RFK Jr. Is Headlining the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit. This Doesn’t Bode Well.

On April 21, the first day of the 14th annual Rx and Illicit Drug Summit, organizers announced a surprise presenter for the closing plenary on April 24: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., newly minted Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and vocal proponent of building labor camps for people who use drugs.

…

Government agencies and for-profit partners have never exactly been at the forefront of harm reduction, and it’s clear what demographics the summit caters to; the registration fee is over $1,000. It’s always skewed to the right, and it’s not necessarily surprising that HMP Global is now platforming a man who famously wants to build hundreds of “healing farms” into which people facing drug charges can be sent indefinitely to “learn the discipline of hard work,” and who wants us to believe this is an alternative to incarceration. But when RFK Jr. is the overdose-crisis expert addressing an audience filled with many of the nation’s major players in drug policy, that’s still a good indication of a five-alarm fire.

…

Other speakers included United States Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn (R). Several people who attended Blackburn’s panel told Filter that her thoughts on overdose prevention were mostly about the importance of border security, including that “all options are on the table” when it comes to President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. 

Attendees of Bondi’s session told Filter that she appeared to confuse stimulants with benzodiazepines, describing students “using Xanax to study.” And that she repeatedly claimed the majority of the illicit fentanyl in the US is brought in by migrants crossing the southern border. Yet there was still clapping and whooping coming from the audience.

…

RFK Jr., who’s widely known to be in recovery from problematic heroin use in the 1980s and reportedly attends nine AA meetings per week, has spoken publicly about being influenced by the work of psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung. Jung wrote of man’s “spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness,” and how drugs and alcohol distract from this quest. Like the Protestant work ethic that teaches us how godliness and salvation are found through hard work and suffering, it all conveniently dovetails with the capitalist need to maintain the supply of human labor.

While revisiting Gnosticism (which, in short, was my bridge to witchcraft) on my personal blog, I recently explored Carl Jung’s connections to both its traditions and to alchemy. Notably, Jung also collaborated with the OSS, the precursor to the CIA—a lesser-known facet of his work that intersects intriguingly with his interest in symbolism and transformation. His accounts of visions and stone tablets immediately brought to mind Joseph Smith’s translation of the golden plates into the Book of Mormon, along with the angelic revelations that shaped the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I am a former member, having come to see it as a cult). Given these parallels, it was unsurprising to learn that some speculate Jung may have intended to establish a religion of his own.

Sources:

OSS SECRET AGENT 488 (archived)

Roots of Carl Gustav Jung in Gnosticism, Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism

Carl Gustav Jung – The 20th Century Gnostic

Carl Jung’s Major Influences and Philosophy

‘Before and After Science’: Esoteric Traces in the Formation of Psychoanalysis – Research Repository

Cult Fictions: C.G.Jung and the founding of analytical psychology

Irony or hypocrisy? ENTHEOGENIC RELIGION IN THE RED BOOK BY CARL JUNG