Subliminal Jihad

Dimitri and Khalid explore the later career of chief cyberculture impresario Stewart Brand from the early 1970s to today, including: Fred Turner's 2004 book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture" highlighting tensions between the New Left and the "New Communalists"; Stewart Brand running the livestream on the Mother of All Demos with SRI computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart in 1968; predicting and championing the “personal computer” revolution in Rolling Stone in 1972; Brand's late ‘70s obsessions with CIA suslord Gregory Bateson and orbital space colonies; launching the WELL (the first self-described ‘online community’) with Larry Brilliant and throwing the first Hackers’ Conference with John Brockman in 1985; how Grateful Dead lyricist/Mormon cattle ranching heir John Perry Barlow shitposted his way to cyberpunk stardom and CIA consultancy gigs on the WELL; Brand’s fateful run-in with MIT Media Lab founder/brother of an Iran-Contra mass murderer Nicholas Negroponte; chief Brand acolyte Kevin Kelly launching WIRED magazine; and the 1990s formation of a bicoastal Long Now/EDGE Foundation “digerati” network that would eventually link up with Robert Maxwell’s daughters and “science philanthropist” Jeffrey Epstein on their way to capturing the commanding heights of the 21st century's New Economy… For access to full-length premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Dimitri and Khalid speak with Dr. Neşe Devenot about Psymposia’s new report “The Psychedelic Syndicate”, Bryan Johnson’s recent livestreamed psilocybin trip featuring Hamilton Morris and Genevieve Jurvetson, the not-so-crypto-transhumanism abounding in the Esalen/MAPS milieu, Steve Jurvetson hob-nobbing with Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister in the dot-com nineties, the high abuse potential of Grofian therapy practices, the murky CIA ties of ‘90s LSD missile silo impresarios William Leonard Pickard and Gordon Todd Skinner, Alexander Shulgin’s Chomsky-esque double-dealing with the DEA and Bohemian Grove, the possibility that MK-Ultra “research” never really ended, the coordinated backlash that occurs when you hold abusers accountable, and more. For access to full-length premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Dimitri and Khalid finally take spiritual aim at one of the most pivotal "countercultural" suslords of modern American culture: Whole Earth Catalog creator and consummate Silicon Valley hippie connector Stewart Brand. For access to full-length premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Dimitri and Khalid speak with Marcus (@Marcus_TROTR) from The Return of the Repressed podcast about class conflict, the slave mode of production, and dynamics of expansion and collapse in 1st millennia BC Greece. Topics include: the rise of maritime city states out of the rubble of the Bronze Age Collapse, iron-forging as disruptive technology, questioning the class structure of this era and defining who the “aristocracy” actually were, intra-elite struggles between nouveau riche and “old money” landowner factions, the curious co-existence of free and slave labor, the slave mode of production’s rapid expansion during the so-called golden age of Athenian “democracy”, the rise of coinage via Philip II of Macedonia’s mercenary armies, Alexander’s construction of a vast Eurasian web of city states connected by “currency”, and more… Subscribe to the Return of the Repressed: https://www.patreon.com/thereturnoftherepressed For access to full-length premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, become a subscriber at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad

Dimitri and Khalid examine the philosophical oeuvre of Peter Thiel’s favorite Stanford professor, the French Catholic academic René Girard, including: Girard’s core theories of mimetic rivalry and the scapegoat mechanism, his hot takes about why Christianity is different from every other religion, pagan gods-as-sacralized victims of communal violence, using the devil to drive out the devil, Thiel’s disturbing 2004 paper “The Straussian Moment”, his sus efforts to blend Girardian ideas with those of Leo Strauss and Nazi legal theorist Karl Schmitt to revitalize Western Civilization, becoming the Anti-Christ to stop the Anti-Christ (Greta Thunberg), JD Vance’s gallingly two-faced embrace of Girardian Catholicism, Thiel installing memetic rivalry as the core dynamic of 21st century social media platforms, and more… For access to the full-length episode, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.