The Cult Wars: a beginner's guide

Scientologist Eric Roux will be addressing another academic conference this week. Will there be anyone on hand to challenge his claims?

Eric Roux

Frenchman Eric Roux is arguably Scientology's most prominent ambassador in Europe. A member for more than 20 years, his current post is President of the Union of the Church of Scientology in France.

During the later stages of Scientology's court battle in France he spoke for the Paris Celebrity Centre, one of two Scientology organisations convicted of organised fraud.

He gave a composed and polished performance at the Paris appeal court, even if his testimony did not in the end sway the judges. In October last year the Cour de Cassation, France's top court, confirmed the landmark convictions against the movement.1

Roux describes himself as a religious freedom campaigner and has spoken on the issue at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), at the Council of Europe and in Washington.2

He also sits on the Steering Committee of the European Interreligious Forum for Religious Freedom (EIFRF), an organisation whose origins are not entirely clear (anybody heard of Djemad Sedik?).

Roux keeps followers posted on his activities via a blog and a Twitter account. And in addition to his media appearance and other campaign work he also addresses academic conferences.

As reported earlier at Infinite Complacency, in February of this year Roux gave a presentation at the INFORM conference in London: “Scientology: from controversy to global expansion and recognition”.

INFORM, the Information Network on Religious Movements founded by Professor Eileen Barker goes out of its way to build dialogue with movements such as Scientology. It does not consider confronting such groups to be part of its role.

On Wednesday, at the University of Sussex in England, Roux will address another audience of academics, this time on: “Scientology versus Crisis: New Religious Approach or Old Schemes Remodelled?”

This time he is a panellist at a meeting of the British Sociological Association at SOCREL, its annual conference on the sociology of religion.

Is Roux's presence at the conference an issue? Of course not: he has every right to tell the truth as he sees it to whoever wants to listen.

But it does seem worth asking if anyone will be on hand to present the other side of the story – especially given Scientology's troubled relationship with the truth.

Here is what the movement's founder, L. Ron Hubbard had to say on the subject:

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them. … He's got to tell you lies in order to continue control, because the second you start telling anybody close to the truth, you start releasing him and he gets tougher and tougher to control. So, you can't control somebody without telling them a bunch of lies.3

Roux's co-panellists at SOCREL are Donald Westbrook, an academic doing research into Scientology; and lawyer and rights activist Alessandro Amicarelli.

Amicarelli has quite rightly denounced Russia's persecution of Scientology as a violation of human rights.

But the title of his talk at SOCREL suggests more scepticism towards counter-cult groups than to Scientology iself: “The Church of Scientology, from the Attacks of Secto-phobic Groups to the Victories in the Courts: A New Slant on Life for the Heirs of Hubbard?”

Amicarelli's work is cited in five separate posts at the EIFRF website; Roux quotes him approvingly on his Twitter feed. Difficult then to see any tough questions coming from this side of the panel.

Donald Westbrook is a young academic conducting research into Scientology. He takes the movement seriously as a religion and has criticised France's heavy-handed approach to “cult-like excesses”.

It looks then, as if both Roux’s fellow panellists come from the same side in the so-called “cult wars” – the longstanding, acrimonious dispute among scholars over how best to study movements such as Scientology.

For those of you who arrived late, here's a rough map of the battlefield – painted with a broad brush, admittedly.

Hawks, doves and zombies

The conventional approach to movements such as Scientology and others is to label them as abusive cults who practise mind control to manipulate recruits into switching their loyalty from family and friends to the group, with often disastrous consequences.

But while not denying that some movements can be destructive, some academics argue that the situation is not quite so clear-cut.

Some people have perfectly legitimate reasons for joining and staying in these movements, they say – and not all of those who leave necessarily see their time inside the group as having been uniformly negative.

They also argue that we need to get rid of the negative preconceptions we bring to the debate about such movements – which is why they object to the word "cult". The word is problematic because it is a loaded term, packed with negative connotations – it is, in effect, a “thought-stopping cliché” to put it in terms students of mind control might recognise.4

For this reason, these academics prefer what they consider the more neutral expression, New Religious Movement, or NRM.5 This, broadly, is the position taken by INFORM and Professor Barker.

Other organisations however, most notably the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), take a different line.

These scholars, while acknowledging the problems with a loaded term such as “cult”, argue that if the cap fits, wear it – and Scientology, for one, fits most definitions of a cult.

Try this one on for size, from Michael Langone and the late Louis J. West, both veterans of the ICSA (or American Family Foundation as was):

Cult (totalist type): A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc.), designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.6

At the ICSA website, an article by Langone and the late Herbert Rosedale acknowledges the problems with the term.

Even though we have each studied cults and educated people about this subject for more than 20 years, neither of us has ever felt completely comfortable with the term “cult”.

No other term, however, serves more effectively the linked educational and research aims of ICSA...”7

And if the cap fits...

One reason he C-word remains problematic is because most definitions incorporate some description of psychological manipulation or “mind control”. And the issue of “brainwashing” is another of the main fronts in the cult wars.

Many scholars were extremely sceptical of the cruder versions of brainwashing that were circulating in the 1970s: they argued that it was too easy to use it as an excuse to justify forced deprogramming. It is hard to disagree.

In the early years of what some observers considered was the moral scare over cults, some anti-cult activists did use the mind control argument very much as a blunt instrument.

These people considered the members of such groups to be little more than preprogrammed zombies – and that, for them, was enough to justify extreme measures to force people to snap out of the "cult mindset": measures such as deprogramming by force.

Coercive deprogramming is when you hold someone against their will until you can convince them they have been victims of cult mind control (or until they can convince you that you have convinced them).

Thinking has moved on a fair bit since then: advocates on both sides of the argument have more sophisticated models of the control mechanisms used inside Scientology and other movements. And most people acknowledge that old-style coercive deprogramming cannot be justified.

While there are still some scholars who question that there is any such thing as mind control, most observers appear to accept that – even if the idea needs to be treated with caution – it is not meaningless to talk in terms of undue influence.

Today, the real debate appears to be over how far it can be used to explain people's behaviour – how much heavy lifting it can do in the debate over cults.8

But if we acknowledge that there is such a thing as mind control/undue influence/coercive persuasion, there can be little doubt that it exists inside Scientology. At the very least, the movement inculcates an intolerance for – a resistance to – any information challenging its beliefs.

Consider how determined Scientologists are to avoid contact with entheta – material critical of Scientology – to avoid hampering spiritual development. (How's that for a thought-stopping cliché?)9

And consider the overwhelming pressure members come under to shun or disconnect from loved ones declared suppressive: enemies of the movement. Arguably this is Scientology's most effective – and most destructive – mechanism of control.

Despite this there are still some academics who have long been willing to take too much that Scientology and other controversial movements say about themselves at face value.

They have reserved their scepticism for disillusioned former members who have gone public to denounce the movement.

These scholars often dismiss the horror stories of “apostates” on the grounds that disenchanted former members excluded from such movements clearly have their own agenda, their own axe to grind – never considering that this is equally true of both sides.

This is not unlike the line taken by staunch communists in the 1930s and beyond, who dismissed the horror stories told by former communists turned dissidents as the lies of class traitors.

These loyalists – including many intellectuals and academics – were too naïve or too ideologically blinkered to consider the possibility that life in the Soviet bloc was anything other than double-plus good.

So one can’t help wondering: is it bad form at SOCGEN to contradict the guests?

Don't worry: just in case it is, we've invited Jon Atack to correct Eric Roux's copy.

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1   See here for the first part of his testimony and here for the second part. He was not himself a defendant in the case.

2   You can find a bio in this document relating to the INFORM conference earlier this year.

3   Hubbard, Technique 88: “On Control and Lying”.

4   The “thought-stopping cliché” of course is one of the elements set down by Robert Jay Lifton as a key component of thought reform in his classic study Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.

5   More recently I've also seen the term NARMS: New Religious and Alternative Religous Movement.

Regular readers of Tony Ortega's site, The Underground Bunker, will know that he too has reservations about using the word “cult”, though for entirely different reasons. For Ortega, the whole “cult-church” debate is distraction from the real issues. See his dialogue with Jon Atack on this point from earlier this year – and note Jon Atack's reasons of taking a very different position on the question: “Jon Atack: Why I call Scientology a Cult and not a Church”.

6   FWest, L. J., & Langone, M. D. (1986). “Cultism: A conference for scholars and policy makers.” Cultic Studies Journal, 3, 117-134 – and quoted in the cited Rosedale-Langone article.

7   Here are the concluding lines of the same piece: Even though the term “cult” has limited utility, it is so embedded in popular culture that those of us concerned about helping people harmed by group involvements or preventing people from being so harmed cannot avoid using it. Whatever the term's limitations, it points us in a meaningful direction. And no other term relevant to group psychological manipulation (e.g., sociopsychological influence, coercive persuasion, undue influence, exploitative manipulation) has ever been able to capture and sustain public interest, which is the sine qua non of public education. If, however, we cannot realistically avoid the term, let us at least strive to use it judiciously. From the ICSA article “On using the term 'cult'”, by Herbert Rosedale and Michael Langone.

8   For more on the debate over mind control, see Misunderstanding Cults: searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field (University of Toronto Press, 2001): in particular Part Two of the book.

9   For a more detailed treatment of influence techniques used inside Scientology, see Jon Atack's “Never Believe a Hypnotist”.

Invisible Handcuffs I

An unusual case of human trafficking in Britain is generating extensive coverage in the world press: but why are people surprised that people can be controlled in this way?

Police and other professionals fighting human trafficking seem amazed that the victims in this case appear to have been virtual slaves for 30 years without being physically restrained.

One senior officer has spoken vividly of the “invisible handcuffs” that appeared to bind the three women involved to their alleged captors.

But why so surprised?

Anyone working in the field of cultic abuse could tell them that it is perfectly possible to reduce people to virtual slavery through emotional and psychological abuse.

The professionals working in human trafficking however are clearly used to less subtle, more brutal methods.

Here are the basic facts to date: On November 21, police acting on a tip-off from a charity arrested an elderly couple in London over allegations that they had kept three women for up to 30 years in conditions that amounted to slavery.

A statement from New Scotland Yard identified the victims as a 30-year-old Briton, a 57-year-old Irish national and a 69-year-old Malaysian.1

“These women are highly traumatised, having been held in servitude for at least 30 years with no real exposure to the outside world...,” said Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland of the Met's Human Trafficking Unit (HTU).

“Our unit deals with many cases every year but has never unearthed such a staggering example of people held against their will for their whole life time,” he added.2

In a statement the following day Commander Steve Rodhouse tried to spell out what for them was the unique aspect of this case.

Officers in the Human Trafficking Unit were used to dealing with cases in which the victims had been physically and sexually abused to keep them in captivity, he said. This was something different, however.

“We do not believe that this case falls into the category of sexual exploitation, or what we all understand as human trafficking,” he said.

“It is not as brutally obvious as women being physically restrained inside an address and not allowed to leave.

“What Kevin [D.I. Hyland] and his team are trying to understand is what were the invisible handcuffs that were used to exert such a degree of control over these women.

“Trying to label this investigation as domestic servitude or forced labour is far too simple.

“What we have uncovered so far is a complicated and disturbing picture of emotional control over many years, brainwashing would be the most simplest term, yet that belittles the years of emotional abuse these victims have had to endure.

“We believe at this stage to the outside world this may have appeared to be a 'normal' family.”3

Forget the shackles

Anthony Steen, chairman of Britain’s Human Trafficking Foundation, made a similar point in comments to BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme.

"You've got to think of slavery as something different from what it was in the 18th century when people were in shackles,” he told journalist Sean Ley.

"It's psychological slavery, it's emotional slavery, it’s debt bondage slavery. It's changing: every time we catch up with it is running away in another direction..." he added.

In this case, he said: “The so-called slaves did have mobile phones and apparently they had television and they could go out so it's going to be very much more psychological slavery than actual physical slavery and that is even more difficult to detect."

Initial media coverage of this affair compared it with the ordeal of Elizabeth Fritzl in Austria, whose father imprisoned her for 24 years and repeatedly raped her. But that is well wide of the mark.

We know already that in this case, the victims were not locked away, at least not physically. They were, on the face of it at least, free to come and go as they pleased.

Professionals in the field of human trafficking are more used to dealing with victims who have suffered beatings and sometimes rapes to keep them compliant.

The harrowing case studies at the Human Trafficking Foundation’s website – forced labour, child/sex trafficking, domestic servitude – make that abundantly clear.4

They appear to be less familiar with the idea of these “invisible handcuffs” that control victims with a minimal of physical coercion.

But for anyone familiar with the cult phenomenon this is old news.

The days are long past when “cult mind control” was presented as a unique, almost magical form of manipulation against which unwary mortals were helpless.

Professionals in the field now place it in a broad spectrum of abuse that operates in different forms in other walks of life. They draw parallels for example between cultic manipulation and the dynamics of an abusive relationship.

Other academics studying cults – or new religious movements as they prefer to call them – have fought a determined rearguard action to play down the significance of mind control. Some have questioned its very existence.

This time around however, it may be more difficult to dismiss: because this time, the phenomenon has broken into the mainstream; and this time, we are not talking about a religious movement.

Latest reports in the British media suggest that both the suspects and the alleged victims were once members of a political cult: they appear to have been active in something called the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre, in Brixton, south London.

If that proves to be the case, police could do worse than to consult one uniquely qualified cult expert.

Dr Janja Lalich, professor of Sociology at California State University, spent more than 10 years in the San Franciso-based Democratic Workers Party, which she now characterises as a political cult.

It was that experience which shaped her subsequent academic career investigating the dynamics of cultic abuse. She spent some time working with cult expert Dr Margaret Singer, (who will be a familiar name to some of the regulars here).5

But what does all this have to do with Scientology? Well, more than you might think.

A review of recent US lawsuits by former members and a look at a case out of Mexico reveal more than a few ironies – of which more next time.

1 “Two people arrested by Human Trafficking Unit”, New Scotland Yard statement, November 21.

2 From the November 21, police statement. Officers launched their investigation after being contacted by the London-based Freedom Charity, which campaigns against forced marriages: one of the three women, the Irish woman had approached them after seeing them featured in a BBC documentary on the subject. On Saturday the charity reported a five-fold increase in phone calls since the story broke.

3 From the November 22 police statement “Update following arrests by Human Trafficking Unit”. In the same statement, DI Hyland said that all 37 officers in the HTU were now assigned to the case, a measure of how seriously they are taking the case. Given the case spans 30 years of alleged abuse however, they made it clear that the investigation would take months: officers have seized 55 bags of evidence – more than 2,500 exhibits – which they will have to examine.

4 You can get an idea of the kind of cases they normally encounter at this part of their website.

5 I recommend the book they produced together, Cults in Our Midst. You can see a complete list of Lalich’s books at her website, cultresearch.org.

Hassan on 'A Piece of Blue Sky'

Among the new material in the revised edition of Jon Atack's A Piece of Blue Sky is an introduction from Steven Hassan, an acknowledged expert on mind control issues. Infinite Complacency is pleased to be able to reprint his tribute to Atack and Blue Sky.

Must read! This book is the definitive, factual, all-inclusive exposé on the real L. Ron Hubbard and the true story behind Scientology. If you read one book on Scientology, make it this one.

Jon Atack has an extraordinary, razor-like mind and indefatigable memory. In my opinion, he is by far the greatest expert on L. Ron Hubbard, having digested every idea Hubbard ever had and everything written about Hubbard, as well as his countless interviews of former officials. He is my “go-to” man when I have a factual question concerning anything Scientology.

Jon is truly a rare human being. Yes, he was in Scientology nine years and was OT-5. Unlike most former members, he went on to research in such extraordinary depth and detail that he became the resource for governments around the world wanting to understand what Hubbard and Scientology were all about.

He was mercilessly harassed for sixteen years harming his personal life tremendously to the point that he “retired” from speaking publicly about Scientology, and spent the next sixteen years developing his exceptional talents as an artist, drummer and novelist.

In 2012, I visited Jon and we talked in great depth about all of the positive developments around Scientology, the flood of top officials and other long-term operatives writing books and exposés, and I urged him to consider coming out of retirement.

I was delighted to find that he had reconstructed the unexpurgated, never before published original Piece of Blue Sky. We sat down and did a video interview together in the hope that he might re-release A Piece of Blue Sky.

Scientology did everything within its power to stop the publication of A Piece of Blue Sky the first time, making it only the second book to be banned in the US.¹ The manuscript was published without alteration, because it was factually accurate.

This new release includes 60 direct Hubbard quotations that are the essential heart of Scientology. These statements from Hubbard’s journals and letters, and his secret orders to his intelligence agency, the Guardian’s Office reveal Hubbard’s true intentions and his insane delusions.

Scientology is the quintessential destructive mind-control cult. It’s an authoritarian, pyramid-structured group that uses deception and mind control to make its followers dependent and obedient.

I define mind control as four overlapping components known as the BITE model which stands for control of behavior, information, thoughts and emotions. Hubbard was a master manipulator who employed all four components to reduce followers to an almost childlike devotion.

Hubbard was a stage hypnotist, and in my professional opinion, Hubbard’s “technology” is a series of hypnotic methods. Hubbard openly called his system “indoctrination”. Even though Scientologists are taught to believe that the technology de-hypnotizes people, the opposite is true. 

Critical faculties are dismantled, thought-stopping techniques taught, phobias installed. Indeed, the whole “study technology” is designed to install the Scientology belief system of Hubbard, the self-styled “commodore” of this paramilitary organization.

Since leaving the Moonies in 1976, I have worked with numerous people from hundreds of different cults. I can confidently say that Scientology ranks as one of the worst of the worst. I remember talking with Paulette Cooper who wrote the book, The Scandal of Scientology.

Fair Game

Paulette was harassed herself, falsely accused of a terrorist bomb plot and spied on by a scientologist “best friend”. She was indicted by a grand jury. Then the largest FBI raid in history revealed internal documents, vindicating Paulette completely and sending eleven senior Scientology officials, including Hubbard’s wife, to prison.²

I have frequently been subjected to Scientology harassment. For expressing my considered opinion of the group, I have become “fair game”, to use Hubbard’s expression. Under this doctrine, scientologists are encouraged to harass opponents.

I have been followed. I have been threatened. I have been sued. I have had complaints against my license filed by Scientology. They have gone through my trash. They have told neighbors that I am a criminal. They have picketed my office in Nazi uniforms inviting people to “Join Steve Hassan’s crusade against religions”.

In all of these decades, it is so heartening to read book after book and exposé after exposé of former officials who either ordered these dirty tricks or have performed them and who now wish to expose the organization.

Douglas Frantz wrote a two-part story in the New York Times about how Scientology hired private investigators to dig up dirt on IRS Commissioners and through back-door legal wranglings was able to end a 25-year fight with the IRS to gain tax exemption, which they have used ever since to claim that they are now a religion.³

Scientology even lobbied the U.S. Government to censure Germany for not recognizing it as a religion but labeling it as a dangerous “psycho-sect”. Scientologists cannot work in government organizations in Germany, because they have many times infiltrated governments for the purpose of spying.

There are many who leave the Church of Scientology who continue to believe in Hubbard and the “technology.” There is a whole independent Scientology movement with tens of thousands of former Scientologists who continue, in my opinion, to be detrimentally affected by their indoctrination.

Many believe they have benefited greatly, but I would strongly advise them to read this book and break the taboo on discussing Hubbard’s ideas. Because close scrutiny reveals fatal contradictions, the common denominator of dangerous cultic ideologies.

Be honest about any benefit you received, but understand Hubbard’s intentions. Jon Atack’s papers are very useful for this purpose. No one can continue to believe in Hubbard after reading Never Believe a Hypnotist!

The recent movie The Master, attempted to give insight into Hubbard during the early days. I thought it was way too kind, even with its portrayal of Hubbard as a grandiose, narcissistic sociopath.⁴ In A Piece of Blue Sky, Atack has captured the true essence of Scientology, using Hubbard’s real words.

Every good book about Scientology starts with this as its foundation. None have yet equaled this exacting examination of the history of scientology and its creator, because it leaves little to say.

This is the first objective history of the group, because Jon’s own previous membership never gets in the way of his objectivity. As I said at the beginning: a must read!

— Steven Hassan, January 2013

For more information on Steven Hassan and his latest book, Freedom of Mind, see his website.

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1   For more on the battle to publish Blue Sky first time around, see my January entry, “Atack Unchained”.

2   For Paulette Cooper's own account of what happened, see “The Scandal behind 'The Scandal of Scientology'” at her website.

3   “Scientology's Puzzling Journey From Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt” by Douglas Frantz, New York Times, March 9, 1997.

4   See the film's official site for a selection of clips. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the excerpts featured there include scenes that didn't make it into the final film.