Scientology royalty: Why it makes sense for Tom Cruise to host the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

 
A few days ago ITV announced plans for next month’s elaborate celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, which will be broadcast live from Windsor Castle.

There was quite a reaction when it was announced that one of the hosts of the festivities will be American actor Tom Cruise.

Naturally, we heard from people who were surprised not only that an American actor would be hosting this decidedly British event, but also that Tom’s status as Scientology’s number one celebrity made it a questionable decision, didn’t it?

Well, we’re here to reassure everyone that Tom will fit right in, for the following reasons.

1. Scientology itself is enjoying its 70th birthday this year. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard kicked off a new movement with his 1950 book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which was not only a bestseller but resulted in a small boom of interest, people getting together to “audit” each other’s prenatal memories, and the establishment of some foundations. By the next year, however, Hubbard was bankrupt, his second marriage had fallen apart, and he’d absconded to Cuba to hide from creditors. With the help of an oil millionaire, however, in 1952 Hubbard began to piece things together again in Wichita and Phoenix, where he announced that his movement had a new name: Scientology. What a coincidence that the same year Elizabeth II took the crown, Scientology was born. And seven years later Hubbard moved to England, where he established a headquarters in East Grinstead, and by the mid-60s he was enjoying the absolute height of his popularity. Scientology was going so well in England by that point, Parliament tried to ban it for a short time, and wouldn’t let Scientologists flocking there from overseas into the country. Eventually, the heat on Hubbard got so bad, in 1967 he took Scientology to sea and ran it from a ship for the next eight years. But Saint Hill Manor in England will always be “Ron’s home,” and the ties between Scientology and Albion remain strong.

2. Scientology is on fumes, and it’s awfully big of ITV to lend a hand. Although Scientology claims to have millions of adherents and even, in a 2012 ad, said that it was gaining 4.4 million new people a year, the truth is that it has never had anything like those numbers. At its height, around the year 1990, it had around 100,000 active members around the world, but the last twenty years have been so bad, we’ve put together evidence that the number of active Scientologists is only about 15,000 now. Scientology is struggling, and the pandemic has not helped. But hey, here’s ITV and the queen to the rescue! Scientology never misses an opportunity to pretend not only that it’s “the fastest growing religion in the world,” but that it’s the “world’s coolest religion” and that it’s a mainstream affair. Any involvement with Tom Cruise and British royalty will provide fodder for countless new ads and come-ons from church leader David Miscavige and his hired hands.

3. If there’s an accident at the jubilee, Tom is the only one who can do something about it. Tom Cruise was brought into Scientology in 1986 by his then-girlfriend Mimi Rogers, just a few months after the death of Hubbard. Tom and Mimi were married on May 9, 1987, which is Dianetics Day, celebrating the May 9, 1950 publication date of Scientology’s Bible, as it were. In 2004, to celebrate Tom’s gung-ho dedication, Scientology leader David Miscavige made a 30-minute film about Tom’s involvement in the church, which was shown at a private celebration that October so Dave could give Tom a special “Freedom Medal of Valor.” Part of that 30-minute video was a 9-minute interview of Tom himself, in a black turtleneck, talking about what a privilege it was to be a Scientologist. Four years later, in 2008, that interview was leaked to the Internet, and the rest of the world got to see the actor explain that when a Scientologist comes across the scene of an accident, he knows he’s the only one who can do something about it. This was a puzzling statement to outsiders, but high-ranking “OT” Scientologists know that they have incredible superpowers bestowed on them by L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology,” which includes the ability to affect matter, energy, space, and time with only the powers of their mind. This is good news for ITV. If something goes haywire at the Platinum Jubilee, they know they can rely on Tom to fix it with laser beams coming out of his brain.

4. Tom has been a queen himself. A core tenet of Scientology is that we are each of us immortal beings known as “thetans” who have lived for trillions of years, inhabiting a countless number of bodies — male and female — over countless lifetimes that have occurred in other planets and other galaxies. As a Scientologist, Tom Cruise has spent years at hundreds of dollars an hour to recover those memories of his past lives, confirmed by the swinging needle of an e-Meter. He knows that he’s lived at every strata of society on those myriad planets and space confederations, as a pauper and a prince, and somewhere along the line he not only was the top monarch of a sprawling space empire, but he simply had to have been, at one time or another in 76 trillion years, a queen. So he has that in common with Elizabeth, and he’s no doubt happy to chat with her about it and compare notes.

5. What better way to patch up things with the colonies than invite its most famous deadbeat dad. Imagine your dad hosts the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and all you get is a postcard. But that’s likely to be all Suri Cruise gets out of the experience, since her father decided years ago that his young daughter was the demon seed and stopped seeing her. Now, it’s true that since his ex, Katie Holmes, caused a major public relations disaster for Scientology when she ditched him while he was just pretending to be an astronaut while filming scenes for Oblivion in Iceland in 2012, she would be considered a “suppressive person” and Suri would then be a “potential trouble source” for being connected to her. But here’s the thing, Tom is Scientology’s biggest celebrity and if he wanted to he could ignore all of those rules. So why doesn’t he ignore Scientology’s heartbreaking family-ripping rules and see his daughter? As we have said again and again, maybe he’s just that much of an asshole. It sure would be good to see a journalist who has the chance at the Jubilee ask him why his daughter isn’t along for the ride.

 
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Source Code

“A Clear apparently is the — oh, not apparently, it’s true — he’s the original electric eel, and so on, and apparently affects physical objects without half trying in that state. That is to say, you can warm something up or something. This isn’t phenomena that you would consider even very good phenomena; I mean, it isn’t very advanced, don’t you see? Now, you can see very easily that throwing a lightning bolt couldn’t be very much of a trick. It merely depends on practice in holding your position. If you could hold your position very accurately, why, you could throw a lightning bolt that would probably char the Empire State Building. But that’s beside the point. That’s just theoretical. What you’ve got here in actual fact is that by staring at things you can make them warm, and things like this, you know. You pick up a, here’s a glass with some ice in it, you know? You stare at it for a few minutes and you haven’t got a glass with ice in it. It’s the warmest Coca-Cola you have ever had anything to do with, don’t you see? This is very, very low-scale phenomena. It’s just monkey business.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 27, 1965

Avast, Ye Mateys

“I’ve just written an HCO Pol Ltr on ‘Death Wishes’ of interest to the ship.” — The Commodore, April 27, 1969

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“When I was just a static and nothing else, there was a bunch of us existing in a nothingness with nothing before us or anywhere, and we did nothing, absolutely nothing but observe — you guessed it — nothing. We were all 100 percent connected together and would have shared everything if there was anything to share (one mind, multiple viewpoints) but we never communicated or had anything to communicate, nor did we have any thoughts or emotions, or whatever, but it was better than tone 40 because we were above the dichotomies of serene beingness. I want to do that again.”

 
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Past is Prologue

1996: AOL continues to run its Religion & Ethics folder as if it were theta.com, the church’s web site. Now that critical postings are banned from the Scientology folder, the battle has moved to other folders on the system. “Yes, the Free Zone folder is gone. The last activity I remember there was RonArtist’s post asserting that the Free Zone folder had no right to exist in the AOL Religion and Ethics area because, according to him, the Free Zone wasn’t a religion and its only purpose was to ‘attack’ Scientology. And a Scientologist called TheAlaskan, who sounds wacko enough to be a fanatical Scn but might be a troll, posted a threatening message ‘to the squirrels.’ The folder disappeared soon after that. Whether it was due to Scn pressure or lack of activity, I don’t know. If any of you have any 10-free-hour AOL disks that you’re using for coasters, or if you have an AOL account you’re not making use of, please give a thought to jumping into the AOL Scn folders for a bit.”

 
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Random Howdy

“The big difference between Scientology and the mafia is the mafia actually go to church on Sunday.”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Next pretrial conference May 31. Trial scheduled for August 29.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Last hearing was on January 18, referred to grand jury. Additional charges also referred to grand jury after January 5 assault while in jail.
— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff’s sentencing to be scheduled.
— Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Pretrial conference May 20 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial conference set for May 5.
— Joseph ‘Ben’ Barton, Medicare fraud: Pleaded guilty, awaiting sentencing.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Found guilty of criminal and civil contempt.

Civil litigation:
— Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Eleventh Circuit affirmed ruling granting Scientology’s motion for arbitration. Garcias considering next move.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Valerie’s motion for reconsideration denied on March 15.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Next hearing scheduled for June 29.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for June 28.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: Trial concluded, Cannane victorious, awarded court costs. Appeal hearing held Aug 23-27. Awaiting a ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

 
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THE PROSECUTION OF DANNY MASTERSON

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links, including our four days in Los Angeles covering the preliminary hearing and its ruling, which has Danny facing trial and the potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison.

SCIENTOLOGY: FAIR GAME

After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.

LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH

An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and now on Netflix.

SCIENTOLOGY’S CELEBRITIES, from A to Z

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

 
Other links: SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks. Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Clearwater city manager unhappy about landing on our ‘Top 25 Enabling Scientology’ list
[TWO years ago] Have Jane Doe’s attorneys figured out how to serve Scientology leader David Miscavige?
[THREE years ago] Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard on family and sex: As enlightened as you’d imagine
[FOUR years ago] Strange days for a woman accusing Danny Masterson of rape — and for her rocker husband
[FIVE years ago] Scientology submits names of 500 members to federal court as ordered, but there’s a catch
[SIX years ago] LIVE IN L.A.: Hearing in Laura DeCrescenzo’s Scientology forced-abortion lawsuit
[SEVEN years ago] Should Louis Theroux be worried? What a Scientology ‘documentary’ actually looks like
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: More scenes from the End of Days
[NINE years ago] Scientology’s Notorious R2-45 Policy: Is There a Smoking Gun?
[ELEVEN years ago] Michael Fairman Talks to the Voice After his Scientology Excommunication

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 27, 2022 at 07:00

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Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2021 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2021), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 15 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

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Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

 

Tony Ortega at The Daily Beast