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L Ron Hubbard mandated that all Office of Special Affairs personnel, the people who deal with “external threats”, study Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
Sun Tzu teaches that you must attract your enemy to attack your strongest defenses, while distracting your enemy from attacking your weakest ones.
Activists, yes even anti-scientology activists, are an angry bunch.
Often, they are extremely emotional, and thus, easily manipulated.
They tend to organize around certain buzzwords without ever asking what, exactly, those buzzwords mean.
Totalist Goals Give Activists a Big Ass Brain Spooge
The totalist purpose “To Clear The Planet” gives the Scientologist a major Brain Spooge. It doesn’t matter what it means – just get to work “clearing the planet”! That fanatical blindness he instilled with these totalist goals allowed him to raise prices out the roof while the Scientologist didn’t care that the logistics of ‘clearing the planet’ became more and more impossible – while making Hubbard WAY more money on fewer and fewer people.
See? So being manipulated as an activist – even a Scientology activist – is always the goal of someone seeking power over others for their own gain.
This is also used by Scientology to defend against anti-Scientology activists who might dismantle their tax exemption, and their global real estate empire.
Buzz Words Can Have the Same Effect on Angry Anti-Scientology Activists
The “Where’s Shelly?” campaign is a great example of this. It gets people angry and fired up, but, because it is a hoax, sends anti-Scientology activists into a brick wall. Scientology has a very strong defense here because Shelly Miscavige is not missing, and never has been. It also distracts today’s Anti-Scientology activists from the murder of Shelly’s mother, Flo Barnett, which is one of Scientology’s greatest legal weaknesses.
Why?
Because murder has no statue of limitations.
A buzz word can be defined as “A word drawn from, or imitative of technical jargon, often rendered meaningless and fashionable through abuse by non-technical persons pretending familiarity with the subject. Buzz words become meaningless through endless and inappropriate use and repetition.”
I’ve seen many buzz words come and go over the course of my 25 years out of Scientology.
The latest buzz word, rising in prominence now, is “human trafficking.”
If someone wants to recruit a bunch of angry people to get fired up, and send them at their enemy, they can call Scientology a “human trafficking cult”. Plenty of people will get shocked and alarmed – watch and like videos, pay super chats, and even go outside and angrily protest against Scientologists walking down the street – all without ever looking up what “human trafficking” actually means.
And, just like the Scientologist “clearing the planet”, they will never ask for any concrete evidence that Scientology engages in this behavior that will fit the legal definition.
They will just mobilize themselves straight into a brick wall.
Fight This Kind of Emotional Manipulation With Basic Skepticism
I’ve tried to write about Basic Skepticism before because, as an Ex-Scientologist, learning the skills of basic skepticism changed my whole life. Very few anti-Scientology activists have ever been interested in the buzz-kill of skepticism, and many other Exes suspected I was an OSA Agent who was just trying to harsh everyone’s brain spooge.
But here’s the thing:
Basic Skepticism makes you a more effective activist. It reveals when you are being led into a brick wall – right where Marty Mike and Dave want you. It will help you identify where Scientology’s weaknesses are that will actually, finally, get criminal indictments that execute penetrative law enforcement powers necessary to get past Scientology’s religious and corporate ramparts.
THERE HAVE BEEN NO SUCCESSFUL CRIMINAL INDICTMENTS OF SCIENTOLOGY SINCE 1978.
DAVID MISCAVIGE IS STILL IN POWER, STILL DOING WHATEVER HE WANTS TO SCIENTOLOGISTS.
That was worse than a total failure.
Are Marty, Mike and Dave doing it to you again?
What is Basic Skepticism?
When an Atheist questions the Bible, that is NOT skepticism. That is pseudo-skepticism.
When an Atheist questions Atheism, that is skepticism.
So you can see how rare true skepticism is.
Basic skepticism is only 2 steps:
1. Recognize when you’ve been given a claim to believe.
2. Ask for, or seek for yourself, evidence which supports that claim.
1. Seems simple only if the claim is one you don’t believe. If the claim is one you do believe, recognizing it as a claim, rather than a “fact”, is harder. It is uncomfortable. In fact, all of this is uncomfortable – that’s why almost no one does it.
2. Seek evidence WHICH SUPPORTS THAT CLAIM. Not counter-claims, or arguments against that which derail your target. You must find positive evidence which supports the exact claim you’ve been given to believe.
So we’ve got a claim here:
2. What physical evidence exists for Scientology’s actual, real life activities which supports the legal definition of human trafficking above?
Believe it or not, this process will make you a more effective, less manipulated, anti-Scientology activist.
I suggest all anti-Scientology activists apply basic skepticism to the claims you have been given to believe about Scientology, and which fuel your activism.
This process will uncover the brick walls Marty, Mike & Dave are trying to march you into, and will reveal the weaknesses in their defenses which they do not want you to see.
I don’t really understand your definition of skepticism.
As an atheist how would I question atheism? What claim am I investigating?
Of course one claim an atheist can be skeptical of is that “No god exists”.
But a much more fruitful line of being skeptical of one’s own belief as an atheist is “Nothing non-material exists.” If you can find positive evidence which supports that claim, I’ll buy you a gallon of ice cream.
Thanks for talking about skepticism. As I said in my article, I think it is one of the most valuable and life-changing disciplines ever.