Thursday, January 10, 2008

Scientology's Critics Have Reached Critical Mass

One of the defining points for me as a Scientology critic was when I wrote the post, The Critics Have Reached Critical Mass. I wrote the post on October 21, 2005. When I finished the essay, I had the writerly experience of having captured the zeitgeist, the pervasive cultural feeling of the time and place. In this case, I saw the enormous backlash against Tom Cruise as an expression of the decades of pent up cultural resentment against Scientology and its tactics of intimidation, harassment, particularly its doctrine of of Fair Game and of suing people who disagreed with this brutal and nasty Cult. I said that Scientology had built a dam made out of fear and that this dam held back the anger of society. I saw Tom Cruise as having placed such a big crack in the Scientology dam that the dam broke. Decades of pent up cultural resentment poured fourth and engulfed Scientology in a torrent of anger, ridicule, and payback.

I received a great many e-mails from my fellow former Scientologists and lurkers who read xenu.net following my essay. For me, the essay crystallized my determination to keep working to expose Scientology. When Tom Cruise went on the warpath for his Cult, many people felt the same way I did and joined the fight against Scientology. Overnight, there was a wave of blogs, internet posts, and media reports on Scientology and Tom Cruise. This crushing wave would later culminate in episode 912 of South Park, a great triumph for Matt and Trey that I will discuss in a separate post.

My essay follows in blue:

The critics of Scientology have achieved critical mass. There is currently a critical mass of global public outrage and ridicule being directed at Scientology. This critical mass runs along the strong central axis of all major and minor media outlets and includes popular anti-Scientology websites such as xenu.net; Lermanet.com; gerryarmstrong.org; scienTOMogy; Ex-Scientology Members Board, etc.

That there has been such a heavy backlash against Scientology in popular culture is not some sudden phenomenon. It is rather a long-overdue indictment of Scientology by a planet outraged by decades of Scientology's inexcusable lies, intimidation, and brutality. Scientology has pulled this in on itself because it first created and then perpetuated a culture of brutality, hostility, inhumanity, and intrigue against society which was expressed in Operation Snow White and continues to manifest itself in the covert operations of OSA, the utter inhumanity of RPF, and the terrorism of Fair Game. Scientology created the preconditions necessary for the wide public contempt and scorn it is now justly receiving at the hands of the planetary citizenry and its media.

In 1967 L. Ron Hubbard declared war against humanity and freedom by asserting his policy of Fair Game against the world. LRH basically said that Scientology was a law unto itself and that it would viciously destroy its critics by any means possible. LRH was on the high seas in the period when he declared Fair Game. That LRH was in the high seas imbued him with a piratical spirit in which he said he and his followers would attack and destroy anyone who opposed them. Ron suddenly became a global religious pirate who served noticed that Scientology was at war with the world and would remain in a condition of war until the world capitulated to Scientology and turned over its governments to Scientology rule.

The primary purpose of Fair Game was to savagely destroy Scientology's critics by use of great violence. The secondary purpose of Fair Game was to instill a fear of Scientology in the public at large in order to chill freedom of speech and to prevent people from taking actions adverse to Scientology.

LRH knew that if he loudly and brutally destroyed his enemies he could accomplish two key objectives: 1) He could easily afford to pay settlements to the people he had ruined, but only after they had been utterly ruined and had surrendered to CoS by signing non-disclosure agreements. Scientology could destroy people and then settle with them quietly. The victims would take the money they needed to rebuild their shattered lives and they could never legally talk about how Scientology ruined them. In this way, Scientology could use the same brutal, and sometimes illegal, tactics over and over to destroy people and the public would never realize it because the victims were silenced. Fortunately, some victims fought back and exposed the tactics of Scientology. The website "Scientology Lies" is an excellent resource that documents the crimes and lies of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology:
http://www.scientology-lies.com/crimesindex.html

2) By destroying its critics in a very public manner, Scientology would make the public afraid of angering it. This is what all tyrants do when they, "put a few heads on pikes." Tyrants make a brutal example of a few people to terrorize everyone else into obedience and silence. This is what Scientology has done and continues to do: It uses terrorism to instill fear in society. Scientology is no better than any other terrorist organization in this regard.

LRH didn't care what the public thought about him or Scientology as long as the world's population stayed quiet and allowed Scientology to destroy its critics and to harvest victims from the world's population by use of its systematic program of mind-control that masqueraded as a religion.

******
The Pirate Fortress of Scientology began to crumble when Tom Cruise attacked Matt Lauer and then bizzarely displayed his love for Katie Holmes. Tom's angry and irrational behavior suddenly triggered a critical mass of anger that had been simmering in Western Culture for several decades.

The huge amount of ridicule and anger recently directed at Scientology did not appear overnight. It did not come from out of nowhere. It rather came from deep wellsprings of resentment against Scientology that had been building pressure for decades. Moreover, all of the mechanisms were already in place to allow critical mass to be reached almost instantaneously. The major critics such as Gerry Armstrong, Jon Atack, Jesse Price, Arnie Lerma, and Karen Spaink had been doing the heavy lifting and fighting the good fight for decades. Websites such as this one, Andreas' celebrated xenu.net aka Operation Clambake, had been in operation widely disseminating the truth about Scientology. The upper level materials had been exposed and widely ridiculed. Step by step, all of the elements were building to a climatic confrontation between Western Culture and Scientology.


******
The huge planetary backlash against Scientology that has been seen in recent months was the consequence of LRH's Declaration of War, of Fair Game, against all people who opposed Scientology. Tom Cruise himself reasserted LRH's Declaration of War against humanity:

"Some people, well, if they don't like Scientology, well, then, fuck you." He rises from the table. "Really." He points an angry finger at the imaginary enemy. "Fuck you." His face reddens. "Period."

ref: www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6420217?rnd=1129925845967&has-player=
true&version=6.0.12.1059

Tom exposed his militant religious fanaticism when he uttered these words. These words would prove to boomerang, for once Tom uttered this curse the world took wide notice of his abusive Scientological curse and would return it to him in spades.

******
In retrospect, Tom Cruise's appearance on Oprah marked the zenith of Tom Cruise's career. He walked on stage as the most famous and powerful movie actor in the world. He was considered invincible. No one in the press would dare attack him or say anything less than flattering about Tom Cruise if they ever hoped to get an interview with this living screen legend.

Yet Tom Cruise's Oprah appearance would prove to be his personal Little Big Horn, for he allowed his ego to lead his power and prestige into a media massacre he never saw coming. Tom thought the Oprah interview would be a romp where he could charm women the world over and convince them that his love for Katie was pure and true and that Scientology was the most tres chic thing in the world.

In what has to be the single most bizarre interview in television history, what was supposed to be Tom's boyish charm was seen as full adult lunacy and perhaps even the erratic hints of an approaching insanity.

The cracks in Tom Cruise's armor widened to become chasms. The world looked into these chasms and finally saw the real Tom Cruise and it was disturbing. The Top Gun badly over-corrected and flamed-out on Oprah. Tom lost altitude in the vast skies of the world media and plummeted like a rock.

There proved to be a huge difference between Pat Kingsley guiding Tom Cruise's his career and his Scientologist sister Lee Anne -- who was now his PR person -- trying to fly him through something as major as an Oprah interview. Oprah is not a cable channel in Brazil where Tom can flub it. Oprah is the world and Tom flamed-out in the most important venue in the world. It was a stunning loss of face for the biggest actor on the planet.

*****
Tom Cruise followed up his fiasco on Oprah in what has to be one of the most ill-advised TV interviews ever. During his interview with Matt Lauer, the Top Gun again badly over-corrected. Tom lurched from being a romantic lunatic on Oprah to being a Scientology bully and a complete ass during his interview with Matt Lauer. Worse, Tom went on the attack using his $360,000 religion which is based upon a little green man named Xenu, an E-Meter, and Body Thetans.


The Matt Lauer/Tom Cruise interview was Scientology's Pearl Harbor. This was the defining moment when the forces of the Western media and people worldwide saw a major weakness in Scientology and launched a broad attack where Scientology least expected it, and that would be Tom Cruise. Scientology wrongly thought that Tom Cruise was invincible and that the media would never dare attack him. But by this time Pat Kingsley was gone as Tom's PR guru. She had been replaced by Tom's sister and fellow Scientologist, Lee Anne DeVette. Stripped of the guidance and protection of Pat Kingsley, the stage was set for disaster in Tom's career.

Tom Cruise and Scientology were caught sleeping. They never suspected that the planet was so angry at them. People all across the globe were watching and waiting for an opportunity to repay Scientology for inflicting decades of intimidation and outrageous and uncivilized barbarism upon the planet.

*****
Tom Cruise's interviews with Matt Lauer and Oprah interviews were defining moments in culture, for the world witnessed in them a major actor fall from his pedestal by his own bizarre actions. The world also decided that payday had come for Scientology: The world was no longer willing to accept the outrageous conduct or actions of Scientology and its adherents.

Scientology and Tom Cruise had sewn the wind and they would reap the whirlwind.

The outrage would be initially expressed as comedy and satire directed at Scientology. However, the comedy deepened into a sobering global realization of how dangerous and unbalanced Scientology really is. People read the websites and articles and were shocked to discover that Scientology really was a dangerous and fanatical cult as the critics had been saying all along.

Tom Cruise's popularity plunged in the months that followed. The Matt Lauer and Oprah interviews were absolute disasters for Tom Cruise and marked a turning point in his career as well as the fortunes of Scientology. Tom had gambled his prestiege and popularity to fight for Scientology and its belief in the evil galactic overlord Xenu and its fight against psychiatry.

Tom had gambled almost everything and had lost.

******
Tom Cruise only made it worse for himself and Scientology by going on the attack. People were absolutely outraged when Tom Cruise attacked the very likable Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields. Tom was being an imperious Scientology bully and people finally had had enough of Scientology's bullying and intimidation.

Matt Lauer simply said that psychiatric drugs had helped some people he had known. Tom talked over Matt and talked down to Matt: "Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even-- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's-- where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?"

To compound matters, Tom attacked Brooke Shields for making medical decisions appropriate to her life that were not in agreement with Tom's religion, a religion that costs $360,000 to go to the top. Tom Cruise essentially said that he and Scientology were better equipped to make medical decisions for Brooke Shields -- and for all other women suffering postpartum depression -- than Brooke or any other woman was.

Tom Cruise, a high school dropout, declared himself and his religion -- which is run by another high school drop-out named David Miscavige -- to be smarter and better than science and medicine.

People do not like uneducated religious fundamentalists of any stripe dictating healthcare or other life decisions to them, and Tom Cruise was doing exactly that: He was being an uneducated religious fundamentalist dictating terms to the world.

The world laughed in Tom's face and has not stopped since.

*****
This whole thing is not about psychiatry versus Scientology. It has very little to do with psychiatry and rather everything to do with the planet being completely fed up with Scientology's intimidation tactics. The planet is no longer willing to accept Scientology's intimidation tactics.

Tom Cruise just happened to be the person who crystallized the planetary resentment against Scientology's intimidation tactics.

******
The internet and the rest of the media immediately ran with the stories of Tom Cruise's belligerent and irrational Scientology behavior. The deep wellsprings of resentment against Scientology burst forth: The dam broke. The anger and contempt against Scientology that had been stored for decades engulfed Scientology in the floodwaters of popular outrage.

There is now so much negative media against Scientology that its private covert operations bureau named "OSA" is overwhelmed. Scientology calls negative media "entheta" and OSA is drowning in a flood of entheta that even its magical OT powers cannot stop.

A poster here at xenu.net named entheta_nyc wrote a public letter to Scientology's covert operatives:

Dearest OSA gals and goons:

...getting much sleep lately? I can't imagine that you have been. Must really suck having so many new situations to handle. Imagine how much enturbulation is not getting monitored, let alone getting handled, these days. And, it must be a real bummer that to the extent OSA had tech to handle the critics on the web up until this point (not very successfully, mind you), none of those strategies are even applicable to the new critics. Face it: there is no tech for handling ScienTOMogy.com or anything else that totally ridicules Scientology and doesn't even bother to take it seriously. As long as your job was to handle people trying to disseminate OT materials or former members speaking out you could delude yourself into thinking that this was a fight you could win or a situation that could be handled. Not. Any. More. You would have to handle every single person on this planet who has a sense of humor... I couldn't come up with a bigger joke than Scientology if I tried. ref:http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=14994

******
It is true: Scientology will never again be the same following Tom Cruise's disastrous PR flaps. The best Scientology could do following the debacle was to try to swindle the victims of Hurricane Katrina and attack scienTOMogy. Imagine the immorality of trying to sell expensive Scientology courses to people whose homes and lives were ruined by Hurricane Katrina! Yet it is true: Like vultures swooping down on the victims of a terrible natural disaster, over 1,000 Scientologists went down to Louisiana and other states in a concerted attempt to get traumatized victims to join Scientology and sign away their FEMA monies and insurance settlements to Scientology.

Can you say depraved?

******
OSA's attack on the brilliantly comical website scienTOMogy.com has to be the lamest, weakest, and most boomeranging legal attack Scientology has ever launched. For Scientology to attack a comedy website made it seem pathetic and clueless, especially when it decided to sue the sites creator for $100,000 for a so-called trademark infringement:

ref: www.scientomogy.com

This is the exact sort of bullying litigation and moral criminality that causes people globally to ridicule Scientology and to hold it in contempt.

Payday has come for Scientology.

By being completely unable to handle the onslaught of humor except by tepid legal threats that everyone laughed at, Scientology has shown that it has feet of clay. Scientology was able to defeat the IRS, but it has shown that it can't take a joke.

Humor is one of the best weapons to use against Scientology. As the Christians say, "The Devil hates to be laughed at." So does Scientology. You make the connection.

*****
One prediction is that David Miscavige (the leader of Scientology) will order some heads of critics to be put on pikes in order to show that Scientology is as big and bad as ever. However, Scientology will have to think very carefully about what it does because all of the radars of Western culture are up worldwide. The media and the planet are just waiting for Scientology to make its next mistake.

Has Scientology gotten the message from the planet that we want it to change and become peaceful and law-abiding or does it want more bad roads, more bad weather, and more bad press?

Did Scientology get the message?

*****
Scientology is now at a major crossroads in its life. It has to either radically reform itself now or Western Culture will continue to use the media to relentlessly take apart Scientology in the courts of world opinion.

Scientology has to declare that it is no longer in a state of war against its critics or the world at large. Scientology has to announce the cessation of hostilities against its critics and the world ar large and publicly announce sweeping internal and external humanitarian reforms.

The alternative for Scientology is to continue to face the critical mass of negative global opinion and diminishing stats. It is hard to be a Scientologist these days. All internal reports indicate a siege mentality and downstats. The best course of action for Scientologists is to go offlines for awhile and see what RTC does next:

Will there be an amnesty?

Will there be sweeping internal and external humanitarian reforms?

Will there be price reductions?

*****
In its present form, Scientology cannot repair the damage that it has done to itself let alone clear the planet.

What will Scientology do to repair itself?

Perhaps the larger question is if Scientology can repair itself?


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