Saturday, August 05, 2017
Non-barking Hubbard
Since I noticed the astonishing Aberree in a NW Ayer list of newspapers, I've been writing and citing from it frequently. Alphia Hart was a truly prophetic thinker who happened to work in one of my old stomping grounds, and his writing deserves far more attention.
The Hubbardites have a strong reputation for catching and roasting all criticism, but I haven't seen ANY indication that my items about Hart have been read or noticed. The stats continue to show the same old pattern: two or three fairly regular readers, and frequent reads of two or three old items. The clicks on recent items seem to exclude the Aberree stuff.
I've seen a catch-and-roast pattern once before, when I dared to question a local Repooflican radio yapper. His Facebook fans grabbed onto the item and barbecued it. So I know how to spot such a pattern. It's just not happening with the Hart/Aberree material.
Two days later: The question was answered by an article in Atlantic on new religions.
[Hubbardism] has claimed to have around 10 million members worldwide. But it has struggled recently, as former high-level members of the faith described the immense sums of money required to advance within the Church hierarchy, as well as threatening actions the Church takes against dissenters. The faith’s founder aggressively recruited Hollywood celebrities to promote the faith in a successful bid to generate publicity. But despite all the glitz and glam, many celebrities once linked to Scientology have disavowed it. All signs point to a declining membership, and today the faith is independently estimated to have as few as 50,000 members worldwide.In other words, about the population of Enid. No longer capable of threatening or roasting every dissident. Later: This fits nicely into the pattern of Owning The Conversation, along with Amazon. Hubbard and Bezos mastered the art of dominating all "knowledge" about their organizations, which gives every little action and gesture HUGE leverage.
Labels: Aberree, Asked and answered
¶ 2:52 AM
