Kind: captions
Language: en
most people most of the time are
polite cooperative and
kind until they're
not the following is a conversation with
Rick Spence a historian specializing in
the history of intelligence agencies
Espionage secret societies conspiracies
the occult and military
history this is Alex Redman podcast to
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in the description and now dear friends
here's Rick
Spence you have written and lectured
about serial killers secret societies
Cults and intelligence agencies so we
can basically begin at uh any of these
fascinating topics but let's begin with
intelligence agencies which has been the
most powerful intelligence agency in
history the most powerful intelligence
agency in history
I mean it's an interesting question I'd
say probably in terms of
historical longevity and consistency of
performance that the Russian
intelligence Services notice I didn't
say the KGB specifically but the Russian
intelligence Services going back to the
zaris
period are consistently pretty good not
infallible none of them
are of course there's a common Western
way of looking at anything Russian uh
very often I think it's still the case
Russians are viewed in one of two ways
either they are bumbling idiots or they
are diabolically clever no sort of
middle ground and you can find both of
those examples in
this so what I mean by that is that if
you're looking at the Modern svr or FSB
which are just two different
organizations that used to be part of
the one big KGB the AGB or its
predecessors the
Czech you're really going back to the
late 19th century and the Imperial
Russian intelligence Security
Service generally known as the Okana or
oranka it's really the department of
police and the special core of
garms their primary job was protecting
the Imperial regime and protecting it
against Imperial or rather interior
enemies
revolutionaries for the most part and I
got very very good at
that by co-opting people within those
movements infiltrating and recruiting
informers aent provocators in fact they
excelled at the aent
provocator person you place inside an
organization to cost trouble usually
maneuver them into a position of
leadership and they provoke actions that
can then allow you to crack down on them
that is many to sort of lure or bring
the target organization into any legal
legal or open status that it can be more
effectively
suppressed they were very good at
that so good that by the early 20th
century in the Years preceding the
Russian Revolution in 1917 they had
effectively infiltrated every radical
party Bolshevik menik
SRS great and small and placed people in
positions of influence and Leadership
to the point that
arguably that is you can debate this but
I think in the whole they could largely
dictate what those parties did nothing
was discussed at any Central committee
meeting of any revolutionary group that
the Arana wasn't immediately aware of
and they often had people in positions
to influence what those decisions
were of course that raises an
interesting question is that if they
were that good and they had infiltrated
and effectively controlled most of the
opposition then how did the regime get
overthrown by a revolutionaries the
answer to that is that it wasn't
overthrown by
revolutionaries it was overthrown by
politicians that would then take us
into a detour into Russian history but I
I'll just leave it with this if you look
at 1917 and you look closely this is one
of the things i' would always tell my
students is that there are two Russian
revolutions in 1917 there's the first
one in March or February depending on
your calendar that overthrows Nicholas
II revolutionaries are really not
involved with that Bolsheviks are
nowhere to be seen trosky and Lenin are
nowhere to be seen they have nothing to
do with that that has to do effectively
with a political conspiracy within the
Russian Parliament the Duma to unseat an
emperor they thought was you know
bungling the war and was essentially a
loser to begin with and it was a coup
d'a a parliamentary
couet the temporary or provisional
government that that Revolution put in
power was the one overthrown by Lenin 8
months
later and that government was
essentially one dominated by moderate
socialists it was a government that very
quickly sort of turned to the left you
know the guy we associate with that is
Alexander kensky Alexander kensky was a
Russian socialist a politician he was
the Quasi dictator of that regime he's
the person not the Zar who's overthrown
by
Lenin uh
so the the revolutionaries the end did
not prove to be the Fatal threat to the
zarus regime it was the zaris political
system itself that did
that what then transpired was that the
Okana and its method and many of its
agents then immediately segued over into
the new Soviet security service so one
of the first things that lenon did in
December of 1917 within a month of
seizing
power since the hold on power was
tenuous at best was that well you were
going to need some kind of organization
to infiltrate and suppress those pesky
counterrevolutionaries and foreign
imperialists and all of the other
enemies that we have and so the
extraordinary commission to combat
counterrevolution and sabotage that
Chaka was formed
you put a veteran bolik Felix
zinski at the head of that someone you
could politically rely upon but dzinski
built his organization essentially out
of the okon I mean there you know there
were all of these informers sitting
around with nothing nothing to do and
they were
employed um in the early 20s the kind of
ranking file of the chcka might have
been 80 to
90% former Imperial officials those were
gradually decreased over
time so why would they do that well they
were professionals they also needed to
eat and and things were somewhat
precarious so if your job is to be an
aent provocator if your job is to
infiltrate targeted organizations and
lead them astray you do that for whoever
pays you that's part of the
professionalism which goes
in and under the Soviets the Soviet
intelligence services are also very good
at that they are very good at
infiltrating people into to opposing
organizations and I guess the one
example I would give to demonstrate that
or the Cambridge five
the British
Traders Soviet standpoint Heroes who
were recruited no most notably Kim
filby guy Burgess Donald mlan Anthony
blunt and there may have been well more
than five but you know that wasn't bad
out of just
Cambridge uh and placing those people in
high positions the the ultimate goal of
course is to get your people into
positions of leadership and influence in
the opposing intelligence
service and so they did of course it all
fell apart and they ended up in you know
philby ended up living the last part of
his life in Exile in Moscow but they got
their money's worth out of him and you
can also find this in KGB infiltration
the CIA the FBI the AL Rich Ames uh
Hansen
cases of course we we were infiltrating
by we I mean the Americans in the west
managed to infiltrate our moles as well
but if it came down you know someone
could dispute this but I would think if
you were going to come down to a kind of
like a a who had the most mol Super
Bowl
probably the Soviets would come somewhat
ahead of that so the scale of the
infiltration the number
people and uh the skill of it is there a
case to be made that the Arana and the
Chaka orchestrated both the components
of the Russian Revolution as you
described them well there's an
interesting question for me I mean there
are all kinds of questions about this I
mean one of the questions is whether or
not lenen was an Okana agent okay I've
just said
heresy uh some people I'll do that quite
often because I am a heretic
and proud of it great um why why would
you possibly say that Lenin could have
been an Okana agent well let's look what
he managed to
do so you had coming into the 20th
century
a a single nominally a single Marxist
movement the Russian Social Democratic
labor
party and bolik and menik majority ites
and minority ites are merely factions of
that party and they always agreed that
they were all marxists
and we we all believe in dialectical
materialism and the the rise of so we're
all we're all socialist comrade uh the
difference was the the Tactical means by
which one would attain
this and uh what lenon wanted was a a
militant small-scale Vanguard party
wanted a revolution it wanted to seize
power seize control of the state and
once you have the state then
you induce socialism from
above whereas the majority of the people
the so-called menix the minority ites
who are oddly enough the vast majority
of the party that's one of the first
things how do you lose that argument
okay how do how do the how does the
minority get to grab the name majority I
but lenon did
that so what L wanted was a a
conspiratorial party of committed
revolutionaries that would plot and
scheme and undermine and eventually
seize control of the state and induced
socialism from
above there were other Russian marxists
who thought that that sounded vaguely
totalitarian and not really Democratic
and not even terribly
socialist and they oppose that
ineffectively from the beginning
outmaneuvered every step of the way the
menix are a case study in failure of a
political organization that too will be
heresy to some people but look they
lost now so what linen managed to do
starting around 1903 continuing on this
is he managed to
divide to take what had been a single
Marxist party and split it into angry
contending
factions because he and his bulvik on
one side advocating a much more militant
conspiratorial
policy the discombobulated menix were
over and the other and in between were a
lot of people who really didn't know
where they stood on this I mean
sometimes they kind of agreed and he
seems to be making sense today no no I
don't think he's making sense in that
day but but he managed to completely dis
unify this organization now who could
possibly have seen benefit in that they
now whether or not they put him up to it
whether or not in some way they helped
move him into a position of leadership
or encouraged it or encouraged it
through people around him whether he was
a witting or unwitting agent of the Zara
secret police he certainly accomplished
exactly what it was that they have
wanted and I find that
suspicious it's one of those things that
it's it's so convenient in a way is that
I'm not necessarily sure that was an
accident there's also this whole
question to me as to what was going on
within the Okana
itself now this this is one of these
questions we might come to later
about how intelligence agencies interact
or
serve the governments to which they are
theoretically
subordinate they do tend to acquire a
great deal of influence and power after
all their main job is to collect
information and that information could
be about all kinds of things including
people within the government structure
itself and they also know how to
leverage that information in a way to
get people to do what you want them to
do so an argument can be made again an
argument not a fact merely an opinion
which is mostly what history is made out
of of
opinions is that at some point between
about 1900 and 1917 people with in the
Okana were playing their own
game and that game took them in a
direction which meant that continued
loyalty to the emperor specifically to
Nicholas
II was no longer part of
that to me in a way it seems almost
during the events of
1917 that one you had an organization
that was very effective when it did that
suddenly just becomes
ineffective doesn't really disappear
these things don't go away because it
will reappear as the oaka basically
fairly
quickly but it raises the question to me
as to what degree there were people
within the organization who allowed
events to take the course they
wished I always wonder how much
deliberate
planning there is within an organization
like aana or if there's kind of a
distributed intelligence that happens
well one of the key elements in any kind
of intelligence organization or
operation is
compartmentalization need to
know so rarely do you have an occasion
where everybody everybody in an
executive position are all brought into
a big corporate meeting and and we
discuss all of the secret operations
that are going on no no you never do
that um only a very limited number of
people should know about that if you
have a person who is a a case officer is
controlling agents he's the only one who
should know who those people are
possibly his immediate superiors but no
way do you want that to be common
knowledge so information within the
organization itself is
compartmentalized so you don't need
everybody to be in on it you don't even
need necessarily the people who are
nominal at the top for instance the
Okana the real boss of the Okana was the
Imperial Ministry of the Interior the
minister of the interior in fact but
minister of the Interior had no real
effective control over this at all I
mean to the point was that at one point
early on they actually organize the
assassination of Their Own
Boss they uh have their agents among the
revolutionaries kill the minister of the
Interior because he'll just be replaced
by another one he is an imperial
bureaucrat he's is not really part of
their organization you know it's like a
director of an intelligence agency
appointed by the
president maybe he's part of the
organization maybe he isn't maybe he is
not one of
us so you've
got different levels different
compartments within it and and who's
actually running the show if anyone is I
don't know that's never supposed to be
apparent well that's a fascinating
question I me you could see this with
nkvd it's obviously an extremely
powerful
organization that starts to eat itself
where everybody's pointing fingers
internally also as a as a way to gain
more power so the question is in
organizations like that that are so
compartmentalized where's the power
where's the center of
power because you would think think
given that much power some individual or
a group of individuals will start
accumulating that power but it seems
like that's not always a trivial thing
because if you get too powerful the
snake eats that person well if we go
back again to the uh the founder of
Soviet Secret Police Felix zinski
dzinski dies in
1926 Keels over after giving a heated
speech to a party meeting
now the common view what you usually
read which is was ke for the time is
that you know clearly Stalin had him
whacked because anytime someone died it
was almost always it and I think a lot
of times he
did but in some cases Stalin's probably
getting blamed for things that he didn't
actually do the jinsky wasn't even
opposed to Stalin so it's not clear why
he but this was the you know Stalin died
you know obviously he was poison
something happened it was an unnatural
death somebody goes in for an operation
you know gets a little too much
anesthesia Stalin killed them uh
somebody tips over in a canoe in Upstate
New York Stalin killed them there's
actually a case about that
so that itself can be kind of useful
where every time someone dies they think
you killed them that's that's kind of an
interesting uh method of intimidation in
that
regard but suspicion is nonetheless
there dzinski had
been he was the Grand Inquisitor he was
seemingly firmly in control of the
organization of course maybe he wasn't
maybe he was my guess would be is that
if doin's death
was not natural causes that he was
probably eliminated by someone within
his own
organization and then you look at the
people who take
over um his immediate success is uh
veslav meniny who's really kind not
really a secret policeman more a kind of
intellectual
diletant but if you look behind him you
notice the fellow is Henrik
Yoda and Yoda will really sort of manage
things from behind the scenes until
meniny dies in
1934 and then you go to will hold on
until he's a victim of the purges I
think in in 37 or or 38
uh Yoda is um
ambitious
murderous and if I was going to point
the finger to anybody who possibly had
zinski whacked it would be him and for
the purposes simply of
advancement that's the uh you know the
person to look out at any kind of
corporate organization is your immediate
subordinate the person who could move
into your job because more than likely
that's exactly what they're planning to
do yeah just one step away from the very
top yeah somebody there will probably
accumulate the most
power you mentioned that the various
Russian intelligence agencies were good
at creating agent provocateurs
infiltrating uh the halls of power uh
what does it take to do
that well there's a interesting little
acronym called
mice m i
and it's you generally used and it's
just the way in which you would acquire
how do you get people to work for you
well m stands for money you pay them
people are greedy they want money you
know if you look at Aldrich Ames he had
a very very expensive wife with
expensive tastes so he wanted money I is
for
ideology so during particularly in the
1920s and the 1930s the Soviets were
very effective in exploiting Communists
you know people who wanted to serve the
great
cause even though that that's initially
not really what they wanted to do
because the idea was that if you recruit
Agents from among let's say American
Communists you compromise the party
because exactly what your enemies are
going to say is that all Communists are
Soviet spies they're all traitors in
some way so you would really want to
keep those two things separate but
ideology was just so convenient and
those people would just work for you so
well they were you could get them to do
anything betray their grandmother they
would go ahead and do that for the
greater good so ideology can be a
motivation uh and that can be you know
someone who is a u who is a devoted
Marxist leninist it can also be someone
who's a disgruntled communist because
you know there's there's no
anti-communist like an
ex-communist okay you know those who
lose the faith
um can be become very very
useful uh for instance if if you look in
in the case of American intelligence the
the people who
essentially temporarily destroyed much
of the KGB organization in the US Post
World War II were people like Whitaker
Chambers uh Lewis buen Elizabeth Bentley
all of those people had been Communist
party
members they had all been part of the
red faithful they all for one reason or
another became
disillusioned and um Turned rat or
Patriot whichever case you may want to
uh put in that regard what does the sea
in the E stand for the C is for
coercion that's where you have to
persuade someone to work for you you
have to pressure them so usually you
blackmail
them you know that could be they have a
gambling habit uh you know and they old
days it's very often because they were
gay okay gets them in a position where
they can be compromised and you can get
them to do your bidding that those
people usually have a certain amount of
control here's an interesting example of
how the Okana tended to handle this and
I think it's still largely used um you'd
round up a bunch of
revolutionaries on some charge or
another Distributing revolutionary
literature running any illegal printing
press you bring a guy into the room and
you say okay okay you're going to work
for us he of course have refused to do
so they go well if you
refuse we'll we'll keep the rest of your
comrades in jail for a while you know
maybe beat them with a rubber trenching
or so and then we're just going to let
you
go we're just going to put you back out
on the
street and if you don't work for us we
will spread the
rumor through our agents already in your
organization that you are and then what
will your comrades do how long are you
going to live so you see you have no
choice you're ours and you're going to
cooperate with
us and the way that that uh
Effectiveness would be ensured is that
you you have multiple agents within the
same organization who don't know who
each other are that's very important and
they'll all be filing
reports so let's say you have three
agents inside the Central Committee
of the SR party and there's a committee
meeting and you're going to look at the
reports they file they all better agree
with each other
right if one person doesn't report what
the other two do then perhaps they're
not entirely doing their job and and
they can be liquidated at any time all
you do is drop the dime on them and this
was done periodically in fact in some
cases you would betray your own agents
just to completely discombobulate to the
the
organization this happened in one
particular particular case um around
1908 the fellow who was the head of the
of the chief revolutionary terrorist
organization which wasn't bolik but the
so-called socialist
revolutionaries they actually the
biggest revolutionary party the SRS who
AR even actually marxists more
anarchists but they they went all in for
the propaganda of the deed they really
like blowing people up and carry out a
and carried out quite a campaign of
terrorism the fellow who was the head of
that terrorist organization was a was a
fell of the name of yevo azf and yevo
azf was guess what an Okana
agent everything he did every
assassination that he planned he did in
consultation with his control so he'd
kind of run out his string there was
increasing suspicion of him he was also
asking for a lot more
money uh so the Arana itself arranged to
have him write it out and what did that
do well what do you do in your party
when you find out the chief of your
terrorist Brigade was a secret police
agent it SED consternation and
mistrust nobody in the party would ever
trust in you couldn't tell who you were
sitting
around uh I know that a fellow I wrote a
biography on Bor sov who was a Russian
revolutionary and and the second in
command within the terrorist
organization ation by the way the guy
that wanted Oz's job so bad he could
taste
it well on the one level he expressed
absolute horror that his boss was a
police agent and will he should because
sanov was a police agent too see they
already had the number two waiting in
the wings to take over but he was
legitimately shocked he didn't really
suspect
that uh so it's it's a way of
manipulating this and then finally we
come to the E that I think is the most
important
ego sometimes people spy or betray
because of the egotistical satisfaction
that they
receive the sheer kind of mavelli and
joy in
deceit an example of that would be Kim
filby one of the Cambridge 5 now now
philby was a communist and he would
argue that he always saw himself as
serving the Communist cause
but he also made this statement uh I
think it's in the the preface to his
autobiography and he says one never
looks twice at the offer of service in
Elite
Force he's talking about his recruitment
by the nkvd in the 1930s and he was
absolutely chuffed by that the M fact
that they would want him what he
considered to be a First Rate
organization would want him
satisfied his
ego and if I was to take a guess as to
whether it was ideological motivation
whether it was the romance of Communism
or whether it was the appeal of ego that
was the most important in his career of
treason I'd go with ego and I think that
figures into a lot you know people don't
someone doesn't get the
promotions that they wanted again if you
look at something
like Aldridge am's career particular
you've got these kind of his his career
in the CIA
was hit or
miss um he didn't get the postings or
promotions that he wanted his evaluation
he never felt that he got credit for
doing that and that's the type of thing
that tends to stick in someone's craw
and can lead for egotistical reasons an
added
incentive to betray yeah that there's a
boost of the ego when you can deceive
sort of not play by the rules of the
world and
just play with powerful people like
they're your pawns you're the only one
that knows this mhm you're the only one
that knows that the person who is
setting across from you to which you
have sworn your loyalty you were
simultaneously betraying what a rush
that must be for some people I wonder
how many people are susceptible to this
I would like to believe that people have
a lot of people Haven the Integrity to
at least withstand the
Mi the the money and the ideology the
pull of that and the ego it can also be
a combination of the two I mean you you
can create a uh a recipe of these things
certain amount of
money ego and the little push of
coercion that if you
don't we will'll rat you up you'll be
exposed what are some difference to you
as uh we look at the history of the 20th
century between the Russian intelligence
and the American intelligence in the CIA
if you look at both the oana and the KGB
one of the things that you find
consistent is that they a single
organization handled foreign
intelligence that is spying upon enemy
or hostile governments and also internal
security so that's all part of
it whereas if you look at the US models
that evolves you you eventually have the
FBI who under Hoover qu insists that
he's going to be The Counter
Intelligence Force okay if they're you
know they're commi spies earning around
America it's the FBI who's supposed to
far at them out the CIA is not supposed
to be involved in that
and the uh the charter the basic
agreement in 1947 did not give the CIA
any you it's often said they they were
borred from spying on Americans which
isn't quite quite true you can always
find a way to do that what they don't
have is they don't have any police or
judicial
powers they they can't run around in the
country carrying guns to use on people
they can't arrest you they can't
interrogate you they can't jail you they
have no police or judicial powers now
that means they have to get that from
someone else that doesn't mean that
other agencies can't be brought in or
local police officials corn or whatever
you need you can eventually acquire but
they can't they can't can't do that
directly so you've got this
division between foreign intelligence
and
domestic Counter Intelligence often
split
between hostile organizations the
relationship between the FBI and the CIA
I think it's fair to say is not
chummy never has
been there's always been a certain
amount of of rivalry and and contention
between the two
and it's not to say that something like
that didn't exist between
the domestic Counter Intelligence and
foreign intelligence components of of
the KGB but there would be less of that
to a degree because there was a single
organization they're all
answerable to the same
people so that gives
you a certain greater amount I think of
of leeway and power because you're
controlling both of those ends
I remember somebody telling me once that
and he was a retired KGB officer there
you go
retired one of the things that he found
amusing was that in in his role one of
the things that he could be is that he
could be
anywhere at any
time in any
dress which meant that he could be in or
out of uniform and any place at any time
he was authorized to do that so more
freedom more power I think one of the
things that you would often inter view
is that well the Russians are simply you
know naturally
meaner yeah there's there's less respect
for human
rights there's a greater tendency
to
abuse power that one might have I mean
frankly they're all pretty good at that
they're probably it is fair to say that
there is probably some degree of of
cultural differen is that it not
necessarily for institutional reasons
but cultural
reasons there could well be things that
Americans might bulk at doing more than
you would find on the Russian or Soviet
side of the equations the other aspect
of that is that Russian history is long
and contentious and
bloody uh one of the things it certainly
teaches you never trust
foreigners every foreign government
anywhere any country on your border is a
real or potential enemy they will all at
some point have given the chance invade
you therefore they must always be
treated with great
suspicion that goes back to something
that I think the the British observed is
that countries don't have friends they
have
interests and those interests can change
over time well the CIA is probably
equally suspicious of all other nations
that's your job you're supposed to be
suspicious your job is not to be
trusting yeah the basic job of an
intelligence agency is to safeguard your
secrets and steal the other guys and
then hide those away are there laws
either intelligence
agencies that uh they're not willing to
break this a
basically Lawless operation to where you
can break any law as long as it
accomplishes the task well I think uh JN
k give his pen name he talking about his
early recruitment into British
intelligence and one of the things he
remember being told UPF front was if you
do this you have to be willing to lie
and you have to be willing to
kill now those are things that in
ordinary human interactions are bad
things
generally we don't like it when people
lie to us we we we expect that people
will act honestly towards us you know
whether that's being businessman you're
involved with your employers we're often
disappointed in that because people do
lie all the time for a variety of
reasons but but honesty is generally
considered to be it but but in uh in in
a realm where deception is a
rule dishonesty is a virtue to be good
at that to be able to lie
convincingly is
good is one of the things you need to
do and killing also is generally frowned
upon you know put people in prison for
that they're otherwise executed but in
certain circumstances killing is one of
those things that you need to be able to
do so what he felt he was being told in
that case is that you know once you
enter this realm the same sort of moral
rules that apply in general British
Society do not
apply and and if you're squeamish about
it
you won't fit
in you have to be able to do those
things I wonder how often those
intelligence agencies in the 20th
century and of course the natural
question extending it to the 21st
century how often they go to the
assassination how how often they go to
the kill part of that versus just the
Espionage let's take an example from
from American intelligence from the CIA
1950s 1960s into the 1970s MK
Ultra that is a secret program which was
involved with what is generally
categorized as mind control which really
means messing with people's
heads and what was the goal of that well
there seem to have been lots of goals
but there was an FBI memo that was I
recently acquired quite legally by the
way it's Declassified but it's from
1949 so this is only two years after the
CIA came into existence and it's an FBI
memo because the FBI of course very
curious to what the CIA is up to and the
FBI are not part of this meeting but
they have someone in they're sort of
spying on what's going on so there was a
meeting which was held in a private
apartment in New
York so it's not held in any kind of
it's It's essentially never really
happened because it's in somebody's
house but and there are a couple of guys
there from the CIA one of them is cleave
Baxter cleave bter is the um the great
Godfather of the lie
detector uh pretty much everything that
we know or think we know about Li
detectors today that youo to Cle Baxter
uh he's also the same guy that thought
that plants could feel but which somehow
was a derivative of his work on lie
detectors so these guys are there and
and they're giving a t talk to some
military and other personnel and uh
there are certain parts of the document
which are of course redacted but you
could figure out what it is that they're
talking about and they're talking about
hypnotic suggestion and all the
wonderful things that you can
potentially do with hypnotic
suggestion and two of the things they
note is that one of the things we could
potentially do is erase memories from
people's minds and implant false
memories that would be really Keen to do
that just imagine how that would be
done so here to me is the interesting
point they're talking about this in 1949
MK Ultra does not come along until
really 1953 although there all sorts of
you know art of Choke and others
everything is sort of leading up to that
it's simply an an elaboration of
programs that are already
there I don't think that It ultimately
matters whether you
can implant memories or erase memories
to me the important part is they thought
they could and they were going to try to
do it and that eventually is what you
find out in the efforts made during the
1950s and 60s through MK Ultra MK search
MK Naomi and all the others that came
out that's one of the things they're
working for um and among the few MK
Ultra era documents that survive there's
that whole question is that can you get
someone to uh put put a gun to someone's
head and pull the trigger and then
remember it later
yeah you could interestingly enough so
nondirect violence controlling people's
minds controlling people's minds at
scale and experimenting with different
kinds of ways of doing that one person
put it that the basic argument there or
the basic thing you're after was to
understand the architecture of the human
mind how it worked how it put together
and then how you could take those pieces
apart and assemble them different
ways so this comes this is where
hypnosis comes in which is
a was then still is fairly spooky thing
nobody's ever explained to me exactly
what it is the idea was that could you
you think of the whole possibilities in
this case could you create an alternate
personality and use that alternate
personality in an agent role
but then be able to turn it on and off
so subsequently the the
person which that personality inhabited
was captured and interrogated tortured
you know had their fingernails torn
out they would have no memory of it they
couldn't give any kind of secret away
because it was embedded in some part of
their brain where there was a completely
different person I mean you can just
imagine the the possibilities that you
can dream up and again it's not I think
the question is to whether you that is
possible or whether it was done although
I suspect that both of those are true
but that you would try to do it then
imagine the Mischief that comes out of
that and one of the big complaints from
a legal standpoint about MK Ultra and
the rest is that you were having medical
experiments essentially being carried
out on people without their knowledge
and against their will which is you know
a no no yeah the fact that you're
willing to do m medical experiments says
something about what you're willing to
do and I'm sure that same Spirit
Innovative
Spirit uh persist to this
day and uh maybe less so I hope less so
in the United States but probably in
other intelligence agencies in the world
well one thing that was learned and the
reason why most MK Ultra and similar
records were destroyed
on order in the early 70s around the
time the CIA became under a certain
amount of scrutiny now the mid-70s were
not a good time for the agency because
you had the church committee breathing
down their neck you had all these
assassin you know people were asking
lots of questions and so you need to you
need to dump this stuff because there's
all kinds of because you were committing
crimes against American citizens so
let's let's eradicate it and the
important lesson to be learned is that
never do these type of thing again where
at least in any way in which the
agency's direct fingerprints are placed
on
it you can pay people you can subsidize
research you can set up Venture Capital
firms you got plenty of money and you
can funnel that money into the hands of
people who will carry out this
research privately so if something goes
wrong you have perfect
deniability and the the topic of mice on
the topic of money ideology coercion and
ego let me ask you about a conspiracy
theory so there is a conspiracy theory
that the CIA is behind Jeffrey
Epstein at a high level if you could
just talk about that is that something
that's at all even possible that you
have uh basically this would be for
coercion you get a bunch of powerful
people to be sexually mischievous and
then you collect evidence on them so
that you can then have leverage on them
well let's look at what Epstein was
doing uh he was
a well he was a businessman who then
also developed a very lucrative sideline
and being a a high level
procur basically in supplying young
girls
and he
also filmed much of that activity
um I think his partner in this galain
and I'm hope I'm pronouncing her name
correct I think it's galain gain well
I've heard it both ways gilain or galain
whichever it may be I think her argument
at one point was that well we did this
to protect
ourselves but this type of thing has
been done before there's nothing new
about this getting influential people in
compromising situations and filming
them uh I could give you another
historical example of that in late 1920
actually early 1930s just pre-nazi
Berlin there was a very prominent uh
sort of wouldbe psychic and occultist by
the name of Eric Yan
hanison uh he had a private yacht I
think it was called the seven sins uh
and he hosted parties he also had a
whole club called the Palace of the
occult which hosted parties where things
went on and and there were cameras
everywhere he filmed important people
you know guys like the brownshirt chief
of
Berlin in various states of undress and
sexual
Congress and he did that for the
purposes of
blackmail so in Epstein's case he is a
procurer of young
girls to
wealthy men
largely
and many of those events were were
recorded now even if it wasn't his
intention to use them for blackmail
think of what someone else could do
because people know about
this so you could raise a question is
this not you know Epstein is just kind
of a greedy
pervert but through his greedy
perversion he's now collecting
information that could be useful who
could that be useful to who would like
dirt on Prince
Andrew on the CL think of all the people
who were there and the these you know
there were important people
who you know went to Lolita Island so if
it isn't Epstein directly it he might
have been being I'm not trying to let
him off the hook because I have anything
for him he was either running his own
blackmail business or someone was using
him as a front for that I mean I I think
we're kidding ourselves we trying to
pretend that's not what was going on so
you think you an American intelligence
agency
uh would be willing to swoop in and take
advantage of a situation like that well
you know American politicians could
ultimately end up in a position to
oversee things like intelligence
budgets one of them might even become
director you never know you can never
tell what some crazy president might do
it could be very one of the guys who
understood the was was J Grover Jed
Grover spent a long time collecting do
dossier and politicians how do you think
he'd remain director of the FBI as long
as he did because he systematically
collected dirt on
people so there is a
history of this type of thing and again
he could argue that's partly for his
protection to keep his job to protect
the the sanctity and security of of the
bureau you can find a million different
ways to to justify that it's really
dark
well there is that side to human nature
let's put it that way whether it's the
CIA or the Arana maybe that's what the
president of the United States sees when
they show up to office is all the stuff
they have on him or her and say you that
that there's a internal mechanism of
power that you don't want to mess with
and so you will listen well whether that
internal mechanism of power is the
military-industrial complex or whatever
the the bureaucracy of government
contuct of the deep State the Deep the
entrenched bureaucratic well it's been
said and I think it's generally true
that uh bureaucratic creatures are like
any other creatures it basically exists
to perpetuate itself yeah and and to
grow I mean nobody wants to go out of
business and and of course then you get
all of these you know things like
pizzagate
and accusations of one form another but
here's an interesting thing to consider
okay and I want to argue that I'm not
saying that pizz gate in any way was
real or q and onand is but but where do
they get these ideas
from so let's ask ourselves do
pedophiles
exist
yeah do organized pedophile
organizations
exist yeah they they share information
pictures they're out there on the dark
web they cooperate
so does child trafficking
exist yeah it
does so in other words whether or not
specific conspiracy theories about this
or that group of organized pedophil
cultists is real all the ingredients for
that to be real are there pedophiles
exist organized pedophilia exists
child and human trafficking
exists at some point at some time
someone will put all of those together
in fact certainly they already
have we'll jump around a little bit but
your work is so fascinating uh and it
covers so many topics so let's if we
jump into the present uh with the
Bohemian Grove and the Bilderberg gr
bilderbergers uh so the elites as I
think you've referred to them so this
Gathering of the
elites uh can you can you just talk
about them what is what is this well
first thing I have to point out is that
Bohemian Grove is a place not an
organization it's where the Bohemian
Club meets it's that
2700 acre old growth redwoods near you
know North of San Francisco the Bohemian
Club began
I think way back to the 1870s it's its
initial members were mostly
journalists okay in fact supposedly the
name itself comes from it was a term for
an itinerate journalist who move paper
to paper was called the
Bohemian and although I think there may
be
other reasons why that particular term
was was chosen as well but I I think the
original five members there were you
know there were like three journalists
there was a a merchant and there was a
vent guy owned a Vineyards California
House
surprising none of them terribly wealthy
but they formed an exclusive men's club
was and still is nothing terribly
unusual about that at the time but it
became fashionable and as it became
fashionable more wealthy people wanted
to become part of it and the thing about
getting rich guys to join your Club is
what do rich guys have money and of
course it's one of those Rich guys that
bought Bohemian Grove where now you
build your your old boy summer camp
which is what it is they got cabins with
Goofy names they go there they perform
skits they dress up in costumes yeah
true some of those skits look like Pagan
human sacrifices but you know it's just
a skit what's really going on there so
on the one hand you can argue look it's
it's it's just it's a rich guys Club
they you know they like to get out there
that the whole motto of the place is
weaving spiders come not here so we're
we're going to talk about business bus
we just want to get out into the woods
put on some robes you know burn a couple
of effigies in front of the owl have a
good time probably get drunk a lot
what's with the robes why do they do
weird creepy why do they put on a
mask and the robe and the and do the
plays and the the owl with the and then
sacrificing I don't know whatever why do
you have a giant owl I mean what why do
you do that what is but what is that in
human nature cuz I don't think the rich
people are different than and uh not
rich people what what is it about wealth
and power that brings that out of people
well part of it is the ritual aspect of
it and that clearly is a ritual and
rituals are it's pretty simple rituals
are just a series of actions performed
in a precise sequence to produce an
effect that describes a lot of things it
describes plays Symphonies every movie
you've ever seen a movie is a ritual it
is a series of actions carried out in a
precise sequence to produce an effect
with an added soundtrack to cue you to
what emotions you're supposed to be
feeling it's a great idea so the rich
people should just go to a movie or
maybe just go to a Taylor Swift concert
like why why do you have to well why the
all part of it is to create this kind of
sense I suppose of of group solidarity
you know you're you're all going to
appear and also a way of sort of
transcending
yourself in a way you know when you put
on the
robe it's like putting on a uniform you
are in some way a different or more
important person it's a ritual okay the
the key ritual that beomi and Grove is a
thing called The Cremation of care and
cremation and that's what it's supposed
to be it's it's a we're going to put all
of our you know we're rich important
people we have to make all of these
critical decisions life is so hard so
we're going to go out here in the woods
and we're going to kick back and we're
all going to get gather on the lake and
and then we're going to carry you know
it it it's it's wicker it's not a real
person
and how would you know and then we're
going to and we're going to and this is
The Cremation of our Char but it's a
ritual which is meant to produce a sense
of solidarity and relief among those
people who were
there the question comes down with the
rituals is how seriously do you take
them how how important is this to to the
people who carry them out
and the interesting answer to that is
that for some people it's you know for
some people it's just boring I mean
there probably people standing around
the owl who think this is ridiculous and
can't wait for it to get over with there
are other people who are kind of excited
about it you get caught up into it but
other people can take it very
seriously it's all the matter of the
intention that you have about what the
ritual
means and I don't mean to suggest by
that that there's anything necessary
Sinister about what's going on but it it
is it is a it is clearly a ritual
carried out for some kind of group
reinforcing purpose and you're
absolutely right you don't have to do it
that way that's not I mean I've gone to
summer camps and we never carried out
mock sacrifices in front of an owl all
right you know we did all those other
things um we didn't even have any robes
either so it goes beyond merely a a rich
guy summer camp although that's an
aspect of it but it also I think often
obscures that focusing on Bohemian Grove
at the getaway of the club ignores that
the club is around all the time that's
what's at the center of this it is the
club and its
members so despite all the talk about no
no weaving spiders coming around here
what are the other features of the
summer meeting are things called
Lakeside talks uh this often people are
invited to go there and and one of the
people who was
invited I think around 1968 was Richard
Nixon who was making his political
comeback and he was invited to give a
talk where very important people are
listening and Nixon in his Memoirs
realized what was going on he was being
auditioned as to whether or not he was
going to be read he recognized that that
was really the beginning of his second
presidential campaign he was being
vetted
so one of the main theories call it a
conspiracy theory or not about the
Bohemian Club in the Gatherings is that
people of wealth and influence gather
together and whether or not it's part of
the agenda or not inevitably you're
going to talk about things of interest
but to me the M of fact that you invite
people in political leaders and to give
Lakeside talks means that there there
are weaving spiders which are going on
and it is a
perfect private venue to vet
people for political office I mean yeah
where else are you going to do it if
you're interested in vetting if you're
interesting in powerful people selecting
well see here's the question are these
guys actually picking who's going to be
president is that the decision which is
being made or are they just deciding
what horses they're going to back right
I think the latter is the simpler
version of it but it doesn't mean it's
the other way around but these are the
kinds of you know I mean Nixon was you
know there was the whole 1960
thing so he's he's the new Nixon
remember this and this this is where the
new Nixon uh apparently made a good
impression on the right people because
he did
indeed get the Republican
nomination and he did indeed become
president well there could also be a
much more innocent explanation of really
it's powerful people getting together
and having conversations and through
that conversation influencing each
other's view of the world and and having
a legitimate discussion of
policies why wouldn't they I mean why
would you assume that people are not
going to do that it's the owl thing with
the with the robes like what why the owl
and why the robes um which is why it
becomes really compelling when guys like
Alex
Jones uh forgive me but I have not
watched his documentary I probably
should at some point about the Bohemian
Grove where he claims that there is uh
uh
Satanist human sacrifice
of I think
children um and I think that's quite a
popular conspiracy theory or is lost
popularity it kind of like transformed
itself into the konon set of conspiracy
theories but I mean can you speak to
that conspiracy let's put it this way
the general public rich people are
inherently suspicious yeah okay let
let's put it that
way uh first of all they've got all that
money and and and exactly how did one
obtain it and uh I do not of necessity
adhere to the view that behind every
great Fortune there is a great crime but
there often are you know there there are
ways in which it's acquire but I think
it's one of the things I think that can
happen is particularly when when people
require a huge amount of
money and I won't name any names but
let's say there are people who perhaps
in The texere Who coming from no
particular background of wealth suddenly
find themselves with $600
billion well what this is the question
you would have to ask yourself why
me because you're one of the rare tiny
group of human beings who will ever had
that kind of wealth in your
hands even if you are a convinced
atheist
I think at some point you have to begin
to suspect that the cosmic muffin
Providence whatever it is put this money
in your hands to do what achieve great
thing just think of all the stuff so
you're going to start a foundation and
you're going to start backing all the
things that you you like this is yeah I
think there's an element of ego that
comes in with it as
well
and again it may not be so much what the
rich person with a huge amount of money
at their
disposal and a lot
of fuzzy ideas about what to do with it
can be
influenced by
others it's always that question as to
who's actually
manipulating these
events what's what's going on in that
regard in some way they they can be a
very useful sucker you know find
somebody with a lot of money and get
them to finance the thing
that you want them to
do the Bohemian Club is I don't think in
of itself inherently evil or Sinister
but it means that there are lots of
different people in it who have
different agendas it goes back to what I
said about how somebody feels about The
Cremation of care ritual this is either
just a waste of time it's just some sort
of silly thing that we're doing or it is
something of
great
importance perhaps even
mystical or religious importance because
that's ostensibly what it's pretending
to be it's always this question is to
what degree you begin to play and the
play becomes
serious that tends to happen a lot
you've studied a lot a lot of Cults and
uh
occultism what do you think is the power
of that mystical
experience well what is broadly referred
to well we get into what what's a ult is
and what's the occult ult is the hidden
that's all it really means specifically
hidden from
sight
and the basis of it is the idea that
what is hidden well what is hidden from
us is most of the world most of reality
so the basic concept within occultism
basic concept within most religions
which are approved forms of
occultism is that the world the physical
world that we are aware of is only only
a very small part of a much larger
reality and that what the methods and
practices of
occultism arguably do is to allow
someone to either enter into this larger
reality or to access that larger
reality for purposes to be exploited
here the most interesting statement
about and it ke element of this becomes
the thing called Magic now we all know
magic you know it's a guy standing on
stage performing a
trick but the interesting thing about a
stage magician is that a stage magician
is we know when we're watching this that
it's a
trick yet we can't really figure out if
he does it well how that trick is being
accomplished because it seems to defy
physical laws and that's what's
fascinating about it so even though you
know it's a trick if you can't figure it
out it it has this kind of power of
Fascination but it's mimicking
something stage magic is
mimicking real
magic so it's real magic well let's go
back to Alistar Crowley because you know
he he always has to come we knew I knew
he was going to come up at some point in
this earlier than that cuz he always
does all roads lead to alist all roads
lead to Alistar Crowley um Alan cley and
I've said this enough that I should be
able to get it right but I'm
paraphrasing here he goes magic which of
course he spelled with a K to you know
or
C um is the the Art and Science of
causing change to occur in Conformity
with
Will so in a way that's sort of mind
over
matter but it's the idea that one can
through will through intention
Bend
reality to make something happen
somebody wants to put it this way it's
tipping the luck
plane so you know you got some kind of a
level plane what you're trying to do is
just tip it just a little bit so the
marble rules rolls over one side or or
another now that presupposes a lot of
things that is there a luck plane I
don't know but you know it's it's a good
sort of idea to have
but and here again
don't become overly bothered trying to
figure out whether you actually can bend
reality become bothered by the fact that
there are people who believe that they
can and will go to great efforts to do
so and will often believe they have
succeeded so it's this effort
to make things occur in a particular way
maybe just to sort of nudge reality in
one little way or another and that's
where things like rituals come in
rituals are a way of focusing will and
detention we're all there we're all
thinking about the same
thing and you have to imagine just how
you know the pervasiveness of what could
be called that that kind of magical
thinking every have is everywhere so let
me give you an example you ever attended
a high school football Pepperell M think
of what's going on
there okay your team is going to is
going to battle the other team you've
now assembled everyone in the
gymnasium you've got people who are
dancing around in animal totem costumes
and and what are you chanting everyone
is supposed to chant that you know that
the other team dies okay that you will
be horribly defeated and that our team
will be
victorious that is a Magic
Ritual the idea is it becomes into this
idea it's very popularly about
visualizing things visualizing
manifesting I don't know this term where
you need to manifest your success well
that's just
magic that is trying to cause change in
Conformity with Will so these things can
happen without you you being even
consciously aware of what's going on and
you don't need to be because if you're
all a part of the
of the mob which is there in the
gymnasium and you you get into this and
you get worked
up and a cultist would argue what you're
doing is you're creating a huge amount
of energy all of these people are
putting energy into something and that
energy go somewhere and maybe you can
maybe just maybe you actually
can slightly increase the chances of
your team's victory of course your
opponents are having their own ritual at
the same time so whoever has the bigger
Mojo will apparently win on the team so
that's a I would say trivial example of
that uh but a clear one but I do believe
that there's incredible power in groups
of humans getting together and morphing
reality I think that's probably one of
the things that made human civilization
what it
is groups of people being able to
believe a thing and bring that belief
into reality yes that's your examp L
right bring to conceive of
something and then through intention
will to manifest that into this realm
and of course the that power of the
collective mind can be leveraged by
charismatic leaders to do all kinds of
stuff where you get Cults that
do you know horrible things or any
anything there might be a cult that does
good things I don't know it depends we
usually we don't call those Cults
exactly without endorsing this entirely
an interesting you know one of the
questions what's the difference between
a cult and a
religion and it has been
said that in the case of a
cult there's always someone at the top
who knows what's going on generally who
knows it's a
scam in a religion that person is dead
so see I've just managed to insult every
single Rel and but that's it it's an
interesting way of of thinking about it
because I think there is some degree of
of accuracy in that statement do you
think actually the interesting
psychological question is in Cults do
you think the person at the
top always knows that it's a scam do you
think there's something about the human
mind where you gradually begin to
believe believe your own yes
that'ss that again is part of magic I
think is believing your own
um it doesn't necessarily mean
that the the head of the cult realized
but there's
someone maybe the second you I always
sort of look in in the lieutenant
someone probably has an idea about
what's going
on uh the other thing that seems to be a
a kind of dead giveway for what we would
call a cult is is what's called e
excessive reverence for the leader
people just believe everything these
people
say I I give you an example of the first
time I ever encountered anything like
that was in um was in Santa Barbara
California in the 1970 I was going to
grad school and there was a particular
cult
locally which I think was Brotherhood of
the
son and was the same there was some guy
who was you know
among the other things followers were
convinced to hand over all their money
and personal belongings to him I believe
he used part of that money to buy a
yacht
with u anyway a lot of it went to him
and then of course working for free upon
different cult owned business
enterprises of which there were several
and there was a person I knew who became
a devoted follower of this and it
was all I could think of
at one point was ask them what the hell
is the matter with
you I mean have you lost your mind why
why would you what is it that this
person can possibly be providing it that
that you essentially are going to become
a slave to them which was which is what
they were
doing and I actually give that credit in
a way of sort of sparking my whole
interest in things like secret societies
and here again as a disclaimer I am not
now nor have I ever been the member of
any fraternal organization secret
society or cult that I know
of and that's what interest me about
them because I I'm just always trying to
figure out why people do these things
like I said why the robes in the owl why
yeah why do you do that and it it's
trying to figure it out I mean I
couldn't even hack the Boy Scouts okay
that was too much of because to me you
join an organization and the first thing
comes along as there's somebody there
are rules and someone is telling you
what to do okay I don't like people
telling me what to do spent much of my
life trying to avoid that as much as
possible and join a cult there's going
to be someone telling you what to do um
join the Bohemian Club and there's going
to be someone telling you what to do and
obviously a lot of
people really get something out of that
it it it becomes in some ways it's sort
of necessary for them to function but I
do not understand it and my study of it
is a personal error to try to understand
why people do that and there are so many
reasons uh primary of which I would say
is the desire in the human heart to
belong
yes and uh the dark forms that takes
throughout human history recent human
history is uh something I'd love to talk
to you a bit about if we can go back to
the beginning of the 20th century on the
German side you've described how secret
societies like the Tuli Society lay the
foundation for Nazi ideology can you uh
through that lens from that perspective
describe the rise of the Nazi party well
I guess we could start with what on
Earth is the Tuli
Society so the Tuli Society
was a
small German occult society that is they
they studied metaphysics another fancy
word for
occultism that uh appeared in
Munich um around
1918 the key figure behind it was a uh
German
esotericist by the name of Rudolph
folendorf okay not his real name his
real name was Adam Rudolph
glow he was adopted by a German no
nobleman and got the name f zebot andorf
and I like to say that name so I have
this real thing about vague mysterious
characters who show up and do things and
and trying to figure out who these
people are so we're working up in the
Years sort of prior to the first world
war so the decade or so prior to World
War I he spends a lot of time in the
Ottoman
Empire turkey there was know then the
the Ottoman Empire
uh which was a fairly tumultuous place
um because in 1908 1909 there was a the
Young Turk
Revolution and uh you had a kind of
military coup which effectively
overthrew the ottoman Sultan and
installed a military hun which would go
on during the first world war to make
its greatest achievement in the Armenian
Genocide eventually he created a
genocide
military regime which would lead the
country into disastrous first world war
which would destroy the Ottoman
Empire out of which modern turkey
emerges yada yada Y and by the way we
should take a tiny tangent here which is
uh that you refer to the intelligence
agencies as being exceptionally
successful and uh here in the case of
The Young Turks being um also very
successful or uh in doing the genocide
meaning they've
achieved the greatest impact even though
the
impact on the scale of good to evil
tends towards evil it's one of those
things that often comes out of
revolutionary situations revolutions
always always always seek to make things
better don't they we're going to take a
bad old regime you know the the sultan
is you know and the
sultan was bad I think it's fairly St
Abdul Hamid II was not a uh wasn't
called the red Doon because of his
favorite color type of
thing and the idea is that they were
going to uh improve they were now going
to you know the Ottoman Empire was a
multinational Empire they were going to
try to equalize and bring in the
different groups and and and none of
that happened it became
worse okay in the same way that you
could argue that the goal of Russian
revolutionaries was to get rid of the
bad old incompetent medieval zaris
regime to bring in a new great shining
future and it became even more
authoritarian and the crimes of the
Imperial Russian regime pale in
significance of what would follow in the
same way that the crimes of Abdul Hamed
pale to when you get to The Young Turks
but that wasn't necessarily the
intention but VAB buttorf is a German
businessman who's who's working in this
period and the whole point here is that
the ottomate Empire in this period is is
a a a hot bed of of political
Intrigue you know all kinds of
interesting things about it the Young
Turk Revolution is essentially a
military coup but it is
plotted in Masonic
lodges okay I know technically Masonic
Lodgers are never supposed to be
involved in politics but they
are uh or you know the lodge meeting
breaks up and then you plot the
revolution so same group of people but
it's it's not technically but yes and
there's there's the the Macedonia Resort
Lodge in Tessalon was Ground
Zero for plotting this military coup
That was supposed to improve the
Empire zabot andorf is in one way or
another mixed up in all of this or at
least he's an observer of it plus he's
initiated he's initiated into the
Masonic
lodges um and and interestingly enough
the fell who initiates him into one of
these Eastern lodges is a Jewish
Merchant by the name of
Tudi and who's also a
cabalist and invol so zorf is very very
interested in the occult he's initiated
into Eastern Masonic lodges in a period
when those same lodges are being
used as a center for political
Intrigue he also apparently is involved
in gun running which which in
Revolutionary periods is you know
there's a lot of money to be made off of
that so he's connected to
various dark businesses in a tumultuous
time with connections
to politicized
Freemasonry and the
Occult
now in the course of the first world war
he returns to Germany he just shows
up and it would be my operative
suspicion or theory that zabot andorf
was working for someone I don't think he
just pops up in Munich on his own accord
why does he leave the Ottoman Empire and
return to that
place who's behind
him well maybe no one but maybe someone
because he does seem to have money at
his disposal and he comes into Munich
and he basically takes over this small
sort of occult study group now the
interesting thing is that the Tuli
Society is really just a branch of
another existing what's called an
ariosophy
order a thing called the German order or
the Gan ORD which is centered in
Berlin but for some reason he he doesn't
want his group to be connected by name
with the germanen Orden so Tuli Society
Tuli in this case is a reference to
supposedly a mythical Arctic homeland of
the Aryan
race okay apparently they were all snow
people who wandered out of the snow at
some point it's kind of like a frozen
Atlantis so I mentioned these people the
Aros sophists who which is you have to
practice saying that so what are they
well they're a kind
of racist dramatic offshoot of
theosophy and I know I'm explaining one
thing to explain something up but
there's no other way to do this so
theosophy was uh 19th century very
popular and widely modeled ult belief
that was founded by a Russian woman by
the name of Helena
blavatsky uh she was a medium psychic
she's supposed to channelings from the
ascended masters the basic story there
they all of the ascended masters which
are mystical beings that may or may not
have once been human they live inside
the Himalayas or they float among them
on a
cloud and and they guide the spiritual
evolution of humanity what blony did was
to take Western
esotericism and blended with Hindu and
Buddhist esotericism which became very
very sexy in the west still is you know
you know Buddhism attracts a lot of
people because well it's Buddhism it's
different
see so you know the the mahatmas the
ascended masters were sending her
messages despite the fact that she was
later proven pretty much to be a fraud
and writing the letters herself
nevertheless people still went along
with this Doctrine and it's been widely
modified and copied since
then so and idea in theosophy was that
human spiritual Evolution was tied to
physical
Evolution so in you know in the case of
lovasi lavasi never said that Aryans
white people anything out this were
Superior she talked about you know a the
different root races but it's just her
version of it it's just total gobbley
goop that seems to include everyone and
I had to defy you to make much sense out
of
it but in the early 20th century there
were different sort of you know one of
the things that became
fashionable you know not terribly
popular these are small movements with
the idea that
well you know Germany is a new upcoming
country and and part of this I think was
really trying to Define who the Germans
were
because remember the German Empire
Germany as a political State doesn't
come into existence till 1871 prior to
that Germany was a geographic expression
a vague one
which described a large area in Central
Europe where a lot of people who you
know wore leather
shorts and uh or something like that and
spoke similar German dialects were
nominally Germans but they might be
prussians or bavarians or you
know they came in all sorts of varieties
in relig there was no German identity
something very similar happened in Italy
in the same period I mean you know there
weren't Italians there were sardinians
and there were Romans and there were
Sicilians
umbrians spoke again dialects of a
similar language but had never lived you
know not since the Roman empire under a
single state and really didn't think of
themselves as the
same so you have to create this
artificial thing you have to create
Germans there's now a Germany with an
emperor and so we're all going to be
Germans
well exactly what is that
much of it is is an artificial creation
you know you have to decide upon some
sort of standard dialect okay we'll
decide what what that is you know often
dialect that only a few people actually
speech and then it will be drilled into
children's heads through State schooling
programs so I think this is the the kind
of milu that it comes out of people were
trying to figure out what on Earth
Germans actually were and the need for
some sort of common identity
and you know that leads to everything
like vagian Opera Rickard Vagner wanted
to create a German mythical music so he
went back and strip mined old German
myths and cobbled them together into a
lot of people standing on stage singing
and that was his purpose he was he was a
nationalist he was in many ways a kind
of racialist Nationalist and this was
his idea of trying to
create out of bits and pieces of the
past a new fangled form of of German
identity
so on the more mystical end of this you
had the ideas that well Germany must
have been created for some special
purpose because the Germans must be very
special people and we must have some
sort of particular Destiny and then out
of this you know the direction this is
heading well we're all part of some sort
of Master race uh with with some sort of
ties to some sort of great civilization
in the past call it Tulie call it
whatever you want to be they basically
just invent
things and try to attach those to the
past and so ariosophy was the aryanized
version of
theosophy and what this did was to take
the idea that spiritual and physical
Evolution had led to the most advanced
form of human beings which were the
arens and the most advanced group of
them were of course the
Germans and this attracted and like keep
in mind again this was not a mass
movement this was very much a fringe
movement most people weren't aware of it
and weren't particularly interested in
it but it had an appeal for those who
already had a kind of esoteric bent in
some form or
another and this is where things like
the Gan order the German order and their
other groups it was only one of many
sort of grew out
of and what it was that the two society
as a branch the Tuli gazelle shaft was
supposed to
do was to study this it it was it was an
esoteric study group and so people would
get together and they'd talk about
things probably make more stuff up and
all sort of work around this this idea
of of German Aryans is the most
advanced type of human beings and all
the wonderful things that the future
would hold and the mid the fact that
this was in the midst of war in which
Germany was again you know fighting as
they saw it for for its its existence
heightened those kinds of those kinds of
tensions as
well
so my suspicion
again is that Zol andorf in terms of who
was behind him that he was essentially
called back to Germany to work either
for the Prussian political police or for
some aspect of
German intelligence and security
to try to mobilize occultism or
esotericism for the war effort because
again this is 1918 the the war is it's
gone on way too long within a few months
Germany will collapse and it will
collapse simply from the psychological
exhaustion of the population so this is
almost like uh to help the war effort
with a kind of propaganda
a narrative that can strengthen the will
of the German people strength the will
of some people some people when you have
you have to try to appeal to different
aspects of this but the the mystical
aspect is one of those things that can
be it can have a very powerful influence
and the idea is that if we we can come
up with some kind
of of mystical nationalism maybe that's
one to put it a kind of mystical
nationalism that can be exploited for
the wiers at this point you're you're
kind of grasping at straws and this this
is a whole period when the Germans are
marshalling the last of their forces to
launch a series of offensives on the
Western Front the peace offensive which
will initially be successful but will
ultimately fail and and lead to a a
collapse in
morale but among the leadership of
Germany it was a recognition was that
National morale was
flagging and one of the other things
that was kind of raising its head was
what had happened nearby a year well the
Russian Revolution which had now brought
the idea which brought another solution
to all of this the idea of revolutionary
Marxism here we need to remind ourselves
as where Marxism comes from not Russia
Germany where was the largest Marxist
party in Germany and Marx probably
expected the Revolution to begin in
Germany where else I mean the Soviet
Union is not very industrialized Germany
is and so that's where it would probably
Russia 5% of the population is a
dustrial workers in Germany 40% of the
population is inou so if any place was
like made for Marxism it was Germany I
think that's why caught on in East
Germany so well because it had kind of
come
home um and you know it was it was a it
was a local belief it wasn't something
imparted imported by the Russians it was
that was it was a German invention
so the Tuli Society one of the things
you can see in this is the Tuli Society
was particularly involved in sort of
anti-marxist or
anti-bolshevik
agitation they saw themselves the Bon
Source saw them as this whole move it
was a counter to this it was a kind of
counter Marxist movement can we sort of
try to break that apart in a nuanced way
so so uh it was a nationalist movement
the occult was part of the picture
occult racial theories so there's a
racial component like the Aryan race so
it's not just the nation of Germany and
you take that and contrast it with
Marxism did they also uh formulate that
in racial terms did they formulate that
in National versus global terms like how
do they see this Marxism formulates
everything by class
okay people are categorized by class
you're either part of the proletariat or
part of the Bourgeois or just you know
you're either part of the proletariat or
just some sort of scum really needs to
be swept into the dust bin of History
only workers
count
and that was what would take someone who
was a
nationalist would sort of drive them
crazy because their ideas we're trying
to create a German people you know we're
trying to create a common German
identity but what the marxists are doing
is they dividing Germans against each
other by class German Workers hate the
German Bourgeois
German proletariat is opposed to German
capitalist we're all you know we're all
trying to fight this war
together so that was why
Marxism in the form particularly in the
form of bushism was seen as unpatriotic
and of course was opposed to the war as
a whole you know the idea that you know
parting Lenin was that the war was an
imperialist
War and the only thing that was good
that was going to come out of it is that
the imperialist
war through all of the crises it was
creating would eventually lead to a
class war and that would be good because
that would reconcile all of these things
but think of this the two very different
versions of
this the the bolshevist version or let's
just call it the the Marxist version of
Germany was going to be a class society
in which we're going to have to have
some kind of civil upheaval which will
have German fighting
Germans whereas the the kind of mystical
nationalism the almost kind of religious
nationalism that zabot Andor from the
Tuli Society had hitched its wagon to
held that Germans are all part of a
single racial family and that's what
must be the most important thing and
that these can be different ways of
trying to influence people it comes down
to a matter of of political
influence so in a sense I think that
what zabot Andor from the Tuli Society
was trying to do at least within Munich
was to use this idea of mystical
nationalism as a potential rallying
point for some part of the population to
oppose these other forces to keep people
fighting the war is lost though uh by
the in November you know the Kaiser
abdicates and essentially the Socialists
do take over
Germany that's things come very very
close to following the Russian
model and you even get the Russian
version or take on the Bolsheviks which
are the spartacist who try and fail to
seize power early on but you do
essentially end it with the Socialist
Germany and that then leaves in the
aftermath of the war the tul Society is
sort of the the odd man out although
they're still very closely connected to
the Army and here's one of the things
that I find interesting when you get
into 1919 who is it that's paying so
Endor bills it's the
Army the one thing the German Army is
absolutely determined to do is to
preserve its social position and power
and they're perfectly willing to dump
the
Kaiser to do that
that's sort of this
deal which is made um in November of
1918 Kaiser's abdication the
proclamation of a German Republic which
you know you just had this guy declare
it it wasn't really
planned uh there's the the aert Groner
pact Groner is the chief of staff
general staff at this point uh fedick
aert is the chief socialist politician
basically and they make an
agreement and the agreement basically is
that the Army will support abert's
government if aert supports the Army in
particularly that means the continuation
of the officer Corp and the general
staff in one form or another so a deal
is made and that of course is what will
eventually help defeat the spartacist
uprising now was the Army doing the
similar kinds of things that you we've
talked about with the intelligence
agencies this kind of same kind of uh
trying to control the direction of
power the German intelligence landscape
in the first world war is a is obscure
in many ways there there are lots of
things that are going on you've
got Germany has an a military in
intelligence service called AB tyong or
section 3B that's just plain Military
Intelligence you know they they're
constantly trying to collect military
information you know before the war
about the weaponry and plans of the
enemies and then about what the
operational plans were during the
war doesn't really go much beyond that
though the German foreign
office runs a kind of political
intelligence
service and that's the one which is much
more involved in things like subsidizing
subversion in Russia
which is one of the things that the
Germans sign on
to fairly
early little diversion here in 1915
there is a Russian revolutionary who's
lived much of his life in
Germany um who goes by the code name of
parvis and he essentially comes to the
Germans in Constantinople interesting
enough in Turkey he's hanging around
there the same time as Bendorf is there
which I find Curious so parvis or
Alexander heland to give his actual name
comes him and he goes look uh there's a
lot of revolutionaries in Russia and
there's a lot of mistrust with the
regime we think that the war will
increase the contradictions in Russian
society and if you give me a lot of
marks I can Finance this revolutionary
activity and through subversion I can
take Russia out of the war well the
Germans are facing two front war that
sounds great we'll use money in order to
but notice what they're doing the German
general
staff a very conservative organization
not a bunch of revolutionaries are going
to finance revolution in an opposing
country they are going to finance
revolutionary subversion to take Russia
out of the war
which
basically works
so that gives you another idea as to
what the German military is willing to
do they're not
revolutionaries but they'll pay
revolutionaries to subvert another
regime now you've got the problem is
that the Revolutionary regime that your
money helped bring to power is now
threatening to extend into your country
MH so the whole question for the Army
and for others in Germany in 1919 is how
to keep Germany from going Bolshevik
from in a sense being hoist by your own
patard so the Tuli Society I don't think
is a huge part of this program but it is
a part of it and it's all an effort to
try to keep control and that's why the
Army is financing them that's even why
the Army at some point then supplies
them with its own
propagandists so the Tuli Society begins
to create under saboten leadership what
he called the rings of Tuli and these
are satellite
organizations that aren't the Society of
so but they're they're kind of
controlled and inspired by
it and one of those is thing called the
German Workers
Party and the German Workers Party again
is local it's not large it's not
terribly influential but what does it
aspire to be it aspires to be a party
that will bring German Workers
away from the seductive influence of the
Bolsheviks and into a more patriotic
position a patriotic and the way that I
describe this is that it's not an
anti-communist organization it's a
counter communist
organization so you don't create
something which completely opposes it
you create something which mimics it
which is ultimately what the German
Workers Party will become is the
National Socialist German Workers Party
known as that term
socialist and that
is in my view what Nazism is from the
beginning it is a counter communist
movement and by the way for people who
don't know the National Socialist German
Workers Party is also known as the Nazi
party so how did this Evolution happen
from those that that complicated little
interplay we should also say that a guy
named Adolf Hitler is in the Army at
this time
yes well he's going to come into this
because I remember said the Army was
going to supply its own propagandist to
help the German Workers Party and the
Tuli Society do their work and the
propagandist they Supply them with is a
is a man who the army
trains sends to classes to learn the
artart of public speaking and propaganda
and that fellow is corporal Adolf Hitler
so how does Adolf Hitler connect with
the German Workers Party well he' been
in the army during the war the only
regular job that he' ever had kind of
liked it so you often get the views that
well at the end of the war he joined
millions of other German soldiers who
didn't have job no no he stays in the
Army he stays in the Army till
1921 he's on the army payroll at the
very time in which he is help to set
this
up what appears to have happened is this
Sabol andorf had organized the Tuli
society that didn't had you know that
that had tried to oppose there's
actually a brief period of
time in which the Communists actually
take over
Munich um the Bavarian Soviet Republic
which doesn't last very long and
eventually the Army and volunteers put
this down uh while that's going on by
the way Hitler is actually sitting in
the
uh barracks in Munich wearing a red
armband because he is technically part
of the soldiers who have gone over to
the Bavarian Soviet
Republic he seems to have had flexible
interests in this case um so once order
is restored so to
speak the Army comes in and decide that
well one of the things we need we need
to have people who can lecture true
soldiers on on patriotic
topics and so there is a particular
Captain by the name of Carl Meyer who
sort of spots Hitler he later describes
him as uh like a stray dog looking for a
master uh Hitler has a knack for public
speaking other soldiers will listen to
him now some people can do that some
people
can't Meyer decides that he's a good
candidate for further training and so
yes they bring him in they turn him into
a what's called a veon a kind of liaison
man uh he's an army
propagandist
and then you've got this little outfit
called the German Workers
Party and essentially what happens is
that Hitler is sent in to take over
leadership of that which is what happens
he shows up he attends a meeting there
are like 50 people
there by the way that the topic of that
the the first meeting he's at is how and
why capitalism should be
abolished okay which is not what you
might well
expect and because remember the German
Workers Party is trying to cast itself
as a counter
bolshevism so it's not saying that
capitalism is great which is important
now capitalism is evil we agree upon
that we just agree it it's it has to be
destroyed from a nationalist point of
view as opposed from some sort of
Strange internationalist point of view
so Hitler is essentially as I see it
sent in by the Army as their trained man
to assume leadership within this small
party and to use it
for the Army's patriotic propaganda
campaign and he succeeds in doing so
even to the name change to the National
Socialist or German Workers Party I mean
really what sounds more red than
that so the interesting thing is uh from
where did anti-Semitism seep into this
whole thing it seems like the way they
try to formulate counter Marxism is by
saying the problem with capitalism and
the problem with
Marxism is that uh it's really judeo
capitalism and quote judeo bolshevism
from where did that ideology seep
in well that's a huge topic where does
anti-semitism come from let's start with
that term itself a term
which I have really grown increasingly
to
dislike because it doesn't actually say
what it
means anti-Semitism is anti- jewi
ISM that's all it is I'm not sure
whether there has ever existed a person
who hated Jews Arabs and males equally
okay I that's kind of hard to imagine I
don't know but that's that's technically
what that was with me because let's face
it most semites are Arabs so if you're
an anti-semite then you don't seem to
distinguish Jews from Arabs makes no
sense the origin of the term is invented
by I guess what an anti-semite okay a um
guy in the 1870s German journalist by
the name of vilhelm Mah who is wouldn't
you know it part Jewish
himself and decides that you really need
a better term than yudas Jew hate which
was the term that because that just
sounds so you know inelegant doesn't it
okay what do you want to call yourself a
Jew hater or an
anti-semite see anti-Semitism it's got
that ISM part in the end of it which
means it's a system of belief anything
that has an ism must somehow be
scientific and important it's all part
of the 19th century obsession with
bringing trying to bring science into
something one or the other so we're
going to get rid of Jew hate and we're
going to turn it into
anti-Semitism and we're only going to be
talking about Jews but we'll never
actually say that and
somehow the invention of a Jew hater to
disguise the fact that he's a Jew hater
even though he's partly Jewish by
inventing the term anti-Semitism worked
because everybody has bought it repeated
it ever
since so and I don't know I you know
maybe just because anti-sm would just be
is that is it too Direct in some way is
it do we have difficulty confronting
actually what it is that we're talking
about I do wish terms were a little bit
more direct and self-explanatory yeah
Jew hate is is a better term well the
question then comes what exactly do you
hate about
Jews and a lot of this has to do
with if you go back prior to the 19th
century if Jews were hated they were
hated for religious reasons in Christian
Europe they hated because they weren't
Christians and they existed as the only
kind of significant religious minority
but but other than that they tended to
live separately they had little economic
influence Jews tend to live in Shettles
in the East ghettos elsewhere you they
were some were involved in banking and
business but they they they sort of
remained segregated from much the
society that changes when you get to the
19th century and with what's called
Jewish emancipation and that means that
between about 1800 and 1850 most
European countries dropped the various
legal or social restrictions against
Jews they are assimilated into the
general
Society so ideally you stop being a
German Jew and you become a Jewish
German those are two very different
important Concepts
and what that does of course is that it
opens up the
professions business World elsewhere so
Jews move who had
been largely within those Realms to
begin with they already had a good deal
of experiencing and experience in
banking business and they move into
those areas and professions and become
quite
visible and that's what then creates
anti-semitism
because in some way that is seen as part
of the of the of the changes that that
have taken
place and there are a lot of things
going on here part of it has to do with
the kind of wrenching social and
economic changes that took place with
industrialization so one of the things
to keep in mind is that in the process
of
industrialization just like today whole
classes of people were were extinct
economically Craftsmen for instance so
when factories came along and began to
produce things with machines all the
crafts people who had made those things
previously are now unemployed or go to
work as wage
labor in in factories so there are
winners and losers in
industrialization and what people saw in
Germany and elsewhere is that among this
new sort of RIS in capitalist elite
among these new professions among the
bureaucrats that are coming out of these
burgeoning states there were
visibly a fair number of
Jews so in some way the rise of Jews in
the minds of many people were connected
to all of the other bad things that were
going on you know the world was changing
in a way we don't like and seemingly the
Jews are
prospering while I am not
and that was true in Germany elsewhere
Jews became highly visible in the
professions they became very visible in
banking they became visible in legal
profession they became visible in the
medical profession and those are people
that a lot of people would come in
contact with bankers lawyers and doctors
they were not the majority there
but you know vastly over represented in
terms of the general
population and and and especially
within the
cities so in that sense the roots of
anti-Semitism to me is that Jews in
Germany and elsewhere and not just in
Germany by any means France Britain
everywhere else became identified with
the bad changes that were that were
taking
place and but you also found that uh
Jews were not only prominent among
capitalists they were also prominent
among in the Socialist movement as well
well so one of the things you could look
around if we returned to Germany in 1919
in the aftermath of World War I and you
look around in Bavaria or elsewhere you
tend to find that there are a lot of
Jews inv visible
positions on the German
left Rose Luxembourg is but but one
example of that you know oan LaVine some
of them came in from Russia you know
when the Soviets send a representative
to Germany in this period it's Carl
rodek
a Jew so it wasn't difficult to exploit
that to argue
that just as the ranks of capitalism was
full of
Jews the ranks of bolshevism or of the
Revolutionary left were full of Jews
because you could easily go around and
distinguish a great many of them again
they don't have to be the majority they
just have to be numerous prominent and
visible
which they
were so this provided you a you know in
the case of the propaganda of the German
Army the type of stuff that Hitler was
spute out they could put all the anti-
capitalist rhetoric in there wanted to
the Army was never going to overthrow
capitalism and the capitalist knew they
weren't going to do it so go ahead you
know talk about us we don't really
care that's not going to because we know
that the Army would prevent that from
happening the way to then undermined the
Real Enemy it was the scene the the
Revolutionary left was to point out the
the Jewish influence there I mean look
at Russia well Len is not but trosy
there he is look there there there's a
Jew there's one rodic is a Jew it wasn't
hard to find them in that
regard you gave a lecture on the
protocols of the Elders of Zion it's why
they considered to be the most
influential work of anti-Semitism ever
perhaps
uh can you describe this
text well the protocols of the Learned
Elders of
Zion is probably one of the most
Troublesome and destructive works of
literature that has ever
emerged and yet its
Origins remain obscure so you get a
whole variety of stories about where it
came from so the one story that is often
is that it was it was the work of the
Okana the Russian secret police and in
particular it was all crafted in 1904
and
1905 uh in uh in in Paris and there's a
whole description of u p rovski
who is the supposedly the chief of the
okran at the time was the man behind it
another fellow by the name of matv
golinski was the drafter of it and that
they they
had this document uh written by a a
French political writer from some
decades back called dialogue in Hell
between makavelli and
monu which they were then
adapting that usually it's argued that
they they plagiarized it into the
protocols and and and none of that is is
is really
true I mean the first part about it is
that
at the time this supposedly took place
Raj Co he wasn't working for the Okana
he hadd been fired and he wasn't in
Paris and the whole situation which is
described couldn't have taken place
because the people who did it weren't
there it's a
story but it provides a kind of
explanation for it so the protocols
emerge so you always have to go back
this is one of the things
that I have
found always useful in research is go
back to the
beginning find the first place this is
mentioned or the first version or the
first iteration where does it
start so you go back to St Petersburg
Russia run
1903 there is a
small right-wing anti-semitic newspaper
published there called zamia
banner and it publ lishes in a kind of
Serial
form a work doesn't credit with any
original
author and this is the first version of
the protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion but what it's actually
describing is a judeo masonic plot to
rule the world those two terms are
always combined together and I fact in
the earlier version there's far more
mentions of Freemasons than there are
are
Jews and it's you know the publisher
namia it's it's closely connected to a
thing called the union of the Russian
people the union of Russian men which
was um ostensibly existed to defend the
Empire against
subversion and particularly against what
I thought was Jewish subversion when
they also argued that the prominence of
Jews and revolutionary movement somehow
proved that this was in some a a Jewish
Revolution but again this is this is not
a mainstream newspaper it's not
appealing to a mainstream population
very few people saw it but this is where
it appears now keep in mind that's two
or three years before it's usually said
to have been written or the other
version is that there's this crazy
priest by the name of Sergey Nelis and
he wrote it or attend actually attended
it as an appendix to his work in 1905
now it was it was around before that so
neis didn't create created wasn't
drafted in Paris in 1904 or
1905 it was serialized in an obscure
right-wing Russian
newspaper 1903 and by the way we should
say that
these are 24 protocols well it varies it
varies uh that are I guess supposed to
be like meeting notes about the supposed
cabal where the Jews and
Freemasons are planning together a world
domination but it's like meeting notes
right protocol which are Russian term
basically for notes of a meeting
yeah well as notes of a meeting these
are the goofiest things I've ever seen
because what you've got here it's it's
not notes no one takes notes from a
meeting that way what you've got is like
the exposition of a bond villain all
right it's all of this boy all then
we're going to do this and then okay the
last thing you want to do is lay out
your if you got a plan for world
domination my suggestion would be don't
write it
down so it's not notes of a meeting it's
it's a it's again it's another sort of
narrative or story that's being
told it Bears no resemblance to the
dialogue on Hell between melli and
monu but what it is the best thing it's
it's not particularly readable in some
ways uh there was an Italian writer by
name of cheser
Mikus uh who wrote a book translated in
English called the non-existent
manuscript and what it is is that he
takes the different versions starting
with the 1902 1903 versions and looks
through the other ones and and he tries
to in the process to reconstruct what he
thinks the original might have
been but the other thing he does which
was fascinating to me is that he takes
this whole sort of initial text and in
in bold type he indicates the paragraphs
but more often sentences or phrases that
appear to be identical from the Jolie
work and they're just scattered
throughout it there's
no particular Rhyme or Reason to it you
don't plagiarize that way I mean who
does that uh sentence here sentence
there which has led to a peculiar theory
of mine which of course I will have to
expound upon which is that I think that
the original author of the protocols was
the same Maurice
Jolie I think what someone stumbled
across was a work which he wrote and
never
published and which he just drew it's
exactly what someone would do working
from your own kind of
material because I've you know I've
written things and then taken what I've
written and then sort of repackaged that
into something else sentence here
sentence there yeah and the same sort of
thing comes out only sort of bits and
pieces of it remain so Hawai would Jolie
have done that Jolie was uh we're
talking about a man whose career
basically spaned the 1850s to
1870s he's an obscure figure
I'm not even totally sure he existed I
mean it but it's one of those things you
go looking for him I love that you're a
scholar of people that just kind of
emerge out of like the darkness they
just they just come from nowhere and and
there's the Arana there also we should
also say this was I guess the original
would be written I mean what what's the
language of the original Russian Russian
but my hunch is that that's adopted from
a French version first of all they're
constantly harping on Freemasons which
wasn't nearly as a big idea as there if
you go back to France in the 1890s MH
there's some big scandals well there's
the DFA Scandal we got that all right
where you've got a Jewish officer on
trial for being a traitor all right so
that was Pro so you bring in the whole
Jewish element Jews is disloyal drus
case
1894 earlier you had the Panama Scandal
which was this huge investment Scandal
when the Panama Canal company in Paris
collapsed and again many of the major
players in that work Jewish Finance
ear and then you've got the taxel
hoax so the taxel hoax was the work of
this guy his real name was I think Zan
P he was kind of a French journalist he
I know he started out writing porn so I
mean he wrote things like sex lives of
the popes and you know the erotic Bible
and various things of that kind he was a
Catholic broke with the Catholic Church
wrote bad stuff about the pop
and uh apparently became a Freemason for
a while and then supposedly recanted his
evil ways went back to the church and
then under the name Leo taxel began
writing these whole series of Articles
basically arguing that there was a
masonic satanic
conspiracy run by the way by an American
Albert
Pike and this also included child
sacrifice it's got pizza
and it is wealth by a high priestess
Diana vau and so there's like child
sacrifice you know weird Roby Bohemian
Grove stuff and the Freemasons are devil
worshippers going back to the Knights
Templars and so there's a thing called
The Devil in the 19th century and the
secrets of
Freemasonry and this became a bestseller
in
France so France is just obsessed with
all these all these kinds of
conspiracies so evil satanic Freemasons
evil Jewish financiers
dfus this this is the Brew where all of
this comes I want to figure out how
Freemasons and Jews get connected
together France is the place where this
happens now taxel or Zan P eventually
pulls another interesting thing in this
around
1897 critics argue that he's making this
stuff up and demand that he present
Diana vau supposed satanic High
Priestess toddler
killer and he says oh we're going to
have a press conference she'll appear
and say all of this stuff as she returns
to the church and you know possibly
becomes a nun and so people show up you
know High figures in the Catholic Church
shows up and he does no dianon and Doan
p goes it's all a hoax I made it up
you're all a bunch of idiots for
believing it okay you you members of the
church especially just just what
gullible you know morons you are and
that's it he confesses it to this day
however you will find people who will
insist that it's actually true because
they desperately want it to be true
MH but this is I think the milu that I
like that word apparently that that this
that this comes out of and this is this
is this whole kind of unhealthy yeah
mix so France to me is the only place
that in the decade preceding it that
something like this would be
concocted so it was either created by
some sort of unknown person there but I
still think that even though he dies in
like 1879 that that and in in morce
Jolie's troubled
career he went from being an opponent of
French Emperor Napoleon III which is
what his which is what the whole
dialogues was written
against and then he was for a Time time
a close political
Ally of a French politician by the name
of Adolf
creu so Adolf Crux what's he got going
for him well he was kind of a radical
politician he was an opponent of
Napoleon III he was a Freemason oh and
he was
Jewish in fact at one point I think he
was actually the head both of the
Scottish
right in France and and I an important
figure in the
aliance Israelite okay the Jewish
organization in France so he was
publicly very prominently Jewish and
Masonic so someone else who would have
linked them together Jolie as he did
with Vally everyone this is a guy whose
life largely consisted of dual threats
and fist fights
so he gets he gets angry at creu
and it's exactly the type of thing that
he might write to vent his spleen about
it but he
died probably a suicide that's kind of
difficult to
tell in obscurity his
son seems to have inherited most of his
literary
works and his son then worked for new
became a journalist work for newspapers
in France in the 1890s but was also
associated with some people on the
fringes of the Okana or the Russian
press
in
France so one of the little things that
uh had happened by this time is that
France and Russia had become allies even
though their political systems are
completely
incompatible and so the Russians were
using money to subsidize French
newspapers that were championing the
alliance between the two Russian
meddling okay no they're just paying to
have the right kind of newspapers come
out so there's this whole connection
between the kind of Russian journalistic
World and the French journalistic world
and all of these scandals which are
going on and Jolie's son and then you
know 10 years down the road this thing
pops up in a newspaper in St Petersburg
that's where I
think the origins
lay why do you think it took off why do
you think it grabbed a large number of
people's
imaginations and even after it was shown
to be not actually what it's supposed to
be people still believe it's real well
it doesn't take off immediately okay
never receives any kind of wide I mean
nobody much reads the first edition of
it
when it's reedited it keeps getting
there are something like 18 or 19
different versions as it goes through I
mean it gets get you know
people leave this protocol out or leave
another one as time goes on there's more
and more emphasis on Jews and less and
less on Freemasons so it's sort of and
the whole thing could have
begun as an anti-masonic tract mm I mean
you could leave Jews out of it entirely
and just turn it into a masonic plot to
rule the world but let's just throw them
in as well since the the two things are
already being combined
elsewhere it doesn't become a big deal
until really after the first world war
because the initial versions of it are
all in Russian and you know let's face
it well that's widely read in Russia
it's not much read anywhere else it's a
different alphabet nobody can even see
what it
means so it has no particular influence
outside of Russia but then you get to
and you get all these different versions
of it so Sly you get two English
versions in the US another English
version in Britain a German Edition a
French Edition a Dutch Edition everybody
is coming up with these things so it's
not until the immediate aftermath of the
first world war that this metastasizes
and it begins to show up in all of these
different foreign
additions um and I think that just has
to do with the changes that have taken
place during the
War uh one of the things that people
began looking for was said why was there
a war and we have just had this whole
disastrous War and the world has been
turned upside
down so there has to be some kind of
explanation for that I don't know and
and one of the things this offered to
see there's this evil plan there's this
evil plan that has been put into motion
and this could possibly explain what's
taking
place the reason why the protocol
s were I think
widely bought then and why they still
are in many ways is the same reason that
the taxel hoax I was talking about was
because it told a story that people
wanted to
believe so in France in the
1890s there was widespread suspicion of
Freemasons it was seen as
a somewhat Sinister secretive
organization certainly secretive
and there was
also you know the same sort of
generalized prejudices about
Jews clannish distinct too much
influence all of the things that went on
so you could it was sort of easy to
combine those two things together and
even though
taxel admits it was a
hoax there were those who argued that
this is just too it's too accurate it
describes things too completely to be a
hoax
and then you get the same arguments in
fact I've heard the same arguments with
the protocol I don't even buy this is as
an example of plagiarism because you
can't actually prove what's being
plagiarized in any sense to
me the protocols are a prime example of
what I call a turd on a
plate these things crop up I have to
explain that now but I after what is a
turd on a plate well a turd on a plate
is a turd on a plate suppose you come in
and there's a plate sitting on the table
and there's a turd on it yeah now the
first thing you're going to what is is
is that a turd is it a human turd where
did it come from who's why would someone
poop on a plate they're all these
questions that come to mind it makes no
sense but that's what you come it's just
there
right I don't know where it came from I
don't know why but there's a turd on a
plate and that's what the protocols are
they're just there but the reality is
just like with a Turret on a plate you
take a picture of that in modern day and
it becomes a meme becomes viral and
becomes a joke on all social media and
now it's viewed by tens of millions of
people or whatever it becomes popular so
wherever the tur came from it
did Captivate the imagination yeah it
did speak to something because it seem
to provide an
explanation can you just speak to uh
hatred is it just an accident of History
why was it the Jews versus the
Freemasons is it uh the collective mind
searching for a small group to blame for
the Pains of civilization and then Jews
just happen to be the thing that was
selected at that moment in history it
goes all the way
back to the
Greeks let's blame
them so one of the first occasions you
find the idea that Jews are a
distinct
mean-spirited nasty
people goes back to an a Greco Egyptian
historian named
Mano this is around I think 300
BC early can't even rope the Romans into
this
one so Mano is trying to write a history
of the dynasties of Egypt I think his
history of dynasties of Egypt still is
one of the basic Works in this but he
tells this whole
story which essentially describes the
kind of first blood lials that the you
know the Jews to celebrate their you
know various religious holidays would
capture Greeks and fatten them up in the
basement and then slaughter them and eat
them or drain blood or do something yeah
it's just the sort of earlier version of
that
kindy uh also I think it repeats the
sort of Egyptian version of The Exodus
out of
Egypt which is quite different than the
biblical
version um in this case the Egyptian you
know they they they worked as you know
they stole all the stuff out of the
Egyptians houses and ran off into the
desert the Jews th all the stuff and in
all yeah Hebrews Hebrews robbed the
Egyptians they they were taken in and
you know we took them in and sheltered
them gave them jobs and then they like
stole all the jewelry and ran away we
didn't even chase them we were glad to
see them gone so it's a different it's a
different narrative on that story uh but
it essentially portrays the Jews as
being as being hostile you know that
they don't like other
people um they're contemptuous of other
people's religions the rest of it and
see the Greeks tended to think of
themselves as being extremely
Cosmopolitan now the Greeks run across
people worshiping other gods they go
well those are just our Gods under
different names okay every everything
was sort of adjusted into their
landscape so you end up with that kind
of of hostility which was there at the
time and that was probably influenced
also by some of these earlier
rebellions uh that had taken place in
Egypt you know and during the Roman
period you you not only have the Judean
rebellion
in 70 AD but you have a couple of other
uprisings in North Africa and they're
very bloody Affairs and in some cases
Jews begin massacring other people
around them they start killing the
Greeks the Greeks start killing them so
there was a fair amount of from that
period on a certain amount of Bad Blood
of mutual contempt between Greek or
between Helens between the people who
became heniz as the Romans would be and
the
Jews and the Romans also seems to have
developed much of that idea you know
they consider judaist being you know
horrible place to have to govern
inhabited by a a stubborn obnoxious
people um not
well-liked so that's really where you
see
the earliest version of
that and the reasons for it would
[Music]
be complicated what you could say is
that going back to mano and the Roman
period Jews
judeans frequently experience
difficulties conflicts with other
people living around
them and part of that probably had to do
with the diaspora which was the movement
well you know you get the idea the
Romans came in and kicked everybody out
which they didn't Jews had been leaving
Judea since it was a poor limited area
and moving into areas like North Africa
Egypt serica all the way into southern
France they move widely around the Roman
Empire
so that sense of both distinctness and
hostility existed since ancient
times so it wasn't just the attitude of
the church towards Jews was mixed
by well one of the ideas of course is
that uh at the end of time you know just
before the second coming one of the
signs how we going we know that that
Jesus is going to return and the world
is going to end well the Jews will all
convert there will there will be a mass
conversion they'll sort of see the light
now so there have to be Jews around to
do that or we won't you know it's like a
canary and a coal mine you you you have
to have them there to tip it off so that
was one of the arguments as to why
within the church as to why Jews would
not be forcibly
converted beyond the fact that it's just
kind of bad policy to forcibly convert
people because you don't know whether
it's sincere
but they need to be
preserved as a kind of
artifact which will then redeem
itself at the end of time
it's not something which is encouraged
it predates
Christianity and then Christianity of
course in its own way just sort
of plagiarizes the whole Jewish thing
doesn't
it I mean I hesitate to use that term
but that's what you do it's just like
well we're the Jews now okay you used to
have a unique relationship with God but
now it's been passed over to us and so
you know
thanks thanks for the Bible you know I
can remember that and my mom's side I
was periodically exposed to Sunday
school and and pretty much the Old
Testament was always presented as if
somehow it was the you know the history
of like with lack of a better term you
know Europeans in some way it was it was
sort of a Christian history it was all
the preal to that and there'd be some
sort of a knowledge the he first the
term Hebrew was always used never Jews
so you know the ancient Hebrews and
somehow the Hebrews just sort of became
the Christians and I don't know the Jews
just got let they didn't get a memo or
something so it's basically like
Christianity the
prequel is the the Old Testament yeah
but they just sort of to take over okay
we we have the special dispensation now
thank you very
much um you're an
artifact so it's interesting so this
this whole
narrative uh that I would say is kind of
like a viral meme
started as you describe in 300 BC it
just carried all carried on various
forms and morphed itself and arrived
after the Industrial Revolution into in
a new form to the to the 19th and 20th
Century and then somehow captivated
everybody's imagination I think that
modern anti-Semitism
is very much a creation of the modern
world and the Industrial Revolution it's
it's largely creation of Jewish
emancipation it's the nasty flip side of
that
okay all of the restrictions are thrown
off but now also you become the focus of
much more attention than what you had
what you had before you know prior to
that you
had the the kind of
ghettoization which worked both way I
mean there
were rabbis who praise the ghetto is is
is a protection of Jews against the
outside world because inside we can live
our life as we wish and we are
unmolested whereas if we were the great
fear is that if we were sort of absorbed
into this larger World we'll lose our
identity that sort of question comes up
in the 18th century and things like the
uh hasala movement in Germany cuz the
German Jews were always at the sort of
cutting edge of assimilation and
modernity Moses melon was an example of
that arguing that you know we just need
to become
Germans so you know as much as possible
synagogue should be look like Lutheran
Churches
um everything you things should be given
in good German and and that's the way we
we need to become Jewish Germans we
don't we don't want to become a kind of
group of people who are who are part in
that way and
that he created great
tensions ever since you know one of the
essential points that seems to me in
anti-Semitism anti- jewi ism is that all
the Jews are in it together isn't that
one of the things okay they're always
talking about as if they're Collective
Jews this Jews that as if it's it's a
single undifferentiated mass of people
who all move and speak in the same the
same
way from my personal experience not
being
Jewish I've it's incredibly diverse in
many ways really one of the things that
anti-Semitism proposes is a continuity
or a singularity of Jewish identity that
never existed just like you said in one
hand there's a good story in the other
hand is the truth and often times the
good story wins out and there's
something about the a that there's a
cabal of people whatever they are in
this case our discussion is
Jews seeking world domination
controlling everybody is somehow a
compelling story it gives us a direction
of a people's to fight of a people's to
hate on which we project our pain cuz
life is difficult life for many for most
is full of suffering and so we channel
that suffering into hatred towards the
other maybe if we can just zoom out what
do you from this particular
discussion learn about human nature that
we that we pick the other in this kind
of
way and we divide each other up in
groups and then construct
stories and like constructing those
stories and they become really uh viral
and sexy to us and then we channel the
hatred we use those stories to channel
our hatred towards the other
well you know Jews aren't the only
recipient of that I mean any anytime you
hear people talking about Jews this or
that white people this or that black
people this or that Asians this or that
where they're an undifferentiated Mass
yeah who apparently all share something
in
common well nobody's really
thinking and the other thing you'll find
is that people who will Express those
views when press will argue that oh this
you know if if they actually know
anybody from those groups those are okay
mhm you know it's like Nazis they all
they go H this isn't okay Jew they're
all right they were they would always be
constantly making exceptions and one for
you know but they actually met an actual
human being and they seem to be fairly
normal well they were okay so what it
was that they they hated weren't actual
people for the most part it was just
this kind of
vision that they had of them you're not
even talking about real
people uh I don't know what does that
tell you about human nature well okay in
70 odd years what have I learned about
my fellow
creatures
one I don't actually understand them any
better than I ever did in fact less so
okay I would say this when I was 17 I
thought I had the world much more
figured out than I do
now completely deluded but you know it
seemed to make much more sense and I
could categorize things BAS Bic take
upon human beings most people most of
the time are
polite cooperative and
kind until they're
not and the
exact Tipping Point and moment in which
they go from one to the other is
unpredictable God that's brilliantly put
speaking of the Tipping Point you gave a
series of lectures on murderers crimes
in the 20th century one of the crimes
that you describe is the Manson family
murders and that combines a lot of the
elements of what we've been talking
about and a lot of the elements of the
human nature that you just uh described
so can you just tell this story at a
high level as you understand it the
Manson villing well you begin with
Charles Manson who's the key element in
this and Charles Manson for most of his
life up until the time that he's around
33 is an unexceptional Petty
criminal in and out of
prison reform school from an early age
not really associated with violent
crimes he did stuff like steal cars
write bad
checks became an unsuccessful pimp and
drug
dealer so around 1967 he gets out of his
latest stint in federal Lockup in
terminal Island there Los Angeles
California uh by that time time he's
learned how to play the guitar has
Ambitions to become a
musician and uh also has proclaimed
himself a
Scientologist not that he ever seems to
have pra but that's what he would claim
that he was kind of you know
self-educated himself in in prison to a
certain degree and so when he gets out
of of prison in '
67 he was a model prisoner he behaved
himself you know and and seemed can sort
of Imagine his life is going in a
completely different direction and and
here again I'm going to say something
kind of good about Charles Manson which
is that he actually was a decent singer
if you really sort of listen to some of
the stuff he did he you know he's not a
great singer
but he could have you know other people
got recording contracts with less Talent
than he had and he could play
guitar uh The Beach Boys actually do
record one of his songs without him how
would you evaluate Hitler's painting on
compared to Charles Manson well you're
supposed to say it's terrible okay okay
it looks average to me yeah it's
landscape I mean if you didn't know it
was
Hitler yeah would it would it would it
would you I I don't know what people say
about it um I'm sorry for the
distraction it's just you know it's just
it's an average painter that's what it
was something like crazy genocidal
Maniac paintings you don't have really
have those so Manson you know he could
could have done that he probably could
have you know he made certain inroads
into the music industry and if he hadn't
been such a weirdo he might have gotten
further with it but his life could have
taken a different turn so this is one of
the questions I have where did a guy who
becomes who's an unexceptional career
Petty
criminal suddenly emerge into some sort
of criminal mastermind a Svengali who
can bend all of these people to his will
and get them to go out and commit
murder that's a that's a real shift that
you
have so the first thing it kind of could
tell you that something odd is going on
is he gets out of prison in LA
county and he's supposed you know he's
on
parole you know par leaves are supposed
to have a job not supposed to leave the
jurisdiction of their parole he heads
straight for the Bay Area violates
parole right off the bat two weeks
later he drifts into the parole office
in the bay area whereupon he should have
been arrested and sent back to terminal
Island but instead they just assigned
him a pro I don't know maybe things were
easier then in some way so he gets
assigned to parole officer Michael
Smith Michael Smith is initially
handling a number of Peres but after a
while once he takes on Manson he only
has one parole Le he's supervising
Charlie Manson which is
odd then you also find out that Michael
Smith in addition to being a parole
officer is is a graduate student at the
University of
California uh studying group dynamics
especially the influence of
drugs on gangs and groups and he's also
connected to the hayatt Ashbury free
clinic which is a place where the
influence of because he Ashbury had lots
of drugs and lots of
groups so you know Charlie Manson never
gets a regular
job hangs around with un with young
girls
EXC cons engages in criminal activity is
repeatedly arrested but nothing ever
sticks for the you
know next couple of
years so who gets that type of thing who
gets a get out of jail free
card
informance so here is what again this is
speculation but
Manson at some point after he got out of
prison is getting this treatment because
he is recruited as a confidential
informant for who for
who that's the interesting
question so probably not for any local
police departments uh my best suspicion
is probably the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics precursor to the
DEA you know Federal parole
Federal parole officer come graduate
student in drugs and group dynamics and
eventually with permission he goes back
down to LA and what is he part of when
he's there well he's on the fringes of
the music
industry not so much you know he those
the Wilsons and elsewhere which also
brings him to the fringes of the film
industry so one of the things If you're
sort of looking in terms of Hollywood
Music Industry Elites and the flow of oh
and he's also dealing in drugs
mhm and
girls so an early version of Jeffrey
Epstein yeah uh Manson attracted lots of
underage runaways
and train them use them also associating
with biker gangs who produced the drugs
Etc so that's that's part of what he's
he's an he's an informant in the
movement of drugs basically within the
film music Industries and he's given
pretty much a kind of free reign at that
point what then happens in August of
1969 is that there are these murders you
know first Sharon Tate and her friends
in SEO
Drive I think everybody is probably
pretty much heard that story before and
of course the question is why SEO Drive
why Sharon Tate frosi and the rest him
that he have some Manson was familiar
with the place he had been there before
members of the family had been there
before
so he knew where it was it wasn't an
easy place to find I mean the way that
that house the house the original house
is no longer there but the same sort of
property in a house is built there and
if you didn't know where it was it's
it's not someplace let's just go for a
drive in the Hollywood Hills and murder
people in a house well that isn't the
one that you would come
across there are lots of connections
there uh voytech fski who was one of the
people killed at the clo Drive housee
was involved in drug dealing that's
that's a possible connection between the
two probably a fairly likely one
probably not unfortunate Sharon Tate at
all she was probably in the wrong place
at the wrong time her husband might have
been you never
know uh and then the next night uh after
the the slaughter there which by the way
Manson is not at so this is one of the
interesting things about is Charles
Manson doesn't kill any of these people
his crime is supposedly or ing the
killings to be
done he
supposedly um thought that the killings
at the Tate house were
sloppy and he was going to give
everybody a crash course and how you
apparently commit seemingly random
murderers so the next night he takes
group of people over to the LA Bianca's
house in a different section of
LA and you got Leno and rosemary lanca
guy's a grosser his wife runs a dress
shop upper middle
class and uh you know they're bound and
gagged and hacked to death and uh as as
at the uh Tate residence various things
like Piggy are written you know various
messages in blood things that are
supposed to look like cats paws because
one of the groups trying to be framed
for this was the idea was the Black
Panthers so the general story that comes
out in the subsequent trial is that this
was all a part of something called
Helter Skelter which Manson supposedly
was an IDE that that sounds like a
beetle song that's where he got it from
he thought the Beatles were talking to
him through their music and that there
was going to be an apocalyptic race
war and this was all part of a plan to
set this off so this is why the Black
Panthers were trying to be implicated in
this
although how it was supposed to do that
is never really
explained here is what I think was
really happened
what really happened and now I think it
fits
together before Sharon Tate and her
friends or the law Biancas were
killed there was a Murder By members of
the family of some of the same people
involved in the later killings of a
musician drug manufacturer by the name
of Gary
Hinman so Manon again was involved in
the drug
trade and Hinman made them he was a cook
basically
and he brewed them up in his basement
sold the drugs to Manson who sold them
to biker gangs like the straight satans
which was one of the groups that he used
and they distributed them
elsewhere well one day the straight
Satan show up and complain that the last
batch of meth or whatever it was that
they got from Manson had made some of
their brothers very very ill and they
were quite unhappy about that and they
wanted their $22,000
back Manson had gotten those drugs from
Gary
Henman so he is unhappy and he sends
Bobby BOS and couple of the girls over
to him's place to get the money from
him as the story is later related I
think by Susan
Atkins Hinman denied that there was
anything wrong with this drugs and
refused to pay up which led to a
interrogation torture session in which
she was
killed yeah and the idea was here what
are we going to do with that well one of
the other groups that Hinman had sold
drugs to were guess what people
associated with the Black Panther so
we'll leave these things up and it will
make them that they will do it so it's
Bobby
BOS who then takes hinman's car and
decides to drive it up the
coast by the way with a bloody knife
with henman's blood and hair on on it
and blood on the seats in the car and
then he pulls it off the road and you
decides to sleep it off and he gets
busted right so find hinman's Body find
BOS in henman's car with a bloody knife
with him yeah he gets
arrested so BOS was very popular with
some of the girls there's consternation
in the family that Bobby has been
arrested so how can we possibly get
Bobby out of jail copycat killings so if
we go kill more people and we make it
look the same then see Bobby couldn't
possibly have done it no see he just
borrowed the car okay he stole the car
but the knife was already in he didn't
have anything to do with this so that to
me makes the most sense out of what
followed how often do people talk about
that theory that's an interesting Theory
well it's it's there it's just not the
one that that b wanted to go with helter
SC because it was again it was a story
that people could understand yeah and it
was Sensational and it would catch on
also another probable issue in that was
that his star witness was Linda caban
Linda
caban she was present at both the Tate
and La Bianca murders she didn't
participate in the killings according to
her she sort of drives the car but
everybody else talked about what had
happened well okay she turns state
evidence and gets total
immunity and it's largely in her
testimony that all the rest of the case
is
based now if you start throwing into the
equation that she proclaimed her love
for Bobby bosle and this could and that
she according to others was the chief
proponent of the copycat
killings well then that would get messy
now there's one guy that's at the center
of this it's Charles Manson he ordered
all of this done to ignite a race war
even
though how would any of that do it okay
so that doesn't make sense but he is
nevertheless at the center of this
because he's the glue of the family
right he exerts a tremendous amount of
psychological control over them how was
he able to do that Sergeant TR how like
what because he said he was a petty
criminal it does seem he was pretty
prolific in his Petty crimes like he he
did a lot of them he had a lot of access
to LA
D okay okay which he started
getting at the free
clinic you in San Francisco so lots lots
of it floating
around um some descriptions of the
family at spawn Ranch is that people
were basically taking acid on a daily
basis which by the way was also a
potential problem with Linda cassian's
testimony since she also admitted to
being high most of the time and also
thinking she was a witch all right so
you want to put her okay okay where do
you want to go with that see if Manson
wasn't Manson if he hadn't acted like
such a complete if he hadn't actually
acted like the crazed hippie psycho
goofball that bugliosi painted him as
being then cavan's testimony wouldn't
have been as strong because you could I
mean the first thing against her is
you've got an immunity mhm for for
telling the story The prosecution
wants you know that's a little iffy
and we won't even bring in the witch and
the drugs and being in love with Bobby
BOS they AR so if Manson had you know
been dressed like you sitting there in a
suit and tie and you know and and
behaved himself and spoken normally
things might this isn't to say that he
wasn't guilty as
hell so what he supposedly did was to
inspire all of these
killings
and I think that's probably you know
sort of beginning with the Hinman
killing he told them to go over there
and get the money one way or the other I
don't know whether it's clear whether he
told him if you don't get the money kill
him but henman's
dead and
then you might also seen the value in
terms of having copycat killings as a
way of throwing off any other kind of
blame the other story you get is that
one of the people who had lived at the
SEO house for Sharon Tate was before was
a record producer by the name of Terry
Melcher meler supposedly is the general
Story Goes had welched on a deal with
Manson in terms of a record contract you
know he he screwed over Manson in some
sort of a record deal and Manson wanted
to get revenge and sent and sent them to
kill everybody in the
house which again doesn't make much of
sense one Manson knew that meltra wasn't
living there anymore
he probably knew where melshire was
living if he wanted to get melshire he
could could have found him it wasn't
that difficult to
do and
um so that's it's not revenge on Terry
melshire that Drew him there he was
familiar with the house so the idea was
to Simply commit random killings that
would
throw it would muddy the whole Waters
with the Hinman killing then you might
pick some place you knew of you knew the
place with running out there would be
someone there and you really didn't care
in the same way that the L Bianca seemed
to have
been Manson was familiar with that
because it supposedly had been the scene
of uh creepy
crawling this is little interesting
things that the family would be taught
to do creepy crawling it's when you
sneak into somebody's house at
night while they're there asleep or when
they're not there and you move things
around so when they get up in the
morning or they come home they'll
suddenly notice that someone has been in
their house which will freak them out
which is the whole point of that but it
doesn't seem like the murder or the
creepy crawling was the what creepy
crawling made it be it doesn't seem like
the
murder like some of the other people
you've you've covered like the Zodiac
Killer the murder is the
goal maybe there's uh some Psychopathic
kind of artistry to the murder that the
Zodiac Killer had and the messaging
behind that yeah but it seems like with
the the as at least the way you're
describing it with the Charles Manson
family the murder was just um they just
had a basic disregard for human life and
the murder was a as a consequence of
just operating in the drug underworld so
Manson set up a kind of Base I thing
called the Spawn movie Ranch which was
an old movie Ranch out in the Northwest
Edge of LA and they just kind of camped
out there um he used the girls in
particular squeaky fro to get the owner
operator um I think George spawned to
let them hang out there and basically
she slept with him and he was perfectly
happy to let them hang out they also had
a place out in the desert that they
had they dealt in credit card fraud
stolen cars it was kind of a chop shop
that they ran out of the place
so he he had a fairly good little
criminal gig going which with the
protection he had probably would the one
thing they couldn't cover him on was
murder so you think there was if he was
an Informer you think there was still a
connection between de FBI CIA whatever
with with him throughout this until he
come murder the real question is there
is a book written on this by Tom O'Neal
called chaos I'm not necessar saying
it's the easiest thing to get through
there's a lot of material there I don't
think O'Neal necessarily knows what to
make of some of the stuff he came up
with but he does a very good job of sort
of demolishing the whole buosi
narrative and one of the people he
mentions is a name that I had run into
elsewhere and so I really paid attention
to it when I saw it again and the name
is reev
witson reev
witson shows up on the fringes even
though he has no no judicial function he
sort of hangs around buosi in in the
prosecution he's some sort of advice
he's just kind of there in the same way
that he was one of these guy you know he
grew his hair kind of long wore bell
bottoms hung around the music community
and elsewhere in Hollywood but no one
could tell you exactly what he
did I know what he did later but a
decade later he shows up as a CIA
officer in Central
America
hm so reev witson later in his career at
least is Cia what was
he in
1969 what is he doing in
this uh the other thing about it is he
appears to have been the person who
called there's whole question of when
the bodies at SEO Drive
are discovered so the general story is
that Sharon Tate's housekeeper shows up
around 8:30 in the morning finds the
bloody scene and goes screaming next
door but there was another fellow who
knew I think the owner of the house is a
photographer last name may be hatami he
gets a call earlier in the morning
saying that there have been
murders
there and the person he recalls calling
him is Reef
Whitson so
someone had been at the house
before the bodies were discovered and
they had not called the
police so I don't know what's going on
there but it's a um it's a curious kind
of of
situation and Manson in a lot of ways
just kind of self- imiles himself I mean
his behavior at the trial is bizarre
it's threatening it's disruptive you
know he's got his girls out in the
street carving x's in their forehead
carrying
knives one of the attorneys initially
his attorney Ron
Hughes becomes van halton's attorney and
he figures out that the three girls
supposedly on Charlie's
insistence are going to confess and they
confess that it was all their idea and
Charlie had nothing to do with it and
Hugh doesn't like this because his
defense for her is that she was under
his influence MH and therefore not
responsible for her own actions he he
was in having psychic control so he
refuses to go along with it there's a
break in the trial he goes camping up in
the mountains with some
friends disappears during a rainstorm
and then some months later his
decomposed remains are
found now rumors always the rumors okay
what would history be without rumors mhm
held that ah see members of the family
they they were they were pissed off at
Ron Hughes because he messed up
Charlie's idea to get him off and so
they killed him oh maybe they did maybe
he drowned that's that's absolutely
impossible to say you got that kind of
story there's a guy named Juan Flynn who
was an employee at the spawn Ranch
didn't like Manson held Manson
responsible for the murder of his boss
he would testify that Manson told him
that he had ordered all the killings and
that Manson also admitted that he had
killed 35
people maybe he did on the other hand
Juan Flynn didn't like him and he had no
other than his word had no real proof of
what he was
saying so please understand me in this
case is that unlike some people who
argue that Charles Manson got a raw
deal I don't think that's the case I
think that he influenced tremendous
influence over the people
there
through
drugs
through sex was another frequent
component in it um he had a real whammy
over a lot of these people's minds I'm
not sure how that that still kind of
puzzles me he was a scrawny guy and he
wasn't physically intimidating I mean
even a lot of women wouldn't be
physically intimidated by him but he
nevertheless had this real psychological
power and and there were and if you look
around him the the male followers he had
wasn't were fairly big
guys so he could get people to do what
he
wanted and again to me the simplest
explanation for this is that it began
with the Hinman killing and probably on
Manson's instigation the others were
copycat killings to throw off what was
going on that would if I was a cop
that's what I would focus on because
that seems to make the most sense it
still is fascinating that he's able to
have that much psychological control
over those people without having a very
clear ideology so it's a cult yes the
great the great focus on Charlie the
leader the the excessive devotion but
there's not like a maybe there's not an
ideology behind that like there
something like Scientology or some kind
of religious or some kind of I don't
know uh utopian ideology nothing like
this no I I think that Manson again was
essentially a
criminal he had a sociopathic mindset
and he hit upon a pretty good
deal yeah but like how do people
convince anybody of anything with a with
with a cult usually you have either an
ideology or you have maybe personal
relation like you said sex and drugs but
underneath that can you really keep
people with sex and drugs you have to
kind of convince them that you love them
in some deep sense like there's a un
like a commune of love you you have a
lot of people there in the cult they
don't they have some sort of what we
like to call dysfunctional families yeah
uh a lot of the females in particular
seem to have come from you know more or
less middle class families but those are
full of
dysfunction uh you know their parents
didn't love them they were semi-
runaways and now they had this
whole
family uh you know a lot of the younger
women had children
you know some of them by Manson some of
them by the others they sort of bonded
together and again when we return to
that uh that pull towards
belonging that gets us humans into
trouble so it does seem that there was a
few crimes around this
time so the Zodiac Killer well
California what I'm from okay sorry
remember this period vividly okay so by
the way the the Tate La Bianca killings
occurred on my birthday the year I
graduated from high school so I remember
this happy birthday a term which has
been used for that uh there's a writer
by the name of Todd wood who's toyed I
wish I'd come up with this killer
fornia and which is just sort of a
Chronicle of the serial killers and
disappearances uh in the late 60s and
70s so you've got the Zodiac you've got
other ones I mean you know
I hate to say it I'm not trying to be
flipping about it but I mean young
female hitchhikers were disappearing at
an alarming rate in Northern California
um there are bodies that have never been
attributed some think that
the The Zodiacs victims but it was a
dangerous
time uh Edmund keer you know The Co-Ed
Killer was was another one there were a
lot of uh creepy Psychopaths running
around I don't know if there was
something in the water or what was going
on but it was
a menacing in some cases um hitchhiking
especially if you were alone and female
was not something you wanted to do in
much of the Golden State certainly not
of around the Bay Area so a lot of these
strange sort of killings that were going
on the zodiac is it's one of those
things where they you have these people
who have theories about it and if you
don't share their Theory then you know
you're part of the problem in some form
or another so I'm not sure for instance
the Zodiac killings R all committed by
the same person I think there might have
been multiple people
involved and you know the first killings
are all of couples it's very sort of
clear that they I remember on my
examination of it one of the one of the
things I was looking at specific you
what else is there to say about the
Zodiac killing so what I was going to
look at is that there are all of the
accusations that there was an occult
aspect to it there was some sort of
ritualistic aspect so I looked at
different things
locations victims phases of the moon
that's always worth looking
at and I didn't find much correspondence
in any of
those uh in one of the killings I think
the one at Lake beresa he does appear in
this kind of weird hooded costume you
know he's got his symbol that sort of
compass or aiming reticle you know
circle with a cross through it it can
mean mean a variety of things he used
guns and he used knives but he certainly
had a think for couples except in the
last of the killings which is of a cab
driver in downtown San Francisco who he
shoots in full view of
witnesses which is completely
atypical and also when he was stabbing
the victims it it doesn't seem like he
was very good at it or if the goal was
to kill them he wasn't very good at it
because some of them survived yeah he
doesn't he's not particularly thorough
about it he seems to have had much
more more the violence seems to be
directed at the females and the
males so I mean there's a there's a
couple questions to ask here first of
all did people see his face there's a
composite drawing of his face which I
think is based upon the the Stein
killing the cab driver killing where
there were people who saw him or who
claimed they saw him the other ones were
all when it was fairly dark right I'm
not sure that anyone else got to look at
his face the one that occurred in the
daylight at beresa he was wearing a
mask so there's something in common
initially in the targeting of victims
which doesn't in the last case then
after that there's just these different
cases of
where there's a pretty good case to be
made of a woman who claims I think she
was she and her a small child were
picked up her car broke down she got a
flat tire and she was picked up by this
guy who she got a very sort of strange
vibe from who eventually just let her
go well you know that might have been
the Zodiac it it might not have been you
uh you do this kind of rigorous look
saying like Okay what is the actual
facts that we know like reduce it to the
thing that we know for
sure and uh in spe about his
motivation he uh he said that he was
collecting Souls souls for the afterlife
for the afterlife that's kind of a culty
yeah I mean that's what I believe is it
the Vikings or the Romans they believe
this in battle you're essentially making
sacrificial victims and they will be
your ghostly servants in the afterlife
you think he actually believed that who
knows I mean here here's the question
was he making that up just to be scary
or is that what his actual that's what
he's saying his motivation is so let's
take him at face value rather than
trying
to wish that into the corn field that is
to to get rid of
it let's just take it to so he's
claiming that he's he's killing these
people in order to acquire slave
servants in the
afterlife he will subsequently go on to
claim many more victims I'm not sure 44
or eventually he will have before he
just kind of
vanishes one of the really interesting
Clues to me when I was looking at that
case which I didn't find anybody else
that tended to make much of it of is
that it all has to do with this kind of
Halloween card that he sends to the
press in San Francisco and it's talking
about sort of rope by gun by fire and
there's this whole sort of wheel you
know like the zodiacs but what was this
drawn from where he got this from is
from a Tim Holt Western comic book
published in 1951 and you see the same
thing in the cover it's Wheel of Fortune
but with different forms of grizzly
death on it and all of the things that
he mentioned are shown on the cover of
this so whoever put together that card
saw that comic book well that's kind of
an interesting clue so does that mean
he's a comic book collector
when would he have I mean that is one
and also but where he got the idea from
he's incorporating these things from the
then there are of course his codes which
people have you know which aren't all
that difficult to decipher probably
because they weren't meant to
be the other thing that you find often
with serial or Psychopathic hillers is
are toying with the Press I mean this
goes all the way back to Jack the Ripper
and they get
attention and then he just
disappears uh why do you think he was
never caught I think they knew what to
look for there's nothing much to go
on mean there was a guy who was long a
suspect and then eventually he tested
his DNA and find that didn't T match any
of the things that they'd
found uh again it goes back to I'm not
even sure that it's one person as a
responsible for all of them well there
so one of the interesting things you
kind of bring up here
um and our discussion of Manson inspires
this but there does seem to be um a
connection I shared inspiration between
several Killers here the Zodiac the Son
of Sam later and the the monster of
Florence so is it is it possible there's
some kind of like an underworld that is
connecting these people well you take
the
Zodiac and you get his claim that he's
collecting souls for the afterlife there
are other things that are occultish
connected to that he may have picked
some of the killing sites due to their
physical
location to their position on in a
particular
place uh if you look at the Son of Sam
case of course David burkowitz will on
and off claim that the he was part of a
satanic cult that was carrying out again
these
killings um mostly of couples and young
women similar to to the
Zodiac and that he had only committed
some of them and was Witnesses at
others and that has really created the
whole idea that yes there is this some
kind of satanic cult which engages in
ritual murders then if you go all the
way to Florence uh you've got murders
who go on on and off for a long period
of time again focusing on couples in
isolated areas which Italian prosecutors
ultimately tried to connect to some kind
of satanic cult although I'm not sure
they ever made a particularly strong
case for that but that element comes up
in all three of
them so you can with a little
imagination argue that those
similarities that those things should
come up in each of those cases in
different
places either suggest that oddly enough
Psychopathic criminals all sort of
thinking the same way or that there is
some sort
of higher element involved in this that
there's some kind of common
inspiration here got you come back to
something similar we're talking before
about do pedophiles exist do pedophile
okay so
do do satanic Cults exist well they
do okay there was one in my
hometown apparently quite harmless as
far as I know never did anything to you
know but there there are people who you
know robes Here We Come Again robes cut
the head off a chicken naked woman is an
alter you know you can get off on that I
suppose if that's your
thing so profess Satanist exal exist
satanic Cults
exist serial killers exist ritual
murders
exist are those things necessarily
connected no could they be
connected yes
okay there's there's nothing don't ever
tell me that something is just too crazy
for people to do because that's that's
crazy talk all right you've studied
secret societies you've gave a lot of
amazing lectures on secret societies uh
it's fascinating to look at human
history through the lens of secret
societies cuz they've permeated all of
human history you've talked about from
everything from the nights Templar to
Illuminati Freemasons like we brought up
Freemasons lasted a long time uh
Illuminati as you've talked about in its
uh sort of main form lasted a short time
but it's Legend never gone away never
gone away so maybe like Illuminati is a
really interesting one who what was that
well the Illuminati that we
know uh started in
1776 in fact you can pin it down to a
day the 1 of May May Day
17776 in ingel Germany founded by a
professor Adam
viop it wasn't initially called the
Illuminati because that's not really the
name of the organization was called The
Order Perfect bists apparently that
changed visoft would say things like
never let our organization be known
under his real name anywhere which
leaves wondering what's its real
name so
Illuminati is simply the plural of
illuminus which means one who is
illuminated one who has seen the
light so in Roman
times Christian converts were Illuminati
because they had seen the light anyone
who thinks and there have been
organizations called illum that that the
term
is not trademarked not copyrighted
anybody who thinks they've seen the
light about anything is an Illuminati so
it it defines
nothing uh the symbol of the order was
an owl
which interestingly enough is almost
identical to the owl which is the emblem
of the Bohemian Club oh boy make of that
what you
will I don't make that much out of it
because one owl looks pretty much like
another owl to me but compare
them you know you got to kind of wonder
about there's a little just a little
thing maybe there's some kind of
connection
there so but that supposedly has to do
with the connection to the goddess
manura and the owl was sacred to her and
the end the order and the order was the
the men of all the person who was
brought
in uh the number of levels changed over
time there was a higher level to the
order that people at the lower level
didn't know about pretty typical for
this but the thing about vial was that
he was quite he was a uh voluminous
correspondent with members with his
Illuminati both during the time that it
legally existed in Bavaria and later
on so Visos himself lives I think until
1830 uh dies in go which was ruled by an
Illuminati Prince and so nothing ever
happens to these no no Illuminati has
ever put to death or arrested impr
prison for any period of time what
happens is that their plan well what was
his plan his plan was to essentially
replace all existing religions and
governments in the world with a one
world order
governed by the
Illuminati so to do this you had to
subvert and destroy all the existing
order and you know he argue the purpose
for this is to uh we wish to make men
happy and free but first we must make
them
good all right so that's what the the
order is all about of course he also
said things like oh man is there nothing
that you won't believe okay so myth
would be used in that also thought women
should be brought into it had a rather
interesting view about that was that we
should appeal to
women uh in part because women have a
chip on their shoulder because they're
left out of things so we should appeal
to their vanity on that point and offer
that in the
future all things will be open and they
will be emancipated so we should hold
out the prospect of female emancipation
to attract them because he argued in the
short term there's no better at a way to
influence men than through women get
women on our side by promising them
emancipation but it made sure we'll
never actually deliver it to them
because the future world will be a boy
club so he talks about these things
fairly openly uh and this is where you
get this idea of some sort of a new
world order which is to be based upon
the destruction of the existing
order so there are those who
argue that there is a trail
of descent that leads from Vice Hoff's
Illuminati to The Communist
Manifesto and in fact communism itself
that Marxism was simply a further
restating of this idea and you can draw
some sort of K I mean the idea never
entirely goes
away the Bavarian
government gets a hold of the order's
inner texts so the story is there
they're delivered to them I I think that
Vice gave them to him I think he
engineered the exposure of his order
because it gave him
publicity by being exposed in Bavaria
you gained great Renown and they
continued to recruit after this and the
Bavarian government actually bans the
Illuminati four different
times why cuz apparently the first three
times didn't work so the fourth one does
you can notice that it's like pap bands
on Freemasonry and they just go on and
on and on because this clearly isn't
working and you actually highlight the
difference between U speaking of
publicity that there's a difference
between visibility and transparency that
a secret society could be
visible it could be known about it could
be quite popular but you could still
have a secrecy within it you have no
idea what's going on inside yeah it's
like a black box if I set a black box on
this table we can see that there is a
black box what's in the Black Box a cat
who knows in fact the secrecy might be
the very thing that makes it even more
popular Adam Vice out again there is no
more more thing convincing than a
concealed mystery give people a
concealed mystery in the so we need to
make the order mysterious for that exact
reason always hold out the possibility
that knowledge special knowledge that no
mere mortals have other than you will
have in that way so he senses a lot of
things uh the use of of vanity and ego
to recruit people to influence both men
and women it's it's quite
sophisticated and as you might expect
from a professor of canon law trained by
Jesuits
so I certainly don't think that it
ceased when it was banned in Bavaria
because everybody just scatters and goes
elsewhere like Paris
and then you have the French
Revolution so the idea of the Illuminati
the to put a crudely The Branding is a
really powerful one it and so it it
makes sense that it can there's a thread
connecting it to this day that a lot of
organizations a lot of secret societies
can sort of AD adopt the brand anybody
can call it you can go and form a club
and call it the Illuminati and if you
are effective at it I think it does
attract
it's the chicken or the egg but powerful
people tend to have gigantic Egos and
people with gigantic egos tend to like
the exclusivity of secret societies and
so like there's a there's a it's a
gravitational force that pulls powerful
people to these societies exclusive only
certain and you also notice something
goes back to we were talking about much
earlier we talking about intelligence
remember mice ego ego means of
Recruitment and control that's a great
Achilles eel in human beings the
exploitation of ego and of course if we
go back to the conversation of
intelligence
agencies it would uh be uh very
efficient and beneficial for
intelligence agencies to infiltrate the
secret societies right like because
that's where the powerful people are
yeah or the secret societies to
infiltrate the intelligence agencies oh
boy well I mean that's actually in in
all the
lectures I kind of had a sense that
intell agencies themselves are kind of
secret societies right well it comes
down I give you my definition of secret
societies what they come down to one is
that generally their existence isn't
secret it's what they do is secret it's
what's in the box is opposed to the
existence of the
box so one of the most important
Criterion is that they are self-
selecting you just don't join they pick
you they decide whether or not you're
going to they admit you and they
sometimes they will sort of recruit
you uh once you have been recruited you
have to pass tests and
initiations and you also have to swear
Oaths of
loyalty those are always very very
critical so broadly speaking what
entrance into an intelligent
organization does they they decide
whether you get in you just don't
automatically get the job you have to
pass tests of one AI detector test for
instance field training tests a whole
variety of tests and then you're sworn
to
secrecy you never talk about what you do
ever or there will be dire
consequences so the method is very much
the same and also this idea of creating
a kind of insular
group you this the organization is
us and everyone else is outside of that
we are guardians of special
knowledge see this is the type of thing
that would generally happen if you
question whatever any kind of
intelligence agency did well we know
things that you don't why because we're
the organization that knows things we
collect information we know the secrets
we guard the secrets therefore if we
tell you you must believe us I have this
sense that there are very powerful
secret societies operating today and we
don't really know or understand them and
the conspiracy theories in spirit might
have something to them but are actually
factually not
correct so like you know an effective
powerful secret society or intelligence
agency is not going to uh let you know
anything that it doesn't want you to
know right they'll probably mislead you
if we get that close
so I think you know the question is
what's the most powerful or important
secret society probably the one you
don't know about one that doesn't
advertise its existence the one which is
never known anywhere under its real
name you've got things like the Bohemian
Club you've got the Builder bers which
is another sort of you know formed in
the
1950s largely the creation of a guy by
the name of Yosef retinger
polish mysterious Pier at of nowhere a
schemer for
years a man expelled from Britain France
and the United States at one point or
another long active in the Mexican labor
movement all okay readinger is
mysterious figure in fact his I think
there was even a book written about him
called imanance GRE gray Eminence the
fellela the frontman for the
bilderbergers was uh Prince barard of
the Netherlands who was at one point a
Nazi and then a Dutch Freedom Fighter
all right take your pick but uh reinger
is is the moving hand behind the whole
thing and I'll be damned if I can figure
out who retinger is so the idea is that
well you get like influential people in
media business
politics and you bring them together
just to
talk to try to find common answers or
are common
questions it's all very much sort of
Western Europe Anglo European I me all
very closely sort of connected to
Nato the whole concept of a kind of
atlanticist
world which is essentially the
anglo-american combine combined with
Western
Europe but you got a bunch of these
things I mean
the council and Foreign Relations is
very similar to that and the
bilderbergers and there's an overlap
with the Bohemian Club and then you've
got the pan Circle or Le Circle which is
more military but also linked to the
so-called secret gladio you know the
idea if the Soviets overran Western
Europe there would be a stay behind
organization called gladio there' be
these Freedom
Fighters so the question I have about
that is that how many secret
organizations do you
need I mean why all these separate
groups which often seem to have the same
people into them yeah there's a and the
closer I look the more I wonder the same
question we asked about the Russian
intelligence agencies is where's the
center of power it seems to be very hard
to figure out does the secrecy scare
you well I guess on one level I'm
comforted that there's somebody actually
making
decisions as opposed to T I mean what
what do you want do you want chaos or do
you want everything kind of rigidly
controlled
and I don't put much stock in the idea
that there actually is some small group
of people running everything because if
they were it would operate more
efficiently I do think that there are
various disperate groups of
people who think that they're running
things or try
to and that's that's what concerns me
more than anything else well I hate to
go back to them again guess for bringing
up you go back to the nazzis they had
their whole idea about a new world order
and they only had 12 years to do it and
look what a mess they made I mean look
at the damage the physical damage that
can be
done by an idea inspiring a relatively
small group of people controlling a
nation based upon some sort of racial or
ideological fantasy that has no real
basis in reality and yet guides their
actions it's it's this differentiation
that I always make and I would try to
get across the students between always
be clear about what you know and what
you
believe you don't know many
things you know your name you know when
you were
born you probably know who your father
is but that's not absolute unless you've
had a DNA test and only if you trust DNA
tests so you know who your mother is you
believe this man is your father why
because your mother told you he was so
you believe things generally because
someone has told you this is to be true
but you don't really know for
sure well because we know so little we
tend to go by beliefs so we we we
believe in this or We Believe even that
you know you believe that uh your cult
leader is the is the is the answer to
everything and it seems to be very very
easy to get people to believe
things and then what happens is that
whether or not those beliefs have any
real basis in reality they begin to
influence your
actions so here again regrettably in
some ways to bring it back to the Nazis
what were the Nazis convinced of they
were convinced that Jews were basically
evil aliens that's what it comes down to
they were some they weren't really
humans there's some sort of evil
contamination which we must
eradicate and they set out to do that
and then they were sure that there's
just a few problems that can be solved
and once you solve them that you have
this beautiful Utopia where everything
would be just perfect it' be great and
we can just get there and I think this
really strong belief in a global
Utopia it just never goes right
it seems like impossible to know the
truth for some reason not long ago I was
listening on YouTube to Old wobbly songs
internet the uh workers of the world um
I don't know why I I didn't know there
was a whole album of wobbly songs but um
and there was one of them called
Commonwealth of toil and it's like most
of them they're sort of taken from
gospel songs and it's talking about in
the in the future you know how wonderful
everything will be in the Commonwealth
of
toil that will
be and now these are you know
revolutionary leftists in this case
wobblies but
nonetheless it it's like it's like a
prayer for for communism everything now
in in the future everything will be good
because the Earth will be shared by the
toilers and and you know from each his
abilities each according to his need and
and it's and it's this kind of sweet
little song in some way but I'm just
sort of imagining this you know if I was
going to Stage that I'd have like this
choir of children singing it with a huge
hammer and sickle behind them because
that's that's what it's
combining and that you can think that
the sentiments that are Express in that
song which you know are legitimate in
some
way of of all the
horrors that that that thing leads to it
is fascinating about humans a beautiful
idea on paper an innocent little idea
about a utopian future can lead to so
much
suffering and so much destruction and
total the unintended consequences that
you see describe La of unintended
consequences and we learn from it I mean
that's why history is important we'll
learn from it hopefully do
we slowly or slow
Learners I'm unconvinced of that but
perhaps is speaking of unconvinced uh
what gives you
hope if uh human beings are still here
maybe expanding out into the cosmos A
Thousand 5,000 10,000 years from now
what gives you hope about that future
about even being a possible future about
it happening most people are cooperative
and kind most of the
time
and that's one of those things that can
usually be dependent upon you know and
usually you you'll get back to what what
you put into
it uh another thing that I have like a
weird fascination of watching are people
who have meltdowns on
airplanes because that's
just
bizarre that's fascinating watch the
people who will you know there's some
sort of psychotic break that occurs and
and they'll and it's always going to end
the same way the cops are going to come
on and drag you off the plane now true
they'll you and you're going to
inconvenience everybody there and and
usually at some point they don't care
about that that's that's the one little
sense of power that they have so they
have some sort of loot sense of
powerlessness and if their only way of
power is just to piss off everybody else
on that
plane they're going to go ahead and do
it even though it's going to
lead nowhere for them and there's
similar sometimes psychological behavior
in uh in traffic oh the road rage thing
the road rage yeah it's fascinating and
I bet the most there again those are all
people who up to some point were
cooperative and and kind and polite and
then they
snap so those are all part of the human
makeup as well
but also part of the human
makeup difference between humans and
chimps is the ability to get together
cooperate in a mass scale over an idea
create things like the Roman Empire did
laws that uh prevent us and protect us
from crazy human behavior manifestations
of a man type of human beings are just
weird animals not getting on it's just
completely peculiar I'm not sure that
we're allog together natural but I think
we are all together beautiful there is
something magical about humans and I
hope humans stay here even as we get
Advanced robots walking around
everywhere more and more intelligent
robots that claim to have Consciousness
that claim they love you that
increasingly take over our world I hope
um this magical things that makes us
human still persist well let us hope so
Rick you're an incredible person
so so much fascinating work and uh it's
really annoy I've never had anybody ask
me as as many interesting questions as
you have so thank you so much or as many
questions this was so fun thank you so
much for talking today well thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Rick Spence to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from John F
Kennedy the very word secrecy is
repugnant in a free and open Society
and we are as a people inherently and
historically opposed to secret societies
to secret Oaths and to secret
proceedings we decided long ago that the
dangers of excessive and unwarranted
concealment of pertinent facts far
outweighed the dangers which are cited
to justify it thank you for listening
and hope to see you next time