1 | Intro | History is a story of causality with no gaps. Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes those reasons aren't generally unknown. Either they're purposefully hidden, distorted, or sometimes simply forgotten.
2 | Intro | So, writing this thread as a communist... what if I told you, relatively speaking, the Bavarian Illuminati were the good guys? Would you dismiss it? Might you prefer to cling to modern pop myth & revisionist history? Or would you ask, "How much do I really know?"
3 | Intro | This thread is meant to shed light on what's been distorted and/or forgotten as it is extremely important we as leftists & communists know who the enemy is and why. Equally important is knowing who is not the enemy.
4 | Intro | It is unfortunate that we live in a culture saturated with cottage industries ad their commodities. Conspiracy theory is a pernicious cottage industry constantly pumping out garbage commodities seeking to profit off of revised history and disinformation.
5 | Intro | This does not mean that there aren't some kernels of truth in what's been distorted. There is no way to sugarcoat the fact that secret societies and at times even occultists & their occult orders have influenced history, on the left and the right.
6 | Intro | In 2022 BCE, the time of this thread's composition, everyone's heard of the Illuminati or the Freemasons, but the majority of us have very little understanding of what these groups were or are, let alone know their history.
7 | People know what the commodity cult & disinfo fetishists tell us. And if you haven't noticed, it's often right-wing conservative fundamentalist types who are pumping out that snake oil more so than any other demo.
8 | Intro | The commodity cult fetishizing conspiracy theories tells us a group like the Illuminati controls the world and communism is and always has been an Illuminati plot. Half of that assertion is utter nonsense. But half of it has a hint of truth in it.
9 | Intro | But how many of us have ever heard of Martinism? Or how many of us are familiar with Synarchist ideology? And if you are familiar with such terms, how much do you know?
10 | Intro | Before the internet, secret societies were how (usually rich) people kept themselves entertained. Secret societies were the message boards, YouTubes, wikipedias & even the texting of the day. In essence, they were surrogates for the internet itself.
11 | Intro | A hallmark of modern conspiracy theory is the idea everybody in a secret society is on the same page. Example: A Freemason from this region of the world would be working towards the same end as a Freemason from that part of the world because they're both Freemasons.
12 | Intro | Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as any subreddit, message board, or chatroom, any secret society, political or mystical, will very often have various factions within it.
13 | Intro | This is particularly applicable when it comes to Freemasonry, which is and always has been a benign social club at its core. Throughout its long history, however, many interesting actors have used the hub of Freemasonry in interesting ways. Some were good. Some bad.
14 | Intro | It is therefore eye-roll inducing to see people today tag historical figures who were Freemasons as if it is some kind of pejorative by default and then quite often trying to vilify or disqualify anything they've ever done because of it.
15 | Intro | Consider that in the future it is possible that anyone who uses the Internet today could potentially be vilified as being evil for belonging to "Twitter." Or being a "Redditor" or a "YouTuber." It's the same principle...
16 | They are exclusive clubs only those with the knowledge of knowing how to post and reply to messages or edit and upload videos can belong to used by people who employ special user names.
17 | Intro | So of course almost anyone important from before the 1960s was a Freemason. And if they weren't they were part of another order. There are plenty of them in history. And many were bad, sure. But they weren't bad *because* they were Freemasons.
18 | Intro | Just as we can find cutting-edge information on the internet, a Masonic hall was where such information would have been found in the 17th-early 20th centuries. But we can also find a lot of nonsense on the internet. A lot of nonsense was in the Masonic halls, too.
19 | Intro | There are three types of secret societies: 1. political 2. mystical/occult 3. a mix of 1 & 2.
I'll be discussing types 1 & 3. Type 2 is of no consequence—Incidentally, the Illuminati was a Type 1. Anything associating them with the occult came later by revisionists
I'll be discussing types 1 & 3. Type 2 is of no consequence—Incidentally, the Illuminati was a Type 1. Anything associating them with the occult came later by revisionists
20 | Intro | This is a rough outline of a greater work. The timeline begins where it must, with the Enlightenment. It concludes with the ending of the First World War which coincides with the Soviet-Russian Revolution and the subsequent founding of the Third International.
21 | Intro | Knowing our history & the history of our enemies is invaluable. When we know our own, it can't be used against us. When we know theirs, it can be used against them. Onto the secret history of revolution every leftist & communist should know. A Timeline:
22 | PART I: THE EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT, ESTABLISHING FREEMASONRY & THE JACOBITES
23 | 1637 | French philosopher René Descartes publishes "Discourse on Method." He writes: "I think, therefore I am." No one knows it at the time, but the Enlightenment has begun—New memes of ration & reason begin to bleed into the discourse of Europe's intelligentsia.
24 | 1641 | Scotsman Robert Moray, serving in the French army (what many Scotsmen of his time did) is ordered to return to Scotland to help a Scottish revolt turn into an advantage for France. He distinguishes himself during Scotland's subsequent invasion of England.
25 | Moray is then initiated into the Lodge of Edinburgh, a fun secret group not much more than a stonemason guild/social club. He likes it so much he helps establish lodges in England (with whom he seems to have kissed & made up with as he's later knighted by the king).
26 | Side note: Sources cite Moray as the first non-tradesman Freemason known to history. This is not entirely true as non-tradesman Masons began joining the Edinburgh lodge in 1634. But the moral of the story: Freemasonry is now in England.
27 | 1660 | Ration, reason & the scientific method are new concepts. The same Robert Moray establishes the Royal Society, a national academy for learning natural sciences (born from the alchemists). The world is being looked at in new and interesting ways.
28 | 1687-1689 | Isaac Newton publishes his "Principia," basically a how-the-universe-really-works users manual & John Locke introduces new ideas into the political sphere like natural rights and limited political authority.
29 | All of a sudden, the old Judaeo-Christian Bronze Age desert god starts to seem smaller in stature in the minds of men for the first time since the dawn of the Iron Age.
30 | Meanwhile, the relatively recent addition of Freemasonry into European society, England in particular, offers a liberal refuge for these new ideas to be discussed away from the conservative public, government & religious establishments...
31 | England has a little more liberty than continental Europe as they're no longer under Rome's thumb. France, however, still is. Either way, over the next two generations religious conservatives of the age everywhere grow increasingly suspicious of Freemasonic lodges.
32 | 1714 | Queen Anne of House Stuart dies. Parliament gives the throne to an insignificant German prince named George. The German House of Hanover now rules Britain (and still does). The Scottish House of Stuart is pissed.
33 | 1715 | The son of the once-deposed Stuart king, James II (last Catholic monarch of Britain), lands in Scotland after living in exile in France to begin a rebellion. The Masonic lodges now come in very handy in fomenting this "Jacobite rebellion."
34 | Side note: For those not aware, Jacobites are supporters of the House Stuart claim to the throne of Britain.
35 | 1717 | The first Grand Lodge of Freemasonry is established in England. Freemasonry had been brought to England by Moray (Ashmole as well)... both men had Stuart sympathies. The Grand Lodge is sponsored by House Hanover to help prevent future Jacobite influence & espionage.
36 | Over the years Masonic lodges continue to pop up across England and continental Europe. They are the central hubs for the Jacobite/House Stuart v. House Hanover rivalry playing out as rebellion continues to develop.
37 | 1734 | Meanwhile, in France, Voltaire publishes "Lettres philosophique" against the current religious and political system. The work pisses off everyone. He is forced to flee Paris.
38 | 1736 | Freemason & Jacobite Andrew Michael Ramsay writes an oration on the history of Freemasonry and traces its roots back to knights of the Crusade. It is the first time ever this claim has been made and will become a standard motif in Freemason myth.
39 | 1740 | "Scottish" Freemasonry—with the attraction of new degrees & a connection to Templar Knights (adopted from Ramsay's oration)—is invented by Jacobites in France as a counter to losing the popular Masonic lodges in England with the Hanoverian Grand Lodge.
40 | 1744 | With all of this use of Freemasonry for revolutionary politics & espionage, an early anti-Masonic book is published by Gabriel Calabre Perau titled "Secrets of the Order of Freemasons Unveiled." In it Perau admits to hearing about this mysterious new "Scottish" rite.
41 | Jacobites continue to use the Masonic lodges and their new invention, the Scottish rite, to foment as much disaffection to undermine the German House of Hanover before they launch their actual rebellion.
42 | 16 APR 1746 | Battle of Culloden. The rebelling Jacobite forces supporting House Stuart are crushed by the Hanoverian government. The Scottish clan system is abolished. Ideas of a Stuart restoration are gone forever...
43 | But everyone seems to notice that those Masonic lodges & degree systems sure did come in useful when it came to fomenting and counteracting rebellion, spying & espionage. Some even begin to see how it might be useful to convey other ideas...
44 | PART II: THE CLASSICAL ENLIGHTENMENT & FREEMASONRY'S DESCENT INTO THE OCCULT
45 | Amid all of the House Stuart v. House Hanover drama the Enlightenment has continued to flower, particularly in France...
46 | 1750 | French philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau writes his radical Enlightenment essay "Discourse on Science & the Arts" critiquing the economic relationship of his time (In it he even criticizes science & the arts, making an enemy of Voltaire).
47 | Rousseau is a womanizing misogynist bastard who'd often trot his newborn infants to orphanages... but he's also the most brilliant light of the entire Enlightenment and would later go on to inspire everyone from Marx, Jefferson, Paine, Lenin & Mao.
48 | 1751 | Denis Diderot & Jean le Rond d'Alembert attempt to democratize knowledge and publish the first edition of the "Encyclopédie." Over the years, the "Encyclopédie" will undergo many revisions, additions & translations.
49 | Meanwhile, "Scottish" Freemasons in France turn towards charity, taking in and caring for Jacobite refugees who had lost everything in their Catholic claimant's rebellion against the Protestant House Hanover.
50 | 1754 | The Freemasonic Rite of Strict Observance is founded by Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund who states he received it from exiled Jacobite Masons in Paris. (This cannot be documented, but it was von Hund's claim and it very likely did happen).
51 | There is a lot of nonsense in von Hund's Rite as it introduces esoteric occult principles into Freemasonry for the first time: A concept of "Unknown Superiors" is central to the Rite (It's an idea later used by Blavatsky 100+ years later and taints Mason mythology forever).
52 | In actuality, there is also a quasi-political motive behind von Hund's Rite. It is meant to stir up pride in the German-speaking parts of the world, a people with no country or kingdom of their own (similar to Jacobite exiles). The Rite slowly catches on in central Europe.
53 | Also in 1754 | A French Freemason named Martinez de Pasqually begins practicing a peculiar and unique form of mystical quasi-Gnostic Christian meditation within Masonry with his Ordre des Élues Cohens. Mysticism begins to take root in Freemasonry.
54 | Pasqually's secretary & star student is mystic & Freemason Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin who masters his system. Saint-Martin also goes on to study Jakub Bohm's mysticism.
55 | Saint-Martin's occult writings combine with Pasqually's ideas and spark the original Rite of Martinism (this will turn out to be very important).
56 | Saint-Martin establishes his own Martinist order, the Rectified Rite of Martinism, but it dissolves sometime prior to the French Revolution. Saint-Martin's top follower is French occultist Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (he will come up again).
57 | Meanwhile, Karl Gotthelf von Hund's Rite of Strict Observance dominates Freemasonry in continental Europe. There are Strict Observance lodges scattered all across central Europe by 1770. Saint-Martin's writings begin to have a powerful influence on this Rite.
58 | 1755 | Rousseau publishes a second essay, "Discourse on Inequality." He writes that the great perversion of inequality causes people satisfaction in seeing others suffer and it's inequality that creates separation between fellow humans.
59 | 1759 | Voltaire publishes "Candide" satirizing the baseless metaphysics of Christian optimism in god.
60 | 1760 | In a letter to d'Alembert, Voltaire (who is also a Freemason) writes: "Ecrasez l'Infâme" or "Crush the infernal thing," referring to irrational religious superstition & ecclesiastical authorities which use them as a means to inflict punishment.
61 | 1762 | Voltaire's distaste for the Church gets even more bitter. A Protestant merchant in a heavily Catholic region of France, Jean Calas, is sentenced to death for the murder of his son over a claim he intended to convert to Catholicism. Calas denies the accusation.
62 | 9 MAR 1762 | At his execution Calas's limbs are stretched by horse until pulled from their sockets. He swallows 30 pints of water. Each one of his limbs are broken twice by an iron. While still alive he maintains his innocence. He dies the next day strapped to the Wheel.
63 | Also in 1762 | Rousseau writes "The Social Contract," challenging the ordering of society by the church and the monarchy. He argues laws are only good if the people will them with a binding social contract. A truly radical piece of literature.
64 | 1763 | Voltaire entreats King Louis XV to have the Calas case retried. During the retrial, Calas is posthumously found innocent. It is found that his son committed suicide over gambling debts. The whole affair causes Voltaire to write "Treatise on Tolerance."
65 | 1766 | Chevalier de la Barre, a young nobleman wrongly accused of blasphemy is put to death: He's tortured & beheaded. His body is burned on a pyre with Voltaire's "Dictionary" nailed to his headless corpse.
66 | de la Barre's murder by the Church would be mentioned by Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities" ~100 yrs later. In France at the time anti-Church & monarchy sentiment ramps up in the liberal Masonic halls. Voltaire's words "Ecrasez l'Infâme" becomes the battle cry.
67 | 21 JUL 1773 | Pope Clement XIV officially suppresses a secret society of Catholic priests, the Jesuits (which is another story unto itself).
68 | 1 MAY 1776 | In conservative Catholic Bavaria a liberal 28-yr-old Ingolstodt University professor of canon law, Adam Weishaupt, along with four of his friends, establishes a secret antinomian society: the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, aka the Illuminati.
69 | PART III: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI
70 | Weishaupt dislikes religious dogma and is taken by the liberal ideas proposed by Voltaire, Rousseau & Diderot, etc. He hopes to bring about ambitious progressive changes to intensely conservative & very Catholic Bavaria, then, ideally, the rest of Europe.
71 | For this, Christianity had to be done away with and standing governments destroyed. But in particular, Weishaupt hopes to bring progressive change at his university where liberal faculty members like himself often clash with the ex-Jesuit faculty.
72 | A couple of things about Weishaupt: #1. Contrary to what many cottage industry conspiracy theorists like to claim, Weishaupt is NOT Jewish. #2. Also contrary to what many cottage industry conspiracy theorists like to claim, Weishaupt is NOT a Jesuit.
73 | But being that he is all but surrounded by ex-Jesuits he is familiar with their ways and so the Jesuits do influence the structure of his order.
74 | Weishaupt was initiated into Freemasonry two years prior, but he is disillusioned with it almost immediately because of his particular lodge's ban on political & religious discussions.
75 | 4 JUL 1776 | Across the Atlantic the American colonies officially declare independence from Britain. Though they are most interested in liberalized markets, commerce & accumulating wealth, the signers of the Declaration are influenced by the writings of Voltaire & Rousseau.
76 | 1777 | An interesting historical character & trickster fraud Count Cagliostro visits Germany. It is alleged he meets Weishaupt and becomes acquainted with the Illuminati. There's no proof of this, tho he would testify at his trial in Rome years later that he was a member.
77 | What is known is Cagliostro is initiated into the Rite of Strict Observance of Freemasonry (More on him in a bit).
78 | 1777 | Weishaupt orders that all members of the Illuminati must join a Freemason lodge and seek recruits within the lodges. They place a premium on recruiting from the intelligentsia, literary types & in spite of their hatred for religion, clerics (interesting).
79 | 1778 | While in London Cagliostro produces a forged "ancient" Masonic manuscript he claims is from Egypt. He claims this Masonic manuscript is "as old as the pyramids." Cagliostro's new irregular Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry is established (and it catches on).
80 | Cagliostro will refer to the Egyptian Rite as "true" Masonry. It goes on to become known as the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm which attracted radical and non-conformists across Europe (this new Rite will become very important later).
81 | 30 MAY 1778 | François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire, dies in Paris.
82 | 1779 | There are now 54 members of Weishaupt's Illuminati. Members would study classical moral writers like Aristotle & Cato and then move on to contemporary philosophers like Holbach & Helvetius. Their aim is to create an elite cabal of enlightened initiates.
83 | These Illuminati initiates begin inserting themselves into influential positions in Bavarian society with the intention of transforming it into an "Enlightenment utopia." Recruitment continues to focus on the socially prominent, wealthy & talented.
84 | By this time they've also successfully infiltrated a number of Masonic lodges across Europe. Many of the leaders of these lodges are also Illuminati initiates.
85 | Around this time one of the main Illuminati architects—Xavier Zwack—successfully orchestrates the takeover of a Munich Freemason lodge. With this takeover religious conservatives begin to catch on to what's been going on under their nose all along.
86 | 1780 | After joining the Masonic lodge in Weimar, the great German poet Johann von Goethe is initiated into Weishaupt's Illuminati. By now, the Illuminati has cells in Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Russia & Italy.
87 | 16 JUL 1782 | The Convention of Wilhelmsbad. It is one of if not the most important Freemasonic assemblies in the order's entire history. Called by the Duke of Brunswick, Ferdinand, Grand Master of the Rite of Strict Observance...
88 | The Convention of Wilhelmsbad also marks the beginning of the end for Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati.
89 | The convention's official purpose is to settle the ongoing disputes about the origins of Baron von Hund's Rite of Strict Observance as occultism was significant to von Hund claimed it was descended from Templar Knights and he himself acted under "Unknown Superiors."
90 | None of which was true nor did von Hund have any proof to back any such claims (Interestingly, many chroniclers seem to agree that von Hund lived his life truly believing his claims in spite of the lack of evidence-a testament of the mind's ability to fool itself).
91 | Meanwhile, the convention also opened its door to Saint-Martin's student and Martinist, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz who now hopes to supplant von Hund's alleged Templar Rite of Strict Observance with his own rite that he called: "The Beneficent Chevaliers of the Holy City."
92 | At the same time, the Illuminati see this convention as a chance to recruit new members. High-ranking Illuminati members & Freemasons Baron Von Knigge & Johann Christoph Bode attend with this aim in mind.
93 | Willermoz is aware of the Illuminati and knows what they've been up to, particularly within Freemasonry. The Illuminati spend much of that summer trying to recruit new members at the convention but they are checked by Willermoz.
94 | 1 SEP 1782 | After 30 sessions, the Convention of Wilhelmsbad concludes that the Rite of Strict Observance, which dominated much of central European Masonry for a generation, has no connection to the Templar Knights or Unknown superiors and is nonsense.
95 | They also declare that they would adopt Jean-Baptiste Willermoz's ritual—Meanwhile, the Illuminati go home with little to show for their efforts.
96 | In adopting Willermoz's ritual, Freemasonry rids itself of much of the occult mysticism that had played a role in its Rites since 1754.
97 | This also allows much of Masonry throughout continental Europe to be a refuge for liberal reformers for the next 100+ years (Hence conservative conspiracy theorists & the Church's dislike of Masons, particularly non-English Masonry. English Masonry remains conservative).
98 | Around this time, Von Knigge has a falling out with Weishaupt (over the strictness of the master-initiate relationship of the order)—the same Von Knigge who was sent to the Council of Wilhelmsbad—This leads to their outright exposure.
99 | It is at this time Von Knigge would also accuse Weishaupt of secretly being a Jesuit. Again, he was not a Jesuit, but their order's structure reflected Jesuitry. But Von Knigge's claim has been cited as proof Weishaupt was a Jesuit by conspiracy entrepreneurs ever since.
100 | 1784 | Horrified by rumors and accusations of a liberal revolutionary secret society at work in Catholic Bavaria, the Illuminati is banned by Karl Theodor of Bavaria under pressure from the rather unsettled Church.
101 | Weishaupt takes off for neighboring liberal Gotha where he is protected by Illuminatus Prince Franz Xaver von Zwack as the Illuminati outside of Bavaria remains largely unaffected.
102 | Though banned, Illuminati initiatives do not just cease overnight. Bavaria's Karl Theodor has to ban them again the following year. He issues another proclamation banning the Illuminati in 1787, and another one again in 1790. Meanwhile...
103 | 1784 | Inspired by the far more radical Rousseau, relatively conservative Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant writes his essay "What is Enlightenment?" A plea for liberation from irrational immaturities. "Dare to know," he writes.
104 | 1785 | Conman Count Cagliostro, the self-styled "Grand Copht" of his Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, pops up in Paris (T-minus 4 years from the Revolution).
105 | 15 AUG 1785 | The Affair of the Diamond Necklace in Paris begins.
106 | 1786 | Cagliostro is one of many imprisoned at the Bastille over the Diamond Necklace Affair. He later writes an open letter to the French people, urging them to mount a "peaceful" revolution and destroy the Bastille. He's released after 9 months and banished to England.
107 | 1786 | Over in Italy, a 25-yr-old Filippo Buonarroti— the great early socialist radical (and future inspiration for Marx & Blanqui)—is initiated into a Tuscany Freemason lodge that had been controlled by members of Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati.
108 | Buonarroti, who would become the most influential revolutionary of the early 19th c., would spend the rest of his life using Illuminati methods in an attempt to foster leftist revolutions across Europe.
109 | 1786 | Back in Bavaria, police raid Illuminati architect Xavier Zwack's home and seize hundreds of copies of the Illuminati documents, including secret correspondence from Weishaupt who had been hoping to reboot the order in earnest while in exile.
110 | This ends the brief but memorable history of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati. Weishaupt retires to liberal Saxony and spends the rest of his life quietly as a writer and professor of philosophy. The Illuminati is scattered to the four winds (but it is not forgotten).
111 | PART IV: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION & THE JACOBINS
112 | 1787 - Weishaupt makes Johann Christoph Bode Executive Secretary of the fledgling Order (there is still a false hope of a full Illuminati reboot at this time—it doesn't happen). That same year Bode visits Paris where he strikes a friendship with lawyer Nicholas Bonneville.
113 | Interestingly, Nicholas Bonneville would go on to become one of the leading radical journalists of the coming French Revolution. (Speaking of which, we're now at T-minus 2 years from the Revolution).
114 | MAY 1789 | The kingdom of France faces national bankruptcy due to King Louis XVI's (in part due to financing the American Revolution against rival Britain) causing him to summon the Estates General.
115 | JUNE 1789 | The Jacobins are founded by liberal republicans from Brittany during the assembly. The name is derived from where they set up HQ: an old Dominican monastery in Paris. The monks had been called Jacobins because of their association with St. Jacques.
116 | The Jacobins hope to de-Christianize French society and supplant the Catholic Church's pre-eminence in society with a devotion to ration reason & the ideals of the Enlightenment (Seems like Bode may have been in touch with some of these guys, too).
117 | 11 JUL 1789 | King Louis XVI fires his liberal finance minister Jacques Necker. This move is not popular.
118 | 14 JUL 1789 | A crowd gathers outside Paris's Bastille on a hot summer afternoon. They demand the surrender of the fortress being used as an armory and prison. The 100 men guarding the tower refuse to surrender. The mob attacks. The Revolution begins.
119 | In the chaos some in the crowd hold up busts of the liberal Duke of Orleans Louis Philippe I. Louis Philippe is the king's cousin but was not in any respect a friend to the king (Also, he changed his name to Philip the Equal).
120 | Duke Philippe Egalite is also Master of the Grand Orient Lodge & member of the Nine Sisters Lodge (which helped Ben Franklin & John Paul Jones secure funding for their American revolution). This makes Philippe the most important Freemason in all of France.
121 | The radical who whipped up much of the dissent among the crowd that storms the Bastille is Philippe's friend and fellow member of the Nine Sisters Lodge, Camille Desmoulins (protege of Mirabeau). All three: Philippe, Camille & Mirabeau later join the Jacobins.
122 | Side note: A popular bit of Revolution mythology is the belief that Philippe is acting in accordance with Cagliostro who ordered the Bastille destroyed or that he is simply fulfilling the Count's wishes from three years earlier.
123 | It's a baseless claim made by those who wish to promote Cagliostro's role in history as being more than it really was either to vilify or put a shine on Freemasonry (it could go either way), particularly his Egyptian Rite which will still play an important role.
124 | 10 OCT 1789 | Nine Sisters member & Jacobin Dr. Joseph-Ignanc Guillotin suggests to the National Assembly that any crimes deemed worthy of execution be carried out via decapitation.
125 | A recently perfected device that would come to take on the doctor's name is agreed upon as the device to use during executions as it was a more humane way to be decapitated compared to the axe. The guillotine's purpose is meant to end life not inflict pain.
126 | Side note: Whenever one listens to a conservative lecturer on the French Revolution, to this day they'll emphasize discussing the carnage of the radical Jacobins, the "Reign of Terror," and their use of the guillotine. But they leave out a few things...
127 | They fail to mention the centuries of horrific tortures, beheadings & bloody terror imposed on the people by the Church and the monarchy. The guillotine offered a stark contrast. But, again, that's all left out.
128 | Also, according to France's official executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, while it was still in development it is King Louis XVI who suggests that the device that will come to be called the guillotine use an oblique blade instead of a curved one. #Irony
129 | 27 DEC 1789 | Count Cagliostro is arrested in his homeland of Italy for attempting to establish a Freemason lodge in Rome. With the recent memories of the Illuminati plot this is a serious crime. He spends the rest of his life in prison. His Egyptian Rite survives him.
130 | 1791 | Filippo Buonarroti arrives in Corsica to agitate egalitarian reforms but is chased off the island by a mob of angry Catholics. He would return a month later to continue his work. Eventually, he is brought into Robespierre's revolutionary government.
131 | 21 SEP 1792 | The French monarchy is abolished and Year I of the French First Republic is proclaimed (The king and queen were arrested in August and a short constitutional monarchy experiment was tried, but it didn't last. After the third week it was over).
132 | Around this time Jacobins are split between the liberal pro-war with Prussia moderates Girondine and the demonized radical anti-war Montagnards. #SoundFamiliar? Robespierre is a vociferous anti-war Montagnard.
133 | 21 JAN 1793 | King Louis XVI is executed by the guillotine.
134 | 16 OCT 1793 | Marie Antoinette is executed by the guillotine.
135 | 18 NOV 1793 | Robespierre and his Montagnard faction take full control and purge many Girondins. The dead king's cousin and arch nemesis Philippe Egalite is executed by guillotine. #oops
136 | 5 APR 1794 | Camille Desmoulins is executed by the guillotine.
137 | 27 JUL 1794 | The Coup of 9 Thermidor. Robespierre's government falls. The following day Robespierre is executed by the guillotine. #oopsredux
Buonarroti loses his support in Paris and returns to Italy.
Buonarroti loses his support in Paris and returns to Italy.
138 | PART V. ILLUMINATI PARANOIA & THE RISE OF FILIPPO BUONAROTTI
139 | MARCH 1795 | Italian proto-communist Filippo Buonarroti is recalled back to Paris and imprisoned by the Directory for redistributing wealth and land from landowners to the peasants of Oneglia.
140 | While in prison Buonarroti meets journalist and fellow proto-communist François-Noël Babeuf, aka Gracchus. Buonarroti and Babeuf become fast friends and start plotting together.
141 | OCTOBER 1795 | Buonarroti & Babeuf are released from prison and immediately form the socialist revolutionary Pantheon Society. It is meant to oppose the Directory.
142 | FEBRUARY 1796 | Buonarroti & Babeuf's Pantheon Society is shut down by police. Those who remain committed reconstitute and establish the revolutionary cadre the "Conspiracy of the Equals." They begin employing some tactics used by the Illuminati 10-20 years earlier.
143 | Side note: It is worth recalling, as previously mentioned, the Freemason lodge Buonarotti had been initiated into in Italy had been under the control of Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati just prior to his initiation.
144 | MAY 1796 | Conspiracy of the Equals coup attempt - Buonarroti & Babeuf's "Conspiracy of the Equals" try to topple the Directory. It is specifically led by Babeuf who wants to install a socialist republic. The coup fails.
145 | After the failed coup, Buonarroti is sent back to prison where he will remain for the next ten years. The ambitious "Conspiracy of the Equals" coup attempt inspires leftist thinkers and revolutionaries alike across Europe for generations to come.
146 | Side note: For leading the coup, Babeuf is executed by guillotine. Meanwhile...
147 | 1797 | The transformation of the Illuminati from the minor episode in the history of secret societies that they had been to the "centerpiece of 200 years of paranoid speculation" begins:
148 | The first of two volumes is published in London by Augustin de Barruel. The title of his work: "Memoirs Serving as a History of Jacobinism."
149 | du Barruel is an ex-Jesuit who fled Revolutionary France and so he has a big axe to grind. He is convinced that a widespread conspiracy was responsible for the Revolution in France.
150 | While du Barruel blames Freemasons & Enlightenment philosophers for helping foment revolutionary ideas for the overthrow of the French monarchy, he writes an inner circle within Masonry deliberately planned the whole Revolution.
151 | Which of course is true. No revolution has ever occurred without an inner circle planning it. But du Barruel is specific. He claims the Revolution was all part of a sinister crusade against the monarchy & Christianity and cites the Bavarian Illuminati by name.
152 | du Barruel offers no proof of this accusation. He simply remembers the Illuminati plot to do what actually happened in France in Bavaria earlier. Despite the lack of evidence, conservatives & monarchists in France & Europe at large are charmed by du Barruel's claims.
153 | Nevermind that the French people may have been sick of the corrupt French monarchy and aristocracy which supported it on their own. "No! It could only have been an idea hatched by liberal elitists! That's the only reason why it happened!" #SoundFamiliar?
154 | At the same time, John Robison publishes his book (ready for this title?): "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."
155 | Robison is a conservative Scottish professor of natural science & Freemason who wants to protect Britain from the revolutionary ideas spreading in the Masonic halls of continental Europe. His book is meant to distinguish British Masonry from the German French & Italian.
156 | Robison's book also blames the French Revolution on the Illuminati. Critics then and now savage Robison's book as baseless nonsense. But of course, this doesn't stop it from becoming popular.
157 | Robison's book is regularly printed and has dominated English-speaking conspiracy theory ever since. de Barruel and Robinson's books have been taken up "enthusiastically by conservatives as a weapon against liberal opponents." to quote chronicler J.M. Greer.
158 | If anyone's ever seen an NWO/Masonic/Illuminati conspiracy theory video on YouTube, hallmarks of these videos are the claim that it's all part of a "liberal leftist hidden agenda that rules the world." Well, this is where it all originated.
159 | Robison and du Barruel both claim that the Illuminati attempt by Baron Von Knigge & Johan Christoph Bode to infiltrate the 1782 Freemason Convention of Wilhelmsbad was not a failure at all, but, according to their made-up sources, was a huge success.
160 | So according to their work and the people who follow it—in effect—all of Freemasonry was now run by the Illuminati. An order that no longer existed. In fact, Freemasonry was now relegated as nothing more than a front for the Illuminati. Which is and always was nonsense.
161 | To be fair, it is true that the Illuminati members and their politics never went away and few if any were ever imprisoned. In fact, as we saw Bode's influence over Bonneville, the old members were still politically active after they were banned in Bavaria.
162 | It seems to have friends who infiltrated high places paid some dividends for them after all.
163 | But an important factor conservatives and conspiracy theorists alike—then & now—always leave out of the equation is one doesn't need to be part of a leftist elite to see crimes born out of inequality to want and work for change.
164 | It seems to be part and parcel of conservatives and conspiracy theorists alike—then & now—to want to chalk up anger and discontent in the masses as being something manufactured rather than to see why revolutionary groups form in the first place. It is their m.o.
165 | You can stop a revolutionary, but if the reasons for the revolutionary's existence in the first place persist, the revolution and its ideas will also persist. And adapt (as we shall see). Meanwhile, also that same year...
166 | 1797 | In the closing years of the French Revolution a student literary club forms in Besançon — In the early 19th c. the club grows more political (leftist) in its hatred of imperialism as Napoleon marches to empire (this according to chronicler Charles Nodier).
167 | 4 JUL 1798 | Owing to du Barruel's & Robison's books anti-Illuminati hysteria reaches America as conservative Yale President, Congregational minister & Federalist Tim Dwight delivers a sermon warning America of the nefariously progressive Illuminati plot.
168 | Side note: During the 1800 US Presidential Election the word communist really didn't exist in the American lexicon. So Dwight and other Federalists accuse Thomas Jefferson of being a member of the Illuminati in their efforts to have John Adams re-elected. #SoundFamiliar?
169 | 21 JAN 1799 | The Parthenopean Republic. With members of what was left of the Naples Illuminati cell the short-lived Pathenopean Republic is established under the auspices of the French First Republic. It collapses in mid-June when King Ferdinad IV returns as monarch.
170 | Meanwhile, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's mystical "Martinist" writings now carry a powerful influence on the conservative elements of European Freemasonry. Saint-Martin views the French Revolution as a microcosm of Judgment Day.
171 | Saint-Martin's mysticism calls for the ideal society of "spiritual theocracy." This is somewhat similar to Weishaupt's ideas, but its ends are the polar opposite of the Illuminati's. No one knows it yet, but the seed of modern right-wing religious fascism has been planted.
172 | In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, Enlightenment idealism & the Napoleonic era, most (tho not all) previously existing occult secret societies end operating openly. Many cease altogether. This includes St. Martin's Martinism (but it comes back).
173 | 1806 | Filippo Buonarroti becomes a member of the secret political society known as the Philadelphes—it is the group that had started as a reading club in Besançon 9 years earlier—while he's still in prison for his "Conspiracy of Equals." He is released shortly after.
174 | 1808 - A Napoleonic-era French Republican in Naples, Pierre Joseph Briot, founds the pre-eminent post-Revolution secret society, a liberal political affiliation to oppose empire which would come to dominate much of the 19th century: the Carbonari ("Charcoal burners").
175 | The Carbonari have no direct affiliation with Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati. At this point Weishaupt is quietly living in exile in Saxony. However, their aims are similar: an international society based on ration, reason & equality (radical leftist ideas for the time)...
176 | As such, Carbonari activities are often conflated with the Illuminati due to these similarities and the fact that the Carbonari take inspiration and draw upon Weishaupt's methods. But they are not the same beyond ethic and spirit.
177 | 1814 | During the end of Napoleon's reign they help bring down imperial French puppet governments throughout Italy. It is their first (and perhaps biggest in all of their history) success.
178 | 18 JUN 1815 | Battle of Waterloo - Napoleon loses. The first French Empire and Napoleon's military & political career ends.
179 | With Napoleon's defeat Europe experiences nearly two generations of peace among each other. There is not another war between Europeans until the Crimean War in the 1850s. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, revolutions from within continue to cook.
180 | PART VI: THE MODERN AGE TAKES SHAPE & BUONNAROTI ACT II
181 | 1818 | Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley publishes the world's first *science-fiction* novel, "Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus." It is about an Ingolstadt scientist who creates a monster he loses control of.
182 | Side note: Some with a sharp eye notice this story seems to be a callback to Ingolstadt professor Weishaupt & his creation of the Illuminati who wanted a world predicated on science & reason—which some still believe may be at work in the 1810s (It was not).
183 | Furthermore... researcher Scott de Hart, in his work claims Mary's husband Percy Shelley was a member of the Illuminati (he was not) and that he was the real author of "Frankenstein" (he was not).
184 | Never an initiated Illuminate, Percy Shelley was a romantic liberal who had been very fascinated (as were many writers of the century) with the Illuminati and their radical ideas...
185 | But given her upbringing, Mary Shelley would have known about the Bavarian Illuminati as well. So the symbolic references to them in her title (the modern Prometheus, bringer of light) is probably not accidental. And it's possible Percy could have helped.
186 | But "Frankenstein" was absolutely written by Mary as her means of coping with the death of her premature daughter. Window-dressing token references that may or may not allude to the Illuminati aside, the story is not concerned with Illuminati politics.
187 | Jane Austen references the Illuminati by name in "Northanger Abbey." Leo Tolstoy brings them up in "War and Peace." References to the Illuminati in fiction is not unique to Mary Shelley and certainly not a secret signal that Percy wrote the novel.
188 | 1818 | Russia. The Union of Welfare is founded by the core group of an earlier attempt by Russian leftists under Pavel Pestel who sought to infiltrate Russian society to bring about liberal reforms carried out by strategically placed administrators in secret.
189 | #Soundfamiliar? Russia's Union of Welfare is inspired by the French Revolution and learns from the tactics of the Carbonari and the defunct Illuminati. It's no surprise that many members of this Union are Freemasons, which, unlike British Freemasonry, is very liberal.
190 | The 1820s | Meanwhile, sometime in the early 1820s Filippo Buonarroti and his followers gain control of the Philadelphes in Italy and soon take over Philadelphe leadership across Europe. This will have incredible significance in the years to come.
191 | 1 DEC 1825 | Russian Tsar Alexander I dies. His brother and heir Konstantine abdicates the day after (non-Orthodox) Christmas and his surviving brother Nicholas is named the new tsar.
192 | 26 DEC 1825 | Decembrist Uprising in Russia - In response to the controversy of the tsar's abdication, seeing an opening, a group of officers connected to the Union of Welfare leads 3000 soldiers in Senate Square near the Russian imperial capital of Petrograd.
193 | Attempting to achieve what the French Revolution had done some 35-40 yrs earlier the Decembrist's plan (and hope) is that they will lead the Russian military in toppling the imperial tsarist regime and enacting liberal reforms.
194 | This Decembrist Uprising is a total failure. Troops loyal to the tsarist regime open fire on the revolting troops killing many and causing the rest to scatter. A few days later the same thing occurs in Ukraine with similar results.
195 | The new Tsar Nicholas I's men round up the Decembrists, executing Pavel Pestel and cracking down hard on the rest. Meanwhile, public opinion, particularly among the educated classes, seems to be in favor of the Decembrist's attempt at liberal reform.
196 | The tsarist crackdown on the Decembrists convinces much of liberal Russia that a full-blown revolution will be necessary. This opens the door to generations of revolts and blowback that will ultimately culminate in the Bolshevik Revolution (but we're not there yet).
197 | 1828 | Filippo Buonarroti publishes his book, "Conspiracy of Equals," a history of his friend and fellow Jacobin François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf.
198 | Buonarroti's book becomes the bible of leftist revolutionaries throughout Europe. It's even translated into English and used by the Chartists.
199 | If it hadn't been already, the model of revolution by a cadre of elites is cemented as the standard method—Future Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin would heed these lessons later.
200 | PART VII. ILLUMINATI REQUIEM
201 | 18 NOV 1830 | Adam Weishaupt dies at the ripe old age of 82 in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Many people believe his Bavarian Illuminati never went away. While it's a romantic ideal, even a lucrative one, it's simply untrue.
202 | While former members of the Illuminati took their ideals and what they learned as Illuminates elsewhere, even influencing other revolutionary orders, the Bavarian Illuminati, which had very much relied on secrecy according to Weishaupt's own words, ceased operations.
203 | Weishaupt spends much of his time after the initial banning of the Illuminati in Bavaria writing an Illuminati Apologia. When the Illuminati never came back together he wrote a number of works on his old order and his philosophy. This is hardly in keeping with the program.
204 | Much is made of the lessons Weishaupt took from his enemies the Jesuits. But another influence on Weishaupt was Pythagoras & the Pythagorean school in colonial Crotona (c. 500 BCE). In many respects, Pythagoras can be seen as a proto proto-communist revolutionary.
205 | Pythagoras would ideally recruit from the sons & daughters of the aristocracy of the colonial-Crotona elite. They would live communally. Women were accepted. There were various grades and accompanying rules for the grades, but those of the same grade lived equally.
206 | Pythagoras introduced a new way of living into the Hellenic world. Not just in his egalitarian communal lifestyle, but he offered his students an alternative to the metaphysics and mysticism of Olympianism, one based on mystical mathematics.
207 | Aristotle's logic is still a century-and-a-half away. While metaphysics and mystery school mysticism were still present in Pythagoras's teachings, his dedication to something that can be observed in the material world was a revelation.
208 | Neoplatonists 700 years later would claim the pentagram, with sacred mathematical ratios embedded in it, was adopted by the Pythagoreans as signs of recognition, among other things. There is magic in math.
209 | It would also seem, however, that Pythagoras may have had issues with the mob rule of colonial Crotona's democracy. Pythagoras's school was reportedly destroyed after his students began to secretly infiltrate Crotona's government in an attempt to destroy it.
210 | Unlike a typical proto-communist, however, it seems that Pythagoras was attempting to undermine democracy in favor of wealthy elites, possibly the patrons of his school from families of his students. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So it's not a perfect transposition or analogy; but close.
211 | Many years later, Manly P. Hall, world-renowned 20th c. Masonic philosopher would state that Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati was "part of something bigger, a larger movement" This has been used by conspiracy theorists as more proof the Illuminati never went out of business.
212 | Hall was a mystic. His statement was not rooted in empirical history. Nor was it intended to be. So what was Manly P. Hall referring to when he made that comment?
213 | In 1492 in Spain the mystical Alumbrados are mentioned for the first time. After they are banned there were the mystic Catholic Illumines in France. They're banned in 1635. Around the same time we see the emergence of the mystic Protestant Rosicrucians.
214 | Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, around the same time as the Alumbrados in Spain, there was the Roshaniya founded by the Sufi mystic warrior Bayazid Khan. Their history and reason for being would be familiar to students of the Illuminati's history.
215 | Instead of the Catholic church and corrupt Christian governments, the Roshaniya rose in defiance of the corrupt Moghul Empire. Khan also desired a utopian egalitarian paradise ruled by an enlightened elite.
216 | When Manly P. Hall states the Illuminati was part of "something larger," he is making a metaphysical observation that many cosmic coincidences from that 1492-1776 time period seemed to be taking place and new ethics and new orders following those ethics were emerging...
217 | And they were doing so across time and space independent of each other (or at least seemed to be). Also, Hall would not have overlooked the fact that these years also coincide and span the years of the discovery of the New World & the American Declaration of Independence.
218 | For someone like Manly P. Hall it would be normal to interpret something hypernatural going on in history. So his statement is one of intuition. There is nothing empirical about Hall's observation.
219 | For a mystical Masonic philosopher like Hall this is simply how he would interpret the world. And he's more than justified in doing so. Though Hall's claim is not rooted in material fact, it remains true that there have been a number of odd coincidences in history.
220 | So it was also kind of strange, as Prof. Richard Spence notes, that Pythagoras and someone like Siddhartha Gautama are born, lived, taught & died at almost the same exact time in history, the Buddha in the East & Pythagoras in the West.
221 | One of the last works Adam Weishaupt would write in the 18th c. while living out his post-Illuminati exile is "Pythagoras, or Reflections on the Secret Art of the World and Government."
222 | PART VIII: HEGEL, MARX & THE NEXT GENERATION
223 | c. 1830s | The Philadelphes, at this point one of the few surviving political secret societies of the Napoleonic era, dip into esoterica and now take control of Cagliostro's irregular form of Freemasonry the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, Meanwhile...
224 | c. 1830s | The same Memphis-Misraïm Freemasonic rite is intertwined with the leftist revolutionary organization Society of the Seasons led by radical socialist Louis-August Blanqui (Society of the Seasons also draws a lot of inspiration from the Illuminati).
225 | 1831 | Giuseppe Mazzini, a band of Italian liberals in exile in Marseilles & members of the leftist revolutionary secret society the Carbonari, found La Giovina Italy (Young Italy).
226 | Mazzini leads the group and patterns its internal workings on the Carbonari, but rather than focusing on internationalist Carbonari goals, Mazzini only accepts Italians and wants to focus on establishing a nationalist Italy.
227 | Earlier, having been influenced by Christian mysticism and hoping to bridge the 2-world philosophy of the phenomenal & noumenal as laid out by Kant, philosopher Georg Hegel had published "The Phenomenology of Spirit" in 1807.
228 | For Hegel the only place you might find truth is in the world, in history (this is key).
229 | Hegel was the first philosopher to look at history seriously. For Hegel there was only the historical world. That's where truth happens. Hegel's notion of the dialectic becomes his lens for reading history.
230 | 1831 | Following Hegel's death, the Young Hegelians emerge. The Young Hegelian left begins to attack state legitimacy that clings to spiritual principles. One Young Hegelian—Bruno Bauer—proclaims the entire Jesus story a myth.
231 | Bauer has a student, the young Karl Marx. Though Marx will ultimately break away from the Young Hegelians, he is nonetheless inspired by the premium Hegel had placed on history.
232 | 16 SEP 1837 | After a life full of important works and righteous agitation, the great Filippo Buonarroti, another inspiration to young Karl Marx, dies in Paris surrounded by friends and admirers.
233 | 12 MAY 1839 | A Society of the Seasons armed insurrection attempts a coup in Paris led by Armand Barbès and August Blanqui. 400 revolutionaries take over city hall and the Palace of Justice. Ultimately the coup attempt implodes after a few hours.
234 | 17 DEC 1843 | As capitalist modes of production dominate England's economy and worker exploitation is rampant (particularly of children), rather than publish a political pamphlet (as was his original idea) Charles Dickens publishes "A Christmas Carol."
235 | PART IX: KARL MARX & THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
236 | 1844 | Karl Marx posits his alienated labor theory when he publishes "Estranged Labor." Marx notes that under capitalism the more a worker makes the more the product of his labor is somebody else's, so in working, the worker loses himself.
237 | For Marx this is a contradiction. Labor should be an extension of the laborer. Using a Hegelian model that says conflict and contradiction are what push history along Marx sees this contradiction and believes this is what will create historical change.
238 | 1845 | As nationalist political fervor across the western world takes hold, all of a sudden there is a great revival in occult studies once again after the publication of Eliphas Lévi's "Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic."
239 | 1 JUN 1847 | Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels form the first Marxist political party—the Communist League—in London when their Communist Correspondence Committee merges with the Christian communist revolutionary group the League of the Just.
240 | 21 FEB 1848 | On behalf of the Communist League, Marx & Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto." ... Shit is about to get real.
241 | 24 FEB 1848 | Days after the "Manifesto" is published a second revolution in France breaks out, the February Revolution. The Second Republic is pronounced.
242 | JANUARY 1852 | Napoleon III seizes power in France and proclaims the Second Empire.
243 | c. 1850s | During the brief period when the Egyptian Rite of Memphis-Misraïm is able to operate legally in France, a lodge is chartered by the Philadelphes in London by French emigres.
244 | The more conservative Grand Masonic Lodge of London is unhappy with this development as the there are many leftists and atheists flocking to this newly chartered, relatively radical, Memphis-Misraïm lodge.
245 | 1855-59 | Philadelphes in London's Memphis-Misraïm lodge despise Napoleon III. Their goal is to get rid of the tyrant. They begin operating a front organization called the International Association.
246 | Part of the International Association's activities is to organize labor and expand unions. Allegedly, they also plot attempts on Napoleon III's life.
247 | Meanwhile, the International Workingman's Association (IWA), the First International, is launched under Philadelphe leadership to carry out the International Association's projects committed to the cause of labor.
248 | The First International under the Philadelphes brings on board the German economist Karl Marx as a growing number of radical groups across Europe were already enamored with him via the Communist League and taking up his ideas independently from the Philadelphes.
249 | Marx's participation is seen as a key cog in the machine the Philadelphes want to put into motion. They believe they can manipulate him for their own ends (they would be wrong).
250 | 24 NOV 1859 | Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species." Man's place in the order of the universe is unsettled. It would especially rattle the conservative Christian base at the time.
251 | 1864 | The novel "Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli" by liberal French Republican Maurice Joly is published. It is a satire of Napoleon III's reign and ambitions to rule the world. (This relatively obscure work will be important later).
252 | c. 1864 | The International Brothers, aka the International Brotherhood—an anarchist secret society—is founded in Italy and led by Russian radical Mikhail Bakunin and Italian revolutionaries who grew disillusioned with Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy.
253 | 28 SEP 1864 | The First International's first official gathering takes place at St. Martin's Hall in London.
254 | It is largely assembled by French liberals who had found a home in the London Philadelphe lodge and are now in exile from Napoleon III's dictatorship. Many English labor unionists inspired by Marx also attend.
255 | DECEMBER 1865 | By this time, Marx, his then-friend Auguste Blanqui & their allies have all but taken control of the First International from Philadelphe sponsorship as the last of the Philadelphes on the sub-committee of the General Council are removed.
256 | PART X: KARL MARX VS. MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
257 | 1866 | Bakunin publishes the International Brotherhood's anarchist manifesto, "Revolutionary Catechism." The print calls for capitalism's replacement by an egalitarian society in which farmers owned the land they work and industry is owned and managed by worker coops.
258 | In practice, however, Bakunin's Brotherhood is an absolute dictatorship controlled by Bakunin and its plan of action concentrates all power in the hands of the Brothers after his theoretical revolution in an "invisible dictatorship."
259 | Bakunin's anarchist International Brothers launch a sub-group—the Secret Alliance—as a front. It would go by the inviting name Alliance of Social Revolutionists or the Secret Alliance of Socialist Democracy. Its aim is to facilitate infiltration into the International.
260 | 1866 | That same year August Blanqui publishes "Instructions for an Armed Uprising."
261 | 14 SEP 1867 | Meanwhile, Karl Marx methodically eviscerates capitalism and its mode of production when the first volume of "Das Kapital" is published.
262 | 1868 | The Secret Alliance—Bakunin's front for his anarchist International Brothers—applies to enter the First International. International leadership rejects their application but does allow national subdivisions of the Alliance to join as local branches.
263 | With his foot now in the door, Bakunin spends years in the International trying to subvert it to his aims. Marx & the Blanquists prevent him each time as they control the largest bloc of delegates on the International's Council (the same bloc that defeated the Philadelphes)
264 | 1868 | The antisemitic author Hermann Ottomar Friedrich Goedsche writes another relatively obscure novel, "Biarritz." In one chapter Goedsche depicts Jewish elders meeting Satan in a Prague cemetery (As with Joly's book, this book will be important later).
265 | 1869-1876 | Beginning in 1869 and ending in 1876 the brilliant but douchey German composer Richard Wagner's 4-opera "Ring Cycle" are performed for the first time. Wagner's works are intended to stir pan-German nationalism.
266 | The German people love the "Ring Cycle." It's the "Star Wars/Lord of the Rings franchise" of its time. Wagner's plan works-but perhaps too well? The conservative fans really become taken by the work. A revival of interest in Germanic paganism begins.
267 | 2 SEP 1870 | Battle of Sedan. Napoleon III is defeated and captured. The Second Empire collapses. Radicals and Republican liberals declare a new French Republic, the third in the past 100 years.
268 | 17 MAR 1871 | Blanqui is arrested for organizing two takeover attempts of the Third Republic's inadequate provisional government (31 Oct 1870 & 11 Jan 1871). He will spend the next nine years in prison. The following day...
269 | 18 MAR-28 MAY 1871 | The Paris Commune!
270 | 1872 | After four contentious years, Marx & the Blanquists finally expel Bakunin from the International—Bakunin will try to launch an "Anti-Authoritarian" International of his own but fails to attract more than a token following outside of his own organization.
271 | Though Marx defeats Bakunin for control of the International, it is a pyrrhic victory. The years of internal strife turn many members off and interest in the International wanes.
272 | 1873 | Lacking any zeal after the internal Marx-Bakunin battle for control of the International, General Council leadership relocates to New York.
273 | 1874 | Bakunin diverts the entire treasury of the Brotherhood for improvements to his Swiss villa. This causes many members to defect.
274 | 1876 | With no real interest or solidarity any longer in place, the First International dies in New York.
275 | That same year, Bakunin dies in Switzerland. (This will leave an open pathway for the founding of the Second International in 1889).
276 | c. 1880s | Cagliostro's old irregular Freemasonic Rite of Memphis-Misraïm is formally combined under a "high priest" or Grand Hierophant (the first of which is Italian Freemason & revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi).
277 | 13 MAR 1881 | Russian Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in Petrograd by members of the socialist revolutionary Narodnaya Volya.
278 | APR 1881 | Pogroms begin in imperial Russia after Jews are scapegoated for the assassination of the tsar. (When the refugees from the Russian pogroms arrive in New York, Emma Lazarus is inspired to write her poem, "The New Colossus.")
279 | 14 MAR 1883 | Karl Marx passes away in London. Almost as if on some kind of cue, upon Marx's death very very dark things begin to spawn in Europe. Darker than what was already going on...
280 | PART XI: THE RISE OF THE OCCULT IN RIGHT-WING NATIONALIST POLITICS: SYNARCHY & THE SYNARCHISTS
281 | 1884 | Dr. Gérard Encausse, aka Papus (a name to remember going forward) is one of the most important figures in revived occult circles in France. He revives Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's old Martinist order. Papus is also a rabid ultra-conservative antisemite.
282 | 1884 | The Palladian Order hoax. The original Satanic panic in the modern age. Not important in the grand scheme, but is worth knowing about insofar as a lot of anti-Freemason conspiracy mythology is concerned when it comes to fundamental Christians today who buy into it...
283 | Beginning in 1884 and going on for 10 years, Lèo Taxil—an anti-Catholic French muck-raker & Freemason—trolls Catholics on a level never before seen after the pope releases an encyclical attacking Freemasonry. Look into it. You won't be disappointed. #SatanicPanic 1.0
284 | 1885 | Synarchy is established by French occultist and Martinist Joseph Alexander Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. d'Alveydre breaks off with the liberal socialist politics of the early French occultists (such as Éliphas Lévi).
285 | d'Alveydre inserts a reactionary brand of conservative right-wing occult practice into western political thought.
286 | 1886 | d'Alveydre forms a press syndicate to promote Synarchy.
287 | 1887 | d'Alveydre publishes his reactionary tome "La France vraie," in which de describes the ideal government and what Synarchy is. It is meant as the counter-opposite of Anarchy. Whereas the esoteric occultism of Synarchy's origins have gone away, its methods have not.
288 | Synarchy would go on to become the major driving force in European politics for the rest of the 19th c. and then much of the 20th. Meanwhile, in the esoteric circles, this new occult conservatism would come to dominate much of western esoterica until the 1960s.
289 | So what is Synarchy? First a summation of its mythology: Like most political snake-oil salesmen, d'Alveydre had an alternative vision of world history (alternate or revised history is a hallmark of occultists seeking to sell people on something)...
290 | d'Alveydre believed Synarchy was a governing system of the world under a great "Universal Empire," founded by a character taken from Hindu myth named "Rama" in 6729 BCE. But the Empire fell.
291 | The great spiritual leaders of all ages: Moses, Jesus, blah blah blah, had attempted to re-establish this Universal Empire. He'd go on: Knights Templars (who else?) had almost attained the perfect synarchist state during their time, but not quite...
292 | The only nation governed on synarchist principles in his own time was the hidden underground kingdom/city-state of Agharta, deep under the Himalayas.
293 | d'Alveydre claimed it was ruled by a "Supreme Pontiff" or Brahamatma, the head of the religious sphere, *assisted* by the Mahatma and Mahanga, who headed the political & economic spheres (Note how the religious sphere comes first, not enlightenment idealism at all).
294 | For d'Alveydre it is these 3 spheres that factor into Synarchism in praxis. Synarchy sees human society as composed of the 3 independent spheres of religion, politics & economics. These 3 will conflict with each other resulting in the fall of all 3... Anarchy.
295 | In synarchist theory, the solution to this problem of inevitable anarchy is establishing an insulated circle of initiates who have positions of influence in the 3 spheres #SoundFamiliar? This secret circle would coordinate the activities of the 3 spheres resulting in peace.
296 | Side note: Nobody ever hears about Synarchy. We all hear about the radical leftist Illuminati & benign Freemasonry. Illuminati & Freemason paranoia is a lucrative cottage industry. But almost never is Synarchy included in this industry.
297 | In part this may be because Synarchy itself is not an order or a group. It acts in the world as a program or an ideological adaptor.
298 | Clearly it's stealing the methods of old secret political actors like the Carbonari & Illuminati before them, but their ideological aims are the polar opposite. So when one discusses the "Illuminati" in a flippant manner these days, what is really meant?
299 | Propaganda Due (a conservative Freemasonic org) dominated Italian politics of the 1970s and was a textbook example of Synarchy in its attempt to bring Italian politics, church & crime-controlled drug economy in alliance to resist the rise of communism in Italy.
300 | This is interesting when one looks at what is going on in Italy in 2022 as communism is once again on the rise. An open fascist is in charge of Italy again. This is all the more interesting when we consider a few other things.
301 | The Cagoule, the French fascist movements before WW2, were heavily Synarchist. As were the policies of the complicit fascist Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France that was born out of the Cagoule.
302 | The Thule Society out of which the Nazis would rise, like a parasitic worm hatched from an egg incubated in fecal matter, was heavily Synarchist (more on them in a bit).
303 | PT. XII: ANTISEMITIC IMPERIAL RUSSIA, ANTISEMITIC GERMANY & THE STAR OF LENIN RISES
304 | 8 MAY 1887 | Aleksandr Ulyanov is one of five men executed by hanging for the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III. Ulyanov's youngest brother, 17-yr-old Vladimir, does not forget.
305 | 1889 | French English & German Marxists + trade unionists (with NO affiliations to any secret groups occult or political) meet in Paris at the Salle Patrelle to establish a framework for working-class solidarity in the aftermath of the International's demise 13 yrs earlier.
306 | This congress was meant to compete with another radical international congress going on at the same time in Paris on the Rue de Lancry dominated by anarchists. The Marxists wanted to re-establish an international of their own. The Second International is born.
307 | 1894 | Austrian monk, fascist, occultist & antisemite Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels claims to have received "true enlightenment" upon finding the tomb of a Templar Knight (because of course he did) and begins writing theories regarding blue-eyed blond-haired Aryanism.
308 | Liebenfels believes the white "Aryan" race is spawn from god-like aliens and sees Germanic people as the purest example left of these "aliens." Ariosophy—aka the Völkish movement—is born. Meanwhile...
309 | 1895 | Reports of early versions of the antisemitic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" mysteriously begin to surface in Russia.
310 | It is plagiarized fiction being presented as fact detailing a plan of subversion & financial manipulation by "secret elders" in order to undermine Christianity & control European politics to establish a Jewish monarch.
311 | "The Protocols" is a cruel hoax with dark aims. Much of it is plagiarized from Joly's satirical 1864 novel "Dialogue in Hell Between Montesquieu and Machiavelli" & Godsche's racist 1868 novel "Biarritz."
312 | Though there are disagreements over exactly when "The Protocols" originally began to appear, and even more so, who was behind it, it seems likely that a Russian Theosophist and spy working with the tsar's secret police, Yuliana Glinka, is behind the original forgery.
313 | 1895 | Lenin helps organize a Marxist group in Petrograd, the Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. In December he is arrested, spends a year in jail, and then 3 years in exile in Siberia.
314 | 1900 | After eleven years of planning, the Second International finally establishes its framework and formal organization. Unfortunately, most of the power remains with the Socialist & Social Democratic parties from different countries that compose it rather than workers.
315 | This is bad because the dawning of the 20th century saw many nationalist political strains that would eventually give rise to WWI in the following decade. The Second International is doomed to fail straight of the box.
316 | 1900 | Rabid antisemite, occultist, spiritualist, Freemason & Martinist Dr. Gerard Encausse (aka Papus) visits Russia and meets with fellow antisemite and spiritualist Tsar Nicholas II.
317 | As mentioned, Encausse had restarted Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's "Martinist" order in 1884. Encausse is also caught up in d'Alveydre's occult writings and synarchist philosophy. Over the next 5 years Encausse acts as "spiritual advisor" to Nicholas II.
318 | Also worth noting: while France and the Russian Empire are allies at this time, Encausse is acting as a spy on behalf of France—Historically occultists & spiritualists working in close quarters with heads of state are almost always someone's spy. This is no different.
319 | It's worth a note all the more when you consider all of the so-called Evangelicals who hang around politicians like flies on dog droppings in American politics these days. They're not all what they claim to be.
320 | 1900 | Also that year, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels establishes the proto-fascist secret society Order of the New Templars with a structure modeled after his monk order. Its aim is to bring in right-wing extremists and keep Marxists & communism out of Germany/Austria-Hungary.
321 | Side note: Liebenfels's right-wing racist fascist Order of the New Templars uses a swastika for its flag.
322 | JULY 1901 | After spending time in Egypt as an engineer, German engineer (and government agent) Rudolf von Sebottendorff moves to Turkey. While there he is initiated into the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm.
323 | OCTOBER 1901 | Antisemites Encausse (Russian Tsar Nicholas II's spiritual advisor & spy) & Jean Carrère write a series of articles in the "Écho de Paris" newspaper in France...
324 | In these articles the Russian statesman Sergei Witte & chief of the secret police (the Okhrana) Pyotr Rachkovsky are accused of being part of a financial syndicate trying to disrupt the Franco-Russian alliance. These articles echo the "Protocols of Zion."
325 | The main point of these articles by Encausse & Carrère (published under a pseudonym) is that this alleged financial syndicate is part of a larger "Jewish conspiracy" that every conservative & Russian monarchist reader would have been familiar with.
326 | Side Note: Because of Encausse's association with the tsar and his role in the "Écho de Paris" articles it leads some to believe he was also behind the publication of the finalized version of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at around this same time.
327 | Ironically, Rachkovsky, as head of the Okhrana, was tasked with operations against revolutionaries who sought to bring down the imperial government allied with France after Tsar Alexei's assassination in 1881—Yuliana Glinka, the original forger—is likely one of his agents.
328 | Some also believe another of Rachkovsky's agents in Paris, Matvei Golovinski, was behind the original compilation (perhaps even working with Glinka) of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" hoax/forgery. No definite proof has been established either way.
329 | 1902 | Lenin publishes the pamphlet "What is to Be Done?" In it he argues that only a disciplined party of revolutionaries could bring socialism to Russia. Bolshevism begins to form.
330 | 1903 | With all of the antisemitism flying around Europe, Pogroms against Jews in tsarist Russia break out again.
331 | 1903 | At a socialist conference in London 33-yr old Lenin meets with other Russian Marxists and establishes the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. Immediately there is a fundamental disagreement between methodologies to bring about the revolution.
332 | Lenin declares victory in various votes in spite of controlling only a fraction of the delegates. It is the first stroke of tactical genius in a career full of brilliant tactics Lenin would execute.
333 | The Mensheviks favored a mass worker's party and an open organization to democratically bring about socialism. Bolsheviks, under Lenin, disagreed.
334 | Lenin prefers a small vanguard party of committed revolutionaries who would rely on militant and conspiratorial techniques: a political "secret society" opposed to a mass political movement.
335 | Russia, as an absolute monarchy with a history of violent crackdowns, was infested with the tsar's agents. The Okhrana lurked everywhere. As a matter of practicality it is Lenin's model that made much *much* more sense.
336 | The Okhrana was a government secret society of sorts itself. It combatted anti-imperial revolutionary conspiracies with their own conspiracies and were experts at infiltrating revolutionary groups and placing their agents in leading positions.
337 | So good at their job were they that for a time some even believed Lenin was a secret Okhrana agent.
338 | Many, then and now, would note Lenin's methods and his aims somewhat resemble Weishaupt's Illuminati from 125 years earlier. Which is not incorrect. But there are more than a few major fundamental differences...
339 | Chief among them being the Marxist ethic of liberating men from the tyranny of capital which Weishaupt's Illuminati had no real concept of (Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was published the same year the Illuminati formed) and did not figure into their ideology at the outset.
340 | 1903 | "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" begins being published in abbreviated forms in the conservative Russian newspaper "Znamaya" (Russia's InfoWars/FOX News) which is owned by Black Hundreds radical Pavel Krushevan.
341 | The Black Hundreds are the ultra-nationalist pro-monarch right-wing paramilitary xenophobic terrorists in Russia at this time. They're basically imperial Russia's Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three-Percenters & Brown Shirts. They're also behind many of the anti-Jewish pogroms.
342 | PT XIII: THE BOLSHEVIKS, THE FAILURE OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL & RASPUTIN
343 | 8 FEB 1904 | War between Russia and upstart Japan breaks out in the east over Manchuria.
344 | 1903 | Father Iliodor delivers a sermon at Peterhof Palace advocating for land reform. The Russian aristocracy & Orthodox Church do not approve. One of Iliodor's defenders is a young man captivating the church at the time named Rasputin (more on these two later).
345 | 22 JAN 1905 | Russian Revolution of 1905: Bloody Sunday - As Russia fights an imperialist war against Japan, liberal Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon who is very popular among the workers leads them to the imperial winter palace to deliver a petition to Tsar Nicholas II.
346 | Imperial troops open fire on the demonstrating workers and kill hundreds. In response a series of strikes are sparked across the Russian Empire in the industrial city centers. The strikes continue off and on for the next two years.
347 | 1905 | Meanwhile, the former Austrian monk, racist & fascist Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels writes "Theozoölogie" advocating sterilization of the sick and the "lower races," among other things. He also refers to his Germanic Aryan race as god-men.
348 | 1905 is the same year Liebenfels also founds the fascist magazine "Ostara." Many of the published articles in the magazine push antisemitic and Ariosophoc-Völkisch theories. A teenager named Adolph Hitler was a fan.
349 | 26 MAY 1905 | The strange death of Savva Morozov - Savva Morozov is dead. What happened is unclear. Some believe it is suicide. Others believe he is assassinated by Bolshevik Leonid Krasnin (which would mean on Lenin's orders).
350 | There is a compelling case to be made that he was assassinated by the Bolsheviks. If indeed Morozov was assassinated, a large life insurance sum was the motive. The Morozov family owned textile mills and was the fifth richest family in the Russian empire.
351 | Savva had been funneling some of the profits from his family's mills to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. When Morozov's mom found out about this she stops it. The end result is her son Savva dies; either by suicide or by assassination.
352 | The middle-man between Savva Morozov & Lenin was author Maxim Gorky. Gorky was a liberal Freemason not affiliated officially with the Bolsheviks but he was a great friend to Lenin and helped him publicly and financially.
353 | Reportedly, Gorky had persuaded Savva Morozov to make the insurance payout payable to Gorky's common-law wife, Maria Andreeva. Andreeva would later hand a 60,000 ruble payout to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. #Shrewd
354 | 1905 | "The Protocols of Zion" wind up in the appendix of the book "Velikoe v Malom" by a conservative self-styled Russian Orthodox mystic Sergei Nilus. Nilus's wife is a member of the antisemitic tsarina's court.
355 | Ten years after mysteriously surfacing in Europe "The Protocols" is standard required reading for conservatives. They see the rise of Bolshevism as being a byproduct of a non-existent Jewish conspiracy, ignoring every single social factor which was the real cause.
356 | 12 AUG 1905 | Tsar Nicholas & Tsarina Alexandra have their only son the heir apparent, Alexei. It is evident immediately that Alexei is a hemophiliac.
357 | 5 SEP 1905 | The Russo-Japanese War officially comes to a close with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. It is a humiliating defeat for imperial Russia.
358 | 18-22 OCT 1905 | The 1905 Odessa Pogrom marks the bloodiest of the Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia during the 1903-06 outbreak of pogroms aimed against them.
359 | 1 NOV 1905 | Rasputin meets the tsar & tsarina for the first time. Rasputin is not a monk, nor does he have any formal connection to the Orthodox Church, he is a conman. He's also believed by some to be part of a secretive heretical group, the Khlysty.
360 | The Khlysty are a quasi-Gnostic offshoot of the Orthodox Church who practice extreme asceticism but at times are also known to engage in mystical acts of frenzied sexual intercourse to purge mind & body of sin (somewhat akin to ancient 2nd c. Carpocratian Gnosticism).
361 | The Romanovs are taken by Rasputin and believe he may be able to help through metaphysical means with their son's (heir of the empire) hemophilia — Again, The Romanovs were very superstitious. Rasputin takes over the office previously held by French spy Dr. Gerard Encausse.
362 | In point of fact, it is believed that Rasputin is part of a German plot. Unlike France, Germany and Russia are not allies — In this instance, Rasputin's main accuser would be his future personal nemesis, Father Iliodor, the same man Rasputin had once defended.
363 | But Bismark did want to see the Russian Empire break up into various smaller entities. With Russia experiencing a discontented working class and now losing to Japan, Bismark smells blood in the water. Interestingly, almost like magic, Rasputin enters the picture.
364 | 6 JUN 1906 | In the aftermath of its humiliating defeat to Japan and with the empire suffering massive work stoppages Tsar Nicholas II creates an elected legislature to de-escalate the revolution, the Duma. The Duma, however, is elected by the aristocracy.
365 | Almost every single member of the Duma is a Freemason. And with Russia having been an absolute monarchy for centuries the new legislative Duma is also full of liberals.
366 | Late 1906 | The xenophobic ultra right-wing pro-imperialist radical monarchist group the Black Hundreds (aka the "Union of the Russian People") come together formally as a reaction to the formation of the Duma under right-wing agitator & antisemite V.M. Purushkevich.
367 | Purushkevich believes the new Russian constitution and the formation of the Duma is part of the Jewish conspiracy against the Tsar. #SoundFamiliar? (In point of fact, it is actually possible it was a conspiracy, but one helped cooked up by Bismark).
368 | The recently published fake "Protocols of Zion" play a large part in Purushkevich and the Black Hundreds propaganda campaigns. They would run candidates and hold a few seats in the Duma. Meanwhile...
369 | Black Hundreds militiamen were carrying out murders against liberal Freemasons, non-Mason liberals, ethnic minorities (Poles & Armenians) and the pogroms against Jews. Also worth noting: In the post-Revolution civil war the Black Hundreds would fight for the White Army.
370 | The Black Hundreds also receive massive support from the antisemite Tsar Nicholas II at this time. He subsidizes their criminal activities with 2.5 million rubles annually. The Tsar also wears their badge on his imperial uniform.
371 | The previous year Lenin writes: "The fight against the Black Hundreds is an excellent type of military action which will train the soldiers of the revolutionary army, give them their baptism of fire, and at the same time be of tremendous benefit to the revolution."
372 | 1906 | After a failed money-raising venture in New York on behalf of an American secret society—the A-Club—and the likes of Freemason Mark Twain, Gorky rents a villa on Capri where Lenin and other Bolsheviks set up a revolutionary school of sorts.
373 | 16 JUN 1907 | The Revolution of 1905 fizzles out and is ultimately a failure.
374 | JUNE 1907 | The Tiflis Bank Robbery aka the Erivansky Square expropriation goes down. In the main square of what's now the capital of Georgia, a Bolshevik band, including a young Stalin, ambushes a payroll convoy and seizes 340,000 rubles.
375 | This didn't do the Bolsheviks any favors insofar as the public was concerned. Many of the bills are also marked making them hard to launder.
376 | The Tiflis Robbery proved to the revolutionaries that robbing banks would not be the best method forward for financing the revolution. Other means would be necessary.
377 | 18-24 AUG 1907 | The Stuttgart Congress - With the drums of nationalism beating across Europe a continent-wide conflict seems inevitable. The Second International draws up a plan to prevent such a war by calling for general strikes within every country that declares war.
378 | The Stuttgart Congress of 1907 makes this plan its centerpiece of socialist policy in every European nation. But as previously mentioned, because most of the power lies with liberal politicians their plans are doomed to fail.
379 | 1908 | The List Society is established in Austria based on the popularity of the work of Ariosophist occultist, antisemite & Germanic pagan nationalist author Guido von List.
380 | As head of the group List would promote the idea that a pan-Germanic empire was coming that would embrace "Wotanism" and rid the world of all its degeneracy. #SoundFamiliar?
381 | 1909 | Walther Rathenau, German civil servant & industrialist (also the future post-WW1 Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic) makes an innocent remark/analogy about a "Committee of 300" controlling Germany's economy and certain monopolies in a news article he writes.
382 | This offhand remark written in his article "Geschäftlicher Nachwuchs" for the Neue Freie Presse is not meant to be taken literally... but it is. This sparks a racist right-wing reaction that has gripped modern conspiracy theories even to this day; particularly in Europe.
383 | Side note: With the forged antisemitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" still on everyone's mind, Rathenau, being Jewish, would later be accused of being a member of this non-existent "Committee of 300" he had written a line about in an article.
384 | Rathenau would be assassinated in 1922 by right-wing militants of the Organisation Consul, an ultra-nationalist antisemitic terrorist organization operating in the post-WW1 Weimar Republic days. They would later figure into the Nazi party.
385 | 1910 | Remembering how his friend once defended him after he advocated for land reform during a sermon seven years earlier, Father Iliodor goes on the record and defends Rasputin in the press regarding his association with the imperial family (their split occurs later).
386 | 1910 | Father Iliodor is no longer allowed to preach and sent into exile. Rasputin lobbies on Iliodor's behalf, but Tsar Nicholas II agrees with those who seek to keep Iliodor banned.
387 | 21 MAY 1911 | The tsar has a changed of heart. Exiled Iliodor is asked by Tsar Nicholas II to speak out against Jews & revolutionaries. Iliodor is promoted archimandrite. Meanwhile, Iliodor grows more and more suspicious of Rasputin's relationship with the imperial family.
388 | DECEMBER 1911 | Archimandrite Iliodor & Bishop Hermogen come into open conflict with Rasputin. After Hermogen beats Rasputin with a crucifix in a monastery, Rasputin lodges a complaint with the tsar — It is Bishop Hermogen who originally accuses Rasputin of being a Khlysty.
389 | In response—and at the behest of his patron Maxim Gorky—Iliodor publicly condemns Rasputin due to his decadent behavior and suspicious relationship with Tsarina Alexandra, including passing letters written by the Tsarina to the Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov.
390 | 1912 | Iliodor renounces the Russian Orthodox Church and publishes an open apology to the Jews. For this he is defrocked and banished.
391 | 1912 | Lenin formally announces a split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
392 | PT. XIV: RIGHT-WING FASCISM SPREADS ITS WINGS
393 | 1912 | Two relatively secret Ariosophist German orders are founded on the occult teachings of antisemite fascist and German pagan nationalist Guido von List: the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden.
394 | The Germanenorden is established by Hermann Pohl, a German antisemite and right-wing political activist influenced by "The Protocols" who already belonged to the Reichshammerbund (Reich Hammer Society), the most influential antisemitic group in Germany.
395 | Pohl is inspired to create the order based on the nationalist pan-Germanic music and philosophy of Richard Wagner but mainly the Ariosophical teachings of Guido von List.
396 | 1913 | Sebottendorff, knowing how secret societies can facilitate political conspiracy returns to Germany from Turkey (Germany & the Ottoman Empire are strong allies) styles himself as an occult sage & agent of "mysterious paymasters." He immediately joins Germanenorden.
397 | The Germanenorden is rabidly pro-war and anti-left. German Army spy von Sebottendorff knows that if this order can be strengthened it can be exploited for pro-Berlin propaganda purposes and necessary political conspiracies as leftist causes are sweeping through Europe.
398 | von Sebottendorf takes over the Germanenorden's Munich branch and renames it the Thule Society. Their slogan is "blood and earth" and adopts Liebenfels's right-wing fascist Order of the New Templars use of a swastika.
399 | von Sebottendorf establishes the Thule Society's HQ at Munich's Four Seasons hotel. It seems like the Thule Society is just a club for Germans to discuss Germanic literature, folktales & occultism (runes, Aryan gods, astrology, etc), but an inner core plot politically.
400 | Side note: You may recall the Four Seasons debacle with MAGA American-Nazi tool Rudy Giuliani after MAGA American-Nazi tool Trump lost the American presidential election in 2020. But was it a debacle? Or a dog whistle?
401 | PT. XV: THE GREAT WAR, FALL OF RASPUTIN AND THE TSAR & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION DAWNS
402 | 28 JUN 1914 | Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in concert with six other assassins from the Yugoslavian group Mlada Bosna which is supplied by the Serbian Black Hand.
403 | The first attempt on Ferdinand's life that day resembles Tsar Alexander II's assassination. Nedeljko Čabrinović throws a grenade at the Archduke's car but misses—Later, after taking a wrong turn, Ferdinand winds up in Princip's sights. Gavrilo shoots Ferdinand & his wife.
404 | Mlada Bosna wanted a free Yugoslavia and was against the imperial Austro-Hungarian empire. Though Princip's actions are often pointed to as what started WW1, in truth, this was a war that was going to happen regardless of a Habsburg prince.
405 | 1914 | As nations and their socialist parties get caught up in nationalist fervor and calls for war, the centerpiece of the Second International's plan to call for general strikes across Europe is ignored and the Second International dies an ignominious death.
406 | 12 JUL 1914 | Chionya Guseva, a young peasant woman, stabs Rasputin in an assassination attempt. Rasputin recovers but is of the belief that his former friend Iliodor is behind the attempt on his life as the woman was a follower of Iliodor. Chionya claims she acted alone.
407 | The imperial family and police agree with Rasputin. Iliodor flees for Norway. While in Norway Iliodor learns of a supposed plot involving Rasputin and Alexandra to arrange a separate peace with Berlin through intrigue in Stockholm.
408 | Here is the tea: According to Prof. Richard Spence's work, Rasputin was said to be involved with the secretive Stockholm cabal known as "the Greens," a group likely associated with another secret political group Baltikum.
409 | Baltikum was composed of Russian Germans who were pro-Berlin (The Baltikum emblem is said to have been a green swastika). At the root of all of the rumor & innuendo regarding Rasputin & Alexandra was this potential separate peace... not an illicit affair.
410 | This makes sense. Remember, Alexandra was German. Her grandparents were Queen Victoria & Albert; both Germans. But here is the thing, in my own research, I can find no mention of Baltikum or "the Greens" in any reference work available to me.
411 | This tidbit of history Prof. Spence cites seems to come from a Russian historian/journalist (Oleg Shishkin). I have not read his work and I don't know his sources. So take this Rasputin-Baltikum detour with a grain of salt...
412 | And countering this is the idea of Germany accepting a peace that allowed the Russian Empire to stay intact. After all, Germany ultimately wanted the breaking up of Russia into smaller states. But it also doesn't mean Alexandra wouldn't have tried regardless.
413 | I'm not saying the Rasputin-Baltikum story isn't true. I'm not saying Baltikum or "the Greens" aren't real. It even makes sense if it were true. But I cannot verify anything one way or the other on this. But just know, this story is out there.
414 | On the other side of the coin, Britain & France certainly do not want to see a separate peace made—They wanted Imperial Russia in the fight on their side and would go to drastic measures if they thought someone with influence might be trying to work toward a separate peace.
415 | 1914 | Lenin opposes the War as an imperialist conflict and calls on proletariat soldiers to turn their guns on their capitalist leaders who sent them into the trenches. For imperial Russia and the Russian people, World War I would be a disaster.
416 | 2 DEC 1914 | Saying that the "real enemy is at home," Karl Liebknecht is the only member of Germany's Reichstag to vote against funding the war with Britain, France & Russia.
417 | SPRING 1915 | German & Austrian armies drive hundreds of miles into the Russian Empire. In response, Tsar Nicholas II takes command of the troops in the field, leaving the government to Tsarina Alexandra, Rasputin & a coterie of reactionaries.
418 | 1915 | With Germany & Russia still at war, Russian Marxist Alexander Parvus (aka Helphand) visits the German embassy in Constantinople to propose Russian revolutionaries & Germany had common aims: the destruction of tsarism and the division of Russia into smaller states.
419 | This is the music Berlin wants to hear. Helphand says German money could help the revolutionaries achieve this end. It is at this time Marxist Helphand offers to be a German agent to organize the subversion of Imperial Russia.
420 | Of course, what Germany would ultimately get in helping finance the overthrowing of the tsar and the breakup of the Russian Empire was not what they had hoped, nor what they expected.
421 | Side note: Alexander Helphand is also a great friend and mentor to Leon Trotsky.
422 | 1915 | Helphand approaches Lenin, now in Switzerland, with a potential offer of German-backed financing for the Revolution. Lenin declines the potential offer... for now.
423 | SPRING 1916 | The Menshevik Leon Trotsky (he would not become a Bolshevik until 1917) is living in France and spreading an anti-tsarist message however possible. This is a problem as France & the Russian Empire are allies fighting Germany in a war together.
424 | JUNE 1916 | The exiled former Father Iliodor, still fearing for his life, escapes to New York.
425 | FALL 1916 | France deports Trotsky to neutral Spain. While there, Trotsky receives a large sum of money & first-class tickets for his entire family to go to New York where he remains until after the Tsar falls.
426 | While in New York, Trotsky develops a relationship with German-born American banker, capitalist (and Freemason) Jacob Schiff.
427 | Schiff had helped to finance the Revolution of 1905. It is unknown whether or not he helped finance the 1917 Revolution, but there's every reason to believe he would have been willing to. And given Schiff's connections, perhaps he did.
428 | Schiff had a deep hatred of the horrific antisemitic Tsar because Jacob Schiff was Jewish. It's why he helped in 1905. It's why he would have helped again in 1917.
429 | Schiff also had friends connected with the Warburg Bank in Berlin, connected to Kaiser Wilhelm's German government. Nothing can be proven before 1917, but the claim goes like this:
430 | Trotsky's old pal Alexander Helphand (Parvus) finances his New York trip via German money in the wake of his proposal to Berlin. While there Trotsky and Schiff meet up and set up additional longer-term financing.
431 | 25 OCT 1916 | Dr. Gerard Encausse (the right-wing radical occultist, antisemite who likely facilitated spreading "The Protocols" & spiritual advisor to Tsar Nicholas II before Rasputin) dies from t.b. while working in a military hospital in Paris.
432 | 30 DEC 1916 | Rasputin is assassinated. Reports are he is ultimately killed by British agent Oswald Rayner overseeing the operation when he shoots him in the head after the famously long and torturous ordeal we've all heard didn't go as planned.
433 | Britain would not have wanted a separate peace established. If Rasputin was facilitating a separate peace through contacts in Stockholm it needed to be stopped. Rayner's involvement in the assassination has never been acknowledged and is denied by Britain to this day.
434 | EARLY 1917 | Bolshevik membership is at its lowest. It's under 10,000 members, a far cry from its nearly 50,000 members ten years earlier in the closing days of the Revolution of 1905.
435 | Lenin at this time believes peace at any cost was necessary to advance the Revolution in Russia and the world revolution to follow — Lenin now wants a separate peace. Not a popular position among many of his fellow revolutionaries, like Trotsky.
436 | 22 FEB 1917 | The February Revolution erupts. Angry workers at a metalworking plant in the imperial capital of Petrograd strike. The cause: food shortages & the disastrous participation in the horrific War which sees Russia suffer crushing defeat after crushing defeat.
437 | 11 MAR 1917 | In response to the workers' strikes and violent clashes with police, troops from the Petrograd garrison are called out. In some areas they open fire, killing some workers. In the days that follow the workers do not relent but the soldiers begin to waiver.
438 | 12 MAR 1917 | 92 years after the original Decemberist uprising in Russia, regiment after regiment in the army garrison joins the workers. By the following day the entire 150,000-man garrison has joined the Revolution.
439 | 15 MAR 1917 | The Tsar steps down — 3 days after the entire Petrograd garrison joins the worker revolt Nicholas II abdicates in favor of his brother Michael (who refuses the crown). The Bolsheviks arrest the entire royal family. The tsarist regime of Russia is over.
440 | Russia is now in the hands of a provisional government led by Russia's minister of war Alexander Kerensky and tolerated by the Petrograd workers' council Soviet formed by the February rebels. Kerensky hopes to salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage.
441 | With the tsar out of the picture, Lenin must work his way back to Russia the long way around as France is not willing to be of any help to anyone who might undermine their now teetering Russian ally in the War. Germany on the other hand is eager to help.
442 | Lenin had been living in Zurich as a political exile since 1914. As the War waged on, he was hoping to establish an armed uprising in Switzerland. But when the news of the tsar's abdication over the February Revolution reached him, he wanted to get back home.
443 | MARCH 1917 | Germany—who is still at war with Russia—helps transport Lenin via train from Switzerland, across Germany, to Stockholm (The same city Rasputin was said by some to have been working on a separate peace to keep Russia out of the war years earlier).
444 | While there promise are made to finance the Bolsheviks using front companies that Trotsky's friend Alexander Helphand arranged with Nya Banken, a Stockholm bank run by socialist sympathizers with close ties to Stockholm Bolsheviks.
445 | The head of Nya Banken is Olof Aschberg. Aschberg is a close partner and business associate of Trotsky's uncle Abram Zhivotovksy.
446 | 1917 | Meanwhile, back in Germany, Rudolph von Sebattendorff begins creating the "Rings of Thule," satellite study societies of his Munich Thule Society.
447 | 16 APR 1917 | Lenin finally returns to Russia by way of Finland. Bolshevik numbers increase from 10,000 to 20,000. Meanwhile, liberals running the provisional government are still intent on winning the war against Germany.
448 | Returning to Russia before Trotsky (who is still in New York as of January 1917), Lenin is able to rally the growing Bolsheviks with the slogans: "Power to the Soviets" & "Peace, land, and bread."
449 | With the German money Helphand and Trotsky were able to secure Lenin is also able to launch a propaganda campaign.
450 | Lenin, Trotsky & the Bolsheviks knew the War was lost. Russians are war-weary. The economy is falling apart and the bourgeois liberals in the provisional government who overthrew the tsar have no plan or method to follow through with political & economic change.
451 | MAY 1917 | Sir William Wiseman, chief of British intelligence in New York writes London: "Germans have secured control of the most important secret societies in Russia and it is necessary that this German influence should be exposed and counter-societies organized."
452 | This is likely an acknowledgment that the Bolsheviks had been, up to this point anyway, financed by German money as a means to undermine France and Britain's eastern front ally. However...
453 | In that same cable, Wiseman says: "It must not be forgotten Russians regard their secret societies as the most important part of their liberal political machinery."
454 | Keep in mind many members of the Duma were liberal Freemasons of the Grand Orient of the People's Russia lodge. As were those now in the provisional government. Interesting side note: Estimates put the Russian Empire's population at 180 mil in 1917. Less than 1k were Masons
455 | Of those 1,000 ~400 belonged to the aforementioned Grand Orient lodge. They were influential liberals, politicians, heads of industry, military officers & even members of the Romanov family (Alexander Mikhailovich specifically).
456 | JULY 1917 | Lenin backs an attempt to take out the bourgeois liberal provisional government. The attempt fails, resulting in criminal indictments against Lenin, Trotsky & other Bolsheviks.
457 | Though Trotsky and others are jailed, Lenin escapes back to Finland. As for the jailed Bolsheviks (including Trotsky), no one is prosecuted. The head of the bourgeois liberal provisional regime Alexander Kerensky shields them from prosecution.
458 | Kerensky believes the Bolsheviks could be handy, perhaps even necessary, later. He'd be right.
459 | Ambitious liberals of the provisional regime promote former imperial intelligence officer Gen. Lavr Kornilov to seize power from Kerensky in a coup. Kerensky sets Trotsky and the other Bolsheviks free to rally workers against the coup. This proves successful.
460 | Kerensky is successful as the provisional government's coup behind Kornilov collapses. But the Bolsheviks are the real winners. And everyone paying attention knows it.
461 | AUGUST 1917 | Lenin officially admits rival Trotsky into the Bolsheviks. This is not a popular decision among many. Lenin admits him because both know Soviets are the key to moving forward (also likely due to Trotsky's money connections in NY & Stockholm). Meanwhile...
462 | Trotsky sees Lenin's support growing. He doesn't like it.
463 | By the end of the Summer of 1917 Bolshevik numbers are now at ~200,000.
464 | 6 NOV 1917 | Bolsheviks take control of the large cities in Russia: Petrograd, Moscow, etc. from the ineffectual Provisional government. Within two days a new government is formed.
465 | 2 DEC 1917 | Russian Armistice with the Central Powers - Days after the Bolsheviks take control of a military HQ at Mogilev a ceasefire is proclaimed between Russia & the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria & Ottoman Empire).
466 | Russia would lose much in land and resources in the armistice: 1 mil. sq. miles and a majority of its coal, oil & iron stores. Lenin insists the "shameful peace" is necessary "in order to save the world revolution and its only foothold, the Soviet Republic."
467 | Meanwhile, back in Germany, sometime in the following year, von Sebottendorf tasks journalist Karl Harrer & Völkisch movement agitator Anton Drexler to set up "a political workers' circle" aimed specifically at counteracting socialism & Bolshevism.
468 | PART XVI: THE GREAT WAR ENDS, THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL & THE BAVARIAN SOVIET STATE
469 | JANUARY 1918 | The War rages on. There had been food shortages & strikes in Vienna the previous year but by winter things are worse. Things are also different because now news of the Bolshevik's seizure of power in Russia emboldens the working class in Vienna.
470 | 6 JAN 1918 | 4,000 Hungarians demonstrate outside of the German consulate. They are tired of the war and they are hungry.
471 | 14 JAN 1918 | Flour rations are cut in half in Austria. The people are annoyed af. A general strike is launched throughout much of Austria-Hungary. By the 18th of January 350,000+ Viennese workers are on strike.
472 | 27 JAN 1918 | Following Vienna's lead, in spite of gains by the Central Powers, Germany's workers—who are sick of food shortages & seeing their sons coming home maimed or as hamburger, too—prepare for a massive strike in Berlin (There had been 561 smaller strikes in 1917).
473 | 28 JAN 1918 | 100,000 workers hit the streets of Berlin demanding an end to the war. Within days the number of workers striking in Berlin reaches 400,000. Workers in Dusseldorf, Kiel, Cologne & Hamburg follow. In total, 4 million workers strike across Germany.
474 | 31 JAN 1918 | Petrified of a Bolshevik-like revolution (which they helped finance #oops) the German government declares a state of siege and arrests the ringleaders of the strikes across the country — 150 are imprisoned & ~50,000 are drafted and sent to the front.
475 | Though the war would continue on for much of the rest of the year, the events of January 1918 causes Germany to lose its foothold in what had otherwise been a stalemate.
476 | Germany's production falls behind relative to the British, French & now American Allies (The US had entered the war the previous April).
477 | c. 1918 | Father Iliodor returns to Russia and offers his services to Lenin. He stays in Russia for the next four years (In 1922 Iliodor returns to NY where he becomes a Baptist and works the rest of his life as a janitor in the Met Life Insurance Co. tower in Manhattan).
478 | 16-17 JUL 1918 | The Romanov family is executed by the Ural Soviet. Trotsky had wanted a public trial with himself as lead prosecutor. He'd go on to blame Lenin for ordering the execution.
479 | For Lenin's part, no evidence has ever been found lending any credence to Trotsky's claim. Even after the opening of the Soviet state archives. The Ural Soviets carried out the execution on their own as a Czech army approached during the Civil War.
480 | The Bolsheviks could not risk the former imperial family being rescued. Though Lenin did not order the execution there is archival evidence indicating he endorsed the Ural Soviet's initiative after the fact.
481 | 30 AUG 1918 | Lenin is shot twice in an assassination attempt. Fanny Kaplan, a young partially blind revolutionary is scapegoated arrested & executed. In actuality, the assassination attempt appears to have been an inside job. But from where?
482 | Everyone knows the man with the most to gain with Lenin out of the way is the Bolshevik moneyman, Trotsky. But being the Bolshevik moneyman, Bolshevik leadership gives him a pass. This includes Stalin (But Stalin will not forget).
483 | 28 OCT 1918 | 1,000 German sailors are arrested for refusing orders to continue with an attack against Britain in the North Sea.
484 | 31 OCT 1918 | The Aster Revolution. Hungary declares independence ending the dual monarchy of Germany's ally the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That night pro-dual monarchist & former Hungarian Prime Minister Count Istvan Tisza is assassinated.
485 | 3 NOV 1918 | The November Revolution. 3,000 workers & sailors in the German navy at Kiel raise the red flag of communism. Whatever is left still fighting of Austro-Hungary surrenders. In Moscow a massive rally in support of anti-imperialist rebels in German-Austria is held.
486 | 7 NOV 1918 | Barely over two months removed from being shot twice in an assassination attempt, Lenin is present as a monument to Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels is dedicated at Moscow in Red Square. 
487 | That same day King Ludwig III of Bavaria flees from his palace in Munich leaving Kurt Eisner of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany as "minister-president" in the newly established People's State of Bavaria (Weishaupt's old stomping grounds).
488 | 9 NOV 1918 | Germany's November Revolution. In the face of continued strikes and mutinies by the German working class & military, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates. Karl Leibknecht declares a socialist republic in Germany. Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert is handed power.
489 | Though Germany is now in the hands of the socialists, the infiltration of the socialists by the right upon von Sebottendorf's orders helps splinter German socialists into various factions. On the far left is the German Communist Party seeking to emulate Russia's Bolsheviks.
490 | 11 NOV 1918 | Germany formally surrenders and fighting in the Great War comes to an end (Germany's right-wing nationalists will never forgive or forget how the left ended the German war effort).
491 | 5 JAN 1919 | After working closely with von Sebottendorf's Thule Society, Anton Drexler & Karl Harrer formally establish the DAP, or German Workers' Party, as part of von Sebottendorf's plan to stem the tide of communism in Germany.
492 | The DAP hates Marxism and the Bolsheviks. But, oddly, the DAP has no love of capitalism, either. von Sebottendorf's manufactured Thule Society Workers' Party sees both Marxism and capitalism as "evil manifestations of Jewish influence."
493 | 11 JAN 1919 | Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht are kidnapped & tortured by the Freikorps, a paramilitary & mercenary outfit tasked with destroying the leftist German November Revolution of 1918. On 15 Jan, Luxemburg & Liebknecht are shot. Rosa's body is dumped in a canal.
494 | JANUARY 1919 | As his government was failing, Bavarian Minister-President Kurt Eisner's party loses his election. He finishes 6th. Eisner had tried to distance himself from Bolshevism in his brief stint in power. An unpopular position to take.
495 | 19 FEB 1919 | Head of the recently voted-out liberal Bavarian government Kurt Eisner is assassinated by an antisemitic right-wing nationalist member of the Thule Society, Anton Graf von Arco-Valley.
496 | Erhaud Auer, leader of the Social Democrats, is falsely suspected of being behind Eisner's assassination. An Eisner supporter would shoot Auer twice during a eulogy causing a massive firefight. One delegate is killed while other ministers have mental breakdowns.
497 | There is no government in Bavaria. What there is plenty of, however, is unrest and kidnappings. Munich University closes.
498 | 2 MAR 1919 | As the Russian Civil War now rages, the Third International aka Comintern—the Communist International—is established in Moscow. It opens with a tribute to Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg.
499 | 2-6 MAR 1919 | The Third International spends its first congress organizing and illustrating the differences between a dictatorship of the proletariat and bourgeois liberal democracy.
500 | 1919 | Surviving Martinists form a Synarchic International to oppose the Third International (Comintern) — This Synarchic International later sees the emergence of fascism across Europe (The Thule Society will be enhanced & Mussolini's fascists in Italy emerge).
501 | 6 APRIL 1919 | The Bavarian Soviet Republic rises in Munich run by a mishmash of German leftists, anarchists & communists loyal to Lenin. Its leader Ernst Toller calls on the Bavarian Red Army (which doesn't exist yet) to support the dictatorship of the proletariat.
502 | Order begins to be established in Bavaria once again. But the new "eclectic" Soviet government still has some issues. Toller reopens Munich University but disallows the study of history. It is deemed "hostile to civilization."
503 | 12 APRIL 1919 | The Communist Party led by three Russian Bolsheviks seize power in Bavaria after one week of Toller's government. Eugene Levine is named head of state as chairman of the Bavarian KPD.
504 | 18 APRIL 1919 | A rival government led by socialist Johannes Hoffmann against the Bavarian Soviet Republic battle at Dachau. The Bavarian Soviet Republic is successful, but Hoffman is not done.
505 | Hoffmann negotiates a deal that will see 20,000 men of the hated ultra-right Freikorps join his cause. They're referred to as "White Guards of Capitalists" by the Bavarian Soviets. The White Guards take Dachau and surround Munich.
506 | 26 APRIL 1919 | Surrounded by the Hoffman and the Freikorps, supporters of the Bavarian Soviet Republic take over the rooms of the Thule Society at their HQ in Munich's Four Seasons hotel. They arrest Countess Hella von Westarp and take six others hostage.
507 | 30 APRIL 1919 | In retaliation for many of their associates' crimes (the murder of Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebnecht among them) and because they were also now surrounded, the seven members of the Thule Society who were taken hostage are executed.
508 | 1 MAY 1919 | Lenin states: "The liberated working class celebrates its anniversary not only in Soviet Russia but in Soviet Bavaria." Unfortunately, that same day, the Freikorps breaks through the Munich defenses. Vicious open street warfare follows.
509 | 3 MAY 1919 | The right-wing Freikorps defeats and topples the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Many of the Freikorp fighters have painted swastikas on their helmets.
510 | Over 600 people are killed. Over 300 of them are civilians. The Bavarian Soviet leader Levine will be executed by firing squad in prison later,
511 | Watching all of this unfold up close and personal is a 30-yr-old Adolf Hitler.
512 | Hitler is still in the German Army in 1919. And he was in Bavaria. And herein lies a peculiar historical fact that some have a hard time with. But Germans were so disoriented by the war. And the fighting wasn't over even if the war was.
513 | Hitler was aimless. He had little to no political loyalties as the German government he fought for in the war was no more. And he was now in Bavaria at a very politically "fluid" time.
514 | When Jewish leader Kurt Eisner was assassinated, photographs seem to show Hitler present at the funeral precession. Hitler may have briefly thought he found a place to belong with the socialists. Or the whole thing was a tactical rouse.
515 | There is said to be a filmstrip showing Hitler wearing a black armband of mourning & a red armband of socialism at this funeral precession. He chose to march with the red socialists at that time rather than mill about at the Thule Society which was in Munich at that time.
516 | It is useful to know this because there will be anti-socialist anti-communists who will point to this fact without context. Hitler was a sociopath who had no base and a lack of ideology. In post-War Bavaria, socialism was a brief lifeboat.
517 | So, during the Bavarian Soviet, due to circumstance, Hitler served as a German Army battalion rep liaison to the Bavarian Soviet's Department of Propaganda and was therefore affiliated with the Soviet for six weeks to perhaps two months. Odd, but seems to be true.
518 | Side note: When Hitler writes "Mein Kampf" in six years he'll falsely claim his ideas were fully formed while recovering in hospital in 1918. Historian Thomas Webber proves this is false in his work "Hitler's First War."
519 | In his work, Webber also claims that Hitler was a public political supporter of Kurt Eisner in early 1919, something he'd try to destroy any trace of in the future.
520 | In reality, Hitler was a sock in the wind. His affiliation with the Bavarian Socialists and later the Bavarian Soviet could be akin to Christians converting to Muslims after Saladin took Jerusalem.
521 | When people make a claim that Hitler was a communist usually it's someone who has no idea what they're talking about. But then there are others with more of a clue who'll point to this episode of the Bavarian Soviet and the events leading to it. This is where it comes from.
522 | And of course, as the Bavarian Soviet Republic falls Hitler quickly aligns himself with the new Weimar Republic. Once this occurs he is part of a commission and begins ratting out soldiers from his regiment who had overt communist sympathies or aspirations.
523 | German army's chief of education & propaganda is Capt. Karl Mayr. He's been funding von Sebottendorf's Thule Society. Hitler comes to Mayr's attention at this time. Mayr would say of him: "He's a stray dog looking for a master."
524 | Capt. Mayr start sending Hitler to attend lectures at Munich University where one of his instructors is engineer, antisemite & Thule Society member Gottfried Feder (Feder would also be a key early Nazi party member later).
525 | 28 JUN 1919 | The Treaty of Versailles is signed. The Great War is formally over. Though the war is done, a lot of embittered Germans return from the War hardened by battle and with plenty of right-wing fascist organizations available to them to join.
526 | SEPTEMBER 1919 | Now Mayr assigns Hitler to attend a lecture at a meeting of the German Workers' Party (DAP)... the party created by von Sebottendorf under the Thule Society and on his orders by Drexler & Harrer as a means to curb growing communist sentiment in Germany.
527 | The lecture being given is titled "How and By What Means Can Capitalism Be Eliminated." Because, to reiterate, though the German Workers' Party (DAP) is created specifically to curb the rising influence of Marxism, they don't have a fond love of capitalism either.
528 | The German Worker's Party is the larval stage of what would shortly turn into the Nazi party. It's anti-capitalist sentiments coupled with its anti-communist beginnings is par for the course. It's 1919 Germany: Everyone is sick of capitalism.
529 | But, remember, this is supposed to be a secretive under-the-table workers' party with nationalist intentions. It was trying to appeal to the working class as a means of subversion. Everyone knew about the Freikorps, they were open fascists. The DAP was *meant* to be subtle.
530 | Those who like to claim that the Nazis were socialists ("It's in their name! Duh!") don't take this into account. 1: most of them don't even know this part of history. And, 2: even if they did, why let the facts ruin their revision of history.
531 | The speaker giving the lecture at this Thule Society/DAP German Workers' Party meeting Mayr tells Hitler to go to is to be Gottfried Feder, who Hitler is already acquainted with.
532 | Meanwhile, over in Russia, the Third International prioritizes facilitating the communist revolution of the working class worldwide even as they are under attack by the fascist White Army.
533 | They will ultimately prevail after five long years of hard fighting and the Soviet Union is officially established three years later on 30 Dec 1922.
534 | 12 SEP 1919 | In Germany, Hitler attends the meeting he's been assigned to visit by his superior, Capt. Mayr. Roughly 50 people are in attendance. Hitler is unimpressed with everything he sees that night.
535 | After the lecture, though, Hitler participates in a post-lecture debate. Members of the German Workers' Party are very very impressed with his oratory skills. They ask him to join the party. Hitler has found his base. He accepts their invitation.
536 | The rest, as they say, is history.
THE END
THE END
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