From our friend Wythe
The Cult Web Film that Inspired Loughner
by Michelle Goldberg
We now know a little bit more about the matrix of ideas that helped
inspire Jared Loughner's murderous rampage on Saturday. According to a
friend of his interviewed on Good Morning America on Wednesday, the
conspiracy documentary Zeitgeist "poured gasoline on his fire" and had
"a profound impact on Jared Loughner's mindset and how he views the
world that he lives in." He was also, according to his friend's
father, influenced by the documentary Loose Change, a classic of the
9/11 Truth movement. This does not mean that either of these movies is
responsible for making Loughner do what he did, but it does show how
his madness was shaped by a broader climate of paranoia, and offers a
clue as to why he targeted Gabrielle Giffords.
According to his friend, Zach Osler, Loughner "didn't listen to
political radio, he didn't take sides, he wasn't on the left, he
wasn't on the right." Naturally, conservatives have seized upon this
to exonerate themselves of charges of incitement. But it's not that
simple. It's hard to place Zeitgeist and Loose Change on the
conventional partisan spectrum—both come from a shadowy conspiracy-mad
subculture where the far right and the far left meet. Yet it's the
contemporary right, the right of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party, that
has mainstreamed ideas from this demimonde in an unprecedented way.
To understand how, it helps to look at the career of Alex Jones, an
Austin radio host and the country's most prominent conspiracy
theorist. Jones was the executive producer of Loose Change, and chunks
of Zeitgeist are taken from his documentary Terrorstorm. Jones
disagrees with elements of Zeitgeist—he's a Christian, while Zeitgeist
attacks religion—but he's said he supports 90 percent of what's in the
movie, and he promotes it on his show. "A lot of people find my work
because of Zeitgeist," he said during an interview with the
documentary's director, Peter Joseph.
The point, again, is not that Alex Jones, Zeitgeist, or The Tea Party
are responsible for Loughner's crimes. The point is that he targeted
Giffords for a reason, one rooted in his unhinged interpretation of
recognizable conspiracy theories.
Both Zeitgeist and Alex Jones promote the idea that world events are
controlled by a secretive banking cabal that is using debt to enslave
us all. Zeitgeist echoes Alex Jones in warning that the United States
is about to be merged with Canada and Mexico into a "North American
Union" that will use a new currency, the "Amero." "When the time is
right," Zeitgeist informs us, "the North American Union, The European
Union, the African Union, and the Asian Union will be merged together,
forming the final stages of the plan these men have been working on
for over 60 years: a one-world government." This government will
implant microchips in all of our arms. "In the end, everybody will be
locked into a monitored control grid, where every single action you
perform is documented," it says.
Zeitgeist, which came out in 2007 and has since spawned two sequels,
is an Internet phenomenon. The two-hour documentary is available for
free online, and according to its creators, it has been viewed tens of
millions of times. Its claims are heatedly debated on Ron Paul forums
and anarchist websites; excerpts appear on numerous Tea Party pages.
It has a global following: When it played in a South African theater,
the Cape Times described it as a "disturbing reminder" of "the subtle
move towards a micro-chipped society, with the world's population
potentially destined to be logged onto a monitored grid, leading up to
a centralized one world economy."
The idea of control and manipulation is the movie's real theme,
knitting together its disparate parts. Zeitgeist's second-third
rehashes classic 9/11 Truth theories that purport to show that the
attacks were actually an inside job. This was done, the final section
argues, at the behest of a banking cabal that has repeatedly goaded
the United States into war in order to solidify its wealth and power.
Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at the think tank Political Research
Associates and one of the country's foremost experts on right-wing
movements, points out that Zeitgeist borrows liberally from the G.
Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island, an "expose" of the
Federal Reserve System popular with the John Birch Society, Alex
Jones, and some Tea Party groups. It also draws on ideas from the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, though it never mentions Jews.
Right-wing conspiratorial beliefs have long festered on the fringes,
but in the Obama era, they've been injected into the center of our
politics like never before. The distance between figures like Alex
Jones and the contemporary conservative movement has shrunk
alarmingly.
Steeped in the rhetoric of the militia movement, Jones has promoted
just about every conspiracy theory out there: He even accused the
Illuminati of putting its symbols in the Starbucks logo as a taunting
show of strength. Though rooted in the right, he also occasionally has
guests from the far left—he's hosted Democratic Congressman Dennis
Kucinich [Kucinich is on the "far left"? -- WH] as well as Texas
Republican Louie Gohmert. His political hero is Ron Paul—he runs
RonPaulWarRoom.com, and Paul is a frequent guest on his radio show.
But until recently, most conservatives disdained him. In 2007,
Michelle Malkin argued that Paul's association with Jones was enough
to disqualify the congressman from participating in GOP primary
debates.
Since then, though, Republican politics have become a lot more
paranoid. Tea Party groups and Fox News started echoing Jones'
warnings that the swine flu virus was really a pretext to establish
martial law. Lou Dobbs went on Jones' show in 2008 to discuss the
coming North American Union. In March 2009, Jones released The Obama
Deception, which argued that Obama is the front man for a
transnational oligarchy working to create a one-world totalitarian
state. The day after it came out, the online Fox News show Freedom
Watch did a joint broadcast with him. "I appreciate what you're
exposing," Fox host Andrew Napolitano told Jones. "I must tell you
that there was a time when the types of things that you are warning
against was not discussed openly and publicly." Glenn Beck
fictionalized Jones-style conspiracy theories in his 9/11 truth-themed
novel, The Overton Window.
People who study the right have worried for months about the
consequences of paranoid beliefs about treasonous government plots. In
2009, Berlet authored a report titled, "Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy
Theories, Demonization and Scapegoating." It traced the history and
dissemination of the kind of conspiracy theories floating around the
right, and said, "People who believe conspiracist allegations
sometimes act on those irrational beliefs, and this has concrete
consequences in the real world."
Loughner was caught up in the sort of conspiratorial fantasy Berlet
was describing. His YouTube videos are often unintelligible, but in
their moments of lucidity, they rail against manipulation of the
currency system and the illegitimate power of the federal government,
obsessions of the right-wing populist milieu. In this milieu,
politicians like Gabrielle Giffords weren't simply wrong, they were
agents of an intolerable tyranny manipulating the economy and turning
Americans into slaves. Hence the vitriol and intimations of violence
that scared Giffords and her staff well before Saturday's shooting.
The point, again, is not that Alex Jones, Zeitgeist, or The Tea Party
are responsible for Loughner's crimes. The point is that he targeted
Giffords for a reason, one rooted in his unhinged interpretation of
recognizable conspiracy theories. Right-wing activists and politicians
have traded on such theories, giving them far more mainstream exposure
and credibility than they ever had before. Experts on political
violence have been arguing for months that this is extremely
dangerous. People like Loughner are the reason why.
To read it all:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-13/zeitgeist-the-documentary-that-may-have-shaped-jared-loughners-worldview/
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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