Middle classes, consumer society, and Western decadence.

With the involuntary participation of Emmanuel Todd and Michel Clouscard

BY Marti MICHEL

Warning: Michel Clouscard and Emmanuel Todd have certainly never met at the café or in their works. This is therefore a first (risky, but one that I will be forgiven for given my amateurism in this matter) that you are about to witness.

A short school introduction.

"Work, consume and shut up", a popular slogan made fashionable by Extinction Rebellion and taken up without a fight at each demonstration, as the meaning seems obvious.

Yet...obvious? Not so obvious. At a demonstration, it sounds good, but today it's a break until the next one (the following Saturday!): let's take advantage of it, let's think about it.

What exactly do we mean by that and who are we talking to? Because we are, frankly, both workers and consumers: having little choice, would the simple fact of opening our mouths exonerate us from the system? Should we rather see this as a reproach to the worker-consumers seated at café terraces for not joining us? Unless we see it as a denunciation of a society that leaves no other alternatives than alienation at work and letting off steam in consumption. But isn't it also intended to target those who have easy access to superfluous goods, the middle class... it would be the inequality in the distribution of wealth, excluding a large part of the population, and the class selfishness that we would thereby denounce.
And then, at the end of the day, is the "worker-consumer" association really that relevant? In our Western societies, let's dare to caricature, those who consume goods are not those who produce them: they must be found on other continents.

Thus the "consumer society" is rearing its head, with the middle class in the vicinity.

The middle class, we're getting to it.

For the Marxist-Leninist (the "dogmatic" version), the middle class is the soft underbelly of society. Without its own reference point, it oscillates between two extreme poles: the ruling class and the proletariat. It oscillates, yes, but will always lean towards the strongest: either towards the organized working class armed with a unifying program (socialism), or towards the dominants ready to buy it (they have the means), and determined to shoot the recalcitrant beggars.

And if the working class were to lack strength for structural reasons and no longer just through simple organizational weakness, or both simultaneously, the "Leninist" schema is clear: victory of capitalism in the open countryside!

This explains why a whole current of the French far left sees in the sole disappearance of the Communist Party (for which the "new" "right-wing" leadership is responsible) the main reason for the weakening of the workers, and therefore the urgency of its reconstruction.

What our “dogmatic” activist does not see is that the working class is not the only one affected. This is what Todd shows in his book Les luttes de classe en France au XXIème siècle (Le Seuil- 2020-): it is not so much inequalities that are exploding, it is the whole of society that is collapsing, all the sections that compose it are falling in the same proportions, and the ruling oligarchy is seeking its salvation elsewhere. Except that safe havens are becoming scarce: the EU, unreliable, the US perhaps?

This is where the crisis lies.

For Todd (I am referring to the book The Defeat of the West, Gallimard, 2023), the middle class is a question of social standard of living. Situated between the two extremes, it provides the glue that binds a society together. By definition cultivated, it is able to coax the upper class and represent the lower class. In fact, it ensures the stability of any liberal democracy. If it were to be attacked, the edifice would shake on its foundations. This is exactly what is happening today.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, he writes, “the developed world was catching its breath. It was the time when maximum family conformism flourished, constituting the substrate of the baby boom. This recovery in fertility was based on a particularly clear division of male and female roles. » (1)

This is the time of the Marshall Plan, of a spectacular rise in the standard of living in Europe, in France in particular, of a working class whose upper classes are accessing the status of middle class, in fact the lower middle class. So much so, says Todd, that some dream of a working class merging with the intellectual elites, forming a conscious ruling class.

Michel Clouscard (Le capitalisme de la séduction, Delga -1981) sees in it the premises of the consumer society (worldly consumption).

Clouscard immediately sweeps away a misunderstanding. The consumer society, a pure product of neo-capitalism, is not in the provision of the people, however abundant it may be, of a commercial production, technically advanced or even sophisticated, resulting from progress and cutting-edge research. This is a production, through its use value, that contributes (or should contribute) to the emancipation of humanity, of women in particular.

No: the novelty will consist in the insane project that neo-capitalism sets itself under the impetus of US imperialism, initially supported by the Marshall Plan: to shape man, his body and his desires, no longer only for the exploitation of his labor force, to bend him to the capitalist mode of production, but so that he can blend entirely into the commodity put on the market. To recognize himself body and soul in it.

Or rather, in the commodity reduced to an ideological function, to the state of a sign (a social marker, like cattle are marked).

This miracle was able to materialize thanks to the US army: thus, he explains, from the Liberation, the US military surpluses cluttering up the depots were all the rage. Cheap, everyday clothes, the famous blue jeans for example, initially work pants for workers, will become fashionable. A distinctive sign of modernity, being in the know, in the wind.

Clouscard therefore seems to consider that this "capitalism of seduction" was imposed from the early 1950s. We will see that he analyzes this neo-capitalism (which he still assimilates in 1981 - the date of publication of his book - to "state monopoly capitalism" while research on neo-liberalism was spreading, in particular the erasure of the role of States in globalization), as a terrible factor of social decomposition.

But this social shift as described by Clouscard, will only triumph with that of neo-liberalism, much later. Let us date it from the end of the 1970s with the arrival of Jimmy Carter and Thatcher, May 68 having perhaps opened the way for France. The election of Mitterrand in 1981 (and his turn towards austerity in 1983) allowed it to take off.

In the meantime, it was the middle classes, including large contingents of workers, who were gaining strength and forming the basis of what would be called the Welfare State. Gaullist success had no other source. And it also explains the first major fractures within the French Communist Party (split within the UEC, Union of Communist Students), caught between loyalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the call for class collaboration launched by the middle class. Tensions (or contradictions) brought about by the evolution of East-West relations, oscillating from the Cold War to "peaceful coexistence", while its links with the Kremlin remained close: triumphant tour of France by the USSR First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev - 1960 - received with great pomp by De Gaulle... and construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961! If we cannot mechanically copy Clouscard's analyses to characterize this period of the 30 glorious years, it remains that it was not neutral as far as the psychosocial behavior of the classes was concerned.

The bourgeoisification of the working class was a reality: it does not mean that it succumbed to the sirens of worldly consumption (Clouscard would be the first to recognize this).
Todd in Les luttes de classe en France presents two versions that have divided the experts.

The optimistic version: "The development of secondary and especially higher education in a context of generalized enrichment, has led individuals to a post-materialist culture of self-fulfillment. Emancipation of women, sexual tolerance, marriage for all, openness to the outside world and rejection of borders: it is not too difficult to summarize the dominant state of mind that succeeded the old stuff that was the Church, Gaullism, the PCF and the SFIO." (2)
Except that, as Clouscard will point out, it is indeed a converted SFIO that will bring consumerist society to the baptismal font!

The pessimistic version: Enrichment has pushed contemporaries to be interested only in their own personal development. It is the culture of narcissism. The elites lose the sense of work, of high moral values ​​(wisdom, probity, justice...). They succumb to what American researchers will call "common decency" - common indecency - while the lower social classes, by reaction, will seek to protect themselves from it.

Todd develops a middle analysis, which seems to me to take up that of Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents.
The constraints imposed by any society provoke a violent internal conflict that can only be controlled by a repressive moral conscience. A superego that forbids. Provoking neuroses and psychoses. I will not venture further!

On the other hand, the rise in the standard of living has produced "a basic personality whose self is certainly freed from many prohibitions, but who must face the harsh reality that, even when nothing is forbidden, not everything is possible (...) Faced with these inadequacies, the liberated individual will tend to sink into a state of depressive fatigue."(3)
In short, from collective neurosis we move to generalized depression.

Where does this lead us? To the following conclusion:

"(...) we have entered a phase where people have become so accustomed to the unemployment rate, to stagnation or falling incomes that they no longer have any hope that it will change. (...) Unemployment is now an integral part of our traditions. (...) People know what they are, that they are not going anywhere, that they have no particular reason to regret not having another life." (4)

However, this adaptation, let's say, psychocollective with a strong capitulation tendency, accompanies an advanced phase of social decomposition. Todd paints a striking picture of the evolution of socio-professional categories between 1990 and 2018 (5):

Socio-professional categories (as a % of the active population)
Farmers: 4.5 (1990); 2.0 (2007); 1.5 (2018); evo: -3.0
Artisans, traders, business leaders: 7.9 (1990); 6.6 (2007); 6.5 (2018); evo: -1.4
Executives and higher intellectual professions: 11.7 (1990); 13.1 (2007); 18.4 (2018); evo; +6.7
Intermediate professions: 20.0 (1990); 23.1 (2007); 25.7 (2018); evo: +5.7
Employees: 26.5 (1990); 28.9 (2007); 27.2 (2018); evo: -+0.7
Workers: 29.4 (1990); 25.6 (2007); 20.4 (2018); evo: -9.0

In terms of the number of industrial jobs, in 1990, they concerned 20.25% of the working population and only 13.6% in 2016. We are talking here about the destruction of the potential for wealth creation.

This is where we join Clouscard.

The neo-capitalism (we would say neo-liberalism) that is being established accommodates itself very well to this deindustrialization of so-called advanced countries. To develop elsewhere, in the shadow of offshoring. And very logically encourage a consumer society (the golden calf-commodity) that a solvent middle class allows... even if it is less and less so.

The first concern of the system will be to disconnect the commodity from any link with the concrete work that created it: to make it forget it. The product must present itself from the outset as a mechanized machine to which the consumer submits: while giving him the illusion that the fact of pressing buttons makes the machine its work. All advertising is based on this: a car that looks like you, a perfume that reveals your femininity or virility. It is the product that humanizes you.

And this, throughout our lives: capitalism takes you by the hand and never lets go.

So from birth, the baby must undergo its first conditioning: it will be a question of surrounding the child with gadget-machines with controls adapted for him, such as the musical mobile above the cradle, the parents ecstatic according to the mastery of the automated machine by their offspring. The handyman dad who sculpted a toy in front of his kid, or the child making a trolley on wheels or a water mill that the street gutter animates, it must be over! Childhood imagination must be limited to the shelves of Disney stores.

And later, it will be the scooter that went out of fashion for children but was recovered for adults, very quickly electrified, mechanized.

Above all, above all! We can waste. It is disposable. The recognition of the worker (Chinese?) without whom the object would not exist, is thrown away with it!

Waste is another given of this consumer capitalism, a necessary step in the dissociation of work and merchandise. This is why neo-capitalism will have to fight the old ideologies of older generations still attached to the values ​​of work and domestic economy.

In fact, this capitalism only expresses the original antagonism between capital and labor: except that now, it will seek to resolve this conflict by pulverizing the second term!

Clouscard gives the example of the motorcycle, which I continue in cinematographic mode. The motorcycle is a means of transport that is useful for the user (during traffic jams) or simply a source of pleasure. The biker maintains his machine, knows its mechanics, does not hesitate to take it apart, and in doing so recognizes the work accomplished in its manufacture.

Let's compare with the Harley Davidson from the movie Easy Rider. Motorcycles customized to death, flashy, bulky, bizarre seat. The biker will first focus his attention on the outer shell (American flag required). This will allow him to differentiate himself from the average biker, to identify with the "great" Harley tribe. To the point that when they meet, they organize Japanese engine throwing competitions!

We have left the domain of the use value of the machine to join the worldly consumer, that of the consumer society. The example here is a caricature, but let's understand that the concern of neo-capitalism will be to present all its production by highlighting its strong ideological added value and erase its human part, work. The temples of worldly consumption as an escape center for all.

Enveloping the individual in consumer ideology, all that remains for the system is to absorb the social classes themselves. Not to unify them, but to atomize them, to split them. Here we find Todd's analyses of the anomie that strikes Western societies.

The individual will identify with a group, however informal it may be (the Goths, the suburbs, the punks and their derivatives: invasive tattoos and piercings), and each group must be able to recognize itself, to distinguish itself in the profusion of choices offered, generating a way of life, morals that are specific to it. (6)

The supreme ideological weapon is respect for individual freedom: but it is understood that this freedom is first and foremost free access to new values ​​put on the market. They are the ones that liberate.

We are dealing with a permissive, playful society, where nothing, absolutely nothing is taboo, except the questioning of capitalist society! Let us remember Todd and the origin of the ambient depressive atmosphere: "to face this harsh reality that, even when nothing is forbidden, not everything is possible".

Of course, not all groups are equal. The richest must set the tone. That's fair game. Thus, seasonal fashion will serve as an example with its select fashion shows. But the system will target the lower classes, ready-to-wear, through it. Destroying the production of the previous year. Even if it means coming back the following year.

But here we go again in the cultural domains (the famous literary rentrée).

In fact, consumer society will adapt to all levels, all tastes, all desires (pornography is part of it). From the wealthy neighborhoods to the suburbs: clothing (almost uniforms, with very visible commercial labels) as well as culture (rap industry) are all social markers, group identification.

Everything will be the object of recovery. Let abortion and the pill finally be legalized, let anti-homosexuality laws be abolished, progressive rights if ever there were any, and the ideology of desire will come right behind. Sex elevated to freedom (sexual revolution May 68). Then woman against man. Then the questioning of sex as the last step.

Everything, except the essential mechanics of capitalism: the extortion of the surplus value of the labor force. Extended into colonial-type exploitation in the so-called "overseas" countries (elsewhere, somewhere, that we are no longer even able to locate on a map!), on which our Western economies live, as parasites.

The challenge to the system, anticipated or even driven by itself, will also be an opportunity for new outlets. The stakes are high: this is the territory of youth.

It is a question of diverting it, as was said above, from the older generations. Without depriving oneself of recovering certain relics (retro is classy): vinyls for example, a lucrative market in full expansion (as opposed to the enthusiast collecting old records). But for the rest, it will be enough to perfect one's modeling in the boxes, with deafening rhythms, violent stroboscopic lights, dances that are more like disjointed machines or infernal cadences than shared pleasure. Machinization of ready-to-use bodies.

It is not surprising that this society offers itself Che or a debauchery of rebel slogans on its T-shirts. Proof of social permissiveness: unfettered enjoyment and individual incivility are very suitable.

And to give a semblance of cohesion to the whole (to hold on at all costs in this Babylon), an immense pharmacopoeia and various drugs, not to mention alcoholism, are poured into the populations, for the benefit of international criminal oligarchies and US bigpharma. For the benefit of capitalism, more simply.

Let's give Todd the floor again.

Western decadence, the disintegration of the nation-state (7) are the fruit of the disappearance of any collective belief around which a community is welded. Religion until now played this role. Its passage to zero state leaves an entire people orphaned: no substitute ideology, including the communist ideal, has been able to seriously replace it.

Even less the European Union formalized in 1992, bringing together countries that are no longer nation-states, forced to adopt a single currency based on sand: an independent central bank without a European budget, but supposed to homogenize disparate economies.

What Clouscard tells us are the efforts of neo-capitalism from the day after the Second World War, to take advantage of the ambient upheaval to impose its new model.

But this system, as we have seen, is not part of a unifying desire, of recomposition of a people, but on the contrary of decomposition, of social disintegration. Of mass brainwashing.

Better: in its finality, this society of worldly consumption dissolves into globalization, the globalization of only exchange relations where the nation-state has nothing more to do, no longer exists.

Todd speaks of the reign of nihilism. In the literal sense of the term: a society that goes so far as to deny reality. To rebuild another, believe in it and want to impose it on the world. Including through war. Phenomenal that the West can still think of itself today, in all sincerity, and act, against simple objective reality, as being the center of the world!

I lived in an era terrified by the atomic bomb: our entourage talked about it, the cinema illustrated it, political parties mobilized. Today, when nuclear war has never been so close, widespread indifference is the order of the day.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/classes-moyennes-societe-de-consommation-et-decadence-occidentale-avec-la-participation-involontaire-d-emmanuel-todd-et-michel.html

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR

IMAGE MISCHIEF BY GUS LEONISKY

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

WARNING FROM GUS LEONISKY:

LAURENT GUYÉNOT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORIST. HE WRITES BAD CRAP AND GOODCRAP...

Laurent Guyénot, after attending a major engineering school, obtained a Master's degree in Biblical Studies in New York, then studied the history of religions in Paris. It was in this same city, at the University of ParisIV-Sorbonne, that he defended a thesis in Medieval Studies on the fairy-tale universe of lais and novels, revised and published by Gallimard under the title: "La mort féerique: Anthropologie du merveilleux XII°-XV° siècle"

At the end of the 12th century, poetry inspired by the tales and legends of Brittany spread throughout France and England. Arousing extraordinary enthusiasm, it soon spread throughout Europe. The chivalrous adventures of these lais and novels are imbued with the supernatural: fairies from the Other World (Morgane, Mélusine, to name only the most famous) bond with heroes (Arthur, Lancelot), who sometimes themselves have mysterious fairy knights as fathers.

Far from collecting the vestiges of an ancient pagan mythology, as was long believed, these fairy tales are the expression of an imaginary of death inherited, certainly, from ancient traditions (Germanic as well as Celtic) but which continues to be widely shared and renewed by secular medieval society, lords and peasants alike, despite the clerics.

They implicitly inform us about the way in which we then imagine a bad death, how to escape it and ensure a good death, or how we can maintain relationships with the dead while we are alive.

By rereading and comparing these stories and these "cycles" in the light of historical anthropology, Laurent Guyénot sheds light on this culture, which is mainly oral, secular and yet religious in its own way, of which the Latin works of scholars have only transmitted to us a partial and biased idea.

https://www.amazon.com.au/La-mort-feerique/dp/2070130053

WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN INTERESTING "COVOLUTATIONED" MERGE OF ANCIENT BELIEFS AND MODERN ACTIVITIES DESIGNED TO CONTROL THE MASSES OF NAIVE DUDES OUT THERE WITH BELIEFS — AS WELL AS ENTERTAIN THEM WITH MAKE-BELIEVE, AKA WHAT HOLLYWOOD HAS BEEN DOING FOR YONKS... THE CONSPIRACIES ARE GROSS AND I BELIEVE YOU DON'T BELIEVE ANY OF THESE....

According to a March 2021 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 15 percent of Americans and 23 percent of Republicans believe that,

“The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” 

I know that polls must not be trusted, but I can easily believe that tens of millions of people agree with that statement. It’s not just an American phenomenon; it is widespread in France too, as I have painfully observed in recent months (more later).

Part of those believers might also agree with the statement that, “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by Jews,” but, if asked to choose, they would probably say that the Satan-worshipping pedophiles are above the Jews in the occult hierarchy of Illuminatis. Attempts at syncretism sometimes emerge, as when Candace Owens voiced her belief that:

“what we have right now is a pedophile ring that has assumed a ton of power in the world by pretending that any person who notices is antisemitic. My theory is that these people are not Jewish; they publicly present themselves as Jewish, but in reality, they worship and follow an entirely different faith, and it’s satanic. … These are demonic, monstrous people who are using Judaism to hide their actions.”

My theory is the opposite: Jewish supremacists are using Satanism “to hide their actions.” The transgenerational sect of Satan-worshippers operating in total impunity at the highest level of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington—raping, torturing, sacrificing and drinking the blood of children in black masses—is a fantasy to deflect attention from the cult that really controls Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington.

Assuming Satan-worshipping pedophiles (SWPs) do exist, they are self-hating individuals driven by perversion and ambition. How could they have any kind of loyalty to each other? Do they control each other by blackmail? In that case, they will kill each other when they can. Blackmailing will not make loyal. Therefore, SWPs can never be a driving force in politics, let alone in history.

Only a community bonded by a common history and identity, an assumed common blood, a common ideology or religion, possibly a common hatred, and at the very least a common aim and a transgenerational determination to advance it, can have global political power and long-term influence on history. The Satanists have no power; that’s why you can denounce them as much as you can without consequence. (It does make you feel and look brave, though!)

Surely there exist some nuts worshipping Satan in disgusting ways. But Satan is a Christian concept. Worshipping Satan means believing that Christ and Satan are waging a cosmic war, and choosing to side with the loser. Generally speaking, our ruling elites are simply not into this paradigm. You may call them “satanic” in the sense of “evil” if you like, but they certainly do not care for Satan.

In this article, I will not insult readers of the Unz Review, by trying to convince them that the world is not governed by the SWP cult. I assume you figured that out already. Still, I think that this modern quasi-religious creed is worth examining as a case-study in “controlled opposition”, or perhaps what Ron Unz has termed “promoted opposition”—or how about “over-the-top opposition”. The very fact that millions of people fall for that farfetched conspiracy theory needs to be explained.

The SWP mythology is what I call the “dark pill” (I would have said “black pill” but for the other context it is now used for). The metaphor of the “red pill”, from the movie The Matrix, has passed into everyday language: we are red-pilled when we realize that the mainstream narrative is a lie. The dark pill is, if you like, an overdose of red pills. Having escaped the virtual “prison for your mind” with the red pill and thus gained a foothold in reality, you will, if you swallow the dark pill, feel the ground crumble beneath your feet once again and sink into a black hole, as distressing as the world before the red pill was reassuring.

The dark pill is another prison for your mind. It impedes your ability to reason logically. It makes you feel powerless. It is an inverted religion to give you hopelessness. It has been extremely effective in framing the mind of a conspiracy-minded public who have turned to Internet as their sole channel for information, and it has become one of the most pervasive popular paradigms of post-modernity.

It is the slippery slope of our tendency to see the super-rich and the super-powerful as inherently evil. The more horrific the rumors about them, the more credible they seem. The dark pill makes us forget that we’re dealing with men. Corrupt men, as most of us would probably be in their place, but still men nonetheless, sons and fathers, with social needs, and a concern for their reputation and legacy.

The SWP mythology is not very different from David Icke’s reptilian theory (The Biggest Secret, 1999), according to which the world’s leaders do not belong to ordinary humanity, but are related to the “tall, blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system, now hiding in underground bases, [who] are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy against humanity” (Wikipedia). According to a poll in 2013, 4 percent of registered American voters believed in David Icke’s ideas. They are surely part of the 15 percent who believe in the SWP international.

The SWP conspiracy theory not only generates learned helplessness (there is nothing you can do against Satan, except pray and “trust the plan”). It also diverts our attention. After all, compared to Satan’s followers feeding on babies and the blood of tortured children, Yahweh’s followers seem like gentle lambs! If the international underground fraternity of the SWPs rule the world, then nothing else matters. International Zionism could even be a good thing, if it could help rid us of these satanic vampires.

In symbolic terms, the inverted pentagram is a false flag to conceal the star of David. Those who would have us believe that Satan-worshippers have taken over Christian civilization may not be exactly the same who blamed Allah-worshippers for 9/11, but they are like two tentacles of the same octopus.

The difference, of course, is that Satan-worshippers have no significant existence. Yes, I know, there exist Satanic churches. The oldest is the Church of Satan, founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey. But Lavey is a Jew and a staunch Zionist who in his autobiography claims to have helped smuggle weapons to Israel. Malcolm Jarry, who more recently founded the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts, is a self-described “secular Jew” and an “unwavering supporter of Israel,” who claims that “there is not much conflict between being Jewish and a Satanist.” (He has a point, since Satan is Yahweh’s executioner in the Hebrew Bible: the author of 1 Chronicles 21 hesitates between “Yahweh unleashed an epidemic on Israel,” “the angel of Yahweh wreaks havoc throughout the territory of Israel,” and “Satan took his stand against Israel.”)

Why do Jews found Satanic churches in Western countries? Probably because: 1. they must infiltrate every religion, even non-existing ones; 2. they want to blaspheme and subvert Christianity in every possible way; 3. they can always use Satanism as a bogeyman.

Granted, every Satanist high-priest is a charlatan, but not all of them are Jews. Michael Aquino, founder of The Temple of Set is not. But he is an expert in PSYOP, who co-authored in 1980 a smart military report titled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory.

In any case, these religious cults are just for show. They make do with funny clothes, ugly gadgets and dark invocations, but are under FBI surveillance and don’t engage in any criminal activity.[1]

So much for religious Satanism, essentially a snare for deranged self-hating Christians. What about cultural Satanism, in heavy metal rock and transgressive pop-culture in general? I don’t need to tell you who is behind it. It’s not the Satanists, it’s the Yahwists who are promoting Satanic codes in the entertainment industry, for the same reason they are promoting pornography, transgenderism, and all the rest: they want Christian civilization out, spiritually and physically. Besides, you need to show some Satanism in order to blame Satanism as a civilizational threat. Satanism (pervert displays like in the recent opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris) and anti-satanism (the moral outrage at such pervert exhibitions) make an artificial dialectical opposition, meant not to produce an Hegelian synthesis, but confusion and division.

Among the Jews who played a key role in injecting Satanic nightmares into Western culture let us not forget the directors of the two earliest blockbuster horror movies, Roman Polanski for Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and William Friedkin for The Exorcist (1973). The impact of these films—and the genre they inspired—on the collective psyche cannot be exaggerated.

If there was no Satanism, or at least some appearance of Satanism, the rumor that Satanists rule over us would not gain traction. If Satanism did not exist, Israel would have to invent it. Which is what they do (by Israel, I mean here worldwide organized Jewry, WOJ). Israel has a double motive for fostering religious and cultural Satanism, both as a virus to stress and weaken Christian society, and as a smokescreen to conceal its own enterprise of world corruption and domination. What I mean is somewhat the opposite of what is meant by the illustration below: not Satan making Israel, but Israel making Satan. B’nai B’rith is sewing satanism into the Western social fabric.

Yes, there are certainly real brain-dead Satanists. And yes, there are pervert pedophiles and child-murderers, with every possible background. There are even pedophile networks with high-profile politicians among their clients. And—who knows—there might even be Satan-worshipping pedophiles, although I’ve never seen any credible evidence for it.

But blaming the SWPs for what is wrong in the West is just like blaming the “one-percent psychopaths” for the 2008 economic crisis, as did the 2011 film I am Fishead. Of course, individual psychopaths are a problem, and psychopathy is well worth studying. Robert Hare’s book Without Conscience actually inspired me to conceptualize Israel as “the psychopath among nations”. Collective psychopathy is different from individual psychopathy, though, and I think it is a grave misunderstanding to call Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader psychopaths. They are not. What they have is a collective psychopathy, resulting from the worship of their psychopathic god, and possibly from the trauma ritually inflicted on every eight-days-old male for a hundred generations (details here).

If almost one Republican in four believes that, “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles,” the credit goes largely to the pro-Trump team who engineered the PsyOp known as QAnon since 2016. Its message to Americans was that the world would be saved as soon as Trump neutralizes that network of SWPs, more or less identical with “the Deep State” that Trump said he was fighting, or the “Swamp” that he said he would drain, or Democrats in general.

This was not the first time that a Satanic craze was used as political propaganda. British sociologist Richard Jenkins has written a book titled Black Magic and Bogeymen, documenting a psychological operation conducted by military intelligence in Belfast in the troubled times of the 1970s. Captain Colin Wallace, head of the army’s “black operations” in Northern Ireland, told Jenkins that they deliberately stoked up a Satanic panic from 1972 to 1974, even placing black candles and upside-down crucifixes in derelict buildings in some of Belfast’s war zones and crime scenes, and leaking stories to newspapers about black masses and Satanic rituals. The purpose was simply to demonize and thereby delegitimize the struggle of paramilitary groups on both sides.[2]

What proved especially effective in the QAnon operation starting in 2016 was the association of pedophilia and Satanism. For if the threat posed by Satanism is doubtful, pedophile rings are, on the other hand, a disturbing reality. It is highly unlikely that the Pizzagate scandal, triggered by the hacked emails of John Podesta in 2016, was a total fabrication. As Aedon Cassiel wrote on the Unz Review: “we know that high-level sex abuse is in fact a thing that happens in the upper echelons of power, and we know that it gets covered up when it occurs, and we know that the media is often complicit in the cover-up as well.”

QAnon overexploited the story (without naming too many names), and enriched it with still more gruesome memes such as “adrenochrome”, an elixir of youth allegedly consumed by upper-class pedo-satano-psychopaths, extracted from the pituitary glands of children under torture. The idea seems to have been borrowed from the novel and the film Las Vegas Parano (1972 and 1998). Can you think of anything more horrible than a massive child trafficking ring to drain the blood of tortured children for the use of our global elite? The “adrenochrome harvesting” theory has been embraced on mainstream television by quite a few people, including actor Jim Caviezel and others associated with the recent movie The Sound of Freedom. (That Caviezel is mostly remembered for his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s Passion is not irrelevant, since the theory is particularly well received in fundamentalist Christian circles, and definitely echoes ancient antisemitic blood libel.) Watch here, if you dare, a recent example of a genuinely fake news story feeding the adrenochrome hoax.

The SWPs are the explicit theme of several “documentaries” of the QAnon school, such as Out of Shadows (2020), a very professionally-made film in which stuntman Mike Smith tells of his “awakening” and how he “found God” and “started searching for the truth” after learning about the SWPs in Hollywood from his “pelvic floor therapist”, an invisible angel with no name and no face who, strangely, never reported what she saw to the police. Here is the key passage, to illustrate the level of credibility of the film, and the level of gullibility of the targeted public:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI8apiDZpso
&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%
2Fwww.unz.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ

I recommend watching the whole film with a focus on the visual and sound effects used to make empty rhetoric appear informative. A critical look at such films help us understand how manipulative this sort of videos can be.

What is worth noticing is that, at the outset, Smith emphatically denies being into “conspiracy theories” such as “bigfoot, or aliens, or flat earth, or 9/11 conspiracy, or JFK.” This is extremely typical of dark-pillers. They will totally ignore (and here even deride) historical research on 9/11 or the JFK assassination. And when these events are brought into the picture, you will probably hear the word “Illuminati”, but never the word “Israel”. This is an unmistakable clue of the origin and the intent of such material.[3]

The SWP mythology has a history before its appropriation and elaboration by the QAnon movement. It is interesting to recall its early appearance in the “Satanic Panic” that shook the USA and other English-speaking countries in the 1980s and 90s. The origin of this collective hysteria has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries. In Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (Basic Books, 1995), Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker wrote:

“According to a claim that has been promoted for more than a decade by preachers, police, prosecutors, psychotherapists, child-protection workers, and antipornography activists there exists in this country—and, indeed, around the world—a massive conspiracy of secret satanist cults that have infiltrated everywhere into society, from the CIA to police stations to judges’ chambers and churches. The devil worshippers have even secreted themselves in day-care centers and preschools, the story goes, where they pose as teachers. This prospect has been particularly frightening, for it is said that satanists consider youngsters attractive prey for rape and torture and easy recruits for their faith.”[4]

“In a culture as heterogeneous as ours, so extensive a moral panic can be achieved only by concerted efforts at institutionalizing it,” the authors insist. “It was a powerful effort that did not come together overnight. But as it took shape, a veritable industry developed around the effort to demonstrate the existence of ritual abuse.” The media played a key role, as usual. What journalists are good at is transforming two cases into an epidemy, and a local news item into nationwide outrage. Moral panic call for political action, so that, ultimately, “the psychotic delusions of a few individuals were translated into public policy.”[5]

“By the mid-1980s, belief in ritual abuse had been institutionalized by professional societies, journals, the mass media, and a federal government that energetically promoted its champions’ claims. Advocates used these forums to develop a new logic and language that made the unbelievable sound credible, despite impassioned efforts by defendants and their attorneys to discredit it.”[6]

It all started in the practice of “recovered memory” therapists influenced by the book Michelle Remembers, first published in 1980 at St. Martin’s Press, based on the “memories” recovered by Michelle Smith with the help of hypnotherapist Lawrence Pazder.

The success of Michelle Remembers sparked other books on Satanic ritual abuse (SRA), such as Audrey Harper and Harry Pugh’s Dance with the Devil (1990), in which hypnotized Audrey “remembered” being impregnated several times to give birth to babies to be consumed in Satanic rituals. The influence of Polansky’s Romary’s Baby (1968) is quite clear.

The story of Michelle Smith and how it ignited the Satanic Panic of the 1980s is the subject of a documentary released last year: Satan Wants You. But on that early stage of the epidemy, I recommend the freely available The Search for Satan, a remarkable film directed by Ofra Bikel and aired on PBS in 1995. The same team also made the two-part, four-hour masterpiece Divided Memories, dealing with the “false memory” controversy at large (the second part contains stories of “recovered memories” of Satanic ritual abuse). The Search for Satan documents the role played by a number of criminally incompetent psychiatrists like Bennett Braun, Roberta Sachs, Corydon Hammond and Judith Peterson, who, through “seances” akin to exorcisms, managed to convince patients like Mary Shanley and Patricia Burgus that they possessed dozens of personalities and had belonged to Satanist bloodlines for many generations. These doctors were championed by feminists like Gloria Steinem, and given national voice by Geraldo Rivera in his prime-time NBC broadcast of October 26, 1988, “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground”. Note that Braun, Sachs, Steinem and Rivera are Jewish. So are Helen Bass and Laura Davis, the authors of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (1988), the book that contributed more than any other to the epidemy of false memories of sexual abuse.

The ”false memory syndrome” was a heavy blow against the father figure in Western society. And it is no surprise that accusations of Satanic ritual abuse have been made very publicly by vengeful divorced women against their former husbands, as in the Hampstead case near London, when Ella Draper, in a bitter battle over her children, accused the father Ricky Dearmanof leading a pedophile Satanic cult and having forced his children to kill babies and drink their blood. It turned out that the children, who had made those accusations on camera, had been brainwashed under torture by the mother’s boyfriend, Abraham Christie.[7]

Women with “recovered memories” of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) often ended up being diagnosed with multiple personalities too. The diagnosis of “multiple personality disorder” (MPD) was included in 1980 into the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-3). Although the DSMwarned that MPD was extremely rare, its ratification greatly contributed to legitimize the practices of recovered memory therapists, who felt empowered to produce under hypnosis multiples “alters” in patients who had never before had been diagnosed with MPD.[8] The many abuses of this diagnosis, and the realization that the disorder often has an iatrogenic origin (meaning that it is produced by therapy), prompted its withdrawal from the 1994 edition (DSM-4). In its place was introduced “dissociative identity disorder”, drawing from the work of French physician Pierre Janet (1859-1947) on dissociative post-traumatic amnesia, a well-documented phenomenon.

To explain why victims of the SWPs did not remember any of their horrific abuses until hypnotized decades later, believers claim that the SWPs had… well, hypnotized their victims (and members as well) to program and dissociate them into multiple personalities. Revelations about the CIA project MK-Ultra in the mid-1970s came handy, and the SWP conspiracy mythology now typically includes wild exaggerations of the possibilities of mind-control through MK-Ultra-type techniques including drugs, torture and hypnosis. In TRANCE Formation of America: True life story of a mind control slave (1995), Mark Phillips, a self-styled former CIA operative, recounts how he rescued Cathy O’Brien from a government network that had turned her into a MK-Ultra sex slave, by splitting her personality into multiple “alters” since early childhood. Neither she nor her family had noticed anything until Phillips helped her “recover” her memories by hypnosis.

The Nazis are typically included in that elaborate recipe, as a cherry on the cake. In the film Out of Shadows, mentioned above, we hear about Himmler and his evil experiments to create a race of overlords, complete with a photo of his gothic-style castle. In Robin de Ruiter’s The 13 Satanic Bloodlines, we learn that Joseph Mengele played a crucial role in the development of the “Monarch Mind Control program” (a sub-program within MK-Ultra, of which so little is known that imaginations can run wild), and “was part of the occult hierarchy seeking total control of the world.”[9] The introduction of the Nazi ingredient into the MK-SWP dark pill is a sure sign of the ethnicity of its creators. You will not find Israel mentioned in there, except in very rare cases. Corydon Hammond, one of the mad psychiatrists featuring in the film In Quest for Satan, delivered in 1992 , at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder, a speech in which he claimed to know that techniques used to program sexual abuse victims to repress their memories were brought to America by “a Hasidic Jewish Nazi” named Dr. Greenbaum.

The Satanic panic of the 80s-90s mostly affected English-speaking countries. It didn’t have any impact in France. One of the reasons, I think, is the cultural ascendency of Freudian psychoanalysis, which rejects hypnosis and minimizes the reality of incest and sexual abuse (this has been very damaging in its own way, as Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson explains in The Assault on Truth).[10] As a result, the French public is totally unaware of the controversy and the literature on false memories. That explains, in part, the success of a film released in May of this year, Les Survivantes, which, much to my chagrin, is received very positively within the French “truth community”. The film is based on the testimonies of women who have “recovered” their memories of Satanic ritual abuses by hypnosis. Anneke Lucas, from Belgium, is one of them, but the “star” of the film is Hélène Pelosse, a former high-profile government official, who gives plenty of interviews, in which she explains for example that her role in the Satanic baby-slaughter where she was dragged by her grand-father—together with many other members of her family who still remember nothing—, she had the role of “cleaner”, meaning that she had to collect “the heaps of children’s corpses … disemboweled, butchered, burned, massacred, raped, chainsawed. … I had to take a bucket and go and collect all these body parts, put them all in a bucket, and then I had to cook all that, and serve it for dinner, and then clean up; I had to wash the dishes.” According to Pelosse’s “flashes” (she also underwent “exorcism”), Church dignitaries and high-profile politicians, including Emmanuel Macron, are members of this cult. I am now trying my best to warn Frenchmen against buying into this, but find myself quite alone in this fight, and even receive death threat for it.[11]

In the rest of this article, I would like to present two case-studies of hoaxes that have contributed to dark-pilling millions of people in America and Europe with the SWP mythology. I think they give us some insight into the way dark-pilling works on people who lack logical judgment and the habit of reading books. The first case comes from the man considered “the most influential conspiracy theorist”, the second from an unknown man whose only credential is his capacity to shed a tear when mentioning child-sacrifice.

Alex Jones is famous for his capacity at ignoring the role of Israel in 9/11 or in the Kennedy assassinations. It has been argued that his red pill is a substitute or an antidote to the jewpill. His rants are replete with “CIA”, “Deep State”, “New World Order”, “Military-Industrial Complex”, “Bilderberg”, “Inside Job”, and other trigger-words calling exclusive attention to the parts played by American Gentiles in the betrayal and destruction of their own country.

Alex Jones also contributed to the SWP mythology, along QAnon. One of his contributions is his documentary Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove (2000). Let’s debunk this hoax, which has benefitted from an immense circulation worldwide. It will give us a good measure of how vulnerable to manipulations are the followers of Alex Jones, often too trusting and too lazy to do their own research.

The Bohemian Grove is an estate of redwood forest of some 2,700 acres in Monte Rio, California, belonging to the Bohemian Club of San Francisco (who also owns a six-story clubhouse in downtown San Francisco). Every summer, in June and July, hundreds of members and guests gather there for a two-week encampment. On July 15, 2000, Alex Jones and his cameraman, Mike Hanson, infiltrated the Grove and filmed the opening ceremony, called “The Cremation of Care”, with a hidden camera. The footage was the centerpiece of the above-mentioned documentary. Jones claimed that “The Cremation of Care” was an “ancient Canaanite, Luciferian, Babylon mystery religion ceremony,” which may involve human sacrifice.

The claim is based first and foremost on an exaggeration of the “secrecy” surrounding the Bohemian Grove, and on the deliberately blurred nature of the images filmed by Hanson. Let’s first point out that the two men entered the Bohemian Grove through the main gate, took the club’s shuttle bus to the opening ceremony and then left in the same way, without being searched. Moreover, far from being secret, the Bohemian Club’s activities are described in several serious works, such as William Domhoff’s Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats: A Study in Ruling-Class Cohesiveness (HarperCollins, 1975). Lists of members and guests are readily available.

Founded in 1872, the club began as a gathering for journalists, intellectuals and artists (Jack London and Mark Twain hung out there), but gradually evolved into a country club for the rich and powerful (famous is optional), who appreciate the opportunity to socialize in nature away from prying eyes (peeing on redwood trees is an initiation rite). Membership costs around $25,000, and the waiting list is very long. The Bohemian Grove retreat is punctuated by various outdoor theatrical performances written especially for the occasion and typically involving dozens of members as actors or extras (as only men are accepted into the club, female roles are played by men). Professional entertainers are often invited to share their talents (free of charge).

One of the club’s mottos is borrowed from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Weaving spiders come not here.” “It is supposed,” Domhoff writes, “to warn members not to discuss business and worldly concerns, but only the arts, literature, and other pleasures, within the portals of Bohemia.”[12] No doubt the rule is often infringed, but that’s the rule anyway.

Another important rule is that whatever is said within the Club, and during the Grove retreat in particular, is strictly off the public record. It is easy to understand that people tracked by journalists, who will not hesitate to make public their private conversations, feel a need for such an environment. Understandably, this rule also generates controversy, as when in 1971, President Nixon was pressured to renounce attending.

The opening ceremony, entitled “The Cremation of Care”, is a theater play with Wagnerian-style orchestra music performed since 1880 (but rewritten several times), including a procession attended by members and guests. “Dull Care”, an expression borrowed from an old English ditty (Begone Dull Care), symbolizes “the concerns and woes that important men supposedly must bear in their daily lives.” During the retreat, Bohemians are invited to “cast your grief to the fires and be strong with the holy trees and the spirit of the Grove.”[13] The performance takes place around the “Great Bohemian Owl”, a 40-foot tall concrete statue, that is the totem of the club. At its feet, Dull Care’s effigy is burned in a coffin by the Eternal Flame of Fellowship.

This is a playful form of paganism, a little old-fashioned. No Satanism there, unless you want to call any un-Catholic ritual “satanic”. Alex Jones’s claim that the Owl represents the god Moloch is totally groundless and so is, of course, the rumor of human sacrifices; Jones said they “cannot be ruled out”,[14] but the same can be said of the unicorns, since you cannot prove a negative. (Ironically, the god Moloch was originally identical with Yahweh, as discussed in my article “The Devil’s Trick: Unmasking the God of Israel”.)

Hanson’s verdict, that “the men who meet here deep in the woods are involved in a vast conspiracy that has but one ultimate aim: global domination,” or his suggestion that the Grove is “a dark conspiracy fueled by the power of, and adoration for, an ancient dark owl God,” are no more than incantations designed to conjure up images in the minds of believers.[15]

In 2013, an interview appeared of a man presenting himself as a Dutch financier named Ronald Bernard. The video was quickly translated into several languages and attracted tens of thousands of views in Europe. In 2017 news of his mysterious death circulated (on a site specializing in fake news, thepeoplesvoice.tv), but his Youtube channel, which now has 50,000 subscribers, continued to post new material until 2023. Bernard claims to have had first-hand knowledge of the criminal practices of the globalist financial elite, and to have dealt directly with “governments, multinationals, secret services and other terrorist organizations,” sometimes overseeing personally the delivery of trucks full of cash. He found out that these people were Luciferians or Satanists when they finally took him “to places called Churches of Satan”, where they did “their Holy Mass with naked women and liquor and stuff.” He enjoyed it until he was asked to “participate in the sacrifice of children,” and said no.

He broke down and went on studying the Bible and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, had a near-death experience, and realized that “the entire world as we think we know it, is just an illusion we believe in.” Ah, and before leaving the satanic world, says he: “I got tortured physically … in order to make sure I would never break the contract of secrecy.” This is supposed to explain the fact that, despite knowing everything, he will say nothing: not a name, not a place, not a date that might give some flesh to his purely timeless, spaceless and nameless story (a moving story of redemption from hell and finding Christ, just like Mike Smith’s in Out of Shadows). In fact, it’s impossible to find even the name of the companies he claims to have directed. Ronald Bernard, who says that he “played at the highest level [of the financial elite] for about five years,” simply has no curriculum vitae. I suspect he doesn’t even have a birth certificate.

What reinforces my suspicion is that his only project is the creation of a “financial platform” called B. of Joy, which promises you an “emotional return” in exchange for your money.

The only reason that seems to convince people of the sincerity of his testimony is the tear he sheds when recalling that crucial moment when he saw a child being sacrificed. It’s intriguing, I agree. But the world is full of actors ready to pass themselves off as experts or insiders and talk nonsense in grotesque documentaries like Above Majestic—in which Ronald Bernard appears, incidentally.

Your choice of believing “Ronald Bernard” or not believing him depends on your understanding of “truth” and the way to find it. If you think that any claim, especially extraordinary ones, needs to be proven, then there is not the slightest reason to believe him. If you think that claims, even extraordinary ones, should be believed until proven false (especially if coming from handsome people), then you will believe him. This is, unfortunately, the logic that tends to prevail within Conspiracyland, at least in the French village. It is a religious mentality.

https://www.unz.com/article/dark-pill-how-satan-worshipping-pedophiles-have-taken-over-conspiracyland/

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