The Illuminati Freemason Conspiracy The Freemasons began as members of craft guilds who united into lodges
in England in the early 1700's. They stressed religious tolerance, the
equality of their male peers, and the themes of classic liberalism and
the Enlightenment. Today they are a worldwide fraternal order that still
educates its members about philosophical ideas, and engages in harmless
rituals, but also offers networking for business and political leaders,
and carries out charitable activities.
The idea of a widespread freemason conspiracy originated in the late
1700's and flourished in the US in the 1800's. Persons who embrace
this theory often point to purported Masonic symbols such as the pyramid
and the eye on the back of the dollar bill as evidence of the conspiracy.
Allegations of a freemason conspiracy trace back to British author
John Robison who wrote the 1798 book 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. Robison influenced French author Abbé Augustin
Barruel, whose first two volumes of his eventual four volume study, Memoirs
Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, beat Robison's book to
the printer. Both Robison and Barruel discuss the attempt by Bavarian
intellectual Adam Weishaupt to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment
through his secretive society, the Order of the Illuminati.
Weishaupt was appointed a professor at the University of Ingolstadt
in Germany around 1772 and elevated to the post of professor of Canon
Law in 1773 or 1775 (sources conflict), the first secularist to hold
that position previously held by clergy. Weishaupt began planning
a group to challenge authoritarian Catholic actions in 1775, the group
(under a different name) was announced on May 1, 1776. This group evolved
into the Illuminati. The Enlightenment rationalist ideas of the Illuminati
were, in fact, brought into Masonic lodges where they played a role
in a factional fight against occultist philosophy. The Illuminati was
suppressed in a series of edicts between 1784 and 1787, and Weishaupt
himself was banished in 1785.
Weishaupt, his Illuminati society, the Freemasons, and other secret
societies are portrayed by Robison and Barruel as bent on despotic
world domination through a secret conspiracy using front groups to
spread their influence.
Barruel claimed the conspirators "had sworn hatred to the altar and
the throne, had sworn to crush the God of the Christians, and utterly
to extirpate the Kings of the Earth." For Barruel the grand plot hinges
on how Illuminati "adepts of revolutionary Equality and Liberty had
buried themselves in the Lodges of Masonry" where they caused the French
revolution, and then ordered "all the adepts in their public prints
to cry up the revolution and its principles." Soon, every nation had
its "apostle of Equality, Liberty, and Sovereignty of the People."
Robison, a professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh
in Scotland, argued that the Illuminati evolved out of Freemasony,
and called the Illuminati philosophy "Cosmo-politism." According to
Robison:
"Their first and immediate aim is to get the possession of
riches, power, and influence, without industry; and, to accomplish
this, they want to abolish Christianity; and then dissolute manners
and universal profligacy will procure them the adherents of all the
wicked, and enable them to overturn all the civil governments of Europe;
after which they will think of farther conquests, and extend their
operations to the other quarters of the globe, till they have reduced
mankind to the state of one indistinguishable chaotic mass."
Robert Alan Goldberg, in his book Enemies Within, summarizes the
basic themes of the books by Barruel and Robison:
"Writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution, these
monarchists had created a counterhistory in defense of the aristocracy.
Winning the hearts and minds of present and future readers would assuage
some of the pain of recent defeat and mobilize defenses. The Revolution,
they argued, was not rooted in poverty and despotism. Rather than a
rising of the masses, it was the work of Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati,
a secret society that plotted to destroy all civil and religious authority
and abolish marriage, the family, and private property. It was the
Illuminati who schemed to turn contented peasants 'from Religion to
Atheism, from decency to dissoluteness, from loyalty to rebellion.' "
The major immediate political effect of allegations of an Illuminati
Freemason conspiracy in Europe was to mobilize support for national oligarchies
traditionally supported by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Across Europe
authoritarian governing elites were coming under attack by reformist
and revolutionary movements demanding increased political rights under
secular laws. The ideas of the Enlightenment were incorporated by the
leaders of both the French and American revolutions, and in a sense,
these Enlightenment notions were indeed subversive to the established
social order, although they were hardly a secret conspiracy. The special
status of the Catholic Church in European nation-states was actually
threatened by the ideas being discussed by the Illuminati and the rationalist
wing of the Freemasons.
Several common conspiracist themes emerge from these two books. The
Enlightenment themes of equality and liberty are designed to destroy
respect for property and the natural social hierarchy. Orthodox Christianity
is to be destroyed and replaced with universalism, deism...or worse.
Persons with a cosmopolitan outlook--encouraging free-thinking and
international cooperation--are to be suspect as disloyal subversive
traitors out to undermine national sovereignty and promote anarchy.
Shortly after the Barruel book was published, conspiracy theories
about the Illuminati Freemasons were mixed with antisemitism in Europe.
This confluence took place much later in the US.
Adapted from Berlet & Lyons, Right-Wing
Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.
Bibliography
Abbé Augustin Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism,
second edition revised and corrected, English translation by Robert Clifford, (originally
published 1797-1798, reprinted in one volume, Fraser, MI: Real-View-Books,
1995).
John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy—against All the Religions and Governments
of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and
Reading Societies, fourth edition with postscript, (originally published
1798, reprinted Boston: Western Islands, 1967)
Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in The Paranoid
Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1965).
Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy
and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (London: Serif, 1967 [1996].
George Johnson, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in
American Politics, (Los Angeles: Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1983).
Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close
for Comfort, (New York: Guilford Publications, 2000)
Robert Alan Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern
America, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
Herm. Gruber, "Illuminati," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, (New
York, NY: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).
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