19. This whacky prediction was drawn from the Beatles song, ‘Helter Skelter‘
Manson’s name for the coming race war and its aftermath was Helter Skelter, named after a track from The White Album (1968) by the Beatles. This was no act of whimsy: the album as a whole was seen by Manson as a coded revelation of the race war, and from these hints and intimations he derived his whole prophecy. For example, he thought the song ‘Helter Skelter’ referred to the Family hiding in the mine shaft with the Beatles, rather than getting to the bottom of a slide, and that ‘Piggies’ referred to the black uprising against the white authorities.
