By Francio Guadeloupe.

“He’s nothing but a Pharisee!” states Ad, half-jokingly, revealing teeth besieged by plaque and tobacco stains. Teeth like his tell a tale of working-class hardship. I have never come across anything like them in well-to-do neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. However, where Ad lives in working-class Feyenoord in the city of Rotterdam, tooth decay of this kind is not exceptional, and neither is a distrust of elites.

“I wouldn’t trust him an inch”. The elite figure Ad is calling a Pharisee and of whom he is so distrustful is former US President Barack Obama, who has supposedly sold his soul to the Babylonian brotherhood that runs our world. According to Ad (quoting the David Ickes of this world), this is a group of arch-elites descended from humans who made babies with reptilians from outer space. The Sumerian, Egyptian, Roman and Babylonian civilizations, Ad continues, and in fact all world civilizations, were established by these hybrids. I listen attentively, which pleases him. Now this same nefarious race, he rambles on, happy to impart his knowledge to me, has unleashed the coronavirus to get rid of most of humanity. They are also pushing vaccines, thereby continuing with their ploy of turning some of us into what they are: reptiloids.

“They’re pure poison”, blurts out Ad, answering a question I had not asked. He warns me not to take that Satanic Pfizer vaccine! Modern doctoring is actually witchcraft. He should know, he winks, as the people he is descended from have been fighting voodoo priests working for the Babylonian brotherhood from day one. It’s the same thing today, he avers: the medical doctors promoting the Pfizer vaccine are voodoo priests too. Their task is to make us even more ignorant than we already are and, in addition, to alter our brains so that we will forever remain naive slaves.

The human race is a race of slaves. He continues explaining that it is those who were made slaves who are most conscious of the enslavement of all of humanity. His people have much to learn from my people, Ad says, smiling as though he is paying me a great compliment. We have to join forces, blacks and whites, to topple the reptilians.

“But watch out, because not every Jew can be trusted. You must have heard of the Rothschilds!”. Black people have been infiltrated in the same way as the Jews. He’s unsure about me, he teases. I laugh and say I am not sure about myself either. He stops briefly as we walk towards the MCD Vreewijk supermarket, looking at me as if trying to make up his mind. He then says something like “Nah, I would know if you were one of those sons of bitches”. He knows my kind – middle class – because he once owned a store, until mismanagement and a divorce led to him losing everything.

“You’ve got some beautiful dushis”, he says using the Papiamento term for girls. Ad loves my people. Well, who he actually loves is Milouska, his Curaçaoan neighbour, who regularly allows him to eat at her house. Or, even better, lets him eat at the fast-food joint she works at without paying. In exchange, he babysits her daughters, and housesits when she and her boyfriend go on holiday to Curaçao. Today, he once again relates how she stood up to a bunch of Moroccan youths who were troubling him. When they saw that he had Antillean friends like Milouska –and, more to the point, her boyfriend and his friends – the young lads quickly cleared off. This was something she did for him despite not even knowing him. She had just moved in with her boyfriend and two young daughters. It was something she had done, he reasoned, because she recognised that he was a man who discriminated against no one – not even against the Moroccans, among whom he had many friends, particularly young divorced women. Ad was fond of what he called exotic women, dushis and other terms. He was hoping Milouska would hook him up with one of her girlfriends.

Yes, Ad has much to learn about gender. So do many people I know. So do I. And yes, it is safe to say that Ad is into what mainstream intellectuals nowadays call ‘conspiracy theories’. Like many people I know. He, along with my acquaintances who reason in the same way, simply call it ‘the truth’. I cannot say I do. So, what should I call his fancy theories about the Babylonian brotherhood? I won’t give them a name. Instead, I prefer to see them as a reminder that meaning matters, and meaning has to make sense. Why it makes sense to Ad, and what that may or may not have to do with his teeth and his social status, is what I am still trying to figure out. In doing so, however, I cannot forget that I have heard similar theories in well-to-do neighbourhoods, where most people’s teeth are pearly white.

Image: ‘Baphomet, the unseen’. @Francio Guadeloupe.

Francio Guadeloupe is a senior researcher and staff member of the KITLV. A Social & Cultural Anthropologist by training, Dr. Guadeloupe has worked at all the major universities in the Netherlands. He served for four years as the President of the University of St. Martin (USM), until hurricane Irma led to the temporary closure of the institution on the bi-national island of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin.