Economics: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 243-247

 One of my favorite parts of conspiracy theory books, that I’ve learned over the last several years, is when they get into economics because they really don’t understand economics. Conspiracy theorists understand very little about the world normally and the better conspiracy theorists stay in their lane. For some reason that I have yet to fathom they feel the need to delve into economics. Webster’s book, as we have seen, is not coherent when she tries to explain economics it gets worse.

During her discussion of the French Revolution, she tried to disparage the revolutionary government because the free enterprise system wouldn’t keep the tailors employed as they no longer had aristocrats to make clothes for. When the revolutionary government set up work houses, she said that this was bad because workers should be able to find their own employment and not rely on the state…unlike those tailors who relied on the king which was the state at the time. I don’t know if she doesn’t understand economics or if she doesn’t care about it.

We do know that she wants to villainize any revolution, so her vitriol is going to be coming and going. She twists and turns phrases to fit her claim, nothing is more obvious than when she gets into the economics of the world.

She writes that Kropotkine would abolish the old system of economics for a new system, “you [the farmers] will come to an understanding with the workers of the towns, who will send them [Tools] to you in exchange for your products.”

Webster thinks that this is absurd. A peasant who needs a scythe will bring turkey eggs, find out that they aren’t worth a scythe and will instead come home with a chisel. This is what we call a strawman argument. How did she think that an economic barter system worked in the old days? She’s trying to get the reader to imagine a currency-based system only without money, but things. You want to buy a loaf of bread, so you need to bring the correct number of nails with you. She never imagines that Kropotkine is speaking metaphorically that currency will be based on the work product of the people as Adam Smith (that dastardly socialist) recommends. Kropotkine, in this little comment she has cherry picked, is just arguing for a replacement of the mercantile system. Her example is so stupid, why would the farmer take the chisel when they needed a scythe? That’s not how bartering works at all.

She continues by illuminating the word “Expropriation.” The peasants, the revolutionaries claim, will expropriate the riches and goods of the aristocracy. The problem here is that no one is pretending that this wasn’t going to be the case. When the Russian revolution was finally over, they seized the property of the Tsar and the aristocracy. Webster tells us that it was the boldest of calls to violence. Yes, it was. That was the point to get the lower class of Russian society to overthrow the reigns of power.

Then, believe it or not, the revolutionaries tried to kill the Tsar…a few times actually. Alexander II is the Tsar who freed the serfs from serfdom, so this means Webster is going to do that thing where she retroactively pretends that this makes him a good guy. Lest we forget she claimed that the desire of the serfs to be free was merely a ploy by the Illuminati and any such effort of freedom was contradictory to the spirit of the Russian people.

The story of Russian assassination attempts on the Tsar is a lot less well-organized conspiracy and much more Wile E. Coyote. A lot of ACME inspired gun and bomb plots but eventually a bomb gets thrown at the armored carriage of Alexander which knocks it over but leaves him unscathed. As he walks over to the wounded he is reported to remark, “Thank God I’m unharmed.” To which a second assassin cries out, “A little early to thank God.” Throws a second bomb which mortally wounds the emperor. That conversation probably sounds absolutely awesome in Russian.

The result of the assassination was typical of the Tsars—they absolutely cracked down on dissent. Whatever reforms Alexander II had planned were discarded. Webster says that the assassination ended all hope of reform, and whether this is true is impossible to say. Alexander’s reforms weren’t that popular to begin with, then again, while he was alive there was at least some progress.

For Webster though, this isn’t progress. Any reform that granted the population more rights was actually a pox upon them because it is always the followers of Weishaupt that demand these rights.

Webster closes our section by admonishing the revolutionaries for the blood they spilled. She reports that the people she claims were the ringleaders of the assassination were cruelly put to death. Then she says, “But though we must execrate these barbarous methods of retaliation, we must surely admit that brutality was to be found on both sides.” If, she continues, that we must pity the martyrs of the revolution we should also have pity for the victims of the revolution.

Ok, this is a fair point for someone to make. Not Webster though who has not expressed a single twinge of pity for the suffering of the people of Russia up until this point. What she has purposefully neglected up in both the Russian and French revolutions is why violence became necessary to begin with. Suddenly she cares about the wounded members of Alexander’s parade as innocent bystanders; but she’s never once shown concern about the victims of the Tsar’s secret police who were exiled to Siberia for the crime of publishing criticism of the emperor. This is the “why are they being mean to us” plea of the current fascists in charge of the US. This is the “you made us hurt you” defense of tyrants. Webster isn’t even trying to hide it anymore.