Conspiracy by Daniel Pipes

Author:Daniel Pipes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 1997-04-04T05:00:00+00:00

CONTINUITIES

[R]eplacing the term “International Jewry” with the myth of “World Zionism” … was simply old anti-semitic wine in new anti-Zionist bottles!62

ROBERT WISTRICH

It is quite remarkable that the antisemitic and anti-secret society traditions should have almost merged, for they have differed in important ways throughout their long histories.

First, the antisemitic myth is a cohesive one, focusing on a small and virtually unchanging group of people. Conspiratorial antisemites locate one cohesive Jewish plot through history, starting with Herod and lasting until the present. Antisemites perceive differences among Jews as a superficial; they all answer to the same central authority. “We have in our service,” the Protocols boasts, “persons of all opinions, of all doctrines, restorating monarchists, demagogues, socialists, communists, and utopian dreamers of every kind.”63 In contrast, the secret society phobia is directed against groups of every description: religious and anti-religious (Jesuits and Illuminati), moderate and extremist (Freemasons and Jacobins), capitalist and socialist (arms dealers and Communist party agents), great powers and fly-by-night individuals (the British government and witches), rich and poor (Trilateral Commissioners and Catholic immigrants), educated and ignorant (Philosophes and mafia). Further, some accused secret society conspirators are alive (members of the Council on Foreign Relations), some disappeared centuries ago (Templars), and others never existed (Rosicrucians).

Just as Jews share much in common, so do antisemites. In contrast, the secret society enemies are as varied as the objects of their fear. Those preoccupied with Templars see the world very differently from those phobic about the U.S. government. Antisemites work together much better than do the foes of secret societies. Anti-secret society theorists cannot even agree among themselves whether the secret societies collude or fight. Those who believe they cooperate see a single group driving history over the past for two hundred years. For Nesta Webster, “the Russian Revolution … was a direct continuation of the French.”64 Similarly, for Pat Robertson, “The satanic carnage that the Illuminati brought to France was the clear predecessor of the bloodbaths and successive party purges visited on the Soviet Union by the communists.”65 In contrast, others see secret societies at each others’ throats and find in their conflict the motor force of history. As a character in Ishmael Reed’s novel puts it, “beneath or behind all political and cultural warfare lies a struggle between secret societies.”66 The notion of Freemasons in conflict with each other has wide appeal, with some opponents going so far as to understand the world wars in terms of German versus Russian Freemasons, and others portraying modern history as a “war between English and French Freemasonry.”67

Second, while antisemites reflect the serious and cohesive body of Jewish thinking, making their politics almost invariably focused, venomous, nasty, serious, and dangerous to its targets,68 secret society conspiracists range from the murderous to the humorous. In some cases, they turn toward an “occult conspiracy” myth that veers into the magical, permitting one ancient tradition to pile promiscuously onto another—Egyptian, Iranian, and Indian mystery religions, the kabala, Pythogoreanism, Gnosticism, astrology and alchemy, tales of Druids—forming a woolly, indiscriminate whole.

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