Libraries: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 128-132

 What's old is new again. In this section, we get insight into what the "German Union" actually is and how conspiracism hasn't changed in two hundred years. As I mentioned last post, the Illuminati had been effectively disbanded in the area we know as Germany. The Bavarian government had outlawed them, and their membership went off to do other things. Weishaupt tried to restart the group, but most people just wanted to be Masons which they felt that the Illuminati was merely an imitation of anyway. The Illuminati only live on in the minds of conspiracy theorists like Robison. 

It's not hard to see why either. Conservatism throughout history has difficulty with change, that is, after all, what it is conservative about--the old ways, the status quo, etc. When the change comes, ushered in by some kind of Kuhnian paradigm shift, it's usually not considered a natural change. It's something else that is causing it. This presents a rather difficult issue for the conservative,s especially in terms of development in media: do they adopt the new media for its practical use but then decry it whenever anyone else uses it? Or, do they remain consistent: either calling for its ban or keeping quiet? It's almost always the former.

The early concern over the internet was that the devil would ensnare kids, but that didn't stop conservatives in the early days from using it to spread their message. The printing press was much the same pattern. Spreading literacy was a bad idea...but then it is an easier way to print Bibles. Robison is continuing this effort, only his target--the same as it is today--is the libraries. 

The modern reaction against libraries and Robison's reaction against them are the same. The libraries have books that they don't like so therefore we must defund the libraries, ban the books, and send men with weapons to disrupt their events. The move here by Robison is based entirely on religious belief. This is very interesting to me because I did not start reading this book as a book to debunk for the atheist reader. I've done that kind of thing before, and while I was expecting some mention of religion; I wasn't expecting it to this level. The entire chapter so far, the entire end of the last chapter on the Illuminati, is laser-focused on the idea that this group is going to argue against religion. 

Robison also plays here at connecting the dots. Like a true conspiracy theorist, he begins claiming that any news editorial or anything which seems to challenge the authority of a King is now evidence of the Illuminati's secret operations. He's not shy about this either as he states, "This is surely a strong instance of the machinations by which the Illuminati have attempted to destroy the Liberty of the Press..."

The "this" in the quoted line is allegedly a manuscript written by Dr. Stark, which was an expose in the new Illuminati. This is a specious claim because Robison claims that the work was never published due to the Illuminati stopping it. If this is the case, then how does Robison know what is contained in the book? If he has a copy of the manuscript--then he needs to mention it. He doesn't, because, I suspect this is merely a story this Dr. Stark told concerning the reason that no one will publish his book. Surely, Robison could have helped with the publication of it. 

As for the assault on the liberty of the press, Robison has to prove that they stopped the publication of the book. The publisher itself claimed that there was a libelous passage about a woman and some indelicate treatments of religion that prevented the publication for which they reached out to the author and were awaiting a response. This seems more plausible than a defunct secret society reaching their black hand to an obscure publisher in Leipzig and crushing their will. 

The real assault comes next. It would seem that an agent of this Dr. Stark found people in coffee houses in Leipzig and Halle discussing how advantageous public libraries were to the general public. These libraries helped provide the uneducated with the opportunity to learn what were new modes of thought in the learned world. Even the agent of Stark could not help but agree. Yet this agent then hears of a plan to make an association, "which should act in concern all over Germany, and make a full communication of its numerous literary productions, by forming societies for reading and instruction, which should be regularly be supplied with every publication."

This association seems pretty awesome. I have this now: if my local library doesn't have a book we can order it from a different branch. They are all connected to each other and yes, this does allow everyone the advantage of every publication that the entire system has. This is a bad thing how? Well, it's bad because this will facilitate the German hoi polloi in getting some book that may give them dangerous ideas. They may get the idea that superstition isn't rooted in anything but traditional. Even more dangerous, they may read that people who are different from them...(are you sitting down?)...are still people. They may get all kinds of ideas about representation and that a person isn't better or worse than another by virtue of their birth. 

This association is called the German Union, and it is ambitious indeed if it wants to create a library system that would cross political boundaries. Robison believes it to just be another head of the Illuminati. The important point though is that the evidence for this evil institution is that they want to build more libraries.