A Psyop Cinema Primer

Psyop Cinema is a podcast about the film industry and its intimate connections to mass manipulation, conspiracy, and the occult. Hosts Thomas Millary and Brett Carollo explore film from a deep politics perspective, demonstrating how the artistry of cinema combines with psychological and technological knowledge to engineer culture in subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways—making each of us the subject of the greatest mind control experiment in history.

Hollywood has long had a close relationship with intelligence agencies, a connection that has now been officially and publicly acknowledged. Recently declassified documents reveal that the CIA and Pentagon have secretly consulted in the production of hundreds of Hollywood films and television episodes, directly influencing their content. A number of celebrities are even known to be Agency assets—Ben Affleck, for instance, who intimated that Hollywood is “full” of CIA agents.

The purposes behind these collaborations have never been fully explained, but a key link in the chain is MKUltra, a secret mind control program run by the CIA from the 1950s into the 70s. Human subjects were fed massive doses of psychedelic drugs and exposed to other hypnotic techniques, coupled with traumatic stimuli like electroshock. MKUltra became known to the public in 1975, but after that the trail of government mind control experimentation runs strangely cold. Psyop Cinema investigates the many ways those dark experiments may have continued to the present through the guise of Hollywood entertainment.

Survivors and whistleblowers who have come forward over the decades chillingly testify to the existence of an alleged successor program called Project Monarch. While the details of Monarch’s existence remain shrouded in mystery, these firsthand reports describe techniques of trauma-based mind control involving the use of Hollywood movies like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz that read like a hyper-advanced version of MKUltra programming. Adding to the intrigue, this technique begins to appear in a coded form in a startling number of Hollywood movies beginning in the mid-70s (with possible precursors, like Hitchcock’s Vertigo).

Our hypothesis is that methods of mind control developed at the micro (individual) level been deployed at a macro (culture-wide) level, making Hollywood a vehicle for sophisticated cultural engineering operations run by intelligence agencies. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and one of the grandfathers of modern propaganda, observed that “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.” Digging deeper, these scientific and technological methods of mind control can be traced back to the techniques practiced by occultists of all ages. It is no coincidence that several of the subprojects of MKOFTEN, a 60s spinoff of MKUltra, were devoted to black magic, astrology, and other occult pursuits. Most Monarch movies are saturated with occult themes. As early as The Black Cat (1934), Hollywood was pairing Satanism with hypnotic mind control.

In each episode, Psyop Cinema exposes the secrets of cultural engineering, drawing on the history of deep politics and engaging in exacting analysis of films and filmmakers. Thomas and Brett seek to shine a light on these cinematic experiments, working to break the spell of Hollywood mind control, for both themselves and their listeners.

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