Dec 20, 2024
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Our Golden Age of Conspiracies
by Doniphan Blair
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The planes piloted by al-Qaeda operatives, which flew into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, are said by some conspiracy theorists to be an American self-attack. photo: unknownIn this four-part essay, I present “A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies”; “The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto”, a rehabilitation regimen in 13 easy steps; “An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich”, an attempt to reach one person by reminding him of his brilliant and loving former self; and “Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love”, a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many to do the right thing. The Conspiracy of Love I developed from the Holocaust experiences of my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, which are detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).
Part 1: A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies
Back in the good old days, a couple of years ago, people routinely dismissed conspiracy theorists as something akin to stamp collectors: slightly kooky aficionados of an odd discipline. But that’s getting very hard to do today as they attract ever greater numbers, seize the spotlight and push us all towards a surreal tipping point.
They became a major fringe phenomena about eighteen years ago when Theorists, or Truthers, as they prefer to be called, researched the 9/11 attacks and discovered they were an inside job. Although most Theorists decline to be definitive, the al-Qaeda operatives who flew the planes were supposedly agents working for either the CIA or a more clandestine American entity.
These forces are so powerful, according to Theorists, they are able to perpetrate enormous crimes while leaving little or no trace or witnesses.
It was Donald Trump, however, who ushered conspiracies into the mainstream when he became the most prominent backer of “Birtherism,” the notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Then he kicked off his presidential bid with his theory that Mexicans were sneaking across the border, not to work hard at low pay but to rob and rape Americans.
Now Trump is trumpeting new conspiracies almost daily. Obviously, his strategy is to promote manipulative, half-believable stories, sow the suspicion needed to render everything a form of fake news and rule as the greatest faker.
Donald J. Trump's long involvement with glitz, fakery and cheating as well as his emotional intelligence drew him directly to conspiracy theory. photo: courtesy Vanity FairNaturally, having a conspiracy king in the White House enfranchised the conspiracists, as well as the ambidextrous extremists out to exploit them. But over the last four months they have become even more addled by the historical fluke of quarantine isolation, economic collapse and, starting at the end of May, street demonstrations.
Welcome to our golden age of conspiracies, one so glitteringly grotesque it makes the 19th century Illuminati look like children’s theater.
Of course, there are conspiracies by corporate criminals, corrupt officials and criminal enterprises, as well as foreign agents, which warrant investigation—indeed, we need to allocate even more resources there.
And sure, there are dilettante conspiracists who are hardly hurting anyone by googling “Federal Reserve” or “contrails,” say, for a few hours a week—just keeping an open mind, they explain, or indulging in harmless entertainment.
But they have been overshadowed and outgunned by the many disciples of QAnon (an anonymous leaker allegedly high up in the intelligence services), who scour the news for signals concerning Trump’s impending declaration of martial law, arrest of leading liberals and break up of what they claim is a massive international ring of Satanists, who also happen to be cannibals and pedophiles.
As if this weren't odd enough, some Republicans are now running as QAnon candidates, while Trump’s disgraced and indicted former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, recently showed his QAnon colors. (See that story here, a new piece on QAnon in The New Republic, an older one in The Atlantic or one with more psychological perspective from Behavioral Scientist.)
Then there’s Alex Jones’s Infowarriors or the followers of the London Real show, who claim Covid-19 is a lab-engineered bio-weapon or a by-product of the new 5G microwave communication network. And then there's—and this is no joke—the Boogaloo Bois (boys), an actual conspiratorial group.
To get our terminology straight, that means the Boogaloo Bois are not only plotting unlawful or harmful schemes—the so-called conspiracies—but carrying them out and can be properly called conspirators. Last but not least are the conspiracy theorists, who sift the runic sands for traces of plots, often in the land of make believe.
The Boogalooers, however, are all too real. Known for their mixed metaphors—old movie and dance references and Hawaiian shirts combined with large arsenals—their romantic dream for America is to foment riots, kill police and be agent provocateurs—though they’d never use a French term—for a “white revolution.”
One mile from where I sit in Oakland, a Boogalooer murdered Patrick David Underwood, a Black, 53-year-old security guard, on May 29th, the first night of Oakland's George Floyd protests. He was captured within a week but only after killing another policeman, Damon Gutzwiller (white that time).
As the Boogalooers illustrate, there are some very active, aggressive and dangerous conspiracies, which should be sleuthed, tracked and stopped. But there are also a lot of fabricated conspiracies accusing innocent people. Even conspiracy-lite feeds conspiracism, which increases prejudices against minorities, especially Jewish people, given all of the ancient accusations against them, as we will examine in the fourth part of this essay.
The Kennedy killing on November 22th, 1963 is probably the largest major event studied by conspiracy theorists that stands a reasonable chance of being associated with an actual conspiracy. photo: unknownThere has always been conspiratorial thinking—not people plotting, which there has also always been, rather people looking for plots. But it was largely confined to the FBI’s Mafia task force, paranoid schizophrenics or demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who claimed to have uncovered dozens of communists in the upper echelons of the US government and military. (Trump is a direct heir to McCarthy, connected through the latter's close associate, Roy Cohn, who became both Trump’s mentor in skulduggery AND his personal lawyer.)
Modern conspiratorial thinking started with the Kennedy assassination and the obvious inconsistencies in the official reports (although why such sophisticated conspirators would enlist Lee Harvey Oswald, a nutcase just back from defecting to the Soviet Union, would also be hard to explain).
Conspiratorial thinking jumped a level with the arrival of the internet, which opened vast forums for free speech just in time for 9/11. A decade later, emerging social media companies doubled down on those proclivities when they developed algorithms to stimulate interest and ad revenue by favoring viewers’ prejudices.
Post-9/11 increases in state and corporate surveillance didn’t help, either.
Then there’s humanity’s periodic production of a person of exceptional quality. In troubled times, people understandably either hope for such a messiah or decry their opposite: evil masterminds.
More fundamental, I believe, is how the conspiracists themselves feel aggrieved. Obviously, they derive substantial self-esteem and status from attacking hidden enemies and purveying secret information. As in any espionage situation, the more tightly held the secret, the more valuable. And, even in casual settings like shoptalk or gossip, people love to control the information flow.
Information domination is paramount among conspiracists. But they achieve such supposed superiority through tricks and sleight of hand. Indeed, if you dare challenge their evidence, be forewarned. You will soon enter a funhouse debate of dubious indicators, diverging levels of science, full-on fabrications and "plausible deniability."
And, if that didn't establish a shaky enough ground on which to build their confrontation with the entire existing order, once one conspiracy has been revealed, to retain the dominant information spot, they have to keep upping the ante with more spectacular suppositions. This is the reason why QAnon has essentially absorbed all precursing conspiracies, including the ancient, medieval “blood libel” against the Jewish people, making it the conspiracy to end all conspiracies.
Of course, hidden enemies are just that. They rarely rebut claims, let alone strike back (although bin Laden was said to have been incensed by how conspiracists erased his efforts). That is why, a few years after 9/11, Theorists had to stop lauding themselves for bravely "speaking of truth to power," on Pacifica Radio, say, since everyone knew no one would ever bother to come for them.
The US dollar's eye on the pyramid was derived from the private, if not always secret, Free Masons and referenced the Egyptians and their prodigious knowledge. photo: courtesy US TreasuryBut that insult to their humanity is minimal. The big injury, according to my ad hoc research among conspiracist friends and acquaintances in the US, Brazil, Germany, Poland and Mexico, is that their fathers did not treat them right. Unable to simply reject their patriarch, which would be standard for the empowered adult but risky for the injured adolescent, they craft a psychological work-around.
The little patriarch—be it Dad, the employer, the nation—would have done more for them, or so their subconscious speculates, had it not been for the big patriarch—the capitalists, the CIA, the deep state—which they are now free to attack without alienating their community, although family and friends often become sick of their endless theorizing.
In fact, the new book, “Too Much and Never Enough”, by Trump's niece, Mary Trump, documents that he was abused by his father, which would give him a classical conspiracist's childhood (see article). Released on July 16th, it broke records with almost a million copies sold on its first day.
Conspiracism may be related to paranoid schizophrenia, which induces its sufferers to hear people talking about them or voices in their head, essentially the universe communicating with them. A more moderate malaise seems to afflict conspiracists, to whom the universe is also talking but through bits of news, shreds of evidence or other signs, which, when puzzle-pieced together, expresses their desires and politics.
I’m especially chagrined by how conspiracism bewitched so many of my old friends and has its modern roots in the ‘60s. Rejecting authority and embracing new ideas are essential, but for the transition to work efficiently it requires rationalism, proportionality and tolerance.
In fact, many conspiracists have taken up the ‘60s mantle of accepting new paradigms, coming together and seeing the truth.
Unfortunately, underneath their new age cant, the truth they want us to see is a fallen, evil world. Humanity is controlled by puppet masters or reptilian underworld beings, according to one of the most asinine but powerful purveyors of conspira-crap, David Icke, an English former sportswriter. Indeed, a lot of conspiracism smacks of leftovers from a bygone era, Satanism, which, true to form, the conspiracists have returned to in force.
We will all be one, they proclaim, albeit only after eliminating the evildoers, the reverse of a Kumbaya moment. Most religious and shamanic traditions are unified by the basic tenets of responsibility, helping others and tolerance, which is often defined as “Do onto others as you would want to be done unto you.”
It is known as the Golden Rule not simply due to citings by patriarchal monotheists but because it is a functional formula for becoming a conscious adult. To become fully human, we have to recognize the humanity of others—not just our friends, but our opponents.
That is because we were all created by one god, according to monotheists, or one evolutionary process, according to science. Alas, conspiracists doubt such unity and see the world as dominated by devils, with no hope in sight.
Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), the liberal scholar who founded the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society whose deeds were mostly scholarly or advocacy, but which became a scapegoat and then a myth. photo: courtesy Bavarian MuseumIndeed, few conspiracists, as far as I know, have retracted their claims or admitted error, let alone abandoned conspiratorial thinking. Although some disavow it, they do so on equivocal terms. Indeed, when the attraction of rejoining the conspiracist community and its easy stimulation of dopamine becomes too great, they inevitably backslide. They can always muddle through, given how the details of a conspiracy are fuzzy, fungible or fabricated, while the hard facts of their grievances remain unchanged and impossible to deny.
Another workaround conspiracists rely on is that their conspiracy speculations—that there was no moon landing, that Western Civilization is controlled by cannibal pederasts, that Trump is our secret savior—is but a benign form of recreation and amusement.
Indeed, one of America's top conspiracists, Alex Jones, is just “a performance artist... playing a character," according to his attorney Randall Wilhite, during his 2017 custody battle with Jones's ex-wife Kelly Jones. She claimed that hearing all of Jones's hate and fabrication all day—his radio studio is in his house—was not healthy for their three children. This renders Jones even more evil, someone with no core beliefs but who would happily destroy not just his own children but our shared cultural commons simply for the attention and money.
Making up secret cabals and scapegoats used to require its own secret cabal, replete with spies, forgers, printing presses and the like. Nowadays, however, QAnon, London Real and Boogaloo are Facebook groups, YouTube channels or 4chan threads, easily weaponized by trolls and bots, domestic and foreign, as well as by their registered users.
Even newcomer Tiktok, the biggest social medium to emerge outside the US (it is from China) and a source of charming entertainment for sheltering-in-place (see cineSOURCE article), is dragging a new generation—the millennials, who were too young to enjoy 9/11 conspiracy theory—down that mirror-lined rabbit hole.
Indeed, Tiktok has logged millions of views of posts about PizzaGate—arguably the most disgusting and absurd of all the conspiracy theories pre-QAnon, given its odd combination of child abuse and innocuous locations. PizzaGate was "discovered" by deciphering references in the emails of John Podesta, the former director of the Democratic National Committee.
Although Podesta’s emails were hacked by the Russian trolls of Fancy Bear, one of Putin’s cyber spy groups, they were published by WikiLeaks, directed by Julian Assange, who is currently doing a year in an English prison. Assange uploaded them on October 7th, 2016, just weeks before Trump's election, suggesting an actual conspiracy.
With so many people of the left and right, white collar and working class, fixated on the deep state, vaccine poisoning—amid an actual pandemic, no less—and the hundreds of other conspiracies, not to forget the foreign politicians who spout conspiracy theories while organizing actual conspiracies to interfere in the American elections—only four months away—it’s a four-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck, person-the-barricades situation.
I haven’t completely cracked the conpiracist’s code, which would require well-funded research, big data and extensive psychological surveys. But I have had many discussions—OK, often arguments—with a wide variety of conspiracists since 2002; I have observed ample evidence of the actual internal object of their anger (their fathers); and I am petrified.
Perhaps the only thing worse then an uptight, square, stuck-in-the-mud person is a loose cannon, with no real interest in coming to grips with complex situations or their own psychology, but who is ready, willing and able to feed the rising tide of confusion, chaos and fear.
We are now entering the culmination of our Golden Age of Conspiracies, what future historians may call the "Conspiracy Wars," as various factions vie for the attention of an increasingly confused public with ever more outrageous claims. To be sure, it will become quite a cauldron of hysteria, especially at the end of October as Trump, Putin, Jones, Icke and their robotic minions pull ever more outrageous claims out of their demonic hindquarters.
Fortunately, rising up against them is an immense army of rational, loving and decent people of every possible persuasion and creed.
The Satanists, essentially inverted Catholics, were another late-medieval secret society which influenced conspiracists. photo: traditionalPart 2: The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto
1. Actual conspiracies do exist, but they are rare, and extraordinary claims require verifiable evidence.
2. Once we accept one extraordinary claim without verifiable evidence, we are predisposed to accept many extraordinary claims without verifiable evidence.
3. By rejecting such conspiracy tolerance, while remaining vigilant for verifiable evidence about actual conspiracies, we may still let slip through one or two conspiracies.
4. But one or two conspiracies is healthier than the devastating damage inflicted by all the fraudulent conspiracies, which inflame prejudice, confusion and fear, which can foster attacks, killings and even genocides, and which waste colossal amounts of time better used to research actual conspiracies or to enjoy life.
5. Call this the Conspiracy of Love, the proposition that we are significantly better off rejecting unverified conspiracies, which are false alarms over 98% of the time, and assuming that people of good will, even if hidden or unrecognized, will do the right thing at least 51% of the time.
6. Differentiating between good and evil is difficult, especially now that propaganda is rampant, secret agendas are common and mirroring ones opponents is standard, which means conspiracists invariably claim that their opponents are conspiring against them.
7. Nevertheless, over time, the truth almost always comes out. To accelerate this analysis, try this formula: Good is long-term benefit for the many; evil is short-term benefit for the few.
8. By virtue of this maxim, the Conspiracy of Love always beats the conspiracies of hate over time. If it did not, there would be no evolution, and we would still be living in caves ruled by bullies.
9. Love has been increasing. Indeed, the love accumulation of today is significantly more than it was 1000 years ago.
10. But many of us still suffer from lack of love. Indeed, insufficient love from our patriarchal entities is a primary driver of conspiracy psychology.
11. Being insufficiently loved by your father is hard to experience and heartbreaking to watch. Nevertheless, if your overall love accumulation exceeds 51%, you are in Conspiracy of Love territory. If your love accumulation was less than 49%, your father would have killed your mother before she could give birth, or some such conspiracy of hate horror.
12. Admittedly, 51% is a slim win for love, given we would all prefer the true love, til-death-do-we-part variant. Nevertheless, 51% is enough to win in sports, elections and war. By virtue of simple math, 51% of love keeps love growing into the undying love we see in some families, friendships and communities, as well as in religion and art.
13. Welcome to the Conspiracy of Love. You can join at any time by turning towards the light, by asking and giving forgiveness and by starting to do something to help heal all the hate. Admittedly, many of those who hated you or whom you have hated may decline to join the forgiveness project, since they, too, are human. Nevertheless, over time, we—you, I and many of them—will cross the 51% threshold and help grow the Conspiracy of Love.
John Edmiston Milich became a prodigious traveller, talker, astrologer, investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist as well as close friend of this author, shown here in Guanajuato, Mexico, 2019. photo: J. MilichPart 3: An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich
Introduction: John and I became close friends after meeting in Istanbul in 1972, when I was 17, and he was 28. I used to say, only half jokingly, he was my guru. Although we had a falling out over 9/11, we reconnected because our community consensus, at that time, was that 9/11 Theorists were just followers of an alternative religion. With conspiracy theorizing reaching one of its highest points in history, however, I feel obliged to address John publicly and forthrightly, to tell him that he taught me a lot about the Conspiracy of Love, that I still have love for him and that a conspiracy course correction is both possible and desperately needed.
My Dearest John,
It has been a few decades since we talked openly, but it is never too late to start again, I believe.
It’s never too late to turn towards the light. Although we may not reach enlightenment physically, since the hour is late and the road long, we can still arrive symbolically, which will show our support for love, evolution and civilization.
Indeed, you and I come from a community where, once we truly love, we always love. That is because love is about our ideals, which are eternal.
For the same reason, we don’t abandon our wounded on the battlefield. While they may die physically, their symbols can live on, as we can see with George Floyd, who was martyred in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020.
My Dearest John, do you remember your dreams back in September 1972 on the roof of Istanbul’s Utopia Hotel, where a bed could be had for a buck? You just might, given your phenomenal memory, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I dreamt of love, enlightenment, adventure and art—and that you did, too.
How can I make such a claim? As you undoubtedly recall, after our two-week stint on the roof of the Utopia, I had already heard hours, perhaps even a full day, of your ideas. If that sounds hyperbolic, here’s our mutual friend David Winterburn:
“The main topic on our minds… was the journey east. In this regard, the biggest source of information was a 28 year old from Philadelphia named John Milich, whom I remember sitting cross-legged on a rug up on the roof… surrounded by an attentive group of travelers, espousing on a great number of subjects, including his trip to India in 1970.”
“John loved to talk and… [h]is storytelling was inter-spliced with tidbits of erudition about philosophy, culture and religion that I had never encountered in all my travels… Half sage, half raconteur, he was truly the most fascinating character I had ever met at that point in my life.”
(From left) David Winterburn and this author Doniphan Blair (Americans), Darko Radonovich (Croatian) and Jimmy (Canadian) in Iran, 1972. photo: J. MilichLargely inspired by your wisdom, John, I decided to make the long, arduous journey to the east, a spiritual as well as a physical peregrination, of course. Indeed, the former lasts a lifetime, which is why I’m writing you.
To make the trip, I joined with you and David, the Yugoslavians and the Dutchmen (notably Darko Radonovich and Hans Van Loo, with whom I’m also still in touch), and fifteen others Europeans and Americans. We each paid $35 to Dolphin, from Berkeley’s Hog Farm Commune, for a ticket on his old Bedford sightseeing bus, which he dubbed the Rainbow Express.
For 23 days, the Rainbow Express took us on a 2,700 mile adventure across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Kabul. There were harrowing moments, like when its brakes blew out on a mountain pass and the assistant driver had to surf the rocky shoulders to slow us down, or when we were chased from a bath house back to the bus by a passel of boys bombing us with rocks and tomatoes, both in Turkey.
Of course, there were also inspirational events, like when a policeman surprised us at our roadside campfire but then welcomed us and broke out his hashish (also Turkey).
One of the most transcendent moments for me, however, concerns you, John. It transpired on our very first day, within hours of crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, going from Europe to Asia, since the bridge only opened the following year.
We passed under a double rainbow. Given the name of the bus and that we were young romantic hippies, we naturally took it as a magnificent omen. But it only acquired actual insight in my mind when you began reciting, in your deep, sonorous voice, a poem from the book you dug out of my pack (where you were rummaging for some unexplained reason):
“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened,” you boomed over the Rainbow Express’ 50-mile-per-hour, cruising speed rattle.
It was “A Season in Hell” (1873), one of Arthur Rimbaud’s, if not history’s, greatest poems. In it, he details the loss of innocence, collapse into cynicism and embrace of the Devil, which turns out to be a spot-on profile of a conspiracy enthusiast.
My Dearest John, my question to you is this: Where were all the conspiracies back then? If there are so many conspiracies today, surely there must have been some in 1972.
Indeed, we were nine and three years after Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed moon landings, respectively. The Watergate break-in had just happened (June 17, 1972), and the Vietnam War was raging, as was the Cold War. In fact, India and Pakistan just fought a proxy war in 1971, and we were headed toward that battlefield.
Arthur Rimbaud, the teen titan of poetry, considered romanticism civilization’s great idea, although he was from the French, succeed-through-failure school and went down to spiritual defeat. image: unknownGiven your powers of observation and analysis, your prodigious travels and conversations, not to mention your study of astrology, why didn’t you mention any conspiracies back then?
As you recall, the Rainbow Express broke down north of Tehran in the middle of the Alborz Mountains. As it happens, that was not far from Alamut Castle, ancestral home of the Hashashins, one of history’s most notorious actual conspiratorial groups.
Perpetrators of hundreds of assassinations across the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Hashashins gifted us not only the word “assassin” and the strategy of the suicide strike, which al-Qaeda updated for 9/11, but the cynicism and nihilism needed to operate in the realm of conspiracy consciousness.
“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” claimed the Hashashin patriarch Hassan ibn Sabbah.
But as we wandered away from the stalled Rainbow Express and started exploring the canyon and its rushing river, as well as dropping acid (some of us: David, the Yugoslavians and me, but perhaps you as well), secret cabals and demonic forces were the farthest thing from our minds.
Despite being stranded on a barren mountain, in a foreign land, a few miles from the Soviet border, not far from Alamut—and tripping—our prevailing feelings were enjoyment, acceptance and trust.
Indeed, we felt love for each other, for the people of Iran—be it the banker, who helped us score opium the night before and was now partying in the back of the bus with his two young daughters on his knees, or the mechanics working frantically on its engine with only hand tools—and most of the people of the world.
My Dearest John, were you conspiring against us back then? Were you playing the part of an optimistic, loving visionary while secretly believing we were doomed to drown in a sea of nefarious schemes, groups and governments?
From your demeanor and everything you said, I have to conclude a resounding no, which means your conspiracy interests came upon you later.
Milich, in a photo titled 'I love myself', on Crete 1972 shortly before his second journey to India. photo: J. MilichMany of us are wounded, some severely. Naturally, we repress the trauma to buy the time needed to solve our injury’s riddle.
Some injuries heal easier than others. As deadly or devastating as an accident, attack or disease can be, its causes are usually not shrouded in mystery.
Alas, other insults are more complex. Indeed, those of bourgeois life—being mollycoddled by tolerant but unloving parents, being excluded from in-crowds, relinquishing bohemia to get a straight job—are insidious. To the outside observer, they seem minimal but, because they are perpetrated by family and friends not by enemies or bad luck, they scar deeply and intricately.
Whatever our injury, if we come of age without achieving the inner strength or knowledge to tackle the wisdom worker’s first job—“Know thyself”—we naturally look for a way to scab over our wounds.
Conspiracy fanaticism to the rescue.
Instead of challenging us to improve our thoughts and deeds, or those of our community, we distract ourselves and our community by decrying mysterious forces out to destroy us. The severity of the threat entitles us to attack it with all our public hate and private angst, while appearing to remain dedicated to our community.
Indeed, conspiracists often bond into loving, supportive groups, but to do so they must cast out the other, presenting a problem. Accepting the other, the stranger—even the criminal or enemy—is a core concept of almost all faith traditions.
My Dearest John, you’ve had decades to experiment with conspiracy consciousness and delve deeper than anyone I know. Surely by now, you can see the fruit of your labors and can guess what I am about to say:
Conspiracy consciousness stands in exact opposition to the spiritual path you outlined so eloquently on the roof of the Utopia Hotel, almost fifty years ago.
Although you may profusely protest this pronouncement, hurling heaping helpings of hurtful hate, I’m pretty sure that, in your bones, you know what I am saying.
Conspiracy consciousness is not the way of the Buddha or the shaman. Conspiracy consciousness will never lead to big love or enlightenment or even becoming a functional adult.
The psychological trick of conspiracy consciousness, of directing one’s anger towards an unknown entity, in lieu of looking within to its true origins, will not heal our wounds.
I am reaching out to you today not only to tell you the simple truth about conspiracies and remind you of your brilliance back in the day, but to note a secret revealed to me by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair.
You met my mother many times, of course, but she was reserved back then. Since you undoubtedly did most of the talking, you may not have percieved her views on love, kindness and romance.
From John Milich's India diary, 1972, showing his traveling companions, Barbara (lft) and Daniela (rt), and this author in the lower corner. photo: J. MilichFortunately, she has written a book about her experiences during the Holocaust, “Love at the End of the World”, which illustrates how a teenage orphan surmounted a tsunami of suffering, hate and trauma. Although she doesn’t use the term, I call it the Conspiracy of Love both to evoke its radical ideas and to make them crystal clear for you.
During World War II, in the belly of history’s biggest beast, my mother joined a secret society of decent people working diligently, desperately—often until their dying breath—for healing, redemption and love, especially romantic love.
Despite the immensity of the injury and suffering, although she often became deeply depressed, she didn’t descend into cynicism, bitterness and hate. She simply kept hewing as hard as she could to truth, beauty, justice and love.
My Dearest John, given that both your former self and my mother reject conspiracism, shouldn’t you reconsider your position?
The hour is getting late. There are computer conglomerates controlling much of the world, not by virtue of a conspiracy but by people voluntarily participating and providing their secrets.
Trump is president, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging and there are demonstrations in the streets. The earth’s ecosystem and its people’s physical, economic and political well being are under dire threat.
As such, there will be many unhappy people happy to leverage the chaos with conspiracy consciousness, in the hope that greater confusion will bring, if not a revolution, at least a leveling, a bringing down of everyone to their level.
Yes, the forces of good are also rising, from the peaceful protestors to helpful neighbors or conservatives breaking rank to denounce Trump.
Nevertheless, there is a significant chance we are entering an epoch of darkness—not one created by imaginary puppet masters but by us, through our inaction and erroneous analysis.
Although it is not the end times, which is essentially a conspiracy concept, we are obviously in a period of elevated death, economic hardship and political turmoil.
My Dearest John, Won’t you rejoin me in fighting for the love and cooperation you convinced me of on the roof of the Utopia Hotel?
I realize you’re petrified of your inner demons, which undoubtedly involve your father and your sources of income. I realize you have taken up with some very dark energies, as indicated by your Facebook page. I realize change is hard at 76 years of age, and that it might seem like a betrayal of your conspiracy confreres.
But the time for petty differences and denials is done. We must get to work, immediately. Don't tarry another instant in coming back over to the right side of dream, romance and enlightenment, as well as history.
Once you get rolling, once you get back on the Rainbow Express, as it were, I think you will find that all the distrust, lying and hate required by conspiracies is hard, while love, honesty and forgiveness is actually pretty easy. That is because it is the way; it is the way of all flesh; and it is your true self.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair in front of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s death camp, where she was incarcerated for three weeks in 1944, 1980. photo: V. BlairPart 4: Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love
The Holocaust arose from a collision of various political, social and psychological forces, a major one of which was conspiracies.
Although Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people was no secret, the Nazis attempted to conceal their extermination conspiracy. They used euphemisms and lies, like claims that the camps were just for labor. They concealed facilities in back woods and through threats of death, and they dolled one up, Terezin in the Czech Republic, with food, schools and cultural facilities. Then they forced the inmates to perform for visiting officials before shipping them to Auschwitz.
In fact, the Third Reich was the ultimate conspiracy kingdom, with almost everyone conspiring against each other: children denouncing parents, underlings their superiors, while Hitler split the Nazis, military and intelligence agencies into endless subgroups to play them against each other.
In standard conspiratorial mirroring, Hitler accused the Jews of conspiring to control not just Germany but the entirety of socialism and capitalism. The latter claim was often bolstered by references to a popular conspiracy theory of the 1930s, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a document which appeared to show that Jews ran international banking (and still used today among anti-Semites).
By 1922, however, journalists had proved “The Protocols” was a forgery by the Russian Tsar’s secret police in 1903. Although those supporting “The Protocols” claimed it was the journalists who were conspiring, the Tsar’s conspirators gave themselves away. Not being writers, nor very intelligent, they plagiarized “The Protocols” from a 30-year-old French political satire, inserting the words Jew, Jewish and Hebrew where appropriate.
“The Protocols” conspiracy theory was readily believed due to the long association of Jews with moneylending. While those accusations were not themselves a conspiracy theory, since a few Jews had started lending money in the 11th century and continued through the Middle Ages, as well as to today, what remains little known is the actual conspiracy perpetrated by Christian authorities against the Jews.
Indeed, both the Christian clerics of the 11th century and the Nazis built their actual conspiracies against the Jews by using conspiracy theories about non-existent Jewish conspiracies.
Lending at interest has been central to almost all civilizations, and Europe was no exception. Although it has been abused as debt slavery, lending at interest more often incentivized the sharing of wealth, enabling poorer people to build businesses, buildings, ships, etc.
Tribes, on the other hand, encourage lending only through the provision of gifts and favors on top of repaying the principal. As a tribal people, the Jews outlawed lending at interest.
Although European Christians inherited that Jewish law from “The Bible”, in practice they were building a civilization and had to have moneylending, which was provided by the bishops, princes and merchants.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in addition to working as a nurse in Poland during the war, worked as one after (shown here) in Lansburg Am Lech, Germany, 1947. photo: unknownBut when Christ neglected to return for the millennia, Christian thinkers assumed it must be due to the sin of usury. Hence, they conspired to foist moneylending onto the Jews. Since the Jews were condemned to Hell anyway, lending at interest to them would be no sin. In this way, a few Jews became retail lenders, while the wealthy Christians became their secret central bank, a conspiracy so successful, it remains little known to this day.
The Jews were also attacked with the “blood libel” conspiracy theory, which claimed they used the blood of Christian children to make their high holy days’ matzo, the Christ-killer accusations and other calumnies. (For more on this, see the cineSOURCE article, "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained".)
With all these conspiracy theories rattling around the European brain, explicitly or through implicit bias, it was amazingly easy not just for Germany but most European countries to pass increasingly severe anti-Semitic laws. First they excluded Jewish people from society; then they forced them into ghettos; finally, they deported them to death camps.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair was 13 when the Germans invaded her hometown of Lodz, Poland, and she turned 19 in Auschwitz, which means she spent the entirety of World War II as a teenager.
While the Nazis mounted the biggest killing machine in history, conspiring to kill as many as possible—leftists, Russians, Slavs, Roma and queers as well as Jews—she attempted to save as many as possible, both working as a nurse and through love, kindness and romance.
In fact, ten of the 37 stories in her book, “Love at the End of the World”, concern actual or aspirational romantic relationships. In reference to Gustav Freulich, whom she tended as he was dying of tuberculosis—therefore, although they held hands, they never kissed—she wrote, “Life had become meaningful again during those desperate times.”
Indeed, the first story she wrote, after enrolling in a writing class and dedicating herself to the task, was “Stefan” (read it here). She met Stefan at the deportation trains and they fell in love, reciting poetry and kissing while crammed in the back of a cattle car on route to Auschwitz.
Many people might say that such romanticism was misguided, given the existential threat. Perhaps she should have wriggled out the cattle car’s tiny window and leapt to freedom, albeit in the middle of Nazi territory, or foraged a piece of metal and stabbed a Nazi. But she was an undernourished teenage girl unschooled in such skills.
She had, however, learned about love from her adoring parents, and she had studied romanticism, like most teenage girls, which even a total war could not interrupt. Au contraire, it inspired her to rise to the occasion and fight to preserve love, to maintain romantic traditions, to appreciate poetry—even inside the greatest killing machine ever assembled.
In fact, my mother became brief friends with a decent German officer and was allowed a life-saving meal by another, suggesting that the Conspiracy of Love also lived on in their hearts, despite the decades of Nazi propaganda and brutality and the years of training and war.
Why didn’t she give into conspiracy thinking, that the world is run by an evil cabal of haters out to exploit, abuse or kill regular people—particularly since she was under the boot of Hitler for those five-and-a-half years? If anyone was entitled to conspiracism, it was her.
Yes, humanity has produced horrors—genocides, conquests, enslavements and all manner of brutalities—but that has not been the majority of the human experience. And we are able to heal from it. While we have used religion, psychotherapy, art and volunteerism to regain our balance, perhaps the most powerful force of all is love, including romantic love and romanticism.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair handing out bread to the people of Plsen, Czech Republic, during the filming of 'Our Holocaust Vacation', to honor the war-time meal they gave her, 1997. photo: N. BlairAn advanced level of the latter would be the Conspiracy of Love, the actual conspiracy of humans doing the right thing, often after doing everything else but still eventually doing it.
Despite claims that might is right, that only the fittest will survive or that hate runs the world, in point of fact the Conspiracy of Love is the dominant force. Obviously, it conceived most of the people on the planet, since a majority are not the product of rapes, and most of the good we enjoy. Indeed, sexual selection begot mating dances, romantic rituals and romanticism, which powers a lot of art, faith and dreams.
Hence, if we are open, tolerant and loving, we can more easily join with like-minded—but not identical—people, communities and tribes, and foster a faster, easier and less violent evolution towards a more functional civilization.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 04, 2020 - 04:08 AM
by Doniphan Blair
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The planes piloted by al-Qaeda operatives, which flew into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, are said by some conspiracy theorists to be an American self-attack. photo: unknownPart 1: A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies
Back in the good old days, a couple of years ago, people routinely dismissed conspiracy theorists as something akin to stamp collectors: slightly kooky aficionados of an odd discipline. But that’s getting very hard to do today as they attract ever greater numbers, seize the spotlight and push us all towards a surreal tipping point.
They became a major fringe phenomena about eighteen years ago when Theorists, or Truthers, as they prefer to be called, researched the 9/11 attacks and discovered they were an inside job. Although most Theorists decline to be definitive, the al-Qaeda operatives who flew the planes were supposedly agents working for either the CIA or a more clandestine American entity.
These forces are so powerful, according to Theorists, they are able to perpetrate enormous crimes while leaving little or no trace or witnesses.
It was Donald Trump, however, who ushered conspiracies into the mainstream when he became the most prominent backer of “Birtherism,” the notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Then he kicked off his presidential bid with his theory that Mexicans were sneaking across the border, not to work hard at low pay but to rob and rape Americans.
Now Trump is trumpeting new conspiracies almost daily. Obviously, his strategy is to promote manipulative, half-believable stories, sow the suspicion needed to render everything a form of fake news and rule as the greatest faker.
Donald J. Trump's long involvement with glitz, fakery and cheating as well as his emotional intelligence drew him directly to conspiracy theory. photo: courtesy Vanity FairWelcome to our golden age of conspiracies, one so glitteringly grotesque it makes the 19th century Illuminati look like children’s theater.
Of course, there are conspiracies by corporate criminals, corrupt officials and criminal enterprises, as well as foreign agents, which warrant investigation—indeed, we need to allocate even more resources there.
And sure, there are dilettante conspiracists who are hardly hurting anyone by googling “Federal Reserve” or “contrails,” say, for a few hours a week—just keeping an open mind, they explain, or indulging in harmless entertainment.
But they have been overshadowed and outgunned by the many disciples of QAnon (an anonymous leaker allegedly high up in the intelligence services), who scour the news for signals concerning Trump’s impending declaration of martial law, arrest of leading liberals and break up of what they claim is a massive international ring of Satanists, who also happen to be cannibals and pedophiles.
As if this weren't odd enough, some Republicans are now running as QAnon candidates, while Trump’s disgraced and indicted former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, recently showed his QAnon colors. (See that story here, a new piece on QAnon in The New Republic, an older one in The Atlantic or one with more psychological perspective from Behavioral Scientist.)
Then there’s Alex Jones’s Infowarriors or the followers of the London Real show, who claim Covid-19 is a lab-engineered bio-weapon or a by-product of the new 5G microwave communication network. And then there's—and this is no joke—the Boogaloo Bois (boys), an actual conspiratorial group.
To get our terminology straight, that means the Boogaloo Bois are not only plotting unlawful or harmful schemes—the so-called conspiracies—but carrying them out and can be properly called conspirators. Last but not least are the conspiracy theorists, who sift the runic sands for traces of plots, often in the land of make believe.
The Boogalooers, however, are all too real. Known for their mixed metaphors—old movie and dance references and Hawaiian shirts combined with large arsenals—their romantic dream for America is to foment riots, kill police and be agent provocateurs—though they’d never use a French term—for a “white revolution.”
One mile from where I sit in Oakland, a Boogalooer murdered Patrick David Underwood, a Black, 53-year-old security guard, on May 29th, the first night of Oakland's George Floyd protests. He was captured within a week but only after killing another policeman, Damon Gutzwiller (white that time).
As the Boogalooers illustrate, there are some very active, aggressive and dangerous conspiracies, which should be sleuthed, tracked and stopped. But there are also a lot of fabricated conspiracies accusing innocent people. Even conspiracy-lite feeds conspiracism, which increases prejudices against minorities, especially Jewish people, given all of the ancient accusations against them, as we will examine in the fourth part of this essay.
The Kennedy killing on November 22th, 1963 is probably the largest major event studied by conspiracy theorists that stands a reasonable chance of being associated with an actual conspiracy. photo: unknownModern conspiratorial thinking started with the Kennedy assassination and the obvious inconsistencies in the official reports (although why such sophisticated conspirators would enlist Lee Harvey Oswald, a nutcase just back from defecting to the Soviet Union, would also be hard to explain).
Conspiratorial thinking jumped a level with the arrival of the internet, which opened vast forums for free speech just in time for 9/11. A decade later, emerging social media companies doubled down on those proclivities when they developed algorithms to stimulate interest and ad revenue by favoring viewers’ prejudices.
Post-9/11 increases in state and corporate surveillance didn’t help, either.
Then there’s humanity’s periodic production of a person of exceptional quality. In troubled times, people understandably either hope for such a messiah or decry their opposite: evil masterminds.
More fundamental, I believe, is how the conspiracists themselves feel aggrieved. Obviously, they derive substantial self-esteem and status from attacking hidden enemies and purveying secret information. As in any espionage situation, the more tightly held the secret, the more valuable. And, even in casual settings like shoptalk or gossip, people love to control the information flow.
Information domination is paramount among conspiracists. But they achieve such supposed superiority through tricks and sleight of hand. Indeed, if you dare challenge their evidence, be forewarned. You will soon enter a funhouse debate of dubious indicators, diverging levels of science, full-on fabrications and "plausible deniability."
And, if that didn't establish a shaky enough ground on which to build their confrontation with the entire existing order, once one conspiracy has been revealed, to retain the dominant information spot, they have to keep upping the ante with more spectacular suppositions. This is the reason why QAnon has essentially absorbed all precursing conspiracies, including the ancient, medieval “blood libel” against the Jewish people, making it the conspiracy to end all conspiracies.
Of course, hidden enemies are just that. They rarely rebut claims, let alone strike back (although bin Laden was said to have been incensed by how conspiracists erased his efforts). That is why, a few years after 9/11, Theorists had to stop lauding themselves for bravely "speaking of truth to power," on Pacifica Radio, say, since everyone knew no one would ever bother to come for them.
The US dollar's eye on the pyramid was derived from the private, if not always secret, Free Masons and referenced the Egyptians and their prodigious knowledge. photo: courtesy US TreasuryThe little patriarch—be it Dad, the employer, the nation—would have done more for them, or so their subconscious speculates, had it not been for the big patriarch—the capitalists, the CIA, the deep state—which they are now free to attack without alienating their community, although family and friends often become sick of their endless theorizing.
In fact, the new book, “Too Much and Never Enough”, by Trump's niece, Mary Trump, documents that he was abused by his father, which would give him a classical conspiracist's childhood (see article). Released on July 16th, it broke records with almost a million copies sold on its first day.
Conspiracism may be related to paranoid schizophrenia, which induces its sufferers to hear people talking about them or voices in their head, essentially the universe communicating with them. A more moderate malaise seems to afflict conspiracists, to whom the universe is also talking but through bits of news, shreds of evidence or other signs, which, when puzzle-pieced together, expresses their desires and politics.
I’m especially chagrined by how conspiracism bewitched so many of my old friends and has its modern roots in the ‘60s. Rejecting authority and embracing new ideas are essential, but for the transition to work efficiently it requires rationalism, proportionality and tolerance.
In fact, many conspiracists have taken up the ‘60s mantle of accepting new paradigms, coming together and seeing the truth.
Unfortunately, underneath their new age cant, the truth they want us to see is a fallen, evil world. Humanity is controlled by puppet masters or reptilian underworld beings, according to one of the most asinine but powerful purveyors of conspira-crap, David Icke, an English former sportswriter. Indeed, a lot of conspiracism smacks of leftovers from a bygone era, Satanism, which, true to form, the conspiracists have returned to in force.
We will all be one, they proclaim, albeit only after eliminating the evildoers, the reverse of a Kumbaya moment. Most religious and shamanic traditions are unified by the basic tenets of responsibility, helping others and tolerance, which is often defined as “Do onto others as you would want to be done unto you.”
It is known as the Golden Rule not simply due to citings by patriarchal monotheists but because it is a functional formula for becoming a conscious adult. To become fully human, we have to recognize the humanity of others—not just our friends, but our opponents.
That is because we were all created by one god, according to monotheists, or one evolutionary process, according to science. Alas, conspiracists doubt such unity and see the world as dominated by devils, with no hope in sight.
Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), the liberal scholar who founded the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society whose deeds were mostly scholarly or advocacy, but which became a scapegoat and then a myth. photo: courtesy Bavarian MuseumAnother workaround conspiracists rely on is that their conspiracy speculations—that there was no moon landing, that Western Civilization is controlled by cannibal pederasts, that Trump is our secret savior—is but a benign form of recreation and amusement.
Indeed, one of America's top conspiracists, Alex Jones, is just “a performance artist... playing a character," according to his attorney Randall Wilhite, during his 2017 custody battle with Jones's ex-wife Kelly Jones. She claimed that hearing all of Jones's hate and fabrication all day—his radio studio is in his house—was not healthy for their three children. This renders Jones even more evil, someone with no core beliefs but who would happily destroy not just his own children but our shared cultural commons simply for the attention and money.
Making up secret cabals and scapegoats used to require its own secret cabal, replete with spies, forgers, printing presses and the like. Nowadays, however, QAnon, London Real and Boogaloo are Facebook groups, YouTube channels or 4chan threads, easily weaponized by trolls and bots, domestic and foreign, as well as by their registered users.
Even newcomer Tiktok, the biggest social medium to emerge outside the US (it is from China) and a source of charming entertainment for sheltering-in-place (see cineSOURCE article), is dragging a new generation—the millennials, who were too young to enjoy 9/11 conspiracy theory—down that mirror-lined rabbit hole.
Indeed, Tiktok has logged millions of views of posts about PizzaGate—arguably the most disgusting and absurd of all the conspiracy theories pre-QAnon, given its odd combination of child abuse and innocuous locations. PizzaGate was "discovered" by deciphering references in the emails of John Podesta, the former director of the Democratic National Committee.
Although Podesta’s emails were hacked by the Russian trolls of Fancy Bear, one of Putin’s cyber spy groups, they were published by WikiLeaks, directed by Julian Assange, who is currently doing a year in an English prison. Assange uploaded them on October 7th, 2016, just weeks before Trump's election, suggesting an actual conspiracy.
With so many people of the left and right, white collar and working class, fixated on the deep state, vaccine poisoning—amid an actual pandemic, no less—and the hundreds of other conspiracies, not to forget the foreign politicians who spout conspiracy theories while organizing actual conspiracies to interfere in the American elections—only four months away—it’s a four-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck, person-the-barricades situation.
I haven’t completely cracked the conpiracist’s code, which would require well-funded research, big data and extensive psychological surveys. But I have had many discussions—OK, often arguments—with a wide variety of conspiracists since 2002; I have observed ample evidence of the actual internal object of their anger (their fathers); and I am petrified.
Perhaps the only thing worse then an uptight, square, stuck-in-the-mud person is a loose cannon, with no real interest in coming to grips with complex situations or their own psychology, but who is ready, willing and able to feed the rising tide of confusion, chaos and fear.
We are now entering the culmination of our Golden Age of Conspiracies, what future historians may call the "Conspiracy Wars," as various factions vie for the attention of an increasingly confused public with ever more outrageous claims. To be sure, it will become quite a cauldron of hysteria, especially at the end of October as Trump, Putin, Jones, Icke and their robotic minions pull ever more outrageous claims out of their demonic hindquarters.
Fortunately, rising up against them is an immense army of rational, loving and decent people of every possible persuasion and creed.
The Satanists, essentially inverted Catholics, were another late-medieval secret society which influenced conspiracists. photo: traditional1. Actual conspiracies do exist, but they are rare, and extraordinary claims require verifiable evidence.
2. Once we accept one extraordinary claim without verifiable evidence, we are predisposed to accept many extraordinary claims without verifiable evidence.
3. By rejecting such conspiracy tolerance, while remaining vigilant for verifiable evidence about actual conspiracies, we may still let slip through one or two conspiracies.
4. But one or two conspiracies is healthier than the devastating damage inflicted by all the fraudulent conspiracies, which inflame prejudice, confusion and fear, which can foster attacks, killings and even genocides, and which waste colossal amounts of time better used to research actual conspiracies or to enjoy life.
5. Call this the Conspiracy of Love, the proposition that we are significantly better off rejecting unverified conspiracies, which are false alarms over 98% of the time, and assuming that people of good will, even if hidden or unrecognized, will do the right thing at least 51% of the time.
6. Differentiating between good and evil is difficult, especially now that propaganda is rampant, secret agendas are common and mirroring ones opponents is standard, which means conspiracists invariably claim that their opponents are conspiring against them.
7. Nevertheless, over time, the truth almost always comes out. To accelerate this analysis, try this formula: Good is long-term benefit for the many; evil is short-term benefit for the few.
8. By virtue of this maxim, the Conspiracy of Love always beats the conspiracies of hate over time. If it did not, there would be no evolution, and we would still be living in caves ruled by bullies.
9. Love has been increasing. Indeed, the love accumulation of today is significantly more than it was 1000 years ago.
10. But many of us still suffer from lack of love. Indeed, insufficient love from our patriarchal entities is a primary driver of conspiracy psychology.
11. Being insufficiently loved by your father is hard to experience and heartbreaking to watch. Nevertheless, if your overall love accumulation exceeds 51%, you are in Conspiracy of Love territory. If your love accumulation was less than 49%, your father would have killed your mother before she could give birth, or some such conspiracy of hate horror.
12. Admittedly, 51% is a slim win for love, given we would all prefer the true love, til-death-do-we-part variant. Nevertheless, 51% is enough to win in sports, elections and war. By virtue of simple math, 51% of love keeps love growing into the undying love we see in some families, friendships and communities, as well as in religion and art.
13. Welcome to the Conspiracy of Love. You can join at any time by turning towards the light, by asking and giving forgiveness and by starting to do something to help heal all the hate. Admittedly, many of those who hated you or whom you have hated may decline to join the forgiveness project, since they, too, are human. Nevertheless, over time, we—you, I and many of them—will cross the 51% threshold and help grow the Conspiracy of Love.
John Edmiston Milich became a prodigious traveller, talker, astrologer, investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist as well as close friend of this author, shown here in Guanajuato, Mexico, 2019. photo: J. MilichIntroduction: John and I became close friends after meeting in Istanbul in 1972, when I was 17, and he was 28. I used to say, only half jokingly, he was my guru. Although we had a falling out over 9/11, we reconnected because our community consensus, at that time, was that 9/11 Theorists were just followers of an alternative religion. With conspiracy theorizing reaching one of its highest points in history, however, I feel obliged to address John publicly and forthrightly, to tell him that he taught me a lot about the Conspiracy of Love, that I still have love for him and that a conspiracy course correction is both possible and desperately needed.
My Dearest John,
It has been a few decades since we talked openly, but it is never too late to start again, I believe.
It’s never too late to turn towards the light. Although we may not reach enlightenment physically, since the hour is late and the road long, we can still arrive symbolically, which will show our support for love, evolution and civilization.
Indeed, you and I come from a community where, once we truly love, we always love. That is because love is about our ideals, which are eternal.
For the same reason, we don’t abandon our wounded on the battlefield. While they may die physically, their symbols can live on, as we can see with George Floyd, who was martyred in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020.
My Dearest John, do you remember your dreams back in September 1972 on the roof of Istanbul’s Utopia Hotel, where a bed could be had for a buck? You just might, given your phenomenal memory, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I dreamt of love, enlightenment, adventure and art—and that you did, too.
How can I make such a claim? As you undoubtedly recall, after our two-week stint on the roof of the Utopia, I had already heard hours, perhaps even a full day, of your ideas. If that sounds hyperbolic, here’s our mutual friend David Winterburn:
“The main topic on our minds… was the journey east. In this regard, the biggest source of information was a 28 year old from Philadelphia named John Milich, whom I remember sitting cross-legged on a rug up on the roof… surrounded by an attentive group of travelers, espousing on a great number of subjects, including his trip to India in 1970.”
“John loved to talk and… [h]is storytelling was inter-spliced with tidbits of erudition about philosophy, culture and religion that I had never encountered in all my travels… Half sage, half raconteur, he was truly the most fascinating character I had ever met at that point in my life.”
(From left) David Winterburn and this author Doniphan Blair (Americans), Darko Radonovich (Croatian) and Jimmy (Canadian) in Iran, 1972. photo: J. MilichTo make the trip, I joined with you and David, the Yugoslavians and the Dutchmen (notably Darko Radonovich and Hans Van Loo, with whom I’m also still in touch), and fifteen others Europeans and Americans. We each paid $35 to Dolphin, from Berkeley’s Hog Farm Commune, for a ticket on his old Bedford sightseeing bus, which he dubbed the Rainbow Express.
For 23 days, the Rainbow Express took us on a 2,700 mile adventure across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Kabul. There were harrowing moments, like when its brakes blew out on a mountain pass and the assistant driver had to surf the rocky shoulders to slow us down, or when we were chased from a bath house back to the bus by a passel of boys bombing us with rocks and tomatoes, both in Turkey.
Of course, there were also inspirational events, like when a policeman surprised us at our roadside campfire but then welcomed us and broke out his hashish (also Turkey).
One of the most transcendent moments for me, however, concerns you, John. It transpired on our very first day, within hours of crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, going from Europe to Asia, since the bridge only opened the following year.
We passed under a double rainbow. Given the name of the bus and that we were young romantic hippies, we naturally took it as a magnificent omen. But it only acquired actual insight in my mind when you began reciting, in your deep, sonorous voice, a poem from the book you dug out of my pack (where you were rummaging for some unexplained reason):
“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened,” you boomed over the Rainbow Express’ 50-mile-per-hour, cruising speed rattle.
It was “A Season in Hell” (1873), one of Arthur Rimbaud’s, if not history’s, greatest poems. In it, he details the loss of innocence, collapse into cynicism and embrace of the Devil, which turns out to be a spot-on profile of a conspiracy enthusiast.
My Dearest John, my question to you is this: Where were all the conspiracies back then? If there are so many conspiracies today, surely there must have been some in 1972.
Indeed, we were nine and three years after Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed moon landings, respectively. The Watergate break-in had just happened (June 17, 1972), and the Vietnam War was raging, as was the Cold War. In fact, India and Pakistan just fought a proxy war in 1971, and we were headed toward that battlefield.
Arthur Rimbaud, the teen titan of poetry, considered romanticism civilization’s great idea, although he was from the French, succeed-through-failure school and went down to spiritual defeat. image: unknownAs you recall, the Rainbow Express broke down north of Tehran in the middle of the Alborz Mountains. As it happens, that was not far from Alamut Castle, ancestral home of the Hashashins, one of history’s most notorious actual conspiratorial groups.
Perpetrators of hundreds of assassinations across the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Hashashins gifted us not only the word “assassin” and the strategy of the suicide strike, which al-Qaeda updated for 9/11, but the cynicism and nihilism needed to operate in the realm of conspiracy consciousness.
“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” claimed the Hashashin patriarch Hassan ibn Sabbah.
But as we wandered away from the stalled Rainbow Express and started exploring the canyon and its rushing river, as well as dropping acid (some of us: David, the Yugoslavians and me, but perhaps you as well), secret cabals and demonic forces were the farthest thing from our minds.
Despite being stranded on a barren mountain, in a foreign land, a few miles from the Soviet border, not far from Alamut—and tripping—our prevailing feelings were enjoyment, acceptance and trust.
Indeed, we felt love for each other, for the people of Iran—be it the banker, who helped us score opium the night before and was now partying in the back of the bus with his two young daughters on his knees, or the mechanics working frantically on its engine with only hand tools—and most of the people of the world.
My Dearest John, were you conspiring against us back then? Were you playing the part of an optimistic, loving visionary while secretly believing we were doomed to drown in a sea of nefarious schemes, groups and governments?
From your demeanor and everything you said, I have to conclude a resounding no, which means your conspiracy interests came upon you later.
Milich, in a photo titled 'I love myself', on Crete 1972 shortly before his second journey to India. photo: J. MilichSome injuries heal easier than others. As deadly or devastating as an accident, attack or disease can be, its causes are usually not shrouded in mystery.
Alas, other insults are more complex. Indeed, those of bourgeois life—being mollycoddled by tolerant but unloving parents, being excluded from in-crowds, relinquishing bohemia to get a straight job—are insidious. To the outside observer, they seem minimal but, because they are perpetrated by family and friends not by enemies or bad luck, they scar deeply and intricately.
Whatever our injury, if we come of age without achieving the inner strength or knowledge to tackle the wisdom worker’s first job—“Know thyself”—we naturally look for a way to scab over our wounds.
Conspiracy fanaticism to the rescue.
Instead of challenging us to improve our thoughts and deeds, or those of our community, we distract ourselves and our community by decrying mysterious forces out to destroy us. The severity of the threat entitles us to attack it with all our public hate and private angst, while appearing to remain dedicated to our community.
Indeed, conspiracists often bond into loving, supportive groups, but to do so they must cast out the other, presenting a problem. Accepting the other, the stranger—even the criminal or enemy—is a core concept of almost all faith traditions.
My Dearest John, you’ve had decades to experiment with conspiracy consciousness and delve deeper than anyone I know. Surely by now, you can see the fruit of your labors and can guess what I am about to say:
Conspiracy consciousness stands in exact opposition to the spiritual path you outlined so eloquently on the roof of the Utopia Hotel, almost fifty years ago.
Although you may profusely protest this pronouncement, hurling heaping helpings of hurtful hate, I’m pretty sure that, in your bones, you know what I am saying.
Conspiracy consciousness is not the way of the Buddha or the shaman. Conspiracy consciousness will never lead to big love or enlightenment or even becoming a functional adult.
The psychological trick of conspiracy consciousness, of directing one’s anger towards an unknown entity, in lieu of looking within to its true origins, will not heal our wounds.
I am reaching out to you today not only to tell you the simple truth about conspiracies and remind you of your brilliance back in the day, but to note a secret revealed to me by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair.
You met my mother many times, of course, but she was reserved back then. Since you undoubtedly did most of the talking, you may not have percieved her views on love, kindness and romance.
From John Milich's India diary, 1972, showing his traveling companions, Barbara (lft) and Daniela (rt), and this author in the lower corner. photo: J. MilichDuring World War II, in the belly of history’s biggest beast, my mother joined a secret society of decent people working diligently, desperately—often until their dying breath—for healing, redemption and love, especially romantic love.
Despite the immensity of the injury and suffering, although she often became deeply depressed, she didn’t descend into cynicism, bitterness and hate. She simply kept hewing as hard as she could to truth, beauty, justice and love.
My Dearest John, given that both your former self and my mother reject conspiracism, shouldn’t you reconsider your position?
The hour is getting late. There are computer conglomerates controlling much of the world, not by virtue of a conspiracy but by people voluntarily participating and providing their secrets.
Trump is president, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging and there are demonstrations in the streets. The earth’s ecosystem and its people’s physical, economic and political well being are under dire threat.
As such, there will be many unhappy people happy to leverage the chaos with conspiracy consciousness, in the hope that greater confusion will bring, if not a revolution, at least a leveling, a bringing down of everyone to their level.
Yes, the forces of good are also rising, from the peaceful protestors to helpful neighbors or conservatives breaking rank to denounce Trump.
Nevertheless, there is a significant chance we are entering an epoch of darkness—not one created by imaginary puppet masters but by us, through our inaction and erroneous analysis.
Although it is not the end times, which is essentially a conspiracy concept, we are obviously in a period of elevated death, economic hardship and political turmoil.
My Dearest John, Won’t you rejoin me in fighting for the love and cooperation you convinced me of on the roof of the Utopia Hotel?
I realize you’re petrified of your inner demons, which undoubtedly involve your father and your sources of income. I realize you have taken up with some very dark energies, as indicated by your Facebook page. I realize change is hard at 76 years of age, and that it might seem like a betrayal of your conspiracy confreres.
But the time for petty differences and denials is done. We must get to work, immediately. Don't tarry another instant in coming back over to the right side of dream, romance and enlightenment, as well as history.
Once you get rolling, once you get back on the Rainbow Express, as it were, I think you will find that all the distrust, lying and hate required by conspiracies is hard, while love, honesty and forgiveness is actually pretty easy. That is because it is the way; it is the way of all flesh; and it is your true self.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair in front of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s death camp, where she was incarcerated for three weeks in 1944, 1980. photo: V. BlairThe Holocaust arose from a collision of various political, social and psychological forces, a major one of which was conspiracies.
Although Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people was no secret, the Nazis attempted to conceal their extermination conspiracy. They used euphemisms and lies, like claims that the camps were just for labor. They concealed facilities in back woods and through threats of death, and they dolled one up, Terezin in the Czech Republic, with food, schools and cultural facilities. Then they forced the inmates to perform for visiting officials before shipping them to Auschwitz.
In fact, the Third Reich was the ultimate conspiracy kingdom, with almost everyone conspiring against each other: children denouncing parents, underlings their superiors, while Hitler split the Nazis, military and intelligence agencies into endless subgroups to play them against each other.
In standard conspiratorial mirroring, Hitler accused the Jews of conspiring to control not just Germany but the entirety of socialism and capitalism. The latter claim was often bolstered by references to a popular conspiracy theory of the 1930s, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a document which appeared to show that Jews ran international banking (and still used today among anti-Semites).
By 1922, however, journalists had proved “The Protocols” was a forgery by the Russian Tsar’s secret police in 1903. Although those supporting “The Protocols” claimed it was the journalists who were conspiring, the Tsar’s conspirators gave themselves away. Not being writers, nor very intelligent, they plagiarized “The Protocols” from a 30-year-old French political satire, inserting the words Jew, Jewish and Hebrew where appropriate.
“The Protocols” conspiracy theory was readily believed due to the long association of Jews with moneylending. While those accusations were not themselves a conspiracy theory, since a few Jews had started lending money in the 11th century and continued through the Middle Ages, as well as to today, what remains little known is the actual conspiracy perpetrated by Christian authorities against the Jews.
Indeed, both the Christian clerics of the 11th century and the Nazis built their actual conspiracies against the Jews by using conspiracy theories about non-existent Jewish conspiracies.
Lending at interest has been central to almost all civilizations, and Europe was no exception. Although it has been abused as debt slavery, lending at interest more often incentivized the sharing of wealth, enabling poorer people to build businesses, buildings, ships, etc.
Tribes, on the other hand, encourage lending only through the provision of gifts and favors on top of repaying the principal. As a tribal people, the Jews outlawed lending at interest.
Although European Christians inherited that Jewish law from “The Bible”, in practice they were building a civilization and had to have moneylending, which was provided by the bishops, princes and merchants.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in addition to working as a nurse in Poland during the war, worked as one after (shown here) in Lansburg Am Lech, Germany, 1947. photo: unknownThe Jews were also attacked with the “blood libel” conspiracy theory, which claimed they used the blood of Christian children to make their high holy days’ matzo, the Christ-killer accusations and other calumnies. (For more on this, see the cineSOURCE article, "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained".)
With all these conspiracy theories rattling around the European brain, explicitly or through implicit bias, it was amazingly easy not just for Germany but most European countries to pass increasingly severe anti-Semitic laws. First they excluded Jewish people from society; then they forced them into ghettos; finally, they deported them to death camps.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair was 13 when the Germans invaded her hometown of Lodz, Poland, and she turned 19 in Auschwitz, which means she spent the entirety of World War II as a teenager.
While the Nazis mounted the biggest killing machine in history, conspiring to kill as many as possible—leftists, Russians, Slavs, Roma and queers as well as Jews—she attempted to save as many as possible, both working as a nurse and through love, kindness and romance.
In fact, ten of the 37 stories in her book, “Love at the End of the World”, concern actual or aspirational romantic relationships. In reference to Gustav Freulich, whom she tended as he was dying of tuberculosis—therefore, although they held hands, they never kissed—she wrote, “Life had become meaningful again during those desperate times.”
Indeed, the first story she wrote, after enrolling in a writing class and dedicating herself to the task, was “Stefan” (read it here). She met Stefan at the deportation trains and they fell in love, reciting poetry and kissing while crammed in the back of a cattle car on route to Auschwitz.
Many people might say that such romanticism was misguided, given the existential threat. Perhaps she should have wriggled out the cattle car’s tiny window and leapt to freedom, albeit in the middle of Nazi territory, or foraged a piece of metal and stabbed a Nazi. But she was an undernourished teenage girl unschooled in such skills.
She had, however, learned about love from her adoring parents, and she had studied romanticism, like most teenage girls, which even a total war could not interrupt. Au contraire, it inspired her to rise to the occasion and fight to preserve love, to maintain romantic traditions, to appreciate poetry—even inside the greatest killing machine ever assembled.
In fact, my mother became brief friends with a decent German officer and was allowed a life-saving meal by another, suggesting that the Conspiracy of Love also lived on in their hearts, despite the decades of Nazi propaganda and brutality and the years of training and war.
Why didn’t she give into conspiracy thinking, that the world is run by an evil cabal of haters out to exploit, abuse or kill regular people—particularly since she was under the boot of Hitler for those five-and-a-half years? If anyone was entitled to conspiracism, it was her.
Yes, humanity has produced horrors—genocides, conquests, enslavements and all manner of brutalities—but that has not been the majority of the human experience. And we are able to heal from it. While we have used religion, psychotherapy, art and volunteerism to regain our balance, perhaps the most powerful force of all is love, including romantic love and romanticism.
Tonia Rotkopf Blair handing out bread to the people of Plsen, Czech Republic, during the filming of 'Our Holocaust Vacation', to honor the war-time meal they gave her, 1997. photo: N. BlairDespite claims that might is right, that only the fittest will survive or that hate runs the world, in point of fact the Conspiracy of Love is the dominant force. Obviously, it conceived most of the people on the planet, since a majority are not the product of rapes, and most of the good we enjoy. Indeed, sexual selection begot mating dances, romantic rituals and romanticism, which powers a lot of art, faith and dreams.
Hence, if we are open, tolerant and loving, we can more easily join with like-minded—but not identical—people, communities and tribes, and foster a faster, easier and less violent evolution towards a more functional civilization.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 04, 2020 - 04:08 AM
