In the mid- to late-twentieth century, Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard authored an extraordinary series of essays on tyranny of government, injustice, oppressive economics and psychiatric abuse. He wrote the bulk of these works for Freedom magazine. The following essay is among the many originally published in 1969.
The major breakdown of Western democracy is its habit of carelessly basing legal actions on false reports.
Anyone can say anything about anybody, and police powers and courts are liable to act on reports so false that a child could see through the lie.
This was the most odious thing about the nazis. And this characterizes Communist “justice.”
In February 1969, I isolated the false accusation, false report and failing to confront the accused with his accusers as the basic breakdown of justice. These undermine personal security and involve the whole judiciary in endless, needless traffic.
Innocent people are subjected to press attacks, court procedures, endless expense and ruined lives by these factors alone.
Corrupt pressure groups, such as the psychiatrists, can disrupt any possible rival or tear the social structure of a nation to pieces as long as false reports are published, accepted and acted upon.
So flagrant is this abuse that it destroys, for one and all, the value of the cause of democracy.
When justice becomes slow, when it becomes expensive and when false reports on people and groups are allowed to go unchallenged and unpunished, any ideology becomes a tyranny.
So great are these factors in the disruption of loyalty and creation of revolutionaries that no government that permits them is safe.
This is, in fact, a new philosophic breakthrough in the field of jurisprudence. The great importance of the false report in breaking down a nation’s social structure and its cause has not been understood.
Most of the internal conflict in a country is caused by individuals and groups defending themselves against false reports.
In a period where governments “seek to capture the minds of men,” a great deal of reform will have to be done.
Human rights have as one of their threats the false report. Yet there is no adequate practical recourse. Suits for libel? Forget them. They cost more than anyone can afford, take forever to try and leave the public with the false reports even when they are won.
As false reports tear down the security of the individual and small group, these then have to assert themselves. They do so, in their turn, by attacking.
A nation which permits these to be acted upon will eventually find itself deserted by its populace and supporting groups, attacked by its decent people and eventually will be overthrown.
To save itself, a nation must permit direct legal action which is fast and inexpensive so that an individual or group can legally protect itself from false reports.
Only if the “free” world reforms its human rights will it have a cause worth fighting for, worth supporting. Otherwise its public and social groups will desert it to any other cause without even much examining it.
The virtues of patriotism, loyalty and devotion to the government are not dead by some strange social decay. They are dead because people feel their government no longer protects them, even attacks them, opens the door on them to easy psychiatric seizure, fantastic taxation and personal insecurity.
For instance, the black man in the US has long been saying he will not fight for the government. That isn’t because he’s a Communist. It’s because anyone can lay a charge on them, no matter how false, get a black man jailed, beaten up, lynched. And authorities shrugged with “It’s just a coon.” He had no equal respect under law. Any false report, untested, could get him arrested, beaten or killed. So he became very insecure. And now he continually riots, loots, burns, is even closing universities. All because any false report was accepted. And he could be beaten or hung waiting on slow, expensive justice.
It isn’t limited to US blacks. This was true of all US minority groups and is true of religious and racial minority groups in far too many countries. So they form a core of resistance and unrest. They are nervous and defensive.
Then, as the situation worsens, many social groups begin to react to false reports against them, again unable to obtain justice fast enough to prevent name damage.
About that time the officials better look to their foreign bank accounts and decamp. For that government, even while still functioning, is no longer the government of its people. It is their enemy. Any revolutionary movement will be joined. These are the mechanics of revolution.
People will stand for an awful lot. Then one day patriotism is dead. Because the government no longer has a cause the majority believe in or will fight for.
The principles of not accepting false reports and confronting one with his accusers and their accusations before punishing actions of any kind are so strong that if the West accepted them and scrupulously practiced them, it would have a cause great enough to survive.
It could then “out-cause” the Communist.
As it stands, Western governments have to buy and bribe their defense at a cost so fantastic it will break them.
Our position is this: We are standing up and befriending Western powers, trying to get them to pull up their honor and justice before the mob gets to them and tears them to bits.
