Category: Mayhem

THE PROCESS CHURCH OF THE FINAL JUDGEMENT: REVELATIONS OF AN APOCALYPSE CULT

Alessandro Papa’s excellent new book, The Process: Archives, Documents, Reflections and Revelations, is an indispensable addition to the small number of publications devoted to the 60s apocalypse cult, The Process Church of the Final Judgement.

When I say small, I refer only to the handful of books—well, three—that includes Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment and Propaganda and the Holy Writ of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, both published by Feral House in recent years, along with William S. Bainbridge’s sociological study of the organization, Satan’s Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult, which came out in 1978. Not a lot.

The Process is the subject of fascination for many people—I’m one of them—because of how dark their theology was, and a desire to understand what caused the well-educated middle class members to join up with such a group in the first place. What weirdos! Although they appeared at first blush to be a Satan-worshipping cult—something Ed Sanders’ lurid Manson book The Family is partially to blame for—this view is very widely off the mark. The Processean tenants sought to harmonize the notion of the Christian eschaton with the carnage the cult’s young adherents had literally been born into, the bombed out ruins of post-WWII Europe. Christ would return and team up with Satan for the final judgement of mankind. After what had just gone down, would this have seemed so incredibly far-fetched? In this sense, the poetic Process theology, most of it coming via the inspired pen of the group’s charismatic leader, Robert DeGrimston, was firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian imagery and the thanatonic impulses of eschatological beliefs in general.

LINK: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_process_church_of_the_final_judgement_revelations_of_an_apocalypse_cult

‘Krugersdorp Killers’: Four articles you need to read

From demon cleansing to a love for knives and cult-like behaviour, the Krugersdorp murder trial is again in the spotlight.

This after the court appeal of Marcel Steyn, the youngest alleged member of the so-called “Krugersdorp Killers”, was heard on Tuesday.

Here are four articles on the case: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-05-16-krugersdorp-killers-four-articles-you-need-to-read/

“Uncover: The Village”: A Serial Killer, Toronto’s Gay Community, and a Podcast That Transcends True Crime

“Uncover: The Village,” a podcast about a series of murders in Toronto’s gay community, focusses on the victims, their loved ones, the police, and the community, not on the perpetrator or the crimes.

Early in the first episode of the new podcast “Uncover: The Village,” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, we visit the garden of a woman named Karen Fraser, at her house, on a quiet side street in Toronto. It’s August, 2018, and Fraser is showing the podcast’s reporter and host, Justin Ling, her flower beds, or what’s left of them; she describes “tulips and daffodils along here, lots of periwinkle.” All of this, Ling says, “was designed and maintained by her faithful gardener, Bruce.” For the past decade, Fraser allowed a family acquaintance, Bruce McArthur, to use space in her garage to store equipment for his landscaping business. In exchange, he tended to her yard. In early 2018, Toronto police told Fraser and her partner that they would need to leave the property—the police needed to excavate. In what became the largest forensic investigation in Toronto police history, officers found the remains of eight men in Fraser’s planters and a nearby ravine.

LINK: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/podcast-dept/uncover-the-village-a-serial-killer-torontos-gay-community-and-a-podcast-that-transcends-true-crime

This Week in True-Crime Podcasts: NPR Digs Into a ’60s Civil-Rights Case

The true-crime podcast universe is ever expanding. We’re here to make it a bit smaller and a bit more manageable. There are a lot of great shows, and each has a lot of great episodes, so we want to highlight the noteworthy and the exceptional. Each week, our crack team of podcast enthusiasts and specialists will pick their favorites. To read the last edition, click here.

At last, an honest true crime podcast

The new season of the true crime parody ‘A Very Fatal Murder’ goes out of its way to remind the listener that every narrative podcast is ultimately about its host’s ego.

The difference between parody and withering critique is that of depth. It’s one thing to lampoon a genre or work by exaggerating its tropes and tics to show how ridiculous they are, but too much of what passes for “satire” these days simply stops there, sometimes out of an abundance of caution (after all, there’s nothing less funny than a failed attempt at humor), and sometimes simply out of self-satisfaction. You see this in pop culture all the time. HBO’s Silicon Valley and IFC’s Portlandia might goof on the tech industry and Portland in painstaking detail, but when the moment presents itself to really turn the screws on their targets, to point out the privilege and elitism to each of these cultures’ worldview, they always take the easy way out. And why wouldn’t they? Part of Silicon Valley’s verisimilitude has to do with a carefully cultivated whisper network of industry sources, while many of the Portlandia cast members are actual Portland residents. For those shows’ creators, it’s probably not worth it.

LINK: https://theoutline.com/post/7460/at-last-an-honest-true-crime-podcast?zd=1&zi=tpi6wlcr

Criminal History of Mankind

Colin Wilson tells the story of human violence from Peking Man to the Mafia – taking into account the calculated sadism of the Assyrians, the opportunism of the Greek pirates, the brutality that made Rome the ‘razor king of the Mediterranean’, the mindless destruction of the Vandals, the mass slaughter of Genghis Khan, Tamurlane, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler and more. Each age has a unique characteristic pattern of crime. In the past three centuries crime has changed and evolved until the sex killer and the mass murderer have become symbols of all that is worst about our civilization. But this is not just a study in human depravity; it is an attempt to place crime in perspective against human discovery, exploration and invention. The result is a completely new approach to the history and psychology of human violence.

Download: http://booksdescr.org/item/index.php?md5=B27F8A0F84E680C51AC5AAA830C4A929

Why Charles Manson Really Terrified America

In his later years Charles Manson was grey and frail, squat like a hobbit from hell, and still breaking prison rules. He had access to illegal cell phones, a supply of LSD, and when his girlfriend Star came to visit, he had an arrangement with the guards that allowed him to finger her pussy under the table.

As the year was about to fall into 2017, Manson, 82 years old, called his closest friends from Corcoran maximum security jail, where he was housed in the highest-security wing, to say farewell. His snarling voice had grown weak on the phone and he was “fading, a bit confused,” according to Nikolas Schreck, the friend who took one of the calls. Due to inadequate medical facilities at Corcoran state pen, prisoner B33920 was transferred to hospital a few times without anybody noticing. But with the swastika tattoo still visible on his forehead, it was not surprising that during an in-patient appointment at a civilian surgery in Bakersfield, California, a visitor recognised the man Rolling Stone branded the “Most Dangerous Man Alive,” and called whoever it is you call when you see Charlie, alive in death’s waiting room, with your very own eyes.

LINK: https://morbidbooks.net/feed/2019-05-22-why-charles-manson-really-terrified-america/