After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Real History of the Illuminati

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

There really was a secret society called the Illuminati that aimed to create a New World Order. This is true story of the Illuminati and how they were transformed into the world's first conspiracy theory by the French revolution.Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney are joined by Michael Taylor whose new book is called Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the War between Science and Religion and who is working on a full length history of the Illuminati.Edited by Tomos Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARK.You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast

Say it quietly. Whisper it. The Illuminati were real. Once upon a time, there really was a conspiratorial organisation that set out to create a New World Order. They really did claim to have secret mystical knowledge. They were also really, really big on paperwork. It's the early 1780s. Revolutions are sparking across the Western world as ideas of the Enlightenment begin to find political expression. In Bavaria, Germany, one more enlightened revolutionary is hard at work. Adam Weishaupt, disgruntled scholar and founder of the Illuminati, is rubbing his eyes after a hard morning's letter writing.

He's been writing letters to dukes and professors, letters calling for more recruits, letters berating the ones they already have, letters written in code, letters written in petulance, letters arguing about secret ceremonies. Why are they arguing with him anyway? Wasn't all of this his bloody idea in the first place? Letters hinting at hidden mysteries and universal truths,

letters deploring the number of deeply incriminating letters being sent. Someone really needs to tighten up on these things before it's too late. Adam Weishaupt, would-be architect of world affairs, lets out a deep groan. Oh, the Illuminati was real, alright. But wasn't exactly what you'd imagine.

Come with us now as we lift the curtain and discover the real-life secrets, warts and all, of the Illuminati. And the monstr Maddy Pelling. And I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. Now, the world can sometimes feel awash with conspiracy theories, from QAnon to lizard people to 5G towers. Many, though, are harmful, with very real world effects. Today, we're talking about possibly the greatest and most long-standing conspiracy theory of them all, one to which we return time and time again, and from which others have since mutated.

That's right, we're talking about the Illuminati. So you're probably familiar with the Illuminati from Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, and of course internet speculation about how successful Beyoncé has become. But even amidst that speculation, there is still something around this secret society that we don't quite understand. And that's the origins of it, because we've seen it in Hollywood films. We've seen celebrities accused of being members. And in the 20th century, in real grotesque terms, witnessed how ideas relating to this

so-called cult of the Enlightenment even became enmeshed in anti-Semitic rhetoric, an idea that still persists today. But is this all nonsense? Was there ever a real society called the Illuminati? And if so, what sort of thing did they actually get up to? And what's surprising about this particular story is how both old it is and the fact that there is a kernel of truth to it. Helping us navigate the murky, sinister, questionable world of this so-called society and conspiracy theories more generally is our guest today, historian Dr Michael Taylor.

Michael specialises in histories of the 18th and 19th centuries, and his books include The Interest, How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize of Political Writing, and Impossible Monsters, Dinosaurs, Darwin, and The War Between Science and Religion. Now he's writing a complete history of the Illuminati right from their origins through to today. So Michael, welcome to After Dark and I think we're joined by your cat as well. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. And yes, if your listeners can hear anything in the background, I'm afraid I'm failing to persuade my cat that her new diet is a good thing.

That's quite all right. Between us, I think we've got several animals already resident on After Dark. So we're always welcoming to four legged creatures. Now, before we get into the history of the Illuminati, because there is a real tangible history that we can recover from the archive here, could you just, Michael, for our listeners, give us a nutshell version of the Illuminati conspiracy theory? What is it for anyone who's been living under a rock or hasn't seen anything to do with Dan Brown? Can you just give us a sense of what the Illuminati supposedly is? Well, it probably means this conspiracy probably means something different to everybody who

believes in it. But if there was a generic theme to the conspiracy theory, it is that there is a self-selecting intellectual and cultural elite, a secret society, which is directing world events towards their own nefarious ends by means of infiltrating important institutions and governments around the world. We can see it quite a lot, I think, in accusations that, I don't know, that 9-11 was an inside job or that Hillary Clinton is actually a lizard person, or that the WEF at Davos decided to create COVID as a means of controlling people. These are all the frankly lunatic outshoots of what began as something much smaller. And we're in a very specific context at the outset of this, aren't we? We have basically the rise of

revolution happening in Europe around this time. So the society is in a moment of flux. Do you think that context within which they arise, which we explored a little bit in the outset narrative, do you think that sets the tone for how they come about and how they develop? Oh, definitely. So the Illuminati, as you mentioned, were founded in 1776, and this is arguably the high point of the era of enlightenment. So you have people like Voltaire and Diderot riding in Paris, you've got Kant in Königsberg, Britain and especially Scotland's having its own enlightenment. And these enlightenment ideas about the individual, about secularism, about rational thinking,

are beginning to find political expression, not just in the American Revolution, but eventually in the French Revolution itself. And it's in this context that Adam Weishaupt, who is a 28-year-old professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, who's becoming increasingly frustrated with the control that former Jesuit priests are exerting, not only on the university, but on his career, decides in order to give expression to the kind of enlightenment that he wants to see percolate throughout Germany and throughout the world more generally, decides to form a secret society within which he and his friends and his students will swap these ideas and will develop policies about how to change the world in a way that is coherent with his enlightenment values. So Michael, who was Adam Weishaupt and what did he have to do with the

Illuminati? So Adam Weishaupt, he was a professor of canon law, and he had risen pretty quickly through the academic ranks, thanks to the patronage of his godfather. He was a very senior advisor to the Duke of Bavaria. But whenever he fell out with his godfather, he then found himself prey to the machinations of the really conservative ex-Jesuit academics at Inglesat, and he found his academic career stalling. Weishaupt was a disciple of the Enlightenment. He had read very deeply of lots of French philosophers who were propounding a more radical way of thinking about the world. If he couldn't express these views through formal channels at Inglesat, he decided that he would form his own secret society with his friends,

with his colleagues, and with his pupils. They would discuss these ideas and they would form his own secret society with his friends, with his colleagues and with his pupils. And they would discuss these ideas and they would formulate plans for giving political expression to these ideas by means of infiltrating governments, not only in Bavaria, but around Germany as well. Merle Michael, do you think that Weishaupt is serious in what he's doing? Do you think he really feels that he can change the world? Or is this a smaller scale society? Throughout the period of Enlightenment in particular, we see salons coming to the fore, we see all kinds of learned societies, mostly exclusively male, that are looking to debate and change the world in some way. Can we view the establishment of the Illuminati simply in those terms? Or does this have a much more large scale and

potentially nefarious aim? I think it's both things because the Illuminati begins as a very, very small project. The first meeting has only five people at it. And you might well think, well, isn't this just basically a reading club? Isn't it a Bavarian salon rather than a Parisian soiree? But Weishaupt is very clear. There is some kind of messianic complex within him. And the idea that he pursues through the society is Veldreformation. He really does want to cause a revolution in the way that the world operates.

In that sense, let's dig down a little bit deeper into what his aims are for this society. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is a new world order is often associated with the idea of the Illuminati in our own time. Is that something that's present at the outset in the 18th century? Oh, it is. So that phrase does appear. not in English, obviously, it's more in Latin. But the idea of creating this new world order is absolutely central to the Illuminati project. And how it's meant to happen is quite gradually. It's not as dramatic as we might think. So Vysok begins with establishing the first Illuminati cell at Ingolstadt. And then he begins to instruct his initial recruits to go and recruit for themselves. He's especially keen to recruit young, good looking men from

wealthy, influential families. But he wants to do that because he knows that these are the people who will find it easier to exert influence over governments, both in Bavaria and across southern Germany. So he then established his sales at Freising, Munich, other towns, especially university towns and cities throughout the south of Germany. It's this gradual process of, you know, is this person going to be good? No, let's have seriously analyze our recruits. They create lots and lots of documentation about this, which is, you would think, pretty stupid for an allegedly secret society, but it's great for historians because

we can track everything that the Illuminati are doing throughout these early years. Now, some of the members are supposedly pretty famous names today. Is it true that Mozart and Goethe were members of this society? The Illuminati reached its high point in the early 1780s, whenever there was a crisis in Freemasonry in Germany. And so, lots of educated, influential intellectuals began to look for other venues and other vehicles for this kind of intellectual society. So, it's absolutely true that Goethe in Weimar was a member of the Illuminati. There is strong but perhaps circumstantial evidence that both Schiller and Mozart were members as well. Mozart was definitely a Freemason in Vienna and we think there's a good chance that he could have been a member of the Illuminati too.

That does not mean that Mozart and Goethe and Schiller were plotting to overthrow all worldly governments and destroy religion. It does mean, however, they saw in the Illuminati, this society that were discussing the kinds of enlightened, rational ideas that were so appealing to them and to men of their ilk. Tell us a little bit then about the Freemasons, Michael, just as a side note, because you mentioned there there was a slight rupture in Freemasonry at this time. So maybe give us some background context to the Freemasons, how they relate to the Illuminati, and then what this rupture was. That might be quite useful. So Freemasonry, as we know it, had begun in the early 18th century in London. If you walk through Covent Garden, you can see the Freemasons Tavern that's got 1717 written in big gold numbering on

the front of the building. That was when the first Grand Lodge was founded and it spreads very quickly throughout most of Europe. Now it splinters in all different directions, there are different kinds of rights, different types of Freemason lodges, but what it does is provide a kind of institution where men from relatively different walks of life can come together and again, all the myths aren't really true. They are trying to pursue the perfection of themselves as much of society. It's a means of socializing within a benevolent philanthropic society. Freemasonry itself is regarded as a danger

to a lot of autocratic hierarchical governments because it is a society within society itself. And because whatever grades or hierarchies you attain outside of the Freemasons Lodge, you lose them whenever you go in and a different hierarchy pertains. And that's really quite dangerous to a lot of very conservative thinkers in the 18th century. But as these lodges spread throughout Europe and as the Illuminati itself begins to develop, Weishaupt realises that he needs an institutional basis from which his network can grow. He needs the protection, he needs meeting places and he needs venues for recruitment. So he and his allies look at Freemason lodges

as means of not only finding themselves a meeting place, finding themselves a pool of candidates who would appear to be amenable to their ideas, and also a means of infiltrating different societies or different governments. So for example, if you join a Freemasons lodge in Bavaria, that lodge will have a connection to one in the Rhineland and it will have one to connections to a lodge in Prussia. So it's by these means that illuminated ideas begin to spread throughout Germany. I want to ask a little bit about what's happening in these ceremonial spaces. We've got this idea, as you say, of the Illuminati becoming increasingly dangerous in the real world, and that they are able to infiltrate and maybe reverse or certainly complicate the hierarchies that are established in society and in authority. But when we come into these ceremonial spaces, a different kind of hierarchy is performed and there is an element of performance here. So if one was to be initiated in the 1780s, say into the

Illuminati, what could one expect to experience and take part in once you'd entered a space like that? experience and take part in once you'd entered a space like that. We actually don't know how far those kinds of initiations really took place, because in lots of the early Illuminati documentation, we see that Vice Upton's allies are constantly arguing and revising about the ceremonies and the rituals and what's actually going to happen. There is very little reporting of these things really taking place. We can assume that they did, and we can assume that certain ceremonies did take place. But it's also worth bearing in mind that what the Illuminati borrowed from Freemasonry was its institutional structure and its hierarchy of knowledge. So the idea that if you're a Freemason, you

progress through these grades and you gain access to greater and more mysterious secrets and secret forms of knowledge as you progress. That's the kind of intellectual pyramid scheme, for want of a better phrase that Weishaupt borrowers from the Freemasons. There is another secret society related to Freemasonry known as the Rosicrucians in the 18th century in Germany, and they are much more interested in the ritual ceremonial forms of Freemasonry. So that might be a slightly disappointing answer, but really what we have happening within these grades and within these initiations with the Illuminati is the granting of access to supposedly superior forms of knowledge. Now what this means in practice is probably even

more disappointing because as with any work of drama or fiction where the author is presenting to the world the funniest man or the smartest woman in the world, the funniness or the smartness of that person is always going to be limited by the author's own abilities. And so as you're progressing through the stages of the Illuminati, the access or the knowledge to which you're gaining access is always going to be limited by what Weishaupt himself thinks. So it's not as if you're going to access some hidden secret wisdom that's been waiting to be discovered for all eternity. You're just getting closer and closer to Weishaupt's own personal philosophy. Well, that's a really good link, actually, because let's talk about Weishaupt a little bit and let's talk about why people might

have wanted to follow him. And in so doing, I think I have my own opinions on this and I think the answer is no, but in so doing, does it take on a cult-like appearance or do you think that's a real 21st century imposition of that kind of cult status? You could be tempted to describe it as a cult, but that might be unfair. status. You could be tempted to describe it as a cult, but that might be unfair. First, because Vysop remains anonymous to almost everybody within the Illuminati. I mean, he's got his higher council of close friends and allies who know who he is. The vast majority of people, they don't know. And so what they're pursuing, they think, is the idea or sociability with other enlightened individuals as much as

cleaving to one individual person. What's also fairly clear from the correspondence among the Illuminati is that there's a constant power struggle. And this says something about the contradictions which are inherent within the society. So, you know, first, Vaisapt is promising freedom and enlightenment and rational thinking, but he's also telling everybody that I'm in charge. He's promising to open people's minds to a world of knowledge and wisdom that had been hidden from them, but he's sending out very prescriptive reading lists saying, you must read X, Y, and Z, and don't steer away from anything else. And there's a constant pettiness to all of the arguments that they're having with each other. So as I said, they write everything down, they share the correspondence, they're constantly drafting and revising different ceremonies and

grades and statutes. And there's a fight about where they store all of these documents. So Vysok wants to keep lots of them, but Munich, which is the real strong power base, say that, no, we're going to create a central archive. And Vysok then says, well, if you're going to create central archive, then I want to create a lockbox, which will destroy its contents if somebody tries to open it by force. So as much as these people are really high minded and trying to think about transforming the world in their own image, it often kind of resembles, you know, a parish council meeting. I'm assuming that the Illuminati's idea of enlightenment didn't include women.

It did not. I don't think there were any female members of the Illuminati. But perversely, whenever the conspiracy theory takes off, one of the accusations which is levelled at the Illuminati is that they were creating illuminata. And that it was the seduction of the supposedly weaker sex that was allowing them to infiltrate world governments through the corruption of the wives and the mothers and the sisters of the powerful men. So we're doubly cursed by the misogyny then. We can't get into the secret society, but we're blamed for the corruption.

Excluded from par, but responsible nonetheless. Wonderful. I love it. We've established the background to the Illuminati here slightly, and it's quite interesting to see the parallels between what was and what is. But one of the most fascinating things that I saw in my notes for this episode was how quickly, relatively, that it falls apart. Could you talk us through that? Because it's a relatively quick turnaround. It is. So by the early 1780s, the Illuminati have spread fairly rapidly. We think there are at least 1500 people who are within the society, and they are beginning to formulate some pretty radical and even ridiculous plans. So for example, during the idea of the American

Revolution against Great Britain, there's an assumption that Britain is going to win, but also that the American colonies are going to be devastated and depopulated as a result of the war. So one of the letters I was reading yesterday when researching all this stuff is a promise from one senior Illuminatus to a junior that, you know, you stick with us, don't worry, we are going to take 12 men and 12 women and a bunch of orphan children, and we're going to recolonize the Carolinas

and create our new Illuminati paradise in the America. So they are reaching quite a long way, but it all falls apart, as you say, really quite quickly. Because Munich, which is probably again, the most important center for Illuminati activity, they're beginning to get a littleuminati activity. They're beginning to get a little bit too confident. They're talking a little bit too openly about what they're doing and what their plans are. The Duchy of Bavaria and the Bavarian state government

remains intensely conservative, intensely Catholic, and they perhaps quite justly begin to get a little bit worried about what this secret society appears to be planning. The, the Catholicism and the conservatism of Bavaria is quite important to the entire story because that's really what gives the impulse to the creation of society in the first place. It's a radical enlightened reaction to those forms of absolutism and conservatism. The Duke of Bavaria then issues a series of edicts in 1785 and 1786. And whenever one of the senior Illuminatus houses is hoist-rated and all of these documents, which again for a secret society they had been stupidly keeping on hand the whole time, everything is exposed. So people leave the society, Adam Weiser himself flees into exile and lots of his senior allies then spend the next few years

repudiating all kind of involvement with the society. There is some sort of spin-off in the Deutsche Union, which was a literary and debating society, but really by 1786, it's over. There is a decade of agitation and meeting and lots and lots of documentation of their plans. But you might well ask yourself, is anything happening after 1786? Is this the end of the story? But of course, as we know, it's not. Hey folks, since you're a fan of history, you clearly want to understand how we've ended up with the world that we have.

Well, I'd like to tell you about my show. It's called Dan Snow's History Hit. And on that show, you get a daily dose of history and the stories that really explain just about everything that's ever happened. If you want to know the origin stories of the cities we inhabit, what's in our kitchen cupboards, why we've always been drawn to dictators, the deep history that explains what's going on, for example, in the Middle East, well, we've got you covered. And if you'd rather be regaled with dramatic tales

of powerful empires, we do that too. Get a little bit smarter every day with Dan Snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts. So it's remarkable to me that actually the Illuminati has a relatively short life in this first iteration. But of course, as you say, Michael, there is a longer history to be had here and Anthony is now going to tell us something about that history. The heat was stifling in Paris in July 1789, but even more oppressive than the weather was the tension in the city. What some perceived as the progress of revolution hung in the balance. Would it survive or would the royalist forces crush the people of Paris?

It was amidst the unfolding of this globally impactful history that a young man in a crowded Parisian café would become the stuff of legend. Now our young man jumps up onto the table and shouts out to his comrades, Now is the time to fight, now is the time for the people of Paris to take up arms and claim the streets." His rallying cry set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the storming of the bestie. But wait.

Breathy whispers urged, had this young man not jumped onto the cafe table in an altogether otherworldly way? You'd seen it too, had you not? It was almost like he was a puppet jerking up into the air, as if you were being controlled by some other unseen entity, by a nefarious puppet master secretly overseeing the bloody events of that stifling summer and orchestrating the chaos that would soon spread out across France, across Europe, indeed, across the world. This, at least, is what the Abbé Agustin Barrowell would have had you believe. The man who turned Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati into the world's first conspiracy theory.

Okay, let's get into it. So this is the beginning of the Illuminati point two, the imagined version. So Michael, let's start with who is Augustin Barrewell and what is his theory slash conspiracy theory? So Barrewell is a French priest, staunchly conservative, formerly a Jesuit. He was a respected man of letters, who during the early years of the French Revolution was disgusted by what he saw. After the September massacres of 1793, he flees France and ends up in England, where he becomes a bit of a rallying point, not only for emigres, but for British conservatives who regard the French Revolution as the harbinger of all dreadful things.

By 1797, Barrowell writes a four-part memoir of the history of Jacobinism, within which he attributes the downfall of the French Ancien Regime and the carnage of the last eight years to the Illuminati. Now, we might look at this and think with the benefit of 200 years hindsight, that is completely mental. This was a relatively minor German secret society who basically were swapping notes and book reviews about Enlightenment texts for a decade,

and then fell apart at the first kind of challenge from the state. But Barrowell's argument, and an argument that's taken up by many others, is that because the Illuminati had used the network of Freemason lodges across Europe to gain access to important people, they had managed to gain access to really important people in France as well. The Comte de Mirabeau is fingered as one of them, and the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis XVI, is accused of being the other key conspirator. And it is through them, and the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis XVI, is accused of being the other key conspirator. And it is through them, Barwell and his allies argue, that the Illuminati, who had mysteriously disappeared in Germany, had then reappeared to re-exert

this force in France. And we need to understand that in sympathy with people of the 1790s, you might believe this. There aren't sophisticated econometric analyses of the French economy, which might explain why so many people were ready to rebel. They didn't have access to all of the documents detailing the collapse of royal authority or the parlour state of the French Monarchy's finances. What they see is the most dramatic and revolutionary collapse of a deeply religious, deeply hierarchical, deeply conservative state and its replacement with a secular democratic atheist egalitarian regime. And who was promoting that kind of change? Well, some of the evidence at they had is that the most nefarious, apparently, people who were promoting that scheme were the Illuminati. And so Barrow

Well publishes these four books in London, translated into English over 1797, 1798. And at the very same time, John Robeson, who is a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, he's very good friends with people like James Watt and James Black, he's a professor of physics at Edinburgh, he is writing almost exactly the same thing. Now, he's doing it for a different reason. He's trying to defend Freemasonry from the slur of being associated with the French Revolution because he's a Freemason himself. Barrowell is just attacking everything that the revolution stands for. But we have in Britain in 1797 and 1798, these two books alleging the same thing, that basically

the Illuminati were the conspirators behind the French Revolution. And again, you might think, well, you know, how do people really believe this? Well, lots of people really do. It meshes with a lot of really, really urgent contemporary concerns. And as soon as you begin to believe that, it becomes very easy to fit lots of different events of the 1790s into the conspiracy theory. As you can well see with conspiracy theories today, almost every single thing that happens, every adverse event, people who believe in the conspiracy theory can mold their conspiracy theory to fit any set of facts. And that's what happens in the 1790s.

So Michael, we have this context and we have this very now French context coming from German. It's hinting into Britain now as well. What is it exactly do you think that starts to see these theories go global for one of a more sophisticated term about it? But it really does take hold around this time, doesn't it? It does. And it's mostly because I think the French Revolutionary Wars, not necessarily It does and it's mostly because i think the french revolutionary wars not necessary the nepoleonic but certainly the wars of the seventy nineties are the first truly ideological wars in global history that's not to say that was a religion can be ideological but the french republic is trying to exert an export its ideology by force across the world this leads to a repressive reaction in places like Britain. So William Pitt's regime introduces a lot of legislation, which means that

expressing any kind of sympathy for French love and free ideals for establishing correspondence with French revolutionaries becomes a serious criminal offense. And so perversely, by introducing all of this repressive legislation hit on his government force this kind of radical or liberal ideology into clandestine corners necessarily means that they have to conduct these activities in secret and then whenever anybody is discovered to have engaged in any of this sympathetic behavior towards the French Revolution, it simply looks like they had been members of a secret society.

There are other events which lend a little bit more credence to this. One of them is the United Irishmen Rebellion of 1798 in Ireland, because whenever the plans of the United Irishmen are discovered, it looks as if they have adopted precisely the same kind of anonymized cell structure within their organization that Barrowell had suggested was the way that the Illuminati organized themselves. It was also supposed to be proof that the Illuminati were behind the Irish conspiracy that the French revolutionaries themselves had intended and then in fact did attempt to support the United

Irish Rebellion. So in the mind of the paranoid conservative in Britain in the 1790s, all of this appears to be unarguable that there is a secret society or secret societies pushing for the same kind of extravagant revolution that had happened in Paris since 1789. And we have a lot of this bubbling and it seems very lively and all these theories are shaping some of the events that are happening across Europe. But once more, and I find this really interesting in terms of the longevity, and we'll come on to that in just a second, but once more it dies down again and it kind of just peters out.

Can you tell us when that starts to happen in this second wave? It does. I think we should probably mention the United States here, because that's quite important to the afterlife of the conspiracy theory. So in 1798, there had been waves of emigration from France, from Ireland, from all over the world, into the United States. At the same time, Federalists in New England, who were likely to be more sympathetic towards Britain than to France, were pushing for a war with France. Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, who of course had spent a long time in Paris during the revolution, which appeared to be something quite suggestive, were more sympathetic

to France and therefore were resisting the idea that the United States should prosecute a maritime war against French ships who had been committing piracy on American vessels. In this context, President John Adams legislates for the sedition and alien acts, and these are pieces of law which make it very easy for the United States federal government to imprison and to deport immigrants to the United States who appear to be acting subversively. All of this gathers pace over 1798, 1799 and into 1800s when lots of conservative federalists, especially in New England, places like Connecticut and Massachusetts,

are arguing that Jefferson's pro-French Republicans are effectively the agents of the Illuminati themselves. Now, again, this seems bonkers, it seems daft, but lots of very, very serious people believe that because they are trying to explain things that appear to be inexplicable by reference to whatever knowledge and whatever sets of facts and agencies that they can get their hands on. Come 1800, Jefferson in the revolution of 1800 sweeps the Federalists from power. He beats John Adams to the presidency. The Federalists are basically kicked out of office for all time in 1818-1822 from Congress. Now at this point, the conspiracy theory does appear to die down because Napoleon has established himself as no longer the

Jacobins or their successors in charge of the French government. Napoleon establishes the concordat with the papacy. So again, there's this idea that France is no longer implacably hostile to religion. And after 1805, 1806, threats of invasion died down. So even though there's a slight burst of initially anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in 1806 with the Seminini letter, which alleges that the Al-Ahmad idea and I are working in league with subversive Jewish people in Italy, and this is all nonsense, of course, but that's what may be the last gasp of this original conspiracy theory. For a long time, even though there is a post-Napoleonic war reaction across Europe, where forces of conservatism really have the upper hand for

a very long time in most of the major powers, this doesn't disappear completely. There are all of these books which sold thousands and thousands of copies. So anytime that everything appears to be tending towards radical revolutions, such as in 1848 or in 1871, people maybe again begin to point towards the Illuminati as a potential cause of these things. But it never really happens because the 19th century, this is a horrendous generalisation, but is relatively peaceful in Europe. There aren't these dramatic turns of events, these traumatic turns of events, which would cause people to reach for an absolutely extraordinary explanation of things that they don't really understand. LW. In terms of the longevity of the Illuminati idea then, as a story, as a conspiracy theory, do you think, Michael, it's in part survived because it emigrates to America and it becomes

part of the mythology potentially around the founding fathers? I'm thinking of the Hollywood version of the American Illuminati. I'm thinking about the national treasure film and Nicolas Cage looking at the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill. Is it that version that goes across at the end of the 18th century, very beginning of the 19th century, to which we owe the version that we have today? Is that the reason why it survived? That's certainly when and where the seeds were planted. And lots of the iconography, as you mentioned, that has subsequently appeared in 20th and 21st century conspiracy theories belongs to the late 18th century. But what really turns the Illuminae

conspiracy theory into this monster that it is today is the Russian Revolution, because this is an equally traumatic, dramatic event. If the French monarchy had been this singular institution of European politics in 1789, the Russian monarchy and the Russian Empire had been just as significant a presence. But it is replaced with its polar opposite, with a Bolshevik atheist government. We then have people on both sides of the Atlantic in the Anglophone world, attempting to explain this revolution by reference to forces which they apparently can't see or understand. And this is the really troubling moment because whenever people like Nesta Webster, who's a columnist for lots of British newspapers in London in the late 1910s and 20s, tries

to explain this new revolution, she melds together the Illuminati conspiracy theory with the protocols of the elders of Zion. And this is where we get the birth of the anti-Semitic Illuminati conspiracy theory. And again, we might hope that not very many people believe that, but it was reproduced and reiterated and regurgitated in lots of the really significant institutions and publications, both in London and in the United States, and even by people as significant as Winston Churchill, who on reading Webster believed in it wholeheartedly.

This has been truly fascinating, Michael. It's been really interesting to start to draw lines across time between some of the discussions we're having in our own time. And just as a final point before we wrap up and before we go, I'm interested to know what you make of some of the discussions we're having in our own time. And just as a final point before we wrap up and before we go, I'm interested to know what you make of some of the things and theories and ideas that we're seeing in our own time.

It feels really present again. And I can imagine you watching the news or seeing things in newspapers, just going, just eye rolling intensely. Can you tell us what your relationship to the 2024 iteration of illuminati-ism is? So this is something that I'd only really looked at and studied from afar until quite recently, or at least from an academic perspective, until I went on a cricket tour in late April or early May to Wiltshire and I stayed in a bed and breakfast. And as soon as we walked in the door, we began to wonder had we walked into another dimension, because there were posters all over the walls and

leaflets on the tables, which said, cash is freedom, 5G causes cancer. COVID is a hoax. Diseases don't exist. Water cures everything. And our host, who was absolutely lovely and runs a very fine establishment, believed all of these things completely sincerely. And in terms of how I think the 18th century history of all of this relates to the present day, we've had a number of pretty seismic shocks over the last 20, 25 years to the established liberal political order.

And we might well look at things like COVID, for instance, being perhaps the main one, because that's probably the most dramatic thing that has affected so many people of the world since the Second World War. And we want an emotionally satisfying, comprehensible explanation for all of this, in the same way that people in the 1790s looked at the French Revolution, and they didn't necessarily want somebody saying well, it was probably a mixture of long-term and short-term factors with specific triggers. That doesn't satisfy anybody. It's much much easier to look at things that you hate and say somebody's to blame. And that is why I think people are much more willing to believe in conspiracy theories.

They want to believe that they have an enemy who's working against them, because that enemy can be defeated. It's really unsatisfying and unpalatable to accept that shit sometimes just happens. Michael, it's been absolutely intriguing. You are working on the history of the Illuminati now as a book. When will it be out and where can people buy it? Well, the deadline for submitting it is New Year's Eve next year. So it's going to be a while, maybe late 2026. But in the meantime, I would encourage all of your listeners to buy Impossible

Monsters. It's my most recent book, which is about another intellectual culture war of the 19th century. It's about the discovery of dinosaurs and the conflict between science and religion that was provoked on a kind of people in Britain discovering impossible monsters in their rocks and soil. How fascinating for this moment in time for both of those books to be out and on the way. Michael, thank you so much. We're going to have to have you back because I can see multiple different offshoots to this conversation that I think the listeners would really, really enjoy.

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