"Getting out of a 'cult' is not something that you recover from, it is something you are strengthened by." -- Alanzo
Alanzo first began writing about Scientology in the mid-1980’s on the Religions & Ethics section of the GEnie Bulletin Board using a 2400 baud modem. He’s been writing about Scientology, both in and out of the subject, since then.
When Alanzo left Scientology in 1999 and became a critic of them on the Internet, Scientology sought to redefine him as a “Suppressive Person” and an overall low-life scumbag.
Since waking up a few years ago, from the tribal environment of Anti-Scientology and applying critical thinking to that, too, AntiScientologists have sought to do the same.
Alanzo has seen the tribalism that makes Scientology a cult in Anti-Scientology, too – simply at a less intense volume.
Because of his long experience both in Scientology and in Anti-Scientology, Alanzo feels a somewhat lonely & quixotic duty to be an asshole in these matters.
The following posts have been published on AlanzosBlog, and have biographical information in them.
During all 3 Seasons of Leah Remini’s Scientology and the Aftermath, Leah and Mike have sought to make anyone who criticizes their show out to be a Scientologist. Because who could possibly criticize the holy work that they are doing but a Scientologist?
Marty Rathbun wrote a post last September that is more relevant than ever, thanks to Indy OSA turning intelligence into Black PR.
If there’s one reason that I’m doing these videos, it’s because these ideas from the anti cult movement are destructive to an Ex-Scientologist, or an Ex-member of any minority religion that they call “cult”. And they’re just beliefs – they’re not facts.
I recorded my thoughts on the treatment I observed Aaron Smith-Levin getting from his Anti-Scientologist friends. From the ideologue Chris Shelton, to Tony Ortega’s demagoguery, to Leah Remini’s need to create a moral panic around Scientology – can Aaron’s intellectual honesty survive?
Many people have listed the parts of Scientology involvement, especially Arnie Lerma at his seminal Lermanet.com blog. This is one I developed for a project I am working on.
Adopting the beliefs of the anti-cult movement dramatically changes the views and attitudes of those who experience a loss of faith. Those changes have a profound effect on how Exes make sense of their own past. So we must ask: How helpful is the ideology of the anti cult movement in making sense of your […]
The 19th century German philosopher Max Scheler said that an apostate was ‘engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past’. American sociologist Lewis Coser defined an apostate as not just a person who experienced a dramatic change in conviction but “a man who, even in his new state of […]
I used to think that as long as I was not in the cult of Scientology any more, I would never fall into the unquestioning, partisan mindset that I had adopted when I was a Scientologist.
To dismiss that part of your life, to wall it off under labels of “delusional Scientologist” or “weak” or “crazy loon” is to remain in a dissociative state – to continue living a fractured life with some of the best parts of you buried underneath a wall of self-hatred and shame.
A Post-Ex has integrated the arguments, and “truths”, he made as a Scientologist with the arguments, and “truths”, he made as an Ex/Anti-Scientologist. He has seen the disconnects and the contradictions there, and repaired them. He no longer walks around with an opposite self inside him, with which he is at war.
What if being a Scientologist was never a really a disease in the first place that you needed to “recover from”? What if it was just one part of your own much longer spiritual journey that taught you many important lessons, and from which you emerged stronger and wiser than ever? How would you know?
Consider that this is a trick that L Ron Hubbard pulled on Scientologists. Think about the terror a Scientologist experiences, and the ways their inner thoughts and environment are controlled by this trick. It’s a very vicious and uncaring one. It was a trick Hubbard used without regard to a Scientologists interests at all – […]
Your assumptions can be quite insidious. You must study the actual subjects that Hubbard “spun” for you – from sources completely independent from L Ron Hubbard – so as to challenge your own assumptions, separate out Hubbard’s installed ones, and inspect them for their weaknesses.
Once I’d spotted that my thinking was tribal, I was no longer consumed by my tribe’s survival. I resented that the tribe had taken over my thinking. I could finally see the eclipsed and thoughtless cruelty of my former tribe.
If you were not abused in Scientology, and you say so in the various social media platforms on the Internet, then you can be accused of being heartless to those who were. A common way to avoid that is to forget your own viewpoint and to take up other peoples’ problems of abuse as your […]
Scientologist and Anti-Scientologist alike can not think. They are both too militantly tribal to be able to think rationally. Here’s how.
How gullible can some Ex-Scientologists get? Jon Atack wrote a post on Tony Ortega’s blog, accusing everyone who was ever involved in Scientology of being gullible. I commented about Jon’s broad-brushed generality of anyone who ever called themselves a Scientologist. It gave me the chance to use the word “hootenanny” (twice), and I have been […]
For anyone not intimately familiar with Hubbard’s writing and the early history of Scientology, you should know that almost every word that Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd speaks in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is either a direct quote or a paraphrase from L Ron Hubbard. You should also know that the sequence of scenes in this […]
Carmen K. Sisson | Photographer Here’s the recipe which has been followed by 1000s of people before you: Make the harm 100 times worse than it actually was. Keep repeating the harm you experienced over & over to yourself and others. Become a member of a group that identifies you by the harm you suffered. […]
Another excellent discussion over on Mike Rinder’s blog prompted me to post this solution to the endless tribal warfare between “spiritualists” and “scientists”. Although I almost always disagree with her, Marildi, once again does an admirable job making her case. As well as Eclipse-Girl, Roger Hornaday, and the rest. _____________________________________ marildi says June 17, 2015 […]
When I got out of Scientology and began exposing them on the Internet 19 years ago, it was because I had discovered how cruel that the leadership in the Church of Scientology had been to too many people. And I realized this had to be stopped. And so, along with many others, at great risk […]
People need simplistic explanations for Scientology because it’s too much work to understand it. They just want Scientology to be a cult & Hubbard to be a con man because it’s easier to think with that way. Even an Ex-Scientologist can go through a period where this is what they want. In the long run, […]
When I was young and dumb, I worked with OSA in Illinois. Randy Kretchmar, Carol Brookes and Mary Ann Ahmad were the Office of Special Affairs at the Chicago Org at that time. The Cult Awareness Network had not been infiltrated, taken over and destroyed by OSA yet. They were still the Church of Scientology’s […]
I wrote this after dealing with a swarm of Scientologists on the Internet: I’ve seen it now. It is unmistakable. It works like this: You present an idea that has NOTHING to do with Scientology, and the Scientologist must relate it to something in Scientology to “understand” what you are talking about. Example: I wrote […]
The “Father of Deprogramming” Ted Patrick was a devoted Christian who believed he was doing God’s work by kidnapping people & holding them in a room & browbeating them until they denounced their faith. In 1980, he served 1 year in prison and paid a $5000 fine for kidnapping and false imprisonment.
After being an Ex-Scientologist for 18 years, I’ve identified what I think are the top 5 things that, over time, become the most toxic and corrosive about being an Ex-Scientologist. I’m pretty sure most all Ex-Scientologists have experienced these, too. The trick is to not let them destroy you.
The Free Exchange of Ideas The Questioning of Rooted Assumptions Allowing Rigorous Debate Cultivating Mutual Respect Seeking to Live With the Truth Whenever these ideals have been violated, I have always felt a sense of unfairness, and felt the need to criticize the venue or group which knowingly and continually violates them. My criticism of […]
There are some very common ways that you can become a hypocrite as an anti-Scientologist. After being an anti-Scientologist myself for so long, I have identified a few of those ways of thinking so that you can avoid being a hypocrite as an Anti-Scientologist.
Of all the books that have been written about Scientology, if you had only one shot to communicate to someone what Scientology was all about, I would give them John Sweeney’s “Church of Fear”.
I learned that after I took down my site, I received more attempts to hack my site than I ever had in its whole existence. In fact, one hacking attempt actually worked for about an hour. It was accomplished by using confidential information that HelluvaHoax! posted on ESMB. I’m not saying HelluvaHoax!, or anyone else […]
Alanzo was a Scientologist for 16yrs. He left in the late 90’s & got fairgamed: fired from his job, followed by PIs & endured attempts to destroy his business by Scientology. He’s emerged from that & believes getting out of a cult isn’t something that you recover from, it’s something you’re strengthened by.
Alanzo details some of the worst Scientology fair game waged against him by Mike Rinder’s Office of Special Affairs, then explains how and why anti-Scientologists become so hysterical and irrational.
The other day, more than 14 years after leaving Scientology, I realized that one of the biggest wins I had in Scientology might not have been as valuable as I’ve been thinking it was. In the 1980’s I was the Executive Director of the Peoria, Illinois Mission. As ED Peoria, I’d written High Crime Reports […]
Alanzo is an Ex-Scientologist who sees the same tribalism he escaped in Scientology rising up in Anti-Scientology.
Out of all the lessons he learned by escaping Scientology, he learned one lesson harder than any other: Never let your tribe do your thinking for you.
Alanzo writes from the battlefield of the war between Scientology & Anti-Scientology.
