If you haven’t seen it yet, you soon will.
It’s making the rounds around the Web faster than Tom Cruise’s hyena-esque clip and it’s far more disturbing.
A group calling themselves Anonymous is out to expose and “systematically dismantle” Scientology and is throwing down the gauntlet on YouTube after enlisting hackers the world over to shut down the Church’s website several days ago.
“Over the years, we have been watching you,” says a computer-generated voice over time-lapsed images of a building I can only assume is a Scientology-owned property. “Your campaigns of misinformation; your suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.”
If the word “destroyed” doesn’t cause the little hairs on your arms to stand on end, then the next line out of synthesizer Sam’s mouth–explaining the group’s motives–should. “For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, for our own enjoyment.”
Now, I’m no fan of the Church of Scientology, but to destroy it for the sake of one’s own enjoyment sounds truly pathological and just downright creepy. At first I thought maybe the video was some Scientologist trying to garner the controversial belief system some ACLU-like sympathy, but the sentiments expressed in the video are so vibrantly malignant that it’s hard to believe this is an experiment in reverse-psychology.
A loose confederation of “Internet vigilantes,” Anonymous has taken on others, notes Gawker.com. But it was the release of the aforementioned Cruise video on YouTube, followed by threatened legal action by the Church of Scientology, that spurred them into action. Apparently, it’s dangerous to meddle with the tech geeks’ turf.
Anonymous admits that they are employing some of the very methods it denounces in the Church of Scientolgy itself to battle Scientology, fighting fire with fire so to speak. But does one totalitarian turn really deserve another?
Anonymous promises that the infiltration and destruction will be gradual and protracted, so we can only wait and see what the next move will be. For now, perhaps gossipmeister Perez Hilton summed it up best when he said in a recent post, “This is some scary Matrix s**t!”
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posted January 25, 2008 at 8:38 pm
“Now, I’m no fan of the Church of Scientology, but to destroy it for the sake of one’s own enjoyment sounds truly pathological and just downright creepy.”
That, and it also sounds very 1984 (it truly freaks me out how many times I’ve referred to that book–and I’ll probably refer to it many more times throughout my life).
posted January 25, 2008 at 8:53 pm
We’re not just in it for our own enjoyment anymore.
The more we have learned about the CoS, the more we are convinced that it needs to be taken down. They have killed their own members in order to suppress dissent. They have infiltrated the government in order to fight the IRS. They charge people over 200 thousand dollars to advance to the highest level (“OT VIII”) and yet they are given tax-exempt status.
Yeah, we’re taking them down.
posted January 31, 2008 at 7:21 pm
This is not a church. This is a cult. Anonymous is trying to help stop the madness. Anonymous is fighting for all the right reasons. Our goverment gives tax excemption for being a church. Open your eyes people before it’s to late support Anonymous is not just a group of hackers anonymous doesn’t do things to hurt others just for shit’s & giggles they have better things to do with time. Research, listen, learn, check all resourses you will see then Anonymous is everthing and more for taken on this battle. God Bless Anonymous.
posted February 6, 2008 at 6:49 am
We’re not fascists.
We’re not terrorists.
We are the common body. Students, educators, factory workers, artists, programmers, doctors, hackers, and business leaders. We are from all walks of life.
EVERYTHING has been done overtly, and can be easily researched if you want to see it yourself. Our faces and voices may be hidden and scrambled, but our mass creates a mosaic seen by all. Because, in the end, we do not want to become our enemy, and ‘become the abyss’.
We started as unlearned and raw, but our higher brain functions are taking over, and now are operating the legal and legitimate sphere of the public forum. Protests, debates, and mainstream media are gaining steam, and those will be the real fighters in this conflict. We are merely the fire starters.
Keep the knowledge free and open.
Expect us.
posted February 11, 2008 at 12:18 pm
While the aims of Scientology are noble I think that somewhere the train has left the track. The stance against drugs is also given in a credible manner. They state;
“Drugs, pollutants and other chemicals are essentially poisons and take their toll on a person’s body by depleting its stores of vitamins and minerals, leading to susceptibility to other health problems.”
While this can be taken as a stand against illegal drugs, the “Church” has gone beyond to include any form of pharmacology. We have seen the good that natural and synthetic medications have done to alleviate the illnesses and conditions man is heir to. However, if we are to believe that the tack Scientology has taken against anti-psychotics and other medications used for the alleviation of symptoms in various mental illnesses, all medication is bad.
The process of auditing is nothing more than the use of Bio-Feedback to pinpoint subjects of stress. In the hands of a trained psychiatrist or psychologist, Bio-Feedback is a useful tool. In the hands of a CoS Minister or Pastor who is untrained in standard B-F techniques, it can be detrimental.
Psychiatry has been evolving over an extremely long time. For L. Ron Hubbard to re-package the obsolete Freudian Psychology is plagiarism taken to the extreme for dubious reasons.
posted June 20, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I can’t find out alot about Scientology. Although Tom Cruises video was a little disturbing, it seems that their beliefs are pretty much what I believe in (from what I can find out). Of course, I’m pretty contrary so I don’t want to be forced to do something “for the church”, does that have to do with this? This article is very poor for information also. And, yes, as a person that has been deeply and permanently damaged by the medical industry – good for them! I’m not against all drugs, just the drugs that we are physically forced to take and the drugs that we are brainwashed to believe are necessary and “health food”.
Does anyone have any links that have some comprehensive information about this group?