Benjamin Zeller
speaker
150 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Benjamin Zeller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The FBI investigator in the 1970s determined the group wasn't breaking any laws and said, no, sorry, we can't do anything. Also die lokalen Behörden, obwohl ich keine Anforderungen von jedem Gruppe habe, aber von dem, was wir wissen, weil sie leidenschaftlich waren, wurden sie im Grunde genommen verabschiedet. Es ist legal, kommunal zu leben. Es ist legal, deine Familie zu verlassen.
Wenn du ein Adult bist, natürlich. Es ist legal, nicht mit Leuten zu sozialisieren und zurück in dein Zuhause zu wollen. Also waren sie im Grunde auf jedem Radar. Now, I'm not an attorney, to be clear, so I'm not giving legal advice here. But as far as I can tell, even when they came to embrace suicide as an option, they weren't doing anything illegal.
But certainly up to that point, they had avoided any sort of entanglements with law enforcement such that no one in California was even aware of what they were up to.
One of the things I find interesting at the very end is that actually they timed their exits, is what they call the suicides. They timed their exits. They made these sort of FedEx packages to send to ex-members that had disks for updating the website and some videos and some instructions. This is actually how the bodies were found. So because one of the ex-members was sent a package.
for the packages to arrive after the suicides were completed. And an ex-member has told me, and I accept this argument, that it was done so that there could be no culpability. Again, I'm not sure what the law would be if you receive a FedEx package which says someone's going to commit suicide. I would think the ethical thing to do is you'd call the police or something.
But they timed it so there was no way for the ex-members to stop it. By the time those packages arrived, the deed was done. They are very methodical, if nothing else. Yeah, they very much were so. And that's what happens. So one of the ex-members receives a package and goes down and finds the body and calls 911. And you can find the audio tape online of the 911 calls.
It's all there on YouTube somewhere.
It was really cool. I remember looking at it. I remember before Heaven's Gate. I remember looking up and thinking how cool it was. I was living in Rochester at the time in the city of Rochester. There was light pollution, but I can't imagine what it looked like if you were out in the desert or something without light pollution.
But even in the city of Rochester with the light pollution, it was visible and it was unmistakable. And it was to a certain degree sort of magic. I think for members of Heaven's Gate, they have been looking for some way to convey their message to the wider world.
Sehr früh danach hatten sie die Demonstration genannt, nämlich die Idee, dass die Founders getötet und umgekehrt werden und es die Wahrheit ihres Messages an die Welt zeigen würde. Das ist natürlich nicht passiert. Aber die Idee von Demonstrationen, von der Aufmerksamkeit aller und der Welt zu zeigen,
Ich glaube, wenn sie Hellbob-Komik sahen, sagten sie, das ist Teil dessen, wie der nächste Niveau es machen wird. Der ganze Welt schaut nach dem Außenraum, schaut nach den Himmeln. Und jetzt ist unsere Chance, ihre Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen. Und wenn das, was sie dachten, war, waren sie richtig, weil wir darüber reden, 20 Jahre später.
Es ist wirklich so. Ich habe sie nie gesehen, die sagen, dass die Phoenix Lights besonders verantwortlich waren. Aber ich denke, dass sie Teil von dem, was mit den Phoenix Lights und mit der Erhöhung der UFO-Settings passiert, das dann in die Begriffe der Klamotten zu helfen führt. Und das ist der berühmte Art Bell.
Radio Show Call, where there's a claim that there's evidence that there's a UFO trailing Hellbob Comet. All of that's part of a package. So there's this whole sort of UFOlogical sort of focus, which has never gone away. I mean, it's always been a strong UFO subculture since the 50s. With the Comet in particular,
Die Mitglieder von Heaven's Gate haben sich in die konspiratorische Denkung eingelassen. Und einige Mitglieder in der Regel haben die Konspirationen sehr ernst genommen. Das ist eigentlich eines der Dinge, die ich über Heaven's Gate faszinierend finde, dass sie sehr präsent waren. Heute sind die Konspirationstheorien überall.
In den 90ern waren die Konspirationstheorien für die meisten Leute immer noch eine Art lachende Sache. Du lachst, du weißt, People believe in cattle mutilations and UFOs and things like that. Now it's much more mainstream, you know, with, you know, QAnon and everything like that.
But for members of Heaven's Gate, for some members who believed in the conspiratorial world, the idea that there was a huge UFO trailing the comet and the government was hiding it from the people was plausible. It actually fit their narrative. So I think that's, you're entirely right also, it was the confluence of factors. So we have, how about comets?
And we have the timing with the spring equinox right before Easter. This is basically a Christian-oriented group. We have the Phoenix lights and then the claims of the companion behind the comets. All of this really fed into, I think, the sense of synchronicity that now was the time.
Sie entwickeln einen Endzeitprozess. Und tatsächlich in manchen Fällen, und das geht zurück zum Anfang, haben sie in den 1970er-Jahren, was sie den Prozess des Überkommens ihrer Menschheit genannt haben, einen Ausgangsprozess entwickelt. First of all, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a formal ritual, but there was a ritualization of the group.
They went on a bus tour back to, they toured where the group started in Oregon. They went to Las Vegas and went to an outer space themed casino. So they sort of ritually sort of reenacted the beginning of the group and where they were going outer space. They had a communal meal together at Marie Callender's restaurant. Und so haben sie eine Art Gruppenkohäsion geschaffen.
Und sie haben diese Idee entwickelt, dass sie etwas Formatives in dieser Weise machen. Und dann wurden die echten Rituale der Ausgaben choreografiert. Sie haben sich verpustet, wenn man ganz literal sein möchte. Sie haben einen Mischung von Barbituraten und Alkohol.
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