(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)

Parallels between "1984" and Scientology. Substitute "L. Ron Hubbard" for "Big Brother" and "Scientology" for "the Party."

On Big Brother.

From George Orwell's "1984" published in 1949: "At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonable sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to where he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party choose to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization."

Commentary: Hubbard gets the same praise. Every success is due to his methods and every mistake or failure is due to someone or something else. His face is everywhere in Scientology organizations, just as one finds the leader in other dictatorships: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, China, the old USSR and Nazi Germany, and for the exact reasons Orwell gives. Orwell's remark about Big Brother not dying even applies to Hubbard for he didn't "die." His death was unthinkable as it would have meant the tech did not work. So he merely went to his "next level of research."

Robert Vaughn Young
writer@eskimo.com