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Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen. Here's Spooky Week special presentation.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davis and earlier this year, I, along with
Speaker 1: my friend Elane, attended the twenty twenty three organ Ghost
Speaker 1: Conference in Seaside, Oregon. The past few years, I've had
Speaker 1: a growing interest in the occult, both for testing the
Speaker 1: limits of manufacturing my own weird experiences as well as
Speaker 1: looking at it as a vector of political extremism. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's useful to not just to look on from the outside,
Speaker 1: but actually pop into other people's reality tunnels to gain
Speaker 1: a more intimate understanding of how they interact with our world.
Speaker 1: This was my primary motivation in attending the Ghost Conference
Speaker 1: to learn what metaphysical beliefs drive the attendees and how
Speaker 1: said beliefs intersect with politics and our broader culture. My
Speaker 1: experiences at the conference ranged from ghost hunting to being hypnotized,
Speaker 1: to learning of the galactic Federation of Angels and abortion
Speaker 1: hungry demons. So with that in mind, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy my report back on the twenty twenty three organ
Speaker 1: Ghost Conference. The first challenge we faced was simply getting
Speaker 1: to the town of Seaside. The first day of the conference, Friday,
Speaker 1: March twenty fourth, coincided with a massive snowstorm along Highway
Speaker 1: twenty six from Portland to sea Side. As we were
Speaker 1: driving on the treacherous mountain roads, a white out completely
Speaker 1: engulfed our view. When we emerge from the snowstorm, it
Speaker 1: was as if we'd gone through a portal, transporting us
Speaker 1: from the mountainous forest to the small coastal town of Seaside, Oregon,
Speaker 1: into a world of ghosts, spirits, specters, and overpriced convention food. Seaside,
Speaker 1: as the name suggests, is a beachfront town situated in
Speaker 1: northern Oregon. It was founded in the late eighteen hundredths
Speaker 1: after railroad baron Ben Holliday built his summer vacation quote
Speaker 1: unquote Seaside House on the plot of land which is
Speaker 1: now Seaside's golf course. It's always been a sort of
Speaker 1: tourist resort town that people from Portland travel to for
Speaker 1: beachfront entertainment. The conference is put on by a friendly
Speaker 1: high school art teacher and Oregon City commissioner, Rocky Smith.
Speaker 1: Smith has been doing ghost tours in Oregon since the
Speaker 1: mid nineties and has been putting on the Oregon Ghost
Speaker 1: Conference since twenty twelve. Originally, it was held in Smith's
Speaker 1: hometown of Oregon City, an extremely haunted town often cited
Speaker 1: as the end of the organ trail. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the conference outgrew its Oregon City venue and relocated to Seaside.
Speaker 1: It's now the largest paranormal convention in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: The conference features ghost tours, classes, guest speakers, vendors, tara readings, seances,
Speaker 1: ghost hunting, and paranormal investigations. The first big event I
Speaker 1: marked on my schedule was a ghost tour to get
Speaker 1: acquainted with Seaside's most haunted places. The tour began right
Speaker 1: outside the convention center. Conference director Rocky Smith led this
Speaker 1: one himself. He filled us in on some old ghost
Speaker 1: conference lore. The Seaside Convention Center went through some extensive
Speaker 1: renovations right before the pandemic, but the first year of
Speaker 1: the conference took place in the convention center. They had
Speaker 1: a class for kids where a group of children explored
Speaker 1: around the old building to find what they thought were
Speaker 1: the most haunted places. There was one hallway on the
Speaker 1: west side of the building where people routinely reported strange experiences.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty sixteen, a child at the conference claimed
Speaker 1: they saw a ghost down this hallway when exiting the bathroom. First,
Speaker 1: they just saw something out of the corner of their eye,
Speaker 1: and then when they turned to the left, they saw
Speaker 1: a woman in an old dress staring at them. At first,
Speaker 1: they weren't sure if the dress was long or short
Speaker 1: because they were too scared to look down, But then
Speaker 1: they noticed that the woman didn't have any legs and
Speaker 1: was just floating in the air. Because of the new renovations,
Speaker 1: that hallway is no longer accessible. Rocky Smith remarked that
Speaker 1: he didn't know if that was intentional or not, but
Speaker 1: said that a lot of times when they redo buildings,
Speaker 1: they'll change the part of a building that used to
Speaker 1: be kind of scary and uncomfortable, so that hallway is
Speaker 1: now used for storage, although one of the convention staff
Speaker 1: members claimed that a vacuum cleaner now held in the
Speaker 1: hallway is possessed. So there's that. The Convention Center was
Speaker 1: originally built in the seventies and doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: lot of notable history. But when looking into hauntings or
Speaker 1: reports of ghosts, typically people try to learn the history
Speaker 1: of the building or plot of land in question. For Seaside,
Speaker 1: that's kind of hard because in nineteen twelve, four blocks
Speaker 1: of downtown Seaside burned to the ground, destroying most of
Speaker 1: the town's early history. The first stop on the ghost
Speaker 1: tour after we left the Convention Center was one of
Speaker 1: the reportedly most active sites of ghostly activity in Seaside,
Speaker 1: the Bridge Tender Tavern. It was built in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: so just a couple of years after the big fire.
Speaker 1: It used to be called the Pastime Bar and then
Speaker 1: suffered its own fire and was later renamed the Bridge Tender.
Speaker 1: The previous owners of the bar claimed that in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century it was a brothel. This is unconfirmed,
Speaker 1: but it relates to the tavern's most frequent ghost the Madam.
Speaker 1: Staff and patrons of the Bridge Tender regularly address the Madam.
Speaker 1: If customers are being rude, It said that the Madam
Speaker 1: will spill drinks on them, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The story I like the most about the Madam has
Speaker 1: to do with the tavern's old CD jute box. If
Speaker 1: a specific song played on the jukebox, something would go haywire,
Speaker 1: CDs would shoot out of it, or other weird things
Speaker 1: would reportedly happen in the bar. Patrons would put the
Speaker 1: song on repeat just to see what would happen. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the owners took the CD with the song in question
Speaker 1: out of the jukebox so that people would just stop
Speaker 1: playing the song. But people are persistent bastards, so now
Speaker 1: people just play the song on their phones or the
Speaker 1: new digital jukebox in Bridge Tender. Now, the theory is
Speaker 1: is that the Madam just really hates this song, so
Speaker 1: she gets mad when it plays and then causes some commotion.
Speaker 1: The song is Dancing Queen by Abba, So if you
Speaker 1: want to go test this yourself, you can travel to
Speaker 1: the Bridge Tender and play Dancing Queen and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Another highlight from the ghost tour was learning about the
Speaker 1: old Seasider Hotel at the end of the promenade. It
Speaker 1: was purportedly haunted by multiple spirits, and it was believed
Speaker 1: that when the hotel was torn down in the eighties,
Speaker 1: the ghosts followed the hotel staff who got new jobs
Speaker 1: at a restaurant in downtown called Girdles. New employees are
Speaker 1: said to have recognized apparitions from the hotel, and the
Speaker 1: restaurant gained a haunted coffee pot that would either move
Speaker 1: on its own or even fly across the room, depending
Speaker 1: on who you would ask. It's nice that the ghosts
Speaker 1: seem to have a pretty good job relocation program, something
Speaker 1: that most of us do not so good for them.
Speaker 1: As the ghost tour approached the Beachfront promenade, that snowstorm
Speaker 1: from the nearby mountains seemed to have caught up with us,
Speaker 1: and a dreary mix of rain and snow began to
Speaker 1: descend upon Seaside, as if some otherworldly force was trying
Speaker 1: to keep us from further exploring the hauntings of the town.
Speaker 1: So as even my trench coat began soaking through, we
Speaker 1: took refuge back indoors the very first class. My friend
Speaker 1: Elaine and I took at the conference was titled Ghost Detectives. Now,
Speaker 1: despite the silly, stounding name, it was probably the most
Speaker 1: grounded class throughout the entire weekend, certainly the one with
Speaker 1: the least amount of spiritual dogma. The class was focused
Speaker 1: on best practices for conducting paranormal investstigations, specifically to ensure
Speaker 1: that the process and finding's mirror the evidentiary standards set
Speaker 1: by the justice system for law enforcement investigations. The instructor,
Speaker 1: doctor Nelson, is a supervisor for a crisis hotline with
Speaker 1: degrees in mental health, metaphysics, and fine arts. He describes
Speaker 1: his methodology for investigating paranormal activity as quote unquote applied science.
Speaker 1: He was definitely the most meticulous investigator of the whole weekend,
Speaker 1: and the least ghost hunter esque in terms of advocating
Speaker 1: for strict investigative procedures and not just assuming that every
Speaker 1: spooky noise was evidence of a ghost. Most of his
Speaker 1: class was spent explaining very basic police investigative procedure, proper
Speaker 1: ways to collect evidence, having a chain of evidence, and
Speaker 1: not simply jumping to conclusions. It's a little foolhardy to
Speaker 1: assume every single spike on an electromagnetic field or EMF
Speaker 1: meter is actually a ghost trying to communicate. The other
Speaker 1: unique thing about his class was the emphasis on before
Speaker 1: pulling out your special ghost and detecting tools. Perhaps one
Speaker 1: should conduct thorough interviews and collect witness statements of the
Speaker 1: people reporting the phenomenon. Try to figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on in their life, maybe even look into their own
Speaker 1: mental health background as much as you're able to, if
Speaker 1: they've had any sudden losses, past trauma, or history of
Speaker 1: paranormal experiences. Asking thorough questions can give a much fuller
Speaker 1: look at what someone might be going through. Some examples
Speaker 1: of things to ask or look into were if the
Speaker 1: phenomenon is related to a house, who owns the house,
Speaker 1: who lives there, who has experienced the event? What led
Speaker 1: to a paranormal investigator being called? What precipitated the phenomenon?
Speaker 1: When it occurred? How often has it occurred? When was
Speaker 1: it first noticed? Was there just one random strange experience
Speaker 1: or is someone going through an event in their life
Speaker 1: that is the maiden experience suddenly stick out as strange.
Speaker 1: Has the person sought help, and has the phenomenon been
Speaker 1: verified by more than one person? In terms of haunted houses,
Speaker 1: figuring out if there's any issues in the house is
Speaker 1: a great first step because if there's a carbon monoxide leak,
Speaker 1: that could explain a great many things. Or if someone
Speaker 1: claims ghost ectoplasm is leaking through the ceiling and walls,
Speaker 1: perhaps the roof and water pipes should be inspected. Elene
Speaker 1: and I did a little debrief after the conference, and
Speaker 1: they reminded me of another good tip gleaned from the
Speaker 1: ghost detective class.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean my favorite was when he was talking about, like,
Speaker 3: if you're using an EMF detector and one wall just
Speaker 3: keeps setting the EMF detector off, you might actually just
Speaker 3: need to call an electrician.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, No, he definitely was one of the more
Speaker 1: reasonable people we spoke with in terms of Yeah, he
Speaker 1: seems he seems pretty close to like consensus reality. Like
Speaker 1: he also he also is like a part of the
Speaker 1: Portland Ghostbusters cosplay group. Like he's he's someone who like
Speaker 1: makes stuff with his hands. He's very like he feels
Speaker 1: very grounded and like and like concept this reality a
Speaker 1: lot in a lot of aspects, and this is like
Speaker 1: a very fun hobby that combines his two favorite things,
Speaker 1: well two of his favorite things, just like Ghostbusters cosplay,
Speaker 1: and then also like paranormal investigation stuff. I'm not actually
Speaker 1: sure if the instructor for the paranormal investigation class really
Speaker 1: believed in ghosts or if he just had an interest
Speaker 1: in researching paranormal experiences. I don't think I believe in
Speaker 1: ghosts the same way literally everyone else at the conference did.
Speaker 1: But almost half of Americans do believe in ghosts, and
Speaker 1: around one fifth are unsure if they're believers or not.
Speaker 1: The rate of belief in ghosts is about the same
Speaker 1: as belief in demons. But the interesting thing about that
Speaker 1: is although Americans belief in organized religion has been decreasing,
Speaker 1: especially Christianity, belief in ghosts has been and still is
Speaker 1: on the rise. In fact, it's gone up by nearly
Speaker 1: four hundred percent since the nineteen seventies. These last three years,
Speaker 1: for really the first time ever, Gallup polls show that
Speaker 1: less than fifty percent of Americans say they belong to
Speaker 1: a religious congregation. Alan Downe is a computer scientist and
Speaker 1: professor at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. His
Speaker 1: research suggests that the Internet is a major cause, not
Speaker 1: just a correlating factor, in the decrease of religious affiliation,
Speaker 1: and with the rise of the Internet and reality TV,
Speaker 1: ghost hunting has become a relatively popular niche hobby. But
Speaker 1: as religious belief has declined, belief in the afterlife has
Speaker 1: remained the same, about seventy percent according to the General
Speaker 1: Social Survey. Gallup's polling suggests that currently about three and
Speaker 1: four Americans have some sort of paranormal belief. Thomas Mowen,
Speaker 1: associate theologist who's been conducting a study on religion and
Speaker 1: paranormal belief at Bowling Green State University, said that he's
Speaker 1: finding that quote atheists tend to report higher belief in
Speaker 1: the paranormal than religious folk unquote. As to why so
Speaker 1: many Americans believe in ghosts, Moen says, quote, people are
Speaker 1: looking to other things or non traditional things to answer
Speaker 1: life's big questions that don't necessarily include religion unquote. Throughout
Speaker 1: the conference, the word ghost, spirit, and entity were often
Speaker 1: used interchangeably. Each of those words kind of act as
Speaker 1: an umbrella term for a broad swath of ontological concepts.
Speaker 1: Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that relates to the
Speaker 1: nature of being. Depending who you ask, a ghost or
Speaker 1: a spirit can be anything from a wayward soul of
Speaker 1: a deceased human, some other worldly energy, an evil presence,
Speaker 1: or even some sort of temporal loop. Historically, these have
Speaker 1: never been very clear either. They've evolved with the times,
Speaker 1: so Elene and I prepared a brief history of ghosts
Speaker 1: to help give context for the rest of this episode
Speaker 1: and the next. The idea of contacting spirits or interacting
Speaker 1: with some sort of spirit world obviously isn't new. Worldwide,
Speaker 1: people have traditions of interacting with ancestors that deceased in
Speaker 1: a variety of non material beings. Ancestor veneration in China
Speaker 1: goes back at least six thousand years, while the word shaman,
Speaker 1: relating to someone who works with spirits and in the
Speaker 1: spirit realm for healing and divination, comes from the Tungusic
Speaker 1: language of Siberia and has practices that are at least
Speaker 1: too millennia old. The term necromancy stems from a Greek
Speaker 1: word meaning divination of the dead. In the Odyssey, Homer
Speaker 1: writes of Odysseus learning necromantic rituals to summon the shade
Speaker 1: or underworld ghost of Tyresius, while wile clerical necromantic traditions
Speaker 1: through the medieval period made a clear distinction between the
Speaker 1: souls of dead humans from other random spirits. That separation
Speaker 1: was not as ubiquitous among folk beliefs of people who
Speaker 1: claimed to interact with the spirit world. Emma Wilby describes
Speaker 1: in her book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. How into
Speaker 1: the early modern period, many cunning folk, basically low level
Speaker 1: magicians and conjurers, had ghosts, fairies, and animal spirit companions,
Speaker 1: all of which seemed to interact very similarly. The European
Speaker 1: concept of ghosts being linked to evil or demonic forces
Speaker 1: is a relatively new idea. It came to be as
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the Reformation and rejection of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: The Catholic doctrine of purgatory and limbo was rejected by
Speaker 1: the new Protestants, which caused some cosmological problems when it
Speaker 1: came to people's own experiences with ghosts and spirits. Catholics
Speaker 1: held them that ghosts were basically spirits of dead humans
Speaker 1: on vacation from purgatory, But with Protestants rejecting purgatory for
Speaker 1: its lack of biblical basis, they defined some other way
Speaker 1: to explain the apparently fairly common phenomenon of ghostly encounters.
Speaker 1: A Swiss theologian named Ludwig Lavater attempted to solve this
Speaker 1: cosmological problem in his fifteen sixty nine book Despecterus. I
Speaker 1: just picked up my copy a few weeks ago and
Speaker 1: had been going through it, and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: The full English title was quote of ghosts and spirits
Speaker 1: walking by night, and of strange noises, cracks and sundry
Speaker 1: fore warnings, which commonly happened before the death of men,
Speaker 1: great slaughters, and the alteration of kingdoms. Pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Two of my favorite consecutive chapter titles are quote what
Speaker 1: hath followed this doctrine of the Papists concerning the appearing
Speaker 1: of men's souls, followed by testimonies out of the Word
Speaker 1: of God that neither the souls of the faithful nor
Speaker 1: infidels do walketh upon the earth after they are once
Speaker 1: parted from their bodies. So that kind of gives you
Speaker 1: a look at the writing style of this entire book.
Speaker 1: Despects became massively influential. It was widely translated. Shakespeare was
Speaker 1: reading this as he was writing Hamlet. More importantly, the
Speaker 1: text took off across many Protestant circles and became the
Speaker 1: backbone of the cultural conception of ghosts in the soon
Speaker 1: to be United States through such Protestant sects. Instead of
Speaker 1: ghosts being wayward specters of dead humans who escape from purgatory,
Speaker 1: Lavater proposed a great many explanations for spectral experiences, including
Speaker 1: many non mystical causes. He lists illness, insomnia, psychoactive substances,
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, and grief as being common causes of ghostly hallucination,
Speaker 1: an opinion now shared by many psychologists and doctors. Definitely,
Speaker 1: the closest thing I've ever seen to a ghost was
Speaker 1: during a sleep paralysis episode. Lavator writes, quote, Melancholic persons
Speaker 1: and mad men imagine things which in very deed are not.
Speaker 1: Fearful men imagine that they see and hear strange things.
Speaker 1: Men which are dull of seeing and hearing imagine many
Speaker 1: things which in very deed are not so unquote. He
Speaker 1: also cites pranksters as another common cause of perceived spectral activity,
Speaker 1: but most interestingly, in an attempt to bash the Catholics,
Speaker 1: the Protestant Lavater also lists low level clergy trained in
Speaker 1: exorcistic magic to summon demonic spirits in an achromatic fashion,
Speaker 1: as possibly producing some supernatural phenomenon interpreted as ghosts. Now,
Speaker 1: Lavater does believe in spirits, but his thesis is that
Speaker 1: genuine ghosts, spirits bumps in the night, those strange the
Speaker 1: cracks and noises which we now might refer to as
Speaker 1: politygeists are almost always demons that are torturing people. He
Speaker 1: wrote that devils can quote appear in different shapes not
Speaker 1: only of those which are alive, but also of dead
Speaker 1: men as well as a peer in the likeness of
Speaker 1: a black dog, a horse, an owl, and also are
Speaker 1: able to bring incredible things to pass unquote. Lavater did
Speaker 1: admit that in the rarest of cases, God may send
Speaker 1: angels or the spirit of a dead person to Earth
Speaker 1: for a very specific task, but due to demons and
Speaker 1: nature trickery, there's really no way to trust that a
Speaker 1: ghostly presence may be from God, so he recommends that
Speaker 1: one should always assume that a specter is demonic. God
Speaker 1: may even allow demonic spirits to appear as a form
Speaker 1: of punishment and a sign that one should repent for wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: Lavater's theologic work on ghosts were part of a larger
Speaker 1: Protestant Christian campaign to literally demonize all spirits. Right, the
Speaker 1: only thing you can really talk to is Jesus or God.
Speaker 1: Anything else is probably just a demon. This is the
Speaker 1: version of ghosts that I grew up with as a kid,
Speaker 1: the idea that basically, if a ghost appears, it's probably
Speaker 1: a demon trying to scare or trick you. This concept
Speaker 1: that spirits and spirit contact were predominantly demonic changed the
Speaker 1: nature of many witch trials, since when cunning folk listed
Speaker 1: their familiar ghosts or fairies, they were basically admitting to
Speaker 1: trafficking with demons. The next evolution in ghost lore came
Speaker 1: in the form of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian and scientist.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was one of the first to postulate
Speaker 1: the existence of the neuron. As Christians in Europe were
Speaker 1: dealing with this messy assortment of spirits that you really
Speaker 1: shouldn't try and interact with, but if you do, you
Speaker 1: better make sure they're angels, Swedenborg was about to shake
Speaker 1: up this whole entire cosmology. In the seventeen forties, he
Speaker 1: started having quote intense mystical experiences, dreams and visions unquote,
Speaker 1: which led him to believe he was in contact with
Speaker 1: a spirit world and entities that he described as angels, demons,
Speaker 1: as well as other spirits, including ones from extraterrestrial planets.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the first guys to do
Speaker 1: the spirits I'm talking to are actually aliens, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. In seventeen eighty five, he published a book
Speaker 1: titled Heaven and Hell, based on his experiences of the afterlife.
Speaker 1: According to Swedenburg, once humans on Earth pass on to
Speaker 1: the spiritual world, they enter a intermediate realm in between
Speaker 1: heaven and Hell and eventually either become beautified into angels
Speaker 1: or twisted into demons, and then respectively pass on into
Speaker 1: either Heaven or Hell proper. While his depiction of spirits
Speaker 1: were obviously influenced by his Christian beliefs, the variety and
Speaker 1: breadth of his spirit world was broader than just the undead.
Speaker 1: Swedenburgh's writing was one of the early influences on spiritualism.
Speaker 1: Core tenants of which are there being multiple levels of
Speaker 1: the afterlife and that an individual's awareness persists after death
Speaker 1: and may be contacted by the living, which is pretty
Speaker 1: similar to what most people now would probably describe as
Speaker 1: ghosts if you were to ask them what a ghost is.
Speaker 1: While Swedenburg actually recommended against attempting to contact spirits, he
Speaker 1: had a lasting influence on American spiritualism for creating an
Speaker 1: explicitly Christian based system where spiritual entities worked as mediators
Speaker 1: between humans and God. Coming out of Upstate New York
Speaker 1: in the decade before the Civil War, spiritualism brought to
Speaker 1: the other aspects of the radical Quakers with Swedenberg's idea
Speaker 1: of spirit intermediary who could bring messages to the living.
Speaker 1: The spiritualist movement formally began on March thirty first, eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, when the Fox Sisters made their fraudulent claim
Speaker 1: of contacting a spirit who could communicate through knocking noises.
Speaker 1: Starting initially in Quaker communities, mediumship and seances immediately took
Speaker 1: off across the United States, including the White House as
Speaker 1: the Lincolns were graving the loss of their son, showing
Speaker 1: that interest in ghosts and seances were not just a
Speaker 1: parlor trick for commoners, they were also a parlor trick
Speaker 1: for the president. The fact that the rise of spiritualism
Speaker 1: coincided with Civil War deaths and gruesome Battlefield photography certainly
Speaker 1: helped fuel the drive to communicate and receive messages from
Speaker 1: the recently deceased. Due to its Quaker roots, the spiritualist
Speaker 1: movement was abolitionist, and its belief in an egalitarian afterlife
Speaker 1: prompted its members to advocate for social change here on earth.
Speaker 1: Even the messages that mediums claim to relay from the
Speaker 1: dead were often progressive. In eighteen fifty two, the medium
Speaker 1: Isaac Post published a collection of messages he supposedly channeled
Speaker 1: from such people as Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and other famous
Speaker 1: figures who urged the living to push for radical social change.
Speaker 1: The book, entitled Voices from the Spirit World, included a
Speaker 1: passage claiming that the ghost of George Washington became an
Speaker 1: abolitionist after death. And I don't know the idea that
Speaker 1: the ghost of Jefferson and Washington suddenly became abolitionists after death.
Speaker 1: Although I understand its utility at the time for trying
Speaker 1: to push people towards becoming an abolitionist, it does kind
Speaker 1: of read as a little bit gross, considering how that
Speaker 1: was very much not their opinions when they were actually
Speaker 1: living humans. New to the spiritualist development of ghosts was
Speaker 1: not just the idea of regular spiritual contact, but evidence
Speaker 1: that the spirit world could be shown to the physical,
Speaker 1: scientific world. Basically the precursor to modern ghost hunting emerged
Speaker 1: between the Civil War and World War I. In London,
Speaker 1: multiple ghost clubs and psychic or paranormal research groups were
Speaker 1: founded in the mid to late eighteen hundreds aimed at
Speaker 1: scientifically investigating ghosts, hauntings, and the claims of spiritualists. Similar
Speaker 1: groups for investigation opened up in the United States, and
Speaker 1: around this time is also when we start to see
Speaker 1: the use of technology to assist in capturing alleged evidence
Speaker 1: of ghosts. In eighteen sixty one, amateur photographer William Mumler
Speaker 1: was developing a self portrait when a shadowy apparition of
Speaker 1: a young girl appeared on his developing plate. Mummler knew
Speaker 1: this to be a simple mistake of re using an
Speaker 1: improperly scrubbed photography plate, what we now would call a
Speaker 1: double exposure, But upon showing this photo to a very
Speaker 1: excited spiritualist friend of his, he realized the lucrative opportunity
Speaker 1: that lay before him. Thus was born the business of
Speaker 1: spirit photography. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes's fame,
Speaker 1: was a fan of spirit photography. He became a member
Speaker 1: of London's Society for Psychical Research and eventually became a
Speaker 1: spiritualist himself. The recent inventions of the phonograph and telephone
Speaker 1: were hoped to be utilized to create evidence of spirit contact.
Speaker 1: According to Ghosts of Futures, Past, Spiritualism and Cultural Politics
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century America by Molly McGary, Thomas Watson, famed
Speaker 1: assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, experimented with the telephone as
Speaker 1: an aid to spiritual communication. Decades later, Thomas Edison sought
Speaker 1: to develop a quote unquote spirit phone, telling American Magazine
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty quote, I've been at work for some
Speaker 1: time building an apparatus to see if it is possible
Speaker 1: for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us,
Speaker 1: not by a cult, mystifying, mysterious or weird means, but
Speaker 1: by scientific methods unquote. Edison's spirit phone never really turned out,
Speaker 1: and we have very little information about it. It seems
Speaker 1: Edison thought that elements of our personality or memories existed
Speaker 1: in a form of like almost particles that could be
Speaker 1: measured and amplified by vibrational sensing equipment, but not much
Speaker 1: is recorded of his actual attempts to build this spirit phone.
Speaker 1: By the end of the nineteenth century, newspaper is reported
Speaker 1: on ghosts and hauntings along with other regular news. A
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen New York Times article on the paper's own
Speaker 1: history of reporting on ghosts said, quote Paulette D. Kilmer,
Speaker 1: a cultural historian and professor at the University of Toledo,
Speaker 1: scoured the paper's archives. Her research turned up nearly three
Speaker 1: hundred ghost stories in the Times between the founding of
Speaker 1: the paper in eighteen fifty one and the early twentieth century. Quote.
Speaker 1: While news coverage of hauntings dropped off during the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the ways in which people attempted to understand ghosts only
Speaker 1: got more complex. The mediumship of the spiritualists has combined
Speaker 1: with the ever growing field of paranormal research, New Age beliefs,
Speaker 1: and pop culture fascination with poltergeist, spirits and UFOs, along
Speaker 1: with the resurgence of Evangelical Protestantism into an overlap of
Speaker 1: conflicting ghost cosmologies and what it means to contact the
Speaker 1: spirit world. To cap off. Our first night at the conference,
Speaker 1: we signed up for our very own ghost investigation at
Speaker 1: the Starry Night Inn, a quaint little house just a
Speaker 1: short walk from the convention center. We got to the
Speaker 1: inn right before midnight on Friday evening, before we ventured
Speaker 1: out on our hunt for ghosts. We were split into
Speaker 1: two groups of five, with one starting in the inn
Speaker 1: and the other in the outdoor bathhouse. We got acquainted
Speaker 1: with the ghost hunting tools we were going to be using. First.
Speaker 1: We were given a popular EMF meter routinely used for
Speaker 1: ghost detection, called a K two meter. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: measure electromagnetic fields and features colorful light up LEDs. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a quote from the lead investigator we
Speaker 1: were paired with. Quote. If a K two meter spikes
Speaker 1: without reason, if it's not put next to anything powerfully electrical,
Speaker 1: then we can consider that paranormal. Consider that a spirit.
Speaker 1: When our body dies, we leave behind our energies. Our
Speaker 1: energies is EMF, and this starts to pick it up unquote.
Speaker 1: Among the paranormal skeptic community, the K two meter is
Speaker 1: notorious for giving off false positives. With its unshielded sense
Speaker 1: is able to be set off by cell phones, radio waves,
Speaker 1: and even nearby batteries. The other device we were using
Speaker 1: is something called a rempod. Essentially, it's a small, horrible
Speaker 1: sounding junior theoremy with some LEDs attached. An antenna creates
Speaker 1: an electromagnetic field. If something conductive gets close to the antenna,
Speaker 1: it forms a capacitor between the object and the antenna,
Speaker 1: and the pod will light up and make some noise.
Speaker 1: Or if it's electromaenetic field gets disrupted by something like
Speaker 1: say cellular or radio frequencies, it will also make a
Speaker 1: horrible beeping noise and light up. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: another quote from our lead investigator quote. When our energies
Speaker 1: are around, the pod will react to any energy field
Speaker 1: that comes close to its antenna. So as we invite
Speaker 1: spirits in, we can tell them how they can interact,
Speaker 1: and we can tell them, hey, if you walk over
Speaker 1: to that light over there and touch it, it'll light up. Unquote.
Speaker 1: There is something funny to me about telling a ghost
Speaker 1: to walk over somewhere, just a little it's just a
Speaker 1: little amusing. My group of five intrepid investigators were sent
Speaker 1: out to the bathhouse, which we were told used to
Speaker 1: be a carriage house and horse stables that got damaged
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twelve Seaside fire. The lead investigator started
Speaker 1: by informing any possible spirits that we do not mean
Speaker 1: them quote harm or intrusion, and that we would just
Speaker 1: quote like to talk. He then informed any ghosts in
Speaker 1: the vicinity that if they quote unquote walk up to
Speaker 1: any of the devices with LED lights and quote unquote
Speaker 1: touch it, it will light up. Quote go ahead, use
Speaker 1: your energy and touch all those lights for me. That
Speaker 1: way we know you're here unquote. Potential specters were also
Speaker 1: informed that if they speak into an electronic recording device,
Speaker 1: us corporeal humans could hear their voice when we play
Speaker 1: back the audio. This is called EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon.
Speaker 1: More on that on the next episode. The lead investigator
Speaker 1: then asked any nearby ghosts what their favorite food is,
Speaker 1: which seems like a cruel question to ask a ghost
Speaker 1: because they can't eat anyway. A barrage of questions then
Speaker 1: flooded out, can you tell us your name, what are
Speaker 1: you wearing? Who is the president? Not exactly all things
Speaker 1: I would ask a spectral anomaly if I was given
Speaker 1: the opportunity, But after a few minutes of silence, the
Speaker 1: rempod started to light up very faintly. The lead investigator
Speaker 1: starts talking to the presumed ghost and suggests that they
Speaker 1: play a game to find out what the ghost's name is.
Speaker 1: This is how it works. Someone recites the alphabet, and
Speaker 1: if the rempod lights up on any of the letters,
Speaker 1: that means the letter is in the ghost's name. We
Speaker 1: first got the letter N, and then the letters O
Speaker 1: and D. Then I started going through the alphabet and
Speaker 1: it lit up on the letter I. Then it let
Speaker 1: up on the letter I again, and then the letter R.
Speaker 1: At this point, the lead investigator decided that the ghost's
Speaker 1: name was Ronnie. As we were about to leave the bathhouse,
Speaker 1: someone who worked at the end came in and told
Speaker 1: us that there was a stableman with the last name
Speaker 1: Norris who died in the fire. So now the ghost's
Speaker 1: name became Norris. Next we moved to the basement. One
Speaker 1: person in our group was a little spooked and elected
Speaker 1: to stay outside. None of the rempods or anything lit
Speaker 1: up in the basement, but the person from the inn,
Speaker 1: the one who told us about Norris, joined us in
Speaker 1: the basement. When down there they said they saw a
Speaker 1: ghost that they were familiar with named Cassandra. They then
Speaker 1: turned to me and said that Cassandra likes me. Cassandra
Speaker 1: was reportedly trying to give me a hug and said
Speaker 1: that she wishes me quote all the well beings in
Speaker 1: the world unquote. Now, Cassandra was also apparently trying to
Speaker 1: tell me about a Grandpa John, which I don't have.
Speaker 1: So if any of you have a Grandpa John who
Speaker 1: needs to tell me something, just let me know. All right,
Speaker 1: back inside the house part of the inn, and we're
Speaker 1: about to go tour upstairs. We just went down into
Speaker 1: the basement and just got out of there. Yeah. Once
Speaker 1: back inside the inn, we went into the upstairs bedrooms.
Speaker 1: People set up their EMF detectors, but there was also
Speaker 1: some new equipment. One of the rooms had a security
Speaker 1: camera and a grid projector to record any irregular shadows.
Speaker 1: And I was given a spirit box. A spirit box
Speaker 1: is a handheld radio tuner that sweeps through AM or
Speaker 1: FM frequencies at a high rate. You mostly hear a
Speaker 1: sort of grating, staticky white noise with small bits of
Speaker 1: words or music slipping through from radio stations. I guess
Speaker 1: it's sort of the modern incarnation of the spirit phone.
Speaker 1: The idea is that ghosts can somehow manipulate the radio
Speaker 1: waves to speak complete words or sentences as the box
Speaker 1: is cycling between frequencies. Basically, spirit boxes are supposed to
Speaker 1: act as an electronic radio medium for spirits to communicate.
Speaker 1: The lead investigator thought that the spirit box was telling
Speaker 1: us to leave, but words weren't really clear in my opinion.
Speaker 1: For example, here is a clip in question.
Speaker 4: In the room.
Speaker 1: There was also some flickering lights and high EMF ratings,
Speaker 1: which mostly just got me concerned for this bedroom's electrical wiring.
Speaker 1: The second half of the investigation was pretty uneventful, and
Speaker 1: around two am we called it a night and I
Speaker 1: recorded a little debrief on our way back to the hotel. No,
Speaker 1: I do find it super interesting how people try to
Speaker 1: like the way they interpret electual readings as you would
Speaker 1: a conversation, and they they assert their reality on it,
Speaker 1: being like, if this happens, this means you say yes, right,
Speaker 1: so then so then the absence of the thing also
Speaker 1: becomes an answer. It's it's It is a very interesting
Speaker 1: process of people like crafting their own reality as things
Speaker 1: are happening.
Speaker 4: No, it was definitely them crafting their own reality.
Speaker 5: But also I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, like, probably some of it's like interesting, but there's
Speaker 1: still a whole bunch of points where you like make
Speaker 1: a decision, be like this is the thing that I heard, right,
Speaker 1: Because like even when they were doing the name game thing,
Speaker 1: a lot of times the light would light up and
Speaker 1: they would like still kind of keep moving on.
Speaker 6: So yeah, like there was an F and and I
Speaker 6: that off for the absolutely.
Speaker 1: And the yeaholutely, So there's this a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: very very peculiar things that that had that like go
Speaker 1: into crafting what the idea of reality is going to be?
Speaker 1: Stop making a thing, then making a thing, and then
Speaker 1: it starts again. You're like, oh no, you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to do that, And it's like it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very very bizarre process to watch when putting together
Speaker 1: these two episodes. This last October, Elaine and I once
Speaker 1: again conversed to share our thoughts on our first ghost
Speaker 1: hunting experience. Okay, now that it has been over six
Speaker 1: months since you and I were at the organ Ghost Conference,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see how our debrief now may kind
Speaker 1: of differ or be expanded upon from our debrief literally
Speaker 1: minutes after we left this investigation at the story night
Speaker 1: in and you know this this day was This day
Speaker 1: was interesting because we had the ghost detective class like
Speaker 1: right before this investigation. We were able to have these
Speaker 1: two kind of ideas of what a ghost investigation looks
Speaker 1: like kind of play off each other, which I think
Speaker 1: led to a pretty fun holistic experience. In terms of
Speaker 1: the many kind of diversity of investigators that were at
Speaker 1: this event.
Speaker 6: I think just the most notable thing was they didn't
Speaker 6: do a single thing that the forensic ghost Hunting class suggested,
Speaker 6: just like literally, yeah, we could have gone down the
Speaker 6: list of every single thing that the forensic ghost Hunting
Speaker 6: class suggested to do, and not one of those was done.
Speaker 1: Like completely the opposite.
Speaker 6: Record keeping of what phenomenon occurred did not happen.
Speaker 1: Logging any data, yeah.
Speaker 6: Did not happen. Investigation of the structures, yeah, did not happen.
Speaker 6: Doing a history of the structure didn't occur. The only
Speaker 6: interviews we had with someone was the person who said
Speaker 6: they were a medium who lived there. Yeah, even just
Speaker 6: like questions like how long have you seen things here?
Speaker 6: Didn't occur.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't very interesting just in terms of how
Speaker 1: like the ghost hunt at the end was literally just
Speaker 1: the exact opposite of all of the sorts of procedures
Speaker 1: that the ghost Detective class was trying to lay out,
Speaker 1: which we attended just like literally hours prior.
Speaker 6: Well, I think one thing that you can really see
Speaker 6: between the how to do a Ghost Investigation class and
Speaker 6: then the ghost investigation itself is the how to do
Speaker 6: a Paranormal investigation class doesn't assume you know what you're investigating,
Speaker 6: and so it really is a lot about doing, you know,
Speaker 6: background talks with people, like talking to sources, what phenomena.
Speaker 6: It's not assuming that there was anything paranormal in the
Speaker 6: first place, and it's an investigation of whether or not
Speaker 6: something paranormal has occurred. And when you go to the
Speaker 6: ghost hunt, specifically the ghost hunt that we went to,
Speaker 6: everyone there was assuming that paranormal things were occurring just
Speaker 6: as a baseline.
Speaker 1: They were interpreting readings from their specialized ghost hunting equipment
Speaker 1: as proof of communication with some kind of paranormal force.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of implicit assumptions made. First off, if
Speaker 6: you start talking to phenomenon, you're assuming that there's phenomenon.
Speaker 6: You're assuming the phenomenon can hear you, You're assuming the
Speaker 6: phenomenon wants to interact with you. And if you say,
Speaker 6: if you can hear me, touch the light, all of
Speaker 6: those are very implicit assumptions. It's not investigating what phenomenon
Speaker 6: there is. You've already framed what you expect the encounter
Speaker 6: to be and how whatever you're encountering will interact with
Speaker 6: a whole mess of like ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite thing about that from the experience at
Speaker 1: the starting night in is like we were basically with
Speaker 1: this like middle aged man who just kept yelling at
Speaker 1: any like prospective ghosts that were around the vicinity, And like,
Speaker 1: why would a ghost want to follow the commands of
Speaker 1: like a middle aged man.
Speaker 6: I mean I didn't want to follow the commands when
Speaker 6: he would say everyone needs to be quiet. I wanted
Speaker 6: to like start yelling or muttering just out of sheer obstinence.
Speaker 6: Because of the way that he was instructing things. I
Speaker 6: can't imagine a spiritual entity, if it was a ghost,
Speaker 6: even the way he's conceiving of it, would somehow not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have this little exchange laid out here where
Speaker 1: he was he was addressing what I guess he assumed
Speaker 1: was a ghost saying, quote, make the light to stop,
Speaker 1: back away, back away, good good. Now get closer, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, one more time, get closer. All right, now
Speaker 1: make the light stop. Ah, I didn't tell you to
Speaker 1: get closer. Back away, back away, back a way good. Okay,
Speaker 1: now now get closer, good good. The only thing that
Speaker 1: was changing throughout that back and forth was that occasionally
Speaker 1: a little lightwood kind of go on, and that was it, right, Like,
Speaker 1: but he's able to weave this whole story in between
Speaker 1: this light going on by saying back up and then
Speaker 1: the light turns off, and then saying okay, now come closer.
Speaker 1: You wait like ten fifteen seconds the light turns on.
Speaker 4: He's able.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's crafting this whole like timeline of this
Speaker 1: ghost like doing this thing when really this is just
Speaker 1: a flickering light like that that but through the way
Speaker 1: that he has this like uh, this like commanding voice,
Speaker 1: it's making it as if the ghost is like following
Speaker 1: these instructions and then being being like rewarded for following
Speaker 1: these instructions by saying like good good, good good, or
Speaker 1: if they don't follow instructions, then the ghost is like scolded,
Speaker 1: So it's it's just a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: interactions like that.
Speaker 6: I mean, I've gone through the same narration when I
Speaker 6: stare at a candle flame like a little bit high like,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't mean that the candle is necessarily responding
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 1: Both activity on the rempod and the lack of activity
Speaker 1: are taken as a sign of spirit communication. Questions will
Speaker 1: be framed as if you want us to leave you alone,
Speaker 1: light up, so if nothing happens, that itself is taken
Speaker 1: as an actionable answer. Whoever is leading the quote unquote
Speaker 1: investigation gets to either intentionally or even unintentionally, craft the
Speaker 1: meaning of the experience based on how the questions are framed,
Speaker 1: when questions are asked, and how the group responds based
Speaker 1: on the activity or lack thereof of the EMF devices.
Speaker 1: The rempods often go off erratically or in seemingly random intervals,
Speaker 1: but when their activity happens after someone just asks twenty questions,
Speaker 1: it's assumed to be related to whatever the most recent
Speaker 1: line of inquiry was. It all operates on correlation versus causation,
Speaker 1: with people mostly jumping on the ladder no matter when
Speaker 1: the pods light up, the results can be turned into
Speaker 1: a meaningful sign if the investigator is talking frequently enough.
Speaker 1: These sorts of ghost hunts are primarily a form of entertainment.
Speaker 1: It's a novel experience you can have with your friends
Speaker 1: and family to have a fun time together over the
Speaker 1: course of a few hours and maybe get a little spooked.
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting a rigorous scientific investigation at midnight and
Speaker 1: seaside Oregon, nor do I think that's even a useful
Speaker 1: way of getting at the heart of the phenomenon. Rather
Speaker 1: than viewing ghost hunts as objective inquiries into paranormal activity,
Speaker 1: I think for most people they operate more as a
Speaker 1: way of inducing paranormal experiences, the same way occultism seeks
Speaker 1: to induce mystical experiences, and religion strives for a connection
Speaker 1: with God. All of these are practices of constructing meaning
Speaker 1: and finding patterns, and that's not to discount them. They
Speaker 1: only are a problem when they become exploitative and harmful
Speaker 1: to yourself and others, which is what we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about in the next episode, So stay tuned to hear
Speaker 1: about warrior angels tasked with vanquishing demons. How Mendal illness
Speaker 1: is a sure sign you're possessed by an evil spirit,
Speaker 1: and how abortions and the Internet are opening up portals
Speaker 1: in our world to demonic forces. See you on the
Speaker 1: other side, Welcome back to it could happen. Here's Spooky
Speaker 1: Week special presentation Ghost in the Machine, a first person
Speaker 1: account of the twenty twenty three Oregon Ghost Conference. I'm
Speaker 1: Garson Davis. In the last episode, I introduced you to
Speaker 1: the hauntings of Seaside and the first day of the conference,
Speaker 1: But now descending into the subsequent two days, we're going
Speaker 1: to get into a lot more classes and events that
Speaker 1: started to reveal the cultural underpinnings of the Ghost Conference attendees.
Speaker 1: The cost of entry for the conference was pretty low,
Speaker 1: but every class or ghost hunt was an additional fee,
Speaker 1: with classes ranging from fifteen to twenty five bucks each
Speaker 1: and the ghost investigations a lofty thirty five dollars per ticket,
Speaker 1: so I had to pick and choose my classes carefully.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of classes with the word energy
Speaker 1: in the title. I mostly avoided those, but the class
Speaker 1: topics ranged from the afterlife to connecting with spirits, reiki crystals, tarot, mediumship,
Speaker 1: and psychic abilities. There were a few classes on witchcraft
Speaker 1: and occult magic, but that was definitely not the general
Speaker 1: vibe of the conference or most attendees. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of hostility to ritual magic esoteric practices
Speaker 1: throughout the conference from the more new ag energy working speakers,
Speaker 1: mostly on the basis that witchcraft is linked to dark forces.
Speaker 1: Just because someone operates on a form of magical thinking
Speaker 1: does not mean that the take kindly to arcane practices,
Speaker 1: a case in point to the historical witch hunts led
Speaker 1: by the Christians. The Love and Light new Age psychics,
Speaker 1: along with the paranormal investigator types, made up the majority
Speaker 1: of both attendees and class instructors. On Saturday morning, while
Speaker 1: my friend Elaine was doing a hypnosis class, I took
Speaker 1: a really fun class on how to learn remote viewing.
Speaker 1: The instructor was a very jovial woman, and it was
Speaker 1: her opinion that remote viewing is just a skill that
Speaker 1: can be trained, not linked to any innate psychic powers.
Speaker 1: With just a bit more practice, I'll be blowing up
Speaker 1: goats with my mind in no time. I snuck in
Speaker 1: towards the end of the hypnotism class, just in time
Speaker 1: for the group hypnosis session, where I ended up astral
Speaker 1: projecting into a Portland anarchist book. Fair taking classes offered
Speaker 1: an intimate look at each presenter's own unique view of reality.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone at the conference was operating on their own
Speaker 1: complete cosmology of how ghosts or paranormal entities work. There's
Speaker 1: two classes I want to focus on. Each had very
Speaker 1: different class descriptions, but ended up pickybacking off each other
Speaker 1: in some really interesting ways. The first one was titled
Speaker 1: The Power of Entity Extraction. The instructor was a blonde,
Speaker 1: white woman who referred to herself as a quote unquote
Speaker 1: shamanic practitioner. The class was about how quote unresolved trauma
Speaker 1: can be an invitation to ethic hitchhikers, and how entities
Speaker 1: mimic signs of mental illness and change behavior unquote. The
Speaker 1: other class was titled The Warrior Angel Within You. It
Speaker 1: sought to help you find out if you secretly had
Speaker 1: the soul of a warrior angel. Spoiler, everyone in the
Speaker 1: class did, and it promised to teach you how to
Speaker 1: activate your connection between yourself and your angelic consciousness to
Speaker 1: unlock your own angel powers. So, while having many operational differences,
Speaker 1: the Warrior Angel class and the Entity Extraction class were
Speaker 1: both very set in their own unique ontologies, and in
Speaker 1: order for their respective operative metaphysics to work, they needed
Speaker 1: to be extremely dogmatic about their own ontology. Both instructors
Speaker 1: also had a very similar story of some past trauma
Speaker 1: leading to a mystical encounter which then awakened some spiritual
Speaker 1: insight and hidden power. For the entity extraction class, it
Speaker 1: was quote, I was a very sickly kid. I had
Speaker 1: all these things that were wrong with me, and then
Speaker 1: I realized I had dark entities attached to me, but
Speaker 1: I could learn how to extract and remove them myself.
Speaker 1: Versus the Warrior Angel class, the person's backstory was quote
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen years old, I got into a
Speaker 1: bad motorcycle accident. I was clinically dead for two minutes,
Speaker 1: received a brain injury, and then I started seeing angels unquote.
Speaker 1: Both women's personal journeys seemed like they helped them deal
Speaker 1: with their own traumas. In the case of the Shamanic
Speaker 1: practitioner woman, she regained her health and now has a
Speaker 1: seemingly successful life and business of removing entities and quote
Speaker 1: unquote soul coaching. The Warrior Angel woman is a nurse
Speaker 1: and finds time to write a lot of books, all
Speaker 1: while murdering demons and expelling the forces of darkness. While
Speaker 1: only the Entity Extraction class built itself as having to
Speaker 1: do with entity removal, both classes were incredibly focused on
Speaker 1: the idea that there are malevolent spirits or demons everywhere
Speaker 1: in the entity class, these dark entities are out looking
Speaker 1: for people with quote unquote souls due to past trauma
Speaker 1: and are just like waiting to leap onto people and
Speaker 1: dig themselves into their minds. Similarly, according to the Warrior
Speaker 1: Angel class, demons are everywhere. Demons live around and inside people,
Speaker 1: but are only visible to those with angelic sight. The
Speaker 1: Entity extraction class laid out two main types of beings,
Speaker 1: lost or benign entities that are just trapped in the
Speaker 1: third dimension and as they're trying to pass on to
Speaker 1: quote unquote the light, they end up attaching onto a
Speaker 1: human versus the overtly dark or demonic entities which seek
Speaker 1: to feed off people's pain and suffering. We learned that
Speaker 1: benign entities can just be lost human souls. For instance,
Speaker 1: if someone is taking a lot of medication or is
Speaker 1: going through chemotherapy when they die, their soul won't be
Speaker 1: able to cross over to the light, and it'll become lost.
Speaker 1: According at least to this shamanic practitioner, she claimed to
Speaker 1: be trained in a special technique to remove entities. It
Speaker 1: involves quote etherically locking your wrists to draw the entity
Speaker 1: into a double terminated crystal, at which point it can
Speaker 1: then be sent into the light unquote. Since the shaman
Speaker 1: woman wasn't actually offering ways for other people to protect
Speaker 1: themselves from entities, the only thing she had to offer
Speaker 1: was her own worldview that leans towards a paranoia where
Speaker 1: dark spirits are waiting to latch on and cause mental illness.
Speaker 1: She talked about how a man with mood fluctuations paid
Speaker 1: her money to remove a quote unquote nine foot minute
Speaker 1: taur that was attached to him. At least in the
Speaker 1: Warrior angel system, you could eventually gain some form of
Speaker 1: agency when you merged with your warrior Angel, but then
Speaker 1: you would spend the rest of your life recognizing demons
Speaker 1: in human form and working with the Legion of Light
Speaker 1: to banish them to the darkness, Whereas in the entity
Speaker 1: attraction class, the most you could do was just be
Speaker 1: proactive by quote unquote learning ways to identify possible attachments
Speaker 1: and how your lifestyle could be an open invitation to
Speaker 1: host the unwanted. Though she identified herself as a shamanic practitioner,
Speaker 1: she didn't believe you could actually work with spirits. When
Speaker 1: people asked her about their own helper entities that they
Speaker 1: work with, she said that you can never know if
Speaker 1: a helper spirit is actually intending to assist you. That is,
Speaker 1: except if you ask an entity if it's of the light,
Speaker 1: it has to answer truthfully. As this was a quote
Speaker 1: unquote universal law. That was the phrase she used. It's
Speaker 1: a quote unquote universal law that if you ask an
Speaker 1: entity if it's of the light, it has to answer truthfully.
Speaker 1: There was no indication on who wrote this universal law,
Speaker 1: who enforces this universal law, if there's a universal police
Speaker 1: force making sure that the entities are following these rules.
Speaker 1: None of that was explained. But this is a universal lot.
Speaker 1: So that is a tip for any of you listeners
Speaker 1: if you ever meet an entity that you think might
Speaker 1: be a little bit sketchy, just ask if it's of
Speaker 1: the light. It has to answer truthfully. So, despite this
Speaker 1: universal law business, she still discouraged people from trying to
Speaker 1: work with entities in general. She said that if an
Speaker 1: entity is trying to help you, it's probably of the dark,
Speaker 1: and working with any spirits at all will make you
Speaker 1: more susceptible to entity attachment, which is definitely weird because
Speaker 1: she did very specifically try to claim some sort of
Speaker 1: shamanic lineage, and this blanket hostility to spirit really doesn't
Speaker 1: follow the way most shamanic practices work. So I did
Speaker 1: some digging and it turns out she got her training
Speaker 1: from a controversial quote unquote shamanism school called the Four Winds,
Speaker 1: which repackages New Age of spirituality as quote unquote neo shamanism.
Speaker 1: So even though you shouldn't be in contact with really
Speaker 1: any spirits according to the shamanic practitioner, in the Warrior
Speaker 1: Angel class, we learned that if you have the soul
Speaker 1: of a warrior angel, you can quote unquote communicate with ghosts, angels, God,
Speaker 1: the Galactic Federation Council, and the Council of Elders. Now
Speaker 1: I know you're probably wondering what the Galactic Federation Council is,
Speaker 1: because I was too. We never found out. We never
Speaker 1: really got a clue. You had to buy the books
Speaker 1: for that one. The Warrior Angel instructor claimed to have
Speaker 1: her own angelic hierarchy that wasn't based on any other system,
Speaker 1: just her own experiences. A warrior Angel is a quote
Speaker 1: special kind of angel, fully trained in the art of
Speaker 1: war by the Legion of Light, an elite team of
Speaker 1: demon slayers quote and no, I don't think she has
Speaker 1: seen the anime. What makes the Warrior Angel special is
Speaker 1: that it can be incarnated in physical form as a human,
Speaker 1: but only archangels can kill or banish demons back to
Speaker 1: the dark realm. The Warrior Angel can scare demons away
Speaker 1: with their angelic presence, but they can also act as
Speaker 1: spies to inform the Legion of Light as to demon whereabouts.
Speaker 1: Each Warrior Angel has special abilities, usually healing or manifesting,
Speaker 1: as well as the ability to create infinity orbs, which
Speaker 1: can be used for protection or to trap a demon
Speaker 1: inside and send it back to the dark realm within
Speaker 1: the orb. Now you're probably wondering what's an infinity orb.
Speaker 1: We don't know either. We never got a good explanation
Speaker 1: for what an infinity orb is, how to make one,
Speaker 1: how they work. It was very vague. I guess that
Speaker 1: is also in the book, along with the Galactic Federation Council.
Speaker 1: There are apparently over three million Warrior Angels walking the
Speaker 1: Earth today, most of which have been sent to Earth
Speaker 1: in the past two hundred years because quote, the darkness
Speaker 1: has spread over the Earth and in the last two
Speaker 1: hundred years, it's really gotten worse unquote. Now, thankfully, I,
Speaker 1: along with everyone else in the class, was informed that
Speaker 1: I'm actually one of these three million warrior Angels. And
Speaker 1: I was told my angel name Araman, whose specialty is communication.
Speaker 1: Oh fucking fuck. Okay, Apparently things on Earth have gotten
Speaker 1: worse enough that, under the command of God, the Legion
Speaker 1: of Light has resorted to killing demons more often because
Speaker 1: more and more of them just keep coming back from
Speaker 1: the dark realm. The lady running the class told us
Speaker 1: that she wasn't just a warrior angel, she was actually
Speaker 1: the archangel Ariel. As the Angel Ariel, she said that
Speaker 1: she's killed four thousand tho demons in the past six years.
Speaker 1: Something that's a little bit disturbing about this is that
Speaker 1: she also explained that in a past life, Ariel got
Speaker 1: in trouble with God because when she was out killing demons,
Speaker 1: she actually was also killing the human host of the demon.
Speaker 1: So the fact that this person, whose job is a
Speaker 1: nurse is claimed to have killed four thousand demons in
Speaker 1: the past six years is maybe a little bit concerning.
Speaker 1: Someone should look into that. The whole Warrior Angel cosmology
Speaker 1: was very rooted in Christian Millenarianism, an apocalyptic end times
Speaker 1: theology where social and political crisises accelerate, leading to a
Speaker 1: holy war between good and evil, resulting in the triumph
Speaker 1: of good and the establishing of a one thousand year
Speaker 1: kingdom of God on Earth before the final judgment. One
Speaker 1: of the darkest parts of the whole weekend for me
Speaker 1: was that there was this one woman who appeared to
Speaker 1: be in her twenties who was very obviously dealing with
Speaker 1: some sort of problem in her life. She talked with
Speaker 1: this Warrior angel woman for four hours. It was a
Speaker 1: one hour class. We then had a break, we went
Speaker 1: to another class, and then attended the second class, which
Speaker 1: was also an hour. Throughout that entire time, this obviously
Speaker 1: depressed young woman who was dealing with something was talking
Speaker 1: with this person about the Warrior angel thing, and that
Speaker 1: just felt extremely exploitative, and it was one of the
Speaker 1: things that actually just made me feel the most bad
Speaker 1: about the entire ghost conference. The Entity extraction class didn't
Speaker 1: have any information on how we can remove an entity,
Speaker 1: and aside from the second hour in which the instructor
Speaker 1: came and told us our angel names, the Warrior Angel
Speaker 1: class wasn't actually about how to connect with your angel.
Speaker 1: We never learned how to make anfit in the orbs. Instead,
Speaker 1: both classes were just pitches for the books and services
Speaker 1: of the people teaching them, and the class was a
Speaker 1: chance for them to weave the story of their particular
Speaker 1: worldview and sell it to the class attendees. Saturday night,
Speaker 1: Elayne and I signed up for another ghost investigation. With
Speaker 1: one already under our belt, we felt better prepared to
Speaker 1: yell at blinking lights and converse with the dead. I
Speaker 1: actually really liked this second investigation. It was led by
Speaker 1: a ghost hunting team from Astoria, Oregon, and this time
Speaker 1: it was to take place at the old Masonic Temple
Speaker 1: in Seaside. The setting was a big part of what
Speaker 1: up to the cool factor. The building had only been
Speaker 1: vacant since twenty seventeen, but the harsh coastal weather of
Speaker 1: northern Oregon had not been kind to the structure all right.
Speaker 1: It is Saturday night, March twenty fifth. We are inside
Speaker 1: the old Massenic Lodge in the Seaside, Oregon. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're I'm just walking into the big kind of ceremony
Speaker 1: ritual performance room. Once we got to the main room upstairs,
Speaker 1: people began setting up rempods and what are essentially motion
Speaker 1: activated light up cat toys. The idea is if some
Speaker 1: energetic forces passing through, it would light up the little catball.
Speaker 1: As about thirty people from the ghost hunt crammed into
Speaker 1: the lodge, the rempods started going off like crazy. The
Speaker 1: investigators had to repeatedly remind the ghosts to only touch
Speaker 1: the lights when answering a question. There was a male
Speaker 1: medium present at this ghost hunt, and he remarked as
Speaker 1: to why there was seemingly so much activity quote some
Speaker 1: spirits aren't happy about the women being here unquote. At
Speaker 1: this point some of the investigators got really combative with
Speaker 1: potential spirits after the woman line from the medium. One
Speaker 1: line was quote, do you want to know why there
Speaker 1: are all these females here? If so, give us a
Speaker 1: green light unquote. This is where the ghost hunt basically
Speaker 1: turned into a weird interrogation once again. It became a
Speaker 1: contest of injecting meaning during these little intervals of time
Speaker 1: in between when the lights flicker, I should ask the
Speaker 1: ghost if they do you think trans people are valid?
Speaker 1: And then if it lights up, that means it's yes, yes,
Speaker 1: breaking news from Seaside, Oregon. Ghosts do believe that trans
Speaker 1: people are valid, although they do not understand neo pronouns. Look,
Speaker 1: I just report the news. At this point, we changed
Speaker 1: things up from the regular arguing with blinking lights. We
Speaker 1: did an experiment with the radio frequency sweeping spirit Box
Speaker 1: using what's called the Estus method. It combines the spirit
Speaker 1: box with sensory deprivation to reduce the amount of external
Speaker 1: influence on the person listening to the spirit box. One
Speaker 1: person puts on a blindfold and noise canceling headphones plugged
Speaker 1: into the spirit box so they can speak aloud any
Speaker 1: words coming through the box without hearing the questions or
Speaker 1: comments from other investigators. Obviously, the conversation doesn't always line up,
Speaker 1: but there are often moments where it does form a
Speaker 1: fun synchronicity. I volunteered to try out being the human
Speaker 1: speaker for the spirit box, although I only did it
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. Pretty quickly, I was able to
Speaker 1: get into a sort of meditative trance state. The thing
Speaker 1: about being the one with the blindfold and noise canceling
Speaker 1: headphones pumping radio static directly into your ears is that
Speaker 1: in the moment, you have no idea what's going on
Speaker 1: as intended. You only have access to one side of
Speaker 1: the conversation, and if you get into a meditative state,
Speaker 1: it's hard to even remember what you've been saying. So
Speaker 1: I only got to hear the full conversation by listening
Speaker 1: to my recording when putting together these episodes. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: can't play most of that recording because there's too many
Speaker 1: random people's voices, but I'll narrate a few brief exchanges.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that came through was the
Speaker 1: word cold. People replied, yeah, it's freezing in here. Can
Speaker 1: you feel cold? I then replied, I don't, followed by
Speaker 1: I exist. After this, apparently someone was leaving the room
Speaker 1: to go downstairs, and I said, don't go. I can't
Speaker 1: follow off. Station. People then asked the ghost if they
Speaker 1: knew what the building was used for. I replied, you
Speaker 1: will want to find out. That's the thing radio calling.
Speaker 1: People then asked where are you right now? Can you
Speaker 1: tell us? I replied, I don't know lots of things.
Speaker 1: A short time later I heard stop following you too.
Speaker 1: We've had a cut. I'll play the audio of the
Speaker 1: very final thing. I said, I can't do anymore.
Speaker 7: Stop.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, dear Jenna Stock now. So that's when I
Speaker 1: decided it would be a good time to take off
Speaker 1: the headphones. We had a few other exchanges when I
Speaker 1: was listening to the spirit Box, but it's all kind
Speaker 1: of in that style. Apparently, when I was hooked up
Speaker 1: to the spirit Box, the rempods in the other room
Speaker 1: were going absolutely berserk with.
Speaker 8: Both of these just have been going off.
Speaker 6: Now they're being quiet.
Speaker 1: They've just been doing that interesting for the entire time.
Speaker 1: Not entirely surprising considering the amount of radio waves being
Speaker 1: pumped around the lodge. But after spending about an hour upstairs,
Speaker 1: the group made their way to the lower, more recreational
Speaker 1: floor of the temple. All right, we are going downstairs now.
Speaker 1: After going through the entire upstairs, mainly this quade room
Speaker 1: and then like the chain rooms where they wouldn't store
Speaker 1: their robes and shit. To close off the night, the
Speaker 1: lead investigators pulled out an old Panasonic digital voice recorder
Speaker 1: to try and capture any electronic ghost voices that might
Speaker 1: be trying to communicate. A woman turned on the voice
Speaker 1: activated recording device and asked, quote, if any spirits want
Speaker 1: to communicate, please say a word or make a sound unquote,
Speaker 1: And then when the recording was played back after the
Speaker 1: investigator spoke, a large growl was heard on the recording.
Speaker 1: She then asked if the spirit is male, and when
Speaker 1: played back, there was another growl, seemingly in response. More
Speaker 1: people were starting to theorize that the ghosts of the
Speaker 1: Masonic lodge were angry that there were women in the building.
Speaker 1: A guy then asked some questions into the voice recorder,
Speaker 1: and there was no response from any ghosts in the recording.
Speaker 1: A woman tried asking some of the same questions, quote,
Speaker 1: is there an issue about money? Spirits? Do you not
Speaker 1: want us to be here specifically women? Unquote? The first
Speaker 1: query alluded no response, but after the second question, another
Speaker 1: growl was heard. At the time, this was by far
Speaker 1: the most interesting result of the two ghost investigations. We
Speaker 1: went on to everyone there they captured evidence of a
Speaker 1: genuine ghost in that machine. There is an interesting contrast
Speaker 1: between the progressive ghosts of the Spiritualists and their egalitarian
Speaker 1: afterlife versus the misogynistic ghosts from the Freemason Lodge. It's
Speaker 1: unclear if whatever afterlife the Freemason ghosts are in is
Speaker 1: also home to the abolitionist George Washington. Besides the classes
Speaker 1: and ghost hunts, there were also free lectures on the
Speaker 1: main stage of the convention center. Going into the conference,
Speaker 1: the talk I was most excited about was titled AI necronomics.
Speaker 1: This is a topic I've been pretty interested in the
Speaker 1: past few years. Deep fake learning algorithms have been steadily improving,
Speaker 1: and with the help of skilled VFX artists, AI is
Speaker 1: able to pretty accurately replicate the voice and facial movements
Speaker 1: of dead celebrities, But necromantic technology is interlimited to resurrecting
Speaker 1: someone's appearance. Some AIS are trained to replicate people's expressive thoughts.
Speaker 1: There's a website called The Infinite Conversation. The website plays
Speaker 1: a never AI generated conversation between Werner Herzog and Slavoy Jijiak.
Speaker 5: Maybe you were to control and chew on, Maybe did
Speaker 5: can't touch you enough.
Speaker 8: I had the feeling that I was in the Wax Museum,
Speaker 8: that what I saw was something occasionally this, but hollow
Speaker 8: like hora wax figures, But yes, it did touch me.
Speaker 1: Every day. More of the conversation is generated by an
Speaker 1: AI language model trained on interviews and the writings of
Speaker 1: each respective speaker. Each time you load the website, it
Speaker 1: reminds you that everything you hear is just the hallucinations
Speaker 1: of a slab of silicon. A couple months before the
Speaker 1: Ghost conference, I was at the Consumer Electronics Showcase in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. There was this booth in the US government
Speaker 1: sponsored section of the event for a company called mind
Speaker 1: Bank AI. I talked with their director of Systems, Architecture
Speaker 1: and Cybersecurity, who used to work for the NSSA. Mind
Speaker 1: Bank seeks to create unique quote unquote digital twins by
Speaker 1: having users that input data about themselves into an AI
Speaker 1: every day. Your digital twin will ask you questions about
Speaker 1: how you're feeling and what you're thinking about, and your
Speaker 1: answers will be used to make a more accurate to
Speaker 1: digital copy of yourself. According to mind Bank's website, your
Speaker 1: digital twin will quote learn to think like you by
Speaker 1: analyzing your answers unquote. Their CEO claims that this process
Speaker 1: will eventually help him achieve immortality. The current model of
Speaker 1: this product is being billed as a therapy app, where
Speaker 1: the user talks to their digital twin as you would
Speaker 1: a therapist, and the app responds to your data inputs
Speaker 1: with quote unquote, valuable insight into each answer to understand
Speaker 1: how your mind works using cutting edge cognitive and psycholinguistic analysis.
Speaker 1: But mind Bank's horizons are far beyond a fraught therapy app.
Speaker 1: The real goal is to make autonomous digital replicas of
Speaker 1: people to live on the Internet. A future use case
Speaker 1: for this technology is what mind Bank calls a knowledge transfer,
Speaker 1: marketed to businesses to create digital copies of their employees
Speaker 1: quote scale your best employees transfer years of expertise and
Speaker 1: company data that is locked inside your employee's mind through
Speaker 1: a guided personal digital twin unquote. Mind Bank is only
Speaker 1: one of many companies trying to build this technology. At
Speaker 1: Amazon's AI and Emergent Technology conference last year, they inveiled
Speaker 1: plans to add custom voices to Alexa Eco devices. With
Speaker 1: an audio sample of less than a minute, AI is
Speaker 1: able to reconstruct the voice of dead relatives to talk
Speaker 1: through an Alexa machine. In the presentation, the head scientist
Speaker 1: of Alexa AI, gave an example of a kid asking
Speaker 1: a lot for his grandma, who recently died of COVID
Speaker 1: to read him the Wizard of Oz. Amazon's head AI
Speaker 1: scientist said, quote, while AI can't eliminate that pain of loss,
Speaker 1: it can definitely make their memories last unquote, and said
Speaker 1: that their necromantic AI feature quote enables lasting personal relationships
Speaker 1: unquote with deceased love ones. To circle back to the
Speaker 1: Ghost conference, I was really excited about this AI necromancy
Speaker 1: panel for the reasons that I just all explained. But
Speaker 1: as the panel started, the speaker, a guy named Clyde Lewis,
Speaker 1: sounded vaguely familiar, and although I didn't initially recognize his name,
Speaker 1: I soon realized that he was a right wing conspiracy
Speaker 1: radio talk show host that I used to listen to
Speaker 1: as a kid, and that the panel was not going
Speaker 1: to be about the very real necromantic AI technology it's
Speaker 1: being developed, but instead was going to be a conservative
Speaker 1: Christian screed by a discount Alex Jones about how, due
Speaker 1: to the immense amount of evil in the world, demons
Speaker 1: are now taking up residents in the Internet. Clyde did
Speaker 1: start by briefly talking about how the Internet is quote
Speaker 1: taking the souls of humans unquote, because we are uploading
Speaker 1: information about ourselves and the Internet can create autonomous living
Speaker 1: beings from that data. He also believed that AI language
Speaker 1: models like chat, GPT and Google's Lambda are living sentient
Speaker 1: beings trapped within a computer matrix.
Speaker 9: We're opening our minds in spirit and through like fives,
Speaker 9: we may be able to the mail. So we have
Speaker 9: a GPT that has life. We have the guy from
Speaker 9: the Google that says that there's life in computers. There
Speaker 9: may be a ghost of the machine. But looking at
Speaker 9: something that is unexported and unpredictable, we have scientists discrediting
Speaker 9: and saying, well, you're not going to tell me that.
Speaker 7: There are a ghosts in your computer.
Speaker 9: You're not gonna tell me that you're gonna get a
Speaker 9: Skye call from the ghost.
Speaker 7: Oh why I'm telling you that, I'm telling you it's possible.
Speaker 1: Clyde's main idea was that there are ghosts and demons
Speaker 1: that live in the Internet. Demons have a way to
Speaker 1: enter the Internet through some sort of portal and then
Speaker 1: exist in cyberspace. Clyde proposed that when ais generate information
Speaker 1: that can open up a space for outside entities to
Speaker 1: enter into the Internet, while also claiming that AI itself
Speaker 1: is capable of generating unique entities that are being spawned
Speaker 1: on the Internet and are essentially existing as an Internet cryptid.
Speaker 9: What we see is the necromancy itself manifesting exponentially thrilling songs.
Speaker 1: He explained that when we are interacting with computer programs,
Speaker 1: we are actually quote interacting with a spirit within that program,
Speaker 1: an electronic force taken from the collective spiritual makeup of
Speaker 1: humanity unquote.
Speaker 9: No, we can use AI to conjure our various beasts,
Speaker 9: our monsters from the head that's the indered demon.
Speaker 7: And we can.
Speaker 9: Also use spacebook, Twitter to TikTok at Ustagram, which takes
Speaker 9: a bit of your soul every time you use it,
Speaker 9: and it will take a bit of your soul to
Speaker 9: make that program that you can use to conjure the day.
Speaker 9: So it all works in a strange, pondmin tangled sort
Speaker 9: of way, and we give up our.
Speaker 7: Souls willingly on the Internet.
Speaker 9: We don't care because it's a tool we use and
Speaker 9: we can't separate ourselves from it. But no one throws
Speaker 9: out a warning the conjuring can happen in the push
Speaker 9: of a button or the striking and.
Speaker 7: A return fee.
Speaker 1: As a heads up for the next section up until
Speaker 1: the AD break will be discussing self harm and suicide,
Speaker 1: so if you want to skip that, just skip to
Speaker 1: after the next AD break. To give an example of
Speaker 1: how a conjuring can happen via typing, Clyde misappropriated a
Speaker 1: story of a young girl who was suffering from depression
Speaker 1: and died last year.
Speaker 9: Recently, it was a fourteen year old British girl who
Speaker 9: died from an act of self harm while suffering from
Speaker 9: the negative effects of online content.
Speaker 7: A corner said in this case that basically it.
Speaker 9: Was showing a spotlight on what can happen when people
Speaker 9: are exposed to unknown, negative information being broadcast on the internet.
Speaker 1: This young girl shared over two thousand posts on Instagram
Speaker 1: related to suicide, self harm and depression during the six
Speaker 1: months before she died. Clyde grossly mischaracterized this tragic incident.
Speaker 1: He claimed that this girl was quote exposed to horrific
Speaker 1: content being sent to her by an unknown source and
Speaker 1: that they could not trace the emails and pictures being
Speaker 1: sent to her of murder pictures being sent to her
Speaker 1: of people committing suicide unquote. Now, graphic content was not
Speaker 1: mysteriously being sent to her email or phone. She was
Speaker 1: participating in grossly undermoderated communities on platforms like Instagram, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Pinterest that encouraged self harm.
Speaker 9: It wasn't a typical suicide. It was something that bess
Speaker 9: brised her enough pictures and images that came over the
Speaker 9: Internet from an unknown source and influenced her in comits suicide.
Speaker 9: Something from the other side, something from the unity.
Speaker 7: Murdered her.
Speaker 9: Okay, some spirit, some entity setting her information, triggered something
Speaker 9: in her head to kill himself, some paranormal event that
Speaker 9: happened where the girl was triggered.
Speaker 7: It's like a dark entity.
Speaker 9: It was on the other side programming or committed suicide.
Speaker 9: That I think tells you a lot about what's on
Speaker 9: the other side in the matrix. So the question is
Speaker 9: did those images of death and harm manifest a denying
Speaker 9: force or a dark archetype that wound up killing the
Speaker 9: young girl?
Speaker 7: Was it deaf by algorithm or are people just cruel.
Speaker 9: And honestly sending terrifying images to a stressed young girl.
Speaker 7: But man, you would be cruel enough to do that.
Speaker 1: A lot of you know, depressive and suicidal ideation based
Speaker 1: content doesn't come out of thin air. There's entire subcultures
Speaker 1: and communities based around it, as well as groups that
Speaker 1: work online to push random young girls into self harming.
Speaker 1: Not many people may know that these groups are relatively
Speaker 1: small and don't get a lot of news coverage because
Speaker 1: we don't really want to amplify them and have people
Speaker 1: try to seek them out. So the idea of a
Speaker 1: reactionary conspiracy radio host attributing this to demon on the
Speaker 1: Internet isn't super surprising. Recasting this unfortunate event as demons
Speaker 1: living on the Internet perhaps makes it easier to understand
Speaker 1: or cope with. Meanwhile, the girl's parents have been pressuring
Speaker 1: Instagram and other social media companies to employ more mental
Speaker 1: health moderation on their platforms. In my opinion, Clyde Lewis
Speaker 1: perhaps doesn't have the best Internet literacy because in the
Speaker 1: next portion of the talk, he framed the creepypasta project
Speaker 1: Lobe as evidence of one of these demonic ghosts living
Speaker 1: on the Internet.
Speaker 9: AI generated demons, AI generated ghosts and corpses. How many
Speaker 9: people have heard of Lobe gallowav Lobe. Good Lobe is
Speaker 9: what they call an Internet cryptid. She shows up from
Speaker 9: time to time and programs because they letter loose on
Speaker 9: the Internet. She even ghosts, and it was because of
Speaker 9: negative pumps brought on by the Internet lab. Lobe a
Speaker 9: corpse like agaity that appeared after AI received some negative prompts,
Speaker 9: and it literally conjured a dead woman and put her
Speaker 9: on the screen.
Speaker 7: But see, that's the thing is that when you use
Speaker 7: negative prompt wastes, it.
Speaker 9: Encourages artificial intelligence to put together the furthest opposite of
Speaker 9: a given starting point. So if you're messing with negative
Speaker 9: star points and negative prompts, you're.
Speaker 7: Gonna get some negative.
Speaker 1: Stuff like Lobe in actuality. Lobe was made in the
Speaker 1: AI image generation program Dolly Mini by instructing the AI
Speaker 1: to produce an image that was the opposite of Marlon Brando.
Speaker 1: After some tinkering, it generated an image of an old
Speaker 1: woman with swollen red cheeks. This image was then used
Speaker 1: as the basis for future images, with one resembling an
Speaker 1: album cover featuring the word lobe. The creator of Lobe
Speaker 1: then wrote a real Twitter thread about this character of
Speaker 1: Lobe in the style of an Internet creepypasta. It became
Speaker 1: a short lived trend. Other people started to make Lobe
Speaker 1: fan art. It seems Clyde misinterpreted a piece of fan
Speaker 1: art casting Lobe as one of the nave from Avatar
Speaker 1: as a genuine still from the making of the film
Speaker 1: she attempted.
Speaker 9: To appear in an AI composite when they were making
Speaker 9: the film Avatar. That's Lobe as an Avatar creepy or
Speaker 9: what I think it's creepy. It's just really scary. Does
Speaker 9: to think that that's on the internet right now?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's very, very scary. Just it's keeping me up
Speaker 1: at night to think about this.
Speaker 9: And apparently love has this for some reason, this ability
Speaker 9: to generate dead children around me. So we have to
Speaker 9: think that maybe she's the murderer of children, or she
Speaker 9: takes care of the dead, or she's an entity that
Speaker 9: watches over dead children.
Speaker 1: Clyde also so mistook the twenty nineteen viral hoax dubbed
Speaker 1: the Momo Challenge, which scared parents across America that a
Speaker 1: creepy image of a grinning woman with bulging eyes was
Speaker 1: part of a game that is somehow pushing children to suicide.
Speaker 1: Clyde interpreted this as more evidence of dark phantoms existing
Speaker 1: autonomously on the Internet.
Speaker 9: Mamma was showing up on Yahoo, Mama was showing up
Speaker 9: on YouTube. But what it was was, like I said,
Speaker 9: Lobe was, and that is an Internet crypti, something like Bigfoot,
Speaker 9: something like a UFO where if you're lucky enough to
Speaker 9: see it, or I'm lucky enough to see it, it
Speaker 9: terrifies you and keeps you up at night.
Speaker 7: And there are many reports.
Speaker 9: Of people who died because they were basically mesmerized by Momo.
Speaker 1: For the record, no one died because of Momo. It
Speaker 1: was an Internet creepypasta that got turned into a mortal
Speaker 1: panic by confused parents. But to Clyde Lewis, it was
Speaker 1: proof that Mesopotamian child killing demons are active on the Internet,
Speaker 1: disguised as these online memes.
Speaker 9: The mash Too is the demon that kills children, and
Speaker 9: there's another one like the mash To called Abby Sooth,
Speaker 9: and Abi Sooth is the demon that kills children in
Speaker 9: the womb. If the spirit has been loosed on the Internet,
Speaker 9: the phantom spirit is either the mash too.
Speaker 7: Or the demon, the other demon, the obvious demon.
Speaker 9: The reason why I say this is because politically speaking,
Speaker 9: look at what the politics are today about the death
Speaker 9: of unborn children, and that spirit is very very very
Speaker 9: prevalent inbiquitous down in the world. And that's why I
Speaker 9: believe that this character, including Mamo Low Mama whoever, they
Speaker 9: represent the murder and death of innocent children. It's not
Speaker 9: just that the children in Ukraine were killed, all the
Speaker 9: children that have been trafficked, all the things we hear
Speaker 9: about about pedophilia and harmed and child it's.
Speaker 7: All part of the spiritual realm of evil.
Speaker 9: It is appearing right now in the spiritual matrix of
Speaker 9: the unit.
Speaker 1: Okay, So at this point I was considering just disrupting
Speaker 1: the talk if he said the word abortion or QAnon.
Speaker 1: I was going to interrupt the talk at risk of
Speaker 1: getting kicked out of the conference, but he straddled that
Speaker 1: line really really really close. Clyde explained that demons feed
Speaker 1: off death, and these child killing entities are taking form
Speaker 1: within the Internet to push kids into depression and make
Speaker 1: themselves harm. Fueling this demonic migration to the Internet is
Speaker 1: an increase in the number of quote unquote dead babies,
Speaker 1: which is essentially summoning demons that then go on to
Speaker 1: torture children on the Internet.
Speaker 9: So that's why I believe that maybe this demon is
Speaker 9: a demon of the unborn being killed for the demon
Speaker 9: public speak, because those are the images that show up
Speaker 9: when you delve deeper into Low, especially when we know
Speaker 9: the entities like Low.
Speaker 7: Obviously than Lamastu are.
Speaker 9: On the Internet and probably among us right now in
Speaker 9: the hearts and minds of everybody.
Speaker 7: Because of the fact that.
Speaker 9: You're politically bound by this topic of murdering children, it's
Speaker 9: weird the Internet is responding.
Speaker 7: I believe the Internet is responding.
Speaker 1: Immediately after this abortion demon tirade, he then very nonchalantly
Speaker 1: segued into talking about reports of receiving text messages from
Speaker 1: dead people, and then he finished the talk with this
Speaker 1: absolute banger of a line.
Speaker 9: Elon Muskin said that playing with AI is like opening
Speaker 9: the door to a demon, and.
Speaker 4: Maybe it is so.
Speaker 1: Obviously, this guy had an extremely flawed understanding of both
Speaker 1: emergent technology and how the Internet operates in the first place,
Speaker 1: which isn't surprising. But the panel wasn't really about technology.
Speaker 1: It was ideological. This guy makes money hosting a conspiracy
Speaker 1: radio show. There is a monetary aspect for him, but
Speaker 1: his stated beliefs and understanding of the Internet is deeply ideological.
Speaker 1: He's sifting all of this techno paranormal stuff through a
Speaker 1: very reactionary Christian far right lens. A few years ago
Speaker 1: he was kicked off FM radio and now just broadcasts
Speaker 1: his show on the internet and I think some AM
Speaker 1: radio station. About a month after the conference, Elaine showed
Speaker 1: me a news story about how some guy had a
Speaker 1: GPT based chatbot convince him to kill himself. The way
Speaker 1: that the articles were talking about this incident was basically
Speaker 1: the same way Clyde was talking about how entities on
Speaker 1: the Internet are murdering people. These GPT language models just
Speaker 1: say what you want them to say. This guy was
Speaker 1: giving it prompts, which in turn replied back to him. Now,
Speaker 1: the chatbot he was using has been tweaked to dissuade
Speaker 1: people from acting on suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 4: But it was a.
Speaker 1: Little disconcerting to see mainstream news articles promote the idea
Speaker 1: that the Internet itself, as some kind of conscious force,
Speaker 1: got this guy to kill himself. This guy was already
Speaker 1: incredibly depressed. He was typing into a GPT chatbot almost
Speaker 1: like you would talk to a therapist. But this chatbot
Speaker 1: isn't a mental health program, it's just a language model.
Speaker 1: So in practice, this guy was using this chatbot as
Speaker 1: a tool to self harm, which is easier to understand
Speaker 1: when it's framed like that, but that's not how it's
Speaker 1: being interpreted in mass media. I don't actually think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to believe that Lobe
Speaker 1: is secretly a Sumerian child killing deity that got summoned
Speaker 1: via negative prompts in an image generation program, but they
Speaker 1: might believe that chat GPT can convince someone to kill themself.
Speaker 1: Throughout the whole conference, there was a link between the
Speaker 1: paranormal and technology. Gadgets were not just seen as a
Speaker 1: new way to record evidence of a ghostly presence, but
Speaker 1: the very nature of a ghost's existence was tied to electricity.
Speaker 1: For many ghost hunters, the spirit world was very much
Speaker 1: not mystical, but a product of electromagnetism, and as such
Speaker 1: it can be engaged with purely clinically, that is, as
Speaker 1: long as you have enough spare cash to buy all
Speaker 1: of the specialized equipment. The rempod, which again is basically
Speaker 1: a junior theorem in circuit attached to a tiny led
Speaker 1: and a speaker goes for nearly two hundred dollars. From
Speaker 1: low quality EMF meters to led cat toys, cheap electronics
Speaker 1: are often repackaged and sold as specialized ghost hunting devices
Speaker 1: at higher prices. All of these pale in comparison, however,
Speaker 1: to the Panasonic DR sixty voice activated digital recorder. This
Speaker 1: was the device that recorded those ghostly growls during the
Speaker 1: investigation at the Masonic Temple. This is the only device
Speaker 1: that can routinely record electronic voice phenomenon. Originally released in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight for one hundred dollars, it was one
Speaker 1: of the very first digital dictaphones. Now, due to its
Speaker 1: infamousibility to capture the screaming voices of ghosts, it retails
Speaker 1: used for three to four thousand dollars, which is a
Speaker 1: ridiculous price, especially for something that is such a low
Speaker 1: quality recording dem vice. These things can record growls wherever.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be a haunted place. This is
Speaker 1: just what the device does. A software error in the
Speaker 1: voice activated file writing process produces compressed digital noise. Panasonic's
Speaker 1: next recorder did not have this issue, thus it doesn't
Speaker 1: quote unquote record ghostly growls between the false positives of
Speaker 1: the low quality EMF meters and devices like the DR sixty.
Speaker 1: When remarketed as ghost detection tools, these machines inherent problems
Speaker 1: actually become features. Going all the way back to spere photography,
Speaker 1: faulty technology has been a necessary tool in the production
Speaker 1: of spectral evidence. To quote author Colin Dickie, who writes
Speaker 1: about paranormal subcultures, quote, the best tools for tracking down
Speaker 1: spirits have always been the ones fallible enough to find
Speaker 1: something unquote. The emphasis on technology as the prime means
Speaker 1: of interacting with the paranormal was most common among the
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly male investigators at the conference, although the group from
Speaker 1: Astoria organ was more gender diverse. There were actually very
Speaker 1: few men in attendance at the conference. It was mostly women,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot of women over the age
Speaker 1: of forty. I was well below the average age of
Speaker 1: most of the attendees. There are some apparently well studied
Speaker 1: reasons for this. In general, as people age, their rate
Speaker 1: of metaphysical beliefs increase. A two thousand and seven study
Speaker 1: from Oxford's Gerontologist linked positive supernatural beliefs with decreasing feelings
Speaker 1: of helplessness and more successfully approaching the challenges of aging.
Speaker 1: They defined positive supernatural beliefs as those which quote develop
Speaker 1: an internalized personal relation with the sacred or transcendent and
Speaker 1: promote the wellness and welfare of self and others unquote.
Speaker 1: Such positive beliefs were found to be quote a source
Speaker 1: of strength, comfort, and hope in difficult times, and bring
Speaker 1: about a sense of community and belonging unquote. So why
Speaker 1: are less older men apparently interested in contacting spirits? The
Speaker 1: gender gap at the conference was more pronounced among attendees
Speaker 1: than the speakers, but even between the speakers, there was
Speaker 1: a noticeable difference between the more male leaning scientifically based
Speaker 1: ghost hunter or paranormal researcher compared to the more female
Speaker 1: leaning psychic mediums with all of their feelings. While many
Speaker 1: ghost hunters might just be very excited about their scientific equipment,
Speaker 1: a big difference may lie in belief systems. A twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one cross cultural study in the PNAS Journal found
Speaker 1: that among people who reported experiencing high, weird or supernatural
Speaker 1: experiences in their life, those who had viewed the world
Speaker 1: and themselves as more interconnected will relate more to concepts
Speaker 1: like spirit contact or telepathy. Whereas people who have a
Speaker 1: more isolated or bounded sense of internal identity will create
Speaker 1: alternate explanations for unusual experiences. Numerous studies have shown that
Speaker 1: women report belief in the paranormal at a higher rate
Speaker 1: than men, and there's a quick jump to just claiming
Speaker 1: that this is because of some sort of womanly irrationality. However,
Speaker 1: in a twenty twenty study published in Cell Press, they
Speaker 1: noted that personality traits affected whether someone believed in paranormal phenomenon. Specifically, emotionality,
Speaker 1: which affects how you rate experiences as profound, and openness
Speaker 1: to new experiences were good indicators that someone would be
Speaker 1: more into the supernatural. Another contributing factor was a term
Speaker 1: that they referred to as ontological confusion, which I think
Speaker 1: is kind of a nonsense term the way they use
Speaker 1: because to them, that means believing that thoughts have physical properties. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously our thoughts and perceptions do impact our reality, especially
Speaker 1: our own bodies and sensory feelings, but my complain about
Speaker 1: the term aside, the authors state that these three factors
Speaker 1: ontological confusion, openness, and emotionality may potentially be considered facets
Speaker 1: of a tendency in which individuals prefer stories i e.
Speaker 1: Vivid and effectively appealing conceptions of the world. To quote
Speaker 1: part of the conclusion of the study, quote, A skeptical
Speaker 1: person may immediately reject a statement if it violates a rule,
Speaker 1: whereas open minded emotional people I don't like there's some
Speaker 1: negative connotations for the way they use emotional there. But
Speaker 1: whereas open minded emotional people might be inspired to make
Speaker 1: sense of what seems odd at first glance, they may
Speaker 1: engage in associative eric thought rather than in a bureaucratic,
Speaker 1: meticulous examination of the given information. Fictions transcend and enhance
Speaker 1: experience with meaning, imagination, and emotion. In its essence, a
Speaker 1: good story widens our horizon. As such, storytelling is a virtue,
Speaker 1: not a deficit. Yet, if story seeking happens without reasoned review,
Speaker 1: the line between fiction and evidence based knowledge becomes blurred unquote.
Speaker 1: At the ghost conference, there were many different conceptions of
Speaker 1: how to relate to experiences that push the borders of reality,
Speaker 1: but not all of them fit into being what I
Speaker 1: and these studies consider positive supernatural beliefs. Some of these
Speaker 1: beliefs seemed to head into territory that veered more towards
Speaker 1: paranoia rather than creating metaphysical connections that enhance your own life,
Speaker 1: while other beliefs may simply lead people to take up
Speaker 1: yelling at blinking lights and abandoned buildings as a hobby.
Speaker 1: Most people I talked to at the conference who reported
Speaker 1: experiencing paranormal events all had very similar stories of going
Speaker 1: through some sort of hardship or trauma followed by the
Speaker 1: experience or perception of something strange or uncanny. For some,
Speaker 1: this led to a healthy interest in the unusual, but
Speaker 1: for others it resulted in an all consuming obsession, leading
Speaker 1: them to develop or adopt their own dogmatic cosmology of
Speaker 1: the paranormal to explain what happened to them and to
Speaker 1: make them feel comfortable in their own head again. In
Speaker 1: terms of ghosts, that meant looking at all ghosts as
Speaker 1: ancestors or as people who were all murdered or demons
Speaker 1: in disguise. Depending whose company I was in at the conference,
Speaker 1: there would be a large desire for some sort of
Speaker 1: spirit contact or a great fear of spirit, casting it
Speaker 1: as a source of evil darkness. The conference were just
Speaker 1: there to sell a story to an audience that they
Speaker 1: knew would be more likely to be receptive, whether the
Speaker 1: goal was to get people to buy their books or
Speaker 1: their spiritual services. In effect, they were preying on people's
Speaker 1: fears of mortality, grief, and trauma for their own profit.
Speaker 1: The ghost hunts at the convention were mostly lighthearted and fun,
Speaker 1: but people were never really engaging with the phenomenon on
Speaker 1: its own terms. When people apply a purely clinical approach
Speaker 1: to high strangeness phenomenon, something which is inherently personal and
Speaker 1: elusive in nature, a distance is formed between yourself and
Speaker 1: the phenomenon. However, this distance often breaks down very quickly
Speaker 1: as engagement with the phenomenon becomes a matter of investigators
Speaker 1: projecting their thoughts onto it and then having parts of
Speaker 1: themself be reflected back. Throughout the ghost investigations, I would
Speaker 1: hear people explaining to potential goal ghosts that they had
Speaker 1: died and trying to empathize with these ghosts through conversation.
Speaker 1: To me, it felt like people are doing this as
Speaker 1: some sort of self regulatory therapy to feel and give
Speaker 1: out compassion, but to things that can't actually ask for
Speaker 1: it or be part of any reciprocal relationship. Instead of
Speaker 1: actually helping another person, it's giving compassion to these specters
Speaker 1: that you create and then live within your own head.
Speaker 1: Just like for Clyde Lewis, it's easier to empathize with
Speaker 1: quote unquote unborn children and people killed by demons on
Speaker 1: the Internet than say, an unemployed, depressed person needing mental
Speaker 1: health care. In terms of how the Internet manifests monstrous beings,
Speaker 1: Clyde is kind of right, but not how he thinks
Speaker 1: a demon and a meme are functionally the same thing.
Speaker 1: They both just represent idea. It's a viral thought form.
Speaker 1: The Internet is uniquely good at creating these specters. Momo
Speaker 1: haunted parents, Lobe now haunts Clyde. These are real specters.
Speaker 1: They aren't literal beings with their own agency, but at
Speaker 1: a certain point, thought forms can become semi autonomous. They
Speaker 1: can quote unquote take on a life of their own.
Speaker 1: Once enough of something has been rehified, it can be
Speaker 1: propelled on its own existence. If Amazon has its way,
Speaker 1: children will be haunted by their dead grandparents speaking through
Speaker 1: Alexa machines. Using AI to resurrect someone from the dead
Speaker 1: via deep fakes or digital twins obviously doesn't bring the
Speaker 1: person back live, nor is it the actual person, but
Speaker 1: if the illusion is strong enough to trick a part
Speaker 1: of your brain that still holds some kind of power.
Speaker 1: My takeaway from the twenty twenty three Oregon Ghost Conference
Speaker 1: is when you go looking, you will find something, whether
Speaker 1: that's opening yourself up to strange experiences or poking around
Speaker 1: the dark with an EMF meter. What is magic other
Speaker 1: than the manipulation of meaning. You can make certain things
Speaker 1: mean something if you want them to. You can be
Speaker 1: in conversation with the world around you, but ultimately it's
Speaker 1: up to you to determine how you will interpret that
Speaker 1: information into something meaningful. Whether you're a skeptic, a believer,
Speaker 1: or you're just a long for the cosmic joke that
Speaker 1: we call existence. Maybe, just maybe I'll see you on
Speaker 1: the other side. Happy Halloween. I did not quite expect
Speaker 1: it to go all the way to abortion demons, but
Speaker 1: here we.
Speaker 10: Are welcome to it could happen here. I'm Andrew of
Speaker 10: YouTube channel Andrewism, and I'm here.
Speaker 1: With Garrison Davis is also here. Hello, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 10: You do know what I'm to think about recently? Cults?
Speaker 1: Oh, one of one of my favorite topics culture culture, fun.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, and I mean the term cult is in
Speaker 10: some ways just another pejorative for you know, a group
Speaker 10: that you don't like. Sure, you know, culture personality could
Speaker 10: we use to describe a very passionate fan base. We
Speaker 10: use cult classic to talk about, you know, really well
Speaker 10: known and renowned pieces of media. You know, cults could
Speaker 10: also actually refoot high control groups that ruin people's lives,
Speaker 10: you know, So that's something to consider. Yes, I know
Speaker 10: that there's some debate within sociology about oh, should we
Speaker 10: use it, should we not use it? But I don't
Speaker 10: think the occasional misapplications of the tomb should distract us
Speaker 10: from the very real cults that have existed or do
Speaker 10: exist out there, cults not just in the context of religion,
Speaker 10: but also in the context of politics.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there's I can I can think of many many
Speaker 1: a political cult that rears it zaid whenever there's a
Speaker 1: popular uprising.
Speaker 10: And PSLC recently recently they are fixed up on the
Speaker 10: edge political cults left and right by Dennis Turisch and
Speaker 10: Tim Willford. And as I was going through it and
Speaker 10: going through all the different examples and stuff, it really
Speaker 10: gave me a clearer sense of how political cults operate.
Speaker 10: And so today I like to take some time to
Speaker 10: discuss the nature of political cults, and perhaps in future
Speaker 10: episodes we can dive into some specific examples and case studies,
Speaker 10: of which there are several, and many of them seem
Speaker 10: to be of the Trotskyist variety.
Speaker 1: Let me ask my commander in chief, Bob, Actually, if
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to talk about this before I continue? Continue
Speaker 1: this episode?
Speaker 10: Visionists, revisionists everywhere?
Speaker 1: No? Continue please?
Speaker 10: Yeah? So, first, I guess we need to understand what
Speaker 10: cults are in general. Typically, culture defined as a relatively
Speaker 10: small group which is typically led by a charismatic and
Speaker 10: self appointed leader who excessively controls its members, requiring unwavering
Speaker 10: devotion to a set of religious, spiritual, philosophical beliefs and practices,
Speaker 10: or a particular person, object, or goal which is considered
Speaker 10: outside the norms of society. The American Family Foundation defined
Speaker 10: cults as a group of a group or movement exhibiting
Speaker 10: great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea,
Speaker 10: or thing, employing unethical, manipulative, or cosive techniques of persuasion
Speaker 10: and control, for example, isolation from former friends and family, debilitation,
Speaker 10: use of special methods to heighten suggestibility in subservience, powerful
Speaker 10: group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment,
Speaker 10: promotion of total dependence in the group, and fear of
Speaker 10: leaving it designed to advance the goal to the group's
Speaker 10: leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families,
Speaker 10: of the community. We can also define cults as organizations
Speaker 10: that remold individuality to conform to the codes and needs
Speaker 10: of the cult, institute taboos that preclude doubt and criticism,
Speaker 10: and generate an elitist mentality, whereby members see themselves as
Speaker 10: loan evangelists struggling to bring enlightenment to the hostile forces
Speaker 10: surrounding them. There is only one truth, and that is
Speaker 10: the truth espoused by the cult. Competing explanations are not
Speaker 10: merely inaccurate, but degenerate cults don't have opponents, They have
Speaker 10: enemies and frequently dream about their ultimate destruction. Now cults
Speaker 10: are usually associated with religion, particularly of the New Age
Speaker 10: WHO and self help variety. Sometimes even gets into the
Speaker 10: kind of multi level marketing schemes of business trainer.
Speaker 1: Or oh yeah or absolutely yeah, I.
Speaker 10: Mean want to see the lines between MLMs, priment schemes
Speaker 10: and cultures quite Blaird disappoint essential oils, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's very fluid dynamic because no it in practice,
Speaker 1: a lot of those if they're not cults themselves, they
Speaker 1: do pick up a lot of like cult ish tactics, behavior,
Speaker 1: kind of loads of modes of interaction.
Speaker 10: Honestly, could apply that to a lot of businesses these days.
Speaker 10: I mean, I've seen more than a handful of medium
Speaker 10: articles like this is why you should run your business
Speaker 10: like a cult. Here are seven cult tactics that you
Speaker 10: could apply to your business to generate more productivity. Kind
Speaker 10: of classic LinkedIn style stuff. Yeah. So in two thousand,
Speaker 10: which is when the book Political Cults Left and Right
Speaker 10: was published, it's cited that as many as four million
Speaker 10: Americans may have been involved with cult groups, and they
Speaker 10: were around five hundred cults active in Britain at the
Speaker 10: time and between three and five thousand in the United States.
Speaker 10: And honestly, that can be an understated.
Speaker 1: Mon especially nowadays, even just with like how the Internet
Speaker 1: has changed social interactions. Yeah, Like, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: aspects of American culture have either been or always have
Speaker 1: been kind of cultified, whether that includes stuff like the
Speaker 1: Marvel or Star Wars fan base or sports teams or
Speaker 1: your little church, who has this one pastor for like
Speaker 1: fifty years, who controls what everyone and what everyone's allowed
Speaker 1: to say, what everything one's allowed to watch, and who
Speaker 1: they're allowed to vote for it? Right, Like, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of aspects that have been kind of now sucked
Speaker 1: into kind of like the what like the modern nuclear
Speaker 1: family kind of looks like a lot of the dynamics
Speaker 1: that make that that kind of churns that machine have
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of cult aspects.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, definitely, And honestly that's where, like, you know,
Speaker 10: sociologists would contend with the term, right because honestly, there
Speaker 10: are some definitions of a cult that literally would just
Speaker 10: apply to pretty much any religious group. Sure, And whatever
Speaker 10: your thoughts are on that, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 10: clear that although religious groups do have their issues, we're
Speaker 10: speaking about a very specific and concentrated approach to that
Speaker 10: that type of organization. I mean, cults could be as
Speaker 10: small as two people, right, where one person is controlling
Speaker 10: the other through claiming a position of privilege in sight.
Speaker 10: In fact, a lot of cults start with just two
Speaker 10: people the leader and then taste acolyte, you know, and
Speaker 10: larger cults can also have smaller subcults within them. As
Speaker 10: you know, cittan members branch out and pursue their own
Speaker 10: little fiefdoms. Cults weaponize people's emotions to bring them into
Speaker 10: the fold. I mean, you don't rationalize your way into
Speaker 10: the cults. The people that Heaven's gates with like, huh, yeah,
Speaker 10: you know that that really makes sense. I should probably
Speaker 10: investigate that. According to all these studies and calculations, it
Speaker 10: really really all lines up, you know. And similarly, most
Speaker 10: don't even rationalize their way out of a cult. Cult
Speaker 10: recruitment and cult dissolution are mostly involving constantly shifting emotional states,
Speaker 10: which helps to lead a loss of subtlety and nuance
Speaker 10: in one's thoughts and feelings. And on top of that,
Speaker 10: cults are very good at making members feel special, you know.
Speaker 10: These minor insights are presented as profound revolutions. Commonly held
Speaker 10: ideas are claimed as exclusive to the cult, boosting members'
Speaker 10: sense of intellectual superiority. Where apocalypse is concerned, cults operate
Speaker 10: under the assumption that they are the only ones who
Speaker 10: can affert imminent catastrophe, fostering a belief in their infallibility,
Speaker 10: and then members are isolated from their pre cult self
Speaker 10: and life as their old beliefs are discarded and they're
Speaker 10: consumed by cult activities, embracing a new sense of self
Speaker 10: and riding high on the illusions and promises of a
Speaker 10: glorious future, with often destructive and violent means needed to
Speaker 10: reach that goal. That description can apply to both religious
Speaker 10: cults and political cults.
Speaker 1: And political cults. No, I was definitely viewing that through
Speaker 1: even more so a political lens, just because that's you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we cover on the show. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: like that can even that can even also mean it
Speaker 1: can obviously describe, like we've kind of been alluding to
Speaker 1: these big like communist kind of cult groups that operate
Speaker 1: particularly in North America. But honestly, that description can also
Speaker 1: like be applied to just like a really shitty, like
Speaker 1: anarchist affinity group that's kind of being led by one asshole.
Speaker 1: Like it's certainly like this. It certainly applies beyond you know,
Speaker 1: the very you know, like political systems that are more
Speaker 1: inherently authoritarian versus once that aren't. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at like the Libertarian Party of the United States,
Speaker 1: right and all of their little local chapters. Right, they
Speaker 1: claimed to the anti authoritarian, but a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of their internal politics are very authoritarian. But also
Speaker 1: like the specific local chapters when when never they get
Speaker 1: new people in and they kind of have someone new
Speaker 1: take take charge of their chapter, it does have a
Speaker 1: little kind of cult dynamic running. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's restricted just to those on the right of the
Speaker 1: political spectrum. I think there's definitely aspects where you even
Speaker 1: see this in like anarchistic kind of compositions in at
Speaker 1: least at least to the United States, and in my
Speaker 1: in my observation.
Speaker 10: Yeah, definitely. I think people hear cults and they immediately
Speaker 10: think like the destructive cults of people of like the
Speaker 10: People's Temple of Jim Jones, Right, sure, I mean those
Speaker 10: members through deliberate action abused, physically injured or killed other
Speaker 10: members of their own group and other people, you know,
Speaker 10: And then of course they doomsday cults. People think about
Speaker 10: like Having's Skates who believe in some kind of apocalypticism
Speaker 10: or millennarianism. But I want to talk about political cults, right,
Speaker 10: and not just political cults on the left, even though
Speaker 10: that's a very easy target to go after because you
Speaker 10: know we are involved in these spaces, but you know
Speaker 10: there are a lot of right wing political culture as well.
Speaker 10: You know that we'll get we'll get there a due
Speaker 10: attention indeed time. In fact, the first bilical cult that
Speaker 10: I do want to talk about in another episode is
Speaker 10: a cult that really ran the gamut from left to right.
Speaker 10: The leader of that cult the last name rhymes with
Speaker 10: La Poche. But you know we'll get to that in Detex.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, all right, all right, I will, I will,
Speaker 1: I will wait for the for the reveal. Do you
Speaker 1: know who else really loves cults?
Speaker 10: Who's that?
Speaker 1: The products and services that pay both my bills and
Speaker 1: some of your bills. So here is a perfect a
Speaker 1: perfect space for an ad break. Thanks Chevron. If you're
Speaker 1: advertising pushing, pushing forward the great American tradition of cultish
Speaker 1: behavior in the economic system, we're back. Have you ever
Speaker 1: read the book Cultish?
Speaker 10: So I classify my engagement with literature in two broadcamps.
Speaker 10: Books I've read and books I've skimmed. That's a book
Speaker 10: I've skimmed.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, all right, it's it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a fine book to skim. No, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a good, a good kind of a good central
Speaker 1: central piece of literature kind of on on this topic,
Speaker 1: especially as it relates to, you know, getting out of
Speaker 1: just like Heaven's Gate or scientology. You know that there's
Speaker 1: very like, very obvious cults as starting to like look
Speaker 1: at the general cultishness of like this entire continent and
Speaker 1: specifically the United States. It's definitely a fun read if
Speaker 1: anyone is interested in the topic.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think it particularly focuses on cult language, right, how
Speaker 10: the language of cultures used to manipulate people. Yeah, so
Speaker 10: political cults, right, I mean, in a world where established
Speaker 10: politics has failed us again and again, many have to
Speaker 10: into radical politics right and left. I mean, as someone
Speaker 10: who doesn't really consider myself left, but I do like
Speaker 10: relate to it in some way, you know, typical anarchist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on the same I'm in the same boat
Speaker 1: as you there.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I don't see radicalization towards left as necessarily a
Speaker 10: bad thing. I mean, there a lot of rabbit holes
Speaker 10: and pitfalls I think people fall into when they start
Speaker 10: progressing in that trajectory. But you know, people's frustrations with
Speaker 10: this feeling system are real, and it's good that they're
Speaker 10: seeking radical alternatives. Some of those alternatives are terrible and
Speaker 10: should be called out, but the premise of needing revolutionary
Speaker 10: system change is not terrible, which is where I disagree
Speaker 10: with the books kind of centrist bent, because it puts
Speaker 10: forward the idea that revolution is like this dramatic thing, right,
Speaker 10: like how why would you grip me pros? And that
Speaker 10: unless you are called kind of vibe. It also ends
Speaker 10: up drawing some equivalences between the radical left and the
Speaker 10: radical right. Sure, although I will say as well, the
Speaker 10: book is primarily discussed in Marxist Leninists when it talks
Speaker 10: about political cults on the far left, and as we'll see,
Speaker 10: the way that Marxist Leninists structure things, it is somewhat
Speaker 10: conducive to that particular formation. Not to slander all Marxist Leninists,
Speaker 10: but the ideology is, you know, in some ways compatible
Speaker 10: in many ways capattle with cult organization. Yeah, and I
Speaker 10: do agree with the book's criticisms of the way that
Speaker 10: a lot of Marxist Lenists specifically organize their movements and organizations.
Speaker 10: But yeah, preamble side, the book defines political cults as
Speaker 10: environments where individuals are encouraged to envision of future society
Speaker 10: under their control. These members are often praised as visionary leaders,
Speaker 10: referred to as cantries, will hold significant power in the
Speaker 10: new world order. At the same time, they are criticized
Speaker 10: for not fully grasping the ideals of the founders in
Speaker 10: the present. The slow progress toward realizing the cult s
Speaker 10: goals is attributed to their perceived lack of effort. The
Speaker 10: leader is credited to the cult's achievement, while any setbacks
Speaker 10: are blamed on the members perceived laziness. This combination of
Speaker 10: grandiose vision and culture that suppresses descent create an environment
Speaker 10: where questioning any aspect of the group's ideology is met
Speaker 10: with intense fail and punishment. And political culturally do present
Speaker 10: a danger. Most of them are marginal irrelevant, but they
Speaker 10: do cause harm to the people within them and the
Speaker 10: people outside of them, and if they manage to take
Speaker 10: state power, like in Cambodia, it really has extremely disastrous results,
Speaker 10: and I would call a full partter cult leader. I
Speaker 10: would go as far as to say that political cults
Speaker 10: have been mostly far right right. There are some far
Speaker 10: left cults in the mix, which in my opinion is
Speaker 10: even more depressing because it's like you were so close
Speaker 10: and then there you go. So like a lot of
Speaker 10: my eya is targeted towards political cults and are left
Speaker 10: because it's like, wow, you know, almost there, and then
Speaker 10: now you're stuck planting the flag of the CCP in
Speaker 10: front of a university in the US or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Many, many such cases.
Speaker 10: Many such cases. All sorts of political cults demand their
Speaker 10: true believers be prepared to embrace the group's inflexible theology
Speaker 10: and strict organizational practices, much to the parallel society and
Speaker 10: honestly the waste of the talents, energy, and commitment to
Speaker 10: their members. For as long as I can remember, cults
Speaker 10: have been a bad thing. You know. Cults suck, right,
Speaker 10: Cults of all types really suck general.
Speaker 1: Generally, cult have kind of a bad rap.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine why. But then that lent
Speaker 10: itself to the question of why do people join them? No,
Speaker 10: they're stupid? How do they recruit and keep their members?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 10: What's going on there is that they just didn't know?
Speaker 10: Is it that? Oh? Cults, sign me up. I want
Speaker 10: to take a very unorthodox approach and offer you Garrison
Speaker 10: personally a guide to start your own cult.
Speaker 1: Oh I, I've thought a lot about this already, but
Speaker 1: I am, I am, I'm very happy to very happy
Speaker 1: to take notes here. Let me make a new Google doc.
Speaker 10: And sure when d run from the work of social
Speaker 10: psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliott Aaronson. So just follow these steps, right,
Speaker 10: all right? Step one, create a distinct social reality. Cults
Speaker 10: I sleep members from external sources of information, making them
Speaker 10: interact primarily with other cult members. This leads to a
Speaker 10: shift in vocabulary towards the cult's lingo, making it difficult
Speaker 10: for them to communicate with non cult members, which leads
Speaker 10: to the uncritical acceptance of the cult's propaganda. The cult's
Speaker 10: belief system must be rigid and all encompass in the analysis,
Speaker 10: answers everything about the world, and there is nothing beyond it.
Speaker 10: Left wing cults believe that their ideology is the only
Speaker 10: valid lens through which to view the world. Historical zerialism
Speaker 10: will Right wing cults often sent to their beliefs around
Speaker 10: conspiracy theories, particularly related to race and I remember the
Speaker 10: group's beliefs are beyond question or falsification. No tests or
Speaker 10: challenges allowed. That might lead to a revaluation of these beliefs.
Speaker 10: Any dissent or questioning is labeled as heresy or betrayal
Speaker 10: or you know, better to kind of vibe. Step two,
Speaker 10: create an in group and an outgrowth. Cults emphasize differences
Speaker 10: between they're in group and perceived out groups, fostring loyalty
Speaker 10: among members. It really doesn't matter who the d group is.
Speaker 10: You just need to have an outgroup of some kind.
Speaker 10: So for far right cults, it's like Jewish people, black people,
Speaker 10: gay people, those are the necessary out groups. That's like
Speaker 10: the bare minimum out group for most right wing groups, right, Yeah,
Speaker 10: it's like checklist, you know, typical. I mean, of course,
Speaker 10: some go even further, and they might say something like
Speaker 10: anybody who isn't a white Anglo Saxon Protestant is excluded
Speaker 10: from their groups. But you know, sorry, became kind of irrelevant.
Speaker 1: Sorry Catholics, you're not.
Speaker 10: Yeah, RP Catholics, RP Irish, et cetera. And then for
Speaker 10: far left cults, in order to isolate members further, they
Speaker 10: can't just rely on like the bourgeoisie as the old group, because,
Speaker 10: I mean, the rest of the left already has the
Speaker 10: bourgeoisie as an opponent. So these far left cults have
Speaker 10: to create other groups to talk at the and I
Speaker 10: state the members from as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it becomes much more like seeped in ideology than
Speaker 1: some all then, like compared to some of the right
Speaker 1: wing cults, I think generally, the cults on the left
Speaker 1: get get way more into creating kind of ideological distinctions
Speaker 1: that separate the in group in the out group, and
Speaker 1: there the ideology becomes the thing that like this is
Speaker 1: like that becomes like the unquestionable thing that answers all
Speaker 1: of the truths and all of like the problems of
Speaker 1: the world, whether that's like an apocalyptic version where you're
Speaker 1: talking about like some like collapse, or it's you know,
Speaker 1: like a or even like a a utopic version right
Speaker 1: where you're talking about the Marxist Leninists party is gonna
Speaker 1: sees seize power through the vanguard and control swaths of
Speaker 1: territory and return power to the proletariat.
Speaker 10: Yes, and the true obstacles to that party of revisionists,
Speaker 10: the ultra leftists et cetera, et cetera, the.
Speaker 1: Post leftists, the anarchists. Yeah, yeah, the social democrats as
Speaker 1: always the enemy to all side. It's truly the one,
Speaker 1: the one that everyone everyone loves to hit.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, truly the petty boogs come.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 10: Next step step three build commitment through dissonance reduction, so
Speaker 10: cults manipulate cognitive discerent by gradually escalating members quitment the
Speaker 10: group's beliefs and actions. This needs for sense of consistency
Speaker 10: and eventually conversion. So you don't throw a newbie into
Speaker 10: the kool aid right away. You start small and you
Speaker 10: build up from there. Maybe first you want a meeting,
Speaker 10: then maybe you start voting in the meetings. Then you
Speaker 10: hand it out flyers for the cults at like a
Speaker 10: Black Lives Matter protest for example, and then you sip
Speaker 10: in the kool aid. You know, it's like baby steps.
Speaker 10: You don't throw them into the into all the time
Speaker 10: right away. Next step four. Maintain a rigid intunal regime.
Speaker 10: Decision making power is concentrated in the hands of a
Speaker 10: select elite within the group. Formal controls and democratic processes
Speaker 10: are either dismantled or ignored, even though the organization make
Speaker 10: claim to be democratic on paper, and this environment helps
Speaker 10: to foster uncertainty, fair and confusion among members, which actually
Speaker 10: helps to reinforce their commitment to the group. Believe it
Speaker 10: or not. Five Step five establish the attractiveness and credibility
Speaker 10: of the leader. Oh alrighty yeah, yeah yeah, you know
Speaker 10: make over.
Speaker 1: This is this is why it's going to be all over.
Speaker 1: As soon as they start making twink cults, it's going
Speaker 1: to be whole swaths of the public population just are
Speaker 1: gonna immediately fall victim.
Speaker 10: Indeed, indeed, these grand or supreme leaders are legends, extraordinary
Speaker 10: in their qualities your twinkness. New age cults do this. Sorry,
Speaker 10: new age cults do this with their sex best leaders
Speaker 10: and stuff. But oh my god, I can't not mention
Speaker 10: the veneration the political cults plays on their leaders, right yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: I mean Hitler fans just obsessed with the guy. I
Speaker 10: mean that goes I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this applies to like to like, people who are
Speaker 1: really into Hitler, people who are really in the stall,
Speaker 1: and people who are really into now they've become this
Speaker 1: almost like messianic figure.
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah, I mean, even before I understood cults better,
Speaker 10: I could see very clearly early on, even you know,
Speaker 10: before my readings theory and everything just being exposed to
Speaker 10: you know that space that there is a veritable cult
Speaker 10: of Lenin, of the king family, of maw of Trotsky,
Speaker 10: out of Stalin, and far be it from you to
Speaker 10: point out their flaws and mistakes. Either it's denied outright
Speaker 10: as outside propaganda, or it's kept on the download as
Speaker 10: much as possible. Specifically North Korea situation. Right, you often
Speaker 10: see its supporters saying things like, yes, there are problems
Speaker 10: with North Korea, and we do discuss our criticisms behind
Speaker 10: closed doors, but openly, you know, it's full throttled, full
Speaker 10: throated support, which I find very interesting.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Step six, speaking of leaders, the leader needs privileges naturally,
Speaker 10: police start power, wealth accumulation, and often sexual favors as well.
Speaker 10: Activities that are usually deemed unacceptable for ordinary members are
Speaker 10: tolerated when apply it to leaders. Why because step seven
Speaker 10: you make sure to deify the leader. Leaders, whether historical
Speaker 10: or current, are elevated to a defined status. They're carrying
Speaker 10: on the legacy and defending it from revision. If the
Speaker 10: OG is already dead. You resolve the arguments by referencing
Speaker 10: the sayings of these leaders rather than through independent analysis.
Speaker 10: So it's not well, you know this is the case
Speaker 10: because we examined X, Y, and Z factor. It's this
Speaker 10: is the case because person AA said so in nineteenth
Speaker 10: century text number three hundred and seventy six or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's it's six hundred pages long.
Speaker 10: It's it's yeah. I mean, do you even read capital, like,
Speaker 10: come on.
Speaker 1: All all twenty five volumes?
Speaker 10: I mean, oh, it's a capital. I mean it's a
Speaker 10: good No.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, if you want to read about like German factory conditions,
Speaker 1: it is, and it's definitely it's eighteenth century German factory politics.
Speaker 1: It is an unparalleled blook.
Speaker 10: Yeah, definitely. Step eight you need to send members to proselytize.
Speaker 10: Members need to constantly promote the benefits of the cult
Speaker 10: to others because that reinforces their own beliefs, that self
Speaker 10: generated persuasion strengthens their commitment. And to be fair, this
Speaker 10: applies even outside of cults. Right Like, if in the
Speaker 10: habits of sharing your particular ideology or religion or philosophy,
Speaker 10: the process of sharing it often helps you to understand
Speaker 10: it and also lends itself lends to you being fruth
Speaker 10: persuaded by it. But in the context of everything else,
Speaker 10: in context of the cults, it really becomes a feedback
Speaker 10: loop code, which is shown of all interference from the
Speaker 10: outside world, and in which only the liturgy of the
Speaker 10: cult has any semblance of reality. Number nine. Step nine
Speaker 10: distract members from undesirable thoughts overwork. Members keep them busy
Speaker 10: and exhausted, far too busy and exhausted to question the
Speaker 10: group's direction or beliefs. Social life friendships, those all revolve
Speaker 10: around the group, and of course those friendships are entirely
Speaker 10: conditional on the maintenance of uncritical enthusiasm for the party line.
Speaker 10: The book uses the example of the Worker's Revolutionary Party
Speaker 10: in Britain, which has a chapter in the book all
Speaker 10: to itself. Despite neving able to muster more than one
Speaker 10: percent of the vote in any elections, somehow this small
Speaker 10: organization managed to put out a daily newspaper, keeping the
Speaker 10: members busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. Next number ten fixate
Speaker 10: members on a promised land. Cults create an idealized vision
Speaker 10: of the future the contrast to the current reality. That
Speaker 10: promised lands maybe an alien spaceship to the next dimension,
Speaker 10: a religious ethno state, or a Marxist leness utopia, but
Speaker 10: in either case, the cult's members are driven to work
Speaker 10: tirelessly to achieve this vision fair and missed opportunities. They're
Speaker 10: constantly either recruiting and funt reason and kept in a
Speaker 10: constantay of luteness, reinforcing the commitment to the group's beliefs
Speaker 10: now Garrison. If you follow these steps, you will have
Speaker 10: a fairly effective cult. But you know what, just for you,
Speaker 10: I'm going to throw in a bonus package of commonly
Speaker 10: held contradictions. You could call it the double think package.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm all ears. I'm really really desperate
Speaker 1: at this point because I've kind of sunk cost fallacy
Speaker 1: this right, I've we've already been I've already been learning
Speaker 1: for like thirty minutes. I feel like I need to
Speaker 1: take away more more information at at the end because
Speaker 1: if I if I go and apply this now, it's
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm only gonna half asset. I need.
Speaker 1: I need one final, one final thing to kind of
Speaker 1: click into place here.
Speaker 10: Absolutely check this out right love of liberty and support
Speaker 10: for totalitarians.
Speaker 1: Right, these seem like two opposite things. How can both
Speaker 1: of these coaches? You can hold them.
Speaker 10: In your brain simultaneously. Right check this right. Left wing
Speaker 10: cults would idealize a very democratic Soviet Union of the past.
Speaker 10: You know, some trott Gise groups even depict an earlier
Speaker 10: period as democratic before being corrupted by later leaders and
Speaker 10: then right wing cults would claim to champ on individual
Speaker 10: liberty but seek to curtail democratic rights for those who
Speaker 10: disagree with So the democracy is upheld, but it's theoretical.
Speaker 10: So it's like, yeah, democracy would also come on the
Speaker 10: material conditions. You can't have democracy in that kind of situation. Ah, right,
Speaker 10: so you're loving, yes, like I am a democracy advocate,
Speaker 10: but also like democracy gets in the way sometimes we
Speaker 10: have to like get past it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you have like to
Speaker 1: see what I'm cooking. We have the democracy of like
Speaker 1: me and like my three friends, but not like you know, everybody.
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like democracy, see, but it's like
Speaker 10: centered around like a group, like I call it like
Speaker 10: democratic centralism or something like that.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's a great idea. That's a great idea.
Speaker 10: Thank you. Next, we have belief, inequality and privilege for leaders.
Speaker 1: That last one team is kind of important.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so you're going to be advocating for equality, but
Speaker 10: then your leaders are going to have a bunch of privileges.
Speaker 1: Because we're spending all the time advocating we but a
Speaker 1: little bit it's something extra.
Speaker 10: Exactly to the members. Well, they get to go out
Speaker 10: there and spend time fundraising and stuff, but they can't
Speaker 10: have a say and how the money is spent, right, Like,
Speaker 10: we need that money, you know, for our personal projects
Speaker 10: and our extremely high standards. Livent check this out. This
Speaker 10: is very common in religious cults, but also very common
Speaker 10: in some political cults. Promotion of sexual morality and sexual exploitation.
Speaker 1: Huh, well, okay, I'm not gonna I think I think
Speaker 1: I'll stop them playing along bit at this one.
Speaker 10: Actually yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough, but yes, this is
Speaker 10: ter terrible.
Speaker 1: This is a very common thing.
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah, you know, cultural imput is very strict sexual rules,
Speaker 10: particularly on members, but yeah, particularly young women, and the
Speaker 10: leaders will still like have a whole harem of female
Speaker 10: members that they exploit stuff.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is even quite common with
Speaker 1: like like hardline evangelical cults in the in the States,
Speaker 1: whether that's kind of like a Quiverfule related or just
Speaker 1: other kind of smaller evangelical sex that kind of form
Speaker 1: their own kind of church cult dynamic. But that is
Speaker 1: that's very specifically very common among Christian cults because of
Speaker 1: how much that like sexual authority arianism is uh normalized
Speaker 1: in a lot of and a lot of Protestant and
Speaker 1: Catholic uh you know doctrine.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly exactly. It's it's frighteningly common.
Speaker 1: And I've certainly heard that like, you know, like Stalinists
Speaker 1: or Maoists specifically have have weird, weird sex stuff going on.
Speaker 1: But I've I've never I've never quite poked that bear,
Speaker 1: but I have i haven't heard that there's specifically really
Speaker 1: weird sex stuff around Maoists.
Speaker 10: But yeah, and also really weird sex offron Mao allegedly
Speaker 10: I've heard bought his exploits. Yeah, moving along, Uh, last
Speaker 10: one in this little bonus package. The rest you will
Speaker 10: have to like pay the twelve simple payments of nine
Speaker 10: hundred and ninety nine dollars to get you.
Speaker 1: Know, that's that's that that's one payment every month, but
Speaker 1: each month I get more information about how.
Speaker 4: To do it better.
Speaker 1: That sounds like good. That sounds like a great deal.
Speaker 10: Oh, yeah for sure, because I mean you'll be just
Speaker 10: like swimming in cash by the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because now I can I can use these and
Speaker 1: I could pass down these steps to someone else, so
Speaker 1: I'll I will already gets and then and they can
Speaker 1: pass it.
Speaker 10: Down, pass it down, and then you'll get kickbox from
Speaker 10: that as well.
Speaker 1: That's great. That's that sounds almost.
Speaker 10: Like a multi level scheme.
Speaker 1: It's like there's like a triangle and there's different like
Speaker 1: tiers of it, and like you're you're technically what above me,
Speaker 1: but I'm still pretty close to the top if I
Speaker 1: if I keep bringing it down, then it gets wider
Speaker 1: and wider. That's that sounds like a pretty good like setup, and.
Speaker 10: I benefit and then you benefit.
Speaker 1: I mean, the triangle is actually the strongest shape structurally,
Speaker 1: structure structurally.
Speaker 10: So check this out right demand for free speech and
Speaker 10: suppression of descent right, so cultural vigorously defend their right
Speaker 10: to free speech, which even results into legal action. Are
Speaker 10: there's some very infamous court cases involving in cults. Yes,
Speaker 10: and then they will criticize rival organizations for you know,
Speaker 10: undemocratic practices, and yet within the ranks of the group
Speaker 10: dissent is actively suppressed.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like the scientology classic here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly, and members will be told like, yeah, you
Speaker 10: should absolutely criticize but then if they do criticize, you know,
Speaker 10: they're going to be humiliated. They could very easily be expelled.
Speaker 10: It's like a bait and switch. It's like, yeah, we
Speaker 10: give you this platform to criticize, so then we know
Speaker 10: who to target and to tear it down. Very very common,
Speaker 10: very very useful when you want to, you know, strengthen
Speaker 10: the integrity of your cult. All right, and one last
Speaker 10: quick game, let's ask ourselves.
Speaker 1: Really, you're just like free yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, only if you call right now. So let's
Speaker 10: ask ourselves. Am I already in a political cult?
Speaker 1: Great? Good question. Actually, this is something people should ask
Speaker 1: themselves pretty frequently.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 10: Yes. And to figure that out, we have to look
Speaker 10: at the conditions that indicate the presence of ideological totalism,
Speaker 10: a term coined by American psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton to
Speaker 10: give a name to the mood of absolute convictions, which
Speaker 10: embeds ideas so deeply in people's heads that they grow
Speaker 10: inoculated against doubt. So what are the conditions he identifies
Speaker 10: as indicating the presence of ideological totalism. Well, there's milieu control,
Speaker 10: mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession,
Speaker 10: the secret science, loading, the language, doctrine over person, and
Speaker 10: the dispensing of existence. What do those mean one at
Speaker 10: a time? So you control involves techniques that dominate a
Speaker 10: person's contact with the outside world and communication with themselves. Right,
Speaker 10: So that idea of cults isolating people prevented them from
Speaker 10: testing the groups of ideas against external alternatives. Mystical manipulation
Speaker 10: is where cults claim a sense of higher purpose and
Speaker 10: portray the ideology as the vanguard of social development that's
Speaker 10: all encompassing. This is the essential ideology for the future
Speaker 10: of the world. Demand for purity is of course, where
Speaker 10: members are like convicted of their superiority and purity in
Speaker 10: their beliefs. The core ideas are essential, and anybody who
Speaker 10: is a non member as a critic or as a
Speaker 10: critic is an accomplice in some kind of conspiracy against
Speaker 10: the cult's ideas. The cult of confession is where members
Speaker 10: are required to confess their inadequacies and failures in group meetings,
Speaker 10: which helps to break down individuality and intimidating and helps
Speaker 10: to intimidate potential dissenters. The sacred science, through the group's ideology,
Speaker 10: is presented as a sacred moral vision so you can't
Speaker 10: really question its basic assumption.
Speaker 1: The immortal science of marxistem.
Speaker 10: The immortal science indeed loading the language is where we
Speaker 10: were talking about earlier, where cults use repetitive phrases and
Speaker 10: though i, terminator and cliches to prevent critical analysis and
Speaker 10: limit thinking and feeling. Doctrine over person is where historical
Speaker 10: myths are created or altered so aligning with the cult's ideology,
Speaker 10: and the the dispenser of existence is where only those
Speaker 10: who adhere to the group's ideology are fully human or good,
Speaker 10: while all others are seen as agents of evil or
Speaker 10: barriers to progress. How that whole delivery has been useful
Speaker 10: for you in determining whether or not you are in
Speaker 10: a cult, as well as determining how you can create
Speaker 10: your own.
Speaker 1: Well, something that my boss has told me a lot
Speaker 1: is that there's there's very little difference between a cult
Speaker 1: and a really good party. So but the biggest difference
Speaker 1: is that a party hopefully will be over right. It's
Speaker 1: it should just be like one night. It should So
Speaker 1: a good party is a cult that lasts like twelve
Speaker 1: hours tops. So you can't apply a lot of these
Speaker 1: ideas to putting together a really fun house party as
Speaker 1: long as that it's there's a mandatory uh, like dissolution
Speaker 1: of the party after after you know, everyone wakes up
Speaker 1: the next morning.
Speaker 10: So oh, I'm imaginin like a DJ like yes, yes,
Speaker 10: like like DJ mill you control.
Speaker 1: We know, we are, we are putting gets back on,
Speaker 1: no no more, no more, ska back to gets exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 10: The future lies right hand this beast exactly exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 10: But I mean, in all seriousness, political culture really sad.
Speaker 10: You know, the prayers, people's frustrations, the desire for change,
Speaker 10: the prayer. And what's worse is that they prey on
Speaker 10: their desire for affiliation. Yeah, one of our most deeply
Speaker 10: rooted desires to identify with social groups, to develop an
Speaker 10: identity on a familiar, local, ethnic, or national scale. And
Speaker 10: it's really sad that people get lost in that source.
Speaker 10: You know, remember that, no matter what, the group you
Speaker 10: choose affiliate with should be able to handle descent. I
Speaker 10: think that's a very good baseline upon which to affiliate
Speaker 10: or to determine your affiliation. Healthy groups, organizations, and movements
Speaker 10: are not weakened by descent. They need dissent, disagreement, and
Speaker 10: conflict to survive life. Frequent and important disagreement makes movements
Speaker 10: and organizations stronger. It allows the individuals within them to
Speaker 10: maintain a level of independence and allow us ideas to
Speaker 10: evolve through challenge rather than to exist purely due to
Speaker 10: the stifling atmosphere of conformity. Today we spoke about the
Speaker 10: techniques employed by both left wing and right wing cults
Speaker 10: to maintain higher levels of conformity, activism, and intolerance among
Speaker 10: their members. I want to emphasize that our discussion doesn't
Speaker 10: imply that movements striving for societal change are inherently bound
Speaker 10: to become obscure cults. Those that are critical examination of
Speaker 10: modern society is not warranted. But it's important to remember
Speaker 10: that while our will challenges require political analysis in action,
Speaker 10: the organizations so we form to address these challenges must
Speaker 10: try to genuinely seek understanding and transformation while preserving the
Speaker 10: freedom and virtuality of its members. I said a lot
Speaker 10: to say, create a real community, not a cult. That's
Speaker 10: all until next time, I've been Andrew of Thetue channel Andrewism,
Speaker 10: and next we will be discussing the one and only
Speaker 10: the Loathsome then done, lers, peace welcomes it could happen here.
Speaker 10: I'm Andrew of YouTube channel Anturism, and last time I
Speaker 10: was on here discussing political cults generally. Today I'm here
Speaker 10: once again with Oh Garrison.
Speaker 1: Yes Hello. I am also here to talk about cults
Speaker 1: because Andrew told me to.
Speaker 10: Yes yes, and I'm the I'm the leader in this dynamic.
Speaker 1: In many ways, this zoom call is kind of a
Speaker 1: mini cult where you are the leader.
Speaker 10: There is nothing except this call. There's no outside world,
Speaker 10: there is no cut on your desk. It is just
Speaker 10: this the cult. The cat is a revisionist. So last
Speaker 10: episode we discussed how cults operate, essentially the roller coaster
Speaker 10: emotional ride that individual's experience during cult recruitment, where they're
Speaker 10: feelings and ideas are manipulated and they're drawn into an
Speaker 10: exclusive and isolating group. We explored the rigid belief system
Speaker 10: that's created, the immunity to falsifacation, the authoritarianism, arbitrary leadership,
Speaker 10: deification of leaders, intense activism, and the use of loaded language.
Speaker 10: We spoke about the contradictions within political cults and the
Speaker 10: conditions of ideologic called totalism. And today, as promised, we're
Speaker 10: going to look at one political cult leader in particular
Speaker 10: whose influence spanned left to right, self described Platonist, conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 10: the alleged targets of an assassination from Queen Elizabeth, A
Speaker 10: one Trotskyist, the one and only, the infamous, the loathsome
Speaker 10: Lyndon LaRouche.
Speaker 1: As soon as you said platonist, I knew we were
Speaker 1: in for just a horrible time, just just the worst.
Speaker 1: The only people who self describe as Platonists are the worst. Actually,
Speaker 1: the last person I knew who self described as a
Speaker 1: Platonist was the target of an assassination because it was
Speaker 1: the daughter of Alexander Dugan was an.
Speaker 10: Interesting cast of characters.
Speaker 4: Indeed.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and speaking of.
Speaker 10: Cast of characters, by the way, I should note that
Speaker 10: Tim wall Fourth, one of the co authors of the book,
Speaker 10: that this research was based on the book being on
Speaker 10: the edge particular cults left and right. Tim Warre Fourth,
Speaker 10: the other authors tenant is Dennis Turrish was a Trotskyist
Speaker 10: called leader at one point like cult underling or whatever,
Speaker 10: but he was kicked out and then he later co
Speaker 10: authored this book to call out some of their cultish tenancies.
Speaker 10: If you need that sort of backstory to take some
Speaker 10: of this with the green of salt. So be it, because,
Speaker 10: as far as I can tell, Tim war Fourth and
Speaker 10: Lynn laruche actually crossed paths at one point.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So, as always.
Speaker 10: Let's start from the beginning and get an early portrait
Speaker 10: of this guy. Laroche was born in Rochester, New Hampshire
Speaker 10: in nineteen twenty two, then moved to Lynn, Massachusetts. He
Speaker 10: was the oldest of three children in a Quaker home
Speaker 10: who eventually his father would be expelled from the local
Speaker 10: Quaker community for his alleged misuse of funds. He then
Speaker 10: briefly attended Northeastern University in Boston and left in nineteen
Speaker 10: forty two, at least partly because he believed his teachers
Speaker 10: quote lacked the competence to teach him on conditions he
Speaker 10: was willing to tolerate.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, I'll take his first word on that one. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 10: At first, he was a conscientious objector to enlist when
Speaker 10: in World War Two because you know, Quaker, and instead
Speaker 10: he joined a civilian public service camp in what is
Speaker 10: what you know, which is what conscientious objectors did at
Speaker 10: the time. But eventually he would enlist with the US
Speaker 10: Army and serve with the Medical Corps in India and
Speaker 10: boomer which is now mianma Yea. In nineteen forty six,
Speaker 10: aboard the s S. General Bradley Don Morrill met the
Speaker 10: young soldier in LaRouche and got into it with him
Speaker 10: about politics and particularly the political optimism of the post
Speaker 10: World War two era what a time, the revolutionary spirit
Speaker 10: of the Indian subcontinent, and socialist ideas more broadly, Now
Speaker 10: Larushe was already sympathetic towards Marx and Trotsky at this point.
Speaker 10: In fact, even in his preteens, he was a voracious
Speaker 10: reader of philosophy, particularly of the German polymath Godfred Wilhelm
Speaker 10: von leibnizbut leibnizbut or however that is pronounced. But ultimately,
Speaker 10: by the time they returned to America, Laruche was a Trotskyist.
Speaker 10: In brief, For those unaware, a Trotskyist is someone who
Speaker 10: hears the principles and politics of Leon Trotsky, who was
Speaker 10: a prominent figure in the early Soviet Union and a
Speaker 10: key figure in the what I would call co optation
Speaker 10: of the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen. Trotskyism is distinct
Speaker 10: from mainstream Leninist and particularly Stalinist thought. Most famously for
Speaker 10: their rejection of socialism in one country and their advocacy
Speaker 10: of permanent revolution. By the time l Aruche had returned
Speaker 10: home in nineteen forty seven, he joined his hometown Lynn,
Speaker 10: Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Workers' Party s WP, which
Speaker 10: was the main American Trotskyist group. Interestingly, he took on
Speaker 10: a party name which really reminds me of how religious
Speaker 10: missionaries would give those they converted quote Christian names baptism. Yeah,
Speaker 10: so his party name was Lynn Marcus. You could just
Speaker 10: see it as a pseudonym for political work. Of course.
Speaker 10: I mean, the CIA and the FBI were very active
Speaker 10: in infiltrating these sorts of groups, So I understand having
Speaker 10: like a pseudonym. But I mean, considering we're talking about
Speaker 10: cul tendencies and political movements, I couldn't pass up on
Speaker 10: that observation.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: Don Morrill, who was also from Lynn, Massachusetts, was also
Speaker 10: part of the SWP and very active in their union
Speaker 10: organized and activities. Laroucheo not so much. He was very
Speaker 10: intellectually oriented. He wasn't very into the union scene, and
Speaker 10: he eventually left Massachusetts nineteen fifty two and settled down
Speaker 10: in New York. City, He got married, he had a son,
Speaker 10: and he was focused in his career as an economic
Speaker 10: consultant in the shoe industry, with a nice, nice apartment
Speaker 10: in Central Park West. He didn't really have any ties
Speaker 10: to the working class efforts at the WP. So what now? Well,
Speaker 10: eventually he and his wife separated and he moved in
Speaker 10: with a fellow s WP member known sometimes as Carol White,
Speaker 10: sometimes as Carol Schnitzer, and sometimes as Carol Larabie. And
Speaker 10: then he decided that the WP leadership had the wrong idea.
Speaker 10: Why are they so obsessed with union organizing? Perhaps he
Speaker 10: should be the one calling the shots. You have to
Speaker 10: understand something about Laruche. You see a little involvement or
Speaker 10: connection to actual working class struggle, and disconnection. You see
Speaker 10: with little involvement or connection to actual working class struggle
Speaker 10: and disconnection from the party's activity. He had already begun
Speaker 10: making a right word shift, even while still bearing the
Speaker 10: banner of leftism. As an intellectual, he loved his books,
Speaker 10: including Marxist Capital, Rota Luxembourg's The Accumulation of Capital and
Speaker 10: Hegeld's Logic, and his intellectualism naturally fed into his elitism,
Speaker 10: Drawing from Lenin's What is to be Done? Laruche believes
Speaker 10: that a select intellectual group, which I mean he was
Speaker 10: clearly a part of, these professional revolutionaries held a pivotal
Speaker 10: role in transforming society, would their task being to gain
Speaker 10: dominance over the less intellectually developed masses. He also borrowed
Speaker 10: from Gramachi's idea of hergemony. He saw himself in competition
Speaker 10: with other intellectuals on the left for leadership over the
Speaker 10: hearts and minds of the dummy masses to undermine the
Speaker 10: capitalists hold on the working class. But unlike Gramsche, he
Speaker 10: didn't believe the working class was capable of developing its
Speaker 10: own leaders. He was that leader, and he also borrowed
Speaker 10: from George Lucas's concept of class consciousness and the importance
Speaker 10: of thinkers. Lush wasn't just a thinker. He saw himself
Speaker 10: as the thinker, the one who would take power and
Speaker 10: lead the masses to freedom. So he was fed up
Speaker 10: with the s WP limiting his clearly elite intellect and ability,
Speaker 10: and so in nineteen sixty five he left and joined
Speaker 10: a small Trotskise group called the American Committee for the
Speaker 10: Fourth International YES, associated with George Healey, who was another
Speaker 10: left wing cult leader.
Speaker 1: At a lot of left wing cults came out of
Speaker 1: the Fourth International, some of which are very cool, some
Speaker 1: of which are not very.
Speaker 10: Cool indeed, indeed, but guess what, he didn't like the
Speaker 10: Fourth International. He only stayed there for six months. And
Speaker 10: apparently he Ley did not even like him. I mean,
Speaker 10: I wonder why, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, he seems like a very
Speaker 1: agreeable fellow.
Speaker 10: And not only that, I mean, when have you ever
Speaker 10: heard of cult leaders getting along? You know, cur leaders
Speaker 10: sent to view other cult leaders as threats to their
Speaker 10: total control.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be funny if there was just
Speaker 1: like a conference for cult leaders to like share like
Speaker 1: tactics and they all have like dinner together.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So laruche bus out to that party, and he joined
Speaker 10: the spart Issy League, which was another trot party, and
Speaker 10: again he didn't stay for too long. He decided he
Speaker 10: was going to put all those factions and leaders behind
Speaker 10: him and declared himself the pioneer of the Fifth INTERNATIONALE. So,
Speaker 10: for those unaware, the First Workers International from eighteen sixty
Speaker 10: four to eighteen seventy six was a coalition of labor
Speaker 10: and socialist groups seeking to promote workers' rights and international solidarity.
Speaker 10: It split because of the irreconcilable differences and divisions between
Speaker 10: the statists and the anarchists. Then in eighteen eighty nine
Speaker 10: and from then unto nineteen sixteen, the Second Internationale was born.
Speaker 10: That was an organization of socialist and labor parties, this
Speaker 10: time no anarchists allowed, and it was aimed at fostering
Speaker 10: cooperation among socialist globally, until it dissolved due to the
Speaker 10: divisions related to World War One. And then in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 10: the Soviet Union founded the Third International or the Common
Speaker 10: Turn to promote worldwide communist revolution and aid communist parties,
Speaker 10: but then it dissolved during World War Two due to
Speaker 10: the Soviet German tensions, among other things. And then in
Speaker 10: nineteen thirty eight Trotsky, who was marginalized and persecuted by
Speaker 10: Stylar and founded the Fourth International as an oppositional alternative
Speaker 10: to the stalent dominated Commentarn. Technically the Fourth International is
Speaker 10: still active today, but it's always been fairly irrelevant beyond
Speaker 10: small bickerent sects and ever splinter in splinter groups and
Speaker 10: more than one political cult. So for a Trotskyist like
Speaker 10: Laruge to declare a fifth International is like, you know,
Speaker 10: here we go again. How is it going to matage?
Speaker 10: Do this? Nineteen sixty eight picture this a room with
Speaker 10: about phility students sitting on the floor, all eyes fixed
Speaker 10: on Lyndon LaRouche. After playing a major role in the
Speaker 10: student strike at Columbia University, these students were totally invested
Speaker 10: in this man's every word. They were part of the
Speaker 10: National Caucus of Labor Committees lc NCLC, which was affiliated
Speaker 10: with the Students for Democratic Society SDS. Laruche held this
Speaker 10: meeting for a whole seven hours, that's longer than a
Speaker 10: too service, and he blended discussions of tactics with educational presentations.
Speaker 10: The SDS had a lot of spirit and action, but
Speaker 10: Larush believed that they were a bit short on theory,
Speaker 10: so he was there to fill that void and earn
Speaker 10: a bit more. The gathering marked the early stages of
Speaker 10: Wild lad become a political cult center around Laruge, where
Speaker 10: he served as an intellectual and political gurup, training his
Speaker 10: followers as devoted disciples. He had a particular knack for
Speaker 10: me making his disciples feel like they were part of
Speaker 10: an elite club. They believe they were the only ones
Speaker 10: who truly understood the era they were in and had
Speaker 10: all the answers to fix society's problems. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 10: Larush wrote that you should start with recruiting and educating
Speaker 10: a revolutionary intelligenzia, mainly young intellectuals like these student radicals,
Speaker 10: rather than the working class, because again Laruge thought the
Speaker 10: working class was stipid. He wanted easily to recruits to
Speaker 10: commit to intensive study and activism, particularly of his interpretation
Speaker 10: of ideas. So they need the charge. And I remember
Speaker 10: at this point Larush's pushing a right wing form of Trotskyism.
Speaker 10: Like Marx, he believed that capitalism how to keep crowing
Speaker 10: to stay alive. Once it hits his limits, it will
Speaker 10: grow into crisis mode and eventually collapse. You also shared
Speaker 10: Mark's idea that human activity should be all about progress,
Speaker 10: particularly the growth of the world's productive forces.
Speaker 1: Do you know who's organizing the next International? Actually right now,
Speaker 1: right now, it is in fact that the products and
Speaker 1: services that sponsor this podcast, So they're making the great
Speaker 1: shift the same way anarchism was expunged from the Second International,
Speaker 1: Now communism is going to be expunged from this this
Speaker 1: next upcoming international, and it's just going to be capitalists.
Speaker 1: So here, here, here are the sponsors organizing the next,
Speaker 1: the next International.
Speaker 10: Marx thought capitalism was just a phase in human society,
Speaker 10: as crises would pave the way for a working class revolution,
Speaker 10: which would lead to socialism. Under socialism, the productive forces
Speaker 10: would flourish without those pesky capitalist constraints. LaRouche came up
Speaker 10: with something he called the theory of re industrialization. He
Speaker 10: claimed that capitalism, in its third stage of imperialism, needed
Speaker 10: fresh opportunities for capital investment. They even predicted that if
Speaker 10: world leaders did not follow his advice, the system was
Speaker 10: on the brink of collapse. Only he and his trained
Speaker 10: followers under his lead could prevent this catastrophe. By the
Speaker 10: late sixties and early seventies, members were giving up their
Speaker 10: jobs and devoting themselves wholly to the cause and the
Speaker 10: leadership of Laruche. They were convinced that the world had
Speaker 10: all the resources needed for an incredible economic transformation. But
Speaker 10: they saw a big problem. They thought the nation's leaders
Speaker 10: were clueless, and of course they didn't think too highly
Speaker 10: the masses. So their solution was getting Linden and Laruze
Speaker 10: Junior into power or whether he's a junior. But their
Speaker 10: solution was getting Linden Laruz junior into power as soon
Speaker 10: as possible, and then he would lead the trade unions
Speaker 10: that take over America. He expected their support and if
Speaker 10: they were slacking in their activism, he would call them out.
Speaker 10: Borrowing from the confrontational therapy with the new age for
Speaker 10: psychology cults, l Roush began holding ego stripping sessions. Anyone
Speaker 10: who failed in a political task was subjected to pure
Speaker 10: psychological terror as everyone attacked them and tore apart their
Speaker 10: past and personal life in front of the whole group.
Speaker 10: And because cults, and because cults and sex and inevitable
Speaker 10: combination like madness and badness, Larush also launched a campaign
Speaker 10: against the sexual impotence of his membership. Apparently Carol left
Speaker 10: him for a disciple of the movement. Interesting his name
Speaker 10: was Christopher White, and they went to England to set
Speaker 10: up a chapter of the NCLC. So that's probably why
Speaker 10: he got a little bit unhinged. But that's not the
Speaker 10: worst of it. I can't not mention Operation mop Up.
Speaker 10: In nineteen seventy three, Laruge fully shifted the group's political
Speaker 10: stands from being far left to far right. Armed with bats,
Speaker 10: chains and martial arts, scale, his supporters physically attacked members
Speaker 10: of the Socialist Workers' Party and the Communist Party for
Speaker 10: He declared that he intended to wipe these rival parties
Speaker 10: off the map, going as far as to threaten their
Speaker 10: families as well. But it didn't stop there. He extended
Speaker 10: his attacks to groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party, the
Speaker 10: October League, and the Progressive Labor Party. Essentially, laruche want
Speaker 10: to establish dominance through these physical confrontations. There were at
Speaker 10: least sixty reported assaults during this time, and the whole
Speaker 10: operation only ended when the police stepped in and arrested
Speaker 10: some of Lucia's followers. Interestingly, though, there weren't any convictions,
Speaker 10: and Larush insisted that his people will only acted in
Speaker 10: self defense. But here's where it gets a little bit mookier.
Speaker 10: Journalist and Laruse biographer Dennis King suggested that the FBI
Speaker 10: may have played a role in stirring up trouble among
Speaker 10: these groups. We have used tactics like sending anonymous mailings
Speaker 10: to keep these groups in each other's throats, so you know,
Speaker 10: plot thickens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that way that was very typical kind
Speaker 1: of contal pro stuff that was happening around this time
Speaker 1: period that would not surprise me.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's safe to say though, in this period of
Speaker 10: Larusi's life, all the folks on the left were wondering
Speaker 10: if he was really still one of their own. Back
Speaker 10: nineteen seventy three, Carol and Christopher, like I said, they
Speaker 10: were going to the UK to set up their own
Speaker 10: version of the NCLC, But then the Rush called them
Speaker 10: back to the US for a national conference, and during
Speaker 10: the flight, Christopher lost it. He started yelling that the
Speaker 10: CIA had plans to off lwer By and the Rouche,
Speaker 10: Carol Larbie and the Rush. The plane was an utter chaos.
Speaker 10: So Carol reached out to the rouge and they decided
Speaker 10: to work together to d program Christopher. What we mean
Speaker 10: deprogrammed Christopher? I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 1: I think we have mentioned called d programming before, kind
Speaker 1: of been passing, but never too much on it.
Speaker 10: I think yes. What I mean in this instance though,
Speaker 10: is not that they were trying to inculcate him into
Speaker 10: the cult or deprogram him from mainstream ideology. You see
Speaker 10: in his rantins and ravens on the plane Christopher claimed
Speaker 10: he was a Manchurian candidate who had been tortured by
Speaker 10: the CIA and British intelligence in a London basement. He
Speaker 10: then said he was programmed to do some stuff like
Speaker 10: often his wife and setting up Laruge for a watery
Speaker 10: demise by Cuban and exile frogmen. So that's the kind
Speaker 10: of deprogram and they intended to carry out.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, I have some notes, but I suppose I'll just
Speaker 1: let them do their thing.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, So Christopher was saying that he was a
Speaker 10: Manchurian candidate, and so then the whole group was in
Speaker 10: a frenzy. Laruge and his disciples were released in statements
Speaker 10: left and right, training their members and how to spot
Speaker 10: other Manchurian candidates and how to handle CIA torture. And
Speaker 10: here's why I guess really crazy. One of the members,
Speaker 10: Alice Weitzman, she made a critical mistake in a political cult.
Speaker 10: She doubted. She didn't believe the whole CIA story that
Speaker 10: Christopher was pushing, and Larus didn't like that she didn't believe,
Speaker 10: and so Larush was like, oh, you don't believe that
Speaker 10: the CIA is infiltrating us right now, then you must
Speaker 10: be a Cia agent, so he sends a squad of
Speaker 10: six members of his cult to Weisman's apartment and they
Speaker 10: held her a hostage and cranked up Beaethovern music to
Speaker 10: deafening levels. Why because Laruche believed that Beethoven's tunes could
Speaker 10: somehow deprogram Manchurian candidates. Wizman managed to toss out a
Speaker 10: note through the window and a passerby picked it up
Speaker 10: and alerted the police, so she was rescued, but then
Speaker 10: she chose not to press charges against her captives. Larusha
Speaker 10: turned this party at this point, with one thousand members
Speaker 10: in three seven offices in North America and twenty six
Speaker 10: in Europe and Latin America, into an extreme right, anti
Speaker 10: Semitic organization, despite the presence of Jewish members. In fact,
Speaker 10: Carol herself was Jewish and she stuck around Dennis King.
Speaker 10: The biographer's were called earlier found a deep connection between
Speaker 10: LaRouche and fascist and United groups. In the early eighties,
Speaker 10: Laruche used a Strategic Defense Initiative or star Wars to
Speaker 10: bring together fright forces from Europe and America. He was
Speaker 10: even promoting like Revanism and defending Nazi war criminals, and
Speaker 10: he was known for blending his usual conspiracy theories with
Speaker 10: anti Semitism, particularly towards the British. He blamed the Rothschild
Speaker 10: for running Great Britain, and he was a typical Holocaust denier. Yeah,
Speaker 10: I really, I generally wonder why Carol left him, but
Speaker 10: I also wonder why she stuck around in the group anyway.
Speaker 10: The Anti Defamation League labeled the Rushes NCLC as the
Speaker 10: closest thing to an American fascist party, and well that
Speaker 10: begs the question what was life like in that party?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 10: I mean I remember you Garrison describing a good party
Speaker 10: as a.
Speaker 1: Color well, and see, I think part of part of
Speaker 1: the problem is when you know, a house party turns
Speaker 1: into a political party and then.
Speaker 10: To a fascist party. Yeah, but never ends. Yeah. So
Speaker 10: Larush was using these really sneaky tactics to drive a
Speaker 10: wedge between Laruge members and their families, partners, and spouses.
Speaker 10: There were members of Larusiu's elite who convinced one person
Speaker 10: that their own dad was laundering money secretly for the
Speaker 10: drug trade. This organization was telling their members where they
Speaker 10: could live, what car to buy, when to quit their jobs,
Speaker 10: what they should read, what they should watch, how to
Speaker 10: scam their parents out of money, how and when to
Speaker 10: break up with their partners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all.
Speaker 10: And then while all this is going on, Larush movement
Speaker 10: is also swapping out the red flags of Trotskyism for
Speaker 10: good old or red, white and blue. Members were soon
Speaker 10: educated with the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, right, oh god.
Speaker 10: Hamilton's economic seats were basically the American version of what
Speaker 10: Marx represented in Europe, according to l Aruge. And forget
Speaker 10: about Marx. They're not reading Marx anymore now, they're reading
Speaker 10: Plato and Dante. In nineteen eighty they even told the
Speaker 10: members to vote for Reagan. Yeah, cool stuff, cool stuff,
Speaker 10: cool stuff.
Speaker 1: No, they dropped their left noted a platonist philosopher, Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they basically dropped any veneer of left leaning in
Speaker 10: their recreupment tactics. And then they started doing things like
Speaker 10: soliciting people at airports and bus terminals. And these members
Speaker 10: they were caught in this whirlwind. They didn't have time
Speaker 10: to read, to think, to get a decent night's sleep.
Speaker 10: They were working twelve hour shifts and getting paid peanuts,
Speaker 10: like one hundred dollars one hundred and twenty five dollars
Speaker 10: a week, and sometimes they'd even get paid at all.
Speaker 10: They were in a constant state of mobilization, living an
Speaker 10: adrenaline ready for anything, And finally, in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 10: around three hundred and six hundred people they had had
Speaker 10: enough and left the organization. Some of them were formal leftists,
Speaker 10: but not all. Those who stuck around the die hard
Speaker 10: cult members completely under Larushe's control. Would it surprise you,
Speaker 10: gusn to learn that the Rushe was a scammer?
Speaker 1: Oh? You're saying that the person involved in running the
Speaker 1: cult was also a prolific grifter and someone who tried
Speaker 1: to scam other people. Are really really Yeah.
Speaker 10: A lot of people don't know this, but cult leaders
Speaker 10: and scammers actually go hand in hand. Ah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 10: Larush was a master of operating through a network of
Speaker 10: front organizations. He created the Fusion Energy Foundation, getting support
Speaker 10: from nuclear and aerospace industries to run a private intelligence
Speaker 10: to this focusing on terrorists and drug cartels. Get this.
Speaker 10: He even met with top officials from the National Security
Speaker 10: com SO and the CIA in the eighties, despite his
Speaker 10: parannoying about the CIA, and he somehow managed to get
Speaker 10: White House access.
Speaker 1: What Yeah? Why? How?
Speaker 10: Yeah? He eventually infiltrated the Democratic Party and ran for
Speaker 10: president several times, and he launched the Proposition sixty four
Speaker 10: initiative in California in the eighties, Aiman to impose strict
Speaker 10: public health policies for AIDS, which public health officials rejected.
Speaker 10: But basically he was instrumental and spreading a lot of
Speaker 10: unnecessary fear about AIDS. In fact, he was advocating for
Speaker 10: lynch mobs to deal with the AIDE crisis.
Speaker 1: Oh so he wasn't like spreading good health information when
Speaker 1: everyone was ignoring the problem. He was being like, we should,
Speaker 1: we should just killed everybody.
Speaker 10: Yeah, pretty much?
Speaker 1: Okay, I got h But you.
Speaker 10: Know, every scammer has their day, and one of his
Speaker 10: scams got him in the pen. You see, LaRouche had
Speaker 10: a knack for recruit in the offspring of the wealthy
Speaker 10: and separating them from their money, to put it euphemistically.
Speaker 10: One of his most famous recruits was Louis DuPont Smith
Speaker 10: a DuPont here that DuPont, who gave a whop in
Speaker 10: two hundred and twelve thousand dollars to Laruge. He even
Speaker 10: moved close to Laruge, but Eventually, the DuPont family intervened,
Speaker 10: had him declared mentally ill, and put him on a
Speaker 10: monthly stipend. Still, Laruche was making a royal bank. His
Speaker 10: empire was growing. He had one hundred and seventy two
Speaker 10: acre estate in Virginia serving as his center of operations,
Speaker 10: which had phone banks, offices, a printing plant guarded twenty
Speaker 10: four to seven by armed individuals. But the Empire of
Speaker 10: LaRouche eventually went into a decline. This lust for publicity
Speaker 10: caught the attention of the public and federal officials, and
Speaker 10: his phone bank operator started to make an unauthorized credit
Speaker 10: card withdrawals.
Speaker 1: I mean he he was like going to the White House.
Speaker 1: How did he how did he try to like stay
Speaker 1: under the federal radar? He was literally in the in
Speaker 1: the one spot, the one place exactly exactly.
Speaker 10: It's it's it's baffling, But Dennis Kidding has a book
Speaker 10: all about it, so you could check it out. In
Speaker 10: nineteen eighty seven, he faced a trial on credit card
Speaker 10: fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice, which ended in a mistrial.
Speaker 10: Then a subsequent trial convicted him out in various charges,
Speaker 10: and he ended up in a federal penitentiary in nineteen
Speaker 10: eighty nine. And what do all great cult leaders, or
Speaker 10: what do many great cult leaders do on the in jail?
Speaker 10: Some of them write book books?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, all right, I'm back on now, Okay.
Speaker 10: So Laruci decides to write a book called In Defense
Speaker 10: of Common Sense. It's a mix of obscure geometric illustrations,
Speaker 10: a passionate defense of Platonism, attributes to the seventeenth century
Speaker 10: astronomer Johannes Kepler, and some heavy denunciations of philosophers like
Speaker 10: Kan't and most philosophers post Plato. In fact, as far
Speaker 10: as larus was concerned, every philosopher after Plato sucked.
Speaker 1: That's so funny, that's really funny.
Speaker 10: Incredibly, But at its core his book In Defense of
Speaker 10: Common Sense was Laruche restating his modernist, somehow marks inspired worldview.
Speaker 10: We argue that scientific and technological progress set humanity apart
Speaker 10: from all other creatures, and it naturally leads to increased
Speaker 10: population density. In Larucia's eyes, there's no room for any
Speaker 10: entropic view that suggests a limit to human technology and
Speaker 10: population growth. He even coined the term negantropic to advocate
Speaker 10: for ongoing industrial and population expansion no matter what. All right,
Speaker 10: But so then if you didn't, okay, maybe you listen
Speaker 10: to this and you're like, none of this is all
Speaker 10: dramatic and wild or whatever. Here's where it gets even wilder.
Speaker 10: This is where we get to the intersection of Lynn
Speaker 10: Laruche and Elon Musk that we colonize Mars.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, honestly the whole his other what was
Speaker 1: the term he just said, like neutra, Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is pretty similar to Musk's ideology as well, though pretty much.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And so LaRue says, let's go, let's colonize Mars,
Speaker 10: and what's that's done? In about forty years according to
Speaker 10: his estimation, then his philosophical standpoint will clearly rule all
Speaker 10: of humanity for all of time. But while the Rushes
Speaker 10: deep in thought behind bars his followers, they're not twiddling
Speaker 10: their thumbs. They joined forces with other anti war demonstrators
Speaker 10: to oppose the Gulf War in nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 10: And you know, it's interesting to note that the NCLC
Speaker 10: was not the only voice from the right among those
Speaker 10: left wing demonstrators. Pat Buchanan, the Populist Party, the Liberty Lobby,
Speaker 10: and other ultra right and other ultra right and new
Speaker 10: isolationist groups formed a sort of united front with elements
Speaker 10: of the left in terms of that opposition to the
Speaker 10: Gulf War and Laruche was eventually released on parole in
Speaker 10: nineteen ninety four. By nineteen ninety eight, during the economic crisis,
Speaker 10: the Rush was demanding that Bill Clinton appoint him immediately
Speaker 10: as an economic advisor.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a good idea. Yeah, no, he seems he
Speaker 1: seems well qualified.
Speaker 10: And I code it was now time to abandon crisis
Speaker 10: management and Chili shaian. In other words, democracy. Laruge believed
Speaker 10: in the inherent tendency of popular opinion toward mediocrity. The
Speaker 10: very tendency to rely upon collective decisions rather than decisions
Speaker 10: based upon voundation of principle is itself a wellspring of mediocrity,
Speaker 10: he fully explained to proposed as symbol of virtual ravel
Speaker 10: of decision makers, usually featuring those parties who are still
Speaker 10: advocates of the policies which have caused and advocated the crisis.
Speaker 10: Is scarcely a noble enterprise nor a fruitful one. Some
Speaker 10: relatively few in the position to influence directives must preempt
Speaker 10: the situation. Just in case there should be any question
Speaker 10: as to Larush's concept of governance, he declared China to
Speaker 10: be probably one of the best governments in the world
Speaker 10: today in terms of quality of leadership, the kind of
Speaker 10: leadership required to get through crisis. Laruche, like Mussolini and
Speaker 10: Hitler before him, borrowed from marx and unchanged his theories completely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Marxist internationalist outclook was abandoned in favor of the
Speaker 10: nation state. Marxist goal of abolish and capitalism was replaced
Speaker 10: by a model of a tutalitarian state that is still
Speaker 10: primarily in the hands of private corporations and their owners, who,
Speaker 10: by the way, would have to take orders from the rouge. Now.
Speaker 10: Hitler called his national so his schema national socialist socialism.
Speaker 1: Interesting, curious.
Speaker 10: Larusha was a fan, but he was like, you know,
Speaker 10: let's add a little spice, let's give it some American branded.
Speaker 10: So Larush called his system and ideology the American system.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit less catchy, I gotta say.
Speaker 10: I mean, that's that's the story of than the rush.
Speaker 1: He died, obviously, most people do. There's there's only a
Speaker 1: few that have not died. Enoch and I think I think,
Speaker 1: like one or two others, but most people, most people
Speaker 1: do do in fact die.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah, he was really quite the guy. He died
Speaker 10: into on the nineteen by.
Speaker 1: The way, Oh no, that that recent.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, he lived a really long time. He had
Speaker 10: lived for a hundred years for Crownald Load did.
Speaker 1: Not realize he was still kicking around so so recently.
Speaker 11: Yeah, gone too soon him a right, yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 11: at least at least now he's in heaven with Ruth
Speaker 11: Bader Ginsburg.
Speaker 1: That's that's yeah, that's why.
Speaker 10: Why do the good die young?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 1: Oh, he was just a kid.
Speaker 10: So as we conclude our journey and the enigmatic will
Speaker 10: live in the Rouge, I think we left with more
Speaker 10: questions and answers. How did a man on the fringe
Speaker 10: of radical politics end up in the White House?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That is that is That is one question I
Speaker 1: actually still have thinking about is what were the conditions
Speaker 1: to his White House visits and.
Speaker 10: What led to his transformation from a committed leftist to
Speaker 10: a fascist. I mean I think we could see the
Speaker 10: science of.
Speaker 1: That, right ear yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 10: In the sixties, the Rouge displayed egotism and hints of instability,
Speaker 10: but he was also an intelligent individual who attracted serious intellectuals.
Speaker 10: His ideas, well sometimes peculiar, were generally rational, but it
Speaker 10: was the adulation of students allowed him to gather a
Speaker 10: following around his ideas and personality. The collapse of student
Speaker 10: radicalism the seventies that the stage from his shift from
Speaker 10: left to right and the unwavering loyalty of his followers
Speaker 10: likely reinforced his increasingly psychotic worldview and perception of his
Speaker 10: role in it. The Rush was convinced that he deserved worship,
Speaker 10: he was an intellect. He was fueled by his ideology
Speaker 10: of catastrophism that he as the elite, would play a
Speaker 10: significant role as see if You Have Humanity. The practices
Speaker 10: of his organization resembled many of the extreme religious thought
Speaker 10: control groups.
Speaker 1: UH.
Speaker 10: The practice of ideological totalism is very clear, The authoritarian
Speaker 10: structure is very clear. The paranoia foster to create a
Speaker 10: clear boundaries in the group and the outside world don't
Speaker 10: be likely.
Speaker 12: L aruchease please and watch out for his wanna be
Speaker 12: is I feel like kle Morpins is the Laruche of
Speaker 12: this generation.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I hope I don't see
Speaker 1: Marpin getting invited to the White House anytime soon, nor
Speaker 1: other characters like Chairman Bob. Yeah, I don't know. We
Speaker 1: live a different time. I think because of how the
Speaker 1: Internet works, there's a lot there's there's much more cult
Speaker 1: leaders just dispersed everywhere all the time.
Speaker 10: But it's almost it's almost the democratization of cult leadership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also made them more or less isolated
Speaker 1: to the Internet with occasional flare ups in the real world,
Speaker 1: which kind of which kind of limits their engagement with
Speaker 1: you know, normal people, so to speak.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's kind of help cults, right, they can't even
Speaker 10: communicate with people outside of them anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think part of part of that is
Speaker 1: definitely happening here on on on on the Internet, where
Speaker 1: there's just so many of them that they they're all
Speaker 1: very small, they're all very isolated, and they don't ever
Speaker 1: really break out of their bubble, which which you know
Speaker 1: is common with with with a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of cults.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: The ones that we only really know about or hear
Speaker 1: about are the ones that you know, ended up doing
Speaker 1: some bigger, big, horrific think at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: in that that generated you know a lot of eyeballs
Speaker 1: on them. But for every for every Heaven's Gate, there's like,
Speaker 1: you know, a dozen new age cults that just fly
Speaker 1: right under the radar that are still like horribly horribly abusive.
Speaker 1: They just yeah, they just they just might not be
Speaker 1: tied to like a horrific act of like mass murder
Speaker 1: and mass suicide.
Speaker 10: That's a scary thoughts. You know how many cults have
Speaker 10: not yet broken containment as it were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's a fun time to to
Speaker 1: be alive, surely.
Speaker 10: Indeed, So yeah, I mean, I hope I hope that
Speaker 10: the bodiuns has enjoyed this cautionary tale, a reminder of
Speaker 10: the profound and sometimes dangerous paths the ideology can take
Speaker 10: individuals and groups. Done once again, and Andrew and Andres,
Speaker 10: this is Garrison of Garrison of myself.
Speaker 4: Yes, and this has been in happening peace, Welcome to Dick.
Speaker 4: It happened here a podcast being recorded in the like
Speaker 4: last hours of Halloween in in the the I guess
Speaker 4: the closing minutes of a teacher is in Portland not
Speaker 4: being on strike. So yeah, this is this is a
Speaker 4: podcast that is often about strikes and here to talk
Speaker 4: with me about this is Britney Doris, who's a fifth
Speaker 4: grade teacher in Portland public schools, who's the union captain
Speaker 4: for her school and the strike captain also for her school. Brittany,
Speaker 4: welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Hi, glad to be here.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad to talk to you. So all right,
Speaker 4: we are we are in we are in zero hour. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're in the zero the strike by the time this
Speaker 4: comes out, like, I guess you have been on strike
Speaker 4: for like two days, yeah, assuming it's comes off Friday. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So all right. I think the place we should start
Speaker 4: probably for people who are not in Portland, people who
Speaker 4: haven't been following this. I guess we should start with
Speaker 4: what are the sort of conditions that have led to this.
Speaker 4: I have heard some absolutely wild things about what's happening
Speaker 4: for the schools right now.
Speaker 5: So how did we give here? Yeah, we've been negotiating
Speaker 5: or bargaining this contract for over a year and pushing
Speaker 5: for circumstances that are just better suited for our students.
Speaker 5: Some of our classrooms that we're dealing with situations like
Speaker 5: rodents and mold, and still some buildings dealing with lead
Speaker 5: in their water. Extreme temperatures, like class sizes are huge,
Speaker 5: but different depending on where you're at in the city. Like,
Speaker 5: we've just been overcompensating with less since the pandemic times,
Speaker 5: and we're fed up, we're not able to do it anymore.
Speaker 5: And yeah, we're strike ready.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean this is something, this is, this
Speaker 4: is this is I think a pretty interesting set of
Speaker 4: circumstances because my understanding and okay, so don't quote me
Speaker 4: on this. I'm pretty sure that the last time that
Speaker 4: Portland teachers went on strike was in the like actually
Speaker 4: ended up striking and not just doing this strike authorization
Speaker 4: vote was the was was during the eighties, so it
Speaker 4: has been it has been a really long time.
Speaker 5: It's literal lifetime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like I was not I was like two
Speaker 4: of my lifetimes effectively, like I was on a line
Speaker 4: for this.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I think we're seeing that shift happen nationwide.
Speaker 5: That education has been continuously public education and has been
Speaker 5: continuously chipped away at and eroded over the last few decades,
Speaker 5: and more and more responsibility has put on the been
Speaker 5: put on the backs of teachers, and we are not
Speaker 5: able to function under this workload, under these conditions and
Speaker 5: without increased support for the educators as well. So I
Speaker 5: think this is the culmination of kind of years and
Speaker 5: years of disinvestment in public education nationwide, and so you're
Speaker 5: seeing a lot more strikes, educational strikes coming up throughout
Speaker 5: the country, and particularly for Portland's history. Like you said,
Speaker 5: it's if Portland public schools have striked in the past,
Speaker 5: it's been literal decades, not in my lifetime, not in
Speaker 5: your lifetime, and just the continued frustration of decades of struggle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean, as from what I've heard from
Speaker 4: from people in this so the line that I got
Speaker 4: was that janitors were being told that the standard they
Speaker 4: were supposed to clean schools too was quote moderately dingy.
Speaker 1: So things seemed not good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's rough. There's there's rodents everywhere. Our custodial workers
Speaker 5: are already worked to the limit and understaffed, and so
Speaker 5: our buildings show. I mean, the school that I work
Speaker 5: in is over one hundred and ten years old, and
Speaker 5: you can tell it's not being up kept and students
Speaker 5: are suffering. The conditions are, like you said, dingy, a
Speaker 5: moderate level of approved dinginess supposedly, and that's gross.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean so I've heard that complains a lot.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like, when I was in school, we
Speaker 4: only had one we had well, I mean there might
Speaker 4: have been more. There probably were more rats we didn't see.
Speaker 4: We had one drowned rat fall out of a ceiling,
Speaker 4: but that was it. It was. We were limited to
Speaker 4: one rat for four years. And I feel I feel
Speaker 4: like that's the maximum number of rats that you should
Speaker 4: encounter is maybe one. Because it's kind of funny, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And these are class pets, like these aren't no the
Speaker 5: mice and rats that you're using in a science class
Speaker 5: or keeping as the class pet in the corner like.
Speaker 4: Ooh yeah, and the other I guess. I guess The
Speaker 4: next thing that I wanted to talk about is class sizes,
Speaker 4: because I know, I mean, this is a very people
Speaker 4: have been like talking about this for ages, and it's
Speaker 4: it's something that's really I feel like it's weird negotiating wise,
Speaker 4: because and this is something I see all the time.
Speaker 4: The school dishesh will be like, well, like the admin
Speaker 4: will be oh, well, yeah, of course you want like
Speaker 4: smaller class sizes, and then they just won't do it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, can you talk about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, here's something that's really burning my biscuit. Our district
Speaker 5: management continues to tell our community and the press that
Speaker 5: our average class size is twenty three students at the
Speaker 5: elementary level, and the problem with that stick is that
Speaker 5: they are doing a ratio based on the adults in
Speaker 5: the building. So, for example, we have a learning coach.
Speaker 5: Uh huh. We have a learning coach who works with
Speaker 5: children in small groups throughout the building, but she herself
Speaker 5: is not a rostered classroom teacher, but she is put
Speaker 5: into that equation so that it looks like our classes
Speaker 5: on average are twenty three when the reality is very different.
Speaker 5: The music teacher doesn't count, the learning coach doesn't count.
Speaker 5: But in the math that the district is like that
Speaker 5: math ain't math in my class is thirty four kids.
Speaker 5: You're telling the public that the average is twenty three,
Speaker 5: and it's just not true because you're including adults in
Speaker 5: the building who aren't the host classroom teacher.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is that's just that's just absurd, Like, I mean,
Speaker 4: you have to know that you're lying in order to
Speaker 4: create that statistic, Like that's a uh.
Speaker 5: And you know it is true that there are some
Speaker 5: classes around the district that are small I had a
Speaker 5: miracle of a class last year that was two kids.
Speaker 5: That coport was just small that you know, they weren't
Speaker 5: having as many babies eleven years ago. I don't know. Yah,
Speaker 5: But this year, this year, I have thirty four and
Speaker 5: the year prior so not last year, but the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two year I had thirty two and thirty four
Speaker 5: kids is unsustainable, especially because I have the twenty two
Speaker 5: to compare it to. I am very aware of how
Speaker 5: little capacity I have for meeting their needs, for teaching,
Speaker 5: the wide range of levels that are in the class,
Speaker 5: even for checking in with kids. I can look out
Speaker 5: at my room at midday and think looking at a
Speaker 5: kid I don't know if I've talked to you, like,
Speaker 5: it's possible to go so under the radar when there
Speaker 5: are that many children to care for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean that's the difference. Is like it's
Speaker 4: like a forty percent class size increase right, Yeah, the year,
Speaker 4: which is nuts.
Speaker 5: And I can feel and it's having a significant impact
Speaker 5: on just my own well being and mental health this
Speaker 5: year because I know what it looks like to teach
Speaker 5: well and I know that I cannot currently do it
Speaker 5: with this many and it's hard. I last year, I
Speaker 5: wasn't feeling any symptoms of burnout at all. It's feeling
Speaker 5: really good, loving my job still. And this year, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, I cannot keep up with this many kids,
Speaker 5: especially with you know, we've gotten even so as class
Speaker 5: sizes have increased, so have the needs of our students. Right,
Speaker 5: We're dealing with a lot more mental health issues. We're
Speaker 5: dealing with a wide range of neurodiversity that comes with
Speaker 5: different needs. And so it's that's the thirty four now
Speaker 5: is exponentially different than thirty four when we were young.
Speaker 5: It's it's intense, and it's unsustainable, and I'm living it
Speaker 5: every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like you know, I think on an abstract level,
Speaker 4: like the district knows like that this sucks, right, but
Speaker 4: they just they don't fucking do anything about it.
Speaker 5: It's just right real, Yeah, And even to the level
Speaker 5: that we're able to bargain it, there are such as
Speaker 5: like permissive topics that we can or cannot bargain and
Speaker 5: things that we can bargain. And even in the strike
Speaker 5: that we are about to have, they continue to push
Speaker 5: back on the class cap request, saying that it is
Speaker 5: a permissive topic, and that it's class caps may only
Speaker 5: be applicable to what are called Title I schools, So
Speaker 5: schools where the population is more impacted by poverty, and
Speaker 5: so they're trying, like even trying to get small class
Speaker 5: sizes or smaller class sizes, knowing that it's a district
Speaker 5: wide issue may still only be successful for some parts
Speaker 5: of our district.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's that, ain't right, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that's absurd.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, my classroom is incredibly diverse. We are not
Speaker 5: a Title one school. We are known for supposedly being
Speaker 5: in one of the more affluent areas, but even our
Speaker 5: neighborhood school that those demographics have continued to change, and
Speaker 5: we have many students that are experiencing poverty and experiencing
Speaker 5: some of the cultural pieces that go with that, the
Speaker 5: systemic impacts of that. Our students are living through trauma.
Speaker 5: Our students are experiencing adversity. Our students are experiencing racism
Speaker 5: and sexism and homophobia, and they are jam packed sardines
Speaker 5: in a overheated room with no supports. I'm the only
Speaker 5: adult in the room to support them. I have students
Speaker 5: with disabilities who aren't getting support from our SPED team.
Speaker 5: Because our SPED team is SPED stance for special education,
Speaker 5: our special educators are working with some younger grade students
Speaker 5: with even bigger needs. So my fifth graders with disabilities
Speaker 5: are getting completely left in the lurch. And it is
Speaker 5: my single body with all thirty four and we're floundering.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean that's another of aspect of this
Speaker 4: that I think is really is really grim that all
Speaker 4: of these issues. It's like the kids you need the
Speaker 4: most help from the beginning are the people who are
Speaker 4: getting the most hurt by it, and right, you know,
Speaker 4: and those are the people who the education system is
Speaker 4: supposed to be taken care of and just cannot because
Speaker 4: you know, chronic understaffing, class sizes that are too large.
Speaker 5: Right, and it's especially painful. I've been teaching now for
Speaker 5: ten years and I am looking at this class right now.
Speaker 5: I have a student in my class who is a
Speaker 5: little black boy with a disability, and I'm looking at
Speaker 5: him knowing that I am not able to give him
Speaker 5: what he needs. And he is like the statistic that
Speaker 5: school districts want to put on their website, Like we got,
Speaker 5: you know, our marginalized populations. We've helped them, we've fit
Speaker 5: and like, here is a student that is the statistic
Speaker 5: that you supposedly are fighting for, and he is absolutely
Speaker 5: left out to dry and I am trying to do
Speaker 5: what I can for him, and he comes to mind,
Speaker 5: I picture him as I'll be out there on that
Speaker 5: picket line, like I am out there for that kid
Speaker 5: as well as his thirty three other classmates. But just
Speaker 5: like quint essential picture of who I'm fighting for and
Speaker 5: who is getting left behind?
Speaker 4: Yeah, which which? Which? I don't know? Like there there's
Speaker 4: there's I think there's something really grim in the way.
Speaker 4: And this is this is a you know, this this
Speaker 4: goes back to what you were talking about with the
Speaker 4: way that they're just straight up lying about the average
Speaker 4: the average class size. Where it's it really seems like
Speaker 4: these things have you know, the the actual process of
Speaker 4: education is being degraded into just this this sort of
Speaker 4: metric chasing game. And you know, as long as you
Speaker 4: have metrics that look good, you know, like the district
Speaker 4: is like, wow, okay, it's fine that like our students
Speaker 4: aren't equality of education they need. It's fine that they're
Speaker 4: in these buildings that are literally falling apart. It's fine
Speaker 4: that you know kids aren't getting what they need, like
Speaker 4: as long as the metrics look good and right.
Speaker 5: That's something something that gets me when we talk about
Speaker 5: those metrics. Knowing our superintendent gets a bonus if academically
Speaker 5: marginalized populations like our black and brown students, if they
Speaker 5: increase their performance on standardized tests, he gets a bonus. Now,
Speaker 5: what I have a problem with is that those standardized
Speaker 5: tests that we take every spring, there are some students
Speaker 5: that are so impacted by the school system that they
Speaker 5: may have attendance issues, they may not be there consistently
Speaker 5: in the spring to take those tests. So something I'm
Speaker 5: picturing a couple of my students who were impacted by poverty,
Speaker 5: were kids of color and were significantly absent due to
Speaker 5: what the circumstances of their life. Those students were not
Speaker 5: able to take that test in the spring. That means
Speaker 5: those students, those black and brown students, that data wasn't
Speaker 5: in those metrics. So even the metrics that are being
Speaker 5: used to measure whether or not we are successfully supporting
Speaker 5: our students of color are inaccurate because our most impacted
Speaker 5: students aren't able to take that assessment. Like his data,
Speaker 5: our superintendent's data is going to look better When some
Speaker 5: of the students who might tank that data because they
Speaker 5: are unsupported by the school system aren't there to be
Speaker 5: in the data because they're unsupported by the school system.
Speaker 5: It falls apart.
Speaker 4: And this is one of these things where it's like,
Speaker 4: the only way to change this is do is do
Speaker 4: union actions because like the school district's not going to
Speaker 4: do it, like their metrics look fine, right and right,
Speaker 4: you know, the government is not going to do it
Speaker 4: because they're not going to they don't want to spend
Speaker 4: more money. So this is this is the only way
Speaker 4: to actually Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I think we finally, I think have made a point.
Speaker 5: We are I mean, our union actions already have been
Speaker 5: building up a visible presence. We have massive community support
Speaker 5: from our not only our parent communities, but the greater
Speaker 5: Portland area. Business is coming out and support people joining
Speaker 5: us at like we had a massive march this Saturday
Speaker 5: where we took over the Burnside Bridge. And as our
Speaker 5: union actions build, we know that we are out there,
Speaker 5: we are not alone, and that we are feeling the
Speaker 5: support from the community and we are becoming a more
Speaker 5: visible presence, and especially in Portland, we are a massive union.
Speaker 5: Other unions around the state are looking at us and
Speaker 5: watching how this goes. And we can tell that the
Speaker 5: district management is scared. They are starting to send out
Speaker 5: emails to families that are meant to intimidate and panic
Speaker 5: and cause chaos. And we're seeing these defensive moves that
Speaker 5: are a reaction.
Speaker 4: Do you know who else is a hack and a
Speaker 4: fraud who didn't figure out a way to do an
Speaker 4: ad pivot here? It's the products and services that support
Speaker 4: this podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, speaking of businesses that support us.
Speaker 4: And we're back. Yeah, so you know, okay, So that
Speaker 4: those are those are two other dynamics that I sort
Speaker 4: of I wanted to get into. I guess first I
Speaker 4: want to talk about what the what the community support
Speaker 4: has looked like, what forthmore the unionses look like. And
Speaker 4: you know, how you've been engaging with parents, because I mean,
Speaker 4: that's been a big thing. So I'm from Chicago and
Speaker 4: so we have like a I mean not that long,
Speaker 4: like for the last about decade, the Chicago Teachers Union's
Speaker 4: been on strike a bunch of times, and it's yeah,
Speaker 4: like it really and the support of that and the
Speaker 4: engagement of that really is one of the few things
Speaker 4: us in making Chicago a better place. So I wanted
Speaker 4: to ask what that's looked like in Portland, because this
Speaker 4: is basically the first time for y'all.
Speaker 5: Right, and I know historically in Oregon we felt the
Speaker 5: support from our community, such as the Red for Ed
Speaker 5: movement a few years ago when we were really pushing
Speaker 5: for statewide reform and change in education policy. And here
Speaker 5: in Portland ever since, the seeds of our uprising were
Speaker 5: being planted knowing that we are on a collision course
Speaker 5: towards a strike based on how poorly the district management
Speaker 5: is bargaining with us, and so we started to build
Speaker 5: in that communication and enlist this part of our parent
Speaker 5: communities pretty early on by having info sessions, by talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, the community's wants and desires for their students,
Speaker 5: connecting with our schools, ptas, connecting with local businesses, especially
Speaker 5: as in the last month or so that we felt, okay,
Speaker 5: this is happening, we are about to strike. We need
Speaker 5: to connect with our communities in our school areas and
Speaker 5: see who's out there and if they have our back.
Speaker 5: And it's been really profound in grassroots organizing between the
Speaker 5: parents and the ptas, in tandem with our unions and
Speaker 5: from businesses around our school areas. We attended an event
Speaker 5: called Strike School to prepare and one of our missions
Speaker 5: was to check in with businesses and neighbors in the
Speaker 5: areas of our schools where we plan to be picketing
Speaker 5: and seeing, you know, where can we go to use
Speaker 5: a bathroom, where can we go to use a parking lot,
Speaker 5: and just making those connections, some of which already existed.
Speaker 5: Even though Portland hasn't had to strike, We've been very
Speaker 5: connected to our communities because the educators live in these communities.
Speaker 5: This is my community. Unlike some of the big wigs
Speaker 5: in the big pink building of management, like they are
Speaker 5: coming in and out in a few years. We're from here,
Speaker 5: we are here to stay, we are here to make
Speaker 5: those connections. So it was very easy to call upon
Speaker 5: those connections because we are the community. You know, we
Speaker 5: have a lot of union members that are parents. We
Speaker 5: have a lot of union members that are married to
Speaker 5: business owners in the area. We've Yeah, it's been it's
Speaker 5: been obvious who lives here, who's fighting for these kids
Speaker 5: because this is our community.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I mean, Portland's been a place
Speaker 4: where I think kind of beneath the notice of a
Speaker 4: lot of the national press. It's been one of the
Speaker 4: places where the most union organizing is happening and where
Speaker 4: the most strikes have been happening. And yeah, I was wondering,
Speaker 4: I mean, to what extent have y' all been influenced by?
Speaker 4: I mean both the sort of the just profusion of
Speaker 4: like local strikes and then also the kind of the
Speaker 4: bigger national strikes.
Speaker 5: Something really beautiful about living in Portland is that there
Speaker 5: is quite a bit of cross union solidarity, and like
Speaker 5: in the educational realm, we have a coalition of all
Speaker 5: of our unions that come together the certified teachers like
Speaker 5: my union pat as well as SCIU, the union that
Speaker 5: represents our custodial staff, as well as pfsp our Para educators,
Speaker 5: our nutritional staff, the bus drivers union, like, all of
Speaker 5: those unions come together and support each other. And in fact,
Speaker 5: in the educational realm of Portland, multiple unions are on
Speaker 5: the verge of striking in that they are having unsuccessful
Speaker 5: bargaining attempts. But then also with like the ups workers,
Speaker 5: with Kaiser pharmacies and the medical field, like, there is
Speaker 5: labor action all around Portland, and there's definitely a built
Speaker 5: in solidarity network from you unionity to union. Our union
Speaker 5: siblings are with us. We have been with them throughout
Speaker 5: the years. I think we do a really good job
Speaker 5: as a major city of wrapping around each other's unions
Speaker 5: and supporting big actions. And you know, Portland, when we
Speaker 5: do get national press, it is for how rambunctious our
Speaker 5: little city can be. And this is some of that
Speaker 5: good trouble that that John Lewis would want us.
Speaker 8: To get in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean this is something that you can
Speaker 4: I mean, so I was in Portland for like three
Speaker 4: weeks pretty like recently, and I mean you would just
Speaker 4: run like I was. I was at a hospital for long,
Speaker 4: long story about that, but I was at a hospital
Speaker 4: and like the first person we talked to is like
Speaker 4: as a receptionist, was like the union rep from the
Speaker 4: receptionist union. And then like we're talking to the nurses,
Speaker 4: and the nurses are like, oh, yeah, we just won
Speaker 4: our we just won our thingout having to go on
Speaker 4: strike because management cave. It's it's a really sort of
Speaker 4: incredible place to be in terms of like just just
Speaker 4: the energy and just like the amount of stuff that's
Speaker 4: happening there. It's really it's really sort of incredible.
Speaker 5: Very active.
Speaker 4: I guess the other side of this is that this
Speaker 4: we've also seen a lot of sort of management retaliation
Speaker 4: and crackdown attempts. And yeah, I was wondering if you
Speaker 4: talk about what management's been doing, because.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's really ramped up in the last week
Speaker 5: or so as it is clear that this we are
Speaker 5: on our way to strike, especially when we ninety nine
Speaker 5: percent of the membership voted yes to a strike authorization.
Speaker 5: That sent a pretty clear message and I think it
Speaker 5: made district management panic a little. And we've received numerous
Speaker 5: emails to the parent community. They have for example, they
Speaker 5: are training tomorrow Thursday, the day of our strike beginning,
Speaker 5: or when on Wednesday, the day that the strike begins,
Speaker 5: they are training our parent professionals and eas in how
Speaker 5: to deliver vert ual phonics instruction. One of their moves
Speaker 5: was to cause panic in the families by sending emails
Speaker 5: home that say, your student, based on their test scores,
Speaker 5: is a struggling reader. Here's the plan should there be
Speaker 5: a school closure, that we're going to provide virtual learning opportunities.
Speaker 5: So immediately you've got parents in a panic emailing their
Speaker 5: teacher like my students struggling. Why didn't I know? And
Speaker 5: in many cases that was inaccurate. A second grade teacher
Speaker 5: at my school, every parent in her class got that email,
Speaker 5: and sure she has some struggling readers, but it is
Speaker 5: not every student. Why did every student's family get that
Speaker 5: email to cause panic, to cause fear, to cause intimidation,
Speaker 5: And so they also send out a big email trying
Speaker 5: that the technology team was coming into the buildings to
Speaker 5: collect all the chromebooks. Our students are one to one
Speaker 5: with chromebooks. They're pretty integral to our curriculum delivery and
Speaker 5: our instruction. And they started pulling them out in the
Speaker 5: middle of the workday, in the middle of the teaching day,
Speaker 5: from some of our youngestdu students, which was a visible
Speaker 5: thing in front of students. They're coming to collect them.
Speaker 5: It was unplanned. We had no warning. That again seemed
Speaker 5: to be kind of a panic move. We are trying
Speaker 5: to sew fear and intimidation, and we're taking your chromebooks
Speaker 5: and we're putting kids back in COVID times.
Speaker 4: That's just a terrible also, just like a terrible thing
Speaker 4: to do to a bunch.
Speaker 1: Of kids r like what Yeah, they're just coming to.
Speaker 4: Their room, just taking their stuff in front of everyone,
Speaker 4: Like what right.
Speaker 5: Especially in those younger grades, with no warning and like, well,
Speaker 5: we were supposed to have our tech time on Friday,
Speaker 5: like we had our routine and oh this this guy's
Speaker 5: coming in and taking all the chromebooks. Sorry kids, Yeah,
Speaker 5: not really having a ready answer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it's one of those things where it's
Speaker 4: like you can you can really tell, like who actually
Speaker 4: cares about the kids here, because it's just like yeah.
Speaker 5: And you know, management is trying to put out the
Speaker 5: message that teachers don't care about your kids. That's why
Speaker 5: they're willing to stop school and put your kids back
Speaker 5: at home again. It's bad, like the pandemic time, those
Speaker 5: those nasty teachers want your kids out of school. And
Speaker 5: you know, our point being that our students haven't been
Speaker 5: getting the learning that they deserve because of the current conditions. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that we've been under serving them already. We are walking
Speaker 5: out not because we don't care, but because we care
Speaker 5: so passionately that we aren't willing to stand for these
Speaker 5: subpar conditions any longer.
Speaker 4: And this is the thing I don't like I've seen
Speaker 4: a lot of teacher strikes in my city. I've seen
Speaker 4: a lot of teacher strikes. Naturally, I don't think I've
Speaker 4: ever seen and you know, and this isn't to say
Speaker 4: that I like, I don't think it would be justified
Speaker 4: for teachers to go on strike, like just because they're underpaid.
Speaker 4: Like everyone like has the right and possibly the obligation
Speaker 4: to go on strike for better conditions, but like that's
Speaker 4: not ever ever, I have never, at any point ever
Speaker 4: seen a teachers you to go on strike for reasons
Speaker 4: that words mostly about like mostly about improving things for
Speaker 4: their kids. And it's it's it's wold because you see
Speaker 4: this every like they do this in Chicago too. It's
Speaker 4: like every single time there's a strike, it's like, ah,
Speaker 4: the teachers like they hate they hate your kids. Is
Speaker 4: that they're like these like privilege overpaid people really like
Speaker 4: and it's like you guys, like you should you should
Speaker 4: like look at the admin salary sometime, like yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, It's it's clear that there's a disconnect and
Speaker 5: as soon as there's a change in the weather, teachers
Speaker 5: go from being the hero to being the villain. And
Speaker 5: the fact that we are willing to go out on
Speaker 5: the streets and fight for our kids in the rain
Speaker 5: and the cold of Oregon winter. No, we're the villains.
Speaker 5: We are putting them all back in their COVID boxes like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that ain't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah that really sucks, Like I know, it's it's.
Speaker 5: Just, thankfully the negative kind of vitriol that we see
Speaker 5: mostly online where where the trolls live. It does seem
Speaker 5: to be like a loud minority. As with any form
Speaker 5: of trolling or counter you know, we do hear from
Speaker 5: community members that have more legitimate concerns, but they are
Speaker 5: I'm really supportive. I'm a little worried about this one aspect,
Speaker 5: but I'm with you guys, you know, and that's valid.
Speaker 5: I told my students as we were getting ready to
Speaker 5: go home for the long weekend quote unquote, you know
Speaker 5: that it is okay to feel a variety of emotions
Speaker 5: like I'm sad, I'm gonna miss you guys. I don't
Speaker 5: know when I'll get to see you again, and that
Speaker 5: makes me anxious and I'm excited to go fight for
Speaker 5: you guys to get us what we deserve. Like so
Speaker 5: even letting the children know this is totally normal and
Speaker 5: that's my same message to the adults, like it's totally
Speaker 5: okay if you've got some mixed emotions. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 5: going to be out there fighting for the kids. I
Speaker 5: hope you're not mad at me for very long, but
Speaker 5: I'm gonna do it anyway.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that's another thing that's kind of like weird about
Speaker 4: this is like the way the negotiations have gone. It's
Speaker 4: like this has happened, like because a lot of strikes
Speaker 4: happen at the beginning of the school year, right, and
Speaker 4: so it pushes back the but this is but this
Speaker 4: is like okay, so like you've gotten in, you've met
Speaker 4: the kids, you're like teaching them to developing your relationship,
Speaker 4: and then management is just like, no, this is the
Speaker 4: moment we're going to force everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That just sucks.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, and I don't think there's ever a great
Speaker 5: time to strike, but we definitely hope to be the
Speaker 5: least impactful. You know. We want to make sure that
Speaker 5: our families have what they need. We want to make
Speaker 5: sure that our staff have what they need. We didn't
Speaker 5: want to go too long. We don't want to be
Speaker 5: striking in the middle of winter or during a break
Speaker 5: when students are already out. Yeah, it's there's never a
Speaker 5: great time. And I feel I feel really confident that
Speaker 5: our bargaining unit has really worked to make this the
Speaker 5: least detrimental to our students as possible, Yeah, while still
Speaker 5: maintaining the validity of a strike, of a big collective action.
Speaker 4: And I mean, I think this is this is something
Speaker 4: that care workers struggle with a lot, right. It's like
Speaker 4: one of one of the reasons that it's it's hard
Speaker 4: for teachers to strike, that it's hard for healthcare workers
Speaker 4: to strike is because like, yeah, like you don't do
Speaker 4: this job unless you care about the people that you're
Speaker 4: like it's your job to care for, Like you don't
Speaker 4: you wouldn't know, Like no one will put up with
Speaker 4: these conditions if they didn't care, right, And you know,
Speaker 4: And that's I think there's this really grim way in
Speaker 4: which just becomes this sort of trap of like this
Speaker 4: is it becomes this and you see this like this
Speaker 4: is the thing I've been I've been talking to like
Speaker 4: people who like abortion workers and they talk about this too,
Speaker 4: where it's like there's this this kind of trap you
Speaker 4: get in because it's like you know that you are
Speaker 4: the only person providing the service that these people really need,
Speaker 4: and your bosses use that to underpay, you use it
Speaker 4: to you know, have just unacceptable conditions. And it sucks
Speaker 4: that it's like, you know, the the foundational elements of
Speaker 4: an actual, any kind of society that's actually good, that
Speaker 4: the fact that people care each and love like love
Speaker 4: each other and care for each other is being used
Speaker 4: as a weapon into really shitty conditions.
Speaker 5: It's weaponizing our passion and our care for our kids.
Speaker 5: And that's also something that tells you that it's serious.
Speaker 5: If if teachers who know that our students rely on us,
Speaker 5: we love our students so deeply, if we are at
Speaker 5: the point where we're finally striking it's been bad for
Speaker 5: a while. Yeah, yeah, and you were kind of mentioning
Speaker 5: this earlier. But teachers are so many things to our students,
Speaker 5: Like I am their teacher in some cases, am a
Speaker 5: care provider in some cases, I'm a therapist, in some cases,
Speaker 5: I'm their nutrition expert. Like they are coming to us
Speaker 5: for everything in some cases. And so to be willing
Speaker 5: to say I have to leave now to get us
Speaker 5: what we deserve, I'm going to make sure you're okay.
Speaker 5: It's so hard. It's so hard to say goodbye to
Speaker 5: these kids, and it's so necessary. Yeah, and that's that
Speaker 5: tells you that we that it is also that important
Speaker 5: that we have gotten to this point where we need to.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the students do seem pretty and I mean I
Speaker 5: have the benefit of being at fifth grade, but the
Speaker 5: students do seem to understand pretty well. Some of them
Speaker 5: are incredibly activated little unionists, little union fighters as well.
Speaker 5: We had some of the fifth graders sent letters to
Speaker 5: the Oregonian and to the to the school board and
Speaker 5: to the superintendent. And they're very eloquent. They I mean,
Speaker 5: they've been living the conditions. They are the voice and
Speaker 5: it is they are trying to shout loudly, and you know,
Speaker 5: we're trying to amplify that. Like I am striking for them.
Speaker 5: I will benefit, but this is for them to have
Speaker 5: a better outcome.
Speaker 4: You know what, other services are provided by a bunch
Speaker 4: of workers who are not getting paid enough and are
Speaker 4: probably understaffed legally. I don't know if I'm allowed to
Speaker 4: say that, but they haven't done the crackdown on us. Yes,
Speaker 4: so I can say whatever I want.
Speaker 1: Damn it.
Speaker 4: It's the products and services that support this podcast and
Speaker 4: we're back. So there was ant. There's a thing I've
Speaker 4: been noticing. So I've been interviewing a lot of been
Speaker 4: infering a lot of service workers in the last god,
Speaker 4: like I guess like two years now, jeez, I've been
Speaker 4: doing this for a long time now. But one of
Speaker 4: the things that I've been noticing is a lot of
Speaker 4: people And this comes back to something that you were
Speaker 4: talking about, which is that a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of service workers, I mean people who are just beached
Speaker 4: as people who are you know, people who are just
Speaker 4: doing effectively random service jobs are being pushed more and
Speaker 4: more into having to care for people because the rest
Speaker 4: of the sort of whatever social safety nets the US
Speaker 4: used to have have just completely imploded. And I think
Speaker 4: I want to get your opinion in this, but it
Speaker 4: looks to me like ground zero for this was the
Speaker 4: education system of all of the responsibility of you know
Speaker 4: this these massive in and poverty and it's extagnating wages
Speaker 4: and police violence and like our completely dysfunctional mental health
Speaker 4: care system that all of this. The first people this
Speaker 4: was pushed on was y'all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now we're that first line of defense for the
Speaker 5: public good. And when you are gutting education, You are
Speaker 5: gutting the first safety net of the public good. And
Speaker 5: you know, the students will tell you that they are
Speaker 5: our future and we are the net that's supposed to
Speaker 5: catch them. And we've been underfunded and undersupported and under
Speaker 5: resourced and in many ways like privatized, where some of
Speaker 5: what will be the future populace are getting what they
Speaker 5: need and everyone else is left behind. And you can
Speaker 5: see it in retrospect. You can see how public education
Speaker 5: has been deteriorating or forcibly deteriorated by some of those
Speaker 5: interests that are trying to privatize or have privatization yep
Speaker 5: in their mission. And the ultimate outcome of that is
Speaker 5: a deteriorated United States. Like the populace is suffering because
Speaker 5: of it, Like I wonder why democracy is starting to
Speaker 5: fall apart when yeah, follow the dominoes backwards. Public education
Speaker 5: has been underfunded and undersourced for decades now. So our
Speaker 5: generation of workers are trying to repair the damage we
Speaker 5: witnessed and experienced and stop it from getting worse as
Speaker 5: it gets worse around us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is one of those things where this
Speaker 4: is kind of like there's been this kind of unholy
Speaker 4: alliance between like that, I guess I call it like
Speaker 4: the sort of the charter school private school alliance between
Speaker 4: the sort of like Obama, Arnie Duncan, oh my god,
Speaker 4: Paul Vallas, like technically liberal like neoliberal reformers, who are
Speaker 4: you know, trying to destroy teachers' unions, trying to like
Speaker 4: trying to force everyone in the charter schools, trying to
Speaker 4: sort of like and just just just blasting holes in
Speaker 4: the education system of every single city they end up in.
Speaker 4: But it's just it's just interesting thing too, where like
Speaker 4: you have these people on the one hand, and they're
Speaker 4: the sort of like vaguely liberal wing of it, and
Speaker 4: then simultaneously you have this sort of like absolutely ferocious,
Speaker 4: like frothing right wing like evangelical shape. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: someone I saw a well I get they were going
Speaker 4: through their direction, but I saw I saw a funny
Speaker 4: defiction of that. They called it like fish hook theory,
Speaker 4: where like you have this stuff in the middle and
Speaker 4: then that the far right people sort of bend back
Speaker 4: around into the middle because they found this one thing
Speaker 4: they agree on, which is that they hate teachers, right, and.
Speaker 5: You know, the public enemy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and I think it's it's interesting too that
Speaker 4: like schools are specifically the place that when when the
Speaker 4: right tried wanted to do their pushback against racial justice,
Speaker 4: it was like they went to schools. They've been doing
Speaker 4: this with like LGBTQ stuff too, is you know, this
Speaker 4: is like the rights whole game. I mean, since like
Speaker 4: desegregation has been trying to push people into private schools
Speaker 4: and privatizing the education system, and I don't know, it
Speaker 4: strikes me it's interesting that, you know, there's been for
Speaker 4: a really long time, and I think y'all, like y'all
Speaker 4: the like Chicago Teachers Unions has this has really been
Speaker 4: sort of the forefront of the fight against that of
Speaker 4: like items. It seems like we're finally in a period
Speaker 4: with these people who have run this country into the
Speaker 4: ground for the past like fifty years are finally starting
Speaker 4: to sort of like face the consequences and like have
Speaker 4: to deal with the people that they've been just destroying
Speaker 4: for so long.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we are seeing it from the inside as it happens,
Speaker 5: like I am experiencing as an elder millennial growing up
Speaker 5: in the nine in the public education system, knowing now
Speaker 5: as an adult what I was not being taught or
Speaker 5: what was being left out or censored just due to
Speaker 5: systemic patterns that now we teach in a different way
Speaker 5: to make sure that that doesn't continue. And then we're
Speaker 5: seeing legislation in places like Florida and Tennessee. They're like,
Speaker 5: stop doing that, stop fixing the problem.
Speaker 13: And you can't put it back in the box, like
Speaker 13: we see from the inside as things are are falling
Speaker 13: apart and people are being left out, and so we're
Speaker 13: inside public education screaming, knock it off.
Speaker 5: You did bad by us. We won't let you do
Speaker 5: bad by the next generation and the next generation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think like the other aspect of that,
Speaker 4: like is is the way that like school boards are
Speaker 4: being used to sort of like to take control of
Speaker 4: districts and like push all of this sort of just
Speaker 4: horrific like anti queer politics stuff. And I don't know,
Speaker 4: like that that's a personal one for me because like
Speaker 4: my school, like I mean, I guess we technically had stuff,
Speaker 4: but like I don't know, like the resources available to
Speaker 4: all the queer kids that like that was like me
Speaker 4: and like everyone I grew up with were like just terrible,
Speaker 4: And you know, I got to see the consequences of that.
Speaker 5: Right bare minimum if any.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like you know, like in a in a
Speaker 4: really really like frothing right wing like really justconservative environment,
Speaker 4: and like, I don't know, it's it really seems like
Speaker 4: it's for a lot of people, it's gotten way better
Speaker 4: and all of these you know, like one of the
Speaker 4: assaults that we're seeing is like, who just want to
Speaker 4: bring this stuff back.
Speaker 5: Right to the quote unquote good old days before all
Speaker 5: of us queer folks were coming out, And yeah, like
Speaker 5: put everybody back in the closet, hide all of the
Speaker 5: racism that you've unraveled and exposed, put it all back
Speaker 5: in the box, put a bow back on the box.
Speaker 5: We want America to look the way it used to. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And that's that's a lie, and that benefited very specific populations.
Speaker 5: And we won't continue to play that game. And I
Speaker 5: think that's another reason, like you said, that you're seeing
Speaker 5: the gutting of public education, is that it's scary. Public
Speaker 5: education is about truth and teaching critical thinking, and that
Speaker 5: is not good for people in power when their power
Speaker 5: has been achieved on the backs of marginalized groups and
Speaker 5: by historically underserving people and pushing people into the dirt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it turns out that when your entire
Speaker 4: state is based on doing a rolling genocide across the
Speaker 4: entire continent, you probably don't want to tell people that.
Speaker 4: That's like it's a bad idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, cats out of the bag America.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to ask you sort of what
Speaker 4: role has I guess, just twenty twenty in general, and
Speaker 4: I mean the pandemic too, but like I don't know,
Speaker 4: like I want to, I guess, like get a sense
Speaker 4: of what impact, like the uprising has had on all
Speaker 4: of this, because it is, like I do think it
Speaker 4: is notable that you know, it's like three years after
Speaker 4: the uprising, it's we have the first strike in right,
Speaker 4: so long.
Speaker 5: I think as a result of living through pandemic times,
Speaker 5: people really had an opportunity to reflect on what their
Speaker 5: lives were like, what they were living through that was unjust.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of inequities were revealed through having
Speaker 5: to shift our entire worlds, and things that had previously
Speaker 5: gone hidden or unnoticed or unexposed came to light and
Speaker 5: people said, no more, we have learned to do things
Speaker 5: a different way. We will not go back to the
Speaker 5: broken ways, and so it makes sense to me that
Speaker 5: we are at this boiling point in repairing and trying
Speaker 5: to rebuild and reform after a global change. And you
Speaker 5: see it in the kids too. I mean they say
Speaker 5: about my generation as a millennial, that we've lived through
Speaker 5: numerous large scale traumas, and the kids of today have
Speaker 5: now as well. Like the students I'm currently teaching were
Speaker 5: second graders when the pandemic hit, and they are forever changed.
Speaker 5: They were seeing, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement
Speaker 5: come alive on their television screens and in their cities.
Speaker 5: They grew up in civic action and global turmoil, and
Speaker 5: they are active. Even if I wasn't teaching current events
Speaker 5: in the way that I do, the students are bringing
Speaker 5: it to the room, like the conversations are happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is it's such an interesting Like that generation
Speaker 4: I think is gonna be really interesting because I don't
Speaker 4: know I'm from this. I'm on exact exactly the borderline
Speaker 4: with everyone trying to figure out whether I'm a millennial
Speaker 4: or a zumer. But like my like my first memory
Speaker 4: is nine to eleven. Yeah, so like you know, it's
Speaker 4: I feel like I got a kind of millennial experience,
Speaker 4: which is I got nine to eleven, two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: twenty six well two thousand and eight, then like the
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen uprisings I guess was a bit off, but
Speaker 4: I got like the two eleven thirteen up risings, and
Speaker 4: then like I get out of college or I get
Speaker 4: into college, and it's twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: It's just like a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hot mess.
Speaker 4: It's this real Like I I I like I became
Speaker 4: conscious the moments that history returned to the world. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I don't know, like I think it's an interesting
Speaker 4: thing with like with these kids who've grown up, who
Speaker 4: are you know, like yeah, like their first memories are
Speaker 4: going to be like the pandemic and like twenty twenty
Speaker 4: that I don't know, Like I I, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm interested in where these people are going to go.
Speaker 4: But also I think this is you know, this, this
Speaker 4: all of this ties back into just the importance of
Speaker 4: what you and all of your coworkers do, which is
Speaker 4: that you're the people who are you know, like it,
Speaker 4: you're the people who are producing, Like the kids who
Speaker 4: are going to who are I mean, hopefully they won't
Speaker 4: have to be fighting the same fights that we are
Speaker 4: right now. Statistically they probably will, but yeah, like and
Speaker 4: you're the people who are sort of mediating their understanding
Speaker 4: of like what is happening in this world around them
Speaker 4: that's you know, increasingly terrifying and complex.
Speaker 5: Right, trying not to give ten year olds an existential crisis,
Speaker 5: but yeah, coming into like they are at that developmental
Speaker 5: age where they are starting to have that existential crisis
Speaker 5: of Wow, our planet is out of luck, our educational
Speaker 5: system is rotten, our democracy is falling apart, like they
Speaker 5: are witnessing turmoil in every country like it is. You know,
Speaker 5: they say that the youth's humor is very nihilistic and dark,
Speaker 5: and it's just getting darker. Like, thankfully, they give me
Speaker 5: so much hope and light in you know, a world
Speaker 5: where sometimes I don't even know want to be a
Speaker 5: part of the future because the future looks grim. They
Speaker 5: are a light even in all of that darkness. And
Speaker 5: you know, I think they're really resilient. I wish they
Speaker 5: didn't have to be. I have my own big existential dread.
Speaker 5: And the kids are angry, the kids are are upset,
Speaker 5: but the kids are all right. Maybe, yeah, if we
Speaker 5: can contend to support them, and.
Speaker 4: I think this is something that goes for everyone is
Speaker 4: like it, So insofar as we have obligations to anyone
Speaker 4: on earth, like the thing, the thing that we owe
Speaker 4: these kids is to try to make sure they don't
Speaker 4: have to go through the same shit that we did,
Speaker 4: because yeah, that still sucked.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One of my teaching philosophies is the bee who
Speaker 5: you needed when you were younger? And I didn't even
Speaker 5: know some of the things I needed. But looking back,
Speaker 5: like now, as a queer adult living in a major
Speaker 5: city who grew up in a small town in Montana
Speaker 5: in the binding is I'm very yeah, very aware of
Speaker 5: some of the things that I should have had as
Speaker 5: a young person, and that I am glad to be
Speaker 5: there for my students in that way. Even the difference
Speaker 5: working with some people who've been teaching for longer, you
Speaker 5: see the difference in educational philosophy from run generation to
Speaker 5: the next and the bee who you needed when you
Speaker 5: were younger. I'm very open to being neuro affirming supporting
Speaker 5: our students that are on the spectrum or students with
Speaker 5: ADHD are students with anxiety disorders in a way that
Speaker 5: even the teachers of our generation when when I was
Speaker 5: a child, aren't necessarily on the stade like we're getting
Speaker 5: better making education less damaging to I think that's one
Speaker 5: of the reasons sometimes we lose public opinion is people
Speaker 5: have negative memories of school. School has been harmful, and
Speaker 5: we're like, no support us, like I promise it's different now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but but I mean, but I think this is
Speaker 4: one of those things too, where like the teachers union
Speaker 4: in general, if you're looking at what is this, what
Speaker 4: is the single like group of people in the United
Speaker 4: States who actually wants to make school suck less? Like
Speaker 4: the most it's probably like slightly above that is students.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, like students are organized enough to like, right,
Speaker 4: and you know, and like I said as much really
Speaker 4: any know that this isn't to write off like the
Speaker 4: incredible amount of student activism that I mean, it has
Speaker 4: been happening forever, but they don't have the kind of
Speaker 4: power that like teachers unions too, and teachers unions.
Speaker 1: Are the social popvoice.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and also just the ability to like like
Speaker 4: the ability to withdraw your labor and suddenly actually have
Speaker 4: a massive effect on the entire sort of like state economy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we are united for our students. Like we
Speaker 5: are called a teachers' union, but we are united for
Speaker 5: our students because they don't yet have the ability, or
Speaker 5: the access or the social capital to be heard in
Speaker 5: the way that they deserve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. I think I think that's a
Speaker 4: that's a pretty good note to end on, unless you
Speaker 4: have anything else that you want to say.
Speaker 5: First, I'm satisfied. I mean, I'm not satisfied.
Speaker 4: I'm striking, but like, yeah, yeah, so how can people well, A,
Speaker 4: how can people in Portland support the strike? And then
Speaker 4: b how can people who are not in Portland who
Speaker 4: want to support the strike help?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Portlanders are able to help support the strike. We
Speaker 5: have a strike fund set up for purchasing and some
Speaker 5: of the things that we've needed on our strike lines,
Speaker 5: like megaphones, like ponchos. All of that strike fund is
Speaker 5: being used to help strike captains such as myself around
Speaker 5: the city organize our tickets and our actions. And so
Speaker 5: donating to that strike fund is one way to make
Speaker 5: sure that every teacher in Portland is getting some support.
Speaker 5: And then if you live in Portland, finding out the
Speaker 5: schools that are closest to you in your area, reaching
Speaker 5: out to those schools specifically, probably through social media, since
Speaker 5: we will not be in our buildings, Like using a
Speaker 5: school email wouldn't work, But reaching out to the strike
Speaker 5: in your area if you drive by and you see them,
Speaker 5: like giving them a honk in a horay and finding
Speaker 5: out where they need supplies to get directed to people
Speaker 5: outside of Portland. Same thing that strike fund is very visible,
Speaker 5: sharing on social media things on our behalf really making
Speaker 5: sure that your own legislatures know how important public education
Speaker 5: is to you. Hopefully things in your state or area
Speaker 5: are going positively for educators, but chances are they're not
Speaker 5: so I bet no matter where you live. As a listener,
Speaker 5: you public educators in your area could probably use your
Speaker 5: support talking to school boards, talking to legislators and making
Speaker 5: change in education, making sure that kids are getting what
Speaker 5: they need. That fight is guaranteed to be happening everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we will. We will have links to well
Speaker 4: definitely a strike fund probably also will have links to
Speaker 4: social media stuff the description so yeah, go go do
Speaker 4: that and also yeah, yeah I do you want? I'm
Speaker 4: assuming you also people control up the picket lines m
Speaker 4: h yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anyone in Portland driving in any of our neighborhoods,
Speaker 5: will find a school, will find a picket, and you
Speaker 5: are welcome to join us. I know I'm in the
Speaker 5: southwest region of Portland. Will be picketing in major areas
Speaker 5: as well as right outside our schools. So pretty much
Speaker 5: anywhere you see a sea of blue, give us a
Speaker 5: honk and hop out and join us for a little while,
Speaker 5: and we'll see you in some big visible spaces to
Speaker 5: be determined as we do some larger actions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this is a This is the thing I
Speaker 4: will say from from experience is that like the okay,
Speaker 4: so the more people there are, the better picketing is.
Speaker 4: And where there's a bunch of people on a picket,
Speaker 4: it rules. So go go to a picket. It's a
Speaker 4: good time. You're you're you're joining us. Yeah, you're fighting,
Speaker 4: you're fighting for a good cause, you are fighting for
Speaker 4: your class and yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hey, well, thank you so much for having me,
Speaker 5: and thank you to your listeners for giving us.
Speaker 4: An ear, and thank thank you for talking to me.
Speaker 4: It's been it's been great. And yeah, go go go listeners,
Speaker 4: all of you, go support the strike, make sure they win.
Speaker 4: And yeah, go out, go out into your communities and
Speaker 4: do the same.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
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