Wikileaks, Alt-Right’s ‘Spirit Cooking’ attack is bogus, last-ditch Clinton witch hunt

As if this election weren’t already strange enough, Hillary Clinton may be spending the last days before the election refuting claims that she is involved in a satanic cult.

spirit cookingOn Thursday, Wikileaks highlighted an email to John Podesta from his brother, Tony Podesta, in which John Podesta is asked if he is planning to attend a dinner hosted by prolific and highly-regarded performance artist Marina Abramovic. In the email, the dinner is referred to as a “Spirit Cooking” dinner, a reference to one of the artist’s pieces, “Spirit Cooking,” a provocative “cookbook” which has been displayed at the MOMA.

What the alt-right would like you to believe is that they have uncovered an underground human-sacrificing sex-cult that counts the entire Clinton campaign as its members.

By The Peabody Awards [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Abramovic at The Peabody Awards [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

What it is, in reality, is a guy who works for the Clinton campaign being emailed by his brother to see if he would like to attend a dinner at the house of Abramovic, one of the most well-known and highly regarded performance artists in the world. A woman with with a 30,000 square foot cultural center in her name in Hudson, NY. A woman who has garnered numerous prestigious awards and honorary degrees from all over the world, and who is friends with the likes of James Franco and Jay-Z.

What we have here is a series of cynical and hysterical assumptions, correlations, and misrepresentations put forth by the alt-right in an attempt to horrify the voting public.

This kind of logic is astounding. Let’s review:

  1. John Podesta receives email from brother asking if he is attending a dinner put on by an artist.
  2. The dinner references the title of a work by said artist that, yes, out of its artistic context, might seem bizarre or offensive to sensitive folks who don’t care for provocative works.
  3. Wikileaks and alt-right sites begin to manufacture a fictional hellscape by drawing from Googled out-of-context imagery, concocting unfair and inflammatory claims about the Clinton Campaign’s involvement with “the occult.”
  4. Twitter-trolls pile on with even more outlandish and bizarre conspiracy theories until suddenly, Hillary Clinton is the grand Poobah of Satan’s blood-drinking army.

By the same logic, we could conclude that because Donald Trump hung out with OJ Simpson, that Trump is a great football player and/or a murderer. Or that, because Trump knew Michael Jackson, he must have slept with children at Neverland.

If Donald Trump had eaten dinner with filmmaker George Romero, we could post grainy pictures of flesh-eating zombies from his early horror movies and conclude that Trump is obviously a cannibal. See? Weird-looking and horrifying, right? Can you believe he eats people?

clinton cultSo here, in the last few days before America votes, Hillary Clinton may actually have to deflect the most far-fetched fictional conspiracy in the history of presidential campaigns, while a man who has 75 actual lawsuits pending (including an actual child rape case, a very real fraud case, and 20 cases involving his treatment of women) skates by — possibly all the way to the White House.

This is nothing more than a last-ditch effort to further paint the Clintons as evil members of a nefarious cabal. It’s the same thing they’ve been getting for 30 years straight.

If you didn’t think it could get any weirder, we still have four days to go.

Eric Shepherd

About Eric Shepherd

Eric is a marketing professional working and living in Portland, ME. His writing on politics, science, and culture has appeared on NPR.com, Babble.com, and other national and regional outlets. Eric is also a public speaker on topics related to branding, social media, and cause marketing. He spent 10 years as a recording and touring musician. He has lived up and down the East Coast, but loves Portland the very most.