The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Now would seem an ideal time for reflection on the bizarre murders committed by Jerad and Amanda Miller this past Sunday in Las Vegas now that the pundits have had a full week to say their piece. Recluse has been eagerly monitoring the conspiratorial right's response to the murders since they unfolded this past Sunday and much of it was rather predictable. Alex Jones naturally detected a false flag operation at work. Raw Story noted:

"On his Monday radio show, Jones immediately called the shooting a “false flag” operation by the U.S. government.

"'Tens of millions of people are flooding here, hundreds of thousands a month, pouring over the borders, being given driver licenses in California to pull the lever to ban guns,' Jones warned. 'We are in the middle of a globalist revolution against this country right now. And my gut tells me that the cold-blood degenerate evil killing of two police officers and a citizen in Las Vegas yesterday is absolutely staged.'

"The conservative radio host said that his 'mind exploded with hundreds of data points' proving that the incident was staged when he first read about it on Sunday.

"Jones explained that conspirators were using Batman villain The Joker as a 'programming template for mind control' because Jerad Miller had dressed as comic book character while he was in Las Vegas.

"As evidence, the host began yelling that Aurora shooter James Holmes — who killed 12 people at a Batman movie in 2012 — had been part of a mind-control program called 'MK-ULTRA.'

“'[Sen. Majority Leader] Harry Reid comes out and says we’re going to do something about this, these are domestic terrorists at the Bundy ranch, everybody needs to be arrested,' Jones continued. 'I told you they’ve been building this behind the scenes, now they’re rolling it out.'

“'Would they stage this now? The answer is absolutely,' he insisted. 'If they would stage al Qaeda attacks, if they would do all of this, would they do this to get our guns and blame the Tea Party that’s sweeping in every runoff election and every primary right now? Defeating, in almost every case, 90 percent of Republican incumbents are going down! 1776 is happening, peacefully, through the system. They want to start a civil war with the police.'

"Jones speculated that the government had sent CIA 'cutouts' to the Pizza shop to kill the officers."

The Joker meme is one of the most interesting aspects of this case and shall be dealt with in a moment. Before getting there though let us consider remarks made by Vigilante Citizen, a website that's held in shockingly high regard by many conspiracy theorists. Largely echoing Jones, VC stated:

"Was Jerad Miller a government agent used to infiltrate and discredit specific groups? Was he programmed to carry out the murders to then take his own life? Was he just a crazy guy with a gun?  It’s difficult to say. It is however clear that the media spin on the Las Vegas shootings is perfectly in line with a top Agenda element of the elite : To discredit, demonize and lump together various groups that are not welcome in the U.S. anymore. Whether we look at Libertarians, constitutionalists, survivalists, or religious and pro-gun groups, they are all being targeted by the elite.

"While I won’t claim that every person involved in these groups is a kind, balanced, law-abiding citizen, it is clear that most of these groups exist because rights and freedoms are being chipped away in America. The main goal of many of these groups is to preserve the original spirit of the U.S. Constitution, which has been seriously violated in the past two decades. However, as the elite is transforming America into a NWO-friendly police-state, these groups are now perceived as a serious threat. More importantly, the elite needs the public to turn against them."

Essentially Jones and VC are echoing many of the longstanding allegations made by the "Patriot movement", i.e. that their movement is the target of relentless persecution by Federal authorities and that even when followers of their ideology carry out horrendous crimes they should not be criticized because these individuals were government agents, mind controlled patsies and so forth.

By and large these claims are baseless, especially the latter. As I've documented before extensively here, the modern day Patriot movement was largely the creation of the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. As that series and my one on the Oklahoma City bombing should have made abundantly clear to regular readers, government agents within the Patriot movement are not the exception, but the rule. The movement has been dominated by "former" high ranking military officers (many of them with backgrounds in intelligence) for decades. Major movement personalities long suspected of involvement in violent crimes (i.e. William Potter Gale, Frazier Glenn Miller,Louis Beam, etc) have inexplicably avoided any serious legal complications until they commit acts so blatant authorities can no longer suppress them (again, Miller).

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

William Milton Cooper, one of the most revered figures in the movement and a "former" Naval intelligence officer

The ties between the Patriot movement and the Pentagon/CIA first began to emerge at the onset of the movement, in the early 1960s, when members of the Minutemen were implicated in arming anti-Castro Cubans in the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle.

"The record suggests that, even if the FBI would carry out raids at the Kennedys' request, Hoover's heart was not into making trouble for Lauchli and his Minutemen. Despite their involvement in illegal bomb-making and sabotage plots, Hoover did not see them as dangerous. In 1965 he told the California Senate committee that 'little real evidence existed that the Minutemen are anything more than essentially a paper organization with just enough followers over the country so that they can occasionally attract a headline.'

"Hoover's remarks are consistent with his career of treating mob financed anti-Communist operators as supportive of, rather than inimical to, his notion of proper law enforcement. In this he was not alone. Mob-backed intelligence operations, such as the New Orleans branch of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, served the purposes of all U.S. interests which hoped to reverse Castro's expropriation of their Cuban assets."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 89)

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

a 1960s era Minutemen poster

Yes, these patriot groups have been implicated in the assassination of JFK, as I noted before here, here, and here. Nor was Hoover's view of these groups atypical of the FBI for decades to come.

"The basic radical-right complaint that it had been the target of COINTELPRO abuses was justified, even if the rhetoric used to denounce the government was steeped in bigotry and exaggerated claims. However, it is difficult to make the case that the Bureau's investigation of the Posse included illegal, COINTERLPRO-style methods. Little evidence exists to support the charge, either in the Bureau's own records, in news reports, or from other sources. Unlike its treatment of dissident groups under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI seemed to respect the constitutional rights of Posse members. Among other things, it closed investigations early – sometimes too early – as soon as it judged that the targeted individuals were engaged in constitutionally protected activity and were not planning any crimes. This was a far cry from the 'anything goes' mentality of the Hoover era. A more serious problems stemmed from the on-again, off-again investigative approach taken by local offices where agents – out of laziness, sympathy with right-wing groups, or concerns for career advancement – did not appear to take the Posse Comitatus very seriously. The memos from Director Kelly may have clamored for more substantial information from the field, but investigating right-wing hate groups was not a path to promotion in the Bureau – that came more readily to agents who distinguished themselves by working 'real' cases involving bank robbery, kidnapping, and murder. The consequences of this dynamic proved embarrassing two decades later when, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Bureau had to scramble to get up to speed on right-wing hate groups because it had failed to devote sufficient resources to the problem much earlier."

(The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas, pgs. 137-138)

COINTELPRO was an operation launched by the FBI in the 1960s against the counterculture as the Vietnam conflict began to rapidly lose support. For years Right Wing groups claimed they were subjected to similar tactics. The Posse Comitatus movement, which began to emerge in the early 1970s, is the basis for much of the modern day militia and sovereign citizen movements. It was founded by a "former" military intelligence officer named Colonel William Potter Gale. It succeeded the Minutemen as the chief militant "grassroots" Right Wing group in the nation and was taken no more seriously than Hoover took the Minutemen.

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

the "Reverend" William Potter Gale

So yes, the claims of persecution by the conspiratorial right are largely frivolous. In point of fact, the Federal government has seemingly did everything in its power to avoid cracking down on the movement until the Oklahoma City bombing. Even then the movement was not dismantled, but simply pushed further underground. A decade later it managed a vigorous resurgence. What's more, it has seemingly more violent than ever. Let us briefly consider some of the violent crime linked to Patriot/white supremacist (I do not think its unfair to lump these two groups together as they and much of the other "grassroots" Right Wing movements are driven by a similar conspiratorial world view) ideology and groups in the past decade:

• Jared Lee Loughner, the Tuscon shooter who murdered six people while trying to assassinate Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, was a major conspiracy buff and an Alex Jones fan
• Serial killer Israel Keyes, who had been active since the late 1990s, was a Christian Identity follower with ties to Elohim City, the white supremacist compound long linked to the Oklahoma City bombing
• As noted here before, Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza's mother was an uber gun enthusiastic and actively engaged in survivalist culture
• The Wisconsin Sikh Temple shooting, which left six dead (seven counting the shooter), was committed by white supremacist Wade Michael Page
• Tom Clements, the head of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was assassinated by a member of the white supremacist 211 Crew gang; the event was surrounded by bizarre circumstances, as I noted at the time
• former White Patriot Party head and Klansman Frazier Glenn Miller was recently arrested for murdering three people during the Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting; Miller was a "former" government informant who was instrumental in derailing the Federal government's Fort Smith Sedition Trail that would have put many of the heads of Patriot movement behind bars; he's also suspected of committing several murders in the 1980s
• In March of 2014 a sovereign citizen was killed during a shootout with police in Ohio
• the son of a sovereign citizen murdered two Alaska State Troopers in May of this year when they tried to arrest his father
• Nearly 100 hate crime murders have been linked to Stormfront, the Internet's premier white supremacist website

And now we have the killing spree of the Millers, in addition to a shooting in Georgia involving a sovereign citizen days before the Las Vegas shootings. Needless to say, this constitutes a lot of dead bodies. And these are just some of the major incidents and random shootings Recluse happened to save in his files. I suspect that the number of minor shootings linked to Patriot ideology and such like over the past ten years is quite significant but no one in a position of authority is trying especially hard to keep track of them all.

Are these indications of a broader conspiracy? Maybe, maybe not. As I noted during my initial examine of the Las Vegas incident, the modern day Patriot movement is displaying striking similarities to the Freecorps movement that emerged in Germany in the wake of the First World War and was instrumental in the rise of Nazism. Freecorps were paramilitary bands actively engaged in suppressing communists and occasionally attempting to overthrow the Weimer Republic. They, like the modern day Patriot movement, were driven by a conspiratorial world view revolving around the notion of world government being brought about by a cabal of Communists, Jews and Freemasons. So yes, this present wave of violence has some eerie parallels that likely are not mere coincidence.

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

Freecorps men

But this researcher finds the notion that the bulk of these murders were committed by mind controlled patsies or even conscious government agents to be ridiculous. Americans are already buckling under the pressure of over three decades of neo-liberal economic policies that have left more than a few of us incredibly desperate if not outright destitute. Throw into this maelstrom the apocalyptic rhetoric and siege-like mentality that Alex Jones and his ilk specialize in and you have a perfect storm.

Thus, this researcher does not feel any hesitation in suggesting that memes being floated by Jones and such like are triggering these incidents of Patriot-related violence on some level. This is most obvious when considering the appearance of the Joker in the latest Las Vegas shooting. Predictably the conspiratorial right have attached much significance to Jerad Miller's apparent fondness for dressing up as the Joker. Probably the most noteworthy examination put forth has been by self-professed revisionist historian (and fascist sympathizer) Michael A. Hoffman II. On his blog Hoffman wrote:

"... The alleged killers in Las Vegas of two policemen at a restaurant, and a bystander at a shopping center, are being variously described as white supremacists, Constitutionalists etc. They may be all or none of those things, but they are most certainly demon-possessed individuals initiated into a devil cult by immersion in the soul-killing Hollywood movies and television and New York entertainment “culture” that permeates the US like the fumo di Satana.

"Examining the photos of the supposed killers of three people, we see the extent to which they have inculcated the Batman meme, which has been occult-saturated since the first, 1989 film in the series, and which reached its apogee with the most notorious and soulless entry ('The Dark Night') starring the late Heath Ledger, who died at age 28.

"On July 20, 2012 James Holmes, a PhD. candidate in the science of the brain (neurology), entered a theatre in Aurora, Colorado that was screening the most recent Batman movie, 'The Dark Knight Rises,' slaughtering 12 people. (The two 'Dark Night' movies have grossed more than $2 billion).

"The establishment media dubbed Holmes 'the Dark Knight shooter' and 'the Joker.' He appeared as a Joker in his first court appearance. His July 2012 massacre was embedded with occult significance (see Revisionist History newsletter no. 63, 'Predictive programming and ritual stagecraft: The Batman movie shooting synchronicities').

"Prior to the attack by Holmes, the name 'Aurora' (i.e. the goddess of the dawn), showed up in the movie trailer for the Dr. John Dee ('007') 'Skyfall' movie. The words 'Sandy Hook' appeared in 'The Dark Night Rises' Batman film prior to the school shootings at Sandy Hook.

"In the case at hand, we have Jerad and Amanda Miller, the putative Las Vegas cop killers leaving behind unmistakable links to the Joker of the Batman genre. No extensive investigation was needed to elicit this clue. It was online for all the world to see on 'Facebook.' The perps themselves revealed it in the Revelation of the Method, part of the pattern of self-revelation which the Cryptocracy permits and encourages in this time in which we live, the last stage of the age-old process of human alchemy, when Satan can walk openly among us and the American people don't give a hoot at any fundamental level of their waking consciousness..."

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

the Millers

But while the symbolism of the Batman universe has always been fascinating and occultic, it has been changed radically in recent years thanks to the Christopher Nolan films. And this change has been in especially sinister. The great Christopher Knowles astutely noted this in the wake of the Aurora rampage. He wrote then:

"I do know that is just more bad news attached to a Christopher Nolan film. This is a guy who puts forward psychopaths as his protagonists (Following, Memento, The Prestige) and cast a guy previously best known as Bateman, the American Psycho as Batman. He also seems especially fascinated with mindfucking as we've seen in Inception and the first Batman film (how people led Inception slide is beyond me). I do know this is a guy who revels in fascist, brutalizing imagery and themes in his work.

"I do know that he deliberately created a brand new archetype with his Joker, the real protagonist of The Dark Knight. A figure of pure, wanton destruction- the killer that every Jugalo would love to be when they grow up. This was pure psychological manipulation of the worst kind, and has had terrible real world results.

"Of course no one wants to think about that because a lot of the same people who immerse themselves in Conspiratainment want to play their ultra-violent video games and watch their torture porn. And their Batman movies."

But what Knowles does not note (at least not that I've found) is that this Joker-as-wanton-destruction archetype has been heavily reinforced in the real world by the "grassroots" Right Wing. Look no further than the Obama Jokers that sprang up in 2009. The Obama Joker image was originally designed by college student in Chicago, who posted it on his Flickr page during January of 2009. Initially it received little attention, but things suddenly changed. The LA Timesreported:

"On Jan. 18, Alkhateeb uploaded the image to photo-sharing site Flickr (shown at right). Over the next two months, he amassed just a couple thousand hits, he said.

"Then the counter exploded after a still-anonymous rogue famously found his image, digitally removed the references to Time Magazine, captioned the picture with the word 'socialism' and hung printed copies around L.A., making headlines."

Soon the image spread to several other cities and was adopted en mass by the Right. Likening Obama, whom the Right perceives as a dictator, to the Joker is something of curious choice, at least in the context of Nolan's Batman films. Batman himself would have been more apt. In The Dark Knight Harvey Dent favorably compares Batman to the Roman institution of dictatorship in which democracy was suspended while a military commander dealt with the "enemies were at the gate." By the end of the film Batman has effectively had to assume dictatorial powers (most notably in the form of NSA-like technological surveillance) to contain the anarchy unleashed by the Joker.

As a kind of archetype for chaos and anarchy Nolan's Joker is a much more apt symbol of the Patriot movement itself and their Red Dawn fever dreams. While no doubt an armed revolt against Obama's America may seem like a romantic idea to any number of Internet tough guys who frequent Infowars the interwar period in Germany tells a much different story. Freecorps gleefully turned their cities into full scale war zones and relished in assassination of various stripes. In theory this was done to contain the spread of communism after the Bolshevik Revolution but more often than not deteriorated into destruction for destruction's sake. This was a crucial part of the much mythologized "Freebooter spirit."

"The accepted authority of the Freebooter mentality suggests another reason why he and his comrades revolted against their class. He argues that since the very raison d'etre of the Free Corps was total destruction, the movement obviously could not draw its rationale from the Weltanschauung of the bourgeois-liberal world. Of necessity, therefore, that world must be destroyed. In a revealing essay von Salomon writes:

"'When we probe into the make-up of the [Free Corps fighter] we can find all the elements which ever played a role in German history except one: the burgerlich. And that is only natural because the peculiar experience of these men... had forged them into one single force of consuming destructiveness. Their purpose could only be accomplished by the emphatic renunciation of what they felt most strongly to be the falsification of true German substance. The spirit of the past centuries [i.e., of bourgeois-liberalism] had not been able to meet the uniquely severe test – that of the hardness of war. This is why the warrior, of necessity, despised the whole system which the spirit had created. The task required of him was not only to build up a new spirit... More than that. The task required... that all ballast, all sentimentalism, all other values must be ruthlessly cast aside so that this whole strength could be set free... Ecstasy and death, tumult and adventure, heroism and excess, cold deliberation and burning idealism, robbery and plundering, arson and murder – a mixture of every passion and demoniacal fury formed... the fighters who dominated the postwar period.'

"The memoirs left by the fighters of the Free Corps movement are a veritable hymn of hate directed against the Weimar Republic, which was the symbol and hence the target of the revolt against bourgeois society..."

(Vanguard of Nazism, Robert G.L. Waite, pg. 56)

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

scenes from Munich following the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic

The trauma that the Freebooter spirit inflicted upon Germany during the 1918-1923 period was profound. Germany's economy improved somewhat after that, bringing a brief period of stability in the mid-1920s. But when things began to go sour by decade's end the siren song of Nazism began to work its spell on the German populace. Despite mythologizing the Freecorps movement to the hilt, the movement's stubborn sense of individuality and libertinism had no place in Nazi Germany and many key former Freecorps men, many of whom having joined the SA, were purged during the Night of Long Knives.

Effectively then the anarchist Freebooters were a crucial competent to the rise of Nazism and the authoritarianism it promoted. And it is quite likely that if the violence perpetuated by the Patriot movement continues to grow that something similar will occur in these United States.

Thus the Joker is quite apt for the Patriot movement, a notion I suspect Alex Jones is quite in agreement with. This blatant disinformation agent played a key role in the spread of the Obama Joker amongst the "grassroots" Right. Jones appeared in Joker makeup for a now notorious broadcast and even ran a poster contest on Infowars for the Obama Joker image. Amusingly, when one of Michael A. Hoffman's readers pointed out Jones' promotion of the Joker meme in the comment section of Hoffman's article on the Las Vegas shooting the revisionist historian was quick to insist that "It was Satanic arrogance, not Alex Jones, that dispatched this duo on their mission to play God in the name of saving the Republic."

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.

Hoffman

Of course, in the article itself Mr. Hoffman had no problem blaming "soul-killing Hollywood movies and television" and usual suspects such as abortion, homosexuality and demonic possession for the murders. Really, about anything seems fair game in Mr. Hoffman's mind except Alex Jones and the Pentagon/CIA-created Patriot movement. Nor is Mr. Hoffman alone in this double standard... far, far from it.