Chris Shelton: logic and loyalty, on the line

Last year, someone sent me some Facebook posts of Chris Shelton that smeared me. Shelton’s purpose was obviously the same as cult head L. Ron Hubbard gave for Scientologists’ black propaganda: to help Ron, et al. destroy my reputation or public belief in me.

I had never met Shelton to my knowledge. I had never communicated to him or about him, and he had never to my knowledge contacted me. His out-of-the-blue smearing related to the Scientologists’ IRS tax exemption, which I have shown was unlawfully obtained for unlawful purposes.¹

Shelton black PRed me in comparisons to Mark Rathbun, which was similar to the function of Michael Hobson, who had been cyberstalking me on Rathbun’s behalf.²Rathbun, of course, committed crimes continuously against me for the Scientologists, most egregiously to obtain and keep the 1993 tax exemption.

I sent Shelton an email with his FB comments via his site’s contact form and asked him to confirm he was the person who posted them.

Dear Mr. Shelton:

Can you please confirm that you are the Chris Shelton who posted the following statements about me on Face Book:

Chris Shelton: An interesting theory, Jane, but not one that deserves your support. Panda is 100% on point with this. Gerry Armstrong’s claims are not based on the actual facts, which you can find in the actual eyewitness accounts and information on record from the 1980 – 1993 time period. Marty’s book, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, is probably the best account I’ve read yet of this and gives the exact reasons why the IRS capitulated.

[…]

Chris Shelton: Marty’s book talks about a conspiracy against Scientology itself with the AMA, APA, FBI, etc. from the dox recovered from the FBI raid and GO files. I don’t know if Marty still believes this conspiracy to be true or not, but he claims it was based on the dox he saw, not his own opinion about it. I can’t claim for sure that there was or was not such a conspiracy but I personally don’t believe there was. Organizational incompetence and human error are often interpreted in hindsight as conspiracy by those who like to see such things. That conspiracy that Marty was talking about has nothing to do with the nonsense that Gerry Armstrong is spewing about in the quote above.

[…]

Chris Shelton: Ok but you’re using Gerry Armstrong to refute Marty Rathbun, when the whole point of this was that Gerry Armstrong is full of it with the original claim on this thread. So this is kind of going nowhere.

My main point with the IRS thing is that Rathbun was there on the front lines of the IRS handlings and was intimately involved with the whole deal worked out with the IRS and he gave a very detailed account in his book about that. Anything Rathbun said about this is not refuted by other errors he may or may not have made about earlier conspiracies which he did not have any direct knowledge of. Gerry Armstrong was nowhere near any of the IRS dealings. So I don’t understand why I would listen to any opinions or conjecture of Armstrong about the IRS deal, especially when they openly defy logic and reason, such as the original quote in this thread. Armstrong may well be a reliable source on other points which he was directly involved in. I can’t say one way or the other because I haven’t read a lot from him. But I do know that when it comes to the IRS deal specifically, I will absolutely give “reliable source” status to Rathbun way before I will give it to Armstrong. That’s pretty much my whole point on this.

[…]

Chris Shelton: I will concede that Marty’s book may not be a 100% factual account of everything that occurred because it is a “memoir” – which means it is a book which tells the story from one person’s viewpoint or position. That doesn’t mean Marty was lying. You seem to write off every single thing the guy says as “lies” but haven’t actually proved that point. Marty’s book is a historical account told from his point of view. I cite it as a valid source for information about what went down with the IRS and I think I have a good reason to use it as a source for that. You notice I am clear in my comments here that I am only citing Marty’s data for the IRS information because he was intimately involved with the entire IRS handling from beginning to end. I did not cite Marty’s factualness with FAMCO or earlier conspiracies or anything else. You haven’t provided any proof that Marty lied about the IRS information. You have just used ad hominem to invalidate Marty’s IRS information because he may have been wrong about some other things.

I’m not even trying to defend Marty. Wasn’t my point in this thread at all. I was just citing a source that has more direct information about the IRS than Gerry Armstrong has. Now it’s all about what a liar Marty is, but even that case is not made by Tony Ortega. Tony even says “Rathbun doesn’t even seem to have read the reporting that was done to counter the church’s point of view at the time, because he never brings it up.” Maybe Marty never did read that other information! That doesn’t make him a liar. And Tony doesn’t call Marty a liar. He accuses Marty of writing a memoir – which is exactly what Marty did. He told an accounting of events as he saw them. And since Marty directly saw the IRS data, I tend to believe his reports about what happened with that. I hope I’m being clear about this. I’m refuting this one unfounded conclusion that Gerry Armstrong is making about the IRS and some bizarre idea that the US Government is somehow in cahoots with Scentology and is “so zealously been trying to aid the spread of Scientology.” That is the most ridiculous assertion I’ve heard in months.

If you are the person who made these FB posts, I would like to speak to you about some of the statements about me in them.

Thank you.

Gerry Armstrong
[contact info]

Shelton emailed me back that he was the same person who posted these statements, and added a somewhat snotty comment that any easy examination of his FB page and blog would show this.

I then emailed him:

Dear Mr. Shelton:

There is nothing else about me on your blog that I’ve found. I am not on FB. It was necessary to have you confirm that you posted the FB comments I quoted.

Please identify what you are talking about when you refer to “Gerry Armstrong’s claims.” Also please identify how you know these are my claims.

When you state, “Gerry Armstrong is full of it with the original claim on this thread,” what original claim did I make that you are claiming makes me full of it?

Is it your position that Marty Rathbun did not submit any false statements to the IRS in the materials on which the Scientologists’ tax exemption is based?

If yes, what do you base that on?

If you believe that he might have made false statements to the IRS to obtain the 1993 tax exemption, do you think he has any responsibility to correct those false statements?

Clearly, throughout your FB comments, and when you state, “I do know that when it comes to the IRS deal specifically, I will absolutely give “reliable source” status to Rathbun way before I will give it to Armstrong,” you are positioning yourself as my enemy. This makes sense because, of course, Marty Rathbun, whom you openly support, and David Miscavige, whom you also support, although probably not openly, have been fair gaming me for 32 years.

You can certainly correct the record you have made, and change your position regarding to me. We’ll see.

Hopefully,

Gerry

I didn’t hear back from Shelton, and six months went by.

When I saw recently that he had posted a video “Scientology: And Justice for All,”³ I thought that perhaps he might have had an ethical change; so I emailed him yesterday to see if he was ready to address his earlier smears. I included my earlier two emails for easy reference. I have been fighting for justice against the Scientologists for thirty-three years, and the Scientologists and their collaborators hate and attack me for doing so.

Rathbun, as is well known, perpetrated injustices against me, and other similarly placed wogs, as a duty, and a paid and in other ways rewarded full-time activity, for many years. Some of those injustices persist, and, in fact, Rathbun not only has done nothing about them, when something can be done, but acts to make them persist or add to them.

There is a set of people who claim to oppose the Scientologists, but nevertheless nastily and apparently baselessly attack me, and people who might support me. The Scientologists have always, of course, had operatives among their opponents. These people clearly had to do enough of what opponents of Scientology do to be accepted as opponents. It is, of course, not necessary to know whether my nasty, baseless attackers are operatives or if they are motivated by other handlers, groups or psychological phenomena. They all serve the Scientologists’ malevolent purposes.

The Scientologists’ key zone of operation where their evil purposes manifest and matter is legal – wog justice. The key to justice for all in the Scientology war is the IRS decision. Shelton’s denigrating me is specific to the IRS injustice, in which I was personally victimized, and which I seek to correct. He presents himself as a highly logical, reasoning person, indeed he calls himself “Critical Thinker at Large,” and writes instructions on the subject of logic. ⁴ He also presents himself in his FB posts as an authority about the IRS decision and Rathbun’s honesty.

Dear Mr. Shelton:

I saw your recent video about “justice for all.” Are you now ready to address your black PRing of me that I wrote you about last year? Your treatment of me after I asked you about the black PR was contemptuous, and I suppose it adds contempt that you’ve done nothing about it since.

You supported the injustices and crimes against me for years inside Scientology, and now outside you not only do nothing about them, but you support the black PR and continuing injustices.

I will be publishing about all this, so clearly you would want to have done the responsible thing.

Justly,

Gerry

Shelton emailed me back.

He accused me of creating a conflict that does not exist. This is impossible, of course. If I had actually created a conflict, it would necessarily have to exist. One simply cannot create something that does not exist. You can say, as Shelton did, that someone can create a conflict that does not exist; but that does not make a not-existing conflict exist. Obviously, my conflict is something he started with his statements in his Facebook posts that serve the Scientologists by black PRing me.

He wrote that he couldn’t believe I am still upset about a single comment he made about me. There was, of course, a series of comments. The accusation of upset is what Hubbard called a “double curve,” which is a standard device Scientologists use on their enemies.

Shelton wrote that no one else even remembers the Facebook thread in which he made his comments. The implication was that I was so unimportant it didn’t matter a fig to anyone else what he said about me; and I was wrong for caring. Although serving well enough to belittle me, his assertion that no one else even remembers is wholly illogical. He could not possible know if it is true. On the other hand, I can know it is false. Importantly, that anyone else even remembers is irrelevant, aside from its lame-excuseness.

He wrote that, if he recalled correctly, his single comment wasn’t even about me personally, but was simply a disagreement with a position I had taken. Clearly his multiple comments were about me personally. To claim that as some kind of justification is head-shaking. But to claim that what he wrote about me personally was not about me personally is a baldfaced lie. As I wrote above, I had included his FB comments in my email that he is responding to.

The FB thread, as it turns out, started with a quote from an English translation of a Russian article concerning a talk I gave in Moscow in 2011. The talk was in English and translated orally and consecutively into Russian, which the writer used for his article.⁵

Shelton’s comments were not simply a disagreement with a position I had taken. He asserted that my claims were not based on facts, without even identifying what my claims are. He accused me of spewing nonsense, even though he does not identify one thing I said or wrote. He stated that I was full of it, in fact that the whole point of the thread was that I was full of it, but does not provide any evidence or reason for my being full of it. He puts down a person for using me — meaning using my facts, evidence and reason — to refute Rathbun’s claims. Shelton’s labels for me in the crucial matter of the IRS tax exemption and the US’s undeniable collaboration with the cult are not position disagreements: “unfounded conclusion;” “bizarre idea;” “the most ridiculous assertion I’ve heard in months.” This is propaganda that serves the Scientologists’ nasty purposes. And Shelton has not supported his smears with logic or reason or facts, while asserting that any opinions or conjecture of mine openly defy logic and reason.

Shelton insisted that he has the right to disagree with anyone he wants to whenever he wants to. Well, duh.

He went on to explain that doing so is not an injustice, but simply voicing one’s opinion. Well, double duh.

It is a very old tack among the Scientologists and their collaborators to call their putdowns, smears or black PR “disagreements.” They then double curve their smears by smearing their victims for objecting to and seeking to correct mere disagreements or differences of opinion.

Shelton wrote that to take slight and offense at a comment made on Facebook, of all places, is to truly be making a mountain out of a crumb. This is another double curve. I logically objected to and sought to have corrected certain statements that constitute black PR, which serves the Scientologists’ antisocial purposes, and specifically concern the IRS tax exemption that affects, in fact victimizes, many people.

It is Shelton who has made his unprovoked and unsupportable obloquys mountainous, to the size where the whole pile should be public for everyone’s sake. It would have been so simple for him to communicate with me civilly, answer my questions, use his reason, support his assertions, and clean up his baseless black PR. Instead, he has refused to do any of these things, but has double-curved his smears and treated me contemptuously. He said some crumby things, wouldn’t come deal with the mountain he was making, and now the mountain must come to him.

It’s illogical for Shelton to depreciate Facebook as a place where what he says matters less or not at all. At the time he posted his comments about me, there were 1.3 billion FB users.

He accused me of having a “grudge match,” but did not explain what he was talking about. “Grudge match” is a term the Scientologists’ supporters use to disparage the importance or relevance of the Scientology v. Armstrong war. It serves the Scientologists’ purposes.

Shelton said that my grudge match is not going to be met by the same from him. It is unclear what he meant.

It is clear, however, that the Scientology v. Armstrong war is not a grudge match any more than framing anyone else with crimes is a grudge match.

He wrote that he has no quarrel with me. A “quarrel” is a disagreement or a cause for disagreement. That he claimed to have no quarrel with me while black PRing me, and specifically in the IRS matter, weighs toward a group agenda. Calling what he was writing about me “disagreement,” while proclaiming himself quarrel free with me is illogical. He picked the quarrel.

He wrote that my email was insulting and unjustified and that he wouldn’t be continuing to carry on any conversation with me if I continued in this vein. He wrote that if I choose to slander or attack him in a public forum, I am going to be disappointed at the results because he was not going to meet me at my level.

I would never choose to slander or attack him in a public forum, or anywhere else, although slandering and attacking me in a public forum was obviously his choice with his Facebook posts. Obviously too, he has taken my objection to his black PR and unreason, and my effort to get him to support or correct his statements against me, as attacks. That is also a typical scientological double curve: initiate black PR against a target and when he objects further black PR him for attacks.

If levels exist, he has never met me at mine. It is illogical then, and mere wishful postulating on Shelton’s part, that I would be disappointed if he didn’t meet me there. My level is full of evidence, reason, justice and humanity.

Shelton wrote that he highly recommended that I review my intentions carefully because sowing dissent in the “ex” community is a lose-lose for all concerned. This is pure projection because Shelton sowed the dissent when he posted the unmerited and unsupported black PR that so clearly serves the Scientologists’ purposes. He had to have wanted to sow that dissent.

He wrote that we should not be attacking one another, we should be helping one another. Well, triple duh. Yet he initiated the attack, and then has refused to help me, and other Scientology victims, by doing what’s right about his preemptive salvo of black PR.

He wrote that we are free to disagree on tactics, attitudes and ideas of how best to go about it but we should still work shoulder-to-shoulder.  Sure, but working shoulder-to-shoulder with people serving the Scientologists’ malevolent purposes toward their victims is unacceptable and folly, even if the workers are ignorant of what they are doing.

I emailed him:

Dear Mr. Shelton:

Your hypocritical treatment of me is something to behold. Your claims to logic and critical thinking are shown to be fraud. What causes you to risk all that just to deal with me so shabbily has to be extremely compelling. Obviously this calls out for public exposure.

It is black propaganda to call the Scientology v. Armstrong war a grudge match.

I am not on your side in some ex-community any more than Mark Rathbun is on my side.

You could be on my side, same as Rathbun could. But you cannot if you treat people this way, especially the Scientologists’ victims, and in other ways still serve the Scientologists’ malevolent intentions.

I know you can see my points. You are not ignorant of what you say or do.

With good reason.

Gerry

He emailed me back.

He wrote that perhaps I could clarify what gross injustice I consider he had committed against me because he honestly didn’t get it. He asked how had he treated me so badly. He said that he was not tracking with my accusations at all.

I emailed him:

Dear Mr. Shelton:

Perhaps you could identify where you think I considered you committed a gross injustice against me. If you can’t find such an accusation, that would explain why you don’t get it. Pretended ignorance is one of Scientologists’ common and major artifices or “beingnesses” for handling their enemies.

I find it impossible to believe that you are so incapable of logic that you cannot find your violations of logic in what you have written, both in your FB comments that started this matter, and in your treatment of me since I asked you to support or rethink your FB statements. (By the way, these statements are below. You implied you didn’t read what you had written when you falsely stated that your comments were but one comment and not about me personally, if you recalled correctly.)

I find it impossible to believe that you cannot honestly understand that your treatment was bad, as in unjustifiably contemptuous.

And I find it impossible to believe that you don’t know when your words and actions show your claims to logic and critical thinking to be fraud.

Yours fairly,

Gerry

He emailed me back.

He said he wouldn’t be answering any more of my emails. He wrote that clearly I have serious issues and that he is not interested in further discourse with me as I am threatening and frankly, very irrational. He said that he didn’t think I deal on well with criticism and that is too bad but it’s my problem, not his.  He said that he doesn’t know what end game I had in mind but he hopes I can learn that it’s totally OK for someone to disagree with me without me feeling the need to threaten and harass them.

I emailed him:

Dear Mr. Shelton:

I am sure we do not have a mutual cause.

It is you who attacked publicly. I have said not one word about you publicly.

It is you who chose in publicly attacking me to serve the Scientologists’ malevolent purposes for whatever pottage it gained you.

Now you have cowered out, rather than deal logically and honorably with what you started illogically and dishonorably.

Your attack on me is a public issue that you made public. You have kept it a public issue by your contemptuous treatment of me after your initial public attack.

May I recommend that you man up and confront the evil you are contributing to? It will not go away with more contempt, more illogic, more pretended ignorance about what you are doing.

It is wildly hypocritical of you to attack me publicly, attack me more when I sincerely ask you to support or rethink your public statements, and then barefacedly ask that I not do anything publicly about your public attack.

Believe me, what I do publicly to address your public attacks, or your private attacks for that matter, will not distract anyone from the real enemy. It will simply show how you support that enemy.

Sanguinely,

Gerry

In Shelton’s FB comments, one of the extraordinary “illogics” or “outpoints,” as the Scientologists would call them, is the idea that Mark Rathbun should be believed about the IRS tax exemption because he “was there on the front lines of the IRS handlings and was intimately involved with the whole deal worked out with the IRS.” This is an absurdly altered importance; or a willful lie, a calculated and defensive falsehood. It is like saying that OJ should be believed about the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman because he was there and intimately involved with the whole deal. The rapist should be believed because he was there from start to finish. The human rights violator should be believed because he was there through it all. Using that illogic, the person most intimately involved with all the crimes and abuses done in the name of Scientology, David Miscavige, should be most completely believed.

If Shelton is sincere about justice, truth, integrity, human rights and victims as he says in his public statements, then what he has done with me is astoundingly illogical. If he is not sincere, and has a hidden allegiance or agenda that can trump logic; i.e., require hypocrisy, then he could conclude that what he has done could be completely logical. That is because logic can serve either good or evil. There is considerable evidence with good reason that using one’s God-given logic for evil is ultimately illogical. Therefore hypocrisy doesn’t work.

That Shelton appears to understand logic, to the level of writing a primer on it, weighs, I believe, against sincerity. I have indicated a point or two of his profuse hypocrisy above. Rathbun’s being there actually weighs against him telling the truth because he committed serious crimes day in and day out in his intimate involvement with the whole deal. And he has not told the truth to date. Shelton’s assertions that in Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Rathbun gave a very detailed account of the whole deal worked out with the IRS, and gave the exact reasons why the IRS capitulated, are willfully false fact statements, easily verified as false with a quick read of the book. There is a conspiracy to maintain the unlawfully obtained IRS tax exemption, and Rathbun is still in that conspiracy. So apparently is Shelton.

He also proffers the corollary illogic to the one in which Rathbun should be believed because of his intimate involvement in the crime. The corollary is that I should not be believed, and my opinions or conjecture about the IRS deal should not be listened to because I was nowhere near any of the IRS dealings. This is like saying that the victim of a burglary shouldn’t be believed if he wasn’t home at the time. The victim of black propaganda should not be believed because he wasn’t there when the black propagandists were black PRing him. A person who assembled a mass of documentation about some evil should not be believed because he was nowhere near the evil dealings. The opinions and conjecture of an investigator who investigates a crime should not be listened to because he was nowhere near it when it went down. Lawyers would never be believed unless they defended themselves in their own crimes or torts.

Shelton’s message in his FB comments was a perfect duplication of Miscavige’s decades-long command intention: I should not be listened to, but the people who victimized me and others should be listened to and believed. Shelton is doing this despite the hurt it causes me and others, and to the cause of justice itself. He is doing it knowing, from the subject matter of the “IRS Deal,” from my communications, from everything easily available online, and from logic, that he was acting to prejudice every man, woman and child, etc. That is true, even if he only knew that he really didn’t know what he was doing, or saying.

Should he choose the debate option, I propose as proposition:

• that Gerry Armstrong should be believed about what he has said and knows about the “IRS Deal”

He would argue:

• that Gerry Armstrong should not be believed about what he has said and knows about the “IRS Deal”

Each side could have, e.g., a half hour to make his argument, then a half hour cross-examination, and then a fifteen minute rebuttal.

Notes