This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca!
Transcript:
Recently, the actor Hugh Jackman made the gossip rag headlines for performing a song and dance routine at the 95th birthday party of Logan Roy…sorry, I mean Rupert Murdoch. I must have been confused by the “Logan” part. Anyway, a lot of people were shocked and appalled at this: after all, Rupert Murdoch is, well, evil! Legitimately evil. He’s the reason we no longer have a functional free press in the United States, and the United Kingdom, and Australia. Possibly Canada? I’m honestly not sure and it’s too depressing to check for a video where he is only a side character.
Because the real story here is Hugh Jackman, who for the past several decades has managed to build up a reputation as a very good looking, very talented actor as well as a fun, easygoing guy. He sings and dances! He does pranks with his best friend Ryan Reynolds! He was married to the same lady for twenty years! Um, almost. And did I mention that he is very good looking? He is! So why is he debasing himself at a party in honor of this soulless melting lump of silly putty?
It’s simple: because Hugh Jackman sucks shit. I know, I’m sorry. I’m not happy about it either but it’s best I just rip that bandaid off as soon as possible.
I’m not even kidding, this was pretty tough for me to accept, too. Okay, so I do tend to have zero inclination towards celebrity worship and I’m never all that surprised when famous rich people turn out to be giant turds, but I did grow up as a MEGA FAN of Wolverine. I read every X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, and yes, even fucking Alpha Flight, “Marvel’s premier Canadian superhero team akin to America’s Avengers,” according to their Wikipedia page. They had their own Sasquatch! He was named Sasquatch.
So even though I knew that Wolverine should have been a smelly five-foot-three walking mohair sweater with claws, I was very pleased to have someone who looked and acted like Hugh Jackman take on the iconic role, and I thought he did a great job in pretty much every movie, but especially Logan and its criminally underrated precursor, The Wolverine.
But! We cannot let such artistic triumphs stand in the way of a cold, rational take on a person’s integrity. And so, yeah, I’m sorry but literally singing and dancing for Rupert fucking Murdoch permanently removes you from the “Good Person” list. I mean, if you’re a millionaire, that is. I won’t hold it against the homeless orphans that Murdoch steals off the streets who are forced to perform numbers from “Annie” in between sessions where they have their blood siphoned for Peter Thiel’s patented Immortality Machine. Those kids can still go to heaven. Once they’re ground into a paste to be fed to the Bengal tigers chained up in Murdoch’s basement.
While reading about this news story, I happened across a comment stating that Jackman attended and performed at Murdoch’s birthday party not JUST because they are both extremely wealthy Australians with less moral fiber than one of those killer robot dogs from Boston Dynamics, but also because they’re in a CULT together. Interesting! So I looked into that allegation and while I could not find any evidence that Rupert Murdoch is in a cult–rarely does the guy who makes a cult end up in a different one–but I DID find evidence that Hugh Jackman is in one. So I figure, hey, let’s talk about that.
In 2006, Jackman was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for her magazine. “I read that you’ve been studying at the School of Practical Philosophy since 1991,” Oprah said.
“Yes,” Jackman replied. “The school began in London in 1938 with a group of men and women who saw the world heading for disaster—World War II. They were asking, “How do we share this planet? What is natural law for humans?” Capitalism is a wonderful idea, but it isn’t a cure-all. So this nondenominational group of people wanted to get together, find the truth, then apply it. Now the school is all over the world.”
Now, there are a few problems with Jackman’s answer. For a start, no, capitalism is not in fact “a wonderful idea.” I think at this point it’s pretty clear that it is a terrible idea that has led to unimaginable misery and death and the destruction of our entire planet!
You might think that his praise of capitalism is just a weird non sequitur in the midst of discussing his school of philosophy, but in fact it is actually quite on point. Because the “School of Practical Philosophy” was not, as Jackman claims, founded by “a group of men and women” who “wanted to get together, find the truth, then apply it” to save the world from disaster. For a start, no women were involved at all. I know, you’re shocked. It was actually founded by this handsome devil, a British politician named Andrew MacLaren, and his son Leon, and they called it “The Henry George School of Economics.” Henry George was an American economist who was, in fact, a pretty cool dude: he saw that rich people were buying up all the land and continuing to get wealthier off this finite resource while poor people led shittier and shittier lives, so he argued that people should own the value they produce but money made off the land and natural resources belongs to everyone, and thus taxing landowners more heavily could entirely fund the government and maybe even pay us all a nice little basic income. He also argued that we can scientifically deduce the most ideal economic policies by comparing and contrasting different societies, making hypotheses and testing them in different conditions.
So far so good, right? Some economists wanted to get together and discuss this one guy’s ideas for combating poverty. Zero red flags. Well, a few years later, Leon took over the organization from his dad, and he changed the focus to “the study of natural laws governing the relations between men in society,” dropping Henry George from the title and going with simply the “School of Economic Science,” which it remained until 2019.
So why did Oprah and Jackman call it the “School of Practical Philosophy” in 2006? Simple: because by that point, it had grown into an international organization that went under different names in different locations in order to hide what it actually was. Oh, there’s the red flag! I found it! To be less confusing, for the most part I’m going to refer to this cult as “the School” or “SES” for “School of Economic Sciences.”
I want to pause here to point out the importance of having a functional bullshit detector in cases like this. If you check out the School’s Wikipedia page, you’ll find it to be remarkably bland. Sure, there’s an early sentence about some people describing it as a cult, or a sect, or a new religious movement, and yes, there IS a section on “historical child abuse,” but most of the page is about the philosophers who inspired Leon MacLaren to change his little economics study group into an international school that provides helpful and inexpensive philosophy classes to people from all walks of life, helping them apply those principles to aid in their own self-improvement. After reading through it, I was left feeling like MAYBE the School was a little culty in the past but it doesn’t really seem so culty anymore. And yet, I saw all these red flags.
Luckily, buried in the depths of the article is a mention of Peter Hounam and Andrew Hogg, two journalists with the Evening Standard who investigated the School and published an entire book about what they found, called “Secret Cult: A full exposé of a
strange and destructive organization that is penetrating the corridors of power.” It’s out of print, but is available to read in full thanks to the Internet Archive, and wow it is a wild ride.
The opening chapter details the story of Frith Oliver, a woman who was born in New Zealand in 1952 to parents who were members of the School. At the age of 8, they enrolled her in a camp run by the “Society of Practical Philosophy,” which is the name that the School used in that area. At the age of 10, her school was visited by Leon MacLaren himself, who was practically worshiped by the adults, some of whom called him “The Master.” Hm, that sounds familiar. Anyway, Leon singled Frith out for special attention, saying she was better and more spiritual than any of the others in the School.
Frith says that the School taught people to not show anyone affection, even their own children, because emotions were weak, so she was intoxicated by Leon’s attentions. And when Leon declared that this special goddess be shipped off to London to be raised by SES, she and her parents agreed and off she went.
In London, she lived with three adult female adherents of SES, and she was taught how to be the perfect woman. Leon himself told her “‘All women always felt guilty,’ he said. With much trepidation I ventured to argue. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel guilty.’ ‘Oh yes you do,’ he assured me. ‘You just don’t realize it yet because you’re too young. All women feel guilty because of Eve’s sin in taking the apple. And so they should. All women are guilty, and the only true aim of their lives must be to purge that guilt.’”
She was taught that any sexual urges she felt were disgusting and should be suppressed (along with all other outward displays of emotion), that women biologically could not enjoy sex, and that sex was a sin if done for any purpose besides procreation and therefore having sex for fun might lead to being reincarnated as a lesser being in the next life. She was taught that husbands were committed to SES first and their families second, and that wives were expected to do all the household chores, to clean without using any actual cleaning products, and to make uncooked vegetarian dinners every day. Yum.
Despite living with those three old SES biddies and being told repeatedly that sex is a sin, at the age of 18, Frith got pregnant. The father was a 35-year old SES member. Frith does not go into detail on their relationship, nor does she describe it as rape or anything else problematic in the book, so I will just leave that there as is.
In accordance with SES policy, Leon had to approve of their relationship before they could get married. He was disgusted with Frith, and not the father, but agreed. The father, in further accordance with SES policy, skipped the birth of his child to attend an SES orchestra rehearsal.
Despite her sins, Frith was eventually promoted to “tutor,” which SES teaches is a person who is a stand-in for God, which they call “the Absolute,” and thus they must be obeyed at all times. She reports that the strict hierarchy in the School led to essentially a trickle down abuse system, where everyone was encouraged to torture anyone “beneath” them.
The contradiction of her husband being the head of the household but also now beneath her eventually led to the complete breakdown of their marriage, and after six years they got divorced and obviously she took on full custody of the now two children. Knowing absolutely no one outside of the School, it never occurred to Frith to leave despite being completely miserable–until one day she was in her backyard having a meltdown at her kids misbehaving, when a neighbor yelled at her to shut the fuck up. That’s all it took! A single angry connection with a stranger outside of the cult. She realized she was losing her mind, and she made the decision to finally NOT attend that evening’s mandatory class.
However, she was still so indoctrinated that she allowed her kids to continue attending the SES school. The kids complained about being bullied, and her son came home with severe headaches that led to vomiting. Finally, she pulled them out, at which point her ex-husband sued her for custody, supported by the School both monetarily and in written testimony against Frith’s parenting abilities. The judge ruled that the kids should be put back into the school until the end of the term, and a ruling on custody was put off for several months. That’s when Frith met the journalists working on the story of the cult, and after they published their findings in the Standard, the ex-husband retracted his custody suit and failed to renew the injunction keeping the kids in the School.
Frith felt horrible guilt for keeping her kids in the School so long, but evidence since the publishing of this book shows that things could have gone much, much worse for them had she not acted when she did. In 2004, ex-students of SES school set up an online forum where they shared their stories, and the abuse they describe witnessing and experiencing is truly horrific:
“The atmosphere was one of almost constant fear. Nearly every activity was carried out in silence. Casual beatings with training shoes and rulers were administered by sadistic teachers for such ‘offences’ as talking in class or producing unsatisfactory work. Official canings were frequently meted out by the thuggish headmaster (who, sadly, is still beating children at a school in Twickenham) for things like ‘lying’, ‘laziness’, repeated lateness, too many ‘black marks’ on the merit table and other ‘offences’ against the highly complicated and probably secret school rules. Strenuous exercise and communal cold showers were a feature of the school day and these were also used as punishments. I was once late for early-morning circuit training and was required to stay after school to perform press-ups and sit-ups to near exhaustion (cutting my back on the hard floor in the process) before a prolonged cold shower observed by the sports teacher. Apart from the routine beatings mentioned above, I also witnessed several physical assaults by teachers: one pupil was thrown against a wall, another was threatened with an iron bar!”
Another user describes “cadet weekends” where children were forced to run cross-country before the sun rose in the winter, wearing only thin t-shirts and shorts. He got an ear infection but was “forbidden from wearing a balaclava to keep the ear warm. This resulted in the infection spreading into the right side of my face where I developed Bels Palsy, and partial nerve damage.”
There were beatings for every real or imagined transgression, often done in front of other students. The users describe being left with permanent physical damage as well as anxiety disorders and trouble forming and maintaining healthy relationships. Some people attempted suicide, and others succeeded. There are reports of this abuse from Schools around the world, all of which seem to have been staffed by people with no actual qualifications to teach anything to anyone.
In 2020, at least one School in the UK was forced to pay ex-students compensation totaling a million pounds but SES refused to admit any liability, and the Schools that remain open swear up and down that they no longer beat the shit out of little kids. I’m sure we can trust them.
In 2023, the actress Emily Watson from Punch Drunk Love and other films revealed that she grew up in SES because her parents were members, and she described witnessing “extreme behaviour, cruelty and unpleasantness that was very damaging.” She also revealed that she was kicked out of the cult in 1996 because she did a nude scene in the film Breaking the Waves. That was five years after Hugh Jackman says HE joined SES. Fun fact: Hugh Jackman has appeared nude on film in 2009 (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), in 2013 (The Wolverine), and in 2014 (X-Men: Days of Future Past). And no, I did not need to look that up, I just knew it for REASONS. I’m sorry, I know he sucks but I do love a Himbo.
Despite those nude scenes, as recently as 2017 Jackman has confirmed that he’s still active in SES. While on a press tour for The Greatest Showman, which is what he performed at Rupert’s big birthday bash, he told ICON magazine that the “School of Practical Philosophy” is “…great. For me, it’s like what the Church is for other people, a place where to find light. It is not so much about discussing esoteric ideas, but practical things, from day to day. We study texts of all kinds, from the East, from the West, from Plato, the Bible, Shakespeare… It is an atmosphere that encourages you not to accept anything but also not to reject anything. It’s easy, practical, simple … and very powerful for me. I grew up in the Anglican Church and my father is a very religious person. I was young, but there came a point when I saw all this as a very narrow way of thinking.”
There’s a good chance that that really is all it is for Jackman, who was already in his 20s and, you know, a man, when he joined. From all the reports I’ve read, it seems like the cult is only truly abusive towards women and children. These days, the cult advertises in places like the New York subway, promising to make commuters happier with a simple 10-session introductory philosophy course for only $90, which a New York Times journalist took them up on back in 2010. She describes attending the fall semester with a diverse crowd of about 400 fellow students, each of whom trekked out to a mansion on East 79th once a week to eat vegetarian snacks, learn how to meditate, and discuss concepts like “being conscious of our actions (“what would a wise man or woman do?”), trying to learn from each experience (“whatever or whoever is in front of you is your teacher”), overcoming negative thoughts, and concentrating on the things that truly matter to us.”
She enjoyed the experience but quit after that first semester, which is probably why she never actually got to the “cult” part. According to a recent post from someone in the r/cults subreddit who says they were raised in SES, “It starts out seemingly like a nice overall philosophy exploration and then gets more and more controlling over time. At first it’s a discussion involving a number of philosophers but over time it’s a very specific religion…By the time it gets to that point in her studies where she will be initiated into meditation and getting into the non-introductory classes, it’s most decidedly a very specific religion with a strict belief system, texts, rules, etc. At first people are “encouraged” to keep their minds open about what they hear and then of course over time you learn not to question anything. At first the “service” (volunteer time for the school) is optional but over time it becomes mandatory (although they will never say that) and you are asked to do more and more.
“It is very male-centric. Men have the power and there is a lot of misogyny built into the belief system and the practices. You can read about some of how the original leader treated women in the book. The power structure is embedded and everyone is trying to become enlightened and this results in many people having power over others and abusing that. Women are taught to let men make the decisions and everything related to sex is very repressed. People are trained over time to be emotionally neutral at all times and this has some pretty devastating effects. The school always comes first – over your family, over your job, over your other religion, over your friends. People learn to hide being sick or having mental health issues because it means you were bad in a previous lifetime.
“There are a lot of elements that sound very similar to Buddhism or mindfulness and a lot of the “exercises” they teach would be helpful outside of the cult. But in the cult they end up being weapons. There were so many decisions made to try to “break” your ego. For example, if you were really good at cooking and terrible at carpentry, you would be assigned to the carpentry activities. Or for another example, you’d be raking the leaves and one tutor would come over and show you a different way to do it and you’d do it that way and then another person would come and show you to do it a different way than the first person. This was purposeful so that you wouldn’t feel like “you” knew the right way to do things and could practice “letting go”. If you are “being in the moment” and watching where your rake touches the leaves, then it should be a good thing for someone to show you an even better way to do it but in the end you learn that you can’t do anything right and you can’t trust your own experiences or decisions and you learn to let other people tell you what to do without question.
I could go on but especially as a women I would try very hard to support her in finding a different way of getting help and if she insists, please try to stay there for her because over time she will lose her friends and community outside the group and then if she tries to leave, she will lose them all.”
I’m guessing that the cult doesn’t expect Hugh Jackman to do a lot of “service,” but he seems to be doing a pretty good job of convincing other people to sign up.
So yeah, Hugh Jackman is in a cult! Fun. I think my favorite part of all of this is that an organization that started as a little group of economists studying the philosophy of a guy who was against private land ownership and in favor of workers maintaining the wealth they generate is now a cult that owns ACTUAL MANSIONS in the wealthiest zip codes in the world and uses them to exploit people for free labor. Capitalism, huh? What a great idea that was, after all.
