Earth Walker
May 12th, 2001, 03:09 PM
Be afraid when the two groups appear to be pooling their
meagre intellectual resources.
I'd never previously considered a connection between the
New Age movement and neo-Nazis, until a news report this
week that Eustace Mullins -- infamous conspiracist, health-
food enthusiast and vilely anti-Semetic author of THE
BIOLOGICAL JEW -- had been booked to appear as the special
surprise speaker at Festival of the Ages, a Salmon Arm New Age
health conference planned to run August 3-6. This is his second
appearance at the annual event, which is billed as "a four-day retreat, full of fabulous food and good fellowship."
I was surprised at first, but after some thought, New Age
ultra-right wingers make perfect sense.
After all, fascists are fond of simplistic, illogical answers to
complicated questions. So are most New Agers. No wonder the
two groups have started pooling their meagre intellectual
resources.
Most New Age beliefs are tiresome or mildly amusing, reminders that the stories we told ourselves thousands of years ago
around the campfire have still got great drawing power.
If you want to believe in the powers of crystals and smoke, well,
go ahead. It's all good if no one gets hurt, as the bishop said to
the actress. But there's a not-so-innocent-and-harmless side to
the New Age movement. After all, remember that the Nazis in
their day were proto-New Age. Hitler was famously a vegetarian,
an animal lover, a worshipper of the dark forests of Teutonic
myth. The Nazis were one of the most ecologically conscious
governments of their time, and were definitely post-christian in
their use of occult symbols and terminology.
I visited the Web site of Preferred Network, the organization
hosting the conference. While there, I started wondering if perhaps the media had been a little hard on poor Hedy Fry this spring, when we mocker her for her ill-advised comments on
racist activities in the Interior. These festival folks are patently
ridiculous and eminently ignorable (speakers at last year's
shindig included Mullins, plus Cathy O'Brien, "former Presidential
Model, Mind-Controlled sex slave"), except for the fact that they
have the stench of cross-burning on them.
"It became obvious four years ago that traditional groupings of
Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity ... were no longer found in their pure forms," David Lethbridge, director of the
Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies (also based in Salmon
Arm) told the GLOBE & MAIL recently. "We began to see cross-
overs with three distinct groups: those into New Age, alternative
health, and tax refusal."
It's not just New Age Nazis, as Lethbridge points out. Back in
1996, The DETROIT NEWS reported on increased links between
right-wing militia groups such as the Christian Patriots and left-
wing natural-health advocates. They all exhibit the same paranoid
fears, that they are: not getting the truth from cabal-controlled
mainstream media and organized religion; being lied to by all-
powerful governments; being poisoned by flouride in the water.
It's a good idea to be suspicious of both media and government.
They are, after all, structures riddled with human beings. And as
most of us know, humans are fallible creatures, subject to random
prejudices and moved by self-interest. But the conspiracy-theory
enthusiasts of the New Age can't leave it at that. Like all
conspiracy fans, they have a biblical, magical view of the
universe. Nothing, they think, happens without some deep,
malevolent reason. Look at one of the last century's most lasting
conspiracy generators: the Kennedy assassination. How can a
man as powerful and handsome and graced by fate as JFK be
killed by a lowly, scrawny fellow such as Lee Harvey Oswald?
Surely, they feel, it must have been a huge, extensive plot,
controlled by all-powerful men -- or lizard people, if you want to
wander down the tortously convoluted path of another neo-
fascist New Ager, the execrable David Icke. Icke, often regarded
as a harmless nut job (he spews theories about the reptile
species that secretly rules the world and other random drive-bys such as "Microsoft and the Bavarian illiminati"), has written
extensively, if somewhat guardedly, on the elite Jewish groups
that are responsible for "almost every major negative event of
global significance."
Without a massive conspiracy, things like JFK's death make the
universe feel like a chaotic, random, terrifying place. It's the
backside of the religious impulse. Somebody has to be in charge
here. This can't all just be happening unsupervised
And so, in their futile search for some fundamental reason why
the world is not to their liking, New Agers are increasingly
grabbing on to poisonous ideas, and 2000 years of blood libel.
There are plenty of code words used, convoluted references to
"the cult of Baal," and the reasoning takes twists and turns that
are positively baroque -- Jews aren't really Jewish, so the
conspiracy theorists aren't really anti-Semetic, for instance.
This stuff is stupid, entirely dismissible, and I hesitated to
write about it at first.(Icke and Mullins and the others out there
preaching this stuff hardly need attention. They thrive on it.)
But it is also, as we have learned, deeply dangerous.
This article is by Matthew Mallon; an associate editor at
Vancouver magazine.
Why fear ye the Dark Queen, oh men?
She is your renewer.
--Dion Fortune
meagre intellectual resources.
I'd never previously considered a connection between the
New Age movement and neo-Nazis, until a news report this
week that Eustace Mullins -- infamous conspiracist, health-
food enthusiast and vilely anti-Semetic author of THE
BIOLOGICAL JEW -- had been booked to appear as the special
surprise speaker at Festival of the Ages, a Salmon Arm New Age
health conference planned to run August 3-6. This is his second
appearance at the annual event, which is billed as "a four-day retreat, full of fabulous food and good fellowship."
I was surprised at first, but after some thought, New Age
ultra-right wingers make perfect sense.
After all, fascists are fond of simplistic, illogical answers to
complicated questions. So are most New Agers. No wonder the
two groups have started pooling their meagre intellectual
resources.
Most New Age beliefs are tiresome or mildly amusing, reminders that the stories we told ourselves thousands of years ago
around the campfire have still got great drawing power.
If you want to believe in the powers of crystals and smoke, well,
go ahead. It's all good if no one gets hurt, as the bishop said to
the actress. But there's a not-so-innocent-and-harmless side to
the New Age movement. After all, remember that the Nazis in
their day were proto-New Age. Hitler was famously a vegetarian,
an animal lover, a worshipper of the dark forests of Teutonic
myth. The Nazis were one of the most ecologically conscious
governments of their time, and were definitely post-christian in
their use of occult symbols and terminology.
I visited the Web site of Preferred Network, the organization
hosting the conference. While there, I started wondering if perhaps the media had been a little hard on poor Hedy Fry this spring, when we mocker her for her ill-advised comments on
racist activities in the Interior. These festival folks are patently
ridiculous and eminently ignorable (speakers at last year's
shindig included Mullins, plus Cathy O'Brien, "former Presidential
Model, Mind-Controlled sex slave"), except for the fact that they
have the stench of cross-burning on them.
"It became obvious four years ago that traditional groupings of
Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity ... were no longer found in their pure forms," David Lethbridge, director of the
Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies (also based in Salmon
Arm) told the GLOBE & MAIL recently. "We began to see cross-
overs with three distinct groups: those into New Age, alternative
health, and tax refusal."
It's not just New Age Nazis, as Lethbridge points out. Back in
1996, The DETROIT NEWS reported on increased links between
right-wing militia groups such as the Christian Patriots and left-
wing natural-health advocates. They all exhibit the same paranoid
fears, that they are: not getting the truth from cabal-controlled
mainstream media and organized religion; being lied to by all-
powerful governments; being poisoned by flouride in the water.
It's a good idea to be suspicious of both media and government.
They are, after all, structures riddled with human beings. And as
most of us know, humans are fallible creatures, subject to random
prejudices and moved by self-interest. But the conspiracy-theory
enthusiasts of the New Age can't leave it at that. Like all
conspiracy fans, they have a biblical, magical view of the
universe. Nothing, they think, happens without some deep,
malevolent reason. Look at one of the last century's most lasting
conspiracy generators: the Kennedy assassination. How can a
man as powerful and handsome and graced by fate as JFK be
killed by a lowly, scrawny fellow such as Lee Harvey Oswald?
Surely, they feel, it must have been a huge, extensive plot,
controlled by all-powerful men -- or lizard people, if you want to
wander down the tortously convoluted path of another neo-
fascist New Ager, the execrable David Icke. Icke, often regarded
as a harmless nut job (he spews theories about the reptile
species that secretly rules the world and other random drive-bys such as "Microsoft and the Bavarian illiminati"), has written
extensively, if somewhat guardedly, on the elite Jewish groups
that are responsible for "almost every major negative event of
global significance."
Without a massive conspiracy, things like JFK's death make the
universe feel like a chaotic, random, terrifying place. It's the
backside of the religious impulse. Somebody has to be in charge
here. This can't all just be happening unsupervised
And so, in their futile search for some fundamental reason why
the world is not to their liking, New Agers are increasingly
grabbing on to poisonous ideas, and 2000 years of blood libel.
There are plenty of code words used, convoluted references to
"the cult of Baal," and the reasoning takes twists and turns that
are positively baroque -- Jews aren't really Jewish, so the
conspiracy theorists aren't really anti-Semetic, for instance.
This stuff is stupid, entirely dismissible, and I hesitated to
write about it at first.(Icke and Mullins and the others out there
preaching this stuff hardly need attention. They thrive on it.)
But it is also, as we have learned, deeply dangerous.
This article is by Matthew Mallon; an associate editor at
Vancouver magazine.
Why fear ye the Dark Queen, oh men?
She is your renewer.
--Dion Fortune