I understand now, although I would have classed that as government taking over art galleries rather than the other way around.
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Ouch. Forgive me, I somehow read this the other way round.
I could pretend I was playing on Hitler’s alternative career path as a painter, but I wasn’t. But come to to think of it, putting someone with an unrelenting idea about aesthetics and art into power does not seem like a fun idea, does it?
On the other hand, anyone on BBS knows how many of the popes, kings, emperors and other rulers actually were artists, or at last scholars of arts? Hm… Well. I should not want to derail further.
After all, we do agree:
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I should note that I go past this building on weekdays, walking my dog on the lunch break. It is a butt-ugly building, built for a butt-ugly purpose with a vulgar disco in the back where socialites go to be seen. And the Scientologists have an office near there.
Kind of ironic, as Munich was the only city where Weishaupt and Knigge’s Order of the Illuminati actually took over a Freemason lodge from the inside. And it was the Bavarian elector who had the Illuminati (and all secret societies) banned, making them the bogeymen they now are.
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There’s a difference between giving someone a pass and going in on them instead of other people also behaving badly.
Mainly because people seem to pick Scientology specifically because it’s new or smaller and less established than the other “big three”
That’s usually a symptom of a bully coward who is fond of rationalizing. “I need to hit someone but I need to hit someone with the popular support of others because I don’t like getting hit back.”
Also Scientology isn’t compulsory anywhere I can think of, nor does one have to claim affiliation to Scientology to hold elected office in any place I can think of.
To the individual victims of the CoS it is obviously a nightmare but osteogenesis imperfecta is terrible too, it just affects fewer people than cancer.
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My biggest worry is that they have already begun exchanging the real paintings with forgeries to either sell or put in the mansions of the top leaders.
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The various German intelligence services have shown a rather bad record in terms of upholding democracy. In recent years, there were several cases of failure to prevent or prosecute right-wing terrorism, despite having informants and leads; also, they were are spying, and colluding with foreign services in spying, on the population, on journalists and legislators; and failed to fully disclose their actions to the parliamentary committees they are legally obliged to report to. One could come to the conclusion that much of what these services do is a threat to democracy in itself.
And of course Scientology is a scam, but IMO so are most, if not all religions. Scientology are a modern religion, with effective, capitalist management, cutting out much of the faith and ritual ballast and going right for profit. In some twisted way, I kind of prefer that, because the scam is so obvious. Since they are still very marginal, I don’t really see why I should regard them as more of a threat than more traditional religions.
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Yes, the state intelligence agencies are a complete shit show, but good luck trying to take those away from the states.
What could possibly go wrong if you put a few dozen right-wingers into a building, make them civil servants for life with no accountability or oversight to speak of and tell them that they are now their state’s last line of defense against islamist commie nazis?
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It’s pretty easy to snipe about exactly how many recognized religions are just better at masquerading; but I certainly wouldn’t want to be in charge of trying to argue against that characterization of scientology…
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That and the $100,000 admission price.
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Has anybody seen the Leah Remini series on her dealings with Scientology. The greed motivated manipulators of this organization need to be jailed.
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It’s because it’s not comparable. Scientology is a grotesque organisation that does nothing but harm the people it preys on. Its sole purpose is to peddle snake oil that it promises will solve all of your problems while intentionally exacerbating those problems through its practices and isolating you from seeking actual solutions instead of desperately trying to buy enough of their poisonous slush. Religions have done some fucked up shit, and they don’t get a pass for it, but they did it in the name of a god and they have values beyond doing fucked up shit - Scientology does nothing but fucked up shit and it does it in the name of a science fiction author who told them they were haunted by clams.
None of those religions have written directives on how to ruin the lives of people who leave them. Even Catholicism isn’t as monolithic and malign as Scientology. It’s not a religion. It is a fucked up cult of psychological torture for the enrichment of the founders. It has no articles of faith and offers no solace to anybody unable to tithe further.
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I don’t believe you’re making a reasonable argument. There are people, as noted above, who have left the actual organization because of the predatory practices yet who continue to apply the things they got from it.
I am not an expert, but the things I’ve read are basically applied psychology with a bunch of hookey bullshit. Things like NLP and CBT. Both of which work if you have a subject with certain pathologies and dispositions.
They took over the CAN (cult awareness network) and run a bunch of high profile drug rehab centers = Ever done a program? Even mine is culty and we’re not even a regular “12 Step Program” (12 Promises)
They take money = lots of it. I refer you to the “mega churches” that exist in the US with much worse schemes than anything I have read about the CoS. At least with the CoS you get a bunch of shitty sci-fi books.
They say hookey bullshit = they all do that. It’s a wash.
They have written plans for doing shitty stuff = The Vatican has it’s onw intelligence agency and political wing. In the 80’s the Protestants in the US took over the Republican party. If I had time you know I could find more examples.
They exploit a virtual slave labor workforce and use brainwashing and violence to keep them compliant = This is probably the most fucked up thing. But are you going to maintain that I can’t find examples as bad or worse in both degree and number of people affected by the other big three?
There is room for everyone to be fucked up. And we are. I guarantee that to the extent you’re able you exploit and take advantage of other people. If you live in the 1st world and consume you’re constantly doing more harm to people than Scientology does to it’s adherents and detractors. It’s just that because we’re all doing it we’ve convinced ourselves it’s ok. Like a group murder is pardonable if you stay in that group.
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Scientology will be the first to tell you that they aren’t doing applied psychology, because they hate the field of psychology as it directly contradicts their tenet that all issues are derived from unconscious engrams like the sound of your mother giving birth. That you cite neuro-linguistic programming, an unsupported psuedo-science further proves that you are not an expert. If people can salvage anything from their time with Scientology that’s great, but Scientology is not attempting to give people tools to deal with their problems, it is attempting to exploit people’s problems for its own gain.
Sure, mega churches are bad - the key point though, is that they are not bad because the Christian Church tells them that is how the faith is to be run. You can be a Christian and never visit a church, let alone a mega church. You can’t be a Scientologist without purchasing a program. I may live in the first world, but I am not actively psychologically torturing people for monetary gain so that I can pay for my own advancement up an imaginary ladder at the top of which I will be able to cure cancer and ascend the bounds of the universe as a perfect being.
The Vatican is literally a U.N. recognised sovereign state. No shit it has an intelligence agency and political wing.
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In the 1960s, L. Ron Hubbard tried to take control of Rhodesia.
At this point it may be worthwhile mentioning Hubbard’s attempt to “win” Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for Scientology. Following the severe setbacks which had been suffered in Australia in the mid-60s, when the ungrateful Australians decided that they did not after all want to be the world’s first “clear continent”, Hubbard decided that southern Africa should have the privilege of being a “safe environment” for Scientology. In 1966 he went to Rhodesia in the guise of “a millionaire financier” (no initial mention of Scientology) to, in his words, “find out what he needed in order to conquer a country.” He spent $80,000 on a house and a hotel “to show his confidence in the country and its government”. They very soon became the centre of Rhodesian Scientology and proved a worthwhile investment. In the few months that he was in Harare, Hubbard made $25,000 selling Scientology courses to a white population of only some 45,000. He regarded his visit to Rhodesia as a homecoming for, so he told his personal assistant Reg Sharpe, he had been Cecil Rhodes in a previous life and hoped to return with the hidden fortune in gold and diamonds which he remembered having buried as Rhodes. Hubbard even went around wearing Rhodes’ favourite kind of hat, presumably in the hope of “restimulating” people’s memories of the late founder of their country.
…
One suspects that Hubbard would have felt very much at home in the pre-emancipation Confederate States. There was no doubt that he was pitching Scientology specifically at the white population as a means of effectively controlling the blacks (much as he had in South Africa). Those to whom he sold his courses were almost exclusively white - the blacks would in any case probably not have been able to afford the fees - and it is noteworthy that in neither of his lectures does he say anything about processing black Rhodesians.
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Wow… this is absolutely fascinating history. Thanks!
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They also tell you we’re evolved from clams.
Neuro-linguistic programming and cognitive behavioral conditioning are applied psychology, no matter what they say. Hubbard personally hated psychology because he was severely paranoid and he had an overriding fear of their correct observations about his character.
If you look at what they do, in fact what a lot of so-called new-age shit did/does, is take elements that serve a function and rebrand them to appeal to people who dislike psychology. I have a firm enough grounding in that area to be able to correctly identify their techniques when they are being recycled and rebranded.
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I cited it’s use. I didn’t endorse it.
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Unlike Catholic priests that diddle children and the higher ups at the Vatican who pay hush money and hide them in other areas of assignment.
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Sounds like Catholicism to me…
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Yeah, and my evangelical pastor told me John F. Kennedy was the Antichrist and the Pope is Satan.
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