How Maoists Are Like Scientologists

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. First the Scientologists, then the Maoists. You should see my e-mail inbox.

After the video of Tom Cruise offering inspirational advice to Scientologists was leaked on the interweb -- and God bless Gawker for being unafraid to keep the link live -- I got calls from three network TV shows asking me to comment. I don't have much experience on TV, but I had written several articles about Scientology, and as the rare writer who takes Scientology seriously as a religion, rather than dismissing it as a cult, I was all of a sudden in demand.

So I went on CBS's The EarlyShow, where I tried to explain some of the terms that Tom Cruise uses in the video ("org," "PTS"). I also tried to explain that Scientology may seem bizarre, but in my experience of knowing Scientologists and interviewing them (though not being one myself), it doesn't seem like a "cult." It doesn't try to separate people from their families, for example.

And so the e-mails started coming, from Scientologists and, more aggressively, from anti-Scientologists accusing me of being soft. (When it gets to be too much, I just have a nice glass of wine.)

Then, yesterday, my article about Bob Avakian appeared in the Boston Globe. Avakian is a fairly trivial character, the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, an old Maoist organization that probably has a few hundred members in the country but acts as if it's the vanguard of the next revolution. (They also have a soft spot for Stalin, for what it's worth.) The occasion for my article was the appearance in The New York Review of Books of an ad signed by many famous scholars, artists, and activists -- Cornel West, the singer Rickie Lee Jones, Chuck D., cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal -- calling on people to "engage with" the thought of Bob Avakian and defending his right to free speech. This all gets pretty bizarre, since no one is attacking Avakian's right to free speech, but he is nonetheless underground and on the lam, perhaps in Paris, perhaps somewhere else, because the Party fears for his safety. (Read the article if you care to have this all explained.)

And it occurred to me in the writing of the Avakian piece that followers of Avakian aren't so different from followers of L. Ron Hubbard. Both groups, for one, believe that their sacred leaders hold the key to the best possible future: if only people would get on board, become Scientologists or Maoists, the new, brighter future would arrive. But, more important, both are terrific latter-day examples of cults of personality. Scientologists will tell you they don't worship L. Ron Hubbard, but they talk about him as if he's the smartest, bravest man who ever lived. They have pictures of him everywhere. They even think his novels are good. And Avakian's supporters have been increasingly frank that they actually want a cult of personality around Bob Avakian (although they call it a "cult of appreciation").

Should this bother us? No, we need not fear Bob Avakian or L. Ron Hubbard. I find their followers entertaining, and occasionally insightful (most people have some good points to make some of the time). It's groups like these that keep America interesting. The biggest mistake that people make when dealing with fringe organizations is to forget that one of the glories of our country is that such groups are allowed to exist. Germany tries to suppress Scientology -- we allow them their buildings in Hollywood and Times Square.

Comments

[raymondlotta]

A REPLY TO MARK OPPENHEIMER ON BOB AVAKIAN

by Raymond Lotta

For all of Mark Oppenheimer's dismissals of Bob Avakian as inconsequential, he is clearly distraught by the fact that some renowned, thinking, and progressive-minded people feel there is something rather substantive in Avakian's work. To cite just two examples: Fr. Daniel Berrigan said about Avakian's memoir, "I felt very attuned to Bob in what were both seeking?"; and John Hutnyk, head of Culture Studies at Goldsmiths University of London has said of Avakian's forthcoming book on religion: "Avakian has answers as to why religious fundamentalism (Christian or Islamic) is on the rise?[and he does this with] a philosophico-political analysis and a program for change."

He also finds it "bizarre" that people might be concerned about dangers a revolutionary leader like Avakian would face. Then again, Oppenheimer seems utterly oblivious to a history of "democracy" in this country that has seen the suppression of the Wobblies, the era of McCarthyism, and the vicious assault on the Black Panther Party. He also seems to have forgotten that one of the opening acts of the Bush administration was its post-9/11 warning to "watch what you say." Such, in Oppenheimer's words, are the "glories of our country."

Read my response to Oppenheimer's earlier article in The Boston Globe on Bob Avakian at:
http://www.engagewithbobavakian.org/comment.htm

[wadenelson1]

If it stifles dissent, and open, public examination of its own tenets, then it's dangerous.

Look at the efforts Scientology has made to squash dissenters, reporters, etc.

The Mormon church is only slightly more open.

You may not insult Allah or draw cartoons about him without the risk of a fatwa.

On the other hand, anyone in the world is free to examine, criticize, even to reject Christianity, and yet it's STILL HERE.

God may have used evolution to do his work in six of HIS days, not six of OURS, but God is good, and the knowledge of good versus evil is what separates man from the beasts. We are pre-programmed for good, even though we are capable of enormous evil.

[marignymitch]

Mr Oppenheimer:

They're all cults. The difference between a cult and religion in this country is a matter of degree. If the crazy has many followers it's a religion, like say Roman Catholicism, but if the crazy has fewer believers it's a cult, like Scientology.

I think it's good and all that many, many cults are free to flower in the country. What disturbs me, however, is that most Americans have bought the crazy in one form or another. Most everyone, if you believe the statistics, have drunk the Kool-Aid. I'm surrounded by sleep-walking sheep! Help!

[InofTouch]

Unlike the other big three mainstream relgions, this one choose to be close and exclusive. So people start overthinking about this relgion since it not open like Madonna's Kabbalah

[OttoMann]

Oh, I see, it's not a cult, it's just a "cult of personality."

[Crowhaul]

We should all keep in mind that the batshit (to quote Bill Maher) associated with a religion like Scientology is no different that the batshit associated with Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, etc.