The Nesara Cult and Qanon's Origins

Robert is joined by Sofiya Alexandra to talk about the culture that helped build the foundation of Qanon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Robert Evans here, and I wanted to ask for your help.
There is a Portland area woman, Ruba to mem She's
an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist, and she
is trying to save her home at the moment. She's
got to go fund me. If you go to save
Ruba's house, are you be a on go fund Bank?
You'll find it Save Ruba's house on go fund me.
If you've got a few bucks, she could really use

(00:25):
it against save Ruba's house. Are you be a at
go fund Me? Thanks? What's killing my babies? This is shit?
That's bad way to start the episode. This is Behind
the Bastards. Poorly introduced podcast by Robert Evans And as

(00:46):
you might guess by our celebration of baby killing in
the introduction, my guest this week Sophie Alejandra. Okay, oh yeah,
hell yeah, did you make in air horns? Let's do it? No, no, no,
I just really got a call that I've been canceled
for those sound effects, So really thanks for having me.

(01:07):
That's a shame. Cancel culture strikes again. First, Dr syce
than you. I'm being told it's Dr Sis. I don't
believe it. But I guess I have to move to Texas. Now,
you have to move to Texas a k a. Cansylvania,
where the coronavirus runs free as the white tailed deer
across the prairie. Uh, Sophia. You and I have a

(01:30):
bit of a history, um, and that history is I
tell you stories about people who got a lot of
babies killed. UM. And I value that part of our relationship.
It's special. You know, there's not just anyone that you
can sit down and really talk about some dead babies with.
But you and I have both had a rough year
um already, as I'm going to guess around three million Americans.

(01:53):
So I decided to have a little bit lighter fair
this week, instead of talking about a baby, talking about
an eiracy theory that in many ways was the genesis
of the Q and on conspiracy theory, which is a
conspiracy theory that revolves around satanic pedophiles killing babies. Robert,
you flatter me. Oh my God keeps so much for

(02:15):
saving this for me. Oh yeah, No, we're gonna, we're
gonna have a good time. We're gonna we're gonna really
really get down and and and dirty with it. Um,
have you heard the second base for us, Robert, this
is this is this is a this is a real
step forward for us. Have you heard of the ness
era conspiracy theory? No? Okay, yeah, well that that is fine.

(02:39):
It it's it's from the late nineties, early two thousands.
How do you that? In E. S. E. R. A.
I'll explain to you what it means of a little bit. Um.
It started in like the late nineties, early two thousand's. Uh.
It has been absorbed into Q and On, or at
least segments of the Q and On conspiracy have absorbed this.

(03:00):
But in a lot of ways, the nessera conspiracy theory,
which kind of hit its height in the Bush Ears,
is a prelude to Q and On a lot of that.
You can see the groundwork being laid for QUA on
in this conspiracy theory. And that's why I think it's
very interesting. It's a beautiful amuse bush Yeah, conspiracy nonsense
to come. I'm very excited. It's very exciting, and it's

(03:22):
being It kind of faded out at the end of
the Bush Ears and it's being revived now so we'll
get to talk about in our next episode. Kind of
the modern revival of the nessera conspiracy theory. But first,
let's go back in time to the early nineteen nineties,
which was I think fair to say, a golden age

(03:42):
of cartoons trying to sell children things mostly but but
compared to now, a golden age for sure. Um Now.
In the early nineteen nineties, a Louisiana State University graduate
in systems philosophy named Harvey Francis Bernard started looking at
the US onomy and seeing some warning signs up ahead.

(04:03):
I don't think I need to explain what those warning
signs were, because we've all lived in a continual period
of economic collapse and whatnot. Um So, Barnard is looking
at like the Clinton era economy and the things that
are getting past and kind of the explosion of neoliberalism,
and going like this could be a problem, and he
decides to solve the problem. Um Now. Bernard believed that

(04:26):
personal debt was the number one factor holding back the
US economy, and that compound interest was the number one
cause of debt and just thus the chief moral evil
facing the US economy. So over the course of several
years he put together a plan to fix this that
he called the National Economic Security and Recovery Act or
NESS Era you know to acronym um. And you're not

(04:51):
going to get any analysis of how well this plan
would have actually worked for me, because I don't understand
the economy. This was his goal. He thought that this
would fix things. I can't tell if it would have ever,
wouldn't UM the proposed it was going to be a
final solution. No, I don't think he was a bad person,
and I don't think there was any like Yeah, I don't.
I don't get that hint because the conspiracy theory bears

(05:12):
no resemblance to what he started, and he's tried to
fight against the theory. This is just like a nerd
who was who came up with what he thought might
fix things, and nobody did it. Um. So, the proposed
law would have replaced the income tax with a national
sales tax, which I think is a bad idea that
when I will comment on because it's kind of regressive
against poor people as opposed to progressive. He would abolish

(05:33):
compound interest on most loans, which seems like a reasonable idea,
and it would have returned the US to bi metallic currency,
aka returning to using gold and silver is stores of
value for our currency, which does seem dumb. Bernard believed
his plan would lead to zero percent inflation and an
economy devoid of recessions and depressions. Um So it was
a nice dream. Again, doesn't seem to me like it

(05:53):
would have worked. But I don't know anything about the economy.
Um And, like every young man with a beautiful dream,
Harvey decided that self publishing was the best way to
get his message out. In n he produced a book
Draining the Swamp Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform. You remember
that title. Yeah, So he sent copies of this book

(06:15):
to every member of Congress, and of course nobody read them. Right,
you send a copy of your your homebrewed fiscal policy
to Congress. Nobody's going to read that. Nobody was ever
going to read that, um Nessara never went up for
a vote, it was never even discussed in Congress, and
Bernard's plan for economic reform remains untested to this day. Frustrated,

(06:35):
he published his book online under a new name, Draining
a Swamp the nessa Story Money and Fiscal Policy, and
for a few years it mostly just existed on the
internet as a bizarre monument to what might have been
if the entire national government had decided to implement the
plan that some dude who had enough spare cash to
self publish had sent them via the mail. Um nothing

(06:55):
really happened with it. No elected leaders or influential thinkers
picked up on the work, but people did start to
read it. And one of the people who read it
was Candice Goodwin, a woman from Washington State who was
a unique mix of gullible and cunning. Now we're not
going to talk about Candice for a little while yet,
but remember Candice Goodwin picks this book up, reads it

(07:16):
in like the late nineties, early two thousands, and while
she's becoming interested in this, a completely separate thing is happening.
A scam is being born in Matune, Illinois, to a
man named Clyde Hood. This is a little bit of
a wandering story. I just like all of the delightful
names Matune. Come on, Illinois. That's not a real town name,

(07:40):
and you fuckers know its fucking Illinois. Um. So, Clyde
Hood is a retired electrician who lives in Matune, and
in nine he decided he wanted to make more money
than tended to be available to small town electricians. He
started what he called Omega Trust and Trading. So Clyde
told the people that he approached with his plan that
he had a background in an investment banking. He'd done

(08:02):
the job for fifteen or sixteen years. He owned a
foreign bank, not one that they'd heard of. But trust him.
You know, there's a big deal. This bank that he
owns is a big is a Jew. I'm personally offended.
These are all lits um. So as I owned the banks,
I control the media. Hello, that is the new conspiracy
that you're dropping today? Uh? Which is which is that

(08:25):
that you control the global economy? Not all the Jews,
just me, just Sophia for the rest of them. Protocols
of Sophia exactly. I am an elder of Zion. There
weren't all of us. It was just me. It's always meeting.
I wrote a whole scroll. I didn't know it was
going to get popular. Oh boy, the fan art that

(08:47):
comes out of this is going to be really problematic
in like five years. So Clyde started telling people again
who was his only background is as a small town electrician.
Clyde starts saying, I've got sixteen fifteen years experience as
investment banker. I own a giant foreign bank. I'm an
expert in offshore trading um. And he would particularly claim
to be an expert in European high yield investment programs

(09:10):
and prime bank notes. Don't know what those are, don't worry.
Clyde didn't really either. He'd just lie about what they were.
He would tell his marks that these were the kind
of investments that are why rich people get richer. So
they're investments that are guaranteed to have a huge like
increase in like a return of r O Y or
whatever return over time UM. And if you invest in them,

(09:30):
you're automatically going to make more money. There's no chance
of them failing. And the only reason you can't invest
in that is that the rich people have set up
restrictions so that little people like you can't get in
these investments. And so you can't get rich because you
don't have enough capital upfront to get in the door
of these kinds of things. So he would enrich people,
That's what Clyde would say. And he would get these

(09:51):
audiences of Midwestern churchgoers mostly, and he would tell them
there are these investments that are why rich people keep
getting so rich and they're locking you out of them.
But because I'm in this system, because I'm a big
part of this, I know how to get you all
in the door I do. He would tell people like,
I do two fifty million dollar deals four times a week.
You know, It's totally routine for me. I know how

(10:11):
to make I like I I can I I understand
this business that they're trying to lock you out of,
and I've got a way for you to get in
with it. He would tell his marks things like this quote,
I'm the only one with control. I'm the only one
with a collateral account. I'm the one with a fiduciary bank.
There are only seven or eight people in the world
that can do all this. So basically it sounds like
a Finn doom, doesn't he a little? Really does? He's like,

(10:35):
I'm the one that holds the money. I got the
only one that knows how this works. But he was
so what he was doing though, This is where it
gets kind of interesting. So he would he would start
by pumping himself up as like, this is how how
big a deal I am. This is the kind of
money I work with, This is the kind of scale
I work at and I'm I'm an integral part, one
of seven or eight people who's a part of running

(10:58):
these systems that are why the rich get rich, sure
that you, the poor, are locked out of And then
he would go into the second part of his spiel,
and I'm gonna quote from a write up in the
News Tribute and a local Illinois paper explaining that spiel.
With a nod to his Christian audience, he said, a
vision from God came to him during a business trip
in Hong Kong. It told him to help the little

(11:18):
people and to do a big trade for humanitarian causes.
For that, he had formed a company called Omega trust
In Trading lt D. He was offering hard working people
a chance to reap their share of the lord's storehouse.
They could buy Omega units for a hundred dollars apiece
under Hood's supervision. Each unit would roll for US two
hundred and seventy five days with a fifty to one return.

(11:40):
Investors could let it roll again for another two hundred
seventy five days, again at fifty to one. After that
they could do one more role. But that was all
for onlookers. The math wasn't too hard to figure in
less than three years, a hundred dollars could become twelve
point five million dollars. So you see what you see
what the scam is here. I've got acts. I I'm

(12:00):
big in the system, the system that you're locked out of.
But God told me to let you in. So individually,
you each can't be a part of this because you
don't have enough money. But if you all pull your
money together, we can get put you in this fifty
to one investment. And if you just let give your
money to me for three or four years, it'll be
millions of dollars that you know. What I like about
this scamp is that in the beginning he says he's

(12:25):
part of the problem. He does. I mean, he's like,
I'm one of the eight people that's the problem. You
can trust me. It's just such a blatant amount of
honesty that I received that hustle. He was like, look,
I am one of eight crooks that control the world.

(12:45):
Obviously you can't be me, but do you want to
trust me with all your money? Yeah? And it's one
of those things where it's a very specific who this
grift could work on is very specific. Right, this is
only ever going to function for like, this is only
ever going to function on a specific kind of conservative
person right where they you tell them, I am a

(13:07):
part of this tiny system of wealth and privilege that
you have no chance of getting access to, that is
made to profit to lock you out as the little people.
But you don't hate me for that because you think
you're you're still bought into that idea that having money
in infer some sort of moral um high ground, right,
that you've done something to earn it. So he's not

(13:29):
he's he's really specifically grifting kind of conservative church going
Midwesterners by saying, hey, um, I'm a part of this system.
But I know you don't really hate the system. You
just hate that you don't have access to it, and
I I will give you access to it because God
told me too. It's an interesting, interesting grift. It's kind
of um, it's not completely different from what happened with

(13:50):
the Wall Street that's thing, right with some of the
way that was being framed to people of like these
kind of investments, normally you can't get in. It's just
the only hedge funds can do this thing. But we're
going to crowdsource this thing that only hedge funds do
and you'll make a bunch of money, and some people did,
but more people lost money. Um, you know, it's that
kind of grift um And I mean it's it's kind

(14:13):
of a nice cocktail, right because you're like, you're bringing
in like, yes, a few people control the world's finances.
You know, you're you're mixing in a healthy dash of
oh God chose me to help, you know, and you're
mixing in the fear, the underlying fear of uh people

(14:33):
that the only reason they're not rich is because they
lack access, but not access in terms of like racism
or systemic like no access in terms of literally one
of the eight people being like you're a now, yeah,
you just need to have the right rich friend and
then everything will be fine for you, like and then

(14:55):
then you can get rich. And it is also another
way in which I guess it does kind of like
you can see some sort of similarities. Walter bets you
just have to put in a hundred bucks, right, And
obviously they're trying to get people to put in more, right,
because if your hundred dollars can turn into twelve point
five million, what if you put in a thousand you'll
be super rich, you know. Anyway, So I just have
to say that me and my mom got suckered into

(15:16):
am Way when we first moved here. So yeah, and
imagine being like a new immigrant and someone is like,
I know how I can prey on you. Yeah, it's
really fucked up. And it's called the American Way, which
I just think is so that's what am Way was
designed to do, you know. Um, like people come here

(15:37):
with a little bit of cash in their pocket and
this dream of America as a opportunity. That's what was
not a lot of cash. Yeah. Um. Also, my mom
has like the worst social skills, so it was just
really fun to have a woman that doesn't say goodbye
before she hangs up, Um the phone that sell any

(16:00):
think to anyone. I'm like, she doesn't know how to
talk to her daughter. She's gonna befriend an American stranger.
Amazing classic. So so far, I think this is an
interesting grift because I'm interested in grifts, but this is
a pretty run of the mill grift. I think thousands

(16:20):
of American con artists have made bank off of variations
of the same idea. Um, there's nothing totally groundbreaking here,
although again I think it is neat. Clyde Hood did
differentiate himself a bit with the kind of work that
he put into his grift and what he did with
the money. Um. In terms of the money, he used
it to make his hometown mattoon like. He poured it
all back into a lot of it back into the community.

(16:41):
He would buy people houses and businesses um. And he
did this to like launder the money right, Like, he
would give people interest free loans and stuff um, which
is smart because it may meant that everybody who lived
around him uh supported him in his grift uh. And
it also meant that he had a way to launder
money um. Now, he was also a kind of labor

(17:03):
full guy. He put the effort into making this look
like official financial ship because again, his clients were low
income Midwesterners who just if the forms looked right, they
would assume this was an actual investment. He would send
his investors official looking legal documents called private party loan agreements,
which are not a thing um. But the people he
was scamming didn't know that, and they got receipts that

(17:26):
seemed very official, so they assumed it was legitimate. Clyde
was also intelligent enough to portray his scam is not
just another get rich quick scheme. He wasn't just offering
people a sure thing investment opportunity. He was a crusader
who had come from the murky waters of finance with
special knowledge and a biblical command to free regular people
from the bonds of debt, slavery, and paycheck to paycheck life.

(17:47):
Clyde claimed his new goal was to quote keep the
Lord's warehouse full. So he also told his marks that
as a rich investment banker, he had access to a
special investment system that was only available to the wealthy um.
So again he was like letting you into this thing now.
For the next few years, Omega spread by word of
mouth all over North America. Hood and four of his

(18:09):
friends acted as the ringleaders, connecting a network of roobs
via direct phone conversations. Omega investors in seventeen area codes
would regularly receive calls with prerecorded updates from Clyde on
the status of their investment. Most of these calls focused
on why the promised payouts were constantly delayed. For example,
quote Omega has been interrupted due to some unforeseen financial conflicts,

(18:31):
he said in a June third, nineteen phone message. These
situations are those situations should be completed on June seventeenth, nineteen,
and the banks will then continue to process your checks
and credit cards. So he's just taking like voice like
it's not even like an actual voicemail. It's like a recording. Yeah,
it's a prerecorded voicemail to keep you up to date
on your investment. And hey, when you love enough to

(18:55):
do the very least, Yeah, sofa, he's he's a he's
a solid grifter. Now this worked for a shockingly long time.
People accepted the delays just as just more evidence that
Clyde was a real hero. Right. The system is trying
to stop him from getting us our money, Like, we're
all in this together. We're fighting the system, and if

(19:15):
we just keep holding out, um, eventually we'll break into
the system. Now. The reality, of course, so similar and
just way too similar to what's happened. I know it's
the same thing. It's too much. It's very fun. I
do like to picture him practicing recording those voice messages.

(19:39):
Imagine being like, oh, no, I should have I got
to invent a new thing. Let's see, like a hedge fund. Uh,
hedge fund? Okay, which what should you do, like a
like high hedge fund VP. Yeah, so the high Hedge
Fund VP has recently told us about some complications in

(20:00):
your account. Just pretty fun to imagine it. Yeah, yeah, Robert, Okay,
So I'm just I'm just thinking about how this is
going to keep happening forever, you know, but you know
what else is going to keep happening forever. And it's
also fun to imagine. I had to put both products

(20:20):
and they're together. It was so cohesive, yes, Robert, products
and services. Okay, well products, that's it. Oh, we're back.

(20:46):
Well okay. So the reality, of course of this con
was that Clyde and his collaborators were making bank stealing
from a bunch of people who didn't have a whole
lot of money to steal. Uh. He recruited salesman who
would pitch Omega to new communities, and his most successful
pitchman brought in sixty two a hundred thousand dollars per week.
So they are fleecing a lot of people for a
lot of money. Clyde avoided pitching two communities too close

(21:09):
to his hometown in Illinois, because again, you don't want
to ship where you eat, California and Texas where his
biggest money making states, which should not surprise anyone. Washington.
So nice choosing such big fucking states. I mean, like
you're you don't want to grift in like South Dakota
get shot four people in town. I've stolen all eight

(21:33):
dollars in the community. Yeah, that's not even going to
pay for my bus stake at home. Yeah, Washington State
was his number three biggest mark, and it was there
in that Candice Goodwin, who we talked about earlier, big
fan of Nessa, became an investor. She lived near Yell, Washington,

(21:54):
which is also where most of Omega's Washington investors lived.
One resident whose mother's gave dollars declined later told reporters quote,
it proliferated throughout this entire town. Another resident who donated
or who invested and lost recalled it was just by
word of mouth. Some friends of ours told us, and
then we turned around to talk to other people about it.
They already knew. And of course, the way that things

(22:17):
work in these kind of communities, small communities, you convince
one person you're legit, they'll tell their friends and it's like, hey,
we all have this opportunity to get super rich. You know,
fighting the system, let's do it. Let's you know, whatever
you've got put in as much as you can, right,
why not, it's a sure thing system. Fighting the system
always results in a huge fucking cash cow at the end.

(22:37):
That's the way fighting the system works. That's why activism
was so lucrative. People fucking union leaders and all the
people protesting just fucking l and union leaders do sometimes
when wind up whirling in cash. But that's because of
the mop Well I don't mean I guess leaders leaders.
I'm thinking of my friends who were yeah, yeah, yeah,

(22:59):
not like there's a difference between most unions and like
Atlantic city unions. So the fact that this kind of
proliferated through very savvy con artists in the network of
savvy con artists reaching out to influential people in small
communities and convincing them that they were the real thing.

(23:20):
That's probably part of why it took the FEDS so
long to realize that something was up. Um. The other
part is that the Internet wasn't really a thing at
this point in the same way that it is now. Right,
it existed obviously in the late nineties, but you were
not going to read small town people for a grift
via the internet. Omega was sold hand to hand and
people were strung along over phone calls to their landlines. Right,

(23:40):
the artisanal grift and artisan grif Yeah, the whole foods
of grift ing. Yeah, it's it's it's uh hand farmed
to table grift ing. It's it's you know, grift local.
I always say, um, support your local grifter. That's merge.

(24:05):
I'm sorry, that is merge. Yeah. So the fact that
like Omega was sold this way allowed also allowed Clyde
and his fellows to trick very well educated and accomplished people.
We're not talking about like a Nigerian prince email scam
here where you shoot out a million emails and you
hope you just kind of scam a couple of people,
like right, you shoot out a bunch. This is very targeted,

(24:27):
very um, there's a lot of effort going into this grift.
One of the biggest marks that they found was a
Seattle based tax attorney and a very successful tax attorney
who gave Omega two hundred and eighty thousand dollars. So
people who should have known better got caught into this ship. Right,
you expect a tax attorney would know this is all lies,
but he didn't. Um. The local New Age movement was

(24:50):
absolutely critical to allowing Omega to spread through most of
these little communities in Washington. The vector of infection seems
to have been jay Z Night, a grew who claimed
to channel Rampa the soul of a forty thousand year
old warrior. Many Omega donors had heard about the opportunity
through jay Z or through Rampha, who again jay Z
she she channeled Ramtha right uh, and I'm gonna quote

(25:13):
again from the right up in the news Tribune here.
Omega was an open secret secret at nights Rampa School
of Enlightenment. For former students say they asked not to
be named, citing the fear of legal retaliation from Night,
who requires students to sign nondisclosure agreements. That's how I
became involved in it was through the school, one student said,
I was involved in it, and practically everyone else I
knew what this school was involved in it. There were

(25:35):
tons of people involved in this. On just a cash basis.
People were sending in cash, cash, with no paperwork, no receipt,
no nothing. People were promised their money was going to
come in before the next snowfall. The students say Night
never endorsed a promoted omega. Some are call her telling
students to cultivate an abundance mentality if the promised fortunes
ever came, which is again secret. Yeah it is, it is, right,

(25:59):
And then that's jay Z Knight. We'll do a story
on her at some point. Is a very skillful grifter, right,
So she's already got people believing I have otherworldly, worldly
wisdom that I'm channeling through the spirit of a forty
year old like dead warrior prints. Right, And if you'll
believe that, you'll probably be in a in a mindset
where you might believe, oh hey, God told me to

(26:20):
let you guys out on this rich people scam so
that we can break the system. Right, it's not so
much of a leap if you're already believed rab the exists.
But also, jay z Knight isn't telling people to get
involved in this because jay Z Knight, being a good grift,
knows this is gonna come crashing down at some point. Right,
So what she tells you is you have to cultivate
an abundance mentality and then and then wealth will come

(26:41):
to you. And if she's telling you that, while these
people she's letting into her community are asking you to
invest in this thing, you're going to pour all your
money into it because that's the way people work. It's
I love the way cross pollination works with grifts. This
whole story is the story of a bunch of different
grifts and conspiracy theories, all cross lanating with her within
like sort of a cultic milieu. To use that term again.

(27:04):
It's like essentially you're being fucked from two sides and
you're getting sucking split like a roast turkey, except for
that sounds rad and this sucks. It's rad. If you
asked for it, it's all rad. If you thought you
were coming over for dinner, Yeah, I mean it depends
on your personality, I guess. But anyway, back to back

(27:27):
to messera. So Candice Goodwin, also known as Shiny Goodwin
s H A I n I. Goodwin, had attended classes
at the Rama School in the late nineteen eighties. The
school had opened in nineteen eighty eight, so Goodwin would
have been one of the very first students. She started
calling herself a channel er in the early nineteen nineties
and when she got involved with Omega, she decided to

(27:48):
do more than just invest money and wait for her return.
Goodwin listened to the prerecorded regular messages Clyde sent out
and thought, that's a pretty good idea. You can really
get people strung along on a grip if you send
the messages this way, if you're in their ear all
the time. So she started putting out a newsletter called
the Daily Dove and started calling herself the Dove of Oneness. Now,

(28:11):
the reports that she sent out in this newsletter were
initially focused on providing people with information about their Omega investments,
and she was not directly affiliated with Omega. This is
like she's like a Remora. She sees the successful grift
and she attaches herself to it right um, which is
another thing that starts to happen with the Omega grift
and with we'll talk. There's a lot going on here. Um.

(28:33):
So she called herself initially just another Omega investor, waiting
for her prosperity deliveries like everyone else. She claimed to
have direct dealings with Clyde and his other partners, but
again she was not a part of their actual organization.
She frequently alluded to secret information that she had been
privy to with making statements like quote. Two new pieces
of info suggest that important strides forward are being made.

(28:55):
She wrote on March twenty, two thousand, you are well
advised to get ready. I have person really been reprogramming
my old ideas about prosperity so that I am ready
to wisely steward this great abundance. So I want to
pause here for a second and make a couple of comparisons.
Number One, she's saying kind of the same things that
Romptha saying, And she's a student of Rampa, both in
terms of her spiritual beliefs and in terms of how

(29:17):
she grifts people. But what's happening here with Omega is
a lot like what you see happening with Q and On. Right,
with Q and On, you have the people who started
it and who have been keeping it going, who obviously
have some sort of grift going on right, they benefit
in some way from this. But then you have all
these people like Praying medic who have like latched onto
the grift and made money from it by doing like

(29:38):
what she's doing. Right, they don't do newsletters so much anymore,
because that's not the grift, but they have Twitter accounts
and YouTube channels that they monetize telling people about this,
basically latching onto this over grift and creating their own
side grifts out of it. And that's that's I'm not
going to say that what's happening with Omega right now
is the first time that this happens, but it's the

(29:59):
first time that it happens that I'm aware of in
a way that it really resembles what we see happening
with Q and on. I don't know if I'm going like,
there's a lot happening here, so I understand if this
is kind of confusing. Do you have any questions about like,
what's going on at this stage? Oh my god, this
gave me such a school flashback. Do you have any

(30:19):
questions before we move on? Yeah? I mean, I think
this is important because this is not always the way
that grifts have worked in the United States. The fact
that this is a mix of a you've got this
financial con right, that's just about getting money from people,
but the con wraps itself in this God gave me

(30:40):
this message and we're fighting the system thing and then
it gets caught up in this. I'm channeling the spirits
of dead Warriors thing. And you have individuals who are
not a part of the original grift latch onto it
and start making money by selling information about the over grift.
That's all very Q and on. That's very modern, and
it's starting to happen here for the first time that

(31:01):
I'm aware of in a really organized way. Well, I
mean the combo. Yeah, but if you think about how,
like I mean, God and grifting just go together absolutely,
like TV spirituality and grifting. Yeah, tell, evangelists have been
doing this forever, and even before that in person people
were doing that forever, like come to my tent and

(31:23):
I'll fucking fleece you for everything you got, and then
I'm gonna throw in some supernatural stuff, show you how
I just made someone walk, and like boom bam boom,
like I've got absolute money. But yeah, combining it with
all of this other stuff is what's like, Yeah, and
and combining it with this starts the guy who's initially
grifting is trying to get small town Christian Midwesterners to

(31:46):
give him money. So it's a very Christian grift. Ramatha
is not a Christian grift right like that, Once you
start channeling the spirits of debt and channeling aliens, all
of this stuff comes into it. You have these two
different segments intermingling, which is what again you're saying with
Q and On. There's people who are part of Q
who like the Q shaman. Right, that guy is not

(32:06):
a traditional Christian grifter or whatever, like that guy believes
some all some weird Norse pagan ship. But it all
gets folded into the same over grift. It all gets
to coexist within this space of unreality. Um. And that's
why it's so Number one, it's why people who get
pulled into that can be convinced of stuff like Nazism,
because if you already accept all of this weird ship

(32:27):
QU and on, you have to believe to be a
part of the Q and On Grift, you're more open
to that stuff. But it also it means that people
of all different people who you would normally think would
be enemies, right this the people who believe in this
kind of there are aliens and I'm channeling dead spirits
and like I've got like there's these aspects of Hindu mythology, right,

(32:48):
you would expect those people wouldn't get along with the
Pentecostal Christian grifting set, but they all can in this
kind of cultic milieu, and I think that's really interesting.
And this is the first time you really start to
see that spin together in a in a cohesive way,
and I think that's meaningful. You're totally right, And it
also makes me think about the fact that like the

(33:10):
things that it's really easy for people to like coalesce
behind are like our children are in danger, you know
what I mean, UM, which has been like the thing
that's been pushing things like or any of like any
of those shows even that are like the mild version
of like, we're scaring you about your kids, so you

(33:32):
watch the show like that's the mildest version of that
con but like Q and On and the Pizza gate
Ship is like the high version, but it's all the
same thing of like you have to be afraid for
your children. And then the other thing that people really
can fucking get behind is um money. If someone promises

(33:53):
you money and how to get rich and become wealthy,
then a ton of people who don't otherwise like agree
on much could totally get behind that idea, Like if
we're all getting money, I'll stand next to a Nazi.
Fuck it. That's like the mentality, you know what I mean.
It's it's also I think you're really onto something when
you talk about these few things that everyone can get behind,

(34:14):
that makes it easier to get this wide variety to
funnel people from a variety of sources. And one of
them is your children are in danger, right um. Another
of them is the system is fucking you, and I
have a way to beat it, right um. And it's
it's I think what the key is that everyone who
isn't super rich knows the system is fucked, but a

(34:37):
fairly small number of people are like, the system is fucked,
and so we shouldn't have a system, right like, so
so this system shouldn't exist. It's much easier to be like,
the system is fucked, but hey, I got a way
that we can we can become winners in it, right Like.
All we have to do is stop the barriers that
are stopping people like us from winning in the system.
The problem isn't the system. The problem is the barrier

(34:57):
for me winning the system that the Wall Street bet ship. Right,
It's also communism. It's literally also communism, and it's like
and it's most cynical a state. But yeah, but it's
in the least cynical form. It's like, the reason we've
been getting fucked as workers have no rights. The way
to fuck the system is if workers all get together

(35:18):
and the power of the working man will make the
system fair. So it's like, not that it's always coming
from like a bat shit fucked up. No, it's not.
Because that's a fairly reasonable that might be the right
way to fix society, but that that's hard and requires
a kind of that requires not being the kind of
individualists that Americans are. Because if you're telling if you're

(35:42):
telling these these Midwesterns like, well you, if all of
us get together and we all agitate for better conditions
for everybody, um, that's what will actually fix the system.
That's a lot harder of a cell for Americans. Then, Hey,
the system is fucked because you're not able to win
under it. I have a way you can win and
then you don't have to care about other people so much.

(36:02):
You know, that's doesn't say good things about us, But
I think that's what's going on here, right. I think
that's why it is hard to get Americans on board
with the system is fucked. So workers need to take
over the means of production and easy to get them
to go. The system is fucked. I got a way
that we can fun people under it, you know anyway? Um,

(36:23):
So yeah, Shana Goodwin, Um, the Dove of Oneness starts
side grifting off of this er grift that is the
Omega investment opportunity thing of the Jake. So Goodwin was
deeply influenced, as I've said, with a many aspects of
the kind of cultic milieu that's forming in the United
States at this time. And I've used that term a
couple of times this episode. I used it in our

(36:45):
lesson on the Satanic Panic. In case you haven't listened,
I want to grab a definition from a right up
by the American Institute for Economic Research that explains what
the term cultic milieu means, because it's very important both
for this and for what we're dealing with, and it
sounds sexy. It is hot as funk right quote. This
is a kind of subterranean world or counterculture with the

(37:05):
whole range of ideas that are strongly opposed to conventional
beliefs and knowledge. These included highly heterodox and unusual religious
systems such as neopaganism or theosophy or Satanism, marginalized political
ideologies such as neo Nazism, conspiracy theories and theories that
rejected central elements of orthodox science, such as rejection of
vaccination and modern medicine, or flat and hollow earth ideas,

(37:29):
and again, everything that makes up a cultic meliu doesn't
have to be complete bullshit. A lot of people get
into this because they start learning about real shady conspiracies
the CIA was involved in, and because those things are
actually really wild and nuts, they they think anything is possible,
and they they are able to buy into stuff that
isn't true right that there isn't documentation of um. And

(37:51):
it's you know, the failure of the mainstream media has
a big part for why this is anyway. That's that
that's a bigger, bigger story than we can talk about today. Um.
But that's what's That's what SHANEA. Goodwin is kind of
she's she's bubbling up from you know, the the Omega
cult starts kind of in this it's just a very
simple Christian Midwestern grift. She comes into it from more

(38:12):
of a kookie West Coast. Uh counter quote. I believe
in aliens, I believe in channeling thing, but at all
they're they're all able to come together. So Omega had
started from a position that its founder had some sort
of hidden knowledge and that the payouts were being halted
by a shadowy enemy, and this made it able to
slot in perfectly with all sorts of other Culti American beliefs.

(38:33):
Goodwin's Daily Dove updates included references to the ascended Masters,
people who were once human but had cleared their karmaic
debt and achieved enlightenment, as well as the dreaded Illuminati
who were stopping people from getting their Omega payouts. Now,
both of these concepts have been common in New Age
circles before Omega, but they kind of get wrapped in
and they also get sold to Christians in a in

(38:53):
a big way. So the Master was in Buffy Yeah, yeah,
I mean again, this in the X Files pulls from
a lot of this stuff. Right, All of this is
happening before Omega, but Omega is kind of where a
lot of things start to boil together. So Rampa and
his teachings obviously had a big impact on Goodwin. And
when you dig into Rampa a bit it's clear that

(39:14):
she had a well he, I guess Rampha is a
hey jay Z Knight is a she. I think, so
it's messy um. Rampa had a wide ranging impact. One
nine six article I found in The New York Times
quoted a former owner of a string of Burger Kings
who claimed ramphis teachings had convinced him to give up everything,
moved to northern California and build a pyramid. And I'm

(39:35):
I'm broadly supportive of that, because it's probably better to
build a pyramid in the woods than it is to
own a bunch of Burger Kinks. But it doesn't hurt anyone,
whereas Bigger King for sure does hurts a lot. Of
Burger King is much more harmful than Wooden's pyramids. Yeah,
so I'm gonna quote from the New York Times here.
Among other things, Miss Knight's teachings include these precepts. God

(39:56):
is not a remote entity, but an integral part of
everything in the universe. Therefore, and himself is divine, and
as such is able to create his own reality and
achieve anything he desires. And in the absence of what
miss Knight calls a judgmental God, you could never please.
There is no sin and therefore no reason for human guilty.
I'm sorry. She had me in the beginning, and that

(40:17):
is how this ship goes in the beginning. You yeah,
this makes sense. And in the end of the way,
it's impossible to do bad things. So you should never
feel guilty for hurting people. Oh I think you might be. Yeah.
Miss Knight contends that cataclysmic events, not nuclear wars, but
earthquakes and other natural catastrophes are likely to occur soon.

(40:38):
As Ramtha. She warns that people should find a safe
place to live, stockpile a two year food supply, and
become self sufficient by planting their own gardens. Among the
safest areas, he asserts, is the Northwest. Because her followers
do not live in a single community and seldom have
met one another. No one has determined how many people
have moved west at her behest, but real estate agents
and others who have observed the migration estimated number at

(40:58):
five hundred and fifteen hundred people, many of them middle
aged women. So that's interesting to me. And obviously cars
on the table here. I moved to the Northwest because
I'm afraid of a societal collapse, and for other reasons,
I'm gonna move there just so I can funk all
those cougars. Yeah, well past sugar time. I'm just saying, yeah,

(41:21):
there you go. Um, Mama's gone eat tonight. Uh. I
think what they're saying about the fact that Rampa is
getting a bunch of these people to move to the
Northwest because it's the safest place in the event of
an apocalypse. This reinforces some of the things I'm saying

(41:44):
about a cultic milieu, because Rampa's teachings about this, there's disaster,
there's an apocalypse coming, this is the safe place, so
you have to move here. In stockpile, that can easily
lead people towards Nazis, because in this same period, the
late eighties early nineties, a lot of Nazis who don't
have wildly divergent cultic beliefs. Sometimes they're also saying, you
need to move to the Northwest because it's the whitest

(42:05):
part of the country and because the nuclear war is
coming and if we're all together, we can create a
white ethno state afterwards. Right. Um. And I'm not just
like making this up because I'm always scared of Nazis.
There's some evidence that jay Z Knight and thus the
Rampha clet have some kind of Nazi adjacent beliefs. In
two thousand fourteen, video surface of jay Z Knight saying

(42:28):
this quote, fuck God's chosen people. I think they have
earned enough cash to have paid their way out of
the goddamn gas chambers by now. So, okay, I am
gonna leave her cult. Okay. I did not come here
to be disrespected. Yeah, I said, good day, Please send

(42:49):
me my check. You don't get checks from RAMA. The
checks flow one way in the Ramphal Wait. But but
is she white? Jesus, I don't even know. I didn't
even check because I in my head, I just pictured
jay Z every time you see her, that would be Yeah,
she's white as hell. Yeah. Absolutely. She looks exactly like

(43:12):
you'd expect. She looks like a side character on One
Life to Live. I think a weird reference, Robert. My mom,
My mom was there was always so whenever I'd be
sick at home, soaps would be on. Google jay Z
Night and tell me she does not look like a
One Life to Live sidey. Hey, Robert, are these the

(43:33):
days of our lives? I don't know it was. We
were a one life to live family. You have allegiances,
you are a soaped. But seriously, google here, tell me
I'm wrong. I'm googling her right now, and it's j
Z the two letters, not not how it's actually she

(43:55):
came right up. She comes up as American teacher. That
seems eating. That seems misleading. She does look like she
doesn't look like what I expected. She looks like Paula Abdul,
a lot of like Paula Abdul, one of those housewives
from one of the house yes merged together. She's got

(44:15):
major housewife face, got the housewife lip plump and fuck
you bangs. Now, this doesn't directly tie into what we're
talking about today, but I should note for context that
also in two thousand and fourteen, whistleblowers revealed that jay
Z Knight had spent years urging her most devoted followers
to drink lie Oh my god, make money off of

(44:37):
them after they're dead, dummy. You gotta mix it with
ship then they don't quite die. It's like the bleach.
Oh my god. I'm going to quote a right up
by Q thirteen Fox here, which is a local fox affiliate.
Alluding to the teachings at RAMPA, Former follower Virginda Coverdale said,
we're more powerful than we realize. Our brain can do
all sorts of things, quantum theory. These things are what

(44:58):
excited me and a lot of other people that got involved.
Coverdale said her family started Following Night more than three
decades ago. She said members were encouraged to drink a
concoction of dead seawater mixed with red devil lie to
enlighten themselves. She said her mother and brother were among
of those who drank the like incoction. This wasn't just
a one time thing, Coverdale said. They We're taking it
for five years, and Rampa at one point told them

(45:19):
to chug it because it's not just a teaspoon in
the morning. In the evening, people were losing their hair.
Oh my god, it's so funny if I joined your
cult and then I went bald. Yeah, because of the
poison you made me drinking piste. See, this is why
in my cult, all we make you chug is Highlands,

(45:42):
all natural baby killing pills. The only kill I made
my followers, but chug them. That's how I know they
really loved me. See, you when I say it. It's
funny when you say she doesn't like it, though. It's
funny when you say it because Robert's face goes well, Oh,

(46:04):
I missed making Robert blush in person. It was a
delightful experience. It's such a sweet baby. Look at him.
Uh shucks, he's blushed again. We we veered off track
in a couple of ways here, um, and I hope
this all hasn't been too confusing, because there's a lot

(46:24):
to get out and like late nineties, early two thousands,
conspiracy culture is one of the things that I love
talking about the most, um. But it's it's it's messy.
It's important though, because it is now mainstream Republican politics, um,
and probably increasingly mainstream democratic politics too, unfortunately. So I
know a lot of people are wondering, right now, what

(46:45):
does this all have to do with NESSA what we
started talking about at the top of the episode, right,
we kind of lost that thread. We're getting there now.
By nine, it was obvious to Clyde and his fellows
who had started Omega, that the law was closing. In
his prerecorded messages to his followers started filling with warnings
of government interference from numerous individuals and entities who wanted

(47:07):
to ensure his investments failed to pay out. When his
marks would complain online about the fact that years had
gone by without a promise payment, he would accuse them
of being part of the conspiracy against Omega, or threatened
them that by doubting him, they were hurting their chances
of receiving their payout. Most Omega investors stayed on board.
They kept putting in money right up to the end.
Many of them mailed it wrapped in aluminum foil to

(47:29):
prevent their shadowy enemies from seeing it. I know, that's
that's some good ship, right, that's the ship we all love. Yeah.
So the millennium turned and the year two thousand came
and for the last speake off, I wrap my vagina
in foil um. I will never get raped because my
vagina will be invisible. Uh, well, you won't get raped

(47:52):
by the globalists. That doesn't seem worth it them, won
Alex Jones. There's only about six thousand and of them.
So yeah, no, that's not not really comprehensive protections. Do
better with a thirty eight. Will put your vagina in
a microwave? Self? No, but don't worry. Even without it,

(48:12):
this ship's gonna blow up. I'm sorry, I'm not at hilarious.
So by the year two thousand, Clyde Hood and his
lieutenants had spent about six years grifting millions of dollars
from you know, credulous people and putting it into their
own bank accounts and into the small town of Mattune,

(48:34):
which was doing quite well as a result of this grift.
By two thousand, they'd taken at least twelve point five
million dollars. This is the point at which federal law
enforcement finally caught up with them and arrested Clyde, as
well as ten other people in Matune, including the deputy sheriff,
a former police officer, a minister, and a lawyer. Eight
people who lived outside of the town were also arrested.

(48:56):
The trial almost immediately went off the rails when prosecutors
asked Clyde what fortune companies he'd worked for, because he
had told people he'd worked for several Hood answered that
he could not remember the names of the companies that
he'd worked for, but stated that they were in the
New York area or the Florida area, probably, which is
an amazing response under oath, So you told investors you

(49:17):
worked for multiple Fortune five hundred companies. Which were they, Oh,
I don't know, Probably they were in New York, maybe Florida.
It's incredible. The New York Times chronicles just how bizarre
the whole affair became. Quote in an especially odd aspect
of the case, Mr Hood and two of the other
defendants have apparently tried to assert that the United States
government does not exist as a grand jury was convened.

(49:40):
They mailed papers to prosecutors, court clerks, mattun police officers,
the county sheriff, and the United States Supreme Courts stating
that any judicial preceding determination, ruling, order, decree, entry, penalty, fine,
or arrest warrants which issues from these courts is nolan void.
Investigators also found identity cards with pictures and signatures of
Mr Hood and another defendant, Lean Faust Diamond, a sixty

(50:01):
three year old real estate and insurance agent from Los
Angeles who solicited investments for Omega. The cards identified Mr
Hood and Ms Diamond as Ambassador and Minister of Justice
for the Free State of Eden. Prosecutors said Ms Diamond
tried to use her card to claim a kind of
diplomatic community and get out of submitting handwritten and fingerprint
samples to the grand jury. Mr Hood testified in court

(50:21):
on Thursday that he signed the card as a joke,
since how about the irony of not acknowledging the United
States and then sending paperwork to the United States Supreme Court.
It is funny, right, I acknowledge that you're trying to
get me to do something, but I also don't acknowledge

(50:41):
you even though I'm sending you paperwork. I mean, And
it's the same in the same way that like, sovereign
citizenship wasn't part of Q and On at first, but
got absorbed into it, and now a bunch of Q
people will talk sovereign citizenship, just like a bunch of
Black Israelites will talk sovereign citizenship. Right, it all, all
of these things are infectious, no matter even though the
original sovereign citizens were a lot of them were super

(51:03):
racist and like not at all, like very big at
it against black people. Also groups of like like like
like black Israelites. Right that this like fringe cult that
believes that like black people are the real Jewish people,
and actual Jewish people are like it's some sort of
like historic scam. There was a shooting based around this
a year or two ago. Um and I think New

(51:23):
Jersey a lot of those people get into sovereign citizen
stuff because it doesn't matter how it started. It matters
that once you're in that kind of like cult it
conspiratorial mind state, you'll just suck all of this stuff in.
It all seems more credible to you, because nothing that's
credible is credible. It's a it's very frustrating. It's a
big problem that we have as a civilization that we're
not going to solve totally. And it's also like the

(51:45):
same ship as the as every shitty politician who's like
I am against big government while you're running for office
against government. Okay, well why are you trying to get
a government position then, you know, or like, oh I'm

(52:07):
gonna get in, I'm gonna change it from the inside.
I'm different. Yeah, you could even draw a line between
what Clyde is doing. Right, I'm inside this big system,
but I'm going to break it for you, the little people,
to like what Trump was doing, where I'm going to
run this big system to break it for you. You know,
it god, I people come on. So Clyde eventually in

(52:28):
court confessed to Omega being an elaborate con. He was
asked by a federal prosecutor in two thousand one, did
you get a vision, an actual vision from the Lord?
And he said in court no, I did not um
he he was. He was asked, did you ever work
for a fortune company as a trader? He answered no,
And he was asked what is Omega? And he said,

(52:48):
it is a scam, so you had. Finally, in the
end of this court case, Clyde hood admit that the
whole thing was a con the entire time. Uh. He
admitted to being a liar in court was sentenced to
fourteen years in prison. The Feds confiscated money from him
and property from him that he and his co defendants
had accumulated, and they did attempt to redistribute it to

(53:09):
his victims. Now, a number of people tried, like filed
to receive restitutions, stated what they donated, try to get
some money back from the Feds, but more. But the
more people the Feds reached out to that Clyde had conned,
the more they ran into a peculiar situation. Many, if
not no they didn't want their money back, not because

(53:30):
they were embarrassed. And this is where Shaney Goodwin, the
dove of oneness, re re enters the story. See. The
arrest of everyone involved in Omega didn't stop her from
sending out her newsletter, and it didn't destroy her faith
in Omega either. On the day of the arrests, she
sent this out to her followers. Tonight, we were told
by a very high intelligence agency source that this whole

(53:50):
thing in Illinois has been staged to try to stop funding. However,
this case in Illinois totally lacks in any ability to
stop funding. It is almost a comedy because the whole
case will disappear instantly, very soon. In all caps, she
continued to assure people that their promised financial returns were
still coming. Clydes arrest was yet another attempted by the
evil people in power to stop thousands of real Americans

(54:12):
from getting rich. The Feds who were reaching out to
pay them back the money that they had lost were
part of the conspiracy, and if they accepted the repayment
of their investment, they would never get the millions of
dollars that they were actually owed. Oh boy, people are
giving you a chance to not be stupid idiot. Just

(54:34):
take the goddamn chance. No, of course not. This is
the FEDS trying to trick me, but giving me back
my money. I'm not gonna fall for it. Isn't that
so good? People only trick you to take your money.
No one ever tricks you to give you money. That's
literally leaving money in the FBI's hands, which just so fun.

(54:58):
It's so amazing. So the news Tribunes summarizes the dove
of oneness is message messages immediately before and after the
bus quote as dove, She cited information from unnamed sources
and described secret struggles among the world's financial elites, beginning
sentences with I have been told, She said, a major
European bank had come to Omega's rescue, but a major

(55:18):
US bank was fighting the program with every trick and
delay possible. U s Supreme Court justices were on Omega's side.
An important judge from the East Coast was fighting on
their behalf. A group she called the White Knights was
waging war against powerful enemies she began to call the
Dark Agenda. Between such ominous reports, she called for group
prayers and positive thinking. She were linked the instructions that

(55:41):
explained how to handle large sums of money when they arrived.
She talked about how she would spend her own money
when she received it. She would give large gifts to
humanitarian causes. So you see what's happening here, right, this
is this is cue and on ship there's the white Knights,
these good people inside the intelligence agencies, inside the banks.
They're trying to get your money to you. They're fighting this,
but there's the dark Agenda is trying to fight them.

(56:03):
There's this epic battle occurring on your behalf at levels
you don't know. But I have secret insight too, and
that's why you need to subscribe to my newsletter and
give me money. It's cute. Why the knight's got to
be white though? Yeah, I mean I don't think she
anticipated what internet culture would do to the term white knight,

(56:23):
but so uh, it's about that time again. You know
who are white knights secretly fighting from within the immoral
system on your backs? That's right, that's right, the ultimate
white Knights. I don't like this phrasing at all. I

(56:46):
love phrasing. I love products and services. They love you too, Robert.
They don't kisses for ads ah, and we're back. We're back,
and we're all just having a grand time. I love

(57:12):
to be bamboozled. I I love it too. So yeah,
the FEDS were aware of the dove of oneness, right. Uh.
They were also aware that a lot of people with
no affiliation with Omega had started selling investment opportunities using
Omega's materials, and this continued in some extent after a

(57:33):
bunch of Omega people went to prison. Jay z Night
Slash Ramtha was very likely one of those people, but
we don't really know if she or her cult profited
directly by getting their members to invest, and the FEDS
opted not to even investigate this. One prosecutor said, we
knew that there were more people associated with her that
apparently had invested in Omega, but that was not an
angle we wanted to pursue because apparently it's very difficult

(57:56):
to pursue that angle, which doesn't really mean anything other
than you were scared that it was going to create
too much of a backlash to go after all these
weird culti organizations, and so you let this thing fester um,
which is, you know, pretty on brand. We're seeing it
now with the capital so when everyone at Omega went
to prison, the Dove of Oneness was still out there,

(58:16):
speaking to a growing audience of people who wanted to
believe that vast riches were headed their way really any
day now. Uh. And those people wanted to believe in this,
wanted to believe that a day was coming when they
would be rich more than they actually wanted the money
they'd invested back, because that amount of money wouldn't make
them rich, you know, they wanted the hope. That's really
what the once Omega, the actual grift collapses, the people

(58:41):
like the Dove of Oneness who are latching onto it.
That's what they keep selling these people is the idea
that no, no, no, you're still going to get rich.
You just have to be patient, trust the plan and
stay calm and you'll get your money. So at this point,
get fucking fisted. Not really a good plan. I nah,

(59:06):
it's a shame. So, now that they were untethered from Clyde,
the Dove of Oneness took a scam that had already
always relied on religious imagery and started building it into
a holy war. So she starts off as like again
like a Remora parasite, leaching off of this scam, but
once the core scam collapses, she spins her side scam

(59:28):
into a whole new thing. Um and this is kind
of where Nessa comes back into the story. On July seventeenth,
two thousand, she wrote this in one of her newsletter updates.
I know that I am receiving information because the divine
power behind getting Omega to us all once the group
prayers to continue. So I have been given a message
of passing on as much information as I can without

(59:48):
jeopardizing the safety of the processes for our benefit. She
continued to share her growing following that the payouts were imminent.
She told people that the prosperity deliveries were coming any day, um.
Over and over. She told Omega investors that prosperity deliveries
would arrive any day. She and others sometimes referred to
Omega in a kind of typewritten code, mixing numbers and numerals,

(01:00:09):
calling it OH or the Big OH. On July ever
made anyone come in that in that group. On July
two thousand, she said members of the Big Program with
the the O and program with a zero could expect
deliveries by July thirty one. On August four, she said
deliveries were imminent. On August seven, she said deliveries were

(01:00:30):
scheduled for the end of the week. And then in
two thousand one, the best thing ever happened. Do you
know what that was, Sophia nine eleven? It was nine eleven.
You're right, that was the best thing ever for for
the Deaf of Oneness and her cult. I mean, I
feel like you're setting me up for a trap there,

(01:00:51):
because now there's literally record of me saying that the
best thing ever in two thousand one was eleven. But
just that audio, I know, But really it's that it's you, Robert, Yeah,
I too, m m m, A cultic manipulator. Sony eleven

(01:01:12):
was a bad day for most people, but if you
were all Quita, a whale or a new age conspiracy grifter,
it was money. Christmas, the Dove of Oneness immediately knew
how to profit off of this tragedy, and she lost
no time in blasting out a post nine eleven newsletter.
I'm going to quote now from a wonderful write up
in Logically, which discusses the history of nessra and heavily
sights Sean Robinson's two thousand four article for The News Tribute,

(01:01:35):
which we've used earlier as a source quote. On September eleven, two,
one mere hours after the World Trade Center in Pentagon attacks,
Dove posted the message that made her a star. The
three targets today we're all connected to ness Era and
the banking changes. I learned just learned that at nine
am in New York this morning, there was an important
banking activities set to be activated in the I m

(01:01:55):
F Nation International Banking Computer Center in the World Trade Center.
This was obviously why the World Trade Center was attacked
today at just before and after nine am. The orders
for those plate attacks came from US citizens who are
trying to stop our deliveries slash the funding of ness Era.
So what Goodwin does. She She comes becomes aware of

(01:02:16):
nessar in the late nineties, and while it had originally
just been this one guy's plan for how to fix
the economy, she turns it into she she ties it
to Omega and says that like ness Era is, this
is this plan to fix the economy for the little
people that's tied in with Omega, and it was about
to be instituted on September eleven, and then the government
flew planes into those towers to stop you people from

(01:02:37):
getting your money. And of course, as Robinson noted, Goodwin's
legion of followers bought into her story and Moss prompted
by Goodwin, they would go on to send letters, postcards,
and emails to the U. S. Supreme Court, the Pentagon Congress,
to international justice organizations. They would stand at protests, wave banners,
pass out flyers, and hold demonstrations on three continents demanding

(01:02:57):
the announcement of a secret law that did not exist.
See the deaf of one that started telling people that
not only like NESSRA was not just some guys planned
for how to fix the economy, it was a law
that Congress had secretly voted to approve, and that the
nine eleven attacks had been carried out in order to
stop from being instituted. And it's all very frustrating. Um yeah,

(01:03:21):
uh So, during my research into this, I came across
a very interesting two thousand five documentary called Waiting for
ness Era. It covers a chunk of this and it
mostly focuses around a small group of NESSRA believers in
Salt Lake City, Utah. The documentary is technically kind of rough.
The audio is particularly crewed by modern standards, but I
think it's a pretty priceless documentation of a lot of

(01:03:42):
the problems currently tearing this nation apart when they were
still in an embryonic stage. Interviews with these Utah believers
give insight into how most of the people influenced by
the Dove of Oneness interpreted her newsletters. By the time
this was filmed, something like three and fifteen thousand people
received her weekly newsletter updates talking about Nessra and Omega
and the shadowy fight of the White Knights to save

(01:04:04):
you know, the little people and get them their money
and stuff. Just needed to get into Harry Potter or something. Yeah,
I mean, these were probably people who thought Harry Potter
was demonic. Um. So. One of the guys they interview
in this documentary is a former Republican fringe congressional candidates,
and he states his belief that the Dove of Oneness

(01:04:25):
is a former intelligence agency employee and has deep connections
to the intelligence apparatus and is trying to like one
of Again, this is a good person in the intelligence
system that's trying to bring us the truth. Now, the
White Hats are interpreted by most believers in the documentary
as being members of the military and the government fighting
to save America from the evil conspiracy that has overtaken it. Again,

(01:04:47):
it's all Q and On ship like you. Many Nessa
believers felt that it was part of a divine plan.
Most of the Utah believers felt the whole Omega plan
had been initially cooked up by St. Germain, who was
like a Catholic saint who had died two fifty years ago.
So this gets added to it that like the money
that is going to come to you because started from
an investment fund that this Catholic state saint started two

(01:05:09):
and fifty years ago, and that's going to make everyone
in the world rich. But the powers that be don't
want you to know about it. And that's why nine
eleven happened, right, It all mutates and gets Oh my god,
that was the most complicated sentence. I know. I know,
there's so much going It's like with Q and On stuff.
When you actually try to unravel all this, like everything
gets so intermingled and just wild, and all I keep

(01:05:30):
thinking is that these people just like needed a hobby.
They needed that. That's that's really where conspiracy starts. It's
a mix of people needing a hobby, having the free
time for a hobby, and also having the understanding that
everyone does that something is wrong, right, and they're not
going to try to like fix their community by doing like,

(01:05:52):
you know, acts of service and I don't know, volunteering somewhere. No,
that would be like an actual way you can literally
improve the world around you well, and doing that, you're
not going to be the special hero, right if you're
part of a huge group of people trying to agitate
in the streets, uh for for societal change, if you're
like actually doing the hard work of activism, it's a

(01:06:15):
lot of people who are all willing to like work
as part of a collective to try to improve the world.
And there's not really a lot of heroes in that,
you know, like not a lot of like it's heroic
to do that, But it's not the same as feeling
like I am one of a small number of people
who have special knowledge and that makes me better than
everyone who doesn't have that special knowledge. Right. It's again

(01:06:35):
this this kind of cult of individualism, Like that's why
this is so much more appealing to so many more
people than actually advocating for positive change. What we really
need is like some sort of a fake club, you know,
like commensa for these people where we can like just
send them like trophies and certificates every month and just
being like, oh, my fucking god, you just broke a

(01:06:57):
new record for being alive, tim or whatever. Tell them that,
like they'll get millions of dollars for donating to this
or for investing, but actually they're just funding a mutual
aid soup kitchen. They're gonna get grifted either way. They
might as well bite food for poor people exactly, like
like tell them the money's for something else, and like

(01:07:17):
they're only being asked for it because they're like part
of an elite group of people and they just keep
sending them different awards and trophies. And it's like I
think if they each had a room full of awards
and trophies like that might really keep them off the streets.
That might really keep them off the streets. Yeah, we do,
like the Time magazine thing. We send them each a
magazine with their face on it when they donate, you know,

(01:07:38):
the first thousand dollars to a soup kitchen or something that. Yeah, yes,
Time magazine covers. Maybe we can like have them like
cut ribbons with giant scissors at places that have already
been open, but like they don't know. Just get to
a park early, you know, in the morning, and be like,
you're opening this park. This parks you because of all

(01:08:01):
of the money you invested, You're going to be a
rich in ten years. Don't worry. You really have something here.
I mean, we've always known we were going to be
called leaders. This could be how we do it. This
could be how we do it. So one of the
reasons I find this Waiting for Necessary documentary interesting is
that it shows that like Q and On, Nessara was

(01:08:22):
capable of drawing in people from across the political spectrum.
That former Republican president or congressional candidate who described himself
as far right but also celebrated that Nesser was going
to force President George Bush out of office, stop the
war in Iraq, and make Clinton the president again, which
is also kind of evidence of how different politics were
in those times. Um I didn't see hatred against the

(01:08:45):
left or Democrats or Republicans really. Instead, it seemed to
be filled but fueled by a gut feeling that the
system was rigged and regular people deserved something like Nessaret
to save them from a fundamentally unjust system. I know
regular people are getting screwed because I'm one of them.
I want to believe that me and the other people
like me are all going to get rich and not,

(01:09:05):
you know, think that maybe the whole system is fundamentally
flawed in a number of ways. So uh yeah. For
about two years or so, Nessar was a big deal
in the wackadoo world of New Age nonsense. It got
big enough that the actual mind behind the real Nassara,
Harvey Barnard, found out about it, and he did his
best to push back against this tide of disinformation, publishing

(01:09:29):
a note to the nessar a website that said, if
you believe any of that, you might want to start
looking for ocean front property in Nebraska. Now. The fact
that the guy who had actually come up with Nassara
was telling people, no, it's not it's not what you
think it is. It's like an economic reform policy. I'm
not going to make everybody rich. Um. The fact that
he was specifically saying they had it wrong meant nothing.

(01:09:51):
In fact, remained significant up through two thousand four, when
dozens of followers were spotted at an anti Iraq war
protest waving sign nds with NESSA written on them. It
started to fall out of vogue out after the invasion
because in part a lot of the like. One of
the ways that the necessary conspiracy evolved is that the
Iraq invasion is never going to happen. The white hats

(01:10:13):
are going to stop it. Bush is going to be
forced out of office, The truth about nine eleven is
going to be revealed, and the real America is going
to be saved by the monsters who ran things. And then,
of course we invade Iraq, and interest in NESSA falls
off after that. But NESSARA limped along and it never
quite died out entirely. In two thousand eleven, someone started
a We the People petition becking President Obama to institute NESSA.

(01:10:37):
Here's what the petition claimed it would do. Number one
zero's out all credit card, mortgage and other bank debt.
Number two abolishes the income tax. Number three creates a
fourteen percent flat rate non essential new items only sales
tax revenue for the government. Uh Number four increases benefits
to senior citizens. Number five returns constitutional law to all courts.

(01:10:57):
Number six monitors elections and prevents the legal election activities
of special interest groups, and number seven creates a new
US Treasury currency backed by gold, silver, and platinum precious metals.
The petition got six thousand, six twenty three signatures, while
above the five thousand signature threshold necessary to earn a
White House response. A very polite white Hose White House
Aid wrote, thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate

(01:11:20):
your participation in the We the People platform on white
House dot gov. The proposals in the National Economic Security
and Reformation Act have not been introduced in Congress, and
the Obama administration cannot implement a law that has not
been passed because again, the whole part of the conspiracy
is that the law was passed secretly and they can't
tell you that, and nine eleven was carried out to
stop it from being enacted. Anyway. I just love how

(01:11:42):
gentle that White House Aid was. Um they were like yeah,
they were just so gently, like, um hey, it was
like explaining something to a child. It's like, hey, um, laws, Okay.
The way laws were is they have to be past. Yeah,

(01:12:03):
they have to exist first. And it's sweet that they
didn't like talk down to them, which is like, you know,
they could have been like, if you have any understanding
of the government whatsoever, you would know that this is
fucking bullshit. But they were like, no, sweetheart, it was
very sweet, honey, I'm sorry. Is something that gets past

(01:12:26):
and it was just not condescending. And I really if
he included a link to the Schoolhouse Rock video on
how a bill comes last, just like amen, Amen, meant
to be. But the sad thing about this is this
beautiful white House Aid is clearly a person who still
falsely believes that the actual nature of reality matters at all,

(01:12:47):
and it doesn't. It just doesn't anymore. We all should
accept that now, right, reality does not matter. What matters
is what you can convince people to believe. As long
as they have weapons, All that matters is what the
most people with weapons believe. That's the way it is,
That's the way it's always worked. This sweet, sweet, beautiful
idiot thought that truth mattered, and I'm sorry, I mean
it did for a couple more years after that, but

(01:13:08):
even then, by two thousand and ten, it was it
was terminal. The truth cancer was was had metastasized. So
for a while, that petition seemed like the last gasp
of a dying conspiracy theory. But conspiracies never quite die
all the way. They just get folded into other conspiracies.
Nessa laid dormant until the Trump era, when a conspiracy

(01:13:30):
theorist president and the burgeoning qan On cult provided it
with an opportunity to feed and grow again. And now
the Nessary conspiracy, which started out as a remora on
the Omega grift and then turned into its own conspiracy,
started attaching itself romor alike to the q and On conspiracy.
It's an incredible ecosystem when you understand it. Oh my god.

(01:13:50):
Uh from logically quote. Every few years, Nessara rears its
ugly head, often coinciding with times of economic hardship and
often accompanied by its global counterpart, the JESSEA Global Economic
Security and Recovery Act. Has managed to merge with other
current conspiracy theories that revolve around the baseless and pro
Trump q and On, where supporters have co opted the

(01:14:11):
global reset narrative to announce that a new era of
debt forgiveness and monetary reform well cash would be replaced
with a gold back cryptocurrency would be imminently ushered in
by none other than Trump. The fact that Barnard's book
has the same name as Trump's electron mantra Drain the Swamp,
maybe a coincidence. But the Q and on supporters it
reads like evidence o God, just because it's one of

(01:14:34):
the most trite political phrases used and overused for like decades. Yeah,
it's like if I, like, if I was like WHOA,
someone wrote a song about love, and so did I.
This means we're cosmically connected. It's like all the songs
are about love, so probably not all every songs about love.
It's the only thing is people write songs about our

(01:14:55):
love and whatever Holy divers about so no I know.
And then there's that one about the data on a set,
the sad one about the dad and his son. Oh yeah,
the sad sad one about the dad and his son. Yeah,
that's kind of about or whatever. The criddle and the
seal of Schoon Son will be together Scott really really fast, guys.

(01:15:26):
So uh yeah. Logically went to the trouble of analyzing
the popularity the change in popularity of Nessa and Jessa
over the course of uh their analysis of posts using
both terms on Facebook over the last twelve months of
that year showed a significant bump in the number of
interactions he can get eighty five thousand point two interactions
by the end of May. Of early posts were from

(01:15:48):
a curious mix of New Age mysticism, pro Trump and
nesse groups and upology pages pages that are now finding
unlikely common ground under the q and on banner. Posts
listed as having the most interactions from the last few
months showed just that Q and on groups, right wing
Christian ministries talking about Trump decreeing a move to a
gold backed currency, and a general air of q and
on theories permeating the aforementioned group. What is astonishing is

(01:16:11):
the global reach of the theory. Posts in English, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Greek,
and Malay are all present in the top fifty most
influential Facebook posts on the topic. Many of these posts
have been shared thousands of times. Analysis on Twitter told
a similar story. From mid June this year, Nessra and
Jessa was the top of three hundred and thirty four thousand,
nine hundred twelve tweets, coming from a pick and mix

(01:16:32):
of star Seeds, cryptocurrency gurus, and a Smorgess board of
q and On accounts at various levels of dedication, all
tweeting with excitement about the inevitable global reset and a
variety of languages. The standard Q and On fair of
reading into anything from the background of Trump suppress releases
is uses proof that debt forgiveness is on its way.
And that's kind of where we are now, Sylvia. We

(01:16:54):
can't even get a fucking these motherfucker's talking forgive. It's
amazing that they think that Congress is secretly passing all
these laws to fix everything, and that's some shadowy cabal
is hiding it from you, but also the actual shady
bastards who were in charge of the country can't even
get you four hundred dollars y'all done by fuck. I mean, honestly,

(01:17:18):
it's so good. It's it's very fun. So I am
optimistic about the future. How are you feeling? I feel
like it makes me feel like I'm a piece of
ship because then I'm like, I feel like I can
be a better cult leader, and you can have better
conspiracy theories and these other people, and then I'm like, Sophia,
why do you want to get in this game? Yeah,

(01:17:40):
It's just like when you see really shitty people doing
stand up, Like I've been doing stand up for ten years,
and occasionally when I think of quitting, I just think
about all the shitty people I know who still do it.
And I was like, Sophia, you can't quit when these fucking,
terribly unfunny people are still doing it. And that's how
I feel. Uh yeah, So I don't need to get
involved in the conspiracy theory game. But every time I

(01:18:01):
hear you talk about how dumb this is, I'm like,
I need to do it better. Yeah. I mean we could, Sophia,
we could be we could be heroes and heroes, we
could steal a lot of money from dumb people. I mean,
if we could just control what kind of dumb people,
then maybe I would do it. Yeah. That's the problem is,

(01:18:23):
no matter what, you're going to wind up destroying the
lives and livelihoods of people who are basically nice, just
the sweet people. Well, and it's just the problem is that,
you know, I get angry at the people who buy
into this stuff. I want to I want to mock
them and insult them. There's even a part of me
that wants to like people are doing some liberals are

(01:18:46):
doing with Texas right now that wants to be like, you,
motherfucker's brought this on yourself by not just buying into
this bullshit but being like so arrogant about it and
and and mocking anyone who told you that it was
obviously a grift meant to take advantage of you. But also, like,
the the level of unreality that permeates our society is

(01:19:09):
so comprehensive. It is such a thick and deadly fog.
I can't blame people who get caught in it. Really,
I could be frustrated, Like it's just so powerful to
you expect them to do to bring it back to
the beginning. Yeah, like my mom and I fell for
am Wi. You know, I'm saying, like, you can't blame

(01:19:32):
anybody has a grift that they that they're vulnerable to. Yeah,
you can't blame people for uh. I mean, you can
blame them if they do reprehensible things that fuck it
hurt other people. You should blame the cult leaders, the
people like the Dove of Oneness who are who are
profiting off of these grifts for sure. Um, And it's

(01:19:52):
just like I don't think we could have imagined that there.
I mean, I couldn't have a at what a huge
problem there is now between people telling the difference between
truth and reality and real news and quote unquote fake news.

(01:20:13):
If we had known it was going to be like this,
I mean, I don't think. I don't think we could
have prepared for it either way. But it just seems
insane because at the very least there used to be
an idea of, oh, this is obviously bullshit and this isn't.
And now it's like, especially older people who get really

(01:20:34):
isolated in their communities, I mean, TV and ship just
praise on them and YouTube and like we've already I
was shopping network anyway, Well, do you have any plugable stuff?
It looks sad, Robert, I am let me boop that

(01:20:56):
little nose boom. Uh yeah, I'm sorry. Just to remember
that you're going to get a tattoo. I am going
to get a tattoo today. I am going to get
a tattoo. And I think I'm gonna buy another big
stupid gun. I think I'm gonna get a fifty cow.
Why not? Yes, that's that's the that's the math that

(01:21:17):
helps cheer you up. Do you need another gun. It's
has been a year since I've needed another gun. I
don't know the gun maybe don't do for right now.
I need a bigger one. I don't have one that big. Mmmm.
That's true. God, you're really just setting Sophia up for
so many jokes right now, Like it's about the explosion

(01:21:41):
of conspiratorial thinking and weaponized unreality makes me think that
I might actually wind up needing bigger guns than I
presently have at some point. You know again enough, it's
really hard to do this when I can't give you
a hug because you need a hug. That is what
I'm reading. I'm going to take drugs and drink more

(01:22:02):
doctors via How Me Again podcast Daddy Well Sophia. After this,
we're going to get into a book. We're doing another
book episode uh for the Thursday episode this week because uh,
spoiler alert, not a spoiler. Really, my mom has cancer
and I have been in Texas helping the family with that,

(01:22:24):
and I don't have time to write a two parter
every week, So we're just going to dig into a
book that came out very recently UM called Ness Era
and the Mark of the Beast, which looks like it
will be a hoot. Isn't Super Long came out in September,
and I think we'll get us up to date on
how the necessary conspiracy theory has adopted to the world

(01:22:45):
of Q and on cool Weird Time to plug my things,
but the way plug it up. You can find me
on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia s O f I.
A and I have a podcast about love and sex
around the world called Private Parts Unknown. You can follow

(01:23:07):
that and another podcast about ninety de fiance with Miles
Great called for Fiance, so check that. And if you
haven't bought her comedy album what the funk Are You Doing?
It's yeah, by the what are you doing? It's Father's Today,
Fucking assholes. God damn it. It comes on in the
car when I'm on shuffle, and every time, no matter

(01:23:28):
what food I when it comes on, and it's like, oh,
every time, it's so enjoyable. It's like, well, here's some
really sad bitch song I'm listening to, and then all
of a sudden, it's like you being like, hey, it's great,
really recommend I'm excited to listen to it. On my
long drive back from Texas through of America, lightful. It

(01:23:55):
will make you feel delighted, Robert so yeah, delight yourself,
you fucking rat bastards. Anyway, thank you for listening to
our podcast. I love you all, dear you rat bastards. M.