Over the years, many people have asked about the political views and affiliations of scientologists. Every time I ask for questions for a listener Q and A episode of the Fair Game Podcast, this question comes up.
Of course, while there can be no blanket generalization about the politics of a group composed of individuals, individualism is not encouraged in scientology. One is expected to toe the party line. So you tend to see a lot of people subscribing to the same views about everything.
Thanks to Aaron Smith-Levin taking the time to count voters registered at scientology buildings in Clearwater, another guideposts has emerged that points to the fact that scientologists lean heavily Republican.
I have opined on this subject before (below is just one example) that scientologists are in lockstep with the views of L. Ron Hubbard; health care if it encompasses mental health is an absolute no-go, so is welfare (“rewarding downstats”). Health care and welfare are Democratic platforms. Add to that Hubbard’s general disdain for, perhaps even hatred of, all things government in nature and he also comes down on the Republican side. (Note: I just read the latest Source Code on Tony Ortega’s blog this morning — Hubbard railing about JFK Health Care plan which he refers to as his “mental health empire.”)
Tony Ortega reported on the push for scientologists to get out and vote in the 2018 election in Clearwater — every candidate they supported was Republican.
You may also recall that in the 2016 Presidential election, one precinct in LA County voted for Donald Trump — the tiny enclave around Big Blue.
Another article about wealthy scientologists’ support of Donald Trump
And now this, from the electoral rolls for the City of Clearwater, noting every person who lists their address as a scientology building (in other words, these voters are ALL Sea Org members):
Current events at the Delphian School are taught with a strong libertarian / republican bias, or at least they were when I went. The course admin there told me he joined Scientology because he loved Ayn Rand and Scientologists were the first group of people he met that lived like they were in an Ayn Rand novel.
Scientologists are anti-abortion (at least publicly), anti-homosexual, racist and don’t believe in helping the poor. How could they be anything but a republican?
That dress. God, that DRESS! How can a woman as wealthy as Trish Duggan even consider going out of the house dressed like that? For that matter, wealthy or poor or anywhere socio-economically in between, how could ANY woman with a smidgen of taste wear that thing? Decades ago my aunts sewed bedroom curtains out of sheets that resembled this pattern. I mean, no kidding; it boggles my mind.
Yes, yes, I know, I’m off topic. But everyone posting regularly here knows what I think of Trump and how ______________it is that so many Scientologists actually LIKE and support this creature. Not the Republican Party, mind you – or, what used to be the GOP – that I can understand, if not agree with. But Trump? No. I still don’t get it. I will go to my grave not getting it. As for that blank line in the first sentence 2nd paragraph, feel free to substitute any derogatory or sarcastic adjective and you’d be correct.
I had the exact same thought. Guess I was duplicating you Aqua.
I think Mike’s right about Republican/Libertarian views on small government, individualism, et cetera are inadvertently helpful to Scientology as an organization. But I think one must recognize that the protections that Scientology exploits are there for a reason, and I don’t think the answer is to remove or ignore those protections. It’s like on cop shows when they complain that their lack of a warrant let a guilty party go free. We cannot suspend the Bill of Rights every time some creep abuses it. And if judges rule in favor of Scientology, it’s not the judges who are wrong, it’s the loopholes in the laws that need fixing. They cannot legislate, only rule on the laws that currently exist. The Clearwater city council was right to try and limit Scientology’s abuses, but the resolution they passed was clearly outside of the Constitution and only wound up strengthening them.
Frankly, the only government organization that can truly end Scientology’s madness is the IRS. They never should have given the Church tax-exempt status, and the moment they did the First Amendment became Scientology’s shield. The answer isn’t to dismantle or go around the First Amendment, but reverse the grievous error of granting them that status. Until the IRS has the guts to do that, nothing will change. And sadly, most bureaucrats won’t stick their neck out if they don’t see a personal political benefit.
The majority of politicians in both parties wisely avoid entanglement with Scientology. At worst some may be guilty of overlooking its abuses, but many more will be aware of the toxicity of associating with them.
Karen Bass, who was a potential VP pick for Biden, did indeed address Scientology. Her excuses when this was called out were pathetic – it was in 2010 when she did and even a decade earlier there would have been no excuse whatsoever as the cult’s criminality was widely known by then.
Some NRMs – Unification Church, Falun Gong and Transcendental Meditation – have been far more involved in politics than Scientology has ever been (TM even ran its own political party and candidates at one stage), though none of those attract the same kind of notoriety. And yet more will be involved, possibly the South Korea-based WMSCOG, which is now bigger in membership than any of these groups ever were.
Republicans are big on giving religion a pass on taxes, and exemptions to other rules…those are things that the CoS depends on. Most Republicans I know think Scientology is a cult, but have also never met any… and are unaware that many support Republican candidates.
The Republican Party “loves” and “supports”, “fights for and protects” religion in general and Christian religions in particular only because Evangelical Christians mostly vote as a block, and the GOP can’t win elections without them. If Christian Americans were the voting minority, and say, Muslims were the majority religion voting Republican the GOP would be holding rallies praising Allah, and if the same were true for the Jews they’d be paying obeisance to the Old Testament and to hell with Jesus Christ and the New Testament. Its all politics. Meanwhile the Founding Fathers were Deists: we were NOT founded as “a Christian nation”. That Colonials under British rule before the Revolution were overwhelmingly White Anglo Saxon Protestant Christian (plenty of Puritans but also Anglicans too) made us “de facto” a Christian country but there’s nothing in the Constitution that says that we are a Christian country, sorry.
Conservative Christians would likely see Scientology as a dangerous heresy to be avoided at all costs – likely the reason a majority of politicians regardless of party affiliation avoid entanglement with that cult. They do see Mormons, JWs, etc as being that as well, but those religions although often termed “cults” are not considered as off-putting as Scientology.
The other country where fundamentalist Protestantism is powerful is South Korea, and these are on the lookout for any sort of heresy deviating from it. Likely the reason Scientology has no foothold there, unlike its presence in Japan let alone in Taiwan.
Interesting information, thanks. Makes sense; I would totally agree.
So is that why Aaron Smith-Levin is campaigning under the Republican banner? Is it simply a strategic move? That would make me feel better about his whole Republican Party affiliation.
Aaron has always talked about his political leaning being on the republican side.
Me too. I find that encouraging fpr the future of the GOP.
I think one thing that is confusing, is that Scientology attracted many progressive thinking young people during the counterculture era, including those influenced by ideas such as “free love”. Hubbard himself was adjacent to if not part of Beat culture with its irreverence and drug experimentation, and was rather of a sexual libertine in his younger years.
But Scientology’s ascendance in the late 1960s coincided with him becoming more authoritarian and puritanical, and cracking down on his young followers in various ways, ultimately asserting an orthodoxy that could be classified as generally conservative, if not fascist and totalitarian. So a group that we tend to associate with the era of hippies and “flower power,” not entirely inaccurately, is now paradoxically one that appears quite conservative socially and politically.
And Scientology grew out of the mind of someone obsessed with ideas of conspiracies to the point of paranoia about plotters trying to kill him personally (see the letters to the FBI that got labeled a “mental case”) and is infused with everything from conspiratorial thinking about real organizations like the APA and the WHO, to imaginary ones like SMERSH and figures that are part of the Scientology cosmology like XENU. It might even be said to be a vast conspiracy theory of sorts at its heart, and thus it’s not surprising that many adherents believe in conspiracy theories in other arenas as well.
I am inclined to see these things similar to you, Peacemaker. Political belief and affiliation is one of those twisty-pretzel things a person finds in Scientology. I track on the: people who were “counter-culture” were drawn to Scientology. Absolutely – the Age of Aquarius and the determination to achieve global peace using the energy of love and aesthetics.
Then, the deeper one goes in, the more they experience the organization as puritanical and authoritarian. I would add, too, the more convoluted the aims and behaviors get, including no genuine organizational support for individual members thinking for themselves or engaging in self-expression and the implementation of their own integrity. This is so rarely supported when you are in Scientology, it rather takes my breath away.
I considered for many years that Dianetics was well aligned with Libertarianism. Later, was stunned how many (year 2016 in the U.S.) Scientologists, including Sea Org members, were rabidly pro Donald Trump.
This was a pretzel-y turn-twist that I could easily comprehend. I realize C of S is not the only guilty party; there are others , but I could not help but scratch my head on what disregard for separating religion and politics.
AFAICT, Hubbard was a bit of a “sexual libertine” throughout his life. At 40 years old he knocked up one of his teen-aged followers even though she was (or perhaps because she was) younger than his first son, Nibs. Then there was that “Helen” he was involved with in the early years of his marriage to Mary Sue.
The relationship of NRMs with “sexual fluidity” is interesting. One discussion I saw suggested that Mormons and Scientology were known for being “sexually fluid” in their earlier years, before tightening things up on that score (albeit Scientology now includes abortions – a reason no Christian or conservative should ever accept them).
The Children of God/The Family were the ones who enshrined sexual liberationism into their creed. Even they largely abandoned many of the most contentious practices, at least after Berg passed away and his widow took over. COG/TFI seems to have undergone a number of reformations since then.
Rajneesh was known as the “sex guru” and presided over the infamous ranch in Antelope, Oregon and also an ashram in India, where a philosophy of sexual liberation, if not even free love, was practiced. His group as well as COG/TFI can be seen as appealing to the counterculture sexual mores of many of the baby boom generation. There were other, smaller, groups of course.
“New religions” tend to be products of their time. Mormons, JWs, Christian Science, British Israelites and Black Hebrews owe their ideas to 18th-19th Century movements (“Awakenings”) whereas Scientology, COG/TFI, Rajneesh, etc owe their ideas to mid-20th Century trends.
Most of the NRMs or “cults” that sprang up mid-century have adapted to some extent, whereas Scientology hasn’t. They’ve also largely not been associated with criminality, unlike Scientology. Eckankar is one example, worth mentioning because its founder Paul Twitchell was briefly involved with Scientology.
DV, Hubbard’s ‘work’ was in many ways rooted in late 19th century movements, and so for example rather similar to Christian Science, though tapping into mid century “space era” trends. And much of his “space opera” is a sci-fi infused take on late 19th century occultism via Crowley. It has some early 20th century influences as well, such as Freudian psychology obsessed with infancy and sexuality, and the use of electropsychometers.
The Briefing Course tapes provide a lot of insight into Hubbard’s political views.
He was particularly scathing about FDR (Frankie the Limper as he called him.)
On the other hand he said that there was no evidence that Joseph McCarthy was mad and declined to criticize him.
Who was the great man, Roosevelt or McCarthy?
History has already decided.
McCarthy was thoroughly discredited in a few years and soon succumbed to alcoholism.
Roosevelt was the president who presided over the victory in the second world war, led the USA out of the great depression and left the USA as the greatest power in the world.
Even by today’s standards, Hubbard would be considered to be Alt-Right, possibly even Neo-Fascist.
I was disturbed by Hubbard’s views even back ithen when I was on the BC.
This is about Oz politics but bear with me:
When I was on staff, back in the early 80s we were briefed by the A/G of the org that we should vote for the Labor Party in the upcoming Federal election. Because they had a better record of helping $cientology (the High Court had recently made the decision that, for legal reasons, $cientology did fit in the definition of religion do the Court recognized it as one)
The Chief Justice of the Court was Lionel Murphy, a former Labor deputy Prime Minister.
Funny that when I left the Kult and actually read the Court’s ruling, Murphy was actually scathing about the Kult but pointed out that the definition of religion in Oz was so loose that basically anybody could form one and be recognized legally as such.
I once was talking politics with a Guardians Office exec who worked in their PR dept. Never a Republican or a Democrat, I said that choosing between the two would be like choosing between syphilis or gonorrhea. How do you make a choice like that, I asked. He said, “It’s easy. You choose gonorrhea because it’s easier to get rid of.” It’s the lesser-of-two-evils-approach that many voters take, and I wanted no part of it.
Some of my Scn friends leaned libertarian (which I’ve heard said is just a conservative who wants to get high), and I eventually joined the Libertarian Party. That only lasted a few years, as it turned out they weren’t much better than the others. They were just as locked into their own ideology just like any other political group.
I’ve since abandoned the standard right/left, red/blue, conservative/liberal political spectrum in favor of something I think has no ideological baggage. These days I see politics as something that falls somewhere between total government and no government. My question to any politician or candidate would be, “Do you think our govt is too big, too small, or pretty much the right size? And then explain why. (I’m not holding my breath that I’ll ever get an honest answer.)
I occasionally entertain an option that I don’t necessarily recommend, but I might be comfortable with. Anarchy, but only if I could be in charge of it.
Love your comments!
I simply ask if a candidate support the 3 main human rights pillars; Right to life, Freedom of thought and action and Right to ones own property. If they fail on any of these I don’t support them.
To: Every lugnut on this blog.
From: David Miscavige COB RTC.
Re: politics in Scientology.
The Church of Scientology has no affiliation with either the Republican or the Democratic parties! We are opposed to any political system that rewards downstats like people on welfare! America will never truly function until we give up this stupid US Constitution and this whole country comes under my absolute rule!
ML
Dave.
To: David Miscavige COB RTC
From: Alcoboy
Re: advocating treason.
I’m calling the FBI right now.
No love at all,
Alcoboy.
To: Alcoboy
From: David Miscavige COB RTC
Re: calling the FBI.
But Alcoboy! How could you do something so entheta like that? You and all the other lugnuts just don’t get it! Only we can create a theta America because only we have the tech to do so!
ML
Dave.
To: David Miscavige COB RTC
From: Alcoboy
Re: building a better America
Who are you kidding? How are you going to use Scientology to build a better America when it has failed to get public into your Idle Morgues much less keep them there?!
No love at all,
Alcoboy
Big Blue, which the LA times article talks about, is a polling place!
So is the Int Base.
Bruce – Whoa, Int Base is a polling place!?!? Those people can’t get out, and no one is allowed in. So this means they can vote without having to mingle.
During an election they open the front gate and allow anyone to drive in. It is not true to say that no one can get in or out, at the time I was there most people lived in apartments off the base. In the 90s they even held weekly open houses where anyone could drive in and take a very sanitized tour of the Int Base.
The prison is a prison of belief.
It may have changed since 2004 when I left, but that is how it was when I was there.
Bruce – I was never able to visit my sister there – although they did do a “show tour” about 15 years ago for my dad and stepmom. And if I was in the area she could only leave for a few hours to spend the afternoon together, with 6 months or so notice. Once I was in the area and went by and Danny (?) at the gate said they didn’t know where she was, maybe she was off “shopping.” Obviously that was a lie, they knew exactly where she was. It is a prison of belief but it seemed also like a real prison.
It is a real prison, otherwise why would we talk about escaping it? But the personnel gate next to the vehicle gate opens from the inside, some kind of Fire Department requirement.
Something a bit hard to explain to those who have never been there, but it takes several leaps of faith to make an escape – first you have to have hit rock bottom. Like the addict or the habitual criminal, the first step is always to somehow realize there is a problem. Lots of folks at the Int Base are unhappy but not to the point of quitting. Others, like Danny Dunnigan, love the self-importance and the thuggery. They would have to be extracted, not allowed to escape.
Once you really want to leave, many have spouses or other attachments. Have to get around that, with the snitch culture it is dangerous to even talk about it.
They tell all kinds of lies that tie you down, like the idea that you’ll be broke and homeless on the outside. Susceptible to drugs and crime. Somehow you need a little hope or a reliable outside contact. Many have nothing like that.
Then comes the actual trip out – walking through that pedestrian gate gets you a lot of unwelcome attention from Security. Maybe they won’t actually strong-arm you back in. Maybe they will. If you manage to call a cab or something possibly they won’t physically assault you in full view of the driver. But who knows.
Out of the gate it is many miles of walking to get anywhere civilized.
So it is fair to call it a prison, even though people are often out and about. Outside people are allowed in under special circumstances. Not as bad perhaps as Alcatraz or Leavenworth but worse in its own special way.
Good point, Bruce. It isn’t like Alcatraz, but hard to get out of mentally and physically both. Her husband blew in 2003 or 2004 and then she ended up in the Hole for years.
Alex Gibney sound-bited Scientology well by calling it a “Prison of Belief”. The most effective trap there is.
At least in prison the prisoners have rights and are feed 3 meals a day and sleep 8 hours a night. Oh and I believe they actually have toilet paper. These are things Sea Org members do not have.
The high price of courses and auditing and the criminal exchange regging for ideal orgs and the IAS tends to weed out the working class, a class of people who create value in society through their labor.
Scientology selects out the parasites, and even celebrates the most egregious parasites like the Duggans.
What I learned of Hubbard’s Scientology writings and policies was, that he was a strong opponent of democracy, social democracy, and was damning as “commie” everything with a tang of socialism in McCarthy-mannner (below his political tone scale). It ensues that (most) Scientologists are of this mind-set.
Hubbard fits right in with the rightist stance. It’s remarkable that some rightist commenters on the Scn-critics sites are strident opponents of Scientology/Scientologists & Hubbard, voicing their disapproval, some in a trolling manner, and at the same time are fully d’accord with Scn/Hubbard’s rightist stance. (I’m not talking about ‘normal’ conservatives).
The CoS organisation is set up in a hierachical-fashistic manner, and it is acting in a “1.1” manner for its public appearance, reflecting Hubbard’s character and his teachings.
Republic, 3.0 (conservative)
Democracy, 2.5 (bored)
Social Democracy, 2.0 (antagonistic)
Fascism, 1.5 (anger)
Communism, 1.1 (covertly hostilety)
https://groups.google.com/g/galactic-patrol/c/SDfmVuGZNvc
There is an irony in that both Libertarians and Scientologists find a home in the Republican party. I can’t imagine a group more antithetical to individual liberty than Scientology. But keep in mind, that Scientology will do whatever is necessary to further the interests of their group, getting in bed with the NOI being just one example. Now how’s that for cognitive dissonance? They’re Republicans, and buddy-buddy with the NOI.
gorillavee, I would say that scientologists could generally be classified as rather libertarian economically, if not otherwise. Their ideas about individual liberty are more in line with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, with underlying implications that the stronger and more able should be free to act even at the cost of others.
Off Topic:
And did you know that Ayn Rand was also poet? Below is some of her early work:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Finish the rest yourself
You damned parasite.
Since the mid-1970’s I have experienced almost all Republicanism in Scientology. In fact I go so fat as to say I have experienced Rand Paul, his father and their party. I cannot remember the name of their party but it is far far to the right, almost anarchism. Personally I saw Hubbard as an extreme fascist. I personally lean farther to the left than all forms of Socialism. My best discussions are with Democratic Socialists. I am not Communist, however. Most of my former Scientology friends not only avoid me, they hate and loathe everything about me. Two years ago a lady nearly took my head off. My early years were spent as a Republican. My entire political view shifted after serving in the Viet Nam era.
I find most Scientologists and their political views obnoxious in the extreme. There is nothing worse in the world than a Capitalist.
I was a member of the Libertarian Party. LRH clearly wouldn’t be a Libertarian. A Libertarian would be declared an SP.
To: otherles
From: David Miscavige COB RTC
Re: LRH as a Libertarian
First of all only one person knows how LRH voted and that’s me! Why? Because I say so, that’s why! Second, I don’t like the blatant disrespect you have for LRH! How dare you suggest that he would embrace anything as vile as Libertarianism!
Cease at once!
ML
Dave.
To: David Miscavige COB RTC
From: Alcoboy
Re: your attack on otherles.
Aaaaaaahhh, go reg an IAS donation from Donald Trump!
No love at all,
Alcoboy.