Peter Joseph's Response to "60 Minutes" / Brooklyn Co.Expo [ The Zeitgeist Movement ]

Hello everybody. This is Peter Joseph. July 31 2011 I want to take a moment to respond to this 60 Minutes Brooklyn College edition news piece that was put out by a student named Daniel Allen under the guidance of some individuals from 60 Minutes. I really enjoyed this piece, I have to be honest because it really does represent the kind of expectation we should have when any major media, meaning Western dominant media will attempt to talk about Zeitgeist and The Zeitgeist Movement. The very first thing to point out is the explicit non-separation of the Zeitgeist film series from The Zeitgeist Movement itself. The fun thing is that the author of the work actually knows the difference but chose to take the more commercial route (meaning the more mainstream avenue) which utilizes sensationalism to capture its audience. Let's remember that 60 Minutes, Fox News, these are entertainment venues. They also have an agenda to push with a very fundamental association to society: traditional culture. As this piece went on, I was amazed at how it contradicted itself in a certain strategy so it would enable itself to take both my movie and analyze it and also The Movement and analyze it while unfortunately still meshing the two together confusing the audience most thoroughly. I also wanted to take this opportunity to quickly address a lot of the common assumptions of this work which I usually don't have time to address because of how minor they really are in my mind. But because of the issue of religion, because the issue of the Jared Loughner incident and other things keep arising (usually with those who have an axe to grind) you can rest assured that those controversial notions will be hit against us in the mainstream if they ever chose to pay attention to us. I'm going to take this opportunity to also quickly address those issues as well. Lets begin. Zeitgeist: It's a word you may have heard before. Its origins are German, and if you've ever used it in a sentence you know it refers to the spirit of the age. What you may not know is that it's also the name of a worldwide social movement spawned from a trilogy of documentary films released on the Internet. The goal of the movement is to live in a world without money and to use technology to provide for basic human needs. While their membership is explicitly non-violent some of their ideas in their movies might make you uncomfortable. (Joseph) The initial introduction was perfectly acceptable overall but then he immediately jumps into the fallacy of my film association to 'their' movies, meaning that these films represent The Zeitgeist Movement not acknowledging that the two films of the current three existed before The Movement was ever in operation. One claims that Jesus never really existed and that 9/11 was an inside job. While they admit they don't have all the answers they're always trying to spread the word to see if they can seduce you into becoming a member of The Zeitgeist Movement. (Joseph) And we're off with the completely erroneous definition of what The Zeitgeist Movement represents which has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with 9/11. Anybody with the diligent sense of research could go to the FAQ of thezeitgeistmovement.com and see the obvious disassociation with my films to the Movement. They could even go to the Zeitgeist movies film series my film series website, and see the complete disassociation. You could also review every moment and every sentence of all the materials ever put out via lecture and video to see that absolutely no reference is ever made to 9/11 or comparative religion. If one was to search Youtube for all of our videos which has about 11,000 returns, those produced by our members never reference comparative religion or 9/11. While religion in and of itself is something that we speak about in our Orientation Guide regarding functional spirituality, it has nothing to do with the subjects described in Zeitgeist: The Movie (part one). The reason the word zeitgeist is used is because of its actual definition. The Zeitgeist Movement means we are interested in changing the very cultural climate that seems to be destroying us and that has to do with a lot of different interwoven notions about what people believe and why and how they relate to the planet, etc. It's like saying that The Zeitgeist Movement because of its name association relates to Google Zeitgeist which is untrue as well. (Journalist) We wanted to meet some of the estimated half million worldwide Zeitgeisters and we started with their NYC chapter. While the group spends their Sundays in the park, it's actually not their most effective recruitment tool. Putting their message online is what's transformed them into a global phenomenon. Would-be followers can visit their website and download 3 films that bear the group's name for free. (Joseph) And it is here where the editorial officially divides as it begins a full treatment on my first film which again has nothing to do with The Zeitgeist Movement. My film was produced in mid 2007 and the movement didn't materialize until very late 2008 and early 2009 after the release of Zeitgeist: Addendum. (Journalist) The films are the work of Peter Joseph. The musician and filmmaker debuted a performance art piece in Brooklyn in 2007. Some of the video projections that played behind him formed the basis of the first film, a self-financed documentary he called Zeitgeist: The Movie. He was not available to speak with us in person, but in this 2010 interview he details The Movement's earliest days. (Joseph) "He details The Movement's earliest days." It's very interesting again how the lines are crossed and blurred. The Movement was an experimental concept after Zeitgeist Addendum which is talked about, but anyone watching this would assume that Zeitgeist: The Movie had an intent for such a thing. Not in a million years when I produced that production did I ever think or even want to begin any type of social reaction to what was happening in the world based on what was displayed in Zeitgeist: The Movie. It wasn't even supposed to be a movie. It was just a rather cathartic expression of myself which I expected to go nowhere. (Joseph) What happened completely blew my mind! (Journalist) According to Joseph, popularity of the movie grew far quicker than he anticipated and it's not hard to see why. The film is based on three very provocative claims; the first is that Jesus Christ never really existed... (Joseph) And then begins a rather long exposition of the first film. (Journalist) The final claim put forward in the movie is that the root of all evil in the world is money. (Joseph) Actually, no. Zeitgeist: The Movie (part 3) had nothing to do with the inherent problems with the monetary system as the 'root of all evil'. It simply pointed out how money was used, how power and profit was gained through various forms of social manipulation: the Central Bank as a private bank cartel the wars that are utilized as admitted by General Smedly D. Butler of World War I for industrial profit gain and all the shenanigans that go along with that which is common knowledge to most people that are paying any attention. It wasn't until the 2nd and 3rd film that a deconstruction of the monetary market system was presented. And this perspective of economics as a distortion of intent as a producer of tremendous inefficiency is explicitly different than what was communicated in Zeitgeist: The Movie (part 3). (Journalist) Based here in lower Manhattan, the financial sector was just one of the three targets set in the sights of the first Zeitgeist movie. Since its release it's caused quite a stir, with several websites springing up in an attempt to debunk the film which has proved to be no easy task. However one academic expert who knows her way around conspiracy theories says the Zeitgeist movie may be nothing more than a little bit of bull. (Joseph) I thought this editorial was about The Zeitgeist Movement not my personal film series. This gives way to more conflation and distortion which I'll comment on as we go along. (K. Olmsted) So I would say it's a grand conspiracy theory linking three previous strands of conspiracy. (Joseph) I don't know who this woman is or what grand conspiracy theory she is talking about, but speaking as a filmmaker for a moment unrelated to The Movement the first film talks about comparative religion: how it developed over time as origin and how the political establishments would utilize religions for their own betterment. The 2nd part is simply looking at 9/11 from a different angle. The government story is indeed a conspiracy theory though no one would refer to the 9/11 Commission Report as a conspiracy theory commission report. The 3rd part is simply about different elements of corruption that have existed in the history of the US with no grand conspiracy element to be found. (Journalist) From her research she defined conspiracy theories as simple ways to make sense of complicated circumstances and sees why the first movie has been such a powerful recruitment tool. (Joseph) First, of all the people I've met in The Movement very rarely does anyone say "I'm in The Movement because of the first movie." They might say they learned about the film series initially through the first movie which led to Zeitgeist: Addendum and then they became more informed and motivated to try and see some fundamental social change to assist in our progress. The idea that this is a recruitment tool explicitly is extremely misleading. However I do agree that many people out there turn to very simplistic forms of causality (some will call it conspiracy theories) in order to explain complex events. There are a lot of people today, such as in the Alex Jones camps and many others, that see the entire world as being pulled through strings and there's no causality in and of itself: It's just a bunch of groups. For instance, rather than seeing the causality: the monetary system, the pyramid scheme of debt the historical origins of the development of this system and how it's basically a self-destructive cancer influencing the motivations of the population as a structural basis it's much easier to say there's just some ruling, banking New World Order Elite that's rigging everything and they want to take down everything for some purpose and that everything is calculated by some hidden group. That is an idiotic way to view the world and is far from reality. (K. Olmsted) It would make the movie more authoritative if they didn't take these leaps from the undeniable to the unbelievable but it also would make it less compelling. I think part of the reason that so many people have watched it and been taken in by it is because it is proposing this grand theory that explains everything. (Joseph) Once again, as the filmmaker I have no idea what the hell that's supposed to mean. I suppose some could look at the entire film series (which I doubt she's even seen) and could say that since we focus on money as the root of many social problems that that's the root of everything and that's actually not what we're saying. We're just analyzing what the most important problem is in trying to find a resolution for it. As far as the film itself which she derails, there is a 220-page companion guide with thousands of sources that goes into extreme detail and has been unrefuted on the Internet with all the people that claim to have debunked this movie. It is quite possibly the most sourced film in history. With all due respect, I don't have time to engage the naysayers anymore because it's so exhausting and there's so many of them and the religious right or the super-jingoistic patriots. If I had the opportunity I could debate anybody into a fetal position on these issues. I'm that confident in the integrity of Zeitgeist: The Movie. (Journalist) The group has chapters in all 50 states and 49 countries around the world. Their message has taken root in countries as far away as Macedonia and Mongolia. We've been told that there are upwards of 500,000 people possibly following the movement talking about upwards of millions of hits online on the movie. Historically, where does that fit in in terms of the size of other movements? (K. Olmsted) If that's true, then it is definitely the largest movement in history. I'm not sure, though, that it's true. I don't know if you can really measure the numbers of adherence to this kind of movement. (Joseph) What movement are you referring to lady? Do you even know anything about what The Zeitgeist Movement represents? If you think The Zeitgeist Movement runs around yelling about Jesus not existing or banking cartels, or false-flag terrorism then you obviously know nothing about The Movement. This whole little biased questioning is displaced because it's utterly ignorant. It's very sad to see this even included in this report. (Journalist) Despite the first movie's online success the movement's members were quick to divorce themselves and the rest of the movement from the very film that started it all. (TZM member 1) Let's be clear. The first film has nothing to do whatsoever with The Zeitgeist Movement. It was a production by the creator Peter Joseph to express his point of view on specific topics. (Joseph) It's obvious this interview took place before this production was created so why did the author choose to spend so much time on the first film and its controversy? Coming back to my original point, the sensationalism associated with this type of thing always creates a distortion because he really wants to speak about the first film knowing how famous it is, and then conflate it with The Movement. There's the reality that most of the major press that The Movement has received has never made these conflations: The Huffington Post and New York Times' reviews of Z-Day (our annual event to promote The Zeitgeist Movement and its ideas) the Russia Today interviews and expositions they did on The Movement and myself, along with many other reports none of them take this time to conflate the two issues because anyone who takes a moment to research it sees the obvious difference. (TZM member 2) We don't go to the first film and really use what the first film says to do advocacy work. (Journalist) Instead, the group relies on the ideas of this man inventor and designer Jaque Fresco. He's the founder of The Venus Project which he runs from a compound located in Venus, Florida. Even though Fresco parted ways with The Movement in April 2011 his idea of a Resource-Based Economy was the focus of Peter Joseph's second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum. Members of the movement say this was the key film that gave rise to The Zeitgeist Movement. (Joseph) And finally a linear causality is honestly denoted with respect to the introduction of Zeitgeist: Addendum and Jacque Fresco to the world. (Journalist) The Venus Project proposes that technocrats using supercomputers not politicians or religious leaders would be in charge of controlling resources. (Joseph) Whoa, I'm not quite sure where to begin with correcting that statement on behalf of The Venus Project. Obviously, supercomputers sounds very science fiction. The application of technology to social management is what The Venus Project advocates, in part so does The Zeitgeist Movement. Even though we're not specific to The Venus Project anymore, the train of thought is still there about what we're doing, how evolution has worked, what we've learned and how we can apply what we've learned and what we see is the monetary system as a barrier. Also the term 'technocrats' has a very limited historical definition because of the organization Technocracy which isn't exactly the same, and this poses another layer of confusion. Thinking about a scientific approach to feed and clothe everyone on the planet is a very logical concept and it isn't related to technocracy explicitly even though there might be some overlap. (Journalist) Another viewer attracted to an alternative to the monetary system was Jared Lochner, the young man who shot Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. According to high school friends, Lochner became obsessed with the film. (Jared friend) I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Lochner's mindset. (Joseph) The first thing to point out is that this individual being questioned is admitted to have not seen Jared in two years prior. (Journalist 2) Eventually, Jared's bizarre behavior drove Oslar away. That was two years ago. (Joseph) Yet, ABC pretends like Jared was watching my movie and then grabbed his gun and ran outside and did what he did. (Journalist 2) Instead he points to this online documentary series called Zeitgeist as the gas on Lochner's fire. (Joseph) Given the admitted time-lapse here Zeitgeist: Addendum, which actually introduced the concept of an alternative to the monetary system didn't occur until its premiere in October of 2008 with The Movement not taking hold until many months later in early 2009. This conflation with the entire film series and eventually The Movement is erroneous, making this statement false: (Journalist) Another viewer attracted to an alternative to the monetary system was Jared Lochner. (Joseph) Zeitgeist: The Movie once again had nothing to do with an alternative to the monetary system, not to mention this conflation with The Movement in this sentence from ABC: (Journalist 2) It's a documentary movement that rails on currency-based economics. (Joseph) What the hell is a documentary movement not to mention that the first film that they're showing clips of really doesn't 'rail' once again on currency-based economics? You can see this interest to conflate and to combine and I feel on a certain part of the editorialists at ABC this was deliberate because of their bias against the film series and eventually their bias against The Movement. I found it quite interesting that this came out just two weeks before the release of Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. I guarantee you that if Zack had referenced a movie by Michael Moore or something to that effect, ABC would have never have made such an erroneous association and run with it. If anyone would like to read more about my personal response and thoughts about this issue please Google: Peter Joseph public statement on Tucson shootings or something to that effect and you will find my public statement pointing out the erroneous concept in and of itself that such a film or any film can really be the cause of such horrific actions. (Journalist) What might surprise you, Lorenzo Segarra is Mr. Kill Money. He's told us he's worked for New York Life Insurance insurance giant AIG and Capital One Bank. (Joseph) I did very much like how Dr. Kill Money as he's called was shown in sort of a dark light at the beginning of this editorial and then as a positive and intelligent individual he is at the end. The rest of the program actually is very positive and supportive so I'm going to end this analysis now but I want to conclude by saying that when the mainstream media does take hold meaning the Western dominant powers this is exactly the kind of rhetoric you can expect in a much less positive light. They will hold onto the first film, Jared Lochner and anything they can find as an erroneous, yet prima facie association to avoid the actual arguments that The Movement presents which is a failing social system and the need to do something different. In conclusion, I want to thank Daniel Allen for taking the energy to do this from Brooklyn College and enabling really a tremendously good thought exercise and a prophetic view of what we can expect from the mainstream media. (Journalist) A worldwide community based on one simple idea: We all need to kill money before money kills us.