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A new twist on how the world of cultist’s work arrived today with a notification from Youtube that a “privacy” complaint had been filed against the video.
There is a policy at Youtube where you are not allowed to reveal personal information of another Youtube user or anyone in general.
When I went to the “offending” part of the video, it dealt with an exchange between two well known authors (D M Murdock/Acharya S and Michael Licona) who are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The exchange was completely in public (on their respective webpages) and I merely summarized the contents. Of course, the facts supported Licona and this must have upset one of the Zeitgeist fanboys.
Invasion of the Zeitgeist CultistsMarch 7, 2012 Albert McIlhenny No comments
Over the last few years, I have been a vocal critic of the film Zeitgeist by Peter Joseph. It is a conspiracy theory film largely based upon the work of a once popular conspiracy theorist named Jordan Maxwell. The film has three parts with the second and third relaying the usual things one hears from conspiracy theorists about 9/11 and the Federal Reserve. Although I reject the film as a whole, my own criticismI has mainly concentrated on the first part dealing with religion (the film claims Christianity is a solar cult based on the suns travels through the zodiac in imitation of the pagan cults of antiquity) since 1) religion is more my area of interest and 2) I have nothing to add to the other areas that have not been said better by others.
Since the film’s release, Joseph has largely moved on from Maxwell’s ideas to the socio-economic ideas of Jacques Fresco as part of the Zeitgeist Movement he founded. Although I reject those ideas as well, I have little interest in arguing about the floating circular cities of a Buckminster Fuller wannabe. Frankly, the whole thing seems a bit silly and the whole thing falls in on itself once you apply the least bit of critical scrutiny. However, such matters were again not my field of interest and I left it to others to carry on that argument. I might add the occasional snarky comment on posts about the topic elsewhere but the Zeitgeist Movement was not a high priority topic for me.
Despite this, I did keep an eye on its goings on through other sources such as Zeitgeist Movement Examined
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zeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com]
the Zeitgeist Movement Exposed
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and Muertos
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muertos.blog.com]
– among others. I am quite aware of how the movement has decayed to a hardcore group. However, the first movie still has much appeal as it intersects with various other audiences: some “village atheists” (Part 1), some of the more traditional “big banker” conspiracy theorists (Part 3), the remains of the 9/11 Truth Movement (Part 2), and, of course, the “Coast to Coast AM” crowd in general. Thus I made some videos on the topic, particularly in areas not covered widely by others, and responded to other Youtube users on the subject. I had interaction with supporters of the film – some friendly and others not so friendly – but largely it was at a low level. My videos tended to somewhat technical in the discussion and not very flashy and so the impact was rather limited except for those who were interested in the topic.
One series I had done was titled “Why I Don’t Take Zeitgeist Supporters Seriously” and detailed soem rather basic errors at the very foundation of the first part of the film. For example, Zeitgeist assumes all ancient religions were based upon the zodiac and precession and this went back at least 3000 BC with the Egyptians and perhaps millennia before then. However, the evidence is quite clear that the twelve sign zodiac was not used until around 500 BC when it was developed in Babylon and not used in Egypt until centuries later in the Ptolemaic era. Furthermore, precession was discovered only in the second century BC. This alone eliminates the supposed long standing precedent Christianity allegedly copied.
It gets even worse when you turn to the supposed “astrological ages.” The division of the sky assumed in the film is one agreed upon by modern astronomers in the twentieth century. Using the division present in antiquity, Jesus was many centuries too early to usher in any “Age of Pisces.” Furthermore, when you read the passages in the Bible used to connect it to such “ages,” it merely becomes a game where certain instances of bulls, rams, fish, and water are picked out and others ignored to make it look like it matches their theory.
Once you read the verses in context, the whole thing is rapidly exposed as pure drivel.
The discussion in the video was rather lengthy and not terribly exciting but, for those who wanted to know why scholars keep saying the film was absurd, it was probably necessary. As with many of my videos, it garnered a few hundred views, most soon after I posted it, and then trailed off. A few weeks ago, I was ready to remove the whole series since I had others on the topic that were more recent and thorough.
Then it happened: I had an invasion of Zeitgeist cult followers.
The whole Zeitgeist franchise of Peter Joseph’s has become very much a cult of personality. It also ties in with others of the types discussed earlier and each of these have their own gurus with their own little cults of personality. I am not quite sure how one of my videos became a target but I would guess it must have been referred to in one or more of the various websites catering to one or more of the various cultic constituency group.
I have found the whole thing quite interesting. The video, which had only a few hundred views total before, suddenly had over fifty a day minimun for the last few weeks with two of the days having over 100 hits. There were, of course, a sudden rash of “thumbs down” votes but I expected that in this situation: when you tell someone their little cult is baseless, it does get their knickers in knot – particularly when they have no clue how to answer you.
The Zeitgeist followers have suddenly been put in the position where they thought they had put Christians. They did not like it one bit.
I was more interested, however, in any comments that might be generated both in the video’s comment page and in private messages. These generally followed a definite pattern.
One was to tell me I had no knowledge of the Zeitgeist Movement and that the usual stuff about the “
movie is not the movement.”
I replied to this that this video is not about the movement and I never even mentioned the movement but only the movie. It seemed the pattern was repeated on a daily basis with no one ever bothering to read any of the comments below and merely making the same assertions over and over and over. Sometimes they even argued that even though the video was about the movie and not the movement it was still unfair to the movement – as if it were my fault that Peter Joseph made a stupid movie and then later named an unrelated movement after the stupid movie.
Another “response” was to tell me I should shut up unless I had a better solution.
Again I pointed out this had nothing to do with the movement but an aspect of the first movie. But even if I were criticizing the movement, I would not have to give my own solution for the world’s problems to conclude your solution was ridiculous.
Then there were the occasional ones who actually tried to defend the content of the movie.
On these occasions, it became obvious fairly quickly that they had absolutely no knowledge of the basic facts on the ground. They merely assumed what Peter Joseph had told them was true. There is an amazing irony here that they were confident in their criticism of others as blindly following dogma without checking the facts when they were doing the exact same thing.
There were a few cases, however, when some good to come out of it.
I have had a few exchanges were the light seemed to suddenly go on and they realized they had been fed a web of lies by Peter Joseph. I recently did a video series titled the “
Wacky World of Jordan Maxwell” that gave some amusing examples of the complete fraudulence of the man who was Peter Joseph’s inspiration for the film. I was able to point some to that series and the reaction was one of surprise and even shock. Zeitgeist is a paper tiger once you know its source.
But perhaps the most interesting responses allude to something Muertos has pointed out in his own blog.
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muertos.blog.com]
Some recent conspiracy theorists are moving away from persuading with alleged facts to emotional and idelogical appeals.
More than one comment stated the truth of what Zeitgeist was irrelevant to its importance. It was the idea of the movement that mattered – not the facts they presented.
This is perhaps the most disturbing since it removes the whole argument from the realm of what is true and indicates the group follows the movement regardless of the truth of its assertions or even what it asserts. It is now a cult for the sake of being a cult.
I have replied to Youtube’s notice but I have no idea if the video will be taken down or not.
Frankly, I don’t really care as I have done less and less on Youtube in recent months. It is simply become a forum for the least common denominators on each side of an issue and the exchanges more closely resemble professional wrestling than anything close to intelligent discussion.
This is one of the reasons I decided to reactivate this blog. It is a decision that is looking better all the time.
Corboy note: this comment "More than one comment stated the truth of what Zeitgeist was irrelevant to its importance. It was the idea of the movement that mattered – not the facts they presented. "
To TZM faithful - be careful of craving action for actions sake. Or movement for a movements sake. Umberto Eco has some insights on what this can turn into.
Eco has 14 points. This is just one.
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9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
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