Seeking to Incite Hate, Tony Ortega Feeds Anti-Scientology Lies to Press

Unemployed anti-Scientologist Tony Ortega, misrepresenting himself as an “expert” on the Scientology religion, recently fed lies to multiple media platforms concerning Church of Scientology policy on the reporting of crimes to law enforcement.

Far from being an “expert,” Tony Ortega has never been a Scientologist, has never been inside a Church of Scientology and has no knowledge of the Scientology religion. He is a hate blogger who lives off his wife’s salary and writes snide, grotesque daily rantings on the internet fringe to feed his “audience”—a small group of rabid anti-Scientologists he radicalizes with propaganda and disinformation. To his obsessed anti-Scientology crew, Ortega describes himself as “your proprietor.”

Contrary to Ortega’s claims, which are intended to incite hate against Scientologists, the Church of Scientology has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of Scientologists, or of anyone, to law enforcement. Quite the opposite. Church policy explicitly demands Scientologists abide by all laws of the land.

Profile of a Hate Blogger

Described by former colleagues as “twisted,” “abusive” and anti-Scientology obsessed, Ortega counts as his proudest achievement over the course of his decade of unemployment a full-time anti-Scientology harassment campaign—one involving thousands of postings intended to intimidate, smear, dehumanize and shame Scientologists.

Referring to the religious beliefs of Scientologists as “fake news” and inferring all Scientologists are liars, Ortega has systematically stalked and endeavored to “out” Scientologists in their personal and professional lives. Tony Ortega’s self-discribed “reporting” comes exclusively in the form of threats and harassment such as:

• Ortega contacts the bosses of Scientologists to “reveal” their religious affiliation and spread defamatory lies in an effort to place their jobs at risk.
• Ortega posts gleefully about recently deceased Scientologists, attempting to blame Scientology for their passing and mocking their family members for seeking comfort in the religion.
• Ortega uses slander to try to deny corporate partners and sponsors to Scientologists engaging in humanitarian projects.
• Ortega stalks Scientologists on social media and reposts their messages out of context to malign them, including a video posted by a 14-year-old girl.

• Ortega attempts to sabotage the campaigns of Scientologists running for public office, writing local papers to demand they print and denounce the candidate’s religion.
• Ortega demands: “What was the Republican party thinking… appointing to the statehouse someone who appeared to be a Scientologist?”
• Ortega mocks Scientologists for donating to the Church’s global humanitarian programs.
• Ortega “breaks the news” of events in the private lives of Scientologists, including personal tragedies, to expose them to hate speech.
• Ortega sends harassment emails to the family members of Scientologists, inquiring about their personal lives.
• Ortega harasses journalists who cover Scientology artists with no anti-Scientology bigotry included in their stories.
• Ortega envisions someone dragging an elderly Scientologist’s “carcass” out of a Church of Scientology.
• Ortega prints details about the personal finances of individual Scientologists by name.
• Ortega ridicules and demeans Scientologists’ statements about how their religion has helped them in life.
• Ortega shops fabricated anti-Scientology stories to desperate tabloid publications.

Ortega employs his fringe platform to give daily voice to what can only be described as his deep-seated, un-American objection to the right of Scientologists to practice their religion free from discrimination.

On December 14, 2015, Erin McMurtry, fueled by anti-Scientology hate speech, drove her car through the front of the Church of Scientology Austin, stopping just short of the nursery. Tony Ortega’s blog read: “Car turns Austin Scientology org into a drive-in.”

Background

Like many fanatics and bad actors, Ortega has a checkered past. He was dismissed from Village Voice in 2012. In discussing the reasons for Ortega’s departure, a former staffer at the Voice complained to the New York Observer that Ortega was “increasingly obsessed with Scientology and had neglected almost all of his editorial duties at the paper.”

While at Village Voice, Ortega spent years defending Backpage.com, the Voice’s primary source of funding and a site that facilitated child sex trafficking. Backpage had become the largest online sex trafficking site in the world before its seizure by federal law enforcement agencies in April 2018. Ortega’s former bosses, who he gloated were “smart enough to start Backpage,” were arrested and are awaiting trial. (Anti-trafficking advocates have campaigned for Ortega to be pulled into the Backpage trial.)

Minors trafficked on Backpage include a teenager who describes being gang-raped, choked and forced to perform sexual acts at gunpoint. Another was stabbed to death and another murdered in 2017, with her corpse burned.

As but one example of Ortega’s role in serving as apologist for the site, he attacked a CNN reporter for her exposé of the child exploitation on Backpage. Ortega accused the network of “junk science” and “mass paranoia” and criticized the broadcast as a “sensationalistic piece” that was “manipulative,” part of “a semireligious crusade” and feeding “the current panic about a nonexistent epidemic of sexual slavery.” (An estimated 15,000 to 50,000 women and children are forced into sexual slavery annually in the United States.)

Former colleagues consistently describe Ortega as toxic and abusive. Former Village Voice investigative journalist Wayne Barrett described Ortega as “a twisted human being, a terrible guy” who “demeans people who work for him.”

Dr. Steven Thrasher, assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University, came forward in April 2021 to state: “Ortega was easily the most abusive editor I have ever had.” Thrasher described how Ortega responded to Thrasher’s story pitch about the killing of a Black homeless woman when Thrasher was writing for The Voice: “I still remember the humiliation of him screaming at me in front of the staff on that day. How could I be so stupid, he screamed, not to get that the woman deserved to be killed by the cops?”

Ortega was “always abusive,” wrote Thrasher. “Screaming. Hitting the table. Shrieking at people.”

Ortega’s resumé prior to his time at Village Voice is equally disgraceful. In August 2002, New Times Los Angeles published a story written by unknown writer “Antoine Oman” entitled “Survive This! The two girls kidnapped and raped in the Antelope Valley are set to go to Hollywood.” The piece claimed a forthcoming NBC series pilot would star a pair of brutally raped teenagers as hosts of their own primetime reality show, which would feature real-life paroled repeat sex offenders.

The article was soon exposed as a fraud written by then-staffer Tony Ortega. Even as he was being outed as “Antoine Oman,” Ortega compounded the lie by writing yet another phony piece claiming the fictional writer had been fired for his transgression.

The Daily Cannibal, a media watchdog website, wrote: “Tony Ortega takes two teenagers, already brutally raped by thugs, and editorially sodomizes them by appropriating their identities, putting lies in their mouths, and pimping them as shameless opportunists.”

Three years later, Ortega wrote yet another fabricated story under another fake name, this time a cover story in The Pitch in Kansas City entitled “Rebel Hell” by “Cesar Oman.” Written as a news story, Ortega claimed city records showed a Confederate gravesite was found during the building of a new arena.

The story was entirely false. The press secretary for then-Missouri Governor Matt Blunt told the Kansas City Star she was “extremely disappointed that a publication purporting to be a news outlet would print a satirical, fantastical article and not identify it as such.”

Columbia Journalism Review, for its part, printed the following: “Let us count the ways in which this is wrong. It was bad enough that the spoof took cheap shots at politicians, put words in their mouths, and betrayed readers’ trust at a time when the media’s credibility is at an ebb. But the official explanation—that The Pitch raised “Rebel Hell” just because it could—is simply inexcusable. Journalism has enough problems without inventing pranks that suck in both citizens and government officials. There is a place in journalism for both smart social commentary and an irreverent take on local buffoonery in office. But fooling your readers, and then hooting at them for being fooled, qualifies as neither.”

Financial Support

As an unemployed hate blogger, Ortega is financially supported by his wife, Arielle Silverstein, a United Nations employee described by a fellow anti-Scientologist as the “power behind the throne” of Ortega’s internet hate domain.

Like her husband, Silverstein has a documented history of religious intolerance and discrimination against minorities. Using a pseudonym, Silverstein has promoted her online bigotry through postings referring to Christians as “suckers,” declaring her “dislike” of and refusal to work with Orthodox Jews, and making sweeping assertions about “Muslim society” and its “unhealthy” attitudes.