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Nesta Helen Webster, 1876-1960, was an outstanding English scholar who did pioneering work in Secret Society research. Her books are meticulously researched and documented, so her work is cited by many other researchers. Her special areas of expertise include the French Revolution, revolutionary movements throughout Europe in the 19th century, and the history of secret societies. She was raised in "High Church" Protestantism.
This book was really great in many respects - particularly in its documentation, which was often firsthand accounts by former Masons/Illuminati. Mainstream historians get ridiculed, and rightly so, for refusing to accept even the possibility of secret societies or conspiracies. There's a ton of primary source quotes, lots of nuanced discussion of things like the Anarchist/Communist divide and the British/Continental Freemason divide (neither of which I had really heard of before), and she leaves the authenticity of certain famous documents up for discussion. There is much to be commended here.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Webster begins sinking herself as she gets farther along in the book. The good becomes mixed in with a lot of her own opinions, which are quite laughable to an Orthodox reader such as myself. She thought that England was the heart of Christian civilization, and had correspondingly low views of both the Germans and Russians. Her views on World War One as an act of pure German aggression are quite dumb.
Nevertheless, the good far outweighed the bad and gave me many more sources to pursue. Fr. Seraphim Rose quoted from this book verbatim in his Survival Course. I got a first edition which came with a helpful chart of the genealogy of the revolutionary groups, which I will pin up on my wall soon.
WOWOWOWOWOW! This book was great--if it were fiction! BUT IT'S NOT! In which case, the author seems delusional. Here we have the wife of a police chief, involved in fascist clubs, declaiming any radical left wing (for lack of a better term) movements claiming they are bound up by the machinations of a german guy named Weishaupt who started the Illuminati--that took over and controlled "legitimate" popular movements--which was financed and charged with the task of utterly destroying civilization so that the Jews might rightfully claim their positions as kings of the world. Or something along those lines. Lots of innuendo, assumptions, and selecting of sources and content to fit her "arguments" and "theories" rather than deriving theories from facts. The author despises communism, socialism, and anarchism and has, it seems, a penchant for spitting antisemitism at Jews--especially Karl Marx. Her work is predated--and many of her facts are too--by Barruel and Robison--who wrote their conspiracies--along the same lines as hers--just after the great french revolution of 1789-93. (Needless to say, she draws from their work extensively.)
So much to draw on here for my conspiracism free school class. As a document of its time, it's extraordinarily interesting. As propaganda against humanity and for fascism, a horrible piece of filth. I liked to think I was reading fiction as a ran through this book. Astounding. Her writing style is extremely accessible--aside from the obvious ideological fanaticism.
This is not the edition I read. It was a red covered, paperback, 327 pages, put out by Constable and Co., London, 1921. I chose to put my remarks under the new edition because it seems like that's where the people are.
This book came up on my radar after reading an article written in 1920 by Winston Churchill, in which he cites Nesta Webster's work on the French Revolution as an authority in shining light on the hidden hand behind the revolutionary movement. I find such viewpoints valuable, as in modern times it is clear that seemingly grassroots revolutionary movements, which seek to overturn the existing order in some way, are often times heavily funded - and promoted - by big, international finance.
I am writing in June, which is pride month. One only need check in on Larry Fink's Blackrock - probably the most powerful capitalistic entity on planet earth; a multinational investment management corporation based in New York - to be met with rainbow flags in abundance. The same is pretty much true for all other corporations, who are extremely likely to be partly owned by Blackrock.
In another such example, the universality of the support across elite sports fields, and television networks, for Black Lives Matter - as well as their gargantuan monetary funding from big capital - also gives an indication that what they are promoting (you could originally check their 'what we believe' section on their website to see their politics is somewhat diverged from that of, say, Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey but they've now edited / deleted some sections) is not necessarily at odds with the agenda of the ruling class, which, in the case of the latter, I would posit is to dissolve nations and ethnic groups in order to create a 'hemispheric common market with free movement of goods and people' - to quote Hillary Clinton by way of Wikileaks. By eroding the sense of ethnos in the west, or breaking down nuclear families, big capital removes the boundaries which stand as obstacles before its agenda.
It is, thus, that looking back to works which were exploring ideas of such a conspiracy a century, or so, ago can offer us some value in recognising what we are truly witnessing before us today. Webster states that to many commentators, the roots of revolution have been attributed to having begun with the work of the 18th century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. Whilst this is partly true—Wesbter explains that one can look deeper into history to Thomas Moore’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic for further analysis—regardless, Rousseau acted as the medium through which these doctrines gained a foothold in France, prior to the French Revolution, setting the ideological groundwork. ‘Civilization is all wrong’ was the overall theme of his work, romantically portraying a more noble primitive man of the past, whose lack of social restraint was the cause of his innate happiness. ‘The fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one’ he proclaimed, a slogan which reverberates into the later ideological developments of Karl Marx. Writing on these issues, in her 1921 book ‘World Revolution', Nesta Webster argued, to the contrary, that what was necessary for the advancement in the being of man was MORE civilization, not less; that ‘moral aspiration is all that sets man from the brute’. Thus, to destroy civilization would leave man in a state of barbarous ruin. A state from which malevolent, centralised powers could seek out complete monopolistic dominance of the fruits of the earth.
The weakness of Rousseau’s return to nature theory—the substance of which coloured all later socialistic movements—was its ignorance of the true state of nature, for nature, itself, is in no way egalitarian. Civilizational ruin would, therefore, more likely lead to scenes from Mad Max than any sort of return to the Garden of Eden. The question is, were the early pushers of revolutionary ideas, which aimed to overturn the civilised world, acting with this from a priori standpoint? Moreover, during the 18th century, Rousseau’s pontifications were hardly exposed to the masses and were largely circulated amongst bourgeois circles and aristocrats, in the same vain that modern leftist ideas are largely reserved to middle-class, white, crusty types.
It must be noted, here, that Rousseau was a freemason and it is this element that characterises how the story develops further. For by way of the secret societies on the European continent, Rousseau’s musings were to move from the abstract realm of theory into the tangible world of destructive and violent action. The aforementioned weakness in Rousseau’s theory was ultimately captured in the slogan liberty, equality, fraternity--for liberty and equality are two mutually exclusive concepts. One cannot live in true liberty under the weight of an overseeing force engineering equal outcomes. And, again, one must ask whether secret societies purposefully pushed for this dichotomous contradiction, seeking to bring fourth chaos to beget a new order.
Webster goes on to tie a thread through the fabric which connected illuminism, the French Revolution, Babeuf, socialism, the revolution of 1848, the Internationale, the revolution of 1871, anarchy, syndicalism and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Interestingly, in the case of the latter, I would recommend Antony Sutton's 'Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution' which uses archived sources to detail how Wall Street financiers funded Leon Trotsky and his revolutionary activities in Russia, which ended in the brutal murder of the Tsar, as well as his daughters and son.
Ultimately, I found this book useful in its detailing of the process of how bourgeois intellectuals romanticise utopian ideals. Those ideas are then filtered to the masses, which breeds envy and malevolence; ultimately, leading to brutal bloodshed and the overturning of the existing order, which is the nature of revolution. The reason some agents have a vested interest in overturning traditional centres of power, is because they understand that nature abhors a vacuum. Another example of this comes to mind in how Paul Woolfwoitz, the neoconservative, lobbied for the invasion of Iraq. Once the place was destroyed, by way of the revolving door of power, he took up a job at the World Bank and went on to lend the Iraqis money to rebuild their nation. Such is the work of big capital. In the meantime, they will promote domestic revolutionary movements to take the spotlight off of their money lending endeavours.
Webster's book is a great starting point for understanding that the narratives we are offered by the media are usually designed to provoke an emotional response. It is necessary to read between the lines and dig a little deeper to see the man behind the curtain.
Have read many of these over the years. Thus, nothing new for me. However, this book would be a good one to start, if a person wants to learn all about the hidden history of the socialists have led to the bloody revoulutions of the modern era. Since, people are awaking to learn that this not a conspiracy any more, but actual truth. Nesta Webester was one of the first to ever write about this, and more importantly a woman.
This is a fantastic factual read, she delves into the evil of communism in a meaningful way and tells you what the controlled media wont, highly recommended factual logical and a warning, if you like this you will also like a book written in 1922 by count cherep Spiridovitch called "The secret world Government"