David Miscavige went to ‘Crazy Town’ at Scientology’s Austin Ideal Org opening!

Yesterday, Scientology leader David Miscavige made his triumphant return to the “Ideal Org” program by showing up to open the new org in Austin, Texas. And what did he talk about? He talked about crazy town.

We know that string of words must seem pretty unrecognizable to the general public, but let us explain.

David Miscavige has been, since the death of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1986, the ultimate, ruthless leader of the Scientology movement, which has, all evidence suggests, been in pretty steep decline since the 1990s.

In 2002 or so, Miscavige came up with a way to at least prop up the appearance that Scientology was still expanding by replacing the large “orgs” (short for “organizations”) in each big city around the world with something even bigger and more expensive, what he called an “Ideal Org.”

So for the last two decades, what remains of the Scientology membership has been under incredible pressure to come up with huge piles of cash to pay for Miscavige’s real estate obsession.

Austin was no different than the others, and so for many years the few local Scientologists who actually live in the Texas capital were subjected to fundraising pressure that was not only intense, but it was also goofy.

You may remember that in 2021, we were fortunate that a woman named Kat helped us put together some pretty amazing footage of that fundraising, which she had managed to obtain after her brief time at the (pre-Ideal) Austin org. She was a local stand-up comedian who joined more as a way to infiltrate the church than a sincere effort to become a Scientologist, and after about 18 months inside, she came out and gave a couple of memorable interviews to our friend Chris Shelton in 2017.

She then helped us put together some amazing footage of the fundraising for the Ideal Org, which included such gems as the hula dance that was supposed to encourage members to fork over tens of thousands of dollars.

(The LRH portrait on the wall behind them is a wonderful touch.)

And keep in mind, this was a decade ago. That’s how long these local folks have been waiting to see their cash turn into yesterday’s ceremony.

Well, Kat let us know that she was there yesterday along with other curious folks who were being kept away from the ceremony with the use of such standard Scientology methods as shrubs in planters placed in strategic locations, as well as security guards and local police.

However, she was close enough to be able to hear Miscavige giving his speech, and she tells us that there was no doubt she heard him multiple times referring to…

Crazy town!

“Bystanders were really curious what the hell he was talking about,” Kat tells us. “You might recognize ‘Crazy Town’ as the theme of many of Austin’s fundraising nights. Stacy Sass was the ‘Mayor of Crazy Town,’ and Crazy Town involved a lot of stupid costumes and ridiculous behavior to hype up donations. On a few occasions Jeff Fischer dressed up in a hula skirt and coconut bikini and danced around when they hit goals.”

Oh, how could we forget! Of course we still have fond memories of that footage…

We’re glad that Kat took the time to go by yesterday’s event…

Since I was taking courses at the org in Austin seven years ago, and left right at the time they moved into the temporary space, I thought I’d give my observations about the event.

First, the local official they got to speak to the crowd was the president of the Austin NAACP. I couldn’t hear his whole speech, but generally he praised L. Ron Hubbard for supporting civil rights and talked about him as if he were still alive. Then they brought out David Miscavige at about 1:30pm. The big thing he announced was that because the staff had been fully trained, “Austin is the first all Golden Age org in history.”

He shouted out a number of Austin org leaders that I recognized:

Liz Combs Seivert – ED Foundation.

Sean Seivert – Liz’s husband, chiropractor in Taylor, TX (Atlas Natural Medicine). I did my first course with him, the Dianetic auditing introduction.

Jim and Stacy Sass – local whales who own Cody Builders Supply off of 290 out toward Manor, TX. I have a lot of memories of Stacy from when I was in the org. She was a big fundraising person. A very particular memory I have of her is one day in the TV room, she held a little event in which she took $100,000 cash and threw it throughout the room and had us “play” in it.

Tracy and Sheila Springer – The Springer clan is huge in the Austin org. I was interrogated on the cans by the son when I was on my way out back in 2017. His brother Korbin was the only politically liberal member I knew and was a student at UT at the time I was in. Korbin also started the new-ish Austin Delphi academy (New Leaf Academy) out on the northwest side of town.

Eric Toohey – Austin whale

In general, Austin Scientology royalty is the Tooheys, the Sieverts, the Springers, and the Sasses. They’re also all entangled by marriage and kids. As far as I know they are all still in, regardless of the weird family betrayals. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the Springer/Sievert/Toohey/Sass family web is Lori Hodgson’s daughter via marriage. I only saw Lori’s daughter and her husband once though. Both had washed out of the Sea Org (from what I recall) but they still seemed respected at the org.

It was a bittersweet experience for me to see the Ideal Org finally open. I’ve been waiting a long time for this because I felt that once it opened, and the people I still cared about saw how utterly it failed, they might get a tiny spark of awakening.

Austin Scientologists always have had a glimmer of self-recognition as to how pathetic their org is, so I was ready for them to just finally get the org open and see for themselves that nothing will change. But it’s taken seven years since the day they said they “finished fundraising” to finally get here.

Thank you for those thoughts, Kat. We’re really glad you were there and could provide us this inside perspective.

And wow, to think that Miscavige actually made mention, multiple times, of the insanity that characterized the fundraising for his new temple to greed.

What a hula dance to crazy town.

[Kat, at the (non-Ideal) org]

[Kat’s perspective yesterday at the grand opening]

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No ‘Group Therapy’ this week

Your Proprietor has been out of town on a family vacation this past week, and we want to thank the friends of the Underground Bunker who helped us keep this place going with their excellent contributions while we’ve been on the road: Sunny Pereira, Valerie Ross, and Bruce Hines.

We’ll be back home soon, and we’ll resume our Group Therapy sessions with Lynette, Pan, Pete, and Alex next week.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

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