By Richard Leon
February 2010
FT258
Weirdness watchers will be only too aware that the occult has seeped into
the media mainstream over the last few decades.
The nexus of strangeness that was once high occultism has a history spanning
many millennia, but over the 20th century it passed from being the exclusive
preserve of (mostly English) eccentrics into a commercial media phenomenon.
The word ‘occult’ itself means anything hidden and sinister – but how hidden
is the occult these days, when you can buy pre-written spells and cheery
beginners’ guides to magic in almost any high street bookstore?
And just as bookshop shelves were colonised by titles written to flatter
teenage witches, primetime television slots were filled with imaginary
vampire-slayers and professional ghost-hunters.
The image of the occult became domesticated and tamed – defanged, as it
were. Where the subject once had the power to shock and terrify the
uninitiated, now only a vestigial frisson of danger remains.
But recently the conspiracy world has started to redefine the occult,
reinventing its darker origins and relocating it in more mundane settings.
The devil hasn’t so much ridden out as moved into fashion, films and pop
music. The old imagery of goats, virgins and scrappy chalk pentagrams has
been replaced by a subtler and more sophisticated language.
Virgins continue to be abused, but rituals no longer rely on bodily fluids
collected from altars in old churches. Spells are no longer chanted or drawn
on parchment.
Instead – so the newly minted history goes – rituals are promoted in the
media and played out to packed audiences in giant stadia, with international
satellite coverage for those watching at home. Like millions of other
people, you may have taken part in an occult ritual without even realising
it…
At the apex of the occult pyramid of new world evil are the Illuminati –
less a coven of hammy Victorian ritualists, more a dynastic network devoted
to the moral and psychological destruction of their victims and the
promotion of terror, sociopathic selfishness and bestial sexuality.
Endowed with a finely honed sense of dark irony, the Illuminati particularly
enjoy flaunting the very symbols of their control in public to influence the
collective unconscious.
A key part of the new conspiranoia is a radical restatement of the
Illuminati’s aims, methods and mission statement. Older forteans are likely
to have fond memories of the Illuminati’s earlier popular exposure in Robert
Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy.
Wilson – who was or wasn’t a high-level initiate, depending on whom you ask
– portrayed the Illuminati as something like a grim secret society of occult
middle managers.
Their recent reinvention is very much darker. Promoted by conspiracists like
David Icke, the 21st-century view of the new black magic ties together CIA
mind-control methods with both overt and covert military and political
operations.
While military and political authorities plan and execute acts of economic
and physical terrorism, a public propaganda machine channels distracting,
destructive and degrading influences through the fashion world, the music
business and the endlessly shiny and disordered lives of Hollywood’s rich
and famous.
LIZARD-PEOPLE
Claims of Satanic influence in rock music are hardly new.
Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page notoriously bought Aleister Crowley’s Boleskine
House beside Loch Ness, and the Rolling Stones were promoting “Sympathy for
the Devil” through the 1960s and ’70s.
But the recent revival of interest in occult-influenced media has moved the
focus away from individual performers and towards an invisible network of
handlers, managers, psychiatrists and supporting ‘creatives’. In this new
view, celebrities and famous performers are victims of the conspiracy, not
its leaders. According to conspiracy investigators, many actors and
performers, including almost every famous name in the business, have given
up their freedom involuntarily. They now live in a kind of twilight world
where their actions are controlled and their media presence is carefully
stage-managed to promote Illuminati imagery – and to keep the public focused
on consuming it.
The means of control and coercion used by Illuminati handlers are more
psychological than physical.
According to Icke, the Illuminati are obsessed with ritual, cold-blooded
abuse, territorial possessiveness of resources and people and top-down
political and economic power. Icke has walked back from his claims that the
Illuminati are literally alien lizard people, morphing into their true form
when angry or stressed (see FT129:30–31). His current view is that the
alien lizards live in a nearby dimension and manipulate the Earth via their
hench-people, aristocratic bloodlines literally wedded to political and
financial privilege and dedicated to personal, political and financial
degradation and amorality.
According to one self-proclaimed bloodline member who posts regularly on the
David Icke message boards, abuse also conditions the next generation of
Illuminati bloodline leaders so that they’ll be ready and willing to
continue that agenda. The cult is managed internally through a dramatic
ethic of ruthless conflict and internal assassination. Only the most
predatory individuals survive to reach positions of power and influence, and
they can be replaced at any time by a more successful and ruthless
competitor.
These occult crime families employ forced prostitution, deliberate mental
breakdown, and total psychological control to further their agenda.
Some of the most controversial suggestions come from individuals who claim
to be former victims of the mind-control cult, and offer tales of systematic
and ritualised pædophilia and sexual abuse, designed to deliberately shatter
the minds of victims into compartmentalised and compliant sub-personalities
called ‘alters’.
Icke associate Arizona Wilder claims to have been involved in organising
ritual abuse for the Illuminati until she left to become a whistle-blower on
the conspiracy scene. According to Wilder, abuse is ritualised, symbolic and
systematic, and plays a key role in promoting the Illuminati agenda. A
similar story is repeated by Cathy O’Brien, who claims to be a victim of a
CIA mind-control programme called MONARCH, which was – and supposedly still
is – a subunit of the notorious Cold War MK-ULTRA. This programme is a
matter of historical record, backed up by official documents, but in
O’Brien’s two books, The Tranceformation of America and Access Denied: For
Reasons of National Security, she claims that individuals are deliberately
tortured with drugs and other forms of both sexual and psychological abuse
until they dissociate into multiple personalities which can then be moulded
at will.
CELEBRITY SACRIFICE
So is the music business controlled by inter-dimensional lizards? Apparently
so.
Unlike most corporations, the Illuminati have occult skills and arcane
knowledge, as well as an advanced understanding of psychology which goes
beyond the feeble marketing boosterism of positive thinking and PR. The
Illuminati run everything – including the music, TV and movie industries. By
incorporating trigger images and developing projects which promote their own
form of amorality, the Illuminati can influence entire populations and
promote their reptilian values of systematic abuse, pathological
self-centredness and ruthless competition.
This makes celebrities very useful to them. The marketing value of
celebrity is worth billions, which is why famous names appear on the
packaging of everything from breakfast cereals to cars, seducing their
followers into buying the officially approved choices of their idols. But
less positive occult leverage is also possible. Rather like voodoo dolls,
Illuminati magicians and psychiatrists stick psychological pins into their
pet celebrities, both for the instant gratification of immediate sadism and
because the mass attention focused on celebrities transfers and amplifies
the torture for the public at large. If the conditioning starts to slip, as
sometimes it does, celebrities can always be sacrificed to create an
upwelling of popular emotion that’s immensely useful in ritual magic.
Central to this new form of conspiranoia is the belief that imagination and
attention are the most precious of occult commodities. According to
conspiracist Matthew Delooze, music festivals and other media events provide
opportunities for the harvesting of human energy. In the same way that David
Icke’s reptilians bear an interesting resemblance to the lizard people shown
in the 1980s sci-fi series V, Delooze’s human-harvesting echoes scenes in
the 1970s TV series Quatermass, where aliens compel young people to gather
in large groups and then harvest them for food. The Delooze re-imagining
assumes that emotional energy is more useful to invisible entities than
physical body parts, but the theme of humans as willing prey remains
recognisable. Appropriately enough, in the TV series, the most attractive
locations for public ritual sacrifice are sacred sites like Stonehenge and
Glastonbury, and giant stadia like Wembley.
Delooze believes that music festivals and very public deaths like those of
Princess Diana and Michael Jackson are equally valuable.
Glastonbury may be the ultimate feel-good festival, but the existence of a
pyramid stage and the presence of ‘ley lines’ suggests that it’s up to no
good. This may confuse survivors of the original festival scene, who saw
festivals as venues for free expression away from the rigid values of a Cold
War culture. It may also surprise survivors of the 1980s and 1990s, who saw
festivals and raves as places where ordinary people could escape from work
and authoritarianism at none-too legal gatherings; not to mention historians
of popular culture, who have traced the lineage that leads to modern-day
festivals back to rowdy public fairs and markets, some of which date to
mediæval times.
To Delooze-ians this is all part of the plot. Participants think they’re
having fun, when really they’re being mind-controlled and manipulated. Mass
media promotion of festivals and celebrity news traps viewers inside an
emotional world where they can be herded from experience to experience like
farm animals. Others have suggested that all media content is
Illuminati-controlled for maximum occult benefit, whether it’s Live Earth or
coverage of Britney Spears’s latest breakdown.
STEPFORD STARS
The constant and deliberate reinforcement of occult symbols in the media has
the double effect of increasing their impact and also flaunting the
controllers’ intent before their unwitting victims. But none of this is
entirely secret, and it’s a feature of the new occultism that the signs are
visible to those who can interpret them. Conspiracy watchers such as the
Pseudo Occult Media blog have become obsessive followers of celebrity news,
deconstructing music videos, fashion photos and movies to reveal hidden
Illuminati symbols.
Most of this symbolism isn’t obvious to outsiders. Traditional pentagrams
and pyramids do occasionally appear, but colours, shapes, corporate logos
and other motifs are just as prominent and powerful. Even photographic
lighting techniques can carry a message: for example, a face in shadow,
which emphasises the duality and splitting of dark and light personality
elements. Similarly, a monarch butterfly symbol on clothes, graphics or
tattoos reinforces the MK-ULTRA MONARCH programme.
Devotees of occult celebrity-spotting argue that not only are celebrities
programmed and brainwashed, they’re also cloned and genetically engineered
to manifest a pleasing combination of good looks. Illuminati science is
decades ahead of our own, so their scientists can create genetic celebrities
to order, blessed with a perfect eye-catching combination of sexual charisma
and physical attractiveness.
Where conventional fans try to keep up with the relationships and lifestyle
fads of their idols, occult-spotters look for evidence of failing
programming. The ritual of celebrity rehab is taken as a sure sign that
conditioning is breaking down, and reinforcement urgently needed. If the
situation is left unattended to, then a famous name might start acting
irrationally, perhaps even leading to a public event that reveals their
abuse. The ultimate success for spotters would be a tell-all public
confession – but this never happens.
Instead, most celebrities are successfully re-conditioned and “Stepforded”.
Just like the Stepford Wives in the book and movies of the same name,
Stepforded celebrities acquire conventional family values and become pliably
robotic. Unlike the movies, this process isn’t limited to women. Any
individual who can’t be reprogrammed can always be replaced by a more
obedient clone, or sacrificed in public with a faked suicide or
assassination.
This may raise a question or two in the minds of sceptics. There’s no
evidence that cloning is possible, never mind likely. And sceptics might
also wonder how it’s possible to tell the difference between the fashions
and accessories available in any clothing store and official
Illuminati-approved mind-control apparel. It doesn’t take an expert
knowledge of fashion to see that many of the claimed symbols and images are
common to the point of being mundane. Butterfly images and leopard-print
fabrics are widespread enough to be clichés in their own right. So how can
these be images of mind-control?
The secret seems to be that what celebrities wear is proof of their
mind-control, and ordinary women – and sometimes men – copy them to
reinforce their own slave status. Sporting a butterfly tattoo or a
leopard-print miniskirt might seem like harmless fun, but in fact it shows a
willingness to conform and to support the Illuminati agenda of pædophilia
and programmed mental destruction. Mind-controlled celebrities are dressed
deliberately by minders to display these images, both to reinforce the
conditioning of the celebrities themselves, and to symbolise the existence
of their conditioning to the rest of us.
TRANCEFORMATIONS
For non-believers, this new occult conspiracy theory sounds like paranoid
delusion, but conclusively disproving the beliefs of Icke and Delooze turns
out to be harder than it might seem, because historical reality is at least
as strange as some of the stories being told about it.
The MK-ULTRA programme certainly existed. Documents prove that for nearly
two decades the CIA experimented with hypnosis, hallucinogens and other
drugs and a process called “psychic driving”.
Invented by Dr Ewen Cameron, who went on to become the first chairman of the
World Psychiatric Association, psychic driving used audiotape loops
combined with drugs to ‘suggest’ behavioural changes. Cameron eventually
developed a more intensive technique called de-patterning, which added
electro-convulsive therapy and insulin coma to the noxious mix of
psychiatric abuse. Cameron’s interest was in treating schizophrenia; but he
experimented freely, with CIA funding, on individuals with relatively minor
psychological problems, including mild depression and anxiety.
Cameron’s grisly research and other parts of the MK-ULTRA programme are a
matter of historical record, but in 1973 CIA Director Richard M Helms
ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed. What’s known about MK-ULTRA is known
almost by accident, as a cache of documents, most of which were financial
rather than operational, survived the cull because they were kept in a
separate location.
Critics of mind-control lore state categorically that there is no evidence
of a programme called MONARCH. But when most of the primary sources are no
longer available, it becomes impossible to be sure which techniques were
used and which weren’t. The MK-ULTRA research seems to have been
distinguished by a significant lack of interest in medical or psychiatric
ethics. When a professional psychiatrist fries the brains of patients with
voltages 30 times higher than those used in conventional ECT, and does this
without their consent, it’s not unreasonable to ask just where MK-ULTRA
experimenters were willing to draw the line between ethical and unethical
behaviour.
More recently, stories of systematic torture and abuse in military prisons
have forced the current US administration to appoint a special prosecutor.
At the same time, former US officials have admitted that terror threat
levels were deliberately manipulated for political reasons. So, from one
point of view, it’s clear that the promotion of fear and abuse have
sometimes been supported at government level. And if you believe Delooze,
torture has an occult purpose too. The aim of torture isn’t to acquire
intelligence, but to debase its victims, create terror, and, most of all, to
focus public attention on the threat of irrational and all-consuming abuse.
FASHION VICTIMS
The fashion and media worlds are similarly unwholesome. Rumours of sexual
favours, not always voluntary, are common in modelling, acting and fashion
photography. There’s also no doubt that these are inherently risky
professions. Creative media can boast a long list of famous names – most
recently Michael Jackson and David Carradine – who were either murdered or
committed suicide, often in bizarre and questionably convincing ways.
But how much of the historical record is conventional decadence and
dysfunction, and how much is evidence of organised conspiracy? Conspiracy
theories can only flourish when facts are either absent or deliberately
ignored. Narrative logic always reflects public hopes and fears, and at the
moment the public has plenty to feel fearful of. In the same way that
conventional Satanism and the occult were the unnameable night terrors of
previous generations, modern anxieties live both in and behind the media.
Celebrities are fascinating because they’re envied and need to be brought
down from their pedestals; but they also stand in for our idealised image of
how life should be, and our fears of how it really is.
And so it should come as no surprise that creative reinterpretations of
media influence now abound. During the Bush years, paranoid reality became
stranger than fiction. But even before then, the traditional Bohemian role
of celebrity was becoming redundant. Sex, drugs, and the occasional high
profile police bust have become formulaic waypoints on the path to
notoriety, and the only people still shocked by them are likely to be
elderly or unusually religious. The rest of the population has moved on, and
many people are now wilder in private (and sometimes in public) than the
subversive stars of 40 years ago ever were. Morals, as well as becoming
laxer, have also become more nakedly exploitative.
So perhaps the biggest clue to the new paranoia is the extent to which
distrust of the authorities and the media is endemic. Supposed authority
figures such as bankers and politicians have proven themselves to be corrupt
at best, and psychotic at worst. It’s not hard to see how movie imagery –
from interdimensional fear-eating lizards to robotic spouses and secret
societies – can be assembled into a consistent narrative of top-down
malevolence and media control. In this view, sacrificial celebrities aren’t
special people, or even special victims – they’re just like the rest of us.
Resources
Pseudo-occult media blog
David Icke message boards (See especially the Stepford Wives thread in
the Symbolism/Mind Control/Subliminal Programming folder)
Matthew Delooze
Vigilant Citizen blog
10 SECRET MIND-CONTROL SYMBOLS IN MUSIC VIDEOS AND MOVIES
1 Butterfly tattoos, clothes, belts, hats, and other fashion accessories;
proof of mind-control because they refer to the MK-Ultra Project Monarch
operation.
2 Black and white checkerboards or lines symbolise duality and good/evil. A
more subtle variation on this theme is the stock portrait photo which hides
half of a star’s face in shadow.
3 Mirrors and shattered glass represent the way the mind is shattered and
mirrored during mental torture. Mirrored personalities represent hidden
‘alters’ who can be made to surface at will with appropriate trigger
imagery.
4 Big cats, including lions, panthers and tigers, and domestic cats which
are usually black or white and spiky rather than fluffy. Leopard-print
clothing also qualifies. The message is that fierce pussies suggest
animalistic sexual impulses.
5 Hello Kitty toys are a more childish version of the same idea.
Interestingly, the Urban Dictionary describes Hello Kitty as a “Japanese
mass-casualty weapon… Doctors warn that even low-level exposure may cause a
perfectly sound mind to crack.”
6 Birdcages, chains and other symbolism of imprisonment represent physical
and psychological bondage in a very literal way.
7 Pink, purple and rainbow colours: it’s hard to see these as sinister, but
purple is apparently used to reinforce programming. The rainbow represents
psychological splitting.
8 Doll symbolism often appears in fashion shoots to reinforce the
mind-controlled nature of a model, who can be posed at will.
9 The Marilyn Monroe look, blonde and classic, is proof that a woman has
been ‘Stepforded’ and no longer has any individuality.
10 And finally, photographers, fashion designers and directors sometimes
succumb to laziness and include more traditional occult symbols such as
pentagrams, pyramids (with and without the Eye of Horus), horned animal
skulls, and other familiar standards. POP'S ILLUMINATI TOP 10
10 Robbie Williams
Robbie Williams has provided plenty of material for weird-watchers
generally, from his retreat from music into an obsession with conspiracy
theories and UFOs (heck, he even grew a Mulder beard straight out of the
last X-Files movie) to his bizarre recent ‘comeback’ appearance on The
X-Factor. Williams’s strange, wild-eyed performance on the show caused
plenty of bemused speculation from the public, but for occult
celebrity-spotters, it all made sense – Williams was displaying the classic
signs of dissociation they’d seen in many mind-controlled celebs in recent
years. And a quick flick through his recent output seemingly confirms their
suspicions about his occult leanings: his logo (as seen in the “Sin, Sin,
Sin” video) is made up of the letter ‘R’, a question mark and the
all-seeing Eye of Horus; in a recent interview, he talked about having
“multiple personalities”; while the video for the song “Radio” even saw him
shape-shifting into a Reptilian alien! On the other hand, Robbie’s avowed
interest in conspiracy theories saw him posting on the David Icke forums,
where debate rages fiercely about his real motivations. So: Illuminati
slave, would-be whistleblower or just another pawn in the game? The jury is
still out on Robbie.
9 Stephen Gately
Michael Jackson’s high-profile demise wasn’t the only pop star death linked
to the occult conspiracy in recent years; Rapper Tupac Shakur is supposed
to have left a raft of musical clues suggesting that he was murdered by the
Illuminati (or was not dead at all, just hiding from them). But would the
masters of the world really stoop to bumping off a one-time member of
Boyzone?
Well, maybe. His career was filled with the kind of symbolism that marks out
a mind-controlled celeb: For starters, Boyzone – like most manufactured
boy- or girl-bands had five members – a significant occult number (how many
points on a pentagram? Go figure.), and the combo’s logo emphasised
dark/light duality, as did their explicitly occult get-up of, er, white tops
and black trousers. He appeared in a movie called Credo (aka The Devil’s
Curse), in which five students tried to summon Belial. And if anyone was in
any doubt, it was Gately’s panto and musical roles that revealed the awful
truth. Playing the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz was the first giveaway –
having no brains being a coded message for having been MK’d by the
Illuminati – while the role of the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
(penned by Ian Fleming, whose Bond books and their film adaptations are
chock-full of occult symbolism) is an obvious gloating nod to the pædophilic
sex rings run by the Illuminati establishment. And Daily Mail columnist Jan
Moir just thought he was gay…
8+7 Beyoncé and Jay-Z
There had always been speculation in occult celebrity-spotting circles that
Beyoncé was a tool of the Illuminati. Her performance at the 2007 BET Awards
was seen as containing symbolism referring to the robot-woman Maria in Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis, but when her 2008 album I Am Sasha Fierce… was released,
the conspiranoiacs nodded sagely to one another. Sasha Fierce wasn’t just a
stage alter ego, but could be evidence of “an artist taken over by evil to
obtain success”. Songs and videos from the album revealed the struggle
between Nice Girl Beyoncé and Evil Robot Beyoncé, while her marriage the
same year to unknowingly possessed Masonic rapper Jay-Z – whose constant
flashing of occult symbols in hand gestures had already made him a firm
favourite among the cognoscenti – was the esoteric icing on the cake.
If there was an Illuminati version of Hello! Magazine, this would have been
their celebrity wedding of the year.
6 Britney Spears
Britney’s bizarre behaviour is legendary tabloid fodder, but her numerous
breakdowns, flip-outs and fashion disasters supposedly all tell their own
hidden story. A one-time Disney MouseKeteer (MK), Britney was seemingly
subjected to mind-control from an early age. Her first tattoo was a
butterfly (Monarch programming) and her song titles (“Hit Me Baby” and “I’m
a Slave 4 U”) included clear references to her fate. Spears was groomed as
the next Illuminati pop high priestess, a process which climaxed in a
public ritual performed at the MTV awards, in which Madonna (yes, allegedly
another MK victim but frankly getting a bit past it) raised Britney to her
new level in the evil hierarchy in a perverted lesbian wedding in which
groom Madge sported a Worshipful Master’s top hat and sealed the ceremony
with a much-reported same-sex kiss.
It didn’t work out though, and rather than replacing the fading Illuminati
Queen, Britney wigged out (apparently many stars’ programming starts to
fail at around age 30). Things came to a very public head when the
malfunctioning starbot checked out of rehab, walked into a hair salon and
said, “I want my hair shaved off.” The sheared Shears caused a media
sensation, but the real story was about more than strange tonsorial
decisions: head-shaving is apparently something that many ‘multiples’ have
done when trying to escape their programming: “The hair represents the
stylists, the handlers and people who are in control of her life and manage
her looks.” There was no escape for Bald Britney, though; she may now be a
‘failed’ replacement for Madonna – Lady Gaga is the current Illuminati
pin-up – but the torture, as Frank Zappa said, never stops…
5 Miley Cyrus
Twins and doubles feature a lot in the mind-controlled celeb mythos – from a
fascination with Dr Joseph Mengele’s twin experiments (according to
conspiracists, he was both an Illuminati controller and a Rothschild, of
course!) to a keen interest in pop stars and their alter egos. Miley Cyrus
and her ‘alter’ Hannah Montana (as well as being a deadly menace to parents’
wallets) is a classic example, memorably described by the Pseudo Occult
Media blog as “The Mind-Controlled Disney Slave from Sirius”.
The TV series Hannah Montana stars Cyrus as a girl who lives a secret double
life – an average schoolgirl by day, and the titular, pretty-in-pink (and
occult purple) pop star by night. The splitting of Miley is demonstrated by
her alter’s name – Hannah is the same backwards as forwards, reminiscent of
the constant mirroring we see in pop videos – and by their different hair
colours (further dark/light checkerboard symbolism). Miley Cyrus’s real
name is also significant, recalling ‘Sirius’, the Dog Star, which in turn
represents the pentagram of the Masons, while even her father’s middle name
– that’s the ‘Ray’ in Billy Ray Cryus – offers up more Masonic Solar
symbolism for those in the know.
The fact that Miley/Hannah has often been seen sporting butterfly symbols on
her clothes, accessories and website pretty much clinches it for one
blogger: “She is literally (in terms of her MK programming) some form of
corporate global Lolita robot” being used to socially engineer teenage girls
for their role as Illuminati sex slaves and reptilian breeding stock.
4 Rihanna
Occult celebrity-spotters have noted that most of Rihanna’s recent videos
blatantly employ the imagery of black/white checkerboards, one-eye-covered
close-ups, as-above-so-below poses (one arm up, one arm down) and all the
familiar trappings of bondage and sexual enslavement, but who’d have thought
that the infernally catchy song “Umbrella” contained plenty of clues as to
Rihanna’s mind-controlled status?
In fact, being “under the umbrella” is just another way of saying “possessed
by the Devil”. Rapper Jay-Z’s opening invitation to Rihanna isn’t an offer
of protection against life’s metaphorical lousy weather but could be
interpreted as a coded invitation for her to join him as one of the
‘chosen’, the secret Illuminist elite who’ll ride out the storms of global
recession (rhymes with possession… hmm), while the rest of us are just
lizard-fodder for the conspiracy. Other lyrics – including the spooky occult
chanting of “ella… ella” and the strange use of the word ‘entity’ seem to
suggest that Rihanna is more than happy to be MK’d in return for Illuminati
‘protection’.
And there are plenty more clues in the video, where Rihanna appears in both
white and black outfits (split into good and evil selves; check the album
title – Good Girl Gone Bad), dances with a phallic umbrella and gets sprayed
with gushes of CGI water – or, as the Vigilant Citizen website has it: “The
liquid hits her a total of 6 times. We then see Rihanna naked, covered in
chrome-coloured liquid. Rihanna has been raped by the Devil and covered with
his semen.” Eww.
And an equally vigilant poster on YouTube spotted a subliminal image (at
2.46) in which the Devil-sauce-glazed pop star forms the image of Baphomet’s
head within a pyramid: “Hair forms the snout, shoulders form the eyes, arms
form the horns. Very ‘not cool’ playing with the subconscious minds of
viewers like that!” Quite.
3 Simon Cowell
He may not be a pop star himself, but talent show puppet-master Cowell
obviously pulls the strings on programmes like the massively successful
X-Factor (known to conspiracy-watchers as The Hex Factor and even the The
Osiris Factor). He has been criticised by (presumably non-MK’d) artists like
Sting as a destructive force against all that is good and spontaneous in
music. But could his evil power go beyond manipulating the minds of the
British public? Is he a major player in the conspiracy? A reptilian, even?
While the David Icke forums were lashed into a state of excitement by a
photo of a grinning Cowell riding a jet ski emblazoned with a Masonic
symbol, evidence has been patchy at best. Then, news came in that Cowell had
chosen this year’s X-Factor winner’s single – and it was none other than
Miley Cyrus’s Hannah Montana hit “The Climb”. Case closed.
2 Michael Jackson
The late Michael Jackson was, according to some bloggers, a mind-controlled
tool of the conspiracy from an early age; his work, they argue, was
peppered with references to the New World Order and clues to his
conditioning, while his Illuminati mission was to be the poster boy for
“narcissism, onanism, androgyny and homosexual pædophilia”. Self-proclaimed
former Illuminati lackey Kathleen Sullivan stated that she had “absolutely
no doubt” that Jackson was “an MK-ULTRA variety slave… [in] their bizarre
‘system’ of spooks, commercialised pædophilia and more…” Another blog noted
that Jacko had a close relationship with a man sometimes described as his
‘personal magician’ and going by the name of Majestic the Magnificent (or
sometimes the even more revealing Majestik Magnificent – how blatant could
this guy be?) and speculated that Majestic may have been more than just a
conjuror and probably “some sort of CIA Monarch mind-control handler”…
In the light of his backstory – bred and stage-managed for stardom by the
child-abusing Illuminati elite – all Whacko Jacko’s subsequent strange
behaviour – from changing his appearance to making his children wear masks
and avoid mirrors – becomes explicable in terms of his attempts to break
free of his programmers. Musically, this was signalled by his move into
Messianic mode – “Earth Song” and the coded tip-off “They Don’t Care About
Us” – but Jackson was playing a dangerous game and it was only a matter of
time before his handlers moved in, wrecking his career with child abuse
allegations. Jackson retreated into Neverland. As one forum poster wrote:
“somebody with a sick sense of humour deliberately programmed him to be a
living Pinocchio, who’s [sic] one desire in life was to become a ‘real boy’…
(Geppetto was a pedo [sic]… talk about another revelation of Illuminati
programming in plain sight.) In this case they actually surgically cut off
Pinocchio’s nose…”
But Jackson’s rebellion against the conspiracy couldn’t succeed; his plan to
reveal the Illuminati’s secret agenda to his millions of fans in a comeback
tour was cut short, say the occult conspiracists, when he was murdered by
his controllers.
1 Lady Gaga
Of all the artists singled out for Illuminati links, none currently gets
more column inches and web hits than Lady Gaga. Doyenne of the
spark-shooting fembot electro-bra which out-nippled 80s-vintage Madonna,
Gaga seems like a factory-made embodiment of the cult of cultiness – a
knowing personification of occult symbolism, with one of the oddest and most
disturbing personæ in any mainstream creative industry, combining some of
the understated Peter Pan creepiness of Michael Jackson, the in-your-face
pseudo-fascism of Marilyn Manson, and the shrink-wrapped and battery-farmed
sexuality of Rihanna and Beyoncé.
Defenders suggest she’s playing the fame game deliberately, hyping the
outrage and milking the scandal, following in an ancient tradition that
namechecks Elvis, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
As the self-styled Fame Monster, Gaga claims to have more in common with the
glam rock spangles of David Bowie and Queen, and the glossy but ridiculous
lifestyles of fashionistas like Donatella Versace, than with secret occult
societies and CIA-run mind-control programmes. Videos from early in her
career prove that she can sing and perform traditional piano ballads with a
strong stage presence, unsupported by fake blood, fake ritual, nudity, or
auto-tuned vocals. And she’s not lacking IQ – she claims German mystical
poet Rainer Maria Rilke as an influence, and wrote papers about art,
religion, and sociology while studying at the prestigious Tisch School of
the Arts in New York.
And yet, there’s no denying that she’s also the Queen of Weird. In less than
a year, she has moved from being an unknown to the conspiracy blogosphere’s
favourite pin-up, ticking all of the boxes of alleged symbolic Illuminati
give-aways. While many artists suggest and hint, Gaga seems to revel in
strangeness, associating herself in her videos and performances with
butterflies, bubbles, rainbows, hyper-sexualised dolls, robots, puppets,
kittens, slaves, and trained killers. She consistently appears in photos
making visual gestures that occult conspiracists interpret as references to
the all-seeing eye.
And why was she selected for the Queen’s Royal Command Performance last
year? Presumably as one lizard princess being rewarded by another – although
in the post-event photos it’s hard not to be struck by the contrast between
the red latex-clad Gaga in her mock-demure ironic red evening gown and
abused panda eye make-up, and the more conventionally attired real Queen.
The high point for Gaga-watchers was last year’s MTV VMA ceremony, where she
was given an extended slot for a performance of her song “Paparazzi” and the
undivided attention of a live audience of celebrities and international
viewers. The performance, described variously as ‘raunchy’ and ‘gruesome’,
culminated in a mock hanging, and her ascent to a glowing light as she was
pulled to heaven swinging on the end of a noose, with fake blood dripping
down her midriff and over her trademark latex panties. Fans loved it, almost
everyone else was scandalised and revolted – not least the nuns at New
York’s Convent of the Sacred Heart who had tried to educate Gaga (then known
more conventionally as Steffani Germanotta) and set her on a path of devout
Catholicism before she began her creative career.
But anyone over 30 understands that outraging the wrinklies, and especially
one’s former teachers, isn’t necessarily the most original artistic
statement. Gaga is weird, but are her antics any weirder than the
ultra-violence and make-up games of punks and new romantics, or the avowed
Satanism of heavy metal bands?
Perhaps a more telling criticism is that Gaga is simply a plagiarist, most
obviously borrowing much of her look from established icy electro-pop diva
Roisin Murphy, garnished with references to other famous fashion stylings.
She turns the eccentricity ‘up to 11’ for effect, but her major talent is
self-promotion and media manipulation, rather than occult self-immolation.
As always with conspiracy theories, lack of hard evidence makes it
impossible to settle on a firm interpretation. But for dedicated culture
watchers, Gaga’s persona isn’t so much occult as adolescent –
attention-seeking, gaudily sexual, and dedicated to shock and awe – making
her no different from almost every other headlining mainstream pop act from
the last half decade.
Her performances are adult-themed pantomime and vaudeville burlesque – more
Punch and Judy than mind-controlled pædophilia. She’s certainly a role
model, but only in the Romantic sense that artists are admired, encouraged
and rewarded for breaking rules, and for being odd. If she promotes
bizarreness, it’s of a very limited and self-conscious kind, dedicated to
and delimited by clothes, boys, girls, make-up, accessories, and an entirely
mainstream self-abusive angst.
