#768: Michael A. Hoffman II

Michael A. Hoffman II is a Holocaust denier, conspiracy theorist, and self-proclaimed scholar of all things Judaic. His self-published books include Judaism’s Strange Gods and Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, and Deceit, and they contain exactly the kind of 30s-style shittery you’d expect from the titles. He has also worked on the projects of e.g. Tom Metzger, Willis Carto, David Irving and Ernst Zündel. According to himself, however, Hoffman is just trying to save the Jews from themselves and the Satanic evils of the Talmud.

Hoffman’s other output includes writings on the occult origins of Judaism and Masonry, and he has written stuff on Holocaust denial, White Slavery (the suffering of white people at the hands of commercial interests in Britain and America negates the sufferings of and genocide against African Americans), and the ravings of Charles Fort, all of which are characterized by the same standards of judgment and critical thinking as his books on Judaism. As for masonry, apparently Hoffman learned from his maternal grandfather that elections in the United States were rigged by organized crime, and there is just a short step from this unsubstantiated premise to the conclusions “[n]othing is at seems to be,” and therefore that the Masons and the Jews are behind everything.

In Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare he outlined his conspiracy theory of a shadow government or “cryptocracy” that gains power through manipulation of symbols and twilight language. Examples include Route 66, which allegedly connects various centers of occult significance, and the Kennedy assassination, in which Hoffman sees ritualistic elements because he is crazy (based on the lunatic ideas of James Shelby Downard, with whom Hoffman coauthored King/Kill-33 before the latter’s death). But there is cause for optimism! Hoffman has stated that the gnosis of this ruling cabal is slowly being revealed through movies such as They Live and The Matrix and other forms of symbolic and subliminal communication since … who knows. He has also attempted to analyze the 9/11 terror attack in terms of human alchemy and psychological warfare. At least Alex Jones seems fascinated. 

Diagnosis: A deeply objectionable character. As opposed to many crackpots, Hoffman is a decent writer and actually takes some care to make his details and data relatively factually accurate. But through judicious application of cherry-picking and motivated reasoning he is able to arrive at precisely the obnoxious, vile conclusions he wants.