Behind the Bastards - The Nesara Cult and Qanon's Origins

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Robert is joined by Sofiya Alexandra to talk about the culture that helped build the foundation of Qanon. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, with the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Robert Evans here. And I wanted to ask for your help. There is a Portland area woman, Ruba Tamimi. She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist. And she is trying to save her home at the moment. She's got a GoFundMe. If you go to Save Ruba's House, R-U-B-A on GoFundMe, you'll find it, Save Ruba's House on GoFundMe. If you've got a few bucks,

she could really use it. Again, Save Ruba's House, R-U-B-A at GoFundMe. Thanks. What's killing my babies? This is, oh, shit. That was bad way to start the episode. This is so bad, Robert. This is Behind the Vasterds, a poorly introduced podcast by Robert Evans. And as you might guess by our celebration of baby killing in the introduction, my guest this week, Sophia Alexandra. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. The Jamaican 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... Oh, really? Thanks for having me.

That's a shame. Cancel culture strikes again. First, Dr. Sois than you. I'm being told it's Dr. Sois. I don't believe it, but whatever. I guess I have to move to Texas now. You have to move to Texas, a.k.a. Cancelvania, where the coronavirus runs free as the whitetail deer crossed the prairie. Sophia, you and I have a bit of a history, and that history is, I tell you stories about people who got a lot of babies killed. Yeah. Are you sure about that? 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 already. As I'm going to guess, around 320 million Americans. So I decided to have a little bit lighter fare this week. Instead of talking about a baby, talking about a conspiracy theory that in many ways was the genesis of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which is a conspiracy theory that revolves around satanic pedophiles killing babies. Robert, you flatter me. Oh, my God. Thank you so much for saving this for me. Oh, yeah. No, we're going to have a good time. We're going to really, really get down and dirty with it. Have you heard? I think this is the second base for us, Robert. This is. This is. This is a real step forward for us. Have you heard of the Nessarra conspiracy theory?

No. Okay. Yeah. Well, that is fine. It's from the late 90s, early 2000s. How do you spell that? N-E-S-E-R-A. I'll explain to you what it means in a little bit. It started in like the late 90s, early 2000s. It has been absorbed into QAnon or at least segments of the QAnon conspiracy have absorbed this. But in a lot of ways, the Nessarra conspiracy theory, which kind of hit its height in the Bush years, is a prelude to QAnon. A lot of that you can see the groundwork being laid for QAnon in this conspiracy theory. And that's why I think it's very interesting. It's a beautiful amuse-bouche. Yeah.

It's got all that conspiracy nonsense to come. I'm very excited. It's very exciting. And it's being, it kind of faded out at the end of the Bush years, and it's being revived now. So we'll get to talk about in our next episode kind of the modern revival of the Nessarra conspiracy theory. But first, let's go back in time to the early 1990s, which was, I think, fair to say, a golden age of cartoons trying to sell children things mostly. But compared to now, a golden age, for sure. Now, in the early 1990s, a Louisiana State University graduate in systems philosophy named Harvey Francis Bernard started looking at the U.S. economy and seeing some warning signs up ahead. 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. So Bernard is looking at like the Clinton era economy and the things that are getting passed and kind of the explosion of neoliberalism and going like, this could be a problem. And he decides to solve the problem. Now, Bernard believed that personal debt was the number one factor holding back the U.S. economy and that compound interest was the number one cause of debt and just thus the chief moral evil facing the U.S. 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 NECERA, you know, to acronym the shit. Gotcha. And you're not 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 you if it would ever wouldn't. The proposed law was going to be a final solution. No, I don't think he was bad person. And I don't think there was any like, yeah, I don't get that hit because the conspiracy theory bears no resemblance to what he started. I mean, he's tried to fight against the theory. This is just like a nerd who came up with what he thought might fix things and nobody did it. So the proposed law would have replaced the income tax with a national sales tax, which I think is a bad idea. That one I will comment on because it's kind of regressive against

poor people as opposed to progressive. He would abolish compound interest on most loans, which seems like a reasonable idea. And it would have returned the U.S. to bimetallic currency, aka returning to using gold and silver as 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. So it was a nice dream. Again, doesn't seem to me like it would have worked, but I don't know anything about the economy. And like every young man with a beautiful dream, Harvey decided that self publishing was the best way to get his message out. In 1996, he produced a book, Draining the Swamp, Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform.

Can you remember that title? Yeah. So he sent copies of this book 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. Nessarra 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, he published his book online under a new name, Draining a Swamp, The Nessarra 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 and sent them via the mail. Nothing 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 in like the late 90s, early 2000s. 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. Yeah, Matune. Come on, Illinois. That's

not a real town name and you fuckers know it. Fucking Illinois. So Clyde Hood is a retired electrician who lives in Matune. And in 1994, he decided to 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 investment banking. He'd done the job for 15 or 16 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 deal. That's a Jew I'm personally offended. Yeah, these are all lies. So as I own the banks, I control the media. Hello. That is the new conspiracy that you're dropping today,

which is which is that that you control the global economy. Not all the Jews, just me. Just Sophia for the rest of protocols of Sophia. Exactly. I am an elder of Zion. There weren't all of us. It was just me. It's always just been you meeting. I wrote a whole scroll. I didn't know was going to get popular. Oh, boy, the fan art that comes out of this is going to be really problematic in like five years. So Clyde started telling people again, who is his only background is as a small town electrician. Clyde starts saying, I've got 16, 15 years of experience as investment banker. I own a giant foreign bank. I'm an expert in offshore trading. And he would particularly claim to be an expert in European high yield investment programs 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 return of ROI or whatever return over time. And if you invested them, 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 up front to get in the door of these kinds of things. So he would tell rich people. That's what Clyde

would say. And he would get these 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 250 million dollar deals four times a week. You know, it's totally routine for me. I know how to make like I can 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 Marx 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 the fiduciary bank. There are only seven or eight

people in the world that can do all this. So basically he was saying sounds like a fin dom, doesn't he? A little bit. He's like, 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 an integral part one of seven or eight people who's a part of running these systems that are why the rich get richer that you the poor are locked out of. And then he would go into the second part of his spiel. And I'm going to quote from a write up in the news tribute in 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 people and to do a big trade for humanitarian causes. For that he had formed a company called Omega Trust and Trading LTD. He was offering hardworking people a chance to reap their share of the Lord's Storehouse. They could buy Omega units for $100 apiece. Under Hood's supervision, each unit would roll for a 275 days with a 50 to one return. Investors could let it roll again for another 275 days again at 50 to one. After that, they could do one more roll. But that was all for onlookers. The math wasn't too hard to figure. In less than three years, $100 could become $12.5 million. So you see what the you see what the

scam is here? I've got access. I'm 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 50 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's what I like about the scam is that in the beginning, he says he's part of the problem. He does 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 respect that hustle. He was like, look, I am one of eight crooks that control the world. 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 you tell them, I am a part of this tiny system of wealth and privilege that you have no chance of getting access to that is made to profit and to lock you out as the little people. But you don't hate me for that because you think you're still bought into that idea that having money in infer some sort of moral high ground, right? That you've done something to earn it. So he's not, he's really specifically grifting kind of conservative church going Midwesterners

by saying, hey, 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 will give you access to it because God told me to. It's an interesting, interesting grift. It's kind of, it's not completely different from what happened with the Wall Street bets 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. You know, it's that kind of grift. And it's, it's, it's kind 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. Yeah. You know, and you're mixing in the fear, the underlying fear of people 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 in now. Yeah, you just need to have the right rich friend and then everything will be fine for you. Like, and then, 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 similarity with Wall Street Betsy's, 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 12.5 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 Amway when we first moved here. So yeah, and imagine being like a new immigrant and someone is like, I know how I can pray on you. Yeah. It's really fucked up. And it's called the American Way, which I just think is so chef's. That's what Amway was designed to do, you know? Like, people come here with a little bit of cash in their pocket and this dream of America as a land of opportunity. We didn't have any cash. That's what was fucked up. Well, not a lot of cash. Yeah. 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 the phone. Selling Amway. Try to sell anything to anyone. I'm like, she doesn't know how to talk to her daughter. She's going to befriend an American stranger. Amazing. Oh, classic. 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 of American con artists have made bank off of variations of the same idea. 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. In terms of the money, he used it to make his

hometown Mattoon like he poured it all back and a lot of it back into the community. He would buy people houses and businesses and he did this to like launder the money, right? Like he would give people interest free loans and stuff, which is smart because it may meant that everybody who lived around him supported him in his grift. And it also meant that he had a way to launder money. Now, he was also a kind of labor full guy. He put the effort into making this look like official financial shit 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,

but the people he was scamming didn't know that and they got receipts that seemed very official. So they assumed it was legitimate. Clyde was also intelligent enough to portray his scam as 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. 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. 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 friends acted as the ring leaders connecting a network of rubes via direct phone conversations. Omega investors in 17 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. He said in a June 3rd, 1996 phone message, these situations or those situations should be completed on June 17th, 1996. And the banks will then continue to process your checks and credit cards. So he's just

setting 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. Hey, when you love enough to do the very least, you know, so grifty, it's unreal. Yeah, he's 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 we just keep holding out, 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, I know. It's the same thing, right? It's too much. It's too on

the nose. It's very fun. I do like to picture him practicing recording those voice messages. Imagine being like, Oh, no, I should have. Yeah, I got to invent a new thing. Let's see, like a hedge fund, a hedge fund. Okay, what should we do? Like a like high hedge fund VP. Yeah. So the high hedge fund VP has recently told us about some complications in your account. Just pretty fun to imagine it. Yeah. Yeah. Robert, where'd you go? Okay, so I'm just I'm just thinking about how this is going to keep happening forever. You know what else is going to keep happening forever and it's also fun to imagine. I had to put both products and services together that was so cohesive. Yes, Robert, products and services. Okay, well, products. That's it.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and not in the good badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was

trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991. And that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when

there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. 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. He recruited salesmen who would pitch Omega to new communities and his most successful pitchman brought in 60 to $100,000 per week. So they are are fleecing a lot of people for a lot of money. Clyde avoided pitching to communities too close to his hometown in Illinois, because again, you don't want to shit where you eat. California and

Texas were his biggest money making states, which should not surprise anyone. So nice choosing such big fucking states. I mean, like you're you don't want to grift and like South Dakota. No, I've stolen all eight dollars in the community. That's not even going to pay for my bus ticket home. Washington State was his number three biggest mark. And it was there in 1998 that Candice Goodwin, who we talked about earlier, big fan of Nessarra became an investor. She lived near Yelm, Washington, which is also where most of Omega's Washington investors lived. One resident whose mother's gave $1,100 to Clyde later told reporters, quote, it proliferated throughout this entire town. Another resident

who donated or who invested and lost $4,500 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 work in these kind of communities, small communities, you convince one person, you're legit. They'll tell their friends, 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, you put in as much as you can, right? Why not? It's a sure thing. Fighting the system, fighting the system always results in a huge fucking cash cow at the end. That's the way fighting the system works. That's why activism is so lucrative. You're always

seeing fucking union leaders and all the people protesting, just fucking rolling in cash. Union leaders do sometimes 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. 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, that's probably part of why it took the fed so long to realize that something was up. 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 90s, but you were not going to reach 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? The artisanal grift. Artisanal grift, yeah. The whole foods of grifting. These, it's the aramon of grifting. It's hand farmed a table grifting. It's, you know, grift local, I always say. Support your local grifter. That's merch. I'm sorry. That is merch. 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 an 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, very, 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 $280,000. So people who should have known better got caught into this shit, right? You expect a tax attorney would know this is all lies, but he didn't. The local New Age movement was 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 Knight, a guru who claimed to channel Ramtha, the soul of a 40,000-year-old warrior. Many Omega donors had heard about the opportunity through Jay-Z or through Ramtha who, again, Jay-Z, she channeled Ramtha, right? And I'm going to quote again from the write-up in the news tribune here. Omega was an open secret at Knight's Ramtha School of Enlightenment, four former students say. They asked not to be named, citing the fear of legal retaliation from Knight, who requires students to sign non-disclosure 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 at the school was involved in it. There were 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 Knight never endorsed or promoted Omega. Some recall her telling students to cultivate an abundance mentality if the promised fortunes ever came. Which is, again, very smart. Is this like the secret? Yeah, it is. It is, right? It's the same. 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 other worldly wisdom that I'm channeling through the spirit of a 40,000-year-old dead warrior prince, right? And if you'll believe that, you'll probably be in a mindset where you might believe,

oh, hey, God told me to let you guys in on this rich people scam so that we can break the system, right? It's not so much of a leap if you already believe Robtha exists. But also, Jay-Z Knight isn't telling people to get involved in this because Jay-Z Knight, being a good grifter knows this is going to come crashing down at some point, right? So what she tells you is, you have to cultivate an abundance mentality and then wealth will come 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. 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-pollinating with her within like sort of a cultic milieu to use that term again. It's like, essentially, you're being fucked from two sides and you're getting fucking split like a roast turkey. Except for that sounds rad and this sucks. It's rad if you ask for it. It's not rad if you thought you were coming over for dinner. Yeah, I mean, depends on your personality, I guess. But anyway, back to back to Nessarra. So Candice Goodwin, also known as Shiny Goodwin, S-H-A-I-N-I, Goodwin, had attended classes at the Romphtha School in the late 1980s. The school had opened in 1988, so Goodwin would have been one of the very first students. She started calling herself

a channeler in the early 1990s. And when she got involved with Omega, she decided to do more than just invest money and wait for her return. Goodwin listened to the pre-recorded regular messages Clyde sent out and thought, that's a pretty good idea. You can really get people strung along on a grift 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, 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 was like, she's like a remora. She sees the successful grift and she

attaches herself to it, right? Which is another thing that starts to happen with the Omega grift. There's a lot going on here. 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'd been privy to with making statements like, quote, two new pieces of info suggests that important strides forward are being made. She wrote on March 20, 2000, you are well advised to get ready. I have personally 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 Romphtha is saying. And she's a student of Romphtha, both in terms of her spiritual beliefs and in terms of how she grifts people. But what's happening here with Omega is a lot like what you see happening with QAnon, right? With QAnon, 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 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 overgrift 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 first time that it happens that I'm aware of in a way that it really resembles what we see happening with QAnon. 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 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 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 overgrift. That's all very QAnon. That's very modern. And it's starting to happen here for the first time that 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. Sure. Absolutely. Like TV. Spirituality and grifting. Yeah. Televangelists have been doing this forever. And even before that in person, people were doing that forever. Like come to my tent and I'll fucking fleece you for everything you got. And then I'm going to throw in some supernatural stuff, show you how I just made someone walk and like boom, bam, boom, like I've gotten all your fucking money. But yeah, combining it with all of this other stuff is what's like, yeah. And combining it with this starts, the guy who's initially grifting is trying to get small town Christian midwesterners to give him money. So it's a very Christian grift. Ramtha is not a Christian grift, right? Like once you start channeling the spirits of death and

channeling aliens, all of this stuff comes into it. You have these two different segments intermingling, which is what again, you're seeing with QAnon. There's people who are part of Q who, like the Q Shaman, right? That guy's not a traditional Christian grifter or whatever. Like that guy believes some some weird Norse Pagan shit, but it all gets folded into the same overgrift. It all gets to coexist within this space of unreality. 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 shit QAnon, you have to believe to be a part of the QAnon 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? 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 cohesive way. And I think that's meaningful. You're totally right. And it also makes me think about the fact that like the things that it's really easy for people to like coalesce behind

are like our children are in danger. Yep. You know what I mean? Which has been like the thing that's been pushing things like 2020 or any like any of those shows even that are like the mild version of like, we're scaring you about your kids. So you watch the show. Like that's the mildest version of that con. But like QAnon and the pizza gate shit 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 money. If someone promises 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 also, I think you're really onto something when you talk about these few things that everyone can get behind 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? Yep. Another of them is the system is fucking you and I have a way to beat it, right? Yep. 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 fairly small number of people are like the system is fucked. And so we shouldn't have a system, right? 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 for me winning the system. That's the Wall Street bet shit, right? It's also communism. That's what happens with Omega. It's literally also communism. And it's like, and it's most cynical, it's bad. State communism. 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 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 bad shit fucked up. No, it's not because that's a fairly reasonable that might be the right way to

fix society. I don't know. But then yeah, 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 telling these these Midwesterners like will you if all of us get together and we all agitate for better conditions for everybody, that's what will actually fix the system. That's a lot harder of a sell for Americans than, 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. You know, that's yep, doesn't say good things about us. But I think that's what's going on here. 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 fuck people. Yep. Under it, you know. Anyway, so yeah, Shayna Goodwin, the dove of oneness starts side grifting off of this grift that is the Omega Investment Opportunity thingamajig. So Goodwin was deeply influenced, as I've said, with 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 lesson on the satanic panic. In case you haven't listened, I want to grab a definition from a write 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 now. And it sounds sexy. It is hot as fuck, right? Quote, this is a kind of subterranean world or counterculture with a whole range of ideas that are strongly opposed to conventional beliefs and knowledge. These included highly heterodox and unusual religious systems such as neo paganism 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. Ding ding ding. So and again, everything that makes up a cultic milieu 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 think anything is possible and they're able to buy into stuff that isn't true, right? That there isn't documentation of. And it's, you know, the failure of the mainstream media has a big part for why this is anyway. That's a bigger bigger story than we can talk about today. But that's what's that's what Shayna Goodwin is kind of. She's she's bubbling up from, you know, the omega cult starts kind of in this in just a very simple Christian midwestern grift. She comes in from more of a kooky west coast counterculture. I believe in aliens. I believe in channeling thing, but it 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

in that the payouts were being halted by a shadowy enemy. And this made it able to slot in perfectly with all sorts of other culty American beliefs. Goodwin's daily dove updates included references to the ascended masters, people who were once human, but had cleared their karmic 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 a big way. Also, the master was in Buffy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's again, it's saying 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 Ramtha and his teachings obviously had a big impact on Goodwin. And when you dig into Ramtha a bit, it's clear that she had a well, he I guess Ramtha's a he Jay-Z Knight is a she I think. So it's messy. Ramtha had a wide ranging impact. One 1986 article I found in the New York Times quoted a former owner of a string of Burger King's who claimed Ramtha's teachings had convinced him to give up everything, move to Northern California and build a pyramid. And I'm 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 King's, but it doesn't hurt anyone. Whereas Burger King for sure does hurts a lot. Burger King is much more harmful than woods pyramids. Yeah.

So I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. Among other things, Miss Knight's teachings include these precepts. God is not a remote entity, but an integral part of everything in the universe. Therefore, man 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 guilt. Okay, I'm sorry. She had me in the beginning and and that is how the shit goes in the beginning. You're like, yeah, this makes sense. And in the end, oh wait, it's impossible to do bad things so you should never feel guilty for hurting people. Oh, I think you might be hurting people at scale. Yeah.

Miss Knight contends that cataclysmic events, not nuclear wars, but earthquakes and other natural catastrophes are likely to occur soon. 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 estimate a number at 500 to 1500 people, many of them middle aged women. Wow. 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 going to move there just so I can fuck all those Cougars. Yeah. Well, past Cougar time at this point. I mean, 500 to 1500, I'm just saying. Yeah, there you go. Mama's gonna eat tonight. I think what they're saying about the fact that Ramtha 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 about a cultic milieu because all rampas 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 80s, early 90s, a lot of Nazis

who don't have wildly divergent cultic beliefs sometimes are also saying you need to move to the Northwest because it's the whitest part of the country and because a nuclear war is coming. And if we're all together, we can create a white ethno state afterwards, right? And I'm not just making this up because I'm always scared of Nazis. There's some evidence that Jay-Z Knight and thus the Ramtha cult have some kind of Nazi adjacent beliefs. In 2014, video surfaced of Jay-Z Knight saying 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. Okay, I am gonna leave her cult. Okay, I did not come here to be disrespected. Yeah, I said good day. Please send

me my check. You don't get checks from Ramtha. The checks flow one way and around the cold. Wait, but is she white? Jesus, I don't even know. I didn't even check because I in my head, I just picture Jay-Z every time you see me. Yeah, me too. That would be, yeah, she's white as hell. Yeah, absolutely. She looks exactly like you'd expect. She looks like a side character on one life to live. Wow, I think that's a weird reference, Robert. Yeah, that was scary. Are you so ped? You're so ped, man. My mom was. There was always, whenever I'd be sick at home, soaps would be on. You're so ped. Google Jay-Z Knight and tell me she does not look like a one life to live sightie. Hey, Robert, are these the days of our lives? I don't know. We were a one

life to live family. Oh, you have allegiances. You are a so ped. But seriously, Google her. Tell me I'm wrong. I'm Googling her right now. It's Jay-Z, the two letters, not how it's actually spelled. She came right up. She comes up as American teacher. That seems misleading. That seems misleading. She doesn't look like what I expected. Far away, she looks like Paul Abdul had a lot of fucked up surgery. She looks like if Paul Abdul and one of those housewives were one of the housework shows merged together. She's got major housewife face. She's got the housewife lip plump and fuck you bangs. Now, this doesn't directly tie in to what we're talking about today, but I should note for context that also in 2014, whistleblowers revealed that Jay-Z

Knight had spent years urging her most devoted followers to drink lye. Oh my God. You can't make money off of them after they're dead. Oh, you got to mix it with shit, then they don't quite die. It's like the bleach. Oh my God. I'm going to quote a write up by Q13 Fox here, which is a local Fox affiliate. Alluding to the teachings at Ramtha, former follower, Virginia Coverdale said, we're more powerful than we realize our brain can do all sorts of things. Quantum theory, these things are what 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 lye to enlighten themselves. She said her mother and brother were among those who drank the lye concoction. This wasn't just a one time thing, Coverdale said. They were taking it for five years and Ramtha at one point told them to chug it. This is not just a teaspoon in the morning, in the evening. People were losing their hair. Oh my God. It's so funny. I would be so bad if I joined your cult and then I went bald. Yeah, because of the poison you made me drink. See, this is why in my cult, all we make you chug is Highland's all natural baby killing pills. No, we don't. The only kid pills. No, we don't. No, we don't. I make my followers butt chug them. That's how I know they really love me. See, when I say it, it's funny when you say it.

It's funny. Sophie doesn't like it. No, it's funny when you say it because Robert's face goes. Oh, I miss making Robert blush in person. It was a delightful experience. He's such a sweet baby. Look at him. Shucks. He's blushing again. We veered off track in a couple of ways here. I hope this all hasn't been too confusing because there's a lot to get out. Late 90s, early 2000s conspiracy culture is one of the things that I love talking about the most, but it's messy. It's important, though, because it is now mainstream Republican politics and probably increasingly mainstream Democratic politics, too, unfortunately. I know a lot of people are wondering right now, what does this

all have to do with Nessara, what we started talking about at the top of the episode? We lost that thread. We're getting there. Now, by 1999, 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 to ensure his investments failed to pay out. When his marks would complain online about the fact that years had gone by without a promised payment, he would accuse them of being part of the conspiracy against Omega or threaten 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 prevent their shadowy enemies from seeing it. I know. That's some good shit, right? That's the shit we all love. Yeah. So the millennium turned and the year 2000 came and for the last six... You think if I wrap my vagina in foil, I will never get raped because my vagina will be invisible. Well, you won't get raped by the globalists. Yeah. That doesn't seem worth it then. You won't be. According to Alex Jones, there's only about 6,000 of them. So yeah, no, that's not really comprehensive protection. Do better with a 38. Nobody will put your vagina in a microwave, self. No. But don't worry, even without it. This shit's gonna blow up. I'm sorry.

I'm not. It's hilarious. So by the year 2000, 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 Mattoon, which was doing quite well as a result of this grift. By 2000, they'd taken at least $12.5 million. This is the point at which federal law enforcement finally caught up with them and arrested Clyde as well as 10 other people in Mattoon, including the deputy sheriff, a former police officer, a minister and a lawyer, eight people who lived outside of the town were also arrested. The trial almost immediately went off the rails. When prosecutors asked Clyde what Fortune 500 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 worked for multiple Fortune 500 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, they mailed papers to prosecutors, court clerks, Mattoon police officers,

the county sheriff, and the United States Supreme Court stating that any judicial proceeding, determination, ruling, order, decree, entry, penalty, fine or arrest warrants, which issues from these courts is null and void. Investigators also found identity cards with pictures and signatures of Mr. Hood and another defendant, Arlene Faust Diamond, a 63-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 immunity and get out of submitting handwritten fingerprint samples to the grand jury. Mr. Hood testified in court on Thursday that he

signed the card as a joke. 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 you, even though I'm sending you paperwork. I mean, in the same way that sovereign citizenship wasn't part of QAnon 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? All of these things are infectious, no matter even though the original sovereign citizens, a lot of them were super racist and not at all very bigoted against black people. Also, groups of black Israelites, right? This

fringe cult that believes that black people are the real Jewish people and actual Jewish people are like some sort of like historic scam. There was a shooting based around this a year or two ago and I think New 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 cultic 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 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 same shit as every shitty politician who's like, I am against big government while they're

running for office. I'm against government. Okay. Well, why are you trying to get a government position then? Or like, oh, I'm going to get in. I'm going to 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? People, come on. So Clyde eventually in court confessed to Omega being an elaborate con. He was asked by a federal prosecutor in 2001, did you get a vision, an actual vision from the Lord? And he said in court, no, I did not. He was asked, did you ever work for a Fortune 500

company as a trader? He answered no. And he was asked, what is Omega? And he said, 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. He admitted to being a liar in court. He was sentenced to 14 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 his victims. Now, a number of people tried, like filed to receive restitution, stated what they donated, tried 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 most of them, no, they didn't want their money

back, not because they were embarrassed. And this is where Shanie 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 thing in Illinois has been staged to try to stop funding. However, this case in Illinois totally lacks 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. Clyde's arrest was yet another attempt by the

evil people in power to stop thousands of real Americans 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 a stupid idiot. Just take the goddamn chance. No, of course not. This is the feds trying to trick me by giving me back my money. I'm not going to 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. Yeah. That's literally leaving money in the FBI's hands. Which is so fucking stupid. It's all amazing. So the news tribune summarizes the Dove of Oneness's

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 U.S. 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 wrote lengthy instructions that explained how to handle

large sums of money when they arrived. She talked about how she would spend her own money once she received it. She would give large gifts to humanitarian causes. So you see what's happening here, right? This is this is Q-it on shit. 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. There's this epic battle occurring on your behalf at levels you don't know, but I have secret insight to, and that's why you need to subscribe to my newsletter and give me money. It's Q-shit. Why the night's got to be white, though. Yeah, I mean, I don't think she anticipated what internet culture would do to the term White

Night, but. So, yeah. It's about that time again. You know who are White Knights secretly fighting from within the immoral system on your behalf. That's right. That's right. The ultimate White Knights. I don't like this phrasing at all. I love phrasing. Great. And I love products and services. They love you too, Robert. They don't. Kisses for ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

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pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system

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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 bunch of Omega people went to prison. Jay-Z Knight 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 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 culty organizations. And so you let this thing fester, which is pretty on brand. We're seeing it now with the Capitol. So when everyone at Omega went to prison, the dove of oneness was still out there speaking to a growing audience of people who wanted to believe that vast riches were headed their way really any day now. 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 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, stay calm and get fucking fisted. Yeah, not really a good plan. I know 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, a parasite leaching off of this scam. But once the the core scam collapses, she spins her side scam into a whole new thing. And this is kind of where Nessarra comes back into the story. On July 17, 2000, 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 wants the group prayers to continue. So I have been given a message of passing on as much information as I can without jeopardizing the safety of the processes for our benefit. She continued to assure her growing following that the payouts were imminent. She told people that the prosperity deliveries were coming any day. 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, calling it Oh, or the big Oh. On July 26, 2000, she said no one's ever made anyone come in that group. On July 26, 2000, she said members of the big program with the O in program with a zero could expect deliveries

by July 31st. On August 4th, she said deliveries were imminent. On August 7th, she said deliveries were scheduled for the end of the week. And then in 2001, the best thing ever happened. Do you want to know what that was, Sophia? 9-11. It was 9-11. You're right. That was the best thing ever for the Duff of Oneness and her cult. I mean, I feel like you're setting me up for a trap there because now there's literally record of me saying that the best thing ever in 2001 was 9-11. Just that audio line out. Exactly. But really, it's you, Robert. Yeah. I too am a cultic manipulator. So, 9-11 was a bad day for most people. But if you were Al-Qaeda, a whale, or a New Age conspiracy grifter, it was money Christmas. The Duff of Oneness

immediately knew how to profit off of this tragedy, and she lost no time in blasting out a post 9-11 newsletter. I'm going to quote now from a wonderful write-up in Logically, which discusses the history of Nessarra and heavily cites Sean Robinson's 2004 article for the News Tribune, which we've used earlier as a source. Quote, on September 11th, 2001, mere hours after the World Trade Center in Pentagon attacks, Dove posted the message that made her a star. The three targets today were all connected to Nessarra and the banking changes. I learned just learned that at 9 a.m. in New York this morning, there was an important banking activity set to be activated in the IMF International Banking Computer Center in the World Trade Center. This was obviously why the World Trade Center was

attacked today, just before and after 9 a.m. The orders for those plate attacks came from U.S. citizens who are trying to stop our deliveries slash the funding of Nessarra. So, what Goodwin does, she becomes aware of Nessarra in the late 90s. And while it had originally just been this one guy's plan for how to fix the economy, she turns it into, she ties it to Omega and says that like, Nessarra 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 11th. And then the government flew planes into those towers to stop you people from getting your money. And of course, as Robinson noted, Goodwin's legion of followers bought into her story en masse. 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 the announcement of a secret law that did not exist. See, the Duff of Oneness started telling people that not only like Nessarra was not just some guy's plan for how to fix the economy, it was a law that Congress had secretly voted to approve and that the 9-11 attacks had been carried out in order to stop from being instituted. And it's all very frustrating. Yeah. So during my research into this, I came across a very interesting 2005 documentary called Waiting for Nessarra. It covers a chunk of this, and it

mostly focuses around a small group of Nessarra believers in Salt Lake City, Utah. The documentary is technically kind of rough. The audio is particularly crude by modern standards. But I think it's a pretty priceless documentation of a lot of 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 Duff of Oneness interpreted her newsletters. By the time this was filmed, something like 315,000 people received her weekly newsletter updates talking about Nessarra and Omega and the shadowy fight of the White Knights to save the little people and get them their money and stuff. Those motherfuckers just needed to get

into Harry Potter or something. Yeah. I mean, these were probably people who thought Harry Potter was demonic. So one of the guys they interview in this documentary is a former Republican fringe congressional candidates. And he states his belief that the Duff of Oneness is a former intelligence agency employee and has deep connections to the intelligence apparatus. And 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. So again, it's all Q and on shit. Like Q, many Nessarra 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 Saint Germain, who is like a Catholic saint who had died 250 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 250 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 9 11 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 thinking is that these people

just like needed a hobby. They needed that. 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 I mean, of course, they're not going to try to like fix their community by doing like, 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 for societal change, if you're like actually doing the hard work of activism, it's a 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 has special knowledge. And that makes me better than everyone who doesn't have that special knowledge, right? It's again, 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 immense stuff 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 new record for being alive,

time 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 going to get grifted either way. They might as well buy food for poor people. Exactly. Like, like tell them the monies for something else. And like, they're only being asked for it because they're like part of an elite group of people. And then just keep sending 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,

the first thousand dollars to a soup kitchen or something. That's such a good idea. Yes, my magazine covers. Oh, maybe we can like have them like cut ribbons with giant scissors at places that have already been opened, but like they don't know. Just like get to a park early, you know, in the morning and be like, you're opening this park. This parks you because of all of the money you invested. Exactly. You're going to be rich in 10 years. Don't worry. We really have something here. I mean, we've always known we were going to be cult leaders, but this could be how we do it. Yeah, this could be how we do it. So one of the reasons I find this waiting for Nessar a documentary interesting is that it shows that like QAnon, Nessar was

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 Nessar 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. I didn't see hatred against the 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 deserve something like Nessar 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 think that maybe the whole system is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways. So 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 Nassar, a Harvey Barnard, found out about it and he did his best to push back against this tide of disinformation, publishing a note to the Nessar 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 Nassar was telling people, no, it's not what you think it is. It's like an economic reform policy. I'm not going to make everybody rich. The fact that he was

specifically saying they had it wrong meant nothing. In fact, Nessar remained significant up through 2004 when dozens of followers were spotted in an anti-Iraq war protest waving signs with Nessar written on them. It started to fall out of vogue after the invasion because in part, one of the ways that the Nessar conspiracy evolved is that the Iraq invasion is never going to happen. The white hats are going to stop it. Bush is going to be forced out of office. The truth about 9-11 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 Nessar falls off after that. But Nessar limped along and it never quite died out entirely. In 2011, someone started a We the

People petition beckoning President Obama to institute Nessar up. Here's what the petition claimed it would do. Number one, zeroes out all credit card mortgage and other bank debt. Number two, abolishes the income tax. Number three, creates a 14% flat rate, non-essential new items only sales tax revenue for the government. Number four, increases benefits to senior citizens. Number five, returns constitutional law to all courts. Number six, monitors elections and prevents illegal election activities of special interest groups. And number seven, creates a new U.S. Treasury currency backed by gold, silver and platinum precious metals. The petition got 6,623 signatures, well above the 5,000 signature threshold necessary to earn a White House response.

A very polite White House aid wrote, thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on whithouse.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 9-11 was carried out to stop it from being enacted anyway. I just love how gentle that White House aid was. They were like, they were just so gently like, hey, it was like explaining something to a child. It's like, hey, laws, okay, the way laws work is... Yeah, they have to be passed.

Yeah, 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. No, no, honey, no. I'm sorry. A law is something that gets passed. And it was just not condescending. And I really appreciated that. It would have been fun if he'd included a link to the schoolhouse rock video on how the bill becomes alive. Just like, I'm an amendment 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. 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. And that's the way it's always worked. This sweet, sweet, beautiful idiot thought the truth mattered. And I'm sorry. I mean, it did for a couple more years after that. But even then, by 2010, 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. Nessarra lay dormant until the Trump era, when a conspiracy theorist

president and the burgeoning QAnon cult provided it with an opportunity to feed and grow again. And now the Nessarra conspiracy, which started out as a remora on the omega grift and then turned into its own conspiracy, started attaching itself remora like to the QAnon conspiracy. It's an incredible ecosystem when you understand it. Oh, my God. From logically, quote, every few years, Nessarra rears its ugly head, often coinciding with times of economic hardship and often accompanied by its global counterpart, the Jessarra, Global Economic Security and Recovery Act. In 2020, Nessarra has managed to merge with other current conspiracy theories that revolve around the baseless and pro-Trump QAnon, where supporters have co-opted the global reset narrative to

announce that a new era of debt forgiveness and monetary reform, while cash would be replaced with a gold-backed cryptocurrency, would be imminently ushered in by none other than Trump. The fact that Barnard's book has the same name as Trump's 2016 electorate mantra, Drain the Swamp, may be a coincidence, but to QAnon supporters, it reads like evidence. Ugh, God. Just because it's one of the most trite political phrases that's been used and overused for like decades, yeah. Yeah. It's like if I was like, whoa, someone wrote a song about love and so did I. This is means we're cosmically connected. It's like all the songs are about love, so probably not. Oh, every song's about love. The only things people write songs about are love

and whatever holy diver's about. So. No, no, no. And then there's that one about the dad and the sad one about the dad and the son. Oh, yeah. The sad one about the dad and the son. Yeah. That's kind of about fucking. Silver spoon or whatever. Is that? That's the cradle and the silver spoon. We'll be together soon. Son, we'll be together soon. This got really, really fast, guys. So, uh, yeah, logically went to the trouble of analyzing the popularity, the change in popularity of Nessara and Jessara over the course of 2020. Their analysis of posts using both terms on Facebook over the last 12 months of that year showed a significant bump in the number of interactions peaking at 85,000.2 interactions by the end of May of 2020.

Early posts were from a curious mix of New Age mysticism, pro-Trump, Nessara groups, and ufology pages, pages that are now finding unlikely common ground under the QAnon banner. Posts listed as having the most interactions from the last few months show just that. QAnon groups, right-wing Christian ministries talking about Trump decreeing a move to a gold-backed currency and a general error of QAnon theories permeating the aforementioned group. What is astonishing is the global reach of the theory. Posts in English, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Greek, and Malay are all present in the top 50 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, Nessara and Jessara was the top of 334,912 tweets coming from a pick-and-mix of star seeds, cryptocurrency gurus, and a smorgasbord of QAnon accounts at various levels of dedication, all tweeting with excitement about the inevitable global reset in a variety of languages. The standard QAnon fare of reading into anything from the background of Trump's press releases is usage-proof that debt forgiveness is on its way. And that's kind of where we are now, Sylvia. We can't even get a fucking $1,400 check. These motherfuckers talking debt forgiveness. Get the fuck outta here. It's amazing that they think that Congress is secretly passing all these laws to fix everything, and that 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 $1,400. Y'all dumb as fuck. I mean, honestly. It's so good. It's very fun, Sylvia. I am optimistic about the future. How are you feeling? I feel like it makes me feel like I'm a piece of shit because then I'm like, I feel like I can be a better cult leader and make better conspiracy theories than these other people. And then I'm like, Sylvia, why do you want to get in this game? It's just like when you see really shitty people doing stand-up. I've been doing stand-up for 10 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, Sylvia, you can't quit when these fucking terribly unfunny people are still doing it. And that's how I feel. So I don't need to get involved in the conspiracy theory game, but every time I 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 heroes. And by heroes, I mean, I mean, 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 no matter what, you're going to wind up destroying the lives and livelihoods of people who are basically nice, just overwhelmed by 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 mock them and insult them. There's even a part of me that wants to, like people are doing, some liberals are doing with Texas right now that wants to be like, you motherfuckers brought this on yourself by not just buying into this bullshit, but being like so arrogant about it and mocking anyone who told you that it was obviously a grift meant to take advantage of you. But also, like the level of unreality that permeates our society is so comprehensive. It is such a thick and deadly fog. I can't blame people who get caught in it really. No, I can be frustrated. Like it's just so powerful. And to bring you

expect them to do to bring it back to the beginning. Yeah, like my mom and I fell for Amway, you know, I'm saying like you can't blame everybody has a grift that they that they're vulnerable to. Yeah, you can't blame people for I mean, you can blame them if they do reprehensible things that fucking 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. But it's just like I don't think we could have imagined that there I mean, I couldn't have it 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. 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 isolated in their communities. Yeah, I mean, TV and shit just praise on them and YouTube. And like we've already I was home shopping that work, you know. Anyway. Well, you have any pluggable stuff? You look sad, Robert. I am. Let me boop that little nose. Yeah. I'm sorry. Just remember that you're going to get a tattoo.

I am going to get a tattoo today. It's not fun. I am going to get a tattoo. And I think I'm going to buy another big stupid gun. I think I'm going to get a 50 cow. Why not? There it is. That's that's the that's the math that helps tear you up. Do you need another gun? Yes, it's has been a year since I've needed another gun. So maybe 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. That's true. God, you're really just setting Sophia up for so many jokes right now. Like it's so reading about the explosion of conspiratorial thinking and weaponized unreality. It makes

me think that I might actually wind up needing bigger guns than I presently have at some point. Again, enough. It's really hard to do this when I can't give you a hug because you clearly need a hug. That is what I'm reading. I'm going to take drugs and drink more Dr. Zevia. Hug me again, podcast daddy. Well, Sophia, after this, we're going to get into a book. We're doing another book episode for the Thursday episode this week because spoiler alert, not a spoiler really. My mom has cancer and I have been in Texas helping the family with that 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 called Nessarra and the Mark of the Beast, which looks like it'll be a hoot, isn't super long,

came out in September of 2020 and I think we'll get us up to date on how the Nessarra conspiracy theory has adopted to the world of QAnon. Cool. What a weird time to plug my things. Plug, plug away. Plug, plug, plug it up. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at theSophiaS-O-F-I-Y-A and I have a podcast about love and sex around the world called Private Parts Unknown. You can follow that and another podcast about 90 Day Fiancé with Miles Gray called 420 Day Fiancé. So check that out. If you haven't bought her comedy album, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, buy the fucking, what are you doing? It's fucking assholes. Father's Day fucking assholes. God damn it. It comes on in the car when I'm on shuffle and

every time, no matter what mood I'm in, it comes on and it's like, oh, Sophia, every time. It's so enjoyable. It's like, oh, 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. I highly recommend shuffle. I'm excited to listen to it on my long drive back from Texas through Great Wilds of America. It's delightful. It will make you feel delighted, Robert. So yeah, delight yourselves, you fucking rat bastards. Anyway, thank you for listening to our podcast. I love you all dearly. You rat bastards. What would you do if the secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood

between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut that he went through

training and a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.