24 April 2014

Book Reviews: A Piece of Blue Sky (1990/2013) by Jon Atack; and Bare-Faced Messiah (1987) by Russell Miller

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I have always had a morbid fascination reading about weird cults, religions, philosophies, and infamous celebrities.  I’ve been reading extensively about Scientology for several years now, and I recently read two fine (unauthorized) biographies of L. Ron Hubbard. 
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I just finished Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky, and it is one of the best historical accounts I’ve seen yet on L. Ron Hubbard (LRH) and his creation, the Dianetics movement and the Church of Scientology.  A new edition of Atack’s book has recently been published, and I got it on Kindle.  His title came from a remark Hubbard was said to have made around 1950 about creating a religion and making a lot of money from it: “Let’s sell these people a piece of blue sky.”  Atack shows us how Hubbard got rich while leaving a lot of damaged people in his wake.  The ruthless nature of Scientology as a mind-controlling, money-grubbing cult is well documented, in both the Hubbard and post-Hubbard eras. 
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Russell Miller’s 1987 Bare-Faced Messiah:  The true story of L. Ron Hubbard is also excellent reading.  Miller traces Hubbard’s life history with special attention to the fables surrounding his early personal life.  Hubbard (LRH) was a pathological liar.  He lied about everything, about his childhood, his adventures, his explorations, and his military career.  (Did he also lie about the alien overlord, Xenu, and the Galactic Confederacy of 75 million years ago?  Or did he believe it?)  Such habitual liars never expect to be called out on their stories.  
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For instance, Hubbard’s military claims were checked by researching his US Navy records.  He claimed to have fought in “all five theaters” of WW2; to have been the “first US returned casualty from the Far East” (machine-gunned on Java); to have commanded a “corvette squadron” in action in the Atlantic; and to have finished the war in hospital crippled and blind (injuries which he claimed to have self-cured by his Dianetics-Scientology mystic insight). 
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In actuality, he never saw combat action.  At the beginning of the war, he was to be posted to the Philippines, but he was sent back stateside after only arriving in Australia, the reason being that he was “not satisfactory for independent duty assignment,” and he “will require close supervision.”  Stateside, he was relieved of the only two naval boat commands he ever had – one on the US east coast, before even sailing (“not temperamentally fitted for independent command”), and one on the west coast where he exhibited gross incompetence and poor judgment during his two short instances of commanding a small naval ship at sail along the North American coast. 
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His Navy fitness report after this rated him as “below average,” and continued:  “Consider this officer lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation.  He acts without forethought as to probable results. … Not considered qualified for command or promotion at this time.  Recommend duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised.”  LRH finished the war hospitalized stateside for an ulcer, not “crippled and blind.”  LRH was, as we used to say in the Marines, a “lying sack of shit.” 
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LRH claimed that he was a “nuclear physicist.”  He never finished college, and he failed the only class he ever took in nuclear physics.  The scale of his life-long trail of lies and fabrications is stunning.  However, early in his pre-Dianetics career he was a prolific writer of pulp science fiction, churning out volume after volume. 
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Both Jon Atack and Russell Miller – who collaborated a bit – owed a lot to the historical work of Gerry Armstrong, a dedicated Scientologist who found a treasure trove of early Hubbard letters and documents in an attic.  Armstrong started archiving and researching – with the blessing of LRH – for biographical purposes.  But Armstrong quickly found that the documentation was proving LRH to be lying about almost everything, and he eventually soured on the cult and left it.  The cult harassed him almost to death, but he got the documentation out to the world. 
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Legal harassment and incredibly nasty dirty tricks campaigns (called the “Fair Game” policy) were a common recommendation of LRH, in his written policy letters, against perceived “enemies” of the Church.  Scientology’s leadership still uses these methods to this very day, as Atack and Miller can tell you.  Both have had horrendous personal experiences of endless Church attacks, and they document numerous cases of attacks on many other people.  They both document that this culture of nastiness originated with LRH himself and is his lasting institutional legacy. 
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Miller’s 1987 book was published in the UK and Europe, but US publishers gave up after two years of legal battles with the Church, and it was never available in America.  The Church has such immense wealth that it can easily overwhelm its enemies in endless legal suits, as LRH taught them to do.  But, finally, this year Bare-Faced Messiah has been published in the USA, and it is now on Kindle also. 
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One fact that might be unknown to many who have only passing knowledge of Scientology is that in the mid-1970s Scientologists, under the ever-paranoid direction of LRH and the cult puppets he created, infiltrated the US government to a degree unprecedented in history, copying reams of documents, thousands upon thousands of pages.  LRH called it the “Snow White Program,” and the reality of the extent of its spying is documented in Church of Scientology documents later taken by the FBI in its 1977 raid on the Church. 
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The cult’s Guardian Office (GO), now re-named the Office of Special Affairs, infiltrated not only Interpol, but the US IRS, the DEA, the US Coast Guard, and the Department of Justice.  The GO agents burgled numerous offices of US government officials, including the US Courthouse in Washington and the office of the Deputy Attorney General, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, the Treasury, and US Customs.  They also burgled offices of attorneys for the American Medical Association and of a critical newspaper.  One must admit that, while all of this was stupid and had to eventually fail, it was ballsy. 
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The 1977 FBI raid on the GO found all the paper documentation proving that Scientology had conspired and infiltrated the US government.  Eleven top Scientologists were sent to prison, including the number two in the hierarchy, Mary Sue Hubbard, LRH’s wife.  LRH was insulated from the GO directives, but he was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” and went into hiding for the rest of his life.  He threw his wife under the bus and ran.  It was his life-long style. 
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The bottom line lesson from these two fine biographies (and from many, many concurring witnesses) is that L. Ron Hubbard, while sometimes appearing charismatic, was a vicious fraud, a liar, and a con man – albeit on a grand scale.  Rather than being a “Commodore” in command of himself and others, he was often panicky, childish, and one who threw horrendous tantrums when he couldn’t get his way.  But he was one hell of a storyteller. 
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-Zenwind.

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