Scientologists have kept a book out of American stores for 27-years because it alleges that L. Ron Hubbard was a racist and a fantasist with a penchant for bizarre sexual rituals; but it is finally getting published.
Written by British journalist Russell Miller, it was finished the year after Hubbard’s death in 1986. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard explores the myths the father of Scientology created around himself.
Bare-Faced Messiah was published around the globe, but was blocked in the United States after two years of litigation in both the United States and United Kingdom from Scientologist leaders. Miller’s American publisher gave up; but now, finally, it is being released with a newly-written introduction from Miller by Silvertail Books, who, in February 2014, were granted world English rights to the book.
The biography was cited quite often by later Scientology books, including Lawrence Wright’s bestselling Going Clear, but few Americans had a chance to read it.
The evidence clearly shows that Hubbard lied about his education and childhood in official Scientology biographies and refutes the assertion that he was one of the nation’s first nuclear physicists and a doctor. In fact, Hubbard failed the one class he took in nuclear physics and dropped out of George Washington University after his sophomore year, never earning a degree.
Hubbard would also observe and document bizarre sex rituals with a prominent Caltech rocket scientist, Jack Parsons, who lived in Pasadena and was a well-known eccentric. Parsons was a devotee of the occult and Hubbard allegedly stole his girlfriend from him. Hubbard moved into Parson’s home, where they would engage in bizarre sex magick rituals that followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley. Parsons intended to create a ‘moonchild’- with assistance from Hubbard – who would be “mightier than all the kinds of the earth”, and whose birth Crowley had foretold.
Hubbard would come to realize that by branding Scientology as a religion it would be better for “business concerns”-
Sam Merwin, then the editor of the Thrilling Science Fiction magazines, was quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah:
“…Hubbard was invited to address a science fiction group in Newark hosted by the writer, Sam Moskowitz. ‘Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,’ he told the meeting. ‘If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.’
This is why Hubbard, and the current leadership of the church, specifically target celebrity devotees such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta- so that it would remain in the news.
Religious gullibility is, perhaps, superseded only by religious fundamentalism.
Hubbard extolled a life in Montana, where he claimed he grew up breaking wild horses on his grandfather’s ranch. However, Miller exposes that Hubbard’s grandfather was a “small-time veterinarian who supplemented his income renting out horses and buggies from a small barn.”
Miller also asserts that Hubbard lied about his service in World War II and only counts around 25,000 people as followers instead of the millions the church claims.
According to Scientology legend, Hubbard had served in “all five theaters” of the war, had been the first American casualty in the Pacific, had survived being machine-gunned and blinded and had broken various limbs, and had commanded American “corvettes” in both the Atlantic and Pacific.
These official church accounts of his wartime experience paint him as a hero and keen military commander on the level of Alexander the Great, but his official government wartime record reveals that Hubbard was a naval lieutenant whom oversaw the re-fit of a trawler in Boston Harbor and was relieved of its command before it ever sailed and, while he was in the Pacific, he was handed command of an anti-submarine vessel that never left the coast of Oregon.
The most astounding event of Hubbard’s war was when he fired on Mexican territory for “target practice” and set off an international incident.
Hubbard is claimed to have traveled Asia intensively, where he developed his love of philosophy and mysticism after spending time with holy men who thought him to be quite gifted. All Miller could find evidence of, however, were two trips to Asia as a teenager while his father was stationed in Guam; including a passage by Hubbard noting that “the Chinese could make millions if they turned the Great Wall into a roller coaster”, but Hubbard ultimately dismissed the thought because “The trouble with China is… there are too many chinks here.”
In researching the legal reasoning for the U.S. ban on Bare-Faced Messiah, a New York Times article from 1989 was found involving a Federal appeals court in New York rejecting the argument that the First Amendment should be taken into account in determining whether publication of a book may be barred even when only a small amount of previously unpublished material is quoted. The right of historians and biographers to quote from letters, diaries, and other unpublished primary source material had been challenged in the case.
The decision escaped much publicity because it relied on a technicality to uphold a publisher’s right to print the unflattering book about L. Ron Hubbard. A Danish corporation related to the church sought to bar the book on the ground that publishing parts of Hubbard’s diaries and journals constituted a copyright infringement.
The concern of the plaintiffs were that Miller’s research includes material such as Hubbard’s teenage diaries, personal correspondence to colleagues, employers and the FBI, as well as government documents.
Miller wasn’t concerned with only debunking a legend. He was documenting a remarkable life. While Hubbard told lie after lie about his accomplishments, he actually did live a chaotic and full life, getting into and out of trouble with pretentiousness.
If he was too busy to attend his college classes, for example, it was because he was ‘barnstorming the country with a friend in a biplane’. Through it all, he was increasingly turning his talents for exaggeration into a budding career as a writer.
For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http://bbark.deepforestproductions.com/
Sources: Daily Mail, NY Post, NY Times, Washington Times, The Bookseller
© 2014 R. Wolf Baldassarro/Deep Forest Productions
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