Lulu Belle
Moonbat
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/03/scientology-film
Hammering at the Walls
(excerpt)
The documentary makes a compelling case for the idea that Hubbard devised Scientology—thought-reading E-meters and all—as a kind of self-therapy. The portrait of Hubbard that emerges, apart from his menacing anglerfish rictus, is of a man with a messianic sense of self-importance who proved again and again to be all-too human: indulging in paranoid fantasies, abusing his wife and concealing an embarrassing war record.
The viewer gets the sense that, when Hubbard died of a stroke in 1986—or transcended his bodily vessel, depending on whose side you're on—the Church took on all the man’s cruel, paranoid and self-deluding tendencies as if they were its holy duty.
“After ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’ and the Wikileaks film, I got very interested in this idea of ‘noble cause corruption’,” says the director. “When people are convinced in the nobility of a belief system they can do the most appalling things.”
In fact, Mr Gibney’s film gives the overwhelming impression that, under the control of the Church’s long-time leader, David Miscavige, a central part of its mission is to intimidate would-be defectors and silence detractors.
Scientology has a flair for aggression. Its missionaries—who call their enemies “fair game”—have been accused of slashing tyres and tapping phones. “Going Clear” reveals how a campaign was waged against the Internal Revenue Service, which had stripped the Church of its tax-exempt status. Thousands of lawsuits were brought against the service, and it eventually relented.
Now the film, its maker and its subjects have found themselves under attack. Ahead of the Sundance premiere the Church took out a full-page advert in The New York Times denouncing the film, and has since set up a Twitter account, Freedom Media Ethics, which attacks Mr Gibney’s interviewees. The Church issued a statement saying that Mr Gibney had not presented them with evidence for the film’s allegations and, more recently, it has sought to discredit reviewers who have criticised the film, protesting that their writings should include a comment from the Church.
The irony seemingly lost on the Scientologists is that anyone who has sat through “Going Clear” will see this smear campaign for what it is: the behaviour of people with something to hide.
“A lot of the reason for that pushback is not [directed at] the audience at large, but the membership that still exists in the Church,” says Mr Gibney. “They're trying to say to them, ‘Don't pay attention to that man behind the curtain. Keep thinking the same old way. Don't believe these liars, these apostates.’”
Hammering at the Walls
(excerpt)
The documentary makes a compelling case for the idea that Hubbard devised Scientology—thought-reading E-meters and all—as a kind of self-therapy. The portrait of Hubbard that emerges, apart from his menacing anglerfish rictus, is of a man with a messianic sense of self-importance who proved again and again to be all-too human: indulging in paranoid fantasies, abusing his wife and concealing an embarrassing war record.
The viewer gets the sense that, when Hubbard died of a stroke in 1986—or transcended his bodily vessel, depending on whose side you're on—the Church took on all the man’s cruel, paranoid and self-deluding tendencies as if they were its holy duty.
“After ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’ and the Wikileaks film, I got very interested in this idea of ‘noble cause corruption’,” says the director. “When people are convinced in the nobility of a belief system they can do the most appalling things.”
In fact, Mr Gibney’s film gives the overwhelming impression that, under the control of the Church’s long-time leader, David Miscavige, a central part of its mission is to intimidate would-be defectors and silence detractors.
Scientology has a flair for aggression. Its missionaries—who call their enemies “fair game”—have been accused of slashing tyres and tapping phones. “Going Clear” reveals how a campaign was waged against the Internal Revenue Service, which had stripped the Church of its tax-exempt status. Thousands of lawsuits were brought against the service, and it eventually relented.
Now the film, its maker and its subjects have found themselves under attack. Ahead of the Sundance premiere the Church took out a full-page advert in The New York Times denouncing the film, and has since set up a Twitter account, Freedom Media Ethics, which attacks Mr Gibney’s interviewees. The Church issued a statement saying that Mr Gibney had not presented them with evidence for the film’s allegations and, more recently, it has sought to discredit reviewers who have criticised the film, protesting that their writings should include a comment from the Church.
The irony seemingly lost on the Scientologists is that anyone who has sat through “Going Clear” will see this smear campaign for what it is: the behaviour of people with something to hide.
“A lot of the reason for that pushback is not [directed at] the audience at large, but the membership that still exists in the Church,” says Mr Gibney. “They're trying to say to them, ‘Don't pay attention to that man behind the curtain. Keep thinking the same old way. Don't believe these liars, these apostates.’”
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Jigsaw Productions 
