As I understand it, which isn’t much, Scientology has a hold over its celebrity members (and others) in part by eliciting confessions in the early going about shameful things they’ve done, and then uses those confessions if the celeb tries to escape the cult. First question is: Do I have that right? Second question is: Really? I mean, I’ve done some shit in my life that I’m not proud of, but it’s nothing so terrible that it would amount to serious blackmail material keeping me in a cult. Even if John Travolta, say, had sex with the family cat, couldn’t he just deny it anyway? If they’ve got him on tape, couldn’t he just say “I was lying” or even “That’s not me, it’s a deep fake.” Or even “So what? That was sixty years ago, and I was a disturbed child.” Am I not understanding something about Scientology’s use of embarrassing material to prevent people from leaving? Unless someone has confessed to murder, most criminal behavior would be beyond the statute of limitations, I’d think.
I’m sure this has been written about at some point. What’s the best, most authoritative book or article on this practice of Scientology you’ve seen? I read a few SD threads like this one , but they didn’t cover the subject.
“Best” is a subjective measure, but this book certainly is well researched and documented, and should answer your questions. There are plenty of other books if you find you are still interested in the subject afterwards.
No seriously, of course blackmail doesn’t work and isn’t needed with many people–but they do collect embarrassing stuff on newbies in their intake processes, just in case, don’t they? I’m thinking some ex-Scientologists have written about it in their memoirs. There was some TV star who left the cult–can’t think of her name but I think she wrote a memoir.
Is that one of the techniques they use? Sure, probably. Is it the only one? Of course not. And even if the confessed things aren’t actually all that shameful, the victims probably think they are. Why? Because they’ve been told so, repeatedly, by folks they trust and respect.
From what I have read, they have lots of connections in showbiz, and they help the careers of actors and musicians who join the church. They don’t need to strong-arm the celebrities, because the celebrities have been thoroughly bribed. The entertainers in the church often have little contact with non-entertainers, and have no idea how the church treats non-entertainers.
Members of Scientology are systematically isolated from their non-Scientologist family and friends, and are convinced to pay vast sums of money (or slave for free for the organization) to let that happen. Leaving is inconceivable because members have no outside support and will be persecuted by their friends who remain, they have invested all their time and money into Scientology, and they have been convinced that their confessions (no matter how small) will be a source of deep shame and will isolate them from the world outside Scientology. It is deliberate and ongoing psychological abuse of the highest order.
I see. You’re saying, as I understand you, that the substance of the confessions is not nearly as important as the impression the organization imposes on the members that they are important. So someone who confesses to stealing a pack of gum at the age of 7 gets convinced that this is a serious crime? Neat trick.
Yes. Nothing is more important than Going Clear, and if members feel that some trivial misdeed is preventing that, then it becomes important. And there is no external frame of reference, because that has been removed.
Finally, there is the sunk cost of all that time, money and emotional investment - people cannot just walk away from all that.
'Zactly. Which will be a problem when it’s time to “rehabilitate” half the US population who’ve bought a particular line of propaganda.
That’s also the reason it’s hard to get CT believers to change course once they’re hooked. “I was wrong” is anathema to a hefty fraction of the human population. They’re often more afraid of admitting their own waste of their own lives to themselves than they are of losing face in public.
For celebrities’, reputation is a major part of their ‘value’, and derogatory material (even if unproven or untrue) is newsworthy and damaging. If allegations that SlicedAlone beat his spouse came out, nobody but a few friends & family would care. But make such (false) allegations about Johnnie Depp, and it’s worldwide news and costs him roles in movies. It matters more to celebrities.
Besides the blackmail, there are many stories of actual, physical harassment and violence against Scientology ‘enemies’, extending for years afterward. And these ‘enemies’ can be low-level people just doing their jobs, like a child abuse investigator who responds to complaints about a Scientology leader, or an IRS worker who catches them in tax evasion.
The little brother of a gf from college got sucked in. His parents were able to get all the money back because he wasn’t quite 18 when he signed his life away. The Scientologists were not happy.
There are a number of online resources that help dispel Scientology. First, to answer the OP’s question about celebrities, there’s this 2013 Salon article by Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Scientology’s head honcho David Miscavige.
No matter what level of star they were, one of the big draws for the celebrities was the Communication Course offered at the center, which claimed to get people comfortable for auditions and helped them to network effectively. Another attraction was the fact that the auditing sessions had a priest-penitent privilege stamp of secrecy, meaning that the contents of each session were guarded, similar to the way that a priest would guard secrets heard during confession. This level of security made celebrities comfortable with relating their problems and the oddities that they wanted fixed.
She mentions other benefits, such as not being “regged,” or constantly asked for donations – normal members get harassed for money constantly. They could also learn at their own pace- normal members are pressured to go “up the bridge,” taking (and paying for) more and more courses. And the more you learn, the higher the cost of the course.
I think it’s less “brainwashing” (although that enters into it) than it is “ego-stroking,” at least for celebrities. The common people are the ones brainwashed (and exploited, and blackmailed, and harassed).
I’m sorry if this is terribly naive, but it never occurred to me that Scientologists could damage their enemies through their ordinary jobs. Do they often get away with it? I mean, if I’m a low-level IRS agent, and I’m a Scientologist, and I have a particular hard-on for a particular enemy of the “church,” and I apply my employer-paid, on-the-job efforts against the enemy to the best of my ability – auditing them every year, “losing” their responses, whatever nasty below-board business I can think up, to what extent is the IRS going to put up with this?
Now I’m wondering if this could be happening all the time. Cops, postal workers, health inspectors – so many people have low-level power over pretty much everybody, and if they are being directed to operate nefariously by their real masters, well – that’s just kind of a nightmare to even think about. Maybe this is why my mail gets lost all the time, I pissed off a Scientologist at work once. (True.)
Huh. I’ll have to read the whole article, but before I do, wondering if perhaps the IRS is not so much corrupted by the Scientologists as cowed and defeated by them.
But anyway, whether the IRS is too lenient on Scientologists for whatever reason is a separate question from whether individual IRS employees abuse their authority to persecute their enemies. Or, if you want, whether the IRS as a whole is directed by Scientologists to persecute enemies of the “church” as a matter of general policy.