American Experience | PBS • Jan 16, 2024 In the 1930s, Summer camps opened up across the country. But these weren’t normal summer camps: they were the creation of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization with a vision of America ruled by white Christians. NAZI TOWN, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. Watch this extended preview of NAZI TOWN, USA, premiering Tuesday, January 23rd at 9/8c on PBS, PBS.org and the free PBS App. Official website → https://to.pbs.org/3tuHAiH Composite art made from stock photos of models.
Nazi Town, USA Preview & Panel Discussion | American Experience | PBS
Jan 19, 2024 • Jan 19, 2024 • PBS Panel Discussion with filmmakers Peter Yost and Edna Alburquerque and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Beverly Gage, moderated by Executive Producer Cameo George, following a preview screening of American Experience’s new film, NAZI TOWN, USA. Recorded Thursday, January 18, 2024.
Streamed live on Feb 6, 2024 • THE WATCH CLUB February ‘24 Interview with filmmaker Peter Yost In December, for the second time in a year, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office filed a civil complaint against a white supremacist group led by a Newburyport resident. The state’s top cop alleges that the group, the Nationalist Social Club-131, violated anti-discrimination laws with its anti-LGBTQ demonstrations and by hanging a banner from a highway overpass that read “Keep New England White.” The rise of contemporary fascism may be alarming, but we’ve been here before. In NAZI TOWN, USA, premiering Tuesday evening on PBS’s “American Experience,” director Peter Yost revisits a period in the 1930s when Nazi sympathizers could fill Madison Square Garden, where they called for a racially “pure” America. “There’s no such thing as foreign fascism,” says one historian in the film. “Fascism is always homegrown.”
The Astrology Podcast Jan 25, 2025 Discussing what every Venus retrograde in Aries period has coincided with in history over the past century, and identifying patterns of 8-year repetitions in the past that are tied in with the present and future, with astrologers Chris Brennan and Nick Dagan Best. The premise of this episode is that we have a Venus retrograde in Aries and Pisces coming up over the next few months, and it seems to coincide with a really important part of the year in March and April where we are expecting some major world events, so I wanted to look back in history and see if I could get a better sense for what these particular retrogrades in Aries have coincided with in the past. What Nick and I did in this episode is we started in 2025 and talked a little bit about what is already known or is clearly developing about the current Venus retrograde, and then after that we jumped back 8 years to 2017, which is the last time Venus went retrograde in Aries, and talked about major events that happened in that period. Then we went back another 8 years to 2009, when Venus was again retrograde in Aries, and so on. During the course of the episode we made it all the way back to 1905, which was the first time that Venus retrograded Aries in this cycle. Here is the full list of Venus retrograde in Aries years over the past century: 1905, 1913, 1921, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1953, 1961, 1969, 1977, 1985, 1993, 2001, 2009, 2017, 2025. By moving backwards in time we went retrograde ourselves, and started with a period that is more familiar, but then kept showing how there are these weird 8 year repetitions that connect events and themes across these different time periods. We ended up finding a LOT of really interesting stuff, and some major correlations that will end up being very relevant for news stories today. I feel like this episode really helps to build on and expand the Venus retrograde research that we did in 2023, and to deepen our understanding of Venus retrogrades in general by really drilling more deeply into this particular series. More importantly, it also helps to shed light on and provide further contextualization of some of the events that will happen in March and April of 2025. This is episode 475 of The Astrology Podcast:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980) was a French philosopher, writer, and key figure in 20th century existentialism. He was a leading exponent of existentialism, a philosophy of existence. His notable works include Nausea (1938), Being and Nothingness (1943), and Existentialism and Humanism (1946). Sartre became a philosophy professor in Le Havre in 1931 and also taught in Paris and Laon. More References: Wikipedia, +3
New Thinkin • Jan 24, 2025 This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1989. It will remain public for only one week. Robert Ornstein, PhD, author of The Psychology of Consciousness, The Psychology of Meditation and The Evolution of Consciousness, points out that our brains evolved in a world very different from the civilization that we have created. Our minds are not well-equipped to deal with the slowly accumulating problems that are threatening us today — such as pollution and population growth. Now you can watch all of the programs from the original Thinking Allowed Video Collection, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove. Subscribe to the new Streaming Channel (https://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv/) and watch more than 350 programs now, with more, previously unreleased titles added weekly. Free month of the classic Thinking Allowed streaming channel for New Thinking Allowed subscribers only. Use code THINKFREELY.
(in Christian theology) a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unpenitent person passes after death.Similar:damnationeternal punishmenthellhellfirespiritual destructiondoomruinruinationcondemnationdestructiondownfall
Origin
late Middle English: from Old French perdiciun, from ecclesiastical Latin perditio(n- ), from Latin perdere ‘destroy’, from per- ‘completely, to destruction’ + the base of dare ‘put’.
1.behavior showing high moral standards.”paragons of virtue”Similar:goodnessvirtuousnessrighteousnessmoralityethicalnessuprightnessupstandingnessintegritydignityrectitudehonestyhonorablenesshonorabilityhonorincorruptibilityprobityproprietydecencyrespectabilitynobilitynobility of soul/spiritnoblenessworthinessworthgoodtrustworthinessmeritoriousnessirreproachablenessblamelessnesspuritypurenesslack of corruptionmeritprincipleshigh principlesethicsOpposite:viceiniquity
a quality considered morally good or desirable in a person.”patience is a virtue”Similar:good pointgood qualitystrong pointstrong suitlong suitassetforteattributeadvantagebenefitstrengthtalentplusOpposite:failing
a good or useful quality of a thing.”Mike was extolling the virtues of the car”Similar:meritadvantagebenefitusefulnessefficacyefficaciousnesspowerpotencyforcestrengthOpposite:disadvantage
ARCHAICvirginity or chastity, especially of a woman.Similar:virginityhonormaidenhoodmaidenheadchastitychastenesspuritypurenesslack of sinsinlessnessspotlessnesswholesomenessinnocencedecencyvirtuousnessrespectabilitydignitymodestycelibacyabstinenceself-restraintself-denialcherryimmaculatenesscontinenceOpposite:promiscuity
A detail from “Sermons and Deeds of the Antichrist” by Luca Signorelli (Orvieto Cathedral fresco, 1500)
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So many rotten, terrible, and nasty things are happening so quickly at the moment, it is dizzying. Where to begin to explore it all? Here is an informal roster of some of the bad things.
The White House just removed the U.S. Constitution from its website. Elon Musk openly made a Nazi salute—doing it twice for emphasis—to celebrate Herr Trump’s victory. Eric Trump, runt of the litter, overtly flashed a Masonic / Illuminati hand signal at the family photo op. At the actual inauguration, Zuck couldn’t stop peeking at Bezos’ girfriend’s cleavage. Zuck looked like the guiltiest little boy in the universe (it must be a weird, vertiginous feeling to know you are choosing to do wrong at such a huge scale). The next day, many Meta users found they were suddenly following Trump and Vance and couldn’t unfollow them. George Bush and Musk also came up with some seriously bizarre face twitches for the occasion.
Clockwise from top left: Musk’s “Seig Heil,” Guilty Zuck, Eric’s Illuminati hand sign, pissed-off Trump-ers listening to Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon on mercy.
The next day, Trump signed, with bravado, a bazillion executive orders: Men are now men and women are now women, once again, forever. Sacred gender duality preserved! Trump executive-ordered the price on eggs and other household good to go down, while raising the price on prescription drugs for old people. He assigned a mere $500 billion for the not-at-all-ominously-named Stargate, a new total digital AI surveillance system under the control of Oracle CEO and Christian fanatic Larry Ellison, one of Elon Musk’s mentors, with Sam Altman and others assisting. Pre-election, Ellison promised to build a total digital surveillance system that will keep all US citizens on their “best behavior” — neat! That is really the way to “own the libs.” And everyone else for that matter.
To add insult to injury, Ellison intends to unleash new mRNA vaccines to cure cancer or whatever. Certainly, there will be no ominous, gnarly side effects from these shots. They definitely won’t shed bizarre nanoparticles or harm the immune system in some unknown, nebulous way. MAGA is just totally winning, totally getting everything the MAGA people wanted — and much more, like omnipresent digital surveillance, a “final solution” for human freedom… a “Mark of the Beast” kind of thing.
I am currently reading theologian Matthew Fox’s Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ (2024). Fox writes (I have added bold for emphasis):
The faux imitator of Christ—called the “great ape” by the church — will bring confusion to minds and hearts. “For false messiahs and false prophets will perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Mk 13:21). “He will be a crowd-pleaser and will be worshipped like an idol.”
He will proclaim himself the benefactor and savior of the people and his bare feet signify poverty or trust of the poor—but beware. He is not a truth-teller. “In reality he is nothing other than a master of deceit, a lover of power, skilled in corruption, and driven by an insatiable ambition to stand above all.” The image on the podium of the Antichrist is a rider on a rearing horse: a symbol of boundless pride and a prophecy of a disastrous fall. (See Rev. 20:20).
“Those who allow themselves to be seduced and deceived by his words “will end up exchanging good for evil and evil for good, becoming lovers of pleasures and greedy for money, corrupt and immoral, and finally violent and homicidal… This is the totalitarian society of the Antichrist. Wicked men uniting to usurp the throne of God.”
This all seems relevant, except perhaps for the bare feet (Trump has mercifully spared us that so far). The actual references to Antichrist in the Bible are somewhat sparse. One major discussion of this archetype comes from St Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12:
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
Perhaps it is becoming clear that, in the question of whether Trump might be the Antichrist, I find myself tilting toward the affirmative. Fox, in his book, equivocates, seeing Trump as one of many Antichrists, or perhaps a representation of Antichrist vibes, instead of the Antichrist. In the introduction, Caroline Myss speculates that Trump is an “Antichrist figure”:
If there is such a force as the Antichrist, and I believe there is, I believe that animating this dark presence requires a rising collective atmosphere of fear, lawlessness, entitlement, hatred, prejudice, and panic. … The Antichrist thrives in chaos and though he presents himself as the person best suited to calm the social waters, in truth, the Antichrist is an agent of chaos and turmoil. Indeed, the Antichrist requires that people suffer so that he can appear to be the redeemer.
At least for the purposes of this particular essay, I am playing with the idea that Trump is more than that: That he is, in fact, along with all of his assorted clan of Nazi-tinged, Illuminati-naughty psychopaths, the big “A” itself.
Reading this, you might ask (I certainly do): Why does it even matter at this point?
Somebody has to “call a spade, a spade.” I mean, if it walks like a duck and acts like a duck, it might be a duck. If we get this Antichrist stuff out in the open—cat out of bag—we can start to talk about it, at least. Perhaps (fat chance) we can even “turn the tables” on the mind-controlled MAGA masses, who might realize they were duped, hoodwinked, sold up the river, and so on.
In his book, Fox makes much of Luca Signorelli’s Sermons and Deeds of the Antichrist (1500), one of the frescos he painted for the Orvieto Cathedral, which, apparently, had a major impact on Sigmund Freud. The fresco features a figure who looks like a cross between Christ and Trump, with Satan whispering in his ear and controlling him. The background of the fresco features lots of SS or ninja-looking black-clad assassins and awful things happening to people resisting the Antichrist’s doctrine. Seems like the kind of stuff that will never ever happen here.
I find myself in a good position to examine this Antichrist material in a blunt and straightforward manner, based on my past work. I explored Carl Jung’s work on archetypes and studied the Judeo-Christian apocalypse along with the prophecies of the Aztec, Maya, Hopi in my book Quetzalcoatl Returns (originally published as 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl). I felt we were, indeed, entering the time of Apocalypse, all things considered.
Both Fox and I cite The Apocalypse Archetype by Jungian scholar Edward Edinger. Edinger saw the apocalypse archetype “constellating very powerfully” in our time, in both the individual and the collective Psyche. For Edinger, the psychological meaning of the apocalypse is “the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization. This is what the content of the Apocalypse archetype presents: the shattering of the world as it has been, followed by its reconstitution.” The horrors of the Apocalypse are meant to lead to something better: Revelation, resurrection, New Jerusalem.
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Next month, I am offering a seminar on the occult philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner wrote about Lucifer and Ahriman as occult beings or forces that work constantly on humanity, diverting us from our proper path of development. Ahriman is the evil Earth spirit, from Zoroastrianism, who seeks to imprison humanity in sterile materialism and hyper-rationality via mechanized technology. Steiner foresaw a literal incarnation of Ahriman as we reach the end of this world-incarnation or Aeon. Elon Musk is an almost too-perfect candidate for Ahriman’s incarnation.
Let’s admit it: We’re engulfed in a text-book psychedelic bad-trip cartoon caricature of the prophesied Apocalypse.
What if businesses were designed to maximize impact — not just profits? Alex Amouyel, president and CEO of Newman’s Own Foundation, details the organization’s commitment to donate all of the profits from the food company it owns — and shows what the “100% for purpose” movement can teach us about doing business, philanthropy and capitalism differently.
The Answer Has Very Little (or Nothing) to Do with Homophobia
By Eric Anderson January 23, 2025 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org)
We should stop lamenting about the ghost of sporting homophobia, writes researcher Eric Anderson. | Courtesy of apn Photo/Hermann J. Knippertz.
In 1993, I was 25, and coaching a cadre of high school distance runners in Southern California. I was also miserable. I had known I was gay since I was 7 and had been hiding my sexuality ever since. The extreme homohysteria of the 1980s was beginning to fade. I determined that to live authentically, I needed to come out.
I told a few of my athletes, which was effectively telling the whole school. My revelation unleashed violence against me and my athletes, who were assumed gay by association. One was severely beaten, breaking four facial bones, for which there were no criminal charges. I became a talking head for issues of gay men in sport, and I returned to university to study the experiences of openly gay male high school and collegiate athletes.
Through my research I’ve found that gay sporting experiences have improved greatly over my own: Men’s sports today are highly inclusive. Any absence of gay men from team sports has little to do with homophobia, and much to do with the diversity of gay people’s athletic and extracurricular interests.
In 2002, nearly a decade after coming out, I published the first-ever examination of athletes who played out of the closet for their teams, interviewing openly gay male high school and university athletes across the U.S. Most (but not all) feared violence, bullying, discrimination and/or harassment from teammates—some because they had heard teammates discussing homosexuality negatively. But things had already improved since 1993. By and large, these sportsmen experienced no violence. Almost all were the best athletes on their teams, which, I surmised, may have mitigated the stigma of being gay.
By 2011, gay male athletes reported even less heterosexism, noting that they could thrive out of the closet even as mediocre athletes. None expected bullying, harassment, discrimination, or violence—because, they suggested, their peers were not overtly homophobic, on or off the field. When I asked one participant, Neil, if he had ever heard his teammates speak negatively of gay men, he answered, “No. Never. Not before or after I came out.”
In the years since, colleagues and I have published ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative studies showing that as cultural antipathy toward homosexuality declined, so did homophobia in sports—suggesting a significant, continued shift toward inclusivity. My 2021 research with Outsports founder Cyd Zeigler, for instance, revealed that only 5% of LGBT high school and college athletes reported negative encounters, with none facing physical hostilities, social ostracization, verbal abuse, team de-selection, or lack of playing time. Athletes viewed their sports teams as more supportive and accepting than the school population at large. This is most likely a reflection of the fact that their teammates also represent strong friendships, the kind of people who will have your back when you fall.
Results did not vary by team type, geographical location, nor the year an athlete came out—suggesting that inclusive attitudes are widespread, and stable over time.
All to say: Things are getting better for gay people in sports.
The question is not why gay athletes fail to come out, but why they fail to try out.
Still, despite these highly positive findings, Cyd and I located only a few dozen LGBT men who played in the “big five” sports: basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and ice hockey. Of a quarter million retired professional soccer players across the globe, only a handful have come out, even decades after retiring; few athletes followed suit when then-trailblazers Jason Collins (NBA) and Michael Sam (NFL) came out in 2013 and 2014.
For many, the statistical absence of gay men in elite team sports leaves the impression that these sports do not welcome gay men. If they did, the argument holds, we would see more athletes come out, in professional and in youth sports. Gay men must exist in macho team sports relative to their population numbers. They must just be afraid to come out.
It is my hope that this assumption disappears. The question is not why gay athletes fail to come out, but why they fail to try out. There is no definitive evidence that gay men avoid the “big five” out of homophobia. There is also no evidence that gay men want anything to do with these sports.
Gay men make up about 2.8% of the male population. It is salient that they do not represent 2.8% of the rosters of football teams; it is self-evident that they comprise more than 2.8% of men in dance and other aesthetic sports, music, fashion, art, theater, and the service sector. What this tells me is that gay men are simply not largely attracted to dirty and dangerous sports. It’s not discrimination, but diversity.
Gay boys are introduced to sport as children in the same institutional, almost compulsory, way that straight boys are. If they loved highly masculinized sports, in this day and age, there would be no reason for them to cease playing them as they grow older.
We should not measure progress in sports by whether gay men represent 2.8% of football athletes. We should measure progress by the freedom that gay men have to choose any sport, without consideration of homophobia. And if gay men choose figure skating or swimming over ice hockey, or cheerleading from the side lines over tackling straight men in football—if they choose the aesthetics of ice dancing over the brain trauma of ultimate fighting—we should celebrate our difference, and stop lamenting about the ghost of sporting homophobia.
To maintain that team sport athletes as highly homophobic simply because gay men are not attracted to these sports is prejudice itself.
When my students ask me why there are no gay men in football (or soccer; I teach in England) I put it like this:
“Because football is f—king boring, mate! 90 minutes of dudes running around failing to score. No thanks. Gay men are far too smart to care about such folly.”
Eric Anderson’s research and books on LGBT athletes, heterosexual masculinity, and more can be found at his website.
Primary editor: Talib Jabbar | Secondary editor: Eryn Brown
A cumberworld is one who encumbers the world, literally speaking. From cumber (hinder), from Anglo-French acumbrer (hinder), from combre (dam, barrage) + world. Earliest documented use: 1374. Another way to describe a cumberworld might be a waste of oxygen.
It is difficult to imagine modern Western alternative spirituality without the influence of Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Every movement in alternative spirituality – from mental-healing and Spiritualism to New Age mysticism and the twelve-step recovery movement – owes an immeasurable debt to the ideas he exploded upon the Western world.
Throughout his priesthood St. Joseph became famous for frequent levitations that were observed on hundreds of occasions and by thousands of witnesses, including many skeptics. Michael Grosso delves into the biography of the saint to explore the many strange phenomena that surrounded his life and develops potential physical explanations for some of the most astounding manifestations of his religious ecstasy.
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