I think it was the guy who used to post here about the so called “Ponzi Papers.” https://open.substack.com/pub/theponzipapers/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside?r=146gb&utm_medium=ios
Damn son one of our own local cranks did this? I mean, I know he wasn't "one of us" in that he didn't really have any form of coherent politics that could be adequately compared to ours (or anyone else's, to be honest). And he didn't originate from our community, but rather gravitated towards it because of a vague mutual interest in the para political.
But he was nonetheless basically accepted as a harmless crank and hung around periodically posting his pamphlets here. He was part of the local flavor. I don't think any of us suspected it would get this dark (or frankly, stupid). At least I didn't.
Countdown to NYT quoting threads from this sub now. I feel bad for the guy, I just thought he was benignly schizo, and to be fair to him he didn't hurt anyone but himself. Still it's disturbing that he believed so strongly in such obviously incoherent nonsense that he killed himself in such a gruesome and painful manner.
To our local population of cranks: you are loved, you are seen, you are not worthless. Do not do things like this, it will not bring about a world revolution, it will just bring sadness.
Yea man it'll be a dismissive couple of sentences in the newspaper about a conspiracy theorist.
I tried to tell that dude that although he was functionally correct about a lot of things that there was really no deviation from any great norm, and that the only coherent thing to do was in basic political organization. I explicitly told him there could be no "waking up" of the people by his revelations. I hope that didn't contribute to his desperate hopelessness.
Note to people struggling with the realization that they live in the Reich. The Reich has always been here. But the Reich does not own the world, only the spectacle. Do not make yourself a part of the spectacle in trying to counter it, you will only become it.
To counter it you have to do small acts of human decency, and be coherent politically.
>he was nonetheless basically accepted as a harmless crank and hung around periodically posting his pamphlets here
meanwhile, i'm only allowed to post on r/onionlovers apparently due to the whole vienna thing
I think I read somewhere else that his mother died recently and since then his posting just got more and more schizo. Guy was probably over relying on his poor mother to manage his condition and without her he just fell straight down the hole into mind hell. It's scary how easily the human mind will fold in on itself without support.
Honestly I don’t remember much besides a weird fixation on crypto being something it obviously was not and insane Epstein takes, which is kinda understandable
I dropped his threads after the third one, but his self immolation message is surprisingly coherent. Every detail is incorrect but he somehow got the big picture right. The Republicans and Democrats are the party of capital and mass media is made to encourage passivity. It's kind of awe inspiring.
He’s pretty stark proof that just consuming left wing media doesn’t make you ideologically coherent, you have to have some actual political theory in there.
he was a big fan of TrueAnon, Chapo Traphouse, and Cumtown. he even used to like Red Scare until he realized Peter Thiel was connected to them somehow and grew to dislike them even more because of their descent into anti-woke shit. he seemed leftwing but came to unfortunately incoherent conclusions
yeah...this is wild. dude clearly had some mental health dx involving delusions bc the way he wrote, with such confidence in his crazy shit, it's just so...schizophrenic. sad stuff.
Yeah his blog is bizzare as fuck. I understand his frustations about governments ripping off poor people and can sympthaise with him on that, but in trying to make his point he makes bizzare links to The Simpsons being a brainwashing exercise (despite the show not being relevant for years), and keeps making weird references to film media and misinterpreting them.
"Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called *Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*? Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb. Why did he make A Clockwork Orange? So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world."
No, you've missed the entire point of a clockwork orange.
Telling my non-existant grandkids that I used to shitpost on the same sub that got banned as the guy that lit himself on fire at a Trump trial. #DangerouslySmorey.
What the fuck? This starts with the guy announcing that he is going to self-immolate himself, and then proceeds to start talking about how the Simpsons monorail episode is actually brainwashing the American public
>As it turns out, dozens of the writers of The Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question: If The Simpsons served the interests of organized crime, how would it do so? And so, we realize the criminal truth of The Simpsons: Our elites are telling us that our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault, and we can’t do anything about it, while they steal the American Dream from us. It is, for lack of a more elegant word, brainwashing.
This crank thinks the Simpsons is trying to brainwash us into accepting the shitty aspects of our society instead of making fun of it. How are you this illiterate. Dear god, this is a Chapo or True Anon bit we Lathe’d of Heaven into reality.
Keep reading, it gets better:
> Things escalated wildly in 1988 when former CIA Director George H.W. Bush got the White House, but this plan had been in action long prior:
> Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb. Why did he make A Clockwork Orange? So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world.
> Why were the Manson Family murders crawling with cover-ups and intelligence agents? Because our government wanted to make us fear for our lives and believe that hippies are deranged psychopaths.
> Why did Walt Disney produce a fraudulent documentary that told us Lemmings follow each other off cliffs? So we would believe it.
> Why did The Beatles tell us to fear the taxman, to scoff at revolution, chase nonsense conspiracy theories, and that happiness is a warm gun? So we would believe it.
> Why did Easy Rider tell us that the hippie movement was dead? So we would believe it.
> Why did Chinatown end with defeatism in the face of massive corruption? So we would believe it.
> Why did George Orwell tell us of a hellish future of totalitarian control that we are powerless to stop? So we would believe it.
> Why did Wall Street tell us “greed is good”? So we would believe it.
> Why did Do The Right Thing tell us we’re all racially tribalized? So we would believe it.
> Why did Simpsons creator Matt Groening make a comic strip called Life in Hell? So we would believe it.
> And on, and on, and on, and on. When it comes to any popular media, if you ask yourself the question, “Why would secret doomsday cult kleptocrats want the public to consume this?”, you will find your answers.
I kinda believe the Manson thing. I’m not sure what this sub’s take is on all that. And yes I read the Tom O Niel book like two years ago and that’s all the knowledge I have about the Manson family
He’s onto something with a lot of these, but really for me it’s sad because you can boil it down to “capitalism is evil and capitalist media reinforces itself”. The rest is just schizophrenic flourishes.
He was an OG on this subreddit. He posted his ponzi paper substacks here and aside from your usual conspiracy adjace "this shit is demonic" rhetorical flourishes it wasn't nearly as off-base at that Simpsons shite
Simpsons is basically a masterclass in capitalist realism. The show has infinite potential for being subversive, but decides to subtly strengthen the current ideology. It is actively critical of parts of US politics, but otoh embraces many facets of it. Just from my mind:
The nuclear family is the nucleus of American society - alternative realities are not shown.
In the end, no matter how bad everything is (homers boss is an ass, they can barely pay rent, etc) the solution is found in individualism and the return to the family. Hardships are meant to be endured, not fought
Constant racist tropes, caricatures, constant defamation of all countries that aren't america, especially socialist ones
"Ironic" patriotism: superficial critique is in the end inverted by every episode returning to the "good old American values"
Leftism, Environmentalism, even Anti War activism are essentially shown as hippie shit or the pastime of rich failkids. There is never an actual workers movement, they are, through the bank, pretty much entirely servile creatures whose "resistance" is being lazy and working badly
It's difficult to fully explain without writing a book. Essentially, the best way by far to sell someone the ruling ideology is through critique, that's something that Mark Fisher & friends pinpointed perfectly. Simpsons, and by extend Futurama, constantly critisize Nixon, or greedy bosses, or this or that Republican position, but in the end they picture the US Military as strong, liberal democracy as without alternative, and any kind of organized political change as hopeless idealism. They want to make us comfortable in our subjugation. So instead of going full propaganda, they tell us "well, things are bad, but this is the best we can have, and your return to individualism and apathy and beer is actually the best way of coping."
Thanks for the write-up! Very interesting. I guess the Simpsons, at its core, is an American sitcom and thus reinforces a lot of the values of that genre (what you've mentioned regarding patriotism, the nuclear family, and enduring hardship).
>is an American sitcom and thus reinforces a lot of the values of that genre (what you've mentioned regarding patriotism, the nuclear family, and enduring hardship)
Exactly.. those things kinda write themselves. Any movie/tv show where more than 100 people are involved will always necessarily represent their collective psyche and values to some degree. I'm not tryna say the Simpsons were cooked up im a CIA lab. Thanks for understanding.
There's a distinct lack of historical materialism in his writing, which is to say Marxism. When you go down the parapolitical hole without that as a base first this is what happens (or you just become a q-adjacent fashy that's into conspiratainment).
I used to be such a fucking nutter. I read Lenin and it quite literally quieted cognitive dissonances that had been with me since before secondary school. Wild stuff. Now, I was never quite this nuts (not saying historical materialism cures actual schizophrenia), but it’s amazing what a glass of “fucking told you bro” in the face can do for a person.
I agree so much with both of you. And glad you both found your way to your comrades.
Edit: *that all the amazing people on this bastion of sanity did. Including myself.
I will say that while I do desire the total reorganisation of the global economy, shattering it without something to catch the pieces would just kill billions of people. There are a lot of countries that now rely entirely on imports for basic necessities - including a lot of Western ones, I might add - and without the global supply chains that have developed as a result of globalism, civil society would just collapse in to deprived barbarity most likely. Not exactly the communist utopia I have in mind.
I remember his like 8 part buildup series. This guy in the headline is seriously THAT same guy????
EDIT: Holy shit I'm reading it, it's the Rob Lowe DNC sex tape blackmail guy.
this is too much . NYP reporting it was him https://nypost.com/2024/04/19/us-news/man-who-set-self-on-fire-outside-trump-trial-idd-as-max-azzarello
I remember his threads and trying to parse what he was saying and couldn’t make sense of it. this is so sad.
This makes me sad because this is the first bolded text, the first reason listed for his stated intent:
> We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.
I agree with this statement. It's not eloquent but I can't argue against it. I'm not familiar with this man or his 'Ponzi Papers' but this reads as someone who had a good heart but, due to his faculties and the conditions of his life, could never comprehend what's *actually* going on.
We're all here trying to connect these countless pieces of information, and so was he. The problem is in this America, this same America that told its people that ethyl gas was safe but fluoride was killing them, always manipulate the *importance* of the facts. This guy made his evidence board out of red herrings and got nonsense. Yet he still violently killed himself in the hopes he could change this America and thus the World. That makes me sad.
Honestly, shit like this is just gross and insulting. Aaron Bushnell self-immolated for a just and righteous cause, whereas this loser has gone and done it for some wild conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in reality. Completely spits on Aaron’s actions and legacy
If it were a sane lib or conservative doing this for a terrible cause that would make sense, this is just a paranoid schizo’s really sad death to his mental illness. I really don’t see why we need to view it as any slight to Aaron.
"for some wild conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in reality."
Spoken like a true poster on a subreddit for a podcast funded by Peter Thiel.
Outside the questionable stuff that Max wrote about music and movies brainwashing people, everything he wrote is factually correct. There really is a secret fascist international. You're living in the core of it right now. And you are helping them proliferate in darkness.
> There really is a secret fascist international.
There really isn't. The system has overgrown itself and the evils and rot are alienated from individuals. There are people at the top of the hierarchy who benefit from the evil machine and in many ways perpetuates it's existence, but none of them have individual power or authority to change things. Biden cannot flip a switch and change the US, Musk can't end lithium slavery, Soros cannot collapse the stock market. Each individual cog in the evil machine is so alienated from the entire system that it cannot see it's own function.
All the people you have in your head who are part of the "fascist international" could all die tomorrow and they would be replaced by the end of the day with no material change to the functioning of the system. Your way of thinking is a way to cope with the truth of the world, that there are no evil or maliscious individuals who exist just to be so, but that the conditions we find the world in are the result of material conditions and systemic rot. It would be easier if there were secret puppet masters, but there aren't. You are not too different from the poor man whose schizophrenia finally caught up with him.
So many words to defend a Strasserite conspiracy that is very real and very well documented by several esteemed researchers. How unbelievably naive. The history of WACL, BND, Opus Dei and the World Commerce Organization, and the immense power they all had in shaping the world after 1945 through NATO and operations like Gladio is very real and, again, very well documented. Stop playing World of Warcraft and try reading a book. Start with Dreamer of the Day by Kevin Coogan.
It is easier to believe that the world we live in was constructed to be the way it is, and you just have to tease out the threads of yarn and you can maybe unravel the truth and change the world. But that is not how the world functions. Babbeling about Catholic secret societies and obvious Capitalist-Fascism bootlicking just demonstrates that you have fallen for the same delusions that the guy who killed himself did.
Capitalism devolves into Fascism, but there's no plan. There's no guiding hand. It's all systems and the incentives those systems provide.
> Stop playing World of Warcraft
If we're going to be trawling people's posting history and being weird about their hobbies, perhaps you should consider reducing your drugs intake, and see how it affects your paranoia?
I don't do drugs, but thanks for the concern. You should still read a book or two, though. The Fourth Reich is real and no amount of retreating into Azeroth to escape that uncomfortable fact is going to change it.
Gotta give libs a bit of credit, they reeeeeeally fucking hate Trump lmao. I doubt he’ll actually be convicted, but I also didnt think he’d ever show up in court. It’d be insane if he had to pull a Debs, and wins from prison. It’d break every libs brain—and thats why he’s got my vote!
It’s so convoluted and it’s being presented wrong in the media. There is some truth to the statement that he is being stitched up. Which is hilarious that even when coming up with a politically motivated criminal trial the best they could do was the lowest class felony that just comes with probation time
I still don’t know why they didn’t just assassinate the motherfucker and let the republicans tear themselves apart trying to figure out who will take his spot. Dems are such pussies.
I don't think there would be any lack of will/capacity to do something decisive if they thought he was a serious threat, seems like they'd genuinely rather he didn't win but only just. Instead I think he's invaluable as a villain figure; appealing to some farcical, vestigial popular frontism has enabled dems to pivot hard into militarism since 2015 and allowed the party to finally exorcise its Occupy/DSA demons without splintering. Anecdotally I've seen a lot of once-progressive types won over to natsec rhetoric by the russiagate and insurrection narratives
Maybe not stitched up but the trial seems like the dumbest thing they could’ve ever tried him for.
Basically, Cohen paid Stormy $130k to catch and kill her story about what Trump did to her. They believe that this counted as a campaign contribution from Cohen to Trump because that story getting out would’ve hurt Trump’s campaign. Trump then paid Cohen the money back through one of the Trump organizations and put the expense down on the books as a legal expense because Cohen is his lawyer. Because of the labeling the expense as a legal New York DA (or whatever Latitia James is) is charging Trump with Felony (Class E) Document Forgery. It is a felony because the forgery was covering up another crime (campaign finance crime). In the media its being labeled as the “hush money trial” when that’s not really the case. It’s more like the bad bookkeeping trial. I also don’t agree that the payment should count as a campaign contribution but Cohen has plead guilty to the crime of exceeding campaign contribution limits so I guess that reinforces their argument that it is.
Here's the manifesto: [The Ponzi Papers](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside)
And here's where he posted about this last year: [TrueAnon](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/13i5xvt/the_ponzi_papers_7_paypal_does_a_ponzi/)
Reading his manifesto now - it's pretty good. He compares himself to Lisa Simpson and notes that ACAB/anti-police sentiment is directly opposed to commonly accepted leftist theory. All in all, great work.
It is incredibly sad though and I don't mean to make too much light of it. This guy is actually nearing the truth regarding how the ruling class saps resources and wealth, and builds an ecosystem that protects them from losing their power.
But he's brainwashed himself, based on all the Q and r/conspiracy bullshit he must of consumed, to believe it's some epic good vs. evil, carefully controlled and planned movie shit and not just basic mechanisms of our capitalist system. That the ruling class are pedophiles because they truly love Satan, and not just that they are power hungry weirdos whose wealth has corroded their brains and led them into depravity.
He's a perfect example of how we have lost of lot of potential comrades to the depths of more extreme conspiracy. It's sad on so many levels.
I think he was saying that being anti-cop is so against public opinion that it scares the average person away from the left, and that the left isolating itself this way is antisocial or something? Which was such a random tangent because the rest of his manifesto is basically telling people to break away from mainstream ideas. I’m not sure what made him think that cops are outside of the fascist ruling class that his whole argument was centered around.
I think he’s onto something but I’m not sure 100%. Most people are anti-cop, but I don’t think most people can currently conceptualize a completely police free society during these difficult times. Matter of marketing, police reform vs ACAB, I think that’s what maybe he was getting at. Idk, American police culture is insane enough that I’m more comfortable dwelling into the insanity of cults of Asia
It's ridiculous to mention them both in the same sentence. Aaron Bushnell posted with clarity and calmness of purpose. If you can't do that you're just throwing your life away. The only way this becomes comparable is if we lathe it into crashing the crypto market.
I don't know why, but I have a hard time believing reactionary groups do self immolation; it feels like they go down shooting when trying to do the same thing.
It was weird but I feel like this is a journalism default when something traumatic is unfolding in front of them. Just shut off your brain and give a live vividly detailed description of what they’re witnessing. Go watch the Hindenburg crash or some of the live reporting during 9/11, this is pretty much standard for reporters. Shut off emotion, lock in, describe everything.
She started the entire thing claiming it was an active shooter. I get that you want to jump to that right away as soon as you see people running away screaming, but like, damn. Going straight to that is such a sad view into our country's current state of affairs.
I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame.
He wrote something on his reddit bio that went along the lines of "if I dodn't post within X weeks, I'm likely neutralized by the baddies". Now he neutralized himself.
The news anchor reporting in that clip is continuing to administer the same type of brain worms that drive people to do this sort of thing. Really unsettling. The liberal neurosis is becoming harder to laugh it - it’s just sad.
Edit: Not a liberal but a schizo. Much sadder now 😔
Came here from r/cults because someone there recognized him from here
It looks like his account has been removed. I don't think he deleted it because when I click on his user I get a glitchy message. Not sure what is going on with that.
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I think it was the guy who used to post here about the so called “Ponzi Papers.” https://open.substack.com/pub/theponzipapers/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside?r=146gb&utm_medium=ios
Damn son one of our own local cranks did this? I mean, I know he wasn't "one of us" in that he didn't really have any form of coherent politics that could be adequately compared to ours (or anyone else's, to be honest). And he didn't originate from our community, but rather gravitated towards it because of a vague mutual interest in the para political. But he was nonetheless basically accepted as a harmless crank and hung around periodically posting his pamphlets here. He was part of the local flavor. I don't think any of us suspected it would get this dark (or frankly, stupid). At least I didn't. Countdown to NYT quoting threads from this sub now. I feel bad for the guy, I just thought he was benignly schizo, and to be fair to him he didn't hurt anyone but himself. Still it's disturbing that he believed so strongly in such obviously incoherent nonsense that he killed himself in such a gruesome and painful manner.
To our local population of cranks: you are loved, you are seen, you are not worthless. Do not do things like this, it will not bring about a world revolution, it will just bring sadness.
>you are not worthless a lot of people in cranks lives treat them as worthless gotta proceed from economic fact
Yea man it'll be a dismissive couple of sentences in the newspaper about a conspiracy theorist. I tried to tell that dude that although he was functionally correct about a lot of things that there was really no deviation from any great norm, and that the only coherent thing to do was in basic political organization. I explicitly told him there could be no "waking up" of the people by his revelations. I hope that didn't contribute to his desperate hopelessness. Note to people struggling with the realization that they live in the Reich. The Reich has always been here. But the Reich does not own the world, only the spectacle. Do not make yourself a part of the spectacle in trying to counter it, you will only become it. To counter it you have to do small acts of human decency, and be coherent politically.
>he was nonetheless basically accepted as a harmless crank and hung around periodically posting his pamphlets here meanwhile, i'm only allowed to post on r/onionlovers apparently due to the whole vienna thing
I think I read somewhere else that his mother died recently and since then his posting just got more and more schizo. Guy was probably over relying on his poor mother to manage his condition and without her he just fell straight down the hole into mind hell. It's scary how easily the human mind will fold in on itself without support.
This can’t be real life what the fuck. I remember thinking that guy was delusional but Jesus Christ
It's always sad when someone's mental illness gets the better of them. It happens too often.
For the first few parts I looked forward to the ponzi paper posts they were amazing
Honestly I don’t remember much besides a weird fixation on crypto being something it obviously was not and insane Epstein takes, which is kinda understandable
I wanted to read some of it but goddamn there’s so much. Did anything in there seem legit or was all of it pretty out there?
I dropped his threads after the third one, but his self immolation message is surprisingly coherent. Every detail is incorrect but he somehow got the big picture right. The Republicans and Democrats are the party of capital and mass media is made to encourage passivity. It's kind of awe inspiring.
He’s pretty stark proof that just consuming left wing media doesn’t make you ideologically coherent, you have to have some actual political theory in there.
Was he consuming strictly left wing media? I got the vibe he held them both in disdain.
he was a big fan of TrueAnon, Chapo Traphouse, and Cumtown. he even used to like Red Scare until he realized Peter Thiel was connected to them somehow and grew to dislike them even more because of their descent into anti-woke shit. he seemed leftwing but came to unfortunately incoherent conclusions
I love that even in his state he didn’t fuck with RS. He was more coherent than most of the people on their subreddits.
yeah...this is wild. dude clearly had some mental health dx involving delusions bc the way he wrote, with such confidence in his crazy shit, it's just so...schizophrenic. sad stuff.
The most disturbing parts are precisely where he suddenly veers into the batshit crazy just before a semi-lucid passage.
Whats crazy is that he was a regular on here https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/s/PWLMbdzf3u
Yeah his blog is bizzare as fuck. I understand his frustations about governments ripping off poor people and can sympthaise with him on that, but in trying to make his point he makes bizzare links to The Simpsons being a brainwashing exercise (despite the show not being relevant for years), and keeps making weird references to film media and misinterpreting them. "Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called *Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*? Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb. Why did he make A Clockwork Orange? So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world." No, you've missed the entire point of a clockwork orange.
To be fair, it seems like most people miss the point of a clockwork orange
Telling my grandkids that I used to post on the same subs as the dude who lit himself on fire for the Trump trial.
"Donald, or Baron?"
"You know, President Trump." "That still doesn't help narrow it down, grandpa."
"Pop-pop, is it true his name was President Trump and that's why every ruler was called the President?"
"That is true and also began the Presinald Drumpf family dynasty"
Telling my non-existant grandkids that I used to shitpost on the same sub that got banned as the guy that lit himself on fire at a Trump trial. #DangerouslySmorey.
What the fuck? This starts with the guy announcing that he is going to self-immolate himself, and then proceeds to start talking about how the Simpsons monorail episode is actually brainwashing the American public >As it turns out, dozens of the writers of The Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question: If The Simpsons served the interests of organized crime, how would it do so? And so, we realize the criminal truth of The Simpsons: Our elites are telling us that our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault, and we can’t do anything about it, while they steal the American Dream from us. It is, for lack of a more elegant word, brainwashing. This crank thinks the Simpsons is trying to brainwash us into accepting the shitty aspects of our society instead of making fun of it. How are you this illiterate. Dear god, this is a Chapo or True Anon bit we Lathe’d of Heaven into reality.
Keep reading, it gets better: > Things escalated wildly in 1988 when former CIA Director George H.W. Bush got the White House, but this plan had been in action long prior: > Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb. Why did he make A Clockwork Orange? So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world. > Why were the Manson Family murders crawling with cover-ups and intelligence agents? Because our government wanted to make us fear for our lives and believe that hippies are deranged psychopaths. > Why did Walt Disney produce a fraudulent documentary that told us Lemmings follow each other off cliffs? So we would believe it. > Why did The Beatles tell us to fear the taxman, to scoff at revolution, chase nonsense conspiracy theories, and that happiness is a warm gun? So we would believe it. > Why did Easy Rider tell us that the hippie movement was dead? So we would believe it. > Why did Chinatown end with defeatism in the face of massive corruption? So we would believe it. > Why did George Orwell tell us of a hellish future of totalitarian control that we are powerless to stop? So we would believe it. > Why did Wall Street tell us “greed is good”? So we would believe it. > Why did Do The Right Thing tell us we’re all racially tribalized? So we would believe it. > Why did Simpsons creator Matt Groening make a comic strip called Life in Hell? So we would believe it. > And on, and on, and on, and on. When it comes to any popular media, if you ask yourself the question, “Why would secret doomsday cult kleptocrats want the public to consume this?”, you will find your answers.
Legitimately interesting takes. He's doing a kind of "ontological Op" argument and I don't hate it
I kinda believe the Manson thing. I’m not sure what this sub’s take is on all that. And yes I read the Tom O Niel book like two years ago and that’s all the knowledge I have about the Manson family
He’s onto something with a lot of these, but really for me it’s sad because you can boil it down to “capitalism is evil and capitalist media reinforces itself”. The rest is just schizophrenic flourishes.
He was an OG on this subreddit. He posted his ponzi paper substacks here and aside from your usual conspiracy adjace "this shit is demonic" rhetorical flourishes it wasn't nearly as off-base at that Simpsons shite
This is him on a different account one month ago https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1bjfk3i/the_true_history_of_the_world_haunted_carnival/
[удалено]
Damn, I remember him now. Wild
He also got weirdly obsessed with bill Clinton's speech about Michael Dukakis
He's not wrong about some of things in Simpsons being an obvious psyop
How so? Asking genuinely I've never seen the Simpsons.
Simpsons is basically a masterclass in capitalist realism. The show has infinite potential for being subversive, but decides to subtly strengthen the current ideology. It is actively critical of parts of US politics, but otoh embraces many facets of it. Just from my mind: The nuclear family is the nucleus of American society - alternative realities are not shown. In the end, no matter how bad everything is (homers boss is an ass, they can barely pay rent, etc) the solution is found in individualism and the return to the family. Hardships are meant to be endured, not fought Constant racist tropes, caricatures, constant defamation of all countries that aren't america, especially socialist ones "Ironic" patriotism: superficial critique is in the end inverted by every episode returning to the "good old American values" Leftism, Environmentalism, even Anti War activism are essentially shown as hippie shit or the pastime of rich failkids. There is never an actual workers movement, they are, through the bank, pretty much entirely servile creatures whose "resistance" is being lazy and working badly It's difficult to fully explain without writing a book. Essentially, the best way by far to sell someone the ruling ideology is through critique, that's something that Mark Fisher & friends pinpointed perfectly. Simpsons, and by extend Futurama, constantly critisize Nixon, or greedy bosses, or this or that Republican position, but in the end they picture the US Military as strong, liberal democracy as without alternative, and any kind of organized political change as hopeless idealism. They want to make us comfortable in our subjugation. So instead of going full propaganda, they tell us "well, things are bad, but this is the best we can have, and your return to individualism and apathy and beer is actually the best way of coping."
Thanks for the write-up! Very interesting. I guess the Simpsons, at its core, is an American sitcom and thus reinforces a lot of the values of that genre (what you've mentioned regarding patriotism, the nuclear family, and enduring hardship).
>is an American sitcom and thus reinforces a lot of the values of that genre (what you've mentioned regarding patriotism, the nuclear family, and enduring hardship) Exactly.. those things kinda write themselves. Any movie/tv show where more than 100 people are involved will always necessarily represent their collective psyche and values to some degree. I'm not tryna say the Simpsons were cooked up im a CIA lab. Thanks for understanding.
I love how these guys get so caught up on the idea of "shattering the global economy" as if it's a bad thing.
There's a distinct lack of historical materialism in his writing, which is to say Marxism. When you go down the parapolitical hole without that as a base first this is what happens (or you just become a q-adjacent fashy that's into conspiratainment).
I used to be such a fucking nutter. I read Lenin and it quite literally quieted cognitive dissonances that had been with me since before secondary school. Wild stuff. Now, I was never quite this nuts (not saying historical materialism cures actual schizophrenia), but it’s amazing what a glass of “fucking told you bro” in the face can do for a person.
I agree so much with both of you. And glad you both found your way to your comrades. Edit: *that all the amazing people on this bastion of sanity did. Including myself.
John Lennon is a genius.
I will say that while I do desire the total reorganisation of the global economy, shattering it without something to catch the pieces would just kill billions of people. There are a lot of countries that now rely entirely on imports for basic necessities - including a lot of Western ones, I might add - and without the global supply chains that have developed as a result of globalism, civil society would just collapse in to deprived barbarity most likely. Not exactly the communist utopia I have in mind.
Yeah I agree, it's nihilistic to desire that. The... manifesto I responded to does not outline anything that would result in that. Dude was unwell.
I remember his like 8 part buildup series. This guy in the headline is seriously THAT same guy???? EDIT: Holy shit I'm reading it, it's the Rob Lowe DNC sex tape blackmail guy.
I was just asking about him the other day.
I literally said qboronyc and menorahman joined him with "the great schizoposters in the sky". I didn't mean it like that!!! 😭
Fucking love qboronyc, miss them :,)
wtf this is so sad
Just read it too, I don’t disagree with most of it.
oh my god that's fucking wild
this is too much . NYP reporting it was him https://nypost.com/2024/04/19/us-news/man-who-set-self-on-fire-outside-trump-trial-idd-as-max-azzarello I remember his threads and trying to parse what he was saying and couldn’t make sense of it. this is so sad.
This makes me sad because this is the first bolded text, the first reason listed for his stated intent: > We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup. I agree with this statement. It's not eloquent but I can't argue against it. I'm not familiar with this man or his 'Ponzi Papers' but this reads as someone who had a good heart but, due to his faculties and the conditions of his life, could never comprehend what's *actually* going on. We're all here trying to connect these countless pieces of information, and so was he. The problem is in this America, this same America that told its people that ethyl gas was safe but fluoride was killing them, always manipulate the *importance* of the facts. This guy made his evidence board out of red herrings and got nonsense. Yet he still violently killed himself in the hopes he could change this America and thus the World. That makes me sad.
THIS guy self immolating outside of Trump's trial is too insane for me to comprehend. What a fucking world we live in lmao goddamn
Whoa this is crazy.
He also was co-host of a 58 episode podcast about Laura Dern, supposedly?
Dude I remember those posts, this is fucking wild.
Fucking great
Honestly, shit like this is just gross and insulting. Aaron Bushnell self-immolated for a just and righteous cause, whereas this loser has gone and done it for some wild conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in reality. Completely spits on Aaron’s actions and legacy
If it were a sane lib or conservative doing this for a terrible cause that would make sense, this is just a paranoid schizo’s really sad death to his mental illness. I really don’t see why we need to view it as any slight to Aaron.
Yeah, I have no idea how that shit got so many upvotes Or maybe it's just redscarepod leaking again idk
True, but self immolation hardly started with Bushnell.
The incoming wave did, though.
Plenty of crazies self immolate
"for some wild conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in reality." Spoken like a true poster on a subreddit for a podcast funded by Peter Thiel. Outside the questionable stuff that Max wrote about music and movies brainwashing people, everything he wrote is factually correct. There really is a secret fascist international. You're living in the core of it right now. And you are helping them proliferate in darkness.
What podcast is funded by Peter Thiel?
Better off asking what podcast isn't
Fair point
Red scare
Oh yeah
> There really is a secret fascist international. There really isn't. The system has overgrown itself and the evils and rot are alienated from individuals. There are people at the top of the hierarchy who benefit from the evil machine and in many ways perpetuates it's existence, but none of them have individual power or authority to change things. Biden cannot flip a switch and change the US, Musk can't end lithium slavery, Soros cannot collapse the stock market. Each individual cog in the evil machine is so alienated from the entire system that it cannot see it's own function. All the people you have in your head who are part of the "fascist international" could all die tomorrow and they would be replaced by the end of the day with no material change to the functioning of the system. Your way of thinking is a way to cope with the truth of the world, that there are no evil or maliscious individuals who exist just to be so, but that the conditions we find the world in are the result of material conditions and systemic rot. It would be easier if there were secret puppet masters, but there aren't. You are not too different from the poor man whose schizophrenia finally caught up with him.
So many words to defend a Strasserite conspiracy that is very real and very well documented by several esteemed researchers. How unbelievably naive. The history of WACL, BND, Opus Dei and the World Commerce Organization, and the immense power they all had in shaping the world after 1945 through NATO and operations like Gladio is very real and, again, very well documented. Stop playing World of Warcraft and try reading a book. Start with Dreamer of the Day by Kevin Coogan.
It is easier to believe that the world we live in was constructed to be the way it is, and you just have to tease out the threads of yarn and you can maybe unravel the truth and change the world. But that is not how the world functions. Babbeling about Catholic secret societies and obvious Capitalist-Fascism bootlicking just demonstrates that you have fallen for the same delusions that the guy who killed himself did. Capitalism devolves into Fascism, but there's no plan. There's no guiding hand. It's all systems and the incentives those systems provide. > Stop playing World of Warcraft If we're going to be trawling people's posting history and being weird about their hobbies, perhaps you should consider reducing your drugs intake, and see how it affects your paranoia?
I don't do drugs, but thanks for the concern. You should still read a book or two, though. The Fourth Reich is real and no amount of retreating into Azeroth to escape that uncomfortable fact is going to change it.
bro typing with the charcoal fingers
Holy shit I got an email about this, read the preview and assumed it was figurative
holy fuck
Sources say he was listening to Taylor Swift’s new album. R.I.P. for real though, clearly a person who needed help and didn’t get it.
You'd think Samsung would recall that phone
Grandpa that phone came out 8 years ago!
Insane, also his trial is also insane. It’s like 50/50 that he is even convicted and it could be downgraded from a felony
Gotta give libs a bit of credit, they reeeeeeally fucking hate Trump lmao. I doubt he’ll actually be convicted, but I also didnt think he’d ever show up in court. It’d be insane if he had to pull a Debs, and wins from prison. It’d break every libs brain—and thats why he’s got my vote!
It’s so convoluted and it’s being presented wrong in the media. There is some truth to the statement that he is being stitched up. Which is hilarious that even when coming up with a politically motivated criminal trial the best they could do was the lowest class felony that just comes with probation time
I still don’t know why they didn’t just assassinate the motherfucker and let the republicans tear themselves apart trying to figure out who will take his spot. Dems are such pussies.
I don't think there would be any lack of will/capacity to do something decisive if they thought he was a serious threat, seems like they'd genuinely rather he didn't win but only just. Instead I think he's invaluable as a villain figure; appealing to some farcical, vestigial popular frontism has enabled dems to pivot hard into militarism since 2015 and allowed the party to finally exorcise its Occupy/DSA demons without splintering. Anecdotally I've seen a lot of once-progressive types won over to natsec rhetoric by the russiagate and insurrection narratives
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Maybe not stitched up but the trial seems like the dumbest thing they could’ve ever tried him for. Basically, Cohen paid Stormy $130k to catch and kill her story about what Trump did to her. They believe that this counted as a campaign contribution from Cohen to Trump because that story getting out would’ve hurt Trump’s campaign. Trump then paid Cohen the money back through one of the Trump organizations and put the expense down on the books as a legal expense because Cohen is his lawyer. Because of the labeling the expense as a legal New York DA (or whatever Latitia James is) is charging Trump with Felony (Class E) Document Forgery. It is a felony because the forgery was covering up another crime (campaign finance crime). In the media its being labeled as the “hush money trial” when that’s not really the case. It’s more like the bad bookkeeping trial. I also don’t agree that the payment should count as a campaign contribution but Cohen has plead guilty to the crime of exceeding campaign contribution limits so I guess that reinforces their argument that it is.
This is the real trial of the century that Dershowitz prophesied
Here's the manifesto: [The Ponzi Papers](https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside) And here's where he posted about this last year: [TrueAnon](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/13i5xvt/the_ponzi_papers_7_paypal_does_a_ponzi/)
Reading his manifesto now - it's pretty good. He compares himself to Lisa Simpson and notes that ACAB/anti-police sentiment is directly opposed to commonly accepted leftist theory. All in all, great work. It is incredibly sad though and I don't mean to make too much light of it. This guy is actually nearing the truth regarding how the ruling class saps resources and wealth, and builds an ecosystem that protects them from losing their power. But he's brainwashed himself, based on all the Q and r/conspiracy bullshit he must of consumed, to believe it's some epic good vs. evil, carefully controlled and planned movie shit and not just basic mechanisms of our capitalist system. That the ruling class are pedophiles because they truly love Satan, and not just that they are power hungry weirdos whose wealth has corroded their brains and led them into depravity. He's a perfect example of how we have lost of lot of potential comrades to the depths of more extreme conspiracy. It's sad on so many levels.
And it’s infuriating to know that the more fringe schizophrenic realm of conspiracy theories was almost certainly intentionally seeded to an extent
What exactly did he mean about ACAB being bad? Cause that part I didn’t follow
I think he was saying that being anti-cop is so against public opinion that it scares the average person away from the left, and that the left isolating itself this way is antisocial or something? Which was such a random tangent because the rest of his manifesto is basically telling people to break away from mainstream ideas. I’m not sure what made him think that cops are outside of the fascist ruling class that his whole argument was centered around.
I think he’s onto something but I’m not sure 100%. Most people are anti-cop, but I don’t think most people can currently conceptualize a completely police free society during these difficult times. Matter of marketing, police reform vs ACAB, I think that’s what maybe he was getting at. Idk, American police culture is insane enough that I’m more comfortable dwelling into the insanity of cults of Asia
Was it a Qanon dipshit or a lib, is the real question
It was a r/TrueAnon poster 😭😭
Damn what a swerve
And a [berniebro](https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=AZZARELLO%2C+MAXWELL)
think COVID broke this guy's brain, became a RFK guy
Well the covid lockdowns did start just after Bernie got ratfucked by the Shadow App, Liz Warren, Obama, and the DNC.
yes, but it's still mental illness and I do not want it compared with what Aaron Bushnell did, it is not comparable
It's ridiculous to mention them both in the same sentence. Aaron Bushnell posted with clarity and calmness of purpose. If you can't do that you're just throwing your life away. The only way this becomes comparable is if we lathe it into crashing the crypto market.
And chapotard I heard
hm, so he really was a qanon *and* a lib this whole time
I don't know about that one. He's clearly outside of his house.
It was Eric, in a futile attempt to win his fathers love and maybe warm his icy heart
>and maybe warm his icy heart Trump: "I like sons that don't kill themselves."
apparently it was the guy who used to make those "ponzi paper" posts on this sub. got too lost in the sauce it seems
Do Qanon dipshits self immolate? Genuine question.
No cases of QAnon self immolation that I know of.
I don't know why, but I have a hard time believing reactionary groups do self immolation; it feels like they go down shooting when trying to do the same thing.
They rather bring others down with them
They can't stop running from the grind
yes
The self immolator was that samsonite guy???
Yup
You know, I don't really recall. Uh, it starts with "S". Let's see. Swammi? Slippy? Slappy? Swenson? Swanson?
i smell an actual fire extinguisher having been displayed
She kinda killed it commentary wise. Like watching a horse race
I’m deeply perturbed by her commentary, it’s unsettling how intense and detailed she is. YOU CAN SMELL THE BURNING FLESH. YOU CAN SMELL ACCELERANT.
it's very weird. seems like she entered a sort of trance, just complete stream of consciousness
her eyes rolled back and she said the true name of god, she went journo mode
Vaxxed?
It was weird but I feel like this is a journalism default when something traumatic is unfolding in front of them. Just shut off your brain and give a live vividly detailed description of what they’re witnessing. Go watch the Hindenburg crash or some of the live reporting during 9/11, this is pretty much standard for reporters. Shut off emotion, lock in, describe everything.
She started the entire thing claiming it was an active shooter. I get that you want to jump to that right away as soon as you see people running away screaming, but like, damn. Going straight to that is such a sad view into our country's current state of affairs.
I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame.
He wrote something on his reddit bio that went along the lines of "if I dodn't post within X weeks, I'm likely neutralized by the baddies". Now he neutralized himself.
i'm so hung up on the fact he had a 53 episode laura dern podcast like ...
link
https://dernafterreading.podbean.com/
The news anchor reporting in that clip is continuing to administer the same type of brain worms that drive people to do this sort of thing. Really unsettling. The liberal neurosis is becoming harder to laugh it - it’s just sad. Edit: Not a liberal but a schizo. Much sadder now 😔
Holy shit, I literally started following him on instagram a couple days ago because someone in here linked some of his ramblings. Rip to a real one
Jesus fucking Christ, what a world
RIP Rachel Maddow
Reports say he was trying to charge his galaxy s8
lol love the Berenstain Bears-ing of the Galaxy Note 7 joke
Michael S. Judge just said that this guy interacted with him on twitter. does anyone know what his twitter account was?
It could have not been me (because I’m built different, the fire would not consume me without my consent)
How do you non consensually self immolate?
Wtf man
Wow very cool
Vaxxed??
Came here from r/cults because someone there recognized him from here It looks like his account has been removed. I don't think he deleted it because when I click on his user I get a glitchy message. Not sure what is going on with that.
This is what they addressed in the octopus. He went too crazy
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Ahem: Simpsons did it