of retaliation from the Church. Can’t take it I suppose. This is a funny line coming from an “anonymous” email probably dictated by Miscavige. I thought your complaint was that I DO show my face and am vocal and can be easily found by anyone? Probably this came as a result of a number of different dictations and someone tried to squeeze them all in to the one email so they could report compliance. The threats of “retaliation” by the church and the “millions” who are out there ready to mow me down as an enemy are typical of the fundamentalist mindset. This is the mindset of the John Allender’s and Ed Bryan’s of the world.
This group is in a dwindling spiral and is lashing out at those who are pointing out its insanities and abuses. There is no introspection. Of course NOTHING could ever be wrong within the RCS. Everything is perfect. It is an “ideal” organization that is above reproach.
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.” Thomas Paine
*Note: The five features of fundamentalism comes from a book: The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence and History by Charles B Strozier, David M Terman, James W Jones and Katherine A Boyd
With this blog you really took attention to the points that we never thought about, you provides good information in your post, let me tell you, very interesting information your are having in your post, this is what I am looking for. Thanks & Regards.
After reading your recently submitted text messages in the Monique case, it is so nice to compare them to your wonderfully articulate postings here. I imagine Dear Leader must ask repeatedly for definitions of some of your more colorful adjectives.
What a great thing to come back to after a vacation. Wow! I’m so intimidated right now I could roll on the floor laughing. I bet you felt the same way too. Such great comedic writing. OTVIIIisgrrr8t has been officially put out of a job because there is no way he can write satire that can top that.
All the points have been addressed, but I must say, those several millions of dedicated Scientologists are only a delusion — or body thetans.
LRH won’t approve or forgive you?
Aw gees, now you’re going to have to start praying or something.
Real people out here have your back against that fake army of several million.
hmmmmm, first impression was that cob dicktated this letter on New Years right after he saw the numbers come in on event attendance.
If that’s not the case the second thought I have is that the interloper is just about to pop out of his own head and see what a quisling he’s been. One or two more incidents experienced inside the mind-f*** and this boy’s about to realize that he’s nobody, everybody is a no-body inside the cob mob and anyone who IS has left, disappreared or has long since given up their ability and duty to observe what they observe and comment on what they have observed and stand by those observations…
Either way, the letter was manifest of the death throes one can expect as life drains out of the organism cob has created.
Happy New Year Mike. From one of the millions of friends that you have discovered you have since you disentangled yourself from cobs web and shared your story on the worldwideweb.
love, gayle
Statpush – exactly what you said
Here, Mr/Ms Seeyarinder, let me fix that for you:
>If you don’t want to leave the cult, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t care. We don’t care. I don’t care if people like you or Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley or the Feshbachs are too addicted to your own self-importance to quit. Who gives a shit? It makes no difference. But yet you have to sit hiding in a cheap tent denying the truth constantly, the brotherhood of cowards afraid to show your faces for fear of seeing how the whole world laughs at you. Can’t take it I suppose. At this point the best thing for you to do is swallow the lies completely, forget about the bitter defrocked apostates, forget about disconnection, forget about your bank account, and move on with your life, and take your new EZBake 3000 e-meter with you. Honestly. Do your bridge over, turn off your brain and don’t ever bring it up again. Show us you really mean it, and go pay your last dime to run around a stupid neon pole, for real.
Actually there is a cult even bigger than Scientology that feels compelled to lie to its followers for the “greatest good” or “the ends justify the means” or it’s just too embarrassing to tell the truth or you know …just because.
Sometime back when I signed up I figured “we” as in the collective “we” were better than that. You know the “Road to Truth” and “Axiom 38” and all that until I ran into the GO especially B1.
Sheeesh
Well you know another definition for a spy aside from being a State sanctioned criminal is a professional liar and these guys and gals were exemplars of their profession.
I know I audited some of them.
True Mike many people lie for some greater purpose but others lie for the latter reason which is “just because”.
Like some people who end up in HCO because they like to lord it over others. People who get involved in the “Great Game” as Kipling called it play it because they enjoy playing it.
Probably has something to do with their tone level or to put it in non scientologese their …unique perspective I suppose.
They see a world full of hostile enemies and live in some paranoid parallel universe where they can trust no one and every one is a potential enemy.
I’m sure where you have an organization where the leader exists in the anger band he will be surrounded by happy smiling people like that waiting with a dagger behind their cloak.
Which means that Slappy may be right about people doing him in but of course being the incompetent moron that he is. He assigns the cause to the wrong people.
Anyhoo..
What I wrote here is purely speculation.
Probably has nothing to do with anything.
This is the new IAS call to arms.
http://youtu.be/Md7OvU5JIcI
Reposting here because, hysterically funny:
OTVIIIisGrrr8!
Weaphuckum & Howe LLP
A Legal Corporation
E. Stuart Mills, Esq.
Senior Partner
Dear Cult Applicant,
Weaphuckum & Howe LLP specializes in helping Cults and Cult Members use all possible legal means to attack and destroy their enemies.
Please fill out this questionnaire about you and your religious group so that we can better understand your needs.
1. I want to attack and destroy the following, please check all that apply:
A. One person
B. More than one person
C. Unseen entities
D. A group
E. Haters
F. Bitter Defrocked Apostates
G. Gays
H. Local city officials
I. The entire government of my nation
J. A splinter or schismatic group
K. A competing religious group or groups
L. Hate websites that blaspheme and mock my religious views
M. The entire Internet
N. Modern Life
O. Western Civilization
P. Civilization itself
Q. This planet
R. Another planet
S. The solar system
T. A sector of this galaxy
U. This entire universe
V. Other universes
W. God
X. Satan
2. My annual budget to attack and destroy my enemy, or enemies, is:
A. $1,000,000 per year (This is a Weephuckum & Howe LLP client minimum)
B. $5,000,0000 per year
C. $10,000,000 per year
E. $11,000,000 – $100,000,000 per year
D. Unlimited, money is no object
3. My tax exempt religious status is:
A. Bulletproof
B. Is presently being investigated by the authorities
C. We just lost it and need it back
4. Our religious leader is:
A. The most important ecclesiastical leader on the Planet
B. A strutting vainglorious, greedy, and brutal narcissist
C. Insane
D. Has good hair and can read a teleprompter as needed
E. Is long-winded and gives dozens of speeches each year that last 3-5 hours each
F. Thinks he is God or God’s exclusive agent on Earth
G. Has one wife
H. Has many wives
I. Has locked away his wife or wives
J. Has outstanding criminal warrants
K. Is on the run from the law
L. Is presently being investigated by law enforcement and/or government agencies
M. Is imprisoned but can still lead the movement from inside prison
N. Is imprisoned in solitary and is of no use to us
O. Is dead but our followers think he is alive and in seclusion
P. Has been kidnapped by our enemies
Q. Is dead and has a large memorial site that our followers visit regulalry
R. Is dead and missing and no one knows what happened
S. Is a dead martyr who was killed by the CIA, Interpol, SMERSH, etc. because he had the truth they wanted to hide
5. Our followers are:
A. Fanatical and will do anything required of them, and we mean anything
B. Docile sheep who will obediently do anything we order them to do
C. Lost in a self-indicting fog of delusion
D. Continually engaged in magical thinking
E. Indoctrinated in, and comfortable with, the thought-stopping, mind control, and hypnotic techniques we use on them
F. Largely criminal
G. Hopeless and in despair and given to bursting into tears
H. Bankrupt
I. All of the above
Our clergy is:
A. Captive and live in berthing, dormitories, monasteries, or other types of religious prisons
B. Hyper-aggressive in gouging every last penny from our members
C. Dazed and confused
D. Terrifying
E. Composed of mostly manipulative criminals
F. All of the above
Our PR is:
A. A complete lie that only our deluded followers will be believe
B. Partially true but mostly full of lies, false statistics, and grossly exaggerated claims
C. Depressing
D. A reaction to all of the attacks on us on the internet
E. Professionally written and produced by an outside firm as we have no staff who can read or write coherently
Please get back to us soonest with the questionnaire after which we will formulate a reply and outline potential strategies that fit your exact requirements.
Note: Please be sure to include $50,000 in cash with your reply to pay our fee for this initial consultation.
Regards,
E. Stuart Mills, Esq.
OTVIIIisGrrr8!
On another topic, if you please – one of my friends said it would be interesting to get the DVDs of the GATII event and let them analyzed for subliminal stuff. There are two reasons – one is that they are very careful to not give out any copies and when it goes to some smaller org it is immediately taken back after being shown. The other reason, which is however not that suspicious thing, is that even higly intelligent people tend to change their viewpoint after seeing the DVD. If it was OK in the end of 90’s or a little bit later for CoS to put hidden internet nanny functions into the screensaver CD and also as we have known Him (who must not be named) then it is very probable subliminal propaganda is implemented if He could do it technically.
Offer a cash reward for one or more of these GAT 2 DVD’s
Then scan them Frame by Frame for messages
If you discover something you struck pay dirt.
If not, nothing ventured ,nothing gained, keep trying.
Cash rewards work, keep it low key
Do what you know who does and hire a PI
Food for thought
Valid comment, Snoopy’s Uncle. As we on the outside can confirm, actual facts and figures are not published by the CoS, therefore suspicions will naturally arise as to what is going on in that pretend religion cum look at me, I’m a martyr scam. Is Miscavige, the well-known 1.1, brainwashing his sheep with subliminal shit? I’d say yes, and those DVDs will be worth analyzing every which way. Apologies in advance to anyone listening to Miscavige’s bollocks; it’s a shit job but someone’s got to do it. I’d do it.
Scientology is most definitely a fundamentalist religion. How one is to proceed as an auditor is “exactly by the book” in all cases. Although my favorite handling is still to “set the e-meter aside and simply ask the pc what is going on.” To care only about the person in front of you, give the pc your full attention and listen to what he/she has to say is pretty simple. This is what friends do for each other every day. And letting someone get whatever off his/her chest has been, is and always will be a good thing to do. To quote Bette Davis from Now Voyager, “Let’s not ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
Regarding the “anonymous” E-mail
“Doth protest the Overt”
In Anon speak: NO U !
About 5 years ago, I got word that Mike had suffered a form of Fair Game at the hands of the Church of Scientology and I was just giddy with delighted over it. I wrote about how “funny” it was that Mike Rinder is now receiving fair game from the organization which he ran, and which fair gamed so many people, including me.
Margaret wrote above (whose writing I very much respect) that another poster was displaying “the other side of the fundamentalist coin”.
Yes, well I have experienced that “coin” personally in myself, and my giddy delight that Mike Rinder had been fair gamed was an example of that. Even as a critic of Scientology, I still had a “bunker mentality”, because I was still at war.
It is very hard to take years of indoctrination and thought habit patterns and just let them all go, especially when they were once the source of so much admiration, group accomplishment, self-pride and self-identity.
If there is one thing that can be said about seeyarinder@fuckoff.com, it is that he is using Scientology, the ideology, to think with. You can see the thought patterns of Scientology in his reasoning, and in the way he sees the world, and even himself. You can see each of those well-worn cognitive pathways inevitably leading him to the same old conclusions and solutions which trap a Scientologist.
The only way I have ever been able to discard the “fundamentalist coin” – in the few times when I have been successful – is to spot the thought patterns that I picked up in Scientology and to question them and to examine them very closely before I let them do any thinking or decision-making for me.
This has demanded that I continue to study new logic and reasoning skills after Scientology and to work to incorporate these new skills into my thinking. Old habits die hard, though, and every once in a while I will find myself STILL dramatizing things I picked up when I was being taught to “think with Scientology”.
Also, I have found it helpful that every time I was about to use a term from Scientology, such as “dev-T”, or “ARC” or any other term, that I STOP, and try to find its English equivalent. This technique is actually a very fast and powerful way to regain your own thinking after Scientology.
Over time, these types of things have helped me in my jihad (struggle) to overcome the fundamentalist cult ideology that I adopted and ingrained in myself when I was a Scientologist.
It’s funny, I thought that being on staff and moving up the Bridge in Scientology would make me a more loving guy. That is ultimately what I wanted to get out of Scientology when I first decided to join. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I saw my own version of “seeyarinder@fuckoff.com” in myself about a year before I finally left. I said to myself, “16 years of trying to make yourself into a more loving guy with Scientology, and this is what you have become?”
The difference now is that there is no Scientology course or Bridge action which I can look forward to and make responsible for turning myself into a more loving guy. There is no state of OT that is going to handle it for me. If I’m going to change, I have only myself to do it.
Oh well.
The jihad continues.
Alanzo
Alanzo, thank you. I can relate to most of what you say, as I too experienced this in my own way over time. It’s nice to know others have done or are doing the same.
One thing Fundamentalists hate more than anything else, is not that others have a different viewpoint, but that they dare to communicate it. The fact that somebody stands up and communicates triggers a reflex to attack the person communicating in in effort to make them shut up: “..Honestly. Do something else,” This is the desperate cry of all Fundamentalists.
Some say Fundamentalist are harmless. They are not. They have a build in reflex to nullify anybody communicating things they do not approve. There are just differences in their methods. Some use weapons to silence people. Some use intimidation and denigration in and effort to silence. But always there is the reflex to silence the differing viewpoint and those who communicate it.
Fundamentalists are poisonous for a free and open society, even if they sell or believe in the Bridge to Total Freedom.
I have the greatest respect for you, Marty and the many others that speak out for the truth and keep communicating their viewpoint.
Thanks Mike, and keep doing it.
Mike. Sorry you have to bear the bunt of such desperate fear in the form of that anonymous e-mail. Most here know how much you actually knew and devoted a lot of your life to serving LRH and his goals. And like many of us, your trying to make a living and raise a family. The amount of intelligence and strength of character it took you to balance and then act on what you came to know is something the writer of that e-mail will doubtless never appreciate, let alone duplicate. But we know. There is a popular story about the dwarf who can see farther than the giant because he stands on his shoulder. Lets hope the sender of that email has the good fortune to climb up on your shoulders one day. Because you have grown to be one of those giants. And its OK that LRH was one of your giants. Its OK. You can see and are trying to fix or make right what he could or would not. Its the motto ‘we come back’ in action. The real compassion and lifestyle of a Bodhisattva. May the best of life be yours in the New Year.
Very well spoken, Mike. This email is dripping with ev purps, which is in itself the basis of what’s wrong with all fundamentalism and certainly the RCS. He wants to roast you on a spit? A bit hellish for the Christmas season IMO.
The Church doesn’t practice the greatEST good, they merely practice what is from their own myopic cyclops viewpoint the greatER good. A colossal blunder of stupendous ignorance and I guess what could be called a crashing MU on the subject of ethics.
That disjointed email is a complete generality from beginning to end intended to create fear and intimidation. But you’ve already got the handling: confront. As you correctly noted it reads as classic DM strung together by a lowly stooge.
A. Harping on about IQ — who was constantly obsessed with that subject and had everyone at the Int base tested multiple times on several different tests? = DM
B. Who is so arrogant that he would enroll himself as the arbiter of “who will never be accepted back”? = DM
C. He shows familiarity with you = DM
D. And he has certainly been reading your posts, which NONE of the “millions” of Scientologists are allowed to do.
This last piece of idiocy is really stunning. Not long ago Marc Headley heard that the Gold shoot team was filming in a restaurant a few blocks away. So he went over. They welcomed him like an old friend, handshakes and big smiles all around. “How have you been? You look great!” They all believed Marc had been working on a “project” and was still in the SO probably working for CST. “Millions of enemies”? No DM, even your own people at the Int base consider us friends.
One sentence was so obviously mis-stated, allow me to correct it here: “But yet we have to sit hiding in the bushes making crude remarks constantly, the brotherhood of cowards afraid to show our faces for fear of retaliation from the World.”
Mike, You are courageous to stand up and speak out the way you do. It takes big, huge, balls. Much appreciation and respect.
To Kevin Tighe,
I appreciate your comment about the use of Osama’s photo. I hate it when I hear Americans villify Muslims or Islam in general and I consider it ignorant. I have a number of Muslim friends and associates and know them to be good people, who are not fundamenatist in any way. Islam shares the Old Testament with Jews and Christians alike, and considers Jesus a prophet. I even know a few Muslims who have a print of “The Last Supper” hanging in their homes as they find it inspirational.
I do think that the comparison of Hitler representing the Boy Scouts is a little off though. Osama Bin Laden was a fundamentalist in every way and mainstream Muslims acknowledge this. At least the ones I know do. Osama has become a symbol of fundamentalism, although unfortunately for Islam, giving it a bad rap. The Taliban is also extremely fundamentalist too and so are the Ayatollah’s of Iran. I think connecting the two latter is a much better comparison to Hitler than the Boy Scouts, don’t you?
I am certain that Mike didn’t mean to slight Islam here on any level and he expressed his remorse in using the photo. But I do know many Muslims who honestly wouldn’t have a problem with it either. They just don’t like what Osama represents for Islam.
Mike, this post just made my day, and it should yours, and everyone else who escaped the fundamentalist cult of the Church of $cientology. Keep up the GREAT work, my friend. That anon letter from “seeyarinder” just told us everything we need to know: this is working! An enemy, Mike Rinder, you are not. Happy New Year!
This email can only be truly understood by those who have been inside the RCS bubble. I have no doubt within the bubble this email is a masterpiece. Those responsible probably did a round of high 5s upon completion. It is only outside the bubble reality that the outpoints shine.
This post is timely, as I recently wrestled with this very subject with another. THIS is the product of BELIEF and fanatical conviction. And betrays many core concepts in Scn that have all but disappeared in RCS. Things like Looking, Observing, Evaluating Data, Thinking for Oneself, Granting of Beingness, etc. If DM was sincere about “Lost Tech”, these would be the first on the list.
The fanatical Scnist is far far worse than the fundamentalist Christian. At least the fundamentalist understands and knows they are BELIEVING in their materials, that faith is required. The fundamentalist Scnist is completely certain he KNOWS his materials to be the Truth, when in fact he has never bothered to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty and find that Truth for himself. No, its just cleverly disguised BELIEF.
Statpush,
You made a very good point. It is a very clever form of indoctrination. Thanks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination
Mike…….. you have pronounced yourself to be the enemy of SEVERAL MILLION Scientologists. .. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. ………Oh my…..pardon me Mike for losing it here…… it was that “several million” thing …… HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA …… gotta go ….. I’m gonna tear something inside if I type those words again …….
Mike, I suspect that the email sent to you was the last step of a formula – doubt maybe. Seems so out of wack to read it any other way.
I questioned someone who I respected and of whom I thought of as level-headed about the stories of miscavige’s brutality. His immediate defense surprised me. To say that the employees were somehow at fault seemed so similar to how a victim of domestic violence sometimes responds.
That said, Miscavige is no Osama Ben Laden. There are plenty of other better examples that would be closer to the mark.
http://webmail.fuckoff.com/src/login.php
KSW is alsoo fundamentalistic
I think lying is built into Scientology. I have never met anyone who has the “OT abilities” described in detail in History of Man. For that matter, I have never met anyone who fits the definition of Book One Clear, athough it was later defined as someone who doesn’t have their own reactive mind. LRH also lied about his military background and his credentials. This was before he got the idea that lying is OK. I even remember hearing LRH say on a tape that “prevarication” (lying) is good for one. And with the Sea Org came “shore stories” and “How to Handle Black PR”, e.g. “dead agenting”. Lying is totally OK when one is engaged in “Fair Game”. And of course OSA/Gaurdians Office took lying to a whole nuther level. Even the grade chart itself is a lie – it has OT levels (OT 9 and higher) on it which don’t even exist and never will. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Those bubble dwellers still drinking the kool-aid can therefore easily justify the lying if it serves the “greater good”, even when they know not-so-deep-down that they are indeed lying sacks of shit. Its good to get away from all that and it takes a while to clear your head of that, i.e. what we call “decompression”. Leaving Scientology is a long process. I think the reason some remain in the bubble for so long is that it is really uncomfortable once one starts confronting the “inconvenient truths” that are so obvious to an outsider.
Well said. If you want to see this bubble dwelling in action on a terrifying scale of delusion, watch the film Camp 14 on Netflix. It’s a slow, agonizing and heartbreaking account of a young man born into a DPRK gulag. It’s hard to watch, but watch the whole thing so you can get to surreal interviews with the torturers who tell their stories along with the young man. These two men have absolutely zero remorse for what they did. They say they do, but you can tell they haven’t had the time to really let the horror in. The COS has many parallels to the DPRK, but fortunately, their actual impact on the world is negligible, but you’ll see the parallels. This is fundamentalism and brainwashing at its very darkest.
I’d add that bubble dwellers have become so used to lying to themselves, they believe it and don’t notice the clash of reality any more. Cognitive dissonance has become ingrained as a habit.
From Wiki: “When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Jethro Bodine wrote: “LRH also lied about his military background …”
Jethro, I’ve been looking for those “lies about his military background” for a couple years now and I’m not finding a there there. I did some research into the controversial areas of his time in the Navy during WWII, and published my findings here: http://scientologymyths.com/hubbardww2.htm
Chris Owen made some pretty significant blunders (as did Russell Miller, Jon Atack and Lawrence Wright) , and I point these out in the article. Not that they didn’t also get some things right, but some of the more central questions (i.e. injuries, seeing combat, etc.) are blatantly wrong.
There’s plenty to validly criticize in organizational Scientology and some of Hubbard’s related choices, imho, but I’m finding that the whole “LRH lied about this background” is really an empty claim when one spends the time looking at the details.
Well, for one thing, he lied about the number of times he was married to a reporter. There is a video of this on youtube (don’t have the link handy). LRH’s military history is much dispusted, and probably for good reason, although a lot of what was written about it was by the C of S.
I also took a brief look at what you wrote-up, and you seem to infer a lot of things based on little evidence. For instance, you seem to infer that his “actinic conjunctivitis” and that this was due to combat. There’s just no evidence it was due to combat. However, I can’t argue that it wasn’t caused by combat either. I think the only person who really knows what happened to LRH during the war is dead now. A lot of what you believe depends on the validity of the records, and I certainly wouldn’t put much faith in any documents the C of S presents, due to their long history of lying.
Hubbard said he thought Scientology should be free, yet he also wrote a policy which stated “Free Service Equals Free Fall”. Scientology was never intended to be delivered for free. It’s just not set up that way.
Oops, this was in answer to J. Swifts comment. Sorry.
This is a little harsh. Anonymous had good reasons to not state their real names when the protests in 2008 started. I don’t think that was cowardice. Please make a distinction between those with good reasons and someone just trying to troll Mike.
This seeya guy is the worst kind of cowardly douche.
He makes threats, claims to speak with the support of millions, yet he uses a bogus name.
Utterly gutless creep like so many bullies.
As he runs out of things to say he resorts to profanity.
If this is the brightest and best from under the dome, it may die out sooner than first thought.
Signed
Derek Wagner
Canada
I have no problem equating Osama Bin Laden with David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology. Osama wanted to destroy the lives of Americans and those who live in the West; Scientology wants to do the same thing, all in the name of the “greater good” in its war on psychiatry.
Everyone agrees that Lisa McPherson’s death was unnecessary; a psychiatric intervention with medication and therapy would have probably saved her life. If Scientology achieves its stated goal of destroying all of psychiatry, hundreds of millions of people worldwide will be doomed to suicidal actions, pyscho-homicidal attacks and, to a lesser degree, barely functional lives.
The sooner that Scientology’s influence in the world (as presented by DM and LRH) is destroyed, the better. However, I don’t object to independents like Mike practicing the technology as I doubt they’re going to wage a campaign to have my anti-depressants removed from my medicine cabinet.
A letter from a kindergarten mafiosi. Maybe he’ll meet the real mafia one day. I here they like family.
Hey Mike
Thank you for your post. I loved it!
We are all proud of you here. The silliness of the e-mail you received gave me a good laugh. It’s like when we were in the 5th grade, and our boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with us and then sent us a nasty note saying how they would never take us back. Even though we had obviously moved on. That’s just how it sounds to me. Having a good laugh has cheered up the evening. Even friends who were never in sometimes like to read your posts because the CoS provides a spot of (unintended) humor.
To the writer of that email: C’mon, we can see that you are jealous of Mike. But you too can be as free as Mike now is. Just walk out that door and don’t look back.
Mary you will find this email even more entertaining if you have Taylor Swift singing in the background.
We are never ever ever getting back together,
We are never ever ever getting back together,
You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me
But we are never ever ever ever getting back together
Like, ever…
In Islam, taqiyya is a form of religiously sanctioned dissimulation whereby a devout Muslim is permitted to speak or act in a manner that falsely conceals true facts or intentions when dealing with an infidel.
Essentially it is the Islamic practice of “fair game,” and it most often employed to gain tactical advantage through deception.
Scientology, through Hubbard’s “scripture” has engaged in highly aggressive and unethical “law fare” which can best be described as the “illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a PR victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent’s time… similar to a SLAPP lawsuit.” (Source: Wikipedia definition: law fare)
Islamists engage in more culturally traditional methods of dealing with political/religious opponents, which can be characterized by the term “Jihad.” An example of taqiyya is the false depiction of Jihad as “personal struggle,” as in “My Jihad is to lose the 20 pounds I gained.” Jihad is holy war, sanctioned by an Islamic cleric.
The intolerance of radical Islamists, and the “means justifying the end” thinking of Scientology are confluent both conceptually and behaviorally.
Terrific information. Thanks for digging it out.
Great article Mike. I haven’t yet had time to read every post above so maybe this point was covered. But may I please suggest that you add another point to the five listed on fundamentalism (and I think it may be the most important point). That is that one needs to agree with everything that the fundamentalist scriptures (and/or leader) says or writes.
I love LRH’s original lectures on education where he stresses the right of the student to reject data (and then later his essay on integrity … what is true for you based on your observation, etc) and there are other early references where he states this in other ways. But that certainty that everything he says is simply fact, which you can find in DMSMH by the way, only became stronger as the years and decades passed and he started referring to himself as “source.” I have no disagreements with the concepts of misunderstood words and false data being barriers to understanding, but the subtext has always been that RON never has misunderstood words or operates on false data (even though he would reject many of his own ideas as he evolved his tech, and certainly CHANGED his own definitions of his OWN terms numerous times). Only the STUDENT who expresses any confusion has fundamental misunderstoods causing those confusions.
The way checkouts are given is a whole matter in itself for another discussion. Nothing wrong with verifying a student’s understanding of course, but in 35 YEARS of giving thousands of checkouts, I never ONCE heard someone say that he/she disagreed with anything LRH ever wrote or sad. NOT ONCE!!! Just think about that for a moment.
I attended a fundamentalist Christian church for a two years (just recently) and it was simply accepted that everything written in the Bible was literally true. And this is EVEN WHEN THERE ARE OBVIOUS CONTRADITIONS (in the new testament as well as the old testament).
Before any fundamentalist religion can truly exert its power over individuals, it must first get them to agree that nothing in the religion can possibly be questioned as to its truth. This is just the beginning of giving up all self determinism of thought and independent thought and the acceptance of every order and directive from above.
I can’t help but surmise (and anyone here is more than welcome to correct me if I’m wrong), that in more than one instance, the answer/COG of the Money Process: “MOCK UP A WAY TO WASTE MONEY” was ‘Scientology.’
Thoughts?
Joe Pendleton, you have just reminded me of my own very, many thoughts and cogs on this very point while I was studying, which I did a lot. I pushed such thoughts aside but in a dark recess of my mind, I did wonder.
However to state to a member of the SO that something was not true for you, was risking your neck. While LRH invited individualism, it was dicey to practise it.
Thanks for reminding me.
I call people like this “Fun-DUH-Mentalists”. I met plenty of them in certain Christian factions I was raised amongst when I was young.
To seeyarinder/fuckoff,
So ya got a beef with Mike Rinder. We all get that here. Since you obviously pay close attention to whatever Mike says and does (including the posts) this is for you.
When you write a threatening email to Mike, please don’t make mention of his 2D, meaning his wife and children. Just by bringing them into it was is not okay by any means. You have a quarrel with the man; leave the wife and children alone. This is wrong and crossing the line.
You show yourself to be a person who has bad intention towards women, children and families. Others may be more reasonable about this and give you the benefit of the doubt. I take your veiled threat seriously and do not.
What’s your problem? Do you secretly dislike women? Think kids are nothing but a big pain in the ass? Resent cohesive family units? Maybe you are jealous of Mike, in that in the face of tremendous loss, he was able to create a 2D again with a young and beautiful woman. I bet it eats away at you.
LRH married and had children with at least 3 women that I know of. Sea Org members get divorced and remarried all the time. What’s the problem with Mike getting remarried? You know the answer – nothing.
You make yourself look bad but when you go after a man’s wife and family, well you just look evil. Think about it next time and keep your mouth closed.
Pepper — methinks you chose your handle well.
Here, here.
The FAM is OFF LIMITS and NOT KEWL.
Sleazy in the extreme.
Not to mention, somewhat telling….
Mike This is a great analysis, the comparison with Bin-Laden doesn’t bother me in the least, after all he is supposed to be a fundamentalist and you are quite right in defining the COS as a fundamentalist organisation. The anonymous mail you got doesn’t show a very high aptitude to understand anything and It is not very a refined way of thinking. Total delusion in a parallel universe. Thank you once more for all you do, for your courage and your sense of duty. Happy New Year to you and your beloved ones.
Alex
Dear Mike,
I sincerely hope that at some point in your life, you’ll find the time to write a book about your experiences in Cof$ and OSA.
Believe it or not, I think a lot of people are still hoping for some answers and ‘closure’ regarding your time and activities under DerMidget, and your considerations on that.
Of course, and quite justifiably, you may be totally of the opinion that none of us are ENTITLED to this from you.
I would also completely understand that viewpoint.
Nevertheless, you are an inspiration, and we thank you for your time and effort thusfar.
Your life is your own, live it the way you see fit, and we will support you in those choices.
Dear Mike,
I note that there is no comment from you on this, which is as I anticipated.
I expected none, truth be told.
Nevertheless, it was heartfelt and genuine and sincere.
Mull it over.
Whatever you decide is in the best interests of you and your family is OK by me.
When the ‘Fall’ comes, just realize that you and Marty will be the first people that we look to.
Be ready with that speech, and the reasons why.
Which, believe me, we also completely understand.
With much respect and gratitude….
Jeff, I stated a few times that I dont have the patience nor inclination to write a book. It’s a very time consuming endeavor. I really dont have the time to devote to it — or more truthfully, I dont want to devote the time to it and detract from other things in my life. I already spend a considerable amount of time with this blog and trying to help people that reach out to me.
Understood, Mike.
Believe me. I mean or meant no disrespect.
You have (to my mind at least) an unreasonable amount of expectation resting on your shoulders.
I was merely trying to express a general ‘sense’ gleaned over the last few years, that I’ve felt many held in regards to those expectations, realistic or not.
Again, I apologize if I offended you in anyway.
I have, do now and always will hold you in the highest regard for your work in PT.
ARC
I took no offense whatsoever. Not even slightly.
Well, maybe sometime in the future, Mike and Marty could do another ‘On the Dock’ series of videos?
…after it has all played out?
How would that be, would it satisfy those with lingering questions?
…if the principals were willing?
ps for this never-in, at least, the first ‘On the Dock’ episodes were my entree into this world; after seeing Laurence Wright’s interview on Going Clear…originally mystified that the author of The Looming Tower had taken the time to study and report on that goofy cult from ‘back in the day’.
Spot-on regarding the fundamentalism. And very telling e-mail. It is good that you publish it to show the frame of mind of such a sender.
Leaving aside the emotional state, he is trying to push buttons. He doesn’t realize that these don’t work here in the real world, outside of the bubble. It’s the old blame game “you are not with LRH” which got used to corner you when you were not marching lock-step inside the cult.
“Because this life, you’re done. There is no going back. You will never be accepted back. Its over, totally“. Ohhhh, what a threat… ! LOL. The idea that Mike or anyone else, who freed themselves from the dictator and the slavery, WANTS to go back is quite self-absorbed.
Mr seeyarinder@fuckoff doesn’t seem to realize, that we are so glad that it’s over. Totally. Glad that we are done. Done with the Fuhrer and his madness, with his cult, with his thought-police, his enforcers)
Except – that a dictator has to be brought to justice, family and friends to be woken up from the trance and freed from the mind control.
.
And now it is not “on the fringes of the Internet” anymore, but even “hiding in the bushes”; and that from an angry dude who is hiding himself, contrary to Mike Rinder who couldn’t be more in the open. This person is not only deluded but is seriously disarranged.
Somehow it sounds as if he is speaking from himself. But at least he knows well that Mike is not stupid (mentioning it several times). That seems to make him even more angry.
Q: “Can’t you just shut up and leave, go do something else?” A: You wish he would.
Q: “For if you and your new group are not suppressives, then who is?” A: YOU.
And… “several million very dedicated Scientologists”. Yeah, right!
I equate them. It wasn’t David Miscavige who initially said that I, personally, should be “eliminated, quietly and without sorrow” due to the gender with whom I 2D. It wasn’t David Miscavige who initially said that the psychiatric medication I’m taking should be eliminated from the world, along with the practitioner who provides it to me. It is David Miscavige who runs the organization who currently promulgates this viewpoint, and anyone not in the organization who does so is also my enemy. The philosophy is bad, and my evil has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Scientology and the Church of Scientology need to be eliminated. And the louder it happens, and the more sorrow there is, the happier I’ll be.
A very appropriate post to show the other side of the fundamentalist coin.
+1 Compassion is powerful to bring as-is-ness. Or as LRH put it, love I stronger than fear.Some people love puzzles, the harder, the better. In this world, there’s no shortage of them!
Ethics does play a role to maintain distance, but begins with one’s own ethics being “in” place and organized, exactly as yours evidently are..
… love IS stronger than fear.
This is an unsolicited plug for those of you who wish to support Mike Rinder in his activities to press the donate button and flow him some cash and contribute to the motion. In my opinion this would help him concentrate on what he is doing here. Anything helps. 🙂 Anyone doing one thousand or more will become a Patron of the Cause and will receive and embroidered sweater saying “hero” on it. 🙂
Tony — I cannot knit or embroider so that is an offer I probably cannot live up to….
What a bunch of predictable blowhard button pushing from the inspired official Scientologist. Do these types of Scientologists run their intended button pushing through an OSA editor before they fire it your way?. Or would this long email have been words put into the mouth of some Scientologist volunteer by the OSA people who craft these supposed buttons they think will effect you?
Revealing the whole assembly line coordinated OSA originated “Handling Program” targets, of what they are still doing like this blather you quoted, I wish you’d do an article on some of the typical “Handling Program” targets, and how various volunteer Scientologists get used to do this type of button pushing.
By the way, have you been followed by helicopters recently, since I’d have thought your helicopter ride a couple weeks ago would have resulted in some helicopter activity against you in retaliation!
Who dreams up all this orchestrated retaliation stuff, it’s surely contained in OSA “Handling Programs”, correct?
I’m hoping you’d detail more how the OSA “Handling Programs” get written up and executed.
Mike,
Looking over your response to Kevin Tighe’s post, I have no choice but to agree with the esteemed Mr. Fuckoff and his beneficent e-mail.You can never be part of the Official Church again.
You’re WAY too un-ser facy.
🙂
I could not stop laughing.Mike, you get the most hilarious mail. I read your blog everyday and alot of it is serios stuff, but this email was just too silly. Keep up the great work.
Lies facilitate “Get you to …” “You need to …”, etc. in order to have/make you do things. Where there are plenty of lies, things are wanted from you by putting up false facades of something more rosy whereas otherwise you might decline. Every phone call from them is full of it. So lie back to them … but then … that might be the central focus of your next sec check. It’s Ok if we lie to you, but the other side of the street should not be traveled.
“Get you to …”
Your participation by choice is simply not acceptable, you must be driven, esp. since you have monies that are rightfully ours.
I can’t believe you would post our private correspondence in public, Mike. How unkind of you.
TC
Snicker.
I was actually thinking that the email really does sound like Tom Cruise. I could hear his voice while reading it … if I were a betting girl…
Concerning the anonymous hate mail from seeyarinder@fuckoff.com: If someone is not willing to publicly state their real name it is because they are a coward.
That’s all it is: Cowardice.
State your name, rank, and serial number of STFU.
An anonymous hate mail is an admission of impotent rage.
If the tone scale had “Impotent Rage” then that is where David Miscavige and the Church of Scientology would be.
“Don’t you see, that is a level of truth. So that an OT comes up the line toward a truth. And the more truths there is in him the higher his case level. By direct proportion.
So a fellow comes in, he’s lying in his teeth. Lie, lie, lie, alter, alter, alter, vary, vary, vary, quibble, quibble, quibble, nya nya nya, booboo dee dee, boo boo. You have a direct, immediate index of his case level. He’s nuts. And this goes down and expresses itself as delu-sion. The delusion of insanity.”
Class VIII lecture 4 “Standard Tech Defined”
When Anonymous protested in 2008 – there were signs that said “SCIENTOLOGY LIES” – that impinged on me because that was what I was experiencing constantly in Scientology!! The problem with Scientology is it says it is ethical and then it LIES and the lies keep growing and growing until they don’t even know what they say or promise anymore. Now Scientology is a Military Organization going to stop the world from ending by those nasty SP’s – the Psychs! The Psychs could care less about Scientology. It is all designed to break people and take their money purely based by scientific results that one can actually see if they would just look!
Is it not so obvious to clams, and everyone really that the COS hates the psychiatric and psychology world, (or as LRH started In 1950) because they are taking money to help you feel better by getting in your mind. COS wants your money to destroy your mind, and that’s their reason for their declared war on pyches!
seeyarinder@fuckoff.com
Thank you for the Epiphany and higher spiritual awareness you gave me. The thought of 10,000 Sea Org members ready to go to guns for Miscavige gave me a tingle down my spine. (Actually there are less than 5000 SO members ~but OK that you are counting project prepares and route outs and those asking to leave and then padding the stat.) Let’s not quibble on a mere SO stat.
You gave me a *SEVERE REALITY ADJUSTMENT*
I Can No Longer Deny the Truth: Scientology is the One True Faith, I read your Email with a sense of exhilaration and ecstasy, your dedication your TRUTH, your DETERMINATION to impinge and your THREATS were delicious. So today, I will start donating my personal property to the IAS amd report to the IJC. Hate mail really works !
http://youtu.be/XwJbYERuJjI
Karen you are great! Happy New Year!
LOL. Love the video.
That was hilarious! Happy New Year!
Mike Rinder – GREAT Post!! I agree with you that the photo of Osama Bin Laden WAS appropriate!! We are talking about an evil cult that destroys lives…in the name of “help and religion”!~ We need to IMPINGE! Lisa McPherson’s autopsy photos impinged on me and her family released them to do just that! You are right on Mike Rinder!! The hater that sent you the e-mail sounds like he is really frustrated that WE ARE WINNING – US SP’S and the Scientologist’s are HOWLING cuz we are winning!! So let’s take em down and continue! Thank you so much Mike Rinder for being you – doing what you do and exposing the truth!! You are a wonderful!
Mike,
I personally don’t agree with many of things you say at times.
But I’d fight to the death for your right to say them.
That said.
The Church has certainly gone down some deep dark hole regarding The Creed, The Code of a Scientologist and Freedom of Speech in general.
Sheeesh
Anyhoo…
It’s easy to see this person is upset.
On one hand he or she or possibly it (as in some kind of bot) doesn’t care what you write but then is pissed that you wrote whatever you wrote and says that you are skating on microscopically ice or whatever as if somehow making some threat existential existence.
One must ask what is whoever making this threat gonna do?
Cancel your Life Time membership to the IAS?
Declare you an SP?
Order you to the TRD?
Wooooeeee!!!
Aren’t you shaking in your boots Mike?
Maybe they might send out their Goofy Goon Squad of Keystone Kops AKA “Squirrel Busters” or more accurately the group that should be called the “Screaming Squirrels”.
Though I doubt it.
Slappy’s already got one deposition and I doubt if he wants another.
Besides it’s hard to keep a covert op covert if your star undercover dick is now known by the name La Blown.
Making that “threat” about as idle as your average spam.
Can’t figure why they included “Friends of LRH”. Unless they want the lurkers to check out the site and see what a fuck up Miscavige is since he became that “different type of leader” they keep talking about.
For all you lurkers out there. Here’s the web address:
http://www.friendsoflrh.org
Anyhoo
All I can say is they must be getting desperate over there at der Fuehrer’s bunker as I see another foot bullet in the making.
Excellent post Mike. One additional point. If you were in Scientology or in the Sea Org and you heard DM state an out and out lie and you knew it to be a lie and did not agree with DM saying it, before too long, the “Thought Police” are on your case and you are in trouble for “Disaffection”.
Then you either get through your ethics conditions and amends and “fly right” and “get with the program” or else you end up in the RPF for more “intense thought correction”.
This happened with me a few times in my Sea Org career. I went along with it on 2 occasions thinking there was something wrong with me so needed correction. Many many other people did the same thing.
It is funny that the emailer recognizes you as a smart person (at least you have a high IQ! lol), but they are not smart enough to be able to see the huge outpoints right in front of their faces. Many people in Scientology, I am sure you will agree, are very smart and thoughtful people.
The fact that they go along with the charade demonstrates the power of mind control that is going on.
It all makes perfect sense. When you get done with Scientology, or almost done, anyway, where is it more natural to go than the tropes and images of Islamophobia. Just remember pal, it wasn’t to long ago that out President described those same guys as “like the Founding Fathers” or something.
Methinks you’re not on the same side as the rest of us here on Mike’s blog. There is a distinct odor or troll in your nasty ranting. 🙂
Mike,
I am a bit envious here as well.
Now that is really a hell of an admirable email address.
What a compliment you got here!
Might you have missed a Withhold on that guy?
Poor sod this fellow….
Greta
Wow! The numbers just don’t add up. If there are 10 million active scientologists on the planet and about 10 000 organizations then that means on average there should be about a 1000 bodies in the shop in each organization. I’ve never seen that. Maybe it’s just my local org that only averages 40 to 50 bodies in the shop and the rest of the orgs in the world are booming…
Thank you for this post. You absolutely nailed it.
Love reading your blog daily. You have greatly helped a couple of my dear friends, as well as myself. Happy New Year to you and your family.
Thanks Steph. Happy to hear it.
The author of that letter could use a little more practice throwing down insults. All I could do was laugh at “sit hiding in the bushes” bit, finding it to be a particularly humorous example of this wonderfully expressed and well written article. We know all too well about what is affixed to the trees and hidden in the bushes Marty’s place. Gawd.
Having briefly been a part of Int PRO Office all I could think of as I was reading this is the PR Policy line “NEVER, NEVER, NEVER lie. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS tell an acceptable truth.”
Keep ’em coming Mike!
crazy squared nuts to the max and comical for others to read. Yes the blind truly is leading the blind. Miscaviage was talking about himself
Great post Mike
And like I tell Marty on his post, many hopes ride on your work. I totally trust you. Thank you for standing up to this well orchestrated insanity. A bubble of love and safety surround you and those you love.
My favorite was “hiding in the bushes.” ??? You’re all over the place getting more truth out. You’re flying around the FH in a helicopter. Your picture is on your blog. etc. etc. etc.
This is a perfect example of the verbal abuse of the executive structure in the C of $. Just yammer on and on, loudly, abusively, say things to offend and upset the person, ESPECIALLY exaggerations about them or complete falsehoods so that you really push their buttons. You stop when you see you have introverted the person sufficiently, or when you satisfy your need to push the shit downwards because you just got a handful of it yourself, or you had to stop because you just got summoned somewhere else to be in a meeting where more of it will happen.
This guy probably even suspects something is wrong but he needs to make it look like he’s really on board, backing up the marvelous command intention that no longer has anything to do with what LRH wanted, by firing these kinds of communications towards you and others exposing the truth about his pathetic little group.
If the missive was written as part of a Doubt formula, in order to “strike an effective blow to the enemy of the group”, then the poor sap who wrote it would STANDARDLY be required to show the EFFECT it had on the enemy. Right?
From the looks of this comment stream, I would say it had the EXACT OPPOSITE of the intended EFFECT.
I must admit to just the tiniest bit of envy that you should be the proud recipient of such glorious emails Mike; it’s been a couple of years since I even received a mail from “Minerva” (OSA Int staffer). I obviously haven’t been vocal and SP enough recently. Well That’s my New Years Resolution for 2014 sorted then. Done.
Martin — I love your spirit.
Keep up the good work Mike. You are in rarefied air. It’s not just anyone who gets a personalized letter from a cult leader including veiled threats.
🙂
Me thinks the sound of rotor blades will just not leave his ears.
Millions…………whatever!
I’ve never seen a situation like this where you have one “side” fighting another “side” so violently when both sides seem to want the same thing. Yep, Kool Aid drinkers vs the Independents. Both want standard tech. Both sides love the philosophy, the technology, the basic ideas, etc, but the Kool Aid drinkers have one major barrier, they are not aloud to listen to the independents. They are not aloud to communicate to the independents. Yep, it’s all bad over there without even looking. To the “outside” world, of course this seems nuts. So nuts, that corporate Scientology has totally lost all credibility with just about everyone but the Kool Aid guzzlers. It used to be Scientology fought for good causes. Less drugs, violence, increased sanity etc. Now their big fight is against their own. It’s a civil war. Corp Scientology need to realize that fighting its own people IS a major reason for their decline. The “Psyc’s” love it. The criminals love it. Comedians love it. And they just keep throwing more gasoline on this raging fire. So my message for those still in is maybe it’s time to talk to your friends on the other side. THAT would be the greatest good for all. There are so many crucial fires to put out.
Quit starting all of these unnecessary ones.
Hey don’t clue them in! I am enjoying this. 🙂
Great observation overrunincalif.
As an analogy, rather than a civil war maybe it is more like RCS is committing “organizational suicide”. They have turned the power to crush and enslave people (Black Dianetics) on their own members. Those that escape are free and called Indies. Those that are in and drinking Koolaide are being crushed and enslaved.
Exactly right. It’s been like that since the ancient 1990s and ars came on line. Nobody cared. The handling was to ignore it, no one cared one byte. What happens? Attack, attack, never defend attack dumb (sorry, I meant retarded). It’s hilarious. Fast forward to these nice kids dancing around with masks on and the masters of communication hide inside the building and put up curtains. Can this get more amusing. I think so. I remember this was a deadly serious activity blah blah but no, it’s not.
I dont think Kevin there is anything wrong with the picture. DM is a fanatics totalitarian, he turned Scientology into an extremist cult. He if he had actual political power he would do concentration camp to put people like all of us, “blog fringer of internet”.
They would show up at your door and say that you take your lugage and come. Your wife or your husband would thanks them to give you a chance to see the light with this “rehab “.
Once in the van, they would tie your hand wtih hand cuff, saying it’s protocole for people in lower condition. Then you would be away for years. Working in swamps. Maybe some would be executed, “to have a better chance next lifetime”. This is the possible extent of alter-is of scientology. You think it is not possible? Look at christianism and inquisition. Even, imagine a scientologist from 1970, travelling into the future. He would not believe what it as has become.
I *am* a scientologist from the 60s and 70s. From the early 80s on, I found it difficult to believe what was happening. I simply turned away from it all, kept a couple of “in” friends by communicating fair winds and smooth sailing. I agree fully that DM would, if he could, openly destroy people. His quote, after being the source of Lisa McPherson’s death: “People die.” The anonymous guy who wrote the email to you would happily obey his orders, another sociopath in the making. I agree with several here that Osama bin Laden was not at all “over the top” and accurately pinpoints the basic instincts of Miscavige. He despises “wog law” and has openly stated that. Scn is simply his justification “for the good the all” willingness to destroy ANYONE who actively opposes him. Just look, Mike, at the efforts and monies he put in on destroying both you and Marty…and Marty’s wife, too. So to me, any differences between bin Laden and Miscavige are differences in degree only.
Thus, a very very well done on your post, every bit of it.
After reading Martha Stout’s “The Sociopath Next Door”, it is now real to me that David Miscavige is a full-blown sociopath. The primary attribute of a sociopath is the complete lack of conscience. The only thing that restrains a sociopath is the reality of those around him. That’s all that keeps the sociopath from subjecting his victims (enemies) to his most severe forms of nullification (e.g., murder, torture, imprisonment).
To avoid criminal charges, Miscavige can’t be as brutal to public Scientologists as to his immediate staff so he nullifies them using more covert means, such as ruining their cases through altered tech, ruining their finances, breaking up their families, etc.
Miscavige attempts to hide the criminal harassment activities which he directs at those no longer under his thrall. Mike & Marty’s (and others) exposure of his activities puts him in a bit of a pickle: His desire to destroy his accusers is frustrated by the laws prohibiting murder, beatings and torture. Unable to get at the actual targets, he will direct his rage at those to hand.
A sociopath’s goal is to nullify others by any means he can without being detected or impeded. Hubbard’s data about the Suppressive Person covers the basics of this but Martha Stout’s book makes it 1,000 times more real.
A sociopath can transform any philosophy, religion or government into a fundamentalist practice.
“But yet you have to sit hiding in the bushes making crude remarks constantly, the brotherhood of cowards afraid to show your faces for fear of retaliation from the Church. ”
” The overt doth speak loudly in accusation.”
Mike, this post is so insightful! It’s very difficult to understand the brainwashing and heavy indoctrination. I have heard still-ins make comments similar to these. There’s no right and wrong, just support of COB. Mind-boggling.
This email is proof that when Mike Rinder expands his influence into society, the squirrels begin to scream !
🙂
Hello Mike and others,
I have been following this blog for a bit now… and I can say that it is spot on. Everything I see, I read if true and I have experience it as an SO Member. I am now out since 2008 after being declared… Well I am pleased to be out. I am happier… less suppression from the Church, and moving on with life. Having a great job, great 2D and a child…
Thanks for your posts.
Well done!
“If you give us your money, your income will increase.”
I witness that this is the big argument inside the cult.
“You live on a planet where you have created millions of enemies, MILLIONS.”
Mike, you deserve the freedom medal!
Your OT abilities are stronger than 5,000 cult OTs. Wohoooo, Rinder the big OT.
5000x classical OT magic power, 5000x postulate power and 5000x helicopter flying power.
You must have completed the Basics, GAT II, OT IX and OT X already.
This ravage is music in my ears 🙂 Lalalalala
“Friends of LRH” LOL. Do you realize that you have pronounced yourself to be the enemy of several million very dedicated Scientologists?”
Aside from the FACT that only a few thousand people are affected by such blasphemy, this line by Mr. bitter non-defrocked apologist, points out the crux of the actual problem.
The crux is this. What does the Friends of LRH site actually contain? It simply lays out with actual policy and tech how David Miscavige is a squirrel and is running a squirrel group. The guys who wrote the site were meticulous in simply stating the facts.
It is the facts that drive the fundamentalists nuts. Miscavologists will vehemently refuse to read a policy or bulletin when you try to show it to them. They can get really, really nasty if you have the audacity to shove it down their throat. I found this out a couple of months ago when I tried to get a koolaid drinker to simply read the actual “Ideal Org” policy. You would have thought I just handed him a live stick of dynamite.
It isn’t just that they are lying to themselves or others. It’s waaaay lower on the scale. When presented with facts they squirm around in Can’t hide. Complete disconnection is their only defense.
“Complete disconnection is their only defense.”
I face this at least once a week.
My ex does it all the time. Especially when I had bought the old books and
showed alterations … it really was the “live stick of dynamite”.
She “hides” herself behind doors or corners when I come and pick up the children.
I remember that she wrote in her last emails (before disconnection) that I was responsible for all
illnesses and acidents of the entire family.
Do I have incredible OT powers?
Scientologists learn how to postulate for years. But all MY postulates worked out
within seconds. And of course, they were all evil thoughts.
So there is the cult type of “restoration of knowing cause”, which is: “others” are responsible for all.
But if it is not yourself then it obviously cannot be as-ised. It remains there for the entire eternity.
Well, I always wanted to be “at cause” … not the scapegoat though.
From my prospective, “whoever” wrote this e-mail to Mike, is writing from a viewpoint of feeling some type of “angst,” – feels like hate mail. It’s coming from a “child” throwing a tantrum.
The “whoever writer” is conveying an “emotion” because he is looking and relying on a source of truth outside of “self.” As small children, it’s a HABIT that everyone develops since we are relying on your parents to tell us “what is.”
The writer is not “feeling” what’s inside of “self” – however small or big “self” is. Being able to “feel what’s there to be felt” is different than “being in the energy of an emotion.”
Five years ago, while getting “so-called help” through a squirrel ethics handling (because I had been dead filed) I experienced this type of “hate energy” coming from an OT5 Tampa Org Ethics officer.
One day while in my house, I spotted her “hate intention” eight feet away from my body and blew it apart and then wept with relief and line-charged for days.
I then requested my 100K back for prepaid services. I took me one year of letters, phone calls, e-mails and then a “threat to go to the news” to get my unused money back, even though the CS had given me the me status of “dead file” (no longer qualified for service).
I was in the bubble for 20 years before I made an easy decision to “live in truth.”
One does not need an e-meter to find the “emotional energy” that has capsulated your theta to “look for truth where it is not.” There is a simple technique to discharge this emotional charge.
Much Love to All, Deniece
well done Deniece!
Bruce
Hi Curious Lynx
To answer you simply, yes, the auditors are the good guys. I have great wins and happy memories from my auditing and the benefit of getting rid of ‘case/bank’ is permanent, if done standardly.
I can say that the auditors are sincere and caring, strange though this may seem.
The advice to you to contact those two websites is good. You should have a good experience with auditing, you’ve already had a taste. It gets better. .
Wasn’t the battle between the Church and the Rinder escalated beyond anonymous email missives long ago? This seems like such a pathetic gesture. It smells of a last gasp, feeble, out-of-ideas attempt at a handling. Seriously, Mike, they’re serving you very weak tea at this point. It’s good news.
Interesting email invective. I can even see the flecks of foaming-mouth spittle staining it in places.
What I’ve been thinking about lately, when I see things like this, is how reversed everything has become. The church likes to trot out that LRH quote about “when we are winning and expanding, the SPs go wild.” This email shows how this has become reversed, particularly in light of how much the church and Miscavige have been losing last year. The bloggers on the fringes of the internet have been winning, and the die-hard church members are going wild.
Another observation about a huge reversal: by leaving the church in droves over the last few years, the Scientology field, as a whole, and as individuals have essentially declared the church and its leadership suppressive. They are disconnecting from IT, and to great case gain and life resurgence, by all accounts.
If one reviews the steps A-E, which are supposed to be performed by a declared SP wishing to get back in good graces with the church (after the SP “recants and comes to their senses”) you can see how A-E could be applied by the RCS to itself, as a possible way for it to survive and reform. Stop committing harmful acts, pay back all debts to people wanting their money back, etc etc.
But of course, this presupposes the RCS leadership is able to “come to their senses.” Sadly, that is so very unlikely.
I was at an Indie party in the LA surrounding area yesterday and we had well over 50 come. And another Indie tole me that 3 years ago they had 20 Indies come. We are growing and the church is going mad and foaming at the mouth and spewing hatred like the letter to Mike. Probably someone doing A to E and “striking a blow” and they are stupid enough to think that that brave smack talk from someone afraid to show their face or name is considered effective. Mike keep on doing what you’re doing. They are scared of you. Keep putting the pressure on.
I agree with Jane Doe. All you are doing, Mike, is getting out the truth, coolly, calmly, rationally, continually, and, for the most part, very amusingly.
That’s ALL you’re doing: telling the truth, in one form or another.
The RCS is doing the rest. The RCS, via its own out-tech and out-ethics, is determinedly, continually and very efficiently doing itself in.
Mike, you, your Special Correspondents and others are merely lending a helping hand.
By reading the truth posted here and elsewhere, by posting comments or even by just lurking, we are helping also.
To the degree that any group requires lies for its protection and survival is the degree that such a group is non-survival and will fail, all by itself.
Truth is the weapon of choice to speed up the inevitable failure of such a group, and this is done for the sake of some of the innocent and not-innocent victims trapped within who need their power of choice restored to them, and this can only be done by giving them accurate data.
The pen IS mightier than the sword. Even in the Dark Ages this was true, and now we’re in the Internet Age.
The Internet makes that pen mighty swift!
Hats off to you, MIke! You’re doing a really good thing. Thank you.
.
+1
Another sock puppet hate mail. I have come to find these are actually sent out by less people than you can count on one hand. The web sites, hate posts and hate emails are sent out by less people than you can count on one hand. “hate” is so close to “fear” on the tone scale, the people, (or person) can’t even take ownership for their own hate and send these out , or posts or mocks up the web sites under anonymous. You confront one of them and they melt away like snow. More little domestic terrorists. All under the banner of “love for L. Ron Hubbard”. It’s as twisted as it gets. They don’t love anybody and ser fac on Hubbard constantly by being overt products that are as enlightened as one of the characters out of the “Deliverance” movie. You honor them by calling them fundamentalists. I call them Scientology Hillbillies.
They could relocate to China and join up with the family planning police. Isn’t this what it’s all about? Family Planning? God forbid someone out here starts their own family / tribe with any different system! Only breed fundamentalists! This is what it boils down to, family planning police!
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/chinese-director-zhang-yimou-faces-fine-1-2-050000356.html
How strange is that last paragraph in the email? It would apply exactly to Miscavige himself.
Richard Kaminski
UK Independent Scientologist
Ominous: “there are 10,000 sea org members that would do whatever it takes to protect DM.” Jim Jones had his loyal officers, too. They helped make the unwilling drink their Kool-Aid at the end.
Thanks for sharing the email. I wonder if someone was doing their doubt formula and “striking an effective blow” at the “enemy”? The irony is that communication like that will just put even more people off Scientology, seeing that is the behavior and communication style of the “church.”
In the end, only the fundamentalist, true-believers will remain in. They will become what in sociology is called a social isolate. That is when things can get very dangerous. Examples of social isolates: Jonestown, North Korea, post WWI Germany, Hitler, Manson, and so on.
Untethered from the web of mutual relationships and interdependencies that weave us into supporting one another in the broader society, the social isolate holds only to his or her own narrow group, myopic sense of reality, and distorted worldview that is not fact-checked.
As Scientology itself would predict, the ARC triangle descends to lower harmonics. Communication turns solid — words become bullets. Shared reality with the outside world is gone. And whatever love there was subsides into fear and hate.
So: “there are 10,000 sea org members that would do whatever it takes to protect DM.” That sends a chill down my spine.
This makes sense: “social isolate.” Yes… I can see that this is what is happening. And it IS dangerous. (at least in my opinion.)
“You live on a planet where you have created millions of enemies, MILLIONS.”
I´d say: Well done! Keep doing what you´re doing! It seems to be working.
This anonymous letter shows just how unconfrontable and perhaps unbelievable the truth is when the bubble is your only source of information.
This is really an excellent post. Probably my least favorable aspect of the church. I would fall into it when trying to sell Dianetics books. When I got desperate (which was often), I would show the person the chapter on a clear, knowing full well that it was quite a stretch from reality. But, every sold book supposedly gets read by 25 people, or some stupid number like that. Quite a pleasure not being part of that anymore.
There are many great aspects of Scientology, but always being truthful, or not engaging in extreme exaggeration don’t make the cut.
Having tried to read DMSMH, I never used it again for dissemination. Mostly I used (and got great results from) Ruth Minshull’s books. She wrote far better than LRH ever dreamt of doing and really knew what people were yearning for. You can still find some of her books via a net search.
That was a fanatical cult message. The line about ten thousand protecting the cob is hilarious. Like they are the Pretorian guard or something. I sure hope the cob ends up like Sadam Hussein. Hiding in a hole someplace and getting yanked out by the military.
The message was pure cob.
The fanatic sure sounds enturbulated. I hope COB is in his little spider hole as well and just as enturbulated. Carry on dear sweet Mr. Rinder as you are the one with thousands and thousands supporting all you do. <3
An insightful analysis. Well done Mr. Rinder.
“…fear of retaliation from the Church…”
A rather chilling admission.
The fair game actions of the “Squirrel Busters”, and all the rest, are not, as asserted, to protect, but to punish. This removes any legal justification.
If the author was put on the stand in Mosey’s case it would be game over.
Do the auditors in the CofS orgs lie, too?
I’ve been reading the odd stuff about Scientology for some time, and despite all the weirdness I found it interesting enough to try a bit of auditing. To see what all the fuss is about. So I went to an org and asked for a demo. The receptionist arranged me a meeting with an auditor and a registrar. The registrar probably didn’t want to scare a new person right away, so he was polite, but he did seem very focused on selling me as much as he could. I had a good excuse to buy as little as I could, because I just wanted a demo.
Anyway, the registrar was not the most pleasant experience, but the auditor was wonderful. The auditor appeared to me very serious, professional and caring – caring about me and about Dianetics. In general, I enjoyed the experience. I didn’t have any clear “end phenomenon”, but it did make me feel kinda good. I received some counseling from psychologsts in the past, and if the idea is to make me feel better about my life, then the Dianetics auditing was somewhat better than Psychology counseling. Unfortunately, because of all the mega-scary things that I read here and on other similar sites, I don’t plan to go on with it.
It all left me wondering: Is it all a clever trick to get people in? Or are auditors really the good guys, while the PR people and the registrars are the bad guys?
Ah, the infamous duality of Scientology in all its glory. Tech vs Admin.
To answer your question simply, Curious, yes the Auditors are the good guys. 🙂 Unfortunately, they’ve been drowned out more and more by the PR/registrar/bad guys in the last 30 years. And so, in general, you’re better off staying clear of the official churches of Scientology around the world, and looking for the independent variety. The websites freeandable.com and iscientology.org are good places to start.
Like X 1000
Curious Lynx, get auditing outside of the church. Get it in the Indie field and you will like it and it will help you. And no bad registrars!
Really good analysis, Mike. They think that if they say it, it will occur because reality is what we agree it is. Inside the bubble, maybe that reality does exist in the minds of parishioners. Which only goes to show how disconnected they are from the rest of the universe. Maybe that is an easier life than living with terminal cognitive dissonance.
This guy needs a mirror!
Bravo Mike, an excellent post and VERY true!
The thing that helped me most to seperate myself from Flag was that I spotted I was being lied to continuously by a very nice staff member who would call me several times a week. She would tell me that “The CS wants you to do…” This was always in the form of directions of what I was supposed to be thinking and doing next, as Flag found me difficult to control. She couldn’t keep her lies straight and I saw right through this.
Now, I had already been wanting desperately to get away from Flag and the orgs in general, who have staff stick to you like a fly on flypaper. Catching her in her pathological lying pattern made it easier for me to make the break in my mind and then my actions. She was the first staff member that I cut my communication line with. From there, I made the break systematically as necessary. I remember this clearly and as I STILL have staff members calling me daily, I use this concept over and over again to NOT communicate with any of them.
If anyone reading this who’s in the church and is battling a similar experience, I promise you, this works. Cut your communication lines with THEM. After all, they would have NO PROBLEM doing this to you and making sure others don’t communicate with you either. Do not be afraid. I know many public are afraid of ethics actions being taken on them for not taking calls or answering emails. I was one of them. Nothing happened to me yet and it’s been years that I will receive zero communication. They just move on to their next mark.
It’s true that the CoS has become a fundamentalist group in its think and practice. There is the us/them mentality at work. In my advice above to help people who are in the church and want out, and are looking at sites like this for confirmation of what they already know, I reversed the flow back at them. This has helped me to leave and get some peace.
Mr “seeyarinder/fuckoff” is exactly what is wrong with brainwashed people carrying out a mission. They love to scream intolerance and hate while they practice it every second of the day. The tone is threatening and intends to frighten people. It’s evil. We DO have the right to communicate, or not!
Good plan. Another method is to get an unlisted number, then cut off the old phone WITHOUT have any calls transferred. You can then email or call the people who you wish able to get hold of you. It takes a bit, but not at all hard to do. I was getting 4-5 calls a week, though I’d not been online for years. Changed the number and I’ve not heard anything since. Months of peace and quiet made all the effort worthwhile.
Great comment Pepper.
I read all your posts and really appreciate them. Thank you Mike. I have personal knowledge of the lies as well. A good friend of mine in CMU once told me about Miscavige would kick back a proposed speech because the numbers “weren’t high enough.” Even when the guys attempted to clarify those were the numbers, Miscavige refused to hear of it with threats, so they just invented numbers. So he knowingly forced others to lie,amongst other overts. She eventually walked off post. She said after many years of silence,that she couldn’t work for liars. The Marketing Unit was constantly being pressured to paint a different picture than the truth.
The subject of fundamentalism brings up an interesting point that I observed years ago. From the late ’70’s to the early ’90’s I was on lines in Scientology. During that time, if I spent any time at an org, I could expect to deal with a small number of people who I would today describe as fundamentalists. They could be counted on to misduplicate policy. Their product always resulted in harming others. I was never too concerned about them because they were a small number and there were so many remarkable people running the show in Scientology that they couldn’t do too much harm. I never considered what would happen if one of them were running Scientology. Today it seems that these people I considered years ago to be fundamentalists are, to a large degree, running the show and the really competent people have been removed or left. I know there are a lot of very good people still in Scientology, but they’re drowned out by the insanity of DM and his fundamentalist followers.
My observation as well, Paul J.
A clear sign your blog is having a huge impact. Well done, Mike!
Dead right, mwestern, Additionally, Mike’s impact has provoked a retaliation which inadvertently reveals the CoS’s true strength: their ammo consists of angry emails sent anonymously.
Richard Kaminski
Right. Impotent flailing about covers it.
🙂
There was supposed to be a New Year’s event on Friday and another presentation on Saturday. Has anybody heard anything through the grapevine about what went down, if anything? I had a bet on another board (JohnP’s) that Demented Midget would not show up.
An event without DM is not an event. There is nobody else left to do the talking. I bet he was there.
Repost from what Galactic Patrol had to say on this topic over at JohnP’s:
“I’m not challenging your premise that if Miscavige stops showing up for events, the game is up. But, the New Years Event in years’ past has had a tendency to have other people speaking at it, usually the guys running WISE, ABLE and those public front group sectors. If MIscavige is “otherwise occupied” and is not at the New Year’s Event, it is NOT an indication that he is on the run or hiding out. If he no shows to the March 13th event, or if there is no March 13th event (which is LRH’s Birthday) then you know things are in really big trouble.”
I’d agree with the second part (no show at the birthday event), but myself haven’t seen anybody else of note speaking for several years now. I would be very surprised if he did not put in at least a token appearance.
I got a message on my home phone from an anonymous 800 number confirming the event was REALLY happening Sunday @ the Shrine, and this was the most amazing year evah!!!!
I called back, and yes it was my favorite destructive cult! They neglected to say who they were on the message.
This was fascinating. I guess they have to call from mysterious numbers or no one will answer, and they don’t identify themselves when they call due to backlash.
Al Queda? Really? How come the German government decided recently to watch Scientology no longer?
Susana, the German government has cleverly removed one plank of the CoS’s attack against it, repaired its relationship with the US, improved its image of tolerance, and has almost certainly passed the hat to Interpol, who are better equipped and have a few scores of their own to settle. A quite brilliant manoeuvre, pulling the rug from under the CoS, removing its martyr status, and observing the CoS fail in that country all on its ownsome. The Krauts have a sense of humour, nein?
A brilliant observation I must say.
The tenor of official the statement is that Scientology in Germany is on it s way out and has shrunk so much in the last years in membership, that they are becoming irrelevant.
I believe the shrinking numbers, but I am not sure if this as the reason is just a shore story. The German secret service always knew that this was not an issue for a secret service, but they were under pressure to be resolved when the wall came down and their founding purpose, – defend against communistic infiltration,- kind of be became moot. Actually one of the parties in the German parliament equivalent to the US Congress brought a motion to dissolve the agency. At that point Scientology was just used to find a new purpose and justification for their existence.
I think they have established themselves now to fight terrorism (the 911 cell prepared in Hamburg) and they can drop watching cults safely without fear of a new motion to get resolved.
Thank you, Gerhard; very interesting. It’s hilarious that in Germany the CoS (Miscavige) would lose its newsworthy martyr status and decline into mediocrity (big word) or piddling (tell it like it is).
Placing a photo of Osama Bin Laden in your entry is analogous to placing a photo of Hitler in an article about the Boy Scouts. It’s propaganda at it’s worse. It’s the kind of thing I expect to see out of Corporate Scientology; not here.
It came with the list of factors — maybe you are right and I should have edited it out. I felt the factors were important and I honestly didnt care about what the image was as it wasnt my point. On balance, I think you are right.
Hell, just photo shop David Miscaviges face over Osama’s
More on point
I liked it as is
Mike, the picture of Bin Laden is appropriate to the article because it illustrates the truth of fundamentalism. And just as any tyrant does, Miscavige has picked up one itsy bitsy corner of the philosophy and rubbished the rest – because it serves his personal agenda.
The staggering cost and effort of driving the CoS into oblivion indicates its leader has intentions incompatible with LRH’s Scientology. Likewise, Bin Laden never represented Islam.
Naturally, everything you have ever heard about Bin Laden is true. He was a bad man, like cruel Stagger Lee.
More tactful than myself, you are, Poet13c.
Scientology is a philosophy, and it embodies the wisdom of thousands of years of thinking man. If anyone thinks that is somehow “bad” … they speak for their own evil.
I do not equate Scientology with the Church of Scientology.
Even when LRH ran the place, it was only there to facilitate the auditing and training which makes it possible for an individual to rise to the perception of the entire subject of philosophy in all its broad reaches, and with the data and definition offered by Scientology, make sense of it and see how it all does in fact relate to them, and that it is all important.
There are always shades of grey. The philosophy contradicts itself in this regard, particularly within the subjects of Study Tech, Third Parties, PTS/SPs and O/Ws to name but a few. The existence of absolutes can breed black-and-white, extremist thinking in some people (witness DM/OSA/various co$ members and a handful of indies). Differentiating between “scientology” and the “church” or “policy” and “tech” is a helpful endeavour when first weaning oneself away from cult-think. But it shouldn’t be the end of the process. The next step should be getting right into the nitty gritty and establishing which of Hub’s asserted “truths” and absolutes are in fact “untrue”, harmful or even dangerous. Imho, these things should be re-written, deleted or at the very least an NB should be added pointing out to the new student how insane they are. If any form of organised scientology has a hope of attracting new members then this needs to be addressed, imho.
Hi Mike, wonderful blog! I’m from S. Africa and its been a real explosive time for us down here. Love to your 2D, I worked with her while on staff in Johannesburg. Great person.
Now back to the topic, fundamentalism. I feel the picture is warranted. It gives instant recognition for what extreme viewpoints held down like hidden 7’s can do. Cause mayhem! Afterall you want people to see what the RCS is doing, the pain and suffering it creates. Its ugly, the image and what it represents is ugly. Who said it had to be politically correct or made easier to confront? Its people like you guys who are sticking their necks out to make this church rot available for all to see! Well done, its your right to comm freely just as its others rights to disagree.
The one thing that most of us do agree on is that the church and Miscavology has run its course! All plagues burn out eventually. Cheers for helping it do so faster. Lets keep the tech outside free from tyranny.
I agree the image is inappropriate and distracts from an otherwise excellent posting.
Yes David, I agree too. Nothing I can really do about it now. Wasnt the best judgment in spite of those that have said they thought it appropriate.
I was NOT trying to say Miscavige equates to Bin Laden.
I was trying to say that Scientology is Fundamentalist.
The authors of that chose Bin Laden as representative of Fundamentalism.
But like the Rolling Stone cover with the Boston bomber — if you read the ARTICLE it is clear I am not trying to make any such comparison, just like RS were not trying to paint a pleasant portrait of the Boston bomber.
Of course Rolling Stone LOVED the controversy it generated….
I think the photo is appropriate. The RCS is al-Qaida in training. Take a look at what RC$ is doing with the Nation of Islam. Believe me if the cob ever gets the resources to threaten and use force against governments and individuals I think he/it would. Look what it is trying to get away with Marty and Mosey and Mike and Christie. This is a wake up call for people who won’t believe the depths that robotic fundamentalism can reach. It is an appropriate connection. It’s not saying that the cult has achieved what Osama Bin Laden has achieved yet, but it shows a connection of what could be in the future and I don’t think it is an exaggeration.
Hi MIke,
You have an amazing blog here. I like the Osama Bin Laden photo. I actually think there is a great comparison to Hitler’s Nazi organization. You could put a little short mustache on DM and it would fit. I have seen it… wife and children writing KRs on the 76 year old father and throwing him out of the house. It’s very scary behavior. And they do it in the name of the “highest good.”
Even if you personally think you should not have put Osama photo there… don’t fret. All that you are doing is so powerful for all of us. And for all of those still buying into the big lie. Whew. Without you, many lives would be lost. Many bank accounts would be trashed. Many life savings would be poured down the drain and many more children would be trafficked.
You’re a hero. We thank you.
When I first saw it my gut reaction was “Wow–the longer they go and dig themelves in deeper, the closer they get to Bin Laden style.” The first reaction was that BIn Laden was teaching. I didn’t pick up an equalizing of Misc and BL but rather going in that direction.
BL had a much more captive and unfortunate audience. His territory was primed for him to move right in. Where Misc has set up shop there is much more free thinking and he already has sooooo many heavy-hitter critics and so much press against him that he will never be able to achieve the levels of BL. He’s a mini me in more ways than one.
I think the photo is appropriate to the content. It may be shocking but so is what the CoS does behind the scenes. It is every bit as corrupt and radical as other fundamentalists in other radical religions.
When the path of the radical CoS is examined over a period of time there is a disturbing trend. The antisocial and downright criminal traits and actions are nothing new but more of their followers are supportive of these actions and justify them to themselves and others. This clearly shows movement in the ethical decline and acceptability of antisocial and criminal actions within a larger sphere of the group. What level of criminality will be acceptable to them tomorrow?
Jihadism didn’t just develop overnight, it evolved into what is today over generations. It is a good analogy of what can happen if fundamentalism is left alone to stew in its radicalism.
Kevin, Osama was a fundamentalist and he destroyed thousands of lives. He was more willing to commit terrorist acts against a large number of human beings. But really it their basic make up there is no difference. If you kill 3000 people based on fundamentalists rational, or if you destroy people one by one with black Dianetics, sleep deprivation torture and insane treatment is just a question of the scale of the activity not one on principle.
Boy Scouts and Hitler are quite different. But the Taliban, North Korean Communists, Al Qaeda and the COS are operating indeed on the some fundamentalist principles. I wonder if the actions of the COS would not be a lot more criminal in nature if they would not exist in a law abiding society but operating like the Taliban in a basically law free environment.
It is surely provocative to open a discussion about the fundamentalist CO$ with a picture of their brother in spirit, Osama. But I do not think it as far off as you say.
+1!
CoS ain’t the Boy Scouts.
Non-issue.
I like the Osama Bin Laden photo. It’s not far off. The enormity of the betrayal and the evil and deviousness warrents such a comparison.
Thanks for a great article.
No reasoning, dialogue or agreement to disagree seems possible with such a person. But you must be winning. The, uh, squirrels are screaming, or whatever it is they do. In any case, they are riddled and rotten with hatred, and that programming runs so much deeper than mere membership. They have become victims and perpetrators in an abusive game. Sunshine disinfects – I very much look forward to an eventful 2014.
At least from this angle I can understand the anger and hatred that I’m met with when I question outpoints.
Even if it were true that there were 12 million members and 11 thousand groups – I wouldn’t want to be part of such a vindictive and hateful group, and their bridge in its present state obviously does not make them nice people to be with. Not saying it couldn’t, just that right now it apparently doesn’t.
Part of this is the creation, using various means, of a group that needs to be told what to do. An army that has no purpose will waste away. So if you have a group that is following you, you must keep that group busy fighting an enemy. If there are none then they must be created or the group will go away and find another game in life. If a group member has the time (no enemy) to raise his/her head and look about then the general or dictator or political party or . . . is in danger. Now if you’re a sociopath that looking about cannot be allowed to happen and so you see what is being created inside the CoS.
David Lingenfelter
Wow. Impressive, keep up the good work Mike!
Dear Mike,
So you post e mails from the Dark Side. That’s not too shabby,Shows integrity.
I posted ( bulletin board) a ;polaroid picture sent to me at a place where I worked called “The Combat Zone’ It was a Huge dead Rat in a toilet with “Your Next” written on the bottom.
My regret is that I did not keep it for my scrapbook .
While Miscavage may well have dictated that email I believe most former RCSers can think of at least one candidate as author. We all know at least one such radical scientologist who would be only to happy send such a miserable communication.
Probably someone desperately trying to get out of liability and believing they have just delivered an effective blow.
I would say that most of the people in the lower organizational levels do not know they are lying. They are lying but they believe the things they are saying, so they think they are telling the truth. In some ways this might be worse than lying.
Yes… nice people telling what they think is the truth and just perpetuating a lie. That’s worse than straight out lies. They are shills for the organization.
But unconscious shills.
The lying starts right away and only gets worse. I was lying before I even finished the comm course. At least at that point I was just blindly repeating the lies I had been told.
I lied whenI joined staff and started selling books, many of them I had not read myself. I passed on lies about pricing, and ep’s later as an FSM. By the time DM took over and every step on the bridge had become painful and impossible, I found myself unwilling to bring new people in based on what was happening with me and many friends I just didn’t feel right putting someone new through it all. Justifying that only an already in Scientologist would be willing or able to weather or understand the current travails.
As things continued to get worse instead of better I had to eventually ask myself why I was putting myself through troubles I wouldn’t wish on a perfect stranger. What a mess.
Dave and GP – good point and God, this is a tough one.
I don’t believe staff members start out intending to lie or even believing they’ll have to. Who would. But life becomes desperate and the lies become “necessary” to the person telling them. Like the unemployed man being asked, ” You’ve driven big rigs within the last three years, right?” Out of work for eight months, he thinks about the question for about 1.2 seconds and then nods his head, “Sure I have.”
The fact that staff members are placed in a position where they “have to lie” is all rather sick and sad.
In this game I think we all get that first lie – a mulligan, if you will. Our hard work, our perseverance and willingness to be there, gets us that one lie. After that – it’s on us.
What’s really hard to fathom is that a benevolent Organization would put its members into a position where lies and deceit become stock in trade. That’s the mind-fuck of what the RCS has become. It’s like a Life Guard rowing out to a drowning man and throwing a 25-lb weight to him, instead of a life preserver. It’s just hard to get your head wrapped around the concept. “Why would they do that?”
Odd
Dave Fagen
Lying while you think you are telling the truth, isn’t that “delusional?”
Mike,
This is an awesome post. I have personal experience with everything you are saying here. I realized one day that I was lying for a living. I was recruiting new staff and it just hit me one day that in order to convince people to join, I was having to tell them more lies than truth about what it was actually like to be on staff. I was telling so many “acceptable truths” that the real truth was totally obscured. The whole Ideal Org strategy was clearly a lie. None of the orgs were expanding. None of them were filling up at all. In fact, they were just being run to make money for the IAS. This was the beginning of the end for me.
To anyone reading this, just stop and look at how many “acceptable truths” or “shore stories” you have to tell on a daily basis in Scientology. About the organization, about what you do in it, about the endless demands for money, about how you actually feel about your wins and case gains, all of it. What do you tell your friends and family about Scientology? Is that what you really think? What would happen if you did say what you really think?
totally agree with you GP.
I do believe with respect to “About the organization, about what you do in it, about the endless demands for money, about how you actually feel about your wins and case gains, all of it,” etc, that they are so BRAINWASHED to believe that their ‘acceptable truths’ are the GREATEST GOOD, that they cannot even see past it.
As my wife said a few days (another posting) it’s a repetitive process to come up to the point of REALLY SEEING what’s going on.
“For if you and your new group are not suppressives, then who is?”
I can give you the answer “Mr or Mrs anonymous email” ……..and the answer issssss
YOU AND ALL THE OTHERS, WHO HELP YOUR LEADER DAVID TO DESTROY THE WORK OF LRH
Now, go back in your BUBBLE…….an be ready to receive your GAT II. And don’t Forget to lock up your mouth, and trow away the key…..because people who speak free…… are not welcome in the church
100% spot-on. I have had to deal with sociopaths and their lying on only three occasions in my life. With all three, and what was undeniable in each but also so difficult for me to confront (initially), was how easy it was for them to out-right lie…not little white-lies that everyone does form time to time, but out-right blatant lies. For them, there seems to be no consideration at all that they will be caught in the lie…no concern for conscience…no concern for truth. It is just lying for some deeper purpose: ser-fac, in an implant, “only we can save the world,” what-have-you. This phenomena is the essence of those in. An automaticity sets in that takes over observation and truth.
I have since decided that sociopathic liars are just a different breed of humans…a type that we simply cannot relate to. It is a bit like animals at a watering hole. Sure they are all animals, but the breeds/types are very very different.