With Scientology in the news again, now seems a good time to revisit this 1983 Penthouse interview with the estranged son of L Ron Hubbard, the late Ronald Edward DeWolf.
In 1950 L Ron Hubbard opened a Dianetics clinic, where the hopeful and newly converted could come, for a fee, and their ills – from loneliness to cancer – would be cured. Dianetics was the new Scientific Revolution and Hubbard was its prophet… Soon the New Jersey authorities and the American Medical Association challenged the veracity of the new faith. L Ron Hubbard met the challenge by fleeing the state (not the last time this was to happen). A frequent memory of Ron Jr. is his father’s packing up shoeboxes with thousands of dollars to move on to greener and safer pastures.
“We attracted quite a few hippies but we tried to stay away from them, because they didn’t have any money.”
More. And. Related: The L Ron Hubbard audio collection.
(h/t, Discarded Lies.)
Rick Ross maintains runs an anti-cult website that has an extensive collection of information on scientlolgy.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html
Jerry O’Connell’s parody video of Tom Cruise’s scientology is hilarious.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/22/jerry-oconnell-in-tom-cr_n_82715.html
Rick Ross maintains runs an anti-cult website that has an extensive collection of information on scientlolgy.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html
Jerry O’Connell’s parody video of Tom Cruise’s scientology is hilarious.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/22/jerry-oconnell-in-tom-cr_n_82715.html
Xenu makes unbeleivers double post!
Yes, it’s Jerry O’Connell’s finest hour. It’s the laugh that does it, and the “phwoosh” hands.
Thetans made me do it.
Re: Hubbard’s Scientology racket, what’s astounding, at least to me, is just how *bad* the “secret” material is. Not too long ago I’d assumed that a modern day Muhammad or whatever would have to come up with much better material than his historical counterpart and have some obvious rallying point. Even the appalling Jim Jones seized on racism as a lure. But bargain basement sci-fi gibberish will, apparently, do quite nicely – which is either hilarious or depressing, depending on how you look at it.
“It was given in the mocked-up fuselage of an aircraft with the thetan fixed before an aircraft door. (There are also two or more aircraft fuselages used in the Helatrobus Implants, but the preclear moved through them, was not fixed in them.) The date is the way to tell the pattern. The Helatrobus Implants existed only between 52 trillion and 38 trillion years ago, the total life span of the Helatrobus government. If the goal is found to lie earlier, between 315 trillion and 216 trillion or later, up to 52 trillion years ago, then it is probably this pattern. The goal items were laid in with explosions.”
(L.R.H., 1967)
Faced with tat like this – which is, don’t forget, built up to and paid for – you really do have to wonder about the motives of adherents. By which I mean, many devotees of LRH are nowhere near dumb enough to swallow this crock sober. So what do they get out of pretending to be much dumber than they are?
Well put question David. We are not dealing with dumb people… but are we dealing with ‘needy’ people, people with a certain lack in their makeup. I myself would call that lack, one of ‘attention’. For the proper amount of funds, that is the one thing you will receive from Scientology.
Luther,
Swallowing hokum and pretending to be stupid seems a peculiar way to reinforce one’s self-esteem, but, yes, maybe it’s a case of “any flattery in a storm.” At least it seems a large part of those non-rational motives I sometimes refer to. I suppose one might wonder if much the same ‘needs’ inform other types of fringe devotion – say, to Marx or Mother Earth, on whose teats the human race is apparently such a drain? Insofar as the believer is assured that, due to possessing some tremendously special quality, he has seen beyond baser motives (or “hegemony” or “false consciousness”) and become a Higher Being.