Scientology and the Internet: Before there was Clambake, another OG made his mark
Your proprietor shares a couple of interests with a man named Ron Newman.
First and foremost, of course, is that we both have a fascination for Scientology and its controversies, even though neither of us were ever involved in it.
And before Operation Clambake became the Internet's hub for information about Scientology in 1996, it was Ron's page "The Church of Scientology vs The Net" that was cited by journalists as the best place to keep up on what was happening.
And a lot was happening in 1995, when Ron's page was a central depository for stories about the war going on between the church and its early online critics.
(That same year, your Proprietor was just starting out, writing our first story involving Scientology at the Phoenix New Times. We had little idea then what a pivotal time that was for copyright and trademark battles as Scientology tried to shut down Internet-based criticism.)
Besides having a lot of respect for Ron as an OG in the online wars, we've also enjoyed his social media posts about cycling. He does a great job documenting the growing number of bike paths proliferating in Massachusetts, where he lives, and he truly lives a cyclist's life.
When we mentioned at our Facebook account on Independence Day that we were fulfilling a crazy notion to cycle from our suburban NYC home to Boston in four days, he became intrigued.
After hearing from Ron, we decided that seeing him would be a great way to finish the journey.
But first we’d had to get there.
Fortunately, we had some great entertainment that first day out of town, riding along the Connecticut coast. On our way to New Haven, we listened to Amy Brady's new book on Audible.
“A lively history of ice in America,” says Kirkus reviews. “Environmental historian Brady, executive director of Orion magazine, takes a wide-ranging, comprehensive tour of places and people associated with our frosty obsession…Bursting at the seams with icy facts and trivia.”
We certainly enjoyed this great investigation of how ice as a commodity developed and changed social history. And the length of the book was almost exactly the same as our ride to see Amy and her partner, our old friend Alan Scherstuhl, former Village Voice film editor and someone we had first met working on a newspaper together in Kansas City some 20 years ago.
Alan and Amy were good enough to take us to a local REI so we could pick up a rain jacket, because it looked like we were going to get a soaking on day two, when we intended to get to Rhode Island.
Sure enough, it was a very wet day. But still gorgeous, and Google Maps put us on some pretty interesting and curious paths, including this narrow causeway over an estuary…
…and on a short ferry ride across the Connecticut River before reaching the Ocean State early in the afternoon.
Day three had us spinning quickly through Providence and out the other side on the lovely East Bay Bike Path down to Bristol. Then over the very frightening Mt. Hope Bridge (thanks, Google!) and then the much more pleasant and breathtaking Sakonnet River Bridge, where we took this shot.
We crossed the Massachusetts state line in Fall River, and that town is famous for one thing, of course.
So we decided to stop and see what Lizzie Borden’s resting place looks like. It’s actually a little underwhelming, and we only found it thanks to an online description of it.
Then, on day four, we had more rain, but it was still just a spectacular day of scenery, like this spooky closed road that Google put us on.
This was Independence Day, so we decided to make a short pilgrimage honoring one of the architects of American Independence, snapping this shot of the birthplace of John Adams in Quincy.
It was lightly raining when we made it to Boston in the afternoon, but we didn’t mind. It’s such a great town, and what a treat to be there on July 4th.
After rolling up to our hotel, we had a chance to get clean and update the website (and we highly recommend The Boxer in the West End. It was our second time staying there, and they really treated us well, which is important when you’re a dripping wet cyclist and need to get your bike up to the 6th floor.)
Later, we sauntered over to the Alcove, a restaurant just off the Freedom Trail at the wharf, and Ron joined us for a fine meal. (He had cycled over from his house, of course.)
We talked about Scientology, naturally, and he quizzed us about how things were going now.
And then he asked us a question that we admit kind of floored us.
We thought it was such a good question, we decided we had to assemble this piece and put it to you all.
Looking back at the online wars of the 1990s, when Scientology was so thoroughly exposed as a bad actor, as a bully, as a vexatious litigant, as an abuser and extorter, and in a new medium, the Internet, that would preserve those records indefinitely…
Given all that, Ron, one of the original gangsters, asked us…
“Tony, why are they still in business today?”
Wow. Now that’s a question.
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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
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Ron Newman is a hero.
And in answer to the question, I guess that the criminal organisation known as the "church" of $cioentology has been able to milk "the religion angle" for both tax benefits and legal protection. In the United States. Other countries are also shying away from using existing human rights laws to stop the organisation from violating the rights of its victims.
Data protection acts, such as the GDPR (in Europe) and CCPA (in California) should be used much more aggressively by critics and ex-victims.
The answer to,that question is an unfortunate twist on the golden rule. “He who has the gold rules.” Chipping away at their vast stores of wealth will undermine their foundations to the degree that at some point they will hopefully fall.