4

The Legal Battles Are Designed to Exhaust People

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One of the smartest things the Church of Scientology realized is that when you have enough money and power to buy your very own Tom Cruise, dragging enemies to court is revenge enough, no matter what the outcome. And since the Church makes a point to copyright literally all of their religious texts and materials, the simple act of showing what the group believes in can be grounds for a costly legal clusterfuck. Any criticism of their doctrine can be labeled as either plagiarism or libel, and the compounding legal fees can sometimes be so great that they can completely ruin you.

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Their budget on these forms is more than the net income of everyone reading this combined.

Time magazine can afford to fight a $416 million lawsuit in exchange for writing an expose on the Church, but other organizations aren't so lucky. Such was the case for the Cult Awareness Network, a support group for people who had been indoctrinated by cults that was hit with 50 lawsuits by the Church of Scientology in the mid-'90s and forced into bankruptcy. The charred shell of a company was later bought by the Church of Scientology, who operates it to this day.

It's that kind of scorched-earth, piss-on-your-grave attitude that keeps these guys on top of a perpetual war with reality -- going so far as to create stacks of propaganda like this to clutter the legal battlefield:

Freedom Magazine
"Also: HBO's hokey hullabaloo, and The Times' tomfoolery."

3

They Work With the Internet to Control Information

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If there's one takeaway from all of this, it's that being shit-filthy rich is a pretty integral part of maintaining a spectacularly insane cult. But the more important factor is knowing how to use that cash to get your message in front of as many people as possible. This is why any modish youngster doing a simple search for the many Newhart episodes on YouTube will find this at the top of their video lineup:

YouTube
Side note: We'd pay good money to see Bob Newhart play L. Ron.

You may notice that Newhart does not contain the words "going," "clear," or "documentary."

But don't worry -- if you were searching for the documentary, Scientology has got you covered too. Right up until it came out, anyone searching for the HBO Going Clear documentary would instead find numerous videos and posts labeling the movie as an ugly piece of propaganda against a helpless religious group. For a while, this was the top search spot on Google:

Google
They even hit up Google+, reaching the tens and tens of users.

2

They Have Enough Money to Hijack Investigations

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The Church of Scientology has a lot of money, enough to buy two or three Disneys, but that's not their only remarkable feature; they have also probably killed people*.

*cough*

One such investigation involved a woman named Lisa McPherson, who in 1995 was put under the medical care of Church members before dying of a blood clot 17 days later. The cause of the blood clot, as declared by coroner Joan Wood, was severe dehydration.

It all seemed extremely open-and-shut -- Wood's judgment was backed up by five different doctors at the time. Naturally, the Church of Scientology did the only rational thing one could do in the face of obvious negligence: They sued the almighty shit out of Wood, demanding to have their own hired doctors (including celebrity pathologist Michael Baden) conduct an investigation that would shockingly conclude that Lisa's blood clot was the result of an old automobile accident instead of any alleged abuse. And just like that, the burden of guilt was remarkably shifted from the Church to the original coroner, Wood, an 18-year medical professional who had conducted over 5,000 autopsies and testified in hundreds of trials. She found herself on the defensive against a millionaire enterprise slamming her for months with numerous subpoenas and thousands of documents.

1

Religious Freedom Goes a Long Way

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Just so we're clear: We seriously can't stress enough the vastness of the sea of money the Church of Scientology floats upon. However, by far the most clever and infuriating detail here isn't their awesome power to tame federal institutions with fat green stacks of presidential flashcards, but rather that they've managed to harness one of the most cherished rights we have:

telegraph.co.uk

In 2013, a lengthy U.K. court battle resulted in five Supreme Court justices redefining religion to not exclusively require the belief in a god, allowing a couple to be married in the Church of Scientology. If you know absolutely nothing about Scientology, this seems like a clear-cut piece about the victory of religious freedom, and not the snarling hoot of triumph from the gullet of a terrifying monster. And that's the tricky little problem.

Despite very possibly being a money-hoarding, murdering, occult scam that preys on the cast of Look Who's Talking -- it's damn near impossible to dictate what brand of spirituality people choose to believe in when there's no absolute evidence that it's hurting anyone any more than any other religion out there.

And to be fair, other religions' movies are just as shitty as Battlefield Earth.

It's our willingness to respect freedom of religion that makes us vulnerable to the rancid mindspawn of pathological science-fiction writers who seek to take advantage of that.

And you know what? That trust is what makes us awesome. Without the freedom to pursue ideas and spirituality, we would never grow as a society, even if that freedom occasionally produces a Jonestown or a Hitler. You just have to take the good with the bad and have the wisdom to tell the two apart.

Along with writing for Cracked, Dave is also a renowned spiritual leader who will advise you for a small fee on Twitter.

Also be sure to check out 5 Brainwashing Tricks That Work No Matter How Smart You Are and 5 Ways Growing Up Inside Scientology Was a Nightmare.