It is frustrating to see how pervasive the myths of the Illuminati, Freemasons, Lizard people et al. are on the internet. A few years ago, I was severely turned off by the Occupy chapter in The Hague for that reason: turns out this nonsense spills out into the real world.
What appears to be underlying this particular impotent analysis is the old simplistic dichotomy of good and evil individuals, the latter for some reason grouping themselves into secret sects with obscure hand signals and signs, claiming whole numeric sets for themselves, politicising arithmetic of all things. Oh, and also having extreme power and influence over all (bad) things that happen in society. There truly isn't a single bad event, regime, or policy that wasn't installed by these illusive puppeteers. It's mildly interesting to note in passing that there's a parallel in this with the monotheist myth of good and demons - perhaps we are observing a secular offshoot of the old morality teachings in this paranoid system of thought.
Today, I had an outburst of frustration. It is in response to a long comment on youtube, conveniently gathering many nuggets of paranoid conspiracy idiocy, as is usual - a pattern that is quite curious. The Illuminati never solo in one of these blurbs. They are always joined by a selection of a standard set of myths, each one of which as obscure and boring as the others. Not wanting to be left out of the boring, I wrote the following:
QUOTE
Dear Wolfgang,
It appears your core analysis of society stems from comic books: That a few "evil "people screw it up for the rest of us "good" people. From there on, you can only waste your time on trying to identify the evil individuals and the evil groupings that they form. And because your analysis is wrong and simplistic, so is any solution that stems from it.
By focussing only on evil individuals and evil secret groups, you totally fail to see how institutions and structures of power influence society. We don't need to speculate if this or that prime-minister is from this or that secretive grouping: we can observe what he says and does exactly, which for the current prime minister of Great Britain is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative philosophy.
The fact that this philosophy is pervasive in the current media and government spheres is extremely convenient to the business and capitalist class. This, again, is not an "evil" group of insiders with their own rituals and signals: They are simply people who, due to owning a large business or extreme wealth, have common interests: namely preserving that situation for themselves (and wouldn't you?). Starting from that observation, the (first) Communist Manifesto was written, with Das Kapital further exploring the mechanisms through which the interests of the capitalist class were preserved back then. Since then, many more interesting things were written on the subject - and I would advise you start with something more contemporary. Not least because Marx is a dry read.
Your analysis leads you to believe that putting a hero somewhere in the system of power can turn the situation around. There are plenty of people of good moral fibre "plugged into" the system: I bet you know a good few people like that, working for the municipality or tax office or any for-profit business (in fact, no matter what -ism prevails, we are always in some kind of system, all of us). I dare say most people have the greatest of intentions. They may not be heroes - which explains the lacklustre sale of colourful leggings and capes - but they are many (legion, even). Hence that is not what is going to cure the "evil" in society - or it would have already. Hoping that someone like Russell Brand is going to take over a prominent position of power, if that were easy or possible, is only going to result in more of the same thing, because you didn't change the way the institutions work, and the structures of power will be the same except with a single different face in there. What needs to happen beforehand is a change of attitude in many of us at the same time. We need to reinvigorate the "old" analyses, and re-learn them because they are just as true today as they were over a century ago.
That's a huge project, and no wonder: our modern societies are pretty large and interconnected. Lots of inertia and complexity. But it's not impossible, unless... Unless we focus our attention on chasing phantoms, while hoping an improbable hero or two is going to get rid of some individual rotten apples, who we cunningly unmask by watching their hands all the time. *doing jazz hands*
Let's focus on issues that are real such as power, class, protest, activism (even the unpublished activities can have real consequences in large or small scale), and get beyond this lizard illuminati comic book nonsense.
That didn't tackle a tenth of the issues he brought up, but hopefully I got the core about right. Though I am thinking now that perhaps it's not meant as an analysis: it might just be modern folklore...?
