Skip: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 251-267

We enter into a bit of a problem with this chapter. Cooper has this habit of "borrowing" other people's work and then claiming that the work is evidence of the New World Order takeover of the United States. We saw this in the very first chapter "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars," he was claiming that the document was a training manual for new recruits that was left in a copy machine subsequently purchased at a government sale. So it's someone else's document, but at least Cooper was adding something to it. Throughout this book, he cribbed documents but then added commentary. When adds commentary, he's done something to make it "his." Whether he's copying Executive Orders he doesn't understand, or UN charters that he also doesn't understand, he's made some effort. Even the last chapter where he took two long editorials and copied them exactly, it was in service to the larger point he was trying to make about the UN. 

Here, we have a problem in that Cooper has done none of this. He calls this chapter, "A Proposed Constitutional Model for the Newstates of America." Then of course he has to subtitle it: "Prepared Over a 10 year period by the Center for Democratic Studies of Santa Barbara, California at a total cost to the United States Taxpayers of Over $25 Million."

I do love it when conspiracy theorists try to point out how much something costs. Part of me wants to attribute this obsession to their fears of hyper-inflation, but more realistically they do this because it grabs attention. Especially considering that this book was written in the early 90s when Republicans suddenly cared about the debt. 

Then the chapter starts. It's in a font that is easily two sizes smaller than the rest of this book. This leads me to the suspicion that he merely ran the source through a copy machine. The earlier examples he had to re-type; but here, Cooper is being lazy. This is, verbatim, something else. There is no commentary, there is no emphasis, there is nothing here other than the title. So what is it?

This chapter is actually the final chapter in a book titled "The Emerging Constitution" by former Puerto Rican Governor Rexford Tugwell. The chapter is the culmination wherein Tugwell has laid out how Constitutions are created, their purpose, and their necessity. This chapter is a thought experiment in which he puts the ideas laid out through the book into practice. This isn't a proposal to throw out the current US Constitution, rather it is a hypothetical proposal for a state starting from nothing. Last chapter I gave credit to Cooper because he could have actually read the Constitution unlike most of the people who claim to love it so much; here, I know he didn't read this chapter. By virtue of the chapter title and its inclusion in this book, we know that he thinks it's some mandate from the JASON project to enslave America. However, it's not any of that. The text of this chapter is just a different version of the Constitution, with updated language, and it puts the rights of the citizens first instead of as an addendum like the Bill of Rights. 

However, without a single commentary note, we, have no idea what Cooper actually thinks. I am merely making an assumption which I do not like to do, but he's left us no other option. 

As the article on this book by Rationalwiki points out, this chapter is likely a copyright violation (as is the above link to the book). 

All of that being said, I'm skipping this chapter. It does nothing but pad out the book. If we remove this chapter, we lose nothing. Unlike other chapters where you can say that excision doesn't change the narrative, we would at least lose Cooper's voice. 

This brings us to the next chapter, which I am grateful that I can introduce before diving in. Now, I knew this chapter was coming, and have been kind of dreading/anticipating it. This chapter is titled: "Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion."

What Cooper has done here is merely republish the infamous anti-Semitic screed, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." In this chapter, Cooper has added some commentary in the beginning but for the most part has left it unchanged. I'm not skipping this chapter for three reasons. First, there is the commentary. Second, if you want to understand right-wing extremist conspiracy theorizing; you need to know this work. Thirdly, the original text is widely available everywhere--this is unfortunate, but including it in this book actually works because we aren't giving traffic to Nazis, White Supremacists, and other anti-Semitic groups. Cooper himself, seemed to have been anti-Nazi. His writings and radio broadcasts don't have the dog whistles of David Icke, Alex Jones, or John Birch Society. However, including this work as a chapter automatically crosses the line here. 

He further stands on the wrong end of the line when his subtitle proclaims the work as anything other than a plagiarism of a work that criticized Napolean III by a writer named Maurice Joly titled, "A Dialogue in Hell by Machiavelli and Montesquieu." Journalist Jonathan Kay in his book "Among the Truthers" claimed that at least 60% of the Protocols is lifted directly from the Joly--and that's not counting the differences because of the author switching from French to German to Russian. The Protocols itself was published in Russia as a way to blame the Jewish minority in the West for the collapsing Empire of Tsar Nicholas II. 

Where Cooper writes that it was referred to in the late 18th century while appearing in the early 19th century; this is incorrect. It first appeared in the very late 19th century or early 20th. I want to stress that it's unproven that the Russian Empire published the tract, but it's unlikely that something like this would have been available without the Russian Secret Police shutting it down if they didn't, at the very least approve it. I've written about this at The Skeptic, so I'll just link that article here. 

So the next few posts are going to dive into the Protocols because Cooper has forced my hand. I was planning on doing it as a future series, but now we have to take it full. I'd offer up a warning here, but the anti-Semitism of the book isn't actually in it. It's in the claim that this book represents the "Jewish plan" for the world. Keep that in mind, just as well, keep in mind that Cooper thinks calling it "Sion" instead of "Zion" and "Cattle" instead of "Goyim" gets him out of anti-Semitic claims.