Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 Our chapter is about the growth of Socialism and instead of talking about the Jews, we are going to get some actual historical information…well, we shall see about how much true information we get—but it is a step up to read an entire page and not read that she’s blaming the Jews. This section is called “The Philosophers” and we begin with Robert Owen. Owen was a textile factory owner and philanthropist who believed in “ the proper housing of the workers, the better education of the children, and indeed of the whole population by the inculcation of ideas of thrift, sobriety, and cleanliness, brought about a complete regeneration of the town and excited universal admiration.” Those words were from Webster, and from what I can discover, she’s right. Owen operated a factory where the wages and living conditions were improved from the average factory worker at the time. This factory at New Lanark in Scotland paid its workers with tokens that were only useful in the factory store (in t...

 Webster loves her block quotes and in today’s section we get a bunch of them. It seems like her floor is anti-Semitism, and her writing is a ball dropped from the hand. It hits the anti-Semitism floor once, then rises above it, only to come down again. The trouble is that the ball does not bounce as high as it did before and it spends less time away from the floor. In the last few months Webster has mentioned “The Jew” once or twice, but then she’ll spend some odd paragraph on it going back to whatever her target was before. In the last few of our posts, her return to blaming Jewish French has become more frequent and today’s post she’s back on it. The question she begins to answer on page 107 (of the PDF) is very interesting: did the Jews do better in France before or after the Revolution? This is a question that is within some sphere of historical research and as an outsider I’d be interested to hear the yes/no. Webster isn’t interested in that question so much. She’s more inter...

 Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the laziest conspiracy theories. Obviously, they are immoral theories seeking to demonize an entire group of people. I just want to add this additional pejorative to it. Webster, in her discussion of the Italian revolutionaries (secretly on the payroll of the Illuminati) adds this, “ but it was not in the band of dissolute young Italians he gathered around him, but in his Jewish allies, that Nubius found his principal support.” When she writes “Jewish allies” we should hear a “dun dun duuuuun,” in our heads. The reader of this book doesn’t need more explanation, just mentioning the word “Jewish” is enough for her intended audience to think, “of course.” Yet, let’s re-examine what she’s claiming. Her target here is the Carbonari, the Italian group that would fight for a unified Italy. Apparently, this is a goal that the Jewish underground also wants. Her source for this allegation comes from a Joseph de Maistre, a counter-enlightenment thinker a...