Operation RPF: Restoring People’s Freedom

I consider that the greatest neglected media story about the Church of Scientology is its Rehabilitation Project Force. This, in my opinion, is the elephant in the room, the story that no one, it seems, can confront – whether media, law enforcement, or government agencies. Because the fact is, the Church of Scientology is running virtual slave camps right in the middle of half a dozen major cities. And the deeper one investigates, the more one wonders, how in hell can they get away with it?

Sure, apologists will take exception to my calling these RPFs “slave camps.” Yet if one investigates, if one talks to people who have actually been in them in the last few years, that is exactly what they are. People disappear into RPFs for years – up to six, eight, or even ten years. They have no contact with family or the outside world. They work at menial tasks, such as making Church furniture, for pennies. They live in unbelievably crowded, squalid dormitories. Even a maximum security prison seems like Club Med in comparison.

Well, leave it to the Aussies to do something about it. I had a call from my friend Kevin Mackey, who briefed me on something they have going called Operation Restoring People’s Freedom, or Operation RPF. They have a thread on this on ESMB.

A brief recap – last year, an Ex-Scientologist named Adrian Kelsey attempted to rescue his son, Shane, from the RPF, where he had been held for many years. After a lot of back and forth with OSA, he marched right in to the base and demanded to see his son. They were able to spend some time together outside the org, shadowed by OSA operatives. And though his son went back to the RPF, he ended up blowing a week later.

Based on information from Shane and from other former Scientologists, notably someone calling themselves “Blown in Australia” (BIA), a shocking picture of RPF conditions and practices emerged, including the fact that people were being held against their will at the ANZO base.

Kevin and other Exes narrowed their focus to three names that they had confirmed who definitely wanted to leave: Matt Faye, an Aussie who had grown up in the Sea Org, Brian Curry, a U.S. citizen and Shane’s twin on the RPF, and Carol Miles, a British subject.

I knew Carol slightly. When we first started doing tour videos for the Freewinds, we had to find someone who could appear on camera as the main spokesperson. Milt Wolfe, the CO FSSO at the time, was hopeless on camera. So we did a bit of a talent scout and found Carol, then a singer in the ship’s house band. She looked great on camera, pretty, confident, good presence. So we invented a fake post for her, “Chief Executive Officer,” put her in an officer’s white uniform, and voila! A Freewinds spokesperson. Of course the problem with creating a high profile opinion leader is that they can eventually see too much, know too much, and get (as we like to say) “disinfected.” And that’s what happened with Carol, as described by Mike Rinder a while ago on Marty’s blog:

“One of the Ship Engineers was severely disaffected with Captain Love Boat [Mike Napier] after several run-ins with him. He became increasingly enturbulated and was not sleeping. He was put under 24 hour watch with full time guards and video cameras in his room. He was not handled with standard tech and ended up committing suicide by hanging himself in the shower with a sheet. The entire incident was covered up so as not to create a ‘flap.’ False information was given to the authorities. Carol Miles, the Public Officer and public face of the Freewinds has disappeared. I guess, like Heber, nobody dares ask where she is. In fact, she was being ‘handled’ under the brilliant guidance of CO CMO Ship (Sue Price) with her special style of ‘executive C/Sing’. Carol’s ‘handlings’ didn’t go well. She made threats and became a security risk. And what happens to inmates on the prison ship when they are too hot to handle? They get shipped off to the prison colony – the RPF in CLO ANZO, in Sydney.”

High-profile “problem” staff are often sent to the RPF in ANZO to get them out of the way. There are several former Int Base staff there, as well as people who “knew too much” about the Lisa McPherson affair. Carol has now been on the RPF in ANZO for three years, and every day of that she has wanted to leave. But they don’t dare let her go. Because people, and especially OT VIIIs, would listen to her. And she has tales to tell.

So Kevin and the Aussie Exes and Anons decided to do something about it, and on Sunday the 19th of December they converged on the premises of CLO ANZO to call attention to illegal RPF imprisonment. The Church, in their usual knee-jerk reaction, called the police, and the officers who arrived became very interested in the charges of illegal imprisonment, and actually conducted welfare checks. They only found one person on the list, Brian Curry who, surrounded by OSA and others, denied that he was being held against his will. (It is standard practice for Human Trafficking investigators, by the way, to interview subject outside the facility where they are imprisoned, and without any of their captors present.)

The Church told police that the other two, Matt and Carol, had been “sent out of the country.” The police later investigated this and apparently found that they had left the country.

The point is, we are dealing with serious matters here. Holding someone against their will is called kidnapping. Shuffling those prisoners from continent to continent also has a name: human trafficking. It is time to shine the light of publicity and public opinion on these odious practices of the Church. It is time to alert law enforcement as to what is going on.

Here’s the video from the Sydney raid:

Survey

Following my posting of the Open Letter from religious scholar James Lewis, if anyone would like to assist in his research into Ex-Scientologists, Independent Scientologists and Freezone, please fill out his survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SL33DLP

 

An Open Letter from James R. Lewis

I’m reprinting a letter from religious scholar James R. Lewis here, for any that missed it. Lewis got into somewhat of a bad odor with Scientology critics as a “Scientology apologist.” Like Gordon Melton, Lewis became a Church of Scientology “ally” and was used by them to defend their religious status and quash critics.

I never met Lewis. I knew Gordon Melton when I lived in Santa Barbara and we had dinner occasionally. I gave him a hard time over his role as a Scientology apologist, and took the time to educate him on what really goes on at the highest levels of Scientology. He has since revised his opinion of Scientology. It now appears that James Lewis has been going through a similar process.

In addition to anything else, Scientology appears to be running out of religious scholars who are willing to shill for the cult.

Here’s the letter:

18 January 2011

An Open Letter to: Scientologists, Ex-Scientologists, and Critics of the Church of Scientology

James R. Lewis

[This letter may be re-posted, as long as it is reproduced in full, without alteration. JRL]

I am an academician and a specialist in the field of new religious movements. Particularly during my early career, much of my research focused on the alternative religions that have been labeled “cults,” and on the controversies in which they have been involved. Though I have sometimes been criticized as a “cult apologist,” in point of fact my views on such groups are nuanced and often critical (in this regard, refer, for example, to my online essay “Safe Sects?” http://www.religioustolerance.org/safe_sec.htm). It should especially be noted that my views on these matters generally conform to the consensus views of mainstream scholars of new religions (i.e., my views are not unique to me). As an academician, my primary audience has been other academicians. Thus, over the years, I have ignored the often ad hominem criticisms that have been leveled against me online by individuals involved in the cult controversy.

However, two things have happened in recent years that have prompted me to address these matters – particularly as they involve the Church of Scientology (CoS) – in a more personal way: (1) My edited collection on Scientology, published by Oxford University Press in 2009, had the effect of raising my profile in the cult controversy. (2) As the result of the defection of large numbers of upper level Scientologists, the Church of Scientology has received increasing media attention – which has had the effect of calling further attention to my Scientology anthology. Thus it seems that circumstances have been pushing me to set forth some of my views on CoS – both academic and personal – in a public way. Hence the current “open letter,” which I hope will be widely distributed (and not quoted out of context).

I should preface my remarks by noting that academicians are ill-suited to participate directly in public controversies, in part because, as a group, we do not think in sound bites. Also, in almost any controversy, all sides of the conflict tend to boil issues down to black-and-white, good-vs.-evil terms, and sometimes adopt a belligerent attitude of “you’re either for us or against us.” I anticipated this reaction when, in the introduction to the Scientology anthology, I asserted that “This volume will…likely end up pleasing no one engaged in the Scientology/anti-Scientology conflict….”

Predictably, critics trashed the book as a public relations exercise, “obviously” paid for by the Church of Scientology. However – as any informed observer could easily have anticipated – CoS hated the collection, particularly the Xenu chapter, which one of my former contacts in the Church characterized as “blasphemy.” Another chapter described CoS’s attempts to suppress scholarship that the Church viewed as presenting Scientology in a negative light. And there were other critical evaluations peppered throughout the text. But, because the book as a whole was not a negative exposé, many anti-Scientologists dismissed the whole collection as a “whitewash.” For its part, the Church of Scientology soon stopped communicating with me altogether, meaning that I have probably been re-categorized as an SP as a direct result of my book.

In this Open Letter, I will not rehearse the social-scientific analysis of the cult controversy that is the consensus view of mainstream new religion researchers. Rather, I will focus the discussion on my evolving understanding of the Church of Scientology.

Neither I nor the great majority of new religions specialists view ourselves as defenders of groups like Scientology. Rather, we are interested in understanding social-psychological processes and the dynamics of social conflict. The fact that many of our analyses undermine the more simplistic accusations leveled against controversial new religions makes it appear to critics caught up in black-and-white thinking that we have made a conscious choice to defend “cults.” However, to the extent that we have chosen to defend anything, we understand ourselves as defending good science against bad science, and, in some cases, as defending religious liberty against the threat to religious liberty posed by the least sophisticated forms of anti-cultism.

My orientation to the study of new religions is informed by the fact that, for three years in my early twenties, I was a member of a controversial new religion, Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO (I have recently described my defection from 3HO in an online article, “Autobiography of a Schism” http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/ivk/mjr/pdfs/2010/articles/lewis_2010.pdf). Though I held certain negative feelings toward my former organization after my exit, these feelings were on par with the feelings one might have about one’s ex-spouse following a divorce (i.e., bad, but not extraordinary). Additionally, I had a number of positive experiences during my term of membership in 3HO that served to balance out my negative experiences.

When I first became interested in the cult controversy as a subject of academic inquiry in the mid 1980s, I was struck by the uniformly negative picture painted by “deprogrammed” ex-members of controversial groups – a picture that contrasted sharply with the mixed evaluation I had formed of 3HO. I suspected these negative evaluations were shaped, at least in part, by the deprogramming experience itself. So I surveyed former members – both deprogrammed and non-deprogrammed – and found that the data strongly supported my hypothesis. (In this regard, refer, for example, to my “Apostates and the Legitimation of Repression,” Sociological Analysis 49:4. 1989, and my “Reconstructing the ‘Cult’ Experience,” Sociological Analysis 42:2. 1986. Parts of these papers reappeared in my Legitimating New Religions. 2003.)

I first made contact with the Church of Scientology during this period for the purpose of locating former Scientologists to whom I could send questionnaires (this never worked out because of CoS’s ill-conceived policy of disconnecting itself from ex-members). A few years later, the Scientology organization became enthusiastic about the conclusions I had reached, and later referred to my research in some of its legal cases – in large part due to the fact that this research called into question the hostile testimony of deprogrammed former Scientologists.

CoS subsequently decided that I was an ‘ally’ (a quasi-technical term within the universe of exotic Church jargon). From that point forward, I was sometimes (but not frequently) asked to write letters of support, usually in response to specific conflicts. I was also once asked to testify as an expert witness in a Scientology court case (to which I agreed, though I never did testify). Additionally, during the years I lived in Santa Barbara, California, I attended various Church events, particularly events at the Hollywood Celebrity Center. Finally, during the ten years I lived in the Midwest, I regularly invited Scientologists from the Chicago Org to speak in my university classes. (As part of my approach to teaching courses on new religions, I invited representatives of many different groups to speak in my classes – not just Scientologists.)

I was, of course, aware of CoS’s unpleasant history, particularly its often vicious attacks on perceived enemies. But, as I got to know Scientologists on a personal basis, I was informed – and came to believe – that the illegal and truly onerous attacks had been discontinued following the dissolution of the Guardian’s Office in 1983. (Unfortunately, the systematic harassment of high-profile ex-members and other critics has become de rigueur in recent years.) And while I disliked certain aspects of Scientology – particularly certain aspects of the Scientology organization – my personal experiences with Scientologists over the course of the past two dozen years have been generally quite positive. As a result of my recent book and as a result of this letter, they may never speak to me again, but I still like and respect almost everyone I knew within the Church.

One aspect of the organization that particularly impressed me was the Church’s social outreach activities, such as the Literacy Crusade and Criminon. Though often dismissed by critics as “front groups,” or as elaborate PR exercises, it is clear that, at Source, these activities are serious enterprises. At several junctures over the years of my acquaintance with CoS, I even requested support for undertaking an academic study of these enterprises. These requests were always denied (for which, in hindsight, I am exceedingly grateful).

I was not prompted to re-think my basic evaluation of the Church of Scientology until relatively recently. This came about as a consequence of several different factors:

(1) The defection of large numbers of long-time, high-ranking Scientologists, who reported intensive abuse at the highest levels of the Church. I am aware that CoS’s position on this has been to deny everything, and to accuse these ex-members of conspiring to concoct a negative picture of events. I find the official response unconvincing.

(2) The sacking of Heber Jentzsch. I knew Heber from when I first began to communicate with CoS in the mid 1980s. I respected him and came to regard him as someone I could trust. Retrospectively, I can now see that my evaluation of Heber significantly shaped my evaluation of the Church. So when he was taken off the front lines and consigned to some dungeon (figuratively speaking) in Gilman Hot Springs, it served to confirm, to my mind, what the high-ranking defectors were saying.

(3) The marketing of “new editions” of L. Ron Hubbard’s basic works. New, slightly “corrected” editions of Hubbard’s basic books have been issued, and Scientologists have been asked to purchase as many sets of volumes as possible so that complete sets can be donated to libraries across the globe. This has been done in the name of the utopian ideal of “clearing the planet.” But placing books in libraries seems an ill-conceived strategy for spreading any sort of message in a digital age. I was a guest at a Scientology workshop not too many years ago where I observed the very hard-sell tactics used to unload these multi-volume sets. It was transparent that this was a fund-raising ploy rather than an effective strategy for disseminating the message. Though I know Scientology has regularly been accused of using unethical methods for raising money, I felt that this was a particularly disingenuous tactic – and yet another symptom of the dysfunctionality of the Church’s top leadership.

This Open Letter is not an apology for anything I have written in the past on Scientology or on the cult controversy. I stand by, and am quite happy with, my body of work up to this point. Rather, in light of new information I have been receiving on the Church of Scientology, there are certain aspects of my scholarship that I would like to clarify and supplement as they bear on the current controversy.

In the first place, I should say that the only article-length paper I have ever written on CoS is my chapter on the growth of the Church in the Scientology anthology. In that piece, I criticized the claim that Scientology was the “fastest growing religion in the world,” but I also painted a picture of an expanding organization enjoying healthy growth. Though the statistics I collected (from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) did not go beyond 2001, more recent data from the 2006 New Zealand and Australian censuses have continued to support this picture.

However, current events have completely overturned my evaluation of the CoS as a rapidly expanding religion. The relatively recent defection of large numbers of long-time, high-level Scientologists – some of the organization’s most experienced administrators and others with expertise in delivering the highest levels of Scientology technology – bodes poorly for the future of the Church. In particular, the pattern of solid growth I analyzed just a few years ago seems suddenly to have ground to a halt.

According to the pseudonymous ‘Plockton,’ who claims to have contacted ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) researchers directly, the ARIS estimate for the number of Scientologists in the U.S. for 2008 was 25,000. (I referred to ARIS data in my chapter on the growth of Scientology.) This contrasts sharply with the 55,000 figure from the 2001 ARIS survey. (“2008 ARIS Study on Scientology Membership in US – Important Data.” Posted March 28, 2009 at: http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=30372.) The drop in total numbers was likely less dramatic than these figures indicate (due to sampling issues discussed by Plockton in his posting).

In 2011, there will be new national censuses in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, all of which will produce figures for total numbers of self-identified Scientologists. So by 2012, it will be relatively simple to contrast these numbers with prior census data. The figures derived from these comparisons will indicate whether membership in the Church of Scientology is growing or declining. Assuming the latter, these statistics should decisively refute David Miscavige’s claim that, under his leadership, CoS has become “the fastest growing religion in the world.”

Secondly, I have seen my research on former members of controversial new religions misrepresented. To clarify what should already have been transparent: The central point of comparison in my several articles on new religion apostates was between deprogrammed ex-members and other ex-members who left their respective movements on their own, without outside intervention. As mentioned earlier, I found a highly significant difference in the post-involvement attitudes of these two sets of apostates, a difference that called into question the veracity of statements made by deprogrammed ex-members about the religious groups to which they had belonged. My questionnaire data had nothing to say about individuals who defected without this kind of an intervention, except that they were likely more objective about their membership period than their deprogrammed counterparts. So, to be perfectly clear: anyone who cites my conclusions about deprogrammees as a way of dismissing the testimony of voluntary defectors – including the testimony of individuals who left the Church of Scientology – is either consciously misrepresenting my work or stupid.

Finally, another criticism leveled against the Scientology anthology was that it should have included a chapter on ex-Scientologists, and perhaps another chapter on the Freezone. I think this is an appropriate critique. I will therefore be undertaking systematic research on former Scientologists and on the Freezone – research that will be reported in future publications. If any ex-CoS members reading this Open Letter think they might be interested in participating in this project, please contact me at: religionresearch@gmail.com.

Buzz

Reading another fascinating book: The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, by Emanuel Rosen. Great reference for anyone in advertising, marketing or PR.

I read Rosen’s original version of this book, The Anatomy of Buzz,  while I was still in the Sea Org. Hubbard had made the comment one time that marketing was mostly “wog” tech, and therefore marketing people should study books on the subject. Hubbard had quite a library of marketing and advertising books, interestingly enough. So I studied probably hundreds of these texts. When I was running my own unit in Los Angeles, I could even get away with actually using what I was learning  – I did things like demographic studies, focus groups and so on. But at the Base, it became impossible to apply these books. Sure, Hubbard said to read them, but a suggestion to do something that the books recommended resulted in blank stares, or accusations that one was “off-Source” or “squirrel,” particularly if they had anything to do with – gasp! – psychology.  So it was always a struggle to apply anything  in these marketing books. And of course these days, it’s impossible.

So it is with the subject of “buzz” – word of mouth.

The Church has always depended on word of mouth, whether it knew it or not. I did studies as early as 1982 that showed that the bulk of Scientologists, over 70%, found out about Scientology through word of mouth, a friend or family member, sometimes an acquaintance. Scientologists were always the best promotion for Scientology.

And as an interesting wrinkle in this datum, we found that the most enthusiastic disseminators were new people who had just gotten into Scientology themselves.  So the positive buzz had a potential viral effect.  Great, so how could they possibly mess this up?

Easy, by mishandling more people than they handled well.

When we were running the Dianetics campaign in the 1980s, we were channeling hundreds, even thousands into the orgs every week. These were people who had bought the book, read it, and requested more information. The “More Information Cards” were keeping Div 6es alive. But on the downside, I was getting horrendous reports at the time of mishandlings – stat push, crush regging, rudeness, you name it.  A huge percentage of people were just getting blown off. The orgs were being supported by the few that were getting through. I was hearing the same thing from FSMs – they didn’t want to take their new people into the orgs.

Another study I did at the time showed a huge falloff as people went up the Bridge. The biggest falloff was from Div 6 to Div 2, something like 60 or 70% never made it past that point. By the time you got up to the OT Levels, it was less than 2% left. Scientology was surviving on volume. Even with the huge percentage of people being mishandled or blown off (or just losing interest), enough were getting through to create a boom.

But Scientology wasn’t looking at the downside. The majority of people going into orgs were having negative experiences. And those people talk. And according to some studies (for instance, Pete Blackshaw’s book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000), negative buzz spreads faster and farther than positive buzz.  And with the rise of the internet, with the proliferation of blogs and chat groups and forums, those opinions get a very broad distribution.

There’s no substitute for treating every customer who walks in the door like gold. Ever been in a Starbucks and have them mess up your order? You immediately get an apology and a coupon for a free drink. Just like that.

Complain about how you were treated in a Church of Scientology? That’s “entheta.” You’re an “enemy.”

And here we get to the crux of why the church can’t change, will never change, their public image.

In The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, Rosen emphasizes that the most important thing any company can do about “negative buzz” is listen to it.  Find out what your customers are complaining about. That tells you what to do to fix it, and turn negative buzz to positive buzz.

The Church makes two erroneous assumptions that prevent this. First, they promote the myth that “any buzz is good.” You hear various versions of this: “it doesn’t matter what people say, any mention of Scientology creates interest.”  It’s a myth. Sure, maybe if you’re a movie star, news that you had a meltdown or got arrested gets you mentioned. It piques people’s curiosity about you. But if you are an organization that services the public, negative buzz reduces your sales and traffic, period. In all my years in Church marketing, I never saw negative press increase Church traffic and income. Quite the opposite.

Second, Scientology assumes that anyone complaining is an enemy. They are to be “handled in ethics” or “disconnected from” or discredited. Certainly no one listens to what they are saying!

And that’s a shame. As I’ve said before, everything the Church needs to know to fix their image is on my blog and Marty’s blog and Steve Hall’s site and many, many others.  They could go through all of the sites and forums and get a list of exactly what they need to do to fix the Church.

But will they? No, of course not. All they can do is attack, discredit, disconnect. Which just feeds into more negative buzz.  The Church appears arrogant, defensive, cult-like. Because that’s what they are.

The fact is, they are way past are past the point of being able to turn their negative image around. A 2008 Gallup poll showed Scientology to be even more unpopular in the US than atheists.

As I mentioned earlier, Scientology’s number one asset in creating good buzz has always been Scientologists themselves. The problem is, most Scientologists in the Church no longer disseminate. And new people disseminating? What new people? So, no positive buzz. When was the last time you heard about a major celeb disseminating? When was the last time you heard Tom Cruise disseminating? A subject can get so negative, so toxic, that no one wants to be associated with it. And there goes any positive buzz.

And even when they try to do something – advertising, sponsorships, events, press releases  –  to improve their image, it inevitably backfires. Not to harp on the Rose Parade, but that caper resulted in overwhelmingly negative buzz on the internet. Just google “Scientology Rose Parade” and you’ll see what I mean.

There’s no substitute for really taking care of your customers, listening to your customers, even listening to your critics, and being humble enough to change what you are doing. Unfortunately, these are all things Scientology will never do.

The End of Dissemination As We Know It

I love the Rose Parade – it is one of my New Year’s rituals. I grew up in Pasadena, and never missed the parade when I was a kid. My grandmother’s house was a block from the parade route, so going down to see the parade was a much-anticipated family treat.

Well, imagine my thrill when I saw this breathless e-mail from Theresa Bloch at the Pasadena Org, replete with OMGs and multiple exclamation points:

“OMG!!! EXCITING NEWS!!!! We have just gotten the word that one of the sponsors of this years Rose Parade is: THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY!!!!!! The IAS has funded the Church of Scientology as one of the sponsors of this year’s Rose Parade on KTLA!! KTLA is THE station that has the contract for the Rose Parade and then is nationally syndicated from there. (You know, when they say, “Brought to you by Honda and… THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY!”) And the new ads will play, of course! This is amazing!!!”

Amazing, sure.  Unfortunately, like much of the Church’s PR, it was a lie. Sorry, “acceptable truth.” If you look on the official Rose Parade website, you’ll find Honda, yes, but nary a mention of Scientology anywhere on the site.

Why? Because they didn’t sponsor the Rose Parade. They bought some ads on a local LA TV station, KTLA, the fourth-rated station in the city. And the ads didn’t actually run during the parade, as KTLA broadcasts it commercial-free. What their IAS ad dollars earned them was a fifteen-second blurb at the end: “A very happy New Year to our friends at the Auto Club, and Scientology, for taking part in today’s Rose Parade telecast.”

All too typical of the sort of overhyped waste that plagues Scientology’s advertising efforts.

Unfortunately, I had an up-close and personal view of David Miscavige’s advertising and marketing philosophy, as I worked for many years in the Church’s Central Marketing Unit – as detailed in the book Counterfeit Dreams.

In 1999, he became enamored with a book called The End of Marketing As We Know It by Sergio Zyman. The entire Base was required to read it. The book itself wasn’t bad. Zyman had been in charge of marketing at Coca-Cola and had presided over one of the biggest debacles in marketing history, “New Coke.” Zyman had, fortunately, learned from his mistakes and went on to a successful publishing and lecturing career. The point of his book was that too many marketers are focused on image – glossy ads and meaningless slogans – when they should be focused on sales and results. They should be focused on the consumer. The consumer didn’t want “New Coke,” and no matter how many ad dollars Coke threw at it, they could not make people want it.

Miscavige, however, took away an entirely different message from the book, almost the opposite of what Zyman was saying. He had everyone actually drink a can of Coke after they had finished reading the book, and then “have the cognition” that Coke was nothing, just a can of sugar water, and that one could sell anything with the right ads and marketing.  (This is typical, by the way, of Miscavige’s endless “study orders” at the Int Base. In lieu of any real staff training, he issues an endless parade of “study orders” which are supposed to result in you having the same cognition he had.  And you’d better have his cognition.)

So the answer to Scientology’s marketing, according to Miscavige, was big, broad, flossy image campaigns.

I already knew this didn’t work. And in fact, Hubbard himself knew it didn’t work, and had forbidden such ads in Policy. And whatever one might think of Hubbard, he was a pretty canny marketer. He said that if you put out an ad, sell a book. Never put out ads to just promote an “image” or sell a generality, “Scientology.”

What boomed Scientology in the late 1980s was book campaigns, not generalized image campaigns. And those campaigns were targeted to specific audiences, what they call “niche markets” today. They were not broadly blasted out to everyone. There was a lot of research into where and when those ads were placed. All that, of course, went out the window when Miscavige gained control over marketing, beginning with useless and wasteful “sports sponsorships.” I talk about all this marketing history in some detail in Counterfeit Dreams.

Well, nowadays, with Miscavige running the show, all they do is broad “image” campaigns and useless, wasteful “sponsorships” like the Rose Parade debacle.

How effective are their ads? Well, the utter failure of one of these ads was recently documented in this online study by HCD research. They showed one of the recent Scientology ads to a test audience and measured the results.

The ad begins with a trite montage of pleasant images, over which a narrator voice drones:

“It’s shiny cars, wistful eyes, and roast beef for dinner. It’s chaos and harmony and water balloon fights, and words you can’t take back. It’s tears of joy and pain, feelings you can’t explain. It’s questions and answers and I don’t knows. It’s the rise and fall of civilizations, stock markets and kids on trampolines. It’s finding true love and losing it, and finding it all over again. It’s music and sensation and touchdowns and chocolate. It’s spirituality and inspiration and money and traffic jams. It’s disaster and heroism and paper clips and knowing when to breathe. It’s flirting and tasting and curiosity. It’s fast and it’s slow. It’s rising and falling. It’s every moment and every hope, every dream, every piece of the cosmic puzzle…”

And on and on… the test audience is entranced, hypnotized with the endless warm fuzzy flow of words and images, the response scores are lazily drifting up and up… Then:

“It’s life, and it’s yours. Scientology: Know yourself, know life.”

Pow! The response rate dives like a shot duck, down and down and down, deep into the minus range. “Typically when a logo or advertiser name appears in an ad there’s a decline in interest and/or believability.” Says Glenn Kessler, president and CEO, HCD Research. “However, I have never seen such a precipitous decline in curves as was seen when the Scientology identification was shown on the screen.” The overriding emotion they were left with? 34% – Skepticism.

So the ad is an unmitigated failure in changing anyone’s opinion about Scientology or creating a positive image. But do you think that will change the way the Church advertises? No way.

Because the truth is, Miscavige doesn’t care. He’s only interested in one response – the flow of cash into IAS coffers. There is only one audience he is aiming at with these ads – Scientologists.  They have only one purpose – to convince Scientologists that the Church is “running big public campaigns” and they should therefore contribute everything they have to the IAS.

Never mind that such ads are off-Policy. Never mind that they are filled with fatuous Danny Sherman drivel. Never mind that only a small fraction of their IAS donations goes into such “campaigns.” Never mind that the little that is actually done is an unmitigated failure. All that is just “entheta” that Scientologists will never look at, never see, never find out about. No, they’ll just listen to the Church’s brags and boasts and PR and lies.

And they’ll keep those donations rolling.

Or will they?

The Trailing Edge

I heard on the grapevine that the big “release” at the New Year’s Event will be the announcement of a huge new book printing plant in Los Angeles, a supposed “dissemination center.” In fact, it appears that it’s the old Bridge Publications warehouse on Bandini Blvd in Commerce, but with a facelift.

Of course, in this age of Kindle and e-books, only the Church of Scientology would consider a brick-and-mortar book printing facility as any kind of newsworthy breakthrough. To the rest of us, it’s kind of quaintly retro.

But what else is new? The Church has always been on the trailing edge of technology.

I remember being at Gold in the 1990s when a huge multi-million dollar state-of-the-art film lab was built to process film. Process film? Really? How quaint. The rest of the industry was going digital at a mad rate and the Church of Scientology was busy investing in analog film developing. Of course, within a few years of being built, the lab was largely obsolete and much of it had to be re-purposed. Who didn’t see the digital revolution coming to the film industry? The Church didn’t.

And remember the big “release” of LRH’s lectures on CD? That was 2002 when the first lecture series, the Philadelphia Doctorate Course, was released on CD. Let’s see, CDs and CD players have been available since the early 1980s. In 1985 Dire Straits sold a million CDs of their Brothers in Arms album. So, nearly 20 years later, the Church of Scientology suddenly wakes up and decides to release Hubbard’s lectures on CD. And announce it as a major technological breakthrough. Of course, by 2002, we had MP3 in full swing and CD sales were on the decline. Trust the Church to jump on a trend when it’s on the wane. Nowadays, every single LRH lecture could fit on an iPod. But do you see that in your Church bookstore? No way.

And how about the Mark VIII E-Meter? Most Scientologists don’t know that the latest e-meter, the Mark VIII, has already been manufactured. They were made in Taiwan in 2004 and have been gathering dust for the last seven years at that same Bandini Blvd Warehouse that they just announced as their “latest breakthrough.” And of course, they are already obsolete. Apparently they were made with serial connectors, not USB ports. So they have to be retrofitted with the right connectors. If they are ever released. Apparently Scientologists outside the Church have already developed software that converts any computer into an E-Meter – you just plug the cans in to a USB port. You’d think the Church would be working on something like that. But no.

So when will we see LRH lectures available as MP3 downloads? LRH books on Kindle? Software to convert your computer to an E-Meter? Don’t hold your breath. Probably not until those technologies have been replaced by something far more advanced.

Scientology likes to position itself as up-to-date and cutting edge. They like to think of themselves as being ahead of the curve, leading the pack. But the truth is, if you look closely and ignore the brags, they are followers, running to catch up with the rest of the world, always behind, always slow, always picking up on a trend when everyone else has moved on.

The Spirit of Christmas

A friend made the observation to me today that the Church of Scientology has no heart. This person, a former Scientologist, had just visited another church and had been impressed at the spirit of benevolence, charity, love and compassion that was evidenced by the people there, both the leaders and the members. These are all traits that we normally associate with Christmas, a time when even the hardest hearts feel some charity and goodwill.

I well remember Christmases in the Church of Scientology. It was seen as an annoying distraction. Staff had to be given a half a day to go out and shop for family presents and send them off. Otherwise it would be a “PR flap.” But even this brief nod to Christmas was barely tolerated.

Every year, Management would go into a panic. It was known that the stats would go down over Christmas. Duh. People were doing other things, seeing family and friends, relaxing. The solution? A hastily put together program to “get the public to come into the Org for courses over the Christmas holidays. “Use that time to get up the Bridge!” the promotion screamed. How dare anyone actually just relax and have a good time when staff were working around the clock to “keep the stats from crashing.”

I always thought it rather silly. Christmas is Christmas. Why don’t we all enjoy it, public and staff, and then get back to business afterwards? But oh, no, the micromanaged stats just had to be pushed up!

At the Int Base, the last five years I was there, we always worked through Christmas, getting the New Years Event ready. It was always last minute, always a flap. Christmas Day maybe we’d get an extra half an hour for dinner and they’d throw up a few decorations. “You can take New Year’s Day off,” we were told. Then the event would be such a flap that no one got New Years Day off either. And after 2000, there were no Christmas bonuses either.

And forget about taking a few days to see family. Dilletante! Other fish to fry!

The last five years I was at the Base, I never had Christmas with my wife.

So staff are pressured to keep on working. Public are pressured to come in and spend money. No bonuses are paid. It’s work, work, work.

Sound familiar? Sure, that’s Ebeneezer Scrooge in Dickens’ beloved tale, A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is portrayed as a greedy and stingy businessman who has no place in his life for kindness, compassion, charity, or benevolence. Well, that’s it. That’s the Church of Scientology.

My advice for Christmas?

Relax. forget about Scientology. Take a break from the blogs and chat boards. Spend some quality time with your family, your kids, your grandkids. Go see some old friends. Travel a bit. Read a good book.

Or, if you’re me, all of the above.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Well, in addition to anything else, I like to keep up with what’s happening with my local Portland Idle Org.

To recap, in 2008, after regging every public they could find to empty their bank accounts, take out second mortgages and rob their children’s college funds, the Church bought the historic 12-story Stevens Building in downtown Portland in an all-cash deal for $5.38 million.

Of course, they emptied the building out, encouraging the existing tenants of the building to move out before their leases expired. It was all rush, rush, rush to start the renovations.

Well, two years went by, and still the building stood empty. They were supposedly regging money for the renovations. How much they collected from their field, we don’t know.

Then, on March of this year, it was suddenly announced that the Church was selling the Stevens Building.  After two years of contemplating the empty building, they suddenly decided it was “unsuitable for their purposes.” There “wasn’t a space big enough to have a large church service or a large church event.” Really. It took them two years to realize that.

Nevertheless they unloaded it. The asking price was 4.95 million. By my calculations, if they bought it for 5.38 million and are selling it for 4.95 million, that’s a $430,000 loss – if they got their asking price.

Well, the next chapter of the saga is that they have now bought a six-story office building at the corner of Third and Oak. It’s currently the location of a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a national restaurant chain.

The only problem? Well, it’s not exactly a posh neighborhood, as this article points out. The block is lined with strip clubs, tattoo parlors, seedy retail stores and shabby grocery stores – the kind with heavy bars over the windows and doors. The article says,

“So it’s not exactly news that the Portland location of national chain Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse is moving from its strip-club flanked locale into fancier digs downtown (the long-standing rumor was confirmed today that Ruth’s will anchor downtown’s Pacific Center on the corner of Southwest Taylor and Broadway).

“Here’s what’s hilariously newsworthy: Ruth’s old digs on SW Third will apparently be turned into the Portland headquarters for the Church of Scientology (we shit you not), which, as we would like to remind you, will be flanked by strip clubs. Amazing.”

There goes the neighborhood.

The Science of Explanations

You’ll never convince anyone that something works by explaining away its failures.

Imagine a scientist demonstrating his new invention – an anti-gravity device – in front of an auditorium of his peers. He tries to make it work, and it fails again and again. And each time it fails, he has another explanation: “the temperature isn’t right in here,” “there’s too much humidity,” “the planets aren’t aligned properly,” or even “there are too many negative vibes in here.” Well, you’d see people walking out, disgusted. The man is obviously a charlatan.

Well, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he did get it to work in his temperature- and humidity-controlled lab. But then he should have demonstrated it in his lab and explained its limitations.

You’ll never convince anyone that something works by explaining away its failures.

Unfortunately this is a lesson that organized Scientology – and many Scientologists – have yet to learn.

Even Scientologists who have left the Church sometimes get into this. The failures of organized Scientology are explained away as “it’s all David Miscavige.” Sure, the man is a highly destructive sociopath. But, as I’ve stated before, this doesn’t even fit Hubbard’s own Data Series criteria for a real Why. A Who is not a Why. And this statement can be “how-comed.” How come a single SP can take over and corrupt an entire organization that claims to have the technology to handle SPs?

There are many Independent Scientologists who are genuinely interested in learning from the mistakes and failures of organized Scientology, really digging in and finding why the Church went bad and working to prevent it from happening again. But there are a few, what we might call fundamentalist or doctrinaire Scientologists, who refuse to consider systemic factors. And certainly the Church would never admit to any systemic flaws.

The Good Barrel

After my recent posting of what I consider to be the twelve systemic factors that make Scientology organizations toxic and abusive, we had a few of these explanations. To go back to our bad apple/bad barrel analogy, they claim the barrel, the Scientology system, is perfect, but it’s been corrupted and misapplied by imperfect people – “bad apples.”

“People are stupid,” I was told. “They are too stupid to correctly apply Scientology.” Well, outside of being arrogant, this statement doesn’t hold water. Isn’t Scientology supposed to raise intelligence?

“People are evil,” I was also told. “They will always corrupt a system like Scientology to evil ends.” Again, that makes no sense. Scientology has Ethics tech, FPRD and other things that are supposed to handle evil purposes and out-Ethics.

Someone even said, “What do you expect? We’re on Planet Earth!” I’m sorry, my understanding is that Scientology is supposed to handle Planet Earth. Wasn’t the whole point to “Clear the Planet”? If the majority of people are too stupid or too evil or too aberrated to correctly apply Scientology, then I’m sorry, how can you call it workable in any sense of that term?

To go back to the “bad apple/bad barrel” analogy, Scientology claims to be the ultimate “good barrel.” Put any sort of apple in the bottom and it emerges at the top not just a good apple, but a golden apple. Then when the whole barrel of organized Scientology goes bad, we are told it’s due to “bad apples.” Well, people would be justified in asking, “isn’t that exactly what you claim to handle? Bad apples?”

Whenever there is a discussion about the “workability of Scientology,” Scientologists tend to focus on the microcosm of specific individual wins and gains. “I had wins,” “My PCs had wins,” “As a C/S, I saw many people getting wins.” All very valid testimony, and that’s great that people get individual results from studying or applying Scientology. Seriously, that’s a good thing.

But when outsiders question the workability of Scientology, they are usually looking at the macrocosm of Scientology – the big picture. Where are the thousands of successful, booming organizations? Where are the tens of thousands of Clears and OTs visibly demonstrating the traits and abilities Hubbard said they would gain? Where is the tangible evidence of Scientology’s benign influence on society (outside of their own event puffery)? Where is the visible, solid, big-picture success of Scientology that anyone can see?

Scientology has had over 50 years to create the “islands of sanity” it claims to be able to create. Well, where are they?

But when you try to take this up with a Scientology fundamentalist to get some answers, you tend to get a litany of explanations. To demonstrate what I mean, here’s something I wrote a while back but never published here – a fictional discussion between a Scientologist and a non-Scientologist.

Conversation with a Scientologist

Non-Scientologist: So, tell me about Scientology.

Scientologist: Well, it’s a religious philosophy which contains tools that anyone can use to improve their life. These are workable tools that have been proven to be uniformly successful if they are applied correctly.

Non-Scientologist: OK, but forgive me if I question your statement about being uniformly successful. I’ve seen some disturbing things online. Apparently the head of Scientology is a sociopath who is physically and verbally abusive to his staff, many staff are treated no better than slaves, the organizations put incredible pressure on their members to come up with more and more money, people are forced to disconnect from their families, the Scientology organizations are failing, emptying out, and there are a lot of defections, including top level OTs. There have even been OT suicides. That doesn’t seem to indicate uniform success.

Scientologist: Well, you have to understand that people running the Church are not correctly applying Scientology. They’ve altered the technology. What they are doing is not Scientology.

Non-Scientologist: I’m sorry, you’re saying that Scientology doesn’t apply Scientology?

Scientologist: No. the official Church doesn’t apply Scientology.

Non-Scientologist: I see. Well, if alteration of the technology is such a major problem, maybe Hubbard should have warned people about it. Maybe he should have written an issue alerting them to the dangers of altering the technology, and had every Scientologist read it at the beginning of every course. And maybe he should have set up a part of the organization as a sort of Quality Control to police this sort of thing.

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did those things.

Non-Scientologist: Oh. Well, then, why didn’t that work?

Scientologist: Well, that’s because people have misunderstoods. They can’t duplicate what they are reading. They even have something called Crashing Misunderstoods.

Non-Scientologist: I see. That sounds like a serious block. Maybe Hubbard should have written something warning people about the importance of understanding words. Maybe he should have developed a technology of how to study, and how to handle these “Crashing Misunderstoods.”

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did. It’s called Study Tech.

Non-Scientologist: OK. Well, why didn’t that work?

Scientologist: Well, people don’t apply it! They don’t clear their words. They’re out-ethics! They are just blinded by their own overts –transgressions – and they have withholds.

Non-Scientologist: Well, I can understand that could be a problem. Hubbard should have invented a technology of ethics to help people be more ethical and disciplined. And maybe he should have directed some of his counseling techniques to help people become more honest and ethical.

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did. There’s a whole book on Ethics and a lot of auditing procedures to address that.

Non-Scientologist: OK, well, why don’t people apply that?

Scientologist: It’s hard to get anything standard done in orgs these days! The Orgs are a mess! They are off-purpose, more interested in money than really helping people. They are understaffed and harassed and insolvent and desperate!

Non-Scientologist: Sure, I can see how that would be a problem. Well, maybe Hubbard should have developed a technology of organization; how to keep organizations on-purpose and functioning properly. Maybe he should have written up all of their duties in detail so they know exactly what they should be doing.

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did do that. It’s been published in ten big volumes.

Non-Scientologist: Well, then, why doesn’t that work?

Scientologist: Staff don’t have time to study it. There’s too few of them and they are desperate. They can’t make enough on staff so they have to moonlight. There are just not enough public in the orgs!

Non-Scientologist: Oh, I see. Well, then, maybe Hubbard should have developed a technology of how to promote and market Scientology. Maybe he should have provided drills telling people how to effectively disseminate Scientology.

Scientologist: Well, actually he did do that.

Non-Scientologist: Ok, why isn’t that used?

Scientologist: You don’t understand! Scientology has terrible PR. It’s hard to disseminate to people because Scientology is so disliked in society.

Non-Scientologist: That is definitely a problem! Maybe Hubbard should have developed a technology of Public Relations so staff could learn how to create a good public image and good relations with the public.

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did that.

Non-Scientologist: Then why is there a problem?

Scientologist: Nothing standard can get done in the Church! The whole of the Church of Scientology has been taken over by Suppressive Persons. They are perverting the tech! They are destroying the Church! Everyone is PTS to them!

Non-Scientologist: Goodness, that sounds serious! Well, maybe Hubbard should have developed a technology to show people how to spot Suppressive Persons, and how to handle them once you’ve spotted them, so you don’t go PTS.

Scientologist: Well, actually, he did that too.

Non-Scientologist: Oh! Well, then, why doesn’t that work?

Scientologist: There are so many other factors I haven’t even mentioned! These Suppressives overwhelm people! They use implant technology!

Non-Scientologist: Well, why didn’t Hubbard develop some advanced techniques to give people freedom from being overwhelmed and proof them up against the effects of these implants?

Scientologist: He did! He did! But you don’t understand! This is Planet Earth. It’s a crazy place! You can’t get technology correctly applied when you have people who are not rational, who are stupid, who are not sane, who are low on the Tone Scale, who are aberrated…

Non-Scientologist: Well, maybe Hubbard should have developed a technology to make people rational, sane and intelligent, to raise them on the Tone Scale, to get rid of aberration…

Oh wait. Isn’t that what Scientology is supposed to do?

Summary

OK, this is a fictional, contrived conversation. But how many of these explanations have you heard in real life? And how often have you seen this kind of circular logic?

In my opinion, the most basic of Scientology’s system flaws is that Scientologists are trained not to see system flaws. Even when failure is obvious to everyone else, fundamentalist Scientologists will refuse to inspect the system. They will interpret all failure as individual failure. They become experts in explaining away failure.

Doctrinaire Scientologists can neither see nor correct systemic flaws, and thus Scientology is incapable of correcting itself.

And maybe we’re getting closer to a real Why.



The Dark Side

It has become a favorite phrase within the Church of Scientology to say that someone has “gone over to the dark side” when they leave the Church. I recently heard a story about someone who was told that they could not talk to a friend of theirs as they had “gone over to the dark side.” The person asked what they had done, but the Ethics Officer couldn’t say. “That’s confidential,” he said, “All I can tell you is that he’s gone over to the dark side.”

There are several definitions of the word dark.  One definition is “evil or wicked.” But another definition is “hidden or obscured.”

Imagine Scientology as a building with all of the windows blacked out so no one can see outside. Those who are inside are told that what is outside the building is evil. They are not allowed to talk to anyone outside the building. They cannot read anything from the outside world. If their friends or family are outside, then they are not allowed to talk to them. You can imagine them sitting in this building, staring at the blacked-out windows, and wondering what is on the other side – the “dark side.”

This metaphor isn’t that far-fetched by the way. I recall attending a demonstration at the local Scientology Org. People were holding signs, playing music and singing. The Org reacted by putting up black curtains all across the front of the building so that their staff and public could not see what was going on.

Amazingly, when they do get up the courage to walk out of that building, they discover not darkness, but light – a whole big world of people and buildings and parks and vast wilderness. A bright world of freedom where people can talk to anyone they want to, read anything they want to, and think anything they want. Or go to a movie or take a walk or go on a vacation or read a book.

And if anyone notices that little building with the blacked-out windows, they just say “what a curious little building. I wonder why all the windows are blacked out?”

So who’s on the dark side?