Yesterday, Mike Rinder wrote a post that he hoped would whip all his commenters up into a lather against Scientologists in the entertainment industry. Here are his final paragraphs of that post:
“But of course they ignore the huge failures that are stinking up the lobby at CC: Jenna Elfman has not been able to hold a job since Dharma and Greg. Kirstie Alley defines washed-up. Anne Archer hasn’t had a role in a decade (or two). Even the mighty Tom Cruise has had two box office bombs in a row. Danny Masterson has done nothing since the 70’s. Juliette Lewis might even be longer. Catherine Bell? Marisol Nicholls? The only one who has had consistent work and success is Bart Simpson. Why aren’t all these other people having successful careers? Why isn’t the scientology magic working for them? For heaven’s sake, it’s the Golden Age of Tech times 2.
And what about Jason, Paul and Leah? They are all flourishing. Jason has a massive NW TV hit that he stars on. Paul is constantly writing and does more real humanitarian work than all of scientology combined. And Leah — leaving scientology has seen her with a NYT #1 bestseller, an Emmy, the leading docuseries on TV and co-starring again in a prime time sitcom. Can you imagine if one of the scientologists had this sort of career success?
Perhaps ESCAPING scientology is the best career boost and guarantee of success.
There is plenty of evidence to support this idea.
Scientology continues to operate on the principle “never defend, always attack” — even though they are like cornered rats and will ultimately be wiped out entirely because they are such menacing, antagonistic and rabid vermin. They cannot change because it’s all laid out in their own policy.”
Did you get that next-to-last sentence?
“[Scientologists]… are like cornered rats and will ultimately be wiped out entirely because they are such menacing, antagonistic and rabid vermin.”
Here he is calling Scientologists “cornered rats” who will be ultimately wiped out entirely because they are such menacing, antagonistic rabid vermin.”
Is this Mike Rinder Anti-Scientology rhetoric reverting back into Mike Rinder Scientology rhetoric? Calling Scientologists “cornered rats” and “rabid vermin” who will “ultimately be wiped out” harkens back to earlier totalitarian regimes, and their rhetoric, which Mike often used as the head of propaganda for the Church of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs.
Thankfully, none of this over-the-top rhetoric really worked on his commenters in the way he was going for. Regular commenters repeatedly corrected Mike on his facts regarding Scientology celebrities and their successes – even though they are still in the Church.
Mike Rinder tried to show how David Miscavige always said that leaving Scientology made people fail.
Mike Rinder then ended up trying to show how staying in Scientology made people fail.
What’s the difference between David Miscavige’s and Mike Rinder’s arguments here?
Some of the dangers from having spent decades in the craziest part of Scientology, as the head of the Office of Special Affairs International, are the totalitarian impulses that can still consume a person – under the right conditions – long after they get out of Scientology.
Now that Mike Rinder is on TV, having flipped from the Number 1 propagandist for Scientology into the Number 1 propagandist against Scientology, let’s hope he is aware of these totalitarian impulses within himself, and that he is taking precautions to try to control them.
This particular post of his is not a good sign.
Someone once said “Seek balance of intellect and intuition” and “Harmonize reason and compassion”
I thought that was good advice.
But what’s it mean?
There are seven more episodes of the Aftermath coming up so I suppose there will be more to talk about. So just to diverge, off topic you might say, I take it that Western thinking wants words, logic, explanations and so on. Eastern thinking might be called conceptual, once again just my own take.
Those two suggestions might be simply contemplative for inner balance, not as applicable to the outside world. I had never practiced an Eastern type of philosophy so I thought these suggestions, there were six of them, would be a good entrance point. I practiced them as almost daily reflections for about two months and had benefits. I might even credit myself with having internalized a couple of them.
Here are the six suggestions:
Seek balance of intellect and intuition
Harmonize reason and compassion
Make concert of heart and mind
Modulate the need to do or say with the abilities to observe, to share and to let be
Spice the syntheses with rhythm
Recognize the oft-intruding, peculiar notion that you have arrived and let it pass
if there was a clear and OT, I’d still belong to the religion known as scientology,
I’m logos speaking without any pathos or ethos.
Impossible.
Maybe Gib is a robot.
I know Gib. So if he is a robot then he is one of the best ones ever made.
Logos without pathos or ethos is like banana and peanut butter without the mayonnaise!
Just impossible to swallow.
sounds like Hubbards ARC triangle and KRC triangle, those were very persuasive to become a scientologists and be a part of the crowd to clear the planet. And yet?
The ancients from the Greeks and up forward all have talked about pathos or emotions or passions. Hubbards copious persuasion is science of survival. And yet what are the results?
I don’t think Mike Rinder has studied rhetoric?
just talking here,
if we consider the three means of persuasion and turn them into a mathematical formula it would be pathos + ethos + logos = persuasion.
Hubbards ARC triangle is affinity + reality + communication = understanding.
I’d contend Hubbard did a masterful job of confusion and I’d say ARC = persuasion, if one really thinks about it in their own experiences being involved in scientology.
I completely agree with you. The ARC triangle was created as a tool to use what you talk about and how you say it (logos), while minding who you are presenting yourself to be (ethos), at a particular emotional tone and reality level that your listener can feel affinity for, accept, and agree with (pathos).
I think the ARC Triangle is a very slimy thing.
me too.
It’s also called Love Bombing, that made be feel slimy whenever somebody and/or a scientologist did such to me, ie you’re such a big being, as the woman would bat her eyelids, LOL
I never thought of myself as a big being as I wasn’t “clear” or “OT” yet. LOL
it’s also the main tool of the auditor, sitting there there asking questions with a simile on his/her face. Behind the scenes is Hubbard’s Bridge to Total freedom with all it’s levels of EP’s that each PC is thinking with during auditing sessions. Is this hypnoses, brainwashing or agreement or persuasion? Maybe it’s all of them?
In fairness regarding the statement about vermin, Mike may have been thinking about the slime bags and top executives in the CoS Inc. that put out the smear videos after every episode of the Aftermath. Those things are designed to cut deep.
Otherwise I guess he doesn’t consider it fair gaming since private investigators aren’t tailing scn celebs and picking through their trash.
Head on battles with the CoS can be vicious. Arnie Lerma once described it as looking down the barrel of a shotgun.
On a more positive note, I think religious tolerance is part of the American psyche and governmental force is not forthcoming to eradicate scn in any and all of its forms.
Good comment, Richard. You are probably right that Mike had top executives (meaning Miscavige, actually) in mind when he called them vermin. I guess I had in mind that he and Leah have made statements about Scientolgists in general that aren’t true, and it seemed like more of the same – an effort to stigmatize the whole subject and those who practice it.
In my opinion it IS an effort to stigmatize the whole subject and those who practice it – and to wipe it out entirely. Mike’s blog and the Aftermath are heading in that direction if they aren’t already there.
“Captain America & Wonder Woman Battle the Evil Cherch of Scamology!”. . . Biff! – Boom! – Bam!
Indeed, Richard. Mike’s efforts to stigmatize all of Scn and SCn’ists is the one reprehensible activity he has been involved with that can be known with certainty AND which is entirely without mitigating circumstances. From the data I’m aware of, the actions he took in the church occurred as a result of the indoctrination and conditioning he had gotten since childhood – convincing him that there was a virtual war going on between the CoS and anyone who would get the way of it making a better world. So I’m not inclined to condemn him for it. But not so with regard to his current efforts; for those he is culpable, IMHO.
I understand what you are saying here, Marildi.
But the power of choice is a crucial subject to consider as an ex when you look back on your life as a Scientologist. I know at least 3 second generation Scientologists, two of them Class 8 Auditors who knew and worked with Hubbard. who would never have anything to do with OSA. They simply didn’t see being a Scientologist – or being a human being – that way.
Look at Mike Rinder’s brother, for instance. He grew up in the same family Mike did. He wasn’t in OSA.
The degree to which you refuse to recognize a person’s power of choice over the direction of his life, the more you dehumanize him. And the more you mask and hide the person and who he really is – even to himself. Blaming brainwashing and mind control can be a way for an Ex to never confront parts of himself that really do exist, and should be confronted.
Mike Rinder is a great case study here to think about.
There is a middle ground between “blaming the victim” and “blaming the brainwashing” that all Exes need to get to for themselves. They need to see things through their own power of choice and work out the correct level responsibility – from their own viewpoint – which they have for each of the major choices they made as a Scientologist.
From maxxing out credit cards, to recruiting people using lies, to enforcing abortions, and to putting “bars on the windows and locks on the doors” as Tom DeVocht talked about, what degree of conscious, willing, intentional choice are you able to assign to yourself?
What does that tell you about the person you were before Scientology, during Scientology, and after Scientology? In other words, what does that tell you about the person you are now and the person you have always been your whole life?
This is the most important activity to engage in after Scientology. And very unfortunately, the anti-cult movement’s Scientology Division’s (ACM/SD) ideas make that process almost impossible. It is a very victimizing and hysterical mindset that allows NO RESOLUTION/NO CLOSURE/NO SELF-DISCOVERY. And it forfeits and blocks out the invaluable lessons you’ve learned from your own experiences.
This is why adopting the anti-cult movement’s ideas and mindset are so destructive to an Ex-Scientologist.
You make the point of demarcation for restored power of choice the point at which you get out of the Church.
You seem to say, “OK, before you were in and you were under that irresistible brainwashing/mind control/coercive persuasion/hypnosis/thought reform (insert your favorite choice-annihilating construct here) and now you are out in the real world.’
“From now on, you are responsible for your choices in life.”
Is that really the only dividing line?
Alanzo: “The degree to which you refuse to recognize a person’s power of choice over the direction of his life, the more you dehumanize him. And the more you mask and hide the person he really is. Blaming brainwashing and mind control can be a way for an Ex to never confront parts of himself that really do exist.”
There is truth to both the fact that people have power of choice AND that their choice can be insurmountably influenced by circumstances. It takes a judgment call – not just by the person himself at the time but by anyone judging him later.
My judgment of Mike is based on my own experience of being totally convinced that Scientology was going to save the world, and that without it the world was doomed. Look at what people do in actual wars – where they know that some people are going to DIE, but are convinced that others are going to be righteously “saved.” In the case of Scientology, the belief was that the vast majority would be saved – and in the long run everybody would be.
The difference between me and Mike is that I was never put on the front lines of that war and had to shoot. I think you’re taking too hard a line here – and too absolutist – when you assume that he could have seen through his conditioning.
I simply make that point by showing others who did see through the conditioning and made moral choices which were superior to Mike’s – even with similar backgrounds and in the same environment.
Not everyone went into the Sea Org, for instance, even though all were recruited. And so on up the character-testing ladder of decision-making as a Scientologist.
Aren’t you assuming that others had the same conditioning as Mike’s?
Yes, Mike’s brother had the same “conditioning” as Mike.
The two other 2nd generation Scns, did too. One of them worked with Hubbard directly in the CMO, just like Mike did. She never went into OSA, and never would. Let alone run OSA for David Miscavige like Mike Rinder did for over 20 years.
“Conditioning” is another choice-annihilating construct.
But as with “mind-control” and “brainwashing”, how all-powerful is this “conditioning” really?
That’s the space between “blame the victim” and “blame the brainwashing” that every Ex needs to find for themselves.
And THAT evaluation of each of your major choices as a Scientologist, is extremely valuable. It can return your whole self back to you after adopting the dehumanizing ideas of the anti-cult movement.
But was Mike’s brother actually put to the test on the front lines, as Mike was?
And yes, I do think conditioning is powerful. In act, I’ve learned that many spiritual teachers, both ancient and modern, consider what we believe to be our “self” is a conditioned fabrication – and that the path to liberation and enlightenment is through freeing ourselves of this false “self,” otherwise known as one’s ego.
What do you mean by “front lines”?
Is this some kind of environment that we are assigning the power to supersede and overwhelm all moral decision making?
I was using the same metaphor regarding war that I used above, which ended with this: “The difference between me and Mike is that I was never put on the front lines of that war and had to shoot.”
With regard to your question about “some kind of environment that we are assigning the power to supersede and overwhelm all moral decision making?” – no, not at all. That environment had/has its own moral code.
Yes it does have its own moral code.
But Mike and you and me all have the power of choice to evaluate that moral code, to test it for soundness, and to choose adopt it for ourselves – or not.
Maybe the reason that you were never put on the front lines and had to shoot is because you made many sets of moral decisions that did not accept that anyone needed to be shot for Scientology. And so therefore you “couldn’t make it” on the front lines.
Or was it because you were never fool enough, or immoral enough, to adopt a moral code that told you to shoot people?
This is basically the same point as before, Al. And I still say you aren’t giving enough credit to the power of indoctrination and conditioning – which, more often than not – depending on how well it conforms to the individual’s personal sense of purpose – takes effect for a very long time, if it is ever surmounted at all.
OK, so how do we determine the POWER of conditioning?
Have you ever examined this?
There are all those studies I keep going on about the POWER of the mind control at work in the Moonie recruitment events, where all the POWER was said to be at work on whoever became a Moonie. It was the power of the mind control which was said to be the reason behind the question “Why would any one ever become a Moonie?”
The anti-cult movement said that it was the MIND CONTROL THEY USED ON YOU. It could never be your own choice to become a Moonie!
So the sociologist Eileen Barker studied Moonie Recruitment techniques and found that over 95% of the people who attended these events, where MIND CONTROL was supposed to be at work, left and never came back. And the overwhelming majority of those who signed up left within two years – even with all that MIND CONTROL from the Moonies being used on them AS MOONIES.
If the mind control was so powerful, how could that many people have resisted it?
Was it just not standardly applied?
What no one was looking at, or did not want to admit, was that it was the Moonies’ own power of choice that was making them a Moonie. BEING A MOONIE was working for them on some level, more than it was not.
So have you really examined this idea of the POWER OF CONDITIONING next to your POWER OF CHOICE in your major decision-making as a Scientologist?
What have you found in your own case?
(NOTE: I’m using CAPITAL LETTERS in order to subdue your own power of choice and MAKE YOU AGREE WITH ME!)
“OK, so how do we determine the POWER of conditioning? Have you ever examined this?”
Yes, and I’ve observed the extent of its power. I’ve seen that people generally have the same basic attitudes, beliefs, opinions, etc. – even the same responses and behavior patterns – as the culture they grew up in. This would apply to the different world cultures right on down to the unique culture of an individual’s own family, schools and other sources of education and conditioning, including the overall culture around them.
Regarding mind control, from what I understand the difference is that it is far more coercive than general conditioning and indoctrination into society. It would have to be coercive – to the degree that it differs from the person’s lifelong, prior conditioning.
OK, and so when the power of mind control was studied, why didn’t it work on the people who became Moonies?
Because their prior conditioning was more powerful even than the power of mind control?
I think I’m following you.
So when a person gets into the Sea Org and does shit that no one’s conditioning ever saw coming, why would they end up doing the shit that Rinder did as head of OSA, if prior conditioning was more powerful?
See there’s a contradiction here, and it’s because you have bypassed the null hypothesis that there is no connection or causatve relationship between cult behavior, conditioning and mind control.
The null hypothesis would be that the person himself is choosing the behavior and no mind control or conditioning or anything other witchcraft was causing the result that we see.
The NULL HYPOTHESIS!
Never forget the null hypothesis, Marildi!
“So when a person gets into the Sea Org and does shit that no one’s conditioning ever saw coming, why would they end up doing the shit that Rinder did as head of OSA, if prior conditioning was more powerful?”
Their prior conditioning included the utter conviction that Scientology was going to save the world. Thus, despite the fact that the shit Rinder and others did violated some of their earlier conditioning, it aligned with what they were conditioned to believe was more important than anything.
I’m not trying to defend Rinder or anybody else. For all I know, his purposes weren’t that noble but instead were to achieve super powers – and the reason he left was because he decided this was not going to happen. The point is that we don’t know and therefore shouldn’t judge.
Just to drop a name, Jesus said “Judge not lest ye be judged.”
But haven’t you heard? I’m the Sinless Man.
So I get to judge.
And so given my own experience with OSA, and my experience with people who got themselves into OSA and stayed in OSA for years and years after knowing full well what they do, I’m just going to judge them and say most of the decisions they made were conscious and intentional. And they made those decisions the way they did because they were getting something out of it.
Then later, after they get out, and a whole new cultural framework surrounded their morality and that kind of compassionless and sociopathic decision-making was made all too clear, they dove into “mind control” and “brainwashing” and “hypnosis” and anything else that masked their own conscious, intentional power of choice.
After all these years, this is where I’m at. I used to be the one talking to you about the “technology of brainwashing”, remember? And you would deny it existed.
I do not put NO power into these choice-annihilating constructs, but I have seen too much value and personal insight in dumping those constructs and saying “I did it because I wanted to do it”, and for very few other reasons. You would not believe how many valuable things come from that viewpoint after Scientology.
“I do not put NO power into these choice-annihilating constructs, but I have seen too much value and personal insight in dumping those constructs and saying ‘I did it because I wanted to do it’, and for very few other reasons. You would not believe how many valuable things come from that viewpoint after Scientology.”
Whatever we did, we always did it because we “wanted to do it”; the question is, based on what? A person who is still at an egocentric stage of development has a different point of view and sees things very differently than someone who is ethnocentric or worldcentric. Would you judge a 10-year-old the same way you would judge a 20-year-old?
In any case, I fully agree with the wisdom of a person taking responsibility for what he’s done. (This is also Scientology tech, btw!) However, in my view the data a person was operating on should be taken into consideration in our holding him responsible as well as in his taking responsibility.
Where Mike (or anybody) is concerned, and this gets back to what I was originally saying, Mike is the one who has the true data, and ultimately it’s up to him to determine what he needs to do in order to responsibility.
Next topic: “After all these years, this is where I’m at. I used to be the one talking to you about the ‘technology of brainwashing’, remember? And you would deny it existed.”
I do remember. But that was on an entirely different topic: You were saying the tech itself involved brainwashing, and I still say you were wrong about that. So how can I possibly believe you are “sinless.” 🙂
Sin is the perception of sin.
Exactly. Our minds meet! 😀
p.s. If by “power of choice” you mean free will that doesn’t necessarily align with conditionioning, this is a factor too, and it would have to be based on universal spiritual values as opposed to values one has attained extermally, one way or another.
We can, but certainly don;t have to enter into the spiritual universe to answer these questions.
You could just say “the guy himself” and that would be fine – from Tony Ortega to the Dalai Lama (as two opposite extremes)
Fair enough.
Alanzo: “Is this Mike Rinder Anti-Scientology rhetoric reverting back into Mike Rinder Scientology rhetoric? Calling Scientologists ‘cornered rats’ and ‘rabid vermin’ who will ‘ultimately be wiped out’ harkens back to earlier totalitarian regimes, and their rhetoric, which Mike often used as the head of propaganda for the Church of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs.”
I wouldn’t even give Mike the justification of “reverting back” – he wasn’t that radical even when he was the head of OSA. It would have been extremely out-PR, even for the CoS, to say about a whole group of people the kinds of things Mike is now saying on his blog. He has become a zealous extremist.
Obviously, his purpose is no longer to simply expose the abuses of the CoS with the aim of getting them handled. He now wants to eradicate Scientology entirely as a religious practice – despite the fact that until fairly recently he was still claiming to believe in religious freedom and the idea that even Scientologists should be free to practice their beliefs, as long as they did not abuse others.
Mike knows very well that Scientologists in general do not, for example, attack critics and attempt to ruin them. That is an OSA policy that pertains to OSA operatives. He knows it and yet he claims that this is what “Scientologists” are obliged by policy to do. Notice how often both he and Leah state, with regard to various abuses, that “this is the policy and no one can change it” – which in effect forwards the message that the abuses will never end until Scientology and Scientologists are “wiped out.” To me, it all comes across as calculated propaganda. And I can’t help but wonder who is really behind it and why.
You are taking what Mike said and blowing all the heel out of proportion. He saidvthat if the cos keeps up the always attack never defend that will be what causes the end of Scientology. I thought you were smart guess I was wrong.
That’s why I provided all the preceding paragraphs, so that you could see that I did not take his quote out of context.
Here’s the whole quote. Look at it again, this time without your tribal filters:
What does “even though” mean here? It certainly does not mean “because” as you are trying to claim. He is saying that they will be “wiped out” because they are vermin.
You have to look at this: Mike Rinder called Scientologists “cornered rats” and “vermin”. Think of another former spokesman for a totalitarian group who called a whole religion of people “vermin”.
Can you?
Blown out of proportion, eh? You mean like how Tony O, Mike Rinder and Leah Remini claim Scientologists are a bunch of pedophiles based on a single quote deliberately and shamelessly taken out of context?
All the worst excesses of Scientology anti-critic/anti-exscn zealotry from the late 80s to early 2000s can be traced back to Mike Rinder himself. Rinder ran Scientology PR so hard into the ground that not even outside PR firms were willing to try to fix its image, no matter how much they were offered.
Whatever he wants to claim now, Rinder was one of the very few key personnel, a gang which included Marty Rathbun, Guillaume Lesevre, Norman Starkey, among 3 or 4 others, who helped force out Pat & Annie Broeker in the weeks following LRH’s death in 1986, and revise LRH’s last will & testament under questionable legal circumstances, and in certain cases, outright illegal.
All senior Int execs from that point on were involved in actions that were likely illegal, but good luck finding even a single one willing to admit their complicity.
In all the brouhaha surrounding Debbie Cook’s resignation a few years ago, no one (as far as I can tell) in the “critic community” thought to question her claims and the circumstances that led to her falling out of favor with Miscavige and ultimately dismissed, which she attempted to explain away. Hint: her downfall relates to her pushing Flag regges to bleed every last cent from every visitor, even ones that were practically raw meat and barely in Scientology a few weeks.
When things got so bad that Flag regges & BSOs were discovered charging accounts of Scientologists who hadn’t even been to Flag in years for services not rendered, dozens of Basics,. Congresses & ACCs, $5000-$10000 Quantum meters, ALL built in 1996, that were already obsolete at Flag for years and about to become obsolete everywhere else… man, I could go on with this insanity. They were totally nuts to not think it would hit the fan and when it did, heads were going to roll and sure as hell did, beginning with Debbie Cook, who still hadn’t learned ANYTHING from what had been done to senior Int execs between 2001-2007.
The point is people like Mike Rinder, Marty Rathbun, Debbie Cook, Jefferson Hawkins, and others at senior management level (and not just at Int Base physically but globally), they really don’t like to take full responsibility, or even any responsibility. They have to dump it all on others. Miscavige was originally the favored target since he makes for a very convenient scapegoat and after all, he is the one who raised the cost of services & materials so stupendously high that only a handful of Scientologists could afford to do Scientology anymore without putting themselves into massive credit card debt. Miscavige is the one who pioneered the now infamous “wallet biopsy” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7CVXO2pBLc] back in the late 80s where regges would literally try to get you to lay out all your credit cards on the table and max them all out.
I could keep going. Lots of examples! So we all know Miscavige was and still is a royal bastard. But you know what? He’s just one bastard. Alone, he’s just another joe schmo like the rest of us mere mortals, and a chronically constipated one at that. I don’t even think Tony O has the kind of bowel troubles that Miscavige is rumoured to have.
Alanzo mentioned in another comment that it takes a certain kind of people to follow the kind of orders that come down from senior execs. Just because an asshole like Rinder tells someone to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge or risk being declared SP and their “eternity” taken away from them, doesn’t mean anyone will do it. And most didn’t, which is what eventually led to his falling out of favour with the Grand Poombah hisself, since nothing Rinder ended up helping Scientology but just made public perception of it even worse than it had ever been before.
You don’t hear much today about all the contradictions in management in the 80s and 90s, but before 2001, Miscavige was not a micromanager. LRH hated micromanaging with a passion, but he eventually became convinced that he was the only one in Scientology capable of managing competently. Thats why there are many HCOPLs on virtually every conceivable topic and why in 1965 he deified himself as the only & only Source of Scientology. He did all that because he got fed up of having to micromanage and tried to set up a system where orgs could run close to “automatic” without him having to have any direct contact or being there.
LRH was right about the hopeless incompetence in Scientology. The higher up you go the chain of command, the stupider they get. I can’t stress that enough. These morons couldn’t and still can’t even deal with ridiculous anti-scn picketing clowns like AnonOrange and AGP without making Scientology look even worse & more sinister than it already is portrayed in the media. Look at their videos for heavens sake. How is it possible that a MULTIBILLION dollar operation like Scientology can’t even effectively deal with goofs like that? Like I wrote in another comment, like many others I gave up in spite of staying in the Sea Org for years and years and genuinely wanting to get the outside world to look at Scientology from a different, more positive viewpoint than the over-the-top negative one presented in the tabloids & media. I genuinely believed and still believe there’s a lot of good, useful data in Scientology, and I was always skeptical about it when I first joined up.
But there’s some kind of fatal flaw in Scientology, like a benign tumor that won’t kill a patient but if not kept in check could potentially grow large enough to invade surrounding tissue and actually become cancerous. That tumor is KSW and the other authoritarian type HCOPLs & EDs, in other words the authoritarian personality cult surrounding the person of LRH that came to dominate the Sea Org after the birth of the Commodores Messenger Organization, which Miscavige joined at 16 years of age and quickly became its most senior officer. Sea Org was authoritarian before Miscavige’s rise-to-power but he took it to a whole ‘nother level, but didn’t jump the shark until after LRH died.
And who helped Little Big Man jump the shark and turn Scientology into a lunatic fest where tens of thousands of dollars were/are spent each MONTH on private investigators; crush/gang regging Scientologists to the point of bankruptcy, sometimes even into deliberate bankruptcy, most notoriously demonstrated in the case of Richie Acunto; using pathetic tools like Grant Cardone to harass the hell out of elderly Scientologists who refused to worship Miscavige like Milton Katselas; list goes on and on and on.
And this thing with bullying Katselas. That actually started with Mike Rinder in charge of “handling” Katselas in the 90s after Milton kept getting KRed by the likes of Jenna Elfman on bogus charges seducing young women attending his Master Class at the BH Playhouse. No one in the senior exec strata at Int liked Milton, and Miscavige was personally very jealous of him because Milton was one of the very very few Scientologists who maintained direct correspondence with LRH himself, even after he began living in a Bluebird trailer in his final years. Meaning that LRH personally read and replied to Katselas by hand via post. I’ve seen the letters myself personally. From what I’ve been told by old-timers, the only other people who had that kind of genuine friendship with LRH were Gene Denk, his personal physician, and the Broekers, though in this case they were in direct face-to-face contact with LRH, whereas Milton’s ties to LRH were purely through letters. From what I’ve been told, the few other people who enjoyed the privilege of handwritten correspondence with LRH directly were all non-Scientologists like Forest J Ackerman. If true, this explains a lot about Miscavige and the type of person he would become.
When you look at all the people Miscavige tried to permanently shun out of Scientology, you’ll find a pattern that all connects back to this issue of friendship with LRH. LRH did think quite highly of Miscavige, but he never considered him a friend and definitely did not consider him sufficiently worthy and competent enough of running the whole show as its undisputed global leader.
The only reason Miscavige has had virtually unchecked control of Scientology worldwide is because of overzealous lapdogs like Mike Rinder who were willing to get their hands bloody in order to curry favour with Little Big Man. But not even Rathbun, Starkey, Lesevre, Jentzsch were scummy enough to do all the rotten things Rinder was more than willing to do, and its also why he is so willing to turn to the other extreme and deliberately promote utter bullshit that he knows is totally, unequivocally false like accusing LRH of being a pedophile and accusing Scientologists of being complicit in child sex abuse due to a single quote deliberately taken out of context from a book written in 1950, which was a radically different kind of culture than ours today. That quote doesn’t mean what they’re claiming it means, and Tony O is trying to milk the hell out of it to distract from all the child sex allegations against Backpage.com which he helped run while at Village Voice. It says a lot about what kind of person Tony O is based on his use of the bullshit phrase, “underage prostitution.”
Sorry, but as others have verified, there’s no such thing as “underage prostitution” and its a disgusting term to try to legitimize or explain away allegations that children have been forced into prostitution by way of Backpage. And I’d like to know why Mike Rinder and Leah Remini refuse to address these allegations and why they try to distract from these issues and the scandals Tony O was involved in by always bringing up straw men and deliberately misinterpreting LRH quotes out of context.
In all the articles & books critical of LRH & Scientology I have not found one that even mentions this quote and I’ve read everything from George Malko, Russell Miller, Jon Atack, Paulette Cooper, and many more. If its been brought up before in their works or in others, I’m not remembering it. Anyone know?
In 18 years out and being a critic and reading all those books and more, I have never seen anyone try to take that example from the back of dianetics and try to make it into “Scientologists believe in pedophilia – it’s in Dianetics!” like Tony Ortega and now Leah Remini and Mike Rinder have done. Leah knows that Scientologists do not believe in pedophilia.
And no one is asking Mike Rinder if this quote was used to justify his getting all his juniors in OSA to suppress charges of child sexual abuse the whole time he was running OSA. Because if it’s the way Tony Ortega says, then Mike is the one who would have used that quote to justify his job every day in OSA.
Mike Rinder is the main person to have suppressed charges of child abuse in the Church of Scientology. He sits there in the episode of Scientology and the Aftermath saying absolutely nothing about his role in creating the procedures and getting his juniors to suppress his own guests’ charges of child sex abuse during that episode.
Mike Rinder was running OSA when those girls were abused and they were being “handled”. All that ran through OSA.
The historical revision is just outrageous.
This is what I saw when Mike and Marty first emerged on the Internet in 2009. The first thing they did was continue to dead agent old guard critics and then revise their own histories on what they did with Dave and the rest. Then, when the Indie thing went bust, they started to become critics of LRH in 2012-2014, and it looked like they were going to start coughing up the dead bodies.
But nope. Never did.
And now look at em.
You watch, Tony won’t call this out, Chris Shelton won’t call this out, 90% of the Bunkeridoos won’t call this out, because he’s ON OUR SIDE and therefore can’t be criticised.
Tribe over truth. Same thing they did in Scientology.
In fact, if you watch Chris Shelton’s latest Q&A video at the 28:40 mark you’ll see Chris launch into a complete opus of revisionist history about what Mike Rinder did at OSA. I don’t know if they are lies or not, because Chris might very well believe what he is saying. But he is not telling the truth about Mike Rinder here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH8fQfan4AA
Again – the exact same thing Chris did for Scientology in the Sea Org.
“But he is not telling the truth about Mike Rinder here.”
What is your source of the truth about Mike Rinder? I’d like to know.
Marty Rathbun’s sworn affidavit in the Ken Dandar case.
Scroll down.
Then there’s Mike Rinder on video running a false flag operation against Gerry Armstrong
Gerry Armstrong goes through a whole hour of things Rinder did to him and to other critics
And LOTS more. Decades more.
History is REALLY being rewritten here regarding Mike Rinder.
Mike Rinder ran the Office of Special Affairs, for Christ’s sake. Chris Shelton makes it seem like he was Scientology’s Monty Hall – kept in a closet his whole career.
Thanks! I looked over your links and, to be honest, got the impression that Mike has been quite willing to say what he knows. You, on the other hand, seem to believe he can recall and could supply many additional and significant specifics than the ones he has given – and that he is deliberately withholding them. I don’t really understand why you have come to that conclusion and seem so certain about it. Sorry if I’m being dense, but please explain, at least briefly, why it isn’t just an assumption on your part. (This is completely aside from what Chris Shelton had to say.)
Marty testified that Mike gave daily briefings to David Miscavige on everything going on with all OSA operations against critics for decades. That means he knew all the details and was in the chain of command to order all of it, sign checks, approve resources, and report back “dones” to Dave.
Marty handled squirrels via RTC. Mike handled critics via OSA.
For decades.
I’m not saying that he is not doing anything now or that he is not in an impossible position now, doing some good things – as long as they benefit him personally. Mike’s never gone out of his way to fix anything, that I know of. In fact, I don’t know of him actually fixing very much with critics that he has harmed, but that’s another story. Maybe having one or two on his show.
Ask the McClaughry’s what they think about Mike Rinder.
I am saying that when Mike reverts back to the Herman Goering rhetoric, someone needs to raise a finger.
So is your point that Mike doesn’t do much of anything unless he himself stands to benefit? At first you were saying that Chris Shelton was not telling “the truth about Mike Rinder” – and that sounded very different from saying you haven’t observed him help anyone but himself.
I don’t understand.
Mike not doing much of anything that does not help himself is not related to Chris Shelton not telling the truth about Mike Rinder’s past.
Okay, got it. It just seemed that you went from saying Mike was a lot more involved with the activities of OSA than Chris Shelton was saying – and then you added that he (Mike) should be doing something to fix the critics he has harmed, so it seemed connected to “the truth about Mike.”
In any case, I understand now that you feel Mike did a lot of harm when he was head of OSA and that he should state publicly what he did exactly and to whom – for the sake of those who were harmed.
I’m curious: do you know of particular individuals who were targets of OSA and would like it to be acknowledged either publically or privately? In other words, who do you feel hasn’t been acknowledged that should be? I would think this should be determined by Mike on an individual basis..
I’ve answered this many times. In fact, once Scientology and the Aftermath was approved for a 2nd season, I wrote a series of posts on this exact subject. Here’s one of the first ones. Look around in that area of time on the blog and you will see the others.
Since I did not work with Mike Rinder, and Marty and David Miscavige, there is no way for me to know all the things that Mike Rinder should take responsibility for. That is Mike’s job. And he has not done nothing, that’s for sure.
But sometimes, when he for instance says that Scientologists believe in pedophilia – when Rinder himself was the one covering up all the child molestations in Scientology while NO OTHER SCIENTOLOGISTS WERE outside of OSA, the deceitful posturing and deflective, dishonest rhetoric is just a little more than I can take, and I have to say something.
Like I said, Mike Rinder is probably in a morally impossible position, and he DID put himself there. So he gets credit for that. But he is also being paid more than any critic of Scientology in its history, while all the other critics he drove into bankruptcy, and worse, get no justice.
On the one hand, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense, as regards justice being served. On the other, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of telling someone how to get their ethics in, unless it’s a court of law doing so since it has the means (theoretically, at least) to determine all relevant data before meting out justice – which we don’t.
Not that I’m a fan of Mike Rinder in many ways. With regard to the Aftermath series, I think Mike and Leah sometimes stretch the truth about Scientology (both of its definitions) and Scientologists way beyond what is factual – to the point of it being a lie. Mike does this kind of thing on his blog, too, such as condoning comments he knows are false, as long as they forward his purposes. He operates on “ends justify the means,” and is hypocritical in other respects, too.
Thanks for the exchange, Alanzo. It was helpful.
I think I am liking you here.
Marie, if you mean me, thank you. 🙂
WTF? This is the type of rhetoric Mike used to spout against the psychs. 97.5% of Scnists are harmless, maybe misguided, but harmless. But, because they are Scnists they should be “wiped out”? That’s right up there with LRH SoS quote about how to handle low toned people, quietly and without sorrow.
I was going to post this on the previous topic but I’ll post it here:
Ex scn-ists sometimes say they have “no skin in the game”. The skin which is actually still there is that if they ever decided to become a public personality like a politician or actor or whatever they can be exposed and classified according to anti-scn descriptions, up to and including complicity in crimes. Even in the everyday workplace a scn-st or ex scn-ist would be suspect. It remains to be seen if “Scientologists” will simply be regarded as non threatening religious fundamentalists and leave it at that.
Regarding this topic, the generality called “Scientology” allows anyone associated with “Scientology” to be fair gamed.
I was actually shocked to read what Mike wrote. And here’s the thing, I didn’t even see it the first time I read it. Here’s a guy talking about members of a religion being “vermin” and they will be “wiped out” – and he is not even targeting the people who are responsible for the abuse in Scientology. He’s talking about all Scientologists.
When you’re right, you’re right.
Who just typed that? Couldn’t have been me!
Never stop, Eileen! 🙂
Ripples in a pond…
Yesterday one of my master’s degree students told me that 10 years ago (she was an undergraduate) I was the first person who had ever told her she should get a master’s degree. At that time she couldn’t imagine ever achieving that. I was humbled and reminded that what we tell people about themselves really matters.
Mike should be much more careful with his words. Words can bite, words can heal.
Very nice!
‘Scientology continues to operate on the principle “never defend, always attack”’
It seems to me that most likely refers to official Scientology – as in the PR apparatus that attacks people, lies about and denigrates them, and put up hateful websites.
If I wrote “Catholicism continues to deny the full scope of the child abuse problem” wouldn’t you assume that referred to the officialdom of the Catholic Church, rather than each and every Catholics in all corners of the world?
The reference is left unclear. I’d agree that the ugly rhetoric seems unnecessary – though if someone had, for instance, just been dealing with vile and unjust PR attacks, I think it’s understandable that they might post such a thing on their blog.
Is there some reason you think Rinder’s blog should be held to a higher standard than, say, your blog?
I’m not the former head of OSA with 25 years of fairgaming history behind me.
You do realize how many peoples’ lives Mike Rinder did his best to destroy, how many families he had ripped apart, don’t you?
We’re not just going to forget everything he did, and look the other way when he starts talking exactly like he used to, while on another mission to destroy a group of people.
Are we?
Well you might, Peacemaker.
But I’m not.
I don’t know if you are an Ex or a never-in, but I have personal history getting involved in 1 OSA project. And I found it so distasteful that I never did anything else for OSA.
People who did a 2nd, and a 3rd OSA project were a certain kind of person. People who spent years working for OSA are yet another, certain kind of person.
But a person who spent 25 years running OSA? Working every day, planning and executing L Ron Hubbard’s most abusive tech and policies and ALL of David Miscavige’s orders?
That’s a very special kind of person – a person who needs to be watched.
Scientology was a test of character. Most people in Scientology passed that test and never participated in the harm of anyone, no matter the pressure. Some people failed that test, though, over and over.
The “in 1 OSA project” was an interesting read, Alanzo! A very well written would-be spy short story. I was almost there with you. I didn’t quite get the significance of the clothespins on the floor but Very Well Done!
That was an OSA intimidation tactic which referred to the president of the Cult Awareness Network having an arrest record for being caught soliciting a male prostitute.
The arrest report, written by the officer who was undercover, testified that the head of the Cult Awareness Network had approached the officer on the street corner and said “I want you to put clothespins on my nipples and suck my d%$k.”
OSA had sent a mailing to the entire CAN database with their president’s mugshot & that report in it.
So the clothespins in the bathroom were a “reminder to the membership” of that.
I just couldn’t see the enlightenment in it.
Thanks for the VWD!
That could be one short story in a collection of such you might write and publish about your scn experiences as well as your experiences as a scn critic. I’d suggest keeping it neutral or detached as in the “OSA Project”. Everyone else in the critic field is making money, so might you! Having your computer hacked would be another story as well as other episodes you’ve mentioned. The Scientology Saga is likely to continue for some time.
Thanks for that, Richard.