Recruitment Strategies: The Plot Against Civilization pp. 333-337

 

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 organizing such avowedly subversive ‘reading societies’ as the Fabian society, and other minor associations, but also in gaining control over ordinary circulating libraries and bookshops, by placing at their head men or women who are definitely working for the propagation of revolutionary doctrines.”

People who read might end up having ideas about how the world might be better improved. This isn’t a good idea according to people like Webster who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Literacy is the enemy here, just plain old literacy. If your ideas are good, there will be no problem in letting competing ideas take their shot. If, on the other hand, your ideas are trash then you can’t allow “works ranging from heavy treatises on intellectual socialism to the lowest form of demoralizing fiction.”

People like Webster always make me think of an observation I heard on the Skepticrat podcast many years ago in reference to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill: that every person who burns books must think that they are the first person who has ever done it for the right reason. There is no good reason, ever.

Webster attempts to justify this position though, and for that I give her credit. Most people don’t make it this far—they just explain how bad the books are and then run off a list of books. Webster explains why these books are bad and how they enlist recruits. Apparently Weishaupt suggested two methods (again no citation for where he made this suggestion): “exploiting grievances” and “promise of power.”

I find the first to be more interesting than the second, but Webster barely covers it. I find it interesting because this entire book has been Webster attempting to exploit a grievance. This book just predates the Great Depression. In England there is increasing unemployment and a general culture shock following the end of the Great War. There is a lot of despair in England just bubbling underneath and Webster’s book only works because it tells the reader who is responsible and how they did it. We’re a century later, the same conspiracy theory exists, but her theory feels hollow because we don’t have the same immediacy. It’s like listening to a 9/11 truther now. Conspiracy theories don’t work unless they are preying on some emotion, usually fear and sometimes appealing to an individual’s sense of superiority. She has to exploit grievance here. It’s another form of “every accusation is a confession.”

Her second, the promise of power is the least interesting one because that’s one she just made up. She leans heavily on Robison who went on a strange diatribe about how people all think that they should be in charge and this is how “the Order” will spread. I’ll say this, he’s probably right about the first part. We all think that we know better than whoever is in charge of us, and sometimes we are right. Yet telling the population that they can all be in charge is pragmatically foolish. Not everyone can be in charge.

What “The Order” was actually promising, and what the Illuminati were proposing, was individual sovereignty. Not a sovereignty held by some coronated ruler or divine bloodline. We should be aware that in 1776, at the founding of the Illuminati, self-rule by the population was not common. When Webster writes that Robison’s prophecy was fulfilled through this promise she’s double wrong. First, it wasn’t a prophecy, and second, she needs to understand that self-rule was the thing the Order wanted, the exact type of thing that she says is under assault. It was under assault, but it was so by people like her—just read the history of fascism in England.

She writes several paragraphs on this, trying to demonize the call for equality and the “pyramidical scale of Weishaupt”—his leadership hierarchy which is apparently different than the French monarchy she loved so much. The point she’s making leads her to a strange position about demagogues which seems utterly irrelevant to the point she’s been trying to make. Remember, this is the conclusion of the book, she can’t introduce new things.

The final method for recruiting is scaring people into agreeing with you. This is a non-effective method if there is alternative that is already in power. The way she writes this is so weird because the tone is one of a mic drop, but it fails completely. The sun still doesn’t set on the British Empire so anyone scared by “the Revolution” can simply run to the Empire. But you know who is really good at scaring people and forcing them to do their bidding? Illuminati? No. The Jews? We haven’t heard about them for a bit, but no. It’s the Germans. German psychology is all over the “so-called Labour movement,” everything goes back to the Germans. The Trade-Unions and the Bolsheviks—are all at the behest of their German masters.

Finally, though, finally for one of these books, are we told of the ultimate plan, “Socialist teachers will inculcate anti-patriotism and materialism into the minds of the rising generations, and Germany will be ale to take over the British Empire without an effort.”

Luckily, I read this book alone at my job, because when I read that line, I started laughing. Germany? This book was written after WWI and after the treaty which absolutely destroyed the German economy for years.

This is how we know she’s full of shit. She’s scared of an enemy that is going to require decades of rebuilding before it can even hope to become a threat and she wants us to believe that her fellow countrymen are going to look at the Weimar Republic and think, “yes, that. We want the thing we just reduced to nothing.”

A German conquered Britian is her ultimate fear. What’s amazing about this fear is that someone reading this is thinking, “but the Nazis, they will become a legitimate fear.” This is true, but even more strangely, Webster is going to attempt to put aside her anti-German racism to support the fascists in Germany. She’s actually going to fall for the very thing she fears.