Suddenly Anti-Semitism: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 32-37

 Webster has given us our plot. It is this: The Illuminati, led by Adam Weishaupt, infiltrated the Freemasons and began overthrowing the European world starting with France in 1786. Why? Well, I’ve never actually read a conspiracy book that explained that notion even though it’s more important than anything else. When we left off last week, there was a meeting in which all of the secret societies: the Illuminati, Masons, and Martinists had met to agree to the plan. In reality, this meeting did happen, but it was about codification of Masonic history, the Illuminati were not invited (although Baron Knigge who was a member of both did attend).

Webster wants to walk a fine line between condemning Masonry for these plots but excusing every Mason with a name. She writes that even those that disagreed and were horrified, still kept quiet. Which doesn’t excuse anything. If you see someone drowning, can swim, and refuse to help—you’re responsible for their death. All of these good people that Webster is trying to defend, she’s only doing so because they can look at her and roll their eyes, “uh, yeah, that never happened.”

To which she’ll reply, “They were sworn to secrecy, they can’t admit it.”

So we move forward: who is ready for some anti-Semitism? Because I sure as hell wasn’t, “1781 and 1782 were remarkable for the growth of another movement which found expression at the Congres di Wilhelmsbad, namely, the emancipation of the Jews.”

Ok…so, you can’t delve into these globe spanning conspiracy theories and not run into some anti-Semitic version of it. Also, I knew that Webster hate the Jews, but I thought she’d wade into it slower. She hits a couple of Jewish philosophers/theologians up for quotes which are about as cherry picked as you can get. She cites Moses Mendelssohn who, in reality, wrote a book that Kant praised whose main thrust was that the state should not push religion on to its citizens either favoring one or preventing another. It wasn’t a pro-Jewish book anymore than saying the local German government shouldn’t force Jews to become Lutherans.

Mendelssohn is an important figure in Jewish history for this claim. Webster twists that into the claim that Judaism ought to be favored, or that the Jewish people are not subject to the law. She then moves against two different figures: a disciple of Menelssohn named Christian Dohm.

Webster writes, “During these years a wave of pro-Semitism was produced throughout Europe by Dohm’s great book, “Upon the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews…”

Let’s be clear, when she says “pro-Semitism” she means tolerance. European anti-Semitism is so intertwined in European history that anti-Semitic scenes and images are literally stained into glass in Cathedrals. Dohm’s book is cast by Webster as some call to violence by Jewish people against Christians, she quotes a third person Heinrich Graetz as claiming that Dohm’s book, “painting the Christians as cruel Barbarians and the Jews as illustrious martyrs.’ ‘All thinking people,’ he adds, ‘now begin to interest themselves in the Jewish question.”

In the first quote, we have to consider that the Christian persecution of Jewish people would make them cruel barbarians to those that they were actively oppressing. The Jewish people made for an easy scapegoat by Christian authorities because according to the book Christians follow, they killed Jesus. There’s also the holdover from Medieval times where Jewish bankers handled the money because Christian kings were not supposed to charge interest. Then there’s the blood libel, where Jewish Rabbis were accused of kidnapping Christians to use their blood to make matza bread. When these writers talk of Jewish emancipation they are talking about freeing Jewish people from centuries of persecution. Not placing crowns upon their heads.

Webster has the Jewish angle and the Illuminati angle; but how do they fit together? Are the Illuminati and Jewish cabal equals? Is one subservient? And if so, who is in charge? We’ve been painted a picture that the Illuminati are the masterminds here, and then suddenly we’re thrown this Jewish plot.

It’s very odd, because once a page or so detailing Jewish involvement is over, we’re back to Weishaupt and “twelve leading adepts.”

Weishaupt is portaryed as a tyrant who rules the Illuminati through cunning and imagination, Webster cites “Philo,” the codename for Knigge, “it is the despotism that he exercises over men perhaps less rich than himself in imagination, in ruses, in cunning…I declare that nothing can put me on the same footing with Spartacus as that one which I was at first.”

This portrayal seems familiar, and longtime readers of this blog, should be familiar as well. This is the type of thing that Robison focused on when we covered his book (for Substack readers I have to link to an older blog for this). It’s like conspiracy theorists are obsessed with gossip. So, Philo doesn’t like being in charge, that’s not a big deal, everyone complains about their boss once in a while.

The rest of the story here is known to us. The ruler of Bavaria was let known that secret societies may be plotting against him, so he banned any society that didn’t publish the names of their members. Wesbter cites the testimony of Robison’s four witnesses as being diabolical—which she claims is evidenced by, “All religion,’ they declared, ‘all love of country and loyalty to sovereigns, were to be annihilated, a favourite maxim of the order being: Tous les rois et tous les pretres/Sont des fripons et des traitres.”

In English this means, “all kings and priests are rouges and traitors.”

She’s actually citing from Robison so we have a provenance for her claims here. Robison’s book had the problem of pulling a quote from a letter (like above) and then claiming some nefarious extension of it when a more mundane explanation is more plausible. Knigge, is more than likely complaining about the lack of upward mobility because Weishaupt is in charge, rather than making the claim that he’s some kind of omniscient puppet master. Trusting Robison’s work is not a good idea, as I said in that series—his problem is that he’s got a “young people these days…” chip on his shoulder and is looking for evidence to support it. Webster isn’t viewing any of this skeptically and she should.

When she cites Robison who writes, “they intend to establish universal liberty and equality…they intend to root out all religion and ordinary morality, and even to break the bonds of domestic life, by destroying the veneration for marriage vows, and by taking the education of children out of the hands of their parents.” She claims that this means the Illuminati wants the “abolition of the family (i.e. of marriage and all morality, and the institution of the communal education of children).”

The parenthetical is more akin to what Robison wrote, but it’s still more extreme. What the Illuminati wanted was the elimination of religion from all of this. This is because, as Kant (a contemporary of both Robison and Weishaupt) would point out, that religious morality is not based on arguments but on fiat by people interpreting what they claimed was the word of god. Deism is what they were pushing. There isn’t an attempt to destroy marriage (they weren’t Anabaptists), there was an attempt to get the Catholic church’s hands out of it.

I should note that this kind of thing is a matter of legitimate disagreement. Webster can disagree with Weishaupt and the Illuminati’s goals here all she wants—that’s fine. I think she’s wrong, that we do not need religion to educate children (which is what the general education of children was at this period in 18th century Germany); but she isn’t just disagreeing. She’s claiming that this is part of a larger plot that is going to culminate in the French Revolution, and somehow there are Jewish philosophers involved as well.