Watching Hubbard demonstrate the e-meter brings to mind the audacity with which Clifford Irving sold his hoax to McGraw Hill.
A mid-1990’s article in Spy magazine by journalist Mark Ebner had a picture of Hubbard with an E-meter hooked up to a tomato, with the caption, “You say Tomato, I say Travolta”.
They killed Issac Hayes!? Those bastards!
This annoys me no end. This is not a word, and it is not the proper deprecating term. They are called “Clams”, which has something to do with Hubbard declaring that humans are thence descended. This is why the site linked earlier in this thread is called “ClamBake”.
…and the recommended taunt is “Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!”…done while snapping one’s fingers.
Great documentary and really informative.
Ultimately, I simply feel no pity for the suckers who will delude reality for their ill-gotten fool’s gold “happiness.”
It’s their own fault for falling prey to a cult.
As I said earlier, the best part was Paul Haggis explaining how an intelligent, rational person could get sucked in.
To follow up on myself, I’m quite confident the members of Heaven’s Gate weren’t recruited with a promise that they would end up dead in brand new sneakers of poisoned pudding. You don’t get followers by showing them the crazy right off the bat, you need something to reel them in at the start.
That’s why the film showed people saying that, at least in the early parts, they got something out of it. Some who escape the cult still follow Hubbard’s teachings, or at least the parts that made sense for them.
Here’s a very low-budget video, but if you overlook that, a fun and potent video about “How To Be A Cult Leader”
We bought that on the newsstand at the time! Here’s the actual article for Spy. I love how he starts out by dead agenting himself to get in before the $cieno, er, clams do.
[QUOTE=Mark Ebner]
I am an ex-drug addict who has solicited prostitutes in my day. I’ve also masturbated and inhaled at the same time, and I have been arrested more than once in my life. I dropped out of high school, and I’ve been under psychiatric care. Oh yeah, and I owe the IRS roughly six thousand dollars that they are well aware of.
In the language of Scientologists, the above information reflects what they include in their “Dead Agent Packs”-dossiers of all the dirt they dig up on people critical of their “religion.” Often they disseminate damaging information like this to the friends, family, landlords, and employers of anyone who dares speak of–or worse, publish anything derogatory about the “church.” So what I’m doing here is Dead Agenting myself before we begin, beating them to the punch.
[/QUOTE]
I follow Ebner on Twitter and he recently retweeted me. Come on, shut up, it was thrilling! Alex Gibney and John Sweeney have also retweeted things I wrote. That was thrilling too (god I’m easy).
It’s a sad story, but laugh
I recall reading some stuff, probably from Operation ClamBake, about the church. The thing where they framed a reporter for sending a bomb threat was mentioned in the film and the book, but they didn’t go into the details that I thought were particularly shocking. I had read the actual leaked internal documents detailing the outline of the plot in this frighteningly Orwelian spook-lingo.
The set up as I recall was that they had agents go to a bar where the reporter Paulette Cooper was known to frequent see that she touched a sheet of jokes that had a blank cover page stapled to it. They saw to it that she handled this joke page, and subsequently they took that blank sheet of paper and typewrote a threatening letter with it. Looking on Wikipedia, I see that this was really just a small part of Operation Freakout, but what I had read was a damning and appalling internal order describing this particular insidious trick. That detail really stuck with me.
I also remember reading the saga of one member who apparently knew his LRH (what they called the scripture of the church) backwards and forwards and sent a memo up the food chain when the church started raising money to combat what they were characterizing as religious discrimination. The poor sap just wanted to inform his superiors that they were in violation of LRH because they were not allowed to ask for money without providing goods or services in exchange, and he cited them chapter-and-verse. I have kind of a soft spot for people who really know their stuff, and this guy took the sacredness of LRH quite seriously and seemed to be confused that people were not glad that he was trying to help them avoid falling into error. Eventually he was forced out of the church.
My friend tried to get me interested in the church, because, I guess, they get trained to do that. Just to be fair, I read Dianetics cover-to-cover. Gawds, what a slog. But it taught me some things (accidentally).
My friend was in a vulnerable space at the time, a bit disillusioned with his life and his prospects, so the church set a good hook. One of the things you (might) get from Dianetics is exactly the same underlying message as homeopathy: your own body/mind can fix itself, real good, all it needs is a tad bit of help. I think that is kind of like playing to the subject’s vanity, which tends to be rather effective.
The other thing I got from the book was a perception of the hypnotic effect of massive verbiage. It was very repetitive, hammering away over and over again on the subject of the Basic-Basic and its origins. After I turned the last page, it struck me that things like sermons and political speeches work in a similar way, attempting to soften up the listener with great flipping wadges of verbiage as a sort of hypnotism, to try to plant the message in deep, fresh loam. But maybe that is just me.
And of course I sat in the mission and let a clam try to drag me in, but all I really remember from that was how it seemed to me like she was shoving her camel-toe in my face the whole time. But that is not exactly unique, other religions try to use sex as a hook as well.
I am sure this is not new information to anyone, but I find Craiglist ads all the time for “bookclubs” that like to discuss self help issues, and how to achieve success. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to realize they are talking about Scientology. This is the current one, but last year there was one that was much more targeted to the lonely, bored, frustrated type of person, who wanted to join a club of other readers, seeking self improvement.
I wonder how successful those ads are.
It looks like there are lots of places where those ads are being run, and not just on Craigslist.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Do+you+enjoy+going+to+lectures+or+seminars+to+learn+about+life+or+being
There’s also a discussion of the ads on xenu.net from back in 2010 (so they’ve been running the same ad for at least 4 or 5 years) where they’re discussing what is apparently the exact same ad as well as ads targeting the parents of young children with a $100 “children’s communication course”, which is VERY disturbing.
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=33542&p=386609
Does the movie touch at all on the NOTs? I was following a.r.s about a decade ago when there was a big deal about some Swede, Zenon Panoussis as I recall, who put the NOTs text (“New era dianetics for OTs”) online and was getting sued by the church. It was a bit comical, as the church had their people infesting the court house to examine the documents continuously, which had to be placed as evidence, so that no SPs would be able to look at them.
It really pisses me off that they claim this material as “trade secrets”. What the ever-loving? It should be a huge red flag that a religion is engaging in “trade”, that is the province of secular business.
They want it both ways. They want the advantages of being recognized as a religion and, at the same time, they want to take advantage of laws meant to protect businesses. Trying to claim “trade secrets” should have resulted in their tax status being reevaluated, in my humble opinion.
Not that I recall.
Honestly, one could have a weekly TV series called The Crimes of Scientology and it could run for years.
It would have to, they would not be able to air 3 episodes without months of litigation tying the whole thing up.
Sure, but it would be fun while it lasted. HBO could pull it off.
On his blog today Mike Rinder gives a good overview of why Scientology should not be tax extempt.
John Travolta is happy living in his own little bubble. Scientology works for him, so anything negative they do doesn’t concern him.
Quoting myself regarding the SNL parody:
Someone put this picture on Twitter. It shows some of the people in the “We Stand Tall” video and their current status, as known or believed by the person who made it (I don’t know who that is):
It’s not big, so not that easy to read, so I blew it up bigger and wrote out what it said for each.
-
Shelly Miscavige
Wife of David Miscavige
Current location unknown -
Ray Mithoff
Former Inspector General for Tech, RTC
Believed imprisoned at Gold -
Mark Yager
Former Inspector General for Admin, RTC
Believed imprisoned at Gold -
Mark Ingber
Former Commanding Officer of the CMO
Believed imprisoned at Gold -
Mike Rinder
Former Commanding Officer of the Office of Special Affairs
Fled the cult in 2007 -
David Miscavige
International leader of the Church of Scientology -
Heber Jentzsch
Former President, Church of Scientology International
Believed imprisoned at Gold -
Greg Wilhere
Inspector General
Reportedly still working with David Miscavige -
Mark Rathbun
Former Inspector General for Ethics RTC
Escaped the cult in 2004 -
Guillaume Lesevre
Former Inspector General Int
Believed imprisoned at Gold
I didn’t add any other text, but I could have. For instance, Shelly Miscavige has not been seen in public since 2007. A Tony Ortega blog from 2013 is a pretty good overview of information to that point.
Heber Jentzsch hasn’t been seen in public since 2004, though he did attend a private memorial for his son in 2012. There’s a “Free Heber” page, which includes Mike Rinder’s writing that the last time he saw him, Jentzsch was in The Hole. The last time Jentzsch spoke to anyone was in 2009, when he told his brother in a telephone call “I’ll never get out of here alive.” Oh yeah, and that memorial service Jentzsch attended for his 27-year old son Alexander who had just died? Alexander’s mother Karen de la Carriere was not only not allowed to attend, she wasn’t even told about it. They were Disconnected because she was no longer in the cult, according to Scientology’s odious and toxic policy.
This part stuck out to me. I’m not sure that the words “intelligent” or “rational” are being used properly.
Hubbard was insane. Miscavige is evil. Still, their charisma managed to get thousands of weak-minded and -willed folks to follow along.
Another (paraphrased) quote near the end had me thinking: "…I willfully chose to believe in Scientology because the alternative was too painful.”
What alternative?
First, I think that having a “crisis of faith” (questioning your religious/political/professional/whatever beliefs) can be an incredibly painful journey. A journey that many choose to abandon because it is simply too painful.
Second is the idea that there is no “larger, deeper meaning”. For many, the thought that they’ll never see grandma again is incredibly painful.
And since most folks want to avoid pain, it leads them towards these types of beliefs.