#698: Hutton Gibson

Hutton Gibson is an erstwhile Jeopardy champion and the father of actor Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson is famously crazy. But Mel Gibson’s crazy doesn’t hold a candle to the crazy of his father Hutton. Now, Hutton is in his nineties, but he still seems to have some crazy left in him. (Note to those who wonder: Hutton is as American as Sovereign Citizens – he moved to Australia in the 50s and back to the US some years later.)

Gibson is what they call “an outspoken critic” of the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church and of Traditionalist Catholics who reject Sedevacantism. He was ousted as secretary of the Latin Mass Society of Australia after becoming increasingly vocal about the Seat of Peter actually being vacant due to John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council, and subsequent popes being heretics. He has self-published several collections of rants on the topic. He has also been quoted as saying the Second Vatican Council was “a Masonic plot backed by the Jews.” Thing is, Gibson thinks, the Second Vatican Council introduced explicitly heretical and forbidden doctrines into the Catholic Church in order to destroy it from within. So it must be backed by the Jews. Who else would do anything like that? Apparently the late John Paul XXIII was also a Muslim. The recently absconded Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, is “homosexual” (and a Freemason), and “half the people in the Vatican are queer.” Apparently that’s how theologists banter about such high-floating matters metaphysical, in Gibson’s mind.

Gibson is, as already suggested, a rather rabid conspiracy theory nut (he belongs to the “Catholic Conspiracy” school – yes, that’s a whole subgenre, comparable to the subgenre of “Nazi zombie movies” of movies; the comparison is apt in so many ways). He is, for instance, a holocaust denier, saying that “the entire catastrophe was manufactured as part of an arrangement between Hitler and ‘financiers’ to move Jews out of Germany.” Apparently Hitler “had this deal where he was supposed to make it rough on them so they would all get out and migrate to Israel because they needed people there to fight the Arabs.” Besides, concerning the “alleged” death toll of the Holocaust, “[t]here weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe,” chimed in Hutton’s wife Joye. “There were more after the War,” said Hutton. After the interview (with Feuerstein) Hutton claims he was misrepresented since Feuerstein never admitted that the interview was taped. You can probably imagine roughly how he approaches 9/11. And indeed, Hutton has claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks were perpetrated by remote control by the people you imagine Hutton Gibson would accuse of doing so.

At the January 2004 We The People conference, Gibson advocated that the states secede from the Federal government of the United States and that the United States public debt be abolished, so he is apparently currently celebrated by the religious rightwing wingnuts for his bald patriotism.

He also has a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can convince him that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Unfortunately he decides what counts as evidence, and given his relationship with evidence in other cases I don’t think there is much point in trying to collect that prize.