Title: Co$ & Totalitarianism----Leadership & Language 2/4
Author: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 04:40:03 +0200 (CEST)

Leadership

"Have you ever felt that you could do a lot more for this planet if
only given the chance in a real group with common interests, common
goals and...The greatest leader on this planet!!"

-From a Sea-Org flyer, 1971



Understanding Scientology, as with any movement, requires analysis of
its leadership characteristics. The orientation of leadership within
Scientology and within Arendt's theories on totalitarianism show how
closely the two are often related. Leadership refers to how the leader
of a movement thinks, behaves, and conceives of his or her
relationship with the group. It is also about how the group member
acts and feels concerning the leader. In many ways, L. Ron Hubbard has
been the dominant leader of Scientology. Yet, after his death,
Scientology did not crumble or disappear. The cult is now under the
leadership of David Miscavige, a long-time Scientologist known for his
temper and ruthlessness.30 Many of the examples used within this essay
will refer to leadership under Hubbard, as there is simply more
information available on him. Miscavige, who has headed Scientology
for the last twelve years, differs in some respects from Hubbard's
leadership style, yet has retained the fundamental characteristics
employed by Hubbard.

Studying Scientology, it becomes increasingly clear that Hubbard's
"discoveries" were merely re-hashed versions of earlier psychological
or scientific theories. Arendt also recognized this quality in the
totalitarian leader. She writes that the leader is distinguished by
"the simple-minded purposefulness with which he chooses those elements
from existing ideologies which are best fitted to become the
fundaments of another, entirely fictitious world."31 Much of early
Dianetics should seem familiar to anyone who has seriously studied
psychology and computer science. Dianetics incorporated a number of
ideas from psychology: engrams32, aberrations33, the subconscious,
"charge,"34 the value of talk therapy, some rules of therapist
behavior. None of these ideas were original or unique to Hubbard. He
simply re-phrased them and claimed them as his own. Hubbard added in
some half-understood concepts from Korzybski's General Semantics (the
"semantic reaction A=A") and Eniac-era computer technology (clear,
key-in, bank, erasure, electronic files).

Also interesting was what Hubbard discarded from his sources- any
uncertainty about how the mind worked. According to Hubbard, the mind
consisted of two compartments, the analytic mind35 and the reactive
mind, and their natures were fully known. The fundamental model of the
"mind" on which all of Dianetics is based includes a division of the
mind into a "bad [reactive] mind" and a "good [analytic] mind." One
could re-file everything (as if the mind was a computer) from the bad
mind into the good mind and then "erase" the bad one, like a software
program. There was no more uncertainty about what the "mind" was,
claimed Hubbard- he had discovered all there was to know. Hubbard
never backed-up his claims of success with actual evidence.
Furthermore, there was no need to prove the workability of the
hypotheses. This astounding simplicity utilized in the creation of
Dianetics was the basis for the "fictitious world" of which Arendt
speaks. By appropriating already existing theories from various
ideologies, while claiming them as his own faultless ideas, Hubbard
had begun building the foundation for the totalitarian movement that
would follow.

One of the major distinctive traits of the totalitarian leader is that
he or she can never admit an error. Arendt writes that "The chief
qualification of the mass leader has become unending infallibility."36
Whatever the leader says, no matter how absurd, his words are always
right and correct. There are no "mistakes" on the part of the leader,
only the failure of the group member to adequately engage in the
leader's instructions.

This theory holds true when applied to Hubbard and Scientology. During
my study of Hubbard's Scientology audio tape series37, I was struck by
the number of times Ron expressed uncertainty about any of the
subjects he discussed: Zero. There was not a single "maybe" in any of
his lectures. Hubbard claimed that "Dianetics is terribly, terribly
simple. You can only mess it up by complicating it."38 Scientology is
100% workable, he said. The only reason Scientology sometimes appears
not to work is because people are either altering it or not doing it
exactly as Hubbard says. Hubbard could make no error- he was
infallible. No one was permitted to challenge the validity of his
methods since within the ideological structure of Scientology, it
would be the equivalent of admitting personal failure.

In addition, the totalitarian leader has a distinct relationship with
the group member, whereby the member becomes a sort of miniature clone
of the leader. To Arendt, this means that "every functionary is not
only appointed by the leader but is his walking embodiment, and every
order is supposed to emanate from this one ever-present source."39 The
members act on account of the leader, while the leader remains
infallible. Thus, any mistake "can only be a fraud: the impersonation
of the Leader by an imposter."40 Through
this identification with the leader, the member builds a sense of
pride and loyalty toward the leader. That is, unless they are unlucky
enough to make a mistake. In that case, in order to correct his own
errors, the leader must liquidate those who carried out his own
orders.41 The multiplication of these mini-leaders also results in the
feeling of being constantly watched or supervised from all angles of
the organization.

The nature of Hubbard's leadership in Scientology has displayed traits
indicating an unsettling similarity to Arendt's theories of
totalitarianism. During Hubbard's years on the Sea Org boat, the aging
Commodore was able to construct a world virtually of his own creation.
One part of this was a rather bizarre new element called the 
Commodore's Messenger Organization."42 The CMO was an elite unit made
up of children who were the offspring of committed Scientologists. The
children acted as messengers, with the original function of serving
Hubbard by relaying his verbal orders to crew and students on board.
The messengers were mainly pubescent girls who eventually came to be
widely feared little monsters.43 It was the greatest possible honor to
be selected as a messenger, and the
girls vied for the position. In their cute uniforms, they were trained
to deliver Hubbard's orders using his exact words and tone of voice.
If the Commodore had a temper and was bellowing abuse, the messenger
would scuttle off and yell the same abuse at the offender. No one
dared to disobey a messenger, for she was vested with the authority of
Hubbard's leadership.

The example of the CMO serves to show how closely Hubbard's leadership
comes to the totalitarian model. Hubbard's messengers were the
"walking embodiment" of their leader. However, the messengers were
composed of an elite group, while the same rules did not necessarily
apply for the majority of Scientologists. When mistakes were made by
other Scientologists on board the Sea Org, they were not "liquidated,"
but humiliated.44 Often times, these mistakes were due to Hubbard's
picky habits and temperamental moods. In these cases, the member was
certainly taking the blame for Hubbard's own errors, while it is
uncertain whether he or she was acting in leader's name.

Loyalty on the part of the member is of equal importance for the
totalitarian leader. A sense of duty or loyalty toward the leader is
necessary because without it, the movement could not function. As
Arendt notes about the Nazi Party, "The mutual loyalty of the Leader
and the people" was the principle "on which the Reich rested."45 To
capture such sentiment, the totalitarian movement requires
"concentrated obedience, undivided by any attempt to understand what
one is doing."46 This builds loyalty toward the group as a whole as
well. Through reviewing the literature of ex-Scientologists, I noticed
that many of them mention this mentality of obedience when referring
to their personal experiences in Scientology. Many spoke of feeling
encouraged not to think about what they were doing, but instead to
concentrate only on the specific action involved. For example, the
following excerpt comes from a former Scientologist regarding what he
felt his duty to be: "I had a few incipient doubts come up, but I
didn't think about it too much. My job, as I saw it then, was to
understand what to DO, to do it, and to observe for myself what
happened. Only what you observe for yourself is true for you. I had
to reserve judgement on anything I hadn't yet 'observed,' whether or
not it was true."47 This obedience to Hubbard's techniques indicates
the same emphasis on loyalty for the leader referenced by Arendt.
Concentration solely on Scientology technique produces a mentality
whereby one is directed to ignore independent thoughts. Another former
member writes about what she understood to be her role as a dedicated
Scientologist: "Stop wavering and apply the tech[nique] exactly in all
areas of life. Look inward; all failures stem from your own
dereliction of your basic duty to apply the tech[nique] precisely. The
only right path is the path of loyalty to Ron."48

Such unreasoning loyalty, once established, obliterates critical
thinking not only in respect to the leader, but about the group as a
whole. The result is an organization where it becomes nearly
inconceivable for the member to violate the leader's orders. Arendt
noted that according to Adolf Eichmann "such behavior was impossible."
It was "unthinkable."49 In Scientology, for those who have become
dedicated to the movement, the notion of disobedience is likewise,
unimaginable. Combined with a sense of duty toward an infallible
leader and single-minded obedience to his techniques, Scientologists
are well on their way to totalitarianism.


Language

"Charge is the electronic bing-bang that hits the pc in the blonk..."

-L. Ron Hubbard, Engram Chain Running, audio tape lecture series,
1963.

Scientology uses a strange language that is altogether baffling to
those unfamiliar with it. Speaking in a lingo almost entirely coined
by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientologists communicate in words that the
average person would find quite perplexing. While this language is
technically English, it is composed of hundreds of coded words whose
meanings are known primarily by Scientologists. This peculiar aspect
of Scientology brings up several questions, such as "What is the
function of this language?" and "How does it relate to
totalitarianism?" In this essay, I will answer these questions by
examining the relationship between language and the thought process in
totalitarianism, focusing on Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. In
addition, I will discuss the type of language that influenced Hubbard
and the consequences of altering word meanings.

The complicated language of Scientology is an integral part of the
movement and distinguishes the group from many others. The official
glossary for Scientology and Dianetics50 lists definitions for over
300 words, and these are only "official" terms. Many of these word
meanings were altered by Hubbard in order that his new definitions
would describe or agree with Dianetic techniques.51 Others terms are
simply made-up by Hubbard.52 The terminology of Scientology is
influenced by several key areas: science-fiction and computer science.
The language of science-fiction throughout Scientology should come as
no surprise, since Hubbard had written science-fiction narratives for
many years prior to Dianetics. Science-fiction is defined as "fiction
dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on
society or individuals."53 Apparently, Hubbard felt little need to do
away with this type of story-telling when speaking or writing about
Scientology. This is because Scientology is itself a kind of "science
fiction." Scientology is composed of undocumented, unproven
"scientific" theories, which are then used by Scientologists to form
success narratives- in short, it is fictional
science. Arendt emphasizes that totalitarian movements rely on
building an entirely fictitious world, whereby factuality is
increasingly distorted.54 L. Ron Hubbard wanted to make fiction
reality- he wanted to write his own "space opera."55

In the upper levels of Scientology, Ron's penchant for science-fiction
becomes especially evident.56 Members discover that some 70 million
years ago, Earth was part of an overpopulated Galactic Federation. The
evil president of the federation, Xemu, ruled that the excess
population be sent to Earth, where they were put alongside volcanoes
and subjected to nuclear bombs. The spirits, or Thetans, of the
victims were then "implanted" with religious and technological images
and became stuck together in clusters. Human beings, said Hubbard,
were actually a collection of these Thetans, a cluster of
alien-spirits or "Body Thetans." Xemu was later rounded up and
imprisoned in a mountain on one of the planets. To this day, he is
still kept alive by an eternal battery. In order to be a free soul,
without
the clusters influencing our behavior, one has to remove these "Body
Thetans" through Scientology techniques. That is what Dianetics
prepares one for!

The language of computer science also highly influenced
Scientology-speak. Hubbard borrowed quite a few computer science terms
from the 1940's and 50's, once again changing their definitions to
reflect the goals of Dianetics. For example, Scientology defines
"machine" as "an actual machine in the mind (like ordinary machinery),
constructed out of mental mass and energy, that has been made by the
individual to do work for him, usually having been set up so as to
come into operation automatically under certain predetermined
circumstances."57 This definition places the human mind in a
mechanical state that can be manipulated accordingly. The mind is thus
a version of a computer that can and should be programmed efficiently.
Other computer related words litter the Scientology dictionary:
circuit58, erase59, processing60, terminal61. This phraseology reveals
Hubbard's desire to mechanize human thought and feelings, to the point
where a simple technique could be used to fix any ailment or
"aberration"62 on the part of the subject.

The language of Scientology serves several primary functions. One of
these is to construct a style of communication unique to that
particular group. The unusual lingo distinguishes Scientologists from
other people, building a sense of community that is different and
removed from the rest of society. Because Scientology-speak is utter
nonsense to the uninitiated, it separates the Scientologist from
everybody outside of that group, functioning as communication for the
few.63 Thus, the language becomes one of the marked traits of the
Scientologist.

Another aspect of language in Scientology is the ease with which
members speak in ready stock phrases arising from the cult's beliefs
and rhetoric. Stock phrases are words which are often repeated in
order to provide an easy explanation for beliefs. To put it another
way, they are clichés. Hannah Arendt particularly noticed this trait
in Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal on trial for the genocide of
the Jewish people. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt writes of being
struck by Eichmann's capacity for continually speaking in "stock
phrases or slogans."64 Eichmann was unable to communicate other than
through catch words and Nazi party slogans. "Officialese is my only
language," he admitted, testifying to his incapability of "uttering a
single sentence that was not a cliché."65

Scientologists also tend to often display this trait. There exists a
startling similarity in phraseology between Scientologists. While
studying language within Scientology, I became aware of how frequently
certain phrases and terms are repeated. This characteristic provides
valuable insight into how a Scientologist thinks and speaks. A prime
example of Scientology lingo is found in the following excerpt,
gathered from a on-line newsgroup:

"Scientology is a religion founded on ethical systems and conduct, by
using the understanding that freedom is found for the individual by
that individual taking responsibility for their past, present and
future. Some criminal organizations have recognized this as a threat
to their survival or criminal intent to rob mankind of spiritual
freedoms and have thus gone about in quite a methodical fashion to
undermine the work of Scientology in the community. Scientology as a
religious practice is about the individual taking responsibility for
themselves and others across the dynamics. It is a good organization
under attack, from ignorance, from evil intent and from those who are
not into taking responsibility in general. It is my personal belief
that there are suppressive individuals in society, suppressive groups,
chaos merchants and the like who knowingly attack the truth either
consciously or unconsciously. They are repelled by the fact that
others
wish to stop criminal action. They are repelled by a group that has
the capability to find them out. They are repelled by concepts of
freedom, love and honor and higher spiritual concepts."66

The passage above demonstrates the thought processes of an
active-phase Scientologist and contains many of the cult's terms and
stock phrases used in a natural context. Virtually everything said has
been repeated over and over by Scientologists in order to justify
their "religion" against attacks by critics. As with Eichmann, the
language is full of clichés that are "always said the same, expressed
in the same words."67 This curious trait is a revealing factor of the
Scientologist mentality. Regarding Eichmann, Arendt wrote that "his
inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think,
namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else."68 Eichmann was
unable to think outside of one position- that of the Nazi party.
Consequentially, his mind was "filled to the brim with
fabricated stock phrases."69

The quotation from the Scientologist shows how effortlessly the member
uses Scientology terms and catch words to defend himself against
criticism. Communication without these stock phrases and cult slogans
would be near impossible, for they constitute the way the member
thinks. Repetition of such phrases within Scientology indicates that
members are only capable of thinking in one particular way. They can
think only in terms of Scientology-speak and have much difficulty
doing otherwise. This does not mean that Scientologists are blind
robots that repeat everything they hear. It does, however, mean that
Scientologists' thought processes have
become so enmeshed in the cult's beliefs, they are unable even to
think outside of the cult's language.

Another element of Scientology-speak, which can be seen in the
previous excerpt, is the strange juxtaposition of talk about
"criminals" with words such as "freedom" and "spiritual." Anyone who
challenges Scientology is an evil "criminal," while the group is
self-labeled as honorable defenders of "freedom" and "higher
spirituality." This paranoid thread runs throughout the language. The
theme can clearly be read in the lines about being "under attack,"
along with the omnipresent "chaos merchants"70 and "criminal
organizations." Scientology views itself as the victim of a brutal
scheme by those who seek to oppose the "truth." The "suppressive"
people of whom the member speaks are defined as those "who actively
seek to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by actions
or omissions undertaken knowingly to suppress, reduce or impede
Scientology or Scientologists."71 Thus, a constant paranoia is built
within the language of the movement. The idea of a worldwide plot to
destroy Scientology because it contains higher "concepts of freedom"
is a testament to the group's delusions and irrational suspicions.
Speaking with Scientologists, one frequently encounters such views
along with the standard stock phrases. As with Eichmann's case,
communication is not possible because the words are
consistently used as a safeguard against reality.72

The altering of word meanings remains another language characteristic
common to Scientology and the Nazi party. For the Nazis, all
correspondence referring to the mass killing of the Jews was subject
to a rigid set of "language rules."73 The rules substituted code names
for words such as "killing" and "extermination," replacing them with
"final solution" and "special treatment." The effect of this language
system was to prevent people from equating the unpleasant idea of
murder with the horrible actions they were taking. Within Scientology,
words meanings are also altered, yet the reasons for the changes are
somewhat different. While the Nazis substituted code words to cover-up
the reality of their murderous actions, Scientologists are more apt to
exchange old words for a new version that better suits their ideology.
An example of this sort of language is the unofficial Scientology term
"Raw Meat Preclear." A Raw Meat Preclear is defined by Hubbard as "one
who has never had Scientology processing."74 Hence, anyone who is not
a Scientologist is equated with "Raw Meat." This is an especially
revealing word substitution, as it exposes the insulting attitude
taken toward non-Scientologists. The term "Raw Meat" is akin to the
massification of bodies into pieces of flesh. It is much easier to
harm a person when they are simply packages of meat, and not people
with complex feelings and experiences. The result of the Nazis' code
words is the same- dehumanization through language. Terming a person
as "Raw Meat" also functions inside another dialectic. Because most
Scientologists were not always members of their movement, they too
were once "Raw Meat." Thus calling another "Raw Meat," the
Scientologist unwittingly equates his or her own self as a
reconstructable, packagable, utterly manipulatable object.

In addition, Scientology redefines words with the goal of producing an
entirely new meaning for them. Often times, such words are a
significant clue into the cult's ideology. For instance, Scientology's
re-definition of the term "critical thought" particularly exemplifies
this
case75. Hubbard defined critical thought as "a symptom of an overt act
having been committed"76 or "a withhold from an auditor."77 What
Hubbard meant is that critical thought is a bad thing; it indicates a
criminal act. "Overt acts" and "withholds" are the equivalent of
crimes against life and freedom in Scientology. The new definition
thus makes it a crime for members to think critically, particularly
about Scientology. Any "critical thought" by the Scientologist is
immediately suspect. This redefinition makes criticizing anything
about Scientology extremely difficult for members, as it is reflected
back on them as something they did wrong. Hubbard's message is clear:
critical thought is not the sort of thing any good Scientologist
should be engaged in.

The theme of critical thought occurs throughout Arendt's analysis of
the totalitarian ideology. Totalitarian movements always work to
stifle critical thinking because it challenges the unifying mentality
which their ideology necessitates. The fact that Hubbard specifically
chose to redefine "critical thought" as a crime is no mere
coincidence. Totalitarian movements cannot function with the plurality
of viewpoints that independent critical thought provokes. Using
language to smother such thinking is a significant step in the
movement toward totalitarianism.

....continued.....
Copyright (c) 1999 Laura Kay Fuller