Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Joining us now is Tim Mack,
Speaker 2: live from Kiev. He's the founder of The counter Offensive,
Speaker 2: which is a news organization specifically dedicated and focusing for
Speaker 2: what's going on inside of Ukraine. It's good to see you, Tim,
Speaker 2: Great to see you, absolutely so.
Speaker 4: Tim.
Speaker 2: You're joining us for the two year anniversary of the
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine of the Russian invasion. You've done some
Speaker 2: fantastic work at the counter Offensive. There's a link down
Speaker 2: in the description. We encourage everybody to go and to
Speaker 2: support it. Just to tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: the actual operations that were happening to mark this occasion.
Speaker 2: You actually wrote a very interesting story about one of
Speaker 2: the most important battles that's actually happened so far in
Speaker 2: the war, and why don't you just tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the battle is a battle called the Battle
Speaker 1: of Antonov Airfield, and what happened there was, in the
Speaker 1: first seventy two hours of the full scale invasion, the
Speaker 1: Russia's Russia's most elite airborne units landed at this airfield
Speaker 1: trying to secure it so that large cargo planes come
Speaker 1: in with armored vehicles and thousands of other Russian soldiers
Speaker 1: and surround and destroy and occupy Kiev. And so our
Speaker 1: story that's out on counter Offensive News is all about
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts from that battle and how close they came
Speaker 1: to losing it, that is, the Ukrainians, as well as
Speaker 1: how close Kiev came to fallen. I mean, had that
Speaker 1: battle not turned out the way it did, Zelensky might
Speaker 1: have been killed, as was a Russian primary objective in
Speaker 1: those early hours and days, and Kiev might have fallen
Speaker 1: as well. Now, it really was won just by a
Speaker 1: little bit of a threat. I mean Ukrainian artillery only
Speaker 1: four pieces were available that day. They managed to fire
Speaker 1: on the airfield and prevent Russian forces from landing there
Speaker 1: and pushed Russian forces back.
Speaker 2: So tim one of the things that you've been focusing
Speaker 2: on from drawing from the battle, then, is then the
Speaker 2: next two years or so of the war. Why was
Speaker 2: that battle so foundational to kind of like the lore
Speaker 2: of the Ukrainian military, its ability to push back those
Speaker 2: Russian forces, and how does it square with some of
Speaker 2: the things that you are seeing on the ground today.
Speaker 1: Well, it's set the stage and the conditions for the
Speaker 1: whole war after that that Russia was not able to
Speaker 1: establish that quick lightning strike seventy two hour occupation of Kiev,
Speaker 1: and they were ultimately driven out of the Kiev region
Speaker 1: and later out of the Harki region in the east.
Speaker 1: So the battle lines that we see drawn now are
Speaker 1: very much the results of this first seventy two hours
Speaker 1: in around the Kiev area. But that prevented Russian troops
Speaker 1: into it, from flying into the capital, and made the
Speaker 1: work of the Russian military much much harder, to the
Speaker 1: extent that years later they're still trying to work back west.
Speaker 1: I mean, had that battle not turned out in the
Speaker 1: way it did, we might be talking about a situation
Speaker 1: where Zelenski was ultimately killed. We might be talking about
Speaker 1: the war taking place in western Ukraine right now instead
Speaker 1: of Eastern Ukraine. I mean, it set the stage for
Speaker 1: so much more to come, and it was just one
Speaker 1: of those battles built out of epic desperation. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a story in this in this report that we
Speaker 1: did about members soldiers that were supporting Ukraine running out
Speaker 1: of ammunition and while making an AMMO run, running essentially
Speaker 1: hitting Russian soldiers with their car that they saw walking
Speaker 1: along the side of the road. That was how desperate
Speaker 1: a god is that they would use any means they could,
Speaker 1: whatsoever to fight back.
Speaker 2: Tim how do we relate this battled some of the
Speaker 2: major discussions happening here in Washington right now around aid
Speaker 2: to Ukraine. I'm curious to somebody who's actually there what
Speaker 2: you can tell us about some of the morale stories
Speaker 2: that have come forward, recruitment debates inside the Ukrainian government
Speaker 2: about mobilization the new commander, How does that fit with
Speaker 2: what we're seeing right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I have to say that the morale
Speaker 1: in Kiev and other parts in the country are really
Speaker 1: quite low. You know, from the American perspective, America has
Speaker 1: enjoyed a lot of support from Ukrainians and a lot
Speaker 1: of thankfulness from Ukrainians over the last two years.
Speaker 3: But I think at this.
Speaker 1: Point there is a concern in Kiev that the tide
Speaker 1: of war might be turning against them, and this is
Speaker 1: one of those moments where a major American strategic victory
Speaker 1: might turn into a major American strategic defeat, simply because
Speaker 1: it feels from the perspective a lot of Ukrainians that
Speaker 1: the United States hasn't kind of kept up there under
Speaker 1: the deal and supported them when they need them the most.
Speaker 1: You know, Ukrainians do believe that if they're properly supplied
Speaker 1: in long run, that they can hold their territory and
Speaker 1: push back against the Russians. I think the Battle of
Speaker 1: Antonov Airfield shows what can happen when even not so
Speaker 1: well equipped Ukrainians are pushing back against people trying to
Speaker 1: take their territory and hurt their families. So Ukrainians very
Speaker 1: much still believe that if they're properly equipped and aided
Speaker 1: by their allies, they can push back and win this war.
Speaker 1: I mean, victory is a kind of ambiguous idea, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of confidence that if they get the
Speaker 1: support that they need and they've been asking for from
Speaker 1: the West, they can certainly succeed. That's the risk. That's
Speaker 1: the moment we have here as we enter the third
Speaker 1: year of the full scale invasion, is Ukrainians looking at
Speaker 1: the West, who had promised them support until the very end,
Speaker 1: not holding up their end of the deal.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, and you mentioned their hold their territory and victory.
Speaker 2: Just from your conversation with people in Ukraine, what does
Speaker 2: victory look like?
Speaker 1: You ask one hundred people, you get one hundred different answers.
Speaker 1: I think to some it could mean the continuance of
Speaker 1: democracy and the ability for free people that choose who
Speaker 1: their political leaders are in Ukraine. For others, it could
Speaker 1: be a territorial issue, the re establishment of Ukrainian holdings
Speaker 1: of territories based on a certain date. One senior Ukrainian
Speaker 1: official made a really interesting comment saying that he will
Speaker 1: know when victory has come when they're able to go
Speaker 1: to the airport and Key and fly to the Hague
Speaker 1: where they will be able to see Gutin and other
Speaker 1: top Russian officials get tried for war crimes. And so
Speaker 1: that two elements of that is the resumption of commercial
Speaker 1: airline services and accountability for crimes committed as Ukraine. So
Speaker 1: there are so many elements here, right. It can be territory,
Speaker 1: it can be economic, it can be legal. So you
Speaker 1: ask a lot of people, you get a lot of
Speaker 1: different answers. But I think that if you're looking holistically,
Speaker 1: all of those, in some way will be part of
Speaker 1: what your average Ukrainian will believe victory includes.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your perspective. It's rare to actually get somebody
Speaker 2: who's on the ground there. I encourage everybody to go
Speaker 2: and read Tim The counter Offensive. There's a link down
Speaker 2: in the description. We encourage everyone to go subscribe. Appreciate
Speaker 2: you joining us, sir, Thank you.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Breaking Points Beyond the Headlines. My name is
Speaker 4: James Lee. Over the years, you might have heard a
Speaker 4: little or a lot about the Church of Scientology. It's
Speaker 4: high profile association with Hollywood A listers like Tom Cruise
Speaker 4: and John Travolta have long lent the institution a veneer
Speaker 4: of glamour and legitimacy. However, the recent sexual assault conviction
Speaker 4: against Danny Masterson, an active member of the church, and
Speaker 4: a lawsuit filed by former member Leah Ramini against the church,
Speaker 4: have revealed cracks in their carefully curated image. Today we
Speaker 4: dive into this mysterious and controversial organization.
Speaker 6: Seventy five million years ago, the galaxy was ruled by
Speaker 6: a tyrant named Zeno. One day, Zanu rounded up various
Speaker 6: wrong dudes and imprisoned them in volcanoes on Earth, which
Speaker 6: was then called Tigiak. This is the world according to
Speaker 6: church founder l.
Speaker 3: Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 6: Hydrogen bombs were dropped on them. Then their spirits, called thetans,
Speaker 6: were trapped in humans. That is the cause of all
Speaker 6: our sufferings. Only through scientology can our theatans be clear.
Speaker 4: Wow, I think we're gonna need some expert help to
Speaker 4: unpack all of that. So joining us today on Breaking
Speaker 4: Points is a former scientologist and host of Growing Up
Speaker 4: in Scientology on YouTube, Aaron Smith Levin.
Speaker 5: Welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I just played for the audience a little
Speaker 4: clip of l.
Speaker 5: Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 4: He's talking about Xenu spirits and exercising thetans. Can you
Speaker 4: break down for us in a simple term as possible,
Speaker 4: what is the core teachings and practices of scientology.
Speaker 5: I'll do my best.
Speaker 7: The core teachings and practices do actually change as someone
Speaker 7: goes up the levels in scientology. There's levels that are
Speaker 7: non confidential, and at the higher end there's levels that
Speaker 7: are confidential. So the thing about Xenu and the body Thetans,
Speaker 7: most scientologists don't actually know about that.
Speaker 5: Believe it or not.
Speaker 7: So the most fair and charitable description that I can
Speaker 7: give you for what scientologists believe. All scientologists believe, even
Speaker 7: at the lowest level, is they believe that everyone here
Speaker 7: on Earth is an immortal spiritual being. Their word for
Speaker 7: that is the Ten. People say it sounds like Satan
Speaker 7: with a lisp, but it's just Thetan. Scientologists don't believe
Speaker 7: in a heaven or a hell. They just believe that
Speaker 7: Thetan's just continue.
Speaker 5: To exist forever.
Speaker 7: Uh, that this body is just sort of a temporary
Speaker 7: vessel when when your body dies, you just pick up
Speaker 7: another body and live lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.
Speaker 5: Now there's another aspect to this.
Speaker 7: Which is that, uh, they believe Earth is actually a
Speaker 7: prison planet, and that the Thetans who are sort of
Speaker 7: sentenced to live lifetime after lifetime here on Earth are
Speaker 7: here because they've kind of been banished here as as.
Speaker 5: A punishment sort of.
Speaker 7: That this is quite literally a prison and that normally
Speaker 7: a Thetan in native state that wasn't in this prison
Speaker 7: planet would have full and total recall of all their
Speaker 7: previous lives, because you know, a Thetan just exists forever,
Speaker 7: and that the reason we only remember one lifetime at
Speaker 7: a time is that every time we die, we as Thetans,
Speaker 7: are sort of pre programmed as a part of our
Speaker 7: prison sentence to report into these these stations called the
Speaker 7: between lives implant stations that wipe our memories but from
Speaker 7: lifetime to lifetime, and that we're programmed to then shoot
Speaker 7: back down to Earth and pick up a new body
Speaker 7: and just live a new lifetime with completely amnesia of
Speaker 7: not only our previous lives but our our native godlike
Speaker 7: spiritual potential. Well does that do a little bit of
Speaker 7: a service for now?
Speaker 4: I know it sounds a lot like a blend between
Speaker 4: science fiction and religion, a little bit of that coming together.
Speaker 5: That's right now.
Speaker 7: You might go, okay with that fundamental belief system, what
Speaker 7: is scientology actually doing with that belief system? Well, scientology
Speaker 7: has a one on one form of counseling therapy. They
Speaker 7: call it auditing, and scientologists believe that with enough auditing
Speaker 7: you can regain enough of your spiritual awareness and power
Speaker 7: to skip to bypass these between lives implant stations, and
Speaker 7: to regain your ability to.
Speaker 5: Have a total recall of your previous lives.
Speaker 7: And that the goal of scientology is to get enough
Speaker 7: people into scientology, and that one scientologists succeed in getting
Speaker 7: enough at least half of the population of Earth up
Speaker 7: through these levels and unplugging them from the matrix. Basically,
Speaker 7: that we will, instead of reincarnating to Earth, will reincarnate
Speaker 7: to the next planet and get the cycle started on
Speaker 7: the next planet.
Speaker 5: They call it Target two.
Speaker 7: Now, what's crazy is that like ninety percent of scientologists
Speaker 7: in the world don't know anything about the Xenu story.
Speaker 7: They've never heard the word body, the ten. They don't
Speaker 7: know anything about that part of it. They only know
Speaker 7: about your own reactive mind and trying to get rid
Speaker 7: of your your own reactive mind. So I don't know
Speaker 7: that that's the three minute elevator pitch for Scientology.
Speaker 4: I know this this can also be a long answer too,
Speaker 4: but can you give the viewers a little bit of
Speaker 4: the skinny on your journey in and out of scientology,
Speaker 4: when you joined, when it is and why that you've left,
Speaker 4: and a little bit about the in between and also
Speaker 4: the post scientology experience.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 7: So I was four years old when my mom got
Speaker 7: involved in Scientology. She was introduced by a friend of hers,
Speaker 7: which is how most people get into Scientology. Some friend
Speaker 7: introduces them.
Speaker 5: So I was four.
Speaker 7: Some of my earliest memories in life is just being
Speaker 7: in the Scientology organization in downtown Philadelphia with you know,
Speaker 7: a whole bunch of other Scientology kids in the nursery there.
Speaker 5: I lived a relatively My mom joined staff.
Speaker 7: So instead of being what Scientology would call a public scientologist,
Speaker 7: that's someone who pays to do Scientology courses or who
Speaker 7: pays to receive Scientology auditing, which, by the way, auditing
Speaker 7: costs between two hundred to five hundred dollars per hour.
Speaker 7: It's not cheap. So she joined staff. That means you
Speaker 7: work for Scientology. It's like your day job, and the
Speaker 7: Scientology courses and auditing that you get you don't.
Speaker 5: Have to pay for them. So that's why a lot
Speaker 5: of people joined staff.
Speaker 7: So as a kid, I lived a relatively normal life
Speaker 7: until about twelve years old. I went to public school
Speaker 7: and everything like that. When I was twelve, my mom
Speaker 7: took me and my brother, my stepbrother, my step sister,
Speaker 7: two of her friends kids pulled us all out of
Speaker 7: school and we all started working full time for Scientology
Speaker 7: in Philadelphia, and then we moved down to Clearwater, Florida
Speaker 7: to do Scientology training down there. So you know, from
Speaker 7: the age of twelve to twenty six, I worked full
Speaker 7: time for Scientology. I did not go to high school.
Speaker 7: I did not finish middle school. I do not have
Speaker 7: a diploma or an equivalency degree or anything like that.
Speaker 7: I ended up joining what Scientology calls the Sea Organization.
Speaker 5: That's like their most dedicated core of staff members. You're in.
Speaker 7: If you're in the Sea Org, it's not just your
Speaker 7: day job, it's your entire existence. It's twenty four seven,
Speaker 7: three sixty five. It's all you do. You don't own property,
Speaker 7: you don't you don't own. You can only have a
Speaker 7: relationship with other Sea Org members have children in the
Speaker 7: Sea Org. Such as their dedication to the cause. So
Speaker 7: after a certain amount of years, I met my wife
Speaker 7: and got married in the Sea Organization.
Speaker 5: After a certain number of years, we.
Speaker 7: Were just a little fed up with kind of how
Speaker 7: unfulfilling and abuse of the experience of working in the
Speaker 7: Sea York was so we got pregnant, knowing well that
Speaker 7: we would have.
Speaker 5: To leave the Sea Organization.
Speaker 7: So we left the Sea Org because we're having a baby,
Speaker 7: but we were still public scientologists for a while. That
Speaker 7: started to change in two thousand and nine when the
Speaker 7: Tampa Bay Times back then it was the Saint Pete
Speaker 7: Times published a series of interviews with very high ranking
Speaker 7: former Sea Org executives, people who had been famous personalities
Speaker 7: in scientology. These people had not only left the Sea Organization,
Speaker 7: but had left scientology altogether and were speaking out for
Speaker 7: the first time. So these former executives who were starting
Speaker 7: to speak out were telling the most horrific stories of abuse,
Speaker 7: of imprisonment, of quite literal torture, not quite guantanamal level,
Speaker 7: but close. And for me that was like the first
Speaker 7: major crack in the dam of going uh oh. A
Speaker 7: lot of things I have believed were true my entire
Speaker 7: life are clearly not true. I don't know exactly where
Speaker 7: everything stands, but something's not right. For about the next
Speaker 7: three or four years, I was on a pretty gradual
Speaker 7: path of discovery of what exactly the lies were.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 5: It quickly became clear to me that it was pretty
Speaker 5: much all lies.
Speaker 7: And part of the tail end of that path for
Speaker 7: me had to do with I mentioned earlier that there's
Speaker 7: non confidential levels and there's confidential levels.
Speaker 5: Well there's levels even above the confidential levels.
Speaker 7: They're so secret, they're so confidential they've never been released yet, they're.
Speaker 5: Still in the vault.
Speaker 7: It's like the magic right, and it's sort of the
Speaker 7: carrot that gets dangled in front of the faces of
Speaker 7: Scientology says guys, we need to work a little bit harder,
Speaker 7: we need to donate a little bit more money, because
Speaker 7: l Ron Hubbard said, these unreleased levels can't be released
Speaker 7: until Scientology reaches certain expansion benchmarks, so we just.
Speaker 5: Need to try a little bit harder.
Speaker 7: Well, once I found out from people who I knew
Speaker 7: would actually know that there ain't no such thing as
Speaker 7: these upper confidential levels. L Ron Hubbard did not leave
Speaker 7: behind anything. They looked everywhere, They looked through all of
Speaker 7: his papers and his files and his records and his cabinets,
Speaker 7: and there ain't nothing.
Speaker 5: I was like, someone should have told me that twenty
Speaker 5: five years ago. I'm ready to get out of my
Speaker 5: life before I do.
Speaker 4: Want to get into the controversy a little bit that
Speaker 4: you're alluding to this control type of thing, But I
Speaker 4: didn't want to ask you what do things people just
Speaker 4: in the world, What do we get wrong about scientology?
Speaker 4: Because I'm certain there has to be some positive aspects
Speaker 4: to scientology or else no one would join.
Speaker 5: Let me answer two different ways.
Speaker 7: I think one thing that people would get wrong about
Speaker 7: stology is just not truly understanding that most scientologists have
Speaker 7: never heard that.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: Most scientologists don't do not know anything about the Zen
Speaker 7: New story or the Body Thintan story. Scientologists know everything
Speaker 7: that I explained early on about the Between Lives, implant
Speaker 7: stations and the prison planet, and you know, the Galactic
Speaker 7: Federation and all sorts of stuff. They've just never heard
Speaker 7: the Xen New story. So if you've seen South Park,
Speaker 7: you know more about scientology than most scientologists do.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: And to answer the question the other way, at the
Speaker 7: lowest introductory levels, scientology is actually very practical, sort of
Speaker 7: helpful in like a self helpy, uh, personal coach, guru
Speaker 7: motivation Tony Robbins, Zish Grant cardone who just happens to
Speaker 7: be a scientologist. You know, uh, we we can, you can,
Speaker 7: you can fix all your problems just hustle a little harder,
Speaker 7: pull yourself up.
Speaker 5: By your bootstraps. People, people who end u joining Scientologic,
Speaker 5: they don't think they're joining a cult.
Speaker 7: And at the very lowest levels, scientology doesn't feel like
Speaker 7: a cult. It feels self empowering. It's giving you a
Speaker 7: positive message. You can you can overcome any obstacle, you
Speaker 7: can solve any problem. You are all powerful negatively. All
Speaker 7: you need is the right tools, and for nine ninety nine.
Speaker 5: We can give you those tools. So but but.
Speaker 7: Honestly, I wonder, I mean, the question was what most
Speaker 7: people get wrong about scientology?
Speaker 5: I wonder how many people actually understand that.
Speaker 4: On the flip side of that, what is so? If
Speaker 4: there's all these good things about scientology, it's practical, gives
Speaker 4: you these kind of self help tools. What's the worst part?
Speaker 4: Why do people like why you? You said you were driven
Speaker 4: to leave because of certain things that you saw? Is
Speaker 4: the Is it the secrecy? Is it the control they
Speaker 4: exert over people's lives seemingly? Is it the leadership? Is it?
Speaker 4: David Misscabbage corruption? What's your opinion on what? Why where
Speaker 4: does scientology go wrong?
Speaker 7: In my personal opinion, the easiest answer to the question
Speaker 7: is where it just overtly goes out of its way
Speaker 7: to destroy families, the family unit, because scientology has this
Speaker 7: belief like we're all just basically sixty some trillion year
Speaker 7: old beings. They have this belief like if you have
Speaker 7: a child, that's not really your child, it's just your
Speaker 7: body gave birth to that body, but you're a Thetan
Speaker 7: and that body is animated by a Thetan, and Thetans
Speaker 7: don't give birth to Thetan's. Theatans are just all natively
Speaker 7: godlike entities.
Speaker 5: So this, this.
Speaker 7: Belief completely minimizes the value of familial relationships, and scientology
Speaker 7: will demand that people sever all ties with anyone in
Speaker 7: their life who is negative about scientology, and it doesn't
Speaker 7: matter if that's your mom, dad, you know, spouse, brother, sisters, son,
Speaker 7: or daughter. To me, that is where scientology gets really
Speaker 7: really bad. Now there's financial aspects as well, so because
Speaker 7: scientology holds that, you know, this entire existence is really
Speaker 7: just the matrix anyway, and you know, higher education is pointless,
Speaker 7: retirement accounts are pointless, Saving these accounts are pointless.
Speaker 5: The only thing that.
Speaker 7: Could possibly have any value in this lifetime is helping
Speaker 7: scientology expand and get more people into Scientology and up
Speaker 7: Scientology bridge to total freedom those that whole construct leads
Speaker 7: to just financial decimation of Scientologists. Now, when I mentioned
Speaker 7: before that the experience working in the sea or just
Speaker 7: got to the point where it was not fulfilling and
Speaker 7: it was abusive. El Ron Hubbard created this management system
Speaker 7: where he says there is no natural, explainable reason why
Speaker 7: stats would ever go down. In order for stats to
Speaker 7: go down, somebody has to actively be forcing them down,
Speaker 7: in sabotaging the organization and to make them go down. Well,
Speaker 7: unfortunately for Scientology staff members, Scientology is shrinking, not growing.
Speaker 7: So there's this constant witch hunt happening internally in the
Speaker 7: organization to find.
Speaker 5: Out who is it that's sabotage in the organization.
Speaker 7: Now, the problem is you can never point the finger up.
Speaker 7: You can only ever point the finger down. So it's
Speaker 7: the lower level staff members that are constantly just being
Speaker 7: harassed and interrogated and punished for the fact that more
Speaker 7: new people aren't coming into Scientology.
Speaker 5: When the reality is the people.
Speaker 7: At the lower levels of the organization have absolutely no
Speaker 7: control over the reason why Scientology is shrinking. You know,
Speaker 7: they have absolutely no control over it, and so the
Speaker 7: experience of working for Scientology everyone is just always pointing
Speaker 7: fingers at each other and witch hunts all the time,
Speaker 7: and it's just exhausting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to pivot to talking a little bit
Speaker 4: about the work that I think this ties in the
Speaker 4: work that you do today. So you live stream almost
Speaker 4: every day, I think every day or almost every day,
Speaker 4: you have conversations with other people about Scientology. So I'm wondering,
Speaker 4: what is your goal. Is it to get people out
Speaker 4: of Scientology? Is it bringing attention? Is it pressuring the
Speaker 4: government or the irs to remove its taxes?
Speaker 5: M status?
Speaker 4: What's your motivation?
Speaker 5: It's definitely all of those things.
Speaker 7: Sometimes on my channel I will say fundamentally, I'm simply
Speaker 7: motivated by pure revenge and if I can do as
Speaker 7: much good in the process. But success is the best revenge.
Speaker 7: And so I define success as making sure that former scientologists,
Speaker 7: who have their their own stories that highlight how abusive
Speaker 7: and destructive scientologists policies and practices are, that all of
Speaker 7: those voices can and can get as big of a reach,
Speaker 7: as far as a reach, and be heard as loudly
Speaker 7: as possible. And I almost relish the fact that We're
Speaker 7: all doing it with just phones and computers and no budget,
Speaker 7: whereas Scientology spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the
Speaker 7: most expensive professional you know av operation possible. And yet
Speaker 7: the voices of former scientologists who are telling the actual
Speaker 7: truth about scientology are being heard louder with no budget
Speaker 7: than everything Scientology can muster.
Speaker 4: You mentioned earlier that scientology is on the decline. So
Speaker 4: what I'm wondering is what do you think is the
Speaker 4: outlook for scientology over the next few years to a decade.
Speaker 4: Is this something that we need to actively pay attention
Speaker 4: to or is it going to die out on its own?
Speaker 5: Just let things play out.
Speaker 4: Where do you see things going?
Speaker 7: Yeah, interestingly enough, at a little bit of the both
Speaker 7: of what you said there, it.
Speaker 5: Is dying out on its own.
Speaker 7: I do think it still deserves to have attention paid
Speaker 7: to it, and it deserves to have its the speed
Speaker 7: of its demise accelerated. I certainly enjoy contributing to the
Speaker 7: acceleration of that demise. Now, practically speaking, I don't think
Speaker 7: Scientology ever ceases to exist unless you succeed in getting
Speaker 7: its tax exemption taken away. It already has its tax
Speaker 7: exemption taken away once before the IRS determined that Elvern
Speaker 7: Hubbard was personally in rich himself from Scientology, and it
Speaker 7: stripped Scientology of his tax exemption. In nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 7: it won that tax exemption back after a years long
Speaker 7: process of harassing thousands of IRS agents. Personally, Scientology is
Speaker 7: probably the only organization in history that succeeded.
Speaker 5: In bringing the IRS to its needs.
Speaker 7: It is my hope that sort of what we're doing
Speaker 7: here with SPTV and a whole bunch of other activists
Speaker 7: who are doing similar things who've never had anything to
Speaker 7: do with Scientology, that we will eventually succeed in getting
Speaker 7: enough grassroots support for revoking Scientology's tax exempt status that
Speaker 7: members of Congress will take it up as a popular cause,
Speaker 7: and that eventually, I hope, within the next ten years,
Speaker 7: we will succeed in getting Scientology's tax.
Speaker 5: Exem status revoked.
Speaker 7: Even if Scientology keeps its tax exempt status, its membership
Speaker 7: will continue to decline. But the problem with having this
Speaker 7: this tax exemption is because it has a special type
Speaker 7: of religious tax exemption that protects it in the courts.
Speaker 7: Like if you sue Scientology and you try to get
Speaker 7: the judge to look at a particular policy letter in Scientology,
Speaker 7: the judge will go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's religious scripture.
Speaker 7: I'm not even allowed to pass to give an opinion
Speaker 7: on whether that's abusive or not. And also, because they're
Speaker 7: tax exempt, they're operating. Their operating expenses are as close
Speaker 7: to zero as you can get. They do not pay
Speaker 7: property tax, and they do not have any pay They do.
Speaker 5: Not have a payroll.
Speaker 7: All of their staff members are considered volunteers. They don't
Speaker 7: have to pay any of them, and even the ones
Speaker 7: they do have make like, you know, fifty bucks a
Speaker 7: week or less. So Scientology probably makes more interest on
Speaker 7: its cash reserves than it costs to keep all the
Speaker 7: organizations in the world open. Electric and water is the
Speaker 7: only expenses Scientology has. So they will continue to exist
Speaker 7: as an entity as long as they have tax exemption.
Speaker 5: And that's why I think getting that tax exemption revoked.
Speaker 7: Is a worthy cause, even if their membership will continue
Speaker 7: to dwindle on its own. There's less than thirty thousand
Speaker 7: members in the entire world. I mean, it's probably closer
Speaker 7: to twenty thousand at this point.
Speaker 4: All right, I think we have there's actually probably a
Speaker 4: lot more than we have time for today, So Erin,
Speaker 4: I want to give you an opportunity to tell people
Speaker 4: where they can find you find more of what you do,
Speaker 4: what you're talking about, whether it's on YouTube or other platforms.
Speaker 7: Growing up in scientology on YouTube is where I focus
Speaker 7: all of my efforts. I've got socials and stuff, but
Speaker 7: you know, growing up in scientology on YouTube is my
Speaker 7: central thing.
Speaker 5: Everyone can just find me there, all.
Speaker 4: Right, awesome, We'll link down below and everybody go follow.
Speaker 4: Erin really appreciate your time today, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to learn more about the growing grassroots
Speaker 4: protest movement against scientology, I recently joined some of the
Speaker 4: protesters on Hollywood Boulevard to do some on the ground
Speaker 4: and behind the scenes reporting. The video is live over
Speaker 4: on my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with
Speaker 4: James Lee. Hit on over. Check that out, give me
Speaker 4: a follow. The link will be in the description below.
Speaker 4: As always, thank you so much for watching Breaking Points,
Speaker 4: and I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 3: Joining me is My good friend is Johnny Burka.
Speaker 2: He's the president and CEO of ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Speaker 3: But for our purposes.
Speaker 2: He is the author of a brand new book that
Speaker 2: we have here in front of us. Gateway to Statesmanship
Speaker 2: is the selections from Xenophon to Churchhill has been edited
Speaker 2: with an intro by you, Johnny.
Speaker 3: So it's great to see you, my friend. Thank you
Speaker 3: jn Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Saga.
Speaker 2: All right, So why did you decide to assemble this book?
Speaker 2: What is the purpose behind a book about statesman? As
Speaker 2: if there hasn't been a million already?
Speaker 8: Why this is It's pretty simple, but you say there's
Speaker 8: been a million. But in America we have this genre
Speaker 8: of self help books for entrepreneurs. There's a million of them,
Speaker 8: Peter Chiel zero to one, Jim Collins good to great,
Speaker 8: but nothing really comparable exists for statesmen. We have a
Speaker 8: lot of books about historic statesmen. But this book is
Speaker 8: really a collection of practical self help leadership advice that
Speaker 8: was presented to political leaders going all the way back
Speaker 8: to antiquity in East and West, really connecting the world
Speaker 8: of theory to the world of action so that they
Speaker 8: can better govern their country.
Speaker 3: So who are some of the people that are included
Speaker 3: in here?
Speaker 2: You have Xenophon to Churchill, So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people in between that, so give us a taste of
Speaker 2: some of the people we're pulling from.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, so in the ancient world, I have Han Fei,
Speaker 8: who's any Chinese legalist in India. I have Catilia who
Speaker 8: wrote a book the Arthur Shastra, which I've included selections from.
Speaker 8: And then in the Middle Ages, I have Goppitis's letters
Speaker 8: to Justinian the Great. I have some Thomas Aquinas in there,
Speaker 8: and of course as we get to the Renaissance, we
Speaker 8: have Machiavelli, Thomas Moore, and Erasmus. And then I brought
Speaker 8: the tradition up to date and included some Churchill and
Speaker 8: de gaul and Theodore Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: I'm a big Degall fan.
Speaker 2: May maybe controversial, but I think he was a very
Speaker 2: very interesting leader. So if we're going to look through
Speaker 2: the book and where can consider this, were great statesmen
Speaker 2: made by the moment?
Speaker 3: Did they rely on a lot of previous of Churchill?
Speaker 2: For example, it's very well read, probably could be quote
Speaker 2: by many accounts. I could quote Roman poetry off the
Speaker 2: top of his head. I don't think Degall was as
Speaker 2: educated as him per se. Roosevelt certainly, you know he
Speaker 2: was of a patrician class, but he was more of
Speaker 2: an instinctual type of leader.
Speaker 3: So what is it do you have to read self
Speaker 3: help advice?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Do you need a book like this?
Speaker 8: Do?
Speaker 3: Some do? Some don't?
Speaker 2: And why do we not seem to have statesmans as
Speaker 2: many statesmen today as we did back in the past.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So, really, a great statesman arises when two things intersect.
Speaker 8: Virtue on one hand, that's you know, the moral, the
Speaker 8: intellectual qualities, but on the other hand, fortune has to
Speaker 8: align with their particular moment. If George Washington was born
Speaker 8: ten years earlier or ten years later, we might not
Speaker 8: know his name. America might not exist as it does today.
Speaker 8: But take someone like Charles Degall, who you mentioned that
Speaker 8: you're a fan of. So Degall actually wrote this book
Speaker 8: called The Edge of the Sword, and I've included the
Speaker 8: selection in there. And he wrote this book when he
Speaker 8: was in his early thirties. He hadn't accomplished anything in life.
Speaker 8: He sat during World War One as a prisoner of
Speaker 8: war and mostly drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and wrote old books.
Speaker 8: And so he sat down and he actually articulated the
Speaker 8: qualities that he wanted to see in an ideal political leader,
Speaker 8: and he had this profound sense that he would one
Speaker 8: day lead in rule France. And then the political moment
Speaker 8: aligned and he of course led the resistance to the
Speaker 8: Nazi invasion, founded the Fifth French Republic and served it,
Speaker 8: served as as president for ten years. So there's a
Speaker 8: delicate interplay between harnessing fortune for your political rise.
Speaker 3: Why do you think we don't have that many good statesmen?
Speaker 2: You had an interesting question I remember on Twitter, You're like,
Speaker 2: who is the last goods? Who's the last living statesman?
Speaker 2: I can't come up with a single answer. I think
Speaker 2: Kissinger was the last great one that we had. You
Speaker 2: can hate him, you can love him. But he had
Speaker 2: a coherent ideology. He was very well rooted. He had
Speaker 2: accomplished a lot in his life. Again, whether it was
Speaker 2: good and or bad. Everybody else just seemed to kind
Speaker 2: of be bumbling along. I mean, even some of the
Speaker 2: bigger mistakes that have been made, you know, Iraq and
Speaker 2: all that was not part of a grand ideological project,
Speaker 2: at least per se in the Kissingerian sense.
Speaker 3: So what is it? Why is in the last thirty
Speaker 3: years we have no gray station?
Speaker 8: Sure? I think there's really two reasons. One at the
Speaker 8: beginning of the progressive era. This is going back one
Speaker 8: hundred years ago. There was a shift away from statesmanship
Speaker 8: classically understood to management, expertise, bureaucracy. So the art of
Speaker 8: the statesman has been lost. And then secondly, I think
Speaker 8: it really comes to our educational system. If you go
Speaker 8: back to the education of Cyrus describing Xenophon's education, right,
Speaker 8: he was raised in almost a spartan culture. I'm not
Speaker 8: saying we should bring back that level of rigor, but
Speaker 8: basically they taught him the principle of restraint, self control,
Speaker 8: mastery of self from a very young age, and that
Speaker 8: played a big role in his shaping his leadership abilities. Today,
Speaker 8: we really don't read any old books, any classic books.
Speaker 8: We don't teach students to think or to write the
Speaker 8: way that we do. I think we saw this recently
Speaker 8: with the controversy at Harvard and so many other elite meebers.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. That's a good point.
Speaker 2: So you write, leadership requires painting a beautiful portrait of
Speaker 2: the world that you'd like to inhabit and installing confidence
Speaker 2: that you are the best person to make it a reality.
Speaker 2: In an age where truth and goodness have lost their
Speaker 2: potency beauty and and wiser minds have noted could save
Speaker 2: the world. So how do you bring that back in
Speaker 2: an error where look, institutional education is not coming back
Speaker 2: in any sense. Is it just read books like this
Speaker 2: at scale? How do you recreate it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Well, I think that quote on beauty is really important.
Speaker 8: That's something that gets lost. I think a lot of
Speaker 8: conservatives in particular, tend to over intellectualize politics. They think
Speaker 8: if you get the ideas right, if you get the
Speaker 8: policies right, then you'll be a great leader, right, And
Speaker 8: that's not really how it works. Great leaders throughout history
Speaker 8: have been builders of beautiful things. I go back to
Speaker 8: Justinny and the Great. He built the hoggiest Sophia as
Speaker 8: a structure that is around fifteen hundred years later, and
Speaker 8: he coupled that beauty because he knew that most people,
Speaker 8: they're not persuaded by logic. They want that big, compelling story.
Speaker 8: That's why a Lincoln or an FDR were such successful presidents,
Speaker 8: even O Reagan, and so I think it comes back
Speaker 8: to that storytelling and to painting that beautiful vision that
Speaker 8: can really capture the imagination of the next generation.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, it's a treat to actually have something
Speaker 2: like this on, so it's gateway to statesmanship selections from
Speaker 2: Xenophonda Churchill. We'll have a link down on the description.
Speaker 2: Everybody going by it. It's good to see my friend.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, thanks for watching.