Scientology’s published objective for Clearwater
Another recent story from Tracey McManus, Scientology’s David Miscavige discusses ‘partnership’ with Clearwater recounts a recent meeting between Miscavige, the Mayor Frank Hibbard, the new City Attorney David Margolis and new City Manager Jon Jennings. It was typical Miscavige, all smiles, handshakes and positivity to try to persuade the new guys in town that he is a nice guy. Just wait until he doesn’t get what he wants.
Stefani Hutchinson covered the reporting on her excellent blog: Miscavige’s Fresh Start: Not New, Not True
For someone who has never been a scientologist, Stefani has a remarkable grasp of both the policies and mindset of scientology.
But I also want to highlight a comment put on my blog by someone who IS a very experienced former scientologist: Mockingbird. This comment deserves far more notice, so I am including it here. Especially the policy quotes. These should be read by the City Officials, as these dictate what Miscavige will DO. Not what he SAYS. He gave the same pitch back in 2017. As soon as he didn’t get what he wanted, he threw a hissy fit and stopped talking to the City. Then he proceeded to take action to “put them into a more amenable frame of mind” (another Hubbard dictate) by buying up huge tracts of property. Now he is back with the schmooze approach. It will last as long as he thinks he is getting what he wants
Here is Mockingbird’s quote in full:
Whenever David Miscavige or any representative of Scientology is presenting information if possible the event should be recorded on video and with full audio if possible.
The person should be asked if they accept and support Scientology doctrine and simply asked about a few bits of Scientology doctrine. It can be different doctrine at different times.
Here are a few as examples.
“In the face of danger from Govts or courts there are only two errors one can make: (a) do nothing and (b) defend. The right things to do with any threat are to (1) Find out if we want to play the offered game or not, (2) If not, to derail the offered game with a feint or attack upon the most vulnerable point. which can be disclosed in the enemy ranks, (3) Make enough threat or clamor to cause the enemy to quail, (4) Don’t try to get any money out of it, (5) Make every attack by us also sell Scientology and (6) Win. If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace. Peace is bought with an exchange of advantage, so make the advantage and then settle. Don’t ever defend. Always attack. Don’t ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy’s front ranks work best”
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 15 AUGUST 1960 DEPT OF GOVT AFFAIRS Ron Hubbard
Here Hubbard specifically said if attacked to find or manufacture evidence and don’t ever do nothing. Very specific and leaving no room for discretion or respecting legitimate authorities.
“The goal of the Department is to bring the government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. This is done by high level ability to control and in its absence by low level ability to overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control such agencies. Scientology is the only game on Earth where everybody wins. There is no overt in bringing good order.”
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 15 AUGUST 1960 DEPT OF GOVT AFFAIRS Ron Hubbard
Here Hubbard made it clear he wanted philosophies or societies to be in complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. And notably he stated there is no overt in bringing good order. In the context of his other statements in the first entry in this series it is clear anything is allowed to be done to anyone Scientology decrees low tones or suppressive persons, meaning anyone unwilling to comply with Scientology’s authority. Anything including lying to or about them or murder.
“You want to know what happens when you clear everybody in that neighborhood, the only thing that [Scientology] center can become used for is a political center. Because by the time you’ve done all this, you are the government…” — Ron Hubbard. Taped Lecture – 9 January 1962: Future Org Trends.
Hubbard’s goals, Scientology’s ultimate goals, were totalitarian. He wanted his creation to take over the entire world and replace all governments.
“Once the world is Clear – a nation, a state, a city or a village – the Scientology-organization in the area becomes its government! And once this has taken place the only policy accepted as valid is Scientology policy.” — Ron Hubbard. Taped Lecture – 9 January 1962: Future Org Trends.
He here makes it perfectly clear that all laws of any kind, including any on human rights, are subordinate to Scientology policy – his policy, his ideas.
Jennings was put there by developers. Miscavige has convinced developers they can start making money again if they let him call the shots. All they care about is money. They are ignorant of and indifferent to the vast, disturbing history of Scientology. They’re also fantasizing if they think they can make a deal with Scientology that doesn’t blow up in their faces. A Clearwater dominated by Stepford Wives and Husbands will always be a pariah and object of scorn.
Jennings also doesn’t care. He just cares about his reputation of being a fixer for sale to the highest bidder, and the fix is in. Nice choice there, Clearwater leaders. Perhaps the biggest remaining impediment is that Miscavige will never appear before a public body. Any appearance would have to be tightly controlled and scripted. Maybe Jennings thinks he’s going to put the fix in on that too.
About three yrs ago I was hanging out with a woman on 7. Somehow we got on the subject of ‘why don’t the ppl of Clearwater like us (sci)? I was on my way ‘out’ but didn’t really realize it then until I said ‘you stole their city! Everything is set up! Utilities, police dept, all govt offices. You didn’t have to do anything. Just buy anything for sale then approach the other businesses and offer exorbitant prices for their bldgs and then no one would be downtown but sci.’ Yes, they stole that city. I told her sci should have bought a huge property and started their own town. Why disrupt someone else’s that had taken years to build up? Go get your own and do whatever you want to it?
I was working with an ‘8’. He used to do real estate but wanted to retire but was made to ‘buy’ one of the downtown addresses for the ‘church’ and so he still has to do real estate even when he didn’t want to.
Anyway, after the ‘7’ encounter and me speaking my mind, needless to say I quit getting 25lbs of sci mail weekly immediately so I guess I was declared (heeheehee). I reckon I speeded up the process. What a f’ing relief. Got to the mid ot levels and suddenly I woke up.
It really started tho when I got an email telling me to call osa so I called and pat told me to not vote for someone but at first wouldn’t tell me who but i said i wouldn’t know if she didn’t tell me. it was mark bunker. i looked him up (i didn’t know i wasn’t supposed to!) and then everything became apparent… i was in a violent cult really. so happy it all happened. learned my lesson. no more cults in future lives…
evolving, your description of an old real estate professional roped into being part of the property buying, is fascinating. If people like that have really been left holding the bag owning those buildings sitting vacant, I don’t think they’re going to want to put up with it for too much longer, and I doubt DM really has a viable plan (witness all the buildings purchased long ago for “ideal” projects still sitting vacant and incurring expenses).
And your point about how Scientology is what I would call a parasite, is a good one. They claim to be the ones who should run the world, and yet do miserably at a lot of basic things (like construction project management), while relying on the “wog” world for all those sorts of things you mention and more, plus now they have to increasingly hire out professional services like legal work as their internal capabilities dwindle.
Glad to hear you got out.
Miscavage really really really wants that 1.4 acre property. Enough that he’d be willing to trade several other properties + cash to get it. Why? What is it about that lot that he so desperately wants?
Like a little child, he doesn’t doesn’t have a plan for it, but wants it. The more he’s told NO, the worse he wants it, just to have it. Petulant little twerp.
It’s right by the Fort Harrison. He can’t stand not to be in control of it.
All that “religion” preaches sounds much like the Orwell book 1984. Hauntingly like it.
Another science fiction work.
“1984” was NOT intended to be a guidebook, Davey.
Davey boy isn’t the only one to use 1984 as a guidebook. LRH did too.
I want to thank Mike Rinder, for letting me post my comment and for sharing it in his post.
To be frank, OSA and to a certain degree some independent Scientologists use every tactic imaginable to deplatform critics of Scientology and try to get us kicked off Twitter, Facebook, out of Facebook groups, out of ex Scientologists’ groups and use a relentless and utterly unethical campaign of lies and underhanded tactics to create and magnify discord, so merely being allowed to post criticism of Scientology on any platform without being subject to efforts at cutting my communication is difficult.
I have to say that if you hear rumors that are negative about a critic of Scientology I would recommend that you be very, very, very cautious about believing or forwarding them.
I am not saying that critics are perfect people or noble heroes and you should trust us blindly, I would prefer if you used your own best judgement to evaluate each of our claims independent of the claimant, look at the evidence for and against it that you can confirm for yourself and when in doubt, “I don’t know” is the default answer.
This brings me to my choice for this post meaning the quotes from Scientology doctrine itself. We don’t have to turn every rock to find evidence that Scientology encourages and even requires dishonest, exploitative, abusive and criminal behavior. The doctrine is jam packed with it if you merely look.
Mike Rinder and Jon Atack have both published many quotes from Scientology and Ronald Hubbard that support this claim, each has probably presented hundreds by now.
I know a few people who have compiled binders full of references to take to court for just this purpose and the problem is not finding the material. The problem is the amount of material is overwhelming and much of the content is so extreme, so bold, so audacious, that people simply disregard it as unbelievable.
But the material and the true history of Scientology as an organization and the true history of Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard and current leader David Miscavige fit together to show the outrageous doctrine is the policy in many cases followed by Hubbard, David Miscavige, and the organization.
If we keep presenting the doctrine in manageable bits along with evidence of the very real conduct, together they can be a useful tool.
I want to mention that the policies that I presented were excerpts from a series that I wrote entitled Why Lying and Murder are Justified in Scientology and hope the full series is useful as well.
http://mbnest.blogspot.com/2017/09/why-lying-and-murder-are-justified-in.html?m=1
scientology makes SUCH a big thing about 1st Amendment rights UNTIL it concerns allowing OTHERS to say their piece. Then it’s apostasy or bigotry or hate speech, or whatever it takes to quash any else’s views on the subject.
Thank you.
This is a great example of the exact thing I was referring to.
Scientologists are buried in double think and may default to the odd habit of doing the cruel and even criminal acts that Scientology doctrine requires while defaulting to thinking of the redefined terms and opposite policies that Hubbard provided such as The Way to Happiness.
This is the perfect entry point for examining Scientology. The doctrine requires human rights violations and exploitation, deception, fraud, abuse and outright crimes and the propaganda claims to value human rights.
Ultimately the actions and orders from David Miscavige, Ronald Hubbard, and the Scientology organizations are the clincher.
You are definitely on the right track.
The officials probably don’t care about the cult’s crimes so long as they hide them well enough they can pretend they don’t know.
I recently started watching The Aftermath on Netflix. I live in Florida and work in Clearwater. Is there anything we can do to try to stop this? Protest?
THIS is as effective as it gets: getting the word out of their TRUE actions and intentions. Already, any “new meat” looking up the subject will first see these scientology-watch sites since they’re more interesting and thus more popular.
As I see it, scientology is their own worst enemy, hopelessly befuddled by the information age and doomed by inviolable, inflexible policies which were only moderately effective in the ’50s. Even then, the policies were wrong-headed and arbitrary, usually going after wrong targets and projecting hate-mongering on those of us who are more interested in scientologists’ long-term prosperity and good health than the Tiny Twit™ in charge of them is.
Ask Mike directly. He has posted many things which are far more useful than telling other people, although that’s good too!
He’ll reply with the links so you (and all of us) can make a difference and take this disgusting cult down… eventually.
Support Aaron Smith-LEvi n’s campaign would be the most e3ffective thing you can do.
I was at work when I posted my other comment.
Mike’s very busy. Search this site for the ways to fight $cientology. Still at work or else I’d post them for you.
You know, that CLEARwater connection was observed 46 years ago years ago as we snuck in under the cover of night. I dare say that it was part of the computation that chose the Fort Harrison in a port city where the Apollo could never have landed. Rotten town to beach the SEA ORG, TBH.
Thanks Mike for the excellent post as it draws fine line between religion and Cults.
Religion allows one to be on sliding scale from liberal to moderate to conservative, where as Cults are about , In or Out , nothing in between, rigidity.
Religion evolves with the passage of time ,as it address the need of particular era, cultural and laws.
Whereas Cult stucks in its inception era, like 50’s and 60’s ( Cold War era, ideal for cults ,supportered by BIG Brothers as long as maintains anti Socialist stance).
Religion is free like free air , where as Cults are always looking for donors, their survival depend on few , due to lack of mass appeal.
For Cults even negative
publicity ,better then no publicity
Excellent quotes here. Scientology is an extremist group. A hate group. They are anti human rights.
These quotes here alone is reason enough to revoke it’s religious exemptions and reclassify them as a dangerous cult, as has been done in other countries like France and Germany.
Human Rights!? for those WOGs?? Hubbard/scn was anti-HUMAN.
He wasn’t even subtle about it. MEST doesn’t deserve any rights.
Aaron Smith-Levin laid it on the line with the Downtown Development Board earlier this week. Three of those DDB members have some sxplaining to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T-hh5lhbMI
It’s truly heartwarming to read your articulation of Hubbard’s covert goals for all of us living on planet Earth; namely, installing a New World Order of totalitarian scientology. One cult to rule them all.
How the IRS and its alphabet soup federal broth can’t taste the arsenic in their own pot seems unfathomable.
Every patriot living in any democratic nation must see Miscavige’s cult as nothing short of a sworn enemy to its very existence.
As for Hubbard’s take on theoretical warfare, lucky for us he was a dummy on his reading of Clausewitz. Think of OSA tech as a kind of gruel consisting of middle school gangster and terrible two’s ideology.
Scientology is chicken soup for the sociopath. Yuck.
In reading the quotes of policy here it struck me that LRH and Dave Miscavige both had Delusions of Grandeur. This is a trait of a narcissist at best and a mentally ill person at worst. And then per Martha Stout’s book, “The Sociopath Next Door” there can be more traits of the sociopath as many sociopaths are also narcissists. Good job Mike and Mockingbird!
PS to my comment above. I forgot to mention Megalomania as another mental condition LRH had that Davey seems to have picked up along the way also.
Thank you.
Like you and Mike Rinder I also read The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout and highly recommend it for examining the character and behavior of Ronald Hubbard.
I found her perspective helpful in many ways and she highlighted that sociopaths often are not physically violent but instead merely do not care about the suffering they cause others.
She also described how sociopaths see life as a game and it is the philosophy that Hubbard presented that life is a game and I have known many people who rejected that philosophy, often highly caring and compassionate people.
I didn’t understand the conflict when I was in Scientology.
But after leaving Scientology and reading Stout’s book I think I see the difference.
To the sociopath any tactic is fair, if done by themselves but anything they don’t like done by anyone else is wrong.
But other people don’t see life as a game because it has an element that a game does not – the sacred.
The sacred can be values that a person has or people that a person loves, the sacred can be religious or philosophical principles that a person believes are above everything else.
The sacred is not like rules in a made up game, it’s more important and meaningful.
To some people protecting children is sacred, or their partner and children, to some an oath to a group or government is sacred. To each person who holds something sacred it is not a game.
We can have different things be sacred or very similar ones but to a human predator like Hubbard nothing was sacred and that was what he had rather than a moral core, a moral compass of any kind.
It is apparent when people say “I could never…” Or “I would never let you…” and they are talking about things with no regard for financial rewards or costs.
Some of us would sell a car or book, even a cherished one, for millions of dollars but never sell our children or partner.
Some of us would work, even doing unpleasant and hard work, for enough money to support our families but would never work in the sex trade or other fields we consider harmful, even if it was legally allowed, for any amount of money.
The fact that we consider some things sacred puts us outside the mindset of the human predator and Stout described this extremely well.
Respectfully, Mockingbird – and when I say, “respectfully” I am not being facetious or falsely polite because I do mean “respectfully” in every sense of the word in that I admire you and learn from your posts – yet, I must take exception to what you depict as the “sacred” in our lives, i.e., what many of us consider sacred, lines we would never cross, things we would never do, etc.
I don’t believe most people including me know, really know, what they would be capable of doing under the right circumstances.
Its very easy for me or anyone to say, “Oh, I would NEVER…(whatever)”.
We ALL say, “I would never do (this)…Oh, I would NEVER do (that)…I could NEVER…etc. etc.
Really? Well, talk is cheap. Which doesn’t mean that we’re not sincere. Of course, we mean what we’re saying. We believe that we would never __________________or ______________.
But then, its amazing what people can do, or will do, when they’re really, really up against it.
And that goes for acts of extreme heroism as well as of extreme cruelty or cowardice. That goes for flagrantly breaking the law.
The thing is, most of us never really get tested- REALLY tested! – and so we don’t know our true capabilities, whether for good or evil.
And so we can sit comfortably back and say, “Oh, THAT? Never! That’s a line I’d NEVER cross!”
There are Sea Org members who without permission from the Scientology public have charged up credit cards in the 10s and (in the case of someone I know) hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Are they born criminals, these Sea Org members?
Doubtful. Possibly they were just desperate, utterly desperate, for a night’s sleep.
A good night’s sleep. Exhausted, stressed, worried and very fearful, and so they committed deliberate credit card fraud across state lines which if they weren’t a religion would have the FBI hunting them down to be arrested and thrown in jail.
I could go on with illustrations and examples both in Scientology and elsewhere but I’m not going to because I’m sure you get my sole point, i.e., almost none of us know what we are capable of doing under the “right” circumstances.
I am glad you responded.
You bring up several important issues.
What we consider sacred is not something that is a universal truth.
In other words you may believe that you might never do something but in fact could under some circumstances. The important thing about the sacred is that you associate it with being more important than an arbitrary element in a game, not that you have infallible awareness of your own character or the future.
I have found that often people believe they would never do something or fail to do something under some circumstances and when they actually do occur the person doesn’t do anything remotely like what they think they would.
The important thing about the sacred is that it matters a lot to us. It is not a perfect prediction or behavior. That is impossible.
If you are aware that you value something and would be deeply disturbed if it happened that is an indicator of what is sacred to you.
The sacred is more about what matters to you, not what you actually do.
And Scientology is notorious for getting people to violate their own values and boundaries, things which should be sacred but unfortunately cults get people to set aside these personal values and submit to the authority of the cult leader or founder or even doctrine and to conform to group norms.
Cult expert Professor Margaret Singer interviewed over four thousand ex cult members and notably said in an interview that a cult is a group that tries to completely or almost completely totally control your decision making.
So, as part of converting a person to a deployable agent and asserting authority a cult has to get a person to replace their own volition with extreme submission to the authority and their own independent judgement with dependence on the authority and group to decide for them.
Margaret Singer described this in an interview and I highly recommend her book Cults In Our Midst and the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton which describe this quite well.
The point about the sacred is not that they are absolutely accurate predictions of behavior, such things don’t exist to my knowledge, but that they are usually a core part of our identity and to varying degrees we can be persuaded to abandon them due to social pressures or conflicting values and desires, but we can and probably should have them.
I think they help a lot of people, maybe most people, to have relationships with others and some degree of identity and integrity.
If anyone is interested in the research on this topic psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written several good books on the topic and his book Righteous Mind is an excellent book to start with.
To briefly describe his work, he has done a lot of research on the values that different people start with and how these are expressed in their political views, George Layoff likewise has described this in his own work in books like Don’t Think of an Elephant!
But back to my overall point, most people have some things that are sacred to them, and this varies but people like Ronald Hubbard do not have these values. Being honest, kind, compassionate, merciful, decent, and on and on play no part in the thinking of a person like Hubbard except to say that he saw everything he did as justified and anything done against him as wrong with no coherent philosophy.
As Jon Atack has remarked several times, human predators like Ronald Hubbard do not know how to love, part of love is the sacred status of people besides oneself, which Hubbard never appreciated.
And part of love is accepting that we ourselves have done the wrong thing and hurt other people who didn’t deserve it some of the time, which Hubbard never seems to have done.
It is hard to love when you can’t appreciate what other people feel.
“The sacred is more about what matters to you, not what you actually do.”
I GET it now!
Why, this concept in one form or another constitutes the general core issue of practically every serious book, play or movie script ever written!
I now understand and agree, totally. Thank you for taking the time and effort to explain it to me so well, Mockingbird.
I should point out that I can’t take credit for this. In reading about human predators and recovery I have run into these concepts from others.
I don’t know who came up with the idea of the sacred.
In reading about it I saw how Hubbard and other human predators describe life as a game with no rules and display willingness to lie, cheat, destroy, bend and manipulate rules while disregarding the rules in their own conduct.
I also saw how most people hold some things as sacred and often strive to be faithful to what their values are, even if they fail to some degree.
The combination of these ideas and the idea of the sacred being important to most people but just a front for human predators was the thing that tied all these things together.
Human predators are often aware that other people have values and hold things sacred, but feel they are superior for not having what they see as sentimental or foolish ties to others.
Sometimes they see their own selfish and abusive behavior as enlightened and the smart way to be.
I want to point out something regarding the sacred and how it is influenced in a cult. Here is an abridged description of the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton.
“Dr. Robert J. Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform
Milieu Control.
This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
Mystical Manipulation.
There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
Demand for Purity.
The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
Confession.
Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members’ “sins,” “attitudes,” and “faults” are discussed and exploited by the leaders.
Sacred Science.
The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Loading the Language.
The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members’ thought processes to conform to the group’s way of thinking.
Doctrine over person.
Member’s personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.
Dispensing of existence.
The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group’s ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also.” (Lifton, 1989)
Notably The Sacred Science and Doctrine Over Person are worth focusing on regarding the sacred and the fact that a totalist group tries to exert such extreme control that the group redefines the sacred for the individual members.
Mockingbird, so basically what you’re saying is that a cult SUBSTITUTES that which a person holds sacred with what the cult holds “sacred”. In Hubbardese one could phrase it as a substitution of one’s own PERSONAL ethics with the “ethics” – or more correctly MORALS (always do this, never do that) of the cult. When a conflict between the former and the latter arises, one’s own very personal ethics (sense of what is sacred) is subjugated to what the cult defines as sacred, or as you’ve phrased it, “the group redefines the sacred for the individual members”.
And that is how parents leave their children, and children disconnect from their parents and other loved ones, and how Sea Org members can justify perpetrating credit card fraud on trusting Scientology public and regges can take every dime from some hapless Scientology senior citizen; how Class V org staff can work 80 hours a week and receive $20 pay, or no pay, how Scientology parents can and do dump their teenaged kids in the Sea Org, and…OMG – and, and and and and on down the list of crimes perpetrated by Scientologists on other Scientologists in the name of clearing the planet. The reason, reduced to its utter simplicity, the ONLY basic reason is because WHATEVER the cult needs and wants AT ANY GIVEN TIME is not only sacred to the cult, but sacred TO THEM.
Whatever the cult needs or wants is what -appearances however to the contrary – THEY actually need and/or want.
There is no ESSENTIAL difference between the group member and the group when the group is a cult.
Wow.
This actually answers a question I’ve been asking for a long time. And now I finally get it.
In every fundamental way that effects the way one operates in life, when the group is a cult, the individual IS the group and the group IS the individual.
Wow again, and thank you again.
I have to say that the difference between a cult and a non cultic group is the presence or absence of the eight criteria in the relationship.
The cult is set on asserting a very high degree of control over the emotions, beliefs and behavior of the person.
Hubbard recognized that the Affinity (emotions), Reality (redefined in Scientology as agreement, not truth, to represent agreement between a person and themselves, meaning beliefs) and Communication (behavior) of a person can all be used to influence each other and to control a person.
A non cultic group is not totalistic and not trying to control your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behavior to such an extreme degree.
Part of the beliefs and emotions that a person has , as expressed through their behavior is what is sacred to that person.
Most groups do not try to alter what is sacred for you. Most employers don’t try to change, for example, your familial relationships, your religious beliefs and practices, your political affiliation and so on. We could also describe religious groups that do not tell you how to handle your familial relationships and your employment and finances.
Many religious groups very rarely expel members and notably do not enforce shunning of people who leave the group.
Many Jewish and Christian groups do not require that current members shun ex members.
I advise that anyone who wants to explore how cults sabotage the autonomy of members examine the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton, and the books Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein and Traumatic Narcissism by Daniel Shaw describe the relationship between the cult leader and the cult member in extreme detail and with information that many people do not include.
Each of the eight criteria is relevant, for example the demand for purity is spot on.
I also should point out that the BITE model by Steve Hassan gives quite a bit of information on this as well.
Love this comment💖
Clearwater the first city of scn in the world.
And how do they get it? Buying it piece by piece? With force and arrogance?
But actually what do the people who live there think about this partnership?
In this today post scn shows us his true aspect, the totalitarian fascist one.
The mayor and the other gentlmen should wake up.
DM’s taking to the field after years of silence and with this timing also means that Aaron Smith-Levin inspires fear.
“And how do they get it? Buying it piece by piece? With force and arrogance?”
Both.
Dwarfenführer® would prefer not to buy, as that could lessen the flow of funds into the coffers he controls, but Force and arrogance hasn’t been too effective as yet and it takes a lot of effort on his part, energy and attention he could use elsewhere, once he shrugs off that everlasting hangover.
Right. His ego is screaming that he wants to announce it in some future event.
Instead probably the biggest news would be about a farmer lost somewhere in east EU that using the tech has almost doubled his chickens (and related stat in howling affluence).
One can hope that Aaron Smith-Levin becomes the William Law of Clearwater and Scientology. For those of you unfamiliar with William Law he was the editor and proprietor of an anti-mormon newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor. He was only able to publish one edition because Joseph Smith immediately had his goons go into the establishment and trash it after which Law fled for his life. Soon after that, Joseph Smith was shot to death in a jail cell and the Mormons were forced out of Illinois.
I didn’t knew it. This could be the fate waiting scn behind the next corner.
One can only hope!
It shouldn’t have even come to a ‘partnership’ since it was already a stand alone city. He’s moved himself, dm, into a position as if he has a right to say ‘let’s partnership’. BS.
A law is made when there’s a problem. There needs to be a new law made that a city cannot be stolen from it’s rightful population. Has there ever been a situation like this in history? Please comment. I get mad about this when I think of them running off with Clearwater.
There’s no ‘Life’ in downtown. Didn’t ron say something about ‘look at the environment and you see the condition of the ppl living in it?’ something like that. i never could quote him well. sorry
LMR, to be fair I think pols expected the CofS would mature and mellow like most such groups do. But we’re now at a point, where DM has been leader as long as Hubbard was, that it should be abundantly clear that Scientology can’t be expected to do anything different, than the same things it always has.
I also think the nature of the policies — “scripture” even — that drive their practices haven’t been laid out as clearly for them as MB does here. So far as I know, now one has for example ever put together something like a professional background briefing document for public officials, laying out these policies and how they drive Scientology’s behavior.
But looking at things now, they should be able to understand that Scientology has behaviors and strategies that are unchanging.
It’s ALL beginning to make sense now…….”GOING CLEAR IN CLEARWATER”………………..
Had friends who lived there a good while ago…..they opted out when “the dark side” started growing in populus & buying up everything they could. They felt like outsiders in a town where they were both born & raised…….”they” were pushy & obnoxious…………seeminlgy got their way in everything while the “local village idiots” on the supervisors/township boards let it all happen.
There is also a Flag Order titled “Rules and Regulations, Obedience to” which mandates that Scientologists abide by and follow all laws in the countries it is operating in. It also explains that doing so is the simplest way to stay safe from government attacks. It says seeking complicated and dishonest ways to circumvent the law only opens the org and members to risk of punishment. A friend tells me they’ve seen many violations of this policy.
It’s useful to keep in mind the context in which Hubbard wrote his policies; namely, to whom.
All the toddler warfare strategies (attack attack attack) were on GO/OSA lines, making them covert policies.
That Flag order was conspicuous in the breech. Anything he thought he could get away with was okay. Get caught and cause a flap, and you were in the bilges.
Glenn, I’d like to see that order. I bet it’s full of weasel-wording and “acceptable truths” that actually provide Scientology operatives like GO/OSA plenty of room for end-justifies-the-means style tactics and strategies including flaunting “wog” laws, while directing the rank and file to keep up an appearance of being law abiding.
Peacemaker,
I studied that Flag Order many times and it is VERY clear. Follow the law and avoid all the problems you’ll have if you don’t.
It was very clear and there was no “wiggle room” in it whatsoever.
I tried for years to get it applied (there were a lot of violations going on there) but I had no success. I gave up and routed out.
And get this! 20 years later I was back there as public and I spoke to many staff and the same illegal acts were being committed.
The US govt needs to find the guts to rigorously investigate and prosecute. But I ain’t holding my breath for that. They’ve not done anything even after I submitted detailed reports.
You know, the National Socialists believed they were the good guys too.
So did the Sith in the ‘Star Wars ‘ franchise.
“ONCE MORE THE SITH WILL RULE THE GALAXY! And we will have peace.”
Emperor Sheev Palpatine.
Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge Of The Sith.
I’m always amazed that these local gov’t execs don’t read and head policies like this by Hubbard. Just shows how criminal most are. As long as they keep their lucrative gov jobs they don’t care.
Right. Like, if Neville Chamberlain had sat down and read ‘Mein Kampf’, he would have known what Hitler was really up to.
Unfortunately he had read the book.
And the dumbass still believed that Hitler was a nice man who could be persuaded not to harm anyone.
I think its more that in general people don’t read that much any more.
Probably true Aqua. In the USA at least most people <50 have no higher than a 5th grade education and are incapable of comprehending most of what they read…
Yes, it would appear that we have become a remarkably dumb, semi-literate, and highly suggestible country in the past 15 years or so.
Or perhaps that the USA ever had a preponderance of literate, analytically inclined people is the apparancy.
Possibly the USA has always been collectively dumb, and until recent times our majority stupidity and backwardness was effectively hidden.
One fact is beyond dispute: We in the USA today are overall, demonstrably and embarrassingly dumb, and getting dumber.
No, at one point the USA had the highest average level of education of any country on the planet. Which is why it became the most productive, wealthiest and most inventive country in the world The dismantling of the edu system started in 1975. Via Fed law.
Real, Americans today are better educated than ever. In 1975 barely over half had completed college and now it’s around 80%:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
In the same period of time college completion rates have gone from around 10% to about 25%.
The main reason other countries have surpassed us, is state-level and ideological resistance to measures like national standards, that are being used successfully by those now outperforming us. State education authorities are wrapped up in things like arguments over evolution (still) while we’re being beaten by countries with a national focus on things like STEM.
Much of that undercutting of education is driven by religious interests that continue to hold an almost, well, cult-like sway. They would rather have kids taught in ways that harmonize with “old fashioned” religion than prepare them for the 21st century global economy.
Aqua, I think it’s that moving into the 21st century, has exposed the ugly underbelly that was always there.
In an odd way I would say that we are probably getting smarter overall, but that our collective behavior as a society is currently in decline, I think because retrograde zealots have found ways to dominate it disproportionately.