"Should we not at least try to drive the money-changers from the temple? "
I lean towards seeing Jesus whipping the money lenders out of the Temple as a Gospel-anomaly that requires some explaining, just as when he curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season (?). It might even be read as a moment of weakness (human fallibility) on JC's part, as when he feels forsaken by God on the cross.
(I do not understand Christians who want their Christ to be infallible, since “to err is human” and were he perfect, then he would no longer be human and imitation would be futile. The second part of the saying about human error is—Christ’s divine prerogative—forgiveness, which is only necessary/possible because of our capacity for missing the mark.)
Violence may sometimes be a necessary human response to injustice, then, and preferable to the sort of false humility that suppresses (out)rage and swallows it down in an attempt to be more than human, and so does violence to ourselves. But it is still missing the mark, insofar as it is a reaction that stems from being scandalized by the world (Satan), and feeds the very thing that it is pushing against, that stumbles over the block in a reactive move to get around it: as evidenced by the revolutionary blueprint, how government oppression leads to revolution, lead to oppressive government, ad infinitum.
The idea that a revolutionary response is legitimate, and therefore comes from God (as expressed in a comment below, advocating the Trump admin reformation) is a serious (maybe cardinal) mistake that conflates rendering unto Caesar with what God wants. Ironically, “Render unto Caesar” advocates non-revolutionary action, compliance to state power, which suggests a different Christ to the rough “justice” he administers to the money lenders. (This latter is perhaps because of their hypocrisy in pretending to be one thing while being another?)
The essential Gospel idea here is “My kingdom is not of this world” and “Get thee behind me Satan (Peter), because you value the things of this world and not those of God.”
ALL Trump (or any candidate) supporters, and all revolutionaries, are valuing the things of this world, allowing themselves to be scandalized by Satan, and so becoming an instrument of that. And of course they imbue their worldly-value/alignment with a religiosity as its cover, and dress it up in kingly robes, because that’s how their error manifests and propagates itself: by raising up worldly values to supplant those of God.
And I, meanwhile, run the risk of being scandalized by the fools who look to political reformers to fix their lives & fill up my comment sections with scandalous blarney. ;)
Maybe one significant aspect of Christ's driving the money lenders from the temple is the fact that he did it himself, unaccompanied; he didn't get a 'gang' together to do it. (Likewise, I'll stand corrected if wrong, but I believe it was only Christ who, in the gospels, rebuked the religious elders; his disciples never weighed in on this). Maybe we can read from this that, if in our time the money lenders are to be driven from the temple, it is Christ and/or the Holy Spirit that has to do it, which may involve it being done through us as "Christ-in-the-world- today", but only insofar as we are Spirit led.
The episode might also aid coherence between God as depicted in the Old and New Testament, by showing us the righteous anger which is perhaps more in keeping with Yahweh than with much of Christ's ministry.
As regards "render unto Caesar": one possible way of looking at this is that Christ was being understanding and somewhat merciful - he may have been saying, "I know you live in a system which is beyond your control, and you have to play along so as to earn a living. That's OK, but while you're having to do that, give to God what is God's - e.g. your heart and will".
There's some fun stuff in there, but the Marx stuff is so blatantly anti-historical that I have to question the method on the rest of the stuff. You can simply go to marxists.org and read all 10 years of Marx's writings before the Communist Manifesto to see that it follows a very logical intellectual path, which continues into his later unfinished works. So either they completely falsified all his manuscripts with his characteristic almost unreadable writing (which we still have to a very large extent), falsified the insanely large amount of texts and letters that he wrote, that all quite obviously seem to be written by 1 person, and then falsified also all the minutes for the first international where he espoused his philosophy in person and called Bakunin a dirty freemason repeatedly, or we stick to the fairly straightforward historical picture that he was just quite a smart and very productive writer in a specific historical time and milieu. Pretending that one of the more prolific, idiosyncratic and well-documented writers of his time actually didn't write his own works is such a bold statement to make that his further historical investigation also needs to be called into question imo. Also, a lot of the writings we have are still unfinished, and noone, except Engels compiling and publishing the stuff Marx already wrote for vol. 2 and 3, has really taken the time to complete his 7 volume plan of Das Kapital, so if other people were able to write his works, then why did it stop when he died? Especially if it was so important as an elite plan for the future development of the world.
Also it's funny to take the Freemasons at their word when they say that they were behind all the revolutions in history, because we also know that they're just a bunch of narcissistic hobnobbers who continually pretend that anyone interesting was part of their little goonclub.
Usually these people are scared of taking Marx or Hegel seriously, just because they say that even the elite and their clubs are subject to forces of history greater than themselves, and that they're thus not All-Powerful and it's possible to fight them, even on their own turf by dismantling their ideology. And while I believe too that there are elite plans that span hundreds if not thousands of years, even these plans they made can't be completely their own making: they had to find their ideas from somewhere. This is why Hegel says it's actually in some sense the Idea that's in control, as ultimately the elites can only make plans by the logic of the Idea's they have. This Marx then takes further by showing that some Ideas are developed in the interest of the elite, but that some Ideas can also be developed in the interest of the people themselves. If you read Marx's early works all he's concerned with is to figure out a way to live in a non-alienated authentic manner, without being controlled by the ideology/Ideas of the elite, which are necessarily traumatic and anti-human Ideas in some sense, thus the same project that we're supposedly engaged in.
Secretly I think that there's a lurking resentment in the fact that Marx's ideas have actually led to people taking up arms against the oligarchy (and then being partially coopted again), while the ideas of most conspiracy researchers have led to very little, so they try to undercut him without actually engaging his writings by making up stories about his writings not even being his own. Miles Mathis, another conspiracy researcher who sometimes has quite interesting stuff, even had the hilarious take that Marx was coopted because he wrote such big books so that you wouldn't be able to read it all and then be so caught up in reading that you'd never actually take arms against the oligarchy. Except of course that the people who read Marx actually tried to take up arms lmao.
Sorry for the long rant, but I always get a bit agitated by these ahistorical takes from people who simply demonize Marx and other writers of yesteryear, just to avoid the actual work of reading to understand what they meant.
I can't comment on the deep background of Karl, but I can easily see how someone who has immersed themselves in his (alleged) output would reject a one-line dismissal, devoid of citations or explications. Any idea what Watt might have been basing his claim on? (have you heard anything like it before?)
OTOH I think it's easy to underestimate (as well as overestimate) the depth & sophistication of these sorts of group-ops w/front men (eg The Beatles?).
Is there evidence that any armed Marxist uprisings led to outcomes not fully in line with the social engineering goals being opposed? You seem to suggest that conspiracy research would be more of a genuine challenge to power if it led to armed revolt? Isn't arming and dispatching c-theorists (cf Pizzagate, Ted Kazcinski) part of the SOP of State?
Don't even get me started on MM! Worst of the well-poisoners.
I tend to give Watt some benefit of the doubt that, if he made this claim about Marx, then there must be something to it, since his overall approach/understanding seems solid. OTOH, if he pulled the claim out of his ass, then obviously it puts all the rest into serious doubt.
(This was before the Marx-demonization became a pillar of alt-media conspiracy theory so it could even make him an early meme-spreader.)
Well the only other guy who I heard talk about Marx in this fashion was MM, who had a bit of a better point, in the fact that Jenny Marx (his wife) was from the Phillips family, who were quite powerful industrialists in the Netherlands, and received some money from her uncle. Still, this isn't even a very interesting take, as Engels was also an industrialist, and one can of course fall out with one's class and family's spookiness. (As you know out of personal experience with the Fabians, just as I do with some of my family.)
Then I have also heard claims of Marx being a freemason, but the problem is that there's no real evidence for it, while there is with for example Bakunin, who Marx also accused of being a freemason and thus muddying the waters for revolution.
But no, this is the first time I heard someone proffer the idea that Marx did not write the communist manifesto, which is really really hard to believe, as we even have an intact manuscript page with his name on it from the communist manifesto. I could literally walk over to the institute that has it in my hometown of Amsterdam and inspect it in person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto#/media/File:Iishmarx.jpg
What he I think bases his claim on is that the manifesto was published anonymously, but this was obviously for fear of juridical repercussions, as they lived in a time of heavy state repression. They were even convicted after the 1848 revolutions, for which reason they were expelled from Germany and lived in exile in London. (In London Marx just sat autistically in the British Museum reading room, to research for his later writings.) To suggest this was out of disdain for Marx by his handlers or something like that shows so little attention for the historical context that I really can not take it seriously. Also the claim that Marx was some shitty journalist before that just completely ignores his time with the Young Hegelians and the 10 years of very interesting philosophical output he had, so I can even say that for that claim he could just have looked up one single bibliography of Marx to prevent this blatant falsity. Then the bit about South-America overtaking North-America in an American union is also not present in Das Kapital, so again just completely made up. Marx did write a lot on America in his later works, but he was actually quite optimistic about the autonomous quality America had in that time, and thought the rest of the world could learn from their way of constructing more autonomous communelike living situations. So also there I just don't know what he's referring to.
I may be overstating it, but Marx's life has been so studied, and his biography has been so well-documented, that for any claim one makes on him it should be very easy to produce a citation, which I really can't find for these claims, besides the fact that they just seem ahistorical and wholly made up in the first place. With the Beatles for example it's quite easy to show the connections to naval intelligence (hello sgt. pepper) and such that they had, while with Marx I haven't yet been able to be convinced, even though I've tried to look for these connections myself too.
Then, about the armed revolt, there is a difference to me between individual vigilante terrorism and organized communal revolt, where the first is by definition unable to pose any challenge to oligarchy, while the latter might have some sort of chance at the least. Violence can of course be a double-edged sword, but even Christ flogged the moneychangers out of the temple, which many revolutions have taken as an example. Marx and Engels explicitly based their ideas on the German peasant revolts in the 1500s, the Protestant revolutions against Catholic financial oligarchy, and even on the communal practices of the early Christians as documented in Acts and the early Church Fathers. Michael Hudson also has very interesting stuff concerning the connection between economy and christianity that Marx also takes up.
Now concerning the Marxist revolutions, the problem is of course that once a movement becomes bigger it is entangled again into the nets of corruption that bind this world, but the question is if one should go into a complete retreat from these binds and leave the world rotten as is, or if one should risk entanglement, exactly to try and untangle the world. For me it is analogous to the Theravada or Mahayana buddhist divide, where the Mahayana boddhisatva goes back into the world to liberate it, instead of only caring ones own liberation. To continue on the Asian tour, I do also think that the Marxist revolution in China, while also producing a lot of corruption, has shown to now produce a better and more peaceful society, where most people actually own their own home and are able to pursue their free time in ways they choose themselves, then has been done in America. But even besides revolutions, his writings, which ultimately were more of an expression of the workers movement than that they created the movement, did help inspire countless smaller projects and the workers movement ultimately improved the lifes of workers greatly during the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, as being a prole was absolute shit in the beginning of the 19th. As Marx says in Capital, the worker was really fed as some sort of human sacrifice to the Mammon machine of the capitalists, from which they could only separate themselves by organizing and demanding better working conditions, shorter working time, and ultimately freedom from wage-slavery. This worked very well for some time, but sadly our ultimate freedom from wage-slavery was not effected, partly due to the horrors of the industrial world wars of the elites, which they fomented against the threat of the workers movements imo, and partly due to the cooptment of the workers into the social democratic movements, also known as the Fabians. Any Marxist worth his salt despised the Fabians as a movement of elite capture, and Marx railed at length against similar projects in his own time.
The problem I think with a lot of conspiracy research is that they don't realize that people have not actually simply been duped for thousands of years, but that for ages people have realized the lie and fought against it in various ways, but because they've ultimately lost consistently, while making gains to some extent (we're not the Lords explicit property anymore at least), their struggles are ideologically falsified by modernday social engineers to appear other than they were. But the kingdom of Satan is a kingdom divided, thus can not stand, and will eventually fall. Marx's writing are in all honesty nothing more than an elucidation of why and how the kingdom of Mammon will ultimately destroy itself, and finally say that one should become active in helping its downfall.
Now to finish with some of my own doubt, I do always find it strange that Marx can be so central to the academy, while still being revolutionary in my own opinion. What I do see is that he's very often heavily misread to turn him into some sort of Fabian, so maybe the academical discourse on him helps actually to neutralize his ideas, and give some sort of outlet of virtual revolt for the socialist larpers we see all around, with the stamp of his imposing name for approval. Marx himself at least wasn't an academic, and always railed against it as apologetics for the state.
I can't in good conscience ignore the comment above, in defense of Marxist revolution in China. My impression of Chairman Mao is that he was probably the vilest psychopathic despot of the 20th century, head & shoulders above the usual suspects, and yet somehow gets a mostly free pass.
The idea that students ripping their teachers limb from limb, and human flesh appearing on menus in revolutionary restaurants, "has shown to now [sic] produce a better and more peaceful society" is probably the most outrageously contentious statement anyone has ever made at this site. (Yes, even above, "Donald Trump is going to save America")
I wasn't defending Mao on that stuff, I just think that besides Mao there were actually a lot of people that did try to improve things, and that in lieu of the horrors of the cultural revolution, they have now succeeded in building a somewhat better society for millions of people by consistently trying to keep the financial oligarchy out of power. But idk, I'm no dogmatic on China, it just seems that nowadays they have a somewhat succeeded to make a somewhat more humane society, but I wouldn't defend them too much, and certainly not these culture revolution practices.
But I also think it's a very definite problem, as most of these revolutions have just seemed to produce horror upon horror, so I'm not sure if I'm actually behind them, but I also don't know if I can count out armed revolt, because you think it would be a good idea to organize and take the power from the oligarchic parasites. It's just a sad fact of the logic of this fallen world that any resistance against them will just reproduce the horror to some extent, but should we not at least try to drive the money-changers from the temple?
As you can see I waver a lot on this topic, and should probably just read more on the actual history of these revolutions to be able to form a definite opinion to discern what is good and what is evil.
Such comprehensive and thoughtful comments in defence of Marx & Marxism present me with a cognitive conundrum, one in which I want to have a strong opinion to back up my emotional dislike of Marx, but in all honesty cannot,.
On the one hand, I only have tidbits of info here & there (such as Marx's personal behaviors as an elitist a-hole belying his alleged values), & on the other, the anti-Marxist slant of conspiracy-consciousness has become so pervasive post JBP that I can hardly claim not to have been influenced by it, without, as you say, seeing much close analysis of the works themselves.
All that said, & as w/ Freud & Einstein (the two other most influential Hebes of the 20th century), I can't see a case being convincingly made for Marx having such massive social leverage from the start, where he not consciously involved in some sort of group operation of global engineering. This would then make the 2nd matrix sloppy narratives about it (like the "Theodore Adorno wrote the Beatles songs for Tavistock" narrative) a means of conflating subtler truths with gross simplifications and so causing intelligent people to dismiss them.
It's become a bit more comprehensive then I intended haha, probably because I'm avoiding writing my thesis. But I do like breaking a lance for Marx as I think he's heavily misjudged by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike.
I get the emotional dislike, as Marx has been used for quite horrible purposes and misread in a thousand ways, but the reason for that is I think because he actually reached some real truth, which the hounds immediately go after.
Furthermore, Marx was in some sense a similar elitist a-hole as we are, he just wrote and criticized his contemporaries a lot, but in person he was known to be very jovial, with a good relationship with his wife and daughter.
Then the last point, which is very interesting. Now first, Marx didn't have massive social leverage at first, but only started gaining this over the years and especially only later after his death with the expansion of the workers movement. Also Capital is just a very good book for explaining how capitalism works.
Then on the global social engineering group part, the thing is that I think Marx was actually very much aware of this, but that the whole point of the worker movement and the Communist International was to in some sense create a great conspiracy - by the workers! - to rival the conspiracy of the elite. But with Marx I think it's not that these groups were simply fomented by some masterminds, but that the worker movement actually caught on because the workers were (and still are) in shit situations under the yoke of the elite, and that for this reason they started organizing and gaining critical mass to stand up again to the oligarchs.
On a more conspiratorial level I kind of think Capital is some sort of cybernetic demonic machine conjured up by Financial Magicians like Pica de Mirandola in Venice in the Renaissance, and that Marx was trying to exhume or exorcise this vampiric demon (he calls Capital a vampire many times) by bringing it to consciousness for the workers on which it was feeding, with the same literary methods as the Old Testament Prophets used, so that the workers themselves could start exorcising themselves and their communities of this demon, whose tendrils were material as well as psychic. (A bit like Willem Dafoe's character in the new Nosferato lol, though with occult spells.) Now just like with Christ, only a conspiracy of the Good (Christ in the gospels constantly hides himself), that constantly exposes and reveals the Evil can ultimately defeat the evil, but in a strange way, by letting the Evil defeat itself.
Marx's main idea for communism was thus actually to constantly agitate for the lessening of working hours, so that the capitalists would be forced to automate the workers away, and the worker wouldn't be needed by the machine anymore. Then man would be free from work, as a great abundance would be produced automatically, so that man could start to work not simply to provide for his basic needs, but to work for his personal, intellectual and spiritual development, as well as for the development of his community. The gambit of communism is just the freedom from wage-slavery and the real opportunity to figure out ones own lifework for oneself.
Also I haven't really engaged with James Lindsay except from a distance, but I do know that the whole schtick of 'Hegelian Dialects' is kinda stupid. Hegel is so much funnier than conspiracy types make him out to be, because his whole point is that the elites who think they are in control are actually governed by their own ideas, instead of the elites 'using' the dialectic to govern people. The dialectic uses them, especially because they try to use it! They compulsively try to make themselves immortal out of the insane narcissism they have in that they think they are God. For Hegel then the whole idea is that most elites don't have a clue, but compulsively enact certain schemes, all because they think that they are at the top of the world, not God, whereas the humble can actually develop a way better idea of how the world works, because they aren't blinded by their own ideas of grandeur. They don't know what they do, as Christ says. Take for example Crowley, isn't he a perfect symbol for the elite ideology that just leads to pitiable masturbatory self-destruction? For Hegel the true madness is not some peasant thinking he is king, but a king thinking he is actually king by reason of his own greatness, instead of that the people have granted him their power for him to be king. And thus the people should see that they are able to take away this power as well etc etc.
Also to be perfectly honest I think there might be a problematic occultic side to Marx, but I have yet to figure out my full thoughts on that, so I can't really say anything on it yet. Also because I don't know yet if he doesn't do it exactly to exorcise these occultic notions, which is the hunch I have. It will take a while to research, but if I find out I will for sure tell you.
I would say it's well established that the wealthy indistrialist Engels family had much to do with Marx having any career. And do not discount the massive influence Fabian Society Marxism has held over the official narratives of "history" long before the current proffers of counter narrative came along.
It also seems clear Marx was a bitter, life-hating Satanist, but hey, anyone is free to defend him & Stalin & Hitler & Aleister Crowley, too, for that matter. Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD 😂
Right off the bat, Marx is acknowledged as the actual author. The nuance here is that he was instructed about what to write, & that his authorship was deemed UNIMPORTANT enough by his bosses to omit his name. So the fact that you can examine an original hand-written manuscript with his name or even signature included means nothing. In & of itself, it doesn't even prove that he actually wrote said manuscript, but I'll grant you that for the sake of argument. It does nothing to address whether the ideas were truly his own or if he was simply hired to write as instructed.
Yes, but that’s why I said you can quite simply read the 10 years of intellectual development Marx documented in his various writings befor the Communist Manifesto to see that it lies very much in the extension of those earlier writings, so that invalidates the idea that he needed someone else to write it for him pretty conclusively.
You can also examine the Satanic rantings of his utter hatred towards God for creating such a miserable creature as himself😂
Anyway, the two things need not be mutually exclusive. Obviously when you hire someone to write as instructed, all the better that said writer has already developed his own ideas in the same direction. And according to whose opinion was he a well-respected & professional journalist? Other adepts bent on destroying the human spirit from flourishing? According to other opinions, he was disheveled but dangerous propagandist doing the bidding of Fabian globalists subverting the local community's culture, not a "journalist."
Personally, I define Satanism as self-worship &/or hatred of God. So I would see Satanism all over his work that others would not call Satanic. However, Marx also seemed to have an obsession with serving evil threading throughout his poetry. Obviously poetry is subjective, but it certainly doesn't inspire the human spirit with truth & beauty, rather, it seems to revel in tearing these down, like much of modern "art" & architecture.
“Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well.
My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for Hell.”
—The Pale Maiden, 1837
“Look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab
Unerringly within thy soul…
The hellish vapours rise and fill the brain,
Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.
See the sword—the Prince of Darkness sold it to me.
"His utter hatred towards god", except that he helped his daughter through a crisis of faith by carefully setting out the Catholic theology, even though he wasn't concerned with it himself?
And according to whose opinion? To mine lol, because I actually read his philosophical works. Just say you haven't read him and only listened to what other people said about him, then we can end the discussion because there's little to discuss when you haven't read the texts.
So he loved his kid. Parenthood often forces these kind of inconsistencies. And yes, I admit it has been many years since I
deigned to dirty my mind with the likes of Marx. I read Marx along with all the other power-mad men of the dustbin of history, beginning in preadolescent childhood
through my twenties, when I finally figured out that they're all twisting themselves into pretzels in order to uniquely express the same basic contempt for their humanness instead of being God Himself. So I won't waste any more of my time arguing over this pet hero of yours than I would to brush up on the details of the musings of all those evil madmen whose writings I once devoured in the quest to understand evil- at least not at a time when I am deliberately clearing my mind of poisonous influence in order to align with God's purposeful plans for me instead of my own.
I don't think I ever claimed anything about his journalism, it's just that he was respected as a philosopher in his small circle of intellectual friends, the Young Hegelians, who played an important role in the Prussian intellectual milieu.
I would caution you to consider how much of our history actually IS fabricated before you go dismissing the very idea of fabrication, both of materials & of characters. Edgar Allen Poe was poisoned to death & then had his character assassinated by a fabricated historical narrative in which his enemy in life became his biographer in death to paint him a horrible alcoholic & degenerate (accuse opponents of what you yourself are/do):
I have replied to the Marx bit also. But is Karl Marx your only area of exploration??? He doesn't even matter anymore. Marxism has moved on, just as all ideas evolve away from their (supposed) progenitors (as if there's anything new under the Sun, at this point everything is a remix)
No I just like reading old books and Marx is one of these I've read quite a bit, miss me with that remix stuff when you can just read the originals lol. Why drink from the muddy river when you can go to the clear source?
Twenty years ago wants its insult back 😆 But you're gonna recycle it just like every idea has long been recycled remixing of everything that has come before. You clearly misunderstood, because I was saying MARX is the muddy water, as ALL ideas are at this point.
Just FYI, this particular article isn't even by Ehret; it's on The Chained Muse by David B. Gosselin. So you clearly didn't even have a look before having a snarky reply.
This article on how the British created Communism & blamed it on "the Jews" should shed more light untinted by pervasive "progressive" propaganda upon the subject for you:
It’s an interesting article, and I need to indeed dive more into the Urquhart business with Marx, which is strange. Yet he simply reads Marx wrong, in precisely the way the Fabians and Urquharts he lambasts do, namely as only attacking the middle class, while there are many writings in Marx where he continually and repeatedly slams the feudal aristocrats, the landlords and the rentiers living off of the work of the industrialists and the workers. Unsurprisingly he repeatedly calls for their overthrow, and contrary to this guy’s reading he has no illusions about feudal society, as he considers the bourgeois development as better than the feudal serfdom. Another case of someone only reading and citing the Manifesto…
I guess a good analogue would be Freud, who people also demonize, probably had some weird connections etc, but is still highly rewarding to read, maybe not for taking up arms, but more for figuring out one's own authenticity.
If Freud is a good analogue then isn't there also a good case is to be made that Freud was fronting for some larger occult ideology-spreading, rather than an isolated genius having spontaneous insights? As for the value of the work, I have found it useful for writing pieces and books, but that doesn't mean overall his work has had a positive influence (I am skeptical); or even that it didn't lead me down some blind alleys (too soon to say for sure). As I discussed in a recent piece on Girard, Freud seemed to be writing fiction and presenting it as science, for much of the time, ie, imposing a new paradigm rather than discovering one.
Personally I think, also for historical reasons, that Freud is more suspect than Marx in some sense, as Marx really has a way more empirical outlook than Freud. Capital is littered with historical reference, and ultimately quite self-explanatory in its premises.
But furthermore, I think there is a problem with too quickly taking the occult ideology-spreading as a problem, as I think in some sense that's just how ideas seem to propagate. Some are consciously complicit in this, but I think that even the consciously complicit are just useful idiots for the ideas themselves, which propagate through these various secret societies, but even we ourselves make secret societies (like your Manopticon) exactly to gestate and develop our own ideas. Superculture feeds on culture, but ultimately it is culture again that produces this superculture in some strange feedback loop, where there is an Idea that actually grounds both sides of the loop.
This is not to say that we should simply trust these ideas (which is why the Marxist idea to figure out in whose interest in idea is developed is so eminently useful, and has become a standard way of viewing the world for everyone now), but it is more to say that I think even from these compromised figures we can distill interesting ideas, as ultimately they don't really spontaneously generate these ideas themselves, they aren't God! Even they still have to grapple with the complexity of the world, and even they, how much they pretend that they understand all, still don't understand all and need to use basic human instincts and concepts to make sense of it all. Now this can be read as apologia for psywar, which I don't intend it to be, just more of a riff on the fact that even forces for good will at some point have to talk in occulted parables, because it seems human communication/language almost forces us to. Christ also has some quite suspect characteristics to him, but shining through is I think a truth.
Now the reason I defend Marx over Freud is that I think Marx can best be likened to an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah or Amos, who continually and explicitly denounces the abuses of the elite and tries to prophecy how society will develop in consequence of the corrupt practices of the elite. The prophets have ultimately also inspired millions to turn away from the corruption of their state, or even take up arms against it, and I see Marx as not really different. See for example also Engels' book on "The Condition of the Working Class in England" were he describes the social ills he saw, that became the reason for their organizing.
Of course Marx wasn't some isolated genius either - never forget Engels - but a thinker who was part of a larger milieu that might indeed have been in part created for nefarious purposes, but even there I think this is the reason why Marx was constantly criticizing those around him, and developing his own ideas in this debate, just to find out what which were the good and which were the bad ideas.
Now to finish, if ever you think "I want to read some Marx", then I would recommend "The German Ideology" and the Paris Manuscripts, as these are the works were he most clearly states his philosophy in some sense, instead of going on extended empirical economic investigations, and also seem in line with your work, as they grapple with the problem of ideology imposed by the elite, and of finding an unalienated way of life.
The main point here, for me, about ideas being the ruling force, is one that deserves some attention & is also one I am circling currently for a possible new project.
Well it a community for which one must perform certain acts to get in, like subscribe to the substack, and perform certain ritual libations to join, like abstain from drugs and smoking before and during the sessions. And I mean this not in a dismissive sense! I think Christ and his disciples also formed a sort of secret society, but I think it is a secret society that runs counter to the secret societies that try to control and obscure the world, for this sort of secret society tries to liberate and reveal, and opens itself to the outside, while at the same time remaining secret in a certain sense. Secrecy is also important, for as Christ and Paul say, the princes of this world constantly try to destroy and feast on any truth they see, so the words of Christ are spoken in parables, to hide their truth from the powers that be that try to cannibalize it, but reveal it to the people that actually hunger for the truth.
Also I've been reading Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga, and he sees a lot of culture as structured by theatrical forms that are similar to secret societies (for isn't the secret society ultimately just a form of theatre), which he doesn't per se approve of, but isn't in itself bad. I actually think you'd like that book a lot, I can highly recommend it.
And nice, I hope to have shed some light on it, cause I'm still wrestling with it myself. I'd be very interested in what you have to say.
Also about the Manopticon, I should send you a message because I do want to join in one of the meets at some point, so I'll do that now.
It seems like Marx creates puzzle boxes for intellectuals who now toil in academia deciphering the endless permutations of his revered word, annotating and revealing its nuances.
They both (Marx/Freud) seem to spawn a cacophony of talking/wild action, like an incantation was cast on the world. What intellectual bell should we ring to clear our intellectual cupboards of these spells?
Its hard to say, because they both have some insights about our circumstances, Freud with the unconscious, and Marx with exploitation & alienation of class interests. But ruminating on some of these structural features of our circumstances is not a way out, anymore than talking about depression could inherently cure depression. The idea is laughable in retrospect! And solving society through utopian projects is similarly misguided.
Let us quote a controversial figure on this stack, arguing here that working to undo our "woes" is itself undoing"
"What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal green–pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most often are ‘equality of rights’ and ‘sympathy for all that suffers’—and suffering itself they take for something that must be abolished.
We opposite men, having opened our eyes and conscience to the question where and how the plant ‘man’ has so far grown most vigorously to a height—we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness of his situation must first grown to the point of enormity, his power of invention and simulation (his ‘spirit’) had to develop under prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audacity, his life–will had to be enhanced into an unconditional power– will. We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species ‘man’ as much as its opposite does. "
according to the speech Gorbachev gave in the Soviet Union, a two-page spread was done on the Soviet general staff of the military, and they found that they were all into the same things, channeling, fortune-telling, talismans, all the old magic stuff. [Citation?]
I know you are probably asking for the citation for the Gorbachev speech--which I don't have--but there are plenty of books on the occult and the USSR such as "Reb Shambhala" by Andrei Znamenski; and "The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture" by multiple authors.
Thank you for bringing Alan Watt to my attention. His name gets lost in the mire of misinformation.
My ears pricked up when he spoke as I think I can learn from him. He knew a lot. His comment on Marx was not a thing I particularly wanted to spend time on. He would turn in his grave I expect if that is all people discuss when reading his words.
He was right on so many things, I feel. For instance, he said in 2019 "Even now is they must keep Americans thinking that they have a country, which is theirs". We can see Trump doing his job which is to dismantle it and merge it with other countries. World governance is the aim and Web 3/cybernetics are the latest tools taking them there.
Watts is great, but for him to bypass Marx in the way he did leads me to believe he doesn't really understand Marxism. Neitzsche believe in Übermensch, not Marx.
To play Devil's Advocate: I think that Henrik and Alan are mistaken in their claims that Karl Marx and J.S. Mill talked about the agglomeration of Europe, America and Asia into big economic blocs. Marx' Capital is mainly economic analysis of the present and near-past, and I don't recall any such grand predictions regarding the unification of North and South America. As for Mill, his mentality was totally bourgeois (or 'penny-pinching' if you like) and I have a hard time believing that he was thinking about immanentizing any grand mergers. Off-hand remarks like these, which are also grand claims, cast a shadow of doubt on the rest of the discussion. Just my $0.02
EDIT: This is not to field a defense of Marx or Marxism, but just to place it in its proper historical position. Personally I dislike Marx very much because his socialist movement was always antagonistic to what they called 'petty bourgeois reformers' (i.e. antibank socialists, agrarians, etc.)
EDIT #2: I'd also like to know more about the Fire of London in 1666 if anyone has anything on that.
I believe in return for financial support, Cromwell agreed to lift the 1290 ban on Jews in England. He made the agreement with Rabbi Mannaseh "The Great Jew" of Amsterdam.
Believe it or not, but I have probably heard or read 90% of Alan Watt's entire material. He is one of my absolute favorite authors. If you are looking for an introduction to his material, I would recommend first listening to or reading the interviews with Alex Jones and Coast2coast. After that, the interviews on Sweet Liberty. Then you have a good start.
Regarding the mention of James Lindsay ITT(and as a general response to this thread), I recently discovered Eric Voegelin- so far I'm really liking the guy:
Not sure if JL is controlled op or what, but whatever the case, I'd bet money Lindsay was influenced by Voegelin. afaict, EV's work sums up views I've been incubating myself for some time-- particularly regarding Marx etc, Voegelin's idea of "political religions", and why we should not try to immanentize the eschaton- it'll just make things worse. I think this just might be correct and a common thread amongst the various shitshows in history.
A couple of years back, a group of so-called 'transgender' people hereabouts were flyposting to advertise a group exclusively for 'trans'-identifying people to meet in secret, ostensibly for mutual support.
The name that had been chosen for the group was "The Masonry".
Just for reference for others, the Urquhart bit is so blatantly false after some investigation that it's again hilarious how someone can think this. To think that Urquhart, a Turkophile with some funny reactionary tracts, mostly remembered for introducing the Turkish bath in Britain, was some mastermind spy behind Marx is laughable. Marx published some articles in his journal, but after their first meeting he was convinced that he was a a fool and that they could only agree on the Palmerston question, after which he still published some articles in his journal because it was one of the few that would publish his tracts on Russia, which were indeed not that great, but also consistently called for the overtrow of the British aristocracy by the workers btw. This stopped after 1857 and after that they had no contact, nor is there any evidence of 'Urquhart being his main confidant', except for this probably slanderous biography in 1907. Why do people always just read the made up sensationalized pieces instead of the original and then pretend that the original is fake because it doesn't align with the insane story?
We have access to the internet now, you can just look up the originals instead of falling for the fakes, but I guess people don't like reading...
"Should we not at least try to drive the money-changers from the temple? "
I lean towards seeing Jesus whipping the money lenders out of the Temple as a Gospel-anomaly that requires some explaining, just as when he curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season (?). It might even be read as a moment of weakness (human fallibility) on JC's part, as when he feels forsaken by God on the cross.
(I do not understand Christians who want their Christ to be infallible, since “to err is human” and were he perfect, then he would no longer be human and imitation would be futile. The second part of the saying about human error is—Christ’s divine prerogative—forgiveness, which is only necessary/possible because of our capacity for missing the mark.)
Violence may sometimes be a necessary human response to injustice, then, and preferable to the sort of false humility that suppresses (out)rage and swallows it down in an attempt to be more than human, and so does violence to ourselves. But it is still missing the mark, insofar as it is a reaction that stems from being scandalized by the world (Satan), and feeds the very thing that it is pushing against, that stumbles over the block in a reactive move to get around it: as evidenced by the revolutionary blueprint, how government oppression leads to revolution, lead to oppressive government, ad infinitum.
The idea that a revolutionary response is legitimate, and therefore comes from God (as expressed in a comment below, advocating the Trump admin reformation) is a serious (maybe cardinal) mistake that conflates rendering unto Caesar with what God wants. Ironically, “Render unto Caesar” advocates non-revolutionary action, compliance to state power, which suggests a different Christ to the rough “justice” he administers to the money lenders. (This latter is perhaps because of their hypocrisy in pretending to be one thing while being another?)
The essential Gospel idea here is “My kingdom is not of this world” and “Get thee behind me Satan (Peter), because you value the things of this world and not those of God.”
ALL Trump (or any candidate) supporters, and all revolutionaries, are valuing the things of this world, allowing themselves to be scandalized by Satan, and so becoming an instrument of that. And of course they imbue their worldly-value/alignment with a religiosity as its cover, and dress it up in kingly robes, because that’s how their error manifests and propagates itself: by raising up worldly values to supplant those of God.
And I, meanwhile, run the risk of being scandalized by the fools who look to political reformers to fix their lives & fill up my comment sections with scandalous blarney. ;)
Maybe one significant aspect of Christ's driving the money lenders from the temple is the fact that he did it himself, unaccompanied; he didn't get a 'gang' together to do it. (Likewise, I'll stand corrected if wrong, but I believe it was only Christ who, in the gospels, rebuked the religious elders; his disciples never weighed in on this). Maybe we can read from this that, if in our time the money lenders are to be driven from the temple, it is Christ and/or the Holy Spirit that has to do it, which may involve it being done through us as "Christ-in-the-world- today", but only insofar as we are Spirit led.
The episode might also aid coherence between God as depicted in the Old and New Testament, by showing us the righteous anger which is perhaps more in keeping with Yahweh than with much of Christ's ministry.
As regards "render unto Caesar": one possible way of looking at this is that Christ was being understanding and somewhat merciful - he may have been saying, "I know you live in a system which is beyond your control, and you have to play along so as to earn a living. That's OK, but while you're having to do that, give to God what is God's - e.g. your heart and will".
Roger that!
45 comments in under 12 hrs, must be a record; will have to catch up tomorrow!
There's some fun stuff in there, but the Marx stuff is so blatantly anti-historical that I have to question the method on the rest of the stuff. You can simply go to marxists.org and read all 10 years of Marx's writings before the Communist Manifesto to see that it follows a very logical intellectual path, which continues into his later unfinished works. So either they completely falsified all his manuscripts with his characteristic almost unreadable writing (which we still have to a very large extent), falsified the insanely large amount of texts and letters that he wrote, that all quite obviously seem to be written by 1 person, and then falsified also all the minutes for the first international where he espoused his philosophy in person and called Bakunin a dirty freemason repeatedly, or we stick to the fairly straightforward historical picture that he was just quite a smart and very productive writer in a specific historical time and milieu. Pretending that one of the more prolific, idiosyncratic and well-documented writers of his time actually didn't write his own works is such a bold statement to make that his further historical investigation also needs to be called into question imo. Also, a lot of the writings we have are still unfinished, and noone, except Engels compiling and publishing the stuff Marx already wrote for vol. 2 and 3, has really taken the time to complete his 7 volume plan of Das Kapital, so if other people were able to write his works, then why did it stop when he died? Especially if it was so important as an elite plan for the future development of the world.
Also it's funny to take the Freemasons at their word when they say that they were behind all the revolutions in history, because we also know that they're just a bunch of narcissistic hobnobbers who continually pretend that anyone interesting was part of their little goonclub.
Usually these people are scared of taking Marx or Hegel seriously, just because they say that even the elite and their clubs are subject to forces of history greater than themselves, and that they're thus not All-Powerful and it's possible to fight them, even on their own turf by dismantling their ideology. And while I believe too that there are elite plans that span hundreds if not thousands of years, even these plans they made can't be completely their own making: they had to find their ideas from somewhere. This is why Hegel says it's actually in some sense the Idea that's in control, as ultimately the elites can only make plans by the logic of the Idea's they have. This Marx then takes further by showing that some Ideas are developed in the interest of the elite, but that some Ideas can also be developed in the interest of the people themselves. If you read Marx's early works all he's concerned with is to figure out a way to live in a non-alienated authentic manner, without being controlled by the ideology/Ideas of the elite, which are necessarily traumatic and anti-human Ideas in some sense, thus the same project that we're supposedly engaged in.
Secretly I think that there's a lurking resentment in the fact that Marx's ideas have actually led to people taking up arms against the oligarchy (and then being partially coopted again), while the ideas of most conspiracy researchers have led to very little, so they try to undercut him without actually engaging his writings by making up stories about his writings not even being his own. Miles Mathis, another conspiracy researcher who sometimes has quite interesting stuff, even had the hilarious take that Marx was coopted because he wrote such big books so that you wouldn't be able to read it all and then be so caught up in reading that you'd never actually take arms against the oligarchy. Except of course that the people who read Marx actually tried to take up arms lmao.
Sorry for the long rant, but I always get a bit agitated by these ahistorical takes from people who simply demonize Marx and other writers of yesteryear, just to avoid the actual work of reading to understand what they meant.
I can't comment on the deep background of Karl, but I can easily see how someone who has immersed themselves in his (alleged) output would reject a one-line dismissal, devoid of citations or explications. Any idea what Watt might have been basing his claim on? (have you heard anything like it before?)
OTOH I think it's easy to underestimate (as well as overestimate) the depth & sophistication of these sorts of group-ops w/front men (eg The Beatles?).
Is there evidence that any armed Marxist uprisings led to outcomes not fully in line with the social engineering goals being opposed? You seem to suggest that conspiracy research would be more of a genuine challenge to power if it led to armed revolt? Isn't arming and dispatching c-theorists (cf Pizzagate, Ted Kazcinski) part of the SOP of State?
Don't even get me started on MM! Worst of the well-poisoners.
I tend to give Watt some benefit of the doubt that, if he made this claim about Marx, then there must be something to it, since his overall approach/understanding seems solid. OTOH, if he pulled the claim out of his ass, then obviously it puts all the rest into serious doubt.
(This was before the Marx-demonization became a pillar of alt-media conspiracy theory so it could even make him an early meme-spreader.)
Well the only other guy who I heard talk about Marx in this fashion was MM, who had a bit of a better point, in the fact that Jenny Marx (his wife) was from the Phillips family, who were quite powerful industrialists in the Netherlands, and received some money from her uncle. Still, this isn't even a very interesting take, as Engels was also an industrialist, and one can of course fall out with one's class and family's spookiness. (As you know out of personal experience with the Fabians, just as I do with some of my family.)
Then I have also heard claims of Marx being a freemason, but the problem is that there's no real evidence for it, while there is with for example Bakunin, who Marx also accused of being a freemason and thus muddying the waters for revolution.
But no, this is the first time I heard someone proffer the idea that Marx did not write the communist manifesto, which is really really hard to believe, as we even have an intact manuscript page with his name on it from the communist manifesto. I could literally walk over to the institute that has it in my hometown of Amsterdam and inspect it in person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto#/media/File:Iishmarx.jpg
What he I think bases his claim on is that the manifesto was published anonymously, but this was obviously for fear of juridical repercussions, as they lived in a time of heavy state repression. They were even convicted after the 1848 revolutions, for which reason they were expelled from Germany and lived in exile in London. (In London Marx just sat autistically in the British Museum reading room, to research for his later writings.) To suggest this was out of disdain for Marx by his handlers or something like that shows so little attention for the historical context that I really can not take it seriously. Also the claim that Marx was some shitty journalist before that just completely ignores his time with the Young Hegelians and the 10 years of very interesting philosophical output he had, so I can even say that for that claim he could just have looked up one single bibliography of Marx to prevent this blatant falsity. Then the bit about South-America overtaking North-America in an American union is also not present in Das Kapital, so again just completely made up. Marx did write a lot on America in his later works, but he was actually quite optimistic about the autonomous quality America had in that time, and thought the rest of the world could learn from their way of constructing more autonomous communelike living situations. So also there I just don't know what he's referring to.
I may be overstating it, but Marx's life has been so studied, and his biography has been so well-documented, that for any claim one makes on him it should be very easy to produce a citation, which I really can't find for these claims, besides the fact that they just seem ahistorical and wholly made up in the first place. With the Beatles for example it's quite easy to show the connections to naval intelligence (hello sgt. pepper) and such that they had, while with Marx I haven't yet been able to be convinced, even though I've tried to look for these connections myself too.
Then, about the armed revolt, there is a difference to me between individual vigilante terrorism and organized communal revolt, where the first is by definition unable to pose any challenge to oligarchy, while the latter might have some sort of chance at the least. Violence can of course be a double-edged sword, but even Christ flogged the moneychangers out of the temple, which many revolutions have taken as an example. Marx and Engels explicitly based their ideas on the German peasant revolts in the 1500s, the Protestant revolutions against Catholic financial oligarchy, and even on the communal practices of the early Christians as documented in Acts and the early Church Fathers. Michael Hudson also has very interesting stuff concerning the connection between economy and christianity that Marx also takes up.
Now concerning the Marxist revolutions, the problem is of course that once a movement becomes bigger it is entangled again into the nets of corruption that bind this world, but the question is if one should go into a complete retreat from these binds and leave the world rotten as is, or if one should risk entanglement, exactly to try and untangle the world. For me it is analogous to the Theravada or Mahayana buddhist divide, where the Mahayana boddhisatva goes back into the world to liberate it, instead of only caring ones own liberation. To continue on the Asian tour, I do also think that the Marxist revolution in China, while also producing a lot of corruption, has shown to now produce a better and more peaceful society, where most people actually own their own home and are able to pursue their free time in ways they choose themselves, then has been done in America. But even besides revolutions, his writings, which ultimately were more of an expression of the workers movement than that they created the movement, did help inspire countless smaller projects and the workers movement ultimately improved the lifes of workers greatly during the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, as being a prole was absolute shit in the beginning of the 19th. As Marx says in Capital, the worker was really fed as some sort of human sacrifice to the Mammon machine of the capitalists, from which they could only separate themselves by organizing and demanding better working conditions, shorter working time, and ultimately freedom from wage-slavery. This worked very well for some time, but sadly our ultimate freedom from wage-slavery was not effected, partly due to the horrors of the industrial world wars of the elites, which they fomented against the threat of the workers movements imo, and partly due to the cooptment of the workers into the social democratic movements, also known as the Fabians. Any Marxist worth his salt despised the Fabians as a movement of elite capture, and Marx railed at length against similar projects in his own time.
The problem I think with a lot of conspiracy research is that they don't realize that people have not actually simply been duped for thousands of years, but that for ages people have realized the lie and fought against it in various ways, but because they've ultimately lost consistently, while making gains to some extent (we're not the Lords explicit property anymore at least), their struggles are ideologically falsified by modernday social engineers to appear other than they were. But the kingdom of Satan is a kingdom divided, thus can not stand, and will eventually fall. Marx's writing are in all honesty nothing more than an elucidation of why and how the kingdom of Mammon will ultimately destroy itself, and finally say that one should become active in helping its downfall.
Now to finish with some of my own doubt, I do always find it strange that Marx can be so central to the academy, while still being revolutionary in my own opinion. What I do see is that he's very often heavily misread to turn him into some sort of Fabian, so maybe the academical discourse on him helps actually to neutralize his ideas, and give some sort of outlet of virtual revolt for the socialist larpers we see all around, with the stamp of his imposing name for approval. Marx himself at least wasn't an academic, and always railed against it as apologetics for the state.
I can't in good conscience ignore the comment above, in defense of Marxist revolution in China. My impression of Chairman Mao is that he was probably the vilest psychopathic despot of the 20th century, head & shoulders above the usual suspects, and yet somehow gets a mostly free pass.
The idea that students ripping their teachers limb from limb, and human flesh appearing on menus in revolutionary restaurants, "has shown to now [sic] produce a better and more peaceful society" is probably the most outrageously contentious statement anyone has ever made at this site. (Yes, even above, "Donald Trump is going to save America")
I wasn't defending Mao on that stuff, I just think that besides Mao there were actually a lot of people that did try to improve things, and that in lieu of the horrors of the cultural revolution, they have now succeeded in building a somewhat better society for millions of people by consistently trying to keep the financial oligarchy out of power. But idk, I'm no dogmatic on China, it just seems that nowadays they have a somewhat succeeded to make a somewhat more humane society, but I wouldn't defend them too much, and certainly not these culture revolution practices.
But I also think it's a very definite problem, as most of these revolutions have just seemed to produce horror upon horror, so I'm not sure if I'm actually behind them, but I also don't know if I can count out armed revolt, because you think it would be a good idea to organize and take the power from the oligarchic parasites. It's just a sad fact of the logic of this fallen world that any resistance against them will just reproduce the horror to some extent, but should we not at least try to drive the money-changers from the temple?
As you can see I waver a lot on this topic, and should probably just read more on the actual history of these revolutions to be able to form a definite opinion to discern what is good and what is evil.
Such comprehensive and thoughtful comments in defence of Marx & Marxism present me with a cognitive conundrum, one in which I want to have a strong opinion to back up my emotional dislike of Marx, but in all honesty cannot,.
On the one hand, I only have tidbits of info here & there (such as Marx's personal behaviors as an elitist a-hole belying his alleged values), & on the other, the anti-Marxist slant of conspiracy-consciousness has become so pervasive post JBP that I can hardly claim not to have been influenced by it, without, as you say, seeing much close analysis of the works themselves.
All that said, & as w/ Freud & Einstein (the two other most influential Hebes of the 20th century), I can't see a case being convincingly made for Marx having such massive social leverage from the start, where he not consciously involved in some sort of group operation of global engineering. This would then make the 2nd matrix sloppy narratives about it (like the "Theodore Adorno wrote the Beatles songs for Tavistock" narrative) a means of conflating subtler truths with gross simplifications and so causing intelligent people to dismiss them.
What's yr opinion on James Lindsay?
It's become a bit more comprehensive then I intended haha, probably because I'm avoiding writing my thesis. But I do like breaking a lance for Marx as I think he's heavily misjudged by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike.
I get the emotional dislike, as Marx has been used for quite horrible purposes and misread in a thousand ways, but the reason for that is I think because he actually reached some real truth, which the hounds immediately go after.
Furthermore, Marx was in some sense a similar elitist a-hole as we are, he just wrote and criticized his contemporaries a lot, but in person he was known to be very jovial, with a good relationship with his wife and daughter.
Then the last point, which is very interesting. Now first, Marx didn't have massive social leverage at first, but only started gaining this over the years and especially only later after his death with the expansion of the workers movement. Also Capital is just a very good book for explaining how capitalism works.
Then on the global social engineering group part, the thing is that I think Marx was actually very much aware of this, but that the whole point of the worker movement and the Communist International was to in some sense create a great conspiracy - by the workers! - to rival the conspiracy of the elite. But with Marx I think it's not that these groups were simply fomented by some masterminds, but that the worker movement actually caught on because the workers were (and still are) in shit situations under the yoke of the elite, and that for this reason they started organizing and gaining critical mass to stand up again to the oligarchs.
On a more conspiratorial level I kind of think Capital is some sort of cybernetic demonic machine conjured up by Financial Magicians like Pica de Mirandola in Venice in the Renaissance, and that Marx was trying to exhume or exorcise this vampiric demon (he calls Capital a vampire many times) by bringing it to consciousness for the workers on which it was feeding, with the same literary methods as the Old Testament Prophets used, so that the workers themselves could start exorcising themselves and their communities of this demon, whose tendrils were material as well as psychic. (A bit like Willem Dafoe's character in the new Nosferato lol, though with occult spells.) Now just like with Christ, only a conspiracy of the Good (Christ in the gospels constantly hides himself), that constantly exposes and reveals the Evil can ultimately defeat the evil, but in a strange way, by letting the Evil defeat itself.
Marx's main idea for communism was thus actually to constantly agitate for the lessening of working hours, so that the capitalists would be forced to automate the workers away, and the worker wouldn't be needed by the machine anymore. Then man would be free from work, as a great abundance would be produced automatically, so that man could start to work not simply to provide for his basic needs, but to work for his personal, intellectual and spiritual development, as well as for the development of his community. The gambit of communism is just the freedom from wage-slavery and the real opportunity to figure out ones own lifework for oneself.
Also I haven't really engaged with James Lindsay except from a distance, but I do know that the whole schtick of 'Hegelian Dialects' is kinda stupid. Hegel is so much funnier than conspiracy types make him out to be, because his whole point is that the elites who think they are in control are actually governed by their own ideas, instead of the elites 'using' the dialectic to govern people. The dialectic uses them, especially because they try to use it! They compulsively try to make themselves immortal out of the insane narcissism they have in that they think they are God. For Hegel then the whole idea is that most elites don't have a clue, but compulsively enact certain schemes, all because they think that they are at the top of the world, not God, whereas the humble can actually develop a way better idea of how the world works, because they aren't blinded by their own ideas of grandeur. They don't know what they do, as Christ says. Take for example Crowley, isn't he a perfect symbol for the elite ideology that just leads to pitiable masturbatory self-destruction? For Hegel the true madness is not some peasant thinking he is king, but a king thinking he is actually king by reason of his own greatness, instead of that the people have granted him their power for him to be king. And thus the people should see that they are able to take away this power as well etc etc.
I might refer also to Logo on Lindsay: https://x.com/Logo_Daedalus/status/1891185333510742469
Also to be perfectly honest I think there might be a problematic occultic side to Marx, but I have yet to figure out my full thoughts on that, so I can't really say anything on it yet. Also because I don't know yet if he doesn't do it exactly to exorcise these occultic notions, which is the hunch I have. It will take a while to research, but if I find out I will for sure tell you.
Now you're on the right track 😁
Choo-choo, happy chugging
I would say it's well established that the wealthy indistrialist Engels family had much to do with Marx having any career. And do not discount the massive influence Fabian Society Marxism has held over the official narratives of "history" long before the current proffers of counter narrative came along.
It also seems clear Marx was a bitter, life-hating Satanist, but hey, anyone is free to defend him & Stalin & Hitler & Aleister Crowley, too, for that matter. Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD 😂
Except that he wasn't lol: https://mobile.x.com/MarMusto/status/1787179972290900010
Oh and Marx can also be read as a Blakean interestingly enough: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/blake.htm
Right off the bat, Marx is acknowledged as the actual author. The nuance here is that he was instructed about what to write, & that his authorship was deemed UNIMPORTANT enough by his bosses to omit his name. So the fact that you can examine an original hand-written manuscript with his name or even signature included means nothing. In & of itself, it doesn't even prove that he actually wrote said manuscript, but I'll grant you that for the sake of argument. It does nothing to address whether the ideas were truly his own or if he was simply hired to write as instructed.
Yes, but that’s why I said you can quite simply read the 10 years of intellectual development Marx documented in his various writings befor the Communist Manifesto to see that it lies very much in the extension of those earlier writings, so that invalidates the idea that he needed someone else to write it for him pretty conclusively.
You can also examine the Satanic rantings of his utter hatred towards God for creating such a miserable creature as himself😂
Anyway, the two things need not be mutually exclusive. Obviously when you hire someone to write as instructed, all the better that said writer has already developed his own ideas in the same direction. And according to whose opinion was he a well-respected & professional journalist? Other adepts bent on destroying the human spirit from flourishing? According to other opinions, he was disheveled but dangerous propagandist doing the bidding of Fabian globalists subverting the local community's culture, not a "journalist."
can you share the "Satanic rantings" here, as an example?
Personally, I define Satanism as self-worship &/or hatred of God. So I would see Satanism all over his work that others would not call Satanic. However, Marx also seemed to have an obsession with serving evil threading throughout his poetry. Obviously poetry is subjective, but it certainly doesn't inspire the human spirit with truth & beauty, rather, it seems to revel in tearing these down, like much of modern "art" & architecture.
“Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well.
My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for Hell.”
—The Pale Maiden, 1837
“Look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab
Unerringly within thy soul…
The hellish vapours rise and fill the brain,
Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.
See the sword—the Prince of Darkness sold it to me.
For he beats the time and gives the signs.
Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.”
—The Player, 1841
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2024/07/karl-marxs-obsession-the-devil/
Damning!
"His utter hatred towards god", except that he helped his daughter through a crisis of faith by carefully setting out the Catholic theology, even though he wasn't concerned with it himself?
And according to whose opinion? To mine lol, because I actually read his philosophical works. Just say you haven't read him and only listened to what other people said about him, then we can end the discussion because there's little to discuss when you haven't read the texts.
So he loved his kid. Parenthood often forces these kind of inconsistencies. And yes, I admit it has been many years since I
deigned to dirty my mind with the likes of Marx. I read Marx along with all the other power-mad men of the dustbin of history, beginning in preadolescent childhood
through my twenties, when I finally figured out that they're all twisting themselves into pretzels in order to uniquely express the same basic contempt for their humanness instead of being God Himself. So I won't waste any more of my time arguing over this pet hero of yours than I would to brush up on the details of the musings of all those evil madmen whose writings I once devoured in the quest to understand evil- at least not at a time when I am deliberately clearing my mind of poisonous influence in order to align with God's purposeful plans for me instead of my own.
Cool, I can respect that! Only God has all the answers indeed, not Marx.
I'll just leave you with one final Marx quote: “After all, we can forgive Christianity much because it taught us to love children.”
Obviously YOUR opinion agrees, but whose opinions from that time upon which you claim he was respected as a journalist IN HIS DAY???
I don't think I ever claimed anything about his journalism, it's just that he was respected as a philosopher in his small circle of intellectual friends, the Young Hegelians, who played an important role in the Prussian intellectual milieu.
I would caution you to consider how much of our history actually IS fabricated before you go dismissing the very idea of fabrication, both of materials & of characters. Edgar Allen Poe was poisoned to death & then had his character assassinated by a fabricated historical narrative in which his enemy in life became his biographer in death to paint him a horrible alcoholic & degenerate (accuse opponents of what you yourself are/do):
https://thechainedmuse.substack.com/p/edgar-poe-as-cultural-warrior-part?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQLYHgtTQvc
Yeah I’ve read Matthe Ehrett too, now provide me some proof on the Marx bit.
Obviously not enough yet 🤣
I have replied to the Marx bit also. But is Karl Marx your only area of exploration??? He doesn't even matter anymore. Marxism has moved on, just as all ideas evolve away from their (supposed) progenitors (as if there's anything new under the Sun, at this point everything is a remix)
No I just like reading old books and Marx is one of these I've read quite a bit, miss me with that remix stuff when you can just read the originals lol. Why drink from the muddy river when you can go to the clear source?
Twenty years ago wants its insult back 😆 But you're gonna recycle it just like every idea has long been recycled remixing of everything that has come before. You clearly misunderstood, because I was saying MARX is the muddy water, as ALL ideas are at this point.
Just FYI, this particular article isn't even by Ehret; it's on The Chained Muse by David B. Gosselin. So you clearly didn't even have a look before having a snarky reply.
Lol maybe look again, it says By Mathew Ehrett at the top and then Originally Published on his substack
Yes, he is the publisher. David B. Gosselin is the WRITER you would have been READING. Glad you finally clicked through, though 😂
But it's just not true, I'm sorry haha.
Here it is on Matt's substack with no mention of Gosselin:
https://open.substack.com/pub/matthewehret/p/edgar-poe-as-cultural-warrior-part?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7fl8e
This article on how the British created Communism & blamed it on "the Jews" should shed more light untinted by pervasive "progressive" propaganda upon the subject for you:
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardpoe/p/how-the-british-invented-communism?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1dvul1
It’s an interesting article, and I need to indeed dive more into the Urquhart business with Marx, which is strange. Yet he simply reads Marx wrong, in precisely the way the Fabians and Urquharts he lambasts do, namely as only attacking the middle class, while there are many writings in Marx where he continually and repeatedly slams the feudal aristocrats, the landlords and the rentiers living off of the work of the industrialists and the workers. Unsurprisingly he repeatedly calls for their overthrow, and contrary to this guy’s reading he has no illusions about feudal society, as he considers the bourgeois development as better than the feudal serfdom. Another case of someone only reading and citing the Manifesto…
But I’ll check out the Urquhart bit.
and he gives the Hebrews a free pass
Haha well not really, it's not my cup of tea, but I guess you have not read his On the Jewish Question?
Richard Poe? He cancelled an interview with me when I said that I didn't agree the Jews were entirely uninvolved
Ooh wait I thought you were talking about Marx.
But what's "not true, lol"???
You deleted it so I can only see the aborted comment as a notification.
I guess a good analogue would be Freud, who people also demonize, probably had some weird connections etc, but is still highly rewarding to read, maybe not for taking up arms, but more for figuring out one's own authenticity.
If Freud is a good analogue then isn't there also a good case is to be made that Freud was fronting for some larger occult ideology-spreading, rather than an isolated genius having spontaneous insights? As for the value of the work, I have found it useful for writing pieces and books, but that doesn't mean overall his work has had a positive influence (I am skeptical); or even that it didn't lead me down some blind alleys (too soon to say for sure). As I discussed in a recent piece on Girard, Freud seemed to be writing fiction and presenting it as science, for much of the time, ie, imposing a new paradigm rather than discovering one.
Personally I think, also for historical reasons, that Freud is more suspect than Marx in some sense, as Marx really has a way more empirical outlook than Freud. Capital is littered with historical reference, and ultimately quite self-explanatory in its premises.
But furthermore, I think there is a problem with too quickly taking the occult ideology-spreading as a problem, as I think in some sense that's just how ideas seem to propagate. Some are consciously complicit in this, but I think that even the consciously complicit are just useful idiots for the ideas themselves, which propagate through these various secret societies, but even we ourselves make secret societies (like your Manopticon) exactly to gestate and develop our own ideas. Superculture feeds on culture, but ultimately it is culture again that produces this superculture in some strange feedback loop, where there is an Idea that actually grounds both sides of the loop.
This is not to say that we should simply trust these ideas (which is why the Marxist idea to figure out in whose interest in idea is developed is so eminently useful, and has become a standard way of viewing the world for everyone now), but it is more to say that I think even from these compromised figures we can distill interesting ideas, as ultimately they don't really spontaneously generate these ideas themselves, they aren't God! Even they still have to grapple with the complexity of the world, and even they, how much they pretend that they understand all, still don't understand all and need to use basic human instincts and concepts to make sense of it all. Now this can be read as apologia for psywar, which I don't intend it to be, just more of a riff on the fact that even forces for good will at some point have to talk in occulted parables, because it seems human communication/language almost forces us to. Christ also has some quite suspect characteristics to him, but shining through is I think a truth.
Now the reason I defend Marx over Freud is that I think Marx can best be likened to an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah or Amos, who continually and explicitly denounces the abuses of the elite and tries to prophecy how society will develop in consequence of the corrupt practices of the elite. The prophets have ultimately also inspired millions to turn away from the corruption of their state, or even take up arms against it, and I see Marx as not really different. See for example also Engels' book on "The Condition of the Working Class in England" were he describes the social ills he saw, that became the reason for their organizing.
Of course Marx wasn't some isolated genius either - never forget Engels - but a thinker who was part of a larger milieu that might indeed have been in part created for nefarious purposes, but even there I think this is the reason why Marx was constantly criticizing those around him, and developing his own ideas in this debate, just to find out what which were the good and which were the bad ideas.
Now to finish, if ever you think "I want to read some Marx", then I would recommend "The German Ideology" and the Paris Manuscripts, as these are the works were he most clearly states his philosophy in some sense, instead of going on extended empirical economic investigations, and also seem in line with your work, as they grapple with the problem of ideology imposed by the elite, and of finding an unalienated way of life.
In what sense is the Manopticon a secret society?
The main point here, for me, about ideas being the ruling force, is one that deserves some attention & is also one I am circling currently for a possible new project.
Well it a community for which one must perform certain acts to get in, like subscribe to the substack, and perform certain ritual libations to join, like abstain from drugs and smoking before and during the sessions. And I mean this not in a dismissive sense! I think Christ and his disciples also formed a sort of secret society, but I think it is a secret society that runs counter to the secret societies that try to control and obscure the world, for this sort of secret society tries to liberate and reveal, and opens itself to the outside, while at the same time remaining secret in a certain sense. Secrecy is also important, for as Christ and Paul say, the princes of this world constantly try to destroy and feast on any truth they see, so the words of Christ are spoken in parables, to hide their truth from the powers that be that try to cannibalize it, but reveal it to the people that actually hunger for the truth.
Also I've been reading Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga, and he sees a lot of culture as structured by theatrical forms that are similar to secret societies (for isn't the secret society ultimately just a form of theatre), which he doesn't per se approve of, but isn't in itself bad. I actually think you'd like that book a lot, I can highly recommend it.
And nice, I hope to have shed some light on it, cause I'm still wrestling with it myself. I'd be very interested in what you have to say.
Also about the Manopticon, I should send you a message because I do want to join in one of the meets at some point, so I'll do that now.
It is exclusive but not secret; it is so not-secret that I have even aired audio clips from one meeting; however, privacy IS respected.
Interesting to mention Theatre (which I love & grew up doing)as it seems to have been the original public secret ritual workings
Sun worship explainer: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GkHKsRCXYAAUdOH?format=jpg
LOL; not sure what the relevancy is?
The cycle from Atlantean technology to today's brain chip, clairvoyant institutions, predictive programing, and AI madness.
https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/p/palantirs-quest-to-create-clairvoyant
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/01/argentina-ai-predicting-future-crimes-citizen-rights
It seems like Marx creates puzzle boxes for intellectuals who now toil in academia deciphering the endless permutations of his revered word, annotating and revealing its nuances.
They both (Marx/Freud) seem to spawn a cacophony of talking/wild action, like an incantation was cast on the world. What intellectual bell should we ring to clear our intellectual cupboards of these spells?
Its hard to say, because they both have some insights about our circumstances, Freud with the unconscious, and Marx with exploitation & alienation of class interests. But ruminating on some of these structural features of our circumstances is not a way out, anymore than talking about depression could inherently cure depression. The idea is laughable in retrospect! And solving society through utopian projects is similarly misguided.
Let us quote a controversial figure on this stack, arguing here that working to undo our "woes" is itself undoing"
"What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal green–pasture happiness of the herd, with security, lack of danger, comfort, and an easier life for everyone; the two songs and doctrines which they repeat most often are ‘equality of rights’ and ‘sympathy for all that suffers’—and suffering itself they take for something that must be abolished.
We opposite men, having opened our eyes and conscience to the question where and how the plant ‘man’ has so far grown most vigorously to a height—we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness of his situation must first grown to the point of enormity, his power of invention and simulation (his ‘spirit’) had to develop under prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audacity, his life–will had to be enhanced into an unconditional power– will. We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species ‘man’ as much as its opposite does. "
according to the speech Gorbachev gave in the Soviet Union, a two-page spread was done on the Soviet general staff of the military, and they found that they were all into the same things, channeling, fortune-telling, talismans, all the old magic stuff. [Citation?]
I know you are probably asking for the citation for the Gorbachev speech--which I don't have--but there are plenty of books on the occult and the USSR such as "Reb Shambhala" by Andrei Znamenski; and "The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture" by multiple authors.
Thank you for bringing Alan Watt to my attention. His name gets lost in the mire of misinformation.
My ears pricked up when he spoke as I think I can learn from him. He knew a lot. His comment on Marx was not a thing I particularly wanted to spend time on. He would turn in his grave I expect if that is all people discuss when reading his words.
He was right on so many things, I feel. For instance, he said in 2019 "Even now is they must keep Americans thinking that they have a country, which is theirs". We can see Trump doing his job which is to dismantle it and merge it with other countries. World governance is the aim and Web 3/cybernetics are the latest tools taking them there.
Watts is great, but for him to bypass Marx in the way he did leads me to believe he doesn't really understand Marxism. Neitzsche believe in Übermensch, not Marx.
To play Devil's Advocate: I think that Henrik and Alan are mistaken in their claims that Karl Marx and J.S. Mill talked about the agglomeration of Europe, America and Asia into big economic blocs. Marx' Capital is mainly economic analysis of the present and near-past, and I don't recall any such grand predictions regarding the unification of North and South America. As for Mill, his mentality was totally bourgeois (or 'penny-pinching' if you like) and I have a hard time believing that he was thinking about immanentizing any grand mergers. Off-hand remarks like these, which are also grand claims, cast a shadow of doubt on the rest of the discussion. Just my $0.02
EDIT: This is not to field a defense of Marx or Marxism, but just to place it in its proper historical position. Personally I dislike Marx very much because his socialist movement was always antagonistic to what they called 'petty bourgeois reformers' (i.e. antibank socialists, agrarians, etc.)
EDIT #2: I'd also like to know more about the Fire of London in 1666 if anyone has anything on that.
I believe in return for financial support, Cromwell agreed to lift the 1290 ban on Jews in England. He made the agreement with Rabbi Mannaseh "The Great Jew" of Amsterdam.
Believe it or not, but I have probably heard or read 90% of Alan Watt's entire material. He is one of my absolute favorite authors. If you are looking for an introduction to his material, I would recommend first listening to or reading the interviews with Alex Jones and Coast2coast. After that, the interviews on Sweet Liberty. Then you have a good start.
Your videos have a song at the beginning of them could you please let me know who sings it and the name of the song thankyou..
assuming you mean the Jobcast, all songs are listed in the show notes, in this case with a link to Cullah's site
Yes I was referring to jobcast. Thankyou I will check the notes ☺
Regarding the mention of James Lindsay ITT(and as a general response to this thread), I recently discovered Eric Voegelin- so far I'm really liking the guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin
Not sure if JL is controlled op or what, but whatever the case, I'd bet money Lindsay was influenced by Voegelin. afaict, EV's work sums up views I've been incubating myself for some time-- particularly regarding Marx etc, Voegelin's idea of "political religions", and why we should not try to immanentize the eschaton- it'll just make things worse. I think this just might be correct and a common thread amongst the various shitshows in history.
Also, this talk is good and relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcsiKBOhSpY
A couple of years back, a group of so-called 'transgender' people hereabouts were flyposting to advertise a group exclusively for 'trans'-identifying people to meet in secret, ostensibly for mutual support.
The name that had been chosen for the group was "The Masonry".
Just for reference for others, the Urquhart bit is so blatantly false after some investigation that it's again hilarious how someone can think this. To think that Urquhart, a Turkophile with some funny reactionary tracts, mostly remembered for introducing the Turkish bath in Britain, was some mastermind spy behind Marx is laughable. Marx published some articles in his journal, but after their first meeting he was convinced that he was a a fool and that they could only agree on the Palmerston question, after which he still published some articles in his journal because it was one of the few that would publish his tracts on Russia, which were indeed not that great, but also consistently called for the overtrow of the British aristocracy by the workers btw. This stopped after 1857 and after that they had no contact, nor is there any evidence of 'Urquhart being his main confidant', except for this probably slanderous biography in 1907. Why do people always just read the made up sensationalized pieces instead of the original and then pretend that the original is fake because it doesn't align with the insane story?
We have access to the internet now, you can just look up the originals instead of falling for the fakes, but I guess people don't like reading...
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/marx/wheen/ch07.htm
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1853/11/20.htm
https://marxists.architexturez/archive/marx/works/subject/russia/index.htm
https://www.levantineheritage.com/pdf/the-role-of-david-urquhart-within-the-framework-of-the-ottoman-british-relations-during-19th-century-Arif-Gulsaran.pdf
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