The United States of Paranoia (52 page)

75
. “Anti-Semitism in Conspiracy Literature,”
Conspiracy Digest
, Winter 1976.

76
. “Apollo Hoax?”
Conspiracy Digest
, Winter 1977.

77
. “Cover-Up Lowdown,”
Cover-Up Lowdown
1 (1977).

78
. Author’s interview with Jay Kinney, February 22, 2012. All Kinney quotes come from this interview unless otherwise noted.

79
. “Passing the Buck,”
Cover-Up Lowdown
1 (1977).

80
. Steve Jackson, “Illuminati Designer Article,” n.d., sjgames.com/ illuminati/designart.html.

81
. Steve Jackson, e-mail to the author, January 12, 2012. All Jackson quotes come from this e-mail unless otherwise noted.

82
. Wilson was not completely consistent here, since he elsewhere expressed his opposition to intellectual property laws. He would later enter the world of games on his own terms as the host of a role-playing game called
Conspiracy
.

83
. Jay Kinney, “Backstage with ‘Bob’: Is the Church of the SubGenius the Ultimate Cult?”
Whole Earth Review
, Fall 1986.

84
. William A. Covino,
Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination
(State University of New York, 1994), 140.

85
. Author’s interview with Ivan Stang, August 8, 2012. All Stang quotes come from this interview unless otherwise noted.

86
. The church wasn’t shy about turning its critique against itself. In a rant about the United States’ “diabolically seductive brand of mindless consumerism,” for instance, one SubGenius book invoked Amazonian tribespeople “walking around in Coca-Cola
TM
T-shirts, Aerosmith shirts, ‘Bob’ shirts.”
Revelation X: The “Bob” Apocryphon—Hidden Teachings and Deuterocanonical Texts of J. R. “Bob” Dobbs
, ed. Ivan Stang and Paul Mavrides (Fireside, 1994), 21.

87
. “SubGenius Pamphlet #1” (Church of the SubGenius, 1980).

88
.
The Book of the SubGenius
, ed. Ivan Stang (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983), 93.

89
. Kerry Thornley, “Introduction,” in Malaclypse,
Principia Discordia: How I Found Goddess
, v.

90
.
Arise! SubGenius Recruitment Film 16
, directed by Cordt Holland and Ivan Stang, screenplay by Stang, Paul Mavrides, and Harry S. Robins, SubGenius Foundation, 1991. An earlier version of this film started circulating around 1986.

91
.
Tribulation 99
cinematographer Bill Daniel was the brother of
Slacker
cinematographer Lee Daniel. Incidentally, 1991 was a banner year for conspiracy cinema: Along with those two pictures, it saw the release of Oliver Stone’s assassination flick
JFK
, the film that made the phrase “Oliver Stone movie” a lazy synonym for “conspiracy movie” even though most of Stone’s films do not involve vast conspiracies.

92
. Author’s interview with Craig Baldwin, March 26, 2009.

93
.
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America
, written and directed by Craig Baldwin, Facets Multi-Media, 1991.

94
. The boundary between Wilson’s countercultural and Christian readers is more fluid than you might expect. In his study of a London millenarian church, the British journalist Damian Thompson spoke with a Christian who in his younger years “flirted with anarchism, punk rock, witchcraft, and Satanism.” During that period, Thompson reported, the interviewee accepted
Illuminatus!
as “truth lightly clothed as fiction.” When he was born again, he “carried out only minor adjustments to this narrative.” Damian Thompson,
Waiting for Antichrist: Charisma and Apocalypse in a Pentecostal Church
(Oxford University Press, 2005), 103–4.

95
. “Nardwuar vs. Robert Anton Wilson,” November 8, 1996, nardwuar.com/vs/robert_anton_wilson/index.html.

96
. Firesign Theatre was a quartet of comics whose dense, nonlinear audio plays drank from the same well as
Illuminatus!
At one point, in fact, they considered the idea of optioning Wilson and Shea’s trilogy, though they never followed through. For more on their career, see Jesse Walker,
Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America
(New York University Press, 2001), 78–80.

97
. Krassner,
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut
, 216.

98
. Quoted ibid., 223.

99
. Ibid., 247. Like Hoffman, Krassner was heavily involved with the Yippies—indeed, he was the one who gave the group its name.

100
. Ibid., 254.

101
. Author’s interview with Paul Krassner, July 26, 2012. After Krassner moved to San Francisco, he, Kinney, and a few friends started a group they initially called the Conspiracy Club. (Later, when it became clear that the refreshments deserved equal billing with the conversation, it became the Conspiracy Dessert Club.) Everyone would bring in clippings from the news that might seem to suggest a conspiracy, and the group would discuss the stories. Sometimes participants were serious, sometimes they were joking, and sometimes they hovered in between. “I think our approach and our sensibility was to question everything,” Kinney told me, “including our own tendency to read into some of this material.”

102
. Krassner,
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut
, 320.

103
. Quoted in Gorightly,
The Prankster and the Conspiracy
, 91.

104
. Kerry Thornley, “A Bulletin to All ‘Rightwing Anarchists’ and Other Libertarians,”
Free Trade
, July 1968.

105
. Kerry Thornley, “Living On the Sea and Off the Land: A Suggestion,”
Ocean Living
1, no. 4 (1968).

106
. Quoted in Gorightly,
The Prankster and the Conspiracy
, 194.

107
. Thornley, “Wonders of the Unseen World.”

108
. Kerry Thornley, “How Our Movement Began: Extremism in the Defense of Liberty, Part II,”
New Libertarian
, April 1985.

109
. Kerry Thornley, letter to Doc Hambone, n.d., multistalkervictims.org/mcf/hambone/thornley.html.

110
. Quoted in Gorightly,
The Prankster and the Conspiracy
, 193.

111
. Quoted in Adler,
Drawing Down the Moon
, 336.

Chapter 10: The Ghost of Rambo

  1
.
Good Guys Wear Black
, directed by Ted Post, screenplay by Bruce Cohn and Mark Medoff, from a story by Joseph Fraley, Action One Film Partners, 1978.

  2
. Quoted in Rick Perlstein, “Ronald Reagan’s Imaginary Bridges,”
The Baffler
19 (2012).

  3
. Thomas Frank,
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
(Metropolitan Books, 2008), 250. For a critique of Frank’s book, see Jesse Walker, “What’s the Matter with Libertarians?”
Reason
, December 2008.

  4
. David Morrell,
First Blood
(Warner Books, 2000 [1972]).

  5
. Morrell, “Rambo and Me,” introduction to
First Blood
, xii. The first version of Morrell’s essay appeared in
Playboy
, August 1988.

  6
. The relevant research was summarized in Peter Rowe, “Busting Vietnam Stereotypes,”
The San Diego Union-Tribune
, November 11, 2005.

  7
. Morrell, “Rambo and Me,” x.

  8
. Ibid., xii.

  9
.
First Blood
, directed by Ted Kotcheff, screenplay by Michael Kozoll, William Sackheim, and Sylvester Stallone, from a novel by David Morrell, Anabasis Investments, 1982.

10
. Morrell, “Rambo and Me,” ix–x.

11
. Andrew Kopkind, “Red Dawn,”
The Nation
, September 15, 1984.

12
.
Red Dawn
, directed by John Milius, screenplay by Milius and Kevin Reynolds, MGM/UA, 1984.

13
. Susan Faludi,
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
(Harper Perennial, 2000), 395.

14
. On whether Cosmatos or Stallone deserves credit for directing
First Blood Part II
, see Henry Cabot Beck, “The ‘Western’
Godfather
,”
True West
, October 1, 2006.

15
.
Rambo: First Blood Part II
, directed by George Cosmatos, screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron, from a story by Kevin Jarre, Anabasis Investments, 1985.

16
. Quoted in “Reagan Gets Ideas at ‘Rambo’ Showing,”
The Milwaukee Sentinel
, July 1, 1985.

17
. Gustav Hasford, “Vietnam Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry,”
Penthouse
, June 1987.

18
. There’s a hint of another primal conspiracy myth too. When the Chuck Norris and Anne Archer characters are holed up at the Squaw Valley Inn, Norris looks out the window warily. “Any enemies out there?” Archer asks. Norris, who has started to suspect Archer of being part of the conspiracy, replies pointedly, “I’m just as worried about the enemy within.”

19
. For a thoughtful discussion of
Good Guys Wear Black
’s relationship to both the eighties POW/MIA rescue cycle and the colonial Indian captivity narratives, see Louis J. Kern, “MIAs, Myth, and Macho Magic: Post-Apocalyptic Cinematic Visions of Vietnam,” in
Search and Clear: Critical Responses to Selected Literature and Films of the Vietnam War
, ed. William J. Searle (Popular Press, 1988).

20
. David Morrell,
Rambo: First Blood Part II
(Jove Books, 1985), 235. One of the POWs responds to the news about Reagan with the words “Holy fuck.” Rambo replies, “Yes, I said that many times.”

21
. For a comparison of the POW/MIA films with certain westerns of the 1940s and ’50s—many of them conspiracy-themed—see Nick Redfern, “The Military Metaphor of Government in the Cold War Western,” April 16, 2009, nickredfern.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/the-military-metaphor-of-government-in-the-cold-war-western. Redfern linked
Rambo
to pictures whose anti-Washington attitude often reflected an authoritarian impulse, while I’m highlighting the picture’s ties to the more antiauthoritarian movies of the 1970s. I see this less as a disagreement with Redfern than as a sign of the complexities and contradictions of our shared subject.

22
.
Rambo III
, directed by Peter MacDonald, screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Sheldon Lettich, Carolco Pictures, 1988.

23
. Sometimes the comparisons between Waco and Wounded Knee were direct and overt. For an example, see S. Leon Felkins, “The 110th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre: Some Chilling Modern Parallels,” December 28, 2000, lewrockwell.com/orig/felkins4.html.

24
. On Posey’s career, see J. M. Berger, “Patriot Games,”
Foreign Policy
, April 18, 2012; R. M. Schneiderman, “My Life as a White Supremacist,”
Newsweek
, November 11, 2011.

25
.
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
, directed by William Gazecki, written by William Gazecki, Dan Gifford, and Michael McNulty, New Yorker Films, 1997.

26
. Andrea Chase, “Rambo,” n.d., killermoviereviews.com/main.php? nextlink=display&dId=959.

27
. Gina Carbone, “ ‘Rambo’ Review: There Will Be Blood,”
Seacoast Online
, January 26, 2008.

28
. David Morrell, “David Morrell FAQ,” n.d., at 66.241.209.129/faq.cfm.

29
. Quoted in “Answering Questions Is as Easy as Breathing—Sly
Answers
Back! Day 1,” January 14, 2008, aintitcool.com/node/35279.

30
. I wouldn’t have minded seeing some of the Afghan heroes of
Rambo III
return as villains in
Rambo IV
. But that might have pushed the franchise into areas that Stallone would rather leave alone.

31
. Richard Slotkin,
Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860
(University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 94. Or you may remember it from chapter 2.

32
. If
The Searchers
is the most notable recent incarnation of the Indian captivity narrative, the most notable recent incarnation of the white-slavery captivity tale is a movie that
The Searchers
directly inspired:
Taxi Driver
, a 1976 film scripted by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro’s version of the Wayne character is relentlessly unappealing—he is a murderer and a madman—but he becomes a folk hero after “rescuing” a prostitute in a bloody raid on a brothel.

      De Niro’s character brushes against another archetype, the “lone nut” assassin, when he flirts with shooting a presidential candidate. A few years later, life imitated art when John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan. An obsessive fan of
Taxi Driver
, Hinckley hoped his act would impress the actress Jodie Foster, who played the prostitute in Scorsese’s movie.

33
. Slotkin,
Regeneration Through Violence
, 95.

Chapter 11: The Demonic Cafeteria

  1
. Philip Sandifer, “Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 39 (Prime Suspect, Cracker),” September 12, 2012, philipsandifer.com/2012/09/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for_12.html.

  2
. For a twenty-first-century account of black prisoners using the sovereign citizens’ legal arguments, see Kevin Carey, “Too Weird for
The Wire
,”
The Washington Monthly
, May–July 2008. Carey identified one conveyer belt by which these concepts reached black hands—the prison system—but that was hardly the only one. People affiliated with offshoots of the Moorish Science Temple had preached similar notions before the events at the core of Carey’s article occurred. And in the 1990s, when I was writing a lot about pirate radio, I met several black radicals who defended their right to operate unlicensed stations using arguments essentially identical to those of the sovereign citizen crowd.