The Broken Clock part I: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 165-168

We are at the French Revolution and as I mentioned last week, this is the most important event for Illuminati conspiracy theorists. For them it is evidence of the first strike, the Illuminati created a bloody revolution. It's not plausible given the actual timeline but conspiracy theorists need to mention it. Robison is going to dedicate an entire chapter to the French Revolution, and it is here that we must remind ourselves that he's writing in the immediate wake of the actual revolution. He would have been reading newspapers printed about events in the revolution taking place the day after. 

It's news, it's actual news to him, and it's taking place right now. It's hugely important, but a few years after the Revolution he's going to draw the wrong conclusion about how it started. It's kind of depressing because the kernel of the truth is there and he just doesn't grow it into anything. 

We will begin with Robison's first broken clock of the book wherein he makes a correct claim and observation. Importantly he doesn't do so accidentally. 

Last week I mentioned the history of the French revolution as briefly as possible while sticking to accuracy. Robison is going to go into a bit more depth but here he makes several observations that are more interesting in that they are not based on gossip, hearsay, or some obscure letter that someone gave him. It's based on a reading of the historical event that had just happened. 

The first responsibility that Robison places on the Revolution is the King of France itself. First we have to get there. Robison speaks of the "Sages of France" again, the Enlightenment Philosophers whose ideas had grabbed the German states and were openly professed in France. These ideas were, "unsuitable to the absolute monarchy of France." 

Which is correct. Ideas about natural rights, freedom of speech, and representative democracy are hostile to monarchy. Yet these ideas were ideas of the literati, the intellectual elite. They would have appealed to the commoners but there would have been little they could do about it. It would not have been popular without some trend setters (or influencer as we would call them now) endorsing these ideas. In this case, the trend setter was the aristocratic class, including the king, of France. 

Robison rightly blames the King for what happened to the King. He writes, "In this attempt to ruin Britain, even the court of France was obliged to preach the doctrines of Liberty, and to take its chance that Frenchmen would consent to be the only slaves."

In the US, the American Revolution is extremely mythologized and even now it is becoming more mythologized in order to promote and ever-growing extremist version of nationalism. Even when I was in history classes, we were taught that the victor of the colonies was due to the American pluck and a little help from some French and German soldiers. What needs to be understood for historical context is the reason the help came from France in the first place. The American revolution was a proxy war for the French against the UK in much the same way that American war in Vietnam was a proxy war between the US and the USSR--or just like the Soviet-Afghanistan war was also a proxy war between the US and the USSR. 

The French crown dumped francs, soldiers, and officers into the war in the British colonies to upset Britain's colonial strength. The American colonists, fighting alongside them weren't just fighting a rival superpower they were fighting for an idea of being free from the rule of a monarch. We can debate the reasons some of the American leaders of the Revolution wanted independence in the comments, but the average militia man facing down the red coats was doing so for an idea. 

Back in France, in order for there to be popular support for the intervention the crown "was obliged to allow the Parisians to amuse themselves with theatrical entertainments, where English law was represented as oppression, and every fretful extravagance."

So we have French soldiers returning from a successful war, and were exposed to the ideals of democracy and fighting for a cause rather than a king. There were officers who stood next to American counterparts where the war gave those Americans a new station in life. Victory for the colonel in the American army change their life. They could have success in government or just in private land ownership without having to hope that the king noticed. The average Parisian could go to the theater and see the King of England be portrayed as a tyrant and be overthrown to cries of liberty with applause. Yet those same theater goers would leave the theater and "They found themselves under all their former restraints." 

Robison discusses two other features of Post-American revolution France. The first is the debt and, as I mentioned last week, the regressive taxes placed on the population to relieve that debt. The second is the Parliament which was seen as mediator between the King and the people. Here, Robison claims, was a growing threat itself. The members of Parliament could never rise above a certain position, they would never be inducted into the Noblesse du Sang (nobility by blood), and as they watched the American experiment grow they began to feel the ceiling which kept them down. 

It is at this point where Robison goes off track. Everything he is saying is true. He's excluding the famine, but I'll be generous assuming that he was unaware of it. The story continues that the King called for the "Notables" to come and give advisement. These people, the philosophers of France, the wise of the world all gave their advice. In that advice were the dangerous ideas of the Enlightenment. The words of Voltaire and Diderot, of Locke and Montesquieu. This is where the evil hand of the Illuminati, those strange Masonic Lodges, and the German Union would be seen--in the ideas that they published? 

If we understand Robison so far, it is that his opposition to the dangers of the Illuminati is that he must be recommending censorship. So far we have seen no evidence that anyone was forced to read these ideas. The various groups merely spread them. They would discuss the ideas of democracy, liberty, and rights; but no one was compelled to read them. In fact, quite the opposite, these works had to fight the censor. The point of the German Union was to make books available in areas where they could not be printed. What is at work here is the marketplace of ideas, and if the ideas spread by these groups are popular that's not an insidious conspiracy. The king sought advise, for which Robison claims that in seeking advice "he most assuredly declares his own incapacity, and tells the people that now they must govern themselves."

This is assuredly false. In asking for advice on a particular matter the king does declare that they are not an absolute authority but this is not a bad thing. Admitting that one does not know is not a vice, after all that is why the king has a finance minister. Robison is about to go off the rails and since this is section is a matter where Robison gets it right I think it's best to stop here. Next week, I'm assuming he's back off the rails.