IMHO, I think it's important for people, in, out and never in, to understand that Hubbard's use of rhetoric in his Dianetics and Scientology writings contributed greatly to convincing people of things that were '
made of of whole cloth' or that had been mixed with threads of truth' '
while being spun out of whole cloth. because they rang true.
How else were we willing to believe that Scientology was a religion, that the psychs were the enemy for eons, that radiation could be removed with vitamins and sauna, that auditors could audit others with out their own case kicking in because they were superior to the bank, that 'no case on post' meant that staff could and would be made to work and not allow personal issues or considerations to get in the way to the point where they would endure atrocious amounts of neglect and abuse.... and so on.
He persuaded us, whether by written or oral works, that only he held the answers, that only he rose above the bank to see the truth, because he told us so. L Ron Hubbard was a man who lived and breathed to use the power of words and the art of persuasion with the intent of controlling the reader, the listener. And if he could not convince those really in the know, he could at lest convince those not in the know. And he did. He sold us a Bridge to Total Freedom that went no where. Many of us bought it, believing what he stated was truth. He convinced us enough to believe what he said without inspection, to believe that critical thinking was not necessary. He convinced us there was a war and we had to fight it with Scientology. We believed that Scientology worked and was the only hope of mankind. That we had a planet to clear and only with Scientology could it be done.
Most were not stupid when they read these things he professed. Vulnerable or ignorant, yes, but not inherently stupid. There was enough bits of truth and temporary sensation of gain to keep the lot of us in far longer than we ever intended when we walked in the door. We were persuaded enough by the written works and the insistence that only they contained the truth to believe. And that is because his use of rhetoric came to be an integral part of the belief system.
We word cleared nearly everything we read because he told us we had to in order to understand. We studied stuff until it became truths for us at that time. We even studied it the way he told us to study it. He convinced us that if we didn't understand what he wrote or said, that it was our misunderstanding and not his. We believed a lot of baloney because he made it convincing through his use of rhetoric. Add to that the hypnotic effects of auditing, the temporary elation of 'wins', the promise of more, more, more and that we, too, would become gods. Add to that the insanity of his administrative policies followed by equally if not more so believers in his bullsh*t and what you get is Scientology.
This may not be how others see it but it is how I see it, I may not have had the term rhetoric to define how he did it but I saw the effects as I was evolving out and knew I'd been sold a 'prison of belief'.
So I would not minimize his use of rhetoric in how he accomplished this.