David Graeber: Fowl Play?

Was David Graeber murdered, assassinated, culled, or killed by his own ideology?

I’ll examine each of these possibilities with the help of Crow, Nevermore Media’s gumshoe detective, and his bird of a feather, Tobin Owl. Any bad puns are purely the responsibility of the author and neither bird can be held liable. The puns will continue until morale declines! And yes I know that crows and owls aren’t fowl weather friends.

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murder most fowl

Crow has crowed that he’s the leading proponent of the theory that Graeber was assassinated by his wife. In this essay, The Wisdom of Kandiaronk, Crow asks if this was the essay that got David Graeber killed?

THE WISDOM OF KANDIARONK (WAS THIS THE ESSAY THAT GOT DAVID GRAEBER KILLED?)

He writes:

About a year after he died, a book called The Dawn of Everything appeared, which was allegedly co-written by David Graeber and his long-time collaborator David Wengrow, a British archaeologist.

The book is an enigma wrapped in riddle. One reviewer called it “a savant-idiot mix of dazzling success and ridiculous failure”, and I’d say that sums it up nicely. Many people have expressed amazement that a scholar as brilliant as Graeber could say so many stupid things in a single volume.

If you are curious about exploring this rabbit hole, I would highly recommend starting with the excellent series of videos produced by the always-illuminating What is Politics? YouTube channel.

Crow continues:

If you ask me, it’s not enough just to say that The Dawn of Everything is puzzling. David Graeber died mysteriously while working on a book which aimed to change the course of human history, but the book that was actually released after his death is a full-on anti-anarchist polemic. Let’s put two and two together, folks. There’s an obvious explanation here - he was assassinated because his ideas were dangerous.

I believe that The Dawn of Everything was based on Graeber’s real writing, but that it was heavily edited in order to support statist assumptions.

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lame duck conspiracy theory

In How Did David Graeber die? Crow writes:

How did David Graeber die?

The cause of death, according to his wife, was necrotic pancreatitis. On October 6th 2020, Nika Dubrovsnky, who had married Graeber a year earlier, made a blog post entitled “My opinion on David’s cause of death”, in which she wrote:

Many people asked me what the reason for David's death was. The Venetian hospital stated in autopsy's results that the cause of death is massive internal bleeding caused by pancreatitis necrosis. I want to add my own conspiracy theory: I firmly believe it is related to Сovid…

It was tough for David to abide by the rules of isolation, not go to the cafes, not meet with neighbors; he hated masks and continuously tried to reuse single-use gloves.

David (gently) complained about me to his friends, telling them how I "torture" him. In general, David was a heartfelt person, and his whining was in many ways boasting: "Look how Nika takes care and worries about me! "

However, I send rays of hatred to the careless idiots who giggled at my efforts to isolate and advised David to ignore my demands.

Of course, I know that I am the one to blame. David was an obedient Jewish husband. I could have put my foot down and demanded we leave immediately and spend the entire lockdown self-isolating in a remote village somewhere. But I didn't. I don't know why. I didn't want to be a control freak or a "strict wife."

We both started having strange symptoms in March. About once a week, we'd get headaches, felt muscle pain, tingling in the lungs, extreme tiredness (to the point of not being able to talk on the phone). Just continually wanting to sleep.

Then everything would go away, but after 5-8 days, the symptoms would repeat. We cared for each other tenderly: we brought tea with ginger and lemon and vitamins to each other. I mostly slept all day, and David took hot baths.

Later I recovered completely, while David developed strange new symptoms. It all started with a peculiar soapy taste in his mouth. He felt it after meals and said it continued throughout the day. We stopped using washing liquid on our dishes. David went to the dentist and had his gums deep cleaned several times to prevent inflammation. He got (several!) root canal treatments. We didn't know what else we could do.

He got an antibody test. The result was negative.

A while later, he began feeling a tingling sensation in his fingertips. He attributed this to practicing too much guitar playing. Then the tingling began in his toes and legs too. Fatigue. Mild but persistent abdominal pain; digestive disorders. But primarily constant fatigue. We consulted various doctors. We did various tests. First, in London, then in Berlin.

All the doctors said the same thing: there are no obvious symptoms, but you have "post-viral syndrome, wait, and everything will pass."

And we waited.

David was tested for Covid at clinics in Venice, with negative results. When I asked if his death could be related to Covid, the doctor replied, "if you test positive for Covid, then you have Covid. A negative test does not mean that you do not have it." And I feel the same way as his doctor. I feel that Covid was a reason why he developed this strange and bizarre illness so rapidly. I blame for this the joke-government of Boris Johnson and general human stupidity and self-reliance.

David died of necrotic pancreatitis and internal bleeding, but why suddenly the healthy, totally never-drinking-alcohol David would develop this disease. Why would it be so sudden and quick?  Why did such strange symptoms accompany it? Why did it start right after we thought we had Covid?

Crow summarizes:

Let’s recap. One of the most important anarchist thinkers in the world dies mysteriously after complaining to his friends of a soapy taste in his mouth, which is a symptom of poisoning, and no one finds his death a wee bit suspicious?

Furthermore, his wife, who presumably inherited his estate, blames his death on a non-existent virus, despite the fact that he died of internal bleeding. Do viruses cause the rapid onset of internal bleeding now? Since when? …

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a murder of crows

(Yes that is what a flock of crows is called!) Crow asks, “Was David Graeber poisoned by his wife?”

Although there’s overlap in all these categories of inflicted death, I think that murder and assassination are mutually exclusive. Murder is done for personal reasons, like an inheritance or revenge. Assassination is political.

For Nika to have been an agent supplied with poison by the state would have been a long game to play. Although they’d been married only a year, she posted a picture of her son as a toddler on his 18th birthday, saying that was around when she’d met David. She’s an attractive single mother, which may have appealed to David.

She also strikes me as naive, gullible and reactionary. She and David started a nonprofit called The Yes Women for East German women who’d been denied their pensions. Here is their mission statement:

Bizarre, eh? Nika always refers to David as “the best man in a world” and their photos are cozy and a mite cloying. David expressed astonishment that someone would want to spend the rest of their life with him … not knowing that would be a year. I think they were smitten and she fell hook, line and sinker for the CovidCon, as evidenced by this photo:

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targeted pigeons

Graeber as a targeted individual is certainly plausible, especially since he and Nika were both sick. Was it to prevent his book, The Dawn of Everything, from presenting an incendiary, world changing message? Was The Dawn of Everything a heavily edited, watered down version of Graeber’s thinking and research?

In his essay, Crow published the first English version of The Wisdom of Kandiaronk in full from David’s original essay. This was a pleasure to read. However, I didn’t think the book edited out its paradigm-shifting meaning. I had found the book version also inspiring and did my episode on Muskrat Love & Anarchy on it, linked at the end.

However, Graeber has always been a thorn in the side of the establishment, so assassination is entirely plausible.

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culling the flock

The most likely cause of death in 2020 was whatever created the symptoms that were then blamed on Covid, the non-existent virus. Conspiracy Sarah just posted these memes:

Were all the symptoms psychosomatic? For some, I suspect so. But I also give credence to Bryan Ardis and his research into synthetic snake venom, which I’ve written about here. As a poison, that could account for the soapy taste, or loss of taste that many experienced. There’s also parasites, as Pasheen of Diva Drops has chronicled, which could be why ivermectin was effective. Or radiation frequencies, as Frances Leader has been following.

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anarchist or socialist gull?

In the end, however, I think David fell victim to his own ideology, which was socialist rather than anarchist. He believed in the UK healthcare system and wouldn’t see private doctors, who may have led him to alternative explanations and treatments. He believed that government should provide for the needs of its people, like Noam Chomsky, another faux-anarchist.

His economic solution was Universal Basic Income. Like many men, he believed in the techno-fix where robots would do all the work and we’d need to manage our leisure. Women, who do more of the maintenance work of life, are less likely to fall for this.

On an overnight stay in Manchester, I mailed a copy of my book to David’s academic address at the School of London. I didn’t expect to hear back, and I didn’t. The publisher of Sun Magazine wanted me to do an interview of David. I sent a list of questions I wanted to ask to his publicist, but never got through. I was looking to start a conversation about the ways in which my economic plan addressed the problems he identified.

My model of small scale sovereignty leaves the capitalist economy alone, leaves the socialist government in place, and creates a supplemental community system of reciprocity. Without firing a shot or occupying a single plaza, it may only require Trump cancelling Social Security to bring us all together in taking back our labor from the banks. David didn’t have a plan. Also from Conspiracy Sarah:

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what is politics?

I highly recommend the What is Politics? four-part series on The Dawn of Everything. Its critique of the book is pointed, but comes from an intra-anthropologist perspective. Graeber and Wengrow use straw-man arguments against positions that anthropologists haven’t held for decades.

I learned a lot about anthropology from What is Politics? He uses the terms patrilocal and matrilocal rather than matriarchal, which is a contradiction in terms. He looks at the conditions under which societies were egalitarian, including gender equality, as I talk about in When Mothers Ran the World. A man after my own heart, he defines his terms!

Yet, as he admits, Graeber is arguing against popular misconceptions that are represented by Yuval Noah Harari and Jared Diamond, neither of whom are anthropologists. As the best-known anthropologist of our era, Graeber’s evidence for egalitarian societies is needed in the public discourse. And Graeber’s position that we can change society is needed in the public imagination.

I agree with What is Politics? that we can’t change our social system without a consideration of the material circumstances. Anarchy, however, isn’t individuals going their own way and doing what they want. It’s communities thinking through the rules instead of leaving them up to the rulers.

As he agrees with Graeber, for 90% of our existence as a species, people have lived in egalitarian societies. There’s nothing inherently hierarchical in human nature. People in stateless societies were more politically conscious—they have to be. The first step is small scale social structures. And with that agreement, it’s our job to make it so!

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Russell Brand did an interview of Noam called Anarchy and Ideas for Change. I look at three ways that Noam's ideology keeps us stuck in moral superiority rather than anarchy and blaming others instead of ideas for change. I examine the concepts of a need-based economic system, youth and activism—particularly environmentalism and Greta Thunberg, the inherent justice of toddlers, and whether it's possible to treat the symptoms and cure the disease at the same time.

In The Dawn of Everything, Davids Graeber & Wengrow tell the story of Kandiaronk, or the muskrat, the Wendat stateman who ran circles around European politicians. They also show why Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari are unduly pessimistic about the ability of humans to invent and reinvent their own social structures. I add Chris Hedges to this doom and gloom trio and explain why blind obedience has it backwards. The three essential freedoms are listed, that every person NOT trained in obedience took for granted. My theory, that money has been 3500 years of obedience training, is expounded. I end with Kandiaronk’s view of money and the question from the Daves of 'when did we stop imagining that we could reinvent our social relations?

In a recent essay on The Rings of Power, Charles Eisenstein differentiates between feminine power and 'honorary men.' The Dawn of Everything by anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow tells the creation epic of The League of Five Nations and the Jigonsaseh, or Mother of All Nations. As we enter our dark winter of the soul and look at the cult of immaturity in so-called leadership, they show us why we are orphaned by our culture and deprived of the feminine power of all of us.

David Buss, evolutionary psychologist on mating strategies, claims men are wired to seek multiple partners who are as young and fertile as their social status allows. But why do young women mate with them? To answer that, I consult anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow on the Yanomami of Venezuela, the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia, and the Wendats of Canada. They show that sexual liberty was the norm when women owned the economic resources and money was just a plaything used for status, political apologies, and gambling.