By email and posted at: https://gerryarmstrong.ca/compliance-report-to-marisa-sigmond/
Dear Marisa:
Here is a transcript of the section relating to me from your July 13, 2024 video, “Listen Up Gerry Armstrong!!!” Thanks for your Tone-40 Admin TR. I did indeed listen up. You’re mainly interested in my relationship with Alanzo, Allen Stanfield; or you’re interested, rather, in its termination. But I’ll first clarify some other things.
I was not the original, or an original, anti-scientology activist. I was not the original person to pretty much crush boundaries within the cult, whatever they might be, or to do whatever else I ended up doing. And I wasn’t the original person to go public with the realization that Hubbard was a giant lying fraud.
People had been communicating critically about Hubbard and Scientology, singing songs and carrying signs for decades before I came along. There was, and is, in certain matters, a particular value for my experiences and knowledge, and for my authentication of relevant Hubbard and Scientology policies, practices, actions and documents, because it all corroborated some of the earlier writers, victims and activists’ experiences and knowledge, for which they were being Fair Gamed.
I first spoke up about my experiences and knowledge in the fall of 1981; that is, my experiences and knowledge that Hubbard and his enforcers did not want spoken up about. Standardly, the Scientology muscle – RTC, the PIs, the lawyers, OSA, all their collaborators, everyone under David Miscavige — attack up-speaking relevant truth-tellers, and seek to silence and destroy us. A material fact underlying this criminal compulsion to silence and destroy the persons speaking up and telling the relevant truth, is that the Scientologists, et al. have nothing to offer.
In my experience and knowledge, they — RTC, the PIs, the lawyers, OSA, all their collaborators, everyone under David Miscavige – have never offered anything to confute, counter, or even address the relevant truth that up-speakers have spoken. Up-speaking truthtellers comprise the class of wogs the Scientologists dub “Suppressive Persons” (“SPs”) and target as “Enemies.” We are treated or handled as “Fair Game.”
For forty-two years and change the Hubbardite and Miscavigeite Scientologists have postulated and acted against me as a major SP, high priority for silencing and destroying. Postulate” is Hubbard’s scriptural word he defined as “self-created truth.” They “create” as truth a hateful image of me, and create years of hating my image. Their postulated goal is to silence and destroy me. Their attitude and actions to achieve this postulated and unlawful goal is known as “Fair Game.” I have been neither silenced nor destroyed, so have been an activist as long as I’ve been speaking up.
Hubbard “scripture” equates the condition, motivation, actions of “Suppressive Persons” with wog mental science’s “antisocial personalities,” or “sociopaths.” The biggest SPs, whom the Miscavigeites spend boxcars of beans to silence and destroy are, for the most part, linked by their speaking up about their experiences and knowledge of what the Miscavigeites don’t want spoken up about. Scientologists derive “great gain,” “power,,” by their hypocrisy. And their collaborators, the phallanx of lawyers, PIs, police, government officials, and real-life sociopaths, gain a suitcase of spondulicks and the protection and laughs of devilhood.
You mention that I live in Canada not because I want to. And you mention that legally I have to stay in Canada. In the sense that I don’t want to live in any other country more than I want to live in Canada, I can honestly say that I live in Canada because I want to.
I am Canadian, so living here is natural. The fact of my being here for twenty-seven years following my return to Canada, with the exceptions of a thankfully and quickly aborted effort to live and litigate in Nevada, and twenty or so months in Germany, also supports the conclusion that I wanted to live here. My time with Caroline in Germany was to escape and minimize Fair Game against us in Canada and build our first web sites. This made it possible to speak up, and to undertake my defense in the Miscavige cult’s litigation. My Answer from Germany to the cult’s pending complaint: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a7/3394.php
In most cases or countries, where I domiciled for a bit in my adult life, I wanted to live. I always tried to make the best of it. Also in most cases, if my only other option is to not want to live where I’m living, I think that I’d rather want to. Basically, I’m pretty sure that, so far at least, wherever I am I’m supposed to be. I am additionally apparently seamlessly connected to where I will be. These conditions are part of a simple life’s purposefulness.
It’s true that for a time after I left California and returned to Canada, I attempted, in compliance with the US’s rules, to maintain and not lose my US alien resident status. Then it became obvious that I could not, for material world real reasons, return to the US to live. Plus, I was wanted in Canada, not as in the US for the punishment ordered against me, but for the help I could give here. Actions the at-cause Scientologists took that drove me to leave my home in California, where I also had been where I had been supposed to be, and made me to lose my very valuable residency status, however, were torts and crimes, and are ongoing.
It is also true that I did return to California on a couple of occasions to attend a silly trial and then oral argument in a rigged appeal in the Armstrong VII case. This was a lawsuit the Miscavigeite Scientologists filed in their campaign to silence and destroy me, seeking ten million dollars plus for my mentions of my Scientology-related experiences or knowledge. Time, however, has unwound as it does, and for many years I have not entertained any desire to go back to the US to live. Despite that absence of any desire to live there, as a citizen of the Free World I am a known opponent of the SP doctrine-supporting dictatorship and dictator running the Free World where I live in one of its currently compliant countries, Canada. Powerocracies are living the lie.
There are still jail sentences, fines and obscene money judgments against me in the US, all of which violate the US’s laws and Constitution, and human rights charters virtually everywhere. The US Intelligence Community, of course, is in cahoots with the Miscavigeite Scientologists. There has been no sign of a change of mind or heart from any relevant US Government official, or even from any irrelevant one. I’ve suggested that someone with a conscience in the Federal Government officially invite me to DC to testify, and I’m holding out for that solemn occasion. I’m not, however, holding my breath.
I don’t legally, or even illegally, have to stay in Canada, at least as far as I know. I haven’t left the country, or tried to, for almost seven years. I also recognize that since then some security bureaucrat could have put me on a no-fly-list, or done something dastardly to detain, derail or destroy me.
Back when I was living in California and the cult had just obtained IRS tax exemption, someone fingered me as a hot prospect, or hot suspect, for the Unabomber’s crimes. In 2020, the cult’s in-house lawyer Kendrick Moxon made an in-court threat to get me extradited from Canada. Right now, ever since the start of the Ukraine war, some Scientologists or Scientology collaborators have been disseminating and maintaining the dangerous lie that I’m a key cause of the conflict. I am sure these people have had me declared falsely an “enemy of Ukraine” and put on the Myrotvorets kill-list. https://gerryarmstrong.ca/the-gerry-armstrong-book-a-murder-mystery/
The Scientologists or their collaborators have physically assaulted me a bunch of times, and the willingness to hurt me is a cult-wide rule of honor.
There is, therefore, good reason to recognize that, though I might be the walking antithesis of an actual Unabomber, or the peacenik antipode of some actual mad war monger, there are corporally powerful people with connections into tops of government that still want me silenced and destroyed. The key weapon in the Scientologists’ Fair Game arsenal is “black propaganda” or “black PR.” I have not heard a word, however, that I would be prohibited, for any official legal, administrative or national security reason, from leaving Canada. I am living, therefore, with a good faith belief that I can legally, and without “official” obstruction, leave whenever I want.
It is also my belief that there are many countries I could travel to freely and be welcomed in, if I am reasonably called. As I mentioned, I don’t intend to travel to the US until one of the Federal Government branches invites me, but pretty well every other country I feel free to visit. Maybe not Ukraine, where I’m surely hit-listed, but, who knows, they could delist me and invite me too.
It’s fair, I think, to acknowledge that long trips are more difficult and physically challenging for me now than even just seven years ago, and almost all my trips outside Canada since I returned here in 1987 have been long ones. So, I don’t know if I’ll ever leave this place. I can, however, if I believe I’m needed.
You called Alanzo my “sidekick,” and you ask, “Why [am I] teaming up with [him], given [his] track record of publicly stating that he feels that Scientology is an oppressed religious minority group.” “Sidekick,” which has its own Wikipedia page, is “a close companion or colleague who is, or is generally regarded as, subordinate to those whom they accompany.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidekick
It’s funny that you dox Alanzo as my “sidekick,” because three or so years ago Italian Scientology-colluding academic Massimo Introvigne, PhD publicly labeled me a “minor sidekick” of Alexander Leonidovich Dvorkin, PhD, a fairly famous Russian religion scholar and friend of mine.
In March 2021, I gave a short talk “Exceptional Hypocrisy: The US’s International Religious Freedom program” at a Zoom conference in Paris,
https://gerryarmstrong.ca/exceptional-hypocrisy-the-uss-international-religious-freedom-program/
and in a subsequent article disparaging the conference and the participants Introvigne wrote:
Playing the anti-Western and anti-American card is common in Russia, but what is interesting is Dvorkin’s attempt to sell his toxic merchandise in the West. He came to the conference accompanied by some minor sidekicks, including Gerry Armstrong, an American anti-cult activist who in 2014 wrote to Vladimir Putin calling him a victim of “massive Western campaigns” of “black propaganda,” and asking Russia to intensify its persecution of Scientology.
I pushed back a bit in a response I titled “Masterminds, Sidekicks and the Bear, Oh My!”
Introvigne does not identify the “toxic merchandise” he says Dvorkin is attempting to sell in the West. Introvigne also does not say how my participating in the conference helps sell this unidentified “toxic merchandise.” Introvigne is using the common black PR technique of shameless innuendo.
I did not accompany Dvorkin to the conference any more than I accompanied any of the other ten or so participants. I doubt that Dvorkin and I got within eight thousand one hundred ninety-some-odd kilometers of each other during the conference.
Introvigne’s clear intent is to trivialize me when he calls me Dvorkin’s “minor sidekick.” I don’t recall anyone previously ever referring to me as someone’s “sidekick,” minor or otherwise, but here it’s not a bad role. For Introvigne, it’s a black PR failure. The Bible, although my KJV does not contain the word, names a number of venerable sidekicks: Moses had Aaron, David had Jonathan, Paul had Barnabas, and Jesus had a dozen. Now Dr. Dvorkin has Gerry Armstrong.
Introvigne calls me an “American” as if it’s a slur. I’m actually a dyed-in-the-wool Canadian and have been my whole life. It’s true I’m a North American, but have never claimed to be a mere American. I have stated that I am a Canadian in sworn and publicly available declarations and affidavits, and even publicly posted images of my Canadian passports. ((http://www.gerryarmzzgstrong.org/50grand/writings/historical/passport-1971-01-25-2-3.html )) In my 2014 article, which Introvigne links to and lies about, my first words were, “When growing up in Chilliwack, British Columbia.” Further on in the article, referring to the date I published it, I wrote, “It is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.” Introvigne has pretended ignorance of voluminous evidence and then not scored a black PR point.
So, I’ve had, as you might imagine, some time to ponder sidekickery — what it means to be or have a sidekick. And I’ll have to protest, or confess, that Alanzo is not really nor truly my sidekick. I don’t think of him as I might a sidekick, if I had one. I also don’t think he’ll argue with my rejection of sidekickistry as any form or foundation for our actual relationship. Hearing that one isn’t what one isn’t can’t be all that disappointing. In this situation, Alanzo hearing from me that he isn’t my sidekick does not alter what in our real material or extra-material relationship he really is, or we really are.
For the same reasons that Alanzo is not my sidekick I am not his. I accompanied Dr. Dvorkin hundreds of times, indeed stayed at his home in Moscow, and traveled with him many miles by planes, trains, automobiles, busses, kick scooters, и пешком. It might also be said that he accompanied me. Ironically enough, I did not, as Introvigne claimed, however, accompany Dvorkin to the Paris conference. Introvigne made this false claim to bolster his assertion, his postulate that I am, was, or had been Alexander Dvorkin’s sidekick, and, more deplorably, a minor one in a whole stable of major and minor sidekicks. I have never accompanied Alanzo anywhere, however, and he has never accompanied me. So, in truth, certainly, Alanzo is not and never was my sidekick, and vice versa.
Introvigne uses the term as a condemnation, although it is actually neutral. With superheroes, the sidekick shtick could be super honorable, deserving a super commendation. Cf. that infinitely lovable superhero Perfecto and his faithful sidekick Miracle Boy. But being Hitler’s sidekick, if he had had one, is, societally, still, at this point, an irredeemable role, even though it might sell books: I Was Hitler’s Sidekick©.
The Internet reports that “a villain‘s supporters are normally called henchmen, minions, or lackeys, not sidekicks.” David Miscavige does not have a sidekick exactly that I know of. He has a kennel of henchmen, a million minions, and lakhs of lackeys. He might have a batman, or a batgirl, or a buddy bodyguard. I have none of these: no henchmen, minions, lackeys, followers, disciples, devotees, batmen, or bodyguards, and no sidekicks, or even applicants for a sidekick position.
The closest thing I have to a sidekick is sweet Caroline, who has accompanied me for thousands of miles and a couple of hundred thousand hours, and even accompanies me to bed, which is very sidekickesque. She is, however, impossibly unsubordinate. I think that unsubordination — not insubordination, God forbid — has largely worked. Every other smart, good-hearted wife might also be unsubordinate to their husbands, and may their husbands be unsubordinate to them. No second bananas in the bunch.
It could be said that during his Sea Org period in his cult-running years, when he was riding high on the high seas, L. Ron Hubbard had a bevy of sidekicks called “Commodore’s Messengers.” They sidekicked for him in shifts or “watches.” They lit his cigarettes and held his ashtray to catch his ashes and give him a firm foundation for him to crush out his fags. They ran his messages, enforced his orders, stayed nearby, awake and on watch, even as he slept. They reportedly helped him on with his pants when he arose. Now those are sidekicks!
When I first came aboard the “Apollo” in 1971, Hubbard’s unmissable sidekicks, the Messengers, were all young women or just girls. They were in every way I could conceive of, on or off watch, his subordinates. And in those years, they accompanied him everywhere. He was, of course, a bit of a villain, so they could be called “handmaids,” or “henchbabes.”
Introvigne and his trucklers smear Professor Dvorkin as patently evil, making his sidekicks evil, no matter how minor, merely for sidekicking around with him. My association with “the notorious Dr. Dvorkin” is supposed to therefor make me wrong about Scientology. Sidekicking around with just about anyone, however, except maybe for Hitler, or Jeffrey Epstein, might prove valuable on a résumé. Even this special relationship’s negation or vilification might have value. Alanzo can emphasize on his résumé: “Globally falsely accused of being That Gerry Armstrong’s sidekick.” I might include on my résumé, when applying for one position or another: “Imputed minor sidekick of Prof. Alexander L. Dvorkin.”
Contemporaneousness in the material world, appears to be a necessary component in human (Wog and Scientologist) sidekick relationships. Alanzo can call Old Jim Bridger his hero, follow in Jim’s footsteps, and consider himself subordinate in the Mountain Man class. But Alanzo really can’t be Jim’s sidekick. The opportunity for a sidekickship sailed with Bridger when crippled and blinded he retired to his apple orchard in Kansas City, Missouri and died in 1881. Hubbard’s nubile sidekicks from the 1960s and ‘70s lost any chance to residekick for him when he rocketed off from his meat-body’s impediments, so the Miscavigeites’ hagiography says, “to continue his research on another plane of existence.”
Alanzo has a relationship with me, just as he can have one with Jim Bridger. But that relationship is not sidekicking for either Jim or me. It’s one hundred forty-three years too late with Jim. Sure, before Alanzo and I stop completely changing position in time, he could still conceivably accompany me somewhere, and during our accompaniment he could pass for a seemingly standard sidekick. Indeed, he could do it as a professional. Maybe the State of Wyoming would invite me, and we could sidekick for each other into the Bridger Wilderness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridger_Wilderness
There is, however, the other condition I mentioned earlier, in addition to physical world accompaniment that would prevent Alanzo, and anyone else, from ever being my sidekick, and that is the impossibility of subordination. I simply do not consider Alanzo, nor anyone else, subordinate to me in any relevant way. Everyone is my equal in every relevant way; in fact, contrary to Hubbard’s big OT III “cognition,” we really are one.
Ironically, my asseverated equality with the Scientologists in every relevant way is key to why they hate me, and are doing their damnedest to silence and destroy me. They use Scientology to make themselves better and greater than us, and to give themselves exceptionality and the authority to control us. Scientology is what, in their teachings and learnings, makes them right and others wrong. They achieve superiority, in their minds, by postulating, or projecting, inferiority in others. It’s fake superiority, of course. Actual superiority in a relevant way is unattainable. Wogs are in every relevant way the Scientologists’ equals. Subordination is futile. Scientology doesn’t work. Thank God.
Years ago, not long after I started speaking out about my Scientology-related experiences and knowledge, I adopted a Bob Dylan lyric as my basic mantra for my kinship with my fellow earth-dwellers:
I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, and the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different than anyone
Ain’t no use a-talkin’ to me
It’s just the same as talkin’ to you.
( From “I Shall Be Free No. 10”)
Over all these years, a number of people, and agents of a number of entities, have sought to talk to me, and have talked to me, wittingly or unwittingly, overtly or covertly, sincerely or insincerely. And they wanted to talk to me even though it was just the same as talkin’ to them, or you, or out loud on a telephone wire.
These days, everything I say audibly is recorded, I’m sure, and everything I think of is recorded elsewhere. After living not too far out of step with Dylan’s brotherhood-of-man confession above, I came across some on-point Good Book corroboration that sealed the deal for me: God making the sun to shine on the evil and on the good; sending rain on the just and on the unjust; and being no respecter of persons. Check it out.
So, to me at least, Alanzo is not my sidekick, and never has been. And, as I said, vice versa. Nor does he strike me in any way as antisidekickish. Let’s say I actually acquire a sidekick — if for no other reason than with God all things are possible, and He is inter alia sensus humoris — I don’t think Alanzo would be unamused. He is not subordinate to me in any relevant way. In court or deposition, if, based reasonably on some reasonably relevant issue, some real lawyer asked me, “Are you friends with Allen Stanfield, aka Alanzo?” I predict that, given my present experiences and knowledge, I would testify, simply, “Yes.”
OK then, let’s say we’re friends, as far as I can see. It’s not a horribly long friendship but does go back some years. It can be readily divined and analyzed from reams of publicly available e-information, tangential and non-tangential.
Now, back to your question, “Why am I teaming up with Alanzo given his track record of publicly stating that he feels that Scientology is an oppressed religious minority group?” In temporal terms, it can easily be seen that whatever “teaming up” I’ve done with him, which can be ascertained from easily available public e-information, is what I might do with almost anyone. He interviewed me and I spoke up about my experiences and knowledge. All sorts of people, professional or amateur, commercial or transmundane, have interviewed me about, in some way, my Scientology-related experiences and knowledge.
Alanzo has communicated with me in different media just as all sorts of other persons have over my adult lifetime. So, it can reasonably be concluded that I’ve teamed up with a great slew of people. It can also be discerned that our myriad team-ups — if teaming up is seen as a temporal activity — has all sorts of temporal reasons, causes or explanations. Read all about them!
Now, in the realm of spirit, and certainly applicable in this public spectacle, a basic law is the holiness of relationships. All relationships are holy. None more than others. To someone who knows this, it can be seen that holy relationships can be short — a smile, a “good morning,” a drive-by shooting — or, once formed, can last a day, a night, a year, a lifetime, and, Who knows? beyond. Although he’s not my sidekick, Alanzo and I have a holy relationship. Clearly, there is nothing exceptional in this. It’s just the best factual starting point I’ve found for understanding relationships, and experiencing them, to whatever degree, in the spiritual state.
I’ve discovered in all this thought on sidekickery, that the truest of sidekick relationships for people everywhere is with God. He goes before, we follow. He leads us to safety and on surprise missions. He restoreth our souls. This admittedly could be a difficult relationship to form, even if an applicant had some awareness it was what he or she was hoping or holding out for. Believe me. Sidekicking for God is eminently persecutable in our society, even if He has you spending your time picking up trash, pulling weeds, or riding herd on the garbage dumpsters for Him. I know He keeps sidekicks working who haven’t a clue they’re sidekicking for Him.
Fortunately for God’s sidekicks, who could be a heavenly host division for all we know, sidekicking for Him is a relatively invisible activity, except to those looking for it. He, of course, is Spirit. I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say should be construed as legal advice; with that said, it could be that sidekicking for God is still a lawfully unprosecutable activity at this time. It is also, nevertheless, a particularly perilous activity because it will draw us into engagement with the malign, anti-God entities like the Miscavigeite Scientologists and their colluders, collaborators or coconspirators who order, implement, facilitate or countenance our persecution.
There are lots of people saying the world has no relationship with God. For a sensible discussion, it is better to understand that “they” simply don’t realize they have such a relationship, indeed a holy one. Among some of those who would say they had a relationship with Him, there is an apparency, a delusion, that He’s sort of our sidekick, that He goes where we wilt, He runs errands for us, He serves us.
God’s countless aware or unaware sidekicks’ relationship with Him can be seen clearly in the subject and activity of wisdom. He doesn’t ask for wisdom from us; but if we ask Him for wisdom, He giveth it liberally. We cannot use God, and it is better to not spend time trying. He, however, uses His sidekicks. Jesus, it could be said truthfully, was God’s perfect sidekick. He was like a son to Him.
My worldly relationship with Alanzo started when we were both participating on alt.religion.scientology (“a.r.s.”). We had an adversarial relationship for a while. When he was in Scientology, he had been briefed about me and brought to image me as an evil entity. I had never heard of him. In fact, I didn’t know his name for some time after we had communicated adversely or otherwise on a.r.s.
At some point I saw that he was being maltreated in the evolving Cybertology milieu similarly to how I was being maltreated, and by the same set, more or less, of de facto “opinion leaders” in the supposed antiscientology side of the steeming milieu. I’ve had my way of dealing with this phenomenon, and Alanzo has had his own way, which differs from mine at certain points.
He has been supportive publicly, accepted my words, posted my materials, spoke up, engaged with me adult-to-adult, and granted me credence. Granting credence is a crucial issue with the Miscavigeite Scientologists and their collaborators. They live by the politique des paranoïaques that anyone who grants credence to me, or to persons acting in concert with me, are “enemies” to be silenced and destroyed. I grant credence to Alanzo, thus vice versa, and so it goes.
You say, Marisa, that I’m “like mountains and mountains elevated above [Alanzo’s] intellect level,” and that’s why I “should go on [my] own.” It’s such a funny image, being mountains and mountains above Alanzo’s intellect level. It’s so impossibly untrue that it’s exceedingly risible. The truth is, he is easily just as intellectually endowed as I am. We have individual and unique educations, experiences, connections, knowledge, vocabularies, styles, interests, you name it. A rare point possibly at which our street lives actually do come close to coinciding is at our IQs, our “intellect levels.”
I’ve chuckled a lot in the few times Alanzo and I have talked by phone. He wrote somewhere that I’d been giggling, which I think he said to support a defense of me that I wasn’t, as the Miscavigeites, et al. black PR me, a humorless sociopath. I did a shallow dive into giggling and chuckling, found some giggle and chuckle “sound effects” online, and presented my materials to Alanzo. He heard me, received my evidence and argument, went with the facts and the flow, and agreed that we both had chuckled, and not giggled. I chuckled a lot because he was often funny, and I’m attuned a lot of the time to senses of humor and the incidents, connections, and words that whet them.
I admit to chortling too once in a while, but chuckling is my most common, average form of the “pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, usually audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system.” Laughter, it turns out, in which both chuckling and chortling are subforms, is a new academic subdepartment, I’m not joking, just being introduced as Risibology. In 1978, Hubbard assigned me to the RPF for “Joking,” which could make a hilarious teaching opportunity.
The chuckling matter evidences Alanzo’s possession of a sense of humor, which is a valuable and salvatory life gift, but also shows his willingness to change a position he’d taken. He’d made an inconsequential fact flub, mislabeling my recurrent chuckling “giggling.” I spoke up, gave him my info, and he accepted my facts. It seems to me that a big beef with him is his refusal, his critics say, to change his publicly stated facts, opinions, conclusions, etc. when legitimately challenged. You know, like a politician.
Actually, in relation to me, and beyond, Alanzo has demonstrated an ability to change his mind and its positions, not just by facing the music of my chuckling, but with his deeply held opinions of me as a person. He started off classifying and treating me as the proverbial evil SP, a frightful, dangerous enemy, and then he changed his mind. He’d read enough of my writings and documents, I suppose, listened to enough of my talking, and thought enough about the circumstances in which all of this was happening, to do a U-turn.
Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder, and others from their group, knew me personally in the cult, and for years hated me and worked on silencing and destroying me, far beyond the antipathy Alanzo-the-Scientologist had for me, or any nastiness he did to silence and destroy me. Rathbun, Rinder, et al. left the Miscavigeite cult, they said, declared themselves free of their programming, and had for decades possessed my writings, talks, docs and thoughts, and then some. They never, however, changed their minds about me. And they all act to keep Scientology working, to keep its tax exemption working, to keep getting away with what they’ve gotten away with.
Alanzo has also openly promoted his major religious mind-changing and life-changing decisions, his apostasies, and where he’s at now in relation to his previously sincerely held beliefs.
I was 16 years in Scientology 15 years in anti Scientology. And now I’ve been eight years out of both, writing about each.
Because, materially-speaking, we had communicated, to whatever extent, and done an currently-important interview; because of his demonstrated willingness and ability to change his mind or position; and because of your video to which I’m responding, I proposed to Alanzo to debate him regarding what you say is “his track record of publicly stating that he feels that Scientology is an oppressed religious minority group.” He agreed to my debate proposal.
Accepting for now what you’ve said, his fact proposition is, “Scientology is an oppressed religious minority group.” Alanzo, of course, can challenge or correct your language and this draft proposition. My counter-proposition, for now, is something like, “Sure, to a few people, because you can, as you demonstrate, get people to believe almost anything. But Scientology is so much more than that to so many more people.” Ask Al-Qaeda’s press agents; they’ll swear by Allah that they’re ‘an oppressed religious minority group.’ Ask a Jew for that matter. And for that matter, ask a Christian.
When I spoke to Alanzo, he agreed to a debate tentatively on the issue of “What is Scientology?” which could be one hell of a listing question for both wogs and Scientologists. Is it an oppressed religious minority group? Is it that and more? Or is it something else entirely? We agreed to work out a debate format; timetable; pre-debate stipulated facts, issues and parameters; media and other technical issues; and give ourselves time to prepare, define our terms, etc.
Actually, after thinking about this concept for a while, I believe an informal discussion, a conversation, not a debate, is the way to go. No winner, no loser, no moderator, nothing resembling or restimulating the electronically-laid-in US Presidential Debate engrams, which are still painful. Oddly, I disagree with Alanzo on a number of relevant Scientology-related issues. This is probably, in part, because he makes his position public on these issues, and invites discussion. I say “oddly’ because you’re pretty well telling me that I’m about the only living humanoid who agrees with Alanzo about almost anything.
Although he hasn’t agreed to a discussion, he did agree to a debate, so the less structured discussion format shouldn’t be at all objectionable.
Here are some topics he will recognize that could produce good discussions:
- Is Scientology just an average, common oppressed religious minority group?
- Is “brainwashing” a scam, or a recognizable facet of Scientology?
- What exactly are “Antiscientology” and “Anticult” or “Anticultism? and who or what cares?
- What is a viable way forward in a quest for justice for Scientology’s victims?
One last thing: Should you desire a signed printout of this letter, please send me your postal address, $15.00 US, and $10.00 US to cover printing, postage and particulars, and I will mail you such a signed document.
Same for anyone else who would like an originally signed copy. If there are any other documents people would like me to sign, just mail them to me, and I’ll sign for $15.00 US per page, and sensible ppp. Don’t send confessions to be signed, or a criminal conspiracy’s membership pledge, or an order form for some endangered species, or that sort of thing. You want something a grandchild would appreciate, or collectors would pay big bucks for, and which would show up on Quora in a decade or so.
Peace out.
Gerry Armstrong
cc: Alanzo