The Mastermind: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 37-41

 “Here a curious point arises. Was Weishaupt the inventor of this system? We know that he was indoctrinated in occultism by Kolmer, but beyond that we can discover nothing…how is it that so vast a genius should have remained absolutely unknown to posterity?”

Webster raises one of the most important questions in these types of global conspiracy theories. The question of origin is really important, who came up with this plot? For a skeptic this is a good question to figure out exactly how far down road the conspiracy theorist is going to kick the can.

As of this writing, two days ago the Trump administration publicly claimed that not only did convicted sex trafficker and rapist Jeffrey Epstein kill himself but also that there was no list and no other documents related to his operation. I am not going to weigh in on those conspiracy theories (I’ll link to an article I’m going to write for a different site when it goes up); what I am going to talk about is one of the defenses that I’ve seen on r/conspiracy. That defense is that it was too dangerous to release the list as it would be a death sentence for anyone that did. This position raises the question of who would carry out that sentence? The president of the United States is the one that is in charge of this alleged list so who is above him?

In the case of Weishaupt, Webster raises the correct problem: who taught this guy? If no one taught him then he should have been noted before his appointment as a professor of Theology. It’s not a substantiated fact that Kolmer taught Weishaupt. This is a fact that Webster is assuming based on a different conspiracy book. Even if it were true, then who taught Kolmer? At least when Icke gives his Lizard Alien thing it’s an origin point. It’s not just the knowledge, it’s the motivation. As someone that took a professorship in theology, it would seem that Weishaupt just wanted to be surrounded by his books, paper, and ink; but then suddenly he wanted to conquer the world according to these people.

She can’t answer this question, no one can—because it has no answer. What Webster can do is throw shade on the philanthropic nature of the organization. She says, “With regard to the philanthropic nature of Illuminism it is only necessary to consult the original writings of Weishaupt to realize the hollowness of this assurance.”

Ok, challenge accepted. Let’s see how Webster frames it first though. Her position is that in the correspondences between Weishaupt and his adepts; there is no mention of charity or philanthropy only world domination, the sheer love of destruction, and the “insatiable spirit of intrigue.” Right away, we have a problem, she’s only consulting the letters of Weishaupt. The letters are important, but there’s also his book.

I’ve not finished reading this book but, from the introduction to it, we can read the type of person that Weishaupt was looking for to join his organization, “Whoever does not close their ears to the lamentations of the miserable, nor their heart to the gentle pity; whoever is a friend and brother to the unfortunate; whoever has a heart capable of love and friendship…”

I will admit that I pulled that from page 5 of the introduction to Weishaupt’s book, because I’m not that far into it. However, it seems cross purposes with what Webster is claiming. I wouldn’t expect too many of the correspondences that were made public to be about philanthropy considering they were used as evidence in the trial that Robison covered in his book. The problem is that this is cherry-picked evidence. Webster isn’t interested in Adam Weishaupt the person, she’s interested in Adam Weishaupt the myth. For that she is leaning heavily on Robison and Baurrell’s works, for which the former is very unreliable and I have not read the latter.

The next few paragraphs are rehashes of what she’s mentioned before. We’re treated to the repetition of the part about two classes of women members, a eulogy for atheism, and Weishaupt’s desire that kings and priests disappear from the Earth. For the last part we have to keep in mind that conspiracy theorists like Webster are generally pro-authoritarian, and Webster is going to become a literal 1930s style European fascist whose pro-Nazi position is only tempered by her hatred of Germans. There are some new details, she claims that in the confiscated papers from Zwack there was a diagram for a safe that would destroy papers inside if forced open, a method of poisoning an entire room, and a recipe for a tea which caused abortion. The latter was known to us because of Weishaupt’s possible impregnation of his sister-in-law that we covered in the Robison book. This is also not an invention of theirs. There is mention of such a tea in the show Deadwood, this was a thing that existed and it’s just poison. Enough poison to end a pregnancy but not enough to do lasting harm to the mother.

The women membership is only mentioned to inflame the social conservatives reading this book, and make no mistake—it’s both classes that do this. The first is the apparent permissiveness of either prostitution or libertines; while the second is the very nature that women would be admitted and taught to read.

The chapter ends with the dissolution of the Illuminati in Bavaria. In real history the Bavarian rulers were offended that a group opposing theocratic and monarchic rule would exist, so they banned the group. However, they couldn’t be seen as targeting this specific group because that would look exactly the type of situation that began the firestorm of the American Revolution; so, they banned any group which didn’t make public the list of members.

Webster adds something to this story, “A copy of this publication, entitled Original Writings of the Order of the Illuminati, was then forwarded to every Government of Europe, but, strange to say, attracted little attention, the truth being doubtless, as Abbe Barruel points out, that the extravagance of the scheme therein propounded rendered it unbelievable, and the rulers of Europe, refusing to take Illuminism seriously, put it aside as a chimera.”

So, I looked for this book, and I cannot find it. Now, some of you may be better than I at finding stuff online and if you can get a pdf of it post the link in the comments. What I did find was a bunch of conspiracy books that aren’t the real thing (the clue is that they mention the Bilderberg Group), the works of Abbe Barruel, and this last thing which is a list of rules that members of the Illuminati were to follow. This last link would absolutely prove my point: that the Illuminati was just a nerd club for enlightenment philosophers—but I cannot verify this as a source.

Finally, Webster is claiming that his organization was going to have a devastating impact on the world around it. However, let’s look at what she’s claiming—that the world isn’t prepared to resist the machinations of this evil organization but only the government of a small province in the German speaking territories was? We’re on page 40 of this book and she’s running into a devastating contradiction.