John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Short twelve minute video on whether the CIA used the tiny Franklin Federal Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s as cover for a sexual blackmail operation that ensnared top officials in the Reagan and Bush I administrations.
Subscribe to our free Weekly Newsletter for articles and videos on practical mathematics, Internet Censorship, ways to fight back against censorship, and other topics by sending an email to: subscribe [at] mathematical-software.com
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Did the CIA collect sexual blackmail information on the Reagan and Bush administrations in the 1980s, secretly controlling the country? Is the CIA continuing to do this today with front men such as the late financier Jeffrey Epstein? Was the Franklin Scandal the tip of a Satanic iceberg that continues today or the crazed QAnon of the 80s or both?
The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal
On November 4, 1988, the National Credit Union Association (NCUA) and the FBI shut down the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska, quickly determining that about $40 million had been embezzled from the credit union. The investigators indicted the credit union manager Lawrence “Larry” E. King, a gay African-American Omaha native, Republican activist, and gifted singer who performed the National Anthem at the 1984 Republican Convention. Amongst other things, King claimed to be a friend of President George H.W. Bush (Bush I), showing off a picture of Bush with him. King was eventually convicted of embezzling the missing money and other financial crimes.
Against the backdrop of the massive Savings and Loan (S&L) and junk bond scandals of the late 1980s, ultimately costing taxpayers about $200 billion, the missing $40 million was a drop in the bucket. But allegations of pedophilia, prostitution, pandering of underage boys and girls to powerful business and political figures and even Satanic ritual abuse by Larry King and his associates had been accumulating for years in the Nebraska foster care system where King’s cousin and her family “adopted” several foster children who reported substantial abuse to the authorities.
The Nebraska State Senate established a committee, “the Franklin Committee,” to investigate both the financial scandal and the allegations of sex crimes. The committee hired a private investigator Gary Caradori who managed to find at least four additional alleged victims with similar stories: Alisha Owen, Troy Boner, Danny King and Paul Bonacci. The federal government, state of Nebraska, and Douglas County (Omaha) empaneled three separate grand juries to investigate.
The grand juries, the FBI, and the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) soon focused on an alleged conspiracy by Gary Caradori and the alleged victims to get a lucrative book or movie deal and/or lawsuit settlements by accusing numerous powerful figures in Nebraska of sex crimes including Omaha Police Department (OPD) Chief Robert Wadman, Omaha World-Herald (the largest paper in Omaha) publisher Harold Andersen, department store heir and millionaire Alan Baer, and a number of others.
At least according to his family, friends, and colleagues, Caradori flew to Chicago with his eight year old son AJ, ostensibly to attend a baseball game, to acquire actual blackmail photos or video from Rusty Nelson, the alleged blackmail photographer of King’s sex and blackmail ring. Caradori’s plane disintegrated or blew up mysteriously on the way back to Omaha, killing Caradori and his son. No blackmail photos or videos were recovered from the wreckage according to official reports.
Acting on the grand jury report, the Nebraska authorities successfully convicted Alisha Owen of perjury. At least two of the victim-witnesses, Troy Boner and Danny King, recanted their stories under interrogation and testified against Owen, claiming Caradori had conspired with them to make up the original stories in search of movie deals and legal settlements.
The Franklin Committee was shut down. John W. DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator involved in the investigation, wrote a book The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska alleging a massive cover-up. DeCamp linked the scandal to the CIA, the Iran-Contra scandal, and Satanism. Theories about the scandal proliferated on the Internet.
Nick Bryant’s The Franklin Scandal
Nick Bryant’s The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal devotes 629 pages to the scandal, focusing on the alleged victims with a hefty 154 page chapter “State vs Owen” on Alisha Owen and her perjury trial. Bryant traveled to Nebraska many times over several years, interviewing and befriending many of the alleged victims and tracking down several additional alleged victims starting from a lengthy list of possible victims compiled by Gary Caradori before his death.
This is a very long book with extensive information on some aspects of the scandal, especially the alleged victims and their stories. There are several sections with fairly explicitly discussions alleged sado-masochistic encounters and sex parties that may be difficult for some readers.
The book is organized in a loosely chronological order, but jumps around disconcertingly between chapters and sometimes sections. For example the chapter on Gary Caradori includes Caradori’s death and the end of the Franklin Committee (state senate). The subsequent extremely long “State vs Owen” chapter jumps back to the grand jury investigations when Caradori was still alive, following Alisha Owen instead of Caradori.
I came away from reading the book feeling that some of the claims were probably true. There was a cover-up and Gary Caradori was probably murdered.
That said, there is clearly reasonable doubt, indeed more than reasonable doubt. There are no pictures or video, DNA test results, or other solid forensic evidence supporting the allegations. The book opens with a wild goose chase with alleged blackmail photographer Rusty Nelson that never produced any pictures, film, or video that Nelson claimed he had stashed in remote locations in Colorado.
The alleged witnesses — mostly victims — all have significant credibility issues: criminal records, psychological problems, drug use, confessed involvement in highly illegal activities, and changing and contradictory stories. This is particularly true of Paul Bonacci who has reported some of the most bizarre experiences including Satanic ritual abuse claims and was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) — now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Rusty Nelson, the alleged blackmail photographer whom Bryant has caught lying to him repeatedly according to the book.
The book actually provides very limited information on the named alleged perpetrators other than Larry King: millionaire department store heir Alan Baer, Omaha World-Herald publisher Harold Andersen, backroom Nebraska political figure Eugene Mahoney, Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman, and others. This may be to avoid libel lawsuits, but one would expect these people to have other skeletons in their closets if the Franklin allegations are true, a form of partial corroboration of the allegations. One person named by the witnesses, Omaha World-Herald reporter Peter Citron, was convicted of child molestation independent of the Franklin investigation for example.
Columnist gets prison terms for child sexual assaults
by Jon Sweet UPI, July 23, 1990
OMAHA — A former newspaper columnist and television entertainment critic was sentenced in court Monday to prison for a term of three to eight years for sexually molesting two young boys in his home.
Peter Citron, who pleaded no contest to two felony counts of sexually assaulting a minor, was also declared a mentally disordered sex offender and ordered to undergo treatment during his prison term.
(….)
In his interviews promoting the book, Nick Bryant complains about the unwillingness of editors at mainstream book publishers and magazines to publish the book or his articles on the scandal (TrineDay specializes in “conspiracy” and other “fringe” topics), attributing this resistance to “cognitive dissonance,” perhaps hinting at a larger super-conspiracy preventing publication as well. The book suggests that Larry King was working with DC lobbyist Craig Spence in a larger CIA backed sex and blackmail ring providing underage boys to top officials in the George H.W. Bush administration, perhaps even including Bush I himself. However, given the absence of solid forensic evidence such as photos, film, DNA etc., it is easy to see why most editors considering both their reputation and the possibility of lawsuits from powerful, wealthy persons would pass on the story.
“Conspiracy Theory” versus “Conspiracy Theory”
The phrase “conspiracy theory” is frequently used to dismiss allegations of crime, misconduct, and even just gross incompetence by groups of powerful people, especially authority figures in the worldview of the person or persons shouting “conspiracy theory”– without mentioning or addressing the specific facts or logic of the conspiracy theory.
Thus, recently for example, suggestions that US government officials erred in funding dangerous gain of function research into bat coronaviruses as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) over the objections of hundreds of prominent scientists questioning the “gain of function” research during the Obama administration and lo and behold the enhanced coronavirus might have escaped from WIV some time in late 2019 were immediately dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” in February of 2020 in what was clearly a coordinated media campaign organized in part by Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance which acted as the conduit for government funding of the “gain of function” research at WIV.
With conspiracy theories about larger conspiracies, it is often said “someone would have talked” as if no one has talked. In fact, as with the Franklin Scandal it is common to find multiple people talked in many alleged conspiracies. This was noticeable with many of the multiple victim child molestation cases of the 1980s, some of which such as the McMartin Preschool case featured many alleged victims.
In these “several people talked” cases, the multiple witnesses can be explained away by alleging a conspiracy to fabricate a conspiracy, generally orchestrated consciously or not by the investigators, in this case Gary Caradori. Cases like the McMartin Preschool case were explained away by blaming leading questioning by the therapists who interviewed the children, false memory syndrome, and similar excuses.
Those trying to discredit the “conspiracy theory” generally try to avoid or minimize the use of the word conspiracy in describing their own conspiracy theories as this may raise questions in the minds of listeners indoctrinated to believe conspiracies by their beloved authority figures are impossible. In the Franklin case, the authorities used the phrase “a Carefully Crafted Hoax” to describe the conspiracy allegedly organized by Gary Caradori.
Once you have voted for Bill Clinton it is hard to accept that he would sexually harass subordinates or that his wife and staff would conspire to cover up such misconduct. However, “a vast right-wing conspiracy” to fabricate the many scandals that have dogged the Clintons seems entirely reasonable and likely.
Prior to Monica Lewinsky, several women had alleged that Bill Clinton had sexually harassed or even raped them. Unlike the Franklin case, Monica Lewinsky with some coaching by Linda Tripp retained forensic DNA evidence of her relationship with Clinton. Linda Tripp was even taping her phone conversations with Lewinsky. A certain resemblance to the alleged Franklin sexual blackmail scheme is evident in Clinton’s misadventures.
The CIA and Satanism
Nick Bryant argues unequivocally in online interviews and to some extent in the book that Larry King and Craig Spence were CIA “assets” recruited in South East Asia during the Vietnam war. King served in the US military in Thailand during the war. Spence worked for ABC News in Vietnam at about the same time. A few of the witnesses such as Paul Bonacci and Rusty Nelson alleged a CIA involvement in the alleged sex and blackmail scheme.
King supposedly recruited underage boys and sometimes girls from the famous Boys Town Catholic orphanage in Omaha and other local sources and flew them to Washington DC and other cities to service the rich and powerful, notably unidentified officials in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Lobbyist Craig Spence held parties for the DC elite during this period, allegedly attended by CIA Director William Casey for example.
Some of the stories — e.g. Paul Bonacci — included Satanic elements, alleged human sacrifice, the CIA MK-Ultra mind control program, and other far out elements. Bryant minimizes discussion of the alleged Satanic elements even though he traces his investigation back to an assignment to write a “very dark” article on Satanism. Only a few paragraphs here and there deal with the Satanism aspect or Bonacci’s more far out stories.
Curiously enough the only clear CIA involvement in the Franklin Scandal in the book is that the Franklin Committee (yes!) hired former CIA Director (1973-1976) William Colby to investigate the death of Gary Caradori. Colby was a friend of John DeCamp. DeCamp had served with (or for) Colby in Vietnam where Colby was head of the controversial Phoenix Program, an alleged assassination program to wipe out the VietCong in South Vietnam accused of numerous crimes.
William Colby (CIA Director, 1973-1976)
Thus the Franklin Scandal involved CIA connected investigators accusing other business and political figures in Nebraska of working for/with the CIA in a nefarious sex and blackmail scheme. As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up.
List of CIA References in The Franklin Scandal
Although CIA involvement is central to Nick Bryant’s theory of the Franklin Scandal, the six-hundred plus page book actually only refers to the CIA in about twenty two short sections — often a sentence or paragraph. The most substantive references — claims of CIA involvement by Craig Spence, Henry Vinson, and Washington Times reporter Paul Rodriguez — are contained in the short thirty-six page chapter “Washington DC”,” pp. 275-310. Nick Bryant has another book Confessions of a DC Madam co-written with Henry Vinson, detailing Vinson’s claims.
Neither Spence, a cocaine addict who officially committed suicide, nor Henry Vinson, a now convicted felon who ran the escort service that provided young male prostitutes to Spence seem particularly reliable sources.
Again, remarkably, the only clearly documented CIA connections in the Franklin Scandal book are between the Franklin Committee and former CIA Director William Colby (see below).
p 9, “The Net was replete with stories of Satanists abducting children, and also of clandestine bonds between Satanists and the CIA.”
p 10-15, discuses the “Finders” case in which the CIA allegedly quashed an investigation into alleged severe child abuse by the “Finders” group, a controversial cult-like self-help group, in 1987. The book does not demonstrate a connection between the Finders case and the Franklin Scandal as far as I can tell.
p 17, quotes Larry King from 1988 issue of Omaha’s weekly Metropolitan claiming to know and admire the late Bill Casey, CIA Director in the Reagan Administration. (claim by Larry King who was convicted of embezzling about $40 million from the Franklin credit union)
p 18, “Though [John W DeCamp’s] Franklin Cover-up offered compelling evidence for the existence of [Larry] King’s pedophile ring and its cover-up by law enforcement, it lacked substantive proof for the ring’s connection to Washington DC, blackmail, and the CIA, and also the pandering of Boys Town kids.”
p 81, “The [Franklin] Committee members kicked around a number of names for a week or so, and at the suggestion of [Chairman Loran] Schmit they voted to invite former CIA Director William Colby to apply for chief counsel.”
“Since the credit union’s demise, several rumors were wafting around Lincoln and Omaha that Franklin monies had been covertly diverted to the CIA in its efforts to support the Nicaraguan Contras’ fight against the Communist Sandinistas.” (rumors)
p 82, “[Schmit’s] fellow Committee members shot down Colby’s appointment by a narrow margin — four to three.”
p 168-169, “[alleged blackmail photographer Rusty Nelson] didn’t feel compelled to convince me of the implausible events he discussed, which included allegations of pedophile politicians at the pinnacle of national power, Larry King’s CIA connections, blackmail, and the auctioning of children.” (Bryant describes Rusty Nelson as an untrustworthy character, having caught Nelson lying to him on several occasions.)
p 177-179, discussed Franklin Committee hiring former CIA Director William Colby to investigate Gary Caradori’s death and Colby’s own suspicious death in 1996 (officially an accident). Note hiring Colby is the only unequivocal, documented tie between the Franklin Scandal and the CIA. (documented CIA connection)
p 214, “[Boys Town counselor Dr. Leslie Collins] even held his elder stepdaughter at knifepoint for hours when she attempted to break off their [sexual] ‘relationship.’ Collins also threatened to kill her boyfriend if she ended her ‘relationship’ with Collins — she took his threats very seriously; he had previously disclosed [claimed] to her that he carried out covert activities for the CIA. Collins would ultimately be sentenced to thirty-to-fifty years for the sexual assaults on his stepdaughters.” (claim by a convicted felon trying to intimidate his victim, see references at end for Leslie Collins)
p 253, Discusses a rambling monologue by a witness called by special prosecutor Van Pelt for the Douglas County grand jury including the sentence: “Now, so I believe that Communism is a simplex theory, which has no practical application in reality, and Communists are lacking in judgment, and also that both the CIA and the three FDA networks are manipulated by double agents of the KGB.”
p 279, In discussing documentation from Henry Vinson’s gay male escort service acquired by Washington Times reporter Paul Rodriguez: “[Craig] Spence had ties to the CIA, blackmail and Larry King.” Apparently citing a New York Times article: “In fact, CIA Director William Casey seemed to be particularly fond of [Craig] Spence and his high flying get-togethers.”
p 282, “In some Japanese political circles, it was thought that the CIA had hatched the story [alleged leak of classified F-16 data to Soviets] to discredit [Japanese politician and Craig Spence associate Motoo] Shiina and nullify his rise to power.” (informed speculation)
p 287, “[Craig] Spence would divulge to Washington Times [owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church!] reporters that ‘friendly’ intelligence agents bugged all the parties at his Kalorama home, and he repeatedly alluded to the fact that he was in the CIA. ‘We had sources disclose that Spence wasn’t a direct employee of the CIA, but they confirmed Spence was a CIA asset,’ [Washington Times report Paul] Rodriguez told me [Nick Bryant]” (undisclosed sources)
p 290, “After [Craig] Spence threatened the [Washington Times] reporters with the razor blade, he launched into a protracted diatribe of self-importance, asserting he had carried out assignments for the CIA on numerous occasions — assignments that were crucial to covert actions in Vietnam, Japan, Central America, and the Middle East.” (Threatening reporters with a razor blade obviously raises questions about Spence’s sanity.)
p. 291, Discussing Craig Spence’s apparent suicide a few months later: “Next to Spence’s body on the bed was one final enigma: a newspaper clipping about then CIA Director William Webster’s attempts to protect CIA agents summoned to testify before government bodies — the Washington Times reported that Spence had indeed been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating [Henry Vinson’s] the 34th Place escort service.
p. 293, “I [Nick Bryant] asked [Henry] Vinson two questions: ‘Were [Craig] Spence and [Larry] King partners in pedophilic pandering?’ and ‘Were [Craig] Spence and [Larry] King hooked up with the CIA?’ He reponded with an unhesitant, nonchalant ‘Yes’ to both questions.”
p. 296, 297 Vinson discusses his alleged dealings with Spence, King, and purported CIA “agents” or “assets”. (Vinson is a convicted felon.)
p 306, Strange story of an unidentified police officer source’s encounter with “suits” — “CIA, FBI or Secret Service” and Larry King during an investigation. (unnamed source, no mention of suits showing official ID to the unnamed police officer)
p 468, “However, [Washington Times reporter] Paul Rodriguez and his colleagues had [unnamed] sources state that Craig Spence was a CIA asset; Spence himself claimed he was a CIA asset and confessed that his home was bugged by “friendly” intelligence agents. Henry Vinson also told me [Nick Bryant] that Spence confessed to him he was a CIA asset and that his blackmail enterprise was CIA-affiliated.”
“Vinson claims to have informed federal officials that the pedophilic blackmail enterprise of King and Spence had connections to the CIA. The CIA has denied its affiliation to Spence, and Vinson is a convicted felon, …” (emphasis added)
p 469, Discusses CIA’s Operation Midnight Climax, part of the MK-ULTRA mind control experiments, suggesting parallels to the alleged King/Spence sexual blackmail operation.
p 473, returns to CIA and Finders case briefly.
p 499, Document Index, Documents — CIA inducing dissociation and MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) p. 593
What Would Make the Franklin Scandal Book Better?
I found the semi-chronological order disconcerting, especially jumping back to before Gary Caradori’s death. Death after all is a final, emotional event, and suddenly realizing Caradori was back alive again several pages later confused me.
I would have preferred a strictly chronological order, perhaps with an overview of events at the very beginning. The wild goose chase with Rusty Nelson in which Bryant and Nelson were pulled over by menacing Nebraska State Patrol officers and their vehicle searched is discussed at the start of the book, perhaps as a mechanism to grab the reader’s interest and attention. This might be an effective opening hook, but then give a clearer timeline of events the book will cover and then move to a strictly chronological retelling of events. Any documentation or pictures of the search would have helped make the case for a cover-up.
Give a few paragraph to a few page introduction to each key character, especially the named perpetrators as soon as they first appear. Alan Baer’s name appears many times before the book finally explains who he is in detail. According to the index, Baer is first mentioned on page 114, as follows:
“Alan Baer, a prominent Omaha millionaire whom Caradori would link to King’s pandering network.”
Baer is then mentioned briefly six more times with little further info until pages 162-163 finally explain who Baer is and his relationship to the Brandeis department store family. He inherited the Brandeis fortune from his mother’s brother E. John Brandeis. As far as I can tell, Bryant never bothers to tell us whether the Omaha Brandeis family is related to the famous Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis in some way. The Brandeis family members are not listed in the index either. This limited information on Baer is part of a general dearth of information on the alleged named perpetrators.
The chapter “State vs Owen” is very long, 154 pages, longer than some books. It consisted mostly of an almost blow by blow, line by line recounting from the grand jury and perjury trial transcripts with editorial comments added. A shorter chapter summarizing the events and issues of the trial with the actual transcripts in the already 100 page appendix with supporting documents would be easier to digest.
The Franklin Scandal was quite complex with numerous players and events. Several tables of key people, events, and data would likely help. Specifically:
All Legal Charges, Convictions or Case Resolutions — who was actually charged and convicted of what. All in one place.
All Named Alleged Perpetrators, what they allegedly did, any convictions, and any other convictions or scandals that might speak to their character.
All Named Witnesses with any credibility issues such as criminal convictions, changed stories, drug use, etc. listed.
All Suspicious Deaths (there were several suspicious deaths in addition to Gary Caradori and his son), Official Cause of Death, Name, Date, suspicious circumstances.
Key Documented Financial Transactions, such as millionaire department store heir Alan Baer’s alleged payment of $12,000 to either Franklin Credit Union or Larry King personally. Documented financial transactions are frequently more persuasive than eyewitness testimony in “conspiracy theory” cases. Witnesses after all may be lying, mistaken, or even insane — all three are usually alleged in “conspiracy theory” cases as in the Franklin Scandal. Put copies of the checks in the appendix with the other supporting documents.
Conclusion
In the Franklin case, we have several witnesses with similar corroborating original stories, witnesses with significant credibility issues including recanting under interrogation, witnesses from multiple sources — social workers in the Nebraska foster care system and Gary Caradori who seemingly tried to corroborate the original foster care stories as a good investigator should, and now several more found by Nick Bryant. We have two competing conspiracy theories to explain the testimony and no solid forensic evidence — no pictures, video, or DNA. At this late date we are unlikely to get to “ground truth” even with a thorough, sincere, fair, competent re-investigation.
The bigger lesson is that — as in many “conspiracy theory” cases — often some people do talk, sometimes many, telling similar tales. Eyewitness testimony proves of little persuasive value in many cases. Eyewitnesses tend to be either participants in the conspiracy such as Henry Vinson and Rusty Nelson who inherently have a credibility issue or accidental observers who cannot explain in detail their odd experiences and whose credibility may be undercut by their attempts to explain their puzzling observations.
The many people who claim to have been involved in Satanic cults including ritual abuse and even human sacrifice in recent decades may persuade credulous evangelical Christians and miscellaneous others but have been largely dismissed by society at large even in cases with demonstrable bodies and other evidence of reality.
Multiple mutually supporting accounts can frequently be blamed on conscious or unconscious conspiracies by the investigators as with the Franklin Credit Union scandal and Gary Caradori: overzealous prosecutors, a vast right wing (or left wing) conspiracy, psychotherapists with leading questions, false memory syndrome, and other excuses. Often canceled checks for large unexplained amounts of money have been the most persuasive evidence of actual conspiracy in practice.
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Short video review of Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon by Dave McGowan (no relation) arguing against his startling thesis that the Laurel Canyon folk rock music “revolution” of the late 1960’s was engineered by the military industrial complex to discredit the anti-Vietnam war movement by associating it with oddly dressed, drug addled hippies.
Subscribe to our free Weekly Newsletter for articles and videos on practical mathematics, Internet Censorship, ways to fight back against censorship, and other topics by sending an email to: subscribe [at] mathematical-software.com
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
David McGowan (with a foreword by Nick Bryant)
Headpress, April 30, 2014, 316 pages (Paperback), also has Kindle version
This book addresses the question whether and to what extent powerful interests such as the “military industrial complex” influence or even fully create popular culture and the “news” convincing us to buy goods and services, support public policies or do things that are not in our interest and even quite harmful.
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon argues that the hippie counterculture of the 1960’s largely grew out of the folk rock “revolution” music scene in Laurel Canyon in Southern California epitomized by the Byrds, Jim Morrison, and other counterculture icons of the era who lived in and around Laurel Canyon — not Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. Not only that but the Laurel Canyon music scene was a carefully staged psychological operation by “military intelligence” and the CIA to discredit the anti-Vietnam war movement by associating it with long haired, oddly dressed, drug addicted hippies.
Jim Morrison, Military Intelligence Operative?
The poster child for this theory is Jim Morrison of the Doors, surprisingly the son of Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison who commanded the US fleet in the infamous and controversial Gulf of Tonkin incidents in August of 1964 which provided the pretext for a massive increase in the US involvement in Vietnam — flooding the small south-east Asian nation with US troops in 1965. Yes, Jim Morrison really was the son of Admiral Morrison. A number of other key figures in the folk rock revolution/Laurel Canyon music scene were sons of career military officers including John Philips of the Mamas and Papas, Frank Zappa, Gram Parsons of the Byrds, and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield.
Dave McGowan (1960-2015) Discussing Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon in 2014
David McGowan (1960-2015, no relation) presents the birth of the 1965 folk rock revolution as follows:
All these folks gathered nearly simultaneously along the narrow, winding roads of Laurel Canyon. They came from across the country— although the Washington, DC area was noticeably over-represented— as well as from Canada and England, and, in at least one case, all the way from Nazi Germany. They came even though, at the time, there was no music industry in Los Angeles. They came even though, at the time, there was no live music scene to speak of. They came even though, in retrospect, there was no discernible reason for them to do so.
McGowan, David. Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart Of The Hippie Dream (p. 17). Headpress. Kindle Edition.
David McGowan returns to this theme several times in the book and in most of the many interviews he did on the book, many available on YouTube as of July 9, 2022. This thesis is demonstrably false.
There was a sizable music industry in Los Angeles in the 1958 to 1965 period including the Southern California icon Capitol Records founded in 1942. Capitol Records was the label for the Kingston Trio who launched the “folk music revival” in 1958 with their hit “Tom Dooley.” The author mentions Capitol at least three times in the book! Other LA area record labels included: Liberty Records (1955-1971), Dot Records (in LA 1956-present), Arwin Records (late 1950s-mid 1960s), Dunhill Records (1964-1967), and GNP Crescendo Records (1954-present).
There was a sizable live music scene as well including several nightclubs such as Doug Weston’s Troubadour, opened in 1957, that specialized in folk music. The author mentions the famous Troubadour club at least five times! Other live folk music venues at the time included Pandora’s Box (about 1958-1966) and Ed Pearl’s The Ash Grove (1958-1973).
There were many reasons for musicians, particularly folk musicians, to relocate to the Los Angeles area in the 1960s.
The folk music revival of the late 1950s, sparked by the Kingston Trio’s hit “Tom Dooley,” (reminder: Capitol Records), sparked folk music clubs and records all over the United States and indeed the world. A large fraction of the Laurel Canyon musicians were struggling or moderately successful in the folk music scenes in New York/Greenwich Village (John Philips and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and Papas), Toronto (Neil Young and Joni Mitchell), Cambridge (Harvard/Boston), Kansas City etc. There is a long history in the United States of people rebooting or trying to reboot a failed or stagnant career by heading west, especially to California.
Gidget (1959) Advertises Surfing and Southern California
Southern California could offer balmy weather, beaches, and scantily clad members of the opposite sex as well as proximity to the glamorous movie industry and a long history of tolerance for Bohemians and other oddballs compared to much of the country. California was not nearly as expensive in the 1950’s and early 1960’s as it is today.
Books like the 1957 bestseller Gidget and hit movies such as 1959’s Gidget, a sanitized movie version of the book starring Sandra Dee and James Darren, painted an idyllic vision of Southern California for teens and young adults. The Los Angeles music industry began churning out beach songs with the Beach Boys — another Capitol Records band — well before 1965. There were many reasons for struggling or stagnant folk musicians to migrate to LA.
How Typical was Jim Morrison?
Hundreds of musicians, both famous and not so famous, lived in and around Laurel Canyon in the late 1960’s into the 1970’s. An obvious explanation for the presence of ex military kids like Jim Morrison which Dave McGowan acknowledged in many of his interviews is rebellion against their presumably strict military upbringing. Military officers are often stereotyped as distant or even abusive fathers who try to run their family like a military unit, an often unsuccessful method. Dave McGowan argued that while this could explain an excess of military kids, all of the Laurel Canyon musicians were from military or military intelligence families or (in some interviews) all military or super-rich families; Gram Parsons of the Byrds was apparently both.
However, many of the musicians Dave McGowan mentions or even devotes entire chapters to did not have obvious military families. Although John Philips of the Mamas and the Papas father was a retired Marine Corps officer, Cass Elliot (Naomi Cohen)’s father ran a lunch wagon business for construction workers in the Baltimore area, Denny Doherty’s father was a dockworker, and Michelle Phillips (Gilliam)’s father was an LA County probation officer who had served in the military probably during or around World War II (see below for more discussion of World War II).
The book devotes an entire chapter “Endless Vibrations” to the scandalous, sometimes criminal antics of the Beach Boys. The Wilson brothers of the Beach Boys’ father Murry Gage Wilson owned an industrial equipment rental company in the Los Angeles area. Their cousin and fellow Beach Boy Mike Love’s father Edward Milton Love founded and owned Love Sheet Metal Company, another LA business.
Arthur Lee of Love, one of the few African American Laurel Canyon musicians, also the subject of an entire chapter, did not come from a military family. His biological father Chester Taylor was a cornet player. His step-father Clinton Lee was drafted in World War 2 but was a construction worker and stonemason in Los Angeles after the war, not a career military man.
Canadian Neil Young of Buffalo Springfield’s father Scott Alexander Young was a journalist. Fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell (Robert Joan Anderson)’s father William Andrew Anderson served in the Canadian military during World War II but became a grocer after the war. And so on. On close examination, many Laurel Canyon musicians, including many prominently featured in the book, did not come from career military families. While many appear to have come from solidly middle class or upper-middle class backgrounds, only a few are/were clearly super rich before making it big in popular music.
Most of the Laurel Canyon musicians were born in the early 1940s, right before, usually during, and occasionally right after World War II. Their parents were nearly all young adults during the war, the prime age to be drafted or volunteer for the massive war effort. It is estimated about sixteen million Americans served in the military during World War II (about two million in Europe), about eleven percent of the US population.
The US began building up its military and supplying arms to the British Empire years before Pearl Harbor. It took some time to somewhat demobilize the military after World War II with the Cold War perpetuating much of the wartime military and industry. World War II followed the Great Depression, most likely making a military career unusually appealing to this generation.
It is not surprising many Laurel Canyon musicians had parents who served in the World War II military. Many appear to have returned to civilian life. That some did not or had made a career of the military against the backdrop of the Great Depression and sky-high unemployment levels is also not that surprising.
The Classified Lookout Mountain Film Studio
Laurel Canyon was home to a secret classified film studio and lab on Lookout Mountain, a relatively secluded location up in the hills, from the 1940s until at least 1969. It is apparently now the home of actor Jared Leto. This appears to have been used to produce films of nuclear weapons tests but very little is known about the facility.
Weird Scenes suggests the facility may have somehow managed the Laurel Canyon hippie psyop, but presents no real evidence, even tangential connections between employees of the facility and hippie rockers who presumably at least occasionally passed each other in the Laurel Canyon shops, may have been neighbors, etc.
Mobsters, Manson, and Satanism
Weird Scenes features a Laurel Canyon “death list” of drug overdoses, suspicious accidents, purported suicides and clear murders in and around Laurel Canyon. Charles Manson and his followers had a number of well documented as well as alleged ties to some of the Laurel Canyon musicians, including Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Manson and some others had ties to Anton Szandor LaVey (real name Howard Stanton Levy) and/or his Church of Satan. Heavy drug use and drug dealing permeate the accounts of the Laurel Canyon music scene.
Charles Manson Mug Shot (1968)
The book connects Laurel Canyon to many scandals and crimes, mostly in the LA area and in some cases alleges ties to various organized crime figures. The book manages to pull in everything from the death of stage magician and escape artist Houdini who lived in Laurel Canyon for a while, the Black Dahlia murder in 1947, the Tate-LaBianca (Manson) murders, and the so-called Wonderland murders in July of 1981 well after the Laurel Canyon music scene had peaked. Most of this has little to do with military intelligence or the CIA on the surface.
The book is not alone in suggesting a link between the “intelligence community” and Charles Manson. Tom O’Neil’s Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (Little Brown and Company, June 25, 2019) speculates Manson and his cult were a CIA MK-ULTRA mind control and COINTELPRO operation to discredit the hippies and undermine the anti-war and/or anti-establishment movements of the time — not unlike Dave McGowan’s theory.
Perhaps. The evidence is rather weak. What then to make of the history of crime and scandal including Manson associated with Laurel Canyon?
The Sunset Strip, home to the nightclubs associated with the Laurel Canyon folk rock revolution music scene has a long and shady history. The Sunset Strip is only a few miles from the entrance to Laurel Canyon, an easy commute by car even today (about eight to eighteen minutes by car on Mondays at 8:30 AM according to Google). Google Maps reports it is an hour and a half walk from the so-called Houdini Estate in Laurel Canyon to the infamous Viper Room nightclub on Sunset Strip today.
The Pandora’s Box coffee house/nightclub (about 1958 to 1966) that specialized in folk music was located at 8118 Sunset Boulevard, about 1.4 miles from the Houdini Estate, only about four to eight minutes by car on Mondays at 8:30 AM today.
The Sunset Strip started out as an unincorporated region connecting Beverly Hills to the west and Hollywood to the east with lax law enforcement. In the 1920s it became home to nightclubs, speakeasies, strip clubs and other dubious operations often associated with the gangsters of the Prohibition era, a pattern generally agreed to have continued up to at least the 1950s.
The nightclubs catered to the Hollywood elite as well as the general public and often were associated with prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, and other illegal activities. Notorious mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel and his successor Micky Cohen frequented many of the nightclubs and were said to control some or all of them. Other nightclubs nearby, not on Sunset Boulevard, had similar reputations and histories.
One of the prime suspects in the gruesome Black Dahlia murder in 1947 was Mark Hansen, owner or co-owner of the huge Florentine Gardens nightclub (5955 Hollywood Boulevard). Elizabeth Short, the so-called Black Dahlia, was one of many young women who frequented the huge nightclub and stayed intermittently in Hansen’s bungalow behind the Florentine Gardens. Someone claiming to be the killer mailed a package with Short’s birth certificate, social security card, other personal items, and an address book with Mark Hansen’s name on the cover to the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper making Hansen one of the prime suspects. Hansen was widely believed to be mob connected at the time.
Historically, entertainment is a great business for laundering money because theater tickets, nightclub tickets, records and CD’s etc. were usually purchased with cash. Drug dealing, prostitution, illegal gambling and many other illegal activities generate large amounts of cash.
There are both widespread rumors and several documented scandals such as the extortion conviction of Morris Levy suggesting deep organized crime involvement in the music industry and payoffs to DJs and radio stations to play music on the air.
Charles Manson, for example, looks suspiciously like an underworld character who was selling drugs and women to the Laurel Canyon elite. Perhaps he truly went nuts or perhaps he was stiffed in a drug deal or other illegal transaction — or set up as a fall guy by some other nefarious persons. None of this requires the CIA or military intelligence or a psyop to discredit the anti-war movement.
The Death of Dave McGowan
Shortly after Weird ScenesInside the Canyon was published, Dave McGowan died, reportedly from pancreatic cancer. The common highly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer usually kills in about six months.
Dave McGowan had been a little known “conspiracy theory,” usually a loaded pejorative term, writer with various articles, a web site, and several books prior to publication of Weird Scenes which did much better, garnering numerous reviews and sales on Amazon. He was interviewed on podcasts, radio and video a lot after Weird Scenes was published. This has led to suggestions that the book was too successful and the conspiracy killed him, presumably using a carcinogenic agent.
Certainly his death does seem a bit too coincidental. That said, about nine percent of Americans die in their fifties usually from common diseases such as cancer and heart attacks associated with old age. Dave McGowan was about fifty-five (55) when he died.
Conclusion
It is impossible at present to rule out the thesis of Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon but the case presented is weak. There was a vibrant music industry in LA in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was a vibrant live music scene in LA dating back at least to the Sunset Strip of the 1920s. There were many reasons for folk musicians in particular to move to LA and Laurel Canyon near the live music venues in the mid 1960s.
Many of the Laurel Canyon musicians had negligible family or personal ties to the military, military intelligence, or the CIA. Several, most notably Jim Morrison, did have such ties which might make one wonder.
The scandals, crimes, and various shady goings on associated with Laurel Canyon and with the Laurel Canyon music scene probably reflect organized crime involvement in nightclubs and the music business dating back to the 1920s rather than some larger intelligence community plot.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
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John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Subscribe to our free Weekly Newsletter for articles and videos on practical mathematics, Internet Censorship, ways to fight back against censorship, and other topics by sending an email to: subscribe [at] mathematical-software.com
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The Psychology of Totalitarianism is a new book by Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium, outlining his theory of “mass formation” especially with respect to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. His theory of “mass formation” was popularized by Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor or one of the inventors of the mRNA vaccine technology, during Malone’s Joe Rogan interview on the COVID pandemic and the COVID vaccines, using the name “mass formation psychosis” which Desmet does not use. Desmet has appeared on several podcasts touting his ideas since then, with several recent appearances to promote the book.
Briefly, I found the case for Desmet’s theory of mass formation with respect to the COVID response unconvincing, although I believe some of the factors such as widespread loneliness and social isolation that he discusses are contributing factors. Some sections of the book are quite interesting and insightful but for other reasons.
Rather, the “groupthink” and grossly irrational behavior during the COVID pandemic can be attributed to a “collective fight or flight response” not specific to totalitarianism, long predating the modern era, and common during wars and war-like episodes such as the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, World War I and World War II. This collective fight or flight response has been aggravated by pandemic profiteers such as Pfizer and Bill Gates much the same way that “Merchants of Death” selling weapons have aggravated the fight or flight response both before and during wars.
Mass formation is a theory to explain extreme instances of “mass hysteria” or “groupthink” including such episodes as the bloody purges in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. The term and various mass formation theories predates Desmet who has his own variant of the theory which is elaborated in detail in the book. He cites such scholars as Gustave Le Bon and Hannah Arendt.
The book is well written, translated into easily readable English by Els Vanbrabant. A few sections are a bit dry and academic, but overall the English version is clear and interesting with no hint that it is translated other than the frequent references to Belgium and Belgians. It includes an index and references, although a number of critical statements lack footnotes.
The book is clearly marketed toward skeptics of the official COVID narrative or those with significant doubts — hopefully a large and growing group given the evident massive failures of the COVID vaccines since the summer of 2021. Others may be unable to see the case for widespread mass hysteria, groupthink, or other irrationality in the COVID response. The book cover and first pages feature numerous laudatory quotes from Robert Malone MD, Peter McCullough MD, and other prominent critics of the official narrative, policies, and generally the COVID vaccines. These one sided endorsements are likely to limit the reach of the book.
Desmet’s mass formation theory in the book is really two theories that he links together in a whole. The second theory is the mass formation theory that Desmet and Malone have discussed on several occasions. Namely, a general environment of loneliness, social isolation, lack of meaning, and “free floating anxiety” leads to a situation where a large fraction of the population (about thirty percent) fanatically embraces a simplistic, often rapidly changing narrative that provides a powerful sense of both meaning and solidarity with other people, substituting the greater good of the collective for normal social and moral relations. This mass formation is a form of collective hypnosis involving a narrow focus on a single simple goal such as “zero COVID” at any cost, including self-destructive measures and monstrous acts that would normally be rejected as immoral.
A Critique of Scientific “Rationalism”
In the book, Desmet attributes this environment of loneliness, social isolation, lack of meaning, and the associated free floating anxiety to the flaws and limitations of the modern Enlightenment rational materialistic mechanical worldview beloved of many scientists, engineers, and other intellectuals including himself until age thirty-five. Note that the social isolation and associated problems could have another cause than the rational scientific worldview but give rise to the mass formation. Desmet is specific in blaming the “rational” worldview however for the preexisting conditions that make possible the mass formation.
Desmet’s critique of the “rationalist” worldview, perhaps better called “scientism,” is extensive with many good points and insightful discussions of flaws in mainstream science and statistics, making up most of the book, nearly all of the first and third parts. The mass formation theory that many readers may have encountered on podcasts before the book’s recent publication makes up part two which is only about three chapters, sixty pages.
For me Desmet’s extensive criticism of the scientific rationalist materialistic worldview as he calls it was the most interesting part of the book, even though I disagree with his overall thesis. I found his discussion of the practical problems with statistics and graphical data presentation, focusing on the dismal and misleading use of statistics during the COVID pandemic, particularly interesting and insightful.
That said, Desmet’s discussion of quantum mechanics in modern physics is incorrect. The mainstream Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics does not give consciousness any special role in the measurement or observation in quantum mechanics. Some physicists have theorized consciousness in some way is the “measurement” or “observation” that collapses the quantum wave function in the mainstream Copenhagen theory. This is a fringe view.
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is almost certainly “incomplete” and logically flawed as Einstein argued in his 1935 paper with Podolsky and Rosen. The problem is the lack of a clear consistent definition of “measurement” or “observation” in the mainstream theory. Incompleteness does not however mean that consciousness plays a central role in quantum mechanics as Desmet claims in several places. Most non-Copenhagen theories to resolve the incompleteness — for example the many worlds theory of QM — do not use consciousness to resolve the logical flaws in the Copenhagen Quantum Mechanics illustrated by Schrodinger’s Cat and other paradoxes.
David Bohm’s pilot wave theory — derived from the earlier pilot wave ideas of his mentor Einstein as well as deBroglie and Schrodinger — actually removes the need to invoke either a wave function collapse or consciousness by interpreting the quantum system as a pilot wave and a discrete particle somewhat like radar controlled drone guided by a radar signal bouncing and diffracting through a mountain range. The drone always has a specific location and velocity whereas the radar beam is spread out over the landscape, interfering with itself and causing confusing wavelike behavior in the trajectory of the drone.
Although Bohm linked his ideas to mysticism with the pilot wave or “quantum potential” analogized to the World Spirit (Anima Mundi) of western mysticism or the chi of eastern mysticism, the pilot wave theory is entirely mechanistic.
Desmet’s discussion of the supposed scientific revolution during the 17th century, illustrated with the usual stories about Galileo, is what most scientists and intellectuals in the modern world are taught. Yet it is grossly contradicted by the actual historical record which shows a seamless evolution from religion and mysticism, most clearly with the work of Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, both mystics, alchemists, astrologers, and deeply religious men who envisioned God as mathematician dictating mathematical laws obeyed by subsidiary spirits or angels embodied in the Sun and planets.
This notion of a predictable, mathematical universe created by a God or gods is very old, dating back to Pythagoras in ancient Greek and very likely Pythagoras’s teachers in Egypt and Babylonia (modern Iraq). A benevolent God would hardly be the capricious, inscrutable nut case pictured by Carl Sagan and other atheist science popularizers in recent decades, instead providing rational laws of nature for His human creations.
The common textbook notion of a scientific revolution in the 17th century rejecting medieval religion and superstition, epitomized by Galileo and his clash with the Catholic Church, appears to be a projection of atheistic, materialistic views that became dominant in organized, professionalized science during the 19th century and early 20th century.
The Collective Fight or Flight Response
The fight or flight response is a powerful reaction to an immediate perceived threat such as a tiger or other large predator, a car accident, a human antagonist such as a mugger, or other physical dangers. It involves a narrowing of focus to the immediate threat, short term thinking, a strong physical response mediated by adrenaline and other hormones.
An extreme fight or flight response can include loss of pain sensations, the ability to fight and kill with severe, normally disabling or fatal injuries, and other dramatic changes. Many higher cognitive functions are lowered or turned off to handle the immediate threat. Some short term thinking skills and reflexes may be enhanced instead. The immune system is reduced or turned off to focus all energies on the immediate threat.
Human beings and other herd animals also have a collective fight or flight response most evident during wars or public emergencies. Obedience to authority increases. Conformity increases. People and groups that are perceived as different are frequently attacked, isolated (e.g. confinement of American Indians to reservations, internment of Japanese Americans in WW2), driven out (e.g. enslavement and expulsion of most Wampanoag from the Massachusetts colony after King Philips War in 1675) or killed (e.g. massacre of settlers by the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota in 1862). The collective focus narrows to the immediate survival threat. Group members will display flags or other signs to indicate membership in the group (e.g. wearing masks during the COVID pandemic, displaying vaccine cards and certificates) and make differentiating the group from the attackers easier.
These are instinctive, primal responses probably adapted to repelling an attack by a rival tribe or clan in ancient times. As in the individual fight or flight response, higher cognitive function is curtailed or turned off. If your village is being attacked by the tribe across the river, it is not the time for nuanced thought. Language such as “you are either with us or against us” surfaces. The tribe coalesces into a single military unit and fights as one.
The collective fight or flight response does not require preexisting loneliness, social isolation, discontent, a lack of meaning or any negative conditions at all. It simply requires a perceived physical threat to the group.
This is the “mass formation” behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemics, even if due to the deliberate release of a biological weapon, are not attacks by a rival tribe in 10,000 BC. The collective fight or flight response can be disastrous in a non-military public emergency, real or imagined.
War profiteers learned a long time ago to provoke and exploit the collective fight or flight response to create and prolong wars, boosting profits often with disastrous consequences for most people. Pandemic profiteers such as Pfizer and Bill Gates can do the same.
Conclusion
The Psychology of Totalitarianism is well worth reading, both because of Desmet’s insights on scientific rationalism and because it will undoubtedly influence the debate and conflict over the COVID pandemic, vaccines, and policies. However, those skeptical of the rapidly changing COVID narrative or major parts of the narrative should not embrace Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis. While it is likely widespread loneliness and lack of meaning has contributed to the overreaction, the main cause is probably the primal collective fight or flight response stoked by a continuing barrage of fear porn from the advertising funded mass media.
Psychoanalyzing people to their face is rarely persuasive. Most people find this condescending and offensive. Desmet eschews the phrase “mass formation psychosis” with good reason and COVID skeptics should particularly avoid telling other people that they are psychotic.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Subscribe to our free Weekly Newsletter for articles and videos on practical mathematics, Internet Censorship, ways to fight back against censorship, and other topics by sending an email to: subscribe [at] mathematical-software.com
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
In the 1997 movie Wag the Dog a mysterious consultant played by Robert DeNiro and a Hollywood producer/campaign contributor played by Dustin Hoffman fake a war in Albania complete with a computer generated terrorism video produced by movie biz special effects wizards to divert public attention from a sex scandal engulfing a Bill Clinton-like President who is running for reelection. The phony war succeeds despite several snafus and a brief rebellion by the CIA. The President is reelected amidst a surge of war fever and patriotism. How well do wars work in the real world?
The most spectacular boost in Presidential approval ratings due to a war followed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed about 3,000 people on US soil, probably the largest single day massacre in US history both in absolute numbers and fraction of the population. (The few day Santee massacre of settlers by Dakota Sioux Indians in Minnesota in 1862 probably killed a larger fraction of the population at the time.) President George W. Bush and the Republicans seem to have benefited electorally from the subsequent “war on terror” in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
However, historically the effect of wars and national security events such as the successful launch of the Sputnik I (October 4, 1957) and II (November 3, 1957) satellites by the Soviet Union on Presidential approval ratings and electoral prospects is much more varied. Sputnik II is significant because the second satellite was large enough to carry a nuclear bomb unlike the beach ball sized Sputnik I.
Truman and the Korean War
President Harry Truman’s approval ratings had been declining for over a year prior to the start of the Korean War. He may have experienced a slight bump for a couple of months (see plot above) followed by further decline.
Eisenhower and the End of the Korean War
Like most new Presidents, Dwight Eisenhower experienced a big “honeymoon” jump over his predecessor Harry Truman. There is little sign he either benefited or suffered from the end of the Korean War.
Eisenhower and Sputnik I and II
Eisenhower’s approval ratings had been declining for almost a year when the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite Sputnik I on October 4, 1957. This was followed by the much larger Sputnik II on November 3, 1957 — theoretically capable of carrying a nuclear bomb. Although Sputnik I and II were big news stories and led to a huge reaction in the United States, there is no clear effect on Eisenhower’s approval ratings. He rebounded in early 1958 and left office as one of the most popular Presidents.
However, Eisenhower, his administration, and his Vice President Richard Nixon who ran for President in 1960 were heavily criticized over the missile race with the Soviet Union due to Sputnik. Sputnik was followed by high profile, highly publicized failures of US attempts to launch satellites. Administration claims that the Soviet Union was in fact behind the US in the race to build nuclear missiles were widely discounted, although this seems to have been true.
John F. Kennedy ran successfully for President in 1960 claiming the notorious “missile gap” and calling for a massive nuclear missile build up, winning narrowly over Nixon in a bitterly contested election with widespread allegations of voting fraud in Texas and Chicago. Eisenhower’s famous farewell address coining (or at least popularizing) the phrase “military industrial complex” was a reaction to the controversy over Sputnik and the nuclear missile program.
Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
President Kennedy experienced a large boost in previously declining approval ratings during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. This is often considered the closest the world has come to a nuclear war until the recent confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine. It also occurred only weeks before the mid-term elections in November of 1962.
Johnson and the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War ultimately destroyed President Lyndon Johnson’s approval ratings with the aging President declining to run for another term in 1968 amidst massive protests and challenges from Senator Robert Kennedy and others. There is actually little evidence of a boost from the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in August of 1964 and the subsequent Gulf of Tonkin resolution leading to the larger war.
President Johnson ran on a “peace” platform, successfully portraying the Republican candidate Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as a nutcase warmonger. Yet, Johnson — at the same time — visibly escalated the US involvement in the then obscure nation of Vietnam in August only a few months before the Presidential election in 1964.
Ford and the End of the Vietnam War
The end of the Vietnam War (April 30, 1975) seems to have boosted President Gerald Ford’s approval ratings significantly, about ten percent. Nonetheless, he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Carter and the Iran Hostage Crisis
President Jimmy Carter experienced a substantial boost in approval ratings when “students” took over the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran on November 4, 1979, holding the embassy staff hostage for 444 days. This lasted a few months, followed by a rapid decline back to Carter’s previous dismal approval ratings. The failure to rescue or secure the release of the hostages almost certainly contributed to Carter’s loss the Ronald Reagan in 1980.
George H.W. Bush and Iraq War I (Operation Desert Storm)
President George Herbert Walker Bush experienced a large boost in approval ratings at the end of the first Iraq War followed by a large and rapid decline, losing to Bill Clinton in 1992.
President George Bush, September 11, Iraq War II, and Afghanistan are discussed at the start of this article — overall probably the clearest boost in approval and electoral performance from a war at least since World War II.
Biden and Ukraine
As of June 16, 2022, President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have continued to decline since the February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia. There is not the slightest sign of any boost.
Conclusion
Despite the folk tradition epitomized by the movie Wag the Dog that wars boost a President’s approval and electoral prospects — at least initially — history shows mixed results. Some wars have clearly boosted the President’s prospects, notably after September 11, and others have done nothing or even contributed to further decline. Korea, for example, seems to have only contributed to President Truman’s marked decline and the loss to Eisenhower in 1952.
Probably the lesson is to avoid wars and focus on resolving substantive domestic economic problems.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Main Web Site: https://mathematical-software.com/ Censored Search: https://censored-search.com/ A search engine for censored Internet content. Find the answers to your problems censored by advertisers and other powerful interests!
Subscribe to our free Weekly Newsletter for articles and videos on practical mathematics, Internet Censorship, ways to fight back against censorship, and other topics by sending an email to: subscribe [at] mathematical-software.com
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
