"Getting out of a 'cult' is not something that you recover from, it is something you are strengthened by." -- Alanzo
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 – […]
Mike Rinder Anti-Scientology vs. Mike Rinder Scientology: a great real life example of what happens when your friends and your group are more important than the truth. If you would like to see the same kind of information control that the Church of Scientology uses to squash criticism, just go over to Mike Rinder’s Anti-Scientology […]
This Ex-Scientologist is courageously putting herself out there and warning the public about the abuses she has personally witnessed in Scientology, and while she is in the middle of doing that, Tony Ortega tries to discredit her on his blog.
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 […]
A valued contributor to this blog, Richard, said something that made me realize a whole bunch of things about Tony Ortega and his Underground Bunker, ESMB, and all the other outlets of the Anti-Scientology Mafia Network (ASMN) Richard wrote: “Classifying all people participating on the Underground Bunker as cultists seemed to have a shock effect, […]
Is Tony Ortega is trying to undermine yet another Ex-Scientologist? Ex-Scientologists that Tony Ortega has undermined: Carmen Llewelyn Marty and Monique Rathbun Mike Berman And now Aaron Smith-Levin And those are just the ones I’ve written about. (If there are any others, please let me know in the comments section.) They are all brave […]
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.
I am presenting this piece of writing which appeared on ESMB recently as an example of what I believe to be a pathological state of mind for an Ex-Scientologist to develop. This particular Ex-Scientologist has been out of Scientology for a long time and has had many opportunities to reconcile with his old self as […]
Yesterday, in the comments section of my blog, I provided the link to a post that Marty Rathbun wrote in December of 2009 about his wordpress blog account being hacked. That post was written four months after Marty and “collero’s” email exchanges. And if Marty’s wordpress.com blog was hacked, that means the hackers got his […]
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 […]
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 […]
Here, Marty is describing a scene that appears to be an impromptu discussion in a car between Mike Rinder and Leah Remini in the final episode of Season 1 of Scientology and the Aftermath. But Marty is claiming here that it was actually a discussion in a car between Marty and Mike, in reality, 8 […]
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.
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, […]
Until the background of these acts have been exposed, detailed and thoroughly condemned by Mike Rider and Marty Rathbun, and amends made to Gerry Armstrong for what they have done to him, there can be little possibility that a person who wishes to claim they are “exposing the abuses of Scientology” fails to expose the […]
Tony’s single hypothesis, which he’s riding like a little hobby horse in a futile attempt to herd Ex-Scientologists thinking (Ex-Scientologists who know more about Scientology than Tony Ortega and Ray Jeffrey ever will) has holes as big as the open range.
Everyone should know the story of Gerry Armstrong. Because if it was not for Gerry Armstrong, LRH, Marty, Mike and Dave might have gotten away with the whole thing.
Marty Rathbun wrote a post last September that is more relevant than ever, thanks to Indy OSA turning intelligence into Black PR.
From the article: But even before the film’s debut, the accuracy of those staged depictions of Miscavige losing his temper and hitting church members was called into question by Rathbun himself. “The ‘re-creation’ was in fact a creation,” Rathbun wrote on his blog in September. “Even though they worked with me for a year on […]
…”those who speculated that Rathbun had secretly settled will be feeling justifiably smug today”. – Tony Ortega Underground Bunker posters “8675309” and “Peacemaker” asked some important questions in the Underground Bunker a couple of days ago which I believe shed some well-deserved skepticism on Ortega’s smugness campaign against Mark and Monique Rathbun since April of […]
“Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This […]
I have to say that Tony Ortega hit it out of the park this morning. Not only did he publish evidence of probable criminal activity and cover up by members of the Church of Scientology in the Danny Masterson case, but he also produced Dani Lemberger, who said…
Yesterday, to mark the occasion of the US premier of Louis Theroux’s “My Scientology Movie”, Tony Ortega printed a small snippet from the testimony of an obscure Scientology lawsuit going on in Tel Aviv Israel, translated from the Hebrew. Tony brags that “those who speculated that Rathbun had secretly settled will be feeling justifiably smug […]
The main thing wrong with Scientology is that you might end up disconnecting from someone in your family? After all this time, is that all we’ve got?
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.
Stubborn & persistent speculation on Marty Rathbun continues to spread like a rash. Even Academy Award winning writer/director Paul Haggis has gotten himself in on the speculation by giving us either/or scenarios which seem to prove for him that Marty Rathbun is working with David Miscavige to discredit critics of Scientology. He even went so […]
Alanzo was involved in Scientology 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 […]
This is an example of only one exchange I had on the Marty Rathbun Scientology blog back in 2010, when he was the leader of the second Independent Scientology Movement, and Mike Rinder was helping to moderate, mostly in the background. Samuel | October 25, 2010 at 8:10 am | Reply As an afterthought: at […]
My point is not that there is no damage that comes from having been involved with Scientology. My point is that these assumptions must be examined critically before making these generalizations about Ex-Scientologists – and especially before adopting these assumptions for yourself as an Ex.
Does Karen De La Carriere pay money to Tony Ortega and Chris Shelton to post what she wants?
Marty Rathbun is as flawed as any one of us. And no one has been a bigger critic of him than I have been. But Marty Rathbun has achieved as much or more than any other critic of Scientology in its entire history – going all the way back to Joseph Winter.
After throwing darts in every direction, the bumbling duo of Tony Ortega and his anonymous sidekick “TexasLawyer” continue their speculation even after the last papers have been filed in the Monique Rathbun legal case, leaving their “commenting community” just as vengeful and confused as they were before. Obviously, Monique and Marty Rathbun have not done […]
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.
