Snowmobile

 

Our man in Quebec has some problems with his car... 

Global fall

 

More like summer!

"A Year on Planet Earth" is a four-part nature documentary released in 2022. I just watched the fall or autumn episode. It´s pretty eclectic and follow very different animals all over the world. It´s not even clear whether it´s always "fall" in the various locations.

Elephants in Africa, grizzlies in the Yukon, chipmunks in Quebec, muskoxen in Norway, Amur falcons chasing swarming termites in Nagaland, and monarch butterflies in both Maine and Mexico...you get the picture. Add zillions of crabs on Christmas Island and you´re done! 

I think we´ve seen most of this before, tbh, but it was a nice diversion from the election drama in a certain North American nation...

Globalist false flag

 

Or the greatest conspiracy theory ever hatched? The Why Files takes on Project Blue Beam, here associated with Quebecois writer Serge Monast. 

This particular conspiracy theory claims that an evil cabal will try to "unite humanity" by staging a fake UFO attack. I think it´s obvious that the purported "project" is really a mash up of various earlier conspiracist ideas about the NWO, the Anti-Christ, and so on. Ronald Reagan´s UN speech about a hypothetical alien invasion may have triggered these particular speculations. The Christian fundamentalist aspect makes it curious that people who aren´t even close to being such also promote the "theory". The cultic milieu strikes again!  

I think I´ve heard of Blue Beam about 20 years ago when reading some book by David Icke. It´s a metaphor for globalism and one world government, something the Why Files actually points out. Fear of technological innovation (including genetic manipulation) is another ingredient.

"Is it possible"? Hardly, even apart from the fact that Monast apparently plagiarized some aspects of his false flag scenario from "Star Trek". Our globalist overlords simply don´t have the necessary technology or energy sources. Nor are they sufficiently united. Or even sufficiently smart, LOL. 

So nah, this will remain (admittedly interesting) science fiction.     

Kamala Harris is...Indian!

 

I knew that Canadian cult-buster Henri Jolicoeur liked Kamala Harris (he mentioned her in an attack video on Tulsi Gabbard), but I didn´t know that Harris went to high school in Jolicoueur´s home town. But then, maybe his "home town" is Greater Montreal! The video above is a tribute to Kamala Harris´ Indian mother. Linked for information purposes.  

The hidden children

 

An article by Magnus Lundberg about a cult-like group in Quebec, the Apostles of Infinite Love. The group has a peculiar message rooted in Catholic traditionalism. It seems to have both male and female leaders. The supreme head calls himself Pope. The message is strongly apocalyptic and centers on Marian apparitions. It´s also conservative, in the sense that the Apostles reject the "modernism" of the Catholic Church, claims that its infiltrated by Masons, and so on. 

And yes, they abuse children.

The Canadian authorities raided the "monastery" of the Apostles inumerable times, and it seems their suspicions were well founded, since decades later, some of the former children - now adults - confirmed that the group was indeed abusive. Note that the "nuns" also participated in the beatings and humiliations. In the end, all charges against the Apostles were dropped, since the evidence secured by the social workers during the raids decades earlier had disappeared?!

Why are we not surprised...

Maybe it´s time for the real Virgin Mary to make a new apparition, I don´t know.   

Apostles of Infinite Love

The Young Turks take over

Credit: Harrystyle 

The Spartacist League (SL) is a small US Trotskyist group based in New York City. They also have even smaller groups of supporters in other nations, including Canada, regrouped under the banner of the International Communist League (ICL). The SL and their foreign clones have long been notorious for their strong sectarianism, absurd political positions and bizarre antics. Despite their nominal Trotskyism, the group often sounded pro-Stalinist, indeed as a parody of Soviet propaganda, extending support to the likes of Jaruzelski, Andropov and the PDPA of Afghanistan. Defense of NAMBLA and other forms of decadence was another weird staple. 

While sounding more "dogmatic" and "radical" than most other Trotskyist groups, the "Sparts" also took positions many would consider "right wing", such as opposition to open borders and a de facto defense of the national rights of "colonial settlers" such as Israelis, Northern Ireland Protestants and perhaps even White South Africans. In Canada, the Spartacist League (or Trotskyist League, to use their local moniker) took "Anglo-chauvinist" positions and opposed Quebecois national self-determination...until they reached the conclusion that Canada would be better off without them, essentially advocating that Quebec be kicked out of the Canadian commonwealth! In general, the Spartacist tendency had a tendency to view all forms of nationalism as reactionary pure and simple, while the more traditional Leninist and Trotskyist approach is that the nationalism of the oppressed is at least partially progressive. Another peculiar trait of the Spartacists is that they often criticized Lenin and Trotsky for not being radical enough (really sectarian and/or pro-Stalinist enough). 

Few people even on the far left gave a damn after the mid-1990´s, when the Spartacist League and their clone network had become passive and demoralized. Still, I´m sure a few eyebrows here and there were raised when in 2017, the Spartacists unexpectedly changed their long-standing sectarian/right-wing line on the national question. At least kind of. Even more surprising was the fact that the new orientation bore the imprimatur of the Spartacist League´s founder and leader, James Robertson. Much is unclear in this story, but it seems that the old man had grown tired of his own long-term cadres, and therefore promoted a group of "Young Turks" to replace them in the leadership of the Spartacist tendency. The internal rebels were based in Montreal, Canada. Still, as I pointed out at the time, the line change left many questions unaswered. It was either very impressionistic, or a compromise between Robertson and the Montreal collective. Robertson passed away in 2019, and in 2020, the SL and ICL pretty much ceased functioning, apparently due to problems related to the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns. 

However, it seems the Spartacist tendency is back in business again. The most recent issue of their magazine "Spartacist", dated 1 September 2023, announces more dramatic political changes than in 2017. With the Young Turks, or should we call them Young Quebec, now firmly in control of the operation, the Spartacist League has essentially repudiated its entire historical program! The Spartacists have morphed into a fairly regular Trotskyist group. They still sound very sectarian, but it seems to be a more "normal" Trotskyist sectarianism than the erratic form that has been typical for this tendency since at least the late 1970´s. They also repudiate the "right wing" deviations on the national question in a more thorough-going and intellectually fulfilled fashion than five years ago.  

The documents reprinted in "Spartacist" No. 68 express unconditional support for national liberation struggles in the Third World, calls for an "anti-imperialist united front", defends the Bolshevik line on the "colonial question" adopted at the Second and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International, and repudiates the Spartacist tendency´s erstwhile de facto support for Israel, the Northern Ireland Protestants and the like. One conference resolution expresses support for Argentina in the Falkland-Malvinas War, while the erstwhile position was a nominal "neutrality" that could be seen as pro-British. Another calls for an independent Puerto Rico. 

Indeed, the National Question seems to be the axis around which the entire line change circles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the leadership of the international tendency now seems to be in the hands of French-speaking Canadians, reacting against the erstwhile "Anglophone" orientation. Topics *not* covered include the Black Question in the United States, where the Spartacist League has traditionally called for "revolutionary integrationism", and the immigrant question where - as noted earlier - the original take was opposition to open borders. Nor do the documents comment on the Spartacist League´s bizarre "military defense" of the Islamic State terrorists against the YPG. 

There is still much to be done here!

It´s possible that the Spartacist League is backing off from their strong Stalinophilia, since the expositions on the Soviet Union and China - while not explicitly breaking with the pro-Stalinist positions of Robertson - nevertheless sound more regularly Trotskyist. Yes, "military defense" of the "degenerated and deformed workers´ states" against "imperialism and capitalism" is called for, but its also strongly emphasized that the best form of defense of the "workers´ states" would be proletarian socialist revolution abroad and political revolution against Stalinism at home. 

It´s also interesting to note the SL´s and ICL´s new analysis of the world situation after the fall of the Soviet bloc. They see the latest three decades as a real albeit temporary stabilization of the world capitalist system under United States hegemony, with the turning point being essentially now. While the capitalist world order is imploding, a confrontation looms between the United States and China. This is important, since the Spartacist League still view China as a "deformed workers´ state", in other words as worth defending (despite Stalinism and state capitalism) against the capitalist world. Presumably, Putin´s Russia is just a Chinese or would-be Chinese proxy in this scenario. The above also means that the national bourgeoisie in the Third World will be temporarily strengthened, since they again feel they have room for manouevre like during the Cold War, tilting towards China as the new hegemon. And that in turn makes it necessary to apply the above-mentioned tactics of the anti-imperialist united front, und so weiter. Thus, despite the worsening world situation, "Spartacist" thus sounds cautiously optimistic. 

One thing never mentioned once (as far as I can see) is the climate crisis. Is the neo-Spartacist League climate denialist or climate indifferentist? There does seem to be an "anti-woke" tendency present in the documents, since the Spartacists constantly attack "liberalism" and regard it as "more and more hysterical". Feminism is condemned as a Trojan horse of imperialism in the Third World (the same logic can obviously be applied to LGBTQ++), NGOs are attacked, and so on. Climate activism is often considered a "woke" thing, so one sure wonders if the non-mention is deliberate! During the political crisis in Canada in 2022 surrounding the truckers, the local Spartacists distributed pro-trucker leaflets. It will be interesting to see if this tendency will make a thorough reassesment of their historical support for decadence and libertinage...

I suppose you could say that the SL and ICL, while repudiating the absurdly contradictory line of "Robertsonism", has now been saddled with the usual contradictions of mainline Trotskyism!

Gotta love the aesthetic

 

The front cover of the latest issue of Spartacist, magazine of the Spartacist League and its international co-thinkers. The ones in Montreal, in particular? 

I haven´t read it yet, but judging by the headlines and some quick browsing (and the complaints of the competing International Bolshevik Tendency), the Spartacist League has now definitively broken with its past and become a more "normal" Trotskyist group, albeit still a very sectarian one. 

They even criticize James Robertson at one point in the document. The main "turn" seems to be support for national liberation struggles in the Third World (and, I suppose, Quebec), while still calling for "Communist leadership" in such a sectarian manner that nobody will pay attention anyway.

I might consider reading all of it (for ol´ times sake) at some later point. Meanwhile, I have to admit that the Soviet Russian aesthetics of that front cover are quite good... 

Deconstructing Tulsi Gabbard

 

Tulsi Gabbard is a controversial American politician and political commentator whose main claim to fame is probably her 2019-2020 primary election campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Gabbard destroyed Kamala Harris´ presidential bid before the voting even started, but as we all know, Harris staged a comeback later. Still, it *is* intriguing that Harris´ attempt to become POTUS in her own right was upset by a “fringe” candidate like Gabbard!

Supposedly a progressive leftist, Gabbard veered rather strongly towards the populist right, eventually leaving the Democratic Party altogether in 2022 for unknown pastures. Judging by the presentations linked above, Gabbard may never have been a leftist at all, and perhaps deliberately prettified her past.

It´s been known for a long time that Gabbard had contacts with Hindu nationalists (she even met Modi). Her Hindu beliefs are derived from a breakaway group from the Hare Krishna movement, known as Science of Identity. Both her parents (not just her mother) are members of Science of Identity, and so is Gabbard herself. The group is based on Hawaii, where the Gabbards live. The founder-leader of this group, Chris Butler, is a really raving homophobe. So is Mark Gabbard, Tulsi´s father, who claims to be a Catholic but is actually a member of Butler´s organization. While it´s not super-secret that Gabbard is somehow connected to Butler´s people, she has tried to downplay both the connection and essentially denied her guru´s homophobia.

The narrator of the videos linked above is a Canadian counter-cultist with somewhat eclectic spiritual beliefs, Henri Jolicoeur. As a very young man, Jolicoeur was a member of the Hare Krishna movement (the ISKCON) and worked closely with none other than Shrila Prabhupada himself. Indeed, he was tasked with spying on Chris Butler´s ISKCON temple in Hawaii! It seems Butler was creating his very own, shall we say, cult following already back then. Yes, Jolicoeur regards Science of Identity as a dangerous cult, prompting Butler´s lawyers to sue him for libel in both Hawaii and Quebec as a result (the present status of the lawsuit is unclear to me). 

The videos are interesting, not just for what they may reveal about Gabbard or Butler, but also due to the narrator´s reminiscences. Judging by other uploads on his channel, Jolicouer knows all of the ISKCON “fallen gurus” who took over the Hare Krishna after Prabhupada´s death…and he despises all of them (or almost all). There is some other interesting info of a counter-cultist nature on the channel too, so stay tuned for more links!

As for Tulsi Gabbard, she did have an intriguing ability to politically attract a rather motley crew of people. Among people who had positive things to say about her were Alt Right cyber-demon and citizen´s reporter Mike Cernovich, pro-populist leftist Jimmy Dore and perennial kind-of-liberal gadfly Michael Tracey (who even endorsed her for president). I was interested in her politics, too, but things change and so on.

Presented her for all it may be worth. 

 

The Canadian colony

 

“The CPC(ML): A Revisionist Organization of Agent Provocateurs” is a pamphlet published in 1978 by IN STRUGGLE! (yes, you´re supposed to spell it that way). It was later known as the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada IN STRUGGLE! (still with the exclamation mark at the end). Despite the peculiar name, the organization seems to have been a fairly main-line Marxist-Leninist group, if there is such a thing. In Struggle were independent-minded enough not to slavishly follow the “line” of any particular Communist regime. They supported Enver Hoxha´s Albania against post-Mao China, but never accepted Hoxha´s retrospective attacks on Mao Zedong. In Struggle even tried to unite various Marxist-Leninist groups in Canada, to no avail.

In the pamphlet, In Struggle take on a very different political animal: the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), a notorious and notoriously kooky outfit led by one Hardial Bains. The CPC(ML) were originally Maoists, then switched to supporting Albania. Despite their bad reputation on the Canadian left, the CPC(ML) managed to get the Albanian franchise and became officially recognized by the Party of Labor of Albania. The CPC(ML) still exist, but these days, they support Cuba and North Korea instead. I originally assumed that the CPC(ML) were mostly notorious for their tiresome rhetoric and personality cult of Bains, but if In Struggle´s pamphlet is something to go after, the real history is darker (but also very typical).

At least during the 1970´s, the CPC(ML) were an adventurist and extremely sectarian group of a kind that frequently pops up on the far left. They often physically attacked other leftists with baseball bats or bricks, attempted to take over leftist rallies and protest marches, invaded leftist or workers´ cafés to read bombastic declarations, and so on. Entryism was another tactic, for instance when Bains´ group pretended to form local branches of a competing Marxist-Leninist group. When the Bains group officially proclaimed itself a party, the CPC(ML) claimed that a highly respected Marxist-Leninist activist in Canada, Jack Scott, was their party chairman, when in reality Scott had denounced them as provocateurs! 

Bains was of Indian (Punjabi) descent, and successfully managed to infiltrate the East Indian community in Canada through various front groups. Or maybe not so successfully, since the CPC(ML)´s attempts to take over Sikh “temples” (really a kind of community organizations) sometimes ended in huge physical fights outside the meeting halls. Naturally, the Bainsites condemned all competing leftist groups (including In Struggle) as “police agents” and what not. In this pamphlet, In Struggle repays the favor by accusing the CPC(ML) of being literal fascists…

Like many other volatile groups of this kind, the CPC(ML) combined adventurism and bombastic sloganeering with positions far to the “right” of most leftists. A case in point is their Canadian nationalism. Bains claimed that Canada is a colony of the United States, and the Canadian revolution must therefore be “democratic” rather than socialist, uniting “all the people”, including anti-American capitalists. Indeed, one of Bains´ main objections to the Maoist “three worlds theory” was that it claimed that Canada was imperialist! He thus criticized the Communist Party of China *from the right*. 

This Canadian nationalist line created problems for Bains in Quebec, where he instead tried to promote Quebecois nationalism. In Struggle, which supported the right of Quebec to self-determination while arguing against actual independence, charges Bains with the crassest opportunism, since his weird party didn´t really fight for French language rights in the here and now (thereby adapting to Anglo-chauvinism), while calling for a bloc with Quebecois nationalists in the abstract. 

Not sure who might be interested in this material today, but there you go.

Heed the words of the sweet lord, oh, ye of little faith

 

"If you reject me, I will make you incarnate as a microfossil in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt of Northern Quebec, and it will take at least 3.77 billion years until you get another shot at it somewhere in Tompkins Square Park!!!" 

Occasion for scandal

 

Catholic traditionalism is a current inside and outside the Catholic Church which opposes the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). There are several different kinds of traditionalists, and to the general public they are mostly known for two things (if at all): the Tridentine Mass (often referred to as "the Latin Mass")...and Mel Gibson! But perhaps there is more?  

"Occult Lineages within the Traditional Roman Catholic Movement" is a book by Catholic ritual magician (sic) Agostino Taumaturgo. The author is apparently a former traditionalist, and in this little book sets out to expose the hidden connections between this current and - wait for it - occultism. 

Or maybe not. 

After reading the booklet, I can only conclude that there is zero evidence for any *real* (or shall we say "material") connection between the Trad Catholics and the minions of the Evil One. Indeed, Taumaturgo himself doesn´t claim that there is. 

Rather, the claim is that certain lineages of ordination that exist within the Traditional Catholic movement have also been appropriated by Martinists, Gnostics, Freemasons and so on. Moreover, the lineages include closeted homosexuals and even a convicted paedophile. Since traditionalist Catholics are apparently notorious for their purism and purity-spiraling, this could (perhaps) be an "occasion for scandal" (something these people have a paranoid fear about). Taumaturgo believes otherwise, and theologically speaking he seems quite correct. Indeed, it´s not even clear why he published the pamphlet in the first place. Click bait? Or to shake the trad Catholics out of their complecency, since they tend to believe that their priests are 100% pure and holy-holy?

The Catholic Church, naturally, claims "apostolic succession". The claim is that the Church priesthood can be traced back, through a series of valid and licit ordinations, all the way to the original apostles. And since they were (one way or another) appointed by Christ, He is the true founder of the Church. Groups which have broken away from the Catholic Church often also claim apostolic succession, as do some groups with no Catholic backgrounds at all, for instance the "Liberal Catholic Church" (really a front for the Adyar-based Theosophical Society). For complex theological and crypto-political reasons, the Catholic Church consider some breakaway Churches to have valid ordinations and hence apostolic succession. At the same time, their ordinations aren´t considered licit. That an ordination of a priest can be valid and yet illicit is a difficult concept to wrap one´s head around, and indeed the Church often avoids discussing the matter, fearing that malcontents will only pick up the "valid" part! Note also that the succession isn´t broken by sinful conduct. An ordination is valid even if the priest is an open or closeted heretic or lives in mortal sin.

Having valid ordinations and hence apostolic succession isn´t just a bureaucratic or nostalgic thing - at least not if you take Catholicism seriously as a religious path - but also gives the priest the needed authority to administer the sacraments, some of which are considered necessary for salvation, being conduits of God´s grace. If a splinter group from the Catholic Church holds a similar view of the sacraments, it obviously becomes extremely important for them to demonstrate that their priests and bishops, too, have at least "valid" ordinations. Still, I have to say that the whole thing looks like a LARP sometimes, with various obscure groups (some with only tenuous connections to Catholicism) swapping lineages with each other. Sometimes, the discussion enters La-La-Land: apparently, some occultists claim that Aleister Crowley had apostolic succession!

Most of the criss-crossing lineages described by Taumaturgo seem to originate in the Old Catholic Churches, which despite their name, have nothing to do with Catholic traditionalism. Old Catholics are the result of splits from the Catholic Church during the 18th and 19th centuries. While the Old Catholics are of course seen as schismatic by the "real" Catholic Church, the latter grudgingly admits that the Old Catholic ordinations are technically valid (but not licit - see above). This means that even a person with no prior connection to the Catholic Church can recieve a valid ordination from Old Catholics, and over the years, many spiritual seekers have done so. This is how Old Catholic lineages were appropriated, or perhaps expropriated, by occultists. The so-called Independent Sacramental Movement (which includes the Liberal Catholic Church) consist in large part of groups with Old Catholic ordinations. Some ISM groups seem pretty mainstream theologically, while others practice various forms of esotericism. Taumaturgo has discovered a few Old Catholic lineages which were appropriated by esoterical groups and then found their way into Catholic traditionalism. I almost suspect it may have been by mistake!

The book is frankly hard to follow, not because it´s badly written but due to the nature of the topic, but if I understand the author correctly, the main "occult" lineages have gone the way of Roger Caro´s L´Eglise Universelle de la Nouvelle Alliance, a French group which at least outwardly was Catholic in theological orientation, while a literally esoteric (secret) section may have been Gnostic or Rosicrucian. A member of this group, Mamistra Olivares, had first been consecrated by Caro himself and later by a traditionalist. (An ordination of a bishop is often referred to as a "consecration".) Olivares subsequently consecrated another traditionalist. But is there any evidence that the traditionalists knew about Olivares´ real views? 

Another person consecrated by Caro, George Bellamere, subsequently consecrated André Barbeau, the leader of a group in Canada known as the Catholic Charismatic Church (Barbeau also held other lineages, including one from the official Catholic Church). Several traditionalist bishops can trace their lineage back to this person (including a certain Agostino Taumaturgo). But the Charismatic Church doesn´t seem to have been occult, and once again it´s not clear whether Barbeau knew that Caro was a Gnostic or Rosicrucian. Weirdly, Barbeau was also part of another ordination lineage which included people with Theosophical connections or near-Theosophical ideas, but once again, he might not have known this, since the lineage also goes through Old Catholics.

Are you even following this? ;-)

Taumaturgos ends with predicting that the traditionalist Catholic movement will be near-dead in 100 years. If or when the Catholic Church reintroduces the Tridentine Mass as an option, most Catholics who attend traditionalist services will quickly revert back to the official Church, leaving only a handful of hardliners. Apparently, most people who hang around the Trad movement do it for the Latin Mass alone, having little time for the rest of the package. He believes that changes are bound to happen once the first "GenX-er Pope" is elected, such a person being born too late to have any emotional investment either way in the post-Vatican II controversies surrounding the mass. Besides, many Catholics grew up with the New Mass and might not see it as particularly problematic in the first place. The author doesn´t seem to have any solution to the problem (or predicament). 

While "Occult Lineages in the Traditional Roman Catholic Movement" doesn´t expose any actual devil-worship among Mel Gibson´s friends, it may be of some interest to a special kind of hardline nerds and sect-watchers who simply must know every detail about every peculiar little group out there. In other words, people like yourself! Or perhaps me? Available free from the author´s website. 

Revelation on the road to Ottawa

The original social-Trudeauite as a baby

Latest gossip from the Trotskyist fringe. The post-Robertsonite Spartacist League goes full Strasser here. Both hits and major misses in these frankly rather confused statements from their Canadian affiliate, the Trotskyist League (really just the Spartacist station on the fringe of the surrey). 

"Labor must defend the truckers"

"Socialist" Fightback: Social-Trudeauites

Francophone fun house

The insanity continues... 

Quebec to tax the unvaccinated

Revelation on the road to Montreal: How the Spartacist League discovered the right of nations to self-determination

”Spartacist” is the publication of the so-called International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), a network of small revolutionary groups centered on the U.S. Spartacist League (SL). The Spartacists are notorious on the far left for their pro-Stalinism (despite being Trotskyists), sectarianism, and general kookery. They have also been frequently accused of First World chauvinism, anti-immigration racism and pro-imperialism. In issue no 65 of ”Spartacist”, dated Summer 2017, the group reprints a conference resolution titled ”The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra”. The issue itself has the title ”The Fight for Leninism on the National Question”. The resolution supposedly reverses the erstwhile chauvinist course of the organization.

Or does it *really*? The traditional Spartacist position on the national question is that ”interpenetrated peoples” can´t demand self-determination under capitalism. The examples usually given were Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. In practice, the Spartacists defended the national rights of the Jews in Palestine and the Protestants in Ireland beneath a cover of ra-ra-revolutionary verbiage. It´s *not* clear from ”Spartacist no 65” whether they have revised their understanding of these conflicts. Nor is it clear whether the SL has repudiated its opposition to open borders or its de facto pro-British stance during the Falkland-Malvinas War.

What is clear is that the SL has changed its understanding of many other national conflicts, but these don´t involve ”interpenetrated peoples” as usually defined. Still, it does represent a break with the traditional line of this particular tendency. Thus, the SL now supports independence for Quebec and a privileged position for the French language in that province. Their previous position is condemned as Anglo-chauvinist. (Strictly speaking, the Spartacists began calling for Quebecois independence already in 1995, but mostly to get rid of the national question from the Canadian agenda altogether, in effect a position of kicking Quebec out so Anglo workers could go on with more important ”class struggle” issues.) The Spartacist League now also calls for the independence of Catalonia, the Basque countries and Corsica. Further, they propose the partition of Belgium into three or four new republics.

Only a few Third World issues are commented upon. Apparently, the Spartacist tendency used to oppose the independence of Guadaloupe, a French colony in the Caribbean with nominal status as a French departement. This position was reversed by the conference. Curiously, the Spartacist take on Puerto Rico used to be the exact opposite: this U.S. dependency should be *forced* to become independent regardless of whether the inhabitants like it or not! Here, the international conference took the eminently sensible position that the Puerto Ricans themselves should decide on their exact relation to the United States – many Puerto Ricans, in fact, demand statehood (i.e. they want the island to become the 51st U.S. state).As for Syria, the SL upholds the (bizarre) position of military support to the Islamic State terrorists against the Kurds – the Kurds, it seems, are still Turds. If the Albanians are still goat-fuckers is, alas, never explained…

Why did the ”International Communist League” suddenly change some of its long-standing positions in this manner? I suspect the reason is a power struggle within the tendency between a certain Comrade Coelho and an old guard of entrenched petty apparatchiks at the Spartacist HQ in New York City. Spartacist founder-leader James Robertson has apparently left his semi-retirement and joined forces with Coelho, who thus carried the day. The new ICL executive committee is said to be 70% non-American and the goal is to make the entire organization 70% ethnic minority. In their fight against the old-timers, Jim & Coelho had the support of non-Anglophone sections in Quebec, Greece, Mexico and elsewhere. Since the Spartacist League and their co-thinkers don´t really *do* much, I strongly suspect that the entire change of line is really the reflection of a change of guard within an increasingly irrelevant sect. Those who liked the old line better can join two old splits from the SL, the Bolshevik Tendency and the Internationalist Group, which both uphold the right of English-speakers to carry out their business in Anglais even in Montreal, Acadia and (perhaps) Paris.

Cultists of the upper class

This man has no connection to the OST, I just wanted to find a photo of a modern "Templar"! 

“The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death” is a collection of scholarly, sometimes super-scholarly, articles about the Solar Temple cult and their 1994 mass suicide in Switzerland and Quebec. Alongside the sad endings of the Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians and Heaven´s Gate, this is one of the most notorious cult suicides (or rather murder-suicides). It´s also a problem for scholars of New Religious Movements, since they usually *defend* cults. This is shown very clearly in this collection, when several contributors claim that (of course) only the underprivileged join cults, so how can the privileged people in the Solar Temple have been cultists, and commit suicide to boot? Why indeed. This class prejudice is actually quite revealing!

I don´t think the contributors ever solve the riddle of why the OST committed mass suicide (perhaps an anti-cultist psychologist could do it?), but some explanations do suggest themselves. Contributing factors seem to have included the waning charisma of the cult leaders Jouret and Di Mambro, embarrassing exposures of the inner workings of the “temple” in the media (including holograms to fake appearances of the Ascended Masters) and a generally paranoid worldview centered on ideas about an apocalypse at some point during the 1990s. The OST claimed to be in touch with “masters” at Sirius. The original survivalist orientation was scrapped at some point in favor of a direct “transition” (or bug out?) to the Dog Star. It´s possible that the murder-suicides were planned years in advance, a similarity to both the Peoples Temple and Heaven´s Gate. The trigger, just as in the Peoples Temple case, was a brutal assassination of perceived enemies of the cult. The entire mass suicide was ritualistic, a similarity with Heaven´s Gate. Some were murdered or tricked into participating (like Peoples Temple). On a deeper level, the events are probably impossible to understand unless you discuss them in terms of “brain-washing” and “mind control”, or perhaps really raving irrationality, which pro-cult scholars obviously refuse to do.

The most interesting articles were those dealing with OST´s complex history and pre-history. The OST combined several different strands of occultism, including the pseudo-Catholic Masonic ritualism of the “Neo-Templar” tradition and the Theosophical belief in ascended masters from other planets. Homeopathy, aristocratic elitism and ecological concerns were also part of the mix. The order had a long string of front organizations. Their lectures were held at both New Age bookstores and expensive hotels. Virtually all members were privileged, including high-ranking civil servants and a mayor in Quebec. The political connections of the OST are somewhat murky. Cult leader Luc Jouret was a Communist in his youth, but then joined the Belgian Army and participated in a raid in Zaire against left-wing rebels. Of course, it´s possible that Jouret was a nationalist Maoist (they supported France and Zaire against “Soviet social imperialism”). Later, he teamed up with “former” Nazi Julian Origas in an occult order. The occult underground in France may have had connections to secretive Gaullist operatives and even the notorious P2 lodge in Italy, but it´s not clear if OST were part of this network. This volume strongly suggests that they weren´t. 

I get the impression that the OST were at bottom a highly aberrant Theosophical-New Age group which used the ritual strapping of Neo-Templar Masonry to attract lapsed or dissident Catholics (Francophone nations are predominantly Catholic). I suppose the references to the Knights Templar are also connected to the “aristocratic” orientation of this particular cult.

The main lesson of the OST episode is the usual one we all heard before: stay away from cults, including secretive upper class cabals. Funny that lesson was lost on the editors and contributors to this volume (which is also grossly overpriced – do I have to be an aristocrat to afford it?)

Here be monster lore (and quasi-sturgeons)

“Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis” is the English translation (or version) of an originally French-language book published in Quebec. The British publisher has the humorous name Fortean Tomes. May I guess that it's connected to Fortean Times? Interestingly, the authors of the tome are skeptics, which raises the question why the semi-official organ of Forteanism would publish it? My guess is that the monstrous volume of fascinating information got Fort's disciples hooked on this project – that, and creating chaos and mischief, something Fort would have greeted with some satisfaction!

The book analyzes traditions about both lake and sea monsters from French-speaking Canada, Europe and Chile. Chronologically, we are dealing with the entire period from the Renaissance until the early 1970's (the tome was published in 1988 – my copy has a peculiar insert dated 1989). Most of the book is written by Michel Meurger, a French folklorist. The authors try to avoid the more famous lake monsters, such as “Champ” in Lake Champlain or “Nessie” in Loch Ness, probably to emphasize that they are part of a *much* larger problem-complex. Sources include interviews with eye-witnesses and amateur monster-hunters, dusty volumes of old books, and newspaper clippings. The book's layout is somewhat confusing, with the pictures and picture-captions not always corresponding to anything in the main text.

Meurger argues that both crypto-zoologists and modern skeptics have “secularized” old folklore which was really part of a symbolical, mythological landscape with only tenuous connections to “real” animals. To the crypto-zoologist, the lake monster is an unknown animal, or perhaps a known animal previously thought extinct. To the skeptic, it's a misidentified known animal, or simply a floating log. Both miss the point. The original monster-legends feature creatures which are absurd and obviously impossible from a biological viewpoint. Examples include “the water-horse”, mermaids, extremely large snakes *on land* which then move to the sea, or chimaeras. Often, these beings are associated with the supernatural: strange lights, fairies or shape-shifting. They function as portents for disasters, or even the apocalypse itself. They are also symbolic, such as snakes coiled like an Ouroboros. Sometimes, diffusion of monster motifs can be followed rather exactly, as when European monsters were suddenly spotted in Canada by French settlers. Meurger believes that the process of gradual “secularization” can be followed at the small Swiss lake of Selisbergsee rather exactly from 1584 to 1926. The local monster, the Elbst, was originally conceived as a ghostly shape-shifter and supernatural portent, and was transformed only later into a dragon-like creature. Even later, it simply became a “Big Fish”!

That being said, echoes of the mythological landscape survive even in modern accounts at many locations, something obvious from the book's detailed description of Quebecois lore. The monsters don't always conform to the Nessie-plesiosaur stereotype. Often, they are said to have horse-like heads with manes (compare the “water-horse”). The monsters are said to inhabit the deepest and darkest parts of the lake, where the bodies of drowned men are never found. There are frequent legends about underground rivers connecting different lakes with one another. They can also be associated with isolated islands. The locals may regard the monster-haunted lakes as “evil”, and try to avoid them as much as possible. In other words: monsters are liminal creatures, found at the boundaries between the dead and the living, or between the wild and the civilized. Meurger makes the intriguing observation that the “misidentified floating log” beloved of skeptics is actually just another mythological motif. In the traditional stories, lake monsters are said to disguise themselves as, or be misidentified as, floating logs… Ultimately, however, even traditional lore is subject to evolution. Modern versions of the lurking monster mythologem include “the mysterious submarine” or “the oversized sturgeon”, and there have been tie-ins with the UFO craze and even the black helicopters!

Is there *anything* real behind all these purported observations? Meurger says he doesn't really know. Perhaps we are dealing with visionary experiences, but if so, they are hallucinatory in character, not genuinely “occult”. Perhaps people really do misidentify strange wave patterns, known animals, and so on. However, in both cases the “real” experience triggers an entire complex of myths which then moulds the experience in traditional channels. The person claiming a monster sighting isn't really an eye-witness, rather he is a folklore informant. Meanwhile, the scholar or scientist claiming that the bizarre chimera or merman is “really” a dinosaur or a sea-cow is setting himself up as a representative of Civilization above Barbarism. Renaissance and early modern scholars who professed belief in *some* naturalized monsters also had ideological agendas, such as proving that Scandinavia was just as good as the world of the Bible or Pliny.

“Lake Monster Traditions” can be read by friend or foe alike. To the skeptic, it offers a somewhat more sophisticated explanation for monster observations than the usual “misidentified trivial X”. To the crypto-zoologist, it's a virtual guide to where the cryptids may actually be lurking. To the occultist, it will prove the survival of the fairies in the modern world. And to the Fortean, I suppose it means that ontological chaos and epistemological mischief won't abate any time soon…

The Raël Revolution

Claude Vorilhon or Raël is the founder-leader and prophet of a strange new religion, known as Raëlism, the Raëlian Movement or the Raëlian Church. The term "Raëlian Revolution" has also been used. Critics consider it a bizarre cult. This curious movement became big news about ten years ago, when their company Clonaid claimed to have successfully cloned a human baby. Otherwise, the Raëlian religion is centred on effective worship of space aliens. Vorilhon claims to have met a highly evolved alien in the French mountain region known as the Massif Central, and was later allowed to visit his home planet. He retold the story in two short books, "The book which tells the truth" and "Extra-terrestrials took me to their planet". Later, he also published a third book called "Let's welcome our fathers from space". Today, Raël's three most important works are available under one cover, but there are also older editions of each book in various languages. 

For whatever reason, the Raëlian revolutionaries were very much in fashion during the late 1990's and early 2000's. Raëlians were often featured on Swedish TV, usually uncritically. They also evangelized outside the major metro station in Stockholm City. I bought their material from one of the eager missionaries. It seems the Swedish branch had run out of the second part of Raël's space trilogy, which worried the missionary greatly. He emphasized how important it was to read Raël's three main books in the right order, and almost refused to let me buy the third volume unless I gave him my phone number, so he could contact me when the second part had again become available...

Ha ha ha. That's how they always try to hook you, isn't it? I didn't fall for his cultic pitch, and insisted on buying volumes one and three, to which he eventually relented. Nor did he get my phone number.

The Raëlians have always struck me as a quintessentially postmodern phenomenon, typical Maastricht-Clinton era-fall of Communism stuff. The libertine message, the trans-sexual and transhumanist angles, the constant attacks on the Catholic Church, and the mainstreaming of the UFO subculture, all this sounds "so 1997".

Or does it?

I was surprised when finally reading Raël's first book, "The book which tells the truth" (that's a translation of the French title, by the way). It sounded extremely anachronistic. But then, that's hardly surprising. Vorilhon published the book already in 1974. Reading it was like reading a message from a time long gone. The parallels with the Theosophically-inspired contactee literature from the 1950's and 1960's are obvious, as are the similarities with the speculations of Erich von Däniken (a best selling author at the time). The alien being encountered by Vorilhon is a humanoid space traveller of small stature, landing on Earth in a UFO with the usual flashing lights. He seems to be all-material, but (of course) spiritually advanced. As usual, the aliens are worried about our nuclear tests, and fear that humans might one day be able to hurt the alien race. Also as usual, they can't reveal themselves in public, instead carefully choosing an ordinary mortal as their go-between and messenger. Like George Adamski, Vorilhon is eventually allowed to visit the aliens' home planet, and (again like Adamski) this happens in a sequel to the first book. Also like Adamski, the space brother reveals a mysterious symbol to his chosen messenger, a symbol with obvious Theosophical connotations - a swastika within the Star of David. In contrast to the Theosophically inclined contactees, however, Vorilhon's alien friend is more technological than occultic-Buddhist. He reveals that the space aliens are our creators, that all life on Earth is the result of advanced genetic engineering by alien scientists, and that the aliens have mated with human females. The Bible turns out to be filled with covert references to alien intervention, most notably (surprise) the prophecies of Ezekiel. Here, the similarities with Erich von Däniken become apparent. Naturally, Jesus was a space alien, too! Nor is it surprising that the aliens are known as...the Elohim.

Does this mean that Vorilhon was a mere plagiarizer? Probably not, since his little neo-religious group survived into the 1990's and 2000's, at which point it began to really thrive. (Incidentally, I don't know much about the history of Raëlianism. It's possible that it was well-established in France and Quebec before spreading internationally, but I suppose the global success must have come around the time I met them in Stockholm.) I honestly can't see much in Raël's first book that would move a young adult 25 years later, but at some point, the prophet must have began incorporating sexual libertinism, trans-sexuality and other "postmodern" themes into his message, making it more attractive for a new generation, although I'm sure some of it may have worked at least in California already in 1974! Vorilhon's philo-Semitism and Zionism might perhaps be more controversial in left-liberal circles, who usually support the Palestinians (at least this is the case in Europe).

However, Vorilhon's message also contains elitist and anti-democratic traits. He calls for "geniocracy". Only people with high IQ should have the right to vote, and only geniuses should be allowed to run for office. Jews are the smartest people on the planet, since they are directly descended from the alien scientists. Only those who obey the messenger will be granted a kind of eternal life by the space aliens, etc. Everyone outside the fold is a fool. There even used to be a political party devoted to geniocracy in France, a kind of Raëlian version of the TM's Natural Law Party. Of course, none of the above is particularly surprising, and shows that the Raëlians have pretty much the same authoritarian, cultic tendencies as other new religious movements. Usually, however, the more overtly fascistic ideas are carefully hidden away. Vorilhon seems to be preaching them from the roof tops. Trans-sexual, philo-Semitic fascism? How about that?

In a sense, I agree with the anonymous Raëlian revolutionary who tried to convert me years ago. You probably have to read the three books in the right order, and presumably some of Raël's other books as well, in order to really "get" this movement. "The book that tells the truth" only tells part of the truth, the part which sounds stranded in the fads of the early 1970's.

Stay tuned for further revolutionary developments...