Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 We’re finally at the end of this book. Let’s see how she wraps it up. Last week we were treated to her rather late introduction to Christianity as being the savior of, uh, human civilization. She claims that only Christianity can save us, but throughout this whole book I haven’t been able to pin down what Christianity has power over. She wants us to believe that this (whatever “this” means) is a fight between good and evil, and to get there we have to jump through some special pleading hoops, “ The words of Joseph de Maistre who, like Barruel, regarded the French Revolution merely as the first stage in the campaign, must be taken as the battle-cry of the White Army today: ‘the French Revolution is Satanic in its principle and can be only really killed, exterminated, and finished by the contrary principle. ” Right after quote she puts the French original in parenthesis, which is not something she’s consistently done throughout this book. Once in a great while, we got the origin...

  The biggest hurdle atheist and secular groups face is establishing the kind of community that religions have because of their history. Everyone gathers at the place of worship because that’s what people have always done, whether the individuals gathering are really into it or not. It’s just the default practice and the non-religious organizations have to find a way to crack that. Webster begins this section with an attack on Weishaupt’s alleged claim that the Illuminati needed to appeal to those with a “ hankering for religion.” This is precisely the problem, but that problem is largely addressed by the actual Illuminati when they adopted some of the practices of the Masons. Webster is afraid that the people are going to abandon their religion for Socialism. She cites an unnamed “dignitary” of the Church of England who claimed that Jesus would be a Bolshevik had he returned to 1920s England. If this person said it, I get what they mean. There is a problem that this entire p...

  I wonder if you could have a conservative conspiracy theorist that is actually pro-women’s rights. I’ve never run across one. All conspiracy theorists that I have read, have viewed any progress on women’s rights as being part of the conspiracy. Webster, a woman, is no different. The Illuminati, we must remember, was about as progressive on women’s issues as one could get in 1776. They attempted to educate women and include them in their organization. They would not be on par with the male members but for a club of this kind to include women at all is a positive step, of course Webster is going to have a problem with this. Our selection this week begins with her attack on “Feminism.” This book is going to be published in 1921, which means that Webster was working on it for at least a year. Keep this in mind because it was not until 1918 that women were given the right to vote in the UK—provided that they were over the age of 30 and owned property through marriage. This, as a s...

  Towards the end of the Robison book that is the origin story for this conspiracy theory, Robison began complaining about a German reading society. For Robison the Illuminati thing had run its course and it was difficult for him to pretend that that an organization that lasted just over a decade was secretly in charge. He sought a new enemy, someone was running continental Masonry, and he jumped from place to place and target to target. The German Reading Societies were his final target. These societies were going to do two things: the first began publishing as many books as cheaply as possible. The second was that they were going to establish a system within the German speaking states so that a person in Berlin could request a book from a library in Bavaria and have it delivered to them. This was a problem, but Robison never explains why this is an issue. Webster tells us what the problem is: they’ll be reading unapproved books, “ Not only have the moden Illuminati succeeded in...