Kanye West “Power”: Illuminati Overkill
disinformation reader Niall sent us a note saying:
Here’s an article I wrote about Kanye West’s latest video “Power” and how I think he is basically trolling the internets and conspiracy theorists with it. It’s from our music blog Shallow Rave — we don’t normally cover esoteric stuff, but it’s a personal interest of mine, and when the two subjects collide it’s too good an opportunity not to miss!
Here’s Kanye’s video and below the story from Shallow Rave:
So, have you seen the video for Kanye West’s “Power”? And did you notice all the occult symbolism there-in? Come on, let’s be honest here – you’d have to be a total fucking idiot not to.
I have commented on this kind of thing before (most notably Lady Gaga), but if you are new to the modern trend to read everything in pop music as being controlled by the Illuminati, then start here with a brilliant piece by the Fortean Times. Of course, written as it was about 12 months ago, it already seems out of date as it doesn’t feature Kanye. But I’ll come clean on all this “conspiranoia” fascination – I’m sick of it. I’m over it all. And why? Because the tables have turned – this is no longer about an audience reclaiming popular culture with fresh and bizarre readings. Now it’s nothing more than a clever marketing gimmick. Conspiracists, KANYE IS TROLLING YOU.
First of all, let me clarify – I do not believe that there is an Illuminati conspiracy to rule the world. I do believe there are elite organisations/groups of indiviuals who hold certain reigns of global power and will do anything to retain them – legal or illegal, covert or overt. However, I do not believe in a singular secret organisation that brainwashes children through the use of MK Ultra/monarch butterflies/Hello Kitty dolls/ancient Egyptian religious figures/sex abuse. Yes, I am pretty sure that the sexual abuse of children happens, and sometimes in a secretive and organised fashion, but I don’t believe that those genuinely horrific acts are perpetrated by a solitary shadowy organisation, with the intent of keeping the general population under a mind control regime. And why not? Because it is JUST TOO NEAT. It doesn’t take into account enough the age old human capacity to be rubbish (those theorists will tell you it’s because the Illuminati are NOT HUMAN), for things not to go to plan, for mistakes to happen.
It just reads too much like the plot of Scooby Doo. “Mr Illuminati burnt down the old funfair!” But this drive towards narrative is understanable. All our senses are bombarded by narrative-based media wherever we turn. All religions are based on stories passed down from old to young. History is played out like a drama with a beginning, middle and end. Even the simple act of brushing your teeth nowadays has to have an “arc”. This is what makes conspiracy theories so attractive – they take genuine fears about troubling aspects of the world we live in, and mould them to fit a very straight forward story with an easy good/bad dichotomy at its center. Whether you worship Jesus or Oprah, it doesn’t really matter – they are both sold on their stories, so why shouldn’t the real world be too?
Initially I was drawn to these story-telling aspects of pop conspiranoia, the wild correlations people would draw between disparate pieces of information drip fed to us by the media. Personally I feel like conspiranoia has replaced horror films in my life for creepy thrills. However, it quickly became boring once you realised that the message of nearly all these sites/videos is the same. BELIEVE IN JEEBUS! And not in a personal/spiritual/empowering sense, but rather in the most crassly traditional sense: “Don’t ask questions – just believe. Pray to God to make it stop!”. It seems it’s too much to ask of the fundamentally religious that they could apply the same critical thinking to their own cherished belief system as they do to a pop video.
And this is where the trouble starts – though on the surface they seem to be very knowledgable about pop culture, these sites and YouTube posters are actually ignorant of the way the modern world works. According to them, there can only be two meanings for every action. One, the surface level meaning that the “sheeple” can understand (Gaga leaves prison with her foxy femme pal and enacts a glossy, sexy revenge in a world of B-movies and product placmeent) and the other what it REALLY means (Gaga is a puppet enslaving a generation of brainwashed minds into homosexuality through the use of ancient Egyptian symbols). There can be no other meaning or no other valid reading. Remember: politics, sociology, anthropology and economics are merely tools of the elite. Ambiguity, reflexivity, irony – conspiranoia does not trade in these. And that’s the REAL irony – conspiranoists ask us to see beyond the surface meaning but only to agree with their meanings – not to find meanings of our own, to find a third/fourth/fifth/6.5 billionth meaning.
As with conspiracy culture in general, pop conspiranoia has turned into a huge global meme, yet people are still convinced that they are discovering this hidden knowledge for themselves, and they and they alone know what it all means. Mass media events like The Matrix and The Da Vinci Code are huge global smash hits, and are regularly offered up as fonts of proof of the worldwide conspiracy, yet even your nan has seen them by now. It’s quite a feat really, when you think about it. Most advertisers would kill to be able to create products a third of the world can own but that retain the cachet of being “secret”. It’s also the most truly scary aspect of all this – when the powerful majority believes that they are the oppressed minority. Where have we seen that before?
So, back to “Power”. To the conspiranoists, the only reason Kanye can be using this type of symbolism is because his Illuminati puppet masters told him he must make his Masonic initiation rites public, to taunt the select few viewers who knows what it really means. It’s got nothing to do with a desire for more notoriety by the record label, it’s got nothing to do with a PR department wanting to drum up some publicity for their latest product. It’s got nothing to do with the legions of staff who work for Kanye or his label seeing an article and mentioning it to him, it’s got nothing to do with an artist having self-knowledge and commenting on how the world sees them. Because, that’s not what artists do, is it? No, they just sing silly songs. They are not normal people who on occassion have reason to cruise the internets, to search their own names on Google, to email pictures of their bits to strangers in an attempt to get laid. They’re just pop artists – they wouldn’t deliberately troll you. Would they?
I would expect an article like this to get a raft of comments from people accusing me of being “one of them” (the Illuminati and/or the Masons), if I actually thought anyone was reading. For handy reference I will refer to those people as “black sheeple”. They have realised that they do not have to follow the herd as they once did – however, they mistakenly believe that to move directly against the herd is the only option they have. Like Neo they have been woken out of consensus reality, but they have yet to realise that the “netherworld” they have woken into is itself a consensus reality that can be woken out of. That is THE great failing of the Matrix film sequence and why I hate them so much – Neo awakes to find himself a super-being not on the set of “Holy Mountain” or “2001: A Space Oddessy”, but rather in “Terminator Fucking 3″.
To those black sheeple I would like to say don’t comment until you read “The Illuminatus Trilogy“. Or even better “The Invisibles” – it has pictures.
Further reading:
Fortean Times: The Illuminati X-Factor.
Technocult – The Conspiratainment Complex and Why I Don’t Find Conspiracy Theory Funny Anymore
Bossip: Kanye West New Allegiance To Illuminati Exposed?
Vigilant Citizen: Kanye West’s “Power”: The Occult Meaning of its Symbols
Result of Google search with keywords “Kanye”,”Illuminati” and “Power”
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