Esoteric Brezhnevism

J. Posadas (1912-1981) The Posadist Fourth International, founded by the Argentinian eccentric J. Posadas, became notorious for its leader’s enthusiasm for nuclear war and willingness to incorporate ufology and pseudoscience into his Marxist philosophy. By the 1960s, Posadism was exhibiting characteristics of a cult, with the cruel and charismatic but not particularly intelligent Posadas revered as a figure of mystic insights. “Any signs of individualism, in behavior or opinion, were mercilessly critiqued,” writes A.M. Gittlitz in his recently published book I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism . “Even one comrade telling Posadas that he was ‘the best of all us’ drew a rebuke since he was not an individual, but the prime mover and sum total of parts.” [1] Posadas’s ego played the major role in the movement’s trajectory, however; and what may surprise the reader of Gittlitz’s book more than the talk of extraterrestrials or communication with dolphins is the...

John Frankenheimer [Originally published April 14, 2018] Sirhan Sirhan, the man who has been characterized as both the first “Palestinian terrorist” as well as the quintessential “Manchurian Candidate”, was described after his alleged assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 as having been “motivated by Kennedy’s support for Israel.” Sirhan is supposed to have written in a notebook, “Kennedy must die by June 5th” (i.e., the anniversary of the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967) [1]. Sirhan retracted his initial admission of guilt in the crime, claiming to have been “hypno-programmed” by the assassination’s plotters. Indeed, more than one researcher has suggested that Los Angeles sex therapist and hypnosis expert William J. Bryan did the programming. “Bryan, a self-proclaimed eccentric character, once boasted to two of his favorite prostitutes that he, in fact, had hypnotized Sirhan and had worked on ‘top secret’ CIA projects,” writes  Forgotten Terrorist  author Mel Ay...