Still non-barking Hubbard
[Mostly keeping this space occupied whlle I'm pushing toward final deadline on courseware.]

I've made this point before, and it becomes stronger with the passage of time.

Last year I accidentally noticed a wonderful dissident magazine called Aberree, published from 1954 to 1964 in Enid. Since Enid was my old stomping ground, I knew a lot of the places and people mentioned in the publication. I was surprised that I hadn't heard of the magazine during the years when I was in and around Enid. Still surprised.

Alphia Hart, the editor, was a sharp-eyed and heretical observer of everything, but his main focus was on the Hubbard organization. Hubbard's mafia tried to take him down and finally gave up.

I wrote 50 related items over six months, then used up the available material and moved on. With 50 items citing a dissident who is still mentioned in Hubbardian circles, you'd think the modern Hubbardians would have clusterfucked the entries. The Hubbard organization pioneered the art of clustertrolling, LONG before the web made the practice easy.

I can tell from blog stats when an item gets noticed. None of the Aberree items caught any specific readers or linkers.

Conclusion: Hubbardism no longer has the power to threaten or ruin its enemies. One estimate indicates current membership is 50k, not the millions we are led to believe.


= = = = =

Modern sidenote: This story about the Theranos fraud shows an uncanny resemblance to Hubbard. Elizabeth Holmes was supposedly developing an automatic blood-testing machine, but didn't take any of the necessary steps to make it work. The setup seemed like a classic pump-and-dump stock fraud. But when the shit started to fly, Holmes removed the entrepreneur mask and told her employees that she was starting a religion. Anyone who didn't want to spread the gospel could get the fuck out. Most employees got the fuck out.

Hubbard's religion began with a much simpler machine, Volney Mathison's modified lie detector. Hubbard built a complex tyrannical religion around the machine. My experiments showed that the circuit was more active than passive; it was sending a current through the body which had an effect on heart rate and brain, perhaps through the vagus nerve. I don't know if Hubbard understood this, but he certainly understood that the machine was a useful tool for controlling people.

If Holmes was planning to use a blood-testing machine to start a religion, maybe her machine was also meant to be active instead of passive. The needle could inject a little RFID tag before taking the blood, like a mosquito injecting a virus.

Labels: Aberree

  ¶ 1:41 AM