Communism, Hypnotism & the Beatles: The Communist Music Master Plan

If you're old enough to remember the hysteria that accompanied the arrival of the Beatles in America in 1964, you're probably old enough to remember that not all of it came from screaming teenage girls. There were those who thundered against them from the pulpit and argued that the arrival of the long-haired four and their nonconformist music presaged The End Of Civilization As We Know It!

 

Among the murmurers of Dark Conspiracies and Impending Doom was the Reverend David A. Noebel, an associate of evangelist Billy James Hargis and his Christian Crusade. Attempting to be scientific in his arguments, Noebel cites Pavlov's (another Commie!) famous experiments on getting dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell as part of the nefarious plot to adapt the Beatles and their rhythmically hypnotic music into Communism's Master Plan Against Humanity. The primitive, steady beat of the music has been scientifically and diabolically synchronized with the body's natural rythyms in order to render "a generation of American youth neurotic through nerve-jamming, mental deterioration, and retardation". The result is the Soviet weapon "mentacide" which Noebel describes as "a lethal psychological process that produces a literal suicide of the mind!" The whole pamphlet is filled with this combination of crack-pot pseudo-science combined with enough railings against the "four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks" to keep any rational reader in stitches. It's kind of rare, but if you can find this pamphlet, I highly recommend reading it. Your funny-bone will be tickled pink (or maybe that should be "tickled pinko!")

 

This wasn't the good reverend's only tirade against the Beatles or rock music (he was still fulminating against both in his 1973 book The Marxist Minstrels), nor was he the only voice among fundamentalist Christians to demonize rock music as anti-Christian or Communistic or even satanic (check out this essay by Johnny Marr for a fuller history). This was a time when the idea of playing rock music in a church was un-Christian and anathema.

 

Times do change though and, apparently, even some carved-in-stone, fundamentalist beliefs crumble with its passage. The first documented Christian rock group to play in a church was Mind Garage in 1967. It wasn't until the 1990s though, that Christian Rock really took off in popularity and now the children and grandchildren of those prophets of the Rock 'n' Roll Red Menace probably have no idea what the old folks were so upset about.

 

Photo Credits:

1) "The four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks"

2) Cover of Communism, Hypnotism & the Beatles

 

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