The Distant Sun

A glimpse inside the communities you are barred from

In 2010, Scientologist John Brousseau fled the organization’s Los Angeles ‘Gold Base’ compound. He was pursued across the country by a church retrieval team. After a confrontation, he again managed to escape, eventually joining fellow defectors under FBI protection in Texas.   

The FBI was investigating allegations of human trafficking and violence, particularly those related to ‘The Hole’. The Hole was a rumored Scientology prison, in which out-of-favor church members were alleged to be confined and subjected to psychological and physical punishment, sometimes for years at a time. The church denied its existence. 

The FBI hoped that Brousseau - disillusioned with Scientology after decades of membership - would help the investigation, giving law enforcement the support they needed to raid the base.  

The raid never happened. On August 5, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer ruled that the church was protected by the First Amendment's free exercise of religion clause, barring courts from examining church operations rooted in religious scripture. She announced that judgment on the application of discipline "is precisely the type of entanglement that the religion clauses prohibit”. 

Absent other evidence, the FBI was forced to discontinue its investigation. To this day, the 520 acre Gold Base continues to be a thriving center of activity for the church, as it has been for the last 45 years. Little is known about the activities that occur therein. 

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Now, I’m no Scientologist, nor do I have any intention of throwing our people in The Hole. But there are lessons for us here. The protection that space and faith (or at least the claim of faith) gave to their parallel society should be recognised. Opportunities for us to invoke the same protections must be uncovered. 

Since faith is a constant theme of my work, today I will focus on space. The fact that their organization owns such a large swathe of land affords them great distance from prying eyes, allowing them to sustain a bizarre society without interference from law enforcement or other parties. This protection is powerful enough to hold in the face of extremely hostile coverage in the media and the focus of the letter agencies. 

Frankly, I wanted to have some fun with this week’s edition, so let’s take the principles of space and distance to their logical extreme. I thought I’d do a white-pilling episode examining how these principles are being expressed by a sizable but largely unknown community, one which is embracing the most beautiful, dynamic, and bold aspects of the American tradition. It is the community shown below. 

In fact, there are over 600 of these communities. 

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