Leon,
You made these same arguments when on the topic of brainwashing.
Unfortunately, for you, those arguments were sidestepped and became irrelevant with the presentation of what was recognized, by the 1960s Australian Anderson Report, as the blueprint for Scientology.
In 1955, Hubbard, deviously, concocted a black propaganda device meant to taint his critics, dissenters, and psychologists and psychiatrists, as communists and communist sympathizers.
By the mid 1960s, Hubbard had placed into use, and had incorporated into Scientology doctrine, enough of this blueprint for it to be noticed, and the Anderson Report did notice it.
It was later noticed again in the mid 1980s by the book 'Messiah or Madman?'
A more thorough examination, 'Brainwashing Manual Parallels', finally appeared around 2001.
It was Hubbard who used the word "brainwashing" in the title of the booklet that became his own secret blueprint for Scientology.
He described what he was doing: "Using mental healing... to assert and maintain dominion over thoughts and loyalties..."
As for the matter of hypnosis, obviously parts of Scientology employ hypnotic methods, overriding the person's critical faculties and placing content into the person's mind.
IMO, not everything in Scientology - not every piece of Scientology - involves hypnosis.
There are other ingredients used in the Scientological trap, the foremost being deception, and also the manipulative and exploitative use of "help," "truth," and the relief a person experiences when he "gets something off his chest" also known a catharsis.
So, Scientology is not all hypnosis, nor is it all brainwashing, but it uses these things, and they are essential parts of the "package" of Scientology.
Of course, most basically, "hypnosis" is a word, and there can be debates over what that word means.
The same with "brainwashing." There can be debates over its meaning.
With the matter of "brainwashing," as mentioned above, the debate re. "brainwashing" can be placed to one side, as Hubbard, himself, used the term to describe what he was, primarily, doing to his followers.
According to Hana Eltringham - former deputy Commodore and Hubbard confidant - while on the Flagship, she was told, by Hubbard, that what he was doing to the crew was hypnosis. It wasn't everything he was doing, but it was a recurring thread woven through his instructions and actions. A key ingredient.
This is why, if anyone has an idea of salvaging any benign aspects of Scientology, he or she had better take a thorough look, and keep in mind Hubbard's hidden agenda, as revealed in his 1938 'Excalibur' letter, in other correspondence, and in his late 1940s 'Affirmations'.
And of course, there's the "blueprint" he inadvertently revealed, in 1955, when he couldn't resist an opportunity to smear his perceived enemies, with his description of "enemy tactics," in a 64 page black propaganda booklet.
In 1969, Hubbard, confidentially instructed that Scientologists "use enemy tactics."
What the wide-eyed trusting Scientologists - some opened up and receptive after having their "minds blown" in a cathartic session - didn't realize, is that the man they saw as the "Source" of their "Total Freedom" was using those same "enemy tactics" on them.