Topic: Separation of Church and State
Scientology and the Information Age: Attacking Protestors and Lying to Authorities Fails When the Truth is Easily Accessible Scientology's tactic of harassing its critics is becoming increasingly ineffective.by David Kipp
(liberal)
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In the past decades, Scientology's critics have been more-or-less easily silenced. Not only did Scientologists greatly outnumber their critics, ex-Scientologists and declared "enemies" of Scientology (called "Suppressive People" in Scientology's doctrine) were part of a tenuous, fragile network characterized mainly by fear: many wanted to be left alone, and many were afraid of harassment by Scientologists.
Today, however, Scientology's anti-critic tactics have become increasingly outdated. In the age of the internet, it takes minutes for someone in California to learn about something that happened in Australia, and instant messaging makes real-time collaboration not only cheap, but easy. Scientology's current enemy, Anonymous, is born from the internet, and comprised almost exclusively by people who are comfortable using the internet, collaborating with strangers, and exchanging their ideas and opinions on everything.
And cutting the head off this enemy, as they cut the head off the Cult Awareness Network, buying it and forcing it into a pro-Scientology slant, is simply not going to work. Under the Fair Game policy, and using tactics such as those used against Mark Bunker (a well-known critic of Scientology) and Paulette Cooper (the victim of Operation Freakout, an elaborate attempt to discredit her and drive her to suicide), Scientology has attempted multiple times to attack and discredit Anonymous.
Why doesn't this work? Because when one member of Anonymous is threatened, it takes less than a day for that knowledge to propagateand not only to fellow members, but to the public and the internet as well. At its core, Anonymous is rooted in the internet, and everything one Anonymous member knows is something that all members know.
It's impossible to silence an individual in a group like that, and in fact, a quick and simple internet search proves it. YouTube, a public video sharing website, currently has 152 results for the search query, "scientology assault", and Anonymous' central website, www.enturb.org, has an entire subforum dedicated entirely to documenting instances of Scientologists' harassment of its critics.
Just last week, 4000 anti-Scientology videos were removed from YouTube. Before the internet, perhaps, this would have gone unnoticed and it would have taken days for the knowledge to trickle to the public. But in this day and age, it took mere hours for not only an explanation of the situation to be posted on many Anonymous planning websites.
It took sixteen hours to go from "these videos went down" to "YouTube is putting the videos back", in fact, and during those sixteen hours, members Anonymous uncovered and publicized the fact that not only was the company that claimed infringement literally non-existent (it's illegal to file a false DMCA complaint), but also the humorous fact that one of the possible Scientologists involved, "Oliver Schaper" made most of his income by managing and selling pornography.
Within two days after that, the media had picked up on the story and reported it, immortalizing Scientology's public, blatant violation of the law.
Scientologists have called 911 multiple times during Anonymous' peaceful protests, over increasingly trivial matters. A few months ago, in fact, a masked protestor with a bright green boombox had a police car pull up to him. When he posted on the internet, he explained the situation: "someone" had called the police and said they saw a masked man carrying a large bucket of acid, and the police had been obligated to (on taxpayers' money) drive over and investigate. While in the past, this may have been effective (in some mysterious way), today it only serves to show just how antiquated Scientology's actions frequently are.
If an Anonymous member is followed by a strange man, or stalked, or has a picture of their license plate taken, everyone will knowand when everyone knows, that makes Scientology's scare tactics not only pathetic, but also, threatening in their scope. It shows a pattern of hostile, threatening behavior, and if it doesn't stop, things will eventually come to a head when authorities finally decide, "No, you aren't allowed to do this to so many people". And that time is coming.
Scientology has failed to adapt to the information age, and in its efforts to silence critics, has merely managed to put itself further under the increasingly critical spotlight of the public eye. Its illegal actions will no longer go unseen, or unpunished, and its failure to realize that simple fact is slowly but surely destroying it from within.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of David Kipp only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. David Kipp is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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