Ask an Amateur Scientist: 
The Illuminati

By Brian Thompson

I. The Setup

So, there’s this guy called Alex Jones whom you may have seen stinking up the Internet over the last several years.  He’s a radio host based out of Austin, Texas, and his show’s mix of blustery, spittle-charged ranting and isolationist paranoia has really served to carve a unique and successful space in fringe culture.  The guy’s so popular, he even scored a couple cameos in Richard Linklater flicks.  (He was the guy driving around town yelling into a bullhorn in Waking Life.)

You can get a first-hand glimpse into the workings of Alex Jones’ mind by visiting his website, InfoWars.com, or watching his myriad public access cable-quality “documentaries” on everything from the Bohemian Grove social club to how 9/11 was an inside job.  Everything in his worldview points back to a vast conspiracy of powerful people who have been scheming through the centuries to enslave the common man and usher in a New World Order.  Every semi-secret group, wealthy family, royal lineage, and government agency is in on the plot.  And the catchall term for the whole twisted cabal is Illuminati.  Roughly translated: the enlightened ones.

Spooky.

But while none of Alex Jones’ predictions and rantings have ever born fruit (he was convinced years ago that we’d all be rounded up in FEMA camps right now and that a one-world government would rule us all with an iron fist), that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Well, he’s wrong about most things, but the Illuminati really did exist.

II. The Findings

In 1776, a professor of canon law at Ingolstadt University, Adam Weishaupt, formed the Illuminati as a secret society of freethinkers bent on reshaping European civilization.  Sounds sinister, but we’re not talking about mass enslavement and the petting of white lap cats here.  If the Illuminati had actually played out as Weishaupt envisioned, European society might have been better off.

It’s no coincidence that 1776 was also the year of the American Declaration of Independence.  This was the Age of Enlightenment, named as such because free inquiry, scientific thinking, anti-superstition, and democratic ideology was in high fashion.  Philosophers, intellectuals, literati, and burgeoning scientists throughout the Western world influenced each other and shared ideas.  The same notions of individual freedom and bucking royal rule that inspired Thomas Jefferson and other Americans to flip Britain the bird also inspired Weishaupt to envision a new kind of enlightened society.

But where the Americans had the advantage of being separated from their oppressors by a great big ocean, Weishaupt and others like him in Europe were under the close scrutiny of despotic royals and clergy.  Like most Enlightenment thinkers, Weishaupt was an atheist.  And like Jefferson’s vision for America, he wanted a Europe free from the religious rule.

So instead of taking up arms against their oppressors in what would probably be a losing fight, Weishaupt decided to form a secret society that would change European government from within.  Thus, the Illuminati was born.  He modeled the group’s hierarchy after that of the Freemasons.  Low-level members were recruited by higher level members, and more information about the group was disseminated as a member rose in ranks.  In fact, most of the Illuminati’s early members came directly out of Freemasonry, since the Masons were already on shaky footing with the dominant Catholic Church.

The Illuminati slowly expanded over the course of about a decade, with membership reaching across many countries and reportedly reaching over 2,000.  But here’s where the idea of the Illuminati as the greatest of all conspiracies sort of falls apart.  The history of the secret society is actually a perfect example of how massive conspiracies just don’t work.

With more and more members, Weishaupt was less able to directly control all of the activities carried out in his society’s name.  Local chapters were set up, and there was a chain of command in place, but people are people.  The more of them you have, the more varying personalities you have to deal with.  Eventually, little sects and branches of the Illuminati began to break away from the main goal.  In his letters, we can read how Weishaupt eventually lost faith in his own enterprise.  Writing to his chief lieutenant, he complained that his club was filling up with sex-crazed, drunken egomaniacs.

It was inevitable that word of the group would spread to those whom it was meant to target.  In 1784, the government of Karl Theodor of Bavaria banned all secret societies in the country, and the Illuminati almost immediately fractured beyond repair.

The end.

III. The Conclusion

Only, that wasn’t the end.  No one really knows why, but the Illuminati as an idea took on a life of its own in the centuries since the real group was founded.  Whether it was the idea of secretly plotting against authority or simply because it had a really cool name, other people started their own secret societies they also called the Illuminati.

In the mid-’70s, Playboy Magazine editors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea collected all the crazy conspiracy letters they received at the office (surprisingly lots) and created a sweeping, psychedelic science fiction novel trilogy called Illuminatus! Basically, they crafted a story based on the conceit that every conspiracy theory was actually true.  It’s a great series of books, and Robert Anton Wilson is probably the most underrated science fiction master of the 20th century, but it was also a big joke.

But conspiracy theorists won’t be stopped by flimsy things like jokes, facts, or reality.  They claimed Wilson and Shea were CIA disinformation agents, that the Illuminati were real, and that “they” were out to get us.  Of course, all of the blame can’t be laid at the feet of Illuminatus!, since the books were built upon conspiracy theories that were already floating around the ’60s counterculture.  But Illuminatus! may have been the first in a series of novels, films, and TV shows that have co-opted and added to the Illuminati myth over the years–from X-Files to The Da Vinci Code.

Because the real history of the Illuminati is so little known and the name is so damned cool, it’s turned into a sort of catch-all term for every “secret rulers of the world” conspiracy out there.

Alex Jones recently discussed the movie version of Watchmen on his radio show.  He hadn’t read the comic book because, as he said, he’s more into the serious study of history and “government documents”.  I assume his primary bedside reading is the U.S. Tax Code.  But he then proceeded to explain how Watchmen was a product of Illuminati social conditioning.  Alan Moore, he claimed, is an admitted Freemason, and since Freemasons, the CIA, the British royal family, and the Jonas Brothers are all part of the Illuminati New World Order, this is proof enough of his primary claim.  Just to underscore the point, he noted that the comic book version of Ozymandias’ costume features an Eye of Horus on the breastplate.  This, of course, is an Illuminati symbol.  And the ultimate goal of Watchmen?  To show us how the Illuminati will one day manipulate us into accepting their despotic rule by orchestrating a tremendous international disaster.  They love teasing us with their nefarious plots, Jones claimed, because they think doing so gives them “magical powers”.

What does any of this have to do with the real history of Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati?  Nothing, really.

Funny, isn’t it?

YouTube video of Alex Jones’ Watchmen “review”:

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About The Amateur Scientist: Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university and a regular blogger at CHUD. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years.

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