The term “wog” is commonly used by scientologists. It is derisive. It is scientologese for the non-scientology world or the non-scientologist — and they are considered ignorant (not having been enlightened by the wisdom of Hubbard), second-class citizens and lower order beings. Scientology views the world in us vs. them terms. Them are the wogs.
There is debate about the derivation of the term, but there is no doubt it’s an insult. Here is the definition from Merriam Webster and also the Urban Dictionary:
This is a golliwog doll…
Here is the definition in the official scientology Technical Dictionary:
Of course, this is the most politically correct version they could come up with — these definitions are required to be Hubbard quotes.
Here are some less savory Hubbard uses of the term, making clear how derisively he viewed “wogs.” Of course he had quite a history of racist statements
We live in a very woggy world at this time. The wog is so out-Ethics he is living in what amounts to a criminal society.
Now this would appear that the E/O runs the org. Or that he gets in everyone’s way. Or that he is a whip that forces people to work. Or any other silly idea borrowed from a wog world where the police make things about as safe as a snake pit full of assorted reptiles.
The TECH fact is the data we have about SPs. There are very few of these in proportion to decent people. That one fact is something this society’s police don’t know. According to extant social tech ALL people are basically bad and are only made “good” through punishment. So everyone everywhere has to be threatened. That’s extant wog tech. It doesn’t work.
When you view how far flung the SO is and how much it’s doing, I doubt there’s a group on the planet that could begin to equal it. Now in the wog world, there’s nothing but sunshine, chicken and ice cream. And H bombs and stupidity and snobs and aberration and the draft and droughts and inflation…
WOG WORLD: If you were puzzled about my ‘now in the WOG world’ jokes in yesterdays OOD — that was the way certain people were 3rd partying us. Making a horrible false impression between us and elsewhere. ‘Now in the Wog world — ” Or how great the beach is compared to the ship. At least we’re trying to get it to survive and that’s more than you can say for the ‘Wog World’.
Here’s the wiki article on Golliwog. The article notes the Golliwog character created by Florence Kate Upton was jovial, friendly and gallant but his exaggerated and racially offensive appearance eventually did him in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog
Hubbard came to Australia during a time period that the term was highly offensive (some Australian actors have desensitized the term now and it is no longer offensive). Theirs no way that he would not know how much of a insult the migrant population (mainly the Greeks, Italians and Yugoslavians) found this unflattering term. To continue using this highly offensive term whilst undoubtedly knowing how offensive it was pretty much sums up the man – uncaring, arrogant, rude and a man who believed he was superior to others, definitely not the qualities of a religious leader who is meant to set a good example of human behavior, in fact the complete opposite.
Hubs was SO ignorant in so many ways. But it didn’t stop him from creating a “religion” to really rake in the MONEY, which was his primary motivation.
Yes, ‘wog’ is racially offensive and Scientology needs to find a new term to refer to non Scientologists. This won’t happen because the term ‘wog’ was coined by LRH and you can’t go against Source.
Oh, wait a minute. Tiny Boots does that all the time.
A couple of things I will say:
If someone wants to call me that term because I am not a scientologist then go ahead. It simply, to me. says I am not one and that is a very good thing.
As for Tiny Boots or corn cob which ever, One of the great things about being me is that it means I am not him. I don’t have to live the sorry life he does filled with hate and anger. Forced to scream and rant at everyone around him just to make himself think he looks better, stronger more what ever, I can live a normal life and, when it comes down to the end of that life I will not have to face the reality that I have lived a life for naught. I didn’t base my life on a science fiction religion.
If one wants to call me a wog why go right ahead. I count it as a good thing.
but that’s just me.
Gotcha and I am very happy that you don’t want to be David Miscavige. I don’t either. Everything you say about him is right on the money. I do understand your feelings toward the term ‘wog’ and I do respect them. But I think that the subject of today’s blog is that in parts of the world the term is racially offensive and LRH was being insensitive when he coined it. Sort of a minister referring to us as pickaninnies because we don’t go to his church.
I totally understand and find it totally offensive. Totally. However, I will not let someone that hates define who or what I am. Period. I refuse to let him or anyone else think they can get over on me with language like that. I refuse.
It isn’t offensive in some parts of the world, it is offensive all over the world. If a minister said something like that I would simply get up and walk out. After the service that minister and I would have a very short conversation about that type o language and I would leave. He would be doing the listening not the talking.
I refuse to hurt another with my words. Period.
All I can say is amen to that!
I had only known the scientology definition until just a couple days ago when the word popped up in a historic fiction novel I was reading. I didn’t understand what it meant in the context used, so I looked it up. I had no idea before of the pejorative racial definition. Wow, was I surprised and disgusted! I almost emailed you about it. Glad you wrote about it in this blog article. Another example to add to the refuse heap of things written by Hubbard.
It’s a little awkward, yes. With being not an English native speaker, I didn’t even know the word before encountering it in the context of watching scientology ever again, as their more or less derogative term for non-scientologists. And Hubbard re-defined and made up so many words, so, ok, there’s one more, meh. Eventually I happened to read – most likely as side remark in a Tony Ortega article – that it was an already existing word, and then not what I suspected to perhaps be some version of “idiot”, but one with a weird racist background. Duh!
So if I ever would have used it elsewhere before I knew that, then as part of some kind of insider joke about scientology weirdness, but I’d say that could still have ended very awkward depending on who would have listened, and then for more than one reason! Lol
Use of the term “wog” and others was recently ruled “racist” and “abusive” by a court in Australia, which levied a $715,000 fine. Even if Hubbard might possibly have started off thinking the term meant something else, the Australians, and the Brits, at Saint Hill should have informed him otherwise — and it was shameful that they went along with use of the term, knowing better.
“Barilaro told the court that statements in the Friendlyjordies videos including repeated use of the words “wog”, “greasy” and “slimeball” made him feel as if he was at school where he said he suffered racist abuse because of his Italian heritage.
“I grew up with the word ‘wog’ and ‘dago’,” he said.
“I used to go to school in primary school and would start the day in a punch-up because I was called a ‘wog’.
“Anyone who wants to use the word ‘wog’ and think it doesn’t offend, well ‘wog’ was not used as a term of an endearment, I grew up with that.””
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/google-ordered-to-pay-john-barilaro-715000-over-friendlyjordies-youtube-videos
I just wonder if members of the NOI are aware of where the the term WOG originated. Don’t forget to clear the words, Tony Mohammad !
No, the NOI are treated like mushrooms:”Kept in the dark and buried in bovine-derived fertilizer. I’m sure they use the word “wog” as freely as the white scientologists. AND as ignorantly.
Which I find quite surprising given THEIR racist background.
Peacemaker,
Sorry – “Wog” is not a pejorative for an Italian.
The term is “wop”.
Italians in countries with English as the first language have long been insulted by the terms “dago”, “guinea” (pronounced gi-nee) “greaseball” and “woP” with a “p” not a “g”.
Barilaro misheard what he was being called.
FYI, I’m half Italian and very proud of my heritage on the maternal side. But I don’t look Italian at all. I take wholly after the paternal Celtic side. Many times I’ve been told Italian jokes with these names figuring in them. If they’re funny I just laugh. Some of these jokes have been quite funny. Its all in the tone.
In Australia, ‘wog’ is indeed used in Australia as a term for Italian, Greek or other southern European, even though it’s used comically by people of Italian origin themselves like Santo Cilauro – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn1FP6Rtf7Y
Whoa! Ok, I stand corrected then, Ulysses, thank you.
You’re welcome, Aquamarine. I remember reading Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky, in which he asked his Scientologist roommate (in the UK) if he had any dislikes, only to be shocked to be told ‘only wogs’.
Interesting story about NSW, as unlike Victoria, SA and WA, it was one of the states that didn’t ban Scientology.
Wow. I wonder if by “wogs” he meant non-Scientologists, or Italians, Greeks, etc.? Possibly both 🙂
Half Italian? As Tony Soprano would say, what part of the boot do your people come from? As for me, my great grandmother Lowe was a Giannini whose grandfather immigrated from Tuscany around 1773 and was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson.
Interesting, Alco. We’re all such mixtures here.
My mother’s mother was from Calabria – “toe of the boot”. She was very Asiatic looking – beautiful, really – she was quite beautiful, and tall for her day, with olive skin and ink black hair and eyes.
My mother’s father came from Rome or somewhere nearby. He was quite short, had light brown hair and eyes.
Out of the 8 children, only my mother and one of her brothers got their father’s coloring, the light brown hair and brown eyes. The other six all had the ink black hair and the very dark eyes, almost black and kind of slanted, and the olive skin.
Yet ALL of them came out short – quite short. Not one of them got the tall gene from their mother!
Wow. Interesting.
At first I thought the fine was Draconian for simply using a racial slur but scanning the article it was an extensive defamatory campaign against the plaintiff so all is well.
What is the Jack In A Box effect that Soviet and Russian tanks that are prone to?
To understand this one must see how those of particular ideology see others.
A Collectivist will see another person as something to be used. An Individualist will see another person as something to be protected. One can see this in tank design.
Western tanks (Abrams, Leopard 2, Merkava) are designed to prioritize crew protection. Soviet (Russian) tanks don’t prioritize crew protection. The Abrams and Leopard 2 are designed with blowout panels with blast doors for ammunition storage to protect the crew. The Merkava series was designed with a front engine and an escape hatch in the rear to protect the crew. Soviet (Russian) tanks are designed simply to shoot. The crews of Soviet (Russian) aren’t protected from ammunition explosions and other hazards. The crew is simply part of the mechanism.
LRH and DM saw other people as things to be used. When Paulette Cooper called out LRH on his behavior he got angry. DM gets angry as a result of being called out on his behavior. The Mafia uses people. Scientology uses people. Scientology is worse than The Mafia. How does one deal with an organization that’s worse than The Mafia? Lisa McPherson was being used by Scientology. When McPherson was no longer useful she was disposed of.
Hubbard made a big show of villainizing the Soviets, while creating a cult that was very much like Stalinist collectivist totalitarianism, in many ways. And DM’s regime is now much like Putin’s with the Scientology “whales” equivalent to the Russian oligarchs, who live lives of luxury while the masses live in near poverty (many members are pushed to the edge financially with large debts and few assets, while the average Russian has an income under US $10,000) in exchange for the comfort of paternalistic leadership and a sense of security.
Jack-in-the-box: The top blows off and anyone previously inside is launched out of it. Describes soviet/Russian tanks to a “T”.
For such an anti-communist, Ron BECAME the worst of the Communist regimes. “You become what you resist.”, truly. For example, he well duplicated Chinese “re-education” camps with the RPF, only with a “scientific” flavor by including the e-meter to discover ‘transgressions’.
Yes, there’s “Humanoid” and “Wog.”
What so many scientologists strive for is “Homo Novis.”
Definition Homo Novis:
Scientologists who ascends the Bridge to Total Freedom to the extent that they lose all compassion for their fellow man and even their fellow scientologists and descend below a “humanoid” or “wog” existence into a soulless void. At this point they are now owned by the church of scientology. One can attain this state anywhere along that Bridge.
I believe that originally “Homo Novis” was supposed to be derived from the Latin, meaning “new man”. However, in practice it has devolved into something else entirely.
So perhaps the term deserves a new derivation from the modern English…something like “Human Novice”, meaning “has not yet learned to be human.”
Yes. Exactly. It’s in Book One. So a scientologist can get on that descent pretty quickly.
And they still get colds and need glasses!
Sarah,
That was nicely written of you:-)
Sorry not related. I just want you to know that I cried with you on episode 3.
You sir! Are beautiful. You sir are strong and inspirational! I’m sorry for your loss of your family. They have absolutely no idea of what they have lost. But Sir the world has gained you! And what a beautiful soul!
Yes, “a beautiful soul.” At that moment it’s not on the show, of course, because Leah asked to stop filming, which they did. Most of the crew was teary eyed or crying. One can only guess what Mike was experiencing in that moment but I think the “loss of family” was in those tears (and so much more).