DDD SUGGESTED READING ~ "HAMPSTEAD SATANIC PANIC" EDITION

Hello there! 

To anyone visiting this site for the first time, if you're coming from the link in a recent posting at HampsteadResearch.com, I would like to personally welcome you to the Daily Dirt Diaspora blog. I hope you can struggle against your powerful monomania long enough to check out a few of my other blog posts to get a better feel of where I'm coming from, who I am, and why I've decided to post on this subject only now. 

I would also like to answer a few of the questions posed to me by HampsteadResearch.com author Charlotte Ward in her posting, seeing as it's been a few hours and she has yet to approve the answers that I provided in the comments section of her blog. 

And so, in answer to her question as to whether it would be "epistemologically unsound to assume" that I was "on the payroll", the answer is YES, it would be epistemologically unsound to make that assumption, but totally in keeping with her insistence on believing utterly ridiculous crap with no evidence whatsoever. 

As to her question as to why none of the "alleged abusers with distinguishing marks" has "come forward" to prove their innocence, I have to answer with a question of my own... TO WHOM?! Seeing as she and her ilk believe that literally every police officer, physician, and government official in England is a member of their precious fantasy cult, exactly who is it that you propose should be performing these extremely intimate exams?  

Hold on… is it possible that we have finally cracked this case? Could this whole sick enterprise really be all about a few sad idiots trying to finally lay their eyes on an actual NAKED human being?!

Inquiring minds want to know! 

Cheers!
Yer Old Pal Jerky

Ella Draper and Abraham Christie... CULT-EXPOSING SUPERHEROES!

If you have any level of engagement with the rapidly metastasizing "Truther" segment of the parapolitical infosphere - heretofore to be referred to as "conspiritards" - then you've no doubt come across the disturbing video of two young children making sensational claims about a massive Satanic cult engaged in the most wicked practices imaginable operating behind the scenes of their school in Hampstead, UK. According to these so-called Whistleblower Kids, among the goings-on at Christ Church Primary were pedophile rape and torture on an industrial scale, animal and human sacrifice complete with rituals performed while wearing freshly flayed flesh, and shocking revelations about the local McDonald's, where a cult-member manager had set up a "special room" to host after-hours cannibalistic BBQ parties.

Of course, the cult's Grand Poobah was these kids' biological father, who happens to be a professional actor, which in and of itself appears to be sufficient proof of guilt for some; and the video was shot by their wonky vegan mum and her weirdo boyfriend... but still! It had to be true... it just HADDA! Because... well...

Actually and obviously, anyone with more than a thimble's worth of grey matter sniffed out a con from the get-go. Subsequent events, revelations and investigations have proven that Occam's Razor is still pretty fuckin' sharp, regardless of years of overuse and abuse.

And yet around the world, online and off (but mostly on), countless thousands not only continue to believe the children's claims - which they recanted as soon as they learned that the police would protect them from their mum's abusive new boyfriend - but are even going so far as to stalk and harass numerous teachers, school employees and church officials, whom they claim are secretly living double-lives as murderous Satanic baby-fucking cannibals.

At this point you might be wondering why I'm even bothering with this story, which basically died with a whimper a couple weeks ago after stinking up the stupid side of the Internet for almost a year. After all, the courts called shenanigans on the whole sorry saga and officially cleared the father's name. So it's game over, right?

Wrong. Googling any combination of the words "Hampstead", "cult", "abuse", "Christ Church School", "Whistleblower Kids", "Satanic coverup" shows a roughly 50-to-1 ratio of those who still believe these insane and recanted claims, versus those who accept the court's eminently reasonable conclusions. This troubles me. It troubles me deeply, particularly as someone who has dedicated much of my life to attempting to tease out the sharp and shiny pin of truth from the towering haystack of lies that is our current media (and wider cultural) milieu.

As a student of philosophy, I attempt at all times to be conscious of any epistemological prejudice that may be present whenever serious claims to truth are made. I also try to take into account the ontological foundations upon which those prejudices (if any) may be based. One needn't be conversant in the jargon of phenomenology, however, to understand the source of my concern. Basically, I'm worried that we're reaching a very dangerous point in our civilization. I'm not talking about Peak Oil, or the ramifications of overpopulation, or the threat posed by religious fundamentalists, although that last one is tangentially related.

About a generation ago, some philosophers and social theorists began to seriously grapple with an issue that had been niggling at the Modernist mind since the dawning days of the 20th century: the loss of Truth, with a capital T. In the face of the vast, nihilistic enormity manifest in the scientific and psychiatric discoveries of the day, a great many of the early Modernists beat a hasty retreat, conservatives returning to the Church and/or Tradition, while others made a fetish out of Progress. Both sides worried about a world where nothing was True. Then, with the relatively concurrent collapse of Anglo Positivism and rise of Continental Postmodernism - with deconstruction the new praxis and relativism the new byword - it seemed as though Truth was really on the ropes.

But now, I think we've come to an even more dangerous point: a world where EVERYTHING is True. And I think the behavior of the online masses in relation to the so-called "Hampstead Cult" story is powerfully illustrative of exactly that.

Which brings us (at long last) to today's Suggested Readings.

First, I bring you Barrister Blogger Matthew Scott's passionate defense of both the Hampstead community, where he lives, and the Christ Church Primary School, which his children all attended and survived unscathed. I urge you to read Scott's "Warning to the Credulous" in its entirety, even if only so you can more fully appreciate the lunacy of so many of the reactions in the comments section, among which you will find numerous instances of anonymous conspiritard cowards lighting their torches, hefting their pitchforks, and accusing Scott, himself, of being (surprise!!!) a murderous pedophile cannibal.

If the above essay seems a bit too personal - too invested, too "close to the action" for rhetorical comfort - then I think you'll find blogger and broadcaster Keelan Balderson's essay Six Questions that Hampstead Cult Believers MUST Answer to be far more disinterested, analytical, dry and logical. It starts out:

Despite the overwhelming evidence against Abraham Christie and mother Ella Draper, in the Hampstead abuse case, there are still people that are clinging on to the original “allegations.” To those that still believe there is a Satanic Cult operating in North London, I have 6 very important questions to ask you. 

1) Why Do You Believe With No Evidence?
One of the most common arguments from believers is that the police did not investigate the allegations that were outlined in the original videos. This isn’t an accurate position at all, as they did interview the father, search the church where satanic ritual abuse allegedly occurred, and took the children on a drive to try and corroborate certain locations from the story. They found nothing. They also interviewed the children extensively, and a doctor medically examined them for signs of abuse on two occasions.
Some allegations are highly improbable. It’s alleged that on the last day of the school term a satanic abuse party was held until late at night, involving teachers from multiple schools, hundreds of children, and their parents. Would it not strike the local community as odd that lots of adults and children arrived at the school in the morning, but did not leave until night time? Wouldn’t there have been a huge commotion as they all left the school grounds, particularly if children had taken part in horrific rituals? Anybody could make an infinite list of problems with such a story, not least the fact that not one other person involved or observing from a far, has spoken out or provided tangible evidence that it occurred. When you couple such implausibility with the investigation that DID take place, and the retractions from the children, the police would have to come to a reasonable conclusion that it simply didn’t happen. 

Despite this, the mantra from believers is still that the police did not investigate.
This then begs the question – if you don’t think the police carried out an investigation, or that it wasn’t up to the right standards, or that there’s a full blown cover-up – and because of this they have not produced any evidence of a satanic cult – why do you believe there is a satanic cult?

It continues on like this for five more questions, so read on. Or I suppose you could just watch the video... or rather, listen to it, seeing as it's essentially an audio podcast of almost the entire essay, itself. Here it is...

In summation, I give you a recent, up to date Radio BBC documentary on this subject, which is thorough, uncompromising, and essential listening for anyone interested in this topic, no matter what they believe at the outset.

Shocking, isn't it, how what started out as a simple, innocent hunt for witches could so quickly devolve into a witch-hunt?

***

If you've read this far into today's offering, I'd like to thank you for allowing me to ramble and rant, and for following me down a dizzying array of digressions that seem, in retrospect, to have been somewhat pointless, but that I had to get out of my system for my own good, if only to exorcise them from my mind.

As always, comments are welcomed and, to be perfectly honest, sincerely hoped for.