The gradual disintegration of traditional religions has reached its final stage. The modern world in general, and the West in particular, have had to replace prominent figures of the public imagination (biblical prophets, Christ, ancient heroes, influential historical figures) with new ones. Hence the rise of all sorts of “stars”, self-made men and new messianic, prophetic and mythical figures, i.e., Judeo-American superheroes such as Captain America (MARVEL) and Superman (DC COMICS).
Modern techniques for crowd manipulation and indoctrination, as well as techniques for influencing public opinion, were developed in the United States during World War 1 to convince the American populace that a U.S. military intervention had some merit, and this in spite of the fact that the American people were opposed to any intervention in the Eurasian conflict. To this end, on April 13, 1917, the White House created The Committee on Public Information (CPI), otherwise known as the Creel Committee. Edward Bernays [i], the mastermind behind modern propaganda techniques, was a member of this commission. He combined Gustave Le Bon’s works on mass psychology with those of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.
The CPI, which comprised mainly of journalists, intellectuals and publicists, served as a laboratory for modern propaganda through its use of various dissemination channels: radio, written press, brochures, films, posters, caricatures, illustrated journals, numerous flyers, images and audio documents.
Of significance, it invented the four minute men: tens of thousands of volunteers, often notorious people, tasked with publicly declaring their support for government action and inducing hatred of the enemy. Such methods have been effective in backing Uncle Sam’s endless hegemonic wars.
The techniques that were developed during World War 1 ultimately paved the way for American comics created at the outset of World War 2.
Martin Goodman founded Marvel Comics in October 1939 (the war had begun in September). In December 1940, Marvel’s three main owners – Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Martin Goodman, all of whom were Jewish –responded to Nazism by creating Captain America, a patriotic superhero who embodies the land of the free, fights tyranny and, in this case, fights Nazi Germany as well. Less than a year after Captain America’s debut in Marvel Comics, the USA began to strike ships belonging to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis (September 11, 1941). Japan responded by attacking Pearl Harbor (on December 7, 1941), thereby giving the USA its desired pretext to go to war.
The Avengers, or the Hero Worship of Jewish Terrorists
A significant drop in sales ensued after the commercial success – aided and abetted by the Second World War – of Marvel issues which pitted Captain America against the Nazis. During the 1950s, stories of Captain America confronting communists did not catch on.
In 1963, one of Marvel’s main scriptwriters, Stan Lee (the son of Jewish Romanian immigrants), created The Avengers, a group of superheros to which Captain America belongs. The Nokmim militia obviously provided the inspiration for the famous Avengers.
In 1945, the Jewish state’s first president, Chaïm Weizman (1874-1952), a former chemist and director of the World Zionist Organization, provided the Nokmim (plural form of Nakam, which means avenger), a Jewish partisan militia belonging to the Bericha Movement (led by a Zionist Jew called Abba Kovner), with the chemical formulas intended to poison the water storage containers of Munich, Nuremberg and Hamburg.
Abba Kovner was arrested upon his return from Israel, where he had received the poison; his militia of mass killers would later on be prevented from executing his plan; yet, in 1946, they succeeded in poisoning the bread intended for prisoners at Langwasser.
Today, Abba Kovner is known as a hero in Israel.
The cosmology and mythology of Marvel
The Judeo-American company has released one film per year on average ever since the cinematic release of Iron Man in 2008; the general public, in turn, gradually became familiar with the Marvel Universe.
Superheroes like Captain America, Iron Man, or The Hulk, despite having their own “solo” movies, were gradually combined, notably in the movie The Avengers, under a common universe comprised of earthly heroes as well as other heroes living on planets located at the other end of the galaxy. The Norse god Thor featured in two films (one in 2011, the other in 2013), and is included among the heroes involved in the Marvel Universe and in The Avengers. Throughout his adventures, he goes back and forth between Asgard, his celestial kingdom where both Odin (his father) and Loki live, and the land of which he is the guardian.
In the 2014 Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy, a character called The Collector provides us with a valuable lesson in cosmogony (all that which relates to the origins of the universe):
Before creation itself, there were six singularities. Then the universe exploded into existence, and the remnants of these systems were forged into concentrated ingots. Infinity Stones. These stones, it seems, can only be brandished by beings of extraordinary strength. These carriers can use the stone to mow down entire civilizations like wheat in a field.
These six stones, each of which corresponds to a singularity of the universe and to a particular power that derives from it, have the following names: Soul Stone, Mind Stone, Time Stone, Space Stone, Reality Stone, and Power Stone.
Drawing almost entirely from Gnostic cosmogony, Kabbalistic cosmogony holds that the universe was brought into being by divine emanations: namely, the sefirot (plural form of sefirah, a kabbalistic concept equivalent to the Gnostic aeons), which make up what kabbalists call The Tree of Emanation, better known as The Tree of Life.
There are ten different sefirot, and all of them fall into one of two main categories: four belong to the creation of the universe (cosmogony), six (the same number as there are Infinity Stones) to its inner workings (cosmology).
Each sefirot, or emanation, has a name; their names are quite similar to those of Marvel’s Infinity Stones, such as Sefer Hokhmah (wisdom), Sefer Binah (understanding), Sefer Gevurah (strength) or even Sefer Yesod Olam [ii] (the foundation of the world).
The stones in the Marvel Universe are coveted by an evil deity called Thanos, who we find sitting on a throne located on the edge of the universe. His throne looks like a slab of rock from a destroyed planet. The character’s creator was inspired by Thanatos, the Greek god of death. Thanatos was an infernal and dreaded deity who, to the ancient Greeks, evoked destruction.
Thanos is the most powerful being in the universe, a destroyer capable of annihilating entire planets. He is a Titan (an obvious reference to the Titans in Greek mythology) of the race of Eternals. Thanos’ destructive and genocidal actions are motivated by his love for, and devoted worship of, the feminine incarnation of death, Mistress Death, whom he tries to impress.
His purpose is to become a Supreme Being whose power resembles that of the Demiurge, the evil god of Gnosticism. The Demiurge is at once evil incarnate and the figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe, or material world, as a whole. Thanos seeks to become a sort of “prince of this world”…
The Demiurge is also present in the Talmud and Kabbalah under the name Metatron, an archangel who is unique in his ability to stand before God and sit on His throne. Kabbalists view Metatron [iii] as a creation that came into being at the same time as the emanation of the inner heavenly spheres (like the Demiurge in Gnosticism). According to them, “Let there be light”, the verse from Genesis, refers to the “formation of the light of the intellect in the shape of the Metatron”… [iv]
A great many masonic lodges probably identify this Demiurge, Metatron, or immanent deity, with the Great Architect of the Universe.
Thanos is not the only destructive deity in the Marvel Universe. On May 18, 2016, the movie X-Men: Apocalypse was released in France. Apocalypse (deriving from the Greek word unveiling, in reference to the end times) is presented as the chief of all mutants, the most powerful of them all. After being buried in the basement of a pyramid several millennia ago, Apocalypse, who had ruled over ancient Egypt as a living god, awakens in the present only to find that “the weak rule the earth” and wreak havoc in his place.
His goal is thus to “rip everything they’ve built from the ground. Wipe clean this world, and […] lead those that survive into a better one”.
In short, he advocates for an ordo ab chaos rooted in a Kabbalistic and nihilistic conception of Sabbatean-Frankism, whose followers have taken political and ideological control of the Western world [v]. The neo-conservative scholar Michael Ledeen has applied this doctrine to geopolitics by coining the notion of ‘constructive chaos’.
I have presented here only a glimpse of the ideological, eschatological and mystical background driving the Hollywood cinematographic machine to shower us, for over a decade now, with superproductions of which the main themes are chaos, the end of the world, and apocalyptic wars.
Article originally published in French on October 26, 2016: arretsurinfo.ch/marvel-ses-origines-politiques-et-son-univers-esoterique/
Youssef Hindi is a writer and historian of messianic eschatology. Born in Morocco, he emigrated to France at a very young age and followed a path that led him to develop a reflection on the necessary reconciliation of the North and the South shores of the Mediterranean. Two worlds whose destinies have always been intimately intertwined. Here’s his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/youssef_hindi?lang=en
Notes:
[i] Read his provocatively titled book: Propaganda: the Public Mind in the Making, first published in 1928.
[ii] Read: Gershom Scholem, La kabbale, une introduction, origines, thèmes et biographies, Gallimard, 2003, p. 189.
[iii] Metatron is featured in three sections of the Babylonian Talmud : Hag. 15a, Sanh. 38b et Av.-Zar. 3b. According to the Talmud, Metatron received permission to sit on the Throne of God because he was the celestial scribe, tasked with recording Israel’s good actions. For more on Metatron, see: Gershom Scholem, op. cit., pp. 567-572.
[iv] Gershom Scholem, op. cit., p. 121.
[v] Read: Youssef Hindi, Occident et Islam – Tome I : Sources et genèse messianiques du sionisme, Sigest, 2015.