Whenever I give lectures on my book on censorship – Whaddya mean you haven’t read it? Buy it here at a recession-beating price – I discuss the great issues of the wealthy to silence critics, the conflict between religion and freedom of thought and the determination of dictators to persecute dissenters. These themes have animated great philosophers. None more so, I continue, than Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, who managed to get them all into one cartoon.
In a 2005, they broadcast an episode entitled Trapped in the Closet. The little boy Stan goes to one of the Scientologists’ personality testing centres. His “Thetan” levels are so high the Scientologists decide he must be the reincarnation of L Ron Hubbard, that herder of credulous souls who founded the sci-fi cult in the 1950s.
South Park’s writers have a lot of fun leaking the religion’s secrets. They explain that long, long ago, the evil alien emperor Xenu fills DC10s with people who were excess to his glactic empire’s requirements – quite how he got DC10s is not explained.
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