Live and Let Die: Why Criticize Scientology?

Why Criticize Scientology?

When I was a part of the Church of Scientology and in the Sea Org, I always used to wonder about people who attacked Scientology. I wondered what motivated them; why did they seem so passionate about what they were doing. Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? Wasn’t it enough that they didn’t like it and left? Couldn’t they just leave us Scientologists alone to practice our religion in peace? Why did they have to spend so much time and effort going out of their way to write blog articles, be interviewed by the press, write books and even make whole movies about how bad the Scientology experience was? In other words, couldn’t they just live and let live?

We had lots of explanations fed to us about Church attackers in the Church, mainly out of the mouths of personnel from the Office of Special Affairs, (OSA), the Church’s legal arm.  In 2008, they carefully explained how Anonymous, for example, were a bunch of no-good hackers and bored teenagers who didn’t have anything better to do. We were told that between bouts of masturbating to internet child porn in their basements and doing drugs, they were being funded by some mysterious ringleader who organized their efforts in each org area and paid them with pizza and $10-20 an hour to go dance around in front of the orgs with signs reading “Ask me about Xenu” and “Scientology is a trap”. We were told that these mysterious ringleaders were being paid lots of money by Big Pharma to do away with Scientology because we (the Sea Org) were so effectively cutting into the profits from psychiatric drugging of children, profits which run into the billions of dollars per year. It’s ironic now, knowing how much money the Church is hording in its off-shore IAS bank accounts, how condemnatory they always were towards psychiatry and Big Pharma’s “billions in blood money.” I’ve never seen a better example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Church members are told that I and other critics are suppressive people who want nothing less than the utter destruction of all Mankind. They are told that it is because of our own wrong-doings that we are so critical of the Church of Scientology. Apparently in their eyes, Scientology is the only organization in the history of the world that can do no wrong and is above criticism of any kind. Its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and its current leader, David Miscavige, are incapable of making any mistakes and are the most selfless and dedicated and altruistic human beings who have ever lived. Of course, this defies all logic and reason.

I worked for the Church for 25 years – most of my life. It was no easy task to make me into an enemy of Scientology. Even after I left the Sea Org, I was still dedicated to doing Scientology and making it to OT. The Church’s injustice machinery had to work overtime to turn me to the “dark side.” I can only thank them for that now, but at the time it was a journey much like that of Dante travelling to the lowest levels of Hell. I could never have taken such a life-altering journey without stumbling over some jaw-dropping milestones, the kind which change your outlook forever.

For example, I now know that:

• The Church of Scientology is exclusively dedicated to just one thing: making money. Whatever purposes or aims it was founded upon, and no matter how it used to be run, that is its state now. It is actually a for-profit corporation hiding behind a cloak of religious authority, which gives it rights and privileges which no corporation should have. As a recognized religion in the US, Scientology can and does freely engage in stalking, harassment, emotional and psychological blackmail, human trafficking and slavery, all protected by the First Amendment right to the free practice of religion. It should not have this right. If any for-profit business tried to get away with what the Church of Scientology gets away with on a daily basis, they would be shut down by at least four government agencies within a few days of the first reports of abuse being filed.
• L. Ron Hubbard died a self-admitted failure, hiding from the law and wanted for tax evasion, as well as being an unindicted co-conspirator in the Operation Snow White fiasco. He did not “go off to research upper OT levels” and “leave his body peacefully” as was falsely claimed by David Miscavige in 1986. He left a “last will” and instructions for certain organizational actions to be taken, but he did not provide any hat write-up nor did he choose his successor.
• David Miscavige was among those who took advantage of Hubbard’s deteriorating mental state in his final years, feeding him false reports so as to isolate Hubbard further from what was really going on with Scientology and create a condition where it was easy for Miscavige to grab the reins of power once Hubbard was gone. Indeed, Miscavige had already effectively taken over control of Scientology and was freely spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in parishioner monies on his own excesses before Hubbard was even dead. Miscavige himself is a sociopathic liar who physically abuses his staff and has single-handedly managed to decimate International Scientology management beyond repair. His greatest skill is his ability to use PR to fool the remaining Scientologists into thinking that he is a great spiritual leader who is somehow the only person ensuring Scientology’s future. Ironically, the exact opposite is true, something the remaining Scientologists are going to be shocked to one day find out. Miscavige’s lies are already catching up with him at an alarming rate and he is not going to be able to keep his crimes under wraps for much longer.
• In the late 1960s, Hubbard purposefully created, organized and operated a Gestapo-like intelligence operation known as the Guardian’s Office. Such an apparatus is one that simply begs to be used for abuse and that is exactly what it is doing. Hubbard’s wife, Mary Sue, played no small part in running the Guardian’s Office under Hubbard’s supervision, ruthlessly attacking anyone who dared to speak critically of the church so as to “ruin them utterly” according to Hubbard’s written policies. When the Guardian’s Office went too far and was rightfully busted for illegal actions taken directly against agencies of the U.S. government, it was nominally disbanded but in fact, its leaders, policies and operations really were just transferred en masse to the Office of Special Affairs, which continues to operate in the tradition of the Guardian’s Office, practicing the policy of “Fair Game” against anyone the Church’s leaders deem an enemy. To this day, they overtly and covertly carry out terror campaigns against church critics for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment right to speak their mind.
• The Church has amassed literally billions of dollars in assets and liquid funds, yet disperses little to none of this money for any of its humanitarian purposes or “key strategies for planetary clearing” such as Ideal Orgs. It doesn’t need to collect one more dime from any parishioners in order to achieve its ends. The international Church coffers hold enough money to outright buy and renovate every current Church building in the world and build as many new ones as they want. There is enough money to easily produce millions of copies of The Way to Happiness and mail or even airdrop them all over the Middle East, Southeast Asia, North Korea and any other suppressed or war-torn region of the planet. It can afford to build and staff any number of Narconon Drug Rehabilitation Centers or Applied Scholastics schools all over the world. Planeloads of Volunteer Ministers could be sent to any trauma center or disaster zone at a moment’s notice. Yet Church money is hardly ever used for any of these purposes, and when it is disbursed it pays only enough to cover a tiny fraction of what is required. Every single time one of the things I’ve listed are needed, Scientology parishioners are told that they need to pay for it immediately because the Church doesn’t have the money. This is probably one of the most bald-faced lies that the church is operating on right now, giving its parishoners the impression that it is doing all this humanitarian work around the world, while in reality it is doing almost nothing. The only thing all this money is really going for is to satisfy the material needs of David Miscavige, who never wants for a single thing and is waited upon by numerous full-time support staff literally 24 hours a day.

Now having learned about all of these things in grim detail (and plenty more), I decided that I should do something to expose the truth. I’m not alone in this. There are organizations with hundreds or even thousands of members who work full-time to expose these same kinds of abuses, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International. I’m not comparing myself or other Scientology critics to these organizations in terms of the volume of good that we do, but I can safely say that we are working for the same purpose: to do our best to make the world a better place by exposing corruption, abuse, avarice and financial mis-dealings.

No matter how or why you leave the Church of Scientology, when you find out what is really going on with and in it, you want to do something about it. You want those who are still inside, being blatantly deceived and cheated and abused, to not be stuck in that horrific situation. You want disconnected families to be re-united with their loved ones. You want real justice for those who have been so wronged by Church leaders, and you want to see those who are responsible for these abuses to be held accountable.

That is why I am speaking out and I believe that is the motivating force behind most of the other critics as well. That is why we don’t have a “live and let live” philosophy when it comes to leaving Scientology alone. No organization that is carrying out the kinds of abuses every day that I have described above deserves to keep living. It is time for the Church of Scientology to end. That is why I speak out and why I hope that through my work, I can convince others to do the same.