Geschiedenis, algemeen, Interbellum

(1) Jon Halliday & Gavan MCormack, “Japanese Imperialism Today – ‘Co-prosperity in Greater East Asia”, Penguin 1973; “At the end of the First World War the Far east was convulsed by a series of revolutionary upheaval, following on the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Japan exploded in 1918, Korea and China in 1919. For several months in the years 1921-2 the four major imperial powers involved in the area, the U.S.A., Japan, Britain and France, met at Washington to try to re-stabilise their position in the Far East and reorganize their respective holdings in the light of the great changes which had taken place during the war, both in relations between the imperialists, and between the masses in the area and the various imperial powers. / The Washington Conference probably represented the most painstaking and prodigious effort ever made to systematize inter-imperialist relations over a major area of the globe. On the whole, the Western powers were extremely keen to maintain good relations with Japan, and had difficult reconciling themselves to the final break with Japan which came with the Second World War. America was traumatized by Pearl Harbour. But as the war progressed, the main tasks became to ensure that the contradictions between the Western imperialists and Japan should be solved in a more effective way than they had seen at Washington. Whereas the Washington Conference had opted on the whole for a division of interests, the thinking of the American ruling class during the Second World War moved toward integration under U.S. hegemony. / Well before the end of the Second World War, the U.S. government set up a task force, largely made up of intellectuals, to study the coming problem of how to absorb Japan into the Western imperialist system. This task force included such figures as Ruth Benedict

[author of The Chrysanthemum and he Sword]

and Talcott Parsons. The core of America’s problem was how to demobilize the antagonistic elements within Japanese capitalism without undermining the entire system. Parsons, for example, warned agitatedly about the dangers of a rural-based revolution if the absorption programme were not handled with care. /

(2) Passim: America’s liberal scholars, however, were unable to produce a scientific analysis of Japanese capitalism and imperialism: in particular, they could not specify the respective roles of the military and business leaders in the process which had brought about the war with the U.S.A. in addition, the war with Japan ended much more quickly than envisaged, and the U.S.A. had to install its occupation regime without having worked out a unified political programme for Japan, and without the necessary numbers of trained personnel. Beside this of course, there was the fact that General Douglas MacArthur, enjoying the install himself with virtually dictatorial powers in Tokyo. MacArthur was, on the whole, close to the right wing of the Republican Party; many of his case advisers were also extremely conservative, and some were outright cranks. But there were also a number of New Dealers involved in the administration of occupy Japan, both in Tokyo and in the U.S.A., and MacArthur tends not to see –eye-eye with them. The American occupation of japans did not follow a linear pattern: policy changed several times, and during each of these passes there were more or less dangerous contradictions. With this important proviso the following point should be stressed: the occupation made major attempt to draw Japan away from contact with Asia, particularly socialist Asia after 1949, and tie it in to the American-dominated ‘Western’ world; Japanese currency was not convertible, and the Japanese were not allowed to travel abroad in the early post-war years; during the entire period of the occupation, the U.S.A provided nearly two thirds of Japan’s imports, while taking less than a quarter of Japan’s exports – in other words, Japan was transformed into a huge captive mare for U.S. exports.

(3) Passim: At the political level, MacArthur imposed an American drafted Constitution whose two most important features, as regards future developments, were a close downgrading of the status of the Emperor and locating sovereignty in the Japanese people; and a clause [Article 9] banning the maintenance of land, sea and air forces as well as all ornaments, without qualification. By international agreements, Japan was deprived of all territories it had acquired by force: these included all the areas on the Asian mainland, including Korea; Taiwan and its surrounding islands, which included both the Penghu [Pescadores] and the Tiaoy Islands; Sakhalin and the Kuriles. Two groups of islands, the Ruykyus and the Bonins [Ogasawara], were taken over as colonies by the U.S.A. / Western imperialist writers have long sustained the myth that the occupation smashed the Japanese zaibatsu. This is completely false. The occupation attacked only a handful of businesses, mainly trading companies like Mitsui which had been involved in flagrant slave labour operations, mainly in China and Korea; and a few industries closely tied to the wartime regime, mainly through arms production. Very few businessmen were purged, and even when they were formally disqualified, this was done in such a way as to enable them to retain power behind the scenes, or to delegate it to reliable deputies. A number of American businesses did, of course, try to use the occupation to weaken their competitors: this group included American textile manufacturers, rayon and ceramics producers, and most big trading companies. A second group, the more powerful, lobbied successfully for tight limitations on the de-cartelization’s programme [and for its rapid reversal]; this group, dominated by General electric, included Associated Oil, Westinghouse [which had a pre-war tie-up with Mitsubishi], Owens Libby [tied up with Sumitonom], American Can [tied up with mitsui] and Goodrich [tied up with Furukawa]. /

(4) Passim: A second myth which has been widely perpetrated in the West is that only with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 did America decide to reverse its occupation policy and build up Japanese industry. This is false. America has begun to turn and crack down on the Japanese working-class movement as early as May 1946, less than one year father the start of the occupation. By 1948 the U.S.A. was already actively seeking out a way to restart Japanese industry at full pitch, and this process was already under way in 1949, fuelled by Washington’s hostility to both the Japanese working masses and the Chinese Revolution, which were the two determinants in the process. The Korean War was, certainly, important in accelerating the process, and in promoting the militarization of Japanese industry, but it is important to make clear that America’s promotion of Japanese capitalism predated June 1950, and was directed against socialism throughout Asia – not only in Korea, but also in China and, above all, in Japan itself. / The Korean War, and its attendant boom, was, of course, extremely profitable to Japanese business, which benefitted greatly for the increased American expenditure connected with the war; the war itself thus solidified the position of Japan as America’s counter-revolutionary ally in East Asia.”

Fantasy, Auteurs

(1) Humphrey Carpenter, “The Inklings – C.S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their friends”, Unwin 1981; “Friendship with other men played as important a part in Tolkien’s life as it did with Lewis, Tolkien encountered romantic love at an early age, for when he was sixteen had fell in love with a girl of nineteen, a fellow orphan who lived in his Birmingham lodging house. But he and Edith Bratt very soon were separated by his guardian, and in late adolescence Tolkien was thrown back on friendship with others of his own sex, so much so that by the time he was reunited with her he had, as it were, lost touch with her, and had devoted the greater part of his deepest affections to his male friends. He and Edith were eventually mare and had four children, by family affairs [though of great interest and importance to Tolkien] seemed to him to be quite apart from his life with his male friends. This division of his life into watertight compartments inevitably cause a strain, and Edith Tolkien resented the fact that such a large part of her husband’s affections were lavished on Lewis and other men friends, while Tolkien himself felt that time sent with the Inklings and in other male company could be gained by a deliberate and almost ruthless exclusion of of attention to his wife. ‘There are many things that a man feels are legitimate even though the cause a fuss’, he wrote to a son who was about to be married. ‘Let him not lie about them to his wife or lover! Cut the out – or if worth a fight: just insist. Such maters may arise frequently – the glass of beer, the pipe, the non-writing of letters, the other friend, etc. etc. If the other’s side’s claims really are unreasonable [as they are at times between the dearest lovers and most loving married folk] they are much better met by above road of refusal and ‘fuss’ than subterfuge.’ () Passim: Edith Tolkien was capable of responding to this attitude with equal obstinacy, and as a result the atmosphere in the Tolkien household at Northmoor Road was sometimes as difficult as that in the Lewis-More ménage at the kilns. / In t might be imagined that Tolkien adopted this attitude and divided his life in this fashion because, like Lewis, he regarded the female intellect as largely inferior to the male. Certainly he was incapable of expressing such an opinion. In 1941 he wrote: ‘How quickly an intelligent woman can be that, grasps the teacher’s ideas, see his point – and how [with some exceptions] they can go o further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him. It is their fight to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized [in many other matters than the physical] by the male. ’Yet Tolkien was not at all condensating to his many women pupils, and he helped several of them to achieve considerable academic distinction. Moreover, while he was capable of agreeing with the kind of view about female minds which Lewis held, he was also quite capable of sympathising with the plight of a clever women who had been grappled by marriage into leading an intellectually empty life.”

Feodale geschiedenis, Utopisme

(1) Ano, “Communism” 1 – The 19^th century England Workers Movement”, International Communist Current 2007;  “Primitive communism was not static. It evolved through various stages, and finally faced with irresolvable contradiction, dissolved and gave birth the first class societies but the inequities of class society in turn gave rise to myths and philosophisers that expressed a more or less conscious desire to do away with class antagonism and private property. Classical mythographers such as Hesiod and Ovid recounted the myth of the Golden Age when there was no distinction between ‘mine’ and ‘thine; when some of the later Greek philosophers ‘invented’ perfect societies where all things were seen in the light later Greek philosophers ‘invented’ perfect societies where all things were held in common. In these musings, the not-so-ancient memory of a real tribal community wired fuse together with far older myths about man’s fall from a primordial paradise. / But communist ideas always became more widespread and more popular, and gave rise to actual attempt to realise them in practice, during times of social crisis and of mass revolt against the class system of the day. In the great Spartacus revolt and of mass revolt against the class system of the day. In the great Spartacus revolt against the decadentie to setup communities based on brotherhood and equality; but short-lived attempts to set up communities bases on brotherhood and equality; but the paradigmatic communist’ trend of this epoch was of course Christianity, which, as Engels and Luxemburg have pointed out, bean as a revolution to the lives and other classes crushed by the Roman system before it was adopted by the decadent Roman Empire and then became the official ideology of the emerging feudal order. The early Christian communities preached universal human brotherhood and tried to institute a though-going communism of possessions. But as Luxemburg agreed in her text ‘socialism and the Churches’, this was precisely the limitation of Christian communism: it was not posted on the revolutionary expropriation of the ruling class and the communisation of production, like modern communism.

(2) Passim: It merely advocated that the communisation of production, like modern communism, like modern communism. It merely y advocated that the rich be charitable and share out their goods, teeth the poor; it was doctrine of social pacifism and class collaboration that could easily be adapted to the needs of a ruling class. The immaturity of this vision of communist was a product of the immaturity of the productive forces. This applies both to the productive capacities of the time, because in a society dying from a crisis of underproduction those rebelling against it could envisage could envisage nothing better than a sharing out of poverty; and to the character of the exploited and oppressed classes who were the original mother force behind the Christian revolt. These were classes with no common objectives and no historical perspective. ‘There was absolutely no common realm to the emancipation for all these elements. for all of the paradise lay lost behind them; for the ruined free men it was the former polis, the town and the state at the same time, of which their forefathers had been free citizens; for the war-captive sees the time of freedom; for the small peasants the abolished gentile social system en communal landownership.’// this is how Engels, in ‘On the history of early Christianity’, point to the essentially backward-locking, nostalgic vision of Christian revolt. It is true that Christianity, in continuity with the Hebrew religion, had marked a step forward from the various pagan mythologies in that it embodied a rupture with the old cyclical visions of time and asserted that humanity was caught up in a forward-moving, historical drama. But the inbuilt limitations of the classes behind the revolutionary history still seen in mystified, messianic terms, and the borders of this world. / () Passim: Broadly the same can be said of the numerous peasant revolts against feudalism, although fiery Lloyd preacher  John ball one of the leader of the great Peasants’ Revolution in England in 1381, was reported to have said that ‘matters cannot go well in England until all goods he held in common: when there shall be neither vassals or lords…’. Such demand take a step beyond a mere communism of possessions towards a vision of all social wealth becoming common property [this may well be because the lollards were already a forerunner of later movements characteristic of the emergence of capitalism]. But in general the revolts of the peasants suffered the same fundamental limitations as the rebellions of the slaves. The famous motto of the 1381 revolt – ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?’ – has a marvellous poetic power, but it also summed up the limitations of peasant communism, which like the early Christina revolt was condemned to look back to an idyllic past – to Eden itself, to the first Christians, to ‘tread English freedom before the Norman yoke’… Or, if it did look forward, it looked with the eyes of the first Christians to an apocalyptic millennium that would be installed by Christ returning in his glory. The peasants were not the revolutionary class of feudal society, even is their revolts could help to undermine the foundations of feudal order and so pave the way for the emergence of capitalism. And since they themselves carried no project for the reorganisation of society, they could only see salvation coming from the outside – from Jesus, form the ‘good Kings’ misadvised treacherous counsellors, from peoples’ heroes like Robin Hood. / The fact that these communistic dreams could grip he masses shows that they corresponded to real material needs, in the same way the dreams of the individual express deepens the unripe desires. But because the conditions of history could not permit their realisation, they were condemned’ to be no more than dreams.”

Filologie

(1) Facebook, Walter Dan den Berg, 12-1-2021;  ”Booksellers are the treasurers of paper delights, and the antiquarians among them are like the archangels at the gates of paradise

.” Quote out of ‘Willem’ from Jeroen Olyslaegers.

Zonneenergie

() Passim: Div., “Manifest – Krant van de Nieuwe Communistische Partij – NCPN” 7 Oktober, Stichting HOC 2021 – Wiebe Eeckman,  “Stand van zaken klimaat- en energietransitie in Nederland”: “From 28 to 30 September, the Haarlemmermeer Solar solutions exhibition, a trade fair for professionals, took place in the Haarlemmermeer exhibition. I went there to keep my knowledge up to date. The stock market made it clear that it is not due to the resistant technological knowledge that the Netherlands are struggling with its energy transition. Everything you need exists and is available. It must be done! Now it is always a matter of waiting for an individual person to be willing to invest. We need to switch to collective solutions. There must be management and control from the government. // A first critical point is the belief that we will never be able to produce renewable energy from sun and wind to replace nuclear and fossil energy. This is not true. Settings of solar panels can be done quickly. Solar panels can be processed aesthetically, not only on roofs, but also on walls. The thanks from the expo Haarlemmermeer is a nice proof: completely with translucent solar panels. Parking places, railways, highways could be covered with it.

(1) Passim: A second debate in the finding that the current electivity grid cannot cope with the multiplication of electric steam. But, there are several ways out for that. Such as storing renewable energy by converting it to other energy behaviours, as close as possible to the windmills or collected solar panels. When you convert you lose some efficiency, that’s true, but otherwise you can’t transport that energy either to the house. Conversion to growth hydrogen makes it possible to use the old gas pipelines. You can also convert to compressed air, or to heat for heat networks. All very useful for making our heavy industry greener. // It also requires collective thinking and planning according to the needs of the population. In flat of individual installations per house, it is better to look at it per entire block of houses, or by time, or by township. Denmark started doing this some thirty years ago and sets an example of what can still be done, even in a capitalist society.”

Complottheorien

(1) Div., “Manifest” 5 10 juni, Stichting HOC 2021 – Ronald Maassen, “Complottheoriën – een doodlopende weg voor de arbeidersklasse”; “... instead of scientifically studying why these and other problems arise, all kinds of facts taken out of context and alleged facts are linked together. The theories in the end always rely on the behavior of a few persons like the ultimate cause. that real conspiracy leader should ever be removed, and then the world is again in order. In this way, the steel as a whole remains invariably outside range. //The biggest problem with the conspiracy, then, is not whether the conspiracy is involved or not. the main problem lies in the undesirable and one-sided [undialectical or metaphysical] way in which reality becomes closer. it focuses on the role of specific people or institutions, but does not penetrate to the essence of the developments and the real cause of the problems. it is this unscientific way of thinking that makes conspiracy thinking reactions. // Complot thinking is useful for the system - so it is not uncommon that conspiracy theories are also supported by parts of the capital. not only because it is completely distracted from the real origin of all kinds of social problems, Not only that capitalism remains outside the scope, but also because conspiracies can help to put competitors in a bad daylight. // 

(2) Passim: Many conspiracy theories are linked to right-wing extremist and nationalist theories, which aim to destroy 'the nation'. in our country we see, for example, Thierry Baudet of the extreme right-wing party Forum for Democracy, who speaks out against the so-called 'cultural Marxism', which forbid us to be 'proud of the Netherlands' and who endangers the so-called 'liberty'. There would be a 'cultural Marxist elite' who concocted all this in a crooked way. // The problems caused by the capital system are blamed on a mingling 'left-wing elite' - and the extreme right can appear as the great ally of ordinary people. This theory has a sinister background in the Nazi conspiracy theory of the 'cultural bolshevism, It states that the communists under the leadership of the Jews want to destroy the western society and the 'Aryan race' of the ancients. This theory beats several people in one fell swoop: it distributed the working class and pits parts of it against each other, e.g. real or ethnic background, and at the same time an attack on Marxism - the theory that precisely scientifically demonstrates that the real 'elite' [the capitalists, the owners of the big companys] can be overthrown if the working class unites in the struggle against capitalism. / / 

(3) Passim: But other so-called "progressive" forces also use plots to deceive the working class people and eliminate their competition. With the intensification of the competition between the different power blocs [US, EU, China, Russia], we are bombarded in the new with stories about Russian "fake news" and Chinese spies who want to destroy Europe. Anti communism and racism are also at the forefront here. Thus we see a growing anti-Asian racism on the rise. // Amid all the negative reports about China, we see, for example, the led sinologist frank pike calling for and banning the Chinese communist party in the Netherlands’ and the Chinese population of Nederland is presented as planning a kind of fifth column for the cut of china. Brazil's far-right president, Bolsonaro, even speaks of a Chinese plot, and his followers speak of an anti-Christian, communist plot to destroy their country. This time between the picture of Bolsonaro or the inhabitants of Brazil have to sacrifice themselves for the 'employment' [read: the profits of the capital' and the situation is so bright that there are almost half a million corona deaths to be bettered. // in the field of these edible contradictions between imperial power book also a fierce competition time in the field of telecommunications, and all kinds of compositions emerge, for example network 5G. 

(4) Passim: Why do conspiracy theories appeal? - As we mentioned earlier, categories appeal to people because they address real problems that various sections of the population are rightly concerned about. for the self-employed middle-class people, for example, it plays a role that he feels that her interests are not served by the cabinet the corona measures hit these people harsh in their wallet, while they see that the large capital is running away with the money and major shareholders are taking the corona subsidies from the government casually put it in their pocket // But even in parts of the working class, complot theories sometimes succeed, because they respond to problems that the workers' bare hands have to deal with and why people rightly worry about it. Behind the supporters of different conspiracy theorists about the pandemic and about vaccines, were the concerns and misunderstandings of men about important matters. think of the pandemic's misuse of political rights [we will discuss this in an earlier article]. think of the failing government policy and the contradictions there in. Such as the importance of face masks that - as long as there was a shortage - were dismissed as false safety, against the advice of scientists and the world health organization and as soon as there was sufficient supply were nevertheless made mandatory. // 

(5) Passsim: Or think of the state of the pharmaceutical industry, which is in the hands of private owners who compete with each other to acquire edibles and secure huge profits. This instead of the industry acknowledging the sole purpose of promoting public health, collaborating and exchanging information to achieve good and safe vaccines quickly. purpose of production, competition, etc.]. these are all sorts of things that make many recognized people rightly concerned. // The advance of complot theories is thus partly fueled by the contradictory cabinet advocacy itself, and in general the injustice and contradictions that people in the capital society. on this basis reactionary firms and also the political party disseminate their reactionary views and complot theory’s. // Internet can go down like a kind of trap, where people get deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories. this can start with a movie from blackbox.tv or Café Weltschmerz, often with facts taken out of context, all kinds of things are said, under the guise of criticism [always aimed at specific persons or institutions, never the capital system itself]. From there the sound continues and ends up deeper in the trap. but the main reason that reactionary ideas and ignorant approaches such as [but not exclusively] conspiracy theories gain a foothold is the weak class consciousness among large sections of the working class. // 

(6) Passim: Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary struggle - the low class consciousness has to do with the risk in which the labor reform and the communist claim have become widespread after the counterrevolutions in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in 1989-91, as well as the fact that reformist views [like Euro-Communism] are spreading. in the Netherlands, the development even resulted in the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Netherlands [CPN]. at the same time, the capital went on the attack: social rights and achievements came under attack. Marxism was declared dead and Marxist theory and philosophy are combated in every possible way [in education, research, but also in the media, within the workers' movement, etc.] one also encountered an ideological crisis - a crisis of ideas. // the legal, dialectic-material process, which is inherent in the Marxian theory, departs from material reality and conceives it as a complex process that demands change and in which all aspects and developments influence each other in many ways. the desirable change of society is gradually being supplanted by superficial, one-sided, metaphysical [i.e. undialectical] approaches and idealistic theories. conspiracy theories are an extreme expression of that. reality is not scientifically approached as an induced process, but often a single aspect of the reality is excluded. // 

(7) Passim: For example, the previously mentioned example 'a few corporations actually own the entire economy'. This is, of course, a fact - capitalism in its present form grafts enormous monopolies that compete against each other and the petty bourgeoisie ar what can we do with information? Instead of understanding where this power comes from, how it came to be, what the material importance of the capitalists and dared to be about the importance of the working class are, there are also eco-plot thinkers who have listed a group of names or organizations that are simply 'mischievous'. But like Lenin said: 'people were and remain stupid victims of deception and self-deception in politics, as long as they do not discover the interests of this or that class behind all the morally, religious, political and social phrases, statements and beliefs. // The proponents of reforms and improvements will be deceived by the red defenders of the old, so long as they fail to see that every old institution, however rotten and broke it may be, stands by the strength of this or that brained classes.' the gap to understand the greenhouse concerns, and to understand that the capital should not be overturned because it would consist of only people, but because they take advantage of a rotten system and maintain it. // it is striking that lately conspiracy theories have also caught on among people who identify themselves as left-wing and progressive. all that has to do with having low class consciousness. without revolutionaries theories, without the scientific socialism, one is just able to understand the real causes of the problems and injustices in society, and thus one cannot fight against them in a good manner.//  

(8) Passim: Conspiracy theories offer the working class nothing at all. it disguises the essence of the problems that the working class has to deal with, it obscures the world of those problems and most of all organized a stir against capitalism. as communists, it is one job to unmask, break through the unscrupulous thinking mindset and build the conditions for organizing working people for their own interests rather than those of one or the other group of catalysts. the workers, the unemployed, school going youth, students and pensioners of the working class can only win the fight against poverty, unemployment, insecurity, exploitation and war and benefits and quality health care if it is aimed at building another society, socialism-communism.”

————————–

(9) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “ The historical reality of the 'Order of the Illuminated' [1776-1785] has been reinvented, subjected to a mythologizing oriented by a desire to demonize. The founder of the order was presented as a spawn of Satan, an image fixed by Abbot Barruel in the portrait painted by Weishaupt: 'There are men so unluckily born that one would be tempted to take them purely an emanation of this fatal intelligence, to an avenger tired of pure evil. [...] In the den of conspiracies, they excel in meditating attacks, in preparing revolutions, in combining the ruin of authorities and empires. [...] it was with all these traits [...] that, around the year 1748, were born in Bavaria an impious boy Jean Weishaupt, better known in the annals of his society under the name of Spartacus. [...] Enemy of the great day, but like the sinister owl that dazes the sun, and which hovers in the shadow of the night, this disastrous sophist will only be known in history as the demon, by the evil that ' he did, and by what he planned to do.' // The gap between the historical reality of the 'illuminates of Bavaria' and the fictional construction of the Illuminati is striking: here is a para-Masonic organization whose short life [a decennium], very modest membership and limited influence have been replaced by the vision of a 'secret society' which embodies a formidable power of manipulation and whose successive leaderships, supposedly 'initiated', would form like a satanic lineage or a luciferous dynasty. 

(10) Passim: That a 'legend of illuminism' or an 'illuminated legend' has been formed and deformed, transmitted and transformed since the last years of the 18th century, this is a fact, established and studied by many historians. it has never ceased to be reformulated, readapted to the spirit of the times, reinterpreted by multiple actors, at the same time 19th century and 30th century, believed that the mother of History was not the result of the actions of 'secret societies' or the product of a series of conspiracies, or that the secret of world politics was due to the fact that it was ruled by 'unknown leaders', incarnations of evil. / To tell the truth, the demonizing mythologization took place almost simultaneously with regard to the entire Freemasonry. It presupposes a distinction of high historical importance introduced by Abbot Barruel in 1797-1798 in his memoirs to serve the history of Jacobinism: a distinction between the [visible] lodges and the [invisible] rear lodges. The figure of the Free Macon was unraveled: what could not be said of the visible [or semi-visible] masonry could only be the being of invisible or occult masonry, without the glaring 'backlash'. And everything could be said about the more than secret head of the 'secret society'. The path was liberated for the most deliberative arguments aimed at 'supreme direction'. The distinction between the superficial and the answer, as well as the base and the high, would definitively structure the anti-Masonic argument which, itself, would serve as the role of a paradigm in most 'anti-' discourses. For targets of supposedly organized organizations or 'secret societies'.

(11) Passim: In his anti-Masonic pamphlet published in 1867, Les Free-Macons. What they have. What they do, what they see, which was the subject of numerous reissues. , Mgr de Ségur devotes a chapter to characterizing the 'variety of masonry which is hidden and entirely secret', giving a striking illustration of the conspiracy myth: 'This Freemasonry is no longer that of the lodges, it is no longer even this one of high ranks: she is purely and implements the secret society. In the back Lodge, the masons throw the masque [...], at the head of this entire Tenebruese army, there is a united and unknown leader, who remains in the shadows and who holds all the workshops and all the lodges in his hand [...]. This evil man is more powerful than any king in this world. In the last century, this was for many years a German obscurer, called Weishaupt.'// We therefore find the 'Illuminati' and their leader at the head of Freemasonry as it has been mythologized by the anti-Macon polemists of Catholic obedience, since the end of the 18th century. But the mythical identity of the 'illuminati' has also varied greatly, adapting to the norms of the various contexts and the rhetorical codes of the various considered traditions. then at the end of the 18th century the thesis of the Templar origins of the 'illuminati' seemed obvious, during the last third of the 19th century the thesis of the Templar origins of the 'illuminati' appeared obvious, during the last The third of the 19th century tends to impose on itself the thesis of a 'Jewish direction' of the Freemason and, more broadly, of all the 'secret societies' in the fight to destroy the 'Christian civilization'. 

(12) Passim: In a pamphlet dated from 1935, called ‘What we hide from you’, following a description of the 'Masonic hierarchy', we learn once again the principle lesson: 'above this known lower-masonry, we can say official; there is a higher stone masonry, accessible to Jewish Jews.' This thesis on which anti-Judaism is based was reinterpreted after 1945, in a euphemized manner, to be reborn in the form of a denunciation of the 'world government' desired by the 'international bankers' and the 'global associations'. Completed as 'communist subversion'. But the new 'anti-globalist' discourse [from the right-wing] of the end of the 20th century, demonizing the 'new world order' like all the international forms of internationalism, merged among certain others with the myth of the 'extraterrestrials' reptilian race of which most of the rulers of the planet are descendants [of hybrids] or allies. The illuminates have gained a new genealogy, more extravagant than all the previous ones. // What is agreed to be called, in an unsatisfactory way, the 'composition theory' ['conspiracy theory', 'Verschwörungstheorie'] confusedly designates various attitudes [feelings or perceptions], beliefs [or convictions]. , perspectives or systems of thought with explanatory claims. In order to have a chance of escaping the confusion, which is common in the matter, let us proceed to the conceptual distinctions which we can consider minimal in order to analyze the chapter of delirious accusations. Visions of fictional plots can be grouped under four categories, ranging from the least elaborate to the most elaborate - from the composite imagination allowing the interpretation of news items to facts resists de facto the mystique on history or evolution of humanity.

(13) Passim: The wrongly named’; 'Conspiracy theory' can therefore be said in at least four senses: 1. The fear of an imaginary conspiracy or the real worries caused by conspiracy which is not present, even if they are the subject of knowledge. The “threat” here refers to the expression of this fear. However, to give a figure to the causes of fear is to fight against it. And yet, fear increases. To understand the paradoxical process at work, we must reverse the causal order spontaneously asserted by subjects who say they believe in conspiracies. The truth is that they are afraid all the time, in order to escape from fear, they invent compositions that they translate, confirm and fuel their fears. faced with the ups and downs of the world; history, with the flood of events offered in bulk by the media, accompanied by comments that are not very credible or are completely confused, it is great to assume that 'everything is being hidden from us'. 'Everything', that is to say the 'truth', 'the essential', the 'real causes' or the real reasons'. We designate unknown and disturbing subjects for individuals who are afraid of being affected by the disease. Those who believe in conspiracies thus ward off their fears at the same time as they stimulate them. 

(14) Passim: This is the minimal imagination of the plot. This first meaning is presupposed by the next three. // 2. The idea or conspiracy hypothesis: we suppose, faced with historical events perceived as opaque or absurd, that they could be explained by one or more conspiracies, therefore ultimately analyzed by human intentions and actions. But the hypothesis is not here suspended from the use of methodological doubt or limited by recourse to experimentation: it is metamorphosed into a thesis. The idea of ​​conspiracy functions as a self-evident model of intelligibility and the use of which generates psychic benefits. The application of the conspiracy model seems to bring into the order of explanation and reasoning events which seem to reveal chance. The idea of ​​conspiracy, notes Francois Furet, 'operates this perversion of the schema in a way - like which any historical fiat is reducible to an intention and a subjective will'. The illusion of intellectual mastery of what happens allows us to temporarily escape the unhappiness produced by the dissemination of chaos. This is why the revolutionary period was so divided into imagined 'plots': in the midst of seemingly meaningless upheavals, any adversary was accused of plotting, which gave the illusion of understanding the logic of action of the various groups. The transition from direct idea to ideology probably took place at the time of the French revolution, which 'inaugurates a world where all social change is attributable to forces conceived, cataloged, living'.

(15) Passim: This cognitive attitude is, however, accompanied by negative factors where indignation, anger and revolt dominate, against a background of anxiety. Because the identification of supposed 'conspirators' scandalizes and worries. The subjects themselves believed in the plot and only acquired a certain cognitive serenity at the cost of permanent anxiety: they cannot cease their laborious activity of rationalization. The fear of conspiracies thus becomes a permanent disposition of certain individuals or groups. // 3. The ideology of conspiracy: it is based on the conviction that social processes, which are supposed to generate the misery of the world or the misery of humanity, are necessarily explained by manipulations due to malevolence, based on plans, programs or projects. These occult groups are imagined as being both powerful and hostile, which constitutes a fantastic base for their demonization. By unmasking these evil and evil spirits. The denunciation of the complot is done in a positive identity; it is on the side of good. A theory of types of action involving sect and affiliations [of the initiatory type]. existence of occult groups infiltrated in all positions of power, [secret] program of domination and planned operations of manipulation appear at this level, authorizing the emergence of 'conspiracy ideology', or more briefly 'plottism' or 'conspiracy'. It will be noted that the postulate of generalized manipulation functions as a means of manipulation. 

(16) Passim: 4. the myth of the plot or the mythology considered to be the truth, which is constituted in addition to the thesis according to which the plots were fiat, make history a part of history, that is to say, constitute the key to history. Plots dare to express history: such is the dogma on which the mythical edifice rests. And, since the whole is necessarily global, the conspirators are subjects in reverse, dedicated to acting beyond state, linguistic or civil borders: Jesuits, Freemasons, Jewish 'cosmopolites', communists, 'stateless' capitalists, etc. These conspiracies with a planetary aim are sometimes called 'mega plots'. That the space and the time of the conspiracy are part of universal history, that the conspiracy can be delocalized purely to be fictionalized as global, this is a narrative invention attributable to the modern era, inseparable from the emergence of the philosophies of the 'history' in the second half of the 18th century and the dwarflike conspiracies explosion triggered by the French revolution - entry into the gallery of mirrors, where the complot cannot be seen without its doubles: plots respectively Jesuitist, Jansenist, 'illuminist', Freemason, neo-templar, aristocratic, clerical, Jacobin, etc. what Manes Sperber called the 'police vision of history' [expression coined by the psychology in 1953] covers senses 3 and 4: it is based on the thesis that 'the misfortunes of this world must be blamed'; to an evil organization or entity - whether for example the Jesuit Order, Freemasonry, the 'international bankers' or the Jews [those from above, invisible: the ' wise men of Zion''] -, even to a synthesis of evil powers. In the 'mega plots' that we encounter in modern political myths, the maxim 'the extremes touch each other' seems to escape its status as an empty formula in order to take on the value of a law of organization of the imagination.

(17) Passim: Conspiracy thinking presents certain analogies with mythical thinking: like the latter, it populates the world with good and bad intentions, with demons and gods, it 'invests the objective universe with subjective wills', imagining thus explain the origin and persistence of evil. But the modern context in which the great constitutionalist narratives were formed, that of the beginning secularism imposed certain characteristics on them [the idea of ​​the universality of the composition or the importance of processes of influence in actions propaganda] and certain operating types. The myth of the global Jewish conspiracy, for example, and a modern political myth, one of whose peculiarities is to have been fabricated with symbolic materials borrowed from medieval anti-Judaism and anti-Satanism. we can follow Norman Chon in his characterization of 'exterminating anti-Semitism' by attributing to the Jews a global conspiracy of the satanic type: ''the most feverish anti-Semitism [the deadliest form of anti-Semitism]], that which leads to massacres and the attempt at genocide [..], at its core is the belief that the Jews = - all Jews, and everywhere - are an integral part of a conspiracy determined to destroy and then overpower the rest of 'humanity'. and this belief is simply a modernized and secularized version of medieval popular representations, according to which the Jews declared a league of sorcerers employed by Satan to bring about the spiritual and physical ruin of Christianity. // 

(18) Passim: This interpretive model is clearly based on the sociology hypothesis of the secularity of religious beliefs, which will be discussed in this work. It was necessary to intervene, in the fundamental motivations of the most fanatical Jews, the ‘paranoid fear of a conspiracy or a worldwide Jewish conspiracy’. The radicalized conspiracy myth, inspired by demographics, continues to be a machine for creating absolute enemies, doomed to be destroyed. It thus played the role of a magical vision of politics as well as of a cosmic philosophy of history. It also functions as an effective incentive for mobilization and as a powerful mode of legitimation or rationalization of action, however criminal it may be. / From the dread of conspiracies to the idea of ​​a conspiracy that is absent from universal history, from simple conspirationist anxiety to a paranoid vision of the world, there is obviously a vast space to explore, a space where it is rotting – proving to be homogeneous neither culturally nor politically.”

————————–

(19) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “The Da Vinci Code inspired a big budget film in 2005. The mythology of secret societies and the imagination of conspiracy have once again become the privileged symbolic materials of popularized novels. We return the 'Priory of Zion' and its so-called archives [the 'Secret Files'] in the Da Vinci code, and the illuminati enter into actions with angels & demons. The premise of the novel revolves around a plot against the Catholic Church hatched by the illuminates. In a note from the author of this novel, also 'theological thriller', we read: 'As for the conferring of enlightenment, it has also been exited.' From 1975, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, with their novel Illuminatus!, exploited the myth of the illuminati, that of the 'unknown Superiors' who, belonging to a 'secret society' or to several people, control or govern the world. Robert Anton Wilson's successful novels, mixing the detective genre with science fiction and fantasy with a strong esoteric component, have strongly contributed to inscribing the science fiction into the new world popular culture. Since the 1970s, Wilson has been as famous as a scholar and mediator of English-speaking 'apocalyptic culture' as well as a 'New Age' philosopher. 

(20) Passim: This author with polymorphic talents has even established himself as a specialist in conspiracy theories and ‘esoteric’ doctrines [that is to say, implication and initiation process], by publishing a lexicon on the question: this book, titled ‘about everything is under control [Wilson, 19998], has been the subject of a new augmented edition in German version, the more explicit title of which is Das lexicon der verschwörungstheorien [Wilson, 2004] – ‘Lexicon of the theories of complot’. But Wilson treats conspiratorial themes with humor and playfulness, making the parodist visions of history the material for an aesthetic experience, which notably uses parody. He submits to a distanced reformulation, relating to the Lautearian parody or the situationist diversion, the compo-list thesis according to which the action of secret societies – unless it is more specifically the ‘struggle of secret societies among themselves’ – is the motor of History. The simple idea is that we can “dare” have the paranoia or “the conspirationist vision: the role plays are not far away. The conspiracy is everywhere, and points to all sources by Jonathan Vankin, journalist and essayist close to Wilson, stating for example: ‘Civilization is a conspiration which obscures reality.’ understand that he can, or as he wishes…”

—————————-

(21) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “One of the paradoxical effects of democratic 'transparency' is that by facilitating the dissemination of information on the actions of the secret services, on the actions of criminal sects [or international terrorist networks] and political-financial plots fortunately thwarted, it feeds the imagination of conspiracy. not only does the democratic policy of 'transparency' sharpen the spirit of suspicion, by appearing to provide solid proof of the conspiracy theory, but it ends up making the suspicion unfocused and transforming it into an ordinary way of perceiving events. Democratic 'advertising' is never sufficiently enlightening to eliminate any suspicion of 'manipulation'. by bringing everything to light, even the occult, the society of information and commercial communication to produce a deeper darkness, to create the more distant unknown, it lets us understand without having wanted it that reality is quite other than its perceptions, or that 'the truth is elsewhere'. the expected clarity of 'revelations' becomes a machine for generating obscurity. counterfeiters have been taking advantage of this, and have been for a long time. this is evidenced by the first anti-Masonry pamphlets signed Leo Taxil [pseudonym taken by the author Gabriel Joland-Pagés] which bear, as a front title, this sales pitch: 'competitive revelations on Freemasonry'.

(22) Passim: But the problem posed by the games of transparency and concealment cannot be reduced to the scams made possible by the democratic market society. It gestures towards the ambiguous heritage that we have received from the thought of the Enlightenment and from 'he, democratic invention', both of which have never ceased to converge to undermine the foundations of all beliefs humans. We know the main aspects: relativations, desacralisation and abolition of certainties, taking into account the undermining of all determination. hence the fear, expressed by certain eponyms, that by erecting the indefinite into the ultimate truth, we only seek to chase what is necessary in order to substitute for it the arbitrator, which in reaction nourishes an immoderate desire for knowledge of 'a certain source '. Failing to be able to completely correct with the sublime message of the revealed religions, purveyors of absolute truths, the great temptation is to fall back on the 'revelation' roles offered after the professions of the thing. in his admirable essay on André Breton, Julien Gracq makes a remark that carries far: 'In certain hours of solitude and implacable cold, where everything goes wrong, and few eras have known, it seems, in the midst of such glacial lucidity, where we would willingly admit to ourselves that we are less thirsty for truth than for revelation.' the demand for revelation, in a world deprived of absolutes, is insatiable."

——————————-

(23) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “Logic of suspicion, arrests on plots - Behind the secrets revealed, we imagine the existence of even more protected secrets, we suspect any media 'revelation' of hiding better-hidden and more terrifying 'truths'. One of the great aims of the Enlightenment is to reduce, or even eliminate, the share of darkness or the occult in the consciousness of things and humans. No longer hide anything, unveil everything, postulating that everything has been revealed. For the rationalist vigilantes, the committed or politicized Cartesians of the 18th century, it was not only a question of putting an end to the secret, but also of abolishing the mystery. This utopian project of making everything visible was historically relayed by turning into its opposite: far from disappearing, the mystery only recurred, at the same time as the invisible continued to cast the shadow of the visible, doubling in that fate the field of the visible. Paralleling, the invisible was populated by inquiring, threatening creatures, creatures with bad intentions and supposed to act together for unspeakable reasons. In short, the new invisible generated by the rationalist attempt to abolish everything invisible is no longer located in the order of the super-sensible. The imagination of the 'secret society' bears witness to this, populated by groups of 'accomplices', 'companions' or '; affiliates', linked by a cause and a project or a program of action.

(24) Passim,: From then on, the invisible was no longer absolutely inaccessible: however well protected they might be, the secrets of 'secret society' could always be pierced and revealed in broad daylight. Transcendence becomes immanent to immanence; the beyond is now socialized in the beyond of the perceptible. In the cellars, the backyards or the slums of society undergoing secularization and rationalization. But the invisible reality was not only located at the lowest level of the social system, it was also projected into the highest spheres of political, economic and military power. This imaginative prediction, which presupposes all the conspirationist visions of the last two centuries, is based on two axioms: 1. true power is a sacred power; 2. true power has the strength to hide the truth or to veil the relationship. In short, what all power allows us to see or glimpse of itself masks its true reality, and thus deceives citizens. As if it was the nature of the power of craft and deception. The disturbing hidden activities therefore seem to be equally distributed in there [the occult face of power, the high hidden places where the 'invisible governments' are active] and below [the 'secret societies' deemed subversive and their real masters]. Al this, for the possible construction of a great plot, to revise the greatest of secrets: the alliance of 'invisible governments' and 'unknown superiors' to dominate the world. /

(25) Passim: If the imagination is first and foremost the faculty of interpreting signs and their invisible correspondences, the fact dedicated to deciphering the hieroglyphs of the world, an internal work of the imagination began in the years following the French revolution, great blatantly attributed to malicious causes and malignant intentions, as if the series of events by which it was produced had only been the accomplishment of a carefully prepared and secret program of action. The schema of the complex entered the space of ideological evidence while the occult would burst into the 'occult sciences', renamed from the beginning of the 19th century 'occultism'. / If it is true, according to Claude Lefort's broad hypotheses, that modern democracy is characterized by an essential novelty: the desecration of power, which instills uncertainty and uncertainty where absoluteness is lost From the bottom, the individual who leaves the future loses the confidence and assurance that comes from the 'religion of progress' and can hardly escape the anxiety imposed by the vision of an unpredictable future. With the openness of possibilities comes the feeling of complexity and the perception of unpredictability, which deepens the worry. As far as modern democratic societies are concerned with more realistic societies, where the criteria of creativity are shaken, individual and collective choices take on a decisive importance, in the order of political action as well as in that of moral action.

(26) Passim: In an age of uncertainty, citizens are condemned to freedom. their choices are no longer dictated by imperatives from heaven. modern pluralist democracy, by normalizing the indefinite questioning of itself, on its meaning and its value, has freed the corrosive powers of doubt. Certainly, the moderns have invented stratagems to control doubt. but this one sufficiently showed that he could free himself from the muzzle of the doubt method. and limitless doubt, protected in all areas, is what deprives the reasoning individual of all the reasons for living, and gives rise to nihilism. / In the absence of absolute information likely to make sense of the action, temptation is guarded from giving in to the logic of suspicion. From unacknowledged uncertainty arises suspicion, which must be considered as a question or a question raised about the causes of men's misfortunes: who is behind it? Who is the identity of those responsible? but the suspicion tends to be infinite. without term and without fortress. Inconveniently, it is possible for suspects to seek a global and definitive answer, which puts an end to the questioning, one of the possible answers, and satisfactory for many, is that these misfortunes are due to plots, or even to a large plot.

(27) Passim: Everything is finally explained, and his thoughts are calmed, becoming the certainty offered by the evidence of the plot. But they can also be exalted: believing in conspiracies, it is at the same time dangerous that we can put an end to them by revealing them, by revealing the hidden plan of the conspirators and by unmasking the latter. This amounts to being able to defend oneself against the threat, to eliminate the sources of the threat. The use of the idea of ​​conspiracy therefore allows those who profess it as a doctrine to know the cause of our evils', while giving them the reassurance of being able to act and counter the diabolical cause - it is enough to identify and publicly name those responsible or the culprits. In the ideology of conspiracy we recognize a cognitive function [it provides 'knowledge' about those responsible for evil] and a practical or pragmatic function [it provides the means to magically erase the cause of the world's misfortunes]. Furthermore, the dogma of conspiracy erases the unpredictability of history: it provides cheaply the feeling of being able to master the present, foresee the future and outwit the traps of the future, on the basis of a supposed knowledge of the causes deep in the progress of the world. A superb illusion, certainly, but a real feeling: that of an intellectual mastery of the sequence of events. The idea of ​​composition offers a powerful means of bringing certainty back to life in an era lacking it - in all orders, of thought, action and creation."

——————————-

(28) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “When browsing the texts or if they are staged, the clear and distinct identification of 'illumination' is therefore impossible. We can assume that this vagueness of reference functions itself as an indicator of the occult character attributed to these 'masters of the world' who are at the same time the 'masters of the world'; enemies of humanity. These were indistinct from the 'illuminati' that were part of the game: they are indistinguishable and elusive. They are also unfindable. This is why, over the course of pamphlets, they never stop transforming, changing their appearances. So some other complotters, such as the catholic counter-revolutionary speaker Pierre Virion, are willing to denounce 'the occult forces in the modern world'. Deleting individuals and groups in parity between 'occult forces' or what the same Virion calls 'the conspiracy' is an infinite task. The question, however, does not arise: who are they? In the yellow book n. 5, the most recent cult book on secret societies and their beliefs., the last word on the question consists of maintaining that it cannot have an answer: 'the illuminants do not belong to any religion, to any party , has no nation or other grouping but they are happy to cover it. Let us note once again that this game began thousands of years before the arrival of the people mentioned in this book and that it will continue with them. People referred to today as Satanists or representatives of Zionist communities [like the Rothschilds, the Warburgs] are just pawns in a chessboard where the challenge is even greater.' //

(29) Passim: Jan Udo Holey, in this concluding passage from the Yellow Book n. 5, cites another professional denunciation of secret societies and their plans for world domination, Dieter Rüggeberg, author of an essay entitled Geheimpolitik ['Secret Politics']: 'Rudolf Steiner already pointed out in 1920 that the names of The highest members of hidden secret societies never appear on the lists of names [...]. This is the least we can do without the fatale orders of black magic, all imported documents must be coded in a secret writing that cannot be deciphered by uninitiated people if they do not have the corresponding key. It is in this sense that material historians have learned a lot, unless they start again to find the whole truth. // Dan sun liver published in 2001 in the United States and translated into France the following year in Quebec, the children of the matrix, the 'new Age' polygraph David Icke, conspiration theorist denies anyone who is a supporter of A broad definition of the formidable 'illuminati, characterizes it as follows: 'the ruling elite has no more than thirteen families at the top of the social pyramid; we owe him this system of control whose ramifications extend through occult societies. This underground network of societies which serve the global elite form a group that we call the illuminati [from the Italian 'enlightened'], because these people are holders of the knowledge which is denied to the greatest number. The illuminants constitute an organism which, like a cancer, parasitizes all important organizations, that is to say that all the main occult societies direct towards them hand-picked recruits so that they occupy positions to be able to a little everywhere on the international chessboard... they infest all parties, all sides, all countries.'

(30) Passim: It is their common international or global character which gives all these conspiracy figures their terrifying power, which is exploited by conspiracy theorists striving to adapt their polemic representations to an ever-changing reality. So why is there a planetary plot, designed to establish a 'world government'? This is the thesis that a multitude of pamphlets published in Europe and North America [United States and Canada] have been distributed in concert since the 1960s, an editorial phenomenon in expansion thanks to the Internet since the 1990s. in 1966, one of the main French 'anti-globalist' propagandists, the traditionalist Catholic pray Virion, publishes both the text of a conference delivered in Rome on October 25, 1965, The occult forces in the modern world', and a short essay entitled 'soon a world government? A super and counter-church in the United States, the opinion campaigns orchestrated by the John Birch Society [created on December 9, 1958], an anti-communist and anti-Semitic organization, are based on the vision of a historical conspiracy, in an immense amalgam, the Illuminati, the French Revolution, Marxism and the international communist movement, the CFR [council of foreign relations] and the united nations, the constituents being supposed to want to make America a dependency of the world social economy, under the control of the Kremlin.

(31) Passim: In the 1970s and 1980s, the denunciation mainly focused on the 'global manipulators', among whom the most often mentioned were the CFR, the Trilateral or the Bilderberg group. From the beginning of the 1990s, the 'world government' will tend to merge with the 'new world order', an expression launched on the planetary media market by George Bush the father in the context of the first Iraq War [1990- 1991]. hence a new spree of 'anti-globalization' pamphlets, from the extreme right on the other hand, but also, a few years later, from the extreme left [the 'anti-globalization' variant, then the 'alter-globalization' movement, which is taking shape around 1999-2000]. One of these far-right 'globalization' pamphlets, descent into slavery? [1980], by the American publisher and essayist of Griffin, centered on the denunciation of the new world order, is thus presented on a website offering it for sale: 'in a book which has been described as 'devastating'. 'magnificent' and 'superbly documented' by readers of continental kings, Griffin heads to the international banks and presents, in great detail on the basis of extensive documentation, the story of his party's participation in the conspiracy of the Illuminati with a view to creating a single global government, of a totalitarian type. // the method of dramatization implemented by theorists of the 'global illuminist' plot is the same as that which we encounter in the stories of science-fiction or read the parascientific essays on the extraterrestrial invaders and the '; unknown, disturbing worlds from which they supposedly come: so many enemies of the entire human species, beings threatening and endangering humanity [the 'space vampires' directed by Colin Wilson, the 'reptilians' and their descendants in David Icke, etc.].'

(32) Passim: An esoteric antidemonism is expressed in written names, where the mythology of 'secret societies' is articulated with that of the conspiracy, takes up all the themes that synthesize this coulter presentation of a semi-autobiographical book by the magician Franz Bardon [1909-1958], Frabato the Magician, 'esoteric novel' devoted in particular to 'lodges of black magic' and their misdeeds: 'The author warns about these Shadow Orders which bring together the elites of finance and global industry in order to create a world order based on dependence and aversion: the citizen disappears like other states, for the benefit of the customer released onto a vast market that the planet is gradually becoming. Franz Bardon also indicates how these black lodges attack the true followers, how they have planned since the dawn of time the destruction of humanity and caused the suffering of the latter [...]."

————————–

(33) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “The hypothesis that we can formulate, based on the political or psycho-political implications of this culture of conspiracy dressed in esotericism, is that conspirationism calls for extermination. because the logical conclusion of the analysis of world history in terms of conspiracy is that we must put an end to the invisible dictatorship that reigns in the world, by destroying the system of control and manipulation which, in modernity, took the name of 'democracy'. finally with the power of the 'secret societies', and more particularly with that of the satanized 'secret society'; which, for 'thousands of thousands of years', is to trade by radically opposing, by all means, the supra elites - nations who illegitimately reign over the human race. / This fanciful anti-elite has its leading ideologists, its specialized writers, its famous preachers. it is a new wave of populism carried by the 'anti-Big' ideology, spreading rumors and fantasies about the parasitic and destroying power of illegitimate elites, belonging to a network of secret societies intended to form a government invisible world. Much of the anti-oligarchic and anti-plutocracy discourse of the last thirty years is made with such ingredients.

(34) Passim: An 'anti-' discourse which, if it has long been fixed on the lands of the extreme right [extreme right], has been encountered, since the mid-1990s, as well as on the extreme left, in particular in the movements of anti-globalization, on the side of the 'new radicalities': the new 'masters of the world' are accused both of representative democracy], of organizing and legitimizing the exploitation of global capitalism, and of provoking wars [the two Iraqi warriors, in particular] for deep reasons have nothing to do with the reasons publicly alleged. The themes of anti-globalization have become commonplace by spreading across the planet thanks to so-called 'altermondialist' mobilizations since 2000. An immense cross-over between rival and opposing extremisms has therefore taken place and continues in the mid-1990s to 2000. at the beginning of my book entitled The invisible government, the far-right publicist, co-author of Henry Coston, specifies for the reader: 'I do not pretend to reveal in a few pages the underground and concerted efforts of an international oligarchy which tends to establish, under its authority, a world government. my only goal is to discover the existence of this conspiracy and to reveal its goals and motives to a large public, carefully kept in ignorance by subservient governments and 'mass media' at their command. May this little introductory manual for workers reach the eyes of my contemporaries and encourage them to further their information on the underside of a situation for which they are paying the price.”

—————————–

(35) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “The 'Judaization' of the Maconic conspiracy - At a later stage, while the mix of the Masonic/illuminist conspiracy was already widely spread, a new theme of accusation arose: The Jews secretly led the Masonic conspiracy, and were the true conspirators back rooms. such is the message contained in the so-called letter from Jean-Battist Simonini [dated 1806], a fake probably made by Barruel himself. but it was only in the last third of the 19th century that the myth of the Judeo-American conspiracy took shape, in its definitive form. the latter is explained at length in the work of the knight Gougent des Mousseaux. , the Jew, Judaism itself and the Judaism of Christian peoples, published in 1869 in Paris, by Plon. Through this book, a treatise on anti-Maconism and counter-revolutionary Catholic Judeophobia that inspired all the anti-Jewish pamphleteers of the end of the 19th century, Henri Roger Gougenot des Mousseux [1805-1876] became famous in the last two decades of the 19th century. The central thesis of the work, which owes much to the reading of Emil Eckert, is that 'all the social and anti-Christian upheavals' which are shaking the world are 'the work of the Freemasons and the Jews'. , and that through these revolutionary upheavals, Freemasonry being only an instrument in the hands of the Jews, it is 'the triumph of the Jew' or the destruction of 'Christian civilization' which is being prepared, like the inevitable consequence of these troubles.

(36) Passim: Because 'the goal of the Jew, whose conviction runs in the opposite direction to that of the Christian, is to Judaize the world and destroy this Christian civilization there.' the 'Judaization of the world' is the exact opposite of the 'goal of a Christian living an active life', which is 'to Christianize the world'. This is why Gougenot proposed calling 'the active Jew the missionary of evil'. The Masonic conspiracy is genealogically linked to Judaism by the cabal: 'the architects of all the anti-Christian or anti-social disorders which act throughout the world, under the influence of occult societies, are linked by the secret and Jewish link of the cable'. 'Immense and diverse association that is designated by the name 'recent Freemasonry.' the 'cabalist Jews' dare to be 'worshipers of Satan'. now, the secret direction of the back lodges [the same secret ones!] is Jewish: ;'Here then is the anti-Christian philosophy of the eighteenth century, the Israeli alliance a verse and the universal society of manconry living in our midst, both have the same life, animated by a single person and the same soul! And the masonry of the high followers, key to the Jewish initiates, finally allows us to see through the meaning of its manifestos that it is ultimately the latent organization of militant Judaism, as well as the universal Israelite alliance, 'Is just one of its expected organizations.'

(37) Passim: Freemasonry, specifies the anti-occultism Gougenot des Mousseuax, in that it comes 'from the mysterious doctrines of the cabal', ', 'is not the modern and main form of occultism , of which the Jew is the prince, because he was in all the centuries the prince and the great master of the Kabala. Now, the 'special goal' of occultism is 'to de-Christianize the world', that is to say, ultimately, to place the world in the hands of Satan, Gougenot of sparkling wines, concluding that Freemasonry is a 'society that calls itself' Jewish, 'naturally' Jewish, but occult Jewish, and, as such, certainly the most dangerous of the sects', because highly too few: 'The Jew and therefore naturally, among we add that he is necessarily the soul, the leader, the real great leader of masonry, whose known dignitaries are, most of the time, only the deceptive and deceived leaders of the order. ' // What is needed rather, beyond visible masonry, is 'the masonry supremacy of the Jew', of which we cannot provide any evidence. The Barullian distinction between lodges and back lodges, erected as a model of intelligibility, allows Gougent des Mousseux to decipher the hyper-secret in the secret: behind the apparent and known [or at least knowable] leaders. of masonry, we must assume the existence of real and unknown [or even unknowable] leaders.

(38) Passim: These latter, 'high adepts' or 'superior unknowns', can only be Jews [or predominantly Jews], disposed by their nature and their history to 'occult' practices and maneuvers. This is why 'the Masonic lodges [...] become [for Israel the splinterers and troublemakers of the synagogue'. Masonry deserves to be stigmatized as 'the Synagogue of Satan'. The Jews are absolutely destined to produce, as the driving force of the devil, all revolutionary movements; it is important to 'recognize in the Jew the preparateur, the engineer, and the engineer in charge of revolutions'. If therefore masonry plays a revolutionary role, it is because it is under Jewish direction, invisible direction. / There is no Jewish or Jewish-Masonic conspiration without 'secret societies', populated by initiates or 'enlightened ones', stigmatized by Abbot Barruel in 1747-98 as 'the enemies of the human race and the son of Satan'. In 1914, Charles Nicoulland, a close colleague of Bishop Join, expounded this illuminating genealogy: 'The spirit of evil took refuge in the secret society where it approached with pagan rites and symbols; then, under his instigation, the secret society and Freemasonry was born.

(39) Passim: To fight against such enemies is, above all, to reveal their machinations: modern anti-Jewish literature presents itself as a conspirationist literature, responding to the social demand for 'revelations', notably through the unveiling of 'plots'. This demand is supported by the diffuse feeling that 'we have something in common', the 'we'; designating those of the high places, the corrupt elites or the invisible super-elite. Aiming to satisfy this demand for devilment and unmasking, the conservative theorists fabricate universal conspiracies which they can trace back to the Templers, to the founding of the order of the Jesuits or to the enlightened ones of Bavaria. These mythical genes include lists of founders, founders, transmitters or continuators who take on a large number of new faces: the Freemasonry, the universal Israeli alliance and the b'nai b'rith have been added to the list. 20th century the Society of Nations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR,], etc. There is no 'Jewish peril' [or 'Judeo-Masonic'] without secret organizations, in which invisible and dark powers are active, which infiltrate the places of power."

——————————–

(40) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “This type of doctrinal synthesis, including the representations or the 'magical' parts [in the broadest sense of the term], the myth of the world conspiracy and the Christian religious beliefs - were they revisited by the German heritage -, does not is not the only one possible. It is enough to briefly mention the existence of syntheses with various forms of thought foreign to Christian as well [pagan-Arian racism, for example]. in turn, for contemporary histories and sociologists of phenomenon’s or religious events, what favors the demand for belief in the paranormal is the weakening of Christianity and the correlative rise of forms of religiosity without frequency to a transcendent God. Since the 1980s and 1990s, many sociologists and historians of the present have observed the appearance of attitudes and behavior testifying to a sense of the sacred in foreign communities in the area of ​​institutional religion. Hence the southern hypothesis of the emergence of a new post-Christian religiosity in the West, however it is interpreted. However, in these emerging affectionate-imaginary configurations, the connection with the sacred goes hand in hand with the recourse to certain 'esoteric' equitable beliefs and to certain categorical practices as 'magical' to occultists'.

(41) Passim: In other words, if we agree to recognize a religious dimension to these phenomena, beliefs in the paranormal or in 'astrology possess within themselves a religious dimension. The hypothesis is stimulated, on the condition of confirming the other of this new extra-intuitive religiosity, called 'footman' by certain sociologists, who study specifically these 'parallel' beliefs: astrology, travel, reincarnation, experience of imminent death, medicines parallels, etc. In 1981, the sociologist Jacques Maitre noted that 'in the present, astrology goes hand in hand with esotericism, various divinatory traditions, priesthood, yoga, parapsychology, techniques of dominating oneself and others', and added this very interesting observation for an ethnography of contemporary relationships: 'A common trait is often religiosity without god.' one of the questions that the sociologist, the social psychologist or the political scientist cannot avoid asking, is what possible links exist in the 'esoteric/occultist' configuration and certain tendencies or individual dispositions, which we normally classify as signs of 'isms' of bad repute: dogmatism [or conservative thinking], authoritarianism, even extremism.

(42) Passim:  'Parallel' beliefs and mental rigidity - The link between these 'parallel' beliefs and what we roughly call 'extremism' has been partially revealed in the article on 'authoritative personality' published in 1950 under the direction of Theodor W.Adorno?: the 'superstitions', among the ''team of Adorno that goes notably into the belief in astrology, are mostly elements of the 'authoritative personality'. The results of a content analysis of the interviews in reality, in relation to the construction of the measuring instrument which is the so-called 'F' scale of attitudes [authoritarianism scale], are nine in number:

(43) Passim: 1. conventional character: rigid adherence to conventional bourgeois values ​​[in French, this attitude relates to 'conformism', the term 'conventionalism' having another meaning]; 2. Submission to authority: attitude of uncivilized submission to the idealized moral authorities of the group of belonging [from the family to the nation]; / 3. Authoritarian aggressiveness: a tendency to be against people who flout conventional values, and to condemn, reject and punish them; 4. anti-introspection: opposition to or resistance to the subjective, to love, to tenderness; / 5. Superstition and stereotypy: belief in determination by mysterious forces of individual destiny and tendency to think in rigid categories; / 6. Power and 'hardness': sensitivity to the dimensions of domination/submission, strength/weakness, leader/subordinate; identification with the powerful, excessive importance given to the most conventional aspects of the self, exaggerated affirmation of strength and hardness; / 7. Destructiveness and cynicism: generalized hostility, systematic degradation or debasement of humans; / 8. Projectivity: tendency to believe that destructive and dangerous forces are at work in the world [projection in reality of unconscious impulses]; / 9. Secularity: exaggerated society for secular affairs. / It should be noted that the category of 'authoritarian personality' covers that of 'anti-democratic personality', studied by social scientists who were collaborators of Adorno //

(44) Passim: This work on the nature and origins of prejudices was at the same time followed up and coordinated or reinterpreted after Milton Rokeach, who established that, if prejudices result from an oversimplified and rigid style of thinking, mental strictness is not characterized not just individuals with politically conservative or 'potentially fascist and racist' ideas. Self-righteousness traits are therefore not linked to political positions [right-wing or conservative], nor to political positions [right-wing or conservative], nor to ideological content [reputedly 'conservative' or ‘conservative’]. It follows that the self-confidence measured by the F scale [in the work of Adorno and his team] must be reinterpreted as a particular case of a more general syndrome of intolerance that Rokeach proposes to call 'closed spirit' [closed mind] or 'personal dogmatism'. Its main characteristics being the colonization of the different belief systems such that mutually contradictory beliefs can nevertheless be preserved, a resistance to change with regard to these beliefs and the recourse to pure authority justifies the exact attitude of beliefs. Hence the hypothesis that dogmatic knowledge constitutes a very general, trans-God cognitive process. 'mental discipline' [or clicking thinking], resistance to influence [close], and intolerance make it possible to construct, for example, the system of beliefs of an individual, or even a type of personality or a mode of thinking capable of characterizing an individual independent of their ideological-political commitments.

(45) Passim: It is postulated that dogmatism is defined as the inability to accept, for a subject, a mode of spending different from one's own. It remains to be decided, for example, whether dogmatism is a presupposition of all extreme ideologies. and if it is possible to measure dogmatism, by developing a model of dogmatism that is likely to be demonstrated, then this suggests that dogmatism is equally shared by the Right and by the Left. the hypothesis being that dogmatism characterizes religious extremism whatever its political color [right or left, conservative or revolutionary type], the analyzes of the surveys carried out on populations of extreme wealth and extreme poverty -  which demonstrates that they manifest on average a higher level of dogmatism than that of populations not engaged in political groups. another measurement tool was constructed by Palmer by Kalin in 1991: the dogmatic rejection scale [DRS scale: Dogmatic Rejection Scale], which makes it possible to measure the rejection of another by different beliefs, which is supposed to indicate a high level of dogmatism. The results of the research carried out by Natalie Sgro and Serge Guimond, on three separate groups [22 far left activists, 17 far right and 32 non-activists], suggest firstly that the DRS scale is an instrument more faithful and valid for measuring dogmatism than the D scale, then that it makes it possible to highlight left-wing dogmatism, and, finally, that the extreme right activists are significantly more dogmatics than the other participants, whereas far-left activists are no more dogmatic than non-militant members. The nuanced and provisional conclusion of this research is that dogma, present across the entire ideological-political continuum, appears to be a cognitive functioning characterizing more the partisans of an extreme left-wing ideology as well as those of an extreme left-wing ideology.

(45) Passim: These approaches to prejudices or beliefs in terms of 'authoritarian personality', favor 'dispositions' or 'predispositions' [believed to have been put into practice in the childhood of the subjects, in accordance with a hypothesis borrowed from psychoanalysis ],], nevertheless present a weakness noted by many others; They tend to neglect or downplay the facts of a linguistic, contextual or 'sociocultural' nature. In a seminal study published in 1958, American social psychologist Eric Thomas Pettigrew showed that racist prejudices may not be correlated with high scores on the ECEL, so that, in a given population, racist subjects may not be no more 'authoritarian' than other members of the population on average, and that racist prejudices are explained in this case by conformity to the social norm. The same Pettigrew in another reference study, characterized the 'mistake fundamentally in attribution' as the tendency to attribute the behavior of an act almost exclusively to the dispositions of the latter and to ignores the correlatively of a situation as a determinant drawing from the behavior. It results that, in individual judgments, biases appear when a subject has to exclude the behaviors of members of the ingroup [the subject's learning group] and those of the exogroup [an outside group].

(46) Passim: For example, a negative behavior, such as a violent act, is the subject of a dispositional attribution when it is committed by a member of an exogroup 'that's just how they are', 'he s will never change'], but of a situational attribution when it is accomplished by a member of the endo group ['we were provoked', 'it's the legitimate definition']. To which it must be added that imposed social representations - certainly not strictly determinate - are ready-made explanations, which lead social acts, whatever their disposition ['authority' or not], to make attritions or impurity on the basis of the predicated knowledge that these repercussions provide. Despite its limits, the model of the 'authoritative personality', redefined as that of style or dogmatism, retains a descriptive value. / In his recent studies, the sociologist Guy Michelet has observed that the more tolerant one is, the more diminished the frequency of belief in horoscopes. According to the Rokeach paradigm, everything happens as if rigid thinking and dogmatism increased with popular reforms of astrological beliefs. More generally, according to a scale of tolerance constructed from opinions on ethnocentrism and the death penalty, we observe that tolerance decreases as the feeling of insecurity. This is the interpretive hypothesis, coming from psycho-sociology, certainly the most fruitful on the question: 'The objective and subjective situations which give rise to worry, such as the feeling of insecurity, go hand in hand with an increase in similar beliefs. However, these situations also see the development of intolerance.'

(47) Passim: The demand for and consumption of esoteric beliefs could thus be explained by a strong feeling of insecurity, quite widespread in the population, but much more on average among those over forty than among young people. However, in the results of the taken opinion there are surveys in relation to partisan preferences, we observe that; intolerance increases markedly among people who are close to the extreme right. Is it necessary to hypothesize a correlation, in social disruptions marked by a strong feeling of insecurity, a high level of intolerance, a political identification with extreme authority and a tendency to consume beliefs paranormal? The hypothesis must of course be tested by empirical research. / Looking for more light from these questions, which may come from social psychology or political science, it is possible to make a few observations. The proper modern process that we call democracy, accompanied by scientific popularization and secularism, does not in any way lead to the disappearance of belief in the existence of supersensible forces and their action in the sensible world. Magical representations have forged new paths in the disenchanted universe of the moderns, notably in the multiple forms taken by popular religiosity from the initial religious field. this is evidenced by the existence of a vast and expanding market for a popular literature exploiting esoteric themes or magical representations relating to the fantastic [the most successful model of these fictions remains The Lord of the Rings, the great fairy tale by J.R.R. Tolkien ], but also a mass of writings belong to para-history or pseudo-science whose confused discourse is adorned with 'esoteric-mystic-magical' attributes [such as Le Matin des magiciens by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier].

(48) Passim: The worldwide circulation of these texts is now ensured by a very large number of sites on the web. A production of films and video games contributes to the dissemination of this syncretic literature. In an important passage from economics and society, Max Weber notes with insight that the fiat of 'conceiving 'supersensible' forces in the form of gods, even under the guise of a transcendent god, does not eliminate anything, in itself , the ancient representations of magic [not even in Christianity]. This remark can be extended to the limited set of beliefs relating to the 'nebulous esoteric mystic', approached as one of the most significant manifestations of the 'parallel religiosities' which have developed over the years 1970 in the context of the alleged '; return of religion. Because the extension of the concept of “parallel religiosities” is so broad that its understanding [in the logical sense] is vague. But, in order to explore new domains of objects, it was necessary to be satisfied with fuzzy concepts. the sociologist Francoise Champion proposes a descriptive definition which has the merit of convenience 'by parallel religiosities we will understand [...], in the Western context, all non-Christian religions, the various esotericisms and all the beliefs and para-religious parties, ancient [clairvoyance, for example] or news [meditation, for example].' / While it is supposed, in principle, to have put an end to the practices of magic and witchcraft, belief in the transcendent god of Christianity has often shown itself to be compatible, in a particular character or within a particular religious group, with the beliefs in the paranormal and astrology, with spiritism or occultism, which in many cases involve the use of divinatory or magical practices.

(50) Passim: Perverse effect of modern rationalization of Christian theology and the 'rationalization' of the churches: the proliferation of 'irrational' beliefs at the borders of institutional religiosity. but especially outside of it. but we must take into account another great perverse effect of the modern process: democracy, which is developing on a line of increasing complexity, has favored the use of the scheme of conspiracy to decipher appearances - a simplifying reduction of socio-historical reality to the bad intentions and the occult actions of groups whose end [dominating the world] justifies the worst means. what interests us here are the interferences of compo-realistic modes of dis-involvement and forms of thought borrowed from esoteric traditions, of which the emerging global culture offers a striking picture. It is now time to approach the new esoteric-conspiracy culture more precisely by exploring one of its birthplaces in the 1970s. the company launched by Louis Pauwels and his collaborators through a bestseller, Le Matin des Magiciens [1960], and launch of the Journal Planéte, in a context where the new age movement was taking shape, still largely inspired by the leftist 'counter-culture' of the era. the interior of Pauwels, the matinee esotericism of the time. Pauwels' itinerary, from esotericism mixed with conspiracy [through a passion for 'secret societies'] to the new right in its neo-Pagan movement, that is to say GREECE [end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s], to provide a summary illustration of the thesis according to which beliefs in the paranormal are linked to dogmatism and right-wing extremism, in this or that form."

—————————-

(51) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “The culture of mystery and the strange - The new global popular culture has integrated the technique of 'occult power', related either with the classical political myth of the world conspiracy, or with the new mythology coming from ufology, mixing science fiction of horror and interpretation of 'testimonies' of 'victims'. A sociologist cannot question the persistent interest of the general public in 'secret societies' or 'sects' supposed to have spanned the centuries, whether they are purely religious or historically existed [but purely being most often 'fictionalized']. The stories often fall under this ‘fictions']. In the stories that fall under this subcategory of popular literature, whether they are essays or novels, the course of history appears as the result of the occult action of 'mysterious personage' and institutional organizations, involving 'magical' parts. the immense success [national, then international] met by the book of Louis Pauwels to [former disciple of Gurdejeff, before being tempted by Guéron] and Jacques Bergier [to popularize science and amateur of unusual facts, of strange or mysterious phenomena], the morning of the magicians [1960], followed by the creation of the Journal Planeté, organ of the '; 'fantasy realism', revealed the taste of the non-specialized public for 'mysterious' history, an 'alternative' history mixing hidden or magical themes, critiques of so-called 'scientific theories' dismissed by 'official science' [by example, the cosmological doctrine of Hanns Hörbiger], stories about the; action of 'secret societies' [often mentioned in reference to Nazism] and the reinvestment of legends or mythological themes [Atlantis and the 'lost civilization' or 'inner knowledge', the holy grail and the templar’s, the alchemy, the permanence of paganism].

(52) Passim: The co-authors of Le Matin des magiciens presented their book as follows: 'It is the account, sometimes legendary and sometimes accurate, of a first journey into areas of knowledge that have barely been explored.' Among the 'forbidden lands' that they intended to explore, a particular attack was made on Nazism, according to the hypothesis that 'Nazi Germany embodied the concepts of a civilization with no connection with ours'. The Second World War became the inevitable confrontation between two 'world views': 'the humanist'; and 'magic'. Nazism was thus located on the side of the mysterious and the strange, the unknown and the fantastic. This is where the story of 'cursed subjects' speaks to the routinized discourse of 'official science', judged to be conformist and timid. The paradoxical watchword of these so-called witnesses of the occult and not to conceal anything: such is also the founding argument of parapsychology, also called metaphysical or psychotropic. / Faced with the Nazis, approached under the angel of a demagogic esotericism, Pauwels and Bergier were spiels: 'Nazism was one of the rare moments, in the history of civic list, where one protest was opened on another thing, loudly and visibly. Further on, they specified that 'the great novelty of Nazi Germany was that magical thinking was joined to science and technology', and added, drawing inspiration from a famous quote of Leninism -incorrectly cited], this inept characterization: 'in a certain way, Hitlerism was Guénoninism plus armored divisions.'

(53) Passim: In his preface to Kurt Seligman’s History of Magic, one of the first volumes of the Planet Encyclopedia, Jacque Bergier sets out his thesis on the origins of magic, positing the; existence of disappeared civilizations whose heritage is identified, in its fossil state, in magical practices: 'it must be admitted [...] that magicians have always possessed technical information [...]. Where does TV information come from? A single source seems possible to me: one or more extinct civilizations having reached a technical level superior to ours and of which some traditions still survive, through rituals and recipes. We are thus put on the path to the 'lost continents', 'disappeared civilizations'., superior ancestors' [aliens or inhabitants of 'the country of mu'] and of mysteries of the sky' [extraterrestrials and UFOs], privileged object of a fantastical archeology that was made popular by the works of Robert Charroux, published during the 19600s and 1970s by Robert Laffont . a few years before the opera Matin des magiciens/Planéte, Jacques Bergier had collaborated, with notably René Alleau, Michal Carrouges and Robert Knaters, on the revue la tour saint-Jacques [no.1, november-december 1955] which , under the direction of Robert Amadou - known for his scholarly work and demands on 'occultism' -, aims to explore 'the kingdom of the unknown'. This quality review covers the subject of parapsychology, alchemy, astrology and occultism.

(54) Passim: The Planet magazine was, during the 1960s, the catchy and 'general public' version. The first issue of Planéte was, during the 1960s, the catchy and 'general public' version. The first issue of planéte came out in October 1961. Its stated objective was to 'create a link between readers touched by the morning of magicians and the philosophy, aesthetics, and sensitivity of 'fantastic realism’.’in January 1965, Pauwels specifies not without pride that the circulation of the morning of the magicians reached 500,000 copies in Europe and that the liver's career in the United States began in October 1964, he also recalls the success of the Planéte encyclopedia [launched in April 1963], then announced the creation of the Planéte editions. / The esoteric-occult theorists, in the 20th century, often took the myth of Atlantis as symbolic material for their speculations. bear witness to the numerous books published on the question, such as, in France, by Paul Le Cour [1971-1954], priest of the Age of Aquarius, and, in English, by the Scottish historian of occultism, Lewis Spence [1874-1955], himself an occultist. the works of the British colonel James Churchward [1852-1936] who appeared from 1931 [in the United States] on the so-called lost continent named Mu [eastern pendant of Atlantis], mythological bricolage on elements borrowed from the old esoterian traditions, has nurtured an abundant literature. the legends about Atlantis, Mu or Lemur [continent which, according to Ms. Blavatsky, extends from the Indian Ocean to Australia] have been reinterpreted in the context of 'investigations' or fanciful constructions on extraterrestrials, often embellished with delusions about 'reptilians'//

(55) Passim: Let us take the example of the 'glacial theory' ['theory of the frozen world' or 'doctrine of eternal gale'], cosmology and 'alternative' cosmogony, the principles of which were exposed by Hans Hörberig and Philippe Fauth in 1913 in a work entitled Glazial-kosmogonie. The theses of Hans Hörbiger [1860-1931], called by Hitler 'the German Copernicus', were represented in particular by Hans Schindler Bellamy in England and, in France, by Denis Saurat in his essay published in 1954, Atlantis and the Reign of God giants. among these specialists of 'catastrophist theories', among whom we can also count Immanuel Velikowsky since the 1950s, scientific reasoning entirely inextricably mixed with 'revelations' due to mythical stories, relating for example to Atlantis or to ancient times. 'races of managers', often assimilated to varieties of beings who have visited the earth with the mission of influencing the course of human history ['theory of ancient astronauts', taken up in particular by Robert Charroux and Erich von Däniken]. Robert Charroux did not fail to expose, without comment on the subject, certain aspects of the theories of de Hörbiger, For  whom the 'cosmos is governed by an incessant struggle to tempt the cold and the cold, enter the ice and the cold': ' man is intimately associated with the evolution of nature and, depending on the lunar influence, undergoes disorderly mutations. sometimes he is susceptible to gigantism [when the near moon exerts a redoubled attraction], sometimes he is crushed by a great weight. According to these data, our humanity, descended from blond, fair-haired and whitened giants in the aura of eternal ice, resurrects the old ancestral myth of the Hyperborean country, its superior men and its ravishing Pythonian women. a certain hypothesis was well made to seduce Adolf Hitler who needed, to remake the globe, a new mythology."

———————————

(56) Pierre-André Taguieff, “La foire aux Illuminetes – Ésotérisme, théorie du complot, extremisme” Mille et une Nuits 2005; “The same French New Age site disseminates articles devoted respectively to Nietzsche, Rennes-le-Chateau, the yellow book [presented as a 'curious book'] and the question of disa [approached from the angle of criminal conspiracy ]. the mythology of the origins and modes of transmission of the AIDS virus has become a new, inexhaustible theme of conspiratorial discourse: through the litany denunciation of the 'biomedical lobby' and the 'pharmaceutical lobby' [or the 'pharmaceutical industry ', demonized on the model of the 'military-industrial lobby', new imprecators call to reject vaccines and medicines, which 'poison' the human species. the proponents of 'natural medicines' and all forms of 'naturopathy' cannot but rejoice at this great indictment. conspiratorial interpretations vary according to the ideological commitments of the authors. For some. the AIDS virus, manufactured experimentally and voluntarily transmitted through compulsory vaccination campaigns, is first of all a means of 'reducing the world population' [Holy], of therefore achieving one of the objectives attributed by their enemies to the 'globalists 'intensely suppose to be neo-Malthusian. For certain complot theorists from Anglo-Saxon homo-secular circles. , the orchestrated transmission of the so-called AIDs virus was part of a program of extermination of 'gays', whereas for the Black-American nations, it would constitute the privileged instrument of a genocide of the Norse. the political action advocated by these militant circles is firstly the boycott of vaccination campaigns, then the denunciation and harassment of the various demonized 'lobbies', to be traded by that of the pharmaceutical firms. But if the call to turn our backs on technological-scientific modernity is purely to rediscover the benefits of 'soft medicine', 'naturotherapy', acupuncture, yoga, relaxation, vegetarianism, organic agriculture, and, perhaps not, magnetism and hypnosis. it is not an exaggeration to see in the 'planetism' of the sixties a first synthesis of these rejects, these aspirations and these illusions. /

(57) Passim: This episode of the contemporary history of mass culture, a new wave of popularization of occultist themes also characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence of the New Age, celebrated by its apologists as a 'new paradigm', interests us particularly in which resulted in the dissemination of a popular vulgate of neo-paganism and occultism [without forgetting 'alternative medicine' and yuga], but accompanied by conspirationist representations. if the 'paneticism' of Pauwels/Bergier largely draws on, in themes, the esoteric-therapeutic paraphernalia of the new age, it differs from it at least in two respects: first, by its classically conspirationist insistence on the role of 'societies' secreted in history, then by the fascination it enters into for everything that revolves around Nazism. Nothing of such in the new age movement, it can be seen as the global movement having succeeded that of the 'counter-culture' of the 1960s, borrowing from it the twin projects of an personal transformation and a cultural transformation, away from traditional political activism. The empathic investigation into the new age movement, carried out by the American journalist Marilyn Ferguson between 1976 and 1979, was published at the beginning of 1980 under the title The Aquarian conspiracy, with the subtitle: ' persoanl and social transformations in our time'. the work was translated the following year into French, with a more abstract subtitle: 'for a new paradigm'. the word 'conspiration', specifies the journalist in the introduction to the book, is here devoid of non-negative connotation, and must be taken as a metaphor to mean 'union', common aspiration, 'breathing together' ' [literal meaning of 'consoire'], as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggested, recommending a 'conspiration of love'. it is therefore a 'gentle conspiration': breathing and inhaling together, in one breath. As for the use of the word 'Aquarius', it is justified as follows: 'despite my ignorance of astrology, I was attracted by the symbolic power of this dream penetrating our popular culture, namely that after an age of obscurity and violence - the poissons - we will enter a millennium of love and light, "the age of Aquarius", the time of the true liberation of the spirit" the attack on Christianity [or 'Judeo-Chistianism'] was part of the celebration of the entry into the Age of Aquarius, supposed to succeed the Age of Pisces, dominated by Chistianism.

(58) Passim: The “Aquarian conspiracy” therefore designates the set of groups protected by the same conviction: “we are at the heart of; a great transformation... 'America is presented and celebrated as 'the matrix of transformation'. the 'Aquarian conspiracy' is a 'powerful network' which presents two characteristics: it is 'devoid of leadership' and it is devoid of 'polite doctrine', which clearly opposes it to any consultation organized by a secret society, to black designs. One of the best specialists in 'new religious movements', Wouter J. Hanegraaf, interpreted the new age as the fruit of a secularization of Western esotericism, the prudishness of a form of compromise between certain demands or promises of modern science [for example the extension of human life] and various deviations from esoteric traditions. / In catholic circles, we tend to reduce the New Age to a new manifestation of 'neo-Gnosticism', which is part of a polemical tradition which has been established against heresies, 'secret societies' [ including Freemasonry] or theosophy [in the restricted sense of the term, designating the school founded by Ms. Blavatsky], rather than a sociological approach. 'Gnosis' perhaps, in exaggerating the line and overestimating the doctrinal aspect, but what about prosaic 'good vibrations', infantile practices of 'channeling' and quest'; at all costs of a 'health' sacralized by only 'gentle medicine' and magical rituals? It remains that Catholic criticism, despite its defensive character and a certain degree of bad faith, is not devoid of lucidity. We read for example, in a document on the 'New Age' disseminated in 1993 by the Vatican, this suggestive characteristic of 'the main matrix of New Age thought':

(59) Passim: The essential matrix of New Age thought resides in the esoteric-theosophical tradition, a tradition which was widespread in European intellectual circles in the 18th and 19th centuries. We find it in particular in Freemasonry, spiritualism, the occult and theosophy, which have in common a spell of esoteric culture. In this vision of the world, the visible and invisible universes are linked together by a series of correspondences, analogies and influences, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, between metals and planets, between planets and the different parts of the human body, enter the visible cosmos and the invisible kingdoms of relay. Nature is alive, traversed by influxes of sympathy and; antipathy and animated by a secret fire that human beings seek to master. Men can enter into contact with the higher or lower worlds through the imagination [an organ of the soul and spirit], or through mediators [angels, spirits, demons]] or rituals. It is possible to initiate oneself into the mysteries of the cosmos, god and self through a spiritual journey of transformation. but the true goal is gnosis, the highest form of knowledge, the equivalent of salvation, which requires a search for the most ancient and highest traditions of philosophy [incorrectly called philosophia perennis] and of religion [primordial theology], and a secret doctrine [esoteric] contains the key to all 'exoteric' traditions accessible to all. Esoteric teachings are transmitted from master to disciple following a progressive initiation program.'//

(60) Passim: Nothing is wrong in this description, but it does not get to the point. It is the sociologist and historian Massimo Introvigno who most aptly characterized the specificity of the spirit of the new age, summarizing it with the formula 'what about religion, not religion, the extra-religious quality of sacred are carried out by ways long rejected by the Church, such as shamanism, magic, the search for altered states of consciousness [including the use of drugs] or the return to 'cosmic religion’ . / To the bone or sweat ‘the conspiracy of Aquarius’ will provide in a universal peace and love through the multiplicity of 'liberated' communities are opposed to the damn 'conspirations' of 'secret societies', ordered to domination projects or destruction,. fictitious or not, these 'secret societies' are the subject of imaginary fixations and a permanent work of re-inventio, of a mythologization that is always started again. the latter can be argued independently of any view of the conspiracy and without the slightest trace of anti-Semitism. but it often implies the reinvestment of anti-Jewish and anti-Masonic representations, as is the case for the figure of the ‘Illuminati', mythical, non -historical characters, created by symbolical signs from the order of the 'illuminates of Bavaria’. a term such as 'Illuminati', the meaning of which remains undetermined, is therefore freely or arbitrarily determinable. the multiplicity of its possible interpretations facilitates its incessant passage from referential discourse [referring to a defined historical event] to fictional discourse. It is appropriate to introduce a distinction, in popular literature, between historical essays and novels, or more precisely thrillers, which would later be included in historical works.

(61) Passim: On the one hand, we observe the undeniable success of multiple 'general public' essays relating to an 'alternative' history, offering the reader exciting 'revelations' on terrifying 'secrets' which are said to be 'lost' or 'jealously guarded'. Or gripping paths on the 'hidden side of history'. In the same genre, it is necessary to mention the numerous attempts at 'alternative' archeology which aim to review 'many unknown facts which are still unexplained by official archaeology'. The main argument is always the same: 'on the margins of the; ancient archaeology, forbidden archeology invites us to an exciting exploration of the great enigmas of civilization. It is not possible, within the framework of this work, to begin adequately to explore the immense literature on 'the mysterious Egypt' and the 'mystery of the pyramids' [from fiction to essays relating to a pseudo- fictitious 'Egyptology'], which constitutes a body of studies at its disposal. the publications of Christian Jacq, who presents himself as an Egyptologist and novelist, and who is the famous author of numerous bestsellers, illustrate this prediction of texts responding to a craze among the general public for the 'messages' of Pharaonic Egypt, pure the 'secret of the great pyramid', pure other 'secrets' and 'treasure', etc. Robert Charroux had, in French, blazed the trail. in an essay falling under the category 'spirituality', power and wisdom according to ancient Egypt [1981], Christian Jacq does not hesitate to state, from the first page: 'Thanks to Egypt, the mystery of life reveals itself in all its plenitude, it is hidden from our gaze. The priests of the temples can work with their desire for knowledge; the dark naos radiating an internal light take on all their significance for those who wish to make their life a sacred architecture. In parapsychological literature, as in certain esoteric traditions, pyramids are attributed 'extraordinary engendered properties': the pyramidal shape as such would have 'energetic effects due to shape waves'. /

(62) Passim: Since the 1960s, the production of these texts, offered in the French language under the label 'Les enigme de l'un vier' or 'the doors of the strange' [to the definitions of Robert Lafforty], 'univers secrets' [Library marabout, Verviers [Belgium] or even 'Bibliothequ marabout, cosmos et des civilizations vanishes' and 'secret adventure' [published by j'ai Lu], met a vast audience of readers. but, on the other hand, we can only be struck by the contemporary craze for novels with esoteric-religious or theological themes, adventure novels mixing history and fiction, also drawing inspiration from the novel. tests of the noir novel, and resorting, like a detective or spy novel, to suspense and thrill, even to the production of terror or horror. What the story highlights while dissuading it is a set of occult activities of groups or networks which endanger the lives of other human groups, even humanity as a whole. what particularly attracts the attention of the historian or the ethnographer of the present is the massive irruption into the novel genre, since the 1980s, of 'secret societies' and plots [from which the inevitable mysterious assassinations], with intrigues which complicate erudite [or pseudo-educated] references and symbolic interpretations, implying on the part of the reader - informed at the same time as uninhibited - an incessant work of decoding, a story of decryption. The reader is invited to participate in the great work of screening, decryption and demystification for which the thriller provides the necessary tools and required clues."