Mormon Stories 1401: Mike Rinder - Former Top-Level Scientology Official

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of mormon stories podcast i'm your host john dulin it is february 26 2021 and i could not be more happy or excited to have our special guest for today for this mormon stories podcast episode today we have with us uh none other than the mike rinder um mike uh mike is the co-host of a new podcast uh called scientology fair game along with leah remini mike also appeared micrinder also appeared in the documentary known and loved by many mormons called going clear which was also a book by lawrence wright uh mike rinder was also kind of a participant and or co-producer in the leah remedy series on scientology uh that appeared and um going back even further um mike rinder uh was a scientologist for many years and uh he was a high level top top-level executive you could even say maybe david miscavige's right-hand man you can correct me if i'm wrong about that mike um but but he was the leader of scientology's office of special affairs which handled public public relations legal and government relations and handling the enemies of scientology while he was a a member of scientology and ultimately he is as i understand it the highest level uh defector of scientology to date and by his own words he along with leah remini are sort of considered public enemies numbers one and two of scientology and you have a special place in my heart mike because i think i am considered public enemy number one of of the lds church or the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints even though that's not what i'm gunning for um but with without any further ado mike rinder welcome to mormon stories podcast thanks so much john it's it's really a pleasure to be here as i was saying to you before we got on there i have had the the fortunate experience of dealing with now a lot of people from different religious backgrounds and cult appearances and involvements in high control groups and it's always a pleasure to sort of expand my own understanding and perhaps bring some understanding to others based on my experience i i totally agree and uh so again i'm just thrilled to have you on so um okay so there's so much i would want to talk about and um for today we only have an hour hour and ten minutes or so so i'm going to just jump right in is that okay of course of course so so for for those of my listeners who have not uh learned a lot about scientology i want to just let you all know that i did 10 plus hours with chris shelton episodes 1189 all the way to 1202 many many hours 13 hours with chris shelton if you want lots of background on the history of scientology on the history of l ron hubbard on what it's like to be a scientologist i'm not going to use my precious one hour with mike rinder to to dig into all that so much today because of our limited time so i'm gonna just ask listeners to go back and check all that out there's also some great interviews with mike mike i'm just gonna dig in with you on some very specific things if that's okay of course like i told you john i'm an open book ask me anything no restrictions whatever whatever okay so give my listeners just a quick introduction into your kind of your high level history with scientology and uh what you did let's spend a few minutes on that okay you know i was really raised a scientologist and i joined what's called the sea organization as soon as i graduated high school and the sea organization is like the inner circle of scientology the most dedicated members who work full-time 24 7 365 days a year in service of scientology uh signing a billion year contract to pledge yourself for eternity to working for scientology um in over a a period of nearly or a little more than 30 years i rose to the top of the scientology international hierarchy i was a member of the board of directors of the church of scientology international from 1982 until i left in 2007 much of the time between in the 80s 90s and 2000s i spent as the person who was in charge of the external affairs of scientology uh the office of special affairs which meant i dealt with government agencies with litigation with public relations and as john mentioned in his intro with dealing with the enemies of scientology and when dealing with is a euphemistic term that really means in scientology dealing with the enemies of scientology means destroying them and what i mean by that is silencing them so that they no longer speak out or have a voice um it's it's called there is a term in scientology or in the office of special affairs which is used to measure the success of the office of special affairs which is that the person has become a dismissed attacker and an attacker in scientology is anybody at all whether a former scientologist and never a scientologist a member of the media a politician anyone who challenges the thought and party line of scientology and and this ranges from people literally who simply question or write uh media articles that are not flattering towards scientology like rich beija when he wrote his time magazine article in 1993 to those who seek to expose the really sordid underbelly of scientology like leah remini and i and every person who is on that list of enemies of scientology is someone who should be dispensed with and in in scientology terminology that really means uh shut up but it also uh implies and it is true in scientology that people like myself or leah remini or the reporters at the tampa bay times or some others who have spoken repeatedly about against the abuses of scientology would be better off dead and i mean that literally the world would be a better place in the view of scientologists if we were not alive at all that's so grim that's great yeah it is grim i you know the what's odd in some respects john about scientology and particularly this dealing with the enemies of scientology is the fact that it's all written down that l ron hubbard was so um you know obsessed with having his words and his thoughts recorded and made available to everyone to to use that even his thoughts and directives and directions on how you are supposed to destroy people are written down and you know while for a long time they sort of remained under the veil of secrecy that scientology has you know since its inception spent a lot of time and effort to maintain with the advent of the internet all that kind of went away you know the internet is the the you know someone described it as the vietnam of scientology it's really the waterloo it is the end of the road as far as scientology goes because cults like scientology are reliant upon the idea that they can keep their dirty laundry secret and that is no longer the case and as a result i think that the influence of scientology has become less and less and i think that the you know people coming into scientology newly is diminishing rapidly yeah i think there's so many parallels between the church of scientology and the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints for the mormon church but that all i wanted to just start with kind of this joke that we have in the mormon church which is we're grateful for scientologists because they make us look normal or they make us look a bit a bit less weird but the truth is there are so many parallels um you know one of them being i don't know if you know this but the mormon church started and i'm a mormon i'm a mormon kind of video media pr campaign but they did that inspired by the scientologist because if you go back just a year prior to the i'm a mormon campaign there's the i'm a scientologist campaign were you aware of the i'm a scientologist campaign uh yes i was a part of putting that together absolutely did you know that you inspired us in that no i was not aware of that i'm sad to hear i said unfortunately there are a lot of things that i have in my past that i uh have got to take ownership for and responsibility for but they're not particularly pleasant although you know john a lot of people say well you know you know how do you feel about this and i i i honestly have uh clearly enormous regrets for the things that i have been involved in or the people that i hurt or the actions that i took but i i can't on the other hand change history i can't change what happened in the past i can only change how things are going in the future and i am seeking to i guess a tone in some fashion for that by being you know uh pretty active on trying to now expose what really goes on in scientology um you know i don't know why i got off into that i like i told you or you talked a lot were you embarrassed by the i'm a scientologist campaign was there something about that that you're embarrassed about or sad about no ju i'm sad that it inspires some other organization to follow in those footsteps oh sure sure i'm sad that if someone saw those ads and got involved in scientology and ended up having you know their family torn apart or losing all their money and having to file bankruptcy i'm i'm very sorry that i had any pot to play in bringing that about there's a there's a t-shirt that goes around mormonism that literally says i'm sorry for what i said when i was mormon um uh and this is yeah this is so complex because uh but but when you did the i'm a scientologist campaign uh it was very similar to the animal mormon campaign it's got a skateboarder who's cool who says i'm a mormon or it's got a painter who who's an artist and then can you just tell the philosophy that went behind that media campaign that then we copied and used ourselves well the idea was to to take or attempt to take scientology out of oh this is the weirdos that are on the fringe of society and make it clear that this could be you this could you you could be a scientologist just like these people now it's funny john that that is what was the objective you know scientology for uh since its formation and the the objective of l ron hubbard always was to try and take scientology mainstream like have it be part of the culture have it be part of what everybody is a part of so that it it's no longer the weirdos on the fringes today one of the things that i i am most proud of is the fact that we i believe that we have gone a long way to changing the perception of scientology in the in the very broader public you know perception through the aftermath show that look this could be you that people who get involved in cults whether by familial connection and being brought in as a child or by joining because they feel like something uh it might be helpful to them or they might be able to help other people for a long time the the sort of dismissed or the easy way of dismissing what was going on in scientology was uh well i'd nev that would never be me they pray on the week they pray on the people who can't look after themselves and so i don't need to worry about this because it's not me and i think that uh the aftermath went a long way to showing that the people that get involved in scientology and generally in cults are not bad people they're not really different than the run-of-the-mill guy that you might meet in the supermarket they are normal people and in many instances they have uh an almost heightened uh consciousness for doing good for the world a lot of people get into cults because they believe that they're going to be able to help other people you know that's not a bad personality trait to have the desire to be helping other people and i think that it's funny i am a scientologist on one hand in the earlier part of my life was an attempt to mainstream scientology and the aftermath was an attempt to mainstream the victims of scientology yeah it's so complex uh because i do think that there there's so many uh members of the lds church as well that are smart that are brilliant that are good-hearted and and that's what's so complex about these organizations is if you go to the periphery of the organization kind of where the members meet the rest of the world there there are often good families bright people smart people honest people trying to do good and it's always once you get closer to the center where you see sometimes the corruption the the misinformation the deception and it can be really disorienting mike let me just ask you what do you do you think of what do you think about mormons have you had interactions with mormons do you what do you think about the mormon church when you think of us do you think about just a normal christian church do you think of the mormon church as a cult just download for us a few minutes on your impressions of and or interactions with mormons and and the mormon church and your perceptions of it as on the one extreme harmful cult on the other extreme the super happy osmond-like christian you know uh religion where do you see us okay well let me just first say john you know that the president of the church of scientology international hebergench the guy who has been disappeared and hasn't been seen in public for a long time but hebergench was a very dear friend of mine heber was raised in a polygamous mormon family and has you know a mother and 47 brothers and sisters and six sister wives and he left um that environment when he was you know in his early 20s i think and he took off and because he was a singer and actor but i have spent an inordinate amount of time with hiba and i know him very well and i talk i talk to him a lot about mormonism so my impression of mormonism is and and the lds church itself is based on my understanding from heber my uh watching big love my interaction with various people who i know are or have been mormons and my overall impression is twofold one i believe that that the the thing that mo the mormons have going for them is their community and their willingness to support one another in their community i have seen it i have uh spoken to a lot of people who feel that the great value that that the mormon faith brings them is their connection to a community no matter where they are in the world and i think that that's incredibly important on the other hand like you say at the center of this is some pretty weird beliefs and pretty weird you know uh origin story of you know golden tablets and and the angel moroni and the planet kolob and all of this sort of stuff which is very reminiscent of scientology uh very and is i believe if you can here is my fundamental i don't know apart from breaking up families with with disconnection or whatever you call it i can't remember what your word is but breaking up families is is you know because people leave and then they become shunned and are no longer accepted parts of the community is is terrible no matter where it happens and who it happens to and the the basis of it being a religious belief is absolute insanity and is so contradictory to this idea that mormonism promotes the family and community and yet mormonism is the reason that people get shunned but i have this belief and i think that this is probably fairly well borne out in fact that if you can get someone to believe crazy crazy stuff and you know and in scientology there's the story of xenu and the galactic federation and volcanoes 75 million years ago and people being blown up and blah blah blah blah blah if you can get them to believe that sort of crazy stuff you can get them to go along with a lot of other things and the other things are often the things that are more harmful because those beliefs are very internalized and those beliefs in in xenu and body satan's and all the other the other crazy things that you hear about scientology don't really affect anybody outside of that individual and any individual is free to believe and think any way they want what they're not free to do is act any way they want and when you can persuade someone uh about one crazy thing which leads them to believe another crazy thing that's when it starts getting dangerous because that's when you start having people taking actions that are uh not in the best interests of themselves or others now i i'm not sure that i answered your question totally no sure okay well then i'm going to stop there no no keep going keep going what else are you going to say i was just going to say i have not experienced myself or seen myself the sort of abuses in the lds that i have seen in scientology but i haven't been a moment i haven't been in the lds church i haven't my experience is in scientology so i know what goes on in scientology i don't know what goes on in the modern religion so i'm not sure that that i have a a really informed opinion to offer about that other than sort of the general way that i've expressed it which is it's pretty dangerous when you can start convincing people to believe in crazy [ __ ] because that means you can start convincing them to believe in other crazy [ __ ] and that other crazy [ __ ] is what starts to get them to do things that are crazy yeah and and uh you know as a lead up to this interview i put this question out who does more harm the mormon church or the church of scientology and i don't want to spend a lot of our precious time talking about that other than to say just a couple quick things um one of the things that discouraged me discourages me sometimes so as i've listened to your uh wonderful podcast with leah remini called scientology fair game what i've heard come up over and over again you're like is anybody listening why what you know whether it's the scientology's abuse with the tax code it's it's irs tax exemptions it's the abuses that it performs it's all the ways that it can use its tax-exempt status to do all sorts of harm what i hear you and leah remini just saying over and over again is why isn't this a problem why isn't the us government reacting why isn't this stuff illegal why are they being protected um i resonate with that outrage because believe me we have the same outrage we're like how you know in the mormon church it's all the lgbtq suicides we have an epidemic of lgbtq suicides it's the it's the unnecessary divorces that happen it's the families being torn apart it's the but more importantly with us there is a lot of good that happens in the mormon church but what's disturbing is the fact that um that that there's no informed consent that people are born into this faith they give two-year mission service they give 10 of their income they give the so many hours a week they give their full lives to this organization when they have not been taught an accurate view of the church's founding narrative of the problems with the church of the way that it's hurt people the way that it continues to hurt people and and so it's the deception um and it was an intentional deception because what we can show over the past 120 years is that the church leaders have known about the fundamental historical and problems with the church of truth claims and have intentionally chosen to keep this truth from the members decade after decade after decade which then leads to the lack of informed consent it's not that the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints is beating people like david miscavige it's not that we're imprisoning people like scientology um but we're but but it is that millions of people not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people millions of people have been deceived into giving their lives their time their reputation and 10 of their income for their entire lives under false pretenses without informed consent it's a different type of harm but it's still harm and there's sometimes when i talk to reporters or when i talk to you know uh people that would do documentaries they're like well you're not as you're not as violent as scientology you mormons aren't as brutal as scientologists it makes me a little bit sad because because i'm like wait a minute there should be as much outrage around the mormon church as there is around scientology not because we're beating people but because we're a 300 billion organization soon to be a trillion dollar organization and because we're benign we're we're a little bit more benign we have more power we have mitt romney a presidential candidate we have you know the senate majority leader formerly and harry reid we have so much more power and influence which in some sense makes us more dangerous and so it's a different type of weighing of the harm but that's kind of why i asked the question and that's kind of what's behind it does that make any sense to you oh it makes total sense and i'm not sure what the answer to that question is john the truth of the matter is for anybody who has been affected by either organization it doesn't matter if if your family has been destroyed or your life has been destroyed either one of them is just as bad as the other and it you know there there's not much point in arguing whether it's better to be shot in the head by a shotgun or shot in the head by a 45 right i mean yeah one way or the other it's going to do you some serious damage and the the discussion about where which is worse is sort of kind of missing the point because they both have things that need to be uh stopped abuses that need to be stopped and that's really the point you know yeah you bring up you bring up an interesting thing because see i look at it and you go wow you know the mormons are more benign and we've got more influence and this and that so you know it frustrates me because the the filmmakers and stuff and documentarians that come go wow you're not like scientology and i go yeah frustrates me with because they say to us you're not like nexium because you don't brand women on their pubic area and and you know like okay yeah i get it that's true but you know is the abuse really that much worse i i mean the big difference of course is nexium you know keith ranieri made a big big mistake when he didn't formulate his activity into a religion so he could get first amendment protection sure well i i'm not interested in kind of this pain or abuse olympics other than to say i think we are gonna i know that you and lee are trying to make a difference i know that job's witnesses have their activists uh i know that many uh high demand religions and or cults have their activists i believe that we're going to be more effective to the extent to which we collaborate and unite and i just want to make sure that i just wanted to make sure that you understand that that that the mormon church is harming people too and and i think by you coming on this podcast in some sense you're kind of recognizing that and that's that's as much as i wanted from the conversation it's kind of acknowledgment that that all of us have our pain points as a community and that we all need to kind of uh support each other because i believe that the impact we can make by collaborating like you guys did when you brought the jehovah's witnesses into your tv series we were all excited as mormons that you might feature us the following year because the the problem is bigger than scientology it's bigger than nexium it's bigger than mormonism and i think we'll be able to make a bigger difference the extent to which we collaborate that's that's my biggest point i i'm i'm 100 with you john and i think maybe you should come on our podcast next i mean i'm there i haven't haven't have a talk about about what your perspective on mormonism is because like we get a lot of because of the prominence of the aftermath a lot of people write to us a lot of people send direct messages on twitter or right on my blog or whatever saying we need help we've got you know we were part of this yoga group that you know this this guy is like just like bikram and you know can you help us or we're a lot of ex-mormons a lot of jehovah's witnesses a lot of people from various christian faiths have written to us and say can you help us do what you've done for scientology and expose what's really going on in our part of the world and our activities so i certainly um understand that and you know like we've had a podcast with mark vicente from nexium and we're good we've recorded one already with sarah edmondson and she she's in one of the upcoming episodes and what we've done lloyd evans from the jehovah's witnesses and i think that you are correct that when people who have uh similar problems and similar experiences and similar objectives to end the abuses come together you see uh societal change happening and you know that's what happened with the metoo movement that is the sort of classic example of disparate people coming together and united in a cause that was a righteous one to end abuses in by powerful men basically and i see that i and i i hear you very clearly and i think you speak great soothe about this is a a problem that will be best solved by everybody's shoulder to the wheel rather than 30 different people trying to do something yeah yeah all right well my my my listenership is just freaking out that you guys would have us on i'm there you just name the date and time and i'm there okay um i i read leah's book i loved it and you guys inspire me because i've been doing this 16 years i my podcast is literally 16 years old wow yeah i'm 1400 episodes into my podcast i've been doing it since 2005. if you could you have og in podcasting i might i might be okay mike okay really quick i've got so many questions so the the at the very be at the very top i want to understand about scientology is it a belief system is it a religion and i've got some questions i want to ask about this but do scientologists believe that elrond hubbard had some sort of supernatural or mystic power mandate and do they view his writings as holy and is is it a belief system and i've even heard you and leah maybe debate that a little bit but i've got some sub questions we don't need to go deep into this but i wanted to ask you that question as a precursor to a couple other questions how much of it is a belief system in sort of something extra powerful or supernatural verse or not it's it's very much that it is very much the the and the writings and lectures you know hubbard was a prolific writer and uh and he did like 3 000 lectures on the subject of dynamics and scientology those things his writings are considered to be the scripture of scientology they are the you know uh the the text and the the teachings of scientology and they're considered to be infallible in other words elrond hubbard's words are considered to be um and scientology will argue this to the end of time uh but if you know enough about the subject they are considered to be scripture and gospel and that there is nothing that l ron hubbard said that should not be read literally and applied exactly as he said it you know his words are literal and scientology says well you know elrond hubbard didn't consider himself to be a god and he was just a man and blah blah blah well that's kind of a part of the mainstreaming of scientology trying to get it to be acceptable and and more mainstream and not have people going freaking out going oh you think that that elrond hubbard is jesus christ so while on one hand they will say that hubbard was just a man on the other hand the true belief of scientology is that everything that he wrote said and did is the example that all mankind should be following that the belief system of scientology is is uh enormously detailed right i mean i alluded earlier to this stuff about xenu and the volcanoes and 75 million years ago and the galactic federation and this and that which is all the stuff that that people sort of like to latch onto because it's so you know science fiction and hubbard was a science fiction writer and there's a good argument to be made that it just came out of his the same imagination that created you know space aliens and robots in his science fiction created space aliens and and uh body satan's in scientology but there is much much more to scientology than that there is a a whole book that started it all called dynamics where hubbard claimed to have discovered the the true cause of all of mankind's uh physical and emotional ills and upsets and the and at the time when he wrote dianetics in 1950 scientology wasn't even a religion it was a it's called the modern science of mental health it's the subtitle of the book and he considered that it was science and that it was provable and that it had been scientifically tested and this is a claim that scientology makes often now they put on tv ads on the super bowl and stuff that's when you know when science the the meeting of science and religion is scientology they still like push that but there is a uh the the story of how scientology became a religion rather than a science is a pretty simple one which was hubbard lost the copyrights to die next because he drove everything into bankruptcy and so he went and started something new and he called it scientology and after he called it scientology and started talking about the you know thetan which is the scientology tone for spirit someone out in california said hey you know there's a big advantage to being uh calling yourself a religion you get tax exempt status and basically a free pass in the courts and he went whoop sounds like a good angle to me let's give that a shot and that was really the genesis of scientology becoming a religion now so so this is this is where there's such a big parallel because both both scientology and the mormon church were founded by author of fiction joseph smith authored the book of mormon which is bible fan fiction and so did scientology joseph smith also tried to sell the copyright of the book of mormon but failed but then but then the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints was kind of the next step it was a way for him to um have a next level of power influence and frankly a job after the book and so what what but but one of the big i've got a few really big questions one of the big ones is you know a lot of us want to want to know did joseph smith believe that he was still someway creating a book that really was inspired by god or was it a conscious fraud and i want to ask you to speculate when you think about l ron hubbard forming this religion there's one interpretation that it was just how do i make more money religion's a great way to make money or do you believe that in some way he actually felt he was a papyrus a pious fraud or a sincere fraud he felt like he was channeling the divine he felt like he was being um channeling into some type of supernatural force or influence and that when he was writing about thetans when he was writing about the solutions to mankind whether he believed that there was some divine power flowing within him do you have and i know you're speculating but you knew him so what's your speculation my speculation is that he had uh that those two things just the straight fraud and the believer are are not necessarily mutually exclusive right that he probably began with the idea of i need to write a book that's going to make me some money yes and there is a um uh like a zeitgeist in the in the the world it was you know 1949 right after the war everything's in turmoil people are upset there's lots how about a book that tells people how to to deal with their emotions like i'm not so sure that this didn't start out as how can i tap into this market and but i i also believe that from some early point he got a sort of a messiah complex that he had found something because dianetics became a bestseller and there were people all over the country who were forming dianetics groups and explaining how this had changed their life and made them better and blah blah blah and suddenly what might have been a bit of a joke at the outset turned into something that he now is has adoring fans who are telling him that he saved their life who he saved their marriage he did this for them he did that for them and i believe that he started to buy his own [ __ ] right and if you read the the very end of lawrence wright's brilliant going clear book he interviews the guy that was with hubbard at the very end of his life steve fouth and steve says hubbard was obsessed in the end of his life with body things now you can say that this was all just science fiction made up he invented a story blah blah blah but there's no doubt that at least at the end of his life and you can say he had gone mad who knows what but he bought this [ __ ] he believed it 100 he's having steve go out to fence post looking for body things that are bothering him he asks him to build a machine to zap the body things off his body now if he believed that that it was all just a con and all just a scam i don't think that we would have heard that story at the end of his life oh that's such a great comparison okay thank you that's brilliant next question is very related you were david miscavige's right-hand man the number one question i get from my listeners is do the current mormon church leaders the top the quorum of the 12 the first presidency are they sincere believers or are they perpetuating a a conscious fraud my view is that they probably are sincere believers what i wanted to ask you is um is in your exposures to david miscavige do you think he was a sincere believer or do you think did you ever get any evidence or indication that he was a conscious fraud and would he have ever let you um know that and then i've got more questions after that okay well the answer to that question is no he never gave me any indication that he was anything other than a sincere believer remember he was raised a scientologist effectively yeah the the his origin story in scientology is that he was a a small very asthmatic child and had terrible problems uh illnesses etc etc and his father took him to get dianetic auditing and dianetics cured him of his asthma and he tells that story and his dad tells that story and it's uh you know by my observation of miscavitch he believes in scientology on the other hand i will say that for the last 10 or 15 years that i knew him i didn't see him going into any auditing sessions which is sort of like a catholic not going to confession it's uh um expect from the very top of the hierarchy you you don't expect the pope not to be showing up for confession or mass but david miscavige didn't so i then go back and i usually answer this question because people always ask the same question john i say what difference does it make it doesn't matter whether he believes it or doesn't believe it he's still perpetrating it and you can't excuse perpetrating abuses by saying well i believed it too i i think i you know it's it's based on my belief that's such a cop-out to say well i did all these things just because uh that's what i believe was the right thing to do or i didn't believe it but i did it anyway so what's the difference yeah in mormonism we have this term lying for the lord but but there's this i guess there's this mindset that if this really is god's one true church on the earth if people's literal salvation is at stake yeah then by any means necessary kind of to quote malcolm x like if you have to lie if you have to deceive if you have to manipulate or even do harm to some you have to protect the flock and if you have to you know i've been excommunicated for the mormon church if you have to cut off or shun or even deceive um sometimes that's just the cost of doing business when you're doing god's holy work and so by any means necessary because people's lives are at stake and this is god's one true church well that's exactly the same in scientology i mean they're the the idea in scientology is this uh concept of the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics and i'm not going to go into a big description chris shelton probably describe what the dynamics are but fundamentally the belief is scientology is the salvation of all mankind or the only salvation for all mankind not just mankind but this entire sector of the universe and that the good of scientology and the the the the importance of maintaining the good of scientology for the good of all is outweighs any bad that could be done to prevent someone from harming that uh that objective from being attained of scientology being able to salvage every man woman and child on planet earth so you have the exact same lying cheating stealing uh destroying and abusing are all justified if they uh can be put into the category of this is being done for the good of all and just like you have the good of the flock in scientology it's for the good of scientology and that is the case with every high control group i have ever come across you know i'm not a phd in and i haven't studied this and i don't have a degree etc etc but from my observation this concept that the ends justifies the means and the ends are always the ends that are beneficial for the organization that that is the hallmark of a cult yeah absolutely one of the hallmarks thank you okay next question so a lot of a lot of us feel like if only we could have in the mormon church a high-level defection someone in kind of the top 15 power structure that that would you know because we're all wondering how is it that so many people how many active believing intelligent mormons don't know the church's true history don't know the way the church is harming people maintain their orthodox belief how is this possible how do we break through not so that we destroy the church but just so that we wake more people up to the truthfulness of the church um what it really is in our minds in our fantasies we think if only we could have a top-level defection that would make all the difference my first question is how does someone at your level what does it take for someone at your level right hand person to david miscavige what does it take to get someone like you to defect how does that happen what are the required ingredients that make you defect but not david miscavige i would love to hear that okay well what makes what made me defect and what made anybody else defect is always something different there is no formula for this there is no like i've spoken to dozens if not hundreds of former scientologists what was it that caused them to leave usually it is a long series of small things that build up and finally a straw that breaks the camel's back and the thing that that is um i guess different about scientology than mormonism is that in scientology you have things that are clearly physically and emotionally and mentally abusive that are going on and those things uh you know in the i'll speak from my own experience you start out with stuff that happens to you where you are deprived of food or sleep or get beaten or uh you know punished for some in in some fashion and you start out by believing that look this in the overall scheme of things this doesn't really matter this is not a big deal um i probably deserved it and this goes a lot into the scientology fundamental beliefs of you know everything that happens to you you were responsible for creating etc etc and a lot of guilt and shaming and etc etc etc but as time goes on these things sort of accumulate and your experiences accumulate and uh for whatever reason uh something cracks in the end and you know for me it was a long series of things but ultimately when i was dealing with the bbc in london and john sweeney was the reporter from the bbc was asking me on camera you know as david miscavige why i have been told by seven or eight witnesses that they've seen david miscavige physically assaulting you and i am lying saying no that's not the case and we'll sue you if you publish that and you know blah blah blah blah and i stopped at one point and i thought you know why am i defending this what what what is it that is is causing me to believe that this is a good thing to be lying about that you know i had lied about xenu and other weird stuff to katie couric on the today show and other far more dramatic things if you will but they all had underneath them my belief that this was for the betterment of scientology and i suddenly sort of stopped and then david miscavige said something about well you know you're never seeing your wife and children again and ultimately the much of the reason that i had stayed for as long as i had stayed was because he couldn't figure out what to do about my two children and my wife and when he said that uh coupled with the the lying about being beaten by him i just kind of went okay this is the end of the road i'm out of here if you don't have um like if you've got the downside of leaving is greater than the upside then you're gonna stay and i you know what that upside and downside is for every individual like i said is very different but i think that the difficulty that you have with getting high level defectors from them from the mormon church is the same reason why david miscavige is never going to leave he has no upside for leaving there's nothing that he is going to benefit and he is going to lose a lot if he leaves he is not he is going to lose control over a multi-billion dollar empire and i didn't have that control even though i was at the senior echelons of scientology i didn't have any control over the money i couldn't snap my fingers and say you know i want a custom made suit uh get me a new car uh hire me a private jet that the only person that has that in scientology is david miscavige and i think that you don't have that sort of um physical emotional it becomes extraordinarily draining and you become uh very desperate through lack of sleep which is a common thing that happens in scientology even lack of food when you're in the sea organization and those physical aspects of it do have an impact on what your decision-making process is and i think that that scientology has done itself an enormous disservice and miscavitch has done himself an enormous disservice by not recognizing that the the abuses that he will inflict on people in order to demand obedience and control are the very things that have caused him to lose control over too many people and that those people now are biting him in the butt that that makes so much sense like again why is the mormon church a 300 billion dollar plus organization versus scientology what 3 billion i think the church benefits from not being as mean to its top leaders um and by having a lot more money and so with a lot more money in power and less brutality the mormon church is going to be less likely to have a top-level defection it sounds like what happened to you is the pain got too high um and and at some point your conscience woke up and i think it's just harder in in mormonism let me just ask you um one of the things that's been really hard for me is is all the attacks i'm i've been accused of abusing women i've been accused of abusing children i've been accused of financial impropriety like so and a lot of times oddly it's been ex-mormons that have been the ones who have come forward with those sorts of completely fraudulent false manufactured attacks but it's really hard to be in this space because you're constantly smeared with lies on the internet i googled your name for this interview and it's like child abuser child wife would be as your spousal abuser but what's odd is you were part of those smears before you were the target of them and i'm just talk if you want to just like how how do you how do you how do you continue as an activist when your name is being smeared and drugged through the mud how do you survive and persist how do you it's so hard for me i can't imagine what it's what it's like for you well john i think that uh two things one i [Music] believe that the the objective of scientology is to silence me with that sort of activity that uh you know they're not literally uh beating me up in the street they're smearing me on the internet and i believe that this is a mind game and the way to win the mind game is not to be affected by the mind game yeah in other words yeah you know what they want me to do is shut up and go away they want leah to shut up and go away and that's the last thing that i'm going to do because they put crazy [ __ ] on the internet the second thing is that thanks largely to the work that we did on the aftermath generally people just look at anything that scientology says about us in particular but but generally people who are whistleblowers or speaking out about abuses in scientology and dismiss it whole just out of hand those publications and those smear things are really at this point for their internal public they want to be able to show to the scientologist that comes along and says oh my god i just saw this thing and do you know that leah remini and mike rinda had this show and they have this guy on there and he was saying blah blah blah well they'll come back to those people and say well look here this is what we've got about them they're just liars they're out there making money off this they're they're bitter defrocked apostates they are they you know their wife beaters their child abusers they're this they're that the general public however don't tend to give much credence to those things anymore and the longer they keep um doing this and the more it is proven just by reason of nothing actually happens the the less effect that it has yeah that makes sense that makes sense okay um so i'm encouraged and discouraged by the fact that um on the one hand you and leah are just kicking i don't want to say i don't always swear because i'm so mormon but kicking ass you and leah are kicking such no i have i have i'm learning to swear my children are teaching me to swear but it's still hard for me i still haven't tried beer so swearing is but um but mike about coffee i love coffee that is that is one way i fly my ex-mormon freak flag with my coffee um okay so on the one hand i'm seeing you guys kick so much ass in terms of like waking the world up to scientology but on the other hand if a high-level defection like you doesn't bring down scientology what could and then what could ever and i'm not trying to bring down mormonism so much as i'm trying to clean up mormonism and just have the mormon church hurt less people but i guess this is a long way of asking the question how much of a difference have you and leah made and others these high-level defections what are the ways it's made a difference why hasn't it take down scientology yet and what can we this is how we're going to end what do we need to do to make a bigger impact in mormonism and scientology and in the bigger world of high demand harmful religions organizations and or cults so let's start with um what is the impact you have made i think that we have changed generally the perception of scientology is just sort of this wacky hollywood thing that causes uh movie stars to jump on oprah winfrey's couch um to this is actually an organization that is engaged in systematic abuse of people and something needs to be done about it and as frustrating as it is about how slow the but because of course you know it's one thing to be a high level defector it's one thing to have a tv show or a podcast it's another thing to actually affect change and the change ultimately will come about through actions of the government the people that have the authority to change those sort of things the irs uh is the authority that is required to remove the tax-exempt status from scientology and it isn't going to happen because i say it a thousand times on a podcast or leah writes a book or anything else it's going to happen when somebody in the irs ultimately acts but as we all know the process of bringing about societal change is uh you know slow is a nice word to use to describe it you you say use a not nice word use a not nice word you can even swear if you want to yeah it's it's [ __ ] insane it's just like my left it's like it's like driving through molasses but i you say well what's it gonna take uh you know if someone like you defecting doesn't bring it about what's it going to take well i still am firmly of the belief that i am the one that will bring this about that leah and i will ultimately bring this about and if this is not the destruction of scientology i don't care about destroying scientology i care about ending the abuses now do i believe that in order for all the abuses to end that scientology can continue to exist i'm not sure that the the structural church organization as it is can carry on because there's there's a lot of factors that go into that and that's a lot longer discussion john but look back at the civil rights movement look back at what it took to ultimately pass you know the the civil rights act and how long and how hard and how much blood sweat and tears went into that fight over what period of time before ultimately someone or someone's had enough influence and brought enough pressure to bear on elected officials to change the law and you can you can look i also sort of uh use this as an analogy to you know 50 years ago um gay rights was not even a term it began to become uh talked about in the 60s probably the 70s more like but it was fringe if you were a pro gay rights activist you were definitely on the fringe ultimately what happens is these sort of things become mainstreamed people change their attitude you change the perception in society of what's right and wrong and what's good and bad and what people should and shouldn't think about things these days if you are anti-gay rights you are the fringe you you may not be entirely the fringe in in very conservative circles either either religious or political circles but in general in the world you are now uh a fringe dweller for being an anti-lgbtq rights you it's changed and now you start seeing laws changing now the law changes so that you can have same-sex marriage now the law changes now we're having laws being enacted that that prevent discrimination based on gender this is a long time coming right but it has been a process that you can watch and see over history has happened and i believe that that process is now becoming faster because of the internet and i believe that the next thing that we are going to start seeing is we're going to start seeing action by legislators and and governmental bodies to put an end to these abuses and that's why i am like while we continue to educate people the education of those people includes elected officials there are more members of congress and you know state government agencies and law enforcement people who now understand that this is a serious problem abuses in cults than there was 25 years ago there's more now than there was five years ago right it's become and just like me too and these things you just gotta keep going you gotta keep you gotta persist you gotta keep talking you gotta keep getting the message out you've gotta keep trying to reach those who are in positions of power who can in fact do something about it and that is my sort of mantra to live by which is you keep going you keep speaking never be shut up never think that you're that you've lost never think that it's hopeless never think that there is no end in sight because the only way that there won't be an end in sight to this stuff is if people like you and i stop and give up and then it can sink back under the covers and be disappeared into the darkness and nobody is going to do a thing about it so don't ever believe that it it's hopeless because it isn't it can't be because every every change that has happened in society that has prevented the abuse of people has been brought about in this exact same fashion can i get an amen can i get it can i get a hallelujah oh my gosh i'm so inspired mike okay i i know that we kind of have a hard stop i could literally talk to you for hours let me just make a response back yes part of my argument for why mormons need to be factored into the equation along with jehovah's witnesses and orthodox you know hasidic jews and you know extreme muslims the reason why we need to factor in is partly because we have so much power we have mitt romney and mike lee sitting in the senate we have multiple senate seats we have multiple seats in the house of representatives we are a major force in the republican party and when we have not just three billion dollars we have 300 billion dollars and will soon be within 30 years a trillion dollar church and i want to add when you guys are frustrated about the religious freedom arguments that end up in in the in the courts that end up protecting scientologists guess what our lawyers are working with your lawyers and our lawyers are even better and more expensive than your lawyers our lawyers are leading leading the movement mormon lawyers mormon church-backed lawyers are leading the movement to solidify religious freedom to protect not only the mormon church not only the church of jesus christ the latter saints but to protect you so when you're frustrated at the legal protections of colts through the religious freedom clauses it's the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints that's bankrolling much much of of that uh much of those efforts so the thing i want to end with is we are at your service there's a reddit group right now ex-mormon reddits that has 190 000 members we are the largest podcasting uh ex-religious organ you know uh community we are on tick tock we're on youtube we're on x we're on reddit and we want to partner with you and leah we want to partner with the jehovah's witnesses we want to partner with everyone because i believe that the total can be much powerful than the sum of the parts if we collaborate together so yes i will come on your podcast but also i'll help you with your camera i'll fly out to where you guys are like we need to we need to partner together because we can do so much more unified than we will be able to do individually that's my little pitch to you is that okay mike oh that that's fabulous john thank you thank you so much for having me on and thank you so much for being so um willing to to hear what i have to say and interested in it it's always a pleasure to deal with someone who is confronting similar problems but from a slightly different perspective and i i always learn from these experiences and perhaps we can do this again sometime i know we've got a lot of talk about i tend to have difficulty carving out big chunks like you like to do very long podcasts maybe we just have to do like a several one-hour versions maybe because i have a i have a hard time getting that much time carved out in my day mike you have an open invitation to come back on mormon stories uh i we are at your service really quickly before you run please plug any and everything that you want to plug your podcast any books any tv shows how can our listeners support and follow you and leah and your good work well you can support us by listening to our podcast which is called scientology fair game podcast which is on iheart but also available on itunes and spotify and everywhere else you can if you haven't watched it watch the the scientology and leah remini scientology in the aftermath which is now on netflix and you know i have a blog a daily blog that i do mike rindersblog.org and that is something that i it's very much uh oriented toward the scientology community it is not about um like sometimes i delve into broader things but it it's for scientologists and you know unless you you want to learn a bit about scientology it's probably not for generally for your audience so much the aftermath definitely is because that's more that's more other people's stories and hearing their experiences and those experiences inform your own experience and often we have heard from people who have watched the aftermath that had nothing to do with scientology oh my god this spoke to me oh my god i had i this gave me you know the courage to be able to do something about my own circumstances or whatever so those are the things that i pitch um that's all all i have i'm happy to have as as much um moral support as possible it doesn't really matter about how many clicks or anything like that it's it's knowing that there are all these people out there who are on the same page that's what really is important and believe me one of the things i've noticed is that watching a document if you're in a cult but you don't know you're in a cult watching a documentary of another cult can make you feel safe it's like oh those guys are weird i want to learn about them and then as they're watching going clear then they're like oh my gosh that room wait that kind of reminds me of joseph smith and that kind of reminds me of what the church does now so one of the best things any member of a cult can do is watch a documentary about another cult and so i just want to give that endorsement to going clear to your series with leah remini to your podcast and and of the same token we have many scientologists scientologists or scientologists and jobs witnesses that listen to mormon stories because somehow there's so much power in in learning about someone else's cult that helps you wake up to your own so mike rinder you have that moral support you have hundreds of thousands of my listeners that uh are backing you that support you that have been inspired by you i can't name how many of my listeners have been touched and moved and impacted by what you and leah done please have done please pass on to leah our love and respect and and support and i want you to know that we are literally at your service if we can ever help you i hope you'll you'll reach out to us again thanks so much john it's been a real pleasure and can people financially support you and leah that's the last question how can they financially support you guys well i i you know you can go oh here's something else we started a foundation called the aftermath foundation and that is to help people leaving scientology because you know until we had done that and that was and it's been done by a bunch of people that you see on the aftermath former scientology officials and uh they there is a website for the aftermath foundation and you can go there and you can volunteer to help like provide somewhere for people to stay if they're leaving or a job or money or you can click on donating and that's a great great place to be able to go and i that's where you can support our activities okay mike rinder you're a legend we are so grateful for you thank you for giving us time on mormon stories podcast please keep up the great work and thank you for inspiring us and please know there are hundreds of thousands of mormons and ex-mormons that owe you so much you and leah and all your colleagues so much for your amazing work thank you on behalf of the mormon people for all you've done thank you john keep it up bye bye bye okay thanks mike hey listeners thank you so much for joining us today on arma stories podcast we had over 500 contiguous listeners between youtube and facebook uh thanks for your support thanks to mike and leah uh thanks to gerardo for his support for brooklyn alden for the editing she does um thank you to everyone who supports mormon stories in the open stories foundation we literally could not do this without you your donations uh make this possible we're transparent in our finances every dollar goes to fighting ignorance and promoting truth and healing and growth within mormonism and ex-mormonism if you support us thank you less than one out of a thousand of my listeners and viewers donate if you want to see programs like this continue i also want to please request that you consider becoming a donor a supporter of mormon stories podcast today you can go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button at the top become a monthly subscriber 10 bucks a month 100 bucks a month whatever you can afford again 100 tax deductible in the u.s and 100 of your money will go to fighting ignorance and supporting healing and growth so please support us if you can you can also support us by giving us a positive review on the apple podcast app on itunes um you can also uh spread the word uh you can share this episode on on social media on twitter on instagram on facebook you can share it with your communities of people um please promote what we do also we love your feedback so email us at mormonstories gmail.com follow us follow us on twitter follow us become subscribers on youtube the more subscribers we have to this podcast uh to our facebook page the more followers and subscribers we have the more influence we'll have but mostly just i love this work i'm grateful for it i'm grateful for you and i'm inspired by mike rinder i'm not going to give up until you guys stop supporting i have you have my commitment that i will spend every last uh career year the hour that i have fighting for you and fighting for people that need our help if you'll just continue supporting us so it's a pleasure it's an honor i love you guys um stay in touch and we've got much more great episodes for mormon stories podcast in the weeks months and years ahead so stay tuned thanks for all the support i love you guys and we'll see you all uh very soon again for another episode of mormon stories podcast take care everybody

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 39,974

Rating: 4.818182 out of 5

Keywords: scientology, lds, mormonism, mormons, cults, mike rinder, john dehlin, church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, david miscavige, l. ron hubbard

Id: iL4Y-VtmEww

Length: 80min 54sec (4854 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021