Mockingbird's Nest: Scientology Racism

Can the Church Deny It?

Church dogma demands a slavish devotion to its founder L. Ron Hubbard, whose sentiments appear racist to modern sensibilities but were common in white society during most of his life. Racial attitudes have changed greatly over time — in fact, modern anthropological theory denies the existence of "race" [offsite]

altogether. Hubbard's prejudices, however, are forever codified in Source, i.e., they are sacred, immutable doctrine. Hence, Scientology is inherently racist, as the following collection of scriptural quotes illustrates.

A basic component of the Church's services is auditing (counseling sessions). Through a progression of special auditing actions for specific purposes, called rundowns

, Scientologists can advance their spiritual condition. But Hubbard has a Big Auditing Problem with native South Africans, who, along with other "primitives" and children, are in a "retrograded" state:

The South African native is probably the one impossible person to train in the entire world — he is probably impossible by any human standard.

–L. Ron Hubbard, PAB No. 119, 1 September 1957, as published in Level 0 PABS (c.1968, The American St. Hill Organization).

Natives need the help of white men to explain how to care for their possessions, including their land. Hubbard scolds South Africa for not properly attending to native education:

As long as a white foreman is there, they will prevent soil erosion; but the moment that a white foreman turns his back — boo! There goes the whole program.

And you finally get up to the point of where he's [native] supposed to take care of something, a lesson which has never been taught to the native of South Africa.

–L. Ron Hubbard, 15thACC (Power of Simplicity) lecture "Education: Point of Agreement", 30 Oct 1956.

Hubbard also finds that the "insanity rate per capita in South Africa is appalling" and issues a special set of instructions, The Scientific Treatment of the Insane, for South African auditors to address the problem. Note that Hubbard also thinks the Bantu are in need of "rehabilitation", with mental health being only one of the necessary efforts.

The insanity rate per capita in South Africa is appalling. …it is easily seen that a primary requisite in any programme of the rehabilitation of the Bantu in South Africa would be mental health…

–L. Ron Hubbard, HCOBApril 1960, "The Scientific Treatment of the Insane"

The South African Rundown, the only Scientology rundown targeted at a specific ethnic group, was developed for "delivery to South Africans—those who reside in South Africa as well as those who have emigrated to other parts of the world". Hubbard apparently feels that they required special processing because they are "untrainable" and "insane".
The Church's auditing tool, the E-meter, requires adjustment in order to accommodate the needle's larger movements because of the intensity of a black South African'sundisclosed transgressions ("withholds").

A "black South African's" withholds read not only on the needle [of the E-meter] alone but on the Tone Arm [sensitivity adjustment] as well.

–L. Ron Hubbard, E-Meter Essentials, section I: "Meter Oddities", 1988 (pg. 24)

Perhaps the unusually strong withholds can be explained by the Bantu's mercenary nature:

Because the one thing — the very, very commercial little culture the Bantu has … the idea of commerce and money and that sort of thing is very deeply ingrained in these people.

–L. Ron Hubbard, SHSBC, "Errors in Time", 18 July 1963

Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, one of Scientology's basic public texts, says this about "African savages":

…the African tribesman, with his complete contempt for truth and his emphasis on brutality and savagery for others but not for himself, is a no-civilization.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought,Bridge Publications: Los Angeles, 1997.

The reason that Africans feel barbarous is because of their numerous overts

that have resulted from being exposed to a "fantastic amount of space opera

" and a hostile environment.

[Y]ou'll find in Africans a fantastic amount of heavy space opera and so on, going on … which makes the colored African very, very interesting to process because he doesn't know why he goes through all these dances … and why he feels so barbarous ….

–L. Ron Hubbard, 1st Melbourne ACC, lecture "Principal Incidents on the Track", 27 November 1959.

In Hubbard's view, people have to be trained to be "governable" in order to become civilized and deserve independence. He suggests that this was the problem in Cameroon, undergoing internal strife on its way to independence from France and England, because there was no one there to "give civilization to".

They took people who were totally dedicated to certain tribal procedures … and said, "You're free." And they said, "Free. Free? Free. Ah! You mean there's no police anymore." Boom! Boom!

–L. Ron Hubbard, State of Man Congress, Opening lecture, 1 January 1960.

According to Hubbard, Zulus are crazy:

…the Zulu is only outside the bars of a madhouse because there are no madhouses provided by his tribe. … primitives are far more aberrated than civilized peoples. Their savageness, their unprogressiveness, their incidence of illness …

–L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,Bridge Publications, Los Angeles, 1995.

The Church runs security checks on members suspected of certain criminal behaviors. TheJohannesburg Security Check is "the roughest security check in Scientology" and consists of a series of pointed questions which Scientologists answer while on the E-meter (in this case, used more like a lie detector than an auditing tool). Included in the list of "crimes" is engaging in an intimate relationship with a member of a "colored" race. A selected portion of the questions demonstrates the seriousness of this crime:

Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another color?
Have you ever committed culpable homicide?
Have you ever bombed anything?
Have you ever murdered anyone?
Have you ever kidnapped anyone?

–L. Ron Hubbard, HCOPL 7 April 1961, "Johannesburg Security Check"

There are hints that Scientology membership was limited to whites, at least initially, in their organizations in southern Africa. In the first quote below, Hubbard is concerned about the World Bank taking control of England and the general advance of Communism. He believes astronghold of civilization [outlink]

can be set up in Africa to salvage white society. In the second quote, Hubbard praises the South African organization, that, in spite of the limited white population from which to recruit, managed to outproduce all other Scientology organizations.

Now if we can get white population, immigrants and big companies and so on moving into Africa and if we can get with that Scientology well established in Southern Africa, why we can then look forward to a salvage operation base, in case the northern hemisphere's lights go out.

–L. Ron Hubbard, recorded talk to the Saint Hill staff about Rhodesia, 6 May 1966

As South Africa has a white population of only 2.8 million or thereabouts, you can see that every other central organization in the world has been out-created.

–L. Ron Hubbard, HCOB 17 July 1959, "Africa over the Top"

Hubbard sought to create a Scientology homeland in South Africa or Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The Church claims it opposed the white minority governments (most of its activity in the early years took place in colonial states where whites ruled and English was the official language: England, United States, Australia, South Africa, Rhodesia). Hubbard, however, appears to have thought the problem of apartheid was overstated.

The problem of South Africa is different than the world thinks. There is no native problem. The native worker gets more than white workers do in England! […] The South African government is not a police state. It's easier on people than the United States government!

–L. Ron Hubbard, HCOB 10 October 1960, "Current News"

It is considered in England and the United States that the Government of South Africa is altogether too harsh with its native peoples. It is sadly humorous to notice that the native in South Africa, however, holds an exactly reverse opinion and the fault he finds with the South African Government is that it is far too lenient in its administration of laws throughout the native populace.

–L. Ron Hubbard, PAB No. 96, "Justice", 15 September 1956

One reason Hubbard was attracted to Rhodesia was his admiration for Cecil Rhodes; he even claimed to have been Rhodes in a previous life. Rhodes originated the racist land grabs in South Africa, suggesting that "we must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies".
Hubbard's expertise in handling the natives, who were a great resource that was not "well utilised at all", was probably a continuation of his former lifetime's experience.

For instance, my boy Jamble … I used to tell him "yes, I know Jamble — you're a good boy even though you do drink and smoke dacca and gamble — that has nothing to do with me, you're still a good boy" and you know he came way up tone arm. I noticed he drank less and I think he stopped smoking dacca entirely but he didn't stop gambling because Master used to give him a pound to go out to the race track and lose.

… tremendous labour supply in the Bantu, the Mshombe, the Matabele, these people are very hard-working people and under proper direction are quite productive. … and here is this perfectly valid labour supply — the African, who at this time is not being well utilised at all; …

–L. Ron Hubbard, Conference with the Guardian, 18 July 1966

But they served with great enthusiasm. Those people sure can work. The African sure can work. That's one thing nobody has ever quite noticed about them. They are veryhard-working people.

–L. Ron Hubbard, "About Rhodesia", lecture given on 19 July 1966

Hubbard praises the South African government's handling of the Johannesburg slums:

Having viewed slum clearance projects in most major cities of the world may I state that you have conceived and created in the Johannesburg townships what is probably the most impressive and adequate resettlement activity in existence.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Letter to South African Prime Minister Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, 7 November 1960, Johannesburg; reprinted in part in G.P.C. Kotzé, Inquiry into the Effects and Practices of Scientology

, 1972

Hubbard has few reservations in supporting the apartheid government and, in fact, callsHendrick Verwoerd [offsite]

a "great guy". He suggests ways that the Church could serve the apartheid agenda, for instance, using e-meters to interrogate suspects and to uncover agent provacateurs. "Clean them up and the riots collapse." In Hubbard's world, the deplorable conditions of non-white citizens did not give rise to the protests, instead, it was outside agitators (usually Communists) who were to blame — a view in alignment with the government's.
Hubbard sees indigenous people as carefree "natives" dancing in the jungle, or agitators trying to overthrow the colonial government because they haven't been properly primed for civilization.

Illiterate cultures do not survive and they are not very high. The natives of the tribe of the Bugga Bugga Booga Boogas down in Lower Bugga Wugga Booga Woog are mostly no longer with us, or they are around waving red flags today and revolting against their central government.

And they didn't learn fast. Their literacy was not up to absorbing culture rapidly.

They've been very happily down amongst the bong-bong trees, you know, dancing up and down amongst the bong-bong trees, and the highest level of their interest and so forth was their own back yard.

–L. Ron Hubbard, The Study Tapes, "Study: Evaluation and Information", lecture given on 11 August 1964

Hubbard invokes the "N-word":

You shouldn't be scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees. Get yourself a nigger; that's what they're born for.

–L. Ron Hubbard, in a letter to first wife, Polly Grubb

Hubbard describes the spiritual state of blacks:

Actually, have you ever noticed how a Negro, in particular down south, where they're pretty close to the soil, personifies MEST? The gatepost and the wagon and the whip and anything around there—a hat. They talk to them, you know. "What'sa mattuh wi' you hat?" They imbue them with personality.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Therapy section of Technique 80("Route to Infinity" tapes), Part I, a lecture given on 21 May 1952

You can hear this quote in Hubbard's own voice at Operation Clambake [offsite]

.
Hubbard disparages other "colors", too:

Unlike yellow and brown people, the white does not usually believe he can get attention from matter or objects.
…
The white goes further. He often believes he can get attention only from whites and that yellow and brown people's attention is worthless. Thus the yellow and brown races are not very progressive, but, by and large, saner.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought,Bridge Publications: Los Angeles, 1997.

Hubbard on Indians:

Now we say there's, well, another place in the world—there's India. Wonderful place — except for its people.

–L. Ron Hubbard, "The Control of Hysteria" (lecture), 15 April 1957.

Hubbard says that "there's nothing between me and the Arab races at all. As a matter of fact, I like Arabs."

In North Africa they had the Arab with the gun and whip, but he could force people to do things … and he accomplished a tremendous amount of extermination, but he certainly didn't advance that civilization very much.

–L. Ron Hubbard, PAB No. 119, 1 September 1957, as published in Level 0 PABS (c.1968, The American St. Hill Organization)

He's [the Arab] been going crazy steadily and gradually ever since he lost the early very fertile basins of the Middle East. He's been going crazy ever since he failed to learn wheat farming and brought about the erosion of all of the fertile areas of the Middle East.

This race has been going for a very, very long time and has been eating death for a very long time and it is death. … They have eaten death too long and now they bring death to the things they touch.

The Arab is to a point where he won't even follow a decent leader. He's got to have a man of blood, a man of cruelty, exaggeration and bigotry. Then he'll follow him.

…the Arab is trying to be pleased with death and murder and mayhem and disease and poverty and political unrest.

–L. Ron Hubbard, 20th Advanced Clinical Course, "Case Analysis—Rock Hunting", lecture of 4 August 1958

Hubbard on Egyptians (and French):

Those small brown men who sell their sisters on the streets of Cairo were once the mighty Egyptians.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Ability,issue 56, October 1957, quoted in Winning ("News Journal of the Office of Special Affairs") vol.1, iss.3, 1997

Ostensibly there is little antisemitism in Hubbard's works, but on the rare mention of Jews, he upholds common antisemitic myths. What's more, he subscribed to the Spotlightnewspaper published by Willis Carto, "perhaps the most influential professional anti-Semite in the United States" (-Anti-Defamation League).
Hubbard suggests the worldwide conspiracy against him and Scientology can be tracked back to the "Jewish bankers" who are funding his arch enemy, the World Federation of Mental Health.

Now it's of peculiar interest to an Arab country that there is a company and a certain set of bankers who also finance the World Federation of Mental Health. …and we see that although the KGB and so forth seems to be associated with the World Federation of Mental Health, their other organization in action seems to go back to Jewish Bankers.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Aides Conference, "Covert Operations", 2 November 1969

Another fairly common antisemitic notion that Hubbard embraces is that an obsession with sex is a natural characteristic of the Jewish "race".

Furthermore, [Sigmund Freud] had a racial fixation on sex, a fixation sufficiently pronounced to cause it to infect contagiously all modern European stock.

–L. Ron Hubbard, PAB No. 92, "A Critique of Psychoanalysis", 10 July 1956

(My additional quote )"On further living I found that only those who sought only peace were ever butchered. The thousands of years of Jewish passivity earned them nothing but slaughter."

L. Ron Hubbard HCOPL ETHICS, THE DESIGN OF 7 December 1969

Hubbard voices concern about the U.S. pulling out of Viet Nam and how ANZO (Australia/New Zealand/Oceania) would stand alone to face the threat of Communism, which, in Hubbard's view, was part of the psychiatric conspiracy to rule (and ruin) the planet. Apparently Hubbard is dismayed at the prospect of an influx of Asians into Scientology in the area, if their attention was diverted from war with the Americans.

This is the only way I know of to keep Anzo from being deluged with Asiatic hordes.

–L. Ron Hubbard, HCOInformation Letter, "Anzo Supplement", 17 February 1969

Hubbard's opinion of Japanese:

Japanese is a baby talk — very, very hard to read, very, very, easy to talk. … A very faint kind of language.

–L. Ron Hubbard, New Slant on Life, Bridge Publications, 1997.

One of the reasons they [the Japanese] have bad eyesight is probably these microscopic characters[furigana] which have many lines and strokes to them. … We wonder why they went mad and bombed Pearl Harbor when they knew they couldn't win. That [the Japanese language] would be a reason.

–L. Ron Hubbard, "The Part Played by the Analytical Mind" (lecture), 19 July 1950 (as quoted by Anthony Roberts in ana.r.s. post)

There is no madder nation than Japan. … And that nation has the highest rate of suicide, has the highest rate of thick-lens glasses and did the most suicidal trick a few years ago. It's the doggonedest country.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Perception of Truth, part 2: "Logics 1-7", a lecture given on 10 November 1952.

Hubbard taught school on Guam for one month when he was a young man. The island's native population, the Chamorros, made an impression upon him:

… gooks … really more or less savage at heart.

–L. Ron Hubbard, personal diary, June-July 1927

Hubbard regards the Chinese as "subhuman".

When this government [Chiang Kaishek's] finally fell there was no one ready to teach the Chinese the human way of life.

–L. Ron Hubbard, The Dianetic Auditor's Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 1, "Education and the Auditor", July 1951

…China, slavishly dedicated to ancient scholars, incapable of generating within herself sufficient rulers to continue, without bloodshed, a nation.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Fundamentals of Thought, Chapter "Causation and Knowledge", Section "Civilization and Savagery", page 113-114, 1997.

You can put these things into the hands of some Chinese and send him to Hong Kong and we'll have cleared chinks.

–L. Ron Hubbard, Secrets of the MEST Universe(lecture 1), "Methods of Research: The Thetan as an Energy Unit", 6 November 1952.

The very nature of the Chinaman holds him back. If his fellow should fall, John thinks it quite proper that he stamp on the underdogs face.

-L. Ron Hubbard, Ron Letters and Journals

, "Early Years of Adventure [offsite]

" (Asia Diaries, 1927-1929)

When it comes to the Yellow Races overruning the world, you may laugh … [The Chinese] have neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except by intermarriage. One American marine could stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort.