Disassociation with The Zeitgeist Movement
UPDATE 11/02/2011: This article is in much need of a revision, or perhaps I’ll just completely re-write the article. It’s 5 months old and in that time my perspective has, let’s say, evolved.
Some of you might be aware that in past years I held a close association with an organisation known as The Zeitgeist Movement, which describes itself as an ‘economic and sustainability movement’. This official description is largely derived from the movement’s advocacy of an idea known as a ‘resource-based economy’. It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the official description of the movement – for that, please reference their website.
In unofficial circles the movement has been called many things, among them (and most commonly) that it is a conspiracy theory movement. Those who suggest this substantiate their point of view through accusation that the movement propagates false re-telling of major events of political significance (most significantly the terrorist event of 9/11), makes blatantly inaccurate arguments regarding economics (particularly regarding fractional-reserve banking) and probably most telling that the materials which originated the movement (the Zeitgeist I & II films) cite people widely regarded either as respectable authorities or conspiracy theorists (depending on your point of view).
For those of you who aren’t aware, the movement was founded in late 2008 after the release of Peter Joseph’s second film ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum’. This film, while divided into four sections could probably be more correctly be said to be divided into two sections – the first half that of social commentary in the form of leveraging various accusations against the system of fractional-reserve banking and the American empire, while the second half attempts to present itself as a solution to the world’s dominant social ills. In watching ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum’ the accusation that it’s a conspiracy film is hardly visible when viewing, when compared with it’s parent film ‘Zeitgeist: the Movie’.
‘Zeitgeist: the Movie’ alleges that Christianity (and religious theologies in general) is a culmination of borrowed myths of the past, that 9/11 was a covert operation undertaken by certain elements ‘inside’ the United States government to advance it’s agenda in the Middle East (and at home, in the form of taking away personal liberties) and that the banking interests of this world have engaged in high corruption since their ‘enthroning’ through the passing of the Federal Reserve Act (which created a central bank, apparently also centralising their power and control) through economically robbing the people of the world and propagating various wars.
My summary of both ‘Zeitgeist: the Movie’ and ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum’ are, of course, major over-simplifications. The intention of this short article is not to engage in a critical review or commentary of the films, but rather to provide a general background as to the emergence of The Zeitgeist Movement and to explain why I broke my association with them. You can watch both ‘Zeitgeist: the Movie‘ and ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum‘ for yourself if you’re looking for a point of reference on the films that isn’t as simplistic as my descriptions (click the links to view them). Having now provided this general background, I wish to proceed to pondering on my earlier mentioned association with the movement.
I was a hard-core advocate. In fact I didn’t necessarily leave the movement out of disagreement with it’s concepts (and this article is not for that discussion, that will proceed in future), but rather due to incontrovertible problems of another kind.
As I said above, the movement is regarded widely by some to be an oranisation of conspiracy theorists. In my time working for the movement, I talked with literally thousands of people about the aims & goals that they hold. The hardest thing to overcome was mainly the accusation that I (and the movement itself) was based in conspiracy theory.
When people make that conclusion, they instantly shut you off. Images of the tin-foil hat wearer come to mind for many, I’m sure. It didn’t take me long to realise that the movement had the ability to disassociate itself from conspiracy theories, because they don’t form part of any of the stated goals – the association is just made because of some of the content of the Zeitgeist movies. It’s just that to fully disassociate because alternative theories as to many political events are ingrained in many of the members minds.
In this realisation, towards the end of my time with the Movement I suggested that official disclaimers be placed on the Movement websites stating an official disassociation between the movement and the films. I found that nearly every single member of the movement with an organisational role agreed with me on the necessity for the movement to distance itself from conspiracy theories – obviously seeing it as a good public relations move consistent with attempting to draw a more broad demographic of people in. My request for such disclaimers was, however, rejected by the founder and global coordinator Peter Joseph.
Taking into account that the majority of those holding an organisational role had democratically declared support for such a public relations move, I quickly fell out of favor with the movement and many of the coordinators. I believe that respect for the democratic process in making political (read ‘public relations’) decisions is absolutely necessary for harmonious functioning of the decision making of any ideology or politically based group, and for that to be ignored on a management level was rather shocking.
In recent times however, to my surprise, Peter Joseph seems to have changed his tune (at least a little). With a redesign of the gateway website of the Zeitgeist films website, I noticed the following:
…The Zeitgeist Film Series, while an inspiration for The Movement which shares the term “Zeitgeist”, is not to be confused with the content/views of the films in detail. The Zeitgeist Movement is an economic/sustainability movement at its core and its relationship to the Film Series content is not consistent. The Films, while now moving to promote The Movement more so in part, are still intellectual/artistic treatments and are not to be considered a basis for The Movement itself. Please see http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com for more information on this important social revolution.Source: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/project.html
Notice that on this project page, which is linked to directly from the main page, an attempt is made to emphasise distance between The Zeitgeist Movement and the Zeitgeist films as two completely separate things. So, why now instead of an agreement to do so when myself and the majority of organisational members petitioned in favour of this?
When I posted my initial reaction to the new disclaimer on Conspiracy Science (a community of those critical of many ‘conspiracy groups’), one member commented interestingly:
[Peter Joseph is] acting like Napoleon in Animal Farm, they discuss whether the windmill should be built or not, Snowball leaves [and] is pushed out for arguing that it should, then they do it anyway, until it breaks due to errors in design.
It is my feeling that Peter didn’t want to feel that I’d pressured him to do something, though it’s kind of clear I did as the above quote from the Zeitgeist movie website is almost an exact quote of the kind of disclaimer I suggested. He wanted to feel like he’d made that decision himself (which is fine), to publicly update the official film website with the above quotation. He’d already said countless times that ‘the movies are not the movement’, yet when overwhelmingly asked to put it in writing on the film website had said outright no.
My hostility toward the movement and eventual expulsion has been virtually worthless, considering the issue that I had has now been resolved. However, it’s not that I want back in or something like that – I just think that it’s time I start having things to say about the movement in a very public way.
I intend to engage a large scale analysis of the movement over the coming months, in response to this recent change. I’d like to engage questions such as ‘does the movement have integrity?’, ‘is it based on faulty conspiracies?’ and ‘can the platform (in it’s present form) work?’. While I have not described the movement in detail in this article, either in terms of it’s official description or alternative points of view on it, in future articles I intend to engage a comparative analysis of every aspect of the organisation.
I intend to be relatively respectful, and I don’t intend to jump to conclusions. I’m just going to write my impressions, without emotions, and publish them for the purpose of dialogue. This dialogue will likely also extend to interviewing current members of the Melbourne Chapter, with which I still intend to maintain a friendly association.
I look forward to you following along.
