TRIGGERnometry - Cults, Scientology, Wokeness with Chris Shelton

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Chris Shelton is a YouTuber, Author and former Scientologist. Check out his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisShelton1492/featured Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're talking about wokeism. To you, is that a cult? It is. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishol. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. And a fascinating guest we have for you today.

He's an ex-Scientologist, author and YouTuber Chris Shelton. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here. We are very happy to have you. Listen, let's get straight into it. I should mention at the beginning that we'll talk about cults, including some of the ones we discussed quite regularly on the show later on in the interview.

But let's start with your story. You got involved at Scientology. You spent 27 years in one shape or form in that whole situation. Tell everybody from the very beginning to the very end, how did that all happen? Excellent. I was four years old when my parents got involved. And, yeah, my uncle wrangled my dad in. My dad wrangled my mom in.

and they did communications classes and thought it was the bees' knees, and they started becoming Scientologists. And they were divorced, and they got back together. So my entire childhood, I credited to Scientology, to having a family.

That was the big selling point for me as a kid. And then I was sort of around it, raised with the principles of it, just like any other religious household, it was pretty, you know, pretty hardcore indoctrination. All of my parents, friends, friends, you know, all of that, Scientologists. So very kind of bubble-worldy sort of growing up. Even though I did go to public school, I did have that experience. And then after high school, or actually while I was still in high school,

was when I started doing my own class work and really getting involved so that, when I finished high school, they recruited me to join staff and start working for the church. And they totally changed my career path. I was going to go be a writer. And, you know, I was kind of aspiring to be a new Stephen King or something. And this is 1987. This is back away. And I was instead convinced that my talents would better be utilized saving the world. And I went all in. They really got me. And so I ended up working for the church. And I worked in Santa Barbara at the local Church of Scientology there for eight years. It was a very hard existence because I had a full-time job at the church, which was considered

volunteer work. And then I had to have another full-time job to support myself. So all I was doing was working. It was like 80-90-hour work week. And so really the only time I had off was weekend nights to do my laundry and stuff like that. That was my existence for about eight years. I was really dedicated, really hardcore, and there's a lot of abusive nonsense that happened during those eight years while I was in Santa Barbara, but that pales in comparison to what happened when I was 25, and I decided, well, this Santa Barbara thing is fun and nice and all that with Scientology, and we're trying to make a difference in the world with this, but we're not. We're small, we're tiny. There's nothing really happening here. I want to make a difference. I got to save the world. I was really

on that bandwagon. So I stepped up to what is called the sea organization. S.E.A. As in the ocean, it's a paramilitary naval outfit that Hubbard created, all by himself, invented it in 1967, and the most hardcore, really the most fanatical Scientologists are the ones who go into or get recruited for the C-Orgization. And that's a 24-7. All you're doing is Scientology, kind of a setup. You don't have any other life. So you go and you live on a C-org base,

which is set up like a military base with dorms and a galley, and they feed you, and they uniform you in uniforms. And it's yes, sir, no, sir, and ranks and ratings and all of it. It's all there. And there's about four to five thousand. I think when I was in, it's about five thousand. I think now it's descended down to about 3,500 people internationally who are the Seorg. So it's a small group.

And we had it in our minds that we were saving the world. And it was a very, very physically and emotionally ordeal. It was an ordeal. It was quite a thing. And that was another 17 years that I did that. Wow. Yeah. I was really dead.

dedicated. And I, and I, and I really, I keep saying that because I want to get across to people that, that the power of, of a purpose, of a belief, of an idea is, there isn't anything. I believe there is nothing in this world more powerful than what we can do with our ideas. And, and I kind of lived that for, for 25 years, working for the church. I had so many bad experiences. I cannot even begin to detail them all here. But for example, three years of that 17 years was spent on a re-education prison type program called the Rehabilitation Project Force. It's an internal Maoist re-education camp that exists within the Sea Org, within the world of Scientology. It's not a well-known thing. And it took me three years to go through this quote-unquote rehabilitation program,

which really meant that I was spending most of my day. anywhere from 10 to 13, 14 hours a day on hard physical labor. You know, retaring roofs in the hot summer sun, setting up stages and events, building furniture, hardcore stuff. And that wasn't too much fun. That was the first time I ever broke a bone in my body, doing some work there and getting pushed around. And there was a guy who lost an eye. there were people who had very, very bad physical things happened to them as a result of that program. And I'm not even getting into right now the depths of the psychological manipulation that occurs.

I called it a Maoist re-education camp because that's actually the closest thing I can think of to describe what this program was like. And that was just one part of the whole experience. The entire Scientology experience is one of mental and psychological and emotional and emotional, and emotional manipulation. And I was physically assaulted. There was physical violence as well. So it was not a fun time, but it was, you know, it was a life of dedication and discipline. And I thought in my mind, I was comparing it to the kind of dedication that one would see

in monks or nuns in a monastery type of situation. Like it's that, you know, we're dedicated. We are hardcore. We mean it. We're in it to win it. And there was a lot of a spree to core. There was a lot of like, yeah, we're riling each other up all the time, right? But at the same time, here's the problem with this is, one, we weren't saving the world. And two, it's a snitch culture. It's a 1984 kind of culture, quite literally. So you're always reporting on each other. And it's a very domineering authoritarian setup. And your rights, your human rights, your civil rights, they don't matter in an environment like that.

The mission is the only thing that matters, you know, what we're doing. And of course, after all these years of abuse and nonsense, I started waking up. It was a slow process because it had been something that had been part of my entire life. I'd been part of this since I was four years old. El Ron Hubbard was presented to be by my parents, who I loved and respected, as a genius, philosopher, scientist, brilliant writer. That was El Ron Hubbard's positioning to me growing up. So I thought this guy was great, and I thought everything he said was true. And he says some pretty ridiculous stuff, to say the least.

He talks about, you know, taking spiritual journeys to vizabeth. Venus and Mars. And, you know, he talks about intergalactic space civilizations and aliens and a lot of interesting, crazy stuff. But I thought it was all true because I was raised to literally believe it was true. So it took a long time and a lot of abuse had to be rained down on me before I started going, you know, I don't think this is what it says it is. And that RPF program I mentioned was a big part of waking up, because you go through three years of intense physical abuse, hard physical labor, psychological manipulation,

and some pretty intense gaslighting. And it changes you. You start thinking about things in a different way. So finally, in 2012, I got out of the C organization. I had come to the point of realizing it then that the organization of Scientology, this guy, David Miscavage,

who heads the church and what they were doing, was more about months, than it was about actually helping people. Surprise. Right. I mean, I should say, I always neglect to say this from the get-go, it's a money-making scam. That's what Scientology is.

Okay, there's no legitimacy to it whatsoever. I don't even think of it as a legitimate religion. And there are arguments to me made on both sides of that, but that's where I come from. So I finally started waking up. It took years for me to accept to come to the realization that maybe the organization was off. I still thought the subject was good, and I still thought El Ron Hubbard knew what he was talking about. I just thought Muscavage was kind of running it off a cliff.

So I got out of the seagord, but I still wanted to do Scientology, and I was still dedicated as a Scientologist. It would be equivalent to maybe leaving a parish or a church or something, because you're like, you don't like the deacon or or the bishop or the minister, but you still think, you know, God's real, right? So I get out. And here's another thing that's going on in this group. Many things are going on, but one of the key things is information control.

I didn't have internet access, hardly at all. And certainly never saw South Park, never knew about Tom Cruise's craziness with Oprah, never knew about so many things. I mean, there were just tons and tons of lies. Just rivers of lies. And what happened is after I got out,

I was able to get on the internet. For real, like really deep dive. I had had some exposure to a few negative things while I was working in Scientology because, you know, information kind of passes around. But this is a group where, everybody who's in it, really does believe in it. We're all true believers. So we weren't looking for negative information. We weren't trying to be critical. And Chris, you said that you believe in

it, right? I'm going to be honest, every time I read about Scientology, I don't really understand it. What do you believe in? Oh, well, okay. Well, let me answer that in just a moment. Let me just quickly wrap this up by saying, once I got on the internet, three months later, it was all over. All over. I was out, mentally out, but I was still physically Scientologist. I still had all these Scientology friends. I had just left working for the Sea Org, but I was still trying to make my way in this world. And that's when I started speaking up.

So anonymously at first, I was posting on forums and message boards and chat boards and stuff, not under my own name. And then by the end of 2000, which was the year that this all went down, kind of the best and worst year of my life. Best because I discovered the truth. Worst because I lost everybody. Scientology shuns. It's called disconnection. And if you step out of line, if you step out of the rules, if you question anything that's going on, you're shunned.

Sounds like the comedy industry in this country, mate. Exactly. So it's not, it's, it's sort of cancel culture on steroids, right? Yeah, yeah. Not only will they cancel you, they will continue to go after you if you keeps talking, if you keep speaking up. So, um, so I got out and so by the end of 2013, basically a year after I had left, I was no longer a Scientologist.

I was actually speaking out against it. And, um, I'd set up a blog. And in 2014, I came out into my own name. started speaking out loud and proud because the church had figured out that I was speaking out and they disconnected me and they declared me what's called a suppressive person or an SP. I'm an SP. I'm a bad guy. And that's the definition there. In Scientology, that's the equivalent of being an antisocial psychotic personality. Clearly. So, you know, that's me. So, So that's the story, right?

There's tons of details. I mean, so many things to get into with that. But that's the broad strokes of it. And now let me answer your question. Scientology presents itself as, let me put it this way, Scientology presents itself as a religious philosophy, where the basic core belief is that you, me, everybody, are spiritual beings, spiritual entities that are called Thaitons

to differentiate it from soul or spirit or ghost or something. And the Thaeton has lived forever, can't die, is going to live forever. That's you. You're going to live forever. You're always going to be around. But the quality of your existence is in question because you've been around for a long time living life after life after life. You know, you have a body, you grow the body, you live the life, the body dies. you as a spirit are then compelled, Hubbard says,

to go get another body, go down to the hospital and pick up a baby body that no other Thaeton is gulmed onto yet, right? And you grow that body and live that body as though that's you and that's your life. And you believe as a spirit because you have been compelled to through a great deal of force and pain and stuff, you have been compelled to believe that you are a body. That's all you are. And Hubbard, the analogy would be probably the easiest way to think about this is if you think of your body as like a doll, it's like a Barbie doll, and kids play with dolls.

But what if the kids started thinking they were the dolls? That's the current state of mankind, according to Elrod Hubbard. We all are running around thinking we're this. This is all there is to life. So there's a lot of hope. There's a lot of like, wow, there's a big, wide, there's all these possibilities. And similar to the confidential upper levels of the Mormon LDS Church,

there's a concept at the higher levels of Scientology that you actually achieve a state of godhood. And that through the practices of Scientology, they will lead you down this path that will take you to a place of spiritual, immortality and understanding and spiritual ability. So, you know, Hubbard talks in his lectures about, you know, superpowers like telekinesis and telepathy and, you know, clairvoyance and stuff like that, as things all of us potentially can do. Sign me up, mate. That sounds great. Well, not only does it

sound great, but actually it's not entirely out of whack with quite a lot of different spiritual movements, religious and cultural movements throughout history. So so far, I'm not, I mean, I'm not saying it's necessarily appealing to me, but it's not out of whack with quite a lot of other movements, let's say. Exactly. You're nailing it. And that's the surface. That's the veneer.

That's the sales job, right? Here's what it is. It's this great thing. And we're going to improve you. We're going to give you a toolkit for life. We're going to give you all these practical tools you can use to handle your finances, communicate with your kids, get along better with your boss or your spouse,

you know, real practical living stuff. And do they give you that? Do they give you tools to do that? Does that stuff work? Well, some of it does some of the time. Right. And that's the lower level common sense stuff, right? Like, for example, a Scientology principle is,

when in doubt, communicate. Well, that's a principle that served me pretty well. if I'm having a problem with somebody, I communicate to them about it. I don't just sit on it and I don't just make assumptions. And a lot of people have problems with that. They have a problem with stepping up and having what could potentially be a confrontational conversation, either with friends or somebody they're having a problem with. Scientology has some practical exercises you can do in one of their lower level communications classes that can teach you to kind of be a little bit more bold and a little bit more. willing to step up. It doesn't teach you to yell and scream at people as a confrontational measure. It teaches you how to look somebody in the eye and, you know, say something that somebody else can hear. This is really toastmasters level stuff. This is not, you know, any speaking group is going to teach you how to do this stuff. It's not Scientology is wonderful stuff. It's that this is common sense. But it's packaged in such a way. And Elron Hubbard talks.

about it in such a way as to make it sound like it's this wonderful, unique, incredible stuff, that he is the only one who could, through his genius, come up with all of it, right? It's like, he was a writer and he wasn't necessarily a bad one sometimes. He was very good at manipulating people. And Chris, the unique thing for me about Scientology isn't really what you've actually said. It's the way that it harnesses celebrity as a marketing tool in order to get people to enroll. That, to me, I wouldn't want to use the word genius, but in a way, it is genius, because I don't see any other religion that has done that.

That's exactly right. And it was a dedicated strategy on the part of Elron Hubbard as early as 195 to wrangle in celebrities and use them as a front as a PR front to get more people in. And that strategy worked in spades for Scientology. The truth of the matter is that Scientology probably wouldn't exist right now if it wasn't for two people. John Travolta and Tom Cruise. And they have, in turns, been the voice and public face of Scientology and have been very active in talking about the benefits of it for decades. John Travolta is a true believer.

He's also a real nice guy. I've met him. He is. He's genuinely nice guy, but he's completely diluted. And he's all in, just like I used to be. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is a bit of a different kettle of fish. I have many more critical things to say about him. Right. Should we go down there? Are we going to get... He's got very powerful lawyers and a lot of money. Maybe let's take it easy on that one. But so you leave, you become this, you're essentially excommunicated. for the crime of speaking out. And I imagine there's a sort of rewiring in your brain that happens over time. That's right. That's right.

That's right. It's called the recovery process. And recovering from Scientology or a high control group, as we like to call them, I mean, you could use lots of terms, destructive cult, high control group, authoritarian group. Recovering from these groups is no joke. It usually takes professional intervention. And that's not saying that there's something wrong with you. you that you're so screwed up that that's what you need.

It's actually the fact that pretty much, you know, a lot more people than is generally realized could use some help. But this is not a process you want to do by yourself, is my point. I've been learning and talking about and advocating for and trying to educate on this subject of the recovery process. And my channel, my work has been an effort to try to share my own experience. my own work on this, and help other people along with the process, and then at the same time, try to educate the world at large,

so that we have less people who need to do this kind of process. Because there are way too many of these groups out there, far more than just Scientology. And the thing that I find interesting is a celebrity element. Are the celebrities not aware of what's going on? No, they're not. They are kept in insulated. isolated worlds that are actually even more insular than the Scientology bubble world.

The celebrity world is something I've learned a lot about after getting out of Scientology. And of course, I'm friends with a couple celebrities and, you know, like Leah, who's an ex-Scientologist yourself. And so you learn some things. And one of the things that I've learned is that, you know, when you become a public figure, and I'm sure you guys are aware of this, right, it limits your options in some, in some cases. You can't go out all the time in some situations or, you know, especially the big celebrities, right? You can't just go down to the pub. You can't just go hang out, right? You're going to get mobbed. So you learn that you have to rely on certain people. The key people become very

important in your life to manage your affairs, help organize things, set up logistics, etc. And when those people are Scientology celebrities, Scientologists, then they're going to trust other Scientologists. And so they surround themselves with Scientologists. And the Church of Scientology goes out of its way to make this happen and facilitate it. They even have their own separate sub-organization within the church called Celebrity Center. And it's spelled British spelling, by the way, C-E-N-T-R-E. and it is because it was created by an Australian and the Celebrity Center Network

is a group of Scientology churches or organizations that are specifically dedicated only to celebrities and their entourages. It's that important. And the main one is in Los Angeles. That's where the big celebs go. And they have an office called the Office of the President. And the President's Office of the Celebrity Center

is the control network for all the Scientology celebrities. They brief them, they drill and practice with them about how to talk about Scientology in media and how not to talk about Scientology, how to avoid certain questions. This is why Tom Cruise gets a pass all the time because he refuses to answer any questions on the subject. He just won't be confronted on it.

And all of his handlers and people who are around him are all Scientologists. So they're not going to let any of the negativity about Scientology go anywhere near that celebrity if they can help it. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfum intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the Euphoria Elixir collection by Calvin Klein.

And is it advantageous in, for instance, if you want a career in the media or acting to be a Scientologist, will they pull strings in order to help you progress, or does it not work like that? It doesn't work like that anymore. For a period of time back in the 80s and 90s, they had some pull in Hollywood. With the exposure that happened in the 2000s and the whole meltdown that happened in the mid-2000s, everything changed. and sort of the gloves came off with the media, and Scientology was defanged in many ways. I'm not at all implying that they are not a dangerous organization still

because they are, and they're incredibly abusive. But publicly, the amount of power they have in Hollywood has just plummeted because of the exposure of all of the abuses. Chris, I want to open it up to beyond just Scientology. And I think the question that interests me is, what's the difference between a cult, which is, I think, what you would say Scientology is, and the religion?

Great question. And to be even more specific, a destructive cult. Because if you open up a dictionary and you look up the word cult, any religion, almost any group that has a dedicated part to it could be considered a cult. But a destructive cult is the term we use because it makes it clear that this is an abusive organization that's going to hurt you more than it's going to help you.

And when it comes to that differentiation, what we're talking about are actions, what they do. And I stress this over and over again. A cult is not a group with a weird belief set because there is no group anywhere that somebody couldn't think is weird. Right? Every group is weird. it's what do they do with those beliefs because that's what you can watch and that's what you can prove

and that's what you can actually regulate and so what we are looking at with destructive cults is groups that use a belief set or an ideology to radicalize to promote a non-constructive an agenda you could say whether it's financially rapacious and it's bankrupting its members left, right and center,

which is what Scientology does in many of these other groups. Whether it's physically violent, whether it's radicalizing people in the direction of, you know, even terrorist activities, stuff like that. I mean, we see Heaven's Gate years ago, which was a suicide UFO cult. All its members killed themselves. That's pretty destructive, right?

That's a belief set in forming action. And so this is where my demarcation line is. This is the important part, is it's not what they believe. It's what they do with those beliefs. Destructive cults isolate, manipulate, and control. They engage in what's called coercive control. But how is that different? And I'm just genuinely trying to understand the difference.

So there are religions which elements of which encourage people to commit violent acts, right, mainstream religions. There are religions which encourage individuals not to get married or have a family. which is one of the basic building blocks of the human condition, you might argue. There are religions that encourage people to donate large sums of money or even tithe a portion of their earnings to a church. There are religions that do all sorts of things that essentially require people to live in a way that you might argue is completely against their sort of material interests or practical interest, right?

So what's the difference between elements of Islam, elements of Judaism, elements of Christianity, elements of Hinduism, elements of Buddhism, and what you're talking about? Is there a difference? How can you tell? Again, it's really a matter of what do they do with those beliefs. Beliefs inform action. For example, okay, here are some characteristics that we can talk about. Us versus them thinking, black and white thinking, right? Our way or the highway. A destructive cult is a group that has a belief. set like any other group, but there's this scale of extremism, you could say. And you cross a line

when it's no longer acceptable that you think your own thoughts, that you have independent thinking, that you be critical at all of this group or what's going on in it, that you might want to step away from it for a little while. You know, one thing that is used as a judgment factor sometimes is what happens, sometimes the only way you can tell a group is a cult is what happens when you try to leave. Right. What do they do? And these groups tend to be rather extreme about keeping you. They try to go way out of their way to control your life and control your thinking and control your behavior. And they're overriding your own determinism, right? And that's where there's this point where it's gone too far, where you are being controlled, I guess I could say,

where there's coercion being used against you. Every group has rules. But you go in knowing what those rules are and agreeing to it. And if you do that, it's a little hard for me to make judgments about it. Like, you know, if you want to go be a Catholic monk and go live in a monastery and live the ascetic life, I can't tell you that's wrong. that's your choice to make with your life.

But if I tell you, I'm going to give you the dream job of your life and you're going to save the world and it's going to be wonderful, you're going to get paid a lot, you're going to meet wonderful people, you're going to get travel the world, and it's going to be awesome. And then I stick you in a monk's cossack and stick you at a monastery on the top of a mountain and go, have at it, I have presented something very different from the reality of that picture, right? and I've told you, you know, I've sold you on this whole bill of goods. I'm being a little exaggerated to make the point. But, you know, the point is, are you being abused in the group?

Is there physical, emotional, psychological abuse levied against you? And is there informed consent? Do you know what you're getting into? Or do you not know what you're getting into? Do they do stuff to you that you never agreed to in the first place? And Chris, what techniques would they use? in order to groom people so that they then could become Scientology members and followers. Well, it's really interesting because what they try to do is, and this is pretty uniform from group to group,

especially when we're talking about these religious or self-help groups, is they try to find some weakness, something inside you, you know, some problem you're having, some emotional difficulty you're having, trauma, stress, you know, change in your life, recent loss, something like that. and convince you that they can solve that problem. And so then you go in and maybe you get a little bit of relief, a little bit of help. Somebody actually listens to you for once. That's a very powerful force, by the way, just having somebody listening to you.

Then you start thinking this stuff works. You slowly get more and more and more involved in it. And before you know it, you're all in. and in terms of techniques, man, they're all over the place. There's, I mean, it's propaganda technique to get you in. And then it's a series of gaslighting. I mean, eventually there's enough abuse that it becomes a situation of traumatic bonding or learned helplessness. In other words, they're abusing you and they're helping you and they're abusing you and they're helping you.

And this back and forth is kind of what messes with your head psychologically. Like, okay, you go in and you think this is the greatest group ever and the leader is wonderful. And you go talk to the leader and he's kind and he's wonderful and he's beneficent. And he gives you good advice. But then the next day, he tells you he doesn't have any time for you and go away. And then you come back the next day and he's all nice and smiles again. And it's this kind of pattern. Right.

And it keeps you coming back. It's weird. It's a weird thing in our psychology that it keeps you coming. back for more. It's really interesting. And so, you see, I keep, I'm stuck on the religion question because even a lot of the stuff you're describing, like the punishment for apostasy, there are plenty of religions that have pretty strict rules about that that may not be presented to you right at the beginning when you're being indoctrinated. Certainly, you know, I grew up in the former Soviet Union. There are a lot of Orthodox Christians, particularly now, who have very

similar ways of behaving to what you're describing and Islam is the same and other branches of Christianity are the same. So I guess what I'm asking is, how do you know, if someone's watching this, how do you know that you are in the destructive cult of some kind? Right. Okay, so in these big, broad religions, you have churches or groups or, you know, individuals running little setups. Those can become very culty without the overall religion itself being a destructive cult. So we can get this kind of cult experience going on in any of these groups. You know, Westboro Baptists, for example, in the Christian world, right? Christianity in and of itself isn't necessarily destructive cult, but the Westboro Baptist sure are. So how do you know? Well, do you get a

to think your own thoughts. I'm on Twitter, so no, mate. I don't. Do you get to disagree? What happens if you disagree? What happens if you have a different idea from what the leader's dogma or ideology is? Or from what the official textbooks say? Are you allowed to have that kind of thinking? Can you disagree with a very basic principle? And Chris, we were mentioning, we were talking about wokeism. To you, is that a cult? It is. To me it is. Yeah. To be straight up blunt about it, I think it is. And here's the, and here's the problem with saying that that people blow up, their heads blow up immediately is they think that means that I disagree with the values of wokeism, right? Human rights, civil rights, equal rights. Let's give an equality of opportunity. Not an equality of outcome, right? But an equality of opportunity, I think that's an important thing.

like I agree with all those things but this actually speaks to my point I can agree with all those things philosophically but what do people do with them well some people go so extreme with them they're so into

having you know human rights for everybody that they'll kill you if you don't agree they'll strip you of your human rights and say that's justified because you know you're standing in my way it's it becomes this my way or the highway, this extremism, this fanaticism about it, this inability to consider that other points of view or other ways of seeing a thing could be legitimate, could have any

reality or truth connected to it in any way, right? That when you have that refusal, that nope, nope, nope, you know, the whole alternative facts thing, all of that is very culty thinking. because it's all about confirmation bias. It's all about motivated reasoning. These are terms we use to describe this kind of thinking. This is, I have the conclusion. I already know what's true. So if you're going to try to tell me something that's not this,

I know, I don't even have to hear it. I don't even have to listen to you. I don't have to grant you any importance or anything like that because nothing you say matters, because I already know the truth, that's the attitude of a cultist. And we see that in the woke communities. Do you think that in terms of when,

since we've moved across into the political realm and the cultural realm, is that the only cult that you see at the moment or is there other stuff going on as well? Oh, gosh, no. I see cultic activity and propaganda techniques being leveraged against people on all sides the political spectrums.

every social issue. I mean, it really comes down to, for me, I sort of have a bit of a sociological look at it. You know, I bounce between psychology and sociology all the time, because I'm looking at groups and I'm looking at individuals. And so I can talk, you know, I kind of think in with both of these things. And sociologically, every group has this kind of lunatic fringe, extreme band to it, these true believers. And, and, and, and, And it just kind of organically develops almost. It's not helped at all, though, when you get a leader or a leadership, like a group, like the elders that run the JWs, who are inciting and promoting and pushing and propagandizing

for that kind of extreme view. And that's what we see a lot in politics these days. A lot of people riling up trying to create, you know, trying to be their own little trumps, let's say. You know, because we can use that as an example. I mean, all politicians are kind of like this, but, you know, they try to rile it up. And we've seen so much of that now on both ends of the political spectrums on these social issues that we are, that's very divided. It's a very divided situation.

And that's because of the propaganda that's leveled against people. Can you give us an example? So we'll talk about the woke stuff in detail, I'm sure, but maybe elsewhere, because I certainly see that in the woke side of things. And I mean, I guess if you went all the way to the extreme of like Q and on and whatever, it does exist on the right. But to me, that is a tiny majority fringe where I think the woke movement seems to be much more commonplace and widespread. at least that's my interpretation. So can you give me your sense of where else it's happening and some of the, you talk about the propaganda techniques.

Can you give us some examples? Absolutely. Well, cable news networks, right? I mean, that's to me one of the biggest problems I see in our modern world is cable news networks and becoming propaganda machines rather than sources of information or news. We did a show on this a couple weeks ago on my channel where, you know, can a news source become a cult, become culty?

Well, U-N-on shows us that it can. And so if we take that and look at or analyze news sources, whether it's Fox, CNBC, MSN, B,C, right, CNN, are your big three. And they, and you kind of break down what their schedule and what they're doing and who's commentating versus who's actually reporting and what are they reporting and how are they reporting. What's the factualness of it? They're not news stations anymore. They're propaganda platforms.

And I think that's a fairly extreme thing to say, but I think it's justified. Just so people understand, sorry, just to finish this point, a news station is a station that reports to you events that have happened. A propaganda station... Positively. Right. A propaganda station is a station that tells you what you should think about the thing that's happened. And by the way, leaves out all the other stuff that's happened and only shows you one aspect of things that it wants you to focus in on.

Exactly. What we have seemed to have either gone into denial about or don't even really generally understand is that the news has become, it is big business. It's huge business. And so it's not just about delivering objective information anymore. It's about changing hearts and minds. It's about manipulating hearts and minds. And they're very powerful.

These are incredibly powerful platforms with the reach to millions of people at a shot. So when you see that stations like Fox News, which doesn't even exist in the UK for a reason. Or MSNBC or CNN, and you look at the fact-checking percentages, you know, you see numbers like, you know, a third or something of what Fox News is reporting is just completely false. I think it's, you know, 15, 10% or something on CNN and MSNBC. Don't quote me on those numbers, but it's, you know, there's numbers connected with this. You can actually statusize it and break it down and analyze it.

And when you have the commentators, you know, you used to have newspapers with an editorial page. Now most of the damn newspapers, the editorial page with a little bit of news. And that news is, as you said, it is half the news. It's the information about the event that they want to present to you to either confirm your bias or push you in a direction of whatever agenda is being forwarded. And Chris, what effect is this having on society then? Well, clearly, right, we have a very divided society because what it does is, here's the problem with it, is it takes away agency from the viewership because the viewers are not getting the full story. They cannot critically think about the information that's presented to them because they don't have all the information or even most of it.

They have a lot of opinions with a little bit of facts that confirm the opinions. So that divides people. Organically, you know, you just start assigning, it's just the teammanship, the tribalism that is part of us. You can use information to rile up that tribalism, that partisanship. Because what you do, and here's how you do it. The specific way that it's done, one of the most powerful ways that it's done, is by othering, by making the people who don't,

agree with you that don't see things the way you see them as different, as inhuman, as monsters, as aliens as like people who are not you, are not good like you are, are not informed, are not smart like you are. Right? This is part of the propaganda effort is the people who watch our news station are informed, you know, fair, balanced, smart people. all those other ignorant boobs out there don't know anything and in fact some of them are actively working against you

and want to see you dead. When you get this kind of messaging out of a news platform, you have a very, you know, you're capable of creating an incredibly divided society. Do you don't find it incredibly worrying, Chris, that you've seen these tactics being, in organizations as nefarious as Scientology, yet you turn on mainstream media

what should be objective reporting effects and you're seeing the same techniques being used again. That is exactly why I'm sitting here with you right now because that's what's kept me sort of going as a creator, as a content creator. You know, Scientology is a microcosm of a much bigger problem. And that's how I think about and talk about science.

Now is I've kind of, you know, I've been doing this for years. I've created hundreds of videos breaking down Scientology. And there came a point about four or five years ago where it started dawning on me that this is an object lesson. This is not just some experience I'm recovering from. This is something I should be talking about to try to help people understand that we are surrounded by propaganda and thought reform techniques. because exactly like you just said, you start studying the subject called thought reform.

Some people call it brainwashing or manipulation or propaganda. There's a lot of ways you can describe it. But how do you change hearts and minds? How do you sway populations? And once you start looking at that, of course, you start getting into the PR and marketing and sales and the tactics that are used and you start studying this in some depth, you can go to some pretty dark places pretty fast because, when you look at things like what Facebook is doing,

what Cambridge Analytica, that whole scandal, the potentiality is a big data and the power that big data gives to these platforms that can use that data to manipulate masses of people at a time. You're taking the same techniques Elron Hubbard used to manipulate one person who walks into their buildings and does their personality test. You take those same techniques and you apply them to a million people at a shot,

you can get some pretty crazy effects. You can get some very destructive effects on a society. That's what I think my main mission. If I have a mission in life now, it's trying to point that out to people so they have a better understanding of it and can think more critically of it. You know, because these are systems we're not going to change. you're not going to change. I'm not going to change it. They're too big. There's too much, there's too many people involved in too many vest interests. Well, I think that they're starting to

change it for themselves in the, the veil has been lifted somewhat. And we're now starting to see, you know, there's a lot of stuff coming out. There's people on the right who are exposing left-wing stations. There's people on the left who are exposing right-wing stations. And I think a lot of people look at that and they're like going, well, we can tell that they're lying. And the effect is very clear, you know, the most recent example is CNN's coverage of COVID. And they did some polling of CNN viewers and they found that a very large number of them think that essentially your risk of being hospitalized with COVID if you get it is like 50% when the reality is like 1% because it's been a real focus. So I guess the question for me would be how do you as an individual

protect yourself against all of this stuff? Do you just switch it off and don't watch the news at all? Or do you, is there some kind of set of techniques you can use to be present while you're watching this stuff and sort of analyze it as it happens? It's a really good question. And it really, it's not neither or. It's actually a little bit of both. I don't pay attention to, quote-unquote, news sources when they have been fact-checked

routinely to come up with, you know, a majority of or a good, chunky percentage of just flat out biased false exaggerated information, right? Which is why I rail against all of the cable news networks, because I agree with you. There's a slant and an agenda with all of them. You can, though, of course, gauge for that and account for that a little bit. But not as much as people think they can't. It's actually a little disturbing how overly confident people can be and their ability to discern truth out of a pile of crap. Because they're not really that good at it. People just kind of think they are. So what you have to do is be more discerning in the sources of the information. Be more, use more than one source, though,

is probably if there was one trick to this, it's multiple sources. And then, of course, you can't do any of this if you don't know and use critical thinking skills. There's just no substitute for it. If you don't know what a logical fallacy is, if you don't know what bias actually is and how to recognize a biased report from an unbiased report, which is not that hard to do once you know what to look for. You know, it doesn't take forever to learn how to do this. You don't have to go get a college degree. It's just, it does take a little bit of time and it does take a little bit of education. And what do you mean by critical thinking to somebody? Because to a lot of people, that's a term they just hear. But they don't actually know what it is. What do you mean by that? Okay. What I mean by that is not necessarily taking in information and just accepting it. It's being critical of it, which means questioning it. It's always questioning. It's an attitude or a way of approaching data for me more so than it is even a toolkit. It's,

It's about, okay, you have now told me this piece of information. Now, I would like to believe that that information is true because it matches up with how I would like the world to look. But let me check that. And then you go and you look it up. You Google, you talk to somebody, you read a book. You can, you know, there's different ways of fact checking. But you take a little bit of time to second, third, fourth, you know, check something over before you necessarily accept that it's totally true. or you have market, you bookmark it for, you know, later examination or at least flag it for,

well, this might be true, but I need to, you know, I need to do more work on it. If we could practice that kind of, I don't know, having just a little bit more attention on the way we think about stuff, it would actually make a tremendous difference. It would be a huge difference if just that little bit could be added to our thinking process. Well, I agree with you completely. I, I, I, I think coming, and this way may perhaps the wokeness comes back into it, the problem is, as with your experience in the Scientology world, there are punishments for doing so. And I'll give you, you know, it's a controversial example,

but an important one nonetheless. You know, the George Floyd systemic racism, etc. Or BLM, let's say, right? The narrative doesn't necessarily match reality. So if you're an unarmed black person, you're four times more likely to be killed by lightning than you are by a police officer, right? But that isn't necessarily how the conversation it plays out in the media.

And then I'm being very gentle about it, right? Or BLM, let's say you could do the critical thinking, which is what we did. When BLM became a big thing, we went on the website, we read the things that they say they want to do, defund the police, abolished capitalism, whatever, reform. the nuclear family requirement, whatever as I say. That's right. The moment we raised that as like maybe we shouldn't do all of this, we got kicked out of our last

studio, which is why we're here, right? So when you know that. No, well, we don't talk about it too much because we're not really that bothered by it in the sense that we've landed on our feet. I'm using the example as in you're asking people to think critically

at a time when a lot of things are filled with very powerful narratives where the punishment for even thinking about it differently, let alone speaking out in public, is so, so harsh. And so I think a lot of people don't think critically about things,

not because they're stupid or incapable of critical thinking, but actually I think a lot of people now, the world that we live in now, don't think critically about things because they know where that leads. I think that is, I think there's some truth to that.

Certainly, you know, bad consequences are a problem. I think you're actually commenting on the more culty aspect of our society, like what that divisiveness has sort of created is that my way or the highway, right? Us versus them kind of mentality. And the fact that that's instilled in us to the degree that it is at this point

is what is, I think, the biggest threat. It's not even the content that we're arguing about is the fact that we are so us versus them about it. You know, this is, it's just, it's so frustrating, isn't it? to see it play out this way. And this is why I rail against these platforms because they're the ones who kind of are creating it.

Right? I mean, you get the social dilemma. You got the whole social media problem. So mechanically, this is how it's created. Unfortunately, we're kind of built for this. Yeah. Right? Or, you know. Tribalism. Tribalism, right?

The social hierarchies, the, you know, thinking that way. organizing ourselves that way, you know, we're kind of our own worst enemy in some ways on this. But, you know, it is what it is. So you mentioned, for example, the BLM thing. Well, you know, I hear you because I had a show going as one of the shows I was doing on my podcast and I lost somebody because they didn't really understand what I was saying about BLM too, you know, because I was saying a lot of similar things. I said exactly what you just said actually, KK.

I went to their website. I looked at what it said. I talked about that. Yeah. I said, hey, there's more here than meets the eye. And this whole defund the police thing is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. So I took a stand on that on my channel too,

knowing that I was going to lose people, knowing I was going to lose viewers, didn't know I was going to lose a co-host on one of my favorite shows that we were doing, but I did. You know, and that really sucked. So I hear you on that. You know, it's very, very divisive out there.

As far as the critical thinking, because I think we got onto this from the critical thinking aspect of this, yes, it can be scary to step up. Yes, it can be scary to ask questions to speak out. And you have to choose your battles. This is something I've definitely had to learn over the years because I used to battle everybody on everything. You wouldn't know that.

Would you, Mike? And, you know, and it was actually on Reddit of all places that I finally, you know, somebody pointed out, you know, well, you know, you got to pick your battles, but whatever, you do you. And I suddenly was like, oh, I guess I am kind of wasting some time here, aren't I? So there is that aspect to it too, you know. And there's also the other aspect to this, which I've been thinking about lately, which is, you know, in the real world, when you talk to martial arts masters. when you talk to people who really know what they're talking about when it comes to fighting. One for one for one. I don't know about your experience,

but mine has literally been 100%. What should I do if somebody approaches me? If somebody wants to fight me, if I'm confronted, the answer 100% of the time, run. Don't engage. Why? Why? Right? What's the point? So there's that. No, no, I agree. I agree with that on an individual level,

but I think where I would strongly disagree is that that can be scaled up to societal. So you can say if a guy who doesn't like you, who's a Nazi, comes up to you and starts a fight, run away. If Nazi Germany invades your country, maybe you need to do something different, right? And to me, these large-scale societal movements are much more in that sort of category.

They are civilizational threats in my life. you, right? I agree with you. And that's actually why I harp so much on the social media platforms and the cable news networks. I look at those as causative agents in those societal systemic problems. Yeah. But they're big, you know, they're they're too big for any one of us to do anything about. And so the conversation unfortunately ends up, you know, kind of bopping back and forth between the big picture problem. Well, what do I do about it? you know, and the back and forth of that. Yeah, it's because the thing is with these social media companies

is you're aware that they're manipulating. And it's come to the point now where even the executives say that they don't give their kids a smartphone. Exactly, exactly. The social dilemma was very enlightening and opened up a lot of very interesting doors for me in terms of understanding what social media is doing to us because it's leveraging the same kinds of control mechanisms

that are used in cults. Attention is the commodity. So they want your attention. So they're going to manipulate your attention, your interest, to keep your attention, to keep those eyeballs on the screen. You think you're just viewing your wall, your Facebook wall.

This is just what your friends have posted. that's not everything your friends have posted. It's what Facebook's algorithms have selected to show you. And then there's, of course, the problem with the advertisements where the advertising, and this is really where things get nefarious is where targeted advertisements are used to actually manipulate thinking. Political ads is where this comes out most obviously, but then people miss that it's actually part of every advertising.

model. Sales and marketing and advertising is mental manipulation. And when you're using mental manipulation to change hearts and minds ideologically so as to create these partisan camps, whether it's on social issues or straight politics, now you're doing something that nobody ever asked you to do. And nobody signed up for. Nobody signed up on social media platforms to be manipulated. but that's actually what's happening on those platforms 24-7. So that degree, there's a lack of informed consent. There's these things I mentioned earlier in a sort of stumbling way of, you know, if you don't know what you're getting into

and these people are doing things to you that you never asked for and never wanted, that's where things get destructive. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Chris, listen, we could talk for hours and I've certainly really enjoyed it. I imagine we both have. but we got to ask you our final question which is what is the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Oh boy, such a good question. I think in all seriousness, I don't know that we're talking about the importance of critical thinking education enough. We talk about it at a sort of a surface veneer level, but we don't really dig in. It's sort of like police reform. You can make some surface veneer changes

that might sort of, you know, sort of sound good but aren't going to really make any practical difference. And you can do that with education. Well, we need to teach critical thinking. Yeah, but what does that mean? How? You know, how exactly? What, you know, how do we do this and how do we actually break it down grade by grade,

piece by piece, so that it's not just something that is offered as an elective at college? It's something that needs to be instilled in people, not what to think, how to think. think, right? From early, early ages. But if it's not done right, it just becomes another level of indoctrination. And that's the hard part about it. Chris, it's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. If people want to find your work, ironically enough, online, where is the best place to do that? Yes. You can look me up on YouTube, on my channel, which is just my name, Chris Shelton. I identify or put myself out there as a critical thinker, critical thinker at large. and you can find my book, Scientology, Ata Zeno,

an insider's got to what Scientology is really all about on Amazon, where I sell that on Bezos's authoritarian platform. I have self-published, and it's an audiobook, e-book, and hard copy books, so you can get it there. And this book, by the way, is not my Scientology experience. Most Scientology books you're going to find out there are a memoir, are a breakdown. And those are fine. There's no, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not ragging on that. I'm differentiating that that's not what this is. This is an actual critical analysis

of Scientology. So if you really want to know what it's all about, what the beliefs are, who El Ron Hubbard was, why the hell they still have tax exemption, it's all in the book. So you're not ragging on those other books, but yours is a lot better. I get the message. Exactly. No, I really want every. everybody to read all the books. But I just like to make sure people know it's a lot more than just my story. Yeah, of course. Chris, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for watching at home. We will see you very soon with another brilliant interview or a raw show, all of them going out at 7pm UK time. Take care and see you soon, guys. We hope you've enjoyed this incredible interview. Remember to subscribe

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