Terrence Howard, Kanye, B.o.B, Tyga, DeSean Jackson, Will Smith…something is going on.
I appreciate Umar standing up for black people but I disagree with him on things.
He’s another talker in a sea of people doing the same, chasing that easy money from the “algorithm”
I wonder how many women Dr. Umar Johnson sleeps with after his seminars while touring the country considering a lot of the applause in his crowds seems to come from black (maybe single, maybe not) women. Seriously. He’s selling a product that many want, and I figure many women might want the honor of saying they’re the muse to the “honorable” Dr. or “Chief” or “Emir” Umar Johnson.
For such a judgemental person he’s out of shape and should cut back on the deep fried lemon pepper wings.
Considering his misogyny and bigotry, like the “reject modernity, embrace traditionalism” “black people were better under segregation” of thinkers like Kevin Samuels, with the late Mr. Samuels having been associated with podcasts like the Fresh and Fit Podcasts (which leads to Rollo Tomassi, Andrew Tate, Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern, The Young Americans, etc.), I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnson, with his version of Pan-Africanism, is a proponent of polygamy, considering many men are doing whatever they can these days to “get their balls” back, even though I’d argue they were never taken/they’re embarrassing themselves/saying things they might not be able to take back one day. But, who knows? That’s just speculation my part…
I guess according to Umar… people who love each other and have children across “racial lines” have to get…divorced? Split time with their kids? Feel shame?
Fuck you.
Umar chirps about staying in your race and that black men should only date black women but this puts all the blame on men as if black women don’t set the criteria. Marrying someone simply for their race and no other characteristic is stupid to me but it works for some.
There’s plenty of black men for black women and if a woman can’t find a partner that’s more of a sign of her than men. There’s always a willing man more than a willing woman in my opinion. Black women are also allowed to date outside their race and this doesn’t offend me. I remember growing up and there was no love thrown my way and I can admit that. I also grew up traveling as a military brat where environments are very diverse and non-segregated.
Honestly all the anti-whitey talk is a turn off. It’s a turn off to air this supposed dirty laundry. Hate is a turn off. Ignorance is a turn off.
I admit, I’m dating a white woman but black women are beautful but my lady isn’t black. Cool. She makes me feel supported, free, and she doesn’t think she knows better when I speak about race. I can be a nerd. I don’t have to worry about appearances. I can listen to whatever music I want. She simply listens. She shows me affection and there’s no real power struggles. I support her.
No one supported me so why turn my hand away from someone I care for just because of a fat and fat mouthed bigot rapping off black stats and woke talking points I already know about?
I use to live in “Hotlanta” and went to high school there but it wasn’t my style 100%. Bougie. Fast. Heartless. Fake it to you make it. Avarice. Leased cars. Shootings. Strip clubs. Hook up culture. Some of the most spoiled black children I’ve ever seen living in mansions but making fun of poor kids or bullying white kids. Granted there was plenty of old Dixie hate around. I know the S.W.A.T, Ben Hill, Greenbrier, Fort Mac, Old National, Riverdale, the West End near Morehouse and Spelman, just as much as I know the burbs where I grew up where my school was 50% black. Church on Sunday, wings for lunch with extra bleu cheese or Publix chicken with “fixins” on the side. To be honest I miss old days of black culture before rap, before “woke”, but I’m not hating. I grew up with two parents, one from the hood of Miami near Liberty City by way of kinfolk from Alabama near Selma (my grandmother grew up near Coretta Scott King), and my other parent is from the backwoods country of Georgia.
Yet, Umar Johnson has no right to tell a black person who lives the black experience, which is an experience of many experiences, from poor to bourgeoisie, rural to urban, Northern to southern, East to West, native born American or new African immigrant, part black, extrovert, or introvert, straight or gay, tall, or short, “proper sounding” or ebonics, that they aren’t black because they don’t meet his criteria.
When will black people ever stop this? Time and time again…This purity testing? Blackness could be this all-encompassing and loving movement, happy to spread sacred wisdom of the Motherland to influence all mankind, but instead it comes off as hate against hate.
And, who care’s if he’s “eloquent” or “funny”. Hitler was eloquent. Idi Amin was eloquent. Mao was eloquent. Grand Wizard’s can be eloquent or funny.
Dr. Umar who is essentially in the Intellectual Dark Web, like quacks such as Jordan Peterson, Stefan Molyneux, Eric Weinstein, etc. He’s not building anything. He’s not engineering anything. He’s not coding for anything. He’s just another…talker. A paid, viral, algorithm chasing talker with some papermill doctorate, in our postmodern hellscape of self-help gurus with fascist underpinnings hidden under Joseph Campbell Jungian analysis or whatever.
I find it offensive that Umar as one American guy thinks he can single handedly define what Pan-Africanism is. His Pan-Africanism seems like a black man’s wet dream of Hitler grandeur with his Pan-Aryan ideas or some George Orwell 1984 dystopia. Pan-Africanism, Umar aside, despite the noble intentions and the many contributions of self-ascribed Pan-Africanist is inserting a black framework into larger discussion, seems like a form of reverse colonialism where predominately American voices are dictating the narrative, despite America, compared to black countries abroad, is privileged. Yes, systems do oppress black people, but one black American has more opportunity than many black Africans abroad.
I understand the need for we as black people to regain a sense of our roots, but often Pan-Africanism seems like erasure, oddly. It attempts to merge all black aesthetics into one on the grounds of unity, but incidentally might erase the unique nuances that makes the black experience so unique. Further it might not even include things which some might not consider “black enough”. It also might insert toxic elements from the America’s into the family oriented, rural, and pastoral cultures of many African groups. It’s not that Pan Africanism is bad, but how it has come to be, seems slightly problematic but questioning it in certain circles is grounds for something akin to “excommunication”.
And, by the way if you’re some white liberal reading this. Respectfully, all love to you, thank you for being allies to black people in time of need, but on this matter… white liberals have a tendency of listening to the loudest black voice in the room because they’re constantly searching for the blackest “diamond” in the rough.
Pan-Africanism in one way could be considered a bridgehead for the United State’s growing interests in Africa to hedge countries like China, and the US State Department (and intel community) could use “Pan-Africanists” to insert US ideas into Africa.
Adding insult to injury as Umar goes around threatening the existences of interracial couples who are already receive hatred from certain parties, he also DID NOT go to a Historically (emphasis on historically) Black College and University (as if it matters or makes you less black if you don’t go to one). Sorry, is Obama not black enough for going to an Ivy League college, a place where black people were denied for most of American history? Why are we shaming black dance teams at “white colleges” when this could be a showcase of black culture, etc.? Black people act like white folk don’t have (or, didn’t invent) remote controls. It’s not hard for others to watch Grambling vs Southern or the Celebration Bowl.
Umar went to Millersville University and got an advanced degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where osteopathic medicine is heavily criticized by traditional medicine, but it’s not that Umar cares, or many of his follower’s care, considering we live in a world of Zodiac followers and hand-readers, because he simply needed a Dr. in front of his name to give himself more credence. Good on him for achieving it, but simply because you’re a “doctor” doesn’t mean your prescription to the world’s problems are entirely accurate.
He’s even been caught lying talking about his ancestry to Frederick Douglass according to The Root (2017) article by Michael Harriot, titled: We Fact-Checked Umar Johnson’s Hotep Tantrum with Roland Martin Because Someone Had To. That should have cancelled him, but his hotep followers don’t care, his black female followers obsessed with black men with white women don’t care, no different than Trump supporters not caring for his multiple lies.
The further irony of Umar is that he’s some type of Muslim, but for whatever odd reason, black Americans never question the fact that Islam played a huge role and still does play on in the enslavement of black people. Muslims, whom I have no problem with, but relating to the history of slavery in Africa, weren’t permitted to enslave fellow Muslims, so being in Northern Africa and the Sahel, Muslims made raids into Sub-Saharan Africa or traded for slaves for goods with black African tribes or kingdoms. Tribes who didn’t want to be enslaved and wanted to make money from the gold trade routes converted to Islam as a business decision. These gold trade routes helped Timbuktu flourish, but the wealth of gold trading Muslim African Kingdoms likely tipped off the Europeans who had contact with Islam (for better or worsts).
After the Reconquista of Spain and Portugal over the Moors, the Portuguese simply sailed to areas that Muslims were familiar with, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began in the Age of Discovery, especially after Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand sent Christopher Columbus to what would be the new world.
If certain black people are so committed to “de-colonization”, then why not go further, and return to nature-worship which is more indigenous than any Abrahamic religion? However, our ancestors in the USA fought with Christianity inspiring us, so why throw away what our ancestors fought with simply because we want “consciousness”? Why can’t you be a Christian or a cultural one at least (identifies as one, but not a hardcore follower) like most Americans and be equally as intrigued with African culture? Are we better than our ancestors because they were more oppressed than us, but they didn’t “fight hard enough” according to or modern standards? I dunno…
I would argue the existence of black people is miserable because not only are you oppressed by systems out of your control that inherently criminalized or stereotype you, but you’re also policed, haggled, and harassed by your own black people where everyone walks around purity testing the authenticity of the other instead of owning their own lives. You’re a target of white supremacists and get the ire of black nationalists.
Yet, maybe I can’t be mad at Umar because black people are human and most humans care about what other’s think and try to fit in as to not bring negative attention to themselves.
II. Want to Hear a Conspiracy?
Anyways,
Want to hear a “conspiracy theory”?
Ok. Here we go…
White supremacists love black separatism.
Oh, wait, that’s not a conspiracy.
It’s as if the Founding Fathers who supported slavery but knew that the freedom of black people was inevitable, knew that one day, particularly with black people being treated so poorly, would segregate themselves, because they would hate white people, which was their plan all along.
There’s something odd going on to me, but it seems we as a people have accepted the contemporary discourse of self-determination and tribalism as a needed tenant for a more just world, yet, to me, I suspect that this tribalism, particularly in the United States, where white and black are more similar than we given credit for, is and has been pre-planned or is the expression of past segregated/nationalistic ideas still echoing into the present (for example, even the hippies of days past were still racially regressive compared today’s standards but their views or analyses on race, gender, etc., largely remains unchanged to this day).
The Great Replacement Theory” or “Kalegri Plan” is something spouted by conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and Nazis (and, Fox News) alike, but I would argue that the future is the “Great Re-Segregation”.
The Great Re-Segregation is the innocuous herding of groups into defined spaces (maybe, even “smart cities” with “themes” and within meta-verse spaces, i.e., no different than racially segregated neighborhoods) in a globalized world where groups are essentially herded like animals (without thinking of it as such), where our data is collected (genetic information included), surveillance is everywhere, and the mass media is used to stir up unrest in the public, yet, since levers of power will be largely influenced by Westernized European inspired ideas, policy, etc., but also the growing influence of the homogeneous Chinese.
A society ruled by a technocratic elite (i.e., like things already are), indifferent to progressivism or conservatism, who operate with a pragmatic and “syncretic” viewpoint and manages the species, like a Darwinist exhibition. Sure, we will still have overlap between the groups, because we as a species have always had overlap, because sharing genetics helps “keep gene pools” humble (not inner-bred), which helps the overall longevity of the species (i.e., genetic vigor), but most people will be herded (socially groomed) to segregate and the political right and political left are both responsible.
Countries are essentially “centers” overseeing commodified groups where all nations answer upward to institutions and systems effectively ran by a small group of people, i.e., a pyramid scheme. When consumer bases start to slow down in how fast they replicate while also demanding more rights as they climb the economic ladder, economic down-turns are manufactured, new bodies from around the globe are shifted into industrial ones, and process of segregation in one hand and assimilation in another takes course.
However, I don’t want you to lose faith in all institutions, and institutions in many ways are highly effective at mitigating risks and subsidizing costs to help the public; however, there’s players within these systems that seem to have an agenda, or maybe these leaders are simply operating subconsciously the way the system was designed to, i.e., an empiricist, scientific, sterile mindset of mitigating groups, creating grand narratives, managing the scarcity of resources, etc.
III. Trauma, Conspiracy Theory, etc., etc.
But on black people.
Terrance Howard is flying around the world telling people that he has disproved gravity. Kanye “Ye” West is having a psychotic episode for our sick entertainment as he is handled by white nationalists and antisemites using him as a “pet to prove that they aren’t has “unstable” as Ye. Rapper, B.o.B., attempted crowdfunding to raise money to help prove the Earth is flat. NFL Wide receiver, DeSean Jackson was called out for saying antisemitic things. Rappers such as Tyga often talks about “Jewish money”, etc., the irony is that there’s likely Jewish management working on his albums (with rappers also somehow allowed to say terms like “white bitches”). Will Smith, likely feeling emasculated by social media and his wife (or, life partner, what have you, whom had a relationship with Tupac – who holds a messianic status amongst certain black people), calling his manhood and even blackness into question, assaulted another black man on stage, in front of the whole world, at the world’s most prestigious acting award (even if the event has fallen off in popularity in recent years as far as ratings). Kyrie Irving did share a post of a “Black Hebrew Israelite” adjacent documentary (not to be confused with black people who practice Orthodox or Reformed Judaism) that has antisemitic tropes.
The comedian, Godfrey, and even the radio personality, Charlemagne the God, whom I would say have their heads on right for the most part, sometimes praise the Farrakhan’s of the Nation of Islam, which as a group espouses…Black Nazi rhetoric, even if they make certain good points analyzing power, how things work, etc. I found it interesting that everyone called out Ye for his obvious hatred, yet, there this veneration for figures like the Farrakhan’s which is often a way of proving “how down you are” in a culture were purity testing, i.e., sizing each other up seems prominent.
Black people have been taught that we cannot be racist, but only prejudiced, since we lack institutional power, yet, the irony of this idea is that A) it allows black people to not challenge our potentially bigoted ideas and to feel empowered within those beliefs because traditionally we lack power, and B) this notion seems like a form of infantilizing black people by saying our actions aren’t as comparable to that of our supposed “superiors”, and this can be problematic on multiple fronts such as empowering sociopaths who already lack the ability to take self-accountability, and yes, black people can be sociopaths as well.
Bullet point (B) in my opinion tends to be promoted more by non-black liberals or non-black Leftists, who struggle with how to help or listen for fear of offending. Building empowerment solely on the idea that we as black people don’t have power or haven’t had an impact on power systems, seems defeatists to me, i.e., a victim-based mentality, which sure has plenty of merit – considering black people were and are victims in many ways – but, this tendency also has elements of “erasure”, i.e., it erases the impacts black people have been able to insert on power systems.
We as black people always focus on depression as black people. Our movies are either hilarious comedies or the most depressing family or slavery stories. It’s one extreme to the next. It reminds me of the Greek mask where one half is smiling and the other is sad.
Many self-ascribed black nationalists don’t know every single black person who contributed something of prominence, and we often talk about social leaders and celebrities, as opposed to our engineers, scientists, doctors, etc., which interestingly is something that all groups do, further showing we’re no better or worse than anyone else.
Before I go on, I want to state that I want all humans to be inspired by blackness. I do not want black exclusivity, black segregation, black hierarchies, black gatekeeping, purity testing, etc. We are all humans and should find inspiration and commonality amongst each other because we all have different ways of seeing things, so it’s intelligent to learn and adapt to each other. The same way how when I was kid found a moral is tales like Robin Hood who fought the rich and the state for the benefit of the common man, I want a white kid feeling lonely in the boonies to be inspired by Shaka Zulu.
I’ll get to the point of my beliefs. I don’t like segregation. I was raised with a Christian inspired Abolitionism that seeks a future where are people judged by their actions solely and not for their race.
Even though I am by no way a good Christian, and many Christians would reject me as being a Christian because I’m not an extremist, I still place merit on the teachings on mercy, love, humility, etc., that Christianity teaches.
Interestingly, my political left leanings are in part inspired by Christian mercy.
I believe that racial segregation is social engineering derived from our colonial roots and is a way of dividing the public by manufacturing dialectical (diametrically opposed) tension, cultures., etc.
I find it “funny” that white nationalists support the rhetoric of black separatists, so…if logic is to persist, and black people or the political left say that the US is white supremacists (i.e., Amerikkka), then maybe black separatism was intended to be another force that keeps the races separate, so they can be “farmed” “herded” etc. I find it interesting that certain elements of Left-Wing thought, with its anti-colonial, post-colonial, and de-colonial framework calls for self-determinism, yet, white nationalists or other Right-Wing forces call for self-determination too.
I believe that those in power use both left-wing and right-wing because they have a pragmatic view of power, to maintain racial segregation, hierarchies, etc., but these people, seeing themselves as entitled to “evolve the species”, use tension to merge elements of bipolar opposites, so from the explosion of these opposite agents, you create a new paradigm, but the later repeat the cycle as new diametrically opposed binaries reveal themselves.
There’s a Darwinists and Enlightenment Period based mindset (which includes liberalism, Communism, fascism, and capitalism) that sees chaos and flux as essential in the process of evolution and these concepts are embedded into Western thought, didactic, etc. The common man, burdened by the grind of existence, where the system knows and manipulates our Maslow Hierarchy of Needs by creating scarcity (competition, unemployment, etc.), is more likely to find solace in their identity (the cheapest form of currency in my opinion), and not question how those identities are constructed to be binaries in a system of control for the benefit of a few.
For example, the Nation of Islam, which is listed as a hate group by the US State Department, Southern Poverty Law Center (who helped take down the KKK in the 1960s), and Anti-Defamation League, believes that black scientist named Yakub (insinuating Jacob from the Jewish tradition) created white people and other races with an unspecified birth-control method to be “diametrically opposed” to blackness, and to conquer black people.
Nation of Islam by the way was allegedly created by a man impersonating a black man, and he mysteriously disappeared, potentially stealing money from membership fees of poor blacks. Many poor black people fled up north, and the creator of the Nation of Islam, using the then popular trend of secret groups, like B’nai B’rith, the Klu Klux Klan, etc., focused on these new black migrants who became jaded by racism up north. Before the twentieth century, after the Civil War, the United States saw an increase in spiritualism, mesmerism (hypnosis), seances, etc., because there was a lot of death from the war and a changing of America as new immigrants came in. The N.O.I., is simply a byproduct of these events. Today, the Nation of Islam has ties to Scientology, which is further proof of the mind-control elements the N.O.I. seeks out.
Simply reading this I can pull so much. A) black people descended from slaves often make similarities to that of the ancient Jews in captivity since that was the only book that slaves were allowed to read (or, be read too), granted it was redacted by slave owners to justify slavery, B) because of Christianity being forced upon us – my people, as it was for most groups, including tribal Europeans in the Dark Ages, newly freed black people after slavery, notably those exposed to other ideas in Northern Cities, were searching for identity and some chose a religion that was perceived as polar opposite to Christian, rural, and Southern, yet still beholden to the credibility of Abrahamic faiths, and chose unorthodox Islam, and C) the figure of Yakub – a rip off of Jacob – is essentially the concept that not only chirps to anti-Jewish thought, but also the notion of the “Uncle Tom”, “sell-out”, “race traitor”, etc., meaning that the Nation of Islam inserted this character, as a “purity testing” trip-wire figure, as a means of taking the high ground to call any detractors or critics “enemies of the race”, which is a pretty low and lazy way of winning arguments.
There was also an aversion to the COVID-19 vaccines, despite black Americans in certain categories being at increased risk for contracting it due to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, etc., but also black and Latin workers often work in businesses that were prone to outbreaks such as warehouses, meat packing facilities, restaurants, etc.
Sure, my last point about COVID-19 is more understandable, because to be frank, the virus was new, people had limited information, the virus did fundamentally change how we operate (such as tele-work, social distancing, etc.), and there is a general mistrust of institutions; however, for all the other previous points stated, there is a trend of black men, notably popular black celebrities, descending into what I consider to be postmodern solipsism, relativity, and conspiracy theory.
Further, as this phenomenon of black celebrities going mad is happening, which is not necessarily new, there are public figures willingly to use this distortion or confusion of what is real or what is not real to mix it with Pan-Africanism so these public leaders to ascend to prominent positions.
Umar Johnson, for example, is a Men’s Rights Activist, likely inspired by the late yet controversial Kevin Samuels (whom like Jesse Lee Peterson, tells the story that black people were better off segregated).
IV. Fascism hiding under Postmodernism
Misinformation affects all people regardless of demographic because as a society we are now living in a hyper-reality of late-stage, globalized capitalism – full of parody, pastiche, bad actors, i.e., trolls or agents of misinformation, and recycled pop culture – where the distinction between real and fake, or simulation and simulacra is hard to discern.
We live in a world where corporate power for example is so strong, innocuous, and entrenched and it pervades all aspects of life, including the commodification of race, culture, sexuality, orientation, ideology, religion, education, healthcare, and just about…everything. Even misinformation is commodified.
I say that postmodernism is the chameleon skin that shrouds the predatory animus of capitalism.
The disorienting “skin”, i.e., postmodern culture, is simply a way of capitalism to sustain itself by a) creating relativity so we don’t know what is real or fake, and b) recycling culture, often in anachronistic fashion, because most growth or markets have already been exhausted, and most production isn’t from labor value but is from financialization, i.e., using fiat money to speculate on assets to create artificial demand where those at the top benefit the most, and manipulate business cycles to their own benefit (knowing government’s, already being privatized, will insure their loses at taxpayer expense).
As a result, we live in a world where “Continental Philosophy” encompassing fields such as metaphysics and existentialism merges with “Analytical Philosophy” encompassing fields like linguistics, game theory, logic, etc. In other words, we have a lot of intensive research and data alongside endless subjective interpretations of said data thus leading to a “collective flux”, i.e., mass solipsism, resulting in statements such as “my truth”.
Even though this democratization of information can be inspiring and helpful (e.g., checking institutional power), it does lead to a “triumph of the will” of ideas, i.e., the strongest survives, hence we may be subject to constant and ever-growing ideological conflict as ideas battle each other with no sense of moderation or consensus in sight.
But as a fellow black man, I can understand why there’s this need for truth among black people, yet, it seems to be leading black men (not saying more so than anyone else) down conspiracy rabbit holes.
The truth is, of course, black people had our diverse and often differing indigenous identities stripped and were forcibly yet partially assimilated into Western Civilization, to be labor power, but also to serve as an aesthetic binary to whiteness, where blackness became the magnet for the vileness of white supremacy.
Black Americans were designed to arouse a sense of supremacy in white settlers, many who had nothing but the value of being white.
Black people historically were denied education, reading, the ability to speak up, and our own destinies. Yet, this doesn’t mean that black people lacked aptitude, but rather we were disbarred from understanding the civilization which fell upon us, and which also devalued us. There’s a tendency to think that we’re not getting the entire story, or, there’s a paranoia of some higher deeper and nefarious truth – which is true but can be untrue depending upon on how we seek those truths.
But, how far black people have come is a true miracle.
We must be willing to check our own theses.
Simply because we feel something doesn’t mean that it is true, and the also the simplest path towards a solution is often not the truth but its tempting to take the less arduous path. For example, antisemitism is often a gross simplification of the truth, because Jews don’t run the world, even though, of course, there are powerful players that are Jewish pulling the levers of power, but to time and time again blaming Jews is intellectually lazy and ironic. If Jews really ran the world, why would they not just bulldoze anyone in their way?
White nationalist for example, preach that they are superior one second, while claiming to be victims at the same time, and most of the bad ideas that are affecting everyone – white people included – were created by white people. Karl Marx, a Jew, or a BIPOC person didn’t steal your job, but Mitt Romney working in Leveraged Buyouts did.
The temptation to jump to antisemitism, is disingenuous, and an easy scapegoat, but black people do this too, i.e., we try to find a simple explanation without understanding all the nuances, conflicts, inner diversity of various groups, etc.
When you add all of this with the fact that black men are often the most criminalized, black people in general – traditionally speaking – are often seen as having “less quality” or “less refined tastes”, etc., there is an insatiable thirst for truth to rebuild or regain our “consciousness” “regalia” “honor”, but the trauma on black people, both present and past, both anecdotal and institutional, seems to corrupt the path towards truth. This corruption, which objectively is from a good place I would argue, seems to have some black people questioning everything, even basic principles such as Terrance Howard arguing against basic arithmetic (something all humans developed and understood on their own).
History is already a confusing and rigorous endeavor, but most people fall for conspiracy theories, where I defined conspiracy theories as theories where the conclusion is already predetermined, but the researcher with a specific or ideological bias uses facts that simply serve their point, instead of actively challenging their own thesis or idea. Conspiracy theories as opposed to let’s say investigative journalism often lacks rigorous peer review, panel presentations, debates, etc.
She’s not a horrible person, but I don’t get much from her opinions and they seem highly biased, reactionary, and not reasearched that well. I think she has learning to do on issues, but she has a platform to spread her “contrarian” ideas to the masses and add to the paranoia that’s already out there. You hear the word shill a lot online, and in many ways despite her seeming “against the man”, I think she’s only libertarian as a rebuttal to progressive politics so conservatism can be sustained without verbally admitting it, yet, her Fruedian slips in her Tweets reveals a lot of where she is coming from.
Idaho, where Kim is from, is a lovely state with its own unique albeit small progressive elements, but hearing Kim Iversen talk it reminds me of a conservative person from Idaho who really didn’t grow up around a lot of diversity despite her having family who are Asian. Yet, she was indoctrinated within a largely white environment – which isn’t bad – yet, that can shape a person’s biases similarly to if it were the opposite. Put it this way, I’m sure many Right Wingers love her, despite her coming off as “progressive”. I feel she is closeted cheerleader for white supremacy without even realizing it because she equates the talks around white supremacy as being hostile towards white people but fails to get its a conversation about a system.
This take by Kim Iversen and Joe Rogan…is stupid. I’m sorry, it’s stupid. White Supremacists can’t be threats because they…wear khakis? Kim is so paranoid that white people will be “criminalized” that she’ll actually downplay people in a movement that has done violence in the USA such as terrorism.
Another goofball take by Kim. So liberals are leaving supposedly. OK. But Ryan Grim rebuts her claim by saying liberals are moving to liberal areas and her best comeback is “well, they’re not the same sort of Demcrats”. Oh really, can you elaborate more? She also doesn’t address the larger reasons behind the housing crisis such as the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy making home prices soar, innovations in online homebuying making home buying faster, etc.
I’m glad that Kim Iversen runs her mouth. Seriously. She could easily slip away as another innocuous ambiguous newscaster, yet, by her talking and her Tweeting, her true biases, thought process, and beliefs become more apparent.
See exhibits below….
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She can’t understand why people are mad that a vigilante went to a protests which resulted in two deaths? She doesn’t get the symbolic nature of the case considering it was a BLM protests but Kyle being acquitted is a form of the state scaring people to not protests etc.
Forward: Before I get into the article, I want to write a quick list of white supremacists hate crimes, since it seems Kim Iverson is skeptical that white supremacy is a threat, largely since she feels doing anything about it would violate some sort of libertarian principle. But I’m not sure if she’s a libertarian necessarily, and could simply be a free thinker, yet her segments on Rising by The Hill to me have been helping to stoke a sense of mistrust, conspiracy, and even apologetics for right wing ideology.
After I wrote this, it struck me that Kim Iversen is following in the tradition of former MTV VJ, Kennedy, and MTV contributor, Kurt Loder, who are both libertarians. Yet, Kim’s style on her show, Rising by The Hill, seems to be picking up notes from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, i.e., opining in real time, firmly anchored by a bias, rather than giving in-depth analysis of the issues she’s talking about and with nuance. Kim Iversen seems like a decent person. She’s continuously worked and built a career for herself, and that is commendable. However, I notice that she seems flat-footed when it comes to having a good pulse of what’s going on, and in many ways, I think her upbringing has left her a bit ignorant or unable to understand nuance on many issues, such as those relating to race. Her politics are all over the place, which isn’t problematic in and of itself, but discerning what Iversen believes is task. To me, she’s ultimately a “progressive Republican” with a tendency of spreading paranoid energy, and seems strongly influenced by her upbringing in Idaho, but she takes the “hip position” of being a libertarian (without stating it publicly), meaning she’s really nothing more than a Republican. As she decries the tyranny of the state, her political position ends up being nothing more than apologetics for Republican politics. She can be the most progressive conservative pundit on YouTube if she wants, but in reality, the Republican Party doesn’t care about any of her “progressive ideas”, yet she continuously muckrakes the Democratic Party – a party, which of course, can be embarrassing and counter-productive, but still the Democratic Party gives more people across the country, regardless of background, a sense of belonging (as opposed to the monolithic politics of the GOP).
White Supremacist Violence and/or Mass Shootings by White Suspect Crimes:
Payton S. Gendron (10 kills in Buffalo NY). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (168 Kills and 680 wounded). Dylan Roof (9 Kills at a church in Charleston, SC). Stephen Paddock (60 Kills and 411 wounded). Robert Crimo III (killed 7 and injured over a dozen in Highland Park, IL). Phoenix Ilkner, a College Republican called exteme by classmates (2 killed and injured others) at Florida State University. Scott Decry (8 dead, Seal Beach CA). John T. Ernest (Poway Synagogue Shooter. 1 dead. 3 injured). Ethan Nieneker, charged with two counts of capital murder and one count of first-degree felony murder (Austin TX). Vance Boetler, shot two Democrat politicians in Minnesota, with no National Mourning from the Trump Vance Administration. Eric Rudolph (1 Killed and 111 injured at the Atlanta Olympics). James Huberty (21 Kills and 19 wounded at McDonalds during San Ysidro Massacre in 1984). Devin Kelley (26 Kills and 22 wounded at the Southerland Church Shootings in TX). Robert Long (8 Kills and 1 Wounded in Atlanta). Dimitrios Pagourtzis (10 Kills and 14 wounded at Santa Fe HS in Texas who was found with Nazi and Soviet regalia). Brenton Tarrant (51 Kills and 40 injured at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand). Buford Furrow Jr. (1 Kill and 5 wounded at a LA Jewish Day Care). John King, Lawrence Brewer, Shawn Berry (1 Kill of James Byrd Jr who was decapitated by being dragged by a truck in Jasper, TX). Frazier Glenn Miller (3 Kills at a Jewish Synagogue in Kansas). Robert Bowers (11 Kills and 7 wounded at a Jewish Synagogue in Pittsburgh). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (15 Kills and 17 wounded at Columbine HS, where the sole black victim was called the N-word before being shot while calling for his mother). James Harris Jackson (1 Kill with a sword of a black homeless man collecting cans in New York City, NY). Jeremy Joseph Christian (2 Killed and 1 Wounded in Portland OR). James Alex Fields (1 Killed by car and 35 wounded in Charlottesville. Trump supporter). John Earnest (1 Killed and 3 Wounded at Poway Synagogue). Gregory Bush (2 Killed in Jefferson Town KY). Kenneth Murray “Death” Mieske, Kyle Brewster, and Steve Strasser (1 Killed by baseball bat beating. Mulugeta Seraw was beated by Neo Nazis of W.A.R. in 1988 in Portland, Oregon. Brewster was found fighting alongside Proud Boys in Oregon in 2021). Jonathan Russell Kennedy (1 Murder and two attempted murders in Huntington Beach, CA, 1994). Erik R. Anderson (1 Fatal Stabbing of Native American, George Mondragon in 1996 in Huntington Beach, CA). Samuel Woodward (1 Kill of Ben Bernstein in Lake Forest, CA).
Intro in Kim Iversen’s Questionable Analysis on Ethan Crumbley and the Patriot Front March
There’s some controversy around Kim Iversen. I don’t hate her, and I will try to put her into context. Yet, she is quite a mystery. For a public figure she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, not even a locked account that prevents public edits. Basic Google searches pulls up some information but not much about her background.
I don’t think she’s an evil person and I feel she’s fairly interested in the topics she speaks on. Yet, the controversy around Kim has been going on for a while but it really came to fruition with her “interesting” take of Oxford High School mass shooter, Ethan Crumbley. According to Kim, the reason the Sun publication showed an angelic photo of the mass shooter was because the media was trying to make it seem like all innocent white Christian males appear to be terrorists. She didn’t really miss the point as to why people were disappointed at the photo of Crumbley, in that she acknowledged that when people of color are shown in the media they are often depicted with the worst imagery, yet, Kim decided to be a contrarian for the sake of being one, by spinning as if showing an innocent photo of Crumbley was another attempt to “demonize” white males.
Honestly, it caught everyone off guard and left people scratching their heads. It is as if when progress about fair coverage relating race is happening, she felt she had to insert a contrarian opinion for the simple sake of doing so, which could be authentic, or could be for money reasons, i.e., it’s her job, but when you see her Twitter account response to criticism she doubled down on her defense of white Christian males (which makes sense considering she was raised in white society and has a white father and family members).
Traditionally, black people for example were always stigmatized via the media (something that Kim Iversen has acknowledged), e.g., just peek at George H.W. Bush’s campaign ad referring to Willie Horton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUxAMG8UqIw
Yet, even if we can all agree that racialized news coverage is bad, the fact that white supremacy is being analyzed seriously seems to have many people feeling uncomfortable, either out of fear of being unfairly associated with the movement, some who are angry that they feel black crime rates are displayed (despite has already stated there’s historical use of stats when referring to black people), or some people are living with a sense of false consciousness, in that America is largely based on white supremacy and people are naturally wired to act as if it doesn’t exists because that defies a certain set of morals mythologized within American culture such as “we are all individuals” or “all people are equal”, when in fact, many groups are not treated equally. Talking about and combating white supremacy isn’t anti-white, where certainly in the past talking about black crime was anti-black considering the U.S has an explicit anti-black history.
The backlash to speaking about white supremacy comes from fear, in which there’s an inherent fear centering around reprisal, which is ironic because if people are terrified for reprisal (which isn’t or won’t happen), what they’re admitting is that in the past they used similar tactics to make minorities live in fear. Basically, their unfounded fear of reprisal is based on them understanding the horrible past of this nation. If logic were to persist, if white supremacy is not a thing, then why are there so many people eager to point out black crime statistics? If America wasn’t built on racism, then why do so many white people fear “reverse racism”?
If we were to isolate this take by Kim on Ethan Crumbley, sure, OK, we can leave it as an “agree to disagree, but really disagree” moment. Yet, just a few days later Kim Iversen on her Rising program by The Hill released a segment titled, “Kim Iversen: Joe Rogan Calls BS on Patriot Front March, Is the Group Backed by Feds?”, published on 9 December 2021, which when accessed by me on 13 December 2021, amounted a total of 512,000+ views. In this segment it is important to notice that Kim is strategically positioned in the segment in the middle of her two co-hosts, meaning she is the focal point of the video and steering the conversation. In the video, she referenced a Joe Rogan segment, featuring Matt Taibbi (Episode 1745), in which Joe calls into question a recent march of white supremacists called Patriot March that occurred in late November 2021 in Washington, D.C. Joe claims that because they’re “in shape”, and wearing the same clothes, etc., that they look like the Feds. Joe does state jokingly that he’s an unreliable source because he’s a comedian (which is interesting because if that’s the case they why take you seriously anytime?), but still double downs on the fact that they can’t be white supremacist because…they have drums, and they have Khakis?
Kim event got the leader of Patriot Front’s age wrong by claiming he’s eighteen years old (I’m assuming she read an article from 2017) but is about 23 or 24 years older having been born in 1998 according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021). Further, Kim if she just read a little more into this or at least provided more context for her audience, she would have discovered that Patriot Front has ties to the Daily Stormer, being one of the most popular white supremacist websites. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021), “On November 3, 2017, roughly 30 members of Patriot Front marched through the University of Texas at Austin to the campus’s George Washington statue where Rousseau delivered a torchlit speech. The following day, Patriot Front members convened at Austin’s Monkeywrench Books with members of Daily Stormer and The Right Stuff meet-up groups for a flash demonstration.”
The fact that Patriot Front employs Flash Demonstrations seems to more evidence to detract from the idea that the November 2021 march was a Federal Law operation.
“The origins of Patriot Front lie in neo-Nazi organizing that began in 2015 at the message board IronMarch.org, itself an outgrowth of the community of dedicated fascists who commented at online forums such as 4chan and Stormfront, and allegedly founded by Russian nationalist Alexander Slavros. IronMarch in turn spun off the activist group AtomWaffen (German for “Atomic Bomb”) Division, whose members engaged in various far-right actions earlier this year.” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2021). Lastly, Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) stated, “After an AtomWaffen member in Florida shot and killed two other members in May 2017, telling authorities the group was planning to blow up a nuclear plant, a number of AtomWaffen participants joined ranks with Vanguard America.”
Relating to Alexandr Slavros stated within the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) article about Patriot Front, I find it interesting that Matt Taibbi being Russian (which is not a crime, and I don’t want to promote Russophobia) spoke against the Russia-Gate situation during the Trump Administration. I can understand and accept that the case was likely fraudulent, yet, it wasn’t entirely fraudulent in my opinion. My opinion, is that Russia-Gate took facts, omitted some facts, and conflated others in order to check the balance of power of Trump who did display a sense of being imbalanced himself, and also threatening to unravel US foreign policy especially with Russia whom he and others in his administration such as Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil and Michael Flynn had relations with. It was a flex of power not only to the Trump Administration who were creating their own unauthorized foreign policy, but it was a sign to leaders abroad, like Vladimir Putin, that the US State will go to about any means to protect our democracy from foreign influence.
Taibbi and other commentors such as Michael Blumenthal and Andrew Mate of The Grey Zone, rallied against Russia-Gate, but nowhere to my knowledge did they or have they admitted that Russia was providing online Far Right propaganda which influenced the Alt-Right which therefore fell under the tent camp strategy of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. The only sort of Far-Right ideology spoken about by members of the Grey Zone often revolves around the Azimov Battalion in Ukraine, who were revealed to have received US military financing against Russia. In essence, Taibbi and others will call out Eastern European fascism and Nazism when it comes from a US ally to discredit US foreign policy, yet they remain silent on Russian Far Right ideology such as the popularity of thinkers like Aleksandr Dugin who provided essential literature for many in the Alt Right (alongside the writings of thinkers like Julius Evola). Taibbi and others effectively “threw out the baby with the bathwater” as an analogy. Yet, the US government has endangered the US public with Russia-Gate because they didn’t focus hard enough on the far-right ideology actually coming into the USA and West, but rather appropriate facts for their own Machiavellian politics.
Yet, back to Iverson, after showing the Joe Rogan segment laughs before going into the history of plausible or proven examples of state-sanction terror cells. Kim also shows screenshots from Twitter by people like Mr. Reagan, an obvious right-wing pundit, who did have a YouTube channel for a long time and went so far as alleging that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was a fake politician and actress. Kim goes into the background of Patriot Front in which she explains the group was a splinter group that broke away from a group called Vanguard who were the group that set up the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA. Yet, Kim inserts some interesting commentary by stating they are “non-violent”, which might be true in theory, or at least that what’s they say to not bring poor press to their movement, yet, it seems Kim is saying they are non-violent as a way of dissuading any sort of threat by Patriot Front or influence they may have on other groups.
It’s as if Kim is undermining the potentiality of the movement because she’s coming from a libertarian mindset, e.g., she states, “the big question is, how big of a threat are these things though? Yes, do these things exists, yes. Do terrorists exist in all forms, yes. But how large of a threat? What are the American people willing to give up to root out this threat?”.
Before I criticize what Kim just said there, to be fair, the group, where leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau spoke, was relatively small (numbering around 100), and this is according to Ellie Silverman (2021) of The Washington Post, who further stated that the event was pushed by fake Twitter account. “It shows how a small troupe of fascists in uniform can … exploit the loopholes around a social media company like Twitter and absolutely make themselves look much more fearsome, look much more scary,” said Michael Edison Hayden, senior investigative reporter and spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, “and give themselves a much better shot at getting the mainstream coverage they so desperately crave.” (Silverstein, 2021).
The likelihood of what happened at the march is either A) the anonymous Twitter account as owned by a person associated with Patriot Front who sent the message to rally, employing their “flash mob tactics”, but then quickly erased their account, or to give more credence to the idea that the Federal Authorities were involved, is B) the account was set up by law enforcement, with them knowing their “flash mob tactics”, to snuff out Patriot Front to get evidence of its members and gain intelligence on the group. Even if masked, the members had to get to the Capitol somehow, so traffic cameras or other means such as triangulating cellphones can easily build a possible registry of suspects.
But, saying the group was a false flag set up by the federal government seems unlikely, if not disingenuous (my favorite Joe Rogan word he uses a lot), since the authorities would have to recruit about 100 people to march and with 100 people you get the chance that at least one person would spill the beans, or a person that any of those 100 people knew could become suspicious and possibly spill the beans, thus jeopardizing the operation. The possibility of a leak would jeopardize any sort of integrity the government has and be disastrous, culminating in Congressional hearings, firings, even possible cause for actual white supremacists to appeal their cases or convictions, etc.
Joe and Kim’s take on the event possibly being a false flag event has an underlying element of conspiracy, and what one could extrapolate from that claim is that other hate marches or even the Capitol Insurrection itself was a false flag. This therefore takes away from the severity of these situations in an attempt to sweep them under the rug as quickly as possible since they are ammunition for government or activist to continue seeking reform against topics such as white supremacy.
Kim also offers some very thin and weak arguments about the group. She claims that because they have a “polished website” and that they seem well-organized, and that the leader is allegedly only an eighteen-year-old person, somehow means this group can’t be real or be a threat. What Kim and Joe seem to be missing is that white nationalist groups aren’t unsophisticated and have adapted to not looking like traditional Skinheads with red-laced jackboots, being out of shape Good Ole Boys reading Soldier of Fortune with a cache of weapons, or Klansmen. It’s not that hard to get a professional website made if you have a lot of people and tap into someone’s talents or even pay someone do set up your site for you. Also, even if the supposed founder of the movement is young, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have funding from powerful people who have fascist sentiments, similarly to how Richard Spencer came from money, set up the National Policy Institute (ran from his mother’s $3 Million dollar home), and had powerful connections such as with Stephen Miller from the Trump Administration whom he attended Duke University with (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2017).
White Nationalists are not all junkies or meth-heads, or disenfranchised angry white youths, or men who have spent time in the prison system who are tatted up with Swastikas, but as Charlottesville proved, they can be a computer programmer, a cop, a military servicemember, a real estate agent, a college student, a bailiff, or even an adult actor, etc.
Note: The adult actor is Paul Kryscuk, whom according to Joseph Wilkenson (2020) of The New York Daily News, is a 35-year-old reported porn star, who sold multiple manufactured weapons to 21-year-old then-Marine Liam Collins, the feds said. Kryscuk allegedly mailed the illegal DIY weapons from his homes in New York and Idaho to Collins in North Carolina. Kryscuk and Collins were regulars on the online neo-Nazi forum Iron March back in 2017 before the site was shut down, according to the feds. During that time, they recruited Jordan Duncan, a 26-year-old ex-Marine and military contractor, and Justin Hermanson, a 21-year-old current U.S. Marine. According to the feds, the crew filmed a “training montage” of themselves shooting guns near Kryscuk’s home in Boise, Idaho. The video ends with all four giving the “Heil Hitler” salute under a black sun flag, a Nazi symbol. The phrase “Come home white man” then appears on screen to conclude the video. Kryscuk’s vehicle was also spotted at two different Black Lives Matter rallies in Boise, Idaho, over the summer, according to the indictment. Kryscuk and Duncan later discussed shooting the protesters, with Kryscuk calling their group a “death squad,” the feds said. Collins, who was enlisted until September, and Duncan had moved to Boise to work closer to Kryscuk before they were all arrested in late October, according to the Justice Department. (Wilkerson, 2020).
As we can see with Mr. Kryscuk, who lived in Idaho where Kim Iverson calls home, he was attached to IronMarch, similarly to Mr. Rosseasu of Patriot Front, where these groups interface with the Daily Stormer, Atomwaffen SS, and possibly even foreign Neon Nazi sources in Russia.
The analysis of Joe and Kim are both weak and lazy at best. The burden of proof to prove if this is a false flag is on them, but Kim especially didn’t do any sort of investigative research to prove if they aren’t real. Her skepticism is based on a libertarian position, mixed with historical precedent that the government has been involved with groups like this before (for example, Red Squads that infiltrated Leftist groups in the 1960s), but no actual investigative muscle to back up her opinion, despite being an employee of a multi-billion-dollar media corporations that owns hundreds of new stations across the USA.
It’s my suspicion that Joe had his take because he’s tired of Left-Wing politics particularly that centering around the topics of white privilege, wokeness, gender inclusion, gender assignment, etc.
Joe seems agitated by the Left because he’s a comedian and many in the comedian community are revolting against cancel culture. In the segment with Matt Taibbi, Rogan when talking about the Rittenhouse Case, insinuated that black people were so passionate about racial issues that they didn’t even know the victims were white, alleging he has black friends – who remain unknown – who told him they didn’t know the victims were black (I am assuming this is Charlamagne da God who was on the JRE with comedian Andrew Schulz on episode 1314).
Joe then shares a meme, showing the gas station owners of the Car Source that Rittenhouse was allegedly defending who are possibly from the Indian subcontinent, and the victims who were white. This is important because when showing the meme, Joe smugly says “I have a bunch of memes. I have a folder of my phone”, and this seems to be in reference to the backlash Rogan has received on his Instagram in which he’s posted questionable memes, such as one insinuating that the authoritarian right makes strong men and the libertarian right makes good times (silly, because conservatives don’t really care about personal freedoms including the marijuana Joe likes to smoke), but the left spectrum makes weak men and hard times. It’s easy for him to tap into the already existing mistrust of the mainstream media, take out his annoyance with the way things are, and use his platform/popularity to convince people that it’s all a hoax.
Lastly, Kim in this segment states that she was raised in Idaho which in the past was the headquarters of the Aryan Brotherhood near cities like Coeur d’Alene and Lake Hayden (now located in West Virginia) in the upper panhandle of the state. She states that people never really saw them as a threat, which is partially true, considering I grew up in the Pacific Northwest as child and later as a young adult, and remember counter-protestors at these events when showed on the local news. People would show up to protest the Aryan Brotherhood and other groups when they marched, yet, what Kim fails to admit is that this isn’t the 1980s or 1990s anymore. Back then, the United States and specifically Idaho still operated with a sense of white racial majority politics. White America could afford to not take them seriously since society then was still largely controlled by white people, e.g., most TV sitcoms featured white families (and, to even show an interracial relationship for example even in the 1990s was still taboo as to not anger the “Middle America” demographic), every President up to that point had been a white Christian male, etc.
Yet, fast forward, come after the election of the first black/bi-racial President in Barak Obama, the election of the first black and Indian American Vice President with Kamala Harris, and an evolution in society as far as acceptance of gay marriage, the inclusion of immigrants such as those from Latin America, the growing popularity of socialist or progressive politics, and the fight to include Trans people into everyday life, one could argue that white nationalists are gaining steam from this progress. The time Kim grew up in Idaho, gay marriage wasn’t even legal anywhere in the United States, the word Socialism was a political campaign killer, and BIPOC liberation politics had been largely anesthetized by the corporate white-wash appropriation of the MLK “can we all get along” iconography (despite MLK having socialist sentiments merged with Christian ideology). The change in the overall culture of America from when Kim grew up in Idaho to now is further amplified by advancements in technology where at the time Kim is referring to the fastest internet speed as dial-up, whereas now is lightspeed broadband communication across the globe, as well newer notions such as the dark web, using crypto currency, having aliases, etc. For example, the company Gab, located in Clarks Summit, PA., BitChute based out o of the United Kingdom, and Epik, located in Sammamish, WA, host white supremacists and Neo-Nazi websites, blogs, videos, torrents, etc., where Gab was associated with the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. The world Kim is nostalgically looking back on didn’t have 8chan, BitChute, Gab, Parlor, Epik, etc.
When you add the differences between the past to the present with clear examples of white terrorism, then it’s unwise at best for Kim Iversen to simply be downplaying the threat movement of white supremacy. Hell, Fox News itself with commentators like Tucker Carlson openly panders to fascists rhetoric bordering upon “blood and soil” politics, and let’s not forget, Emperor Nero in exile himself, Trump and all the toxicity he and his administration platformed (including Steve Bannon going on a tour of Europe to inspire nationalists, influence EU elections, and set up a training center in Italy to train Right Wing activists).
According to Silverman (2021), “There were more than 5,000 cases of white supremacist propaganda in 2020, a near doubling from the prior year, the ADL found. The Patriot Front accounted for more than 80 percent.”
Is Kim Iversen really “Anti-Establishment”?
Kim Iversen despite appearing as if she’s anti-establishment, is establishment in that she is employed by The Hill and represented by N.S. Bienstock, which is a major TV talent agency representing the likes of establishment news figures such as Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly. United Talent Agency acquired N.S. Bienstock on 22nd Jan 2014. Grace N.S. Bienstock is owned by the private company United Talent Agency which is one of the top 7 talent agencies in Hollywood.
When it comes to the Rising segment, The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, NASDAQ symbol NXST, which had Fiscal Year 2020 revenue streams of $4.5 billion with a Fiscal Year 2016 total equity position of $284.35 billion. Nexstar, owns TV stations across the United States who are affiliates with the major TV networks (e.g., CBS, ABC, NBC, etc.), and owns shares of Food Network.
According to OpenSource.com (2021), Nexstar Media Group has donated to both Democrats and Republican politicians such as in 2014 with $2,600.00 to Mitch McConnell; $1,000 to Adam Kinzinger in 2014; $5,000 to both Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Donald Trump in 2016; $2,500 to Joe Manchin in 2016, $5,000 to Jim Jordan, and $10,000 to Team Graham in 2020 which I assume is Lindsay Graham who went up for re-election in South Carolina, etc. So, Nexstar does lobby and donate to politicians like most corporations do.
What happened to Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti?
Before the current cast of Rising with Kim Iversen, Ryan Grim, etc., it features Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti. Krystal representing more of leftist viewpoint and Seegar representing more a conservative view, were quite popular, but were oddly fired from the segment. It is my belief that The Hill, being an extension of Nexstar (a major corporation most know nothing about, yet, that’s the nature of many corporations), were trying to overstep the traditional monopoly of the big TV corporations so they focused on YouTube in a way that touched into alternative media market yet still trying to keep the traditional news segment feel.
Yet, it seems that Krystal and Seegar were too good at their jobs, where in many cases Krystal’s left leaning commentary that rallied against corporatism likely sealed her fate. She worked for a corporation arguable with conservative politics, spoke against capitalism, became a relatively popular figure, and then she was canned. Yet, Kim Iversen was brought on with an enhanced model of focusing on click-bait and to covertly anchor the show with libertarian, i.e., right wing, i.e., capitalist, sentiments. Whether, Kim thinks she’s simply defending libertine ideals, or our notion of individualism based on classical liberal ideals like David Hume, the truth is that ideology has largely manifested itself obviously as Republican, and therefore as corporatist by nature. Essentially, sure we have our individual rights, but this notion of individual rights is also the basis for corporate personhood, which is no surprise that libertarian billionaires like the Koch Family funding right-wing grassroots movements.
Kim Iversen seems progressive enough, but underlying her psychology is what could be considered “red pilling”, i.e., opening the window to turn listeners into right wing viewers suspicious of authority and slowing attempting to chip away at the progressive gains the left has made. Her left leaning counterpart in Ryan Grim, though often inserting his counter opinion to Kim is often overshadowed, which to me insinuates that Ryan Grim is coming for a centrist position. What we’re left with is what we have if we were to look at Congress, i.e., a centrist’s democratic party lethargically talking about progressive talking points stolen from the few progressives in that party (as seen through Ryan Grim) but accompanied by an ever-growing fascist Republican party.
She’s hungry for clicks, she’s not doing this for free (she’s in it for a pay check and career), she comes from the radio world so she knows the power of sensationalism, it’s a matter of time before she’s on the Joe Rogan Podcast, she’s fairly stubborn when dealing with criticism instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow her worldview, and likely will get crowned by the Right Wing as a darling sooner than later. A part of me feels she’s just being controversial for the sake of controversy because he’s aware that it’s about the algorithm and clicks, and this likely comes from experience in radio, where such shock tactics are needed, but this is amplified by the medium of social media like YouTube.
Another contrarian in a landscape of contrarians competing for attention.
Unpacking Kim’s politics
Kim Iversen has an ambiguous politics, similarly to that of Joe Rogan (note: if interested read by article titled, Is Joe Rogan a Neoplatonist? The syncretic politics of Starship Troopers, zany ESP, magick, the Human Potential Movement, Howard Hughes, Disney and the RAND Corporation by Quinton Mitchell).
But, that’s her right. Not everyone has to fit into a proper definition, necessarily, but I don’t really like Kim’s political analysis. I think she comes off as “progressive” but her underlying worldview is libertarian, where libertarianism despite having representation on the left, e.g., socio-anarchism in the tradition of thinkers like Noam Chomsky (author, of Manufacturing Consent (1988) with Edward S. Herman). However, the truth is that libertarianism within US political history has always been an extension of conservative and Far Right politics – the prevailing ideology for most of the United States history – and in many ways libertarianism has been a politically correct way for the Far Right to appeal to mainstream audience. For example, the libertarian positions of individualism and property rights often translates to segregation (such as with State Rights used the desegregation debates), not supporting social services which might go the poor/minorities/or immigrants, and maintaining an economic ideology – capitalism, i.e., a variant of colonialism – which exploits labor so owners who traditionally are predominately white keep ownership over the means of production. The very basis of property rights in the United States were originally written for white male landowners who were originally intended as being the only ones allowed to vote considering many had a Republican model idea to government, before Democratic ideas came about to expand the franchise to common people.
Whether she admits it or not, she’s a libertarian, but I define her as a Gen X 3rd Position syncretic libertarian and contrarian wavering in postmodern fashion between New Age, Far Right, the Left, etc., while using click-bait and suspiciously stupid opinions (considering, she’s represented by one of the top talent agencies in Hollywood, even though I thought Hollywood was now called “Hollyweird” by the Qanon crowd). How can she ever allege a conspiracy or shadowy “deep state” when in fact she’s an extension of institutions of power? The conspiracy is she’s a populist libertarian talking on a corporate media network. She’s really a libertarian, leaning in the vein of libertarianism one would find in the ideology that Joe Rogan displays. With her coming from a radio background and now getting more notoriety via the internet, Kim is picking up on hot button issues like COVID-19, China vs. the United States, buzzwords like the Deep State, or any other hot topic floating in the collective consciousness, i.e., the zeitgeist.
She like Russell Brand really dug into COVID-19 skepticism. She is a supporter of Palestine which might give her points with elements of the political Left coming from a de-colonialist tradition but also, she might get points from the racist elements of the Right Wing where supporting Palestine or even radical Jihadism is because they are antisemites (for example, the case of Devon Arthurs, who is Neo Nazi associated with Atomwaffen SS, converted to Islam and his roommates were planning on blowing up a nuclear facility in Florida, per the source A.C. Thompson, 2018, ProPublica. Also, Ethan Melzer, a former private in the US Army, was charged with treasons for divulging information about his Army unit to a Satanic Neo Nazi group called Order of Nine Angels, per Kyle Rempfer, 2020, Army Times).
She has spoken against US interventionism in Latin American nations, which is good. Yet, she doesn’t believe that white supremacy isn’t as big of threat as what the media is saying, even though the media never talked about it in the past at least as being indicative of a growing social trend, so the fact the media is finally acknowledging white supremacy doesn’t mean it’s a false story but, more so we’re finally pointing the light at white supremacy. Sure, we can debate the scope of white supremacy, for example, there’s not hundreds of thousands of hate crimes occurring, yet, white supremacy can’t be measured with a scope of simply being large or small, because all it takes is a few individuals to conduct terrorist attacks, and white supremacy isn’t always with terrorism but cast with ballots at the voting booth. Whether she wants to admit it or not, Donald Trump’s MAGA is an expression of white supremacy, or what I like to call “white settler politics”.
Deconstructing the aesthetics of Kim’s political ideology
Before I go on, I must state that I don’t think everyone in list below is bad or entirely problematic, yet, some are, yet, all of the people listed below represent the “alternative space”, and this space seems influential on Kim Iversen’s ideas.
Kim could be best associated with the alternative media sphere that has Jimmy Dore (who spends a lot of his time attacking progressives for not being aggressive enough despite not realizing that a person such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is just one person in the House of Representatives who has to send legislation through a burdensome progress of drafting, committee, vote, Senate review/approval/or kick-back, and Presidential signature); Russell Brand; Graham Elwood, Joe Rogan (who has platformed and joked around with figures like Gavin McInnes – founder of the Proud Boys -, Alex Jones who shilled for Donald Trump and has ties to Roger Stone, Jordan B. Peterson [multiple times], figures of the Intellectual Dark Web, and any array of thinkers bordering upon being kooks); the Useful Idiots with Katie Halper (who really isn’t problematic at all – whom, interestingly hasn’t been invited to the Joe Rogan Experience. Kim Iversen has participated on Katie Halper’s podcast), and Matt Taibbi (a critic of Russia-Gate, yet, being Russian he seems to have bias and can’t seem to acknowledge the fact that even if Russia-Gate was fraudulent it doesn’t mean it entirely was, but even if it was entirely false, Far Right ideology from East Europe such as Russia and Ukraine, e.g., the concept of a Nazbol or monarchism, did influence the American Right Wing which therefore falls into the spectrum of MAGA politics. For example, Richard Spencer and his follower sang at Charlottesville, “You will not replace us” but also “Russia is our friend”), Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, possibly The Grey Zone with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté (critics of NATO, Russia Gate, Israel, the CIA, etc.), maybe a little Peter Schiff (an proponent of Austrian Economics spanning Fredrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard – a father of anarcho-capitalism, the Mont Perelin Society, and Ludwig Von Mises), sprinkle in some Ron Paul (an influential figure in anti-Federal Reserve politics, the Tea Party, etc. But, we can’t forget about Libertarian Presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, whom Joe Rogan admitted to voting for in 2016), and Tulsi Gabbard (who is pretty much the presidential choice for everyone listed before, yet Tulsi is an active duty military officer, who seems to be playing the same game that Kim Iversen is playing, i.e., being appealing to the Leftism developed by Bernie Sanders, the state via her ties to the Pentagon via her committee assignment to the Armed Services Committee, but also appealing to post-Tea Party libertarianism one finds on the political right).
Loose cultural markers or aesthetics that float around the world that Kim’s ideology wavers around are the following: A distrust of mainstream media (MSM) especially those associated with liberal politics such as CNN or MSNBC (where the MSM have issue of ethics and integrity, yet, to assume that mainstream media doesn’t do any good job at all is false, and for some reason conservatives don’t consider Fox News to be MSM), Naturalism, holistic medicine, anti-vaccinations (an easy way to gain followers in a heated debate on vaccines, but anti-vax culture often revolves around conspiracy theorists in the traditional of the New World Order, fears of racial replacement or de-population, the Christian Right, etc.), con-spirituality (i.e., conspiracy spirituality, the nexus between conspiracy theory culture and New Age spirituality such as zodiac, charms, UFOs, parapsychology, etc., where New Age spiritualism is a successor of older Occultic and Neoplatonic ideologies mainly from the late 19th to early 20th century such as of Alastair Crowley, Austen Osman Spare, or Madame Blavatsky, where some these older ideas did have intersection with right-wing ideologies, i.e., Nazi Occultism. For example, take the curious case of the MAGA Shaman arrested for the January 6th Insurrection. Think of it as when the Right Wing trips too much acid at Burning Man or when hippies and paleo-conservatism merge), Boomerism, Generation X MTV generation cynicism (a spoiled generation, despite being the product of the divorce generation of their Boomer Parents, from America’s Goldie Lock’s era of the 1990s after the Cold War but whom where anti-establishment largely because corporations appropriated anti-establishment fashion, e.g., punk, rap, grunge, etc.), comedians revolting against cancel culture (despite comedy often being a cover for actual oppression or further stigmatizing historically marginalized groups), a cynicism towards wokeness (e.g., insinuating that corporate America is only being inclusive now for profits as opposed to being humanist, when this argument fails because capitalism catered to white supremacy but I guess people didn’t have a problem with them?), the Manosphere (appealing to men’s rights in the face of what some consider to be the radical feminist takeover of institutions and culture, particularly at the detriment of white heteronormative males, which has spawned a subculture of dating gurus, Incels, but also women who can profit by simply saying what these men want to hear, i.e., “I’m not like other women”), T.E.R.Fs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), skepticism towards government or central authority (despite displaying a sense of disassociation because the right wing is anti-government in many ways, often because they feel they can’t benefit from government as they use to, but in other ways many support police and militarism, but they seem to fix this my favoring “paramilitary” culture, i.e., militia culture), liberalism based around the rights of the individual which naturally leads more so towards a favoring or apologetic of capitalism (despite having some socialist sympathies, but we have to remember Gen X was born and indoctrinated during the Cold War, so the recent Millennial and Zoomer generation acceptance of Leftism isn’t as strong necessarily within Gen X, i.e., it’s still a taboo ideology that defies their materialist needs, career ambitions, etc., considering many are in managerial positions now), decentralization, etc.
Her politics could be understood as a synchronistic 3rd position that merges elements of left and right. An overlap between the anti-establishment left of old mixed with elements or right-wing libertarianism, yet she seems firmly based on conservatism (her default position), which could be from the fact she was born and raised in a very conservative state, with one of the largest white populations, during the Cold War, etc. Then we must consider her personality, which could be naturally contrarian for the sake of being so (which is just one possible element of her personality, i.e., I am not saying she’s an overall bad person, i.e., we all have our quirks), and when you compound this by the fact that she is a career-woman (I’m assuming she identities with feminism) she likely has a chip on her shoulder. I am not saying that being a strong empowered career driven woman is bad at all (I support it), but when factoring in her own personality, it could translate that she essentially double-down hard on her beliefs to not relent since relenting even if she has a bad take on a subject is a form of losing. Appearing wrong or giving credit when due might be possibly hard for Kim in that she’s possibly self-conscious about what people think of her (getting into Twitter beefs), yet she doesn’t see it this way and double downing on bad takes.
It’s anti-establishment and seemingly progressive so it can appeal to actual progressive people, yet the issue with 3rd Position politics is that even though it seems natural, and many are prone to moderate politics, when you’re platforming 3rd position politics to a mass audience, typically through an opinion piece format such as what Kim Iversen does, then you do pose the risk of legitimatizing actual Far Right ideology and end up seeming likely a disingenuous centrists who cherry picks elements from whatever side of the spectrum they feel comfortable with.
Generation X
All these people, expect for Jimmy Dore, could be grouped into the Generation X demographic, i.e., millennials before millennials, but unlike millennials, they’re more influenced by the precursor Baby Boomer generation, and weren’t as emersed with technology as Millennials. For Generation X, technology was there but it was still speculative, such as William Gibson Cyberpunk, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix, etc., but the physical world wasn’t as technologically integrated as it was with Millennials and Zoomers. In other words, Gen X being older now, isn’t as nuanced around technology despite using technology, and their worldview whether they admit it or not is influenced by a nostalgia of how things were. In other words, sometimes Gen X misses the mark because they’re not as technologically emersed as what they think they are. For example, understanding certain memes might go over the heads of some Gen Xers because they’re older and not as culturally engulfed in the levels and sublevels of contemporary pop culture.
What I notice with people like Joe Rogan for example, is that he sounds old or lacks a sense of gravitas where the world is now. His podcast ends up simply being “Joe talking to Joe”, where it’s a platform for him sharing his opinions more so than really challenging his own opinions or even that of others. As a Millennial myself who is about to be 35 years old, I’m getting “up there”, yet Generation X is already “up there” yet Generation X was one the most prolific “youth generations”, probably on par with teenagers right after World War II, i.e., they were the MTV Reality TV (Real World, Road Rules) generation meaning that they defy age in a traditional sense. They’re older but are frozen in youth. Kim Iversen’s news coverage could be defined as when Tool listeners, with all of its Jungian psychology and appeals to the hippie moniker of “It’s all a lie man!” from the 1990’s enter institutions of power but end up not being as progressive as what they think they actually are.
Generation X was defined by postmodernism. Postmodernism being a philosophical worldview that was a reactionary movement to the objective truth claims (grand narratives or meta-truths) proposed by modernism or structuralism, e.g., the postmodernist rejecting the claim that science will save us all. To the postmodernist there is no grand truth but various truths meaning reality is ultimately subjective since most alleged truths are often biased by those who state such truths, or there are limitations in what humans can understand. The goal of presenting this subjective worldview was to undermine oppression that postmodernist blamed on the objective truth claims of objective truths. Postmodernism resulted in a merging of high-art with low-art (pop culture), a general sense of nihilism considering no truth could be objectively determined, but overall postmodernism, outside of being a philosophical worldview, is also a condition resulting from when capitalism reaches its zenith, i.e., late-stage capitalism.
If postmodernism could be easily defined, I refer to it as modern people existentially living as individuals within late-stage capitalism, in which the landscape is dominated by corporations who recycle culture but also use clever ways of shrouding power, conspiracy theories are endemic since people can’t discern between factual information or misinformation, people communicate through pop culture references, and no one really knows who is running the show system systems are highly complex and interwoven often creating problems by proxy of being so complicated.
Generation X was defined by this. They were the byproducts of Reaganomic consumerism, consumption, TV, the declining crime rate from the 80s into the 90s, and the general sense of global peace and American exceptionalism after the Cold War ended. The United States was the sole hegemonic force in the world, exploiting global supply chains built off cheap labor from America’s now competitor in China, and corporatism dictated culture. Yet, Gen Xers despite living in this relatively peaceful time, have a tendency for punk rebelliousness, where punk itself emerging in the 1970s, could be considered a form of postmodern music in that it revolts against order and plays with nihilism, yet, it became just another commodified movement of capitalism considering there is no real escaping capitalism.
I know all this because I was born in 1987, so I am an older Millennials, i.e., I’m Gen X’s baby brother who grew up with same tropes and cultural influences despite not being old enough to adequately partake, yet my childhood was still dictated by a sense of corporate culture (Beavis and Butthead, Daria, Liquid TV, The Simpsons), aggressive campaign marketing to children, etc. If you ever read the book White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo, my generation of Millennials are the baby charter of Wildmer, i.e., a baby born into a nineteen-eighties household absorbing CNN doomsday footage.
Idaho and Bio.
Boise is like a smaller Denver, yet development has grown rapidly largely since people form California migrated to the state for affordability reasons, similarly to how Californians flocked to states like Arizona. What do you notice about both states? They are traditionally very conservative such as Arizona being known not only for suntans, retirement communities, a love of John Wayne aesthetics, strict watering laws, and memories of late 1990s commercials featuring Arizona State University Girls Gone Wild footage, but also Barry Goldwater and John McCain neoconservatism. Not only do you have a local conservatism, but you have a conservative influx by newcomers mainly from places like California who fear taxes, dislike big cities, support the police, but want the convenience of nice homes, shopping centers with everyone favorite Cheesecake Factory or P.F. Chang’s, perfect suburban high schools, etc. It’s as if Orange County in the heyday of its John Birch Society paleoconservative phase landed in Arizona and Idaho. Cities and towns centering around Boise (located in the region called the Treasure Valley) include Nampa, Eagle, Meridian, Star, Emmett, Caldwell, etc.
I am familiar with Idaho. I lived in the Pacific Northwest in Washington State, and with my father being military, I stayed at Mountain Home Air Force Base for a short period of time since my family moved all over the place, but later in life, my first serious relationship in college was with a woman from a small town just outside Boise. When I traveled to Idaho to meet my girlfriend’s family and attend her cousin’s wedding (as the only black person there which wasn’t a problem), Boise was growing, but it was still relevantly new as far as being a “happening city”. In other words, Zillow or Realtor.com hadn’t gotten its hands on Boise quite yet. This was right around the time of Boise State’s iconic win versus Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl with the famous Statue of Liberty play.
She was born and raised in Idaho on March 28, 1980 (Alchetron.com, 2021). She attended Capital High School in Boise, ID (Metrobiography.com, 2021), and is a trained jazz drummer (Alchetron.com, 2021). It probably wasn’t until she got to college at The University of California – Davis (majoring in philosophy), where she first got her true sense of diversity and be able to break free, with UC-Davis being accessible to both metropolitan Sacramento and San Francisco. Yet, even California itself isn’t the most diverse state overall. Sure, in metropolitan regions, yes, but the State of California itself – same as everywhere else in the United States – does have a history or racism and segregation which culminated in segregated and often poorer/people-of-color communities. We often hail the West Coast as progressive but in many ways the West Coast is symbolic of the Dream of Manifest Destiny, i.e., white Zionism, where Western states did purposely segregate people of color, e.g., Portland, Oregon with Sunshine Laws (curfews), The Oregon Territory barring African Americans from settling after the Civil War in which Confederate settlers moved into the territory, the eradication of Native Tribes, discrimination against Hispanics even if they were native to California before the American take-over, etc.
In other words, whatever diversity Kim was exposed to when was attending college in late-1990s, it likely wasn’t the best depiction of diversity and even if there was diversity this was in a time when people didn’t analyze structural racism or oppression as much. This was the time of the MTV era 1990s where it seemed the “world was perfect” under corporatism and corporate America.
Kim being from Idaho which for most of its existence has been a predominately white state, expect for pockets of Tribal Lands such as those of the Nez Perce tribe, a significant Hispanic population due to the state’s reliance on agriculture, and others such as small demographic of Asian Americans, yet, very few African Americans traditional (outside of college towns like Boise, i.e., Boise State University). There’s also a very large Mormon population, arguably with the second largest Mormon population outside of Utah. There is also a significant Basque community in Idaho who hail from Basque Country in Northern Spain and Southern France.
According to Alchetron.com (2021), Kim worked for radio stations such as in California such as KDVS, KDND, and KWOD, but also co-hosted a show in Indiana called WAZY Wake-Up Crew with Big Jake and Kim Iversen on WAZY-FM. Yet, she received her own show in Austin, TX, Your Time with Kim Iversen on KAMX, and she has co-hosted the radio show Loveline. She has done stints as news reporter for News 12 Networks and as a VJ for Concert TV. Kim as a diverse portfolio of experiences which is good for her and her career.
Kim’s Ethnicity, Biracialism in White Spaces, and understanding orientalism (the sexualization and mystification of Asian Women) in relation to white supremacy
Kim is of Vietnamese and Danish-American descent. Her Vietnamese lineage likely comes from the Vietnam War Era where many Vietnamese refugees were resettled throughout the United States such as California, Louisiana, etc. So, likely she has anti-Communist beliefs because her family fled Communist Vietnam. I am not sure if her father is a war veteran but many veterans (just like Earl Wood’s, i.e., Tiger Woods dad) took Vietnamese wives. She was also raised in the Cold War in a conservative state meaning she likely grew up in a home that favored Ronald Reagan. Being in a home led by a white father, which isn’t bad, it’s easy to see that Kim grew up “white”. Sure, she was a minority in many ways and likely had connections to her Asian roots, but the environment around her was overwhelmingly white conservative, so she was indoctrinated with that belief structure of Republicanism.
Being partially Asian likely wasn’t a problem since Asian Americans were often treated as “model minorities” and it’s not uncommon for white men to marry Asian women. There’s nothing wrong with interracial marriage or love, yet, in relation to white supremacy, Asian woman are often victims of orientalism, i.e., Asian women are casted or lusted over as being mysterious exotics with submissive and consoling characteristics, and often not burdened by white supremacy as other groups of color traditionally.
Since Asian Americans are often seen to be treated with model minority status (which is a controversial term as stated by Audrea Lin (2018) in which she stated the model-minority myth obscures the vast differences among Asian-Americans), the truth is that Asian woman are often sexualized through orientalism. One could assume that the Far Right does tolerate Asian Americans despite when they need to activate white supremacy against Asian Americans to remind who is “on top of the totem pole”. It might sound off record, but for example with the Alt-Right online communities there is a love of anime for example, where women are often depicted with hyper-sexualized and white-washed features.
Audrea Lin (2018) of The New York Times wrote about white supremacy’s fetish for Asian women in an article titled, The Alt Right’s Asian Fetish. The article discusses how Andrew Anglin (founder of the Daily Stormer), Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, John Derbyshire, and Kyle Chapman all dated, had sexual relations, and/or married Asian women. Lin (2018) even references Charleston AME Church shooter, Dylan Roof, who stated that Asians “could be great allies of the white race,”. Lin (2018) also references Adolf Hitler, who stated, ““I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves,” Adolf Hitler said in 1945. “They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own.””. Lastly, Lin (2018) interestingly points out that the Alt-Right fetish for Asian woman could be in part due to white women more so adopting feminism.
We must remember that Japan as an Axis power and to this day is a homogenous nation that has visible nationalist parties, paramilitary groups, etc., and this fact of course resonates with the Alt Right. For example, when it comes to showcasing history in the West, history is often dominated by Greco-Roman or Dark Ages European culture, yet, there is a soft spot for the aesthetics of Asian cultures such as that of the Japanese (for example, Samurai), yet, the cultures of let’s say Africa before slavery is pretty much non-existent within mainstream historical documentaries, etc.
Like many minority children living in predominately white spaces or multi-racial children, especially before society started talking about Critical Race Theory, often have a sense of identity crisis. Children of color are often the sole representatives of what other’s think their group is or how they see them on TV. For example, being a black child in suburbia but people assume that child to be like black people they see on TV, i.e., hip, tough, athletic, not academic, etc. Kim likely experienced this to a varying degree. For example, particularly as a female in a white environment and in a nation where beauty standards for the longest were catered to a European aesthetic of beauty, she likely had some issues with identity. Assuming she is cisgender heteronormative, most of the boys she likely liked growing up where obviously white. In other words, she was fitting into a culture that was predominantly white and emulated that culture’s view on the world (remembering this was the 1980s and 1990s – nowhere near as progressive as what we have now), becoming an apologist or defender of that culture, despite always being slightly on “the outside” of it.
If she adopted the worldview, politics, beauty standards, gender roles, and possibly even racial biases or racial lack of awareness (cultural sensitivity) of the predominate group, she was able to fit in and be just like any other kid, yet, I’m sure she’s experienced at least a little racism or ignorance while growing up as a kid.
The purpose
of this paper is to A) show the important Defense Industry angle to Katie Hill’s
district. The district she represented is a major player regarding the Military
Complex and this district was recently held by an ardent Trump supporter. Katie
winning that seat probably gave the Trump Administration (and, possibly even
the neoliberal side of the DNC that supports war) and the Defense Lobby a
person who wouldn’t simply vote for pro-military legislation for the sake of
doing so, even though Katie Hill has voted for pro-military and veteran legislation.
Katie Hill also voted against sending military arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE
which brings to light Jared Kushner, the supposed Peace Plan, Donald Trump, and
even Jamal Khashoggi, and B) to show the socio-political climate of the
Antelope Valley in her district which has a history of drugs, white nationalist
gangs, and is very sensitive to Recessions, meaning there’s a higher risk of
right-wing reactionary politics.
With Katie
Hill out of office, Johnson (2019) of The Hill, stated, “California Gov. Gavin
Newsom (D) on Friday set the date for the special election to decide who will
replace former Rep. Katie Hill (D), who announced her resignation last month amid
allegations she had affairs with campaign and congressional staffers. The
special election for the 25th Congressional District seat will take
place March 3, and if no candidate wins the majority, then a run-off will be
held on May 12, the governor’s office said.”
Regarding the
upcoming election, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks is running, well,
possibly. According to Martin (2019), “The race to replace Katie Hill in
California’s 25th District keeps getting wilder, Cenk Uygur, a
former MSNBC personality and found of The Young Turks, a progressive
activism website, has announced his intent to run for the seat.” Further,
Martin (2019) states, “And while he’s clearly fired up, there might a couple of
things standing in his way. For one, he doesn’t live in or have any apparent
connection to the 25th. Uygur resides in West L.A. and, when asked
about the issue, responded, “People are obsessed with geography over the
issues.”” The article by Martin (2019) also discusses Cenk’s past comments
regarding women, which will certainly hound him, either with the right-wing calling
hypocrisy for the left being wishy-washy on the issue when its politically
convenient, or, he’ll meet stiff resistance from women voters, or, it won’t be
an issue because he said these comments so long ago and his platform has stood
up for women and advocated for progressive causes.
Regardless, the 25th District is also important for the Military and Aerospace Industry with Lockheed Martin having a facility in Palmdale, AeroVironment in Simi Valley, etc. The overall Southern California area has Edwards AFB; Vandenberg AFB under the Space Command and thus NASA; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ; March Air Force Base (defunct); Los Angeles Air Force Base which houses the Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile System Center; Fort MacArthur in the San Pedro district of LA which still falls under LA AFB; Camp Pendleton; the Pomona Colleges and Caltech as far as research is concerned; The Aerospace Corporation, and all the major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, BAE Systems, ViaSat, Airbus, etc.
Katie had
a hard job to balance. She had to actively support a vital economic engine for
her region, despite the New Left constantly attacking the Military Complex,
yet, she had to vote in a way that morally aligned that support for the
military with progressive ideology. Essentially, you can be a leftist or
liberal and support the military, despite the perception in the media that the
left hates the military and the right-wing is military obsessed. There is a
vast spectrum regarding this matter. There’s plenty of Democrats or Leftist in
the United States military and I can attest to that because I served myself
(honorable discharge), but I also grew up in the US Army during my father’s twenty-three-year
Army career.
Further,
you have to realize the “Military Complex” isn’t purely mega-corporations hated
by the political-left but it’s a web or ecosystem comprising an array of
federally recognized small businesses spanning categories such as Woman-Owned
Small Businesses, Service Disabled Veteran Small businesses, Minority-owned
etc. It involves politicians who want to help their districts get jobs, NAICS
codes, General Service Administration schedules, federal research grants with
universities, etc. Federal contracting is universe of its own. Besides the
major prime-contractors such as Boeing, you have smaller suppliers provide
everything from specialty parts, composite moldings, scientific testing, clothing,
food services, cleaning services, IT help, and the furnishing of commercial-off-the-shelf
items such as office supplies, computers, and construction services to facilities.
So, the
military-complex employs more people than the general public understands and it’s
not all some boogeyman evil Robocop corporation. A small mom and pop shop in
Anaheim might win an award to deliver printers to some A.B.C.X.Y.G office in a government
facility, or a furniture store in a predominately minority HUB zone (opportunity
zone) might win an award to furnish a command posts’ briefing room or install
lights at your local US Postal Office. Contracting, even that not relating to
the military (all government agencies require contracting, i.e., people who
spend money and issue service contracts), and the Military Complex essentially beefs
up the American economy with direct suppliers in supply-chains or
contract-by-contract awards to small-to-medium size businesses all over the country
who are praying they get a phone call for a chance to submit proposals for a
federal, state, or local project.
She
unseated Steve Knight who is an 18 year LAPD veteran who oversaw a program
called CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) which one could
contrast to Katie’s participation in PATH (People Assisting the Homeless),
served in the US Army, was born in Palmdale and attended Palmdale High School,
and while in the House he served on the Committee on Armed Services
(Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Lanced Forces and Subcommittee on Sea-power
and Projection Forces); Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (Subcommittee
on Energy as Vice Chair, Subcommittee on Space, and Subcommittee on
Contracting and Workforce as Chair,
and Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight, and Regulations).
According
to infographic developed by Bycotte & Silver (2019) Knight voted for Trump’s
policies 99% of the time and was the seventh most partisan Trump supporter in
the House.
Katie Hill
despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum, did serve on the
Committee on Armed Services (as well as the same subcommittees as Knight) and
on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The difference is that
Katie served on the Committee on Oversight and Reform as Vice Chair and served under
its subcommittees of Economic and Consumer Policy and the United States House
Oversight Subcommittee on Environment. The Oversight committee is the committee
looking into Trump. As far as Caucus Membership she was on the LGBT Equality Caucus,
Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the New Democrat Coalition.
Knight sat
on the House Aerospace Caucus, Climate Solutions Caucus, Alzheimer Disease Task
Force, Republican Law Enforcement Task Force, Congressional Lupus Caucus,
Congressional Military Family Caucus, NASA Caucus, Congressional Unmanned Systems
Caucus, etc. Despite both Katie and Steve being in different parties, their
Congressional committee and caucus memberships seem aligned in many ways with
the district they represent, but then differ in certain ways based on their party
affiliation.
Both Hill
and Knight represent areas that value veterans, relies on the defense &
aerospace industry or contracting for employment, but there’s an array of
social issues from being tough on crime and California’s affordable housing
crisis. The district is effectively a swing district with an arguably diverse
population where voters seem issue-based despite standard-political affiliations.
People will vote outside of party lines if a certain issue is relevant. Do you
want to lose your job if federal money dries up or a recession happens? Or, do
you want to lose your house if housing prices keep soaring? These are two major
issues effecting Katie Hill’s area.
With the
military-complex being important in this case and Knight losing to Hill…is it
possible that the revenge porn leak was partially inspired to get her out of
power and to help Knight comeback so the GOP could have a die-hard Pro-Trump
voter to vote for defense spending bills? Not to mention, hedging the House which
is responsible for drafting articles of impeachment. There’s no proof of that a
foreign power hacked her husband or he was conned based on anger in leaking her
photos, but Katie probably angered a lot of people by voting against arms sales
to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It’s not even out of the question to think that
the pro-Israel lobby could’ve thrown her under the bus, considering Jared Kushner
and Israel are allies to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So, with Katie Hill voting
in favor to combat issues such as antisemitism, she could’ve been betrayed for
going against a larger geopolitical game with Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Let’s look
at a few of Katie Hill’s votes regarding the military and security while in the
House and I got her voting record from Vote Smart (2019) [Note: See Reference
Section]:
She voted
(Yes) to the National Defense Authorization Act on 7/12/2019
She voted (Yes)
to Never Forget the Heroes: Permanent Authorization of the September 11th
Victim Compensation Fund Act on 7/12/2019
She voted (Yes)
to the NATO Support Act of 01/22/2019
Yet, she
may have angered certain lobbies by voting (Yes) to
S J Res
38 – A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed
export to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of certain defense
articles and services on 7/17/2019, and,
S J Res 37 – A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of
the proposed export to the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of France of certain
defense articles and services on 7/17/2019.
So, think
about that…she did her job in supporting US patriots and veterans but also
supported NATO, yet, she went against Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These countries
are very close to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. So, Katie unseated Knight and
she voted against two of Donald Trump’s key allies as the chaotic unfolding situation
in the Middle East gets worst. Remember the controversy with Trump and the murder
to Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia? Or, Erik Prince of Blackwater being called
out for having a meeting in the Seychelles with representatives from the UAE on
behalf of Trump? Remember Jared Kushner’s supposed Middle East Peace Plan. If
this is the case, there’s a higher level of political intrigue, but also
betrayal, considering Katie also voted from pro-Israel, Anti-Defamation League,
and AIPAC backed legislation denouncing Antisemitism.
Further,
keeping this voting record in mind, considering she voted against an arms-sales
to Trump and Kushner allies, Saudi Arabia and UAE, she was also on the “Trump
Watchdog” committee, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In
a paper from her hometown of Santa Clarita, Painter (2019), stated, “Hill sits
on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which, according to
the representative, has launched multiple investigations into the president’s
administration on issues that were not fully examined in the Mueller report,
including White House security clearance policies, family separations at the
southern border and alleged sharing of nuclear information with Saudi
Arabia.”
“There’s
so many issues that we’ve got to continue our investigations on and it’s just
not related to the Mueller report,” she said (Painter, 2019).
Katie Hill
even on her Twitter account on February 19, 2019 at 9:13 AM and mentioned the
previous of possible national security by the Trump Administration with Saudi
Arabia.
Let’s get
to the point.
I don’t
really want to focus on her personal relationship with her husband because it’s
not my business. I really don’t know what to make of it or say about her
personal life. My focus in this paper is A) The Military Complex Angle and B)
An understanding of her mysterious “tattoo”, which doesn’t necessarily
implicate Kate Hill with white supremacy, since I’ve heard or read no
explanation from her, but the possibility that her tattoo is an Iron Cross, sheds
light on the economic and racial situation of the Antelope Valley.
On a
positive note, in a brilliant campaign, Katie was able to modify the sense of
patriotism people in her district expect and which she believes in, but with
progressive ideology more in alignment with what we see in an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She won.
Katie Hill
represented the 25th District of California which encompasses the cities/towns/Census-Designed
places of Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Palmdale, Lancaster, and the northern
part of the San Fernando Valley. The median income is $76,866 according to a
basic Google Search, which looks good on paper, but for California standards
that probably puts you in the dead-middle middle-class, so I am assuming this area
is mostly exurban, not suburban in the traditional sense, of working commuter
families. She was a part of the Blue Wave, predominately female revolution of
newly elected politicians in the wake of events such as Donald Trump’s
election, the MeToo movement, Stormy Daniel’s circus events, and the controversial
Ford vs. Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings.
But let’s get this next question out of the way before is Katie Hill a Nazi?
I would say… No. Why? She voted for House Resolution
489 – Condemning President Trump’s Racist Comments Directed at Members of
Congress on 7/16/2019.
She voted for House
Resolution 312 – Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act. She voted H.R 1585 – Violence
Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 on 4/4/2019. She voted for House Resolution
183 – Condemning Antisemitism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the
values and aspirations that define the people of the United States and
condemning anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities as hateful
expressions of intolerance that are contrary to the values and aspirations of
the United States on 03/07/2019. She voted for H.Res.124 – Expressing opposition to
banning service in the Armed Forces by openly transgender individuals.
And…She voted (Yes) to House Resolution 41 –
Rejecting White Nationalism and White Supremacy – National Key Vote on 1/15/2019.
After her
nude photos were leaked in what has been called revenge porn, which I do believe,
it was revealed she had an Iron Cross tattoo. To my knowledge Katie Hill hasn’t
explained the tattoo. From my view it could be some sort of Nazi symbol, which
will be discussed down below, or it could be something akin to “Hot Topic,
angry Avril Lavigne teenage girl” tattoo of Independent Trucks company. Yet,
her current voting record refutes any claim that she is a Nazi.
Katie grew
up in Santa Clarita, which was ranked by Money Magazine in 2006 as the 18th
best place to live on their list out of 100 cities/towns. The area also voted
for Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite traditionally being Republican, and in
2016, 6.14% voted for Third Party candidates, which reflects a historical
trend, since in 1992, 29.18% voted Third Party and in 1993, 13.24% voted Third Party.
So the area is very prone to swings it seems, though traditionally its
conservative, and I would assume the third-party vote comes a sense of populist
ideology such as that of Ross Perot in 1992, or libertarian based politics
considering the areas rancher and rural heritage. Santa Clarita is an
agglomeration of four former rural towns, with Saugus being one of them, and this
is where Katie went to high school. She also comes from an education family,
where here grandfather was a Political Science professor at UCLA, her grandmother
was educated as an Anthropologist, and her father was a police-lieutenant with
a degree from Katie’s alma mater of Cal-State Northridge with Organizational
System Management (Herstein, 2018).
However, the
issue is that the nearby Antelope Valley and areas like Lancaster were known
for having Neo-Nazi elements going back way before the 2000s but was increased after
2000 during the Financial Crisis where many California cities faced bankruptcy
while the State Government was in economic disarray. The desert towns outside
of Los Angeles that were predominately working-class white based on California’s
often unspoken history of racist laws and segregation, where blue collar white communities
despite being die-hard Republicans and unrepentant followers of the LAPD (such
as during the Rodney King Trials and acquittal of white officers) had biker
gangs, Neo Nazis, meth labs, etc.
Finnegan
(1997) of The New Yorker, published an article titled: The Unwanted:
In a Los Angeles suburb where schools and parents faltered, the American Dream
was replaced by drugs, neo-Nazism, and despair. The Hardest hit were Mindy
Turner and her friends. The piece details the life of Mindy Turner of the Antelope
Valley, who lived in a working-class blue-collar home in Lancaster, but by the
ninth grade was a Nazi, meth addicted, sexually active (with much older men),
and became a “skin bitch” (per the article) of the Nazi Low Rider gang of
Lancaster. Eventually, with the help of her mother she was able to breakaway,
but the Nazi group wasn’t letting her go. “The N.L.R.s were into tattoos: swastikas,
skulls, Iron Crosses, lighting bolts – through lightening bolts were permitted
to be worn only by those who had killed a black person” (Finnegan, 1997, para.
16)
“In 1980,
the combined population of Lancaster and Palmdale, the Valley’s two main
cities, was sixty thousand. By 1994, their combined population was two hundred
and twenty-two thousand, and today estimates of the Valley’s total population
range as high as four hundred thousand. This hyper-expansion was first sparked
by housing prices in Los Angeles and its nearer suburbs, which soared during
the nineteen-eighties, and by white flight from an increasingly Latino and
Asian city. The Antelope Valley had been considered too remote for commuters,
but the completion of the Antelope Freeway, snaking over the San Gabriel
Mountains, helped change that.” (para. 2). Finnegan (1997), also stated, “Then,
in the 1990s, the Southern California economy, staggered by cutbacks in the
aerospace and defense industries, fell into a deep recession” (para. 3); “In
the Antelope Valley, abandoned housing tracts began to dot the subdivided
desert. Boarded-up shopping centers and bankrupt school districts followed,
along with a wave of personal financial disasters so severe that USA Today
dubbed Palmdale “the foreclosure capital of California”” (para. 3); “For anyone
who has spent time there lately, this is a scary thought – if only because
growing up these days in the Antelope Valley seems to be, for many kids, a
pretty harrowing, dispiriting affairs” (para. 5); “…the Valley’s supersonic
growth has led to overcrowded, often chaotic schools; according to the high-school
district’s superintendent, nearly forty-five percent of the entering students do
not finish their class”; “The teen pregnancy rate is alarmingly high” (para.
5), and “A sheriff’s-department spokesman in Lancaster estimated that fully half
the Valley’s children are unsupervised after school. He also said that there
are now, not coincidentally, more than two hundred youth gangs represented in
the Valley” (para. 5).
“There was
a street war raging in Lancaster between white-supremacist skinhead gang known
as the Nazi Low Riders and a rival gang of antiracist skinheads who called themselves
the Sharps” (Finnegan, 1997, para. 6).
These
economic factors compounded by the nativism mixed with demographic changes from
immigration, and the general racist backlash against President Obama in
right-wing circles, made working class areas prime targets for increases in hate
groups. Many African Americans for example facing gentrification found themselves
migrating to more affordable areas such as the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley,
just to find themselves targeted by hate crimes in the 1980s and 1990s.
Maybe,
Katie before she became her current progressive self, was hanging out with the
wrong crowd (or, the wrong boyfriend), or maybe the tattoo is ironic, or as I
said previously, something more aligned to extreme sports like skateboarding
with companies like Independent Trucks. Yet, let’s say that Kate was hanging
out with the wrong crowds being a rebellious young woman getting tattoos, etc.
If a
former Nazi past is true, maybe this a type of American History X situation? A
person who was born into a privileged-class of people, despite the reality that
many are not privileged within this class, and as she grew into herself, she
refuted any association with her former beliefs/friends and became an advocate for
the LGBTQ community, minorities, veterans, Indigenous First Peoples – Native Americans,
and immigrants. Maybe, I don’t know.
When
dealing with politics you’re not sure where the daggers are coming from and
despite Katie being young, she held a quite powerful and important district.
Katie Hill
is from my generation. We’re the same age, 32, who grew up in the Bart Simpson,
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, TGIF, MTV (when they played music videos), summer
Hollywood blockbuster nineteen-nineties, but came of age during the War on Terrorism
where Myspace was actually popular, had rap music blasting, saw hyper-sexualized
pop stars and pornography, listened to death growl screamo or emo or metalcore
or hardcore, the list goes on.
All of
this before the election of Barack Obama, yet after his election we then
experienced our free twenties as underemployed college-graduates in the service-sector
in a county which A) felt like we were making progress as far as rights and
culture was very engaging and experimental, but B) we saw the birth of a type
of “postmodern”, super-intense, conspiracy-based conservatism under the likes
of people such as Alex Jones, whom in another light, sounds like the voice from
Hotel Rwanda urging Hutus to pick up machetes.
Like
Katie, myself and people of our generation sort of grew up on the lightspeed trajectory
of post-MLK racial harmony, unfettered globalist capitalism, mega media conglomerates
creating culture, but also experienced growing pains in a nation still
organized around what is effectively our post-colonial racial-caste system, which
still annoyingly dictates the masses for politics, marketing, sales,
advertising, box-office ticket sales, etc.
We’re a
generation of postmodern kids where cultures merged into new aesthetics. We’re baby
Gen X who are now adults entering managerial and leadership positions, tired
and hyperaware of the latent defects within the psychology of the United States
despite being the target of “Millennial Studies” in click-bait online articles
for Baby Boomers who don’t retire since they have no pensions and fear losing
all their money in their 401ks if the economy tanks.
Katie is
white. I am black. Who cares? Yet, like many minorities who climbed up the
economic ladder from the 1970s to now, and found ourselves in suburbia, my
racial engagement with different races was A) not a problem at all 95% of the
time – I considered my white friends as family, but B) I still witnessed the
sociological vestiges of white supremacy such as a caricature view to
minorities with minorities being the boogeyman on the late night news, feeling
in between a rock and a hard place as I juggled whether to ace the SAT or to
emulate black celebrities on TV or in rap videos, and witnessing the eye-balls
follow people who were in interracial relationships where women were not only
slut-shamed but also the target of passive racism.
However,
being in my thirties, I actually see the younger generations as way more
progressive, open-minded, and post-racial while still being sensitive to racial
issues and conversations (more willing to listen than to deflect claims of
racism or sexism), more so, than mine and Katie’s generation. When I look at younger
generations, I’m shocked how much more “woke” they are compared to mine and we’re
not that far away from each other in age.
However,
with the rise of Donald Trump and the Alt-Right ecosystem of outlets such as
YouTube or BitChute (though it’s painful, we must support free speech), it
seems that there might be a regression in progress, with young, curious, and existential
minds going down the rabbit hole to find purpose but then find themselves in
the far-right, first with Jordan B. Petersen maybe via the Joe Rogan Podcast
which features members of the Intellectual Dark Web such as Sam Harris brining
back notions of racial IQ levels, then Stefan Molyneaux or Lauren Southern,
then they’re gone.
So, a part
of me, being the black kid in school, had a sense of possible understanding to
who Katie is and where she comes from. Instead of judging at first glance, I
try to visualize a young, insecure, confused girl in a toxic environment such
as public school who may have projected hate as a form of defense, but she was
really…scared. All teens are a little scared. People can change and when you’re
young and stupid, you’re insecure and afraid. She may be the casualty of an unspoken
racially segregated high school inflicted with juvenile tribalism, where white
teenagers who are educated to feel responsible for the past, get fed up, and
violently reject it. They may actually accept the fact that white supremacy
exists, but then they may have bad encounters with people of different races
who effectively bully them. For all I know, Katie could be a suburban white
girl, from a racially segregated education system with plenty of socio-economic
problems, who grew up conservative, and by proxy gravitated towards white
cliques who felt they needed to group up like we’re living in a prison system,
and was exposed to Nazi-like ideas. Maybe they came to her and that was all she
had being a young, scared, body conscious female in an American public school
which can at times resemble a Corrections Facility.
It is not
uncommon to see a type of “white rights” response by white people who see
minorities getting rights and some minorities might target white people or
whites might be “clowned on”. It’s complicated. I’ve witnessed it myself as a
black man, while I’ve also experienced racism myself. We live in a country
where racism is real in both overt and covert ways, yet, white people carry the
target of being the symbol of hate, so anyone not white might agree on one
thing…white people are the racist. This is probably frustrating for many white youths
and the decent into racism isn’t simply from home or friends, but from a sense
of frustration of not being judged on actions but being judged on their race. The
truth about America is that anyone can be the victim of racism, so to get over
racism we must acknowledge that and defend people. If black kids are bullying a
white kid, then its up to black kids to stand up for that white kid. If white
kids are saying racist things to a black kid, then it is up to white kids to
stand up for that black kid. You can insert any race you want, since racism isn’t
restricted to the standard notions of black and white.
This is a country
where even people of color are being encouraged to enter racial-safe spaces, to
perceive most of their reality with race at the center, and to essentially be
paranoid while they constantly scan for microaggressions. To relate this to
Katie being caught with a bong, this racial climate on college campuses reminds
me of the class-scene from the film How High with Redman and Method Man,
where a white professor eggs on his students of color to attack him, while the
professor belittles the black students who simply…go to class. However, we live
in a nation where we have a President who dog-whistles to actual racists. To
me, both sides are in complete LaLa land.
Even for
an older Millennial like myself this intersectional racial climate was
confusing, not because I don’t see value in this framework, but rather it often
denies all the positive racial harmony that many Americans grew up with. It
seems very clinical and intellectual over humanist and connecting. A lazy
solution. Race relations in the United States went slightly in reverse because
of the traditional political-right with its covert John Birch Society antics
posited on denialism and willful ignorance, but also the political-left which
has employed a coalition-revolt campaign which tends to treat groups as militaristic
battalions, commanded by unelected political pundits – tip toe, stay in line, everyone
in your unit act the same…
However,
identity-politics and intersectionality from the standpoint of analysis is a
powerful and important tool but the issue is the scope of how much we use it.
The collateral damage that can happen. It could be said that if we were to
objectively stand back and analyze both sides, is that we’d probably see we’re
living in a perverted rigged system of color-based dialectics. A confusing sociological
experiment bent on tension under the auspices of conservatism or liberalism. Yet,
there is a true, harsh, reality to these issues, so we must acknowledge them,
but we probably should rethink about how we’re combating racism so it’s
inclusive to those who feel historically linked to its reason for existing. The
Democrats have an election to win in 2020, don’t they?
Katie Hill’s
mysterious “Iron Cross” tattoo insinuates a world which has lost context, forgiveness
if guilty, and understanding. Wasn’t Malcom X nothing more than a petty
criminal before he became the activist we remember today? I’m sure many gangbangers
and Aryan Brotherhood followers have left the corrections system and refuted
their former lives, despite having scars such as tattoos, which painfully
reminds them of who they were, and in certain cases, I would assume people have
these tattoos as a reminder of who they aren’t anymore (considering tattoo laser
removal surgery is expensive). There’s not a fixed rubric or lexicon when it
comes to context. It’s a delicate process of fact-finding, gauging recent
behaviors, etc. Further, peoples’ reactions to Katie Hill represents a type of subconscious
vengeance where people are happy Katie got canned because it kicked down the “high
horse” morality of feminism (as far as perception goes) and the political left.
Because of these social factors, the actual context and hard facts of the Hill
case have been buried under perception, political vengeance, etc.
Yet, Katie
is a progressive, leftist, pro-feminist, pro-LGBTQ(IA) female, who lived with a
woman of color while in Congress (Lauren Underwood), actively supported
Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and The Squad, stood up for immigrants, voted against
White Nationalism and Antisemitism, and became a vocal anti-Trump advocate.
What we can learn from all of this, if let’s say the Nazi accusations are true,
is that people…can change.
Finnegan,
W. (2019, February 28). THE UNWANTED: In a Los Angeles suburb where schools and
parents faltered, the American Dream was replaced by drugs, neo-Nazism, and
despair. The hardest hit were Mindy Turner and her friends. Retrieved November
24, 2019, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/12/01/the-unwanted.
American soldiers fighting for colonial conquest in the Philippines in the early twentieth century from the Library of Congress. This paper goes into detail about how the Las Vegas Shooter’s Filipino connection unveiled – either directly or coincidentally – a real past and present involving black market and government sanctioned gun-trafficking; paramilitary operations regarding the Global War on Terrorism; sex trafficking, and psychological operations.
Abstract: The Las Vegas Shooter had wired money to The Philippines before he conducted one of the largest, if not the largest, mass shooting in modern US history. However, the legacy media isn’t doing as good of a job that it can when it comes to linking dots relating to the island nation of The Philippines. The Philippines has a brutal history of colonization but is also an important regional hub for American defense policy. The island is also notorious for human trafficking and has played a major role in American “Hearts and Minds” psychological operations with revelations regarding the MKUltra Project.
The Las Vegas Shooting unveiled a real-world struggle where the Philippines is in the cross-hairs. FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, DOJ regarding guns; DOD regarding counter-terrorism; a Jihadist cell in which the now deceased founder was technically on the side of the US during the Soviet-Afghan War; Chabad missionaries and increased US and Israeli cooperation.
Keywords: Philippines, Noahide, Terrorism, Abu Sayyaf, Psy Ops, Psychological Operations, US Special Forces, Las Vegas, Israel, Guns, USA, ATF, FBI, Homeland Security, Trump, etc.
Table of Contents:
Trump and The Philippines
A History of Gun Smuggling
The Las Vegas shooter’s Filipino connection
Chabad, Noahide, and The Philippines (also, a History of Bondage)
Islamic Terrorism, US Counter-terrorism
Psy-Ops, Vampires, and the works of OSS CIA Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale
The Black Dahlia & The Philippines
MK-Ultra in The Philippines
The Curious Case of Candy Jones, The FBI and Hypnosis?
1. Trump and The Philippines: After the events of the Las Vegas Shooting which occurred on October 1, 2017 it did not seem as if the mainstream media or even the alternative media were digging into the Filipino connection regarding the massacre. The simple fact that Marilou Danley is from the Philippines and was involved in events surrounding the shooting, seems that more questions regarding the Philippines would have arisen. Shortly after the Las Vegas shooting, President Donald Trump visited The Philippines to discuss security and drug enforcement with President Rodrigo Duterte, whom, according to Reuters (2017), “Duterte is known for his often profanity-laden tirades against the United States, chiding Washington for treating the Philippines “like a dog,” despite the two nations’ longstanding relationship. The Philippines’ leader announced his “separation” from the United States during a visit to Beijing a year ago, declaring he had realigned with China as the two agreed to resolve their South China Sea dispute through talks.”
However, in an official press release from The White House regarding Trump and Philippines and his trip to the island nation, it was stated the vast scope of US taxpayer money going to the Philippines.
There was $85 million in counterterrorism-related equipment, training, and support to the armed forces of the Philippines; President Trump announced an additional $14.3 million for the community of Marawi City to address the humanitarian needs of 360,000 displaced persons; the two leaders noted that the United States has provided approximately $65 million to enhance the Philippines’ maritime security capabilities; President Trump announced $2 million to support drug demand reduction programs in the Philippines, and President Duterte thanked President Trump for the delivery of more than $1 billion in United States foreign assistance to the Philippines over the past eight years (White House.gov, 2017).
Further, there’s gambling and casino links between the Vegas and the Philippines. Donald Trump has a Trump Tower Manila. Trump is also very popular in the Philippines.
Higgeibottom (2019) states, “As once-close allies show dismay at Trump’s presidency, the Philippines has held true. In fact, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll of 25 nations… Donald Trump is trusted by 78% of Filipinos – a higher proportion than any other country. That means Filipinos trust the U.S. president more than Americans do. Only 55 percent of Americans this year said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust and confidence in their leaders, according to Gallup. And that’s at a 10-year high. Meanwhile, 69 percent of Israelis, 28 percent of Britons and only 9 percent of French people had confidence in the U.S. president, according to Pew’s report.”
Yet, Higginbottom (2019) does state, “Trump doesn’t get all the diplomatic credit here. Filipinos have long looked on their former colonizers favorably. Richard Heydarian, author of The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy, sees it as a sort of “”collective amnesia” from a bloody past with Americans.” Lastly, Higginbottom (2019) states, “But after the U.S. foiled the revolution, it governed with a relatively soft hand compared to the Spanish. The U.S. left — in relative terms, of course — possibly the most “benign imperial legacy in Asia,” explains Heydarian. Educational opportunities increased with American-funded programs. And the country was protected militarily from others in the region. “The U.S. is broadly seen as a knight in shining armor” to Filipinos, Heydarian says.”
I believe the Las Vegas shooting inadvertently unveiled a larger “deep-state” struggle regarding the importance of the Philippines to the USA where legal and illegal gun sales are common. Where the state and black-markets (including the illegal sex industry and gambling) meet in overt and covert operations to balance power in The Philippines. The fact that Jihadist terror is a real thing on the island nation means the USA has justification for a presence there in a kind of “you need us” mentality, but this justification is part of a larger DOD strategy regarding China. Controlling and co-opting black markets is vital for the intelligence, and there’s a chance that the Las Vegas shooter, or at least his girlfriend were somehow connected, even if they were low hanging fruit.
2. A History of Gun Smuggling: There’s an extensive history regarding arms trafficking between the United States and the Philippines, but there’s evidence of arms dealing revolving around Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada, thus bringing the Las Vegas Shooting into mind.
In a New York Times archive piece from the Cold War, Gerth (1985) states, “George A. Rodriguez, an official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who until recently headed its program to combat international trafficking in arms, said: ”The recent trend is an increase in international arms trafficking to the Philippines. It involves Filipinos in the United States, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Las Vegas and Chicago.””
The article by Gerth (1985) details how the Philippines at that time saw a rise in private armies under President Ferdinand E. Marcos and mentioned an American official who stated he wanted to remain unidentified. The unnamed American official stated the private armies were being trained in special warfare tactics. The article by Gerth (1985) also references James A. Kelly, who served under Ronald Reagan’s anti-communism presidency as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (East Asia and Pacific.).
Kelly was concerned of the role that private armies would play in the country’s stability having feared coups and turf wars. George A. Rodriguez, in the article by Gerth (1985), stated, “”Some of it is random, but several of the investigations involve money people. One of the guys getting guns is a leading industrialist in the Philippines who is very close to Marcos.”
“Philippine military officers are
also reported to be implicated. A Justice Department official said
American-based Filipinos were involved in smuggling M-16’s to Philippine
military officials.” (Gerth, 1985).
“A Filipino businessman in
California said he had been asked by a member of the President’s palace guard
to send guns to Manila hidden in a golf bag. The businessman, who asked not to
be identified, also said a Philippine military official had used a private
detective agency in the United States as a front to buy guns legitimately.”
(Gerth, 1985).
In 2011 or 2012, the Justice Department issued a press release, 12-027, under its Criminal Division Component, stating that three Filipino nationals were arrested for trafficking assault rifles into the United States.
According to the United States Justice Department (2014), “Three Philippine nationals have been arrested on charges of violating the Arms Export Control Act, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. of the Central District of California and Steven M. Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.” According to the complaint, the case is part of an FBI investigation of transnational Asian organized crime groups involved in the illicit trafficking of firearms (United States Justice Department, 2014). Lastly, the United States Justice Department (2014), stated, “– items specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted or modified for military application – into the United States from the Republic of the Philippines, including 12 fully automatic Bushmaster M-4 .223 caliber rifles, a .50 caliber sniper rifle, an M14 7.62mm assault rifle, a single-shot grenade launcher, a rocket propelled grenade (RPG-7) launcher, a mortar launcher, an AK-47 rifle and ballistic vests. None of the defendants had a license to import these items into the United States.”The three men in the DOJ bust were Sergio Santiago de Leon Syjuco, aka “Yogi,” 25, of Muntinlupa City, Philippines; Cesar Paolo Inciong Ubaldo, aka “Arvi,” 26, of Paranaque City, Philippines; and Arjyl Revereza, 25, of Manila, Philippines.”
However, a counter accusation was made against the FBI involving possible unethical tactics involved in the bust.
According to Pimentel (2013), “Defense attorneys had feverishly asked the judge to dismiss the case arguing the undercover FBI agent engaged in “outrageous government misconduct” and entrapped their client. Federal Deputy Public Investigator Richard Goff traveled to Manila and found: “On several occasions, the undercover agent invited [the defendants] to …brothels in and around Manila in order to reward them for their efforts and encourage them to continue looking for weapons. [The undercover agent] ordered prostitutes and paid for himself and others to have sex with the prostitutes.” Court documents show the place the deals were being conducted in was at brothel houses Air Force One and Area 51, which was later raided by the Philippine government where they found underage prostitutes. The FBI agent had sought $15,000 in reimbursement related to the investigation.”
The quote by Pimentel (2013) is backed by Sullivan (2018), who stated, “Several FBI employees have been recalled from cities across Asia in recent months while the Justice Department’s inspector general examines allegations related to parties and interactions with prostitutes, The Wall Street Journal reports.” Further, Sullivan (2018) states, “Although the vast majority of the FBI’s approximately 36,000 employees are based in the United States, the bureau maintains a large presence of special agents and support staff in embassies across the world who work with foreign law enforcement agencies on matters of mutual interest. These permanently assigned international personnel are augmented by FBI global response teams based in the United States, which frequently deploy overseas to conduct investigations.”
To keep the FBI in mind involving the previous quotes surrounding guns and prostitution, let us add gambling to the mix to show the scope of the FBI in the Philippines.
Reuters (2013) stated, “The FBI sent agents to Manila as part of a probe into millions of dollars of payments made by Universal Entertainment Corp to a government consultant in relation to the firm’s casino project on Manila Bay, the Philippine gaming regulator said.” Further, regarding this FBI probe into Manila based gambling operations which also included the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Reuters (2013), stated, “Reuters was the first to report in mid-November on the money transfers totaling $40 million to Rodolfo Soriano, an aide of Naguiat’s predecessor Efraim Genuino. The payments were made in 2010 when Universal was lobbying for concessions from the government for its casino project.
Back to guns…
In a separate case, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (2016) stated, “A Long Beach woman and her son have been named in federal grand jury indictments that charge them with illegally shipping hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of firearms parts and ammunition to their native Philippines – munitions that were concealed in shipments they falsely claimed to be household goods.” The press release by ICE details how Marlou Mendoza, 60, and Mark Louis Mendoza, 30, were given indictments by a grand jury and Ms. Mendoza was arrested at LAX airport, but her son in 2016 remained at large. Eerily similar to the money wire-transfer in the Las Vegas shooting case between the United States and The Philippines, it was stated, “The money laundering charge against Mark Mendoza alleges that during the first six months of 2011, he transferred more than $650,000 in proceeds generated by the illegal ammunition exports from an account in the Philippines to a money remitter in Los Angeles.” (Immigrant & Customs Enforcement, 2016).
“Mark Mendoza, who was the president of a “tools and equipments” company known as Last Resort Armaments, ordered more than $100,000 worth of ammunition and firearms accessories, much of which was delivered to his parent’s Long Beach residence over a six-month period in 2011. The items Mark Mendoza ordered included parts for M-16 and AR-15-type rifles, which are listed as defense articles on the United States Munitions List. Pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act, items on the Munitions List may not be shipped to the Philippines without an export license issued by the Department of State.” (Immigration & Customs Enforcement, 2016).
Relating to the task-force that pursued the Mendoza’s, according to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (2016), “A Joint probe by HSI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that began in 2011 after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers uncovered a cache of ammunition and firearms parts in an outbound crate being shipped by Marlou Mendoza that had falsely been declared to be household effects. In July 2011, CBP and the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) intercepted and seized three separate shipments from Last Resort Armaments containing approximately 180,000 rounds of .22-caliber ammunition, and more than three dozen receivers for AR-15 and M-16 assault rifles. In November 2012, specials agents with HSI and ATF special agents executed a search warrant at a location associated with Last Resort Armaments, seizing more than 120,000 rounds of .22-caliber ammunition, along with AR-15 trigger assemblies, magazines, sights and rifle barrels.”
The United States Embassy in the Philippines in a press release detailed the gun-trafficking arrests of Elizabeth Grino and Ronie Velasco within the Philippines through coordinated efforts by the Philippine National Police, US Homeland Security, ICE, and the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm bureau (ATF). According to the press release, “Grino and Velasco were caught during a buy bust operation in Makati City on June 8, 2017 after a number of illegal sales of the Glock fully automatic firearms selector switches (SEARS) to buyers in the United States. They were arrested for violation of the Philippine Republic Act (RA) 10591, Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act, a no-bail offense. PNP, ATF, and HSI Manila are working together to have charges filed against the two, who are representing Royal City Tactical, for the manufacturing and shipping of the Glock fully automatic SEARS to the U.S.” (U.S. Embassy Manila, 2017).
So, think about all of this… These ICE, FBI, and DOJ cases happened before the shooting, with the US Embassy releasing information on US-Filipino gun sales in 2017, a few months before the shooting – a shooting where a Filipino woman that dated Stephen Paddock had received a large sum of money via international wire-transfer from a man with a large cache of guns.
3. The Las Vegas Shooter’s Filipino Connection: It’s important to know that Marilou Danley has Australian citizenship but was living in the United States. She still resides in the US in Los Angeles in a home worth over $2.3 million dollars (Radar Online, 2019). Elton-Pym (2017) stated that she was reportedly in the Philippines at the time of the attack, but some of her personal ID may have been used to book Mr. Paddock’s Vegas hotel room.
All we really know about Stephen Paddock is he was a gambler, maybe with a drinking problem, lost a slip-and-fall lawsuit against the Cosmopolitan casino, had a pilot’s license, had a computer with no hard-drive in his hotel room, had a few professional jobs but made millions in real-estate, had a father with a criminal history, was a germophobic, and according to Ms. Dailey in an article by Mitchell (2018) became interested in guns (which she stated was a hobby), became distant where the relationship lost intimacy, but Paddock was constantly looking out of windows.
““Danley, according to police, said during their early September stay at the Mandalay Bay Paddock was “behaving strangely” and looking out the windows toward the Las Vegas Village venue where the three-day concert would be held later in the month. “The two were staying in room 60-235 and she observed Paddock constantly looking out the windows of the room which overlooked the Las Vegas Village venue,” the report states. “Paddock would move from window to window looking at the site from different angles.”” (Mitchell, 2018)
However, something more disturbing probably led Mr. Paddock’s paranoia. According to Mitchell (2018), “Computer forensic analysis of Paddock’s Dell laptop “revealed numerous internet searches for open air venues” and “several hundred images of child pornography”. On top of this disturbing revelation, lastly, Mitchell (2018) stated that Investigators also found Paddock “was indebted to no one and in fact paid all his gambling debts off prior to the shooting.”
According to Jason Silverstein (2018) of Newsweek, “The documents reveal Danley told investigators they would likely find her fingerprints on Paddock’s ammo once they looked into it — which turned out to be true. She also said she sometimes helped with loading the magazines for some of his weapons. It was not clear from the documents why exactly Danley was handling the weapons or if she did anything else with them.”
“The records also show Paddock purchased most of his guns and ammo online in the 12 months leading up to the attack, and that he used anonymous communication tools and destroyed some of his digital footprints. Investigators found three cell phones in Paddock’s Mandalay Bay hotel suite. One was locked, and an FBI agent wrote that this phone was likely the one that would contain “any information related to a potential conspiracy.” Authorities previously revealed that they also found a laptop with no hard drive in the room.” (Silverstein, 2018).
According to Winter, Dienst, Williams & Blankstein (2017), “Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock wired $100,000 to an account in his live-in girlfriend’s home country, the Philippines, in the week before he unleashed the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, according to multiple senior law enforcement officials.”
“Danley, 62, who had traveled to Hong Kong on Sept. 25, could fill in some of the blanks after returning to the United States on Wednesday, the officials said. She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport escorted by FBI agents late Tuesday; multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said.” (Winter, Dienst, Williams, & Blankstein, 2017).
“There were 16 Currency Transaction Reports, or CTRs, filed for Paddock in recent weeks. The Treasury Department and the IRS mandate that casinos file the reports for “each transaction in currency involving cash-in and cash-out of more than $10,000 in a gaming day.” (Winter, Dienst, Williams, & Blankstein, 2017).
The piece by Winter et al. (2017), however, paints Steve Paddock, the shooter, as a high-stakes gambler, who claimed to have been injured in a slip at a Casino and he sued the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Paddock was also Seven Stars Tier Status holder which is a premier package for high-roller gamblers. Yet, after the slip incident, and with Paddock losing his lawsuit, it seems something happened, and then he did the shooting.
However, there’s still a lot of shade around this, but the fact that his girlfriend was in the Philippines, doesn’t implicate her to some larger international conspiracy, but rather sheds light on the Philippines as is, which is actually the focal point of issues such as Terrorism, guns sales, human trafficking, and having a long history of US Special Operations which involves Psychological Warfare campaigns.
According to Herbets (2018) on October 1, 2018 a judge had ordered the release of 300 pages of FBI documents relating to the shooting and it shed light on the probable cause the FBI had which was Paddock’s emails.
“According to one of many requests for access into shooter Stephen Paddock’s email account, investigators found that he may have been emailing himself cryptic messages.” (Herbert, 2018).
Paddock was having email correspondence with email addresses, centralpark1@live.com and centralpark4804@gmail.com. Yet, Herbets (2018) states, “The FBI states Paddock was once the manager of an apartment complex in Reno called Central Park.Girlfriend”
Regarding Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands and a major Trump donors, there’s not much of a connection to The Las Vegas Shooter, despite Adelson owning hotels in Vegas which are the Venetian and Sands. The only suspicious thing one could draw is the fact that security in Las Vegas could be argued as equivalent to its own surveillance state, there’s a culture of “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas”, and Adelson is a die-hard Zionist and many have said that his ideas are directly influencing Trump’s Middle East Policy such as the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Further, due to Sheldon Adelson as a Zionist who backs Trump links him to the Chabad community of Judaism, which has large missionaries in The Philippines.
Two of the hotels related to Paddock are Caesar’s and the Cosmopolitan.
Caesars Entertainment Corporations is partially owned Apollo Management Group, TPG Capital, Paulson & Co, but also by Carl Icahn. Icahn served as Donald Trump’s special economic adviser on financial regulation. Reuters (2016) said, “Trump and Icahn share some history in the casino business. Icahn this year helped shutter the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resorts in Atlantic City, two years after buying it out of bankruptcy. The casino was once a prized part of Trump’s empire.”.
The Cosmopolitan Hotel is owned by Blackstone Group and under CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman, which is one of the, if not the largest hedge fund in the world with over 500 Billion in Assets Under Management (AUM). Arnsdorf, Dawsey, Goldmacher, & Debenedetti (2017) of Politico stated, “Billionaire investor Steve Schwarzman’s newfound status as a trusted outside adviser for President Donald Trump has created blurred lines in which the Blackstone CEO is offering guidance on policies that could boost the fortunes of his company and his personal wealth.”
As far as the Mandalay Resort where Paddock conducted the shooting, according to an SEC (2017) report, it is owned by MGM Resorts International which is owned 16.1% by Tracinda, a private equity group, and T. Rowe & Price 13.9%.
So, Steve Paddock, the Las Vegas Shooter, has connections to two property held by advisers with links to Donald Trump, although the shooting itself happened to at a hotel owned by MGM Resorts which is partially owned by Tracinda and T. Rowe & Price.
4. Chabad, Noahides, & The Philippines: The Philippines is home to about 20,000 Noahide religious followers. Noahide is essentially a “gentile” worship of Israel and practicing of Judaism without Gentiles allowed to be Jewish. The Chabad Lubavitch community, which Jared Kushner has ties to, has a section on their webpage dedicated to The Philippines (https://chabad.ph/noahides/). According to a Haaretz op-ed, tilted, The Messianic Zionist Religion Whose Believers Worship Judaism (But Can’t Practice It), by Ofri Ilany on 9/12,2018. “Cooperation between Israel and the Philippines is constantly growing, and this week reached new heights with the visit to Israel of the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte. The Philippines are a key arena of Chabad activity, and one of the primary venues where the new religion is being disseminated. There are four Chabad centers in the country, and in addition to assisting Jews, they support 10 Noahide houses of prayer. The Hasidic emissaries view the Philippines community as the model for Noahide communities in other countries.” (Ilany, 2018).
“Last month, Nova Religio, a journal devoted to emergent and alternative religions, published an article by Rachel Z. Feldman, assistant professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College, in Pennsylvania, titled “The Children of Noah: Has Messianic Zionism Created a New World Religion?” In the summer of 2017, Feldman visited Noahide communities on the Filipino island of Cebu, which are supervised by Chabad rabbis. Like most Noahides around the world, the members of the Cebu community came mostly from Protestant churches but had abandoned their belief in the New Testament.” (Ilany, 2018).
“One of the groups Feldman observed lives in a mountainous, “financially challenged” rural region. In the past its members were cave dwellers who belonged to a Sabbath-observing church called Sacred Name Believers. Their leader is the Noahide preacher Emmanuel Villegas. For years he visited poor communities on various islands and converted them to the Children of Noah. He called on them to renounce Christianity and to burn their holy books – though not before cutting out the Tetragrammaton (God’s Hebrew name) from the texts.” (Ilany, 2018).
The relationship of the Philippines to Israel is deeper considering many Filipino workers do domestic work in Israel. Yet, many Filipino workers risk deportation in a nationalistic Zionist Israel. Eloise Blondiau (2016) of American Magazine, published an article titled, Filipino workers spend decades caring for Israeli families. Now they risk deportation for having children. Filipino workers spend decades caring for Israeli families. Now they risk deportation for having children (Blondiau, 2016). According to Blondiau (2016), “Despite these deep connections to Israeli society, Ms. Franco’s future in the officially Jewish state is at risk, even despite becoming a mother to a child born in Israel. This child, Yael, now 12, identifies as Israeli. Yael says she feels more Israeli than Filipino. Hebrew is her first language, and she has never left Israel.”
So where is Ms. France and her child supposed to go? Back to a county riddled with Islamic terrorism and on the radar of Jewish Noahide missionaries but also the United States military. Religious people in the Philippines being indoctrinated by Chabad ideology, despite the fact many Filipinos are engaged in international domestic work, but Filipinos are being rejected in Israel.
“The Israeli government has deported undocumented babies and young children for decades. The mothers could choose either to leave with their children—in which case they would lose their visas—or send the children home to live with relatives. Until recently, in something of a compromise, authorities allowed undocumented children who were enrolled in school to stay in the country. After a plan to deport school-going children in 2008 was later abandoned in response to a public outcry; for example, 800 children of migrant workers were granted amnesty.” (Blondiau, 2016)
“Last year, however, immigration officials began to detain Filipino mothers and ask them to sign documents that said they would be deported with their children by the end of this summer.” (Blondiau, 2016)
Considering the Chabad community is Orthodox and practices the Talmud, but is also operating in a nation such as The Philippines which was a large human and sex trafficking issue, on top of the fact that many Filipinos (who identify as religious) are sent abroad to due domestic duties in Israel (despite their treatment regarding deportation), it brings to light the practice of Child Marriage in regards to the abuse of minors.
Far away from The Philippines in the US state of New Jersey, a bill was sent to the State Legislature to block the practice of child marriage, or any marriage under the age of eighteen years old. According to JTA and Ben Sales (2018), “Jewish activists are driving both sides of the debate. The main group lobbying for the bill is Unchained at Last, a nonprofit that opposes underage marriage. The group’s founder, Fraidy Reiss, who grew up Haredi, says child marriage, primarily of girls to older men, is an abusive practice that can damage children emotionally and physically.”
Further, the JTA and Sales (2018), stated, “Agudath Israel of America, the national Haredi organization, says it supports the bill but that its provisions are too strict. Citing child marriages that take place in observant Jewish communities, it wants to see an exemption made for older teenagers who want to wed.”
The article in Haaretz however doesn’t deal with more age extreme cases and dealt mostly with marriages of 15-17. The articles also stated, “If the bill passes, it would make New Jersey only the second state in the country to ban child marriage. Delaware banned the practice earlier this year.” (JTA & Sales, 2018). This means underage marriage laws are more common in the US than we realize. A sort of “Blue Law” leftover from older times were such marriages were more common.
A History of Colonialism and Bondage.
The Philippines was first owned by the Spanish Empire under brutal control but was later acquired by the Americans in the American victory in the Spanish American war.
According to History Channel (2010) Emilio Aguinaldo and members of the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary society launched independence in the eighteen nineties. After the Americans beat the Spanish, the Americans annexed the nation which led to a Filipino resistance against the Americans, however, this was suppressed by a growing presence of American troops which topped around 65,000.
The History Channel (2010) article also refers to what could be called ethnic cleansing in the Philippines. “In an infamous episode, U.S. forces on the island of Samar retaliated against the massacre of a U.S. garrison by killing all men on the island above the age of 10. Many women and young children were also butchered. General Jacob Smith, who directed the atrocities, was court-martialed and forced to retire for turning Samar, in his words, into a “howling wilderness.”
More than 4,000 Americans perished suppressing the Philippines–more than 10 times the number killed in the Spanish-American War. More than 20,000 Filipino insurgents were killed, and an unknown number of civilians perished. (History Channel, 2010)
In 1935, the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established with U.S. approval, and Manuel Quezon was elected the country’s first president. On July 4, 1946, full independence was granted to the Republic of the Philippines by the United States. (History Channel, 2010)
Today many Americans are of Filipino heritage, have a served is the United States military, and up until full independence to my knowledge had the same passport rights as any other American overseas territory, i.e., Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.
Yet, sexual abuse has gripped the country’s history and present. According to the Associated Press (2018), “Women’s group asked the Philippine president on Thursday to oppose any request by Japan to remove a newly erected statue honoring women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The Gabriela women’s group said President Rodrigo Duterte should instead demand an official apology and compensation for Filipino women who were “conscripted by the Japanese Imperial Army to serve as wartime sex slaves.”
Not only is sex trafficking big in the Philippines, like that of exposes on Indonesia, the land is also notorious for organ trafficking, which to me recalls Israel’s need for organ donors. So, we have Chabad in The Philippines teaching a religion of Israel state-worship, but Israel has an organ-donor need and The Philippines is known for illegal organ dealing.
According to The Week (2009), “Brooklyn Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum was arrested for “trafficking in human body parts,” said Sally Satel in The Wall Street Journal, as part of an FBI corruption dragnet targeting 44 New Jersey–area officials and rabbis.”
Further, according to Cook (2008), “Organ trafficking, say Filipino kidney specialists. In some desperately poor communities, many men have sold their kidneys to make a bit of cash, even though post-surgical care is rare. In Basesco, on Manila Bay, about 3,000 of the slum’s 50,000 inhabitants are reported to have sold a kidney — but not to other Filipinos, for few can afford a US$17,000transplant operation. Despite a government-imposed cap which restricts the number of transplants to foreigners to 10% of the total, wealthy foreigners, many from the Middle East are the chief beneficiaries.”
Lastly, Klein (2018), “Israel has become increasingly involved in the world transplantation industry in the last decade. This comes a few years after India, which until the 1990s was the global center of the organ trade, enacted legislation prohibiting transplants using organs acquired from living people.”, and, “The illegal transplantation industry has continued to flourish globally in recent years, the European Parliament notes, but the place of Israel – along with the Philippines and Pakistan – as hubs of the organ trade has been taken by new countries, among them Costa Rica, Colombia, Vietnam, Lebanon and Egypt.” (Klein, 2018).
5. Islamic Terrorism, US Counter-terrorism: The Philippines has a Jihadist Islamic Terrorist element, as well as being the the home to large sects of radical Noahide sects, despite the nation being predominately Roman Catholic. The county is also involved in US Special Operations against Terrorism. So, we have the US military, Israel, Jihadist, and zealot Noahide “Christian” communities, all bubbling on the island nation comprised of dozens of islands but also has a brutal history of colonialization and of human/sex trafficking.
According to Stentiford (2018), “Specifically, the US effort in the southern Philippines was a complex generational effort that, viewed over the long term, was remarkably successful in achieving US strategic goals in the region. Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines (OEF-P)—as the US involvement in the southern Philippines was dubbed—was quite different from its counterpart in Afghanistan. Rather than a dramatic battle against terrorists and the establishment of a new government, OEF-P became, for the Americans, a largely steady-state application of multiple US government resources to fundamentally alter the relationship between the Philippine government and security forces and the people of the southern Philippines in support of American and Philippine strategic goals. (p. 1)
Further, Stentiford (2018) states, “The US military made the first tentative steps toward returning to the Philippines in March 2001—six months prior to the 9/11 attacks—to address a very specific strategic problem. Much of southern Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago had effectively become what political scientists call “ungoverned space.”
Lastly, Stentiford (2018) states, “What became Operation Enduring Freedom–Philippines began following 9/11 in 2002, when the United States sought to open a second front in the larger war against Islamic terrorist networks by engaging al Qaeda-linked organizations such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Jemaah Islamiya (JI), organizations that were taking advantage of the relatively ungoverned space in southern Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago.3 In this sovereignty vacuum, violent terrorist groups such as JI and the ASG were able to operate with impunity. One catalyst for US forces to enter the region was the kidnapping of an American missionary couple who were taken, along with others, from the Philippine island of Palawan on 27 May 2001 and brought to the region. Initially employing Task Force 510, and later Joint Special Operations Task Force–Philippines (JSOTF-P), the United States worked to increase the capability of the Philippine security forces (including both the armed forces and later the Philippine National Police) to defeat ASG and JI.” (p. 2).
According Kyle Rempfer (2019), a staff reporter for Military Times whom previously served an enlistment in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and his reporting focuses on the Department of the Army, stated that “The United States wants to be the preferred military partner for the countries surrounding China, and the Army’s 1st Special Forces Group has been working that angle for decades.”
“Around 2001, 1st Group soldiers began training Philippine Rangers who would eventually form the Light Reaction Regiment, the Philippine Army’s premier counterterrorism and special mission unit. That force saw early action in the mid-2000s against the Abu Sayyaf terror group on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Later, they proved pivotal in the campaign to uproot the Islamic State during the 2017 Battle of Marawi” (Rempfer, 2019).
Seth Robson (2019) of Stars and Stripes, in his piece titled, US plans new anti-terrorism training centers for Southeast Asia, East Africa, details how the US State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance Program (ATA) is funding Regional Training Centers (RTCs) in Asia to fight militant groups such as ISIS.
“Southeast Asia has been plagued by terrorism for decades. From 2002 to 2015, hundreds of U.S. special operations troops assisted the Philippine armed forces with training and surveillance through the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines.” (Robson, 2019).
“At its high-water mark, in 2010, the task force included about 600 special operators working out of Camp Navarro in Zamboanga city on the island of Mindanao.” (Robson, 2019). This supported by Stentiford (2018) who states, “The main support and coordination for OEF-P had been based at either Camp Navarro, in Zamboanga City, or at Camp Aguinaldo, in Metro Manila. The number of troops fluctuated during the first years from lows of around 50 to a high of around 1,200 Americans. About half were in staff and support roles at Andrews Air Force Base, Camp Navarro in Zamboanga, or Camp Aguinaldo near Manila. The remainder of the forces were distributed mainly in team houses, normally co-located on Philippine military posts and camps, scattered from Davao to Tawi Tawi.” (p. 2-3).
“However, U.S. forces can operate facilities on Philippine bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, and U.S. personnel often visit military bases in places such as Zamboanga, Sulu and Palawan, according to Patricio Abinales, a Philippines expert at the University of Hawaii, ‘I’m sure they are not just there for some light training’ he said.” (Robson, 2019).
One terrorist group in The Philippines is Abu Sayaff, which according to the BBC Monitoring (2016), “It broke from the broader Moro National Liberation Front in 1991 because it disagreed with the MNLF’s policy of pursuing autonomy and wanted to establish an independent Islamic state”, and, “Its founder, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was an Islamic preacher who fought in the Soviet-Afghan war, where he is said to have met Osama Bin Laden and been inspired by him. Al-Qaeda provided the group with funding and training when it was initially set up. After Janjalani died, the group split into two main networks whose leaders were then killed in 2006 to 2007. Since then, Abu Sayyaf has operated as a collection of factions that work with each other through kinship or personal ties, but which also occasionally compete against each other.” (BBC, 2016).
Think about that, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan Conflict which means he was on the side of American interests during the Cold War and received some type of training or arms, even if by proxy, from the Pentagon. So, we have a terror group founded by a veteran of the American-side of the Soviet-Afghan conflict, same as Osama Bin Laden, who set up terrorist cells conveniently in The Philippines, which is an area that is of vital US defense policy in evermore growing tensions of the USA versus China. Terrorism thus serves as a justification and smokescreen, for the superpowers for exercise fore indirectly. For example, if these terrorist cells weren’t in the Philippines and people noticed growing US military operations, it would stir suspicion of direct war or conflict between China and the USA.
Rommel C. Banlaoi (2010), the Executive Director of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, an independent think-tank, in an article published for the West Point Combating Terror Center, stated, “The ASG is a symbol of the complexities of armed violence in the southern Philippines that interact with issues of banditry, terrorism, rebellion, separatism, clan conflict, ethnic conflict and warlordism. The continuous entry of foreign jihadists to the southern Philippines only compounds these issues, as radical foreigners subvert the minds of the locals, imbuing them with a violent Islamist ideology. Moreover, they also train local fighters in sophisticated bomb-making skills. Only effective governance can limit ethnic conflict, banditry and rebellion.”.
So, we have a shooter in Las Vegas with a shadowy Filipino girlfriend… Who was in the Philippines during the shooting… Changed her social medial profile information before the shooting… Admitted to having her prints on the ammunition… The Philippines is known for gun trafficking and the prostitution of minors… The FBI has been under scrutiny for accusations of procuring prostitutes that were minors in illegal gun sting-operations, but the agency has also been accused of having agents engaging in Asian prostitution… The Vegas Shooter had pornography featuring minors on one of his computers and there was missing hard drive from that computer or one of his other computers… He had a pilot’s license… His girlfriend worked in a casino… The FBI and Nevada Gaming Control Board investigated direct-payments from a major Japanese casino-machine vendor with Filipino government officials… Trump has a hotel in Manila… Chabad is a large community in the Philippines… Sheldon Adelson, known as The Kingmaker, is heavy-hitter in Las Vegas… The Philippines is an important strategic location for the USA against China with Duterte serving as a kind of Turkey’s relation to the USA and Russia in a region where Duterte can ride the fence… There are jihadist elements in the Philippines… In the early nineteen-fifties,
6. Psy-Ops, Vampires, and the works of OSS CIA Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale: Major General Edward G. Lansdale was sent to the Philippines to conduct psychological operations. He was educated at the UCLA and was in publishing before joining the US Army which still then held the Air Corps before it was spun off into the independent United States Air Force. Another person attached to UCLA was Dr. William S. Kroger who was a pioneer in hypnosis and will be discussed later.
“Edward Lansdale was a California advertising man who joined the fledgling Office of Strategic Services during the World War II, later going on to become a CIA officer and U.S. Air Force major general.” (Malkasian, 2018). He was one of the fathers of Psychological Operations within the US military and applied concepts learned in advertising with an anthropological approach of understanding a population’s customs. By studying a group’s culture, the United States military was able to “Weaponize Anthropology”, which was has been discussed in published books such as Weaponizing Anthropology by Dr. David Price.
According to the United States Air Force’s (n.d.) Biography section, “In 1950, at the personal request of President Elpidio Quirino, he was transferred to Joint United States Military Assistance Group, Philippines, to advise the intelligence services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines which were then meeting a serious threat to national security by the Communist Huks. Ramon Magsaysay had just been appointed secretary of national defense and Lansdale was made liaison officer to Secretary Magsaysay for JUSMAG. The two became intimate friends, frequently visiting the combat areas together. Lansdale helped the Philippine Armed Forces develop psychological operations, civic actions, and the rehabilitation of Huk prisoners in projects such as EDCOR. He was given a temporary promotion to colonel in 1951”.
“He was an assistant for special operations to secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara during the early years of the Kennedy administration when vital decisions were being made to commit U.S. support to the Saigon government in fighting the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.” (Barnes, 1987).
“He was the prototype for Col. Edwin Barnum Hillendale in “The Ugly American,” the novel by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick about a harmonica-playing American officer who went into the rural areas of the Philippines and persuaded the peasants to oppose communism. He also was the prototype for “The Quiet American,” the naive U.S. official in the novel by Graham Greene who believed the United States could defeat communism in South Vietnam by instilling a sense of Town Hall democracy in the rural population.” (Barnes, 1987).
“He was an early proponent of psychological warfare, a concept he first put to use against the Hukbalalhap in the Philippines. In one such operation there, government psychological warfare squads, playing on a superstitious dread of vampires in the countryside, spread rumors that a vampire lived on a hill where the Hukbalalhap were based. Two nights later, the government squad seized the last man from a night rebel patrol, punctured his neck with two holes, hung his body until the blood drained out, and then put the corpse back on the trail. The insurgents fled the region.” (Barnes, 1987).
Lansdale was brought to the Philippines by the Military Assistance Group, which is a designation for United States military advisers sent to other countries to assist in the training of conventional armed forces and facilitate military aid.
Such Military Assistance Groups would also play a role in the Vietnam War serving a lynchpin or crux between the Central Intelligence Agency and Combatant Commanders of the various service branches. Essentially, the MAG or MAAG (Military Assistance and Advisory Groups) distilled policy that service branches would conduct with many of these operations relating to “Hearts and Minds” campaigns on the surface but also psychological terror operations including Phoenix Program Kill Brigades. On a random note, Tiger Wood’s dad was a member of the Military Assistance Group while in Vietnam, an alumnus of the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland, and a member of the US Army Airborne based out of Fort Bragg. Earl Woods would later make a living in the Southern California Defense sector, but his son, would go to play golf at Stanford University, which was connections, oddly to Esalen Institute founder Mike Murphy, who was an advocate of the Human Potential Movement which is related to Transhumanist Movement based out of universities such as The New School in New York City , the early psychadelia community (recreational drug usage such as with LSD), and he authored the book Golf in the Kingdom.
Michael Murphy himself was military connected, earning his B.A. in psychology in 1952 from Stanford University. After graduation, he was drafted by the US Army and spent two years stationed in Puerto Rico as a psychologist
Back to Earl Woods, the US Army Airborne under US Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg falls under the United States Special Operations Command based out of MacDill AFB near Tampa, FL. Fort Bragg is home to the JFK Special Warfare Center where courses in psychological operations are also taught. One unit that falls under the US Army’s Special Operations Command out of Fort Bragg, NC is the USAF 193rd Special Operations Wing based of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. The mission of this unit is to Broadcast radio/TV to target populations, jamming, etc., but messages are created back at the 4th Psy Group at Fort Bragg.
7. Black Dahlia & The Philippines: George Hodel, the suspected Black Dahlia Murderer, fled to the Philippines and eventually took a Filipino wife. Also spent time in China. Mr. Hodel was born in Pasadena, California, and was of Russian-Jewish descent, and was a medical doctor who left Caltech after a sexual sandal but later gained his medical degree from UC Berkley and the University of San Francisco. In his mid-years he was involved in the Hollywood party scene where his medical skills would come in handy including performing abortions. He was interested in S&M and surrealist art and was friends of artist Man Ray (also of Russian Jewish descent), whose art piece, The Minotaur, would be the same as Elizabeth Short’s mutilated body.
8. MK-Ultra & The Philippines: MKUltra program was created by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (now called the Directorate of Science & Technology) and the United States Army Biological Warfare Center. According to a National Public Radio interview by Terry Gross (2019), with journalist Stephen Kinzer, on Kinzer’s research into the MKUltra Program – particularly that of chemist Sidney Gottlieb, it was stated, “Some of Gottlieb’s experiments were covertly funded at universities and research centers, Kinzer says, while others were conducted in American prisons and in detention centers in Japan, Germany and the Philippines. Many of his unwitting subjects endured psychological torture ranging from electroshock to high doses of LSD, according to Kinzer’s research.”
9. The Curious Case of Candy Jones, The FBI and Hypnosis?: Pin-Up model, Candy Jones, while one a USO morale tour in the Philippines, claimed she was mind-controlled while there. Despite Ms. Jones, coming off as a caricature and being seen a “quack” , the revelation that she was possibly hypnotized or at least examined by a Dr. William S. Kroger of UCLA, who was a pioneer in hypnosis is plausible because he was a gynecologist with hypnotherapy credentials. However, this claim was made by a Mr. Michael Cannon, who seems to be involved your typical far-right conspiracy circles, being attached to The Constitution Society. Mr. Cannon aside, when I follow up on the lead, I do find interesting information on William S. Kroger who was a gynecologist and trained hypnotherapist. Yet, we should take her accusation seriously. She said she was practiced on without her consent.
It sounds strange to say words such as mind-control, but it’s not that far fetched to think that people wanted to attempt to experiment if it were possible, particularly for interrogation techniques or the training of military troops to stay calm under severe duress. We must remember that MKUltra was real, and not simply a moniker in conspiracy culture circles. Dr. Kroger was a real person who is published in the field of hypnosis and educated at a prominent university.
Yet, William S. Kroger seems have lived a life of esteem and was given a kind obituary by the Los Angeles Times in 1995. According to Myrna Oliver (1995) of The Los Angeles Times, “The author of a dozen medical textbooks, Kroger began experimenting with hypnotism in 1930 and taught more than 100,000 physicians to use the 4,000-year-old technique as the least intrusive method of dealing with such areas of medicine as childbirth and chronic pain. The American Medical Assn. finally approved the use of hypnotism in 1958.”
Further, Oliver (1995), stated, “Kroger was often consulted about uses of hypnotism in fields other than medicine, notably interviewing crime victims or witnesses. In 1977, the FBI asked him to question the school bus driver who was kidnapped with his 26 young passengers in Chowchilla, Calif. Under Kroger’s hypnosis, driver Frank Ray was able to recall all but one digit of the license plate of the kidnappers’ van, greatly assisting in tracking them down. The psychiatrist trained FBI agents in hypnosis techniques and assisted them in solving about 30 homicide and other cases using age regression, time distortion and imagery to interview hypnotized witnesses. He was also a consultant to the Los Angeles Police Department and law enforcement agencies around the country.”
An interesting reference to Dr. W.S. Kroger appears in the reference section of
So, even though Candy Jones herself may not have been credible to many, the fact that a doctor linked to her claim was actively consulting the FBI in real-life, shows there’s an overlap between alternate forms of medicine and psychoanalysis with the state. If hypnosis was used by the FBI it isn’t a stretch it could be used for military purposes or intelligence reasons.
However, theirs is a possible link to Candy Jones and William S. Kroger considering A) he was medical professional with hypnosis expertise which he conducted and published at reputable universities such as Northwestern, UCLA, etc., and B) A lot of his work dealt with Gynecology – hence, there’s a plausible reason for him to have seen Ms. Jones if she was experiencing female related health issues.
Searching William S. Kroger and Philippines as words in a standard Google Search, I came upon Dr. Kroger in a reference section of the book by Foss, Foss & Domenico (2013), detailing biases against women in regards to gender identity, titled, Gender Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World, in which is Foss, Foss & Domenico (2013) references Eduard Eichner’s (1962), “The Premenstrual Tension Syndrome – Fact or Fancy?” in Psychosomatic Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Endocrinology, edited by William S. Kroger (Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1962), p 319.
Foss, Foss, & Domenico (2018), states, “After Dalton named PMS a medical disorder, the diagnosis became popular with physicians and researchers alike to the point that many came to believe that all women suffer from PMS. Physician Eduard Eichner studying what he called premenstrual tension syndrome (PTS), summarized this belief: There is ample evidence that woman in general…experience symptoms of premenstrual tension. Many are not aware they suffer, but their coworkers know and often feel the full effects of irritability and irascibility manifested by the patient. Interpersonal relations are frequently inharmonious, and many domestic tragedies results from PTS” (p. 94).
George Hodel was born October 1, 1907 in LA and died May 16, 1999 in San Francisco. Edward G. Lansdale was born February 6, 1908 in Detroit but grew up in the LA area and died February 23, 1987 in McLean, VA. Both George Hodel and Edward Lansdale spent time in the Philippines in the 1950s. Edward Lansdale before he joined the military was a Los Angeles-area Advertising man that was educated at UCLA. But noted Hypnotherapist William S. Kroger was clinical professor of anesthesiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. However, I’m not making a direct link here, yet, both men’s names will appear in this report with Lansdale having physically served in The Philippines, whereas Kroger, or at least an associate or someone with an interests in his workers, was rumored to have been in The Philippines.
Mitchell Research Group 