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Anonymous vs. Church of Scientology

posted by Scott Beale on Monday, February 11th, 2008

A group of hackers and activists simply called “Anonymous” have taken on the Church of Scientology. First they posted a video message to Scientology.

Then Anonymous posted a follow-up video, calling for a global protest against Scientology on February 10th.

Prior to the protests, Anonymous posted a video on “Code of Conduct”, detailing 22 very specific rules to follow during the protests.

Today’s episode of Rocketboom does a great job summarizing what lead up to the protests and they had several field correspondents who reported on the protests as they took place around the US and in London.

Here’s GETV’s report on yesterday’s protest in front of Scientology in San Francisco. Brock over at SFist also has a write-up on the San Francisco protest.

Anonymous vs. Scientology

Over on Metroblogging Los Angeles Sean Bonner has a write-up on the Los Angeles protest, complete with a bunch of photos.

Brown paper bag anon

Whitechapel has coverage of the Sydney Scientology protest.

Will Greenwald has a write-up on the New York protest on CNET.

Josh Poltilove of The Tampa Tribune reports on the protest at Scientology’s world headquarters in Clearwater, FL.

Brian Braiker recently wrote about Anonymous’ war on Scientology for Newsweek “The Passion of ‘Anonymous’”.

Anonymous’ recent actions were in party motivated by Church of Scientology’s attempts to force Gawker to remove a video they posted of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. Along with the protests, Anonymous has recently launched Project Chanology, “a large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form”.

photo by Sean Bonner & THERKD

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filed under: Video

this blog post was written by Scott Beale on Monday, February 11th, 2008


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Viewing 19 Comments

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    San Francisco was one small part of the global protest, which we have declared EPIC WIN. Special applause to the ONE person who protested $ci Tokyo.

    The next global Anonymous protest is scheduled for March 15 2008, Lafayette Hubbard's birthday. There will be party hats and cake. Expect us.
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    It's really sad to see actions like this are so accepted. Especially by left-leaning websites and bloggers who talk about rights and acceptance. Regardless of your personal opinions or beliefs Anonymous is a very overt attack on religion; religious persecution. You can argue that Scientology is not a religion but that is a moot point, it's still something that a large group of people believe in.

    Glorifying protests such as these are the same to me as hailing white power protests. Yes they should be acknowledged but not encouraged as these are. I hope this doesn't continue to escalate, I know Scientologists that are concerned for their safety, that is going too far, when you cause citizens to fear expressing their personal beliefs because they are concerned about retaliation.

    By the way, the first rule of posting a comment to this blog is that they are not anonymous, and the only comment on here so far is anonymous, eh?
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    Yeah, we really haven't been enforcing the anonymous thing much. That was added a while ago when we were having a lot of problems with comments. I'm going to go ahead and remove that for one now.
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    Benji... calling Scientology anything other than a cult or a club is a conclusion that has yet to be drawn ultimately. There are fine lines between cults and religious organizations, and I believe Scientology's methodologies, practices and structures should be analyzed prior to assuming they're a religion, thus making your claim of "a moot point"... well... moot point in itself, and the reasoning behind it even more moot. NFL teams are not religions (officially).

    Reality and fact takes more than projections, perception and acceptance. Meaning, you could go around convincing people you're a loaf of bread all day - it's not going to make you made of yeast, savvy?

    That aside, these protests are an exercise of free speech - organized by a well formed group of individuals who have a creative presence on the Internet - which makes LaughingSquid a perfect platform to present this protest. Attacking the action of posting this article on the site and comparing it to being a white supremacist is absurd. The logic used in your comment is flawed, and the grounds of your argument are fundamentally subjective.
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    From what the group has said, they very specifically *aren't* attacking the religion, but rather the organization and it's actions. They expressed support of groups like Free Zone, which followed the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard but didn't charge for them.

    The majority of the protesters were masked because of the Church's "Fair Game" policy, where it is encouraged to relentlessly attack critics, including lawsuits, picketing, harassing phone calls to homes and employers, and generally causing "...citizens to fear expressing their personal beliefs because they are concerned about retaliation..."

    There were many other issues that Anonymous wished to draw attention to, but little has been said to refute their claims; instead, cries of "religious opression" try to stifle their critics' voices. Why not just answer the charges?
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    Benji, I appreciate what you are saying about religious persecution but if you actually research the Church of Scientology, you will see that it's a massive organized extortion scheme. The Church of Scientology is responsible for several deaths due to negligence, and has repeatedly threatened and harassed critics in the past. Have you ever heard of "Fair Game"? The CoS is a criminal organization and they do anything they can to suppress anyone who tries to reveal it.
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    First off, it's nice to see some constructive responses (see enturbulation.org), and I do appreciate them.

    Firstly the majority of the participants base their arguments on unverified claims that have been circulated on the internet for some time, and are so widespread they assume them to be true, it does not work that way. If I ever were to author a report based on Wikipedia, or other various websites all mixed together it would not be even considered, no matter how eloquently or passionately I articulated it, which is where I think a lot of Anonymous are getting tripped up.

    Believing something to be true, and it actually being true often times can be very, very different things. Scientology bashing (yes, bashing) has not been remotely constructive, on the part of Anonymous, it has been hostile, juvenile, and baseless. Try posting any viewpoint other than anti-Scientological ones on the majority of the Anonymous-related forums and no matter how accurate, neutral, or otherwise well-put, it will be either removed, moved, or censored in various other ways, it is not open to discussion (on the internet). I have been fighting to make Wikipedia more neutral on this particular religion for a few years now, and I'm losing, it's horribly skewed and not a valid source of almost any information.

    Imagine you are a Scientologist, how would it feels to have people in front of your church screaming (literally, this was done) "Scientology, we hate you!", or "Scientology, f*ck you!".

    Anonymous is a mindless (no original thought), baseless, group of both intelligent and not so intelligent people wasting their energy on hatred, anger, and worst of all recruiting others who happily hop on the bandwagon. Any critique of Scientology, founded or not can be applied to most other large religions and would stick, money, politics, whatever.

    Blah!!! So much anger :(
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    The philosophy and religion of scientology is as far from the official church (consisting of the private non profit company called Church of spiritual Technology, the Religious Technology Center and the Church of Scientology International) as it is possible to get and still be on the same planet.

    When Hubbard was alive the church did indeed practice scientology and expanded and helped many people to become more aware as beings. The philosophy was promoted and people were welcomed into the church. Families and family life was promoted and the cost of the services were reasonable.

    After his death, however, a new regime took over (evidence available upon request) and all that changed. The emphasis became, money, dedication to the exclusion of all else and a paranoiac obsession that anyone not with the church was against it. Church members were not allowed to look at the internet or anything the church management deemed contrary to church (not philosophic) doctrine.

    Many of the original followers that assisted Hubbard with his research were booted out. Script and books were changed and a very effective 1984 job was done on the literature.

    Even the wife of Hubbard, a tireless supporter, has become persona non gratis with the church.

    The philosophy of scientology is not practiced in the church. The church is a vehicle for making money, not for "spreading the word".

    It is a misnomer to say that that the church practices scientology because it does not anymore.

    The only scientology you will find is practiced outside the church in the Scientology Freezone.

    Most of the current critics are critical of the church, not the philosophy, much of which they are probably unaware. But what is of concern is that many critics, and the fellow in the street does not have a clue about what scientology is. All one gets is rhetoric and a diatribe of, "its bad", "Scientology kills people" or "scientologists eat babies" and other such claptrap. No, the church may participate in dubious activities but certainly any self respecting scientologist does not and scientology does not kill anyone. The bald ignorant statements of, "they be all bad over there" is not a sound approach for adjudicating the merits or otherwise of any philosophy

    How many people know what the ARC triangle represents, or what is a stable datum or what the eight dynamics are and they would not have a clue. How many people actually know what scientology is? Not very many! They do not even know the basics of real scientology.

    But their criticism of the church is very different and very understandable. In the eye's of the freezone scientologist, the church has committed the ultimate crime of suppressing the philosophy and, instead, imposed an authoritarian dictatorship totally at variance with the original philosophy.

    THAT is why it is attacked so much. Unfortunately the baby often gets thrown out with the bath water.
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    Benji writes: "Firstly the majority of the participants base their arguments on unverified claims that have been circulated on the internet for some time"...

    ...and which Scientology has been trying to wipe from the face of the Internet, spending millions of dollars in its attempt to do so. That verifies the information quite nicely to the eyes of many readers.

    And what information is this? Harassment (Operation Freakout), legal threats, lawsuits intended to bankrupt Scientology's targets ("The purpose of the lawsuit is not to win, but to harass"), censorship (Google, the Penet remailer, the Internet Archive, Slashdot, XS4ALL, and many many more), lives ruined because people dared to speak out against Scientology (Keith Henson being one of many), people dead from mistreatment and suicide because of Scientology (Lisa McPherson, Noah Lottick, Philip Gale, and many others), Scientology's lying to its own followers about practically everything (Scientology being "compatible with Christianity" when Hubbard declared, "...the man on the cross, there was no Christ"), infiltration of government agencies and offices (Operation Snow White), crackpot science that endangers the lives of its practitioners (Narconon), the repeated pronouncements that every single person who ever says anything at all negative about Scientology is full of hate, a bigot, a criminal, a pervert...

    ...need I go on?

    This has been going on the Internet for 15 years now, and Anonymous has demonstrated that despite Scientology's best efforts to portray itself as an innocent "religion," the truth has long since been revealed. And it is getting stronger every day. Ten years ago, would anyone have thought that a protest against Scientology could bring nearly ten thousand people into the streets worldwide? Scientology is a laughing stock, and eveything it says ("our critics are committing hate crimes!") and does ("Psychiatry: An Industry of Death") are being laughed at exposed for the sham they are.
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    Anonymous has moved from blustering online to actual terrorism. While they deny all responsibility for anything - there remains the fact that envelopes containing white powder showed up at 23 Scientology churches in California a week ago, prompting Homeland Security to investigate.

    When you encourage hatred on sites like this, that's what you are encouraging.

    If they continue escalating their religious bigotry against Scientologists, how long will it be before they start burning crosses on lawns?

    A hate group is a hate group is a hate group.

    Grow a conscience.
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    I know that the line about not posting as Anonymous was removed, but honestly, I consider it cowardly not to post with your name, you want to talk about brainwashing, look at your group, all with the same identity and blindly following the same ideology.

    I wouldn't go as far as to call Anonymous terrorism, I don't think it is, but technically unless someone claims the white powder being sent to churches it was sent by Anonymous, that's the whole point of your group.

    Most everything you say before "...need I go on?" is made up fables circulated on the internet. The people you speak of dying, the operations you say were conducted, quotes you use that exist in no book ever published or documented (and if they are they are taken out of context the same way interviews are edited to skew perspectives), they are just fabricated. Maybe the internet has become such a large part of people's lives that they don't know much else, but there are such things as actual (paper) court transcripts, books in libraries, and the Scientology books themselves.

    By the way, every Scientologist I've asked about Xenu (higher lever or not) has no idea what people are talking about when they say that. That is a good example of something 100% fabricated then ascribed.

    I don't know how this many people can be duped into being filled with this much hate, to the point where they would stand in from of a CHURCH and yell "we hate you!", but honestly it needs to stop, it's just ridiculous. If you have a problem with the ethics of an organization go through the proper government channels.

    When I go out, and talk to people about Scientology, they either say they know nothing, they know Scientologist and like them, or they hate Scientology and every reason they do comes form some forum or Wikipedia article. This is dumbing down the country, if you're going to attack a religion, and it's people then at least be able to put together more solid facts than what would be required for a 4th-grade research paper.
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    > By the way, every Scientologist I’ve asked about Xenu (higher lever or not) has no idea what people are talking about when they say that. That is a good example of something 100% fabricated then ascribed.

    They believe that knowing about it will kill them. These documents are verified in court as evidence. Scientology is not a religion, as all of them who dragged in crosses in 1969 entirely to convince the IRS to make them tax-exempt know perfectly well.
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    Benji writes, "Most everything you say before “…need I go on?” is made up fables circulated on the internet. The people you speak of dying, the operations you say were conducted, quotes you use that exist in no book ever published or documented (and if they are they are taken out of context the same way interviews are edited to skew perspectives), they are just fabricated."

    This proves beyond a doubt you are just trolling. End of thread.
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    The first two you tube clips have been removed.

    The Scientologists have used legal, and extra legal, means to silence their critics. Free speech is a lot more important to me than tolerance.
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    Ideas are just that -- ideas. And behavior is just that -- behavior. Society has a right and an obligation to criticize ideas because ideas lead to human behavior. It is dangerous, not to mention ridiculous, to characterize protest and criticism as bigotry when the arguments are reasoned, and those protesters refrain from ad hominem attacks. The Anonymous movement is a legitimate exercise of the rights given to individuals in a democratic society, and mischaracterizing them as some sort of hate speech is a transparent attempt to shut down debate.

    First Amendment, people. Read it, internalize it, and read the philosophies behind it. (Enlightenment, anyone? John Locke? Founding fathers? They were rabblerousers, too, and look at the gift they've given us.) Don't throw away our freedom to speak by succumbing to shallow accusations.
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    That's Lawrence Wollersheim in the SF interview. Too bad the interviewer is clueless as to who he is. lurk moar mebe
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