Every Conspiracy Ends Here

Black Sun Session 7: Conspiracy Beliefs, the Protocols, and the Entertainment You're Already Consuming

You’re already in the conspiracy world. You might not know it, but you are.

If you’ve listened to Joe Rogan, if you’ve watched Tucker Carlson, if you’ve followed Candace Owens, Ian Carroll, or Alex Jones—or if you’ve so much as scrolled past a reel about the deep state, FEMA camps, or “what they don’t want you to know”—you have been drinking from a well that was thoroughly poisoned before you ever got there.

I know, because I drank from it too. For years.

The Last Thing I Had to Throw Out

I spent two decades in the New Age. I entered the rave scene in San Francisco around the year 2000. By 2018, after three trips to Burning Man and a plunge into what I call the “deep New Age,” I was fully immersed in the conspiracy worldview: galactic civilizations, the moon being fake, the works.

I’ve said many times in this series that when you throw out a biblical framework for reality and go shopping, you end up in some very strange aisles. I should know, because I wandered those aisles for years.

Then I became a Christian in 2020. Like many New Age converts, shortly thereafter I burned my tarot cards and books, smashed my idols with a hammer, and threw out what I couldn’t break.

But there was one thing I didn’t destroy, because I didn’t recognize it for what it was: the conspiracy worldview, itself. That was the last piece of the New Age that had to be sanctified out of me.

And it didn’t start happening until July 2024, after Stone Choir and when I started reading Black Sun. So for me, “Chapter 14: Conspiracy Beliefs and the New World Order,” was uncomfortably like looking in a mirror.

The Poison at the Bottom of the Well

Grandfathers of Conspiracy: Bill Cooper and David Icke

Here’s what Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke documents in this chapter, which he published in 2002. At the very foundations of the American conspiracy movement sit two men, Bill Cooper and David Icke. Before there was an Alex Jones, before there was an Ian Carroll, before there was a Joe Rogan mainstreaming conspiracy content in a cloud of bong smoke, there was Cooper and Icke.

Both of them—explicitly and by name—cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as central to their worldview.

Bill Cooper’s landmark book, Behold a Pale Horse, published in 1991, includes a complete reprint of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as its fifteenth chapter. He included the full text of the 1923 Victor Marsden translation. Cooper suggested readers substitute “Illuminati” for “Jews” and “cattle” for “goyim,” but he printed the Protocols in full and built his conspiracy framework on top of them.

His book sold over half a million copies.

Behold a Pale Horse (1991) and The Robots’ Rebellion (1994)

Similarly, David Icke in his 1994 book The Robots’ Rebellion, quoted extensively from the Protocols while commenting on how their plans had been realized in current political developments. When confronted with the fact that Hitler used the Protocols to incite antisemitism, Icke responded (in classic New Age fashion) that “because Hitler used knowledge for negative reasons doesn’t reflect on the knowledge itself.” Meanwhile, Icke expressly acknowledges Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse as a source.

Now here’s the scary part: in Black Sun, Goodrick-Clarke documents that investigators found extremist groups were pursuing a deliberate strategy of entryism through David Icke. Far right and Neo Nazi groups purposefully targeted him, intending to use his platform to disseminate their ideas into the New Age and Green movements.

Read that last sentence again and think about your favorite conspiracy-friendly podcaster.

This is not about the Protocols as a fringe document from history that the conspiracy industry stumbled upon. Instead, the Protocols is the conspiracy industry’s foundation. Nor was the conspiracy world “infiltrated” by the Protocols. It was built on them.

Bill Cooper didn’t toss in the Protocols in as a curiosity or an afterthought. He printed the entire text and constructed his worldview from it… while throwing in a couple of shallow word substitutions to protect himself from charges of bigotry later.

Three years later, David Icke cited Bill Cooper. The next generation of conspiracy content creators cited David Icke. And now millions of people consume conspiracy content every day without knowing they’re standing on a rotten foundation.

So if you’ve been listening to me talk about Hyperborean edits, Savitri Devi, and Miguel Serrano while thinking, “That has nothing to do with me”… guess what? If you listen to Joe Rogan, if you watch Tucker Carlson, if you follow Ian Carroll, or if you consume—or produce!— any conspiracy content at all, you need to think twice.

You’re not several steps removed from the Protocols. You’re one step removed.

The only difference between you and the guy posting Hyperborean edits is that he went digging and found what’s at the bottom. You just haven’t dug deep enough yet.

Because there is no road through the conspiracy industry that doesn’t end at Bill Cooper. Even Art Bell of Coast to Coast AM didn’t start getting into conspiracy content until the early 1990’s, right when Cooper published his book.

Let me be clear: that doesn’t make everyone who enjoys conspiracy content an antisemite. But it means the well you’re drinking from was poisoned at the source, and ignorance of that fact won’t make the water clean.

The Consent of Your Conscience

This is the part that should alarm everyone with a living conscience, and especially Christians. Goodrick-Clarke explains that the conspiracy worldview always arrives at the exact same destination:

“Because war is being waged against you, you are justified in waging war back.”

Those words aren’t stated as plainly today. But in the old days, conspiracy content creators were much more open about it. Cooper said explicitly in 1991 that peaceful citizens are justified in taking “any measures, including violence, to identify, counterattack, and destroy the enemy.” Goodrick-Clarke calls this “a lethal projection.” In other words, by accusing others of being tyrants, you are vindicated in being a tyrant in response.

That was the intended function of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and is why Norman Cohn called his book Warrant for Genocide. The Protocols don’t just describe a conspiracy, they provide the moral license to act. They give men the consent of their conscience to commit violence, using a straightforward logic: if the Jews—or the elites, or the Illuminati, or whatever word you substitute—are waging total war against you, then total war back is not just permitted. It’s required.

This is why young men who started with memes and podcasts end up in dark places. They probably didn’t set out to become extremists or antisemites. They set out to understand why their world felt broken. They went looking for answers.

And the answers they found that were packaged as entertainment, forbidden knowledge, or “what they don’t want you to know,” led them down a well that has poison at the source.

The Protocols have been disseminated worldwide since the late 1800s. Cooper put them in a bestselling book in 1991. Icke amplified them through the New Age. Finally, COVID opened the floodgates.

And now millions of people are consuming content shaped by a forged document that was designed to justify genocide.

There is nothing new under the sun. Or as I said in the recording: there is nothing new under the Black Sun, either.

Check Your Feed

If you’re wondering where all the antisemitism is coming from on X, in Telegram channels, in the comment sections and podcasts of Reformed pastors, you don’t need to look further than your own smartphone and the entertainment choices you’ve been making since 2020.

Don’t believe me? The first fifty pages of Black Sun are free on Kindle. Download them. Read them. If you recognize anything in there, buy the book.

Don’t take my word for it.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Once again, this session ran longer than I intended. And even though Goodrick-Clarke’s “Conclusion: The Politics of Identity” is only a few pages long, it’s worthy of its own discussion. I intend to do that soon.

However, with a baby on the way who’s due anytime, circumstances may delay that session. I humbly request your patience, as I try to do this discussion the justice I believe that it deserves.

Thank you :)

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