Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

  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...

  In Gary Allen’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” he explains that if you ask the average person what Communism is, they’ll give some answer about Russia. If they’re an academic, they’ll probably talk about the differences between Socialism, Marxism, and Communism. None of those, according to him, are correct, because Communism is something else. His view, and that of the John Birch Society as well as the current presidential administration is that COMMUNISM (Allen does all caps for this) is just a word for whatever they don’t like. Usually this is anything that is progressive or liberal. Increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy an extra 1%? COMMUNISM! Make law enforcement accountable for their actions? COMMUNISM! Etc. It’s all very stupid because the word has no meaning. What I didn’t know when I covered Gary Allen’s book was that he blatantly stole this framing from Webster, “ In the same way the word ‘Communism’ has a double meaning.” She goes on to explain that the average person...

  It is a good thing that this book is wrapping up because Webster is all over the place now. Last week I hypothesized that Webster was beginning to end this book when someone handed her an English copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which had just been published in England. She had to work extra hard to write that forgery into her book while at the same time discrediting it because she’s so racist against Germans that it actually overrides her anti-Semitism. Perhaps 1918 was just a different time. An important thing to remember about this time is that racism isn’t just about skin color. That aspect of racism still exists but there is also the racism against ethnic groups as well. When Webster attacks Germans, it’s racist—it’s just not what we are used to. Webster hates anyone that isn’t Anglo, Napoleanic French, or Bakunin specifically. Her book has to do the conspiracy theory move of making us afraid of the imminent future, so she has to look at the most immediate past....

Last week we glossed over the long period where Webster compared selections of the Protocols to selections of whatever she could use to show that the world revolution was being controlled by a single entity. She failed in this, but the point was to never create a case—this far in the book, you are buying her story. Her intended audience is not going to fact check her assertions about the other books. She’s been handed a gift in the form of an English translation of the Protocols which not only justifies her anti-Semitism but also her conspiracy. Because the Protocols are too good of evidence she questions their authenticity. This is a good move, a surprising one for her, but I would give her credit if I didn’t suspect that it was disingenuous. A little background for any new readers. This book was published in 1921. The first English version of the Protocols was published in Britian in 1920. While she’s writing this book, the Protocols are going to hit the shops. It had been widely c...

 After learning some Webster’s absolutely deniable opinions, with two basic facts thrown in, she wants us to begin focusing on who the real Illuminati is, “ who are the modern Illuminati, the authors of the plot?” Can you guess? I’ll give you two attempts only because the first one is going to be “isn’t the modern Illuminati the modern Illuminati? No. To find who the modern Illuminati are, we need only look at the Russian revolution. The revolution that three posts ago she said wasn’t worth covering. She characterizes the Russian revolution as having no motive other than a campaign of ceaseless destruction. This motiveless violent revolution has “ led many people to believe in the theory of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity,” and that, “ to the unprejudiced observer Bolshevism in Russia may well appear to be a wholly Jewish movement.” Anti-Semitism was a rife in England during the interwar period. There may have very well been people who blamed the Russian Revolution ...

  Works like this survive on vibes, and one of the vibes that they have to exploit is fear. Most of that fear is about changing the orthodoxy that the reader regards as “the default.” People hate change, especially Americans. An American will brag about surviving suffering rather than every question why they suffered in the first place. When the Communist/Socialists takeover (in Webster’s view these ideologies are the same), one of the cultural institutions that they target are the religious ones. From the perspective of the revolutionaries the reason that this is a necessary step is because religious institutions are part of the problem. The French revolution targeted the Catholic church because the Catholic church, at the time, was part of the oppression of the French peasantry. They not only blessed the Aristocracy they were inextricable from it. The Russian Orthodox church was the same. The Tsarist government was endorsed by the church and benefitted from it. What Webster lik...

We’re done with Russia, so no more of that weird racism—we’ll just have to settle for Webster’s normal brand. It’s 1878 and she claims that “ Western Europe experienced a repercussion of the Russian Terror, and the four leading Anarchists, Kropotkine, Cafiero, Malatesta, and Brousse, organized a worldwide scheme of violence described by them as the ‘Propaganda of the Deed.” I don’t think she knows what ‘repercussion’ means. Does she mean to say that the scheme of the four is in direct response to the Russian Tsar’s clamp down of the Russian citizens? I am really asking that question because there is no context for her claim. It’s the first sentence of the paragraph that opens the section. We just have to move past it I guess. The end of the paragraph implies a good old fashioned false flag. The German Emperor Wilhelm I (which Webster writes as “William” for what I assume are racist reasons) was the target of two assassination attempts by anarchists Hodel and Nobling. Webster tell...

 We’ve left the HIV/AIDS conspiracy and now we’ve moved on to the New World Order. You know, the thing that the entire book has allegedly been about, so we’re back to this topic. I know I sound like I’m beating a dead horse’s drum here, but the only justification for this appendix is that Cooper thinks that he needs one. He doesn’t understand what they are for but the “smart books” have them. Is this going to be evidence or different conspiracy theories that are supposed to prove his point. The first document is a scanned version of the front page of John Robison’s “Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on In the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies (Collected From Good Authorities).” It’s literally just the front page of the book. I spent a good year or so reading this book ; and it’s not the proof of anything. It’s just Robison complaining that Masonry in Europe isn’t how he remembered it, the Illuminati w...

The strangest thing about this post is that I do not know exactly how to write it. I’d always intended to cover this book—in fact, it was going to follow Behold a Pale Horse. However, the framing of this book within another book changes things because of the context. I had also known that the Protocols were in this book as well, but I assumed they were abridged in some fashion and not just plagiarized entirely. That changes things a little bit, but by that much. The first thing I want to say about it is that this is definitely a case of something I would like to call “the Mona Lisa Effect.” Think of the Mona Lisa. Ok, how big is that painting? In most people’s heads it looms large, but it’s about the size of a normal portrait (it’s actually 30 by 21), not tiny but not the wall covering monolith that we picture it because of its reputation. This is similar to Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” That book can be read in a few hours, it’s very short; but it has a reputation. The Protocols are li...

 Protocol 24 We come to the end of the book within a book. I’ll have thoughts on the entire thing and a summary next week, but we do still have to deal with this final protocol. “I pass now to the method of confirming the dynastic roots of King David to the last strata of the Earth .” This is one of those meaningless statements that sounds cool. Alex Jones does this all of the time; he goes on long rants about how he’s “for humanity” and it sounds really cool until you consider that it’s just vacuous in meaning. I’m sure Nilus worked really hard on this statement, but there’s nothing here. The elder is going to confirm the dynastic roots. Ok, that’s a sensible thing, but then he’s going to do so until the end of the Earth. I get the metaphor, but I’m not buying it. The Elder seems confused here. Is he taking over or is he ruling from the shadows? The first sentence makes me think that they are going to rule directly, but two paragraphs later he says, “ Certain members of the seed o...

Protocol 23 "That the peoples may become accustomed to obedience it is necessary to inculcate lessons of humility and therefore to reduce the production of articles of luxury." One of the biggest problems in the conspiracy world is that the conspiracy theorists seemingly want to lament the system that enforces a class system while at the same time not wanting to recommend any kind of system that would replace it. For example, present day conspiracy theorists seem to have an utter disdain for the capitalist system but they never dare criticize that because they've spent their entire lives demonizing Communism and Marxism. Someone like Bill Gates or George Soros should be their ideal because they are very wealthy. They've won capitalism, but instead they are demonized because they use their money in ways that conspiracy theorists don't like.  Similarly the Elder here is trying to tell us that humility can be taught if there are no items of luxury; but I can't se...

 “ In our hands is the greatest power of our day—gold: in two days we can procure from out storehouses any quantity we may please.” We wrap up our discussion of economics that the plagiarist clearly doesn’t understand with this sentence. This has to be an odd read for Cooper because Cooper sold gold on his radio show. He was one of the first people on the conspiracy right to really push the idea that gold was going to get us through the coming apocalypse. Here, the Elder is telling us that gold is their servant. This means that any transaction involving gold benefits the Cabal, and Cooper supports this. Now, of course he doesn’t, he hasn’t read this but rather inserted it into his book. I say this not to defend him but to attack him. He just knows that his fans like the Protocols so he put it in (though I doubt that they’ve even read it). The gold is the last straw for me, there’s no way that he’d include this and jeopardize his revenue stream. As I said though, we are done with ec...

Protocol 21 We're still on economics, even though I was sure we'd be done with it now. This protocol deals strictly with internal loans because, according to the elder, " they have fed us with the national moneys of the goyim, but for our state there will be no foreigners, that is, nothing external." I understand what the elder is claiming here: that because "they" control the world, there is no outside, there is nothing to be really considered "foreign." A country loaning to them is really just them shifting money around. However, this doesn't gel with what they said last week when there were clear differences between the states. The seemingly permanent problem with this book's consistency is that it wants to make the reader think that the plan is already complete but also that it can be stopped. Listen to Alex Jones now (well don't actually do that), he's both lost and about to win. The nonsense is the point of all of this because...

Protocol 20: Part II We are still in Protocol 20 and we are still discussing financial stuff. Last week I mentioned that this Protocol was going to shift subjects. We're still talking money but we aren't talking "money." The new demon that our plagiarist concentrates on is the gold standard.  Remember how to read this: everything the cabal recommends is what we are supposed to hate.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the plagiarist is in way over his head here. There is nothing in Serge Nilus's background that would indicate he has any kind of expertise or even competence in economics. What we do know is that Nilus has some financial troubles. When people who are conspiracy theorists run into financial problems, they always run to one thing--gold.  They love their gold because gold would have gotten them out of their troubles, but also because they understand gold. Gold is a thing you can touch. It's pretty, it's shiny, and if I tell you that ...

Protocol 20 After the shortest of Protocols I think we come to the longest. This Protocol is six pages long and it is predictably unfocused. This week we'll focus on the tax plan set forth by the Elder.  I think my favorite thing about when conspiracy theorists get into financial conspiracies is that they have no idea what they are talking about. We saw this when I covered None Dare Call it Conspiracy; as soon as Allen attempted to dive into financial ties it he was lost. Economics is never as simple as balancing a checkbook, but it is an easy way to enrage people who pretend to be concerned about deficit spending and that sometimes "the poors" get stuff for free.  The conspirators here are going to redesign an entire economic system from the ground up. They are going to do this in order to hide the fact, that in the real world, the Russian Tsar is out of money but that we shouldn't worry about that because the Jews are behind it.  The elder begins oddly, well oddly f...