"In
my opinion it is a lunatic book... There is a type of unstable mind which
cannot rest without morbid imaginings, and the conception of a single cause
simplifies thought. With this good woman
it is the Jews, with some people it is the Jesuits, with others Freemasons, and
so on. The world is more complex than
that."-- Hilaire Belloc, commenting on Nesta Webster's Secret Societies and
Subversive Movements, 1924
Nesta Webster saw conspiracies everywhere...
Secret
Societies and Subversive Movements, published in 1924 and her masterwork,
sought to alert the English-speaking world to the dangers posed by Jews,
Bolsheviks, Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, ad infinitum et ad nauseum...
 |
| Nesta Webster remains one of the most cited "authorities" among contemporary conspiracy theorists. At the request of the British Army's leadership, Webster provided lectures to commanders on the "true nature" of the Bolshevik threat. |
Why Mrs Webster believed such things should
be something of a mystery. Born to a
well-connected family in comfortable circumstances and raised in a stately
home, she took a degree from respectable Westfield College in London and
married rather well, becoming the wife of England's Superintendent of Police
after she toured the world to complete her education. Yet, despite this (or perhaps because of it),
Nesta Helen Bevan Webster-- granddaughter of an Anglican Bishop of Chichester--
was publishing pamphlets with titles like "The need for Fascism in
Britain" by the mid-1920s...
Our mystery may be solved in part by
Webster's comment about the notorious Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax fabricated between 1897 and
1903 by agents of the Russian Secret Police and subsequently widely distributed
in the United States by auto maker Henry Ford.
It didn't matter, Webster said, if the Protocols were authentic or a clever forgery: what was important
was they told the truth. And that truth
was simple for her. She knew Jews were
up to no good. Plain and simple. They toiled like moles, she said, in dark
corners of finance and publishing to achieve world-wide domination...
 |
| Two French editions of the The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery created by Russian Secret Police who aimed to bolster support for the Czar by appealing to Jew hatred. |
[Henry Ford reportedly spent $5 million of
his personal fortune to print 500,000 copies of the Protocols and to purchase the Dearborn
Independent newspaper to spread his Jew hating nonsense. Copies of the paper and the Protocols were distributed throughout
his vast network of automobile dealerships where they were handed out free of
charge to customers. As early as 1922,
Ford began providing financial aid to Adolph Hitler's Nazi movement out of sympathy for its anti-Semitic platform. The German dictator admired Ford greatly, keeping a life-size portrait
of the car maker in his office and honoring him in 1938 with The Grand Cross of
the German Eagle, to celebrate Ford's 75th birthday.]
Anti-Semitism was fashionable among the
better classes of Europe during Nesta's day just as that equally repulsive myth
of Negro Inferiority guided the racial theories of the Deep South in the United
States. (Notions of White European
superiority were fueled by the claims of Phrenology, a 19th Century
pseudoscience which measured skulls for factors like thickness and bumps that
could be used to determine intelligence levels or personality type of an
individual or ethnic group). Among
Webster's early admirers, we may count Winston Churchill who enthusiastically
and lavishly praised her fourth book, The
French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, published in 1919...
It was the French Revolution, in point of
fact, that got the intellectually complicated Nesta Webster into the Conspiracy
Theory business...
 |
| Liberty Leading The People by Eugene Delacroix romantacized the French Revolution whose leaders aimed to dethrone both King and Pope and create a secular state based on Reason. |
After she returned to England following her
marriage to Captain Arthur Webster in India, Nesta devoted three years to
researching the topic of the origins of the French Revolution. She began with a suspicion that Jews and
Freemasons were somehow to blame for the overthrow of good order in
Europe. Not surprisingly, she found evidence
to prove her notions. Historians
question the actual value of her research since she tended to using
unsubstantiated allegations from a single source or, alternatively, citing
multiple authors who made similar unproven charges as proof that the charge had
to be true...
Part of Webster's elaborate theory that
sinister elements devoted to spreading atheism spawned the French Revolution
involved the dark hand of the Illuminati who sprang into being on May 1, 1776,
through the machinations of Adam Weishaupt.
Despite his training in the classrooms of Jesuits and his position as a
lay professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt, Weishaupt became
ensnared by freethinkers who held that one should base conclusions on the basis
of facts, reason and logic as opposed to tradition or religious dogma...
 |
| The pseudoscience of Phrenology was used to scientifically prove Caucasion superiority over other racial groups throughout the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Its advocates further used it to demonstrate English or German or French superiority over other European groups. |
Adam Weishaupt and his Order of the
Illuminated Ones failed to find much favor with either Church or State. Within a year of its founding, the Order was
suppressed by Karl Theodore, the Elector of Bavaria. Weishaupt went into exile. The remaining members of the Illuminati
panicked and scattered to the four winds...
Or did they?
It was the considered opinion of John
Robison, a Scottish scientist, the secretive Order had not only remained intact
but also continued to foment revolution and rebellion against God and
legitimate authority throughout the Christianized world. He shared his thoughts on the subject in his Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the
Religions and Governments of Europe carried on in the Secret Meetings of the
Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Rooms, collected from Good Authorities...
 |
| Contemporary conspiracy theorists find proof of a Masonic or Illuminati plot against Christianity in the "All-Seeing Eye" above an unfinished pyramid and a Latin phrase proclaiming a New Order of The Ages. How, they ask, can we support a government whose very founders brazenly announced their godless agenda on the nation's currency? |
Robison's Proofs
of a Conspiracy appeared in the United States in 1798, a year after its
European publication...
The Proofs
crystallized suspicions among reactionaries about the true loyalties of their political
opponents and set in motion a dynamic which still plays a significant role in
American government two hundred years later.
To a very large extent, we can argue the fear of the Illuminati in their
various guises continues to dominate conspiratorial fears on the political
right in the United States...
Asked about Thomas Jefferson, the average
American today may cite him as author of the Declaration of Independence or as
the visionary who purchased the vast Louisiana Territory. However, to the politically conservative
Federalists of the late 1790s, old Tom was a hated and dangerous man, an agent
of both French Atheism and the freethinking Illuminati.
 |
| An issue of auto manufacturer Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent, part of his multi- million dollar campaign to alert America to the threat posed by Jews in her midst |
It took little time for preachers to jump on
the anti-Illuminati bandwagon. Ink had barely dried on the first copy of
Robison's Proofs printed in the US
when Reverend Jedediah Morse preached two sermons on the topic to his Boston
congregation. A month after the Reverend
Morse inveighed against the Illuminated Ones and their agents, the President of
Yale University, Timothy Dwight, delivered an impassioned Fourth of July
tirade, demanding to know if "our sons (shall) become disciples of
Voltaire and our daughters concubines of the Illuminati?" Dwight's fiery speech cemented Federalist
fears of Jefferson and his godless ways...
Fear of the illuminati helped secure passage
of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 by the Federalists. These four acts came close to causing the
fledgling United States to split apart as both Jefferson and James Madison, the
key figure in drafting the nation's Constitution, authored resolutions
denouncing them, and America's Navy fought an undeclared war on the high seas
with ships flying the flag of the French Republic...
 |
| Title page of The Jefferson Bible, a cut-and-paste account of the life of Jesus compiled by Thomas Jefferson. A deist, Jefferson had the highest regard for the moral teachings of Jesus but believed stories of his miracles and resurrection were fictions appended onto his biography by his followers. |
The crisis engendered by the Alien and
Seditions Act died down but the fear of secret societies remained strong. What has been labeled as the first
"Third Party" political movement in the United States was formed in
upstate New York in 1828 to oppose the influence of Freemasons in American
government.
The Anti-Masonic Party, by way of trivia,
gave our system of government the practices of nominating conventions and an
official party platform. To a large
extent, organizers of the Anti-Masonic Party had a hidden agenda: defeating
Andrew Jackson and his vigorous view of democracy. Old Hickory was a Mason (one of 14 US
Presidents who attained the degree of Master Mason) and frequently praised the
society. His opponents cleverly tapped
into an existing distrust of Freemasonry to achieve their goal of defeating a
larger political philosophy that had little to do with secret societies...
Originating in western New York, the
Anti-Masonic Party began with a suspicion that Freemasons in the town of
Batavia kidnaped and murdered William Morgan, a Mason who became dissatisfied
with the order and threatened to publish its secrets...
 |
| Andrew Jackson mortally wounds Charles Dickinson in an 1806 duel after Dickinson repeatedly asserted Jackson's wife was an adultress who knowingly had sexual relations in a bigamous marriage. One of fourteen Presidents known to be a Master Mason, Jackson's political opponents unsuccessfully used his connection to Freemasonry against him. |
Class resentment may have had something to do
with anti-Masonic sentiment. Masons were
often among the more financially and socially successful members of society in
the early days of the American Republic.
George Washington was a Mason. Extensive
research by Masonic historian Ronald Heaton indicates at least eight of the
fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence were Masons-- Benjamin
Franklin and John Hancock being among them.
Unverified claims also link another five or six of the signers to the
brotherhood. It is generally
acknowledged the Boston Tea Party was the child of Freemasons...
In the case of Andrew Jackson and the
Anti-Masonic opposition to him, we should look past his reputation as champion
of the common man and steadily growing middle class to remember he was a rich
man. Historians estimate his fortune in
2010 dollars would come close to $120 million.
[By way of comparison, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had
resources equivalent to $525 million and $212 million respectively]. And we should also realize the opposition to
Jackson (and Jefferson) was also led by fairly rich men who rallied ordinary
folk against the "dangerous" policies of these Presidents...
 |
| The Mysteries of the Freemasons by Leo Taxil was a 19th century hoax which asserted, among other ludicrous claims, that Masons worshipped the mysterious Baphomet of the Knights Templar. New Testament scholar Hugh Schonfeld has argued that "Baphomet" is a cypher translating into "Sophia" ("Wisdom"), the feminine aspect of God |
The struggle against Jackson and Jefferson (as well
as many other Presidents) had much to do with a sense of political
displacement. In simplest terms, those
who were once the elite and in charge find themselves in subordinate roles with
minimal ability to make the rules for others...
We humans seek explanations for why things
change. In the case of white southerners
facing court-ordered integration of schools during the tumultuous1960s, the
explanation often had to do with a conspiracy led by Jews and Communists who
used their stooges on the "liberal" Supreme Court to weaken America
to "mongrelize" the white race.
The Federalist Party of the late 1790s and early 1800s, formed around business
and trade ideas promoted by Andrew Hamilton, saw opponents as hell-bent on
visiting the horrors of the French Revolution upon the United States...
Sometimes, a sense of displacement affects
the internal direction of a political party.
Feeling core Republican Party conservative values were being ignored, midwestern
lawyer Phyllis Schlafly led a revolt against "Eastern Liberals" like
New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller then dominating the party. This successful uprising resulted in Senator
Barry Goldwater's disastrous 1964 nomination for the Presidency...
 |
| Mid-1960s advertisement for the John Birch Society, a staunchly anti-Communist conservative organization whose founder charged President Dwight Eisenhower was willing tool of the Red Conspiracy. |
Those who see sinister purposes behind
associations of the rich and powerful will not find merit in political
scientist C Wright Mill's assertion in his 1956 study, The Power Elite, that "social origin and formal education in
common tend to make the members of the power elite more readily understood and
trusted by each other, their continued association further cements what they
feel they have in common"...
Why should we believe two rich men who
attended the same university see that as a bond when we can just as easily
believe they are bent on enslaving humanity through currency manipulation or
stock market frauds? The former is too
simple an answer...
Bogeymen like Illuminati and Freemasons do
not appear magically out of nowhere. We
can trace the fear of them back much farther than the 1700s, to lingering
suspicions the Knights Templar survived their brutal suppression engineered by
France's King Philip IV and Pope Clement V in the early 1300s. Those who profited financially from the
judicial executions justified by confessions extracted through torture feared
the Templars who'd escaped were biding their time, patiently waiting to destroy
Church and State...
 |
| George Washington in Masonic regalia |
[Mainstream historians tend to be skeptical
of claims linking the Templars and Masons directly. Certain Masonic traditions assert the connection
(as do many if not most anti-Masonic groups) but documentation to prove this is
lacking. Readers interested in one of
the better works on the subject may find John J Robinson's Born in Blood useful. A
non-Mason when he began researching the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381, Robinson
found what he believed to be subtle hints of an organized Templar survival in
the events which took place during the uprising. Robinson's theories are considered
speculative but other historians often recommend Born in Blood as well-written and interesting with a proviso they
do see his case as proven.]
 |
| Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren was a frequent target of hatred by groups who simultaneously opposed racial integration and supported the practice of saying Christian prayers in publicly funded schools. |
Returning to Nesta Webster, we note her
interest in the French Revolution began with an attempt to understand the rise
of Communism in Russia. She repeatedly
argued in her writing that Bolshevism sprang from a much older conspiracy. As for the roots of this older conspiracy,
she saw three possibilities: Zionism, pan-Germanism, or an evil "occult
power." Her personal preference was
to blame the Jews, noting "Jews have never been more Jews than when we
tried to make them men and citizens"...
Hilaire Belloc described Webster as
delusional. I suspect he was right...
 |
| Banner of the Anti-Masonic Party, the first "Third Party" political movement in the United States. Its agenda was to free the United States of the doleful effects of Freemasonry. Its largely Protestant membership also kept a wary eye on Catholic immigrants. |
[Skeptical readers may view some of Nesta's
thoughts as ignorant racism, asking how we could automatically link
Zionist-inspired conspiracies to Freemasonry and bands of Bolsheviks. These readers may be unaware at least one
connection was addressed in 1869 by Gougenot de Mousseaux in a work whose title
translates to Jews, Judaism, and the
Judaization of Christian People. de
Mousseaux warned that Freemasonry was "an audacious work of Judaism, an
artificial Judaism to recruit strange men-- and especially Christians-- to the
Jewish race" with Masonic Lodges acting as synagogues where duped Gentiles
worked to advance Zionist agendas.]
Of course, one man's lunatic is another man's
clear thinking citizen. What do we make
of the John Birch Society, founded in 1958 by candy manufacturer Robert Welch,
Jr? Are they the right-wing extremists
many claim them to be? Or is there truth
to JBS allegations that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was infiltrated
by Communists? Why would our government
put fluoride in our drinking water if not to poison and weaken us so Reds can march
in, take over, and fly the Hammer and Sickle flag high above Kansas' state
capitol? What did George Herbert Walker
Bush mean with his remarks about a New World Order? Can there be any real doubt among loyal and
true American patriots that President Eisenhower was a tool of Moscow and its collectivist
monsters?...
 |
| Technological advances in the 1920s and 1930s made Phrenology available and affordable to all. These improvements unfortunately did little to improve the intelligence of people who used the pseudoscience to generate theories of racial superiority. |
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CREDITS
Note:
All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia,
without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: French
editions of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion from holocaustresearchproject.org;
Robot Phrenologist devices from medicalbillingschool.org; Phrenology Chart
illustrating the Natural Language of the faculties from http://pages.britishlibrary.net/phrenology/uh.edu;
George Washington Freemason from news.nationalgeographic.com; title page from
the Jefferson Bible from blogs.smithsonianmag.com;
C Wright Mills quote from The Power Elite
(Mills, New York, 1956); de Mousseaux quoted by Daniel Pipes in Conspiracy:
How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From (New York, 1997);
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