Cannabis, psychedelics and the storming of the Capitol

Smoking weed used to be the occupation of left-leaning, long-haired hippies. These days a diet of dope and alternative news has created an army of unhinged, far-right conspiracy theorists, writes Chris Horrie

Jake Angeli, aka Yellowstone Wolf, enters the Capitol (AFP via Getty)

What do the words Baked Alaska mean to you? Maybe the name of a somewhat naff dinner party dessert made out of meringue, ice cream and sponge. It is the sort of thing that might have been served with a final flourish at Abigail’s party, washed down with some red wine straight from the fridge.

That’s fine as far as it goes because these days Baked Alaska signifies two other things: the name of a popular and extremely potent strain of marijuana and, finally, the online handle of one Joseph Gionet – Donald Trump activist and rap musician (creator of the Maga Anthem) – and one of the main instigators of the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol building.

Gionet’s journey into the world of the far right came via libertarianism and campaigns for the legalisation of all drugs, not just weed. Libertarianism turned out to be a gateway drug for Gionet and soon he was posting neo-Nazi memes online, possibly because Gionet is an internet businessman and such outrages tend to attract traffic and therefore advertising revenue. From there it was a short step to meeting Donald Trump, in person, having Trump’s face tattooed on his forearm and launching an online “news channel” podcast specialising in spreading rap music and weed-flavoured conspiracy theories.

Gionet was not, however, the only pothead involved in the January escapade.  Far from it. It was immediately noted that the Capitol invaders included a core group of druggy-looking, counter-cultural types, eschewing the more clean-cut jack-boot-and-Brylcreem look of the traditional fascist. There were a few sinister and apparently insane ex-military types who, although lacking an obvious “exit strategy”, seemed otherwise to know what they were doing. Perhaps they too were on drugs, like the soldiers in Vietnam you see in the old films. But there were not many of these lost souls as a proportion of the whole phalanx. The whole thing was not so much the FreiKorps as the Freak Corps.  

Reporters in the midst of the event found that although Trump’s supporters were thought of as being “the left behind” salt-of-the-earth factory workers from the rust-belt, or “Mom and Pop” traditionalists, this mob was different: most of the people who followed Baked Alaska and the other oddballs into the building came from suburbs all over the US, flying in business class to attend, and staying overnight in expensive hotels with “three martini lobby bars” was how the reporter for The Atlantic put it.

The well-heeled “tourists” swelled the numbers, and you don’t have to be Hannah Arendt to know the appalling things crowd-followers or initially innocent bystanders get up to when the red arm bands start to get dished out. But it was the druggies who were very much to the fore.

One of the invaders, James Bonet, from the nondescript town of Glen Falls in upstate New York, was so stoned he filmed himself and a group of pals smoking a joint and boasting about “smoking with my people” in the Capitol building. He then cunningly distributed the video on the internet where it was immediately found by the FBI, who had him arrested. In a second video Bonet is seen giggling and stumbling around in the crypt, or basement, of the building where he and other thrill-seekers were searching for senators to shout at, throw dung at or, possibly – if things got really freaky – hang. “Made it in!” Bonet yelps into his mobile phone streaming app: “We made it into the building, bitches. We are takin’ it back!"

Not all the core group was high on marijuana. Some may have been high on more potent psychedelic drugs.

This contingent included Jake Angeli from Pheonix, Arizona, who is known online as Yellowstone Wolf – a self-proclaimed practitioner of native American shamanistic medicine, and now known to millions as “the Q Shaman” after spear-heading the invasion stripped to the waist, brandishing an actual spear and wearing a native American war bonnet. Angeli was to become one of the main viral video clips of the day, gormlessly wandering around the Capitol corridors and debating chambers saying how cool everything was before jumping up and down on Mike Pence’s ceremonial chair, ranting and raving like a cross between John Bercow and Jamiroquai.

America is a land where life never ceases to imitate art, especially pop art, and the invaders seemed to be living up to the description of the White Punks on Dope

Angeli turns out to have had a fairly comfortable background and was for a time in the US navy in an administrative capacity. This was a very hum-drum lifestyle. So after being demobbed he began experimenting with psychedelic plants he found in the Arizona desert and launched himself into the New Age therapy business and, at the same time, a wannabe actor and voice-over artist. He later claimed that he had been taking psychedelics since he was 11 years old.

Angeli’s drug experiences convinced him that Freemasons secretly run the world and had designed the layout of the streets in Washington DC to channel ley lines, which somehow channel the Earth’s magnetic field to provide the government with demonic power. Compared to this theory, the main QAnon conspiracy story with which he is associated seems mundane (as everyone now knows the ‘QAnon’ internet conspiracy has many ornate embellishments but revolves around Hilary and Bill Clinton luring children into pizza parlours into order to rape and murder them, and then drink their blood).  

Pennsylvania Avenue, the broad boulevard along which the invaders approached the Capitol, according to Angeli, runs along one of the most energy-infused ley lines in the world. One purpose of the invasion of the Capitol was to prevent Biden becoming president. By physically blockading the validation process. But more importantly the event would have the side effect of “altering the quantum realm” and channelling the ley-line energy to power cosmic consciousness. Co-incidentally the invasion was also an opportunity to boost his business and reputation as an “alternative” therapist, on-line celebrity and counter-cultural figure.

Beyond the antics of Baked Alaska and Yellowstone Wolf, the full panoply of internet-based right-wing stoner nonsense was on display alongside all the heavily weed-dependent Nordic-Runic symbolism of computer shoot ‘em up interactive video games, Heavy Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal, Thrash Metal and, for all I know, Scrap Metal insignia. 

One invader was even carrying the green, black and white ‘swastika’ flag of Kekistan – an imaginary country, complete with a comprehensive Truman Show-like back story, invented history and fictional topography ruled by a chortling African dictator called President Big Man Tyrone, who broadcasts regularly on You Tube. 

Kekistan, named after the Egyptian God of Chaos, is in a permanent state of war with neighbouring Normistan, which is inhabited by Normies, in other words, people who are not stoned all the time. The Kekistan element in the Capitol crowd were attempting to replace Joe Biden with Big Man Tyrone, whose declaration of war on normality has been watched by two million people on You Tube, electoral college or no electoral college.

 Instead of the wailing of the oppressed, the insurrectionary air was filled with a blend of teargas, animal manure, inarticulate hipster slang and… marijuana smoke

America is a land where life never ceases to imitate art, especially pop art, and the invaders seemed to be living up to the description of the White Punks on Dope – the sort of dilettantes described by the avante garde New York rock group, The Tubes, as spoilt well-off baby-boomer fashion victims from the suburbs, who dabble in drugs and generally try to attract attention and give meaning to their otherwise entirely nihilistic lives by being obnoxious and offensive.

This said, the role of drugs including cannabis in the January affair was mentioned by numerous reporters on the scene. The Atlantic said the smell in the Capitol building was the most memorable aspect of the day. Instead of the more traditional whiff of grapeshot and the wailing of the oppressed, the insurrectionary air was filled with a blend of teargas, animal manure (to be thrown at the senators if possible), inarticulate hipster slang and… marijuana smoke. A reporter for Slate magazine told of how he saw a man in a conference room with his feet up on the desk smoking weed with a group of friends, adding: “When we clocked each other, he offered me a joint.”

But in all the analysis that followed, the evidently huge role of cannabis in the online mania which led to 6 January – indeed the whole Trump Experience itself from 2016 onwards – has scarcely been mentioned. Indeed the fact that large sections of the population throughout the developed world are permanently moshed off their gourds and how this might affect democracy, not to mention the suicide boom and generalised competency in public life, seems to be the issue which dare not speak its name.

This is weird. I am starting to get paranoid about it. Are “they” supressing the central role of the Weed of Wisdom in creating the online Trump cult, and the occasional off-line offshoots such as the Capitol invasion and related phenomena such as  people in Texas staggering around waving guns while wearing gigantic inflatable psychedelic Trump cowboy hats and reflector shades. Mere co-incidence? I don’t think so.

Traditionally the drug culture was associated with an appropriately vague and malleable hippie leftism, adjacent to the anti-war movement, ecology, equal rights and free expression

Cannabis is slowly being decriminalised in America and in some states, including notably Alaska, use and dealing is in practice legal, even without the fig-leaf excuse of medical use. 

CBS news, reviewing a range of official sources, estimates that 16 per cent of everyone in Alaska uses marijuana on a regular or daily basis, but use is heavily skewed to younger people, especially men, and, presumably, the economically inactive with a lot of time on their hands – people in fact like Baked Alaska and followers and fans of his homegrown rap music and incessant druggy Nazi-chic social media click-bait. Estimates for overall “regular use” in the US and UK hover around 10 per cent of the population, but vary according to different sources, and those, such as the trend tracked by the UK Home Office crime survey for England and Wales are based on arrests, and are therefore probably underestimates.

By way of contrast on current trends, the number of regular or daily weed smokers will soon exceed the total number of newspaper readers in the US and the UK, and the numbers probably exceeded the total number of broadsheet newspaper readers long ago. The gap is narrowing because, after a dip around the turn of the century, the trend towards differential cannabis use by young people (and women) is soaring upwards once again. 

The fact is that something like 10 to 20 per cent of the electorate is constantly or frequently stoned and getting their news largely in dream-like form from their own mis-firing neurons, stimulated by the flashing lights on their phone, computer or TV screens. This growing demographic – or psychographic – is big enough to cause unexpected landslides of the sort which brought Trump to power in 2016 and doubtless lead to the naming of the British Antarctic research ship as Boaty McBoatface in an online poll in the same year. 

Something like 10 to 20 per cent of the electorate is constantly or frequently stoned and getting their news largely in dream-like form from their own misfiring neurons

Trump’s unexpected victory was attributed to “low information and low propensity” voters who previously could not be bothered to turn up at the polls. The Boaty McBoatface affair was blamed on bored stoners looking to annoy and embarrass the establishment. The two constituencies are in all likelihood not that much different.

Traditionally, drug culture was associated with an appropriately vague and malleable hippie leftism, adjacent to the anti-war movement, ecology, equal rights and free expression. But as these causes have entered the mainstream, points of contact between the drug culture and the political right – and the agenda of Trump – have become more obvious. Gun ownership is a good example. Many of the heroes of the drug counter-culture were individualistic gun nuts. 

William Burroughs, the totemic drug culture writer and personality, was rarely seen without an assault rifle and, for target practice, would line up portraits of literary greats such as Shakespeare and shoot them between the eyes. Guns (and in the UK, knives) have become an intrinsic part of the drug culture as gangs fight to establish monopoly control over distribution in different parts of town.

Generally progressive and informed opinion for a long time now has been in favour of legalisation of cannabis based on the mounting evidence that the likelihood of users facing direct physical harm is very low, and that symptoms of anxiety and paranoia were balanced by the relaxing properties of the drugs. Fewer people have discussed the impact of the new generation of millions of 30, 40 and even 50-year-old veteran smokers on the culture of the west, including the political culture.

It is over 60 years since Richard J Hofstader first published The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which was an investigation of the counter-productive insanity of cold-war witch-hunts of mostly innocent people supposedly involved in a secret conspiracy to overthrow the US. Since then psychedelics have been added to the mix in a process which can have only increased the prevalence and depth of delusional and paranoid thinking.

Last year the UK National Institute for Health published a review of multiple cases of violent crime attributable to cannabis use, noting that the political push towards legalisation had lead struggling public health organisations in the US to “downplay the drug’s negative effects”. The paper focused on chronic marijuana users with recurring episodes of paranoia, defined medically as “exaggerated, unfounded mistrust” and “marijuana-induced psychosis”, defined as “radical personality change, loss of contact with reality”. The study also notes that many new cross-bred strains of marijuana being produced by experts growers in the legalised conditions of the US are unregulated, but have “far higher” concentrations of psychoactive substances.

The phenomena is probably being hastened not just by the new stronger strains of weed, but the increasing number of hours spent watching homemade ‘alternative news shows’

The paper noted that marijuana was also playing a direct role on the more violent end of the political spectrum. Dylann Roof, the heavily armed 21-year-old white supremacist, was high when he murdered nine people attending a prayer service in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Roof had been smoking weed three times a day, most days, since he was 12. He had tried to give up marijuana aged 16, but suffered paranoid panic attacks and started hearing voices in his head. So he started smoking again to calm down.

The medically defined “unfounded mistrust” and “loss of touch with reality” led Roof into far-right politics where he believed that Jews and freemasons were engaged in a conspiracy to kill him as part of a planned “white genocide”. One problem is that people in a persistently paranoid-delusional state cannot change their mind, since any attempt to do so by, for example, Fake News, is taken as further evidence that the conspiracy is taking place. The process resembles the way the most deadly types of biological and computer viruses work – taking over the mind’s defence systems and using them against the victim.

Similarly, in November 2017, Robert Dear, a “pro-Christian” anti-abortion activist, killed three people and injured nine others when he attacked a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. He believed his victims were involved in the abduction and murder of children. Dear moved to Colorado after the state had legalised marijuana so he could buy it more easily. Dear was described in court as “a heavy user” who suffered from mood swings and paranoia and was given to sudden and inexplicable outbursts of anger.

These violent cases arise from within the much larger group of cannabis users who reported psychotic or pre-psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices or having feelings of being conspired against, which they could not easily shake off through an objective assessment of their own position. There are many millions who find the drug harmless or positively useful for genuine medical reasons. The point is that the spectrum appears to be shifting away from the sort of harmless enjoyable delusion that makes you think that staring at a lava lamp for an hour is an interesting thing to do, and sliding towards the idea that devious gremlins (insert disliked racial, gender or social group here) are trying to hoodwink you into murdering your own children by giving them a measles jab.

The phenomena is probably being hastened not just by the new strains of weed, but the number of hours spent watching homemade “alternative news shows” on the internet, such as the one produced by Baked Alaska, which amounts to recycling the more hypnotically hysterical and paranoia-provoking output of Fox News. For more than a decade psychologists have wondered whether the non-stop cacophony, blazing graphics and Breaking News! warnings can induce a type of fear-based, edge-of-the-seat hypnosis in viewers, especially if they are stoned at the same time. Unsurprisingly Fox News viewers were soon mainlining on the paranoid conspiracy theory that the violence during the Capitol invasion, once it got out of hand, had been carried out by left-wing provocateurs and FBI infiltrators (known to hard core Maga people as “glowies” because they are apparently easy to spot in a crowd of Genuine Patriots).

It is difficult to know what should be done about all this. The new Biden administration will move to further ease restrictions on marijuana production. Reliable sources of news and information will decline. “Alternative news” providers such as Alex Jones’s Info Wars will continue to make millions every year, and more heavy dope smokers will enter the arena, alternately bored and terrified and ready to follow anyone who understands their increasingly unhinged state of mind.