Helter Skelter

by Alfonso

I am re-reading, after many years, the book Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi & Curt Gentry. It is about the infamous murders committed in the late 60's by a band of hippies, followers of Charles Manson, who thought he has Jesus Christ and needed to escape to the desert to avoid an apocalyptic event that was coming, which he called Helter Skelter, based on his own interpretation of Beatles songs and many other strange philosophies he picked along the way.

Creating his own "Bagarre"

His band of followers, a cast of middle-class frustrated youngsters with various psychological issues and family problems, saw in him the charismatic leader he was and were ready to do anything, including murder, for their guru.

I find the following quote by Manson, very illuminating:

"You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.” (*)

The book's authors make this comment regarding the quote above:

“Therein lies still another of the keys he [Manson] used: in addition to repetition, he used isolation. There were no newspapers at Spahn Ranch [the group's base], no clocks. Cut off from the rest of society, he created in this timeless land a tight little society of his own, with its own value system. It was holistic, complete, and totally at odds with the world outside.” (*)

The band of miscreants that Manson gathered around him was not the first, nor would it be the last, group of persons that followed a leader with messianic visions and willing to do anything, including murder if necessary, for the cause.

Some of us will find disturbing parallels between this story and other stories closer to home.

* * *

(*) Excerpt From: Vincent Bugliosi & Curt Gentry. “Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (25th Anniversary Edition).” W. W. Norton & Company , 1974. iBooks.