by Dr.Drew Burns

A portion of this post appeared Sun, 01 Feb 2015 06:36:18 under the blog title Conspiracy Theory Digest.

Two Teams

Two dominant domestic conspiracy flows exist in the United States, the secular and the religious. Behind every secular conspiracy theory, an overtly evil cabal of shadowy fiends. Behind every religious conspiracy? The Devil. Whether it’s the Satanic Illuminati, or boring old human Illuminati (with, or without shape-shifting reptiles), they give secret orders to the puppet leaders – the ones’ whose names you know – they all feel the need to telegraph their villainy in television and movies (but almost always English language media), they all seek total earthly control.

Each team has its own strengths, weaknesses, and preferred lines of attack. Secular conspiracy theories excel at reframing massive tragedies experienced with enough emotional distance that it can remain an abstract concept. Your 9/11s, your mass shootings, your encroaching Anthropocene heat death all threaten to expose the comfortably numb to the unbidden realization of their own precarity. Better to grab the pharmakos and whip the scapegoat. The secular takes the lead early, only to later be overtaken by the supernatural.

Contrarily, there exists a subset of conspiracies that always implicate a dark spiritual umbra. When images, sounds, and patterns of movement prove discordant to the churchly senses, the dissonant stimuli appear demonic. The solution is simple. Witchcraft!

To some extent, anything that is not directly sanctioned by a church can (and probably has) been suspected as a satanic conspiracy. Still, nothing connects the Puritans with the alt-right like that great Triumvirate of Fear – fear of change, fear of the uncanny, fear of loss of control. Fear of change, social change especially, is the bedrock of the conservative ethos. The uncanny – the abnormal, the deviant, the other – all so scary to any culture that screams for uniformity, conformity, and aesthetic control.

Control itself is a parasite. Control is not power. Control uses power to zombify. Control is the emerald jewel wasp. Control pumps the cockroach full of dopamine to make it do its bidding. Control is a false power – the zombified cockroach-turned-blissful-germaphobe thinks it is in control while control is laying eggs in his carapace.  The fear of loss of control then is painfully, obviously a fear of freedom.

And again, the Triumvirate is available for the godless just as much as it is for the faithful, but it hits different. The secular either believe they have control, or believe that they should. The religious perspective presumes a supernatural struggle, with the spiritually minded person believing themselves on the side of good. This means, of course, that the religious conspiracy theorist can say with absolute, unironic, certainty that everything that they don’t like is pure evil.

A pattern emerges with spiritually derived conspiracy theories. In the digital world of media saturation – all consisting of images antithetic to the doxa – this takes the form of a conceptual witch hunt. Thus, the individual witch is burned in effigy and the target becomes the witches’ sabbat – the ritual itself. The event, its form and structure, is imbued with occult meaning. The coin toss, kickoff, halftime, the two-minute warning are the opening of the mouth, the offering, the funerary meals, and the closing rites. The team names, too, become fodder for the ceremonial interpretation – the Rams and Bengals transmogrified to represent the battle between Light and Dark.

There are some transitory rituals, to be sure. 2014’s Ice Bucket Challenge phenomenon was a satanic binding ritual and we all know you hail Satan like an uber every time you tip a Monster energy drink. Likewise, every triangle, circle, trapezoid, or combination thereof could reveal the devil, 666, but could just as easily represent the Holy Trinity, the Wheel of Time, a Sacred Geometry.

The ritual par excellence, then, is the Satanic Superbowl’s Illuminati Halftime Sabbat. The religious auditors of truth consistently accuse as evil, anything with advanced digital graphics, significant choreography, intricate or revealing costumes, and rappers. These inquisitors conclude that the Superbowl is a dark opera designed to invert the biblical narrative. All Illuminati magickal manipulation culminates in this most watched annual television concert event in American media. The belief that the Halftime performance is a satanic ritual is persistent and predictable. Fame is inherently vile to many, especially anyone distrustful of the mainstream. Thus, everyone from Beyoncé, to Ke$ha, to Jim Carrey are regularly accused of being figureheads of satanic witch covens on alternative news media (e.g., Before It’s News.com).

The Halftime Show is the witchcraft that binds the viewers to the inversion of God’s Word. The performers become agents working on behalf of the Beast. Thus, the hypnotic song and dance that comprises the most high unholy Illuminati ritual ensnares the viewers and programs them for another year of psycho-social enchantment.

Dark Horses

2015’s Super Bowl Halftime performer Katy Perry was already being accused of Satanic Ritual intent weeks before the event. Perry is another of the popular musicians suspected of being an agent of the cabal. To the Illuminati-spotters, Perry seems a brazen acolyte; so much so that her song Dark Horse was noted by the “lamestream” media for its illuminati content. Among the viewers aware of the Satanic collusion between the NFL and Capitol Records, the true nature of Perry’s Halftime performance was clear. Perry summoned demons in her performance, according to AM talk radio personalities Jan Markell and Paul Ridgeway.

Pronouncing whomever the popular culture representative is as a witch, daemon, or shapeshifter follows a time-honored tradition that pays obeisance to the Triumvirate of Fear. Things just aren’t right! Something’s changing in society and I don’t think I like it! The social order was once predictable and now I am scared I may no longer be able to anticipate the status quo. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt propagated by social media’s capacity to sift like-minded folks into algorithmically concentrated communities. Who is the community fearful of the change that the Halftime Sabbat invokes from the pop culture grimoire?

Consider the line-ups from 2011 to 2021 as an indication of the FUD corral.

2021: The Weeknd

2020: Jennifer Lopez and Shakira

2019: Maroon 5 with Big Boi and Travis Scott (who has more recently been accused of blood sacrifice by the paranoid mob).

2018: Justin Timberlake and the Tennessee Kids along with the University of Minnesota marching band

2017: Lady Gaga

2016: Coldplay, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson and the University of California marching band

2015: Katy Perry, Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott and the Arizona State University marching band

2014: Bruno Mars, Red Hot Chili Peppers

2013: Beyonce and Destiny’s Child

2012: Madonna, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and Cee Lo Green

2011: The Black Eyed Peas, Usher, Slash

An argument might be made that the fear fest centers on the intersection of women comfortably capable of expressing themselves sexually, people of color merely existing in public in ways that would not pass The Hays Code or otherwise bristle a white ethnocentric sense of the uncanny. Then there is the ritualistic inclusion of unannounced guests and massively immersive choreography – one linking chaos and order and the other creating hypnotic visual poetry. The lack of ankle-length dresses and men in suit and tie precipitates the conservative fear of change. Meanwhile, the uncanny imagery seemingly meant to entrance evokes a fear of loss of traditional oppressive values by dint of an audio-visual manifestation of an alternative.  

 The Cabal Knows That You Know That They Know That …

It’s laughable. The Satanic Illuminati throws its annual football ritual. Conspiracy vloggers cry foul. The mainstream media, the alleged mouthpiece of the cabal, report and catalog the vloggers’ rage for posterity and later mockery. Of course, it isn’t just angry bearded guys huffing angrily into their camera phones in trucks parked in Walmart parking lots. A Libertarian PAC, an Arizona lawmaker, and the Qanon faithful add the Satanic Bowl Halftime Sabbat to their list of popular culture boogeymen.

What is the meaning behind the geartrain linking the Q-fried proletariat and the media that it both feeds and seeks to eviscerate? Whether it be to prove and demolish the Satanic Illuminati conspiracy performing public rituals for purpose of brainwashing the masses, or the search for proof shows unequivocally that perception may truly be fundamentally transformed by ideology; it’s clear that it is not proof positive of a healthy distrust in the ruling class. If anything, this parasymbiotic relationship betrays two antagonistic heads of the same clockwork hydra.

Pattern recognition is critical. Famous musicians perform in lavish costumes in front of tens of thousands of spectators and millions of television viewers every year. Maybe something is going on. Obliquely, the corresponding algorithm reveals that “Yes, something is going on, and it’s pure evil!” If you think that a secret cabal controls our minds with hypnotic messaging during the most-watched sporting event of the year, then this would make perfect sense. Why else would the establishment allow us to believe the “official story?” Officially, Pepsi wants you to notice the Halftime Show, so you will think of Pepsi next time you go to the store, listen to Eminem, or get as high as Snoop Dogg. Pepsi pays for famous musicians to perform in over-the-top one-off performances to make this transmogrification of the appetites possible.

Is that mind control? Okay, fair enough, yes. Is it the “powers that be” trying to trick you? Okay, fine, maybe so. But if it is, and you’re pissed about it, you can always avoid Pepsi, or television, or Capitalism. But, of course, that is not what conspiracists are suggesting. The suggestion instead is that the Super Bowl Halftime ritual is a sponsored advert to trick you into trying Satanism, make your kids to become bisexual, teach your family to hate God, and reject Christianity.