Propaganda #1 : I Am Samizdat

I hate hate - both the concept and especially the word, which should be used only a handful of times over the course of ones life. Instead, we should use equivalents like "Hatred breeds fear which grows like a pervasive weed until logic, reason and hope die from a lack of sunlight. I strongly and vigorously dislike hate."

American Founding Fathers had a lot to say on the subject of fear and hatred. Jefferson for instance said "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." And yet John Adams said "Fear is the foundation of most governments". One Founder warned about a fear-mongering government while the other said it was inevitable. One of the Father's of the Christian church named Tertullian likewise said "Fear is the foundation of safety".

Many tractates and gospels have found their way to the light of day clearly indicating that Jesus had his immediate disciples write their recollections of his teachings into gospels and epistles. Over a hundred years later, men who had been rejected by this initial Christianity began to reap their revenge. Men like Tertullian and Irenaeus threw their lot in with Bishop Theophilus whom had commissioned Leucius - the former disciple of Marcion, to write Luke-Acts along with a redaction of only a small handful of select gospels. Why, 20 years before in 165AD Justin Martyr had said that instead of a centrally accepted church with a single Bible there were rather many competing Bishoprics each with their own proto-Bibles. There were literally many dozens of gospels and many more epistles than the synpotic Bible now presents.

Fearful of the Valentinian's who had cruelly rejected him as one of the unworthies, Irenaeus had followed the somewhat Gnostical Polycarp's directive to what is now called Lyon, France - a hotbed of numerology. Irenaeus uses his beloved gematria to determine that there shall be four gospels. Using simple majority rule on most issues and super-majority rule on the most controversial challenges, the Caesarean synod democratically determines the orthodox (straight-thinking) way. Frex the word "Catholic" which means fairly (-olic) universal (Katha).

This was the con - that theirs was the only officially sanctioned Christianity with the only approved Bible. Elements of Tatian's proto-Bible the Diatessaron were incorporated sans the Barnabus apocrypha. However, it was Marcion's method of parallelism used to create Mark, borrowed by his former disciple Leucieus to create Luke, John and Matthew that were used to disseminate the original source Q (Quelle, German for "source") into new gospels using names of long dead disciples.

How would the orthodoxy sell this newly sanitized religion to the masses who well knew that there were a great many competing Bibles? Thanks to Tatian, the Muratorian document was forged validating something which never existed - a Roman papacy established by Peter. When the Caesarean synod needed a document to support their claims it was always mysteriously found in a cave along the way. We are the Mother Church. Why? Because we say so. Question us not! Just do as we say! And so it was that the false Christianity prophesied by Jesus himself in one of the seven or so versions of the "Apocalypse of Peter" came to pass for the spiritual Church he had established now did "business in my name". Peter reportedly wept and, when the rest of the disciples were informed of this alternate Christianity "they were angry about those who would be born" (Apocryphon of James).

Christianity would be subsumed, overwhelmed and arrogated to a much less spiritual system which would seek to stamp out any heresy (choice) using snippets of popular texts together with the anecdotal rhetoric of the poisonous Caesarean synod for to build a putative case by self-quorum. Much later Pope Leo X allegedly said "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!".

Seeking to conserve only their power, the orthodoxologists closed the door to the inner sancto religeo established by Jesus, Peter, James and especially by Paul through his disciple pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite who had formed a church within a church, an inner sactum where those worthy to hear the mysteries of God were invited to Embateuo "enter into the mysteries". Created 150 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, this new church emulated the Pharisees of old whom Jesus accused of keeping the mysteries of God from the masses: "The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so." (Gospel of Thomas, Meyers, saying 39).

This new Christianity would emulate the cabal of Herodian Pharisee's more and more, for just as Rome was led by an Emperor who was also the High Priest, so too was the Pharisaic kleptocracy a theocratic institution which used religion to control the weak-minded and fearful masses. A Theocracy does not seek to ameliorate the masses, they seek to exploit their fears with messages of impending enemy Jihad. For almost 2000 years we have been taught that the enemy will any day surround Jerusalem, or Billings Montana, if you will, and rape and pillage at will. And yet it never seems to happen. And somehow Christianity keeps ticking along with only the most pro-forma attempt at disseminating a spiritual message whilst all the while selling forgiveness for a reasonable rate.

Using fear and hatred the Church fostered an axiomatic progrom continuing the reformed Roman civitas. Over centuries any literalism of a spiritual dharma taught by Jesus was expunged from the Bible until there was nothing left but an elaborate travelogue: Jesus went here, he went there yaawwwn. But at least the sheeple were more or less under control and the liberals were a distant memory. Funny how those two diametrically opposed words have such contrasting etymology. The *conservative modus operandi is to *serve up a *con: to be tricked, hoodwinked, beguiled, betrayed, bluffed, deceieved, deluded, double-crossed, bamboozled, mislead, taken, duped, fooled, punked, cozened, lead astray, taken for a ride and snowed.

Contrast conservative with liberal: to free, to be freed or let loose (liberated) from previous *con-strictures. Samizdat thinks that surely it is no coincidence that the roots of the word conservative indicate an elaborate scam while the roots of the word liberal indicate freeing somebody from a scam. It's as if knowledge truly is power and ones local *library a symbolic repository of liberating ideas! And if it is books which liberate the sheeple, shall not the Church outlaw books and even criminalize -reading- to dissuade the masses from evolving to think for themselves?

And so it was that lo- beginning with the ending of classical Roman antiquity and the corresponding rise of Christian conservativism, the "Dark Ages" came to represent the paucity of artistic and cultural output of all western societies, especially the written history for there were no books. Without books you can't have liberals, right? In the late 1700's the advent of Democracy threatened the orthodoxologists. Suddenly it seemed everybody owned a printing press! The more people learned that it was the Church which had kept them in the dark the more they hated this institution and its control mechanisms.

In 1870 the Church responded to newly unearthed versions of old gospels and epistles very much different that the ones in the Bible by decreeing a dogma of "Papal Infallibility" wherein God was declared to be infallible and by extension the Pope and the Bible itself were also preserved from the possibility of error. Forever after only the Church could speak for God; any Gnostic tractate, codice or gospel which slipped through the net of censorship was predetermined to be the work of the Devil. But the damage was done and the die cast - never again would the Church cut off the hands and ears, blind the eyes, cut out the tongues of heinous criminals whose crime was (gasp) reading forbidden books. Increasingly the Conservatives would have to turn to their own printing presses to combat the liberal ideas of their foes, but this is another chapter in the story of Conservative vs Liberal. Samizdat hopes you enjoy a look back at ancient history coupled with a nod towards contemporary news, for those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. Samizdat would really hate that.

"Between the far away past history of the world, and that which lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness. That time we call the dark or Middle Ages. Few records remain to us of that dreadful period in our world's history, and we only know of it through broken and disjointed fragments that have been handed down to us through the generations." (Howard Pyle, Otto of the Silver Hand, 1888)