The film Zeitgeist: The Movie has been a bit of a sensation since its release in 2007. It has received millions of hits on Youtube and other internet outlets and gave its creator Peter Joseph Merola a platform for two other films with another in the works. It’s controversial views of Western society, immersed in the vision of contemporary conspiracy theories, launched it as one of the most successful “viral” films of the internet age. Although it largely consists of crackpot theories in “shockumentary” form, it has reached a wide audience and is one of many similar efforts that have made conspiracy theories a mainstream American phenomenon. So where did this stuff come from anyway?
Peter Joseph Merola was a filmmaker and musician who, like many young artsy types, adopted some off-the-wall ideas about how thw world worked. Within that subculture, conspiracy theories about the evil world of commercial enterprise as well as other aspects of mainstream American life are not an uncommon thing. Complaints abound in such circles on the lack of funding for their latest piece of agitprop performance art, puppet shows demonstrating the evils of the system, or atonal marimba symphonies.
For his part, Merola had somehow run across the videos of crackpot conspiracy theorist/con artist Jordan Maxwell and apparently got hooked to his particular brand of snake oil. Maxwell was born Russell Pine prior to deriving his new name from the term “Jordanus Maximus” mentioned in occultist Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. He went on to prove himself an adept publicist of various crackpot religious ideas from the nineteenth century by the likes of Blavatsky, Gerald Massey, Godfrey Higgins, and others. He weaved these together with politico-religious conspiracy theories and combined them with figments of his own imagination to form an overarching view of the world ruled by a joint cabal that included, among others, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Catholic Church, every major corporation, the CIA, and the United Nations. I’m not sure if he ever implicated the Girl Scouts but who knows what he thought they put into those cookies.
Merola, then going under the name “Peter J” (and later under “Peter Joseph”), created Zeitgeist as a performance art piece and this was the basis of Zeitgeist: The Movie. Unlike Maxwell and other conspiracy theorists, Merola had some expertise in marketing and it immediately shows in the relatively slick production (for a low budget affair) and emphasis on imagery over substance. In some sense, the effort has all the markings of an infomercial for the conspiracy theory subculture.
When the original version of the film was released, Merola stated in an interview with Jeff Rense that Jordan Maxwell was the lifeblood of the film and that it was basically a walk through his work – particularly parts 1 and 3. What young Peter didn’t know was that Maxwell’s ideas were fraudulent – many were culled from nineteenth century occultists and his etymologies of ancient texts were often based on modern English rather than ancient languages. In particular, those familiar with the history of religion had a laughfest with the first part of the film. Still, many took up the Zeitgeist banner and those with an axe to grind against Christianity were soon regurgitating its claims without verifying anything contained therein.
As for Maxwell, his own background paints the picutre of a rather odd bird. At one point he had a business selling videos of his lectures and he appeared on a few senstationalistic television programs as an “expert.” Along with sales of his tapes, he sold instructions on how to avoid paying income taxes and international driver’s permits. Suffice to say, he apparently never took his own advice on taxes but merely promoted ideas then common among conspiracy theorists. As for the permits, he was indicted by the Federal Trade Commission and a judgment against him issued. Yet it was this guy who Merola obviously admired and named as the lifeblood of the film. So much for the discernment of Peter Joseph Merola.
Of course, little of this mattered for his core audience. A generation raised on Oliver Stone films were ripe for this sort of nonsense and Zeitgeist became an overnight internet sensation. For those with any real background in the topics covered in the film, the whole effort was bogus from start to finish. Soon enough, as the film gained more and more exposure, the critiques began and the result wasn’t pretty. In particular, the first part dealing with religion was absurd and Joseph was faced with the task of revising his film to avoid the most obvious errors.
It appears that for this end he called in D. M. Murdock (aka “Acharya S”), another conspiracy theorist, to assist in certain aspects of Part 1 of the final cut version. Of course, her work was only a little better than Maxwell’s and she relied on similar crackpot sources as well as scholars a century or more out of date. She, like Maxwell, seemed oblivious to the rather late development of zodiacal astrology which made the entire astrotheological framework untenable. Similarly, the supposed parallels were far less than met the eye and many were manufactured out of whole cloth.
More recently, Merola and Murdock have revised their thesis yet again in their newer source guide by merely redefining certain words such as “crucifixion” to have a broader meaning than before. Now they claim any deity pictured with its hands in the air was “crucified.” Of course, all of this is nonsense since 1) their original sources never understood it this way and 2) their whole theory has the crucifixion as part of a death and resurrection sequence. Since raising the roof hardly qualifes as fatal (was Richard Nixon a crucfied sun god?), so flaccid a defininiton of “crucified” falls apart on its own.
Meanwhile, Merola found a new hero to stand behind in the person of Buckminster Fuller wannabe Jacques Fresco and his “resource based economy.” I need not dwell on the nonsense of this brand of utopian collectivism but while this vision of a computer driven technocracy may appeal to former Trekkies’ views of the federation, the evidence of history tells us such schema always end up like something closer to the Borg.
Merola loved Fresco’s ideas – at least those that could generate good soundbites – and used it as a basis for his film Zeitgeist: Addendum. He founded The Zeitgeist Movment as an advocacy group for the plans outlined in Fresco’s Venus Project and generated more attention for Fresco in a few months than the founder of these ideas could have done in his entire lifetime. He also made a followup film Zeitgeist: Moving Forward and chapters of the movement were founded in many cities. Jordan Maxwell was never mentioned again.
Despite the free publicity, Fresco ended up distancing himself from Merola and his followers. The basic outline seems to be that Fresco wanted to finance his own film, Merola appeared to take umbrage at being upstaged, Fresco stated Merola didn’t know anything, and from there the catfight ensued. The two movements are no longer on speaking terms and Merola’s movement was left as an advocacy group for nothing in particular. The excitement he generated for early events evaportated and the movement has dwindled to a hardcore group of supporters. Most recently, he has attempted to link himself to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests but organizers on that front seem to treat his movement as an uninvited party guest. Even “9/11 truthers” have dismissed Merola and his band of followers as inconsequential – a sure sign his fifteen minutes are just about up.
Still, the original film rolls on. It is still by far the most watched of Merola’s output and the primary entry point for his movement. With a new film in the works, one is left to wonder what direction he will go in next and if he will latch on to yet another guru. Whatever the direction he takes his followers, the problems go deeper than the specific views to the man himself. Peter Joseph Merola is certainly an articulate fellow with a good speaking voice who can be quite engaging. However, when his views are challenged, he is prone to immature outbursts as he retreats within a coccoon of those who take his every word as gospel. Having already jumped on the bandwagon of questionable figures and touted their work as “the answer,” he is once more faced with recreating his message. When the new message finally arrives in his next film (supposedly in the works), will anyone still care?
