Marty posted a blog entry in response to a new St. Petersburg Times article about a WISE-affiliated company accused of paperwork fraud. (WISE is the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, an organization that licenses Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s management system, the “Administrative Technology.” I used to work at a WISE company, by the way; that was the beginning of my Scientology education.)
What’s of interest to me is not the article, but the way Marty reacted to it.
“The Times took the lazy, low road on this ‘investigation,'” writes Marty. “They take a couple of LRH quotes out of context and position them as the why for the criminality… If the LRH quotes…had any bearing on the company’s criminality (ALL RECENT) then where was the Times twenty years ago?”
I clicked Marty’s link to the article expecting to find some really damning Admin Tech quotes. (Goodness knows there are a lot!) Instead, I found this:
Hubbard preached that managers keep a keen eye on statistics and not worry about coddling employees.
“However one tries to coat the pill, there is no substitute, in an executive, for the ability to get the crew to produce,” he wrote. “The fire-breathing product officer will be followed and supported when the wishy-washy old pal guy will be stepped all over in the rush to follow the real leader.”
The only way for an organization to survive is to grow, said Hubbard, who also devised a system of “ethics” in which unproductive employees could work their way out of conditions called “danger” and “nonexistence.”
That’s it. 104 words out of a 2,800 word article. And nothing that blames the company’s bad behavior on LRH.
So why is Marty so adamant? Why is he suddenly down on the SP Times — a paper he loved and lauded when they featured him in their Truth Rundown series ?
The answer, I think, is that Marty knows the truth about the Admin Tech. See, the Admin Tech is where LRH pretty much explains how the Scientology scam is run. Granted, it’s written so as not to disabuse the True Believers – read my blog entry Hard Sell for more on that – but it’s plain that the Admin Tech is all about spreading the word and making money.
That’s fine for a secular business, but it’s not so fine when you realize that it’s how LRH ran his “religion.”
As a former Scientology exec, Marty Rathbun should be very familiar with the Admin Tech, but many of his followers (those who were public Scientologists and not staff members) aren’t. And from what I’ve seen in the past, Marty is keen to keep it that way. You rarely see Admin Tech quotes on Marty’s site, and posting a quote from the Admin Tech in a comment is a pretty sure-fire way to get it censored.
I’ve always suspected Marty fears that if his followers start reading the Admin Tech, they are more likely to see Scientology for what it really is. And he’s probably right.
Now, if the article really did attempt to blame NTC’s troubles on the Admin Tech, I’d say that Marty had a point. I know the Admin Tech fairly well, and I can’t recall anything that encourages fraud – in fact, most of the admin tech is pretty sensible, if a bit close-minded. The article does seem to use NTC’s alleged illegalities as a reason to talk about Scientology’s ties to the business community.
Of course, Church-going Scientologists see that as a good thing. Most WISE business owners will be pleased to talk your ear off about their success with LRH’s Admin Tech. Used properly, it makes a lot of money for those who use it – including the Church of Scientology.
And that’s what makes Marty’s reaction so interesting. Perhaps he is just illustrating Scientology’s black-or-white mentality: The article talks about LRH’s Admin Tech; the article is negative; therefore, the article is anti-LRH entheta.
But Marty seems so eager to avoid the subject of the Admin Tech, that I can’t help but think there’s something else going on. I can tell you that the Admin Tech is the reason I’m not a Scientologist. Perhaps Marty’s afraid that his flock might feel the same way.
Am I reading too much into this?
Read the original articles here:
- SP Times article: Scientology founder’s tenets drive Pinellas title company, under fire for rapid document processing
- Marty Rathbun’s blog entry
UPDATE: Great quote in a comment from Marty:
“They [the SP Times] received so much grief from the church for the Truth Rundown series they have been a weird sort of propitiation band since. At the expense of LRH and the tech. This article is really the work of Miscavige. Throw LRH under the bus so as to divert attention from Miscavige.”
Get that? According to Marty, this article is a way of kissing up to the Church. If the first two sentences weren’t so delusional, the last two would be laugh-out-loud funny. Marty’s lying makes me angry, but at times like this, I really do feel sorry for the guy. I honestly do.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog's Blog 