"Getting out of a 'cult' is not something that you recover from, it is something you are strengthened by." -- Alanzo
Sunny Pereira, like a good Tribal member, instead of struggling to tell the truth about Scientology and all of her experiences in it, she’s working hard to give her anti-scientology tribe what it wants. The problem with this is that – in the end – no one gets the truth. Some anonymous person asked me […]
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. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
Please Leah. I used to believe that you were one of the most level-headed and powerful critics of Scientology in their history. But ever since you knowingly mis-characterized a quote from Dianetics to make it seem like Scientologists believed in pedophilia, and now you have publicly blamed a mother for her own daughter’s suicide to […]
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 not facts. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
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 […]
A Manhattan judge said “Million Dollar Baby” screenwriter Paul Haggis must face a civil rape lawsuit by a publicist after hearing a graphic account of the alleged assaults. “What Mr. Haggis did is forcibly removed her clothing, forcibly kissed her, forcibly penetrated her vagina,” an attorney for Haleigh Breest said in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday. […]
Tony Ortega loves it when a Scientologist commits suicide. He jumps all over every Scientology suicide he hears about. He even blames Scientology mothers for their daughter’s suicide. It’s where Tony Ortega’s cruelty against Scientologists who have nothing to do with the abuses in Scientology really shines. Ortega recently published an article on his blog […]
This is the first in a series of videos by Gerry Armstrong, the most fair-gamed person in Scientology history, to Mike Rinder. This one is dated February 18th, 2018. Here’s the 2nd, dated Feb 18th, 2018 Video Number 3, dated February 23rd, 2018 Video Number 4, dated February 25, 2018 Video Number 5, dated February […]
In all my 19 years of being out of Scientology and watching what other Scientology watchers are saying, and how they are faring – I have never seen so much boredom with the subject of Scientology. I do believe that A&E is going to have to survive ratings crashes for any time slot they insert […]
A few days ago, Mike Rinder, as is his wont, asked for comments on Scientology and the Aftermath S2E2 featuring two tragic suicides by Scientologists. So I posted my thoughts on it: “Alanzo says August 23, 2017 at 12:29 pm I personally can not believe that you and Leah have gone down the road of […]
The anti cult movement teaches that minority religions harm the mental health of their members. Hundreds of psychological practices have been built on the idea that Ex members of these minority religions are suffering from some form of mental illness, and that they need to ‘recover’ from it. Leaving your previous religious or spiritual pursuit, […]
With all the episodes of family members fighting with each other on Scientology and the Aftermath, which have nothing to do with David Miscavige or any of the people who are actually responsible for abuse in Scientology, there is one story that doesn’t seem to be worthy of the “brave” TV series. But this story […]
Leah tells her powerful story about what happened to her in the Church which led to her leaving Scientology. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
For Nathan Rich Scientology was simply not something he wanted to get involved in – ever. No matter how much they forced him, Scientology was not ever something that was going to work for him. And he makes a very good case about how it actually harmed him from a very early age. This video […]
Aaron Smith Levin visited Tony Ortega’s blog this morning in an effort to enlighten us on what’s going on behind the scenes of Season Three of “Scientology and the Aftermath”. It looks like Ortega’s blog post this morning, “SHOCKING MOLESTATION CLAIMS LEAKING OUT BEFORE AFTERMATH EPISODE”” gives details of a young Ex-Scientologist’s life that – […]
Fresh off the catastrophic legal loss of the Garcia case, Mike Rinder put up a post today trawling for any extant legal cases against Scientology. The results of both Headley and Garcia prove how disastrous it is to have Rinder on your side in a legal battle. If you have a civil or criminal case […]
After WWII, a series of trials were held by the victors to prosecute war crimes by German soldiers. During these trials, over and over again, “I was only following orders” came up as a defense for these soldiers’ actions. This defense was roundly rejected by the prosecutors and the judges because: “The fact that a […]
To hear Anti-Scientologists tell it, Elizabeth Moss was just a clueless & brainwashed Scientologist during her Emmy-winning performance portraying Offred in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. But is thinking with stereotypes about people in minority religions ever going to explain how Elizabeth Moss is such a great actress? Having been a member of Scientology for 16 years, […]
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 […]
After calling it her religion for 34 years, Leah Remini now claims that Scientology is not a religion. Many anti-Scientologists promote the fact that the Church of Scientology went through a very intentional and detailed overhaul of all its missions and orgs to make Scientology look like more of what people expect a religion to […]
This discussion about Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs occurred on Mike Rinder’s blog yesterday: Alanzo says October 31, 2015 at 12:01 pm Well done on 20/20 last night, Mike! Talking to you is like SLEEPING WITH SATAN! LOL!! It’s great that all you Int Base Escapees have created a safety net for people like Leah […]
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 […]
Mike Rinder should use Season 2 of Scientology and The Aftermath to provide a Truth and Reconciliation commission on the people he has fair-gamed as the head of OSA. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
And they deserve closure. No person who is loyal and sycophantic to those who refuse to provide the information necessary to help people who have been harmed by Scientology are likely to be a credible journalistic source for those scrambling to make a buck at Scientology reporting. That’s a long sentence, but if you read […]
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. Share AlanzosBlog Far […]
Robert Vaughn Young (RVY) was Mike Rinder’s predecessor for many years. He woke up from the spell of Scientology in the 1990’s and contributed some of the best critical writing on Scientology that exists. He died of cancer in 2003. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
The key characteristic of a pseudo-skeptic of Scientology is the furious and dedicated certainty of their position, and their squinting suspicion that anyone who would question them must be an OSA agent. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
There are a lot of things about Scientology scriptures and OT levels that we would not have access to today on the Internet without the help of Dennis Ehrlich. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
Truth changes. If there is anything that the experience of having gone through Scientology should teach an Ex-Scientologist, it’s that. If they quit being your friend/family just because the truth changed, then were they really your friend/family to begin with? Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
I’ve reached out to Tony Ortega via email for a comment about what kind of hatred of Christians was going through his mind, or if there was anything they did or said in the real world that set him off. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
In my race to lose friends and influence fewer people, I have to write one more post about the breathless and distorted interpretations of Scientology experiences by Tony Ortega. Yesterday, Tony Ortega wrote a blog post entitled “Even the local Scientology mission is hiding a horror show of abuse: Kelly Jordan tells her tale”. The […]
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. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
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 […]
Tony Ortega is one of the most valuable critics of Scientology ever. But is he so biased that, over time, you can start to live in a delusional world about Scientology? I think so. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
I came across this post in an on-line venue controlled by Ex & Anti-Scientologists. It pretty much stopped everyone in their tracks. I think it is well-written, extremely insightful, and deliciously heretical. Blasphemous, even. It gives a very important perspective on one aspect of what we are doing here on the Post-Scientology Internet. ********************************************** When […]
The video above – a tweet that is presently pinned to the top of Freedom Media and Ethics Twitter profile – features an edited snippet, taken out of context, where Marty Rathbun is discussing what went on behind the scenes with Paul Haggis, Lawrence Wright, Alex Gibney and others in producing Going Clear, the book […]
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Marty brings up the promise of legal action by Mike and Leah at the end of Season 1 of Scientology & the Aftermath. Marty claims that he and Mike went to a top-tier legal firm just like Leah and Mike did in the last episode of the show. Marty says that the legal firm told […]
I’ve re-joined the fray on Twitter over the last couple of weeks. Tony Ortega is on Twitter answering questions to people about Scientology in his extremely biased way. I mean really, even Tony Ortega has to admit that he has a bias, and he writes with a bias on Scientology everyday on his blog. No […]
If I were to pinpoint exactly when my disillusionment began with Scientology watching, I’d have to say the seed was planted with the Going Clear premiere. Share AlanzosBlog Far and Wide
There is a point at which this metaphor becomes an exercise in thought-stopping: A person accepts it as an explanation for why Scientologists do what they do in the way that Larry and other anti-Scientologists describe, and that’s all you need to know. It seems to explain everything when, in fact, it explains very little. […]
Andreas Heldal-Lund, the founder of OCMB, used to be a free speech advocate, famously helping Tory Christman to post on his website when she was still a Scientologist – knowing she was going to post pro-Scientology ideas. When Tory asked him why he was helping her, he replied, “Because I believe in the freedom of […]
Eileen Vartan Barker OBE, (born 21 April 1938, Edinburgh, UK) is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has […]
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 […]
No way, right? Ex-Scientologists Aaron Smith-Levin and Chris Shelton present information Chris gathered on his recent trip to Australia about supposed new ways that SO orgs are being run – the greatest sources of abuse in Scientology by far. Chris doesn’t say where his information comes from but it’s interesting information to think about, nonetheless. […]
If you’ve written enough screenplays, you learn that the main difference between the good guy and the bad guy in a movie is that for one, you know his motives for the actions he takes in the story, and for the other, you don’t. Good guys can kill people, blow up cars and bridges – […]
Gerry has an interesting viewpoint on Jon Atack and Chris Shelton’s allegiance and mutual promotional efforts of each other. ” I do not mean that Mr. Shelton’s arrogance or narcissism is a concern to him, but should be a concern to people who might look to him for guidance or tout his humility. Perhaps you […]
For the second time in many months, I personally, and politely, asked Marty Rathbun how that email ended up in the hands of Scientology attorneys, and in court against Dani Lemberger. I told him that if I only knew the answer to this, that I could assist him in getting his answer out to others, […]
This happened this morning: RandomSP • 2 hours ago O/T but speaking of the right to be forgotten… Or, more correctly, “the right to forget”… I am taking my leave of the Bunker and of all things Scientology. I am exercising my right to forget Scientology as regards reading about it, following the doings, etc. […]
Self-invalidation and self-disgust for having been a Scientologist is a common result of trying to graduate from Scientology. In some places on the post-scientology Internet, it becomes an unspoken penance to be endured before we can truly be considered by others to be “out” and no longer a stupid and deluded cult moron. Share AlanzosBlog […]
Despite his obvious and often unhinged bias against Scientology, Tony Ortega sometimes displays enough intellectual honesty to redeem himself as a journalist who wants to be taken seriously. I’ve been reading and re-reading his recent series of articles on the unlicensed mental care facility set up by Scientologists in the back woods of Tennessee. And […]
This begins a new weekly feature here on AlanzosBlog. Heresy, means “to choose”. Labeling certain ideas as heresy has been going on for a couple of thousand years now. What’s so great about heresy is that it forces scrutiny of assumptions that too often remain hidden and unexamined. The consideration of heresy and heretical questions was what […]
Tony Ortega’s charge, that the Church of Scientology has so much political power that it can shut down a FBI probe into human trafficking at its international headquarters, is quite a claim. It’s a claim that Ortega makes over and over, and it gets repeated by his followers over and over, as well. But I […]
Here’s the text of her post: “Hi- Rachel Bernstein here. None of that is true. If you ever have questions about anyway that I practice, or what I charge, or if I take insurance, just contact me. I have been doing this work for 26 years and there is no way that I would have […]
Alanzo was a Scientologist for 16 years.
He reached the state of "Clear" and was on staff as an Executive Director and Course Supervisor in Scientology missions in the Midwest and Los Angeles.
When Alanzo had experienced enough in Scientology to see the extent to which he had been deceived, he left and immediately began speaking out on the Internet to expose its lies and abuse. Alanzo first began speaking out against Scientology on the Internet as "Poopsy Charmichael" in the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup in the late 1990's.
As the main Internet battleground between the Church and its critics, ARS soon became too negative and so Alanzo moved to Beliefnet.com and elsewhere on the Internet to engage with actual Scientologists, providing them with the information they needed to make informed decisions about their own involvement in Scientology. He spent many years in the early to mid 2000s presenting Scientologists with LRH's real biography & other information that the Church had been hiding from them. Alanzo saw many Scientologists "wake up" around the Internet, after finally getting the information they needed.
In January/February of 2007, Alanzo then moved to the brand new Ex-Scientologists Message Board (ESMB), where Exes were gathering to tell their stories in Scientology. From there, Alanzo witnessed the rise of Anonymous, and was in attendance when Marty Rathbun, in the summer of 2009, kicked the hornet's nest with his announcement that he had started up his new website, and thus the great 2nd Exodus of Independents had begun.
Alanzo found more Scientologists to engage on Marty's website in the Independent movement. Also, Alanzo spent a few years at Geir Isene's blog, where he engaged many very intelligent and free thinking Scientologists and Exes who had retained constructive and positive views of their time in Scientology. This influenced Alanzo greatly by reminding him of things that he had conveniently forgotten about himself and his time in Scientology while becoming an "Anti-Scientology critic".
Then, an unknown critic emerged onto the scene from the Village Voice, Tony Ortega. Alanzo posted often to the Underground Bunker and was one of its most frequently upvoted Anti-Scientology critics there.
That's where Alanzo was exposed to more "never-in" critics of Scientology he'd seen yet on the Internet. And with its mix of the cruelty of Anonymous and the disrespect and disgust for Scientologists, Alanzo began to see tribal behavior that was very reminiscent of the worst of the Sea Org. When Tony Ortega repeatedly went after a woman, a Scientologist whose daughter had committed suicide, he saw the cruelty that all those anti-Scientologsts whipped up in each other. This caused Alanzo to have yet another turning point.
He realized that the deeper he became involved in the Anti-Cult/Anti-Scientology Movement, the more he began to notice very similar tribal behavior to the most fanatical of Scientologists. Alanzo saw a rise of some of the same tribalism from Anti-Scientologists that he was trying to escape by getting himself out of Scientology.
It was like being stuck in a nightmare, and after finally wrenching yourself awake, you're relieved to have escaped that nightmare - only to realize that the nightmare is still going on! ☺
That's when Alanzo began applying the same critical thinking skills to the underlying beliefs of Anti-Scientology that he had earlier applied to Scientology. And that's when his anti-Scientology mindset collapsed on Alanzo, just like his Scientology mindset had collapsed on him so long ago.
And this is where Alanzo is today - applying basic skepticism to both Scientology and anti-Scientology beliefs. He has come to realize that this position of skepticism toward both Scientology & Anti-Scientology is the only sustainable view.
Alanzo's experience of the previous 18 years has led him to conclude that, as long as you continue to think critically and you remain loyal to the truth instead of any person or group, getting out of a 'cult' is not something that you recover from, it is something that you are strengthened by.Alanzo's purpose is to provide the information necessary for people to make informed decisions about Scientology & Anti-Scientology.
