They’re lawyered to hell. And they’re aggressive. For fuck sakes they even raided an fbi office and stole all the evidence and no one did a damned thing about it. They have enough money to be able to operate above the law, and certainly above any separation of church and state. Our laws operate on a level that allows them to litigate themselves out of messes, regardless of guilt or innocence, because they have the money to afford people to exploit loopholes, not because they aren’t guilty.
A lot of people here mentioning scientology’s history of litigation and taking down the IRS and while that’s true, I also think it’s worth mentioning Waco. After the Waco seige the government lost a LOT of interest in going anywhere near cults. It’s just a giant mess that nobody wants to put their ass on the line to deal with. When you’re dealing with fanatics you never know what crazy shit is going to go down. As long as they aren’t hurting people outside of their cult itself, many politicians would sooner keep away from them and avoid having something backfire. That’s not to say that they’re right to think that way. It’s just the truth. Everything changed after Waco. Before Waco, the government was actually trying to do more about cults. The Jonestown massacre involved a sitting congressman getting gunned down. All the IRS shit with the scientologists went down before Waco too. IMO, Waco is the most important turning point to look at to understand why the government won’t touch cults anymore.
Also, they are big enough and have tabs and famous enough people that they can bribe some C list politicians/judicial people to keep a low profile under the grand scheme of things, just as you said it.
Scientology was deemed as a cult in the early days. L.Ron Hubbard spent much of the 50s and 60s sailing around the Mediterranean with his own fleet of ships. Later they started fighting hard against the US government, going so far as to infiltrate several government buildings and destroying all documents the government had on them. Look up “Operation Snow White” if you don’t believe me.
Scientology reached tax-excempt status in 1993. My guess is they’ve fought dirty to get to that place, they probably have some inside-men in the government or they some have dirt on certain congressmen.
While everyone is right about separation of church and state, that’s only part of the problem.
Scientology is also very aggressive with lawsuits and other bad faith shenanigans. They made the IRS back down by flooding them with an obscene amount of lawsuits. Scientology has a shit ton of money, they can afford to overpower other people in court.
They also own a lot of land. Clearwater, Florida is one example. They bought out pretty much the entirety of downtown Clearwater. Built the courthouse, own a lot of the businesses there, etc. They also have a cruise ship they keep in international waters and can do whatever they want out there. And it’s worse than you’re thinking. They own land/towns on a lot of other places too .
They’re dying thankfully, thanks to the internet (which they themselves admitted) and South Park (lol) they’re numbers went from the tens of thousands to thousands. Hell in some ppl places theres only like 80 something people for an entire state.
Real answer: Religion in the United States is protected by Amendment I of their constitution. There isn’t much the Government can do without infringing on or appearing to infringe on this protection.
With all the mess going on in this country right now, I don’t know that anyone wants to also add on the epic shit-show that would inevitably result from the government trying to mess with religion - even the weird cults.
Add comment