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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In his important new book, veteran journalist Tom O’Neill chronicles both numerous, large breaches in the official story of the killings performed by Charles Manson and his “family” and profound involvement of elements of the intelligence community with the operations and development of the group and its actions, as well as Manson’s persona and behavior.
O’Neill has performed great service in setting forth an operational manifestation of the spook community, the CIA, in particular, underlying an iconic, seminal event in the history of the 1960’s.
Although most of our political and journalistic establishments adhere to the untenable–though professionally requisite–fiction that the intelligence community does not get involved in domestic political affairs, O’Neill’s research shows us that prevailing reality is not only fundamentally different from the official pretense, but that the results of the deep involvement of espionage agencies in our political life has pivotal, deadly results.
As O’Neill acknowledges at points during the conclusion of the book, neither all of the major discontinuities in the investigation, nor the precise relationships of Manson and his crew to documented and/or apparent CIA officers can be nailed down, past a point.
Some critics have assailed his work, taking advantage of this realization and characterizing it as a deficiency, which it is not. Spies don’t wear ID tags: “Hi! My name is ‘Reeve’ (or ‘Louis’) and I’m working undercover for the CIA.”
The fact that some of the relationships uncovered by O’Neill remain opaque, past a point, is baked into the nature of intelligence work.
A couple of overlapping metaphors/comparisons may prove useful in understanding both the significance of O’Neill’s work and the disposition on the part of many reviewers to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in the official story of the Manson killings, and then retreat to a journalistic stance that might be summarized: “Well, after all, it’s just conspiracy theory.”
When assembling a jigsaw puzzle, there comes a point in which the overall picture contained in the puzzle becomes evident, although some parts of the incomplete image remain unclear.
A useful comparison is to be found in the overlapping disciplines of astro- physics and radio astronomy. Examining distant reaches of space, astronomers have been able to infer the presence of huge, powerful gravitational forces by measuring the bending and distortion of light that passes by them, even though the sources of that gravity are not readily visible.
The same metaphor can be applied to O’Neill’s own Herculean quest into the Manson killings. As he pursued his investigation over decades, he became drawn into realms of intrigue that were alien to his main field of endeavor–he wrote about the entertainment industry.
As he proceeded with his inquiry, he notified his editor(s), almost apologetically, that he was moving into areas of investigation involving–initially–the CIA. As he proceeded further, he again notified them that his investigation overlapped the JFK assassination. He, himself, was being drawn inexorably in toward this intense gravitational force–a power political “black hole,” if you will.
O’Neill’s research has given us insight into the presence of very powerful, lethal forces at work within the parameters of Charles Manson’s escapades and the development of the Haight Ashbury, even though some details of the forces remain elusive.
In this interview, we begin by examining extraordinary distortions in the conduct of forensic procedure and application in multiple law enforcement agencies, as well as fundamental perversions of jurisprudence as administered by the legal systems in Los Angeles and California. Of paramount importance in this discussion, as well, are the striking discontinuities in the operation of the correctional system in the Golden State–the unimaginable behavior of parole officers charged with overseeing Manson and company, in particular.
In short, Manson and his charges were being “handled,” in intelligence parlance.
Following discussion of Manson and company’s correctional overseers, we highlight some of the many intelligence connections to the actions, milieu and composition of the “family.”
Those intelligence connections include: the involvement of CIA/MKUltra veteran Louis Jolyon West with the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic (frequented by Manson and his “family”); the involvement of the National Institute of Mental Health with the HAFMC and research involving LSD and amphetamine (the MIMH has fronted for CIA research in the past); Los Angeles District Attorney General Evelle Younger’s links to the intelligence community (FBI, Office of Strategic Services); Los Angeles Police Lieutenant William Herrmann’s work for CIA, among other agencies; overviews of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program and the overlapping CIA’s Operation Chaos, both directed at the anti-Vietnam War movement and “black militants,” such as the Black Panthers.
One of the most striking of the apparent intelligence community connections to the Manson investigation is the aforementioned Reeve Whitson.
Reeve Whitson:
- Was alleged by Iranian immigrant Shahrokh Hatami to have phoned him with knowledge of the killings of Sharon Tate, et al, before the crime was reported by the news media and before law enforcement even arrived at the crime scene!
- Was alleged by the LAPD’s top investigator and Sharon Tate’s father (a Colonel in Army intelligence) to have been deeply involved with the Manson investigation.
- Was alleged by attorney Neil Cummings to have maintained some kind of surveillance on the Cielo Drive home, as part of some sort of work he was doing for the intelligence community.
- Was confirmed as an officer of the CIA by his own ex-wife.
- Was known to have felt that he was–in the end–betrayed by the faction of the CIA for which he worked.
- Was able to pull strings in a pivotal way: “. . . . A British film director who himself claimed to have ties to MI5, [John] Irvin said that Whitson got meetings ‘with minutes’ at “the highest levels of the defense industry—it was amazing.’ ”
- Was apparently a close associate of retired General Curtis LeMay, George Wallace’s Vice-Presidential candidate in 1968.
- Was associated with LeMay when the latter became vice-president of a missile parts manufacturer, which was headed by Mihai Patrichi. Patrichi was a former Romanian army general and a member of the Romanian Iron Guard, whom we have spoken about and written about in many programs and posts. The Iron Guard was part of the Gehglen “Org,” the ABN and the GOP.
- Was associated, through his intelligence work with Otto Skorzeny and his wife Ilse.
- Was the special adviser to the chairman of the board of the Thyssen firm, also as part of his intelligence work.
1. Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill; Little, Brown and Company [HC]; Copyright 2019 by Tom O’Neill; 978–0‑316–47755‑0; pp.184–187.
. . . . I wanted to see . . . if Manson had any credible connections to the government or law enforcement, and if I could link him to the police infiltrations of leftist groups I’d read about. Then, as if I’d conjured him from thin air, someone emerged who fit into the puzzle. He seemed to have wandered into Southern California from the pages of a spy novel . . . . His name was Reeve Whitson, and his intersections with the Manson investigation suggested a dimension to the Tate-LaBianca murders that had been wiped from the official record.
It started with Shahrokh Hatami, Sharon Tate’s friend and personal photographer. When I spoke with Hatami over the phone in 1999, he’d never given an interview about the murders. Sorting through his memories, he recalled something he’d never been able to explain.
At seven in the morning on August 9, 1969, Hatami got a frantic phone call from a friend. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he listened as the caller delivered the terrible news: Sharon Tate and four others had been murdered in her home on Cielo Drive. Afterward, in numb terror, he and his girlfriend switched on the radio and listened all morning for further reports. They had to wait a while. As Hatami later learned, that call came ninety minutes before the Polanskis’ maid had arrived at the house, discovered the bodies, and ran screaming to the neighbors, who called the police. Unwittingly, Hatami had become one of the first people in the world to hear about the murders—all because of his friend.
That “friend” was Reeve Whitson, whom Hatami characterized as “a mystery man”—a phrase I’d hear a lot as I researched him in earnest. A close friend of Tate and Polanski, Whitson had a talent for discretion. When people remembered him at all, he was usually on the periphery, coming and going, his purpose unknown, his purpose unknown, his motives inscrutable. . . .
As well it should. Hatami’s testimony was a dramatic high point. Before the packed courtroom, he explained that five months before the murders, he’d been visiting Sharon Tate when he noticed someone on the property. Hustling toward the front door, he found a short, scraggly Manson standing there. Manson asked if Terry Melcher was around. Hatami wanting to be rid of him, sent Manson around back. He knew that Rudi Altobelli lived in the guest-house, and could tell him where to find Melcher.
. . . . To get some sense of Whitson’s role in the case, I looked his name up in the trial transcript. It appeared four times, all during Hatami’s testimony. It was Whitson, he confirmed on the stand, who brought him to [Vincent] Bugliosi during the investigation. And yet Whitson never appeared in Helter Skelter, which gave an otherwise detailed account of Hatami’s story.
Hatami’s story proved that Manson knew where the house on Cielo Drive was, and how to get there. And it added some tragic foreshadowing: since Tate, Sebring, Folger, and Frykowski were in the room behind Hatami, this would be the one and only time Manson laid eyes on his future victims.
The problem, Hatami revealed to me, was that he’d never been confident that it was Manson he saw that day. His uncertainty meant nothing to Bugliosi and Reeve Whitson, who coerced his testimony anyway. “The circumstances I was put through to become a witness,” Hatami said, “I didn’t like at all.” Whitson told him “‘Hatami, you saw that guy, Altobelli said so, we need another person to corroborate it.’” . . . .
Hatami demurred, and Whitson turned the screws, effectively threatening him with deportation—he said he’d ensure that Hatami, an Iranian without U.S. citizenship, wouldn’t be able to get another visa. If he wanted to stay in America, all he had to do was say he’s seen Manson that day at Tate’s house. Not long after, Whitson brought Hatami to his car and showed him his gun. Although Hatami didn’t know Whitson too well, he took the threat seriously—he believed that Whitson really had the means to deport him.
“I was framed by Mr. Whitson,” Hatami told me. “I was never sure it happened that way. I had to save my ass.” Bugliosi and I were still speaking then, so I asked him if he knew Whitson at all. Hatami thought that was “rubbish.” “Bugliosi knows him very well, “ he said. “I could not have been a witness without Reeve.”
He was right. Because the defense suspected that Bugliosi and Whitson had, indeed, coerced Hatami’s story, they called on Bugliosi to explain himself at the trial. Under oath, but out of the presence of the jury, Bugliosi tried to answer for the fact that he’s interviewed without a tape recorder or a stenographer. Who was in the room when Hatami talked? “Just Reeve Whitson, myself, and Mr. Hatami,” Bugliosi replied. the judge decided that Hatami couldn’t testify to having seen Manson. The jury heard only that he house when a man came to the door, and that he sent the man to the guesthouse.
But of course, Bugliosi had forgotten that he’d supplied Whitson’s name under oath. Whitson wanted it that way. He served his purpose and then disappeared, Hatami said, like “a piece in a chess game.”
If Whitson was a chess piece, who was moving him around? He’d died in 1994, so I couldn’t ask him. Hatami gave me the names of people who might’ve known him Almost invariably they told me the same thing: that Whitson had been an undercover agent of some kind. Some said he was in the FBI, others the Secret Service. The rough consensus, though, was that he was part of the CIA, or an offshoot special-operations group connected to it.
2. Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill; Little, Brown and Company [HC]; Copyright 2019 by Tom O’Neill; 978–0‑316–47755‑0; p.199.
. . . . I’d already spoken to Frenchie LaJeunesse, the FBI agent who’d contributed to Five Down on Cielo Drive. I called him again to ask whether Walter Kern was really Reeve Whitson.
His answer: “Yes.” In fact, the publishing deal couldn’t have happened without Whitson, LaJeunesse said. “Reeve Whitson was a part of putting the book together, the linchpin between all of us.”
It was Lieutenant Helder, the lead investigator for the LAPD who’d assigned Whitson the pseudonym of Walter Kern, to protect his undercover status—hardly a step one would take with an ordinary “amateur sleuth.” “Reeve didn’t want his name associated with a book,” La Jeunesse said, even long after the Manson case had been solved. “Not on the jacket, not even in contracts—he didn’t even want money.”
In effect, I now had written proof from the LAPD’s head investigator, and from Sharon Tate’s own father, that Reeve Whitson was smack in the middle of the Manson investigation from the start. . . .
3. Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill; Little, Brown and Company [HC]; Copyright 2019 by Tom O’Neill; 978–0‑316–47755‑0; pp.190–191.
Maybe the most compelling evidence came from Neil Cummings, a lawyer who’d known Whitson since ’84. Several people had told me he was among Reeve’s closest confidants, so I took him to lunch. I hadn’t told him about Hatami’s claim–that Whitson had called him before the bodies were even identified–but he corroborated it independently.
According to Cummings, Whitson was in a top-secret arm of the CIA, even more secretive than most of the agency. He talked a lot about his training in killing people, implying that he’d done it at least a few times. And when it came to Manson, he “was closer to it than anybody,” Cummings avowed:
“He was actively involved with some sort of investigation when it happened. He worked closely with a law enforcement person and talked quite a bit about events leading up to the murders, but I don’t remember what they were. He had regrets for not stopping them, for doing something about it.
He had reason to believe something weird was about to happen at the [Tate] house. He might have been there when it happened, right before or after–the regret was maybe that he wasn’t there when it happened. He told me he was there after the murders, but before the police got there. He said there were screw ups before and after. I believe he said he knew who did it, and it took him a long time to lead police to who did it.
Whitson had the Tate house under surveillance, Cummings added, which is how he knew something was going to happen. On the night of the murders, he’d been there and left. . . . .
. . . . Sure enough, I reached his ex-wife, Ellen Josefson (Nee Nylund), by phone in Sweden. Josefson didn’t beat around the bush.
“He was working for the CIA,” she said. “That is why I am worried to talk to you.”
“Was she sure about that?”
“Yes, I am sure.” She and Reeve had met in Sweden in ’61, she explained. They fell in love in an instant. Before the end of the year, they’d married and moved to New York. In those days, he was undercover as a journalist, producing pro-Communist pieces as a ploy to meet radicals. This, he seems to have hoped, would lead to more contacts in Russia. It was a scheme so elaborate that someone from the Polish embassy was involved, she remembered, and in due time, Whitson was bringing Russians to their place.
“I got furious with him,” she said. “I was very anti-Communist.” How could she have married a pinko? That’s when Whitson felt he had to pull the curtain back. He explained that it was just part of his work for the agency—something he was otherwise ill inclined to discuss. . . .
. . . . A British film director who himself claimed to have ties to MI5, [John] Irvin said that Whitson got meetings “with minutes” at “the highest levels of the defense industry—it was amazing.” He was “on the fringes of very far-out research” for the government, “not discussed openly because it verges on the occult.” He added that Whitson “had very good connections with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office” and pull with immigration officials, as Shahrokh Hatami had said. . . .
. . . . Then came Otto and Ilse Skorzeny, the most sinister of Whitson’s friends. They were Nazis—genuine, German, dyed-in-the wool Nazis. The United Nations listed Otto Skorzeny as a war criminal. He’s been one of Hitler’s most trusted operatives, leading the manhunt of one of the Fuhrer’s would-be assassins and spearheading a secret mission to rescue Mussolini. After the Third Reich fell, Skorzeny safeguarded the wealth of countless Nazis and helped disgraced war criminals settle into new lives around the world. Brought to trial before a U.S. military court, Skorzeny was alleged to be “the most dangerous man in Europe”—but he was acquitted, having made himself an asset to U.S. intelligence. His wife, the Countess Ilse von Finkelstein, was once a member of the Hitler Youth; a shrewd businesswoman known for her beauty and charm, she negotiated arms deals and contracts for German engineering companies. Irvin had met Ilse many times through Whitson. When she got drunk, he said, “she was always doing Heil Hitler salutes!” . . . .
. . . . His [Whitson’s] resume was scant from the fifties through the seventies, after which it covered more ground than seemed possible for a single life. He was the special advisor to the chairman of the board of Thyssen, among the largest corporations in Germany. . . .
. . . . Colonel Tate was just one of his friends in high places. Usually, in the same breath, Whitson’s friends named another military bigwig: General Curtis LeMay.
. . . . LeMay, a former Air-Force officer nicknamed “Bombs Away LeMay,” had retired in ’65 and turned to defense contracting, where one critic feared that he “could e more dangerous than when he was Air Force Chief of Staff.” He moved to L.A. to become the vice president of a missile-parts manufacturer, but it fizzled, a did LeMay’s brief political career. After that, Mr. Bombs Away had spent his retirement roaming the city with Mr. Anonymous [Reeve Whitson.] . . . .
. . . . Though I never figured out what LeMay and Whitson got up to together, it was plausible that they were tied up in Charlie Baron’s cabal of right-wing Hollywood friends, the ones who, Little Joe told me, had “done terrible things to black people.” (George Wallace, who’d chosen LeMay as his running mate in his’68 presidential bid, as among the nation’s most notorious racists.) .
“I’m sure he knew Baron,” Whitson’s friend John Irvin told me. . . . +
. . . . Le May was hired by Networks Electronic in 1965. The high-security facility, which had a contract with the Defense Department, was located in Chatsworth, California,less than five miles from the Spahn Ranch. The company’s founder and president, Mihai Patrichi, was a former Romanian army general who was a member of the Iron Guard . . . .
. . . . In his final years, Whitson was destitute and disgruntled, telling rueful stories of the “Quarry”–his term for the section of the CIA he worked for–and trash-talking the agency. Once you’re in, he told one friend, “You really are a pawn.” In his dying days, the government had said, “You didn’t even exist to us.” . . . . About a year before he died, seeing the thriller The Pelican Brief, Whitson leaned over in the dark of the cinema and told a friend, “I wrote the yellow papers on everything that happened.” With a hint of nostalgia, he explained that “yellow papers” detailed interrogation techniques, including a procedure in which a man had a plastic tube inserted in his rectum, peanut butter smeared on his scrotum, and a rat dropped in the tube. . . .
Program Highlights Include: Discussion of a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office Wiretap on Family member Bobby Beausoleil which disclosed the Manson family execution of the Tate-LaBianca slayings months before authorities made the arrests; a LASO raid on the Manson family at Spahn Ranch roughly a week after the killings that found multiple types of criminal activity by “Charlie’s Angels” and resulted in neither arrests nor the revocation of Manson’s parole; a “No Deal/Deal” between the D.A.‘s office and family member Susan Atkins; the replacement of Atkins’ defense lawyer Gerald Condon with two hand-picked attorneys– Richard Caballero and Paul Caruso –who were cozy with the DA’s office and the mob; the disclosure of Susan Atkins’ tailored story by FBI informant Lawrence Schiller, who had written a similarly manicured account of Jack Ruby and whom we discussed in our landmark series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio; the refusal of Attorney General John Mitchell to release Manson’s parole file to his defense attorney during the death penalty phase of the trial; Mitchell’s dispatch of Justice Department official David Anderson to quash the defense subpoena; Manson defense lawyer Irvin Kanarek’s asking Anderson if Manson’s parole file contained information that incriminated Mitchell; the fact that Manson’s parole file has never been made public; the unusual handling of Susan Atkins, who–like Manson–was never brought to heel despite involvement in criminal activity while on parole; the stunning actions (and inactions) of Manson parole officer Roger Smith: ” . . . . Under Smith’s supervision, Manson was repeatedly arrested and even convicted without ever being sent back to prison. It was up to Smith to revoke Manson’s parole–it was ultimately his decision. But he never even reported any of his client’s violations to his supervisors. . . .”
Riveting book with long library waiting lists. . . . I agree that this book is definitely worth anyone’s time, to purchase, mark up, and read in detail.
Not sure if the author goes into this, could be significant from a “food for thought” angle to this case. George Spahn, then 80 years old, allegedly gave The Family members tbeir nicknames “Squeaky” “Tex.” They were using “Squeaky” trading sexual favours apparently to stay at the ranch. Howard Hughes’ “The Outlaw” (1943) was filmed there years prior. Hughes obviously a towering figure in the establishment defense industry in the USA, and apparently also very racist. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/king-dream-a-nightmare-for-bigoted-howard-hughes/
@RK–
Don’t know about itunes.
The links on this website all check out. Might want to use them in the future.
https://emory.kfjc.org/archive/ftr/1000_1099/f‑1085.mp3
Best,
Dave
Went out and paid top dollar for the book–well worth it. “Dr.” West putting the whammy on Jack Ruby (no witnesses,so called law ‘enforcment’ complicit). Documented Pretzelogic on the part of judiciary and Bugliosi. Tom O’neill had this eat a lot of his life up, but he found enough pieces lying around to make anyone fond of laws or sausages fear for the continuation of our common fantasy...
One aspect of this case worth mentioning pertains to Polanski’s changing of Shakespeare’s Macbeth especially regarding the character of Rosse, one of Macbeth’s fellow thanes. Macbeth, of course, was his first film after the Cielo Drive murders. Polanski rewrites the play so that Rosse becomes the third murderer of Banquo, silently directs the other two murderers to their deaths, silently opens Macduff’s castle to murderers in act four, then returns to ‘the good guys’ with none the wiser in act five. One biography I read stated that critics saw it as Polanski using the violence as a kind of catharsis which Polanski denied; he thought that had he produced a comedy, he would have been castigated for being callous about what happened on Cielo Drive. He claimed to want to be faithful to the play and its necessarily violent mood. The rewriting of the play is faithful to the original in that it adds no new dialogue, however, Rosse’s sinister reworking could have been intended to send a message about the people around him possibly Reeve Whitson or someone like him. Just a thought—apparently the new Tarrantino film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, references this scene. I haven’t seen it yet, but plan to sometime soon.
Why are some of the most evil and powerful people in the US political establishment suddenly so interested in promise of psychedelic medicine? That’s the question raised in the following opinion piece that appeared on The Guardian last week. A question driven by the growing interest and investments in psychedelic medicine research companies by figures like Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer. For example, recall how far right former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz joined Thiel Capital in 2021 as a “global strategist” who will oversee a number of start-ups, including the psychedelics developer Atai.
Why are some of the leading authoritarian fascists in the US so interested in an area of medicine that’s been generated growing excitement for its ability address conditions like treatment-resistant depression? Are these fascists suddenly gripped with treatment-resistant depression of their own? Well, as the article notes, when it comes to fascist authoritarian interest in the business of psychedelic medicine, there are a couple of obvious areas of appeal. For starters, there’s money to be made. And on one level that’s all the explanation we need.
But as the article also notes, there’s another aspect to the emerging field of psychedelic medicine that would be a prime interest to authoritarian fascists: a 2018 study found that just two doses with medical psilocybin resulted in sustained shifts against authoritarianism. It’s a remarkable finding for a society with steadily increasingly levels of depression in parallel with steadily increasing levels inequality and despair: one of the hottest new areas of anti-depression medicine results in sustained shifts against authoritarianism. A remarkable finding that obviously represents a potentially remarkable threat to the kind of future Bannon, Thiel, and the Mercers want to realize. A future where almost everyone is basically living the hopeless life of a neo-liberal serf in a world succumbing to eco-collapse. A future were widespread depression and despair is an entirely logical and appropriate response. What kind of threat does psychedelic medicine pose to that future?
At the same time, let’s not forget that a key ingredient for make that future of despair a sustainable one (sustainable for the oligarchs, at least) is mass propaganda a authoritarian conditioning. The proles need to be domesticated and tamed for this future. What kind of potential could psychedelics play in that kind of future? As we’re going to see, that 2018 study that showed decreases in authoritarian attitudes following doses with psilocybin also showed sustained increases in a sense of connectedness to nature. A sense of connection to nature that’s obviously going to have to be severe in the face of eco-collapse.
Don’t forget the history of psychedelics in the CIA’s mind-control programs. Recall how mobster Whitey Bulger was reportedly heavily experimented on with LSD as part of those experiments. Also recall how the Mumbai terrorists in 2008 were high on drugs like LSD during their multi-day attack. Might there be an interesting in combing the abuse of psychedelics with right-wing brainwashing techniques to manage a population that’s effectively been led into a maelstrom of mass crises? Keep in mind that fascist visions for the future almost invariably involve a massive collapse in the quality of life for almost everyone. How are fascist organizers like Thiel, Bannon, and the Mercers planning to manage these mass crises? Scaremongering about ‘others’ will only go so far. What kind of next-generation brainwashing techniques are they developing?
These are the kinds of questions raises by the growing interest of America’s leading fascists in psychedelic medicine. Are they trying to avoid the perils of psychedelic medicine resulting in a drop off in authoritarian-minded psychologically scarred individuals? Or are they trying to develop new techniques for authoritarian brainwashing? Presumably is going to be a bit of both, along with making a lot of money along the way:
“It’s foolish to imagine positive transformation achieved with the help of Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon or Greg Abbott. After all, these are the same people who vociferously oppose universal healthcare and deny climate change. With their support, we can expect psychedelic medicine for the elite, as a tool of state power or an engine of conspiracy theories, rather than a liberationist psychedelic movement. Until we have universal, single-payer healthcare, the benefits of psychedelic therapy will be out of reach for most Americans.”
Why are predatory authoritarian fascists so interested in psychedelic medicine? It’s not a desire to help their fellow humans, of that we can be sure. So is it just the money? There is indeed quite a bit of potential money in this area. Is that it? Just another money-grab? Perhaps with the benefit of making wars easier to fight too?
We almost have to hope it’s just about the money. Because we you look at the actual effects psychedelics have been found to stimulate, the non-monetary motives are arguably a lot more disturbing. Because if the studies showing psychedelics lead to reduced support for “authoritarian attitudes” are accurate, it would appears that psychedelics represent a powerful threat to the kind of fascist world figures like Thiel, Bannon and the Mercers have spent decades fighting to realize. It’s hard to think of a more effective means of controlling that threat than owning the research and resulting patents:
And as the following 2018 article about study showing a sustained drop in authoritarian attitudes points out, there was another notable sustained shift in attitude associated with psilocybin: a greater connectedness with nature. It’s a potentially destabilizing sense of connectedness for a civilization currently collapsing the ecosystem in an orgy of profit-maximization:
“The new study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, is the first to provide experimental evidence that psilocybin treatment can lead to lasting changes in these attitudes.”
It was just in 2018 when we got this first study providing evidence of lasting changes in attitudes towards both authoritarianism and connectedness to nature after just a few therapeutic doses with psilocybin. And a couple of years later we start hearing about Peter Thiel’s big investments in this area. What role did the studies revealing anti-authoritarian and pro-nature attitudes have on Thiel’s investment decisions?
Again, don’t forget that Thiel didn’t get into this area until 2020, two years after this study. It’s hard to imagine he wasn’t aware of this potential.
We’ll see what they’re ultimately planning. But it’s worth noting one of the grand ironies here: figures like Thiel, Bannon, and the Mercers really are people who should be gripped with a deep sense of depression and despair. Their lives have been monstrous, after all. They are blights on the planet. Among the worst people to have ever existed in many senses. It’s hard to think of people better positioned for an intense spiritual journey of self-discovery and a greater sense of connectedness to the world around them. They’ve lived horrifically selfish lives. Lives literally dedicated to promoting an ideology of gross selfishness. They are genuinely broken amoral people who should feel profoundly awful about how awful they’ve been. So should these fascists ever experience the long-overdue epiphanies related to the horrid lives they’ve lived and the incredible damage they’ve inflicted on the future, at least there should be more treatment options available. That’s of course assuming squashing that research isn’t part of the plan.