Monday 16 March 2009

Introduction

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

Scientology is today paying the price for its aggressive campaign launched in the mid-1990s to shut down its earliest online critics.


Its use of law suits and court-authorised raids on critics’ homes only succeeded in creating fresh waves of opposition.


These new activists pooled the existing information on Scientology and generated new material through original research, all the while subjecting the movement to a barrage of derision.


It is this rolling campaign that has, in part, encouraged defectors from the movement to come forward and relate their experiences.


When in January 2008 Andrew Morton published his unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, more former members stepped forward to denounce Scientology.


The same month, the niece of the Scientology’s leader David Miscavige, Jenna Miscavige Hill, went public on how the leadership tried to cut her off from her parents when they quit the movement: a practice known as disconnection.


Hill helped set up Ex-Scientology Kids, a website for people who grew up in Scientology, which has proved to be a fresh source of damaging stories about the movement.


Other former members also started to speak out, alleging that they had been victims of Miscavige’s violence.


Also in January 2008, “Anonymous” -- a new wave of critics whose numbers included a group of young hackers -- emerged.


They attacked Scientology’s websites, organised worldwide protests against the movement and leaked embarrassing material: from a promotional video featuring Tom Cruise to compromising internal documents.


Scientology denounced Anonymous as a "cyber-terrorist group" perpetrating "religious hate crimes" (in its response to a March 2008 article in Radar Magazine).


It regularly dismisses statements made by former members turned critics as self-seeking claims from people who were unable to live up to the movement's high ethical standards.


But the deluge of information from former members broadcast across the Internet shows no sign of weakening.


Now a former Scientologist Marc Headley has filed suit against the Church of Scientology International, a case that could have implications not just for the movement as a whole but for its leader, David Miscavige.


Next: 1 Marc Headley's lawsuit.

5 comments:

  1. The source of the aggression toward internet critics is the same as the source of aggression toward top Scientology staff members: David Miscavige. He is a wholly corrupt and violent lunatic who believes that anything goes in his mission to "expand" Scientology: abuse, crime, unlawful restraint, kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, etc. Former members are speaking out because it is the right thing to do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This website is incredibly awesome. Can't wait for the book.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This blog has been added to freebase, hope you don't mind. It belongs in the timeline.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Not at all: good to be part of an open-source community.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Amazing how Hubbard and his followers managed to screw up something through paranoia that could have been a runaway success. I suppose in a perverse kind of way we have to thank him and them that they were as paranoid and incredibly cack-handed as its clear they were. Otherwise I can see few reasons (except the failure at OT to come up with the goods) why it would not have spread far and wide ad infinitum.

    I reached New OTIV over 14 years on and off staff and ultimately I didn't feel I had achieved ANY lasting benefit. I did however have one huge change early on which felt like a life saver (due to prepchecks) and around four other major wins which temporarily sent me high as a kite, the last being my one and only floating TA on New OTIV. That night as I wandered home to East Grinstead from Saint Hill I felt more wonderful and excited about life than I ever had before. (This was after a date locate to some very distant point in a galaxy far, far away. I suddenly felt wonderful. I looked up and the Class XII who was on the other side of the desk immediately indicated my floating TA.) But those five experiences were pretty much it for a fourteen year run. So much... yet so little. These days I'm amazed anything worked AT ALL as I see Hubbard as pretty much a conman and paranoid mental case.

    Go figger as the Yanks say!

    ReplyDelete