Born on 13 March 1911 in the mid-western US state of Nebraska, L. Ron Hubbard was the son of a navy officer and spent time in Asia and the South Pacific. He studied civil engineering in Washington, D.C. but was a bad student, eventually dropping out. Nevertheless, Hubbard later claimed to have worked as a nuclear physicist.
PULP FICTION
In the 1930s, Hubbard became a well-known writer for pulp fiction magazines. He wrote in a variety of genres but mainly science fiction, under pen names that included Winchester Remington Colt, Kurt von Rachen and Legionnaire 148. In 1938, Hubbard claimed to have had a revelatory experience as the result of a side effect of a sedative used in a dental procedure. He emerged having formulated the principles of a self-help system called Dianetics, but would not put it into book form until later.
dianetics
During World War Two, Hubbard served in naval intelligence and later claimed to have left service as a war hero with a Purple Heart medal for a combat-related injury, although there are no records of it. Documents do show that Hubbard’s superiors found him self-important and unsuitable for command. In 1950, Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, a 180,000-word book allegedly completed in six weeks. Based vaguely on the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Eastern philosophy, it was written in pseudoscientific jargon and was immediately dismissed by the American Psychological Association. In response, Hubbard repeatedly damned psychiatry as a profession —although he did once send a letter begging the Association for psychiatric help (to no response).
Scientology facts:
Members:
The organisation claims that it has some eight million to fifteen million members worldwide, four million of them in the US. This number, however, may include the vast majority who only take an introductory course.
Churches in the world:
The first international outposts of the Church were in cities like Paris, London, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich and Florence. According to the official website, there are now more than 11,000 churches, missions and groups in 184 nations.
Net worth:
The Church of Scientology has an estimated worth close to $2 billion and owns properties across the globe including $400 million in property in Los Angeles. At their spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, the church has sixty properties worth an estimated $168 million.
CONFESSIONS
Dianetics was a massive commercial success at first but soon fell out of fashion, and Hubbard, in debt, lost the rights to the book. In 1951, Hubbard refashioned Dianetics into a belief system called Scientology, founding the Church of Scientology in 1954. The Church believed that negative memories known as ‘engrams’ from current and past lives could be removed by using an electrical device called an ‘e-meter’ in confessionary sessions with ‘auditors’. The aim was to purge the mind and reach an enlightened state known as ‘being clear’, which also returned the human being to their original divine state as a so-called ‘thetan’.
CELEBRITIES
When Hubbard’s refusal to pay tax became problematic, he went abroad and spent years sailing around the Mediterranean with a young crew of Scientologists. On returning to the US in the early 1970s, he went to Hollywood, where he hoped movie stars would add glamour and money to the organisation. Celebrity Centers, such as the lavish centre in Los Angeles, were built. Here, famous Scientologists, including Priscilla Presley, Elisabeth Moss, John Travolta and Tom Cruise put an attractive face on the Church.
CENSORSHIP
Now both the US and international authorities were pursuing Hubbard. But Scientology was already rich and powerful, with a radical membership prepared to do anything for it. There were attempts to infiltrate government offices and remove unfavourable records —as if they were a form of ‘engram’. Scientologists believed, as Hubbard claimed, that any such action was justifiable as the human race was at threat from an evil galactic dictator called Xenu.
TAX-FREE
Hubbard died in 1986, spending his final years paranoid and in seclusion. But the Church continued under David Miscavige, who had joined at the age of eleven. When the Church received a billion-dollar tax bill in 1993, the US tax authorities were flooded with thousands of lawsuits filed by Scientologists. As a result, the Church was recognised as a religion in the US and given tax-exempt status. It enjoys full religious status in other countries too, including Australia, Italy, Spain and Sweden.
ABUSIVE PRACTICES
In the mid 2000s, a number of former senior members of the Church turned against it. There were allegations of human and civil right violations of members, and of pressure being put on them to give massive donations. As recently as 2015, a team of aggressive lawyers employed by the Church tried to get the documentary Going Clear, based on a book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright, banned. Today, while its membership has declined, the Church of Scientology remains active, with investments and real estate worth billions of dollars across the world.
THE COST OF REACHING CLEAR
Reaching the level of ‘clear’ is an expensive process in the Church of Scientology. As members rise through the hierarchy, they are expected to constantly take courses. An introductory ‘taster’ course is just $35. But each subsequent step requires a new course, and courses start at around $650 and then escalate into the thousands at higher levels. Today, a session with an auditor costs about $800 per hour with an average length of 2.5 hours required. A pack of Dianetics books costs about $4,000, with each update requiring a new purchase.
vs. anonymous
In 2008, the Church of Scientology became the target of a series of protests, pranks, and hacks by a leaderless online community called Anonymous. Project Chanology was a turning point for the collective, which had formed on the internet message board 4chan and went from conducting trolling raids on individuals in organisations to a form of coordinated activism that, while irreverent, became increasingly political. The protest arose in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from an interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the internet. Anonymous responded with a series of videos that declared war on the Church for alleged breach of copyright and brainwashing, and by flooding its servers with fake data requests. It turned into an international protest occurring in Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Later targets of Anonymous ‘hacktivism’ included government agencies, child pornography sites, copyright protection agencies and corporations such as PayPal and Sony. They publicly supported WikiLeaks and the Occupy movement and, most recently, supported the protests against police brutality in response to the George Floyd killing.