Speaker 1: Wow, Sophie. I did not expect for you to take
Speaker 1: personal responsibility for the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Um.
Speaker 1: I had always blamed it on Lee Harvey Oswald. Now
Speaker 1: now actually you have blamed it on a lot of
Speaker 1: people I know. And it's possible someone might say that
Speaker 1: I'm just blaming yet another person for the assassination of JFK.
Speaker 1: But really, what I'm trying to let people know is
Speaker 1: that Sophie can land three shots within a roughly dinner
Speaker 1: plate shy sized target at a surprising distance. Move it
Speaker 1: also moving target, moving target too. You got to lead
Speaker 1: that very impressive. I believe in you, Sophie. I believe
Speaker 1: in your ability to take out John Fitzgerald Kennedy if
Speaker 1: you'd had to, And that's why we've built you this
Speaker 1: time machine. If he was coming at you with his
Speaker 1: limousine and you were you were sheltering in a book depository,
Speaker 1: I think you could have done it. Thank come back
Speaker 1: to behind the bastards too powerful. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to introduce this one, so I decided to blame Sophie
Speaker 1: for a historical crime. I am Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: a podcast ostensibly about the worst people in all of history.
Speaker 1: We are getting behind some bastards because all right wing
Speaker 1: politics today is rooted in the series of conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: that we are explaining right now for you in three
Speaker 1: hundred iss years of history condensed into I don't know,
Speaker 1: like five podcast episodes. Anyway, My guests to continue this
Speaker 1: glorious journey in part four are Margaret Killjoy Hello, and
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis. Good morning or afternoon or is some other
Speaker 1: time m yep, it's whatever time of day you're listening to.
Speaker 1: So folks, here we are. Let's get back into the
Speaker 1: story for the next year or so. After the Kennedy
Speaker 1: assassination conspiracy, he's around. Carrie kind of flared and then
Speaker 1: eventually seemed to subside. His friend Greg moved back to
Speaker 1: New Orleans. Greg kind of was back and forth between
Speaker 1: Whittier and New Orleans. You know, it is being young.
Speaker 1: You can't, you know, make rent for a while, you
Speaker 1: move back in with your parents, then you come back.
Speaker 1: It's life and h Once he comes back to the city,
Speaker 1: the two start work on their long shelved plans to
Speaker 1: create a satiric religion based on the Greek goddess of
Speaker 1: chaos eires. Now, Gary wrote most of the first draft
Speaker 1: of a tract that would later become This is a
Speaker 1: little bit before zenes were a thing, but it also
Speaker 1: is kind of a proto zine. And its title is
Speaker 1: prince Skipia Discordia or How I Found the Goddess and
Speaker 1: what I did to her when I found her, And
Speaker 1: this is it's a good title. It's a good title.
Speaker 1: These guys are very funny, and this is it is
Speaker 1: kind of framed as it's a mix of like a
Speaker 1: religious tract and you know it actually what it's kind
Speaker 1: of framed as when I remember when I told you
Speaker 1: about how that illuminated member of the Illuminati got struck
Speaker 1: by lightning and found by the cops. A lot of
Speaker 1: the Principia Discordia kind of has the feeling of like
Speaker 1: intercepted communications from like yeah, this like weird, underground cold,
Speaker 1: and that's intentional. They know the history that I related
Speaker 1: to you all in the first In fact, are quite
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about the history that I related to you all
Speaker 1: in the opening episodes of this series. Aspects of it
Speaker 1: are kind of framed as a religious tract, and the
Speaker 1: faith that this is attract for is called Discordianism. Now
Speaker 1: by this point, Kerry had already started reading guys like
Speaker 1: Max Sterner, and he had found himself pulled out of
Speaker 1: his objectivist trend, of his iron Rand support, and towards
Speaker 1: a more a sort of individualist anarchism. Sterner is a
Speaker 1: guy who wrote a book called The Ego and Its
Speaker 1: Own And I am not the person to summarize that
Speaker 1: Egoism is kind of is one of the things that
Speaker 1: like that of anarchism is called. I am not the
Speaker 1: person to summarize it to you. But the main impact
Speaker 1: that has on carry is that he finds himself pulled
Speaker 1: towards anarchism as opposed to this kind of And he'd
Speaker 1: always been an anti state guy, right. That is a
Speaker 1: thing that is pretty consistent, you know, And that's a
Speaker 1: thing that he believes when he considers himself a capitalist revolutionary.
Speaker 1: The main thing that Stirner does for him is he
Speaker 1: drops the capitalism right and is just kind of now
Speaker 1: anti state. And he and Greg are also getting increasingly
Speaker 1: interested in the occult. In this period of time, Carrie
Speaker 1: does a pass on the Principia Discordia and then they
Speaker 1: start mailing it off to an ever expanding group of
Speaker 1: their friends, who are mostly artists and weirdo pranksters who
Speaker 1: all like the idea of a religion centered around chaos.
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteen sixties, American conspiracy culture had taken
Speaker 1: off to new heights thanks to the Kennedy assassination and
Speaker 1: all that shit that was going on with UFOs. Conspiracism
Speaker 1: is also taking off increasingly among the right wing. Too.
Speaker 1: Conservative political establishment is starting to have its first big,
Speaker 1: big break away from what you might call consensus reality,
Speaker 1: which is existing and accepting a plane of basic reality
Speaker 1: that is similar or if not basically identical to the
Speaker 1: ones that the liberals accept, and towards a more darker
Speaker 1: splinter reality defined by conspiracism. And the author of this switch,
Speaker 1: probably the single figure most responsible for the splintering of
Speaker 1: the reality tunnels in mainstream American politics is a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert H. Welch Junior, who we have talked about
Speaker 1: on this show. He is the founder of the John
Speaker 1: Birch Society. Now again, if you want to listen to
Speaker 1: those episodes on Bob Welch that we do with the
Speaker 1: Knowledge Fight guys, I do recommend them. But in case
Speaker 1: you haven't heard those, Are you just rusty on the
Speaker 1: subject of the John Birch Society. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from our friend Hofstadder again, who wrote the Paranoid Style
Speaker 1: in American Politics in November of nineteen sixty four. So
Speaker 1: that article that I quoted to you earlier talked about
Speaker 1: the Illuminati and its influence on kind of conspiracism in
Speaker 1: America earlier like two episodes ago. That article was written
Speaker 1: during the period we're talking about right now, November fo Yeah,
Speaker 1: a few years ago Welsh proclaimed that communist influences are
Speaker 1: now in almost complete control of our government. Note the
Speaker 1: care and scrupulousness of that almost. He has offered a
Speaker 1: full scale interpretation of our recent history in which communists
Speaker 1: figure at every turn. They started a run on American
Speaker 1: banks in nineteen thirty three that forced their closure. They
Speaker 1: contrived the recognition of the Soviet Union by the United
Speaker 1: States in the same year, just in time to save
Speaker 1: the Soviets from economic collapse. They've stirred up fuss over
Speaker 1: segregation in the South. They have taken over the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and made it one of the most important agencies
Speaker 1: of communism. Right, That's how Hopstater described This is where
Speaker 1: and that is if you replace communism with the illuminati,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of shit that people were saying
Speaker 1: after the French Revolution, right, It's the same playbook, and
Speaker 1: it very much is a playbook for a guy, for
Speaker 1: a lot of these people. In the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: Welch came across a pair of books that had a
Speaker 1: massive influence on him. In these books were Nesta Webster's
Speaker 1: Secret Societies and Subversive Movements from nineteen twenty four and
Speaker 1: American evangelist Gerald win Rod's book Adam Weisshopped a Human
Speaker 1: Devil from nineteen thirty five. That is a that is
Speaker 1: a banger title. If anybody writes a book about me,
Speaker 1: Robert Evans a human Devil, I will be the proudest
Speaker 1: I'm capable of being. I had a satanic scare at
Speaker 1: the last place I lived, like a local newsperson about
Speaker 1: one of my music videos, and so we just printed
Speaker 1: up the next band shirt was just all of the like,
Speaker 1: axe wielding terrorist women, anti phi anarchists, sacrificing babies in
Speaker 1: the woods or whatever. That's how you can do it.
Speaker 1: So both of these books, and this is going to
Speaker 1: really shock you, guys, were profoundly anti Semitic. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of the start of this of a European
Speaker 1: school of thought that saw Jews and the Illuminati and
Speaker 1: in some cases the Freemasons as like co authors of
Speaker 1: the French and Bolshevik Bolshevik revolutions together that like, this
Speaker 1: is all tied together, and this is a big part
Speaker 1: Hitler is spousing aspects of this he's taught. En if
Speaker 1: you like, look at what Hitler actually said about the
Speaker 1: conspiracies he believed. He would often call it Judeo Bolshevism, Right,
Speaker 1: Hitler's not so much into the illuminatis stuff. But the
Speaker 1: stuff Hitler believes is very much descended from a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff. So Welch jettison to the anti Semitism
Speaker 1: he found in these books, some of it at least,
Speaker 1: but he kept the rest, particularly the obsession with a
Speaker 1: grand Illuminati conspiracy theory. And I'm going to quote now
Speaker 1: from the book The World of the John Birch Society.
Speaker 1: Welch's first public mention of the Illuminati, but not yet
Speaker 1: the Insiders, came in his more stately mansion speech, delivered
Speaker 1: before a crowd of seventeen hundred at the Conrad Hilton
Speaker 1: in Chicago on June fifth, nineteen sixty four. He told
Speaker 1: his biographer that although he had been studying this subject
Speaker 1: for a number of years prior to this, he understood
Speaker 1: that you couldn't start putting it all out in one
Speaker 1: go because nobody would believe you. Instead, he'd endeavored to
Speaker 1: lead the Birch Society's members little by little to where
Speaker 1: they would be interested. Despite these concerns, Welch's idea of
Speaker 1: the insiders was quickly incorporated into the society's official worldview,
Speaker 1: with Birch writers like Medford Evans amusing about whether Dean
Speaker 1: Rusk was the insider's quarterback, for example. But just as often,
Speaker 1: the conspirators continue to be identified as the communists, the liberals,
Speaker 1: the establishment, the liberal establishment, or simply the conspiracy. The
Speaker 1: seeming interchangeability of the terms reflected the fact that appearances
Speaker 1: to the contrary, notwithstanding Welch's turn to the illuminati, hadn't
Speaker 1: really changed his basic analysis. So that's interesting. Number one.
Speaker 1: Welch is kind of doing a little bit of an
Speaker 1: atom by shop with his society right where he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you can't tell everyone the whole truth at once. You
Speaker 1: have to kind of like lead them there. But he's
Speaker 1: also he comes to believe that, he comes to believe
Speaker 1: in these Illuminati conspiracies, that they're behind the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: of the Bolshevik Revolution and all of these social justice movements.
Speaker 1: But he also consciously loops them in with both this
Speaker 1: blaming it on insiders, right, the illuminati or the insiders,
Speaker 1: and you might call them the deep state, you know,
Speaker 1: but he also he identifies them in the same breath
Speaker 1: as not just the communists but also the liberal establishment. Right,
Speaker 1: all of this is the conspiracy. All of this linked
Speaker 1: together is the conspiracy the right is going to believe
Speaker 1: in from nineteen sixty four up to today in November
Speaker 1: nineteen huh Oh. It's just it's so based on anti
Speaker 1: semitism in terms of the way that like people think
Speaker 1: of anti semitism is like racism, but confusing because applied
Speaker 1: to this group of people that's often white. But it's like,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's just this entirely different system of oppression
Speaker 1: that's based on this. I don't know, but yeah, this
Speaker 1: this belief in this fucking secret rules based on this,
Speaker 1: It's based on this belief that there is a fragment
Speaker 1: of society within your society that is different and fundamentally
Speaker 1: is trying to push all of these modernizing elements for
Speaker 1: sinister reasons right of their own power. Right. That is
Speaker 1: the core of anti Semitic belief. And it is focused
Speaker 1: obviously on the Jews being that fragment. But once you
Speaker 1: start to believe that, it's not hard for you to
Speaker 1: move on to just like, well, beyond that, it's the Illuminati, right,
Speaker 1: it's the communist it's the liberals, establishment, all of these
Speaker 1: different like you've accepted that there's this that any sort
Speaker 1: of movement towards a progressing society is based in a
Speaker 1: conspiracy to destroy it, right, And that's the most important
Speaker 1: step to take. And it also it goes the other
Speaker 1: direction too. Now that you get people to believe in
Speaker 1: lizard people or whatever other Illuminati thing, you can then
Speaker 1: get them to also just become anti Semitic. Yes, it
Speaker 1: works backwards and forwards. Again, it's very syncretic too, So
Speaker 1: you can people who are just convinced that there's lizard
Speaker 1: people or Bigfoot or UFOs if you loop that into like, well,
Speaker 1: the Illuminati doesn't want you to know about Bigfoot or
Speaker 1: the UFOs, right, And they're keeping that, then that is
Speaker 1: also an inroad to get those people believing that the
Speaker 1: Jews are behind everything bad in society. This is a
Speaker 1: pretty durable, improven thing that happens within conspiracism. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: November of nineteen sixty six, roughly a year after the
Speaker 1: publication of The Prince Skipia Discordia, Bob Welch published an
Speaker 1: essay in a John Birch magazine titled The Truth in Time,
Speaker 1: in which he revealed his discovery of a master conspiracy
Speaker 1: older than communism. The communist movement is only a tool
Speaker 1: of the total conspiracy. As secret as the communist activities
Speaker 1: and organizations generally appear, they are part of an open
Speaker 1: book compared to the secrecy enveloping some higher degree of
Speaker 1: this diabolic force. The extrinsic evidence is strong and convincing
Speaker 1: that by the beginning of the twentieth century there had
Speaker 1: evolved an inner core of conspiratorial power able to direct
Speaker 1: and control subversive activities which were worldwide in their reach,
Speaker 1: incredibly cunning and ruthless in their nature, and brilliantly far
Speaker 1: sighted and patient and their strategy. Whether or not this
Speaker 1: increasingly all powerful hidden command was due to an unbroken
Speaker 1: continuation of vaishops alun Illuminati, or was a distillation from
Speaker 1: the leadership of this in other groups We do not know.
Speaker 1: Some of them may never have been Communists, while others
Speaker 1: were to avoid as much dispute as possible. Therefore, let
Speaker 1: us call this ruling click simply the insiders. It's it's
Speaker 1: just people fallen for the bait, thinking that they're smart.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, and Bob Welsh is both high on his
Speaker 1: own supply but also recognizes this is a good way
Speaker 1: to manipulate people, and it's interesting. Nineteen sixty four is
Speaker 1: Welsh's first meet mention of the Illuminati, whereas like, I've
Speaker 1: got to prep the ground for people. Nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: is where he comes out with his big speech talking
Speaker 1: about the Illuminati. Nineteen sixty five is when the Principia
Speaker 1: Discordia gets published. It is all of this. We should
Speaker 1: say that the Principia Discordia has a decent section in
Speaker 1: it about the Yes, I'm about to get to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will be reading from it right now. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Principient Discordia was written for people like Greg and Carey.
Speaker 1: Because it was written by people like Greg and carry right, intelligent,
Speaker 1: well read weirdos on the fringes of society who are
Speaker 1: natural skeptics, but who are also drawn irresistibly towards conspiracism.
Speaker 1: It's fitting that chapter one, authored by Carry and attributed
Speaker 1: to his pseudonym Lord Omar khay M Ravenhurst, was called
Speaker 1: the Epistle to the Paranoids. It is essentially a message
Speaker 1: to the counterculture of the nineteen sixties. And at this point,
Speaker 1: as he's had his sort of break into anarchism, he's
Speaker 1: finding himself increasingly angry that the objectivists where he'd formerly
Speaker 1: kind of like found identification, and the Marxists who he'd
Speaker 1: once identified with, and the anarchists who he now identified
Speaker 1: with all hated each other. And we're all fighting each
Speaker 1: other rather than fighting the state, right, and he the paranoids,
Speaker 1: that's who he's talking about, is these people on account
Speaker 1: your culture who are all in opposition to the state,
Speaker 1: but who can't get along with each other. And this
Speaker 1: message in the Prince Scipia Discordia is essentially a message
Speaker 1: to this fragmented chunk of the counterculture that he was like,
Speaker 1: you guys are fighting too much to oppose the state.
Speaker 1: In a meaningful way. And I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from that now, And this is again the Epistle
Speaker 1: to the Paranoids. Number one, Ye have locked yourselves up
Speaker 1: in cages of fear, And behold, do you now complain
Speaker 1: that ye lack freedom? Ye have cast out your brothers
Speaker 1: for devils, And now complain ye lamenting that ye've been
Speaker 1: left to fight alone all chaos? Was once your kingdom
Speaker 1: verily held ye dominion over the entire Pentaverse. But today
Speaker 1: ye was sore, afraid, and dark corners, nooks and sinkholes. Oh,
Speaker 1: how the darknesses do crowd up one against the other
Speaker 1: in ye hearts? What fear ye more than that? What
Speaker 1: ye hath rotten? Verily? Verily? I say into you, unto you,
Speaker 1: not all the sinister ministers of the Bavarian Illuminati, working
Speaker 1: together in multitudes, could so entwine the lad and with
Speaker 1: tribulation as have your baseless warnings. Are you just trying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a thing that anyone involved in radical politics
Speaker 1: today would identify it with on a deep and emotional level. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's well written too, he is He's I find a
Speaker 1: lot in this piece. Um. Now, the next section of
Speaker 1: the Prince Skipia was an ad um and it's framed
Speaker 1: as an advertisement as like a hokey sixties style advertisement
Speaker 1: to join the Bavarian Illuminati, which is listed as the
Speaker 1: world's oldest and most successful conspiracy. Greg and Carry give
Speaker 1: their version of Illuminati history here, which puts the creation
Speaker 1: of the organization at around ten ninety by Hassan is Saba,
Speaker 1: a medieval warlord credited with creating an order of hashbet
Speaker 1: fueled assassins. People get the history, the exact history on
Speaker 1: that a little bit, quite a lot wrong. Obviously, Hassan
Speaker 1: as Sava had nothing to do with the Illuminati, and
Speaker 1: they knew this. This was a joke for them right.
Speaker 1: The advertisement is very tongue in cheek. It also references
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft's creation Yog south Off, as well as so
Speaker 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, among other things. The
Speaker 1: Princekipia is a satire of real cults, but also a
Speaker 1: satire of American mass media, and in fact, that ad
Speaker 1: to join the Bavarian Illuminati ends with these lines. If
Speaker 1: your right Q is over one fifty and you have
Speaker 1: three thousand, one hundred and twenty five dollars plus handling,
Speaker 1: you might be eligible for a trial membership if you
Speaker 1: think you will quit if you qual If you think
Speaker 1: you qualify, put the money in a cigar box and
Speaker 1: bury it in your backyard. One of our underground agents
Speaker 1: will contact you shortly. I dare you tell no one.
Speaker 1: Accidents have a strange way of happening to people who
Speaker 1: talk too much about the Bavarian Illuminati. Maybe may we
Speaker 1: warn you against imitations? Ours is original and genuite you
Speaker 1: do a podcast about this? Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's some mensa mixed up in there. Right. There's also
Speaker 1: like Coca Cola ads kind of like this is the
Speaker 1: original flay you know, yes, yes, they're making fun of
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Speaking of advertisements that will instruct you
Speaker 1: to bury your money and throw it away. Here our
Speaker 1: ads that God, I hope it's a gold ad. I
Speaker 1: hope I wish for each of you a gold ad.
Speaker 1: At this point we're back. Um, so one thing that
Speaker 1: becomes clear going through the prince Skipia and and doing
Speaker 1: and by the way, you can pronounce the Principia discordia
Speaker 1: however you want, because nobody actually knows how ancient Latin
Speaker 1: was pronounced in its entirety we have ecclesiastic Latin, which
Speaker 1: is a bit different. So if you want to be
Speaker 1: like I don't you're gonna pronounce it that way, you
Speaker 1: can go fuck yourself. I took three years of Latin,
Speaker 1: I'll say it. However the fuck I goddamn want um
Speaker 1: go to hell. I'd love you don't study Latin and
Speaker 1: high school kids. That's what I did time I did.
Speaker 1: Look at us. We are such a bunch of suckers.
Speaker 1: I know, I know absolutely. My friends are all like
Speaker 1: learning Spanish that they didn't travel with, and I'm stuck
Speaker 1: there learning about how fucking caycillous and is. Yeah, buddy,
Speaker 1: I had a you know, it helped me up a
Speaker 1: conversation with my nun aunt about whether or not you
Speaker 1: pronounced Latin certain ways. That's what I got out of
Speaker 1: three years A lot I took. You want to We
Speaker 1: just did some episodes on on Bobby Fisher, and some
Speaker 1: people thought I was intending to just kind of joke
Speaker 1: about the fact that he was a nerd because I
Speaker 1: was also a nerd, which is why I brought up
Speaker 1: Warhammer so much. But I took three years of Latin
Speaker 1: so that I could understand all of my Warhammer books
Speaker 1: like that was that was why I did that. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: so there there you go. Anyway, whatever, one thing that
Speaker 1: comes clear going through the Principia and doing all this
Speaker 1: research on the Illuminati is how knowledgeable Greg and Carrie
Speaker 1: and their other friends were about the actual history not
Speaker 1: just of the Illuminati, but of other secret societies and conspiracies.
Speaker 1: These guys have like an academic levels understanding of this history,
Speaker 1: which is why they are able to parody it so successfully.
Speaker 1: The Principia contains a number of letters in which members
Speaker 1: of the Illuminati, all of which are like and they
Speaker 1: take as did we didn't really get into this in
Speaker 1: those but all of the original Illuminati people like took
Speaker 1: on uh pseudonyms that were like themed after ancient Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman history like Achilles and Ajax and stuff, and
Speaker 1: all of the new Illuminati, the Discordians take on pseudonyms
Speaker 1: as well. As I said, Um Carries is Lord Omar
Speaker 1: Khayam Ravenhurst, Greg Hills is Malaclipse the younger m and
Speaker 1: yeah they give you know, uh yeah, so these guys
Speaker 1: are are are very much anciously like aping Adam yeshopped
Speaker 1: and in their conspiracy document that they put out. They
Speaker 1: each provide kind of different and often contrasting theories about
Speaker 1: the actual age and origin of the Illuminati. Usually this
Speaker 1: winds up stretching back to prehistory and they're kind of continuing,
Speaker 1: why shops lie here? Right, like consciously continuing because like
Speaker 1: he would pretend it was an ancient society. They're doing
Speaker 1: this intentionally, and it also includes bits like this which
Speaker 1: are clearly satirizing the John Birch Society. Your publication is
Speaker 1: timely so mentioned that an addition, and this is part
Speaker 1: of a section of it that's framed as intercepted letters. Basically, right,
Speaker 1: your publication is timely so mentioned that in addition to
Speaker 1: the old fronts like the Masons, the Rothschild Banks, and
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve System, we now have significant control of
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Investigation since Hoover died last year,
Speaker 1: but that is still secret. The Students from a Democratic Society,
Speaker 1: the Communist Party USA, the American Anarchist Association, the Junior
Speaker 1: Chamber of Commerce, the Black Lotus Society, Eddie, the Republicans Party,
Speaker 1: the John Dillinger Died for You Society, and the Campfire Girls.
Speaker 1: It is still useful to continue the sham of the
Speaker 1: Birchers that we are seeking world domination, so do not
Speaker 1: reveal that political and economic control was generally complete several
Speaker 1: generations ago. It's so funny, it's so good. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a response to the John Birch society as much
Speaker 1: as it is anything else. And they're fucking with people, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on here. Okay, but the right is
Speaker 1: there a Campfire Girls or do they make that up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like a Girl Scouts kind of that that
Speaker 1: I may still exist for all I know. I'm not
Speaker 1: a Campfire Girls exit expert, although soon we'll have our
Speaker 1: six part series on the camp Fire Girls. You already
Speaker 1: did the Boy Scouts, so we could have done a
Speaker 1: couple more episodes on the fucking boy Scouts. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So they write this silly zine, and I know some
Speaker 1: of you who are not like is into this stuff
Speaker 1: as all three of us are, are probably like, why
Speaker 1: are we talking about like this weird joke that's dudes
Speaker 1: made in the mid sixties. Oh boy, trust me, it matters.
Speaker 1: So they write this week, they write this weird zine
Speaker 1: and if you know anything about kind of like pre
Speaker 1: internet erazines, you know that the thing they're going to
Speaker 1: need next is a photocopier. Now, in the mid nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: photo copiers existed. You could get access to them, but they,
Speaker 1: like owning one would have cost you know, probably like
Speaker 1: what a car does today. It was not easy to get,
Speaker 1: like to purchase one. Most people didn't have access to
Speaker 1: one unless they had access through an institution. And so
Speaker 1: if you were going to use such a machine, you
Speaker 1: either were like at a school that had one, or
Speaker 1: you had maybe an employer that had one and you
Speaker 1: could kind of like get some time on it. So
Speaker 1: it just so happened that Greg Hill when they decided
Speaker 1: they want to start making a bunch of copies of
Speaker 1: this thing they had out. Greg Hill had a friend
Speaker 1: named Lane Kaplinger, and Lane worked as a secretary for
Speaker 1: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: the movie JFK by Oliver Stone, Garrison is the guy
Speaker 1: played by Kevin Costner. So he would go on to
Speaker 1: write the first major Kennedy assassination conspiracy book titled On
Speaker 1: the Trail of Assassins, which is what Stones JFK was
Speaker 1: based on. This will be relevant soon, so Greg Hill
Speaker 1: and his friend sneak into Jim Garrison's office and they
Speaker 1: use the photocopier to produce several copies of the Prince
Speaker 1: Sipia Discordia, which they start handing out to friends who
Speaker 1: read it and find it funny. These people, then, I
Speaker 1: will say, as someone who's also interested in this history,
Speaker 1: this claim is heavily disputed. Yes, we know there's at
Speaker 1: least one zne they did use Garrison's photocopier on it's
Speaker 1: not provable that it was the Prince Scipia Discordia. And
Speaker 1: they also claimed that the first copy of the Principia
Speaker 1: was typed out using Garrison's typewriter. Yes, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of weird claims about Garrison's specific because others later
Speaker 1: in the JFK stuff, Well he's going to wrote it,
Speaker 1: Oh not just that, um but uh yeah, no, you're right, Garrison,
Speaker 1: this may not have happened. We do know that they
Speaker 1: used because they were writing other zcenes. It's pretty well
Speaker 1: known that they used his photocopier for one thing a
Speaker 1: couple of years prior to this. There have been claimed
Speaker 1: since that they used it for this, And like you
Speaker 1: said that they used as typewriter. We don't know what's
Speaker 1: true because these guys, again, part of what they're about
Speaker 1: to start doing is telling a bunch of funny lies,
Speaker 1: so so good. That's a It is known that Hill
Speaker 1: and a friend got access to his photocopier at one point, right,
Speaker 1: I chose to tell people the version that I found
Speaker 1: most funny, which I thought was in line with Discordian traditions.
Speaker 1: But yes, that is good, that is useful context. So
Speaker 1: they start handing the stuff out to friends, and in
Speaker 1: the way that things spread back then, these people read it.
Speaker 1: A lot of them like it. They find their own
Speaker 1: access to like mimiograph machines or where they go to
Speaker 1: the library. They start making copies of it and handing
Speaker 1: it out to friends, and in a couple of different
Speaker 1: cities people start to decide to start Discordian chapters, which
Speaker 1: I themed us both kind of secret societies and sects
Speaker 1: of a religion that's like what they are consciously aping,
Speaker 1: but in reality it has a lot more in common
Speaker 1: with like modern nerds subculture today. And to kind of
Speaker 1: go through this process, I'm going to quote now from
Speaker 1: the book kal Left by an author named J. Mr.
Speaker 1: Higgs slowly, Hill and Thornley recruited a few like minded
Speaker 1: friends into their new religion. Their aim was to undermine
Speaker 1: existing belief systems by spreading confusion and disinformation with as
Speaker 1: much humor as possible. To this end, they each adopted
Speaker 1: a host of new names under which their Discordian endeavors
Speaker 1: were credited. Many new Discordian chapters were founded. The majority
Speaker 1: of these contained only one member, and some contained none.
Speaker 1: Discordians then wrote essays and letters under these aliases, only
Speaker 1: to follow them with completely contradictory essays and letters under
Speaker 1: a different alias. So this is like becomes sort of
Speaker 1: the first act of worship of the Discordian Church is
Speaker 1: to like write essays and letters about conspiracies and then
Speaker 1: send them out to different magazines and different publications under
Speaker 1: a variety of alien aliases. Now, as for the actual
Speaker 1: religion itself, we all know you've actually meant aliens Mmm,
Speaker 1: I did? Which you know my book on the Illuminati,
Speaker 1: by that one Crank does talk a lot about the Anonochi.
Speaker 1: They are. Apparently the Babylonians talked about them all the time,
Speaker 1: So you know, no one's more credible than the Babylonians.
Speaker 1: But the actual tenets of the Discordian Faith, which is
Speaker 1: again a satire of religion. Are you know, there's a
Speaker 1: variety of things. Everybody's a pope, which is not an
Speaker 1: original thing initially. It is actually very centralized. It's kind
Speaker 1: of one of the big changes in the Discordian Faith
Speaker 1: over the years is the decision that everybody gets to
Speaker 1: be a pope. They don't have religious dogmas. They have katmas,
Speaker 1: which are like relative meta beliefs rather than like strict
Speaker 1: beliefs in something right, there's kind of a general prescription
Speaker 1: in the Discordian Church against believing too hard in anything.
Speaker 1: Like every religion, they have foods that your band kind
Speaker 1: of arbitrarily from eating. In this case, it's hot dog buns,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of just like hot dogs
Speaker 1: handed out at like Discordian events in this period of time.
Speaker 1: And again this is meant to Yeah, it's meant to be.
Speaker 1: She would love this. It's it's it's a joke. It's yucks.
Speaker 1: But what you should have realized right now by the
Speaker 1: passage I read earlier where they're kind of they're spreading
Speaker 1: all these jokes, but they're also spreading all of these
Speaker 1: different claims about the things they've done as a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: What they've done, what Hill and Thornley particularly have done,
Speaker 1: is create a series of memes which start to spread
Speaker 1: through the underground media of the day, through this kind
Speaker 1: of growing underground network of what's going to become zene culture. Now,
Speaker 1: because this faith gets founded in nineteen sixty five, right
Speaker 1: as the Kennedy assassination, conspiracy theories pick up steam, conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories becomes sort of the language that discordions choose to
Speaker 1: do their messaging in. Now, this is what brings us
Speaker 1: to Playboy magazine, the mid Delatement, a place Jamie Locke
Speaker 1: has worked. She did, She's deeply tied all these Jamie
Speaker 1: has involved in this so much. We are through the
Speaker 1: looking glass here. People. When I say Playboy today, you
Speaker 1: either think of all of Hugh Hefner's mini sex crimes
Speaker 1: or you think about, um, oh yeah, that like website
Speaker 1: or that magazine that used to be big and is
Speaker 1: no longer profitable and turned into like kind of a
Speaker 1: sleazy internet brand in the nineteen sixties. Playboy is hugely
Speaker 1: influential in the counterculture, not just because there's there's pictures
Speaker 1: of attractive naked people but because they're like of the articles,
Speaker 1: like they're there are a lot of very influential writers
Speaker 1: the articles. This is a thing, and two of the
Speaker 1: guys who are writing it for the articles are a
Speaker 1: pair of editors for Playboy magazine named Robert Shay and
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilsons. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of Roberts
Speaker 1: involved in this story too. But yes, Bob Shay and
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson are both editors for Playboy magazine, and
Speaker 1: they're both kinda into a lot of the same stuff
Speaker 1: that Carry and Greg are. They they find the occult.
Speaker 1: They're both very much into the occult, especially Robert Anton Wilson.
Speaker 1: They are taking huge amounts of LSD. And by the way,
Speaker 1: so are Hill and Thornley by this point, um, And
Speaker 1: you know, they start to notice because Playboy publishes letters,
Speaker 1: and one of the places, the easiest places for Discordians
Speaker 1: who are writing these nonsense conspiracy letters to get their
Speaker 1: shit published is Playboy. And Robert Anton Wilson Robert Shay
Speaker 1: start to notice, like, we're getting a lot of weird
Speaker 1: letters from guys writing about the Illuminati and Arris and
Speaker 1: stuff that's peculiar. So they start responding to some of
Speaker 1: these letters, Wilson, being a prankster himself, decides he's going
Speaker 1: to fuck with whoever is sending him these joke letters
Speaker 1: by publishing all of the weirdest ones and his particular thing,
Speaker 1: as in the EG issue, he likes to publish conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories letters letters that are conspiracy theories that specifically contradict
Speaker 1: each other, like incompatible theories about the Kennedy assassination and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, because he thinks that's funnier, and it is.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from a summary by
Speaker 1: a writer named James Burt. Wilson said he did not
Speaker 1: consider this a prank or a hoax, but guerrilla ontology.
Speaker 1: He became increasingly exasperated with the fixed views on both
Speaker 1: the right and left of politics, and he wanted people
Speaker 1: to question the information they received, to stop seeing their
Speaker 1: beliefs as inherently true. Onology is a branch of branch
Speaker 1: of philosophy that studies, among other things, the nature of reality,
Speaker 1: like what is true? Right again, this is a philosophy
Speaker 1: discussion on a podcast, So we're flattening things here, but
Speaker 1: that's the basic of it, right. It is the science
Speaker 1: of like what is how to classify and explain objects
Speaker 1: and entities. Wilson and Shay, like the Discordians, saw themselves
Speaker 1: as waging a necessary war against people's widely accepted definitions
Speaker 1: of reality. And they are looking out at millions of
Speaker 1: people being massacred in Vietnam, at police in the street
Speaker 1: beating civil rights marchers, and they are responding to what
Speaker 1: they see as all of the people perpetuating these crimes
Speaker 1: have locked themselves into what Robert Anton Wilson will later
Speaker 1: call a reality tunnel, which is this like very solidified
Speaker 1: belief about the nature of the world that is wrong
Speaker 1: but justifies violence because the world itself will not form
Speaker 1: to this errant belief. And so if you can't accept
Speaker 1: anything else as real, you're going to do violence on
Speaker 1: the people who insist in living in a way that
Speaker 1: does not conform to that belief you have about the world.
Speaker 1: So the thing Wilson and Shay want to do is
Speaker 1: soften people's understanding of what reality is and the hope
Speaker 1: that it will stop a lot of this horrible shit
Speaker 1: from happening. Right, that's the goal. Okay, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: this is not going to work out perfectly, but it's
Speaker 1: it's you understand where they're coming from, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I do, at least I do. I feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes we think that like, oh, well, use sarcasm and
Speaker 1: parody and irony. I feel like people who are versed
Speaker 1: in the internet, well know why this doesn't work, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the spoiler is that it doesn't. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know what does work, Margaret, the exchange of money
Speaker 1: for items. Oh, I was going to say, advertising, Oh,
Speaker 1: it has. It has a more profound impact on human
Speaker 1: cognition than almost anyone understand hands and in fact, in
Speaker 1: the future will be considered to be a health hazard
Speaker 1: on the same level as cigarette smoking. But for now,
Speaker 1: it's what keeps podcasts on the air. So enjoy your
Speaker 1: information hazard everybody, We're back, and have your kids considered
Speaker 1: the benefit of smoking pall malls. Pall malls aren't just
Speaker 1: the tastiest cigarette on the market. They're the cigarette that
Speaker 1: has an extra long filter which helps those tiny hands
Speaker 1: grasp and smokes safely. Sophie, you don't want kids to
Speaker 1: hear the good news about pall mall cigarettes. The cigarette
Speaker 1: crafted with tiny hands in mind, by tiny hands. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hurt. Look you know, one of the tragic
Speaker 1: lessons about advertising is that sometimes people consume different products
Speaker 1: than they advertise. Yeah, fair enough, Just like I actually
Speaker 1: kind of more into silver. Hmm. Well, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I talk about how Lasik provided me with laser eye surgery,
Speaker 1: but the reality is that I lashed a banshee uh
Speaker 1: to the rock in my backyard. Sophie, I can't talk
Speaker 1: about how I trained a banshee to fix my eyes
Speaker 1: with the ice the okay, whatever, Sophie, Jesus unfair anyway, Discordians.
Speaker 1: So Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shay start publishing all
Speaker 1: of these weirdo letters by these weirdo Discordians, and eventually
Speaker 1: like realize something is going on here, that it's not
Speaker 1: just an increasing number of crazy people sending them conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And Robert Anton Wilson, when he finds this out,
Speaker 1: is like so on board. He's like, this is the
Speaker 1: best thing I've ever heard of. And he travels and
Speaker 1: he go. He meets with Kerrie Thornley in nineteen sixties seven,
Speaker 1: and as soon as Thornley explains the game to him,
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson becomes a Discordian and he is immediately
Speaker 1: on board with all of this shit. Now, some other
Speaker 1: stuff is happening while all of these figures are meeting.
Speaker 1: At this point in time, a book called The Second
Speaker 1: Oswald has been published, which is the first organized conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory about a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, through this yes, it comes out
Speaker 1: in this book that Carrie Thornley, this weird countercultural figure,
Speaker 1: has ties to all of these people adjacent to the
Speaker 1: conspiracy in the Second Oswald and the nature of this
Speaker 1: coincidence that he's just sort of tied to all these
Speaker 1: people that this book has argued, we're like helping to
Speaker 1: carry out the assassination is too much for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and a growing chunk of the conspiracy culture
Speaker 1: of the time convinces itself that Thornley was the second
Speaker 1: gun man, and some versions of the conspiracy he's like
Speaker 1: an Oswald double who is there to distract from the
Speaker 1: fact that like, yeah, like the multiple Oswald basically right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people because Thornley looks like Oswald
Speaker 1: and knows him, think that he's the second Oswald. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the people who decides this is what's happened.
Speaker 1: One of the people who comes to believe this about
Speaker 1: the Kennedy assassination is Jim Garrison, the DA of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: So Garrett, Yeah, that's not going to work. That's not
Speaker 1: going to work out well for anybody. Garrison. Garrison, Hi, Garrison,
Speaker 1: he started, you know, I know all of our names
Speaker 1: except for Margaret, so fallen a bit far. I've been
Speaker 1: deeply implicated in this conspiracy. So Jim Garrison starts investigating
Speaker 1: Kerry Thornley in January of nineteen sixty eight, right after
Speaker 1: Carrie and Bob Wilson meat, and he actually subpoenas Kerry
Speaker 1: Thornley so he can ask Carrie about his relationship with Oswald. Now,
Speaker 1: Thornley denies that he had been in any contact with
Speaker 1: the assassination in any assassin, in any manner since nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. But Garrison comes to believe that Thornley is
Speaker 1: part of the conspiracy and acted as a body double
Speaker 1: for Oswald. And he also finds out that Oswald moved
Speaker 1: to New Orleans right after Thornley, and that the year
Speaker 1: before the assassination, they were both in Mexico City at
Speaker 1: the same time. So he charges Carrie with perjury. This
Speaker 1: is like a year's long fight Carrie has with like
Speaker 1: a perjury charge over lying about his associations with Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald. And this is a very situation Carrie had
Speaker 1: actually been called in a lot of people don't know this.
Speaker 1: Carrie Thornley testified to the Warren Commission in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four because he had published his book The Idol Warriors,
Speaker 1: which was about Lee Harvey Oswald. And all he's talking
Speaker 1: about on the Warren Commission stuff is what he knew
Speaker 1: about Oswald, right, But because he says he had no
Speaker 1: more contact with him, this is a really you can
Speaker 1: get in shitloads of trouble for lying in a congressional
Speaker 1: inquiry like this, right, Like you are not allowed to
Speaker 1: do that. So the fact that they're a year after
Speaker 1: he testified, he also released a book just titled Oswald Yes,
Speaker 1: like the same exact year that the Principia was first
Speaker 1: was first being distributed. Because if I'm not mistaken when
Speaker 1: he no, no, because he becomes convinced after a while,
Speaker 1: I believe that Oswald. He starts believing that Oswald was innocent,
Speaker 1: and then he comes to believe that Oswald did it,
Speaker 1: and he eventually comes to believe something very similar to
Speaker 1: what Jim Garrison believes. But he writes the book Oswald
Speaker 1: kind of in the middle of all of these beliefs
Speaker 1: because he knows the guy and yeah. Um, So Carrie
Speaker 1: starts to get very paranoid at this point because in
Speaker 1: the middle of creating a religion about secret societies where
Speaker 1: they claim to be the Illuminati pulling the strings, he
Speaker 1: has also become the center of the JFK assassination conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory and is now being charged with perjury. So this
Speaker 1: is what we call yes, yeah, yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: years of putting up flyers asking for a president to
Speaker 1: be assassinated if you don't want people to think you
Speaker 1: might have done it. Hmm. Now you remember back when
Speaker 1: that Nazi paid him to do research on the Hitler book?
Speaker 1: Oh god, yes, okay, so the book is title I
Speaker 1: think it's like Hitler was not a bad guy, right.
Speaker 1: Carrie becomes convinced that the guy and again this Nazi
Speaker 1: is not a real person, Like there was a person
Speaker 1: there because people saw carry talking to him, but the
Speaker 1: name he gives is not a real person, right, So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that that's part of why this
Speaker 1: guy gets wrapped. We don't know who this was. Carrie
Speaker 1: becomes convinced that that guy was a fed who paid
Speaker 1: him to do this research, so there would be a
Speaker 1: bunch of writing about Hitler under the title Hitler was
Speaker 1: not a bad guy in Carrie's handwriting, and the state
Speaker 1: could put it up as a manifesto after framing him
Speaker 1: for killing Jfki. Yeah, that's that's what Carry starts to
Speaker 1: bleak because he's like, no one knows who this guy is.
Speaker 1: This is such a weird thing that somebody paid me
Speaker 1: to do. Someone just wanted my name on this, like
Speaker 1: Nazi things, so they could argue like I was involved
Speaker 1: in it. Because he also sees that what Garrison is
Speaker 1: doing is trying to bring him into this and blame
Speaker 1: the assassination on him, So he's not there are people
Speaker 1: in the government trying to pin the assassination. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's also he's also locked in this conspiratorial mindset
Speaker 1: now in part as recreation, so he kind of just
Speaker 1: starts to go crazy. Now, yeah, that tracks. Carrie is
Speaker 1: also at his heart a prankster, and despite the severity
Speaker 1: of the situation he is in, he cannot help himself,
Speaker 1: but fuck with Jim Garrison. And I'm going to quote.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from the very interesting book The
Speaker 1: Prankster in the Conspiracy, which is by that that go
Speaker 1: Rightly Guy, and is a biography of Carry, primarily quote.
Speaker 1: Sometime in nineteen sixty eight, during the course of the
Speaker 1: Garrison investigation, Carrie discovered that one of Garrison's aids, Alan Chapman,
Speaker 1: belief that the jfk assassination had been the work of
Speaker 1: the Bavarian Illuminati, that ancient in fraternal order, much ballyhooed
Speaker 1: by right wing conspiracy theorists such as the John Birch
Speaker 1: Society as a centuries old secret society behind communism and
Speaker 1: damn near every other socialist inspired ill then corrupting the
Speaker 1: world and poisoning our precious bodily fluids. In response to
Speaker 1: all of this Bavarian Illuminati paranoia, Carry, in the midst
Speaker 1: of Garrison's probe, decided to mind fuck Garrison all the
Speaker 1: more by sending out spurious announcements suggesting that he Carry
Speaker 1: was an agent of the Bavarian Illuminati. These communicates were
Speaker 1: sent under the auspices of the Discordian Society. The mind
Speaker 1: fuck eventually got Carrie interested in the history of this
Speaker 1: mysterious secret society, and the more he read about the
Speaker 1: Bavarian Illuminati, the more fascinated he became. Eventually, Kerry and
Speaker 1: his fellow Discordian conspirators started planting stories about the Discordian
Speaker 1: Societies age Old War against the Illuminati, accusing everyone under
Speaker 1: the sun of being a member of that sinister and
Speaker 1: sneaky organization, from such politicos as X and LBJ. Daily
Speaker 1: and William Buckley to Martian invaders and various conspiracy buffs,
Speaker 1: plus members of the Discordian Society itself, which made it
Speaker 1: all very confusing and extremely hilarious. So he starts sending
Speaker 1: fake letters claiming that he's in the agent of the
Speaker 1: Illuminati to one of Garrison's aids, who believes that the
Speaker 1: jfk assassination was the work of the Illuminati and is
Speaker 1: actively investigating him for his complicity in that crime. Yeah. You, look,
Speaker 1: whatever you think of the wisdom and ethics of this,
Speaker 1: you have to respect that commitment. Yeah. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone's like that'd be like if I resolve if
Speaker 1: if when people are like, oh, you're an evil Satanist,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yes, I personally brought Satan back from
Speaker 1: the dead and used him to do this actual crime
Speaker 1: that happened. I am the literal Christian devil, and I
Speaker 1: killed all those kids at that elementary school and whatever whatever.
Speaker 1: The one that started the Satanic mannock was Yeah, I
Speaker 1: forget Mountain Mountain Meadows seem No, that's the Mormon massacre.
Speaker 1: I've lost track, you know whatever. By the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Carrie Hill and Robert Anton Wilson have a name for
Speaker 1: this combination prank act of political terrorism that they've sort
Speaker 1: of lapsed into committing. They start to call it Operation
Speaker 1: mind Fuck. Jmr. Briggs writes the aim of Operation mind
Speaker 1: Fuck was to lead people into such a heightened state
Speaker 1: of bewilderment and confusion that their rigid beliefs would shatter
Speaker 1: and be replaced with some form of enlightenment. Now that
Speaker 1: may have been optimistic, yeah, yeah. It is worth noting
Speaker 1: that the Discordians are not the only anarchist weirdos thinking
Speaker 1: along these lines at the time. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: another group of anarchists on the UC Berkeley campus had
Speaker 1: formed a group called the Bavarian Illuminati and had started
Speaker 1: sending out weird press releases with the gold of giving
Speaker 1: conspiratorially minded people something to get paranoid about. And the
Speaker 1: lady who founds this group at Berkeley later becomes friends
Speaker 1: with Thornley and becomes a Discordian and is now a
Speaker 1: right wing crank journalist. This is the worst thing that's
Speaker 1: happened in this episode. Yeah, oh no, don't don't worry.
Speaker 1: Something a lot worse is coming, Margaret. Oh no, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is like but also this type of stuff
Speaker 1: is not that he's not superly good, disissimilar to like
Speaker 1: the situationists, Yes, which we will. We'll be chatting about
Speaker 1: them in a little bit too, which I think is
Speaker 1: useful context to give people. But yeah, Operation mind Fuck
Speaker 1: becomes a mix of deliberate paranoid incitement an anarchist political project.
Speaker 1: Some of the press, some of the press releases they
Speaker 1: send out are just like conspiracy nonsense, but others are
Speaker 1: comparatively serious where they are advocating for specific political acts.
Speaker 1: They put out a big paper urging a permanent universal
Speaker 1: rent strike, and their idea is that everyone should just
Speaker 1: start stop paying rent and go about their lives as normal.
Speaker 1: So there, it's this mix of like, here things we
Speaker 1: actually believe, and here's a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: This mix of conspiratorial incitement and sincere attempts to push
Speaker 1: some political change was a conscious aping of a strategy
Speaker 1: that Greg Hill, who wrote under the name mal Eclipse
Speaker 1: the Younger, had come across in a book titled The
Speaker 1: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. The authors had argued
Speaker 1: that the only strategy an opponent can't predict is a
Speaker 1: random one. Hence what became the New Religion's maxim, we
Speaker 1: Discordians must stick apart. Now, Yeah, it's like what they're
Speaker 1: what they're doing is like a thing in game theory.
Speaker 1: We do actually talk about this in the Chess episodes,
Speaker 1: where like, if you're like a random weirdo, like you
Speaker 1: can sometimes beat people in these games who are much
Speaker 1: better than you because you just are not acting in
Speaker 1: a way that it can they can possibly predict. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are arguments that I've been reading a little bit,
Speaker 1: and forgive me, I know very little about go, but
Speaker 1: basically one of the things that people will say is
Speaker 1: that like a good chess computer cannot be beat by humans,
Speaker 1: right like when it's when it's playing it It's like
Speaker 1: we are past the point where human beings can beat
Speaker 1: the machines and chessum. But you they kind of don't
Speaker 1: have computers at go that are that reliable at beating
Speaker 1: human beings. They're they're good, um, And some of this
Speaker 1: has to do there's just been less work in doing
Speaker 1: this with machines that play Go. But one of the
Speaker 1: things people will notice that because there are so many
Speaker 1: more possibilities and Go, human players can just do crazy
Speaker 1: shit and the machine gets kind of tripped up right
Speaker 1: in a way that's not as possible with chess, because
Speaker 1: there's less sort of options that you have in them
Speaker 1: of chess than you do with Go. Um. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: find this interesting. Not an expert on Go. Another inspiration
Speaker 1: for Thornley Hill, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shay, and the
Speaker 1: other early Discordians are the situationists. As Garrison just said, now,
Speaker 1: these are a group of avant guard artists and activists.
Speaker 1: They start out in France. Their basic contention this isn't
Speaker 1: like the fifties, right, So this is in the period
Speaker 1: of time and when like Greg and Carry are like
Speaker 1: teenagers and young adults, is when the situations are kind
Speaker 1: of at their most influential, and the basic contention that
Speaker 1: the situations have is that culture, in the form of
Speaker 1: advertising and increasingly slick mass media, is being forced upon us.
Speaker 1: The situationists believe that you should resist cultural homogeneity with
Speaker 1: a sort of artistic judo, taking the momentum of mass
Speaker 1: media and turning it back against its wielder. Situationist art
Speaker 1: projects were supposed to have no single author or creator,
Speaker 1: as they value decentralization of creation. Artists would work together
Speaker 1: under shared names and rejected the idea of the visionary
Speaker 1: out tour. Again you can see how this had a
Speaker 1: big influence on what would Greg and Carry and the
Speaker 1: others are doing. Key to this thinking is the idea
Speaker 1: of the spectacle, originally defined by guide Aboard as the
Speaker 1: autocratic rain of the market economy. The media is one
Speaker 1: outward expression of the form of this autocratic rain. As
Speaker 1: a Board wrote, rather than talk of the spectacle, people
Speaker 1: often prefer to use the term media, and by this
Speaker 1: they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of
Speaker 1: public service. Now this is all a little bit wonky,
Speaker 1: so I want to turn to a paragraph by Tierman
Speaker 1: Morgan and Laurie Pergey explaining the concept in more detail.
Speaker 1: Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism's instrument for distracting and
Speaker 1: pacifying the masses. The spectacle takes on many more forms
Speaker 1: today than it did during Debord's lifetime. It can be
Speaker 1: found on every screen that you look at. It is
Speaker 1: the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop up
Speaker 1: ads that appear in your browser. It is the listical
Speaker 1: telling you ten things you need to know about X.
Speaker 1: The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of commodifiable
Speaker 1: fragments while encouraging us to focus on appearances. For Debord,
Speaker 1: this constituted an unacceptable degradation of our lives. And by
Speaker 1: the way, all of this stuff has a huge influence
Speaker 1: on the Wachowskis and is kind of like the basis
Speaker 1: of the Matrix movie, which ausies in verse black that
Speaker 1: that ship gets fucking turned around. Yeah, sure it does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is one of those things where I have a
Speaker 1: lot of sympathies with this, with the situationists, and I
Speaker 1: like that style of practis. But also this thing can
Speaker 1: get turned in on itself, turned in on itself, like
Speaker 1: can you can never actually escape the loop? You can
Speaker 1: only try to loop it even tighter and then hopefully
Speaker 1: it will collapse in on itself. But yeah, it will
Speaker 1: keep because we keeps described. We haven't described the loop
Speaker 1: that Deboard sets up quite yet for people. But but
Speaker 1: hold on to that thought because I do want to.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that in just a second.
Speaker 1: So Debord is convinced that art has failed and is
Speaker 1: essentially dead as a thing capable of carrying meaningful countercultural messages.
Speaker 1: And this is because the spectacle is an expert at
Speaker 1: something called recuperation, where ideas and individuals that were initially
Speaker 1: subversive are trivialized, cleansed of their revolutionary potential, and reincorporated
Speaker 1: to mainstream capitalist society as commodities. The easiest example of
Speaker 1: this is like a shape Guivara T shirt, Right, this
Speaker 1: communist revolutionary being turned into this like shirt that you
Speaker 1: buy at a head shop that's owned by a hedge fund. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like a podcast about like cool revolutionaries in history that's
Speaker 1: like exactly the corporation that's ever existed. These are all
Speaker 1: good examples, Margaret, thank you. From Kimberll Valanov's Out in
Speaker 1: My Head, the way the situation is suggested fighting against
Speaker 1: recuperation was called determment, which is what Garrison was talking
Speaker 1: about a little bit ago, and it is the recontextualizing
Speaker 1: of an existing work of art in order to shift
Speaker 1: its meaning towards something that inspires revolutionary feelings. Now, the
Speaker 1: situationalists are also motivated by the concept of psychogeography, which
Speaker 1: is a way of describing one's surroundings in order to
Speaker 1: like influence their emotional state. It's a little bit difficult
Speaker 1: to describe some of the situationalists art over a podcast,
Speaker 1: but one thing that they would do in Paris is
Speaker 1: they would like cut up and reshuffle maps that were
Speaker 1: then given to people in order to encourage people to
Speaker 1: under two different parts of the city that they would
Speaker 1: not otherwise have traveled to and thus build connections between them. Right.
Speaker 1: This is kind of part of what they're trying to
Speaker 1: do here, is trying to cut their What they saw
Speaker 1: is the power that maps had over how humans thought
Speaker 1: about the geography of their cities. This is also a
Speaker 1: response to the fact that city planners like set up
Speaker 1: cities in such a way to keep certain groups of
Speaker 1: people apart. Right, I mean, you can think about the
Speaker 1: way this existed whatever city you live. This is a
Speaker 1: part like look at the way bike lanes are always
Speaker 1: set up, right. They don't go to poor neighborhoods as
Speaker 1: a general rule. They connect affluent parts of town to
Speaker 1: affluent parts of town or places where people shop. It's
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent of the case, but that is
Speaker 1: a lot of them, right. This is a thing that
Speaker 1: the situation is still recognizing when this is one of
Speaker 1: the things in which that the kind of art that
Speaker 1: they're doing is trying to fight against. This all sounds
Speaker 1: very heavy, but situationist art is often credited with sparking
Speaker 1: a massive series of riots in Paris in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which is right within the time period we're talking about. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the situation ationist international kind of falls apart eventually for
Speaker 1: the same reason most left wing movements do. But the
Speaker 1: tactics that they'd pioneered and the goal of their work
Speaker 1: gets kind of stuck in the teeth of the global left.
Speaker 1: And that's all happening kind of in the period of
Speaker 1: time before and right at the height of what well, right,
Speaker 1: the start at least of what the Discordians are doing.
Speaker 1: Um all, right, now, now we can talk about it Garrison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's just one of those It's
Speaker 1: just one of those things that because we've even seen
Speaker 1: like this situation, has tried to get ahead of that
Speaker 1: type of recuperation and it's just a very hard thing
Speaker 1: to do. Like it's it's, it's it is. It is
Speaker 1: one of those things that eventually there there are attempts
Speaker 1: to even to even put that recuperation and commodify that
Speaker 1: even aspect of it. It's like one of the few
Speaker 1: good jokes in Rick and Morty that I that I
Speaker 1: stand by is the is the is the freedom wafer
Speaker 1: selects of of like distilling this brain juice that is
Speaker 1: that is that is that that gets them like grown
Speaker 1: during an act of rebellion and selling that back to
Speaker 1: you so you can consume and have that same feeling
Speaker 1: of rebellion. And it's yeah, it's it's it's this. It's
Speaker 1: this mechanism that can just keep on going into itself
Speaker 1: and getting trying to break out if that is I
Speaker 1: mean a topic of a lot of this type of
Speaker 1: political theory. But so yeah, it's this um oh sorry, Margaret, Oh,
Speaker 1: just like this idea that the de tournament thing used
Speaker 1: to make a lot of sense to me. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Adbusters and stuff like the late nineties early
Speaker 1: We'll chat about them a little bit later. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that was like I was in art school and
Speaker 1: Adbusters came around, and then I dropped out of art
Speaker 1: school to go travel and try and do anarchy or whatever,
Speaker 1: And these are related thoughts. Yeah, and the de Tournament
Speaker 1: and all that was a big part of it. But
Speaker 1: I like but seemed tornment then loop so many times
Speaker 1: I'm kind of back to just like regular direct cultural
Speaker 1: attack just making art. Yeah, you just fucking do the
Speaker 1: things you believe in, and you say the things you
Speaker 1: believe into people, and you just fucking try like instead
Speaker 1: of the Judo thing, you just punch him in the face,
Speaker 1: you know, I Margaret, I hadn't thought this until just now,
Speaker 1: but it kind of occurs to me that you can
Speaker 1: argue that the situationists part of what they're doing is
Speaker 1: similar to what VII Shopped was doing way back in
Speaker 1: the day. It's this thing that like you have to
Speaker 1: hide your message one way or the other, right that
Speaker 1: like that has to be a part of it. Like
Speaker 1: there's it's interesting this like because I'm thinking about like
Speaker 1: I can remember there's a lot of folks on the
Speaker 1: left who part of like will celebrate And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is wrong, but like one of the things
Speaker 1: they love about The Matrix is that it is so
Speaker 1: clearly inspired by the situation is like down to the
Speaker 1: path fact that like, at the very beginning of the movie,
Speaker 1: Neo has a copy of a book called The Society
Speaker 1: the Spectacle, right, like that's believe, I believe he has
Speaker 1: a semi laker and Stimulation which oh sorry, sorry, it's
Speaker 1: it's right, which was which was inspired by the writings
Speaker 1: of Society of the Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah um. And
Speaker 1: so it's like, is that an example of an insurgent
Speaker 1: form of art being snuck into a massive Hollywood blockbuster
Speaker 1: or is the move? Is the Matrix itself an example
Speaker 1: of the recuperation of what the situationists were doing, because
Speaker 1: it's this multi billion dollar franchise, And then even and
Speaker 1: then even the Matrix is rebellious messages get recuperated by
Speaker 1: fascism with with the res is talking about red pills,
Speaker 1: but sister screams at him, but but and then on
Speaker 1: but then the fourth Matrix film is about the recuperation
Speaker 1: of the first of Matrin and it's it's looping on
Speaker 1: itself endlessly, and this is this is what operation mind
Speaker 1: fuck is really after. It's about causing this loop to
Speaker 1: destroy people's brains and make reality incredibly malleable, and that
Speaker 1: is that that is the goal of this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I would argue, they're not trying to destroy people's brains.
Speaker 1: And I think that because again, the story we're building
Speaker 1: too is this does all go terribly wrong. But I
Speaker 1: think an argument you could make if your pro mind
Speaker 1: fuck is that, well, the situationalists were cool, but also
Speaker 1: it would have been a real bad thing if people
Speaker 1: had believed too strongly in what they were doing and
Speaker 1: and come to like treat these ideas of determment as
Speaker 1: if it is something you should take that seriously, as
Speaker 1: like the most effective way of fighting against capitalist modernity,
Speaker 1: and maybe getting people to think this way and start
Speaker 1: looking at these kind of loops of recuperation in which
Speaker 1: these things the situationalist created created this multibillion dollar franchise,
Speaker 1: and then that maybe that causes people to take all
Speaker 1: of it a little bit less seriously and treat it
Speaker 1: more like a tool in the toolbox rather than something
Speaker 1: that should be the core of your personality. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: as I feel like some of the recuperation stuff, it's
Speaker 1: like people get mad because they punched someone and then
Speaker 1: they got punched back. It's like, right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do this thing that attacks capitalism. Capitalism is going to
Speaker 1: look and be like, all right, well, what's the best
Speaker 1: thing I can do? And they might try and use
Speaker 1: that back against me, like of course they are. We're
Speaker 1: we're fighting, Like I punched them and they punched me,
Speaker 1: Like this is like, yeah, it's a it's a conflict.
Speaker 1: And in a conflict, um, you learn from the actions
Speaker 1: of your adversary, which is why idea like you have this,
Speaker 1: you have this very interesting uh anarchist group called Up
Speaker 1: against the Wall. This is who I was thinking about
Speaker 1: trying all this. Yeah. Yeah, cut the fence at woodstock,
Speaker 1: which makes woodstock what it is in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and then woodstock winds up in pepsi commercial Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: life and actually the situation it's kicked out the British
Speaker 1: situationists because they liked Up against the Wall motherfuckers. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: Up against the Wall motherfuckers had a conflict with the
Speaker 1: This is all sorry, we didn't need to go And
Speaker 1: what if you want, I have a whole episode of
Speaker 1: A That's Up against the Wall Motherfuckers came out recently. Excellent, excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: we are going to cover all of this in more
Speaker 1: detail lately, but I wanted to talk in this by
Speaker 1: talking about the situationists, because as the Discordian Church really
Speaker 1: starts to take off in the early nineteen seventies, that's
Speaker 1: the goal that Thornley and Hill and Robert Anton Wilson
Speaker 1: and Bob Shay and all their friends kind of have
Speaker 1: as to in a very situationist manner, take the cultural
Speaker 1: weight of these conspiracy theories that the John Birch Society
Speaker 1: and the Right Our Sea as a method to power
Speaker 1: and are using still to this day as a method
Speaker 1: of power. And they are trying to, in a situationist manner,
Speaker 1: kind of like Judo, turn the weight of this stuff
Speaker 1: back against itself by, as Garrison said, in some ways
Speaker 1: kind of breaking the brains of the people who believe this,
Speaker 1: by widening the field of play conspiratorially right, instead of
Speaker 1: instead of the instead of the John Birch Society being
Speaker 1: the only word on the illuminati. Well, let's expand what
Speaker 1: this fucker can be well beyond what they can control,
Speaker 1: and maybe the hope is that they can't manipulate people
Speaker 1: as effectively and that maybe people even become less manipulatable.
Speaker 1: Now spoiler, this is debatable as to whether or not
Speaker 1: it works very well. Some people would argue that what
Speaker 1: the Discordians are about to do is build a very
Speaker 1: well crafted gun and then leave it on the table
Speaker 1: in a room full of four year olds. But we
Speaker 1: will talk about that next week. Y'all got any plugables
Speaker 1: to plug? Well? If you want to support people trying
Speaker 1: to use some of these same type of tactics in
Speaker 1: defense of the forest, you can donate to the to
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Solidarity Fund of the One of the posters
Speaker 1: I saw around Atlanta about about the topcop City stuff.
Speaker 1: It it ended with a very situationist esque motto, which
Speaker 1: was reality the battlefield. And yeah, so this type of
Speaker 1: thing is is continuing on today, and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not just people making propaganda, it's also people like
Speaker 1: doing stuff physically in the real world and face the situationists,
Speaker 1: did you know? Yeah? Absolutely, And and there's people facing
Speaker 1: legal consequences for it, and if you want to support
Speaker 1: this people that are that are experiencing state repression, you
Speaker 1: can donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Yes, donate to
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. And it is it is good
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. This is why one of the
Speaker 1: things I would like to leave liberal type folks, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean that as like a slur, but like
Speaker 1: folks who are kind of like more centrist in liberals
Speaker 1: who we have a lot of listeners who are of
Speaker 1: that tendency. What I would like to leave you with
Speaker 1: is the next time you hear someone on the right
Speaker 1: say something that is objectively factually wrong and feel the
Speaker 1: desire to dunk on them, consider whether or not you're
Speaker 1: just feeding the loop, right, because reality is the battle
Speaker 1: field and you may not in fact be able to
Speaker 1: damage their cause by locking into an argument with them,
Speaker 1: right that that that may be a doomed tactic in
Speaker 1: the way that we're talking about, a doomed tactic that
Speaker 1: is much more in line with the people that I
Speaker 1: tend to admire Politically. There's no political side has a
Speaker 1: monopoly on doomed tactics, but I think it is worth
Speaker 1: saying that if arguing with conservatives about the nature of
Speaker 1: reality could change things. We would be in a different
Speaker 1: situation right now, and perhaps other tactics are necessary. My
Speaker 1: Margaret is for the derieve my favorite of the situationist tactics,
Speaker 1: which is gopher a walk and go for a walk
Speaker 1: where you don't normally go for a walk. I love
Speaker 1: the idea of that as like a way to change
Speaker 1: your scope of reality. I think that they did a
Speaker 1: really good job of that. And then also a plug
Speaker 1: that all of the references earlier about Jamie doing all
Speaker 1: of this, and that is Jamie Loftus, who has a
Speaker 1: bunch of podcasts on this very network, including My Year
Speaker 1: in Mensa UM and a bunch of other ones. And
Speaker 1: then I and did Jamie do nine to eleven? We
Speaker 1: can't say she didn't. I actually think that we probably can. Okay,
Speaker 1: she comes from the northeast, Margaret, that's true. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. Suspicious true, suspicious grade? Okay,
Speaker 1: the third grade? Nine to eleven three times three is nine.
Speaker 1: Sophie also did too many too many conspiracy also, like
Speaker 1: didn't didn't we like just read that that um the
Speaker 1: Illuminati was controlling the girl Scouts like they're specifically going
Speaker 1: after they are organizations with kids to recruit them to
Speaker 1: do these types of acts. Powerful that it all makes
Speaker 1: sense now, because if we've learned one lesson in this series,
Speaker 1: it's that joking about this stuff never has consequences. Cos
Speaker 1: I was just so proud that got those things all
Speaker 1: in one reference. That's good. That was good. All right,
Speaker 1: everybody go, um go make a conspiracy somewhere. You know
Speaker 1: what I'll add. I'll add to what Margaret said about
Speaker 1: taking a walk another anarchist thinker, uh uh graver or
Speaker 1: David David grab Yeah, David Graber. One of the arguments
Speaker 1: he made was that when you're out walking in a city,
Speaker 1: as often as possible, cross somewhere other than where you're
Speaker 1: legally supposed to cross. But look both ways. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: look both ways. Don't get hit by a car post anyway.
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