The Wild Hunt: Symbolisms, Meanings, and Folklore (Part 3)

Part 3: Wotan as archetypal leader of the Wild Hunt; folkloric figures relating to him

by Sean Jobst

26 January 2021

1896 work by Swabian painter Hans Thoma
(1839-1924), forming the costume design
for Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen"

   In my last post of 2020, I examined the qualities of Frau Holle or Perchta as leader of the Wild Hunt. Yet other traditions cite the Germanic god Wodan as the One who leads the Wild Hunt. This is not surprising given that Holle/Perchta seems to be the same as his wife, Frija - the different names depending on the region and time period (much like Wodan gradually became known as Wotan due to developments in the German language). Their roles would be complementary towards each other, making the Wild Hunt a balance of the masculine and feminine power forces that exist within Nature. "Not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Woden into frau Gaude"(Grimm, III, 932). He is identified so much with the Wild Hunt that in Swabia and Switzerland (the lands of the ancient Suebi and Alemanni), the Wild Hunt itself was often called Wuotis Heer (Wodan's Army).

   Wotan or Wodan is a multifaceted god we can relate to and emulate in many different ways as varied as individuals. His 'Wode' being the personified wind or divine breath, the battle frenzy of warriors, comes from the same "inspiration" as the words of a writer or a poet. His ordeal on the World Tree was truly about "killing" himself to himself so as to discover the enlightenment within, the immortal command to "Know Thyself". The Runes are not only letters and symbols but each laden with deep esoteric meanings about the psyche, cosmos, nature and memories - thus related to the Unconscious. Wotan's healing abilities, such as with Balder's horse in the Merseburg Charms, can be emulated to "heal" both physical and spiritual maladies. His great "shamanic" abilities offer general ways to sense there is more than just one physical reality; his leadership over the Wild Hunt in some folklore showing the "veils" between life and death, physical and spirit worlds, can be thin and obscure within the overall cycle of life, death and rebirth. 

   He often contrasts with the god Ziu (known as Tiw to the Anglo-Saxons and Týr to the Norse, all from Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz), the Germanic Sky Father whose iconography shows balance of the Sun and Moon (solar and lunar energies), represents values such as order and courage, the North Star, and other natural and cosmic symbolisms. Whereas Ziu is a god of war, Wotan is more specifically tied to those who died in battle or otherwise a violent, traumatic death. In the tripartite functions he applied to Indo-European mythologies, French philologist and mythologist Georges Dumézil identified Ziu with Sovereignty - the "light" aspect of society, exoteric values such as justice and order for all the tribe - and Wotan as representing the "dark" aspect of society - the esoteric, mysterious, shadowy realms, and inspiration. The two deific power-forces are to be balanced so one may truly know themselves. The "dark" for me conveys imagery of the Unconscious and the Shadow which are essential for any growth. Those qualities as personified by Wotan are most at play in the Wild Hunt.

   Ziu is more concerned with rules and principles guiding war, while Wotan is with the state of mind achieved through acts of battle, the warrior's fury and ecstasy. Continental Germanic sources, such as bractaetes like those found in Schwaben and charms like that of Merseburg, stress his ecstasy and healing abilities more than many functions he had in Scandinavia as Óðinn (where he absorbed the functions and qualities of other deities). There is no evidence for a Valhalla in continental sources, there being more of a stress on the Underworld such as the mounds. Folklore speaks of people's spirits being pulled away while asleep to join the Wild Hunt or being "abducted" or "guided" to the Underworld, recalling the psychopomp archetype who is also leader of the Wild Hunt. Aside from Wotan, the Welsh psychopomp Gwyn ap Nudd is associated with both the Wild Hunt and the Otherworld. 

Illustration of the Wild Hunt from Das festliche Jahr in Sitten,
Gebräuchen und Festen der germanischen Völker (1863), a work by
Swabian historian and linguist Otto von Reinsberg (1822-1876)

   Similar to "wode" also conveying the power of the wind and fury, French sources identified the leader of the Herlathingus (Furious Army) as Herla, whose name seeks like a combination of Old French herler "make a racket" and herle "tumult, noise" (Lecouteux, 171). Could this be remnant of an earlier Gaullic equivalent to Wotan? A saying from Ottenhöfen in the Schwarzwald states: "Der Wind isch e altes Männle" - "The Wind is an old man"(Meyer, 370). That all these qualities are combined in the Wild Hunt's leader is no accident. "It was natural that the ancient god of the dead who rode through the air should keep a place in this way in the memory of the people, and it reminds us of the terror which his name must once have inspired"(Davidson, 148). Grimm expands on this theme (with various references):

   "This wind's-bride is a whirlwind, at which our mythology brings the highest gods into play. Even Wuotan's 'furious host,' what is it but an explanation of the stormwind howling through the air? The OHG. ziu, turbines, we have traced to Zio, pp. 203. 285; and the storm-cloud was called maganwetar (p. 332 last l.). But the whirlwind appears to be associated with Phol also (pp. 229. 285), and with an opprobrious name for the devil (schweinezagel, säuzagel, sûstert, sow's tail), to whom the raising of the whirl was ascribed (Superst. I, 522) (102) as well as to witches (ibid. 554). It was quite natural therefore to look upon some female personages also as prime movers of the whirlwind, the gyrating dancing Herodias, and frau Hilde, frau Holde (p. 285). In Kilian 693 it is a fahrendes weib; in Celtic legend it is stirred up by fays, and the Irish name for it is sigh gaoite (O'Brien), sighgaoithe (Croker III, xxi); in a whirlwind elvish sprites can steal (Stewart p. 122). It is a popular belief in Sweden, that the skogsrâ (wood-wife) makes her presence known by a violent whirlwind which shakes the trees even to breaking. The Slav. polednice (supra, p. 478n.) is a female daemon, who flies up in the dust of the whirlwind (Jungmann sub v.). According to a legend of the Mark (Kuhn no. 167) the whirlwind was a noble damsel who loved the chase above everything, and made havock of the husbandman's crops, for which she is doomed to ride along with the storm to all eternity; this again reminds us of Diana and the huntress Holda (see Suppl.)"(Grimm, II, 632-633).  

   Much like Irish folklore about someone being "away with the sidhe (fairies)", the Wild Hunt conveys much imagery of people being swept up in its furious winds. One of these may be the medieval German Emperor Friedrich der Barbarossa, about whom Grimm cites a 14th century folk legend: "Yet some have seen him awake: a shepherd having piped a lay that pleased him well, Frederick asked him: 'fly the ravens round the mountain still?' the shepherd said yes: 'then must I sleep another 100 years'(Grimm, III, 955)." The shepherd was then led into Friedrich's armory, where he was "presented with the stand of a hand-basin, which the goldsmith found to be sheer gold"(ibid., 956). This is interesting given the folklore throughout Europe that the one who helps the Wild Hunt may be given gifts such as gold. 

   It also carries on the ancient Indo-European archetype of the hero who will ultimately awaken after a prolonged slumber, conveyed in such varied legends (even if in thinly-veiled Christian or literary veneers) as the Portuguese Sebastianismo or the Upstate New York story of Rip Van Winkle (possibly a remnant of an old Dutch tradition and not merely Washington Irving's creation). In the Germanic context, it ultimately stems from Balder, whose life personifies this cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Its no accident that the leader of the Wild Hunt (Wotan) is his "father" and heals his horse, placing the Wild Hunt within the never-ending cycle of life. This theme survives within German folklore through the "undead nobleman" Count Hans von Hackelberg, cursed to hunt eternally due to bad actions during his lifetime. To me this manifests the ancient Germanic worldview that included multiple incarnations to "resolve" one's problems (reincarnation rather than just one lifetime), so that the dead may have some kind of unresolved "business" in this world. A variation says he died by a boar's tusk, and upon his death his soul shunned the Christian heaven, preferring to eternally join the company of the Wild Hunt across the night sky. 

 

Odin's Hunt, by the Swedish artist
August Malmström (1829-1901)

   Wild Huntsman of Death. As the guider of dead souls into the Underworld (in addition to his many other qualities), Wotan "was most generally known as the Wild Huntsman, and when people heard the rush of the wind they cried aloud in superstitious fear, fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted on snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds"(Guerber, 30). Conveying the "chaotic" forces of Nature, the Wild Hunt had such names as the Furious Bond in Schwaben and Muetiseil in Switzerland. What is "hunted" here is death, which is why supernatural images of a ghostly knight were introduced. Grimm saw this "knight" as Wotan, downgraded by Christianization to a ghostly figure who "lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power....a specter and a devil"(Grimm, III, 918).

   This Hunter Archetype was innate to indigenous European tribal faiths, part of the animistic worldview held by our ancient Ancestors. He was not only a guardian of the primal forces within Nature, but so often was also a god of the "threshold", going beyond boundaries of the physical and perceivable world into the supernatural and unseen. Examples include the Gaullic god Cernunnos, or Herne the Hunter and the Green Man within English folklore. The Celtiberians had various localized gods with horns or antlers, allegorical of "aggressive power, genetic vigor and fecundity"(Simón, 310) - expressions within the Wild Hunt. In German folklore, a hunter figure variously called Waul, Waur, Waurke, Wod, Wode, Wolk or Wuid (according to region), clearly comes from Wotan and his "wode" energy. The victims of a figure called the Wild Huntsman include "unjust judges, cruel castle custodians, Sunday violators, passionate hunters who have to ride as punishment for their offenses in the wild 'Hunt'"(Bächtold-Stäubli, 633). One story describes "four sons" of the Hunter, named after the four cardinal directions (ibid., 634), which could be symbolic of the Wind from all directions and allegory for different manifestations of Wotan.

   Eckhart and Tannhäuser. A closely related figure to the Huntsman is the "faithful" Eckhart, a heroic knight most associated with the forests of Thuringia, where he helps Holle in the Wild Hunt. "In Frankhausen Holda moves at the head of the fellow hunters. In Schwarza (Thuringia) she is accompanied by 'the faithful Eckhart', in Hassloch and Gruneworth her horse carries little bells and the villagers shout: 'Listen, the Rollegaul (Holle's horse) moves around!'"(Gardenstone, 105). He warns people of the Hunt's approach and to keep their distance from the various supernatural forces in the Thuringian forests. He is the male protagonist in the story of "Venus and Tannhäuser", about an obscure Swabian Minnesinger and poet; the Minnesinger were traveling musical poets of the Age of Chivalry whom several scholars have proposed carried on the Old Ways - minne itself meaning "memory" in the sense of ancestral memories. Upon entering the Thuringian forests, Tannhäuser discovers the Venusberg (Mountain of Venus), presided over by Lady Minne who was none other than Frau Holde, dwelling within the mountain with many heroes and minnesänger (Rahn, 95).

   From Venusberg come the howls and lamentations of souls and spirits, creating a thin veneer between worlds of the living and dead. Its a story of a human hero undertaking a shamanic journey into the Otherworld, where he experiences various supernatural events and beings, but ultimately yearns to return to the earth only to find out that many years had passed in earthly time. Eckhart and these occurrences are closely associated with the Ember Days that roughly correlate with Germanic Yule. A "Furious Army" leaves from the Venusberg, consisting of unbaptized infants, warriors fallen in battle, and ecstatics, the latter according to the 16th century Bavarian historian Martin Crusius being those "whose personality splits but whose traveling soul has not returned to the body"(Lecouteux, 146). Eckhart carries a staff and is "an old man with a white beard"(ibid., 147), according to Zuanne della Piatte, a shaman from Altrei (Anterivo) in South Tyrol who carried "many signs and diabolical formulas in the German language". During his 1497 "witchcraft" trial, he told stories about travels to the "beyond", being snatched away to Venusberg, where he met Holle and Tannhäuser, in whose company he traveled around the world on black horses in what appeared to be five hours in earthly time (Behringer, 56). All of these accounts and qualities make Eckhart/Tannhäuser allegories of Wotan.

   Jung on Archetypes of the Wild Hunt. Among the pioneering work of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was uncovering the Wotan Archetype whose remnants he identified in the memories and dreams of his patients of Germanic descent. From the northeast Swiss canton of Thurgau, a region that was inhabited by the Alemanni and later part of the Duchy of Swabia, Jung resonated with highly specified traditions of the Suebi and Alemanni. In one of his later works, he described a dream he once had of a large ghostly wolfhound hunting a human soul. He interpreted the hound as his mother's psychopomp guiding her into the Otherworld, a remarkable synchronicity since he discovered soon after his dream that she had indeed died. He saw the soul as her soul being "reclaimed" by the god of their Alemanni ancestors (Jung, 1965, 313). This god he interpreted as Wotan, presiding over the army of the dead which was sälig Lüt (selige Leute) "the blessed folk" in his Alemannic dialect (ibid., 230-231). In 1956, Jung wrote in a lengthy letter to Melvin J. Lasky, an American publicist then resident in Germany:

   "Wotan is a restless wanderer, an ancient god of storm and wind, unleashing passion and frenzy. His name means literally 'Lord and Maker of Fury.' Adam of Bremen wrote in 1070 or thereabouts: 'Wodan id est furor.' His essence is ecstasy; he is a turbulent spirit, a tempest that sets everything in motion and causes 'movements.' Among these were the orgiastic midsummer's day dances mentioned by Dr. Schmitz-Cliever; the religious movements of the Middle Ages named by H. Scholz also bore the mark of this perturbing spirit. The exodus of the children from Hamelin comes into this category. It should be noted that music is a primitive means of putting people into a state of frenzy; one has only to think of the drumming at the dances of shamans and medicine-men, or of the flute-playing at the Dionysian orgies.

 

   "Leibniz mentioned St. Vitus's dance as a possible cause of the events at Hamelin. In this connection I would like to draw attention to a related, though far more dangerous, manifestation of collective frenzy upon which Wotan has likewise left his mark. This is the 'going berserk' of Wotan's followers, a regular seizure that drove them to madness and gave them supernatural strength. Not only single individuals were seized in this way, but whole crowds were swept along and infected with the 'berserker rage.' It was a mass frenzy, to which other people gave the expressive name furor Teutonicus. The exodus of the children from Hamelin may be conceived as a less brutal movement activated by the same 'ecstatic' spirit. The rat-catching Pied Piper himself must have been possessed by the spirit of Wotan, which swept all those who were liable to such transports - in this case children - into a state of collective frenzy. 

   "As to the disappearance of the children in the mountain, it should be remembered that legends often banish into a mountain certain heroes in whose death the populace cannot or will not believe, and whose return is expected, with fear or hope, in the distant future. For the psychologist this is an apt way of saying that though the forces represented by the banished and vanished children have momentarily disappeared from consciousness, they are still very much alive in the unconscious. The unconscious is perfectly symbolized by the dark, unknown interior of the mountain. It scarcely needs mentioning that a reawakening of these forces has actually taken place.

   "Another aspect of this disappearance is the state of 'being lost to the world' which is frequently reported in connection with ecstasy and more particularly with 'going berserk.' According to legend, the hero becomes invisible or is transported to another place, or occasionally his double appears, as when he is seen in battle, while in reality he is sunk in trance-like slumber....From a psychological point of view the motif of the rats, which seems to have been added afterwards, is an indication of Wotan's connection with the daemonic and chthonic realm, and with evil. Wotan was banished by Christianity to the realm of the devil, or identified with him, and the devil is the lord of rats and flies"(Jung, 1990, 331-332).

Illustration by Carl Emil Doepler (1824–1905)

[To be continued in Part 4, about the Männerbünde, the Wild Hunt's origins in ancient processions, its shamanic and initiatory elements, and Iberian traditions of the Wild Hunt....]

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns, and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer, eds. Handwörterbücher Zur Deutschen Volkskunde. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Verlag, 1941.

Behringer, Wolfgang. Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. H.C. Erik Midelfort. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

Davidson, Hilda R. Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1964.

Gardenstone. Goddess Holle: In Search of a Germanic Goddess, trans. Michelle Lina Marie Hitchcock. Norderstadt, Germany: BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, 2011.

Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology, Vol. II, trans. James Steven Stallybrass, 1883. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology, Vol. III, trans. James Steven Stallybrass. London: George Bell & Sons, 1883.

Guerber, Hélène Adeline. Myths of Northern Lands: Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art. New York/Cincinnati/Chicago: American Book Company, 1895.

Jung, Carl. Letters of C.G. Jung, Vol. II: 1951-1961, eds. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé. Hove, East Sussex: Routledge, 1990.

Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Random House, 1965.

Lecouteux, Claude. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.

Meyer, Elard Hugo. Mythologie der Germanen. Straßburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1903.

Rahn, Otto. Lucifer's Court: A Heretic's Journey in Search of the Light Bringers, trans. Christopher Jones. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2008.

Simón, Francisco Marco. "Religion and Religious Practices of the Ancient Celts of the Iberian Peninsula". e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison), March 10, 2005, Vol. 6, Article No. 6.

An Overview of Recent American Political Events

by Sean Jobst

20 January 2021

   Today the Asterisk President Joe Biden* was inaugurated in a "virtual" non-event presided over by 25,000 National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C. due to "security threats" hyped up by a fear-mongering Corporate Media that fawned over him from the beginning. An FBI notoriously ridden with the deepest of Deep State actors, will "vet" the troops and subject them to loyalty tests down to their personal opinions because apparently the demented career politician who was able to receive a record number of votes while campaigning from his basement just commands allegiance through his overwhelming popularity. Its telling that loyalty tests to Biden apparently supersede protected free speech and their oaths to the Constitution. Even Secret Service agents are being subjected to such loyalty tests in what amounts to a new witch-hunt. This is a demoralizing effort to sow suspicion and confusion within their ranks, while conditioning a confused public to not know what to believe.

   The "security" measures are being justified by the Capitol Hill fiasco on January 6th, when a relatively small number of people broke away from the massive crowd that gathered for the pro-Trump "Save America" rally. The same media and political Establishment that for months were justifying and in many cases inciting 2020 riots under the banner of BLM and Antifa, which supported Leftist protestors who stormed Capitol Hill during the Kavanaugh hearings in September 2018, now cries crocodile tears over right-wing "domestic terrorists". "Violence has been an important tool for protests" according to Slate - but only in relation to sanctioned Leftist rioters not the "male rage" it identified with the Capitol Hill rioters. The narrative continues even when Corporate Media admits provocateurs among them, such as John Sullivan, a Leftist activist who leads a group called Insurgence USA and was caught on camera instigating violence at the Capitol. CNN gave an apologetic interview portraying him as a passive observer despite his own video evidence.

   We are witnessing a massive gaslighting. The militarized spectacle is being greeted by the same Establishment that fear-mongered about an alleged "coup" by Trump for months. Of course the troops are necessary to secure the "peaceful transition" cliche repeated ad nauseum. Neocons and Neoliberals joined together in such efforts as the Transition Integrity Project, essentially calling for a coup to prevent a "coup" - the organizer of that Project happened to speak at an Open Society event that called for "militarization" in 2016. The reality is that this current charade is a massive psyop - as much as QAnon is a psyop for the other side, selling false hope - serving two purposes: First, presenting Biden as beleaguered by evil forces garners sympathy for him by low-information people guided by their emotions over reality. Second and most importantly, it sets up a convenient bogeyman that will justify any militaristic, authoritarian measures the Biden/Harris regime will pursue within the next four years. Its all about propaganda in this age of Fifth-generation warfare.

   Biden recently announced he would use vaccine manufacturing as his excuse to invoke the Defense Production Act, not to mention his bleak "Dark Winter" imagery, so we can expect several other measures using this "domestic terrorist" bogeyman as his excuse for the same type of Police State legislation he supported during his career. Incidentally, the Establishment's love for authoritarianism is such that even while proclaiming Trump to be a "fascist" - despite being far less authoritarian on every level than Biden and Harris - it still called on him to invoke the Defense Production Act "to use more 'autocratic' means to control the coronavirus outbreak" in a blatant violation of the Constitution's separation of powers. That same elite's love for war is such that the only favorable coverage Trump got (in an otherwise obsessive Trump Derangement Syndrome media) was early on when it appeared he would continue the endless wars status quo - something to keep in mind as the incoming administration is staffed with assorted cretins with deep links to the military-industrial-complex and Wall Street firms. I will be a consistent voice exposing those connections.

   Politicians who dragged their feet for months about delivering crucial financial help to millions of Americans dealing with the effects of Covid lockdowns - and for the record, I am opposed on principle to such government stimulus which are only "needed" due to the State meddling in the market and livelihood of people in the first place - before the dust even settled rushed in with a new impeachment charade, and industries rushed to penalize anyone suspected of even being at the Capitol Hill that fateful Wednesday. The Corporate Media was filled with sensational articles, even shaming or doxing individuals who were at the protests (not just those who stormed Capitol Hill). Big Tech oligarchs intensified their selective censorship efforts as part of their "global approach", with Twitter permanently banning Trump, and efforts to shut down alternative tech platforms not as giddy as them about censoring one side over another. Oligarchs hate competition.

   Whose interests were actually served by the Capitol Hill fiasco? Certainly not the 75 million people who voted for Trump, as it disrupted hearings that disputed the legitimacy of Biden electors from two states (Arizona and Pennsylvania). Certainly not the people who went to hear Trump speak that day, as one has to wonder about a handful of people who would carry out this act rather than hear their idol speak. The old status quo alliance of Establishment politicians and Big Media, joined now by Big Tech oligarchs emboldened by the special privileges given them by government, exploited the events for all they're worth. The same criminal media that lied America into wars, that lent themselves as propaganda for various Police State policies, that carried water for their own favored politicians and filled their trash pages or airwaves with ridiculous puff - is pushing an absurd narrative about Capitol Hill which is their gift which keeps giving. Millions remain under their spell, to be lulled into sleep under the status quo.

   The reality is that in his speech on January 6th, Trump was not calling for any violence much less "inciting" them - it effectively ended the hearings meant to challenge 31 Biden electors and led to yet another impeachment effort against him. Trump said at the rally: "And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down. We're going to walk down anyone you want, but I think right here. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand for integrity."

   Nothing about storming Capitol Hill or anything provocative, but showing support to the select Senators and Congress members who disputed the electors. If anything it expresses the desperation of a man who knows his star is fading, so he placed his last hopes at the mercy of certain politicians. Even Twitter which banned him, never said he was "inciting" violence but merely that some people would "misinterpret" his words. Cut off from Twitter, Trump released a statement via the White House on January 13th: "In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers." This was followed by his farewell address released yesterday, in which Trump said "all Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol" as "political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans" so "can never be tolerated".

   The militarized spectacle was instituted in D.C. because of the images it seared into the public, with a massive round-the-clock news coverage including airing the inauguration to an extent even greater than previous years. These measures were carried out even though the results of the Pentagon investigation were released yesterday: "No plot against Biden was found." And even the Department of Justice recanted its previous assertion that the Capitol Hill rioters wanted to "capture and assassinate" politicians. Yet the Big Lie narrative is still being repeated by Big Tech, Corporate Media, and the Democratic/Republican duopoly Establishment which sees its opportunity to squash a populist surge beyond the careful parameters of acceptable discourse (and thought). Past administrations used all kinds of false flags and psyops to justify wars and the Police State, so are we to presume its not being done now? Garner sympathy by appearing beleaguered for one side, and demoralize the other side by projecting a massive display of power.

   Contrast the statements of non-violence to CNN talking head  Chris Cuomo (the privileged son and brother of governors) who asked about BLM riots last June: "Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful. Because I can show you that outraged citizens are what made the country what she is and led to any major milestone. To be honest, this is not a tranquil time." (The answer would be the First Amendment's "right of the people peaceably to assemble"). That same month, Kamala Harris said on a fawning late night talk-show: "They're not going to stop before election day in November, and they are not going to stop after election day. And everyone should take note of that on both levels. That they're not going to let up. And they should not, and we should not." She asked for donations for rioters who destroyed and burned many small businesses. In August, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a member of the leftist "Squad" on Capitol Hill, demanded "unrest in the streets for as long as there's unrest in our lives". Long before her selective outrage now, Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference on June 14, 2018: "I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country." There are countless more examples of such hypocrisy.

   I have made clear my past opposition to many of Trump's policies and connections, as far back as 2016. Yet I have also been consistent against the other side, especially given their selective outrage, hypocrisy, and obnoxious Trump Derangement delusions these past four years. Whatever his faults up to the very end, the forces that have now arrayed against him epitomize the worst Corporatists, Wall Street firms and hedge fund managers, lobbyists, architects and advocates of the endless wars, Big Tech and Big Media oligarchs, Police State and mass incarceration authoritarians. And its an indisputable fact those forces are united around the Biden/Harris regime which will carry out all those status quo policies that we witnessed in previous administrations. 

   Their spell over people's minds is such that millions on the Left applauding this new regime hold positions completely at odds with the actual records of their two anointed saviors. Conversely, the momentum of this "Right-wing" grassroots revolt of 75 million against the Corporatist Duopoly should be built into a consistent, principled movement that would also reevaluate some of its positions inconsistent with its general distrust of authoritarianism, endless wars, and America-First policies. We can only observe and name the specific solutions as the regime will wage its wars, increase its authoritarianism, serve its Wall Street and Corporatist masters, weaken the economy, and re-enter disastrous trade deals. 

The Rona, Global Surveillance, and the Great Reset (Part 6): Crashing the U.S. Dollar, Elevating Israel's Technocracy, Belt and Road Soft Power, and "Opportunity of Outcomes"

by Sean Jobst

15 January 2021

   I've been away for the past two weeks partly because I became infected with the Rona myself as was confirmed in a test. It was a sickness I overcame - with strange symptoms that were more than just the seasonal flu I get every Winter - and in the process I became one of the vast majority for whom its a non-fatal virus. It confirmed me even more in my conviction that this is a very real virus, but that Authoritarians have been exploiting it for their own agenda to horrible success (using the expansion of their power and wealth as the measure). Politicians who use their armed goons to enforce inconsistent lockdowns, elites who have used it to destroy people's livelihoods, all while flouting their own restrictions and favoring certain Corporations who have indeed gotten rich from what we have been seeing as the largest restructuring of the world's economy in history!

   We are supposed to believe they are doing all of this to contain the spread of a virus which continues to spread even despite their efforts. Shutting down small businesses and herding the masses into crowded big box stores. Authoritarians would want to deny people to right to work and make their own living, instead reducing them to a compliant, dependency class. A latest scheme is their renewed push for a Universal Basic Income, where we see the same old trajectory of gullible Leftist talking-points fitting handily with the ultimate objectives of Bankers and Corporatists. This is not the government giving people their own money back, but the financial powers behind the government already looting their wealth (and those of future generations through Debt), and then treating it as their own property to dispose of as they will. Meanwhile, certain industries like over-privileged Hollywood celebrities have been openly calling on federal aid for themselves, indeed the recent stimulus bill smuggling line items to benefit their industry (as well as assorted other pet projects having nothing to do with Covid relief) lest they have to dip into their own profits and assets rather than rely on the looted wealth of the American worker and productive class!

   Its in this vein I write the latest installment in a series that should have already ran its course but for the need to expose and push back against this ongoing agenda. Continuing from Part 5, where I examined how certain forces are using it to roll out Agenda 2030 and utopian schemes for "global governance" on behalf of certain well-funded NGOs, as well as the Financiers' latest scheme of Central Bank Digital Currencies: Another form of their Money Power updated to the Technocratic Age. There is a broader transition towards a vast Global currency restructuring. Nation-States have long outlived any purpose they may have had for the Elites, who are now dropping the mask and openly centralizing the world's wealth and resources towards Globalist institutions. Witness their special ire towards any political or social trend towards Populism, for example. Yet in the process there are certain State actors whose own power happens to align with such Globalist institutions as the World Economic Forum and Agenda 2030 NGOs, namely Israel and Communist China whose mercantile-obsessed Belt and Road Initiative happens to align closely with the use of Technocracy and multinational trade networks in the Globalists' own centralization.

   Around the incoming Asterisk Presidency is the solidified Establishment of Neoliberal Corporatist, Wall Street, and Neocon warmonger forces - enabled by Leftist activists who fail to see how their proposals are used by the same Establishment they claim to be against, for example their ignorance about the banking system. So it is that in November 2020, Demond Drummer, co-founder alongside AOC's former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabati and Justice Democrats' co-founder Zack Exley of the pro-Green New Deal think-tank New Consensus, greeted Biden's "victory" with a pro-Federal Reserve screed. He ignorantly labelled this private bank "one of the most underutilized and most misunderstood tools in our American system," calling on a Biden/Harris administration to give it even more powers over the economy: "The Federal Reserve is America's development bank, so we should use it to develop America. The Federal Reserve Act really empowers the Federal Reserve system to do anything that it takes to rebuild and stabilize our economy." Such is the bankruptcy of Marxist economic illiteracy, an ignorance that Bankers and Corporatists have long perpetuated.

   Massive Federal government spending has defined both parties and all recent Presidents, because ultimately it benefits the financial interests whose power remains no matter who is the public face in Washington - and politicians personally benefit off this same system. Behind the spending frenzy has been a printing frenzy, with over 400 billion more dollars in circulation since the beginning of the Rona, according to statistics published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. As of Sept. 28, 2020, a whopping 23.6% of all US Dollars were printed into circulation within the last year. Anyone with some level of economic literacy knows just how grim this is, with the declining value of a Dollar more in circulation (inflation), the weakened purchasing power that will be felt by the people, and the assets of future generations being looted. Global and Domestic elites alike have been using the Coronavirus as an excuse to affect the most extensive, most expansive wealth redistribution in history! They can fund their authoritarian programs, while the Bankers profit immensely.

   In April 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced it would expand financial resources, ostensibly to "fight" the Virus. It zeroed in on the U.S. Dollar as "standing in the way of a truly global monetary response to the coronavirus crisis," as noted by an article in the South China Morning Post: "The dollar's dominance denies the IMF the right to act as a global lender of last resort with the SDR [Special Drawing Rights]. The coronavirus has shown no respect for national borders or economic boundaries and has quickly morphed from a local epidemic (in China) to a global pandemic. If it is going to be met by a global response beyond the medical level, barriers to global monetary action will need to be removed." One need only ask who will lead and benefit from such "global monetary action"?

   Elites wax gleefully about the "opportunities" each crisis presents, always couched in nebulous terms of "our world" but actually about their own anointing as the global managerial class. "The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world," as World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab writes in "The Great Reset". This Bilderberg Steering Committee member formed the WEF out of a previous group called the European Management Forum. The mass digitalization of all aspects of life into the Internet of Things is the cornerstone of Schwab's "Fourth Industrial Revolution" pet theory, so its little wonder he has been awarded an honorary professorship at the Unit 8200-ridden Ben-Gurion University of Israel. He formed his Forum of Young Global Leaders with $1 million from Israeli Dan David Prize in 2004. This hi-tech transfer solidifies Israel's central role on China's Belt and Road Initiative, so its little wonder Schwab is also an honorary professor of the China Foreign Affairs University, run under the auspices of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yet again we see how even while eagerly presiding over weakened nation-states, Globalist elites find their alignment with the geopolitical interests of the Israeli and Chinese governments.

   On 26 October 2020, the WEF published an article, "Duque, Kagame and Netanyahu: How to harness digital tech after the pandemic". After all the social platitudes about increasing "global GDP" and "global economic value", the article cited its actual priority as using "human resources to staff the tech space of the future," with Israel's technocratic "partnerships" around the world as the model as it glowingly quotes Netanyahu: "Israel's R&D spending per capita is already the highest in the world. A new co-operation that is 'giving enormous hope to everyone here' is with the Arab world. 'We have just signed peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates; we're signing peace agreements now with Bahrain.' These agreements include the sharing of technology in the coronavirus fight and beyond. Finally, Israel is looking to ensuring its cyber-defence systems are watertight. 'The more we have dependence on these [digital] systems, the more we need to protect them.' 'I think the world has already changed,' says Netanyahu. 'The only question is how fast do we change.'"

   Clearly, those of us who know the role of Israeli military intelligence's Unit 8200 at the heart of this technocracy, and its close alliance with Communist China's Belt and Road, can see these policies of the WEF financial elites as also benefiting them at the expense of the rest of the world. On September 15, 2020, ISRAEL21C published the article, "Israeli tech will help reshape world after pandemic". It cited analysts of Israel's tech power: "Start-Up Nation Central report predicts Israel will be a world leader in digital solutions transforming health, education and welfare". The report's authors said Israel's "longstanding expertise in software, data, sensors and cybersecurity provides an excellent starting point" for reshaping the post-Covid world. Using its five leading sectors of cybersecurity, digital health, fintech, Industry 4.0, and agri/food tech makes Israel "very well positioned to see an increase in demand in the new digital age" which will allow it both to establish "the new normal" and seek nothing less than its own digital superpower:

   "Israel's tech ecosystem is well positioned to help establish the 'new normal' and drive its evolution. Its ecosystem's ability to quickly adapt is evident in both the generation of hundreds of innovative new tech startups each year, and the rapid pivoting of existing companies, all with an eye toward new market challenges. In the dawn of the post-pandemic new digital age, Israel can transcend its 'Start-Up Nation' status and become the leading nation in providing its citizens - and ultimately the world - with cutting-edge digital solutions in health, education, and welfare."

   At the heart of Israel's 5G debate is navigating the rivalry between the United States and China, respectively whose Qualcomm and Huawei are the world's two main 5G networks. On April 5, 2020, Yaakov Katz asked in The Jerusalem Post: "What does Israel's future 5G network have to do with coronavirus?" While there are the close ties with the US: "On the other hand though, Israeli-Chinese relations have also flourished in recent years and Beijing is today Israel's biggest infrastructure partner, building roads, tunnels, ports, railroads and more in deals valued at tens of billions of shekels." Moshe Koppel, chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, "has been working behind the scenes trying to bring Israeli and American officials together to jointly develop some of the components and hardware needed for 5G networks." In other words, more Israeli takeover of the American hi-tech sector. It finally quotes Koppel as envisioning a partnership between Israel and "big international consortiums" towards this end: "A lot of the cutting edge hi-tech stuff that is related to security and to big data collection cannot be done alone by a small country like Israel and needs to be done by big international consortiums."

   Just as governments worldwide have used the Coronavirus as the excuse to institute various measures to extend their own controls over people, the Communist Chinese regime has used it as an excuse to greatly expand social controls, such as enabling certain neighbors and Party representatives to monitor and inform on people (a feature shared with various other draconian systems, such as the Communist regime in Cuba). Not even on the radar of Western leftists' selective "social justice" concerns, the regime has used the virus to intensify draconian efforts against foreigners and minorities. Most known for its role in 5G infrastructure around the world, Huawei has tested AI software to recognize and track ethnic Uighurs, whose concentration camps were built with help from the infamous Blackwater with its own ties to the UN Smart Cities program. From the virus' inception in Wuhan, the regime suppressed and censored information about the outbreak, including holding local Wuhan citizen journalists in state detention for their videos exposing the scope of the outbreak, as well as a prominent scholar who called Xi Jinping "clueless" over his response. A recent pro-CCP puff piece in the New York Times highlighted how Chinese citizens lack basic freedoms, but assures us "In a Topsy-Turvy Pandemic World, China Offers Its Version of Freedom": "But they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life." Whatever constitutes a "normal" life without basic freedoms is perhaps what's envisioned as the "new normal".

   China has used the Rona to vastly expand its neo-mercantilist "soft power" of the Belt and Road, including Latin America where its ownership of companies and assets include ports and infrastructure, telecom, and financial institutions. Many Africans have warned of China's colonialism over their continent. China has used the virus to mass infiltrate CCP members into several UK defence firms, banks, and pharmaceutical giants. Among the Globalist institutions in the CCP's pockets is the World Health Organization, which has been complicit in blacklisting Taiwan on its behalf. The WHO has constantly praised the regime for its response, including its Ethiopian Marxist director-general Tedros Adhanom calling China the "new standard for outbreak control", with an obvious emphasis on control. His predecessor, former Hong Kong health director Margaret Chan, gave a slavish pro-regime speech at the Chinese Academy of Government on 18 Nov. 2016: "In the eyes of the world, China is increasingly seen as a model for development at many levels." She praised how China lifted "millions of its people out of poverty" and "China is extremely fortunate to have a President who has made health the centre of all government policies". Not content with merely letting Globalist admirers sing his praises, Xi Jinping has used their institutions to lobby the world to model itself after his regime. In his address to the 15th G20 Leaders' Summit on Nov. 21, 2020, Jinping pushed the world to accept a global Covid tracking system using QR codes to access its users' data. Globalists envision Communist China as their model to institute worldwide - expansive surveillance powers over its people, using technology to monitor and control people to an unprecedented level, a powerful bureaucracy closely linked to multinational oligarchs.

   As we will examine in future articles, there is a large segment of Wall Street and Big Corporate interests, as well as powerful individuals such as Henry Kissinger, who have long been closely tied to Communist China. These are the people in ascendency right now, surrounding the incoming Asterisk President*. Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Adviser who had earlier worked for Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State, gave a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on June 13, 2017: "We need to strike a middle course - one that encourages China's rise in a manner consistent with an open, fair, rules-based, regional order." He envisioned American "ties to the region that create an environment more conducive to a peaceful and positive sum Chinese rise." These people are Globalist interventionists tied to Wall Street firms such as BlackRock and Pine Island Capital, whose policies benefit those Establishment forces who profit from war, but their approach towards Communist China and the soft power of the Belt and Road will be one of compliance. Meanwhile, they consent to a weakened American economy for the masses using a response to the Rona as their excuse - the redistribution of wealth into their hands requires it.

   Aside from proclaiming the "Dark Winter" as his excuse for ever-more authoritarian powers, Biden has used the Rona to virtue signal to the Leftist activist sing of his alliance. On May 13, 2020, he appeared from his basement on "Good Luck America", Snapchat's daily political show hosted by Peter Hamby. Biden said that Covid means "We have a chance to institutionally change the way this economy functions." Already coopted by Big Business and Wall Street, we can expect the intersectional, authoritarian Left to sign off on this increased redistribution of wealth to the oligarchs so long as their favored social programs are ensured. Biden followed this up with an online commencement address to Columbia University Law School on May 20th, when he advocated using COVID to "rewrite the social contract": "From this pandemic, you can remake the world as it should be. To see COVID-19 as a force majeure, that compels us to rewrite the social contract that's been scrambled by nature's fury and human failures." The Marxists and Corporatists are united in a "social contract" that sees human beings in stark economic and statistical terms, no matter all their "humanitarian" disguises.

   Enshrined within his 110-page "Unity Task Force" document in consultation with Bernie Sanders and the Leftist activist wing, Biden developed a plan for an Equity Credit Scoring System which takes identity factors into account even though the industry already prohibits discrimination. The real purpose is controlling and monitoring people through gathering data about them, much like Communist China's Social Credit System except in this case it would be based on compliance to intersectional "Wokeness" and his authoritarian measures couched under fighting the Covid. In a homage to such a leveling process, a "credit scoring system" would be about an equality of outcome not opportunity. On Nov. 1, 2020, Kamala Harris posted a cartoon on Twitter with her voice over: "Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place." The ominous reality behind the platitude is more debt to Wall Street combined with an intensified dependency upon the State, reducing all to a level where they can be easily controlled and manipulated. Such terms are predictive programming for the Great Reset, as Klaus Schwab called for a "stakeholder economy" overseen by centralized governments using an "equality of outcomes" as their mask. "The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes," Schwab writes. "Governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes." 

   Anyone who thinks such rhetoric is anything but a mask for expanding their own power and wealth, is a useful idiot of social engineering. Yet such are the real objectives behind these various "public health" measures, exploiting the virus for what's nothing less than the largest transfer of wealth and power in history - on an unprecedented scale. This is what they actually mean about a "new social contract" behind Covid as their convenient mask. More layers of control, surveillance, and compliance added to society.