Luigi Corvaglia
Abridged edition of the 12-part study ‘Fascists, Spies and Gurus. Psychological warfare and the geopolitics of cults' by Luigi Corvaglia
I - Funny Stuff
In July 2020, my self-esteem flinched. The annual report on religious freedom in the world by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) closed with recommendations to U.S. President - then Trump - on how to protect this fundamental right; among the recommendations was to obstruct the work of FECRIS, the European Federation of Centers for Research and Information on Sectarianism, at the annual OSCE Meeting in Warsaw. Well, representing FECRIS at the annual OSCE Human Dimension Conference to denounce abuses in totalitarian cults is exactly the humble person who signs this writing.
So began my dossier on the geopolitics of cults (2022). The incipit was with effect. Trump should have taken care of obstructing me (with all the busyness he's had fighting the "deep state"). This grotesque revelation plunged the stunned reader right onto the scene. Like a shrewd director, after surprising him with other equally grotesque revelations, I led him into an orderly historical reconstruction. It was a story about cults, espionage and psychological warfare. Basically, it was the chronicle of a "spy story" That report would be translated into English, French and Dutch and then published in 2023 in the Fogli di Via series by the de Ferrari Foundation.
Jeffrey Augustine, an investigator who is among the best known critics of Scientology in the world, has written on the subject:
Corvaglia offers the most accurate description yet read of what is, essentially, a multinational religious-based intelligence operation.
Arnaud Palisson, the analyst who headed French intelligence service's "cults and sects" department for ten years, said:
The dossier on geopolitics of cults is a unique model. [...]
Stephen Kent, professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, Canada, one of the most renowned academics in the field of cultic studies, called my report ‘pure dynamite!'
I would not have thought that a work that is, after all, a hodgepodge written with a light hand and ironic wit, would be so well received. I therefore believe that the time has come to transform the material, which was deliberately presented in a "filmic" way at the time, into a more straightforward and organic treatment, supplementing it with new information and, above all, placing it better in the ideological and political framework. In this prologue, however, I take the liberty of resuming the spirit of that first dossier so that the reader, unfamiliar with the dynamics of the obscure world I am going to discuss, can be introduced to it with the right attitude, i.e. with the curiosity of the incredulous. In order to attract the attention that everyone has for the incongruous, I report some grotesque things that are useful for this purpose. The first is the fact that my narcissism has been tickled not only by the fact that a US government agency has advised the President to obstruct the little person writing here, but also by the further fact that immediately afterwards a non-governmental organisation called the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) proposed that Italy be placed on the list of countries at risk in terms of religious freedom because of my presence. You may be surprised at this by reading the article "Also Europe in the Special Watch List?" (Figures 2 and 3).
Figure 2-3 - Excerpt from FOB article saying that all countries where FECRIS operates should be monitored for risks to religious freedom (fig.2) because no French or Russians are going to the OSCE - that is, an Italian is going... (fig.3)
To make matters worse, the president of this organisation, Alessandro Amicarelli, accused me in a public Facebook post of colluding with the Chinese communist regime in the commission of various nefarious acts, including the forced removal of organs from dissidents (fig.4). The statement is at least original, so the person who doesn't mind uttering it must also be interesting. Let's get to know him.
Alessandro Amicarelli, Alex to his friends, is a lawyer practicing in London. His correspondence address, as stated on the U.K. Business Register page, 78 York St, London W1H 1DP gives the appearance of being the headquarters of a company with the sympathetic name of "Billy the Duck Ltd" and which deals in video production and lists only one employee).In truth, the same address, a small corner room, is home to a dozen other companies (but no law firm). They will fit in.
On his personal page, Amicarelli describes himself as a "lawyer, lecturer and philanthropist" He therefore loves his neighbour, as the etymology of the word suggests. This is made even clearer by the fact that he describes himself as the "Founder and President of the Embassy of Love International" on the aforementioned page. The fact that the name is reminiscent of an ambiguous nightclub inspired me to find out more.
The European company search engine North Data creates interesting networks by connecting companies and individuals together based on their business connections. The tab dedicated to Amicarelli contains the pattern of connections shown in Figure 6.
If you click on the link to "Embassy of Love Ltd" you will learn that it has its registered office on none other than Regent Street (Figure 7). Those who know London know that it is a truly exclusive address. However, a simple search for that address reveals an interesting fact. The elegant building is known for harbouring fake addresses for bogus companies, i.e. a virtual address used by thousands of fraudsters (Figure 8). In fact, the address is used by around 4,000 companies, some of which are known to have scammed their investors. However, North Data is an engine that only censuses European companies, while Amicarelli, on his page, claims to have established his embassy of love in the US.
In fact, In addition to the company that appears to be registered in Cardiff, Wales, on 16 February 2021, there is another one in the USA that was registered on 6 February 2023 (he likes February) under the name Embassy of Love International Ministries, with its registered office in Washington state.
The U.S. address corresponds to the Fidelity Building in Spokane (below in a photo - fig. 10 - taken from Google's Street View where part of it appears blurred at the request of some of the businesses located there).
It is not known what the two sister companies are involved in. Even the UK company register entry does not reveal the purpose of the company, although it does mention duties and remuneration.
If we look at the other nodes directly linked to the lawyer, we see Roma Nation Embassy, a company based at, you guessed it..., yes, 207 Regent Street! Activity? Unknown.
We also see that he is connected with Obaseki & Co Ltd, the law firm run by Nigerian lawyers where he runs his practise. In the team photo, you can catch a glimpse of Amicarelli peeking out from behind the heads in the front row (Figure 11). You can recognise him because he is the only "Caucasian."
Surprisingly, this studio is actually at the address given in the records, Bentley Road, a far less cool neighbourhood than Regent Street, where he prefers to have his correspondence sent (Figure 12).
Poking around the other nodes in the network reported by North Data, we see a direct connection to the All Faiths Network for the United Kingdom. This is one of the multiple organizations under the umbrella of Scientology.
This religious holding, whose credo is a mixture of Gnosticism, magic and science fiction (you can read a summary of its doctrine in the third chapter of this report), is an organism with many faces and many manifestations. One of these is the All Faiths Network, whose director is William Martin Weightman, not coincidentally another direct node of Amicarelli, as North Data reports. It's easy to find out who Weightman is.
He is a proud member of the Church of Scientology and, as he states on his Linkedin page, former director of the church's human rights office (Figure 13).
This is no surprise. In fact, Amicarelli, Weightman and a certain Rabbi Jeff Berger of the church of Scientology in London, have co-signed a book on Covid 19 published by the All Faiths Network. There is a picture of me on page 25. The photo of the philanthropist speaking at a meeting of the All faiths Network under the effigy of Scientology founder Ron L. Hubbard was also not lost on me (Figure 14).
The All Faiths Network is one of the members of the European federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB), of which Amicarelli is President. Other constituent associations of the federation include Soteria International, an expression of the Atman Yoga organisation of Gregorian Bivolaru, the guru who has been wanted by Interpol for years and finally arrested in France in 2023 on charges of criminal conspiracy, human trafficking and sexual abuse; then there is the European Interreligious Forum For Religious Freedom, whose president is the "Rev." Eric Roux, President of the United Churches of Scientology in France and vice-president of the European Office of Public Affairs and Human Rights of Church of Scientology (and probably head of the OSA, the Church's intelligence) and the European Coordination for Freedom of Conscience (CAP LC), whose president is Thierry Valle, also a rapresentative of Scientology.
Figure 15 - Eric Roux e Thierry Valle
One of the founding members, and still a member of the Federation's scientific committee, is Fabrizio d'Agostini, who in the Scientology magazine "Etica e Verità" expressed his satisfaction at having achieved OT 6 certification, one of the highest levels in the Scientology hierarchy (Figure 16). It almost suggests that FOB has something to do with Scientology.
Incidentally, Amicarelli is also the surname of the historical spokesman for Scientology in Italy, Fabio Amicarelli. Of course, it does not mean anything, it could be a name match, but there is a third Amicarelli, the hypnotist Michele Amicarelli, who also sits on FOB's scientific committee. Three people with the same last name all connected to the same world. It may be, although Amicarelli is not a very common surname in Italy. Below (Figures 16 and 17) you can see a comparison between the prevalence of that surname and mine, which is also not very common except locally.
What is FOB about? As you can read on their website, it promotes and protects religious freedom. FOB is in the register of lobbyists at the European Parliament and the European Commission.
In January 2016, I reported all this to the ‘Linkiesta’ newspaper, which published an article by Carmine Gazzanni that included an interview with me. The FOB's immediate reaction was a response in the same magazine, threatening to sue the author of the article and me for defamation. I responded on the same page:
I don't think anyone, inside or outside FOB, would have the temerity to say that Scientology, for one, is not at least a "controversial" organisation. Yet the FOB board writes that this statement is "damaging." Why? If being part of even controversial organizations is the right that FOB defends to the hilt, why should the statement that its members are also part of such organizations be injurious! Perhaps an association that defends gay rights would be offended if it were accused of some of its members being homosexuals? A curious logical wrapping up that can only be explained by the FOB board's fear that this might cast doubt on the Federation's true aims.
Of course, no lawsuit followed.
Most of the articles published on the organisation's website are taken from the magazine Bitter Winter. This is the magazine of the Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) of the well-known Massimo Introvigne, whose wife is herself on the scientific committee of FOB). This prolific author is also the president of a strange company called E-religion SNC, which claims to have only one employee. The company was founded in 2001 (the employee was hired 20 years later).
Between embassies of love and electronic religion, the various societies that can be linked to the cadre of defenders of "religious freedom" appear increasingly intriguing and mysterious. What will all these entities with registration numbers, mailboxes and emails ever be used for? We will not be told. What is certain is that inferences, rumors and, the more time passes, interesting clues are circulating on the subject....
The latest grotesquerie is the use of a photo taken on 29 September 2017 in Salekhard, Siberia. I am reposting it here (Figure 20):
The one on the far right is me. The picture was used as definitive, "smoking gun" evidence of a connection between FECRIS, or at least me, and the Russian regime. Indeed, the second from the left is Alexander Dvorkin, a Russian anti-cult activist close to the Orthodox Church (and the one in the centre is, of course, an Orthodox bishop). The now iconic image has served its purpose on the main websites of anti-cult movement opponents and has enjoyed an honourable career spanning many years. It even enjoyed the honour of being presented as part of a scholarly dissertation at the international congress of the famous Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR). An example of high conceptual elaboration and rare scholarly rigour was the speaker's comment: "I was told that this person - she was referring to me - is strongly atheistic - who told her that? - but you can see he has no problem hanging around with clergy." Indeed, the bishop at the centre was not exactly incognito. You can see the irrefutable argument in Video 1 (further down in the text).
Video 1 - Rosita Soryté Caught the author of this report in awkward company
The refined scholar who presented this sophisticated argument at the CESNUR international congress is Rosita Soryté, the wife of CESNUR director Introvigne and a member of the scientific committee of the FOB federation mentioned above.
The image was even quoted by Massimo Introvigne himself in an article in Russian, in which the scholar claims to have seen a picture in which I, a so worldly person, appeared "almost overwhelmed by priests" (the gentleman with the beard next to me is a Lutheran pastor). The director of CESNUR of this blessed image has made it a highlight of his repertoire for years. In the photo below, for example, he illustrates the image at the 2018 American Academy of Religion conference in Denver (Figure 21).
The photo has since also appeared in such unlikely circles as a book on the Covid 19 pandemic published by the All Faith Network (but now we know what it is. It is the photo on p. 25 that I alluded to above). The photo later appeared several times in the magazine Bitter Winter, published by CESNUR, once even with a funny but sibylline caption that read "Luigi Corvaglia on the far right (which is not his political position)."
However, the most incredible of the reuse of this photo, took place in The European Times, an obscure online newspaper which claimed that the anti-cult movement was responsible for the anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia and, therefore, morally co-responsible for the ongoing war (!).
The author of this and other articles in that magazine is a certain Jan Leonid Bornestein, of whom there is no trace on the Web. His only available photo, entered into the prompt on the Facecheck.id website, an identity verification tool using facial recognition, returned zero results. It cannot be ruled out that this person does not exist and that the photo is an artificial intelligence achievement.
"The European Times" is a strange publication registered in Spain but whose editor is a Bulgarian, a certain Petar Gramatikov. He claims to be a hierodacon of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, although his ordination took place in violation of the canons (he has been married and divorced several times, which makes him ineligible for ordination). In any case, he was ordained by the Metropolitan of Tyrnovo, even though he lives in Plovdiv. So, in all likehood, his diaconate and monasticism are simply decorative. The only things that are certain are that he publishes the newspaper of a wellness center, the Orpheus Club Wellnes, in Plovdiv, and that he has a very good relationship with Scientology, as evidenced by his presence at the 46th anniversary celebration of the founding of the organization's Belgian headquarters. The photo below shows him in the centre during said celebration.
The one on the far right (whether this corresponds to his political faith is not known) is Ivan Arjona Pelado, one of the leading representatives of Scientology and a component of church’s secret service. Tout se tien.
In October 2024, the French investigative newspaper 'Blast' published a dossier revealing that The European Times is part of an international Media Center called Brussels Media, whose executive director, Lahcen Hammouch, is very close to Scientology. Incidentally, the contact address of The European Times is that of a satellite association of Scientology in Spain, the Fundazion para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad, whose director is that Ivan A. Pelado who can be seen on the far right of the previous photo (fig. 22).
The Blast article also publishes a photo taken in the European Parliament on November 30, 2023 showing an interesting clique that includes Pelado, curiously always last on the right of the picture, the aforementioned Eric Roux, Scientology's highest rapresentative and FOB federation member, in the centre, and Brussels Media director Lahcen Hammouch, second from the left (fig. 23).
Then, there is no doubt about the link between The European Times, Scientology and associations defending "religious freedom," such as FOB and others, like Human Rights Without Frontiers, whose director is Willy Fautré, first from the left in photo 23, or the Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC), whose vice-president Christine Mirre is third from the left in photo number 23, next to Roux.
At the end of the same month that saw the publication of the 'Blast' article on the network linking Brussels Media, Scientology and NGOs in defence of "religious freedom," my Siberian photo also returned to the limelight after a brief period of eclipse. The reason for this was that the Ukrainian parareligious cult AllatRa had not liked my statement to a collective of investigative journalists that their movement was a conspiracy theory with obscure origins and that it exhibited pro-Putin rhetoric. An incredible smear campaign followed in which various AllatRa "trolls" accused me, not them, of being a "Russian agent" or an "agent of the Russian Orthodox Church." That photo helped (see Figure 24). The arguments used against the anti-cult movement, taken evenly from Bitter Winter's publications, also served them well.
Apart from that, there seems to be no doubt about AllatRa's pro-Russian political goals, as several journalistic investigations have also shown. In early November 2024, Ukrainian security services even raided around 20 cult’s headquarters , confiscating material that confirmed the findings of investigations into the cult's "subversive activities on behalf of the Russian Federation." Strangely enough, the only expert from outside the organisation who was willing to be interviewed for the TV of that movement about the alleged persecution of AllatRa and other cults was a FOB member, and not just any FOB member, but top Scientologist Fabrizio D'Agostini. I thought I understood that I was the friend of the Russians and that FOB stood for democracy and freedom instead. Evidently there is something wrong with this representation.
This introduction has thus enabled the reader to familiarise themselves with the actors (CESNUR, Scientology, FOB, USCIRF, etc.), to get an idea of their relationships with each other and their modus operandi, and to learn how the author uses open resources to investigate the network of "cult apologists"." The reader can now immerse themselves in the neat treatment of the history, ideological framework and geopolitical context in which the hybrid warfare operations we have just discussed are embedded.
II - Mind Games
1- The paradigm of the cross-eyed gunslinger
There are two ways to hit the mark. One is to have a good aim and hit the innermost circle of the target. The other is to hit randomly and draw the target around the hole we have made. This second system is more effective, but only if no one is watching us shoot.
A group of sociologists who have monopolised the study of "new religious movements" is a good example of the second kind. These authors, gathered around the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) in Turin, Italy, put forward a single and simple thesis in hundreds of mutually recognised articles in a kind of cross-peer review, namely that is, that mind manipulation is a myth. It follows that the "cults" that abuse their followers are nothing more than a "moral panic" created by a phantom anti-cult movement that is "bereft of scientific credibility". In short, people join destructive cults of their own free will and after a rational assessment and stay there. This portrayal is made with complete indifference to the enormous amount of experimental psychology, neuropsychology and social psychology studies on persuasion and social influence. In fact, it has been clear for decades that individual and collective decisions defy rationality and that the human mind is susceptible to suggestion and systematic errors that can be exploited by those who wish to direct them (Tversky & Kahneman, 1979; Cacioppo & Petty, 1984; Damasio, 1984; Zimbardo, 2002; Budzynska & Weger, 2011).
There is someone who received a Nobel Prize for these studies on the manipulability of the mind: Daniel Kahneman. The social influence and power of the perception of oneself as part of a group (self-categorisation) in determining actions is a consolidated legacy of scientific knowledge (Turner, 1987, 1991, Turner & Reynolds, 2012). The existence of persuasion techniques is the basis of marketing and political propaganda strategies (Cialdini, 2017; Sharot, 2018).
Despite this undeniable mass of data on persuasion compiled by the disciplines truly relevant to such studies, the aforementioned sociologists repeat in chorus that "science" has rejected the theory of "brainwashing".
What science? Theirs, i.e. studies based on data such as proselytism and retention rates in new religious movements.
All psychological and neurobiological studies do not count. This approach is akin to a group of boys refusing to play football and therefore deciding to fence in a new, smaller pitch, thereby defining the rules of a new game, by deciding who can and cannot play, and finally declaring that those who play traditional football are not really playing football. It's like drawing the target around the hole.
2-The argumentative fallacies
At this point it is fair to ask what game those we use to call “cult apologists” are playing in their new playing field. It is quickly said: essentially in the use of argumentative fallacies.
There are three main ones:
1 straw man argument
2 poisoning the well
3 petitio principii
The Straw Man argument
The 'straw man argument' is a trick used by those who want to win an argument without addressing its content. It works by attributing to the other side an argument that they have never put forward. Of course, the thesis must not only be false, but also obviously absurd, grotesque or ridiculous and therefore easy to refute. In the case of the apologists, the straw man is 'brainwashing'. Just as all psalms end in glory, all historical reconstructions of the concept of brainwashing made by cult apologists end with a citation of the old film The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra. The film tells of a Korean War veteran who, in response to a certain stimulus, was reprogrammed into an alien-controlled automaton to kill the candidate for President of the United States. This cinematic and grotesque version of manipulation serves to highlight the absurdity of the idea and thus protect gurus, demagogues and cult leaders from accusations of practising it. There is only one problem with this reasoning: nobody believes in the manchurian candidate, no one has ever supported the brainwashing thesis. What scholars mean when they speak of mind manipulation has nothing remotely to do with the Manchurian Candidate hypothesis.
To better understand the difference between undue persuasion and Hollywood, however, it is useful to read a book by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. In his book Underground (1997), he recounts the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo underground in 1995, in which thirteen people were killed and 6,000 others poisoned. Murakami writes that the followers of the religious cult known as Aum Shinrikyo (The Supreme Truth) who carried out the attack "were not passive victims, but actively sought to be controlled". He describes how most Aum members "deposited all their valuable personal wealth of self-esteem" in the "spiritual bank" of cult leader Shoko Asahara. Their goal was to submit to a higher authority, to someone else's representation of reality. Perhaps what constitutes an abusive and totalitarian group is the premeditated construction of a system that selects and supports this escape from freedom, reinforcing it with slow and gradual steps, playing on guilt and shame. This may not be ‘brainwashing’, but it is certainly manipulation, certainly undue persuasion, because it is aimed at exploitation. We are talking here about mechanisms known to neuroscience, social psychology, the “behavioural economics” of Kahneman - who won a Nobel Prize for revealing the systematic errors (biases) and irrational heuristics of our brains used by marketing and propaganda - and the cognitive linguistics of Lakoff (2004), which emphasises the persuasive nature of language. He clarified how the use of specific terms activates cenceptual frames that guide the listener's perception. To deny this, you have to be very ignorant or very much in bad faith.
A significant mistake in the discussion of the subject has been to define persuasion as a construct made up of a single dimension. If there is only one form of persuasion, it will always be lawful for someone ("we all persuade and are persuaded") while for others it may sometimes be malignant. But they do not know where to draw the line to separate it from lawful persuasion. So it is necessary to introduce an often-ignored dimension: the purpose of the persuader, that is, the dimension of interest.
This is a dimension we can outline in an axis that has egoism (interest in ourselves) and altruism (interest in others) at the two poles. The introduction of this new dimension amplifies the range of connotations and expressive typologies of persuasion. These can be reproduced spatially by intersecting two axes according to the tradition of circumplex models used in psychology (fig. 26).
Two things can be deduced from this:
The first is that the focus must not be on brainwashing through specific methods, but on persuasion for the purpose of exploitation. That is manipulation. The attention must be directed on “why”, non “how”.
The second thing that can be easily deduced from the diagram I presented is that the idea that anti-cultists want to censor persuasion tout-court is false, as only one of the quadrants represents the mind control area. It is basically another straw man argument.
b) Poisoning the well
The expression “poisoning the well” is used to describe an argument in which what the opponent says is delegitimised in advance by questioning his or her credibility or good faith. In this way, anything they say can be ignored, deemed false or irrelevant by the public. “since you’re bad, what you say is not worthy of consideration”. The constant defamation of activists, academics and associations that show concern for totalitarian groups is certainly not aimed at discussing their arguments, but at casting doubt on their credibility. Indeed, activists who oppose the work of cults are nevertheless labelled as unscientific (because of the brainwashing myth), illiberal (because they are hostile to 'freedom of worship') or even complicit in despotism. Whatever the 'anti-cult movement' says is therefore unfounded.
C) Petitio principii (or “begging the question fallacy”)
The most sophisticated technique, which can even be regarded as a genuine mind game, is the “begging the question fallacy” (petitio principii). This is an error in which the premises already contain the statement that the conclusion is true. In other words, the conclusion is already taken for granted in the premise.
Massimo Introvigne (1993) gives us a wonderful example of this. He has found the most ingenious way to propose the concept that anti-cultists believe in a non scientific phenomenon with his division into a secular anti-cult movement and a religious counter-cult movement. He combines the division 'secular-religious' with a division into 'rationalist' and 'post-rationalist' movements.
Rationalists, according to the author, are those who believe that 'cults' attract their followers through fraud, deception. Deception is not supernatural, ergo it is rational. Therefore, there will be both rationalist anti-cult movements and rationalist counter-cult movements.
Introvigne writes:
Anti-cultists will emphasize the secular features of the fraud (e.g. 'bogus'miracles) and the counter-cultists its religious elements (e.g. 'manipulating'the scriptures), but the fraud remains prominent.
Instead, movements that imagine superhuman or supernatural intervention to explain cultsuccess are called post-rationalist. Post-rationalist counter-cult movements theorise the intervention of Satan. The devil is the supernatural explanation favoured by the religious. Referring to the secular critics he calls anti-cult movements, the author writes:
For their secular counterparts of the anti-cult movements, cultists, have themore-than-human power of 'brainwashing their victims; but, as it has beennoted, 'brainwashing' in some anti-cult theories appears as something magical, the modem version of the evil eye.
An extraordinary coup de théâtre! First, we are presented with a dichotomy that is simplified but loaded with meaning. This is then articulated in a further subdivision that produces four boxes: two for the rationalists and two for the post-rationalists, as if there were two floors of a building. One floor is rationalist and the other post-rationalist. On each floor, one flat is occupied by religious people and one by secularists. Introvigned describes the tenants on the first floor, the rationalists, as very similar because they use explanations of the same kind. They are in the same framework (rationality), but he claims to perform the same operation with the tenants of the second floor, the supposed post-rationalists, who are not similar in any way. Only a very low level of critical vigilance can let this analogy pass. A very low vigilance and an effective frame, that of absurdity (“evil eye”, “post-rationalism” and so on). Let us take a look outside the box. Satan's intervention is indeed a supernatural idea, mind manipulation a scientific theory. While it is true that neither hypothesis is universally accepted, the first is not because it is not falsifiable by Popper's definition, while the second is up for debate precisely because it is falsifiable; hence it is a scientific hypothesis. However, a well-designed frame – as George Lakoff teach us - can create an illusion of similarity.
Most importantly, the normal logical processes are reversed in the description presented here. Instead of arriving at the conclusion that the manipulation theory is irrational through a series of successive logical steps, the discourse only spins the argument further by setting this irrationality as a premise! Thus, a tautology is realised that cannot prove anything.“Since brainwashing is not rational, cult apologists promote unscientific concept”….
Nice try, Massimo!
It is precisely a “begging the question fallacy”, because the same idea is repeated in the premise and the conclusion. Arguments that beg the question can be persuasive and obscure the fact that a debatable claim is being presented as truth.
3 - From argumentative fallacies to smoke and mirrors
The first to take advantage of the systematic errors of the mind and carry out a manipulation are precisely these authors.
a) Cult apologists as cultural parasites
Cult apologists and leaders invoke religious freedom, i.e. the principles of open society that apply outside the cults, the same principles that they deny within the cults. In other words, they claim to defend closed societies on the basis of the principles of open society. I call it “Salvemini’s paradox” (after an Italian liberal thinker).
Besides being a paradox, this is a form of cultural parasitism, because they take nourishment from the open society to feed closed societies.
b) Cult apologists as identitarians
The activism of the organisations defending ‘religious freedom’ associated with these authors is presented as a defence of rights, of freedom, of respect for free choice, in short, of democracy. It is anything but.
Where democracy means the universalisation of rights and respect for minorities, the cult apologists' proposal is not really motivated by respect for minorities, but it is very reminiscent of the differentialism of the identitarian and sovereigntist ideology, a far-right ideology, which, on the contrary, values differences precisely in order to oppose the universalisation of rights.
Identitarians and cult apologists appeal to the “right to be different”. Although this may seem like an affirmation of universalism and ecumenism, the identitarian is an enemy of the open society. dentitarians defend other closed groups against the claims of open society so that it does not interfere with theirs own group.
If the Western citizen is horrified by the practise of infibulation or other female genital mutilations and calls for their abolition, it is because he or she believes that the universalization of rights is a value that precedes respect for a culture that degrades and inflicts violence on women.
The identitarian, on the other hand, believes that the customs and traditions of cultures where individual rights are not respected must be protected because the defence of identity precedes the defence of individual rights. Indenties are superior to human rights.
Cult apologists work in the same way.
The identity of the cult is superior to civil rights that exist outside it. So the call for the defence of rights by cult apologists is a red herring, a smoke screen.
c) The final smoke screen
Finally, it takes a minimal cognitive effort to escape the traps of argumentative fallacies and understand that the New Religious Movements, the term we might ironically consider the “woke” term for cults, obviously have no reason to be defended in the name of vaunted liberal principles, because in the liberal-democratic framework, religious freedom is intangible. Those who need to be defended are abusive and totalitarian cults, i.e. groups where abuse and harassment take place. This defence is necessary for abusive cults precisely because they operate in a liberal democratic system that condemns abuse and harassment. Anything else is drawing the target around the hole.
III - The Cult Apologists Network
Scientology
"The good news is that thanks to the intervention of the CIA, the department of the Greek secret service that deals with new religious movements has been closed and the staff dismissed!!!". So says one of the numerous documents found by Greek police in the mid-1990s when they stormed Scientology's headquarters in Athens and seized a variety of internal material from the cult some of which was made public. Some of the documents contain references to CIA support for Scientology's foreign branches.
Investigators also found thousands of pieces of information about the private lives of citizens and evidence of actual espionage activities. Scientology does indeed have its own highly efficient intelligence structure: the Office for Special Affairs (OSA). The former head of the local FBI office in Los Angeles said that Scientology has 'one of the most effective intelligence services, rivaling even the FBI'.
To better understand what we are talking about, an interlude is necessary to introduce the reader to the Scientology doctrine and its 'ethics'.
a) Scientology doctrine in a nutshell
Scientology was founded by Ron L. Hubbard a year and a half after the success of his 1950 book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health", which formed its basis. According to Hubbard, the mind is divided into three parts: the analytical mind, the reactive mind and the somatic mind and most physical and mental problems are nothing more than problems caused by traumatic events stored in the reactive mind and called engrams. It is possible to eliminate engrams, and thus eliminate the reactive mind, in order to reach the state of “clear”, a state in which the individual is able to realise their full potential. This is possible through a therapy described as auditing in which the pre-clear confronts the engrams of their reactive mind with the help of an auditor. The process is a one-to-one technique in which the auditor asks questions and the pre-clear searches their mind and provides answers. These levels of auditing, called "degrees”, are fee-based, like all Scientology courses and services.
The E-meter is an indispensable tool for auditing. This is an artefact that resembles a skin conductivity meter and records what Hubbard calls the "electronic structure of the reactive mind”. Fluctuations in the needle of the E-meter indicate the presence of a 'mental mass' that acts as a resistance to the flow of the E-meter's electrical energy, indicating the presence of engrams and the untruthfulness of the adept's confessions, which are obviously blocked by spiritual problems. Once the state of "clearness" is reached, one witnesses the disappearance of a multitude of diseases, an increase in intelligence and a decrease in accidents, 'for engrams predispose to accidents' (p. 122).
All this was already described in Dianetics in 1950. Hubbard further developed his doctrine on this basis and founded the Hubbard Association of Scientologists in 1952, from which Scientology emerged in 1954. Apart from the many 'technologies' for achieving incredible advantages, the doctrine is based on the Gnostic idea of an immortal soul that can free itself from the prison of matter through knowledge. Hubbard calls it thetan. In Scientology, thetans are believed to be reborn in new bodies from time to time through a process called 'assumption', a concept equivalent to reincarnation.
The expression Body thetan refers to a disembodied thetan that is stuck in, on or next to a human body. All human bodies are said to be infested with these disembodied thetans, or groups of them, known as 'clusters', which are formed in a hierarchy with a leader, a deputy leader and other members of the group. This has its origins in the story of Xenu. This mythical story deserves a description.
According to "Scientology's Advanced Technology", Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a "Galactic Confederacy" who 75 million years ago brought billions of inhabitants of his overcrowded empire to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") to kill them after rounding them up with the help of psychiatrists under the pretext of a tax audit (that's funny). Psychiatrists play the same role in the Scientology narrative as Jews do in anti-Semitic doctrines. Then he had them loaded into spaceships that resemble the Douglas Company's DC-8 aircraft in every way (that's funny too), had them brought to Earth and stacked around volcanoes, then killed with hydrogen bombs. The official Scientology writings claim that the thetans of these aliens were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic tape" and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to some kind of cinema (weird, huh?) where they were forced to watch a "super colossal 3D movie" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard called "various misleading data" (collectively referred to as the R6 implant) into the unfortunate thetans' memories, memories that "have to do with God, the devil, space enterprises, etc." These included all world religions; Hubbard attributed Roman Catholicism and the image of the crucifixion in particular to Xenu's influence. The two 'implantation stations' mentioned by Hubbard, i.e. 'cinemas', were allegedly located in Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. These disembodied thetans then infested the bodies of people on Earth, causing mental damage that can only be repaired by Scientology auditing. For a fee.
These events are known in Scientology as "Incident II", and the traumatic associated memories as "The Wall of Fire"or, as mentioned, "R6 Implant".
The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the story of Xenu to members who have completed a long series of courses (which cost a lot of money). After reaching the 'state of Clear', the individual is supposed to be able to ascend through 8 further spiritual levels, called OT levels (Operating Thetan) , from OT I to OT VIII. Hubbard described Xenu's history in 1967 in Operating Thetan Level III (OT III) and warned that the "R6 implant" was designed to kill anyone who revealed it or "attempted to dislodge it". Despite this, much material about Xenu leaked to the public through court documents and copies of Hubbard's notes circulated over the internet, and it appears that no one died as a result.
A peculiarity of Scientology is therefore the concept of the 'misunderstood word'. Progress on the 'bridge to total freedom' (as Scientology defines itself) can come up against an obstacle if one encounters terms in the study that one does not understand. This, according to Hubbard, would lead to a dangerous process of introversion, abandonment of study and the commission of 'overts', i.e. those 'contrary' acts that prevent the release of true spiritual potential. Scientology has a so-called "Study Technology" to which it devotes a veritable religious/professional course and has invented no less than nine different methods of "clarifying words".
These are essentially the ideas that Scientology followers believe in. What they do has mainly to do with so-called Ethics. To uphold right action, the movement has an 'Ethics Section' to which the follower turns or is sent when sub-optimal situations arise in his personal life or in the group. The Section, headed by an 'Ethics Officer', develops special programmes (often for a fee) to bring their 'ethics' back 'in'. Situations that may involve the Ethics Section are: Homosexuality; family members who are critical of the follower's membership, but especially criticism of the organisation, its founder, the doctrine by suppressive persons that is, i.e. persons whom Scientology perceives as its enemies, whose "pernicious' actions are intended to suppress the progress of individual Scientologists or the Scientology movement.
The 'attack the attacker' policy was codified by Hubbard in the late mid-1960s in response to government investigations into Scientology. In 1966, Hubbard wrote down the correct procedure for attacking the enemies of Scientology:
(1) Spot who is attacking us.
(2) Start Investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own
professionals, not outside agencies.
(3) Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them.
(4) Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime actual evidence on the
attackers to the press.
Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.(…) Never wait. Never talk about us - only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get
headlines. Don't use us .
I speak from 15 years of experience in this. There has never yet been an attacker who was not reeking with crime. All we had to do was look for it and murder would come out.
(from Attacks on Scientology, "Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter," 25 February 1966).
The most important management tool for suppressive people is the Office for Special Affairs (OSA), Scientology's secret service.
Scientology and the US government
Examples of state intervention in support of Scientology are certainly not limited to the above-mentioned protection provided by the CIA to the Church in Greece. Among the documents published on Wikileaks is a report that after the arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Germany, German Scientologists were invited to a briefing at the US embassy. With the US Secretary of State!
Wikileaks has published cables showing that the American consulate in Hamburg received information about the German task force against Scientology and in particular the well-known church opponent Ursula Caberta from Christoph Ahlhaus, who later became mayor of the city.
When Gerry Armstrong, who is regarded as Scientology's greatest enemy, arrived in Russia, the authorities were informed of his arrival by the American embassy in Moscow so that they could take detention measures against him.
In short, not only does Scientology seem to have more than cordial relations with the US government, but it even seems that the US authorities are doing everything they can to help the church get rid of its enemies.
Greg Mitchell, the founder of The Mitchell Company, is the Commissioner of the Church of Scientology in Washington D.C. and a member of the Church of Scientology himself. According to insiders, his job is to help the Church gain credibility with influential decision-makers. He has been at home in various US governments since the 1990s. According to disclosure reports from the US House of Representatives and Senate, the controversial religious group has paid more than 1 million dollars to Greg Mitchell since 2003 to carry out his lobbying work.
According to White House visitor logs, Gregory Mitchell participated in a 'Criminal Justice Working Group" with political advisor David Pope in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House on 28 September 2009.
The Church of Scientology is an informal member of the NGO International Religious Freedom Roundtable, which Mitchell chairs. According to the IRFR's official website, "the IRFR "works to engage the United States government and urge its leaders to make religious freedom a higher priority in foreign policy and national security'. This goal appears to have been absolutely achieved with the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998.
In 1989, the memoirs of Miles Copeland, an ex- CIA officer representing the 'libertarian' far-right (i.e. strong supporters of the free market), current associated with the magazine National Review, were published in London . A curiosity: he is the father of 'Police' drummer Stewert Copeland. In his book 'The Game Player', Copeland tells of a plan hatched by his colleague Bob Mandelstam in the first half of the 1950s. The operation was called 'Occultism in High Places'. The idea was simple: since some heads of state and government were in the habit of consulting astrologers and occultists, American intelligence officers were to 'co-operate' with these occultists in order to turn them into channels of influence for the agency.
The plan worked, for example, when a "clairvoyant" sent by the agents convinced the president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah to make a visit to China, during which a CIA-inspired coup d'état overthrew the absent leader. According to Copeland, US intelligence also influenced Indonesian President Sukarno 'quite significantly' through 'psychics" and 'fortune tellers".
But the agency also allegedly utilised spiritual movements. This applies to the political-religious movement Moral Rearmament, founded by Lutheran pastor Frank Buchanan, which, according to Copeland, offered agents the opportunity to influence not only African and Asian politicians but also European leaders via secret channels. At one point Copeland mentions Scientology. Unsurprisingly, the church founded by Ron L. Hubbard was seen as an excellent means of influencing people who were themselves influential. In fact, Scientology's persuasion techniques are well known and are strikingly similar to those of the CIA. Copeland then reports an interesting fact:
We sent into the Scientology cult our agent, who under the direction of Ron Hubbard himself became “clear,” but then he demanded and started to receive ever more “monetary compensation for operational expenditures,” which together with his savings he gave over to Dianetics.
Dianetics is, as I said, the registered trademark that describes the 'technology' developed by L. Ron Hubbard and the fundamental principles of mind and spirit on which Scientology is based. In other words, it is not clear whether the CIA was trying to infiltrate and influence Scientology or whether the opposite was the case. It probably went both ways. What is certain is that the process known in Scientology as auditing is very similar to the polygraph-based interrogation in the Kubark Counter-Interrogation Manual. Kubark is a code name used by the CIA to define itself. It was used at the 'School of the Americas', a US military training facility in Panama, among other places. The students included some of the most bloodthirsty personalities in Central and South America, including Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos (Panama), Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Eduardo Viola (Argentina), Hugo Banzer Suárez (Bolivia).
Scientology literature is full of code names and acronyms that correspond to the use of intelligence documents, and some of the Church's training routines appear to have been taken directly from the Kubark manual. Scientology's training routine, TR-1, is called "Dear Alice". In this routine, the trainee is asked to read random sentences from Lewis Carroll's book "Alice in Wonderland" without showing any reaction to the book's whimsicality. The Kubark manual describes an interrogation technique called 'Alice in Wonderland'. Hubbard quotes the Kubark manual almost verbatim when he says that
Detention in a controlled environment and perhaps for a lengthy period is frequently essential to a successful counterintelligence interro- gation of a recalcitrant source.
Of course, none of this is proof of an overlap between Scientology and the CIA, but it is certainly evident that L. Ron Hubbard was aware of these techniques and intended to use them for the same purpose that the CIA used them: to gain control and power over others.
In truth, Copeland claims that a pact was also made between the CIA and Scientology, but without providing evidence or revealing the contents. However, we are certain that there was another agreement, in 1993. This is a story that needs to be reconstructed.
Operation Snow White
Relations between Scientology and the American government were not always cordial. In the 1970s, Scientology carried out an infiltration and espionage of American institutions, known as Operation Snow White, which ended with an FBI raid on the organisation's headquarters. In this operation, Scientology's intelligence service (then the Guardian's Office, now the Office for Special Affairs - OSA) illegally gained access to 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, and private organisations critical of Scientology in order to obtain information and delete compromising documents. This was the largest infiltration in US history. At the same time, a bitter 25-year war began between the Church and the Internal Revenue Service, the famous IRS. We are talking about the government agency that managed to put Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, while it failed to do so for murder and drug trafficking. for 25 years, Scientology claimed tax exemption as a religious corporation. More than 50 lawsuits were filed by the organisation against the IRS. In 1993, the IRS unexpectedly capitulated and granted the exemption.
Four years later, the New York Times revealed some interesting background to the affair. A private investigator told reporters that he and several other colleagues had been hired by Scientology to gather information on IRS officials, particularly about misconduct at work, alcohol and drug use, and extramarital affairs. Irregolarly, the tax exemption came about at the express request of the IRS director, so the normal approval process was skipped.
It was after this agreement, that the US State Department began to lobby internationally to defend Scientology's interests in all countries of the world. For example, when the German government became involved against Scientology (a 1998 report emphasised the destructive aspects of this 'commercial enterprise disguised as a religion' and a 2007 report by the Ministry of the Interior described the organisation as 'incompatible with the Constitution'), a series of firm statements by the US government in defence of the cult followed. For the US, Scientology is a religion and must be protected in the name of 'religious freedom'. Other measures include a document by the Beareau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (BDHRL), an agency of the US State Department, in which Germany is listed alongside countries such as China as one of the countries that violate religious freedom.
The Clinton administration has been very friendly towards Scientology. In November 1996, the President himself wrote an 'exclusive' article on 'what we can do about drugs' for the Scientology magazine 'Freedom', which was later translated into several languages.
His wife Hillary Clinton received members of the Scientology front office ‘Hands of Hope’ in the White House and received a quilt with a quote from L. Ron Hubbard as a gift [here] . This event was later aptly labeled in the media as Clearwatergate (a cross between Watergate, which engulfed Nixon, and Clearwater, the headquarters of the Church of Scientology).
In 1997, Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger met with actor John Travolta, a believer in the Church, and other Scientologists to discuss the German government's stance on Scientology (TIME 22September 1997). According to "George" magazine in March 1998, President Clinton met personally with John Travolta. Clinton praised the 'educational' materials of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the 'George' report, he said: 'Your programme sounds great' and added: “I would like to help you with your problem in Germany with Scientology”.
On March 21 1997, the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reported that President Clinton had complied with the requests of Scientologist Tom Cruise by instructing his newly confirmed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to arrange talks with German Foreign Minister Kinkel about Scientology's claims of religious persecution in Germany (Berliner Morgenpost, 23 November 1998).
In a letter of 'warm greetings' dated December 22 1999, Clinton thanked Scientologists for 'all your efforts to promote and build just communities united in understanding, compassion and mutual respect".
The official reason given for the Clintons' interest in Scientology was that the President had a Scientology sympathiser as a roommate when he was a student.
The US government's interference in Scientology outside US territory has been even more serious. At the end of 1998, for example, the US State Department sponsored a concert by jazz pianist and Scientology loyalist Chick Corea in Berlin because he was allegedly not allowed to perform in Germany due to 'religious discrimination'.
Just how far the US government's administrative support of cults can go is shown by the advice of the US State Department spokesman, who recommended that Germans watch the film 'Mission Impossible' starring Tom Cruise. The Hollywood star is Scientology's ambassador in Europe. In a letter to the State Department, he spoke seriously and openly about his lobbying work for Scientology:
... I appreciate the valuable assistance the State Department has given to members of my Church in protecting their rights, especially in Europe.
It is even known an intervention by the US Consulate General in Hamburg about the building permit issued by the city's technical authority for the establishment of the new Scientology Centre in the city, which concerned, among other things, the number of toilets and showers.
Many influential politicians in the United States have been recruited by Scientology. Some of them can be shown to be dependent on Scientology campaign contributions. An outdated list can be found on the Internet.
The agreement between the government and Scientology was accompanied by a secret protocol that has not yet been made public. What could be the content? Surely we can guess the potential of a planetary organisation like Scientology, whose main objectives include collecting and storing a large amount of information so that it can blackmail and compromise anyone, from the ordinary member who has gone astray to the powerful of Earth. To name one example: Arseny Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, who probably attended several courses in Scientology many years ago as director of the Aval Bank of Kiev, is an example of a man whose personal information would be extremely interesting not only to Scientology but also to the American intelligence services.
Certainly, the weight of the Church founded by L. Ron Hubbard seems to have grown disproportionately in the political sphere since the mid-1990s, when a powerful lobbying effort was initiated that has been meticulously described by Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta. The church funded politics and its celebrities (Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others) personally financed election campaigns. According to Bruno Foucherau, Scientology paid $725,000 to a political lobbying firm in 1997 and $420,000 the following year. Greg Jensen, one of the church's most respected leaders, allegedly sponsored the campaign of Senator Benjamin A. Gillman, who would later become chairman of the OSCE's Commission on Religious Freedom, an organisation that nearly led to a diplomatic incident over its attacks on France's anti-cult policies at the OSCE meeting (in the section moderated by Introvigne, director of CESNUR).
Emblematic of Scientology's closeness to the US government is the affair surrounding the dismissal of Arnaud Palisson, who headed the "Sects and Cults" department of the French secret service for ten years when Sarkozy was in government, who received Tom Cruise at the Elysée Palace and was very accommodating towards the Church. Asked about the affair, Palisson, who now lives in Canada, replied: "Sarkozy is the American. He does not want to do anything that displeases him'. Operation Snow White is now just a memory.
Scientology and the network of 'cult apologists'
The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was the most important organisation to emerge from the anti-cult movement in America. In 1991, Time magazine quoted the then director of CAN, Cynthia Kisser, in the article 'The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power'. Kisser stated that: " Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members”. These comments and other forms of criticism from CAN caught the attention of the Church of Scientology and ‘Landmark Education’, which separately took legal action against the organisation. in 1996, Scientology sued "deprogrammer" Rick Ross and CAN for violating the civil rights of Jason Scott, a member of a Pentecostal church who was abducted by Ross and two other associates to undergo "deprogramming" at the behest of his parents.
CAN was involved because a contact person in the organisation had referred Scott's mother to Rick Ross. In the trial, Jason Scott was represented by Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientologist lawyer. Ross and CAN lost the case, which drove CAN into bankruptcy.
The puzzling thing is that the association's phone numbers, name, logo and real estate were acquired by Mr Hayes - a member of the Church of Scientology - who gave them away for free to a Californian group whose board includes several Scientology members (see here). In other words: Scientology has formed an anti-cult organisation on its own! Basically, it's like the Mafia founding an anti-Mafia organisation. The new CAN is, as one might suspect, much softer on alternative groups. The new CAN's list of experts includes Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvigne. The latter is the director and founder of the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR), the former is the director of the American section of the same CESNUR.
CESNUR’s benevolence towards Scientology has led some to speculate that the two organisations have a mercenary relationship. The director of CESNUR, who sent me a cease and desist notice on the matter, says this is not true. To be honest, I don't believe it either. It would be wrong to reduce CESNUR's activities to a mean form of intellectual prostitution. The study centre and Scientology seem to have the same goals and pursue them through cultural influence. It is not about buying a service.
Right in the middle of the 1990s, when anti-cult campaigns were being activated in Europe and religious freedom control institutes were proliferating in the US, Scientology seemed to become the rallying point for many other minority cults, forming more or less formal and more or less open alliances supported by America's Christian fundamentalist organisations and, by osmosis, by their political credentials. Organisations like the Institute on Religion and Public Policy are an interesting hodgepodge of diverse people, from ultra-conservative senators to Moonies (the followers of Reverend Moon's Unification Church) and the followers of Guru Sri Chimmoy. However, this does not prevent the Institute from describing itself as 'fundamentalist Catholic'. The founder and president was Joseph K. Griebosky. In 2004, a former employee of Griebosky's, Daniel Chapman, contacted the well-known activist Gerry Armostrong to inform him that Griebosky received $8,000 per month from Scientology when he founded the IRPP in 1999. It is possible that Scientology itself paid for the founding of the IRPP. In December 2011, Mark ("Marty") Rathbun, a former high-ranking Scientologist, published on his blog a Scientology document titled "Grieboski Programme" dated 29 January 2007, which described "goals" or actions that church leaders believed Grieboski had to take to solve Scientology's problems in Europe and facilitate its entry into Muslim countries.
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy opens up the phenomenon of incongruent aggregations and paradoxical ecumenism. This will become particularly evident in the coming years with the explosion of associations and federations whose declared aim is to lobby national and supranational political bodies to oppose the actions of organisations protecting the victims of cults. The action is best known in Europe, a continent where the anti-cult policies of some countries, notably France, but also Germany, which has imposed significant restrictions on Scientology, pose a threat to those who consider it useful to defend 'religious freedom". The most important organisations of the so-called 'cult apologists' are the Belgian Human Rights WIthout Frontiers (HRWF), the French Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience (CAP LC) and the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB). Then, of course, there is the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR), a scientific think tank that supports the demands of the above-mentioned associations with the supposed authority of academic knowledge. Let us briefly examine them.
The president of the HRWF is Willy Fautrè, a regular visitor to the US embassy in Brussels and a long-time correspondent for News Network International, an evangelical US publishing group that is fiercely anti-communist (communism meaning anything that deviates from right wing views) and extremely conservative (against abortion, against recognising same-sex couples, etc.). He was also a member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), an organisation that apparently had links with Scientology. Indeed, the Greek correspondent of the Federation contributed to publications of the church founded by Ron Hubbard and the Moscow delegation published a book in collaboration with Scientology.
The French CAP LC has Thierry Valle as its president, who is pictured in the photos below (Fig. 34) together with Françoise Morel, a leading Scientology figure, in front of the headquarters of the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights (CCHR), a front office of the Church of Scientology. The photos were taken by a group of French 'ethical hackers' who were active against Scientology in 2015.
Thierry Valle also appears in the list of employees of the Guaranty Building (HGB) in Los Angeles, one of Scientology's most important administrative locations, for the year 1994, which the former Scientologist Paul Adams compiled a few years later.
The Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) describes itself on its website as 'an interest-led non-governmental organisation registered in the official register of lobbies at the EU Parliament and the Commission in Brussels and Strasbourg, representing six nations'. The current president is Alessandro Amicarelli, who accused me of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party on organ harvesting (see the prologue to this dossier). Incidentally, one of the founding members was Fabrizio d'Agostini, who is still a member of the scientific committee. His form of presentation is missing a basic piece of information that is, however, easy to find in Scientology publications: he is a high-ranking Scientologist. He would even be OT VIII.
One of the founding organisations is Soteria International, an emanation of Atman Yoga (formerly MYSA Yoga) by Gregorian Bivolaru, the 'sex guru' who is currently in prison in France after being on the run for many years. He is facing charges of sexual abuse, human trafficking and more. Rosita Šorytė, the wife of CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne, sits on the FOB's scientific committee.
These organisations work through coordinated lobbying of supranational bodies (UN, OSCE, Council of Europe, ECHR), just as envisaged in the manifesto written by Introvigne in response to the French law against cults. We will come back to this.
In 2019, the Scientology front group Fundación para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad was granted Special Consultative Status by the United Nations. The foundation is headed by Ivan Arjona Pelado , a high-ranking member of the Church's secret service, the Office for Special Affairs (OSA). This status will enhance Scientology's ability to speak to the United Nations and will also enable it to organise conferences under the UN umbrella and thus gain new political allies from around the world.
The previous year, Ivan Pelado, Greg Mitchell and Eric Roux, a top Scientology figure in Europe and head of the OSA, took part in a summit on religious freedom in Brussels organised by ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe. This is a Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament. The most renowned participants were Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights at the UN Human Rights Council, and Sam Brownback, former Governor of Kansas and, until Biden's election, US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Brownback's office published the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom. Brownback's selection as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in 2018 was made by USCIRF. USCIRF is the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the commission that advised the US President in 2020 to obstruct the work of the anti-cult federation FECRIS at the OSCE (see the prologue to this report).
Other speakers included the aforementioned Willy Fautrè, President of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), and Patricia Duval, a French lawyer who is rarely absent from Scientology panels. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) and is one of the authors of the CESNUR magazine on religious freedom Bitter Winter and the Journal of CESNUR.
Also present was Bashy Quraishy from EMISCO, an association that fights against anti-Islamic prejudice but, strangely enough, fights against the anti-cult movement.
This is just one example of the diverse lobbying activities of the network of “cult apologists” at the level of transnational politics.
The actions of Scientology organisations and the cult apologists at European level are facilitated by the benevolence of various French-speaking personalities. For example, the French far-right MEP Maxette Pirbakas (2019-2024) and the Moroccan businessman Lahcen Hammouch, CEO of Brussels Media, the holding company that publishes the European Times. The former is the organiser of the conference on religious freedom, whose speakers are pictured in Figure 23 (see below), with the MEP third from the left. Lahcen Hammouch (second from left in the picture) is an entrepreneur who is committed to the cause of the Moroccan Sahara. He is running for mayor of Brussels for the ‘Les Engages’ party, which, according to the newspaper 'Blast', emerged from an ufological cult.
Two photos taken at the OSCE Human Rights Meeting in Warsaw in different years give an idea of how coordinated this action is. The first (fig. 37) shows in the front row, from the left, the Scientology delegate Ivan Arjona Pelado, next to him Massimo Introvigne, the director of CESNUR and Bitter Winter, then Willy Fautrè from Human Rights Without Frontiers and finally Alessandro Amicarelli from the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB). In the second row, behind the Scientology representative, Christine Mirre, Vice-President of the Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC). The first thing the viewer notices is that, apart from the Scientology representative who had not noticed, everyone is smiling at the same camera, even the CAP LC representative in the second row. Like a school group on a field trip, they are one group.
This photo is proudly displayed on the banner of the website of the European Federation for Religious Freedom (FOB). It shows, among other things, the arrival of Bashy Quraishy, the man with the black beret on his head and a colourful scarf, who is just taking his place. Practically all the members of the Brussels Committee for Religious Freedom mentioned a few lines above.
The second photo (Fig. 38) is even more telling and shows a briefing with high-ranking representatives of Scientology meeting with representatives of organisations defending "religious freedom". So we are not talking here about a simple 'conflict of interest', but about blatant complicity. It is evident that this is a coordinated and planned action by some Scientology executives (including those of the OSA) and the leaders of the NGOs in defence of religious freedom. The photo was taken at the OSCE meeting in Warsaw shortly before the start of the session in which I would have attended.
IV - The Black Network
A strange religious expert
The 'Foro Espiritual' in Estella, Spain, is, as it says on the city's website, 'a workshop of fraternity where different religious communities coexist in an atmosphere of harmony, peace and joy, seeking meeting points with the aim of the world finding peace'. In short, an ecumenical festival with clear New Age connotations. At the first edition in 2006, the speakers included a certain Ives Guillou, who was presented as an 'expert on religions'. Anyone who knows enough about the 'strategy of tension" and the italian 'anni di piombo' (years of lead) will wince when they read this name. It is the real name of the man who went down in history as Yves Guérin-Sérac. He was the founder of the Aginter Presse agency, a covert terrorist structure that was financed by Salazar's secret police and had links to Western intelligence services. Aginter Presse functioned as a control room for right-wing subversion from 1966 to 1974. Through the neo-fascist organisation Ordine Nuovo, Aginter Presse was involved in terrorist attacks in Italy, starting with the massacre in Piazza Fontana, and in Operation Condor, a CIA plan to eliminate opponents of South American dictatorships in the 1970s.
It is somewhat unusual for the grey eminence of international black terrorism to speak about universal love and the 'human family' at a religious festival, especially given the fact that he had been in hiding for decades when he was listed at the festival under his real name. Interestingly, however, this was not the first time Guérin-Serac had participated in events related to the world of alternative spirituality. The journalist Andrea Sceresini inform us that in 2002 Guérin-Sérac took part in a meeting of the Women's Federation for World Peace, an emanation of the Unification Church. What makes it all even more incomprehensible is that Guérin-Serac was anything but ecumenical, not only politically but also religiously. One man who knew him very well was the lifelong Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who was a member of the neo-fascist groups ‘Ordine Nuovo’ and ‘Avanguardia Nazionale’. He claimed that what struck him most about the figure who called himself Ralf at the time was his religiosity: 'Ralf was very Catholic. Fundamentalist Catholic!' In other words, he was not the type to attend new age festivals. Vinciguerra, however, added a further notation:
Christian civilisation was built on millions of dead and he had no qualms about doing the same to preserve it!
The traditionalist matrix
(a) the doctrine of double effect
The twisted logical and moral entanglements that characterise a particular environment in which the political right combines with religious radicalism are difficult to see through. For example, there are two glaring contradictions in the lines above. The first relates to the coexistence of the fundamentalist Catholic and the mass murderer in one and the same person - specifically in Guérin-Serac. The second contradiction is that of one who professes a form of Catholicism that is hostile to ecumenism, because he is fundamentalist, and actively participates in events organised by other cults. To solve these apparent puzzles, we need to unravel the skein and start where the thread of the story begins. Following it will take us to unimaginable places.
The proximity of Catholic traditionalism to murders and terrorist attacks was already evident during the Algerian war. The OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) was a French clandestine paramilitary organisation with the slogan 'French Algeria or death'. It was founded in Madrid in 1961 under the protection of Francisco Franco's fascist government and had as its main political reference the Catholic counter-revolutionary organisation La Cité Catolique, which supplied the OAS with numerous fighters. In fifteen months, the OAS caused around 1,500 deaths through terrorist attacks of unprecedented cruelty. After the Evian Agreement between the French government and the Algerian Liberation Front, which laid the foundations for Algerian independence from France, became known, the OAS decided to carry out an assassination attempt on de Gaulle, who was considered a traitor. This failed and the organisation disbanded.
As anomalous as it may seem, it should be noted that in Catholic circles linked to the military hierarchies, the practise of torture and murder was considered worthy of absolution. This was based on the ideas of Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine of Hippo. Louis Delarue, chaplain of a unit deployed in Algeria, said that one had to choose between two evils, and letting a bandit temporarily suffer the death penalty was the lesser.
Probably the best justification for the nefarious deeds of Catholic activists was provided by St Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the double effect: 'The evil caused by an action directed towards the good does not invalidate the morality of the action itself'.
Among the OAS volunteers was Yves Guérin-Sérac, who apparently based his mission on the logic of St Thomas, as he was later prepared to kill millions of people in order to achieve the goal of protecting traditional Christian society.
b) Subversion and revolution
After the defeat in Algeria, Guérin-Sérac and other OAS veterans fled first to Franco’s Spain and then to Salazar's Portugal in order to avoid being sentenced for desertion and treason. It was here that the idea of founding an international anti-communist organisation took shape. This structure was to consist of specialists in the fight against 'subversion'. This concept is of central importance. An important reference for the OAS fighters is said to have been La Cité Catolique. It is therefore appropriate to say a few words about this organisation. It was a Catholic counter-revolutionary organisation led by Jean Ousset. He saw the root of all evil in 'subversion'. By this he meant the distortion of the Christian order, natural law and the Creator's plan, a distortion that had been given its greatest impetus by the French Revolution.
From the 1960s onwards, this fight against subversion also took the form of the defence of the 'white presence' in the few African territories that remained in European hands.
Ousset was not alone in this battle. The same struggle against modernity and the disruption of the natural order was waged in Brazil by Plinio Correa de Oliveira and his association Tradition, Family and Property. What Ousset called 'subversion', Correa de Oliveira called 'revolution'.
De Oliveira argued that Christianity had suffered a dramatic spiritual decline since the 15th century due to the spread of social egalitarianism and moral liberalism, which had put an end to the righteousness that had characterised mediaeval society.
He therefore considered it necessary to fully restore Christian civilisation through the reintroduction of social hierarchies and aristocratic titles, as well as the dissolution of socialist parties. De Oliveira was the advocate of a programme for the 'restoration of order', which was described as a return to a
Christian civilisation, austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacred, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal.
TFP has remained true to this goal by actively participating in the efforts of reactionary forces to depose democratically elected presidents in Latin America, beginning with the coups in Brazil in 1964 and that of Pinochet in Chile in 1973. Margareth Power writes that the TFP maintained a "mutually supportive relationship" with Pinochet's dictatorship for seventeen years, justifying the violation of human rights with the overriding need to fight communism. This is the same logic used by the Catholic OAS military in Algeria.
Penny Lernoux points out that the actions of the TFP were in line with the goals of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which not only supported the coup but even seems to have financed the TFP for its work against democracy in Chile (page 297). There are even reports of martial arts training camps in Rio de Janeiro for members of the TFP, the army and the police.
In those years, the TFP forged links with the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which, according to Benjamin A. Cowan, was "a secretive and often questionable organisation whose activities in the second half of the 20th century ranged from spreading panic to overt or covert support for right-wing terrorism“ (page 156). The fifth WACL congress, held in Manila in 1971, was hosted by dictator Ferdinand Marcos and was attended by the Brazilian and Argentinian delegations of the TFP (Power, op.cit., p. 98).
In the 1980s, the TFP extended its reach further by joining forces with and co-founding the International Policy Forum of the US New Right theorist Paul Weyrich.
Plinio Correa de Oliveira and Jean Ousset did not like each other because the Brazilian found the Frenchman too socialist and because of his allusions to the French counter-revolutionary culture of the 19th century, which always harboured a certain hostility towards the ruling bourgeoisie, as he considered it to be secular and Masonic. However, the two lessons are composed in an Italian counter-revolutionary association that has both Ousset and de Oliveira as cultural references: Alleanza Cattolica.
c) Aginter Presse
In May 1974, after the 'Carnation Revolution' had brought democracy back to Portugal, a group of soldiers stormed the premises of a press agency at Rua des Pracas 13 in Lisbon on the orders of an official from the PIDE, Salazar's secret police. The agency was Aginter Presse, founded by Guérin-Sérac. Analysis of the documents found revealed that the fake press agency was an international centre of subversion, the control and coordination room of an unconventional war, capable of carrying out espionage operations, organising attacks, training mercenaries and infiltrating revolutionary movements. The agency consisted of
- an espionage centre linked to the Portuguese secret services and other Western intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and the West German Gehlen network;
- a recruitment and training centre for mercenaries and terrorists specialising in attacks and sabotage, especially in Third World countries;
- a political organisation called 'Orde et Tradition', flanked by a military arm called 'Organisation d'Action Contre le Communisme International' (OACI).
In the Rua des Pracas archives, evidence was found of active cooperation between Aginter Presse and the security services of major Western countries, which commissioned the agency to carry out 'dirty' operations that were not officially allowed to be carried out by government agencies of democratic countries. The American services supported the agency, for example, in the anti-communist plan Stay Behind, in which the Italian paramilitary secret organisation Gladio was also involved. Relations with the American intelligence were conducted via intermediary organisations that avoided directly financing the Aginter Presse.
One of these organisations was the John Birch Society. This organisation of the economic and religious right is the prototype of a galaxy of conservative foundations and think tanks that form the backbone of American soft power. We will see later what role they play in supporting 'religious freedom" in the world.
This paradoxical struggle against subversion through subversion experienced its greatest stage in Italy with the so-called strategy of tension, which began with the Piazza Fontana bombing in 1969. The documents of Judge Salvini, who was in charge of investigating the massacre, clearly show that the agency and Guérin-Sérac himself were involved in the attack. In June 2005, the Court of Cassation ruled that the massacre was the work of a "subversive group founded in Padua within the Ordine Nuovo', a neo-fascist group founded by Pino Rauti, whose links with Guérin-Sérac have been proven, as Judge Salvini also stated in the parliamentary commission of enquiry into the massacres. The relations between Ordine Nuovo and parts of the Italian secret service were so close that one cannot speak of a simple infiltration of the organisation into the security services , but of two parallel and coordinated structures. Ordine Nuovo was also referred to as the 'prosthesis of the deviated services'.
The Ordine Nuovo also consisted of young people who were fascinated by mystical and esoteric cultures. Rauti himself had them practise magical rituals. The culture of the Ordine Nuovo was permeated by an anti-modern, hierarchical and spiritualist attitude (see Stefania Limiti, Potere Occulto, ChiareLettere, 2022, p. 278).
Through the OAS and Aginter Presse, European neo-fascism underwent a strategic and fundamental change: from an anti-American and anti-Soviet stance to a defence of the West, even becoming a force defending Atlanticism.
c) Alleanza Cattolica
Alleanza Cattolica was founded in 1968 by Giovanni Cantoni together with Agostino Sanfratello. Italian traditionalism, which saw its fulcrum in AC, was also always very critical of the “Risorgimento”, the political and social movement that led to the unity of Italy in 19th century, which was seen as the Italian version of the French Revolution. Alleanza Cattolica was therefore dedicated to spreading revisionist interpretations of the history of the Risorgimento and the apologetics of the various 'insurrections', i.e. the Catholic popular uprisings against the liberal and democratic revolutions (Vendée in France, Sanfedistas in Italy, Cristeros in Mexico, etc.).
Sanfratello is close to the neo-fascist terrorist Franco Freda and was the mentor of Roberto Fiore, the founder of the extreme right-wing movement Terza Posizione. Freda was convicted for the 1969 bombings in Italy, then for incitement to racial hatred and subversive association. Fiore, on the other hand, was sentenced by the Italian judiciary in 1985 for the offences of subversive association and armed gang. During his years as a fugitive, Fiore was protected by MI6 as an 'agent of British intelligence'. In 1991, the European Commission of Inquiry into Racism and Xenophobia confirmed his association with MI6 since the early 1980s. Fiore and Sanfratello are also the founders of the political movement "Forza Nuova", on whose lists Sanfratello himself stood as a candidate in 2003.
President of Forza Nuova was another representative of Italian catholicism, the jurist Piero Vassallo, author of an essay in defence of the Nazis in court in Nuremberg.
There are many lawyers in the AC. Among them is Alfredo Mantovano, who at the time of writing is Undersecretary of State in the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and responsible for the secret services.
However, the most influential lawyer in AC is Massimo Introvigne. He joined Alleanza Cattolica in 1972, and soon became the most active member of the association and one of the main signatories of the magazine "Cristianità", the official organ of AC. In 2008, he even succeeded founder Cantoni, who had suffered a stroke, in the official role of 'Reggente Vicario', but effectively at the head of the organisation (Cantoni only retained the position of Regent in an honorary capacity). Introvigne continued the tradition of insurrectionary apologetics by founding the Centre for Counter-Revolutionary Studies (CESCOR) in Turin.
But what is Alleanza cattolica?
The organisation says it is committed to defending the 'social doctrine of the Church', where 'social doctrine' has nothing to do with a commitment to solving social problems, but rather with the instructions that believers should follow in the public sphere according to the principles of 'natural morality'. De Mattei writes:
Giovanni Cantoni's encounter with Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, whose major work Revolution and Counter-Revolution became the basic text for the training of young fighters, was decisive for him.
As Introvigne himself told me in a private communication, "Alleanza Cattolica has always 'navigated' between Correa de Oliveira and Ousset, recognising that there was also a pluralism within the counter-revolutionary world, participating in Ousset's famous Lausanne congresses and maintaining no less friendly relations with this world than with the TFP."
Ultimately, the Alleanza Cattolica moves between the organisation that was dear to the OAS fighters (and whose veterans flowed into the Aginter Presse) and the Brazilian association that collaborated with the South American caudillos protected by the CIA.
d) neocon slip
From the mid-1980s, Tradition, Family and Property came under considerable fire from the institutions. A scandal had already shaken the image of the TFP in France at the end of the 1970s. The Saint Benoit school, founded by the TFP in Chateauroux in 1977, hit the headlines when former members of the association and concerned family members denounced the indoctrination of children that took place there through manipulative pressure and led to negative effects on their relationships with their families. This indoctrination allegedly led the children to fully identify with the organisation and its goals, which had a negative impact on their family relationships. In particular, many students were made to see their parents, especially fathers with prestigious professional positions, as an expression of the 'revolutionary' values that the organisation was supposed to combat.
A report on the school's aberrations entitled 'Tradition, Family, Property. Catholic association or millenarian sect?" was compiled by anonymous writers.
Among the other accusations made in the dossier was the excessive veneration of the founder's mother, Mrs Lucilia, whose locks of hair were elevated to the status of relics. Following this report, the school was closed. At a court hearing in 1982, it was established that the students had been subjected to psychological measures to make them members of the organisation.
In 1984, following a parliamentary investigation, Venezuela banned the TFP, accusing it of practising forms of psychological conditioning of its followers. The following year, the Brazilian Bishops' Conference declared that the TFP was incompatible with the Church 'because of its esoteric character, its religious fanaticism, the cult reserved for the personality of its founder and his mother and the improper use of the name of the Virgin Mary' (XXIII National Assembly of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference, Itaici, 18 April 1985). Two things then happened. Firstly, the TFP published a haphazard pamphlet destined, however, to inaugurate a fortunate thread and entitled Brainwashing. A Myth Exploited by the New 'Therapeutic Inquisition. Its central theme was that mental manipulation was a myth used to combat religion by a fictitious and conspiratorial 'anti-cult movement' made up of psychiatrists and communists. in 1991, TFP reiterated this by publishing in French "The New Atheist and Psychiatric Inquisition Calls Those They Wants to Destroy 'Cults'", by Gustavo Antonio and Luís Sérgio Solimeo, ed. Société Française pour la Defence de la Tradition, Famille et Propriété, Paris 1991, translation of a Spanish text from 1985), which already makes the concept clear in the title.
The second event was that Correa de Oliveira and his followers suddenly developed a vision in which they saw Christian America as the only counter-revolutionary force capable of responding to European secularism, the fruit of the French Revolution, and the 'Marxisation" of the Latin Church, which had gone so far as to criticise Tradition (and even TFP).
Tradition, Family and Property has collaborated with representatives and associations of American conservatism such as Paul Weyrich and the Council for National Policy (CNP). This is a secret organisation described by the New York Times as 'a little-known club of a few hundred of the country's most influential conservatives' that meets three times a year behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference.
The European sister organisations of TFP, such as Alleanza Cattolica and the Lepanto Foundation, have taken the same stance, allying themselves with American neoconservatism in the fight against secularism and defending 'religious freedom". De Mattei (Lepanto Foundation) is a member of the board of experts of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute as well as the Acton Institute - some of the most active think tanks in the American neoconservative galaxy. Introvgne himself writes in his book on Plinio Correa de Oliveira (Una battaglia nella notte, 2008) that TFP has succeeded in linking with the American right "a set of interests involving the major foundations around which conservative culture revolves" (p. 210).
All of these associations are part of a vast network of Christian pro-free market organisations called the Atlas Network, which is known to operate [...] as a silent extension of US foreign policy, [...] think tanks associated with Atlas receive silent funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, an essential arm of American soft power. American soft power.
Lee Fang writes this in Sphere of influence: How American libertarians are remaking Latin American politics, The Intercept, 9 August 2017
In view of this change in political perspective, the foundation of a new institution from the AC in 1988 seems to follow the same logical sequence. This was the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (Centre for the Study of New Religions), CESNUR. Its founder and director is Massimo Introvigne.
e) CESNUR, the counter- revolution with the mask
CESNUR is a well-known research centre for 'new religious movements' that claims to be 'independent of any religious or denominational organisation'. Although Introvigne has often responded to criticism of the dubious neutrality of a centre for the study of religions whose main representatives are members of Alleanza Cattolica (e.g. Pierluigi Zoccatelli, Marco Respinti and Andrea Menegotto) by pointing out that CESNUR has nothing to do with Alleanza cattolica and works in an avalutative and scientific manner, it was Introvigne himself who declared in 1993:
Thus, the activists of Alleanza Cattolica, together with others, have founded and run CESNUR, the Centre for the Study of New Religions, [... ...] within the context of an apologetic response that does not fail to return to the broader framework of the dramatic struggle between evangelisation and anti-evangelisation, and thus, in the language of the Catholic counter-revolutionary school from which Alleanza Cattolica draws its inspiration, between revolution and counter-revolution, a framework whose thematic presentation constitutes one of the main objectives of the association.
In ‘La questione della nuova religiosità’ by Massimo Introvigne, published by Cristianità, 1993 (ISBN 88-85236-14-6).
"The Catholic counter-revolutionary school from which Alleanza Cattolica draws its inspiration' and which forms the backbone of CESNUR's activities is that of Ousset and Correa de Oliveira.
Over the years, CESNUR has emerged as the main actor in favour of 'religious freedom", presenting itself as a scientific authority entitled to defend the cults criticised by the so-called 'anti-cult movement', which is hostile to free belief. This includes spreading the idea in publications and at congresses that spiritual manipulation does not exist. We are once again faced with the paradox from which we started, namely that Catholic traditionalism thunderstruck by ecumenism on the road to Damascus. Perhaps it was not Damascus.
The dark side of politics
Jeffrey M. Bale of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, arguably the foremost international expert on political and religious extremism, terrorism, unconventional warfare and covert political operations, does not hesitate to write in the second volume of The Darkest Side of Politics that unconventional warfare play a role organisations, promote "political and religious agendas that, in the name of religious and democratic freedoms, actually aim to defend extremist, totalitarian and anti-democratic groups from investigation, criticism and possible state repression, and more generally to resist or even drive back secular humanism, liberalism and modernism in the West". The expert adds that 'perhaps the most important case of these organisations is CESNUR'.. The 'sub rosa' agenda of defending religious freedom with paradoxical 'liberal' arguments (since its director is a 'right-wing Catholic activist'), the "sub rosa" agenda of this centre is to fight against secularism.
Seen this way, CESNUR appears as the “cognitive” version of the Aginter Presse. That was the control and coordination room of a physical and psychological war against communism; CESNUR is the control room of a cultural and cognitive influence war against secularism.
Indeed, Massimo Introvigne still describes French secularism today as a consequence of the Jacobin terror (revolution, subversion), whose heirs would be the government agency Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires (MIVILUDES) and the Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme (FECRIS), a French organisation that brings together European associations for the defence of and information on the sectarian phenomenon. He writes in an article dated 9 May 2023:
France, even more than Germany, has always been the European country that has made intolerance of religion almost a national sport. Article 2 of the French constitution consists of the famous motto liberté, egalité, fraternité. [...] Not everyone knows that the full text originally contained the closing words 'ou la mort'. [...] After 240 years, the anti-religious mentality of a certain France has still not completely disappeared. [...]
In short, the enemy is still Robespierre.
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