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As conspiracy theories about an American “deep state” have spread and gone viral over the last four years, they have been taken up by a particular online persona, combined with variety of other conspiracy theories, both modern and classic, and been transformed in the Coronavirus Era into a kind of cult. I am speaking, of course, about Qanon, a kind of anonymous prophet for today’s conservative conspiracy theorists. It all began back in early October, 2017, when Donald Trump posed for photos with a group of military leaders and, smirking, made a cryptic comment about a calm before a storm. Many assumed he was joking, or that if it was anything, it may have been in reference to some imminent military adventure, but to conspiracy enthusiasts, or those eager to dupe them, it was a perfect segue into wild theories. Before the end month, a post called “Calm Before the Storm” appeared on the “politically incorrect” board of the website 4chan, a home away from home for Nazis and incels where most users forego a username in favor of appearing “anonymous.” But this poster, who was claiming inside information about Hillary Clinton’s impending detainment and extradition, used the moniker Q, which many assumed was in reference to some clearance authorization for top secret data in the Department of Energy, though the contents of Q’s posts seem to claim White House access rather than any knowledge of nuclear materials. For all we know, the poster originally meant it as a reference to the omniscient character of Q in Star Trek the Next Generation, meant to indicate his or her being all knowing, and the connection to a top secret clearance authorization was a happy accident. The poster, or posters, as they often refer to themselves as “we,” certainly encouraged the idea that they had intimate knowledge of the goings on at the highest level of government, and they painted President Trump as a lone warrior against a deep state conspiracy, insisting, in fact, that he was winning this battle. They depicted him as being in total control, just biding his time until the forthcoming “storm,” or “great awakening,” when he will finally make his perfectly orchestrated move to checkmate the cabal of globalists that control everything. Who is this cabal? Well, Q remains cryptic, including actual ciphers in posts so that followers can see what they want, implicate who they want to implicate. Certainly the Clintons, who it was claimed were the real subject of Mueller’s investigation, and establishment Democrats generally, but the followers of Qanon were not satisfied with such a prosaic conspiracy. They wanted to fold in the greatest hits of every wild conspiracy theory for the last hundred years, so they embraced Pizzagate and made their deep state a pedophile ring, and they revived the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s to make them actual devil-worshipping eaters of children. They take up the Jewish World Conspiracy by arguing that Jewish banking families like the Rothschilds are behind everything, and they follow in the path of many who came before them in pointing at Freemasons and the Illuminati. Indeed, a key element of their theory, that the deep state cabal with whom Trump is doing battle engages in drinking the blood of children and harvesting adrenochrome from abused children’s brains, seems to echo directly some of the more outlandish claims John Robison made, without evidence, against the French scientists he hated and accused of being Illuminist conspirators before the French Revolution: Robison claimed that they would purchase children from the poor in order to dissect their living brains in search of a life force, a horrifying mad-scientist experiment that even the police were supposedly powerless to stop. So it seems nothing that Qanon spews is new. They’re just dredging up baseless conspiracy theories that have been around since the Enlightenment, and have been influencing U.S. politics since at least 1798.

In choosing a place to start with a discussion of the Illuminati’s presence in America, or its supposed presence, then the clearest starting point would be to discuss the Great Seal of the United States. This is image you see on the dollar bill. On one side, there is an eagle wearing a striped shield, grasping arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other, with a constellation of stars over its head and the Latin Motto E Pluribus Unum. On the other side is the iconic pyramid with a floating and radiant eye in its peak, with the Roman numerals for the year of our independence at its base and two Latin phrases: Annuit Coeptis above, meaning God has favored our undertakings, and Novus Ordo Seclorum below, meaning “a new order of the ages.” It is this second image that drives conspiracy theories about Illuminati influence at the dawn of our nation, especially since the phrase New World Order has come to be associated with the supposed worldwide conspiracy. In reality, the notion and phrase would not actually appear until the middle of the 20th century, with a push toward world governing bodies like the League of Nations. The phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum can be traced back to the poet Virgil, who in a passage of the fourth Eclogue used similar language to describe the coming of a golden age of justice. So it was really a reference to the idea that the independence of America represented the dawning of a new age, which it was widely regarded as signaling. Many will say that the eye in the triangle is Illuminati iconography, but this is not accurate. The Illuminati used the symbol of an owl on a book. The radiant eye used on our seal is the Eye of Providence, supposed to represent God watching over mankind, and thus complementing the motto above it on the seal. The Eye of Providence would go on to become a common Masonic symbol, but it’s unclear whether it was common among Freemasons before its adoption on the Great Seal of the United States. Today, people try to claim that the triangle is an Illuminati sign, and this appears to have come from lore about the symbolism on our Great Seal. The problem with this is that the Eye of Providence was suggested as an element of the seal in August of 1776, during the first committee on the topic, which included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. At that time, the Bavarian Illuminati was just a fledgling club among university students in Ingolstadt, as I indicated in Part One. The inclusion of the Eye of Providence seems to be an earnest attempt to illustrate through symbolism that God approved of their democratic experiment and nothing more. As for the eye being enclosed in a triangle, that wasn’t because it was pictured as the tip of a pyramid, for we see even in early versions of the seal without the pyramid that the eye was in a triangle. It may be that the triangular shape of the seal’s eye was due to the importance of geometry and triangles specifically to Freemasons, as at least some on the committee certainly were Masons. This would have nothing to do with the Illuminati, however, as the Bavarian order had yet to spread among continental Masonic lodges, and the brand of Masonry in Revolutionary America was far different from continental Masonry anyway. The other possibility is that the triangular shape represents the trinity, making it simply a Christian symbol that ironically has encouraged a fear of a sinister anti-Christian conspiracy for decades.

The reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons. (Use of this image is in no way meant to convey the false impression that any part of this article or podcast episode is sponsored or approved by the Government of the United… — The reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons. (Use of this image is in no way meant to convey the false impression that any part of this article or podcast episode is sponsored or approved by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof)

Knowledge of the Bavarian Illuminati did not reach American shores until the work of John Robison and Abbé Barruel did. Interestingly, neither Robison nor Barruel suggested that the American Revolution had been orchestrated by the Illuminati as they claimed the French Revolution had been. However, they both vaguely and without evidence suggested that the Illuminati had begun infiltrating Masonic lodges there, Barruel by stating that “sects equally inimical to Royalty and Christianity are daily increasing in numbers and strength, particularly in North America,” and Robison by including America on a list of countries with lodges corrupted by the Illuminati, assuring his readers in parentheses that there were “several” there. As obscure and ambiguous as these claims were, they still touched off an Illuminati panic in America because of prevailing political and ecclesiastical conditions. For simplicity’s sake, it can be characterized as similar to modern America. At the time, there were two principal parties, the conservative Federalist party that held control of both houses of Congress as well as the presidency under John Adams, and their more progressive rivals, the Democratic-Republican party, championed by Thomas Jefferson, who contrary to the sentiments of most Federalists believed that the French were our revolutionary brethren. In fact, the country was in the midst of a diplomatic and trade crisis with the revolutionary government of France when American editions of Robison’s and Barruel’s books were being published. Called the XYZ affair, it involved the refusal of an American diplomatic commission to pay off French officials, and it led to an undeclared naval war between our countries called the Quasi-War. To those with anti-French views at the time, the Illuminati conspiracy theory gave further reason to distrust and hate any post-revolution government of France and allowed the Federalists to paint themselves as the last bulwark against a further lawless and godless brand of revolution that, if the conspirators had their way, could consume our young republic the way that it had France. It was a perfect political barb to fling at their political rivals, as well, for rather than engaging in legitimate debate about our relationship with France, the Federalists could make a straw man of the Jeffersonians and say their sympathy for the French proved they were in on the Illuminati conspiracy. And just as conservatives in Britain had attempted to delegitimize the Irish rebellion by calling it an Illuminati plot, after the conspiracy theory reached America, the rural Whiskey Rebellion against a whiskey tax during Washington’s presidency was later recast as proof of Illuminati machinations in our country. Even George Washington, who was sympathetic to Federalist policies but had always tried to remain non-partisan, let himself be swayed by the conspiracy theory. While at first he expressed doubt that any Masonic lodges in America were “contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati,” only a month later he qualified that assessment and wrote that “individuals of them may have done it,” and the idea that some founders of lodges and democratic societies in America “actually had a separation of the People from their Government in view” he then characterized as “too evident to be questioned.” But it’s clear from his letters that the only evidence he is referring to is the work of John Robison, which was, of course, no evidence at all.

There were, however, more forces than just the political pushing the American people to believe in an active Illuminati plot in America in those years. Orthodox Congregational ministers of New England in that time had seen their power and influence wane with the rise of millennial doctrines and evangelical faiths after the Great Awakening (the historical one, not Qanon’s imagined “Great Awakening”). Predictably, these clergy attributed the changes to impiety and a widespread corruption of morals. To them, the works of Robison and Barruel explained the turning away from their brand of religion as the result of an anti-Christian plot. The appeal is understandable. Their flocks were only shrinking because Illuminati agents of the devil were secretly corrupting their society. Reverend Jedidiah Morse, famous for his work in American geography, was the most adamant in his preaching of the Illuminati conspiracy theory. From his Boston pulpit in May of 1798, Morse declared that there was a conspiracy “to root out and abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.” Soon Morse was not the only one taking up the conspiracy claim. Congregationalist theologian and president of Yale Dr. Timothy Dwight preached it as well. This clerical campaign represents a concrete effort to move away from the enlightenment ideal of the separation of church and state and an effort to Christianize the nation. In the ramp up to the presidential election of 1800, these Congregationalists naturally threw their weight behind the party and candidate that had positioned themselves as being against the Illuminati threat by being anti-French: the Federalists and John Adams. So in an American election year, we have preachers at their pulpits convincing their parishioners that they must vote a certain way because of a false conspiracy theory. It’s just this sort of thing that the Johnson Amendment of 1954, which denied tax exemption to organizations involved in partisan politics, was meant to prevent, an amendment that the Trump administration has attempted to do away with recently through executive order and tax legislation. With the power of New England organized religion behind them, helping to convince even the less politically conscious that Thomas Jefferson was a threat to America, they likely would have succeeded in getting Adams reelected. But they didn’t count on their conspiracy theory being turned around on them.

Portrait of Jedidiah Morse. Public domain work available at Wikimedia Commons.

There is a strong argument to be made that the result of the election of 1800 owed a lot to a series of newspaper articles that appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper called the Aurora during the years leading up to the election. This anti-Federalist, Jeffersonian organ saw its circulation increase substantially after it began publishing the diatribes of a preacher named John Ogden, who spent many of his columns enumerating the offenses of the Federalist powers against, for example, an innocent congressman they had jailed for political reasons, or a poor widow that they had ruined. Rather than focusing his withering articles on only the politicians in power, though, he identified the orthodox Congregationalists of New England, especially Yale’s Dr. Dwight, as the pharisees that reinforced their power. He depicted Dwight as a popish figure and accused him of indoctrinating the youth at Yale, and he characterized the existing power structure as a blend of both priestcraft and aristocracy that was threatening to destroy the foundations of our new democratic republic. And when Morse and Dwight started their Illuminati disinformation campaign, Ogden flung their accusations right back at them, calling them the Clerical Illuminati of New England. By his reckoning, the Federalist brand of government looked far more like the authoritarianism of the Bavarian Illuminati, and the orthodox Congregationalist suppression of alternative doctrines showed that they were the true enemies of religion. Ogden’s Illuminati looked far more like the modern idea of a “deep state,” an entrenched power structure, but rather than a bureaucratic machine, it was a secret marriage of church and state. In the topsy-turvy, paranoid rhetoric of that election year, the fact that the Federalists and Congregationalists were so vehemently insisting that the Democratic-Republican Jeffersonians were the Illuminati was the clearest evidence that it was the other way around, since clearly the Illuminati would accuse their enemies of being the conspirators in order to hide the truth that they were the conspirators themselves. Ogden passed away before the election was decided, but his widely read counter-accusations appear to have been a decisive factor, helping to sweep Thomas Jefferson into office in 1800 despite the fact that many still suspected him of being a godless agent of chaos.

After the election of 1800, with no concrete evidence of the conspiracy ever coming out despite the Reverend Jedidiah Morse insisting that he had incontrovertible proof in his possession, the Illuminati scare just dissipated. President Jefferson clearly wasn’t going to abolish all religion and overthrow all civil government, and a few years later, the French appeared to be moving away from the fearful brand of democracy associated with the Illuminati conspiracy when their Senate proclaimed Napoleon Emperor. Thus, the specter of the Illuminati faded into the background of political discourse for about a quarter century, until the kidnapping and suspected murder of one man once again dredged up the talk of a sinister Illuminati conspiracy in relation to Freemasonry. In 1826, a man named Captain William Morgan who had recently been involved with Masonry in upstate New York advertised his intention to publish a book revealing their initiation rites. In retaliation, some local Masons had him jailed on a minor debt then pulled him out of the jailhouse, after which he was never seen again. Outrage over this crime led to a political movement to suppress Freemasonry in America, not because of any specific Illuminati-esque plot, though. Rather, it was because many civil servants were also Masons, and it was argued that their vows of loyalty to their lodges and fellow Masons superseded their oaths of office, inviting corruption. Out of this movement grew an organized third political party in America for the first time, the Anti-Masonic Party, which in the 1830s was actually the first party to ever conduct a convention for the nomination of a presidential candidate. During these years of rampant anti-Masonic rhetoric, the word Illuminati was certainly tossed about frequently again, as if it were a slur synonymous with Freemason, for Barruel and Robison had effectively linked the two forever. If you want to know more about William Morgan and this chapter of American history, you can get yourself a copy of my historical novel, Manuscript Found, in which I go into far more detail. Maybe one day I’ll do an entire episode on the topic, but for our purposes in this study, suffice it to say that this was only a blip in the story of the Illuminati conspiracy theory in America, a short-lived and minor resurgence of the language rather than the theory itself.

A depiction of Captain William Morgan’s alleged murder at the hands of Freemasons. Public Domain work available at Wikimedia Commons.

For a long time after the Anti-Masonic movement, conspiracy theory in America was more dominated by nativism, specifically positing that the Catholic Church was plotting to overthrow our democracy. As though taking up the legacy of his father, the Reverend Jedidiah Morse’s son, Samuel Morse, the telegraphy pioneer, spread his own brand of conspiracy theory in Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States. Samuel Morse’s conspiracy theory was not about the Illuminati, but in some regards it shared themes with the theory his father had promulgated. Both postulated that a sinister cabal out of Europe was secretly acting to undermine American government and religion. Also, just like the Illuminati conspiracy theory, Samuel Morse’s Anti-Catholic conspiracy theory developed into a creed justifying bigotry, specifically against the Irish and other Catholic immigrant groups. As for the Illuminati conspiracy theory, it would eventually become inextricably linked to anti-Semitism, but that would not occur until the 19th century, after the emergence of forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ever since the Middle Ages and the rise of the Blood Libel, there had been some form of a conspiracy theory that Jews all over world conspired against Christians, but it wasn’t until the Protocols hoax that this conspiracy theory took a form undeniably similar to that of the Illuminati, spreading the idea that Jews were not just scheming to desecrate the host or commit ritual murder or poison wells… but that they were engaged in an organized worldwide plot to overthrow all governments and religions. Interestingly, the tendency to link Jews to the Illuminati conspiracy theory seems to have been present from the beginning. In 1806, Abbé Barruel received a letter from a Piedmontese soldier named Jean Baptiste Simonini that claimed it was really the Jews behind the Freemasons and the Illuminati. To his credit, after some further research, Barruel decided that this Simonini fellow was wrong, that although many Jews were Freemasons, it was the Freemasons generally, manipulated by the Illuminati, who had conspired to foment the French Revolution. And he even suggested that blaming the Jews was dangerous and could lead to a massacre.

It would not be until the work of one Nesta Webster that the Illuminati theory and the Jewish World Conspiracy theory would become more concretely combined. Daughter of a successful banker, Nesta Webster was a British woman of means who had travelled the world. Along the way, she developed the notion that she was the reincarnation of a French duchess who had been guillotined during the Terror. This started her interest in the French Revolution, which she began to research and write about, along the way, predictably, encountering the work of Abbé Barruel, which she accepted enthusiastically. In her book The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, she revived Barruel’s theory of an Illuminist-Masonic plot having orchestrated the French Revolution, and her work was accepted as credible by none other than Winston Churchill, who then helped spread the ideas of Barruel further, stating “This conspiracy against civilization dates from the days of Weishaupt... as a modern historian Mrs Webster has so ably shown, it played a recognisable role on the French Revolution.” But Nesta Webster did not just parrot Barruel’s ideas. She took them further, suggesting that Communism and the widespread European revolutions of 1848 were later examples of the Illuminati revolution machine at work, and that Bolshevism in Russia was the new Jacobinism, the latest evidence of the Illuminati plot. After developing this idea in her next book, The French Terror and Russian Bolshevism, she eventually made the leap to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, based on the idea promulgated in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that Bolshevism was a Jewish plot, arguing that the Illuminati conspiracy to spark revolutions the world over had been a Jewish conspiracy plot all along, with the Rothschild Jewish banking family behind it. Unsurprisingly, Nesta Webster’s far right views led her to become involved with British fascist groups. And I’m not just labeling these organizations fascist; they were explicitly self-described fascist groups, like the British Fascisti, comprised of members of the British Conservative Party who were troubled by the Bolshevik Revolution, inspired by Mussolini, and described themselves as Christian patriots; and later, the British Union of Fascists, an actual fascist political party. By the 1930s, Nesta Webster was defending Nazi persecution of Jews and praising Hitler for fighting the supposed Jewish conspiracy.

Photo of young Nesta Webster. Public domain work available at Wikimedia Commons.

Returning to America and the influence of the Illuminati conspiracy in our own politics, it may come as no surprise that white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan discovered the writings of Nesta Webster and touted them as scholarly evidence of a Jewish plot against Christians. But it was Webster’s linking of the Illuminati and a Jewish World Conspiracy to Communism that really drove the resurgence of the theory in America. In the midst of the so-called Second Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against Communism in America, the John Birch Society was formed by a Massachusetts candymaker, and it was this group that would bring Nesta Webster’s revitalized version of Barruel and Robison’s Illuminati theory into modern U.S. politics, and in the process reshape conservative politics in America. Named after a military intelligence officer killed in a confrontation with Chinese Communist forces at the end of World War II, The John Birch Society made clear from the beginning that they believed the threat of Communism was far more than an economic model or political ideology. One quote from their founding meeting clarifies their view of Communism as a worldwide conspiracy, as there at the start of things, they asserted that “both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a ‘one-world socialist government.’” Through their publications, Review of the News and American Opinion and later The New American, they spread their version of a worldwide Communist conspiracy, and folding Nesta Webster’s version of events into their own, it just became more and more massive and sinister. The version of history spread by the John Birch Society is that, after pulling off the French Revolution through their front groups, the Illuminati continued their orchestration of revolutionary activity through other secret societies, like the Carbonari in Italy and Masonic or Masonry-inspired societies across Europe. They saw only the machinations of the Illuminati leading up to the Springtime of the Peoples in numerous countries during 1848. Despite the fact that they were more like the American and French revolutions in that for the most part they sought the end of absolute monarchy and the establishment of representative democracy, the John Birch Society characterized them as the first Communist revolutions, kicked off by Karl Marx’s publication of The Communist Manifesto. And rather than admitting that Communism might have been a genuine historical development or a natural evolution of socialist thought, they said this too was part of the plot, reducing Marx to nothing more than a hireling paid by the Illuminati to write the manifesto in order to provide a new revolutionary philosophy for a new age. Of course, one can easily counter this idea by citing Marx’s work as a newspaper editor in the Rhineland years before he was supposedly hired by the Illuminati, as a clear progression of his theories can be discerned. But the John Birch Society was, to use Marx’s turn of phrase, haunted by the specter of Communism, seeing in every progressive, every liberal, even every moderate conservative, a secret agent of the Illuminati.

Thus the Illuminati came to be used, once again, as a tool of the conservative right, especially the far right, as a weapon against the far left that they feared or hated. But just as in the election of 1800, it would soon be taken up by their rivals and used against them. During the 1960’s, riding a cresting wave of counter-culture and civil disobedience, a new concept of the Illuminati was born. It started in the pages of Playboy Magazine, which published a letter about the Illuminati suggesting they might be behind the assassinations of King and Kennedy and giving a false background that the Illuminati could be traced to the Historical Arabic Order of Assassins, or Hashishim, though there is no clear connection between them or any other ancient mystical group, as discussed in my most recent patron exclusive, The Myth of Occult Illuminism. Then more letters appeared, each contradicting the last, more and more confusing the understanding of the Illuminati theory that I have tried to clarify in detail during this series. It turns out that these letters were fake, written by a Playboy staff member named Robert Anton Wilson, in collaboration with one Kerry Thornley, author of a little pamphlet called Principia Discordia. Thornley’s book parodied religious tracts and promoted a satirical religion in which the goddess of chaos is worshipped and adherents are encouraged to perpetrate hoaxes like the Illuminati letters to Playboy. Wilson, who would go on to adapt some of these ideas into a popular gonzo fiction series called the Illuminatus! Trilogy, explained that the goal of Discordianism was to fight authoritarianism by spreading disinformation in order to make people think. Their goal in their fake letters to Playboy was to flood readers with competing viewpoints in the hope that they would think critically in order to resolve the conflicts. Ironically, though, it had the opposite effect, increasing awareness of and belief in this baseless conspiracy theory. The Illuminatus! Trilogy is even sometimes mistaken as an exposé of Illuminati activity in modern times, like a sequel to the works of Robison, Barruel, and Webster, when it is clearly an absurdist satire.

Satirical song about The John Birch Society from the 1960s, performed by the Chad Mitchell Trio, featuring John Denver.

So here we are in the 21st century, and conspiracy theories are a major component of American cultural and political life, playing perhaps the biggest part in a presidential election since 1800. And I would be remiss if I didn’t make it clear that belief in conspiracy theory is not exclusive to the far right. As the example from the pages of Playboy in the 1960s shows, plenty on the left see the Illuminati or similar shadowy groups as being behind the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Liberal proponents of the Illuminati conspiracy love to point to George H. W. Bush’s speech about the Gulf War in 1991, in which he mentions a New World Order, as proof of his involvement in the conspiracy, and 9/11 Truthers will suggest that the neoconservative administration of George W. Bush was secretly behind the September 11th attacks, perpetrating them in order to justify war in the Middle East. Indeed, Qanon paints itself as a non-partisan conspiracy theorist movement, since they see not only establishment Democrats but also establishment Republicans like the Bushes as part of the evil cabal they envision Trump heroically battling. To be clear, I am also not asserting that belief in conspiracy theory indicates stupidity or mental illness. A recent study shows that more than half of all Americans believe in at least one major conspiracy theory. And this is attributed to a specific mindset and psychological factors such as the cognitive biases that I listed at the end of Part One. Another factor that can encourage even very intelligent and level-headed people to engage in conspiracist thinking is narcissism, as the idea that we are privy to the truth when so many are deluded can be very appealing. Existential crises also seem linked to the development of this mindset. Feelings of personal anxiety and alienation, especially when combined with anxiety over the state of society, can draw us down the path of spiraling conspiracy theory, and doesn’t that just describe how we are all feeling right now in 2020? Nevertheless, another recent study does seem to suggest that this “conspiracy mindset” does disproportionately affect those on the right side of the political spectrum.

It used to be that conspiratorial thinking was more common among the right when the left were in power, and more common among the left when the right held the reins of government. Now, though, with a conspiracy theory salesman in the highest office of the land, this no longer seems accurate. Even The John Birch Society, purveyor of a Jewish World Conspiracy theory thinly veiled as anti-Communist conservative patriotism, has agreed that their brand of paranoid politics contributed to or even is responsible for the rise of Trump in their article “Is ‘Trumpism’ Really ‘Bircherism’?” In the 1960s, when the JBS first came on the scene, true conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr., decried their feverish paranoia as fringe madness and warned that “sincere conservatives” ought to distance themselves from their views, which he described as “far removed from reality and common sense.” Yet today, Bircherism has become the norm for the GOP, or at least for the version of it that Trump and his base have made dominant. One cannot help but see a parallel here of a political society convincing a large swathe of the common people that the powers that be must be overthrown… could the John Birch Society and Qanon be the real Illuminati? Of course it’s possible that Trump and the anonymous Q really believe the misinformation they’re spreading. One last psychological feature of conspiracy belief is projection, the idea that one assumes those in power have undesirable character attributes because of one’s own undesirable character, and this could well explain why the Trump administration, which has proven itself to be the most corrupt administration in modern history, might spread the idea that their political rivals are secretly so very corrupt. But to engage in a bit of tit-for-tat, as Ogden did back in the election of 1800, consider the notion that there is no “deep state” arrayed against Trump, but rather that, by taking over the Republican Party apparatus the way the Illuminati tried to take over Freemasonry, it is his own power that has become entrenched. Ponder a moment whether it’s possible that, rather than being engaged in a secret war against Satanic establishment powers as Q claims, Trump has already overthrown establishment powers to raise up an extremist, far-right New World Order. Just as it was once said that the Illuminati might point to their enemies and call them the Illuminati, couldn’t it also be said that Trump and his bootlickers in the John Birch Society and Qanon and all the far right madmen and talking heads, like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Dinesh D’Souza, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, are all agents of the real conspiracy, pointing their finger with one hand so you don’t pay attention to what the other hand is doing? And if that sounds too far-fetched for you, then you should find all of their massive conspiracy theories just as unbelievable.

The Illuminati Illuminated, Part Two: The Order in America

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