How the Corona Crisis Has Exposed New Age as a Potential Violent Movement
The photo of the “QAnon Shaman”, Jake Angeli, has become an icon of the storm on Capitol.
As I wrote in my first article on the Corona crisis (Covid-19: The Fall of America and the Rise of China), the crisis has exposed and provoked quite a lot.
For example: It has forced us to remember the Greco-Roman philosophers´, and the early Christian´s, mantra: Memento Mori. Remember that you must die. The Corona crisis has, besides it´s obvious negative side (illness, death, restrictions) also accomplished one of the most strange events in world history. All over the world, people have, of course due to government restrictions, stopped up. They stay at home, they don´t fly, they think over their behavior. People show will to co-operation, helpfulness, kindness. Moreover: the whole consumer industry has stopped up. Capitalism has received a major blow. This has resulted in that Nasa now can show pictures of a decreasing air pollution. There rules a strange stillness everywhere, a kind of meditation, a moment of afterthought. This is the portal which the Indian author, Arundhati Roy, talks about. In other words: it also seems like the Corona crisis is interconnected with climate crisis. But, the pandemic will hardly be used as a portal. Instead there will, as indicated in my first article, probably happen a change in power balance, where Westerners will be the gaping witnesses, and victims, to the rise of China. We will probably, for a brief period. see a hybrid of Western Surveillance Capitalism and Chinese communism. China is also a strong supporter of evolutionism, and don´t care much about climate change. But the Corona crisis has also delivered a severe blow to the ideology of evolutionism; the ideology, where we find it natural to talk about that life is about progress, development, growth, renewal, innovation, visions, whether it's economic, political, social conditions, spiritual - and also when it comes to art. However, evolutionism is a newer Western phenomenon. In the rest of the world, it did not exist before the Europeans. All pre-modern societies had a cyclic view of history. In the society of today it is stated in all areas that we must move on, develop ourselves, renew ourselves and the institutions, companies, develop trade, exports, imports. In the cyclic societies concepts such as gods, providence and destiny were central. But such concepts have now been replaced with ideas of growth and progress. In business, innovation and expansion have become key words. Evolutionism has gone so much into the blood that it also characterizes our view of spirituality. If we should try to view the Corona Crisis in connection with this teaching, we could say, that the collective ego-inflation of our time is based on extremely self-obsessed thinking. This self-obsessed thinking is especially seen in the United States of America. It is a part of the so-called “American Dream”. In his book Fantasyland – How America Went Haywire, Kurt Andersen writes that an entertainer, reality tv star, conspiracy theorist, con artist and pathological liar are now sitting in the White House. In his book Andersen argues for that USA was created by people, who likes good stories and the believe in the, some times a bit too, fantastic worlds. The book describes the Trump-phenomenon as a direct consequence of the land´s history. The national character is determined by the right of believing what you want. No matter what others are saying. This moment in history, the era of Donald Trump, where facts no longer are facts, are quite natural for Americans. Around the turn of the century another revolution happened: the internet allows the spread of fake news, and wrong information and viewpoints explode. Conspiracy theorists have found a haven here. Donald Trump, for example, created his political platform and power base in the republican party on the background of a conspiracy theory: that the former president, Barack Obama, not is born in USA. The internet creates a perfect infrastructure to obscure ideas and beliefs, which before were long from mainstream. Alternative realities could now be discharged to a huge audience, which the traditional gatekeepers couldn´t control. While almost all other countries are working deeply seriously with the corona virus, we see an American president, and a large American population, claim that the virus is a hoax. And in connection with the presidential election we were witnessing a new conspiracy growing: the so-called QAnon conspiracy. And it is especially the exposure of this conspiracy theory, which has exposed New Age as a potential violent movement. QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them. QAnon has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. QAnon also claimed that Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. Between March and June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, QAnon activity nearly tripled on Facebook and nearly doubled on Instagram and Twitter. By that time, QAnon had spread to Europe, from the Netherlands to the Balkan Peninsula. It maintains an especially strong following in Germany. Far-right activists and influencers have created a German audience for QAnon on YouTube, Facebook, and Telegram estimated at 200,000. One German Reichsbürger group adopted QAnon to promote its belief that modern Germany is not a sovereign republic, but rather a corporation created by Allied nations after World War II, and expressed its hope that Trump would lead an army to restore the Reich. In Russia, a similar conspiracy theory, the "Union of Slavic Forces of Russia" or "Soviet Citizens"—which claims the Russian Federation is a Delaware-based LLC that occupies the legal territory of the Soviet Union—also became susceptible to QAnon beliefs. Many Canadians have also propagated QAnon, and one in four Britons are said to believe in QAnon-related theories, though only six percent support QAnon. The movement has also spread to Spain and Latin America, with countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay and Brazil having an online presence. QAnon is disseminated mainly by Trump supporters, who refer to the Storm and the Great Awakening. QAnon's precepts and vocabulary are closely related to the religious concepts of millenarianism and apocalypticism, leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious movement. Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as the "Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or to face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country. The result will be salvation and utopia on earth. A May 30, 2019, FBI "Intelligence Bulletin" memo from the Phoenix Field Office identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat. And now to New Age. Pastel QAnon is a collection of techniques aimed predominantly at indoctrinating women into the conspiracy theory, mainly on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram and TikTok. It uses feminine-coded aesthetics (including a pastel color palette, from which it gets its name), language, activities and communities, and uses gateway messaging to frame the conspiracies as reasonable concerns. Concordia University, Canada, researcher Marc-André Argentino identified the trend. Pastel QAnon targets several existing communities and “movements” which are predominantly populated by women including; lifestyle, celebrity, influencers, fashion, beauty, fitness, dieting, mothers and community groups, yoga, self-improvement and self-care, “holistic” living, childbirth (including home birth), pregnancy and childcare support groups, interior design and party planning. “Conspirituality” messaging within groups is often spread by their “leaders” and “influencers” for monetary gain especially during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the impact on their businesses e.g. yoga instructors and other “wellness” professionals spreading anti vaccination conspiracies. Researchers have identified lack of investment in women's health as a key driver for women adoption of “conspirituality.” Conspirituality is a neologism portmanteau describing the overlap of conspiracy theories with spirituality, typically of New Age varieties. The term was coined for the 2011 study "The Emergence of Conspirituality" by sociologists Charlotte Ward and David Voas published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. They characterize the movement as follows: "It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a 'paradigm shift' in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian 'new world order' is to act in accordance with an awakened 'new paradigm' worldview." The authors noted that sometimes those with New Age beliefs are more prone to thinking like conspiracy theorists. The study also describes The Zeitgeist Movement, an activist group, as being a part of the conspirituality movement. Conspirituality has therefore also been linked to the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon and COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats. In the article, How Covid-19 myths are merging with the QAnon conspiracy theory (BBC News, 3 September 2020), Marianna Spring and Mike Wendling write: Online and in real-life demonstrations, two viral conspiracy theories are increasingly coming together. At first glance the only thing they appear to have in common is their vast distance from reality. On one hand, QAnon: a convoluted conspiracy theory that contends that President Trump is waging a secret war against Satan-worshipping elite paedophiles. On the other, a swirling mass of pseudoscience claiming that coronavirus does not exist, or is not fatal, or any number of other baseless claims. These two ideas are now increasingly coming together, in a grand conspiracy mash-up. So, large parts of the New Age movement are a part of this merging with QAnon. Besides what already is mentioned, it is my view (as always in my cultural criticism), that this, basically, has to do with the philosophical background in postmodernism, anti-intellectualism and anti-science, as well as Anti-realism (subjective idealism, relativism, etc.). Let me go a bit into some of the background and my own “insider knowledge” of New Age. In my article, My Life as a Vagabond, I described how I actually lived more or less like a "Dharma Bum" for about 36 years. The period could be seen as starting in 1990, and ending in 2008, where I published my first book. But the period is actually longer. It started in London in 1985, and ended in 2016, where I was hospitalized with a liver disease. Here I had a near-death experience. The whole thing was generated by my kundalini awakening, which happened in the start of 1990. In London I had started reading about spirituality (mostly new age and occultism), and I practiced yoga and meditation. I was also quite into the beat writers and the counterculture (especially Robert Anton Wilson - see my articles, Final Secret of the Illuminati and The Godgame). After my kundalini awakening, I started using alcohol to calm down the symptoms. This was somehow justified by the “counterculture philosophy”. I considered myself as a chaos magician, or a “chaos navigator”. I was very much into the third virtue of critical thinking: flexible thinking, or looking at things from above. That is: a life of bohemianism, poetry and storytelling, combined with the use of drugs and alcohol. I vagabonded around the world in search of so-called Pirate utopias. Pirate utopias were defined by anarchist writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey), who coined the term in his 1995 book Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes as secret islands once used for supply purposes by pirates. Wilson's concept is largely based on speculation, although he admits to adding a bit of fantasy to the idea. In Wilson's view, these pirate enclaves were early forms of autonomous proto-anarchist societies in that they operated beyond the reach of governments and embraced unrestricted freedom. More broadly, and in connection with Pirate Utopias, he has also coined the concepts of "Temporary Autonomous Zones", and "Permanent Autonomous Zones", both of which are communities that are autonomous from the generally recognized state or authority structure in which they are embedded (the latter link has a list of real existing zones). Wilson is, besides being a chaos magician, a practitioner of the so-called “Refusal of Work” movement. So was I. And I still am. But, today I see him as a “Gatekeeper” (see my article: The Godgame). I still recommend his book T.A.Z – The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, as a help of breaking up your negative thinking, and making your stagnated reality tunnels flower (download it for free). However, in my article, Peter Kingsley - Another Story Waiting to Pierce You, I have written a critique of Wilson, and it is this critique that is central for this article. In the Kingsley article I wrote: Who are Kingsley´s main sources of inspirations? In the beginning of Catafalque he mentions two: Carl Jung and Henry Corbin. Corbin could be the reason for Kingsley´s interest in Sufism. But if we take into consideration the philosophy Kingsley is advocating then it would be illustrating to draw in something that sounds very similar, namely chaos magic. Carl Jung is namely a completely central figure in chaos magic. Furthermore, chaos magic is a postmodern form of magic. When we take this into consideration, it seems that we have a clear overview of a puzzle, because the postmodern influence can explain a lot of Kingsley´s deconstructivist claims. For example, Kingsley claims that Empedocles is “sabotaging” reality (Reality, page 424). This kind of language is also used in chaos magic. Take for example the chaos magician Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), who in his book Taz: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is speaking the same “magical” language (note that Wilson in Iran translated classical Persian texts with Henry Corbin). Poetic terrorism. Wilson advocates some kind of postmodern Sufism, and the book can be seen as an intellectual justification of Islamic terrorism. In postmodernism, there is namely no discrimination between fiction and fact. Wilson has also written postmodern justifications of pedophilia. He is very much into sex with small boys. In fact, he just follows a long line of other postmodernists justifying pedophilia: Wilhelm Reich, Gilles Deleuze, Daniel Cohn Bendit, Tony Duvert, Gabriel Matzneff, René Schérer, Michel Foucault. Just to illustrate what postmodern “logic” can be used for. Perhaps the Catholic priests accused of pedophilia have read too much postmodernism on their studies. That might sound surprising. What´s not surprising, to me, is when we find out how many of the Islamic terrorists in fact are highly educated from Western Universities, where postmodernism rules everything. Wilson is describing different methods of how you can perform “poetic terrorism.” He describes this as a kind of performance art. In my booklet, Feminism as Fascism, I wrote about Valery Solanas´s murder attempt on Andy Warhol: On June 3, 1968, she went to The Factory, where she found Warhol. She shot at Warhol three times, with the first two shots missing and the final one wounding Warhol. She also shot art critic Mario Amaya, and attempted to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, point blank, but the gun jammed. Solanas then turned herself in to the police. She was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. Many postmodernists describe, in continuation of Wilson, Solanas´s murder attempt as, “a great piece of performance art”. I have many times written about how postmodernism is the intellectual background of New Age. It is therefore no surprise to see postmodernist war and violence rhetoric reflected in New Age. And, this is, with the Corona crisis, now coming into expression in direct activism (the activists often refer to themselves as “spiritual warriors”). With the 2021 storming of the United states Capitol, we see how my above warnings against QAnon as a potential domestic terror threat, now has proven correct. The photo of the “QAnon Shaman”, Jake Angeli (see photo in the start of this article), has become an icon of the storm on Capitol. The storm was among others, inspired by the novel “The Turner Diaries”, by neo-Nazi leader, William Luther Pierce - read more in the article: How ‘The Turner Diaries’ Incites White Supremacists, by Alexandra Alter (New York Times, Jan. 12, 2021). Many other kinds of activism are happening. Just an example. As reported in blog.to, the conspirituality movement is ramping up in Toronto over the battleground issue of masks. Stephanie Sibbio, proprietor of Glowing Mama Health and Fitness, filmed herself storming Sweet Potato health food store without the bylaw-required mask, demanding to be sold tampons in person. Video:
This is a typical way of abusing the concept of human rights. Let me repeat the following sentences from my article, The Difference Between Philosophical Education and Ideological Education. They are the essence of what human rights are all about:
In philosophy you focus on, what cooperation and conversation require of you in order to that you at all can exist: that you speak true (don´t lie), that you are prepared to reach mutual understanding and agreement (don´t manipulate), don´t make an exception of yourself (but treat others as equals). From this rises the eternal moral values (as for example that it is wrong to lie), and generally our ideas of right and justice: the so-called human rights, the idea about the individual person´s autonomy and dignity: you shall treat the other not as a mean, but as a goal. Glowing Mama is doing just about the opposite. She is abusing human rights in the sake of an ideology (I use her as an example, since her abuse of human rights, is repeated in numerous ways on social medias). Therefore Matthew Remski (from the Conspirituality Podcast) can write, in his article: Glowing Mama Anti-masker - Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in Health Food Store: This tense incident played out in my hometown, where I’ve worked in the yoga world for more than a decade. Here’s a brief summary of the key conspirituality themes and methods on display here, with some insider notes: 1) Entitlement. Sweet Potato is located in The Junction, a highly-gentrified and mostly white district of Toronto, boasting an average house price of 933K. If this is Sibbio’s neighbourhood, she’s either well-off or has access to money. The retail (frontline) worker she confronts, patronizes, and harasses, sounds as though they are Latin American by heritage. 2) Alt-right media tactics. The hand-held quick-march muttering selfie is a favoured tool of shitposters out to wreck the libs in public spaces. It’s also highly engaging, as the viewer is being backed into the horizon of the target, pinned in place as a witness. 3) “I am a law of one.” Sibbio’s assault on the store relies on a highly motivated interpretation of the current Toronto masking bylaw, as violating her “human rights”. The bylaw does list exemptions, but in this video Sibbio does not appeal to the exemptions. From a phone call with Toronto Public Health, I learned that if a customer were to invoke a medical exemption, the business should attempt to provide delivery or curbside service. Sibbio was offered both, but she had an emergency: she was out of tampons. 4) “My body is the most sacred thing in the world”. In the world of women’s alt-health, menstruation is a sacred act. The masking bylaw is interrupting Sibbio’s care for it. She is both powerful but also vulnerable, and feels her favourite organic store must now be responsible for her hygiene. Her urgent bodily need should obviously be honoured above any social restrictions or etiquette. 5) Emotional incontinence. As a wellness influencer, Sabbio’s bodily pride is a public commodity, and broadcasting a hygiene need is a sign of liberation or feminist empowerment. Here, her anger at the store workers is also worthy of aggressive posting. This makes sense. The influencer economy is driven by oversharing in all categories. Anxiety or frustration at lockdown measures is not something to regulate but something to monetize. 6) “Sovereignty” and its discontents. On Instagram, Sibbio posts COVID and vaccine disinformation from conspirituality zealots like Del Bigtree and Zach Bush. Common in their discourse is the concept of “sovereignty”, a term meant to refer to the value of bodily autonomy, but which has white supremacist roots. Sibbio’s assault on the health-food is rooted in this logic, that she should never be asked to regulate her body in any way for the benefit of society. But by making her stand hinge on being able to buy hygiene products whenever and however she wants to, sovereignty is reduced to the right to be a unimpeded consumer. I haven’t seen any influencer use this concept to point at “self reliance”, which might encourage a person to be more resourceful. Conspiritualists yearn for sovereignty, but also uninterrupted customer service. 7) “My breath is sacred.” As Sibbio is standing there insulting and endangering the workers, she is potentially a vector for asymptomatic spread with every patronizing word she speaks. It’s unlikely she would ever admit to this, because this would suggest not only that the virus is real, but a lack of mindfulness or self-awareness with regard to her internal condition. Wellness influencers must at all times believe they are well, or that they have the capacity for self-healing. If they don’t, their own unregulated products are called into question. In a confrontation like this, this attitude creates a peak form of passive aggression. Sibbio can present like a proud glowing mama while everyone around her knows she is toxic. Because she doesn’t believe in COVID, she has plausible deniability. This is a perfect strategy for yoga-types who want to present as socially acceptable while acting like assholes. 8) Conspirituality exposes community fragility. Sibbio’s Instagram feed features a tribute to yoga teacher Diane Bruni, who died on January 23rd, decades too soon, after living with cancer. Bruni was a personal friend of mine, and was beloved of thousands in the wider yoga world. Sibbio writes: “From the first time I took your class when I was 15 years old, to the last time I ran into you and gave you a hug, you have and will forever hold a special place in my heart.” This is incongruent, as Bruni would have been appalled by Sibbio’s storming of Sweet Potato. At the beginning of the pandemic, Bruni was a community leader in offering sanitation advice, showing how she was sanitizing her car keys and credit card after shopping trips. Cancer and treatment left her immune-compromised. She had to isolate from virtually everyone for the last year of her life, while navigating arduous hospital treatments. The fact that Sibbio can both love and outrage the memory of a mentor is an object lesson in how fragile yoga and wellness communities are in terms of shared values. People can come to love each other through ritual experiences, and powerful embodiment practices. But because the relentless focus of these industries is on personal development through privatized religion, it’s a gamble as whether any individual within them is going to behave as a citizen, or believe they are citizens at all. In his book T.A.Z., the above-mentioned Peter Lamborn Wilson, also describes different kinds of black magic rituals. He frequently uses words such as terrorism, sabotage, assassins, crime, black sorcery, violence, murder, war, and, black magic as revolutionary action. From page 55 to page 59, he describes how to perform black magic curses. He, for example, describes the so-called "Malay Black Djinn Curse". On page 58, he writes: At present, for tactical reasons, we do not advocate violence or sorcery against individuals. We call for actions against institutions & ideas […] How should action against institutions avoid attacks on individuals? Others are therefore, with inspiration from this, going further. The website, Kalika War Party – Eliminating Social Evil (which I found on the Facebook profile of a Pastel QAnon influencer), writes about itself: This site presents the morality and method for eliminating psychopaths and enemies of life from the world. And: The KWP [Kalika War Party] adds to the peaceful solution its proper measure of violence, homeopathically dosed. This strategy may be called contra-violence: the use of intentional, targeted violence against those who rule by force and never concede their power voluntarily. The striking force applied by warriors in the Party is moral, mental, psychological, material, and magical—including the lethal measure of force, death by a killing spell (how to kill another human being through a black magic spell). Video of the Lethal Strike is available online at YouTube. However, the website makes a lot out of other possibilities of downloading it. Below is the YouTube video. You’ll have to go to around the middle of the video, before the more disgusting aspects begins (Note! You´ll need to click this YouTube link, or the link to YouTube provided below, since the owner doesn´t allow to share the video on other websites): New Age is continuing many of the themes from the counterculture movement. Besides postmodernism as an intellectual background, this is also happening through the intervention of the Human Potential Movement, and, especially, the Esalen Institute. In my article, The Godgame, I wrote:
I will also mention movements as "Gatekeepers", as for example the counter culture movement, which I´m highly inspired by, but which also was the cause of my spiritual crisis, and my alcohol abuse. We know the "light" side of the counter culture movement: Peace and Love. But the movement also had a "dark" occult side. People like Wiliam Burroughs, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson, were all members of the occult order: Illuminates of Thanateros. William Burroughs was, according to Arthur Versluis, quite a nasty fellow. In his book, American Gurus, Versluis writes: [...] The interviewer later asks this [to Burroughs]: "The Beat/Hip axis, notable in figures such as Ginsberg, want to transform the world by love and nonviolence. Do you share this interest?" Burroughs replies: Most emphatically no." [...] the direction of Burrough´s interest in these areas [sorcery, occultism] is markedly sinister or "left-hand" (page 101). This perhaps reflects George Harrison´s own well-founded disillusionment with psychedelics which was, in part, brought on by his visit to San Francisco´s Hight-Ashbury district in the 1960s. Rather than finding “hippie” spiritual seekers, he found a lot of kids virtually homeless and strung-out on drugs. It has been over fifty years since the heyday of the 1960s and the brief flowering of the psychedelic era that ended abruptly when Woodstock gave way to Altamont, the achievements of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) were obscured by the terrorist acts of the Weathermen, and sensitive Beatles lyrics inspired the homicidal rages of Charles Manson´s Family (see my pop culture file: The Beatles and Their Relation to Psychedelics. In the summer of 1969, a horrific cultic story would indelibly imprint itself on popular American culture, and its images would persist for decades to come. During morning hours of august 9, 1969, at a mansion located in an exclusive enclave of Los Angeles known as Benedict Canyon, five people were murdered. Among those found dead was actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski. Scrawled in blood at the scene were the words “Death to Pigs.” Later that night another multiple murder shook Los Angeles. A prominent couple, Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, were found stabbed to death in their home at the edge of Hollywood. The investigation of what became known as the “Tate-LaBianca murders” culminated in the arrests of members of a small cult group calling itself “The Family” or the ”Manson Family,” led by Charles Manson. I have several times told about how many psychic ill people I have met in the New Age movement, people who, due to New Age subjectivism and relativism, confuse their psychic illness with spiritual constructs, as for example kundalini and shamanic awakening. This is often the case with people who would be diagnosed as skizophrenic, delusional, bipolar, or simply disconnected and untethered from collective reality. Often they even work as shamans, therapists or spiritual healers. I have also had many people in counseling who were suffering from spiritual crises due to involvement with gurus who are psychic ill, and who have created their own “treatments.” I have written an article about the “phenomenon”: The Faust Syndrome and the End of the Time of Enlightened Masters. Also see my new blog post: United States of America: The Homeland of the New Gurus. Manson had a history of manipulating and controlling others as well as a list of mental health issues, including schizophrenia and a paranoid-delusional disorder. He had spent most of his youth in public institutions, and other than brief paroles, he had been locked up for most of the 1950s and 1960s. Manson studied Scientology and Buddhism. In 1967, at the age of thirty-two, he was released from prison for the last time (see my free Ebook: The Scientology Game – and The Matrix Player´s Handbook). The small cult of followers Manson assembled, which never numbered much more than one hundred, was fixated on his dark vision of a coming apocalypse. In his twisted mind Manson imagined that the Tate-LaBianca murders would be a pivotal point in an apocalyptic drama. Manson saw these senseless slayings as somehow becoming the ignition point of race war, which would engulf society and lead to the fulfillment of his destiny. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi said: “The Family at Spahn Ranch was Charlie Manson´s Family, ladies and gentlemen. He controlled every single facet of their daily existence.” The prosecutor explained, “Charles Manson´s Family preached love but practiced cold-blooded, savage murder. Why was that so? Because Charles Manson, their boss, ordained it.” Does that sound familiar to the teachings of the Kalika War Party? It is no co-incidence, because the whole thing is part of an underlying stream of American conspiracy thinking. And, as mentioned, today we see, that QAnon has been labeled as a potential domestic terror threat. In Hinduism, Kali Yuga is the last of the four stages (or ages or yugas) the world goes through as part of a 'cycle of yugas' described in the Sanskrit scriptures. The other ages are called Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Dvapara Yuga. The "Kali" of Kali Yuga means "strife", "discord", "quarrel" or "contention" and Kali Yuga is associated with the demon Kali (not to be confused with the goddess Kālī). The latter confusion however, is interesting in connection with the paradoxical in the Devil´s game (also note that "Discordianism" is highly praised in New Age circles). On the KWP website you´ll constantly hear about how the above-mentioned black magic is justified by references to Eastern spirituality, yin and yang, balance, love, light, positivity, tantra, human unity, etc., etc., etc. If the KWP website should decide to delete, I have saved it on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20210310171335/https://kalikawarparty.org/manifesto/ As I write in the Introduction to my website: A central theme in my cultural criticism is a defence of philosophy, which is under attack from scientism. On the whole, philosophy (especially Greco-Roman philosophy) is the basis of my work. I have many times told, that the simplest way to describe the main problem of today, is to describe the difference between sophism and philosophy. The Sophists were wandering teachers, who sold their “wisdom” to the bewildered populace of Periclean Athens. Any charlatan could make a killing, if enough people believed in him. Men like Gorgias and Protagoras, who wandered from house to house demanding fees for their instruction, preyed on the gullibility of a people made anxious by war (today it is Covid-19). To the young Plato, who observed their antics with outrage, these “Sophists” were a threat to the very soul of Athens. One alone among them seemed worthy of attention, and that one, the great Socrates whom Plato immortalised in his dialogues, was not a Sophist, but a true philosopher. The philosopher, in Plato´s characterization, awakens the spirit of inquiry. He helps his listeners to discover the truth, and it is they who bring forth, under his catalysing influence, the answer to life´s riddles. The philosopher is the midwife, and his duty is to help us to what we are – free and rational beings, who lack nothing that is required to understand our condition. The Sophist, by contrast, misleads us with cunning fallacies, takes advantage of our weakness, and offers himself as the solution to problems of which he himself is the cause. In my article, The Matrix Conspiracy (a central concept in my cultural criticism), I wrote: There are many signs of the Sophists, but principal among these is that they are subjectivists and relativists. Their teachings are about how to get on in the world, and not about how to find the truth. Anything goes: not facts, but the best story wins. And the result is mumbo-jumbo, condescension and the taking of fees. The philosopher uses plain language, does not talk down to his audience, and never asks for payment. Such was Socrates, and in proposing him as an ideal, Plato defined the social status of the philosopher for centuries to come. No one should doubt that sophistry is alive and well. The Matrix Conspiracy is permeated with it. We see it in the postmodern intellectualism, in the management culture, in the self-help industry and in the New Age environment. The Sophists are back with a vengeance, and are all the more to be feared, in that they come disguised as philosophers and scientists. For, in this time of helpless relativism and subjectivity, philosophy and science alone has stood against the tide, reminding us that those crucial distinctions on which life depends – between true and false, good and evil, right and wrong – are objective and binding. Philosophy and science has until now spoken with the accents of the academy and the laboratory and not with the voice of the fortune teller. When Plato founded the first academy, and placed philosophy at the heart of it, he did so in order to protect the precious store of wisdom from the assaults of charlatans, to create a kind of temple to truth in the midst of falsehood, and to marginalise the Sophists who preyed on human confusion. In philosophy, there is one term that covers the whole tendency of the rising of sophism: Anti-realism. My own view is, not surprisingly, the opposite: philosophical realism (this was also Plato´s and Aristotle´s view: click here). However, you´ll need to go into my other writings in order to get the full picture. My complete philosophy is collected in my free Ebook: Philosophical Counseling with Tolkien. Science is a direct product of Greco-roman philosophy, and this is one of the reasons why I completely support science. I have mentioned the problem with ideological/spiritual abuse of science. Therefore science itself must be protected in the same way as philosophy must be protected, from the attack of charlatans (sophists). Anti-realism is the generator of the thought distortion Denialism, which anti-realists often confuse with "critical thinking". In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event, when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality. In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas. The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the facts and the reality of the subject matters, and the term climate change denial describes denial of the scientific consensus that the climate change of planet Earth is a real and occurring event primarily caused in geologically recent times by human activity. The forms of denialism present the common feature of the person rejecting overwhelming evidence and the generation of political controversy with attempts to deny the existence of consensus. The existence of Covid-19 is precisely accentuated by the overwhelming evidence. The term COVID-19 denialism or new coronavirus denialism (or viral denialism) refers to the thinking of those who deny the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic or, at the very least, deny that deaths are happening in the manner or proportions scientifically recognized by the World Health Organization. These claims are considered pseudoscientific, and the current scientific consensus supports data issued by countries' health agencies (look at them instead of what Veronica writes on Facebook, or Todd says in his YouTube videos). Basically, look for correct Covid-19 information on these two websites: WHO (World Health Organization) CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) The difference between sophism and philosophy can also be described as the difference between ideology and philosophy. Ideology altogether is a psychic disease. You are not in doubt about, that ideology is a psychic disease if you look at its collective manifestations. It appears for example in the form of ideologies such as Communism, Liberalism, Conservatism, National Socialism and any other nationalism, or in the form of rigid religious systems of faith, which function with the implied assumption, that the supreme good lay out in the future, and that the end therefore justifies the means. The goal is an idea, a point out in a future, projected by the mind, where salvation is coming in some kind – happiness, satisfaction, equality, liberation, etc. It is not unusual, that the means to come to this is to make people into slaves, torture them and murder them here and now (read more in my article, The Difference Between Philosophical Education and Ideological Education). This article is the update I wrote to my longer article on Covid-19: Covid-19: The Fall of America and the Rise of China (In this article I understate, that my defense of science doesn´t mean that that there isn´t ideological movements that are trying to abuse the Corona crisis. First of all: the existence of Covid-19 is a scientific established fact, and it is a fact that the vaccination helps. We can see this now. Covid-19 deniers, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists brag about their open-mindedness and the closed-mindedness of the established scientific community. But there's nothing open-minded about hanging on to a theory that's WAY outside anyone's common sense, just because you really like it or you really like the person (or community) who told you it or you felt a spiritual response to it. If you want to know about science, go and find out about it. If you think you can do better than the scientists out there working on Covid-19, go and do it, instead of filling the internet with stories about it. Such stories will, as shown, be debunked. If not, just let go, and accept that there are things you don't know. To people who don´t agree with me, tell me why. Please lay off the "I don't understand any of the science but I just know in my heart that what Todd is saying on YouTube, or Veronica writes on Facebook, are “true” business. I've heard that far too many times already. If you think any of the facts that I'm giving are wrong, tell me why. And tell me why the facts are wrong, not how you think you can read my motivations from thousands of miles away. The facts are there. If they're correct, deal with it. If they're wrong, explain it. However, I will continue investigate ideological abuses of the Corona crisis. Just two examples: 1) There might come a problem with a heightened surveillance, digital identity (due to the Corona passport, which I believe only should be temporary). This is something I mentioned in the article. Also see my article: The Matrix Hybrid between Digital Totalitarianism, Surveillance Capitalism and Chinese Communism. And, with China, comes the other example: 2) The Wuhan lab-leak theory is now being taken seriously. Nearly a year and a half since Covid-19 was detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the question of how the virus first emerged remains a mystery. But in recent weeks the controversial claim that the pandemic might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory - once dismissed by many as a fringe conspiracy theory - has been gaining traction. Now, US President Joe Biden has announced an urgent investigation that will look into the theory as a possible origin of the disease. So, what do we know about the competing theories - and why does the debate matter? I will write an article on this. Here, I will also explain why a possibly lab-leak not can be intended, since the virus also affects China. It is also in contradiction with China´s effort of becoming the world´s leading superpower, since an intended lab-leak very likely would be exposed, and that China therefore completely would lose respect. In the meantime, read this article: Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously, BBC News, 27 May Articles mentioned (in the order they appear): How Covid-19 myths are merging with the QAnon conspiracy theory, by Marianna Spring and Mike Wendling (BBC News, 3 September 2020,) How ‘The Turner Diaries’ Incites White Supremacists, by Alexandra Alter (New York Times, Jan. 12, 2021) Glowing Mama Anti-masker - Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in Health Food Store, by Matthew Remski Covid: Biden orders investigation into virus origin as lab leak theory debated, BBC News, 27 May Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously, BBC News, 27 May Related texts by me (in the order they appear): Covid-19: The Fall of America and the Rise of China Evolutionism – The Red Thread in the Matrix Conspiracy Constructivism: The Postmodern Intellectualism Behind New Age and the Self-help Industry A Critique of the Growing Anti-intellectualism and Anti-science My Life as a Vagabond Final Secret of the Illuminati (a Critique of Robert Anton Wilson) The Godgame Peter Kingsley – Another Story Waiting to Pierce You (a critique) Feminism as Fascism The Difference Between Philosophical Education and Ideological Education The Beatles and Their Relation to Psychedelics The Faust Syndrome and the End of the Time of Enlightened Masters United States of America: The Homeland of the New Gurus The Scientology Game – and The Matrix Player´s Handbook The Matrix Conspiracy Philosophical Counseling with Tolkien The Matrix Hybrid between Digital Totalitarianism, Surveillance Capitalism and Chinese Communism Update! I don´t know if Charlie Tye has read about my concept of The Matrix Conspiracy, first mentioned in my 2010 book, A Portrait of a Lifeartist, but in the article, The Matrix: how conspiracy theorists hijacked the ‘red pill’ philosophy, he writes: …one of The Matrix’s most enduring cultural contributions has been to conspiracy theories. Motifs from the film have been adopted by online groups to reinforce their messages, which are often hateful and violent. Incels, or involuntary celibates, are particularly engaged with Matrix-style “philosophy”. A mass shooter in the UK, for example, was found, after his death, to have been using Matrix imagery in online discussion forums before committing his crimes. The problem is so widespread that the new Matrix film is being taken by some as a rejection of the trend. Ahead of the film’s release, two of its writers described themselves as approaching the movie with the intent of reclaiming the “red pill” trope from its hijackers. The idea of the red pill is a key example. In the original Matrix, the protagonist is invited to choose between a red and blue pill. The red reveals the world for what it truly is; an artificial construct of machines which have enslaved humanity. The blue allows the protagonist to remain in a comfortable delusion; spared from facing the horrors beyond. This cultural motif is now a cornerstone of conspiratorial thinking. Red pill conspiracy theories follow the same basic logic. A nefarious enemy is working behind the scenes, having concealed their harmful activities from the population. By “taking the red pill” believers “wake up” to this truth. It is perhaps ironic that in the film the red pill reveals reality for what it truly is while in conspiracy theories it allows adherents to construct their own reality – one which tends to reinforce and rationalise their own preconceptions. In other words: when the red pill conspiracies are talking about the Red Pill, they are in reality talking about the Blue Pill. |
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