Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics. [L. Ron Hubbard is the Founder of Scientology.]
Daily Beast: Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics
http://ift.tt/1RwB66E
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James Kirchick
CANDIDATE OR CULT LEADER? 04.02.16 10:00 PM ET
Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics
The madmen’s mutual mantra: “Don't ever defend. Always attack.”
Is Donald J. Trump the new George Wallace? Silvio Berlusconi? Adolf Hitler?
Could be. But at least as much as a southern segregationist, rich pervert turned politico or genocidalitler?Could genocidal fascist, Trump fits the profile of a cult leader, and one cult leader in particular: L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the pyramid-scheme-masquerading-as-religion known as Scientology.
Consider: both men are (or, in Hubbard’s case, were) narcissistic, autocratic, money-obsessed, pathological liars and would-be sexual conquerors who built business empires for the primary purpose of self-enrichment under glitz-drenched brands maintained by fraud and advanced by uncompromising litigiousness and occasional physical aggression against critics.
Hubbard died in 1986, though perhaps only corporeally. He claimed he was Cecil Rhodes in a previous life and today may be inhabiting the soul of Donald Trump for all we know; at the least the two men bear some resemblance.
Both are defined by compulsive acquisitiveness. “MAKE MONEY. MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY,” Hubbard wrote to underlings in an early Scientology “Governing Policy” document. “MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY.”
Trump’s complaints of being unfairly audited by the IRS echo Scientology’s decades-long battle with the taxman; Hubbard was himself named an unindicted co-conspirator to a covert, 1973 Scientology operation dubbed “Snow White” aimed at infiltrating the agency.
Hubbard was also one of the great frauds of the 20th century. A man who lied about nearly every aspect of his biography and repeatedly bragged about imaginary feats of daring and physical bravery, his breathless, downright Trumpian testaments to his own genius and courage were mere preparation for the greatest lie of them all: that he had unlocked the secrets of the human mind in the form of “Dianetics,” the pseudoscience at the heart of Scientology. Hubbard used to claim that “auditing,” a process in which one holds onto electrically charged metal cans and talks about past life experiences, could raise people’s I.Q. by one point per hour.
In one of the many legal cases brought against the Church, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge deemed Hubbard “a pathological liar” driven by “egotism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.” Sound familiar?
Much as Trump surrounds himself with sycophants and media supplicants, Scientologists venerate Hubbard as a sort of man-god; his portrait, which followers salute while shouting “hip hip hooray,” is ubiquitous in Church establishments.
One distinction: Whereas Trump’s a talker, Hubbard was a writer, one who started out as a pulp fiction novelist and churned out hundreds of works of science fiction, crime potboilers, and sham sociology and religious texts over the course of his long career. For both men, the overflow of words is a function of an insatiable appetite for money, power and acclaim.
When not making up stories about themselves, both men lied about the world around them. Trump persists with his false claim of witnessing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers, one of countless fibs he has repeated effortlessly on the campaign trail. Hubbard, bitter at the psychiatric profession’s designation of Dianetics as crankery, declared psychiatry a devious plot to destroy humanity.
Trump also resembles Hubbard as a self-help guru who mostly helps himself. Like all religions, Scientology promises its followers spiritual illumination, the apex of which is the revelation that, 75 million years ago, a galactic warlord named Xenu planted the bodies of billions of aliens around the Earth’s volcanoes and detonated them with hydrogen bombs. The immortal spirits of these beings now adhere to humans in the form of “Thetans” that one can only release with the help of Scientology teachings.
Trump’s Art of the Deal is to Trumpism what Hubbard’s Dianetics is to Scientology: a load of bullshit pretending to teach you how to fix yourself, just replacing the new-age homilies with odes to avarice.
What distinguishes Scientology from most other organized religions is—still more shades of Donald—its unambiguously transactional relationship with adherents. In exchange for moving up its ladder of enlightenment known as “The Bridge to Total Freedom,” Scientologists pony up ever-increasing amounts of money to the Church, which often pressures them into maxing out credit cards, taking on loans they cannot afford, or driving themselves into bankruptcy.
The most succinct and accurate description of Scientology remains that offered by investigative journalist Richard Behar in his 1991 Time magazine investigation, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” Scientology, Behar wrote, is a “hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
For Trump and Hubbard respectively, politics and religion are extensions of business empires. Trump University, the now-defunct branch of the many-tentacled Trump Organization that most clearly resembles the Scientology swindle, preyed upon unsuspecting consumers by guaranteeing them future riches in return for the money they handed over now. Today, Trump University, (which, despite its name, was never an accredited educational institution), is the subject of a class action lawsuit in three states; the New York State Attorney General has condemned it as a “bait-and-switch scheme.” A recent New York Times story revealed how instructors pressured students to turn in positive evaluations, much like how Scientology brainwashes and intimidates its own followers. “The surveys themselves were a central component of a business model that, according to lawsuits and investigators, deceived consumers into handing over thousands of dollars with tantalizing promises of riches,” the Times reports.
Hubbard and Trump—camp figures to the core—also share a chintzy aesthetic. Scientology videos, promotional materials and edifices all share a grotesquely ersatz style that’s been described as a pastiche of an Ikea catalog with a “romanticized nineteenth-century English countryside.” This is eerily similar, in tastelessness if not actual design, to Trump’s gaudy and soulless properties. Visiting Trump’s New York Penthouse apartment a decade ago, Daily Beast founding editor Tina Brown memorably noted its “Ba’ath Party décor.”
Most ominous is the connection between the two men’s misogyny, racism, authoritarianism and the physical violence encouraged by their organizations.
* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics. [LRH is the Founder of Scientology.]
Daily Beast: Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics
http://ift.tt/1RwB66E
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
James Kirchick
CANDIDATE OR CULT LEADER? 04.02.16 10:00 PM ET
Donald Trump Is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics
The madmen’s mutual mantra: “Don't ever defend. Always attack.”
Is Donald J. Trump the new George Wallace? Silvio Berlusconi? Adolf Hitler?
Could be. But at least as much as a southern segregationist, rich pervert turned politico or genocidalitler?Could genocidal fascist, Trump fits the profile of a cult leader, and one cult leader in particular: L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the pyramid-scheme-masquerading-as-religion known as Scientology.
Consider: both men are (or, in Hubbard’s case, were) narcissistic, autocratic, money-obsessed, pathological liars and would-be sexual conquerors who built business empires for the primary purpose of self-enrichment under glitz-drenched brands maintained by fraud and advanced by uncompromising litigiousness and occasional physical aggression against critics.
Hubbard died in 1986, though perhaps only corporeally. He claimed he was Cecil Rhodes in a previous life and today may be inhabiting the soul of Donald Trump for all we know; at the least the two men bear some resemblance.
Both are defined by compulsive acquisitiveness. “MAKE MONEY. MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY,” Hubbard wrote to underlings in an early Scientology “Governing Policy” document. “MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY.”
Trump’s complaints of being unfairly audited by the IRS echo Scientology’s decades-long battle with the taxman; Hubbard was himself named an unindicted co-conspirator to a covert, 1973 Scientology operation dubbed “Snow White” aimed at infiltrating the agency.
Hubbard was also one of the great frauds of the 20th century. A man who lied about nearly every aspect of his biography and repeatedly bragged about imaginary feats of daring and physical bravery, his breathless, downright Trumpian testaments to his own genius and courage were mere preparation for the greatest lie of them all: that he had unlocked the secrets of the human mind in the form of “Dianetics,” the pseudoscience at the heart of Scientology. Hubbard used to claim that “auditing,” a process in which one holds onto electrically charged metal cans and talks about past life experiences, could raise people’s I.Q. by one point per hour.
In one of the many legal cases brought against the Church, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge deemed Hubbard “a pathological liar” driven by “egotism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.” Sound familiar?
Much as Trump surrounds himself with sycophants and media supplicants, Scientologists venerate Hubbard as a sort of man-god; his portrait, which followers salute while shouting “hip hip hooray,” is ubiquitous in Church establishments.
One distinction: Whereas Trump’s a talker, Hubbard was a writer, one who started out as a pulp fiction novelist and churned out hundreds of works of science fiction, crime potboilers, and sham sociology and religious texts over the course of his long career. For both men, the overflow of words is a function of an insatiable appetite for money, power and acclaim.
When not making up stories about themselves, both men lied about the world around them. Trump persists with his false claim of witnessing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers, one of countless fibs he has repeated effortlessly on the campaign trail. Hubbard, bitter at the psychiatric profession’s designation of Dianetics as crankery, declared psychiatry a devious plot to destroy humanity.
Trump also resembles Hubbard as a self-help guru who mostly helps himself. Like all religions, Scientology promises its followers spiritual illumination, the apex of which is the revelation that, 75 million years ago, a galactic warlord named Xenu planted the bodies of billions of aliens around the Earth’s volcanoes and detonated them with hydrogen bombs. The immortal spirits of these beings now adhere to humans in the form of “Thetans” that one can only release with the help of Scientology teachings.
Trump’s Art of the Deal is to Trumpism what Hubbard’s Dianetics is to Scientology: a load of bullshit pretending to teach you how to fix yourself, just replacing the new-age homilies with odes to avarice.
What distinguishes Scientology from most other organized religions is—still more shades of Donald—its unambiguously transactional relationship with adherents. In exchange for moving up its ladder of enlightenment known as “The Bridge to Total Freedom,” Scientologists pony up ever-increasing amounts of money to the Church, which often pressures them into maxing out credit cards, taking on loans they cannot afford, or driving themselves into bankruptcy.
The most succinct and accurate description of Scientology remains that offered by investigative journalist Richard Behar in his 1991 Time magazine investigation, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” Scientology, Behar wrote, is a “hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
For Trump and Hubbard respectively, politics and religion are extensions of business empires. Trump University, the now-defunct branch of the many-tentacled Trump Organization that most clearly resembles the Scientology swindle, preyed upon unsuspecting consumers by guaranteeing them future riches in return for the money they handed over now. Today, Trump University, (which, despite its name, was never an accredited educational institution), is the subject of a class action lawsuit in three states; the New York State Attorney General has condemned it as a “bait-and-switch scheme.” A recent New York Times story revealed how instructors pressured students to turn in positive evaluations, much like how Scientology brainwashes and intimidates its own followers. “The surveys themselves were a central component of a business model that, according to lawsuits and investigators, deceived consumers into handing over thousands of dollars with tantalizing promises of riches,” the Times reports.
Hubbard and Trump—camp figures to the core—also share a chintzy aesthetic. Scientology videos, promotional materials and edifices all share a grotesquely ersatz style that’s been described as a pastiche of an Ikea catalog with a “romanticized nineteenth-century English countryside.” This is eerily similar, in tastelessness if not actual design, to Trump’s gaudy and soulless properties. Visiting Trump’s New York Penthouse apartment a decade ago, Daily Beast founding editor Tina Brown memorably noted its “Ba’ath Party décor.”
Most ominous is the connection between the two men’s misogyny, racism, authoritarianism and the physical violence encouraged by their organizations.
* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *
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