"Chinamen"

L. Ron Hubbard's opinions of the Chinese and other "Orientals" seemed to have been formed early in his life, during his teens when he traveled briefly to China, Japan, the Philippines, and Guam. Had he been an ordinary teenager, his racist remarks could be overlooked as youthful thoughtlessness. However, in its quest to mythologize Hubbard, the Church of Scientology assures us that Hubbard is anything but ordinary and "throughout these travels, Ron's observations and adventures are carefully recorded  in diaries".

Regrettably, Hubbard's racism continued into and throughout adulthood and is codified as sacred scriptures.

The American way of life is the universal measure of society:

"The Scientology religion is based exclusively upon L. Ron Hubbard's research, writings and recorded lectures —
all of which constitute the Scriptures of the religion"

What is the American way of life? This is a question that will stop almost any American. What is the American way of life that is different from the human way of life? We have tried to gather together economic freedom for the individual, freedom of the press, and individual freedom, and define them as a strictly American way of life — why hasn't it been called the Human Way of Life?

We are faced with an Asia which is awakening. Japan, having been induced to become a modern industrial nation, branched out into Asia with her ideas of freedom for the individual. She sold other backward nations on the idea that Japan would free them from the yoke of the white man, even though she realized that she was committing suicide by so doing. To quote from some political propaganda distributed in these countries by Japan, "You will cry for us when we are gone. But we have freed you. Don't ever forget it, and don't forget us." Japan's missionaries knew that Japan would go under when it came to a contest between her country and the Western World, but the seed she sowed is far from dead.

We, in the persons of Perry and others who sailed their ships into Asia, gave Asia the spark of freedom. Japan accepted the teaching and committed national suicide by attempting imperial expansion, involving us in a very long and terrible war. We cannot but wonder and sometimes become confused, nor can we blame the Asiatics for a tiny bit of confusion now and then concerning the intentions of the Western World, when we try to fathom the actual nature of our political foreign policy. Do we, or do we not, desire Democratic principles and the "American" way of life for the Asiatic peoples?

Consider the U.S. support of China's totalitarian regime headed by Chiang Kaishek. While we weakly spoke of freeing the Chinese from the yoke of imperialism we poured huge sums of money and war material into the hands of a government which practiced the very principles we spoke against! When this government finally fell there was no one ready to teach the Chinese the human way of life. If we had only sent out a few missionaries with a desire for these people's freedom in their hearts saying, "Now if you would like to have radios, and automobiles, and safety razors, this is how you go about it…," things might have been different today. We had no one there, and even if we had, our support of the fallen government would have been ample proof to the people that we did not have their interests at heart. But somebody was there. Somebody was there with a propaganda aimed directly into the desires of the people who want just a tiny taste of freedom. Russian agents were there. "You are all comrades," they shouted over loudspeakers and in public markets. "The way to freedom and equality is to shoot all the landlords and divide the land so that each of you has an equal share." So Russia is first with the most, and we complain because she takes over!

-L. Ron Hubbard, The Dianetic Auditor's Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 1, "Education and the Auditor", July 1951.

Hubbard explains how balance is necessary in subduing barbaric peoples:

The way to paralyze a nation entirely and to make it completely ungovernable would be to forbid education of any kind within its borders and to inculcate into every person within it the feeling that he must not receive any information from anybody about anything. To make a nation governable it is necessary to hold a kindly view of education and to honor educative persons and measures. To conquer a land it is not necessarily efficient to overwhelm it with guns. Once this is done it is necessary to apply educative measures in order to bring about some sort of agreement among the people themselves, as well as between the conqueror and the subdued. Only in this way could one have a society, a civilization or, as we say in Scientology, a smoothly running game .

In other words, two extremes could be reached, neither one of which is desirable by the individual. The first extreme could be reached by emphasis only upon self-created data or information. This would bring about not only a lack of interpersonal relations, but also an anxiety to have an effect which would, as it does in barbaric peoples, result in social cruelty unimaginable in a civilized nation. The other extreme would be to forbid in its entirety any self-created information and to condone only data or considerations generated by others than self. Here we would create an individual with no responsibility, so easily handled that he would be only a puppet.

Self-created data is, then, not a bad thing, neither is education, but one without the other to hold it in some balance will bring about a no-game condition  or a no-civilization. Just as individuals can be seen, by observing nations, so we see the African tribesman, with his complete contempt for truth and his emphasis on brutality and savagery for others but not himself, is a no-civilization. And we see at the other extreme China, slavishly dedicated to ancient scholars, incapable of generating within herself sufficient rulers to continue, without bloodshed, a nation.

We have noted the individual who must be the only one who can make a postulate  or command, whose authority is dearer to him than the comfort or state of millions that have suffered from such men (Napoleon, Hitler, Kaiser Wilhelm, Frederick of Prussia, Genghis Khan, Attila). We have known, too, the scholar who has studied himself into blindness and is the world's greatest authority on government or some such thing, who yet cannot himself manage his bank account or a dog with any certainty. Here we have, in either case, a total imbalance. The world shaker is himself unwilling to be any effect  of any kind (and all the men named here were arrant personal cowards) and we have the opposite, a man who would not know what you were talking about if you told him to get an idea on his own.

-L. Ron Hubbard, Fundamentals of Thought, Chapter "Causation and Knowledge", Section "Civilization and Savagery". Bridge Publications, Inc.: Los Angeles, CA. 1977pp. 112-114.

Even the intractable Chinese can benefit from Scientology:

This is a breakdown of the Axioms. If you recombine the Axioms and look them over, you'll find out that it breaks down to this — it has to be that. It just has to be that, that's all. You look over the Axioms. These Axioms are true, and they were sweeping ahead and showing up things. And all the Axioms were, were the constant data which had been turned out from the primary principle "Survive," and the mind as a computing machine which tries to resolve problems relating to survival. How simple.

But actually what we're doing here is a form of mathematics. It's a form of mathematics. Now, every once in a while, just for the hell of it, I put these things into practice in the material universe. They always work. They don't work because I say they work.

You can put these things into the hands of some Chinese and send him to Hong Kong and we'll have cleared chinks.

What's the difference? What's the difference, then, between this investigation which we're doing, on which we're engaged, and past investigations?

What's the essential difference?

Well, it was one: the assumption that the problem could be solved. Now, boy, that is an arbitrary assumption. There is no reason to believe the problem can be solved. But we throw in the one arbitrary which was thrown in on the track  ahead of survival. There's an arbitrary sitting there, and that arbitrary says the problem can be solved — the problem of the human mind can be solved. Now, that should tell you a lot. You throw an arbitrary ahead of a law in order to get a law. That's called heuristic thinking.

-L. Ron Hubbard, Secrets of the MEST Universe (lecture 1), "Methods of Research: The Thetan as an Energy Unit", 6 November 1952.

The Church presents only positive material on its web sites (common PR practice) and so we are not generally privy to diary entries like this one, in which Hubbard expresses his disdain for the "natives":

After a hard docking against tide and wind, we found ourselves confronted with a baggage problem. A lot of lazy, ignorant natives gathered our grips. We hopped into a carrameta and went to the Manila Hotel where Mother and I indulged in a glass of "lemon squeeze".

-L. Ron Hubbard, personal journal, as quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, "Opinion and Order of the U.S. District Court", New Era Publication International v. Henry Holt and Co., "Fair Use Purpose Less Convincing", 1988.

However, in rare instances, an interesting tidbit eludes the censors and finds its way to an official Church web site:

The very nature of the Chinaman holds him back. If his fellow should fall, John thinks it quite proper that he stamp on the underdog's face.

-L. Ron Hubbard, Ron Letters and Journals , "Early Years of Adventure " (Asia Diaries, 1927-1929).

"John" may sound like an unusual name for a Chinese man, but Hubbard was employing a common term of this era, John Chinaman. It was used stereotypically to refer to a whole group of Asian (mostly Chinese) people, as well as in a generic sense for the average Chinese (similar in use to "John Q. Public").

Author Russell Miller describes several of Hubbard's Asian diary entries in his book Bare-Faced Messiah .

It was clear that by the time he reached Shanghai, Ron had adopted some of the more obvious colonial mannerisms, for he casually reported joining the Madison crowd for "tiffin" at the Palace Hotel later that day and would also soon be referring to the natives as "gooks".

-Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pg. 30 .

Neither did the Chinese people endear themselves to the opinionated young American. He found them shallow, simple-minded, dishonest, lazy and brutal. "When it comes to the Yellow Races overrunning the world, you may laugh," he noted." … [The Chinese] have neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except by intermarriage. One American marine could stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort."

-Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pg. 42 .

Shantung Peninsula only recently returned to China after being occupied for some years, first by the Germans, then the Japanese. Ron took the trouble to research Tsingtao's history and concluded that the Chinese, with all their corruption, were unworthy heirs to their own territory inasmuch as they had failed to profit from the efforts of Germany and Japan to clean up their country. "A Chinaman can not live up to a thing," he wrote, "he always drags it down." On 30 October he noted thankfully: "We have left Tsingtao forever, I hope."

-Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pg. 42 .

See the quote above in Hubbard's own handwriting .

The Gold Star stopped at Shanghai and Hong Kong before heading back to Guam, but Ron tired of further descriptive writing, apart from taking a final swipe at the luckless Chinese race. "They smell", he concluded, "of all the baths they didn't take. The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here."

-Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pg. 43 .

See the quote above in Hubbard's own handwriting .