On weekends, this blog occasionally discusses non-political topics. Although this post has a political subtext, you may also file it under "Religious paranoia" -- or maybe "Fun with art history."If you are not yet convinced that WorldNet Daily has sunk below the bottom, check out this gem from 2006:
'Satanic' art in Catholic Church exposedThe assertion here is that Old Scratch himself has embedded secret subliminal messages into much of that deceptively bee-yoo-tiful Roman Catholic art seen in churches, History Channel documentaries and coffee table books. Priests -- who stare at this art more than other people do -- become mesmerized. Their eyes glaze over. They start muttering: "Boys...boys...must...rape...boys! Cannot stop myself...! No control...! Must rape boys!"
Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery
So runs the WorldNet theory -- a theory which challenges the dominant paradigms in art history and the psychology of sexual deviance.
WorldNet, using a classic tabloid tactic, "proves" its sensationalistic assertions not by the presentation of evidence but by the quotation of "experts." In this case, the "experts" are hawking a documentary film called Rape of the Soul. The tag-line: "You'll never look at art the same way again!"
But just who are these art "experts"? Oddly enough, not one of them specializes in art history.
The first is Dr. Stanley Monteith, a noted conspiracy broadcaster best known for his video and book The Brotherhood of Darkness, which he discusses here:
It is impossible to understand the unfolding of world events without the information contained in this video. What was the origin of the Council on Foreign Relations, and what is its relationship to Freemasonry, Theosophy, Socialism and Communism?Yada yada yada; you know the drill. Right-wing conspiracy theorists are like Chinese fast food joints -- each one promises something new and unique, and each one gives you the same old crap. Of course, the CFR, Freemasonry, Theosophy and Communism are very separate items -- although Blavatsky's followers did have links to Czarist circles in Paris, and Blavatsky herself was located somewhere on the right. (Shows what you know, Stannikins. Blavatsky was quite the paranoid theorist in her own right: She saw Evil Jesuit Conspirators under every bed.)
Our next "expert" is the video's producer, identified as "Michael A. Calace, an Italian director, actor, writer and producer who is also a devout Roman Catholic." He also claims to be an inventor who has made bold breakthroughs in golf technology. Calace began to investigate Satanic art when he discovered demonic imagery, including a secret 666, embedded into a design on a missal. In correspondence with someone who doubted the 666 story, Calace's production company offered this sniffy response:
No hoax. Not in the slightest. Leave the visual arts to the experts."Leave the visual arts to the experts." I love that line.
We have all of the evidence, the players, the corroboration, or it would not have been announced.
The third "expert" in this team is our old friend Dr. Wilson Bryan Key, who used to make big bucks producing mass-market paranoia paperbacks which warned the public about the dangers of subliminal images. Playboy centerfolds, he claimed, often contained carefully hidden extras. Back in the 70s, I did not want to dismiss this theory without putting it to a proper test, so I spent many an hour searching Playboy centerfolds (especially Miss November, 1975) for those elusive subliminals. Alas, the images I found were quite, uh, liminal.
(Liminal: "The threshold of a physiological or psychological response." That's Janet Lupo, all right.)
The key Key claim holds that, in the days before Photoshop, the big ad agencies hired airbrush artists to embed the letters S-E-X into photographs of all sorts of commercial products. Artists also allegedly placed hidden penises and vulvas into the ice cubes seen in liquor ads. Oddly, Key never proved the point by offering a confession from any pro illustrator.
I was once one of the most skillful freehand airbrushers this side of H.R. Giger, and although I made a good living back in the '80s, no-one ever hired me to embed a subliminal. No artist known to me was ever asked to do such a thing. People who work for ad agencies think that Key is hilarious.
No scientific evidence demonstrates that "subliminal" sexual imagery would accomplish anything. (For god's sake, don't bring up the Vicary pseudo-experiments. Only paranoid rubes believe in that crap.)
A confession: Years and years ago, I placed teensy-tiny naughty images into a couple of book illustrations as a gag -- a gag inspired by the furor over Key's wild assertions. No-one directed me to do this. The thought occurred to me that he might be so kind as to give me free publicity. As you know, I can be a bit of a rascal.
From time to time, viewers have found vaguely sexual images hidden in my work -- images that were not intentional. For example, I had to rework the folds in a section of the Virgin Mary's cape in this piece, out of fear that someone viewing the thing in Key-vision might scry a hidden vulva where none was intended. Such things do occur by accident.
But you can't convince nutjobs like Key to accept the possibility of coincidence. If a cloud looks like a duck, God must have created a transitory duck sculpture in the heavens, for reasons best known to Himself.
The "ducks-in-clouds" phenomenon seems to be the whole basis of Calace's documentary. If anything in an old work of art looks odd or disturbing, it's a conspiracy. If a work contains symbols inscrutable to uneducated library-phobic dolts, it's a conspiracy. If you can spot something vaguely penis-like in the folds of Christ's drapery, it's a conspiracy. And if an old religious painting shows two apostles hugging each other, it's a homosexual conspiracy.
By the way: According to Calace, Leonardo da Vinci was in on the scheme. Odd, isn't it, how these things are always invisible to Leonardo scholars and can be seen only by amateurs?
Calace's paranoid mystifications are nothing new.
In 1932, the London Times published a piece by an anonymous conspiracist (I like to think that it was dear old Montague Summers, up to his usual shennanigans) which claimed to find Satanic imagery in an Annunciation by an unknown master, probably Barthélemy d' Eyck. The painting is located in a church in Aix-en-Provence, and is thus known as the Aix Annunciation. None other than M.R. James, the famed ghost story author, wrote a detailed refutation of this assertion. The controversy, as summarized by this article, was quite intriguing.Modern day esotericists have attempted to tie the Aix conundrum to the mystery of Rennese-le-Chateau. If you're clever enough, you can link a Mickey Mouse lunchbox to the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau.
My ladyfriend is an art history student with a keen interest in symbolism, which is why her school comrades call her "Mrs. Panofsky." (The reference goes to famed "iconologist" Erwin Panofksy, a real life equivalent to Dan Brown's hero, Robert Langdon.) She did fairly extensive research into the Aix Annunciation and found both precedence and innocent explanations for all of the so-called "Satanic" details.
Yes, even the thing with the monkey.
And now for the political significance of it all: Once the public loses faith in Barack Obama -- any day now, any day now -- disillusioned lumpenproles will turn to sites like WorldNet Daily and to "experts" like Stan "the Man" Monteith for an explanation as to why the world is the depressing way it is. It's a conspiracy! Yep, you can blame all of your problems on the Illuminati and the build-a-burgers and the dreaded CFO. Blame Freemasons, Theosophists, commies, Rennaissance painters and Cat-lick mind controllers. Whatever you do, though, do not blame greedy capitalists. They're always innocent.
20 comments:
I wish the term "conspiracy" could come to be used with somewhat more rigorous definition, and that "conspiracy theorists" could more often be replaced, as appropriate, with words like hucksters, propagandists, irrationalists, and such.
"Capitalists/ism" is getting kinda old too.
Not disagreeing with anything said, just lamenting the corruption of our language and culture. Perhaps from the disenchanted, a poet will emerge who will push back against the corruption. They won't all remain hopeless cases, I hope.
I never said that all conspiracy theories were crap. But the ones involving secret societies, subliminals and religion usually are.
Conspiracy: "two or more people acting in concert to commit an unlawful act"
When actual conspiracies are revealed we invariably see that there is a ton of evidence and plenty of witnesses that can tie things together. Nothing involving large groups of people can remain secret for long.
The reason I don't believe in conspiracy theories involving shadowy organizations that secretly engage in or manipulate major events is simple - when you look at the clandestine activities of the US government (revealed by the investigations into Iran-Contra and Watergate as well as the Church commission) you discover that the combined ineptitude of the people involved is staggering.
9/11 was a conspiracy - by members of Al Queda who plotted to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. That they were successful was due more to luck than efficiency.
We had ample warning prior to 9/11 that Al Queda was plotting something (they did everything except run television ads announcing their plans)and the plot could have easily been thwarted by something as simple as locked cockpit doors.
Al Queda is/was about as powerful and secretive an organization as any that has ever existed - yet look how much we know about them and their activities.
Back in the 70's and 80's the fundies were convinced that rock music LP's had subliminal messages hidden in them via "backward masking." (I can just imagine some big-haired minister in a plaid polyester suit playing Beatles albums backwards listening for "Paul is dead")
IIRC it was Robert Plant who said that if backward masking worked the message the artists would put in their songs would be "Buy the album"
I agree with Gary that the word "conspiracy" is too imprecise. Conspiracies most certainly occur--and calling inconvenient truths "conspiracy theories" is a classic technique to cover up wrongdoing.
And yet there are people with unique and identifiable thought patters, different from the "norm." For now, we just have to call them conspiracy guys.
Joe's post highlights a striking quality of conspiracy buffs: the belief that the conspirators deliberately leave clues, often in the form of symbols. You see this in theorists like Alex Jones, who believes there are Illuminati symbols on Starbucks coffee cups, or Texe Marrs, who sees just every hand gesture as an Illuminati sign.
The bad guys are constantly giving the game away, but only the conspiracy theorist can perceive it.
Of course, since no two conspiracy theorists ever see the same symbols, we know we're in Conspiracyland.
Joseph, you made me google Janet Lupo, well worth the time and effort, she was quite buoyant, in the day!
Funny. This has always struck me as a bit of a conspiracy site, what with the world controlled by evil Obots.
JXC, I met her, once. Very nice lady. She told me that Tom Laughlin -- you know, "Billy Jack" -- was desperate to get her into movies, but she had no interest. I don't think any other hook could have induced me to pay money for a Billy Jack movie.
For whatever reason attaching the word "conspiracy" to any behavior combination involving more than a few makes is sound bad or crazy. People don't appear to want to have an open mind and are most interested in shutting the idea down from the start. Hence, if there were any real facts to support a conspiratorial behavior, it wouldn't be allowed to get off the ground from day one.
However, what if later a huge conspiracy was busted explaining that our feelings of a conspiracy existing was real from the start?
The huge conspiracy was by design from the start made to happen using more than a few, possibly hundreds or even thousands. In the end it was mostly proven by a huge bust or series of busts. After all the hours that everyone endlessly debated, some even imprisoned and put into mental institutions and even killed. As explained sbove, some may see this NOW as pure fantasy since nothing like this has ever happened in our History before to suggest it's possible. But what if what I'm saying is real?
There is so much debate and harsh critisizm regarding discussing, in any believable sense, any conspiracy.
Perhaps the smallest comspiracy may be more believable to many of us than a huge conspiracy. We read about crimes where someone or a team of criminals were able to pull something off. Earlier, thier efforts may have been viewed as a small conspiracy.
A huge conspiracy though would involve many, possibly hundrends over a very long period of time. And of course, the people wouldn't want to believe that any of it were true. But what if this huge conspiracy actually is about to get busted and has been busted a little here and a little there for a long time already?
What say you?
Fact: I was in a family for more than 26 years who explain in detail about 911, the economy collapse, Detention Camps, other State Run Terrorism acts, Bush family, Clintons, Obama and much more up through 1996. I left the family in 1997. They explained that the criminal system is using the proceeds of huge drug sales to FUND their operations in support of another White House Coup. They tried it and failed in 1933 and modeled this new attempt using all the success from the past. The family said they are CIA Assets and won't ever be prosecuted for anything even if it involves murder.
Meet the family:
Mexico drug plane used for US 'rendition' flights: report - Sep 4, 2008
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg
Please keep in mind that the plane that was busted was part of a company setup with assistence by Obmaa with the family while he worked at a law firm in Chicago in the 90's. I heard all about it. Clyde O'Connor is my exx-sister-in-laws brother and her husband is my ex-wife's brother. Also, Dr Orl Taits, Cal an attorney researched and found more than 130 properties owned by Obama which is how they pay for services done.
So again "What say you?"
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Conspiracies certainly never have anything to do with implanting weirdo artistic symbols within existing constructs. Who could make a buck out of that? Real conspiracies are usually out in full view, like predatory lending or derivatives or lying to win public support for an unnecessary war...
For an example of the sort of massive conspiracy that the leaders and military of this country have been willing to risk doing, consider the Cambodia air campaign.
Something around 4,000 sorties were undertaken by B-52 bombers (very large and logistically complicated instruments of war involving crews and support teams in the hundreds, flight log documentation, fueling records etc.). Hundreds of thousands of tons of ordinance, more than was dropped on Japan throughout the entire course of WW II, was dropped on that small country.
Operational secrecy was helped by keeping the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force out of the loop. Everyone in the crews, except the pilot and navigator, was unaware of where the planes were when the bombs were dropped. A concerted effort to make 'double books' on the sorties destroyed the actual records of what had been done.
However, that still meant that well over a hundred persons were knowledgeable, per sortie. (The first strike involved the diversion of 48 out of 60 B-52s on the 'cover mission,' meaning 96 relatively low level military personnel knew of that one mission, along with the other top brass in SAC command and the Pentagon hierarchy who were in the loop).
The 14-month "Nixon" phase of the Cambodia bombing remained unknown for 4 years. It may well have been a 30+ year old secret that LBJ had also ordered and gotten bombing of Cambodia, for that was only officially released in 2000 by Clinton when he declassified the entire government file.
Neither Prince Sihounak nor North Vietnam, both of which parties were knowledgeable of the strikes in real time, so much as uttered a peep on this matter.
As for these more speculative claims of secret society conspirators, we find eminently well situated world leaders on the record agreeing they are active and influential in the extreme.
Cf: the Wall Street coup attempt attempting to use Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler against FDR for an example of what has been attempted, and the incredibly minor aftermath of the public disclosure of this plot (which has been mainly expunged from history books).
XI
Cannot help but inject James Vicary?, I believe that's the right name, and the 1957 Coke and popcorn claim, in movie theaters.
Which, though proven a hoax, actually wound up causing a ban, of sorts, by the FCC re subliminal messages, sometime in the '70s.
Fact is, the public as a whole totally believed it, and it caused fear, among many, that "brain-washing", on a mass scale, had begun.
The 14-month "Nixon" phase of the Cambodia bombing remained unknown for 4 years.Unknown to whom?
In addition to the pilots and navigators there were millions of Cambodians who were aware of the bombings. The North Vietnamese were aware of the bombings too, since they were the target.
It's a safe bet China and the USSR knew as well.
The "secret" was kept from the American people, but other than that it wasn't a secret.
Actually, guys, you prove the point I was trying to make: Conspiracy theorists -- at least the wackier kind, almost all of whom are on the right -- actually HIDE the real conspiracies.
I don't have the clipping to hand, but trust me on this: Back in the mid-1980s, an NYT editorialist scoffed at the idea that the CIA had ever plotted to kill Castro. That was just a "conspiracy theory" according to the editorial writer.
But the NYT was the paper that had broken that very story, about twelve or fifteen years earlier!
"Oh, you conspiracy theorists -- the Martians landed at Roswell -- the Illuminati control the world -- the CIA toppled the government in Chile -- if it's not one thing, it's another!"
For the past twenty years I've been having this conversation with gullible right-wing dolts:
"Now in 1961, the CIA killed Patrice Lumumba..."
"Oh, are you talking about the Illuminati?"
"No, I'm talking about the CIA..."
"Oh, are you talking about the Bilderbergers...?"
"No, I'm talking about the CIA..."
"Yeah, but you need to take it to a higher level. You see, Skull and Bones..."
"No, I'm talking about the CIA. JUST the CIA."
"But what about the Satanists who run Proctor and Gamble?"
"I'm talking about the fucking CIA. Nothing else."
"Then you're covering up the real issue. The Priory of Sion and the Freemasons..."
"CIA! CIA! CIA!"
"Illuminati! Illuminati! Illuminati!"
"There is no Illuminati. It's not real. The CIA is real."
"Who's paying you to divert attention from Roswell and the alien menace?"
"I'm trying to talk about a covert operation..."
"All covert ops originate with the Rothschild family and the Committee of 300..."
And on. And on.
This shit has been going on for twenty years. Every time someone tried to investigate or to discuss something that's real, the lunatics commandeer the discussion. This is what happened during the days of Iran Contra. And it happened within the JFK research community. (See: Jim Marrs, Jim Fetzer...)
Sometimes I wish that every conspiracy theorist had one neck so I could wring it.
So, what you are saying is that conspiracy theories are like religion in that they are used to explain away realities that are too ugly, unbearble to accept or bring about feelings of hopelessness. I can see that. And that would explain why "conspiracy nut jobs" are as unbending as "religious nut jobs".
This reminds of a tv show back 20 years or so ago and back in the country that I was born in called "Uncle Napoleon". He was this old guy who grew up in the era of British world dominance and by default dominance over affairs of my country of birth. The show was a clever political discoarse ,but at the end of each episode, Uncle Napoleon always managed to blame Britain for anything that was wrong, which sort of let the actual culprits off the hook or it seemed to the naive and uneducated. That is probably why the show was allowed to air for so long, but enough people caught onto the real aim of the show that today anyone that is a "conspiracy nut job" is called Uncle Napoleon.
beeta
Intelligence agencies are conspiracy theories. btw, ground personnel were flown into, presumably, Cambodia and Laos, would run a mission, then were extracted, all without them knowing where they were. Only the air crews knew. What were they doing? "Interesting things..." I was told.
"And on. And on.
This shit has been going on for twenty years. Every time someone tried to investigate or to discuss something that's real, the lunatics commandeer the discussion. This is what happened during the days of Iran Contra. And it happened within the JFK research community."
Fact: I was married in that family I keep talking about who was directly involved in laundering money into property directly related to Iran/Contra. They were totally scared and visited each family member, including me, to question us about who our friends were and more. They often opened up more about what they were involved in and the "cover up" or "on and on" as you put it was and still is part of their over all plan to hush things up. And it works, doesn't it!
By the way, the family said that Kennedy's assassination was assisted by people from their group. As far as what I've read, the records say that there were many from Chicago who participated in something to do with Kennendy's assassination.
The original question about "Icons" used to subliminally remind people of their secret mission is far easier to do than not. Frankly, I have Patents, copyrights and Trademarks. A trademark is Iconic and anyone can use some of the older Icons in their displays and other public signs anywhere. It's really a no brainer.
As far as If they are actually working in a subliminal way is questionable but surely for those involved. They do talk about it often as it seems to instill unity within the ranks. While the family discussed what they were involved in, they often referred to our Dollar bill and a few other things as a reminder of how huge this was. My father-in-law and a few others are FreeMasons. As I understand, The Illuminati's are linked into the Freemasons. There are supposed to be more than 6 million (1-2% of population) illuminati's in the US. As simple check might surface that many of these people are employed by contractors associated with the NSA, DHS and others who are tracking people in the US. Could this be where the huge Gang Stalking is coming from???
Bereminded that the family I often refer to are considered CIA Assets.
Why nothing ever comes out of anything is the REAL question! Joe, why not run an article about why nothing ever happens as it should happen?
Some of it appears to be the result of corruption. Visiting TPM Muckraker will show that it's happening everywhere in the Federal area. MSM keeps all of this quiet. It's almost like it isn't happening at all and this goes for many of the cable areas too. It really is a news blackout against imforming us with what is happening.
I explained a few facts above in my post. They aren't going away. In fact they are surfacing more and more detail. Something is happening to the good and we're not supposed to know about it, but it does exist. Eventually you'll see it. It's unfortunately that I'm not allowed to talk about it otherwise I would.
Marty Didier
Northbrooko, IL
Joe, I've been running across many links lately that do relate to what I've been talking about all this time. You might want to say that being involved for more than 30 years has given me a trained eye.
Link:
Banks run Congress, top Democrat says
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/01/banks-run-congress/
My thought is that some of what exists is starting to surface however some of it is still in infancy. I've said many times in the past that the family in many respects worked for the big banks with the drug system. They were involved in laundering drug money into property at very high levels because the Recorder of Deeds Dept were so corrupt the family feared being brought down. Now guess who told them to go to the big banks to do the laundering? CIA and other operatives.
Keep in mind that the White House Coup from 1933 included big banks if I'm not mistaken.
There's more but for another time...
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
But, Joseph, how do you explain this?
I am surprised that no one has cited the 1954 anti-crime crusader Estes Kefauver who lead the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that investigated the pernicious influence of horror comics on the youth of our nation. The text for this witch-hunt was a masterful piece of apperceptive hokum that involved some quite creative interpretations of the hidden subliminal sexual images contained in the popular horror comic genre. Called “The Seduction of the Innocent” published by Dr. Frederic Wertham it contained many exhibits illustrating these subliminals in a manner that would test the credulity of even the WorldNet theorists: penises hidden in foliage, vaginas detailed in the limbs of trees, etc. I once saw a copy of the report and it was funnier than the hidden church demon art that Dr. Stanley Monteith imagines.
I graduated from high school in 1954 and by the time the Senate came to investigate my favorite EC comics (published by William Gaines) I was beyond the pale, having grown up on a steady diet of brilliant, insightful, irreverent, satiric, creative, thought provoking and beautifully rendered comics the likes of Vault of Horror, Crypt of Terror, Crime Suspense Stories, and the early Mad and Panic magazines. The Committee literally put them out of business. Fortunately they reemerged in the “Adult format”—larger, but for me, less interesting than the pulp versions I had grown up on. Perhaps it was just that I had outgrown the genre. Certainly the investigation and the establishment of the Comics Code had a chilling effect on the industry in general. My interest in comics waned until the sixties when I discovered underground comics and once again I came to see the freedom, creativity and artistic value of the medium.
EC (Entertaining Comics) never produced a nation of juvenile delinquents as the Senate subcommittee claimed. What it did produce was a small number of people like me who possessed an altered consciousness who were predisposed to look at the world in a slightly jaundiced way through eyes that would brook no fairy-tale treacle in the material we subscribed to.
Peace,
Bob Boldt
PS
It is good to be back!
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