The Devil & Naomi Wolf

in response to 'Have the Ancient Gods Returned?'

Everywhere I turn people are talking about evil, evil that has a name—Satan, the Devil, right here in Atmospheric River City. In a previous episode I talked about Robert Malone blaming the covert psy-ops on Satan and the narcissism parasite that’s in all of us. Aubrey Marcus called it the empire virus where, after the chaos warriors go kamikaze on the Death Star, you wake up with your face bloody from eating your neighbor but there’s instant forgiveness. Everybody was possessed. The Devil made us do it. It’s the Satan virus zombifying our brains, ala Mattias Desmet.

Evil is a hot topic. Harrison Koeli calls it by the fancy name Ponerology in his stack. Luc Koch asks whether humans are fundamentally good or bad. Celia Farber writes about the rise of pop culture’s woke Satanism, and says those warning against it can now rest their case. And Peter Singer makes the point that ‘ordinary people are evil,’ from a 1972 ethics paper I debunked over a decade ago.

Even Conspiracy Sarah invokes the horned one in saying,

If I were a terribly nefarious procurer of the devil’s work, I would think to my horrible self, “Terrible-nefarious-devil-self, how could I negatively affect the most people? What thing effects everyone? ” 🤔

Food, water, and air are already taken…why not villain-ize

→THE SUN ←

In this episode, however, I’m going to focus on Naomi Wolf’s article, “Have the Ancient Gods Returned?” Her premise is that the events of the last 2.5 years can’t be explained “in ordinary material, political or historical terms.” Only by “existential, metaphysical darkness.” She writes:

I could not explain the way the Western world simply switched from being based at least overtly on values of human rights and decency, to values of death, exclusion and hatred, overnight, en masse — without reference to some metaphysical evil that goes above and beyond fallible, blundering human agency. …

What we have lived through since 2020 is so sophisticated, so massive, so evil, and executed in such inhumane unison, that it cannot be accounted for without venturing into metaphysics. Something else, something metaphysical, must have done that. And I speak as a devoted rationalist.

I admire Naomi but had to laugh with the ‘at least overtly’ for the values of human rights and decency on which the Western world is based. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here, the difference between how things seem overtly and what the reality is covertly, superficial vs. real, what’s said vs. what’s actually done? Overt ‘values’ are psyops and virtue-signaling. No one could look at the last two centuries of the Western world or the last two millenia and find it based on human rights and decency.

I agree with Naomi that what we’ve lived through since 2020 is sophisticated, massive and executed in unison. Is that beyond the scope of humans? Or is Naomi not looking hard enough? Let’s look at how she defines Satan from her Jewish tradition:

The way in which the Hebrew “ha-satan” differs from the Christian Satan is important: … If I “satan” someone, I oppose them, accuse them, or slander them…. Thus, in Hebrew, the noun and verb שׂטן (satan) can have the non-technical meaning of “stand opposed to someone as an adversary.” In the case of Balaam, even the Lord’s messenger was a “satan” to him, that is, a God-sent opponent. That is the first point to keep in mind: unlike in English, where “Satan” always refers to a malevolent being, in Hebrew satan can have a generic, non-technical meaning.”

Because our (Jewish) tradition of Satan is more impressionistic than the character who appeared later under Christian narratives, I felt that “Satan” was not sufficient to explain fully the inexplicable, immediate mirror-imaging of what had been our society, from ordered at least on the presumption of morality, to being ordered around death and cruelty. But I did not at that time have a better concept with which to work.

Once again, lots of qualifiers there: ‘the presumption of morality’. That’s a big presume. I think it’s interesting that the Hebrew satan isn’t even evil enough to have committed the ‘inexplicable, immediate mirror-imaging of what had been our society … to one ordered around death and cruelty.’

I’m trying to be kind here but has Naomi lived in the same Western world I have? I have her book The End of America in which she compares the post-911 US to Nazi Germany or Pinochet’s Chile. Is she aware of how the US put Pinochet in power after the violent coup that deposed Allende after three years of CIA plotting? Even the term America is telling, where it only refers to the US and not two continents full of countries that are equally America.

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But let’s look at the Christian Satan, who seems to have more bonafides in evil than the Hebrew. Elaine Pagels has written The Origin of Satan that starts by clarifying that the gospels are wartime literature with the earliest, Mark, written in 70 CE, the year that the Roman siege of Jerusalem ended in the rape, slaughter, torture and enslavement of the insurgent Judeans who had kicked out Rome for three years.

In Jesus is the OG PsyOps, in which I also question Naomi’s assumptions, I talk about the zealot revolution. Where does the gospel of Mark stand? According to Elaine:

Mark takes a conciliatory attitude toward the Romans … the two trial scenes included in this gospel effectively indict the Jewish leaders for Jesus’ death while somewhat exonerating the Romans. Mark virtually invents a new Pilate—a well-meaning weakling solicitous of justice but, as Mark depicts him, intimidated by the chief priests within his own council chamber and by crowds shouting outside, so that he executes a man he suspects may be innocent. [10]

History, Elaine explains, tells a different story of a man of “ruthless, stubborn and cruel disposition” famous for brutally suppressing unruly crowds and frequent executions without trial. Where does Satan come in?

The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces … The gospels almost never identify Satan with the Romans, but they consistently associate him with Jesus’ Jewish enemies … in every case the decision to place the story of Jesus within the context of God’s struggle against Satan tends to minimize the role of the Romans, and to place increasing blame instead upon Jesus’ Jewish enemies. [13]

If we look at the story of Jesus being invented by Josephus, as Joe Atwill and I do, Satan and his demons become—not the enemies of Jesus—but the enemies of Rome. They are the zealots who believe in sovereignty, not empire. They see all people as equal, not some with the right to rule and some born to obey. Perhaps they answered the ‘call to arms’ on Naomi’s back cover “spurring us to act ... as rebels and patriots—to save our liberty and defend our nation.”

This demonization of the Jews should be especially important to Naomi since pograms tended to follow the Good Friday reading of ‘the Passion.’ This is particularly pointed out by James Carroll in Constantine’s Sword. This is what’s called the ‘blood libel.’ Rather than reviving the concept of Satan, Naomi should be naming it as the psyops that’s been used against her people for two millenia.

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Naomi, however, has bigger fish to fry than some little ha-Satan. She describes:

The sheer amoral power of Baal, the destructive force of Moloch, the unrestrained seductiveness and sexual licentiousness of Astarte or Ashera — those are the primal forces that do indeed seem to me to have “returned.”

Or at least the energies that they represent — moral power-over; death-worship; antagonism to the sexual orderliness of the intact family and faithful relationships — seem to have ‘returned,’ without restraint, since 2020.

Where were these sexually licentious raves being held during the pandemic? Why wasn’t I invited? There was so much ‘sexual orderliness’ going on during the pandemic that bodies weren’t even involved, as Bo Burnham illustrates poignantly in his one-man show Inside. Naomi observed a much less boring pandemic than I saw.

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What’s allowed the return of these feisty, bloodthirsty, horny gods? The Jews have broken the covenant:

I was taught in Hebrew School that we as Jews are forever God’s “chosen people.”

But God does not say that consistently in the Old Testament, at all.

There are many times a “Covenant” is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. But when YHWH explains what He wants from his Children, in “Exodus”, He is clear that certain conduct is expected from us, in order for us to receive his blessing …

I always thought that many Jews, and indeed the education I had in Hebrew School, alarmingly misread what YHWH so clearly stated. I was taught that being “chosen” as God’s people was a static, lucky status. All you had to do was to be born Jewish—better yet, to be born Jewish, marry a Jewish spouse, raise Jewish children, light Shabbat candles, go to synagogue on the High Holy Days, and visit the State of Israel. I was also taught that God bestowed the Land of Israel to the Jewish people unconditionally.

We were not taught in Hebrew school what the Hebrew Bible really says — that we could indeed lose God’s favor and be “un-Chosen” again.

This shocked me. I’ve never heard someone Jewish so blatantly admit that they are taught God’s favoritism for them in Hebrew school, one that depends on being born Jewish, marrying Jewish and raising racially pure Jewish children. And Naomi didn’t do the Fiddler-shuffle of ‘Sure we’re chosen … why doncha choose someone else, God?’

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As an example of the covenant, Naomi invokes Noah in Genesis 9:8-17. But let’s look at what happens after the rainbow in Genesis 9:18-29:

The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.

Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth, may Japheth live in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his slave.”

After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Altogether Noah lived 950 years and then he died.

Yet his curse lives on. The next section clarifies that the descendants of Shem are the Semites. In an archived episode of my Third Paradigm radio show called Nasty Noah & the Patriarchs, I continue the story:

To clarify, the Canaanites today are called Palestinian, those cursed to be perpetual slaves to their brothers. It says they spread from Sidon to Gaza. One descendent of Ham is Babel where God destroys the tower. But Shem's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson is Abraham. He goes into the land of the Canaanites, where God promises his offspring all the land he can see in every direction. This is the source of Hebrew entitlement to Israel, as the descendants of Shem and Japheth. Egypt was another of Ham's sons, and Sodom and Gomorrah are descendents of Canaan, making their guilt only as credible as his.

If this thread of logic is cut, the entire fabric of Hebrew superiority unravels. Does God really curse Canaan and his descendants because Noah says so? And how does Canaan get into the curse at all? It's his father Ham who talks. What does Ham really say? In the apocryphal gospels, to cover with a garment is a euphemism for covering the truth with a lie. So let's see—Noah is drunk and naked, Ham walks into the tent and sees something that he refuses to shut up about. Somehow, Noah gets furious at his grandson. What would Freud say? Is he blaming the victim? Are Sodom and Gomorrah displacement of guilt?

So the God who gave Palestine, the land of the Canaanites, to Israel, the descendants of Shem, is a God who listens to drunkards who curse the children they rape because they told on them. Noah commands God to condemn his grandson to be a slave to the uncles who covered his shame, and for Canaan's descendants to serve all of their descendants. But from the evidence, neither Ham nor his brothers paid any attention to this curse. Their clans multiplied and prospered mutually for thousands of years. This curse was buried until a Biblical rationale for slavery was needed, when Africans became the descendants of Ham.

God never acted on Noah's curse. But we do what God will not. We give nuclear weapons and 10 million dollars a day to the descendants of Shem to enslave the children of Canaan. They lost their inheritance rights when Canaan told on his grandfather. That’s the repercussions of this four-thousand year-old curse.

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Naomi writes, “The Bible is all around us in the West — or it has been — even though we think we are living in a postmodern reality. We have been blind to its influence, for the most part.” I agree with that. The moral superiority assumed in colonization, slavery, Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, ‘American exceptionalism’ and blowing up other people’s pipelines comes straight from those pages, old and new.

What are the things of which Yahweh approves? Raping your sister, impregnating your daughters then blaming it on them for getting you drunk, sending those same daughters out to a mob to be gang-raped, tearing your concubine limb from limb because she went home to her father, pawning off your wife as your sister to be the King’s consort to protect your own skin, and pretty much anything you do to a woman.

What is it that earns God’s wrath? Intermarriage with the Canaanites. The entire Torah is an anti-Canaanite polemic, starting with Cain whose name is all too similar and his crime based on somebody who claims to speak for God. I’ll be giving more examples of this pattern in future episodes, including why Abraham was really the mercenary warlord Abdi-Ashirta, Joseph was an Egyptian Monsanto, and Moses led the ruling class out of Egypt.

The examples Naomi gives of breaking God’s covenant include lurid photos of scantily clad dancers, horned costumes and strange statues of RBG. To me, God doesn’t care what you wear, how you dance, what art you make, who you have sex with or how much sex you have. God cares about the violence we do to other people, and how our moral superiority lets us justify land theft and slavery.

If Satan stands for sovereignty, I stand with Satan. As the Bible defines Semitism, I am anti-Semitic. I do not honor God’s 4000 year covenant with the sons of Shem that they will own and rule all the lands of the earth, and the descendants of Canaan will be their slaves … because Canaan, the little snitch, talked about what his grandfather did when he was drunk and naked.

I am not, however, anti-Judaism. It was the Judeans who believed that all people had a right to be free and govern themselves, and they were fearless in defending—not only themselves—but other territories like Samaria. Under the form of Judaism practiced by the zealots, which I believe was called The Fourth Philosophy, freedom was spreading like wildfire.

We desperately need that Judaism today and Naomi is just the person for the job of challenging the entitlement version she was taught in Hebrew school and researching the true Judaism. I hope with all my heart that she takes up this task.

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For more in the Biblical realm, this is Jesus Is the OG PsyOps:

Nothing says Christmas like conspiracy research! In this episode, I examine Joe Atwill's book, Caesar's Messiah: the Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. I talk about my initial rejection of the concept, only to find that every Bible scholar I read confirmed it, without any idea that they were. Naomi Wolf's post, A Walt Whitman Poem for Christmas Day is subtitled Must We Really Stand Up for the Truth? From it, I distill the inherent dogmas of superiority that she isn't willing to question: Christianity, Judaism, America, academia and artists. With admiration for Naomi, I talk about why our unexamined dogmas make us vulnerable to manipulation. My book, How to Dismantle an Empire, begins by looking at democracy and money as the foundational psy-ops of Western civilization and this episode adds the third pillar of Judeo-Christianity.

and The War on Burkas on Sam Harris:

In Feb of 2018, Russell Brand asked Sam, "What's the biggest threat to freedom, Islam or consumerism?" I rephrase consumerism as capitalism and deconstruct Sam's examples of burkas and suicide bombers that he used to show religious ideology, particularly of Islam, was the source of all evil. I look at how this reasoning gave a faux-moral rationale for the occupation of Afghanistan and the killing of 1M people since 9-11, letting motivators like paychecks and profits off the hook. Rephrasing Russell's 2021 video, I ask "Did Sam Harris Use Feminism to Justify the Afghan Clusterf*ck?" and I urge Sam to question his dogma of moral superiority and its cover of "humanitarian intervention."