Self Sabotage in Scientology

Scientology has tons, literally, of policies and bulletins and tapes requiring abusive, fraudulent and criminal behavior from Scientologists. Lots of us get frustrated when we have worked to recover from Scientology and looked at the indoctrination we went through with a critical eye, a skeptical eye and realized the mountains of evidence are readily available in Scientology doctrine and history.

Policies like this and hundreds of others are not secret or high level esoteric knowledge. Scientology is jam packed with these, so the media and government officials should look at a snippet of these materials and the very real record of crimes by Scientology leaders Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige and realize the game hasn't really changed. It is extremely unlikely to change.

Scientology cult members when presented with these materials either say "I have never seen this", or "you are taking that out of context, you do not understand Scientology" or my favorite "you don't have the fucking rank to ask that question."

They cannot face criticism of Scientology because Ron Hubbard created preemptive prejudices against criticism. Just as it is in this policy Hubbard used repetition and variation of the claim that "critics always have crimes" or "critics are paid to be critics and have a money motive" claim to discredit criticism by getting Scientologists to equate ALL criticism with a prompt to attack the attacker with shifting automatically from listening to criticism to discrediting the critic. This is the genetic fallacy and hasty generalization (aka glittering generalities and name calling) combined.

It is terrible critical thinking to ALWAYS disregard criticism and without any evidence or independent judgement to render the verdict that criticism is wrong and the critic cannot be listened to.

Hubbard presented this idea again and again. It is in the tone scale, Science of Survival, Introduction to Scientology Ethics book, Keeping Scientology Working and many, many policies and bulletins.

It is a cornerstone of Scientology and in my opinion has to be doubted or cast aside for a Scientologist to be able to escape the prison of the mind. When it is deeply enough indoctrinated into the mind a Scientologist will have an automatic reaction of rejecting external criticism of Scientology and will criticize themselves for doubting Scientology and believe they have misunderstood words or unhandled out ethics of are in a lower ethics condition or are abberated for doubting Scientology or Hubbard.

This is why it is so hard to escape Scientology indoctrination once a sort of event horizon of indoctrination has been crossed.

When you automatically reject external evidence against Scientology and automatically discredit all critics it is hard to reach you but when you defend Scientology and Hubbard over your own feelings, thoughts, experiences and observations you are a fanatic and zealot. You are both the jailed and the jailer.

Here is a policy from Scientology that is an example of this:

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 14 AUGUST AD13

Central Orgs
Sthil Students

SCIENTOLOGY FIVE PRESS POLICIES

(Tech Dir to Star Rate Examine HCO Sec and Assoc Sec. any HCO Exec Sec and any Special Programmes Director on the Theory and Practical of this Policy Letter and report to me when so done.)

This HCO Policy Letter modifies press policy.

We do not care if Scientologists communicate to the press but if they do there are certain points to keep in mind.

Certain vested interests, mainly the American Medical Association, a private healing monopoly, wish to do all possible harm to the Scientology movement over the world in order to protect their huge medical-psychiatric income and desired monopoly which runs into the tens of billions annually. In their congresses they complain that we and people like us cost them 1.1 billion dollars a year that they don’t receive. Their sole interest is income. Reference: Minutes of various AMA conferences. Almost all our bad publicity and attacks are authored by two men, one named Keaton, the AMA press man, and one named Field, their head of “investigation.” These men flood bad tales about Scientology into press, magazines, radio, TV. Their sole interest is a medical psychiatric monopoly for the AMA. They blind the public to the fact that the crimes of psychiatry are medical crimes, not crimes of mental healing. The medical-psychiatrist is a very small part of the world of psychiatry. They want it all for physical medicine.

The sole reasons for attack are money and monopoly. If ethics entered into it they would clean up their own failures.

Their publicity goes overseas. The FDA is used by these people and FDA releases are sent overseas.

I don’t care whether anyone thinks this shouldn’t be or thinks it isn’t right. It isn’t. It’s just fact and we have the evidence in black and white.

We have always had policies of leaving healing alone and not attacking medicine and other areas of psychiatry. Our pay for this is receiving continual bad press.

Medical doctors practicing psychiatry are peculiarly vulnerable. Their physiological technology belongs to the 19th Century. It has innumerable crimes on its hands. Hitler and Stalin held power through medical psychiatry. They associate themselves chiefly with the rich and powerful.
They therefore cannot stand up to any heavy attack. Further they have many averts.

We are modern, 20th Century. We are of the people. We hate Fascism and brutality. We are the new replacing the old. We have passed the test of survival. Despite 13 years of attack we have survived. Therefore we must have something and we must be all right. So much for the justice or truth of such attacks.

THE REPORTER

The reporter who comes to you, all smiles and withholds, “wanting a story,” has an AMA instigated release in his pocket. He is there to trick you into supporting his pre-conceived story.

The story he will write has already been outlined by a sub-editor from old clippings and AMA releases.

He probably knows as well as you do that you are decent and effective.

He has no power whatever to alter the pre-conceived story he has been ordered to write. If he were audited or otherwise totally convinced of the great value of Scientology he would still write the same critical story. If he didn’t he would probably get sacked. So the time you spend trying to convince him of your decency and effectiveness is wasted time.

He wants a story. The only ways to handle him are to eject him or to give him a story that he thinks is a story. There are no half-way measures.

If he publishes outright lies sue his paper for libel if you like, but don’t be afraid of what he will write. Central organization income usually rises during bad press campaigns. So he can’t really harm you whatever he does or says. Your job minimum action is to refuse to be led into utterances that can be misconstrued.

Contrary to what he may want to believe, press doesn’t always mould public opinion.

No bad product sells, no matter how much advertising it buys or how much good press it has. Bigger than press is word-of-mouth. If advertised products don’t have good word-of-mouth they don’t sell.

We have good word-of-mouth and will continue to have it as long as we give service.

So good service and being decent are superior to even good press. Be decent, then, and give good service and good press or bad press, we’ll still make it.

We prefer no press because it slows our word-of-mouth amongst the people.

However, bad press is no catastrophe. So the reporter cannot really hurt you and is nobody to be feared. Pitied, rather — for if he does write what he really feels, he’ll get sacked. That’s what makes him sick and cynical. He may know you’re decent and effective and yet he’ll have to go write what he’s told to write.

Even if you handed this policy letter to him and he said it wasn’t true, he’d have to write stories that follow the points below.

So actually he’s on a spot. He’d have to sell out the human race if his editor told him to.

But he would write a different story if he found one that fitted his pattern of requirements.

STORY RULES

If you want to give him a story he will publish you have to know these rules, for they are the rules he follows.

The rules of newspaper writing today are very exact. And this is probably a far better analysis of the rules than he has, so you could surely win.

To be printed, a story must contain one or more of these things:

1. HARM (Blood, violence, damage, death, scandal)
2. SEX
3. MONEY
4. BIG NAMES
5. The story must be written to INVALIDATE something.
6. The story must contain a CONTROVERSY.
7. A story must contain TWO OPPOSING FORCES. Dialectic Materialism is the basic philosophy used by the society at this time. This philosophy is crudely stated in the following statement: “It takes two opposing forces to produce an idea.” The Scientologist recognizes this as RIs in a GPM but it is real to editors as TRUTH.

Therefore a great story to a newspaperman contains nearly all of 1 to 4 above and 5, 6 and 7.

This is the formula on which modern newspapers operate. They don’t publish any other kind of “news story.”

You could be elected Queen of the May and the headline would be “Controversy Rips Queen Election. Sexual bias Hinted.”

If you inherited a billion happily from an uncle who loved you, and were all set to help the millions with it, the news story would be “Foul Play Hinted in Uncle’s Death. Rights of Heir Challenged. Sex Life Probed.”

And that’s the is-ness of the entheta called news.

This sounds like criminal gossip mongering. It is. But it’s also the total formula of news in this century. It’s what the editor believes sells papers. It may not even do that but they believe it does. And the publisher, hounded by economics, must sell papers to stay alive.

A SCIENTOLOGY LIABILITY

If you give him any story at all, the reporter must wind it into the above formula or it won’t be published. He may not even be after you or mad at you. He just has to write “a story” along the above lines.

If you talk only about Scientology, according to 7 he must furnish another terminal, so he adds in “the public” and makes Scientology oppose “the public interest.” He has, then, no choice but to make Scientology dangerous to the public.

As he has a rule in 1 about Harm, and he can find no blood, he is driven to inventing something that harms something or has harmed something.

In 2 he must have sex so he has to invent some sex.

In 3 he has to talk about our fees because Money is a great story requirement.

In 4 he has to have names and so has to use my name as the best one known regardless of all the other people in Scientology.

In 5 he has to make 1 to 4 invalidative of Scientology if that’s the only item there and he expects the public to buy his papers so he can’t invalidate the public.

In 6 he has to imagine something questionable or just say we’re controversial as he must have a Controversy. This makes things “timely and interesting” for his editor.

And as I said above, he has to have two forces so he is driven to use the public as the other one to “oppose” Scientology.

Therefore by the very nature of news writing and the singleness of Scientology you get bad press unless you release good press stories of your own guidance.

It is naive to expect good press. Press isn’t going to pat anyone on the head. It’s going to follow its rules of “what is a story” 1 to 7 above.

Unfair though it may seem, that’s still the is-ness of it.

A GOOD STORY

The best story you can hope for from modern press would have to have all the above elements.
This sounds deadly for us. But it really isn’t. All we have to know is their formula, release our own stories using it and be sure it isn’t us to which they assign the blood, sex, money and names. Let it be somebody else’s blood, sex, money and names.

Actually we are pretty dull on the first four points. We’re too decent, we give too much service.

They have to imagine bad things to get them in at all.

So let’s use their formula if we want press but with a more accurate viewpoint.

DRILLS

First you should glance over some daily papers and satisfy yourself that the news formula above is factual to get some practice and to see how varied the resulting stories become. You will find you can determine where a story would be placed in a newspaper by the number of requirements and the magnitude of one or more of the requirements. And you will be able to predict how long any story will last by seeing how many requirements it fulfills and to what degree.

And you’ll be a news analyst. A columnist’s story is the exception. He is against things. But he still follows other requirements too. Thus if we were simply against things we would most likely be columnist type news, not headline.

It’s a good drill. Once you’ve done it press won’t ever scare you again. And you can be cause over it.

Take the front page news stories and a pencil. Check off in any one story as many as you can of story requirements 1 to 7 above by number and the first letters of the requirement.

It’s an amusing game. You won’t find many missing in any one story and you’ll find that those that go front page for days: have all of the requirements.

Call that “Something A”. We’re against it or them.

1. Explain how harmful “Something A” is.
2. Explain the sex aspects of “Something A” or omit.
3. Give figures as to the huge sums connected with ”Something A”.
4. Give the big names connected with “Something A” and what’s wrong with them.
5. Be sure to Invalidate “Something A”.
6. Explain that “Something A” is controversial and exactly what about it is controversial.
7. As mentioned above be sure to define that you as a force oppose “Something A” as a force and you have a fully designed “news story”.

Now and then a skilled press hand can get an idea which has pure INTEREST value. This is essentially a theta story. And in a sane society mostly these would get published. But on releasing them in the present society immediately 1 to 7 gets added to such a story. Take my Tomato Story. “Vegetables react on an E-Meter.”

Essentially then bodies and vegetables were both of the same order of response. This I made into “Do Tomatoes Feel Pain?” and got International Press. But before a week had run the following elements had been added 1. Crazy to think so 2. Pretty Girl inspires love in a cabbage 5. Probably not 6. Controversial. They couldn’t manage to increase 4 beyond my name and 7 they couldn’t quite manage. It went however and went on for two years with everybody from the U of Texas to the US Government getting in on the act.

They are starved for ideas. They are scarce, as you could imagine from a philosophy like Russian Dialectic Materialism. Therefore the press nurses and continues old stories. They look for but do not expect to find new stories. My last press boy (after I’d batted a theta International Press story out for the third time in a year, all carefully figured out) said “But one can’t think of a Tomato story every six weeks!” He didn’t believe it was possible to
think of new ideas and also believed that it was impossible to get press.

It’s always possible to get press. The hardest press to get is theta press because it’s too far from the modern formula. You and I know that theta flows faster than entheta. That makes one wonder what makes newspapers circulate at all. For their formula is enturbulative and therefore unlikely to go far.

From this we can assume, then, that they seek enduring stories, not interesting or communicating stories. So adding time to a story is always good.

“We are always getting A type cases. They must stop this continual selling of A.” “It takes years to make a real professional Auditor.” “We have been trying for years to stop A.”

A campaign against vice is always good news. Gets lots of mileage. Because it adds up to all seven points, usually.

To create a news story often requires that you take action. The action need not outlast the news value of the story.

This is a special programmes sort of job. Example: Teenage girl shows up in HGC who has been beaten and raped by teenage boys at High School and withholding it since. Audit it out, get parents to okay investigation, call in press.

Release story of vice and crime at local High School with the org doing the investigation. On subsequent days:

Criticize laxity of police. Criticize principal. Finally find more teenage sex cases. Just day by day deal off a new action to the press. String the story out. Take an action, hold a press conference. Put students on meters. Put teachers on meters. Get parents to sue. Finally advise school hire a permanent mental consultant and give daily mental exercises to “teenage mobsters”. Then wrap it all up and skip it. You’ve made something evil become something good attained-Scientology in Schools.

You make a calendar of coming events, one day one action. One action one news story. And string it out.

Exercise: Do a story design and calendar for “Scientology Ministers demand FDA prove sterility pills aren’t sex stimulants.”

That’s press. You cause it. You don’t just receive it.

And all press must be calculated at the reality level of the newspapers, not the public.

Most press agents (public relations counsels) don’t understand press. They often act only to prevent it. Or they try to use me 24 hours a day to specialize on 4. Or they want “stunt press” — like Bernard McFadden’s parachute jump into Niagara Falls at the age of 70 or some blonde swimming the Channel. This has small value and is chancy press.

And preventing press is also chancy for one is only at effect.

If you really want “good” press, get some element that fits all seven of the above requirements, plan an exact series of actions, do them in exact sequence and release a press story for each action. The press will love you.

Now, does it occur to you that it is this exact action (poorly done) that is being undertaken against us by the AMA.

Ah, you learn fast! But the difference is theirs is toward a sordid goal.

This is an analysis of current press. It is released to help understand our press situation and our problems.

I am not condoning the current state of press. I am just giving you data about press and requiring that if you want press or have to handle press it will be successful in this current society only if handled with the above elements firmly understood.

Using these Scientology FIVE data we could be front page 100 days out of every year.

RON HUBBARD