The Scientologist 2 hours ago
Only one problem with all this. Rinder and Rathbun and company keep talking about Miscavige as if he was operating out of a vacuum all these years. But for all the years until 2004 or so when Miscavige began removing people from their executive positions at Int, these people were complicit in the game.
Rinder himself is principally responsible for the embarrassingly draconian OSA tactics like picketing homes of critics and that sort of thing from the late 80s into the 90s. I remember when that nonsense with Bunker happened and I couldn't believe it. I was certainly no fan of Bunker, but sending some guy in severe Ethics trouble to picket his house was laughably stupid.
And this is another thing, the tactic of sending people to picket critics' homes and/or businesses, and also this thing with the Squirrel Busters, this was all instituted under Rinder's watch. It's all straight out of his playbook, and all very much set down and recorded, and Miscavige was probably hoping that Tommy Davis would be able to emulate Rinder as a result of that.
Cook in her email talks about "extreme fundraising and regging" because of Miscavige. But I don't get it. This "extreme" regging has been going on since the 1980s when Miscavige and his inner circle (Starkey, Lesevre, Jentszch, Rathbun, etc.) led the restructuring of the Church and instituted ridiculous price increases, which led to a massive exodus of members out of the Church.
Tony has spoken about the 1980s as being a kind of Golden Age for the Church, but in reality, the 80s were horrible for the Church. So many people ended up leaving because of the huge price increases, and these increases were HUGE. Up until the 1980s, you could get trained as an auditor and go Clear/OT for less than a few thousand dollars - we're talking about dozens of courses and services that would take the average person a few years to complete. Today, just to go Clear on the training route will cost you about $45,000 (without any discounts and scholarships). That kind of figure was unheard of in the 1970s for the average Scientologist.
Then there's the whole story behind the IAS, which was also established in the 1980s and spearheaded by Miscavige and his inner circle. Insane regging for the iAS began as soon as it was founded and hasn't let up since then. Miscavige's goal of a "billion dollar war chest" was made emphatically clear in the 1980s. This is nothing new. If you had been there in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the "war" with the IRS reaching its peak, the IAS was a major part of that campaign. They were regging for donations like crazy for the IAS back then, as bad as they are doing now. After 1993, when the IRS settled with the Church, IAS regging became even more fanatic, and this time the focus was shifted towards psychiatry and big pharma.
So, from the late 1980s on, fanatical and "extreme" regging became part and parcel of life in the Church. And this was during the era when Miscavige had so-called "checks" on his power - the people around him, the inner circle of Int executives, these people were just as fanatical and zealous as Miscavige about bilking Scientologists out of their life savings.
This thing with Gardini is peanuts compared to all the other people bilked and destroyed because of the FSO. Remember Albert Jaquier? You don't think Cook was complicit in how that guy was royally screwed over? Or this business with Lisa McPherson? She was knee deep in all this. They all were.
These people who were for years at the very top are ALL responsible for the conditions they now rail against and lament. They allowed someone like Miscavige to consolidate his power from the very beginning, when he ruthlessly bulldozed his way to the top - he could not have done that without the help of others. He had plenty of supporters who wanted a piece of the action.
It is these people who helped create the monster, and now they are trying to stage a coup and "take back" the Church - and then what? They helped create the environment for the insane regging that went on for years since the 1980s. They justified it for all those years with LRH policy. Now they're justifying their actions against the Church with LRH policy. For years they terrorized Scientologists outside the Church as "squirrels" and now these same people have become "squirrels" and they in turn accuse Miscavige and the Church of "squirreling."
What the hell? Which is it? What kind of "1984" nonsense is this?
Personally, I think they're all fucking crazy.
