Suppressive Person

According to Hubbard, suppressive persons have a number of distinct characteristics:

1. He or she speaks only in very broad generalities.

2. Such a person deals mainly in bad news, critical or hostile remarks, invalidation, and general suppression.

3. The antisocial personality alters, to worsen, communication when he or she relays a message or news. Good news is stopped and only bad news, often embellished, is passed along.

4. A characteristic, and one of the sad things about an antisocial personality, is that it does not respond to treatment or reform or psychotherapy.

5. Surrounding such a personality we find cowed or ill associates or friends who, when not driven actually insane, are yet behaving in a crippled manner in life, failing, not succeeding.

6. The antisocial personality habitually selects the wrong target.

7. The antisocial personality cannot finish a cycle of action.

8. Many antisocial persons will freely confess to the most alarming crimes when forced to do so, but will have no faintest sense of responsibility for them.

9. The antisocial personality supports only destructive groups and rages against and attacks any constructive or betterment group.

10. This type of personality approves only of destructive actions and fights against constructive or helpful actions or activities.

11. Helping others is an activity which drives the antisocial personality nearly berserk. Activities, however, which destroy in the name of help are closely supported.

12. The antisocial personality has a bad sense of property and conceives that the idea that anyone owns anything is a pretense, made up to fool people. Nothing is ever really owned.Hubbard, HCO Policy Letter of 27 September 1966 Issue II, The Antisocial Personality - The Anti-Scientologist, p. 2-3.

Hubbard's definitions of "destructive groups" and "constructive or betterment groups" are, generally speaking, taken by Scientologists to refer to the relationships of such groups or individuals with the Church itself. A group critical of or otherwise seen as opposed to Scientology is automatically deemed "destructive" and the Church is likewise automatically deemed to be a "constructive or betterment groups". It is noteworthy that his criteria do not acknowledge the possibility of principled opposition to the Church, for instance on the grounds of disapproval of its policies.

Suppressive Person policies and practices

The Suppressive Person doctrine is connected to several of Scientology's most controversial policies. One of these is "disconnection," in which Scientologists are ordered to cease all communication with the declared "suppressive," even if they are immediate family members.

Another controversial policy related to those classified as Suppressive Persons is the "Fair Game" policy. This policy, instituted by Hubbard in 1965, stated that a person deemed "Fair Game" "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." [HCO Policy Letter of 18 October 1967, Issue IV]; A published copy of this can be found in Scientology: Basic Staff Hat Book, Number 1, released 1968, page 26 Under this policy, those declared SP were also officially designated as "fair game."

The Church claims to have stopped declaring people "Fair Game" in 1968.L. Ron Hubbard, ["HCO Policy Letter (HCOPL) of 21 October 1968"]; see also Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology; Report by Sir John Foster, K.B.E., Q.C., M.P.; Published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, December 1971, ("Foster Report"), [Chapter 7], paragraphs 176-77. However, many critics of Scientology, including former high-ranking Scientologists have claimed that the "fair game" policy has continued until the present in substance, if not in name, especially since the exact wording of the order which supposedly cancelled "Fair Game" stated "FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This Policy Letter does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP [Suppressive Person]." (emphasis added)Organization Executive Course -- An Encyclopedia of Scientology Policy, vol. 1, p. 429, as cited in Adding to the skepticism is the fact that in 1989 and 1994 appeals for Wollersheim vs. Church of Scientology, the Church's position was that "Fair Game" was still a "core practice of Scientology", and therefore protected as "religious expression".

The formal administrative judgment that labels an individual a "Suppressive Person" is known as an "SP Declare," and is issued as a church "Ethics Order." Presently, an SP Declare needs to be approved by the "International Justice Chief" (IJC), who resides in the Church of Scientology International headquarters in Los Angeles, California.

Non-Scientologists can be and often have been labelled as suppressive persons, subject to the full range of penalties set out in Hubbard's "Ethics" policies (including Fair Game, during the period when it was publicly applied). A suppressive person is one who has been responsible for "suppressive acts", defined by Hubbard as being "the overt or covert actions or omissions knowingly and willfully undertaken to suppress, reduce, prevent or destroy case gains, and/or the influence of Scn on activities, and/or the continued Scn success and actions on the part of organizations actions and Scientologists." Hubbard, in Modern Management Technology Defined, p. 509

Similarly, entire groups could be declared suppressive; suppressive groups, in Hubbard's view, were "those which seek to destroy Scn or which specialize in injuring or killing persons or damaging their cases or which advocate suppression of mankind." Hubbard, ibid. . Under this broader definition, suppressiveness included more than just publicly opposing Scientology; it also included any group supporting activities to which Hubbard was strongly opposed, especially psychiatry. In 1965, for instance, Hubbard declared the entire government and parliament of the Australian state of Victoria to be "suppressive persons and they and their families and connections may not be processed or trained and are fair game." Hubbard, "The Auditor", no. 31, p. 1. (December 1967).

The Church of Scientology appears to maintain a central list of ex-members and splinter groups formally declared to be suppressive. In an executive directive of 1992, the Church's "International Justice Chief" lists over 400 groups and over 2,300 individual people considered to be suppressive. Flag Executive Directive 2830RB of 25 July 1992, "Suppressive Persons and Suppressive Groups list", exhibited in Church of Scientology International vs Fishman and Geertz, No. CV 91-6426 HLH (Tx), April 4, 1994 These comprise individual ex-Scientologists and breakaway groups regarded as hostile or heretical, such as Erhard Seminars Training (EST). The list is notable for the absence of non-Scientologists "suppressives" such as critical journalists, psychiatric groups and so on, suggesting that the Church keeps track of external threats separately (a function of the Church's Office of Special Affairs).

Commentary by Hubbard on SP's and careerism

Like there are a bunch of guys monkeying around with this peace/war button, you know? And should we have a war or should we have peace? Well, they’ve moved in on the button again, and then they go off of it. Well of course, a war would just finish any human communication and cultural lines on which anything can travel. So therefore, we don’t really have all the time there is. We can’t really sit around on our hands and do nothing. Furthermore, the planet could be expected to resist any such movement, because the most resistance you get toward being cured by anyone is an insane person. An insane person will resist being cured harder than anybody ever heard of, because he knows everybody is Martians and they’re all out to get him. And he knows there’s no help, and so on. Of course, that’s what makes him insane.

A certain number of these on the planet, in high positions, bring about the conditions known as war, and so on. Now recently we traced, by the way, how a person moves from the lower stratas of the society up to an executive position or a political position of magnitude. You can see the pattern of it can be seen in your own org. A person cannot hold the job of central files clerk, and he argues and argues, and finally moves himself over to some other portion of the org. There's very few people in that portion of the org, so he gets an I/C, in charge of something, then there isn't anybody else around, and he seems to be active, and he becomes a departmental head. He becomes a departmental head by accident, and he actually is pushing himself up.

Now he has, he doesn't have the motivation of helping others, he just has the motivation of protecting himself. And the higher he rises on the pyramid, the more he thinks he will be protected. That's part of his insanity. You get up to the top of the pyramid you spend ninety percent of your time ducking bullets.

But the facts of the case are that there is sort of a system by which a person who can't hold any post winds up with a very high post.

Abuse of the \"Suppressive Person\" label

In a lecture he made on 19 July 1966, L. Ron Hubbard expressed concern about the possible abuse of the SP label in respect of those who are otherwise good citizens and contribute to civil society:

You should upgrade your idea of what an SP is. Man, meet one sometime! A real one! A real monster.... Well, in all the time we've been around here we only had one SP that I know of. One real SP that was on staff.... And I don't know of another single SP that we've ever had on staff. Isn't that interesting. You see all these SP orders and so on... Don't throw it around carelessly, because this is an--a very exaggerated condition, SP. Hubbard, "About Rhodesia," lecture, 19 July 1966, Saint Hill Special Briefing Course tape transcripts, Lecture Set 421-434, pp. 223-224

References