What are /lit/'s thoughts on Chaos?
I dismiss anything that claims Charlie was a murderer.
>>24913961Started reading it today, coincidentally. Prose seems too self aggrandizing, but it makes sense since it comes from a journalist. Prefer the brevity of Dave McGowan in Programmed to Kill or Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. People say it's a good book so we'll see
>>24913961Haven't read any of his stuff, but I watched Tom on Joe Rogan, and the connections he wove between Manson, the CIA, and the attorneys was extremely compelling. Super interesting shit.
>>24913961I wonder how much Pynchon knew about all the seedy dealings of US intelligence agencies before the broader public became aware in the 70's. Also, how?
>>24914475Cormac wrote about that stuff too, it's always been an open secret any readers voracious enough could uncover
>>24914475A lot of these guys had military background or knew people in the military. Military men love to boast and tell tales. In another registry the film Hardcore by Paul Schrader speaks of snuff films being made across the mexican border with american teenage runaways brought there by pornographers way before it became more widespread as an urban legend
>>24913961At times it drags and there're too many little details to keep everything clear the whole way through but I enjoyed it overall. The passages recounting O'Neill's 20 year obsession with the case are pretty fascinating in their own right and they're interspersed throughout the book in a clever way to temper the barrage of information. It's a death by a thousand cuts argument, by the end of it I was convinced some shady shit went down but I don't remember half of it.
>>24914721I actually know a guy who served in Iraq and Afghanistan both and sometimes I feel like he's yanking my chain.
>>24914968A lot of them retell famous 'badass' military stories or put their twist on it. Some will tell you what they actually did but embellish it or hide details, just the same as any tale teller. But overall the experience of going overseas to play glorified boyscouts can lead to some wild shit happening so it may as well all be true. My opinion is that when someone tells some badass secret operative black ops CIA like story they're lying but other tales might be true
>>24914979Yeah I figured
>>24913961It's pretty disarranged.
>>24913961this and Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon are the more thorough books
>>24913961I only know this book because of Cum Town. Adam lied about reading it and got clowned on by Nick and Stavros for it.
>>24916128Brendon Schaub claimed he was reading when Whitney Cummings was a guest. I use to watch them depending on who was the guest.
It exposes more of the story around manson than any other book. Although it cant connect the mkultra plot with manson conclusively. He did find evidence of a key player involved in mkultra conclusively and also exposed the shady trial of manson (which imo was just corruption to save face). I do find the other stuff such as mansons probation records interesting but its all speculative. I definitely think Manson was more involved with celebrity culture being a low level pimp and drug dealer.
>>24913961It debunks pretty much the entirety of the official narrative. That's all I'll say. It does suggest a lot but he offers no definite or harmonized conclusions.
>>24916128>StavrosWhere do I know that name from? Sounds familiar
>>24917780Stavros Halkias. He has his own podcast now called Stavy's World, and he was recently in a movie with Emma Stone.
>>24917128>It exposes more of the story around manson than any other book.The Manson Files
>>24913961The following is a much better work. Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft [3 vols.] by Peter Levenda. I just read that a three-volumes-in-one edition of this work is to be published in February 2026.
>>24914157>Weird Scenes Inside the CanyonI thought I was gonna like that so much more than I did, but it was really repetitive and all the chapters blended together. This was a way better music business conspiracy book
>>24919599why is it better?
>>24919808Yes Weird Scenes was a bit of a letdown, but for me it's mostly because I'm not familiar with almost all the music acts written about in the book aside from the Beach Boys, The Doors and Frank Zappa. I found the first half of the book very interesting particularly about the Lookout Mountain secret military base and the description of the social fabric of Laurel Canyon as well as the dive in at the military upbringing of most of these musicians. But when it dove into the bands & artists by singular chapters pretty much like he did with each killer in Programmed to Kill I started losing interest
>>24913997The book actually also casts strong doubt on whether Manson himself ever killed anyone (although it does quote him saying that he did). Bugliosi's various legal maneuverings (some not actually legal) to get Manson himself charged with conspiracy get a great deal of attention in the book.
>>24917742>It does suggest a lot but he offers no definite or harmonized conclusions.To be fair to him he *is* totally up front about this. It's not something that he hides from you until the last chapter or anything, his ongoing struggles to pry some definite meaning out of the case are an ongoing strand of narrative.
>>24919852Because that post is written by Peter Levenda or a paid shill of his. Look at the formatting of the title, lmao
>>24916128Wow sounds hilarious anon good story
>>24917780Because Stavros is the name of the Greek guy Janice has an affair with in the second book of John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy, “Rabbit Redux.”
>>24917128Really interesting? Thanks, I just might have to read it. I myself, including from reading some conspiracy lore/alternative journalism and history books about various scandals and conspiracy theories like MK Ultra, speculated Manson was tied to Mk ultra. I thought there was also the possibility of the CIA or even FBI false flagging it (or using Manson as a patsy, or pushing him into doing it, like you see the FBI having done in some modern cases of claimed “foiled terror attacks”), a major reason being as psychological warfare against the counterculture/hippie and anti-war movements of the day, which they disliked, and to further public distrust and skepticism of these movements and people, so law enforcement could also have a heavier hand in going against any of them when needed, any other “long haired freaks” essentially. Also a motive in criminalizing cannabis and LSD, when the same bastards were probably just spending years or decades pushing it (also to massively profit off such drug-trade and use the funds for off-the-books black ops) and in the case of LSD even studying it for mind control purposes.
Reading this right now and it's pretty graphic. Also, Pierre Trudeau was one of these satanist pedo mind control freaks, allegedly.
>>24913961Needed to have some fat trimmed down, but overall interesting read. I definitely think Bugliosi is a liar and there's a lot more to Manson than we've been told
>>24916592>Brendon Schaub claimed he was readingThis is a lie, as Schaub doesn't know how
>>24913961it is okay but nothing spectacular. if you know nothing about the manson case i would say its worth reading because o'neill does a very good job deboonking the official narrative around the tate/labianca murders, but beyond that its kind of eh. i don't think he necessarily went all in on the MKUltra narrative just to sell more copies but the ending does feel like a bit of a letdown, lots of conjecture but no smoking gun, at least in regards to jolly west and the mkultra stuff. after reading finishing that book i was left with the feeling the most likely scenario is that spooks more or less allowed manson to run wild and maybe even steered him into carrying out some kind of attack that could be used to discredit the hippy movement. i would choose aberration in the heartland of the real over chaos any day to be honest unless you are only interested in learning about deboonking the official narrative of the tate/labianca murders.wendy's book felt much more fleshed out than chaos and it covers a lot of the same topics that are brought up in the 2nd half of chaos but in a far more in depth/better way.>>24919599>>24920555 i've been considering reading levenda but ive read conflicting stuff about him. is he worth checking out at all?
>>24922574What's the qrd on Pierre being an MK Ultra victim?
>>24923611Anon isn't saying that Trudeau was a victim, he's saying he was one of the satanist pedo freaks who wanted to *use* MKUltra-style mind control on *other people*.
>>24924000Maybe, but it isn't clear. When I see the words "mind control freaks" in that exact order, I assume we're talking about victims of mind control (of the satanic pedo variety). Whether Pierre was pitching or catching, I want to hear about it.
>jolly west was the CIA MKULTRAN doc who (((diagnosed))) jack rubys psychosis and maybe maybe not was mansions handler while he violated parole and had people murdered>Vincent bugelosisisisis was an untrustworthy piece of shit>it took O’Neil a generation to piece this all together That’s Chaos in 3 sentences
>>24913961Why bother when you could just go to the source and read about Tavistok and/or British influence
>>24924059ESL? That anon would have said he was a mind -controlled- freak, instead. But even that would be strange, since freak implies an obsession in this context and not victimhood.
>>24913961The parts around various legal proceedings and police mishandling are too fucking long and repetitive. I get true crime & cold cases loving women love reading about the logistics surrounding a case and the legal aspect because it's akin to gossips but I really wasn't expecting that but more of a dive in into the spook angle. Dave McGowan's books are much more limpid on that aspect, you can just smell Tom O'Neill deep down is just another NPC journalist
>>24913961Honestly to me it sounds boring. Unless it's about espionage, UFOs and the Kennedy family I am not interested. Secrets about Marilyn Monroe may be interesting though, especially in relation to the Kennedies.
