SelfDefinition.Org
The Brainwashing Manual
(1955)
L. Ron Hubbard
Chapter XIV The Smashing of Religious Groups
You must know that until recent times the complete subject of mental derangement, whether so light as simple worry or so heavy as insanity, was the sphere of activity of the church and only the church.
Traditionally in civilized nations and barbaric ones the priesthood alone had in complete charge the mental condition of the citizen. As a matter of great concern to the psychopolitician this tendency still exists in every public in the Western World and scientific inroads into this sphere has occurred only in official and never in public quarters.
The magnificent tool welded for us by Wundt [1] would be as nothing if it were not for official insistence in civilized countries that "scientific practices" be applied to the problem of the mind. Without this official insistence or even if it relapsed for a moment, the masses would grasp stupidly for the priest, the minister, the clergy when mental condition came in question. Today in Europe and America "scientific practices" in the field of the mind would not last moments if not enforced entirely by officialdom.
[1. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920): "Father of experimental psychology."]
It must be carefully hidden that the incidence of insanity has increased only since these "scientific practices" were applied. Great remarks must be made of "the pace of modern living" and other myths as the cause of the increased neurosis in the world. It is nothing to us what causes it, if anything does. It is everything to us that no evidence of any kind shall be tolerated afoot to permit the public tendency toward the church its way. If given their heads, if left to themselves to decide, independent of officialdom, where they would place their deranged loved ones, the public would choose religious sanatoriums and would avoid as if plagued places where "scientific practices" prevail.
Given any slightest encouragement, public support would swing on an instant all mental healing into the hands of the churches. And there are Churches waiting to receive it, clever churches. That terrible monster the Roman Catholic Church still dominates mental healing heavily throughout the Christian world and their well schooled priests are always at work to turn the public their way. In the field of pure healing the Church of Christ Science of Boston, Massachusetts excells in commanding the public favour and operates many sanatoriums. All these must be swept aside. They must be ridiculed and defamed and every cure they advertise must be asserted as a hoax. A full fifth of a psychopolitician's time should be devoted to smashing these threats. Just as in Russia we had to destroy, after many many years of the most arduous work, the Church, so we must destroy all faiths in nations marked for conquest.
Insanity must be made to hound the footsteps of every priest and practitioner. His best results must be turned to jibbering insanities no matter what means we have to use.
You need not care what effect you have upon the public. The effect you care about is the one upon officials. You must recruit every agency of the nation marked for slaughter into a foaming hatred of religious healing. You must suborne district attorneys and judges into an intense belief as fervent as an ancient faith in God that Christian Science or any other religious practice which might devote itself to mental healing is vicious, bad, insanity-causing, publicly hated and intolerable.
You must suborne and recruit any medical healing organization into collusion in this campaign. You must appeal to their avarice and even their humanity to invite their cooperation in smashing all religious healing and thus, to our end, care of the insane. You must see that such societies have only qualified Communist-indoctrines as their advisers in this matter. For you can use such societies. They are stupid and stampede easily. Their cloak and degrees can be used quite well to mask any operation we care to have masked. We must make them partners in our endeavour so that they will never be able to crawl from beneath our thumb and discredit us.
We have battled in America since the century's turn to bring to nothing any and all Christian influences and we are succeeding. While we today seem to be kind to the Christian remember we have yet to influence the "Christian world" to our ends. When that is done we shall have an end of them everywhere. You may see them here in Russia as trained apes. They do not know their tether is long only until the apes in other lands have become unwary.
You must work until "religion" is synonymous with "insanity". You must work until the officials of city, county and state governments will not think twice before they pounce upon religious group as public enemies.
Remember, all lands are governed by the few and only pretend to consult with the many. It is no different in America. The petty official, the maker of laws alike can be made to believe the worst. It is not necessary to convince the masses. It is only necessary to work incessantly upon the official, using personal defamations, wild lies, false evidences and constant propaganda to make him fight for you against church or against any practitioner.
Like the official the bona-fide medical healer also believes the worst if it can be shown to him as dangerous competition. And like the Christian, should be seek to take from us any right we have gained, we shall finish him as well.
We must be like the vine upon the tree. We use the tree to climb and then, strangling it, grow into power on the nourishment of its flesh.
We must strike from our path any opposition. We must use for our tool any authority that comes to hand. And then at last, the decades sped, we can dispense with all authority save our own and triumph in the greater glory of the Party.