Scientology,
the Last Laugh
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In May this year, Belgian Le
Soir Magazine published an astounding
cover article, or spread of articles, by Julie Barreau, headlined
“la Scientologie vise Bruxelles.” The cover featured
a photo of Scientology’s mega celebrity “Operating
Thetan” and ambassador Tom Cruise. The article treated a
range of issues relating to Scientology, identifying it as a political
organization seeking to seize power and establish a dictatorship,
announcing its purchase of a large and strategically located office
building in Brussels for its new European headquarters, and impugning
some of its claims as fraudulent, its cost as exorbitant, its
psycho-social system as robotizing, and its head David Miscavige
as a bully boasting of shooting
down critics or “Suppressive Persons” like ducks
in a pond. The article also provided an update on the pending
criminal case against Scientology’s Belgian branch on charges
of fraud, illegally practicing medicine, violating the privacy
law, and being a criminal organization.
By recent American media standards, the article is astounding
in its defiance or challenge to Scientology, attesting the writer’s
and Le Soir Mag’s confidence in their facts and in their
ability to withstand Scientology’s counter attack, whatever
it may be. Since Time Magazine’s 1991 cover story “Scientology
the Cult of Greed,” serious American media, if they
touched it at all, have produced much softer and safer pieces
on the organization. Of course Scientology’s response to
Time and its writer Richard Behar included years of threatening
and resource-consuming dirty tricks, and litigation that cost
the magazine a reported seven million dollars. The lawsuit against
Time and the appeals that followed and only ended in 2001 also
cost Scientology dearly, adding significantly to rendering the
organization now virtually libel-proof. Scientology’s reputation
is sufficiently bad that almost anything said about it cannot
further damage that bad reputation. Serious American media did
not take advantage of Time’s legal success and Scientology’s
libel-proof condition, however, but were clearly chilled by the
amount of money the magazine and its parent company paid in legal
fees to defend against the organization’s formidable litigation
machine.
Funnily enough, it has been elements within the unserious American
media that have made the most use of Scientology’s terrible
reputation, to the point of openly daring the organization and
its litigious leaders to sue for that usage. For the past two
years, since OT Cruise started publicly and somewhat wackily stumping
the world for Scientology, cartoons and comics have declared the
organization and the actor comedic fair game. In 1977, U.S. cartoonist
Jim Berry drew a single newspaper cartoon panel that nonconfrontationally
merely mentioned Scientology, and then organization boss L.
Ron Hubbard ordered Berry’s career destroyed. The national
network of Scientology intelligence and public relations personnel
mobilized for that purpose, and only the FBI’s raid of organization
intelligence bureaus in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. the same
year exposed and derailed the operation. In 2005, South
Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone devoted a whole half
hour very popular television show to blatantly and confrontationally
ridiculing Scientology, its reputation, its hierarchy and Cruise.
The episode ends mocking Scientology’s and Cruise’s
litigiousness and defying them to sue. So far Scientology has
bitten its group lip, remained silent publicly, and mounted no
perceptible counter attack.
Ms. Barreau reviewed the hilarious Scientology episode “Trapped
in the Closet” in Le Soir Mag and noted that Scientologist
Isaac Hayes, who provided the voice for one of South Park’s
regular characters, had reacted by suddenly leaving the show,
and that Cruise may have used his star power or box office clout
to prevent a repeat broadcast of the episode. Parker and Stone
responded with an even more lurid episode in which Hayes’
character is disposed of obscenely, although with some sorrow.
Since the Le Soir Mag article, moreover, the repeat broadcast
of “Trapped in the Closet” has occurred, and the episode
was nominated for an Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy
for Outstanding Animated Program. The Internet spread these episodes
around the world and has made them instantly available to anyone
at any time. The Internet never ceases to watch and to comment
on anything Scientology does in response, and the Net goes back
in time to fill in what might have been missed about the organization
earlier. In part because of its reputation for litigiousness,
Scientology has lost some teeth from its litigation bite. In part
because of its use of the law to squelch Internet exposure and
opposition, Scientology is more exposed and opposed than ever
in that medium. The organization cannot shudder South Park or
the rest of the media’s jokers into silence, it cannot close
cyberspace, it won’t sue Le Soir Mag, and it will never
rehabilitate its former ability with threats of legal action to
prevent the public from getting the facts that add up to its libel-proof
reputation. Since Scientology is a peculiarly American cult, since
Miscavige in California dictates every step the Scientologists
take in Brussels and all Europe, and since the U.S. Federal Government
still supports and promotes the organization internationally,
the American media cannot but get serious about it. Scientology
will face that eventuality without the hope of stopping it, and
will only make its reputation and condition worse if it tries.
The Le Soir Mag article was also astonishing for its report
on Scientology’s April 8, 2006 gathering at the Best Western
Hotel in Brussels, which Barreau, apparently quoting the organization’s
own advertising, called a “summit meeting.” In reality,
it was a programmed staff recruitment event, to which dedicated
Western European Scientologists, who were not already on staff
at their local “churches” but were good recruit prospects,
had been invited and herded. It is not clear if Barreau or some
other writer got herself invited inside the meeting room to record
the event, but it is clear that she was not part of the herd.
Scientology lets journalists occasionally see inside some parts
of its buildings that Miscavige says they can see, and lets them
hear what Miscavige says they should hear. Occasionally too, some
under cover journalist has gotten inside long enough to take an
introductory Scientology course. Scientology does not, however,
permit journalists or any other undedicated outsiders, or “wogs”
as Scientologists call us, to attend its recruitment events. The
organization does not let wogs witness its recruiters haranguing
Scientologists with warnings of imminent danger and doom to get
them to join staff. Miscavige would have wanted journalists to
see or hear very little of what was seen and heard in that Brussels
hotel meeting room. The announcement of the purchase of Scientology’s
new European HQ building was a great gimmick to corral a sizeable
crowd of perhaps two hundred potential staff recruits. The gimmick
also worked to get the interest of some wogs who were anything
but potential staff recruits, and to motivate them to get one
or more wog reporters into the event.
Miscavige would not want journalists and other wogs to hear
Scientology’s view that Europe, and specifically its democratic
institutions, the European Commission and the European Parliament,
comprise the “Fourth Reich.” Miscavige would not want
the wog world to know that he and his Scientologist troops have
declared war on that Fourth Reich. For years Scientology has conducted
most of its skirmishes covertly, hidden its warlike intentions,
spent millions creating a human rights cover, and denied even
being at war. Nevertheless, as Ms. Barreau reports, that is precisely
what the lead recruiter at the Brussels events in April told his
audience to get them to join staff – the European Union
and its Government are the Fourth Reich and Scientology is at
war with them. Amazingly, the man making these statements was
none other than Fabio Amicarelli, who since 2003 has held the
position of Executive Director of the Church of Scientology International’s
European Office for Public Affairs and Human Rights. While schmoozing
European government officials in Brussels, and promoting Scientology
to them as a human rights organization, Amicarelli does not say
that he and his fellow Scientologists are at war with them and
view them as Fourth Reich Nazis. At the recruitment event, however,
he was on specific program orders, probably approved by Miscavige
personally, to recruit staff for Scientology’s envisioned
European expansion from among the supposedly dedicated Scientologists
assembled to hear him. Amicarelli and the other recruiters could
not deviate from their program orders and spoke what they had
been instructed and drilled to speak, and consequently the journalists
and any other wogs present heard some remarkable things.
Another extraordinary acknowledgement or admission Amicarelli
made, which is particularly useful to Scientology’s opponents
in its war, is that its “social reform” or front groups
-- Narconon,
Applied
Scholastics, Criminon,
etc. -- are all feeder lines for the Scientology organization.
“Feeder” is a common English word, meaning in this
usage a device that feeds materials into a machine for further
processing. “Feeders” is also a specific Scientology
term defined as “all the junior entities on the bridge that
are supposed to feed people up the bridge to the higher org.”
The “bridge” is what Scientologists call their gradated
system that processes people from Homo
sapiens, “wog”
or “raw meat,”
through the higher Scientology state of “Clear”
or Homo novis, to the
highest state of “OT,”
where Scientologists claim they are “at cause over matter,
energy, space, time and life.” Every Scientologist is somewhere
on the bridge, and every person that Narconon, Criminon, Applied
Scholastics or other such groups get into their programs is on
the same Scientology bridge. For decades, organization spokespeople
have denied that these groups are feeders, and denied that they
have any agenda to recruit people into Scientology. Amicarelli’s
admission to the Scientologists he was trying to recruit for organization
staff that these groups are all Scientology feeders is also an
admission that Scientology spokespeople all of these years were
all lying.
Since Amicarelli, a top organization representative in Europe,
has now admitted that Narconon, Criminon, etc. are feeder lines
for Scientology, public agencies, officials and courts that recommend
or fund these groups, send people to them, or permit them to operate,
cannot now avoid confronting and understanding the system into
which such people are being fed. As long as any Scientology feeder
groups operate in their countries, national governments have a
right and a duty to demand that the organization, and David
Miscavige personally, reveal and explain what those countries’
wog citizens fed into Scientology will be processed to become,
to believe and to do. As long as the U.S. Government supports
Scientology and its feeder groups around the world, other national
governments have a right and a duty to demand that the U.S. identify
all the dangers of the system or “religion” the feeders
feed people into for processing. It is foolish for the governments
of Europe to permit its very vulnerable people -- those addicted
to drugs, those in prison, those suffering from mental disorders
-- to be food for an organization that will process them into
cult members who will view Europe’s peaceful democratic
institutions as the Fourth Reich and who will join a war against
these institutions. It is equally foolish for the governments
of Europe to not view the U.S. support for Scientology and its
feeders -- Narconon, Criminon, Citizens Commission on Human Rights,
etc. -- as support for the organization’s war and a threat
to European democracy.
A key point that everyone fed into Scientology’s system
reaches, which the European and U.S. Governments, the media, the
public and the Scientologists can productively be brought to understand
and address is the “Suppressive
Person” doctrine. In Scientology “scripture,”
the doctrine justifies Scientologists viewing Europe’s government
as Fourth Reich Nazis and waging war on them. The SP doctrine
generates hatred and underlies antisocial or criminal policies
and practices such as “Disconnection,” which has broken
up countless families, and “Fair Game,” which legitimizes
the destruction of critics or opponents by any means. Because
of the doctrine, which people are taught even within the feeder
groups, Scientologists accept and even revel in Miscavige’s
violent claim of shooting down SPs, who are but peaceful and good
wogs, like ducks in a pond.
The best example of the organization’s worldwide application
of the Suppressive Person doctrine is the almost 25-year Scientology
v. Armstrong saga. The case demonstrates with overwhelming
documentation that virtually every person fed into Scientology’s
system becomes contracted to suppress and destroy basic human
rights in violation of international human rights charters. My
case shows, beyond rational argument, that the organization’s
claims of defending and promoting human rights are hypocrisy,
and that its “religious creed” is fraud. The case
is applicable not just in California or just in the U.S., but
has international relevance and applicability. Amicarelli, all
his fellow recruiters, all their recruits, every Scientology corporation
or “church” everywhere in the world, every related
entity such as the feeder groups, and all of their directors such
as Miscavige, officers, employees, volunteers such as Cruise,
agents and lawyers are contracted
to destroy human rights. The Scientology v. Armstrong case
and evidence demonstrates that Scientology is what it is accused
in the Belgian courts of being, a criminal organization.
The
media and the European governmental components Scientology attacks
as the Fourth Reich have never really understood and addressed
the Suppressive Person doctrine or the Armstrong case. Consequently
Scientology and its representatives, and the U.S. officials who
support the organization against Europe, have never been brought
to confront or even explain the doctrine and the case. Scientology’s
big push into Brussels, Amicarelli’s rants of war and the
Fourth Reich, his identification of front groups such as Narconon
and Criminon as feeder lines, and the organization’s blind
eye and deaf ear for its libel-proof reputation have made this
confrontation very timely. Who knows, perhaps Le Soir Mag will
contribute another astounding article or two.
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