When the powers that be ordered all American readings of Huckleberry Finn be cancelled, the US school system complied immediately. And for good reason too – the western world simply wasn’t ready for its interracial NAMBLA undertones.
You know who was ready though? Perverts.
But that’s besides the point.
Books still get banned you know. All the time – why just recently the British arm of Amazon.com reached into its electronic library, grabbed a tell-all work of non-fiction by the spine and thrashed it to and fro until the pages thereof had all fluttered loosely to the ground.
Rumour has it the book was pulled by the heavy hand of Tom Cruise who, for the record, denies any involvement in this literary scandal. His influence is implied because the novel’s topic is – you guessed it – Esoteric Christianity. Or whatever that thing is he’s deep into.
John Duignan is a guy who wrote a book called The Complex. Duignan is a former Scientologist who’s had it up to here with how the religion made him and everyone else who’d reached the inner sanctum of the seventh level sit around wearing nothing but donuts over their nipples while talking over and over about how L Ron Hubbard didn’t owe the US government one red cent when he died alone in his desert trailer.
This is all detailed in his book’s eleventh chapter – it starts on page eight. We should clear up that we haven’t actually read the book as we’re waiting for Oprah‘s go-ahead, but most of our description there is probably written on the jacket somewhere. If you want to see for yourself – don’t check Amazon.co.uk – they’ve digitally burned it. At least according to the author.
The Daily News explains things:
“On Oct. 31, Irish publisher Merlin released ?The Complex,? in which John Duignan, identified as ?a former high-ranking member? of the church in Britain, describes his ?dramatic escape? from its ?elite para-military group,? the Sea Organization.? Five days later, Cruise dropped by Amazon?s Seattle headquarters to glad-hand staffers and host a sneak peek at his new movie, ?Valkyrie.?
“A few days later, Amazon?s British Web site stopped selling ?The Complex,? explaining to customers that someone mentioned in the book had alleged it defamed him with ?false claims.?”
Cruise is innocent – we think we can explain things right away here. Tom strangely stopped by the Amazon offices to show off his new Valkyrie movie. Seems like a weird choice until you realise that later in the day he’d also let the employees of a local mom & pop grocery store sneak a peak. Then he went to two gas stations and an unimpressed toll-taker, all allegedly with a projector in tow, but we digress.
The film, being extremely pro-Nazi according to a dream we had three nights ago, whipped all the employees up into a heil-Hitler fervor, causing several smokey book piles to plume way up into the night sky.
We don’t really think Cruise’s visit had a specific book bashing agenda though. No, there was definitely more of a religion-in-general theme to the torching as we’ve heard other flame-fuellers included the Bible, The Book of Mormon, and the third installment of Jeff Foxworthy‘s semi-popular ‘You Might Be Resurrected If….” series.
But, you know, Cruise denies the allegations outright.
Julian Mentat says
When Scientologists stop me in the street, the firstt lie they tell me is that they just want to give me a personality test, which is BRILLIANT because if you don’t want the test, i.e. if you HAVE a personality, if you KNOW who you are, then you’re not suitable material for brainwashing. Thus the recruits actually SCREEN THEMSELVES.
Fredric L. Rice says
This is typical of the Scientology crime syndicate. The crooks hate us for our civil rights.
Geoff Tate says
First: The Church of Scientology caused John Duignan’s book ‘The Complex’ to be banned on Amazon and in UK bookstores.
Second: The representative of Scientology to be with Amazon at the time was Tom Cruise.
Three: The banning of ‘The Complex’, book-burnings in Nazi Germany and the release of ‘Valkyrie’ during Hanukkah ?
That’s a Sarah Silverman joke just waiting to happen.
Wait, didn’t the UK ban her too ?
FrankG says
If the book is the average non-sense that one can read against Scientology on the internet it was OK to pull it.
If one wants to know about a religion he should read the basic books of that religion and then decide if they answer his questions or not.
KeeKee says
FrankG – spoken like a true cult of scientology member! You and your cult do not get to decide what other people can or cannot read.
If one is to follow your reasoning then all books by L Ron Hubbard should be taken off the shelf because they are nonsense and dangerous. Not only was Hubbard a terrible writer but all of his ideas were stolen from other people – even his precious E-meter. Google ExScientologyKids(dot)com to read the truth.
dianetics/scientology is a trap – stay free.
Julian Mentat says
>> If one wants to know about a religion he should
>> read the basic books of that religion and then
>> decide if they answer his questions or not.
And how would you decide THAT?
[a] the answers correspond to scientific evidence
or
[b] the answers make me feel good
Gatwan says
From my experience, I was never held hostage or shackled in a basement or anyting like that. I can only say that these people mostly speak out cause they will get money. It’s no frickin mystery that CoS is made up of what it recruits. Yea, you may see many snobby rich kids in CoS who end up becoming the CEOs of a sector of the church and treating others like dirt, but those are the same little friends that it’s fellow members have recruited. The same assholes get pooped out for their bad deeds and some recognize they were part of the problem, and others score 10 grand for an interview and then justify their bully attitudes, by saying they were brainwashed, is a non-stop ” chicken or the egg”. Assholes come in as assholes and get poop out as them, and then they make it seem like they were under a trance treated everybody else, like atypical a hole does… so quit the victim b.s.