[www.tabletmag.com]

Brave New World

The Zeitgeist movement is the first Internet-based apocalyptic cult, centered around a doomsday-proclaiming film and an ideology filled with classic anti-Semitic tropes

By Michelle Goldberg | Feb 2, 2011 7:00 AM

A moment in Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.


Over the last two weeks, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward [1], the third in a series of apocalyptic cult documentaries, has been screening around the world, translated by devotees of the so-called Zeitgeist movement into more than 30 languages. There were engagements in Buenos Aires and Athens, Sarajevo and Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Tokyo, among hundreds of other cities. In the United States, it showed at indie movie houses, underground bookstores, public libraries, and universities from coast to coast, including a five-day run at New York’s Tribeca Cinemas.

About 30 people turned out for a Wednesday evening showing in Manhattan. After being greeted by earnest volunteers in Zeitgeist T-shirts and given the chance to pick up pamphlets and newsletters about the Zeitgeist movement—or TZM, as its acolytes call it—they sat through a two-and-a-half-hour film, alternately frenetic and soporific, explaining the necessary and imminent collapse of economies based on money, the root of all the world’s sufferings. The film prophesied the emergence of a superior “resource-based economy,” in which decisions about the allocations of goods and services will be made by computers free from corrupting “opinions.” Robots will do most menial work, liberating people for more creative, humanistic pursuits, and technological innovation will ensure abundance for all. The movie ends with scenes of crowds worldwide surging into the streets and, realizing that money is but an enslaving illusion, dumping their cash in great piles in front of the now-impotent central banks. Amazingly, only one person walked out.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is silly enough that at times I suspected it was all a put-on, a sly satire about new-age techno-utopianism instead of an example of it. But to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, the Zeitgeist movement is entirely serious. At times, it even seems like the world’s first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity. In a phone conversation, Brenton Eccles, a former member from Melbourne, described how his involvement cut him off from reality. “It’s very, very, very isolating,” says Eccles, who was part of the communications team in the movement’s Australia branch. “You’re encouraged to kind of exit the real world. There’s kind of this us-and-them attitude.” A few days later, he sent me a document recanting most of his charges and claiming that his conflicts with the organization had in fact been his fault. This did not make it seem less cult-like.

There are lots of strange things about the Zeitgeist phenomenon, but strangest is how it got started. It’s a global organization devoted to a kind of sci-fi planetary communism, but it was sparked by a 2007 documentary [2] steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The first Zeitgeist documentary borrowed from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and conspiracy-mad Austin radio host Alex Jones to rail against the cabal of international bankers that purportedly rules the world. It was this documentary that reportedly obsessed Jared L. Loughner, the disturbed young man who allegedly shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Since the shooting, conservatives have latched on to the Zeitgeist movement’s new-age side to argue that Loughner hailed from the left. Others, myself included [3], have pointed out that the original Zeitgeist film is full of fringe right-wing ideas that have migrated toward the mainstream via the Tea Party. Zeitgeist warns, for example, that the United States could soon be subsumed into a North American Union as a precursor to the establishment of totalitarian one-world government. Members of the Zeitgeist movement, not surprisingly, reject any connection between the shooting and their ideology, even as some of them welcome the new attention that it has brought their ideas. “It’s ultimately a positive thing,” says Keith Embler, the earnest aspiring actor who co-chairs the New York chapter. “It’s press. And”—with the third documentary just released—“the timing couldn’t be better.”

Meanwhile, the evolution of the movement itself remains obscure. How did a modern gloss on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion inspire a global organization of wide-eyed technophile environmentalists? What is the Zeitgeist movement?

***

The documentary that started it all began as an art project. “The original Zeitgeist was not a film, but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video,” the Zeitgeist website [4] explains. The director, a young college dropout who goes by Peter Joseph, his first and middle names, says he “tossed” it up online, where it soon was getting hundreds of thousands, then millions, then tens of millions of views on Google Videos. It has since been removed from that site, but several people have posted it on YouTube, where various versions have received millions of views each, and on Vimeo, where it’s been seen almost 600,000 times in the last six months. DVDs of the first two documentaries are also for sale online.

“The work was never designed as a film or even a documentary in a traditional sense—it was designed as a creative, provoking, emotionally driven expression, full of artistic extremity and heavily stylized gestures,” the Zeitgeist website says. This might, however, be a bit of a post-facto rationalization, meant to distance Joseph from some of the reactionary ideas in his film. It certainly doesn’t explain how the piece made the transition from performance art to relatively coherent two-hour documentary.

The original Zeitgeist has a three-part structure, and if you just saw the first third, you might think it came from the left. It begins by arguing, using a characteristic mix of fact and invention, that Christianity is a colossal fraud, a set of myths appropriated from pagan sun cults for purposes of social control. Control is the film’s real theme: All our politics and our institutions, it suggests, derive from a conspiracy of international bankers who manipulate world events for their own profits. The second part argues that Sept. 11 was an inside job, engineered by these moneyed interests. Much of its footage was taken directly from documentaries created by the far-right radio host Alex Jones, whose work is devoted to exposing the global elite’s plan for totalitarian one-world domination.

From there, Zeitgeist launches into a pseudo-exposé of the international monetary system, a theme that runs through both its sequels. According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates [5], a think tank that studies right-wing movements, much of it derives from two books: The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, a member of the John Birch Society, and Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins. Mullins hated Jews, but his references to Jews in the book are oblique. “It’s bait, written by one of the world’s most notorious anti-Semites to lead people into that analytical model,” says Berlet.

Zeitgeist works the same way. Though it says nothing about Jews, its analysis mirrors classic anti-Semitic canards. Immediately after footage of the twin towers falling, for example, the film features an excerpt from a speech that Charles Lindbergh gave to an America First group in 1941: “When hostilities commenced in Europe in 1939, it was realized that the American people had no intention of entering the war. But it was realized that this country could be enticed into the war, in very much the same way that it was enticed into the last one.” As his words play, headlines about Iraq float across the screen. “We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction,” he concluded. Lindbergh, of course, was talking about the Jews. Viewers attuned to anti-Semitic rhetoric would naturally conclude that Joseph was, too.

After Joseph put Zeitgeist online, it quickly became an Internet sensation. Clips appeared on the websites of Ron Paul supporters, white nationalists, and, before long, some Tea Party groups. Anarchists and anti-imperialists embraced it as well. Stories about it appeared in newspapers worldwide. Some were admiring: South Africa’s Cape Times compared it to An Inconvenient Truth. Even the debunkers testified to its reach. An article in the Irish Times described [6] the “massive interest” the documentary had attracted before lamenting, “One really wishes Zeitgeist was a masterful pastiche of 21st-century paranoia, a hilarious mockumentary to rival Spinal Tap.”

As Zeitgeist’s audience grew, people started asking Joseph what they should do with his explosive information. He didn’t know what to tell them. He supported Ron Paul, but he believed the system to be too irredeemably corrupt for a political solution. That’s when he met Jacque Fresco, a radical futurist and would-be secular prophet who has been preparing for his moment in the limelight for more than five decades.

Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Harlem in 1917, Fresco moved to Los Angeles after World War II. The journalist Lionel Rolfe, in his memoir [7] of California bohemia, Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, wrote that in the early ’50s, “Fresco had a circle of disciples who considered him next only to Albert Einstein, although the friends and relatives of those disciples often thought Fresco was a fraud and a charlatan.”

Back then, Fresco, a self-educated industrial designer, had already developed his ideas about machines making traditional economics irrelevant. In the 1970s, he moved to a compound in Venus, Fla., where he and his partner, Roxanne Meadows, set about creating designs for the cities—and civilization—of the future. They call their work The Venus Project [8].

Joseph learned about the Venus Project when Fresco, having seen Zeitgeist, sent him one of his books. For Joseph, Fresco’s highly detailed vision of a world without money, a world where work itself is largely unnecessary and human ills like greed and crime are obsolete, was a revelation.

Soon, Joseph was devoting himself to spreading the word about Fresco and The Venus Project. His second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, starts in much the same vein as the first, with an attack on the international financial system. But then it shifts to a worshipful examination of Fresco’s work, offering it as a solution to the ravages of the current system. Joseph’s latest film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, further elaborates Fresco’s irenic vision of a “resource-based economy,” one without poverty, inequality, or environmental strain.

***

The Zeitgeist movement emerged in 2008, after the release of the second documentary, as chapters formed worldwide to figure out how to prepare for immanent economic collapse and technological salvation. Joseph never acknowledged his massive ideological shift from decrying a one-world system to embracing it—he just powered through the contradictions with an intense, weirdly mesmerizing self-confidence. He seems entirely sure of his movement’s capacity to fundamentally reshape human beings. In the first Zeitgeist newsletter, he explained to a letter-writer why there would be no gluttony in a resource-based economy. “[F]or a person to want ‘more’ than another is an unsustainable, conflict invoking value which serves only a selfish conditioning generated by the current cultural climate of ‘survival of the fittest’ via the Market System of Competition,” he wrote. “TZM seeks to remove this system, hence removing the distorted values that coincide and are hence imposed and reinforced.”

Lots of right-wing fans of the original documentary have since deserted Joseph, though not all—the Zeitgeist newsletter features an essay by a former Ron Paul activist who described trying to get his Tea Party group to embrace Fresco’s ideas. Meanwhile, new cadres of progressive seekers have joined, going to meetings and throwing themselves into the movement’s vibrant online community. At 96, the bearded, impish Fresco suddenly has a large global following—last year, he visited 18 countries on an international lecture tour.

Since 2009, the movement has celebrated Z-day in March, with chapters worldwide putting on events. The New York Times covered [9] the inaugural Z-Day gathering in Manhattan, which attracted a sold-out crowd of around 900 to hear Joseph and Fresco speak. It was, wrote reporter Alan Feuer, “as if Karl Marx and Carl Sagan had hired John Lennon from his ‘Imagine’ days to do no less than redesign the underlying structures of planetary life.” This year’s Z-Day will take place on March 13, with a main event in London and local happenings worldwide.

Most members, particularly the new ones, are probably unaware of the Jew-baiting subtext of the documentary that launched their movement. Many were genuinely baffled in 2009 when a German social networking site, studiVZ, banned Zeitgeist groups because of their implicit anti-Semitism. Others seem a bit embarrassed by the first Zeitgeist; they’ll often say it’s “irrelevant”—one of TZM’s favorite epithets—because it came out before the movement got started. But no one is disavowing it, and so a growing global movement of tech-savvy idealists continues to promote a work of far-right paranoia.

“I’m willing to accept that the filmmaker is a person who has a great energy and tremendous ignorance who inadvertently replicated the Nazi view of money manipulation,” says Berlet. “In which case he needs to repudiate it.” That seems unlikely. In a video interview available online, Joseph rails against his critics, “the self-appointed guardians of the status quo.” The first Zeitgeist, he insists, “is based on pre-existing information. There isn’t one thing in that film that doesn’t come from a source.” True enough. The problem is what the sources are.

I wanted to share an exchange that is going on right now on Facebook with a user who kind of dubiously reminds me of David Wish. I do not mean this to be insulting to Mr. Wish and this should not be considered an attack. However as we are all just people on the internet it is often easy to create false idenities on the internet to pursue an agenda. This is what he said when asked to provide proof of abuse on the part of the Zeitgeist Movement to therefore prove it was a "cult".

Quote
John Bassist
Sure. There was this guy on the forums named Jeremy. He was reality testing vtv. vtv flunked. And then ad hommed Jeremy in three threads 40 ad homs deep. I contacted vtv privately and told him it looked bad and asked him to chill. He attack...ed me in pm. I made the point in a thread about alpha brainwaves that people sleepwalk in violence and that vtv was doing that versus jeremy. vtv joined that thread and ad hommed me 20 or 30 ad homs deep and was joined in making fun of me by thunder. I did not return ad homs i stayed civil and kind, but i did not roll over and play dead or lick boots. I was then banned. What would you have to say if that was your experience? What would you have to say if you spent 700 posts on their forum supporting them and they did that to you? This is only one example. Paying close attention shows that vtv runs the forum using bully and intimidation tactics, ad hominem double standard, and fascism and totalitarianism. Just the simple fact alone that they have secret moderators is stand alone an absolute proof that they are a cult. Period. End of argument. Secret mods= cult. The end. They are an evil and vicious cult, and the proofs of this are endless once you understand how to look. I can provide proofs of that interaction with VTV despite his attempt to remove all the evidence by deleting those threads on the forum and despite him contacting joshua pritkin to have my wiki site for NI4D taken down. I have absolute evidence. Anybody who looks at it and reads it will see. I was viciously attacked by vtv without a good reason and then banned for defending myself. The end.

I bolded what is supposedly making us a cult. His version of what took place on the Zeitgeist forums as to why he was banned is not really accurate either. (This "reality testing" he claims this Jeremy fellow was just personally attacking people. ) However even if he were telling the 100% absolute truth and he was removed from an internet forum, that happens every day on forums every day that have nothing to do with cults.

The incident with the NI4D website was that he went there and abused his privileges of their Wiki for his own personal vendettas, creating a page solely for the purpose of personal attacks against people he felt had "slighted" him.

I hope that is not all that is going on here.

However, this further proves my point that there is an agenda by people who are angry that they were banned from the Zeitgeist Movement forums to try and paint the activist organization as a cult as retaliation for their banning from our forums.

Quote
shakti
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/57732/brave-new-world/

Brave New World

The Zeitgeist movement is the first Internet-based apocalyptic cult, centered around a doomsday-proclaiming film and an ideology filled with classic anti-Semitic tropes

By Michelle Goldberg | Feb 2, 2011 7:00 AM

A moment in Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.


Over the last two weeks, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward [1], the third in a series of apocalyptic cult documentaries, has been screening around the world, translated by devotees of the so-called Zeitgeist movement into more than 30 languages. There were engagements in Buenos Aires and Athens, Sarajevo and Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Tokyo, among hundreds of other cities. In the United States, it showed at indie movie houses, underground bookstores, public libraries, and universities from coast to coast, including a five-day run at New York’s Tribeca Cinemas.

About 30 people turned out for a Wednesday evening showing in Manhattan. After being greeted by earnest volunteers in Zeitgeist T-shirts and given the chance to pick up pamphlets and newsletters about the Zeitgeist movement—or TZM, as its acolytes call it—they sat through a two-and-a-half-hour film, alternately frenetic and soporific, explaining the necessary and imminent collapse of economies based on money, the root of all the world’s sufferings. The film prophesied the emergence of a superior “resource-based economy,” in which decisions about the allocations of goods and services will be made by computers free from corrupting “opinions.” Robots will do most menial work, liberating people for more creative, humanistic pursuits, and technological innovation will ensure abundance for all. The movie ends with scenes of crowds worldwide surging into the streets and, realizing that money is but an enslaving illusion, dumping their cash in great piles in front of the now-impotent central banks. Amazingly, only one person walked out.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is silly enough that at times I suspected it was all a put-on, a sly satire about new-age techno-utopianism instead of an example of it. But to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, the Zeitgeist movement is entirely serious. At times, it even seems like the world’s first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity. In a phone conversation, Brenton Eccles, a former member from Melbourne, described how his involvement cut him off from reality. “It’s very, very, very isolating,” says Eccles, who was part of the communications team in the movement’s Australia branch. “You’re encouraged to kind of exit the real world. There’s kind of this us-and-them attitude.” A few days later, he sent me a document recanting most of his charges and claiming that his conflicts with the organization had in fact been his fault. This did not make it seem less cult-like.

There are lots of strange things about the Zeitgeist phenomenon, but strangest is how it got started. It’s a global organization devoted to a kind of sci-fi planetary communism, but it was sparked by a 2007 documentary [2] steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The first Zeitgeist documentary borrowed from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and conspiracy-mad Austin radio host Alex Jones to rail against the cabal of international bankers that purportedly rules the world. It was this documentary that reportedly obsessed Jared L. Loughner, the disturbed young man who allegedly shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Since the shooting, conservatives have latched on to the Zeitgeist movement’s new-age side to argue that Loughner hailed from the left. Others, myself included [3], have pointed out that the original Zeitgeist film is full of fringe right-wing ideas that have migrated toward the mainstream via the Tea Party. Zeitgeist warns, for example, that the United States could soon be subsumed into a North American Union as a precursor to the establishment of totalitarian one-world government. Members of the Zeitgeist movement, not surprisingly, reject any connection between the shooting and their ideology, even as some of them welcome the new attention that it has brought their ideas. “It’s ultimately a positive thing,” says Keith Embler, the earnest aspiring actor who co-chairs the New York chapter. “It’s press. And”—with the third documentary just released—“the timing couldn’t be better.”

Meanwhile, the evolution of the movement itself remains obscure. How did a modern gloss on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion inspire a global organization of wide-eyed technophile environmentalists? What is the Zeitgeist movement?

***

The documentary that started it all began as an art project. “The original Zeitgeist was not a film, but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video,” the Zeitgeist website [4] explains. The director, a young college dropout who goes by Peter Joseph, his first and middle names, says he “tossed” it up online, where it soon was getting hundreds of thousands, then millions, then tens of millions of views on Google Videos. It has since been removed from that site, but several people have posted it on YouTube, where various versions have received millions of views each, and on Vimeo, where it’s been seen almost 600,000 times in the last six months. DVDs of the first two documentaries are also for sale online.

“The work was never designed as a film or even a documentary in a traditional sense—it was designed as a creative, provoking, emotionally driven expression, full of artistic extremity and heavily stylized gestures,” the Zeitgeist website says. This might, however, be a bit of a post-facto rationalization, meant to distance Joseph from some of the reactionary ideas in his film. It certainly doesn’t explain how the piece made the transition from performance art to relatively coherent two-hour documentary.

The original Zeitgeist has a three-part structure, and if you just saw the first third, you might think it came from the left. It begins by arguing, using a characteristic mix of fact and invention, that Christianity is a colossal fraud, a set of myths appropriated from pagan sun cults for purposes of social control. Control is the film’s real theme: All our politics and our institutions, it suggests, derive from a conspiracy of international bankers who manipulate world events for their own profits. The second part argues that Sept. 11 was an inside job, engineered by these moneyed interests. Much of its footage was taken directly from documentaries created by the far-right radio host Alex Jones, whose work is devoted to exposing the global elite’s plan for totalitarian one-world domination.

From there, Zeitgeist launches into a pseudo-exposé of the international monetary system, a theme that runs through both its sequels. According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates [5], a think tank that studies right-wing movements, much of it derives from two books: The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, a member of the John Birch Society, and Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins. Mullins hated Jews, but his references to Jews in the book are oblique. “It’s bait, written by one of the world’s most notorious anti-Semites to lead people into that analytical model,” says Berlet.

Zeitgeist works the same way. Though it says nothing about Jews, its analysis mirrors classic anti-Semitic canards. Immediately after footage of the twin towers falling, for example, the film features an excerpt from a speech that Charles Lindbergh gave to an America First group in 1941: “When hostilities commenced in Europe in 1939, it was realized that the American people had no intention of entering the war. But it was realized that this country could be enticed into the war, in very much the same way that it was enticed into the last one.” As his words play, headlines about Iraq float across the screen. “We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction,” he concluded. Lindbergh, of course, was talking about the Jews. Viewers attuned to anti-Semitic rhetoric would naturally conclude that Joseph was, too.

After Joseph put Zeitgeist online, it quickly became an Internet sensation. Clips appeared on the websites of Ron Paul supporters, white nationalists, and, before long, some Tea Party groups. Anarchists and anti-imperialists embraced it as well. Stories about it appeared in newspapers worldwide. Some were admiring: South Africa’s Cape Times compared it to An Inconvenient Truth. Even the debunkers testified to its reach. An article in the Irish Times described [6] the “massive interest” the documentary had attracted before lamenting, “One really wishes Zeitgeist was a masterful pastiche of 21st-century paranoia, a hilarious mockumentary to rival Spinal Tap.”

As Zeitgeist’s audience grew, people started asking Joseph what they should do with his explosive information. He didn’t know what to tell them. He supported Ron Paul, but he believed the system to be too irredeemably corrupt for a political solution. That’s when he met Jacque Fresco, a radical futurist and would-be secular prophet who has been preparing for his moment in the limelight for more than five decades.

Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Harlem in 1917, Fresco moved to Los Angeles after World War II. The journalist Lionel Rolfe, in his memoir [7] of California bohemia, Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, wrote that in the early ’50s, “Fresco had a circle of disciples who considered him next only to Albert Einstein, although the friends and relatives of those disciples often thought Fresco was a fraud and a charlatan.”

Back then, Fresco, a self-educated industrial designer, had already developed his ideas about machines making traditional economics irrelevant. In the 1970s, he moved to a compound in Venus, Fla., where he and his partner, Roxanne Meadows, set about creating designs for the cities—and civilization—of the future. They call their work The Venus Project [8].

Joseph learned about the Venus Project when Fresco, having seen Zeitgeist, sent him one of his books. For Joseph, Fresco’s highly detailed vision of a world without money, a world where work itself is largely unnecessary and human ills like greed and crime are obsolete, was a revelation.

Soon, Joseph was devoting himself to spreading the word about Fresco and The Venus Project. His second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, starts in much the same vein as the first, with an attack on the international financial system. But then it shifts to a worshipful examination of Fresco’s work, offering it as a solution to the ravages of the current system. Joseph’s latest film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, further elaborates Fresco’s irenic vision of a “resource-based economy,” one without poverty, inequality, or environmental strain.

***

The Zeitgeist movement emerged in 2008, after the release of the second documentary, as chapters formed worldwide to figure out how to prepare for immanent economic collapse and technological salvation. Joseph never acknowledged his massive ideological shift from decrying a one-world system to embracing it—he just powered through the contradictions with an intense, weirdly mesmerizing self-confidence. He seems entirely sure of his movement’s capacity to fundamentally reshape human beings. In the first Zeitgeist newsletter, he explained to a letter-writer why there would be no gluttony in a resource-based economy. “[F]or a person to want ‘more’ than another is an unsustainable, conflict invoking value which serves only a selfish conditioning generated by the current cultural climate of ‘survival of the fittest’ via the Market System of Competition,” he wrote. “TZM seeks to remove this system, hence removing the distorted values that coincide and are hence imposed and reinforced.”

Lots of right-wing fans of the original documentary have since deserted Joseph, though not all—the Zeitgeist newsletter features an essay by a former Ron Paul activist who described trying to get his Tea Party group to embrace Fresco’s ideas. Meanwhile, new cadres of progressive seekers have joined, going to meetings and throwing themselves into the movement’s vibrant online community. At 96, the bearded, impish Fresco suddenly has a large global following—last year, he visited 18 countries on an international lecture tour.

Since 2009, the movement has celebrated Z-day in March, with chapters worldwide putting on events. The New York Times covered [9] the inaugural Z-Day gathering in Manhattan, which attracted a sold-out crowd of around 900 to hear Joseph and Fresco speak. It was, wrote reporter Alan Feuer, “as if Karl Marx and Carl Sagan had hired John Lennon from his ‘Imagine’ days to do no less than redesign the underlying structures of planetary life.” This year’s Z-Day will take place on March 13, with a main event in London and local happenings worldwide.

Most members, particularly the new ones, are probably unaware of the Jew-baiting subtext of the documentary that launched their movement. Many were genuinely baffled in 2009 when a German social networking site, studiVZ, banned Zeitgeist groups because of their implicit anti-Semitism. Others seem a bit embarrassed by the first Zeitgeist; they’ll often say it’s “irrelevant”—one of TZM’s favorite epithets—because it came out before the movement got started. But no one is disavowing it, and so a growing global movement of tech-savvy idealists continues to promote a work of far-right paranoia.

“I’m willing to accept that the filmmaker is a person who has a great energy and tremendous ignorance who inadvertently replicated the Nazi view of money manipulation,” says Berlet. “In which case he needs to repudiate it.” That seems unlikely. In a video interview available online, Joseph rails against his critics, “the self-appointed guardians of the status quo.” The first Zeitgeist, he insists, “is based on pre-existing information. There isn’t one thing in that film that doesn’t come from a source.” True enough. The problem is what the sources are.

This is the second time this article has been posted in this thread. And I ask the same questions I did then. Where is the proof of anti-semetisim? Why would an anti-Semetic group promote the work of a Jew? (Jacque Fresco). The author of this article is spouting some crazy stuff.

Is the Zeitgeist Movement a cult?
By Neil Kiernan a.k.a VTV

Where did the accusations start that the Zeitgeist Movement was a cult? Well as most unfounded statements about the Zeitgeist movement it usually starts with someone who is angry because they were banned from the forums for being jerks. The next phase of this generally leads to them going from being ardent supporters of the RBE and TZM to suddenly needing to find ways to demonize the thing that “rejected” them. It's not uncommon for people to do this. Though it is not exactly rational. Generally people who have to resort to such aggressive conversational tactics have a lot of un-expressed anger. So they lash out at people they are debating with. And when they are called to task for doing so, they scream “authoritarian” at the people telling them to stop. Because after all they don't want to be told what to do. (Never realizing of course that by attacking someone they are trying to dominate them psychologically and therefore are seeking to take authority over them.)

On my show we have been over that topic many times. And am working on a film project to cover it even more in depth. The reason I sought to review it was because we needed to get at the core causes of why this “Oh yeah! Well your a CULT!” nonsense generally starts. They are angry for being in their minds “rejected” because of their aggressive behavior. So now it's time to ad hominem the group that cast them out to protect their pride. The irony that generally what caused them to leave was not that they suddenly saw flaws in the RBE itself. Just that they don't like being asked not to be bullies on the forums. But of course suddenly they hate the RBE too.

It reminds me of an angry kid who is told he can't be part of a club some of his friends have formed so they say with anger: "Oh yeah!??? Well I didn't want to be part of your stupid club anyway!!!" Then they might go form their own club in retaliation. -cough RBOSE COUGH!-

So the accusations of “cult” emerge. I have ignored this entire concept for some time because it seriously sounded so silly I didn't even feel it needed to be addressed. In my recent debates I decided to debunk it entirely. It didn't take long. It was then however that it occurred to me that most people didn't even really understand how subjective this concept of “cult” was and therefore it was very easy to cast a dark shadow on anything by using that word. This is largely because of the vague nature of the concept.

One of the books that Jacque Fresco strongly recommends is “They Tyranny of Words” by Stuart Chase. If your interested in the book you can find it on Amazon.com for a decent price.

[www.amazon.com]

Anyway, one of the major things that Mr. Chase covers in the book is that words generally have many meanings and psychological effects. And rarely do you have any idea what someone actually means when they use a word to convey a concept. People's idea of what a word means is highly influenced by their culture and environment when they learned the word. There are all sorts of other factors with it.

Take the word “Communism”. Say that word out loud in the United States and people get a negative feeling right away. Say the word “Capitalism” in Soviet Russia and you would of gotten the same reaction. There was a reason for that. It was that people on both of these sides had a vested interest to psychologically condition the people in their perspective countries to dislike the ideology of the other country. Thus, the “cold war”.

I remember for years growing up during the “cold war” being told that Communism was bad. Though for years I never really understood why, or even what Communism was. This was also to the benefit of the people propagandizing Communism. If you say something is bad enough people will feel socially compelled to go along with that. I mean after all, if a lot of people say something is bad it MUST be bad right? Especially if they said it on TV!

There are a lot of other words that have been “charged” by our culture to have negative connotations. Say the word “democrat” and this generally leads you to “liberal” which is considered synonymous with “socialist”. Which is in turn synonymous with “communist”. See how that works? And what is the word “communist” associated with? Well generally with “fascist”. So now by calling someone a democrat in some circles this also means they are a fascist. It conjures up images of gulags, Stalin, an evil oppressive regime that spies on you with the KGB and sends you to prison in Siberia. And that is EXACTLY what their opposition want. There is a similar set of reactions you get with “republican”. Generally means “rich”, “greedy”, etc.

Now how do these associations measure up with reality? Without going into the Socialist/Communist tangent too much further, I would point out that all of the socialists I have ever spoken to, Paddy Shannon and Brian Moore being two of them, one of whom is a well known filmmaker, and the other is a former presidential candidate for the socialist party, neither of them had any support for the idea of fascism. Or totalitarianism. In fact, both of them had a great deal of respect for personal freedom. They just felt that people would have a lot more freedom and quality of life in a world where resources were shared equally rather then being owned by a few people who demand servitude out of anyone who wants to have access to what they need to survive.

So what does all this mean to the concept of “cult”?

The word “cult” has all sorts of negative attitudes associated with it. People immediately are taken to thoughts of the Branch Davidians who burned to death in Waco Texas in an alleged mass suicide. Or the Jones-town cult that drank “the kool-aid” to kill themselves. The bizarre practices of the church of Scientology,(A note: Not all Scientology followers are in the "church") Bohemian Grove, etc. The problem with the word cult is that it's definition is so loose that it is very easy to throw that word at anyone, or rather any group of people who hold a similar idea. We will get into that directly. But the word is not even always used in a negative light. A movie can have a “cult following”. And when someone makes that distinction they generally don't mean that there is some religious sect of people worshiping the film, or it's actors, etc. And sometimes it just refers to any group of people who happen to like a given concept, or thing. “The Kiss Army” affectionately refers to the “cult” that follows the rock band “Kiss”. They love their music and their image so collectively they have this in common.

So, does this mean that all “Kiss” fans would drink Kool-aid and kill themselves with Cyanide if Gene Simmons asked them to? Or even most of them? Or even any?

Does it mean that the “cult following” of the original “Highlander” film would be willing to burn themselves and their children to death if the writer Gregory Widen asked them to?

(Note: I don't doubt that people have done some stupid things and associated it with either of these things. But that is individual crazy people, and is not facilitated by the groups in question. A crazy stalker killing someone to impress their object of obsession is obviously not the fault of the object in question.)

So, lets break down what the word “cult” means.

Cult:
–noun
1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.

3. the object of such devotion.

4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

5. (From Sociology.) a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.

6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.

7. the members of such a religion or sect.

8.any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.

OK, looking at each of these individually, lets examine them and compare them to the Zeitgeist movement.

1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.

7. the members of such a religion or sect.

5. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.

The Zeitgeist movement does not advocate religion at all. In fact, if anything it is counter religion. Though being non-religious is not a condition of being involved in the Zeitgeist movement it is a predominantly atheist movement solely because we value the scientific method, not religion and not superstition as the arbiter of decision making. People are free to have their own beliefs. And so long as they are not advocating something theocratic, as in the idea that their religion should have a place in making laws for other people to be forced to follow, we don't care.

In the world we propose, people would be free to pursue whatever religion they want. And as I pointed out during the Rudy Davis interview, we would not be making any laws nor would we ever advocate laws being made to force someone to be atheist. Or not to practice any religion.

However, we also would not be willing to stand by and allow them to make laws to force other people to participate in their religious practices. We won't pass laws against women wearing scarves on their heads. But we also won't allow laws to be passed to force women to wear scarves on their heads.

For some people not being willing to help them be fanatic alone means that we therefore want to take their freedom away. That is too bad but it is not logical.

I have had to deal recently with someone who insists that because there are some sources quoted in the first Zeitgeist movie that quote from various pagan religions that we therefore advocate paganism. I had to explain to him (over and over) that the sources in the first film were to compare religions and how they were similar in an attempt to prove that Christianity itself was not anymore “divinely inspired” then any of of the pagan religions it copied.

We have also had to deal with some people who have suggested that because Jiddu Krishnamurti was in the beginning of the second film that therefore we advocated the theosophical society. The theosophical society was yet another religious group that you could call a “cult”. And apparently they worshiped a god they called “Lucifer”. Jiddu Krishnamurti left the group and went on to pursue philosophy on his own. The problem with these never ending distinctions is they of course only quote the ones that are helpful to their quest to prove we are some sort of evil sun worshiping cult.

For example, the first Zeitgeist film starts with a recording of a devout Buddhist named Trungpa Ripoche. Are we therefore a Buddhist movement?

Among the sources of the first Zeitgeist film is also “The King James Version of the Holy Bible” We also frequently quote Martin Luther King Jr. and obviously we are not a Christian movement.

The references to religion in the Zeitgeist movement are for the purpose of showing that all religions are questionable. And false institutions. And that superstition is irrelevant. And generally founded on nonsense. If we were some cult trying to get people to worship Lucifer, or advocate the occult it would be somewhat counter-productive to state that all religions are BS. (And I don't mean bad science). And to encourage people not to worship anything. Much less Lucifer.

I also had to explain (over and over) that the first film is not relevant to the Venus Project or the Zeitgeist Movement. Jacque Fresco himself although atheist does not endorse the first film. If you want proof of that you can find it on my website during my interview with him in Florida that I have uploaded to YouTube.

He kept insisting that since the first Zeitgeist film had occult or allegedly Luciferian authors in it's list of sources that therefore our movement was based on satanic ideas. Finally, I point blanked the individual and asked them where in the Zeitgeist Orientation guide (or any publication talking about the movement or the Venus project) that it suggested that members of the Zeitgeist Movement venerated Lucifer or suggested that people should? He of course could not find that anywhere. This would be because we are not a religious movement and do not suggest anyone be religious. Ever. If our goal was to spread Lucifer worship it would of been pretty easy to state that.

So concluding this part, the Zeitgeist movement is not a religion. Does not advocate a religion. Does not encourage religious practices. Has no rituals. Or ceremonies. We obviously don't have any “sacred ideology” and do not have any “sacred symbols” because we don't believe in the concept of anything being “sacred” because we don't believe in religion. And that basically disqualifies it from all of the negative connotations that are generally brought up when using the world “cult” in the derogatory.

So what about this one?

2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.

A lot of people in TZM do admire Jacque Fresco for his work. Nobody is building any shrines to him. Nobody believes he is God. Or mystical. I know people who admire Muhammad Ali for his boxing prowess. That doesn't mean they worship him. So, religion again is out of the way here.

But as the definition provides a non-religious example in the “physical fitness cult” we come to the non-negative connotations of the word “cult”. Being devoted to physical fitness is not a bad thing. Being a “Kiss” fan is not a bad thing. This is where the word gets very subjective. Because you could say neo-nazis are basically the cult that venerates Adolph Hitler and his racist ideology. And obviously that is not a good thing. But it's still not religious.

But when you really look at this closely, cults seem to be everywhere.

The Republican Party. The Democratic Party. The Socialist Party. (In fact, just about every political party could be considered a “cult”. )

Labor Unions. The Feminist movement. The civil rights movement. Any organization that advocates certain principles. Hell, the Salvation Army is a “cult” by that condition. Charitable organizations are cults by that definition. The list goes on and on and on.

The reason we run into trouble, is as demonstrated in “The tyranny of words” there are often multiple meanings and multiple spins on any word or concept.

The Zeitgeist movement like any other group that suggests a certain ideology has people who oppose that ideology and seek to therefore actively oppose it. And propaganda is a powerful tool for defaming an ideology. So very much like the word “communist” being used to attack socialists, the word “cult” is used to attack us. Only it's worse. Because anything can be a “cult” if more then one person is interested in it.

So, by this definition. Allow me to direct your attention to a few “cults” out there.

The anti-conspiracy cult. We can use the Conspiracy Science forum users as an example. A group of people who collectively feel strongly about a certain set of ideals. Are very abusive to people who oppose those ideas. In fact they spend hours and hours of their lives stalking into the personal lives of people who advocate what they oppose in order to defame them.

The Free Market Capitalism cult. Some have called it the “Cult of Ayn Rand”. Again a group of people who collectively feel strongly about a certain set of ideals. Are very abusive to people who oppose those ideas.

Here is the difference. Since I have a habit of being fair where those who call us a “cult” do not. I do not believe that either of these groups has rituals, or a specific religious belief. Though they can both be rather fanatical to the point of being irrational. I don't see either of them passing out Kool-aid with cyanide in it to end their lives in protest of a world where some people believe in conspiracy theories or don't think the Free Market is a good solution either.

But when these people try and make that distinction when it comes to us they take advantage of this association of words to suggest that we are some sort of “Jones-town cult drinking the Kool-aid.”

Even though we as a movement hold no religious beliefs at all.

Finally:

8. Any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.

In Zeitgeist Addendum, Peter points out that science took us from believing that demons caused disease, to modern medicine. And obviously we do not advocate methods that are unscientific.

While I have seen some members of the Zeitgeist Movement who are against vaccination. Or are Vegan, or whatever none of those ideas are held by the movement itself. If vaccinations do not work then science will prove that. If being Vegan is the way then science will prove that. But neither of these things are a belief that is currently advocated by the Zeitgeist Movement or the Venus Project.

In conclusion:

It is very easy to call any group of people who hold a similar ideology a “cult”. It is also something that because of it's subjective nature can be difficult to disprove. But as I have demonstrated in this article the world “cult” has many definitions that refer to groups of people for different reasons.

The “religious cult” does not apply.

The concept of a “social cult” or group of people who happen to hold the same ideology or admire certain people for holding that ideology applies to a LOT of organizations. And is not by any means directly related to the idea of the “religious cult”. “Kiss” fans come from all different religions, from cultures all over the world. And members of the Zeitgeist Movement tend not to be religious, and do also come from cultures all over the world.

So if someone wanted to say that there was a “cult following” of Jacque Fresco they could say the same thing of the “cult of Barack Obama”. Or the “cult of Ghandi”. Or the “cult of the civil rights movement” that tended to admire Martin Luther King. These distinctions can be made just as easily as the “cult of Adolph Hitler”.

In essence, the word “cult” is so flexible in what it means that anyone who has really considered it should have a hard time taking anyone seriously who tries to use it as an attack.

As stated in Wikipedia:

“The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of the 20th century, especially since the 1980s, and is considered subjective.”

Subjective, meaning that it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and is therefore not in of itself a concept that is solid in it's foundations.

VTV,
I have a real problem with having discussions with people when they insist on spelling things out and then utilize the large amount of data to find areas to distract from the core issue. I can handle a conversation on the level of accepted standards; whether it is an in-depth discussion or discussion where certain areas are accepted as givens, by both parties, all in the hopes of finding a higher common ground and the removal of misunderstandings.

It seems that interests other than the obvious may be at work in some of the previous responses in this thread. My point being is that we do not say using a toilet is wrong because some bad person used one. The other posters can post what they will and I leave it to the “known” moderators to determine and advise as they do so well. I feel that others have a right to post things, as are, and things are acceptable, but that others noting possible skew, like myself, and should note it to the others reading this thread. I could also be wrong and a moderator here could see something wrong that I missed. I am okay with that. I am sure they will explain why if they do.

I do not have personal issue with any of the ZM teachings. It is of no concern to me. I have a problem with those that act in a non-transparent manner, while being transparent, directing others. This leads to abuse. It is a red flag, bright and true. There is never an excuse. Like I said before, get some professional help if you can’t handle it. It is in the best interest of everyone involved.

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VTV
It reminds me of an angry kid who is told he can't be part of a club some of his friends have formed so they say with anger: "Oh yeah!??? Well I didn't want to be part of your stupid club anyway!!!" Then they might go form their own club in retaliation. -cough RBOSE COUGH!-


Where did the accusations start that the Zeitgeist Movement was a cult? Well as most unfounded statements about the Zeitgeist movement it usually starts with someone who is angry because they were banned from the forums for being jerks. The next phase of this generally leads to them going from being ardent supporters of the RBE and TZM to suddenly needing to find ways to demonize the thing that “rejected” them.

The statement above is a statement that can be taken in more than one way. As far as the facts of my personal contact with TZM, it was not a, “someone who is angry because they were banned”, situation. I take great displeasure with you saying things here that are not anyway relevant to me, and could possible be interpreted as me or my personal experience with ZM.


The group/moderator response from TZM was misleading readers by making a false accusation, and then anonymously deleting the facts. The irony of it all is that this was exactly the type of cultist thing my original post was calling out and was correct on. If you give a crap, fix it! Get a pro. :) I do not see a parade of social psychologists running here to say what TZM are doing with anonymous moderators is acceptable.

Complaining here with what you teach as your doctrine is irrelevant. However, we may point out that your words are hypocritical, as a further proof of deception.

I say the group here, because when you put up anonymous moderators, somewhere there is accountability. Either everyone in the group accepts the responsibility of their choices to have anonymous moderators and all accept being personally responsible for all abuse to others, from anonymous sources, within the group, or they have to hold wrong doers responsible. I think it is silly to expect others to take complete and total responsibility for the mistakes of others. If that is what you are advocating here, “Some new order where we all take full responsibility for all the bad choices of others”, then you can all knock yourselves out and start apologizing one at a time. What will that help? Nothing. You will be endlessly apologizing and the bad choices still won't be fixed. You preach a bunch of meaningless words. The forum moderators messed up. The system you have in place is an abusive cultist system and so far, every response I have heard from your side is typical cultist response. You make a sad impression on me.

Not everyone decides they want to be in a position of power in their life. Some exercise great caution before leading people, exercising humility and acknowledging their human limitations based on their life experiences. I know you are not asking my opinion, but I think if you really want your movement to have a chance, it is going to have to make better choices in regard to transparency and accountability in the area of directing others.

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DavidWish
VTV,

I am going to be totally straight with you. I addressed everything. I can assure you that no rational mind agrees with you. They messed you up. I'm sorry. I can't help you.

David, I posed the exact same argument that Mr. Ross suggested I pose to you. And that is thus:

This forum has anonymous moderators. Meaning this ANTI-CULT forum.

Your entire argument was based on the premise that groups that have anonymous moderation are cults. So by that logic, this ANTI-CULT forum is part of a cult, and therefore, Rick Ross is a cult leader by your estimation.

Rick Ross's financial records are not posted anywhere on this website either. (He also said given the situation it would not be anyone's business.)

You are now trying a debate tactic of just implying I am crazy, but you have yet to answer for the huge gaping holes in your logic.

There are forums all over the internet that use anonymous moderation. This is a huge stretch on your part.

He also asked me to have you define ABUSE. And you being told you cannot participate on an internet forum is not abuse. So unless someone from TZM has molested you, assaulted you, etc you are just further proving my theories that your trying to turn this positive forum that works to expose real cults to your own agenda. And that is sad.

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DavidWish
VTV,

I am going to be totally straight with you. I addressed everything. I can assure you that no rational mind agrees with you. They messed you up. I'm sorry. I can't help you.

OK, going to address this one more time.

I spoke to Rick Ross, the expert who runs this website today. I tried to post this here, for some reason it became it's own thread.

First of all, allow me be clear. Mr. Ross does not endorse the Zeitgeist Movement, and does not want to taken as such. He has not had a chance to really investigate the Zeitgeist Movement. However he made it very clear in our conversation today the following:

1. Having anonymous moderators does NOT make an organization a cult. (And in fact, this forum has anonymous moderators.)

2. There is no reason a person in an organization should be forced to disclose all of their financial records unless there is evidence that it's membership is being abused financially.

He also asked me to ask the people who are making accusations of providing evidence and instances of ACTUAL abuse. And that telling people they cannot use an internet forum does NOT constitute abuse.

Highlights from Dialogue/Debate on Barbed Wire Smile


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January 18, 2010 at 3:34 am
Zeitgeist members are generally aware that the Venus Project operates under a non-profit 501c, but they are blind to the fact that it is a for-profit organization as well.

[www.manta.com]

“Venus Project Inc is a private company located in Venus, FL. Current estimates show this company has annual revenue of $120,000 and employs a staff of approximately 2.”

The Venus Project, Inc. also currently operates under the name “Global Cybervisions” and was actually established in February, 1995.
Reference:
[www.corporationwiki.com]

Donations to the Venus Project via their website go to their non-profit sector, but other revenues go to the for-profit sector, which is not listed anywhere on their website. The fact that the Venus Project is secretly operating under three names is dubious, since Zeitgeist members are currently laboring for the Venus Project under the impression that there is no profit motive involved.

Also:

**Back in 1974, when Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project appeared on Larry King, he was misrepresented as having a PhD in Human Factors Engineering. (bold by Corboy for emphasis)

Barbed Wire Smile, owner of the blog, is for states rights, and an intelligent, participatory citizenry--and in the Second Amendment.

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« Let them eat cake
Beyond Red State / Blue State: the real American divide »
Dialogues with the Venus Project (Zeitgeist Movement)
January 31, 2009
Many of you have probably seen the movie Zeitgeist. For those who have not, simply put this term into your search engine and you can watch the movie on-line.



Like many of you, the criticisms of fiat currency, fractional reserve lending and the state resonated with me. While doing some research, I happened across the website for the Zeitgeist Movement and was intrigued. So I went into the site and started reading.



Once I dug deeper, specifically in regards to something called the ‘Venus Project’, I was shocked at what I discovered. I will leave it my readers to do their research on the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project. What follows are excerpts from a debate I attempted with several of their members. I thought these snapshots might elucidate the sad state of dialogue as it regards the problems so many perceive, and the human knee-jerk reaction to latch onto some great scheme, plan or vision for a ‘better’ society. Also, it will illustrate the poor quality level of debate that’s out there. It took much prodding to elicit any well-thought-out responses. I encourage you to check these guys out. They are absolutely frightening – a mass of otherwise well-intentioned people who sense something is wrong, but are blindly seeking answers. Rather than understand their own history, they reach out to yet another form of statism and control: the centrally-planned collective.



Statement: A Free Society can be Designed



Barbed responds:



There is no design without control.



There is no control without force.



There is no societal force absent the state/tribe/collective.



There is no state/tribe/collective until the state/tribe/collective monopolizes force.



Once force is monopolized, the human being is subject to control by the whims of the state.



But, you say, WE have good ideas. We love human beings.



That may be so. But will you live forever? Once force is handed over to the state, it is handed over in perpetuity, the people already having been disarmed, controlled and pacified.



Will the next generation of Really Smart Leaders be as judicious with the use of that force as you will?



Ponder this, lest your movement morph into another branch of the statism you abhor.



Statement: This can only be done through proper design.



BWS Response:



Please explain:

1. How design does not imply control and therefore, inherently, force ?

2. What do you do with the human beings who do not fit your ‘design’?

For example- John Smith is an investment banker. He represents all that you claim to abhor.

You are ‘designing’ a society. John Smith and his value system does not fit into this design.

What do you do with John Smith?



(The answers to my questions seemed to imply that in the utopian ‘Venus Project’ society, there would be no money and therefore no investment bankers. My question, therefore, was deemed moot. There was little discussion of how the transition to this utopian society would be carried out, however, which is very concerning. The whole line of reasoning reminds me of Mao, or Pol Pot, but in reverse: instead of a forced migration to the fields, it’s a suggestion of a highly technological society in an almost Gene Roddenberry sense. In fact there are frequent Star Trek references to be found on their forum. I suggested they read The Grapes of Wrath.)



Question: What do you think of the 2nd Amendment?



BWS Response:



We must not distract ourselves with ‘why’ someone may want to prevent you from owning the means of self-defense, in this case a gun.

We must ask how.

HOW do they propose ‘banning’, ‘restricting’, ‘regulating’, ‘confiscating’, and ‘policing’?

Will the state apparatus be used for these ends, as is so often the case? If not, what controlling body will, through its monopoly on the use of force, ‘ban’, ‘restrict’, ‘regulate’, ‘confiscate’ and ‘police’?

Once this authority, this power, has been handed over to such a body, what will said body do with this power next?

What if someone refuses to comply? What force will be used to compel this human beings action in the determined direction? Do you support the tazing of this human being? Do you support the beating of this human being? Do you support the killing of this human being? Do you support the imprisonment of this human being? If so, for how long?

We must ponder deeply our desires to direct human behavior and understand the dynamics of control utilized by both states and humans to control other humans.

Those who would ‘ban’ must first ponder these issues and draw them out to their logical conclusions.





Statement: You are so powerful when you have weapons , I believe people like you are sissies , without weapons or some brainwashed people doing the job for you , you are powerless , you are too sissies do fight like men.



BWS Responds:



How wrong you are.



The firearm was the ultimate achievement of mankind, freeing him from the totality of ‘might makes right’. No longer could the state send someone bigger, someone stronger, men in greater numbers, or with more swords to put down those who would not submit to the power of the state. The firearm made men equal.



However, since men are easily brainwashed by the state, man allowed the state to regulate and confiscate privately held firearms, thereby regaining for the state what is crucial to exert its control: a monopoly on the use of force.



Such is the plight of the people, that they so eagerly, through their desire to regulate that which they personally disfavor, grant the state ever increasing authority over their lives.



Statement: Although I support civilian ownership of guns, I believe it must be carefully regulated and all owners need a good understanding of firearms. Again, I don’t want to start a gun control discussion. Just pointing out a few things.



BWS Responds:



If you don’t want to start a gun control discussion, allow us to substitute peanuts for guns.



Regulated by whom?



Once this individual or group of individuals ‘regulates’ peanuts, how are these regulations enforced?



Note that ‘force’ is explicit in the term ‘enforce’. To whose authority are you willing to submit in order to enforce ‘regulations’ regarding peanuts?



How are you gonig to police these regulations?



What will you do if someone ‘violates’ these regulations? Will you approve of tazing this person? Beating this person? Will you imprison this person? For how long will you authorize the state to imprison this political prisoners who did not follow your ‘regulations’ ?



Statement: What might happen either is (sic) massive anarchy, mass looting, rape, murder and a lot more bad things.



BWS Responds:



I think there is a misunderstanding of the term ‘anarchy’ here. That is to be expected given the that the term has been manipulated and defined for the people, via the mainstream media, by the state.



One may ask, in response to a criticism of the ‘design’ motive inherent in TVP: “What do you propose? Anarchy!?”

One does not ‘propose’ anarchy. Anarchy is not a proposition. Anarchy is not a destination. Anarchy is a journey. Nor is philosophical anarchy a practical proposal. It is not a system. It is an anti-system. One is correct in suggesting that no historic example exists of functioning anarchy. But the suggestion is oxymoronic. There is no ‘functioning’ anarchy.

Rather than ‘propose’ anarchy, one whittles away at the state control mechanism- at regulation and the monopoly on force.

We could eliminate the overwhelming majority of regulation current in place in the modern, western state and be nowhere near philosophical anarchy. We would, however, be much closer to minarchy – and hence liberty.

“When the government fears the people, there is liberty…” -Thomas Jefferson

However, in order to approach liberty, we must resist in every way possible the state’s attempts at civilian disarmament (what you call ‘gun control’)

However, this does not appear to be the tone of this forum or this movement.

Therefore, TVP will simply replace the existing state paradigm, morphing into yet another tool of control, new state paradigm.

This is unfortunate.

To understand the problems you perceive in society, first understand the mechanisms of control and the reality of force. Force is neither good nor bad. However, it exists. To ignore this fact renders any suggestion for ‘change’ moot. Therefore, to achieve liberty one most ensure the state cannot monopolize force.



Statement: The need for regulation will vanish with proper education. The whole point behind regulating firearms is to ensure that the person in question actually knows how to safely operate one without harming others.



BWS Responds:



Who determines whether or not ‘the person in question actually knows how to safely operate one without harming others’? Does the state determine this? The vanguard? Do you determine it? Who is the decision-maker? What if I disagree? What force will you exert upon me to ensure my compliance? What testing procedures will I have to go through in order to ensure that I ‘actually’ know how to safely operate a firearm? Who will design the test? Who will administer the test? If I fail this test, will you deny me a firearm? How will you deny me a firearm? Will you unleash the force of the state upon me? Will you imprison me?



These are questions proponents of TVP have not pondered with sufficient intellectual rigor.



Statement: Own firearms in a world where there is no practical reason to own them? I don’t see that anyone would do anything to them for disagreeing. If they used those firearms to harm people then there would of course be a problem. One of the things the Venus Project talks about is using scientific method to arrive at CONCLUSIONS rather then OPINIONS. We HAVE (pondered these issues), and I can assure Jaque has as well.



BWS Responds:



Then I invite ‘Jaque’ to come debate his vision on my site. Or you, for that matter.



In reading your responses, and the responses of others, it is clear that TVP fits the classic definition of a cult.



You cannot debate your positions logically or apply intellectual rigor to your conclusions because you begin with the premise, rather than derive the premise through questioning and inquiry.



You begin with the premise of a world in which firearms are obsolete.



Yet again, I resist the side-debate over whether this vision is desirable or not, but instead question your premise.



You cannot begin with a world where things that exist in reality are already ‘obsolete’. This is ok in Star Trek. It is not ok in reality. In reality, you must have a plan to implement that which you suggest.



What you have in this community is a commonly accepted starting point that conveniently skips over the realities and challenges of implementation.



You use the euphemism ‘design’. In reality, you imply force. But you are able to gloss over the unpleasantness of this term by starting your thought process, and your debate, far down the road.



Jaque asks: If given a clean slate, how would you design a society?



Pol Pot also asked this question, and then implemented the blank slate upon which to ‘design’ his ideal.



TVP proponents skip over the difficult questions and begin with the blank slate.



Therefore is all serious inquiry glossed over by simply replying that “in a world where X is obsolete, we will not have this problem.”



Where will you find the police to render ‘obsolete’ that which does not fit into your ‘design’?



You will find them from the legions of cultists on this forum.



Statement (In answer to my challenge that the Venus Project does not address how this is to be done and how it will handle objectors): Yes it does actually. You handle people who object by eliminating any reason to object. Not by force or coercion, but by destroying whatever stands in the way of everyone being comfortable with the idea. By addressing the problems that create the objection at their root causes rather then creating laws and expecting people to go along with them. (emphasis mine)

BWS Responds:

“By destroying whatever stands in the way of everyone being comfortable with the idea”

Do you understand how frightening this is? Do you understand what you are saying?

Can you not see who else has uttered such words in the past, and what the result has been?



And there you have it. The real agenda uncovered in a few short dialogues.



*****



A New Manifesto



I have just read through the Venus Project manifesto and it seems to me the antithesis of what I (and many others) took away from the movie ‘Zeitgeist’.



Regardless of the author(s) intentions, the suggestions contained therein seem the most ambitious manifesto to date for complete central planning and human control I have ever read in my life. The responses of those I encountered on their forum were cult-like.



Therefore I offer up the following:



1. To members of the Zeitgeist Movement and, specifically, supporters of the Venus Project: I offer up my blog to debate you. I invite you to come forth and state your proposals of design for a ‘better’ society. I will give you all the time and space you want to offer up your views. But come prepared. Email me and I will open up a post dedicated to the exchange of views



2. I offer up this counter-manifesto: Those of us who respect liberty and the individual, those of us who respect the fundamental human right to own property, to own the means of self-defense and to resist the tyranny of the majority (or of the individual) will resist you. Those of us who respect our ties to the land, who respect the circularity of nature and the intrinsic human ties to the soil, we will resist you. Those of who respect the hand-made and the local, the wood over the iron, the organic over the genetically engineered and the individual over the collective will resist you. We will resist you utilizing every means possible, at every corner and every step of the way. We will never surrender. And when your technological, ‘designed’ utopia begins to enslave its children, when your ‘benevolent’ leaders give way to your tyrants, we will be there to save you.



This entry was posted on January 31, 2009 at 9:27 am and is filed under January.

One can read ensuin debate on the blog if one goes to the many comments.

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Wasn't aware until now that Larouche was in Zeitgeist. Any Zeit defenders care to explain this?

[thethirdestate.net]

Zeitgeist Exposed
This post was written by Guest Post on March 20, 2010

In Agatha Christie’s classic crime novel the ABC Murders, the detective Hercule Poirot comes up with the following formulation: “When do you notice a pin least? When it is in a pin cushion. When do you notice a murder least? When it is one of a series of related murders.” I would like to extend Poirot’s thinking to “When do you notice an extremely pernicious and dangerous conspiracy theory least? When it is set in a two hour film amongst many other conspiracy theories.”

Over the last year or so a number of people have told me that I should watch the film Zeitgeist: The Movie. All of these people have been lefties or liberals, and each tells me that the film supplies a good exposé of power in the modern world. These people have been from a wide range of backgrounds and ages, some of them environmentalists, some of them unionists, some of them socialists, some British, some American. The film has achieved massive viewing figures globally, with over 3,000,000 people having watched it on Youtube, and many more on DVD or Google Video. And of all of these people who have recommended the film to me, none has noticed its reliance on the old myth of the “world Jewish conspiracy”.

In this article I hope to expose the film’s relationship to older anti-Semitic texts and myths, and look more closely at how these theories are made to look left-wing or liberal. I wish to explain why this film has become so attractive to people who otherwise are engaged in good struggles against capitalism, against war, and to save the environment. I am particularly interested in the relationship between the film and a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, along with its use of other anti-Semitic tropes that have existed throughout modernity.

Zeitgeist: The Movie is split into three parts: The first focuses on the relationship between astrological symbology and the story of Jesus; the second on “the truth about 9/11″; and the third is about international finance. In all honesty the first part is neither here nor there. The argument is that Christianity is not original in its particular form of mythology, and instead is a reconfiguration of older myths focusing on sun gods. Whether or not we take this argument to be true has very little impact on how we understand modern society. The second section of the film expounds a theory that 9/11 was an inside job, committed by the American state. Many people do believe this, and much of the information is inaccessible, but the argument that I would like to make is that these two conspiracy theories are in many ways inconsequential to the overall meaning of the film. Rather they are used as a smoke screen to justify the dissemination of anti-Semitic material in the final section of the film.

What is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
The Protocols is a book first published by around the turn of the last century in Russia. It is a fraudulent and fictional document made to read as if written by Jews intent on ruling the world. It suggests that the Jewish people plan on world domination through a process of controlling governments, controlling the media, controlling banks, and swindling the populace at large. The claim is that Jews wish to enslave the world by creating a “one world government.” Of course the text is deeply anti-Semitic, and has been shown numerous times to be a forgery, but has been used consistently throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to justify atrocities committed against Jews. Furthermore it remains popular in parts of the world, and amongst certain right-wing and fascist organisations.

The relationship between two texts
It is easy enough to say that there is a large cross-over of content between Zeitgeist and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by plucking a few choice quotes. For example, where Zeitgeist says, “International bankers now have a streamlined machine to expand their personal ambitions”, The Protocols says “the wheels of the machine of all the states are moved by the force of the engine, which is in our [the Jews'] hands, and the engine of the machinery of our states is Gold .” But I would suggest that this sort of critique does not go far enough, rather I would like to show that the entire argument of the third section of the film has been lifted from The Protocols. It is the same argument, often in slightly altered language, and as such is just as anti-Semitic. I will focus on five particular aspects: The one world government; the use of war; manipulation of the populace; the focus on gold and money; and the idea of an all-powerful secret cabal.

The One World Government
One of the great fears of the conspiracy theorists is a one world government. This point is made explicitly towards the end of Zeitgeist in a discussion of a North American Union, an Asian Union, the European Union, and an African Union. And finally, they say “when the time is right they will merge together forming the final stages of a plan these men have been working on for over 60 years: a one world government… One bank, one army, one centre of power.” This argument is particularly related to he opening of Protocol 3 in which we read, “Today I may tell you that our [the Jews'] goal is now only a few steps off. There remains but a small space to cross of the long path we have trodden before the cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolise our people, will be completed. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be locked into its coil as in a powerful vice.” The Protocols go on in Protocol 5, “by all these means we shall so wear down the goyim (non-Jews) that they will be compelled to offer us international power of a nature that will enable us to absorb all the State forces of the world and to form a Super-Government.”

The use of war
There is a section in the film in which it is claimed that the justifications for America going into a number of world wars were orchestrated by “men behind the government.” We are told that the sinking of the Lusitania was planned, that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened, that Pearl Harbour was known about well in advance, and of course that 9/11 was an inside job. We are told that both sides of conflicts have been funded by the same “international bankers.” This section of the film is lifted directly from Protocol 7, which reads, “Throughout all of Europe, and by means of relations in Europe, in other continents also, we must create ferments, discords, and hostility. Therein we gain a double advantage. In the first place we keep in check all countries, for they well know that we have the power whenever we like to create disorders and to restore order… We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbours of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbours should also venture to stand collectively against us, then we must offer resistance by universal war.”

I am not going to say here that wars haven’t been entered into cynically, because of course they have, and I am also not saying that many wars should not be opposed, because again in many cases they should. The point though, is that the structure of this particular argument about war is based on the idea of Jews running the world, and should thus be thrown out.

Manipulating the populace
There are two branches to classic Jewish conspiracy theory thought about how the people are made stupid and swindled. The first, and in fact the one that has been most significant in the history of Jewish conspiracy theories, is the idea of Jews being in charge of the media. The second, which has become less widely used but still exists in Zeitgeist: The Movie is the idea of Jewish control of the education system to make it ineffective. The issue of Jewish control of the media is covered in Protocol 12 in which it is written, “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control. Even now this is being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours (the Jews’) and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.” And in Protocol 13, “We further distract them [the non-Jews] with amusements, games, pastimes, passions, people’s palaces… Soon we shall begin through the press to propose competitions in art, in sport of all kinds. These interests will finally distract their minds from questions in which we should find ourselves compelled to oppose them.” In Zeitgeist identical issues are covered throughout but in particular there is discussion of a “culture entirely saturated by mass media entertainments.” We are told that the same people behind the planned takeover of society are “behind the mainstream media.”

In both Zeitgeist and The Protocols we see some discussion of the education system. In Zeitgeist we are told about the “downward slide of the US education system” and that “They [the government] do not want your children to be educated.” Completely unsurprisingly the same argument is made in Protocol 16: “When we are in power we shall remove every kind of disturbing subject from the course of education and shall make out of the youth obedient children of authority.” The narrator of Zeitgeist says, “the last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public”, echoing the sentiment from Protocol 5 that “there is nothing more dangerous to us (the Jews) than personal initiative.”

The focus on gold or money: the federal reserve, and Jewish usury
Both The Protocols (particularly Protocols 21 and 22) and Zeitgeist focus heavily on issues regarding money or gold. Both offer the theory that the problems of society are caused by money and systems of money being controlled by a small group of people of questionable morals. What is important here is the focus is on money rather than on capital or production. Instead of offering critical perspectives on the structures within society that cause oppression and poverty, the general view is society as it stands is benevolent and this benevolence is subverted by problems in the sphere of circulation.

Over the centuries, going back as far as the expulsion of the Jews from Britain in 1290, the charge of usury has been levelled against the Jews for anti-Semitic purposes. Zeitgeist says of the federal income tax, “roughly 25% of the average worker’s income is taken via this tax, and guess where that money goes? It goes to pay the interest on the currency being produced by the Federal Reserve Bank. The money you make working for almost three months out of the years goes almost literally into the pockets of the international bankers.” Again, for the sake of trying not to appear as racist as they really are, the word Jew is replaced with “international bankers.” This is once again a restatement of an anti-Semitic myth. Just as in all of these examples, the arguments here are lifted from older anti-Semitic theories. They are not offering an explanation of world or national political economic systems, rather they exist solely to foster an attitude of hatred to a certain pre-defined section of society.

A secretive cabal?
Ultimately, the argument that is being made throughout Zeitgeist is that the world is being controlled by a small secret society of individuals, and in the context of the history of conspiracy theories, they are talking about the Jews. When we are told by the film about meetings of these “international bankers” that are “secretive and concealed from public view”, discussions about “an accelerated agenda by the ruthless elite”, or “people behind the government” they are breathing new life into an old racist myth that we must try to do away with.

There is an insistence throughout conspiracy theories that someone or some group of people are personally responsible for all of the ills of the world, and this is very much related to anti-Semitism throughout modernity. For hundreds of years, Jews have been the officially sanctioned scapegoat of capitalism. Where systems of production have impoverished people, the Jews have been blamed; where people have felt taxes are unfair, the Jews have been blamed; where people have felt alienated by the structures of society, they have been told that they are in fact alienated because they are not part of secret meetings of Jews. Ultimately these theories lead us away from a critique of capitalism. Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek makes exactly this point with reference to Wagner’s anti-Semitism when he writes “He needs a Jew: so that, first, modernity – this abstract impersonal process – is given a human face, is identified with a concrete, palpable feature; then, in a second move, by rejecting the Jew which gives full body to all that is disintegrated in modernity, we can retain its advantages. In short, anti-Semitism does not stand for anti-modernism as such, but an attempt at combining modernity with social corporatism which is characteristic of conservative revolutionaries.”

Who was Senator Louis McFadden?
Louis McFadden, who is quoted at length in Zeitgeist, was a senator in the US in the first part of the twentieth century. He also happened to be a serious anti-Semite, and came out with lines such as, “in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money.” He is quoted twice in the film saying the following: “A world banking system was being set up here… a superstate controlled by international bankers acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure…” and “It was a carefully contrived occurrence. International bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair so they might emerge rulers of us all.” Within the context of McFadden’s world view, he is using “international bankers” as an epithet for Jews. What is notable is that the makers of Zeitgeist seem keen to omit this context, to suggest that McFadden is simply offering a critique of capitalism. The fact is that within conspiracy theories the labelling of Jews as “international bankers” and “international finance capital” is a common trope. These quotes would have been understood at the time, and is still understood by many now, to be anti-Semitic gestures.

The Case of Jeremiah Duggan, and the truth about Lyndon LaRouche
Another rather shady character who appears in Zeitgeist is American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. I felt I should include the following story as anecdotal evidence of quite how dangerous these people can be:

Jeremiah Duggan was a British Student at the Sorbonne who died in 2003 in extremely suspicious circumstances. In the months leading up to his death, Duggan had become involved in what he believed to be an anti-war organisation. In fact he had become entangled with a set of political organisations headed up by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. In March that year, Duggan attended a conference of these organisations at the Schiller Institute (a site owned by LaRouche’s movement) in Wiesbaden, Germany. During the course of meetings Duggan revealed himself to be Jewish, and yet in such meetings of LaRouche’s movement, Jews are blamed for starting the war, reanimating the old conspiracy myths about the Jews encouraging wars as they aid social control. He said in his keynote address to the conference, “This plot to launch a new world war has been intellectually influenced by people who, like Hitler, admire Nietzsche, but “being Jewish, they couldn’t qualify for Nazi Party leadership, even though their fascism was absolutely pure! As extreme as Hitler! They sent them to the United States.[…] Who’s behind it? . . . The independent central-banking-system crowd, the slime-mold. The financier interests.”

At around 5am, after Duggan had revealed his Jewish identity at the conference, he phoned his mother. He said, “Mum, I’m in … big trouble … You know this Nouvelle Solidarité? ..” He said, “I can’t do this” … I want out.” And at that point the phone was cut. And then it rang back again almost immediately. … And then the first thing that he said that time was, “Mum, I’m frightened.” She realized he was in such danger that she said to him, “I love you.” And then he said, “I want to see you now.” She said, “well, where are you, Jerry?” And he said, “Wiesbaden.” And she said, “How do you spell it?” And he said, “W I E S.” And then the phone was cut.

The next day, Jeremiah was found dead, with members of LaRouche’s movement claiming that he had committed suicide. Inquests are still ongoing to determine what happened that night. In the last few weeks a second inquiry into his death has been announced.

LaRouche has been known as a Jewish conspiracy theorist for more than 30 years now. His organisation is cultish and dangerous (one of the reasons I choose to write this anonymously), and the content of much of what he says can be traced back to the sort of allegations put forward by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What, then, is a man like this doing in a film that purports to be a lefty-liberal critique of society?

Zeitgeist and the Left
What is in many ways most unsettling about this film is the fact that it purports to be left-wing or liberal. As the film ends we see images of three men faded in and out: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther-King, and John Lennon. Throughout the film we have quotations from left wing comedian Bill Hicks and a section is given to New Labour politician Michael Meacher. It is asserted once again that the aim of this film is the affirmation of the unity of humanity, of doing away with difference, whether it be class, race, or sex. We are made to think that the film is offering a radical left critique of power. Instead it is indulging in the sort of theories that are more at home with right-wing libertarians. I do not know entirely why the Zeitgeist group are particularly targeting the left. It is perhaps a divisive measure, but also possibly just an arena where they feel they can convert people to their way of thinking. What is clear, though, is that the suggestion that the ideas expressed are left-wing or liberal, and the deployment of quotations from well known lefties and liberals, is utterly cynical.

The positivist problem
There is one reason in particular that these conspiracies may seem compatible with left wing modes of thought, and that is to do with the philosophical problem of positivism. Stated in its simplest form, this is that ideas about transforming a society cannot be straightforwardly expressed in the language or accepted modes of thought of the society that they wish to transform. And this issue is common to all transformative theories of society. Probably the most influential branch of this type of thinking stemmed from Hegel to Marx, and then into Marxists of the 20th and 21st century. The solution for them is to talk in terms of a dialectic, that is, by comparing the consciousness of a society to the material reality. The significant conclusion of this type of thought is that one’s consciousness of society, up to a certain point is always false.

The conspiracy theorists take on this question in another way. They say that if our consciousness of society is always false, it is made to be false by a small number of powerful who make it false. They believe that we are consistently duped by an all-knowing cabal who control every aspect of our lives. And the solutions differ too. For the Marxists and socialists the problem is that society produces a consciousness that doesn’t allow us to fully understand our immiseration in work, in unemployment, or in powerlessness, and the solution is the radical transformation of society to a fairer, less exploitative world. For the conspiracy theorists the answer is the elimination of this so-called small powerful elite. They do not believe that society needs any more transformation than this.

This is difficult philosophical ground to tread. We run a huge risk if we are to criticise the conspiracy theorists for not being positivists, not working within accepted modes of thought. Instead, what we must say is that their particular critical mode of thought does not propose a correct solution for solving society’s problems, and furthermore is reliant not on unity but on division. We must show that inequality in society is structural rather than being based on the wishes of a small group of Jews.

What is to be done?
Zeitgeist: The Movie is ever growing in popularity, and furthermore they are building a movement. More and more people are being influenced by what the film has to say, without realising quite where it is coming from. It is important that as widely as possible we can expose the anti-Semitic subtext to this film. We must expose the film as being cynically positioned to influence liberals and lefties. In targeting the ideas presented by Zeitgeist it is not enough to just quibble over details, rather we must be trying to understand the politics that this film overall is trying to portray. We need to read through the many layers of conspiracy theories here, and understand that there is one in particular that they want us to believe, and that this one is, of course, the most dangerous and pernicious.

It is important to understand that the type of critique of society offered by the Zeitgeist movement cannot be separated from the Jewish conspiracy theory. One cannot take classic anti-Semitic texts, replace the word “Jew” with “international bankers”, or “international finance capital” and then believe that your theory is no longer anti-Semitic. Of course there are very good arguments that capitalism and indeed imperialism are extremely dangerous. There are very good arguments from a left or liberal perspective to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should never have been fought. And it is here that we must recognise that ends do not justify means. We cannot afford to support any cause that is simply anti-capitalist, or any cause that is simply anti-war, otherwise we run the risk of getting into bed with fascists. Rather, our positions on capitalism and of war must arise from thoroughgoing critique, rather than a rehashing and rebranding of old anti-Semitic narratives.

In order to spread this message as widely as possible I encourage you to republish this piece on your own websites, to send it to friends and comrades, to show it to anyone who tells you about “this fabulous new film you just have to watch.” One of the easiest ways is, if you are on twitter, to just click the tweet button at thee top of this post. If possible, do track back to us here at The Third Estate so we can monitor how widely this material is being disseminated. In coming weeks I will be recreating this article as a voice-over video, much in the style of Zeitgeist: The Movie in order that we can spread these views to even more people who may be influenced by this abhorrent film.