By Ben Caleca on 4/11/08
Celebrities can be weird people. There are always rumors about one celebrity or another floating around some blog, but for the most part, I tend not to follow such trivial “news.” However, I was intrigued by a leaked video of Tom Cruise ranting and raving about the Church of Scientology. He was babbling almost incoherently, suggesting a clean sweep of those who oppose Scientology and hinting that no other religion can help humanity like Scientology can. Like many, I was confused, but the video had a much more important effect: It revealed the dark side of an organization that relies on controlling information to survive and thrive.
Scientology’s attempts to remove this video from the Internet led a group called Anonymous to make a video warning, saying that Scientology was now at war with them. The crimes they attributed to Scientology were severe, severe enough to catch my eye. What I found surprised me.
Documents from dozens of sources – the New York Times, Time magazine, independent reports and reports from former Scientologists – tell stories of a cult-like group whose “technology” created by the group’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, seemed tantamount to brainwashing. Its teachings are based on the now famous Xenu story, a tale of an alien nuclear holocaust kept confidential to all but high-level Scientologists until it was leaked to the public several decades ago. Even the German government has classified the group as a cult on the grounds that it is more of a pyramid scheme than a true religion. Apparently, to reach a higher spiritual plane requires that you pay exorbitant amounts of money, including in excess of $300,000 to become an “Operating Thetan,” a high state of being that apparently grants superpowers and success.