February eleven.
Any questions on Marxism or communism? I identified how
fascism was a generic term for any group on the right? Yes? No?
Maybe? I placed on the board where you could find the lectures?
I have a feeling there's something I forgot to tell this class
and I can't remember what it was, but maybe it will come to me.
John Birch Society. How many have you heard of it? Nobody.
At least a few of you looked it up in the index and came across
it. Why did I pull out an obscure group? Because they weren't.
And more so, they had been one of the largest political groups
in Fremont and Newark over the years and part of their strength
in this area was because they were founded by an extremely
wealthy family of developers and a couple of families actually,
and some of you may know the family, it's the Reader family,
and Bob Reader. Any of you know Nicole Reader? she went to
many John Birch Society camps on the Fremont City Council well
probably fifteen years ago now, but it was a while back so it
is an organization that had meetings all the time at the
Hilton, but as I say, in the last couple of years we haven't
heard much from them and part of the reason I think is that
their main theme although there were a number of themes was
that communism was such a dramatic threat that any government
intervention in the economy would lead to socialism and it
would lead to communism and therefore they
constantly opposed any regulation by the government because of
their tremendous anti-communist philosophy.
Well with basically the lack of fear of communism 1 think
among Americans today I don't think Americans have that panic
that they once had about the Marxist international threat that
it's difficult to excite people to come down to anti-communist
rallies today at least that's my feeling. So it is could be for
that reason that we have not seen their names in the press and
that you people aren't as familiar with them as not even a
generation of students of five or six years ago would have been.
Does that mean you don't need to know about it? Well, I don't
know. I mean I don't think it hurts to know history. But I also,
you know, you hear about them from time to time in your
readings. The Birch Society has been around since the 1950s when
it was founded by a man named Robert Welsh. He was a candy bar
manufacturer. Candies or mints? I don't know.
And it was about the tail end of the McCarthy era. How
many of you remember hearing about the McCarthy hearing and
what does that represent? Does anybody want to 1950s -scare of
communism. And since the American were frightened of the
expansion of communism especially right after China took over
in 1949 Joe McCarthy and many politicians took advantage of the
American fears to create tremendous witch hunts. Anybody who
had left-leaning ideas, anybody who sounded like they supported
any human rights were called
communists. Includingi n the south people who want to end
segregation and they were segregation. They were -- Russian
conspiracy the term Pinko -- why do you think the term
Pinko? Because red is the color of communism? You've known
that. They use the color red. Well, Pinko means not quite
red, but getting there,
Anybody know why red is the color of communism? By the
way, I'm skipping around here, but I'm not -- I'm touching on
all these issues just in a sort of, you know, stream of
consciousness, but why is red the color of communism? It's the
color of the working class revolution, the blood. The blood of
the working class.
Does anybody know what the color of anarchy
uses black as it's color. Anybody know why they
black? Why they choose black to be the color of

is? Anarchy
would use
anarchy?
Because it's a strong color? I'm just trying to figure out
if it's a strong color or not. No, it's not. I didn't
think a color is a strength, but maybe it is. I don't
know. It's a good guess. Any other reasons? Black is
literally the absence of color. And being the absence of
color it reflects on the absence of government, if you will,
anarchy.
So there was some logic to choosing black and when you see
political rallies throughout the world, you'll often see the
red flags of the Marxists, the communists, but you will also
see in there the black flag of anarchy and once again
how do the Marxists and the anarchists differ? Philosophically?
How do they differ? Anarchy believes in what? Anarchy. And what
is it? They don't believe in a government. The absence of
government. They believe there shouldn't be any government.
Okay. So what does communist want as an ultimate as well?
Communists also want to achieve anarchy, right? No government.
So they sound the same. what's the difference? Everyone is
equal as a communism? Well everyone is equal as an anarchist.
It's the method of getting there.
Communist believe you have to get there in what fashion?
Through socialism. Right. you go through the step of socialism.
Anarchist hold that you go there immediately without passing go
and collecting two hundred dollars. So they do not follow the
dialectic. Another term used in the McCarthy era was fellow
travelers. Which basically was applied to people who were again
liberal. They weren't necessarily members of communist party,
but the attitude was that they traveled along with them and that
their ideas were no different even though and would aid the
communist conspiracy to take over the United States. So Pinko
and fellow traveler are terms that you will see in your reading.
They reappear sometimes in the press as well. he accused people -
- they lost their, I don't know, they were in prison for a
while, but he never identified one communist still in government
and then when he took on the
promote the gay life style and homosexuality and that parents
should prevent their children -- and he's asking sponsors to
pull away from sponsoring the Teletubbies because they are gay and
the way he proves they're gay is they carry a purse, the males,
which is their magic box and they have the gay symbol on top
which is the triangle which indicates that they are gay and -
only one of them does. And he is arguing that it was the name of
the producers. He's also arguing the color purple because that
is a gay color? Which means Barney is also gay? Barney, I
believe. We're going to have a whole generation of gay people
growing up. That mean we won't have any children in the future.
Our world will end. It will solve the population problem. Not in
this country. We'll just allow more immigrants in, right? You
have to have a work force. Right. So in the long run, Jerry
Fallwell is going to wipe himself out, right? I'm sorry. I told
you I find the newspapers funny and I find life funny. Now some
of you may take it seriously and you have to boycott Disney. We
talked about that, didn't we? The reason for boycotting Disney
because Donald Duck doesn't wear any pants. You didn't hear
that? No. You missed all the fun when you don't read the
newspapers. All right so maybe we'll get you to read newspaper
just for the fun stuff. Also because of the fact that they allow
domestic partner insurance which is part of it, but it wasn't
the whole thing.
And I did talk about AdamSandler though? It was Time
magazine's columnist, but I did mention that right? And how
many of you saw Water Boy? And you're all the ones we said were
going to hell, right? Just keeping the same light. Is all of
this related to our political world? Of course it is.
When you're talking about these kinds of protests the
involvement in government, um, so what happens? In 1955, Robert
Welsh created a society to search out the communist. He names
it the John Birch Society after an American Christian
Missionary and navel captain who he says and may be true was
the first American killed by the Chinese communist after world
war two. It was a very autocratic society based on a blue book
that he wrote expressing you know his philosophy which included
in the blue book to the president of the United States at the
time the American war hero Dwight Eisenhower was a cod-carrying
communist. BirchSociety held that communists were everywhere
and so during the 50s, they ran into meetings, broke up the
meets, screamed, yelled, disturbed them and got a reputation
for violence.
However, he was smart enough to change the approach,
created it into an educational society and opened up the
American opinion bookstores. Where you could get books on the
illuminate, on the anti-Christ how the peace symbol was the
symbol of the crow and of course on the communist could
be -- but most of all the underlying philosophy was anti
democratic. They held and hold that America has been perverted
and its Constitution has been perverted with this push because
it has moved us towards democracy which is a movement towards
communism. They hold that the framers of the Constitution
created not a democracy, did not believe in democracy, but
instead believed in a federal republic and what they established
was a federal republic. Many of you will say well what the hell
is the difference? And the responses by their definition, you
elect people to office that may be considered somewhat
democratic, but the people you elect are people you elect to do
what they want to do. Translation? They know better than you,
what's good for the country. They're not to represent you in the
sense of listening -- well now, no, they could listen to you.
But they are voting. They get elected because they know better
what's good for you because most people don't know what's good
for themselves because they're not involved in the system. And
when you allow people to get involved, it causes what the
framers did.
I agree with the Birch Society on that. They were not
supportive of a democratic system. They did create a federal
republic with a system that you did effect those that were
property owners. We have evolved into a more democratic system.
And they would like to return to the big return to 1787 the
Birch Society and the founders of the constitution
bringing us back to a period when we would really have a
stronger government and a better government in their mind if
number one, we elected people who knew better who was going on
and wouldn't have the communist threat around us.
In nineteen -- I can't remember the year right now -when
Robert Welsh died, he was followed in office by somebody called
McDonald. And he was aboard the Korean airline 007 which was
the Korean airline which was shot down over the Soviet Union
because it wondered off course. The Russians were convinced and
so to have were a lot of the Americans at this point. It may
have been used as a spy place because they shot it down and two
hundred some people were killed. The head of Birch Society -and
the John Birchers, many of them hold that it was shot down
intentionally as a plot between the CIA and KGB who knows the
truth about communism take over.
So there is that sense that continues and win that
organization. So once again I spent a lot of time on an
organization that's almost defunct. It's not subversive. It
doesn't preach the overthrow of the united states like the
Nazis. It certainly isn't extreme right in the way we would
think of the Nazis or the KKK because it doesn't hold racism as
part of it's philosophy. It allows women, blacks, Jews to be
members. There may be racist members of the organization, but
the organization itself does not hold that. Most of the members
of the organization are members
of a party that does get large number of registrations more
than probably it will, um, called the American independent
Party. It is on the ballot in California. It's one of a
parties that is on the independent. It exists throughout the
country.
in 1968, it was formed and it ran George Wallace for
president. In 1972 it ran Lester Maddox. Both of whom were
segregationists. But the Birchers did not see it as
segregation, did not support it. They supported it because the
philosophy was to return to basically a federal republic and to
prevent any government intervention in the economy. Many people
joined the American Independent Party because they don't
realize that out in California that the American Independent
Party is an ultra conservative political party. They see the
word independent in it and they say I'm an independent. I don't
belong to any party and they signed up for the party.
A number of years ago the mayor of Hayward -- but the
democratic candidate and he wanted to challenge him so he
stepped aside, decided not to run for the mayor of Hayward and
decided to run as an independent and so he registered with the
American Independent Party showing his own stupidity, he did
not know and when in -- when he tried to run for the office he
finally pulled out what the press and everybody else attacked
him for joining the party of the segregation as George Wallace
and Lester Maddox. So even
politicians can screw up without knowing.
What's the American Independent Party all about? If you
want to be an independent in California how do you register?
Anybody? Did anybody register to vote as in independent? You
all registered political parties? The three of you who
registered to vote? You registered declined to state? To
register to vote as an independent in California you register
decline to state. That means that you're not registered with
any political party. In many states when you register to vote
they do give you the opportunity of the registering as an
independent that was true in New York, but that does not appear
on the ballot. I mean the registration card except in form of
decline to state and in the form of the American Independent
Party which is not an independent party.
Sometimes, choosing a name can be very important.
Politically, that's amazing how just one word. Many people
joined it for the name of independent. What's Adolf Hitler's
real name? Was it was -- I don't know if he would have made it
if he would have kept that name. Later, many years after he
was born, his actual father married his mother. His father's
name was Hitler, so the name was changed to Hitler. So what's
in a name? Any questions on the Birch Society? I've added a
lot more material in the discussion, but at least it was
material.

Any questions on the American Independent Party? Which

I didn't put on your chart. Well if I didn't talk much about
Jerry Fallwell then I guess 1 didn't talk much about the
Christian coalition and we put them in the chart. I'm assuming
that, right? Jerry Fallwell in the late 1970s created a group
called the moral majority. Catch the name purposely chosen to
make Americans believe that the vast majority of the people were
moral and they were not the ones in politics but by choosing the
name moral majority, you know, he's using an advertising
gimmick, a word like to sell a product. Fallwell's mission as a
Christian Baptist minister was to bring christians into
politics. He felt is that what has happened to American society
is that most christians which are the majority of the Americans
were staying out of politics because it was dirty and evil and
were doing their missions not hiding Christ under a burial or
the light of the Christ by spiting it among people by their
churches, but not doing it political because of the fear that
the evil would rub off and he felt that our political step was
at Oz and evil comparatively to the people of America and so he
advocated and created the group to get christians into politics.
Specifically into the one party that was truly Christian and
moral the republican party. Under his beliefs you could not be a
Democrat and moral. I still haven't figured that one out, but
okay. He had a lot of the impact on the 1980 election. Ronald
Reagan and he continued to communicate as did the moral majority
himself and they began a power take over of the party moving the
republican party and its philosophy even Ronald Reagan further
to the right to the ultra conservative position. Their
philosophy was return to the Christianity of the Bible, the big
catch phrase was family values, which was interesting in that
for the first time in American history we had elected a divorced
president that the moral majority was supporting. Ronald Reagan
has been the only divorced president that has ever been elected
to political office. (I am sorry Karen, but something happened
on my steno machine so there is a few minutes of lost notes.)
I asked forgiveness and believe it or not
his congregation forgave him and gave him money to fight the
case. I never can understand that, but okay fine. That's, you
know, we can forgive -- well. A few weeks, actually months,
later he was stopped by police with a prostitute in the car.
'The same one? No, different one. If it was the same prostitute
you'd consider it like a marriage. And under the seat of the car
were numerous pornographic magazines and at that point it was
difficult for people to forgive him.
Okay. The third incident that hit sadly, again, the
Christian community, was an individual named Oral Robberts it
wag his arrogance that bothered a lot of the Americans. His
university in Oklahoma, something about Oklahoma city in the
paper today -- his in Oklahoma had a medical school that was
losing money and he needed to keep it open, eight million
dollars, and he said that unless people donate eight million
dollars he would stand on the roof and God would take him back.
Some were saying, stand there. But the fact was that somebody
gave him eight million dollars. It worked. And that upset just
his arrogance upset many people who had been contributing to
Christian organizations. They even stopped giving to that guy
who used to be on channel 48 with his cow boy boots and hat.
Gene Scott. Anybody ever see him? Not been around for a couple
of years. But -- so
and on top to have that Jerry Fallwell decide to take over the
PTL administration of James Baker and clean it up. Well nothing
past off as dirt, but the fact was that even though he may not
have been immoral, it certainly raised questions about his
jumping into an immoral kind of situation and it didn't help
any and the money just dried up.
So in 1988, Pat Robbertson who founded the Christian
broadcasting network decided to run for the republican
nomination for president. And in so doing, he also organized a
group call the Christian coalition, which had the same
philosophy as the moral majority now that they were defunct. The
philosophy was to bring christians into American society. And
that organization has been extremely influential in the
republican party and many of their members have taken over
organizing post leadership positions within the republican
party. Candidates for the republican nomination constantly
begged for their support. Financially, as well as voting. In
fact, in 1996, a republican candidate for the nomination named
Steve Forbes. From the magazine, refused to take a position on
some of Christian moral issues in the coalition including
abortion and he lost dramatically in the -- and so he began to
analyze it and from 1996. He has changed his tune. He has been
purposely appealing to the Christian wing of the republican
party. And to the fundamentalists and has been going down and
talking and making strong statements on
family values and anti-abortion statements, now and is one of
the forerunners for the republican nominating for the year
2000.
So there is tremendous power and what I'm saying of this
particular organization in the republican party the Christian
coalition to the extent that many people feel that that's what
has been one of the major problems with the republicans and
their attempt to remove Clinton it's become such a strong moral
crusade that they're hurting them and certainly northern
republicans are starting to feel that because the more
republicans from northern states tend to be more liberal have
been backing away from supporting the impeachment and you may
have seen today's paper, three republicans have indicated they
will not vote for removal of office under either condition.
Either the perjury or the obstruction of justice charge. They
are all northern and they're all from heavily mixed democratic
state where you don't have the Bible belt influence. And they
are predicting they may not get a majority.
The republicans have a tendency to pull their people
together but they will lose a number of votes in there. At
least on obstruction of justice, then personally, because most
of the members of congress are lawyers and they know that
there is no as trying to convict somebody with perjury when
they play word games in court because they do it all the time.
That's not perjury. As much is we know, it's
lying, it's not a legal definition of -- so when you say that
oral sex is not sex, then that's not perjury. It's a God damn
lie. And you can't remove him from lying. That's not a crime.
We wouldn't have any presidents.
Where do you put the coalition? Well, obviously ultra
conservative, halfway between right and center. They want to
go back to those values that were Biblical or -- any
questions? On either the moral majority or the Christian
coalition?
Well, the American atheist church. Did we talk about that?
It was funny. We talked about that. The American atheist church
and Madeline Murray O'hare in class? Green Peace and Sierra Club
we talked about? We talked about Green Peace? Where did we put
Green Peace? To the left. To the left? Why would we put them to
the left? They want to conserve the environment? They want
radical change. They want a radical change in the sense that the
United States conservation has not been very supportive. It's
not something that our people have generally supported all
though we obviously are moving towards that direction and the
Sierra Club too, a liberal organization that wants to preserve
the environment of the Sierras. The mountains. The hiking
trails. The most left-wing almost extreme left conservationist
group, did I talk about them? Earth First? Okay well that looks
like I covered all of the groups that were on the chart. Did I
miss any at all? Sounds like I
covered them all.
Well then let's deal with the chart for a minute on another
perspective and make it clear that not everybody fits on the
chart for various reasons. Not all people fit because they're
nuts. We have a woman in Fremont who runs for office every time
there's an election. Have any of you ever encountered her or -
you have? Where? At a gas station? She seems so get all over the
place. I'm always amazed how many people run into her. What did
she say to you? She just tells me what her stand is and she can.
She pushed around a shopping cart. She's a -- what do you call
those people? Bag lady. She's a bag lady, yeah. She's a bum. I
don't know. I don't like the word bum. Derelict. Now, it's funny
because even I -- I'm not using any clinical terms here, she
used to have a house that was left to her, but the city of
Fremont walked in and took out two truck loads or three truck
loads of garbage and the house was filled with all kinds of -
she collects things. Everything, in fact. One point she got
busted for stealing twenty newspapers out of a machine. Why she
moved there I don't know, and the Mayor of Fremont she called to
bail her out. But she finally lost her house and bought a trailer
and now she lives on the streets or in the trailer, I'm not sure
which but she's been running for about fifteen years. She gets
about six hundred votes all the time. Philosophy? That the way
to get rid of drugs in Fremont is you have to
get rid of all the apartment dwellers because the drugs are
soil and carried out in the apartment and if there are no
apartment$, there are no drugs to to prevent the drugs coming
in. She also has advocated that if she gets elected no house
will sell for over a hundred thousand dollars. Lots of luck,
huh? She wants to go under the central park so some of her
positions are solid except she was running for the Ohlone
college school board. She talked about horseback riding trails
in the hills because she comes from a family of horseback
riders. In fact, one of her great-grandfathers was a cowboy.
The other great-grandfather was a movie actor which explains
why she runs for political office. I haven't been able to put
that one together either. Well that's no where. I would put her
however the fact is I can't put her on the chart. Her positions
are so -- they're just spacy. I mean, I'm not sure what word I
can use. They're weird they're unique. And some are not bad,
others are just out of the pace.
How do I choose? Maybe she goes various. I don't know left
or right because when we deal with that, we deal with the
attitude to whether people are good or bad or evil, whether she
wants change new or old and she does both. Depending on what?
Taking houses back to a hundred thousand dollars might be going
back in time. I don't know.
On a national level we have people like that, too. One is
Lyndon LaroRuce. Has anybody here heard of Lyndon
LaroRuce? Yeah. This last election in 1996 for some reason his
posters didn't appear all over Fremont like they did in '92. He
has run for president five times, I believe, it is now. He first
runs in the Democratic primary to try and get the democratic
nomination. When he doesn't get that, he runs his own campaign.
The last two or three times he's run from prison. He was
sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term. He has followers that
he used to buy a half hour of TV time on Saturday nights to show
his charge and explain his viewpoint. Where that money comes
from, well part of it was from donations. Part of it was
donations that he went to prison for because he was telling
people that if they gave them their credit card number, they
would borrow a thousand bucks pay them back interested so that
they would, well nobody got their money back, forget the
interest, and so it was considered fraud. His followers believed
that he was a political prisoner and is being held.
It's interesting. His wife runs for president of Germany,
but she's a German citizen. Philosophy? That there is a
conspiracy that was trying to destroy America that ties to the
Soviet that started with Thomas Jefferson. It's the
Jeffersonian philosophy that spread that it's also spread
through the drug trade which is headed by the queen of England.
And at this point the queen of England who was a fascist and is
Henry Kissinger. Kissinger escaped Germany

She got a

as a Jew and yet she spelled his name with an SS.
lot of the history when they got the nomination in Illinois for
governor and vice governor and nobody knew who they were. They
wound up on the ballot and the democrats decided to vote for
republicans at that point. They tried to run for the non -- the
democratic offices without people began feel to identify this
group of people but from all over this country he brought in
people from the Birch Society a number of years ago to create a
petition that people did sign to create concentration camps for
people with the HIV virus. It didn't say that, it was too -- and
it went on the ballot. They talked about quarantine. They do
that in Cuba. And they're placed in camps my first encounter -
oh, boy the way the publicity got enough out there to make them
what this was all about and what it meant and most of all,
people, if you pass something like this, most people who had HIV
were not about to be tested or tell people on and it was much
more dangerous kind of situation.
My first encounter with the LaroRuches, I was coming out of
Gemco. People remember it? A few years from now nobody will hear
of it. It still pisses me off it went out of business. I liked
Gemco. It was sort of the relax then they put this stupid Target
in there. That stuff was ugly and cheap, Gemco had good prices
on good quality goods. I walk out of this store, it's a Sunday,
I'm dressed in jeans and T-shirt. This woman comes over to me
and said will you sign this petition to end AIDS. And I said no.
It was just
something. I hate people who won't leave you alone and they
follow you and they grab you, you know. I just said no. I
was nice, but you know, I've got a New York personality and
when they start doing that my whole New York temper explodes
in a New York way. I think I mentioned before New Yorkers
don't punch. We have vicious mouths. We bite. Okay? We
know how to use the mouth. She follows me. She grabs my
shirt and she says, aren't you afraid of AIDS? And I said
no. She said why. Because I'm not F-ing around. I used
the word. And she got real -- upset because my wife was
there and my kids. You ought to have your mouth washed out
with soap. And I said well maybe if you washed your ass
hole out with soap you wouldn't be afraid of AIDS. Isn't
that New York? Now come on that's New York. California
should just they would have just punched you. New York is
-- SO. What can I say? So that was my encounter with the
LaroRuche people.
I'm not a New York professor -- all right. Then there are
groups in a sense, politically, that are difficult to classify
on the chart. One of those groups is the libertarian party. I
don't think it honestly does fit on the chart because its views
are both good and right and good and left. And um, libertarians
hold that the government that governs best that's the old
Jeffersonian. They have their own chart. They want absolutely
minimal government. In fact, the libertarian party is probably
the closest to an
anarchist party that we have in the United States and to be
candid with you, I think they're probably the most consistent
with the political parties. From my perspective. No, I'm not a
libertarian. I belong to the Kershner party. The libertarian
chart does explain their view. Like a diamond.
Now you remember that we sit on the right. There's a
tendency to believe people are evil and they want strong
control, but what do they want control over is this they want
control over people, of government control, of the social tests
of people. Okay? They want dictatorship over the social life.
However, they want freedom of the economic to get the good
people who will be able to compete freely to improve the
economy. So there is some truth to what those groups on left
tend to believe in -- I'm sorry, right. Continue to believe in
economic freedom of social control. By the way -- is that every
time I hear republicans tell me that they're opposed to
government intervention and control, I say crap. That is the
biggest crap in the world. The republicans are just as much in
support of government control as the democrats, and this is why
I think the libertarians are more honest. How do the republicans
want government control? Right there. Social. They don't want
abortion. They want government to control abortion, to prevent
abortion. They want the government to outlaw home sex want they
want to outlaw prostitution outlaw drugs,
right down the line. Gambling, okay we can go on, and this
elements that republicans are willing to control as far as
morality is concerned their choice of morality, pornography all
is controlled by republican party. So they brain washed people
in this country to believe that they don't want government
control, but they don't want it in the economic system. The left
wants control over the economic system. They believe that people
are not allowed to participate, are perverted. They lose their
freedom, whatever. And they want freedom social. So this is a
government dictatorship or economics on the left and I agree
that the libertarians are probably accurate here. They say that
these two come together at the base of the diamond for total
control. The base of the diamond is total control over economics
and over social.
Total government dictatorship. Okay so what would the top
of the diamond be? Freedom. And they call that libertarian? So
the top is the libertarian, which want no control or minimum
over social economics. Translation? The libertarian party does
hold that there should not be government control over your
personal choice be it prostitution or pornography or your
economic choice.

The business and how you conduct your business.
They do believe that there should be some security and there
should be some prevention against fraud.As far as the military is concerned they practical in their belief that they feel that we must have a military, but minimal at home technologically to protect ourselves we do not need American bases anywhere in the world that we should stay at home and save and cut our funding and therefore cut taxes by two thirds general. They are also opposed to the public control of most things.

I like the libertarian philosophy, however, they're
opposed to public education. They would eliminate public
education. And my own personal bias is I like my job. I also
happen to believe in public education, but in the long run, I
think they have a lot to say for total freedom despite the fact
that at this point some of their philosophy frightens me. I'm
sorry I just don't trust macho cops. I'm talking about the
company, not the fact of the people. Q Isn't that a sense of how
the Pinkertons work? A Yeah. Robo Cop. 1 want a public police
force. Any questions on libertarian? Well, then, there's the
other element of the chart that people don't fit on. Um, we
refer to these individuals as true believers. And I need to make
a point here. I'm going to distinguish and it's an artificial
between true believers and people with a true faith. Many of you
have a true faith. I hope that you are true believers. The
artificial separation.
In 1950, a man named Erik Hoffa, not Jimmy Hoffa. He's
buried with the fishes. Head of the teamsters. His son is now
head of teamsters. However, wrote a book called the true
believers. He wanted to study why people in the 1930s when he
was a young man could switch from one end of that chart to the
other. It makes sense if you believe in people or you believe
people are good, how can you switch to the other side? Logically
and yet people were moving and one week would be a communist and
one week be a fascist. How does it happen? He starts to think
about this. He came up with an answer. True believers. What he
said was, all the time but especially in times of the depression
like they were living in there are people who lack self-worth.
They're the kind of people you can say, you're ugly; you're
terrible; you're a shit, and they go rigrht on. I don't know if
you've encountered people like that.
I went one time to a church in the south. The minister sat
up there and told him how evil they were and there was no way
out of it and then asked for money and everybody went Halleluya.
However, what does a person who has no self worth feels they're
worthless too? What do you do with a person with an inferiority
complex? If you're a loser and you feel yourself a loser? You
can commit suicide. That's one choice. If you haven't got the
guts to commit suicide you go kill somebody and get yourself
committed, suicide. Or you drop out, cop out, pop out. You take
drugs, drink alcohol. And so that you're high all time then you
know how good you are. You sober up. You realize you're a loser
so you stop so you get drunk all time. So but that's not
always the answer for many people. Some people get an
identity. It gives them a purpose for being.
What organization? Well it can be any organization, but
there are certain groups especially object extremes but there
are groups that appeal to people who feel themselves to be
losers. Who lack self-worth. They go out and they literally
recruit those who were lacking self-worth and we often refer to
them as cults. In fact, some of these we know when they finally
get attacked. The people revert to their lack of self worth by
committing suicide on mass. The first one that really hit the
American press in 1978 the year most have you were born was the
People's Temple in Jonestown when nine hundred people either
suicide with poison fruit punch. Yeah. Kool-aid. And then of
course there have been some recent ones: Waco, David Keresh and
Heaven's Gate was not one all those people that were waiting for
the space ship. They all had Nike tennis shoes. And then he used
apple sauce with the poison in it. Sort of a scary process but
these are what we call true believer groups and there are many
of them out there that haven't committed suicide yet, some of
them are powerful because when you have an organization of
people who need an identity, you have free labor and when you
have free labor you have a lot of money coming in. And many of
these groups raise their funds by sending out their laborers to
do inventories to -- they sell things on the streets. I mean
you've encounter them all over the place from time to time.

I guess one of the ones that used to be at the airport but you get off a plain and years ago these people would
come up to you and stick a rose in your hand. Okay. And
then they'd ask you for money. I actually had that happen at
the aquarium in San Francisco. And then she asked me for
money. That pissed me off. There goes my ego. What kind of
woman are you? Anybody know what group that was? American
flags and rose tell you it was for their --. Years ago they
used to dress in safron robes, shaved heads and will go
around the streets singing I think then all of a sudden they
decided they became more of a true believer group. They
start dressing like real people and confronting you all the
time. Harry Krishnas. And in their fund raising, I was
going to the DMV, is a couple of years ago and there was
this fairly attracted woman, but when she had a British
accent she became interesting. Women with British accents
sound intelligent, so when they're they sound -- but you
-- had this one they sound like a but this one was
British accent so I listened to her. She was raising funds
for this charitable cause, she had a little thing that shows
that she was legitimate. So I gave her five bucks. I don't
know why. I'm a sucker for British accents I guess and I get
inside and this guy said is that Harry Krishna woman out
there? Even knows these things you can be taken, but you
can tell the difference between true believers and those of
the true faith. of those of the true believers really lie to
you. They don't tell you who they are. They deceive you. Those
with the true faith have no problem in telling you who they are
because they know that if you're not interested you don't want
to participate -- it's your problem. You're going to go to hell
that's you're problem. They're just aiding you if you want that
help. Okay? And so you can distinguish them when they come to
your town. They have a true faith.
I know a number of years ago my son yelled dad dad the
Mormons are coming. Guys down the street with white shirts on
ties and their bikes and -- but you know when they come to the
door they tell you who they are. They're from the Latter Day
Saints. They leave you alone, but if not it's your problem.
However, a few months after that, he yells dad there's some
strange people down the street. They're wearing ties and
jackets and suits and they're all different colors and they got
-- the Mormons are one color. This group had different colors.
And, I said okay those are the Jehovah's Witnesses. Again,
they're not true believers. They have a true faith, but they're
going to come to the door and they're going to try and give you
the watch to your -- and ask you for ten cents. Don't worry
because I was leaving. I come back, he's got a pile, a stack. I
said, what happened? He said they were so nice. And he said and
the first thing they gave me and as a -- was how to deal
with my father. But they didn't stop coming after that. Once you
took the pamphlets they're going to come to your town, but that
was quite different than this kid who comes to my door. He's
selling these Garfield toys. And I look at him and I say, well
we're raising money for our church. He's got this glassy eyes
and it's not drugs, I can see this guy is somewhere in space
somewhere and I look and I said well what's the church? Well
it's a Christian church and I said what kind? A Christian
church. And I am -- well where is the church and he said
downtown. I said downtown where? He said downtown in the city
and I said what city and he said the city and I said oh, is it
the Unification Church he said yeah, how did you know? That's
the Moonies. That every couple of years marry ten thousand
people in this place in Mendocina county where we feed them
nothing but vegetarian food and then indoctrinate them. They're
a group that brain washes people. But they're very big and
powerful they got a lot of the money. They own churches,
buildings, printing companies, hotels, and contributed to
political parties to maintain their base. But certainly does
appeal to them is scientology. I think you have to have be
almost a true believer to take their test. Three thousand
questions on why you hate yourself. And then you finally get
through the course it's thousands of dollars. It helps people,
it's helped a lot of the people. You know, how else would John
Travolta been able to make Phenomena? We'll see you next week.