Speaker 1: Ah, Welcome back to the Conspiracy Cast with Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: where every week I try to put irresponsibly out something
Speaker 1: that sends a chunk of our listeners down a very
Speaker 1: dark road. Now, Margaret, you were just telling us all
Speaker 1: that you've been snowed in recently. Yeah, why why don't
Speaker 1: you talk to me about that? Just a little bit? Okay,
Speaker 1: it snows. I live rurally. I can only I can
Speaker 1: get out with my you know, giant pickup truck or whatever,
Speaker 1: but the mail can't cut up the driveway, the gravel road.
Speaker 1: So you you, you were, you were? You know what
Speaker 1: happens when there's so much snow that it's difficult to
Speaker 1: leave your house. How would you describe that state of affairs?
Speaker 1: I love it. I'm a prepper. My house is completely
Speaker 1: self sustaining even if the power out. I like, yeah, Margaret,
Speaker 1: is it true that you secretly were in the United
Speaker 1: States military and stole government documents? Oh, I'm snowed in.
Speaker 1: That took a lot of setup. That was mostly failure,
Speaker 1: but I know it in the end, was it was it? Really? Uh? Yep?
Speaker 1: It sure was. I was surprised that you're you're sticking
Speaker 1: to these like low level. I mean that stuff you
Speaker 1: were just saying is true, but I'm surprised that you
Speaker 1: haven't gotten into the real conspiracy about how gold is
Speaker 1: actually corrosive and it destroys your brain if you're near
Speaker 1: large quantities of it. Wow, Margaret, I mean, what's the
Speaker 1: responsible thing to do then with all of your gold?
Speaker 1: If you have it and you can feel it impacting
Speaker 1: your brain, Robert, you should bury your gold. I think
Speaker 1: that's too dangerous. I think people need to send their
Speaker 1: gold to our po box and our actually trained a
Speaker 1: romancers will will will decontaminate the gold, um, and and
Speaker 1: find a safe place to bury it. We'll put the
Speaker 1: Midas touch. That's right, that's our motto. Is this the
Speaker 1: last episode of the series. This is the last episode
Speaker 1: of the series. All right, we have to we have
Speaker 1: to we have to get we have to get all
Speaker 1: of all the last bits in now before him. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And speaking of ending, um, it's about to be the
Speaker 1: end of Carrie's life. UM. Not a particularly long life. UM,
Speaker 1: with the exception of Bob Wilson, Uh, none of like
Speaker 1: the kind of most prominent early Discordians live crazy long life.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of them that there's a lot of guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah JFK still bouncing around down in Texas after fighting
Speaker 1: that mummy. Yeah. Um yeah, so he's he's kind of
Speaker 1: like the last years of his life he spends rambling
Speaker 1: throughout the South and making zines in Atlanta's little Five
Speaker 1: Points neighborhood. Um, one of the ways he gets by
Speaker 1: kind of he never really makes a profit at it.
Speaker 1: But like if you if you send him a dollar,
Speaker 1: he will send you a bunch of random wall newspapers.
Speaker 1: And if you send him a letter saying I don't
Speaker 1: have any money, he'll also send you a bunch of
Speaker 1: random wall newspapers. Basically, if you send carry either currency
Speaker 1: or anything else, he'll send you a bunch of his zines.
Speaker 1: And that's just he's kind of able to maintain a
Speaker 1: marginal like living by doing that. We do but with gold.
Speaker 1: If you send us gold, we will either send you
Speaker 1: a zine or not. Yeah, one of those two things
Speaker 1: will happen. And if you later encounter razine in like
Speaker 1: a bar or something, just assume that was us too, YEA.
Speaker 1: In that way, if you don't receive anything, you won't
Speaker 1: feel ripped off. Now, the other thing that's happens in
Speaker 1: this is that like again, all these kind of like
Speaker 1: punk kids are coagulating in little five Points because it's
Speaker 1: a place you can get by without having sort of
Speaker 1: a very regular income. There's not like a lot of
Speaker 1: attention from the local government on that part of down yet,
Speaker 1: and all of these people, particularly a lot of young
Speaker 1: punk ladies, find Carrie and kind of adopt him as
Speaker 1: a guru. Um he should not be yes, um this
Speaker 1: there there are some problems with this, these these young
Speaker 1: women who call themselves the thorn Lyett's um. Because that's
Speaker 1: not that's not good for Carrie. That's not the thing
Speaker 1: what this guy's brain needs. UM. Now Again, Carrie never
Speaker 1: seeks treatment in or help in any meaningful way. UM,
Speaker 1: and his conspiratorial beliefs continue to evolve. This starts with
Speaker 1: kind of his anger at his ex wife, but it
Speaker 1: eventually he becomes convinced that both her and every woman
Speaker 1: that he has ever slept with, like every woman who
Speaker 1: approaches him, who hits on him, are all part of
Speaker 1: a conspiracy. They're all Nazis who were secretly sent over
Speaker 1: to the United States to have sex with him and
Speaker 1: breed a future fearer. UM. No, though he is. He
Speaker 1: is just like fully solid into his own his own
Speaker 1: hole that he does yeah, yeah, and you know that's
Speaker 1: actually very sad. But it is also like the kid
Speaker 1: on TikTok. There's a kid on TikTok who's like a
Speaker 1: fan fiction kid who like does yeah, some sort of
Speaker 1: part of nerd culture I'm not familiar with, but he
Speaker 1: has convinced himself that he's the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler
Speaker 1: and has gotten a like nose piercing that when his
Speaker 1: Harris styled a certain way, he looks kind of like,
Speaker 1: honestly not a bad resemblance. And I'm gonna be again,
Speaker 1: to be totally fair, if Hitler was reincarnated, that's exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of person he'd be in twenty twenty three. Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert can't take all the blame for that one. No, no,
Speaker 1: get it, get get get ready for the six part
Speaker 1: series on twink Hitler. Oh, that's that's going to be
Speaker 1: more than six parts. Garrison Behind the Twinkler. We're just
Speaker 1: launching a new weekly. Oh god, keeping up with him. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one thing that seems undeniable is that Carrie's belief in
Speaker 1: a conspiracy behind the JFK assassination only deepened with time.
Speaker 1: He came to be convinced that he was a central
Speaker 1: part of the plot, and one of his last public
Speaker 1: appearances was in nineteen ninety two on a TV show
Speaker 1: called A Current Affair. We're gonna play a segment from
Speaker 1: this let's just let's just watch this incredible piece of
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties television starring our friend Carrie Thornley. He emerges
Speaker 1: from the shadow, Okay, grim shadows that have cost up
Speaker 1: all over a man with a frightening secret, a terrible boast.
Speaker 1: I wanted to shooting. I wanted to assassinate him very much.
Speaker 1: You've just seen and heard a man called Carrie Thornley
Speaker 1: use the exotic background of New Orleans as his headquarters
Speaker 1: for a deranged plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy's
Speaker 1: one regret his good friend of marine buddy Lehi Voswald
Speaker 1: got there before him. In fact, he was so close
Speaker 1: to Oswald that he even read a book about him
Speaker 1: before the assassination. Now again, listen to the words that
Speaker 1: Terry Thornley and shot up. I wanted him dead. I
Speaker 1: would have shot him myself. I would have stood there
Speaker 1: with a rival and pulled the trigger if I'd had
Speaker 1: the chance. Terry Thornley talked for the first time in
Speaker 1: history about the hybrillest competition imaginable a rate to kill
Speaker 1: President Kennedy, and Thornley wants the world to know he tried.
Speaker 1: He's heart I told the Secret Service. I said, the
Speaker 1: only reason I didn't kill him was because I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time with a gun.
Speaker 1: The world met Terry Thornley in the nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: So you see what's happened here at number one, Kerry.
Speaker 1: It's moved on from like you know, I was mind
Speaker 1: controlled to like I had my own plan to kill Kennedy,
Speaker 1: and I was like fighting with Oswald to pull it off.
Speaker 1: But what's really happening here, more than anything, is that
Speaker 1: these like sleazy daytime TV fucks are using a very
Speaker 1: sick man in order to make content, Like this is
Speaker 1: his mustache. They stole his mustache. He does have like
Speaker 1: an amish beard do, but that's pretty messed up, like
Speaker 1: he's they it's very They're like framing all of this
Speaker 1: almost like an episode of like Unsolved Mysteries. In between
Speaker 1: as they cut through to like this footage of Carrie
Speaker 1: walking down like a darkened street and everything. It's pretty exploitative.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's kind of like the last big public
Speaker 1: thing that Carrie does. And I'm not one for conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: It is kind of sad. I'm not, you know, one
Speaker 1: for conspiracies, but from just in order to be perfectly responsible,
Speaker 1: I do think I need to show you both the
Speaker 1: logo for the show that he has his last appearance on.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a pyramid. It's a pyramid. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: pyramid directly behind the current affair logo. So interesting. Interesting,
Speaker 1: What a year was this? Um, this is nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: So this is this is a year after after he
Speaker 1: published zen Archy, which is kind of one of one
Speaker 1: of a weirdly long lasting text that he wrote towards
Speaker 1: the end of his life. Yeah. Um, and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of his last like TV type appearance, although
Speaker 1: I think the last appearance he actually makes is right
Speaker 1: before he passes on. He dies in ninety eight. Um,
Speaker 1: a bunch of because Discordians were some of the very
Speaker 1: first people on the Internet. We're talking like Usenet days,
Speaker 1: and like there were a bunch of different kind of
Speaker 1: fan websites to Thornley and Bob Anton Wilson and all
Speaker 1: all of these other guys, and one of them gets
Speaker 1: him and like sits down with him and conducts a
Speaker 1: live chat session interview where a bunch of Discordians around
Speaker 1: the world are able to like ask him questions. And
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the first times anyone had
Speaker 1: done this. This is the late nineteen nine, so there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of people who beat him to that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. That is now like the language through
Speaker 1: which fandoms are conducted, which is also interesting. I was
Speaker 1: terminally online in the late nineties and I was telling
Speaker 1: Garrison about this, that a lot of overlap with them
Speaker 1: Discordian and especially like Church of SubGenius and all of
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, and so it's just like that
Speaker 1: just really tracks to me. And it was like these
Speaker 1: like slightly older people who were like the cool weirdos
Speaker 1: on the internet that I was like, whoa, look at
Speaker 1: these cool weirdos on the Internet. I would go on
Speaker 1: IRC chat and like, yeah, meet all these Discordians. Now. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Carrie in the state that he's in, is not taking
Speaker 1: He's not like visiting a doctor regularly, and he also
Speaker 1: just doesn't have access to particularly good healthcare, and this
Speaker 1: becomes particularly a problem when he gets evicted by the city.
Speaker 1: They kind of like coming in clean house and Little
Speaker 1: five Points and kick out a lot of like the
Speaker 1: crusty radicals. And so he and a bunch of yeah
Speaker 1: these kids all wind up sleeping in a very specific
Speaker 1: forest in Atlanta, where he gets sick and is eventually
Speaker 1: hospitalized and dies. Um. Wild. That happens in November of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. He is sixty years old when this occurs. Um,
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I think that's interesting. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: the specific forest that is now being turned into copsody
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's right outside a Little five Points. If if you
Speaker 1: have more details on that, I could I could probably
Speaker 1: confirm that, um, if he has not found them, but
Speaker 1: I yeah, it's worth looking into because it I mean,
Speaker 1: it is the Melanni Forest is just like a few
Speaker 1: miles directly south from Little five Points. There is there's
Speaker 1: a road that connects you straight from from a Little
Speaker 1: five Points towards to that section of the forest. The
Speaker 1: late eighties that we're sorry, in the late nineties. That
Speaker 1: that would have been right right after the city shut
Speaker 1: down that area of forest that operated as a prison farm. Um,
Speaker 1: so that would have been it would kind of entered
Speaker 1: its first stage of like not really being used for
Speaker 1: anything for the next like twenty twenty years or so. Yeah. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a kind of thing I know exactly.
Speaker 1: They just say, like the forest kind of near a
Speaker 1: little five points but interesting. Yeah, it's kind of one
Speaker 1: of the last places he spends any time. So he's
Speaker 1: actually still living. I'm sorry this all making up conspiracy
Speaker 1: things too much fun. Still living under the forest, and um,
Speaker 1: I don't know where to go from there. If only
Speaker 1: um obviously he is not a man who had an
Speaker 1: easy life. The high Discordian leaders did not in general
Speaker 1: have easy lives. Um. Greg Hill, as we've said, kind
Speaker 1: of collapses mentally after his divorce from his wife. Um,
Speaker 1: he gets a job. He eventually becomes a like upper
Speaker 1: mid level executive at Bank of America. Oh that's well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's even sadder than that, because he will work as
Speaker 1: a bank executive during the day and then for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life he just comes home. He does
Speaker 1: not interact with anyone and he drinks himself to death.
Speaker 1: He drinks himself to death like it's a job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is that is how Greg Hill leaves the world.
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson lives the longest of the guys we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, into the early two thousands. He is
Speaker 1: a much healthier person. There are some like criticisms of him.
Speaker 1: He kind of he has some like very specific critiques
Speaker 1: of feminism that I think some people have uncharitably compared
Speaker 1: to being an early men's rights advocate. That's not actually
Speaker 1: what I mean. From one thing, his wife was a
Speaker 1: fairly influential feminist activist in her day. He had a
Speaker 1: lot of specific issues with specific things certain feminists were
Speaker 1: saying that he criticized, but was not like anti woman
Speaker 1: in any particular way. Now he is. He is a
Speaker 1: guy in who's writing shit in the sixties and seventies, um,
Speaker 1: which falls over time, right, Like there's some misogyny you
Speaker 1: can find in this early stuff. It also afferent, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time when a lot of the feminism is
Speaker 1: specifically anti porn. Also yeah, yeah, he is someone who
Speaker 1: changes over time. And nothing that I've seen of his
Speaker 1: is like like hateful, you know, like, he's not like
Speaker 1: a cool or a violent person. He's just you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you go in and read a bunch
Speaker 1: of his stuff, you'll find some stuff that doesn't age
Speaker 1: well and some stuff that you disagree with, which is
Speaker 1: going to be the case with everybody who thought of
Speaker 1: things that were interesting at any point in history. Not me,
Speaker 1: not not Margaret future actually hum yeah, and and not me.
Speaker 1: You can find Maya. It's actually kind of a sequel
Speaker 1: to zinn Anarchy. It's called put the lead back in
Speaker 1: the gas tanks. Comma fuck them kids, And it's sort
Speaker 1: of my manifesto. UM. And I think really people are
Speaker 1: going to get a lot of good out of that.
Speaker 1: I also think bicycle helmet should be illegal, So you know,
Speaker 1: check that book out. Follow my five pillars of making
Speaker 1: sure children don't graduate school at accelerated rates, um, all
Speaker 1: good stuff. School zone speed limit should be fifty five
Speaker 1: miles an hour. It's interesting because as we're kind of discussing,
Speaker 1: like the the end of the lives of these people, UM,
Speaker 1: a few years before of a few years before Greg
Speaker 1: Hill died, he gave an interview UM to loom Panics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is like a was a publisher for both weird
Speaker 1: left wing and right wing Esota Rica. Yeah. Yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: that he he He talked about how, like his pen
Speaker 1: name Maloclipse the younger he like described it as like
Speaker 1: as like a spirit that like entered him and he
Speaker 1: was he was, he was, he was, he was. He's
Speaker 1: able to like channel writing through through the spear, which
Speaker 1: is why he credited the work to to this to
Speaker 1: to to this entity. But he also says that like, um,
Speaker 1: that the entity kind of left him once. Yeah, once
Speaker 1: Principia was writing, he kind of like it left and
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, part of him is like it like
Speaker 1: disappeared over time. We'll actually talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that in a second. I've got to call from him.
Speaker 1: You'll find interesting, Oh awkward interjection. Robert forgot to do
Speaker 1: the ad break back when he was supposed to. So
Speaker 1: we're editing this in crudely, probably in the middle of
Speaker 1: a sentence being spoken by Garrison, and we'll probably come
Speaker 1: back from this ad break mid sentence spoken by Garrison,
Speaker 1: just to fuck with him. But yeah, Bob Wilson is
Speaker 1: the guy who kind of lives the longest and he
Speaker 1: you know, the last years of his life are racked
Speaker 1: with pain due to post polio syndrome, but he remains
Speaker 1: extremely productive. And the thing that he has that that
Speaker 1: I don't think really any of the others had, particularly
Speaker 1: not Hillan Thornley. Bob Wilson is a weirdo. He's into
Speaker 1: all this esoteric shit. He's also a professional, like a
Speaker 1: professional writer who writes for a massive publication. He knows
Speaker 1: how to pack gage ideas in ways to get a
Speaker 1: lot of people to pay attention to them. And so
Speaker 1: it's Bob Wilson. It's his work that's going to kind
Speaker 1: of bring Discordianism to its widest audience and also have
Speaker 1: the biggest long term cultural impact in mainstream conceptions of
Speaker 1: the illuminati, because that's the thing that Wilson does the most.
Speaker 1: That Wilson's work does the most. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shay, his fellow editor at Playboy,
Speaker 1: start to publish a series of three novels, eventually known
Speaker 1: as the Illuminatus Trilogy. The book is a very weird
Speaker 1: piece of fiction. One of the things they're doing during
Speaker 1: this is like every chapter, basically they switch off, and
Speaker 1: so they were kind of trying to write each other
Speaker 1: every chapter into a corner that the other couldn't get
Speaker 1: out of. Assos. I know, it's it's not structured the
Speaker 1: way most books are. The foundational premise is that all
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, even the conflicting ones, are true, and the
Speaker 1: history of the world is largely determined by a secret
Speaker 1: war waged between the all controlling Illuminati and the Discordians,
Speaker 1: who are like the insurgents fighting against the Illuminati and
Speaker 1: also are part of the Illuminati. It's a very it's
Speaker 1: that kind of book. Um And again, one of the
Speaker 1: things actually because like they're everyone is a double agent, right,
Speaker 1: and like the Discordians are actually deeply enmeshed in the Illuminati.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's happening here that Wilson is
Speaker 1: talking about is the fact that if you were a
Speaker 1: radical in the sixties, you came to the realization that
Speaker 1: like a significant chunk of the people you organized with
Speaker 1: were Feds, and so like that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why all of this is like that's such a like
Speaker 1: there's so many different like quadruple agents and stuff in
Speaker 1: this in this series. Um, so it's just like working
Speaker 1: for like mainstream publications Uh, yeah, you're you're critiquing capitalism
Speaker 1: or participating capitalism. And I don't actually think that's like
Speaker 1: bad obviously, but it's it's messy, and I could leave
Speaker 1: you with that sort of sense of yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a very messy book. And so this is
Speaker 1: a hugely influential book. You know, we'll talk about this
Speaker 1: in a second, but like you, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that's influential in ways that are mostly not super visible,
Speaker 1: because when people put hints and references to this stuff
Speaker 1: in their work, they're often very coy about it. And
Speaker 1: just because of how influential this was and sort of
Speaker 1: conceptions of the illuminati and conspiracies, a lot of it's
Speaker 1: faded into the background since then. But yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to I think probably the best way of kind of
Speaker 1: talking about the way this stuff works is the idea
Speaker 1: of the twenty three enigma, which is a big thing
Speaker 1: in the Illuminatis trilogy, and it's it's basically like one
Speaker 1: of the things that Wilson does in this book is
Speaker 1: he finds there's all these different specific dates in history
Speaker 1: that are influential that involve the number twenty three. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of like very specific fucked up historical shit
Speaker 1: that happens in nineteen twenty three, and he'll he'll pull
Speaker 1: all of these different dates in moments and stuff together,
Speaker 1: because if you start listing enough stuff like that, the
Speaker 1: kind of pattern recognition chunk of your brain lights up
Speaker 1: and you start to attach a specific like significance to
Speaker 1: the number twenty three. And so, like Wilson's kind of
Speaker 1: goal here, this was another little way of bringing people
Speaker 1: to Chapel perilyss is if you kind of like list
Speaker 1: out all these different ways that the number twenty three
Speaker 1: is significant in history, maybe people will start to question
Speaker 1: whether or not the Illuminati is like picking spis you know,
Speaker 1: is there a conspiracy that's doing certain things, that's carrying
Speaker 1: out all these assassinations and revolutions on dates that have
Speaker 1: a twenty three in them. Are they doing it because
Speaker 1: like they're trying to signal to people what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Is this some sort of message or is it just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of like like, if there's enough
Speaker 1: things happening in the world that if you like pull
Speaker 1: out every significant event that happened on the twenty third
Speaker 1: day of a month, you'll get a bunch of weird shit, right,
Speaker 1: which is the where I tend to land on things.
Speaker 1: But this kind of like works never one. If you
Speaker 1: read the Illuminatus trilogy, you're going to wind up like
Speaker 1: just noticing twenty three's forever, but also because of how
Speaker 1: influential the books are, sit down and watch the fucking wire, right,
Speaker 1: and see how many twenty threes you see on the
Speaker 1: back of squad cars or in people's shirts and jackets.
Speaker 1: Watch like any big show and keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for the number twenty three, and you'll note that it
Speaker 1: shows up more often than it seems like it should.
Speaker 1: And is this just because Michael Jordan is a popular
Speaker 1: basketball player? That's certainly some of it, or does a
Speaker 1: lot of it have to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: a bunch of the people who were making, particularly the
Speaker 1: TV shows that were big in the late nineties early
Speaker 1: two thousands, had been fans of this stuff and stuck
Speaker 1: twenty threes into their work. Well, that's also the case.
Speaker 1: And because of how effectively Bob does this, and how
Speaker 1: many people pick up on this and start sticking twenty
Speaker 1: threes into art and television and stuff, a conspiracy and
Speaker 1: actual conspiracy develops over the number twenty three, that it's
Speaker 1: somehow tied, you know, the secret society running the world,
Speaker 1: which culminates in a two thousand and seven film starring
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey titled twenty three. I've never even heard of
Speaker 1: this movie. Oh yeah, it was, it was. It was
Speaker 1: a big deal back in the day. I guess this
Speaker 1: is like really lived under a rock. Yeah, But I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing that Bob Wilson is doing is he's he's
Speaker 1: basically taking advantage of the human brains gift for pattern recognition,
Speaker 1: because it can kind of, for one thing, when you
Speaker 1: get people locked into this pattern than when you reveal
Speaker 1: things that have to do with like the number twenty three,
Speaker 1: it feels like more of a reveal, Right, it just
Speaker 1: kind of like works narratively. And also Bob Wilson liked
Speaker 1: fucking with people, and this like had a clear impact,
Speaker 1: but it also has kind of formed. This is the
Speaker 1: baseline of a lot of the tactics that are used
Speaker 1: by conspiracists today because the way that social media works,
Speaker 1: if you can start like seeding in references to conspiracies
Speaker 1: in a bunch of ways that go viral when people
Speaker 1: start seeing all this shit popping up on their timeline,
Speaker 1: and maybe it comes up on their timeline in a
Speaker 1: moment that's particularly significant to them, and then they put
Speaker 1: more weight into it. Like all of this stuff is
Speaker 1: a lot easier to do. Bob had to draw you
Speaker 1: in to a thousand page fiction book to like tweak
Speaker 1: people's heads with this shit. Now you can do that
Speaker 1: at scale using algorithms on Twitter and YouTube and shit.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying people have it's like publicity stuff. It's like,
Speaker 1: in publicity, you expect someone to not buy a product
Speaker 1: until like the tenth time they hear it. And this
Speaker 1: is this is true for fucking anarchists and radicals and whatever. Also, right,
Speaker 1: like like if you're trying to sell a book or
Speaker 1: you're trying to get people to have interest in a book,
Speaker 1: they're not going to do anything about it the first
Speaker 1: several times they hear it. And so it is really
Speaker 1: interesting that it's the same strategy. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: the goal of my operation. Mind fuck Bob Wilson's goal.
Speaker 1: And these guys are all folks who are on the left.
Speaker 1: They're all people who are also activists. Is like to
Speaker 1: kind of Robert Guffey, who's written a book called Operation
Speaker 1: mind Fucking. Writes about this, summarizes the goal is like
Speaker 1: they want to break the trance that kept America at war,
Speaker 1: blindly consuming and oblivious to its impact on the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, destabilize the dominant cultural narrative through pranks
Speaker 1: and confusion like that was essentially the goal. But as
Speaker 1: Guffey notes, over the ensuing decades, it was the progressive
Speaker 1: left whose ideas wound up being mainstreamed really from all
Speaker 1: in the family onward. It was progressive values in fictional
Speaker 1: TV maud to Mash Murphy Brown to the West Wing,
Speaker 1: and as that became the dominant cultural narrative, Operation mind
Speaker 1: fuck became a tool of the old right. And that
Speaker 1: is over time kind of what you see is as
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff, not all of it. Obviously
Speaker 1: these guys are much more radical than the fucking West Wing.
Speaker 1: But as some of this, like these attitudes towards um,
Speaker 1: you know, militarism and shit, and and attitudes towards like,
Speaker 1: you know, sexual liberation and u like that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like radical political equality and whatnot, as those become more
Speaker 1: mainstreamed them the it's like the toolbox loses its power
Speaker 1: for that side. Right, but becomes a more powerful tool
Speaker 1: of the people who are now kind of the insurgents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the point that Guffey is making.
Speaker 1: There's degrees to which I disagree with him, but I
Speaker 1: think he's kind of like broadly looking at this in
Speaker 1: a way that's that's that's useful. Well, So we don't
Speaker 1: why we don't a sign, like we don't hold tactic
Speaker 1: sacred is because like tactics themselves are applicable in certain
Speaker 1: contexts and not another context and can be used by
Speaker 1: all kinds of people. So if there's not a moral
Speaker 1: weight attached to a tactic, then I don't feel bad
Speaker 1: if the right wing is using Operation mind fuck type stuff,
Speaker 1: because of course they are, because if they're the underdogs,
Speaker 1: that's what they'll use. Like, yeah, it's like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a gun on it on the table, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they've done, is they've built a gun and
Speaker 1: they set it down on a table. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they try they used it first, and we can. I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, arguable, like the degree to which
Speaker 1: it was successful or not. Um. And I do think
Speaker 1: it's interesting because one of the things, like we're trying
Speaker 1: both to talk about sort of the broader impact on
Speaker 1: American politics and culture that the aftershocks of Operation mind
Speaker 1: Fuck had. But the other story is the impact that
Speaker 1: it had on like conspiracy culture itself and even like
Speaker 1: the conception of the Illuminati. And this has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that, again, Robert Wilson and
Speaker 1: Robert Shay are both really good writers from like a
Speaker 1: capitalist standpoint in terms of their ability to write things
Speaker 1: that spread and can be sold, and this has led
Speaker 1: a lot of creators to adapt their work. They're also
Speaker 1: very influenced by HP Lovecraft, who was kind of an
Speaker 1: early creative commons advocate in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have used those terms, but he was this
Speaker 1: advocate of, like, yeah, people should be taking my stories
Speaker 1: in this mythos that I've built in writing their own
Speaker 1: stories in it. And that's also kind of the attitude
Speaker 1: that Wilson and Shay seem to have towards a lot
Speaker 1: of this. And so a lot of people adapt versions
Speaker 1: of the Illuminatis trilogy. And this leads to in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties when Kerry Thornley is going on that
Speaker 1: TV show to talk about how he was racing his
Speaker 1: buddy Oswald to kill Kennedy. A little Austin based pen
Speaker 1: and paper game company called Steve Jackson Games makes a
Speaker 1: card game, and Steve Jackson Games makes a lot of
Speaker 1: card games. They Munchkin is probably their biggest seller now.
Speaker 1: But they make a game in the early nineties called
Speaker 1: Illuminati New World Order, and it's based in part on
Speaker 1: the Illuminatis trilogy and in part on just like Shit
Speaker 1: in the News. And the nineteen ninety four edition of
Speaker 1: this game includes a card called Terrorist Nuke and Margaret
Speaker 1: how she described that card. That is a picture of
Speaker 1: the World Trade Centers being blowed up, and not blowed
Speaker 1: up from the bottom, like, no, not from the bottom,
Speaker 1: from about where that plane hit it. Yeah, this card
Speaker 1: gives plus ten power or resistance your choice to any
Speaker 1: violent group you control with violent is capacitalized. Well, it
Speaker 1: certainly gave plus ten empower to the American government. There's
Speaker 1: another card. I forget what it's called, but it just
Speaker 1: it shows the Pentagon exploding in a particular section and
Speaker 1: the way that the Pinnagonics. Yeah, I mean the band
Speaker 1: the Coup put out like them hanging out in front
Speaker 1: of some blowed up world towers like I think that
Speaker 1: week or some shit like it's just an idea whose
Speaker 1: time had Am I gonna finish that sentence? No, but
Speaker 1: certainly it was an image that many people had thought
Speaker 1: of before it happened. That is, like, there's even stuff
Speaker 1: like in the Simpsons. There is there's stuff all over
Speaker 1: of things resembling nine to eleven that happened in like
Speaker 1: the two decades prior. I will say none of them
Speaker 1: quite as much as this reson. Yes, absolutely, it is
Speaker 1: a little striking yeah. Um. Now, the almost startling pressions
Speaker 1: of this card, and the fact that it came from
Speaker 1: a card game called Illuminati New World Order led to
Speaker 1: viral conspiracy theories that the actual Illuminated had faked the
Speaker 1: nine to eleven attacks and used this card game as
Speaker 1: what Alex Jones called predictive programming to seat awareness of
Speaker 1: their crimes. The crowning moment of this particular conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: came when Osama bin Laden was assassinated in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: The CIA gained access to his hard drive, and the
Speaker 1: contents of this hard drive are now all publicly available.
Speaker 1: They contain a PDF titled smoking Gun Proof that Illuminati
Speaker 1: planned terrible events many years ago to bring down our culture.
Speaker 1: The article that follows is an exhaustive dissection of the
Speaker 1: Illuminati card game on Osama Bin Laden's hard drive. Again,
Speaker 1: Steve Jackson's game must have made bank off of this.
Speaker 1: They were just sitting back being like, yeah, yeah. The
Speaker 1: other thing that happens right around this time is they're
Speaker 1: making like a cyberpunk role playing game, which includes a
Speaker 1: bunch of hacking shit. And because the FBI, especially in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, is not very doesn't know anything about computers,
Speaker 1: they like freak Out and aid Steve Jackson games. So like,
Speaker 1: after this comes out, there's a massive federal raid on
Speaker 1: this gaming company. It's all a coincidence. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is and especially when this shit shows up on Ben
Speaker 1: Laden's hard drive, like this is a lot of people's
Speaker 1: chapel perilous moment, right Yeah, you're like, why how would
Speaker 1: this be in his hard drive? And obviously there had drive.
Speaker 1: There was so much shit, including like all of the
Speaker 1: fucking Looney Tunes cartoons you could ever want um. But
Speaker 1: if you're if a part of your brain at any
Speaker 1: point this went like, huh, I wonder if something we're
Speaker 1: just going on I mean you know, that's Operation mind
Speaker 1: Fuck working as intended. Um. Now, the Illuminatus Trilogy ironically
Speaker 1: made the Illuminati reel to millions of people. This is
Speaker 1: due in part to the relevance of the books themselves.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen eighties, the Illuminatus Trilogy was made
Speaker 1: into a stage play, which was so popular it launched
Speaker 1: the careers of Bill Night and Jim Broadbent. The Queen
Speaker 1: of England attended the opening. Um. It is a weirdly
Speaker 1: influential play. UM. So uh yeah, the Queen of England
Speaker 1: attends this play based on this ridiculous series of books. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course Illuminati imagery. We're just we're posting this
Speaker 1: on a day when like Elon Musk posted an Illuminati meme.
Speaker 1: Jay Z and Beyonce have incorporated Illuminati symbolism in that
Speaker 1: their acts, which have convinced a lot of people that
Speaker 1: they are, in fact in the Illuminati. Um. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: research suggested that about half the US population believes in
Speaker 1: at least one conspiracy theory, and one of the most
Speaker 1: popular is the existence of the Illuminati. I suspect it's
Speaker 1: probably over half at this point. The QC theory a
Speaker 1: lot has happened to reality since twenty fifteen. And honestly,
Speaker 1: if you stopped happen, reality stopped existing. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean consensus reality took a big hit. We all there
Speaker 1: were It's almost like, you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: use society is like, uh, some fucking like worm traveling
Speaker 1: through the soil. We hit a rock and burst into
Speaker 1: pieces and like that's now You've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: little worms that formed out of the carcass of that
Speaker 1: big worm. And we're all tunneling in different directions and
Speaker 1: some of us have wound up in piles of shit. Huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that maybe is better. I use it as
Speaker 1: the like the way of understanding majority reality is like
Speaker 1: the ice is thicker where more people are and stuff,
Speaker 1: and like out on the edge is like where some
Speaker 1: of the more fringe things happens, and there's no value
Speaker 1: in something being fringe or not right, like much like
Speaker 1: Operation mind Fuck. It's like there's no value fucking people's heads.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, sometimes it just feels like we fucking
Speaker 1: the ice flow just split in half. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is um you know, obviously, like Q went on, conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory is a rebranded Illuminati conspiracy theory. They are taking
Speaker 1: the joke that these guys made about how the CIA
Speaker 1: and the Republican Party and the Democrat Party and the
Speaker 1: anarchists and YadA YadA, we're all, you know, part of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy together. The actors just taking universities, the people
Speaker 1: in the media. They even even even the current fucking
Speaker 1: stuff with like you know, the the the elites pushing
Speaker 1: gender ideology and all, like the antitrans stuff is just
Speaker 1: is just another version of the Illuminati. Like it's all
Speaker 1: the same shit. And if any of those people would
Speaker 1: get my pronouns right, as if any of the people
Speaker 1: that they think are like controlling and trying to make
Speaker 1: everyone trans would like fucking get my pronouns right. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's it's interesting too because um uh, what you
Speaker 1: actually kind of see here because it's not just the
Speaker 1: Discordians that like Discordian attitudes towards the Illuminati that have
Speaker 1: been taken up by Q and on. They're kind of
Speaker 1: merging the Discordian depiction of the Illuminati with the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society's depiction of the Illuminati. So like like that's
Speaker 1: really what you've seen happen here, which is such a
Speaker 1: strange thing, but I don't see any other way to
Speaker 1: kind of parse out the intellectual DNA of this movement. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because at this point, for one thing,
Speaker 1: some of the first people to recognize what was happening
Speaker 1: with the alt right and like what was happening kind
Speaker 1: of with all of these different social movements, these right
Speaker 1: wing social movements that have spread through conspiracies over the
Speaker 1: Internet were old Discordians, and a lot of these people
Speaker 1: have kind of come to the conclusion that not only
Speaker 1: did Operation mind Fuck fail in its initial noble goal,
Speaker 1: but it had been subverted and turned into a weapon.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote from Guffey here again. The
Speaker 1: parallels between the Discordian goddess Heiress and the Egyptian frog
Speaker 1: headed god Keck should be obvious. Both were created to
Speaker 1: represent the spirit of chaos, disruption, and anti authoritarianism, and
Speaker 1: many Altright memes, Keck resembles Donald Trump with a froglike face.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, depicting Trump as a half human half reptilian
Speaker 1: hybrid is meant to be a compliment to the president.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, conspiracy theorist David Ike grew to
Speaker 1: fame by traveling around the world accusing various world leaders
Speaker 1: of being shape shifting reptilians in disguise. Today, Trump supporters
Speaker 1: clothe him in a reptilian form as a tribute they
Speaker 1: perceive him to be a cold blooded agent of pure chaos.
Speaker 1: I was literally just looking up all of the stuff
Speaker 1: linking the peppe Keck thing to the Yeah, the entire
Speaker 1: way that Fortune was using this like specifically influenced by
Speaker 1: the operation mind folk stuff specifically influenced by like the
Speaker 1: chaos magic stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's fucked up and
Speaker 1: you're you're not gonna Obviously, the odds that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: himself knows any of this are basically zero, but the
Speaker 1: odds that there are people in his orbit who were
Speaker 1: aware of a lot of this history are quite a
Speaker 1: bit higher. And you're not going to find smoking guns here. Um.
Speaker 1: But there there are some things that I've read over
Speaker 1: the years that set like send me back to that
Speaker 1: chap will paralless space. Um. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: an article in the Guardian, and this is from way
Speaker 1: back when the Cambridge Analytic a scandal broke, like if
Speaker 1: you can remember then, So this is this is an
Speaker 1: article about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As Wiley describes it,
Speaker 1: he was the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up
Speaker 1: creating quote Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mind fuck tool in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Steve Bannon, then executive chairman of the alt
Speaker 1: right news network Bright Bart, was Whiley's boss, and Robert Mercer,
Speaker 1: the secret US hedge fund billionaire and Republican donor, was
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytic as investor. And the idea they brought into
Speaker 1: being was to bring big data and social media to
Speaker 1: an established military methodology information operations, then turn it on
Speaker 1: the US electorate. Now, is WHILEY using the term mind
Speaker 1: fuck just because that's the term that is most appropriate.
Speaker 1: Is he using it because as the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who'd get this job, he's familiar with this history. Or
Speaker 1: is he using it because it's a term that he
Speaker 1: heard around the office, And then why were the people
Speaker 1: using it? Like? Right? You can you can drive yourself
Speaker 1: into some interesting areas if you read too much into
Speaker 1: a fucking quote from a Guardian article where a guy
Speaker 1: happens to use the word mind fuck while talking about
Speaker 1: a psychological warfare tool. But I do that sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm reading about the Illuminati at four in the morning.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you're in the chapel perilyss right now,
Speaker 1: almost permanently. Yeah. So, research in twenty sixteen by You're
Speaker 1: in Swammy, a psychology professor, suggests that conspiracy theory believers
Speaker 1: are more likely to be suffering from stressful life situations
Speaker 1: than nonbelievers. And what I find interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that the toolbox built by the Discordians, merged with the
Speaker 1: reach of social media, gives bad actors a way to
Speaker 1: create stressful life situations for millions of people, which draw
Speaker 1: them deeper into conspiracism while alienating them from their families
Speaker 1: and thus making them more vulnerable. Right, this is a good,
Speaker 1: big thing on qan on. A lot of people that
Speaker 1: fall into this are not are not actually like like
Speaker 1: they're actually doing fine. Like a lot of them are
Speaker 1: like suburban Republican moms who like are living life pretty good,
Speaker 1: but the invention of this conspiracy theory throws their life
Speaker 1: into shambles because they now like it creates these stressful
Speaker 1: conditions that otherwise kind of well off and privileged people
Speaker 1: are already existing in. Yeah, and it's it's that that
Speaker 1: is like part of you know, to the extent that
Speaker 1: you want to throw put blame on the original Discordians.
Speaker 1: Some of what makes this tool set so dangerous didn't
Speaker 1: exist when they invented it, right, Like, all of the
Speaker 1: stuff that has been done using kind of the basis
Speaker 1: they established wasn't possible back in the nineteen sixties. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is worth noting though that, Like I just said that,
Speaker 1: But as Garrison brought up earlier, among the first Discordians,
Speaker 1: there was a pretty widespread understanding that they were at
Speaker 1: least potentially fiddling with something dangerous. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from j. Mr Higgs here. Greg Hill was an
Speaker 1: atheist who intended Discordianism to be a satire of religion.
Speaker 1: He certainly did not start out taking the idea of
Speaker 1: goddesses or spirit seriously. By the late seventies, however, he
Speaker 1: was convinced that his Discordian adventures had stirred up something
Speaker 1: that he was unable to explain. As he told his
Speaker 1: friend Margot Adler, if you do this type of thing
Speaker 1: well enough, it starts to work. I started out with
Speaker 1: the idea that all gods are an illusion. By an
Speaker 1: end I had learned that it is up to you
Speaker 1: to decide whether gods exist. And if you take the
Speaker 1: Goddess of Confusion seriously enough, it will send you through
Speaker 1: his profound and valid and metaphor physical trip as taking
Speaker 1: a god like yahweh seriously yep, yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is this is this is funny, just uh right. Right
Speaker 1: right before he started recording, this video came out of
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk talking about how he got sick because some
Speaker 1: witches like like cursed him, and like, the first step
Speaker 1: for magic to be effective is that you have to
Speaker 1: believe in the magic. So the fact that Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: believes that witches can make him sick means that he
Speaker 1: has now opened up the possibility in his brain to
Speaker 1: get sick because of magic. So now people can do
Speaker 1: that and he's and he will get sick because this
Speaker 1: is how your brain works. Like this is like actual
Speaker 1: like science stuff with the placebo effect, with the no
Speaker 1: sebo effect. That the fact that he's decided that witches
Speaker 1: can can cause him physical damage means that whitches can
Speaker 1: now cause him physical damage. And because we have so
Speaker 1: many listeners to this podcast, and and I think there
Speaker 1: is a great stored potential in their mental energy. If
Speaker 1: you have some time today when you listen to this,
Speaker 1: everyone just think about giving Charlie Kirk Chlamydia. Let's all
Speaker 1: just let's all just work on that together psychically, just
Speaker 1: a little bit of a clap for old Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: I think we can do it. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is visualize his face getting smaller and smaller until
Speaker 1: until he develops a series of horrible rashes. So throughout
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, in particular, the tactics of the Discordians
Speaker 1: merged with things like the Situationists and groups like Up
Speaker 1: against the Wall Motherfuckers, which had all kind of existed
Speaker 1: in the same period that the Discordians got started. One
Speaker 1: of the things that gives the Discordians longevity is that
Speaker 1: there are kind of follow up cults to the original cult,
Speaker 1: the Church of the SubGenius being the most well known
Speaker 1: that is basically rebranded Discordian. Bob Wilson is a part
Speaker 1: of it, and this kind of keeps a lot of
Speaker 1: like the stuff that they had been putting out relevant,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they have a big influence in
Speaker 1: the spread of a widespread left wing cultural practice called
Speaker 1: culture jamming by anti consumerst activists in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: well and speaking of anti consumerism and and and church
Speaker 1: at the SubGenius. One thing they put out was a
Speaker 1: lot of fake advertising, just like and just like, just
Speaker 1: like the fake ads. You're about to hear. Nothing you're
Speaker 1: about to hear is a real product. These are fake.
Speaker 1: The show is entirely supported by the CIA, working with
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society. Yea, all fake products, but you
Speaker 1: still have to listen. You still have to listen to
Speaker 1: them or also it won't work, so yeah, yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: break the illusion. All right, we're back. My favorite of
Speaker 1: those ads was the one where JFK was talking about
Speaker 1: his new podcast where he talks to celebrities. The Deep
Speaker 1: Fake JFK podcast is actually pretty good. It is. It
Speaker 1: is shocking how clear they make his voice, and it
Speaker 1: flows very consistently. A lot of AI voices are kind
Speaker 1: of junkie, but the deep Fake jaky voice is actually
Speaker 1: one of the better ones that I've heard. We should
Speaker 1: interview it about Kerry Thornley add a little bit in there.
Speaker 1: Cyber is way more confusing than I was led to
Speaker 1: believe by playing shadow when I was a kid. Well,
Speaker 1: it's part of this is actually part of why it's confusing.
Speaker 1: So the basic idea of culture jamming is that you
Speaker 1: repurpose and co opt symbols and figures of established power,
Speaker 1: turn them into memes, and use that to subvert capitalism.
Speaker 1: A good example of this would be the Billboard Liberation Front,
Speaker 1: who started hacking billboards in their terms in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite pieces of their work is an
Speaker 1: AT and T billboard, which originally said AT and T
Speaker 1: works in more places, and the BLF added like NSA headquarters.
Speaker 1: The Billboard Liberation Front and other culture jammers influenced and
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of modern activists and artists, but you
Speaker 1: might note they seem to have made a lot less
Speaker 1: progress in their culture jamming than late adopters on the
Speaker 1: right wing. Since twenty fourteen, when Gamergate roared to life
Speaker 1: in a hail of me and repurposed bits of mass media,
Speaker 1: different once fringed chunks of the radical right have forced
Speaker 1: their way into the mainstream, often co opting not just
Speaker 1: the imagery of other artists like Pepe, but co opting
Speaker 1: actual people to spread their message. In fact, we have
Speaker 1: evidence that Adbusters, perhaps the premier clearing house of leftist
Speaker 1: culture jamming up to the present day was used by
Speaker 1: the alt right as a textbook in their twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen meme operations. Aaron Gallagher was one
Speaker 1: of the very first researchers on this beat. In a
Speaker 1: medium right up titled alt Right Culture Jamming, she cites
Speaker 1: a September twenty fifteen Pole post read adbusters don't follow
Speaker 1: the left hard propaganda, but look at the examples. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: that's so frustrating. Ah, it's deeply frustrating. I feel like
Speaker 1: the loss. I don't know, Margaret. I think the only
Speaker 1: way it is through. We have to have to keep going,
Speaker 1: just keep posting harder. We're going to do it eventually. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of two things. It's either earnestness or it's
Speaker 1: getting things weird enough and fucking with people's heads enough
Speaker 1: that we make everybody a furry. And then people are
Speaker 1: too busy trying to make you know, various genital sheaths
Speaker 1: for their furs suits to have a second civil war.
Speaker 1: But see, they will be earnestly looking for genital sheaths
Speaker 1: for their first suits. That is the strength of the
Speaker 1: furry movement. It is an earnest thing that everyone else
Speaker 1: views ironically. But this is this is something actually I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about a lot that the past week, and
Speaker 1: how these these tactics they do seem to be successful
Speaker 1: in the ways that the right uses them. The left
Speaker 1: and anarchists have seen success in these same tactics. But
Speaker 1: this this type of like in the last previously in
Speaker 1: our series, we talked about like a deternament versus recuperation,
Speaker 1: and how these these two things they're kind of they're
Speaker 1: kind of two sides of the same coin. Actually, like
Speaker 1: they're kind of they operate, they operate the same and
Speaker 1: they both and same thing with like culture jamming. They
Speaker 1: all do contribute to this like fracturing and this opening
Speaker 1: up of reality. But and what that does is that
Speaker 1: it creates these brief windows of opportunity where like reality
Speaker 1: is extremely malleable and it can be shaped by collective
Speaker 1: groups of people. But yeah, so as these things are
Speaker 1: useful tactics for for creating these these areas of possibility
Speaker 1: and these and these and these small windows um and
Speaker 1: one of the kind of risks of using these tactics,
Speaker 1: and we kind of saw this with Occupied, We saw
Speaker 1: this with a few other kind of very very culture
Speaker 1: jamming based movements. Is that once this reality has been
Speaker 1: fractured in a specific way, if if if we don't
Speaker 1: win this battle, it can never be attacked in the
Speaker 1: same way. Again. It's like as if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to use these culture jamming tactics as as a
Speaker 1: part of a diversity of tactics to kind of effect reality,
Speaker 1: to to open up these fractures once once they have
Speaker 1: been once they've been attacked, and if we lose this
Speaker 1: method of attack and this and the location of attack
Speaker 1: is going to be so much stronger than it was
Speaker 1: like pre the pre the fracture And it's when you're
Speaker 1: fighting the borg exactly. It's it's it's one of these
Speaker 1: things where you have to be very careful when using
Speaker 1: these tactics because you could inadvertently, you know, make make
Speaker 1: the attack surface actually you know, much harder in the
Speaker 1: future if you don't actually you know, succeed at your goal. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea that like you have to think
Speaker 1: about some of this stuff like operation mind fuck the
Speaker 1: way that like a hacker would think of a zero
Speaker 1: day exploit. A zero day exploit is like basically a
Speaker 1: fuck up and code that can allow you like a
Speaker 1: method to get in and you know, access a thing
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to access. But the instant you
Speaker 1: use it, the people who are responsible for defending whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're hacking will know what you've done and
Speaker 1: fix it. So you can use a zero day once. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to be careful about when you deploy something
Speaker 1: like that. And also, yeah, like like you have this
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, okay, if where we perceive reality
Speaker 1: is going from a garrison, was saying earlier, if where
Speaker 1: we perceive reality is like kind of a a fixed point,
Speaker 1: and you want to move that, but it's a pin
Speaker 1: stuck in the political map. The pin is stuck in
Speaker 1: the political map, and everyone who wants to change it
Speaker 1: wants to pull the pin out of the map so
Speaker 1: it can be moved. And the pin is now out
Speaker 1: of the map. But the problem is that everyone now
Speaker 1: can fight over the pin and move it, and so
Speaker 1: really you always want to pull the pin out of
Speaker 1: the map when you're positioned to be the one who
Speaker 1: can move it instead of the other team. Yes, be
Speaker 1: fast on that shit. And it's one of those things
Speaker 1: obviously in terms of like determining bastardry. There's bastardry and
Speaker 1: Carrie's personal life. When it comes to what the Discordians
Speaker 1: were doing. I think it'd be a trap to fall
Speaker 1: into too much recrimination here. Now we know Carry in
Speaker 1: particular was a reckless guy. This was not not a
Speaker 1: reckless thing to do Operation mind fuck. That said, it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to blame an acid drenched young man
Speaker 1: and his friends for thinking that their extended joke about
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society would unleash a torrent of chaos
Speaker 1: upon the world, although I have to say Harris at
Speaker 1: least is surely pleased. Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely, they
Speaker 1: did exactly what they said that they were going to
Speaker 1: try and do, and it worked. Yes, they got shocked
Speaker 1: that it worked. Yea. It is interesting to note that,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say about their aims, the impact
Speaker 1: of the Discordian Society on global politics and the course
Speaker 1: of mankind far outweighs any other real secret society that
Speaker 1: I can name. Like, objectively, they had more of an
Speaker 1: impact on politics than the real Illuminati. They also succeeded
Speaker 1: in forcing their names into the story of the Illuminati forever,
Speaker 1: and as evidence of this, I want to read a
Speaker 1: quote to you from a wild Ass Illuminati conspiracy book
Speaker 1: by Jim Mars. It is critical at this point to
Speaker 1: understand that Illuminism is an ism, not unlike national socialism nazis.
Speaker 1: That's in parentheses communism, capitalism, and socialism. It is a
Speaker 1: belief system that is not relegated to any one individual
Speaker 1: or group in any given period of time. The beneficial
Speaker 1: goals of the Illuminati, such as free from church dogma
Speaker 1: and government tyranny, lived on to modern times in France, America,
Speaker 1: and Russia. But the more sinister aspects of the order,
Speaker 1: such as inherent secrecy, duplicity, violence, and the drive for
Speaker 1: absolute power lived on too when unscrupulous men. Robert Anton
Speaker 1: Wilson opined, the one safe generalization one can make is
Speaker 1: that Wishop's intent to maintain secrecy has worked. No two
Speaker 1: students of illuminology have ever agreed totally about what the
Speaker 1: inner secret or purpose of the order actually was or is.
Speaker 1: As Wilson wants fancifully told a radio audience, maybe the
Speaker 1: secret of the Illuminati is that you don't know you're
Speaker 1: remember until it's too late to get out out. That
Speaker 1: that is such an interesting way to frame that though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that Robert coming out as in the Illuminati to
Speaker 1: us or is that Robert telling us that we're in
Speaker 1: it now? Hmm? Interesting? Interesting, Wow, it's a decision for
Speaker 1: everyone at home to make. That kind of just is
Speaker 1: like hindsight is twenty twenty though, Like, you don't know
Speaker 1: how much you're gonna affect history or like reality until
Speaker 1: it's already happened. And even still, I don't think Robert
Speaker 1: Aunton Wilson and the Discordian guys knew how much this
Speaker 1: stuff would be impacted because they all died in they
Speaker 1: all died in the early two thousands, and this stuffs
Speaker 1: like kind of reached reached the peak of its power
Speaker 1: from twenty sixteen to like the present. Um, And yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is a very a very concise way
Speaker 1: to to to frame membership of the Illuminati. I would yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to die before I find out that
Speaker 1: my life's work fuels all of my ideological enemies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that part's a bummer. I don't know. I think about
Speaker 1: it a couple of ways. Um. One of them is that, like,
Speaker 1: as I think about Robert Danton Wilson's ideas of reality
Speaker 1: tunnels and pan agnosticism. I kind of think that one
Speaker 1: of the healthier terms that social media has given us
Speaker 1: is the idea of headcanon, right, which initially came out
Speaker 1: of like the fan fiction universe as a way of
Speaker 1: talking about like, well, I'm deciding this is true about
Speaker 1: star Wars or whatever. But it's a term that gets
Speaker 1: used more broadly by people on the Internet, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe even if you're talking about loopy stuff when
Speaker 1: you use it, the idea that this is canon that
Speaker 1: is inside my head as opposed to this is my
Speaker 1: view of reality is maybe in a subconscious way, an
Speaker 1: inherently healthier way to talk about shit. No, that's so true.
Speaker 1: I like that idea. Yeah, anyway, that's a more or
Speaker 1: less complete history of the Illuminati. Did I love that.
Speaker 1: The actual history of the Illuminati is like, there's this
Speaker 1: guy he wanted to be a nerd and that fucking
Speaker 1: Christians wouldn't let him, so he did some weird Christians
Speaker 1: and looking science shit, and that lasted for a little while,
Speaker 1: and then God struck one of them down, and now
Speaker 1: there's fucking pyramids on the dollar bill and reality TV
Speaker 1: Stars of the President. Yeah, it is kind of the
Speaker 1: story of like two different groups of well meaning nerds
Speaker 1: who like fucked around in order to try to make
Speaker 1: the world a better place, but the only language they
Speaker 1: had was lies, and so a number of problems were
Speaker 1: created as a result. Yeah, and that's why, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's actually why I believe. I think that like jokes
Speaker 1: and lies and there's like some interesting and good shit
Speaker 1: that can be done through all this. But I think
Speaker 1: that's why just like people being earnestly about what they're
Speaker 1: about feels like, yeah, much like headcannon as like a
Speaker 1: way to inure ourselves from this kind of nonsense. And
Speaker 1: I actually think we've been talking a lot about this,
Speaker 1: about how the different culture weapons that the left and
Speaker 1: the right use to kind of get around each other,
Speaker 1: that these are not static battle lines, and that tactics
Speaker 1: are adopted and altered and change over time. One of
Speaker 1: the things that made Trump potent, and that made you know,
Speaker 1: the alt right and the initial Trump movement potent, was
Speaker 1: in fact a kind of honesty, or at least authenticity,
Speaker 1: And I talk about that. I've talked about this a
Speaker 1: few times over my career. I had a series of
Speaker 1: interviews with a guy, Rick Wilson, who was an objectively
Speaker 1: unpleasant man in a lot of ways. He was one
Speaker 1: of the chief Republican like dirty tricks media guys. He
Speaker 1: did a lot of really ugly attack ads in the
Speaker 1: Obama era and then became an anti Trumper. But like
Speaker 1: one of the things he will he would point out
Speaker 1: when he was and this wasn't I was talking to
Speaker 1: him as the election was going on and we were
Speaker 1: kind of analyzing the Clinton campaign's ads as he was like,
Speaker 1: these all feel like something somebody cooked up in a
Speaker 1: Madison Avenue ad agency, because they are and Trump bads
Speaker 1: feel like something some guy made on his computer at
Speaker 1: three in the morning after like slamming a bunch of monsters.
Speaker 1: And that's what worked about Trump. There's something authentic about
Speaker 1: that that like enraptured people because it felt more honest
Speaker 1: than the politicians we were used to. Um. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean he was a fundamentally honest man, but there was
Speaker 1: a central honesty in his approach and like his willingness,
Speaker 1: his unwillingness to even like pretend that he felt bad
Speaker 1: for doing bad things. That was that was that was
Speaker 1: like this authenticity that was an effective weapon in their quarrel.
Speaker 1: And I think over the years they've gotten so up
Speaker 1: their own there's an extent to which I think they've
Speaker 1: gotten up their own asses about the you know, saying
Speaker 1: the quiet part, you know, and and uh and and
Speaker 1: kind of like wrapping their actual intents and layers of
Speaker 1: subversion and all of this fakery. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a degree to which that may have thrown people off
Speaker 1: who would have otherwise been appealed to them. And I
Speaker 1: think there's also kind of the period we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now from the right is where they're they're discarding these
Speaker 1: tactics and they're trying authenticity again in terms of like
Speaker 1: we're just going to straight up talk about wanting to
Speaker 1: erase transgender people from existence, we want to ban books,
Speaker 1: we want to make it illegal to learn, you know,
Speaker 1: take ap African American history, all this kind of shit,
Speaker 1: Like the mask is kind of off, and I think
Speaker 1: maybe they may be miscalculating, and we have some early
Speaker 1: signs that that may be the case, the degree to
Speaker 1: which that kind of authenticity is a selling point. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, Margaret, I think there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: you're right in terms of like what our response needs
Speaker 1: to actually be because they're showing their faces now and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty ugly one. So maybe this is the
Speaker 1: time to show ours rather than you know, trying to
Speaker 1: make our little illuminati and hide our enlightenment values from
Speaker 1: the people who can't possibly understand it well enough yet.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, And I think part of that
Speaker 1: has to do with like, um, you know, like many
Speaker 1: people listeners probably identifies liberals, but there's a sort of
Speaker 1: joke that everyone hates liberals basically from all other every
Speaker 1: other position and also possibly including the liberal position often. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of it has to
Speaker 1: do with this, like having people be sort of wishy washy,
Speaker 1: or having people yeah, not quite say what they're about,
Speaker 1: you know, And I don't know, just being like yeah,
Speaker 1: I often see that you actually get more people not
Speaker 1: necessarily agreeing with you, but able to make their own
Speaker 1: decisions about where they agree with you and where they
Speaker 1: don't when you're just like, well, this is what I'm about.
Speaker 1: What are you about? You know, instead of being like, oh, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: this is how I don't know? This like false. The
Speaker 1: problem the media has too, because, by at least according
Speaker 1: to Gallop, public trust in the media, about twenty three
Speaker 1: percent of the American copulation thinks that journalists are basically honestum, like,
Speaker 1: so people do not believe that the media is telling
Speaker 1: them the truth. Like this New York Times idea of
Speaker 1: like the importance of you know, honest, unbiased journalism. That
Speaker 1: is not a thing. And it's not a thing because
Speaker 1: no one believes you're unbiased. So the honest thing to
Speaker 1: do is not to be like, well, we can't have
Speaker 1: trains people reporting on trend or black people reporting on
Speaker 1: you know, issues that affect the black community because they're biased.
Speaker 1: Like no, just like have people report on shit and
Speaker 1: be honest about what they believe. If you're a fucking
Speaker 1: Marxist or a fucking conservative walking into you know, a
Speaker 1: protest or a movement or whatever, X tell people what
Speaker 1: you think about the world when you go to report
Speaker 1: on that thing. Obviously, Like if you're reporting on like
Speaker 1: a tornado, your ideology is not important. But I would
Speaker 1: much rather know, yeah, exactly, Yeah, that we don't need
Speaker 1: we don't need to We don't need to know that,
Speaker 1: you like, have a Marxist to take on the economy
Speaker 1: or whatever if your job is to report on a hurricane.
Speaker 1: Although maybe that'll influence the way you talk about like
Speaker 1: the but whatever how people handle it, let let I
Speaker 1: mean don't like it. It's this, it's the fact, Like
Speaker 1: the reason people don't trust the media. A big part
Speaker 1: of it is that you can't be an unbiased journalist.
Speaker 1: It's simply not a thing that exists in the same
Speaker 1: way that like, the very way you see the world
Speaker 1: and the way that it feels to you, even down
Speaker 1: to the way things taste, is impacted by your expectations.
Speaker 1: This is a biological reality that is undeniable. Your expectations,
Speaker 1: your personal biases. Everything including like how much sleep you've
Speaker 1: got the night before, changes the way you interact with
Speaker 1: physical reality, as is the things you believe. So it's
Speaker 1: actually fundamentally dishonest to pretend that you're coming at anything
Speaker 1: from some sort of point of objectivity. And everyone knows
Speaker 1: that at some level, which is why nobody trusts journalists. Right,
Speaker 1: That's my take, and we should work to like part
Speaker 1: of me open about her a biases is to also
Speaker 1: kind of like no, okay, Like my weak spot is
Speaker 1: that I want to believe that someone who calls themselves
Speaker 1: this or that label is fundamentally good or fundamentally bad,
Speaker 1: and so I should be aware of my own biases,
Speaker 1: even for myself, so I can move towards objectivity. I
Speaker 1: mean I have when I went into this. This is
Speaker 1: the second version of this that I've done. The first
Speaker 1: one was a much shorter version that we did as
Speaker 1: part of a live show, and it was much less
Speaker 1: complicated and towards the Discordians and delved into a lot
Speaker 1: less of this. And you know that's part of It's
Speaker 1: because these guys were my heroes when I was a
Speaker 1: very young man. Yeah, and I didn't want in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to learn things like the fact that
Speaker 1: Carrie Thornley attempted to molest a young girl like that
Speaker 1: is an unpleasant thing to realize and have to adapt
Speaker 1: into because that, you know, that actually does mean something
Speaker 1: about the things that he believed. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that it means is that you should always be
Speaker 1: carefu all about how much you believe anything, right, because
Speaker 1: belief can lead you to some very frightening areas, even
Speaker 1: if even if that is a belief in the value
Speaker 1: of love and and you know, physical autonomy and stuff, right,
Speaker 1: Because that's how Carrie would describe the underpinning of the
Speaker 1: horrible thing that he did. Um and uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think we've probably talked enough about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Sure have or you guys want to
Speaker 1: plug anything stop doing the or have no no no. Yeah. Sophie.
Speaker 1: By the way, when you sent me that text last night,
Speaker 1: you know, saying saying that your your uber wouldn't pick
Speaker 1: you up outside of the senator's house and that you
Speaker 1: had a hot firearm, you had to discard. Um did
Speaker 1: you ever wind up getting that uber? Well, here's how
Speaker 1: we know your conspiracy is wrong. Would not take it uber?
Speaker 1: I would call your ass Yeah, you're going to say,
Speaker 1: would lift? This has all been an extent. Did add
Speaker 1: for lift? Lift? If you're going to carry out a
Speaker 1: political assassination, it had better be in a lift. Lift.
Speaker 1: We do not ask questions. Seriously, need to start offering
Speaker 1: that as something that we do here a lift. We
Speaker 1: make sure every one of our drivers has a hidden
Speaker 1: area in the car that you can police a hot
Speaker 1: firearm lift. We go the extra mile shop lift anyways, Garrison,
Speaker 1: Margaret Pluggables. If you want to look at my slightly
Speaker 1: unhinged ramblings about chaos magic, you can follow my Twitter
Speaker 1: account at Hungry bow Tie, as as as this is airing.
Speaker 1: I will probably probably be in Atlanta for the Week
Speaker 1: of Action, which is going on to defend the Force there.
Speaker 1: So if you want to support people in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: can donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. I would say
Speaker 1: I have two book novella series that came out a
Speaker 1: little while ago that called the Danielle Kane Series. The
Speaker 1: first ones The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion. The second
Speaker 1: one is The Barrel Will Send What It May. They're
Speaker 1: both really short and they deal with more ggicals stuff
Speaker 1: and more stuff about how we shape reality than some
Speaker 1: of my other writings. So maybe you'll like them if
Speaker 1: you like this episode, and you can get them wherever
Speaker 1: books are sold. Yeah, read those books, because I have
Speaker 1: been using a series of fake, cutout social media accounts
Speaker 1: in order to harass and threaten Margaret into writing a
Speaker 1: third one. But it's not working, so help me out
Speaker 1: people anyway. This has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 1: about the Illuminati that also is the Illuminati. So whatever
Speaker 1: conspiracy you belief about me and my friends here on
Speaker 1: the show, it's probably real in some way. Happy twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
Speaker 1: website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.