The smear campaign has been an intensive and dedicated effort to destroy our organization and spiritual teacher’s reputation, with a number of the key players stating that they wished to see The Gnostic Movement closed down, and has involved both online and offline activities. Here is a list of some of the things people involved in the smear campaign have done as part of it:

What they have done to Belzebuub

1. They have been taking virtually every aspect of his life they can find out about, manipulating it, twisting it, making false allegations about it and publishing it.

2. They look at whatever he has done and does, details of his home, details of his finances, his life, and where it suits their purpose they publish it and make untrue allegations about it. They claimed to have hired a private investigator to find out private information about his life.

3. They contacted Interpol with the intention of getting the police to investigate him.

4. They created a climate of religious hatred against him in Cyprus where the Orthodox Church is strong, making him appear on TV as a cult leader and the devil using false allegations. Prior to these TV shows a person who had tried to set up a group in favor of Belzebuub was told they would be killed if they did so in a certain area of a city in Cyprus – the neighbor making the threat said he would “cut off the heads” of all the people setting up the group if he could and would also go to the mayor and accuse them of doing bad things if they set up there. Witnesses state a main figure from the smear campaign who appeared on the TV show was aware of these threats before the TV show.

5. They have set up websites and twitter accounts in his name which make untrue allegations and defamatory statements about him.

6. They have put videos in YouTube about him, defaming him and mocking him.

7. The forums on his community website were infiltrated by this group in disguise. He was attacked in there and defamed, and it caused such serious problems within the forum community that a number of participants went on hunger strike in an attempt to try and stop the hate campaign, with one refusing to eat for over 5 days.

8. They sent emails, many of them unsolicited and harassing, to large contact lists of his colleagues and students (both present and former), and their families, to spread their false accusations against him. They also contacted people via phone to get them on their side.

9. They took emails of his and published them online which were property of The Gnostic Movement. The emails did not belong to them but to the organization. They put them up out of their true context in a false one they created, cutting out vital parts of them, removing the other correspondence, falsely framing him.

10. They put up press releases with untrue allegations about him, and they sent press releases to the media which would get their allegations spread widely.

11. They spread their untrue allegations to other websites and formed links to their website.

12. They got in touch with other groups like themselves and formed a campaign of religious hatred against him.

13. They have tried to stir the anti-cult movement and public against him using the cult mechanism and formula.

14. They have tried to blackmail him.

15. They have consistently stalked his presence in the public and attempted to smear it.

16. They collected testimonies from people who are against him and have used them to send to the media, anti-cult groups, published them on websites, and have publicized them on television.

17. A contributor to their campaign had put up his books online in electronic form, distributing them freely as her own work, removing him completely.

18. They have publicly blamed him for things he is not responsible for. For example, they have blamed Belzebuub for a woman removing her story from their website, however, we received an email from the person who negotiated the removal of the woman’s story due to its falsity and invasion of their privacy, and who confirmed that no one, let alone Belzebuub, was in contact with them about doing this. They have blamed Belzebuub for a woman going on hunger strike in protest against the attacks on Belzebuub, whom he had no contact with and whose strike was triggered by the harassment of people on these forums (mentioned in point 7.). They have accused Belzebuub of lying about the sale of a property, when what they have presented as evidence to justify their claim is only due to a matter of records that have not yet been updated by Government departments. They accused practitioners of Belzebuub’s teachings in Greece of a fraud which never existed, and has been refuted here, and then blamed it on Belzebuub who had no involvement in the event, using it to accuse him of illegal behavior. These are just a few examples.

19. Two psychologists were used to attack him and give the hate campaign credibility. One (who appeared on a TV show about it) was a friend of a friend of a leader of the hate campaign, the other who wrote a condemning report about Belzebuub was contacted by telephone and appears to have been paid (see point 20 below).

20. They falsely claim he has been classified as a cult leader by a prominent anti-cult organization, when he has not. They submitted his name to that organization, and claim that amounts to a classification, when it does not. One of our attendees actually called and spoke to the so-called “cult expert” that has written an article about Belzebuub. When asked if he had actually read anything by Belzebuub he said no, that he had only received the material that the ex-members heading the smear campaign had sent him. When asked whether he had been paid by them to write the article, he stayed silent…

21. People working from the Gnostic Teachings website have destroyed his Wikipedia page.

What they have done to people attending The Gnostic Movement

1. They uploaded derogatory propaganda comparing people in The Gnostic Movement to Nazis to the internet.

2. Many posters warning the public we are a “dangerous and destructive cult” have been put in a city in which we have a center, and posters advertising our courses were defaced and torn down—one perpetrator stated on an anti-cult website, “I would love to know what I can do to get the Belzebuub worshipers out of [city name], other than ripping down their posters whenever I can.”

3. In another city in which we operate, the Center sign was vandalized, “cult” posters were put up where public talks were given, and posters advertising our courses around the city were also defaced. Because of this, many of the center attendees have been afraid to go to The Gnostic Movement’s center.

4. They used a contact in the media to do a show on mainstream TV in Cyprus, promoting their false allegations and creating a climate of religious hatred (making Mark appear as the devil and denigrating attendees of The Gnostic Movement as mindless followers) in a country where an attendee of The Gnostic Movement had already received a death threat and where The Gnostic Movement has an operating study center. More on this here

5. They threatened to seek advice from the Greek Orthodox Church for the existence of a “dangerous heresy” in Greece – referring to The Gnostic Movement’s Greek study center.

6. They have anonymously attacked the forums on the Belzebuub community website intensively for a period of days, leading to a number of people going on hunger strike to protest for their campaign to end.

7. They took control of the organization The Gnostic Movement in Greece against the wishes of the directors and attendees, in order to close it down, and seized control of its Center by locking the legitimate directors out. They threatened one director that if he did not step down from his position that they would try and make him lose his job, and threatened all the legitimate directors that if they did not step down they would drive them to the courts for “fraud”.

8. They have set up a website and a Youtube channel in The Gnostic Movement’s name but inverted, to spread false allegations and deliberately appear in searches for The Gnostic Movement.

9. The contacted large numbers of current and former attendees of The Gnostic Movement around the world and their families, via email, phone, and in-person, to spread their false allegations and invite them to contribute to the smear campaign, and in doing so, turned some family members, and couples against each other through false accusations.

10. They have threatened numerous attendees of The Gnostic Movement with multiple law suits of unjustified claims for speaking out in their own defense against the smear campaign, using legal threats against anyone who speaks out about the smear campaign or who doesn’t comply with its demands.

11. The claimed to have contacted Interpol with the intention of getting the police to investigate The Gnostic Movement.

12. They have contacted a number of anti-cult groups, websites, and “experts” with false allegations to have them publish material on The Gnostic Movement.

13. They have taken the personal lives and private emails of people in The Gnostic Movement, and have distorted them, misrepresented them, and have published them amongst false allegations, along with publicly accusing The Gnostic Movement and a number of named individuals in it for things they have never done.

14. They have violated copyright laws by publishing material belonging to our organization and others.

15. They promoted their hate site and the allegations against The Gnostic Movement by taking false names and posting links to it in forums around the internet as if they were neutral readers.

16. They wrote press releases about The Gnostic Movement in an attempt to get the media to do stories about their false allegations.

To read a more detailed account of how people have been persecuted by this campaign, see How the Gnostics are being persecuted today

UP NEXT – The attempt to portray The Gnostic Movement as a “cult” and our response