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The Zeitgeist Movement

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The Zeitgeist Movement
AbbreviationTZM
Formation2008; 16 years ago (2008)
TypeAdvocacy group
Region served
International
Key people
Peter Joseph
WebsiteTheZeitgeistMovement.com

The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) is an activist movement established in the United States in 2008 by Peter Joseph. According to a London School of Economics researcher, TZM "presents a synthesized emancipatory worldview based on the implicit themes of cosmopolitanism, secularism, the explicit themes of systems-thinking, and promise of postscarcity globally redistributive resource-based) economics. These perspectives challenge the conventional paradigms of nationalism, religion, modernism, and neoliberal capitalist globalization, respectively."Cooper, Brent. "The Zeitgeist Movement: Alter-globalization, Complexity, and Conspirituality". Scribed. Retrieved February 8, 2021.</ref> VC Reporter's Shane Cohn summarized the movement's charter as: "Our greatest social problems are the direct results of our economic system".[1]

History

The Zeitgeist Movement was formed in 2008 by Joseph shortly after the late 2008 release of Zeitgeist: Addendum, the second film in the Zeitgeist film series.[2][3]

Zeitgeist was first linked to the Venus Project. In April 2011, partnership between the two groups ended in an apparent power struggle, with Joseph commenting, "Without [the Zeitgeist Movement], [the Venus Project] doesn’t exist – it has nothing but ideas and has no viable method to bring it to light."[2]

The first Zeitgeist documentary which predates the organization Zeitgeist movement, borrowed from the works of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and radio host Alex Jones.[4] Much of its footage was taken directly from Alex Jones documentaries.[4]

The group holds an annual event, Z-Day (or Zeitgeist Day), an "educational forum" held in March. The New York Times reported on the second Z-Day held at Manhattan Community College in New York in 2009 which included lectures by Peter Joseph and Jacque Fresco.[5] This event sold out with 900 people paying $10 each to attend. The event's organizers said that 450 connected events in 70 countries around the globe also took place.[5]

Reactions

An article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion describes the movement as an example of a "conspirituality", a synthesis of New Age spirituality and conspiracy theory.[6]

Michelle Goldberg of Tablet Magazine called the movement "the world's first Internet-based apocalyptic cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity."[4] In her opinion, the movement is "devoted to a kind of sci-fi planetary communism", and the 2007 documentary that "sparked" the movement was "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."[4]

Alan Feuer of The New York Times said the movement was like "a utopian presentation of a money-free and computer-driven vision of the future, a wholesale reimagination of civilization, as if Karl Marx and Carl Sagan had hired John Lennon from his "Imagine" days to do no less than redesign the underlying structures of planetary life."[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Cohn, Shane (May 12, 2011). "The Zeitgeist Movement: Envisioning A Sustainable Future". VCReporter. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  2. ^ a b Gore, Jeff (October 12, 2011). "The view from Venus Jacque Fresco designed a society without politics, poverty and war. Will it ever leave the drawing board?". Orlando Weekly. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
  3. ^ Cohn, Shane (May 12, 2011). "New world re-order". VCReporter. Retrieved May 28, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Goldberg, Michelle (February 2, 2011). "Brave New World". Tablet. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  5. ^ a b c Feuer, Alan (March 17, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  6. ^ Ward, Charlotte; Voas, David (2011). "The Emergence of Conspirituality". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 26 (1): 109–111. doi:10.1080/13537903.2011.539846. S2CID 143742975.
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