"Going Clear" is the film Scientologists don’t want you to see

THE GUARDIAN
By John Sweeney

‘Pope’ David Miscavige took over the controversial church after L Ron Hubbard. Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features

The most mesmerising moment in "Going Clear," Alex Gibney’s wrecking-ball job on Scientology, watched so far by 5.5 million Americans, is a clip of leading church executives singing along to a clunking 1980s rock anthem, "We Stand Tall." So, the clip of Scientologists singing along with Miscavige is sinister, an eerie negative of thousands of North Koreans weeping at the death of mass murderer Kim Jong Il. It feels like brainwashing in action. The North Koreans have an excuse for going along with thought control lest they end up in the gulag; Scientology’s extraordinary achievement, perhaps, is to pull off brainwashing in Florida, in California. [link]