Given prior statements of Roman Polanski on the Dick Cavett show that he was a suspect of a criminal profiler in the murder of his wife – and good evidence he was a cruel husband – some of the quotes I’d seen referenced to Confessions of a Blue Movie Star seemed compelling and concerning in the potential context of both ‘murder as a fine art’ as well as information warfare. Having watched the film, it makes me think that snuff itself is likely a propaganda scheme designed to create a mass hysteria, yet around the usual kernel of truth (in these cases, murders or deaths linked to potential communists). In this sense, snuff as a genre and meme seems quite similar to – and derivative of – the satanism hysteria which followed the murder of Polanski’s wife and friends by the Charles Manson group.
“Yeah I do think a camera can be as dangerous in the hands of a ‘filmmaker’, in quotes, as a bazooka.” – Roman Polanski
Cover of the version of the movie I received. It apparently has several variations. In movie, the title seems to actually be ‘Confessions of a Blue Movie Star’, but you’ll most popularly find it cited as ‘Evolution of Snuff’. (VHSCollector.com)
It is interesting that Anger too was close to the Surrealist school of art which is considered as a possible factor in the psychological profile of the Black Dahlia murderer. Anger’s film making was inspired by the Surrealist artist Maya Deren, and his 1947 film ‘Fireworks’ led to his romantic involvement with older French artist Jean Cocteau, whom he lived with in France . (Much of the Surrealist school – including Deren – can be placed close to Communism, and Anger also seems to have boycotted Hollywood in the HUAC era, despite Anger’s precedence of using Nazi images in his films.)
Anger was also a lifelong friend of John Gilmore’s lifelong friend Curtis Harrington – a famous filmmaker associated with the occult scene in Hollywood. In addition he was connected to at least 3 of the Manson Family murderers. In this sense, Anger straddles both the Surrealist network hypothetically associated with the Black Dahlia case and the ‘satanist-cultist’ network which might be associated with the Tate-LaBianca murders.
A first at n01r today is a guest blog from Dr. Richard Spence, Professor in the History Department at the University of Idaho. Dr. Spence has one of the coolest sets of courses I’ve seen which complements a lot of the things I investigate at the site; such as the intersection of the occult, strategic disinformation, and espionage (like Theosophy).
Dr. Spence has done some great work linking Aleister Crowley to espionage networks, and was kind enough to offer a draft article of a circumstantial connection linking Jack Parsons to Soviet intelligence as well. He makes a great argument for how Parsons might have been manipulated by a skilled handler based on his (apparently narcissistic) psychology.
I’d like to launch right into my Part 2 on ‘Communist Conspiracy and Murder as a Fine Art’; but in order to make that eventual post more succinct on the parallels between Roman Polanski and Orson Welles as they may relate to the Tate-LaBianca murders and the Black Dahlia cases respectively; I first need to delve into the question of ‘who was the true heir to Aleister Crowley’? The many links to the Crowley set permeate the back story of the cult scene which seems to have given emergence to the Charles Manson crowd. We may not arrive at a definitive answer, but exploring the question of Crowley and urban legends about his heir (to wit the figures of L. Ron Hubbard and Kenneth Anger via their mutual relationships with Jack Parsons) seems to be important in terms of examining the paradigm I’m suggesting.
Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, and L. Ron Hubbard may be strong cultural influences on the Tate-LaBianca Murders
As one of two ‘American’ film directors to be honored in the Russian Golden Eagle film awards category of‘Contribution to World Cinema’(the other being Francis Ford Coppola), it seems somewhat obvious to me that Roman Polanski is a filmmaker who closely aligns with the Orson Welles style of film as (Russian / Communist) propaganda.
“The school was tightly connected with the Polish film archives and we could see anything we wanted… Personally, I was part of the [Orson] Welles group, but there were also groups of neorealists and students who liked the heroic Soviet cinema.” – Roman Polanski
In another long and diverging parallel, I truly enjoyed Mary Pacios’ book ‘Childhood Shadows’, about the January 15, 1947 murder of Elizabeth “Bette” Short – best known as ‘The Black Dahlia’, in Los Angeles California. Pacios offered a fascinating and plausible suggestion that Orson Welles could be a credible suspect in the unsolved case. Welles left the United States shortly after the death. This kind of behavior is common for murder suspects. While Pacios did not explore the politics, my prior research suggests Welles had similar motivations to flee around this time due to his Communist Party linked politics and connections to Russian espionage.
Justice Unserved: Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia
I’ve been learning more about crime scene staging and extrapolating the practical similarities to disinformation. Especially in the context of probabilistically unlikely coincidences, I have long held a view that you can’t intimately know more than one Russian spy and work with them without plausibly being at least a Russian asset yourself.
One of the 1990s conspiracy theories which I recall hearing about in popular media and internet lore is that of the ‘Beast Computer’. The 1998 track ‘Information‘ off the (Wu-Tang-Clan affiliate) Killah Priest album ‘Heavy Mental‘ might be the best popular cultural example which I can to point to that may reflect this kind of thinking. (Much like the RATM canon artistically it’s not a bad album IMHO and I like the sound, although it is chock full of anti-Americanism. Just be sure to enjoy the lyrics critically from a strategic perspective as they probably relate to a legacy of disinformation.)
It is apparent that the track captures an online premillennialist zeitgeist of apocalyptic / popular eschatological concepts. I think this strongly represents the late 90’s online anti-American conspiracy thinking which accompanied such ‘viruses of the mind‘ as ‘Nostradamus‘ and ‘Bill Gates 666 Disinformation‘ and are likely traceable to Russian active measures activity (see also, ‘False Flag‘). Specifically, for the purposes of this post, the ‘Information‘ track mentions the idea of a ‘Beast Computer’ within the context of anti-CIA/NSA sentiment, anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and even cyberspace (lyrics). The controversy surrounding the so called ‘Beast Computer of Belgium’ is in fact cited in the context of a 1998 ‘mind virus’ as well which is specific to Russia, but the conspiracy has been associated with Russian Orthodoxy overseas since at least 1982. Continue reading “The 666 Mindvirus Part II: A Russian Orthodox Connection”
Much like the fabricated Nostradamus emails, usegroup posts, and text messages which flooded the internet following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and are seemingly attributable to Russia, I recalled a similarly viral chain of disinformation from earlier in the 1990s. Lets call these fairly transparent conspiracies: ‘Bill Gates 666 disinformation’ (a good debunking can be found here).
I also just found that over the past month, Larry Flynt’s investigator Dan Moldea has been connecting with the press as well in the context of work Kavanaugh had done on Kenneth Starr’s Independent Counsel investigation into Bill Clinton — where Flynt and Moldea had come to Clinton’s rescue. In this case, Moldea is arguing not for a sex scandal (although his argument does derive from one), but for a lack of ethics regarding Clinton-era press leaks as being grounds for why Kavanaugh’s nomination should be questioned.
Here I find it important to point out that Moldea is basically the ‘standard bearer’ of the promotion of modern anti-conservative ‘Jimmy Hoffa’ conspiracy theories which emerged directly from Trotskyist-Communist labor narratives from the HUAC era and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of the 1930’s. Otherwise I think you might be able to chalk a lot of this up to harmless politics — when it may not actually be so. It creates a potential ‘Russian propaganda’ connection among the attempts to assail Judge Kavanaugh, and brings the story in line with the scope of this blog. Continue reading “Michael Avenatti and Dan Moldea vs. Nominee Brett Kavanaugh : The Muddy Wheelchair Tracks of Larry Flynt?”
