Alanzo
Bardo Tulpa
ESMB was created in January of 2007.
At that time, Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder and David Miscavige had been able to intimidate almost every media company from reporting on the abuses and criminality of the Church of Scientology.
These Young Turks had infamously sued TIME Magazine so many times for their "Church of Greed" cover story from the 90's that TIME'S Insurance company dropped their liability insurance.
Marty, Mike and Dave lost every lawsuit, and every appeal they filed. But the fact that they had a legal team of loyal, dedicated Sea Org members to abuse the US legal system created fear throughout global media. Most media companies are small businesses. They simply can't afford to put up this kind of fight.
So Marty, Mike and Dave were able to do, pretty much, anything they wanted to Scientologists and not ever have it reported in the media.
These "Young Turks" were pretty proud of themselves.
They were Causative OTs.
But the Internet allowed a kind of asymmetrical response to this situation. Individual, anonymous, Ex-Scientologists could tell their own stories of abuse and criminality that they'd witnessed in Scientology - ordered by Marty, Mike and Dave.
And Marty, Mike and Dave found this very hard to deal with.
I hope that other members of ESMB, and other Old Guard Scientology Critics, can help fill in some of the history here.
But what was the reason I picked the year 2010?
Because that's the year everything changed.
At that time, Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder and David Miscavige had been able to intimidate almost every media company from reporting on the abuses and criminality of the Church of Scientology.
These Young Turks had infamously sued TIME Magazine so many times for their "Church of Greed" cover story from the 90's that TIME'S Insurance company dropped their liability insurance.
Marty, Mike and Dave lost every lawsuit, and every appeal they filed. But the fact that they had a legal team of loyal, dedicated Sea Org members to abuse the US legal system created fear throughout global media. Most media companies are small businesses. They simply can't afford to put up this kind of fight.
So Marty, Mike and Dave were able to do, pretty much, anything they wanted to Scientologists and not ever have it reported in the media.
These "Young Turks" were pretty proud of themselves.
They were Causative OTs.
But the Internet allowed a kind of asymmetrical response to this situation. Individual, anonymous, Ex-Scientologists could tell their own stories of abuse and criminality that they'd witnessed in Scientology - ordered by Marty, Mike and Dave.
And Marty, Mike and Dave found this very hard to deal with.
I hope that other members of ESMB, and other Old Guard Scientology Critics, can help fill in some of the history here.
But what was the reason I picked the year 2010?
Because that's the year everything changed.