This video presentation above and my accompanying article below concern crucial events that happened 246 years ago in the year of 1776 that still impact us today.
One of the most important books written on the American Revolution in the last century is The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn. (.pdf format) It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Through its focus on the transatlantic influence of republican ideology, Ideological Origins put ideas back at the center of the revolutionary narrative. In doing so, it helped spark an unprecedented burst of scholarship on the intellectual history of the origins of the Revolution that lasted for nearly two decades and whose influence lives on.
One cannot fully study the American Founding and the Founding Fathers without examining the arcane subject of Freemasonry and its substantial impact upon these men and events. The place to begin is CONSPIRACY IN PHILADELPHIA: Origins of the United States Constitution, by Dr. Gary North, followed by Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840, by Steven C. Bullock; Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, and The Radical Enlightenment – Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, by Margaret C. Jacob; and The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook, by Niall Ferguson.
Highly recommended is the outstanding volume, Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy, by Peter M Burfeind. The author’s acquaintance with the scholarship of Murray N. Rothbard is both very refreshing and commendable.
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington (Librarian of Congress)
A New Look at the Writings of Thomas Paine While He Lived in France, by John B. Shrawder
The Jefferson Bible : the life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth, by Thomas Jefferson
UNESCO of the Eighteenth Century. La Loge des Neuf Sœurs and Its Venerable Master, Benjamin Franklin, by Nicholas Hans
Bacon, Newton, Locke and the Origins of the Modern Age: A Personalized Bibliographic Overview
John Robison, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, was the author of 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. The book was first published in 1797 and appeared in several editions by the end of the next year, including impressions in Philadelphia and New York.
Freemason George Washington famously commented on the book and soon developed a national controversy regarding the supposed influence of the Illuminati on Americans:
“It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a separation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.” – George Washington, October 24, 1798, regarding John Robinson’s book, Proof of a Conspiracy.
The pinnacle of this fierce ideological war was the election of 1800, with Washington’s presidential successor John Adams facing Adams’ vice president (and Washington’s former secretary of state) Thomas Jefferson. Adams’ Federalists accused Jefferson and his Democratic Republican followers of being pro-French Revolution and tools of the Illuminati. Jefferson accused Adams of seeking to restore monarchy and abolishing the republic. It was one of the most vituperative and contentious elections in history, probably only outdone by that of 2016.
Here are Jefferson’s thoughts and reflections regarding the Illuminati during this period.
Because of the particular nature of some of my articles and blogs at LRC, many readers over the years have inquired concerning my personal views and scholarly assessment of the Bavarian Illuminati and its genuine impact on world history. Did such an organization really exist? Does it exist today? What role did it play in the French Revolution of 1789? The Revolutions of 1848? The Russian Revolutions of 1917? etc. Since its founding on May 1, 1776, the Illuminati has been the subject of more controversy, disinformation and fear-mongering than almost any other topic analyzed by historians. But today, from impeccable archival research compiled over the past several decades, we now have an almost complete true picture of this clandestine organization and its nexus of influence. Here are the seminal primary and secondary documents I recommend which present that historical portrait: Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington; Perfectibilists: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, by Terry Melanson; The Secret School of Wisdom: The Authentic Ritual and Doctrines of the Illuminati, edited by Josef Wäges, Reinhard Markner and translated to English by Jeva Singh-Anand; Philo’s Reply To Questions Concerning His Association With the Illuminati, by Adolph Freiherr Knigge and translated to English by Jeva Singh-Anand; Illuminati Manifesto of World Revolution (1792): L’Esprit des Religions, by Nicholas Bonneville and translated to English by Marco di Luchetti Esq.; A New Look at the Writings of Thomas Paine While He Lived in France, by John B. Shrawder; Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism: A Translation from the French of the Abbe Barruel, by Augustin Barruel; The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, by Robert Darnton; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, by Robert Darnton; Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, by Robert Darnton; Critique and Crises: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, by Reinhart Koselleck; and The First Professional Revolutionist: Filippo Michele Buonarroti, 1761-1837, by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.
The Hidden Story of the Paris Commune
For forty years I have been fascinated with how such conspiracy theory scare stories have cropped up in American history since the beginning of the republic, and have been repeatedly used to manipulate the masses.
In recent decades there has been a thriving cottage industry concerning the Illuminati in American popular culture.
I have attempted to relate to my readers that once upon a time a secret society named the Order of the Illuminati was indeed founded on May 1, 1776, by a former professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria named Adam Weishaupt. This clandestine organization existed for a number of years and had an elite membership of significant and influential persons throughout Europe who acted covertly in furtherance of the goals and objectives of this group. Using primary source documents, careful and diligent scholars have documented who those specific members were and what the goals entailed. But the organization went out of formal existence. No successful scholar has been able to authentically document the continuation of the organization by overt or covert means to the present day.
But what about Nesta Webster, some persons will say?
Webster was an amateur historian of occult/political secret societies in the early part of the 20th century. Her published works were reviewed in many prominent newspapers and magazines, both favorable and unfavorable.
She came from a very privileged British background and was married to a high ranking police official.
She wrote numerous works, both fiction and non-fiction.
Her richly detailed and seemingly authoritative books, reflecting the widespread shock and reaction to the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, were influential in elite governmental circles both in Great Britain and America, particularly those of military intelligence.
She believed that Western European Christian civilization was under attack by a 2,000 year old conspiracy. Over the course of these centuries these enemies have taken many forms, both above ground and underground. These enemies were behind the both the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. They were behind Continental Freemasonry (the Grand Orient) and the Illuminati.
Webster believed that behind these enemies for those two thousand years (and the source of their ultimate strength and power) were the Jews.
Nesta Webster was a Fascist.
This is not an ad hominem smear or slur against her. In the 1920s she joined the British Fascists Ltd., and served on its Grand Council. She wrote pamphlets and lectured for this organization.
In the late 1930s she continued to write articles whitewashing the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, defending the Nazis’ policies directed against the Jews. Even after Hitler had invaded Poland in 1939 and Great Britain had declared war, Webster defended him as a man of peace.
For forty years I have been greatly interested in the historical subject matters upon which Nesta Webster wrote.
My assessment is that powerful and influential conspiracies have existed throughout history. They still exist and are trying to shape and mold public opinion and institute elite oligarchical rule throughout the world. That is the essential modus operandi and substance of State rule from the time of ancient Sumer.
Many of these conspiracies have indeed been occult or pseudo-religious in nature but I do not believe that the central, decisive, over-arching power brokers or impetus behind these efforts has been the Jews, the so-called Synagogue of Satan, in their many guises or manifestations, real or imagined.
With this particular conclusion, put forth by innumerable disparate authors such as Nesta Webster, William Guy Carr, Myron Fagan, Pat Robertson, Eustace Mullins, Tony Brown, or Rabbi Marvin S. Antelman, I heartedly disagree because there is a paucity of objective evidence and documentation for this anti-Semitic belief which is indistinguishable from prejudicial, preconceived skewing of the research.
And now this latest anti-Illuminati Hip-hop hysteria is enthralling a new generation of the gullible.
(However the most bizarre and implausible section of this intriguing video begins at 1:43:26 to 2:02:31 and concerns the alleged relationship of George Washington and the Jesuits. The video then posits that earlier in England the Declaration of Indulgence proclaimed by King James II in 1687 was the basis of “Religious Liberty,” in opposition to which led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the coronation of William and Mary as the new Protestant monarchs after deposing James. This Declaration was then alleged to form the substantive basis of “religious liberty” in the American colonies in a masking effort of Jesuit subterfuge said to undergird a vast Roman Catholic conspiracy to seize the new American Republic.
As documented in the authoritative scholarly volumes, The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860 A Study of the Origins of American Nativism, by Ray Allen Billington, and America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, by David Goldfield, throughout the 19th century a series of virulent anti-Catholic books on this theme were widely published and popular with the Protestant multitudes, such as Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (1835), Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States (1835), Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed (1836). Later Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, by the Rev. Josiah Strong, was published in 1886. Strong’s Our Country spoke immediately and eloquently to Protestant America. Over a period of 30 years the book sold 175,000 copies. A postmillennial evangelical defense of Anglo-Saxon rural America against Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, socialism, mammonism, materialism, immigration, the liquor power and other dred scourges of a modern urbanized society.)
12:45 am on May 1, 2022
