Nearly everybody has heard at least once of Scientology: religion or cult? What is it really, outside the gossip pages of glossy magazines? It is certainly an anomaly in terms of communication. While it breaks every rule of PR, Scientology has been living and prospering for decades. Luca Poma provides us with an exclusive analysis from the inside.
by Luca Poma


Read more http://www.comunicazionecb21.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Scientology-a-reasoned-critique-of-communications-strategies.pdf

Thanks, Luca. Although Scientology, IMHO, mangles "ancient wisdom" instead of applying it, there are many good points in your article. CoS will claim that no journalists are allowed to join or take courses, so you were being secretive, and therefore they can ignore you. Ironically, being secretive is one of THEIR major weapons.

Welcome to OCMB, Luca. interesting article. I haven't read all of it yet but I promise to do so.

Note that we also have a Media Reports section and we're always looking for translations of important foreign news media that we might otherwise miss. If you can help us with italian-to-english translations of published articles that you think are worth posting then that would be great. We do already have some good translators here but the more the better.

“2) more generally, Scientology fails to apply the theory of stakeholder value. It has never drawn up, or at least never made public, a map of its stakeholders, it has never made public is medium and long term strategies of dialogue with them, it has never published a ha statement about the redistribution of added value;”

I would like to have a clarification of the above statement: In the USA we use the term “shareholder”. Is “stakeholder” is the same as “shareholder”?

Welcome to the group, Luca Poma!

I have always loved the cults contradictory stance towards communication...on the one hand it is the most important thing to do and on the other hand, they teach their members to keep secrets, lie, and be less than communicative with family.

This was a big one for me too, especially when I was in. I used to ask, what's the point of doing grade 0 if all you do now is censure my communication? Sometimes I wonder if the amount of cognitive dissonance created by scientology is intentional or is even an essential ingredient of the mind control process: render them nearly unconscious with so much cognitive dissonance that they are so confused they'll believe anything you tell them.

If the communication course were all that it is cracked up to be, then why would any member have to be less than honest with their family? The EP is that you can communicate about anything to anyone...I guess that means that you can talk to anyone as long as you do not discuss anything of importance.

I don't know if Luca is coming back to the board but it would be interesting to know if the authorities in Turin have done anything more since the police raided scientology offices over a year ago and seized all those documents on judges, police, journalists etc.

For those that don't know what I'm talking about, or need a reminder here's that media thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=32495
(Luca Poma's article translated: viewtopic.php?p=377969#p377969 )

Hello to everybody, I'll try to answer all your questions.
But first of all I would like to apologize with all of you: I speak fluently (in addition to my language, Italian) only French, so I have to respond, to translate, to post on these forums by my co-worker, then see the answers and repeat this process.
Moreover I'm often absent for business trips (now I'm reading from Mexico).
So it is very difficult for me to follow this thread and I can't be timely, in replies, as I would like.
As for "who I am" my CV is available online in English at http://www.lucapoma.info/en/docs/shortbio.pdf
I would like to clarify to avoid confusion that the term "manipulation" - which you can read in a passage in my curriculum - used in the Italian language does not necessarily have a negative meaning (for this reason I have placed quotation marks), this term mean (also) "change the form, as you do with your hands when you working with clay. "
The term "stakeholder" does not mean "shareholder" in Italian. One shareholder is a "shareholder" (he owns shares) while stakeholders means "any public potentially interested / interesting for an organization. "
Turning to questions of substance, my personal position on Scientology is detailed in the "open letter" that I published in Italy, available in English at the URL http://www.dimarzio.it/srs/modules/mydo ... hp?lid=184.
This letter is a reasoned organization criticism , and I don’t think to add anymore. It can be shared or not,it can be considered too soft or not, but it is my genuine opinion. I want to stress that a a strong Scientology criticism, in my opinion, is more valuable if it is done by someone like me –someone that has had an experience in some ways disappointing in Scientology- that doesn’t "hate" the organization”: it is obvious that those who have much rancour against Scientology, or everyone that think that Scientology is totally rubbish, criticizes it. It is less obvious that people like me, who even though doesn’t share much of what Scientology is, doesn’t think that it is "all the evil in the world"critics Scientology (even with this you can or cannot agree but it is my personal point of view). The world is not just white or black ("praise or denounce of Hubbard") there are many shades of gray, as taught us the fuzzy logic of fuzzy sets, but not for that reason this criticism is less strong.
One detail, to reply to an user's question: With regard to my admission to Scientology’s courses, ten years ago I was a consultant in public relations and communications and I wrote articles and essays, but I was not yet a journalist (in Italy for journalists need to do an exam and have an authorization by the State) so I never lied to Scientology by claiming to be a journalist while I was not. However, the suspiciousness of Scientology towards journalists is another indicator of poor mental health of the organization (even if I think that Scientology does not matter so much that you are a journalist, but if you're a journalist who is there to do a negative investigation on them).
Returning to the paper published in this forum, the purpose of this essay - which was written and originally published in one of the most famous italian review of public relations and communication - was not to criticize the doctrine of Scientology, but its aim is to criticize communication and public relations techniques of Scientology. Many Critics were launched against the doctrine of Scientolgy , someone more serious, others less well-grounded, but they have a high degree of subjectivity: who is in favor of Scientology will deny that this is true while who are against these charges support them . Criticism of their communication techniques, instead, is objective and indisputable, because if you violate a technical rule universally recognized of communication means that you are violating this rule beyond what you might think about the doctrine. Ironically,Scientology could be the best religion in the world (not, in my opinion) but it still be committing a serious error if it violates the rules of propriety in public relations or communications. At least this is my personal point of view.
I should add that I think this field of research - more objective than doctrinal one, which is also very interesting - it's been too little studied in the past: should revail more firmly, especially inside the journalistic community - the lack of "authenticity" of an organization that -only apparently, - displays its authenticity.
Furthermore, the fact that the scriptures of Scientology regarding public relations and, however flawed and outdated, cannot be altered by Scientologists is questionable: the world changes, and even where the doctrine would remain unchanged, the "techniques" through which the organization relates to the outside world should be discounted(up-date). The fact that this up-grade doesn't happen is a further demonstration of the stupidity of this organization, and also violation of the doctrine of Scientology itself, where it says that every organism (living or social)must act to achieve the highest level of survival (and Scientology in this sense doesn't doing it, because the modern world requires transparency that Scientology doesn't offer).
I conclude with an update on the blitz of Turin: the ordinary judiciary has decided to close the case, because in spite of the blitz was not possible to gather enough evidence on the existence of investigation files of personalities, journalists and judges.
These files certainly exist, but from sources related to former officials of the department 20 interviewed by me, of course, are not kept in the Org, and then when the police carried out the raid did not found them . The only exception was my file that as someone of you could remember, the Church claimed to have destroyed while still preserved one copy of that: then, the dispute at law will continue at the National guarantor of Privacy, which will provide reasonable sanctions against the Church. It would be more desirable to have a stronger action of censorship, but since they didn’t the files - apparently kept in members of Department 20 and Sientologist’s private houses - this was not possible. However it was a useful action of pressure and control: I hope that the Church understands that it can not do what it want and that the principle "the end justifies the means" can not be applied as a justification for systematically violations of the law.

Luca, every anti-Scientology website has representatives of “all shades of gray”, as you put it. I, for example, see Hubbard as a person with mild mental retardation. The others see him as an evil albeit very intelligent conman. Still, others think that some parts of Scientology, although not its entire body, are correct and workable. Finally, there are participants who practice Scientology outside the Church of Scientology.
Do feel free to express your opinion openly -- unlike the Scientology cult, we all respect freedom of speech.

PS. As a stock market analyst, I might be using in the future fuzzy sets to analyze the stock movements. But before that I need to take a graduate course on fuzzy sets theory.