Scientology and Trotskyism

It is hard to escape the similarities between Trotskyism and similar cults. One cult I have been studying a lot about is the Church of Scientology. I recently began watching Leah Remini’s brilliant documentary about Scientology on Netflix. Remini, a former Scientologist, has set to work exposing the truth about her former cult, assisted by the man who was its leading PR man, Mike Rinder. Both have now dedicated their lives to telling the truth about their sordid sect, and exposing the horrifying tales of abuse and exploitation that have characterised this loathsome organisation. I have also been listening to episodes from their podcast and videos by the former Scientologist and historian of Scientology, Jon Atack, which have shed light on this horrible doctrine and the damage it has done to thousands.

It is very easy to see that other groups are cults, but not that your own is. On my way to my first Socialist Appeal October School event with other members of my branch, we passed the Scientology building on Tottenham Court Road and smirked. ‘That’s totally not a cult!’ the branch (cult) leader jibed. Scientology was very clearly a cult. Of course, our organisation wasn’t a cult. We were a revolutionary organisation, or so we thought.

Scientology has a very convoluted doctrine which is difficult for people who are not outsiders to understand. Its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, was a first-grade charlatan and failed science fiction writer who chose to dedicate his fevered imagination to the creation of a religion which would promise people magical powers. Today it has thousands of loyal followers across the world. These people believe that if they follow what L. Ron Hubbard has told them, they will gain complete control over their body and ward off any evil, including sickness, death, rape, etc. Now the first thing to note is that Scientologists get ill and die like everyone else, including L. Ron Hubbard, who shuffled off this mortal coil (‘discarded his body as it was an impediment to his research’) in 1986 and has not returned since, despite promising to be back in 21 years’ time.

Scientologists believe that all human life is a product of an apocalypse brought about by the evil galactic dictator Xenu, who sprayed the Earth with ‘thetans’ or spirits that are trapped inside a physical ‘meat body’. Human beings are actually spiritual creatures who are trapped in the material world, and Scientologists believe that they are in a struggle to save humanity from being trapped in its natural body so they can return to the spirit world. All of the evil in the world is held to come from ‘body thetans’, which must be exorcised in a so-called ‘auditing’ process, where Scientologists are made to confess their wrongdoings in an intrusive process of interrogation. The individual is held to be responsible for anything bad that happens to them – it is because they have ‘entheta’ (anything which causes ‘upset’ or disturbance, for example, questioning Scientology or reading information that is critical of the religion) or they are guilty of ‘overts’ (harmful actions towards Scientology). Scientologists believe that because they have the ‘technology,’ or ‘the tech’, they should be able to overcome any problem, and if they aren’t, it is because they haven’t been implementing Scientology well enough. They are on a mission to ‘clear the planet’, and anyone in the way of that is considered a ‘suppressive person’, including Scientologists who report not seeing results.

Scientologists also practice ‘disconnection’, a form of shunning which tears apart families and friendships. If one does not leave Scientology in an officially choreographed manner, you are declared a ‘suppressive person’ and disconnection ensues. If one speaks against Scientology publicly, the church dedicates a massive amount of resources to slandering and demonising them, including using confidential information from auditing sessions against them. They have lawsuits filed against them, they are followed by private investigators and subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation until they back down. Hate websites are made about them on the Internet and things in their past, real or imagined, are dug up and used as part of their campaign of character assassination. Former friends and family members will be asked to testify as to the wickedness of this individual and why they should not be trusted, in videos that are made available for public consumption.

Scientology, far from being a genuine religion, is little more than an extortion racket. It rakes in millions of dollars each year, as members are made to pay for courses in order to learn how to become an ‘operating thetan’. There are eight courses (OT I-VIII), with each ‘course’ becoming more and more expensive as time goes on. It is possible to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single course. You are supposed to gain amazing powers at each level of the ‘course’, including the ability to ‘exteriorise from the body’. Not a single Scientologist has ever demonstrated an ability to use any of these powers, however. In fact, even confessing as a Scientologist that these powers have not worked for you can get you ‘declared’ a ‘suppressive person’ and kicked out. After all, there must be something you are doing wrong that is preventing you from seeing results.

As I sat there and watched the documentary, I could see so many examples of similarities between my experience in the IMT and Scientology. We fitted all eight of Lifton’s cult criteria to a T. The milieu control is intense. In the IMT we were expected to spend a ridiculous amount of time reading and re-reading the sacred texts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, as well as purchase books from the organisation’s printing press, especially new editions of books which we were highly encouraged to acquire. In Scientology, every member is expected to spend a couple of hours each day reading the sacred tomes of L. Ron Hubbard, which members are expected to purchase and study. These contain the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe and ‘clearing the planet’. The disconnection practiced against former members who leave is identical to that practiced by Trotskyist cults against non-members. In the ‘Sea Organisation’, which is an elite group within Scientology composed of full-time employees for the organisation, there is a culture of totalitarian control and separation from the outside world, as well as overwork, that cannot be fully distinguished from the experience of full-timers for Trotskyist sects. The Sea Org members are expected to take a tour of duty on a Scientology ship, working long hours, eating rotten food (insofar as they are fed at all), avoiding sex and relationships and requiring special permission to marry and get children. Their entire lives revolve around serving the organisation.

The thought-stopping cliches used are also similar. In the IMT, hostile sources of information were ‘bourgeois propaganda’, ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘Stalinist’, ‘reformist’, ‘defencist’ etc, and we were taught to avoid them. In the same way, Scientology labels negative information ‘entheta’ and coming from ‘suppressive persons’ who are seeking to hinder Scientology in its goal of ‘clearing the planet’. These people have ‘overts’ and are not to be trusted. The word ‘wog’ (originally a racist term that Hubbard was fond of) is used to label anything Scientology disapproves of. Psychiatry is ‘wog’. Non-Scientology medicine is ‘wog’ medicine. Talk of ‘clearing the planet’ in Scientology was like our talk of ‘building the organisation’ to bring about the socialist paradise. The loaded language didn’t stop there. Just as Scientology members refer to their organisation as ‘the organisation’ or ‘the org’, we talked of ‘the organisation’, ‘the org’, ‘building a Bolshevik organisation’ and other variations of this theme. Just as Scientologists have their preposterous and idiosyncratic vocabulary (‘suppressive person’, ‘operating thetan’, ‘clearing the planet’, ‘entheta’, ‘disconnection’) we used words like ‘contacts’, ‘comrades’, ‘perspectives’, ‘the Centre’, ‘full-timer’, ‘intervention’, ‘lead-off’, ‘Fighting Fund’, ‘subs’, ‘political education’ – vocabulary which only served to cut us off from the outside world and further restrict the thinking of members of the organisation.

Both Trotskyist cults and Scientology have a strong division between the internal and external aspects of their doctrine. For example, Scientology stresses that they do not practice disconnection, that they have abandoned the practice of ‘fair game’ whereby they hound critics, that they accept other religions and that they do not discriminate on the basis of sexuality, race or otherwise. These are all lies. Internally, disconnection remains a valid tool used against ex-members, ‘fair game’ continues to be practiced but is called something else as it would lead to bad PR, Scientology is hostile to all other religions and the religion is homophobic, and even racist (as Hubbard was both these things). In fact, Hubbard’s own son killed himself because of his homosexuality. Hubbard’s response to his son’s death was that it would cause the organisation bad PR! Meanwhile, in the IMT, we claimed to support the Labour Party (when internally we hated it and wanted to destroy it), we publicly defended Corbyn (whilst internally harshly criticising him as insufficiently radical and too weak against the Blairites) and we told contacts and new members that we were a democratic organisation (even though internally we suppressed any real democratic debate).

Scientology is also paranoid about dealing with law enforcement, all the way back to the days of Hubbard’s problems with the law. It is obsessed with dealing with crimes committed by its members, like rape and molestation, ‘internally’. Similarly, the IMT and other Trotskyist cults prefer to deal with accusations of rape and sexual assault ‘internally’ rather than risk bad PR by handing the issue over to the authorities. More often than not, this results in despicable cover-ups.

There are so many more examples. Both have an infallible leadership which can do no wrong, lie about ex-members to discredit them, exploit loopholes in the law to avoid tax, hold mass meetings at which crowd manipulation and peer pressure can do its work, make false prophecies, discriminate against gays (as Militant, the IMT’s predecessor organisation, did), promote the idea of doctrine over person (the doctrine is always right and individuals with negative experiences are always wrong and deserve their bad experiences), and so much more. It is clear that all cults have similar features which they used to control, manipulate and exploit their members.

Scientology is ten times worse than the IMT or any Trotskyist sect, but the difference is one of degree, not essence. If my membership of the IMT has done anything, it is to strengthen my commitment to individualism and critical thinking and to confirm my hatred of totalitarianism of all kinds. Bizarrely, some people remain Scientologists even after they leave Scientology. When I found out, it reminded me of those who ditch Trotskyist cults but retain a faith in some sort of Marxism. In my opinion, to fully break free of cultism, one must break with the ideas that encourage cultism. Marxism is not an ideology that is in any way, shape or form compatible with human freedom. Many Scientologists who leave find their way out altogether, much like how revisionist Marxists in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War found their way out of Marxism altogether. We can only hope Remini’s documentary has shone a light on some of the evils that have been going on unbeknown to so many people, and the inhuman nature of this foul doctrine.