A short background note
Massimo Introvigne is an expert on international patent law, and also one of the five top leaders of the right-wing Catholic organisation, Alleanza Cattolica, a "sister group" of the Brazilian "Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property.". In his free time, Introvigne also runs CESNUR, a "Centre for Studies on New Religions," funded by the local government of Piemonte in Northern Italy. Introvigne also claims to be a sociologist, having taught Sociology of Religion first at a clerical seminary in Southern Italy and then - for three days a year - at a private Mexican institution in Rome. In 1998, Introvigne published a study on a little-known organisation called "New Acropolis," of which I had once been a member. In this study he made a series of positively false and libellous statements about me personally; the study was also seriously flawed from an academic point of view. To defend myself from this unprovoked libel, I set up the CESNUR Critical Page, analysing his study, and suggesting why it was so markedly defective and one-sided. The reason, I maintained, lay in the extremist political and ideological background of Dr Introvigne. Dr Introvigne and his lawyers have gone through the CESNUR Critical Page with a fine-tooth comb looking for anything to sue about; yet they have never come up with any mistake on my part, or even one offensive remark about Dr Introvigne. Introvigne's idea of a debate was as follows:
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