Thursday 13 July 2017

Creepy Smear Campaigns



 
If you're a big shot [or think you are], there are many ways to deal with criticism: You can address it with counterarguments, you can use it to improve yourself, you can ignore it ... or you can spend inordinate amounts of time and/or money trying to nuke the reputation of your critics in the hopes that it will make people stop listening to them.

This is about the people who go for that last option. But sometimes they end up throwing so much shit in the wind that it flies right back in their faces. Like when ...

Church of Scientology Forged a Bomb Threat to Smear a Journalist

If you ever start feeling sorry for those poor Scientologists because everyone picks on them, just remember the time they had a journalist indicted on fake terrorism charges because she wrote a book that painted them in a bad light. If you think we're being unfair, well, let's run through the details.

Starting in 1969, journalist Paulette Cooper published a number of damning exposes on the church and its founder, sci-fi writer turned messiah L. Ron Hubbard, including a book called The Scandal of Scientology, which detailed the psychological methods used to keep the church's followers (and, more importantly, their money) in line. The church tried to sue Cooper to shut her up several times, but none of the lawsuits took off, mainly because they couldn't prove that she had just pulled her book out of her ass like they claimed.

So, they moved to the next step: "Operation Freakout," an organized campaign to have Cooper "incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks" (that's a direct quote from a real church document). Besides writing her phone number on bathroom walls and sending anonymous smear letters to her family members and neighbors, the Scientologists actually infiltrated Cooper's life by having agents pose as friends -- one supposed friend reported that Cooper was close to suicide after all the harassment, adding, "Wouldn't that be great for Scientology?"

But the lowest moment came when church members mailed themselves bomb threats and told the police that Cooper had sent them. Cooper agreed to have her fingerprints taken by the cops, not too worried by the laughably transparent attempt to have her arrested ... only to find out that her prints were actually on the threatening letters, and that the stationery had come from her house (courtesy of the infiltrators). This resulted in some very real federal charges for conspiracy to commit terrorism, which turned Cooper's life into a living hell until the charges were finally dismissed two years later.
Documents seized in an FBI raid of a Scientology office in 1977 revealed all of this and more: The Scientologists had also planned to frame Cooper for threatening President Ford and Henry Kissinger. Oh, and according to a former member, at one point they even planned to murder her. At which point presumably somebody stood up and said, "Whoa, we'd better not do that or else we'll look like assholes."

General Motors Laid Out Hooker Traps for Ralph Nader

After spending most of the 1930s killing the electric streetcar and conspiring to install a fascist dictatorship in America, by the 1960s General Motors had moved on to more constructive things -- like building criminally unsafe cars with total impunity. When some guy called Ralph Nader came along and ruined the party for GM, the company decided to dig up dirt on Nader to discredit him ... and when they couldn't find any shameful secrets in his past, they figured they'd help him create some. With hookers.

The higher-ups at General Motors found themselves facing a wave of scrutiny after Nader's most famous book, Unsafe at Any Speed, was published. The book is a scandalous look into the safety record of the automobile industry, and it exposed GM's 1960 Chevrolet Corvair as the murder machine that it was. Rather than take Nader's advice to heart and create cars that didn't unnecessarily kill people, GM came up with a solution that to them made a lot more sense: If they proved that Nader was a pervert or a homosexual, obviously everyone would forget about the whole "My car could kill me at any moment" thing and continue buying unsafe vehicles.

And so, GM hired private detectives to follow Nader around and catch him in some kind of unscrupulous act, only to discover that he was perfectly clean (17 detectives died of boredom during the stakeouts). Still, GM was determined to get something on the guy, even if they had to fabricate it. Nader was able to confirm, years after GM's crusade, that the company had greenlit a plan to hire comely prostitutes to throw themselves at him in the hopes that his raw animal lust would kick in and cause him to give himself over to them. Thankfully, his extreme dullness prevailed and the plan failed.

GM's plans were revealed when the taped conversations of one of the detectives with GM higher-ups became public. Eventually, the company's president was forced to apologize to Nader for the invasion of privacy. We kinda hope Nader becomes president one day just so he can harass them with an army of hookers. See if they like it.


10 comments:

  1. OMG! This one got me roaring with laughter!
    Not that it is so funny, but because it is desperate!
    "... or you can spend inordinate amounts of time and/or money trying to nuke the reputation of your critics ..." -- so true of the desperate.

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    1. The more these idiots have to hide, the more absurd their attempts at a cover-up become. I've witnessed narcs make shockingly stupid choices in their effort to divert the truth and silence the whistle blower. Yeah, they are totally desperate and really dumb. It's not funny what they try and do to the scapegoat, but when the scapegoat ultimately prevails, it's a hell of a lot of fun to see the shit these assholes throw in the wind fly right back in their face.

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  2. So horrendous. The murder-car thing. I think people believe things are relatively safe if approved for the market-- food, cars, pills, toys. They have other things to worry about , so they proceed w/ hope or assurance. Only to be killed by merciless garbage.

    Very similar to the child world of MNs: "this is ok, isn't it? For my own good, right? She's my mother? I'm hallucinating her cruelty, aren't I?"

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    1. D.E.M., you make a really good point about the parallel between our MN families and the creepy cult leader and the greedy corporate overlord. They all exploit our trust, violate our safety and make us doubt our own perceptions. And if we criticize the MN cult on their abuses we can expect the same kind of reaction that GM and the Scientologist dished out - an unrelenting smear campaign designed to nuke our reputation and our life. This is especially true if you write a blog or a book and the paranoid freaks want to make you disappear.

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    2. Capitalism run amok is psychosis.

      Btw:
      I am so fucking impressed by your survival! My MNmother almost turned my sister against me. Sister started yelling at me, calling me selfish --when we were in our 20s-- and I said to her "you don't know me. You're hurting me in echoes of mother. If you don't stop, we're done and I mean it. Say good bye now. Your choice".

      And she chose me.

      But you have been teamed up on, utterly surrounded by mental illness and viciousness. I am awestruck by your humour and generosity.

      And sooooooooooooooooo saddened: what we might've been, lisette without this history:(. All this lost years to anxiety and self-hate.

      Today is beautiful outside. I will not give it to that darkness.

      Hugs!

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    3. Thanks, D.E.M.

      I'm glad your sister had the good sense to choose you. I guess she chose the light. My sister jumped on the MN gravy train and squealed, "Yay meeeee!!!" all the way to the dark side and beyond. I believe she has surpassed the MN mother in terms of mental illness and viciousness.

      I like how you say Capitalism run amok is psychosis. Same thing with these narc bullies - it's a folie a deux or trois or whatever; it's a shared madness. They are all drinking the same Kool-Aid.

      Sometime I get sad about the lost years too. But the way I look at it, we now have a new lease on life ... better days and better ways from now on.

      Don't let the dark souled fuckers get you down. Enjoy the light!

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    4. I just found this site. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your dedication to enlightening, supporting and guiding all the victims of these caustic people to a path of strength and recovery. May you be showered with blessings! ~Leah~

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    5. Thanks, Leah! That's very kind. Glad you found your way here. Welcome!

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  3. Dark-souled fuckers!! Lol.
    Toddler-level rage & grasping without the toddler capacity to grow & show vulnerability. So vile.
    (And just look: one is POTUS. Holy. Shit.)

    New lease on life: yes. And many people have lost years too, to all sorts of shitty things.

    One more thing: the nuclear family as coextensive with capitalism (private property, private households) .... if we were raised tribally then the narc dynamic mightn't exist.
    Dare to daydream. :)

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    1. Oh, I would have preferred to be raised tribally... By Cannibals!! That way, I would have known what to expect: multiple dunkings in a piping hot vat of oil followed by dizzying spins on a spit, after which they would consume my flesh. At least I would be dead. That would be better than psychological mindfuckery followed by an emotional feeding frenzy on my pain. But now we know how these narcs operate so if we do not bleed, they cannot feed. No emotions for these dark souled mother fuckers; just irreverent humor followed by disgust... And exposure.

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