Speech: The Scientology Wars (Dr. Jolyon West)

Author: Dr. Jolyon West
Document date: ca. 1992, 6 November
Document title: Dr. Jolyon West's speech at the CAN Conference 1992
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: CAN (Cult Awareness Network) Conference
Location: Los Angeles, California
Description: Louis Jolyon (”Jolly”) West (1924-1999) was an American psychiatrist, human rights activist and expert on brainwashing, mind control, torture, substance abuse, post traumatic stress disorder and violence. In the last part of his speech at the 1992 CAN (Cult Awareness Network) Conference, Dr. West compared Hubbard's psychopathology to that of Hitler's.

In his life, Ron Hubbard privately expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler more than once. Thus it is not surprising to see how many of Hitler’s tactics he adopted.

Other parallels also suggest themselves. The book Dianetics was Hubbard’s Mein Kampf. Like Hitler, Hubbard was scornful of established religions but made temporary connections with them for purposes of political advantage. Hitler’s alliances with religious leaders exploited common prejudices against Jews. Hubbard’s against psychiatrists. Hitler invoked fears of a common enemy. He called it communism. Hubbard, likewise, the IRS, and many respectable religions who are worried about their tax status. At the same time Hitler promoted fanaticism among his own followers and a mystique that owed more to Norse mythology than to Christianity. Just as Hubbard’s mystique owed more to science fiction cliches than to any established religion. In fact both men were athiests, and enemies of genuine religion.

Hubbard and Hitler were both intelligent, charismatic, energetic and equally capable of ruthlessness and charm. Both were intense, arrogant and profoundly narcissistic, capable of the boldness and decisiveness that often accompany great intensity of purpose and total lack of conscience. Their ability to exploit others was boundless.

For them the end always justified the means. And the end was self-aggrandizement and the intoxication of power. Both exhibited paranoid symptoms at times, but were not clinically psychotic most of the time. Far from it. And the clearcut diagnosis I believe in both cases was psychopathic personality.

Hubbard’s hostile obsession with psychs, that is psychologists and psychiatrists, matched Hitler’s hatred and persecution of the Jews. Like Hitler, Hubbard often accused his enemies of the very criminal practices and warlike preparations in which he himself was engaged.

Neither man could tolerate dissent or deviation from the party line. Both were past masters in the use of the big lie. And both had no compunction about inflicting suffering on others, with no mercy at all for deserters.¹, ², ³, ⁴

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