Murder, South Africa, Legal, New World Order, Shape-shifting Reptilian Aliens, Worldviews
Mail & Guardian: Missing the point about the murder of women
One warm Saturday evening in October 2011, a group of eight friends, a mixture of male and female, white, black and coloured, aged between 15 and 23, walked up a small hill behind a swimming pool in the suburb of Linmeyer in the south of Johannesburg. They went equipped to spend the night drinking, smoking marijuana and chatting around a campfire, as they usually did on weekends. But this was not a normal weekend.
Hours later the majority of the group had fled, while two of them stumbled and crawled back to town: Kirsty Theologo, 18, most of her body covered in third and fourth degree burns, somehow assisting Bronwyn Grammar, then 16, her arms and body burned from trying to roll her friend in the sand and douse the flames that were covering her. Soon after, her brother found Kirsty in the kitchen of their home, so heavily burned that she was barely recognisable. She was rushed to hospital where she lapsed into a coma. The fire had severely damaged her lungs and upper body and she died days later.
A story began emerging almost immediately of a planned attack in which the other members of the group soaked Kirsty with petrol, set her on fire and left her to burn to death. Lurid details including a bloody ritual, five-pointed stars drawn on the ground and the desecration of a bible led to a swift diagnosis by press and police that this was a 'Satanist murder', a phrase that has a long resonance in South Africa. Six people were arrested: five male, the oldest of them 21, and one 15-year-old female.
The Theologo murder shocked South Africa, garnering a comparatively large amount of press coverage for a country with a high rate of violence against women. Journalists, editors, religious leaders and politicians flocked to report and comment on Kirsty's brutal fate.
Hers was far from the only story of "satanic" killing to appear in the South African press in recent years. In the summer of February 2014, just days after some of the accused had been jailed for Kirsty's murder, a man working in the veld near Dobsonville in Soweto, Johannesburg, stumbled across the mutilated bodies of two local teenage girls. Best friends Thandeka Moganetsi, 15, and Chwayita Rathazayo, 16, had been missing since the previous day.
The girls, both pupils at nearby George Khoza Secondary School, were found metres apart, still wearing their school uniforms, with open wounds on their backs and cuts on their hands and necks. Three razor blades and a black candle were found near the bodies, once again leading to a quick diagnosis of Satanism from the press, police and parents.
Distraught friends told tales about satanic cults operating within the school that may have "sacrificed" the girls. Two teenage boys, pupils at the same school, were quickly arrested. Religious and political leaders descended on Dobsonville to decry the scourge of Satanism in schools. Once again, these killings received an unusual amount of media and public attention in a nation that often glosses over public violence."
" ... Shriner began espousing views that a New World Order composed of shape-shifting, reptilian aliens were seeking to take over the planet. To do this — at least, according to Shriner — the aliens were masquerading as politicians and other prominent public figures tasked with doing the bidding of their overlords. "We've been seeing it on a massive scale," she said in 2016. "Celebrities, news announcers, even people in commercials. Everybody you see on TV, about 90%, is a clone or a synthetic robotoid."
Shriner began spreading her beliefs through websites, and then eventually by way of YouTube videos and podcasts. Through these media, she was able to tap into a somewhat small, but extremely dedicated audience. As time went on, her ideology shifted from being a fringe conspiracy theory to a pseudo-religion with vampires, demons, and zombies sprinkled in for good measure."
Clearer Thinking: Understand how other people think: a theory of worldviews.
"A libertarian, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pro-development YIMBY watch an apartment complex being built. The libertarian is pleased - 'the hand of the market at work!' - whereas the socialist worries that the building is a harbinger of gentrification; the YIMBY sees progress, but the environmentalist is concerned about the building's carbon footprint. They're all seeing the same thing, but they understand it differently, because they inhabit different worldviews.
We can think of worldviews as snow globes. We each occupy our own snow globe and, when we're inside it, it can seem like the whole world. If it's snowing in our snow globe, we think it's snowing everywhere; if our snow globe is made of green glass, everything looks green to us. We might not even realize that there's anything beyond our snow globe! But if we can step outside, we see that our view from inside was only part of a much larger picture. If you can step outside your snow globe - and visit other people's - you'll be able to see a more accurate representation of the world and communicate better with others. For every snow globe you master, you'll gain a powerful new lens through which to see the world - and you'll see that no single snow globe has all the answers.
Worldviews are a type of story we learn about how the world works and about what things matter and why. In this post, we put forward a theory of worldviews that will help you understand how different worldviews work. We call this "Snow Globe Theory." Every worldview includes many beliefs, but after reflecting on a wide variety of worldviews, we believe that almost everyone has four central components. There are other common elements that some worldviews have but others don't - for example, a strong culture, or a theory about trustworthy sources of knowledge – but this article will focus on these four central elements:
• What is good?• Where do good and bad come from?• Who deserves the good?• How can you do good or be good?
You can understand a worldview quite well if you know what thoughtful people with that worldview would all answer in response to these four questions."
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