A Room 101 Interview with Joy Porter

Joy Porter is Professor of Indigenous History within the History Department at Hull University and the author of Native American Freemasonry: Associationalism and Performance in America, a book the historian was writing when she was one of my lecturers at Swansea University back in 2007. I remember once in class the subject of the Freemasons came up (not hard considering George Washington and many other of the founding fathers of the United States were Freemasons) and after class I got into what must have seemed a bit of a odd conversation to the mainstream academic about secret societies, in particular the bizarre antics of Republicans and Democrats inside the Bohemian Grove. After seeing the Indian Freemasonry book was out, I decided to catch up with my old teacher and ask her some questions about the new book and the role of Freemasonry in the early United States.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Joy. The first question I have is how did you go from writing and researching about Native Americans to writing a book about the history of Freemasonry in the United States?

Joy Porter: My first book was a biography of a key Seneca-Iroquois named Arthur Parker and he was a very committed Freemason. That got me thinking.

Richard Thomas: I know you are from Ireland and in one lecture I remember the topic of the Freemasons came up and someone in class said that in Northern Ireland there are a lot of Freemasons in the police and government. What were your initial thoughts, if any, about the secretive organization and did writing the book challenge your perceptions at all?

Joy Porter: To be honest, my knowledge of N. Irish Freemasonry is limited - that'd be a whole other book! My old friend Jim Smyth at Notre Dame has written about it in terms of Irish history- he's your man.

Richard Thomas: Thanks to the internet the Freemasons are famous for their strange rituals and costumes. Did you see any of these, what did you think? And in your opinion is Freemasonry a religion?

Joy Porter: In the US for many men it has served as a religion of sorts, but the organization itself has been very concerned over time to make clear that it is not a religion. This has not prevented organized faiths such as Catholicism from feeling very threatened by it.

Richard Thomas: The perception, of course, is that the Freemasons are an elitist organisation. So I was initially surprised to learn that Native Americans have been involved in Freemasonry for centuries. How did this happen and what were the motives of the white men who brought Native Americans into their lodges and how has this relationship changed over time?

Joy Porter: Answering that took me a whole book! In short, US Freemasonry accepted elite Indians because of the imagined world Indians were deemed to inhabit and because of the Indian relationship to ritual, something Masons respected. Once within Freemasonry, Indian Masons were able to retain aspects of their tribal and pan-Indian identities that they could not develop in the same ways in the non-Masonic world. I argue that the Indian Masonic relationship over time has largely been very positive for Indian and non-Indian Masons alike.

Richard Thomas: Given the secrecy involved in Freemasonry, historically how have non-Freemasons in the Native American community viewed Indians who become Freemasons?

Joy Porter: This is an enormous question that is another research project in its own right but in my experience at least, I found limited evidence of Indian folk resenting Indian Masons. But then, I wasn't looking for that data.

Richard Thomas: Many of America's founding fathers were admitted Freemasons. How important do you think Freemasonry was in the American Revolution?

Joy Porter: It had a significance certainly. The best book on the topic is by Steven Bullock.

Richard Thomas: Overall do you think Freemasonry has been a force for good in America, or does the secretive group deserve some of its bad reputation?

Joy Porter: Certainly a force for good in my opinion. Freemasonry upheld the colour line but so did most organizations when this was the norm. It gave a great deal to many communities. I think community-based associations generally are positive as they bring people together but as with any grouping, it will by definition be selective. Associations are as much about who is excluded as who is included but the evidence I found suggests that Freemasonry gave many men over time a sense of solace and brotherhood in a world increasingly bereft of such compensations.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Joy. What are some of the other books you've written?

Joy Porter: I've just published another book with Praeger, Land & Spirit in Native America (2012). It looks at how we comprehend wilderness and Indian land, including Indian "Sacrifice Areas" in the nuclear Southwest.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Jim Marrs

One of my favourite films is Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. Although Stone took a lot of creative licence in the film, for instance merging different historical characters into a single character like the "MR X" character, the film was largely based on two non-fiction assassination books. The first was On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, written by former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only prosecutor to bring a trial for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and who is played by Kevin Costner in the Oliver Stone film.

The second book which informed the film was Crossfire by Jim Marrs. I remember listening to Jim interviewed about the assassination on The Alex Jones Show and that interview really captivated me and I began reading more and more books about the assassinations of the 1960s. What follows is my own interview with Jim Marrs about the JFK assassination and some of the parallels with 9/11.

Richard Thomas: I've always had an interest in the paranormal and unexplained, but Oliver Stone's film JFK and your book Crossfire played a large part in my becoming interested in the JFK assassination and other conspiracy topics. How did you first begin researching the JFK assassination and what exactly do you think happened in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963?

Jim Marrs: On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a journalism major at the University of North Texas and I began looking into the JFK assassination on the day it happened. I still have the Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers from that day to include the UNT campus special edition. I knew something was funny right from the start because witnesses were on TV stating that two shots came one on top of the other --- Bang! Bang! At the time I was a deer hunter and had bolt-action rifles of my own and I knew that the bolt on a bolt-action rifle had to be cycled before firing again. Therefore, one could not get two shots close together. But at that time, although I was puzzled, I had no alternative but to believe the official version.

As to what happened in Dallas, President Kennedy was killed in a military-style ambush involving organized crime with the active assistance of elements within the federal government of the United States to include the CIA, FBI and military. Pressure from the top thwarted any truthful investigation. The Kennedy assassination was a true coup d'etat—a sudden and violent shift of power to the right in this country. And that power remains with us today.

Richard Thomas: The final documentary in Nigel Turner's 9-part series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, "The Guilty Men," which speculated about Lyndon Johnson's involvement in the assassination was banned after its initial broadcast on the History Channel back in 2003. How significant do you think LBJ's involvement was in the assassination, and are there any parallels to be made with 9/11 and George Bush's War on Terror continuing under President Obama?

Jim Marrs: Common sense would dictate that one does not kill the president of the United States without being assured that his successor would not track and prosecute the culprits. I do not personally believe that LBJ had any foreknowledge of the details of the plan as he would have wanted "plausible deniability." However, I think he generally knew what was up and was in agreement as it was his lifelong dream to become president and he would stop at nothing to achieve his goals.

The parallels between the JFK assassination and 9/11 are numerous. In many ways, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks fit the same template as the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963:

• Within hours, despite a lack of real evidence, one man was blamed for the event along with hints that he was connected to foreign enemies.

• Official pronouncements were widely publicized only to be quietly admitted as errors later on.

• Although within the jurisdiction of the local authorities, the entire case was usurped by the FBI and CIA, both agencies under the control of a president who benefited from the tragedy. In 2001, FEMA, also controlled by the president, was added to this list.

• A group of specialists (medical in the JFK's case and engineers in that of the WTC) was convened but limited in what they could view and study, blocked from conducting an objective probe by federal officials.

• Evidence in the case was hastily removed and destroyed, forever lost to an impartial and meaningful investigation.

• More evidence was locked away in government files under the excuse of "national security."

• Federal malfeasance was excused by claiming lack of manpower and resources and no one was disciplined or fired. Federal agency budgets were increased.

• Any alternative to the official version of events was decried as "conspiracy theory" and "unpatriotic."

• The federal government used the event to increase its own centralized power.

• A foreign war (Vietnam in JFK's case and Iraq and Afghanistan today), which otherwise would have been opposed, was supported by a grieving population.

• A top government leader (then LBJ and now Bush), formerly under suspicion for election fraud and corrupt business dealings, was suddenly propelled to new heights of popularity.

• Many citizens knew or suspected that the official version of events was incorrect but were afraid to speak out.

• A compliant and sycophantic mass media was content to parrot merely the official version of events and studiously avoided asking the hard questions that might have revealed the truth.

• In yet another strange parallel to the Kennedy assassination, in the months and years following 9/11, an increasing number of potentially crucial witnesses began suffering untimely deaths.

Richard Thomas: Your second most recent book is called The Rise of the Fourth Reich. The Third Reich was born out of Hitler's Enabling Act and the end of the democratic Weimar Republic, would you agree that in the wake of the JFK assassination and 9/11 America has undergone a similar metamorphosis to 1930s Germany or the Roman Republic in the wake of Julius Caesars' assassination in 44 BC?

Jim Marrs: The American Republic has been lost to a National Security State Empire with many parallels to Rome and Hitler's Third Reich – 9/11 = Reichstag fire; the PATRIOT Act = the Enabling Act; Homeland Security = Secret State Police; secret detention centres = concentration camps; Nazi National ID cards = National ID Act of 2005, etc.

Richard Thomas: In Alex Jones' 2000 film Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, the popular alternative radio show host exposed the bizarre annual "cremation of care" event, in which, as strange as it sounds, many of America's biggest names apparently meet up to conduct a mock child sacrifice to a forty foot stone owl deity, allegedly called Moloch. Have you seen any evidence of similar occult overtones in the JFK assassination or 9/11, or, even anywhere else?

Jim Marrs: There are many odd and puzzling aspects to both the JFK assassination and 9/11, for example, the strange similarities in names and places between the death of Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, of which many people are aware. Dealey Plaza sits on the 33-degree parallel which has significant Masonic meaning. There are many other such oddities but we must not let this fascinating aspect distract us from the hard factual evidence of conspiracy in both cases.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

'Illuminati' Symbolism and Architecture in Sci-Fi - Richard's Room 101

In a previous Room 101 column, I wrote about 'Illuminati' or secret society symbolism in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, a film based loosely on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In that film, there are numerous examples of symbols and ideas often associated with the 'Illuminati' and other popular secret society conspiracy theories on the web. "The Owl of Bohemia," the "all-seeing eye," even David Icke's Reptilians (an extra-dimensional race of reptiles, of which, Queen Elizabeth II is supposedly a member of) are given a nod to in the form of a replicant snake! And all this in 1982 … which was more than a decade before the internet gave conspiracy theorists the power to reach millions around the world with their exciting mix of in-depth research and New Age paranoia.

The best and most obvious example of 'Illuminati' architecture in Ridley Scott's sci-fi dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 has to be the immense pyramid skyscrapers that dominate the skyline, however.

This was Christopher Knowles's response when I asked the author of Our Gods Wear Spandex and The Secret Sun blog about this strange aspect of Blade Runner:

"Well, we know that Dick was all over anything weird or mystical, but I don't think he had much involvement in the movie itself. Blade Runner kind of presents us with this kind of technocratic dystopia that some of these elite cult types would see as the paradise of their apotheosis. The cognitive elite in their penthouses and the poor, teeming masses huddled in the streets and the middle class a distant memory. The constant rain is kind of like the piss of the new gods in that regard. Maybe Scott incorporated some of those symbols as part of the overall social critique of this world that runs throughout the film. Maybe it was the screenwriter David Peoples, who also did similar films like Twelve Monkeys and Soldier."

A stargate or portal between Heaven and Earth, pyramids have always been an icon associated with Divine power and authoritarian rulers. So Ridley Scott and/or screenwriter David Peoples couldn't have picked a more appropriate design for the headquarters of the powerful Tyrell Corporation. The megacorporation that dominates the Earth and "off-world colonies" in the year 2019, and whose motto is "More Human Than Human," a reference to the artificial beings or NEXUS-6 Replicants they create in the 'image' of their company's God-like founder, the billionaire genius and artificial human slave trader Dr Eldon Tyrell.

In Ridley Scott's first science fiction film 1979's Alien, another "company," this time called Wyland-Yutani dominates human-inhabited space in the 22nd century. Most casual fans of the Alien franchise are familiar with the company's second logo designed by James Cameron for the second film in the series, Aliens, with the interlocked W/Y, but the original logo designed for Scott's film was an Egyptian winged sun emblem.

According to David Icke and other well-known researchers in the fields of parapolitics and alternative history, "The Illuminati" (which Icke defines as a network of interlocking secret and quasi-secret groups) are the "continuation of the Mystery Religions of Babylon and Egypt" in ancient times that practised "sun worship." With this in mind maybe the title of Ridley Scott's new Alien prequel "Prometheus" shouldn't be that surprising then when you take into account the abundance of potential 'Illuminati' symbolism in Blade Runner and Alien. Prometheus was the Titan in Greek mythology who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind.

But Scott's science fiction films aren't the only examples of 'Illuminati' architecture in Hollywood films. A pyramid on Mars is featured in Total Recall (another Philip K. Dick film adaptation) starring Arnold Shwatchenegger, who according to Alex Jones' 2000 documentary film, Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, has been an attendee at the mysterious summer camp event in northern California, at which the bizarre "Cremation of Care" ceremony supposedly involving the mock human sacrifice of an infant to a giant forty-plus foot stone owl deity called "Moloch" is alleged to take place.

In July 2010 it was even reported that the California "Governorator" had given a speech at the super secret rich man's retreat where political, business and Hollywood elites from the Bush's to the voice of The Simpsons' Mr. Burns, Harry Shearer, have admittedly attended.

Anti-New World Order filmmakers and secret society researchers suggest that for the 'Illuminati conspirators, the pyramid represents the compartmentalisation of secret knowledge from mankind. But even if the conspiracy theorists are correct about this why would any secret society (whether you believe 'Them' to be the Bilderberg Group, the Skull and Bones Society at Yale University, the Freemasons, or even a conglomeration of all these and other secret and quasi-secret groups) put their secret symbols in big Hollywood films for everyone to see?

"I have heard that the popular culture is used as a tool by whatever elite, business, govt, Illuminati, etc., to both gauge and control the populace. That is, the conspiracy is the conspiracy theory itself, making its way into the mainstream culture, thereby usurping the power of the populace to alter it because one can diminish some researcher or whistleblower as someone who 'just watches too much X-Files,'" Dean Haglund, better known as Langly in the popular 1990s TV series The X-Files told me in 2010.

In a correspondence on Facebook filmmaker and Bilderberg researcher, Timuçin Leflef, told me, "there are several facets to it - including sacred geometry." Other researchers such as Texe Marrs, author of Codex Magica, have suggested that the secret rulers of the world believe that they get paranormal powers from putting their secret signs and symbols on display, or hidden in plain sight. Hence the pyramid and all-seeing-eye on the back of the one-dollar bill.

While you can't rule anything out, readers who are conspiracy-inclined should remember that there is some overlap between fans of sci-fi and the conspiracy genre. Books and films like George Orwell's 1984, H. G. Wells' Things To Come, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World have almost become required reading and watching for anyone who wants to attempt to untangle the great conspiracy.

Might a simpler explanation be that the scriptwriters or directors of these films might have been inspired by the New Age or paranormal book section … of course, it could all just be a coincidence too. Whatever the truth I think 'Illuminati' symbolism and architecture in films and TV shows is a subject that deserves more research.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

The Devil Rides Out - Richard's Room 101

By the late 1960s, the once cutting-edge Hammer Films was falling quickly behind the times. Back in the 1950s, the small British studio had been the leader in horror. It was the innovator that bravely trod where others were afraid to go. Meanwhile, American studios were making mostly bad science fiction films about alien invaders from the Red Planet and giant radioactive monsters (obvious stand-ins for Communists and the bomb). Hammer, on the other hand, was busy remaking the classic Universal gothic horrors that first launched the talkie era back in the 1930s (Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy) in glorious techno colour. This time around, though, adding the "dangerous cocktail" of blood and nudity to the horror mix. This might sound rather tame by today's standards but was genuinely shocking to 1950s audiences. 

Sadly, however, the studio that dripped blood was unable to stay ahead of the horror game indefinitely. Between the 1957 release of their first gothic horror The Curse of Frankenstein and their last film to date To the Devil a Daughter in 1976, the basic Hammer product, for the most part, failed to evolve at all. There are only so many Dracula and Frankenstein sequels a studio can make before audiences get bored. By the time Hammer made The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires in 1974 (kind of a mad mix between a Dracula and a Bruce Lee film), the writing was already well and clearly on the wall. Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary's Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist ... these are the films that Hammer should have been making a year before their transatlantic competitors did, not an eighth Dracula sequel without the franchise's biggest star Christopher Lee as Seven Golden Vampires was!

There was one film, though, that could have changed the fortunes of the troubled studio and bought them the extra time they needed to regain lost ground. However, the film-makers failed to adequately capitalise on the picture's success early enough. That film was The Devil Rides Out: an adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's bestselling but disturbing 1934 novel about the Occult and widespread practice of Satanism at the highest levels of modern society. It's worth noting that Whitley's black magic books sold in their millions, even outselling James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Though, they were never popular in America due to Whitley's VERY British style of writing and imperialistic heroes.

Upon its 1968 release, the film adaptation of The Devil Rides Out was immediately hailed as a return to form by impressed critics. Today, the film is widely considered by fans as perhaps the best of the Hammer Horrors. In 1976, Hammer adapted another of Dennis Wheatley's bestselling black magic adventures: To the Devil a Daughter. But despite doing the best business Hammer had seen in years, it was already too late for the collapsing company ... if they had only released it sooner.

Old British horror films starring Christopher Lee might be interesting to film buffs and might even make entertaining late-night viewing, but what does any of this history lesson have to do with the unexplained, paranormal or even parapolitics? That's the question most regular readers will probably be asking themselves right about now.

Well, consider this, what if it wasn't all fiction? Both Dennis Wheatley and Christopher Lee (who was instrumental in getting the film rights for Hammer) had at least been somewhat associated with Britain's elite ruling class. Wheatley spent much of WWII in Churchill’s basement fortress as part of the Joint Planning Staff with the rank of Wing Commander. And Christopher Lee even claimed (via his mother Contessa Estelle Marie) to be a descendent of Charlemagne, the famous European monarch who through his conquests effectively recreated the Roman Empire in the middle ages. The question must be asked then did this pair know things the general public didn't?

At this point, it's important to point out that by "Satanism" we're definitely not talking about the very limited Christian fundamentalist definition of anything they don't understand but, more seriously, any attempt to use the Occult sciences for selfish, destructive or evil ends. The secretive Sith religion practised by the evil Emperor of the Galaxy and Darth Vader in the popular Star Wars films (which oddly enough also star Christopher Lee) would definitely qualify, but the Wicca faith, which emphasises a "rule of three," most certainly would not.

That said, the answer to all of the above, as weird as it might sound, is an alarming but definite "yes." Dennis Wheatley was famous for saying, when asked about the supernatural and occult, "don‘t meddle!" More substantially, though, in a recent documentary titled "To the Devil ... The Death of Hammer" made to accompany the DVD release of To the Devil a Daughter, Christopher Lee goes into some detail about how he and Wheatley originally intended the Hammer adaptations of The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil a Daughter to be a kind of "propaganda" warning about the serious dangers of Satanic worship and belief.

Also in the same documentary, filmmaker David Wickes goes into detail about how Wheatley was an "authority" on Satanism and the Occult. Wheatley didn't just make stuff up, he actually knew the meaning of all the different symbols and based his black magic books strongly on real Occult lore and fact. This might explain why the Satanic worship scenes and certain plot elements from The Devil Rides Out seem to mirror, bizarrely, events and oddities in the real world.

The most obvious example, of course, is the "Cremation of Care" ceremony which marks the beginning of the annual (and very weird) three-week-long ‘encampment' each summer at Bohemian Grove. A secluded 2,700-acre redwood grove located in northern California. Readers who aren't familiar with either Bohemian Grove or "Cremation of Care" should read my earlier Blade Runner: Electronic Owls and Illuminati Symbolism article or watch Alex Jones' excellent documentary Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove. However, it's pretty well documented that the ceremony involves the mock human sacrifice of an infant to a giant 45 foot stone owl god, and what more, many of America's and even the world's most elite names in politics, business and the media attend the annual gathering dressed in outlandish but expensive Ku Klux Klan style robes. Which, rather suspiciously, are just like the robes worn at the black magic ceremony to call the "Goat of Mendes" in The Devil Rides Out. It's worth pointing out, too, that the "Great Owl of Bohemia" (which may or may not be meant to represent the Canaanite idol Moloch) has horns.

Then there's the less well-known Skull and Bones Society at Yale University, of which President George H. W. Bush, his son President George W. Bush, and the latter's 2004 presidential opponent, Senator John Kerry, are all admitted members. The secret societies headquarters, ominously known as "The Tomb," have become famous on the university campus for their own bizarre rituals (which involve members dressing up as the Devil, getting in and out of coffins, oh and more mock human sacrifice) as well as the malevolent screams and chants of "Devil equals death!" and "death equals death!" emanating from the building. The windowless "Tomb" is also allegedly decorated with pentagrams and other Occult-type imagery. And this is where America's political class have spent their college years since 1832 ... maybe those wars suddenly make a lot more sense.

Perhaps the creepiest and definitely the strangest parallel, though, is that just as in The Devil Rides Out (and again the Star Wars films, strangely enough), after being initiated into The Order of Skull and Bones members are given new Satanic-sounding names. George Bush senior's Skull and Bones name allegedly being "Gog" or "Magog."

How seriously anyone in Skull and Bones or the Bohemian Club takes these strange rituals is anyone's guess. However, the elite have certainly put a lot of time, money and research into something they claim is just a bit of harmless recreational fun. Whether Dennis Wheatley knew about either of these secret societies and their rituals isn't known but one thing is for sure: what they appear to be is exactly the sort of obscene practices he was writing about in his books and, with Christopher Lee, wanted to warn the world about in the Hammer adaptations.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA