World revolution; the plot against civilization

Front matter

THE PLOT AGAINST CIVILIZATION

BY

NESTA H. WEBSTER

Foreword

Amongst all the books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles that are now devoted to the World Revolution through which we are passing, it is strange to notice how little scientific investigation is being brought to bear on the origins of the movement. A frequent explanation advanced, and, I believe, the most fallacious, is that the present unrest must be attributed to " war weariness." Human nature, we are told, exasperated by the protracted horror of the recent international conflict, has become the victim of a crise de nerfs which finds its expression in world-wide discontent. In support of this theory we are reminded that former wars have likewise been followed by periods of social disturbance, and that by a process of analogy the symptoms may be expected to subside as the strain of war is relieved, in the same manner as they have subsided hitherto. It is true that political conflicts between nations have frequently in the past been followed by social upheavals — the Napoleonic Wars by industrial troubles in England, the Franco- Prussian War by revolutionary agitation not only in the land of the conquered, but of the conquerors — but to regard these social manifestations as the direct outcome of the preceding international conflict is to mistake contributing for fundamental causes. Revolution is not the product of war, but a malady that a nation suffering from the after-effects of a war is most likely to develop, just as a man enfeebled by fatigue is more liable to contract disease than one who is in a state of perfect vigour.

Yet this predisposing cause is by no means essential to the outbreak of revolutionary fever. The great French Revolution was not immediately preceded by a war of any magnitude, and to the observant mind England in 1914 was as near to revolution as in 1919. The intervening World War, far from producing the explosion in this country, merely retarded it by rallying citizens of all classes around the standard of national defence.

vii viii WORLD REVOLUTION

The truth is that for the last one hundred and forty-five years the fire of revolution has smouldered steadily beneath the ancient structure of civilization, and already at moments has burst out into flame threatening to destroy to its very foundations that social edifice which eighteen centuries have been spent in constructing. The crisis of today is then no development of modern times, but a mere continuation of the immense movement that began in the middle of the eighteenth century. In a word, it is all one and the same revolution — the revolution that found its first expression in France of 1789. Both in its nature and its aims it differs entirely from former revolutions which had for their origin some localized or temporary cause. The revolution through which we are now passing is not local but universal, it is not political but social, and its causes must be sought not in popular discontent, but in a deep-laid conspiracy that uses the people to their own undoing.

In order to follow its course we must realize the dual nature of the movement by studying concurrently the outward revolutionary forces of Socialism, Anarchism, etc., and the hidden power behind them as indicated in the chart accompanying this work. The present writer believes that hitherto no book has been written on precisely these lines ; many valuable works have been devoted to secret societies, others to the surface history of revolution, but none so far has attempted to trace the connection between the two in the form of a continuous narrative. The object of this book is therefore to describe not only the evolution of Socialist and Anarchist ideas and their effects in succeeding revolutionary outbreaks, but at the same time to follow the workings of that occult force, terrible, unchanging, relentless, and wholly destructive, which constitutes the greatest menace that has ever confronted the human race.

Parts of Chapters I and III appeared in The Nineteenth Century and After, and certain later passages in The Morning Post.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I

PAGE

The Philosophers — Rousseau — Secret Societies — Freemasonry- — Adam Weishaupt — The Illuminati — Congress of Wilhelmsbad — Illuminati suppressed.

CHAPTER II Thb First French Revolution . . .27

Illuminism in France — Cagliostro — Mirabeau — Intrigues of Prussia — The Orl^anistes — The Reign of Terror — Clootz and Internationalism — Robespierre and Socialism — The plan of depopulation — After-effects of Revolution.

CHAPTER III The Conspiracy op Babeuf . . . .53

Gracchus Babeuf — The Panth£onistes — Manifesto of the Equals — System of Babeuf — Plan of the Conspirators — The Great Day of the People — Discovery of the Plot — Execution of Babouvistes — Illuminism in England — Ireland — The United Irishmen — Bantry Bay^-IUuminism in America.

CHAPTER IV The Growth op Socialism . . . .84

Revival of Illuminism — The Tugendbund — The Alta Vendita — The Industrial Revolution — Role of the Jews — The Philosophers — Robert Owen — " New Harmony " — Saint-Simon — Pierre Leroux — Fourier— Buchez — Louis Blanc — Cabet — Vidal — Pecqueur — Proudhon — Trade-Union Terrorism.

x WORLD REVOLUTION

Chapter V Pack

Russian Secret Societies — The Dekabrist Rising — The French Revolution of 1830 — The bourgeoisie before 1848— The Secret Societies — Apathy of the Government — The outbreak of February — Fall of the Monarchy — The Social Democratic Republic — National workshops — Associations of working-men— The 17th of March— The 16th of April— The 15th of May — The days of June — Reaction — The European conflagration.

Chapter VI

R61e of the Jews in Germany— German Social Democracy — Lassalle — Karl Marx — Engels — Russian Anarchy — Michel Bakunin — " The Working-Men's Association" — Intrigues of Marx — The " Alliance of Social Democracy " — Bakunin and the " German- Jew Company."

Chapter X Page

The Great War — R61e of British Socialists — R61e of German Social Democrats — The Russian Revolution — Bolshevism — Roleof the Jews — The Protocolsof Nilus — German organization.

Bolshevism in England — Our Illuminati — Danger now threatening civilization — Methods of defence.

Chapter I

The Philosophers — Rousseau — Secret Societies — Freemasonry — Adam Weishaupt — The Illuminati — Congress of Wilhelmsbad — Illuminati suppressed.

It is a commonly accepted opinion that the great revolutionary movement which began at the end of the eighteenth century originated with the philosophers of France, particularly with Rousseau. This is only to state half the case; Rousseau was not the originator of his doctrines, and if we were to seek the cause of revolution in mere philosophy it would be necessary to go a great deal further back than Rousseau — to Mably, to the Utopia of Thomas More, and even to Pythagoras and Plato.

At the same time it is undoubtedly true that Rousseau was the principal medium through which the doctrines of these earlier philosophers were brought home to the intelligentzia of eighteenth century France, and that his Contrat Social and Discours sur Vorigine de VinegaliU parmi les hommes contained the germs of modern Socialism in all its forms. The theory of Rousseau that has the most important bearing on the theme of this book might be expressed in the colloquial phrase that "Civilization is all wrong" and that salvation for the human race lies in a return to nature. According to Rousseau, civilization had proved the bane of humanity ; in his primitive state Man was free arid happy, only under the paralysing influence of social restraints had his liberty been curtailed, whilst to the laws of property alone was due the fact that a large proportion of mankind had fallen into servitude. "The first man who bethought himself of saying This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseries and horrors would he have spared the human race who, snatching away the spades and filling in the ditches, had cried out to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that;the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one.' "* In these words the whole principle of Communism is to be found.

There is a certain substratum of truth in Rousseau's indictment of civilization — a substratum common to all dangerous errors. For if there were no truth at the bottom of false philosophies they would obtain no credence, and thus could never constitute a menace to the world. Rousseau's gigantic error was to argue that because there are certain evils attendant on civilization therefore civilization is wrong from the beginning. As well might one point to a neglected patch in a garden and say: "See the results of cultivation!" In order to remedy the evils of the existing social system more civilization, not less, is needed. Civilization in its higher aspects, not in the mere acquisition of the physical amenities of life, or even of artistic and scientific knowledge, but in the sphere of moral aspiration is all that separates Man from the brute. Destroy civilization in its entirety and the human race sinks to the level of the jungle in which the only law is that of the strong over the weak, the only incentive the struggle for material needs. For although Rousseau's injunction, "Go back into the woods and become men!" may be excellent advice if interpreted as a temporarymeasure, "go back into the woods and remain there" is a counsel for anthropoid apes.

It would be idle, however, to refute the folly of Rousseau's theories, to show that in Nature Communism does not exist, that the first creature to establish the law of property was not man staking o^fc his claim, but the first bird appropriating the branch of a tree whereon to build its nest, the first rabbit selecting the spot wherein to burrow out his hole — a right that no other bird or rabbit has ever dreamt of disputing.

1 Discours sur Vinegalite des conditions.

As to the distribution of the "fruits of the earth" one has only to watch two thrushes on the lawn disputing over a worm to see how the question of food supply is settled in primitive society. Nothing could be more absurd than Rousseau's conception of ideal barbarians living together on the principle of "Do as you would be done by" ; only a dreamer utterly unacquainted with the real conditions of primitive life — the life of rule by the strongest, of pitiless preying on the weak and helpless — could have conjured up such a vision. 1

Even eight eenth-century France, with all its avidity for novelty and its dreams of "a return to Nature," never regarded the primitive Utopia of Rousseau in the light of an attainable ideal, and it is as inconceivable that the philosophy of the Discours sur Vinegalite should have led to the attempt to overthrow civilization in 1793 as that the mockeries of Voltaire should have led to the Feasts of Reason and the desecration of the churches. The teaching of Rousseau never reached the people to any appreciable extent, his influence was confined to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and it was certainly not the hyper-civilized habitues of the salons nor the prosperous bourgeois of the provinces, nor indeed was it Rousseau himself, living on the bounty of the most dissolute amongst the rich and sharing their vices, who would have welcomed a return to aboriginal conditions of life.

The salons toyed with the philosophy of Rousseau as they toyed with any new thing — Mesmerism, Martinism, Magic — whilst the disgruntled members of the middle class who took him seriously used his theories merely as a lever for stirring up hatred against the class by which they believed themselves to be slighted, and never dreamt of emulating the Caribbean savages held up to their admiration by the exponent of primitive equality.

1 On the Indian frontier, where still to-day no laws exist, the inhabitants are obliged to resort to the plan of building towers reached only by ladders wherein to sleep at night, and by ascending into these refuges and pulling the ladders up after them they are able to slumber in comparative security from assassination. Equality- of wealth is maintained by the same primitive methods. "How do you prevent any one getting too rich? " a British general inquired of an inhabitant of the Swat Valley, where a rudimentaiyform of Communism is carried out. "We cut his throat," was the brief reply.

It is not then to the philosophers, but to the source whence they drew many of their inspirations, that the great dynamic force of the Revolution must be attributed. Rousseau and Voltaire were Freemasons; the Encyclopedic was published under the auspices of the same order. 1 Without this powerful aid the drawing-room doctrinaires of the eighteenth century could no more have brought about the mighty cataclysm of 1789 than could the Fabian Society have produced the world revolution of to-day. The organization of the Secret Societies was needed to transform the theorizings of the philosophers into a concrete and formidable system for the destruction of civilization.

In order to trace the origins of these sects it would be necessary to go back quite six centuries before the first French Revolution. As early as 1185 an order had been formed, calling itself the " Confrererie de la Paix," with the main object of putting an end to wars, but also with the idea of establishing community of land. In their attacks on the nobles and clergy, the Confreres thus expressed their belief in the system now known as nationalization: " By what right do they invade the goods that should be common to all such as the meadows, the woods, the game that runs about the fields and forests, the fish that people the rivers and the ponds, gifts that Nature destines equally to all her children? " Accordingly the Confreres set out to destroy the chateaux and monasteries, but the nobles arming themselves in self-defence ended by destroying the " Confrererie." 2

It will be seen, therefore, that Rousseau in attacking the rights of property was proclaiming a doctrine that had not only been preached but which it had actually been attempted to put into practice in France 600 years earlier.

The fact that the Confreres of the twelfth century had been thus summarily suppressed did not prevent the formation of further subversive sects; early in the following century came the Albigeois professing much the same

1 Martinis de Pasqually, by Papus, President of the Supreme Council of the Martiniste Order (1895), p. 146.

2 Recherches politiques et historiques, by the Chevalier de Malet (1817), p. 17.

doctrines; in 1250 a Hungarian ex-priest named Jacobi organized a crusade against the priests and nobles, and at about the same date the order of the Templars was founded in Jerusalem by certain gentilshommes of Picardy during the Crusades. On their return to France the Knights Templars instituted themselves as a power independent of the Monarchy, and under their Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, rose against the authority of the King, Philippe le Bel. In 1312 several of their number were arrested and accused, amongst other things, of spitting on the crucifix and of denying the Christ. In the course of their cross-examination they declared that they had not been fully initiated into the Statutes of the Order, and that they suspected " that there were two sorts, some that were shown to the public, others that were carefully hidden and were not even known to all the Knights." l

Jacques du Molay and several of the leaders were executed, and, according to the Chevalier de Malet, "those who had escaped the storm afterwards met in obscurity so as to re-knit the ties that had united them, and in order to avoid fresh denunciations they made use of allegorical methods which indicated the basis of their association in a manner unintelligible to the eyes of the vulgar : that is the origin of the Free Masons." 2

This last assertion finds further confirmation from the Martiniste Papus, who explains that the " Grand Chapter " of French Freemasonry founded in the eighteenth century was constituted under the Templars, " that is to say that their most eminent members are animated by the desire to avenge Jacobus Burgundus Molay and his companions for the assassination of which they were the victims on the part of two tyrannical powers: Royalty and Papacy." 3

Meanwhile Freemasonry in England had developed

1 Recherches politiques et historiques, by the Chevalier de Malet (1817), p. 37. 2 Ibid. p. 39.

3 Marlines de Pasqually, by Papus, p. 140. In the above passages I have only touched very briefly on the origins of Continental masonry, as the subject was recently fully dealt with in the very interesting articles that appeared in the Morning Post during July 1920 under the title of The Cause of World Unrest, and republished in pamphlet form by Grant Richards.

along quite different lines. This is not the place to discuss its aims or origins; suffice it to say that although French Freemasonry of the Grande Loge Nationale derived from one of the same sources — the Confrererie of the Rose Croix — and received its first charters from the Grand Lodge of London (founded in 1717), the two Orders must not be confounded. The craft masonry of Britain, which was largely a development of the real guild of working masons, has always retained the spirit of brotherly association and general benevolence which animated its founders, and has adhered throughout to the principle that " nothing touching religion or government shall ever be spoken of in the Lodge." 1

In France, however, as in other Continental countries, the lodges speedily became centres of political intrigue. The Grand Orient, founded in 1772, with the Due de Chartres (later Philippe Egalite) as its Grand Master, was an undeniably subversive body, and by a coalition with the Grand Chapter in 1786 acquired a far more dangeroas character. For whilst " the spirit of the Grand Orien 4 " was frankly democratic (though not demagogic)," the spirit of the Grand Chapter was revolutionary, " but the Revolution was to be accomplished above all for the benefit of the upper class 2 (la haute bourgeoisie), with the people as its instrument" The brothers of the Templar rite, that is to say, of the Grand Chapter, were thus " the real fomentors of revolutions, the others were only docile agents." 3 In the opinion of Papus and of contemporary masons themselves the Revolution of 1789 was the outcome of this combination. 4

Indeed the influence of Freemasonry on the French Revolution cannot be denied by any honest inquirer into the causes of that great upheaval, and, as we shall see later, the French Freemasons themselves proudly claimed the Revolution as their work. It was thus that George Sand, herself a mason (for the Grand Orient from the beginning admitted women to the Order), wrote long afterwards: " Half a century before those days marked out by destiny

1 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 10. 2 Papus, op. cit. p. 139.

. . . the French Revolution was fermenting in the dark and hatching below ground. It was maturing in the minds of believers to the point of fanaticism, in the form of a dream of universal revolution. . . ." *

The Socialist historian, Louis Blanc, also a Freemason, has thrown much light on the question of these occult forces.

We know, moreover, that George Sand was right in attributing to the Secret Societies the origin of the revolutionary war-cry, " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Long before the Revolution broke out the formula " Liberty and Equality " had been current in the lodges of the Grand Orient — a formula that sounds wholly pacific, yet which holds within it a whole world of discord. For observe the contradiction : it is impossible to have complete liberty and equality, the two are mutually exclusive. It is possible to have a system of complete liberty in which every man is free to behave as he pleases, to do what he will with his own, td rob or to murder, to live, that is to say, under the law of the jungle, rule by the strongest, but there is no equality there. Or one may have a system of absolute equality, of cutting every one down to the same dead level, of crushing all incentive in man to rise above his fellows, but there is no liberty there. So Grand Orient Freemasonry, by coupling together two words for ever incompatible, threw into the arena an apple of discord over which the world has never ceased to quarrel from that day to this, and which has throughout divided the revolutionary forces into two opposing camps.

As to the word Fraternity, which completes the masonic formula, we find that this was added by a further Secret Society, the Martinistes, founded in 1754 by a Portuguese Jew, Martinez Paschalis (or Pasqually), who had evolved a system out of gnosticism, Judaized Christianity, and the philosophies of Greece and of the East.

This Order split up into two branches, one continued by Saint-Martin, a disciple of Martinez Paschalis, but also of Jacob Boehme, and a fervent Christian, and the other a more or less revolutionary body by which the lodge of the

1 La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, ii. 219.

Philalethes was founded in Paris. In the book of Saint- Martin, Des erreurs et de la veritt, published in 1775, the formula " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity " is referred to as " le ternaire sacre." ,

The Martinistes, frequently referred to in French contemporary records as the Illumines, were in reality dreamers and fanatics, 1 and must not be confounded with the Order of the Illuminati of Bavaria that came into existence twenty-two years later. It is by this " terrible and formidable sect " that the gigantic plan of World Revolution was worked out under the leadership of the man whom Louis Blanc has truly described as " the profoundest conspirator that has ever existed."

Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was born on the 6th of February, 1748. His early training by the Jesuits had inspired him with a violent dislike for their Order, and he turned with eagerness to the subversive teaching of the French philosophers and the anti-Christian doctrines of the Manicheans. It is said that he was also indoctrinated into Egyptian occultism by a certain merchant of unknown origin from Jutland, named Kolmer, who was travelling about Europe during the year 1771 in search of adepts. 2 Weishaupt, who combined the practical German brain with the cunning of Machiavelli, spent no less than five years thinking out a plan by which all these ideas should be reduced to a system, and at the end of this period he had evolved the following theory :

Civilization, Weishaupt held with Rousseau, was a mistake: it had developed along the wrong lines, and to this cause all the inequalities of human life were due. " Man," he declared, " is fallen from the condition of Liberty and Equality, the State of Pure Nature. He is under subordination and civil bondage arising from the vices of Man. This is the Fall and Original Sin." The first step towards regaining the state of primitive liberty consisted in learning to do without things. Man must divest himself of all the trappings laid on him by civilization and return to nomadic

1 "The Martinistes, whose tendencies were purely scientific, passed frequently for madmen and despised politics" (Papus, op. cit. p. 55).

2 Les Sectes et societes secretes, by the Comte Le Couteulx de Canteleu (1863), p. 152.

IDLUMINISM 9

conditions — even clothing, food, and fixed abodes should be abandoned. Necessarily, therefore, all arts and sciences must be abolished. " Do the common sciences afford real enlightenment, real human happiness? or are they not rather children of necessity, the complicated needs of a state contrary to Nature, the inventions of vain and empty brains? " Moreover, " are not many of the complicated needs of civilization the means of retaining in power the mercantile class (Kauf mannschaf t) , which if allowed any authority in the government would inevitably end by exercising the most formidable' and despotic power? You will see it dictating the law to the universe, and from it will perhaps ensue the independence of one part of the world, the slavery of the other. For he is a master who can arouse and foresee, stifle, satisfy, or lessen needs. And who can do that better than tradesmen? "

Once released from the bondage civilization imposes, Man must then be self-governing. " Why," asked Weishaupt, " should it be impossible to the human race to attain its highest perfection, the capacity for govern! itself? " For this reason not only should kings and nobles be abolished, but even a Republic should not be tolerated, and the people should be taught to do without any controlling authority, any law, or any civil code. In order to make this system a success it would be necessary only to inculcate in Man " a just and steady morality," and since Weishaupt professed to share Rousseau's belief in the inherent goodness of human nature this would not be difficult, and society might then " go on peaceably in a state of perfect Liberty and Equality." For since the only real obstacle to human perfection lay in the restraints imposed on Man by artificial conditions of life, the removal of these must inevitably restore him to his primitive virtue. ' ' Man is not bad except as he is made so by arbitrary morality. He is bad because Religion, the State, and bad examples pervert him." It was necessary, therefore, to root out from his mind all ideas of a Hereafter, all fear of retribution for evil deeds, and to substitute for these superstitions the religion of Reason. " When at least Reason becomes the religion of men, then will the problem be solved."

After deliverance from the bondage of religion, the loosening of all social ties must follow. Both family and national life must cease to exist so as to " make of the human race one good and happy family." The origins of patriotism and the love of kindred are thus described by Weishaupt in the directions given to his Hierophants for the instruction of initiates :

At the moment when men united themselves into nations they ceased to recognise themselves under a common name. Nationalism or National Love took the place of universal love. With the division of the globe and its countries benevolence restricted itself behind boundaries that it was never again to transgress. Then it became a virtue to spread out at the expense of those who did not happen to be under our dominion. Then in order to attain this goal, it became permissible to despise foreigners, and to deceive and to offend them. This virtue was called Patriotism. That man was called a Patriot, who, whilst just towards his own people, was unjust to others, who blinded himself to the merits of foreigners and took for perfections the vices of his own country. So one sees that Patriotism gave birth to Localism, to the family spirit, and finally to Egoism. Thus the origin of states or governments of civil society was the seed of discord and Patriotism found its punishment in itself. . . . Diminish, do away with this love of country, and men will once more learn to know and love each other as men, there will be no more partiality, the ties between hearts will unroll and extend. 1

In these words, the purest expression of Internationalism as it is expounded today, Weishaupt displayed an ignorance of primeval conditions of life as profound as that of Rousseau. The idea of palaeolithic man, whose skeleton is usually exhumed with a flint instrument or other weapon of warfare grasped in its hand, passing his existence in a state of " universal love," is simply ludicrous. It was not, however, in his diatribes against civilization that Weishaupt surpassed Rousseau, but in the plan he devised for overthrowing it. Rousseau had merely paved the way for revolution; Weishaupt constructed the actual machinery of revolution itself.

It was on the 1st of May 1776 that Weishaupt's five

1 Nachtrag . . . Originalschriften , (des IUuminaten Or dens), Zweite Abtheilung, p. 65.

years of meditation resulted in his founding the secret society that he named, after bygone philosophical systems, the Illuminati. 1 All the members were required to adopt classical names: thus Weishaupt took that of Spartacus, the leader of an insurrection of slaves in ancient Rome; his principal ally, Herr von Zwack, privy councillor to the Prince von Salm, became Cato ; the Marquis di Constanza, Diomedes; Massenhausen, Ajax; Hertel, Marius; the Baron von Schroeckenstein, Mahomed ; the Baron Mengenhofen, Sylla, etc. In the same way the names of places were changed to those celebrated in antiquity ; Munich, the headquarters of the system, was to be known as Athens; Ingoldstadt, the birthplace of Illuminism, as Ephesus, or to the adepts initiated into the inner mysteries of the Order, as Eleusis ; Heidelberg as Utica, Bavaria as Achaia, Suabia as Pannonia, etc. For greater secrecy in correspondence the word Illuminism was to be replaced by the cypher o , and the word lodge by Q . The calendar also was to be reconstructed and the months known by names suggestive of Hebrew origin — January as Dimeh, February as Benmeh, etc. For the letters of the alphabet a complete code of figures was constructed, beginning with m as number 1, and working back to a and on to z.

The grades of the Order were a combination of the grades of Freemasonry and the degrees belonging to the Jesuits. Weishaupt, as has already been said, detested the Jesuits, but recognizing the efficiency of their methods in acquiring influence over the minds of their disciples, he conceived the idea of adopting their system to his own purpose. " He admired," says the Abbe Barruel, " the institutions of the founders of this Order, he admired above all those laws, that regime of the Jesuits, which under one head made so many men dispersed all pver the universe tend towards the same object; he felt that one might imitate their methods whilst proposing to himself views diametrically opposed. He said to himself : ' What all these men have done for altars and empires, why should I not do against altars and empires? By the attraction of