OBJECTS IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR MAY APPEAR CLOSER THAN THEY ARE
Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles – David A Noebel
At any one given moment, my mind churns with a popular music tune penned by some casual collector of global music scene trophies, a nostalgic TV jingle, and a deep sense of existential dread that I’m living a meaningless existence – all while worrying I’m sub-optimally recycling to the scourge of oceans and The Children’s future.
At the time of reading this booklet (5 July some time ago, originally), I was simultaneously playing All Too Well and the Um Bongo song on an infinite loop in my head, while wondering whether I’d gotten Gardening Waste Bin Day right. The prospect that this is all apparently the fault of the Beatles, the 1960s British rock band that was “more popular than Jesus”, was, then, somewhat comforting…
This 1965 US booklet, penned by Reverend David A Noebel and published by the Christian Crusade, is here to warn us of “The Communist Master Music Plan”. The ‘Red Scare’ and McCarthyism were in decline come the 60s, however, so I gather this reaction was more about ‘blasphemy’ and the threat to America’s conservative Christian patriarchy than Beatlemania as a communist conspiracy. (Interesting piece about this here.)
Noebel’s is a grave and alarmist 15-page thesis, followed by a whopping 159 detailed footnotes that the more dedicated of students are urged to research themselves. We’re not Christians or religious here at Hypno HQ; we just respect and attest – many people in power are their own religion, so I have no wish to offend people living humble lives.
The thesis hinges upon the work of Ivan Pavlov, a Soviet and Russian psychologist mostly known for his work in conditioning. We jump from seemingly authoritative information of Pavlov’s salivating dogs to hypnotism and music, and the “nerve-jamming” of children, to teasing what this all has to do with the Beatles and hysterical teenagers, and the general demise of “America’s” good, upstanding society. [I sincerely do appreciate ‘belief-turbulence’ affects us all in this VUCA world; I am gathering information on this mystical art – and science! – to bridge future gaps between aspiring inventors and their spa and wellbeing advisory networks of whatever the fuuk mess we’re in these days…]
Noebel’s first point of business is, obviously, the nerve-jamming of children, and a couple of children’s record labels that he urges people to boycott. Several paragraphs are dedicated to the dangers posed by children’s song The Little Puppet, which, apparently, constitutes a hypnotic induction (lyrics include “down deeper and deeper”). It’s either turning young brains into mush and/or indoctrinating them into the outdated trend for ‘communism’ – I’m unclear. (And what’s sadly ironic, of course, is capitalism has done just as fine a job of frazzling brains than Noebel fears of granular nuances in beliefs about acceptable factory working conditions.)
Finally, we come to mostly incoherent fearmongering about the Beatles and ‘mass hypnosis’. I’m sure Beatlemania must have been a troubling time for religious conservatives in the States watching teenagers expressing (religious-type) ecstasy at “four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks” from Liverpool. Sometimes it is better to just retreat from such mesmeric, magnetic ebbs and flows on one’s remaining few brain cells and see if anything new emerges…
You can read the booklet here in pdf should you wish.
