Social Equals: The Plot Against Civlization pp. 62-66

 “The conception of France rising like a phoenix from that great welter of blood and horror is as mythical as the allegory from which it is taken and has existed only in the minds of posterity.”

No notes, I just like that sentence.

Webster wants us to believe that the revolution failed. Not that the aristocrats retook power, but that the revolution never helped anyone. This is an interesting take, so we’ll have to consider her evidence for it. If you’ve been following along, she doesn’t have any. She has the people’s suffering during the terror, the counter-revolution, and the numerous groups fighting for control in this period. This is to be expected, and I don’t think any historian really believes that everything was just oysters and baguettes for the French during this period. Webster is playing on the ignorance of English history lessons that do not get into the nitty details of what it was like to live through the revolution.

Indeed, the American revolution had periods of uncertainty and chaos; sure, we didn’t have the terror to live through but there was a brief period of time where things were very unsure. What Webster is trying to do here would be like condemning the Irish revolution of 1917 because “the Troubles” happened.

She presents a long quote from Louis Madelin which describes the exhaustion of the French people after the revolution. This doesn’t prove that the revolution failed only that the people were tired. Yes, of course, I don’t think anyone can seriously dispute this.

Webster has introduced Madelin’s work with the phrase, “Yet in France the truth is at last beginning to be known…”

The phrase leads us to believe that we are dealing with Webster’s contemporaries. Madelin would certainly have been one of these. Then she pulls the old conspiracy theorist move of the bait-and-switch. She swaps out the contemporary of Madelin for a person named “Redhead Yorke.” Yorke was the child of a freed slave and who died in 1813. This isn’t a contemporary who is “at last beginning,” to see the truth. This is a person who wrote a book just after the Revolution had finished. The work Webster quotes from is titled “France in 1802” and is about Yorke’s travels through France. He does indeed describe the poverty in France and how difficult the life of the farmers was; Webster stops citing, but Yorke then describes how he didn’t like the wine, the meat was terrible, but the poultry was excellent. Once he arrives in Amiens, he describes crowds of people attending the theater, and how the average Frenchmen would rather be called a thief than someone who missed the latest play.

Webster writes Yorke reporting being assailed by beggars for alms, rife unemployment, no education, and all of this “owing to the destruction of the old nobility and clergy, and the fact that the new rich who occupied their estates were absentee landlords, there was no system of organized charity.”

This does not follow the earlier quotation. In fact, it appears 4 pages earlier (pp. 24 of the linked text). To Webster’s credit, this is about the ruin caused by the Revolution, but Yorke’s tone is different. Yes, there was poverty after everything was “over;” but the real problem is different. Yorke understands that the only thing these people are going to be able to do is join the military, an immense standing army that can only be supported by the merchant and agricultural classes.

Do we need to heed Yorke’s warning that such an immense army looks ready to burst upon Europe? Well, obviously, but we know now. Webster never addresses this, and it’s odd: she could easily fold this into her conspiracy. The Illuminati bankrupted the French aristocracy, caused a revolution, impoverished the people so the only hope they had was to join a military, and then they proceeded to conquer Europe. Maybe she’ll get to it. Yet, the better writing in these books is always at the beginning.

The theory I’ve been developing over the years and inspired by the writer of “Jewish Space Lasers;” is that what conspiracy theorists truly hate although they don’t realize it: is capitalism.

The rest of the chapter brings up a very interesting issue. The problem of who the revolution actually benefits: the rich. She points out the same thing in the Russian revolution (which was wrapping up while this book was published); and we can add to that the American revolution. Her claim is that all “Revolutionary leaders or writers have been boureois, from Weishaupt to Lenin. Marx was bourgeois, Sorel was a bourgeois likewise. No man of the people has ever taken a prominent part in the movement.”

Historically she’s made some errors. Marx wasn’t a bourgeois, he was highly educated but if it wasn’t for his partnership with Engels, he would have completely lacked funding. He also never led a revolution. Neither did Weishaupt, aside from the fictional one that Webster is alleging here. However, she’s largely correct in that the educated elite always begins the revolution. The problem is that these are usually co-opted by opportunists and demagogues. Lenin was at least a true believer while Stalin saw the opportunity to become a tyrant. The American revolution is a little more murky but even if we ignore the writings of the actual leaders of that Revolution and instead read Scottish thinker Adam Smith: the revolution was about the confusing and predatory taxation on the colonies; but more importantly that the people who contributed so heavily to the British crown were denied any say in the functioning of parliament.

Yes, the common person doesn’t normally lead a revolution, but that cannot be used as an indictment for all revolutions. If she wants to make this claim, ok, I suppose that she could, and it would be an interesting idea though I would feel that it is a little too ideological. This would mean that no revolution that was led by the wealthy would be legitimate—which would impugn her own Magna Carta and the English Civil War.

Webster closes by claiming that it is a known fact that the Masons, writers, and Illuminati were behind the French Revolution. This comes from a former revolutionary turned reactionary named Leopold Hoffman; but it’s also a false cause. Yes, some of the revolutionaries were masons, but that doesn’t mean that revolution came from Masonry. This is the error that Robison makes, and the error that the American “Anti-Masonic Party” made as well.

The primary quality that the elites had in the 18th century was literacy. The reason that these people wanted revolution is because they could read that there might be a better way to organize society. People like Franklin, Rousseau, and Locke could read reasons for a better way. What Webster doesn’t want, is that—literacy. She doesn’t care about the impoverished of France during the revolution because she didn’t care about them before it.