#3041: Marjorie Holsten

Marjorie Holsten is a Minnesota-based lawyer, former delegate to the Republican National Convention and treasurer of the Education Liberty Watch, a wingnut organization fighting for promoting Christian nationalism in public schools, opposes that evolution be taught without presenting young-Earth creationism as a viable scientific alternative, promotes a science curriculum that denies the existence of global warming, and, perhaps more centrally, pushes parents’ rights to give their kids whatever education they want (or none) through homeschooling; the group is perhaps most famous for helping to launch the career of Michele Bachmann.

 

Although Holsten might not be a major figure on any kind of national stage, she did receive some attention back in 2016 for her argument that sex education is a conspiratorial plot to produce Democratic votes: “why would they teach such awful things to our children? If you go deep down and you connect those dots, you see that when children are desensitized to sexual things, that affects their ability at a later date to bond with a spouse. And so if you have somebody who can’t bond, they’re not going to have a stable marriage. When you have unstable, broken households, how do they vote? Democrat. So this has a very evil underlying intent.” Yes, there’s some serious dot-connecting there. Holsten did, grudgingly, admit that children have to learn a bit about how life works, but suggested showing them guinea pigs mating instead because “you really couldn’t see anything” and thus not learn anything anyways.

 

We don’t know what Holsten’s been up to since and can’t be bothered to do any serious investigation, but her organization is apparently still around.

 

Diagnosis: At least she takes a strong grassroots interest in children’s education. Unfortunately, she is rather typical of a large group of people who seem to have been doing just that in the US recently.

 

#3040: Timothy Charles Holmseth

Timothy Charles Holmseth is a former journalist – possibly ‘journalist’ – and current promoter of QAnon conspiracy theories who claims, for instance, to be the sole journalist authorized to represent the (fictitious) “Pentagon Pedophile Task Force”. On his website, you can find multiple ‘reports’ with titles like “WAR REPORT: PRESIDENT TRUMP SHINES WHITE HOT SPOTLIGHT on CIA EXPLOITATION of JESUS CHRIST (TRUMP SHOWS YOU THE CIA HOLLYWOOD PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION of PASSION of the CHRIST-SOUND of FREEDOM-THE RESURRECTION) [BOB UNANUE] [CHILDREN CHAINED NAKED to BEDS by NAVY SEALS]” or “SPECIAL NATIONAL SECURITY SERIES: JUDICIAL TERRORISM in AMERICA (THE EPSTEIN COUP) – HILLARY CLINTON TORTURE AND CANNIBALISM LAWSUIT U.S. COURT DOCUMENTS THAT WERE SUPRESSED BY BIG TECH HAVE GONE VIRAL!!!!!”, and we hope readers will excuse us for not bothering to wade through it all to look for some kind of thread in the incoherent hot mess of hysteria and paranoia that constitute Holmseth’s reports. The strands of standard QAnon mythology are at least readily apparent: Yes, there is a lot of Clinton Body Count stuff, and everyone Holmseth can think of (except, notably, Donald Trump), including fellow QAnon sympathizers like Alex Jones and Michael Flynn, are allegedly involved – it’s really a fine illustration of that sort of conspiratorial thinking where every piece of information, regardless of what it says or how it apparently contradicts anything Holmseth has said elsewhere, is interpreted as being evidence for an always expanding conspiracy that is simultaneously getting more and more desperate in its attempts to silence him through PSYOPs.

 

Holmseth is particularly famous for spreading false and insane claims of child abuse. In June 2020, Holmseth and the group calling themselves the Pentagon Pedophile Task Force (PPTF) – according to the febrile fantasy of Holmseth, the PPTF “was created through the Donald J. Trump White House, per Presidential Executive Order, and operates through United States Army Intelligence Support Activity”, but in reality it has, needless to say, no connection whatsoever to any US governmental agency – got some attention (went viral) for spreading false claims about tens of thousands of children being held hostage and tortured in New York City; according to Holmseth, some secret recent US military operation rescued 35,000 “malnourished, caged and tortured” children who were kept for the purpose of extracting adrenochrome from tunnels beneath Central Park and other unnamed U.S. cities. His reports even features audio clips of unidentified people claiming, without evidence, that they know medical workers who treated those children. The story contributed to the popularization of the hashtag #SaveTheChildren among QAnon dingbats. And of course, by co-opting a trademarked name for the child welfare organization Save the Children, conspiracy theorists made work dedicated to the actual welfare of children (rather than conspiratorial fiction) harder to accomplish, among other things by redirecting users who are searching for the child welfare group to abominable QAnon nonsense. Eventually, social media companies took action against the QAnon use of the hashtag, which predictably led the conspiracy theorists to conclude that those social media companies were part of the coverup. So it goes.

 

Holmseth’s delusions extends to his own person. According to himself, Holmseth is “a human trafficking victim of the State of Minnesota. Holmseth became a political prisoner after he was kidnapped by State of Minnesota four times. Holmseth was charged with publishing evidence and information about Jeffrey Epstein’s child procurement operation. Holmseth was locked in a private for-profit detention center and tortured by his captors.” In reality, Holmseth has been arrested multiple times and incarcerated for violating a lifelong restraining order after systematically failing to control himself from harassing his victims or posting threatening and defamatory commentary online. (According to himself, he has also later been kidnapped and imprisoned by deep state forces after uncovering baby sales arranged via Ukrainian Embassy in DC). And he has a long history of filing frivolous and nonsensical lawsuits against any and every state or federal institutions alleging … well, it’s rarely entirely clear neither to us nor to the courts (nor, we suspect, Holmseth himself, who evidently has a tenuous grasp of reality), but the lawsuits generally seem to have something to do with alleged international pedophile rings that he claims are behind his previous arrests.

 

Yes, it is very dumb. But Holmseth has, disconcertingly, been a major influence on more violent and materially dangerous segments of the QAnon community, such as Alpalus Slyman and Cynthia Abcug, and a quick check online reveals that he has a large number of fans among people with (usually) undiagnosed schizophrenia and bots.

 

Diagnosis: No, we can definitely not rule out that Timothy Charles Holmseth’s brand of lunacy is of the kind that we don’t generally like to cover in our Encyclopedia. Still, it is a mark of the times that he nonetheless has been able to achieve a remarkable level of influence. There is, apparently, lots of similar … thought patterns going around, and certainly not sufficient resources to meet everybody’s needs.

 

#3039: Heidi Hollis

Shadow people are supernatural beings that some people claim to see moving about in their peripheral vision. 

 

Such creatures are common in folklore and fiction, and some people apparently struggle to distinguish reality from horror-comedy fiction in a reliable way or to wrap their heads around the fact that the John Dies at the End book series is not a documentary, and believe that reality, too, is populated with such nonsense. That group of people – apparently “[m]any methamphetamine addicts report the appearance of ‘shadow people’ after prolonged periods of sleep deprivation” (S.T. Anderson, 2012), and such visions are commonly associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – will sometimes refer the work of Heidi Hollis, who popularized the idea of shadow people on Coast to Coast AM in the early 2000s (she was a regular guest). Hollis’s work has also appeared in such highbrow venues as Alien Disclosure Files, History’s Greatest Mysteries, and Ancient Aliens, and she has apparently written a number of books based loosely on her own imagination (avoid them: the David Wong / Jason Pargin series is far more entertaining, colorful and educational). Hollis is also former host of Magick Mind Paranormal Research Radio and a frequent guest at various gatherings devoted to various brands of silliness.

 

Hollis currently runs a podcast, Dark Becomes Light, where you can learn about “Shadow People®, Hat Man® & the Alien War going on Now!” (yes, they’re trademarked while simultaneously supposed to refer to real entities – Hollis’s fans don’t think too closely about such issues, and Hollis herself has proudly labeled herself “The Woman Who Trademarked the Devil”); she is apparently also interested in “Bigfoot, Dogman, Holy Encounters, Near Death Experiences, Ghosts, Psychic Happenings, Ancient Mysteries, Reincarnation, etc.”

 

So who are these mysterious entities, the Shadow People and Hat Man? According to Hollis, “[b]are demonic. Shadow People® are dark beings who can shapeshift, aiming to blend with the night as they paralyze their victims. Hat Man® doesn’t always mind being seen and will step out from the shadows for you to get a good look. He wants you to revere him for being evil incarnate.” The solution, if you are troubled by him, is apparently to find Jesus. For legal reasons, her website features a Quack Miranda warning emphasizing that Hollis “is not a psychological therapist”, though we are somewhat worried about the people who managed to scroll down her website all the way to the disclosure without drawing that conclusion on their own.

 

Diagnosis: Stupidity is never as pathetic and ugly as when it’s combined with a grift, and Hollis’s grift is ugly: The last thing people who think they see ‘shadow people’ need, is a moron who tells them these shadow people are real. Hopefully (and not unlikely) most methamphetamine addicts suffering from prolonged sleep deprivation will be perfectly able to recognize Hollis’s silliness for what it is.

 

#3038: Danny Holliday

  

Danny Holliday is pastor of Victory Baptist Church, Alton, Illinois, member of the National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders, fundie bigot and deluded self-declared victim of anti-Christian government oppression. Particularly grievous with regard to the government’s oppression of Holliday is the fact that government and courts recognize same-sex marriage: Holliday doesn’t like same-sex marriage, and the fact that others are allowed to do things that don’t align with his beliefs and approvals, is rank oppression of him. So it goes.

 

In fact, Holliday thinks marriage equality for gays and lesbians violates the separation of church and state. As Holliday sees it, the separation of church and state means that the government has “no right to disregard what God says” about marriage or other issues: “The issue is God defined marriage and since our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence and the oath of office in the state of Illinois recognize almighty God, then we have no right to disregard what God says about the institution of marriage. They don’t have a right to step beyond the veil, that separation of church and state, because it is God who gives us religious freedom and not the state”. In response, Rick Green – not generally known for reason or sensitivity to reality, and who otherwise does not believe in the separation of church and state – compared Holliday’s campaigns against marriage equality in Illinois to “John Adams at the Continental Congress the guy behind the scenes that was working day and night to make sure we got the Declaration of Independence.”

 

When the Supreme Court ruling came down back in the days, Holliday was unhappy: “Just as the Supreme was all wrong on slavery, which resulted in the Civil War, it is all wrong on legalizing same-sex marriage” (there’s some handwaving involved in that ‘just as’). But the ruling was of course just part of a more general anti-Christian trend that has (entirely in Holliday’s mind) led to crosses being “illegal on Government property” and “the words Merry Christmas have become taboo”.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, he is a delusionally paranoid fundie, and as delusionally paranoid fundies are wont to do, his bigotry is presented as victimhood. And at least at a local level, some people seem to be listening to him.

#3037: Jamel Holley

Jamel Curtis Holley is the former mayor of Roselle, New Jersey; former Democratic representative to the New Jersey General Assembly representing the 20th Legislative District from 2015 to 2022; deranged anti-vaccine activist (one of numerous such legislators) and RFK jr. associate; and a general threat to his surroundings and civilization in general.

 

Holley has palled around with RFK jr. on numerous occasions and credits him with “learning so much on the effects of vaccinations and the dangers [RFK imagines] it has caused to our children”. They appeared together for instance at a February 2020 anti-vaccine rally at the Connecticut State Capitol protesting a bill that would narrow vaccine exemptions, where Holley also gave a speech (Holley also led anti-vaccine activists on in protesting a similar bill in New Jersey that he was fighting, tooth and nail). Kennedy, on his side, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Holley through fundraising speeches and also delivered remarks to Holley and other members of the NJ Legislative Black Caucus on “the harmful effects of vaccinations”. Of course, at least in official settings, Holley tends to appeal to health freedom rhetoric and to lambast the media for its tendency to label anti-vaccine activists as ‘anti-vaccine activists’ (Holley ‘is not anti-vaccine’).

 

Holley has also e.g. engaged in familiar conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and Gates’s involvement in vaccination programs around the world, including attacking Gates for having “injected and caused harm to mulitple [sic] minority families in India and Africa” – Holley is referring to a famous and bonkers piece of misinformation originating with, of course, RFK jr. During COVID, Holley also promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, claiming that it saved his uncle’s life.

 

Diagnosis: Moronic conspiracy theorist. And as so often, that character trait didn’t prevent him from getting elected to positions of power. We are not entirely sure what he’s doing these days (he might be running a consulting firm), but it is unlikely to be anything good.

 

#3036: Larry Holcombe

Larry Holcombe is an author, ufologist, conspiracy theorist and generally somewhat colorful figure. He is perhaps most famous for his 2015 book The Presidents And UFOs: A Secret History From FDR To Obama, which alleges that all presidents since FDR have had extensive knowledge about UFOs and extraterrestrials (there are apparently “four ... races of extraterrestrials that visit Earth, one of which is considered hostile”), have wanted to go public with the information, and have been consistently blocked by intelligence officials for reasons that remain somewhat diffuse. Holcombe’s book is accordingly a bit repetitive, with the same basic story told for each president: some civilians and/or military people see a strange object; the observers are told to keep quiet while the Air Force debunks; additional details later leak out. Though Holcombe attempts to prop up the narrative with official documents, it should be unnecessary to mention that the evidence for extraterrestrials in general and his narrative in particular remain – to put it diplomatically – inconclusive.

 

It is all very, very standard fare for UFO conspiracy theorists. Holcombe also believes “that Roswell, and the bungling of crash retrieval events, was the defining moment in the development of the United States policy towards the UFO issue”, complains about “media indifference to the UFO issue” and has, as is virtually required (and unavoidable) for people in his business, had his own UFO encounter back in 1995. Coast to Coast AM has naturally picked up the story.

 

Diagnosis: The realization that ‘Wait, the program that is featuring my story is Coast to Coast AM’ should beget some moments of self-reflection for reasonable people. At least Larry Holcombe seems to be generally harmless.

 

#3035: Rene Holaday

A.k.a. Rene’ Holaday (adding punctuation to your name is a typical sovereign citizen step to mark a perceived distinction between their human identity and the ‘strawman’ corporate entity they allege the government created in their name)

 

Rene Holaday is a Washington-based horse breeder turned self-taught “UN researcher”, and she has traveled around (e.g. to events like the Montana Red Pill Festival) and published a book (The Perils of Sustainable Development) seeking to expose the UN’s “senseless human-hating programs” that will turn Americans into “indentured slaves.” As Holaday sees it, the UN plans to turn the US into a kind of feudal society where citizens have no rights beyond whatever the “evil ruling lords” allow them. As evidence, she points to various Sustainable Cities initiatives, adding that the UN is going to force people to live and stay within these as captive slaves. The fact that the programs Holaday attributes to the UN do not make any sense whatsoever and the fact that the UN has absolutely no power to control US decision-making are details she seems thoroughly confused about – rather, according to Holaday, if you don’t stand up now you will “lose everything you have ever grown to know and love in this country, like private property rights, individual rights, rights of man over earth and animal, rights to live where you choose, rights to eat the foods you want to eat, rights to own livestock and pets, etc, etc.” According to herself, her book on these issues was “the FIRST Book in the USA on The UN's Agenda 21(-50)”, and it was apparently gifted to President Trump himself by former Washington State Senator, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture during Trump I, and deranged conspiracy theorist Brian Dansel as part of Dansel pestering Trump about Agenda 21.

 

Now, there are of course lots of these delusionally paranoid clowns around, but Holaday has at least enjoyed the attention of local politicians and local militia-affiliated organizations, which is a bit alarming. Holaday did for instance serve as Washington State Representative Matt Shea’s legislative assistant for a while, until she was fired by the Chief Clerk’s Office of the state legislature for participating in an event promoting the secession of several Washington counties from the state to form the state of Liberty (“It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty State,” said Holaday).

 

Indeed, Holaday tried to run for election to the U.S. House herself in 2024, representing Washington’s 5th Congressional District as a “Christian MAGA Republican”, but failed to advance beyond the primary. According to her own campaign materials, Holaday had “won multiple times against” Agenda 21 “at the local, State, and National levels” (basically Agenda 21 seems to be the perceived agent behind everything she doesn’t like): she e.g. “saved both Stevens and Spokane County from one of the biggest UN programs coming down from the State level”. And apparently “I win because I know the Constitution, and I use Sun Tzu strategy”. In addition to lowering gas prices, “restoring God over this nation” [?], and banning “Electronic Voting Machines and Mail-in Ballots” her platform also promised to … well, it’s worth quoting her:

 

“As a UN expert, I know that the UN’s form of governance is based upon the Communist Manifesto, with Fascism as their economic model. To have the UN in America, and entrenched in all of our local, State, and National Government, says that we have Communism subverting everything happening in America right now. Did you know the term 'The Deep State’ is synonymous with Communism as well? [you didn’t know that, did you?] I studied Government and foreign governance structures in college, and used that education to fight and win against the UN’s Communist programs that seek to ‘Dethrone God, and destroy Capitalism’-Karl Marx [nope]. As a Constitution Buff, I know that ALL Communism in America is ILLEGAL and will fight it from China too!”

 

We imagine that reading her whole book would take some effort.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, she is profoundly confused about a whole lot of things, but apparently also has lots of fury and paranoia to motivate flailing around on the impulses that bubble to the surface of her stream of consciousness. Given the political climate, she might have a significant career ahead of her.

 

Hat-tip: mtcowgirl