Brief: Wetiko: Original, New Age & Marxist Views
Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally to Bernhard Guenther and Laura Matsue's QAnon-adjacent version.
Wetiko's metaphysical framing, inherited from Forbes's explicit rejection of Marxist materialism, left the concept open to spiritual recuperation by the right. He proposes a different application: reading wetiko through David Harvey's "capital surplus absorption problem," compound growth's insatiable hunger for profitable outlets.
Show Notes
Columbus and Other Cannibals (Jack D. Forbes) — Internet Archive
Derrick Jensen interview, "The Left has never been against civilization" — Platypus Affiliated Society
Exorcising Wetiko — Journal of Futures Studies
Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition — Kosmos Journal
Dispelling Wetiko — Chaucer's Books Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Simon & Schuster
Wetiko: Healing The Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Paul Levy | TCM #62 — YouTube
Divide & Conquer and the Wetiko Mind Virus | TCM #35 — veilofreality.com
The Cosmic Matrix — Apple Podcasts Bernhard Guenther, Author — Piercing the Veil of Reality
Interview: David Harvey — Exploring the Logic of Capital — Socialist Review
The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism — reviewed by Ed Rooksby, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession — David Harvey, Socialist Register
