Failed State Update

Oki is a Canadian documentarian with a keen eye for unusual subject matter. We spoke to him back in January when he infiltrated a cabal of conspiracy theorists who use hypnosis to "prove" that there is a secret space program operating throughout the universe. His latest doc, The King of Stolen Valor, is a must-see. It is the story of Jonathan "Jack" Idema, a former U.S. Army non-commissioned officer who was found guilty of running a private prison in Afghanistan and torturing Afghan citizens. Idema was posing as a US government-sponsored special forces officer at the time. The US government claims no knowledge of his operations. After spending three years in an Afghan prison, he traveled to Mexico, where he died of AIDS in 2012.

Oki's latest doc, The King of Stolen Valor is on YouTube.

Ravi lives in Silicon Valley, he's a former Google employee, and he’s a Targeted Individual. That is, he believes he has been the subject of high-tech surveillance and harassment.

Whatever the cause of the trauma he has experienced, the trauma is very real. “I felt like committing a crime” at one point, he says. “I felt like avenging what happened to me.” But after learning that there is a whole community of people like him out there, he doesn’t feel so alone anymore. Besides, to do something drastic, he says, would be “in vain.”

Long-time friend of the show Lucien Greaves will be on FSU tonight. What will be talking about? The arson at the Satanic Temple's HQ? Probably. Sovereign Citizen death threats? Youbetcha. Satanic Panic? That is to be expected.

Jack Brewer is a freelance writer with a longtime interest in the UFO genre. He maintains the blog "The UFO Trail," where he posts credible info on incredible topics. Brewer is the author of "The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community," in which he explores how public perception of the UFO phenomenon has been distorted by the intelligence community and suspect researchers. Neither a debunker nor a believer, Brewer integrates objectivity and critical thinking into his writing while keeping an open mind. His latest book is called "Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC." NICAP is one of the first UFO investigation organizations, and IC stands for "intelligence community."

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSQcUGK7hQ

Douglas P. Horne is a former staffer for the Assassination Records Review Board and the author of several books, including Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. In this episode of Failed State Update, J.G. and Douglas discuss Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon's (very real) plan to down aircraft, blow up ships, or possibly kill American civilians as a pretext for an invasion of Cuba. President Kennedy, wisely, thought the whole thing was nuts and prevented it from happening.

Northwoods is a bit of a history lesson, but it's an important one. It exemplifies the lengths that the military may go in order to get its way. And as conspiracies go, it's as bizarre as anything Alex Jones has cooked up. And it's all real.

In Tumacácori, Arizona, a stone’s throw from the U.S. border with Mexico, roughly 85 “destiny reservists” await their fate. They are the followers of Gabriel of Urantia. Born Anthony J. Delevin in Pittsburgh in 1946, Gabriel’s life work is a community known as the Global Community Communications Alliance (GCCA). They live in a compound in the desert where they raise animals, harvest hemp, and study their prophet’s teachings. This is all in preparation for the end of this world, and the coming of the next.

And the apocalypse, according to Gabriel, is closer now than it’s ever been.

Last week, Paladin called the cult’s radio station KVAN-FM last week to address the people of Tucson on the air. “We are living in a transition period,” Gabriel/Paladin says in the voice of the trans-dimensional space creature.

On today’s Failed State Update, former GCCA member Joshua Lilly listens to Gabriel's latest broadcast with us and helps us understand both the message and cult psychology in general.

But first, J.G. and Lenny discuss Monarch mind-control conspiracies and why they are the perfect myth of our time. This is the subject of Monarch, the debut novel by Candice Wuehle.

LINKS:

We had so much fun doing the Failed State Jukebox a few weeks ago that we thought we'd try it again. Thanks to my (Lenny's) terrific administrative skills, J.G. Michael wasn't on the call. But don't worry, he'll be back next week!

With author and journalist Mark Jacobson as our guide, we prevailed through 90 minutes of cult music, including: 

TaliasVan & the Bright & Morning Star Band: Let's Be Lovers (live)
Jeremy Spencer: Can You Hear The Song
Charles Manson: Cease to Exist
The Beach Boys: Never Learn Not to Love
Boney M: Rivers of Babylon
The Melodians: Rivers of Babylon
David Koresh: Rivers of Babylon
Passion: Don't Stop
Mobb Deep: Shook Ones, Pt. 2
Peoples Temple Choir: He's Able
L. Ron Hubbard: Alien Visitors Attack
Jim Kweskin Jug Band: Dark as a Dungeon

But that's not all! Listen to the end, because Philadelphia's own Shy Boyz come on to discuss their cult covers album, American Idolz. They also share their rendition of "Energy Master," originally recorded by Gabriel of Urantia.

In this episode of Failed State Update, J.G. Michael speaks with Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Deputy Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations about a scandal involving CAIR's Ohio chapter and a right-wing outfit called the Investigative Project on Terrorism. There is evidence that IPT has been spying on Muslim-American activists and working with the state of Israel to target American students activists. It's a bombshell story, one that's only going to get crazier as more details emerge.

Russia has invaded Ukraine, and what more is there to be said, besides: Fuck war and fuck imperialism.

(Well, there is a little more than that to be said, and J.G. Michael has Eric Draitser on the show to say it.) 

What do UFOs, the CIA, the conflict in Ukraine, and the Philadelphia Experiment have in common? Tune in to find out!

You're in for a treat! For this edition of Failed State Update: The Podcast, J.G. Michael interviews author and extremism expert Spencer Sunshine on the Oath Keepers' role in January 6, the militia movement in general, and what happens when antisemites infiltrate leftist politics.

Is the United States collapsing, or is all of civilization collapsing? To explore that question we bring you John Zerzan, an anarchist and primitivist author whose work has been compared to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, of all people. His books offer an alternative vision of history that focuses on the destructive nature of technology. And more importantly — and this is why we spoke to him — his work suggests a possible future free of the alienation and control of capitalism-run-amok.

Havana Syndrome is back in the news. On the one hand, it's clearly a psychogenic illness that's being misdiagnosed as the result of commie death rays. On the other hand, by treating it as an attack by America's enemies, politicians can use it to help further their foreign policy objectives. Which side do you think the media is going to take?

Robert E. Bartholomew is a native New Yorker who teaches history at Botany College in Auckland, New Zealand. His many books include The Martians Have Landed! A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes and Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior. Most relevant to this episode, he is the co-author of Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria with Robert W. Baloh.

The subject of political cults continues with Marley Clements, a writer, producer, and documentary filmmaker whose work includes Active Measures (2018) and QAnon: The Search for Q (2021). Her company Bunker Crew Media is responsible for the Kremlin File podcast.

MOVE is a radical Black communal organization founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, best known for the 1985 firebombing in which 11 members (including 5 children under the age of 14) were murdered by law enforcement. These days, the group lives on as a "political cult," as former member Kevin Price reveals in his blog, Leaving MOVE. In part one of the series, Kevin gives the true history of the group as it morphed from what was considered to be a Black liberation group to a political cult. In part two, he explains what led up to the 1985 firebombing. He also describes many of the novel religious and philosophical beliefs of the group. Part three will bring us up to the present, including Kevin's own story and the unsolved 2002 murder of John Gilbride — believed by many to be a "hit" by MOVE.

MOVE is a radical Black communal organization founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, best known for the 1985 firebombing in which 11 members (including 5 children under the age of 14) were murdered by law enforcement. These days, the group lives on as a "political cult," as former member Kevin Price reveals in his blog, Leaving MOVE. In part one of the series, Kevin gives the true history of the group as it morphed from what was considered to be a Black liberation group to a political cult. In part two, he explains what led up to the 1985 firebombing. He also describes many of the novel religious and philosophical beliefs of the group. Part three will bring us up to the present, including Kevin's own story and the unsolved 2002 murder of John Gilbride — believed by many to be a "hit" by MOVE.

MOVE is a radical Black communal organization founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, best known for the 1985 firebombing in which 11 members (including 5 children under the age of 14) were murdered by law enforcement. These days, the group lives on as a "political cult," as former member Kevin Price reveals in his blog, Leaving MOVE. In part one of the series, Kevin gives the true history of the group as it morphed from what was considered to be a Black liberation group to a political cult. In part two, he explains what led up to the 1985 firebombing. He also describes many of the novel religious and philosophical beliefs of the group. Part three will bring us up to the present, including Kevin's own story and the unsolved 2002 murder of John Gilbride — believed by many to be a "hit" by MOVE.

Joshua Lilly is a former follower of Gabriel of Urantia, the subject of my book New Age Grifter. He’s also something of a “fan favorite,” so — due to popular demand — I am giving him an (almost 2 hours long!) episode of the FAILED STATE UPDATE podcast to tell us about his life and times in (and out of) a religious cult.

New Age Grifter is the story of Gabriel of Urantia, a self-proclaimed holy man who currently presides over a spiritual community (some call it a cult) in the desert of Southern Arizona. In a fenced-in compound, three generations of the Global Community Communications Alliance soak in Gabriel's teachings as they wait for the end of the world. 

My book on the group, titled New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and his Cosmic Family is out today.

Raymond Buckland founded The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in 1966. After visiting the late Gerald Gardner and his collection on the Isle of Man, Raymond was inspired to start a collection of his own. While working for British Airways, he was able to acquire many of the artifacts in this collection from all around the world. He initially displayed his museum on a few shelves in the basement of his Long Island, N.Y. home. However, over time, Raymond’s witchcraft collection rapidly grew to well over 500 artifacts, ranging from Ancient Egyptian ushabtis to documented artifacts from the Salem Witch trials. This was the first museum of its kind in the United States with an anthropological approach to the world of folklore and the supernatural.

This episode of FSU features Steven Intermill, the director of the museum, which has been located in Cleveland since 2017. We talk about the museum itself, alternative religions, harassment by fundamentalist weirdos, and much more.

Joseph Daniel Casolaro (everyone knew him as Danny) was a journalist who died in Martinsburg, West Virginia, thirty years ago this August. He was in town working on a book tentatively titled The Octopus, which promised to tie together damn near every conspiracy theory of the decade: including the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, and the FEMA concentration camps.

When Casolaro was found dead in room 517 of the Sheraton Hotel, his wrists slashed with a razor blade, the medical examiner ruled the death a suicide — a ruling that continues to be controversial.

In this installment of Failed State Update, I speak to journalist Tim Shorrock and historian Jack Calhoun about PROMIS — the software that sits at the center of The Octopus — and its surprising relevance to the modern surveillance state. I also speak to Dominic Orlando, Danny's cousin, who shares his thoughts on the media's (mis)handling of the story.

A story crossed my desk recently: "Inside TikTok’s booming dissociative identity disorder community" (Input Magazine, July 6). The author, Jessica Lucas, looks at the unique world of social media influencers with multiple personalities. While it provides a unique look at a fascinating subculture, it does not portray the truth about Dissociative Identity Disorder (the clinical name for multiple personalities) and how the diagnosis has been abused by therapists over the years. 

Not only are these conspiracy therapists harming patients, they are a telling example of America's decline. 

My book Satan Goes to the Mind Control Convention: Manchurian Candidates, Recovered Memories, and the Dark Side of Conspiracy Culture is finally available as an audiobook! From the back cover blurb:

Satan Goes to the Mind Control Convention looks at the role that conspiracy theories play in American life and the current political climate. The audiobook begins at a convention for therapists who uncover “memories” of past lives, extraterrestrials, and government mind-control operations. From there, the listener will encounter Pizzagate enthusiasts, conspiracy entrepreneurs, Satanists, flat-earthers, and more. Ultimately, the author cautions that right-wing conspiracy culture is a fascist confidence trick that will only get more violent over the coming years.

In the first half of this episode, I speak with Branko Marcetic, a staff writer for Jacobin magazine and a 2019-2020 Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting Fellow at In These Times. He is the author of Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. 

After the flip, I speak with Jeremy Kuzmarov, J.P. Walker assistant professor of history at University of Tulsa and the author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs and Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century. His series on Biden's foreign policy is available at Covert Action Magazine.

It's the big FOUR-OH! and today I'm speaking with Mike Elk, labor reporter and the founder (in 2016) of Payday Report, a crowdfunded news agency focusing on labor and union news. In this interview we talk about the importance of independent media, getting past the over-intellectualization of left-labor reporting, and the shocking reality of sexual harassment in unions.

The notion of "repressed memories" has been widely discredited, yet it stubbornly persists—on trash TV, in poorly researched self-help books, and now on New York Magazine's website. In this episode of Failed State Update, Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of The Satanic Temple, breaks down "The Memory War" by Katie Heaney, a weird example of pro-conspiracy theory agitprop that has more to do with QAnon than legitimate reportage.

The return of Mark Jacobson. We expand on our previous conversation to talk about the zeitgeist. We get into QAnon,  the Ghost Dance, and of course, Bill Cooper.

We are living in a time of unprecedented distrust in America…

Faith in the government is at an all-time low, and political groups on both sides of the aisle are able to tout preposterous conspiracy theories as gospel, without much opposition. “Fake news” is the order of the day. This book is about a man to whom all of it points, the greatest conspiracist of this generation and a man you may not have heard of.

A former U.S. naval intelligence worker, Milton William Cooper published his manifesto Behold a Pale Horse in 1991. Since then it has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming the number-one bestseller in the American prison system. According to Behold a Pale Horse, JFK was assassinated—because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were about to take over the earth—by his driver, an alien himself; AIDS is a government conspiracy to decrease the population of blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals; and the Illuminati are secretly involved with the U.S. government to manage relationships with extraterrestrials. Cooper died in a shootout with Apache County police in 2001, one month after September 11, in the year in which he had predicted catastrophe.

In Pale Horse Rider, journalist Mark Jacobson not only tells the story of Cooper’s fascinating life but also provides the social and political context for American paranoia. Indeed, with the present NSA situation and countless other shadowy government dealings often in the news, aren’t we right to suspect that things may not be as they seem?

Jared Yates Sexton has been an important voice decrying the little Hitler in the White House (for one more week) and the future, not-so-little Hitlers that are on the horizon if we don't wise up quick. His message is more important than ever, so I'm reposting two of his appearances here in case you missed 'em the first time...

I didn't set out to present a Christmas episode of this podcast, but when the talk got around to the harmful nature of the Santa Claus myth, I knew I had a timely program. Pastor Harry Walther is the founder of The Church of Philadelphia-Internet and host of Doomsday Talk Radio. I met him in 2012 while filming a series of videos for The Verge about American end times beliefs.  In this episode of Failed State Update, Harry and I talk about why The End didn't happen on December 21, 2012, and why it just might be around the corner now. We also talk about his 2011 book, Jesus: Son of God, Clone of God, and why Santa is harmful to children.

CORRECTION: Pastor Harry's ministry is called: "The Church of Philadelphia-Internet," not "The Church of Jesus Christ-Internet"

There is an internet community of people that call themselves Targeted Individuals. These people claim that they're being surveilled and harassed by the U.S. government or other unknown entities. Sometimes this activity is called "gangstalking" because, unlike traditional stalking, the harassment involves teams of people. Fears of gangstalking seem to me to be motivated by, among other things, the same anxieties that create UFO abduction narratives and QAnon theorists. 

Are we living in a failed state? And if so, so what? Between the environment, pandemic, and everything else that 2020 has given us, I think it's probably high time that we look at ourselves in the mirror and decide what's really important. And if you're of a spiritual or metaprogrammatical bent, you could probably learn a thing or several from Antero Alli. His latest book, State of Emergence, covers his experiments in group ritual. It's one part Jerzy Grotowski, one part Carl Jung, and 100% mind-blowing.

If you know anything about the assassination of JFK, the odds are good that you learned it from Oliver Stone. Even if you haven't seen JFK (1993), the claims made in the film — claims made by the likes of homophobic New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and antisemitic conspiracy theorist Fletcher Prouty — have kind of seeped into the mainstream and become part of our common understanding of the tragedy. In his latest book, On the Trail of Delusion, author Fred Litwin turns the clock back on the Jim Garrison investigation and makes us reconsider what we think we know about November 22, 1963.

By its very nature, the intelligence community holds more sway over this country than we will probably ever know. This reality—which has played a key role in transforming the United States into a Failed State—has its origins in the Cold War and the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. Norman Mailer was one of the most insightful chroniclers of Cold War America, and in this episode I talk to two people who knew him personally and saw him in action as he reckoned with the realities of the CIA and that seminal event in conspiracy culture, the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

In this action-packed episode of FAILED STATE UPDATE, I break out a certain conspiracy theory-themed trivia board game ("Conspiracy Theory" by Neddy Games) and host an action-packed competition between four fascinating dudes. Come for the conspiracy questions! Stay for the learned discursions! With internet celebrities Joseph Matheny, JG Michael and Jon Marsh (and one international man of mystery, Kirk 'Mad Dog' Cooke).

Pearse Redmond is a podcaster, writer, and one of the leading figures of the Jeffrey Epstein research community. For years, when no one in the mainstream media cared, Pearse and his cohort were diving deep into Epstein-world, trying to figure out what the man was up to and how to get him put in the slammer for good. In this episode of Failed State Update, we discuss some of the more bizarre aspects of the Epstein case and why it took the mainstream media so long to catch up with the conspiracy theorists.

Back by popular demand, this episode features more dirt on Ted Gunderson. It starts out pretty straightforward, with digital forensic investigator Ed Opperman talking about his experience with the disgraced former FBI agent. Then public satanist Lucien Greaves talks a bit about his investigations into the Satanic Panic, including his experiences with ol' Ted. Finally, Joseph Matheny comes on for a wide-ranging chat about QAnon, the Finders as metaprogramming, the gameplay-theater-ceremonial magick nexus, and more! Things start out pretty down-to-earth, but by the end of the episode, there is plenty of esoterica for you to chew on. Get ready to have your mind blown, then press play...

But for chrissake, if you haven't listened to the previous episode (24), please be sure to, so you don't get too lost...

What we have here is my first ever presentation to a conference, in which I use the story of The Finders—a small commune unfairly maligned as a "cult"—to discuss the political dimension of conspiracy theories. The talk also covers the story of Ted Gunderson, who went from being an FBI-COINTELPRO guy to a major figure in conspiracy theory culture. And of course, I tie this all back to QAnon. Ends with a brief discussion of Grey Faction, the group that sponsored the conference. There's a lot of interesting, little-discussed history here, suitable for listening during jogs, long car rides, and wherever else you consume your podcasts.

Very excited to once again have author, academic, and political commentator Jared Yates Sexton on the show to address the (failed) state of the union. He has a new book out called American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World But Failed Its People, and it's one you're definitely going to want to check out, as it lays bare all the myths and falsehoods that Keep America Great Again for the 1%. 

Podcast up this episode of FAILED STATE UPDATE to hear about political cults,  the Third Reich as an American phenomenon, how Pizzagate has been going on since the Roman Empire, and why Americans are suckers for fascism.

In this episode of Failed State Update I'm joined by film critic, artist, and social media provocateur Dylan Coleslaw to discuss cTom's 2011 film Song of the Blind Girl.

There are underground filmmakers, and then there's cTom—or Tom Charley, as he's also known (both are pseudonyms, actually).  cTom has directed four films, all of which are ham-handed polemics against elite pedophilia and other crimes against the republic. But there are two things that make these films stand out: The fact that they were made a decade before QAnon, and the all-out incompetence of the director's craft. His films are perfect examples of the "so bad it's good" (a/k/a "awfulsome") approach to filmmaking. 

On the latest episode of Failed State Update, journalist and author Alexander Zaitchik discusses the profound implications of capitalism-run-amok on the pharmaceutical industry and the battle against COVID-19. It's one heck of a wild ride! 

In 2002, Richard McCaslin raided the elite Bohemian Grove campground in disguise as his alter ego, The Phantom Patriot. His plan was to prevent the kind of ritualistic child sacrifice that Alex Jones had talked about in the film Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove. Luckily, there was nothing of the sort going on. He would spend the next six years in jail for the armed raid. 

Author Tea Krulos, who knew McCaslin personally,  joins me in this episode of FAILED STATE UPDATE to discuss McCaslin, Alex Jones, and the strange turn this country has made over the last year or so. Where The Phantom Patriot was once a lone kook, these days the kookiness is endemic. 

Tim Schwab is a freelance journalist based in Washington DC and 2019 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow. Tonight he's visiting the Failed State to talk about his latest for Columbia Journalism Review, "Journalism’s Gates Keepers." In the post-Covid world, where Bill Gates is seen as something of a technocratic foil to Trump's science-blind political posturing, it's important to examine the Gates's eponymous foundation with a critical eye. And that's what' Schwab has been doing, in articles for CJR and The Nation that ask if all that cash the Foundation is spreading around doesn't have some pretty significant strings attached.

Mark Laxer is an author and former follower of the cult leader Frederick Philip Lenz. He broke away from Lenz some time ago, only to realize recently that Trump's base is going through the same process that he went through as a member of a destructive cult.

Mark has written about this in two books: Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult (1993) and his latest, Rama Trauma Trump: I Left the Cult and Now Look What Happened.

I have a trio of great guests on this episode. And we'll need to talk to a lot of people if we're going to get to the bottom of what's happening in Portland with the feds, and the kidnapping, and that sort of thing. KRISTIAN WILLIAMS is the author of a number of great books, including Our Enemies In Blue. He's also a police abolition activist based in Portland. He's able to give us some perspective on who the feds are in the city, what they're up to, and any broader implications there may be. JUNIPER SIMONIS provides a firsthand account of what it's like to be arbitrarily detained and then released for doing nothing illegal in the general vicinity of the feds. And lastly (but first on the episode) freelance journalist GARRISON DAVIS will give us the skinny on what it's been like to be on the frontlines of the Portland uprising since the beginning. It's a nebulous story, but I think these three individuals will get us a lot closer to what's really going on.

Has "cancel culture" hit the UFO scene? Probably not. But MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) has had a few controversies over the years, including a recent one where the State Director of Vermont and Rhode Island lost his position for some really messed up Facebook posts. To shed some light on what's happening there, I spoke with Eric Smith, a MUFON field investigator based in Rhode Island. He says that the UFO scene is getting increasingly younger and more progressive — and that MUFON doesn't seem to be keeping up. We'll also speak to Andy Gittlitz, host of The Antifada podcast and author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism, a book about a strain of communism that isn't afraid to incorporate more outlandish ideas into its philosophy. Tune in and find out what "fully luxury automated communism" is anyways,

NOTE: I've fixed the wonky audio 30 minutes in and updated the file.

I've always been fascinated by the weird, parallel Christian media universe, so for this episode, I figure we'd consult the experts. Boys Bible Study is a podcast known for its hilarious and insightful reviews of faith-based movies (a fair amount of which involve Kevin Sorbo somehow). In this episode of Failed State Update, I will be joined by the Bible boys: Ash, Julian, and Scott, as we discuss The Reliant (2019). This film ostensibly stars Kevin Sorbo and Eric Roberts, but in reality, it's just two hours of kids camping in the woods. Their time is spent cowering from a vague, Antifa-like threat that has taken over the cities and whining about God. It's a look into a parallel reality that's only becoming more prevalent in this country every day.

From my other podcast, The So-Called Prophet From Pittsburgh about a UFO cult in Arizona and its leader, Gabriel. Joshua Lilly (spiritual name: VanMon) was brought into the Global Community Communications Alliance as a kid, kicked out as a teenager, and joined again as an adult. Practically his entire family is still in the group. In this in-depth conversation, Josh relates the path that drew him to Gabriel of Urantia (twice). We also discuss cult members' motivations, cult "mind control" techniques, how the group gets its money, and the spiritual elitism in our culture. At the beginning of the episode, I share a little bit about how the GCCA is handling the COVID-19 crisis.

Stuart Schrader is a Lecturer/Assistant Research Scientist in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. In this episode of Failed State Update, we talk about the little-understood facts that the United States is an empire, and that what our police do at home has a striking resemblance to what our military does overseas. Of course, this has some very serious implications for the current resistance movement that's been so busy on the streets of America since the murder of George Floyd.

For this episode, I spoke with two pretty smart dudes. First off, Jared Yates Sexton (a political analyst, associate professor, and author of the forthcoming book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People) discussed authoritarianism, both in the Trump White House and in the hearts of too many of us. We also covered the role of conspiracy theories in... well, almost everything. After that, my interview with Shane Burley (author of Fascism Today: What It Is And How To End It) covers fascism, anti-fascism, and the George Floyd Protests. This is good content to consume if you want to pretend you've read the above books.

For fifteen years, Jim DeRogatis was the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was while there that Jim and his colleague Abdon Pallasch became the first reporters to expose R. Kelly's sex trafficking cult. His book Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly both exposes what rich people get away with in this country and gives the reader a first-hand account of the work that investigative journalists do. I think it's one of the most important books of 2019.

There's an uprising goin' on. But while the oppressed are uprising, and the cops are knocking heads, right-wing thugs are waiting to take advantage of the chaos for their own fiendish ends. And these ain't your daddy's racists: they believe in meme magick and wear aloha shirts.

In this episode of Failed State Update, I talk to two people who have devoted some serious time and effort to understanding Q Anon, the Boogaloo Bois, and other absurd modern manifestations of the radical right. 

Mike Rains is the host of the Poker Politics podcast, for those who want to get into the weeds of Q Anon analysis. 

CV Vitolo-Haddad is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the Alt-Right, Boogaloo Bois, and other fascist creeps.

I'm a veteran of the anti-globalization movement, but sadly these days COVID-19 and some seriously messed up lungs have turned my activism into slacktivism. When I wasn't busy yesterday Venmo-ing my donation to the Pittsburgh Freedom Fund (see "Pittsburgh Jailbreak," below), I spent about 12 hours monitoring Twitter feeds, live streams, and my handy police scanner to try to get an idea of what was going on during the Battle of Pittsburgh.

On this episode of Failed State Update, I will ponder paranoia, provocateurs, the Phoenix Program, and the one weird thing that connects Vietnam to political activism. Special guests include Pittsburgh activist Vincent Scotti Eirene of Duncan and Porter House, and Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam.

Clearly, the American Empire is clocking out — it's anybody's guess whether it will go with a whimper or with a bang, but it seems likely that we'll know the answer to that question relatively soon. But what did it take to forge this empire in the first place, and how can it be that so many Americans are unaware that this imperium even exists? In the latest episode of Failed State Update, I will be speaking with Vincent Bevins, a journalist and the author of the recently released The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. As it turns out, the bloodiest and most horrific acts of American imperialism are the ones we've never heard of. Also discussed: Covid-19 as a symptom of America's collective insanity, and Russiagate as psychological projection.

Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist and the author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (PublicAffairs, 2018). We spoke recently about the response to COVID-19 in the city of Los Angeles, where he currently lives. Since it's Yasha, the conversation quickly turned to surveillance and empire and the fact that the systemic collapse of the USA (ca. 2020) is largely the result of the chickens coming home to roost — as web 2.0 influencer Ward Churchill might say. After taping that call I decided to expand the discussion a bit by bringing on Anne Orchier, an organizer with NOlympics LA, about why the Olympics is bad news and how Los Angeles is, much like the rest of the country, experiencing "disaster capitalism" run amok. 

This episode of Failed State Update is about the intersection of government spies and ETs. As far as I can tell (and who can really tell?) the UFO community has been encouraged to pursue and promote some wacko ideas over the years by the United States Air Force to distract them from the shitty things the government is doing (and the scary weapons their government is creating). The best evidence supporting this hypothesis is the story of a defense contractor named Paul Bennewitz who we will discuss here in some detail. But there is also the strange case of Tom DeLonge of Blink-182: can we really trust an overgrown pop-punker whose think tank fraternates with the CIA and Lockheed Martin? As usual, Failed State Update provides few answers, but asks plenty of questions.

Laura Johnston Kohl grew up as an activist in Washington, D.C., and watched as many of her heroes were assassinated in the 1960s. She attended college in Connecticut and continued her commitment to work for change and to make a difference.  While exercising her civil rights to protest peacefully, she was tear-gassed while protesting the war in Vietnam.  After a brief marriage, a visit to Woodstock, and a stint working with the Black Panthers, she moved to California to join her sister. Soon after that, she was introduced to Peoples Temple and spent the next nine years in California and Guyana.

In this episode of Failed State Update, Laura will tell us how Jim Jones used radical politics and religious faith to trap people in his apocalyptic cult. It's a riveting history and an important cautionary tale.

In the second episode of Failed State Update, we check in on Christian Smalls, the ex-Amazon employee who lost his job fighting to protect his coworkers from Covid-19.  And then we'll have a wide-ranging conversation with J.P. Sottile, the journalist behind the influential Rundown newsletter, about the strange political and psychological times we've found ourselves in. Topics include the generation gap, fascism, nuclear war, and looking at the bright side of the system's collapse. 

[CORRECTION: I'm pretty sure I referred to Christian Smalls as "Christopher" on the podcast. Apologies.]

In the premiere episode, Joseph "Lenny" Flatley talks to J.G. Michael of Parallax Views about the politics of the anti-quarantine movement and the tragic canceling of Insane Clown Posse's 2020 Gathering of the Juggalos music festival. He also speaks to Christian Yingling of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia and John "Wagz" Wagner of the PA Lightfoot Militia about the militia movement's response to Covid-19.