I’m about halfway through it (Leah’s book, though I agree about Wright’s book) and it is. I started a thread about it but it got eaten. I hadn’t seen this thread yet. It’s fun and funny, but shocking and chilling too. The tabloids are focusing on asshole Tom Cruise and brave Katie Holmes and admirable Jennifer Lopez* but there’s a lot more to it than the Hollywood/celebrity aspect.
Jennifer Lopez’s father has been a Scientologist for over 20 years, and Jen was friends with Leah Remini for many many years while Leah was a Scieno, but apparently she’s never been sucked in by the cult. And she supported Leah when Leah left the cult. Oh how those things must’ve driven David Miscavige crazy!
I have tons of anti-Scientology books. I like them all but my favorites, besides Going Clear, are The Unbreakable Miss Lovely (read in conjunction with The Scandal of Scientology, which can be read free on the internet), Blown For Good and The Church of Fear.
Steve Hassan (who recently followed me on Twitter, which is a really shallow thing to say but, OMG!) and Jefferson Hawkins both have great books about mind control. Steve takes a broader approach to cult control than Jefferson, who was a Scientologist for decades before he (literally) escaped. Hawkins was a marketing guy and artist who was responsible for the exploding volcano ads in the '80’s. He knows about how Scientology and marketing go hand-in-hand and how ever the twain shall meet. There’s a whole section about Jefferson on Tony Ortega’s site.
On YouTube, seek out Chris Sheldon. He was a Scieno for decades and has a ton of great videos explaining different aspects of Scientology and its mind-control techniques. His latest explains “The Truth Rundown” which is an unbelievably hellish mind-control ordeal Sea Org members are routinely put through. He says Leah Remini is one of only two non-SO members (that he knows about) to ever be subjected to it. Everyone should watch this, even if you have no interest in Leah Remini. You have to admire her for going through this for months (and paying $300,000 for) and STILL breaking free of the cult!
I’m sorry I can’t link to anything else. I do love my phone but linking is a pain in the ass.
I finished Leah Remini’s book recently and I have to recommend it. The forward, where she lays out in confessional detail every bad thing she’s done in her lifetime, with the caveat - might as well get it out there, because CoS is going to tell the world these things anyway to discredit this book. Funny thing is that she was absolutely correct, down to the exact wording I’ve read in statements from the CoS.
Cringeworthy and funny and sad, in equal measures.
I remember the whole Rajneesh thing. It was a scary time for people in northern Oregon, and that was before they Rajneeshis poisoned the salad bar. :eek:
A small-town weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 1,500 won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Synanon, which was starting to take over the town. This was in the 1970s.
*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.
*
Information in the Dead Agent packs (aka “Pre-Clear folder”) is used too extort money for additional “training”. It’s as if the Mafia had been granted tax-exempt status.
The problem with books about cults is determining the author’s bias, which is sometimes substantial. For a look at both cults and the anti-cult movement, I recommend Strange Gods, which will help you discern what ax someone might be grinding.
twicks, PhD in the sociology of religion, expertise in American cults [dissertation on Jonestown]
Leah credits Mark Ebner for helping her, and as soon as I read her Foreward I figured he was the one who advised her to write it. Some of it is quite embarrassing but she did the right thing. Anything that undermines the cult’s powerful hold over people, which includes fear of disclosure of embarrassing information, is a good thing (and drives Scn crazy).
Except for the whacking people part*, Scientology is much much worse than the Mafia.
though L. Ron Hubbard did admire Hitler and advocated genocide. How is the planet supposed to be “Cleared” anyway? By “disposing” of anyone involved in psychiatry, SPs and anyone else who wouldn’t get with the program (Scientology in any or all of its forms) “quietly and without sorrow.”
Sure, but the truly astonishing thing about Scientology is their history of turning anyone who reports on them into foes. Journalists, people who have devoted their lives to examining things fairly and without bias, wind up devoting themselves to destroying Scientology.
Read The Unbreakable Miss Lovely about Paulette Cooper. They framed her for making bomb threats, had her surrounded by spies and tried to drive her to suicide. Their drive to destroy her was so extreme that, were you to make a movie of it, the filmmakers would have to drop half of what they actually did as the audience would never believe it.
Twix is making a good point. There are far more biased books about cults than fair ones. It’s only natural, there’s something wrong with anything fairly described as a cult, we should be biased against them. But if you look at work that focuses on a single cult with antagonistic viewpoint then you don’t know where the facts end and the authors opinions start. The same goes for the general anti-cultists. I don’t know what the OP is looking for exactly, but a dispassionate view of cults won’t look good for them and might better explain the psychology involved instead of just categorizing all cults as evil and dangerous without analysis of the underlying story.
Yes, this has been difficult. It is clear when you read the different books, and some of them are full of drama! and hysterics! And some are calm reiterations of the facts. Generally I prefer books by people who have actually been members of the cult. A lot of mainstream authors look down on any religion that is not Christianity and we don’t get a clear look at their topic.
Thank you all for your recommendations. I have requested a bunch of these titles from my library.
Also, when he was at his peak, he regularly got calls from the head of this group, which is basically a UFO cult. I remember one caller saying, “No, Bob, don’t put me on the phone with this guy!”
I hadn’t thought about that for a long time, until just now. We’re talking about a case of female genital mutilation over on another board, and I found this:
