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Andreas Heldal-Lund (10 December 1964 – 2 January 2024) was a Norwegian anti-Scientology activist best known for operating the website Operation Clambake.
Andreas Heldal-Lund | |
|---|---|
 Heldal-Lund in 2005 | |
| Born | 10 December 1964 Oslo, Norway |
| Died | 2 January 2024 (aged 59) |
| Occupation | Webmaster |
| Known for | Internet activism against the Church of Scientology |
| Website | xenu |
Andreas Heldal-Lund was born in Oslo, Norway on 10 December 1964.[1] He moved to Stavanger, Norway in 1985.[1]
In May 2022, Heldal-Lund was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour, known as Glioblastoma.[2] He died on 2 January 2024 at the age of 59, in the arms of his living partner and a few close friends.[3]
Heldal-Lund served on multiple boards for the national secular humanist organization Human-Etisk Forbund.[4][5][6] He was also a member of the Norwegian Society of Heathens.[7]
Heldal-Lund first became interested in the Church of Scientology in 1996 when he read about Magne Berge, an ex-member in Norway, who sued the organization in court and won.[2][8] Heldal-Lund started gathering information about Scientology and eventually began hosting the materials himself as part of a project he called Operation Clambake.[2]
Heldal-Lund was also a contributor to the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup. On 14 July 2000, he sent an email to a user calling themselves "Magoo" with advice for making their posts more readable.[9][10][11] This started a conversation between the two.[9][11] Of the experience, Magoo would later say to Heldal-Lund, "I honestly thought you were the devil...I was amazed at how kind you were. I thought for sure you would be the meanest and worst of all the critics. So when you were you, it really cracked the shell."[9] Magoo made an announcement on 20 July 2000 on alt.religion.scientology that she was Tory Bezazian and she was no longer a Scientologist.[9]
In 2003, Heldal-Lund received the Leipzig Human Rights Award from the European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the US, an organization which states it is composed of "Scientology opponents from all over the world."[12][13]
He received an honorary award in 2022 from Human-Etisk Forbund.[14]
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Andreas Heldal-Lund originally created a website that was a list of links to articles and information about Scientology and the Church of Scientology. When he noticed that the links kept disappearing because of legal maneuvering by the church,[15][2][16][17] he decided to host the information himself.[18][19][20][16]
Most of the information presented by Operation Clambake is critical of the Church of Scientology and its leadership, although dissenters are given prominent space to air their differences.[21]
Even though the Church of Scientology had threatened legal action, Heldal-Lund said he'd never been sued.[15][16] Norway has more liberal copyright laws which provide more freedom of speech protections.[15][2][17] However, Mike Rinder, a former executive director of the Office of Special Affairs for the Church of Scientology[22], and Leah Remini, a former Scientologist, put forth another theory in a conversation with Heldal-Lund in their Fair Game Podcast.[16] It as Heldal-Lund's chosen domain name of xenu.net that may be responsible.[16] Xenu is a central character in Scientology's creation myth[23] which can only be accessed in higher levels of the church.[24][25] Scientologists are required to sign a confidentiality agreement that contains a clause stating they understand they will be fined each time they speak about the materials with anyone else.[24][25] According to Remini, this fine can go as high as $100,000 for each infraction.[26] Filing a lawsuit and referencing the name xenu.net in court documents could breach this agreement.[16]
Instead Heldal-Lund said the Church sent harassing letters to his job and investigated his friends and former partners.[27][16] Every time he'd think about stepping away, the church would do something else to keep him invested.[27][15] In an interview with Dawn Olsen, Heldal-Lund said, "They created me; if they had left me alone and ignored me, I probably would have been doing this for [only] a couple of months."[15]
The church also targeted his ISP, network service providers[15] and filed Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices with both Google and the Wayback Machine to remove links to xenu.net.[17][28]. Under the law, if the site owner feels the removed links are fair use, they can file a counter notice under the DMCA to have the links restored.[29] Heldal-Lund declined to take this step because he felt that filing the counter notice would subject him to US copyright law.[28] Public outcry from free speech advocates made Google restore some of the links to xenu.net.[30] For a time, this also resulted in Operation Clambake rising to the number two position on Google search results for "Scientology;" just under the church's official website.[30][17]
When actor Jason Beghe decided to leave Scientology in 2008, he contacted Heldal-Lund, who convinced him to meet with Mark Bunker, a critic of Scientology known to the Anonymous group as "Wise Beard Man".[31] Heldal-Lund and Bunker went to Beghe's house, where Beghe participated in an interview about his experiences as a Scientologist.[31] Bunker published a two-hour portion of the three-hour interview to YouTube on 4 June 2008.[32]
In the aftermath of online acts taken against Scientology by the group Anonymous as part of the protest movement Project Chanology, Heldal-Lund released a statement criticizing the digital assault against Scientology.[33][34] "People should be able to have easy access to both sides and make up their own opinions. Freedom of speech means we need to allow all to speak – including those we strongly disagree with."[35]
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- Leipzig Human Rights Award, 17 May 2003[12]
- Honorary Award in 2022 from Human-Etisk Forbund[14]
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