How William Cooper and his book 'Behold a Pale Horse' planted seeds of QAnon conspiracy theory

[tulipsandroses]

Last edited Wed Dec 2, 2020, 02:30 AM - Edit history (1)

I had never heard of this guy or this book before tonight. So, I decided to try the online dating thing again. One guy that messaged me, in his profile, it lists Behold a Pale Horse as the book he's currently reading. So out of curiosity, I googled it. Yeah, uhm, its a no. Maybe he's reading this book for research purposes, but I am not going to try to find out. He can keep all that conspiracy bullcrap to himself.

EAGAR, Ariz. — When authorities killed William Cooper in a burst of gunfire outside his hilltop home in eastern Arizona, he was an author and radio host who had attracted a rabid following among UFO buffs, prisoners and the militia movement
For them, his book, “Behold a Pale Horse,” and nightly shortwave radio show lifted the veil on how the world actually works.
Through his death in 2001, Cooper’s legacy was cemented. He was seen as a sage and legend. His book would become a defining text for conspiracy-minded people. What might have otherwise been seen as an amateurish hodgepodge of ideas earned gravitas once its author was gunned down.


SNIP-----

That Cooper would die in a shootout with authorities seemed fated. And, in his book, he suggested it was an honorable way to die
“I believe that any man without principles that he is ready and willing to die for at any given moment is already dead and is of no use or consequence whatsoever,” Cooper wrote in the creed that began his book.

The internet was not yet ubiquitous in the mid-1980s when Cooper started spilling what he said was clandestine information from top secret documents he read as a member of a naval intelligence unit.

Cooper used not only his book, but also in-person lectures, mail-order cassette tapes and a show on shortwave radio to share his understanding of a master plan to destroy the world.

Even though many have never heard of Cooper, his dark, conspiratorial thinking has endured and been amplified. He was a forerunner to the conspiracy theorists of today such as Alex Jones — with whom Cooper feuded.

SNIP---
The book has also attracted followers of the conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which falsely casts Democrats as doing the bidding of globalists in order to shield their perversions, including devouring babies for their nourishing blood.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/09/behold-pale-horse-how-william-cooper-planted-seeds-qanon-theory/5916328002/
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https://newrepublic.com/article/150922/pioneer-paranoia

[choie]

1. Yeah...

no.

[John1956PA]

2. That phrase from Revelation was used as the title to the 1964 film . . .

. . . set in post-revolutionary Spain and which was directed by Fred Zinnemann. Critics were not warm to the film, but I thought it to be okay when I viewed it many years ago.

I am disappointed to read that the apocalyptic phase was appropriated years later for the title to a nonsensical tome.

[Upthevibe]

3. tulipsandroses...

Thank you for this post. I lost a friend to the "QAnon cult" and have been trying to put the pieces together regarding how in the world this absolutely deranged conspiracy theory came to be....

[Squinch]

4. I wish I had bookmarked it, but a DUer posted a great article on how the whole QAnon thing

perfectly follows the pattern of a computer game.

Given that, it should be easy to use those same techniques to befuddle the whole QAnon message and lead people to understand that QAnon itself was the conspiracy.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. I had actually bought this book abut 20 years ago

and got partway through it. Interesting that QAnon locked onto it. I think he had photocopies of all kinds of (I guess FOI'd) documents about Bildenberg, etc. If anyone is familiar with the comedian/activist Dick Gregory, he was heavily into similar CT and may have referenced the author too.

I remember when the author ended up in that confrontation, dying in a hail of bullets. And of course that would just deepen the major CT that he had crafted.