Hubbard, Scientology, death and memes

Jon Atack wrote on Ex Scientologist Message Board:

After the Armstrong case, attorney (and legend) Mike Flynn turned to Gerry and told him he’d killed Hubbard. We killed Scientology at Toronto. All we have to do now is dig a big enough hole to bury it in. ¹

Jon also emailed me about the “death” of Scientology. He wrote that, as he had said from the stage, we, the conference participants, have killed Scientology, in the same way that my attorney Michael Flynn had said that I had killed L. Ron Hubbard.

Jon had made such a statement on the last day of the conference. It wasn’t sensible for me to respond publicly at the time, although it was eminently called for. I am certain I had some brief interactions later with conference participants about Jon’s proclamation that Scientology is dead and we killed it, because it was brand new news, important to me, and there were lots of people who talked with me the final evening.

Jon continued in his email that after Flynn said I’d killed him, Hubbard’s body lumbered on, but his credibility was shot by different judicial exposés, including the 1984 judgment in the Scientologists’ first case against me.

The deaths of Hubbard and Scientology and Scientologists are not the same at all. One is, in human terms, true. Hubbard is dead. The other is not true, the Scientologists and their entities are not dead, and we did not kill them. This is being presented as a meme for acceptance, which, I believe is so erroneous that I would speak up publicly. I also have, of course, a personal interest in this meme because Caroline and I, and all sorts of people acting in concert with me, are still combatting the Scientologists and their collaborators, who are very much alive, and not killed one whit.

Flynn’s comment to me, “You killed him…you killed Hubbard,” was after the settlement in December 1986 and after Hubbard really was dead, which was January 1986. The Scientologists remaining have not been killed in the same way. Nor have their organizations, nor their lawyers, nor their connections and agents in high and deadly places.

I, of course, knew that Flynn was only talking psychically, and I really had not killed L. Ron Hubbard at all. But he is, in human terms, dead. This is something on which wogs and Scientologists agree. He’s dead. Scientology and Scientologists are not.

So his body had lumbered its last long before Flynn said I’d killed him. I wrote something about this in 2011:

I had a friend, a very smart professional, who said to me, not long after Hubbard’s death, and quite seriously, “You killed him, Gerry.” Of course I hadn’t. All I had done was tell the truth about things that needed the truth told about them when there was the opportunity to tell it. I could see, however, where, following the Breckenridge decision, following his failed ops to silence me, and in the grip of long term malignant narcissism, Hubbard could have seen me as the executioner he’d appointed. He couldn’t come out of hiding, the Scientology v. Armstrong judgment in LA identified him as virtually a pathological liar, and the criminal division of the IRS was using the judgment and case documents to go after him and the organization.

My career as an appointed executioner should have ended there, but DM then appointed me his executioner. He must have thought the truth was killing him, and he went to extremes to suppress it and silence the people telling it. He committed and got others to commit countless pettinesses and crimes to appoint me their executioner.

Marty spent his years in the Sea Org with me as his appointed executioner, and over the past couple of years has newly appointed me his executioner.

Appointing me as their executioner must mean Scientology’s myriad beneficiaries are feeling something different from great, I guess. Postulating me as executioner imputes to me the evilest of intentions toward them and a threat to their dynamics, which means their “eternity.” I’m a living threat to their universal postulate to have lies be true. Their willingness to fight back was triggered a generation ago and we have been at war ever since.

Scientologists war on me because I tell the truth. Yet telling the truth is the only real hope I have to end the war. I want their war on me and persons acting in concert with me to be over, because it’s time, although it always was time. Ending their war is as easy for the Scientologists as not appointing anyone their executioners.²

In his email, Jon wrote that it remains for Scientology and Scientologists to be buried but their back has been broken. He said it was “the Beast” that remains to be buried, but I am sure he was referring to Scientology and the Scientologists keeping it working.

The Scientologists’ back is not broken, and, they are as motivated as ever by base desires including revenge. Revenge is command intention. They have $60 K in a heartbeat, and can get it to pretty well anywhere on planet earth in hours. We the people who supposedly killed them don’t have it and are relegated to hustling for it.

The Scientologists are not dead. Fortunately, neither am I, nor are many other people who stand up to the Scientologists’ lies, aggression and threat in this war. The Scientologists’ back is not broken. Fortunately neither is mine nor are the backs of many other upstanding people. Fortunately too, in the war, Hubbard is dead.

Acceptance of the Scientology-is-dead meme serves the Scientologists’ purposes in a number of ways. It is not true for the Scientologists. They are in action in some way all day long, and do not act in any way as if they are dead. So they gain the advantage of believing, or knowing, what is true; that is that they are alive and at war. And those who say they are dead are laughed at with good reason, because they are so easily proven wrong.

Claiming that we killed Scientology, when we did not, is at best magical thinking, and has the psychological downsides that such thinking has. It is the attribution of causal relationships between actions and events which seemingly cannot be justified by reason and observation. Here there is a non-event, the killing of Scientology, and the thinking that what caused it was the conference in Toronto. Magical think is distinguished from the scientific method and is appropriately subject to skepticism. People could even welcome a skeptical analysis, questioning and even refuting of this meme.

If the old Scientology-is-dead meme or the new we-killed-Scientology-in-Toronto meme is accepted, while untrue, those who do not accept it, knowing it to be untrue, will be placed at a serious disadvantage in the war the Scientologists wage on us, using the arts of this war commanded in HCOPL “Battle Tactics.” People who accept that false meme necessarily have to lose any incentive to do anything effective about the war being waged, or to keep up the good fight, because what was once a threat while alive is no threat now dead. And people who accepted that meme will be incentivized to portray those who know Scientology and Scientologists are alive, and who stand up to their lies, aggression and threat, as deranged or pathetic, tilters at carcasses. When in truth such people might be very different and worth supporting in their effort.

People accepting that meme would have an incentive to keep others from joining the people who know that Scientology and Scientologists, and their collaborators, are alive, potent, and at war, and who yet stand against them. To not try to dissuade people from joining in the war alongside the Scientologists’ opposition would acknowledge the meme generators and the meme accepters had been wrong as long as they had been generating that meme and keeping it working.

Off the top of my head, the Scientologists have recently acquired a TV station; own a huge publication/printing and media plant, other studios and media units; run front groups we haven’t even heard of yet; and have footholds in Third World countries, and handholds in western governments and agencies; billions in acknowledged assets; an intelligence network, an attorney network, and an organized pseudomilitary; and US Government aircover. We who supposedly killed them last week have nothing comparable. We are actually very few.

If Scientology and Scientologists are dead, they could maintain very few legal actions. The facts are that the Scientologists are able to come into virtually any court anywhere, very animatedly, with very big bigbucks attorneys; the Scientologists’ IRS tax exemption has not been revoked; the Scientologists continue to deprive citizens of basic human rights without prosecution or even acknowledgement; the conspiracy between the Scientologists and the US Federal Government has not been plumbed; there are an insane, unlawful injunction, jail sentences and fines against me that prevent me from entering the US, and the dead would not maintain such orders; and Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder and David Miscavige haven’t even begun to tell the relevant truth yet. These are proofs of life, not of Scientology or the Scientologists’ death.

I have been placed in a situation where there is an appearance of benefitting financially from the conference. This did not, however, incentivize me to promote the idea that the conference was so effective that we participants had killed Scientology and Scientologists, in any way similar to the way that Hubbard had been killed. I don’t believe that there was any prior mention of sharing in sales of the film or presentations. In any case, I have not officially been offered remuneration of any kind for my participation. And I have not exaggerated the conference’s value or effect to make money. Jon and Jim Beverley have a monetary incentive to hype the event’s value and effect, which should acknowledged, even the introduction of the we-killed-Scientology meme I’ve been writing about.

In my first communication to Dr. Beverley right after the conference I wrote:

Again thank you for inviting me to the Toronto conference and for making it I believe a huge success, and hopefully a meaningful step toward resolution of the Scientology problem.

I think that this is still a reasonable and realistic statement about the event, and about future, perceptible hope. The conference was not where Scientology and Scientologists were killed. It is unlikely that the conference will in the future be viewed as the point of accomplishment of that goal.

Having not achieved that goal at the conference, we can actually be grateful, because it is wrong, and arguably criminal. To celebrate the killing of Scientology and Scientologists could be viewed as an admission that it was the underlying motivation or intention. I do not have that intention and would not work toward that goal. Justice is the goal. It is clear that justice has not been achieved, and must be fought for, unless injustice is accepted.

It is not clear what part memetic engineering or memes will play in bringing the Scientologists to end their war on good wogs, or submit to justice. There are many memes that are inarguably wiser to accept, for multiple related purposes, than any that are untrue. An untrue meme can be hell.

If the conference has a hope of becoming a meaningful step toward resolution of the Scientology problem, then certainly support it, and give in that hope. Nobody should go into massive, or minimal, debt over this conference, even if Scientology had been killed, or, looked at another way, even if the conference never became that meaningful step. Make it meaningful might make a neat meme.

It is reasonable to assume that the Scientologists have a recording of the entire conference, and some of the conversations between participants and others that were not part of the recorded conference. In this matter certainly, safety is senior to sales. We all know that the black PR tract the Scientologists prepared for this event was but one trial round, in a new Skirmish in Toronto. I think that the participants, who care, should be provided with recordings of their public statements right away. The public post-conference discussion about conference finances also amps up security concerns, and moves toward greater/full disclosure as strategy.

But for all our sakes, make a better meme.

*****

Caroline posted an excerpt of this article to WWP earlier today.³  Phobos asked a related question in that thread:

According to Jon Atack, the Conference is 60 thousand dollars in the red: “Prof Jim handled all the money details. From what he has told me, it is in the region of 60K. I’d be perfectly happy to distribute the material for free, once Jim has been paid back, but I have to contact all the participants to find out how they feel.”

Caroline, do you or Gerry have any comments on the above?⁴

Thanks for asking.  I was not involved in the organizing, other than concerning my own participation, which involved no payment to me and no knowledge of the organizers’ finances. From what I now know, my idea would to be to release all the conference footage, immediately. If it makes sense to edit out set up, set down, sound and video tech stuff, fine. Make it open to study and analysis at every level. The idea that Dr. Jim Beverley, professor at Canada’s largest theological University, connected to a career’s worth of Christian Croesuses, tied in to a network of NRM scholars, has to go to the Scientology-related forums for a few dollars to pay off a $60 K debt, does not, except in narrow conspiratorial contexts, make sense.

I have no doubt that Dr. Beverley could raise this sum rather painlessly without having to sell the conference videos, and all that entails. Therefore do not tie their release/distribution in any way to collection of funds against Dr. Beverley’s debts. Morph the website that announces the conference into a conference website, put up as much material as possible, including the talks, as soon as possible. Do the best possible, now that it has been put in motion, to make it meaningful.

http://gettingclear.co/index.html It’s been almost a week.

So my suggestion is: 1. Publish as promised, for everyone, right away. 2. Jim collects to cover his debt. (It certainly is possible to go beyond the few poor souls on the message boards.) 3. He can go on the record about finances, original agreements, what’s the deal with Tyndale, etc.

Notes