Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We’re back. That stomach virus is not a joke; I lost 13 pounds in three days over it. Also note new posts are doing to be on Tuesdays going forward. My teaching schedule switched from Tues/Thurs to Mon/Wed. Two weeks ago, when we last left off, Webster had begun a new chapter. The previous chapter had been curiously devoid of her random anti-Semitism with only a few mentions of the ethnicity of a couple of the French revolutionaries. This chapter wants to make amends for that oversight. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing is, among all of the other things that it is, lazy. Laziness is the least salient criticism of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing, but it’s also an important one. The thing about blaming “the Jews” is that it has an already built in audience that is ready to fill in all of your holes. The writing is done for you. Current GOP darling and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes doesn’t say anything new, he doesn’t have to—it’s all been written for him. He just says it a bit more coherentl...

 It's grading time which means that I will not be posting this week. I'll be back next week for more Webster. 

We shift locations from France to the German states in 1848. Going concurrent with the French revolution apparently. A little context, Germany is not one country. Much like Italy in the Renaissance period it’s a series of republics, principalities, and theocracies with ill-defined borders and a shared language. The strongest of these is Prussia which has a Spartan like devotion to military prowess and has, at its head, the one known as Frederick the Great. We met Frederick earlier in this book, and Webster is not a fan. She’s not a fan, because she hates Germans. I mentioned this in the beginning of this series: the only thing that kept her from becoming an English Nazi is that she hated Germans too much. She was anti-Semitic and as we have seen, a fascist—but aligning herself with the German people was a step too far. It’s a weirdly focused racism that keeps one from becoming a Nazi but here we are. Conspiratorially we’ve met Germany when we dealt with Robison’s book. His problem ther...

When we ended last week, Webster was trying to explain that the Revolution of 1848 failed because it didn’t instantly fix the problem of unemployment. Instead, what it did, was set up a council which then created employment camps that helped people find jobs. This was bad for the reason that the state should not do this. Why? Well, let’s see if she can explain it this week. We get a quote from a character named “Mermeix,” aka Gabriel Terrail; a mediocre journalist and person who accepted bribes in order to change the story. The quote is, “ a government cannot guarantee work since does not depend on it to provide customers.” This is a pseudo profound bullshit. It sounds good at first glance, but any inquiry into this idea shows how vapid it is. The entire thing is based on a false premise; not all work is based on the idea of a transactional relationship. You don’t need customers for work. No one built a road for “customers,” educated children for “customers,” or led the police for “cus...

One of the goals of this project is to take away the “punch” of conspiracy theory books. They generally look impressive and are full of information that the author has tied together into a grand conspiracy. For the most part these books do a good job in convincing because people tend to skip over the parts they don’t care about. An actual historian would be more interested in the narrative that Webster is pushing now, but the audience that is going to scoop up this book is skipping it. This is my seventh book for this blog and I can say this: she needs to remind the reader what the point is once in a while. On the plus side, she hasn’t mentioned “the Jews” in about thirty pages. We are at the beginning of the Bourgeousie revolution and so far, Webster really has nothing to go on. So far she’s told us that the protestors/revolutionaries had legitimate complaints, those in power were offering some concessions, and negotiations were happening. The problem, that we know from history, is th...

I’m trying to figure out who the villain is in our story. Of course it’s the Illuminati, but it’s also the Socialists. It’s anyone that that challenges the status quo. So what’s interesting about the Revolution of 1830 is that this was a revolution against the new status quo put in place by the Illuminati after the only free period of Europe: that which took place during the reign of Napolean. So the Bourgeoise monarchy comes into power and like all monarchies it becomes one that ignores the plight of the people and serves only itself. Which, ok, that’s just how monarchies go—it’s how the one prior to 1789 went that Webster claimed was “for” the people. So then in 1848, the next revolution begins but Webster is claiming, again, that this was organized “ by the Secret Societies, directed by the Socialists, executed by the working-men and aggravated by the intractable attitude of the King and his ministers, the second great outbreak of World Revolution took place. ” She admits that there...

 The Russian revolution figures heavily into conspiracy lore because it also settles into the fear of conservatives over Communism. The John Birch Society likely never exists if the omnipresent boogeymen of Communism doesn’t scare their members into donating. We’re obviously before that time, WWII hasn’t happened yet, and Webster is writing pretty recently after the formation of the USSR under Josef Stalin. The problem that conspiracy theorists have in covering the Russian Revolution is the same problem that they have in covering the French Revolution: they have to pretend that everything was fine before the revolution. What’s going to be interesting about this chapter is that Webster is stepping outside of her comfort zone. She’s written a historical book about the French Revolution prior to this book but now she isn’t going to be able to draw from that knowledge base. After that book on the French Revolution her writing gets more and more conspiratorial…she dips her toe in the sp...