English 280: The Journalistic Essay

By Pablo Dalton

The lobby of the Church of Scientology on 448 Beacon Street in Boston is rustic and tacky. Every surface is covered in plastic-shelled gift packages of books, videos, and other propaganda, one of which is specifically devoted to explaining the ills of psychology and psychiatric medicine. An early-generation flatscreen television with a built-in DVD/VCR player (the door to the VCR slot had broken off) bubbles quietly with a recruiting video displaying stereotyped youths of every ethnicity declaring abstract motivational sentiments. A Caucasian girl dressed like a Native American with paint on her cheeks declares serenely, “I believe in peace,” and then the video’s ambient music peaks, a Scientology logo popping up onscreen followed by information on the Church’s youth program. A woman named Carol with glossy eyes and big lips in a black pantsuit would not speak to me unless I filled out a “Routing Form,” allowing the Church access to my name, physical and email addresses, and other personal information. Their receptionist said, “The Church doesn’t have a stand on the issue. There’s nothing we can tell you that you can’t find out on your own.” The information that there would be a protest in 15 minutes seemed to startle her, and as I left, the lobby began bustling with Scientologists as though they had materialized from every corner of the three-story brownstone.

Anthony Simone represents a movement called Anonymous. This opposition to the Church is without leadership or centralization, and its wrath is viral. Appropriately, the logo for the “group” is a suited figure with no head. Their cause is perpetuated by individuals united only by their computers and blunt desire to dismantle the Church entirely. On November 15^th, 2008, Simone and the Anons gathered as they do, once a month, to remind the Church that it was still under attack.

It was overcast around 11am when Simone arrived in front of the Church. He wore a black ballroom mask that he later removed, a sharp double-breasted charcoal overcoat and jeans.

“[I’ve been involved] since the beginning,” he said, and his exposure to the movement was through flyers and online threads. He is the closest thing to an administration that Anonymous has in Boston.

“I’m the permit-holder [for this protest],” he said, “my name is public record. The Church knows me at this point.” He lit an American Spirit with a silver Zippo lighter and explained that a typical protest included 30-40 people, and that the Church, lately, had offered little physical opposition.

“Sometimes they send people outside to instigate. They scream in our faces and try to get us to assault them so that they can sue. They’ve called in bomb threats to their own building and blamed us. We’re not violent. We hope that people will do their own research and realize what we really are.”

Simone is a backbone rather than mind of the Boston operation. He made his rounds greeting people by their online handles as they arrived. There was Teal, Time Machine, and Photo Guy, all of whom were extremely polite. “We’re very accepting and open,” said Teal, who had arrived with her mother and a friend who wore dark sunglasses and a gray scarf wrapped around his head. Regarding the organization and its issues of central leadership, Simone explained that they functioned through “natural order and consensus.”

Scientologists walked by on their way to work, frowning and muttering to themselves.

“We won’t be intimidated,” Simone said, “and we’re here to remind them that we haven’t forgotten about them.”

Anonymous’s website, whyweprotest.net, cites the Lisa McPherson Case as their primary argument for the claim that “Scientology Kills.” They provide a link to a memorial website for McPherson that claims her involvement with the Church and its rules regarding medical treatment resulted in McPherson’s inability to receive proper attention, leading to her death. Protest videos have sprouted up all over YouTube in the last year. Masked individuals, usually wearing those of the film V for Vendetta, warp their voices so that they sound like the villains in every film ever made about a kidnapping and issue direct warnings against the Church for allegedly violating human rights and bribing the IRS into tax-exempt status. “We are Anonymous,” the slow, chunky voices say, “we do not forgive, we do not forget. We are Legion.” Soon after the videos began to appear, the Church’s website was hacked so that entering the words “dangerous cult” into a search engine would list the Church’s website as the first result. Protests began internationally and the media began paying attention.

Time Machine left to get posterboard and markers, and soon after, more protestors arrived. Photo Guy hovered over Simone and a Boston Police officer, snapping pictures of the two as they agreed that this would be a peaceful protest and the sidewalks unobstructed. Then Ted the Scientologist showed up and all became a perverse rapture.

It happened like the climax of Barton Fink, with a voice like John Goodman’s or that of an equally gigantic force of nature. “HEY SCIENTOLOGISTS! I’M ONE OF YOU! DO YOU WANNA FUCK MY MOUTH?”

Photo Guy smirked as he left to cover the Proposition 8 rally taking place elsewhere in the city: “We have just lost public favor.”

Ted the Scientologist bounded down the street screaming. He wore a chocolate brown suit, maroon dress shirt and crimson bowtie. He is bald and clean-shaven, with modest glasses and a young, energetic grin. “Hey! I will fuck you in the mouth! Who wants to draw a horrible mustache on me?” He carried a briefcase with a piece of paper taped to it that read, in jagged black marker, “Ted the Scientologist (I’m One of You).” Someone pulled out a marker and scrawled a curled black mustache on his face. He patrolled the sidewalks, screaming as a possessed woman giving birth to a chainsaw might, but with a deeper voice. His name is Rick Glass, and he is without fear.

Behind us, two children peeked out of a window and their mother yanked them away. Lifting the window, she leaned out. Rivaling Ted’s screams, she enunciated every harsh syllable with deliberate, rabid maternal rage: “We have little kids in here,” she screamed, jowls quivering, “Watch. Your. Mouths.”

“It’s not my fault,” Ted/Rick said, “I was mouthfucked against my will as a child.”

The police informed the protestors that the language needed to be tame. Somebody muttered something about the First Amendment. A protestor in a black suit and tie prepared an iPod dock which was protected from the sputtering, asthmatic weather by a little green umbrella, and cued Tay Zonday’s “Chocolate Rain” to play. The little speakers blared this song a few times, some nerdcore hip-hop and electronic music, and a particularly Wu-Tang-esque song in which several angry voices prompted listeners to “read a motherfucking book.”

“[Ted] is a little tough, but he is an asset to the movement,” Teal said.

“Don’t take him too seriously,” Simone reminded us all.

It was noon and the weather hadn’t improved. Pairs of scientologists flooded out of their bastion and glared at the blue-haired skinny girl handing out flyers, face obscured by a surgical mask. They threw thumbs-downs at those with “Scientology Kills” posters. Almost every car passing by, however, smiled and obeyed the posters reading “Honk Against Cults.”

By 12:30 there were close to thirty Anons. Paul Bradford, a higher-ranking member of the church, came outside to speak with the police officer overseeing the protest, but refused to speak to anyone else. “Hi Paul!” the protestors shouted.

A coughing factory-default-beige Toyota Camry pulled up to the church and a stocky Hispanic man came out with a giant stack of pizzas, a bogus order of course, but one that the Anons say the Church called in. I am inclined to believe them, because no one took out a cell phone the entire time. Paul stood out by the pizza man’s car, shooting jittery glances over at our corner and shaking his head at the pizza boxes.

Ted’s shrill mouthfucking spree had quieted, as he was preparing for his next assault. Having removed his suit in exchange for a sleeveless black hooded sweatshirt, he stood as close to the Church as was legally permitted and began screaming in a way that put the blackest of Norwegian Death Metal vocalists to shame. “SCIENTOLOGY WHAT?” he boomed, followed by the chorus of 20 or so voices, “SCIENTOLOGY KILLS!”

“BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!”

His arms were outstretched, legs spread apart and planted against the pavement as though he were preparing to be struck by something massive. He was ululating. It rippled through the entire crowd – the dancing kids in suits and pilgrim hats and creepy eyeless masks, nearly every driver on Beacon street, the jowly woman’s children who had returned to the window as spectators.

Still the Church did little more than walk around and stare.

“Just got off the phone with New York,” Simone said to Teal, “they have about 30.”

In spite of the success of both major cities’ numbers that day, there are those further concealed within the digital underground who feel differently about the movement. A year ago, a man who will be called Anonymous One sat in front of his computer, entranced in a blue layer of electric light, reading the words sent to him in a private message: “are you ok?” to which he replied, “my pussy is so wet.” Anonymous One is in fact a 19-year-old heterosexual and his baiting trick led to the arrest of a businessman from Hawaii who believed he was talking to a thirteen year old girl. The businessman’s correspondence with the digital nymphomaniac was saved and forwarded to his employers, local authorities, and the FBI. All of this took place through the same online forums that have become the breeding ground of vigilantes and subsequently, Anonymous revolutionaries.

Anonymous One is no longer a direct enemy of the Church, but his role as bait to online sexual predators exposed him to the movement in February of 2008. Anonymous One is a small, goofy individual chronically-clad in a black hooded sweatshirt with a local grime-punk band’s logo on the breast. Wiping cocaine from his nostrils, he explained that the Anonymous movement likely originated through the collective efforts of the same hackers that discovered the Hawaiian businessman’s Social Security number.

“No one had any real information on Scientology until recently. Probably one person started a thread and from there it was a domino effect. The way I was first introduced was within 2 days of the first scientology thread. I wanna read about this more, I thought. So everyone on the forum started digging up information on Scientology,” he said calmly, without any of the rushed inflections of a man on coke.

“I personally started getting angry at Scientology. People were making flyers for other Anons to print out and put out wherever, mostly college campuses – the average user on the forums is around 19. It looked like fun and it’s for a cause I respect. I made my own flyers, people liked them and started printing them out. But like with everything else on the internet, I got bored.”

It rained for awhile. People floated past us. The music got quiet and the screaming stopped. Nobody from the Church had come out in awhile, and the protestors eventually dispersed to march towards Columbus Park and hand out flyers, maybe stopping by the Proposition 8 rally, maybe just going out for a bite to eat before they went home. Some of them sounded eager to attend a party at somebody named JT’s place.

Ted approached me and offered some words of council: “As a member of the press, school or not, you should keep your distance if you want to talk to the Church. We had an Israeli journalism student try going in to talk to someone and she came back out an hour later scared shitless holding a black DVD that said ‘Anonymous Hate Crimes Against Scientology.’ Be careful unless you can handle that sort of shit.”

Two Scientologists in matching sweatpants followed me for two miles but I ran and veered off onto Charles Street, stopping for a coffee. The weather was weird all day, with spastic winds and inappropriate bouts of warmth as though a storm were on the verge of tearing through the narrow streets. It came so close, but then the wind died down and there was no storm. Anonymous One has his own thoughts on storms.

“[Original forum-users] feel like we’ve lost the cause,” he said. “It’s been taken over by kids looking for a trend. The forums have nothing to do with Anonymous anymore.” He sat back in his chair, only slightly bothered by the drips and a little anxious since he’d finished all of his coke. Coming down with a Vicodin, he suggested that a nobler war was still being waged in the birthplace that now rejects Anonymous, the same cause with which he was first aligned, a silent movement against pedophiles and predators that has been neglected in the wake of Anonymous versus Scientology. If you don’t like a church, he argued, shrugging and grinning as the pill coursed though him, don’t join it.