A few days ago, I posted about my dissatisfaction with the "investigate Scientology" petition which is being circulated. I commented that the petition itself was fundamentally flawed and that it pointed to a wider problem with the current state of Scientology criticism, namely that too much critical effort is ineffective, poorly thought-out and on occasion even counter-productive. In this post I'll explain why, and in a post to follow I'll explain what could - and should - be done about it.

Perhaps I should start by considering where we have come from to reach this point. I've been involved in Scientology criticism for much longer than most on a.r.s. - since 1995, in fact, around the time of the infamous Erlich raid and the attempted rmgrouping of a.r.s., both of which made the newsgroup one of the most read on Usenet at the time. Back then, critical activity was embryonic - most of the critics were either generic anti-cultists or ex-Scientologists. There were relatively few critical websites and a major lack of reliable, detailed information on Scientology. Much of the secret material was still unknown to most and was only just beginning to come out. When the a.r.s. controversy blew up, a new wave of critics appeared on the scene - non-Scientologist free-speech advocates and those who were appalled by the behaviour of Scientology in general.

Many of these people people, myself included, were frustrated with the lack of information available and the often poor quality of debate on the newsgroup. Various people set up archives of material on what was going on with a.r.s. - Ron Newman's "Scientology vs the Internet" was and is still the classic example. Other people, such as Martin Poulter and Steve A., concentrated on local (in this case, UK-specific) events and media reports. Still others, such as Larry Wollersheim and myself, dug out source material such as books and reports and made them available on the web. A very small number of people, again including myself, went beyond this and wrote original new articles on the background of Scientology, its history and its practices.

Six years on, the quantity of critical information on the web is enormous - far more than anyone could have imagined back in 1995. It's also largely of very good quality - critical books such as Bare-Faced Messiah and A Piece Of Blue Sky, source documents such as Hubbard's FBI files or US Navy records. Indeed, it is probably because Scientology's online critics have been so active that Scientology felt the need to get into the web in a big way itself. However, this very success has brought its own problems. Primary information-gathering has been easy (albeit time-consuming). Now that task has been largely completed, there is relatively little for the newbie critic to get his or her teeth into. This has left many critics with a smaller range of possible activities.

(I should add that one reason why I began writing essays on Scientology was the hope that it would provoke other people to do something similar, as the question of "what next" was an issue even back in the mid-90s. Unfortunately I underestimated the difficulties in producing wholly new material on Scientology - both in terms of access to information and in expertise - so this has never really taken off, although the LMT did make a major effort to promote it through its annual Literati Contest.)

Anti-Scientology activity, it seems to me, falls into three main areas. These are: informing people of what Scientology is and what it does; campaigning against Scientology's present activities; and campaigning against Scientology's potential future activities. I'll discuss each in turn.

The first area is, to use a bit of jargon, information exploitation.

This involves obtaining and distributing information for specific purposes. Critical websites are, by definition, a passive form of information exploitation: people go to them to look up information. If they don't know the website is there, or they can't physically access it, then the information is of no use to them. Although it may not sound very effective, the critical websites have had a very significant impact indeed. Vastly more critical information is now readily available online than any other form at any other time. No longer does the general public have to rely on vulnerable, easily-removable books in their local library. Not even the great national libraries have as many critical books as do some of the Scientology critics' websites. And of course, the information available online goes far beyond reproductions of critical books - much of it would never have been published in the first place had it not been for the web.

I don't doubt that this has had a real and negative effect on Scientology. Parents, siblings, children and even Scientologists themselves have all been able to access detailed information on what they have got involved with. The very fact that Scientology felt it necessary to compel its members to filter out critical websites shows just how effective the Internet critics have been. The effect goes wider than that. I have answered many queries from journalists and government officials around the world about the information on my web pages, and on Scientology in general. Newspaper articles and government actions worldwide have been influenced, and in some cases directly sparked by Internet activism - the Lisa McPherson case is a good example.

Information is the great enemy of Scientology - it prefers to operate away from scrutiny or critical attention, especially where its own members are concerned. Scientology itself puts a big effort into information - or more accurately, propaganda - with probably millions of dollars put into the production and distribution of large quantities of glossy promotional material. It is very carefully calibrated and targeted. However, it is often poor-quality information - frequently refutable, often biased and on more than one occasion quite simply not true. By contrast, the critics make at least a stab at objectivity, present information that Scientology does not - cannot - refute and is usually demonstrably true. But it is relatively poorly presented, is often not available offline and is barely or not at all targeted. So although the critics may have the better product, Scientology exploits its own product better - Betamax vs VHS all over again.

Campaigning against Scientology's present and future activities depends, absolutely crucially, on information exploitation.

Scientology has been able to get the support of the US Government and politicians against restrictions on its activities in Europe not because such people have any great sympathy for Scientology - I know of no Scientologist politicians in any national legislature - or because of Scientologists' voting power - which is negligible anywhere outside of Pinellas County - but because Scientology has been able to push their "buttons", to use Hubbard's phrase. "Freedom of religion"

is a very powerful button indeed and Scientology has made full use of its effect. Compare and contrast with the "new Nazism in Germany"

claim which Scientology tried to push a few years back - that got nowhere and even earned Scientology a rare rebuke from the US State Department, because Germanophobia simply is not a major button these days. This failure aside, it has to be recognised that Scientology is backed by an extremely determined, full-time lobbying operation which undertakes detailed research and targeting. Its effectiveness has depended not on the quality of its information but on the way in which it has been exploited. This takes resources, which the critics simply do not have - excepting the LMT, which I'll come to later.

As well as information exploitation, another concept is crucial in campaigning against Scientology's activities - political capital.

Campaigning against the status quo involves persuading people to do something - change a regulation or law, run a newspaper article, impose a restriction, and so on. Campaigning against a future Scientology activity - for example, getting state funding for a front group - requires persuading people *not* to do something, usually favouring Scientology. In either case, political capital is critical in even getting a foot in the door. By "political capital" I mean credibility - a commodity which is hard to acquire but easy to lose.

Scientology is well aware of this concept too, which is why it puts such elaborate efforts into promoting its own political capital and reducing that of others. The adoption of Christian clerical garb and titles in the late 1970s was a mostly successful attempt to improve its credibility as a bona fide religious organisation, as is its courtship of celebrities, who - particularly in the United States - always have a willing audience. Conversely, "dead agenting", which is often portrayed by critics as simply being smear tactics, is in fact a sophisticated if ruthless method of destroying the opposition's political credibility. The exposure of Bob Minton's activities in Nigeria, which turned out to be totally above board, was used to portray him as a crooked businessman. Other perceived enemies have been portrayed as child abusers, deadbeat dads, financial cheats, neo-Nazis, hatemongers, murderers, rapists, blackmailers. In every case the objective is to destroy the credibility of the target and prompt other parties to think "no smoke without fire - better not associate with this person in case it's true".

But political capital can also be squandered by the critics themselves, if they engage in activities which can be portrayed or come across as being extremist or loony. For example, FACTnet claimed that Battlefield Earth contained subliminal pro-Scientology messages - a claim, backed up by no evidence whatsoever, which was widely reported but also widely derided. As a result, FACTnet's reputation for veracity and its credibility have taken a severe knock. It works the other way, too - for example, Scientology's false claim that the Norwegian royal family had endorsed its pseudoscientific drug "rehab"

programme resulted in widespread press exposure and provided evidence for Scientology's reputation for dishonesty. In both cases, an entirely true fresh claim would inevitably be met by distrust and comments along the lines of, "oh yeah - look what you said last time".

This is why campaigning activities need to be considered very carefully before they take place. The "investigate Scientology"

petition is a case in point: it is so badly thought out that it has zero credibility and will damage the credibility of its sponsors.

Future approaches from the same source will be met with a greater degree of scepticism - in effect, the sponsors have self-dead-agented themselves. Random unsupported denunciations of Scientology will have much the same effect, as will, unfortunately, picketing.

I have long been uneasy about the anti-Scientology pickets, which is why I've been one of the few UK critics never to have participated in one (although this didn't stop Scientology falsely claiming that I had). Any critical activity has to meet two tests, in my view: is it effective and does it risk blowback, in other words can it be used effectively against me? If the answers to those questions are yes and no respectively, then it is worth doing. Picketing, however, fails on both counts. It is ineffective - indeed, it is probably counter-productive - and it plays wonderfully into the hands of Scientology. When the pickets first started, they were on free-speech grounds in protest at the attacks of Scientology on Internet users, in much the same spirit as the more recent demonstrations in support of the detained Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov (which is in many ways a modern equivalent of the mid-90s Erlich case). Further focus was given to the pickets by the death of Lisa McPherson. Since the collapse of that case, however, the focus of the pickets has dissipated into a general "protest against Scientology". I've seen the pickets justified as an emotional escape-valve or a way of creating team spirit amongst critics. This isn't good enough; if critical activity starts being about benefitting the critics rather than the criticism, it's lost its point entirely.

Any objective assessment of picketing has to recognise that it has little real effect. The disruption it causes is minimal: maybe a few hours' lost body-routing per month at a handful of locations around the world. It permits contact with at the most a few thousand members of the public, with probably only a fraction of those paying more than cursory attention to it. It has had no effect at all on improving Scientology's behaviour; the organisation is incapable of responding positively to outside pressure, regarding any such pressure as a manifestation of the evil psychiatric conspiracy against it. If anything, the pickets have probably *helped* Scientology's leaders - we've already seen them justifying their actions by pointing to the "screaming of the SPs" as a sign of increasing effectiveness. Most damagingly of all, picketing has probably confirmed to ordinary Scientologists that their leaders' paranoid conspiracy theories are true. It is easy for Scientology's leadership to portray pickets against Scientology as being pickets against Scientologists, particularly as the latter identify so strongly with Scientology.

Picketing is the worst possible way of reaching out to wavering Scientologists, as it occurs in a way which precludes them from contacting the critics - any such contact would instantly be seen and reported to OSA - and confirms the propaganda image of the critics as hatemongers.

Equally damaging is the use that Scientology has been able to make of the demonstrations. The "picketing a religion" card is a particularly strong one to play, especially after Sept 11, and Scientology has played it for all it is worth. The fact is that, rightly or wrongly, Scientology is widely recognised as a bona fide (albeit weird and somewhat dubious) religion. The simple fact that it is known publicly as a "Church" is a major propaganda tool. The idea of "picketing a church" understandably makes people uneasy or even hostile, just as it would if the target was a mosque or synagogue. It does not matter whether the critics perceive Scientology as a religion or a racket;

what matters is how it comes across in the wider world.

Pickets have also provided Scientology with a golden opportunity to stage provocations and blacken the name of the participants. Direct physical confrontation with Scientologists is a dangerous game, as we have already seen. The frequently-observed deployment of batteries of cameras by OSA staff is not simply a method of intimidation but a way of generating valuable propaganda. Unflattering photographs of picketers shouting slogans, waving signs and - especially useful - responding to provovations have been heavily used to "dead agent"

critics. It makes no difference whether Scientology has been in the wrong in its actions towards picketers - with its highly efficient propaganda machine, it has been able to propagate its account far more rapidly and widely than have the critics. A tactic recommended by Hubbard has undoubtedly been used widely - discredit critics by compiling "dead agent packs" portraying them as extremist bigots, with supporting evidence culled from photographs of pickets. The www.parishioners.org website presents something along these lines, but far more detailed files will certainly exist within OSA.

Perhaps the clearest example of blowback from picketing comes from the LMT in Clearwater, Florida, which picketed Scientology on numerous occasions over the past 2-3 years. (I recall that from time to time it was claimed that the LMT's members were acting in a personal capacity, but this was clearly a fiction and I don't think it was ever taken seriously by anyone, including the courts).

From the start, the pickets were bad-tempered and confrontational.

This was entirely predictable, given the militancy of Scientologists in their "Mecca", the probability of provocation and the temperament of some of the picketers. It reached its low point last year with the ridiculous games of "picket chicken" and the painting of white lines on the road. The results were equally predictable - as far as the population of Pinellas County were concerned, the LMT became known as "the folks who picket Scientology". Most of the LMT's media exposure concerned picketing, as a search of the St Petersburg Times archive demonstrates. The pickets gave Scientology a great opportunity to portray the LMT as extremists - a claim which it was far better equipped to make than the LMT was to rebut - and certainly seems to have soured relations with the local authorities. When Clearwater's police chief was quoted as saying "Bon voyage" to the news of the LMT's departure from the town, he was undoubtedly motivated by a desire for a return to the relative peace and quiet which prevailed before the arrival of the LMT. Public officials, like most other people, prefer to have a quiet and orderly working life and anything which detracts from that tends to be unwelcome. Since the picketing was directly supported and on many occasions initiated by the LMT, the difficulties which were caused for the local authorities rapidly eroded any sympathy which they may have felt for the LMT's activities.

It's particularly striking that the pickets don't seem to have mobilised the local population, in Clearwater or elsewhere. Almost 22 years ago to the week, demonstrations against Scientology were held in Clearwater which attracted as many as 3,000 people - nothing like this has been seen since. I don't think this is a case of Scientology having "taken over" the town; it's more likely that the population has decided to tolerate, though maybe not actually like, the 800-pound gorilla sitting in their front room.

The "investigate Scientology" petition which I've referred to earlier also fails the dual test of effectiveness and blowback. At best its effect will be minimal, with the petition round-filed by the DoJ. I have already pointed out, in my previous post, its fundamental flaws.

When communicating with government or the media, one must always remember that one is doing so from a position of weakness. Both government and the media have a major problem in picking up the signal from the noise in public communications. Every government office and media organisation receives a constant torrent of incoming correspondence, much of which is vague, misdirected or simply worthless. Some may be of great importance; much is trivial; a significant amount is a waste of time. Even Albert Einstein's 1940 letter to President Roosevelt concerning the possibility of an atomic bomb, possibly the most important item of public correspondence in 20th century history, took weeks to make its way to the President's desk and then only because Einstein was a widely recognised figure, a Nobel prize-winner with very serious credentials. Had the letter come from J. Random Citizen of Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is doubtful that any more would have come of it.

It is a regrettable but unavoidable fact that the public is not treated equally. Large corporations, celebrities and politicians have preferential access - either because they represent economically or politically significant interests, or because they are politically important in their own right. As such, they effectively have an automatic right to a hearing. Next on the list are well-organised pressure and special interest groups, such as Greenpeace, the trade unions or indeed Scientology. They are well-organised, well-resourced and highly professional in directing their communications at the appropriate targets, thus getting their message across effectively and enlisting useful allies. The message itself may or may not have much value - what does "washes whiter than white" really mean? - but the way in which it is presented makes all the difference in "making the sale", whether of soap powder or a campaign position. At the bottom of the pile is the disorganised mass of the general public. Few members of the public have much idea, or have made much effort to find out, how government or the media works, and often make impossible or undesirable demands of quite the wrong people.

Communications from corporations and special interest groups can usually be regarded as signal; communications from the general public are, all too often, just noise. This is especially true of obsessive single-interest correspondents who write numerous polemical diatribes on issues of concern. In Britain, we call them the "green ink brigade"

or "green-inkers", after the colour of ink which they (for some reason) usually seem to employ. They frequently come across as being somewhat unbalanced and in some cases they undoubtedly are. It is absolutely the kiss of death for a correspondent to become tarred with the green ink brush, and even more so to be labelled a "vexatious correspondent" (which guarantees instant round-filing for any correspondence). Remember that incoming correspondence from the general public is usually read and acted upon by junior employees, and stands relatively little chance of being escalated to higher levels unless its significance immediately stands out. An ill-considered rant, by contrast, will stand out in the wrong way and make its recipient much less likely to take it seriously.

It can thus be seen that members of the general public writing to government or the media about Scientology are at a serious disadvantage, compared to Scientology. Individual members of the general public are, rightly or wrongly, given a lower priority than organisations. Any communication about Scientology has to be watertight, backed to the hilt by hard evidence, targeted at precisely the right organisations and people and tailored to fit their concerns.

This is not an easy thing to do, as it requires research, a measure of organisation and much careful drafting. Hubbard understood this lesson well, as long ago as 1965, when he established his "Department of Government Affairs"; Scientology today uses this approach to good effect.

This is where the petition falls down so badly. It makes a whole host of allegations and demands, most of them vague and uncorroborated, several of which are directed at completely the wrong target - the DoJ rather than the Treasury or the Florida authorities. There is quite simply nothing in it that would provide any justification for any public official to do anything other than to write a polite letter noting the petitioners' concerns and then round-file the petition. Its effect will have been precisely zero. In fact, it may even have a negative effect, in that it may damage the sender's credibility if he attempts to raise a more substantive matter. I have seen some posts attempting to justify the petition as being an "emotional appeal", but if this has no useful effect what is the point? It is far more likely to be used in certain quarters as "evidence" that the US Government is on Scientology's side. Others have pointed to Jon Noring's petition on Scientology vs the Internet, but that was more an expression of public concern on a well-documented matter than a "do something" petition on a whole range of disparate and poorly documented matters. Noring's petition didn't actually attempt to "do" anything, unlike this petition.

Another problem for the critics has been the increasingly poisonous and divisive internal relationships within the critical community.

(Some don't like me using speaking of a "critical community", but while there may be no formal critical organisation there is certainly a community of interest, so I use the phrase in that latter sense.)

The constant drip of venom from anonymous and probably Scientology-connected posters has certainly been a factor, but the unfocused nature of the critical community is probably a bigger reason in driving wedges between people. Here our diversity works against us.

Unlike in Scientology, there is nobody to tell us what to think or do.

While this ensures greater freedom of action and more creativity than Scientology can muster, it means that much critical activity is ill-directed, poorly thought out and unhelpfully duplicative of others' efforts. Unfortunately it also means that there is much greater scope for division and personal conflict than in a rigorously directed organisation such as Scientology. This has been most visibly on display in the vicious and personal flame wars which have raged between critics, accusing each other of being "OSA whores", lickspittles and so on.

I should add that this is far from being an unusual situation - exactly the same internal dynamic could and can still be seen operating in emigre communities of political exiles from eastern Europe and the Middle East. The matter of the repressive regimes from which they had escaped, which theoretically they were concerned with opposing, were overshadowed by the disunity and conflict between dissidents. Much time was spent - wasted - in attacking each other's political positions and ideological credentials. Few, if any, achieved any significant influence on events in their home countries, where change came about as a result of internal rather than external pressure. The anti-Saddam exile groups have never coalesced for precidely these reasons, much to the frustration of the US Government.

The radical left has also experienced much the same thing, with innumerable splinter groups fighting over the meaning of socialism rather than getting to grips with the supposedly common opposition. As the saying goes, "the other side are the opposition - my side is the enemy".

A further problem is the superficial and often insupportable claims made by far too many critics. A prime example is the repeated denunciation of Scientology as a "crime cult", a "criminal mafia", an "international criminal conspiracy", a "terrorist group" and so on.

This it is not, as a cursory glance at the historical record will show. In the entire 50-year existence of Scientology, the organisation has only been convicted once, in one country, of a serious criminal offence - in Canada, for the criminal activities arising out of the Snow White espionage campaign. Household names such as General Motors or Exxon have a far worse corporate record.

Some have claimed this to be an example of the state shielding or otherwise failing to get to grips with Scientology. In fact, the organisation is very careful to remain just within the law, or to engage in activities which are difficult to prosecute. It is not as if this issue has never been considered before; a British government official put it very well in 1963 when she wrote that Hubbard was "the type of person who makes certain that he always remains just within the law". The fact is that probably 99.9% of Scientology's activities - auditing, campaigning against psychiatry, Ethics, all the cumbersome bureaucracy that passes for "management technology", manipulating the legal system, etc - is entirely legal. It may be undesirable or mistaken or dishonest or unethical, but this is a different argument entirely from it being "criminal". On thinkig about it, I'm struck by how similar the argument is on both sides of the fence. Scientologists see the critics doing things which they regard as unethical, therefore the critics are "criminals". Some critics see the Scientologists doing things which they regard as unethical, therefore the Scientologists are "criminals". The two positions are effectively mirror images of each other.

While the remaining 0.1% of Scientology's activities might be legally doubtful, such matters are very difficult to prosecute criminally unless (a) there is rock-solid evidence and (b) a prosecutor is interested in the first place. The standard of proof may be lower in the civil courts, but the difficulties - not least Scientology's unlimited war chest - are such that bringing a civil case would be a very dangerous course indeed to pursue. The British Government looked at the question of legal action in considerable detail in the mid-1960s, shortly before the introduction of a ban on Scientologist immigration, but concluded that "the Scientologists are not committing any criminal offence and a civil action for negligent treatment would be very difficult". That was, of course, before the activities of the Guardian's Office and, later, OSA, became widely known. However, the uncomfortable fact is that no suit for harassment has ever, as far as I know, been won (or for that matter even been brought) against OSA.

Its conduct may be reprehensible but it is essentially legal. If OSA is in fact engaged in illegal activities, then they are well concealed - nothing on the scale and blatantness of the Guardian's Office criminality has ever come to the surface. If you believe that such activities are happening, then by all means investigate and expose - but don't shout "criminals" without rock-solid evidence.

The vast majority of Scientologists are not members of OSA nor, indeed, have any great involvement with it (considering how secretive it is). They may, like Tory, be conscripted to serve as foot soldiers in dubious activities - but that is about the limit of it. Their other day-to-day activities are in no way criminal. Take the notorious OCA "personality test", for instance. On the face of it, this is a well-documented example of deceptive marketing. However, the fact is that it is simply not seen as a big deal by prosecutors, or even those being taken in or ripped off by the OCA. Oxford University, which (in my experience at least) was claimed by Scientologists to be the originator of the test, was dismissive of the matter when I raised it with the university authorities. As far as I know, nobody has ever managed to bring a prosecution against Scientology over the OCA. The "personality test" is much like the rest of Scientology - legal or at least unlikely to be prosecuted, although again we may be justified in regarding its practices as undesirable or dishonest.

This matters when it come to portraying Scientology to the outside world. While it may set critical pulses racing to denounce Scientology as "criminal" or "terroristic", it doesn't do much for anyone else.

The general public may have an image of Scientology as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous" (to use the immortal words of Justice Latey) but it is a big leap from that to criminality, because the latter does not presently form part of people's preconceptions about Scientology.

In fact, Scientology itself provides good examples of how and how not to portray issues which it regards as being of concern. In the "how not to" category is its obsessive campaign against psychiatry, which is blamed for everything from falling SAT scores to Sept 11th. The concept of a worldwide psychiatric conspiracy responsible for the ills of the world is so far from people's preconceptions that it is literally laughable. Its constant repetition has little more effect than convincing people of the cranky fringe nature of Scientology - of course, the organisation has no choice in the matter, as its hatred of psychiatry is such a deep-rooted ideological issue. Hubbard convinced himself that the general public hated psychiatry, but despite being proved utterly wrong Scientology continues in that belief, as it has no self-corrective mechanism to overcome its founder's mistakes.

On the other hand, its campaign against psychiatric drugs is a good "how to" example. People do have a preconceived notion that medical drugs can have dangerous unforeseen side-effects - thalidomide and, before that, heroin are genuine real-world examples. It requires no great leap of imagination to conceive of Ritalin or Prozac having dangerous side-effects. Scientology has played skilfully on these fears, highlighting horror stories, making common cause with other campaign groups and pitching newsworthy stories to the media and politicians. Although it did not lead to legislative action, the campaign did have a serious adverse effect on sales of psychiatric drugs and must undoubtedly have put people off using them. The name of the game is to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and by making use of an existing anxiety, it was possible to spread FUD widely to a receptive audience.

This holds valuable lessons for critics of Scientology. It is very difficult, indeed futile and probably counter-productive, to try to engineer a wholesale shift in public views towards Scientology.

Without widespread political and media support, the tools for such a project are not available anyway. It would instead be far more productive to strengthen existing preconceptions about the organisation - its greediness, its weirdness, its rabid hostility to sceptics.

This means that it will be necessary to change the language being used in some quarters, particularly the often hysterical denunciation of Scientology, which at best comes across as cranky and at worst confirms Scientology's claims that it is being subjected to hatred and bigotry. It also confirms the need to build a critical coalition and seek allies, which will require at least some small measure of organisation. It would be undesirable, not to say impossible, to replicate Scientology's authoritarian worldwide network, but there is much that could be done to increase the "professionalism" (for want of a better word) of the critics' activities. That will be the subject of my next essay on this subject.

| Chris Owen - ronthewarhero@OISPAMNOyahoo.co.uk | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | THE TRUTH ABOUT L. RON HUBBARD AND THE UNITED STATES NAVY | | http://www.ronthewarhero.org |

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