October 26, 2021 • 42 mins
Dive into the frustratingly relevant world of magical memes and ancient Egyptian gods. We explain how a frog comic went from a meme to a symbol of Trumpian chaos, to an internet religion with power to alter reality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm so close to clicking leaf meeting. Every time that
that bullshit comes up, it's like, yes, I consent, That's
why I'm fucking here. All right. So we we're starting
with that line from Daniel Well, come to spooky. It
could happen here today. We are discussing a truly spooky topic,
(00:31):
one that everyone is just really gonna hate. Uh, and
it's we're talking about let's say, esoteric Kecki is um
and me magic. So Shanni, my brothers and sisters come
along on a right shadow. We read a whole book
for this, Oh at least I did you read a
(00:51):
book just for this? I would say that like all
of the books I read from age nineteen to twenty
two prepared me have that had been preparing here for this. Yeah,
the books I read while I was doing psychedelics twice
a week. All Really, we're good background on this subject.
That is that is true? You want to kick us
off and I don't. So I think firstly we're talking
(01:14):
about we're gonna we're gonna emphasize awareness over amplification or
that kind of my my goal for this is that
we can all be more aware of kind of the
power that images on the Internet can have over influencing
the actual world, and talking about people who believe this
to a ridiculous degree and how they actually have been
able to institute change not only because of this belief,
(01:36):
just because of their dedication to this practice, because it's
it's because it's a thing that exists and it has
had real world ramifications, and it's good to understand that
that's a thing, and that also maybe we can influence
the way we like us use the Internet to also
maybe make good things happen as opposed to just being
doomers all the time. Um So that's kind of what
(01:58):
I wanted to start with many jubs to that garrison
complete keck with you God. Although to be fair, the
past few days I have just been spamming the it
could happen here a group chat with horrible nonsense surround keck.
It has been the most insufferable week of my life.
Horrible nonsense like like paragraphs, paragraph paragraphs, walls of text
(02:26):
so big. Any any actually safe working environment that cared
about its employees would have fired you long ago. Yeah. So,
I think the other thing that we should definitely mention
is that any type of like occultism mysticism or like
woo woo um has actually does have a decent history
within right wing political ideas and specifically like you know,
(02:49):
like more extreme like right wing um stuff in the
past few years. Like everyone's most people know that, like
the modern not like the like the early Nazis had
some mystical stuff going on. There's a lot more stuff
going behind the scenes. A lot of their favorite authors
also were like practicing occultists. Um, so this is this
is this is a thing that goes back awhile you
(03:10):
can even see this to some degree with like how
close Christianity is to a lot of the right wing
to a lot of like the modern right wing the
States as well, a lot of what we would consider
evangelical Christianity has a lot of stuff that's actually very
similar to occultism. They just use different terms because occultism
and and like magic is taboo. But it's actually the
same things. It's all like just it's inter it's interacting
with the same systems, just with different words. So like
(03:33):
this is this is the thing that is is not
it's it's not just on the internet. This is thing
that's been going on for thousands of years in particular,
the past one years, we've seen a big rise in
the amount of like occultism and mysticism specifically tied to politics. Yeah,
and there's this. I mean there have been a couple
of articles written just recently about the fact that a
lot of like the Woo Woo left, the kind of
(03:55):
um not really esoteric, but kind of mainstream a CULTI left,
like the popa culti left, has has increasingly turned towards
stuff like Q and On. And a big chunk of
it is like this this openness to like feel power
in coincidences, synchronicity would be there, and and just a
general open mindedness to um, maybe too many things. Sure, Yeah,
(04:20):
I mean it's you can see this on on on
a lot of a lot of sides because it's yeah,
it's it is definitely not just the right wing. I
mean it's like the biggest example of it would probably
be facets of Q and On the past few years
have done very similar types of things. Uh, there's a
lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes, like
how how Pepe operated was very similar to that, which
is what we're mainly talking about today. Um, but you
(04:43):
know there is also stuff like this on on the
left wing, whether it be like new a g type
stuff that seems to kind of mostly be bullshit, but
there's a you know other other type of like like
like like folk magic or like indigenous traditions that have
that have I would say slightly more uh significantly more
like there's reasonable actually stuff going on as opposed to
(05:05):
just like New Age selling books and that kind of stuff. Yeah.
One of the things that also separates actual religion from
religion that kind of has formed in this nomadic way
recently is that all of this stuff, particularly what we're
talking about today, formed simultaneously with political sentiment and as
(05:26):
and and was was crafted and in a lot of
cases like they state facts wrong specifically because they are
trying to craft a political narrative alongside this like weird
quasi spiritual things I speaking of spiritualism coming to the
same kind of coming to the same and this is
you know, we're all kind of anarchisty adjacent here. And
one of the things that really came up around the
(05:46):
same time as anarchism in the twentieth century was a
concept called chaos magic, which was really really really tied
to a lot of old really tied to a lot
of like anarchist thought and anarchists kind of thinkers. Some
of the most as chaos magicians are like explicitly anarchist,
someone like Grant Morrison. Um. Others are like Discordians which
have a lot of like anarchists crossover stuff, like like
(06:08):
Robert Enton Wilson, which kind of operates in that same ocean. Yeah,
he played a big role in kind of pulling me
away from proto alt right style beliefs. And I think
also a lot of his work was very intelligently crafted
because he wrote about conspiracies, He wrote about esoteric magic,
but always with a really intent eye on increasing people's
(06:30):
defenses to this kind of stuff what we're talking about today. Um,
he was very like cognizant of that, Like he wrote
about conspiracy as an enthusiast, but also as someone who
was trying to stop um kind of unchecked conspiratorial belief. Yeah,
he went awout about that in peculiar ways, but he
was an odd man. Yeah. And the reason why I've
been getting more into this type type of stuff the
(06:52):
past year, uh increase, And the reason why I really
like chaos magic as I like it as like a
post modern system of magic of looking at how basically,
if magic is just ideas and trying to figure out
how our brains can interact with the physical world, then
chaos magic introduces a lot of interesting stuff around like
late stage capitalism, because it is is it's explicitly tied
(07:13):
to to like postmodern art and postmodern thought, um in
the way you know, brands and marketing and specifically the
Internet all affects our minds. All this stuff. It gets
talked about in Charos magic a lot, and I really
like look using that framework for things um and speaking
of that kind of stuff specifically around the Internet, we're
gonna be talking about. The first thing I want to
mention is like the concept of searching for something and
(07:36):
then you're like you're and you're gonna find it, whether
that you know, Robert Enton Wilson and um. Like the
illuminious Trilogies has like and like, and Discordianism has like
twenty three and the Law of Fives. Right. I I
read that book when I was twenty and I have
been like seeing twenty three's repeatedly at like significant moments
in my life for the last fourteen years or so. Like, Yeah,
(07:57):
it's it's like once you get that kind of meme
and planted in your brain, it can stick with you
for forever. And and this this happens to everything. You know,
This happens to This happens to everyone. Like once you
learn about a new topic, the next day, you'll see
it somewhere right you'll be like, you'll you'll you'll like it.
And it's in all these places that you didn't see
it before. This happens all of the time with everything.
(08:18):
This is how this is like how synchronicity works, and
this is where religions come from throughout history. And it's
because like this all has its roots in why we're
very good hunters. We are patterned were pattern recognition, Like
our brains are pattern recognizing machines. That's what we're best at.
And it means that we're good at spotting berries and
(08:40):
tracking deer. And it also means that we can't stop
making religions religions. And if we have one too many synchronicities,
we can change the entire way we view about the
like the whole world, which can have varying degrees of effects.
Sometimes I can if it's just a little bit that
can maybe actually be very helpful. If you join a
(09:00):
weird cult that does messed up stuff, then it's like, yeah,
that's a problem. Sometimes it ends in burning man, and
sometimes it ends in burning men. Yeah, drop the bomb
on that one. So first thing I want to kind
of discuss before we get into the actual timeline of
how pep bank Because became a thing, I want to
just do a brief overview of sigils and memes um
(09:24):
and the idea of what like, let's let's take the
original concept of the meme, which is like, you know,
the it's genes are genetic, memes are cultural. There's are
cultural ideas that can spread like a virus um and
usually memes. In the since since since the Internet has
(09:44):
become way more popular, memes have become more tied to images,
like like, memes are a much more visual thing now,
whereas in the nineties they were more of just like
like an idea concept, but now they have like in
this extra visual backing. So a sigil is a is
an magical concept tend mostly to chaos. Magic, which is
basically an abstract concept um or or like as a
(10:07):
specific concept put into an abstract image that then gets
charged and then it's going to manifest itself in your life.
The reason why this works, it's because part part of
this desire gets implanted deep in your brain when you
charge it through like a trance or there's a there's
there's like there's different methods of charging sigils, but you
have this, you have this concept and this idea and
(10:28):
this desire and it gets put into you. So you're
gonna kind of subconsciously do things that that influence it
into becoming something that you can see. Just like you know,
if you're if you're looking, if you hear about twenty three,
you're gonna see it. Same thing for this. It's it's
it's it's the same kind of based concept. UM and
then Grant Morrison of Comic book Writers my favorite comic
(10:48):
book writer. He he was, he's really the only person
that's developed sigils more since their inception. UM with the
concept of a hyper sigil, which is taking this theme
idea of like wanting to influence change in the world
via this visual medium of a sigil, and instead of
just having it be like an abstract glyph that you charge,
hyper sigil is an entire work of art with this
(11:09):
express interest. UM so everything that you do in this
is trying to get some type of real world change,
and it's very very intentional, right, and a lot of
art already oprights like this. This is why a lot
of postmodern magic is very similar just to like making art,
because it's the same kind of basic idea, whether that
be something like you know, like the matrix or you know,
any any type of art kind of does this already
(11:31):
if it is good, um, and it in it confined
ways to influence reality. So memes operate on this same way.
And eventually people actually found it. Eventually people on four
ch and realized that they that they were doing sigils
and started using this word because it's really the same
thing when you're when you're altering all of these images
of this frog and posting it into all these different
(11:52):
kind of more abstract more like ugly obscure kind of
like weird like surreal types of types of memes, and
you're spamming them on politicians Twitter account. You're basically doing
a group a group schedule and a group hyper sedul
because you're all making these individual things and you're spamming
them into the world, and because there's so many of them. Yeah,
they're gonna have they're gonna have a real world effect. Yeah,
(12:13):
And they're gonna have a real world effect in part
because of the way human brains work, in part because
of the way algorithms work, which is one of the
things where like it's it's easy, especially if you're an
impressionable kid, to mistake the algorithm doing what it's designed
to do, which is find patterns groups of people sharing
something and expand that to a larger group of people.
Go oh, if this cluster of people like this, this
(12:34):
will probably be something that's very Algorithms are great at
making synchronicities because that's what you're designed to do. That's
what they're supposed that that's the whole point of why
they exist, and that's why this is that that that's
why are because as you stated a little earlier, and
one of these days on Bastards, we're gonna talk about
Helena Blovotsky and like the Theosophy movement and more detail,
like all of the occult stuff that fed into the
(12:56):
Third the early stage of the Third Reich. But the
cult back then is very different from the kind of
a cult feeding into fascism now, which is heavily based
around synchronicity, because it's also heavily based around social media
and the way memes bread. Yeah, that's why I thinks
what the chaos magic has really gotten kind of a
resurgence the past few years with social media and how
algorithms developed, because they do mirror a lot of the
(13:18):
concepts within chaos magic, because the Internet is kind of
a chaotic place, but it's also it's not just pure chaos.
It is chaos within a framework of order, which is
why I like the like the like the chaos star,
like the like the actual like chaos like sigil. Yes,
the errors of pointing in every direction, but you can
make a perfect circle around all of the arrows. It's
because it's not just pure chaos. It actually is contained
(13:39):
within this other framework. And by the way, Garrison, when
you started talking about u synchronic cities and sigils, I
checked my phone for a second and saw that it
was five seventeen on October five. Of course contains both
two and three, and as thus a sacred number October
twenty three. I shouldn't have to explain why that significant.
And remember Robert, it's yeah, but it's three on my phone.
(14:04):
Why is my phone's fucked up? Because because because the universe. Baby,
that's the synchronicity. I'm living in the future, motherfucker's And
what time is it that it's not right now? It
was my phone and the other time it is. I
don't need to know what time it is your default reality. Yeah,
(14:27):
you're you're you're on a different, different dimensional plane. Now
we have two into two different ones. I think. I
think this ship, I think this gives up gives us
a perfect opportunity for the audience to find their own
synchronicities in these ads, because who knows what's going to happen,
what's gonna play, So look for patterns and you'll find them.
(14:51):
Here's some I hope it's an ad for the Egyptian
goddess mod and we are back, We're gonna, We're gonna
now actually kind of get into some of the some
of the actual Peppe nonsense. Um. I think. And another
(15:15):
important part to mention is that like for a lot
of people doing this online, this this is like an
online pattern that happens all the time. Um, it happens
with it happens with stuff like this, it happens with
with with cat boys. It happens with a whole bunch
of stuff. Is that like stuff starts as a joke
and then you do it a lot and the repetition
basically makes you do it genuinely. Yeah, like me talking
(15:38):
about getting all of my followers to a compound in
Idaho where we die fighting the f d A exactly,
Literally that turns into an actual death cult. So it's
it's it starts as a joke and then under repetition
it becomes genuine. This happens to basically almost everything on
the internet. Yeah, this, this, this, this, this leads to
Garrison and I doing the inevitable Robert Evans Behind the
(15:59):
Bastards episode episode Yeah, the three part or if I
ever heard one? You you hope? So you wish what
what are what are catboys? This that is different? That's
a different you're here? That is a different podcast. Think, Yeah, Hi, sorry,
I know I only enter Jake briefly. Is that is that?
Are they are they like pre furries? Is that some different? No?
(16:22):
Cowboys Fury It's kind of it's it's it's it's rehumanizing
the it's rehumanizing the Furies. So like the same way,
the same way the same way Sonic the Hedgehog is
a re mickey mousification of vegeta. Uh, catboys are a
humanification of furries. This is a whole process on the
(16:44):
I can explain this in great detail in the later episode,
but I think we have enough. We have enough to
talk about already. Thank you so much, my dog. Okay.
Sure would someone be willing to sacrifice their own mentality
to describe the rise of Pepe and just originally in
the early twenty teens, Yeah, so it started as this
(17:07):
guy's comic that there was nothing particularly worried about. Yeah,
it was just it was a dude's comic. He was like, uh,
feels good man was kind of a good man. He
was a chill dude. He was a chill dude. Yeah,
not a fascist comic. Peppe is actually pretty fun. Yeah,
comic Pepe, He's like he's like a millennial slacker who
doesn't really know what to do with his life after
(17:27):
like after nine eleven, after the financial crash. He's just
trying to kind of get by the comics. Fine. Yeah,
the comics fine, but the art just that kind of
the specifics of how he drew Pepe made him very
well suited for a meme because he's expressive and he
so he shows up and starts getting spread in four chan,
and you know, that kind of idea goes viral, and
(17:48):
it particularly gets attached to a lot of like the
political ship on Pole and the people who are like
churning into gamer Gate and the right sad Pepe gets
very popular, Smug Pepe gets very popular. Yeah. Yeah, and
then as so Kick is chee chext of it, like
(18:09):
later on, I think we'll go over more for like
how Pepe is like the cartoon character got you know,
as soon as it becomes a meme, it spreads out
into all corners. And the people who meaned this hardest
we were on Fortune. So this is how pep Peppe
became kind of tied to this. And I think the
last bullet in Pepe really solidifying him as as an
(18:29):
alt right memes specifically was the Richard Spencer punch. I
think I think that's the thing that actually was like done.
It's like, no, Pepe is just this now, he can't
be anything else because but when when when Richard Spencer
was being punched, he was describing what Pepe was. That
was what's happening in that specific viral moment. If you
want to talk about like magical terms, this is Pepe
getting like charged, Like this is the idea of like
(18:51):
this idea getting getting charged because it is now going
to be preflated to the masses in this in this
moment of like pure motion. So that's when Pepe really
gets tight. And I think Hillary Clinton made it very,
very worse the way she talked about this kind of
stuff on her speeches basically gave gave the alt right
(19:13):
a baseball bat to hit her with. The the problem
that Clinton and everyone else because like a big part
of I would argue that like the largest part of
why Pepe became a thing that was destined to last
was that pundits and politicians, including Hillary and media people
kept talking about it as a fascist symbol and kept
discussing like what it was, and that anyone who grew
(19:33):
up on the Internet, who grew up around these communities,
knows that you ignore them as much as possible, to
the extent that that's possible. You don't feed the troll
you don't give them power, Yeah you don't, And and
talking about it again, this is like cast matic like
referencing it, bringing it up. Bringing it into the real
world gives it power. That's the thing that feeds it. Yeah,
so that that's how it got so much more power.
(19:55):
The more Clinton talked about it, the more news media
wrote about it, everyone got so excited on unfortune. That's like,
that's that's that's like, that is them winning, then them
seeing this thing, and and then and then this goes
back pre even being far. I can remember because I
was in these spaces when they first started doing ship
like raids on the Church of Scientology. Every time there
(20:17):
would be actual, like news coverage of what people on
the Internet did, it got people so fucking excited because
like the Internet had been this thing that didn't matter
for the longest I think in the in in the
book I read about this kind of stuff. They they
did use the example of like Anonymous and the raids
on Centology being like a precursor to this type of
like me magic of this thing like like internet forums
(20:39):
influencing the real world through repetition and getting getting to
grow power, but getting people who don't use Internet to
talk about these same things. It was like a precursor
to then what we what we saw the al right,
which is which is a pretty pretty common opinion. Um.
And then and then enter enter the Egyptian gods. Robert
st wanna do you wanna? Don't wanna? I don't want
(21:02):
to discuss that. We're gonna That's what we're gonna say.
Next is, how's this intersex with Egyptian gods? The ancient
Pharaoh's played a card game of ancient and terrible power. Man,
nobody wants you as a kid. This is no man, Robert,
(21:25):
do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do
you want to discuss keck? Yeah? I mean so way
back in the day, um, and I think I think
this even pre dates World War Craft. I remember at
first happening on like StarCraft games online, there would be
like gamers from Korea, and like when you were doing
like a Zurg rush or something, which is when you
have a bunch of guys and they all attack the
enemy base or whatever, they would type out their term
(21:47):
for l O L, which was like keck k e
K yeah okay u k so would usually just look
like a stream of ku k e k k k
over and over and over again. This really took off
in World War Aircraft, where like there were Korean gold
farmers were a big thing, and like keck was something
that like everyone kind of knew what it meant because
it was often the only thing you can understand. You
could you could understand as an American that like these
(22:10):
people would be typing um and it as a result
of kind of all of that, it took off an
internet culture as just an l O L and specifically
like one of the things that's going on here as
the mid auts dawn and the Internet becomes serious business,
and like social media really and everybody's even before social
media is dominant, but just when everybody's taking the Internet seriously,
(22:30):
it's clear there's a lot of money in it. It's
it's mainstream. You have this this kind of second generation
of Internet people who got on in the late nineties
early two thousand's when they were kids, who get frustrated
at the fact that all of these different terms and
phrases and like bits of Internet culture that they had
identified with our going mainstream and are using them. Yeah. Yeah,
(22:52):
And keck is everyone knows what l O L is.
People don't know what keck is. So in places like
four Chune, that becomes a really popular thing, and keck
kind of is like so keck as a as a
term for laughters, like floating around at the same time
as like Pepe memes, and so whenever you whenever you
like meme something into the mainstream, whenever like some four
chan opera whatever you wanna call it, like succeeds in
(23:15):
getting main stressed it. It's as Hiller Clinton mentions Peppe
on stage, everyone in fourtune goes kick because they're laughing.
They go can they say, like top keck and whatnot?
And and and eventually somebody realizes that there's an Egyptian goddess.
One of the translations of that god and goddess his
name is k e k Um. Now there's a couple
of other translations. There's there's there's there's a whole bunch
(23:36):
of issues with this if you want to look at it.
That's with the rational kind of brain is because like this,
there was this old family of god's are very very
old old Egyptian gods. They all had male and female versions.
The male versions all had frog heads um and but
around frogs can change their gender. Ye, So like so
like all of the all this whole era of Egyptian
(23:58):
gods all had frog heads. So they is one of
them that was named Keck, who was a god of chaos.
And this also played into how Fortune was using Trump
because like they liked Trump mostly as like as like
a chaotic reforce that got people angry, because that's what
that's what Fortune wanted to do as well. They wanted
to be a chaotic force again that gets people angry.
That's why they really latched onto Trump. Um. And then
(24:19):
when they found out that, oh there's this god named
Keck who is like the lord of like like like
um like pro that's what's the word um, primordial darkness,
primordial darkness. Yeah, and this idea not even chaos yeah yeah,
kind of like um um urinus and like Greco Roman faith, right,
(24:39):
like a god kind of before the gods that are
are more well known. But like this was a synchronicity.
So they took it as like, you know, the same
way religions take take synchronicity and create and create like divinity.
They took this as like this take they took this
as like divinity. Again. This this starts as a joke,
but you do it enough and you start to take
(24:59):
it serious, sleigh, and there's a you get a mix
of um, you get a mix of of real like
Egyptology was that Yeah, there was a god named Kick,
like among a bunch of other gods. One of the
ways he was depicted was with a frog head. But
also like bad Egyptology. Like I found an article on
the word plus press blog Peppe the Frog Faith, which oh,
(25:20):
I'm sure this, I'm sure this is like a bastion
of archaeology, and and the title is amateur egyptologist weighs
in on the frog statue hieroglyphs. And one of the
things he points out are talking about the frog statues
that isn't check but they thought it was Kick yeah, yeah, yeah,
and a number of things. So like one of the
things this guy claims is that the hieroglyphics for keeck
are a frogman um and then a couple of what
(25:40):
he calls baskets. First up their cups, not baskets. Second,
the actual um uh hieroglyphics for for k e K
don't include the little frogman. They're like the two of
the little cups in this weird T shaped thing. Like yeah,
it's all, it's all, like it's bad again, amateur egyptologist,
Like he's just a kid who is googling stuff and
(26:01):
like got some either lie or got some hieroglyphics wrong.
But but Keck as like an idea of like now
we have a backing of an ancient god again first
as a joke, but then some people start to take
it more seriously. Really really caught on among people because
because it's funny, Like it's it's just funny, and it's
(26:22):
gonna catch on on for chat because it's hilarious, right,
so they're gonna start using this and repeating this and
creating a whole new memes, creating Like there's like there's
like an eight eight part book series that's like fake
books written by like someone who's like just me big
but pretending to take it seriously. But like the authenticity
doesn't actually matter because because it exists, it doesn't actually
(26:43):
matter how authentic it is. Yeah, Like and there's there's
weird coincidences that continue to occur, Like one of the
biggest being there's this like phrase shadow at which creeps
up in all of this and becomes like this exhortation
that they use like a way of like exclaiming and such.
And then somebody figures out that shad is also a
song like an aallow disco song I think from the seventies,
(27:04):
and the album that shadows on has like a frog
man face on the cover. Um, And so they're like,
it's a sign of the because you're gonna find frogs
wherever you look now, because that has becomes the uncommon frogs.
You're gonna find them everywhere now and there are every
ancient religion everywhere in the world. I'm gonna get guarantee
(27:26):
there's some fucking frogs in it, because like they're everywhere,
and they're they're old creatures. People pay to frogs. They've
been around for a long time. The frogs have been
around a wild So the frog the other the other
thing that happened. So people not only basically created their
whole mythology around this, creating different types of religion. There
was like Keckism as a religion, the cult of keck
(27:48):
um esoter Keechism, all of their own distinct differences. Because
these people spend all their time on the internet. Um,
they developed all these things. And they also found this
old frog statue that they said keck it actually it
isn't it's actually it's actually a gold called heck it um.
But on the basis does it does it doesn't matter.
(28:10):
But on the base of the statue it had. It
had glyphs which appear to us modern humans as they
look like someone sitting on a computer. Like they look
like someone sitting in front of a monitor on a keyboard. Um.
And on the other side of the keyboard is a
DNA is like what looks like a DNA spiral. So
this is like like jeans, right, jeans, jeans are DNA.
(28:33):
Memes are cultural DNA. This is a glyph of the
god Teck on a statue with someone on a computer
with a DNA spiral. Of course they're gonna take this
is like some like message from the from the gods.
You're like, yes, I'm supposed to be. I am supposed
to be by my meming, I'm doing Kex's work to
put Trump into office. Yeah, it's um God, that's frustrating Insurance,
(28:58):
it sure is. But like all of those in the group,
this is like the statue was just a depiction of
what the check people and the and the Pepper standards
were doing posting on the internet to manifest real world change.
And that's that's all it is. If you want to
see other examples of this, like if you look at
the ancient alien stuff, there's this like famous my Mayana
hieroglyph of the astronomer that's like if you if you
(29:19):
know what a telescope is, because you're looking at it
a thousand years after it was carved, it kind of
looks like it might be a telescope, and it's part
of what like people say like, oh, this is proof
that like that this is an alien Like he's looking
at a fucking telescope. No, it was, there's other explanations
for it. It was something like that somebody carved. Yeah,
I think there's another thing that you start and I
(29:40):
see this like not even like I see this just
this is just on the end of all time, like
I see left, just do this or like so like okay,
so you learn something and then oh it's not true,
but then people will keep spreading the thing because they'll
say people, yeah, yeah, it has more power with it,
so you're still gonna believe it. Yeah, Like when we
(30:01):
talk about the fact that Will Wheaton murdered three people
in if you repeat this is the message like yeah,
yeah with a knife, what's horrible yeah. Now, I mean
he was in Thailand at the time, so he was
able to get out and we don't extra diet, so
he's he's got out scott free. But yeah, but I
mean like this is like the same this is the
same thing that Trump does, which we'll talk about it,
(30:22):
but we'll talk about a bit. It's like if you
would repeat the thing enough, it becomes true for large
swats of the population that that's that's that's all truth
actually needs to be for people. Um, I think I
think we're gonna go and break uh and come back
and close us, close us up, and finally finished this
horrible discussion. Um. Anyone know who won't meme fascism? Well, actually, KFC,
(30:48):
the have you seen have you seen the KFC fascist
posting on Twitter? Yeah, there's like a Spanish KFC account
that has been doing that that it's up to some ship.
I hate I hate that. That's a sentence that that
that you got to say. I just hate it. For products,
(31:23):
And we are back. I have finished an entire dark
meat bucket and I am so full. Um yep. And
now now I'm sad. I'm sad because I'm still thinking
of the fascist KFC Twitter account. Um so we we
The other thing I want to do, want to mention
(31:44):
is kind of Trump's own power of belief kind of
idea and how Trump was basically using esoteric terms, was
able to basically create an alternate reality for millions of
people to live in. Um And there's really no getting
through to them now because they are literally just in it,
just in a different dimension. And there's just there's there's
no way to pierce that other dimension. They're basically living
(32:05):
in just a totally alternate reality. There's there's no use
saying that it is the one that we live in. Um.
So Trump is obsessed with a few of these ideas.
He's less than like the like, He's less interested in
like the woo and more interested in like the power
of positive thinking, power of your own belief. He grew
up in a movement and a specifically stuff. Yeah, he
(32:27):
grew up following a specific movement and church called that
falls under the umbrella called New Thought um, which is
where Trump's you know, Trump's like like how strong Trump's
ego is comes from this idea of that you need
to reinforce yourself and reinforce your own victories because if
you do that, you're gonna you're you're gonna find them.
(32:50):
Right If if if you're looking for twenty three, you're gonna
find it. If you're looking for your own victories, you're
going to force them to happen, um, even if they
don't happen into other people. Right. But like so that
we see this happening successfully with the election, we see
both like all of the meming, everything that happened in
twenty in the Trustean election worked for Trump UM. And
(33:11):
you know, you know, of course, of course he didn't
win the popular vote, but that doesn't actually matter, but
it worked into in getting him to office now it
you know, it worked less well for the election um,
but still his reassertions that he won still gave us
a lot of real world results, like the January six
(33:32):
Capital insurrection. So like it's this, right, so this type
of idea that if you re if you if you
reinforce this thing, if you reinforce this belief, if you can,
if you have if you have this idea and you
keep putting it out into the world, it's gonna manifest
some type of real, real world result. And that that
was January six, That's what that was. And and that's
(33:55):
the kind of the world we live in now. It's
like the weaponized unreality world where people become is of
how media works. Because are the Internet works, they're able
to create this like chaotic like the sphere of of
energy and ideas that can like spread so much faster
than anything used to be that could everyone can segment
their own reality into two degrees that we've never really
(34:17):
seen before because of how fast information can travel. Now, um,
it is, it is it is a new it's it
is a relatively new thing. The way that the way
that this this this can operate, so like memes, memes
themselves like Pepe and all this kind of stuff undoubtedly
had had an impact on not only just the twenties
sixteen election, but just the entire political climate surrounding the
(34:38):
whole Trump presidency. Uh. Now, to the degree to which
we can credit me magic or the god kick, that
part is meaningless because because the effect is the same
that like the synchronicities were still experienced and and truth
is just is just experiential. So it's the beliefs that
we kind of hold will shape how we experience things anyway,
(35:00):
and that will experience what the actual truth is there's there.
There is a great Robert Nton Wilson quote that is
like reality is what you can get away with, yep.
And that's that's like that that like summarizes how Trump
was able to be so successful is because he was
able to shape reality. Right. I think me and me
and Chris were talking about this the other day about how, Chris,
(35:23):
do you want to say the thing about like the
Democratic Party and Republican Party and how okay, okay, So
there's there's there's there's a thing and Garrison I think
it was too young for this, but there's a very
famous thing that that one of the Bushman Pedietrician people
said about how Democrats lived in the reality based community.
And this this is like a whole thing in the
in like the two thousands. This is just in the
(35:44):
Bush administration and everyone loses their minds and this is
like a whole meme on the Democrats that's like, oh,
we're the reality based community and they're not. But but
then this is the interesting part. If you look at
the second part of that quote, right, we's actually saying
is that so the Democrats are the reality based community, right,
they they analyze reality. The Republican party is the party
(36:04):
that creates reality because other people in control the empire.
And this is this is what neo conservative this was right.
And you know, the argument here basically is that the
Democrats are you know, they're always going to be a
step behind because they're merely analyzing reality, whereas Republicans using
the powers or of the state to you know, change
and define it. And this this worked for them, you
know what. I would argue that this is how they
(36:24):
came into power, This is how there's this is what
they're still doing. Yeah. Yeah, why every president since Ronald
Reagan has just been Ronald Reagan with a mask. Yeah.
But but I think I think there's something very important here,
specifically about how Bush took office, right because Bush Bush
steals the election, right, Bush does like the thing that
Trump was trying to do is what George Bush did
(36:44):
in two and two thousands, but with a riot, just
with a very kind of riot. Yeah. But but this
is the thing, the thing, this is the thing that
Bush and the neo cons understood that the Trump is
kind of understand but never quite solidified because they're not
like they're not sort of insider political actors, Which is
that Okay, so all of the stuff about saying something
and it becoming real. Right, there's there there's sort of
(37:07):
a limit to this if if you don't have a gun. Now,
if you have a gun, then the limits of that
are are you know, it's it's you can be basically
whatever you want because you can just you can force
everyone else to also accept this as reality that you know,
this is what the state is. Right and there there's
there's a whole there's a whole thing. This is a
couple of performance theory. It's like, yeah, so like you
you saying the thing makes it so right? Well, this
(37:29):
is this is what a state is. And this is
how Bush won the election because he, unlike Trump, who's
people tried to like take power directly about like Stormy
in the Capitol. Bush was smart and Bush was like, oh, okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna de clare that I won the election.
And but but but instead of like openly doing it right,
I'm going to get the Supreme Court to declare that
I'm president. And you know, and this this this requires
(37:50):
the Brooks brothers, riots, stop the counts and all the stuff.
We were like, you know, it's doesn't yeah, yeah, it's great.
But it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter that, you know,
he he didn't win Florida, Like if if if if
if if, if the if the votes had actually been counted,
he would not have won Florida. But because he was
able to get the courts to say that he was president,
he was president. And and that's that is the concept
(38:12):
of magic words yep, yep, and this is this is this,
this is this is all the state is right, it's
this this this the state is magic with a gun
behind it. Yeah, it is, yeah, the state of magic.
Because it's like, yeah, you're right. It's like magic can
have a hard cap. There's going to be a certain
people that you know, with with with Trump's reality altering
kind of power, there's a certain that there is a
hard cap on how much that can influence the general population.
(38:34):
But if you have a gun behind that, that gives
us so much more enforceable power. And to go back
to Egyptian mythology, one of the attitudes they had about
the pharaoh is that reality was whatever the pharaoh declared.
Other a lot of societies of this idea towards their monarchs,
and the duty of his people is to make reality
conform to the Pharaoh's will, and like, that's that's what
(38:57):
the GOP does. Like that fascist. So I think I
think the quote surrounding like, yeah, the Democrats are the
reality based party because they because they you know, observe
reality and and like and yeah and and like and
like and like. Libs and Democrats are like yes, they
like they take this on prior, like, yes, we are rational,
we observe reality. Meanwhile the Republicans like, no, you just
(39:19):
observe it, but we can just we can create it.
I think that is a great example of how those
two parties operate politically and how like, yes they're both
they're both right leading parties. But here's the difference for
how they actually operate is that one of them is
way more passive in their observing of reality and one
is is okay with getting their hands dirty and actually
(39:39):
forcing this type of reality altering changes. I will say,
I think, like one thing to close this out is
that you know we can we when we can tie
this all the way back to the second part of
the Duel Power episode, which is that the Nikon Kon
project doesn't work, and the reason it doesn't work is
that you know, they they like they basically they lose
militarily and that just that implodes the entire project. And
(40:01):
so you know, and if if if if you look
back at like all of this stuff about how we
can shape reality, we can shape reality, we can shape reality.
That stopped being true the moment that you know, like
they lose control of Bosra or like you know, all
like they when the other people, Uhder is to be
unkillable by all the weapons of Empire. Yeah, yeah, it's
(40:22):
like you know, and and Sawder and Solder does this
by like you know, Sauder sets up a bunch of
baby clinics, right, He's like, here's a bunch of clinics.
Heared we we we will will give help the pregnant mothers,
like you guys really gonna shoot us. And you know,
he builds a militia around this, and he's and he's
able to like he's one of the smartest people on
the planet. He's yeah, and he's not. It's not a
good guy, but like completely shatter the neo cons like
(40:44):
they they're dead, Like they don't like that. That project,
which was like the culmination of this this incredible like
into that described in electro projects of Trouble military project
and they got their absolute ask kick by watch of
people doing dual power. Yep, I think, and I I really,
I do want to talk more about kind of chaos
magic and there's a lot on the grounding, and I think,
(41:07):
but yeah, I think this is a great intrin how
how these concepts overlapped with politics and reality. Disagree on
the end of this with one aspect, Garrison, because you
said their reality can't be pierced, But the ancient texts
speak of a spear that once pierced the side of
Christ itself, and while Hitler held it, his armies were ascended,
but it was stolen. And if we can find this, Sparrison,
(41:32):
we can pierce their reality. Hey, I have a Fedora,
I have a whip. We could we all have Fedora, Garrison,
do it. Let's go. We are We are off to
find the spear that signs us off the sphere of destiny.
You can follow our adventures on Happened Here pod and
Coles Media on Twitter. Um and yeah, I'm sure we
(41:54):
will give you updates for our Spirit ventures of the Pod. Sophie.
We need half a million dollars to find the Spirit
of destinating. Okay, okay, great, see you on the other side.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
(42:15):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
I'm so close to clicking leaf meeting. Every time that
that bullshit comes up, it's like, yes, I consent, That's
why I'm fucking here. All right. So we we're starting
with that line from Daniel Well, come to spooky. It
could happen here today. We are discussing a truly spooky topic,
(00:31):
one that everyone is just really gonna hate. Uh, and
it's we're talking about let's say, esoteric Kecki is um
and me magic. So Shanni, my brothers and sisters come
along on a right shadow. We read a whole book
for this, Oh at least I did you read a
(00:51):
book just for this? I would say that like all
of the books I read from age nineteen to twenty
two prepared me have that had been preparing here for this. Yeah,
the books I read while I was doing psychedelics twice
a week. All Really, we're good background on this subject.
That is that is true? You want to kick us
off and I don't. So I think firstly we're talking
(01:14):
about we're gonna we're gonna emphasize awareness over amplification or
that kind of my my goal for this is that
we can all be more aware of kind of the
power that images on the Internet can have over influencing
the actual world, and talking about people who believe this
to a ridiculous degree and how they actually have been
able to institute change not only because of this belief,
(01:36):
just because of their dedication to this practice, because it's
it's because it's a thing that exists and it has
had real world ramifications, and it's good to understand that
that's a thing, and that also maybe we can influence
the way we like us use the Internet to also
maybe make good things happen as opposed to just being
doomers all the time. Um So that's kind of what
(01:58):
I wanted to start with many jubs to that garrison
complete keck with you God. Although to be fair, the
past few days I have just been spamming the it
could happen here a group chat with horrible nonsense surround keck.
It has been the most insufferable week of my life.
Horrible nonsense like like paragraphs, paragraph paragraphs, walls of text
(02:26):
so big. Any any actually safe working environment that cared
about its employees would have fired you long ago. Yeah. So,
I think the other thing that we should definitely mention
is that any type of like occultism mysticism or like
woo woo um has actually does have a decent history
within right wing political ideas and specifically like you know,
(02:49):
like more extreme like right wing um stuff in the
past few years. Like everyone's most people know that, like
the modern not like the like the early Nazis had
some mystical stuff going on. There's a lot more stuff
going behind the scenes. A lot of their favorite authors
also were like practicing occultists. Um, so this is this
is this is a thing that goes back awhile you
(03:10):
can even see this to some degree with like how
close Christianity is to a lot of the right wing
to a lot of like the modern right wing the
States as well, a lot of what we would consider
evangelical Christianity has a lot of stuff that's actually very
similar to occultism. They just use different terms because occultism
and and like magic is taboo. But it's actually the
same things. It's all like just it's inter it's interacting
with the same systems, just with different words. So like
(03:33):
this is this is the thing that is is not
it's it's not just on the internet. This is thing
that's been going on for thousands of years in particular,
the past one years, we've seen a big rise in
the amount of like occultism and mysticism specifically tied to politics. Yeah,
and there's this. I mean there have been a couple
of articles written just recently about the fact that a
lot of like the Woo Woo left, the kind of
(03:55):
um not really esoteric, but kind of mainstream a CULTI left,
like the popa culti left, has has increasingly turned towards
stuff like Q and On. And a big chunk of
it is like this this openness to like feel power
in coincidences, synchronicity would be there, and and just a
general open mindedness to um, maybe too many things. Sure, Yeah,
(04:20):
I mean it's you can see this on on on
a lot of a lot of sides because it's yeah,
it's it is definitely not just the right wing. I
mean it's like the biggest example of it would probably
be facets of Q and On the past few years
have done very similar types of things. Uh, there's a
lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes, like
how how Pepe operated was very similar to that, which
is what we're mainly talking about today. Um, but you
(04:43):
know there is also stuff like this on on the
left wing, whether it be like new a g type
stuff that seems to kind of mostly be bullshit, but
there's a you know other other type of like like
like like folk magic or like indigenous traditions that have
that have I would say slightly more uh significantly more
like there's reasonable actually stuff going on as opposed to
(05:05):
just like New Age selling books and that kind of stuff. Yeah.
One of the things that also separates actual religion from
religion that kind of has formed in this nomadic way
recently is that all of this stuff, particularly what we're
talking about today, formed simultaneously with political sentiment and as
(05:26):
and and was was crafted and in a lot of
cases like they state facts wrong specifically because they are
trying to craft a political narrative alongside this like weird
quasi spiritual things I speaking of spiritualism coming to the
same kind of coming to the same and this is
you know, we're all kind of anarchisty adjacent here. And
one of the things that really came up around the
(05:46):
same time as anarchism in the twentieth century was a
concept called chaos magic, which was really really really tied
to a lot of old really tied to a lot
of like anarchist thought and anarchists kind of thinkers. Some
of the most as chaos magicians are like explicitly anarchist,
someone like Grant Morrison. Um. Others are like Discordians which
have a lot of like anarchists crossover stuff, like like
(06:08):
Robert Enton Wilson, which kind of operates in that same ocean. Yeah,
he played a big role in kind of pulling me
away from proto alt right style beliefs. And I think
also a lot of his work was very intelligently crafted
because he wrote about conspiracies, He wrote about esoteric magic,
but always with a really intent eye on increasing people's
(06:30):
defenses to this kind of stuff what we're talking about today. Um,
he was very like cognizant of that, Like he wrote
about conspiracy as an enthusiast, but also as someone who
was trying to stop um kind of unchecked conspiratorial belief. Yeah,
he went awout about that in peculiar ways, but he
was an odd man. Yeah. And the reason why I've
been getting more into this type type of stuff the
(06:52):
past year, uh increase, And the reason why I really
like chaos magic as I like it as like a
post modern system of magic of looking at how basically,
if magic is just ideas and trying to figure out
how our brains can interact with the physical world, then
chaos magic introduces a lot of interesting stuff around like
late stage capitalism, because it is is it's explicitly tied
(07:13):
to to like postmodern art and postmodern thought, um in
the way you know, brands and marketing and specifically the
Internet all affects our minds. All this stuff. It gets
talked about in Charos magic a lot, and I really
like look using that framework for things um and speaking
of that kind of stuff specifically around the Internet, we're
gonna be talking about. The first thing I want to
mention is like the concept of searching for something and
(07:36):
then you're like you're and you're gonna find it, whether
that you know, Robert Enton Wilson and um. Like the
illuminious Trilogies has like and like, and Discordianism has like
twenty three and the Law of Fives. Right. I I
read that book when I was twenty and I have
been like seeing twenty three's repeatedly at like significant moments
in my life for the last fourteen years or so. Like, Yeah,
(07:57):
it's it's like once you get that kind of meme
and planted in your brain, it can stick with you
for forever. And and this this happens to everything. You know,
This happens to This happens to everyone. Like once you
learn about a new topic, the next day, you'll see
it somewhere right you'll be like, you'll you'll you'll like it.
And it's in all these places that you didn't see
it before. This happens all of the time with everything.
(08:18):
This is how this is like how synchronicity works, and
this is where religions come from throughout history. And it's
because like this all has its roots in why we're
very good hunters. We are patterned were pattern recognition, Like
our brains are pattern recognizing machines. That's what we're best at.
And it means that we're good at spotting berries and
(08:40):
tracking deer. And it also means that we can't stop
making religions religions. And if we have one too many synchronicities,
we can change the entire way we view about the
like the whole world, which can have varying degrees of effects.
Sometimes I can if it's just a little bit that
can maybe actually be very helpful. If you join a
(09:00):
weird cult that does messed up stuff, then it's like, yeah,
that's a problem. Sometimes it ends in burning man, and
sometimes it ends in burning men. Yeah, drop the bomb
on that one. So first thing I want to kind
of discuss before we get into the actual timeline of
how pep bank Because became a thing, I want to
just do a brief overview of sigils and memes um
(09:24):
and the idea of what like, let's let's take the
original concept of the meme, which is like, you know,
the it's genes are genetic, memes are cultural. There's are
cultural ideas that can spread like a virus um and
usually memes. In the since since since the Internet has
(09:44):
become way more popular, memes have become more tied to images,
like like, memes are a much more visual thing now,
whereas in the nineties they were more of just like
like an idea concept, but now they have like in
this extra visual backing. So a sigil is a is
an magical concept tend mostly to chaos. Magic, which is
basically an abstract concept um or or like as a
(10:07):
specific concept put into an abstract image that then gets
charged and then it's going to manifest itself in your life.
The reason why this works, it's because part part of
this desire gets implanted deep in your brain when you
charge it through like a trance or there's a there's
there's like there's different methods of charging sigils, but you
have this, you have this concept and this idea and
(10:28):
this desire and it gets put into you. So you're
gonna kind of subconsciously do things that that influence it
into becoming something that you can see. Just like you know,
if you're if you're looking, if you hear about twenty three,
you're gonna see it. Same thing for this. It's it's
it's it's the same kind of based concept. UM and
then Grant Morrison of Comic book Writers my favorite comic
(10:48):
book writer. He he was, he's really the only person
that's developed sigils more since their inception. UM with the
concept of a hyper sigil, which is taking this theme
idea of like wanting to influence change in the world
via this visual medium of a sigil, and instead of
just having it be like an abstract glyph that you charge,
hyper sigil is an entire work of art with this
(11:09):
express interest. UM so everything that you do in this
is trying to get some type of real world change,
and it's very very intentional, right, and a lot of
art already oprights like this. This is why a lot
of postmodern magic is very similar just to like making art,
because it's the same kind of basic idea, whether that
be something like you know, like the matrix or you know,
any any type of art kind of does this already
(11:31):
if it is good, um, and it in it confined
ways to influence reality. So memes operate on this same way.
And eventually people actually found it. Eventually people on four
ch and realized that they that they were doing sigils
and started using this word because it's really the same
thing when you're when you're altering all of these images
of this frog and posting it into all these different
(11:52):
kind of more abstract more like ugly obscure kind of
like weird like surreal types of types of memes, and
you're spamming them on politicians Twitter account. You're basically doing
a group a group schedule and a group hyper sedul
because you're all making these individual things and you're spamming
them into the world, and because there's so many of them. Yeah,
they're gonna have they're gonna have a real world effect. Yeah,
(12:13):
And they're gonna have a real world effect in part
because of the way human brains work, in part because
of the way algorithms work, which is one of the
things where like it's it's easy, especially if you're an
impressionable kid, to mistake the algorithm doing what it's designed
to do, which is find patterns groups of people sharing
something and expand that to a larger group of people.
Go oh, if this cluster of people like this, this
(12:34):
will probably be something that's very Algorithms are great at
making synchronicities because that's what you're designed to do. That's
what they're supposed that that's the whole point of why
they exist, and that's why this is that that that's
why are because as you stated a little earlier, and
one of these days on Bastards, we're gonna talk about
Helena Blovotsky and like the Theosophy movement and more detail,
like all of the occult stuff that fed into the
(12:56):
Third the early stage of the Third Reich. But the
cult back then is very different from the kind of
a cult feeding into fascism now, which is heavily based
around synchronicity, because it's also heavily based around social media
and the way memes bread. Yeah, that's why I thinks
what the chaos magic has really gotten kind of a
resurgence the past few years with social media and how
algorithms developed, because they do mirror a lot of the
(13:18):
concepts within chaos magic, because the Internet is kind of
a chaotic place, but it's also it's not just pure chaos.
It is chaos within a framework of order, which is
why I like the like the like the chaos star,
like the like the actual like chaos like sigil. Yes,
the errors of pointing in every direction, but you can
make a perfect circle around all of the arrows. It's
because it's not just pure chaos. It actually is contained
(13:39):
within this other framework. And by the way, Garrison, when
you started talking about u synchronic cities and sigils, I
checked my phone for a second and saw that it
was five seventeen on October five. Of course contains both
two and three, and as thus a sacred number October
twenty three. I shouldn't have to explain why that significant.
And remember Robert, it's yeah, but it's three on my phone.
(14:04):
Why is my phone's fucked up? Because because because the universe. Baby,
that's the synchronicity. I'm living in the future, motherfucker's And
what time is it that it's not right now? It
was my phone and the other time it is. I
don't need to know what time it is your default reality. Yeah,
(14:27):
you're you're you're on a different, different dimensional plane. Now
we have two into two different ones. I think. I
think this ship, I think this gives up gives us
a perfect opportunity for the audience to find their own
synchronicities in these ads, because who knows what's going to happen,
what's gonna play, So look for patterns and you'll find them.
(14:51):
Here's some I hope it's an ad for the Egyptian
goddess mod and we are back, We're gonna, We're gonna
now actually kind of get into some of the some
of the actual Peppe nonsense. Um. I think. And another
(15:15):
important part to mention is that like for a lot
of people doing this online, this this is like an
online pattern that happens all the time. Um, it happens
with it happens with stuff like this, it happens with
with with cat boys. It happens with a whole bunch
of stuff. Is that like stuff starts as a joke
and then you do it a lot and the repetition
basically makes you do it genuinely. Yeah, like me talking
(15:38):
about getting all of my followers to a compound in
Idaho where we die fighting the f d A exactly,
Literally that turns into an actual death cult. So it's
it's it starts as a joke and then under repetition
it becomes genuine. This happens to basically almost everything on
the internet. Yeah, this, this, this, this, this leads to
Garrison and I doing the inevitable Robert Evans Behind the
(15:59):
Bastards episode episode Yeah, the three part or if I
ever heard one? You you hope? So you wish what
what are what are catboys? This that is different? That's
a different you're here? That is a different podcast. Think, Yeah, Hi, sorry,
I know I only enter Jake briefly. Is that is that?
Are they are they like pre furries? Is that some different? No?
(16:22):
Cowboys Fury It's kind of it's it's it's it's rehumanizing
the it's rehumanizing the Furies. So like the same way,
the same way the same way Sonic the Hedgehog is
a re mickey mousification of vegeta. Uh, catboys are a
humanification of furries. This is a whole process on the
(16:44):
I can explain this in great detail in the later episode,
but I think we have enough. We have enough to
talk about already. Thank you so much, my dog. Okay.
Sure would someone be willing to sacrifice their own mentality
to describe the rise of Pepe and just originally in
the early twenty teens, Yeah, so it started as this
(17:07):
guy's comic that there was nothing particularly worried about. Yeah,
it was just it was a dude's comic. He was like, uh,
feels good man was kind of a good man. He
was a chill dude. He was a chill dude. Yeah,
not a fascist comic. Peppe is actually pretty fun. Yeah,
comic Pepe, He's like he's like a millennial slacker who
doesn't really know what to do with his life after
(17:27):
like after nine eleven, after the financial crash. He's just
trying to kind of get by the comics. Fine. Yeah,
the comics fine, but the art just that kind of
the specifics of how he drew Pepe made him very
well suited for a meme because he's expressive and he
so he shows up and starts getting spread in four chan,
and you know, that kind of idea goes viral, and
(17:48):
it particularly gets attached to a lot of like the
political ship on Pole and the people who are like
churning into gamer Gate and the right sad Pepe gets
very popular, Smug Pepe gets very popular. Yeah. Yeah, and
then as so Kick is chee chext of it, like
(18:09):
later on, I think we'll go over more for like
how Pepe is like the cartoon character got you know,
as soon as it becomes a meme, it spreads out
into all corners. And the people who meaned this hardest
we were on Fortune. So this is how pep Peppe
became kind of tied to this. And I think the
last bullet in Pepe really solidifying him as as an
(18:29):
alt right memes specifically was the Richard Spencer punch. I
think I think that's the thing that actually was like done.
It's like, no, Pepe is just this now, he can't
be anything else because but when when when Richard Spencer
was being punched, he was describing what Pepe was. That
was what's happening in that specific viral moment. If you
want to talk about like magical terms, this is Pepe
getting like charged, Like this is the idea of like
(18:51):
this idea getting getting charged because it is now going
to be preflated to the masses in this in this
moment of like pure motion. So that's when Pepe really
gets tight. And I think Hillary Clinton made it very,
very worse the way she talked about this kind of
stuff on her speeches basically gave gave the alt right
(19:13):
a baseball bat to hit her with. The the problem
that Clinton and everyone else because like a big part
of I would argue that like the largest part of
why Pepe became a thing that was destined to last
was that pundits and politicians, including Hillary and media people
kept talking about it as a fascist symbol and kept
discussing like what it was, and that anyone who grew
(19:33):
up on the Internet, who grew up around these communities,
knows that you ignore them as much as possible, to
the extent that that's possible. You don't feed the troll
you don't give them power, Yeah you don't, And and
talking about it again, this is like cast matic like
referencing it, bringing it up. Bringing it into the real
world gives it power. That's the thing that feeds it. Yeah,
so that that's how it got so much more power.
(19:55):
The more Clinton talked about it, the more news media
wrote about it, everyone got so excited on unfortune. That's like,
that's that's that's like, that is them winning, then them
seeing this thing, and and then and then this goes
back pre even being far. I can remember because I
was in these spaces when they first started doing ship
like raids on the Church of Scientology. Every time there
(20:17):
would be actual, like news coverage of what people on
the Internet did, it got people so fucking excited because
like the Internet had been this thing that didn't matter
for the longest I think in the in in the
book I read about this kind of stuff. They they
did use the example of like Anonymous and the raids
on Centology being like a precursor to this type of
like me magic of this thing like like internet forums
(20:39):
influencing the real world through repetition and getting getting to
grow power, but getting people who don't use Internet to
talk about these same things. It was like a precursor
to then what we what we saw the al right,
which is which is a pretty pretty common opinion. Um.
And then and then enter enter the Egyptian gods. Robert
st wanna do you wanna? Don't wanna? I don't want
(21:02):
to discuss that. We're gonna That's what we're gonna say.
Next is, how's this intersex with Egyptian gods? The ancient
Pharaoh's played a card game of ancient and terrible power. Man,
nobody wants you as a kid. This is no man, Robert,
(21:25):
do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do you wanna? Do
you want to discuss keck? Yeah? I mean so way
back in the day, um, and I think I think
this even pre dates World War Craft. I remember at
first happening on like StarCraft games online, there would be
like gamers from Korea, and like when you were doing
like a Zurg rush or something, which is when you
have a bunch of guys and they all attack the
enemy base or whatever, they would type out their term
(21:47):
for l O L, which was like keck k e
K yeah okay u k so would usually just look
like a stream of ku k e k k k
over and over and over again. This really took off
in World War Aircraft, where like there were Korean gold
farmers were a big thing, and like keck was something
that like everyone kind of knew what it meant because
it was often the only thing you can understand. You
could you could understand as an American that like these
(22:10):
people would be typing um and it as a result
of kind of all of that, it took off an
internet culture as just an l O L and specifically
like one of the things that's going on here as
the mid auts dawn and the Internet becomes serious business,
and like social media really and everybody's even before social
media is dominant, but just when everybody's taking the Internet seriously,
(22:30):
it's clear there's a lot of money in it. It's
it's mainstream. You have this this kind of second generation
of Internet people who got on in the late nineties
early two thousand's when they were kids, who get frustrated
at the fact that all of these different terms and
phrases and like bits of Internet culture that they had
identified with our going mainstream and are using them. Yeah. Yeah,
(22:52):
And keck is everyone knows what l O L is.
People don't know what keck is. So in places like
four Chune, that becomes a really popular thing, and keck
kind of is like so keck as a as a
term for laughters, like floating around at the same time
as like Pepe memes, and so whenever you whenever you
like meme something into the mainstream, whenever like some four
chan opera whatever you wanna call it, like succeeds in
(23:15):
getting main stressed it. It's as Hiller Clinton mentions Peppe
on stage, everyone in fourtune goes kick because they're laughing.
They go can they say, like top keck and whatnot?
And and and eventually somebody realizes that there's an Egyptian goddess.
One of the translations of that god and goddess his
name is k e k Um. Now there's a couple
of other translations. There's there's there's there's a whole bunch
(23:36):
of issues with this if you want to look at it.
That's with the rational kind of brain is because like this,
there was this old family of god's are very very
old old Egyptian gods. They all had male and female versions.
The male versions all had frog heads um and but
around frogs can change their gender. Ye, So like so
like all of the all this whole era of Egyptian
(23:58):
gods all had frog heads. So they is one of
them that was named Keck, who was a god of chaos.
And this also played into how Fortune was using Trump
because like they liked Trump mostly as like as like
a chaotic reforce that got people angry, because that's what
that's what Fortune wanted to do as well. They wanted
to be a chaotic force again that gets people angry.
That's why they really latched onto Trump. Um. And then
(24:19):
when they found out that, oh there's this god named
Keck who is like the lord of like like like
um like pro that's what's the word um, primordial darkness,
primordial darkness. Yeah, and this idea not even chaos yeah yeah,
kind of like um um urinus and like Greco Roman faith, right,
(24:39):
like a god kind of before the gods that are
are more well known. But like this was a synchronicity.
So they took it as like, you know, the same
way religions take take synchronicity and create and create like divinity.
They took this as like this take they took this
as like divinity. Again. This this starts as a joke,
but you do it enough and you start to take
(24:59):
it serious, sleigh, and there's a you get a mix
of um, you get a mix of of real like
Egyptology was that Yeah, there was a god named Kick,
like among a bunch of other gods. One of the
ways he was depicted was with a frog head. But
also like bad Egyptology. Like I found an article on
the word plus press blog Peppe the Frog Faith, which oh,
(25:20):
I'm sure this, I'm sure this is like a bastion
of archaeology, and and the title is amateur egyptologist weighs
in on the frog statue hieroglyphs. And one of the
things he points out are talking about the frog statues
that isn't check but they thought it was Kick yeah, yeah, yeah,
and a number of things. So like one of the
things this guy claims is that the hieroglyphics for keeck
are a frogman um and then a couple of what
(25:40):
he calls baskets. First up their cups, not baskets. Second,
the actual um uh hieroglyphics for for k e K
don't include the little frogman. They're like the two of
the little cups in this weird T shaped thing. Like yeah,
it's all, it's all, like it's bad again, amateur egyptologist,
Like he's just a kid who is googling stuff and
(26:01):
like got some either lie or got some hieroglyphics wrong.
But but Keck as like an idea of like now
we have a backing of an ancient god again first
as a joke, but then some people start to take
it more seriously. Really really caught on among people because
because it's funny, Like it's it's just funny, and it's
(26:22):
gonna catch on on for chat because it's hilarious, right,
so they're gonna start using this and repeating this and
creating a whole new memes, creating Like there's like there's
like an eight eight part book series that's like fake
books written by like someone who's like just me big
but pretending to take it seriously. But like the authenticity
doesn't actually matter because because it exists, it doesn't actually
(26:43):
matter how authentic it is. Yeah, Like and there's there's
weird coincidences that continue to occur, Like one of the
biggest being there's this like phrase shadow at which creeps
up in all of this and becomes like this exhortation
that they use like a way of like exclaiming and such.
And then somebody figures out that shad is also a
song like an aallow disco song I think from the seventies,
(27:04):
and the album that shadows on has like a frog
man face on the cover. Um, And so they're like,
it's a sign of the because you're gonna find frogs
wherever you look now, because that has becomes the uncommon frogs.
You're gonna find them everywhere now and there are every
ancient religion everywhere in the world. I'm gonna get guarantee
(27:26):
there's some fucking frogs in it, because like they're everywhere,
and they're they're old creatures. People pay to frogs. They've
been around for a long time. The frogs have been
around a wild So the frog the other the other
thing that happened. So people not only basically created their
whole mythology around this, creating different types of religion. There
was like Keckism as a religion, the cult of keck
(27:48):
um esoter Keechism, all of their own distinct differences. Because
these people spend all their time on the internet. Um,
they developed all these things. And they also found this
old frog statue that they said keck it actually it
isn't it's actually it's actually a gold called heck it um.
But on the basis does it does it doesn't matter.
(28:10):
But on the base of the statue it had. It
had glyphs which appear to us modern humans as they
look like someone sitting on a computer. Like they look
like someone sitting in front of a monitor on a keyboard. Um.
And on the other side of the keyboard is a
DNA is like what looks like a DNA spiral. So
this is like like jeans, right, jeans, jeans are DNA.
(28:33):
Memes are cultural DNA. This is a glyph of the
god Teck on a statue with someone on a computer
with a DNA spiral. Of course they're gonna take this
is like some like message from the from the gods.
You're like, yes, I'm supposed to be. I am supposed
to be by my meming, I'm doing Kex's work to
put Trump into office. Yeah, it's um God, that's frustrating Insurance,
(28:58):
it sure is. But like all of those in the group,
this is like the statue was just a depiction of
what the check people and the and the Pepper standards
were doing posting on the internet to manifest real world change.
And that's that's all it is. If you want to
see other examples of this, like if you look at
the ancient alien stuff, there's this like famous my Mayana
hieroglyph of the astronomer that's like if you if you
(29:19):
know what a telescope is, because you're looking at it
a thousand years after it was carved, it kind of
looks like it might be a telescope, and it's part
of what like people say like, oh, this is proof
that like that this is an alien Like he's looking
at a fucking telescope. No, it was, there's other explanations
for it. It was something like that somebody carved. Yeah,
I think there's another thing that you start and I
(29:40):
see this like not even like I see this just
this is just on the end of all time, like
I see left, just do this or like so like okay,
so you learn something and then oh it's not true,
but then people will keep spreading the thing because they'll
say people, yeah, yeah, it has more power with it,
so you're still gonna believe it. Yeah, Like when we
(30:01):
talk about the fact that Will Wheaton murdered three people
in if you repeat this is the message like yeah,
yeah with a knife, what's horrible yeah. Now, I mean
he was in Thailand at the time, so he was
able to get out and we don't extra diet, so
he's he's got out scott free. But yeah, but I
mean like this is like the same this is the
same thing that Trump does, which we'll talk about it,
(30:22):
but we'll talk about a bit. It's like if you
would repeat the thing enough, it becomes true for large
swats of the population that that's that's that's all truth
actually needs to be for people. Um, I think I
think we're gonna go and break uh and come back
and close us, close us up, and finally finished this
horrible discussion. Um. Anyone know who won't meme fascism? Well, actually, KFC,
(30:48):
the have you seen have you seen the KFC fascist
posting on Twitter? Yeah, there's like a Spanish KFC account
that has been doing that that it's up to some ship.
I hate I hate that. That's a sentence that that
that you got to say. I just hate it. For products,
(31:23):
And we are back. I have finished an entire dark
meat bucket and I am so full. Um yep. And
now now I'm sad. I'm sad because I'm still thinking
of the fascist KFC Twitter account. Um so we we
The other thing I want to do, want to mention
(31:44):
is kind of Trump's own power of belief kind of
idea and how Trump was basically using esoteric terms, was
able to basically create an alternate reality for millions of
people to live in. Um And there's really no getting
through to them now because they are literally just in it,
just in a different dimension. And there's just there's there's
no way to pierce that other dimension. They're basically living
(32:05):
in just a totally alternate reality. There's there's no use
saying that it is the one that we live in. Um.
So Trump is obsessed with a few of these ideas.
He's less than like the like, He's less interested in
like the woo and more interested in like the power
of positive thinking, power of your own belief. He grew
up in a movement and a specifically stuff. Yeah, he
(32:27):
grew up following a specific movement and church called that
falls under the umbrella called New Thought um, which is
where Trump's you know, Trump's like like how strong Trump's
ego is comes from this idea of that you need
to reinforce yourself and reinforce your own victories because if
you do that, you're gonna you're you're gonna find them.
(32:50):
Right If if if you're looking for twenty three, you're gonna
find it. If you're looking for your own victories, you're
going to force them to happen, um, even if they
don't happen into other people. Right. But like so that
we see this happening successfully with the election, we see
both like all of the meming, everything that happened in
twenty in the Trustean election worked for Trump UM. And
(33:11):
you know, you know, of course, of course he didn't
win the popular vote, but that doesn't actually matter, but
it worked into in getting him to office now it
you know, it worked less well for the election um,
but still his reassertions that he won still gave us
a lot of real world results, like the January six
(33:32):
Capital insurrection. So like it's this, right, so this type
of idea that if you re if you if you
reinforce this thing, if you reinforce this belief, if you can,
if you have if you have this idea and you
keep putting it out into the world, it's gonna manifest
some type of real, real world result. And that that
was January six, That's what that was. And and that's
(33:55):
the kind of the world we live in now. It's
like the weaponized unreality world where people become is of
how media works. Because are the Internet works, they're able
to create this like chaotic like the sphere of of
energy and ideas that can like spread so much faster
than anything used to be that could everyone can segment
their own reality into two degrees that we've never really
(34:17):
seen before because of how fast information can travel. Now, um,
it is, it is it is a new it's it
is a relatively new thing. The way that the way
that this this this can operate, so like memes, memes
themselves like Pepe and all this kind of stuff undoubtedly
had had an impact on not only just the twenties
sixteen election, but just the entire political climate surrounding the
(34:38):
whole Trump presidency. Uh. Now, to the degree to which
we can credit me magic or the god kick, that
part is meaningless because because the effect is the same
that like the synchronicities were still experienced and and truth
is just is just experiential. So it's the beliefs that
we kind of hold will shape how we experience things anyway,
(35:00):
and that will experience what the actual truth is there's there.
There is a great Robert Nton Wilson quote that is
like reality is what you can get away with, yep.
And that's that's like that that like summarizes how Trump
was able to be so successful is because he was
able to shape reality. Right. I think me and me
and Chris were talking about this the other day about how, Chris,
(35:23):
do you want to say the thing about like the
Democratic Party and Republican Party and how okay, okay, So
there's there's there's there's a thing and Garrison I think
it was too young for this, but there's a very
famous thing that that one of the Bushman Pedietrician people
said about how Democrats lived in the reality based community.
And this this is like a whole thing in the
in like the two thousands. This is just in the
(35:44):
Bush administration and everyone loses their minds and this is
like a whole meme on the Democrats that's like, oh,
we're the reality based community and they're not. But but
then this is the interesting part. If you look at
the second part of that quote, right, we's actually saying
is that so the Democrats are the reality based community, right,
they they analyze reality. The Republican party is the party
(36:04):
that creates reality because other people in control the empire.
And this is this is what neo conservative this was right.
And you know, the argument here basically is that the
Democrats are you know, they're always going to be a
step behind because they're merely analyzing reality, whereas Republicans using
the powers or of the state to you know, change
and define it. And this this worked for them, you
know what. I would argue that this is how they
(36:24):
came into power, This is how there's this is what
they're still doing. Yeah. Yeah, why every president since Ronald
Reagan has just been Ronald Reagan with a mask. Yeah.
But but I think I think there's something very important here,
specifically about how Bush took office, right because Bush Bush
steals the election, right, Bush does like the thing that
Trump was trying to do is what George Bush did
(36:44):
in two and two thousands, but with a riot, just
with a very kind of riot. Yeah. But but this
is the thing, the thing, this is the thing that
Bush and the neo cons understood that the Trump is
kind of understand but never quite solidified because they're not
like they're not sort of insider political actors, Which is
that Okay, so all of the stuff about saying something
and it becoming real. Right, there's there there's sort of
(37:07):
a limit to this if if you don't have a gun. Now,
if you have a gun, then the limits of that
are are you know, it's it's you can be basically
whatever you want because you can just you can force
everyone else to also accept this as reality that you know,
this is what the state is. Right and there there's
there's a whole there's a whole thing. This is a
couple of performance theory. It's like, yeah, so like you
you saying the thing makes it so right? Well, this
(37:29):
is this is what a state is. And this is
how Bush won the election because he, unlike Trump, who's
people tried to like take power directly about like Stormy
in the Capitol. Bush was smart and Bush was like, oh, okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna de clare that I won the election.
And but but but instead of like openly doing it right,
I'm going to get the Supreme Court to declare that
I'm president. And you know, and this this this requires
(37:50):
the Brooks brothers, riots, stop the counts and all the stuff.
We were like, you know, it's doesn't yeah, yeah, it's great.
But it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter that, you know,
he he didn't win Florida, Like if if if if
if if, if the if the votes had actually been counted,
he would not have won Florida. But because he was
able to get the courts to say that he was president,
he was president. And and that's that is the concept
(38:12):
of magic words yep, yep, and this is this is this,
this is this is all the state is right, it's
this this this the state is magic with a gun
behind it. Yeah, it is, yeah, the state of magic.
Because it's like, yeah, you're right. It's like magic can
have a hard cap. There's going to be a certain
people that you know, with with with Trump's reality altering
kind of power, there's a certain that there is a
hard cap on how much that can influence the general population.
(38:34):
But if you have a gun behind that, that gives
us so much more enforceable power. And to go back
to Egyptian mythology, one of the attitudes they had about
the pharaoh is that reality was whatever the pharaoh declared.
Other a lot of societies of this idea towards their monarchs,
and the duty of his people is to make reality
conform to the Pharaoh's will, and like, that's that's what
(38:57):
the GOP does. Like that fascist. So I think I
think the quote surrounding like, yeah, the Democrats are the
reality based party because they because they you know, observe
reality and and like and yeah and and like and
like and like. Libs and Democrats are like yes, they
like they take this on prior, like, yes, we are rational,
we observe reality. Meanwhile the Republicans like, no, you just
(39:19):
observe it, but we can just we can create it.
I think that is a great example of how those
two parties operate politically and how like, yes they're both
they're both right leading parties. But here's the difference for
how they actually operate is that one of them is
way more passive in their observing of reality and one
is is okay with getting their hands dirty and actually
(39:39):
forcing this type of reality altering changes. I will say,
I think, like one thing to close this out is
that you know we can we when we can tie
this all the way back to the second part of
the Duel Power episode, which is that the Nikon Kon
project doesn't work, and the reason it doesn't work is
that you know, they they like they basically they lose
militarily and that just that implodes the entire project. And
(40:01):
so you know, and if if if if you look
back at like all of this stuff about how we
can shape reality, we can shape reality, we can shape reality.
That stopped being true the moment that you know, like
they lose control of Bosra or like you know, all
like they when the other people, Uhder is to be
unkillable by all the weapons of Empire. Yeah, yeah, it's
(40:22):
like you know, and and Sawder and Solder does this
by like you know, Sauder sets up a bunch of
baby clinics, right, He's like, here's a bunch of clinics.
Heared we we we will will give help the pregnant mothers,
like you guys really gonna shoot us. And you know,
he builds a militia around this, and he's and he's
able to like he's one of the smartest people on
the planet. He's yeah, and he's not. It's not a
good guy, but like completely shatter the neo cons like
(40:44):
they they're dead, Like they don't like that. That project,
which was like the culmination of this this incredible like
into that described in electro projects of Trouble military project
and they got their absolute ask kick by watch of
people doing dual power. Yep, I think, and I I really,
I do want to talk more about kind of chaos
magic and there's a lot on the grounding, and I think,
(41:07):
but yeah, I think this is a great intrin how
how these concepts overlapped with politics and reality. Disagree on
the end of this with one aspect, Garrison, because you
said their reality can't be pierced, But the ancient texts
speak of a spear that once pierced the side of
Christ itself, and while Hitler held it, his armies were ascended,
but it was stolen. And if we can find this, Sparrison,
(41:32):
we can pierce their reality. Hey, I have a Fedora,
I have a whip. We could we all have Fedora, Garrison,
do it. Let's go. We are We are off to
find the spear that signs us off the sphere of destiny.
You can follow our adventures on Happened Here pod and
Coles Media on Twitter. Um and yeah, I'm sure we
(41:54):
will give you updates for our Spirit ventures of the Pod. Sophie.
We need half a million dollars to find the Spirit
of destinating. Okay, okay, great, see you on the other side.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
(42:15):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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