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

Undreaming Wetiko — Book Soup

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

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