The Deadly Cult of Unthinking.

Art, film and other creative endeavours have the uncanny knack of revealing how the long shadow of the past leaves its indelible dirty stain on the Great Reset.

I have put my current research project on hold to return to some work I began a few years ago for a master’s degree in Religions and Theology. My thesis presented evidence for discerning a trace of the WWII Holocaust in the British film, The Wicker Man (1973). This was a serious examination of the themes presented in the film and the reactions to it from various audiences and fans. It was always my intention to return to it after completing my PhD. I now see it as a much bigger project which will incorporate other significant films, one of which I have written about in this Substack, Rosemary’s Baby. These creative endeavours reveal the slide into evil we currently live through and the relationship these events have to (amongst other things) WWII and the Holocaust. In what follows, I share some preliminary thoughts contextualising my ideas.

The Wicker Man

I posited The Wicker Man as a Post World-War II phenomenon as opposed to a product of the so-called “long sixties” where it is customarily situated. Drawing upon the work of Robert Eaglestone, (The Holocaust and the Post Modern, 2004) the definition of what constitutes Holocaust fiction is widened to include novels and films that implicitly refer to the Holocaust without featuring specific elements of it. Thus, Schindler’s List is a film that attempts to portray or represent the Holocaust, The Wicker Man is not.

I argue that a trace of the Holocaust can be discerned through aspects of The Wicker Man and (importantly) in the responses to it over a period of fifty years. My evidence comprises of analysis of key scenes within the film, authorial input, responses to the film from academics, and a consideration of fan responses. The image of the burning wicker colossus is examined for its potent symbolism and shock value. I illustrate that identity, identification and otherness are foregrounded within the film and form an uncanny correspondence with events during WWII and the Holocaust.  I note links between the German Faith movement of the 1930s, and the portrayal of the reconstituted paganism depicted in the film. A hostility to the Judaeo-Christian tradition unites them both.

I further assert that the New Age inspired Pagan cult depicted in the film forms a problematic alliance with notions of progressivism. The ‘long sixties’ positioning of the film’s protagonist and victim (Sergeant Howie) as a cultural conservative, and thus a force to be overcome, encourages a misreading of his character. It also positions him as a signifier of the ‘other’ and as such presents audiences, particularly returning audiences, with a moral conundrum. With whom, and what does one choose to identify? Whose values does one share? And how does one approach the ‘other?’ (Or to put it more bluntly, whose side are you on?)

There is obviously much more to say about the film than my brief summary allows. In terms of quantity, my original dissertation was 15,000 words and that involved considerable editing. In terms of the qualitative, it was less about the accumulation of information or even knowledge. Rather, it was about meaning. However, I will get to that at the appropriate time.

The impetus to write the original thesis felt prescient in 2014 because it seemed to me that we in the West were slipping into a censorious and highly partisan culture, or rather, cult of sorts. This ill-defined yet discernible cult sought to control, at the very least, our speech and our thinking. And of course, The Wicker Man was a film about a cult which itself garnered a new cult of sorts. Out in the world, the self-styled cult of progressivism seemed curiously related to certain attitudes portrayed in the film. Additionally, I felt that the unthinking adoration that the film had garnered warranted some interrogation. At the time I was researching, the emergent controlling cult felt more remote than it does now where the wolves of ‘woke’ are heard scrabbling at every door. The howling we frequently hear now emanates from those who were, in 2014, but mere cubs. And my, how they have grown.

What big mouths they have.

All the better to manipulate our speech and thought processes I hear you say. Yet what is currently on the cards is a far more totalising and constraining system of control than we could ever have imagined even three years ago. We are able to see the flourishing seeds of this new world order, a final solution if you like, to the world’s problems, in the minutiae of the everyday. To explain this, I must conjoin my experience of the aforementioned wolves with some other relatable roaming beasts.

In a previous life, I had observed, rather passively at first, the rise of what I and others had identified as what we loosely (and without much thought) termed Holocaust Thinking. It seems like a rather crass term that risks trivialising the most serious of events in recent European history. Yet it is worth teasing out what this means; what does it mean to refer to that event and not another; what does it mean to draw upon lessons flowing from this direction and not another? What does it mean to recognise certain messages that have been absorbed, consumed and digested?

At first, answering these questions leads us to think of concepts of authoritarianism, especially over political correctness, exertions of power over people, the deliberate misleading of others, fostering deliberate confusion over rules and punishments and suchlike. And yet, the phrase was obviously an oxymoron. This was not, of course, ‘thinking’ in any real capacity. It was more in the praxis of a visibly increasing managerialism and systems dominated regimes that this force became unconcealed to us. Its language has the appearance of innocuity yet operating as it does, stitched into ever widening policy laden ‘systems,’ its effects have proven utterly devastating. The result of a process of not thinking, of ‘unthinking’ we might say. Surely this is a phenomenon familiar to many.

The College Story

By means of illustration I shall share something anecdotal. As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail. Bear with me as I set this out. I once worked in a further education college. The college had, rather suddenly, acquired new managerial staff who had a new way of being, operating and speaking.  They had their own language comprising of a curious set of neologisms for describing work practices, which at first, were incomprehensible to us. These terms were supposedly concerned with the educational environment, yet always sounded rather clichéd and commerce related. Until they arrived, we had never heard of ‘pushing the envelope,’ ‘blue sky thinking,’ or ‘futureproofing.’ Nor had we ever seen fit to ‘touch base,’ be ‘data-driven,’ produce ‘deliverables,’ to consider the ‘value-added’ element of our work and to be thinking about ‘solutions’ ‘going forward.’ We were no longer a college, but a Centre of Excellence; we no longer had a library, we had a learning resource centre.

Education for its own sake was something our new overlords expressed puzzlement over rather than encouraged. Statistics reigned above everything. This was blamed upon OFSTED requirements because, well, there always has to be something other than oneself to blame.[1] Experience in education counted for very little. If anything, it was frowned upon. This was especially so if one had spent many years working for the same institution. One was now supposed to hop from job to job, each time reinventing oneself into a meaner, linked-in and yet less connected person.  Less connected that is, to other colleagues.  Management skills in themselves were deemed to be universally applicable. How one operated in finance or retail sectors could simply be transferred to education. In other words, coming up through the ranks, actually having done the job of those one now supervised was not only beneath one, it was also a practice that was utterly discouraged and long gone.

Furthermore, these new managers seemed dedicated to change for its own sake. Their own curricula vitae took precedence in decision making. Things ‘happened’ because someone had a ‘gap in the CV’ that needed ‘filling.’ Face to face encounters were rare. Managers cancelled their lessons, hid in offices and sent out emails and memoranda expecting obedience from their socially distanced position. This distancing enabled them to make ruthless decisions with ease when it came to admonishing staff for not producing good data, or to dismiss long serving staffs because their faces no longer fitted.

We foot-soldiers on the educational ‘shop floor’ witnessed cruel and inappropriate measures inflicted upon long serving, often middle-aged people who had dedicated their working lives to our institution. These were people who were close to the end of their careers and had little prospect of getting comparable jobs elsewhere. Additionally, the managers adopted a gladiatorial and threatening approach to those who had opted to stay, where people were expected to ‘throw their hat into the ring’ apply and reapply for their own jobs. It was a miserable period of time.

Now that I have outlined the context, we can now get to a crucial point.

There was one brief conversation that I recall at the height of these risible managerial behaviours where a trusted colleague, commenting upon the state of things said something like, ‘you can just see these managers being the type that would wave people into the gas chambers.’ He was not being flippant. In the moment, the statement struck a clear note of recognition and did not feel hyperbolic nor disrespectful to victims of the Shoah.

On reflection, in addition to the acknowledgement of these managers’ weak and cowardly characters, what he said pointed to something deeply structural. That is, despite things appearing to be as they had always been, something unseen yet fundamental had shifted and changed. Notwithstanding the hierarchical nature of the typical workplace that has been commonplace for decades and more, we were suddenly in a position where hitherto unthinkable patterns of behaviour had become normalised. And whichever way we turned, there was no one to help and nothing we could do. This magnified our sense of helplessness, of there being no ability on our part to correct wrong things, that there was no part of the ‘system’ to which one could appeal or make oneself heard amidst the futility of it all. And all the while, the utter lack of thought infused everything. In other words, there was nowhere to turn. The unions seemed powerless. Everything was permitted to the principal and the managers. College governors invariably supported them and their actions; and our rights, as employees and human beings were, and perhaps had always been, illusory.

At the conclusion to a weary and highly stressful period of negotiations of sorts, almost one third of the staff were made redundant - due to financial problems - on a voluntary basis. It was clear that this was not the case for some who were leaving under some duress. It was as though people had been un-personed, or even in a strange sort of way, symbolically killed off. Got rid of. It was a ruthless culling of personnel that was to have a devastating effect on the college’s (and therefore students’) ability to function for the purpose for which it was intended.

Unthinking

However tasteless, the idea of ‘Holocaust Unthinking,’ took on a life of sorts. Something had been unconcealed by that experience. I began to see examples of it in other places and situations. I thought about what was meant by Holocaust Unthinking, and what this might mean for others. I recalled Hannah Arendt’s description of Adolf Eichmann, the man whom my colleague had surely had in mind when making his gas chamber remark. It has often occurred to me that not only had Eichmann been lacking in thought as Arendt had famously written, but that he had in all probability stopped himself from thinking in order to carry out his grisly task. This seemed to be the crux of the thing and a significant clue to an understanding of the college management’s approach.  And perhaps even current events.

It is my view that they had decided to halt their ability to think in order to be able to ‘obey orders.’ Orders from whom though? Every cog in the machine knows what it must do, and how to collectivise the worst of commands so that he can claim merely to be ‘carrying out orders,’ or simply doing what ‘must be done.’ It seems as though we now exist in a hall of mirrors where no senior person in any organisation ever takes responsibility for anything. Management collectivises its responsibilities whilst you Untermenschen must always grasp and own yours.

Subsequently, underlings (and service users) pay the price for policies dreamt up by what amounts to a system standing in the place of a shouting dictator. College principals therefore point to chairs of governors, governors point to the need to support their principals, they point to government policies, policies required (say) for rounds of funding, examination award purposes, compliance purposes, or whatever the bureaucratic system throws up. This renders everyone as appropriately socially distanced. Everyone wears a mask behind which to hide. Everyone is just doing his job. Does that sound familiar?

I would say that this is the very essence of the phrase, banality of evil.

Russell Group

And so, my professional college experience merged into a new student experience as I returned to a Russell Group university campus to read for the master’s that produced my Wicker Man thesis. I began to see odd little signs and stickers around the place declaring ‘check your privilege!’ or ‘stay in your lane!’ The word ‘woke’ began to appear in conversations, and graffiti in the toilets amplified all of these sentiments and more. I found it incredulous that such middle-class sounding youngsters could be so shrill about class, race and capitalism. Blatant contradictions did not phase them; they would bemoan the inability to get onto the property ladder in the same conversation about demonising capitalism and ‘the west.’ Lecturers and professors either hid from this or actively fanned its flames.  It all felt a little juvenile and surreal. I recall mentioning to a Guardian reading professor my fears over the policing of speech and that it would soon lead to policing of thought. He merely shrugged.

The twin levers of workplace bureaucracy and university indoctrination have done their work. Speech and thought are now policed and checked via email signoffs, lanyards, Zoom credentials. A Russell Group university, which began with the study of the Bible no less, with a rich and worthy heritage now requires its staff and students’ active participation in the destruction of language and demands that this be made visible at every opportunity. Surely this is the result of a decision not to think somewhere along the line. This is facilitated by a hierarchical bureaucratic system headed by someone with the title of ‘vice chancellor’ who will never find herself accountable, yet never misses an opportunity to signal her allegiance to something now called ‘equity.’

So, at what appears to be (but is most certainly not) the conclusion of the Covidian era, I feel the impetus to return to this theme of Holocaust Unthinking more than ever. The Covidian cult embraces all of the usual shibboleths I have alluded to above. The cult speaks of diversity but is monocultural. It champions ‘science’ yet forbids any arguments that deviate from an agreed narrative. It decides in advance what the truth is and works to make evidence fit its version of truth. It operates in a world of appearances, of theatre. It uses actors and performers as a new priestly caste. It uses gaslighting and dissembling to communicate its messages. It leads us all on a merry little dance. Most of all, it believes there are too many of us. It has decided to act upon that. So, it is time to keep your appointment with the wicker man. And embrace what it actually is. The inevitable, unmistakeable, Great Reset.

The Event that Orients our Time

Part of the initial stimulus for my thesis on the Wicker Man film was a point made by Robert Eaglestone that the WWII Holocaust is an event that orients our time. I believe this to be true more than ever. Eaglestone pointed to the quantity of literature that exists about the Holocaust, that the vastness of it means that it would exceed anyone’s ability to read it in a lifetime.[2] Furthermore, he noted examples of film and literature that were not specifically about the Shoah, yet one could see them reflecting upon it. This is how I contextualise the Wicker Man. Creative works have the ability to penetrate the unconscious and bring the unbelievable to our attention in ways that mere information and even knowledge cannot.

Eaglestone points out that there is something about the impact that the event we call the Holocaust has had upon us, (or the ‘West’) and what this tells us about who we are, and how things are for us. The Holocaust’s shadow still darkens our world.

It is also worth pondering about what it means that we currently live in a supposedly ‘progressive’ liberal democracy. If our society ever was a true democracy, this is clearly no longer the case. Whether or not that is an accurate claim, our democracy is no longer operating in a way consistent with what it is claimed for it, and we are rapidly marching in lockstep with other former liberal societies towards a destiny of totalising intent. The Covidian climate narrative is being used to justify an unprecedented power grab by our representatives beholden to big corporations seeking unprecedented enrichment at our expense. Many of those involved seem indelibly linked with the unaccountable World Economic Forum, (WEF) (Including Britain’s monarch), an unelected body of mostly very wealthy individuals headed by the octogenarian, Klaus Schwab.

The WEF’s Great Reset programme, which is now being rolled out as quickly as possible, began with the instituting of the Covidian Cult. Schwab was suitably quick off the mark with his exhortations to ‘build back better,’ uncannily echoing the German dictator’s slogan, ‘Build with Hitler.’ And, with lightening speed across the western liberal democracies, world leaders were happy to repeat his mantra without pausing to consider what it was we were supposed to be ‘building back.’ This was especially ominous given that at that point in time, not that much had actually been destroyed. Obviously, that was still to come.

The Great Reset’s measures, as stated in Schwab’s publications and other sources, include but are not limited to: the threat of digital identity linked to a controlled, programmable digital currency, resulting in the end of all privacy and the end of personal savings and private property. Additionally, a social credit system, a ‘carbon allowance,’ de-banking threats, extortionate energy costs, food scarcities and restrictions, significant curbs to freedom of movement within one’s own region, the policing of language and thought, strenuous censorship, the requirement for compulsory mass medication on pain of fines, job losses, or other cancelation techniques. Added to this we can regard as axiomatic the ongoing demands for the dismantling of all sexual boundaries resulting in the end of women’s sex-based rights, children’s rights and the rights of gay people. All of these measures are being incrementally introduced in a manner reminiscent of the National Socialist Workers Party’s operations which unfolded over many years before the killing machines of the ‘final solution’ got going. It astonishes me that some people still regard the WEF as a chimera, a mere talking shop or an irrelevance.

The Solutions

Does anyone need reminding that Nazi Germany did not begin with Auschwitz, it ended with it? As Arendt explains in her Eichmann report, the sequence of events began with the premise of solving the ‘Jewish Question.’ This had, as its first solution, expulsion and plunder. The second solution was concentration. Then the final solution was death. In turn, the Great Reset addresses the human question. Their first solution was tied to the Covidian cult of lockdowns and face obliterating surgical splashguards. Additionally it involved cancelations and plunder not limited to currency inflation, the destruction of small businesses, homelessness, domestic violence, suicides and all manner of children’s ruined prospects. Now we slide towards the climate solutions with which readers will be familiar. And then when these fail, as they must, they will surely roll out their final solution, after which, I guess, the building back will commence. Moreover, this Great Reset is happening with the active participation of those who would previously have claimed to work against such a grain, such as academics, teachers, medics, and other public service employed left-leaning individuals.

In this respect, there are uncanny parallels with National Socialist Germany in that its programme attracted its share of academics, teachers, medics and civil servants. As a point of relevance, its programme of eugenics and extermination could not have happened at all without the substantial cooperation of medics in many fields. Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav has drawn parallels here in her frequent warnings in speeches and films made for the American Children’s Health Defense organisation. This is an organisation that has come to further international prominence during the initial Covidian cult era as it sought to inform people about the wider dangers afoot with the over-zealous injection programmes being rolled out across the world.

What many fail to perceive is that Germans in the 1920s and 30s were promised in National Socialism a progressive, classless, anti-capitalist revolutionary movement that would usher in a bright new future, steeped in modern technology, ideals of progress, good health and prosperity. It was not much of a conservative movement, although many like to construe it so. There was nothing in Hitler’s published ideas that was concerned with conserving anything, and his approach to the German constitution and institutions, especially the Church was highly destructive. He may have enthused about the German Volk, but it was not the generous gathering in of all creeds (and none) under the flag of the patriot. For Hitler, Volk was the constituting of a people into a race. The German people were mustered in the name of a good cause. Because for all totalising regimes, there is always a ‘good cause.’ In our time, it is the holy Covid and now the holy Climate that is used to justify the destruction of our way of life, with all of the cult’s obvious inconsistencies notwithstanding.

Euphemisms

Euphemisms were ubiquitous then as now. Who would fail to recognise the subtext to the phrase ‘special treatment,’ or ‘showers,’ or even Lebensraum (living space) and of course, ‘Final Solution.’ Lawrence Langer writes about the Holocaust having impurified language.  We find ourselves making grim associations with certain words in certain contexts. Words such as: train, track, boxcar, smoke, chimney, ghetto, roundup, deport, rollcall, organise, camp, block, oven, furnace gas, shower, and even ‘arrival’ and ‘departure.’ In the present day, the phrases emerging as highly euphemistic might be ‘safe and effective,’ ‘social distancing,’ ‘public health,’ and ‘misinformation.’ There are new phrases such as ‘anti-vaxxer’ and ‘far right’ that are designed to suggest a priori the deplorable nature of those who question the proponents of mass medication. No thought goes into dissecting these ideas or the name-callers. How easy it is to let these ideas take root.

The assumption with Holocaust education is that the threat of another Holocaust only comes from something called the ‘far right.’ Yet we hear frequently that Covidian sceptics are ‘far right,’ and anyone who questions the new dominant ideologies is considered to be ‘far right.’  Believe in the family? You’re ‘far right.’ Believe that vaccines are dangerous? You’re ‘far right.’ There is simply no satisfactory definition of ‘far right,’ and that, in itself, is so useful to the proponents of the Great Reset. This is why it is really convenient for Schwab and his allies if sceptics adopt antisemitic tropes.

You see? We told you they are ‘far right!’

The sickening sense I have with all of this fostered confusion is that far from preventing another Holocaust we have been tacitly teaching criminals how to do it. The Malthusians know exactly how to hide what must be hidden, and why. What better plan could there be than to operate in plain sight and pass off the many premature deaths in terms of normal activities, events that happened by chance, or coincidence.  Do not investigate and nobody will notice.

Let us say it out loud people. Murder is not the answer to climate change.

In case the reader thinks I have overstepped the mark, one only has to consider the underwhelming response to the proliferation of excess deaths that have only occurred since the injection roll out. What about the cessation of data collection for adverse events, or the change of role from regulator to ‘enabler’ that our Medicines and Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA) has openly adopted in Britain. Similar action is taken in other countries. The mainstream press are not even curious when the biggest story ever is unfolding before their eyes. One simply does not need to resort to conspiracy theories or outlandish stories to make the point. In common with Hitler’s Mein Kampf, everything the great re-setters are doing is written, published, openly stated and brazenly discussed. People are dying by the thousands and no concern is expressed. There is no panic afoot, nothing happens except greater concealment. It is the very definition of what Eaglestone refers to as the ‘public secret.’ Like the Poles or Germans who ‘knew’ and did not ‘know’ about the killings in their midst, nobody knows, and everybody knows.[3]

The WEF have now spoken openly about democracy being a ‘bad thing.’ There are mentions of ‘useless eaters,’ who are ‘using up resources’ in addition to the tacit encouragement of euthanasia and an all-round cult of death. (Think here of Canada’s MAID or abortion legislation). The WEF issues statements extolling the virtues of low birthrates ‘for the sake of the planet.’ Has anyone produced any evidence for this? Evidence running in the opposite direction is marginalised, censored and will no doubt at some point be banned.

We increasingly find ourselves under surveillance and state control is proliferating by the day. Schwab has not been shy about the intention that we should have no privacy. Ghettos, euphemistically named 15-minute cities, are being constructed. Incrementally, our ability to move around freely and to travel is being curtailed. Food rationing has begun under various guises, always to do with the ‘planet,’ but there is to be no digging for victory. In all parts of the world, farmland is being confiscated and compulsorily purchased; cattle are to be destroyed. As a result, there will be a lot less food. Is anyone in authority showing any concern? Are any mitigating measures being implemented? Warnings about starvation during the house arrest period went unheeded. Those who did the warning found themselves publicly vilified and threatened with all manner of losses.

These ideas, it should be noted, were laughed away as conspiracy theories three and a half years ago. And like the small-scale situation of the earlier college story, I can see how Holocaust Unthinking translates and unfolds.

In the beginning of the Covidian era, despite things appearing to be as they had always been, something fundamental shifted and changed. We were suddenly in a position where hitherto unacceptable patterns of authoritarian behaviour became normalised. And whichever way we turned, there was nothing we could do. This magnified our sense of helplessness, a sense of there being no ability on our part to correct wrong things, that there was no part of the ‘system’ to which one could appeal or make oneself heard amidst the senselessness of these government and big business actions and utter lack of thought. There was nowhere to turn. Everything was permitted to the powerful. What is more,

the media,

the medics

and the unions

invariably supported them and their actions;

and our rights,

as citizens

and human beings

were,

and had perhaps always been,

illusory.

I hope the reader understands why it is now time for me to make a fresh appointment with The Wicker Man.

On that, I’ll keep you posted.

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to share.

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A note for new subscribers. Firstly, welcome aboard and thank you for subscribing, it is really appreciated. You may not have had a chance to peruse my earlier essays. If you found this interesting, you might find the following worth a look.

Rosemary’s Baby: This is Really Happening.

Malice through the Looking Glass.

This Train is Destined to Terminate.

Orwell’s Endgame: Winston Does Not Love Big Brother.

We're All Doing Media Studies Now.

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[1] Office for Standards in Education. One of a number of acronyms that serve to conceal the thing that they are supposed to be.

[2] Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 12.

[3] Robert Eaglestone, The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature, ((Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017) 9-27.