This is a blog post by one of our regular posters, Mike Westen (MWesten), entitled The War of the Hubbards. He asked me if I would like to share it here. I think it’s a thought-provoking piece, with English spelling and all. You can see the full article at his blog by clicking on the link above. I have excerpted the part that focuses on scientology (he draws analogies to islam in his longer piece — I prefer to just focus on scientology here).
A question for scientologists: what do you actually stand for?
Scientologists are by no means unique when cherry-picking their most favoured scriptures. Practically all religions have scriptural dictates civilisations eventually outgrow. And religions that evolve, reform and modernise arguably remain a valuable addition to the marketplace of ideas, providing comfort and solace in a seemingly chaotic world.
Those that are unable or unwilling to evolve remain largely in the headlines, where the actions of the extreme instill fear, terror and hatred in the minds of the masses.
…
Per “Suppressives and GAEs”, Hubbard claimed to be impervious to criticism.
Per the “Manual of Justice”, he never forgets and always evens the score.
Per KSW, criticism of scientology stems from no results or bad results.
Per “Critics of Scientology”, a critic is a criminal with a sordid, sinister past.
Per “What is Greatness”, the church should respond to critics with nothing but love.
Per “Counter Attack Tactics”, critics must be fired from their jobs and prevented from speaking further.
Per TWTH, the Code of a Scientologist and numerous policy letters, the church should be setting a good example of the efficacy of its product.
Per “Intelligence Principles”, they must create false rumours and lies to smear and discredit those who criticise it.
Per “Kindness”, the only time the church ever really suffers is when it isn’t nice and/or kind enough.
Per “A Manual on the Dissemination of Material”, critics should be ruined utterly.
This is the topsy-turvy world of the cognitively dissonant scientologist.
It is time scientologists confront this dichotomy, once and for all.
It is time for scientologists to take a stand.
Scientologists must own their religion and take responsibility for its future. Failure to do so will arguably be their undoing. Which version of Hubbard reigns supreme is up to the individual. The kind, loving, father figure? Or the cantankerous, vengeful, old shit?
They cannot have it both ways. Ignorance and denial lets the outpoint persist. It is the ultimate not-is.
…
As Hubbard himself said, clearly in a happier, wiser frame of mind, communication is the universal solvent.
It would be lovely to see scientologists screaming this from the rooftops.
I long for the day they actually start to believe it.
I wasn’t in long, but the duplicity was apparent early on. This points it out well, Hubbard contradicted himself often. Well, I happened to bring this up to a Scientologist while I was being brought onto the bridge and I got an answer.
The explanation will be a key-in for any ex-Scientologist. First, the whole chronology of the authored works came up. He wrote these as he researched them. His later works always supercede the earlier works. In other words, besides his words being literal as you read them, you now have to take chronology of research into consideration. It made more sense then, but I still had issues when the ED or DoE would point out specific policy letters for context that would contradict what I had read. I guess they believed policy letters always superceded the basics? It was confusing then as it is now. But somehow Scientologists can make it work by always thinking their citation is the most authoritative. I even had some of them verbally citing LRH when denying my refund, indirectly threatening to declare me through verbal citation of an LRH quote as a way to get me to rescind my request. Crazy, right?!
The choice made by COB? Cantankerous, vengeful, old shit.
In the words of that old knight in The Last Crusade, “He chose… poorly.”
TrevAnon. I have seen it. I really like this girl. Her analysis is perfect. Absolutely well worth watching.
Sea Org Sonnet
Putting all my trust in some fake leader
All too soon I felt the walls close in
Forcing me to change my whole demeanor
Shamed for my imaginary sins
Took some time to get myself untethered
Listening to the same old song and dance
Finally left the mind control forever
Waking up from my hypnotic trance
No more giving in to blind devotion
Following some warped philosophy
No more holding back my true emotion
No more billion years of slavery
Opening my eyes I saw the scam
Don’t need a cult to tell me who I am
Bravo/brava! Writing a sonnet is not easy. I’ve written several. The most memorable occasion was when I wrote one on the ferry heading to see my then-fiancé; just sat down at the table after we embarked and had it completed before the ferry docked on the other side, less than 40 minutes total. He still has it somewhere. We’ve been married over 16 1/2 years now.
NIcely done!
Hubbard was selling Dianetics as a miracle 15 years before it had some kind of “end phenomena” (where the cognition is that the pc has moked up everything). Basically a scam.
But the PC was still reactive so he had to invent the OT levels. And he sold the OT powers before they existed.
The greatest charlatan of the century.
OT
Molly McMullen has a new video up about the decline of Scientology. Well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSR3gdeV5g
TrevAnon. I have seen it. I really like this girl. Her analysis is perfect. Absolutely well worth watching.
Criticisms come from abuse by that criminal cult, incessant targeting of your wallet, disconnection & family break-ups, Fair Gaming anyone Hubbard is displeased with, covered-up rapes and pedophilia, etc. It’s highly doubtful “no results or bad results” even makes the top 10, as there is so much else that is just pure evil about that Mob-like Crime Syndicate.
What other proof is needed to demonstrate the Church of Scientology is a Mafia-like Crime Syndicate ???
Several reasons for not believing L. Ron Hubbard:
1. He lied about his war record, having never seen combat, claiming stolen valor.
2. He made up the story of OT III, forcing his imagination on others by charging high fees.
3. He allowed Sea Org officers to disempower several productive mission holders and confiscate their money.
4. He directed members of the Guardian’s Office to steal thousands of government documents resulting in the biggest infiltration in U.S. history.
5. He falsely claimed to cure psychosis by releasing a procedure known as the Introspection Rundown, based on one experiment, resulting in the death of Lisa McPherson.
6. He hid Scientology’s true identity in setting up the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida.
7. He ran from the law to avoid subpoenas and government tax agents probing allegations that he was skimming church funds.
Criticisms come from abuse by that criminal cult, incessant targeting of your wallet, disconnection & family break-ups, Fair Gaming anyone Hubbard is displeased with, covered-up rapes and pedophilia, etc. It’s highly doubtful “no results or bad results” even make the top 10, as there is so much else that is just pure evil about that Mob-like Crime Syndicate.
What other proof is needed to demonstrate the Church of Scientology is a Mafia-like Crime Syndicate ???
The contradictions of Hubbard’s writings are so obviously laid out in this article. Whether scios will actually respond to this cognitive dissonance is another matter. Personally, I doubt it.
Good article. And don’t forget the famous, “What Is Greatness?” where he says that you should love people even in spite of every reason not to love them. I guess that would include critics of Scn. Just one more proof of his inconsistencies and even speaking one thing publicly and another thing privately; of giving lip service to one thing publicly, and then doing the exact opposite in practice. How hypocritical.
These are not contradictions. As Hubbard explained in (non confidential) PR Series 7, Intelligence is covert. PR is overt (visible.)
Scientology is, essentially, a private intelligence/blackmail gathering, and dirty tricks operation (under the guise of “counseling,” and “religion.”) This part is hidden. This, and the survival of the LRH name-and-“image” forever/fanatic club might be described as its core.
It’s also a money-getting and real estate speculation scam. This part is behind the scenes but not totally secret.
And it has a PR coating that is very visible.
At the outer most region of this PR coating consists of front groups that deny being controlled by Scientology.
1965 Fair Game is covert; 1966 ‘What is Greatness’ is PR.
Two different levels. No contradiction.
“Scientology is, essentially, a private intelligence/blackmail gathering, and dirty tricks operation (under the guise of “counseling,” and “religion.”) This part is hidden. This, and the survival of the LRH name-and-“image” forever/fanatic club might be described as its core.”
Maybe. Yet your assertion denies the perspectives of those at the heart of this argument: parishioners. The significances you assign to the nature of the church contrast with those who actively/passively make it what it is. Their opinions matter.
“1965 Fair Game is covert; 1966 ‘What is Greatness’ is PR. Two different levels. No contradiction.”
Hubbard also said that one should never use lies in PR. If PR conflicts with Intel then yes, this is a contradiction.
To the run-of-the-mill scientologist, “PR” is the religion. It is at the very core of what they have signed up to. The epitome of Hubbard and his scripture. The example of its efficacy. Theta. It is the scientologist’s “American Dream.” And like America, there is no reason why Intelligence and PR shouldn’t complement eachother.
Within the CoS, they do not. They are in opposition. They contradict eachother.
And so it is within the US.
What makes the United States of America? Its government? Its intel community? The military-industrial complex? Or everyday, run of the mill Americans and the ideals they uphold?
“Doublethink is a process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to accept as true that which is clearly false, or to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to one’s own memories or sense of reality.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
The contradictions in Scientology are galore. It’s impossible to sort it out or reject what Hubbard said (openly) when being caught up in the cult bubble. When you mention it, you are told to look for your “Misunderstood Word”. Hubbard is always right, no matter how much he contradicted himself.
The contradictions with the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance* are also acting as a thought-stop.
* “In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; or participates in an action that goes against one of these three, experiences psychological stress because of that. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, they try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#cite_note-:0-1
O/T. Scientologist Rizza Islam: Super Spreader of Covid-19 Misinformation.
Lead story by The Infodemic on Tortoise Media with great supporting graphics:
https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/08/04/rise-of-the-super-spreaders-infodemic/content.html
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Over the course of the month, public Facebook posts linking 5G to coronavirus garnered half a million likes, clicks, comments and shares. Among those joining the trend for scare stories were the alternative medicine doctor, Dr Rashid Buttar, Instagram Scientologist Rizza Islam and Robert F Kennedy Jr. At the time, these four individuals had a combined Facebook following of over 750,000.
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The Daily Dot has picked up the story:
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/robert-kennedy-jr-coronavirus-influencer/
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
Second to Kennedy in spreading misinformation is Rizza Islam, a YouTuber and Scientologist who boasts almost 500,000 followers on Instagram and about 120,000 interactions on his posts. He has spread misinformation about 5G radiation, Gates, and the origins of the coronavirus.
* * * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
Isn’t Rizza Islam supposed to be in jail for fraud? He and his mom were going to court on charges. Whatever happened to that?
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rizza Islam’s and his mother’s Pretrial Conference / Trial Setting Conference was continued to January 12, 2021.
Thanks for the info. I hope the same doesn’t slow down the Danny Donkey Punch Masterson trial.
As regards the issue of beauty queens and other issues including teenage sexual abuse and the history of that subject over the past maybe 50 years, I just saw an excellent documentary film titled, “Audrie & Daisy” (2016). It concerns two very young (maybe 14 years old) high school girls that claim they were sexually abused at a party for high school kids. The aftermath of this incident included many ugly incidents and culminated with the suicide of one of the girls.
“Many ugly incidents” included the house where one of the girls lived was burned down after allegations that one of the boys involved was the son of a famous wealthy and powerful state politician.
I’m recommending this film because it provides an excellent review of many important issues and includes some very important and thoughtful issues that people have never been able to resolve. But we sure do need to resolve them or else the amount of pain and suffering will just continue to grow until …… well, I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
Looking from the outside, I. See two main groups. Public and some staff believe in the kind and loving Hubbard, who brought his perfect tech to us for our betterment and to save the planet. The sea org, on the other hand, spends most of their time in the other gradient, with the vindictive, leader driven by money and revenge and their continuing need to get ethics in and reply to every insult with worse.
Situations can drive individuals and groups temporarily from one pole to the other, but for the most part I think the dichotomy is handled by ignoring the passages they don’t want to remember. The problem is Scientologist don’t have the excuse of other religions that passages were left out, mistranslated by later committees or that meanings were misinterpreted because Hubbard lived in the modern era and everything he said was written or recorded. Hubbard claimed everything, so it is hard to argue with his own words. On the other hand there is evidence that changes have been made in Miscaviage’s era.
Thanks, MWesten for putting it so succinctly yet pointedly.
Will the real scientologists please stand up?
Too dangerous by far in the Age of Miscavige, but necessary if they don’t want to go the way of the Shakers.
It’s a strange dichotomy in just about every religion. We wouldn’t have a “western civilization” without the civilizing influence of religion, but religious conflicts have torn up the place so many times that it is hard to make sense of it. Do we revere the renaissance or decry the 30-Years War? Aren’t they both logical results of the 95 theses nailed on the door of a church?
The truth is, every religion has to face the specter of change. The believers of today are different from the ones that established traditions in earlier ages. Do we cling to traditions so closely that we lose all relevance, but retain our moral purity? Or do we bend with the winds of change and grow our influence in the world but lose our very soul?
There are many who think to follow Voltaire and Rousseau, rejecting religion utterly or even blaming it as the source of all evil in the world. But remember what happened to Voltaire’s fervent followers. A time period known as “the Terror”. Which did not end in a glorious revolutionary new awaking of justice and love. It ended in a brutal dictatorship. A repeating pattern from Robespierre to Mao Zedong.
Truth is, there is no one source of evil in the world, unless you can simply call it human nature. Religion attempts to quantify and define good and evil in many ways, often with small success. It is still worth considering.
As time goes on, and science advances, there are fewer questions that can only be answered by faith. If you apply the “God is in the gaps” argument the gaps are always getting smaller. Do we need a thunder god, whose name gives us one of the days of the week? No, thunder is now explained by atmospheric phenomena and not the blows of the mighty hammer, Mjolnir.
But we still need some way to elucidate the basic laws of human interaction. The rule of law is paramount, but where does the concept come from? If we abandon the rule of law, don’t we get chaos and finally totalitarianism?
Any religious tradition has to come up to the 21st century or fade away. Fundamentalism in its intolerant form is not compatible with human decency.
I love this! Thanks Bruce.
Perfectly stated.
I was gratified to hear Mike in his Koncrete Podcast 68: Mike Rinder Episode. It was a long two hours, but to his credit interviewer Daniel Jones simply posed good inquiries, then let Mike speak. Mike’s prodigious memory brought up event after event, eventually establishing a very good summation of his years in and out of Scientology. He also clearly set forth the abuses of the church, and its many failings.
At the end, Mike made clear there is one sure path to taking down Scientology, which would include filing charges for illegal acts, and removing its tax exemption. That path is to raid the many church files, and gather their own paper evidence. That’s how the FBI did it, and the eventual result was prison sentences for Mary Sue Hubbard and others, and the dissolution of the GO (which never went away, it just morphed into OSA).
I was thinking of exactly that a few days ago, but in the realm of the Clearwater PD’s ending of their investigation. That ending hinged on the fifteen or fifty or whatever number of affidavits handed to them by Scientologists, all of whom swore this and that, pulling the rug out from under the victim’s own recollections of criminal behavior within the church. I couldn’t help but think “why didn’t they just subpoena central files or make a raid looking specifically for information about the crime, and looking for validation or invalidation of all those affidavits?” With the church’s well-known directives for lying to protect itself, a raid on records should have been a no-brainer, especially once all those affidavits started to rain down.
When the raids come, the church will fall. It happened before, it should happen again. Let the evidence contained in their own physical records serve to alleviate some of the members’ cognitive dissonance – the truth may not make them free, but it will give them a chance to perceive events as they actually occurred, and help insulate them from the harmful revisionist history the church demands they make.
Nailed it!
$cientology can’t exist without the coercion or financial crimes. So never expect that to go away. As for the ‘nice’ things that Lron said, they were later contradicted by later sayings. This way the Lroners could pick and choose any Hubtard saying and cite it as ‘scripture’.
Janus revisited. One face is spiritual, one face ‘the beast’.
Vengeful Old Testament God, or forgiving New Testament God? It is an old dichotomy.
New recruits seem to get love bombed, while CCHR always shows its true colors in vengeful OT style.
Hubbard claimed to be both Buddha and a the “Anti Christ”. Both light and darkness. I’m no mental health expert but my guess is that he had a SEVERE case of bi polar disorder among other things. A good friend of mine, that once worked in his household unit, told me she never knew “which Hubbard” she would encounter each day. One day he would be all paranoid and accuse her of intending to poison him and send her to hard labor. The next day he would offer her a token dollar to accept his apology and continue her job like nothing ever happened. I have heard many accounts like that. Basically the man was out of his f#@%ing mind. Sadly, through information control, Scientologists are convinced that Hubbard was someone worth following and sacrificing their life for.
Mat so true. People keep their veneration towards hubbard just because the image and PR build on him by management is what they were trained to want and accept.
They will sacrifice family and life for him. This is also part of what Mike calls ‘certainty’.
I don’t think hubbard ever had any real decency. He was tragically prisoner of his own ego.
Excellent point. I heard similar stories from someone who was on the Apollo in contact with Hubbard every day. The story goes that this man acted like an OT and produced amazing results. Hubbard NEVER complimented him.