SPDL: Tom Cruise: Executing the Suppressive Person Doctrine

Over the last six weeks, and erupting in the September Rolling Stone cover article, Tom Cruise has been talking up a volcano of media about his role as the hit man Vincent in the movie Collateral, and his character’s “antisocial personality.” He even had a ninety minute tête-à-tête two weeks ago with the French Minister of Finance Nicolas Sarkozy when Cruise was in Paris promoting the film.

“Antisocial” is a common enough English language adjective.

1 a: tending to interrupt or destroy social intercourse
b: hostile to the well-being of society
c: characterized by markedly deviating behavior <antisocial actions> <crime is antisocial> <antisocial persons>

2: averse to the society of others or social intercourse: misanthropic. — Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

Cruise is employing the term in his media comments and in his portrayal of Vincent, however, with the special meaning he was taught in Scientology.

From The Scotsman, August 23:

when he talks about the role, and how it demanded a lot of research into what he terms “anti-socials”, he begins to sound uncomfortably intense and earnest.

“I’ve studied anti-social behaviour and personalities,” he says, “and in Scientology, there is a large body of knowledge about anti-socials. So I worked hard to create Vincent’s moral code from that.”¹

On one of its web sites, Scientology presents an essay by cult founder L. Ron Hubbard entitled “The Antisocial Personality” that identifies what Hubbard says are such persons’ “characteristics.” This essay is taken from a “technical bulletin” Hubbard wrote dated September 27, 1966, which is almost identical to the online version except for, notably, its title: “The Antisocial Personality —The Anti-Scientologist.”²

When the legal or political structure of a country becomes such as to favor such personalities in positions of trust, then all the civilizing organizations of the country become suppressed and a barbarism of criminality and economic duress ensues.

Crime and criminal acts are perpetrated by antisocial personalities. Inmates of institutions commonly trace their state back to contact with such personalities.

Thus, in the fields of government, police activities and mental health, to name a few, we see that it is important to be able to detect and isolate this personality type so as to protect society and individuals from the destructive consequences attendant upon letting such have free rein to injure others.

As they only comprise 20% of the population and as only 2½% are truly dangerous, we see that with a very small amount of effort we could considerably better the state of society.

Well-known, even stellar, examples of such a personality are, of course, Napoleon and Hitler. Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Christie and other famous criminals were well-known examples of the antisocial personality. But with such a cast of characters in history we neglect the less stellar examples and do not perceive that such personalities exist in current life, very common, often undetected.³

Contract killer Vincent, Cruise is telling the world, is just such a common, undetected antisocial personality, an Anti-Scientologist.

New York Daily News August 1, 2004:

I’ve never played a character like this before,” says Cruise in an exclusive talk with the Daily News. “Vincent interested me because he is such an anti-social personality, bringing destruction and chaos with him wherever he goes. He’s a force of nature.”⁴

“Chaos” is an interesting choice of terms too for Cruise. Hubbard called the antisocial personalities at one time “Merchants of Chaos,” and Scientologists still use that label. From the Scientology Technical Dictionary:

Merchant of Fear or Chaos Merchant and which we can now technically call the suppressive person.⁵

Also from the same Tech Dictionary, the definition for “Antisocial Personality:”

we’re calling it a suppressive because it is more explicit.⁶

As Vincent, Cruise is dramatizing a member of the class of people about whom he has been well indoctrinated in Scientology, the class called variously “suppressives,” or “antisocials,” “Suppressive Persons,” or “SPs.”

USA Today August 3, 2004

To nail Vincent’s “antisocial personality” and die-hard commitment to his job, Cruise explored his dubious moral code. Vincent, he says, doesn’t think he’s “doing anything wrong” and isn’t aware of “the chaos that he wreaks.” All he knows is that he has to kill five people by 6 a.m.⁷

MTV August 4, 2004

“This guy being an antisocial personality, the things that concern him aren’t the same things concern a social personality,” he said. “One of the keys is that people, when they’re doing things, they do believe that they’re right in doing them and they have it all justified as to why it’s OK.⁸

This “social personality” is another Scientology term that has a very specific meaning to members of the cult. Hubbard writes in the same bulletin “The Antisocial Personality —The Anti-Scientologist.”

The social personality can be defined most easily by comparison with his opposite, the antisocial personality.

This differentiation is easily done and no test should ever be constructed which isolates only the antisocial. […]

As the society runs, prospers and lives solely through the efforts of social personalities, one must know them as they, not the antisocial, are the worthwhile people. These are the people who must have rights and freedom. Attention is given to the anti-social solely to protect and assist the social personalities in the society. […]

Thus it is the twelve given characteristics alone which identify the antisocial personality. And these same twelve reversed are the sole criteria of the social personality if one wishes to be truthful about them.³

Cruise insists that he is no antisocial or Suppressive Person, but the SPs’ opposite.

ABC News August 2, 2004

“I look for characters that I feel are going to be challenging. This is definitely right out there. A very, very complex character, playing this anti-social personality.” […]

“Just looking at the moral code, looking in terms of what I know about life, he’s the antithesis of who I am and how I feel about people and humanity,” Cruise said.¹⁰

Boston Herald August 4, 2004

“I play a character who is the antithesis of who I am,” Cruise said. “Everybody has a different moral code, and the things that concern him are not the things that concern a social personality, and this guy is an antisocial personality.”¹¹

Cruise’s insights about his Suppressive Person Vincent not thinking he’s doing anything wrong, and about antisocials believing that they’re right in doing what they do and having it all justified as to why it’s OK, also derive from Scientology “scripture.”

Even the antisocial personality, in his warped way, is quite certain that he is acting for the best and commonly sees himself as the only good person around, doing all for the good of everyone — the only flaw in his reasoning being that if one kills everyone else, none are left to be protected from the imagined evils. His conduct in his environment and toward his fellows is the only method of detecting either the antisocial or the social personalities.¹²

It is clear that Cruise, who is now regularly referred to in the media as a “devout Scientologist,” is indoctrinated enough in Scientology administration, “ethics” system and “technology” for the organization’s leadership to have him speak publicly about the subject, and even to talk about the “Suppressive Person” doctrine, and he is dedicated enough to do the public speaking they’re having him do. He knows what the SP doctrine is, and he executes it in his role as Tom Cruise, Scientology Agent.

Scientology teaches that Suppressive Persons, or Antisocials are a class comprising two and a half percent of earth’s population, and are the cause of all illness, accidents and any bad condition. Scientology states that SPs are completely evil and irredeemable, “truly dangerous,” committing crime continuously, “psychotic,” and deserving of no civil rights. Scientology also teaches, and Cruise knows, that the Antisocial Personality, the SP, is, as the Hubbard bulletin but not the online version says, the “Anti-Scientologist.” The opponents or critics of Scientology or any of its doctrines, policies or practices are the people that the organization identifies as Suppressive Persons. From Hubbard Policy Letter of December 23, 1965, revised January 8, 1991 “Suppressive Acts Suppression of Scientology or Scientologists:”

A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON or GROUP is one that actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology with suppressive acts. […]

Suppressive acts are defined as actions or omissions undertaken to knowingly suppress, reduce or impede Scientology or Scientologists.¹³

Hubbard wrote, and Scientologists accept as “scripture,” that all critics of Scientology are criminals with criminal pasts for which they could be imprisoned, and Hubbard threatened that his organization would find and expose the crimes of anyone who opposes Scientology.¹⁴

Scientology’s policy and practice for the treatment of people identified as Suppressive Persons, universally known by the name Hubbard gave it, “Fair Game,” calls for malignities against the SPs, the “enemy,” such as lying to, tricking or suing them, and criminal, violent acts acts, such as theft, injury or destruction.¹⁵

In another policy letter, called menacingly “Battle Tactics,” Hubbard expanded on the need and opportunities for Fair Gaming Scientology’s SP “enemies.”

“We must ourselves fight on a basis of total attrition of the enemy. So never get reasonable about him. Just go all the way in and obliterate him.[…]

One cuts off enemy communications, funds, connections. He deprives the enemy of political advantages, connections and power. He takes over enemy territory. He raids and harrasses.[…]

The prize is “public opinion” where press is concerned. The only safe public opinion to head for is they love us and are in a frenzy of hate against the enemy, this means standard wartime propaganda is what one is doing, complete with atrocity, war crimes trials, the lot. Know the mores of your public opinion, what they hate. That’s the enemy. What they love. That’s you.

You preserve the image or increase it of your own troops and degrade the image of the enemy to beast level. […]

Wars are composed of many battles.

Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars.”¹⁶

In heading for that safe public opinion of a frenzy of hate against the people Scientology declares “SPs” and “enemies,” and in their campaign to degrade these people’s images to beast level, the organization publishes and disseminates mountains of generalized as well as individualized defamatory and hateful attacks, which Hubbard termed “Black Propaganda” or “Black PR.” Hubbard himself Black PRs the SP class as “insane,” “criminal,” dramatizing a “continuous determination to destroy,” “the only thing wrong in this universe,” and responsible for “fill[ing] the institutions with victims, the hospitals with the sick and the graveyards with the dead.”¹⁷

According to the “Suppressive Person” doctrine, SPs, Scientology’s “enemies,” “oppose violently any betterment activity or group,” and “have a deep but carefully masked hatred of anyone who seeks to help them.” For example, from “The Antisocial Personality – The Anti-Scientologist:”

If anyone were to promise to make others stronger or brighter, the antisocial personality suffers the utmost agony of personal danger.

They reason that if they are in this much trouble with people around them weak or stupid, they would perish should anyone become strong or bright.¹²

From the Scientology Technical Dictionary:

He goofs up or vilifies any effort to help anybody and particularly knifes with violence anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or intelligent. A suppressive automatically and immediately will curve any betterment activity into something evil or bad. ¹⁹

Important to the Suppressive Person doctrine is Hubbard’s and the organization’s claim that Scientology makes human beings more powerful and intelligent, stronger and brighter, in fact, that Scientology is the only system and procedure to make people more powerful and intelligent, and stronger and brighter.

From Hubbard’s policy letter of February 14, 1965, “Safeguarding Technology:”

In fifty thousand years of history on this planet alone, man never evolved a workable system. It is doubtful if, in foreseeable history, he will ever evolve another.

Man is caught in a huge and complex labyrinth. To get out of it requires that he follow the closely-taped path of Scientology.

Scientology will take him out of the labyrinth. But only if he follows the exact markings in the tunnels.

It has taken me a third of a century in this lifetime to tape this route out.

It has been proven that efforts by man to find different routes came to nothing. It is also a clear fact that the route called Scientology does lead out of the labyrinth.²⁰

To devout Scientologists, because Scientology is the only “technology” that works to improve mankind, make everyone smarter, more able, and, very importantly, more ethical, and get us out of the trap that Scientology also says everyone, except them, is in, learning, applying, spreading and defending the “tech” and their identities as Scientologists is all important. From Hubbard policy letter of February 7, 1965, “Keeping Scientology Working:”

We’re not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t something cute or something to do for lack of something better.

The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.

This is a deadly serious activity. And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance.²¹

Another key component of the SP doctrine is the concept of the “Potential Trouble Source,” or “PTS,” which is the state, condition and identity of anyone “connected” to a Suppressive Person or a Suppressive Group. Connection to an SP or an SP group, Scientology teaches, is the cause of all illness, and the cause of people “roller-coastering,” losing their “gains,” their increased power, ability and intelligence “gained” from the organization’s technology. From the definition for “Potential Trouble Source” in the Scientology Technical Dictionary:

Somebody who is connected with an SP who is invalidating him, his beingness, his processing, his life. [cite]

Means the case is going to go up and fall down. He’s a trouble source because he’s going to get upset. He’s a trouble source because he’s going to make trouble. And he’s trouble for the auditor and he’s trouble for us and he’s trouble for himself. [cite]

It means someone connected to a person or group opposed to Scientology. It is a technical thing. It results in illness and roller-coaster and is the cause of illness and roller-coaster. [cite] ²²

Hubbard laid down the law in a number of policy letters, and in his book Introduction to Scientology Ethics, about what constitute Suppressive Acts that make a person an SP and that make people connected to the SP PTS. For example, from his policy letter “Suppressive Acts Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists:”

Suppressive acts are clearly those covert or overt acts knowingly calculated to reduce or destroy the influence or activities of Scientology or prevent case gains or continued Scientology success and activity on the part of a Scientologist. As persons or groups that would do such a thing act out of self-interest only to the detriment of all others, they cannot be granted the rights ordinarily accorded rational beings.¹³

Scientology publishes in its “scriptures” a long list of Suppressive Acts or “High Crimes” that make a person a Suppressive. These High Crimes include serious felonies such as murder and arson, and many acts that a reasonable person would view as innocuous and any citizen’s right, such as public statements against Scientology or Scientologists, testifying before state or public inquiries into Scientology, reporting Scientology or Scientologists to the civil authorities, public disavowal of Scientology, demanding the return of fees, publicly departing Scientology, making private plans to leave, informing others one is leaving, or continued adherence to a person or group pronounced a Suppressive Person or group.

Scientology teaches that SPs, the people who criticize, and perhaps otherwise oppose the influence or activities of Scientology, are so hateful, or frightful, or powerful that Scientologists under the organization’s command may not deal with them or even grant them credence. Scientology’s leadership threatens that anyone who grants credence to an SP will be guilty of a Suppressive Act and the Suppressive Person doctrine will be applied to him.

It is a SUPPRESSIVE ACT to deal with a Declared SUPPRESSIVE PERSON […] To maintain a line with, offer support to, or in any way grant credence to such a person indicates nothing more than agreement with that person’s destructive intentions and acts.

[… ] to deal with one constitutes no less than a Suppressive Act. Such an act is cause to have levied against you the same per policy Church justice procedures afforded any Suppressive Person. Full ethics penalties will be applied.²⁴

The Suppressive Person doctrine teaches that Scientology alone has the “technology” to detect and to shatter SPs, the people who oppose the organization’s influence or activities, and the organization teaches its adherents in this detection and shattering “tech.” When Tom Cruise says that he “studied anti-social behavior and personalities,” he doubtlessly studied Scientology’s “PTS and SP Course,” also called the “How to Confront and Shatter Suppression Course.”²⁵

The organization’s “devout” celebrities, just like its non-celebrity devotees, are indoctrinated²⁶ in this “technology” of detecting and shattering the SPs, Scientology’s “enemies,” “opponents” or “critics” that they encounter in life. Scientology then uses these indoctrinated celebrities’ status to promote the Suppressive Person doctrine to others in the organization’s publications, advertising and events.²⁷

The organized Fair Gaming of Scientology’s opponents, is not carried out by the celebrities, of course, because this would cause bad PR for the celebs. Fair Game operations are the responsibility of the SP doctrine enforcement personnel ²⁸ in the Religious Technology Center and the Office of Special Affairs,²⁹ which are arms or networks in the global Scientology enterprise directly under the control of cult leader David Miscavige.

We whom Scientology’s leaders have declared to be “SPs” and are the cult’s Fair Game targets strenuously object to celebrities like Cruise using their star status and their easy access to national and international media and to officials to promote and forward the cult and its “technology” that target us. We are particularly concerned with Scientology’s current and increasing use of celebrities and supercelebrities to sell the public, media and government officials on the Suppressive Person doctrine. The Suppressive Person Defense League, which is dedicated to defending SPs and uniting SPs to stand up against the SP doctrine and its executioners, calls on Cruise, and all Scientologists, to immediately cease all support for this pernicious doctrine, and to cease all support for Scientology until the cult ceases teaching and enforcing this doctrine.

We are not saying that there are not antisocial people in the world, or that such antisocial people are not evil or dangerous, or that they do not cause great damage and suffering. Psychology, psychiatry, science and the courts have recognized that such persons exist much longer than Scientology has existed. What we are saying, however, is that the people Scientology’s leaders, personnel and celebrities identify as “SPs” and “enemies,” as evil, criminal and insane, and target as Fair Game, are not antisocial at all, not evil, not criminal, and not insane. Scientology’s SP targets are generally and simply ordinary, good, social people who criticize or oppose some of this global, totalitarian cult’s policies, practices or claims.

There are in fact a great number of Scientology organization policies and practices that are themselves antisocial, that are hostile to the well-being of society, averse to the society of others or social intercourse, or misanthropic, and which call out to good people for criticism. Many of the cult’s claims for its “technology,” such as raising IQ, even claiming “about one point per hour,” are provably false, and should be denounced as fraud. The Suppressive Person doctrine, which brings Scientologists to view opponents of the organization’s reprehensible policies and practices and fraudulent claims as SPs, and opens them up to Fair Game, is itself an extremely antisocial, dangerous doctrine and very criticism-worthy. Scientology’s policy and practice of “Disconnection,” which is rooted in the SP doctrine, and by which the cult breaks up families and destroys personal or professional relationships, is damnable.

Contrary to what the Suppressive Person doctrine states, SPs, the Scientology organization’s critics or opponents, do not fear people getting better, or stronger or smarter. They don’t oppose violently any betterment activity or group, don’t hate anyone who seeks to help them, don’t vilify efforts to help anybody, don’t knife anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or intelligent, and don’t curve any betterment activity into something evil or bad. Scientology’s “scriptural” assertions that “SPs” do these things are false and defamatory, intended to black PR the good people who oppose the cult’s bad policies and practices, to degrade their image to beast level, so that Fair Gaming them becomes laudable.

Scientology does not detect, target, Fair Game or shatter actual antisocial persons, but declares good, loving people to be “Antisocials” or “SPs” and then goes about targeting, Fair Gaming and shattering them. The cult equates the good people it targets with gangsters or murderers, but the cult doesn’t target or Fair Game gangsters or murderers. Scientology equates its SP targets with the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the U.S. on September 11, but doesn’t go after terrorists, and the cult equates the good people it Fair Games with Hitler and Stalin, but does nothing about the despots or their regimes in power around the world.

The Suppressive Person doctrine is a doubly cruel thought system and organizational rule, because the good people who comprise its SPs are usually already Scientology’s victims. People that Scientology defrauds, often out of huge sums of money, have every reason to criticize the cult’s false claims, delivery failures and the Scientologists who carried out the fraud. Such criticisms, however, make the fraud victim a Suppressive Person, and a target for Fair Game, thus twice victimized. A person might have been horribly abused and victimized in Scientology, locked up, ordered into the cult’s reindoctrination labor camps, or kept slaving for years, but if he ever spoke out about the abuse he would be declared an SP and Fair Gamed, a victimization which can be worse than what he endured inside.

In 1984 Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr. stated in his judgment in the case of Scientology v. Gerry Armstrong, which was affirmed on appeal in 1991³⁰:

In addition to violating and abusing its own members civil rights, the [Scientology] organization over the years with its “Fair Game” doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.³¹

From the evidence gathered since 1984 at the very least, similar conclusions can be drawn. Hubbard has died, but the “Suppressive Person” doctrine, and policies and practices for its execution, Fair Game, have continued in full force in the Miscavige Regime. There also are signs that while the SP doctrine is being pushed right now by Scientology, including by its celebrities, people outside the organization are beginning to grasp what the doctrine actually is.

Neil Strauss writes in the September Rolling Stone:

Since Scientology, in the popular imagination, is such a loaded word — often associated with heavy-handed recruitment tactics, strong-arm-lawyer assaults and steep membership and course fees — one would think that Cruise wouldn’t be so willing to take a journalist through that world.

“Who are those people that say those things?” Cruise asks when I bring it up over lunch one day. “Because I promise you, it isn’t everybody. But I look at those people and I say, ‘Bring it. I’m a Scientologist, man. What do you want to know?’ I don’t mind answering questions.”

He lists some of Scientology’s selling points: its drug-abuse, prison-rehabilitation and education programs. “Some people, well, if they don’t like Scientology, well, then, fuck you.” He rises from the table. “Really.” He points an angry finger at the imaginary enemy. “Fuck you.” His face reddens. “Period.”³²; ³³

We are the enemy Cruise imagines, the people he points angry fingers at, gets red faced about, says fuck you to. Cruise knows, because he also knows that Scientology is the “science of knowing how to know,” that people who don’t like Scientology, who might comment on its heavy-handedness, strong-arm-lawyer assaults, and fees fit for millionaires, are Suppressive Persons, SPs, Antisocials, Anti-Scientologists. We are Scientology’s victims, and our further victimization is what Cruise’s fees buy.

We’re looking back at Cruise, we’re bringing it, and we have some questions. We want to talk with him about the Suppressive Doctrine that he was taught in Scientology, and which victimizes so many good people. We’d like to talk to him about his support of the organization that promulgates and enforces this doctrine, its absence of science and reason, and the hatred and abuses it engenders. We’d like to ask him if perhaps he’d risk being declared SP himself, in order to criticize the doctrine, the hatred or the abuses, or to speak up for the victims. We hope he gets in touch.

Gerry Armstrong
Suppressive Person Defense League

Notes