Networks of Legitimacy: CESNUR, Religious Freedom Advocacy, and the Blurring of Scholarship and Activism

Luigi Corvaglia

In the field of studies on new religious movements, the boundary between academic research, advocacy, and public communication has progressively thinned to the point of becoming, in some contexts, difficult to distinguish. The case of CESNUR (Centro Studi Nuove Religioni), founded and directed by Massimo Introvigne, offers many insights in this regard thanks to its active participation in an ecosystem of advocacy in favor of “new religious movements” that appears dense, characterized by closely connected, interconnected, and mutually functional nodes.

A constellation of organizations devoted to the promotion of “religious freedom” and active in lobbying at supranational institutions indeed presents elements of great interest from this point of view. Among these is the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB), which republishes a large number of articles from CESNUR's magazine Bitter Winter. The federation, founded in Rome, is currently relocated to Turin, a few hundred yards from the headquarters of CESNUR. Among the associations that compose it is the All Faith Network (AFN). This is one of the many organizations linked to Scientology. Another member is the European Interreligious Forum for Religious Freedom, whose president is “Reverend” Eric Roux, president of the United Churches of Scientology in France and vice president of the European Office for Public Affairs and Human Rights of the Church of Scientology . There is also the European Coordination for Freedom of Conscience (CAP LC), whose president is Thierry Valle. The latter appears in the list of employees of the Hollywood Guaranty Building (HGB) in Los Angeles, one of Scientology’s most important administrative headquarters, for the year 1994, compiled by former Scientologist Paul Adams some years later. Among the founding members, and still present in the scientific committee, is Fabrizio d’Agostini. In his profile on the federation’s website, a fundamental piece of information is missing, which is however easily found in Scientology publications: he is a high-ranking Scientologist. He would now even be OT VIII.

As a side note, it should be observed that among the founding and constituent members appears also Soteria International, an expression of Atman Yoga (formerly MySa Yoga), of Gregorian Bivolaru, the sex guru currently in prison in France after having been wanted for years by Interpol for sexual abuse, human trafficking, and more.

This composition raises the doubt that FOB operates less as a neutral platform and more as a hub of convergence for a constellation of actors sharing the same objective of defending new religious movements from public and state scrutiny and that, through Bitter Winter, uses the “academic” production of CESNUR for this purpose. In this regard, a curious element to add to the picture is that the wife of the director of this research center—which, as such, should be value-neutral and not partisan—Rosita Soryte, sits on the scientific committee of this highly Scientology-influenced organization.

An academic paper by Phil Lord (2021) argues that CESNUR participates in constructing the religious legitimacy of Scientology, and even goes so far as to hypothesize a contiguity.

Similar organizations include Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), whose director is Willy Fautré, and the already mentioned CAP LC of Thierry Valle, which is also a member of FOB, for which the same conditions and considerations apply. All these organizations often publish the same material, attend the same forums, and present the same individuals within their internal structures.

All these actors operate or have operated with a central organization in international religious lobbying, the International Religious Freedom Roundtable (IRF). For example, CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) were among the signatories of a petition, under the IRF banner, calling for the withdrawal of the consultative status of FECRIS, the European Federation of Centers of Research and Information on Sectarianism, at ECOSOC (IRF Roundtable letter, 2022,).

IRF's founder and co-chair is Greg Mitchell, a registered lobbyist for Scientology in Washington, D.C. (Cult Education Institute, 2103; OpenSecrets, 2023; Ortega, 2023). The IRF Roundtable has coordinated numerous international campaigns against anti-cult legislation, particularly in Europe. According to allegations, Scientology has used the IRF Roundtable to build informal alliances with conservative and libertarian actors in the United States and Europe and to exploit the notion of religious freedom in order to delegitimize the monitoring of high-demand religious groups (Ortega, 2018). The Scientology lobbyist was among those who received the CESNUR FIRMA award in 2019 . The other awardees for promoting religious freedom and dialogue were the director of Bitter Winter and the apostle Naason Garcia, arrested a few days later in Los Angeles with 26 charges including human trafficking and child pornography.

The content produced by this ecosystem in the form of statements, events, and articles is then relayed by media belonging to the same area. In this regard, the role of The European Times appears significant, a publication particularly focused on defending groups labeled as “cults” and attacking organizations engaged in combating abuses in spiritual movements and generous in citing and featuring Introvigne. An investigation by the French weekly Blast argues that The European Times is not a simple independent outlet, but the expression of the publishing group Bruxelles Media, embedded in a network of political relationships linked to environments of the European right and, at the same time, intersected by connections with the world of Scientology. In this framework, the newspaper is described as a device of media legitimization capable of providing visibility, coverage, and respectability to actors that present themselves as autonomous, civic, or humanitarian, but which the investigation relocates within a broader apologetic constellation. Among the cited examples is the Fundación para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad, a Spanish organization formally presented as a cultural and social entity, which Blast, however, identifies as closely linked to Scientology, also through the coincidence or proximity of its address with structures of the Church of Scientology in Spain. The point, in the economy of the investigation, is that this foundation would not be used as a simple external partner, but rather as part of a system of labels, media, and public interfaces that produces the appearance of pluralistic and independent support, while actually operating as a sounding board of a coherent ideological, reputational, and lobbying network. One of the main contributors to The European Times is Willy Fautré, the president of HRWF.

Although Bitter Winter, as a publication linked to a research center, may appear to be a respectable information outlet—to the point of serving as a source of information used by the U.S. State Department regarding religious persecution in China—it is part of the same informational circuit that includes The European Times, being relayed by the same nodes of the ecosystem and often presenting the same content in a less crude form. Among these are various articles celebrating the synergistic work of religious freedom activists with the IRF and recurring campaigns in favor of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), the new name of the Unification Church. Regarding the latter, the newspaper Mainichi devoted an investigation to the debate on religious freedom in Japan and to the conferences organized by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), describing them as the expression of an organized and structured ecosystem that serves as a central platform of international “religious freedom advocacy,” supported by a common direction. In practice, the transposition to Asia of what has already been described. Mainichi claims that participants in those summits between 2021 and 2022, including Donald Trump and Mike Pence, were handsomely paid. Introvigne participated in 2022.

The support of the director of CESNUR has recently been evident in both Japan and Korea. In Japan, following the killing of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by a young man who accused him and his party of having helped and protected the Unification Church—which he claimed was responsible for his family’s financial ruin—Massimo Introvigne wrote:

While the weak mind of the assassin had clearly been excited by anti-Unification-Church campaigns by militant lawyers and anti-cultists, the latter succeeded in persuading most media, both in Japan and internationally, that rather than being a victim the Unification Church was somewhat responsible for the homicide, in a spectacular reversal of both logic and fairness.

In other words, Shinzo Abe was killed by the 'anti-cult movement'.

In Korea, following the corruption scandal that involved the government and the Unification Church, Bitter Winter openly sided with the Church, portraying the investigation as a form of religious persecution.It then promoted an international campaign for the release of its leader, Hak Ja Han, portrayed as a victim of a political and judicial attack.

Another interesting aspect of Bitter Winter is that it sometimes appears to rely on sources that are at least questionable. Perhaps the most evident case is that of the China Tribunal. This was a non-governmental tribunal launched by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC). Bitter Winter gave great prominence to the verdict of this tribunal, which declared that the Chinese government harvests organs from dissidents, particularly followers of the Falun Gong movement. However, if you take a look at the ETAC website, you will discover that, scrolling through the list of directors, many have links to Falun Gong. Of course, this does not mean that the results and conclusions of this tribunal are necessarily false, but its claimed independence is.

Further doubts arise from the conspiratorial hypothesis advanced against the World Health Organization, which allegedly concealed the origin of the Covid virus from a Chinese laboratory.

A study conducted by the University of Urbino, Italy, on conspiracy theories related to Covid has shown that most of the nodes in the misinformation network about the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy lead directly to the website of the Church of Almighty God, one of the movements most defended by Bitter Winter.

Some doubts about the reliability of Bitter Winter have been expressed by sources that have no connection with the Chinese government, which might benefit from discrediting the magazine. For example, by a Korean Protestant publication and by the website BZF, affiliated with China Source, a nonprofit Christian “ministry” based in the United States that aims precisely to reduce pressure from the CCP on Christian churches. These critics hypothesized a link between Bitter Winter and the Church of Almighty God. However, it should be noted that China Source later rectified its claim, stating that, following private conversations with Bitter Winter, it understood that the magazine has no connection with the Church of Almighty God. When asked by the author about the arguments that led it to change its mind, it did not respond.

Further doubts arise regarding the transparency of Bitter Winter’s funding models—it publishes daily and in multiple languages—and the methods of gathering information in closed contexts such as China.

What is certain is that the dynamic described appears to configure a real supply chain: academic production  - specialized media - political advocacy. The result is a closed circulation of discourse, in which the same content moves between closely connected nodes, reinforcing each other.

This configuration finds a particularly effective interpretative key in a historical precedent: the Hadden Memorandum. It was a confidential email written by Jeffrey Hadden, a professor at the University of Virginia, which became public against the author’s will.

The memo revealed a network of meetings and strategies among well-known scholars of New Religious Movements (NRMs), lawyers, and representatives of NRMs, aimed at “neutralizing”—this is the term used—the critics of cults (anti-cultists), such as Margaret Singer and the American Family Foundation (AFF).

The three main proposals of the memo were:

1. Creation of a flow of secret funding from NRMs to an “independent” group, composed of the promoters of the meetings mentioned in Hadden’s letter, to support research favorable to cults, circumventing transparency about the origin and purpose of the funds.

2. Creation of an American version of INFORM (UK). The Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) is an apparently respectable body founded in London in 1988 by Eileen Barker. In the memorandum, Hadden wrote that Barker “has taken a very significant step to neutralize anti-cult movements in the United Kingdom.” Hadden reveals here that this organization was, at least at the time of the letter, actually part of a global campaign against anti-cultists, and the author promotes the creation of a U.S. version with the same objectives.

3. Creation of a strategy to counter the “Project Recovery,” that is, the set of services for former members of cults and their families of the American Family Foundation (AFF), through a public campaign and the production of a new academic research agenda aimed at delegitimizing the concept of brainwashing.

   
   

Hadden’s text therefore denounces an active, covert, and ideologically aligned collaboration between certain scholars and the religious movements under examination. Hadden and others (including Melton, Barker, Bromley, Lewis, Richardson) did not merely study NRMs, but acted as their defenders against critics and the media.

Although an INFORM USA was never created, the actions and projects outlined in that memorandum have come to life in the activity of a dense network that synergizes organizations devoted to lobbying in favor of religious freedom and research centers such as CESNUR, which counts the same Eileen Barker among its international scientific committee.

With regard to funding for entities that are benevolent toward spiritual movements—one of the main pillars of the Hadden group strategy—more than one element seems to confirm that this strategy is still in use today. For example, Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), that its claim of independence from religious, political, or philosophical movements is seriously undermined by its financial records. In 2019, in fact, about half of the organization’s total income came from a single source: the Alfred Vogel Foundation, as clearly stated in the 2019 financial report (archive).

The Alfred-Vogel-Stiftung, registered in Switzerland under number CHE-102.058.838, was established to continue and disseminate the naturopathic philosophy of its founder and to allocate surpluses to institutions reflecting his “Christian philosophy.” In reality, this wording points to Alfred Vogel’s well-known affiliation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses: the first edition of his manual Der kleine Doktor contained warnings against blood transfusions, consistent with the movement’s doctrine, and the company A. Vogel AG was co-founded with M. Bolle, himself a Jehovah’s Witness, together with other executives linked to the same community.

Seen in this context, One might wonder to what extent this may have influenced the fact that Human Rights Without Frontiers has often advocated in favor of the Jehovah's Witnesses —for instance, here, here, here, and here.

Without implying any leaps of logic or unfounded speculation, one might hypothesize that this type of relationship could be implemented by Church of Scientology, Universal Peace Federation and other movements toward members of the same constellation of organizations.

The story does not end here.