#646: Michael Ellner

Michael Ellner is an “aids critic”, and his erudite criticisms of contemporary science related to HIV – and its corresponding conspiracies – have earned him his very own page at whale.to. According to Ellner: “Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality …,” though more reality-apt people would probably note that when Ellner perceives everything upside-down it says far more about his perception of things than it says about the things he perceive. Ellner is crazy. “As far as ‘AIDS’ goes, we have been subject to the most heinous and genocidal fraud in medical history,” and he suggests that instead of ordinary medicine (which kills people) we must renounce evidence, science and reality and go for holistic treatments without the faintest trace of supporting evidence of efficacy. Accordingly, Ellner can offer nothing but anecdotes and imagination to support his claim, but such limitations hwve never stopped a crank (by definition). Then there is POMO: “AIDS is not a disease. It is a social agreement,” writes Ellner and one Tom DiFerdinando; “[t]here are others who need AIDS also. Do not forget. Medicine is a business.” In other words, people are dying because they accept the conceptual scheme on AIDS and death pushed by the establishment. And fortunately Ellner can offer you safe, affordable treatments.

Ellner considers himself “an internationally prominent Certified Hypnosis Practitioner and Pain Relief Educator,” and claims that there is considerable scientific evidence that hypnosis can help reduce, even eliminate pain (assessed here). He doesn't tell us where this evidence may be found, admittedly, but asserts that the “medical establishment” have been spreading lies about hypnosis. It is unclear whether he thinks that hypnotherapy can cure AIDS, but by the power of POMO it probably can.

Diagnosis: It is noteworthy that on his hypnotherapy homepage Ellner writes nothing about his HIV-“skepticism”, almost as if he dimly realizes that there is something less than convincing about it and that it may contribute to undermining his reputation in the field of hypnotherapy. In any case, Ellner is a woo-meister and denialist, who should definitely not be lent an ear in the most desperate of circumstances.

#630: Mark Downey

And just in case you thought you’d seen the worst of lunacy by now, we give you Mark Downey. Reverend Downey is the culprit behind the “Christian Identity” website Kinsman Redeemer Ministries, which is a good place to go to give up all hopes for humanity. Downey’s main tenet is that the so-called “Chosen People” of the Bible are – as opposed to what the Bible suggests – not the Jews, at least not today’s Jews, but rather the “Germanic, Celtic, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon” peoples. And thus you may get an impression of the direction in which Downey is headed. And indeed: “Adolf Hitler showed the world the mercy and loving kindness of Positive Christianity,” he says, but we failed to listen and were instead fooled by a Jewish conspiracy to view Hitler as evil. Yes, that’s the idea, and even among the most insane it will probably remain a minority view for some time. As for anti-semitism, Downey has revived most myths from ancient and medieval times. “How many of the innocent youngsters you see on milk cartons have fallen prey to the ceremonial knives of rabbis and lie buried in secret graves or were ground up into dog food in some jewish-owned processing plant?” asks Downey in his series of articles charmingly titled "Why We Hate the Jews", and follows it with this.

But Downey isn’t quite done. The whole idea of the notion of “Kinsman Redeemer” is that Jesus came to redeem not all humans, but his kinsmen. His kinsmen were the white people (since, as most renaissance paintings so accurately depict him, Jesus was blond and blue-eyed). It doesn’t really help, then, that Downey actually purports to reject “white nationalism” – he rejects white nationalism since white nationalism is, according to Downey, a pagan movement. Instead, he prefers to view his ideas as “Christian nationalism”, which combines the main tenets of white nationalism with dominionism and hysterical endtimes babble. It is not as charming as it sounds.

Of course, Downey and his group also rejects evolution – not on technical grounds but because evolution implies common descent and by the inference rule of Downey’s wacky wishful thinking evolution must therefore be false. Instead they claim that all races were created separately (and should not be mixed – “race mixing adulterates God's plan for the Ages”) and that the different races represent not only different species, but different genera (no, they do not exhibit any trace of having the faintest idea what that would mean).

To really emphasize their fervent contempt for reality, they are also 9/11 troofers (though you probably saw that one coming), and promote the idea that the levees of New Orleans were destroyed on purpose by the guv’mint during Hurricane Katrina, which, alongside most other natural disasters, was a punishment from God for America’s rejection of God’s laws on race in any case. I don’t think much good can come from delving deeper into Downey’s ideas so we’ll leave it at that. (We are also reluctant to link directly to any of Downey’s own stuff; you’ll have to google it).

Diagnosis: Could he be the most deranged psychotic madman we’ve encountered thus far? His candidacy is at least a strong one, though his influence will probably remain somewhat limited for the foreseeable future.

#626: Thomas DiLorenzo

Thomas DiLorenzo is a professor of economics at Loyola College, Austrian school “economist” (fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute) and neo-confederate pseudohistorian. He has previously been affiliated with the neo-secessionist League of the South Institute, though appears to deny any current affiliation. As an economist his work mostly toes the party line of the Austrian theory, and tends to eschew rigorous analysis and scientific approaches in favor of whatever fits his political views (the Federal Reserve creates business cycles, central banking is a “legalized counterfeiting operation,” anything other than laissez-faire is fascism or socialism, and so on and so forth). More personal contributions to the field include blaming the banking crisis on ACORN and Jimmy Carter.

His rise to infamy in the 90s was based not so much on economics but on his work for the tobacco industry. In works such as Cancerscam: The Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics he tried to argue that by telling people that cigarettes are dangerous charities such as the American Heart Association were scamming the public by using tax money designated for research to promote what he deemed to be partisan political purposes.

Indeed, despite his designated area of expertise DiLorenzo is primarily known for his work in (pseudo-)history. In writings uncannily reminiscent of David Barton’s attempts to portray the Founding Fathers as advocates of theocracy, DiLorenzo has tried to portray them as ardent supporters of (DiLorenzo’s own take on) “small government” principles (except Hamilton – Hamilton was evil and betrayed Jefferson, partially with the help of judicial activism). Surprisingly enough his profoundly inaccurate characterizations tend to portray those who agree with him politically in a very favorable light and those who disagree as remorseless villains.

His most notorious contributions are his screeds on Lincoln, however. In The Real Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked, two pieces thoroughly rooted in the mythology of the Lost Cause of the South, Lincoln is portrayed – through cherrypicking and ignoring all of Lincoln’s letters opposing slavery – as a hardcore racist whose sole goal in the Civil War was to keep the Union together. Though the latter may indeed have been Lincoln’s main goal, DiLorenzo’s portrayal is not merely selective or biased, but pure conspiracy theory – according to DiLorenzo, Lincoln was trying to force the South into secession in order to impose tariffs to benefit the North, thereby destroying states’ rights to bring about the institution of the statist “Hamiltonian vision” of a massive federal government, complete with allegations that mainstream historians have been trying to cover up Lincoln's “true” (communist) intentions (DiLorenzo’s claims are discussed here; a very even-handed review can be found here). Also, Hitler was a fan of Lincoln, which is as relevant as always.

As a measure of his success LewRockwell.com hosted a “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference in Richmond in 2003 starring DiLorenzo. The conference has since become a road show reappearing around the South (in line with the grand tenet of pseudo-science: public outreach is prior to research).

DiLorenzo’s writings on FDR and the Great Depression consist primarily of New Deal denialist PRATTs to the effect that Hoover was a crypto-socialist and FDR the great Satan.

DiLorenzo is of course a long-standing opponent of the 14^th Amendment, and has been caught toying with (or even endorsing) the NAFTA Superhighway conspiracy. The SPLC considers him one of the most important intellectuals to “form the core of the modern neo-Confederate movement.”

Diagnosis: A fine example of what happens when truth and accuracy are viewed merely as means (among others) to support a political position. DiLorenzo’s work as a pseudo-historian are at least borderline conspiracy theory ravings, and his apparent influence is hence more than a little frightening. 

#625: Maxine Dietrich

A.k.a. Andrea Herrington (real name)

Maxine Dietrich is the founder of Joy of Satan, which is a noe-nazi satanic UFO cult, and yes, you read that right (the website is here), and off we go. According to Dietrich, her brand of spiritual Satanism differs from other religions in that everything can apparently be explained scientifically, including the astral plane, our souls, telepathy, magic experiences, and the very real, anthropomorphic deity she worships (Satan is not “evil”; “good” and “evil” are “nothing more than cultural concepts; Satan transcends this,” which, though it is a feeble attempt at postmodern relativism, makes no real sense). How does science explain her religion? “Our limited understanding of Quantum Physics has revealed a bit about the human soul.”

Ah, I see.

“How”, you may ask – though you probably won’t, since you probably suspect that you won’t get a particularly informative answer. Anyways, here goes Dietrich”s scientific, quantum explanation of it all: According to Dietrich “Kirlian Photography” reveals “the fact that we have an aura. Kirlian photography is a specialized form of photography, along the same lines as x-ray imaging.” I don’t suppose it really surprised you that Dietrich would be unable to distinguish science from incoherent woo, or distinguish scientific evidence from idle speculation (there is also this)?

Furthermore, according to Dietrich, “the U.S. Government and other world powers are well aware of this ability within humans and the reality of psychic warfare, though they keep much of this from the public.” The Catholic Church, for instance, is a Jewish conspiracy – according to Dietrich, all of their leaders are really Jews, and aliens are behind Christianity – in particular, Christianitly was instigated by a group she refers to as “the Intergalactic Federation (IGF)” (these guys – they don’t seem very nice). Christianity itself was their program “for the destruction of Aryan peoples”. Furthermore “Satan and the Original Gods are from Orion. The IGF is at war with Orion.” I guess that explains a lot. Poor Orion.

I think I’ll let readers rummage through that webpage for themselves (this quote is telling). Its crazy is fascinating in a Gene Ray-sense. It is admittedly hard to find any reliable information about the size of Dietrich’s church or the extent of her brand of theistic satanism, but it doesn’t seem to be too influential.

Dietrich’s husband, Clifford Herrington, used to be the leader of the National Socialist Movement. The connection between Herrington and satanism has at least made Hal Turner uncomfortable, but then Turner was an uncomfortable man to begin with.

Diagnosis: Fascinating, though her webpage design really gives her away from the start.

#624: Mark Dice

A.k.a. John Conner

Mark Dice is an author, “media analyst”, political activist, founder of the group “The Resistance”, and radically attention seeking extreme, hardcore religious fundamentalist conspiracy theorist who tends to spew (a lot of) garbled nonsense about the New World Order and a vast and a largely incompatible array of (mostly Satanic) secret societies, including (but not limited to) the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, and Bohemian Grove. His favored technique for spreading the word is phone mobbing (“flood the airwaves of call-in radio and television shows”), which does not put him and his followers in a particularly favorable light even with his fellow conspiracy theorists, but Dice is so far removed from this world that he wouldn’t notice (a good example is his anger at Charlie Sheen for not promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories) (if you think Sheen is insane, you’re only proving to Dice that you’re part of the conspiracy and probably a Satanist).

Dice’s first and most well-known book was a 450-page and largely incoherent manifesto, “The Resistance Manifesto,” which consists mainly of unsupported claims, fallacies, rage, confirmation bias and hearsay – the latter being primarily things he has apparently heard himself say; since he trusts himself, this counts as testimony (and since he doesn’t seem to trust anyone else, such testimony is apparently better evidence than anything anyone else might say). The main point of the manifesto is that the Illuminati (“many would say that the illuminati were instrumental in insuring that the 9/11 attacks happened, [and] that they are behind the banking collapse,” which does not constitute evidence even if correct) manipulate political and financial arenas to erode the Constitution and push for a socialist New World (why a secret organization would want a socialist government is anyone’s guess, but you know; socialism is evil, the Illuminati is evil … and so forth. They also promote immorality (e.g. here), selfishness (socialism, you know), materialism, and they purposefully try to keep the population entertained with television to keep them away from politics. They also produce child porn and snuff films (Dice allegedly has evidence that Hunter S. Thompson was a big producer of such), since that’s what socialists do (keep your children away from them), and were behind Occupy Wall Street protests. His other book “The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction” consists primarily if not exclusively of the latter, though Dice does spend some time debunking competing Illuminati conspiracy theories. In particular, he dislikes Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” (calling for his followers to “disrupt” its premiere) since it makes the Illuminati idea look like a mere conspiracy theory. Indeed.

Dice is a regular guest on The Alex Jones Show, as well as Coast to Coast AM, and has appeared on various other shows hosted by various delusional conspiracy theorists, such the Sean Hannity Show, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage. He is also featured in various 9/11 conspiracy documentaries as a reliable source, and his loudness, zeal, persistence and tirelessness in promoting his stuff – making a lot of noise, disrupting events, and pestering people – have managed to garner him some intermittent national attention also without the help of said talkshows – for instance when he attempted to ship DVDs to troops stationed in Iraq to convince them that 9/11 was an inside job (one wonders a little what he wanted them to do with the information). His calls for boycott of VeriChip, claiming that it is the “Mark of the Beast”, received some attention as well, as did his request to have the “Satanic” Georgia Guidestones removed and his call for a boycott of Starbucks because “the Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute.” The socialist Illuminati apparently works in mysterious ways to undermine our civil liberties, but I am sure Dice can connect the dots and get whatever he wants.

Diagnosis: Frothing, hyper-active nonsense factory who could conceivably have done some good if he’d devoted his energy to it (he does have a lot of energy). As it is, his zealous idealism seem to take him toward mindfuck and nowhere in particular.