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[RedShieldwolf]

Phew! Finally got time to post this.

Alright, so I asked if the Church of Scientology constituted a hate group after a video posted by Radio Paul asked the same question. It was (generally?) agreed that the Church of Scientology is far more complex than just a hate group. But what about the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)?

Well according to APA President Nada Stotland, M.D., the CCHR is a hate group.

But is this a valid statement? Let us look at this post made in the earlier thread:

A Rick Ross reference:
The seven-state hate model: The psychopathology of hate groups
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin/March 1, 2003
By John R. Schafer, MA and Joe Navarro, MA

The Hate Model

The manifestations of hate are legion,^lulz but the hate process itself remains elusive. Limited research in this field precluded the development of a comprehensive hate model. Understanding hate groups is essential for the development and implementation of successful intervention strategies, which depend on an understanding of the hate process. The proposed hate model consists of seven stages, including how hate groups define themselves, how hate groups target their victims and taunt them with verbal insults and offensive gestures, and how hate groups attack their victims with or without weapons.

Definition of Hate

Hate, a complex subject, divides into two general categories: rational and irrational. Unjust acts inspire rational hate. Hatred of a person based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or national origin constitutes irrational hate.

Both rational and irrational hate mask personal insecurities. Everyone experiences personal insecurities in varying degrees throughout their lives. The more insecure a person feels, the larger the hate mask. Most people concentrate on the important issues in life, such as earning a living, rearing a family, and achieving personal goals. These pursuits give meaning and value to life. Nonetheless, irrational hate bleeds through day-to-day activities in the form of racial barbs and ethnic humor. Not all insecure people are haters, but all haters are insecure people.

With respect to rational hate, haters do not focus as much on the wrong done to them or others, but, rather, on their own helplessness, guilt, or inability to effect change. The object of rational hate often is despised or pitied. In the same way, irrational hate elevates the hater above the hated. Many insecure people feel a sense of self-worth by relegating a person or group of people to a lower status.

more at http://www.rickross.com/reference/hate_groups/hategroups355.html

Well, the group does promote rational hate. Wikipedia cites the case of Victor Győry, a Hungarian refugee who was committed against his will to a Pennsylvania psychiatric hospital. CCHR secured his release. This was in 1969, the year of the CCHR's creation. In fact, much of CCHR's early activism comprised of obtaining reforms such as keeping detailed computer records on patients and stopping involuntary patient procedures.

CCHR has also made coherent arguments against the labelling of medical disorders as diseases. CCHRInt's Youtube channel even posts a rebuttal to the same Medpage video report of Nada Stotland, addressing Nada equating disease with disorder with interviews from fellow psychiatrists stating that this is in fact not the case. Certainly we could say that a discussion is needed for the way drugs are prescribed, right?

But what about irrational hate? None of the traits mentioned for irrational hate constitutes the focus of the CCHR. Can it be said that the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights is guilty of irrational hate?

If we look back at the article, we will find that the examples given are skinhead groups in Southern California. But the article also states this:

Model Application

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this hate model has a wider application. For example, when a co-worker becomes a hate target for reasons other than race, sex, or national origin, the hater immediately seeks out others in the office who dislike, or can be persuaded to dislike, the hated co-worker (Stage 1). The group establishes an identity using symbols and behaviors. They use a lifted eyebrow, a code word to exclude the hated co-worker from a lunch invitation, or any number of other actions to demean and isolate. The haters even may adopt a name for their group (Stage 2). At this point, the haters only disparage the hated co-worker within their group (Stage 3). As time passes, the haters openly insult the hated co-worker either directly or indirectly by allowing disparaging remarks to be overheard from afar (Stage 4). One morning, the hated co-worker discovers his desk rearranged and offensive images pasted over a picture depicting his wife and children (Stage 5). >From the sophomoric to the terroristic, acts of hate have the same effect. Eventually, the haters sabotage the hated co-worker's projects and attempt to ruin the individual's reputation through rumors and innuendoes (Stage 6). In so doing, the haters make the work environment intolerable for the hate target (Stage 7). Scenarios like this occur every day across America and, indeed, around the world. The targets of hate may change, but the hate process remains constant.

Let's also look back at the reasons for it's creation. Dr. Stephen Wiseman, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Consultant Psychiatrist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC, gave his first public talk about Scientology's war on Psychiatry at Vancouver's annual "Skepticamp" at UBC on March 20, 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLm_N2z60Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMxMMLONSbI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7RNJYSD0sI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io4KtHZKOQE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eyqpBFFoxw

Stephen Wiseman goes into the origins of Scientology's War. He shows that psychiatry was having wild, radical successes with drugs such as Chlorpromazine and Meprobamate, while L. Ron Hubbard was trying to promote Dianetics and Scientology. In fact, Scientology was incorporated as a religion in order to survive. In the spring of 1955, Hubbard began his war against psychiatry with devaluing statements made in Ability magazine, and sent letters to the FBI linking psychiatrists to Communists, the IRS, and secret "LSD attacks" on Scientologists. On September 30, 1955, Hubbard releases Professional Auditor's Bulletin #62, which states both:

• Scientology is the "only Anglo-Saxon development in the field of the mind and spirit."
• An auditor can no more cooperate with a psychiatrist than "do business with Hitler."

As well as this:

• "Nearly all the backlash...has a common source - the psychiatrist-psychologist-psychoanalyst clique."

In September 1956, L. Ron Hubbard gives his lecture called Effectiveness of Brainwashing, where he talks about ruining specific psychiatrists. In another lecture given on October 22, Scale of Reality, Hubbard calls psychiatry "an appropriation racket. Hubbard also develops the concept of the "whole-track" psychiatrists. Psychiatry is now a perpetual enemy.

In 1966, Hubbard releases a confidential directive called "Project Psychiatry." By this point, psychiatrists are rapists and murderers.  Hubbard gives these instructions to Scientologists and Scientologist-hired private detectives:

We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one.

This is Project Psychiatry. We will remove them.

On December 2, 1969, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to Mary Sue Hubbard in a document titled "Intelligence Actions -- Covert Intelligence -- Data Collection". Up until this point, Hubbard's overall goal was to "clear the planet." But in the last page of this document, titled "The War", Hubbard admits:

Our war has been forced to become "To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms."

That was not the original purpose. The original purpose was to clear Earth. The battles suffered developed the data that we had an enemy who would have to be gotten out of the way and this meant that we were at war …

By showing him to be brutal, venal and plotting we get him discarded.

Our direct assault will come when they start to arrest his principals and troops for crimes (already begun).

Our total victory will come when we run his organisations, perform his functions and obtain his financing and appropriations.

All of this culminated in the creation of a Scientology front group, the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. (You'll note that Szasz was the man behind Győry's release.)

So now we have 2 stages of the seven-stage hate model:

• The Hater's Gather: Scientologists and Thomas Szasz
• The Hate Group Defines Itself: CCHR's name and symbols, Scientology's mythology Not sure what counts as a ritual here, if there are any.

The next 4 stages, in which the hate group disparages the target, taunts the target, and attacks the target with and without weapons (see Model Application), could be applied to either the beginnings of the Church of Scientology or the CCHR's progression from legitimate grievances to outrageous and false ones.

Note that guilt by association is applied here as well. Anonymous has been accused of being a psychiatric front group (and, ironically, a hate group as well). In one case, members of an ADD/ADHD forum were told that the diagnosis is a lie and they should just "straighten up." This attitude is distinctive of the Church of Scientology and CCHR, which dismiss many mental disorders are simply nonexistent.

The last stage, where a hate group destroys its target, is more of a goal than a reality for any hate group, and that certainly applies here. Scientologists wish to destroy psychiatry and "clear the planet." Whereas they believe this will give them great self-worth and value, in reality they destroy themselves in the process.

SOOOOOOOOOO, in conclusion...

[mefree]

Must digest....

[ethercat]

Yes, I'm planning on replying too, but I need some time to give it the thoughtful response it deserves.

 

[ethercat]

I'm going to have a harder time playing devil's advocate for CCHR not being a hate group than I did with the CoS, although I am still adverse to using the phrase  "hate group" because of the reasons I stated before.   

I'm going to respond to some of your points directly, and then I'm going to throw a new idea into the mix.

Well according to APA President Nada Stotland, M.D., the CCHR is a hate group.

But is this a valid statement?

I think it is from their point of view, although I see the comment itself more as "joking and degrading" than a serious concern. 

Going back, temporarily, to one of the Southern Poverty Law Centers statements about hate groups, which I can agree with: "All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people..."

CCHR wants to eliminate the entire field of psychiatry (and presumably, psychology too, since they don't seem to distinguish between the two), without regard to what each individual "psych" professes.  This is, not surprisingly, inconsistent with their zeal to seize upon those in the field who agree with their beliefs and use them as advocates, as they do with Thomas Szasz, Fred Baughman, and as they did with Peter Breggin until he supposedly made statements to dissociate himself from them (labeled "needs citation" in the CCHR article on wikiedia.org; there is some more in the Peter Breggin article on wikipedia).

CCHR: "All 'psychs' are EEEVIL" (except for the ones who support us!)

Well, the group does promote rational hate. Wikipedia cites the case of Victor Győry, a Hungarian refugee who was committed against his will to a Pennsylvania psychiatric hospital. CCHR secured his release. This was in 1969, the year of the CCHR's creation. In fact, much of CCHR's early activism comprised of obtaining reforms such as keeping detailed computer records on patients and stopping involuntary patient procedures.

Assuredly, most people would want abuses to stop.  And I cannot argue that the field of mental health has never committed abuses, nor can I argue that there are no abuses today.  Psychiatry is a field of study, made up of individuals who may or may not have the patient's best interests in mind.  I believe most psychiatrists do have concern for their patients, and want to genuinely help them.  Just as I believe that most individual scientologists want to do good in the world.  There is a need for watchdog groups in almost every aspect of society.  I would argue, though, that CCHR and Scientology need to clean up their own abuses first.

CCHR has also made coherent arguments against the labelling of medical disorders as diseases. CCHRInt's Youtube channel even posts a rebuttal to the same Medpage video report of Nada Stotland, addressing Nada equating disease with disorder with interviews from fellow psychiatrists stating that this is in fact not the case. Certainly we could say that a discussion is needed for the way drugs are prescribed, right?

I guess first, I would have to determine the difference between disease and medical disorder.  Maybe a good catch-all phrase to use instead, so we don't get into semantics discussion, is "something not right".

I would agree that drugs are rampantly prescribed for cases of "something not right," and quite often, that is all that is done, there is no counseling for the problem.  Let's say someone has "something not right," and they have taken a drug to put things right.  Are there no mental repercussions of the time they spent with "something not right"?  In many cases, I would think there would be.

I also believe our society is looking for a "quick fix" to problems, and that some problems have no "quick fix".  Sometimes the "fix" (quick or not) lies in a behavioral approach, and sometimes there is an underlying physical reason for the "something not right."  I think too often, the desire for a quick fix leads people (and possibly their physicians, psychiatrists, etc.) to choose a drug, when the problem may be best solved with another approach.  Yes, I do think drugs are prescribed too often for mental issues that could be dealt with in other ways, but I also acknowledge that drugs have helped numerous people.

But what about irrational hate? None of the traits mentioned for irrational hate constitutes the focus of the CCHR.

I think we have to recognize that hate, and by extension, hate groups, are a difficult thing to define, and we have an example (CCHR) which is out of the norm for traditional hate groups, if there is such a thing.  Irrational, fortunately, is a term which is more easily defined, and the definition well accepted. 

Various fields of medicine have come a long way since the days of Hubbard, and the beginning of CCHR.  In particular, the field of neuroimaging has progressed immensely.  Neuroscientists are beginning to map areas of the brain which correspond to certain behaviors which have typically been thought of as "mental illnesses."

I'll link to this, since the article from Scientific American to which it refers is unavailable without paying for it, and this article does provide some quotes from the SA article, as well as raise some interesting points: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/05/neuro-imaging-redefines-mental-illness-complicates-ideas-of-fre/  (Normally, I would avoid linking to a political site.)

Will CCHR now include neuroscientists in their plan for obliteration?

Can it be said that the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights is guilty of irrational hate?

Let me now introduce the idea that one defining factor of irrational hate might be refusal to accept new information or facts that become available about the target of hatred, although this is unmentioned by Rick Ross's article.

CCHR sees the field of mental health (for lack of a better term) as it was in the 50's and 60's, maybe early 70's too in some places.  I get the feeling Hubbard must have read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest too many times.  Those types of abuses being much less common these days, CCHR has now latched onto the idea of medication being abuse, since without abuses, they have no practical reason for existing.  (There is still the recruitment agenda, and the "Hubbardian Personality Disorder", however, the real reasons for CCHR's existence.)

They do not accept (or maybe even know about) the advances in neuroscience, yet this will be where the future of mental health is played out.  Isn't it irrational for a group that presents itself as so well-informed and -intentioned to turn a blind eye to current, modern day, research being done?

If we are going to use the 7 stages model Rick Ross lays out, I would say CCHR has progressed through 6 of the 7 stages:

... the hater immediately seeks out others in the office who dislike, or can be persuaded to dislike, the hated co-worker (Stage 1)

CCHR has attempted to associate themselves with others who are dissatisfied with the state of mental health care, even to the extent that some specifically disclaim any connection:  http://www.antipsychiatry.org/

No Scientologists, please: Anyone joining us will be asked for assurance they are not affiliated with the "Church" of Scientology or its Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which have publicized the harm done by psychiatry but which we want no affiliation with.  This web site does have links to YouTube video critiques of psychiatry by CCHR because these videos are excellent and accurate and worth seeing, but this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of CCHR or Scientology.

They have succeeded with others who haven't looked too closely, or who disregard the negative aspects of association with CCHR.

The group establishes an identity using symbols and behaviors. They use a lifted eyebrow, a code word to exclude the hated co-worker from a lunch invitation, or any number of other actions to demean and isolate. The haters even may adopt a name for their group (Stage 2).

Check. 

At this point, the haters only disparage the hated co-worker within their group (Stage 3).

Check.

As time passes, the haters openly insult the hated co-worker either directly or indirectly by allowing disparaging remarks to be overheard from afar (Stage 4).

Check.

One morning, the hated co-worker discovers his desk rearranged and offensive images pasted over a picture depicting his wife and children (Stage 5).

Check.  See the "Industry of Death" exhibits.

From the sophomoric to the terroristic, acts of hate have the same effect. Eventually, the haters sabotage the hated co-worker's projects and attempt to ruin the individual's reputation through rumors and innuendoes (Stage 6).

They would sabotage the projects of the field of psychiatry if they could, and they do try ("anti-psych" legislation), and they attempt to "ruin the individual's reputation through rumors and innuendos" all the time. 

In so doing, the haters make the work environment intolerable for the hate target (Stage 7).

They haven't managed to do this one, nor do I think they will, because, other than the fact that they are aware of CCHR, most psychiatrists don't pay any heed to CCHR because it's such a joke.  A serious joke, but a joke, nonetheless.  Fortunately, the psychiatrists, as a whole, seem to be a lot more mentally healthy than most Scientologists.

Let's also look back at the reasons for it's creation. Dr. Stephen Wiseman, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Consultant Psychiatrist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC, gave his first public talk about Scientology's war on Psychiatry at Vancouver's annual "Skepticamp" at UBC on March 20, 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLm_N2z60Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMxMMLONSbI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7RNJYSD0sI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io4KtHZKOQE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eyqpBFFoxw

Stephen Wiseman goes into the origins of Scientology's War. He shows that psychiatry was having wild, radical successes with drugs such as Chlorpromazine and Meprobamate, while L. Ron Hubbard was trying to promote Dianetics and Scientology. In fact, Scientology was incorporated as a religion in order to survive. In the spring of 1955, Hubbard began his war against psychiatry with devaluing statements made in Ability magazine, and sent letters to the FBI linking psychiatrists to Communists, the IRS, and secret "LSD attacks" on Scientologists. On September 30, 1955, Hubbard releases Professional Auditor's Bulletin #62, which states both:

• Scientology is the "only Anglo-Saxon development in the field of the mind and spirit."
• An auditor can no more cooperate with a psychiatrist than "do business with Hitler."

As well as this:

• "Nearly all the backlash...has a common source - the psychiatrist-psychologist-psychoanalyst clique."

Ah, yes, the psychs, the CIA, the IRS, and the FDA; and it's the 12 International Bankers that are behind it all.  And the Illuminati is behind all of them.  That, and Flouridation (lol, deliberately misspelled).   

If you've never taken a look at this piece of work, you might enjoy it: http://opposing.scientology.org/

In 1966, Hubbard releases a confidential directive called "Project Psychiatry." By this point, psychiatrists are rapists and murderers.  Hubbard gives these instructions to Scientologists and Scientologist-hired private detectives:

We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one.

This is Project Psychiatry. We will remove them.

Hateful.

On December 2, 1969, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to Mary Sue Hubbard in a document titled "Intelligence Actions -- Covert Intelligence -- Data Collection". Up until this point, Hubbard's overall goal was to "clear the planet." But in the last page of this document, titled "The War", Hubbard admits:

Our war has been forced to become "To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms."

That was not the original purpose. The original purpose was to clear Earth. The battles suffered developed the data that we had an enemy who would have to be gotten out of the way and this meant that we were at war …

By showing him to be brutal, venal and plotting we get him discarded.

Our direct assault will come when they start to arrest his principals and troops for crimes (already begun).

Our total victory will come when we run his organisations, perform his functions and obtain his financing and appropriations.

Hubbard and his hateful paranoia.   

Note that guilt by association is applied here as well. Anonymous has been accused of being a psychiatric front group (and, ironically, a hate group as well).

Scientologists and their Hubbard-implanted hateful paranoia. 

In one case, members of an ADD/ADHD forum were told that the diagnosis is a lie and they should just "straighten up." This attitude is distinctive of the Church of Scientology and CCHR, which dismiss many mental disorders are simply nonexistent.

Hateful.  I've seen other mental health related discussion venues to tell them to go away after they behaved obnoxiously.

The last stage, where a hate group destroys its target, is more of a goal than a reality for any hate group, and that certainly applies here. Scientologists wish to destroy psychiatry and "clear the planet." Whereas they believe this will give them great self-worth and value, in reality they destroy themselves in the process.

SOOOOOOOOOO, in conclusion...

I concur.    

Told ya I wouldn't make much of a devil's advocate for not considering CCHR a hate group (even though I don't like the term).

[mefree]

Additional info on Peter R. Breggin from Quackwatch:

Some Notes on ADHD and Peter R. Breggin's Unfair Attack on Ritalin
By Stephen Barrett, M.D.

Review of "Talking Back to Ritallin"
ADHD, Ritalin, and Conspiracies: Talking Back to Peter Breggin
By Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D.

[ethercat]

http://womenincrimeink.blogspot.com/2008/03/scientology-church-or-domestic.html

During my research phase, which entailed the awful task of researching every cult known to man, I came across the FBI report Project Megiddo. The project was directed at doomsday religions prior to the new millenium, and I was a little surprised to see a reference to Scientology in it. Since I wasn't completely informed about the group, I furthered my research. In speaking with my own contact at the FBI, I learned that cults fall under Homeland Security as potential domestic terrorists.