Dave Bird <dave.xemu.deleteThe@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote...

<snip>

> The standard piece of self-delusion is that "Hubbard didn't really
> know how the church was being run, other people corrupted it":
> which is of course nonsense.
>
> But it suits some people to believe this.

This delusion appears to be quite common in totalitarian systems. It can be easily documented in both Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR, for example. In both places there were many people who were convinced that the outrages of the regime, which they witnessed and experienced first-hand, were the result of those "other people" in the lower echelons of the power structure abusing their power and corrupting the teachings of the dearly beloved leader. If only their wonderful Fuehrer, or the wonderful Comrade Stalin, knew what was happening he'd intervene and put things right. Clearly, information was being kept from him.

In the case of Hitler, some of the letters these poor deluded fools wrote to their Fuehrer, under the assumption that they were alerting him to behaviour by his subordinates he wouldn't approve of, have been preserved and published. Some of these letter writers ended up in concentration camps, to be "disposed of quietly and without sorrow". There was an office set up to handle all correspondence from members of the public to Hitler (obviously, none of this stuff ever reached his eyes), and if someone sent one letter too many that made him or her "appear mental", to coin a phrase, it was off to the concentration camp with them.

It does sound vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

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