Notes from Upstream: Conspiracies and Their Witches
You're all invited to become 'Maxigators'
A phrase many use to label the jibber-jabber of crafty nutjobs like Candace Owens is “conspiracy theory.”
It is true that she and her fellow conspiracy mongers traffic in uncredible theories, but a more accurate phrase might be “witch hunt.”
Not every conspiracy theory ends in a witch hunt, but every witch hunt needs at least one conspiracy theory.
The conspiracy monger need not identify the conspirators. In fact, it can profit her not to. The audience will tune in again for those promised future revelations sure to come. Her vagueness generates the clicks and views and likes which form the currency of podcasting.
When the monger finally turns her vague theory into a witch hunt, previously passive viewers get to join the pack. That’s why Candace Owens appeals for “Candigators” to help her out. The thrill of the hunt is part of the fun.
In 1983, while I was studying at a law school in St. Paul, Minnesota, law enforcement officials in the nearby town of Jordan mounted a shameful witch hunt.
Scott County Attorney Kathleen Morris was hot on the trail of satanist child molesters. She charged twenty-four adults with horrible crimes, including child sex abuse and murder. She charged the crimes without corroborating physical evidence. Instead she based her accusations on coached and coerced testimony from susceptible children.
The stories were absurd, involving dozens of ritual murders, as well as one TV celebrity who had never come anywhere near Jordan, Minnesota.
In the end, Morris convicted only one defendant, and only because he pled guilty after she terrified him into compliance. His imprisonment serves as a lesson to anyone falsely accused.
One tip-off that her cases were bogus was her eagerness to punish any skeptic by charging him too. The purpose and effect of her retaliation was to bully any doubter into shutting up.
In America, the phrase “witch hunt” takes its origins from the notorious 17th Century Salem Witch Trials, when authorities executed twenty people and imprisoned roughly 150 others.
Teenage girl witnesses claimed that the “specters” or invisible spirits of accused witches were biting, pinching and otherwise torturing them.
Massachusetts courts relied heavily on this spectral evidence, so much so, that, in 1692, when Governor William Phips dissolved the original court and established a new court which barred spectral evidence, witchcraft convictions stopped altogether.
No specter, no conviction.
As in the later Minnesota cases, skepticism invited retaliation. After local farmer John Proctor called the witnesses fakes and the trials “sham,” the authorities convicted and hanged him too.
Nowadays, spectral evidence is inadmissible in American courts, although it pops up all too often in our public discourse.
For example, who murdered Charlie Kirk?
To rational people, the answer is obvious. It was the “furry” Tyler Robinson, in a gay relationship with his “transitioning” male roommate.
The evidence is mountainous. Forensic scientists identified Robinson’s DNA on the murder weapon’s trigger, on other rifle components, on the fired cartridge casing, on two of the three unfired cartridges, and on the towel wrapping the rifle.
Robinson has also repeatedly confessed, not only to his “trans” lover, but to others.
Against this and other overwhelming actual evidence, Candace Owens has tendered her own spectral evidence, starting with her claim that Charlie Kirk came to her in a dream and told her he’d been “betrayed.”
“I similarly, like I just said, had a vivid dream this weekend and Charlie came to me and he told me that he was betrayed…there is nothing and no one that is going to stop the truth from coming out and it is going to have international consequences. Take that to the bank. Quote me on that.”
On December 2, 2025, Owens expressed open hatred for the TPUSA witches who
“betrayed” Kirk:
“I now can say with full confidence that I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage. Yes I will be naming names and providing evidence for my claims. And I am making a personal plea to every well-meaning person who donated to this Godforsaken organization to request a refund. You were lied to. And leadership knew.”
TPUSA depends on contributions. The Candace Owens call for refunds was a call to destroy Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA.
TPUSA matters a lot. Some analysts credit TPUSA with winning the 2024 election for Donald Trump and the Republicans. (See, e.g., Grokipedia’s entry for Turning Point USA.)
On December 18, after three months of Owens lies and in defense of TPUSA, Ben Shapiro delivered a long-overdue response in a keynote speech at the TPUSA America Fest gathering. He called out some of those who smeared TPUSA leaders. He started with Candace Owens.
Right on cue, the next day, Owens executed the standard witch hunt playbook and accused Shapiro and his fellow Jews of involvement:
“Every time Ben speaks I feel more certain Israel is involved in 9/10. He’s just way too invested in Charlie’s murder. He never liked Charlie and he’s now suddenly pretending he had a duty to defend his legacy.
“Ben only cares about Israel’s interests. So Israel is involved.”
The next day she added:
“ON YOUR BELLY, WORM.”
Tucker Carlson has held back from endorsing that particular Candace Owens witch hunt, though he did ratify her ludicrous lie that the French President’s wife Brigette Macron is secretly a man. Carlson extolled “my friend Candace Owens, who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and very smart…and then it turns out, she’s right!”
(The Macrons are currently suing Owens for defamation. Question for law-minded commenters: should the Macrons be suing Carlson too?)
Not to be outdone by his friend Owens, Carlson has launched his own witch hunt. In a July 22, 2024, TPUSA speech, he alleged that Jeffrey Epstein was working a sex-trafficking blackmail operation for Israeli intelligence:
“Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?
“By the way, every single person in Washington, D.C. thinks that. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think that.”
If everyone knows something, it must be true.
In his December TPUSA speech, Ben Shapiro called out not only Owens but Carlson too:
“So, for example, if many speakers, including Tucker Carlson and others, get on stage here at TPUSA and claim without proper evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a Mossad rape ring being covered up by the Trump administration, they are also implicating in their speculation actual human beings, good human beings like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi and yes, the President of the United States, even if they’re too cowardly to say President Trump’s name.”
Tucker Carlson spoke after Shapiro. He debated as he routinely debates, by misrepresenting what the other guy actually said. He claimed that Shapiro had called for him and others to be “deplatformed.”
At no time did Ben Shapiro call for Carlson to be deplatformed. In fact, Tucker Carlson stood right there on the stage—literally the “platform”—cackling like a male Kamala as he feigned shock and surprise at the reprehensible words of Ben Shapiro.
From the TPUSA platform which Charlie Kirk built and Erika Kirk graciously provided him, Tucker Carlson screeched that what some unnamed person said about Muslims is “disgusting.” He pretended he was answering Ben Shapiro, but he could not have been, since Ben Shapiro had spoken not a single mumbling word about Muslims or Islam.
According to Carlson, “Attacking millions of Americans because they’re Muslims, it’s disgusting.”
In fact, Shapiro has specifically rejected attacking American Muslims:
“No one is in favor of people being targeted because they are Muslim.”
Tucker Carlson’s dirty little secret is that he was attacking not Ben Shapiro but TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk. According to Kirk,
“It’s suicidal to import millions of them…Islam does not believe in freedom of speech. Islam does not believe in freedom of religion. Islam does not believe in separation of mosque and state.”
Why is it worth anyone’s time to write or read about these podcaster squabbles? Who cares?
I do. Because underlying what looks like a superficial quarrel among YouTube personalities is a significant battle of ideas.
How long did we overlook the hateful insanity operating in our universities before we finally caught on to the damage it has done?
Likewise, we should not ignore “conservatives” like Carlson and Owens. They want to destroy TPUSA. They see Charlie Kirk’s thoughtful blend of religion, culture and politics as “disgusting.”
Their project is to replace the Charlie Kirk conservatism with their own narrow, crabbed and bigoted version.
Fearful to name all the names they have in mind, at least for now, they extend to Charlie Kirk the same cowardice they extend to Donald Trump, and focus on easier targets instead, which for obvious reasons means Jewish targets.
Gone unwatched and unchecked, the harm they do can wind up as dangerous to America as the more obvious leftist insanity we see unfolding in Minneapolis.
By the way, Charlie Kirk himself was willing to do his own deplatforming, at least when it came to bigots posing as “conservative.”
Here is Kirk dealing with a Nick Fuentes follower who claims that America is a “European nation for white men of good stock”:
As I wrote in a previous post, we need more people saying what Charlie Kirk said:
“You sir and your ideology is not conservative. It is right wing identitarian. It has no place in the conservative movement...Get out of Line! GET OUT OF LINE!”
All together now: “GET OUT OF LINE!”
Max Cossack lives with his wife Susan in a dusty little village in Arizona, in a house where two cats skulk about, obviously up to something, though he cannot yet say for sure what.
He may need your help in discovering their true purposes and identities. He invites you to join his investigation. You too can become a Maxigator. Their American names are Tyrus and Cocoa Puff, but no one knows their original Hebrew names. They’re most likely Mossad infiltrators—Max doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t think so. Max should probably check their teeth for transmitters, but he doesn’t look forward to the process—those bright little fangs can shred a man’s fingers like so many nasty little knives.
Also, in case you missed it, the brand-new Max Cossack novel Deep Fakery has just been released. It’s now available in eBook or paperback on Amazon.
Or you can receive a very special temporary Discount at VWAMBooks.com:
Purchase a personally autographed Deep Fakery paperback at 10% off and receive 1 through 7 additional VWAM books at the very special price of only $8 each, including any other Max Cossack novels and any Susan Vass collection of columns.
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My ancestor, Mary Towne Estey, was one of those women hung as a witch in Salem. She was posthumously exonerated. There are real victims of these witch hunts. It's unfortunate that such a former bright star like Candace Owens is turning into a lunatic.
My conspiracy theory is that satan stalks the world looking to corrupt as many souls as possible and destroy the institutions that should protect us from him.
The pandemic taught me that people are really easy to manipulate when they're terrified. Monetizing fear, as T&C are doing, is the cheapest, laziest way to power, fame and fortune in this broken world.