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“Thrive”: Counter-Culture Fascism in Cinema

COMMENT: The advance of fas­cism fea­tures a bur­geon­ing array of media and orga­ni­za­tion­al phe­nom­e­na that direct peo­ple of more “progressive”–even “hip” ori­en­ta­tion in the direc­tion of big­otry and right-wing total­i­tar­i­an­ism.

In par­tic­u­lar, anti-Semitism–denying that it is anti-Semitic–has become some­thing of the “fla­vor de jeur” for much of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor. The cloud­ing of minds with mys­ti­cism has accel­er­at­ed this trend, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the young.

A recent issue of the San Jose Metro–a free week­ly paper in the South­ern Bay Area–featured an inci­sive analy­sis by Eric John­son. This impor­tant arti­cle dis­sect­ed the fun­da­men­tals of a pop­u­lar cult film enti­tled Thrive.

The brain­child of Proc­tor & Gam­ble for­tune heir Fos­ter Gam­ble, the film fus­es New Age mys­ti­cism and cult “free-ener­gy” mythol­o­gy with Old Age anti-Semit­ic ide­ol­o­gy pin­ning the world’s trou­bles on the Roth­schilds and Jew­ish con­trol of the finan­cial indus­try. (Gam­ble him­self holds forth on var­i­ous sub­jects in the film itself.)

In addi­tion to Gam­ble him­self, “Thrive” presents the fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy of G. Edward Grif­fin, a promi­nent John Birch Soci­ety the­o­reti­cian. (The ori­gins of the John Birch Soci­ety are detailed in AFA #11.) In addi­tion to his doc­tri­naire racism, demo­niz­ing the likes of Mar­tin Luther King, Grif­fin tags the Fed­er­al Reserve Sys­tem as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the “Zion­ist” finan­cial cabal.

The most out­landish of the fascisti whose “think­ing” is fea­tured in the film is David Icke. A for­mer soc­cer play­er, Icke has rein­vent­ed him­self as a polit­i­cal guru, dis­sem­i­nat­ing the view that the world’s pow­er struc­ture is con­trolled by “rep­til­ian shape-shifters” who pose as humans, eat young chil­dren and, some­how, are part and par­cel to the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial con­spir­a­cy advanced by Grif­fin, Gam­ble and com­pa­ny.

Anoth­er of the old-line fas­cists whose ide­ol­o­gy is con­tained in the film is Eustace Mullins, although his influ­ence is upon Gam­ble’s the­o­ret­i­cal out­look, rather than in “Thrive” itself. An unabashed admir­er of Adolf Hitler, Mullins is among the sem­i­nal fas­cist ide­o­logues to tab the Fed as an out­crop­ping of the “inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish bank­ing con­spir­a­cy.”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly Icke,  Mullins and Grif­fin have been extolled by the so-called “Truthers.” Both have also been fea­tured on the pro­gram of for­mer Fox pun­dit Glenn Beck.

In addi­tion to the New Age mys­ti­cism, the film’s cache among “pro­gres­sives” is strength­ened by the inclu­sion of the likes of Deep­ak Chopra, Amy Good­man and envi­ron­men­tal­ist (and Baskin & Rob­bins heir) John Rob­bins.

This, in com­bi­na­tion with the dumb­ing-down of Amer­i­ca, has fueled the pop­u­lar­i­ty of “Thrive.”
Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the film has gar­nered a con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing among the “Occu­py” move­ment, accord­ing to author John­son.

“Thrive” appears to be among the most suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tions to date of counter-cul­ture fas­cism, adding some­thing of a bohemi­an fla­vor to the old adage that anti-Semi­tism is “the social­ism of fools.”

(Author Peter Lev­en­da, among oth­ers, has chron­i­cled the over­lap of alter­na­tive reli­gions such as Satanism with fas­cist and Nazi ele­ments in his book Unholy Alliance. The alter­na­tive reli­gious connection/New Age phe­nom­e­non is cen­tral to the suc­cess of works like “Thrive.”)

“The Dan­gers Behind the Cult Film ‘Thrive’ ” by Eric John­son; The San Jose Metro; 5/16/2012.

EXCERPT: Thrive, a two-hour doc­u­men­tary that has gone viral since its release on the web in Novem­ber, sells itself as an opti­mistic vision of a utopi­an future marked by “free ener­gy,” free­dom from oppres­sion and spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. But on its way to depict­ing a dream-world utopia, Thrive deliv­ers a dark and dis­hon­est ver­sion of the real world and espous­es a blend of para­noid con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and right-lib­er­tar­i­an pro­pa­gan­da.

The San­ta Cruz cou­ple who made the film, Fos­ter and Kim­ber­ly Carter Gam­ble, build their tale around an unde­ni­ably poet­ic idea: that there is a secret pat­tern to be found in nature, and that we can learn from it. . . .

. . . In the film’s sec­ond sec­tion, Gam­ble sets out to show exact­ly how and why the gov­ern­ment and its spon­sors are dup­ing us. This sec­tion prob­a­bly accounts for its bur­geon­ing online pop­u­lar­i­ty with the Occu­py move­ment and its sup­port­ers. (For the record, I count myself among that audi­ence seg­ment.)

Bring­ing in pro­gres­sive heroes such as Van­dana Shi­va and Paul Hawken to recount the more or less well-known crimes against human­i­ty per­pe­trat­ed by the likes of Mon­san­to and Exxon-Mobil, Thrive makes the famil­iar, and jus­ti­fi­able, case that huge cor­po­ra­tions have too much pow­er, are large­ly cor­rupt and pose a threat to soci­ety.

But then, once again, the film­mak­ers jump the tracks of ratio­nal­i­ty. This is where the film should go polit­i­cal, but instead it plays the con­spir­a­cy card. And not just any con­spir­a­cy, but the grand­dad­dy of them all: that a hand­ful of fam­i­lies con­trol the world and plan to enslave human­i­ty.

In his soft voice, the gray-haired, blue-eyed Fos­ter Gam­ble says, sad­ly: “As dif­fi­cult as it was for me, I have come to an inescapable and pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing con­clu­sion. I believe that an elite group of peo­ple and the cor­po­ra­tions they run have gained con­trol over not just our ener­gy, food sup­ply, edu­ca­tion and health care, but over vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of our lives.

“When I fol­lowed the mon­ey, I found it going up the lev­els of a pyra­mid.” (As the torus sym­bol dom­i­nates Thrive’s first sec­tion, the pyra­mid dom­i­nates the sec­ond.) And at the top of this alleged pyra­mid of evil: the Roth­schilds.

Not every­one watch­ing this film will know that this argu­ment has been around, and been dis­cred­it­ed, for decades. Appar­ent­ly, the desire to find some­one to blame for all the world’s prob­lems spans gen­er­a­tions. And the Roth­schilds make a pret­ty good tar­get.

Are the Roth­schilds very, very rich? Undoubt­ed­ly. Are the mem­bers of this fam­i­ly doing the work of Moth­er Tere­sa or the Dalai Lama? Most­ly not. Are they all-pow­er­ful pup­pet-mas­ters who secret­ly rule the world? Are they descend­ed from a race of snake-peo­ple? Do they eat chil­dren? Um ... no, no and no.

Are they Jew­ish? Well, yes. And it must be said: The argu­ment made in Thrive pre­cise­ly mir­rors an argu­ment that Joseph Goebbels made in his infa­mous Nazi pro­pa­gan­da film The Eter­nal Jew: that a hand­ful of bank­ing fam­i­lies, many of them Jew­ish, are run­ning the world and seek­ing glob­al dom­i­na­tion.

Fos­ter Gam­ble inoc­u­lates him­self against charges of anti-Semi­tism, stat­ing flat­ly: “This is not a Jew­ish agen­da. Let me be clear.” But while he scrubs out the open­ly anti-Semit­ic aspects of the dis­grace­ful idea, the rest of it haunts the film.

And, once again it must be said, when describ­ing sym­bol­ism used by his imag­ined Dark Lords of the Uni­verse, Gam­ble does not hes­i­tate to note that the Sign appears on the build­ing that hous­es the Israeli Supreme Court, which he erro­neous­ly claims “is fund­ed entire­ly by the Roth­schilds.”

To prove his eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, Gam­ble invites G. Edward Grif­fin, author of The Crea­ture from Jeck­yll Island, which recounts the cre­ation of the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank, a his­tor­i­cal moment which Grif­fin claims was orches­trat­ed by the “glob­al elite who want to con­trol the world and cre­ate a New World Order.”

One of sev­er­al vet­er­an con­spir­a­cy­mon­gers who appear onscreen in Part Two of Thrive, Grif­fin is a long­time lead­ing mem­ber of the ultra-right wing John Birch Soci­ety, a fact not men­tioned in the film. For those who may have forgotten—the John Birchers prac­ti­cal­ly invent­ed the mod­ern con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry.

Found­ed in 1958 to car­ry on the work of the anti-Com­mu­nist cru­sad­er Sen. Joe McCarthy, the Soci­ety went on to bat­tle the Com­mu­nist con­spir­a­cy we now known as the Civ­il Rights move­ment, and its leader, whom many of them referred to as “Mar­tin Lucifer King.”

Then the Birchers focused their ener­gies on reveal­ing the exis­tence of a Satan­ic (lit­er­al­ly) group they called the Illuminati—a cadre of pow­er­ful fam­i­lies that secret­ly rule the world.

While Grif­fin may be the most far-right pun­dit to appear in Thrive, he is not the most far-out. That would be David Icke, although it would be impos­si­ble to know that from the inter­views that appear in Thrive.

Ick­e’s role in the film is to explain the eco­nom­ic the­o­ry behind a com­mon bank­ing prac­tice known as frac­tion­al reserve lend­ing. He does this in less than two min­utes, with the help of South Park–style ani­ma­tions, as though explain­ing the the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty to an atten­tion-chal­lenged sec­ond-grad­er. And of course, he makes the prac­tice appear sin­is­ter.

For a more sym­pa­thet­ic por­tray­al of the prac­tice, see George Bai­ley’s bank-run speech in It’s a Won­der­ful Life: “You’re think­ing of this place all wrong, as if I had the mon­ey back in a safe. The mon­ey’s not here. Your mon­ey’s in Joe’s house, that’s right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Make­lin’s house, and a hun­dred oth­ers. You’re lend­ing them the mon­ey to build, and then they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can.” That’s frac­tion­al reserve lend­ing.

Point of fact: With­out frac­tion­al reserve lend­ing, almost nobody read­ing these words would ever be able to own a house. You would need to raise not only a down pay­ment but the entire val­ue of a home in order to pur­chase it. (Or be born with a for­tune, as was Fos­ter Gam­ble, whose grand­fa­ther found­ed Proc­ter and Gam­ble.)

At any rate, Ick­e’s brief expli­ca­tion car­ries the day for Gam­ble, who con­cludes that with this bank­ing ploy, “We inevitably become debt-slaves to a rul­ing finan­cial elite.”

Icke then goes on to explain, in a minute or two, how banks caused the cur­rent reces­sion pur­pose­ly, in a plot to get their hands on all of the nation’s real property—a devi­ous plot that has been “going on for cen­turies.” Again, as with many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, there’s a pret­ty big grain of truth to that.

Accord­ing to the film’s web­site, this is David Ick­e’s area of exper­tise: “Icke reveals that a com­mon formula—‘problem-reaction-solution’—is used by the elite to manip­u­late the mass­es and pur­sue alter­na­tive agen­das.”

But a glance at Ick­e’s own web­site reveals that this is not his pri­ma­ry area of inquiry. Icke, it seems, is bring­ing the work of the John Birch Soci­ety into the New Age, fur­ther­ing its study into the Illu­mi­nati. Like the Birchers, he swears he is not an anti-Semi­te, yet his site is rife with attacks against the “Roth­schild-Zion­ists” who have, among oth­er things, sur­round­ed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.

Ick­e’s inno­va­tion is that he tells the ancient con­spir­a­cy lie in the lan­guage of a self-help guru. “The Illu­mi­nati are not in my uni­verse, unless I allow them in,” he says. “And then, I give them pow­er. They’re fright­ened, fright­ened enti­ties.”

It’s telling that Icke uses the word “enti­ties,” because Icke believes the Illu­mi­nati, the peo­ple run­ning the world, are not peo­ple at all. David Icke, the man cham­pi­oned in Thrive for his insight to eco­nom­ics, spends most of his intel­lec­tu­al ener­gies show­ing that the world’s lead­ers, from Queen Eliz­a­beth to Bill and Hillary Clin­ton to Barack Oba­ma, are not human, but are mem­bers of “blood­lines” descend­ed from an inter­plan­e­tary cadre of evil, god­like human/snake hybrids he calls “Rep­til­ians.” . . .

. . . He [envi­ron­men­tal­ist John Rob­bins] says that in pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence, he learned that his friend [Fos­ter Gam­ble] was being influ­enced by the ideas of Eustace Mullins, whom he calls “the most anti-Semit­ic pub­lic fig­ure in U.S. his­to­ry.”

Fos­ter Gam­ble did not respond to an email request for an inter­view, but there is cer­tain­ly evi­dence in Thrive that Mullins’ views influ­enced him. One of the cen­tral fea­tures of the film is the sup­posed rev­e­la­tion that the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank is a crim­i­nal enter­prise; Mullins is the man who gave birth to that the­o­ry, in his 1952 book, The Secret of the Fed­er­al Reserve.

The fol­low­ing year, Mullins pub­lished his most noto­ri­ous tract, “Adolf Hitler: An Appre­ci­a­tion,” which prais­es the fuhrer for his cru­sade against the “Jew­ish Inter­na­tion­al bankers” who were attempt­ing to take over the world. In sub­se­quent books, Mullins argued that the Holo­caust nev­er hap­pened and that the Jew­ish race is inher­ent­ly “par­a­sitic.” Incred­i­bly, Mullins also insist­ed until his death that he was not an anti-Semi­te. . . .

. . . . Most of the solu­tions Thrive puts for­ward will res­onate with its tar­get audi­ence of spir­i­tu­al­ly inclined pro­gres­sives: stay informed, shop local, eat organ­ic, avoid GMOs, etc. But not all. Giv­en the trou­bling com­plex­i­ties of part two, I was only slight­ly sur­prised to find that one of the val­ues of the future Thrive depicts is “lit­tle or no tax­es.”

No tax­es. Sounds good—but does that mean no pub­lic libraries? No state parks? No pub­lic trans­porta­tion? How about roads? Social Secu­ri­ty? Haven’t the Gam­bles seen what this kind of anti-tax rhetoric has got­ten us? Dou­bled tuitions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, huge Rea­gan-era-style cuts in social ser­vices, decay­ing infra­struc­ture.

Near the film’s con­clu­sion, Gam­ble reveals the source of his anti-tax posi­tion, rev­er­ent­ly intro­duc­ing a man he cred­its with pro­vid­ing him with his Core Nav­i­ga­tion­al Insight for the future: Lud­wig von Mis­es. He does not men­tion that von Mis­es is the touch­stone of right-lib­er­tar­i­ans, so-called anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ists and rad­i­cal Repub­li­cans such as Michele Bach­mann, who quipped last year that she reads von Mis­es on the beach.

Gam­ble does lay out the core of von Mis­es’ phi­los­o­phy of “non-vio­la­tion, in which “nobody gets to vio­late you or” (ahem) “your prop­er­ty.” That phi­los­o­phy trans­lates into three rules: no invol­un­tary tax­a­tion; no invol­un­tary gov­er­nance; and no monop­oly of force.

In case any­one miss­es the point—that the state must with­er so that man can be free—Gamble shares von Mis­es’ opin­ion that like Com­mu­nism, fas­cism and social­ism, “democ­ra­cy wrong­ly assumes the rights of the col­lec­tive, or the group, over the rights of the indi­vid­ual.”. . . . .

Discussion

19 comments for ““Thrive”: Counter-Culture Fascism in Cinema”

  1. Hi Dave, I’m a long­time fan and am pleased that you liked my piece. Here are links to the entire piece, as well as a fol­lowup about the ten pro­gres­sives who are fea­tured in the film and have since denounced it.

    http://www.santacruz.com/news/2012/03/13/the_right_libertarian_agenda_at_the_heart_of_thrive

    http://www.santacruz.com/news/2012/04/10/author_john_robbins_other_progressives_denounce_thrive/CP4/

    Posted by Eric Johnson | May 27, 2012, 10:37 am
  2. Dave,

    So glad you’ve tak­en THRIVE to task!

    I would like to intro­duce you to the Thrive Debunked blog which has been labor­ing in the Inter­net wilder­ness in oppo­si­tion to what Fos­ter Gam­ble & Co. have been pur­vey­ing with their film.

    http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/

    Also, glad to see your ref­er­ence to Peter Lev­en­da who has writ­ten that the THRIVE Move­ment sounds a lot like the Wan­der­voegel Move­ment in Weimar Ger­many a cen­tu­ry ago.

    Posted by Hollywood Tomfortas | May 27, 2012, 11:47 am
  3. Thank you Emory for cov­er­ing the movie, Thrive. I was hop­ing some­one would point more light on this hor­ri­ble mis­guid­ed tro­jan horse of a move­ment, as it seems to be gath­er­ing momen­tum. John­son’s arti­cle, “Author John Robins, Oth­er Pro­gres­sives Denounce Thrive,” April 10 2012 In the San­ta Cruz Week­ly, brings more news of the appar­ent aban­don­ment of the film by up to 10 of the par­tic­i­pants, so far. A few named, John Rob­bins, Edgar Mitchell, John Perkins, Deep­ak Chopra, Amy Good­man, Paul Hawkins ....Wow not that many left except Fos­ter Gam­blers and his roots and men­tors; Eustace Mullins, G Edward Grif­fin and the lizard mad­ness car­ri­er, David Icke. What a bunch of wicked bed fel­lows.

    Posted by ella seneres | May 27, 2012, 12:53 pm
  4. Dave,

    In the pho­to above, Fos­ter Gam­ble is on the left and the white-haired guy on the right is Adam Trombly, the so-called “free ener­gy inven­tor and expert” for the THRIVE movie. I believe that you will be very inter­est­ed in the sto­ry of Adam’s father, a WW II bom­bardier named Har­vey Trombly who took part in the CIA mind con­trol exper­i­ments at Ft. Diet­rich in that fate­ful year 1952 when Andrei Puharich up in Maine at the Round Table Foun­da­tion super­vised the chan­nel­ing of “The Nine” through the Hin­du Dr. Vin­od.

    I will now excerpt an e‑mail con­ver­sa­tion I had recent­ly with Peter Lev­en­da about these mys­te­ri­ous syn­chronic­i­ties (zem­blan­i­ties!***) that illus­trate the sin­is­ter forces lurk­ing in the deep gri­moire of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal witch­craft.

    ———————-

    TOMFORTAS TO PETER L: Accord­ing to the report of Adam Trombly, his father Har­vey did con­sume LSD and was warned of such by Mr. Olsen. And then the rest of the sto­ry seems to explain Adam’s pen­chant for some­thing akin to Muench­hausen’s Syn­drome, as he him­self claims to have had and beat­en can­cer many times, and he claims to have been poi­soned — I guess he so iden­ti­fies with his father that he sees him­self a vic­tim of dark forces out to kill him, and of course Fos­ter Gam­ble is a suck­er for sto­ries about peo­ple in the ener­gy field being per­se­cut­ed by sin­ster dark gov’ment forces, so he puts Adam front & cen­ter in THRIVE.

    Here is the link to Adam Trombly’s inter­view about his father.
    http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/feb2/trombly.htm

    ADAM TROMBLY: When my father had just got­ten his Ph.D. in bio­chem­istry from Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty — I was a young child — he was enlist­ed as a bio­chemist, by a fel­low Pur­due alum­nus named Frank Olsen, into a U.S. Air Force/CIA joint project. He was sta­tioned at the bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry in Fort Det­rick, Mary­land. This was in 1952 dur­ing the Kore­an Con­flict. He had been a high­ly dec­o­rat­ed U.S. Army Air Corp offi­cer in World War II, but the gov­ern­ment felt that he had a skill of strate­gic impor­tance to the nation­al secu­ri­ty.

    At Fort Det­rick, he and Olsen, along with a cou­ple of oth­er sci­en­tists, were work­ing on a very com­part­men­tal­ized project. . . .

    On Novem­ber 19, 1953, my father (along with Dr. Frank Olson and a cou­ple of oth­er col­leagues) was tak­en by Dr. Sid­ney Got­tlieb to a sum­mer camp near Bal­ti­more. While there, he and his col­leagues were invol­un­tar­i­ly giv­en large dos­es of LSD in their cock­tails; dos­es on the order of 10,000 to 15,000 micro­grams. Olsen knew about the exper­i­ment, and out of con­cern for my father told him, “Har­vey you have been giv­en a psy­choac­tive drug and you are begin­ning to feel its effects. Don’t wor­ry.”

    Olsen had also tak­en a large dose of acid, and lat­er freaked out because he said he had, “blown the exper­i­ment.” It was sup­posed to be a dou­ble-blind exper­i­ment for all of the par­tic­i­pants oth­er than Olsen. He was sup­posed to keep silent.

    Frank Olsen con­tin­ued to feel unset­tled, and was rushed by CIA per­son­nel to New York for psy­chi­atric exam­i­na­tion. Some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pened instead. Frank was blud­geoned in the head and then thrown from his hotel room win­dow. He was mur­dered. This, at least, was the con­clu­sion of foren­sic pathol­o­gists hired by Frank’s son Eric in 1994.

    My father filed an inter­nal protest demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of his friend’s and col­league’s death, and that was what ulti­mate­ly trig­gered the events that killed him.

    In Jan­u­ary of 1954, under the illu­sion that he was being immu­nized from a new retro­vi­ral bio­log­i­cal war­fare agent, he was inject­ed instead with a live virus that he had dis­cov­ered dur­ing his research. He became extreme­ly ill. In his notes, he indi­cat­ed that he imme­di­ate­ly knew. “They killed Frank,” he said, “and now they have killed me. The dif­fer­ence is that I will die slow­ly, very slow­ly.”

    He died in 1960, from a form of lym­phoma as eleven gov­ern­ment labs did mor­pho­log­i­cal workups of his cells. . . .

    —————————

    PETER LEVENDA: This adds a dimen­sion to this sto­ry that locates it in the realm of the tru­ly weird.

    Puharich and Olson did not get along. Olson thought Puharich was nuts; Puharich thought Olson was a “child afraid of the dark.” See Hank Albarel­li’s lengthy but hair-rais­ing and defin­i­tive text on Olson — A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take; The Mur­der of Frank Olsen and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments — for details on this rela­tion­ship.

    I have not been able to dis­cov­er yet if Har­vey Trombly was one of those dosed with LSD along with Olson, but I’m work­ing on it. I have locat­ed Har­vey Trombly, who died in 1960 at the age of 38, as well as one F. W. Quack­en­bush who was indeed a bio­chemist at Pur­due at the time in ques­tion. Those ele­ments of the sto­ry thus far can be ver­i­fied.

    But an Adam Trombly — Puharich — Olson — Nine con­nec­tion?

    +++++++++++++++

    TOMFORTAS TO DAVE:
    The fig­ure who unites us all here is Arthur M. Young (1905–1995) inven­tor of the Bell-47 heli­copter and founder of the Insti­tute for the Study of Con­scious­ness in Berke­ley in 1972. In that fate­ful year of 1952, Arthur Young was present with Puharich at the Round Table Foun­da­tion in Maine. I myself have known Fos­ter Gam­ble per­son­al­ly for 30 years because Arthur Young was our com­mon men­tor. Indeed, the torus idea in THRIVE comes direct­ly from Arthur Young.

    As you know, Peter Levenda’s first book in his Sin­is­ter Forces tril­o­gy is enti­tled: THE NINE, and fea­tures Arthur Young promi­nent­ly. Of course, Arthur’s step­son was Michael Paine mar­ried to Ruth Hyde Paine who got Lee Har­vey Oswald his job at the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry build­ing about 6 weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.

    So, there seems to be a direct link­age of quite high strange­ness from Puharich, The Nine and MK-ULTRA in the 50’s through Adam Trombly’s awak­en­ing in the 60’s through Puharich adopt­ing Uri Geller in the 70’s along with Arthur Young’s Insti­tute in Berke­ley, where I met Fos­ter Gam­ble in the 80’s and now here we are in 2012 deal­ing with Foster’s movie THRIVE. (Oh, and I just remem­bered, Eliz­a­beth Rausch­er is deeply involved here too.)

    Tom Mel­lett
    Los Ange­les, CA

    *** a zem­blan­i­ty is a bale­ful syn­chronic­i­ty

    Posted by Hollywood Tomfortas | May 27, 2012, 5:49 pm
  5. If you see only one viral, cryp­to-fas­cist, New Age movie this sum­mer, make it THRIVE.

    I have to say, I loved the film, and might nev­er have found it or watched it but for Dav­e’s mini-rant. I rec­om­mend every­one see it at least once. But to be fair, I don’t expect every­one to have the stom­ach or schaden­freude — or frankly, enough weed in their bong — to sit through such a mas­ter­piece of philis­tine vul­gar­i­ty. Please allow myself to just blurb­ify it here. (Peter Tra­vers, eat your heart out!)

    With an über-earnest­ness approach­ing high camp, and a visu­al design done by an ape with a bud­get, THRIVE is des­tined to be a clas­sic, along with the “Leg­end of Atlantis” (an epic of the genre, by Fos­ter Gam­ble’s equal Bavar­i­an num­ber, The Prophet Elia).

    I think I must have shout­ed or con­vulsed (I made the cat jump about a foot in the air) when they trot­ted out the Crips and the Bloods, but still I can’t for the life of me fig­ure out what the hell for! (Kim­ber­ly to Fos­ter, har­ried, late in the edit­ing process: “Hon­ey, we need more blacks in the film. Not enough blacks, I says!”)

    So, just as I imag­ine Good­man, Chopra, Rob­bins, Hawken, Sah­touris, Elgin, Shi­va, et al, have learned the mean­ing of “arm’s length” the hard way, I can’t help but ask: Who end­ed up on the cut­ting room floor? A short and spec­u­la­tive list:

    - Jor­dan Maxwell (Drink­ing game: take a pull on the jug every time he says “Con­se­quent­ly” … but be sure to des­ig­nate a dri­ver — prefer­ably one with an ambu­lance.)

    - Zecharia Sitchin (The Anun­na­ki final­ly came for him about 2 years ago, claim­ing roy­al­ties owed.)

    - The Napoleon guy from Zeit­geist (He gets a lunchtime achieve­ment award for coin­ing “fal­siv­i­ty” — among oth­er sub­lit­er­ate neol­o­gisms — with­out appar­ent­ly notic­ing. Now that’s edit­ing.)

    - Chris Ever­ard (Late of the Enig­ma Chan­nel, the man who put the “mud” back into “mud­dle” and the “stif” in “mys­ti­fy.”)

    - Lin­da Stunell (Recent­ly dis­ap­peared, but for­mer­ly of Amen­stop Pro­duc­tions. She should be nar­rat­ing EVERY viral video on the plan­et.)

    Yes, I am a con­nois­seur. And it’s an acquired taste. Blecch!

    Posted by Rob Coogan | May 27, 2012, 8:23 pm
  6. The only thing that seems to be miss­ing in this pro­pa­gan­da piece is the word “Freema­son­ry”. To remind lis­ten­ers who might not know it (the major­i­ty I guess), I have become acquaint­ed with sev­er­al shows and web­sites before dis­cov­er­ing For The Record and Spit­fireList. This movie “Thrive” seems to be fol­low­ing a pat­tern that I have seen many many times in the past. This: If the world is going wrong, it’s because of the Jew­ish Bankers-Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy-Zion­ist-Freema­son­ry-Illu­mi­nati-Rep­til­ians-Annuna­ki-Knights of Mal­ta-Rosi­cru­cians-Fed­er­al Reserve and so on, cabal...

    I wan­der to some extent the key ele­ment here is not in fact Freemasonry.If we recall, it was them who ini­ti­at­ed the Amer­i­can and French Rev­o­lu­tions. Crowned heads of Europe and their allies, of the past and of today, might want to pin on them the odi­ous of humankind’s sit­u­a­tion and, at the same time, get revenge if they could. I think that is worth reflect­ing on.

    Posted by Claude | May 27, 2012, 9:14 pm
  7. I watched part of this, and under it (on you-Tube) were so many fake sound­ing pos­i­tive com­ments, I just have to think that with bil­lions of dol­lars to throw around some­one is manip­u­lat­ing our real­i­ty by cre­at­ing a false social envi­ron­ment for our lives.

    This “Thrive” dork-u-men­tary is so full of lies I caught 2 in the first min­utes of the movie and men­tioned them in the com­ment sec­tion of You-Tube and was imme­di­at­ed pounced on as being “neg­a­tive”.

    Any­way, the torus ener­gy ain’t goin’ any­where so there is prob­a­bly not much to wor­ry about here.

    Posted by brux | May 30, 2012, 9:32 am
  8. Hey Claude:

    You left out “Bol­she­vik” from the list...

    But that’s OK. Isn’t Quak­en­bush a Grou­cho Marx char­ac­ter?

    This film could use his touch...

    -stu

    This movie “Thrive” seems to be fol­low­ing a pat­tern that I have seen many many times in the past. This: If the world is going wrong, it’s because of the Jew­ish Bankers-Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy-Zion­ist-Freema­son­ry-Illu­mi­nati-Rep­til­ians-Annuna­ki-Knights of Mal­ta-Rosi­cru­cians-Fed­er­al Reserve and so on, cabal...

    Posted by ironcloudz | May 31, 2012, 9:57 am
  9. @Ironcloudz: You are right, I for­got it. Thank you for being thor­ough and for your vig­i­lance.

    Posted by Claude | May 31, 2012, 10:14 pm
  10. On the sub­ject of THRIVE, I’m doing my levit­ian best to bring some Marx­i­an if not Stoogean zani­ness into the very Dis­ney­fied film that wish­es to take us back to the Eisen­how­er era. Hey, then it was “I like Ike.” Now Fos­ter Gam­ble upgrades that to “I like Icke!” (Nyicke! Nyicke! Nyicke!)

    So please sing along with the “Fos­ter Thrive and the Thriv­eteers Alma Mater Song” that I com­posed. Lyrics and sto­ry here:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arthur/message/7310

    Posted by Hollywood Tomfortas | June 2, 2012, 12:50 pm
  11. God­wins law?

    Posted by Random internet drifter | June 26, 2012, 2:22 am
  12. Wow, I could almost not get through watch­ing it. So much para­noia in this film. Won­der­ing why the pro­gres­sives in this film would agree to be part of this?-they will know bet­ter next time. The Utopi­an hap­py end­ing “Dis­ney Land ish” Out­lanish actu­al­ly. A per­fect soci­ety with­out any gov­ern­ment or police, hmmm- Then who is going to pro­tect us from the lizard peo­ple? How exact­ly does Mr. Gam­ble think we are to over­come the Rothchilds? If they are all pow­er­ful as he tries to con­vince us they are. Like­ly, he has no inter­est in mak­ing the world a bet­ter place at all, he just hates hates hates and has psy­cho­log­i­cal defects, yet dis­guis­es that with the new age pos­i­tive per­sona. Sounds like he him­self is in a cult and this film was his home­work asign­ment in order to move up a lev­el or two. Thank you for this web site and for expos­ing this redicu­lous film! What a hor­ri­ble group of zom­bies, agree! Does any one have infor­ma­tion on these peo­ples and if they belong to an orga­nized group, cult, secret soci­ety? besides the obvi­ous anti- illu­mi­nati para­noid online chat­ters. Thanks again, thought i was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing when i viewed this film.

    Posted by Caitelyn | July 23, 2012, 11:47 am
  13. A tedious thing to watch (Zeit­geist with star­gates)... but at some points I felt an over­whelm­ing desire to go out and sell some Amway or go to one of those real estate sem­i­nars. The Von Mis­es punch­line is way too long in com­ing. Fun­ny, but I don’t remem­ber the Aus­tri­an econ­o­mists talk­ing too much about love.

    I did own a Ford Torus for a while and I would not rec­om­mend it as a pat­tern for the uni­verse.

    Posted by Dwight | July 24, 2012, 1:15 pm
  14. Did­n’t Von Mis­es had a brief tor­rid affair with Ayn Rand?

    Posted by ironcloudz | July 25, 2012, 8:09 am
  15. Hi Dave,
    thanks for the info (as usu­al) ;-)

    I did want to men­tion that I don’t know who’s fur­ther out there, David Icke or the per­son who made the doc­u­men­tary.

    http://davidickedebunked.com/

    I don’t believe in rep­til­ians, aliens, demons, or Jesus. The per­son behind the doc­u­men­tary sounds like he’s a believ­er.

    Did you watch the doc­u­men­tary?

    I do get the point about Thrive.
    Thanks again!

    Posted by wunjoe | January 5, 2013, 6:58 pm
  16. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/prizewinning-author-alice-walker-gives-support-to-david-icke-on-desert-island-discs-8622648.html

    Prize-win­ning author Alice Walk­er gives sup­port to David Icke on Desert Island Discs

    When asked which book she would take were she to be an iso­lat­ed cast­away, the author of The Col­or Pur­ple chose Icke’s Human Race Get Off Your Knees
    Liam O’Brien

    Sun­day 19 May 2013

    Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Alice Walk­er has voiced her sup­port for the work of con­tro­ver­sial British con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist David Icke on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

    When asked which book she would take were she to be an iso­lat­ed cast­away, the author of The Col­or Pur­ple chose Icke’s ‘Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More.’

    In the 750-page tome, Icke describes how the human mind is con­trolled from the moon.

    The moon, he claims, is actu­al­ly a “gigan­tic space­craft” which sends us a “fake real­i­ty broad­cast”.

    This method of manip­u­la­tion is said to work “in much the same way as por­trayed in the Matrix movie tril­o­gy”.

    Icke, a for­mer BBC pre­sen­ter, drew mock­ery in 1991 when he pro­nounced him­self the son of the mes­si­ah in an inter­view with Ter­ry Wogan.

    Since then, he has made a career as an author and pub­lic speak­er.

    One of his key ideas is that Earth is ruled by shape-shift­ing rep­tiles, includ­ing the Queen and Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

    This isn’t the first time that Walk­er has endorsed Icke.

    In posts on her web­site, she com­pared the for­mer foot­baller to Mal­colm X and described Human Race Get Off Your Knees as “the ulti­mate read­ing adven­ture”.

    Despite bemoan­ing the fact she didn’t have the sci­en­tif­ic brain to ful­ly com­pre­hend it, she “felt it was the first time I was able to observe, and most­ly imag­ine and com­pre­hend, the root of the incred­i­ble evil that has engulfed our plan­et”.

    But per­haps sug­gest­ing that some of the ideas should be tak­en with a gen­er­ous pinch of salt, she said: “Do I believe every­thing? I don’t think it mat­ters.”

    Dur­ing the bizarre inter­view on Desert Island Discs, Walk­er said the set of Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adap­ta­tion of The Col­or Pur­ple was “blessed by angels”, adding: “It just was so full of love that it was pal­pa­ble.”

    When asked which lux­u­ry item she would take, she named a brand of blender. “I would like a solar-pow­ered Vita­mix so that I could make my own green smooth­ies every morn­ing.”

    Posted by Vanfield | May 21, 2013, 4:55 pm
  17. Thanks for the info.

    I don’t know if you guys look around at any of the “con­spir­a­cy” forums but there seem to be a lot of peo­ple who actu­al­ly believe rep­til­ians rule the plan­et etc... I think the entry point is the belief that UFOs are from out­er space. They’re mul­ti­ply­ing!

    Posted by The Choir | May 22, 2013, 3:29 pm
  18. I’ve come to believe over the years that the UFO phe­nom­e­non is a ploy to prep peo­ple’s minds too believe in hooey, specif­i­cal­ly Catholic hooey which in turn has been used to weak­en Democ­ra­cies. Much of the UFO phe­nom­e­non was born out of CIA, and Euro­pean rightwingers work­ing on uni­fy­ing Europe after WWII, in par­tic­u­lar hard core anti-com­mu­nists who had a thing for bomb­ing Europe into unification(Gladio). Take for exam­ple the Tor­bitt doc­u­ment. The Tor­bitt doc­u­ment regard­ing JFKs assas­si­na­tion has become mixed up with Nazis, NASA and UFOs. The Nazi and NASA ele­ment is real.. the UFO stuff is the mis­di­rec­tion. Also thrown into the mix is some “Cana­di­an Jews” mis­di­rec­tion obvi­ous­ly designed to say the Jews are what was behind the JFK assas­si­na­tion. The evi­dence shows that a net­work rightwingers was behind the JFK assas­si­na­tion. It was a col­lec­tion of anti-com­mu­nist fas­cists in Europe and in the USA that had tak­en root in the CIA and liv­ing in Texas(Russian pro-czarist emi­grees) that glommed on to LHO and led him around on a leash. Roman Catholi­cism was main­ly the bind­ing key here, not Judaism. Judaism is the pat­sy reli­gion of choice for shady things that are actu­al­ly using Catholi­cism as the pri­ma­ry cov­er for weak­en­ing democ­ra­cies and have been doing so for a very long time. It is not polite to talk about because, those on the left don’t want to blame an entire reli­gion for things like JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and the events around Lin­coln.. and that would­n’t be the truth. But sim­ply go look at your his­to­ry and ask your­self which reli­gion is the pri­ma­ry thread behind these events? Not Judaism. Catholi­cism has been used as a tro­jan horse for geopo­lit­i­cal intrigues for cen­turies and that is sim­ply a fact. This Thrive movie is sim­ply more “Jews Run the World” mis­di­rec­tion and sleight of hand.

    Posted by corndogger | May 23, 2013, 3:52 pm
  19. Woman Blames David Icke for Son’s Bizarre Death
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/david-icke-obsession-killed-son-2796290#ixzz2kpPbV6Vn

    12 Mil­lion Amer­i­cans Believe Lizard Peo­ple Run Our Coun­try
    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/12-million-americans-believe-lizard-people-run-our-country/63799/

    Almost Two-Thirds of 18–29 Year Olds Believe in “Demon Pos­ses­sion” What Is Hap­pen­ing to Amer­i­ca?
    http://www.alternet.org/belief/almost-two-thirds-americans-18–29-years-old-believe-demon-possession-and-number-growing

    Posted by Phall | November 18, 2013, 2:35 pm

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