Not sure where to begin so this will be a series of bullet points in a stream-of-consciousness format…
I already talked about how Kanye “Ye” is essentially acting like the main character of Pink Floyd’s The Wall (played by Bob Geldof). It’s too similar it’s scary. A rock-n-roll star driven to madness who has delusions of being a fascist leader, where this imaginary character built from his psychosis, is meant to purge all his inner fears and trauma ranging from the. loss of his parent, difficulties with women, and the stess of being a celebrity.
This next comparison I’ll write is how other musical artists play with fascism. Whereas David Bowie with his Thin White Duke character, Marylin Manson, maybe even Nico of The Velvet Underground, Darby Crash of The Germs (who adored Bowie and later died by suicide), etc., played with fascism as an aesthetic or for shock value (Nico, maybe not so much….because she was actually racist).
Artists play with fascism often by being ironic to bring into light how celebrity worship is similar to the cult-of-personality of an authoritarian (a character study), but Kanye isn’t playing or maybe he is but he’s so far gone that its not funny. It’s disturbing.
But, Ye might be in part attempting to out do Bowie etc by being real and not just symbolic.
Ye has internalized fascism but I wouldn’t be suprised if Ye is also lazily impersonating Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and trying to out do Bowie on top of him having mental health issues. I’ve experienced loss, sadness, etc, and like Kanye, a forner hero of mine, I had a vast wealth of knowledge bubbling in my brain. But I didn’t go crazy. Thats what’s sad. Ye for claiming to be so strong but isn’t. If I could pull myself up as a regular guy then Ye can too but he’s lost in the sauce of his out of control brain. Part of me feels that Kanye is not profound but rather he vibes off other people’s stuff and mashes it together in a sort of postmodern pop culture mash up like how Tarantino smashes Italian spagethhi western with French New wave with Japanese Harakiri inspired revenge Cinema. Kanye is profound simply for the fact he inserted a sense of deeper thinking into mainstream hip hop which by the late 90s was still gangster rap but that genre – come the new millennium – was over done, particularly with the two scions of Biggie and Tupac being killed.
Mainstream Hip hop culture was mostly limited in its expression (unlike underground or alternative artists) but many fans of Kanye never picked up the sources, pop culture references, etc.
For example, I talked about how Ye is very similar to Otto Weininger, a Jewish philosopher from the Vienna Scene that gave us the likes of Carl Jung, Sigmund Frued, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Stefan Zweig but also Hitler, Tito and Stalin. Otto renounced his faith because he felt Judaism was effeminate whereas Western Christianity was the masculine ideal. Otto took his own life and later the Nazis used his work to justify their ideology. This appropriation of Otto by the Nazis seems similar to what Nick Fuentes of America First is doing.
Ye, black man to black man, is that he’s battling between a sort of “either/or”(Soren Kierkegaard), “to be or not to be” (Hamlet) dilemma. A black man in Western Civilization where you’re torn between the old notion of the “house” and “the field”, but what if there’s no distinction? Maybe such simplistic “dialectcal” distinctions are simply social engineering to ensure black folk don’t “learn too much” about the society that landed on us?
To ask such questions and go up against the status quo be it against black people, the white racist, or white liberal, is an act of punk rock.
Before Ye’s Antisemitic fall from grace, he was a a black man telling everyone he wasn’t going to be a slave. He was going to “will himself to power” (i.e., Triumph of The Will or Fredrich Neiztche, etc.) and transcend what I call the “racial dialectic” and express himself the way he wanted. If anything another profound thing of Ye is he’s sort of like Icarus. He tried to fly to the sun but his wings melted and he lost his mind.
Ye is like Yukio Mishima before his suppuku.
Ye is done. Good. Instead of the light he chose the dark. But I don’t feel anyone is talking about him like I’m talking about him. Everyone else is focusing on the speech which is valid and needs to be addressed yet no one is going talking about Ye being a black man who simply wanted to forge his own path, make his own style.
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“Haunting us, these different meanings and spectral beings.” House of Leaves by Circa Survive
“If you allow, something so unnecessary to get you down, there’s no one else to blame.” Drug Dealer by Circa Survive
“If you could only offer love, you’d be like a drug to us, like a drug dealer” Drug Dealer by Circa Survive
Introduction: It was a few years ago, maybe around 2015, when I was at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia, seeing Circa Survive. I had seen them four times before in concert, and each time was an amazing experience, but on this night, hearing the heavy bass on their song Descensus at minute 2:41 (reminiscent of something one would find in the band Tool), where the bass was interwoven with spacey guitar work invoking the sounds of an Indian sitar, I was taken away. The bass was synced to oscillating white lights in a dark space. All the heads were bobbing in unison, feeling a part of something transcendental. It was a reminder as to why Circa Survive is one of the most important Progressive rock acts of two-thousands, arguably the progressive band for the older millennial generation. The first time I became aware of Circa Survive was in my teen years in the early two-thousands, walking around a mall and going into either a FYE music-store or Hot Topic and seeing the gothic artwork of Esao Andrews on the Juturna album in early 2005. “That looks cool” I said to my girlfriend, and she responded, “Then buy it then”.
I did not buy it though since I was a broke teenager, with enough money from allowance and fast-food job to take my girlfriend to the movies where we would mess around in the back aisles away from any parental supervision (those awkward days). Fast forward to the college days around 2008, and I downloaded Circa’s song, The Great Golden Baby, to my cellphone, which looking back looked like a brick compared to the lean devices we have today. I listened to it on repeat flying home to Georgia in the winter months from Washington State where I attended college, admiring the storytelling. “I’m going on home by own way, going home by my own”. Fast-forward again, I was already immersed in their albums by 2009, but by the twenty-teens while I served in the Air Force, living a lonely hermetic lifestyle after duty (to avoid getting into trouble), I would drink, draw, save all my money for my eventual escape towards freedom (Honorable Discharge), expand my mind, and Circa was always playing. In other words, I am sharing all these stories to convey that I grew up with Circa Survive. So many bands fizzle out and fail to adapt due to being constrained to a particular genre which are embedded within phases of peoples’ lives, etc. Further rock and roll music fell victim to its own balkanization and corporate interests intensified each genre, thus linking a genre to a certain point in time, but time goes on. Where many bands get caught up in making a specific sound thus breeding genre, if there is no intellectual depth engendering multiple interpretations from the listener, then a song won’t stick. The power of Circa Survive is they grow with their audience and their lyrics help guide the listeners, and the lyrics or hooks are brutally stunning/catchy, to the point where average listeners do not simply listen to the lyrics, they internalize the lyrics. Another kudos to Circa Survive being a progressive experimental act is that progressive music defines the norms of genre. It is bending, thus it becomes more egalitarian, whereas many rock bands I grew up with (being African American) there was a sense that rock-and-roll hand sectioned off its own market by appealing to white listeners only. This paper is not about race, but what I am saying is that experimental music sources inspiration from various traditions thus it has a likelihood of touching diverse listeners. I always say that Circa Survive is blues music despite the high-pitched enchanting voice that defines the traditional norms regarding masculinity while definitely being masculine at the same time.
Correlations and Narrative Building through Lyrics: One can easily stitch together the array of lyrics they have and notice a scene appearing such what I did below:
“Make your move, obvious humor – Always on, dressed to impress. I’ll be the last one to find out why.” The Great Golden Baby. “I’ve fixed myself up nice, but you never came.” Kicking Your Crosses Down. “That’s why you never mention my name to them?” Wish Resign. “What brought you back to this place? I knew you never learned, I you never.” Wish Resign. “Can we last through the winter? The weather is starting to freeze.” In Fear and Faith. “If I last through the winter, I swear to you know I won’t call” In Fear and Faith. “Congratulations. Go home now”, from In Fear and Faith. “Don’t go back on your words. You always said you tell me first.” We’re all Thieves. “I’ve been erased. I’ve been erased from the picture” We’re All Thieves. “Time takes its toll on us. It changes everything” The Great Golden Baby. “I already forget I how used to be without you” Meet Me in Montauk. “If you could try and get your timing right. I’ll let you stay.” Descensus. “You mean so much more to me” Meet Me in Montauk. “I won’t let it tear us apart” The Lottery. “I don’t want to feel like this. Ever, ever, ever, again” Nesting Dolls.
Aesthetic Breakdown: Off the top of my head, I consider Circa Survive to be “prog-psych-ambient-gothic (romantically dark)-hippie folk- post emo-blues rock”, where rock falls under philosophical modernism, thus being a medium that plays with boundaries while also psychoanalyzing the human condition, with a range that can be heavy, avant-garde, Lynchian (David Lynch, e.g., the film Blue Velvet or Lost Highway, i.e., surreal), mystical, romantic, jazzy, sad, and empowering. They have accomplished to make themselves the Doors of post-hardcore music but have shown paced longevity to sustain their career for their personal wellbeing but also for the satisfaction of their fanbase. Instead of creating an image and fitting into it, they disregard image, instead focusing on appearing as they are, yet treat music as an art collective for analyzing a range of subjects influenced by personal revelations within their own lives. Relating to The Doors, the cryptic lyrics of Jim Morrison, as if he were a dark harbinger of American vagabond folk soul, flowing through keyboarding of Ray Manzarek, drums of John Densmore, and guitar work of Robby Krieger, seem as if they inspired Circa Survive strongly. However, I also would sprinkle in some Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mack with her witchy folk 70s prog rock aesthetic. If Circa Survive were around during the Woodstock Area, coming from the burbs of conservative America, rocking out in garage cover bands, they would make the journey to Woodstock or out West to San Francisco, to try to showcase their music. Sprinkle in some of the Stooges, MC5, Janis Joplin, Sun Ra, and especially the blues of Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Motown, etc. In such an alternate universe, by the nineteen seventies they would have been influenced by the Anti-War and Civil Rights movements, where once can easily see them playing benefit concerts in Washington Square Park with activists and random listeners clapping and singing in unison.
Scene from David Lynch’s film, Blue Velvet, which samples the imagery of the brooding blues singer with conflict. Lynch films often deal with the inability to grasp a clear reality similarly to themes found in early Circa Survive
Relief from Grief: Circa Survive’s music is for those who wish to deal and overcome burden. By staring at the truth of oneself and pouring oneself out without shame or criticism, it is a healthy way to real self-actualization. Circa is a safe camp. Brutally and poetically emotive but constrained, focused, and arranged thus showing a sense of self-awareness, hence having the capability to have personal strength to pull oneself up. The lyrical makeup seems almost bard-like or troubadour. Some people, and some genres of music, do not teach this. They may give you the aggression and anger, but they do not show you a way out. There is no finish line. Rather, Circa Survive provides the emotive introspection but also offers the possibility of relief and acceptance. There is no issue with trying to find beauty in painful memories. For example, for me instead of saying “I was hurt”, as I came to grow, I would rather say, “I put myself in a position to be hurt, but I learned from it and retained my sense of having a moral center or compass”. “I fell a part in your arms for the last time, and I felt free because of the things of you told me” (lyric from I Felt Free on Blue Sky Noise).
Aesthetic Breakdown Continued: The band hails from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a suburb on the northern side of Philadelphia, and is consisted of Anthony Green who previously was in bands such as Saosin but has had collaborations with other bands such as The Sound of Animals Fighting and Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer; Brendan Ekstrom on the guitar who was a member of This Day Forward with fellow bandmate Colin Frangicetto also on the guitar; Nick Beard on the Bass Guitar and Steve Clifford on the Drums. The county has produced many local bands but was notable for being more so catered to sports, such as Central Bucks West, i.e., CB West Football, being a notable national powerhouse, particularly up to the early two-thousands. The suburbs are also near a city with a rich history of skateboarding such as Alien Workshop, Kerry Getz, and the shenanigans of Bam Margera.
Yet, back to Circa Survive, they explicitly fall under the post-hardcore genre, which as a genre leans towards progressive Do-it-Yourself humanist politics with such as that laid down by progenitors such as Black Flag, Minor Threat, Gorilla Biscuits, The Cro-mags, Fugazi, etc. For me poetics plays such a role in this sort of genre be it that of Luis Borges with The Garden of Forking Paths, which one could sense in At the Drive-In’s evolution into the Mars Volta, but there’s also inspiration I sense from poets/writers such as Frank O’Hara and Jim Carroll (East Coast), Sherwood Anderson (Midwest), Flannery O’Connor (Southeast), Raymond Carver (Northwest), Cormac McCarthy (Southwest), etc. For example, Thursday’s Geoff Rickly employs similar themes to that of Circa Survive and could be considered one of the godfathers of the modern two-thousands post-hardcore scene with his beautiful lyrics. Thursday songs such as “Where the Circle Ends” is a spoken word poem calling into question the blights of modern life and its hypocrisies such as claiming to want a better world without participating in its approval, or how urban schools go underfunded. Thursday’s song, “For the Workforce, Drowning”, Geoff makes analogies between nooses and neck ties one would wear in a stale corporate landscape, while also making baptismal allegories about washing away sins each day after coming home from a long commute, yet wails “Just keep making copies of copies, of copies, where will it end?”. Also, Rickly with Thursday released songs such as “This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb” that relates the warfare of the American machine going on at the time (Iraq and Afghanistan Wars) juxtaposed against memories of lost youth under the skylines of New York. Further, Rickly employs similar trends that are found in later Circa Survive with his emphasis on lapses in memory in relation to trauma or covering up sins, which can be seen in Thursday’s songs, Tomorrow I Will be You, Cross Out the Eyes, etc. Post-hardcore music offers an outlet for male aggression but with progressive introspection, and calls into question the ills of an individualistic, one could argue fascists, capitalist system, where people deal with poverty, drug addiction, dissociation, alienation, etc.
Catholicism: Circa’s sounds to me is a confluence of factors ranging from something akin to a Jack Kerouac Catholic angelic-like inspiration in their lyrics such as “He has risen, hold me under” in the song, Stop The F-ing Car (an allusion to the film Boondock Saints, if I remember right – a film strongly influenced by Northern city Irish culture, which is a culture that is a part of the history of the Philadelphia area, and this culture is musical like other Celtic cultures), but that this particular lyrics seems to play on the act of purging in baptism, yet, the inverted statement of “hold me under” insinuates more sin to purge. Relating to Catholicism, their song, Rites to Investiture, deals with the Catholic procedure involving the order of Mass such as that after the act of homily. Lapsed faith, the conflict between dogmatic belief and personal discovery, will always be an important concept within introspective music, so the Kerouac angelic inspiration I speak of regarding Circa can also be found in Thursday songs such as “Asleep in the Chapel” on War All The Time, but also the cover art of their album, A Common Existence. Catholicism with its concepts of miracles and Saints, and its foundations from pagan Rome, gives Catholicism a mystical property involving elements such as the purification properties of water, the traces of essences, and possibility of apparitions. Since we are on the notion of religion, in which religion is often inspiration for artists, at least when pondering the philosophical puzzles of it, or pondering one’s upbringing in it, Anthony Green has something akin of a power to heal with his lyrics and live performances. It is as if he is at the head of a flock, at a sermon, where instead of Joseph’s Colorful Robe from the Bible, instead there is an electric lightshow.
Aesthetics Continued: Then there’s notions of lost memory, amnesia, with the lyric “Didn’t I Know You?” (a lyric from the song, Oh. Hello) which relates to the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind. Further, fading memory is also incorporated into the song Meet Me in Montauk, which is an obvious homage to Eternal Sunshine. One can add “I already forget I how used to be without you” from Meet Me in Montauk, or in Descensus with the lyric, “If we forget, I’ll do it all again”. You will hear some slight homages to the band Tool as far as the music (however, the cerebral nature to Circa’s work could be considered Jungian as well, i.e., playing with notions of subconsciousness, dreams, fables as allegories into a deeper human connection, etc.), maybe even a little Deftones inspiration with them as pioneers in shoegaze metal such as with their album White Pony, Radiohead, and of course Bjork (“You were in my dreams, half human, half machine” from In the Morning and Amazing, which invokes imagery to that of Bjork’s “All is Full of Love”).
The term of Post-emo I came up with (maybe it already exists? I do not know) is important here. First, by emo I do mean the branch of emotive hardcore music that derived from hardcore punk music, which arose in the late eighties before being solidified into various regional scenes (East Coast, Midwest Great Lakes, Texas) and was hovered above by the transition to introspective rock music such as that of Radiohead, Nirvana and Sunny Real Estate, but by the late nineteen nineties its influence had grown to become commercially viable as opposed to purely independent. This was emo music before the caricature that came to be by the end of the early two-thousands (my high school years). The vein of emotive and experimental hardcore music that Circa falls under is more in alignment with At the Drive In, Thursday, Glassjaw, Juliana Theory, etc. I would consider early post-emo albums to be Further Seems Forever’s underrated album, How to Start a Fire, which amplifies the blues in emo, almost relinking the blues elements in emo back to rock’s early beginnings as R&B (rhythm and blues) and soul music, but also Armor for Sleep’sWhat do you when are dead, which is a concept album dealing with a full storyline anchored by a main protagonist. The album by Armor for Sleep involves the five stages of grief model (or the Kübler-Ross model) created by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross which breaks down the stages of grief as being the five emotions of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Yet, Circa is also a product of the other vein of early 2000s emo and screamo bands which were immensely popular under labels such as Victory Records, Eyeball Records, Tooth and Nail, etc. Yet, Circa was different than the Hot Topic crowd (not better, but different) even though early Circa Survive had no other place to be sold but at a Hot Topic (which isn’t an insult to Hot Topic at all), hence, I can understand how people might have overlooked the band as just another band rather than a mature art collective of musicians. I suspect being affiliated with such a specific genre caused the members of Circa Survive like some other bands to branch away from the “emo scene” or screamo/metalcore scene and transcend into the “post-“, i.e., similar aesthetics to their roots of the emo/screamo scene, but away enough to distinguish itself as different, deeper, etc. They have never been a “teenie-bopper” band and I would say the same thing for many of the bands I listed above such as the poignant lyricism of Geoff Rickly of Thursday (who collaborated with Circa Survive in their song The Lottery) whose poetics speaks to that of Frank O’Hara and Jim Carroll (author of The Basketball Diaries). Put it this way, how you can trace metal bands to either Black Sabbath (death metal, black metal, etc.), or Led Zeppelin (hair metal, arena rock), etc., in the emotive scene by the end of the nineties you either went the At the Drive-In Relationship to Command way (grimy, dark, adult) or you went the “system boy band” method.
Analysis of the Cover Art in Relation to the Music: Four of all Circa’s main releases have included a female figure on their cover art. The first two albums Juturna and On Letting Go, the fourth album, Violent Waves, and their 2018 release of The Amulet, feature a female figure, yet I could consider the first three albums (Juturna, On Letting Go, Blue Sky Noise) to linearly be a continuous concept album, with Violent Waves and The Amulet being continuation of this female character’s story-line (and her male companion’s – presumably the narrator, i.e., Green is speaking most from his experiences). Concept albums are a concept notable in progressive music, e.g., Pink Floyd’s The Wall, King Crimson, Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Llyod Webber, etc.
Juturna and Mythology: On the cover of their first album, Juturna, we see a faceless woman being sucked up into the air, floating towards something unknown, gravitating off the ground in which the picture includes a decrepit stone building with rusted iron fence, and some sort of dead plant or weed too. Leaving a dead garden. Juturna in Roman mythology is the goddess of wells, springs, and fountains, and the mother of Fontus (a god too of wells and springs), and husband to Janus. Water is indicative of a life source and cleansing force. Janus is where the name of modern month of January comes from, where January is the opening or beginning of the new year. These roman deities were involved in the Mithraism mystery (gnostic) religions of Rome (a onetime competitor to early Christianity), in with the Cult of Mithra was inspired by Zoroastrian thought, in which Zoroastrian thought from Persia – having influenced Greco-Roman thought- involved the sacredness of magi, i.e., magicians, i.e., the foundation of Western magic and later Neoplatonism such as Christian Kabbalistic practice. Mysticism of the Greco-Roman world was a melting pot influences having inspiration in the sacredness of Egypt, proximity of the Levant and Anatolia (Hittites, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Jews), The Middle East such as Babylon, Persia, but also nomadic traditions of the Steppes. Neoplatonism of the Roman Era was a framework created by Plotinus who built upon the esoteric teachings of Plato, and his framework was based on the idea that there are different levels of reality, in which all reality permeates from a source called The One, yet, is controlled by the Demiurge (the creator), and our reality as humans are on the border between the higher spiritual realm and the lower material realm. By engaging in ceremonial practices such as what would later come around such as the practice of Hermeticism, one can tap into higher levels of being or consciousness. Yet, since there is no agreed upon framework as far as ceremony, Neoplatonism has often been seen as occultist or Gnostic in nature, with many frameworks going as far as not believing in the trinity of God within Christian dogma. I am not saying that Circa Survive is by any means a Gnostic band, yet there is something magical or incantation-like about their work.
Juturna Cover Art Return: The woman in Esao’s cover art (https://esao.net) is feminine with wavy black hair, a beautiful yet subtle dress, but there is something sickly too about her. Who is she? She seems as if she could have been the quiet introspective daughter from a well-to-family, the type who looks down in photographs, always picking at her skin, despite having a natural beauty indicating “good stock”. She is floating from a once lush Victorian garden now turned into a barren waste indicating this place was once happy but is no more, and her floating seems to indicate a break from reality or being drawn which is translated as being from a supernatural force out of her control but in which her actions caused. She is our Alice, but this is no Wonderland. This is gothic. Beautiful and dark. The goddess Juturna and her relation to Janus seems to mean that the album is about entering a new door or gateway of cleansing and renewal, i.e., the girl we see on Circa Survive’s album art is on a surrealist and magical journey towards possible sobriety and finding her center (ground, footing, bearing) again.
The Female Figure on the cover art to On Letting Go and Violent Waves: The same female figure of Juturna appears on Circa Survive’s second album, On Letting Go, yet her head has been replaced by a hot air balloon. It is not that she is an “air head” but seems to indicate that on her journey she is now having to confront the thoughts in her head, the thing which inflates (burns) our minds to begin with. Memories. She is letting go of her past.
On Circa’s fourth album, Violent Waves, we see the same female possibly, having “landed” in some sort of MC Escher room which is being flooded, yet also being stalked by some sort of surreal jackal-like animal. What does this mean? We know where she came from, but now it seems she is landed back to a place where her memories were crafted (her trauma) and the water she brings or emanates is cleansing the structure (her life, her past), yet this jackal-like figure seems to be something lurking (a corrupting like character). The female character is also glowing, illuminating with sort of ectoplasmic (ghostly) aura, denoting to me that she may have found a sense of power of some sort, i.e., the courage to confront. The color palette of the jackal by Esao is similar to that of other shapes that appear such as those on the hot-air balloon of On Letting Go, which to me means the jackal is part of the same surreal fabric of the universe in the which the journey is undergoing, and is a representation of something or someone bad that “haunts the halls” of the female protagonist mind, yet it’s being cleansed by the mystical force of water.
The Art Work of Esao Andrew: The artwork of Esao Andrews could almost be defined as “punk gothic”, respectfully speaking (this is me attempting to find the most relatable term for the reader) with Victorian and Edwardian influences likely mixed with his modern influences of Southwest skater and street culture, and it is more subtle than something you find in a Tim Burton film, but invokes the same gothic appeal that mixes morbidity with romanticism. He masterfully uses oil paints on panel or wood. In an interview with Fireside Tattoo Network (2019), Esao stated he partially inspired by Egon Schiele, like another artists I enjoy in Peter Chung, cover-work from the band The Pixies, but also comic book artist, Al Columbia. The differences between dreams and nightmares are what you make of them and how you interpret them. The song, The Glorious Nosebleed, was inspired by a cartoon book by Edward Gorey who was an artist specializing is surrealist dark childhood fiction. I am not sure if Circa Survive such as Anthony Green were aware of Gorey before meeting Esao or if Esao’s influences were shared with Circa, yet both the band and Esao seem to have gravitated towards each other with a mutual interest of things that are surreally gothic and romantically macabre.
Gothic inspirations: Gothic, outside of art, as a literary genre was a reactionary movement to the cherry romanticism of the Victorian Era, thus it dealt with death, decay, loss, angst about the soon to be gone “spiritual world” to that of the modern industrial, etc. One could say that Gothic fiction was about reminding us of our metaphysical possibilities in the face of the growing materialism. The genre was particularly popular in both American and English fiction, but as far as America it was firmly implanted during and after the Civil War, which subsequently coincided and birth of the American spiritualist movements. The Civil War was the conflict which saw countless deaths in a struggle that called the nation’s very soul into question. All that death challenged perceptions, but also created movements where people sought a belief in otherworldly things, and this gave rise to ghost stories, beliefs in specters, seances, etc. When we think about the Civil War, the self-created historical revisionism of the Confederacy takes more a visual space, yet, the Northern Union is where interesting things we happening, such as the abolitionist movement, the transcendental movement with thinkers like Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc.
Interestingly, Circa Survive, being from Pennsylvania, is where the Battle of Gettysburg happened, and the war itself, remember – influencing American Gothic -, inspired writers such Ambrose Bierce, the author of surrealist short stories such as An Occurrence at Owl Creek (later turned into a classic episode of the Twilight Zone), where a many, supposedly a deserter, is about to hanged from a railroad bridge, yet, seemingly escapes and finds himself almost into the loving embrace of his family, yet, right as he approaches his family, his body is dropped and hanged. This story deals with memories, romance, death, etc. And of course, before Ambrose Bierce, there was the one and only Edgar Allen Poe (one could even say Washington Irving before him with tales such as the Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Rip Van Winkle), whose life coincided with the quick foundational growth of America as a soon to be economic juggernaut. The time of Poe’s life was in a transitional moment of American culture, where America was a mix of both Eastern seaboard elitism descended from our once English overlords as wealthy families of Boston Brahmin or Dutch Knickerbocker stock made fortunes off still Indian owned resources (“Cause it’s all built upon a burial ground,” lyric from Frozen Creek by Circa), but also the harshness of the frontier. The era as America’s colonial (iconic) tradition transferred towards something mimicking “modern” started during the Era of Good Feelings, which lasted from 1817-1825. The Era of Good Feelings involved a reinvigorated sense of American pride after the War of 1812, the foundation of Manifest Destiny, conflicts with Indian tribes of the plains, treaties with the British and others over land and borders, but culturally speaking the foundation of American culture diverging from English culture. Yet, there was always a dark and gothic sentiment to the architecture, the fashion, etc. It easy to envision Anthony Green as a fresh-off-the-boat Irish immigrant or second-generation American singing around a Union Camp fire as he ponders the truths of the human condition.
Poe’s life basically aligned with creation of the American Way of life, where the American perception is both inspiring, with its vast expanses of untamed land, but also a harsh place such as what one could have easily found on the frontier but also in disease ridden port cities of the coast such as his home of Baltimore, Maryland (interesting fact, Baltimore’s Salad Days Studios is where Juturna was recorded under the direction of Brian McTernan, with the name Salad Days coming from hardcore pioneer band, Minor Threat). To link Ambrose Bierce, Poe, and gothic romanticism further to Circa, to me, Circa’s roots in the coldness of the East Coast is a foundational element to their music. Circa’s music is influenced by the seasonal changes of New England, with its deciduous forests, leaves, etc.
Minor Threat before Ian MacKaye branched off to create Fugazi, an instrumental band in post hardcore and emotive hardcore
Listen to the opening effects of Holding Someone’s Hair Back, and once can easily relate the spacey effects to that of crystalline white snow falling on a field near an old New England colonial farmhouse, a house in which poetry is about to the read. Snow, just like Gothicism, is both beautiful and harsh in that it represents the death of the seasons but also the renewal of life, e.g., the lyric from In The Morning And Amazing, “From winter brings the spring again”. One can easily image fall time on the Eastern seaboard where leaves are being burned, such as “Smoke’s filled the air and I’m struggling to breathe” from the song, We’re All Thieves.
This gothic element within music such as Circa Survive can also be found in other experimental music projects such Have a Nice Life, where in the song Bloodhail, the singer refers to arrowheads, which to me invokes imagery of the once rich Native culture such as that of the Algonquin, Mohican, etc., of New England before their demise, and one could even say their legacy still has a haunting effect. Another act from New England, from Pennsylvania like Circa Survive, is Planning for Burial, in which one-man show Thom Wasluck mixes post-punk, black metal, shoegaze, and others to weave a mood that paints tales of emotion, pain, and love in New England landscapes. His albums such as Matawan – Collected works from 2018 inspires the strong Native American roots of New England, his 2017 album Below the House seems to relate to romantic tensions living in a dreary landscape, and his 2020 release When Summer Turns to Fall has no words but it is a classically inspired minimalist song that inspires a sense of Walden by Thoreau.
Cover Art of Blue-Sky Noise: The only male figure as far as artwork is depicted on Blue Sky Noise. We see a young man who is wearing a tunic thus indicating some Roman about him, thus relating his depiction to the Greco-Roman mystical (Mithraic) inspirations I spoke about earlier. If the other albums mentioned above are about a female character, this male character on Blue Sky Noise could possibly be an iteration of her significant other, who too is dealing with issues of trauma, e.g., drug abuse.
Around the male figures head is both a halo, indicating sanctity, but the same shame also is part of a monstrous creature’s mouth which is filled with sharp teeth. This creature has the body of some sort of ram or sheep, or an equine of some sort, but the imagery to me relates to the lower half the satyr creature from mythology. This creature as a nature spirit in Greek mythology known for their Dionysian behavior of drinking and womanizing, indicating this monstrous animal on the cover art for Circa Survive, who also holds a music horn, is the allure of a fast lifestyle. The creatures wing I honestly cannot make much of but can only relate it to the mystical like elements of this creature, i.e., mystical things typically have wings so why think too much into it, yet the wings could represent being “high” or “speed”. In addition, a prism of light is coming out of this creature’s flesh which I translate as meaning the illumination that drugs can bring physically, i.e., tripping. In other words, this once saint boy or young man is surrounded by a fast lifestyle in which the creature (addiction) has the capability of luring one in while also destroying someone.
Status of Peter Pan
The male figure in the art also has a right arm which is deformed in some way, which to me insinuates drug abuse by injection, i.e., opioids. This art is a surrealist interpretation of a good person who has fallen victim to the allure of a lifestyle in which hardcore drug use has suspended him in an otherworldly state where monsters surround him.
On Love: The common theme is Circa’s earlier albums was a bond between a man and woman both dealing with some sort of trauma, yet Anthony Green’s brilliance is he does not shy away from this darkness, but by confronting it, he is able to write beautiful lyrics towards a path to light. That is the appeal. He is not messing around. He is not lying. He is staring things in the face. He is taking accountability for his actions and grew from those actions.
Peter Pan, Wendy, and Other Visual Relations: A visual that inspires this male and female in a dire situation of addiction is the short film/music video, Sigur Rós: Fjögur piano released in 2012 which featured Shia LeBeouf and Denna Thomsen. The music video by Alma Har’el, depicts two lovers turned drug addicts who are in a conflicted relationship yet still have a sense of love and memories of better times, but both have an antagonist with a surrealist drug dealer. These visuals seem very in alignment with Circa Survive, yet the albums I am most referring to (Juturna, On Letting Go, and Blue Sky Noise) were all released before the Sigur Ros video. I am unsure if Alma Har’el was inspired by Circa, yet, both the Sigur Ros video and Circa’s content remind me of the story of Wendy and Peter Pan in the Pan Universe by author J.M. Barrie, whom interestingly was born in the Victorian Era, and was in the literally circles of other gothic writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, i.e., the creator of the modern mystery crime genre).
https://vimeo.com/44767537. Stills are from Sigur Ros (c). All Rights are reserved to the original artists and sharing this is for educational purposes.
The time that J.M. Barrie was living was the zenith of the British Empire so there were many cosmopolitan influences making their way back to Britain such as those of India, thus the British elite were mixing English Romantic imagery such as those of John William Waterhouse (his emphasis on Arthurian-like imagery) with that of the ancient mysticism of Hindu India or China and even Africa, so these foreign mystical influences inspired Gothic romanticism (yet, also did drugs, such as that of opium which was legal at the time and pure Absinthe made from wormwood, i.e., the urban legend of the “Green Fairy”). This sort of cosmopolitan influence also influenced French art such as what would become Art Nouveau.
The characters in Circa Survive’s albums to me are Peter and Wendy who forgot Neverland due to coming to the real world or are real people within the real world trying to find Neverland. For example, there are two cover arts associated with Violent Waves. The first was spoken about above in which the female character is in a house somewhere that seems to be a manifestation of her memories, yet another cover has a ship floating atop a planet or orb or some sense, where this orb has a similar color palette to that of other Circa Esao works. The ship is important because it relates to the Jolly Roger of Captain Hook from the Pan universe.
Art Work for the 2015 film Pan by directed by Joe Wright
I prefer for this paper to entertain the concept idea of Peter and Wendy lost in the modern world and who are suffering from amnesia about Neverland. I imagine them living in a dingy apartment, scrapping by, yet both are recovering addicts, and they lost a sense of light, but are on a mission to re-obtain it. Yet, there are evil characters such as a Captain Hook-like person who is analogous to a drug dealer. Lost Boys could represent “street kids”, who are not bad at all, but trying to survive in a harsh environment, this analogy I’m making about Lost Boys relates to the lyric from the British band, Bloc Party, where in their song, The Good News, states, “Throwing down with all the lost boys at the very edge of town”.
Tinker Bell could represent something mixed in that she is not bad, yet she wants to “keep the party alive”, i.e., keep Peter in particular young. A nymph like creature for mythology, who can promise eternal life, but nothing is without a cost. Peter as the male character for this Circa Survive analogy is a person who has a hard time growing up, i.e., avoids responsibility, whereas Wendy grew up too fast, so there is an opposite attraction to each other, where Peter’s innocence (despite his issues) is a light, whereas Wendy’s maturity and strength is a power. Yet, Wendy is very central to the story, even going so far as having to process the trauma of losing a child, such as in the lyrics of Frozen Creek, but also having dealt with assault, i.e., “She’s got the photos but no reflection, He’s got the motive but no transportation”.
This dynamics between my “Circa Survive Peter and Wendy” story-line is that it would create a powerful story line in that both male and female protagonists are both strong and central, who show levels of courage and vulnerability.
Author: This is is me. Circa Fan. Blogger as a hobby. BA from Saint Martin’s University. MS from Embry Riddle Aeronautics. Always thinking outside the box. A fan of East Coast falls.
Kanye will forever be important despite his recent turns. I would fall asleep at night as a bored black teen in suburbia listening to the music of Drive Slow or Late on Late Registration.
I’ll get to the point. After Kanye’s Golden Era with College Dropout, Late Registration (his magnum opus in my opinion), and Graduation to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he went through a lot. His mom died and this is similar to the character of Pink played by Bob Geldof in Pink Floyd’s musical The Wall. Even though Pink’s mother isn’t shown as passing away, the maternal bond is central to both characters. Yet, Pink and Kanye both came to rely on their mothers though Pink’s mother was suffocating, whereas Kanye’s mother was his anchor. This maternal bond (I won’t go all Freudian because I don’t feel well read enough into Freud to say it) was central to both people. Further, Kanye has a had problems with women though in more recent music he’s challenged his notions such as those found in his analysis of the Madonna Whore Complex in the song Violent Crimes on the ye album. This is similar to the character of Pink in The Wall with Pink as having a rocky relationship with his wife since he’s a traveling rock-and-roll musician. Pink has issues regarding fear of loss, control, etc., and can be heard in the lyrics of the song Don’t Leave Me Now which says, “I need you to put through the shredder in front of our friends, oh baby, don’t leave me now” , “How could you go? When you know how I need you…to beat up on a pulp on Saturday night, oh babe…don’t leave me now”. The lyrics depicts a man who blames his spouse of his behavior and can’t operate without having someone to coddle his bad decisions and take his abusive behavior. I’m not insinuating this Kanye, yet, still male and female relationships (or any type) can be rocky and at times have an unhealthy level of dependency going both ways where love and abuse or the ability to tolerate are seen as the same, and the negative behaviors can exacerbate as people push limits, essentially to see if the other stays around. Kanye’s relationship with sexual feminist icon Amber Rose seems similar to that of Pink’s character to his estranged wife, especially since Amber Rose left him for another rapper in an industry where masculine posturing and ego are everything, and she sexually doxed him by revealing alleged aspects of their private sex life to the world.
The Phallus and Vagina
So think about this… He lost his mom, his trophy girlfriend is attacking his masculinity in a masculine industry (historically speaking), he’s constantly in the media, he’s an artists advocating for black America while critiquing it, etc. That’s a lot to handle for a person. Black people, white people, etc., especially since rap music is so popular, took the opportunity of Kanye’s ill advised association with Donald Trump to shame him but also bring back old Civil War tropes attacking his black identity and I even saw supposed liberals equate Kanye to nothing more than a self-hating black man eager to “go back to slavery”.
Pink in the film after hearing of the infidelity of his wife in between the songs The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Young Lust, and One of My Turns, goes in a psychotic breakdown and endangers a groupie. Further, Pink’s father dies in WW2 at the Battle of Anzio and Kanye’s father was estranged from him. In addition, after Pink’s mental condition finally collapses after Comfortably Numb he starts fantasies of fascism as a type of subconscious defense mechanism to protect his deep rooted vulnerabilities and lack of stability. He equates his lack of stability to minorities, gays, “people with spots”, other ramblings and even screams to the entire crowd of his fantasy fascist supports that he’d wish they’d all be shot. A man with deep rooted issues but he’s human. Kanye’s play with fascism – which is common in the arts such as some of the works of David Bowie – during the Trump Era to me wasn’t an advocacy for fascism, but the anger of a black man within Western Civilization as he juggles the old question of “to be or not to be?”, i.e., to be a champion of our Western home or to stand at odds with it due to its history of systemic abuses which played a role in effectively…creating us.
Pink Floyd isn’t racist or fascist and their depiction of fascism in the film was a criticism of it. The film came out during the Margaret Thatcher years which was full of right-wing “Oi Oi” hate groups associated with the National Front and the conservative Tories in power. This is very similar to the far-right peripheries of the Trump Administration’s grassroots right-wing populism with groups such as Proud Boys by Zionist Nazi, Gavin McInnes, with his sad fantasies of reliving the glory days of an all white Cecil Rhodes-Rothschild Commonwealth (and, the fact Degrassi isn’t what it used to be. Gavin was born in England, raised in Canada, and helped with the hipster movement thus spawning the branch out movement of Alt Right). It should be noted that regarding the UK in the 1970-80s, punk music was being appropriated by Nazi Skinheads away from the original Skinheads who were multi-ethnic. The original punk movement was a blend of working class white youth culture mixed with black Caribbean and Black British youth culture in unison, but Neo Nazism branched out as economic conditions worsened under austerity. So, because of this appropriation, Kanye can be understood as doing that but in reverse. Taking symbols of hate against blacks but turning N-gger into N-gga.
Kanye’s play with fascism can be seen in his ironic lyrics in Black Skinhead which is really Kanye appropriating the hyper-masculinity of the far-right for his own purposes to scare the actual fascists. This can also be said about Kanye wearing the Confederate Battle Flag. By taking a symbol which was used to oppress blacks but then appropriate it to analyze it, it can help reduce the unilateral power of the symbol via its inherent white supremacy. Essentially, if that’s what you are, then this what I’ve become but I’m going to analyze it my way and your supremacy doesn’t intimidate me, i.e., we can go loco to loco any-day. The power of White Supremacy for example isn’t mere law or violence but its appropriating masculinity from minorities (and also hyper sexualizing females into caricature tropes – the Asian subservient women, the “freaky” black woman, the sultry Latina) in order to equate masculinity purely to Anglo Saxon and European standards. Thus by keeping this hidden fascism in the back of systems as a contingency plan. It’s a way how white supremacy sustains itself by positing that its form of masculinity is the apex predator of the caste system in both honor, virility, prow, level-headedness, etc. It essentially makes “outsiders” feel uncomfortable.
Seemingly normal Republicanism of Center-Right politics if pushed too far as bleed into far-right nationalism and this is something the political right has known and used for years without saying it because by not saying it, it creates an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, etc. Kanye’s loose association with the Blexit Black Republican movement in the Trump Era wasn’t Kanye being a “traitor” or “sell out”, but provoking African Americans to keep their political options open considering African Americans for the last half century plus have been Democrats and this association with Democrats hasn’t alleviated the important issues affecting the Black Community. It may not have been wise under this President but Kanye’s right to at least talk about African Americans considering Republicanism was him attempting to expand boundaries. And of course, most people didn’t get it, such as most people not “getting art”, i.e., lacking the ability to get context and seeing things simply in stark dialectics or polar opposites.
Pink in his delusion after his mental breakdown in Pink Floyd’s The Wall “It’s my flag now!” said Kanye West on Los Angeles 97.1 AMP Radio on Monday. Kanye West leaving his house after taking a private boxing class to stay in shape. He is wearing a green jacket with Confederate flag on a sleeve, hoody, and What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD) Bracelet. Saturday, November 2, 2013. Juliano/x17online.com EXCLUSIVE
Kanye was one of my idols and I still support the guy. He’s a black man fighting for freedom and not just freedom from the perspective of black liberation but total “ubermench” or “starchild” liberation. Yet, there’s a profundity to Kanye that most might not get. In Greek philosophy there was a man by the name of Diogenes the Cynic who was known for living an eclectic lifestyle, having sharp cynical wit, and living a life as a homeless beggar to show the uselessness of certain aspects of society. I see Kanye in this mode. There’s smarts behind the “madness”. Kanye also has an element of a type of old Testament figure channeling some higher power as people suffer in something which might be called a “mental desert”. Anyways, for a young African American kid who was born in the late 80s and witnessed the power of the music industry on the black community during the transition of hip-hop to gangster rap, right a moment where Great Society programs of the 60s and 70s started to pay off such as the solidification of a solid black middle and upper middle class in suburbia, a person such as Kanye was a fresher in the early 2000s. It wasn’t just about killing, screwing, slanging. There were only two types of black people depicted in the media. The Wills and the Carlton’s. It might be funny but it really was a detriment because of course everyone wants to be a Will, which is great, but by depicting such as stark dichotomy, which was a fabrication for comedic purposes by Quincy Jones, it showed to a generation of young African American men that power, style, and suave mattered more than law, business, management, science, art, philosophy, etc. However, I’m not hating on rap because it is art but simply saying its not the entire meta-truth or objective truth of the black experience.
Anyways, Kanye instead of entirely rapping about the grassroots realism that many African Americans face such as murder, misogyny, bravado and nihilism, Kanye analyzed not only that but the silent lives of the black middle class, but he leap frogged backwards by borrowing from Ray Charles, chain-gang hymns, the Harlem Renaissance, gospel, etc. Kanye was/ an existential meteorite of hyper-aware blackness, operating in a 4th or 5th dimension, that analyzed it from all angles included those that many African Americans don’t realize about themselves. Kanye can vacillate between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between “house slave” and “field slave”, but instead of picking either/or (shout out to Soren Kierkegaard) His pop cultural references were vast spanning foreign film, classical musical scores, political commentary, high art, low art, fashion, etc. Let’s be honest, hip hop changed after Kanye, and some might say for the best, yet, for a genre still dominated by black artists, he did open the window to express yourself in ways that were more experimental, existential, etc. Being black I do know that the community is highly social, i.e., we typically tend to be a monoculture and it typically takes martyrs to take the heat to level up the community.
Kanye’s vast array of samples and influences spanning true hip hop to Duran Duran, the film Juice with Tupac and Omar Epps, the film Welcome to America with Eddie Murphy, Bloods versus Crypts, the ability to not get a taxi as night, Richard Pryor to Bill Cosby in the 80s (a big deal), to Michael Jackson to Fellini films to surreal anime, etc., in my opinion will always set him above and apart from other rappers. I’m sorry but most rappers in the day didn’t take it to such erudite levels. Essentially, he’s the Picasso of Hip Hop. I call in the modern day Gatsby, the hip hop Bukowski with an emphasis on Bukowski in the sense of complexity since Bukowski despite being seen as a woman-hater (I’m not advocating his behavior) was really being a cynic to cover his deep wounds around love and acceptance. He spoke to the common man in a non PC way while making the common man ponder notions such as poetry, stream of consciousness, etc.
I can relate to Kayne because as an African American my interests are vast. I can also empathize before judging. It wasn’t easy to simply “be like everyone else”. To white people or others, black culture is a form of punk, but when you’re black it’s just…life, so when African Americans think outside the box I always support those people and find it honorable, because equality isn’t merely a matter of nationalism or economic empowerment, but it’s a matter of representation in various fields, while also showing the world the diversity of talents and the depths of your comprehension skills.
A scene for Goldfinger (1964), copyright of United Artists. Ian Fleming’s fictitious SPECTRE is an analogy for the world runs. Factions of various groups with the same agenda.
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? I’m tired and finding the truth seems like a matter of endurance and this is something I struggle with, as I stare into this truth that I suspect.
What tipped me off to this was the fact that Erik Price of Blackwater is working for a Chinese based contractor called Frontier Services Group, which is in part helping clear the way for the Sino-Russian economic joint venture, The Belt and Road Project.
This is odd because Prince donated and networked for Trump, so why is a Gung-ho US mercenary helping China despite the Trump administration’s economic nationalism against China?
Also, this leads me back to the shadowy history of China in the final day of World War 2 where the CIA under Bill Donovan was conducting operations (look up the Dixie Mission by the US Army separately). This fact, reminds me of the current Hong Kong democracy protests, which thus points light on Steve Bannon’s Goldman Sachs dealings in Hong Kong regarding digital currency.
It seems that a type of 4d chess is being played, by playing both sides (hence why I use the James Bond image of SPECTRE), and the powers at be, such as banks and corporations are prepping for a new order, i.e., the inevitable goal of linking a democratic (possibly Balkanized, i.e., fragmented) China into the global network.
A new global order of larger economic blocs ran by corporations and banks that will link China, Russia, and the USA, but Israel will have a very important managerial and religious role. This sounds crazy but I suspect Trump of being a New World Order president hiding behind the facade of a nationalist, but his nationalism and Russian apologetic are an attempt at sustaining old Anglo-Continental-Zionist supremacy for the new system that will come, likely after a large showdown such as World War 3 in the future.
(Note as of 7/31/21. With Trump being indicted for various crimes, it seems those in power were searching for a new leaders which was Ron DeSantis, but DeSantis is more devoid and impersonal than Trump.)
This is similar to how the order as is came into being after WW2 and there were many double-play intrigues leading up to both WW1 and WW2.
So, if you read this, take it for yourself. It’s not about me. It’s not about “good job, pat on the back, you deserve a prize”. Go out there and go find the truth. By the way, the ACZS (Anglo-American, Continental, Zionist, Saudi) Network is something I use to describe the the current global Western political order.
It’s an odd collective of elites for the Anglo and American stock, predominately Catholic (but also Protestant) European nobility (they are all related regardless of faith, with even some Jewish inter-marrying) and bankers (and, left over fascists), and Zionist Jews all working in unison, despite the surface appearance of tensions, e.g., in many cases Zionist fund right-wing organizations who you would think are at odds with Zionist but they use this top-cover to increase Zionist power because they can say any criticism is antisemitic.
For example in the United States within the right-wing, despite being a bastion of old white supremacy and antisemitism, there is a support for Zionism via Evangelical Christianity. Further, the right-wing is often militaristic with all of its glib of Soldier of Fortune or hunter aesthetics, is often used to fight Zion’s enemies, tapping into the aesthetic of the “Germanic Anglo-Saxon Teutonic Knight” (e.g., Deus Vult moniker within the Alt-Right). The right-wing are also pawns within a larger global struggle in which they’re simply actors supporting the things they claim to hate, i.e., Iran Contra involving drug selling for arms by anti-communist right-wing organizations such as Western Goals Foundation of John K. Singlaub and Oliver North. Fun Fact: This deep-state heroin dealing was reference in the film, Lethal Weapon (1987).
It sounds strange. It sounds like the ramblings of another lost male musing in cyberspace. But, it’s not.
It’s my personal belief, based on comparisons to history, that it’s all rigged. I suspect that the dynamite is being laid by a powerful cabal of people (capitalists), to instigate the big fight between the major powers, just so a new order equivalent to that which arose after World War 2 can rise. I can see a future where China is Balkanized but not destroyed, because that’s not in the game-plan. The game-plan is to integrate a capitalist and democratic China, or “Chinas” divided along ethnic lines, into the Global economy via the Belt and Road project, which would then give globalism a major push across the finish line of a de-facto world government.
Current tensions between the US and China aren’t ideological because both are capitalist in theory, but rather who calls the shots is up for grabs. China is totalitarian communists but oddly for the benefit of capitalism, i.e., communism is simply for control, but China is still interested in producing goods for profit but also spending money on an ever-growing pool of luxury goods and products.
A democratic capitalist China, just imagine. The consumption, spending, building, and waste such as that found in the American Way of Life. Do we really think that international banks from Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank, HBSC, ING, Softbank, Mistubishi Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, add Russian, Chinese banks too, and the list goes on, don’t want endless profits and immense global power?
The goal of the Western “Intellectual Dark Web” is to groom a war like mentality into an ever-growing conspiratorial American and Western mindset.
Multi-national companies have no allegiance to a country, but only profits, and economic nationalism might preserve a culture, but it will also put that culture at the detriment of other culture’s who “play the game” of innovation on the constant quests of profits. In other words, all of this is inevitable, a sign of human social evolution.
Or is it? Do we really think that Donald Trump or people in his camp don’t know of Prince’s work with Frontier Services Group? Of course most typical Republicans would never see this because they don’t want to. They’re lost in a sense of nostalgic fading white fear based America.
The issue with all of this is that it needs lies to sustain itself for top-cover as paid actors, i.e., top politicians at the services of banks and think-tanks like the Council of Foreign Policy or Trilateral Commission, have to put on a show of global conflict, which does require that people die. The world is ran like a mafia network of factions, and despite “street level goons” getting into turf wars, behind the scenes the top brass or Dons are in cahoots.
Fighting wars for example isn’t always as simply as nationalist propaganda but it’s a matter of fighting for concessions or to create a new order by making it appear that it all seem like a simplistic us versus them scenario. Nations such as Germany and Japan knew they didn’t have the resources to win a victory, though they made up for it with innovation and cruelty, but a part of starting the wars was to carve out space in the new order that would later come. It’s arguable that parties in Japan and Germany had ties to the West before the war and WW2 was largely true, but there’s also a shadowy behind the scene agenda which is hard to make out. Many Nazis wanted to negotiate with the Allies, almost is if they knew the game went too far, but Hitler knowing he was betrayed by people in the West (Cliveden Set. Note: Hitler was a fan of Cecil Rhodes, the British Imperialist, namesake for the Rhodes Scholarship and Rhodesia, who worked for DeBeers Diamonds which was a Rothschild financed company), to keep fighting on.
Germany was fighting a war which couldn’t be won and the only reason to think it had the gall to fight such as war is that many in the Nazi elite though they had support from outside of Germany. The goal seems to have been the implementation of fascism, which was one of the Big Three democratic theoretical models which found support within the West, and the Nazi elite thought they had support for fascism under Hitler within the USA and UK, considering there was Anglo-American support prior to Germany’s invasions of its neighbors, such as the well-known relationships with the Koch Family, Watson Family of IBM, Coca-Cola, Henry Ford, the British Cliveden Set, the Imperial Fascist League of Arnold Leese, the British Union of Fascist under Oswald Mosley (where the BUF has the support of Lord Rothermere who will be discussed later), the American Bund (known for its infamous Madison Square Guard rally in 1939), and even the support of Hollywood through studios such as MGM which was owned by Russian Jew, Louis B. Mayer. Mayer would later become a staunch Republican, especially as the Neoconservative movement rose (which was highly Jewish), and oversaw the McCarthy Red Scare Witch Hunts of actors led by a young Ronald Reagan (later of Bohemian Grove with Richard Nixon). The Hollywood connections to Hitler can be found The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand (2013), by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
The resultant damage to Germany due to Hitler, allowed the powers to carve the world in half during the Cold War, which soon thereafter morphed into the Middle Eastern conflicts regarding oil, the establishment of OPEC, etc. It seems the Cold War in part was a way to carve the Earth in half, manage the populations of Earth under two dialectical economic opposites, but also control energy prices via a cabal of international companies and banks. There was tension between the USA and USSR, of course, but also instances where the truth was revealed, such as (1) the revelation of the Cambridge Five scandal that included Kim Philby, where five British intelligence officers were caught sharing information with the Soviet Union, (2) The US USSR Esalen Institute Exchanges in the early nineteen-eighties, and (3) the fact that Chase Bank under David Rockefeller, the heir to the Standard Oil Dynasty, and with close ties to the OSS (CIA), opened a bank office in Communist Russia in the nineteen-seventies. This was when the Cold War was still on overdrive, despite it being after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since, they couldn’t talk directly, otherwise the entire global order would fall, certain nations such as Israel and India have a history of being back-doors between the USSR and USA.
A Soviet stamp with British Intelligence Officer, Kim PhilbyThe Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand (2013) by the Harvard Press
People like Stalin and Hitler didn’t simply rise from the ashes, but were possibly pulled from the gutters or scouted to play a role, though they were able to control their respective mob faction accordingly to keep the “game alive”.
Speaking to the unfolding One Belt One Road Initiative, if you add, the eventual inclusion of digital currency (in theory the IMF has the power to print money or sanction money), in the wake of the US dollar falling as the world’s reserve currency (though I’m sure it will still be a respectable currency similar to how the Pound was to the Dollar), then not only do we have a world of larger economic blocs, but we have a common world currency. Many developing nations prefer crypto-currency because its more accessible than US dollars, and they’re already used to chaotic currencies. The world will thus be smaller and more interconnected via a technotronic model akin to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “In Between Two Ages” (digital money, digital payment systems able to be cancelled if a person gets out of line, surveillance states, etc.) with international bodies for governorship – either existing as is, i.e., the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, Interpol, or, shifting to new bodies in places such as Israel (some consider the center of the world).
An excerpt from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard
Think about it this way, Trump and the MAGA Camp, which is full of not only white-identity politics apologist and Jewish Zionists, has tried repeatedly to improve relations with Russia, despite Russia under the “esoteric guidance” of Aleksandr Dugin wanting to expand former Soviet territory lost after the Cold War. Russia also has deep relations with China with China being their main creditor and Russia being China’s main natural gas supplier. So, by Trump trying to be get cozy with Russia, in essence he’s getting cozy with China, and the fact that Erik Price is working with Frontier Services Group on the Belt and Road Project – despite Trump’s economic sanctions – indicates that Trump, in theory is supporting Sino-Russian relations, which gives Israel leverage due to its international Chabad networks in Moscow, the USA, etc. Is Trump simply another chaos agent laying the dynamite underneath the facade of America First patriotism, hypnotizing the white majority of the US in its never-ending Culture War? Smoke and mirrors?
The Belt and Road Initiative map by the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites (in blue), c. 870, as reported in the account of ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms. Other trade routes of the period shown in purple. The Radhanites (also Radanites, Arabic: الرذنية, romanized: ar-Raðaniyya; Hebrew sing. רדהני Radhani, pl. רדהנים Radhanim) were medieval merchants, some of Jewish origin. Only a limited number of primary sources use the term, and it remains unclear whether they referred to a specific guild, or to a clan, or generically to Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network. Jewish merchants operated in trade between the Christian and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages (approximately 500–1000). Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period – largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China
Add, to this that Russia and China have close economic ties regarding Central Asia, i.e., The Grand Chessboard as stated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, via the Belt and Road Project, yet, Israel has close ties to both Sino-Russian relations and US-UK (Anglo-American) relations. Despite, being the smallest actor in this unfolding game, Israel oddly has leveraged its size to play a larger role in such as plausible new global order. For example, Israel via religion can play the Old Testament card, i.e., Judeo-Christian, but also can play into End Times prophecy revelation in which many Evangelical Christians believe in, hence, why Islam has been put at odds against Christendom. As the game unfolds, I noticed one similarity between all the major players of Russia, China, the USA, and Israel. This is they all have Muslims in their shooting sights, e.g., the Chechens of Russia, the Uyghurs of China, the Palestinians with Israel, and the Americans which every nation, save Saudi Arabia, though Saudi Arabia is an actor in the global already. Further, Israel can spread a global religion called Noahide, particularly in developing nations, which is a Christian form of Israel worship. Many Noahide Laws have been implemented already without the general public even knowing such as Trump’s staunch Zionist rhetoric.
A map of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Far East in Russia the borders China. Near the Belt and Road Initiative. If the project sees manifests itself, in theory, this would give the Chabad Lubavitch community quite a bit of economic power, considering Israel is on the Mediterranean coast and the JAO is near China. “There are, however, some Chinese renting land in places like the Jewish Autonomous Region, where Chinese farmers are tenants on up to 80% of the land in the tiny province. At the same time, these farmers are the only mass producers of vegetables and grains for the local market, so it’s a win-win situation wherein Russian residents of the region benefit from lower prices for agricultural products, and the Chinese farmers can export the surplus.” (Gabuev & Greg, 2016)
On the other hand, China is Russia’s largest creditor (apart from Cyprus, which acts as an offshore money center for round-trip investment into the Russian economy). Russia has become the largest supplier of oil to China over the last three months, bumping Saudi Arabia from the top spot. (Gabuev & Greg, 2016)
So while there are some developments that might be the beginning of something bigger, more mature, and more ambitious, the end result will still be asymmetrical as long as Russia clearly needs China much more than China needs Russia. China has a diversified economy, including multiple sources of hydrocarbons, and therefore Russia is definitely the dependent partner. (Gabuev & Greg, 2016)
Regarding the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Andrei Muchnik (2017) stated, “The so-called Red Zion was established in the 1930s as a Soviet alternative to British Mandatory Palestine. The first official Jewish entity managed to attract a fair few prominent Jews in its heyday – including Yiddish poet Peretz Markish. The settlers didn’t come only from the Soviet Union, but also from such far-flung places as Argentina and Mandatory Palestine itself. Further, describing Stalin’s reason for creating the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Muchnik (2017) states, another reason was an attempt to try to cozy up to overseas Jews and attract investment. It was also intended to connect the Trans-Siberian Railroad and Amur River Valley. The Chabad.org Staff (2017) stated, “Rejecting the “bourgeoisie nationalism” of the Zionist movement—with its focus on the land of Israel—the Soviet government pushed this remote section of Siberia on the Chinese border as an alternative Zion, where working Jews from all over the world could freely settle and make an honest living working the land.”
Gabuev & Greg (2016) of the Carnegie Moscow Center, stated, “There are, however, some Chinese renting land in places like the Jewish Autonomous Region, where Chinese farmers are tenants on up to 80% of the land in the tiny province. At the same time, these farmers are the only mass producers of vegetables and grains for the local market, so it’s a win-win situation wherein Russian residents of the region benefit from lower prices for agricultural products, and the Chinese farmers can export the surplus.”. Regarding the JAO’s relationship to Belt and Road project, Junya, Yue, Hao, & Bingqing (2018), stated, “As part of it, two cross-border bridges to be completed in 2019 will link China’s Heilongjiang Province with Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast and Amur region, while two international transport corridors are under construction in the Primorsky Territory.”. Further, Junya, et al (2018), states, “In fact, China has become the Russian Far East’s biggest investment source. Primorsky’s capital and port Vladivostok is now home to many Chinese enterprises. In particular, China’s northeastern provinces, known as the “rust belt,” are too looking to bilateral cooperation in securing easy access to seaports and reviving their economies. Agriculture and transborder logistics are currently the two leading sectors in China-Russia cooperation in the Far East.”.
A picture of Aleksandr Dugin’s grand Eurasian ideologyThe Second Warsaw Pact written by Orson Scott Card in Shadow of the Hegemon. This pact ominously reflects Putin’s and Dugin’s strategy of Eurasianism for expanding former Soviet power to areas lost after the Cold War. Promoting anti-NATO, ant-Western sentiments is a cornerstone of Russian psychological operations within the West which was been absorbed into the American Right Wing via pundits such as Alex Jones. Jones’ disinformation war keeps the light off the Trump administration in its attempt to link with Russia, even as far as the Trump administration’s treason regarding the Ukraine. Card writes about the Second Warsaw Pact which is Russian expanding its borders back to Soviet heights with the help of China, thus, this fictional pact by Card reflects real-world Sino-Russian relations. While Russia and China coordinate over Eurasia (with Israelis in the mix), Russia is conducting psychological operations into the West via the American Right Wing such as extremists such as Lauren Southern, Alex Jones, Red Ice TV, etc.
“As if this vat redrawing of the world’s map were not enough, Russia announced that it had joined China as its ally, and that it considered the nations of eastern Europe that were not loyal members of the New Warsaw Pact to be provinces in rebellion. Without firing a shot, Russia was able, simply by promising not to be as dreadful an overlord as China, to rewrite the Warsaw Pact until it was more or less the constitution of an empire that included all of Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy in the south, and east of Sweden and Norway in the north” (Shadow of the Hegemon, Card, p. 428, para. 2)
“The weary nations of western Europe were quick to “welcome” and “discipline” that Russia would bring to Europe, and Russia was immediately given full membership in the European Community. Because Russia now controlled the votes of more than half the members of that community, it would require constant tug of war to keep some semblance of independence, and rather than play that game, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal left the European Community. But even they took great pains to assure the Russian bear that this was purely over economic issues and they really welcomed this renewed Russian interest in the West” (Shadow of the Hegemon, Card, p. 428)
“Indeed, the only force that stood firm against China and Russia while facing them across heavily defended borders were the Muslim nations. Iran generously forgot how threateningly Pakistani troops had loom along their borders in the month before India’s fall, and Arabs joined with Turks in Muslim solidarity against any Russian encroachment across the Caucus into the vast steppes of central Asia. No one seriously thought that Muslim military might could stand for long against a serious attack from China, and Russia was only scarcely less dangerous, but the Muslims laid aside their grievances, trusted in Allah, and kept their bodies bristling with the warning that this nestle would be hard to grasp.” (Shadow of the Hegemon, Card, p. 428-429, para. 4)
“What Bean saw as the driving force of history, however, was the resurgent Russian Empire. Where the Chinese simply took for granted that they were and should be the center of the universe, the Russians, led by a series of ambitious demagogues and authoritarian generals, felt that history had cheated them out of their rightful place, century after century, and it was time for that to end” (Ender’s Shadow, Card, p. 400, para. 2)
“It was Russia that forced the creation of the of the New Warsaw Pact, bringing its effective borders back to the peak of Soviet power – and beyond, for this Greece was its ally, and an intimidated Turkey was neutralized. Europe was on the verge of being neutralized, the Russian dram of hegemony from Pacific to the Atlantic at last within reach” (Ender’s Shadow, Card, p. 400, para. 2) The Russo-Anglo-American Alliance was stated by Robert Heinlein in 1959. It is oddly similar to Brexit under Boris Johnson, Trump with MAGA, and Right Wing Russia with Putin. You can add Jair Bolsanaro of Brazil if you were to draw Right Wing Latin American themes from the film adaption by Paul Verhoeven (1997), e.g., the film takes places in Buenos Aires in the future which was inspired by real-world Euro-Latin fascism after WW2 (Nazi Rat Lines, Right Wing Dictators often of German or Italian heritage). The Cold War after WW2 relating to Latin America was largely dictated by Neoconservatives. Neoconservatives actually got their start from Jewish Trotsky followers who joined the GOP which explained the Jewish domination of Neo-conservatism in this era. Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, Henry Kissinger, etc. All of these leaders are committed Zionists.
Heinlein has odd connections to Jack Parsons, thus Alaister Crowley, but also L. Ron Hubbard via the Manana Literary Society. Heinlein’s political ideology meshes Marxism and Libertarian ideologies, i.e., it merges dialectical opposites into a Platonic society of Citizens and Civilians. Heinlein when he was a Marxist supported the Social Credit, which is Universal Basic Income. Heinlein later turned Right Wing Libertarian in response to the Nuclear Cold War, yet, he postulated a world that merged both socialism and Libertarian ideology. Both Marxism and Libertarian ideology come from a common democratic origin in the Renaissance and later in the factions during the French Revolution as the Jacobin movement fractured. This fracturing of the Jacobin movement into Girondins and Montagnards, where reflected in Masonic Clubs. The British and Americans via the Grand Lodge of England, York and Scottish Rites, took on the Girondin model of private property which later evolved into monopoly capitalsm, while the Montagnards took on Marxism via the Grand Lodge of France.
Does anyone think it’s strange that Rex Tillerson with Exxon Mobil, i.e., Standard Oil of the Rockefellers, had a very cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russian oil company, Rosneft? Maybe, Putin knows strategically that he’s outmatched and the Kremlin’s attempts at infiltrating the West is Russia trying to figure out which superpower it will side with during the inevitable showdown? Maybe, Putin is simply in the pockets of those who already run the world and is effectively the paid-for boogeyman, considering he has the means to make money in the West, such as with oil/natural gas with Exxon Mobil, real-estate, the Russian mob, oligarchs who own sports teams in the Premier League, or his son-in-law’s, Yuri Milner’s, investments with Facebook.
I say this because when it comes to warfare, it’s not always about fighting to win or total annihilation, but rather fighting to lose but still have enough bargaining power at the table of the new order.
Does anyone find it strange, that despite Trump’s “economic populist” rhetoric against China, that one of his close allies and donors in Erik Prince, is doing defense contractor work for Frontier Services Group, a Chinese based firm assisting with the economic juggernaut project, the Belt and Road Initiative? Or, does anyone find it odd that Steve Bannon, despite all his “patriotic rhetoric”, has close ties to Hong Kong via his days as Goldman Sachs, but also his dealings with early Bitcoin and Bitcoin pushers such as Brock Pierson. Pierson was later invited to Epstein’s Island for a science forum. All these clues are right in our faces, but the disorienting part is how they’re never connected, especially by those with the supposed intellect to do so, e.g., the mainstream media. Does anyone not find it odd that Ghislaine Maxwell’s acted with near impunity as the madam of the “elite global managerial class”, hasn’t been charged with anything, despite her father being a double if not triple-agent between the Mossad, MI5, and KGB?
We’ve been here before, haven’t we?
The same international banking interests rearranging the global landscape, so an explosion happens, so a new order, i.e., symbolic of the Phoenix, rises. The political intrigues of what occurred before World War 2 seems to be going on now, but this is “higher level strategy” above what we would see on television, lost in identity politics, zoning out to social media. In the past we know all this real-life historical oddities such as The Cliveden Set with the Astor Family and this “Sects” relationship via Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere. Rothermere was a prominent newspaper propagandist in the UK who supported the Nazis but had a relationship with Jewish-born Nazi spy Stephanie von Hohenloe. Hohenloe would later work for the OSS (CIA); The Neville Chamberlain appeasement of Hitler, which allowed him to invade Poland, and thus compel the Allies to enter the War; Josef Stalin’s early work in the old-fields owned by the French Rothschild’s, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Noble Family, as a Marxist rabble-rouser but people suspected him of being a government agent.
Was the Cold War simply a way to divide the world in half to control energy production and prices, but Marxism and Capitalism were funded by the same international banks who simply coopted and manipulated early organic and grassroots movements? Think about that, what soon unfolded after WW2 and the establishment of the Cold War order? Oil and the Middle East such as the inclusion of the Saud Family with Getty Oil, the CIA and MI5s overthrow of the Iranian government which is rich in crude oil; the fact that the British won the land of Palestine which would later become Israel, after King George and the British Rothschilds dethroned George’s cousins, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (thus his allies in the Ottoman Turks who controlled Palestine), but also Czar Nicholas through the Bolshevik Revolution; the fact that Marxism was financed by Engels, who was the heir to a wealthy Anglo-British industrial company; the Bronfman Family’s (NXVIUM) relation to the Lehman Family, i.e., Lehman Brothers investment house, and the Morgenthau Family. Henry Morgenthau Jr., was the United States Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who shaped the Lend-Lease Program, support for China in WW2, and proposing the Morgenthau Plan, with the latter being the plan to destroy German military capacity but this was seized by the Nazis to keep fighting on; the OSS and US Army Counterintelligence Agency’s faux trials of Nazi War Criminals just to absorb them into the new West Germany intelligence apparatus and US nuclear research program, which included Reinhard Gehlen of Gehlen Organization – the precursor to the modern German BND; we all know about Mossad’s work with Otto Sorkzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando to take out Egyptian nuclear scientists, but also the fact that there many Nazis with Jewish blood. Would Israel not exist without Nazis?
Stephanie Von Hohenlohe was Jewish and a Nazi Spy. Is it possible, she was working both sides, offering communication between Hitler and his supposed Anglo-American contacts such as the Cliveden Set, just to betray Hitler (which was always the goal) so Israel would be created after the war? 2003 Colby Award Winner, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The untold story of Nazi racial laws and the men of Jewish descent in the German Military by Bryan Mark Rigg. Rigg received his B.A. with honors from Yale University and his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University. He served as a volunteer in the Israeli army and as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. The book was cited by the New York Times, “Rigg has turned up an unexplored and confounding in the history of the Holocasut” (Warren Hoge).
Regarding, the Nazi connection it is well-known that the US used Nazi scientists for weapon’s research. However, JD Salinger was actually one of the people charged to hunt down these Nazis when he was attached the US Army’s Counterintelligence Command. Salinger had a nervous breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital in Germany which was being ran by a Nazi in hiding. Even though Salinger is included within many conspiracy theories, it is my suspicion that Salinger and his magnum opus, A Catcher in the Rye, was an analogy about his time in Germany in World War 2, and the cynicism he felt when he learned the truth that the Allies were recruiting Nazis. It is my suspicion that Salinger’s use of the word phonies by the story’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, was a jab at Army and OSS top-brass. Salinger’s Jewish identity was thus called into question, i.e., he has a severe existential crisis, knowing that he was in part assisting people who wanted to exterminate his people, and I suspect the bleakness of Holden depicted his sadness. The impact of Catcher in the Rye wasn’t some “mind control” story as alleged, but rather it was a story inspired by true events that touched upon the most extreme fringes of Western existentialism and nihilism, juxtaposed by the innocence of youth, and this in part sparked a social revolution. The copy-cat violence of some readers inspired by Catcher in the Rye was a social phenomenon similar – allegedly – to that of the Sorrow of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which started a string of copy-cat suicides. Eberhard Alsen (2018), through the University of Wisconsin Press, published, J.D. Salinger and the Nazis, provided an objective analysis of claims relating to JD Salinger. In many ways the book disproves many conspiracies regarding Salinger, and instead shows him as a Jewish-American man with an identity-crisis, i.e., to be Jewish or to be a man of the West, a.ka., an All American guy indifferent to Zionism, who found himself doing lowly enlisted Intel work (never becoming in Officer) but possibly came upon a higher truth as he hunted Nazis that was too much to bare.
“The US Army’s Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency falsified the political and employment records of Braun and his team of engineers so they could continue their work on ballistic missiles for the United States. In short, the US Army deliberately hoodwinked the president” (Alsen, 2018, p.118).
“While the Army resettled (Werner von) Braun and over fifteen hundred other whitewashed Nazis in the United States to do weapons research, Salinger was expected to track down lesser Nazis in Germany so they could be denazified. This double standard must have reinforced Salinger’s negative opinion of the US Army leadership and confirmed his opinion that his job as a Nazi hunter was a ridiculous waste of time” (Alsen, 2018, p.118).
Before I move on from from Salinger, I just want to state that Salinger was a part of the Ritchie Boys, who were a predominately Jewish group of US troopers who were recruited for their German language skills. They were used for interrogation of Nazi prisoners. One, notable member of the Ritchie Boys as Henry Kissinger who would take over as Secretary of State, overseeing the right-wing overthrows of many democracies, and also was a part of the Neoconservative movement which was largely Jewish and/or Trotsky followers who joined the GOP. For example, Trotsky’s notion of international revolution would be absorbed into the US military apparatus under the guise of freedom, and instead of a worker’s revolution, instead it was replaces with spreading democracy, i.e., constant war for the war-machine. This period of time also saw a young Israel find itself becoming cozy with US foreign policy due to its strategic location but also the possibility that many neoconservatives were Jewish and this was a part of the plan to prop up and fund Israel. The Necons later tapped into Evangelical Christianity to further deepen ties with Israel in the political-right which is known for being more patriotic and willing to use military force.
Even though, Salinger isn’t vital to this paper, his CIC link is notable in that it was brought up in a CIA Archived piece, titled, Cold War Allies: The Origins of CIA’s Relationship with Ukrainian Nationalists, by Kevin C. Ruffner (1998). In this article it went into detail about how the SSU (Strategic Services Unit), i.e., the OSS and later CIA, recruited Ukrainian nationalists to form emirges, i.e., cells, to help fight Communism in the West. Frank Wisner of the CIA had a close professional relationship with Kim Philby of the Cambridge Five Double-Spy Scandal. In the article by Ruffner (1998) it was stated that Wisner backed his conclusions for the setting up cells based on information drawn from the CIC, which is where Salinger worked. So, there was a relationship with the CIA and the CIA, and the CIA in certain cases had contacts with moles who had contact with the Soviets; however, I’m not drawing a clear straight connection here, but rather its a case of degrees of separation in a very confusing spy landscape of Cold War, i.e., no one knew who to trust. I’ll share some quotes from Ruffner (1998) below:
“The Strategic Services Unit (SSU), the successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, and the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency learned about anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movements that continued after the war in Western Europe” (Ruffner, 1998)
“Boleslav A. Holtsmann, SSU’s X-2 (Counter-Intelligence) representative in Munich, became the primary American contacts with Ukrainian leaders in the American Zone in Germany” (Ruffner, 1998)
“There were some setbacks between this collaboration of the SSU and Ukrainian emigres. SSU Director, William Quinn, wanted more research into the Ukrainian factions before they could become CIA Assets” (Ruffner, 1998)
“Ukrainians had served in the German Army and had been linked to Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front” (Ruffner, 1998)
“Zsolt Aradi, a Hungarian consultant within the SSU, was instrumental in establishing American intelligence contacts with the Ukrainians. Aradi had written the Ukrainian nationalist movement for the SSU in October 1946, and used his ties with Ukrainian church officials and the Vatican to meet emirge leaders in Germany” (Ruffner, 1998)
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R), Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar (L) and Russia’s Jewish Communities Federation President Alexander Boroda (C) attend a ceremony marking moving the Schneerson library at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre in Moscow, Russia, 13 June 2013. Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar called the decision to transfer the disputed Jewish archive to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre a ‘Solomon’s decision’ and promised to provide availability of the books to people. EPA/ALEXEY NIKOLSKY / RIA NOVOSTI / KREMLIN POOLBoris Johnson with members of Chabad after his victory in the UK. https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/1763414/boris-johnson-wins-rce-to-become-uks-next-prime-minister.htmlTrump with Chabad during National Education Day. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner is close to the Chabad communityPresident Barack Obama presents a ceremonial copy of the Education and Sharing Day Proclamation that he issued on March 31, 2015 to a delegation from the American Friends of Lubavitch in the Oval Office, April 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.https://www.worldcrunch.com/ culture-society/baku039s-oil- glory-from-stalin-to-the-rothschilds-and-nobels
It’s interesting to note that in the Baku Oil fields, the main players were Branobel (an oil company owned by the Nobel Family – yes, the same ones who made dynamite and where the Nobel Prize gets its name from), the French Rothschild, and Royal Dutch Shell. Yet, according to Levine (2007), On 28 April 1920, the Bolsheviks seized power in Baku and Branobel’s oil business in Azerbaijan was nationalized. In May 1920, the Nobel family sold almost half the Branobel’s shares in its possession to Standard Oil of New Jersey.
So, think about that, after the Communist Revolution, the largest oil company in the world ran by the Rockefeller’s absorbed their competition, becoming even bigger. Further, the Bolshevik revolution dethroned King George’s competitor and cousin, Czar Nicholas. It sound’s like grand mafia politics of taking over territory and controlling the political landscape to spur more conflict, thus gain more control. Where did the Bolsheviks get their weapons from? Wasn’t Communism in part created by Fredrich Engels? Who was a British-German rich kid whose parents had a successful textile company. It seems that Communism was in part funded by Anglo-American and banking interests to destabilize competition and centralize resources. Yet, whenever the powers props up an actor like Stalin or Hitler, they don’t have full control of those people, so there’s a power-play between all parties. Hitler thought he had a truce with Stalin during the Ribbentrob and Molotov negotiations leading to the Molotov Pact, but the Allies and Stalin always planned on joined forces, like mobs, and carving Germany in half to start the Cold War.
Erik Prince of Blackwater
Israel’s Black Cube intelligence firm
Prince’s work on the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative with Chinese based Frontier Services Group to jail the Uyghur people on the Western Desert, despite Prince donating to Trump and negotiating with Saudi and Emirate princes in the Seychelles (as proved in the MSM and Mueller Report)
Bannon’s Goldman Sachs history with Hong Kong which included early Bitcoin, i.e., global currency, including work with Brock Pierson (accused rapist) who was at Epstein’s Island.
Israel’s Sino-Russian relations from the time of Ben-Gurion and how they can profit from the Belt and Road Initiative via the Russian territory of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast;
Sheldon Adelson’s (Trump Super Donor) Chinese gambling business with Macau;
The Philippines crucial role in Pacific defense policy, yet, there’s a shadowy underworld of prostitution, gun running, the FBI/ATF/DOJ/Homeland Security, DOD counter-terrorism against Abu Sayyaf where the former leader of Abu Sayyaf was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War on the side of the Americans. The Las Vegas shooter’s Filipino connections oddly pointed the spotlight on what’s going on in the Philippines.
Prince’s relationship with the conservative Council for National Policy which included his “avatar”, Major General John K Singlaub (WW2, China, The Secret War in Laos, Afghanistan, [the latter two known for Heroin), and Iran Contra) aka Right Wing PMC drug dealing to funnel guns for revolutionary forces;
Similarities between Blackwater and Western Goals Foundation;
Prince’s relationship with Left Behind (a Christian Right book) author Tim LeHaye thus linking Prince to the Zionist such as Jared Kushner and thus the Chabad Lubavitch community.
The history of the CIA in China after WW2 before the propping up of Mao who was a bookkeeper in the Yale China missions – an organization built by Yale East Coast elite families dating back to the Old China Opium Trade (John Forbes Kerry is a descendant) which was formed to smuggle heroin out of China after the Boxer Rebellion and Nationalist backlash. The Americans muscled and won the old Heroin networks of the British Empire and French Empire, i.e., British India owned Pakistan and knew of the heroin fields of Afghanistan, where a certain region was called Kafiristan and Nuristan. Nuristan means “Land of Light”, i.e., Land of Illumination. The Americans after the Revolutionary War had already developed heroin networks with Turkey and China.
and how the Hong Kong Protests might be MI5 and CIA supported considering Hong Kong is former British territory.
It seems Prince might be the “chaos agent”, laying the groundwork for the “NWO”, i.e., imploding China and starting a war, just to do a strategic rebuild of China via the Belt and Road so a democratic China can be controlled by foreign global banks and multinationals.
John D. Rockefeller, loved Mao, and opened banking offices in Russia and China in the 70s in the height of the Cold War.
Erik Prince could be compared strongly to Major General John K. Singluab. He headed CIA operations in postwar Manchuria during the Chinese Communist revolution, led troops in the Korean War, managed the secret war along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Kingdom of Laos and Vietnam, worked with the Contras in Nicaragua, and Afghan resistance during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1979, Singlaub founded the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence network that was implicated for supplying weapons to the Contras during the Iran–Contra affair. According to the Special Operations Command (n.d.), “As one of a handful of Special Operations Branch personnel retained the Strategic Services Unit (successor to the OSS), Singlaub stayed in China to report on the Civil War.” So, think about that… Yale and the East Coast elite, also known as the Boston Brahmin, has a long history with China going back to Old China Trade opium dealing, but later Yale opens the Yale China Association in China and Mao Zedung has frequent contacts with this organization. The CIA was in China in the final days of WW2 and after during the confusing times of Kai-Shek versus Mao. Considering David Rockefeller opened a bank in China in the 1970s, seems to show that Mao was in part propped up by the Americans, likely as a hedge against Russia, but also to prep China for eventually inclusion into the global economy as the “totalitarian factory” of the world. Kai-Shek was propped in Tiawan as a hedge against Mao just in case he ever got too far out of line, yet, the Americans have never given full public support to Taiwan. Essentially, funding both sides of the Chinese Civil War was a way to save face that the Americans were fighting communism, but also not fighting the Communist harder, was a part of the plan to divide the world among Cold War partisan lines. China was always the goal of the globalist. Winthrop Rockefeller was the Governor of Arkansas. Another Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton – a Rhodes Scholar and Yale alumni – with the Walton Family would see China finally integrated into the global supply chain. The relationship was that China would vouch for the American’s exorbitant debts to fund its empire, in exchange for the Americans buying cheap Chinese products. A symbiotic relationship that kept two of the world’s strongest powers in bed with each other. I suspect the current Freedom Protests are in part a way to keep China on the globalist agenda without them venturing off to far and acting unilaterally. https://www.soc.mil/ARSOF_History/icons/singlaub.html
David Rockefeller in 1973 published the famous article in the New York Times called From a China Traveler. Rockefeller shows admiration for the Chinese country which was still under Maoist Communist ideology. Rockefeller through Chase Bank, now JP Morgan & Chase, opened one of the first American bank offices in China since the Chinese Civil War, in the nineteen-seventies. This was at a time when the United States was supposedly a staunch anti-communist advocate. Considering the vast history of the American East Coast elite in China dating back to the post-Revolutionary era of opium dealing with China, and the creation of the Yale-China Association (where Mao worked at), it seems that China was always the goal of the globalist. Rockefeller (1973) states, “One is impressed immediately by the sense of national harmony. From the loud patriotic music at the border onward, there is very real and pervasive dedication to Chairman Mao and Maoist principles. Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose.” Further, “The social experiment in China under. Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.” (Rockefeller, 1973). Regarding banks in China and Russia by the Rockefeller Dynasty, David Rockefeller opened one of the first Western bankers in Russia during the Cold War. According to JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In the 1970s, Chase added nearly 40 new branches, representative offices, affiliates, subsidiaries and joint ventures outside the United States, including two historic firsts in 1973: Chase opened a representative office in Moscow, the first presence for a U.S. bank in the Soviet Union since the 1920s” (p. 13). Further, JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In 1973, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller visited China and met with Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai. Chase became the first U.S. correspondent to the Bank of China since the 1949 Chinese Revolution.” (p. 13).
David Rockefeller’s “From a China Traveler” after his trip to China in the New York Times archive. The Rockefeller’s through Chase Bank would open one of the first Western banks in China after the Communist Revolution. https://www.yalechina.org/. We have to remember that Yale has long ties to China going back to Old China Trade which were the post-Revolutionary War trading houses in China. The main commodity of choice was Opium trading, which was hurt by Chinese backlash during the Boxer Rebellion. One prominent trading house was Russell & Company, founded by Samuel Russell. Samuel Russell’s cousin was William Huntingdon Russell, who founded Skull & Bones at Yale University. Notable partners were Warren Delano, Jr., the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in turn had Henry Morgenthau Jr., as his Treasury Secretary. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was the first and only Jew in the Presidential line of succession. Morgenthau is related to the Bronfman Family (NXVIUM via Sara and Claire Bronfman; Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music Group was in Jeffrey Epstein’s Black Book, and Phyllis Lambert nee Bronfman who provided bail money to murderer, Ira Einhorn) and Lehman Family of former Lehman Brothers – the firm which in part started the 2008 Financial Crisis. Another partner in Russell & Company was John Murray Forbes, an ancestors of John Forbes Kerry, the former Secretary of State. Public information about the Yale China AssociationAn article showing growing Jewish and Chinese ties. Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore (2014) ” Jews likely first arrived in China via the Silk Road almost 1,000 years ago. In the mid-19th century, following the Opium Wars, Iraqi Jews settled alongside British traders in Shanghai, where many made their fortunes. China later accepted Jews taking flight from Russia, who made their homes in the bleak snowy landscapes of northern Harbin. In World War II, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany flooded Shanghai: Most left for Australia, America, or Israel when the Communists gained power in 1949. Chinese state media has long championed positive portrayals of the Jews, in part because Judaism, with its ethnically based and non-evangelical nature, has proved less of a threat to the Communist Party than other foreign monotheistic religions, like Christianity or Islam. (China’s own Jewish population, the Kaifeng Jews, have being almost completely assimilated.) High-profile Jewish figures in the Chinese Communist Party’s own history include Sidney Rittenberg, the first American citizen to join the party, and the journalist Israel Epstein, whose funeral was attended by former Chinese President Hu Jintao and former Premier Wen Jiabao. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/167289/nanjing-jewish-studiesSheldon Adelson’s Chinese casino projects stated in the Wall Street JournalA photo of Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s super donor, with Chinese and Las Vegas casino holdingsExamples of Russian psychological operations into the West and many are through Zionist outlets such as Rebel Media, which once employed racist Lauren Southern. Southern went to Russia to interview Dugin. Also, Jay Dyer, an Orthodox convert, sometimes called the “Redneck Socrates”, constantly pushes Anti-Western conspiracy yet refuses to objectively analyze anything coming from Russia. Another example of Russian infiltration into the United States. Relating back to Jay Dyer’s Orthodoxy and his interview with Dugin, we can see a photo of Dugin with a radical sect of Russian Orthodox Church. Dugin has repeatedly spoken about the destruction of the United States and West. Other photos includes racist Richard Spencer which is his now ex-wife of Russian decent. She filed for divorce based on domestic violence accusations. The other photo is Lana Lokteff of RedIce TV who brags about Russian heritage and advocates for an ethno-state. She also identifies as pagan, which aligns with the Russian Hyperborean movement – a movement that is a sub-sect of the Russian Cosmist movement. It is an esoteric movement that claims that life started in Russia. Alex Jones interviewing and platforming Alexandr Dugin. The American “Alt Right” has been co-opted by Russian psychological operations. Jones is a very suspicious character. He has ties to the Disinformation Company and was frequently hosted on the Joe Rogan Podcast. A podcast which actively showcased the Intellectual Dark Web, before Rogan and Jones had a “fall out” and the podcast went back to normal. Jones is very close with MAGA particularly Roger Stone. Jones has consistently defended Trump despite claiming being an objective “conspiracy theorist”. For such a “prominent” conspiracy theorist, Jones rarely objectively analyzes Israel, Russia, or MAGA. His strategy is to be the “Redneck talking head” to tap into paranoia within the conservative white majority to steer them away from the truth, while also weaponizing this demographic will old Republican talking tropes. Alex Jones might have been compromised into being a die hard MAGA and Zionist supporter. His friendship with sexual adventurist Roger Stone might have been the fall of Alex Jones as he fell deeper into his own vices such as escorts and drugs. The MAGA Camp knew the power of Alex Jones over the minds of mostly conservative or right-leaning white males in the backlash to the Obama Administration. That was a powerful voice via YouTube to help push anti-left conspiracies theories, considering the Democratic establishment and Republican Establish (up until Trump) kept a pragmatic policy on Israel and Russia. Trump reversed this course of action by laying down for Israel and consistently trying to network with Russia, even at the expense of the Ukraine. The anti-UN anti-NATO rhetoric of traditional right-wing circles has been used by foreign adversaries to stir conspiracy against the United States. Two Jewish political consultants in George Birnbaum and Arthur Finklestein helped push the George Soros conspiracy which is a staple in Right-Wing Pro-Trump conspiracies. Even Trump referenced Soros during the US crisis. But why would two Jews do such a thing which obviously pushed antisemitism? By pushing antisemitism it allows Jewish elites to play both sides. Antisemitism allows for the cracking down of free speech and investigative journalism, put it is also pushes people into the Right-Wing by blaming all the issues of the world on liberalism. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-soros-conspiracy-finkelstein-birnbaum-orban-netanyahuSo, it’s not treason for Trump to get Ukraine to pull up dirt on political opponents by holding Congressionally approved arms sales from Ukraine, but Trump since then is still pandering to Vladimir Putin. Another example of the normalization of Putin’s Russia by the MAGA Camp via their favorite outlet, Fox News with a target audience of predominately white (not a crime) and elderly. Jason Jorjani, an Iranian scholar and member of the Alt-Right via Arktos Media which he edited (and, distributed Aleksandr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory), was analyzed by The Intercept. Jorjani is frequently showcased on paranormal YouTube site, New Thinking Allowed with Jeremy Mishlove, whom, interestingly, is the only person with a Ph.D in Paranormal Studies from UC Berkley. This goes to show the pseudo-science roots within the Alt-Right, which has historical contexts going back as far as the Nazi Ahnenerbe on its quests to search for Aryan Origins in the Far East and Central Asia, i.e., The Grand Chessboard of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Jorjani’s Iran interests is important because it actually links to the esoteric ideology guiding Russian Neo-Nationalists such as Aleksandr Dugin. Jorjani was also interestingly linked Zionism within his Iranian studies, and Zionism is also a key aspect in Dugin’s esoteric ideology. This was provided in The Russian Cosmists (2012) by George M. Young, a professor at the University of New England. The Intercept article can be found at https://theintercept.com/2018/03/18/alt-right-jason-jorjani/Jason Reza Jorjani speaking about…IQ testing of embryos… on New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove. Paranormal studies are a part of the Far Right and always has been. It is typically linked to Grand Origin Story theories used to justify warfare and expansionism, e.g., the Nazis looking for Far Eastern roots was a justification to push East to the resource rich areas, or, Russia’s attempt at Grand Origin mythology such as Hyperborea myths creates a justification for expanded operations in Central Asia and aligns with Dugin’s Eurasianism ideology. Jason Reza Jorjani speaking about Zionism’s roots in Iranian. Think about that… Zionism, i.e., Jewish. Russian esoteric thinkers link Russian with Iran. The strong connection of Chabad in Russia, the USA, and Israel. Russia’s relation with China on the Belt and Road, plus Israel’s ability to profit from the project in Israel and the far East with the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Or, the fact that there’s many Jews in the MAGA Administration which is linked or associated with the concept of White Supremacy, which thus echoes back to research does by Bryan Mark Riggs in “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers” (2002). There’s a deeper level of strategy and playing both sides going on. A great book by George M. Young that goes into roots of Russian Cosmists
“George Vendasky, for example, sees Russian pre-Christian pagan religion as a development from both Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. And Aleksandr Dugin and other current Russian neo-Eurasianists and neonationalists point to ancient Russia’s religious and cultural kinship with ancient Iran to support their calls for a new Russo-Iranian Eurasian continental alliance to counter NATO power and culture”. (p. 83, Young, 2012).
“The ancient Iranians, to whom Fedorov believes the Slavs are related, were continental rather than insular and peninsular in outland, land tillers rather than land seekers, and in their close relationship to the earth recognized that life is won only by constant struggle against nature. Evil, for the Zendo-Slavic peoples, is not an inescapable condition of existence, as in India, but can be overcome by concerted human effort.” (pg. 83, Young, 2012).
George Vendasky, for example, sees Russian pre-Christian pagan religion as a development from both Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. And Aleksandr Dugin and other current Russian neo-Eurasianists and neonationalists point to ancient Russia’s religious and cultural kinship with ancient Iran to support their calls for a new Russo-Iranian Eurasian continental alliance to counter NATO power and culture”. (p. 83)
“Fedorov viewed Russian culture as a continuation of ancient Aryan Iran, a combination of Eastern and Western principles, struggling against a hostile natural environment, wary of Greco-Roman power to the west and Turan to the East. Similarly, Gumilev views Russia as an absorber and continuation of the great steppe powers of ancient Eurasia, different from and strong than both Western Europe and eastern Asia. For Gumilev, the Mongol invasion by Genghis Khan was not a curse but a blessing for Russia, saving the entire Eurasian heartland from the aggressive clutches of the Catholic West, then presented by Poland and the Baltic Teutonic Knights. Under the khans, Russian Orthodox spirituality was tolerated and allowed to mature, whereas medieval Orthodox spirituality would’ve been crushed under the heels of Teutonic Knights, and the Eurasian heartland would eventually have become simply an extended version of the European spiritual and political battleground of Catholics versus Protestants.” (p. 228)
“In recent times, Gumilev’s theories have proved especially useful to Russian neonationalists, neo-Eurasianists and other with an anti-Western, anti-Atlanticist political bias, the most prominent of whom is the ideologist, Alexander Dugin – and, some might add, Vladimir Putin.” (p. 228)
References:
Alsen, E. (2018). J.D. Salinger and the Nazis. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
“Active or self-directed evolution, then – holistic, anthropocentric, and teleologically determined effort – are some of the terms that scholars have applied to most Russian Cosmist” (Young, p. 9)
Cover Art from A Natural Death by Horse the Band
Before I begin, I want to say that this analysis of Horse the Band isn’t to insinuate they have any connections to the right-wing. I think they’re simply storytelling and telling a story as if where a bad guys vs good guy epic. Horse the Band is an American metalcore band from Orange County, California, that became known for their 8-bit video-game influenced sounds which labeled them as Nintendocore. In personal opinion, I would call them Avant-Garde metal employing postmodern themes, such as transhumanism, simulation and simulacrum, 80s cyber and Cold War pastiche akin to the visions of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, merging high art with low art, and digitization, with the electronic synth elements serving as a device to suggest the informational overload of contemporary life.
The lead singer for Horse the Band with a Behemoth shirt at Warped Tour. Behemoth is a Polish extreme metal band. Relating to geopolitics, Poland and Russia have a traditional feud with one being Catholic and the other being Orthodox. However, you can see the image of the double headed eagle but also the Chaos Magick symbol. I’m not saying Horse the Band is Alt-Right, yet, their album A Natural Death has songs such as Hyperborea and Face of Bear which relates to Russia. Hyperboreans are a sub-sect of Russian Cosmism and in Young’s (2012) book, The Russian Cosmists, the word Arktos is referenced. Arktos is also the name of Arktos Publishing, once edited by Jordan Jorjani of the Alt-Right. Jorjani can be seen online commentating on New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Misholve. Mishlove is a Paranormal researcher from UC Berkeley. Finished reading this. A great book. This paper isn’t to indict the Russian Cosmist movement as a whole, but there are some elements within this frame of thought that relates to some current regressive ideologies, especially those relating to Aleksandr Dugin but also Transhumanism – both Western and Eastern – as a whole.
The band does a good job of analyzing the informational overload of postmodernity, where this era is defined largely by the domination of images or symbols which creates a self-destroying and self-replicating chaotic reality. In such a state of reality it’s hard to distinguish truth (fake from real; organic from synthetic), thus bringing upon existential (nihilistic) questions of being. Horse the Band doesn’t seem to be perpetuating a sense of cosmic dread through postmodern means with ill-intent, but rather they’re musing, feeling and thinking with music to attempt to answer the old philosophical question of, “What is the meaning of life”. But they’re also just having fun.
Their album, A Natural Death, in my opinion is their magnum opus, despite, their follow-up album, Desperate Living – which is good – getting higher rankings from music critics. Math metal is arguably seen as a type of nerdy aggressive male space and I think the bands on stage antics and style has relegated them from larger audiences. It is a type of Revenge of the Nerds, Reed College weirdo or M.I.T style of metal, thus engendering possible accusations of being for suburban, garage conspiring, computer hackers in some rainy Tech corridor such as Portland or Seattle, yet, their demeanor seems ironic, self-aware and assured, and artful. This relates to the underlying theme of artistic movements such as Dada. Essentially, they act quirky as to challenge audiences or listeners not to take life too seriously, i.e., to destabilize metanarratives, which is the key tenant of postmodernism.
Postmodernism sought to challenge the stiff and empirical mindedness of Modernism of the early twentieth century. Modernism posited a belief in structuralism, the ability to know truth, behavior sciences, and made bold objective truth claims such as science will liberate humanity, or skyscraper urbanism will be the future utopia. Yet, these claims were challenged harshly after WW2 since objective truth claims were blamed for the deaths of millions of humans and all in the name of “progress”. Speaking to the Dada art movement of early twentieth-century Europe, alongside other schools such as Italian Futurism or German Bauhaus, Horse the Band’s, A Natural Death, seems in alignment with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Metropolis shows a future advanced urban society based on Modernist and Futurist themes, yet, the film could be argued as one of the earliest warnings of transhumanism and the film is known for its famous female Satanic robot. The fact that Fritz Lang chose a female robot seems interesting. Feminism is often at the forefront of globalist movements such as the Green Movement, or, there’s the banner call of the Future is Female. But, that future also possibly holds transhumanism. Transhumanism seems to be cross-juncture between feminism (particularly with its focus on gender as being a spectrum, not a biological axiom), the New Age movement, the Green movement, globalism, AI and IoT (Information of Things), and transgenderism, etc.
Essentially, transhumanism is related to all these topics, in that it represents a type of “inevitable progress”, and the female form of Fritz Lang’s robot and the real movement of the Future is Female – in a future that will be globally integrated with IoT – indicates the symbolic importance of femininity within this paradigm shift. In other words, femininity as presented and argued within the larger sociopolitical debate makes it synonymous with shifting, merging, androgyny, the evolutionary notion of progress, or, in alchemy language…it’s a malleable “substance”. The female form is also the window into life, so femininity has an esoteric element involving shifting, birth, renewal, etc.
The female robot from Metropolis by Fritz LangA statue of Hermaphroditus, the child of Hermes and Aphrodite. The merging of male and female thus has roots in an ancient esoteric tradition. With such traditions influencing technocracy as well, it does seem that the Trans movement isn’t simply for protecting the rights of marginalized group of people but rather promoting a lifestyle conducive to the upcoming technocratic global future.
A Natural Death seems to be a concept album with a linear but fuzzy storyline. It seems to involve a main female and male character through three linear storylines but all are related and the concept of time travel comes into play. One story arch deals with the violence of the American Frontier with songs such as Murder, Broken Trail, Crickets, and Rotting Horse. Another is set in the modern day such as in New York City, a club as insinuated in Sex Raptor, an occult sex ritual as insinuated in his Purple Majesty, and the Beach which seems to be the scene of a goodbye between the main male and female protagonists. The other story arch deals with the ancient past in Hyperborea or a land under threat from Hyperborea, but towards the end of the album we’re in a space travel setting akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Films or books that come to mind that might have been inspirations are (1) Eyes Wide Shut, (2) 2001: A Space Odyssey, (3) Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, but also HP Lovecraft, (4) The Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros., (5) the American West, (5) the comic hero, Red Tornado – further the albums transhumanist elements, (6) and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series where a Wild West character is central to the plot involving a tower that serves as the bridge between different realities and worlds.
The songs relating to this paper are Hyperborea, Murder, The Startling Secret of Super Sapphire, Face of Bear, New York City, His Purple Majesty, The Red Tornado, Rotting Horse, and I think we are both suffering from the same crushing metaphysical crisis. Other songs could be inserted to help construct a larger storyline, yet this paper is about the Russian, transhumanist, and/or esoteric underpinnings which reflect themselves, oddly, within real-life scientific advancement, geopolitics etc.
1. Hyperborea (which I’ll argue as being related to the Hyperborean mythos of Russian Cosmism later in this paper). Yet, within the narration and plot of the album, the song depicts a type of unnatural winter storm roll in with the lyric, “Numbness swept down from the east.”, i.e., Numbness swept down from Russia. There seems to be the first appearance of the female main character of the overall album’s plot but based in a past life or past representation. The concept of time-travel will appear later in the album, so this reference along with others from other lyrics seems to shed light that this album is largely a romantic adventure, similar to Link with Princess Zelda. “She sulks from silver towers, she could save a life.”. Towers, princesses, Princess Zelda, and Hyperborea possibly being similar to Hyrule from the game’s franchise. Yet, the male lead character in this harsh wilderness, while making references to a female in a tower (a princess or maiden), also has to tap into something equivalent to Conan the Barbarian’s Riddle of Steel. Don’t trust man, don’t trust girl, don’t trust animals, trust in steel.
A scene from Zelda Breath of the Wind which comes to mind when reading the lyrics of HyperboreaA scene from Conan the Barbarian, where a young Conan first learns of the Riddle of Steel
There seems to be antagonist, briefly referenced in the opening song with the lyric, “He says he hates us and he’s afraid to try–and I know why.” but this same character might be manifesting himself later on as the “Purple Majesty” who seems to have a type of mental grip on the female. The albums deals with notions of time-travel, reincarnation, eternal recurrence, deja vu, or even possibly, parallel universes. The album involves a romantic relationship between a male protagonist with a female who first appears, as insinuated in the first song, with being a princess in a tower, but in the modern day this female character gets involved with “His Purple Majesty” in a sex ritual, yet, both are reunited towards the end on a cosmic journey towards transcendence. The album deals with love and death, and the male character is first heard has having to tap into his inner strength with the lyric “trust in steel”, yet, he seems to be bouncing back and forth in between time, thus comes in the transhumanist, postmodern, digital effects and themes.
Interestingly, some random facts found online, Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan, had Hyperborea as the land northeast of Conan’s home of Cimmeria. Howard was also a contemporary to HP Lovecraft who incorporated some elements of that into his Chutulu mythos. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to those who followed his philosophy as “Hyperboreans” in The Antichrist, where he states, ““Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans” (Goodreads, n.d.). The Cimmerians were a real Indo-European group, likely from the Steppes, who lived in near the Caucus bridgeway near Armenia (the strip of land South of Russia to Northern Iran and Northeast Turkey) and were related by proxy to the Scythian tribe, and later migrated into Europe in lands know considered Slavic but with traces in Celtic and Germanic
Hyperboreans, an offshoot of the Russian Cosmist school, being described in The Russian Cosmists by George Young (2012)
2. Murder seems to fast forward in time to the American frontier during an Indian raid on white settlers.
I cut open the white man And take from his woman too If it were up to me, all the white faces would bleed Bleed and bleed and bleed, it’s truth
Murder, it’s murder Murder, it’s murder
Empty plains echo with empty screams There’s a wagon on the highland A father and his girl, both are heading south I tie the boy and the horses
Then you use the skills of the wolf I don’t use a bullet Get close enough, I can use my knife My knife
I cut open the white man And take from his woman too If it were up to me, all the white faces would bleed Red’s a better color, it’s truth
Let the blood out, let it flow Cut the blood out, let it flow Kill the blood out, let if flow Like a river let it flow
Let it flow like a river Let it flow like a river Let if flow like a river into the sea
3. The Startling Secrets of Super Sapphire which has an almost eighteenth-century American East coast, Atlantic, and Gothic nature to it, similar to the stories of HP Lovecraft which are abound with Mayflower East Coast characters found in situations of cosmic dread. Lovecraft is credited with the founding of cosmic horror where older themes of ghouls and ghosts are replaced by physical yet beyond comprehension creatures such as aliens. Lovecraft was a cosmicist, not be confuse with cosmist, and this view held that humans are insignificant to the cosmos and there’s forces in the cosmos beyond human reason such as inter-dimensional beings. Though Lovecraft popularized science-horror or cosmic-horror, writers such as Mary Shelley with Frankenstein used natural sciences as a device within horror before Lovecraft. The song seems to depict a character, whom I consider to be a Captain Ahab figure or Old China Trade Opium Merchant from the Port of Salem (Skull and Bones connection with the Russell and Forbes families), who comes across a sacred artifact (Sacred Sapphire), only to be come possessed by it. “The sapphire is the birthstone of the month of September. The name sapphire is derived from the Latin word “saphirus” and the Greek word “sapheiros,” both meaning blue. Some believe that the name sapphire is derived from its association with the planet Saturn. The name can be roughly translated to mean “dear to the planet Saturn” in many different languages” (Jewels for Me.com, n.d.). Saturn as a planet plays a role in cosmology. The halo is obvious with its significance in culture (angelic halos, wedding bands, etc.), but to many Saturn seems to represent the “Morning Star”, i.e., Lucifer or Moloch. Saturn’s mysterious black hexagon pattern at its northern pole has also sparked many comparisons with religious objects such as the Jewish Tefillin, the six sides and six triangles of the Start of David (which is up for debate it seems but there is the quote of Amos 5:25-5:27), and the Islamic Ka’bah . Yet, Saturn when connected to Saturn Day is reflected in Roman culture, thus our modern culture, yet, it’s also reflected in Hebrew such as Shabbatai שבתאי, meaning restful one, which corresponds to the Jewish Sabbath. When Rome conquered Greece, Saturn became synonymous with Chronos, thus being attributed to Chronos’ power of time, and this time attribute is also found in the Hebrew notion of Saturn. Horse the Band’s album as seen in the song “I think we’re both suffering from the same metaphysical crisis” speaks of time-travel, event horizons, etc.
NASA JPL Caltech Space Science Institute Photo of Saturn’s Hexagon
4. Face of Bear (the national animal of Russia)
Winters coming days die short at the end of autumns reign hunger becomes ravenous hibernation never waits soon the silent slumber for now October’s feast fearless and graceful crashing through dead leaves
DON’T FEED THE BEARS OR THE BEARS WILL FEED ON YOU
all the forest fauna frozen feeling fear flinching at the moment face to face with face of bear all the forest creatures vanish from sight their betters come with hungers that cannot be denied
A few lines downs…
DON’T FEED THE BEARS OR THE BEARS WILL FEED ON YOU
I’ll die with the honor i choose I’ll fight face of bear and lose
FACE TO FACE WITH FACE OF BEAR (x6)
5. New York City. Puts a romantic plot within the storyline between a male and female character. In other song, title, The Beach, we hear a female character crying. Yet, there seems to be a reunion within New York City based on the lyrics:
We embrace in the heart of our city On wet broken sidewalks we’re free
Further, the song seems to insinuate that Horse the Band is actually coming from a pro-Western viewpoint despite the Russian references. Towards the end of the song accompanying the lyric, “We embrace in the heart of our city. On wet broken sidewalks we’re free”, there’s effects of fireworks. Fireworks are a hallmark of American Independence and freedom. If the plot structure is truly a series of interlocking storylines of the same characters through time and space, it seems that narrator in Hyperborea is actually warning of Hyperborea and the antagonist within this song, in my opinion, might later on manifest himself as the “Purple Majesty”.
6. His Purple Majesty There seems to be something awkwardly Lolita and Crowley Sex Magick about this. There’s a lyric by a female character who states, “I’ll do anything you say”, with a coyness about it. The color purple appears a lot within Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and the ceremony master is wearing a purple robe. According to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in a , during an event titled: Color Tells A Story, it was stated, “This somber palette gives way to a rainbow of neon lights as Bill’s night careens out of control, with glimpses of violet and royal purple cropping up at the most perilous moments.” The color purple represents royalty, thus the word majesty makes sense, but it also represents sexuality, magic, you could even throw “Sex Magick” in there, eroticism, mystery, etc. Going over the lyrics again the song seems to depict a ceremonial sex scene. “But she wanted. But she needed. Perfect sex in purple robes. He said, ‘Hold my hand while I touch you’, he said, ‘it will feel better that way’. She said, ‘I’ll do anything you say.'” But, later, it’s said, “she let him INSIDE even though it feels WRONG. It was all the symptoms of love but bleeding a black horror, a horror”. So… How does the Crowleyian Sex Magick of his Purple Majesty relate to Russia, let alone transhumanism? Well, one of the Russian Cosmist was Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) and a young Jack Parsons had correspondence with him and Werner Von Braun to ask for advice for his early rocket science curiosities. Parsons is known for being into the Occult and became involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) of Aleister Crowley. Sex Magick was a practice and Parson’s engaged in orgies with wife. Parsons was friends with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and was associated with the science-fiction writer’s guild, Mañana Literary Society, where Robert Heinlein – the author of Starship Troopers – was also a member. In Heinlein’s Starship Troopers a future alliance called the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance is formed. So, from Horse the Band’s Russian references, particularly through this song “His Purple Majesty”, we first come to Crowley Sex Magick before coming to Crowley himself, Jack Parsons, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian Cosmism which is transhumanism, and also Robert Heinlein who speaks of the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance.
A photo of Bella Heathcote playing Susan Parsons at a Crowley ritual. All rights of this photo are reserved to CBS and CBS All Access. Sharing of this photo is for educational purposes only. A scene from Eyes Wide Shut by Kubrick
7. Red Tornado, is based on the DC Comic book hero. This song firmly links the album to transhumanism, considering Red Tornado is an android. Here are some of the lyrics:
Circuitry and sympathy Are two different things But they come together In a robot who dreams Round and round And round he goes
Later in the song:
His emotions spin at destructive speeds That he needs to control The cumulonimbus inside the machine He’s half robot and half tornado So sad the cyborg cyclone seems Drifting through the sky A willful wisp of machinery Not born but devised Still the cyborg cyclone cries Coolant drips from his eyes Plastic hands on his heart That slowly… Tear him apart
Oddly, my theory, is this album channels the esoteric and technocratic struggle between East and West. It peels away the normal surface to reveal the seedlings of pseudo-science, mad scientists, and occultists who influence “above-ground” political discourse and technological development. The Western form of Technocracy as an application could be best understood through Zbigniew Brzezinski, with this book titled: Between Two Ages America’s Role in the Technocractic Future. A few quotes from this book are listed below.
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.” (Goodreads.com, n.d.)
“In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.” (Goodreads.com, n.d.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski receiving a medal from Jimmy Carter
This might sound odd, but it’s no oddity that John Dee, the minister to Queen Elizabeth, coined the term British Empire and he himself was a magus that practiced Hermeticism and alchemy. Whether it’s the British Empire, Russian Empire, or American Empire, besides or underneath pragmatic or realist policy is a supplemental esoteric ideology (example, Masonry in regards to British Imperialism or American Manifest Destiny; Masonry or Russian Cosmism under pre-Revolutionary Russian conquests, post-Revolutionary Communism, or post-Communist State Oligarchy & Ethnic Nationalism, i.e, Aleksandr Dugin, the Hyperboreans.
John Dee was an Occultist who first coined the term, British Empire
The album on purpose or by accident, though seemingly without any nefarious intent, touches on the current Russia versus USA geopolitical struggle (psychological operations included) involving characters such as Aleksandr Dugin with his concept of Chaos Magick and his Eurasianist ideology, Lev Gumilev’s Neo-Eurasianism, and Valery Dumin’s Hyperborean neo-paganism. All three of the men were analyzed in the book, The Russian Cosmists, by George M. Young (2012), a professor from the University of New England.
The album seems to be a clash of both East versus West and touches upon science, Gnosticism, and esoteric thought. The tension and aggression in the album through the guttural death growls meshed with melodic instrumental solos and computer effects depicts a type of “Chaos Magick War” of factions of both East and West that are warring with each other, thus revealing a deeper, ancient, eternally reoccurring, and more sinister end-game. Yet, this end-game outside of the view of the public is arguably rigged, i.e., a Manichean Dialectic. I say rigged because there is proof of transfer of information between both East and West during the Cold such as now revealed Esalen Institute exchanges as talked about in Atlas Obscura’s piece titled, How a Fame New Age Retreat Center Helped End the Cold War, by Sarakh Laskow (2015). Even the US establishment such as the Rockefeller Dynasty (who gave seed money to both Apple and Intel via Laurence Rockefeller of Venrock Capital) spoke briefly of merging with Russia. Ivy Lee (uncle of author, William S. Burroughs), was a founding member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller’s media fixer. Lee favored peaceful relations with Russia which he wrote in Present-Day Russia (1928), page 214, published by Macmillan & Co., which is archived at sources such Foreign Policy magazine which was reviewed by William L. Langer, but also the University of Chicago Press Journal which is referenced in Schuman (1929) in American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 1 (Jul., 1929): 144-145.
Further, David Rockefeller opened one of the first Western bankers in Russia during the Cold War. According to JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In the 1970s, Chase added nearly 40 new branches, representative offices, affiliates, subsidiaries and joint ventures outside the United States, including two historic firsts in 1973: Chase opened a representative office in Moscow, the first presence for a U.S. bank in the Soviet Union since the 1920s” (p. 13). Further, JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In 1973, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller visited China and met with Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai. Chase became the first U.S. correspondent to the Bank of China since the 1949 Chinese Revolution.” (p. 13).
The concept of “from chaos comes rebirth” is symbolic of the phoenix symbol which is often associated with Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, but is also symbolic to the regalia of the color purple (remember the song: His Purple Majesty) which according to legend was used the Phoenicians, i.e., where the word Phoenix has possible etymological origins here. The Phoenicians were a Canaanite peoples from the Levant region near modern Lebanon, Syria and Israel, who worshipped Baal. Baal was a deity equivalent to Zeus in Greece, who controlled weather, and was represented by a Bull which signified fertility and strength. This figure seems to be the same or related to the concept of Moloch, the deity known for child sacrifice. A rendition of this Baal figure was worshiped by the ancient Hebrews as Baʿal Berith and/or El Berith, when the Jews had broken their covenant with God during the times before the ascension of Gideon. Baal thus seems to have fallen out of favor and was assigned to the role of Beelzebub.
In my novice research into Russian Cosmism and the Occultist underpinnings of Transhumanism, this album, A Natural Death, seems very on point. By Transhumanism, and one could argue transgenderism, I’m talking about alchemical-materialist-evolution based in part on the Neoplatonic notion of The One, which relates to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution which posits that all life evolved from a singular primordial source. Neoplatonism and Darwinism, though seemingly from different fields of study, e.g., metaphysics versus natural biology, yet both posit that all life came from a single source. I personally believe in evolution of some sort, but that’s not important. Darwinism sees evolution as a sign of strength and vigor required for survival, whereas Neoplatonism seems to argue that merging concepts is a way to return to the source or The One. Thus, these two ideologies are related and support each other. It could be argued that Darwin himself was an Occultist and Neoplatonist. Merging is fitness if we were to say Neoplatonic Darwinism. This is the underlying logic of transhumanism, and arguably the prepping for transhumanism with transgenderism, and it is seen as the next evolutionary step, i.e., involving the alchemical merging and manipulation of matter. From a Neoplatonic viewpoint, this seems to be the reason why Occult movements tend to focus on the dark arts or dark fashion. To them, they see what we consider evil as not being evil since its an emanation of the one, or natural doesn’t create morality, so by performing black ceremonial magic, they are in effect merging reality as they see it.
On the album there are the songs such as Hyperborea and Face of Bear, where Hyperborea relates to the Russian esoteric movement that believes Russia is the ancient mystical source of humanity, while Face of Bear relates to the national animal and symbol of Russia. With Horse the Band being called Nintendocore, the two main franchise games of Nintendo that comes to mind is Mario but also Zelda. Zelda seems important to the paper because the fictional land of Hyrule seems loosely based on a Hyperborean concept, with the Zelda franchise taking place in a European medieval setting that blends Celtic, Nordic, possible Slavic, and Anglo-Saxon Germanic elements. The Zelda franchise had the famous game, Ocarina of Time, which involves the main character Link, using a magical musical instrument to go back and forth in between time in order to awaken the Seven Sages, so the villain of the game, Ganandorf, can’t obtain the sacred Tri-Force. The lyric by Horse the Band in the second to last song on the album states, “Initiate! Instruments set to yesterday. At the Speed of Light, across empty plains of time”. Also, within Ocarina of Time, the concept of the Seven Sages seems to relate to the Seven Sages of actual Classical Antiquity which included Thales. Within the Zelda universe, especially relating to Ocarina of Time, the elemental properties of the Tri-Force itself seems to be the equivalent to the Greek concept of the arche, which were the elemental constructs the Classical thinkers used to determine the origin of matter, reality, etc. For example, Thales’ arche was water whereas for Anaximander, apeiron was the arche, which was a concept outside of matter, like the concept of ether.
The finale end song (it’s the second to last on the album) of “I think were both suffering from the same crushing metaphysical crisis” reminds me of 2001 A Space Odyssey with concepts such as transhumanist evolution through metaphysics or theoretical physics, with the main character evolving into a new form of being (the Star Child) and connecting back to a higher source, i.e., the One, or The Grand Architect of Grand Masonry.
A scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey before transfiguration into the Star Child
The song starts off with “Dilation of chronal aperture in 3 2 1”, with the narrator sounding like a NASA rocket launch conductor. Chronal indicates time, whereas aperture is a window in which lights passes, such as a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. Paez (2019) states, “It is commonly accepted in energy medicine circles that a “healthy” chakra has a clockwise spin, it’s aperture is opened to the appropriate amount and has no energetic cords or other imbalances interfering with its function. The health of chakras can be controlled and improved through mental as well as physical means.” So, there seems to be an obvious Hindu Aryan mysticism via references to yogic practices of India.
Dilation of chronal aperture in 3 2 1
Activate! Initiate instruments set to yesterday! At the speed light across empty plains of time On a ship of jewels and gold All of time unfolds
A seven click blip For a fifteen-eon trip Crafting déjà vu Event horizon boom Days resind and lapse Birth after death Tomorrow is the past Event horizon boom Cities shrink and fade into the ice age Dinosaurs now new Event horizon boom
Time is broken!
How small we compared to space and time? (played in reverse) Time after time Time after time Time after time
All these machines that dream Make me want to scream There’s no bears or wild things The future not what it seems Causality denied All of time is now mine The crisis we both share Is you are me when I was there
Time after time It’s almost time Time to say goodbye At the end of time.
The song depicts a journey through space-time where the travelers – assuming a male and female (the songs Beach and His Purple Majesty involves a female character) – are experiencing déjà vu, but on the journey after seeing the future, it seems that Artificial Intelligence (the lyric: All these machines that dream, make me want to scream) have replaced all organic life (there’s no bears or wild things, the future not what it seems). Out of all the animals that are not there, the band singles out bear, which was stated previously is the animal of Russia. So, in theory, are they really saying, Russia is no longer there? The journey seems to go to the outer edges of the known the universe or towards a black hole since the term, Event Horizon, is mentioned twice. The event horizon is the boundary defining the region of space around a black hole from which nothing (not even light) can escape (Swinburne University of Technology, n.d.). It also can be used as the very outer edge of known space, indicating an expanding universe.
The song Rotting Horse with its drab lowly guitar playing, channels the sullen windswept brutality of the American frontier of the eighteen-hundreds, and this song seems to emulate the Wild West, Cowboys versus Indians, artwork on the album’s cover. Since time travel is a theme here, this period of time could have been just one of the visions or multiple realities the protagonist experienced. The repeating guitar with ominous background effects that seems to encompass both angelic choir organ keys, layered with electronic dissonance, touches upon in my opinion the temporary nature of life and the process of decay.
Russian Cosmism is effectively Russian transhumanism. It’s an umbrella of thinkers so you can’t really insinuate that all the Cosmists believed the same thing, or that they would advocate for how their ideologies have been appropriated over time. Yet, Cosmism is like Transhumanism found in the West, yet, since the West and Russia are culturally different, largely around religion, their independent transhumanist schools have notable differences. The Russian Cosmist branch of Transhumanism was inspired by (1) the introduction of Neoplatonic, Masonic, and Occultist ideas into Russia, (2) the wavering oscillation (depending on which specific Cosmists were referring to) of Traditionalism with modernist ideologies such as Marxism, and (3) from a sense of Russian Orthodox exceptionalism either in a global egalitarian “progressive” fashion or from an ethnocentric nationalism, emboldened by a ‘chip on the shoulder’ attitude towards concepts such as American Exceptionalism. Western Transhumanism, being influenced by Neoplatonism was also influenced by the socio-political and religious realities of Catholicism and Protestantism, whereas Russia was inspired or constrained by the solidarity of Orthodoxy.
It could be argued that after the schism between Catholicism and Protestantism, the West was more inclined to take on the Scientific Revolution (with modernity following), since Protestantism wasn’t purely religious, but was also a response to intellectual, economic, and personal freedoms away from the Holy See. For example, Giordano Bruno was a Dominican Friar who was a philosopher, mathematician, poet, and Hermetic Occultist. He was also a Neoplatonist and intrigued by the works of Pythagoras. His ideas, then heretical, were the possibility of life on other planets and that the universe has no true center. Bruno was later burned at the stake for concepts now considered either cannon or possible. Going back to the intellectual progression during and after the Protestant Reformation, the three concepts of intellectual, economic, and personal liberties were vital in sparking scientific secular innovation within the shift from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism.
Book cover with Giordano Bruno. The Book is A Primer to Giordano Bruno: New Age Prophet, Mystic and Heretic (The Essential Giordano Bruno Book 1) by Julia Jones
Transhumanism in the West in my opinion is strongly related to the political systems of Protestant nations, as typified by the British Empire (which included the United States), and these systems are democratic, pluralist (ironically insinuating the philosophical arguments around dualism), individualist, and capitalist models. The philosophical underpinnings of Western Transhumanism is diverse spanning Continental Philosophy of German idealism of Hegel, the Hegelian criticisms of Nietzsche and his resulting extreme existentialism (which thus links to the Darwinist notion of the strongest survives); the French postmodernists which their emphasis on deconstruction, merging concepts for analysis, and analyzing post-capitalist social conditions such as expanding upon Marx’s work on alienation; the Analytical School of Britain with thinkers such as Bertrand Russell or Gilbert Ryle’s critique of Cartesian Dualism; Game Theory and American pragmatism. Continental philosophy serves as the catalyst for deconstruction and merging, whereas American pragmatism and British Imperial Analytics inspired topics such as machine-logic, the Turing Test, and Game Theory. The Occult underpinnings traveling aside these philosophies ranges from Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Christian Qabbalah, Averroism, Zoroastrianism with concepts such as magi, i.e., magic.
Underneath all these philosophies tracing backwards people at some point would cross upon Plato, and thus the later Plotinus, who is the founder of Neoplatonism and our concept of modern metaphysics, ceremonial magic within the West, etc.
Having read the book by Young (2012), I noticed in the progenitors of the Cosmist school of that concepts such as androgyny and body enhancements appeared more than once. For example, Vladimir Solovyov, in response to the hard technocracy of Cosmist Sergei Fedorov, argued that instead of the physical resurrection of all humans as called for in Fedorov’s “Common Task”, Solovyov instead wanted a spiritual resurrection of Sophic inspiration and syzygic unity, i.e., synergy, between male and female essences. Young (2012), states, “Instead of regulating nature, whether external or internal, Solovyov views the great human task as one of incarnating divine love on a universal scale. In one his major works, The Meaning of Love, he develops the idea of a Christian androgyny that would embrace all humanity” (p. 109, para. 2); “Already within itself physical love bears the death-defeating force, the seeds of life and immortality – our task is to realize in full what now exists only as an ideal in Plato and in potential in our everyday lives. Wholeness, “all-unity”, in love means androgyny.” (Young, p. 103, para. 2); “To them he bequeathed the doctrine of sophiology, the centrality of the eternal feminine in Christian spirituality.”
Pavel Alekandrovich Florensky provided a framework for mathematical theory, semiotics, and linguistics, but also cyborgs to Cosmism, building off the autocratic technocracy of Fedorov, the androgynous sophic synergy of Solovyov, and the sophic infused political-economy of Sergei Bulgakov. Young (2012) states Florensky, ”was another Cosmist who believed that the Communist future could possibly (but not necessarily) lead to a revival of medieval objectivism, collectivism, and constructive vision, and a turning from the illusionary individualism and self-destructive atomization that had characterized prerevolutionary modernity” (p. 124), and, Florensky’s natural inclinations may have led toward a kind of figurative levitation, up and away from everyday earthly realia and into a world of Platonic realiora (Young, p. 125). Relating to back Transhumanism, Florensky speculated on early cybernetics, with Young (2012) stating, “And in a 1919 article titled, “Organoprojection”, Florensky discusses the projection of artificial organs, continuation of our bodies, to extend human capabilities throughout the cosmos. Projected organs and body parts can operate and act on the world beyond the limits of our present physical bodies. “Magic, in the circumstance, could be defined as the art of altering the limit of the body with respect to its customary location” By a continuation of flesh and machinery we can extend our organs to reach as far as we can imagine, and operations now considered magical can become routine” (p. 131-132).
The Neoplatonic concept of “The One” could also be argued as being found Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. As previously mentioned, Tsiolkovsky links to Western Occultism and Technocracy through his correspondence to a young, Jack Parson, the pioneering rocket scientist who was inspired by Aleister Crowley and The Occult. Parson has a crater on the dark side of the moon, which to me reflects a commonality between the two nations who first made it into space, the USSR and the United States. Back to Tsiolkovsky’s relationship to Neoplatonism, Young (2012) states, “An idea at the heart of most of his nontechnical writings is that of the “atom spirit” (atom-dukh) inherent in every particle of matter in the cosmos, recalling Fedorov’s idea that all matter as dust of the ancestors” (p. 151).
Further, later but fellow Cosmist, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky had a Neoplatonic view of Plotinus and/or a Material Monist perception in the liking of Anaximenes to reality. “Vernadsky rejects any separation of matter from spirit, but defines all present life as “living matter” and holds that all presently nonliving matter shares with all life a fundamental unity that includes the potential to change from inert to living matter and from living matter back to inert, from being presently alive to being alive formerly and once more alive in the future – a twentieth century scientific analog to Pythagorean metempsychosis” (p. 157). Further, “Vernadsky recognized that a unified view of nature, the idea of the interconnectedness of all, has for millennia been at the heart of much religious and philosophical speculation, and so at the deepest level he found no conflict between scientific and spiritual views of the world. He noted that of all the world’s religions he had studied, the one he felt closest would be the ancient Greek hylozoistic pantheism of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, which finds life to some degree present in all matter” (p. 157).
To understand the basic theories of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, to name a few, I referenced Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia, for the sake of time.
Heraclitus (610 BC-546 BC), of the Ionian School, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher taught by Thales (one of the Seven Sages), known as The Obscure and The Weeping Philosopher, believed in the unity of opposites and analyzed the nature of dialectics. He was committed to a unity of opposites and harmony in the world. He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change, or flux or becoming.
Anaximenes was of the pre-Socratic Milesian School of philosophy, included Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Anaximander was the teacher of both Anaximenes and Pythagoras (yet, Pythagoras had other teachers such as Pherecydes of Syros). Anaximenes practiced Material Monism, which is a Pre-Socratic framework which believes in the physical world and all its objects as being composed of a single element. This concept of Material Monism is related to the idea of Dialectical Monism, which affirms that everything is one but the one is represented by dual manifestations.
Yet, this would also way later inspired Dialectical Materialism of Marxism where everything is comparisons of materialist distinctions such as classes, cultures, genders, etc. Yet, dialectics based in part on the Classical thinkers listed above, way before Marx, would go to inspire the overarching Illuminus thought of Renaissance Europe which thus had an effect on early democratic theories, which then fractured into the dialectic expressions of Libertarian and Marxism. Both Marxism and Libertarian thought (cousin ideologies) are arguably based from the Jacobin schism between Girondins and the radical Montagnard’s of Robespierre, with the both being aligned to Masonry (British Lodges versus the Grand Orient Lodge of France), which itself expresses Monism via the concept of the Grand Architect and Neoplatonic ritualistic ceremony to achieve “levels”. Speaking of levels, this is basic concept in video design.
Anaximenes was the first to state that substances can change form, and he also believed that the universe was in constant motion, insinuating notions of flux or evolution. Pythagoras, is known for many things such as his ideas on mathematics, communalism, asceticism, and mystical symbology such as tetractys which would inspired numerology and cryptography, but also the concept of metempsychosis which is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. In other words, the souls in immortal and transfers to other bodies.
Platonic Realism of Plato is the philosophical position that universals or abstract objects exist objectively and outside of human intelligence. In other words, there are universals such as shapes, forms, numbers, fractals, etc., way beyond human intelligence, and in a way we’re just seeing emanations of these, and matter as we see or can understand it, aren’t the purest forms, and these purest forms are beyond reason to humans.
Later, regarding Plotinus, who’s teacher was Ammonius Saccas (of the Platonic tradition), Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent “One”, containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. His “One” “cannot be any existing thing”, nor is it merely the sum of all things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but “is prior to all existents”. Plotinus identified his “One” with the concept of ‘Good’ and the principle of ‘Beauty’.
We can see an overarching theme which is the material singularity of all things, dialectics, the merging dialectics as being closer to “The One”, but also progress, flux, transfiguration, metempsychosis, reincarnation. Thus, transhumanism has (1) a current hard science aspect inspired by Darwinist evolution; (2) an esoteric tradition; (3) political support within the Illuminus roots of Libertarians and Marxists, and (4) roots within both Analytical and Continental Philosophy. Interestingly, what happens when you mix Marxism and Libertarian? You get a corporation and they’re pretty good at research and development for products instrumental in Transhumanism. Marxism serves as the social glue of the organizational culture but also its hierarchical structure, though it may imitate diversity, this diversity is often a sign of representing the the diversity of the world it is exploiting. Libertarian is where the profit above all else comes into play, but also corporations like free-trade, i.e., globalism, as it searches for new markets and strives to reduce cost especially that of labor. The fact that Marxist and Libertarians are still arguing despite not realizing their common heritage as a unified liberty movement, is simple willful ignorance solidified by concepts such as race in post-colonial nations, e.g., libertarian movement in the USA is often post-Republican white and morally conservative, which actually defies the principle of respecting others personal liberties, and the notion of free-trade actually encourages immigration. Marxist in post-colonial nations still have an affinity for material fetishism often provided by the corporations they protest.
While reading The Russian Cosmists, relating to Hyperborea it was stated, “Along with Gumilev, another prominent unorthodox scholar with at least some direct connection to the Cosmist movement is Valery Demin, a proponent of a Russian version of the “Arktos” theory designating the Hyperborean extreme north as the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans, and perhaps all other peoples. Demin’s 1997 Moscow University doctoral dissertation was titled “Philosophical Principles of Russian Cosmism,” and he is the author of more than twenty books and one hundred shorter works, including essays in Cosmist collection, about the peoples, legends, history, and prehistory of the far north” (Young, p. 229). Regarding Valery Demin, Young (2012) states, “Basing their theories on the writings of Herodotus, Pliiny, Ptolemy, and other ancient authorities, and supported by modern research including Fedorov’s speculations on the origins of civilization in the Pamir Mountains, and Bal Gannadhar Tilak’s writings on the far norther origins of the Vedas, Demin and the Hyperboreans argue that the arctic, which had a much milder climate some 40,000 years ago, was a kind of northern Shambala, or perhaps a prototype for Plato’s Atlantis; in any case, the original homeland of a happy, healthy people who lived far beyond present lifespans”.
Relating to Horse the Band with their opening song on A Natural Death called Hyperborea the work Arktos is referenced in the book by Young (2012). Looking up Arktos, I come to Arktos Publishing, which is known as the main far-right publisher in contemporary times. Arktos Publishing is known for distributing the Alekansdr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory, but its editor was Jason Jorjani. Jorgani was a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who was fired for his association with the American Far-Right. His focus of study (his obsession) is that of Iran, which relates back to the Cosmist ideology of Sergi Fedorov, with Young (2012) stating, “The ancient Iranians, to whom Fedorov believes the Slavs are related, were continental rather than insular and peninsular in outland, land tillers rather than land seekers, and in their close relationship to the earth recognized that life is won only by constant struggle against nature. Evil, for the Zendo-Slavic peoples, is not an inescapable condition of existence, as in India, but can be overcome by concerted human effort.”
Russian Neo-Nationalism links to this esoteric Iranian link, with Young (2012) stating, “George Vendasky, for example, sees Russian pre-Christian pagan religion as a development from both Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. And Aleksandr Dugin and other current Russian neo-Eurasianists and neonationalists point to ancient Russia’s religious and cultural kinship with ancient Iran to support their calls for a new Russo-Iranian Eurasian continental alliance to counter NATO power and culture”. (p. 83).
Zoroastrianism was the religion of Iran; Jason Jorjani of the Alt-Right is a scholar of Iran via Arktos Publishing and frequently appears on New Thinking Allowed, a YouTube show, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove (the only person to get a paranormal doctorate from UC Berkley); Iran is synonymous with the word Aryan and the concept of Aryan links the Eurasian landmass from Europe, Hindu India, the Western Chinese desert and Tibet. This region is considered the Grand Chessboard as stated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, with the USA, Russia, and China vying for supremacy in the resource rich region, thus, this is why esoteric ideology often accompanies militaristic expansionism, e.g., Nazis appropriating the Swastika and sending missions to Tibet, Dugin with his Eurasianism, etc.
Jason Jorjani analyzed by The Intercept
Indo-European studies often correlates to the Alt-Right and past regimes such as the Nazis, but also Cosmist as revealed by Young (20120; Iran is within the grand vision of Aleksandr Dugin’s Eurasianist ambitions; and the band Horse the Band (ironic since the horse was likely first domesticated by peoples of the Steppes) has Russian references in songs such as Face of Bear and Hyperborea, with the later being a real “Grand Origin” movement based on Russian nationalism.
Jay Dyer is often an apologist for Russia. His conspiracy, especially that visible to the public (thus with a larger chance of hits online), often denounces The West. Dyer in my personal opinion represents the post-Republicanism of MAGA America. In essence he is part of the link of Russian psychological warfare into the United States, and he’s a symbol that links Republicans to Russia which is something Dugin wanted. Dyer similar to white supremacist, Lauren Southern, have interview Dugin and helped him get a larger following. It’s also interesting to note that Dyer nor Southern, or any other Alt-Right, or Alt-Right adjacent person within the limelight speaks about Zionism as one of the culprits. MAGA America was not only made possible by the help of Russia but more so from the assistance of Zionism in the USA, Russia, and Israel. Yes, there is a unspoken relationship between the Zionists and the Alt-Right, such as Rebel Media which employed Lauren Southern being owned by Jewish businessman, Ezra Levant.
References
Frederick L. Schuman, “Present-Day Russia. Ivy Lee,” American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 1 (Jul., 1929): 144-145. https://doi.org/10.1086/214937
Mitchell Research Group 