Conspiracy theory deluxe

"Thrive" is an extremely curious movie, narrated by Foster Gamble, the founder of the Thrive Movement.

"Thrive" begins as a soft-core, New Age-inspired movie about free energy, crop circles, ancient astronauts and UFOs. Gamble talks about his spiritual experience of Wholeness and something he calls "the torus", which he believes is the fundamental pattern of the universe. Gamble speculates that "the torus" was known by ancient civilizations, which got the knowledge from highly evolved space aliens. The torus can be used to create unlimited amounts of free energy, which will solve our energy crisis once and for all, ushering in an era of unlimited prosperity and growth.

If you are a sceptic, things go rapidly downhill from there...

Gamble suddenly claims that many inventors of free energy have been harassed or even murdered.

After about 40 minutes, "Thrive" turns out to be a hard-line conspiracy theory production. It features both David Icke and D. Edward Griffin. The latter is a member of the John Birch Society. Gamble believes that the world is ruled by a powerful elite of banking families, most notably the Rockefellers and the Rotschilds. Their agenda is to set up a New World Order, an international military dictatorship based on mass surveillance technology, debt slavery and grinding poverty. The ultimate goal of the agenda is to kill off a vast portion of the human race through forced sterilization, man-made pandemics, and so on. Yes, really!

In contrast to many other conspiracists, Gamble ends on a positive note. He offers solutions to our predicament, solutions which turn out to be an eclectic blend of communitarianism, libertarianism and something that sounds like Green left-liberalism. A ten-point program is advanced, and people are called upon to take non-violent action against the conspiracy, in the traditions of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. "Thrive" ends as it began, with a vague spiritual message, based on aikido and Buddhist meditation.

Although Foster Gamble, his lovely wife and their Thrive Movement isn't exactly my cup of tea, I admit that I was weirdly fascinated by this film. It presents a very extreme and controversial message in an incredibly laid back, soft and even slightly respectable manner. Gamble has convinced many reputable non-conspiracists to appear on his show, including Deepak Chopra and Vandana Shiva. "Thrive" is incredibly well produced, suggesting that someone with substantial means have contributed to the project. My guess is that it's Gamble himself, since he belongs to one of the families which owns Procter & Gamble. The narrator is at pains to distance himself from anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism (several of the people interviewed are Black, including Foster's aikido trainer). He takes the side of the American Indians against the settlers, while claiming to be an avid student of Ludwig von Mises. Not a bad job, certainly not for a person who is on a first-name basis with David Icke...

I will give "Thrive" five stars, not because I agree with its analysis or political program, but because it's so charismatic and intriguing. It's also available for free, both at the movement's website and at Youtube - in 20 different languages.

This is conspiracy theory deluxe.

An eclectic zeitgeist

"Zeitgeist: The Movie" was a sensation on the web five years ago, but (of course!) I missed all the fun. The film, made by Peter Joseph, is an eclectic rehash of various conspiracy theories. Or alternative worldviews, if you're more appreciative.

Often, the message sounds suspiciously similar to that of the John Birch Society: the Federal Reserve is a conspiracy, the Federal Income Tax is illegal, our money are debt-based fiat currency not backed by gold, the U.S. should have stayed out of both world wars and the Vietnam war, LBJ colluded with the Russians and VC's, public schools make students dumber and are probably a conspiracy as well, the U.S. elite wants a One World Government, etc.

A very different kind of conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche, is briefly featured. A whole section of "Zeitgeist" is devoted to the claims of the politically amorphous Truth Movement. Our old friend David Ray Griffin is shown. Curiously, the film starts with an extended attack on Christianity, an attack based on the ideas of Acharya S, Gerald Massey and Jordan Maxwell. Peter Joseph believes that Christianity is a fraud, separating man from the world, thereby serving the establishment and being the psychological soil for other (secular) myths.

But what is the point of the exercise? It turns out that Joseph is the leader of a group called the Zeitgeist Movement, which calls for international communism! According to Wikipedia "The Zeitgeist Movement is a global nonprofit organization founded in 2008. It advocates the abolition of money and private property and promotes a global socioeconomic system in which all resources would be equally shared. According to the movement, such a system would increase social equality and sustainability. The Zeitgeist Movement also believes resource allocation can be managed by computerized systems and most manual labor can be fully automated".

But why would such a group be so heavily dependent on right-wing conspiracy theory (or right-wing truths, if you're a conservative libertarian)? For instance, why would a left-wing group criticize FDR or the abolition of the gold standard, claim that LBJ colluded with the reds, and criticize public schools, not just for educational failure, but for simply being public?

My guess is that "Zeitgeist: The Movie" is deliberately eclectic, since its intended audience consists of young, politically raw seekers who treat all "alternative" and "anti-establishment" sources as equally interesting or veracious. Hence the attempts to combine ideas which are really incompatible - 20 or 30 years ago, a film like "Zeitgeist" would have been roundly condemned as "fascist", and that would have been the end of it. Today, this potpourri of conspiracy theories, or at the very least widely divergent alternative ideas, becomes an instant viral hit.

Well, I suppose that *is* the spirit of the times...

"Zeitgeist" does have obvious similarities with Foster Gamble's "Thrive". Indeed, "Thrive" might have been inspired by the success surrounding the earlier film. Gamble attempts to combine libertarianism with left-liberalism, and has said that he would like to see Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinic as running mates for the presidency! However, "Thrive" is at bottom somewhat less eclectic than "Zeitgeist", perhaps because Gamble is more consistently libertarian. It's also more overtly spiritual than "Zeitgeist", which sounds non-religious or even anti-religious, despite featuring the Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

I award "Zeitgeist: The Movie" two stars. It's not bad as a film production. But no, this is not really my cup of tea. Nor, apparently, my zeitgeist.

Originally posted in 2012. Today, "Zeitgeist" *would* be condemned as "fascist" and quickly suppressed, showing how fast the zeitgeist can change, at least in cyberspace...