Live After Death

DN Claim: “I am requesting that the District Attorney’s office open an investigation into the possible murder/and or identity theft of Michael Aquino . . . I believe that Ms. Hopkins was involved in a conspiracy to steal Aquino’s millions before I was targeted and that there have been attempts to steal his identity and perhaps something more dire has occurred to Michael Aquino which needs to be investigated by the District Attorney’s office or the FBI.” (May 11th 2009 blog post at 11:25pm, text added in modified entry).

Reality: This post illustrates how Napolis approaches research: (1) she makes knowledge claims in the logical form of an  inductive hypothesis without any reality-testing; (2) relies on disinformation about others which fits and pre-validates her views (detailed here); (3) gathers ‘data’ that is susceptible to selection bias; and (4) when confronted with new information that falsifies her inductive hypotheses, simply re-edits her blog text to change the publicly available record (comparison here on Napolis’ original and still unverified claim about the FBI’s visit).

H.P. Lovecraft, the American author of cosmological terror, summed up what happens to those who pursue forbidden knowledge such as Aquino: “That is not dead, which can eternal lie | And in strange aeons, even death may die” (an enigmatic couplet also memorialized in Derek Riggs‘ artwork for Iron Maiden‘s 1985 album Live After Death). Napolis is late on the murder scene as Don Webb chronicled Aquino’s death in the metafictional short story ‘The Sound of a Door Opening’.

Napolis v. Hopkins & Illuminati Corp

DN Claim: “In 2001 I was told that Carol Hopkins was in the Illuminati but also had a private inner Order. Ms. Hopkins communicated with me after I was targeted in May  of 2001 and told me that this Order “hunted”  their personal enemies for “sport.”” (May 8th blog post).

Reality: Carol Hopkins has denied Napolis’ allegations.

The historical Illuminati was an Enlightenment era secret society founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776 which is now depicted by conspiracy theorists as a shadowy, trans-national ruling elite. The Temple of Set’s Illuminati element or study group is concerned with Weishaupt’s aeonic word Perfection which TS former High Priest Don Webb likens to Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony and John Lennon‘s song ‘Imagine’ (blog post 2nd May, 12:28am).

Any ‘private inner Order’ is a claim that Napolis attempts to ensure is unverifiable because of how she frames it, and it appears to be modeled on either the Roman Catholic Church or Napolis’ misunderstanding of the Temple of Set‘s Order system, which are more like university departments which conduct specialized research programs.

Napolis’ allegation that Hopkins’ fictional Order “”hunted” their personal enemies for “sport”” is taken from Richard Connell‘s short story ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ (1924) and film adaptation (1934). Napolis appears to have taken this claim from Mark Phillips and Cathy O’Brien’s self/vanity-published book Trance Formation of America (Reality Marketing, Inc., Las Vegas NV, 1995), in which O’Brien claims the Roman Catholic Church, Illuminati bloodlines and multi-generational Satanists are depicted in a mind control plot with Washington political elites, U.S. Presidents, and the country and western music industry. In turn, Napolis’ allegations revive claims made in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the John Birch Society and similar conservative groups, which felt threatened by the Second Vatican Council and 1960s liberal society. Along with Phillips and O’Brien, Fritz Springmeier promoted these claims during the early 1990s in the U.S. patriot, militia, and survivalist communities, as a worldview to justifiy his tax evasion schemes and to recruit susceptible people from these communities.

Thus, part of Napolis’ claims about Hopkins are based on discredited conspiracy theories and religiopolitical propaganda, which O’Brien, Phillips, Springmeier, Wheeler and others have promoted to gain social status in communities and subcultures. These theories and propaganda may help to integrate these communities against external enemies: notably, the Roman Catholic Church and Washington political elites, which, although perceived as illegitimate,  have ‘power over’ these communities through institutions, religious doctrines and taxation.