G. Edward Griffin


G. Edward Griffin is an American author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of views and conspiracy theories regarding various of his political, defense and health care interests. In his book World Without Cancer, he argued in favor of a pseudo-scientific theory that asserted cancer to be a nutritional deficiency curable by consuming amygdalin. He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, which promotes false theories about the motives behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System. He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports a specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. He also believes that the biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.

Biography

Griffin was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 7, 1931, and became a child voice actor on local radio from 1942 to 1947. He later emceed at WJR, and continued as an assistant announcer at the public radio station WUOM. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1953, majoring in speech and communications. In 1954, he served in the United States Army, and in 1956 was discharged as a sergeant.
Griffin worked as a writer for Curtis LeMay, vice presidential running mate for George Wallace during his 1968 United States Presidential campaign. Shortly thereafter, he began writing and producing documentary-style videos about the same controversial topics covered in his books, such as cancer, the historical authenticity of Noah's Ark, the Federal Reserve System, the Supreme Court of the United States, terrorism, subversion, and foreign policy.

Political advocacy

In 1964, Griffin wrote his first book, The Fearful Master, on the United Nations, a topic that recurs throughout his writings. While he describes his work as the output of "a plain vanilla researcher," Griffin also agrees with the Los Angeles Daily Newss characterization of him as "Crusader Rabbit".
Griffin has been a member and officer of the John Birch Society for much of his life and a contributing editor to its magazine, The New American. Since the 1960s, Griffin has spoken and written about the Society's theory of history involving "communist and capitalist conspiracies" over banking systems, International banking, United States foreign policy, the U.S. military–industrial complex, the American news and entertainment media as propaganda, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the United Nations. From 1962 to 1975, he completed nine books and seven film productions; his 1969 video lecture, More Deadly Than War: The Communist Revolution in America, was printed in English and Dutch. In 1974, he published World Without Cancer, and in 1975, he wrote a sympathetic biography of JBS founder Robert W. Welch.
In May 2009, Griffin helped Robert L. Schulz and Edwin Vieira organize a meeting at Jekyll Island of thirty people including "radical tax protesters, militiamen, nativist extremists, anti-Obama 'birthers,' hard-line libertarians, conspiracy-minded individuals with theories about secret government concentration camps, even a raging anti-Semite named Edgar Steele." Speakers at the meeting "warned of 'increasing national instability,' worried about a coming 'New World Order,' denounced secret schemes to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States, and furiously attacked the new president's 'socialized' policies and failure to end illegal immigration," and attendees made plans for a "continental congress" that occurred in November 2009 that was hosted by the We the People Foundation. Griffin was the first to speak at the Jekyll Island meeting and he "told conferees that merely putting 'large numbers of people in the street' was not enough. 'We must,' he said, 'achieve power.'"
He founded an organization called "Freedom Force International" that put on conventions, like a "Red Pill Expo" in Bozeman, Montana in 2017 which, according to the local newspaper, "its organizers say, promotes freedom of choice, has been criticized by human rights proponents as an “alt-right” recruiting attempt."

Conspiracy theories and fringe science

''The Creature from Jekyll Island''

He has opposed the Federal Reserve since the 1960s, saying it constitutes a banking cartel and an instrument of war and totalitarianism. Griffin presented his views on the U.S. money system in his 1993 movie and 1994 book on the Federal Reserve System, The Creature from Jekyll Island. The book was a business-topic bestseller. The book also influenced Ron Paul when he wrote a chapter on money and the Federal Reserve in his New York Times bestseller, .
Edward Flaherty, an academic economist writing for Political Research Associates, characterized Griffin's description of the secret meeting on Jekyll Island as "paranoid," "amateurish," and "academically suspect." Jesse Walker, the books editor for Reason magazine, says the book has grains of truth but "reduce things too much to a certain narrative, where the mustache-twirlers are behind everything."

Cancer, chemtrails, and AIDS denial

In 1973, Griffin wrote and self-published the book World Without Cancer and released it as a video; its second edition appeared in 1997. In the book and the video, Griffin asserts that cancer is a metabolic disease like a vitamin deficiency facilitated by the insufficient dietary consumption of amygdalin. He contends that "eliminating cancer through a nondrug therapy has not been accepted because of the hidden economic and power agendas of those who dominate the medical establishment" and he wrote, "at the very top of the world's economic and political pyramid of power there is a grouping of financial, political, and industrial interests that, by the very nature of their goals, are the natural enemies of the nutritional approaches to health."
Since the 1970s, the use of laetrile to treat cancer has been identified in the scientific literature as a canonical example of quackery and has never been shown to be effective in the treatment or prevention of cancer. Emanuel Landau, then a Project Director for the APHA, wrote a book review for the American Journal of Public Health, which noted that Griffin "accepts the 'conspiracy' theory ... that policy-makers in the medical, pharmaceutical, research and fund-raising organizations deliberately or unconsciously strive not to prevent or cure cancer in order to perpetuate their functions". Landau concludes that although World Without Cancer "is an emotional plea for the unrestricted use of the Laetrile as an anti-tumor agent, the scientific evidence to justify such a policy does not appear within it."
In 2010, Griffin engaged in HIV/AIDS denialism, claiming that human immunodeficiency virus "doesn't exist" and that antiretroviral medications cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
In a 2012 video titled "What in the World Are They Spraying?", Griffin asserts that airplanes leave a permanent grid of chemtrails hanging over cities like Los Angeles.

Noah's Ark search

In 1992 Griffin wrote and narrated The Discovery of Noah's Ark, based on David Fasold's 1988 book, The Ark of Noah. Griffin's film said that the original Noah's Ark continued to exist in fossil form at the Durupınar site, about from Mount Ararat in Turkey, based on photographic, radar, and metal detector evidence. Griffin also said that towns in the area had names that resembled terms from the Biblical story of the flood. He endorsed the historicity of the Biblical account of the flood, and speculated that the flood was the byproduct of massive tides caused by a gravitational interaction between Earth and a large celestial body coming close to it.

Interviews