I spoke on the theme, “Scientology, the Cult of Total Espionage” in Russia in 2004. I’ve re-written my article for this conference to take into consideration certain developments since then, and to relate the organization’s intelligence nature and activities to what I now understand to be the organization’s key or basic purpose or purposes.
Scientology’s group goal, as commanded by its head, is power – secular, worldly power! Worldly power, of course, requires worldly wealth, and seeking that wealth requires greed. Time magazine famously labeled Scientology in 1991 the “Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” In 2009, Scientology is still a thriving cult of greed and power.
The group purpose for the goal of power Scientology seeks is to victimize people. Scientology calls itself as a subject an “applied religious philosophy,” which in part is true. It is the philosophy — in its scripture, between its scripture’s lines, and in its application – of victimization and victimizers.
Victimizing people is not just Scientology’s essential purpose, it is also a vital activity in its temporal pursuit of its goal. Scientology is manifesting its purpose, “proving” it is winning, by using its power to victimize. Obtaining greater secular power lets Scientology victimize more people more effectively and with less opposition or threat to its victimizing “technology” and application of that tech.
Every lie Scientology tells victimizes people. And telling lies including making false claims in Scientology is pervasive, indeed compulsory, and a sacrament. Every penny Scientology extracts from people with any of its endless lies victimizes those people.
The “human right” that Scientology fights for, the “human right” it doesn’t already have, is the right to victimize people. Scientology’s campaign for the “human right” to victimize people collides, unavoidably, with the human right to not be victimized.
Only one of these rights, of course, can be legitimate. The right that Scientology fights for is not a legitimate human right, any more than the right to suppress freedom of speech, which Scientology also does, is a legitimate human right.
Scientology, being compelled to victimize — by its own scripture or policy and its leader’s intention and orders — accuses people or governments that oppose its victimization “tech” and victimizing actions of suppressing Scientologists’ human rights. Scientology, the monstrous victimizer, portrays itself as the victim, especially the victim of the people it victimizes.
Scientology’s leadership is very aware that they have victimized people, and have had their underlings victimize people, millions of people. And these leaders are aware — in fact Scientologists are as aware as the rest of us — that in the world outside of Scientology, victimizing people is largely unacceptable, and even illegal. Scientology’s leaders have guilty knowledge — the mens rea — that their victimizing, and the victimizing they have Scientology and Scientologists do, is unethical and unlawful.
Because these leaders, although guilty-minded, and guilty as sin, have never been held legally, or even socially responsible, they have accomplished decades of victimizing, and are driven by a secondary purpose: to get away with all the victimizing that’s been done. Scientology and Scientologists have done considerable evil; they have victimized their fellow Scientologists, they’ve victimized people they “disseminate” to or try to lure into their cult, they’ve victimized the good people who stood up to the victimizing; and now they have the overarching need, and the resulting purpose, to get away with it.
It could be observed that this is the same purpose — to get away with it — that governs virtually any unconvicted criminal’s actions and life. The criminal’s, or the Scientology leadership’s, success through time yields their now dominating purpose: to get away with what they’ve gotten away with.
Criminals, or Scientology’s leaders, of course, are still faced with the grim reality that they very well might stop getting away with what they’ve gotten away with. The opposition’s task is to bring that about, simply to stop Scientology from getting away with what it’s gotten away with. What it has gotten away with is victimizing people.
Because of their guilty knowledge, and because they cannot admit to what they’ve gotten away, the leadership has always depended on the secrecy and covert actions of intelligence, and has structured and operated Scientology as an intelligence organization. For that reason it’s proper to describe Scientology as a Cult of Intelligence, or Espionage. The intelligence is for the purpose of victimizing people and for getting away with it, so it’s just as proper, and probably more understandable to see Scientology as a Cult of Victimizing, or Victimization.
To understand how Scientology and Scientologists have come to this point in their relationship with the world and with themselves, it’s helpful to understand some things about their worldview. It is a worldview concocted and enforced by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard when he was alive, and now enforced by current organization head David Miscavige. In the Scientology worldview, Hubbard, and now Miscavige, are totally right. Their orders must be complied with exactly and in their totality, and non-compliance is to be punished. The ideal administrative form of Hubbard’s and Miscavige’s organizations is a dictatorship, an autocracy under their individual and total control.
In Scientologists’ worldview, the Scientology system is the only hope for survival, for themselves and for all mankind. Their system is scientifically precise, discovered and organized by the great scientist Hubbard through years of painstaking scientific research. All other systems, ideas, religions or cures throughout the history of man have failed. The Scientology system, and only its system, can raise its adherents to superhuman levels of ability and power, raise their IQs to supergenius levels, and even raise the dead.
Mankind is in a trap, and Hubbard alone discovered the only way out of the trap, Scientology. Scientologists alone are responsible for getting Hubbard’s “technology” for escaping the trap implemented across the world, and are responsible for the salvation of everyone in the whole world. Hubbard wrote in a vital scriptural directive called “Keeping Scientology Working:”
The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology. This is a deadly serious activity. And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance.
Scientology divides the planetary population into two groups, Scientologists and “wogs.” Scientologists, by their “progress” in Scientology, and just by being Scientologists, are superior to wogs, more intelligent, more aware, more able and more ethical than wogs.
“Wog” is a racial slur in Scientology, comparable to the word “nigger.” Wogs comprise the human race, or “Homo sapiens.” In their worldview, Scientologists comprise a new created race, “Homo novis.”
Scientology teaches that in the wog world there are just two types of people: “good people” and “bad people.” Hubbard wrote, “There are no other types…there aren’t even shades of grey.”
In the Scientology worldview, the real “bad people,” the “truly dangerous,” are a class of two and a half percent of the planetary population called “Suppressive Persons” or “SPs.” According to Scientology’s “Suppressive Person” doctrine, all other people who do something bad or destructive do so only because they are “connected” in some way to an SP.
The “Suppressive Person” doctrine, which is central to the Scientology worldview, states that SPs are the cause of all illness, all accidents and any bad condition in the world. SPs are completely evil, psychotic and impossible to cure, redeem or reform. Scientology says SPs commit crime continuously, and should be given no civil rights. In scripture, Hubbard recommended that such people be disposed of “quietly and without sorrow.”
The Suppressive Person doctrine states that the infallible way of identifying SPs is if Scientology did not work on them. People who complain that after doing Scientology they did not acquire superhuman ability and power, or that their IQs did not go up to supergenius level, are simply SPs.
The organization does not permit Scientologists connected to an SP to take its courses or undergo “auditing,” as Scientology calls its mental probing and manipulation procedures. The Scientologists must first “disconnect” from the SPs they are connected to. This is Scientology’s infamous policy of “Disconnection,” by which the cult has broken up and destroyed countless families, businesses and other relationships.
Scientology says SPs make people they’re connected to appear insane and have them put into mental institutions, and that mental institutions are filled with people SPs put there. Scientology says the SPs, however, are the real insane, although they look and act perfectly normal. Scientology says SPs are common, but also identifies “stellar” historical examples, in scripture: Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Stellar living SPs in Scientology’s current “reality” and its relationship with the wog world would be people like me.
Scientology trains its members, and people in its front groups, in a “technology” for identifying or “spotting” SPs. Scientology calls the methods it teaches for dealing with SPs once they have been spotted, “shattering” them. The title in fact of the course Scientology uses to indoctrinate Scientologists in the Suppressive Person doctrine, is How to Confront and Shatter Suppression Course. Suppressive Persons are the people that Scientology considers its “enemies.” They are also Scientology’s victims.
Hubbard originally called the policy and practice for handling or treatment of its SP enemies, “Fair Game.” In one of his most famous directives, which won’t go away for Scientology until Fair Game goes away, Hubbard wrote:
ENEMY — SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.
For decades, Fair Game has been condemned by courts and by government officials, and heavily criticized by the international media. Scientology claims that for public relations purposes it stopped Fair Game forty years ago. Yet it remains Scientology’s policy and practice for the handling or treatment of the cult’s Suppressive Person “enemies” to this day.
Fair Game is the policy and practice of victimizing people considered “enemies; essentially the science and actions of war. Scientology’s victimizing of its own personnel, although directed by the same malignant minds, is technically different from Fair Game, which is the Scientologists victimization of people who are not its personnel, that is, wogs. Scientology’s SP doctrine is the “rationale” for the victimizing, the “rationale” for the Scientologists’ war against SPs, and the “rationale” for the victimizing of their own members.
The people that Scientology identifies, targets and treats as SPs are not bad, destructive, suppressive, evil persons. Projecting this nature onto the leadership’s chosen targets is willful and is done to forward the leadership’s purpose to victimize, to mistreat their human targets.
The people that Scientology’s leaders declare to be SPs are generally merely critics of the victimizing, of the lies and fraud and of the antisocial or criminal policies and practices like Fair Game. The people that Scientology Fair Games are good people who look and act perfectly normal, but who oppose the cult’s lies, fraud and criminality – medical professionals, clergy, educators, writers, and many more, even the very common like me.
Scientology teaches that SPs are terrified of people getting better, becoming smarter, more able and more powerful. Since Scientology makes people better, smarter, more able and more powerful, they all say, SPs attack the religion. In its worldview, critics of its policies or practices are “criminals,” and Scientologists are directed to find or manufacture evidence of their crimes. Scientology scripture states:
Now, get this as a technical fact, not a hopeful idea. Every time we have investigated the background of a critic of Scientology, we have found crimes for which that person or group could be imprisoned under existing law. We do not find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts.
In truth, the critics of Scientology do not have criminal pasts. Scientology does not work as it claims, and does not make its members better, smarter, more able, more powerful or more ethical. Scientology’s claims for its “technology” are false, and the cult extracts huge amounts of money from people by fraud, and by extortion or manufactured threat that parallels the fraud. Hubbard was no scientist, and conducted no scientific research whatsoever. He was a charlatan who claimed academic degrees and titles he never earned, and he was a sociopath who organized people to victimize.
Scientology, with its determination to victimize, excused and fostered by its Suppressive Person doctrine, makes its adherents extremely unethical. Toward the SP class, Scientologists dramatize the very criminality and other antisocial qualities they project onto their SP targets. The SP doctrine makes Scientology a hate group, and execution of the doctrine – victimization that Hubbard called “Fair Game” – makes the cult a criminal conspiracy.
The actions that Scientology orders its personnel to take in its attacks on SPs are shocking and, being organized or conspired, criminal. One directive, entitled “Battle Tactics,” which was confidential for obvious reasons, is very revealing of what Hubbard expected his Scientologist troops to do:
* “apply the tactics and strategy of battle to the rows we get into, press or legal or public confrontation;”
* “expend the maximum of enemy troops;”
* “make the war costly to the enemy;”
* “cut off enemy communications, funds, connections;”
* “deprive the enemy of political advantages, connections and power;”
* “take over enemy territory;”
* “raid and harass;”
* “capture and use his communication lines. A press magnate on your side is a big win.”
Scientology calls these aggressive, antisocial actions “religious activities,” or “religious exercise,” and calls the “Battle Tactics” directive “religious scripture.” The “enemy” is the SP class, the good people – all wogs it should be observed – whom the Scientology leadership wants victimized. Hubbard wrote that “nothing in this paper advocates physical violence or invites the physical destruction of persons.” He does elsewhere, of course, and there is no limit to what Scientology’s leadership might do, including physical violence and physical destruction to get away with what they’ve gotten away with.
In the same directive, Hubbard spelled out his command intention for the policy and practice of “black propaganda” or “black PR,” Scientology’s often covert manufacture and dissemination of lies, slander and libel to destroy their SP victims’ reputations, credibility, livelihood and lives.
The prize is “public opinion” where press is concerned. The only safe public opinion to head for is they love us and are in a frenzy of hate against the enemy. This means standard wartime propaganda is what one is doing, complete with atrocity, war crimes trials, the lot. Know the mores of your public opinion, what they hate. That’s the enemy. What they love. That’s you.
You preserve the image or increase it of your own troops and degrade the image of the enemy to beast level.
Scientologists are relentless in their black PR campaigns, which in Scientology is a universal form of victimization. Black PR also facilitates all the others forms or tech the leadership uses to victimize its targets. Hubbard wrote in a scriptural directive entitled “Black PR:”
basically it is an intelligence technique…Essentially it is not a PR campaign. It is a cross between PR and intelligence… a hidden source injects lies and derogatory data into public view.
In the same directive, Hubbard acknowledged that Scientology engaged in black PR; and in thousands of other communications, most of them hiding their source, he originated and injected into public view decades of vile, destructive black PR. All Scientologists participate in the intelligence technique of black propaganda.
In the “Battle Tactics” directive Hubbard makes very clear that Scientology and Scientologists are factually at war with the people they target as SPs.
We must ourselves fight on a basis of total attrition of the enemy. So never get reasonable about him. Just go all the way in and obliterate him.…
Wars are composed of many battles.
Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars.
Hubbard is not talking about a war with the devil, or with evil, but with real human beings.
Because the Suppressive Person doctrine is hateful and even criminal — since it orders a conspiracy to victimize a class of citizens — and because of the Scientology leadership’s guilty knowledge of their victimization tech and their victims, the doctrine’s implementation is necessarily largely covert. Scientology’s war on SPs is principally a secret war. Scientology doesn’t announce that it’s at war, and denies that it’s at war. But this is simply a lie to let the cult continue to get away with warring on good people, which they’ve gotten away with for as long as there’s been a cult.
In our societies, open warfare, obviously, is immediately defended against. A hidden or disguised war will not be defended against, unless it is recognized as a hidden or disguised war. Inimical troops and operations won’t be unmasked unless it’s known they’re masked. Scientology does what it can to hide its belligerent intentions and aggression towards its SP victims. But a study of Scientology’s own documents and the unrefuted testimony of many credible witnesses make its victimization modus operandi and those bad intentions very clear.
The most important war technology and operations for Hubbard and Miscavige in their multi-channeled campaign against their SP targets are intelligence. Other channels include public relations, legal, finance, physical bullying and intimidation. Intelligence, naturally, attempts to conceal or disguise many of its operations and objectives. Scientology has been working hard to disguise itself as a “humanitarian organization,” a defender of human rights. The organization has spent millions of dollars to create this cover, and even set up front groups like “Youth for Human Rights” to make its self-promotion as human rights crusaders sound real.
What is real, however, is that Scientology is a monstrous, shameless destroyer of human rights. The Scientology v. Armstrong case is overwhelming evidence of the Scientology leadership’s intention to suppress and destroy virtually anyone’s basic human rights, just to victimize us, to facilitate our further victimization, and to get away with all the victimizing. While Scientology has spent many millions manufacturing an image as a human rights organization, the cult has spent many times that amount to destroy the rights it claims it’s defending.
Scientologists go along with their leaders’ deceptions, and even with their organization’s flagrant human rights violations, because they accept Hubbard’s directive that they are at war. They do not protest that everything for all eternity depends on what they do here and now with and in Scientology. Included in what the leadership requires Scientologists do with and in Scientology is to support the war upon the designated SP enemies, accept and support the destruction human rights and the other forms of victimization, and lie about and help disguise these things.
The anti-drug program Narconon, the education program Applied Scholastics, which goes by many other names, the anti-psychiatry entity Citizens Committee on Human Rights, the Volunteer Ministers, are Scientology front groups that, among their functions, provide cover and intelligence for Scientology’s covert war on Suppressive Persons. All Scientology fronts help the leadership get away with what they’ve been getting away with. And all of these fronts victimize people.
Scientologists, even quite new ones, know that their group or religion is at war, and that they are troops in that war. They know to be on the lookout for enemies, and they watch and listen for anyone in their environment “forwarding the enemy line.” They know when to be silent, and when disinformation should be communicated. They know to not divulge what Scientology is up to. In fact, letting a wog in on Scientology’s actual intentions is considered treason. The organization leadership tells Scientologists who the SPs are, and the Scientologists spot even more SPs in their personal lives who correspond in behavior to officially declared SPs.
Scientologists can indeed spot SPs, because SPs are simply individuals who criticize Scientology’s victimizing people, its fraud, abuses and crime. If Scientologists read or hear a criticism, they know its source is an SP. They know who Scientology’s “enemies” are, and they know these enemies are to be victimized as directed. Scientology troops in their war also know to not get caught, and to not cause adverse publicity for the organization. Because so many people who oppose the victimizing watch for Scientology’s operations and influences around the world, and the leaders must, above everything else, get away with whatever is done, Scientologists are for now at least somewhat limited in their war or Fair Game opportunities. This is a clear and very welcome result in Germany of the OPC officially keeping Scientology under observation.
War binds troops in a life-or-death cause, and Scientology’s intelligence war is a significant factor in keeping people in the cult. Scientology being at war justifies its demand of total, standard wartime allegiance, and justifies constant allegiance testing of its troops, including lie detector “disagreement checks.” The allegiance Scientology and its leadership demand from their underlings is senior to, and more demanding than, their allegiance to country, company, professional codes, family or any other group or charter. For this reason, it is reasonable and prudent to bar Scientologists, or organization agents from positions where conflicts in allegiance create unsafe conditions.
For many Scientologists, and wogs, it is exciting to be a covert operative in a covert war, living a double life, spying on the enemies, reporting to their organization intelligence operators, etc., and getting away with it. Scientology’s intelligence war is not particularly dangerous to the Scientologists, because the enemies they spy and war on and seek to destroy are ordinary, good, peaceful people.
One would think that Scientology would be easy to defeat in its war, because the enemies it creates in order to keep its war going are ordinarily good people. There is no evil empire of Suppressive Persons as Scientology tells its troops, and the Scientologists’ victimizing of good people is immoral with no rational justification.
Scientology, however, has usually selected as its SP targets people who, in our society, lacked the resources to defend themselves or fight back. It has been quite easy for the cult, an extremely wealthy intelligence-focused organization, to financially, legally, socially, psychologically, or even physically crush many of these selected victims. Just because they are good people, they don’t resort to the battle tactics of Scientology, a criminal conspiracy to raid and harass people, degrade them to beast level, obliterate them, etc.
The term “Total Espionage” comes from a book with that title by Curt Riess, published in 1941, about the Nazis’ system of total espionage. Hubbard had Scientologists who dealt with SPs study the book on a Scientology course in intelligence procedures. Because of the dominance and pervasiveness of an intelligence mentality and intelligence activities inside the organization, and because every Scientologist in any capacity anywhere in the world participates, it is accurate to call Scientology a religion, or cult, of total espionage. Because intelligence in Scientology serves the purpose of victimizing people, and because victimization is pervasive and every Scientologist participates, often, of course, as victims, it is accurate to call Scientology a cult of total victimization.
Scientology has a network of Scientologist intelligence personnel, and hires outside private investigators and other professionals. The organization uses standard intelligence means and channels for obtaining information: legitimate research or purchase of information, and illegitimate activities such as infiltration, burglary, theft and extortion. Scientology has internal security and counter-espionage departments, and departments and operatives that function in the wog world. Scientology calls these units or personnel “external facing.” Scientology’s leadership seeks intelligence on every stratum of society — on political leaders, industrialists, entertainers, medical professionals, law enforcement, and on the very commonest of citizens.
In 1977, 150 agents the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, raided Scientology’s intelligence offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Evidence seized in these raids showed that Scientology’s intelligence operatives had burglarized, infiltrated or penetrated over a hundred U.S. state and federal offices or agencies. Eleven Scientologists, including Hubbard’s wife, were prosecuted and sentenced to federal prison.
In a 1991 article in Time Magazine, the Bureau Chief of the FBI in Los Angeles, who participated in the 1977 raids, is quoted as saying:
In my opinion the church has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the U.S., rivaling even that of the FBI.
At its core, Scientology has all the functions of national intelligence services. But what makes it a cult of total espionage is the participation of every Scientologist in the organization-wide report system. Everybody reports on everybody else. Every Scientologist must report, or they will themselves become targets. Husbands report on wives, wives report on husbands, children report on their parents, and parents on their children. Scientologists report to the organization about any “violations” of Scientology’s thousands of detailed policies, criticisms they hear, anything “suspicious,” anyone associating with an SP.
In their early indoctrination into the cult, Scientologists are brought to accept that they will be reported on to organization intelligence seniors, and that they will themselves report on others – Scientologists and wogs everywhere. The amount of intelligence information that Scientology collects through its report system, and dozens of other intelligence channels is staggering.
In “auditing” — the psychological “processing” that Scientology claims makes people super powerful, super able and super smart —Scientologists divulge everything about themselves and their pasts. During this procedure, they are monitored on an electronic meter, and what they say is written down, and is often audiotaped or videotaped. Scientologists divulge their whole sexual history, anything they’ve done for which they could be prosecuted, anything embarrassing, all their innermost secrets, and their families’ and associates’ secrets.
All of this material goes to Scientology’s leaders and to the core intelligence personnel to be used for intelligence purposes, including controlling the Scientologists who divulged their secrets. It is a cruel irony that Scientologists pay huge sums of money to divulge their secrets, which will then be used against them to their further detriment. Scientology’s possession of these personal secrets is a very effective intelligence weapon in keeping people in the cult and preventing them from ever speaking out against the cult’s abuses and criminal activities.
Scientologists are also routinely subjected to even more invasive and threatening interrogations called “security checks” or “sec checks.” The Scientologists are monitored electronically during sec checks using the cult’s electronic meter as a lie detector. These interrogations can be very terrifying experiences. Scientologists have been kept in a sec check room for hours, on the meter, not permitted to go to the bathroom, multiple interrogators hammering them with questions. There is sworn testimony of Scientology leader David Miscavige coming into such a sec check, which Scientologists call “gang bang” sec checks, verbally abusing and threatening the Scientologist victim and spitting tobacco juice in his face. “Gang bang” is another term for gang rape.
Miscavige runs Scientology, and is legally responsible for keeping it working as a hate group and as a criminal conspiracy to violate human rights. For several years of his leadership Miscavige and his underlings denied he ran Scientology — the vast international conglomerate — but there is so much unrefuted evidence of his total control, that they have been forced in most situations to stop telling that lie. He runs the total espionage network and directs the war of intelligence against the SPs.
He controls and operates Scientology through a web of corporations, associations and networks, and a highly dedicated Scientologist officer corps, his co-conspirators. The corporate structure is the product of a conspiracy of devious and power mad minds with some clever and connected lawyers, with the acquiescence of the US Government. The corporate structure was designed to permit first Hubbard, and now Miscavige, to avoid legal liability; which is to say, to facilitate their getting away with victimizing people.
Miscavige calls himself the Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center, or RTC. His underlings all know him as “C-O-B.” Even Tom Cruise calls him C-O-B. To avoid legal responsibility for Scientology’s many failures, and the torts and crimes committed in the war on SPs, RTC claims to be “autonomous.” And Miscavige has had himself labeled, also to help him avoid liability, merely Scientology’s “ecclesiastical head.”
Although intended as bald-faced deception, this is actually quite true, because victimizing people, and the commission of torts and crimes, are ecclesiastical activities. By “ecclesiastical” is meant “relating to a church” or “suitable for a church.” Scientology insists that everything it does is suitable for a church. Importantly, what Scientology does, and is organized to do, is victimize people.
The simple reality is that Miscavige runs Scientology, and legally the conglomerate whole is his alter ego. Although Miscavige and his RTC personnel keep much of their activity hidden, they have published a directive entitled “Matters of RTC Concern” in a great number of Scientology magazines and other media, leaving no doubt of their control and operation of the Scientology-wide intelligence report system.
There are certain matters of particular importance and concern to RTC as provided here on a detailed list. Whenever these occur, copies of your reports should also be sent to RTC. RTC’s Inspector General Network uses such reports to help locate hidden suppression, infiltration, subversion or corruption within and external to Scientology Churches, Missions and other Church organizations.
“Matters of RTC Concern” then provides an extensive list of things that Scientologists are to report to RTC, including:
* Any suppressive act against Scientology or Scientologists.
* Any anti-Scientology … or anti-Church management actions or intentions.
* Any person who is hypercritical of Scientology or the Church.
* Publicly departing Scientology.
* Public statements against Scientology or Scientologists
* Anyone forbidding or advising against the writing of Knowledge Reports.
* Anyone forbidding or advising one not to send Knowledge Reports to RTC.
* Anyone refusing a confessional or refusing to answer a reading question.
A “confessional” is what, for obvious religious cloaking reasons, Scientology calls its metered sec check interrogations. A “reading question” is an interrogation question that produces a reaction on the electrometer.
The most undeniably successful cover for Scientology, the cult of total victimization, has been its determination to be accepted as a religion, something achieved in the US in 1993 with the Internal Revenue Service’s grant of tax exemption. A recent video interview of Miscavige’s former and long time lieutenant Marc Rathbun done by the St. Petersburg Times newspaper in Florida as part of a series on Scientology contains an amazing admission of why the organization determined to be a religion.
it was always perceived that the IRS was the most important thing to handle because if you have tax exemption you have […] religious recognition, you’re treated differently in courts […] there’s […] some level of almost immunity, First Amendment immunity, to a lot of the type of allegations that were being made.
[…] I mean the number one mission was to obtain ah, tax exemption from the IRS
The allegations against Scientology, for which it sought First Amendment immunity, were of victimizing people – fraud, extortion, assaults, theft, false imprisonment, drugging people, and, as with at least Lisa McPherson, homicide. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the “free exercise” of religion. Being accepted as a religion meant that Scientology and Scientologists had immunity from prosecution and could victimize with relative impunity, because the victimization they standardly practice is accepted as religious exercise. The US permits Scientology to make all sorts of false claims for services, for which it charges enormous sums, and to use the US mail and other communication media to make its false claims, because it’s a religion. The US says nothing about Scientology locking people up without trial because it’s a religion.
It has for years been obvious to many people that Scientology’s religious status covers, permits and justifies victimization, and certainly makes it possible for the leadership to get away with it all. But Rathbun was the person inside Scientology who, along with Miscavige dealt directly with, and ran operations against, the IRS, to obtain tax exemption and “religious recognition.” Rathbun’s admission that Scientology’s religious recognition was to get immunity from legal prosecution or liability, for what cannot but be victimizing, is an important development.
In 1998, the US passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), which requires that the US protect and support religious organizations around the world, and to criticize or even sanction countries that threaten or limit those religious organizations’ freedoms. Pursuant to the IRFA, the US State Department has published annual reports on religious freedom in each country. The annual reports, as many Germans know, have criticized Germany’s non-acceptance of Scientology as a religion, Germany’s efforts to warn its citizens about the cult’s dangers, and Germany’s reasoned opposition to the victimization.
The only condition the IRFA puts on its support for a religious organization’s free exercise is that the exercise be “peaceful.” Scientology has never been peaceful, but has always been at war. The US, unfortunately, has completely ignored this war in order to continue to support Scientology and to criticize other countries such as Germany, because the war has been largely covert and hidden, and seldom resulted in documentable physical violence against SPs. The same St. Petersburg Times series, in which Rathbun admitted obtaining IRS tax exemption for the antisocial purpose of getting away with victimizing people, however, also contains a multitude of credible reports of physical violence, indeed a “culture of violence” inside Scientology, Scientologist on Scientologist. The most physically violent of all Scientologists is its leader David Miscavige. Scientology’s culture of violence is Miscavige’s command intention.
Scientology recruits people, citizens from every nation, into this culture of violence. Its many front groups are what it calls “feeders” that feed people into the Scientology culture. Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers literally get their hands on people at disaster sites to lure them into that culture of violence. There is so much evidence of this culture of violence at Scientology’s core that the US Federal Government should be made to reconsider, and terminate, its support for Scientology and what the religion says is its free religious exercise. A culture of violence is not peaceful, and the US is not obliged by the IRFA to support it.
My suggestion to Germans and Germany is to compile a dossier of victimization in its many forms that Scientology practices including physical violence, which the SP Times has virtually done. This dossier would be presented to the US State Department, perhaps the US Ambassador in Berlin, and demand that the US act against Scientology’s leadership to eliminate the culture of violence, since it originates in the US where it is protected, and immediately suspend international support for Scientology pursuant to the IRFA. During the suspension, the US Government should conduct hearings into Scientology’s nature and activities, hearing especially from the victims.
Gerry Armstrong