One wonders what the Senior Worshippers of Xenu must be thinking.
With the French branch of Scientology being charged with fraud and a recent high-profile celebrity departure, the name Scientology has more than a few unsavoury associations.
Maybe that’s why they’re moving away from using it.
The streetside “Free Stress Tests” have always been conspicuously missing any reference to Mr Hubbard’s little cult, but now even their advertising literature is being edited.
Exhibit A: the leaflet for Narconon Melbourne I found in my letterbox this afternoon.
Narconon is a branch of the Church of Scientology, not that you’d know that by looking at the leaflet.
After all, it’s so friendly and generic! “Get off drugs naturally” … “overcoming addiction for good” …
“Banish your engrams and realise your true thetan self”.
No, wait. That’s what it doesn’t say. Maybe you have to complete a few more levels before you get to that.
Even the small print refers to “The Association for Better Living & Education”. How lovely.
The websites for ABLE and the google-baiting getoffdrugs.com.au don’t leave you any the wiser, unless you happen to recognise some of the celebrity supporters.
So what’s going on? Has Scientology always been like this? Or has their brand damage reached the point where they’ve decided to quietly abandon it?
Maybe they should do what some of our other “more respectable” religions have done: start a crusade, kill the heretics and take over the government somewhere.
At the very least, it should get them some tax breaks in Europe.
4 comments:
I think they've always shied away from using the term Scientology. At least until you're in the building. It has always seemed like it was a "free personality test" with no mention of the religion or thetans.
And again, I think they've always separated Narconon from Scientology. At least on a public face kind of thing.
The other night I was reading of a Beck Charity concert for Educating Children International. Here is their website (whoops forgot to photoshop the word scientology from the pic there.)
Interestingly enough, the URL on the beck flyer seems to have been Hijacked by "Why We Protest" (unless, of course, it was always like that and Beck is being subversive - or is it "suppressive"?)
Ahh, good to see some good old cult bashing.
And they are.
Don't tell you up front what it is? Tick.
Don't want you associating with 'outsiders'? Tick.
Ask for pretty much most of your money? Tick.
To achieve the next 'pew' or level, you have to fork out cash. Tick.
How about following the rantings of a charismatic loon who invented the doctrine and believed himself to be the harbinger of the truth. Tick and tick.
Have nothing in the literature providing anything other than that of the sole inventor of the 'religion'. Tick.
Claims to have 'secret' knowledge and only it's followers will be saved. Tick.
If that aint a cult, I don't know what is....
Now - here's me posing a question - why would Scientology be exempt from truth in advertising? If McDonalds held a camp for fat kids to 'redefine their shape' - that turned out to be them feeding the little porkers Big Macs, the general populous would be up in arms. Ridiculous argument? Probably - but these cult loonies annoy the crap out of me.
They've been like it for a fair old while. They have shell companies for each arm.
Dianetics & scientology trademarks are run by the Religious Technology Center
Media is (mostly) put out by Golden Era Productions (hence the california cult compound is called "Gold"
The anti-psychiatry wing is the Citizens Commission on Human Rights
Narconon, as you've noticed, is shelled out to another company, and so on and so forth
Here's one list I've found of front companies
http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/themagazine/vol14/scientology/front-groups.shtml
They ceertainly get their money's worth from their accountants, except that most of their accountants are on billion-year sea org contracts and paid below minimum wage for their work.
Nice, huh?
Aaaand here's some more info from the Ex-sci's message board
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=11107
Post a Comment