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It's Not Easy Being Scientology

Lulu Belle

Moonbat
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/03/its-not-easy-being-scientology/388634/


It's Not Easy Being Scientology


(excerpt)


Last year, the BBC reported that a building owned by the Church of Scientology in northeast England was drawing the ire of local residents. The property in Gateshead—purchased in 2007 for £1.5 million—is depicted on a U.K. Scientology website as an immaculately tended estate with a wide, sloping lawn. In the center of the image, an Arthurian sword, lodged in a stone, catches the rays of the sun. “Northumbria is the area where an entire revival of the United Kingdom's spiritual and cultural fabric emanated from in the 7th Century,” reads the accompanying text, “and now, from where it will shine once again.”

The Scientology site fails to mention that the building has never been occupied since it was purchased, or that it was damaged by a 2011 fire and never repaired. But the BBC article—the first Google search result for the words “Scientology” and “Gateshead”—describes it as a derelict building filled with squatters, its empty parking lot littered with “old sofas, rubbish, and used needles.” Nearby business owners and council members describe it as an eyesore.


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Scientology, the movement established by L. Ron Hubbard in the ’50s, has long been known for its efforts to manipulate information about it in the public sphere. The group carefully crafts its image through widespread publicity campaigns (including a native advertisement published on this site in 2013) while suing and attacking those who portray it unfavorably. Over the past 25 years, the Church has filed lawsuits against high-profile publications such asTime and The Washington Post, as well as ex-employees who criticize the Church publicly. Hubbard himself encouraged aggressive legal action toward people who revealed secret information about the Church. According to a 1997 New York Times article, Hubbard once told his followers, “The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win … If possible, of course, ruin [the opponent] utterly.”


But the Church is losing control of its public image—in large part because the flow of information in the digital age is irrepressible. “It’s the Internet that has changed everything,” says Tony Ortega, the former editor of The Village Voiceand founder of a website, The Underground Bunker, that’s dedicated to criticizing Scientology.

For example, in 2013, a Scientology spokesperson told the BBC that 27,000 people had attended its services in northeast England during the past decade. But those curious about the true number of members in the region can easily find the results of a 2011 census, which found only 2,418 self-identified Scientologists in England and Wales. (In contrast, 176,632 respondents identified as Jedi Knights.) The same census also found that in Northumbria, the number of Scientologists was 62.

Worldwide, too, the group’s membership claims appear to be dramatically inflated. The Church’s official media center states that Scientology has “more than 11,000 Churches, Missions, and affiliated groups across 167 nations." Karin Pouw, the group's spokesperson, says there are millions of Scientologists worldwide and that the Church has grown more in the past 10 years than in the previous 50 years combined.

But according to the new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, directed by Alex Gibney and based on the Pulitzer-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name, the Church has fewer than 50,000 members. The movie, which airs on HBO March 29 and 30, is a portrait of an institution in flux, bewildered by the ubiquity of information.

“The genie’s out of the bottle,” Gibney says. “They can’t keep information bottled up, and their attempts to do so show them in the worst possible light. It’s like that moment in The Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls back the curtain and you see the wizened old man say, ‘Pay no attention!’ It’s too late. The curtain’s been pulled back."


 
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Leland

Crusader
What a couple of damning photographs......Geeze....LOL

The one on the left....a Cult of Hubbard, photoshopped. glistening and clean and "upstat" all for the Cult members to consume......in, in house publications .....

And the one on the right.....the truth...as the building really stands......

What a joke.
 

Random guy

Patron with Honors
The best thing about the article is that they do not just print the cult's protestations, it puts it in critical perspective. I so hope this is a new trend!
 

AnonyMary

Formerly Fooled - Finally Free
But the Church is losing control of its public image—in large part because the flow of information in the digital age is irrepressible. “It’s the Internet that has changed everything,” says Tony Ortega, the former editor of The Village Voice and founder of a website, The Underground Bunker, that’s dedicated to criticizing Scientology.

Goes to show you how un-OT Hubbard and Scientology are for not predicting the internet, lol!!

Also goes to show you how important it is to get the word out on the internet, whenever possible, that Scientology is a dangerous mind altering cult that sucks the life and money out of it's members.
 

La La Lou Lou

Crusader
Goes to show you how un-OT Hubbard and Scientology are for not predicting the internet, lol!!

Also goes to show you how important it is to get the word out on the internet, whenever possible, that Scientology is a dangerous mind altering cult that sucks the life and money out of it's members.

No it shows that scientologists are in total control over matter energy space and time through photoshop.

This article especially the two pictures there expose so much about their public relations. There's taking a flattering angle photo and there's creating an image with computer graphics. What a waste of scientologists hard borrowed money, a few people getting in debt to buy an eyesore where smackheads can share needles. So much for the cult's antidrugs stance.
 

SPsince83

Gold Meritorious Patron
There may come a day when I dance on your grave
If unable to dance I will crawl upon it.

John Perry Barlow
 

Freeminds

Bitter defrocked apostate
Here's another piece about the failed Ideal Org building in Gateshead:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/scientolog...windmill-hills-nursing-home-gateshead-1560947

"It's a shame that it's been left to be so dilapidated, and left to go into such a state," said Angela Douglas, a Labour councillor for the Bridges ward in Gateshead where Windmill Hills is located. "Just use the building or sell it, get rid of it, let somebody else have a chance of redeveloping it."

Planning permission has expired, BTW.
 
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