I confess: I’ve watched all the Alex Jones films, and the Zeitgeist films too. For a while I was reading all the stories from the Watson brothers (Paul and Joseph, who write for Prisonplanet.com and infowars.com), and Alex’s various websites (including the foregoing sites, and JonesReport.com). I would print them out, take them with me to lunch, and surreptitiously leave them on the table for anyone else to happen upon. And I was listening to The Alex Jones Show on podcast with regularity.
I was like Fox Mulder: I wanted to believe. But I had and have several problems with Jones’ world view and methods. It was easy enough to overlook and dismiss my misgivings at first. In fact, it wasn’t until I heard Alex Jones rant about the maker of Zeitgeist that I began to get a glimmer of the deeper religious furniture under Alex’s hood, and I began to really give consideration to what had been merely a subconscious dis-ease prior to that.
Zeitgiest is a film which overlaps to a large degree with the Alex Jones paradigm – with one exception. Zeitgeist features a fairly scholarly analysis of the astrological and symbolic origins of most of the world’s major religions. If you happen not to be religious this is no big deal. But if you are one of the faithful, this is a major challenge to that faith.
So this one day was listening to a podcast of the Alex Jones show on my iPod. He went off on this rant about this argument he had with the maker of Zeitgeist about whether a certain bird behavior was the result of nature or nurture.
Now to me this is a fairly silly debate. And at the moment I don’t recall which side Alex fell on. I’m pretty sure Alex was saying that this certain behavior was genetic, inherited, and not learned. It dawned on me that the significance for Alex was that humans were different than animals in that we are capable of learning and we have free will.
Personally, I think that for humans our behavior is shaped by both nature and nurture, that we carry genetic switches that flip depending on environmental circumstances.
But the debate had religious ramifications for Alex, ramifications that lurked as subtext only: If humans were merely complex animals, then the significance of the Bible is called into question, and perhaps diminished as merely the product of these clever animals’ imagination. Jones could not allow the conversation to lead there.
And so it was that I allowed myself to awaken and consciously confront my first problem with Alex Jones’ world view. I am Buddhist, and Jones is Christian. I don’t mean this in any kind of a derogatory or intolerant way, but rather my issue goes to a fundamental distinction between the world views of these two great religions.
Buddhism, to the extent it is a religion, is officially agnostic as to whether there is or is not a God (used here in the monotheistic western sense of the term, by which is implied a primal cause, omniscience, omnipotence, etc.) Without going too deeply into Buddhist philosophy, it should suffice to say that from the Buddhist point of view, the Universe functions according to certain laws of nature, and these laws function whether or not there is a God, and if there is one, then He, She or It is probably going to be subject to these laws as well, but more importantly, the Universe does not appear to need a God for these laws to function.
Ultimately, Buddhism is concerned with the nature of our thinking and our actions. Specifically, Buddhists define certain modes of thought as positive, and certain other modes of thought as negative. Fear is very definitely a negative mode of thought and is to be avoided, or transformed into fearlessness. Buddhists cultivate a sense of fearlessness about death out of their faith in the notions of karma and reincarnation (actually, rebirth – but that’s getting needlessly technical for our purposes here).
Christians, in contrast, believing not in reincarnation but rather in an eternal heaven or hell, and have historically operated with fear as a primary motivating force. This is not to say that the Christian heaven is not by itself an attractive or motivating goal, but it seems Christians have always employed a big stick as well as that carrot.
Certain Christians, particularly Fundamentalist Christians, concern themselves greatly with the Book of Revelation and the Eschaton or End Times. Certain of these it seems even take efforts to “imminentize the eschaton” as Robert Anton Wilson said it in
– that is, they seek to hasten the End Times. Such action appears to be motivated by the faith that they have earned salvation from certain damnation through their faith in Christ, and that by hastening the End Times they hasten their re-union with God.
I believe some of the Neocons may by secretly motivated by this type of thinking. I don’t think Jones is so religious as to be one of these Eschaton Imminentizers (not all Eschaton Imminentizers are Neocons, and not all Neocons are Eschaton Imminentizers), but I think deep in his consciousness he believes that the Neocons are up to something of Biblical proportions.
However, if Jones doesn’t welcome the actions of these Eschaton Imminentizers (and I think he doesn’t) he certainly is set up to profit from them in the meantime, as his ministry is one fueled by the propagation of the fear of what he portrays as the imminent New World Order.
And so, as a Buddhist, my first problem with Jones is the perpetual state of fear that he carefully cultivates in his audience. That state of fear is necessary to drive sales for his sponsors, who tend to cater mainly to a survivalist world view. I have no problem with being prepared for the worst, but I am also realistic about how Jones makes his money.
The second problem I have with Jones is that while he has an excellent grasp of the gross mechanics of current events, a lot of his statements, ideas, and understanding of the philosophy which motivates the players both historically and at present on the world stage is superficial at best, often oversimplified, and at worst, born of sheer ignorance. As a result, he tends to draw extreme and unwarranted conclusions, and often does so from extremely tenuous and often disconnected evidence. He seizes upon even the weakest of coincidences as proof of his world view, drawing unwarranted universal generalizations from disparate and isolated instances.
If you are constantly on the lookout for any evidence that will confirm your world view, then you are bound to find it, often at the expense of seeing a lot of other stuff that tends to conflict with it.
As an example of this overly simplistic world view, Jones and the Watsons often say that Zbigniew Brzezinski “hates Russia,” but I’ve never really seen any real support for this conclusion.
Here, it is easy for me to put myself in Brzezinksi’s shoes and comprehend that he likely has some complex feelings about something as vast as Russia. When I was in college, I spent some time studying in China, and I find that my feelings about the vast country of China are somewhat complicated. I have a deep love the culture and the people, but my feelings about the government tend to be less benign, and for this reason I consciously pray for the enlightenment of the Chinese Government, if only to transform my negative thoughts on the subject into positive ones.
I expect Zbigniew’s feelings about Russia are even more complex than the ones I feel toward China. This is because Brzezinski (a) was born in Poland and lived through the Soviet invasion of Poland at a young age, and (b) is a professor of Political Science who has taught at both Harvard and the University of Chicago. The import of the latter fact is that it is extremely unlikely that he could get where he has with such a simplistic world view as that which Jones portrays, particularly when Brzezinski is widely reputed as one of the foremost political realists of his time.
Another example Jones’ tendency to over-simplify has to do with his grasp of political philosophy. According to Wikipedia, Jones only briefly attended a local community college in Austin, Texas. I point this out not to ridicule him, but to suggest that he lacks the basic intellectual training and tools with which to comprehend the philosophical ideas that motivate important players on the world stage.
For example, in his film, Endgame, Jones states that David Rockefeller subscribes to Fabian Socialism, which he equates to German National Socialism (Nazism) subject to the distinction that the Fabian Socialists’ path to world domination is incremental and political rather than militaristic. However, this is simply wrong.
German National Socialism (Nazism, a form of Fascism) is a politically corrupt integration of cronyistic corporatism and elitist party politics wherein economic and political power are consolidated in a few corporations. In contrast, Fabian Socialism is an incrementalist approach to a more classical form of Socialism (the English word for Communism) in which control of the means of production is ultimately held directly by the State. It is worth noting that both of these brands of “socialism,” as well as the Soviet and Chinese implementations of “Communism” are to be contrasted with the pure Marxist vision of “Communism.”
Karl Marx, after engaging in a comprehensive study of history, posited the theory that throughout history, for any given political system, be it Agrarianism, Feudalism or Capitalism, the contradictions inherent within that system will inevitably give rise to that system’s successor. This theory is known as Dialectical Materialism. Without going into the contradictions within Agrarianism or Feudalism, Marx said that Capitalism was characterized by two conditions: (1) the fact that labor is the source of all value (regardless of whether that value may be modulated by supply and demand), and (2) the defining trend of Capitalism being that toward the mechanization of labor (replacing the work of people with the effort of machines, or more simply, putting money to work rather than people). That this is a contradiction may not be perceived until you take both factors to their extreme: When all labor is replaced by machine, then the products made by the machines will have no value. That, he said, is when the revolution will occur.
The historical ramifications of a correct understanding of Marx are huge. First, it necessarily follows that the revolutions that transpired first in Russia, and then in China and other countries cannot be viewed as Marxist in any real sense. They were opportunistic seizures of power which treated the masses as fodder and philosophy as an excuse. Second, if you accept Marx’ analysis, it follows that the real “Communist” revolution is yet to come, but that in this age of emerging Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and growing unemployment, may be closer than we think.
Why are these philosophical subtleties important to this discussion? Because if Jones had actually gone to college, studied philosophy and obtained a degree, these subtleties would not be lost on him, and would deeply inform his world view.
Instead, Jones conceives only monolithic views of a New World Order which are at best overly simplistic and at worst misguided and alarmist.
If one bothers to actually study the words of people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, one finds that he expresses what appear to be very sincere concerns for things like Human Rights (concerns which seem to be antithetical to the New World Order Jones portrays). And if the New World Order were as monolithic as Jones would have us believe, then one would expect a guy like Zbigniew Brzezinski to be one of George W. Bush’s biggest cheerleaders.
Instead, in his book, Second Chance, Brzezinksi quite eloquently and meticulously rips George W. Bush a new asshole six ways to Sunday and gives him a near failing grade in his handling of foreign policy, mainly promulgated in the wake of 9/11. However, Zbigniew stops far short of even pondering whether 9/11 might have been an inside job (a point on which I tend to agree with Jones).
In his review of the post-Soviet presidencies, Brzezinski explains that George H. W. Bush lacked any kind of vision to guide his foreign policy but was essentially an adept manager who had extensive experience as a foreign policy bureaucrat prior to ascending to the office of President. Consequently, although Bush 41 did use the phrase, “New World Order” on several occasions, he used the expression not with any particular grand vision in mind, but rather simply parroted the phrase which had already been uttered by his Russian counterpart as a way of consciously wooing Russia to align itself with NATO after the demise of the Soviet Union. In this sense, we were already in a New World Order once the old Soviet Union had imploded upon itself. It was a New World Order in which the United States found itself as the world’s only remaining superpower (a fact which in hindsight also made us the world’s biggest target).
Brzezinksi explains that Clinton, in contrast, actually did have a vision for the future of this New World Order, although this vision was characterized by a blind faith in what Clinton perceived as the inevitable historical (though largely unarticulated and undefined) force of Globalization, much in the fashion in which the idea of Manifest Destiny fueled the westward progress in America in the 1800’s.
Of course, all the while Clinton held the oval office, there was a group that was constantly plotting to regain control of the White House: The Neocons. By now we are all quite familiar with the Project for a New American Century, and the Fascist Regime that has gripped America over the last eight years.
And so by the time of George W. Bush, there were two post-Soviet factions within the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (and likely also within the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission): The Neocons and the Globalists. These two groups appear still to be struggling, but with Obama taking the White House it seems clear the Globalists will have the upper hand for now.
I am sure Jones would argue that these distinctions are minor at best, and that the New World Order will manifest with the same basic characteristics regardless of which faction happens to be in control at any given time. This may be so. I don’t really know at this point.
However, by failing to see these subtleties, Jones perpetuates the view that this New World Order is something that canand should be resisted and defeated, but above all, should be feared.
In truth, I expect, that is an effort as futile as trying to put the genie of nuclear technology back in its bottle. The world has already changed and irrevocably so. There is simply no realistic way to undo the architecture of the New World Order. What I think we can do is play a positive and responsible role in influencing the shape of this New World Order so as to make it as benign as possible.
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