After a group of hackers who called themselves the Anonymous posted a video critical of the Church of Scientology, the Church of Scientology responded with a video claiming that the Anonymous had been sending them threats of violence and threats of arson.
As someone who is neither a hacker nor a Scientologist, but bears some familiarity with both communities, I say with full confidence that these threats are made up.
I know this for two reasons. First, hackers - and especially the kind of hackers who get involved in causes such as the Anonymous - would never threaten or commit arson. Such things are totally in contradiction to the ethic of the hackers such as ones involved in that organization. Such hackers are, for the most part, young idealistic people whose goal is to expose fraud and corruption, reduce organizational bullying, and protect people's freedoms. Nonviolence is very much a part of their beliefs. To claim that these people would threaten the Church of Scientology with violence and arson is ridiculous. One might as well be accusing Tibetan Zen Buddhists of threatening a nuclear war against the United States.
The second reason is that fabricating such threats on the part of its critics is a tried and tested practice of the Church of Scientology. In 1995, a gentleman who called himself "henri ennui" was posting material critical of the Church of Scientology on Internet forums. A representative of the Church of Scientology then forged a post under the name of "henri ennui" threatening arson against the Church of Scientology. A representative of the Church of Scientology then went to the employer of "henri ennui," showed him the post, and got him fired. If they would do this to an isolated critic, they would most certainly do that and more to a collective - especially a collective of hackers which, in the mind of the uninformed, is synonymous almost with terrorism - but whom anyone at all familiar with the subject knows to be anything but.
The video released by the Church of Scientology starts by claiming that "organizations grow and evolve." It is not encouraging to see that the Church of Scientology has failed to grow and evolve out of such corrupt, criminal and tyrannical practices after all these years. And while I, unlike the Anonymous collective, do not see the Church of Scientology as altogether evil and have respect for some of their efforts - one of them being the establishment of the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights that has been effective in fighting abuses in the mental health system - it is these kinds of tactics that get Scientologists branded as villains, conmen and criminals, and that undermine the credibility and viability of their more benevolent efforts. So if the Church of Scientology is serious about its claims of growing and evolving as an organization, it must put to rest such fraudulent practices. Such tactics do not increase the organization's strength or viability or moral authority; they undermine all of the preceding and reduce scientologists in public estimation to a completely despicable status.
The purpose of the Anonymous effort is that of exposing and fighting corruption. And that is a very important purpose, especially at this time. As a result of public apathy, injunctions to not see injustice and evil or to blame the victim, and a communitarian ideology that gives unchecked, unbalanced and unaccountable organs unlimited power over people's lives, corruption has sprouted up everywhere. There is vast corruption in medicine; in legal system, especially as it relates to family matters; in mental health and aged care system; in small towns; in entities such as Jehovah's Witnesses. All these deserve to be scrutinized and redressed to the same and greater extent as is being done by Anonymous regarding the Church of Scientology. Indeed, fighting corruption - along with providing clean energy and protecting the world from terror - is one of the most important challenges of our time.
To Anonymous: You are right to be fighting corruption, and I hope more people get similar idea respecting other forms of corruption than the one you have targeted, including ones listed above. To Scientology: It is time to put an end to the fraudulent and criminal practices such as falsely accusing people of threatening violence and arson. Ultimately even the more credulous will catch on to the deception. The sooner your organization ceases using such tactics, the better off it will be.
