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COMMENTS AND ESSAYS FROM THE Facebook Dissenter/Disinter Group as Achieve Material


SE – Once again, we try to explain (as we have done in the past several times) our general approach to news, the media, politics. Here is a reproduction of private comments in a reply to one of my critics:

“We like some of your ideas, facts, and thoughts, and we welcome them – if presented within reason and decor. This is what we don’t like and try to avoid: Stephen Erdmann: We promote very few human endeavors in an absolute sense, Russian or otherwise, as all fail and all fall within the scope of the loop of human evil and frailty. We look for those foes that all humankind seems to be battling from ‘any’ corner they are hunkered in.

“This Group is not a ‘platform’ for one single person’s private opinions or ‘sermons.’ It is a ‘forum’ whereby ‘all’ have an opportunity to add to the ongoing investigation. Hopefully, most will participate and not just become ‘observers.’ Likewise, this Group will not become monopolized by the thinking and propaganda of just one individual – this was not its purpose.

“We are not affiliated with the KKK or any other political faction said that many times, over and over, as well as has explained why we present all sides of news and media questions, without censorship, if possible. We are against the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) and all its ‘isms,’ “cants,” ‘crats,’ ‘cans,’ and ‘doms.’ All it takes to see this and prove it, is to use your mouse or enter scroll and have a strong browser and investigate back to 2011. We refuse to become any one person’s private, personal pulpit (that is why you have your own Timeline). We allow most to speak their minds continually here — even to the point of opulently and often stuporous ferociousness — over and over — but apparently that is not good enough for a few. It takes a strong mind and will to live under the 1st Amendment and really abide by it.

“When I say ‘we,’ I usually mean ‘me’ – though I am speaking editorially on behalf of all those members who follow and agree with the Preamble religiously — they get the idea and message — and are giving me their full support.

“All the twisting, stretching and manipulating of my stated words and intended feelings will not help these matters and being completely uncompromising, unreasonable and deliberately uncouth certainly won’t help either.


“Please, read my text and postings in their full context and their entirety, if possible, to adjust to the real story and picture I present. Don’t settle for ‘half-baked’ interpretations or careless understanding.

“When any one person begins to use these spaces as solely his or her private podium to demonized (and shout down or otherwise badger) all other voices, he will be informed and given a mandate to cease and desist. This is a ‘forum’ Group and that connotes some fairness and inspection and equipoise of one’s behavior: we hope that each member will reflect on their behavior and not allow it to become effluvium.”

(This does not mean we will allow  boring, tiring, inaccurate propaganda about the alleged Israel-cabal of so-called Zionism, which in many cases is far too short-sighted when it concerns the worldwide Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex-Matrix (MICCM). Well documented pieces on ‘how’ Zionism is part and parcel of the “overall” MICCM, might be tolerated; but, singling out propaganda trying to prove Hitler was virtuous and the killing of the Jewish population as justified, will not be tolerated.

We do not automatically share anti-Semitic views and do not state everyone should or does. In fact, those that appear to be promoted from a Hate standpoint usually won’t coexist on this Group. This Group does not endorse, knowingly, anti-Semitic propaganda per se and any Hate Speech that is the basis for it.)

There is a big difference between a source that publishes outright invented news, and a source—or sources—that you just “don’t like,” or says things that are philosophically different than your views or opinions. Things said on the Left spectrum and the Right Spectrum may annoy us, but they have the Constitutional Right to speak and be heard by willing listeners (you can always turn a deaf ear to the opinion). Myself, I think both sides of the “aisle” are filled with evil intentions and hogwash, but that shouldn’t prevent me printing interesting ‘tidbits,’ unless I decide one day to go completely “off the grid.”

Political terms, names and meanings have evolved, changed, and transformed over the years as many other concepts that have also transmogrified. Some “liberal” concepts once seemed to uphold “freedom,” ‘free speech’ and protected ‘human rights’: now have turned into a ‘power-based’ ‘force’ to change society, even if by ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ means. Some blatantly attack those idealistic overtures the Founding Fathers eluded to (some hiding behind those precepts but being actually treacherous to them). Conservatives tried to parade themselves as preserving the principals that were expounded underlying the Founding Fathers up to and through the Bill of Rights, have much, in the same way, become the lair of the wealthy and ultra-rich which want to control the masses, preserve their power and wealth, and hide behind a disguise of being the protectors of the Rights of Mankind, when they are only another power-based ‘force’ for control and greed using the slavery to the masses. They have far surpassed the British overlords the colonialists fought. All of these have become Monsters.

(I know from experience that security guards are nothing but Whipping Boys, a ‘buffer’ between the Security Guard company, the police and the Landowner (they have three (3) bosses). They are the ‘Fall guys,’ if anything goes wrong, it is their job to take the heat, to not make the Landlords or the company to look bad (nor the police, who often treat them as low, second-class citizens and nothing more). They are given a whole list of phony ‘rules’ to make them robots to ‘slice the heat’ and put on a good ‘public face’ (often at low or very moderate wages), sometimes in very dangerous and life-threatening situations. It is Crony Capitalism at its worst; most guards will not admit this for fear of losing their jobs. They could really tell you some stories: but it would expose the ‘system.’ They are allowed to do what they have to to ‘protect’ this ‘status quo and system.’ I am quite sure this goes beyond the Security Guard profession, and the same mentality exists in most businesses and professions, one way or the other.)

We are here to promote ‘news’ from all different angles and sources, it is not my or anyone else’s purpose to knowingly or even unknowingly ‘prejudge’ the news, unless it becomes so apparent it is false there is no other alternative. But getting to that point can be a rocky and wearisome struggle. We have no prejudice about exposing ‘multiple’ viewpoints, because we realize that reality is multi-sided, often multidimensional, complicated and not always easily discernible: so we present many sides of that struggle. If you read my editorial comments, you should see that I have no particular stake in the sordid political fights and feel such political ‘gamesmanship’ is illusory and almost impossible. Some people feel that such deception is beyond their party, club or faction. You may feel yours is Holy, as well. I doubt that sanctimoniousness. Only the strong-minded need to tread here. That closed-mindedness of “my viewpoint only” needs to be “taken down.”

There is a big difference between a source that publishes outright invented news, and a source—or sources—that you just “don’t like,” or says things that are philosophically different than your views or opinions. Things said on the Left spectrum and the Right Spectrum may annoy us, but they have the Constitutional Right to speak and be heard by willing listeners (you can always turn a deaf ear to the opinion). Myself, I think both sides of the “aisle” are filled with evil intentions and hogwash, but that shouldn’t prevent me printing interesting ‘tidbits,’ unless I decide one day to go completely “off the grid.”

Political terms, names and meanings have evolved, changed, and transformed over the years as many other concepts that have also transmogrified. Some “liberal” concepts once seemed to uphold “freedom,” ‘free speech’ and protected ‘human rights’: now have turned into a ‘power-based’ ‘force’ to change society, even if by ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ means. Some blatantly attack those idealistic overtures the Founding Fathers eluded to (some hiding behind those precepts but being actually treacherous to them). Conservatives tried to parade themselves as preserving the principals that were expounded underlying the Founding Fathers up to and through the Bill of Rights, have much, in the same way, become the lair of the wealthy and ultra-rich which want to control the masses, preserve their power and wealth, and hide behind a disguise of being the protectors of the Rights of Mankind, when they are only another power-based ‘force’ for control and greed using the slavery to the masses. They have far surpassed the British overlords the colonialists fought. All of these have become Monsters.

(I know from experience that security guards are nothing but Whipping Boys, a ‘buffer’ between the Security Guard company, the police and the Landowner (they have three (3) bosses). They are the ‘Fall guys,’ if anything goes wrong, it is their job to take the heat, to not make the Landlords or the company to look bad (nor the police, who often treat them as low, second-class citizens and nothing more). They are given a whole list of phony ‘rules’ to make them robots to ‘slice the heat’ and put on a good ‘public face’ (often at low or very moderate wages), sometimes in very dangerous and life-threatening situations. It is Crony Capitalism at its worst; most guards will not admit this for fear of losing their jobs. They could really tell you some stories: but it would expose the ‘system.’ They are allowed to do what they have to in order to ‘protect’ this ‘status quo and system.’ I am quite sure this goes beyond the Security Guard profession, and the same mentality exists in most businesses and professions, one way or the other.)

Yes, we have covered this phenomena every now and then since 2011. I’ve been through the Divorce Racket (and other rackets) over the years and have tried to speak out in various formats and scenarios; it all follows a common thread. It makes one wonder why we are fighting each other, rather than the ‘common enemy.’ That enemy is hard to see and I’ve done what I can to expose it and make it visible. These pages are open to fellow dissidents and ‘explorers’ and ‘exposers.’ You’re welcome to tell your stories here and add to the exposition. It is all part of a megalith monster I call the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex- Matrix (MICCM).

Concerning a separate and special Rights For Women Manifesto: Don’t know why it has to be signatured by “women” as these are basic Human Rights for all mankind, male or female, which, unfortunately many women, in their symbiotic and parasitic alliance with the Legal Industry Cabal, causes them to tarnish and violate those basic Rights for both Men and Women. See how far these Rights go without falling into the trap (as they have already been) of being used or overtaken by the MICCM and other Legal Industry Masterminds which only serve their own Power, Profit and Prestige.

“Outspoken” should pertain to those who are proven to be true heroes opposing physical and psychological dangers, as opposed to brats and punks, calling themselves adults, trashing and destroying others for very vain and greedy purposes.

It is equally infuriating to be unnecessarily misquoted and misunderstood, when an opponent or debater is just flouting his ingrained and innate propaganda brainwashed into him from birth and is making no attempt to truly analyze and comprehend what you are telling them. Sometimes, their minds are so closed, they just ignore anything you say or do. Instead of approaching the arguments from “in your shoes,” they continue to be the little robots our society has invented and further spiel the usual venom and grade-school invectiveness in which they have ‘not’ tried to unlearn.

I am at a point in my life that I want to undo the evils that I forgot or refused to fight against in my life, and give others a choice to do the same, before it is too late, utilizing my 1st Amendment Rights and no longer turning a blind eye to the fates of the world. To teach others to ‘think’ and discover and use their mind, not to become simple sheep and blind slaves to those who control their reality:. Take off their masks, those little deceiving priests!

People get stuck in very old ideologies, concepts and “isms” and refuse to move out of those ‘boxes.’ We always like to think that we are the ones that are wearing the ‘white hats,’ and are the ‘only’ ones that know how to wear them and, even, the only ones that know where to ‘buy’ them: when, in reality, they are just grey, smudged, soiled and fraying old hats that have been passed around for generations through many, many secret hands.

“Some kind” of compromise and “understanding” is always needed when these debates appear, and try to look at “root” problems and not bring up too many private situations; and even then, always be willing to compromise and see each other’s point-of-view. Other than that, as I have said many times previously, the terms “fascist, liberal, left, right” are thrown around too loosely and with no historical meaning, always being projected from each person’s “private boxes.”

We shouldn’t condemn ‘socialism’ any more than ‘conservatism’: both are aimless, meaningless terms that don’t reflect the hidden agendas they are used for: fascist control and imperial elitism, the real enemy. At least ‘socialism’ had a true and genuine use in history well before America came into being and the bastardization of political terms. Most “political sensations” are nothing but masks to hide our inner evils and to gang together and destroy each other rather than help each other. A lot of national patriotism is the same baby-gook. We tend to fall for false histories, rather than the real histories: take off your masks little priests! Stop living in a world of ancient slogans and worn-out propaganda created by deceptive brain controllers and illusory political ideals.

Putting your full faith behind any one political party or personage is like trying to find virtue in a whorehouse: there are no such animals. Tyrannical and fascistic thinking are par for the course in any arena of life: it is the way humanoids operate. Ideologies are things only on ‘paper’: the real world should circumnavigate those illusory dreams and get down to the true facts; take off your masks, little priests.

I am the real oddball: and I have been sick and tired of the masking and erroneous parading of the so-called “Political Parties” for some time; watching the circus of flying monkeys never changes, even when one monkey is somewhat likable and seems to be alien to all the rest, it never changes. Still, we forge ahead and root and rant like the Romans at the Coliseum.

‘Pure’ Capitalism has never existed, nothing politically and socially has ever existed as ‘pure.’ It is easy to write something on paper and claim it is pristine and infallible, but quite another to see it operate in cold, stark reality. So-called Americanism as Capitalism was corrupted right out of the gate (i.e., see past postings and comments elsewhere). It is nice to write idealistic doctrine, but quite another thing to see it corrupted, inadequate, and having no fail-safe due to the monstrosity of the human condition. I know all about the dictionary definition but applying it to real human accomplishments is a pipedream, daydream, fable that has never really existed in all practically. I ‘sure as hell’ see proof of that every day.

So-called “Capitalism” has had its problems too, part of which redesigning what is a theory on ‘paper’ and inventing it according to our own evil images, in the form of Crony Capitalism, Fascism, etc., etc. Like so much in life, there never has been “pure” Capitalism (like there have never been ‘pure’ heroes, or ‘pure’ religion, or ‘pure’ politics) because any such “ism” is run by nefarious and weak and inhumane “humans.” We have a classical bent to destroy, pervert and warp the things about us. It is just one of many fairy tales and play-toys that humans like to toss around and manipulate. Looking for this Holy Grail (like looking for the Golden Fleece) is ‘fun’ and can be used to bolster our usual Id Monsters (to take a metaphor from the movie FORBIDDEN PLANET), but it is in no way ‘reality.’

Capitalism is a cheap term used on paper only, a fairy-tale used by mega-Monsters to wave in the face of others and hide behind their own magnanimous quests to control and prosper—it is a concept on paper, an ideology, that does not truly represent what is actually being done in reality. Crude Crony Mercantilism as a guise to hide under a fictitious Capitalism might be another way to describe it, but no matter what term you use, it has never really existed, any more than “pure” Communism, “pure” Christianity, or other “pure” ‘isms’ which we use to mask the real person or the real institution as it should be nakedly exposed for what it “is” and for what is really being done in all their corrupt and inglorious actions. Being a Monster in any fashion, no matter, how wealthy or powerful, does not justify its existence, Might does not Make Right, as history blatantly shows, and the defense of such corruption and any extension or characteristic of it only shows the evil it is and continues to become. Thank you Dorian Gray.

Fighting each other instead of the common enemy: what a waste! Some members are correct when they say America has strong fascist elements, but America is “not” the ‘only’ place that this evil does and can take root. We are overemphasizing the wrong places, time and things! Why is it that vampires can’t see themselves in the mirror?

It would appear that “enslavement” — or slavery — is a universal, ingrained mechanism of human nature — a very cruel and often contradictory facet of humans: which we can see today as it is incorporated, mechanized and used in our Modern World; and it is aimed at and applied “to all humans” (except for those who try to rule and use enslavement).

The vile vindictiveness that the public is confronted with by many judges in the legal system goes beyond the words “fair and equal justice,” where the lives of citizens become mere playthings in the Westworld-type of robotic recreation on the floors of the courthouse. The worldwide multi-billion-dollar Legal Industry has permeated every fiber of our lives and directed our realities to the dictates of this despotic Puppet-Master. Ask any divorce man or domestic court victim, they will attest that a man has only five (5) foes when he enters the system: his lawyer, her lawyer, the judge, her innate sexuality and the status quo.

Many live in their little “isms” they were raised in from birth and do not look beyond or question who are the core sponsors (do you have a mirror; can you look in a mirror?). They do not realize how intricately they are crafted and brainwashed. They are robotized goose-stepping zombies, and there is no changing. The MICCM has trained them well.

No concept or leaf is left alone by the MICCM: it is part of evil human nature, even so-called national pride or patriotism. Look down through history and see how often humans have used these for evil and destructive purposes.

The human being is love-challenged and intelligence-challenged and has proved themselves as such down through history. The humans believe that owning tons of money makes them superior to their fellow creatures and creating millions of enslaved and blindly devoted employees makes themselves even better rulers and elitists. It has always been that way, on the micro and macro levels; they also abhor psychological mirrors and will even kill to the death if their empires are challenged, taking millions of fellow humans to their death. They “group” in mutual ‘clubs’ as a way to protect and even ‘mask’ their true natures.

Reality is shifting beneath your very own feet: what we have been taught about the righteousness of the Left or Right, Democrats or Republicans, this ‘wing,’ or that ‘wing,’ and we do not reflect the innate and basic social realities that are taking place before our own eyes. In my years since July 27, 1944, based on my experience and the questions I have asked, and my eyes have seen, we have been deluded over and over, from the day we were born. See my past comments. When confronting attorneys in private and putting hard questions to them, often in confidence, many have said there is no real freedom, anywhere, in any party — that they are in control and they hold allegiance to no one but their Bar Association cabal. Right out of Orwell’s 1984, but only worse and complete. This: because all “isms” are under the evil rule of the “Humans.” Humans that glorify every evil act they do as good and pure: it won’t change, and we won’t challenge it unless we see the real “enemy.” We will continue to form “clubs” (social and physical) — and expound those clubs — with power and greed and evil to be used as ‘clubs’ against each other — until this final Truth becomes too evident to deny.

These lawyers have opened a Pandora’s box. In my meetings with attorneys, they have shown hardened, darkened commitment to fascistic, despotic rule by corporate giants and big business, in stark, no-uncertain-terms—those terms are evident in the elements of its manufacture, such as Fire-At-Will laws and the disrespect of Human Rights.

Note the synchronistic similarities between corporate “government,” popular “government,” social “government,” corporations as “people,” corporate “government” bribing and sleeping with “popular government,” all mixed together in what I call the Military/Industrial/Corporate/Complex/Matrix (MICCM) “Government.”

We don’t understand “government.” We think it is a separate entity, alone and separate from us. Government is the darkest, evilest, macabre parts of our own psyche, and when those elements ‘group’ in the various forms and combinations (such as the MICCM) and materialize, we see the Monster ‘we’ have become. In the science-fiction thriller THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, it was called monsters of the ‘id.’ Until we see the true ‘enemy’—us—we will never, ever come to terms or defeat it.

Part of the problem is our throwing terms around for loose and lop-sided reasons without any real background or roots. These are very powerful people in the IMF and the United Nations, they are not a bunch of poor people trying to grub-up a livable wage for themselves. All this talk about entitlements: some of these ‘official’ people are born-and-breed aristocracy; they don’t know what it is like to live in the slums of India, Africa or the lowest of the low. It is a matter of the wealthy controlling the masses and it is usually the wealthy that profit and the masses that suffer. They spend billions of media-propaganda-dollars guaranteeing that ‘that’ brainwashing is successful so the masses don’t attack them and “keep the lowly in their place.” That is the way it has always been! What is so sad, is when some of these executives, in a “little-bit-than-better-CEO-middle-class-salary,” actually have convinced themselves they are on the “winning side” —yes, they are actually safely on the side of the “elite”—that is ‘their’ team—and yet they don’t realize or are not aware that this is all self-delusion and they are only a few steps away — in actuality — from their very own destruction as outsiders also. It is all part of the programming by the MICCM.

It is very difficult and painful to suddenly realize that lullabies and fairy stories are things that are used to placate us and even control us, stories put down on paper, while they make us feel good and justified, are usually used by ourselves against ourselves as weapons hurting or obscuring ourselves. But we keep trudging on, programmed to believe that our ‘pipe dreams’ will come true and the scribbling we have made—or were programmed to make–mean something and will fly off the paper into reality. We can always pretend and hope.


(An aside: We have a ban on personal and unreasonable attacks on each other, or any other excuse one would try to come up with. If some are allowed to attack private family and friends, then any one is allowed to.

Attacks on one’s personal parents, children, or relatives are not allowed for whatever reason one can imagine. No posting or site or Group justifies hitting below the belt: if your arguments are good, they will not sink this low. That is not just espousing another opinion, that is vicious attack.

We welcome all civil comments. We are running into, now and then, more and more, the questionable muck that is so often displayed across the Internet that ‘free’ speech’ is confused with slander, personal attacks and just being downright nasty and unkind for no other reason. We are happy to see you are not one of them.)

(I am not so sure the Reich disappeared but was transformed into the Fourth Reich, and the transformation and partnerships went further and further: the constant transmogrifications and transformations with partners sleeping in same bed. All the “isms” have blended into sub-Rosa deals: you are dealing with one huge Industrial/Military/Corporate/Complex/Matrix [MICCM]. The Party system is a mask, as are so many other masks. “Take off your mask, little priest,” says murderer Errol Childress to detective Rustin Spence in TRUE DETECTIVE, a mask we all wear and deny. ######################################## 
“He’s saying to take off the mask of his persona. They both know that the whole concept of being a ‘person’ is an illusion, and that everything just repeats over and over again, that good and evil will always exist, and yet Rust continues to fight the ‘good’ fight, because that’s simply his role. He is aware that it is futile, and yet continues this masquerade, nonetheless. Errol is telling him to take off his mask and reveal his ‘true’ self; that the darkness is really within him. That this is all just a play, created by himself. A dream that he had within a locked room. And the only way to reveal this truth is in death.” ################### https://www.quora.com/True-Detective-Season-1-Episode-8-Why… ##### Lindsey Krumhar.) ######### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIdB8LX4pGs.)

It is sad if we still have to use the terms Liberal and Right as human qualifiers, as if it is a baseball sport, instead of just looking at the people as humans and just look at the facts: without all the banner- “my side versus your side” – waving. Slogans are masks to hide the evil, take off your masks little priests.

How in the world do the readers/members equate “non-coercion” with capitalism, when capitalistic countries have far more than a share of human torment and inhumanity? The fact is: there are no ‘pure’ systems of human relations that are devoid of evil and human mistreatment, be that capitalism or other. A lot of corruption happens in this system, and others, that can’t be gainsaid or explained away with fluffy, pie-in-the-sky make-believe. We need to take off our masks!

I think there is far more fear of the wealthy right-wing tyranny taking over America than the poor, underprivileged underclass swarming the Elite-ruling class. This fear of the “reds” coming to get our money was instilled in the 30-50’s to fight Communism by Intelligence operations in America. You are stuck in an era that was not all-together true. I don’t think presenting you with other evidence will do much good, if you are not willing to move out from behind that propaganda.

Having no great love for the current Parties, or any “ism,” does not mean I cannot pick out those bits and pieces and statements of logic that seem – seem – to point to good directions. It doesn’t mean I am giving “WHOLEHEARTED” endorsement of any Party or organization: just respecting some things that they occasionally say that are reasonable. History – true history – exists as bits and pieces in a large jigsaw puzzle; it is up to us to locate and assemble those pieces in honest efforts.

This should be an independent look at facts and issues, not “wings”: this is not a Kentucky-Fried restaurant. And this so-called “Right wing”—that must be a spicy part of the bird—or are they just Muppets dressed in white robes and gold halos floating around with their all-powerful wands and gimmicks?

This Group is not a hodgepodge of confused (nor a melting pot of all kinds of), aimless political quips and slander: do not come here to just “get something off your chest” – speak with purpose, clarity, and humanity and reason: childish tantrums belong in the alley. We need some new, innovative, investigation and reasoning: not the same old, worn-out, repetitive ageless tantrums about Left versus Right. If we cannot change – we are lost.


Members are always welcome to state their detailed reasons for disagreement, but usually none are forthcoming. We encourage members to post their own analysis and other areas of news, no matter how disconcerting; but, apparently, most just rather be by-standing critics that have little to say of value.

If you want further specifics other than what is said here: you need to help locate those persons and names and pin down their actual substance and actions: nothing is being handed on a silver-platter, and we ask all to add further names and specific items; you are welcome to do that. Readers are welcome to speak up and demonstrate their findings, rather than vaguely complain. Sometimes, specific and detailed questions bring forth specific and detailed answers; bad questions, bad answers.

I don’t necessarily believe Putin or “anybody”: I try to present a lot of interesting comments and facts with not so much an unduly “prejudgment” so as to get opinions from all sides, rather than censor from some hidden or inner sanctum crap-pot of judgmental facts; and then I sometimes let the chips fall where they may.

(Please read and follow the Preamble, it is there for a reason. While we abhor censorship, but we do have rules: this is not a “let it all hang out” assembly with wild and ravishing comments. Use reason and purpose and humanity.

For all those out there who occasionally complain about the choice of content [and I am fighting the heavy-hand of the 1st Amendment and no censorship as well]: please submit – submit content that you would like to see, be active to this extent, and not just bystanders and curbside spectators.)

We welcome all the stories of tragedy in the lives of people who have encountered the Power Cabal. Most people are unaware of the day-to-day destruction of the family and other ‘taboo’ topics because the Powers-That-Be are not predicated upon its disclosure and they rather hide the cold, stark and naked facts: it would expose their true, evil intentions. Your stories can be told here.

Concerning child custody and domestic problems: We are interested in presenting ‘both’ sides, not just one side, but ‘all’ the facts as we realize there is important information in each argument. The real enemy is the Monster of a legal profession that is only interested in their Power, their Profit and their Prestige (PPP); a part of the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Matrix (MICCM). To be too exclusive and depositing the argument into one small example is not fair to the whole picture. There are always areas of gray; it is never black and white. ###### I would love to have my children ‘cry’ to see me; I would come running post haste! I am afraid that Parental Alien Syndrome (PAS) has weighed heavy against me. Have you visited Hope Henderson’s Timeline? She has some examples were ‘females,’ as well, have been denied custody and are victims of PAS. ###### I recently went through — and still am — with a case where lawyers have more or less given a doctor a clean bill of health despite cogent and important complaints because the Laws, as written, allow much foolishness to slide through. The medical profession is not immune from the MICCM, but is a part of it. Might always Makes Right. Washington University Physicians are one such Power Structure in which they do not allow ‘real’ dissent and your life is totally in their hands.

We dance around some of the “core” problems and dress our dance in all kinds of (getting to be) “worn out” slogans, chants, and aimless threats, some very inaccurate, often, pretending to be on the “right side” of history — as the ground is shifting beneath our feet and the very reality of things is and has changed drastically in the matrix before our very eyes. More to come.

Some Groups are quite paranoid and hyperventilated, suspecting all people and persons to some curious agenda they ‘have’ or suspect others of having. The JFK groups are mostly like that, being a landscape of suspicion, unreasonable debate, slander, attack and wild accusations. Doesn’t say much for fair and sane investigation, tending to be grade-schoolish and parochially petty. I tend to shy away from such radical and wild climates, not doing science or any one any good: Mostly private “in” Groups, if you are friends of friends of friends, or know same or even if you associate with the wrong people they dislike (not the basis for good journalistic enquiry). Good luck.

But I repeat myself.

(We go back to 2011,for genuine researchers and not just spectators, so use a powerful browser and go searching. Good luck.)

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PRIVACY Warning: Steve Erdmann:
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Due to the fact that Facebook has chosen to involve software that will allow the theft of my personal information, I do declare the following: on this day, September 28, 2016, in response to the new Facebook guidelines and under articles L.111, 112 and 113 of the code of intellectual property, I declare that my rights are attached to all my personal data, drawings, paintings, photos, texts etc… published on my profile. For commercial use of the foregoing my written consent is required at all times.


Those reading this text can copy it and paste it on their Facebook wall. This will allow them to place themselves under the protection of copyright. By this release, I tell Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, broadcast, or to take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The actions mentioned above apply equally to employees, students, agents and/or other staff under the direction of Facebook.


The contents of my profile include private information. The violation of my privacy is punished by the law (UCC 1 1-308 – 308 1 -103 and the Rome Statute). Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are invited to post a notice of this kind, or if you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you have not published this statement at least once, you will tacitly allow the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile update.   https://www.facebook.com/groups/171577496293504/
    ##  https://www.facebook.com/stephen.erdmann1.

NOTE; Many members and readers say this is worthless and of no legal value. I borrowed it from another Group. Worth a try. SE.   

*******

Barry Smith I cannot stand this woman. She is a tin pot dictator. God help the persons in her court room.

   September 2 at 10:59pm

Stephen Erdmann Money and power does that to a person: there are hundreds more like her, regardless of Party or “ism.” They ae a brood in the MICCM.

Verna Safran I like and respect Judge Judy. This looks like a man/woman thing. Men don’t like being judged by a female. But she’s invariably right and has a great sense of humor. she’s against unmarried couples liv     The only bone I have to pick with her is that she’s against unmarried couples living together and buying property together. She calls it “playing house.” But it is true that the law does not allow unmarried partners to inherit, and if there’s a split — they’re on their own. As for “shrew:” and “dictator” — imagine how we feel having nothing but male judges for so many years  living together and buying property together

Stephen Erdmann Male, female, it makes no difference when it comes to the MICCM and the courts: it is just another opportunity to expand and control. Her arrogance is so typical, and “tin pot dictator” about covers it all for her and so many others.

Stephen Erdmann Sense of humor? Has about as much humor as an alligator chewing down.

Verna Safran Then how come it’s just you boys who find her so offensive? Judges are expected to pass judgment. She does her job and does it brilliantly.

Emil Donofrio Oh please she doesn’t get 45 million because she a great judge, it’s all about ratings and sponsors.


Stephen Erdmann
 Men do face a bigger burden when in the courts than women. On the others, I guess Hitler and Stalin did their jobs and did it brilliantly too? For a Progressive Liberal, Verna, you show a major contradiction here: I think that is, in part, by not seeing the true enemy.

Verna Safran If the true enemy for you is women in power and women who have a lot of money, I feel sorry for you because you must be a very unhappy person.

Verna Safran P.S. Always a sign of a losing argument when people drag in Hitler and Stalin for no reason.

Leo O’Brien Very condescending.

Stephen Erdmann Like what?


Leo O’Brien
 As a judge to her plaintiff’s.

Verna Safran Since when did you join the “old boys club, Leo?” Men who put down women in power or try to are the condescending ones. Judge Judy has had her program for over 20 years and it’s one of the most popular ones on TV. Nobody’s forcing you to watch it, but give credit where credit is due. I’m done with this conversation, since prejudice is pretty hard to combat, especially when fellows like you don’t know they have it.

Stephen Erdmann I never said that, read closely, Verna, and also remember what has already been said (but of the biggest faults of Facebook: no content indexing). Every reason to drag in Hitler and Stalin as they demonstrate these human tendencies at their worst. There are millions of Hitlers and Stalin’s out there with those same qualities, they just need to look in the mirror. Seeing the worst of their ID is the beginning of seeing the real problem. Misquoting me – certainly won’t help. Blanketing it over with a lot of hero-worship won’t do it either. Having a hodgepodge Political construct only harms us all. Any man that has entered domestic court will testify to a stacked deck. We all suffer from the tyranny of the MICCM.  

Verna Safran Well, I won’t leave yet until I respond to your latest spilling of invective. I didn’t quote you exactly, but there are certain key words in the above posts that I find VERY offensive: “Dictator” “power mad” “corrupt” — and a comparison of a worthy member of the American legal system to fascists. Do you feel the same way about male judges? Or do your libertarian sentiments prevent you from any sense of order in society and respect for those whose job it is to prevent chaos?

Stephen Erdmann I think the meme has more to do with power and tyrannical regimes, than women’s rights. You have woman’s rights on the brain, but this isn’t presented specifically for a woman’s rights argument. You are forcing it out of context. Read what has been said. ############## So you ‘like’ her, that’s your problem. I think she symbolizes all that is bad with the media, society, power grabs, greed, and on and on. That ‘that’ is popular does not say much for those fans,  that is all I can say. Hey, each has their own opinions; I just think yours is misguided and wrong.

Verna Safran I think your opinions are based on your hating your mommy. Bye now.

Stephen Erdmann Again, the posting was more aimed at general power-issues, misuse of the media, greed, and other related points: you are in error to turn it into a woman’s rights issue (as you often do). It was meant to point out a common foe: the all-powerful MICCM (and yes, I have a big gripe with judges in general).

Stephen Erdmann Now, that was an intelligence-less and very unprofessional comment, Verna, enough said. As you commented yourself somewhat: “Always a sign of a losing argument when people drag in (your mother and your father) for no (good) reason.” Please read and abide by the Preamble or leave the Group. Vindictiveness is not owned just by men, not by a long shot.

Verna Safran: Very good reason if you bother to think about it.

Verna Safran: And don’t you think that throwing your weight around as someone who can kick people off of Facebook is an illustration of your own theory about abuse of power? As Burke said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If you want to throw me off of here for disagreeing with you, so be it. I’m finding a lot of the comments puerile and discussions with bigoted people a waste of time.

Stephen Erdmann: It was not disagreeing that was the issue. It was attacking someone’s family and being outside the rules. If she felt that was fine: go fight in a alley somewhere, not here.

Stephen Erdmann: We have a ban on personal and unreasonable attacks on each other, senility (or, what appears to be) should be no excuse, or any other excuse you are trying to come up with. If you are allowed to, then any one is allowed to. The decision is yours: It ends here.

Stephen Erdmann: Verna Safran: has left the building. Attacks on one’s personal parents, children, or relatives not allowed for whatever reason one can imagine. No posting or site or Group justifies hitting below the belt: if your arguments are good, they will not sink this low. That is not just espousing another opinion, that is vicious attack.

Richard Callahan Waiariki:  “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Which is a problem if you are powerless. I feel for you Verna!

Stephen Erdmann: Do you subscribe to personal attacks, Richard, then have it at: only do it on your Timeline, not here, this is not the place for wild, dirty and victimizing personal attacks? Facebook doesn’t even approve of that. Alley fights and gang mentality lives somewhere, just not here, I hope.

Stephen Erdmann: We do know the different between civil debates and attacking one’s personal family and friends, do we not? I am wondering.

Stephen Erdmann: It was not “disagreeing” that was the issue. It was attacking someone’s family and being outside the rules. If she felt that was fine: go fight in an alley somewhere, not here.

Stephen Erdmann: One other thought, along similar lines: If you accept someone’s Friendship, it should be done in a certain vain, and both parties should make efforts to be just that: Friends. That means doing your utmost to be friends and associate in a loving (to a degree) and fine way. This is not Texas Wrestling or a bar fight. Verna has her own Timeline to do cruel and mean things and she can show her personal disrespect to anyone anywhere else. Why do you want it here?

Emil Donofrio: Oh, please she doesn’t get 45 million because she a great judge, it’s all about ratings and sponsors..

Stephen Erdmann: Thanks Leo, I just don’t understand from where she gets all those so-called ‘fans,’ unless they are birds of a feather flocking together.

Emil Donofrio: Republicans live to see people passing judgment on other people. Besides it’s all about ratings and sponsors they could care less about how good of a judge she is.

Stephen Erdmann: True, it is a circus for money. Power. The same old story. Verna hopscotched around too much between ‘women’s rights’ and ‘left – right’ motivations and other junk: very hard to get a handle on. The issue here, to me, was the age-old scenario of power and control. Verna, by the way, was not Republican, I believe she leaned to the left.

To Jimmy Garst: September 3, 2015: Stephen Erdmann: You mention D and D propagandists that are against unions: why don’t you name who you are talking about? I am not against unions, if I am the one you are referring to, so you are inaccurate. Instead of painting everyone with your inaccurate brush time and again, document your accusations. I know for a fact, not all members are against unions. I also know that not all members fit your constant descriptions that you wildly parade. I don’t mind you speaking your mind, just when you hand out BS, which you do from time to time. Setting yourself against everyone and everything in a blind rage won’t work here, because I hope there are more Group members working “together” for the Preamble “goals” than stirring up dung for the hell of it.

Yesterday at 12:05pm·

Comments on September 5, 2015 from Verna Safran:

Verna Safran has been blocked from the Dissenter/Disinter Group for attacking family members, yet she persists in contacting me with harassment, please investigate her:

I’m the one who said that about the battle of wits, dfarlin’.  You’re sure not good at giving credit where credit is due.  Maybe the “I” being the source of your typing (and other?) problems is trying to tell you something.

44 minutes ago

You sarcasm is tolerable to a point: but when you put your vindicativeness to the extreme of

attacking one’s family, you go outside everyones’  boundaries. If you can’t apologize, don’t present your usual hatred and spite here or you will be reported.

Verna Safran:

Oh, do you have a family?  If so, I don’t remember insulting it.  I just wondered why you hated old people so much, enough to lambast them in a nasty fashion.  I guessed it started with your mom.  You can correct me if I’m wrong.  Meanwhile, keep your vicious cracks to yourself or I’ll report you!

Steve Erdmann:

You have no intention of being reasonable or fair: I owe your attacks nothing. Stop contacting me with your smartass remarks, or I will report you.  This is why you are censored, you are into this kind of stuff.  You do it without a second thought or empathy. What does that say? Cease and desist. Stop. Now.

Verna Safran:

I’ve counted over a hundred “likes” to my remarks on Facebook.  For some reason I seem to get under your skin, so just don’t read what I write.  Simple solution for a simple mind.

Steve Erdmann:

I said what I said: If you have no consideration for the feelings of others, that is your problem – don’t contact me.”

Verna Safran: What would you say about a person who calls an elder citizen “senile” and accuses her of “talking smack” when she posts something that disagrees with your opinion?

September 5, 2015 Yesterday at 1:43pm

Verna Safran: Evidently Steve

Verna Safran: Evidently Steve’s plea for politeness and analysis of aggression applies to everyone but himself. He was incredibly rude to me in his posts, called me names and ridiculed me, exhibiting a disrespect for older people. I asked him why he hated older people, and asked the question therapists would ask (half joking because it’s a Freudian cliche) Did he hate his mother? At this point he totally lost it, freaked out, said I was attacking his family (not so, I never met his family) and he’s been nurturing his imaginary wounds ever since. I don’t wish to continue this discussion because Steve obviously has issues preventing him from courtesy to women and to older folks. I do enjoy communicating with others on Facebook, and most of them “get” my sense of humor. Lordy, I hope the political debates, once we get to see them on television, don’t descend to the level of name-calling and nastiness that Steve has displayed.

Verna Safran: Calling people senile when they are alert and active seniors is a form of slander and goes against the principles that Steve Erdmann set out in his preamble. What hypocrisy!

September 4 at 6:32am

Verna Safran: Some folks, when they get older, acquire wisdom. Do you think Bernie Sanders is “senile”? Was Eleanor Roosevelt “senile”? I can only hope it happens for Stephen Erdmann, and maybe it will, when he comes home from his power trip.

September 4 at 6:52am

Verna Safran John G. — What were you doing awake at 2:55 a.m.? Do you elderly folks have a hard time falling asleep? Or have you mentally reverted to an earlier time in your life and are having nightmares? Don’t worry, the boogeyman won’t get you. And Verna has put away her broom. :>) Just kidding.

 September 4 at 12:10pm

Jimmy GarstRobert Prudente, Is that neo-con Reagan glorification another example of what you call the socialist take over and their propaganda mind manipulation? Robert thinks trickle down is where those socialist not the elite piss all over the Working Man?  Reagan was a Commie hater just like you. I’m surprised you would criticize your hero! Bobby, You are so UnAmerican! You starting to sound like that Commie you hate so much. Hypocrite boy!!

 September 5, 2015:  Yesterday at 3:54pm

Jimmy GarstRobert Prudente, Given your self professed hatred of Evil Commie’s, I’m surprised that you would dare to criticize Fearless Leader, the all time champion in the fight against the Evil Commie Empire, the fight against those Godless socialists, Ronny the  the Bush puppet. Boy, You are such a hypocrite! You better be careful or true fascists live Steve the Mworm will attack you for being an UnAmerican Commie lover. You should really stop with the hate mongering and self loathing, and come out of the closet and admit it is okay to be a Christian Socialist. You might actually become a true Christian, not just another poser.

Jim Tarr: Ronnie wasn”t even president,he was just reading his prompts,Sr Bushy tail was running the show

Stephen Erdmann: Please stop attacking fellow members with name-calling. Professionally attack the issues rather than people – analyze the facts and comment on those facts only.

Stephen Erdmann: If Communists are symbols of love and compassion, there is not much here! I am quite sure there are some loving Communists that are true compassionate individuals: just not this one: you can’t prove love and compassion by being a wild hate-spitting Monster. Avoid and desist in name-calling and personal attacks, professionally examine the issues, not attack the person.

September 5, 2015: Stephen Erdmann Well, your time is limited: can you quote exactly where this was said? I don’t recall seeing anyone calling that you are a “Godless socialist hate monger,” do you make this stuff up as you go along? That ‘would’ be mongering.

Stephen Erdmann: Again, face the issues and refrain from personal attacks: they are not allowed here.

Stephen Erdmann: http://johntreed.myshopify.com/…/60887299…

Steve Maiworm: Where is the proof Mr Jimmy garst that the United States carried attacks on its own people on 911

Jimmy GarstSteve Maiworm Only an idiots would need to ask that question of proof and deny the obvious. Stephen Erdmann, That is not a personal attack on the Worm, just a statement of fact. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXt6n33gOfo

Jimmy Garst: Fascist pigs like Steve love the fascist in Israel and the Nazi too. He even God Blesses Nazi here on this thread. What an unAmerica cow! https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it

Steve Maiworm: Boy these videos really show the truth

Barry Smith Steve, if you still believe the “official conspiracy theory”, you are intellectually lazy. I suggest you you look into groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Fire Fighters for 9/11 Truth. If you possess even a rudimentary understanding of Newtonian physics then you would have known instantly that we have all been lied to.

Jimmy GarstBarry Smith, This site commonly has memes on 9/11. However, Steve Maiworm has the intellectual capacity of a worm. He is willfully ignorant, and a brain washed fascist toad. Trying to have an intelligent conversation with an narrow minded myopic hater is almost impossible.

Steve Maiworm: Voltaire was a left wing progressive nut and socialistic fascist like you Jimmy garst.

Steve Maiworm: Also, I am not in the CIA Jimmy boy

Steve Maiworm : Jimmy your posts are so ridiculous they actually amuse me

Jimmy GarstSteve Maiworm, You are absolutely one of the most stupid, most ignorant and biggest waste of oxygen I have ever encountered. You are a poor excuse for a human. Your hate mongering is OTT and not amusing. The fact that you God Bless Nazi, and you the world of fascism puts you at high-question.

Jimmy GarstBarry Smith and Stephen Erdmann, one final note on Steve the Worm Steve Maiworm. He claims he is not a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. Interestingly, when I went to his FB page to block the ugly fascist pig, low and behold, the man acts very much like a spy.

Jimmy GarstSteve Maiworm is like a jellyfish. Without a brain. A DHS widget. Zig Heil Mien Furher! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=799525130162955&set=p.799525130162955&type=1&theater

Jimmy GarstSteve Maiworm, God Blesses the Nazi Ukrainian Soldiers. I should not be surprised this Nazi loving pig works for the Fourth Reich as a DHS boot licker gropper. http://www.opednews.com/…/NYT-Whites-Out-Ukraine-s-B-by…

Steve Maiworm: Actually that hot dog is you James Jimmy comrade general secretary garst

Jimmy Garst: I’m disgusted that my tax dollars are wasted on the salary of ugly, fascist, scum bag, piles of pig poo, propagandist monkeys, like Steve the Worm. He is a parisite sucking on the fascist tit of his Uncle Sam. A brain washed troll hate monger of DHS. hate mongering idiot who believes in and promotes propaganda nonsense is a waste of time. Truth is irrelevant to Steve. He is easily one of the biggest tools and fools I have ever encountered. I kick myself for wasting my oxygen on this ignorant fascist pile of pig poo. He is a evil, horrible, war monger, hate monger, waste of skin. The world would be a better place without fascist pigs like the Worm. Honestly,to make a comment about proof of 9/11 conspiracy on this site, suggest steve is a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. It is really hard to believe that anyone could be as stupid as Steve. But then, “Patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel and coward”.” Voltaire.

Stephen Erdmann: Okay, I’ve asked gentlemanly and clearly, not to indulge in character assassination and name-calling: it is against the Preamble. I’ve asked you to deal with the issues in a professional way. Spewing aimless diatribes do nothing to help the situation.

Jimmy GarstBarry Smith, this comment by the Worm, Steve Maiworm, is a good example of the OTT stupidity of this moron. He claims, “America is weak.” HAHAHAHA! STUPID!!!! FYI Stevie Stupid, America has the largest most powerful military in the world. The US spends more on militarism than the next 20 countries combined, and half of them are our Allies. Steve has obviously been listening to Trump’s propaganda. Steve does not live in a world of reality. His brain is totally polluted with propaganda nonsense. Steve the fascist lives in a fantasy world I call fascist pigland. America has been bankrupt both morally and financially by patriotic Americans like Steve. With citizens like Steve, who needs Commies for enemies. These morons are doing a fine job of destroying America all on their own.

Jimmy GarstBarry Smith, You must laugh at OTT stupid like Steve Maiworm. He thinks socialist are unAmerican and evil, but Steve is okay with patriotic Nazi Americans who kill our President, bomb the WTC and murder millions of innocent civilians in the name of freedom, liberty and Democracy. With patriotic fascist hate mongers like Steve and Bobby P, America does not need to worry about the minorities, the Commies and the Muslims, These fascist pigs are totally capable of destroying not only the USA but the World, all on their own. God Bless America, the land of the fascist and the stupid.https://www.facebook.com/MintpressNewsMPN/photos/a.427073724002835.96035.277613075615568/876154342428102/?type=1&theater

Jimmy GarstBarry Smith and Stephen Erdmann, one final note on Steve the Worm Steve Maiworm. He claims he is not a paid propagandist in the CIA legion of flying monkeys. Interestingly, when I went to his FB page to block the ugly fascist pig, low and behold, this scum bag hate monger works for DHS. This pig ridicules me while he and his fellow thugs in the fascist police state steal my social security to fund their unholy failed wars of the perpetual war machine and this fascist arse’s salary. . FICA / SOCIAL Security is the largest source of income for the US government at $1.2 trillion annually. The alphabet soup of DoD, CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS (Steve), WAR costs America $1.2 trillion annually. I think Steve’s employment at DHS make it obvious he is no dissenter, but a boot licking Nazi widget. This scum bag is not only a waste of oxygen, but a waste of my tax dollars. You are such a loser, Get a real job Steve. Stop sucking on Uncle Sam’s Tit, you parasite. Get a real job, cos hate mongering, advancing hegemony and WWIII is unproductive, and down right evil. DHS is a waste of my tax dollars, I wish I could make it go away as easily as blocking a fascist pig like Steve on FB. Steve, Please do the world and American tax payers a favor and die soon!https://www.facebook.com/pandaunite/photos/a.486974971319177.98235464.214899805193363/1006928499323819/?type=1&theater

Jimmy Garst: I’m disgusted that my tax dollars are wasted on the salary of ugly, fascist, scum bag, piles of pig poo, propagandist monkeys, like Steve the Worm. He is a parisite sucking on the fascist tit of his Uncle Sam. A brain washed troll hate monger of DHS! Not to be confused with CIA!. The opinion of hate mongers like Steve are irrelevant to the truth . He and his opinion are unimportant. I sincerely wish for your speedy death.

Jimmy Garst, You recently had a pretty free run on your comments last few days in the Dissenter/Disinter Group. I need to get answer to just one question and then leave with one comment: I notice that I cannot comment to topics in your Timeline: are you going to allow me the same ability and freedom to make comments on your Timeline as you have been allowed to do on Dissenter?   #### Lastly, I ask as a personal favor that you refrain from the rather harsh treatment on other members, as requested. I am making the same request of Steve Maiworm and Robert Prudente and all other members.

April 4 · Edited · 

Gordon Novel

Email: G.NOVEL@YAHOO.COM 
Address:
2425 Fairway Drive
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70809


CIA employee as of at least 1963. Was alleged to have been seen with Jack Ruby at Ruby’s Carousel Club. According to researcher Paris Flammonde, he was friends with Dave Ferrie (Ferrie, as well as being up to where his eyebrows would have been in the Kennedy assassination, was a practitioner of hypnosis and black magic) and knew Lee Harvey Oswald. He was an employee of the Double-Chek Corporation and the Evergreen Advertising Agency (both CIA fronts).

“In his youth, Gordon Novel belonged to a neo-Nazi group and was arrested and charged with bombing a Metarie, Louisiana, theater that admitted blacks. Later, he sold spy devices in New Orleans. Gordon Novel claimed he worked with the Cuban Revolutionary Front during the Bay of Pigs, as a Director of the CIA proprietary, the Evergreen Advertising Agency, and had created cryptographic messages for the CIA.”

In 1967, the CIA reported that they never utilized either Novel or the Evergreen Advertising Agency.

During New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Novel was recommended to him by one of Garrison’s political supporters, automobile dealer Willard Robertson. Novel was then an anti-eavesdropping expert, and Garrison was reportedly worried about FBI surveillance. Novel told Garrison about Dave Ferrie’s arms pickup in Louisiana to arm anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

When information regarding Garrison’s investigation was leaked to NBC reporters, Garrison suspected Novel, and Novel was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Novel instead fled to Ohio, where he was arrested on burglary charges Garrison had filed accusing Novel of participating with Ferrie in the arms pickup.

“After some initial reluctance, Ohio Governor James Rhodes finally agreed to extradite Novel to Louisiana if Garrison would complete the papers within sixty days,” which Garrison reportedly never bothered to do. Later, Garrison would claim that people in high places, up to and including President Lyndon Johnson, were preventing him from obtaining his witnesses.

During this time, Novel became an informant for the FBI regarding the Garrison investigation.

http://skinwalkerranch.org/rank.html

Chris Patorov: both sides are pawns in the agenda that is hidden from the citizens both do a small amount of “good deeds” to appease the masses but to be honest both have done too little too late …in this group out of respect this will be the last time i have a political commentary it is the system itself it is flawed and corrupt and only complete disintegration and over haul will fix this money has no business in politics no man ( not to be sexist or woman) born into wealth can ever really comprehend the needs and fears and wants of a general public nor its toils and trials they can never truly make legislation that covers the myriad of difficulties the average person goes through in a lifetime as they themselves cannot comprehend the complexities of struggle only political leaders who have risen from nothing can help our people bottom line money needs to be excluded from politics for it to run efficiently.

Abraham Bolden: In this video, Files said that 5 months before Dallas, plans were made to hit JFK in Chicago. This would have been around late March, 1963. Files is right. Before Kennedy’s plane landed at O’Hare Field, in Chicago, a call came into the SS office from some person calling himself “Lee”. This person said that there was a plan to assassinate Kennedy along the I94 Expressway. The SS, because of staffing problems and short notice, assigned Lt. Bob Linski to try and trace the call. An extra detail of Chicago Policemen were placed atop every underpass along I94. IN THE MEANTIME, THE MOTORCADE WAS cancelled and JFK was helicoptered into Meigs Field. To my knowledge, it was never confirmed that the caller was Oswald but Judyth Baker may be able to shed some light on that. When ASAIC Martineau was questioned about this before the AARB, his answer was a curt, “I don’t remember.” How Files could have known about this incident without being an inside participant is impossible to explain. Also, the biting of the shell casing and placing it on top of a board behind the Grassy Knoll, how could he have known about that and how the mark was indeed found on a casing with a mark on it like the one he describes?

Robert Prudente: This is a special coincidence…Without going into detail, I am on FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) for a PTSD event brought on by my employer…I have now been diagnosed by 2 psychiatrists that I am suffering from anxiety disorder brought on by a specific event perpetrated by my employer…I further expect the employer to reject my claim as a work related injury.

Robert Prudente I recently filed a workers compensation against my employer…I spoke with the adjustor this morning…My injury is PTSD and a diagnosis of anxiety disorder..I do have a serious case of anxiety…This is a work place injury perpetrated by my employer…These types of claims are next to impossible to attain however, my circumstances are well above the norm…I was threatened with termination of employment for insubordination however, I refused citing safety concerns that are addressed in 49 CFR, the Code of Federal Regulations….The bottom line is…”Did the employer have a legitimate threat of termination”…Now, we play the waiting game.

Robert Prudente Right now, we do have a bit left of protection for the working class in the form of organized labor (unions) and the department of labor…however, both are under attack…Corporatism declared war on labor many moons ago and are not letting up.

Stephen Erdmann says:

November 17, 2015 at 11:24 am

The attempt to control those who disagree with you is called: Neophobia, Cainophobia, Cainotophobia, Cenophobia, Centophobia, Kainolophobia, Kainophobia – An abnormal and persistent fear of anything new including new things, ideas or situations, of novelty.

*******

Dissenter/Disinter Magazine goes back to 1967 when I gave birth to a little fanzine that seemed to be my contribution to the media flavor of that time: the Viet Nam war, the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the late Jim Moseley’s Saucer News, Ray Palmer’s provoking Search Magazine and Hidden World series, as well as a line of “controversy” radio programs such as Long John Nebel, Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, with television shows such as Science Fiction Theater and Twilight Zone. In St. Louis in the 60s there was WIL “Steve Clark” controversy radio. There was a section of the media that was some kind of renaissance to the investigating of the more curious and often sinister elements at that time, and it gave birth to myself and others that have continued in that vein to this day (many will include Coast to Coast radio and Alex Jones and others to this list). We still try to contribute to the emblem of “controversy and protest” as a way of getting to the truth.

Subsequently, in the years following, my life embodied further “discovery” of these “realities” of the mysterious Powers-that-Be (which were quite depressing and decorated with flight-or-fight syndromes), and my waking hours were consumed with survival and making “ends meet” (as with so many of the population, I did not have the luxury of always devoting myself to media publishing or even schooling). That story may or may not be left to my memoirs (and my Timeline), if at all.

We try not to “conform” to predisposed or status quo “images” that people have in their heads, or were born with. We approach all topics from different viewpoints and suggestions, because we realize solutions are never black and white (I hail back to H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, George Orwell, Charles Fort (http://www.experienceproject.com/…/Protest-The-Use-…/2923915), Info Journal, and a host of New Age and Protest scientists [study my Timeline]). We offer a forum for discussion, within reason. Questions are always open. I, personally, am ‘independent’ politically, neither bowing to the Left or Right, and neither do I encourage others to bow to them either (or any “ism”). It is a matter of finding out who the tyrants are and how much you relinquish to being a slave. Others may participate from their own level of evaluation, that is their right; but I cannot “endorse” everyone’s politics or religion. We offer a platform to search these things out (in a civil and humane fashion: see Preamble) through questioning and debate. How do you see applying censorship in Groups and Timelines? Use it every time something grinds against your personal opinion?  And what about the next person?  And the next person?  Seems that our Founding Fathers grappled with these questions as well. It is amazing with all the common threads of agreement that ‘can’ be found in fighting tyrannical government and evil conspiracies, we are tearing each other apart, for some reason, over petty feuds and personality squabbles that detract from common core efforts (those little nuggets of gold that make us all as one in protest). We (we are speaking editorially) hope we are able to stand in a “common core” against Tyranny and the evils that are associated with it.

In the end, we are all brothers and sisters.

*******

TO: Julien Landau:  April 3, 2018: Facebook:

Stephen Erdmann Sounds like you are looking for a “robot-god,” not a human being, humans aren’t Holy, Pure and without blemish, none of them; that’s why they wear ‘masks’ and go to Church on Sunday and beg forgiveness, and the prance about afterwards singing praises and hoyden while they continue their usual crimes and schemes, all the while under their sanctimonious masks You are looking for the supreme male-god that always wears the White Hat, but are blind to the fact that even the wealthy and rich male-icon hides the greatest blemishes and scars that most people refuse to see, and often, are disguised demons; the humblest of us are usually the kindest and most pure of all, as Christ taught. We live under many myths and propaganda, and it seems you have fallen for some of them.

Facebook, April 23, 2018.  There is good and bad in all situations, and any group or ‘ism’ can be misused and fall into the same error-filled stance, especially once it reaches a point of power. We use what clubs we can to obtain our goals, but they all ultimately fail in some way. Look at the Dems and Repubs. Yes, I have belonged to unions, even a Teamster Union, and it kissed the company’s ass over and over, and only appeared to be a useless mediator between you and the company: a lackey branch. But how would  you like to put your ‘life’ on the line, as when being a security guard posited in some dire and scary situations, yet to be a bottom fall-guy when things fall apart: you have to take the heat for your four (4) bosses above you: Your security company, the police department, the contractor, and the state EEOC which gives them a lackey thumbs-up and sells their party-line? Now, what would you call that situation?

August 18, 2018, to Tony Elliott:  The more basic and even accurate cause of human slavery and suppression goes far beyond any “ism” or philosophy, it is despotism and tyrannical thinking and that is global. Trying to put human evil and the human ID Monster in nice, neat little ‘boxes’ only shows our failure to recognize the real culprit and the basic evil involved. All ‘leaders’ have shared this evil trend since history recorded. There is no political “safe haven,” and what is written on ‘paper’ is nothing but masks that hide this innate manipulation.

August 19, 2018, Ron Schmidt: Stephen Erdmann I am well aware of the battles, debates and distortions going on with this corporate giant, as anyone else who researches the Internet, apparently much more so than you in making pompous, vain and illogical comments just to gain points. Do you just puke this stuff to just feel the hot air stream out of your mouth, or what? There are many more interested in going further into the Human Rights issues and how corporates are abusing that. Yes, I realize Facebook censors conservative viewpoints and I have also stated the futility and hopelessness of participating in partisan politics. Do you really read my comments, or just vainly pound your chest and whistle Dixie? Getting lopsidedly on a site and starting to spell misquoted and unrelated comments in some weird disjointed way are certainly of no help. I pay attention to “what is going on” apparently far more closely and tightly than you do. It might be considered “the wrong battle” to those who are connecting to the broader issue of Human Rights (which you apparently can’t connect), but it is a battle many are joining in and making the overall connection. If you can’t take it elsewhere, we don’t need it here, and if you really want to see ‘censorship’ keep it up.

(Same) Stephen Erdmann We’ve been over the proper definition of spam many, many posts ago, and, no, I’m not going to drag it up just for your distorted interest, go dig for yourself. You won’t find it with the legalese blinders you wear or by sticking your head up corporate butts as you do. Name-calling is no substitute. I’ve done my research and it does ‘not’ kowtow to ‘official’ or ‘blind’ definitions and corporate ass-kissing. Heard it from you over and over like a busted recording that can’t get out into the fresh air and look at real problems, if the bossman says no, with a swelled head and chest and nothing else. And, sadly, ‘that’ private definition you refer to is not the real definition of spam. (Besides. take it somewhere else, this is my Timeline, not yours.) Furthermore, the usual definition of spam is not what many Facebook users and Internet users are complaining about, they are reporting arbitrary, senseless removals and deletions that sometimes border on Facebook, or anyone’s, insanity; in a much broader sense, corporatism is not guided by any good morality and public sense or duty, other than profits and that gross manipulation of same (strangely, we somehow find ‘laws’ abound against these ‘private’ companies). And, yes, if they could get away with ‘murder’—and actually have—they would.

Facebook; September 14, 2018:   There is no doubt that the assassination was a well-planned, military and psyops conspiracy, involving many faces, many secret operatives, partially to make it virtually impossible to trace or trail-back to the many shots involved. It is my theory that some shooters were unbeknownst to each other, making the trail even more difficult to outline. Dallas that day was a virtual “Spook City” with all kinds of intelligence and clandestine operatives walking the streets, many with their own parts and agendas to play, which also would obfuscate and confuse any investigation (this also suggests that our society has become nothing but a virtual deep state and psyops living- nightmare everywhere). Much evidence would be needed to prove that Jackie had a part to play or did the things alleged, but in this society, such is the makings of our diabolical world.

**********



When a Study Group Fails to Study!

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A Review of Reviews of the Great Gatsby

By: Steve Erdmann

The classic story by the late Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, Scott. 
The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) has fallen on bad times in the hands of merciless and savage idiot-reviewers of the latest rendering and movie by Director Baz Luhrmann. Demonstrating a total lack of empathy of a classic and well-venerated story, or lack of general literary sense, the purpose and honor of said reviewers can only be questioned and their insensivity heralded as further proof of modern-day barbarism.
Poor Brandi Stephens finds herself mystified that a well-liked masterpiece holds ingredients that are asthma and cold to her: complication and characters; Subtract these two literary tools, and you will have the perfect novel. “I am still reading the book, so maybe it will get better.” 
Martha Conneilly queries that it has “words” in the story – and a lot of them: I can imagine that dinnertime, or even a romance (?) in her family can be a very silent and boring event. And she has the ‘best support’ for her viewpoint – her Book Club – and that is saying a lot: When your book club gives a ‘thumbs down’ on an alleged Classic, you know it has to be saying something about the quality of the author! “It was too ‘wordy’.  Members of the Book Club that I am involved in did not give it a good review.  What makes it a ‘classic’?”
“A Costumer” reviewer/reader, who obviously has dredged the depths of human action and is the epitome of a pensive and analytic connoisseur of art, grasps Fitzgerald’s insight into human nature; some added advice: it helps immensely to have the correct story in mind, in any analysis. “I was disgusted with it.  The characters in the story were worthless wastes of human flesh.”
Iaiam, A Kid’s Review, and Suzanne C solidly place their feet into the author’s shoes, they seem well-prepared to see the story through the author’s eyes. No misunderstanding possible here.  Surely, if the novel had any relevance to our modern age, these two readers would have surely been able to have seen it. They have a handle on plenty other ‘insights’ to this literary world of the Roaring Twenties: they clearly demonstrate that the book was not written for their specific audience.
Clearly, Bay Area User has more of a depth and acumen; he or she is able to fit into the author’s shoes – except for the bulging bunions on his or her feet. ‘Old’ literature; probably, they would say, the same goes for the Bible or Shakespeare.
Luhrmann stated that he planned it to be timelier due to its theme of criticizing the often-irresponsible lifestyles of wealthy people. While Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t see 2008 and the modern financial crisis, his vision undoubtedly expanded beyond the 1920s to live again in the bosom of modern-day catastrophe.
“In reality, the American Dream is based on nothing but immoral wealth and materialistic desires for the pleasures in life. However, once at the top, there is nowhere to go but down. And, for those who took the easy road of immorality to reach the American Dream, the ride down is nothing short of a ride from Hell.”
This reviewer seems to have grasped part of Fitzgerald’s “vision,” unlike our earlier reviewers. Surely, the reviewers can share in this revelation that wealth in the story was no guarantee of happiness; that in the long search for sanctity, Jay Gatsby lost sight of where his dream was going.  And don’t you feel sadness that his quest was so near and yet when he had it in hand, it suddenly disintegrated before his eyes because of an innate flaw in his plan? Has that ever happened to our reviewers? And have not our reviewers ever found themselves in love – only to find that ‘love’ evaporate due to some miscalculation, some bit of misappropriated tweaking that just could not pull it through, like a thread slipping from a needle-eye?
Says another insightful reviewer: “Gatsby becomes fabulously wealthy, but he doesn’t care about money in itself. He lives in a beautiful mansion and dresses beautifully, but everything he does is for love. He invents a hero called Jay Gatsby and then inhabits this creation, just as we hope to reinvent ourselves, someday, any day now, almost certainly starting tomorrow.”
Has the reviewer ever had dreams – and those dreams become so paramount that no one – no man, women or child – would interfere with that tempest in a human heart?  And have they not seen that tempest, that battle, in many a Classic novel or tale?
The book opens in the words of Nick Carraway: reserve judgment long enough as to learn something you might miss, there are worlds where other readers have been, other authors have been, that can tell you much about the world, new horizons and reality:
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “Just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”        “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
Reserving judgment, parceling out hope, reaching the ‘unreachable star’ of human love and understanding (The Man La Mancha) are things, as Scott Fitzgerald may have seen, we too can grasp if we really strive to.
Answers to Eric Lundgren’s Questionnaire:
Question No. 1: Ans.: I try to be unique yet universal, capture the genre and the mood and tone of various authors into my own work, yet leaving my definite ‘stamp’.  Since I derive inspiration from multiple sources, my writing can reflect different styles.
Question No. 2: Ans.: A lot of good and bad happened to me in my childhood that has shaped my worldview.  I am primarily a slice of ‘time’ from World War II through the Space Age.  One of the big events in my early life while in an orphanage was watching the atomic bomb tests on TV out in Nevada.
Question No. 3: Ans.: Certainly, science-fiction/fiction is often prophetic.  Reality can often be stranger than fiction, or visa versa. I do believe that there is a psychic/paranormal side to humanity and that quantum physics is beginning to scientifically prove that.
Question No. 4: Ans.: Michael John Moorcock, James Dickey, Philip K. Dick, H.G. Wells; Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer of AMAZING STORIES fame, and his inauguration of FATE Magazine.  There are so many.
Steve Charles Erdmann
05/16/2013
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The Alien Disclosure Deception – The Metaphysics of Social Engineering

UFOs: Unending False Official-Narrative(Exonews.org)

Legends say Jinn are composed of “Smokeless Fire

The Alien Disclosure Deception
The Metaphysics of Social Engineering

by Charles Upton 
*******

*******

Announcing the Publication of a Manifesto against UFO-Worship: 

In the year 2021, in the United States, amid the shock of Covid-19, a new religion was “officially” announced by powerful elements of the ruling elite, including the military, the intelligence community, influential politicians and corporate CEOs: the religion of UFO Worship.

According to the central dogma of this faith, the human race was not created by God through His eternal Self-disclosure, but by the UFO Aliens through genetic engineering; consequently it is the Aliens—not the Almighty, His Prophets and His Angels— who are our rightful spiritual guides, protectors, and guardians.

In this religion, or rather pseudo-religion, two of the central elements of what René Guénon called “Anti-Tradition”—firstly, the regime of Scientism, and secondly, the confusion of psyche with Spirit resulting in the usurpation of the spiritual by the psychic—have come together to produce a full-fledged “church” of the Counter-Tradition, in the form of a religion of Jinn-worship in which magic and technology have become virtually indistinguishable, seeing that the UFO Aliens are none other than those beings the Muslims call the Jinn. And the hierophants of the UFO religion have taken few pains to conceal their virulent hatred of the Traditional faiths. 

Forty years ago, in a short book entitled UFOs, or the Great Parody, French Guénoniste Jean Robin predicted precisely this development, as did British Christian C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength

The Alien Disclosure Deception: The Metaphysics of Social Engineering includes all of Charles Upton’s writings on the subject of UFOs since 2001, plus three chapters dealing with contemporary events, especially the “Great Disclosure” of 2021.

It presents a view of the phenomenon based largely on the UFOlogy of Jacques Vallee as seen through the lens of the metaphysics of René Guénon, also drawing upon Traditionalist authors like Frithjof Schuon, Whitall Perry, Leo Schaya and James Cutsinger, and Christian writers such as C.S. Lewis and Father Seraphim Rose. 

As for the use of UFO mythology for the purpose of social engineering, the author’s thesis is that the military and intelligence communities, finding that they could neither explain nor control the phenomenon, decided that the next best thing would be to use it to further their agenda of transforming the basic belief-system of western civilization from Democracy and Christianity to Transhumanism and Luciferian Technocracy.

They did this by publicly debunking UFOs while secretly leaking information supporting their reality, information onto which they had artificially grafted the beliefs they intended to inject into society through the subculture of UFO believers, as well as through the genre of science fiction cinema.

And the clearest evidence of this agenda, which was probably first posited by Jacques Vallee in Messengers of Deception in 1979, appears in the innumerable absurd, contradictory, and frankly impossible claims made by various UFO “whistleblowers,” some of which The Alien Disclosure Deception examines in minute detail. It also presents an analysis of some of the specific mind-control techniques used by the social engineers, which—at least in certain cases—the author believes are based on a conscious inversion of true metaphysical principles.  

AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON U.S. AT: 

https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Disclosure-Deception-Metaphysics-Engineering/dp/1597311847 

Thomas and Keith

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Thinking Minds of Thomas and Keith

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Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_flyingobjects75a.htm

(Thomas)

I remember Jim Keith writing this book. At the time, he was also working on an article for the coming issue of Steam shovel Press. Jim contributed regularly to the magazine and stayed in phone contact for research help and to chat conspiracy. He mentioned that he was trying to summarize all of his current thinking in a single themed manuscript.

The original Saucers of the Illuminati, in fact, may have been Jim Keith’s last contribution to the zine world. The original book had an 8×10 format, spiral bound and resembled more a magazine than a book. Then, many people who knew Keith at all knew him primarily through his small circulation “fan” magazines (although it is hard to conceive of a conspiracy/UFO cover up “fan”), Dharma Combat being the most well-known but certainly not the only example.

(Keith)

My purpose for authorizing this informal edition was to get into print certain interesting connections that I had made between occult philosophy, the lore of UFOs, and the totalitarian New World  Order – ideas that I had discussed at length with other researchers and that were already twinkling into being in a firmament of articles by some of those worthies. I was a little… paranoid is not the word I seek… concerned that by the time a proper paperback edition of Saucers was ushered into being, that I might be accused of plagiarizing myself.

As it turned out, my worry was largely unfounded, and little of what I wrote about in ’93 has been grappled with, understood, or even mentioned in the conspiracy or UFO press, much less by the New York Times. I take this to be positive proof that I was on the right track.

Actually, my sense is that the ideas in Saucers tend to jump disciplines from political conspiracy, to UFOs, to the occult, to synthesize the information in each. The researchers in those varied disciplines almost never have any truck with and so are confounded by their adjoining truck stops in arcane research. The Left-Hand Path doesn’t know what the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is doing, you might say. But these topics are, at the deepest levels, intertwined and clarify the notions of the others.

Another matter: the ideas in Saucers of the Illuminati are dangerous, not to mention extremely weird, and stray very close to Things You Are Not Supposed to Think. In fact, in current polite-read mind controlled – society you are not even supposed to think that there are things that you are not supposed to think… Do you follow?

Since the lightning appearance and disappearance of the researcher’s edition of Saucers in 1993 copies have been completely unavailable, aside from a pirate edition that was rumored to have been put into print. That unavailability created a few misunderstandings about the book. Some speculated in print and on the Internet that the book was too incendiary, too Politically Incorrect, and that it went so quickly out of print because it was suppressed by the CIA or the Men in Black or some such.

Those things have been known to happen in the annals of conspiracy research, of course, but not in this case. Simply, when I might have been expanding the text of Saucers to a length more appropriate for a paperback, I was doing lots of other things: writing nine other books, chasing the wolf of velvet fortune, things like that.

But I finally got around to the revision in 1998. Now here is the bells and whistles version of Saucers, with a lot of material not included in the book’s original incarnation. Since the first appearance of the book, a great deal in the text has been clarified, and the revised work reflects new theories, new understandings obtained, and an arsenal of new smoking guns. Also included in this edition is the text of “UFOs at the Edge of Reality,” a lecture delivered in Atlanta, Georgia in 1995.

I admit it. Saucers of the Illuminati is my strangest and most controversial work. That fact has been underlined by the largely uncomprehending and sometimes hostile reviews given to the first edition. The book may also be the most true that I have written.

Hold on to your brains. Maybe the world is ready for this stuff now.
 

http://www.subgenius.com/updates/X0002_Jim_Keith_has_died.html

Rock, Nevada, north of Reno, his hometown, and broke his knee. He went to the Washoe Medical hospital there and died during surgery on September 7 at 8:10 PM, when a blood clot released and entered his lung. In addition to co-authoring The Octopus with Kenn Thomas, Keith wrote many other popular books on conspiracy topics, including Mind Control/World Control, Black Helicopters I and II, OKC Bomb, Saucers of the Illuminati, Casebook on Alternative 3, Casebook on the Men In Black and many others. He was well-known and well-loved among the readers of conspiracy literature, and Thomas is receiving a great outpouring of grief and condolences from
Keith’s many fans around the world.

http://radiomisterioso.com/2014/10/12/aerika-keith-and-kenn-thomas-carry-on-jim-keith/

One of the underlying themes of Keith’s works is that the UFO phenomenon is, in fact, of entirely earthly origin and has its roots within a parallel program of technological development. Keith maintained a steadfast commitment to the earthly-origin theory, and he believed that there was a concerted effort to put forth the extraterrestrial hypothesis into the public consciousness.”

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.conspiracy.princess-diana/8OIRWQIf96k

http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/themagazine/vol6/keith.shtml

(Kenn Thomas)

Thank you for the kind words about Jim. He was a dear friend of mine and an important person to the world. The loss is immeasurable. He was not just the co-author of “The Octopus,” but a dharma combatant who demonstrated time and again that the world is far more multi-dimensional, far more interesting, than the pablum that usually passes for news, information and normal discourse. Unfortunately, it is also far more dangerous.

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Roswell!

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Roswell Secrets!

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FURTHER SECRETS OF ROSWELL

By:

Steve Erdmann

Persistence is one word that best describes the previous books by UFO investigators Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, authors of WITNESS TO ROSWELL and INSIDE THE REAL AREA 51. Persistence is also a watchword in their book THE CHILDREN OF ROSWELL.

“We now know that the American government stooped to the lowest level of humanity by going so far as to issue death threats to child witnesses.  This should inform the reader of two things; there was a big secret to be kept…and the secret keepers were willing to go to any lengths to keep it.”

Ben Hensey, Sci-Fi Fact or Fakes, Paranormal Files, foreword.

America was besieged by reports of strange crescent-shaped objects, particularly in the West, and especially around the 509th Atomic Bomb Wing of Roswell, Mexico in the summer of 1947. A head of Counter Intelligence Corps was sent (and later denied what he found). The Army base closed-down for one week under high security, and any visitors refused. A major sense of hidden panic prevailed Roswell overall. 

(THE CHILDREN OF ROSWELL: A Seven-Decade Legacy of Fear, Intimation, and Cover-ups, Thomas J, Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, The Career Press, Inc., 12 Parish Drive, Wayne, New Jersey 07470, www.careerpress.com, 2016, 255 pages, $16.99)

Conventionally downed balloons were discovered and often recovered on Mack Brazel’s tour on the ranch he worked, such as the Mogul balloon train found on June 14, 1947, described as “rubber strips, tin foil, a rather tough paper and sticks.” What foreman W.W Mack Brazel discovered on J.B. Foster’s ranch on July 3, 1947 was “quite different.” 

The military arrived in short-order and discovered remains of a crashed vehicle that also had dispersed debris for almost a mile from a mid-air explosion into a “fan-shaped” pattern.

Intelligence officer, Jesse Marcel, did a hasty “stop-off” at his home to show his wife and son the strange parts of debris. Following, also came a discovered object 40-miles to the North: the remains of a small ship with additional bodies.

All areas were cordoned off, road-blocks, and a severe security-blanket began to cover the Roswell area, all farms, all media, the Air Base was shut down for all purposes for one week, and a drastic and penetrating search for any and all artifacts of the crash that citizens may have taken.

The crash 40-miles north of Roswell needed more equipment, such as a flatbed, and it was declared a matter of clandestinely deep National Security. It included engineers and ambulance trucks. It was a strategic project.

Mechanical engineers examined some of the wreckage back at Hanger P-3, even pounded the material with a 16-pound sledge hammer with no effect.

scapegoat event was created at Fort Worth were, along with “neoprene rubber, wooden sticks, blank masking tape, string, and one-sided reflective foil,” while the real material was sent to Ohio. “The FBI’s Dallas office confirmed that.” (p. 37) All tell-tale equipment had been ‘cleared out’ by dawn and the “weather balloon” headline had raced across the media.

The White House had become a war room connected with the Departments of the Army Air Force chief, the Secretary of War, the head of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the President.

Mack Brazel began “retractions” of the incident on July 9th. The military was the easiest to censor as it was a dictatorship, but non-military citizens had Constitutional Rights. Fool-proof evidence as “hardware” had to also be “dealt with and no time to loose”: intimation of public citizens also began as the military conducted cover-up operations and collect the “near-indestructible, paper thin material that has perfect memory.”

THE DEBUNKING PROGRAM

The Army’s new policy was to dismiss all flying disk sightings or UFOs: a full-scale ‘scourged-earth policy’ ensued.

On September 23, 1947, Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining signed a secret memorandum through the Pentagon to Brigadier General George Schulgen of the Air Intelligence requiring the Division to consider “the phenomenon was real.

Their investigative “web” (later called the Military-Industrial-Complex) included many sources such as Air Force T-2, Bureau of Standards, General Electric, Rand Corporation, Hughes Air Craft and the Battelle National Laboratories.

Since 1947, agents of governments were often monsters that hid in closets to guard truisms that they wanted to control. 

Witnesses Mac Brazel and Timothy “Dee” Proctor were also threatened that if they told what they saw that Dee Proctor would never see his family again. Personnel of radio station KGFL, Walt Whitmore, Jr., Jud Roberts, Frank Joyce likewise received threats that would eventually generate their silence.

Joseph Montoya, Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico, was called to Hanger P-3, and incidentally saw the “little bodies with big heads.” In a panic, Pete and Ruben Anaya came and got Montoya.  Because he could speak Spanish, Sheriff Wilcox delivered the “death threat” to Montoya. Wilcox never ran for the office of Sheriff again (p. 64).

Author Antony Bragalia interviewed the daughter of Hunter G. Penn who had taken “a deadly serious assignment back in the summer of 1947” to “help manage civilian-military affairs after the crash…(an) information black-out.” Penn told his foster daughter, Michelle Penn, that he was authorized to use physical force and weapons to obtain their silence. “He tried to ‘heart-attack’ people,” Michelle said.

Barbara Duggar, George and Inez Wilcox, Phyllis McGuire, all had been threatened for their direct observations or some knowledge of the 1947 crash.  

Frankie Dwyer Rowe was a 12-year-old daughter of a crew chief of the Roswell Fire Department and had witnessed Robert Scrogging unveiling a mysterious piece of foil that couldn’t be destroyed and “flowed like water.” When the military learned what she had witnessed they came to visit her with such people as Arthur Philbin of the 390th Air Service Squadron (ASS) threatening her: “If you say anything, not only will you be killed, but we will come back for your family. There’s big desert out there, no one will ever find you.”

Roswell Fire Station crewmen, Dan Dwyer and Lee Reeves, arrived earlier at a crash site to observe “an egg-shaped vessel of some sort,” small bodies and one still living.

The full-weight and consequence of the ‘family’ of UFO witnesses, both Dan Dwyer and Ken Letcher, had married into Roswell paranoia, especially when “telephone wire-tapping” was discovered in 1997 (pp. 91-95).

Captain Oliver W. “Pappy” Henderson and Dr. John Kromschroeder had knowledge of the transport of the fragments and bodies.  Not surprisingly, “someone from Washington” came to retrieve the material “Pappy” had and reminded him of his security oath.

Guarding his involvement with the crash and Hanger P-3, Provost Marshal at RAAF  Major Edwin Easley kept his promise to President Truman in 1947 that he would was “never to speak about the incident again.”

CRATES TO FORT WORTH

Major Edgar R. Skelly ordered a special crew a road a Silverplate B-29 Bomber Straight Flush to fly a crate containing alien bodies to Forth Worth on July 9, 1947. He headed a nine-man crew to escort a heavily-guarded crate loaded at Bomb Pit Number 1. They were told “to keep their mouths shut throughout their assignment.”  This Skelly did, despite researcher prodding, until his death in 2002.

Both, Jesse Marcel, Sr., his son Jesse Marcel, Jr., who witnessed the original crashed parts, were harassed by mysterious phone calls and threats until the day of their deaths. Senior Jesse Marcel believed he was under a death threat and had a meeting with a mysterious “Dick D’Amato” which certainly didn’t lesson that belief.  D’Amato said the truth was buried deep under Black budgets and witnesses that were heavily watched. 

The RAAF base hospital administrative executive secretary was a Miriam ‘Andrea’ Bush who allegedly had observed alien bodies on July 9, 1947. It was an event that deeply haunted her until her bizarre death in December 1989 in a Fremont, California motel.

One of the biggest threats to the military was the plights of “souvenir collectors” of the crash. Other nearly lost accounts of witnesses were in fear of coming forward. Sydney “Jack” Wright, Dan Richards, Trinidad Chavez, Ralph A. Multer, Charles Austin Wood, Frank Vega, James Wood, Sally Tadolini, Randy Lovelace, June Crain, Walter Haut, Tom Brookshier, were among these.

“To a journalist, it’s always about what happened and why,” said broadcast journalist Cheryll Jones. “This book underscores the bigger issue that the UFO/ET phenomenon is truly a significant part of a bigger picture of lies, deception, and deceit prevalent in our world today. People brave enough to challenge that are a vital part of the journalist’s quest for answers in trying to figure that out. This takes us a big step further in that direction.” (p. 21)

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Steve Erdmann, October, 2019

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https://wordpresscom507.wordpress.com/2020/06/07/stephen-erdmann-trust-and-foundatin/wordpresscom507 – Stephen Erdmann Foundation-Dissenter/Disinter Magazine

Investigative Reporting

The Many Worlds Undiscovered!

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Edited by Steve Erdmannhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/1w2dMekIJLw?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

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David Icke: Secrets of the Matrix

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From the unbelievable to the undeniable: Epistemological pluralism, or how conspiracy theorists legitimate their extraordinary truth claims

Jaron HarambamStef AupersFirst Published December 17, 2019 Research Articlehttps://doi.org/10.1177/1367549419886045

Article information 
SAGE Choice
Open Access
Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial 4.0 License

Abstract

Despite their stigma, conspiracy theories are hugely popular today and have pervaded mainstream culture. Increasingly, such theories expanded into large master schemes of deceit where ‘everything is connected’. Moving beyond discussions of their truthfulness, we study in this article how such ‘super conspiracy theories’ are made plausible. We strategically selected the case study of David Icke – a true celebrity in conspiracy circles and main proponent of such all-encompassing narratives – to analyze his discursive strategies of legitimation: How does he support and validate his extraordinary claims? It is our argument that Icke succeeds by exploiting multiple sources of epistemic authority; he draws eclectically on ‘experience’, ‘tradition’, ‘futuristic imageries’, ‘science’ and ‘social theory’ to convince his audience. In a Western culture without any full monopoly on truth, and for a people wary of mainstream authorities, it proves opportune to draw on a wide variety of epistemic sources when claiming knowledge.Keywords Conspiracy theoriesDavid Ickeepistemic authorityepistemological pluralismNew Agepostmodernism

Introduction

Conspiracy theories about the ‘real truth’ behind the attacks of 9/11, the deaths of JFK or Bin Laden, or those about the ‘true reasons’ behind vaccination campaigns, are widespread in contemporary Western culture and feature in films like The Matrix, bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code or TV series like The X-Files, 24 or Homeland. While assessments of their current popularity are hard to substantiate, especially from a historical perspective, it is clear that conspiracy theories do not operate at the margins of society; they are a mainstream and hugely popular cultural phenomenon and receive much public attention today (Knight, 2000Melley, 2000).

In academia, however, conspiracy theories are often refuted as ungrounded and irrational speculation (Aupers, 2012Harambam, 2017). According to critical scholars, conspiracy theorists make ‘the characteristic paranoid leap into fantasy’ – particularly because they connect many unrelated facts and events (Hofstadter, 1996 [1966]: 11). They may base their theories on (some) factual claims but go ‘wrong by locating causal relationships where none exist’ (Pipes, 1997: 31) and hence ‘inhabit a different epistemic universe, where the usual rules for determining truth and falsity do not apply’ (Barkun, 2006: 187). Conspiracy theorists, then, construct explanatory narratives that our mainstream epistemic institutions and advocates (most notably science and scientists) regard as unwarranted (Byford, 2011Harambam and Aupers, 2015Keeley, 1999). Today, this ‘unlawful’ connecting of seemingly unrelated dots in a meta-narrative is a phenomenon writ large. Barkun (2006) speaks in this respect of the increasing popularity of ‘super conspiracies’ or ‘conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically’ (p. 6). Knight (2000) identifies a similar development: ‘over the last decades conspiracy theories have shown signs of increasing complexity and inclusiveness, as once separate suspicions are welded into Grand Unified Theories of Everything’ (p. 204).

Moving beyond discussions of their truthfulness, we study from a cultural sociological perspective how these all-encompassing super conspiracy theories are made plausible. Drawing everything together is easy, making people believe what you say is more difficult. And yet millions of people around the world – and many in the Dutch conspiracy milieu – are attracted by them. One of the main and most popular propagators of such all-encompassing narratives of deceit is David Icke (Barkun, 2006: 103). He is most famous – or notorious – for his ‘reptilian thesis’: the idea that ‘reptilian human-alien hybrids are in covert control of the planet’ (Robertson, 2013: 28). But he is also known for his ‘synthesis’ of seemingly different or ‘antithetical’ thought: he brings together New Age teachings with apocalyptic conspiracy theories about a coming totalitarian New World Order (cf. Barkun, 2006Ward and Voas, 2011). As Lewis and Kahn (2005) rightfully note, ‘Icke’s greatest strength is his totalizing ambition to weave numerous sub-theories into an extraordinary narrative that is both all-inclusive and all-accounting’ (p. 8). More specifically, Robertson (2016) argues that this is the result of ‘an epistemology that acknowledges [different] sources of access to knowledge’ (p. 9). Alongside the common appeals to ‘science’ and ‘tradition’, Robertson (2016) argues, conspiracy theorists like David Icke draw on other less acknowledged ‘epistemic strategies’ as well: ‘appeals to experiential, channeled and synthetic knowledge’ (p. 10).

Robertson (2016) points here to an important aspect of the epistemic authority of conspiracy theorists: they can draw on ‘the full range of epistemic strategies’ (p. 25), while today’s dominant epistemic institutions only allow appeals to ‘science’ (Gieryn, 1999). Robertson (2016) provides a sophisticated and thorough analysis of the lives and works of several ‘millennial conspiracists’ (such as David Icke) and shows that they (strategically) draw on various epistemic strategies in order to gain authority in this cultural milieu. Basing ourselves on Icke’s 2011 ‘performance’ in Amsterdam, we take this lead further and systematically analyze in full empirical detail how David Icke actually draws on such a multitude of epistemic sources. We focus on his discursive strategies of legitimation and pose open research questions: How does he support and validate his extraordinary claims in order to achieve epistemic authority in the conspiracy milieu? What are the main epistemic strategies he deploys? And what proofs, tropes and metaphors underpin each of these analytically distinct epistemic strategies?

Claiming epistemic authority

Many different scholars – from Hofstadter (1996 [1966]: 29) to Knight (2000: 204) and Barkun (2006: 3) – claim that the adage ‘everything is connected’ is ‘one of the guiding principles in virtually every conspiracy theory’. While Knight (2000) makes a plea for the rationality of this adage in a world of global relations (pp. 204–241), the majority of scholars hold this ‘unifying quality’ of contemporary conspiracy theories to be their major epistemological flaw (e.g. Barkun, 2006Byford, 2011Hofstadter, 1996 [1966]Keeley, 1999Popper, 2013 [1945]). They argue that conspiracies may be ‘typical social phenomena’ (Popper, 2013 [1945]) 307), but ‘these need to be recognized as multiple, and in most instances unrelated events which cannot be reduced to a single, common denominator’ (Byford, 2011: 33, original emphasis). To ‘regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events’ (Hofstadter, 1996 [1966]: 29) is therefore simply ludicrous: social life is inextricably more complex (Barkun, 2006: 7).

Yet such ‘grand unified theories of everything’ are immensely popular today. They are present in the ideas of people consuming conspiracy theories, they are visualized in colorful diagrams that are circulated on conspiracy websites and they form the thought of major conspiracy theorists, like David Icke. Connecting the dots between loose ends may, for such scholars, involve the notorious ‘big leap from the undeniable to the unbelievable’ (Hofstadter, 1996 [1966]: 38), but for many people in the conspiracy milieu, these connections are very plausible and real. What critical scholars of conspiracy theories seem to gloss over in their dedication to debunk conspiracy theories, then is the fact that these overarching theories need to be made plausible if such conspiracy theorists are to have any serious attention. People are not passive or gullible believers; they need to be actively convinced. Underlying conspiracy theorists’ efforts to connect the seemingly unrelated is a need for epistemic validation: they want their claims on truth to be believed, after all. But such ‘grand unified theories of everything’ are not your everyday news: the world as we know it is often turned upside down and inside out, connecting the most outlandish ideas to the very ordinary experiences of people. Indeed, it often is the ‘unbelievable’ that is sold here. The question is therefore how do conspiracy theorists convincingly do so?

To approach this issue, we need to move beyond the positivistic reflex to debunk conspiracy theories as unfounded and irrational (Barkun, 2006Byford, 2011Hofstadter, 1996 [1966]Keeley, 1999Popper, 2013 [1945]) and adopt a cultural sociological approach. From this perspective, there are multiple ways to support truth claims. Max Weber (2013 [1922]) already pointed out that one can claim authority through charisma, tradition or, in modern societies, particularly through rationalized procedures like science or law. In our Western world, referencing to ‘science’ – its institutions, experts, epistemologies and methods – is perhaps the most prevalent and powerful way to lend credibility to the claims one is making (Brown, 2009). ‘If “science” says so, we are more often than not inclined to believe it or act on it – and prefer it over claims lacking this epistemic seal of approval’ (Gieryn, 1999: 1). The tremendous epistemic authority ‘science’ enjoys today is, however, not uncontested: trust in ‘science’, particularly its institutions and experts, gradually declined over the last decades in most Western countries (cf. Beck, 1992Inglehart, 1997) and other forms of knowledge are on the rise. Examples are alternative and complementary medicine, all kinds of non-science-based nutritional regimes and New Age philosophies of life (cf. Campbell, 2007Hammer, 2004Heelas, 1996). Conspiracy culture is part of this cultural trend turning away from mainstream epistemic authorities. Not only do conspiracy theorists openly challenge the epistemic authority of science (Harambam and Aupers, 2015), but like David Icke himself, they often advance other ways of knowing as more authentic and authoritative (e.g. Robertson, 2016). Icke is therefore not just the archetype of the contemporary ‘super conspiracy theorist’ (cf. Barkun, 2006: 8; Knight, 2000: 204), but a typical exponent of the broader cultural movement discontented with mainstream epistemic institutions and their scientific-materialist worldview (e.g. Campbell, 2007Heelas, 1996Roszak, 1995). Now, how does Icke draw on multiple epistemic strategies to make his rather extravagant ideas seem plausible?

Method, data and analysis

The empirical material used for this analysis was collected on the day Icke held his show – ‘Human Race, Get Off Your Knees. The Lion Sleeps No More’ – in Amsterdam on 10 December 2011. This event was one of the many places the first author included in his ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Falzon, 2009) of the Dutch ‘conspiracy milieu’ (Harambam, 2017). For a period of 20 months, between October 2011 and June 2013, extensive visits were made to their social gatherings – shows, political manifestations, conferences and movie screenings – and to their private homes. Besides the traditional ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviewing, the first author undertook content analyses of the media (videos, texts, cartoons, etc.) circulated at these places and on the Internet (their own websites, blogs, Facebook pages, etc.).

In this article, however, we will mostly draw on that particular performance of David Icke. Given the fact that Icke is exemplary of this new stream of conspiracy culture (Barkun, 2006Knight, 2000Robertson, 2013), the analysis of his performance is a strategic case study (cf. Flyvbjerg, 2006) to research in empirical detail how the extraordinary claims of super conspiracy theories are made plausible. The first author participated as one of the many attendees of Icke’s show and observed not only his performance but also his audience with whom he spoke during that day and invited for further conversation elsewhere. He made field notes of Icke’s performance – its textual contents and his manifestations as an artist – and of the (reactions of the) public. Although these field notes were – as ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973) – valuable for the research at large, they lacked the precision needed to adequately substantiate our claims in this article. We hence complemented the field notes with an analysis of professional video recordings of the same show at two different places, respectively, in London’s Wembley Arena show on 27 October 2012 and London’s Brixton Academy in May 2010. The videos are for sale on his website, but also feature on YouTube for free. We have therefore chosen to use these video recordings as the source for the precise quotations used in this article. The first author has re-examined this show a few times with a theoretical focus on the rhetorical and epistemological strategies used by Icke to legitimate his truth claims. The analysis is therefore more textual than ethnographic. Each successive time different themes were fine-tuned to inductively arrive at a typology (cf. Glaser and Strauss, 1967). All excerpts are from the YouTube film1 and are easily accessed. We have consistently marked each quote by its time location on the video.

‘The Day That Will Change Your Life’: David Icke in Amsterdam

David Icke is a true conspiracy celebrity; he holds performances in large venues all over the world, attracting crowds of thousands.2 He is also a writer of more than 20 books, which are read in 12 different languages, and he owns a popular website with many videos and interviews, and a rather active discussion platform (more than 100,000 registered users).3 David Icke manages to bring together a diverse range of people (Barkun, 2006Ward and Voas, 2011). As Lewis and Kahn (2005) argue, ‘Icke appeals equally to bohemian hipsters and right-wing reactionary fanatics [who] are just as likely to be sitting next to a 60-something UFO buff, a Nuwaubian, a Posadist, a Raëlian, or New Age earth goddess’ (p. 3). His fan base is quite diverse: from new religious movements to political anarchists and from alternative healers to anti-government militants on the extreme right. All of them, however, share a discontent with our current societal order, and more precisely with the way our epistemic institutions (i.e. science, politics, religion, media, etc.) work.

This counts for his 2011 Amsterdam performance in the auditorium of the RAI convention center as well. David Icke has attracted a 1500 plus crowd who have paid for a €69 ticket to see him speak today. It is a full day’s program: from 10:00 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening, David Icke will ‘put all the puzzles pieces together’ (13.30). The show opens when we see on the huge video screen on stage a chain of connected iron links passing while we hear a gloomy and grim music increasing in intensity. The links are chained around the earth and have texts on them: ‘New World Order’, ‘Rothschild Zionism’, ‘Child Abuse’, ‘Babylonian Brotherhood’, ‘Bilderbergers’, ‘Aspartame’, ‘Religion’, ‘Club of Rome’, ‘Chemtrails’, ‘Fluoride’, ‘HAARP’, ‘Satanism’, ‘Trilateral Commission’, ‘Mainstream Media’, ‘Fabian Society’, ‘Intelligence agencies’, ‘IMF’, ‘World Army’, ‘Police State’, ‘Global Politics’, ‘Big Pharma’, ‘War on Terror’, ‘Vaccines’, ‘Tavistock’, ‘Military/Industrial Complex’, ‘War on Drugs’, ‘Mind Control’. They make up one large interconnecting chain. And as the music turns more and more ominous, we see a lion – with the image of the earth projected on its skin – bound in chains. The music reaches its dramatic climax as the lion breaks out of his bondage and while he growls loudly, we see the links flying over the screen. The message is clear: the lion sleeps no more, the world liberates itself. And the audience is ready to receive David Icke with an overwhelming applause: the conspiracy rock star is finally here.

In the next 9 hours, David Icke elaborates passionately about ‘the multi-levelled conspiracy to enslave humanity in a global concentration camp’ (15:30). In general, Icke distinguishes between ‘the five-sense level of this conspiracy’ and those levels that transcend the here and now. The former is mostly about the corruption and dogmatism of our modern institutions – media, science, politics, religion and so on – and how they manipulate us and ‘program our minds’ into acquiescence (19:00–25:00). Icke integrates all these institutions in one pyramid. At the top of this pyramid, we find a network of secret societies and powerful families, sometimes captured under the header of the ‘Illuminati bloodlines’ and at other times called ‘Rothschild Zionists’. But, as Icke explains, ‘there is this other-dimensional, non-human, level to look at’ (1:41:00). We now get to the ‘reptilian thesis’ through which Icke gained his fame and notoriety (Barkun, 2006: 105). Icke explains that his super conspiracy theory ‘involves non-human entities that take a reptilian form [which] manipulate this reality through interbreeding bloodlines’ (1:44:00). These are the Illuminati-hybrid family networks that rule the world. However normal they may look to us – Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth – they are in fact ‘shapeshifting’ reptilians ‘hiding behind human form’ (2:07:00). Icke sketches a pristine image of a forgotten past when people still lived in harmony with the natural world and were connected to higher levels of consciousness, but argues that ‘the road to tyranny began when these reptilians arrived here’ (2:23:00). Part of ‘this reptilian intervention’ was to change our DNA so that we can no longer access the world beyond our five senses: ‘they want to lock humanity in that prison’ (3:27:30).

And that, Icke concludes, is ‘the bottom line of this conspiracy: controlling our perception of what is real’ (3:18:00). Our institutions – media, science, politics, religion – play an important part in making these ‘prisons for our minds’ (19:00–25:00), but Icke points to another method of mind control: ‘the moon-matrix’. He argues that the moon is actually a hollowed-out planetoid brought here by these reptilian entities that emits a frequency that distorts our interpretation of reality (2:30:00–3:08:00). However, change is coming, Icke ends optimistically: ‘a new epoch of enlightenment and expansion, of love, harmony and respect is moving into human experience’ (5:12:00). But ‘to go down this road of freedom, we first need to free our minds from the programming of a lifetime’ (22:00); we need ‘to remove the barriers of belief and perception that keep us from enlightenment’ (5:27:00). ‘Enough!’, Icke shouts loudly while he ends the show, ‘it is time to fly! It is time to fly . . .’ (6:42:00). And given the massive applause Icke receives, his audience seems ready for it.

David Icke brings together different conspiracy theories into one dazzling, yet cohesive narrative which captures his audience for hours. In the following section, we will show on which sources of epistemic authority he draws to make his conspiracy theory of everything plausible.

‘Just Following the Clues’: appealing to experience

One of the ways Icke lends legitimacy to his super conspiracy is by reference to his own personal experience, or life course. Virtually, the first thing he does when opening his show is giving a snapshot of ‘the chain of events that had led to now’ (6:30). He explains,

when I look back, I can see very clearly in my life, what happens to all of us, you go through a series of experiences and they seem to be random, they don’t seem to be connected. But when you look back, you see it’s a journey of connected synchronistic experiences that are leading us in a certain direction. (06:00)

Like the opening scene of the chained lion, David Icke makes it clear that ‘everything is connected’ on a personal level as well. He tells us how he was a professional soccer player having to deal with rheumatoid arthritis, how he went into television: ‘what that did was show me the inside of media: shite’, and that he got into (green party) politics: ‘and I saw politics from the inside: how it’s just a game’ (08:00). When he claims that the global elites are actually shapeshifting reptilians, he supports that with his own experience of meeting former UK Prime Minister Ted Heath in television studio years ago. And ‘as I looked into his eyes it was like looking into two black holes, it was like looking through him into this other dimension where he is really controlled from’ (2:06:30). Icke supports his personal experiences with those of others, friends, family or just people he has met: ‘so I met this lady in Canada some years ago, a very power-dressing business women, [who] had this experience and she was shaking when she told me the story’ (3:05:00). Basically, she told Icke how she had a boyfriend who one night while having sex turned ‘totally reptilian and then morphed back to human. And these bizarre stories, have been told by people from all over the world, people from all walks of life’ (3:07:00).

But there is another, more supernatural, type of experience on which Icke draws. He explains how his life changed dramatically after seeing a psychic to have hands on healing for his arthritis. She channels him visions of how he ‘was going out on a world stage to reveal great secrets, that there was a shadow over the world to be lifted, there was a story that had to be told’ (09:30). And although ‘this sounded like complete bloody craziness’ to Icke, his ‘life started to change’ after going to a mountain in Peru where he had ‘extraordinary experiences’ (10:00). This changed everything:

suddenly concepts, information, perceptions, were pouring into my mind. I was seeing the world in a different way, and I was asking the big questions: who are we? where are we? and why is the world as it is? And from that time the puzzle pieces started to be handed to me in amazingly synchronistic ways. (12.00)

Like a true prophet, Icke receives the wisdom he wrote down in his books from the gods above or from a metaphysical master plan: ‘the path is already mapped out, you only have to follow the clues’ (12:30). And that is what Icke has done: ‘all the information was coming to me in incredible synchronicity, of meeting people, seeing documents, coming across information, having experiences. [. . .] just following the clues, I came across this reptilian connection to the families that are running our reality’ (17:00). This Jungian concept of synchronicity or ‘meaningful coincidences’ is prevalent in Icke’s explanations of how he has gained his spiritual wisdom during his life course. By actively ‘putting the puzzle pieces together’ (13.30) or ‘connecting the dots’ (15:00) between seemingly unrelated experiences, he accumulated knowledge about the real reality underneath the surface of everyday life.

Such ‘revelatory experiences in which spokespersons claim to have gained privileged insight into those spiritual truths they present in their texts’ (Hammer, 2004: 369) have been an important source of epistemic authority in various historical religious traditions, but are also used by contemporary ‘prophets’ in today’s market of New Age spiritualities (Heelas, 1996). Icke blends mundane and supernatural experiences together and actively synthesizes that into a larger narrative which obtains a deeper meaning. Whereas Robertson (2016) differentiates ‘channeling’ from the epistemic strategy of ‘experience’, we argue, as we have shown here, that they are intimately connected (pp. 49–53). Icke’s appeal to the epistemic authority of ‘experience’, then, resonates with a broader cultural trend in which the ‘inner’ self and personal experience is the most trustworthy source of knowledge (e.g. Aupers and Houtman, 2006Heelas, 1996Van Zoonen, 2012).

‘All Across the Ancient World’: appealing to tradition

Another important part of David Icke’s argumentation is based on the (allegedly) perennial wisdom of ancient cultures. Icke supports his claims throughout his show by referring to the myths of African tribes, the sagas of Asian emperors, the dreams of Native-American shamans and the more familiar Abrahamic narratives. The best example is Icke’s reptilian thesis. He starts by showing an excerpt from the Old Testament (Genesis, 6:4) but argues that ‘that’s just the biblical version, all across the ancient world you see similar stories and accounts of this interbreeding’ (1:48:30). The most prominent symbolization of this reptilian interbreeding is visible, Icke argues, in the worship of ‘the serpent gods’ which happens all across the world, in all cultures, and in all religions. He starts off by saying that ‘the oldest form of religious worship in the world has been taken back 70.000 years, to an area of the Kalahari desert in South Africa and it is the worship of the serpent or worship of the snake’ (2:07:30). He gives many more examples: ‘Chinese emperors used to claim the right to be emperor because of their genetic connection to the serpent gods. And this is a theme all across the world between the serpent gods and royalty’ (1:58:00). He continues with myths of the old Mesopotamia, the Egyptians (‘who have their pharaohs represented as an cobra’), in Japan and Asia (‘the dragon is the most dominant symbol of that world’), in central and south America (‘the Mayan “Kukulkan” and “Quetzalcoatl” of the Aztecs’), the old druids, ‘folklore is full of serpents, and the Zulu Chitauri’ – their mythical ‘children of the serpent’ (2:07:00–2:10:00). But symbols of the serpent gods are also prominent in contemporary life, Icke tells us: in our myths, fairytales, the emblems of the aristocracy, the logos of car companies: ‘it’s amazing how many times you see the symbols of reptiles and humans, or part human, part reptile, overseeing the palaces, castles and churches of this elite’ (2:17:00). His conclusion is clear: ‘all worship the serpent gods’ (2:10:00).

However, ‘something else goes parallel with the reptilian story’, Icke tells us:

Again not just in the bible with the Garden of Eden, but all across the ancient accounts is the reptilian connection and the Fall of Men. And this is universal. The ancient accounts all talk about a time when humans were so unbelievably different to how we are today. (1:48:30)

He starts off by saying that ‘the energetic schism’ was

of course symbolized by Noah and the great flood. And Noah is simply a biblical version of much older stories that tell exactly the same story of how the earth turned over, how there were great geological catastrophes and how humans lost their power of the connection they had to higher levels of consciousness. (2:24:30)

In his legitimation of the Fall of Men through reptilians, Icke jumps from religious books, to popular myth, to fiction. As to the latter, he quotes large pieces of the book of Carlos Castaneda – a famous, but fictitious anthropological study – which supports virtually his whole thesis of how ‘predators from the depths of the cosmos took over the rule of our lives’ (3:10:00).

Throughout his show, then, Icke appeals to the knowledge and wisdom of the ‘ancient world’ to support and validate his own theories: if ‘they’ have been saying it for thousands of years, it must be true. In a (counter)culture wary of modern institutions and the knowledge they produce, this makes good sense: these old traditions represent after all a more authentic and pure base of wisdom than the cold rationality of modern science (Heelas, 1996Roszak, 1995). Icke’s appeal to the ancient cultures is what Hammer (2004) identifies as the epistemological strategy of ‘tradition’: basing one’s truth claims in the source of non-European (spiritual) lore. Such appeals are by no means references to ‘actual’ practices, customs and beliefs of ‘ancient cultures’, but construct a radically ‘modern’ reinterpretation of non-European tales and traditions (Hammer, 2004: 23). Icke similarly takes such (fictional) legends then as (containing) factual truths. Whether these are ‘really’ true or not may be less relevant for him and his audience: such ancient cultures simply ‘possessed a vast wisdom, a spirituality lost to us’ (Hammer, 2004: 136). David Icke conveniently draws on this more widely felt sentiment of modern cultural discontent and his appeal to ‘tradition’ falls on fertile ground in the conspiracy milieu.

‘Living in the Cosmic Internet’: appealing to futuristic imageries

In contrast to supporting one’s claims by appealing the wisdom of our ‘ancient cultures’, Icke also looks to the ‘future’ as a source of authority when he invokes the imageries brought to life by science fiction and digital technologies. To begin with the latter, Icke speaks, for example, about our bodies as computers: ‘our DNA is like a universal software code’, ‘just like computers, we have a phenomenal anti-virus system we call the human immune system’, and ‘what we call cultures are different sub-softwares of the human software’ (1:10:00–1:12:30). These analogies should all add plausibility to Icke’s argument that our bodies decode a universal energy field (the metaphysical universe) and herewith bring the reality we experience every day into being. Icke: ‘it is just like the wireless internet, where you get a computer and pull the whole world wide web, a whole collection of reality, out of the unseen, to appear on a screen, anywhere in the world’ (36:30). And there are more of such references to digital technologies that should support his ideas. For example, when Icke explains why our reality feels and appears ‘real’, it is ‘because we are living in a virtual reality universe. A fantastically advanced version of a gigantic computer game’ (32:30). Or he points to the new digital technologies that have made moving three-dimensional (3D) holographs possible, like news readers in a television show or Michael Jackson appearing on stage long after his death: ‘some of these digital holograms look so solid’, Icke explains, that ‘people are afraid to walk through them. And that’s what this is, digital holograms is the reality we’re experiencing’ (1:24:30). These examples of the ‘realness’ of virtual realities are deployed by Icke to convince us of his understanding that ‘we live in a very advanced equivalent of the holographic internet, we live in the cosmic internet’ (40:30).

The futuristic imageries developed in science fiction provide another source for Icke to tap into when supporting his super conspiracy theory. He particularly refers to The Matrix throughout his show (e.g. 42:00/47:00/2:59:00). The main idea put forward in that movie – that we all live, without really knowing it, in an artificial non-existent simulated world – resonates quite well with Icke’s worldview. It is a powerful metaphor to convince his audience. When he speaks about how reality is an illusion created inside our heads, he brings us to ‘this scene from The Matrix – which is absolutely right – where the Neo character says, “but this isn’t real!” And Morpheus says ‘well, what is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, taste and see, then “real” is simply electronic signals interpreted by your brain’. That’s all it is’, Icke affirms. But the appeal to science fiction goes further than The Matrix. Icke supports, for example, his claim that the moon is an alien instrument of mind control by referencing to Star Wars – ‘in a galaxy far far away. . . I don’t think so. This is much closer at home’ (2:48:00) – and John Carpenter’s They Live – ‘I thought it was symbolically accurate when I first saw it, but now I know it’s unbelievably accurate’ (3:02:00). Whereas the former movie features the Death Star ‘in the same bloody way as I am talking about the moon’ (2:49:00), the latter boasts a TV tower transmitting a frequency – like the moon-matrix – ‘which is preventing the population from seeing what they would normally see [the truth]’ (3:05:00). Both movies confirm what Icke is saying all along.

What was science fiction yesterday is often science faction today. And vice versa, newly introduced technologies feed the social imagination about its ‘magical possibilities’. The introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century, for instance, motivated the public discourse on ‘spirit communication’ and supported the plausibility and popularity of Spiritism (Stolov, 2008). In his performance, Icke plays with this social imagination about digital technologies to convince the audience. He argues, ‘so much of science fiction ain’t fiction at all, they’re getting it from facts’ (2:51:00) and, consequentially, that much more ‘unbelievable’ stuff has potential reality. Barkun (2006) states that this ‘fact-fiction reversal’ is common: ‘conspiracy literature is replete with instances in which fictional products are asserted to be accurate factual representations of reality’ (p. 29). In a society where people are exposed to technologically real, yet virtual ‘miracles’ on a daily basis – from games to virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) – Icke’s outlandish notion of the cosmic Internet gains in plausibility.

‘What Scientists Are Saying’: appealing to science

In a time and place dominated by the scientific worldview like ours, anyone trying to legitimize their claims on reality would do well to base it in ‘science’ (cf. Gieryn, 1999). It is therefore no surprise that David Icke does abundantly so. The first time Icke alludes to ‘science’ is by using it as ‘building blocks’ of his own theories. When he is arguing, for example, that the moon is actually a hollowed-out planetoid from outer space, he quotes many different scientists to support his claim. He begins with scientists who question the common understandings of the moon as our earth’s satellite: ‘Isaac Asimov, a Russian professor of Biochemistry’ and ‘Irwin Shapiro from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ both argue that given its size and position, the moon cannot be there (2:36:00). He continues with scientists from NASA who concluded after seismic experiments that ‘the moon is more like a hollow than a homogenous sphere’ (2:36:30) – findings that were supported by ‘Dr. Frank Press and Dr. Sean Solomon from MIT’ (2:37:00). To argue that the moon is a construct from outer space, Icke extensively quotes ‘two scientists from the Russian Academy of Science’ – Michael Vahsin and Alexander Shcherbakov – who ‘wrote an article in Sputnik Magazine titled: “Is the moon the creation of alien intelligence?”’ (2:38:00). After presenting their findings, Icke advances their marvelous conclusion:

they say it’s a hollowed out planetoid! ‘What we have here is a very ancient spaceship, the interior of which was filled with [. . .] everything necessary to enable this caravel of the universe to serve as Noah’s ark of intelligence’. (2:40:00)

Icke’s efforts here should give his audience the impression that his theory of the moon as a hollowed-out planetoid is not just something he is imagining, it is actually supported by real scientists.

But David Icke also alludes to ‘science’ as ‘stepping stones’ to reach his own more extravagant ideas. He starts in such cases from a position of scientific quandary and then advances his own rather extraordinary thoughts where science leaves matters unexplained. For example, when Icke explains that our ‘body-computer’ can no longer reach higher levels of consciousness, he turns to unresolved matters in astronomy and goes from there:

the range of frequencies our body-computer can decode is extraordinarily tiny. We are virtually blind, in terms of [seeing] what exist. The vast majority of this universe is what scientists call dark energy or dark matter and they call it dark not because it’s pitch black, but because we cannot decode it. Therefore it’s not within our realm of experience. We have to work it out by its impact on things we can see. (59:00)

In such cases, ‘science’ is the base camp from which Icke ventures into the unexplored territories ‘science’ dares not to enter. They may point in the right direction, Icke says, but because ‘they’re focusing on their own discipline, their own individual dots, and they don’t connect the dots, they can’t see the picture!’ (1:26:00).

Icke finally draws on ‘science’ for its rich repertoire of cultural imageries to make his thoughts clear and intelligible. So when he is talking about how ‘ethereal reptilian entities’ are actually controlling people like Obama and Queen Elisabeth, Icke turns to the image of the sterile laboratory:

and this is a good analogy, you know, when these scientists in a laboratory are working with something they can’t touch because it’s too dangerous. What they are working with will be in a tank, and they’ll put gloves on, which allows them to be outside the tank, but to manipulate inside the tank. Well, that is a very good symbol of what I am talking about, these illuminati bloodlines, these hybrid bloodlines operate like with those gloves, operating inside this reality. (1:56:00)

Or somewhat later in his show when Icke is talking about how the ‘control system’ has trained us into acquiescence and obedience, he puts forward the image of a classical conditioning experiment:

it is a mind game. More and more fine details of our life are being dictated. It is to turn us into a version of this [we see picture of a mouse in the middle of a maze]. When you put shock equipment down different channels [the mouse learns where not to go]. And what they are doing is [the same]: giving us punishments for doing this, punishments for doing that, so we become subservient to the system, never challenge it. (5:00:00)

‘Science’, to conclude, is an important part of our cultural imaginary, and Icke draws effortlessly from it to make his ideas intelligible.

Despite the critique on the institution of science, appeals to its epistemic authority remain highly effective to lend credibility to knowledge (e.g. Gieryn, 1999). Even ‘spokespersons for religious outlooks’ need to position themselves in one way or another to the dominant scientific worldview (Hammer, 2004: 202). Icke taps extensively on ‘science’ to legitimize his claims. On one hand, it functions as his positive Other when he argues that ‘scientists are saying the same’. But ‘science’ also functions in Icke’s thought as its negative Other – when it is the signpost of limitation (as in its inability to provide answers to the mysteries of black holes, dark matter and junk DNA), ‘look, I dare to go further’. Just like religious spokespersons in the esoteric tradition (Hammer, 2004: 201–206; Robertson, 2016: 48–49), Icke uses the authority of ‘science’ pragmatically in the legitimization of his ideas.

‘The Incessant Centralization of Power’: appealing to (critical) social theory

When Icke comes back from exploring the multidimensional level of his super conspiracy to explain ‘how it all plays out in this five sense reality’ (3:27:00); he mostly draws on notions developed in the social sciences. His main question ‘how do a few control the many?’ is unequivocally answered in sociological terms: by ‘the way they have structured society’ (3:27:30).

This allusion to social theory is particularly clear when Icke explains that ‘when you are the few and you have to control the many, you have to centralize decision-making’ (3:36:00). He sketches a pyramidal view of society with the centralization of power/knowledge as its organizing principle:

the idea is to hold advanced knowledge in the upper levels of this structure, where a few at the top are the only ones who know how it all fits together, and they keep the general population in ignorance of what they know, therefore they have the power to manipulate the masses. (3:28:00)

Knowledge is power, Icke explains after Foucault. Very much akin to sociological understandings of modern societies, Icke’s ‘pyramid of manipulation’ is also hierarchically structured along ‘the major institutions that affect our daily life’: religion, finance, military, education, politics and so on (see Figure 1). Through this pyramidal view of society, he underscores the rationality of functionally differentiating society in order to most efficiently control it – thoughts reminiscent of Weber’s (2013 [1922]) bureaucratization theories. Especially, by emphasizing how such systems operate through hierarchical structures, where lower level ‘officials’ just ‘do their job’ and ‘follow the rules’ (cf. Arendt, 2006 [1963]), Icke argues how society can be manipulated with the cooperation of those being manipulated:

they [just] go to work, earn money, go on holiday, they don’t try to manipulate anybody, they don’t try to create a Fascist Orwellian totalitarian. But they don’t know how their apparently innocent contribution individually connects with other apparently innocent contributions around the system. And that’s how they keep what’s going on in the hands of the few. (3:30:00)

Figure 1. David Icke’s pyramid of manipulation.

There is a clear legacy of Marxian thought here that is apparent when compared to ‘The Pyramid of the Capitalist System’ (Figure 2) – a satiric cartoon image published in a 1911 edition of Industrial Worker. Although the dominant institutions may have somewhat changed, the message is similar:

humans have been put in this circular lifestyle, just a repeating cycle of work, eat, sleep and work, eat, sleep . . . so that we spend so much time surviving and not lift our head up to see what’s going on. (3:35:30)

Figure 2. Pyramid of capitalist system.

Meanwhile, the ruling classes enjoy their privileges, while the major institutions guarantee order and stability. Even the operating logic is similar: just ‘follow the money’ and you will get to the cabal. The affinity with Marxian thought, however, goes further. Icke speaks about how these institutions ‘program us with a certain perception of reality which we carry through our lives so we will be good little slaves’ (22:30). Not a far cry from how the ‘superstructure of society’ maintains and legitimizes the dominant ‘relations of production’ by advancing them as normal, just and legitimate (Marx and Engels, 1965 [1865]). Ultimately, Icke reiterates Gramscian notions of how these institutions – and especially the education system – socialize people to obediently serve in their designated (labor)roles in society: ‘which is why the education system is not about educating, it’s about programming’ (3:28:00). These acquired ‘hegemonic beliefs’, Gramsci argues, thwart critical thought and ultimately obstruct ‘revolution’ (e.g. 2011). For the same reasons, Icke urges us to ‘free our minds’ because the ‘control system has been set up in endless ways to divert us, to confuse us and to keep us from the understanding that would set us free’ (14:00). But there is a way out, Icke tells us in rather Marxist terms, ‘the choice is to become conscious!’ (25:00). Class conscious?

When Icke speaks about the centralization of power, he also provides a form of historical sociology. He explains how we

started with tribal situations as part of this centralization process. The tribes came together in what we call nations, nations under unions, like the European Union. And the next stage of that, which they are already preparing for, is to take us into a world government. (3:37:00)

This notion of a coming totalitarian world government, or New World Order, is central to many conspiracy theories (e.g. Barkun, 2006Byford, 2011). What is crucial here, however, is that Icke gives a socio-historical explanation of how we got into the ‘centralized dictatorship the EU is now’ (3:43:00). So when Icke refers to ‘globalization’ as part of the strategy of the cabal, his explanation mimics those sociological theories standing in the tradition of Wallerstein’s ‘World-Systems Analysis’:

globalization is the constant centralization of power, more and more power in the hands of a few, more and more, the globalized economy is making every country dependent on every other country, therefore has no power of individual action and decision making [. . .] and the reason they want to do this is because dependency equals control. (3:45:30)

In contrast to the appeals to ‘science’ where Icke literally quotes natural scientists, the reference to social scientific knowledge is less explicit. But the way Icke explains our current situation and how we got there shows an elective affinity with sociological analysis, especially of the critical or (neo)Marxist signature. In doing so, Icke unmistakably draws authority from explanations that originate in the social sciences, but are now widespread. His talk testifies to the trickling down of (social) scientific notions in wider society (Giddens, 1984). Critical social theory has become a popular idiom for conspiracy theorists to express their discontent with our current societal order.

Conclusion

David Icke brings the heavens and the earths together in one master narrative of institutional mind control, multidimensional universes and shapeshifting reptilian races. This is his objective because ‘when you connect the dots, suddenly the light goes on and the picture forms’ (15:00). We have shown in this article how Icke draws on a multitude of sources of epistemic authority to convince his audience that the ‘unbelievable’ is indeed ‘undeniable’. His claims to truth are a hodgepodge of epistemological strategies: he draws on personal experience, perennial narratives in ancient cultures, technological imageries, science and critical social theory to support his super conspiracy theory. (Academic) criticasters of conspiracy theorists may find this eclecticism problematic: they deplore how such ‘charlatans’ unsettle the boundaries between fact and fiction and warn for the societal ramifications of such relativism (e.g. Barkun, 2006Pipes, 1997Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009). But debunking these conspiracy theories as irrational and problematic does not help us in understanding its massive appeal and plausibility from a cultural perspective. Based on our analysis, we argue in line with Robertson (2016) that Icke’s epistemological pluralism adds plausibility to his super conspiracy theory. Moving beyond a strict religious studies perspective, however, our analysis identified two more distinct epistemic strategies: ‘futuristic imageries’ and ‘(critical) social theory’. Alluding to technological advances and science fiction helps people imagine the ‘unbelievable’, while referring to the societal critiques of academics gives credence to their societal discontents. These are important contemporary additions to Hammer’s (2004) tri-partite schema of drawing on ‘tradition’, ‘science’ and ‘experience’ when claiming knowledge outside the orthodox mainstream. In short, Icke is able to convince his audience of his super conspiracy theory and acquire epistemic authority in the conspiracy milieu precisely because he is able to deploy a very diverse range of epistemic strategies, from the spiritual to the (social) scientific and from the visceral to the cerebral. We will develop two sociological explanations as to why this is the case – hypotheses about the cultural reception of super conspiracy theories that suggest new routes for further research. First of all, in contemporary Western culture, no belief system has a full monopoly on truth – particularly since the erosion of Christian tradition, doctrine and beliefs are not necessarily and fully replaced by the epistemic authority of modern science (Beck, 1992Brown, 2009Inglehart, 1997). For people wary of mainstream institutions and their truth claims, it proves opportune to draw on a wide variety of epistemic sources when claiming knowledge. Motivated by a generalized distrust, they assemble different perspectives on truth and ‘pick-and-mix’ from both established and ‘stigmatized knowledge’ (cf. Barkun, 2006: 26; Campbell, 2007Lyon, 2000Possamai, 2005). However, Icke’s eclecticism may not only serve the epistemological omnivores, his super conspiracy theory may also appeal to distinctly different social groups, coming from different subcultures and lifestyles. Scholars have pointed to the fact that he manages to bring together a diverse range of people, from leftist spiritual seekers to right-wing reactionaries (Barkun, 2006Lewis and Kahn, 2005Ward and Voas, 2011), and our own observations and interviews in the field corroborate that (Harambam and Aupers, 2017). Our second suggestion, then, is that Icke’s reliance on multiple epistemic sources of authority attracts distinctly different audiences: both those attracted to New Age spiritualities, and amateur-scientists, social activists, hackers and fans of the science fiction genre. His text is highly ‘polysemic’: each follower can ‘decode’ Icke’s super conspiracy theory differently and in conformity with one’s own social identity and political interests.

Whether Icke’s theories address the epistemological omnivores – individuals combining experience, (social)science and ancient myth to ‘find the truth’ – or different social groups with distinct epistemological preferences (or both) need to be further researched. In addition, a venue for further research is the communal dimension of conspiracy culture (Ibid.). Icke’s show, after all, is a form of counter-cultural entertainment, and there are many facets of collective effervescence at work during his performances (Durkheim, 1965 [1912]). For now we conclude that Icke’s fusion of science and religion, fact and value, folklore and futurism is reminiscent of what many scholars identify as postmodern culture (cf. Best and Kellner, 1997Jameson, 1991). The dissolution of stable categories of knowledge, the ‘bricolage’ and ‘pastiche’ of many different cultural forms and the individualistic possibilities for interpretation are features that have found their way from the arts and intelligentsia to everyday life of ordinary citizens, like those attending Icke’s show. Postmodernism may be dead in academia; it is alive and kicking in the outside world.

Authors’ note
Jaron Harambam is now affiliated with KU Leuven, Belgium.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This article is based on research funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and is part of the project ‘Conspiracy Culture in the Netherlands: Modernity and Its discontents’, file number 404-10-438.

ORCID iD
Stef Aupers  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8286-7147

Notes

1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2vlegEBuO0, last retrieved on 27 February 2015.

2.This was one of the slogans David Icke promoted his show with, for example, http://www.purityevents.nl/david-icke-the-lion-sleeps-no-more, last retrieved on 15 February 2016.

3.http://www.davidicke.com, last retrieved on 7 May 2015.

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Biographical note

Jaron Harambam is an interdisciplinary trained sociologist working on news, disinformation and conspiracy theories in today’s agorithmically structured media ecosystem. He received his PhD in Sociology (highest distinction) from Erasmus University Rotterdam, held postdoctoral research positions at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, and is now a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship holder at the Institute for media Studies at Leuven University.

Stef Aupers is cultural sociologist and works as a professor media culture at the Institute for Media Studies at Leuven University. He published widely on the mediatization of religion, spirituality and conspiracy theories and, particularly, computer game culture.

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David Icke

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David Icke
Icke in 2013
BornDavid Vaughan Icke
29 April 1952 (age 69)
Leicester, England
OccupationConspiracy theorist,[1] former sports broadcaster and football player
MovementNew Age conspiracism
Association football careerPosition(s)GoalkeeperYouth career1967–1971Coventry CitySenior career*YearsTeamApps(Gls)1971–1973Hereford United[2]37(0)* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only
Websitedavidicke.com

David Vaughan Icke (/ˈdeɪvɪd vɔːn aɪk/; born 29 April 1952) is an English conspiracy theorist and a former footballer and sports broadcaster.[1][3][4][5][6] He has written over 20 books, self-published since the mid-1990s, and spoken in more than 25 countries.[7][8][9]

In 1990, he visited a psychic who told him he was on Earth for a purpose and would receive messages from the spirit world.[10] This led him to state in 1991 he was a “Son of the Godhead”[6] and that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes, predictions he repeated on the BBC show Wogan.[11][12] His appearance led to public ridicule.[13] Books Icke wrote over the next 11 years developed his world view of New Age conspiracism.[14] His endorsement of an antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in The Robots’ Rebellion (1994) and And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995) led his publisher to stop handling his books, which were then self-published.[9]

Icke believes the universe to consist of “vibrational” energy and infinite dimensions sharing the same space.[15][16][17] He claims an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings, the Archons or Anunnaki, have hijacked the Earth and a genetically modified human–Archon hybrid race of shape-shifting reptilians – the Babylonian BrotherhoodIlluminati or “elite” – manipulate events to keep humans in fear, so that the Archons can feed off the resulting “negative energy”.[15][18][19][20] He claims many public figures belong to the Babylonian Brotherhood and propel humanity towards a global fascist state or New World Order, a post-truth era ending freedom of speech.[14][15][21][22] He sees the only way to defeat such “Archontic” influence is for people to wake up to the truth and fill their hearts with love.[15] Critics have accused Icke of being antisemitic and a Holocaust denier with his theories of reptilians serving as a deliberate “code”.[23][24][25] Icke denies these claims.[26]

Contents

Early life, family and education

The middle son of three boys born seven years apart, Icke was born in Leicester General Hospital to Beric Vaughan Icke and Barbara J. Icke, née Cooke, who were married in Leicester in 1951. Beric Icke served in the Royal Air Force as a medical orderly during World War II,[27] and after the war became a clerk in the Gents clock factory. The family lived in a terraced house on Lead Street in the centre of Leicester,[28] an area that was demolished in the mid-1950s as part of the city’s slum clearance.[29] When David Icke was three, around 1955, they moved to the Goodwood estate, one of the council estates the post-war Labour government built. “To say we were skint,” he wrote in 1993, “is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole.”[28] He recalls having to hide under a window or chair when the councilman came for the rent; after knocking, the rent man would walk around the house peering through windows. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told Icke to hide. He wrote in 2003 that he still gets a fright when someone knocks on the door.[30]

Icke attended Whitehall Infant School, and then Whitehall Junior School.[31][30]

Football

Icke has said he made no effort at school, but when he was nine he was chosen for the junior school’s third-year football team. He writes that this was the first time he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as his way out of poverty. He played in goal, which he wrote suited the loner in him and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain.[32]

After failing his 11-plus exam in 1963, he was sent to the city’s Crown Hills Secondary Modern (rather than the local grammar school), where he was given a trial for the Leicester Boys Under-14 team.[33] He left school at 15 after being talent-spotted by Coventry City, who signed him up in 1967 as their youth team’s goalkeeper. In 1968 he played in the Coventry City youth team that were runners up to Burnley in the F.A. Youth Cup. He also played for Oxford United‘s reserve team and Northampton Town, on loan from Coventry.[34]

Rheumatoid arthritis in his left knee, which spread to the right knee, ankles, elbows, wrists and hands, stopped him from making a career out of football. Despite stating that he was often in agony during training, Icke managed to play part-time for Hereford United, including in the first team when they were in the fourth, and later in the third, division of the English Football League.[35] But in 1973, at the age of 21, the pain in his joints became so severe that he was forced to retire.[36]

First marriage

Icke met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Shortly after they met, Icke left home following one of a number of frequent arguments he had started having with his father. His father was upset that Icke’s arthritis was interfering with his football career. Icke moved into a bedsit and worked in a travel agency, travelling to Hereford twice a week in the evenings to play football.[37]

Icke and Atherton married on 30 September 1971, four months after they met.[38] Their daughter was born in March 1975, followed by one son in December 1981, and another in November 1992.[39] The couple divorced in 2001 but remained friends, and Atherton continued to work as Icke’s business manager.[40]

Journalism, sports broadcasting

The loss of Icke’s position with Hereford meant that he and his wife had to sell their home, and for several weeks they lived apart, each moving in with their parents. In 1973 Icke found a job as a reporter with the weekly Leicester Advertiser, through a contact who was a sports editor at the Daily Mail.[41] He moved on to the Leicester News Agency, did some work for BBC Radio Leicester as its football reporter,[42] then worked his way up through the Loughborough Monitor, the Leicester Mercury and BRMB Radio in Birmingham.[43]

In 1976, Icke worked for two months in Saudi Arabia, helping with the national football team. His position at the team was planned to be a longer term position, but Icke decided to stay in the UK after his first holiday back.[44] After his return to the UK, BRMB decided to give him his job back, after which he successfully applied to Midlands Today at the BBC’s Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, a job that included on-air appearances.[45] One of the earliest stories he covered there was the murder of Carl Bridgewater, the paperboy shot during a robbery in 1978.[46]

In 1981, Icke became a sports presenter for the BBC’s national programme Newsnight, which had begun the previous year. Two years later, on 17 January 1983, he appeared on the first edition of the BBC’s Breakfast Time, British television’s first national breakfast show, and presented the sports news there until 1985. In 1983 he co-hosted Grandstand, at the time the BBC’s flagship national sports programme.[47] He also published his first book that year, It’s a Tough Game, Son!, about how to break into football.[48]

Icke and his family moved in 1982 to Ryde on the Isle of Wight.[49] His relationship with Grandstand was short-lived. He wrote that a new editor arrived in 1983 who appeared not to like him, but he continued working for BBC Sport until 1990, often on bowls and snooker programmes, and at the 1988 Summer Olympics.[50] Icke was by then a household name, but has said that a career in television began to lose its appeal to him; he found television workers insecure, shallow and sometimes vicious.[51]

In August 1990, his contract with the BBC was terminated when he initially refused to pay the Community Charge (also known as the “poll tax”), a local tax Margaret Thatcher‘s government introduced that year. He ultimately paid it, but his announcement that he was willing to go to prison rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.[52][53]

Green Party, Betty Shine

Icke moved to Ryde on the Isle of Wight in 1982.

Icke began to flirt with alternative medicine and New Age philosophies in the 1980s in an effort to relieve his arthritis, and this encouraged his interest in Green politics. He joined the Green Party and became a national spokesperson within six months.[54] His second book, It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This, an outline of his views on the environment, was published in 1989.

Icke wrote that 1989 was a time of considerable personal despair, and it was during this period that he said he began to feel a presence around him.[55] He often describes how he felt it while alone in a hotel room in March 1990, and finally asked, “If there is anybody here, will you please contact me because you are driving me up the wall!” Days later, in a newsagent’s shop in Ryde, he felt a force pull his feet to the ground and heard a voice guide him toward some books. One of them was Mind to Mind (1989) by Betty Shine, a psychic healer in Brighton. He read the book, then wrote to her requesting a consultation about his arthritis.[56][57][54][58]

Icke visited Shine four times. During the third meeting, on 29 March 1990, Icke claims to have felt something like a spider’s web on his face, and Shine told him she had a message from Wang Ye Lee of the spirit world.[59][60] Icke had been sent to heal the earth, she said, and would become famous but would face opposition. The spirit world was going to pass ideas to him, which he would speak about to others. He would write five books in three years; in 20 years a new flying machine would allow us to go wherever we wanted and time would have no meaning; and there would be earthquakes in unusual places, because the inner earth was being destabilised by having oil taken from under the seabed.[57][61][56]

In February 1991, Icke visited a pre-Inca Sillustani burial ground near PunoPeru, where he felt drawn to a particular circle of waist-high stones. As he stood in the circle he had two thoughts: that people would be talking about this in 100 years, and that it would be over when it rained. His body shook as though plugged into an electrical socket, he wrote, and new ideas poured into him. Then it started raining and the experience ended. He described it as the kundalini (a term from Hindu yoga) activating his chakras, or energy centres, triggering a higher level of consciousness.[62][14]

Turquoise period

Icke’s turquoise period followed an experience by a burial site in Sillustani, Peru, in 1991.

There followed what Icke called his “turquoise period”. He had been channelling for some time, he wrote, and had received a message through automatic writing that he was a “Son of the Godhead”, interpreting “Godhead” as the “Infinite Mind”.[63] He began to wear only turquoise, often a turquoise shell suit, a colour he saw as a conduit for positive energy.[64][65] He also started working on his third book, and the first of his New-Age period, The Truth Vibrations.

In August 1990, before his visit to Peru, Icke met Deborah Shaw, an English psychic based in Calgary in Alberta, Canada. When he returned from Peru they began a relationship, with the apparent blessing of Icke’s wife. In March 1991 Shaw began living with the couple, a short-lived arrangement that the press called the “turquoise triangle”. Shaw changed her name to Mari Shawsun, while Icke’s wife became Michaela, which she said was an aspect of the Archangel Michael.[66][67]

The relationship with Shaw led to the birth of a daughter in December 1991, although she and Icke had stopped seeing each other by then. Icke wrote in 1993 that he decided not to visit his daughter and had seen her only once, at Shaw’s request. Icke’s wife gave birth to the couple’s second son in November 1992.[68][69]

Green Party resignation and press conference

In March 1991, Icke resigned from the Green Party during a party conference, telling them he was about to be at the centre of “tremendous and increasing controversy”, and winning a standing ovation from delegates after the announcement.[53] A week later, shortly after his father died, Icke and his wife, Linda Atherton, along with their daughter and Deborah Shaw, held a press conference to announce that Icke was a son of the Godhead.[70][71] He told reporters the world was going to end in 1997. It would be preceded by a hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran. The information was being given to them by voices and automatic writing, he said. Los Angeles would become an island, New Zealand would disappear, and the cliffs of Kent would be underwater by Christmas.[72]

Wogan interview

The headlines following Icke’s press conference attracted requests for interviews from Nicky Campbell‘s BBC Radio One programme, for Terry Wogan‘s prime-time Wogan show, and Fern Britton‘s ITV chat show.[73]

Wogan introduced the 1991 segment with “The world as we know it is about to end”. Amid laughter from the audience, Icke demurred when asked if he was the son of God, replying that Jesus would have been laughed at too, and repeated that Britain would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes. Without these, “the Earth will cease to exist”. When Icke said laughter was the best way to remove negativity, Wogan replied of the audience: “But they’re laughing at you. They’re not laughing with you.”[73][74][75] The BBC was criticised for allowing it to go ahead; Des Christy of The Guardian called it a “media crucifixion”.[76][77]

The interview led to a difficult period for Icke. In May 1991, police were called to the couple’s home after a crowd of over 100 youths gathered outside, chanting “We want the Messiah” and “Give us a sign, David”.[78] Icke told Jon Ronson in 2001:

One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I’d been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into “Icke’s a nutter.” I couldn’t walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.[65][79]

In 2006, Wogan interviewed Icke again for a special Wogan Now & Then series. Wogan was apologetic for his conduct in the 1991 interview.[80] However, in his autobiography, Mustn’t Grumble, Wogan described Icke as being a “ranting demagogue convinced we were all manipulated sheep”.[81]

Writing and lecturing

Early books

The Wogan interview separated Icke from his previous life, he wrote in 2003, although he considered it the making of him in the end, giving him the courage to develop his ideas without caring what anyone thought.[82] His book The Truth Vibrations, inspired by his experience in Peru, was published in 1991.

Between 1992 and 1994, he wrote five books, all published by mainstream publishers, four in 1993. Love Changes Everything (1992), influenced by the “channelling” work of Deborah Shaw, is a theosophical work about the origin of the planet, in which Icke writes with admiration about Jesus. Days of Decision (1993) is an 86-page summary of his interviews after the 1991 press conference; it questions the historicity of Jesus but accepts the existence of the Christ spirit. Icke’s autobiography, In the Light of Experience, was published the same year,[83] followed by Heal the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation (1993).

The Robots’ Rebellion

In his 2001 documentary about Icke, Jon Ronson cited this cartoon, “Rothschild” (1898), by Charles Léandre, arguing that Jews have long been depicted as lizard-like creatures who are out to control the world.[84]

Icke’s The Robots’ Rebellion (1994), a book published by Gateway, attracted allegations that his work was antisemitic. According to historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, the book contains “all the familiar beliefs and paranoid clichés” of the US conspiracists and militia.[85] It claims that a plan for world domination by a shadowy cabal, perhaps extraterrestrial, was laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (c. 1897).

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic literary forgery,[86] probably written under the direction of the Russian secret police in Paris, purporting to reveal a conspiracy by the Jewish people to achieve global domination. It was exposed as a forgery in 1920 by Lucien Wolf and the following year by Philip Graves in The Times.[87] Once exposed, it disappeared from mainstream discourse until interest in it was renewed by the American far right in the 1950s.[87] Interest in it was further spread by conspiracy groups on the Internet.[88] According to Michael Barkun, Icke’s reliance on the Protocols in The Robots’ Rebellion is “the first of a number of instances in which Icke moves into the dangerous terrain of antisemitism”.[89][90]

Icke took both the extraterrestrial angle and the focus on the Protocols from Behold a Pale Horse (1991) by Milton William Cooper, who was associated with the American militia movement; chapter 15 of Cooper’s book reproduces the Protocols in full.[91][92][93] The Robots’ Rebellion refers repeatedly to the Protocols, calling them the Illuminati protocols, and defining Illuminati as the “Brotherhood elite at the top of the pyramid of secret societies world-wide”. Icke adds that the Protocols were not the work of the Jewish people, but of Zionists.[94][95]

The Robots’ Rebellion was greeted with dismay by the Green Party’s executive. Despite the controversy over the press conference and the Wogan interview, they had allowed Icke to address the party’s annual conference in 1992 – a decision that led one of its principal speakers, Sara Parkin, to resign – but after the publication of The Robot’s Rebellion they moved to ban him.[91][96][97][98][99] Icke wrote to The Guardian in September 1994 denying that The Robots’ Rebellion was anti-Semitic, and rejecting racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind, while insisting that whoever had written the Protocols “knew the game plan” for the twentieth century.[100][101]

Self-publishing

Why do we play a part in suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on, free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, are given to schools to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events. And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.— And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995)[9]

Icke’s next manuscript, And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), contained a chapter questioning aspects of the Holocaust, which caused a rift with his publisher, Gateway.[95][102][23] In the book Icke suggested that Jews funded the Holocaust by quoting and seconding Gary Allen‘s claim that “The Warburgs, part of the Rothschild empire, helped finance Adolf Hitler”. In his view, schools “indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events” with the mainstream account of the Holocaust thanks to their use of free copies of the film Schindler’s List (1993).[103][24] After borrowing £15,000 from a friend, Icke established Bridge of Love Publications, later called David Icke Books. He self-published And the Truth Shall Set You Free and all his subsequent books.

According to Lewis and Kahn, Icke aimed to consolidate all conspiracy theories into one project with unlimited explanatory power. His books sold 140,000 copies between 1998 and 2011, at a value of over £2 million.[104] Thirty thousand copies of The Biggest Secret (1999) were in print months after publication, according to Icke,[105] and it was reprinted six times between 1999 and 2006. His 2002 book Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster became a long-standing top-five bestseller in South Africa.[7] By 2006, his website was gaining 600,000 hits a week, and by 2011 his books had been translated into 11 languages.[104]

Lecturing

Icke speaking in June 2013

Icke has held public lectures around the world, and by 2006 had spoken in at least 25 countries.[7] He spoke for seven hours to 2,500 people at the Brixton Academy, London, in 2008,[16] and the same year addressed the University of Oxford‘s debating society, the Oxford Union.[106][107][108] His book tour for Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010) included a sold-out talk to 2,100 in New York City and £83,000 worth of ticket sales in Melbourne. In October 2012, he spoke for 11-hours to 6,000 people at London’s Wembley Arena.[109]

Second marriage, politics, television

In 1997 Icke met his second wife, Pamela Leigh Richards, in Jamaica. He and Linda Atherton divorced in 2001,[110] and he and Richards were married the same year.[citation needed] They separated in 2008 and divorced in 2011.[80]

Icke stood for parliament in the 2008 by-election for Haltemprice and Howden (a constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire), on the issue of “Big Brother – The Big Picture”. He came 12th out of 26 candidates, with 110 votes (0.46%), resulting in a lost deposit.[111][112] He explained that he was standing because “if we don’t face this now we are going to have some serious explaining to do when we are asked by our children and grandchildren what we were doing when the global fascist state was installed. ‘I was watching EastEnders, dear’ will not be good enough.”[113][114]

In November 2013, Icke launched an Internet television station, The People’s Voice, broadcast from London. He founded the station after crowdsourcing over £300,000 and worked for it as a volunteer until March 2014. Later that year the station stopped broadcasting.[115][116]

Conspiracy theories

Icke combines New Age philosophical discussion about the universe and consciousness with conspiracy theories about public figures being reptilian humanoids and paedophiles. He argues in favour of reincarnation; a collective consciousness that has intentionalitymodal realism[17] (that other possible worlds exist alongside ours); and the law of attraction[117] (that good and bad thoughts can attract experiences).[118][15]

In The Biggest Secret (1999), he introduced the idea that many prominent figures derive from the Anunnaki, a reptilian race from the Draco constellation.[119] In Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2012), he identified the Moon (and later Saturn) as the source of holographic experiences, broadcast by the reptiles, that humanity interprets as reality.[120][15]

Icke is a critic of the scientific method, describing it as “bollocks” in 2013. When asked by The Sunday Times to explain the existence of television, he said “It’s not that all science is bollocks,” but rather “[t]he basis of the way science judges reality is bollocks.”[121] He also thinks climate change is a hoax.[122]

Infinite dimensions

Icke believes that the universe is made up of “vibrational” energy, and consists of an infinite number of dimensions that share the same space, just like television and radio frequencies, and that some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths.[17][15] He stated in an interview with The Guardian that:

Our five senses can access only a tiny frequency range, like a radio tuned to one station. In the space you are occupying now are all the radio and television stations broadcasting to your area. You can’t see them and they can’t see each other because they are on different wavelengths. But move your radio dial and suddenly there they are, one after the other. It is the same with the reality we experience here as “life”. What we call the “world” and the “universe” is only one frequency range in an infinite number sharing the same space.[16]

Icke believes that time is an illusion; there is no past, or future, and only the “infinite now” is real, and that humans are an aspect of consciousness, or infinite awareness, which he describes as “all that there is, has been, and ever can be”.[15]

Reptoid humanoids

Further information: New World Order (conspiracy theory)The Draco constellation from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia (1690) by Johannes Hevelius. Icke’s “reptoid hypothesis” posits that humanity is ruled by descendants of reptilians from Draco.[123]

Icke believes that an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings called the Archons have hijacked the earth and are stopping humanity from realising its true potential.[15][20] He claims they are the same beings as the Anunnakideities from the Babylonian creation myth the Enûma Eliš, and the fallen angels, or Watchers, who mated with human women in the Biblical apocrypha.[19]

He believes that a genetically modified human/Archon hybrid race of shape-shifting reptilians, known as the “Babylonian Brotherhood” or the Illuminati, manipulate global events to keep humans in constant fear, so the Archons can feed off the “negative energy” this creates.[15][124] In The Biggest Secret, Icke identified the Brotherhood as descendants of reptilians from the constellation Draco, and said they live in caverns inside the earth.[125]

Icke said in an interview:

When you get back into the ancient world, you find this recurring theme of a union between a non-human race and humans – creating a hybrid race. From 1998, I started coming across people who told me they had seen people change into a non-human form. It’s an age-old phenomenon known as shape-shifting. The basic form is like a scaly humanoid, with reptilian rather than humanoid eyes.[126]

Icke claims the first reptilian-human breeding programmes took place 200,000–300,000 years ago (perhaps creating Adam),[127] and the third (and latest) 7,000 years ago. He claims the hybrids of the third programme, which are more Anunnaki than human, currently control the world. He writes in The Biggest Secret, “The Brotherhood which controls the world today is the modern expression of the Babylonian Brotherhood of reptile-Aryan priests and ‘royalty’”. Icke states that they came together in Sumer after “the flood“, but originated in the Caucasus.[128] He explains that when he uses the term “Aryan” he means “the white race.”[129]

Icke has stated that the reptilians come from not only another planet but another dimension, the lower level of the fourth dimension (the “lower astral dimension“), the one nearest the physical world.[17] From this dimension they control the planet, although just as fourth-dimensional reptilians control us, they in turn are controlled by a fifth dimension.[17] Michael Barkun argues that Icke’s introduction of different dimensions allowed him to skip awkward questions about how the reptilians got here.[105]

Icke believes that the only way this “Archontic” influence can be defeated is if people wake up to “the truth” and fill their hearts with love.[15]

Icke briefly introduced his ideas about ancient astronauts in The Robot’s Rebellion (1994), citing Milton William Cooper‘s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), and expanded it in And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), citing Barbara Marciniak’s Bringers of the Dawn (1992).[91][92]

Religious studies lecturer David G. Robertson writes that Icke’s reptilian idea is adapted from Zecharia Sitchin‘s The 12th Planet (1976), combined with material from Credo Mutwa, a Zulu healer.[130] Sitchin suggested that the Anunnaki came to Earth for its precious metals. Icke has said that they came for what he refers to as “mono-atomic gold”, which he claims can increase the capacity of the nervous system ten-thousandfold, and that after ingesting it the Anunnaki can process vast amounts of information, speed up trans-dimensional travel, and shapeshift from reptilian to human.[131][132] Lewis and Kahn argue that Icke is using allegory to depict the alien, and alienating, nature of global capitalism.[18] Icke has said he is not using allegory.[133]

As of 2003, Icke claims the reptilian bloodline includes all (then 43) American presidents, three British and two Canadian prime ministers, several Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs, and a smattering of celebrities. Key bloodlines are said to include the RockefellersRothschilds, various European aristocratic families, the establishment families of the Eastern United States, and the British House of Windsor.[89] Icke has claimed that he saw former British Prime Minister Ted Heath‘s eyes turn entirely “jet black” while the two men waited for a Sky News interview in 1989.[134][16] He confirmed to Andrew Neil in May 2016 that he believes the British royal family are shape-shifting lizards.[21] In 2001, Icke said the Queen Mother was “seriously reptilian”.[89] The Rothschilds, in Icke’s opinion, are also blood-drinking Satan-worshipers, which Daniel Allington and David Toube argued in 2018 was part of a revival of medieval anti-Semitic attitudes towards Jews.[135]

Icke sometimes calls the reptilian plot the “unseen”. After a 2018 talk by Icke in Southport, UK, Michael Marshall reported:

The appearance of the ‘unseen’ in the Middle East 6,000 years ago seems to be no coincidence, and it’s little wonder that Icke’s work is so often accused of anti-Semitism. However, if we were to accept that Icke himself does not hold such views, and that his work is merely co-opted by groups who undeniably are anti-Semitic, we also have to acknowledge that Icke often does his case no favours.[136]

Critics view Icke’s “reptilians” and other theories as anti-Semitic,[25][137][138] and accuse him of Holocaust denial.[25] Critics have claimed that Icke’s reptilians are symbolic representations of Jews, which Icke called “total friggin’ nonsense”, adding, “this is not a plot on the world by Jewish people”.[139] Icke has rejected the assertion he is a Holocaust denier.[26]

Brotherhood aims and institutions

Icke states that at the apex of the Babylonian Brotherhood stand the Global Elite, and at the top of the Global Elite are what Icke has referred to as the “Prison Wardens”. Icke claims the brotherhood’s goal, or their “Great Work of Ages”, is a microchipped population, a world government, and a global Orwellian fascist state or New World Order, which he claims will be a post-truth era where freedom of speech is ended.[140][15][21][22][92]

Icke believes that the brotherhood uses human anxiety as energy and that the Archons keep humanity trapped in a “five sense reality” so they can feed off the negative energy created by fear and hate.[15][18] In 1999 he wrote, “Thus we have the encouragement of wars, human genocide, the mass slaughter of animals, sexual perversions which create highly charged negative energy, and black magic ritual and sacrifice which takes place on a scale that will stagger those who have not studied the subject.”[127] Icke proposes that human sacrifice “to the gods” in the ancient world was for the reptilians’ benefit, especially sacrifice of children, because “at the moment of death by sacrifice a form of adrenaline surges through the body, accumulating at the base of the brain, and is apparently more potent in children”, claiming “this is what the reptilians and their crossbreeds want”. He suggests that these sacrifices continue to this day.[127] He also claims the reptilians and their hybrid bloodlines engage in paedophilia and cannibalism.[141]

It is claimed that the brotherhood either created or controls the United Nations, International Monetary FundRound TableCouncil on Foreign RelationsChatham HouseClub of RomeRoyal Institute of International AffairsTrilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group, as well as the media, military, CIAMI6Mossad, science, religion, and the Internet, with witting or unwitting support from the London School of Economics.[65][92][142][143][144][145] In an interview in February 2019, Icke was asked about his beliefs and replied, “They’re very clever in their systems of manipulation, which is overwhelmingly psychological manipulation, because if you can manipulate perceptions to believe that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11, then you’ll get support to invade Afghanistan”.[146]

Problem–reaction–solution

Icke uses the phrase “problem–reaction–solution” to explain how he believes the Illuminati agenda advances. According to Icke, the Illuminati guide us in the direction they desire by creating false problems, which allows them to give their desired solution to the problem they created.[147] He also refers to this process as “order out of chaos”.[148] In 2018 researchers looking at the psychological effects of Icke’s belief system argued that “problem–reaction–solution” resembles the misinterpretation of the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad popularized by Chalybäus.[149]

Incidents and issues Icke attributes to the Illuminati, or “Global Elite”, include the Oklahoma City bombingDunblaneColumbine9/11 (which Icke believes was an “inside job” to provide an excuse to advance an agenda of regime change across the world), 7/7global warmingchemtrailswater fluoridation, the death of Princess Diana, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Agenda 21.[126][150][151][152][153] These incidents allow them to respond in whatever way they intended to act in the first place.[148]

One of the methods Icke claims they use is creating fake opposites, or what he calls “opposames”, such as the Axis and Allied powers of World War II, which he believes were used to provoke the creation of the European Union and the state of Israel.[147] Icke argues that to ensure the outcome they want they have to control both sides.[22] He believes that US presidents George W. BushBarack Obama and Donald Trump are part of a false political divide. Despite the presidency belonging to the Republican Party then the Democratic Party, then going back to the Republicans, Icke claims they are all pushing the same agenda of regime change in the Middle East, a goal set out in the early 2000s in a document called The Project for the New American Century.[22] Icke claims that this dialectic allows the Illuminati to gradually move societies toward totalitarianism without challenge, a process he calls the “totalitarian tiptoe”.[147]

In Tales From The Time Loop (2003), Icke argues that the Illuminati create religious, racial, ethnic and sexual division to divide and rule humanity but believes that the many can only be controlled by the few if they allow themselves to be and that the power the Illuminati have is the power the people give them.[154][155] “Divide and rule is the bottom line of all dictatorships… Arab is turned against Jew, black against white, Right against Left. Unplugging from the Matrix means refusing to recognise these illusory fault lines. We are all One. I refuse to see a Jew as different from an Arab and vice versa. They are both expressions of the One and need to be observed and treated the same, none more or less important than the other. I refuse to see black people in terms that I would not see white, nor to see the ‘Left’ as I would not see the ‘Right’. How could it be any different, except when we believe the illusion of division is real? If we do that, the Matrix has us.”[155]

Icke’s solution is peaceful non-compliance, which he believes will disempower “the elite”.[154]

Saturn–Moon Matrix

The Moon Matrix is introduced in Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010), in which Icke suggests that the Earth and the collective human mind are manipulated from the Moon, a spacecraft and inter-dimensional portal the reptilians control. The Moon Matrix is a broadcast from that spacecraft to the human body–computer, specifically to the left hemisphere of the brain, which gives us our sense of reality: “We are living in a dreamworld within a dreamworld – a Matrix within the virtual-reality universe – and it is being broadcast from the Moon. Unless people force themselves to become fully conscious, their minds are the Moon’s mind.”[156][157] Will Storr, writing for The Sunday Times in 2013, ponders if Icke’s ideas suddenly “pop” into his head. On page 299 of Human Race Get Off Your Knees, Icke writes about working at his computer on the book and having “the overwhelming feeling out of ‘nowhere’ that the moon was not ‘real’. By ‘real’ I mean not a ‘heavenly body’, but an artificial construct (or hollowed-out planetoid) that has been put there to control life on Earth — which it does. I have pondered this possibility a few times over the years, but this time I just ‘knew’. It was like an enormous penny had suddenly dropped”.[121]

This idea is further explored in Icke’s Remember Who You Are: Remember ‘Where’ You Are and Where You ‘Come’ From (2012), where he introduces the concept of the “Saturn–Moon Matrix”. In this more recent conceptualization, the rings of Saturn (which Icke believes were artificially created by reptilian spacecraft) are the ultimate source of the signal, while the Moon functions as an amplifier.[120][page needed][154] He claims that frequencies broadcast from the hexagonal storm on Saturn are amplified through the hollow structure of our artificial moon keeping humanity trapped in a holographic projection.[15]

5G and COVID-19

See also: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic

David Icke has been identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as a leading producer of misinformation about COVID-19 as well as anti-Semitic content.[158] In April 2020, Icke claimed in a YouTube video on Brian Rose‘s London Real channel that there was a link between the COVID-19 pandemic and 5G mobile phone networks. The video was removed from the platform, and YouTube tightened its rules to prevent its website being used to spread conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic.[159] It was later also deleted from Facebook.[160] Multiple mobile phone masts were subject to arson attacks at this time, as well as telecom engineers being abused.[161] Nick Cohen in The Observer thought Icke was ambiguous as to whether the phone masts should be left alone. Icke said in the London Real interview: “If 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it, human life as we know it is over… so people have to make a decision.”[159][162][163]

London Live screened a similar interview with Icke about coronavirus on 8 April 2020.[164] He made an unsupported claim that Israel was using the crisis “to test its technology” and suggested any attempt to require people to be vaccinated against COVID-19 amounted to “fascism”.[165]

After Ofcom‘s formal investigation, the UK media regulator decided the 80-minute interview broke the terms of the broadcasting code as it “expressed views which had the potential to cause significant harm to viewers in London during the pandemic” which “were made without the support of any scientific or other evidence.”[166]

Icke’s main page on Facebook was deleted on 1 May 2020, while other pages on the site promoting Icke with a smaller readership remained on the platform.[167] Facebook said it had removed Icke’s page for its “health misinformation that could cause physical harm”.[168] His YouTube channel was deleted a day later. A spokeswoman for YouTube told BBC News: “YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of COVID-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS. Due to continued violation of these policies, we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.” Icke’s appearances in videos uploaded by other users were only to be removed if their content breached the same rules.[169]

On 29 August 2020, Icke was a speaker at an anti-lockdown protest in Trafalgar Square, London, organised under the Unite for Freedom banner. During his speech he stated, “Anyone with a half a brain cell on active duty can see coronavirus is nonsense”[170] and, “We have a virus so intelligent that it only infects those taking part in protests the government wants to stop”.[171] He also stated, “This world is controlled by a tiny few people” who “impose their agenda on billions of people”. He told the police who were present at the rally that they were “enforcing fascism that your own children will have to live with” and urged them to “join us and stop serving the psychopaths”.[171]

In early November 2020, Twitter permanently suspended Icke’s account on the platform for having violated its rules regarding COVID-19 misinformation.[172][173]

Reception

Interest in Icke’s conspiracy theories is widespread and has cut across political, economic, and religious divides. His audiences hold a wide range of beliefs, uniting individuals, and left and right wing groups; from New Agers, and Ufologists,[7][105] as well as far-right Christian Patriots, and the UK neo-Nazi group Combat 18, which supports his writings.[7] Icke’s work is representative of a major global countercultural trend.[7] American novelist Alice Walker is an admirer of Icke’s writings,[103][24][174][175] along with comedian Russell Brand,[176][177] and musician Mick Fleetwood.[178] Icke has emerged as a professional conspiracy theorist[1] within a global counter-cultural movement that combines New World Order conspiracism, the truther movement and anti-globalisation, with an extraterrestrial conspiracist subculture.[7]

Accusations of antisemitism

There is a strong strain of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing that makes ufological connections, including especially the work of Milton William Cooper (1991) and David Icke (e.g., 1997). Both are controversial but still well known in both right-wing conspiracist and ufological subcultures.— Christopher F. Roth, Ufology as Anthropology: Race, Extraterrestrials, and the Occult[179]

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League told The New York Times in December 2018: “There is no fair reading of Icke’s work that could be seen as not anti-Semitic”.[180] However, Icke has repeatedly denied the accusation that he is an antisemite. In 2001, when he was questioned by Jon Ronson, Icke declared that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is evidence not of a Jewish plot but of a reptilian plot. He also said, “the families in positions of great financial power obsessively interbreed with each other. But I’m not talking about one earth race, Jewish or non-Jewish. I’m talking about a genetic network that operates through all races, this bloodline being a fusion of human and reptilian genes… let me make myself clear: this does not in any way relate to an earth race.”[181] In an article in The Algemeiner, the writer commented: “Yet when he goes through a list of people in power who he considers to be ‘Rothschild Zionists,’ they all happen to be Jews (with many of them never claiming to be Zionists at all.)”[182] According to Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust, Icke believes a “‘Rothschild Zionist’ conspiracy controls the world, driving global conflict through NATO and seeking World War Three, which will begin between Zionists and Muslims.” Such claims about the Rothschilds have a long history as an antisemitic theme.[138]

Icke states in And the Truth Shall Set you Free (1996):

Why do we play a part in suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on, free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, are given to schools to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events. And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.[9]

Icke claims that the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is genuine, explaining in And the Truth Shall Set you Free:

I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War… They then dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for his rearmament.[9][183]

In the book, Yair Rosenberg reports, Icke uses the words “Jewish” on 241 occasions, and “Rothschild” on 374 occasions.[24] Icke claims that Jews themselves are to blame for antisemitism (a classic Nazi claim that can be traced to Adolf Hitler):

Thought patterns in the collective Jewish mind have repeatedly created that physical reality of oppression, prejudice and racism which matches the pattern – the expectation – programmed into their collective psyche. They expect it; they create it.[184]

In The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World – Who Really Did It and Why (2019), Icke writes that the official explanation for the September 11 attacks is false and is intended to cover up the “massive and central involvement in 9/11 by the Israeli government, [Israeli] military and [Israeli] intelligence operatives.”[185]

In his book UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age, David G. Robertson disputes that Icke is antisemitic, saying that it is just easier for some people to accept that when Icke says reptilians he really means Jews than that he literally means extraterrestrial reptilians control world politics. Robertson also says that to believe the accusations of antisemitism you must ignore numerous things, such as the many high-profile people Icke names as reptilian who are not Jewish (a point also made by Jon Ronson in his 2001 documentary The Secret Rulers of the World, Part 2: “David Icke, The Lizards and The Jews”), Icke’s frequent statements that he is speaking literally and not metaphorically, and that Icke identifies the supposedly reptilian ruling elite as “Aryan” in several places. Robertson also writes that Icke denounces racism, having called it “the ultimate idiocy”.[133] In 2018, in response to allegations of antisemitism, Icke stated to Vox that: “My philosophy and view of life is that we are all points of attention within the same state of Infinite Awareness and the labels we are given and give ourselves are merely temporary experiences and not who we are… Thus to me all racism is ridiculous and completely missing the point of who we are and where we are.”[103]

Following complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress in 2000, Icke was briefly detained by immigration officials in Canada, where he was booked for a speaking tour,[65] and his books were removed from Indigo Books, a Canadian chain. Several stops on the tour were cancelled by their venues, as was a lecture in London.[186][187] Two venues in Berlin cancelled live events scheduled to be hosted by Icke in 2017 following accusations of antisemitism. The Maritim hotel did not give a reason for the cancellation, but the Carl Benz Arena wrote on its Facebook page that it was due to the “contentious nature and the contradictory statements, which for us as a politically neutral event venue do not give a clear picture.”[25] An event to be held at Manchester United‘s Old Trafford was also cancelled in 2017, with the venue saying it was due to Icke’s “objectionable views.”[188] After Icke’s talk in Vancouver on 2 September 2017, the Canadian Jewish News called him “a controversial conspiracy theorist, antisemite and Holocaust denier”. Micheal Vonn, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association’s policy director, told the newspaper: “You are free to be a racist in Canada, you are free to say so and tell others that they should be, too.”[189]

In February 2019, the Australian Government cancelled Icke’s visa ahead of a planned speaking tour[190] on the grounds of his character.[191] Immigration Minister David Coleman upheld the complaint made by Dvir Abramovich, the chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission.[192] This decision was applauded by both major political parties. Labor’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, said, “Labor welcomes the fact that the Government did what we called on them to do and refused David Icke’s visa application.”[191] Icke issued a statement in which he described himself as “the victim of a smear campaign from politicians who have been listening to special interest groups”.[193]

Other responses

Political Research Associates has described Icke’s politics as “a mishmash of most of the dominant themes of contemporary neofascism, mixed in with a smattering of topics culled from the U.S. militia movement.” He opposes gun control, and claims that many mass shootings were orchestrated to increase public opposition to guns. He believes the U.S. government carried out the Oklahoma City bombing.[9] He endorses or recommends antisemitic and far-right publications such as Spotlight and On Target, the magazine of the white supremacist group the “British League of Rights“, and has been closely associated with antisemitic “New Age” periodicals such as Nexus and Rainbow Ark, a “New Age” magazine which is financed by far-right activists and affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Front.[184][194] The neo-Nazi terrorist group Combat 18 promoted Icke’s public speaking events in its internal journal Putsch; of one such event, the journal wrote approvingly:

[Icke] spoke of “the sheep” and how the Zionist-operated government, sorry, “Illuminati“, uses them for its own ends. He began to talk about the big conspiracy by a group of bankers, media moguls, etc. – always being clever enough not to mention what all these had in common.[9]

Michael Barkun has described Icke’s position as New Age conspiracism, writing that Icke is the most fluent of the genre,[195] describing his work as “improvisational millennialism“, with an end-of-history scenario involving a final battle between good and evil. Barkun defines improvisational millennialism as an “act of bricolage“: because everything is connected in the conspiracist world view, every source can be mined for links.[196] Barkun argues that Icke has actively tried to cultivate the radical right: “There is no fuller explication of [their] beliefs about ruling elites than Icke’s.” He also notes that Icke regards Christian patriots as the only Americans who understand the “New World Order“.[197] In 1996 Icke spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, including Kirk Lyons, a lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux Klan.[105] Icke has never been a member of any right-wing group, and he has criticised them.[133]

Relying on Douglas Kellner‘s distinction between clinical paranoia and a “critical paranoia” that confronts power, Richard Kahn and Tyson Lewis argue that Icke displays elements of both and that his reptilian hypothesis and his “postmodern metanarrative” may be allegorical, a Swiftian satire which is used to give ordinary people a narrative with which to question what they see around them and alert them to the alleged emergence of a global fascist state.[198][199][200]

People influenced by Icke have asked public figures if they are lizards. An Official Information Act request was filed in New Zealand in 2008 to ask John Key, then prime minister, whether he was a lizard. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked the same during a Q&A in 2016. Both men said they were not lizards.[201] In a 2013 survey in the United States by Public Policy Polling, 4% believed that “‘lizard people’ control our societies”.[202][203][204]

Selected works

Books

  • (1983) It’s a Tough Game, Son!, London: Piccolo Books. ISBN 0-330-28047-3
  • (1989) It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This: Green Politics Explained, London: Green Print. ISBN 1-85425-033-7
  • (1991) The Truth Vibrations, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-006-5
  • (1992) Love Changes Everything, London: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 1-85538-247-4
  • (1993) In the Light of Experience: The Autobiography of David Icke, London: Warner Books. ISBN 0-7515-0603-6
  • (1993) Days of Decision, London: Jon Carpenter Publishing. ISBN 1-897766-01-7
  • (1993) Heal the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-005-7
  • (1994) The Robot’s Rebellion, London: Gateway. ISBN 1-85860-022-7
  • (1995) … And the Truth Shall Set You Free, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-5-9
  • (1996) I Am Me, I Am Free: The Robot’s Guide to Freedom, New York: Truth Seeker. ISBN 0-9526147-5-8
  • (1998) Lifting the Veil: David Icke interviewed by Jon Rappoport. New York: Truth Seeker. ISBN 0-939040-05-0
  • (1999) The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9526147-6-6
  • (2001) Children of the Matrix, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-1-6
  • (2002) Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-2-4
  • (2003) Tales from the Time Loop, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-4-0
  • (2005) Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications. ISBN 0-9538810-6-7
  • (2007) The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy (and how to end it), Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9538810-8-6
  • (2010) Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9559973-1-0
  • (2012) Remember Who You Are: Remember ‘Where’ You Are and Where You ‘Come’ From, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 0-9559973-3-X
  • (2013) The Perception Deception: Or … It’s All Bollocks — Yes, All of It, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-955997389
  • (2016) Phantom Self (And how to find the real one), Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9576308-8-8
  • (2017) Everything You Need To Know But Have Never Been Told, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1527207264
  • (2019) The Trigger: The Lie That Changed The World, Ryde: David Icke Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-916025806

Videos

  • (1994) The Robots’ Rebellion
  • (1996) Turning of the Tide
  • (1998) The Freedom Road
  • (1999) David Icke: The Reptilian Agenda, with Zulu Sanusi (Shaman) Credo Mutwa
  • (1999) David Icke: Revelations of a Mother Goddess, with Arizona Wilder
  • (2000) David Icke Live in Vancouver: From Prison to Paradise
  • (2003) Secrets of the Matrix
  • (2006) Freedom or Fascism: The Time to Choose
  • (2008) David Icke Live at the Oxford Union Debating Society on YouTube
  • (2008) Beyond the Cutting Edge: Live from Brixton Academy
  • (2008) David Icke: Big Brother, the BIG Picture
  • (2010) The Lion Sleeps No More
  • (2012) Return to Peru
  • (2012) Remember Who You Are: Live at Wembley Arena
  • (2014) Awaken: Live from Wembley Arena
  • (2017) Worldwide Wakeup Tour Live
  • (2019) Renegade

See also

References

Citations

  1. Jump up to:a b c Barkun, Michael (2011). Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11. University of North Carolina Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0807877692.
  2. ^ Dunning, Bob (30 November 2002). “David Icke Coventry City”. Archived from the original on 3 January 2003.
  3. ^ “Conspiracy Theories — The Reptilian Elite”Time. 20 November 2008. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  4. ^ Doherty, Rosa (17 December 2018). “Acclaimed author Alice Walker recommends book by notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke”The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 17 December 2018 – via thejc.com.
  5. ^ Shabi, Rachel (27 November 2018). “How David Icke helped unite Labour’s factions against antisemitism”The GuardianISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  6. Jump up to:a b Bowlin, Ben; Fredrick, Matt; Brown, Noel (10 February 2017). “David Icke and the Rise of the Lizard People”stufftheydontwantyoutoknow.com (Podcast). Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  7. Jump up to:a b c d e f g Lewis & Kahn 2010, p. 75.
  8. ^ Robertson 2016, p. 121.
  9. Jump up to:a b c d e f g Offley, Will (29 February 2000). “David Icke And The Politics Of Madness Where The New Age Meets The Third Reich”Political Research Associates. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  10. ^ Icke, David (1991). The Truth Vibrations. pp. 15–18.
  11. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 192–194.
  12. ^ Ronson, Jon (2001). Them: Adventures with Extremists. London: Picador. pp. 152–154.
  13. ^ Evans, Paul (3 March 2008). “Interview: David Icke”New Statesman. NS Media Group. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  14. Jump up to:a b c Barkun 2003, p. 103.
  15. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Ward, James (10 December 2014). “Mocked prophet: what is David Icke’s appeal?”New Humanist. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
  16. Jump up to:a b c d Doyle, Paul (17 February 2006). “David Icke”The Guardian. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  17. Jump up to:a b c d e Icke 1999, pp. 26–27.
  18. Jump up to:a b c Lewis & Kahn 2010, p. 82.
  19. Jump up to:a b Icke 1999, pp. 19–25, 40.
  20. Jump up to:a b Lynskey, Dorian (6 November 2014). “Psycho lizards from Saturn: The godlike genius of David Icke!”New Statesman. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  21. Jump up to:a b c Andrew Neil, “David Icke on 9/11 and lizards in Buckingham Palace theories”This Week, BBC (video), 20 May 2016, 00:04:02.
  22. Jump up to:a b c d Widdas, Henry (17 April 2018). “Being ‘red-pilled’ by David Icke has never been so entertaining… and terrifying”Lancashire Evening Post. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
  23. Jump up to:a b Offley, Will (23 February 2000). “Selected Quotes Of David Icke”Political Research Associates. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  24. Jump up to:a b c d Rosenberg, Yair (17 December 2018). “The New York Times Just Published an Unqualified Recommendation for an Insanely Anti-Semitic Book”Tablet. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  25. Jump up to:a b c d “Lizard conspiracist David Icke not wanted in Berlin”. Deutsche Welle. 23 February 2017. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  26. Jump up to:a b Widdas, Henry (16 July 2018). “Icke: Reports of my madness have been greatly exaggerated”Lancashire Post. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
  27. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 28–30.
  28. Jump up to:a b Icke 1993, pp. 29, 33.
  29. ^ Newitt, Ned (21 March 2013). The Slums of Leicester. JMD Media Ltd. pp. 153, 159–160.
  30. Jump up to:a b David Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications, 2003, pp. 2–3.
  31. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 36, 38.
  32. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 39–40.
  33. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 44, 46.
  34. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 54, 58.
  35. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 66–69.
  36. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 69–73.
  37. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 61–63.
  38. ^ Icke 1993, p. 61.
  39. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 82, 96, 253–254.
  40. ^ Robertson 2016, pp. 139–140, 147.
  41. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 72, 75.
  42. ^ Icke 1993, p. 78.
  43. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 79, 81, 83.
  44. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 85–86.
  45. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 88–91.
  46. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 91–92.
  47. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 93–95, 99–100.
  48. ^ Icke 1993, p. 98.
  49. ^ Icke 1993, p. 109.
  50. ^ Icke 1993, p. 104.
  51. ^ Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, p. 7.
  52. ^ Anonymous (14 November 1990). “Protester David Icke finally pays community charge”. The Guardian.
  53. Jump up to:a b Kennedy, Maev (20 March 1991). “Icke resigns Green Speaker and parliamentary roles”. The Guardian.
  54. Jump up to:a b Icke, David (1991). The Truth Vibrations. London: Aquarian Press. p. 13.
  55. ^ Icke, David. Days of Decision. p. 19.
  56. Jump up to:a b Icke, David (2016). Phantom Self. Ryde: David Icke Books. pp. 1–3.
  57. Jump up to:a b “Biography 1”davidickebooks.co.uk. David Icke. Archived from the original on 19 June 2011. Retrieved 8 June 2011.
  58. ^ “The 10 worst decisions in the history of sport”The ObserverGuardian News & Media. 12 January 2003.
  59. ^ Kay 2011, p. 179.
  60. ^ Robertson, David G. (7 September 2013). “David Icke’s Reptilian Thesis and the Development of New Age Theodicy”. International Journal for the Study of New Religions4 (1): 27–47. doi:10.1558/ijsnr.v4i1.27.
  61. ^ “Biography 2”davidickebooks.co.uk. David Icke. Archived from the original on 14 July 201. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  62. ^ Icke, David. Tales from the Time Loop. pp. 12–13, 16.
  63. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 190, 208.
  64. ^ Icke 1993, p. 192.
  65. Jump up to:a b c d Extracts from Ronson, Jon. Them: Adventures with Extremists.. Ronson, Jon. “Beset by lizards (part one)”The Guardian. Ronson, Jon (17 March 2001). “Beset by lizards (part two)”The Guardian.
  66. ^ Taylor, Sam (20 April 1997). “So I was in this bar with the son of God…”. The Observer.
  67. ^ Robertson 2016, p. 130.
  68. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 223, 254.
  69. ^ Robertson 2016, pp. 134–135.
  70. ^ Icke 1993, pp. 188, 192–193.
  71. ^ Robertson 2016, pp. 130–131.
  72. ^ Ezard, John (28 March 1991). “‘Son and daughter of God’ predict apocalypse is nigh”. The Guardian.
  73. Jump up to:a b Robertson 2016, p. 131.
  74. ^ Ronson 2001, p. 154.
  75. ^ “The day David Icke told Terry Wogan “I’m the son of God””The Daily Telegraph. 29 April 2016.
  76. ^ Des Christy, “Crucifixion, courtesy of the BBC,” The Guardian, 6 May 1991.
  77. ^ Oppenheim, Maya (31 January 2016). “The most controversial moments from Sir Terry Wogan’s chat show”The Independent. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  78. ^ “Icke taunted,” The Times, 27 May 1991.
  79. ^ Ronson 2001, p. 173.
  80. Jump up to:a b Robertson 2016, p. 147.
  81. ^ Wogan, Terry (2007) [2006]. Mustn’t Grumble. London: Orion. p. 158. ISBN 978-1409105893.
  82. ^ Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, 14, 17, 26.
  83. ^ Robertson 2016, pp. 133–135.
  84. ^ Ronson (Channel 4) 2001, 06:12 mins.
  85. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2003, p. 291.
  86. ^ “Protocols of the Elders of Zion | The Holocaust Encyclopedia”United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  87. Jump up to:a b Barkun 2003, pp. 50, 145–146.
  88. ^ Juliane Wetzel, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the internet: How radical political groups are networked via anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” in Esther Webman (ed.), The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century-Old Myth, New York: Routledge, 2012 (147–160), p. 148.
  89. Jump up to:a b c Barkun 2003, p. 104.
  90. ^ Also see Norman Simms, “Anti-Semitism: A Psychopathological Disease,” in Jerry S. Piven, Chris Boyd, Henry W. Lawton (eds.), Judaism and Genocide: Psychological Undercurrents of History, Volume IV, Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2002, 30ff.
  91. Jump up to:a b c Robertson 2016, p. 138.
  92. Jump up to:a b c d Goodrick-Clarke 2003.
  93. ^ For Cooper: Ed Vulliamy, Bruce Dirks, “New trial may solve riddle of Oklahoma bombing”The Guardian, 3 November 1997.
  94. ^ Icke, The Robots’ Rebellion, London: Gateway, 1992, p. 114.
  95. Jump up to:a b Honigsbaum, Mark (26 May 1995). “The Dark Side of David Icke”Evening Standard. London. Archived from the original on 28 April 1999.
  96. ^ “Greens bar Icke”The Independent, 12 September 1994.
  97. ^ Vivek Chaudhary, “Greens see red at ‘Son of God’s anti-Semitism’,” The Guardian, 12 September 1994.
  98. ^ Goodwin, Stephen (29 September 1994). “Icke factor could thwart Greens’ serious message”The Independent. Archived from the original on 2 June 2013.
  99. ^ Faucher-King, Florence (11 October 2005). Changing Parties: An Anthropology of British Political Conferences. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 264, note 10. ISBN 978-0-230-50988-7.
  100. ^ David Icke, “Down but speaking out among the Greens,” letters to the editor, The Guardian, 14 September 1994.
  101. ^ Barkun 2003, p. 144.
  102. ^ David Icke, “Chapter Seven: Master races”And the Truth Shall Set You Free, Ryde: Bridge of Love Publications, 1995, pp. 127–146.
  103. Jump up to:a b c Grady, Constance (20 December 2018). “The Alice Walker anti-Semitism controversy, explained”Vox. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  104. Jump up to:a b Alexander, Harriet (4 December 2011). “David Icke – would you believe it?”The Sunday Telegraph. London. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  105. Jump up to:a b c d Barkun 2003, p. 106.
  106. ^ Paul Evans, “Interview: David Icke”New Statesman, 3 March 2008.
  107. ^ Marre, Oliver (20 January 2008). “Pendennis”The Observer.
  108. ^ David Icke, “David Icke Live at the Oxford Union Debating Society”, produced by Linda Atherton, Commonage, February 2008.
  109. ^ Mesure, Susie (27 October 2012). “David Icke is not the Messiah. Or even that naughty. But boy, can he drone on”The Independent on Sunday. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  110. ^ Robertson 2016, pp. 139–140.
  111. ^ “Haltemprice and Howden: Result in full”BBC News. 11 July 2008.
  112. ^ Wainwright, Martin; Stratton, Allegra (11 July 2008). “Haltemprice and Howden byelection: Davis sees off Loonies and claims victory in 42-day detention battle”The Guardian.
  113. ^ “David ICKE stood for the None (No Party)”VoteWise. Archived from the original on 13 February 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2010.
  114. ^ Naughton, Philippe (27 June 2008). “Reptilians beware – David Icke is back!”The Times. (subscription required)
  115. ^ Jivanda, Tomas (25 November 2013). “David Icke launches internet TV station The People’s Voice”The Independent.
  116. ^ “The People’s Voice 2.0”thepeoplesvoice.tv/. Archived from the original on 18 May 2016.
  117. ^ Icke 1999, pp. 30–40.
  118. ^ For law of attraction, Icke, Children of the Matrix, 291 ff.
  119. ^ Icke 1999, pp. 5–9.
  120. Jump up to:a b David Icke, Remember Who You Are: Remember ‘Where’ You Are and Where You ‘Come’ From, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2012.
  121. Jump up to:a b Storr, Will (16 June 2013). “It’s a jungle out there”The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 21 April 2020. (subscription required)
  122. ^ Readfearn, Graham (6 December 2016). “More terrifying than Trump? The booming conspiracy culture of climate science denial”The Guardian. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  123. ^ Barkun 2003, p. 105.
  124. ^ Icke 1999, p. 52.
  125. ^ Robertson 2016, p. 140.
  126. Jump up to:a b “The Royal Family are bloodsucking alien lizards – David Icke”The Scotsman, 30 January 2006.
  127. Jump up to:a b c Icke 1999, p. 40.
  128. ^ Icke 1999, pp. 61, 52, 43.
  129. ^ Icke 1999, p. 61.
  130. ^ Robertson 2013, p. 35.
  131. ^ Icke 1999, p. 30.
  132. ^ Lewis & Kahn 2010, p. 81.
  133. Jump up to:a b c Robertson 2016, pp. 150–151.
  134. ^ Icke, David; Mitchell, Ben (22 January 2006). “This much I know”The Observer. Guardian News & Media. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  135. ^ Allington, Daniel; Toube, David (14 November 2018). “Why conspiracy theories are not just a harmless joke”New Statesman. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  136. ^ Marshall, Michael“David Icke Live: What I Learned From Spending Four Hours With The World’s Most Famous Conspiracy Theorist”Gizmodo – UK. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  137. ^ Stephen Roth Institute (2002). Antisemitism Worldwide, 2000/1. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 146–. ISBN 978-0-8032-5945-4.
  138. Jump up to:a b Gardner, Mark (5 January 2017). “David Icke’s ages old New Age antisemitism”Community Security Trust. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  139. ^ Ronson, Jon (6 May 2001). “David Icke, the Lizards, and the Jews”. Channel 4. Event occurs at 00:16:30. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  140. ^ Barkun 2003, pp. 103–104.
  141. ^ Robertson 2016, p. 152.
  142. ^ Icke, David. Children of the Matrix. p. 339.
  143. ^ Icke, David. Human Race Get off Your Knees. pp. 134, 646.
  144. ^ Kay, Jonathan (2011). Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground. HarperCollins. p. 180.
  145. ^ Lewis & Kahn 2010, p. 83.
  146. ^ Seidel, Jamie (18 February 2019). “David Icke: How the world’s greatest conspiracy theorist discovered his personal truth”News.com.au — Australia’s Leading News Site. News Corp. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  147. Jump up to:a b c Robertson 2016, p. 139.
  148. Jump up to:a b David Icke, “Problem-reaction-solution”News for the Soul, accessed 12 December 2010.
  149. ^ Quote on page two from Drinkwater, Kenneth; Dagnall, Neil; Denovan, Andrew; Parker, Andrew; Clough, Peter (January–March 2018). “Predictors and Associates of Problem-Reaction-Solution: Statistical Bias, Emotion-Based Reasoning, and Belief in the Paranormal”SAGE Open8 (1): 11. doi:10.1177/2158244018762999.: “Although, the precise lineage of PRS [problem–reaction–solution] is unknown, researchers often ascribe the origin of PRS to various ancient figures or events (i.e., Roman Emperor Diocletian) and philosophical doctrines (Hegel, 1812; see Fichte, 1794, in Neuhouser, 1990). In this historical context, PRS comprises three stages equivalent to those subsumed within PRS: thesis (intellectual proposition, problem), antithesis (negation of the proposition, response to thesis), and synthesis (resolution of tension between proposition and reaction, resolution). These steps derive from Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus misinterpretation (Carlson, 2007) of Hegel’s dialectic (Mills, 2005; Stewart, 1996). The exact source and academic status of PRS is unclear and beyond the remit of this article, which generally views PRS as a form of faulty inferential thinking. More precisely, as the tendency to validate proffered suboptimal solutions based on limited evaluation of objective evidence.”
  150. ^ Icke, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More.
  151. ^ For 9/11, Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster.
  152. ^ For global warming and Agenda 21, Icke, Phantom Self, 303.
  153. ^ Widdas, Henry (7 June 2018). “David Icke: My unanswered 9/11 questions”Lancashire Evening Post. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  154. Jump up to:a b c Robertson 2016, p. 157.
  155. Jump up to:a b Icke, David (2003). Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Expose of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written and All You Need to Know to be Truly Free (First ed.). Bridge of Love. p. 447ISBN 978-0953881048.
  156. ^ David Icke, Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, Ryde: David Icke Books, 2010, pp. 618, 627, 632.
  157. ^ O’Brien, Liam (19 May 2013). “Prize-winning author Alice Walker gives support to David Icke on Desert Island Discs”The Independent. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  158. ^ The Anti-Vaxx Industry, Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2020
  159. Jump up to:a b Kelion, Leo (7 April 2020). “Coronavirus: YouTube tightens rules after David Icke 5G interview”BBC News. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  160. ^ “Facebook removes David Icke coronavirus-5G conspiracy video”ITV News. 9 April 2020. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  161. ^ Field, Mark (13 April 2020). “How Britain’s telecoms firms are reacting to the surge in coronavirus conspiracies”The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  162. ^ Cohen, Nick (25 April 2020). “Social media no longer tolerates toxic lies? Don’t believe a word of it”The Observer. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  163. ^ “The Coronavirus Conspiracy: How COVID-19 Will Seize Your Rights & Destroy Our Economy”London Real. 6 April 2020. Event occurs at 1:18:05. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  164. ^ “Ofcom ‘urgently’ probes Icke TV interview on virus”BBC News. 9 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  165. ^ Harpin, Lee (12 April 2020). “London Live condemned for allowing David Icke to air ‘lunatic conspiracy theories’”The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  166. ^ Harpin, Lee (20 April 2020). “Ofcom sanctions London Live for broadcasting David Icke interview about coronavirus”The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  167. ^ Dearden, Lizzie (1 May 2020). “Coronavirus: Conspiracy theorist David Icke’s Facebook page deleted as pressure mounts on social media companies”The Independent. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
  168. ^ “Coronavirus: David Icke kicked off Facebook”BBC News. 1 May 2020. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
  169. ^ “Coronavirus: David Icke’s channel deleted by YouTube”BBC News. 2 May 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  170. ^ Drury, Colin (30 August 2020). “Anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine and anti-mask protesters crowd London’s Trafalgar Square”The Independent. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  171. Jump up to:a b “Conspiracy theorist David Icke cheered by thousands at anti-lockdown demo”The Jewish Chronicle. 30 August 2020.
  172. ^ “Twitter bans David Icke over Covid misinformation”BBC News. 4 November 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
  173. ^ “Twitter permanently suspends conspiracy theorist David Icke’s account”The Guardian. PA Media. 4 November 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
  174. ^ “Desert Island Discs: Alice Walker”. BBC Radio 4. 19 May 2013.
  175. ^ Hoyles, Ben; Moore, Matthew (22 December 2018). “Yikes! David Icke on march again after Pulitzer writer Alice Walker’s praise”The Times. Retrieved 24 December 2018.
  176. ^ Lynskey, Dorian. “Psycho lizards from Saturn: The godlike genius of David Icke!”New Statesman. NS Media Group. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  177. ^ Sawyer, Miranda. “Brand on the run”The Observer. Guardian News & Media. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  178. ^ “7 musicians who are fascinated by conspiracy theories”BBC. BBC. 16 April 2018. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  179. ^ Battaglia, Debbora (2005). E.T. culture: anthropology in outerspaces. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3632-7.
  180. ^ Alter, Alexandra (21 December 2018). “Alice Walker, Answering Backlash, Praises Anti-Semitic Author as ‘Brave’”The New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  181. ^ Ronson, Jon (17 March 2001). “Beset by Lizards”The Guardian. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  182. ^ “Antisemite David Icke Being Allowed to Speak at City-Owned Theater in Vancouver for Ten Hours”The Algemeiner. 5 September 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  183. ^ Golan, Ori (13 July 2016). “Don’t waste your money to see conspiracy theorist David Icke”The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  184. Jump up to:a b “From Green Messiah to New Age Nazi”Institute for Social Ecology. January 1996. Retrieved 18 August 2018.
  185. ^ Charles, Ron (24 September 2019). “A hateful, conspiracy-filled book just got harder to buy. That’s no cause for celebration”The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  186. ^ Kraft, Frances (7 October 1999). “New Age speaker set to talk in Toronto”The Canadian Jewish News. Archived from the original on 1 March 2007.
  187. ^ Cowley, Jason (1 October 2000). “The Icke Files”The Independent on Sunday. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012.
  188. ^ Jackson, Jamie (17 November 2017). “Manchester United cancel David Icke show at Old Trafford after backlash”The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2018.
  189. ^ Gindin, Matthew (8 September 2017). “Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorist David Icke Gives Talk in Vancouver”The Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  190. ^ Jaffe-Hoffman, Maayan (21 February 2019). “Aussi Government Bans Man Who Said Jews ‘Bankrolled’ Hitler”The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  191. Jump up to:a b Doran, Matthew (20 February 2019). “Holocaust denier who believes alien lizards rule the world banned from entering Australia”ABC News. Australia. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
  192. ^ Koziol, Michael (20 February 2019). “Government bans conspiracy theorist David Icke ahead of planned Australian tour”The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  193. ^ Karp, Paul (20 February 2019). “Conspiracy theorist David Icke hits back after Australia revokes visa”The Guardian. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  194. ^ “Rainbow Ark magazine”Center for Media and Democracy. Retrieved 18 August 2018.
  195. ^ Barkun 2003, pp. 98, 103ff, 163.
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  205. ^ Alex Godfrey, “Kick-Ass 2: Mark Millar’s superhero powers”The Guardian, 8 August 2013.

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WunderWaffen

One alleged site of production of the Nazi UFOs is a series of tunnels buried under the Jonas Valley in Thuringia, central Germany. Here, under the command of SS General Hans Kammler, legions of slave labourers worked to bring the Fuhrer’s fantasies into existence.

The respected German science magazine has reported how “advanced” the programme was as scientists toiled in secret factories to produce the “wonder weapon” to win the war. The magazine quotes eyewitnesses who saw a flying saucer marked with  the German Iron Cross flying low over the Thames in 1944. “America also treated the existence of the weapons seriously,” it said.

Research done in Third Reich archives points to a secret factory in the Jonas Valley complex. Now officially sealed off, authorities play a cat-and-mouse game with UFO hunters. Why else would the Americans take away everything they found and place the results under a 100-year secrecy order?

The US believed Germany could use it to drop weapons on New York — a target the Fuhrer obsessed on as the war progressed. At the time the New York Times reported on a “mysterious flying disc” with photos of the device seen travelling at extremely high speeds over the city’s high-rise buildings.

“Apparently that machine was capable on its maiden flight of travelling
2,000km,” added the PM report. “The Germans had destroyed much of the
paperwork of their activities but there are numerous hints that it did
indeed exist.”

The Nazi UFO project was driven by engineers Rudolf Schriever and Otto Habermohl and was based in Prague between 1941 and 1943. Initially a Luftwaffe project, it eventually fell under the control of armaments minister Albert Speer before being taken over once again in 1944 by Hans Kammler.  Eyewitnesses captured by Allies after the war claimed to have seen the saucer fly on several occasions. Joseph Andreas Epp, an engineer who served as a consultant to the Schriever-Habermohl project, claimed 15 prototypes were built. He described how a central cockpit surrounded by rotating adjustable wing-vanes formed a circle. The vanes were held together by a band at the outer edge and were set in rotation by small rockets placed around the rim. Once rotational speed was sufficient and lift-off was achieved, horizontal jets or rockets were ignited.

A German official recorded that at the Prague-Gbell aerodrome in September 1943, he saw inside a hangar “a disk 5-6 metres in diameter. Its body is relatively large at the centre. “Underneath it has four tall, thin legs. Colour: aluminum. Height: almost as tall as a man. Thickness: some 30 to 40cm. Along with my friends, I saw the device emerge from the hangar. “It was then we heard the roar of the engines, we saw the external side of the disk begin to rotate and the vehicle began moving slowly and in a straight line toward the southern end of the field. “It then rose almost one metre into the air. After moving around some 300 metres at that altitude, it stopped again. Its landing was rather rough. Later, the ‘thing’ took off again, managing to reach the end of the aerodrome this time.”

German engineer Georg Klein claimed that two types of flying disks had been created by the Nazi scientists. Georg Klein, who went on to have a distinguished postwar career as an aeronautical engineer, said : “I don’t consider myself a crackpot, or eccentric, or fantasy prone person. This is what I saw with my own eyes — a Nazi UFO.”

Dr. Eduard Ludwig,  Chile, South America :  

  1. https://quantumantigravity.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/nazi-ufo_1.pdf
  2. https://quantumantigravity.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/nazi-ufo_2.pdf

Hat Schwerkraft Zukunft ?  
   
Is Gravity The Future ?   

In his “The Hunt for Zero Point“ Nick Cook describes the discovery of “the greatest mystery since the invention of the atomic bomb”. The author, an aviation specialist in the leading military magazine Jane’s Defense Weekly, reveals that American researchers are not only working on revolutionary antigravation techniques, but have already deciphered the secret of the gravity. Only the sensational discovery, which fundamentally changed both transport and weapon technology, had been kept secret for years.

Cook, too, first learns of it through mysterious circumstances. One day he stumbles over a quotation from armor expert George S. Trimble, vice president of the “G project” at Martin Aircrafts. Trimble claimed as early as 1956 that the taming of gravity could be achieved “about the same time as was necessary to build the atomic bomb.” What was he playing with?

There would be, for example, those Nazi scholars who, in the service of the SS, explored the possibility of antigravity and time travel. What became of the head of these armament projects, SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler?

Many clues suggest that SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler escaped to the United States with his findings and made them available to the US military.

It is quite conceivable that in the late fifties, somewhere in the expanse of the American prairie, a secret research laboratory was set up, which, like the Manhattan project, aimed at mastering the power of the atomic bomb.

Had this effort been successful? Is the anti-gravity technology perhaps already in use? In his researches in the laboratories of the armaments industry, in the corridors of the Pentagon, and in the tunnels of former Nazi research centers, this suspicion is confirmed by Cook. Although he is unable to provide any firm proof, the journalist discovers something else in his research: the feeling of a great mystery, “a black heart”. Cook can properly “feel the fear that clings to it”.

And yet the shielding is not complete. Even the attentive observer of scientific literature could not escape the fact that our schoolbook knowledge stands before a revolution.

Astronomers have been observing for a number of years that the universe is expanding much faster than previously thought – a finding many people explain by the action of a kind of cosmic antigravity that drives the galaxies apart. The astronomers emphasize again and again that this force has no influence on earthly masses and only becomes effective at great cosmological distances. But who knows?

The so-called zero-point energy of the vacuum also stimulates wild speculation. According to quantum mechanics, nothingness is not empty, but full potential. Just wonder how big this zero point energy (ZPE) is. “Some say that there is enough energy in a shoe box to allow the whole world to explode,” says Cook’s book, “others think that you can not even boil an egg with the whole ZPE of the world.”

Do Podkletnov know more? In 1992, the Russian emigrant reported that he had discovered a method for shielding gravity at the Tampere Technical University in Finland. For this purpose, Podkletnov had a disk of a special superconducting material rotated over a strong magnetic field. At over 5000 revolutions per second, measurements with a super fine scale, lost samples suspended above the disc up to one percent of their weight!

Although the professional world is still skeptical about these results, the American physicist Ning Li soon waited for a theoretical explanation: the rotating superconductor had a “gravito-magnetic” effect, a phenomenon which Einstein had already predicted. Similar to a moving electric charge, a magnetic field is generated, according to the theory of relativity, rotating matter must also influence the gravitational field. Although the effect according to Einsteinstheorie should be so small that it would be detectable only in the universe. Ning Li could not convince Nasa to repeat Podkletnov’s groundbreaking experiments.

The fact that these attempts failed for many years and Ning Li does not want to comment on the whole subject any more, can only be explained by the power of the “black heart” that Nick Cook could guess in his research.

Yevgeny Podkletnov also felt his strength. The anti-gravity pioneer lost his job at the Tampere Technical University and has to pursue his research on his own. He recently revealed to a reporter of the New Scientist that he had now developed a “pulse generator”, which could throw down an upright book at a distance of one kilometer. Unfortunately, a visit to the facility is not possible because it is located in a security zone of the Moscow University. In addition, he is obliged to “silence” for “patent reasons”.

But the progress can not be stopped. This is also known by the Nasa researchers, who work in the “Breakthrough in Drive Technology” department. In the meantime, they have realized that Podkletnov’s experiment apparently only works when the rotating superconducting disk has a very specific chemical composition – and the Russian physicist has so far kept this mixture secret. But for a generous check, he has now betrayed his special recipe to an American company, who had an exact copy of his antigravation apparatus made for Nasa for 600,000 dollars. These days, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is about to begin the experiments, and it is only a matter of months before the official confirmation of Podkletnov’s breakthrough discovery is made.

Only the scientific community still struggles against the impending paradigm shift. The physicist and book author Hans Christian von Baeyer, who teaches in the USA, considers the antigravitation to be as likely as “the possibility that your office is exploding today”. Even Lawrence M. Krauss, who analyzed the physics of Star Trek and is a science fiction expert, considers NASA’s work as an “nonsense”. As chairman of a corresponding NASA advisory board, he would at any rate do his utmost to “end this stupid project”.

Is there only the arrogance of the mainstream physics establishment behind such statements? Or are they merely distraction maneuvers to conceal the truth of that “dark mystery” that Nick Cook has tracked?

Ulrich Schnabe

Chapter  ONE

The photocopied pages had obviously come from some long-forgotten schlock popular science journal. I had stepped away from my desk only for a few moments and somehow in the interim the article had appeared. The headline ran :The G-Engines Are Coming.  

I glanced around the office, wondering who had put it there and if this was someone’s idea of a joke. The copier had cut off the top of the first page and the title of the publication with it, but it was the drawing above the headline that was the giveaway. It depicted an aircraft, if you could call it that, hovering a few feet above a dry lake bed, a ladder extending from the fuselage and a crew member making his way down the steps dressed in a U.S.-style flight suit and flying helmet—standard garb for that era. The aircraft had no wings and no visible means of propulsion.

I gave the office another quick scan. The magazine’s operations were set on the first floor. The whole building was open-plan. To my left, the business editor was head-down over a proof-page checking copy. To her right was the naval editor, a guy who was good for a windup, but who was currently deep into a phone conversation and looked like he had been for hours.

I was reminded of a technology piece I’d penned a couple of years earlier about the search for scientific breakthroughs in U.S. aerospace and defense research. In a journal not noted for its exploration of the fringes of paranormality, nor for its humor, I’d inserted a tongue-in-cheek reference to gravity—or rather to antigravity, a subject beloved of science-fiction writers.

“For some U.S. aerospace engineers,” I’d said, “an antigravity propulsion system remains the ultimate quantum leap in aircraft design.” The implication was that antigravity was the aerospace equivalent of the holy grail: something longed for, dreamed about, but beyond reach—and likely always to remain so.

Somehow the reference had escaped the sub-editors and, as a result, amongst my peers, other aerospace and defense writers on the circuit, I’d taken some flak for it. For Jane’s, the publishing empire founded on one man’s obsession with the detailed specifications of ships and aircraft almost a century earlier, technology wasn’t something you joked about.

The magazine I wrote—and still write—for, Jane’s Defence Weekly, documented the day-to-day dealings of the multibillion-dollar defense business. JDW, as we called it, is but one of a portfolio of products detailing the ins and outs of the global aerospace and defense industry. If you want to know about the thrust-to-weight ratio of a Chinese combat aircraft engine or the pulse repetition frequency of a particular radar system, somewhere in the Jane’s portfolio of products there is a publication that has the answers. In short, Jane’s was, and always has been, about facts. Its motto is: Authoritative, Accurate, Impartial.

It was a huge commercial intelligence-gathering operation; and provided they had the money, anyone could buy into its vast knowledge base.

I cast a glance at the bank of sub-editors’ work-stations over in the far corner of the office, but nobody appeared remotely interested in what was happening at my desk. If the subs had nothing to do with it, and usually they were the first to know about a piece of piss-taking that was going down in the office, I figured whoever had put it there was from one of the dozens of other departments in the building and on a different floor. Perhaps my anonymous benefactor had felt embarrassed about passing it on to me?

I studied the piece again.

The strapline below the headline proclaimed: “By far the most potent source of energy is gravity. Using it as power, future aircraft will attain the speed of light.” It was written by one Michael Gladych and began: “Nuclear-powered aircraft are yet to be built, but there are research projects already under way that will make the super-planes obsolete before they are test-flown. For in the United States and Canada, research centers, scientists, designers and engineers are perfecting a way to control gravity—a force infinitely more powerful than the mighty atom. The result of their labors will be antigravity engines working without fuel—weightless airliners and space ships able to travel at 170,000 miles per second.”

On any other day, that would have been the moment I’d have consigned it for recycling. But something in the following paragraph caught my eye.

The gravity research, it said, had been supported by the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, Bell Aircraft, Lear “and several other American aircraft manufacturers who would not spend millions of dollars on science fiction.” It quoted Lawrence D. Bell, the founder of the plane-maker that was first to beat the sound barrier. “We’re already working on nuclear fuels and equipment to cancel out gravity.” George S. Trimble, head of Advanced Programs and “Vice President in charge of the G-Project at Martin Aircraft,” added that the conquest of gravity “could be done in about the time it took to build the first atom bomb.”

A little further on, it quoted “William P. Lear, the chairman of Lear Inc., makers of autopilots and other electronic controls.” It would be another decade before Bill Lear went on to design and build the first of the sleek business jets that still carry his name. But in 1956, according to Gladych, Lear had his mind on other things.

“All matter within the ship would be influenced by the ship’s gravitation only,” Lear apparently said of the wondrous G-craft. “This way, no matter how fast you accelerated or changed course, your body would not feel it any more than it now feels the tremendous speed and acceleration of the earth.” The G-ship, Gladych explained, could take off like a cannon shell, come to a stop with equal abruptness and the passengers wouldn’t even need seat belts. This ability to accelerate rapidly, the author continued, would make it ideal as a space vehicle capable of acceleration to a speed approaching that of light.

There were some oblique references to Einstein, some highly dubious “facts” about the nature of subatomic physics and some speculation about how various kinds of “antigravity engines” might work.

But the one thing I kept returning to were those quotes. Had Gladych made them up or had Lawrence Bell, George S. Trimble and William “Bill” Lear really said what he had quoted them as saying?

Outside, the rain beat against the double-glazed windows, drowning the sound of the traffic that crawled along the London to Brighton road and the unrelenting hum of the air conditioning that regulated the temperature inside.

The office was located in the last suburb of the Greater London metropolis; next stop the congested joys of the M25 ring road and the M23 to Gatwick Airport. The building was a vast redbrick two-story bunker amid between-the-wars gray brickwork and pebbledash. The rain acted like a muslin filter, washing out what little ambient color Coulsdon possessed. In the rain, it was easy to imagine that nothing much had changed here for decades.

As aviation editor of JDW, my beat was global and it was pretty much unstructured. If I needed to cover the latest air-to-surface weapons developments in the U.S.A., I could do it, with relatively few questions asked. My editor, an old pro, with a history as long as your arm in publishing, gave each of us, the so-called “specialists” (the aviation, naval and land systems editors), plenty of rope. His only proviso was that we filed our expenses within two of weeks of travel and that we gave him good, exclusive stories. If I wanted to cover an aerospace and defense exhibition in Moscow, Singapore or Dubai, the funds to do so were almost always there.

As for the job itself, it was a mixture of hard-edged reporting and basic provision of information. We reported on the defense industry, but we were part of it, too—the vast majority of the company’s revenue coming from the same people we wrote about. Kowtowing was a no-no, but so was kicking down doors. If you knew the rules and played by them you could access almost any part of the global defense-industrial complex. In the course of a decade, I’d visited secret Russian defense facilities and ultrasensitive U.S. government labs. If you liked technology, a bit of skulduggery and people, it was a career made in heaven. At least 60 percent of the time I was on the road. The bit I liked least was office downtime.

Again, I looked around for signs that I was being set up. Then, satisfied that I wasn’t, but feeling self-conscious nonetheless, I tucked the Gladych article into a drawer and got on with the business of the day. Another aerospace and defense company had fallen prey to post-Cold War economics. It was 24 hours before the paper closed for press and the news editor was yelling for copy.

Two days later, in a much quieter moment, I visited the Jane’s library. It was empty but for the librarian, a nice man way past retirement age who used to listen to the BBC’s radio lunchtime news while gazing out over the building’s bleak rear lot.

In the days before the Internet revolution, the library was an invaluable resource. Fred T. Jane published his first yearbook, Jane’s Fighting Ships, in 1898; and in 1909 the second, Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, quickly built on the reputation of the former as a reference work par excellence for any and all information on aeronautical developments. Nigh on a century later, the library held just about every book and magazine ever put out by the company and a pile of other reference works besides.

I scanned the shelves till I found what I was looking for.

The Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft yearbook for 1956 carried no mention of antigravity experiments, nor did successive volumes, but that came as no great surprise. The yearbooks are the aerospace equivalent of Burke’s Peerage or the Guinness Book of Records: every word pored over, analyzed and double-checked for accuracy. They’d have given antigravity a very wide berth.

For a story like this, what I was looking for was a news publication.

I looked along the shelves again. Jane’s had gotten into the magazine publishing business relatively recently and the company’s copies of Flight International and Aviation Week ran back only a few years. But it did have bound volumes of Interavia Aerospace Review from before the Second World War. And it was on page 373 in the May 1956 edition of this well-respected publication, in amongst advertisements for Constellation airliners, chunky-looking bits of radar equipment and (curiously for an aviation journal) huge “portable” Olivetti typewriters, that I found a feature bylined: Mr. “Intel”, Washington, D.C., with the headline: “Towards Flight without Stress or Strain…or Weight” Beneath it ran the strapline: The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and Interavia Aerospace Review would welcome further comment from initiated sources. — Editors.

The article referred to something called “electro-gravitics” research, whose aim was to “seek the source of gravity and its control.” This research, “Intel” stated, had “reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race are beginning to emerge.”

I read on, amused by the tone and wondering how on earth the article had come to be accepted in a mainstream aerospace journal.

“In the still short life of the turbojet airplane [by then, 1956, little more than a decade], man has had to increase power in the form of brute thrust some twenty times in order to achieve just twice the speed. The cost in money in reaching this point has been prodigious. The cost in highly specialized man-hours is even greater. By his present methods man actually fights in direct combat the forces that resist his efforts. In conquering gravity he would be putting one of his most competent adversaries to work for him. Antigravitics is the method of the picklock rather than the sledgehammer.”

Not only that, the article stated, but antigravity could be put to work in other fields beyond aerospace. “In road cars, trains and boats the headaches of transmission of power from the engine to wheels or propellers would simply cease to exist. Construction of bridges and big buildings would be greatly simplified by temporary induced weightlessness etc. Other facets of work now under way indicate the possi- bility of close controls over the growth of plant life; new therapeutic techniques, permanent fuelless heating units for homes and industrial establishments; new sources of industrial power; new manufacturing techniques; a whole field of new chemistry. The list is endless …and growing.”

It was also sheer fantasy.

Yet, for the second time in a week I had found an article—this time certainly in a publication with a solid reputation—that stated that U.S. aerospace companies were engaged in the study of this “science.” It cited the same firms mentioned by Gladych and some new ones as well: Sperry-Rand and General Electric among them. Within these institutions, we were supposed to believe, people were working on theories that could not only make materials weightless, but could actually give them “negative weight”—a repulsive force that would allow them to loft away “contra-gravitationally.” The article went further. It claimed that in experimentation conducted by a certain “Townsend T. Brown” weights of some materials had already been cut by as much as 30 percent by “energizing” them and that model “disc airfoils” utilizing this technology had been run in a wind tunnel under a charge of a hundred and fifty kilovolts “with results so impressive as to be highly classified.”

I gazed out over the slate rooftops. For Interavia to have written about antigravity, there had to have been something in it. The trouble was, it was history. My bread-and-butter beat was the aerospace industry of the 1990s, not this distant cozy world of the fifties with its heady whiff of jet-engine spirit and the developing Cold War.

I replaced the volume and returned to my desk. It should have been easy to let go, but it wasn’t. If people of the caliber quoted by Gladych and Interavia had started talking about antigravity anytime in the past ten years I would have reported it—however skeptical I might be on a personal level. Why had these people said the things they had with such conviction? One of them, George S. Trimble, had gone so far as to predict that a breakthrough would occur in around the same time it took to develop the atomic bomb—roughly five years. Yet, it had never happened. And even if the results of “Townsend T. Brown’s” experiments had been “so impressive as to be highly classified,” they had clearly come to naught; otherwise, by the 60s or 70s the industry would have been overtaken by fuel-less propulsion technology.

I rang a public relations contact at Lockheed Martin, the U.S. aerospace and defense giant, to see if I could get anything on the individuals Gladych had quoted. I knew that Lawrence Bell and Bill Lear were both dead. But what about George S. Trimble? If Trimble was alive—and it was a long shot, since he would have to be in his 80s—he would undoubtedly confirm what I felt I knew to be true; that he had been heavily misquoted or that antigravity had been the industry’s silly-season story of 1956.

A simple phone call would do the trick.

Daniella “Dani” Abelman was an old media contact within Lockheed Martin’s public affairs organization. Solid, reliable and likable, she’d grown up in the industry alongside me, only on the other side of the divide. Our relationship with the information managers of the aerospace and defense world was as double-edged as the PR/reporter interface in any other industry. Our job was to get the lowdown on the inside track and, more often than not, it was bad news that sold. But unlike our national newspaper counterparts, trade press hacks have to work within the industry, not outside it. This always added an extra twist to our quest for information. The industry comprised hundreds of thousands of people, but despite its size, it was surprisingly intimate and incestuous enough for everyone to know everyone else. If you pissed off a PR manager in one company, even if it was on the other side of the globe, you wouldn’t last long, because word would quickly get around and the flow of information would dry up.

But with Abelman, it was easy. I liked her. We got on. I told her I needed some background on an individual in one of Lockheed Martin’s “heritage” companies, a euphemism for a firm it had long since swallowed whole.

The Glenn L. Martin Company became the Martin Company in 1957. In 1961, it merged with the American-Marietta Company, becoming Martin-Marietta, a huge force in the Cold War U.S. defense electronics industry. In 1994, Martin-Marietta merged again, this time with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin. The first of the global mega-merged defense behemoths, it built everything from stealth fighters and their guided weapons to space launchers and satellites.

Abelman was naturally suspicious when I told her I needed to trace an ex-company employee, but relaxed when I said that the person I was interested in had been doing his thing more than 40 years ago and was quite likely dead by now.

I was circumspect about the reasons for the approach, knowing full well if I told her the real story, she’d think I’d taken leave of my senses.

But I had a bona fide reason for calling her—and one that legitimately, if at a stretch, involved Trimble: I was preparing a piece on the emergence of the U.S. aerospace industry’s “special projects” facilities in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Most large aerospace and defense companies had a special projects unit; a clandestine adjunct to their main business lines where classified activities could take place. The shining example was the Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works,” a near-legendary aircraft-manufacturing facility on the edge of the California high desert.

For 50 years, the Skunk Works had sifted Lockheed for its most highly skilled engineers, putting them to work on top secret aircraft projects.

Using this approach it had delivered some of the biggest military breakthroughs of the 20th century, among them the world’s first Mach 3 spyplane and stealth, the art of making aircraft “invisible” to radar and other enemy sensor systems.

But now the Skunk Works was coming out of the shadows and, in the process, giving something back to its parent organization. Special projects units were renowned for bringing in complex, high-risk defense programs on time and to cost, a skill that had become highly sought after by the main body of the company in the austere budget environment of the 1990s.

Trimble, I suggested, might be able to provide me with historical context and “color” in an otherwise dry business story. “Advanced Programs,” the outfit he was supposed to have worked for, sounded a lot like Martin’s version of the Skunk Works.

Abelman said she’d see what she could do, but I wasn’t to expect any short-order miracles. She wasn’t the company historian, she said dryly, but she’d make a few inquiries and get back to me.

I was surprised when she phoned me a few hours later. Company records, to her surprise—and mine—said that Trimble was alive and enjoying retirement in Arizona. “Sounds hard as nails, but an amazing guy by all accounts,” she breezed. “He’s kinda mystified why you want to talk to him after all this time, but seems okay with it. Like you said, it’s historical, right?”

“Right,” I said.

I asked Abelman, while she was at it, for all the background she had on the man. History or not, I said, trying to keep it light, I liked to be thorough. She was professional enough to sound less than convinced by my newfound interest in the past, but promised she’d do her best. I thanked her, then hung up, feeling happy that I’d done something about it. A few weeks, a month at the outside, the mystery would be resolved and I could go back to my regular beat, case closed.

Outside, another bank of gray storm clouds was rolling in above rooftops that were still slick from the last passing shower.

I picked up my coat and headed for the train station, knowing that somewhere between the office and my flat in central London I was going to get soaked right through.

The initial information came a week later from a search through some old files that I’d buried in a collection of boxes in my basement: a company history of Martin Marietta I’d barely remembered I’d acquired. It told me that in 1955 Trimble had become involved in something called the Research Institute for Advanced Studies, RIAS, a Martin spin-off organization whose brief was to “observe the phenomena of nature…to discover fundamental laws…and to evolve new technical concepts for the improvement and welfare of mankind.”

Aside from the philanthropic tone, a couple of things struck me as fishy about the RIAS. First off, its name was as bland as the carefully chosen “Advanced Development Projects”—the official title of the Skunk Works. Second, was the nature and caliber of its recruits. These, according to the company history, were “world-class contributors in mathematics, physics, biology and materials science.”

Soon afterward, I received a package of requested information from Lockheed Martin in the mail. RIAS no longer existed, having been subsumed by other parts of the Lockheed Martin empire. But through an old RIAS history, a brochure published in 1980 to celebrate the organization’s “first 25 years,” I was able to glean a little more about Trimble and the outfit he’d inspired. It described him as “one of the most creative and imaginative people that ever worked for the Company.”

I read on.

From a nucleus of people that in 1955 met in a conference room at the Martin Company’s Middle River plant in Maryland, RIAS soon developed a need for its own space. In 1957, with a staff of about 25 people, it moved to Baltimore City. The initial research program, the brochure said, was focused on NASA and the agency’s stated goal of putting a man on the moon. But that wasn’t until 1961.

One obvious question was, what had RIAS been doing in the interim? Mainly math, by the look of it. Its principal academic was described as an expert in “topology and nonlinear differential equations.”

I hadn’t the least idea what that meant.

In 1957, the outfit moved again, this time to a large mansion on the edge of Baltimore, a place chosen for its “campus-like” atmosphere. Offices were quickly carved from bedrooms and workshops from garages.

It reminded me of accounts I’d read of the shirtsleeves atmosphere of the early days of the Manhattan Project when Oppenheimer and his team of atom scientists had crunched through the physics of the bomb.

And that was the very same analogy Trimble had used. The conquest of gravity, he’d said, would come in the time it took to build the bomb.

I called a few contacts on the science and engineering side of Lockheed Martin, asking them, in a roundabout kind of way, whether there was, or ever had been, any part of the corporation involved in gravity or “counter-gravitational” research. After some initial questions on their part as to why I should be interested, which I just about managed to palm off, the answer that came back was a uniform “no.” Well, almost. There was a guy, Boyd Bushman, one contact told me, a scientist who worked in the combat aircraft division in Fort Worth who would talk eloquently about the mysteries of Nature and the universe to anyone who would listen. He’d also levitate paper clips on his desk. Great character, but a bit of a maverick. “Paper clips?” I’d asked. “A maverick scientist levitating paper clips on his desk? At Lockheed Martin? Come on.”  My source laughed. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said I was working up a story on antigravity.  A 1999 FBI memo established that Boyd Bushman was indeed employed at Lockheed Martin (LM). The man’s claims of holding Top Secret clearance while working as a Senior Specialist were also verified. Please note, however, LM expressed concerns to the FBI of what “may be an ongoing attempt to elicit LM proprietary or classified information” surrounding Bushman:

I made my excuses and signed off. It was crazy, possibly dangerous stuff, but it continued to have me intrigued.

I called an old friend who’d gained a degree in applied mathematics. Tentatively, I asked whether topology and non-differential linear equations had any application to the study of gravity.

Of course, he replied. Topology—the study of shape in physics—and nonlinear equations were the standard methods for calculating gravitational attraction.

I sat back and pieced together what I had. It didn’t amount to much, but did it amount to something?

In 1957, George S. Trimble, one of the leading aerospace engineers in the U.S. at that time, a man, it could safely be said, with a background in highly advanced concepts and classified activity, had put together what looked like a special projects team; one with a curious task.

This, just a year after he started talking about the Golden Age of Antigravity that would sweep through the industry starting in the 1960s.

So, what went wrong?

In its current literature, the stuff pumped out in press releases all the time, the U.S. Air Force constantly talked up the “vision”: where it was going to be in 25 years, how it was going to wage and win future wars and how technology was key.

In 1956, it would have been as curious as I was about the notion of a fuel-less propulsion source, one that could deliver phenomenal performance gains over a jet; perhaps including the ability to accelerate rapidly, to pull hairpin turns without crushing the pilot and to achieve speeds that defied the imagination. In short, it would have given them something that resembled a UFO.

I rubbed my eyes. The dim pool of light that had illuminated the Lockheed-supplied material on Trimble and RIAS had brought on a nagging pain in the back of my head.

The evidence was suggesting that in the mid-50s there had been some kind of breakthrough in the antigravity field and for a small window in time people had talked about it freely and openly, believing they were witnessing the dawn of a new era, one that would benefit the whole of mankind.
Then, in 1957, everyone had stopped talking about it. Had the military woken up to what was happening, bringing the clamps down?

Those in the know, outfits like Trimble’s that had been at the forefront of the breakthrough, would probably have continued their research, assembling their development teams behind closed doors, ready for the day they could build real hardware.

But of course, it never happened.

It never happened because soon after Trimble, Bell and Lear made their statements, sanity prevailed. By 1960, it was like the whole episode never took place. Aerospace development continued along its structured, ordered pathway and antigravity became one of those taboo subjects that people like me never, ever talked about.

Satisified that everything was back in its place and as it should be, I went to bed.

Somewhere in my head I was still tracking the shrill, faraway sounds of the city when the phone rang. I could tell instantly it was Abelman. Separated by an ocean and five time zones, I heard the catch in her breathing.

” It’s Trimble,” she said. “The guy just got off the phone to me. Remember how he was fine to do the interview? Well, something’s happened. I don’t know who this old man is or what he once was, but he told me in no uncertain terms to get off his case. He doesn’t want to speak to me and he doesn’t want to speak to you, not now, not ever. I don’t mind telling you that he sounded scared and I don’t like to hear old men scared. It makes me scared. I don’t know what you were really working on when you came to me with this, Nick, but let me give you some advice. Stick to what you know about; stick to the damned present. It’s better that way for all of us.”

Towards Flight without Stress or Strain… or Weight

by Mr. “Intel”,  Washington D.C.  

The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and Interavia Aerospace Review would welcome further comment from initiated sources. — Editors.

Washington D.C.,  March 23,  1956  

Electrogravitics research, seeking the source of gravity and its control, has reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race begin to emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implications of all involve aircraft, guided missiles — atmospheric and free space flight of all kinds.

If only one of several lines of research achieve their goal — and it now seems certain that this must occur — gravitational acceleration as a structural, aerodynamic and medical problem will simply cease to exist. So will the task of providing combustible fuels in massive volume in order to escape the earth’s gravitic pull — now probably the biggest headache facing today’s would-be “space men”.

And towards the long-term progress of mankind and man’s civilization, a whole new concept of electrophysics is being levered out into the light of human knowledge.

There are gravity research projects in every major country of the world. A few are over 30 years old. Most are much newer. Some are purely theoretical and seek the answer in Quantum, Relativity and Unified Field Theory mathematics — Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey; University of Indiana’s School of Advanced Mathematical Studies; Purdue University Research Foundation; Goettingen and Hamburg Universities in France, Italy, Japan and elsewhere. The list, in fact, runs into the hundreds.

Some projects are mostly empirical, studying gravitic isotopes, electrical phenomena and the statistics of mass. Others combine both approaches in the study of matter in its super-cooled, super-conductive state, of jet electron streams, peculiar magnetic effects or the electrical mechanics of the atom’s shell. Some of the companies involved in this phase include Lear Inc., Gluhareff Helicopter and Airplane Corp., The Glenn L. Martin Co., Sperry-Rand Corp., Bell Aircraft, Clarke Electronics Laboratories, the U.S. General Electric Company.

The concept of weightlessness in conventional materials which are normally heavy, like steel, aluminium, barium, etc., is difficult enough, but some theories, so far borne out empirically in the laboratory, postulate that not only can they be made weightless, but they can in fact be given a negative weight. That is: the force of gravity will be repulsive to them and they will — new sciences breed new words and meanings for old ones — loft away contra-gravitationally.

In this particular line of research, the weights of some materials have already been cut as much as 30% by “energizing” them. Security prevents disclosure of what precisely is meant by “energizing” or in which country this work is under way.

The American scientist Townsend T. Brown has been working on the problems of electrogravitics for more than thirty years. He is seen here demonstrating one of his laboratory instruments, a disc-shaped variant of the two-plate condenser.
A localized gravitic field used as a ponderamotive force has been created in the laboratory. Disc airfoils two feet in diameter and incorporating a variation of the simple two-plate electrical condenser charged with fifty kilovolts and a total continuous energy input of fifty watts have achieved a speed of seventeen feet per second in a circular air course twenty feet in diameter. More lately these discs have been increased in diameter to three feet and run in a fifty-foot diameter air course under a charge of a hundred and fifty kilovolts with results so impressive as to be highly classified. Variations of this work done under a vacuum have produced much greater efficiencies that can only described as startling. Work is now under way developing a flame-jet generator to supply power up to fifteen million volts.

Such a force raised exponentially to levels capable of pushing man-carrying vehicles through the air — or outer space — at ultrahigh speeds is now the object of concerted effort in several countries. Once achieved it will eliminate most of the structural difficulties now encountered in the construction of high-speed aircraft. Importantly the gravitic field that provides the basic propulsive force simultaneously reacts on all matter within that field’s influence. The force is not a physical one acting initially at a specific point in the vehicle that needs then to be translated to all the other parts. It is an electrogravitic field acting on all parts simultaneously.

Subject only to the so-far immutable laws of momentum, the vehicle would be able to change direction, accelerate to thousands of miles per hour, or stop. Changes in direction and speed of flight would be effected by merely altering the intensity, polarity and direction of the charge.

Man now uses the sledge-hammer approach to high-altitude high-speed flight. In the still-short life-span of the turbo-jet airplane he has had to increase power in the form of brute thrust some twenty times in order to achieve just a little more than twice the speed of the original jet plane. The cost in money in reaching this point has been prodigious. The cost in highly-specialized man-hours is even greater. By his present methods man actually fights in direct combat the forces that resist his efforts. in conquering gravity he would be putting one of his most competent adversaries to work for him. Anti-gravitics is the method of the picklock rather than the sledge-hammer.

The communications possibilities of electrogravitics, as the new science is called, confound the imagination. There are apparently in the ether an entirely new unsuspected family of electrical waves similar to electromagnetic radio waves in basic concept.

Electrogravitic waves have been created and transmitted through concentric layers of the most efficient kinds of electromagnetic and electrostatic shielding without any apparent loss of power in any way. There is evidence, but not yet proof, that these waves are not limited by the speed of light. Thus the new science seems to strike at the very foundations of Einsteinian Relativity Theory.

But rather than invalidating current basic concepts such as Relativity, the new knowledge of gravity will probably expand their scope, ramification and general usefulness. It is this expansion of knowledge into the unknown that more emphasizes how little we do know; how vast is the area still awaiting research and discovery.

The most successful line of the electrogravitics research so far reported is that carried on by Townsend. T. Brown, an American who has been researching gravity for over thirty years. He is now conducting research projects in the U.S. and on the Continent. He postulates that there is between electricity and gravity a relationship parallel and/or similar to that which exists between electricity and magnetism. And as the coil is the usable link in the case of electromagnetics, so is the condenser that link in the case of electrogravitics. Years of successful empirical work have lent a great deal of credence to this hypothesis.

Dear  Robert, 

If Nazis had antigravity saucers, which is very possible, 
due to simplicity of old physics involved, 
what crashed  in Roswell was an American replica.  

Check out Annie Jacobsen.  Interestingly, she claims 
that what crashed in Roswell, was a Russian antigravity saucer,
and the small bodies were NOT Aliens : 

Untold Secrets of Manzano Underground Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico – – Fact or Fiction?

A Typical UFO Seen Over New Mexico

Untold Secrets of Manzano Underground Base

in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Fact or Fiction?

By Norio Hayakawa

<Edited by Robert D. Morningstar>

CIVILIAN INTELLIGENCE NEWS SERVICE

The Manzano Underground Base is Reportedly Situated Beneath this Mountain.
This view is the Northeast end of the Manzano underground base with 3 tiers of electric fences, almost right next to the Four Hills community of Albuquerque –
The Manzano base was supposedly totally closed down in 1992.
Photo by Norio Hayakawa

A QUOTE FROM AN ANONYMOUS SOURCE – November 15, 2021:

“I’m a lifelong Albuquerque resident.  I appreciate the work you’ve put into researching and uncovering the various mysterious topics you discuss.”

About three years ago, a close relative of mine, a young man, was working a job as a construction laborer with a local firm, which in 2018 was contracted to do work on KAFB.  He worked that job for about three weeks.  At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to what he told me after coming home from work each evening, but a few years later I took much more interest, due to the nature of his descriptions of what he encountered.

The following is an essay I wrote, based on his direct eyewitness testimony, which also includes my attempts to explain, in the form of hypothesizing, the larger purpose of the facility that he visited.  I call this The Able Prime Narrative; at the time it was built, Manzano Base was known as Site Able.

Aerial View of Kirtland Air Force Base & Manzano UB Area

I’ve tightly held onto this information for some time, but am sharing it with you because it’s one of the most astonishing factual tales I’ve yet encountered, and I trust your judgement in regard to what you might do with this information.  As you undoubtedly know, there are many unverifiable, or unreliable, stories that have circulated through the UFO subculture community.  This story is one of the most factual I’ve encountered, due to the veracity of this young man’s testimony.

The facts as described by this young man, who I call The Eyewitness, are in my view entirely trustworthy; he’s too young and naive to have a deep enough understanding of these things to have made them up, nor has he shown any interest in the past with these topics.  My attempts at explaining what this story implies remains my own speculation, and hence is subject to my own errors of judgement; but his account is by my estimation entirely trustworthy.  I’ve also brought a close friend of mine into confidence of this story, who has, together with me, interviewed The Eyewitness and has verified the veracity of his story and lack of any obvious contradictions or counter-factual information that might compromise the story’s integrity.

INTRODUCTION

Able Prime is based on facts, of an actual eyewitness account from a very reputable source, of an apparent underground complex located within the boundaries of Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Able Prime
Photo by Norio Hayakawa, Nov. 17, 2021
CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT
This public open space area right next to the fenceline of the base is off-limits to the public after sundown, according to the city ordinance – – Photo by Norio Hayakawa, Nov. 17, 2021)
CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT

BACKGROUND

During the Manhattan Project of WWII, Kirtland Field in Albuquerque, NM was operated by the US Army Air Corp and employed as a point of demarcation for materiel and personnel involved with the build-up of atomic munitions on Tinian Island, in preparation for the atomic bombing raids over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which directly contributed to the ending of hostilities and unconditional surrender of Japan.

After the war, Z Division of Los Alamos was moved to Kirtland Field and became Sandia Base, a separate entity commanded by a series of US Army and Air Force generals.  The facility rapidly expanded to become the nexus of what is known today as Sandia National Laboratory, the primary center of nuclear weapons development during the Cold War. In 1971, Kirtland Field and Sandia Base were merged into Kirtland AFB.

In the late 1940s a facility began to be constructed inside the mountains on the eastern boundary of Sandia Base that became known as Manzano Base, or Site Able, one of six such sites located around the US built to stockpile the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal.  Site Able was special in that, not only was it the first such site, but it was the primary assembly facility used to construct the early plutonium fission weapons, based on the WWII Fat Man design, known as the Mark 4.  

The FAT MAN Atomic Bomb

During this time, plutonium and uranium weapons components were cast and machined at Los Alamos, delivered to Sandia Base and assembled, along with non-nuclear components from other facilities, in an underground assembly factory in the Manzano Base.

The Mark 4 design was assembled by hand, in kit form, from discrete blocks of high explosive lenses, upto which detonators and other components were added, to form the completed weapon, minus the core itself, which was only inserted into the weapon during final delivery by bomber aircraft to its target. Assembled weapons were stored in the Manzano facility, minus their cores, which were stored in separate, lead-lined “bird cage” containers.

The overall layout of Manzano and Kirtland AFB proper, including the warehouse entrance on the east side of Manzano, the former Boeing Airborne Laser Hangar, and KUMMSC).
CLICK ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT

MANZANO BASE LORE

During the height of the Cold War, the existence of Manzano Base was a poorly kept secret among the children of base workers.  It was commonly discussed, on the school grounds in northeast Albuquerque, that a “secret” underground base existed in the Four Hills area of southeast Albuquerque, since many of these children had parents who worked either directly in Manzano Base proper, or on Sandia Base.

In 1992, the Kirtland Underground Munitions and Maintenance Storage Complex (KUMMSC) was activated on KAFB, south and west of the old Manzano Base, and has since become the largest repository of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal.  Since then, stories have been published in the local Albuquerque Journal newspaper about Manzano Base, its former purpose, and how it had since become (supposedly) idled and used only for storage of non-nuclear materiel.

The author has become aware of a book called Raven RockThe Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself – – While the Rest of Us Die“, by Garrett M. Graff, written about the history of the NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) facility, located in Cheyenne Mountain, south of Colorado Springs, Colorado, which indicated that during its design phase a nearly identical mock-up facility was built within the Manzano Base complex, southeast of Albuquerque.

The author is also aware of a firsthand account, from a family friend, an independent contractor skilled in computer networks, who claimed to have been working at an underground computer complex “inside the mountain” directly after the events of September 11, 2001, in a supporting role maintaining computer network equipment.

A closer view of Manzano, with the warehouse entrance on the right and the presumed secondary entrance on the left.   The alignment of the walls of the warehouse point directly to the secondary building.   They are about a mile apart.
CLICK ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT

HERE IS THE STORY – – FACT OR FICTION?, YOU DECIDE:

THE ABLE PRIME NARRATIVE

The Eyewitness was working for a local construction contractor in the 2018 time frame when a job was issued on KAFB.  He and his crew entered the base from the Louisiana Gate, drove east to Wyoming Blvd, then south and east, past the base golf course, to the security entrance of the Manzano Base complex.  

They were directed to drive on a road around the southern edge of the complex, to the eastern side, where they arrived at a warehouse building with a light-blue roof.  The crew parked in the main parking lot, where they were met by security personnel, who told them to leave all cell phones, electronics and cameras in their truck, and fill out a form describing in detail all of the tools and material they would be bringing into the facility.

Immediately across the loop road from this warehouse building is the entrance to Factory 3, one of three such nuclear assembly factories once located in Manzano.

Having complied with the requests, they were escorted into the building through a door on the west-facing side, where they entered an elevator, that was described by The Eyewitness as of a “wire cage” type freight elevator, whose entrance faced west, toward the mountain, and began their descent that lasted for “three to five minutes.”

Once their three to five minute descent was completed, they exited the elevator in a deep underground, concrete-lined facility that extended into the distance toward the west, under the mountain.

The Eyewitness described the feeling of being in the facility as if one were deep underground inside Carlsbad Caverns, and that it felt cold.

Before them was a long, tall, concrete hallway-like structure that extended into the distance.  The walls were made from large sections of rectangular concrete, embedded with a grid of holes.  The ceiling was as high “as if standing on the basketball court of the UNM Pit arena and looking up to the ceiling.”  

The floor of the structure curved gently upward, in an arc, such that the other end of the facility could not be seen.  To the left of the main hallway were a series of rooms that had been built of metal stud framing, that needed interior finishing work completed.  The freight elevator was used to deliver construction materials, tools and supplies from ground level, down into the facility.

The ceiling of the long hallway was described as “corrugated concrete,” similar to the kind of reinforced concrete structures seen under freeway overpass bridges.  Between the ridges of reinforced concrete were brackets extending downward, from which lighting fixtures were attached.  The Eyewitness estimated the height of the hallway as around 50 feet, and the width about 200 feet.

Parked in two neat rows along either side of the hallway were dozens of aircraft, oriented diagonally facing away from the entrance.  The row of aircraft on the left side had wide, flat jet engine exhaust ducts and a pair of canted vertical stabilizers.  They were dark gray, with no markings other than, under the rear horizontal stabilizers, a sequence of 7 or 8 digits, preceded by the “#” (hashtag or pound) symbol.  There was estimated to be 25-30 of these aircraft visible.

Because of his unfamiliarity with military aircraft, the author showed The Eyewitness a series of aircraft images, from which he identified the YF-23 prototype as being the closest to what he observed.

The row of aircraft on the right side of the structure were parked similarly to those on the left, diagonally facing away from the entrance, and were described as being black and triangular.  There appeared to be an equal number of them as the “YF-23“ type, extending into the distance.

In attempting to identify this second type of aircraft, the author showed The Eyewitness images of the F-117 stealth fighter, but he indicated that the type of aircraft he observed were not shaped with flat facets as with the F-117, but instead were smooth and curved, with a central hump that reminded him of images of the B2 stealth bomber, but smaller and with a triangular plan-form.

In each of his visits to this facility that occurred over a period of three weeks, The Eyewitness and his crew worked on the interior finishing of the office-like rooms to the left of the long hallway.  On the last visit, when they were preparing to exit via the elevator, the security personnel informed them of a “security breach,” and directed them to wait by the elevator while other security teams went topside.  After a period of about 30 minutes they were then permitted to depart via the elevator up to ground level, from where they exited the facility and the base.

Another detail described by The Eyewitness was during the elevator rides, they would periodically pass light fixtures in the concrete elevator shaft, visible through the extruded metal sides of the elevator car, implying a series of other floors or levels in the facility.  However, The Eyewitness did not at the time count the number of floors, but his feeling is that it was dozens of floors, at least.

DECIPHERING ABLE PRIME

Whatever facilities are currently situated under the Four Hills of Manzano Base, it is assumed the majority were built in the late-1940s and into the ‘50s, prior to the era of aerial surveillance by high-flying aircraft, or satellite surveillance, hence they may yet possess a higher degree of security than newer-built facilities.  Of specific interest to the author is how such a facility operates, given the implication of deep underground aircraft storage requiring access to both hangars and runways.

Fortunately for the researcher, we live in an era of readily accessible satellite imagery.  The author has examined in detail satellite imagery of KAFB, via Google Earth, and has found circumstantial evidence of specific structural alignments, visible from the surface, that imply possible answers to how the Manzano facility functions.

ELEVATOR ALIGNMENT

The Eyewitness described the freight elevator, that connects the surface warehouse building to the underground facility, as being orthagonal with the building’s walls.  Underground, the elevator is also orthagonal with the eastern end of the long hallway-like structure.  In addition, The Eyewitness describes the long hallway as extending straight into the distance, away from the elevator toward the northwest, under the mountain.

Using Google Earth, by extending a datum line from the blue-roofed warehouse building in a northwesterly direction, parallel to its east/west axis, the datum line extends about a mile under the mountain to a position adjacent to the western fence-line of the Manzano area, directly under another warehouse-like building.

It is conjectured by the author that this second building serves as a secondary access point, via elevator, to the western end of the facility, perhaps used as an emergency exit, and perhaps also feeding electrical power to the underground facility, as there appears to be a transformer substation located just adjacent to the north side of this building.

The secondary building, a mile west of the primary, does not share its alignment with the datum line, however.  By properly orienting the walls of the secondary building in Google Earth, another datum line can be extended, parallel to that building’s east/west axis, another three miles to the west, where it intersects almost exactly with an aircraft hangar providing direct access to the runway system of KAFB.

This hangar is itself oriented to the main east/west runway of KAFB, and is the only aircraft hangar on this end of the base, and the closest hangar to the Manzano area complex.  This hangar is the (former) Boeing Airborne Laser facility.

Area marked with yellow (not the arrow) is the Boeing Airborne Laser Facility and Hangar area)
CLICK ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT

The author conjectures that a three mile-long underground taxiway corridor connects the Manzano facility at the east, to the aircraft hangar three miles west, via an aircraft elevator located under the hangar.

Details of the Boeing ABL hangar, and the William B. Davis Advanced Laser facility adjacent to it.  There’s also Pad 4, to the east, where aircraft are loaded with nuclear weapons from KUMMSC, via the curved road below. 
The alignment of the walls of the secondary building in the middle photo point directly to the Boeing ABL hangar.
CLICK ABOVE FOR ENLARGEMENT

Comparing elevation data (available from online topographic maps) between the blue-roofed warehouse building at Manzano (5741 feet above MSL) and the Boeing Airborne Laser hangar (5298 feet above MSL), there is an elevation change of 443 feet.  Assuming the aircraft elevator under the Boeing ABL hangar is, say, 50 feet deep, this implies that the facility below Manzano could be 443 + 50 = 493 feet under the mountain, about consistent with a “3 to 5 minute” ride in a slow-moving freight elevator.

Further examination of KAFB satellite imagery reveals the KUMMSC facility, located south of the datum line connecting Manzano and the hangar, to be aligned almost exactly orthogonal to the same datum line, implying a possible other underground connecting corridor to KUMMSC.

PURPOSE

A Nuclear Pitchfork?

The existence of a deep underground aircraft facility, verified by a reliable eyewitness, with no obvious access to runway facilities except via an implied underground corridor and elevator, begs multiple questions.

The depth of the facility, deep under a mountainous installation formerly used to protect nuclear weapons from attack, along with the stealth nature of the aircraft types observed, suggests several possibilities.

Given that these aircraft are not publicly known to exist, their location deep under the protection of a mountain may be to warehouse them for some eventual use, perhaps as some clandestine fourth branch of the nuclear triad; a nuclear pitchfork.  Given their location adjacent to, and aligned with, the KUMMSC nuclear weapons repository, perhaps they would be deployed on some long-distance bombing attack, in the event of assumption of hostilities during a nuclear exchange.

Another possibility is that they are being preserved to provide aerial dominance during a post-nuclear war phase, when the conventional air forces might have been decimated during the conflict.

It is also possible they have already been employed in various conventional conflicts.  Consider KAFB itself.  Sharing a common runway with the civilian Albuquerque International Sunport, civilian air traffic all but disappears late into the evening; meanwhile, air traffic over the rest of New Mexico remains scant during the early morning hours after midnight.  This leaves KAFB open for clandestine flights departing and arriving under the cover of darkness, and a cooperative FAA.  Aircraft can depart, fly long distances via aerial refueling, to arrive at their target coordinates halfway across the globe under the cover of nightfall; then return to KAFB under the cover of the next evening, to be sequestered away, deep under the mountain.

Advanced aircraft require constant maintenance in order to be flightworthy.  Hydraulic and engine systems need to be maintained on a regular basis.  Pilots require constant practice, in simulators and actual aircraft, in order for the weapons system to have any utility in warfare.  It is assumed by the author that periodic clandestine flights must be ongoing from the former Boeing ABL hangar on KAFB, and also that other aircraft facilities  (Edwards AFB, Nellis AFB, etc.)  may be used in training and support of these activities.

THE HANGAR

The suspect hangar that may contain the terminus of an underground aircraft elevator contains no external visual identification, other than an illegible round sign or plaque above its west-facing employee entrance.  There are, however, a number of vehicles parked in the adjacent parking lot, so some current activity is implied.  Adjacent to the hangar is a smaller, more modern appearing building bearing a sign indicating the Richard W. Davis Advanced Laser Facility.  An Internet search yields negative results for the building itself, but its namesake is an important figure in the early history of the Airborne Laser (ABL) Project.  

In the rear of this building are a number of large compressed gas cylinders and liquid chemical containers, indicating the facility seems to support some degree of advanced laser work; but the size of the building seems too small to support such activity.  It is the author’s conjecture that this laser facility may be largely underground.

It is assumed that this aircraft hangar may have supported the early years of the Airborne Laser project, including housing the early test aircraft, but that this project’s later phases may now be based elsewhere, thus leaving the hangar available for other purposes.  In addition, more recent research has involved solid-state lasers, rather than the chemical COIL (carbon dioxide iodine laser) using in the ABL program.

THE ORGANIZATION

Given the secretive nature of the Manzano facility, and the history of other projects such as the U2 and A12 aircraft programs, the possibility exists that such facilities are not operated by the overt US Air Force itself, but other, more secretive, agencies. Evidence for this comes from The Eyewitness observing that there were no conventional USAF markings on the aircraft he observed in Manzano. It could be operated by some historically consistent agency such as CIA, or more obscure ones.

It is also possible that some hybrid government/private entity may have taken long term control of the facility, representing a privatization of such “Black” projects.

The facility may have been initially constructed decades ago for other purposes.  Evidence of this is suggested by extending a datum line from the blue-roofed building on the east side of the Manzano complex, past the second structure on the west, continuing several miles to the northwest, which intersects directly with the central complex of Sandia National Laboratory.

Given that it was common in the 1950s to build underground bomb shelters, both privately under single family dwellings and publicly, such as under the UNM campus in Albuquerque, it is likely that an underground access-way may have been built to offer secure egress, from the Sandia area to the shelter of the Manzano complex, in the event of nuclear attack by bomber (in the pre-ICBM era).  This initial connective system may have been extended westward at some later date, to the hangar building, perhaps during the time when KUMMSC was being constructed, which would have offered a convenient cover story to explain the large quantities of earth being excavated during the tunnel’s construction, which would have been visible from satellite surveillance.

It is also logical to suggest that such a deeply protected aircraft facility would have had no purpose before the era of advanced stealth aircraft, since their most vulnerable moments are when parked on the tarmac; locating them underground seems to provide a logical solution in keeping with their stealth nature.

Another question I’ve asked myself is: Why Albuquerque?  Why not, say, Area 51, the National Security Site north of Las Vegas, Nevada?  For one, we don’t know there are not also underground aircraft facilities at Area 51, especially considering Papoose Mountain is located just to the west.  But as indicated previously, Manzano was already build years before the era of satellite surveillance, whereas a newer facility in Nevada would have been observed by satellite while being excavated.  So Manzano provides a “legacy” facility ideal for this purpose.

Additionally, so-called “Janet” flights, of 737 charter aircraft, have to ferry personnel each work day to and from the Nevada National Security Site and the Las Vegas airport; these flights are constantly monitored by enthusiast internet watchers and also, it is assumed, foreign governments.  However, with the Manzano facility no such flights of workers are necessary, since the base is adjacent to the middle-sized city of ABQ and workers can merely drive in and out of KAFB proper.

CONCLUSION

It is not the intent of the author to reveal the existence of secretive facilities merely for the purposes of notoriety or attention-getting.  The facility, at least what has been directly observed by The Eyewitness, does exist.  At this very moment, advanced aircraft, of a type not supposed to exist, do in fact exist, deep under the Four Hills/Manzano Base area of KAFB, four miles from the nearest runway.  Billions of dollars had to have been expended in its construction, and in the aircraft procurement programs involved, without being leaked to the public through congressional oversight.  

Billions of dollars had to have been diverted from other programs to fund these so-called “black programs.” Entire systems must exist in permanence to support such back-channel funding.  Covert organizations must exist, embedded in other, overt ones, to staff and support such activities.  These implications beg further questions, rather than providing any answers.

Yet, secrecy doesn’t always remain secret.  Facilities must be supported, often by local civilian contractors, who are exposed to things they would not ordinarily see.  Word leaks out, things seen in silence are eventually spoken of, often only in whispers.  Such has been the history of the civilian workforce in New Mexico since the early days of the Manhattan Project.

The author is indebted to the work of Trevor Paglen, who inspired the principle that the covert, black world often leaves a shadow, a footprint, in the everyday world we inhabit, offering mere glimpses of something beyond. It is in that spirit that I offer this work.” – The Eyewitness (NAME WITHHELD)

Norio Hayakawa

Albuquerque, NM

November 15th, 2021

*******

Follow Norio Hayakawa’s CIVILIAN INTELLIGENCE NEWS SERVICE

Facebook = http://www.facebook.com/fernandon.hayakawa

E-mail = noriohayakawa@gmail.com

Please also watch Norio Hayakawa’s YouTube videos

Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes

Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes

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Mass killings under communist regimes occurred throughout the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them and the political perspectives of those performing such tallies. Estimates account for executions, deaths from man-made and intentional famines, as well as deaths that have occurred during forced labordeportations, or imprisonment.

In addition to mass killings, terms that are used to define such killings include democidepoliticideclassicide, and genocide.

Contents

Terminology and usage

See also: Genocide definitions

Several different terms are used to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants.[1][a][b][c][d][e] According to Anton Weiss-Wendt, the field of comparative genocide studies has very “little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe.”[2][f] According to Professor of Economics Attiat Ott, mass killing has emerged as a “more straightforward” term.[g]

The following terminology has been used by individual authors to describe mass killings of unarmed civilians by communist governments, individually or as a whole:

  • Classicide – Professor Michael Mann has proposed classicide to mean the “intended mass killing of entire social classes.”[3][h] Classicide is considered “premeditated mass killing” narrower than genocide in that it targets a part of a population defined by its social status, but broader than politicide in that the group is targeted without regard to their political activity.[4]
  • Crime against humanity – Professor Klas-Göran Karlsson uses crimes against humanity, which includes “the direct mass killings of politically undesirable elements, as well as forced deportations and forced labour.” Karlsson acknowledges that the term may be misleading in the sense that the regimes targeted groups of their own citizens, but he considers it useful as a broad legal term which emphasizes attacks on civilian populations and because the offenses demean humanity as a whole.[5] Historian Jacques Sémelin and Professor Michael Mann[6] believe that crime against humanity is more appropriate than genocide or politicide when speaking of violence by communist regimes.[7] See also: Crimes against humanity under communist regimes.
  • Democide – Professor Rudolph Rummel defined democide as “the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command.”[8] His definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims; killings by “unofficial” private groups; extrajudicial summary killings; and mass deaths due to the governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines as well as killings by de facto governments, such as warlords or rebels in a civil war.[9][i] This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government,[10] and it has been applied to killings that were perpetrated by communist regimes.[11][12]
  • Genocide – Under the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide generally applies to the mass murder of ethnic rather than political or social groups. The clause which granted protection to political groups was eliminated from the United Nations resolution after a second vote because many states, including the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin,[13][j] feared that it could be used to impose unneeded limitations on their right to suppress internal disturbances.[14][15] Scholarly studies of genocide usually acknowledge the UN’s omission of economic and political groups and use mass political killing datasets of democide and genocide and politicide or geno-politicide.[16] The killings that were committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia has been labeled a genocide or an auto-genocide; and the deaths that occurred under Leninism and Stalinism in the Soviet Union, as well as those that occurred under Maoism in China, have been controversially investigated as possible cases. In particular, the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and the Great Chinese Famine, which occurred during the Great Leap Forward, have both been “depicted as instances of mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent.”[k]
  • Holocaust – communist holocaust has been used by some state officials and non-governmental organizations.[17][18][19] The similar term red Holocaust—coined by the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte[l][20]—has been used by Professor Steven Rosefielde for communist “peacetime state killings,” while stating that it “could be defined to include all murders (judicially sanctioned terror-executions), criminal manslaughter (lethal forced labor and ethnic cleansing), and felonious negligent homicide (terror-starvation) incurred from insurrectionary actions and civil wars prior to state seizure, and all subsequent felonious state killings.”[m] According to Jörg Hackmann, this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally.[l] Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term “allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime.”[n][21] Michael Shafir writes that the use of the term supports the “competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide“, a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation.[22] George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has “rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to ‘usurp’ and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews.”[o]
  • Mass killing – Professor Ervin Staub defined mass killing as “killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership. In a mass killing the number of people killed is usually smaller than in genocide.”[23][p] Referencing earlier definitions,[q] Professors Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli, and Dominic Rohner have defined mass killings as “the killings of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under the conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims.”[24] The term has been defined by Professor Benjamin Valentino as “the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants”, where a “massive number” is defined as at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less.[25] This is the most accepted quantitative minimum threshold for the term.[24] He applied this definition to the cases of Stalin’s Soviet UnionChina under Mao Zedong and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge while admitting that “mass killings on a smaller scale” also appear to have been carried out by regimes in North KoreaVietnamEastern Europe and various nations in Africa.[26] Alongside Valentino, Jay Ulfelder has used a threshold of 1,000 killed.[r] Alex Bellamy states that 14 of the 38 instances of “mass killing since 1945 perpetrated by non-democratic states outside the context of war” were by communist governments.[s] Professors Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago used mass killing from Valentino and concluded that even with a lower threshold (10,000 killed per year, 1,000 killed per year, or even 1 killed per year) “autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide.”[t] According to Attiat F. Ott and Sang Hoo Bae, there is a general consensus that mass killing constitutes the act of intentionally killing a number of non-combatants, but that number can range from as few as four to more than 50,000 people.[27] Yang Su used a definition of mass killing from Valentino but allows as a “significant number” more than 10 killed in one day in one town.[u] He used collective killing for analysis of mass killing in areas smaller than a whole country that may not meet Valentino’s threshold.[v]
  • Politicide – the term is used to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.[28][j] Professor Barbara Harff studies genocide and politicide—sometimes shortened as geno-politicide—in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.[w] Professor Manus I. Midlarsky uses politicide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union to China and Cambodia.[x] In his book The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings of Stalin and Pol Pot.[29]
  • Repression – Professor Stephen Wheatcroft comments that in the case of the Soviet Union terms such as the terrorthe purges, and repression are used to refer to the same events. He believes the most neutral terms are repression and mass killings, although in Russian the broad concept of repression is commonly held to include mass killings and it is sometimes assumed to be synonymous with it, which is not the case in other languages.[30]

Estimates

According to professor of history Klas-Göran Karlsson, discussion of the number of victims of communist regimes has been “extremely extensive and ideologically biased.”[31] Political scientist Rudolph Rummel and historian Mark Bradley have written that, while the exact numbers have been in dispute, the order of magnitude is not.[y][z] Rummel and other genocide scholars are focused primarily on establishing patterns and testing various theoretical explanations of genocides and mass killings. In their work, as they are dealing with large data sets that describe mass mortality events globally, they have to rely on selective data provided by country experts, so precise estimates are neither a required nor expected result of their work.[32]

Any attempt to estimate a total number of killings under communist regimes depends greatly on definitions, and the idea to group together different countries such as Afghanistan and Hungary has no adequate explanation.[33] During the Cold War era, some authors (Todd Culberston), dissidents (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), and anti-communists in general have attempted to make both country-specific and global estimates, although they were mostly unreliable and inflated, as shown by the 1990s and beyond. Scholars of communism have mainly focused on individual countries, and genocide scholars have attempted to provide a more global perspective, while maintaining that their goal is not reliability but establishing patterns.[32] Scholars of communism have debated on estimates for the Soviet Union, not for all communist regimes, an attempt which was popularized by the introduction to The Black Book of Communism and was controversial.[33] Among them, Soviet specialists Michael Ellman and J. Arch Getty have criticized the estimates for relying on émigre sources, hearsay, and rumor as evidence,[34] and cautioned that historians should instead utilize archive material.[35] Such scholars distinguish between historians who base their research on archive materials, and those whose estimates are based on witnesses evidence and other data that is unreliable.[36] Soviet specialist Stephen G. Wheatcroft says that historians relied on Solzhenitsyn to support their higher estimates but research in the state archives vindicated the lower estimates, while adding that the popular press has continued to include serious errors that should not be cited, or relied on, in academia.[37] Rummel was also another widely used and cited source[aa] but not reliable about estimates.[32]

Notable estimate attempts include the following:[aa]

  • In 1978, journalist Todd Culbertson wrote an article in The Richmond News Leader, republished in Human Events, in which he stated that “[a]vailable evidence indicates that perhaps 100 million persons have been destroyed by the Communists; the imperviousness of the Iron and Bamboo curtains prevents a more definitive figure.”[ab][aa]
  • In 1985, John Lenczowski, director of European and Soviet Affairs at the United States National Security Council, wrote an article in The Christian Science Monitor in which he stated that the “number of people murdered by communist regimes is estimated at between 60 million and 150 million, with the higher figure probably more accurate in light of recent scholarship.”[ac]
  • In 1993, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, wrote that “the failed effort to build communism in the twentieth century consumed the lives of almost 60,000,000.”[38][aa][ad]
  • In 1994, Rummel’s book Death by Government included about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by communist democide from 1900 to 1987.[39] This total did not include deaths from the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–1961 due to Rummel’s then belief that “although Mao’s policies were responsible for the famine, he was mislead about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies.”[40][41] In 2004, historian Tomislav Dulić criticized Rummel’s estimate of the number killed in Tito’s Yugoslavia as an overestimation based on the inclusion of low-quality sources, and stated that Rummel’s other estimates may suffer from the same problem if he used similar sources for them.[42] Rummel responded with a critique of Dulić’s analysis[43] but was not convincing.[44] In 2005, a retired Rummel revised upward his total for communist democide between 1900 and 1999 from 110 million to about 148 million due to additional information about Mao’s culpability in the Great Chinese Famine from Mao: The Unknown Story, including Jon Halliday and Jung Chang‘s estimated 38 million famine deaths.[40][41] Karlsson describes Rummel’s estimates as being on the fringe, stating that “they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history”, and mainly discusses them “on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere.”[45]
  • In 1997, historian Stéphane Courtois‘s introduction to The Black Book of Communism, an impactful yet controversial[33] work written about the history of communism in the 20th century,[46] gave a “rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates” approaching 100 million killed. The subtotals listed by Courtois added up to 94.36 million killed.[ae] Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, contributing authors to the book, criticized Courtois as obsessed with reaching a 100 million overall total.[47] In his foreword to the 1999 English edition, Martin Malia wrote that “a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million.”[af] Courtois’ attempt to equate Nazism and communist regimes was controversial, and remains on the fringes, on both scientific and moral grounds.[48][ag]
  • In 2005, associate professor Benjamin Valentino stated that the number of non-combatants killed by communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia alone ranged from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[ah][ai] Citing Rummel and others,[aa] Valentino wrote that the “highest end of the plausible range of deaths attributed to communist regimes” was up to 110 million.”[ah]
  • In 2010, professor of economics Steven Rosefielde wrote in Red Holocaust that the internal contradictions of communist regimes caused the killing of approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more.[49]
  • In 2011, self-described atrocitiologist Matthew White published his rough total of 70 million “people who died under communist regimes from execution, labor camps, famine, ethnic cleansing, and desperate flight in leaky boats”, not counting those killed in wars.[aj]
  • In 2012, academic Alex J. Bellamy wrote that a “conservative estimate puts the total number of civilians deliberately killed by communists after the Second World War between 6.7 million and 15.5 million people, with the true figure probably much higher.”[ak]
  • In 2014, professor of Chinese politics Julia Strauss wrote that while there was the beginning of a scholarly consensus on figures of around 20 million killed in the Soviet Union and 2–3 million in Cambodia, there was no such consensus on numbers for China.[al]
  • In 2016, the Dissident blog of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile ranges of estimates using sources from 1976 to 2010, and wrote that the overall range “spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000” killed, with 100 million the most commonly cited figure.[am]
  • In 2017, historian Stephen Kotkin wrote in The Wall Street Journal that communist regimes killed at least 65 million people between 1917 and 2017, commenting: “Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering.”[50][an]

Criticism is mostly focused on three aspects, namely that the estimates are based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable,[51][52][53] the figures are skewed to higher possible values,[51][54][ao] and victims of civil wars, Holodomor, and other famines, and wars involving communist governments should not be counted.[51][55][56] Criticism of the high-end estimates such as Rummel’s have focused on two aspects, namely his choice of data sources and his statistical approach. Historical sources Rummel based his estimates upon can rarely serve as sources of reliable figures.[57] The statistical approach Rummel used to analyze big sets of diverse estimates may lead to dilution of useful data with noisy ones.[57][58]

Another common criticism, as articulated by anthropologist and former European communist regimes specialist Kristen Ghodsee and other scholars, is that the body-counting reflects an anti-communist point of view and is mainly approached by anti-communist scholars, and is part of the popular “victims of communism” narrative,[59][60] with 100 million being the most common, popularly used estimate,[61][ap] which is used not only to discredit the communist movement but the whole political left.[62][aq] Anti-communist organizations seek to institutionalize the “victims of communism” narrative as a double genocide theory, or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and those killed by communist regimes (class murder).[59][63] Alongside philosopher Scott Sehon, Ghodsee wrote that “quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes.”[63] The same body-counting can be easily applied to other ideologies or systems, such as capitalism.[61][ar][63][as]

Proposed causes

Main article: Criticism of communist party rule

Ideology

Klas-Göran Karlsson writes: “Ideologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes independently. However, individuals, collectives and states that have defined themselves as communist have committed crimes in the name of communist ideology, or without naming communism as the direct source of motivation for their crimes.”[64] Academics such as Daniel Goldhagen,[65] Richard Pipes,[66] and John Gray[67] have written books about communist regimes for a popular audience, and scholars such as Rudolph Rummel consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings.[51][68] In the introduction to The Black Book of CommunismStéphane Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, stating that “Communist regimes … turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government”,[69] while adding that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.[70]The last issue, printed in red ink, of Karl Marx’s journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung from 19 May 1849

Professor Mark Bradley writes that communist theory and practice has often been in tension with human rights and most communist states followed the lead of Karl Marx in rejecting “Enlightenment-era inalienable individual political and civil rights” in favor of “collective economic and social rights.”[z] Christopher J. Finlay posits that Marxism legitimates violence without any clear limiting principle because it rejects moral and ethical norms as constructs of the dominant class, and states that “it would be conceivable for revolutionaries to commit atrocious crimes in bringing about a socialist system, with the belief that their crimes will be retroactively absolved by the new system of ethics put in place by the proletariat.”[at] Rustam Singh states that Marx had alluded to the possibility of peaceful revolution; after the failed Revolutions of 1848, Singh states that Marx emphasized the need for violent revolution and revolutionary terror.[au]

Literary historian George Watson cited an 1849 article written by Friedrich Engels called “The Hungarian Struggle” and published in Marx’s journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung, stating that the writings of Engels and others show that “the Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers’ revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.”[71][av] Watson’s claims have been criticized for dubious evidence by Robert Grant, who commented that “what Marx and Engels are calling for is … at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson’s citations, that actual mass killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere ‘absorption’ or ‘assimilation’, is in question.”[72] Talking about Engels’ 1849 article, historian Andrzej Walicki states: “It is difficult to deny that this was an outright call for genocide.”[73] Jean-François Revel writes that Joseph Stalin recommended study of the 1849 Engels article in his 1924 book On Lenin and Leninism.[aw]

According to Rummel, the killings committed by communist regimes can best be explained as the result of the marriage between absolute power and the absolutist ideology of Marxism.[74] Rummel states that “communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and its chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusades against nonbelievers. What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state’s instruments of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and the family.”[75] Rummels writes that Marxist communists saw the construction of their utopia as “though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And, thus, this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths.”[74]

Benjamin Valentino writes that “apparently high levels of political support for murderous regimes and leaders should not automatically be equated with support for mass killing itself. Individuals are capable of supporting violent regimes or leaders while remaining indifferent or even opposed to specific policies that these regimes and carried out.” Valentino quotes Vladimir Brovkin as saying that “a vote for the Bolsheviks in 1917 was not a vote for Red Terror or even a vote for a dictatorship of the proletariat.”[76] According to Valentino, such strategies were so violent because they economically dispossess large numbers of people,[ax][s] commenting: “Social transformations of this speed and magnitude have been associated with mass killing for two primary reasons. First, the massive social dislocations produced by such changes have often led to economic collapseepidemics, and, most important, widespread famines. … The second reason that communist regimes bent on the radical transformation of society have been linked to mass killing is that the revolutionary changes they have pursued have clashed inexorably with the fundamental interests of large segments of their populations. Few people have proved willing to accept such far-reaching sacrifices without intense levels of coercion.”[77] According to Jacques Sémelin, “communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the ‘social body’ from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire.[ay]

Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley write that, especially in Joseph Stalin‘s Soviet Union, Mao Zedong‘s China, and Pol Pot‘s Cambodia, a fanatical certainty that socialism could be made to work motivated communist leaders in “the ruthless dehumanization of their enemies, who could be suppressed because they were ‘objectively’ and ‘historically’ wrong. Furthermore, if events did not work out as they were supposed to, then that was because class enemies, foreign spies and saboteurs, or worst of all, internal traitors were wrecking the plan. Under no circumstances could it be admitted that the vision itself might be unworkable, because that meant capitulation to the forces of reaction.”[az] Michael Mann writes that communist party members were “ideologically driven, believing that in order to create a new socialist society, they must lead in socialist zeal. Killings were often popular, the rank-and-file as keen to exceed killing quotas as production quotas.”[ba] According to Vladimir Tismăneanu, “the Communist project, in such countries as the USSR, China, Cuba, Romania, or Albania, was based precisely on the conviction that certain social groups were irretrievably alien and deservedly murdered.”[bb] Alex Bellamy writes that “communism’s ideology of selective extermination” of target groups was first developed and applied by Joseph Stalin but that “each of the communist regimes that massacred large numbers of civilians during the Cold War developed their own distinctive account”,[bc] while Steven T. Katz states that distinctions based on class and nationality, stigmatized and stereotyped in various ways, created an “otherness” for victims of communist rule that was important for legitimating oppression and death.[bd] Martin Shaw writes that “nationalist ideas were at the heart of many mass killings by Communist states”, beginning with Stalin’s “new nationalist doctrine of ‘socialism in one country'”, and killing by revolutionary movements in the Third World was done in the name of national liberation.[be]

Political system

Prosecutor General Andrey Vyshinsky (centre) reading the 1937 indictment against Karl Radek during the second Moscow Trial

Anne Applebaum writes that “without exception, the Leninist belief in the one-party state was and is characteristic of every communist regime” and “the Bolshevik use of violence was repeated in every communist revolution.” Phrases said by Vladimir Lenin and Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky were deployed all over the world. Applebaum states that as late as 1976, Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed a Red Terror in Ethiopia.[78] To his colleagues in the Bolshevik government, Lenin was quoted as saying: “If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?”[79]

Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin’s purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Lenin, who personally ordered the killing of local groups of class enemy hostages.[80] Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, architect of perestroika and glasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political Repression, elaborates on this point, stating: “The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest.”[81] Historian Robert Gellately concurs, commenting: “To put it another way, Stalin initiated very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed.”[82]

Stephen Hicks of Rockford College ascribes the violence characteristic of 20th-century socialist rule to these collectivist regimes’ abandonment of protections of civil rights and rejection of the values of civil society. Hicks writes that whereas “in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives”, in socialism “practice has time and again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships prior to the twentieth century. Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale.”[83][undue weight? – discuss]

Eric D. Weitz says that the mass killing in communist states is a natural consequence of the failure of the rule of law, seen commonly during periods of social upheaval in the 20th century. For both communist and non-communist mass killings, “genocides occurred at moments of extreme social crisis, often generated by the very policies of the regimes”,[84] and are not inevitable but are political decisions.[84] Steven Rosefielde writes that communist rulers had to choose between changing course and “terror-command” and more often than not chose the latter.[bf] Michael Mann posits that a lack of institutionalized authority structures meant that a chaotic mix of both centralized control and party factionalism were factors in the killing.[ba]

Leaders

Professor Matthew Krain states that many scholars have pointed to revolutions and civil wars as providing the opportunity for radical leaders and ideologies to gain power and the preconditions for mass killing by the state.[bg] Professor Nam Kyu Kim writes that exclusionary ideologies are critical to explaining mass killing, but the organizational capabilities and individual characteristics of revolutionary leaders, including their attitudes towards risk and violence, are also important. Besides opening up political opportunities for new leaders to eliminate their political opponents, revolutions bring to power leaders who are more apt to commit large-scale acts of violence against civilians in order to legitimize and strengthen their own power.[85] Genocide scholar Adam Jones states that the Russian Civil War was very influential on the emergence of leaders like Stalin and it also accustomed people to “harshness, cruelty, terror.”[bh] Martin Malia called the “brutal conditioning” of the two World Wars important to understanding communist violence, although not its source.[86]

Historian Helen Rappaport describes Nikolay Yezhov, the bureaucrat who was in charge of the NKVD during the Great Purge, as a physically diminutive figure of “limited intelligence” and “narrow political understanding. … Like other instigators of mass murder throughout history, [he] compensated for his lack of physical stature with a pathological cruelty and the use of brute terror.”[87] Russian and world history scholar John M. Thompson places personal responsibility directly on Joseph Stalin. According to him, “much of what occurred only makes sense if it stemmed in part from the disturbed mentality, pathological cruelty, and extreme paranoia of Stalin himself. Insecure, despite having established a dictatorship over the party and country, hostile and defensive when confronted with criticism of the excesses of collectivization and the sacrifices required by high-tempo industrialization, and deeply suspicious that past, present, and even yet unknown future opponents were plotting against him, Stalin began to act as a person beleaguered. He soon struck back at enemies, real or imaginary.”[88] Professors Pablo Montagnes and Stephane Wolton posit that the purges in the Soviet Union and China can be attributed to the personalist leadership of Stalin and Mao, who were incentivized by having both control of the security apparatus used to carry out the purges and control of the appointment of replacements for those purged.[bi] Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek attributes Mao allegedly viewing human life as disposable to his “cosmic perspective” on humanity.[bj]

Soviet Union

Main article: Political repression in the Soviet UnionSign for the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial about repression in the Soviet Union at Lubyanka Square which was erected in 1990 by the human rights group Memorial in remembrance of the more than 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow during the Great Terror

Adam Jones writes that “there is very little in the record of human experience to match the violence which was unleashed between 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, and 1953, when Joseph Stalin died and the Soviet Union moved to adopt a more restrained and largely non-murderous domestic policy.” Jones states that the exceptions to this were the Khmer Rouge (in relative terms) and Mao’s rule in China (in absolute terms).[89]

Stephen G. Wheatcroft says that prior to the opening of the Soviet archives for historical research, “our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor” and that some scholars who wish to maintain pre-1991 high estimates are “finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data”, and instead “hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge”, although he acknowledged that even the figures estimated from the additional documents are not “final or definitive.”[90][91] In the 2007 revision of his book The Great Terror, Robert Conquest estimates that while exact numbers will never be certain, the communist leaders of the Soviet Union were responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths.[bk]

Some historians attempt to make separate estimates for different periods of Soviet history, with casualty estimates varying widely. Timothy D. Snyder estimates 6 million for the Stalinist period.[92] Alec Nove estimates 8.1 million for the period ending in 1937.[93] Stéphane Courtois estimates 20 million[69] and Alexander Yakovlev estimates 20-25 million for the entire period of Soviet rule.[bl] Rudolph Rummel estimates 61 million for the 1917–1987 period.[94]

Red Terror

See also: DecossackizationExecution of the Romanov familyRed TerrorTambov Rebellion, and Vladimir Lenin’s Hanging Order

The Red Terror was a period of political repression and executions carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. During this period, the political police (the Cheka) conducted summary executions of tens of thousands of “enemies of the people.”[95][96][97][98][99] Many victims were “bourgeois hostages” rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[100] Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion of Baltic Fleet sailors and the Tambov Rebellion of Russian peasants. Professor Donald Rayfield writes that “the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions.”[101] A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[102][103]

According to Nicolas Werth, the policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to “eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory.”[104] In the early months of 1919, perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[105][106] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[107] Historian Michael Kort wrote: “During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000.”[108]

Joseph Stalin

Main article: Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

Estimates of the number of deaths which were brought about by Stalin’s rule are hotly debated by scholars in the fields of Soviet and Communist studies.[109][110] Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations which followed it, some historians estimated that the number of people who were killed by Stalin’s regime was 20 million or higher.[92][111][112] Michael Parenti writes that estimates on the Stalinist death toll vary widely in part because such estimates are based on anecdotes in absence of reliable evidence and “speculations by writers who never reveal how they arrive at such figures.”[113]

After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives became available, containing official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths which occurred during kulak forced settlements in the Soviet Union, for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[bm] According to Golfo Alexopoulos, Anne ApplebaumOleg Khlevniuk, and Michael Ellman, official Soviet documentation of Gulag deaths is widely considered inadequate, as they write that the government frequently released prisoners on the edge of death in order to avoid officially counting them.[114][115] A 1993 study of archival data by J. Arch Getty et al. showed that a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953.[116] In 2010, Steven Rosefielde posited that this number has to be augmented by 19.4 percent in light of more complete archival evidence to 1,258,537, with the best estimate of Gulag deaths being 1.6 million from 1929 to 1953 when excess mortality is taken into account.[117] Alexopolous estimates a much higher total of at least 6 million dying in the Gulag or shortly after release.[118] Dan Healey has called her work a “challenge to the emergent scholarly consensus”,[bn] while Jeffrey Hardy has criticized Alexopoulos for basing her assertions primarily on indirect and misinterpreted evidence.[119]

According to historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Stalin’s regime can be charged with causing the purposive deaths of about a million people.[120] Wheatcroft excludes all famine deaths as purposive deaths and posits that those which qualify fit more closely the category of execution rather than murder.[120] Others posit that some of the actions of Stalin’s regime, not only those during the Holodomor but also dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular ethnic groups, such as the Polish operation of the NKVD, can be considered as genocide[121][122] at least in its loose definition.[123] Modern data for the whole of Stalin’s rule was summarized by Timothy Snyder, who stated that under the Stalinist regime there were six million direct deaths and nine million in total, including the deaths from deportation, hunger, and Gulag deaths.[bo] Ellman attributes roughly 3 million deaths to the Stalinist regime, excluding excess mortality from famine, disease, and war.[124] Several popular press authors, among them Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, Soviet/Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov, and the director of Yale‘s “Annals of Communism” series Jonathan Brent, still put the death toll from Stalin at about 20 million.[bp][bq][br][bs][bt]

Mass deportations of ethnic minorities

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet UnionSoviet leader Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti Beria (in the foreground), who was responsible for mass deportations of ethnic minorities as head of the NKVD

The Soviet government during Stalin’s rule conducted a series of deportations on an enormous scale that significantly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Deportations took place under extremely harsh conditions, often in cattle carriages, with hundreds of thousands of deportees dying en route.[125] Some experts estimate that the proportion of deaths from the deportations could be as high as one in three in certain cases.[bu][126] Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention in 1948 and coined genocide, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the ChechensIngush peopleVolga GermansCrimean TatarsKalmyks, and Karachays.[127]

Regarding the fate of the Crimean Tatars, Amir Weiner of Stanford University writes that the policy could be classified as ethnic cleansing. In the book Century of Genocide, Lyman H. Legters writes: “We cannot properly speak of a completed genocide, only of a process that was genocidal in its potentiality.”[128] In contrast to this view, Jon K. Chang posits that the deportations had been in fact based on genocides based on ethnicity and that “social historians” in the West have failed to champion the rights of marginalized ethnicities in the Soviet Union.[129] This view is supported by several countries. On 12 December 2015, the Ukrainian Parliament issued a resolution recognizing the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars (the Sürgünlik) as genocide and established the 18th of May as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Crimean Tatar Genocide.[130] The Parliament of Latvia recognized the event as an act of genocide on 9 May 2019.[131][132] The Parliament of Lithuania did the same on 6 June 2019.[133] The Parliament of Canada passed a motion on 10 June 2019, recognizing the Crimean Tatar deportation as a genocide perpetrated by Soviet dictator Stalin, designating the 18th of May to be a day of remembrance.[134] The deportation of Chechens and Ingush was acknowledged by the European Parliament as an act of genocide in 2004, stating:[135] “Believes that the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on the orders of Stalin constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948.”[136]

Soviet famine of 1932–1933

Main article: Soviet famine of 1932–1933See also: Collectivization in the Soviet UnionDekulakizationHolodomorHolodomor genocide question, and Kazakh famine of 1931–1933

Within the Soviet Union, forced changes in agricultural policies (collectivization), confiscations of grain and droughts caused the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR (Holodomor), North Caucasus KraiVolga region, and Kazakh SSR.[137][138][139] The famine was most severe in Ukrainian, where it is often referenced as the Holodomor. A significant portion of the famine victims (3.3 to 7.5 million) were Ukrainians.[140][141][142] Another part of the famine was that in Kazakhstan, also known as the Kazakh catastrophe, when more than 1.3 million ethnic Kazakhs (about 38% of the population) died.[143][144]

While there is still a debate among scholars on whether the Holodomor was a genocide, some scholars say the Stalinist policies that caused the famine may have been designed as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism[145] and may fall under the legal definition of genocide by the United Nations‘s Genocide Convention.[137][146][147][148] The famine was officially recognized as genocide by the Ukraine and other governments.[149][bv] In a draft resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared that the famine was caused by the “cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime” and was responsible for the deaths of “millions of innocent people” in Ukraine, BelarusKazakhstanMoldova, and Russia. Relative to its population, Kazakhstan is believed to have been the most adversely affected.[150] Regarding the Kazakh famine, Michael Ellman states that it “seems to be an example of ‘negligent genocide’ which falls outside the scope of the UN Convention of genocide.”[151]

Great Purge

Main article: Great PurgeSee also: Mass graves from Soviet mass executionsMass operations of the NKVD, and Stalinist repressions in MongoliaMass graves dating from 1937–1938 opened up and hundreds of bodies exhumed for identification by family members[152]

Stalin’s attempts to solidify his position as leader of the Soviet Union led to an escalation of detentions and executions, climaxing in 1937–1938, a period sometimes referred to as the Yezhovshchina’ after Cheka official Nikolay Yezhov, or Yezhov era, and continuing until Stalin’s death in 1953. Around 700,000 of these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head.[153] Others perished from beatings and torture while in “investigative custody”[154] and in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure, and overwork.[bw]

Arrests were typically made citing Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) about counter-revolutionary laws, which included failure to report treasonous actions and in an amendment added in 1937 failing to fulfill one’s appointed duties. In the cases investigated by the State Security Department of the NKVD from October 1936 to November 1938, at least 1,710,000 people were arrested and 724,000 people executed.[155] Modern historical studies estimate a total number of repression deaths during 1937–1938 as 950,000–1,200,000. These figures take into account the incompleteness of official archival data and include both execution deaths and Gulag deaths during that period.[bw] Former kulaks and their families made up the majority of victims, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed.[156]

The NKVD conducted a series of national operations which targeted some ethnic groups.[157] A total of 350,000 were arrested and 247,157 were executed.[158] Of these, the Polish operation of the NKVD, which targeted the members of Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, appears to have been the largest, with 140,000 arrests and 111,000 executions.[157] Although these operations might well constitute genocide as defined by the United Nations convention,[157] or “a mini-genocide” according to Simon Sebag Montefiore,[158] there is as yet no authoritative ruling on the legal characterization of these events.[123] Citing church documents, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over 100,000 priests, monks, and nuns were executed during this time.[159][160] Regarding the persecution of clergy, Michael Ellman has stated that “the 1937–38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify as genocide.”[161] In the summer and autumn of 1937, Stalin sent NKVD agents to the Mongolian People’s Republic and engineered a Mongolian Great Terror[162] in which some 22,000[163] or 35,000[164] people were executed. Around 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas.[163] In Belarus, mass graves for several thousand civilians killed by the NKVD between 1937 and 1941 were discovered in 1988 at Kurapaty.[165]

Soviet killings during World War II

Main article: Soviet war crimesSee also: Katyn massacreNKVD prisoner massacresOccupation of the Baltic states, and Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946)

Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, NKVD task forces started removing “Soviet-hostile elements” from the conquered territories.[166] The NKVD systematically practiced torture which often resulted in death.[167][168] According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, 150,000 Polish citizens perished due to Soviet repression during the war.[169][170] The most notorious killings occurred in the spring of 1940, when the NKVD executed some 21,857 Polish POWs and intellectual leaders in what has become known as the Katyn massacre.[171][172][173] Executions were also carried out after the annexation of the Baltic states.[174] During the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents by the tens of thousands before fleeing from the advancing Axis powers forces.[175] Memorial complexes have been built at NKVD execution sites at Katyn and Mednoye in Russia, as well as a “third killing field” at Piatykhatky, Ukraine.[176]

People’s Republic of China

Main article: History of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976)See also: Chinese Civil WarList of massacres in China, and Mass killings of landlords under Mao ZedongA large portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen

The Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949 after a long and bloody civil war between communists and the nationalist Kuomintang. There is a general consensus among historians that after Mao Zedong seized power, his policies and political purges directly or indirectly caused the deaths of tens of millions of people.[177][178][179] Based on the Soviets’ experience, Mao considered violence to be necessary in order to achieve an ideal society that would be derived from Marxism and as a result he planned and executed violence on a grand scale.[180][181]

Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries

Main articles: Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Chinese Land Reform

The first large-scale killings under Mao took place during his land reform and the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries. According to Daniel Goldhagen, official study materials published in 1948 show that Mao envisaged that “one-tenth of the peasants”, or about 50,000,000, “would have to be destroyed” to facilitate agrarian reform.[182] The exact number of people who were killed during Mao’s land reform is believed to have been lower; according to Rudolph Rummel and Philip Short, at least one million people were killed.[180][183] The suppression of counter-revolutionaries targeted mainly former Kuomintang officials and intellectuals who were suspected of disloyalty.[184] According to Yang Kuisong, at least 712,000 people were executed and 1,290,000 were imprisoned in labor camps known as Laogai.[185]

Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine

This group of sections that follow possibly contains original research. Individual articles are not described as mass killings (the Great Chinese Famine, which accounts for about 50% of what is called by some authors “Communist death toll”, is not described as mass killing), and are not included in genocide scholar Barbara Harff‘s global database of mass killings, which is the most frequently used by genocide scholars and includes politicides; one of the few exception is the Cambodian genocide, which is also one of the few events on which scholars agree on it being genocide, and indeed it is included in the database as politicide and genocide. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Main articles: Great Chinese Famine and Great Leap Forward

Benjamin Valentino posits that the Great Leap Forward was a cause of the Great Chinese Famine and the worst effects of the famine were steered towards the regime’s enemies.[186] Those who were labeled “black elements” (religious leaders, rightists, and rich peasants) in earlier campaigns died in the greatest numbers because they were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food.[186] In Mao’s Great Famine, historian Frank Dikötter writes that “coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward” and it “motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.”[187] Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people were summarily killed or tortured to death during this period.[188] His research in local and provincial Chinese archives indicates the death toll was at least 45 million: “In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death.”[189] In a secret meeting at Shanghai in 1959, Mao issued the order to procure one third of all grain from the countryside, saying: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”[189] In light of additional evidence of Mao’s culpability, Rummel added those killed by the Great Famine to his total for Mao’s democide for a total of 77 million killed.[41][bx]

Tibet

Main article: History of Tibet (1950–present)

According to Jean-Louis Margolin in The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese communists carried out a cultural genocide against the Tibetans. Margolin states that the killings were proportionally larger in Tibet than they were in China proper and “one can legitimately speak of genocidal massacres because of the numbers that were involved.”[190] According to the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration, “Tibetans were not only shot, but they were also beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded.”[190] Adam Jones, a scholar who specializes in genocide, states that after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Chinese authorized struggle sessions against reactionaries, during which “communist cadres denounced, tortured, and frequently executed enemies of the people.” These sessions resulted in 92,000 deaths out of a total population of about 6 million. These deaths, Jones stressed, may not only be seen as a genocide, but they may also be seen as an eliticide, meaning “targeting the better educated and leadership oriented elements among the Tibetan population.”[191] Patrick French, the former director of the Free Tibet Campaign in London, writes that the Free Tibet Campaign and other groups have claimed that a total of 1.2 million Tibetans were killed by the Chinese since 1950 but after examining archives in Dharamsala, he found “no evidence to support that figure.”[192] French states that a reliable alternative number is unlikely to be known but estimates that as many as half a million Tibetans died “as a ‘direct result’ of the policies of the People’s Republic of China”, using historian Warren Smith’s estimate of 200,000 people who are missing from population statistics in the Tibet Autonomous Region and extending that rate to the borderland regions.[193]

Cultural Revolution

Main article: Cultural Revolution

Sinologists Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals estimate that between 750,000 and 1.5 million people were killed in the violence of the Cultural Revolution in rural China alone.[194] Mao’s Red Guards were given carte blanche to abuse and kill people who were perceived to be enemies of the revolution.[195] Sociologist Yang Su has written that these mass killing were an outcome of “the paradox of state sponsorship and state failure”; according to Yang, mass killings were concentrated in rural areas in the months after the establishment of county revolutionary committees, with mass killing being more likely in communities with more local party members. Repression by the local organizations may have been in response to the rhetoric of violence promoted by the provincial capitals as a result of mass factionalism in those capitals, and the “peaks of mass killings coincided with two announcements from the party center in July 1968 banning factional armed battles and disbanding mass organizations”;[by] Yang writes that Mao’s government designated class enemies using an artificial and arbitrary standard to accomplish two political tasks: “mobilizing mass compliance and resolving elite conflict”, while the elastic nature of the category allowed it to “take on a genocidal dimension under extraordinary circumstances.”[bz] Political scientists Evgeny Finkel and Scott Straus write that Su estimates up to three million people were “murdered by their neighbors in collective killings and struggle rallies. This happened even though the central government had not issued any mass killing orders or policies.”[196]

In August 1966, over 100 teachers were murdered by their students in western Beijing.[197]

Tiananmen Square

Main article: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

Jean-Louis Margolin states that under Deng Xiaoping, at least 1,000 people were killed in Beijing and hundreds of people were also executed in the countryside after his government crushed demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.[198] According to Louisa Lim in 2014, a group of victims’ relatives in China called the “Tiananmen Mothers” has confirmed the identities of more than 200 of those who were killed.[199] Alex Bellamy writes that this “tragedy marks the last time in which an episode of mass killing in East Asia was terminated by the perpetrators themselves, judging that they had succeeded.”[200]

  • Replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue in Hong Kong’s June 4th Museum
  • A memorial to the 1989 Tiananmen Square events in the Dominican Square in Wrocław, Poland
  • Statue located in Ávila, Spain recalling the events of Tiananmen Square

Cambodia

Main article: Cambodian genocideSee also: Cambodian Civil WarDemocratic KampucheaKhmer Rouge, and Killing FieldsSkulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Cambodia

The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and their bodies were buried by the Khmer Rouge regime during its rule of the country, which lasted from 1975 to 1979, after the end of the Cambodian Civil War. Sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as “the purest genocide of the Cold War era.”[201] The results of a demographic study of the Cambodian genocide concluded that the nationwide death toll from 1975 to 1979 amounted to 1,671,000 to 1,871,000, or 21 to 24 percent of the total Cambodian population as it was estimated to number before the Khmer Rouge took power.[202] According to Ben Kiernan, the number of deaths which were specifically caused by execution is still unknown because many victims died from starvation, disease and overwork.[202] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a “most likely” figure of 2.2 million. After spending five years researching about 20,000 grave sites, he posited that “these mass graves contain the remains of 1,112,829 victims of execution.”[203] A study by French demographer Marek Sliwinski calculated slightly fewer than 2 million unnatural deaths under the Khmer Rouge out of a 1975 Cambodian population of 7.8 million, with 33.5% of Cambodian men dying under the Khmer Rouge compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women.[204] The number of suspected victims of execution who were found in 23,745 mass graves is estimated to be 1.3 million according to a 2009 academic source. Execution is believed to account for roughly 60% of the total death toll during the genocide, with other victims succumbing to starvation or disease.[205]

Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, states that the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime bears a stronger resemblance to “an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism”, or fascism, rather than communism.[206] Responding to Ben Kiernan‘s “argument that Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea regime was more racist and generically totalitarian than Marxist or specifically Communist”, Steve Heder states that the example of such racialist thought as it is applied in relation to the minority Cham people echoed “Marx’s definition of a historyless people doomed to extinction in the name of progress” and it was therefore a part of general concepts of class and class struggle.[207] Craig Etcheson writes that data on the distribution and origin of the mass graves as well as internal Khmer Rouge security documents, leads to the conclusion that “most of the violence was carried out pursuant to orders from the highest political authorities of the Communist Party of Kampuchea”, rather than being the result of the “spontaneous excesses of a vengeful, undisciplined peasant army”,[ca] while French historian Henri Locard writes that the fascist label was applied to the Khmer Rouge by the Communist Party of Vietnam as a form of revisionism, but the repression which existed under the rule of the Khmer Rouge was “similar (if significantly more lethal) to the repression in all communist regimes.”[204] Daniel Goldhagen states that the Khmer Rouge were xenophobic because they believed that the Khmer people were “the one authentic people capable of building true communism.”[208] Steven Rosefielde writes that Democratic Kampuchea was the deadliest of all communist regimes on a per capita basis, primarily because it “lacked a viable productive core” and it “failed to set boundaries on mass murder.”[209]

Other states

Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr write: “Most Marxist–Leninist regimes which came to power through protracted armed struggle in the postwar period perpetrated one or more politicides, though of vastly different magnitudes.”[cb] According to Benjamin Valentino, most regimes that described themselves as communist did not commit mass killings, but in communist states such as BulgariaRomania, and East Germany, mass killings were committed on a scale which was smaller than his standard of 50,000 people who were killed within a period of five years, although the lack of documentation prevents a definitive judgement about the scale of these events and the motives of their perpetrators.[210] Atsushi Tago and Frank Wayman write that because democide is broader than mass killing or genocide, most communist regimes can be said to have engaged in it, including the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, North Vietnam, East Germany, PolandCzechoslovakiaHungaryNorth KoreaCubaLaosAlbania, and Yugoslavia.[211]

People’s Republic of Bulgaria

According to Valentino, between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of a campaign of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement.[212] In his book History of Communism in Bulgaria, Dinyu Sharlanov accounts for about 31,000 people who were killed by the regime between 1944 and 1989.[213][214]

East Germany

Further information: NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–1950

According to Valentino, between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of the Soviet denazification campaign; other scholars posit that these estimates are inflated.[212][215][216]A memorial to dead prisoners at an NKVD special camp in Germany

Immediately after World War IIdenazification commenced in Allied-occupied Germany and regions the Nazis had annexed. In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, the NKVD established prison camps, usually in abandoned Nazi concentration camps, and they used them to intern alleged Nazis and Nazi German officials, along with some landlords and Prussian Junkers. According to files and data released by the Soviet Ministry for the Interior in 1990, 123,000 Germans and 35,000 citizens of other nations were detained. Of these prisoners, a total of 786 people were shot and 43,035 people died of various causes. Most of the deaths were not direct killings but were caused by outbreaks of dysentery and tuberculosis. Deaths from starvation also occurred on a large scale, particularly from late 1946 to early 1947, but these deaths do not appear to have been deliberate killings because food shortages were widespread in the Soviet occupation zone. The prisoners in the “silence camps”, as the NKVD special camps were called, did not have access to the black market and were only able to get food that was handed to them by the authorities. Some prisoners were executed and others may have been tortured to death. In this context, it is difficult to determine if the prisoner deaths in the silence camps can be categorized as mass killings. It is also difficult to determine how many of the dead were Germans, East Germans, or members of other nationalities.[217][218]

East Germany’s government erected the Berlin Wall following the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Even though crossing between East Germany and West Germany was possible for motivated and approved travelers, thousands of East Germans tried to defect by illegally crossing the wall. Of these, between 136 and 227 people were killed by the Berlin Wall’s guards during the years of the wall’s existence (1961-1989).[219][220]

Socialist Republic of Romania

See also: Bărăgan deportations and Danube-Black Sea Canal § Forced labor and repression

According to Valentino, between 60,000 and 300,000 people may have been killed in Romania beginning in 1945 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression.[212]

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

See also: Barbara Pit massacreBleiburg repatriationsFoibe massacresGoli OtokMacelj massacreKočevski Rog massacre, and Tezno massacreFurther information: Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–45Leftist errors, and Titoism

The communist regime of Josip Broz Tito bloodily repressed opponents and committed several massacres of prisoners of war after the World War II. The European Public Hearing on Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes reports: “The decision to ‘annihilate’ opponents must had been adopted in the closest circles of the Yugoslav state leadership, and the order was certainly issued by the Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army Josip Broz Tito, although it is not known when or in what form.”[221][222][223][224][cc]

Dominic McGoldrick writes that as the head of a “highly centralised and oppressive” dictatorship, Tito wielded tremendous power in Yugoslavia, with his dictatorial rule administered through an elaborate bureaucracy which routinely suppressed human rights.[224] Eliott Behar states that “Tito’s Yugoslavia was a tightly controlled police state”,[225] and outside the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia had more political prisoners than all of the rest of Eastern Europe combined, according to David Mates.[226] Tito’s secret police was modelled on the Soviet KGB. Its members were ever-present and they often acted extrajudicially,[227] with victims including middle-class intellectuals, liberals, and democrats.[228] Yugoslavia was a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights but scant regard was paid to some of its provisions.[229]

North Korea

Further information: Human rights in North KoreaKwallisoNorth Korean famine, and Prisons in North Korea

According to Rudolph Rummel, forced labor, executions, and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from 1948 to 1987.[230] Others have estimated that 400,000 people died in North Korea’s concentration camps alone.[231] A wide range of atrocities have been committed in the camps including forced abortions, infanticide and torture. Former International Criminal Court judge Thomas Buergenthal, who was one of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea‘s authors and a child survivor of Auschwitz, told The Washington Post that “conditions in the [North] Korean prison camps are as terrible, or even worse, than those I saw and experienced in my youth in these Nazi camps and in my long professional career in the human rights field.”[232] Pierre Rigoulot estimates 100,000 executions, 1.5 million deaths through concentration camps and slave labor, and 500,000 deaths from famine.[233] During the Korean War, the DPRK “liquidated” 29,000 civilians during the North Korean occupation of South Korea, June to September, 1950.[234]

The famine, which claimed as many as one million lives, has been described as the result of the economic policies pursued by the North Korean government[235] and deliberate “terror-starvation”;[236] in 2010, Steven Rosefielde stated that the Red Holocaust “still persists in North Korea”, as Kim Jong Il “refuses to abandon mass killing.”[237] Adam Jones cites journalist Jasper Becker‘s claim that the famine was a form of mass killing or genocide due to political manipulations of food.[238] Estimates based on a North Korean 2008 census suggest 240,000 to 420,000 excess deaths as a result of the 1990s North Korean famine and a demographic impact of 600,000 to 850,000 fewer people in North Korea in 2008 as a result of poor living conditions after the famine.[239]

Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Main articles: Land reform in North Vietnam and Land reform in VietnamSee also: NLF and PAVN strategy, organization and structurePersecution of the Montagnard in VietnamRe-education camp (Vietnam); and Vietnamese boat people

Valentino attributes 80,000–200,000 deaths to “communist mass killings” in North and South Vietnam.[240]

According to scholarship based on Vietnamese and Hungarian archival evidence, as many as 15,000 suspected landlords were executed during North Vietnam’s land reform from 1953 to 1956.[cd][241][242] The North Vietnamese leadership planned in advance to execute 0.1% of North Vietnam’s population (estimated at 13.5 million in 1955) as “reactionary or evil landlords”, although this ratio could vary in practice.[243][244] Dramatic errors were committed in the course of the land reform campaign.[245] Vu Tuong states that the number of executions during North Vietnam’s land reform was proportionally comparable to executions during Chinese land reform from 1949 to 1952.[243]

Cuba

Main article: Human rights in Cuba

According to Jay Ulfelder and Benjamin Valentino, the Fidel Castro government of Cuba killed between 5,000 and 8,335 noncombatants as a part of the campaign of political repression between 1959 and 1970.[246]

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

Main article: Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

According to Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago, although frequently considered an example of communist genocide, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan represents a borderline case.[211] Prior to the Soviet–Afghan War, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan executed between 10,000 and 27,000 people, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison.[247][248][249] Mass graves of executed prisoners have been exhumed dating back to the Soviet era.[250]

After the invasion in 1979, the Soviets installed the puppet government of Babrak Karmal. By 1987, about 80% of the country’s territory was permanently controlled by neither the pro-communist government and supporting Soviet troops nor by the armed opposition. To tip the balance, the Soviet Union used a tactic that was a combination of scorched earth policy and migratory genocide. By systematically burning the crops and destroying villages in rebel provinces as well as by reprisal bombing entire villages suspected of harboring or supporting the resistance, the Soviets tried to force the local population to move to Soviet controlled territory, thereby depriving the armed opposition of support.[251] Valentino attributes between 950,000 and 1,280,000 civilian deaths to the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country between 1978 and 1989, primarily as counter-guerrilla mass killing.[252] By the early 1990s, approximately one-third of Afghanistan’s population had fled the country.[ce] M. Hassan Kakar said that “the Afghans are among the latest victims of genocide by a superpower.”[253]

People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Main article: Red Terror (Ethiopia)See also: 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia

Amnesty International estimates that half a million people were killed during the Ethiopian Red Terror of 1977 and 1978.[254][255][256] During the terror, groups of people were herded into churches that were then burned down and women were subjected to systematic rape by soldiers.[257] The Save the Children Fund reported that victims of the Red Terror included not only adults, but 1,000 or more children, mostly aged between eleven and thirteen, whose corpses were left in the streets of Addis Ababa.[254] Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam himself is alleged to have killed political opponents with his bare hands.[258]

Debate over famines

Further information: Soviet and Communist studiesThe Soviet famine of 1932–1933, with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded

According to historian J. Arch Getty, over half of the 100 million deaths which are attributed to communism were due to famines.[259] Stéphane Courtois posits that many communist regimes caused famines in their efforts to forcibly collectivize agriculture and systematically used it as a weapon by controlling the food supply and distributing food on a political basis. Courtois states that “in the period after 1918, only Communist countries experienced such famines, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people. And again in the 1980s, two African countries that claimed to be Marxist–LeninistEthiopia and Mozambique, were the only such countries to suffer these deadly famines.”[cf]

Scholars Stephen G. WheatcroftR. W. Davies, and Mark Tauger reject the idea that the Ukrainian famine was an act of genocide that was intentionally inflicted by the Soviet government.[260][261] Getty posits that the “overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan.”[259] Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn opined in a 2 April 2008 article in Izvestia that the 1930s famine in the Ukraine was no different from the Russian famine of 1921–1922, as both were caused by the ruthless robbery of peasants by Bolshevik grain procurements.[262]

Pankaj Mishra questions Mao’s direct responsibility for famine, stating: “A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants.” Mishra cites Nobel laureate Amartya Sen‘s research demonstrating that democratic India suffered more excess mortality from starvation and disease in the second half of the 20th century than China did. Sen wrote: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”[263][264]

Benjamin Valentino writes: “Although not all the deaths due to famine in these cases were intentional, communist leaders directed the worst effects of famine against their suspected enemies and used hunger as a weapon to force millions of people to conform to the directives of the state.”[77] Daniel Goldhagen says that in some cases deaths from famine should not be distinguished from mass murder, commenting: “Whenever governments have not alleviated famine conditions, political leaders decided not to say no to mass death – in other words, they said yes.” Goldhagen says that instances of this occurred in the Mau Mau Rebellion, the Great Leap Forward, the Nigerian Civil War, the Eritrean War of Independence, and the War in Darfur.[265] Martin Shaw posits that if a leader knew the ultimate result of their policies would be mass death by famine, and they continue to enact them anyway these death can be understood as intentional.[266][cg]

Historian and journalists, such as Seumas Milne and Jon Wiener, have criticized the emphasis on communism when assigning blame for famines. In a 2002 article for The Guardian, Milne mentions “the moral blindness displayed towards the record of colonialism“, and he writes: “If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidable Bengal famine of 1943.” Milne laments that while “there is a much-lauded Black Book of Communism, [there exists] no such comprehensive indictment of the colonial record.”[267] Weiner makes a similar assertion while comparing the Holodomor and the Bengal famine of 1943, stating that Winston Churchill‘s role in the Bengal famine “seems similar to Stalin’s role in the Ukrainian famine.”[268] Historian Mike Davis, author of Late Victorian Holocausts, draws comparisons between the Great Chinese Famine and the Indian famines of the late 19th century, arguing that in both instances the governments which oversaw the response to the famines deliberately chose not to alleviate conditions and as such bear responsibility for the scale of deaths in said famines.[269]

Historian Michael Ellman is critical of the fixation on a “uniquely Stalinist evil” when it comes to excess deaths from famines. Ellman posits that mass deaths from famines are not a “uniquely Stalinist evil”, commenting that throughout Russian history, famines, and droughts have been a common occurrence, including the Russian famine of 1921–1922, which occurred before Stalin came to power. He also states that famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as India, Ireland, Russia and China. According to Ellman, the G8 “are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths” and Stalin’s “behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”[124]

See also: Communist crimes (Polish legal concept) and Lustration

According to a 1992 constitutional amendment in the Czech Republic, a person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves, or tries to justify Nazi or communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or communists will be punished with a prison term of 6 months to 3 years.[270] In 1992, Barbara Harff wrote that no communist country or governing body has ever been convicted of genocide.[271] In his 1999 foreword to The Black Book of CommunismMartin Malia wrote: “Throughout the former Communist world, moreover, virtually none of its responsible officials has been put on trial or punished. Indeed, everywhere Communist parties, though usually under new names, compete in politics.”[272]Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former communist leader of Ethiopia

At the conclusion of a trial lasting from 1994 to 2006, Ethiopia’s former ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam was convicted of genocidewar crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death by an Ethiopian court for his role in Ethiopia’s Red Terror.[273][274][275][276] Ethiopian law is distinct from the United Nations‘ Genocide Convention and other definitions in that it defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. In this respect, it closely resembles the definition of politicide.[271]

In 1997, the Cambodian government asked the United Nations for assistance in setting up the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.[277][278][279] The prosecution presented the names of five possible suspects to the investigating judges on 18 July 2007.[277] On 26 July 2010, Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp in Democratic Kampuchea where more than 14,000 people were tortured and then murdered (mostly at nearby Choeung Ek), was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years. His sentence was reduced to 19 years in part because he had been behind bars for 11 years.[280] Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged of war crimes and crimes against humanity but not of genocide. On 7 August 2014, he was convicted of crimes against humanity by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and received a life sentence.[281][282] Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge head of state, was also convicted of crimes against humanity. In 2018, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted of genocide for “the attempted extermination of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities.”[283]

After restoration of their independence in 1991, the Baltic states started investigating crimes against humanity committed during the Soviet occupation, with most criminal cases focusing on deportation of civilians and extrajudicial killing of forest brethren. In 2013 Rain Liivoja estimated that Estonia had convicted eleven, Latvia nine, and Lithuania about dozen persons. Some former Soviet officials like Alfons Noviks [lv], the former People’s Commissar of the Interior of the Latvian SSR, were explicitly convicted for genocide.[284]

On 26 November 2010, the Russian State Duma issued a declaration acknowledging Stalin’s responsibility for the Katyn massacre, the execution of over 21,000 Polish POW’s and intellectual leaders by Stalin’s NKVD. The declaration stated that archival material “not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”[285][ch]

Memorials and museums

See also: Black Ribbon DayDouble genocide theory, and Prague DeclarationMap of Stalin’s Gulag camps in the Gulag Museum in Moscow, founded in 2001 by the historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko

Monuments to the victims of communism exist in almost all the capitals of Eastern Europe and there are also several museums which document the crimes which occurred during communist rule such as the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Lithuania, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga and the House of Terror in Budapest, all three of these museums also document the crimes which occurred during Nazi rule.[286][259] Several scholars, among them Kristen Ghodsee and Laure Neumayer, posit that these efforts seek to institutionalize the “victims of communism” narrative as a double genocide theory, or the moral equivalence between the Nazi Holocaust (race murder) and those killed by communist states (class murder),[59] and that works such as The Black Book of Communism played a major role in the criminalization of communism in the European political space in the post Cold War-era.[60] Zoltan Dujisin writes that “the Europeanization of an antitotalitarian ‘collective memory’ of communism reveals the emergence of a field of anticommunism” and the narrative is proposed by “anticommunist memory entrepreneurs.”[287]

In Washington D.C., a bronze statue modeled after the Goddess of Democracy sculpture, which was created during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was dedicated as the Victims of Communism Memorial in 2007, having been authorized by the Congress in 1993.[17][288] The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation plans to build an International Museum on Communism in Washington.[289] In 2002, the Memorial to the Victims of Communism was unveiled in Prague.[290] In Hungary, the Gloria Victis Memorial to honor “the 100 million victims of communism” was erected in 2006 on the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.[291] As of 2008, Russia contained 627 memorials and memorial plaques which are dedicated to the victims of the communist terror, most of them were created by private citizens, but it did not have either a national monument or a national museum.[292] The Wall of Grief in Moscow, inaugurated in October 2017, is Russia’s first monument to the victims of political persecution by Stalin during the country’s Soviet era.[293] In 2017, Canada’s National Capital Commission approved the design of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism – Canada, a Land of Refuge which will be built on the Garden of the Provinces and Territories in Ottawa.[294] On 23 August 2018, Estonia’s Victims of Communism 1940–1991 Memorial was inaugurated in Tallinn by Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid.[295] The memorial’s construction was financed by the state and the memorial itself is being managed by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.[296] The date of the opening ceremony was chosen because it coincided with the official European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.[297]

Controversies

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The concept of mass killing as a phenomenon unique to communist governments, or ideologically inherent within them, is heavily disputed.[61][63]

Many commentators on the political right state that the mass killings under communist regimes are an indictment of communism.[298][61][299] Opponents of this hypothesis state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars that they claim were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings.[ci][61][300][63]

See also

Communist movements and violence

Mass killing of communists

Violence by governments in general and comparative studies

References

Excerpts and notes

  1. ^ Krain 1997, pp. 331–332: “1. The literatures on state-sponsored mass murder and state terrorism have been plagued by definitional problems. Terms such as state-sponsored mass murder and state terrorism can be (and often are) easily confused and therefore need elaboration. The main difference between state-sponsored mass murder and state terrorism, for instance, is one of intentionality. The purpose behind policies of state-sponsored mass murder such as genocide or politicide is to eliminate an entire group (Gurr 1986, 67). The purpose behind policies of state terrorism is to ‘induce sharp fear and through that agency to effect a desired outcome in a conflict situation’ (Gurr 1986, 46). The former requires mass killings to accomplish its goal. The latter’s success is dependent on the persuasiveness of the fear tactics used. Mass killings may not be necessary to accomplish the particular goal. … 2. Genocides are mass killings in which the victim group is defined by association with a particular communal group. Politicides are mass killings in which ‘victim groups are defined primarily in terms of their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups’ (Harff and Gurr 1988, 360). Interestingly, many of the instances coded by Harff and Gurr as ‘politicide’ are considered by much of the literature to be instances of state terrorism (e.g., Argentina, Chile, El Salvador) (Lopez 1984, 63). Evidently there is some overlap between state terrorism and some kinds of state-sponsored mass murder.”
  2. ^ Valentino 2005, p. 9: “Mass killing and Genocide. No generally accepted terminology exists to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants.”
  3. ^ Karlsson & Schoenhals 2008, p. 6: “‘Crimes against humanity’ is a linguistically and logically cumbersome term when the aim is to analyse physical violence perpetrated by individual groups, institutions and states against specific victim groups in their own country, which is essentially the case in the context of communist regimes’ crimes against humanity. In addition, it is not in keeping with the terms that have long been used by the academic community. Naturally, the work of creating an inventory includes examining the terms used in practice by researchers in their analyses, and it is reasonable to assume that every time, every society and every paradigm has its own terms to refer to the crimes of communist regimes. Nonetheless, it is possible to establish at this early stage that researchers have long used the word terror to describe the crimes of the Soviet communist regime, regardless of the framework of interpretation to which they adhere. Although the extent to which the mass operations and forced deportations of specific ethnic groups ordered by Stalin before and during the Second World War can be defined as genocide is debated, there is agreement among researchers that the term ‘terror’ is the best reflection of the development of violence in Bolshevik Russia and in the communist Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin. As a result, terror will be the term most frequently used here in analysing the Soviet communist criminal history. On the other hand, the term terror is seldom used to describe the mass killings in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, which may be because it is less clear that the actual intention and stated motive of the Khmer Rouge was to terrorise people into submission. The term genocide, however, is relatively widely accepted and established in describing the systematic and selective crimes of the communist regime in Cambodia, although the use of this term is not entirely uncontroversial. Therefore, in analysing the criminal history of Cambodia, this term will be used in precise contexts dealing with the killing of a category of people, whereas more neutral terms such as mass killing and massacre are used to refer to the general use of violence. The terminology used in the Chinese criminal history is dealt with in detail as part of the section on China. … In the Soviet case, as Klas-Göran Karlsson so rightly notes, there is an ‘established term’ for the crimes of the regime, namely ‘terror’ – and this is used almost regardless of the general frameworks of interpretation employed by individual researchers. In the same way, he notes that ‘the term genocide is established and accepted as a description of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge’. In the case of the People’s Republic of China, however, there are no equivalent terms that are accepted or generally established in the academic community and that can be made use of in a research inventory. Bibliographies and search engines all speak their own clear language: those who carried out research on Maoism in its day made very limited use of words such as terror and genocide, and neither do these terms appear among the key terms that carry implicit clear explanations and are therefore regularly used by current foreign and Chinese historians.”
  4. ^ Semelin 2009, p. 318: “‘Classicide’, in counterpoint to genocide, has a certain appeal, but it doesn’t convey the fact that communist regimes, beyond their intention of destroying ‘classes’ – a difficult notion to grasp in itself (what exactly is a ‘kulak’?) – end up making political suspicion a rule of government: even within the Party (and perhaps even mainly within the Party). The notion of ‘fratricide’ is probably more appropriate in this regard. That of ‘politicide’, which Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff suggest, remains the most intelligent, although it implies by contrast that ‘genocide’ is not ‘political’, which is debatable. These authors in effect explain that the aim of politicide is to impose total political domination over a group or a government. Its victims are defined by their position in the social hierarchy or their political opposition to the regime or this dominant group. Such an approach applies well to the political violence of communist powers and more particularly to Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea. The French historian Henri Locard in fact emphasises this, identifying with Gurr and Harff’s approach in his work on Cambodia. However, the term ‘politicide’ has little currency among some researchers because it has no legal validity in international law. That is one reason why Jean-Louis Margolin tends to recognise what happened in Cambodia as ‘genocide’ because, as he points out, to speak of ‘politicide’ amounts to considering Pol Pot’s crimes as less grave than those of Hitler. Again, the weight of justice interferes in the debate about concepts that, once again, argue strongly in favour of using the word genocide. But those so concerned about the issue of legal sanctions should also take into account another legal concept that is just as powerful, and better established: that of crime against humanity. In fact, legal scholars such as Antoine Garapon and David Boyle believe that the violence perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge is much more appropriately categorised under the heading of crime against humanity, even if genocidal tendencies can be identified, particularly against the Muslim minority. This accusation is just as serious as that of genocide (the latter moreover being sometimes considered as a subcategory of the former) and should thus be subject to equally severe sentences. I quite agree with these legal scholars, believing that the notion of ‘crime against humanity’ is generally better suited to the violence perpetrated by communist regimes, a viewpoint shared by Michael Mann.”
  5. ^ Su 2011, pp. 7–8: “Killing civilians in large numbers is an age-old phenomenon. Since World War II, its conceptualization has been shaped by the enormity of the Holocaust, in which Hitler and the Nazi regime killed more than six million Jews. In 1948, the United Nations (UN) passed the ‘Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.’ Lemkin and other framers clearly had the Holocaust in mind when they defined genocide as an act of a nation-state to eliminate an ethnic or national group. Other conceptions of genocide are also preoccupied by central state politics, state-led exterminations, and institutionalized state killers. Later scholars expanded the concept to include cases in which victims are defined other than by ethnic, national, or religious characteristics. Valentino uses the term mass killing instead, and defines it as ‘the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants.’ Other concepts such as politicidedemocide, and classicide were developed to address killings in communist countries.”
  6. ^ Weiss-Wendt 2008, p. 42: “The field of comparative genocide studies has grown beyond recognition over the past two decades, though more quantitatively than qualitatively. On the surface, everything looks good: the number of books on genocide has tripled within less than a decade; the field of comparative genocide studies has its own professional association and journals; more and more colleges and universities offer courses on genocide; several research institutions dedicated to the study of genocide have been established. If we are talking numbers, comparative genocide studies are indeed a success. Upon closer examination, however, genocide scholarship is ridden with contradictions. There is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe. Considering that scholars have always put stress on prevention of genocide, comparative genocide studies have been a failure. Paradoxically, nobody has attempted so far to assess the field of comparative genocide studies as a whole. This is one of the reasons why those who define themselves as genocide scholars have not been able to detect the situation of crisis.”
  7. ^ Ott 2011, p. 53: “As is customary in the literature on mass killing of civilians there is a need to restate here what mass killing is about. Although many definitions have been used — ‘genocide’, ‘politicide’ and ‘democide’ — there has emerged a sort of consensus that the term ‘mass killing’ is much more straightforward than either genocide or politicide. Harff (2003) makes a clear distinction from genocide, often used interchangeably with mass killing, by emphasizing the intention of the perpetrator. He [sic] posits: ‘genocide as an authority group’s sustained purposeful implementation or facilitation of policies designed to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group’ (Harff, 2003, p. 58). Although this definition encompasses the ethnic population, the emphasis here is on the objective function of the authority, which is the destruction in whole or part of the intended group. The second definition, politicide, limits the annihilation to a specific group. Politicide pertains when the victimized group is identified by its political opposition to the dominant party, rather than other communal characteristics (Harff, 2003, p. 58). Rummel (1995) advanced the democide label. It is defined as the ‘murder of any person or people by a government including genocide, politicide and mass murder’ (p. 3).”
  8. ^ Semelin 2009, p. 37: “Mann thus establishes a sort of parallel between racial enemies and class enemies, thereby contributing to the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism. This theory has also been developed by some French historians such as Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Margolin in The Black Book of Communism: they view class genocide as the equivalent to racial genocide. Mann however refuses to use the term ‘genocide’ to describe the crimes committed under communism. He prefers the terms ‘fratricide’ and ‘classicide’, a word he coined to refer to intentional mass killings of entire social classes.”
  9. ^ Rummel 1993: “First, however, I should clarify the term democide. It means for governments what murder means for an individual under municipal law. It is the premeditated killing of a person in cold blood, or causing the death of a person through reckless and wanton disregard for their life. Thus, a government incarcerating people in a prison under such deadly conditions that they die in a few years is murder by the state–democide–as would parents letting a child die from malnutrition and exposure be murder. So would government forced labor that kills a person within months or a couple of years be murder. So would government created famines that then are ignored or knowingly aggravated by government action be murder of those who starve to death. And obviously, extrajudicial executions, death by torture, government massacres, and all genocidal killing be murder. However, judicial executions for crimes that internationally would be considered capital offenses, such as for murder or treason (as long as it is clear that these are not fabricated for the purpose of executing the accused, as in communist show trials), are not democide. Nor is democide the killing of enemy soldiers in combat or of armed rebels, nor of noncombatants as a result of military action against military targets.”
  10. Jump up to:a b Harff 2003, p. 58: “First, the Convention does not include groups of victims defined by their political position or actions. Raphael Lemkin (1944) coined the term genocide and later sought the support of as many states as possible for a legal document that would outlaw mass killings and prescribe sanctions against potential perpetrators. Because the first draft of the Convention, which included political groups, was rejected by the USSR and its allies, the final draft omitted any reference to political mass murder (Le Blanc 1988). The concept of politicide is used here to encompass cases with politically defined victims, consistent with Fein’s (1993b, 12) line of reasoning that ‘mass killings of political groups show similarities in their causes, organization and motives.'”
  11. ^ Williams 2008, p. 190: “A vital element of the evolution of genocide studies is the increased attention devoted to the mass killing of groups not primarily defined by ethnic or religious identities. Most vulnerable minorities around the world had been so defined when Lemkin was crafting his genocide framework, and when UN member states were drafting the Genocide Convention. Such groups continued to be targeted in the post-Second World War period, as in East Pakistan/ Bangladesh in 1971, or Guatemala between 1978 and 1984. But it became increasingly apparent that political groups were on the receiving end of some of the worst campaigns of mass killing, such as the devastating assault on the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965—1966 (with half a million to one million killed), and the brutal campaigns by Latin American and Asian military regimes against perceived dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. One result of this re-evaluation was that the mass killing by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978, previously ruled out as genocide or designated an ‘auto-genocide’ because most victims belonged to the same ethnic-Khmer group as their killers, came to be accepted as a classic instance of twentieth-century genocide. Detailed investigations were also launched into the hecatombs of casualties inflicted under Leninism and Stalinism in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, and by Mao Zedong’s communists in China. In both of these cases—and to some degree in Cambodia as well—the majority of deaths resulted not from direct execution, but from the infliction of ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about [the] physical destruction’ of a group, in the language of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention. In particular, the devastating famines that struck the Ukraine and other minority regions of the USSR in the early 1930s, and the even greater death-toll—numbering tens of millions—caused by famine during Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ (1958—1962), were increasingly, though not uncontroversially, depicted as instances of mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent.”
  12. Jump up to:a b Hackmann 2009: “A coining of communism as ‘red Holocaust,’ as had been suggested by the Munich Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, did not find much ground, neither in Germany nor elsewhere in international discussions.”
  13. ^ Rosefielde 2010, p. 3: “The Red Holocaust could be defined to include all murders (judicially sanctioned terror-executions), criminal manslaughter (lethal forced labor and ethnic cleansing) and felonious negligent homicide (terror-starvation) incurred from insurrectionary actions and civil wars prior to state seizure, and all subsequent felonious state killings. This treatise, however, limits the Red Holocaust death toll to peacetime state killings, even if communists were responsible for political assassinations, insurrections and civil wars before achieving power, in order to highlight the causal significance of communist economic systems. It also excludes deaths attributable to wartime hostilities after states were founded. As a matter of accounting, the convention excludes Soviet killings before 1929, during World War II (1940-45) and in Germany, occupied Europe, North Korea, Manchuria and the Kuril Islands (1946-53). Killings in China before October 1949 are similarly excluded, as are those in Indochina before 1954. Soviet slaughter of nobles, kulaks, capitalist and the bourgeoisie during War Communism are part of the excluded wartime group, but killings of similar social categories in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia after their civil wars in the process of Communist consolidation are included. The summary casualty statistics reported in Table 11.1 conform with this definition and in principle only reflect excess deaths, excluding natural mortality. It provides a comprehensive picture of discretionary communist killings unobscured by wartime exigencies. Others desiring a broader body count to assess the fullest extent of communist carnage can easily supplement the estimates provided here from standard sources.”
  14. ^ Shafir 2016, p. 64: “Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, who was among the first Western authors to analyze this postcommunist trend in Romania, was noting back in 1999 that ‘The pathos, indeed the intentionally provocative tone of the militant parallelism [between Nazism and communism]’ makes use of the term ‘Red Holocaust’ primarily in order to utilize a notion (Holocaust) that ‘allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime.’ Furthermore, ‘the spirit of the wording is one of a claim of victimization careful to legitimize itself in a sort of mimetic rivalry with Jewish memory.’ That is the competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide. But Laignel-Lavastine’s intuitive article also alludes to an ideological basis at the foundations of such efforts. In her opinion, postcommunist Romanian historiography had been captured by (both inter-war and national-communist) ideology.”
  15. ^ Voicu 2018, p. 46: “Beginning in the 1990s the notion of a ‘red Holocaust’ (or a ‘communist Holocaust’) was forged in order to establish–including at the level of terminology–the similarity of the two tragedies. The concept of Holocaust, specific to the history of European Jews (and Roma people and other social categories), was thus extracted from its customary register and used to define a different historical experience with its own specific traits. Leon Volovici rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to ‘usurp’ and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews. As many of those who use the term ‘red Holocaust’ (and other terms along the same lines, such as ‘the Holocaust of Romanian culture’ and ‘the Holocaust of Romanian people’) do so with antisemitic rancor, claiming that the authors of this ‘Holocaust’ are none other than the Jews, the reason for the hijacking of the term becomes clear: to place the blame on Jews and to manufacture an alternate history. It should be noted that the intelligentsia at the top of Romanian culture does not use the expression ‘red Holocaust’ systematically, but rather accidentally. Gabriela Adameșteanu and Rodica Palade, for instance, once considered this syntagma an innocent ‘metaphor’ that could be used legitimately and fruitfully in the debate about the crimes of the communist regime. However, the two journalists–who at the time they supported this syntagma were at the helm of Revista 22–did not use the expression in later publications. From time to time, the syntagma was used by other intellectuals, too, but most of them have recognized its traps and intentions. Yet, while it is no longer part of their usual vocabulary, something of its spirit is still present in the positions they adopt.”
  16. ^ Staub 2011, p. 100: “In contrast to genocide, I see mass killing as ‘killing (or in other ways destroying) members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or killing large numbers of people’ without a focus on group membership.”
  17. ^ Charny 1999: In the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), Israel Charny defined generic genocide as “the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims.”; Easterly, Gatti & Kurlat 2006, pp. 129–156: In the 2006 article “Development, Democracy, and Mass Killings”, William Easterly, Roberta Gatti, and Sergio Kurlat adopted Charny’s definition of generic genocide for their use of mass killing and massacre to avoid the politics of the term genocide altogether.
  18. ^ Ulfelder & Valentino 2008, p. 2: “The research described here sprang from an interest in observing and assessing the risk of extreme human-rights violations in the form of large-scale violence perpetrated by states against noncombatant civilians. Researchers working in this area usually use the terms ‘genocide’ or ‘mass killing’ to label their subject of interest, but the definitions of those terms remain a source of heated debate among scholars, international lawyers, and policy-makers. Cognizant of these debates, we considered numerous strategies for defining and observing our phenomenon of interest. Unfortunately, none captured the range of events that we wished to explore as completely and objectively as does a simple numerical threshold of civilian fatalities. For purposes of this research, then, we defined a mass killing as any event in which the actions of state agents result in the intentional death of at least 1,000 noncombatants from a discrete group in a period of sustained violence.”
  19. Jump up to:a b Bellamy 2010, p. 102: “If we look at mass killing since 1945 perpetrated by non-democratic states outside the context of war, we find two basic types of case. The first involved revolutionary communist governments implementing their plans for radical transformation. Over one-third of all the relevant cases (14 of the 38 episodes) were perpetrated by communist governments. According to Benjamin Valentino, communist governments were so exceptionally violent because the social transformations they attempted to engineer required the material dispossession of vast numbers of people. The most radical of these regimes, in China, Cambodia, and North Korea, attempted to completely reorient society, eradicating traditional patterns of life and forcibly imposing a new and alien way of life. Communist objectives, Valentino points out, could only be achieved with violence and the scale of the transformation dictated a massive amount of violence. Of course, communist revolutions also elicited resistance, prompting the state into massive and bloody crackdowns and generating a culture of paranoia which led many regimes to periodically purge their own ranks (China’s ‘cultural revolution’ being a good example). In communist ideology, the good of the party was associated with the national interest, individuals were divested of rights and subordinated to the will of the party leadership, and entire groups (e.g. kulaks in the Soviet Union, merchants and intellectuals in Cambodia) were deemed ‘class enemies’ that could be eradicated en masse to protect the revolution.”
  20. ^ Wayman & Tago 2010, pp. 4, 11, 12–13: “Our term, ‘mass killing’, is used by Valentino (2004: 10), who aptly defines it as ‘the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants’. The word ‘noncombatants’ distinguishes mass killing from battle-deaths in war, which occur as combatants fight against each other. The ‘massive number’ he selects as the threshold to mass killing is ‘at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years’ (Valentino, 2004: 11-12), which of course averages to at least 10,000 killed per year. … One reason for selecting these thresholds of 10,000 and 1,000 deaths per year is that we find that in the Harff data on geno-politicide, which are one of our key datasets, there are many cases of over 10,000 killed per year, but also some in which between 1,000 and 10,000 are killed per year. Therefore, analyzing at a 1,000-death threshold (as well as the 10,000 threshold) insures the inclusion of all the Harff cases. Valentino chooses 50,000 over five years as ‘to some extent arbitrary’, but a ‘relatively high threshold’ to create high confidence that mass killing did occur and was deliberate, ‘given the generally poor quality of the data available on civilian fatalities’ (Valentino, 2004: 12). We believe that our similar results, when we lower the threshold to 1,000 killed per year, are an indication that the data in Harff and in Rummel remain reliable down even one power of ten below Valentino’s ‘relatively high’ selected threshold, and we hope that, in that sense, our results can be seen as a friendly amendment to his work, and that they basically lend confidence, based on empirical statistical backing, for the conceptual direction which he elected to take. … Within that constant research design, we then showed that the differences were not due to threshold either (over 10,000 killed per year; over 1,000; or over 1). The only remaining difference is the measure of mass killing itself — democide vs. geno-politicide. We have further shown that (although the onset years vary from Harff to Rummel), when one looks at which sovereign states were involved (and the approximate onset year), the geno politicide data is basically a proper subset of the democide data (as one would expect by the addition of the need to show specific intent in geno-politicide). It would therefore appear (assuming for the moment that there are not any big measurement biases) that autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide.”
  21. ^ Su 2003, p. 4: “Following Valentino (1998), I define mass killing in this paper as ‘the intentional killing of a significant number of the members of any group (as group and its membership are defined by the perpetrator) of non-combatants’ (1998:4). A few elements of this definition are worth further discussion. First, identification of the victim is based on ‘membership,’ as opposed to one that is based on immediate threat. In the case of Cultural Revolution, the membership is based on political standards as opposed to ascriptive traces such as race and ethnicity.4 Second, the intent to kill is imputable in the perpetrator. This separates mass killing from other causes of deaths in the Cultural Revolution such as death resulting from on-stage beating or off-stage beating. In on-stage beating the intention was not to kill but to convey a symbolic message and to humiliate the victims, and the main purpose of off-stage torture for confession was clearly to force a confession. Mass killing also differs from casualties of armed battles, a widespread phenomenon occurring in the earlier stage of the Cultural Revolution. Finally, the criterion of ‘a significant number’ indicates some concentration in terms of time and space of the killing. To use a hypothetical example, we should not judge that mass killings occur if 180 villages of a county kill one person in each village, but we should do so if one of the villages kills more than ten people within one day.”
  22. ^ Su 2011, p. 13: “In another conceptual departure from standard scholarship, I use the term collective killing as opposed to genocide or mass killing. This concept shares three basic premises with genocide or mass killing. First, the criteria for becoming a victim are not about deeds but rather with membership in a group. Second, the killing must be intentional, which is distinct from acts of endangerment that carry no goal of killing in the first place. Using torture to elicit confessions, for example, may cause significant numbers of deaths. Third, the number of victims must reach a certain level. This aspect is very much related to the first premise regarding membership: Individuals are rounded up because they are members of a particular group, which by definition results in a collective of victims. I replace the word mass with collective for analysis of units smaller than a country as a whole, for example, county. Collective killings may occur in smaller areas without meeting the criteria suggested by Valentino of ‘at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years.’ With this more fine-grained conceptual approach, it is also possible to compare collective killings across counties, townships, and villages.”
  23. ^ Wayman & Tago 2010, p. 4: “The two important scholars who have created datasets related to this are Rummel (1995) and Harff (2003). Harff (sometimes with Gurr) has studied what she terms ‘genocide and politicide’, defined to be genocide by killing as understood by the Genocide Convention plus the killing of a political or economic group (Harff & Gurr, 1988); the combined list of genocides is sometimes labeled ‘geno-politicide’ for short. Rummel (1994, 1995) has a very similar concept, ‘democide’, which includes such genocide and geno-politicide done by the government forces, plus other killing by government forces, such as random killing not targeted at a particular group. As Rummel (1995: 3-4) says, ‘Cold-blooded government killing … extends beyond genocide’; For example, ‘shooting political opponents; or murdering by quota’. Hence, ‘to cover all such murder as well as genocide and politicide, I use the concept democide. This is the intentional killing of people by government’ (Rummel, 1995: 4). So Rummel has a broader concept than geno-politicide, but one that seems to include geno-politicide as a proper subset.”
  24. ^ Midlarsky 2005, pp. 22, 309, 310: “I distinguish between genocide as the systematic mass murder of people based on ethnoreligious identity, and politicide as the large-scale killing of designated enemies of the state based on socioeconomic or political criteria. Although genocide can be understood to be a species of politicide (but not the converse), in practice, genocidal (i.e., ethnoreligious) killings tap into much deeper historical roots of the human condition. In this distinction, I follow Harff and Gurr 1988, 360. … Turning to Cambodia, the mass killings in that country during Pol Pot’s murderous regime are often characterized with other seemingly identical circumstances. Cambodia and Rwanda, for example, are typically treated as genocides that differ little from each other in essential characteristics. However, the victimization rates for the two countries are similar only when treated as proportions of the total country population systematically murdered. Although the mass murders in Cambodia are frequently characterized as genocide, I argue that in fact genocidal activity was only a small proportion of the killing and that the vast majority of Cambodians died in a politicide, substantially different in origin from the genocides we have been examining. The matter of etiology lies at the root of my distinction here, not definitional semantics. If we lump the Cambodian case other instances of systematized mass murder, then the sources of all of them become hopelessly muddled. … Essentially, I argue that genocides stem from a primitive identification of the ‘collective enemy’ in Carl Schmitt’s sense, whereas politicides, at least of the Cambodian variety, are attributable to more detailed ideological considerations. Further, the Cambodian case falls under the rubric of state killings, having a particular affinity with earlier practices in the Soviet Union and China. Indeed, an arc of Communist politicide can be traced from the western portions of the Soviet Union to China and on to Cambodia. Not all Communist states participated in extensive politicide, but the particular circumstances of Cambodia in 1975 lent themselves to the commission of systematic mass murder. Because an element of Cambodian state insecurity existed in this period, especially vis-à-vis Vietnam, a genocidal element is found in the killing of non-Khmer peoples such as the Vietnamese, who comprised a small proportion of the total.”
  25. ^ Rummel 1993: “Even were we to have total access to all communist archives we still would not be able to calculate precisely how many the communists murdered. Consider that even in spite of the archival statistics and detailed reports of survivors, the best experts still disagree by over 40 percent on the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis. We cannot expect near this accuracy for the victims of communism. We can, however, get a probable order of magnitude and a relative approximation of these deaths within a most likely range.”
  26. Jump up to:a b Bradley 2017, pp. 151–153: “The relationship between human rights and communism in both theory and practice has often been in tension. In the ideational realm, Karl Marx famously dismissed the rights of man as a bourgeois fantasy that masked the systemic inequality of the capitalist system. ‘None of the supposed rights of man,’ Marx wrote, ‘go beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society … withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice.’ Rights and liberties in bourgeois society, he argued, provided only an illusory unity behind which social conflict and inequalities deepened. Rhetorically, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and most of the rest of the communist world followed Marx’s lead. As the Chinese argued in 1961, ‘the ‘human rights’ referred to by bourgeois international law and the ‘human rights’ it intends to protect are the rights of the bourgeoisie to enslave and to oppress the labouring people … [and] provide pretexts for imperialist opposition to socialist and nationalist countries. They are reactionary from head to toe.’ Rejecting Enlightenment-era inalienable individual political and civil rights, communist states instead championed collective economic and social rights. The Soviets grew fond of annually celebrating International Human Rights Day, to mark the anniversary of the 1948 adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by offering lectures to its citizens that contrasted the promotion of socialist rights in the Soviet Union with their violations in the capitalist world. And yet state-orchestrated mass killings and what have come to be called gross violations of human rights were at times almost commonplace in communist-led states. Between 1933 and 1945, more than a million people died in the Soviet Gulag system and likely at least 6 million more in politically induced Soviet famines, Stalin’s mass executions in the great terror and in what Timothy Snyder has termed the ‘bloodlands’ of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus and the western edges of Russia. In Mao’s China, as many as 45 million Chinese died of famine during the Great Leap Forward, while some 2.5 million were killed or tortured to death. During the Cultural Revolution, between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed. In Pol Pot’s Cambodia, 200,000 were executed and between 1.4 million and 2.2 million of the country’s 7 million people died of disease and starvation. If the precise numbers have always been, and continue to be, in dispute, their order of magnitude is not. In fact the entanglements between human rights and communism in the twentieth century were more ambiguous than the chasm between ideology and these staggering numbers would suggest. The meanings of human rights themselves remained unstable over much of the second half of the century, as did the actors in the communist world who engaged with them. What promises of global human rights like those contained in the Universal Declaration might portend and the very claims about what constituted human rights were not fixed. Nor was the significance of human rights for the making of international politics or local lives as they were lived on the ground at all clear. The relationship between human rights and international communism after 1945 became fluid. In the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union played an active role in the creation of a global human rights order in the drafting of the Universal Declaration and the Genocide Convention and participating in the Nuremberg Trials. With the coming of decolonization, the Soviets and the Chinese would also help to open out the meanings of international human rights toward the rights of postcolonial self-determination and development. But human rights in the communist world largely became a polemical state posture within the broader Cold War ideological struggle. Indeed, the international project of human rights itself became a muted practice by the 1950s.”
  27. Jump up to:a b c d e Valentino 2005, p. 275: “Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 15. A team of six French historians coordinated by Stéphane Courtois estimates that communist regimes are responsible for between 85 and 100 million deaths. See Martin Malia, ‘Foreword: The Uses of Atrocity,’ in Stéphane Courtois et.al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. x. Zbigniew Brzezinski estimates that ‘the failed effort to build communism’ cost the lives of almost sixty million people. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 16. Matthew White estimates eighty-one million deaths from communist ‘genocide and tyranny’ and ‘man-made famine.’ See Matthew White, ‘Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century,’ http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm [June 2002]. Todd Culbertson estimates that communist regimes killed ‘perhaps 100 million’ people. See Todd Culbertson, ‘The Human Cost of World Communism,’ Human Events, August 19, 1978, pp. 10-11. These estimates should be considered at the highest end of the plausible range of deaths attributable to communist regimes.”
  28. ^ Culbertson 1978, pp. 10–11: “Available evidence indicates that perhaps 100 million persons have been destroyed by the Communists; the imperviousness of the Iron and Bamboo curtains prevents a more definitive figure. The Communist system of forced starvation, concentration camps, and slave labor is remarkably similar to that of the Nazis, whose policies claimed approximately six million Jewish victims. … This is an incomplete accounting of Communist genocide. Since the Russian Revolution 61 years ago communism has been responsible for the death of 100 million innocent persons – not including the terrorism inspired by Communists in free countries. The total cost of human suffering and grief is beyond comprehension.”
  29. ^ Lenczowski 1985: “The human cost of communism exceeds most Americans’ expectations. The number of people murdered by communist regimes is estimated at between 60 million and 150 million, with the higher figure probably more accurate in light of recent scholarship. The greatest tide of refugees in world history flows from communist states to noncommunist ones: Today it comes from Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indochina, East Europe, and Nicaragua. (During the entire Vietnam war there was nary a refugee fleeing from Indochina. It was not until communism triumphed that life became so unbearable that people who could withstand decades of war fled to the seas.) Communism invented the concentration camp. Millions have been imprisoned and executed, have worked and starved to death, in these camps. Communist regimes will not permit enterprising Western reporters near these camps, so you don’t hear about them on the news. Communist regimes recognize no restraint on their absolute power. From this they establish ideological falsehoods as the standards of right and wrong and the standards by which deviationism is measured; from this stems the systematic denial of all individual human rights. The quality of life always deteriorates under communism: the militarization of society; the destruction of the consumer economy; the rationing of food; the deterioration of housing and insufficient new construction to meet population growth; the destruction of medical care through lack of medicine and medical supplies; the destruction of religion; the destruction and political control of education and culture; the rewriting of history and destruction of monuments to the national heritage; and the assault on family life and parental jurisdiction over children.”
  30. ^ Brzezinski 2010, pp. 12–16: “Because of Lenin – through mass executions during and after civil war, through massive deaths in the Gulag initiated under Lenin’s direction (and powerfully documented in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago), and through mass famines induced by ruthless indifference (with Lenin callously dismissing as unimportant the deaths of ‘the half-savage, stupid, difficult people of the Russian villages’) – it can be estimated that between 6-8,000,000 people perished. That number subsequently was more or less tripled by Stalin, who caused, it has been conservatively estimated, the deaths of no less than 20,000,000 people, and perhaps even upward of 25,000,000. … Though the precise figures for Stalin’s toll will never be available, it is unlikely that the range of 20-25,000,000 victims is an exaggeration. Census statistics also indicate that additionally the biological depletion of the Soviet population during Stalin’s reign was even higher. The estimated number of killings cited above, in any case, accounts for Stalin’s direct genocide. Demographic depletion – because of reduced birthrates, loss of offspring because of higher infant mortality, births that did not take place because of imprisonment of a would-be parent, etc. – certainly had to be in excess of even the enormous toll directly attributable to Stalin personally. … Accounting for the human losses in China during the most violent phases of the communist experiment is an even more difficult task. Unlike the exposure of Stalin’s crimes in the Soviet Union (and the much delayed and the still somewhat reticent exposure of Lenin’s crimes), the Chinese regime persists in regarding the Maoist phase as relatively sacrosanct, with its killings justified but with their scale kept secret. The only exception is the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, from which the current Chinese rulers suffered directly. For this phase of internal violence some estimates have surfaced, and they suggest deaths on the scale of 1-2,000,000. For the earlier phases, notably the 1950s, there have been broad estimates of as many as several million executed as ‘enemies of the people’ – mostly landlords and richer bourgeoisie as well as former Kuomintang officials and officers. In addition, the figure of up to 27,000,000 peasants who perished as a consequence of the forcible collectivization has often been cited. Given the size of the Chinese population, and the indifference to human life of the current regime, the estimate of about 29,000,000 as the human cost of the communist era is in all probability on the low side, especially as it does not take into account the net loss to China’s population because of the demographic impact of such mass killings. This ghastly ledger would not be complete without some accounting of the price in human lives paid for the attempts to construct communist utopias in Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba. It is a safe estimate that these consumed at least 3,000,000 victims, with Cambodia under Pol Pot alone accounting for one-third. Thus the total might actually be higher. In brief, the failed effort to build communism in the twentieth century consumed the lives of almost 60,000,000 human beings, making communism the most costly human failure in all of history.”
  31. ^ Courtois 1999, p. 4: “Thus we have delimited crimes against civilians as the essence of the phenomenon of terror. These crimes tend to fit a recognizable pattern even if the practices vary to some extent by regime. The pattern includes execution by various means, such as firing squads, hanging, drowning, battering, and, in certain cases, gassing, poisoning, or ‘car accidents’; destruction of the population by starvation, through man-made famine, the withholding of food, or both; deportation, through which death can occur in transit (either through physical exhaustion or through confinement in an enclosed space), at one’s place of residence, or through forced labor (exhaustion, illness, hunger, cold). Periods described as times of ‘civil war’ are more complex – it is not always easy to distinguish between events caused by fighting between rulers and rebels and events that can be properly described only as a massacre of the civilian population. Nonetheless, we have to start somewhere. The following rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates, gives some sense of the scale and gravity of these crimes:USSR: 20 million deathsChina: 65 million deathsVietnam: 1 million deathsNorth Korea: 2 million deathsCambodia: 2 million deathsEastern Europe: 1 million deathsLatin America: 150,000 deathsAfrica: 1.7 million deathsAfghanistan: 1.5 million deathsthe international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: about 10,000 deaths.”
  32. ^ Malia 1999, p. x: “The Black Book offers us the first attempt to determine, overall, the actual magnitude of what occurred, by systematically detailing Leninism’s ‘crimes, terror, and repression’ from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989. This factual approach puts Communism in what is, after all, its basic human perspective. For it was in truth a ‘tragedy of planetary dimensions’ (in the French publisher’s characterization), with a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million. Either way, the Communist record offers the most colossal case of political carnage in history. And when this fact began to sink in with the French public, an apparently dry academic work became a publishing sensation, the focus of impassioned political and intellectual debate. The shocking dimensions of the Communist tragedy, however, are hardly news to any serious student of twentieth-century history, at least when the different Leninist regimes are taken individually. The real news is that at this late date the truth should come as such a shock to the public at large.”
  33. ^ Karlsson & Schoenhals 2008, pp. 53–54: “Bearing in mind the charged nature of the subject, it is polemically effective to make such comparisons, but it does not seem particularly fruitful, neither morally nor scientifically, to judge the regimes on the basis of their ‘dangerousness’ or to assess the relationship between communism and Nazism on the basis of what the international academic community calls their ‘atrocities toll’ or ‘body count’. In that case, should the crimes of all communist regimes, in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and other countries where communism is or has been the dominant party, be compared to the Nazi regime’s massacre of six million Jews? Should the Nazi death toll also include the tens of millions of people who the German Nazi armies and their supporting troops killed during the Second World War? Not even Courtois’ analytical qualification, that ranking the two regimes the same is based on the idea that the ‘weapon of hunger’ was used systematically by both the Nazi regime and a number of communist regimes, makes this more reasonable, since this ‘weapon’ on the whole played a very limited role in the Nazi genocide in relation to other types of methods of mass destruction, and in relation to how it was used by communist regimes.”
  34. Jump up to:a b Valentino 2005, p. 91: “Communist regimes have been responsible for this century’s most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million. In this chapter I focus primarily on mass killings in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia — history’s most murderous communist states. Communist violence in these three states alone may account for between 21 million and 70 million deaths. Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa.”
  35. ^ Valentino 2005, p. 75: Table 2: Communist Mass Killings in the Twentieth CenturySoviet Union (1917-23) … 250,000-2,500,000Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1927-45) … 10,000,000-20,000,000China (including Tibet) (1949-72) … 10,000,000-46,000,000Cambodia (1975-79) … 1,000,000-2,000,000Possible cases:Bulgaria (1944-?) … 50,000-100,000East Germany (1945-?) … 80,000-100,000Romania (1945-?) … 60,000-300,000North Korea (1945-?) … 400,000-1,500,000North and South Vietnam (1953-?) … 80,000-200,000″Note: All figures in this and subsequent tables are author’s estimates based on numerous sources. Episodes are listed under the heading ‘possible cases’ in this and subsequent tables when the available evidence suggests a mass killing may have occurred, but documentation is insufficient to make a definitive judgement regarding the number of people killed, the intentionality of the killing, or the motives of the perpetrators.”
  36. ^ White 2011, pp. 455–456: “For those who prefer totals broken down by country, here are reasonable estimates for the number of people who died under Communist regimes from execution, labor camps, famine, ethnic cleansing, and desperate flight in leaky boats:
    • China: 40,000,000
    • Soviet Union: 20,000,000
    • North Korea: 3,000,000
    • Ethiopia: 2,000,000
    • Cambodia: 1,700,000
    • Vietnam: 365,000 (after 1975)
    • Yugoslavia: 175,000
    • East Germany: 100,000
    • Romania: 100,000
    • North Vietnam: 50,000 (internally, 1954-75)
    • Cuba: 50,000
    • Mongolia: 35,000
    • Poland: 30,000
    • Bulgaria: 20,000
    • Czechoslovakia: 11,000
    • Albania: 5,000
    • Hungary: 5,000
    • Rough Total: 70 million
    (This rough total doesn’t include the 20 million killed in the civil wars that brought Communists into power, or the 11 million who died in the proxy wars of the Cold War. Both sides probably share the blame for these to a certain extent. These two categories overlap somewhat, so once the duplicates are weeded out, it seems that some 26 million people died in Communist-inspired wars.)”
  37. ^ Bellamy 2012, p. 949: “Between 1945 and 1989, communist regimes massacred literally millions of civilians. A conservative estimate puts the total number of civilians deliberately killed by communists after the Second World War between 6.7 million and 15.5 million people, with the true figure probably much higher. Communist governments in China and Cambodia embarked on programs of radical social transformation and killed, tortured or allowed to starve whole groups that were thought hostile to change or simply unworthy of life. In the Soviet Union, Albania, North Korea, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and China, communist governments used sometimes massive levels of indiscriminate violence against civilians to deter and defeat actual and imagined opponents and/or exact revenge for the Second World War. Where communist governments were violently challenged, they exhibited little concern for civilian immunity, as evidenced by the Soviet assaults on Hungary and Afghanistan and North Korea’s conduct in the Korean War. Finally, communism spawned violent non-state actors, such as the Red Brigades and Bader-Meinhoffer gang in Europe, Shining Path in Peru, and FARC in Colombia, all of which deliberately targeted non-combatants.”
  38. ^ Strauss 2014, pp. 360–361: “For some areas, there is now a beginning of scholarly convergence on raw numbers. Most are now willing to accept a rough number of around 20 million including famine victims for the Soviet Union, and provisionally somewhere between 2 and 3 million for Cambodia, of whom roughly half were executed outright. In other environments such as China, there is still little consensus on numbers of total victims of Maoist revolutionary policies; for the Great Leap Forward alone, estimates of excess deaths range from 15 to 40 million.”
  39. ^ Dissident 2016: “A brief survey returns the following high and low estimates for the number of people who died at the hand of communist regimes:China: 29,000,000 (Brzezinski) to 78,860,000 (Li)USSR: 7,000,000 (Tolz) to 69,500,000 (Panin)North Korea: 1,600,000 (Rummel, Lethal Politics; figure for killings) to 3,500,000 (Hwang Jang-Yop, cited in AFP; figure for famine)Cambodia: 740,000 (Vickery) to 3,300,000 (Math Ly, cited in AP)Africa: 1,700,000 (Black Book) to 2,000,000 (Fitzgerald; Ethiopia only)Afghanistan: 670,000 (Zucchino) to 2,000,000 (Katz)Eastern Europe: 1,000,000Vietnam: 1,000,000 (Black Book) to 1,670,000 (Rummel, Death by Government)Latin America: 150,000International Movements not in power: 10,000The combined range based on the estimates considered, which derive from scholarly works, works of journalism, memoirs, and government-provided figures, spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000. While reasonable people will disagree in good faith on where the true number happens to lie, any number within this range ought to provoke horror and condemnation. And as previously mentioned, these figures estimate only the number of people who perished, not those who were merely tortured, maimed, imprisoned, relocated, expropriated, impoverished, or bereaved. These many millions are victims of communism too. The commonly cited figure of the deaths caused by communist regimes, 100 million, falls midway through this range of estimates. As scholars continue to research the history of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and other communist regimes, and as they gain access to previously inaccessible records, the scale of communist crimes will gradually come into even sharper focus.Works ConsultedBrzezinski, Zbigniew. Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.Courtois, Stéphane, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Marolin. The Black Book of Communism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.’Cambodians Recall Massacres.’ AP, May 22, 1987.Fitzgerald, Mary Anne. ‘Tyrant for the taking.’ The Times (London), April 20, 1991.Katz, Lee Michael. ‘Afghanistan’s President is Ousted.’ USA Today, April 17, 1992.Li, Cheng-Chung. ‘The Question of Human Rights on China Mainland. Republic of China: World Anti-Communist League’, 1979.Panin, Dimitri. Translated by John Moore. The Notebooks of Sologdin. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994.Rummel, R. J. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990.Tolz, Vera. ‘Ministry of Security Official Gives New Figures for Stalin’s Victims.’ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report. May 1, 1992. (The figure of seven million direct executions under Stalin, given by a member of the security services heading a commission for rehabilitation, may be taken as an absolute baseline figure to which should be added the many deaths suffered by labor camp inmates and the deaths preceding and following the Stalin period.)’Top defector says famine has killed over three million Koreans.’ Agence France Presse, March 13, 1999.Vickery, Michael. Cambodia 1975 – 1982. Boston: South End Press, 1984.Zucchino, David. ‘The Americans … They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave.’ Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2002.Matthew White’s website Necrometrics provides a useful compilation of scholarly estimates of the death toll of major historical events.”
  40. ^ Kotkin 2017: “But a century of communism in power—with holdouts even now in Cuba, North Korea and China—has made clear the human cost of a political program bent on overthrowing capitalism. Again and again, the effort to eliminate markets and private property has brought about the deaths of an astounding number of people. Since 1917—in the Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, Eastern Europe, Indochina, Africa, Afghanistan and parts of Latin America—communism has claimed at least 65 million lives, according to the painstaking research of demographers. Communism’s tools of destruction have included mass deportations, forced labor camps and police-state terror—a model established by Lenin and especially by his successor Joseph Stalin. It has been widely imitated. Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering.”
  41. ^ Aronson 2003, pp. 222‒245: “But most of these problems pale in significance compared with the book’s opening and closing chapters, which caused enormous controversy and even occasioned a break among The Black Book’s authors. … Courtois’s figures for the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Latin America go far beyond the estimates of the authors themselves, as does Courtois’s final body count. … But two other theses created considerable consternation and have come to be associated with The Black Book: the figure of 100 million deaths and the parallel with Nazism. They became central in the debate that followed. … In articles and interviews Werth and Margolin pointed out how, in the service of this goal, Courtois distorted and exaggerated: Werth’s total, including the Civil War and the famine of 1932–1933 had been five million less than Courtois’s ‘mythical number,’ while Margolin denied having spoken of the Vietnamese Communists being responsible for one million deaths. Interviewed in Le Monde, Margolin likened Courtois’s effort to ‘militant political activity, indeed, that of a prosecutor amassing charges in the service of a cause, that of a global condemnation of the Communist phenomenon as an essentially criminal phenomenon.’ Both rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism: … .”
  42. ^ Engel-Di Mauro 2021: “A petulant upsurge in anti-communism is permeating the United States (US) and Canada, as well as countries in the European Union (EU). Its main truncheon is the simultaneously fictitious and slanderous claim that communism caused 100 million victims, a catchy slogan sensationalised through a 1997 propaganda volume titled The Black Book of Communism (henceforth BBC). It suits a more recent China-bashing campaign, where the Communist Party of China is purposefully conflated with communism.”
  43. ^ Courtois 1999, p. xiv: “On the one side, commentators in the liberal Le Monde argue that it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the ‘rural’ Communism of Asia is radically different from the ‘urban’ Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism. … [C]onflating sociologically diverse movements is merely a stratgem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left.”
  44. ^ Engel-Di Mauro 2021: “In this discussion I want to draw attention to the fact that, since the time of the Russian Revolution, capitalist institutions as a whole have caused close to 158 million deaths by waging war alone, with liberal democratic varieties of capitalism contributing at least 56 million of those fatalities. This monstrous impact, unprecedented in the history of humanity, doubtless reaches hundreds of millions more deaths when the centuries of genocides and slavery systems are considered and when murders in the home, at work, in prisons, and in the streets (including by police) are counted as well. Because studies on the level of morbidity associated with capitalist relations are scarce and limited, war-related deaths provide an arguably less assailable set of figures to oppose anti-communist libels.”
  45. ^ Ghodsee & Sehon 2018: “But the problem for the anti-communists is that their general premise can be used as the basis for an equally good argument against capitalism, an argument that the so-called losers of economic transition in eastern Europe would be quick to affirm. The US, a country based on a free-market capitalist ideology, has done many horrible things: the enslavement of millions of Africans, the genocidal eradication of the Native Americans, the brutal military actions taken to support pro-Western dictatorships, just to name a few. The British Empire likewise had a great deal of blood on its hands: we might merely mention the internment camps during the second Boer War and the Bengal famine. This is not mere ‘whataboutism’, because the same intermediate premise necessary to make their anti-communist argument now works against capitalism: … .”
  46. ^ Jahanbegloo 2014, pp. 117–118: “Most interesting, however, is Finlay’s argument that Marxist thought, beyond justifying and excusing the use of violence, also legitimates it. Finlay (ibid. p. 378) argues that this is done by ‘undermining existing moral norms and suggesting that new ones will be created to suit a new proletarian order.’ Marx argues that norms and ethics are determined by the dominating class of the time, as can be illustrated in Lenin’s statement that ‘Honesty is a bourgeoisie virtue’, meaning that honesty is crucial to the existence of bourgeoisie, as other virtues such as loyalty and obedience were necessary virtues during the reign of the feudal aristocracy. This impacts the concept of justice in war dramatically. As there is the assumption that a new social order is to be created, along with a new set of moral and ethical codes, then the current ones may be discarded. Therefore, Finley (ibid.) states that it would be conceivable for revolutionaries to commit atrocious crimes in bringing about a socialist system, with the belief that their crimes will be retroactively absolved by the new system of ethics put in place by the proletariat. Finley also addresses an alternative opinion, that of Shlomo Avineri, who believes that this may be a non-issue when one takes into account the universality of the proletariat. This universality means that it has no active class-based or sectarian interest, or, rather, that its interests represent those of all society. Its major interest is simply to ‘eliminate all other special interests on the basis of which it suffers oppression’ and is an entirely negative entirely (ibid., p. 379). Therefore, our conception of ethics and morality – the product of a capitalist society – is inaccurate. Being based on the interest of the bourgeoisie rather than a true and authentic reflection of the ethics of a universal class, its contravention is not something to be lamented. Finley understands Avineri as drawing two conclusions. First, that:whatever the bourgeoisie with its individualistic and legalistic conception of political ethics and legality has to say about the morality of violence is likely to be invalid since it reflects the particular class interests and therefore the perverted humanism of its proponents. (Ibid., p. 370)and, moreover, that only ethical claims of the proletariat are valid, insofar as they are the true reflections of ‘the perspective of the last social class, at its final revolutionary stage of oppression’ (ibid.). It is only then that morals and ethics can be created authentically, and all other systems ought to be considered as arbitrary. However, this creates a major difficulty for Finlay and, as Marx has inspired many other theorists (Žižek, Fanon, Sorel, etc.) this is a difficulty which he identifies in each of their works as well. Understanding that revolutionary violence is carried out in the hope of future absolution based on a hypothetical social order able to craft a universal system of ethics, Finlay sees this as carte blanche for revolutionists to carry out any action, however atrocious, so long as it helps bring about this imminent revolution. Finlay’s ‘permissive doctrine’ is a ‘philosophical framework within which the possibility of using violence is validated but without setting any clear limits to how much violence can be used and against whom’. Finlay also argue that there is a tendency for excess, as Fanon, Sorel and Žižek all see the use of violence as beneficial, since it may act as a spark for the revolution. Finlay sees the total legitimation of violence in revolution, with no principle of restriction, to be both dangerous and unethical.”
  47. ^ Jahanbegloo 2014, pp. 120–121: “Singh makes a principled argument: that Marx saw the use of violence, even when it is avoidable, as required insofar as that it has a purging quality, believing that only by using violence can all elements of the previous regime be eradicated. Moreover, Singh (ibid., p. 14) considers Marx’s references to the use of bourgeoisie democratic institutions to bring about social change only as ‘hinting to the possibility of the working class coming into power, in England, through universal suffrage’. Furthermore, he quotes Engels in a letter addressed to the Communist Committee in Brussels in October 1846. In this letter, Engels states that there cannot be any means of carrying out the communist agenda ‘other than a democratic revolution by force’ (ibid. p. 10). Singh, however, does acknowledge the desire in Marx to avoid a bloody revolution. Singh (ibid. p. 11) notes that most Marxist writing that alluded to the possibility of this transition being carried out peacefully took place before the events of 1844-48, which ‘showed that a peaceful change was not even remotely possible’. After 1848, Singh notes a return to advocating a violent revolution due to what Singh identifies as the ‘practical considerations’ of being unable to overcome the existing obstacles to a peaceful transition. Singh (ibid. p. 13) writes that, in 1848, Marx published an article titled The Victory of Counter-Revolution in Vienna, where he states ‘there is only one means by which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated – and that is by revolutionary terror’.”
  48. ^ The Magyar Struggle: “Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary. … There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution. Such, in Scotland, are the Gaels, the supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745. Such, in France, are the Bretons, the supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800. Such, in Spain, are the Basques, the supporters of Don Carlos. Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the residual fragment of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. … The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.”
  49. ^ Revel 2009, pp. 94–95: “Already among the most authentic sources of socialist thought, among the earliest doctrinarians, are found justifications for ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the totalitarian state, all of which were held up as legitimate and even necessary weapons for the success and preservation of the revolution. Socialism’s canonical principles were not at all violated by Stalin or Mao when they implemented their murderous policies; on the contrary, Stalin and Mao were scrupulous in applying these principles with perfect fidelity to the letter and the spirit of the doctrine – as has been rigorously established by the Cambridge scholar George Watson in his treatise on The Lost Literature of Socialism. In the modern historiography of socialism, an essential part of the theory has been quite effectively suppressed. The true believers, while claiming socialism’s founding fathers as their mentors, very early on dispensed with any thorough study of them, even of Marx himself. And today, the key texts seem to enjoy the rare privilege of being understood by everyone, without having been read in their entirety by anyone – not even by socialism’s adversaries, who for fear of reprisal are likely to quell their own curiosity. (History for the most part is a selective rearrangement of the facts, and the history of ideas does not escape this general law.) Study of the unexpurgated texts, writes Watson, shows us that “Genocide was an idea unique to socialism.” Friedrich Engels, in an article penned in 1849 for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a periodical edited by his friend Karl Marx, called for the extermination of the Hungarians, who had risen up against Austria. He had a low opinion also of Serbs and other Slavic peoples, and of the Basques, the Bretons and the Scottish Highlanders – all problems that needed to be eliminated. Three-quarters of a century later, in his On Lenin and Leninism (1924), Stalin would recommend study of Engels’ influential piece. Marx himself, in “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany,” published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1852, asked how “those moribund peoples, the Bohemians, the Carinthians, the Dalmatians etc.,” might be disposed of.”
  50. ^ Valentino 2005, pp. 91, 93: “Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing. In addition to shedding light on why some communist states have been among the most violent regimes in history, therefore, I also seek to explain why other communist countries have avoided this level of violence. … I argue that radical communist regimes have proven such prodigious killers primarily because the social change they sought to bring about have resulted in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people. These regimes practiced social engineering of the highest order. It is the revolutionary desire to bring about the rapid and radical transformation of society that distinguishes radical communist regimes from all other forms of government, including less violent communist regimes and noncommunist, authoritarian governments.”
  51. ^ Semelin 2009, p. 331: “Dynamics of destruction/subjugation were also developed systematically by twentieth-century communist regimes, but against a very different domestic political background. The destruction of the very foundations of the former society (and consequently the men and women who embodied it) reveals the determination of the ruling elites to build a new one at all costs. The ideological conviction of leaders promoting such a political scheme is thus decisive. Nevertheless, it would be far too simplistic an interpretation to assume that the sole purpose of inflicting these various forms of violence on civilians could only aim at instilling a climate of terror in this ‘new society’. In fact, they are part of a broader whole, i.e. the spectrum of social engineering techniques implememted in order to transform a society completely. There can be no doubt that it is this utopia of a classless society which drives that kind of revolutionary project. The plan for political and social reshaping will thus logically claim victims in all strata of society. And through this process, communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the ‘social body’ from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire.”
  52. ^ Chirot & McCauley 2010, p. 42: “The modern search for a perfect, utopian society, whether racially or ideologically pure is very similar to the much older striving for a religiously pure society free of all polluting elements, and these are, in turn, similar to that other modern utopian notion – class purity. Dread of political and economic pollution by the survival of antagonistic classes has been for the most extreme communist leaders what fear of racial pollution was for Hitler. There, also, material explanations fail to address the extent of the killings, gruesome tortures, fantastic trails, and attempts to wipe out whole categories of people that occurred in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The revolutionary thinkers who formed and led communist regimes were not just ordinary intellectuals. They had to be fanatics in the true sense of that word. They were so certain of their ideas that no evidence to the contrary could change their minds. Those who came to doubt the rightness of their ways were eliminated, or never achieved power. The element of religious certitude found in prophetic movements was as important as their Marxist science in sustaining the notion that their vision of socialism could be made to work. This justified the ruthless dehumanization of their enemies, who could be suppressed because they were ‘objectively’ and ‘historically’ wrong. Furthermore, if events did not work out as they were supposed to, then that was because class enemies, foreign spies and saboteurs, or worst of all, internal traitors were wrecking the plan. Under no circumstances could it be admitted that the vision itself might be unworkable, because that meant capitulation to the forces of reaction. The logic of the situation in times of crisis then demanded that these ‘bad elements’ (as they were called in Maoist China) be killed, deported, or relegated to a permanently inferior status. That is very close to saying that the community of God, or the racially pure volksgemeinschaft could only be guaranteed if the corrupting elements within it were eliminated (Courtois et al. 1999).”
  53. Jump up to:a b Mann 2005, pp. 318, 321: “All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not. I discuss the three that caused the most terrible human losses: Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. These saw themselves as belonging to a single socialist family, and all referred to a Marxist tradition of development theory. They murderously cleansed in similar ways, though to different degrees. Later regimes consciously adapted their practices to the perceived successes and failures of earlier ones. The Khmer Rouge used China and the Soviet Union (and Vietnam and North Korea) as reference societies, while China used the Soviet Union. All addressed the same basic problem – how to apply a revolutionary vision of a future industrial society to a present agrarian one. These two dimensions, of time and agrarian backwardness, help account for many of the differences. … Ordinary party members were also ideologically driven, believing that in order to create a new socialist society, they must lead in socialist zeal. Killings were often popular, the rank-and-file as keen to exceed killing quotas as production quotas. The pervasive role of the party inside the state also meant that authority structures were not fully institutionalized but factionalized, even chaotic, as revisionists studying the Soviet Union have argued. Both centralized control and mass party factionalism were involved in the killings.”
  54. ^ Tismăneanu 2012, p. 14: “However, a nuance emphasized by Snyder offers a caveat to the comparison between these two extremisms. In fact, Stalinism did not transform mass murder into political history, as happened in Nazi Germany. For Stalin, ‘mass murder could never be anything more than a successful defense of socialism, or an element in a story of progress toward socialism.’ But, to take Snyder’s point further, Communism, like Fascism, undoubtedly founded its alternative, illiberal modernity upon extermination. The Communist project, in such countries as the USSR, China, Cuba, Romania, or Albania, was based precisely on the conviction that certain social groups were irretrievably alien and deservedly murdered.”
  55. ^ Bellamy 2012, p. 950: “But it is not simply the number of victims that distinguishes communist from non-communist mass killing in the Cold War—though that in itself is important to acknowledge. The most important difference for our purposes lies in the fact that amongst the perpetrators and their supporters there was very little recognition that the deliberate extermination of large numbers of civilians might be morally problematic, let alone prohibited. Where there was criticism of this litany of mass murder, it almost always came from outside the communist world. The principal reason for the failure of civilian immunity to moderate the behavior of communist governments during the Cold War was the persistence and spread of communism’s ideology of selective extermination, and its general acceptance within the communist world as a legitimator of mass killing. As I argued earlier, this ‘anti-civilian ideology’ identifies whole groups as being outside the protection of noncombatant immunity and therefore liable for legitimate extermination. The basic communist variant of this ideology was first developed and applied by Stalin and held that certain socioeconomic or national groups or political attitudes were anti-communist and that group members were ‘enemies of the people’ who could be legitimately destroyed. Although each of the communist regimes that massacred large numbers of civilians during the Cold War developed their own distinctive account of selective extermination, they all shared the basic idea that their targets—identified as whole groups—had by their identity, actions, or thoughts, placed themselves outside legal or moral protection.85 Thus, in contrast to most Western or anti-communist perpetrators of mass atrocities during the Cold War, communist perpetrators tended to argue that their victims were ‘criminals’ or ‘enemies of the people’ and therefore beyond the protection of civilian immunity.”
  56. ^ Katz 2013, p. 267: “Mass Death under Communist Rule and the Limits of ‘Otherness’ Steven T. Katz Boston University Mass death is not a new reality. Over the centuries this tragic phenomenon has manifest itself in many times and places. An integral feature of this history of large-scale violence is what I call, ‘otherness.’ That is, the victimizer stigmatizes and stereotypes the victim in various ways in order to legitimate the violence that is then unleashed. What is worthy of note is that this distancing process takes many forms. The historical record reveals cases where the ‘Other’ is created on the grounds of class, sex, color, race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality. So, for example, the majority of Stalin’s victims were identified as ‘class enemies.’ The most notorious example of such class war was directed at the Kulaks, though his entire massive campaign against the peasantry as represented by his forced drive to collectivize agriculture, was based on the notion of class (and his desire for national modernization). Likewise, the extraordinary event that was Kampuchea was defined by the application of a radical communist ideology in which class was everything. Nationalism — connected usually to other factors such as religion, ethnicity, race, or color — has also played its part in justifying oppression and death — as a decisive ingredient in Stalin’s exile of the minority nationalities during World War II and in his assault on the Ukraine in the early 1930s.”
  57. ^ Shaw 2015a, p. 115: “In these contexts, democratic impulses were snuffed out, and foundations were made for the centralization of power in the hands of Stalin, who in turn proclaimed the new nationalist doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’. Thereafter, nationalist ideas were at the heart of many mass killings by Communist states, both in genocide and in war. As Stalinist parties seized power in Asia and the Balkans after 1945, they each proclaimed their own national ideology. Each ‘great leader’ claimed to represent his fatherland, and many were prepared to kill extensively in the leader’s name. After this, nationalist militarism became the model for revolutionary movements across the Third World. Whatever other ideological elements and alliances the insurgent forces claimed, their killing was invariably in the name of national liberation. The ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia (episode VII) represented the nadir of this kind of nationalist Communism. In the former Soviet and Yugoslav areas after 1989, many former Communist elites reinvented themselves as ethnic nationalists. In some cases, they launched genocidal wars in the name of their new creed, to renew the foundations of their power. Nationalism made democratization a sick joke in war zones – the incentive to manufacture ethnically homogenous electorates became one of the driving forces of expulsion and slaughter (episode VIII).”
  58. ^ Rosefielde 2010, p. xvi: “The story that emerges from the exercise is edifying. It reveals that the conditions for the Red Holocaust were rooted in Stalin’s, Kim’s, Mao’s, Ho’s and Pol Pot’s siege-mobilized terror-command economic systems, not in Marx’s utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms. Terror-command was chosen among other reasons because of legitimate fears about the long-term viability of terror-free command, and the ideological risks of market communism. The internal contradictions of communism confronted leaders with a predicament that could only have been efficiently resolved by acknowledging communism’s inferiority and changing course. Denial offered two unhappy options: one bloody, the other dreary, and history records that more often than not, communist rulers chose the worst option. Tens of millions were killed in vain; a testament to the triumph of ruthless hope over dispassionate reason that proved more durable than Hitler’s and Hirohito’s racism. These findings are likely to withstand the test of time, but are only a beginning, opening up a vast new field for scientific inquiry as scholars gradually gain access to archives in North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.”
  59. ^ Krain 1997, p. 334: “In addition, many studies have documented the effects of wars and civil wars on general preconditions for genocides and politicides. For example, Melson (1992) argues that revolutions create the conditions that allow genocidal movements and permit their leaders to come to power in the first place and impose their radical ideology, thereby legitimizing mass murder in the eyes of the populace by making it state sponsored. Following the work done by Laswell (1962) on the ‘garrison state,’ Gurr (1988) documents the establishment and expansion of the secret police and other institutions of the ‘coercive state’ as a direct result of wars and civil wars. Eisenstadt (1978) argues that hostile international pressures lead to greater isolation of the elites, which in turn leads to an increased probability that these elites will use repression. Some preliminary quantitative work has verified this hypothesis.”
  60. ^ Jones 2010, p. 126: “This civil war, one of the most destructive of the twentieth century, lasted until 1921 and claimed an estimated nine million lives on all sides. Its ‘influence . . . on the whole course of subsequent history, and on Stalinism, cannot possibly be overestimated. It was in the civil war that Stalin and men like Stalin emerged as leaders, while others became accustomed to harshness, cruelty, terror.’ Red forces imposed “War Communism,’ an economic policy that repealed peasants’ land seizures, forcibly stripped the countryside of grain to feed city dwellers, and suppressed private commerce. All who opposed these policies were ‘enemies of the people.’ ‘This is the hour of truth,’ Lenin wrote in a letter to a comrade in mid-1918. ‘It is of supreme importance that we encourage and make use of the energy of mass terror directed against the counterrevolutionaries.’ The Cheka, the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police (later the NKVD and finally the KGB), responded with gusto. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders may have viewed mass terror as a short-term measure but its widespread use belies claims that it was Stalin’s invention.”
  61. ^ Montagnes & Wolton 2019, p. 27: “Mass purges further seem to have occurred during, arguably, the most personalist phase, to borrow Geddes’s (2003) terminology, of the communist regimes in the USSR and China. We see two possible complementary reasons for this. According to Geddes (2003), personalist leaders control appointments, potentially raising the congruence of new agents, and the security apparatus, potentially reducing the cost of carrying out the purge. Purges may then have almost disappeared in China and the USSR following the deaths of Stalin and Mao because of the subsequent return to a form of collective leadership to avoid a repeat of past excesses (Levytsky, 1972; Teiwes, 2017). Obviously, much more needs to be learned about why autocrats decide to start a mass purge. However, our framework can be seen as a possible starting point for a more general theory of coercive instruments in autocracy.”
  62. ^ Žižek 2006: “This ‘cosmic perspective’ is for Mao not just an irrelevant philosophical caveat; it has precise ethico-political consequences. When Mao high-handedly dismisses the threat of the atomic bomb, he is not down-playing the scope of the danger — he is fully aware that nuclear war may led to the extinction of humanity as such, so, to justify his defiance, he has to adopt the ‘cosmic perspective’ from which the end of life on Earth ‘would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole’:The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.This ‘cosmic perspective’ also grounds Mao’s dismissive attitude towards the human costs of economic and political endeavors. If one is to believe Mao’s latest biography, he caused the greatest famine in history by exporting food to Russia to buy nuclear and arms industries: 38 million people were starved and slave-driven to death in 1958-61. Mao knew exactly what was happening, saying: ‘half of China may well have to die.’ This is instrumental attitude at its most radical: killing as part of a ruthless attempt to realize goal, reducing people to disposable means – and what one should bear in mind is that the Nazi holocaust was NOT the same: the killing of the Jews not part of a rational strategy, but a self-goal, a meticulously planned ‘irrational’ excess (recall the deportation of the last Jews from Greek islands in 1944, just before the German retreat, or the massive use of trains for transporting Jews instead of war materials in 1944). This is why Heidegger is wrong when he reduces holocaust to the industrial production of corpses: it was NOT that, Stalinist Communism was that.”
  63. ^ Conquest 2007, p. xvi: “Exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, but the total of deaths caused by the whole range of Soviet regime’s terrors can hardly be lower than some fifteen million.”
  64. ^ Yakovlev 2002, p. 234: “My own many years and experience in the rehabilitation of victims of political terror allow me to assert that the number of people in the USSR who were killed for political motives or who died in prisons and camps during the entire period of Soviet power totaled 20 to 25 million. And unquestionably one must add those who died of famine—more than 5.5 million during the civil war and more than 5 million during the 1930s.”
  65. ^ Wheatcroft 1999, pp. 315‒345: “During 1921–53, the number of sentences was (political convictions): sentences, 4,060,306; death penalties, 799,473; camps and prisons, 2,634,397; exile, 413,512; other, 215,942. In addition, during 1937‒52 there were 14,269,753 non-political sentences, among them 34,228 death penalties, 2,066,637 sentences for 0–1 year, 4,362,973 for 2–5 years, 1,611,293 for 6–10 years, and 286,795 for more than 10 years. Other sentences were non-custodial.”
  66. ^ Healey 2018, p. 1049: “New studies using declassified Gulag archives have provisionally established a consensus on mortality and ‘inhumanity.’ The tentative consensus says that once secret records of the Gulag administration in Moscow show a lower death toll than expected from memoir sources, generally between 1.5 and 1.7 million (out of 18 million who passed through) for the years from 1930 to 1953. Moreover, as Alexopoulos summarizes, we have found no ‘plan of destruction’ of prisoners (7), no statement of official intent to kill them in these records. Instead, historians have found that prisoner releases significantly predominated over deaths in the Gulag, with Alexopoulos’s own earlier work on amnesty a leading statement of this view. Yet her encounter with the Gulag medical-sanitary service’s Moscow archive ‘surprised’ Alexopoulos (1), and she now attempts to challenge the emergent scholarly consensus, with uneven success.”
  67. ^ Snyder 2011: “All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million.”
  68. ^ Montefiore 2005, p. 649: “Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags.”
  69. ^ Volkogonov 1999, p. 139: “Between 1929 and 1953 the state created by Lenin and set in motion by Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives.”
  70. ^ Gellately 2007, p. 584: “More recent estimations of the Soviet-on-Soviet killing have been more ‘modest’ and range between ten and twenty million.”
  71. ^ Brent 2008: “Estimations on the number of Stalin’s victims over his twenty-five year reign, from 1928 to 1953, vary widely, but 20 million is now considered the minimum.”
  72. ^ Rosefielde 2010, p. 17: “We now know as well beyond a reasonable doubt that there were more than 13 million Red Holocaust victims 1929–53, and this figure could rise above 20 million.”
  73. ^ Kleveman 2003: In one estimate, based on a report by Lavrenti Beria to Stalin, 150,000 of 478,479 deported Ingush and Chechen people (or 31.3 percent) died within the first four years of the resettlement.; Naimark 2001: Another scholar puts the number of deaths at 22.7 percent: Extrapolating from NKVD records, 113,000 Ingush and Chechens died (3,000 before deportation, 10,000 during deportation, and 100,000 after resettlement) in the first three years of the resettlement out of 496,460 total deportees.; Mawdsley 2003: A third source says a quarter of the 650,000 deported Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Kalmyks died within four years of resettlement.; Fischer & Leggett 2006: However, estimates of the number of deportees sometimes varies widely. Two scholars estimated the number of Chechen and Ingush deportees at 700,000, which would halve the percentage estimates of deaths.
  74. ^ BBC 2008b: “Латвія стала 19-ю країною світу, яка визнала Голодомор ґеноцидом українського народу. Литва й Естонія ухвалили такі декларації раніше.” (translation: ‘Latvia became the 19th country in the world that recognized the Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Lithuania and Estonia have adopted such declarations earlier.’); Korrespondent 2008a: “Латвия присоеденилась к еще 15 странам, уже признавшим Голодомор в Украине геноцидом украинского народа. Декларация подготовлена в ответ на призыв Украины к международному сообществу признать и осудить Голодомор – голод на Украине 1930-х годов прошлого века. Как сообщалось, в феврале Мексика и Парагвай признали Голодомор 1932-1933 годов актом геноцида украинского народа.” (translation: ‘Latvia has joined 15 more countries that have already recognized the Holodomor in Ukraine as the genocide of the Ukrainian people. The declaration was prepared in response to Ukraine’s appeal to the international community to recognize and condemn the Holodomor — the famine in Ukraine of the 1930s of the last century. As reported, in February, Mexico and Paraguay recognized the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.’); Korrespondent 2008b: “Сусідні з Латвією Литва та Естонія визнали Голодомор в Україні геноцидом проти українського народу ще на початку 1990-х років. Загалом, Голодомор 1932-33 рр. геноцидом українців визнали понад 10 держав світу. Серед них США, Канада, Естонія, Аргентина, Австралія, Італія, Угорщина, Литва, Грузія, Польща, Еквадор і відтепер Латвія.” (translation: ‘Neighboring Latvia Lithuania and Estonia recognized the Holodomor in Ukraine as a genocide against the Ukrainian people in the early 1990s. In general, the Holodomor of 1932-33 has been identified by more than 10 states of the world as a genocide of Ukrainians. Among them are the USA, Canada, Estonia, Argentina, Australia, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Ecuador and now Latvia.’).”
  75. Jump up to:a b Ellman 2002, pp. 1151–1172: “The best estimate that can currently be made of the number of repression deaths in 1937–38 is the range 950,000–1.2 million, i.e., about a million. This estimate should be used by historians, teachers, and journalists concerned with twentieth century Russian—and world—history.”
  76. ^ Fenby 2008, p. 351: “Mao’s responsibility for the extinction of anywhere from 40 to 70 million lives brands him as a mass killer greater than Hitler or Stalin, his indifference to the suffering and the loss of humans breathtaking.”
  77. ^ Su 2003, pp. 25–26: “In this study I have documented the patterns of mass killings in three Chinese provinces in the demobilization period of the Cultural Revolution. I also have also sought explanations for this historical tragedy by examining the role of the state. I have presented the findings from a few different angles. Now it is time to take a look at these findings together to formulate my central argument: The mass killings were rooted in the paradox of state sponsorship and state failure. … Mass killings occurred in the three provinces; in two provinces they were a widespread phenomenon. That this finding is from a published source sanctioned by the Chinese government unequivocally supports similar claims made by previous case studies. By examining the mass killings across more than 180 counties, with information from the previous case studies, I am able to uncover the following patterns. First, the mass killings varied greatly across three provinces, while within one province, there appears to be a great degree of uniformity. This pattern indicates that the occurrence of mass killings was more germane to province-specific political conditions rather than national politics as a whole. I tentatively attribute the provincial difference to the different patterns of mass factional alignment vis-à-vis the governmental authorities in the province. In Hubei, the Rebel Faction, having had prevailed in the previous conflict, was incorporated into the new government. In contrast, in Guangxi and Guangdong, the Rebel Factions continued to be the outsider, and the two provinces were more prone to use violence as a weapon against the Rebel Factions. An alternative explanation for the difference is that Hubei was geographically, and by inference, politically closer to Beijing, hence the province tended to have more restraint against violence. Second, the mass killings concentrate in the months after most counties established revolutionary committees, but in the time when the provincial capitals were still entangled in mass factionalism. The peaks of mass killings coincided with two announcements from the party center in July 1968 banning factional armed battles and disbanding mass organizations. The finding that historical timing was crucial factor helps us understand the nature and source of mass killings. The fact that most of them occurred after the new governments were put in place indicates that mass killings were the result of the repression by the local state rather than the result of conflicts between independent mass groups. The fact that they coincided with the crackdown of the oppositional mass organizations in the provincial capital indicates that the provincial authorities promoted the rhetoric of violence, although extreme violence in local communes and villages may not be what they intended. Third, mass killings were primarily a rural phenomenon. In other words, they occurred not in provincial capitals or county seats, but in communes and villages. This is in stark contrast to earlier mass movements of the Cultural Revolution such as campaigns against intellectuals and government officials and the factional street battles which mostly occurred in urban settings. The imagery of top-down diffusion does not apply to the mass killings. This suggests that the class struggle rhetoric disseminated from urban centers found an expression in extreme violence in rural townships and villages, possibly due to the failure of the state to hold the action of the lowest bureaucrats accountable. This explanation is supported by another piece of evidence—the poorer and remoter counties were more likely to have mass killings. Fourth, the perpetrators were the local leaders and their mass followers (e.g., militia members). The more party members in the local community, the more likely there were mass killings, likely because the local government in these communities enjoyed a stronger organizational base to mobilize the extreme violence. Fifth, other things being equal (i.e., controlling for distance, county revenue, and party membership) counties with a significant presence of ethnic minority were not more likely to have mass killings. Similarly, population density, prior armed battle conflict, and the compositions of the county leadership have no association to the likelihood of mass killings. These findings to some extent eliminate alternative explanations to the argument fashioned here that stresses the role of the state.”
  78. ^ Su 2011, pp. 98–100: “The so-called class enemy as a category of the rural population had been in place for about two decades after 1949, but not until the Cultural Revolution did it become a victim group for eliminationist killing. This development cannot be explained by the communist doctrine of a classless society because the doctrine as previously practiced in China, for the most part, was not to create this society by physical elimination. Neither can it be explained by the notion that previously propertied classes posed an objective threat, hence that their elimination was imperative. This review of the origin of class enemy demonstrates that its creation, maintenance, and treatment all served the politics of the time. Mass-killing scholars who draw on political violence in communist societies for comparison, however, often take a realist view of the concept of class enemy (or ‘people’s enemy’ in the case of the Soviet Union). That is, they write as though the opposition to the new communist system was real, with class enemy identifying a broad category of individuals who represent plausible or incipient opposition or resistance to the state. … After the Land Reform movement, China was transformed into a classless society, if defined only in terms of property. From this classless society, the state created an artificial divide between ‘the people’ and the ‘class enemy.’ The toothless enemy class was never designed to be eliminated, either by murder or other means. In the first place, the numbers of class enemies were inflated. Quotas were established and sanctions were applied to local leadership if localities did not have a certain percentage of landlords and rich peasants; the numbers were always greater than their initial landed status would warrant. To underscore the artificiality and arbitrariness of this designation, a few years after Mao’s death, class enemies were eliminated as a political class – not by murder but rather by declaration – once the new leadership decided that the categories and campaigns had become counterproductive. Therefore, the class divides were imposed and maintained by the state and perpetuated through state-sponsored mass campaigns. What purpose, then, did the existence of a constructed enemy class serve? The answer links this artificial class divide to two main political tasks: mobilizing mass compliance and resolving elite conflict. These linkages are the key to understanding why the system deepened the politically constructed divide in times of political crisis. Its elastic nature, then, is the key to understanding why the class categorization could take on a genocidal dimension under extraordinary circumstances.”
  79. ^ Etcheson 2005, p. 78: “Were the Cambodian people somehow Pol Pot’s ‘willing executioners,’ with the violence of the Khmer Rouge regime reflecting an underlying trait of the Cambodian people, historically unique to the time and place it occurred? Or did the violence of the Khmer Rouge regime emanate from some more broadly distributed ideological origin, therefore rendering it amenable to comparison? Perhaps the Khmer Rouge mass killing arose from the same tenets of communism that brought about the mass killing of Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China but that was, by absolute numbers, much less evil. Or perhaps the killing in Cambodia can be understood as a response to the perceived threat from Vietnam, as the Khmer Rouge themselves have argued at some length. These same themes and issues lay at the heart of the Historikerstreit, and they are also part and parcel of genocide studies. In the scholarly literature on the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea, there have been two principal schools of thought regarding the nature of the violence that took so many lives in such a short period of time. One school of thought holds that the primary locus of the violence was local and that it was largely the result of the spontaneous excesses of a vengeful, undisciplined peasant army. A prominent proponent of this school of thought is Michael Vickery. A second school of thought holds that the locus of the violence was centralized and that it was largely the result of a carefully planned and centrally controlled security apparatus. Several observers have proposed this explanation of the violence in the Democratic Kampuchea regime, including, for example, the recently retired U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, Kenneth Quinn. It can be argued, however, that until recently there was an inadequate amount of data to make an unambiguous determination of the question. A wide range of new evidence uncovered by the Documentation Center of Cambodia over the course of the last ten years has done much to resolve this controversy. In particular, data on the frequency, distribution, and origin of mass graves, combined with data gleaned from newly discovered Khmer Rouge internal security documents, have given us new insight into the question of the economy of violence within Democratic Kampuchea. The data lead inexorably to the conclusion that most of the violence was carried out pursuant to orders from the highest political authorities of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. In this chapter, I briefly review some of the new evidence that so strongly suggests this new and well-documented conclusion.”
  80. ^ Harff & Gurr 1988, p. 369: “Revolutionary mass murder: the most common type of politicide (following repressive politicide), with ten examples in our data set. In all these instances new regimes have come to power committed to bringing about fundamental social, economic, and political change. Their enemies usually are defined by variants of Marxist-Leninist ideology: initially their victims include the officials and most prominent supporters of the old regime and landowners and wealthy peasants. Later they may include-as they did in Kampuchea and in China during the Cultural Revolution-cadres who lack revolutionary zeal. In Laos and Ethiopia they have included ordinary peasants in regions which actively or passively resisted revolutionary policies. Most Marxist-Leninist regimes which came to power through protracted armed struggle in the postwar period perpetrated one or more politicides, though of vastly different magnitudes. The worst offender was the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea; the second worst, the Chinese Communist regime.”
  81. ^ Jambrek 2008, p. 156: “Most of the mass killings were carried out from May to July 1945; among the victims were mostly the ‘returned’ (or ‘home-captured’) Home guards and prisoners from other Yugoslav provinces. In the following months, up to January 1946 when the Constitution of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was passed and OZNA had to hand the camps over to the organs of the Ministry of the Interior, those killings were followed by mass killing of Germans, Italians and Slovenes suspected of collaborationism and anti-communism. Individual secret killings were carried out at later dates as well. The decision to ‘annihilate’ opponents must had been adopted in the closest circles of Yugoslav state leadership, and the order was certainly issued by the Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army Josip Broz — Tito, although it is not known when or in what form.”
  82. ^ Vu 2010a, p. 103: “Clearly Vietnamese socialism followed a moderate path relative to China. … Yet the Vietnamese ‘land reform’ campaign … testified that Vietnamese communists could be as radical and murderous as their comrades elsewhere. In May 1953, on the eve of the campaign, the VWP Politburo chaired by Ho authorized the execution of landlords by a ratio of one person for every thousand people, or 0.1 percent of the population.5 … 5. ‘Chi thi cua Bo Chinh Tri’ (Politburo’s Decree), May 4, 1953 (Dang Cong San Viet Nam, hereafter DCSVN, 2001, 14: 201). Based on other sources, Edwin Moise (2001, 7-9) accepts an estimate close to 15,000 executions. This was about 0.1 percent of the total population of 13.5 million in North Vietnam in 1955.”
  83. ^ Valentino 2005, p. 223: “The pattern of Soviet military operations strongly suggests that population relocation was a significant part of Soviet counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Although direct evidence of Soviet intentions is limited, most analysts and observers of the war have concluded that the Soviets adopted an intentional policy of attacking villages in areas of high guerrilla activity in the effort to force the population into flight. Free-fire zones were established in depopulated areas, permitting Soviet troops to shoot anything that moved. In addition to killing tens of thousands in attacks on villages, this policy eventually produced one of the most massive refugee movements in modern history. Approximately 5 million people out of a total prewar population of between 15.5 and 17 million had fled the country by the early 1990s, the great majority across the border to Pakistan. Two million more were displaced within Afghanistan. Many refugees died during the difficult journey over mountain passes to Pakistan.”
  84. ^ Courtois 1999, p. 9: “As for the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-33, which resulted from the rural population’s resistance to forced collectivization, 6 million died in a period of several months. Here, the genocide of a ‘class’ may well be tantamount to the genocide of a ‘race’ — the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine causes by Stalin’s regime ‘is equal to’ the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime. Such arguments in no way detract from the unique nature of Auschwitz — the mobilization of leading-edge technological resources and their use in an ‘industrial process’ involving the construction of an ‘extermination factory,’ the use of gas, and cremation. However, this argument highlights one particular feature of many Communist regimes — their systematic use of famine as a weapon. The regime aimed to control the total available food supply and, with immense ingenuity, to distribute food purely on the basis of ‘merits’ and ‘demerits’ earned by individuals. This policy was a recipe for creating famine on a massive scale. Remember that in the period after 1918, only Communist countries experienced such famines, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people. And again in the 1980s, two African countries that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, Ethiopia and Mozambique, were the only such countries to suffer these deadly famines.”
  85. ^ Shaw 2015b, Structural contexts and unintended consequences: “Many famines, for example, are originally the product of natural conditions (e.g. in nineteenth-century colonial India) or of anti-peasant policies not originally intended to cause mass death (Stalin’s ‘terror-famine’ and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’). However, if regimes, whether colonial or Stalinist, fail to take action to alleviate or end starvation, then that outcome may come to be, in part, intended. The understanding of this issue in the laws of war is enlightening: ‘If the destruction [of civilian populations] is avoidable … through better weapon selection, tactics, etc., then the commander could still be held liable under Article 2 of the 1907 Hague Conventions,’ even if he did not intend to kill civilians. If leaders, in the knowledge of hunger, actively pursue policies that exacerbate it, as Stalin and Mao did by selling grain overseas and using violence to prevent peasants from accessing it, then their intention is clear.”
  86. ^ The resolution stated: “In the early 1990s, our country took important steps towards establishing the truth in the Katyn tragedy. It was recognized that the mass extermination of Polish citizens on the territory of the USSR during World War II was an act of arbitrariness by the totalitarian state, which also repressed hundreds of thousands of Soviet people for their political and religious beliefs, on social and other grounds. The published materials, kept in secret archives for many years, not only reveal the scale of this terrible tragedy, but also testify that the Katyn crime was committed on the direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”
  87. ^ Bevins 2020, p. 240:”… we do not live in a world directly constructed by Stalin’s purges or mass starvation under Pol Pot. Those states are gone. Even Mao’s Great Leap Forward was quickly abandoned and rejected by the Chinese Communist Party, though the party is still very much around. We do, however, live in a world built partly by US-backed Cold War violence … Washington’s anticommunist crusade, with Indonesia as the apex of its murderous violence against civilians, deeply shaped the world we live in now …”

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