On August 11, 2024, in Paris, at the Stade de France, the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games took place. The spectacular appearance of a Hollywood guest descending from the sky was widely discussed in the media as one of the most memorable moments of the ceremony. A little earlier, on July 27, 2024, Tom Cruise was awarded the prestigious title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters and received the award from the French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati 1.
However, not everyone was pleased to see him in Paris, especially at such a significant event.
Just a few days before this event, anticult groups in France began a hysterical outcry regarding Tom Cruise’s persona. This was because he is a member of the Church of Scientology.
“The simple fact that we are talking about his presence is an insult to victims,” said Catherine Katz, a former French judge who heads UNADFI, a group dedicated to defending victims of cults. “It really is a bad message.” 2.
Charline Delporte, president of the National Center for Family Support Against Sectarian Influence (CAFFES), called it “a disgrace.”
MIVILUDES, the French government anticult agency, stated that it had received reports about Scientology-related brochures titled “No to Drugs” being distributed throughout Paris. The agency warned of “risks of psychological destabilization” 2.
“They are very present at the big sporting events, they will no doubt reach many young people, I am very worried,” Delporte said.
The anticult organization FECRIS has begun spreading information claiming that the Church of Scientology is allegedly a “dangerous cult” that manipulates the U.S. legal system to achieve its goals by employing tactics of intimidation, lawsuits, and psychological terror. In their view, Scientologists strive for global influence by infiltrating political, legal, and public structures and forming corrupt connections around themselves. This allegedly “frightening cult” is said to “brainwash” people, extort money from them, ruin lives, and so on and so forth, as commonly listed in typical anticult manuals.
Vilification and dehumanization of various religious movements are standard practices for anticultists. Still, in the case of Scientology, anticultists exhibit genuine concerns. It is not so much that Scientology is a “frighteningly dangerous cult” but that Scientologists have never left attacks and slander against them unpunished.
Church of Scientology
Scientology is a religious movement founded by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Its teachings emphasize the belief that all individuals possess inalienable rights, as stated in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since its inception, the Church of Scientology has placed special emphasis on religious freedom as one of the fundamental human rights. In a world where many conflicts arise from religious intolerance, for over 70 years, the Church has considered the preservation of religious freedom its primary mission3.
The Church of Scientology and its affiliated organizations implement numerous public programs aimed at improving society in various areas 10:
1. Education and Literacy
- Applied Scholastics: An organization that utilizes educational methods developed by the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, such as “Study Technology” (Study Tech). The programs are designed to enhance literacy, reading comprehension, and learning skills among children and adults.
- The Way to Happiness Foundation: Promotes a moral and ethical code containing 21 principles aimed at improving human relationships and moral behavior. The code is not based on religion and is considered a “secular guide.”
2. Drug Rehabilitation
- Narconon: A rehabilitation program for individuals addicted to drugs and alcohol. It is based on detoxification methods developed by Hubbard and includes sauna therapy, vitamin therapy, and “life skills.”
- Foundation for a Drug-Free World: Spreads information about the harms of drugs through the Truth About Drugs campaign. The organization publishes free educational materials, conducts lectures, and provides training on preventing drug addiction among youth.
3. Human Rights
- United for Human Rights (formerly Youth for Human Rights): This program educates people about the fundamental human rights defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The organization conducts campaigns, releases educational materials, and produces video clips.
- Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR): A human rights commission founded by Scientologists and psychiatry professor Thomas Szasz. Its main goal is to expose abuses in the field of psychiatry, such as the use of psychotropic drugs and forced treatment.
4. Emergency Assistance
- Volunteer Ministers: A program that provides assistance in crisis situations, including natural disasters. Volunteers offer support to victims based on Hubbard’s technology of “Assists”.
5. Opposition to Psychiatry
- CCHR (mentioned above): Actively criticizes psychiatric practices and opposes the use of psychotropic medications, electroshock therapy, and forced hospitalization. As part of its activities, CCHR organizes exhibitions, publishes books, and conducts public campaigns.
6. Prisoner Rehabilitation
- Criminon: A program offering prisoners training in “life tools” based on Hubbard’s materials to help them rehabilitate and reintegrate into society.
7. Promotion of Purity and Health
- The Purification Rundown: A detoxification program aimed at improving physical and mental health through the use of sauna, vitamins, and physical exercises. This approach is often applied in other Scientology programs, including Narconon.
The foundation of the Church of Scientology’s teachings is L. Ron Hubbard’s work “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” published in 1950. In this book, Hubbard proposed a new self-development system, claiming that through special techniques, people can eliminate psychological problems. An article in the Los Angeles Daily News from September 1950 stated: “Hubbard has become, in a few swift months, a personality of national celebrity and the proprietor of the fastest growing movement in the US” 6.
However, the scientific community did not accept Dianetics as a science: neither the American Medical Association nor the American Psychiatric Association showed interest in Hubbard’s works. Moreover, the American Psychiatric Association stated that Dianetics methods had not been experimentally tested and should therefore be approached with caution.
Nevertheless, the popularity of Dianetics rapidly grew among American society. Since 1954, local branches of the Church of Scientology have been established in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, France, South Africa, and other countries around the world. At the same time, their active public activities began.
Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics
In 1955, amidst the height of the Cold War, Ron Hubbard urgently published the book “Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics” with a print run of 2,000 copies. He initially sent the book to the FBI and other government institutions. It was intended to be a translation and summary of a Russian textbook on psychopolitics used by the Soviet Union to train methods of mind manipulation, including psychological pressure and propaganda, to undermine Western society. This book served as a warning to the American people about the hidden mechanisms of influence on American minds by the Soviet Union’s recruited agents. The book included detailed instructions on destroying an individual’s personality and turning them into a psychopolitical slave of communism:
“By making readily available drugs of various kinds, by giving the teen-ager alcohol, by praising his wildness, by stimulating him with sex literature and advertising to him or her practices as taught at the Sexpol, the psychopolitical operator can create the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness into which can then be cast the solution…”
Instructions were also provided on how to undermine democracy in countries:
“In order to be conquered, a nation must be degraded, either by acts of war, by being overrun, by being forced into humiliating treaties of peace, or by the treatment of her populace under the armies of the conqueror. However, degradation can be accomplished much more insidiously and much more effectively by consistent and continual Defamation.” 9
“Defamation is the best and foremost weapon of Psychopolitics on the broad field. Continual and constant degradation of national leaders, national institutions, national practices, and national heroes must be systematically carried out, but this is the chief function of Communist Party Members, in general, not the psychopolitician” 9.
The book became popular and widely quoted among American society and was republished more than 20 times thereafter.
Such a broad gesture on the part of Ron Hubbard could not go unnoticed by the anticultists and was used against him. Hubbard was accused of being the one who wrote the contents of the book, as he himself utilizes the brainwashing method in his church. Hubbard himself, however, opposed such actions, and published the book precisely to expose the techniques of covert influence to the general public.
Scientology and the Alaska Mental Health Bill
Only two years after the founding of the Church of Scientology, Scientologists turned their attention to the Alaska Mental Health Bill, which was actively promoted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
At first glance, the bill appeared harmless. It was designed to develop infrastructure in Alaska to care for mentally ill individuals. The bill provided a $12.5 million grant to the Alaska government for the construction of psychiatric facilities, as well as the transfer of 1 million acres 11 (approximately 4,000 square kilometers) of federal land to establish the Alaska Mental Health Trust. A significant provision of the bill was that, if necessary, mentally ill individuals could be transported to Alaska from all 48 states. Meanwhile, the criteria for evaluating the state of mentally ill people and recognizing them as such were highly vague.
This bill raised a great public outcry and caused a flurry of criticism from various U.S. public organizations, including the Church of Scientology.
The official website of the Church of Scientology claims that the bill was an attempt by psychiatrists to create an isolated camp for the mentally ill in Alaska, hidden from public attention and activists defending civil liberties. The camp was located sufficiently far from popular routes, allowing psychiatrists to conduct experiments and mind control on the prisoners without publicity. It was alleged that psychiatrists could declare any individual — man, woman, or child — “insane” or “mentally ill,” stripping them of their civil rights and detaining them in the camp indefinitely without trial.
Scientologists organized a campaign to inform the public about the threat to personal freedom and free speech posed by the bill. If passed, the bill could lead to the creation of a kind of “Gulag” where political opponents could be sent and forgotten about.
Scientologists engaged in active public work by writing numerous letters, which drew the Senate’s attention to citizens’ opposition. After hearings in the Senate committee, the bill was amended to address these concerns.
Church representatives claim that after this, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) intensified its fight against Dianetics and Scientology, viewing the Church as an active opponent of the bill. Scientologists believe that the APA did not forget who initiated the public resistance to this bill, which later manifested through hostile actions against the Church in various countries.
Chronology of Persecution
1962 — Under the influence of the World Federation for Mental Health, the persecution of Scientologists began in Australia.
1963 — Ban on Scientology in Australia (fully lifted in 1973).
1966 — Ban on Scientology in Rhodesia, where Hubbard attempted to relocate his organization from hostile England (lifted in 1980).
1968 — Ban on Scientology in England (partially lifted in 1970, fully in 1980).
1968 — Ban on Scientology in New Zealand (lifted in 1969).
1969 — Ban on Scientology in Greece due to accusations of “kidnapping people” (lifted the same year when the “kidnapped people” were found in good health).
1972 — Ban on Scientology in Morocco (unknown whether it is still in effect).
1974 — Ban on Scientology in Spain and Portugal due to accusations of ties with the CIA (later lifted).
1974 — The U.S. National Security Agency, under pressure from the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledges years of surveillance on Scientologists but does not declassify the purposes and findings of its efforts.
Despite the persecution and oppression of Scientology, Ron Hubbard did not cease to speak out against the overtly “Nazi” methods of psychiatric treatment used during those years.
Hitlerian Psychiatry
Scientologist Bruce Weisman published the book Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal. In his book, Weisman criticizes psychiatry for its connection to state repression and argues that it served as an excuse for the brutal methods used by the Nazis.
German Scientologists Thomas Roder and Volker Kubillus wrote the book Psychiatrists– The Men Behind Hitler, which explores the link between psychiatry and the Nazi regime in Germany.
There is evidence that the Nazi regime used psychiatric institutions to eliminate political opponents, as well as other groups deemed undesirable 4.
Upon coming to power in 1933, the Nazis began implementing laws aimed at discriminating against certain groups. For instance, the 1933 Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health legalized the forced sterilization of individuals with mental disorders and those considered “racially unacceptable” 4.
Political opponents, such as communists, socialists, and other dissidents, could be sent to psychiatric institutions based on subjective diagnoses, such as “psychosis” or “political paranoia.” These diagnoses did not require evidence and could be issued based on personal or political beliefs.
The Nazi T4 Program, launched in 1939, involved the extermination of individuals with physical and mental disabilities 4. This program was part of a broader policy of “purifying” society of those who did not conform to Nazi racial ideals. Under the program, tens of thousands of people were killed in psychiatric hospitals under the pretext of receiving a “humane death”.
In psychiatric institutions, experiments were conducted on patients who were subjected to violence and cruel treatment methods, including psychosurgery and electroconvulsive therapy. These experiments often aimed to study methods of “treatment” and manipulation, and sometimes patients were used as guinea pigs for medical research.
However, in the Third Reich, electroconvulsive therapy was not only introduced in asylums, orphanages, and the Auschwitz concentration camp to return patients to work, but it was also modified to kill through “euthanasia” 5.
Patients in such facilities were isolated from society and had no opportunity to contest their diagnoses or the conditions of confinement. This allowed the Nazi regime to eliminate those who opposed its authority under the guise of treatment.
Thus, Nazi psychiatry served as a tool for political repression, as evidenced by numerous historical studies and documents.
Psychiatry in the United States
To better understand the concerns of Scientologists, it is important to understand what psychiatry in the United States was like at that time.
In the 1950s, the U.S. actively employed powerful medications, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and psychosurgery for the “rehabilitation” of various groups, including juvenile offenders, prisoners, and the mentally ill. As noted by Samuel Chavkin, an American journalist and author, in his book The Mind Stealers: Psychosurgery and Mind Control, published in the United States in 1978, psychologists and psychiatrists played a significant role in the prison system by developing programs that kept inmates in a constant state of fear. Many people were concerned about prisons turning into laboratories where psychosurgery and other methods were used to suppress human will 7.
In some California prisons, such as Vacaville and Atascadero, medications were used in “aversion therapy.” For instance, Anectine (succinylcholine), caused muscle paralysis and was used as a form of torture. In such cases, prison psychiatrists threatened to repeat this method if inmates’ behavior did not change 8.
“Presently [1971], shock treatment is out of vogue, considered as ‘aversive therapy.’ However, in its place at the Vacaville Prison’s planned adjustment center opening shortly, is a drug that is a questionable improvement-the drug Anectine (succinylcholine). The drug paralyzes all voluntary muscles for about 60 seconds and makes it impossible for an individual to use his lungs.
While a prisoner is thus paralyzed, the therapist tells him that the next time he feels an impulse to smash or attack, he will remember the sensation. According to Dr. Arthur Nugent, chief psychiatrist at Vacaville, ‘the sensation is of suffocating and drowning. The patient feels as if he is on the brink of death.’” (LA Times, Sept. 9, 1970).
“Other therapeutic practices currently [1971] underway at Atascadero State Hospital for drug and sex offenders and in other California prisons include: a method of shock with electric prods for ‘curing’ catatonic schizophrenics and the Errorless Extinction of Penile Responses for treatment of sex offenders. The latter therapy consists of giving a shock to the penis if it becomes erect at an erotic picture. Dr. Opton remarked upon the similarity of such ’therapeutic’ practices to the tortures used in Vietnam to secure information from enemy soldiers.”
Electroconvulsive therapy was also used as a form of punishment. These practices raised serious concerns and criticism regarding the ethics of psychiatric methods and their application in institutional settings.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Scientologists organized protests and information campaigns aimed at discrediting psychiatry as a whole. They published numerous books and brochures, claiming that psychiatry and its methods, including ECT, posed a threat to individual freedom and dignity. Scientologists also founded an organization known as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which actively fought against psychiatric treatment methods and called for a ban on ECT.
The campaign led many people to doubt the appropriateness of using ECT, sparking debates about the need to reform psychiatric practices. Scientology’s criticism of ECT was part of a broader anti-psychiatry campaign that targeted not only the method itself but also psychiatry as a science.
However, this activity could not go unnoticed and pass without consequences for the organization. As early as 1956, the same year the Alaska Mental Health Bill was introduced, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program began closely monitoring Hubbard and his followers. Fifteen years later, thanks to a request under the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, the U.S. government admitted that Counterintelligence had extrajudicially conducted wiretapping and room break-ins, mail interception, spread disinformation in the press, and discredited Scientologists before employers.
Unfortunately, the persecution of Scientologists, which began almost from the day the Church was founded, continues to this day.
Conclusion
Based on the information we have discovered, it is clear that anticultism and psychiatry are two branches with common roots that Scientology has actively fought against. Their efforts have uncovered tools of influencing and enslaving people through psychiatric practices. Obviously, such activities of Scientologists could not leave the adherents of global anticultism indifferent. We will explore this topic in more detail in the next parts.
Continue reading in part two of the article.
Source:
1.https://www.ouest-france.fr/cinema/tom-cruise-a-ete-nomme-chevalier-de-lordre-des-arts-et-des-lettres-78cbc758-4c2c-11ef-a622-0126aa35ae01#:~:text=L’acteur%20am%C3%A9ricain%20de%2062,Mission%20Impossible%20%3A%20Fallout%20en%202017
2.https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240808-tom-cruise-at-olympics-would-be-disgrace-say-french-anti-cult-groups
3.https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scientology
4.https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/political-prisoners
5.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5206950/
6.Urban H. B. The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion. — Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011 — ISBN 978-0-691-14608-9.
7.https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Stealers-Psychosurgery-Control/dp/0395263816/ref=sr_1_2?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.l4bBuWocell75YsRecrZzeQ456MFUTs2syCNPW1sEDe3n-zl4JgnovHktTfL-Hzqm3bPws_ZXR7UUpM85gRJ0g.LSHlnMpnaj5xLtAc7zCl0pN22_zxU91KBDSKaGlH368&dib_tag=se&qid=1734432227&refinements=p_27%3ASamuel+Chavkin&s=books&sr=1-2
8.https://archive.scienceforthepeople.org/vol-6/v6n3/genocide-of-the-mind/
9.https://web.archive.org/web/20150906042154/http://www.apfn.org/pdf/The_Brainwashing_Manual.pdf
10.https://www.scientology.org/
11.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/1956_Alaska_Mental_Health_Enabling_Act_legislative_history.pdf
