DID DAVID GRAEBER KNOW AHEAD OF TIME THAT HE WAS GOING TO BE MURDERED?
DOES THIS CRYPTIC TWEET CONTAIN A HIDDEN MESSAGE?
[A]ny pirate who proved too brutal, or even who threatened to abandon his wife for another woman, could be eliminated quite easily by the introduction of poison into the evening meal; in which case, any remaining booty would pass to the hands of his widow and her family.
-David Graeber in Pirate Enlightenment, published posthumously by his Estate
HEY FOLKS,
As you may or may not be aware, the Estate of David Graeber has been busy since the late great anarchist scholar died unexpectedly in Venice after complaining to his friends that his wife was torturing him.
David Graeber died on September 2nd, 2020. Since then, his estate has published three books.
The Dawn of Everything (co-written with the British archaeologist named David Wengrow and a “superb editorial team” which included Melissa Flashman (“our wise counsel in all things literary”), Eric Chinski (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Thomas Penn (Penguin UK), and possibly others
The Democracy Project (co-written with Nika Dubrovsky, his widow)
Pirate Enlightenment (or, the Real Libertalia)
I have spilled tons of ink about David Graeber’s death by this point. On one hand, I want people to focus on the very real possibility that he was murdered, possibly by his wife Nika Dubrovsky, who released a demented statement after his death claiming that she was convinced that he had died of COVID, despite the fact that he never tested positive for the imaginary disease.
(A quick note - back in 2020, most consumers of statist propaganda believed that there was there was a super-deadly killer virus on the loose, which caused cold and flu-like symptoms. Upon further investigation, it turned out that this much-hyped new disease wasn’t new at all - it turned out that the symptoms were actually just due to the common cold, influenza, pneumonia, and a handful of other conditions. As far as I am aware, Nika Dubrovsky has not corrected her earlier statement about David Graeber’s death being caused by COVID, which we now know is fictional, and, in any case, couldn’t possibly have caused organ failure or internal bleeding. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this shit out, people!)
NIKA DUBROVSKY IS THE PRIME SUSPECT IN THE DEATH OF DAVID GRAEBER
Personally I am convinced that David Graeber was killed, and that his widow Nika Dubrovsky is the prime suspect.
Regardless of whether or not she is responsible for his death, she certainly seems to have made the most of it. Three books from a major, world-famous author… That’s not nothing. I know that authors don’t actually get a lot in royalties, but I would imagine that a writer as famous as David Graeber must have been sought after by publishers.
If Nika Dubrovsky is a good negotiator, she’s probably making out like a bandit.
David Graeber apparently left a lot of unpublished writing behind. Indeed, the project that kept him and his long-term collaborator David Wengrow busy for ten years, which led to the posthumous publication of The Dawn of Everything, was imagined by the pair as a project which would eventually lead to at least four volumes (though those of you familiar with Graeber’s writing style will be forgiven for doubting that Graeber could limit himself to a mere four volumes).
David Wengrow, in the introduction to The Dawn of Everything, explains:
David Rolfe Graeber died aged fifty-nine on 2 September 2020, just over three weeks after we finished writing this book, which had absorbed us for more than ten years. It began as a diversion from our more ‘serious’ academic duties: an experiment, a game almost, in which an anthropologist and an archaeologist tried to reconstruct the sort of grand dialogue about human history that was once quite common in our fields, but this time with modern evidence. There were no rules or deadlines. We wrote as and when we felt like it, which increasingly became a daily occurrence. In the final years before its completion, as the project gained momentum, it was not uncommon for us to talk two or three times a day. We would often lose track of who came up with what idea or which new set of facts and examples; it all went into ‘the archive’, which quickly outgrew the scope of a single book. The result is not a patchwork but a true synthesis. We could sense our styles of writing and thought converging by increments into what eventually became a single stream. Realizing we didn’t want to end the intellectual journey we’d embarked on, and that many of the concepts introduced in this book would benefit from further development and exemplification, we planned to write sequels: no less than three. But this first book had to finish somewhere, and at 9.18 p.m. on 6 August David Graeber announced, with characteristic Twitter-flair (and loosely citing Jim Morrison), that it was done: ‘My brain feels bruised with numb surprise.’
Because that seems like somewhat of a cryptic remark, I finally got around to looking it up.
Okay… that doesn’t seem less cryptic after I looked it up. If anything, it’s more cryptic.
If you look a little closer, in the comments of that specific Tweet, you’ll find this:
Hmm. Certainly nothing conclusive, but you can’t tell me that this is normal behaviour. Something weird does seem to be going on.
True, if it wasn’t was for the fact that Graeber died mysteriously a month later, I wouldn’t have given either of the above Tweets a second thought. I would have assumed Graeber was stage-whispering an inside joke or something. It’s only given the full context that things like this become mysterious.
And that’s the thing with this case - it doesn’t get any less mysterious the more you look into it. It just gets more and more mysterious.
Imagine that you’re a homicide detective reading the above Tweets in the context of a homicide investigation. Would they seem normal to you? I’m not a homicide detective, but they sure don’t seem normal to me.
It turns out that Graeber’s Tweet about his brain feeling bruised with numb surprise is a Jim Morrison reference and comes from a Doors song called Soul Kitchen.
Let’s that a close look at the lyrics to that song:
Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I guess I'd better go now
I'd really like to stay here all night
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights shed their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise
Still one place to go
Still one place to go
[Chorus]
Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves
[Verse 2]
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets
Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget
Learn to forget, learn to forget
[Chorus]
Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves
[Outro]
Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
All night
All night
All night
Okay, you can’t tell me that’s not weird.
The final words of that song are:
Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
Okay. I’m trying to come up with some kind of non-paranoid, non-conspiracy, la-dee-da interpretation of this Tweet, but I’m drawing a blank. Can someone please help me out here?
This random website offers some possible interpretations of the lyrics to Soul Kitchen:
The song starts with a sense of urgency as the clock tells the singer that it’s time to leave. The reference to cars crawling past all stuffed with eyes offers a glimpse of a busy and overwhelming urban environment. The street lights share their hollow glow, suggesting perhaps the emptiness people feel in their daily lives.
The chorus speaks of a soul kitchen, a place where the singer can find comfort and solace. The soul kitchen is not just a physical place but a metaphor for something much deeper; a place where the soul can find rest and nourishment. The gentle stove represents the warmth and comfort of home. The stanza “Turn me out and I’ll wander, baby, stumblin’ in the neon groves” speaks of the transience and unpredictability of life. The singer wants to stay in the soul kitchen, but he knows he has to leave.
The final stanza repeats the sense of urgency from the first. The singer wants to stay in the soul kitchen for one more night, but he knows he has to leave. The repetition of “all night” emphasizes the singers’ longing to stay in this comforting and nourishing place.
The lyrics of Soul Kitchen are metaphorical and can be interpreted in different ways. The soul kitchen can be seen as a metaphor for home, a place where the singer feels safe and comfortable. Throughout the song, the singer refers to the gentle stove, a symbol of warmth and comfort. The soul kitchen can represent a place where you can escape the pressures of the world and find rest for your soul
Other interpretations of the song suggest that the soul kitchen is a metaphor for the journey of life. The singer invites the listener to “let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen,” suggesting that they need to find a place where they can rest and regroup. The neon groves represent the excitement and unpredictability of life, but the soul kitchen is a sanctuary that will always be there when needed.
Some have suggested that the lyrics are about Jim Morrison’s experience of feeling like an outsider in society. The lyrics “Learn to forget, learn to forget” could allude to the idea of forgetting about the societal norm and instead embracing a sense of freedom and individuality.
Hmm. Could David Graeber have been referring to his body as a “Soul Kitchen”, in the sense of a home for his spirit?
David Graeber wasn’t known to write explicitly about his spiritual beliefs, but he must have had them. He definitely had a healthy respect for different spiritual beliefs, as is befitting of an anthropologist. I suspect he was either an animist or a Deist and wouldn’t be surprised if he believed that his soul would live on after his death. But to be fair, all this is highly speculative. If only David’s friends would clear things up!
I might be reading too much into this, but there might be something to the line about speaking in secret alphabets. David Graeber won a scholarship to a prestigious prep school after some archaeologists discovered his precocious ability to translate Mayan hieroglyphics when he was still very young.
Let’s keep in mind that David Graeber famously stated that he wanted to live forever. He said so on multiple occasions, including in a debate with C.I.A. front man Peter Thiel, who likes to present himself as some kind of self-styled libertarian.
Darren Allen famously mocked David Graeber for wanting to live forever after the great scholar’s untimely death, because obviously no true anarchist would be so technophilic. But could David Graeber have been sending a message to the world that he had zero intention of committing suicide? Is Darren Allen simply misinterpreting something that was said facetiously due to an ulterior, surreptitious motive that could not be stated plainly?
In the light of Graeber’s cryptic reference to Soul Kitchen, I think that question merits consideration. Perhaps Graeber, who was presumably too smart to believe in literal immortality, was sending a message to the world that he was not suicidal. This is something that someone who was concerned about being “suicided” might have done.
Let’s take a careful look at the famous Peter Thiel-David Graeber “debate”, in which at times the great scholar appears to be cracking up, possibly due to some unknown source of severe psychological stress. He keeps laughing throughout the interview and appears to be greatly entertained by the absurdity of the situation, but there is something unsettling and retrospectively tragic about it. Is he fully sane?
If you go to the 47:00 mark of the above interview, you will see Peter Thiel make an awkward joke at his own expense, which he jokes that he is secretly “working for the regime”. David Graeber breaks character, mutters “secretly” under his breath, gives an impish smile, then looks around as if he’s in trouble. Does this body language support my hypothesis? Or am I over-analyzing things?
Call me crazy, but being crazy might actually be my expertise here. I detect some kind of craziness going on here - some differential between Public Me and Private Me, if that makes any sense. Is David Graeber performing for the cameras here? If so, he appears to never have lost an anarchist sense of humour, and this is the reason that I fire back so hard at Darren Allen for saying that David Graeber was not an anarchist. As far as I can tell, he was doing his best to be an anarchist under the circumstances, which was one of duress.
I really do need other people to help me out here, though, because sometimes I worry that I might be distorting scant evidence to support my theory. But the fact remains that the official narrative about David Graeber’s death remains wholly unbelievable. “The COVID” causes symptoms of arsenic poisoning followed by internal bleeding and organ failure? Since when? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck off!
In the lack of anything resembling a remotely believable explanation for David Graeber’s death, the Internet can hardly be expected to refrain from speculation.
It is worth noting that Nika Dubrovsky:
Did not organize a funeral for her late husband
Showed alacrity in spending Graeber’s money. Very soon after marrying Graeber, she swiftly set up a weird-ass charity to benefit East German divorcees who apparently are not receiving their full pensions. She also used her husband’s fame to set up a couple of other weird projects, including something called the Museum of Care. What is the Museum of Care, you ask? Don’t ask me! Go surf around this website and tell me if you can figure it out! All I know is that it’s weird as fuck!
Sent a demented missive after his death in which she curses his friends for showing concern for him in the months leading up to his death
This is the closest thing that I’ve got to a smoking gun - the words of the Black Widow herself:
Many people asked me what the reason for David's death was. The Venetian hospital stated in autopsy's results that the cause of death is massive internal bleeding caused by pancreatitis necrosis. I want to add my own conspiracy theory: I firmly believe it is related to Сovid…
It was tough for David to abide by the rules of isolation, not go to the cafes, not meet with neighbors; he hated masks and continuously tried to reuse single-use gloves.
David (gently) complained about me to his friends, telling them how I "torture" him. In general, David was a heartfelt person, and his whining was in many ways boasting: "Look how Nika takes care and worries about me! "
However, I send rays of hatred to the careless idiots who giggled at my efforts to isolate and advised David to ignore my demands.
Of course, I know that I am the one to blame. David was an obedient Jewish husband. I could have put my foot down and demanded we leave immediately and spend the entire lockdown self-isolating in a remote village somewhere. But I didn't. I don't know why. I didn't want to be a control freak or a "strict wife."
You can’t tell me that’s not highly suspicious. I would argue that this alone should have been grounds for a homicide investigation. Can you imagine if a woman died suddenly after complaining about being tortured by her control freak husband? Obviously, he would be the prime suspect.
This whole case shows the double standard that exists for men and women suspected of intimate partner violence. People readily believe female accusers, even when there are complicating factors, such as financial interests or custody disputes. But even when a man dies after complaining of the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, people give his wife the benefit of the doubt. Fuck feminism. It’s disgusting.
On August 28, 2020, Graeber said in a YouTube video that he had been feeling “a little under the weather” but was beginning to feel better. The same day, Graeber tweeted that he had “not been in tip-top shape.”
If you watch the video, Graeber certainly appears to be in reasonably good health, speaking with the characteristic enthusiasm that so endeared him to his fans.
Does he look like he has “the COVID” in this video? No, he does not. Does he look like he might have some kind of weird health problems going on? Kind of, yes. He looks somewhat frazzled and bedraggled, I’ll give you that. Could his health problems have been caused by a combination of arsenic poisoning, social isolation, and domestic abuse? I find the latter possibility more plausible than the former.
It’s worth noting that Graeber was also active on Twitter up until the day of his death.
This was his last Tweet:
After he died, Nika Dubrovsky took control of his Twitter account. She continues to use it to post things like this, which is a totally convincing performance of how a bereaved widow might honour her late husband on the anniversary of his tragic death.
Yup! Very human. Nika Dubrovsky’s sure good at pretending to have normal human emotions.
To be honest, the part that most upsets me is knowing that David Graeber apparently left behind a vast amount of unpublished writing. If Nika Dubrovsky inherited his Estate, that means that she is now the legal owner of his unpublished work.
I’ll note that David Graeber does not appear to have had full editorial control over his own books even before he died.
The same day that he published the cryptic Doors quote announcing that he and David Wengrow had completed the book they’d been working on for ten years, he also tweeted this:
I find this strange. David Graeber was a world-famous rockstar scholar. Why couldn’t he and Wengrow choose their own title?
Then again, I know that his publisher refused to publish an earlier book of his under the title he wanted. The original title for Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value was The False Coin of Our Dreams. Maybe I just don’t know how the world of publishing works.
I have also heard it suggested that Graeber might have been pressured by his publisher to include an endorsement of Universal Basic Income in his book Bullshit Jobs. Do publishers attempt to influence the ideological content of major political writers? If so, that is scandalous! Why would a publisher think that they know better than a reknown scholar? If someone of David Graeber’s stature didn’t have editorial control over his own work, we can presume that less prominent writers published by major publishers don’t have creative control over the content of their own books. If true, this is a big, big deal.
I’ll let you be the judge:
Anyway, I will be reviewing Pirate Enlightenment soon.
I hope that these thoughts have been interesting to some of you out there, and I encourage you to listen to Soul Kitchen for yourself and attempt to interpret David Graeber’s cryptic Tweet for yourself.
Here’s a lyric video for your convenience:
And so long as I’m sharing songs, I’d like to dedicate this song, Toast to the Dead, to David Graeber, the greatest anarchist scholar of the early 21st century.
Rest in Power, comrade. Your legacy won’t be forsaken so long as I am here.
As always, your comments are appreciated.
For the Wild,
Crow Qu’appelle
Direct quote from Pirate Enlightenment: "I acquired a photocopy around that time of the Mayeur manuscript, after a visit to the British Library, which for a very long time sat in a pile of books and documents near a large picture window in the room in which I’d grown up in my apartment in New York, on extremely large sheets of paper, barely legible in its eighteenth-century handwriting. For many years I often felt it was slightly reproachfully beckoning to me from across the room as I was trying to work on something else. Then when I lost my home to the machinations of Police Intelligence in 2014, I had the whole thing scanned, along with various family pictures and documents too bulky to bring with me to London, and eventually, I arranged to have it transcribed."
Hmm. David Graeber lost his home due the machinations of police intelligence in 2014. I didn't know that.
Not to disagree with anything you're working out here but it would seem helpful for you to know that you're ideas about authors and publishers may be getting in your way. You seem to have a very romantic notion of this whole dynamic "authors write what they want and find publishers interested in promoting and selling their work" and that is so incredibly rare! Even the Hemingways, Hesse's, and Harrison's (Jim) have been strikingly crafted into styles and topics which the publishers demanded at the time
I would like to take this quite a bit further and suggest that there are times (like the last four years) where agenda, narrative control and promulgation are being pushed with such intensity and urgency that books are basically written BEFORE an author is even selected (if this seems paranoid or exaggerated just take some time trying to find songs on the top 40 music charts which were actually writen by the person performing it - very rare. Rather a mesage is selected and then a face and voice are selected).
Yes, perhaps this weirdness is less common in so-called academic works like Graeber, but lately the media has been drawing a lot of attention to fields of study like Physics, Lingustics, and Archeology and so on which used to be pretty hidden unless that was your work. They want sound bites, celebrity faces to identify with their program, more confidence games which obviously damage the credibility of these studies and the chance that those working in them could be allowed freedom of inquiry or to feel safe from attack while publishing unfiltered findings.