For the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion

by Not Sure

4 October 2026

“So the Internet would eventually become Babel, you see. Which it has become Babel. The authorities themselves, I used to read from the authoritative articles from different professors that work for governments, lots of them do, talking about data, how they'd overload everyone with just data. And when it came to emotive topics, that's what they would use to get different groups and forums all arguing with each other. Never mind the fact a lot of the forums were set up by the ones to attract folk in and then they'd attack you. Just like the 77th Brigade of cyber warriors they call them in Britain. They have many other ones too and different categories of them as well, that will hammer you if you want to get involved in taking people on, head on, you know, your point of view versus theirs. It's all a big game to them. It's managed that way.”

– Alan Watt “Like Nosferatu Uncloaked We Recognize Once Again” - Oct. 4, 2020

On Friday (2 October 2026) I glanced into the family room and saw the title of a YouTube video that my brother was just about to start watching: 'Prepare for War' - Tucker Confronts Britain's Most Pro-War Advocate.

Last week, I listened several times to the section for today's Redux. Alan Watt talked about data overload and how emotive topics would be used to get people arguing. It is all managed.

I settled in for the beginning of the episode because this was the perfect illustration of what Alan talked about. Tucker Carlson was in England in the home of former Member of Parliament (MP) Jacob Rees-Mogg to inquire why Rees-Mogg was telling English people to 'prepare for war' with Russia. The first thirty minutes turned into forty-five because my brother kept pausing the video to heatedly refute Rees-Mogg and share bits of history with me. 'His standard for entering wars is ridiculous: defending the concept of the nation-state as morally right. This goes back to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. An Englishman and a Frenchman carving up the Ottoman Empire. World War One was all about clashing empires. This man is just mouthing propaganda for his banker bosses. You know he began his career working for a Rothschild bank as his father before him did?' I did not know that.

The episode was about an hour and a half and with my brother's ringside blow by blow, I was looking at two and a half hours, so I excused myself and left him to watch it. Yesterday, he told me he'd finished the episode and he had several things to say about it. As I suspected, this debate was an excellent example of how emotive topics are used effectively to engage people and get them to pick a side and enter the argument.

Today, I read a little bit of the mainstream coverage of the debate, as well as a few comments posted on X. It was fascinating to take a closer look at how the well-oiled machinery works together to extend the reach and impact of one emotive argument. “Tucker Carlson faces backlash...” “Tucker Carlson faces ridicule after Russian economy and WWII claims.” Most mainstream news outlets mocked Carlson and the consensus was that Tucker Carlson had been 'schooled' on basic facts by Jacob Rees-Mogg. The debate was handled as a standard, pre-recorded podcast rather than a forecasted, publicly traded event offered on platforms such as Polymarket. Still, commentators on X and other outlets 'scored' each exchange.

Reese-Mogg's stated position is that Russia poses a significant threat to the UK, and therefore the UK should be 'prepared for war.' One of the first assertions that Carlson made was that Russia's economy was larger than the UK's. Rees-Mogg immediately corrected him and gave numbers associated with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Carlson claimed that Russia's military was larger than Britain, with a standing army of 1.5 million compared to the UK's combat-ready force of under 19,000. Rees-Mogg countered that the UK's full-time trained armed forces number over 127,00, and the UK's strength is defined by its technological capability and its NATO alliances.

My armchair comment was to ask, 'If the UK has a better economy, sufficient armed forces, and is not bordering Russia, then why does Rees-Mogg think Russia is a threat and the UK needs to 'prepare for war?' But we are told that Russia has issued threats and warnings to the UK because of British support for Ukraine.

In these kinds of debates, questions are not meant to be answered. The podcast served its purpose by acting as a catalyst for dozens of press articles and countless reaction videos. Tucker Carlson explicitly stated in the debate, 'I'm not here defending Hitler,' but media watchdogs like to point out a pattern of Carlson hosting figures or making arguments that downplay Nazi aggression and engage in World War II revisionism. Rees-Mogg noted that Russia never would have invaded Ukraine had Kyiv kept its nuclear weapons. “I want Britain to have nuclear weapons and I don't mind the United States having them.” He stated that the West wanted to stop smaller states from acquiring nuclear capabilities, “Because we didn't want smaller states to have nuclear weapons, we could live with Russia and China and India and Pakistan and Israel and the UK and France having nuclear weapons.” Tucker missed the opportunity to 'school' Rees-Mogg on the fact that Israel is a small state.

Tucker Carlson's father worked for the Voice of America and U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and their Cold War international propaganda and broadcasting missions often overlapped or coordinated closely with U.S. intelligence objectives. (Read Frances Stoner Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters). Tucker Carlson states that after university, he applied to and was rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Jacob Rees-Mogg attended Oxford, worked for J Rothschild Investment Management, made millions in banking, and as an MP has had government appointments too numerous to mention. What I do find worth noting is that the Discovery Channel did a five-part reality series with him and his family entitled Meet the Rees-Moggs. This series captured the tense lead-up to the 2024 UK General Election and concluded with the aftermath of him losing his parliamentary seat. He now primarily works as a television presenter and commentator. He possesses the perfect background to go toe to toe with Tucker on emotive topics. “Toe to Toe with Tucker on Emotive Topics” is a bit long for a podcast title, but it's catchy. As Alan Watt said, “It's all a big game to them. It's managed that way.”

Before I visit the Tower of Babel, we'll check in with Alan on the God of the Old Testament compared to the God of the New Testament. In a broadcast from August 27, 2007 entitled “Royalty, Life-Rafts, Religions and Repertoires Versus Another, Better Way,” 'Rick' called in to ask about whether Jesus was an agent of the Freemasons or acting against them. Alan discussed the mystery religion tradition, and the Rosicrucians as precursors to Freemasonry.

Then he finished by saying, “The New Testament is almost the antithesis of the Old. The old one is a godfather, a mafia type deity which could be very benevolent or ruthless and sometimes very moody like a drunken father after a hangover the next morning. They were never quite sure if he's going to hit you or hug you. The New Testament has a god of forgiveness and a personal god that you could talk to, so there are two opposing systems, because the New Testament was brought in with a lot of Greek Gnosticism brought into it from the deists and from the stoics from Greece. The old mystery religions are contained within the New Testament if you compare them with the old philosophies of Greece and ancient Egypt, whereas you've got a personal journey towards higher levels of consciousness and manifesting into a form of godhood; but, unfortunately, the ones that are alive today and believe in this they think they can be gods or they're still walking around and no mortal can handle godhood because we've got too many flaws. I hope that helps answer your question.”

The story of the Tower of Babel is recorded in the Old Testament, Genesis 11:1-9. The tower was very, very tall, but the story is short. Let's climb the whole thing.

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

I refer to The Works of Josephus for some context. Flavius Josephus was a Roman-Jewish historian and military leader, born in 37 AD and whose Works is the only source of Jewish history from the First Century CE. He helpfully puts the building of the tower in the context of what we call the Flood. He introduces us to the three sons of Noah: Shem, Japhet, and Ham who were born one hundred years before the Deluge. Without processed food and medical interventions, evidently life expectancy was long. They'd been holed up on the mountain for a long time, waiting for the plains to dry out. They finally descended to the plain called Shinar, speaking the same language, which makes sense if we believe the story that only Noah's line was saved from the Deluge. God commanded them to send colonies abroad to repopulate the earth, but they disobeyed Him. I guess the trouble with a long life is forgetfulness of important lessons learned earlier. God warned again, but they believed their current prosperity came from their own power, so they disregarded that warning too.

Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, and the great-grandson of Noah. In Hebrew, his name means 'rebel' and he spent a good deal of time convincing his relatives that their courage and strength was what secured their happiness; God didn't factor. He was described as a mighty hunter, a warrior. It was not easy for him to turn men from God, so his governing became increasingly tyrannical. He would get over on God, if God ever had a mind to drown the world again. He would build a tower so high that the waters would never reach the top.

We will learn more about Nimrod and his allegorical connection to Cain when we begin to study Alan Watt's Cutting Through in CTTM book club. Alan describes Nimrod as the First Artificer, a builder of weapons and the first city, the artificial beehive.

The Tower of Babel resembles ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats, where priests sacrificed animals at shrines at the top of these stepped pyramids. The official seat of the European Parliament is in Strasbourg, France, and since 1999, the Parliament has met in the Louise Weiss building. Sixty meters high, the top was designed to look unfinished 'like the European Union.' Compare the building to the 16^th century painting, “The Tower of Babel,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A.S. Architecture-Studio designed the Parliament building and states that the design was inspired by a Roman amphitheater. Early promotional material on the Parliament building from the Council of Europe featured the slogan, “Europe: Many tongues, one voice,” but the official inspiration of record remains 'Roman amphitheater' and any comparison to the Tower of Babel is a conspiracy theory.

Returning to Genesis, it is safe to say that God was not pleased with the tower and the disobedience of Noah's descendants. He confused their language, so they did not understand one another, and he scattered them 'upon the face of all the earth.' Josephus writes in Book 1, Chapter 4, Verse 3, “The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon; because of the confusion of that language which [was] readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion.”

Let us consider then, that this is exactly the definition that Alan Watt was reaching for when he said, “So the Internet would eventually become Babel, you see. Which it has become Babel.”

Sometimes we imagine the internet as a web, connecting us together. We ping our pals, and pizza & Pornhub. Forget the spider. The web is an amazing crocheted blanket, weaving our fantasies and desires, our hobbies and livelihoods, trillions of ether-byte strands at a time. Maybe you don't even need a visualizer. Born and raised in Babylon, it's all you know. It's urgent and intoxicating, familiar and cozy. Images of privation, starvation, death and destruction are bracketed with sexy selfies, funny cat memes, Baby Trump, and sports betting.

What strikes me harder than the Confusion to be found in the Babel of the internet, is the hubris of those who are building it, symbolically thrusting the rebellious middle finger heavenward. Nimrod resorted to tyranny because men were not easily turned from God. In our time, no tyranny was needed. It was our 'personal' computer. We love our CELLphones. Now that we've gotten comfy, we are told we have no choice. The Artificer has built the Artificial Intelligence in his image, and we will bow down. Our data will be harvested. Our land will be used for data centers and our water will go to the Beast whose thirst will not be quenched. The Confusion is drowning us and Noah is not here.