October 15, 2025 • 61 mins
Margaret continues her conversation with Sarah Marshall about how everything you've heard about the Illuminati is entirely upside down.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eleusinian-Mysteries
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Regional_Espa%C3%B1ola_de_la_AIT
Occult Features of Anarchism, by Erica Lagalisse
https://www.thecollector.com/cult-of-pythagoras/
http://gnosis.org/hermes.htm
https://www.rosicrucian.org/history
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Z Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Your podcast. That is the show and the second one
of the week, and you probably listen to the first one,
but I'm introducing the second one anyway. I am your host,
Margaret Kiljoy. I decide what counts as cool people who
did cool stuff, and then I sometimes talk about people
who are only kind of that. But my guest is
(00:25):
completely that because my guest is Sarah Marshall, who's host
of the upcoming show The Devil.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You know that's true. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so happy to continue with our secret society story.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I know. And at the end, we're going to start
a secret society.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, the Midnight Society where we throw stuff on the
fire to make it a cool color.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm into that. God wait, I haven't seen The Midnight Society.
And for a really.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Our top braid of the dark choke, I didn't even
know I was referencing something.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh yeah, that makes more sense. I was thinking of
the Midnight Society with the act that I should know
who plays Patch Adams, also Rob oh the Dead Poets Society,
but Poets Aciety in a cave. Yeah, yeah, well I
love that movie When Are You Afraid? As Dark was
on air, I was afraid of the dark. I was
(01:17):
very afraid of the dark.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I was especially afraid of that show's theme song.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh I don't remember it. I think I avoided it.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I was. It had a swing swinging all by itself.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh shit, I do you know?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
You can just kind of push it and then walk away.
But it was very scary. It was scary on the
order of the Unsolved Mysteries theme, which would also send
me like running out of the room.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's funny to me that I was. I was like
that too, and I ended up like living in a
van alone in the woods, and then like built a
black cabin and then slept there alone, and it just
stopped being afraid.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
You know what's funny is that, like I have been
literally alone in the dark, dark woods, like no other
houses nearby, like walking you know, on like kind of
a trail or a road, but like in the dark,
like without any light, and it'd just been like hm hmmm,
(02:12):
or like I'm going to listen to a podcast, you know,
just like I'm going to lose one of I'm gonna
lose the only sense I have right now I'm fine then,
like still like cheesy. True crime often feels scarier than
the things that you feel like are most supposed to
be scary, because when you're actually alone in the woods,
you're pretty much decentering men. I would say it's one
of the things that is out there.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It is true. But then if you run across the
random man in the woods, then you're like, ah, shit,
well this is something I find. It's like double or nothing.
That's how I feel about the woods versus yes, because.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh my god, it is double or nothing. Because also
it's like there have been a few different murders along
the Apple Action Trail. Yeah, but as far as we know,
no murders on the PCT. Oh really, So it's like yeah, right,
So it's like you have to get like East Coast
because the thing about the AT right is that it
like runs through all these towns and it is in
a pretty civilized or you know, peopled anyway, yeah, route,
(03:06):
And so I feel like you just have to yeah,
go like really all or nothing, maybe put it all
on twenty eight Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I wrote into my script the question I was
going to ask you because I had an answer for
myself in mind. When I wrote it. But the problem
is that I write a script at a different time
than I read a script. But the question I'm going
to ask each of you, because also Sophie's on the
call high.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Sophie, Hei, see ah, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Answer my question. I'm gonna ask each of you, what's
your most boomer trait?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oh? No, like half of them. I think I know mine.
I think concerts are too long, but I think boomers
might actually like lung concerts. Sophie, what's yours? I did
it last night at dinner. Hmmm. Oh, you were watching
a baseball game on your phone the entire time. You
(03:57):
had it on mute. It would be a boomer thing
if you had it on full volume and you had
the screen very politely dimmed.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That, and I like to leave people voicemails. Voicemails are nice.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Wait voice memos or voicemails males? Oh see, okay, that
is boomer.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Mine is that I am continually horrified by how much
everything costs, and it's all I want to talk about.
And then if I get a good deal on something,
I want to tell you about that. Like that. I
went to the grocery outlet today and I got Hamburger
helper for a dollar fifty, which is a pretty good deal.
I gotta say, Sarah and I both.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Really hate crowds and loudness.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, we do. We hate them so much.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh, I think that's a that's just normal, right. Why
would anyone like a crowd in loud?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
People clearly like them, you know, because they go to
music festivals on purpose, you know, it's we'll go, we'll
go laces and then like even if there's like a table,
we'll be like, it's loud, and we'll leave. We'll literally leave.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
This is fucking legit. I hate when there's multiple streams
of information at any point in my life. I'm very neurotypical.
Everyone always says that about me. I just deep dive
a new subject every week like that. Yeah. Yeah, Like
if there's a TV on and people are talking and
the table next to me is talking and loud enough
for me to understand, like as actually a string.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Band starts up, hooray.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It was actually almost like one of the things I
was like nice about traveling in countries where I don't
speak the language is that other people are ignorable, like
because you're like, oh, I don't understand that. So my
brain isn't trying to do it. If a TV is
on and it's in another language and it's not a
language I'm trying to learn, like Spanish, then my brain
is just like, well that just doesn't matter. That's finish.
(05:44):
Who fucking cares what that says? You know, no offense
finished listeners? Uh on text.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
But we don't speak you. We're sorry, just never came up.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, keetos. So we were talking about secret societies and
we just got to the founding. Well, actually, no one
actually knows this part. We're getting to the Freemasons. I
can't say the founding of the Freemasons because you know,
who knows the answer to who founded the Freemasons? Fucking
(06:14):
know one?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I bet oh no one. I like that even better.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I don't think the Freemasons not because the other
thing is the secret shit doesn't stay secret, right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's really the thing. Yeah, Freemasons are the most famous
of all secret societies and fraternal orders in the Western world,
the most well known secret if yell, and like I mean,
I honestly haven't done a ton of research about modern masonry.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I like know some, but like.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I mean, I think it's just like er at this point, right,
it's just kind of like the Elks, but with a
little bit more you know.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Ah, yeah, they've like legitimately been around for a long time,
but probably not as long as they say. And what's
funny is that the more obscure and like spooky the
secret societies are, you can usually be like, oh, that
one was fair like the Illuminati, Right, we like know
the name of the guy who founded the Illuminati, what
deity did the legal names of like, and the fake
(07:09):
names of everyone he founded it with, Like, we know
that shit in and out Freemasonry, which is less spooky, right,
no one knows its actual origins. We know that the
first recorded Freemasons, we know that their initiations. We know
that Robert More was initiated in sixteen forty one, and
(07:29):
that Elias Ashmole, which is a funny name, but not
in a bad way. It's not a flood. Let's not
say they.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Call a jerk off that lives in Asheville and Ashmole
in seat of an asshole. They're an ashvill That's the
obscenity free way of saying it.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Wow, that was really boomer of me, actually, that's another.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Some baseball Sophie.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, Elias Ashmole joined in sixteen forty six. These are
the people. We have dates for their initiations, And so
you're still talking about something that is four hundred goddamn
years old as not young, right, that is older than
the United States of America. Yeah, and also therefore older
than most of the countries in Europe, though not England.
(08:17):
But they were initiated by people, right, So it's older
than sixteen forty one, or if you want to be pedantic,
it's older than whatever moment in sixteen forty one. The
guy could have been two hours earlier, but it probably
was at least several years earlier. But in the usual story,
and probably the most likely one, It's not what I
(08:38):
want to put my money on, but the most likely
one is that it developed from the medieval guild system
sort of the precursor. I mean, the medieval guilds. They
kind of get called the precursor to the modern labor unions.
But I'm actually starting, as I do more, as I
read more about the modern labor unions, I actually disagree
with this. I think artisans and working class people actually
come from a different position but whatever, Like maybe some
(08:59):
actual masons and architects had a society. This is what
people normally say, and people are probably right, But to
be honest, based on what I have read, and I'm
not the foremost scholar in any of this, my assumption
is it was started by rich people who didn't actually
work with stone and were into the symbolism and esoteric
nature of like what if we were the Masons and
(09:20):
we could do architecture right?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, and I feel like it's a term that has
some sort of like biblical association.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, they're gonna say, wait to it too, well, there
you go, yah, yeah, I get it. Thanks, No, yeah,
the biblical so that actually it there's a of all
of the crafts that you could pick. Yeah, like masonry
feels very like we are the people build stuff. Only
Carpenter would feel even more biblical, you know. But yeah,
(09:50):
but Carpenters aren't doing as much math as like an Amazon.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Carpenters are going to right top of the world, or
at least saying it in a few years.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Karen Carpenter.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, yeah, No. The main thing I know about her
is that I watched the Forbidden Movie.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
About Forbidden Movie by Todd Haynes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's called Superstar.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, Superstar the Karen Carpenter story because I took a
Barbie had a Barbie doll play Karen and then whittled
it down as her eating disorder progressed.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah. And you don't have to go for Barbie.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, yeah, I know, Barbie doesn't have a lot to lose.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah. And I'm basing my guess that they sort of
nabbed the aesthetics of masonry and guild stuff based on
the fact that they didn't let manual laborers in at
the beginning, and none of them seemed to be Masons,
and also just that like people are bad at keeping secrets.
I assume the Freemasons are only a couple years older
(10:48):
than the first person.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
To be like, guess what I joined mm hmmm, oh yeah,
I mean that is like one of the most iconic
things about human beings is that our secret keeping abilities
are like nil.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I know. But then I get mad with some anarchist history,
in particular because I think of a group of people
who've been kind of good at keeping secrets in a
way that makes my life harder. I think that the
European anarchists of the nineteenth century among this, because I'll
read about these like you know this. Oh yeah, I
grew up. My dad was an anarchist, says Isabel Aberhart,
(11:21):
who wasn't an anarchist but was a really interesting writer
and gender rebel. She's like, oh yeah, my dad was
an anarchist. And you know, I was like running around
passing secrets around and this like blah blah blah, and
we were trying to over the bizarre and then the
general like dad real young of like mysterious poisoning and
I'm like, none of that shit. I don't know any
of those motherfucker's names. There's this whole huge thing that happened. Yeah, anyway, whatever,
(11:42):
this is my own frustration.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Can I tell you something real quick that makes me
think of that's maybe yeah, connected to everything else we've
been talking about, is that it feels like what that
maybe shows is that people are occasionally good at keeping secrets.
You know, not everyone, not all of the time, but
that one of the things that incentifizes it is like
a like deep and real and committed belief in an
(12:05):
ideal and like a shared ideal or shared goals, or
like a sense of honor, right totally that you're also
not gonna you're not going to give up your identity
or that of anyone else that you're you're working with,
and that the secret societies that tend to be imagined
by conspiracy theorists, including you know, the kind of eighties
(12:25):
imaginary Satanism of the Satanic panic is like, well, they
just conspire together because they're evil and they love to
get together and be evil. They have a big hot
luck and they do evil stuff. And it's like, well,
people who are good at protecting each other, and we
can see that, you know, in the current administration, like
people who have no loyalty except to themselves are like
very bad at keeping a conspiracy under.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Totally. No, this is such a good point. And so
either way, however, the Freemason's got their start. By the
time they're acting like the Freemasons we know in Love
and History, they are not acting like a guild of artisans.
They are a group of educated men who are into
being part of a secret, cool thing with lots of
rituals and secrets and you know, thirty three orders that
(13:09):
you can move up through, and they claim an unbroken
lineage of magical knowledge going back to King Solomon from
around one thousand BCE, of course, and of course the
guy who built his temple, the grand architect himself, Rama Beef.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
There is no Rama Beef.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, there's there's no evidence that that man ever existed.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's a great name, though, That's what I That's all
I eat.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I know, and I and I'm like, I wonder, I
don't know enough about names in like Swanna at this time,
but I'm like, is this a name, like some spooky
English people in the seventeenth century were like that sounds
like it would be Solomon's or is the actualistic name?
I don't know, but yeah, my money is on whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah. Well, it's like people would make, you know, people still,
like you know, JK. Rolling make up names for other
cultures they haven't research that sound like Star Wars names,
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Karana Beef, yeah, Vader, yeah, be Fader. But I will
say about the Freemasons at this time that I'm aware of.
They have their problems. We'll get to that. They're strange,
they're probably lying to themselves, but they make the world
more interesting and modern Westernism comes out of them, which
(14:27):
is wacky as hell to think about. And I'm just like,
you know, when shit's main knock on effect is that
it makes the world weirder. I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, there worse things I could do.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
For example, one thing that would be worth no one
thing that would be better than all of that would
be to be really transparent about what kind of sweet
deals you're offering and then explaining those to people by
the means of that advertising. In fact, let's give it
a shot and we're back. I feel enlightened by those ads.
(15:14):
There is a secret meaning. Actually if you do, if
you look back numerally at all of cool Zone Media's
ads and you assign a number value to the different
types of ads, you can decode that and you will
find the secret of the Ancients as long as you
remember to always anyway, sophy, I can tell people about
(15:41):
that code, right, yeah, okay, great. The Masonic worldview that
they came up with, the Freemasons, it was actually it
was actually very political, and it was fundamentally liberal in
the classical sense, but not necessarily like when we say
now classical liberal, we sort of mean like somebody's like
specifically into capitalism. But at the time, if you were
like specifically liberal in a classical liberal sense. You were
(16:03):
like specifically kind of into like liberty as relates to
like monarchy and stuff like that, and then you get
it kind of confused with being into money and whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, you're on your way to figuring that part out.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, specifically they were into the seventeenth century thinker Spinoza,
who was the founder of modern liberalism, who I do
not know enough about. But in this worldview, society and
people are both working towards perfection. Humanity is going to
build heaven through the application of science, and by and large,
(16:43):
so they're like utopians, right, and they by and large
they seek a leveling. They want to bring up the
poor and bring down the rich, like the Levelers who
have talked about a bunch on the show who were
actually kind of cool but also worked with Cromwell who
then went and you know, genocided there. And some of
these beliefs that they were presenting were soon called pantheism,
(17:04):
the idea that all of us are divine and part
of divinity, which gets us back to that hermetic shit
we were talking about on the last episode, right, mm hmmm.
And so the original Freemasons are anti clerical but they're
pantheistic and they're on a religious quest to level society,
and I don't know, so like so far, I'm kind
(17:25):
of like, all right, I'm kind of with you. And
they were really in the line to themselves with spooky forgeries,
nothing like a spooky for cury. I say, I know,
there's some good ones and some bad ones. Elders is
the Protocols of the Elder Zion is an example of
(17:45):
a real bad one, a bad one that's really really
bad one that's Russia hundreds of years later. It's not
what I'm talking about here. The book that they passed
around was called The Triestis of the Three Impostors wonderful
and guess who the three impostors are? I probably wouldn't
be able to And I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Just it's not the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Is that you know?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The Son is one of them? Ayah, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, Wow,
the three and fosters. Yeah, And it was written after
Spinoza died, but it was written by people who liked Spinoza,
like it was probably written by a guy who wrote
a biography of Spinoza, and they claimed that it was ancient.
(18:30):
They they were like, this has been passed down for
seven hundred years, which isn't true. But the idea of
the three impostors actually does seem to be something that's
been around since for a very long time, since about
the nine hundreds. There's different people kind of occasionally with
like the three Impostors, and it's one of those things
(18:50):
that probably you say that and then everyone kills.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You, you know, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
But they weren't really atheists. They were like proto new as.
They built up rituals that they claimed were based on
the Druids and Egypt, and they use lines in their
rituals like all in all things is God eternal and immense,
and then probably like uses toothpaste, uses laundry detergent, yep,
(19:19):
clean your floor, yeah whatever, Yeah, that Broner's hermetic stuff
will do anything. And to quote Erica Lagelise again, Masons
imagine themselves simultaneously as the creators of a new egalitarian
social order and the protagonists of cosmic regeneration, all articulated
(19:41):
in the language of sacred architecture. But they wouldn't tell
you that they're going to do this until you pass
through the various degrees and so like it starts as
kind of like wrapped in Christianity, and as you get
higher up, they're like, you want to know about the
three impostors and hey kid, yeah, And so a lot
(20:03):
of the problem when I look at this whole thing,
because I'm not totally opposed to their goal, right, it's complicated,
and also my opinion about what their goal is shouldn't
actually matter. But I like looking at history and being like,
what would I do? Right. Some of the problem is
the problems with the secret Society we have to pass
through the levels in order to be given the mysteries,
(20:24):
is that they kind of set themselves up to fall
for dumb shit. They're able to stay safe from repression
by being through this you know, secret society because it's like,
in order to know that you're a heretic, you actually
have to be, like you have to have been in
it for a while before, like the big reveal is
like we're all heretics, right, Yeah, But they can lie
(20:49):
to themselves really easily with various forgeries and false secrets
and mysteries this way. And they also this is not
going to shock you didn't let Jews, women servants or
manual laborers, and of course, uh, some lodges were set
up for women. They were a trap where they would
be like, here's the secrets of the Masons, but they
(21:10):
were given fake secrets what on, like the god on,
like the real secrets that the.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Men had this handkerchief for me, and I'll tell you
one of our holy, well not holy, one of our
radical secrets.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, they'll be like the five impostors and it'll be
actually just like five guys I'm dave.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And they grew and grew, and by seventeen eighty nine,
like one hundred some years in they had six hundred
lodges with twenty to fifty thousand initiates, and they started
doing internal leveling, and they started letting in small time artisans,
then manual laborers and illiterate people, and they started being like,
(21:54):
actually were just based on meritocracy.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
We changed it. It's like Facebook stopped letting only colleague students,
going like, well, take whoever.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
This is exactly like Facebook. And it probably started off
as like an annoying boys club and then got into
people following.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I realize that Facebook won't be around forever.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well, the problem is that Freemasons are still around. This
isn't the Illuminati. We'll get to them, yeah right. Shoot.
And also Facebook, much like much like the Freemasons, separated
off into lodges and really easy to lie to yourself
and be convinced of bullshit that you are the only
person who knows and other people aren't as smart as
(22:38):
you because they don't have access to the same secrets
as you. Damn. My deep cut that I'm not even
going to explain is that I think Kunis are reinventing freemasonry.
But I'm not going to explain it anyway. That's just
the little thing to piss off about zero point one
percent of my listeners. The Freemasons were the first to
(23:00):
influential group in Britain to advocate for workers, and they
founded various charitable institutions for workers, like hospices and schools.
They did this slightly more in like a charity fashion,
like later labor unions are going to do a similar thing,
but they're going to be like we the workers are
going to build this, whereas Freemasons are like we the
slightly higher than workers are going to do this for you.
(23:22):
I think it actually might have been because they're they're
letting in laborers and stuff at this point, so it
actually might be more equal than that. But they built
this fantastic infrastructure for disseminating knowledge and without the authorities
knowing you're disseminating knowledge and for making decisions together and
doing stuff that people that if you took this and
(23:44):
were like, took that framework and applied something more radical,
you could really get somewhere. Enter the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Oh boy, welcome finally Illuminati. You are the father And.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They are the exact opposite of what people say they are.
They are absolutely a secret society. They were absolutely a
secret society, and they were absolutely opposed. All of the
people who complained about the New World Order or whatever
would join the actual Illuminati. You know, it's because it's
(24:19):
anyway whatever. Okay. Yeah, this guy in Bavaria, which is
now Germany, his name is Adam Weisshapt. He has a
freem He was a Freemason for a little while, and
he was like, yeah, I just like can't hang with this.
I don't know, I'm not into it. He was really
into the Enlightenment, but they weren't doing The Freemasons weren't
(24:40):
enlightening enough and do you know what the Latin word
for enlightenment is?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Oh? Is it illuminati illuminatus illi ah, I almost said
that half a point yeah, yeah, close enough, that's our exile.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, the illuminati means the enlightened ones basically, So it's.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, it's a good word. It's too bad, it's you know,
it's got some associations at this point.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
No, there's really nothing we could do. This is not
something worth reclaiming. Also, I think secret societies is generally
a bad idea if you're trying to do anything. Affinity
group is the new secret society. You don't need to
expand you get three to twenty people, you trust each
other and you do things together. That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Sewing circle, Just make everything a sewing circle, right, it'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Which is actually it. Yeah, totally, And I should do
something on the history of all that and how like
sewing circles were like deeply radical and.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Book close yeah, quilts.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The Bavarian Illuminati, as people call it sometimes when they
want to distinguish it, was not actually the first group
of people to call themselves the Illuminati. It was other
people doing a kind of similar thing, like some Gnostics
in Spain who all got killed by the Spanish Inquisition,
which nobody expects. And oh that's my most boomer trait
is fucking quoting Monty Python. Maybe I do that too.
(26:02):
Maybe that's a gen X trait, which I'm not god
to think.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So well, it's just it's a it's a nurow spicy trait.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, fair enough. And on May first, seventeen seventy six,
Adam weish Hopt and five followers started the Illuminati May.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
First, Wow, Adam weish hopped Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Wait, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
As you pointed out, I like that it's some guy
whose name we know. When he did it, it's like, oh, yeah,
fucking Adam.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
He would Yeah, exactly, this guy would start the fucking Illuminati.
It's actually it's true that all people named Adam are
part of the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, or else they make sacuals for a living.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, those are the only options for Adams. This is
a reference that went over my head, but I think it's.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's not even a reference, It just it just feels true. Right,
they're making a sacchel.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Is this the like they're making jewelry?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now? Funny dudes, I guess have like a cast of
characters in my brain that pop into being out of nowhere.
Sometimes it's because it's such a liberal arts college name.
It's like your boyfriend in college who like will tell
you about how a triangle is the strongest shape when
he's trying to pressure you into Yeah that's a girl
(27:17):
from your floor.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, that is what Adam would do, but not Illuminati Adam. Well,
no him sy to the Adams. Yeah, yeah, it is
like the first name, but like, you know whatever, well not, and.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
That guy didn't quit himself very well, let's be honest.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, not so good. May First. Isn't that the International
Workers Day? You might think, And it is one might,
almost certainly not a coincidence that that pagan holiday was
when Adam started the Illuminati, because he's into all the
same occult shit as all these people love. And it
is also almost certainly not a coincidence that anarchists and
(27:55):
other labor groups in the eighteen eighties picked May first
for a general strike in the eight hour day, and
they're for had the Haymarket affair in Boston, which leads
to May Day and May first the workers holiday. So
it is not a coincidence that Beltane and the Worker's
Day are on the same day, which is a thing
I conjectured in the very first episode I wrote of
(28:16):
the show, which is about May Day. But now I
can specifically say no, May first is when the Illuminati started,
and that's why the workers did it.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
I love it, God see, and that's why we do
these shows.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It's magic all the way down, and I will never
run out of rend yarn on my board of connecting things.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That's what keeps life fun.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Really, it genuinely is associations between various things, like the
images and memory.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's perfect.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Adam wanted to create, as I've seen it, he wanted
to create a religion of reason but most but I
think this is kind of missing the point because it
wasn't all like we worship science in this cold, detached
we're so sciencey way the way that people when people
like when an atheist did when someone accuses an atheist
of having like sciences religion, that's not the way that
(29:08):
these people were doing it. They were like esoteric, right.
And he was specifically inspired by the illusion mysteries, the
Greek thing that we don't know anything about, and the Pythagoreans,
the Waco people who worship numbers and claim to be egalitarian,
but then shut down democracy and got burned. But most
of his sources, most of the sources about Illuminati, conveniently
(29:32):
leave out how his teachings, one of his main teachings,
or one of the teachings of the Illuminati, was that
man's original sin, what cast us out from our state
of grace was agreed to be ruled by government. So
he hates the state, the church, and private property. Yeah,
(29:53):
and when back in the day, like the way that
now people will be like, I hate capitalism. The way
you would say that in the like early nineteenth century,
late eighteenth century is you would say I hate private property.
But now people are like people think that means you're
their toothbrush, and and people are like, man, I'm just
like not fucking with that. I'm just gonna say capitalism,
you know, whereas it actually means like I own a
(30:15):
factory and everyone works for me. They mean capitalism when
they say that, you know, but whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Yeah, because stuff is you know, very important to those
of us who don't have factories to make more of it.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah. Fuck, that's one of the deepest points I've ever had.
Any like that is so exactly if you don't have capital,
you care about your stuff because you can't get it easily. Yeah,
and so, oh my god, which is like why it's like,
this is why I don't go on and on about
(30:45):
private properties. It's a meaningless term to most people. And
it yeah, like like I like my stuff. I'm surrounded
by books and I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You know. The idea that you can't like your stuff
creates a lot of confusion for people. Yeah, yeah, very
different in conversations, and.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
People will be like, oh, I can't be a socialist
because I like my stuff, and you're like, yeah, well
that's related. I told you so. Adam wrote in a
piece called Spartacus tocato because he called himself spartacus because
he's a humble man. He's not a humble man, spoiler.
(31:22):
He wrote, quote, let us take liberty and equality as
the great aim of Christ's doctrines, and morality as the
way to attain it, and everything in the New Testament
will be comprehensible. Man has fallen from the condition of
liberty and equality, the state of pre nature. He is
under subordination and civil bondage arising from the vices of man.
This is the fall, the original sin. The Kingdom of
(31:44):
Grace is that restoration which may be brought about by illumination.
So he's into writing esoteric shit, but he didn't want
to go around and tell people all at once this
is the right way. He wanted to people over to
his ideas slowly, much in contrast to how advertising works,
(32:06):
where it just says this is the thing, and then
you're like, huh, I wonder how I feel about the thing,
And it doesn't work the first time you hear it,
but by about the tenth time, you're like, you know,
online gambling might be for me, and spoiler, it's not,
but you know, yeah it might. It happens to the
best of us, and especially when there's ads here, they
are and er back. So he's like, I don't want
(32:34):
to go around tell everyone this is the right way.
People have to be brought in slowly and initiated in
secret societies. And there's a couple of reasons why he
wanted to bring people in slowly. One is that ancient
wisdom folks use secrets in initiation, and he wanted to
be like the you know, Pythagoreans or whatever. But I
think the real reason and other people have claimed that
the real reason it's less about pedagogy and how to
(32:57):
bring people into ideas and more strategy, because if you
run around in this time period telling people, hey, we
should overthrow the kings, they just kill you.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
You got to get the ball rolling a little bit
more than that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, And so, in order to find recruits for his
new Illuminati, he was like, you know what, I know
a group of people who are obsessed with cool secrets
and conspiracy shit. So he went to the Masonic lodges
and he converted them or infiltrated them, depending.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
On your perspective on them, or in other words, I've
got a ready made audience of dupes. It's like when
you move on to another MLM and you're like, I've
still got everyone's Facebook profiles, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And it's funny because it's like it's that tactic of
something that's like kind of admirable, but it's still that tactic,
you know.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, it doesn't. The technology changes, but the basic model,
that business model is the same.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
MLMs really are the secret societies of today, aside from
just that secret societies and cults.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, within three years, there was fifty four people in
five cities, and some of these folks were Enlightenment heavy
hitters like goth.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
How do you pronounce goth Uh sorrows of Young brother
g Oe. Yeah, I've I've heard or I my best
approximation is Girta Gerta.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I'm gonna do it again and say Gerta like Gerta
whose name is not spelled anything like Gerta and uh
oh Gerty Yeah, and Mozart, which means I can say
that Mozart was part of an underground, secret society dedicated
to the destruction of the state, the church, hierarchy, and
private property.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And that's looks like at the America figure out, you know,
I've what.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
The thing I realized once I started doing, when I
fell down that particular side rabbit hole, was that I
was like, I don't know shit about the classical composers.
I was like talking to one of my friends who's
like one of the main pe I run a lot
of this stuff by, and he was like, oh yeah,
and like as compared to like Beethoven with this one piece,
And then I'm like, man, I know how some of
them sound. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I mean, enjoying music is a very different and more
meaning full skill set than remembering the dates I would think,
I would.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Say, yeah, and music was consciously part of the illuminats,
teaching about math and the universe and shit. And but
there are all these rich white guys and they just
couldn't help themselves from doing a hierarchy, even though their
whole thing is this leveling. And so they were structured
as a pyramid with various levels. The I don't know
I pronounce these, the minor veil, the minor veil Illuminato,
(35:43):
and then the super cool top tier the areopagites. Wow,
the areopagites, I know, not just regular pagites. Why would
you even bother at keeping pagites around? Oh my god,
well they don't. Actually, there's no reg Yeah. And then
(36:04):
in seventeen eighty three, seven years after they started, one
of the middle tier folks, one of the meaner veil Illuminato,
snitched the whole thing out to his boss, who is
a royal Bavarian duchess. Oh no, and the government was like,
we don't really want a secret society trying to bring
down the government. Specifically, the court claimed, honestly, if I'm
(36:26):
the actual they claimed correctly, the Illuminati was teaching Spinoza,
which claimed they meant that quote everything that exists is matter,
that God and the universe are the same, and that
all organized religion is a political deception devised by ambitious men.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I bet we could get the White House whipped up
into a froth about people reading too much Spinoza, like
inside of a week if we put our backs into it.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
We really could, and we could call it the fucking Illuminati.
And this that's how. But see, this is actually a
really good point because this is where the myth building
the modern conspiracy idea that the Illuminati is the secret
rulers who want to do bad stuff comes from the
fucking Bavarian government trying to shut down the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Well there you freaking go.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
And so it's just like Antifa.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it gets framed as the thing that people trying
to suppress it are doing.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, exactly perfect. Yeah, when people are like Antiva's the
secret rulers of the world, You're.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Like, what are they now? Or are they eating bean
soup tonight?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
No, ending there one pair of pants.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, the Illuminati or the secret masters of the Freemasons.
And so this is what they were claiming and and
so ended the Bavarian Illuminati, or did it The answer
is yes, it did. It actually did add them because
people are really bad at secrets, so if they had continued,
(37:59):
we would fuck know. But the Illuminati lasts less than
a decade. But you can't stop the signal. I can't
believe I said that earnestly. I wrote it as a
joke into my script, but then I said it earnestly.
And people start setting up all kinds of other organizations.
And these are not the diffusion of the Illuminati out
(38:21):
among the people, right. It's not like a couple of
them got away and started new things. Rather, people would
read government propaganda against the Illuminati and were like, oh,
that sounds like a good idea. Though I want to
do that.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Oh my god, most enterprising. You gotta hustle. I know,
I know.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Most of these groups were pretty small, but they came
together to build a network of people devoted to revolution,
one that if I ever do French Revolution episodes, which
I really kind of hope I never have to. But
there's one called the Conspiracy of Equals, which is a
sick name, and they they tried to overthrow the first
French Revolution to make it socialist.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Huh, And that would have been a good call.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I know, it probably would have saved a lot of heads.
Maybe it depends on the kind of socialism. Yeah, And
all these folks, they're in favor of leveling society politically,
and they're laying a lot of the groundwork for modern socialism.
A lot of them are pretty explicitly socialists. And one
(39:27):
of these conspiracy equals guys, one of the French Revolution guys.
He's on trial and his name is utterly incomprehensible to me,
but be beef. There's an F at the end, but
it's French, so probably bibe.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I'll take what I can. We call him bab Ba Beefy.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
We can call him bab a Beefy. Because the nice
thing about Western Europe is that it's the area where
I don't bother looking up the pronunciations ahead of time
because I'm a jerk, or if it's elsewhere in the world,
I try really hard to get it right. But I
just with French, I'm like, I have a weird nonsense
thing where I don't bother looking it up, which is
an asshole movement.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I think, well, maybe it just feels nice to annoy
French people. It's a great American tradition, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
And he went on when when Baba Beef was on trial,
he went on a pretty lucid rant about how the
existence of private property where one guy owns the means
of production and other people work for that guy, creates
an unequal society.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Just like heard of it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, totally makes sense when you put it that way.
And they remain hierarchical and pyramid shaped, all of these
fucking groups. This serves the precursor to twentieth century cell
structure of revolutions, the whole thing where you're like, you know,
like there's this whole normal people spend a lot of
time in reading twentieth century revolutionary organizational structure. I'm sure
(40:45):
where you have like cell structures where you know, you
only know the guy above your cell, and maybe only
one person in your cell knows the guy above your cell,
and he only knows the guy above him. And it's
probably all men because it's twentieth century. Actually unfair, they're Marxist.
That's actually probably decent, like pretty good gender parody in
this cell structure. And anyway, this is the precursor of that,
(41:09):
because in this secret society structure, people only know their
immediate superiors, so if someone snitches out, it doesn't fuck
up the whole thing, is the idea. I don't know
if that's really true, because a snitch brought down the
entire Illuminati, and by the end of the twentieth century,
the traditional cell structure was largely replaced with leaderless resistance
by both the left and right wing. And that's besides
(41:31):
the point. Meanwhile, you've got the Masons right during all
of this shit, and they are and aren't part of
this new diffuse network. Every Mason lodge is a little
bit different, and some are revolutionary as hell, and some
of them aren't. One group. I love the names that
these people come up with. Yeah, a group called the
(41:53):
Sublime Perfect Masters.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh my god, so good, I know.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And these are the people who are going to kind
of like basically do Leninism. Oh, the Sublime Perfect Masters
join a bunch of lodges and convert them to become
more revolutionary. And who joins these lodges but a guy
who's obviously a household name to my household and almost
know on others is Louis August Blonkey. You ever heard
of Blonkey? I don't think so. This is one of
(42:24):
these things that there's no reason why you should have.
But in my mind I was like, oh, shit, Blonkey.
And then I'm like, oh, that's not a self explanatory thing.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I think I'm thinking of Harold broad Key. It's a
different person.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Blonkiy is sort of the proto Bolshevik. He's not even
a Marxist. Is before Marx gets any kind of traction,
But he's really into the kind of revolution where like
it's authoritarian and led by a leader, right, And he
spends a lot of his time in prison for trying
to overthrow the government, because again, governments don't like being overthrown,
most of them. Obviously the Democratic Republic of the United
(43:00):
States wanted to be overthrown because no one put up
any kind of fuss when that happened. But you know whatever,
But he's not up against democrats. He's up against people
with spines, so they throw in prison. Sorry I'm being salty.
The Blankiest were some of the most radical factions during
the Pairs Commune and whatever. The Pairs Commune is the
crucible in which modern leftism is formed, as I've covered
(43:22):
a bunch of times in the show, So all my
red strings that are all coming together.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Oh yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
And the revolutionaries in earliest nineteenth century are super underground
because and they're organizing these secret societies. But the government,
the various governments, are like, oh fuck, we got all
these secret societies. What are we going to do? And
one thing that's come up when I talk about twentyth
century shit is that all the bosses will get together
and form a union. When the workers form a union,
(43:50):
all the bosses of all the different industries will form
a counter revolutionary union. And you'll see this in like
the Newsies episode where like the newspapers, who were ostensibly
against each other, we're like, well, wants to be crushed
these small children? Yeah, we who built our empire for us.
Then we can go back to arguing with each other.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Oh yeah, you gotta crush the children.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Because the rich have class solidarity, so so should we.
God yeah, And nineteenth century Europe had a version of
that too. This is the real, fucking If you want
the actual thing that people claim that the Illuminati is,
it's called the fucking Holy Alliance. And they didn't hide
it because they don't have to because they are the
(44:33):
kings of every fucking country and the goddamn Catholic Church working.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Togay, right, which I feel like, yeah, you've been saying
this this whole time, like if you're actually controlling the government,
then you don't have to keep it a secret and
you just be like, hey, you can't do anything to me.
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, totally the rules. Yeah, and with the Holy Alliance
is the origin of international policing and to keep track
of these secret societies, which is funny because I had
read for a long time that the origin of international
policing was the early twentieth century trying to crack down
(45:10):
on anarchists in the bureau. But that was the Republic's
doing it, where it was the royalties the kingdoms were
doing it.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Before that, huh.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
And the secret societies were like, all right, one of
them said to another one, for example, quote, the conspiracy
of kings must be answered with the conspiracy of peoples.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, heck, yes, it must.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
So they tried to do one, and they created the
first International aka the International Workingmen's Association, uspiciously like a union. Yeah. God,
I actually you know, it's funny as I can't map
I feel like I shouldn't be able to map the
(45:56):
rise of unionism much more about unionism starting like the
eighteen eighties or is this gonna be the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah, but they I don't know either.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
But the IWA is like a federation of workers, and
it's all men at first, and then later you're like, well,
what what that's an annoying name. What about women? Well,
don't worry. The anarchists agree, and they're going to later
start the International Working People's Association instead, which is funny
because they could have just gone with workers whatever.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
They want to differentiate themselves from working you know, horses
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, and the first international Sorry, I just I was
like paying attention. I was about to read, so I
was like, oh, yeah, yeah, and I think no, no, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah, horses down the hall, down the hall, second door
on the left, that's your group.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, that's the International Horses Associated Working Horses Association. And
so this is the thing that modern Marxism and anarchism
and all of these things come out of, is the IWA.
And literally there's like pissing matches between anarchists and communists
in it, and all of the usual, all the bad
shit that we're used to about the left too, also
comes out of this, you know, like people arguing about
(47:09):
all the shit endlessly. But when they get together eighteen
sixty two, they're like, we want to have preliminary meetings
to come up with our thing. We're going to start
in eighteen sixty four, but eighteen sixty two, we're gonna
start planning. Where are we going to meet? And the
answer is in Masonic lodges.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I was gonna say Cabo, but yeah, that's much better.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
And specifically there are these Memphite lodges, which is named
after what they think is like some Egyptian shit. And
these are the like French exiled prudentists from France who
are over there and.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
They they love to cook the from the Paul Prudom cookbook.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Oh, I don't know another prudal.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
This is a Prudom and not a Prudeom, but he's like,
he's a Cajane chef who has had many great cookbooks.
And one of them has a recipe for tradecan that
I actually made one time and it.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Came shit really good. You've got it to duck and
to come out.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, because it's I think it's actually easier than a
regular turkey because when you think about it, like you've
stuffed it with the duck, like what does a turkey
need to be full of something oily?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Okay, yeah, I don't know how to cook meat. I
I agree with.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
That's not true, Sarah. Okay, thank you made it for Duncan.
I did, but only the one time.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
I like you.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Magpie can do a project. Yeah, yeah, Sophie and I
have Sophie can also make a great stake for the record.
I think that people need to know that it's true.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It is important. Yeah, it is known, Okay. And so
the final thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to tie in. So they all meet at this Masonic lodge.
Is a bunch of Masons are the people who start it.
And he's like French anarchists who come over. Prudhon's the
first guy to be like, oh, I'm an anarchist, but
he's actually not really like modern anarchists. He's a different
kind of guy. But anyway, and he's also a misogynist,
(48:56):
but he is also I think he probably was gay
and didn't know it, but that doesn't really excuse it,
and actually really early on other leftist anarchists were like, hey, Pudmin,
we kind of like someone what you said, but fuck you.
What about women? You piece of shit? Like literally within
a couple of years people are like, yeah, we're done
with you guy. Uh into the dustbin of history. I know,
I know, totally canceled. And the thing that is interesting
(49:19):
about them coming out of Masonic shit is, you know,
people are like, they see various symbols and they're like,
that's secretly the fucking Illuminati and Masonic seals. Sometimes they're running, Mmm,
I love it. The red star of communism the second
order in mason Masonry. At the time, I don't know
(49:41):
about it. Currently, I don't know shit about modern masonry.
You were called a comrade. So that's where fucking comrade
comes from, what I think. And the symbol of that,
that second thing was a fucking five pointed star. And
that is, at least according to one author, where the
communists star comes from. And so it why not is
(50:03):
an occultist reference, then.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It's not the kind of occultism we're imagining.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, no, totally exactly. It's it's working class, an artisan like.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Thing in the world, the working class. We've come full circle.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, the ghosts, the specter of the taunting Europe, and
then the other one that this one caught me by
surprise because I never knew the answer to this, the
circle A of anarchism. It's usually people are like, oh,
it means order and anarchy. That's like the main thing
people will tell you.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I never wondered about it. I just thought it looked cool.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I know, it's really easy to graffiti, is That's why
I'm stuck around. Easier to graffiti than a hammer and sickle,
although I will say overall a hammer and sickle is
like a pretty beautiful symbol. I don't I'm not a
I'm not a I'm not a believer in but like,
it's it's a good symbol. I credit where it's due.
The circle A probably originates from the logo of the
(51:02):
Spanish branch of the International Workingsmen in Association, which was anarchist.
Because a lot of the different branches were largely the
like Latin countries were anarchists, and then the like German,
like England, and you're literally yawning is explained this part.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I'm so sorry, Oh, no, it's just the hour. I yeah, no,
this is great.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
And the more Germanic speaking like England and Germany were
more Marxists, and the further south to go, the more anarchist.
It was, Oh that's interesting and there, and the logo
of the Spanish one was basically a circle A with
a little bit of Masonic flare. It was like kind
(51:43):
of a little bit it looks like a mason's tool,
even with a little dangly bit at the bottom to
figure out if your plum, you know.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
And it was a plumbob. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah, it has a fucking plumb bob on it. That's
the word. And that's where the goddamn circle a come from.
Some Masonic influence. Shit.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
I love that. It's like kind of as with a
lot of other stuff, you know, that we've talked about
in the past couple episodes, it's like, yeah, it's real.
It's just the stuff that idiots have projected onto it
aren't true, and they're not made more true by, you know,
by the symbolism appearing elsewhere. Yeah, And I guess it's like, yeah,
(52:25):
I think it is much scarier to accept that, like
the people who decide what happens in the world and
have a stranglehold on us. Don't have to be secretive
about it because they know that they're nobody can do
anything about it, or at least they are very confident
about that. But perhaps they don't they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
They do seem to get really really scared when they
suddenly realize that people got really excited. Like, not the
actions of the people doing the really let's say, very
direct stuff that's happened in the past couple past year
or so, yeah, but the reaction where people were like,
(53:06):
oh see, you know, got got that's cool, and when
they were like, wait, people think that's cool.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I bet Sacho and Vanzetti were pretty attractive too, you know, yeah,
yeah aliens. No, yeah, it's another scary time for oligarchs
of leftist girls loving Italians in jail. You know, no,
it's a scary times. It feels nice to be able
to inspire just a little bit of fear in section
(53:35):
oppressive force. I don't think there's anything wrong with that totally.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And it's solidarity between people that scares them. It is
people saying like we all have each other's backs, including
the people who are doing things that we wouldn't do.
But we have class solidarity against they have class solidarity
against us. We need class solidarity against them, and that's
what fucking scares them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
And also, as we've been talking about, I think if
you have people who have no sense of loyalty to
each other, because that's just not what they're about, there's
something scary about seeing people who have genuine solidarity and
loyalty and belief in a cause, Because if you believe
in nothing and you have loyalty to nothing aside from yourself,
(54:19):
then like that's a power that you can't even comprehend,
let alone use totally, and it must be fucking lonely.
Oh god, Yeah, I don't feel bad for them, but like,
happy people don't call up Fox and Friends and hold
them hostage for an hour. They just don't.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah, happy people don't disinherit their trans daughter and then
go on a massive campaign to destroy trans people everywhere,
because you.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Know, I've never seen a happy person do that, you know,
I really haven't. No.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, and there's even like there's regular as transphobic parents
of trans kids everywhere that don't do that, you know,
that are like I don't get it, But you're still
mo or whatever.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yeah, I'm going to go down to the Applebee's and complain,
yeah to Kaylee, but I still he makes me another mudslide.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
But I'll also probably get fucking angry if anyone talks
shit on you, because you're a goddamn kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
And also even if you're just like, if you're at
the level where you're gonna, you know, where you're not
able to get past that, then like you still probably
aren't taking it to a national scaler making it your
whole job. You know, it's being a bigot in your
free time, and even that's much better.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Yeah, volunteer bigot. Yeah for sake, Sarah. Yes, God, well
that's what I got with the When the right wing
accuses the left wing of being a secret of all conspiracy,
they are presenting it upside down truth. The real masters
of the world are not secret because they don't have
to be. They fucking known everything and are in charge
(55:53):
of everything. And sometimes we have to be secret. But
largely these days that's not how people organize. People tend
to organize in labor unions, in mutual aid societies. People
tend to organize in the open because it has a
lot of strategic advantages.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
So don't don't more in organize. I'm sorry, I said
don't more in organize where you're about to say that
exact thing.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Love it? Yeah, so I don't know, Uh, you guys
thing you want plug? Oh? Yeah, you have a podcast
coming out of October twentieth, I do.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Yeah, I have a mini series coming out from CBC
Podcasts that's called The Devil. You know it really it
gets into a lot of these themes, right, because it's
about exploring the satanic panic, you know that we're repeating now,
but looking at the eighties specifically and the kind of
lingering shadow of it really throughout the nineties, and trying
(56:50):
to just learn from some people who experienced it that
go around and who got caught up in it in
some of the worst ways possible. And yet we're so
amazing to talk to and to. I don't know, I
think through these stories we can see a lot of
what we've been talking about today, which is that the
more you project onto marginalized groups, the more you reveal
(57:15):
what you're really up to as the mainstream or the
ruling class and as society.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, the like every accusation is a confession thing.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, And it's and I feel like
it's one of the things that history can do for
us is to I give us a sense of solidarity
with people through time. Right, because these things recur, moral
panics recur, the need for solidarity remains pretty evergreen. And
for the same reasons. And also because if we study
(57:46):
the past, we have a better sense of how to
maintain some balance in the present. And you know, it
gives you the ability to say, oh, I know, I
know this one, I know this one. Sometimes that really helps.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
It does when they're like, fool me once or fool
someone I read about once, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, Like we have a saying in Texas, fool me once,
shame on you. Fool me twice, won't get fooled again.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Ah, that wacky president who looks like an angel in comparison,
what a terrible world.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I don't know. He seems he's friends with Ellen Degeneress.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
You know, the world to be so much better if
we just encourage certain people to only paint and not
get into politics.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Oh my god, Like Sylvester Stallone could really take that
advice about now to stick to the paintings. Sly for
God's sake, they're really pretty good paintings.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Oh all right, all right, lot of.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
Boxers you know. Anyway, So yeah, I have that podcast
coming out, The Devil. You know, Sophie has talked me
through the whole process as I was making it, because
journalism is very hard, hagag journalist. And when the work
and the people are wonderful, it's still hard because there's
(59:07):
you know, it's a lot of witnessing to be done
of the things that we have done to people in
this country. But yeah, it's out October twentieth. It's a
mini series. There's going to be eight episodes. There's going
to be bonus episodes as well, and I'm just so
happy to be able to bring it out and to
share just the testimony of some of the really truly
(59:28):
amazing people who I got to talk to for it
and who made me feel pretty proud of human beings
in addition to everything else.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Ock.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm excited about all am I right.
Speaker 2 (59:39):
Yeah, I'm excited about I'm going to listen to it
pretty much soon as it comes out.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
I'm so excited all the way.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Is it like it's going to come out slowly? It's
going to be an episode of.
Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah, it's going to come out serially, although we do
night dingeons.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, I might, I might.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Wait, we're going to find out wait until Xmas.
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Yeah, I'm going to see whether I can wait. But
I do like binging on these things.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
So you got anything you want to plug? Season two
of sad oligarc is out now. Hell yeah, what I
want to plug? Hopefully this is last week's news and
not this week's news, but I want you to look
and find out if it's still this week's news is
last week, in addition to other times, the Israeli government
kidnapped a bunch of people on international waters from an
(01:00:24):
AID flotilla, and some people, as I record this, are
still in captivity. And there's a campaign you can go
to Mutual ad Disaster Relief on Instagram or other places
that people are tracking this stuff with the AID flotillas.
And there's a campaign to put pressure on senators and
like people to protect their constituents because there's American citizens
(01:00:45):
among the people who are currently in Israeli captivity. And
I am not a I'll be honest, no one's gonna
be surprised by this. Based on what I talk about.
I'm not a call your senator's activist as a general thing.
That is not my default mode, but I did, and
I it would mean a lot to me personally that
if those people are still in captivity, you put pressure
(01:01:09):
to try and get them the list, and if they're
already free, then fuck yeah. And I'm sure there's still
a lot to be done. You all in the future
know better about what happened at the ceasefire than we
do as we record this. Good I don't. We'll find out,
all right. Thanks everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Z Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Your podcast. That is the show and the second one
of the week, and you probably listen to the first one,
but I'm introducing the second one anyway. I am your host,
Margaret Kiljoy. I decide what counts as cool people who
did cool stuff, and then I sometimes talk about people
who are only kind of that. But my guest is
(00:25):
completely that because my guest is Sarah Marshall, who's host
of the upcoming show The Devil.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You know that's true. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so happy to continue with our secret society story.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I know. And at the end, we're going to start
a secret society.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, the Midnight Society where we throw stuff on the
fire to make it a cool color.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm into that. God wait, I haven't seen The Midnight Society.
And for a really.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Our top braid of the dark choke, I didn't even
know I was referencing something.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh yeah, that makes more sense. I was thinking of
the Midnight Society with the act that I should know
who plays Patch Adams, also Rob oh the Dead Poets Society,
but Poets Aciety in a cave. Yeah, yeah, well I
love that movie When Are You Afraid? As Dark was
on air, I was afraid of the dark. I was
(01:17):
very afraid of the dark.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I was especially afraid of that show's theme song.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh I don't remember it. I think I avoided it.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I was. It had a swing swinging all by itself.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh shit, I do you know?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
You can just kind of push it and then walk away.
But it was very scary. It was scary on the
order of the Unsolved Mysteries theme, which would also send
me like running out of the room.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's funny to me that I was. I was like
that too, and I ended up like living in a
van alone in the woods, and then like built a
black cabin and then slept there alone, and it just
stopped being afraid.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
You know what's funny is that, like I have been
literally alone in the dark, dark woods, like no other
houses nearby, like walking you know, on like kind of
a trail or a road, but like in the dark,
like without any light, and it'd just been like hm hmmm,
(02:12):
or like I'm going to listen to a podcast, you know,
just like I'm going to lose one of I'm gonna
lose the only sense I have right now I'm fine then,
like still like cheesy. True crime often feels scarier than
the things that you feel like are most supposed to
be scary, because when you're actually alone in the woods,
you're pretty much decentering men. I would say it's one
of the things that is out there.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It is true. But then if you run across the
random man in the woods, then you're like, ah, shit,
well this is something I find. It's like double or nothing.
That's how I feel about the woods versus yes, because.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh my god, it is double or nothing. Because also
it's like there have been a few different murders along
the Apple Action Trail. Yeah, but as far as we know,
no murders on the PCT. Oh really, So it's like yeah, right,
So it's like you have to get like East Coast
because the thing about the AT right is that it
like runs through all these towns and it is in
a pretty civilized or you know, peopled anyway, yeah, route,
(03:06):
And so I feel like you just have to yeah,
go like really all or nothing, maybe put it all
on twenty eight Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I wrote into my script the question I was
going to ask you because I had an answer for
myself in mind. When I wrote it. But the problem
is that I write a script at a different time
than I read a script. But the question I'm going
to ask each of you, because also Sophie's on the
call high.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Sophie, Hei, see ah, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Answer my question. I'm gonna ask each of you, what's
your most boomer trait?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oh? No, like half of them. I think I know mine.
I think concerts are too long, but I think boomers
might actually like lung concerts. Sophie, what's yours? I did
it last night at dinner. Hmmm. Oh, you were watching
a baseball game on your phone the entire time. You
(03:57):
had it on mute. It would be a boomer thing
if you had it on full volume and you had
the screen very politely dimmed.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That, and I like to leave people voicemails. Voicemails are nice.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Wait voice memos or voicemails males? Oh see, okay, that
is boomer.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Mine is that I am continually horrified by how much
everything costs, and it's all I want to talk about.
And then if I get a good deal on something,
I want to tell you about that. Like that. I
went to the grocery outlet today and I got Hamburger
helper for a dollar fifty, which is a pretty good deal.
I gotta say, Sarah and I both.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Really hate crowds and loudness.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, we do. We hate them so much.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh, I think that's a that's just normal, right. Why
would anyone like a crowd in loud?
Speaker 1 (04:44):
People clearly like them, you know, because they go to
music festivals on purpose, you know, it's we'll go, we'll
go laces and then like even if there's like a table,
we'll be like, it's loud, and we'll leave. We'll literally leave.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
This is fucking legit. I hate when there's multiple streams
of information at any point in my life. I'm very neurotypical.
Everyone always says that about me. I just deep dive
a new subject every week like that. Yeah. Yeah, Like
if there's a TV on and people are talking and
the table next to me is talking and loud enough
for me to understand, like as actually a string.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Band starts up, hooray.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It was actually almost like one of the things I
was like nice about traveling in countries where I don't
speak the language is that other people are ignorable, like
because you're like, oh, I don't understand that. So my
brain isn't trying to do it. If a TV is
on and it's in another language and it's not a
language I'm trying to learn, like Spanish, then my brain
is just like, well that just doesn't matter. That's finish.
(05:44):
Who fucking cares what that says? You know, no offense
finished listeners? Uh on text.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
But we don't speak you. We're sorry, just never came up.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, keetos. So we were talking about secret societies and
we just got to the founding. Well, actually, no one
actually knows this part. We're getting to the Freemasons. I
can't say the founding of the Freemasons because you know,
who knows the answer to who founded the Freemasons? Fucking
(06:14):
know one?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I bet oh no one. I like that even better.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I don't think the Freemasons not because the other
thing is the secret shit doesn't stay secret, right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's really the thing. Yeah, Freemasons are the most famous
of all secret societies and fraternal orders in the Western world,
the most well known secret if yell, and like I mean,
I honestly haven't done a ton of research about modern masonry.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I like know some, but like.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I mean, I think it's just like er at this point, right,
it's just kind of like the Elks, but with a
little bit more you know.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Ah, yeah, they've like legitimately been around for a long time,
but probably not as long as they say. And what's
funny is that the more obscure and like spooky the
secret societies are, you can usually be like, oh, that
one was fair like the Illuminati, Right, we like know
the name of the guy who founded the Illuminati, what
deity did the legal names of like, and the fake
(07:09):
names of everyone he founded it with, Like, we know
that shit in and out Freemasonry, which is less spooky, right,
no one knows its actual origins. We know that the
first recorded Freemasons, we know that their initiations. We know
that Robert More was initiated in sixteen forty one, and
(07:29):
that Elias Ashmole, which is a funny name, but not
in a bad way. It's not a flood. Let's not
say they.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Call a jerk off that lives in Asheville and Ashmole
in seat of an asshole. They're an ashvill That's the
obscenity free way of saying it.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Wow, that was really boomer of me, actually, that's another.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Some baseball Sophie.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, Elias Ashmole joined in sixteen forty six. These are
the people. We have dates for their initiations, And so
you're still talking about something that is four hundred goddamn
years old as not young, right, that is older than
the United States of America. Yeah, and also therefore older
than most of the countries in Europe, though not England.
(08:17):
But they were initiated by people, right, So it's older
than sixteen forty one, or if you want to be pedantic,
it's older than whatever moment in sixteen forty one. The
guy could have been two hours earlier, but it probably
was at least several years earlier. But in the usual story,
and probably the most likely one, It's not what I
(08:38):
want to put my money on, but the most likely
one is that it developed from the medieval guild system
sort of the precursor. I mean, the medieval guilds. They
kind of get called the precursor to the modern labor unions.
But I'm actually starting, as I do more, as I
read more about the modern labor unions, I actually disagree
with this. I think artisans and working class people actually
come from a different position but whatever, Like maybe some
(08:59):
actual masons and architects had a society. This is what
people normally say, and people are probably right, But to
be honest, based on what I have read, and I'm
not the foremost scholar in any of this, my assumption
is it was started by rich people who didn't actually
work with stone and were into the symbolism and esoteric
nature of like what if we were the Masons and
(09:20):
we could do architecture right?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, and I feel like it's a term that has
some sort of like biblical association.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, they're gonna say, wait to it too, well, there
you go, yah, yeah, I get it. Thanks, No, yeah,
the biblical so that actually it there's a of all
of the crafts that you could pick. Yeah, like masonry
feels very like we are the people build stuff. Only
Carpenter would feel even more biblical, you know. But yeah,
(09:50):
but Carpenters aren't doing as much math as like an Amazon.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Carpenters are going to right top of the world, or
at least saying it in a few years.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Karen Carpenter.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, yeah, No. The main thing I know about her
is that I watched the Forbidden Movie.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
About Forbidden Movie by Todd Haynes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's called Superstar.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, Superstar the Karen Carpenter story because I took a
Barbie had a Barbie doll play Karen and then whittled
it down as her eating disorder progressed.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah. And you don't have to go for Barbie.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, yeah, I know, Barbie doesn't have a lot to lose.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah. And I'm basing my guess that they sort of
nabbed the aesthetics of masonry and guild stuff based on
the fact that they didn't let manual laborers in at
the beginning, and none of them seemed to be Masons,
and also just that like people are bad at keeping secrets.
I assume the Freemasons are only a couple years older
(10:48):
than the first person.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
To be like, guess what I joined mm hmmm, oh yeah,
I mean that is like one of the most iconic
things about human beings is that our secret keeping abilities
are like nil.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I know. But then I get mad with some anarchist history,
in particular because I think of a group of people
who've been kind of good at keeping secrets in a
way that makes my life harder. I think that the
European anarchists of the nineteenth century among this, because I'll
read about these like you know this. Oh yeah, I
grew up. My dad was an anarchist, says Isabel Aberhart,
(11:21):
who wasn't an anarchist but was a really interesting writer
and gender rebel. She's like, oh yeah, my dad was
an anarchist. And you know, I was like running around
passing secrets around and this like blah blah blah, and
we were trying to over the bizarre and then the
general like dad real young of like mysterious poisoning and
I'm like, none of that shit. I don't know any
of those motherfucker's names. There's this whole huge thing that happened. Yeah, anyway, whatever,
(11:42):
this is my own frustration.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Can I tell you something real quick that makes me
think of that's maybe yeah, connected to everything else we've
been talking about, is that it feels like what that
maybe shows is that people are occasionally good at keeping secrets.
You know, not everyone, not all of the time, but
that one of the things that incentifizes it is like
a like deep and real and committed belief in an
(12:05):
ideal and like a shared ideal or shared goals, or
like a sense of honor, right totally that you're also
not gonna you're not going to give up your identity
or that of anyone else that you're you're working with,
and that the secret societies that tend to be imagined
by conspiracy theorists, including you know, the kind of eighties
(12:25):
imaginary Satanism of the Satanic panic is like, well, they
just conspire together because they're evil and they love to
get together and be evil. They have a big hot
luck and they do evil stuff. And it's like, well,
people who are good at protecting each other, and we
can see that, you know, in the current administration, like
people who have no loyalty except to themselves are like
very bad at keeping a conspiracy under.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Totally. No, this is such a good point. And so
either way, however, the Freemason's got their start. By the
time they're acting like the Freemasons we know in Love
and History, they are not acting like a guild of artisans.
They are a group of educated men who are into
being part of a secret, cool thing with lots of
rituals and secrets and you know, thirty three orders that
(13:09):
you can move up through, and they claim an unbroken
lineage of magical knowledge going back to King Solomon from
around one thousand BCE, of course, and of course the
guy who built his temple, the grand architect himself, Rama Beef.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
There is no Rama Beef.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, there's there's no evidence that that man ever existed.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's a great name, though, That's what I That's all
I eat.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I know, and I and I'm like, I wonder, I
don't know enough about names in like Swanna at this time,
but I'm like, is this a name, like some spooky
English people in the seventeenth century were like that sounds
like it would be Solomon's or is the actualistic name?
I don't know, but yeah, my money is on whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah. Well, it's like people would make, you know, people still,
like you know, JK. Rolling make up names for other
cultures they haven't research that sound like Star Wars names,
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Karana Beef, yeah, Vader, yeah, be Fader. But I will
say about the Freemasons at this time that I'm aware of.
They have their problems. We'll get to that. They're strange,
they're probably lying to themselves, but they make the world
more interesting and modern Westernism comes out of them, which
(14:27):
is wacky as hell to think about. And I'm just like,
you know, when shit's main knock on effect is that
it makes the world weirder. I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, there worse things I could do.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
For example, one thing that would be worth no one
thing that would be better than all of that would
be to be really transparent about what kind of sweet
deals you're offering and then explaining those to people by
the means of that advertising. In fact, let's give it
a shot and we're back. I feel enlightened by those ads.
(15:14):
There is a secret meaning. Actually if you do, if
you look back numerally at all of cool Zone Media's
ads and you assign a number value to the different
types of ads, you can decode that and you will
find the secret of the Ancients as long as you
remember to always anyway, sophy, I can tell people about
(15:41):
that code, right, yeah, okay, great. The Masonic worldview that
they came up with, the Freemasons, it was actually it
was actually very political, and it was fundamentally liberal in
the classical sense, but not necessarily like when we say
now classical liberal, we sort of mean like somebody's like
specifically into capitalism. But at the time, if you were
like specifically liberal in a classical liberal sense. You were
(16:03):
like specifically kind of into like liberty as relates to
like monarchy and stuff like that, and then you get
it kind of confused with being into money and whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, you're on your way to figuring that part out.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, specifically they were into the seventeenth century thinker Spinoza,
who was the founder of modern liberalism, who I do
not know enough about. But in this worldview, society and
people are both working towards perfection. Humanity is going to
build heaven through the application of science, and by and large,
(16:43):
so they're like utopians, right, and they by and large
they seek a leveling. They want to bring up the
poor and bring down the rich, like the Levelers who
have talked about a bunch on the show who were
actually kind of cool but also worked with Cromwell who
then went and you know, genocided there. And some of
these beliefs that they were presenting were soon called pantheism,
(17:04):
the idea that all of us are divine and part
of divinity, which gets us back to that hermetic shit
we were talking about on the last episode, right, mm hmmm.
And so the original Freemasons are anti clerical but they're
pantheistic and they're on a religious quest to level society,
and I don't know, so like so far, I'm kind
(17:25):
of like, all right, I'm kind of with you. And
they were really in the line to themselves with spooky forgeries,
nothing like a spooky for cury. I say, I know,
there's some good ones and some bad ones. Elders is
the Protocols of the Elder Zion is an example of
(17:45):
a real bad one, a bad one that's really really
bad one that's Russia hundreds of years later. It's not
what I'm talking about here. The book that they passed
around was called The Triestis of the Three Impostors wonderful
and guess who the three impostors are? I probably wouldn't
be able to And I'm.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Just it's not the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Is that you know?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
The Son is one of them? Ayah, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, Wow,
the three and fosters. Yeah, And it was written after
Spinoza died, but it was written by people who liked Spinoza,
like it was probably written by a guy who wrote
a biography of Spinoza, and they claimed that it was ancient.
(18:30):
They they were like, this has been passed down for
seven hundred years, which isn't true. But the idea of
the three impostors actually does seem to be something that's
been around since for a very long time, since about
the nine hundreds. There's different people kind of occasionally with
like the three Impostors, and it's one of those things
(18:50):
that probably you say that and then everyone kills.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You, you know, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
But they weren't really atheists. They were like proto new as.
They built up rituals that they claimed were based on
the Druids and Egypt, and they use lines in their
rituals like all in all things is God eternal and immense,
and then probably like uses toothpaste, uses laundry detergent, yep,
(19:19):
clean your floor, yeah whatever, Yeah, that Broner's hermetic stuff
will do anything. And to quote Erica Lagelise again, Masons
imagine themselves simultaneously as the creators of a new egalitarian
social order and the protagonists of cosmic regeneration, all articulated
(19:41):
in the language of sacred architecture. But they wouldn't tell
you that they're going to do this until you pass
through the various degrees and so like it starts as
kind of like wrapped in Christianity, and as you get
higher up, they're like, you want to know about the
three impostors and hey kid, yeah, And so a lot
(20:03):
of the problem when I look at this whole thing,
because I'm not totally opposed to their goal, right, it's complicated,
and also my opinion about what their goal is shouldn't
actually matter. But I like looking at history and being like,
what would I do? Right. Some of the problem is
the problems with the secret Society we have to pass
through the levels in order to be given the mysteries,
(20:24):
is that they kind of set themselves up to fall
for dumb shit. They're able to stay safe from repression
by being through this you know, secret society because it's like,
in order to know that you're a heretic, you actually
have to be, like you have to have been in
it for a while before, like the big reveal is
like we're all heretics, right, Yeah, But they can lie
(20:49):
to themselves really easily with various forgeries and false secrets
and mysteries this way. And they also this is not
going to shock you didn't let Jews, women servants or
manual laborers, and of course, uh, some lodges were set
up for women. They were a trap where they would
be like, here's the secrets of the Masons, but they
(21:10):
were given fake secrets what on, like the god on,
like the real secrets that the.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Men had this handkerchief for me, and I'll tell you
one of our holy, well not holy, one of our
radical secrets.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, they'll be like the five impostors and it'll be
actually just like five guys I'm dave.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And they grew and grew, and by seventeen eighty nine,
like one hundred some years in they had six hundred
lodges with twenty to fifty thousand initiates, and they started
doing internal leveling, and they started letting in small time artisans,
then manual laborers and illiterate people, and they started being like,
(21:54):
actually were just based on meritocracy.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
We changed it. It's like Facebook stopped letting only colleague students,
going like, well, take whoever.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
This is exactly like Facebook. And it probably started off
as like an annoying boys club and then got into
people following.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I realize that Facebook won't be around forever.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well, the problem is that Freemasons are still around. This
isn't the Illuminati. We'll get to them, yeah right. Shoot.
And also Facebook, much like much like the Freemasons, separated
off into lodges and really easy to lie to yourself
and be convinced of bullshit that you are the only
person who knows and other people aren't as smart as
(22:38):
you because they don't have access to the same secrets
as you. Damn. My deep cut that I'm not even
going to explain is that I think Kunis are reinventing freemasonry.
But I'm not going to explain it anyway. That's just
the little thing to piss off about zero point one
percent of my listeners. The Freemasons were the first to
(23:00):
influential group in Britain to advocate for workers, and they
founded various charitable institutions for workers, like hospices and schools.
They did this slightly more in like a charity fashion,
like later labor unions are going to do a similar thing,
but they're going to be like we the workers are
going to build this, whereas Freemasons are like we the
slightly higher than workers are going to do this for you.
(23:22):
I think it actually might have been because they're they're
letting in laborers and stuff at this point, so it
actually might be more equal than that. But they built
this fantastic infrastructure for disseminating knowledge and without the authorities
knowing you're disseminating knowledge and for making decisions together and
doing stuff that people that if you took this and
(23:44):
were like, took that framework and applied something more radical,
you could really get somewhere. Enter the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Oh boy, welcome finally Illuminati. You are the father And.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They are the exact opposite of what people say they are.
They are absolutely a secret society. They were absolutely a
secret society, and they were absolutely opposed. All of the
people who complained about the New World Order or whatever
would join the actual Illuminati. You know, it's because it's
(24:19):
anyway whatever. Okay. Yeah, this guy in Bavaria, which is
now Germany, his name is Adam Weisshapt. He has a
freem He was a Freemason for a little while, and
he was like, yeah, I just like can't hang with this.
I don't know, I'm not into it. He was really
into the Enlightenment, but they weren't doing The Freemasons weren't
(24:40):
enlightening enough and do you know what the Latin word
for enlightenment is?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Oh? Is it illuminati illuminatus illi ah, I almost said
that half a point yeah, yeah, close enough, that's our exile.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, the illuminati means the enlightened ones basically, So it's.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, it's a good word. It's too bad, it's you know,
it's got some associations at this point.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
No, there's really nothing we could do. This is not
something worth reclaiming. Also, I think secret societies is generally
a bad idea if you're trying to do anything. Affinity
group is the new secret society. You don't need to
expand you get three to twenty people, you trust each
other and you do things together. That's all you need.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Sewing circle, Just make everything a sewing circle, right, it'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Which is actually it. Yeah, totally, And I should do
something on the history of all that and how like
sewing circles were like deeply radical and.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Book close yeah, quilts.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The Bavarian Illuminati, as people call it sometimes when they
want to distinguish it, was not actually the first group
of people to call themselves the Illuminati. It was other
people doing a kind of similar thing, like some Gnostics
in Spain who all got killed by the Spanish Inquisition,
which nobody expects. And oh that's my most boomer trait
is fucking quoting Monty Python. Maybe I do that too.
(26:02):
Maybe that's a gen X trait, which I'm not god
to think.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So well, it's just it's a it's a nurow spicy trait.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, fair enough. And on May first, seventeen seventy six,
Adam weish Hopt and five followers started the Illuminati May.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
First, Wow, Adam weish hopped Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Wait, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
As you pointed out, I like that it's some guy
whose name we know. When he did it, it's like, oh, yeah,
fucking Adam.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
He would Yeah, exactly, this guy would start the fucking Illuminati.
It's actually it's true that all people named Adam are
part of the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, or else they make sacuals for a living.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, those are the only options for Adams. This is
a reference that went over my head, but I think it's.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's not even a reference, It just it just feels true. Right,
they're making a sacchel.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Is this the like they're making jewelry?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now? Funny dudes, I guess have like a cast of
characters in my brain that pop into being out of nowhere.
Sometimes it's because it's such a liberal arts college name.
It's like your boyfriend in college who like will tell
you about how a triangle is the strongest shape when
he's trying to pressure you into Yeah that's a girl
(27:17):
from your floor.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, that is what Adam would do, but not Illuminati Adam. Well,
no him sy to the Adams. Yeah, yeah, it is
like the first name, but like, you know whatever, well not, and.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
That guy didn't quit himself very well, let's be honest.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, not so good. May First. Isn't that the International
Workers Day? You might think, And it is one might,
almost certainly not a coincidence that that pagan holiday was
when Adam started the Illuminati, because he's into all the
same occult shit as all these people love. And it
is also almost certainly not a coincidence that anarchists and
(27:55):
other labor groups in the eighteen eighties picked May first
for a general strike in the eight hour day, and
they're for had the Haymarket affair in Boston, which leads
to May Day and May first the workers holiday. So
it is not a coincidence that Beltane and the Worker's
Day are on the same day, which is a thing
I conjectured in the very first episode I wrote of
(28:16):
the show, which is about May Day. But now I
can specifically say no, May first is when the Illuminati started,
and that's why the workers did it.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
I love it, God see, and that's why we do
these shows.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It's magic all the way down, and I will never
run out of rend yarn on my board of connecting things.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That's what keeps life fun.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Really, it genuinely is associations between various things, like the
images and memory.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's perfect.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Adam wanted to create, as I've seen it, he wanted
to create a religion of reason but most but I
think this is kind of missing the point because it
wasn't all like we worship science in this cold, detached
we're so sciencey way the way that people when people
like when an atheist did when someone accuses an atheist
of having like sciences religion, that's not the way that
(29:08):
these people were doing it. They were like esoteric, right.
And he was specifically inspired by the illusion mysteries, the
Greek thing that we don't know anything about, and the Pythagoreans,
the Waco people who worship numbers and claim to be egalitarian,
but then shut down democracy and got burned. But most
of his sources, most of the sources about Illuminati, conveniently
(29:32):
leave out how his teachings, one of his main teachings,
or one of the teachings of the Illuminati, was that
man's original sin, what cast us out from our state
of grace was agreed to be ruled by government. So
he hates the state, the church, and private property. Yeah,
(29:53):
and when back in the day, like the way that
now people will be like, I hate capitalism. The way
you would say that in the like early nineteenth century,
late eighteenth century is you would say I hate private property.
But now people are like people think that means you're
their toothbrush, and and people are like, man, I'm just
like not fucking with that. I'm just gonna say capitalism,
you know, whereas it actually means like I own a
(30:15):
factory and everyone works for me. They mean capitalism when
they say that, you know, but whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Yeah, because stuff is you know, very important to those
of us who don't have factories to make more of it.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah. Fuck, that's one of the deepest points I've ever had.
Any like that is so exactly if you don't have capital,
you care about your stuff because you can't get it easily. Yeah,
and so, oh my god, which is like why it's like,
this is why I don't go on and on about
(30:45):
private properties. It's a meaningless term to most people. And
it yeah, like like I like my stuff. I'm surrounded
by books and I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You know. The idea that you can't like your stuff
creates a lot of confusion for people. Yeah, yeah, very
different in conversations, and.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
People will be like, oh, I can't be a socialist
because I like my stuff, and you're like, yeah, well
that's related. I told you so. Adam wrote in a
piece called Spartacus tocato because he called himself spartacus because
he's a humble man. He's not a humble man, spoiler.
(31:22):
He wrote, quote, let us take liberty and equality as
the great aim of Christ's doctrines, and morality as the
way to attain it, and everything in the New Testament
will be comprehensible. Man has fallen from the condition of
liberty and equality, the state of pre nature. He is
under subordination and civil bondage arising from the vices of man.
This is the fall, the original sin. The Kingdom of
(31:44):
Grace is that restoration which may be brought about by illumination.
So he's into writing esoteric shit, but he didn't want
to go around and tell people all at once this
is the right way. He wanted to people over to
his ideas slowly, much in contrast to how advertising works,
(32:06):
where it just says this is the thing, and then
you're like, huh, I wonder how I feel about the thing,
And it doesn't work the first time you hear it,
but by about the tenth time, you're like, you know,
online gambling might be for me, and spoiler, it's not,
but you know, yeah it might. It happens to the
best of us, and especially when there's ads here, they
are and er back. So he's like, I don't want
(32:34):
to go around tell everyone this is the right way.
People have to be brought in slowly and initiated in
secret societies. And there's a couple of reasons why he
wanted to bring people in slowly. One is that ancient
wisdom folks use secrets in initiation, and he wanted to
be like the you know, Pythagoreans or whatever. But I
think the real reason and other people have claimed that
the real reason it's less about pedagogy and how to
(32:57):
bring people into ideas and more strategy, because if you
run around in this time period telling people, hey, we
should overthrow the kings, they just kill you.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
You got to get the ball rolling a little bit
more than that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, And so, in order to find recruits for his
new Illuminati, he was like, you know what, I know
a group of people who are obsessed with cool secrets
and conspiracy shit. So he went to the Masonic lodges
and he converted them or infiltrated them, depending.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
On your perspective on them, or in other words, I've
got a ready made audience of dupes. It's like when
you move on to another MLM and you're like, I've
still got everyone's Facebook profiles, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And it's funny because it's like it's that tactic of
something that's like kind of admirable, but it's still that tactic,
you know.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, it doesn't. The technology changes, but the basic model,
that business model is the same.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
MLMs really are the secret societies of today, aside from
just that secret societies and cults.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, within three years, there was fifty four people in
five cities, and some of these folks were Enlightenment heavy
hitters like goth.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
How do you pronounce goth Uh sorrows of Young brother
g Oe. Yeah, I've I've heard or I my best
approximation is Girta Gerta.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I'm gonna do it again and say Gerta like Gerta
whose name is not spelled anything like Gerta and uh
oh Gerty Yeah, and Mozart, which means I can say
that Mozart was part of an underground, secret society dedicated
to the destruction of the state, the church, hierarchy, and
private property.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And that's looks like at the America figure out, you know,
I've what.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
The thing I realized once I started doing, when I
fell down that particular side rabbit hole, was that I
was like, I don't know shit about the classical composers.
I was like talking to one of my friends who's
like one of the main pe I run a lot
of this stuff by, and he was like, oh yeah,
and like as compared to like Beethoven with this one piece,
And then I'm like, man, I know how some of
them sound. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I mean, enjoying music is a very different and more
meaning full skill set than remembering the dates I would think,
I would.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Say, yeah, and music was consciously part of the illuminats,
teaching about math and the universe and shit. And but
there are all these rich white guys and they just
couldn't help themselves from doing a hierarchy, even though their
whole thing is this leveling. And so they were structured
as a pyramid with various levels. The I don't know
I pronounce these, the minor veil, the minor veil Illuminato,
(35:43):
and then the super cool top tier the areopagites. Wow,
the areopagites, I know, not just regular pagites. Why would
you even bother at keeping pagites around? Oh my god,
well they don't. Actually, there's no reg Yeah. And then
(36:04):
in seventeen eighty three, seven years after they started, one
of the middle tier folks, one of the meaner veil Illuminato,
snitched the whole thing out to his boss, who is
a royal Bavarian duchess. Oh no, and the government was like,
we don't really want a secret society trying to bring
down the government. Specifically, the court claimed, honestly, if I'm
(36:26):
the actual they claimed correctly, the Illuminati was teaching Spinoza,
which claimed they meant that quote everything that exists is matter,
that God and the universe are the same, and that
all organized religion is a political deception devised by ambitious men.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I bet we could get the White House whipped up
into a froth about people reading too much Spinoza, like
inside of a week if we put our backs into it.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
We really could, and we could call it the fucking Illuminati.
And this that's how. But see, this is actually a
really good point because this is where the myth building
the modern conspiracy idea that the Illuminati is the secret
rulers who want to do bad stuff comes from the
fucking Bavarian government trying to shut down the Illuminati.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Well there you freaking go.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
And so it's just like Antifa.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it gets framed as the thing that people trying
to suppress it are doing.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, exactly perfect. Yeah, when people are like Antiva's the
secret rulers of the world, You're.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Like, what are they now? Or are they eating bean
soup tonight?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (37:35):
No, ending there one pair of pants.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, the Illuminati or the secret masters of the Freemasons.
And so this is what they were claiming and and
so ended the Bavarian Illuminati, or did it The answer
is yes, it did. It actually did add them because
people are really bad at secrets, so if they had continued,
(37:59):
we would fuck know. But the Illuminati lasts less than
a decade. But you can't stop the signal. I can't
believe I said that earnestly. I wrote it as a
joke into my script, but then I said it earnestly.
And people start setting up all kinds of other organizations.
And these are not the diffusion of the Illuminati out
(38:21):
among the people, right. It's not like a couple of
them got away and started new things. Rather, people would
read government propaganda against the Illuminati and were like, oh,
that sounds like a good idea. Though I want to
do that.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Oh my god, most enterprising. You gotta hustle. I know,
I know.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Most of these groups were pretty small, but they came
together to build a network of people devoted to revolution,
one that if I ever do French Revolution episodes, which
I really kind of hope I never have to. But
there's one called the Conspiracy of Equals, which is a
sick name, and they they tried to overthrow the first
French Revolution to make it socialist.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Huh, And that would have been a good call.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I know, it probably would have saved a lot of heads.
Maybe it depends on the kind of socialism. Yeah, And
all these folks, they're in favor of leveling society politically,
and they're laying a lot of the groundwork for modern socialism.
A lot of them are pretty explicitly socialists. And one
(39:27):
of these conspiracy equals guys, one of the French Revolution guys.
He's on trial and his name is utterly incomprehensible to me,
but be beef. There's an F at the end, but
it's French, so probably bibe.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I'll take what I can. We call him bab Ba Beefy.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
We can call him bab a Beefy. Because the nice
thing about Western Europe is that it's the area where
I don't bother looking up the pronunciations ahead of time
because I'm a jerk, or if it's elsewhere in the world,
I try really hard to get it right. But I
just with French, I'm like, I have a weird nonsense
thing where I don't bother looking it up, which is
an asshole movement.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I think, well, maybe it just feels nice to annoy
French people. It's a great American tradition, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
And he went on when when Baba Beef was on trial,
he went on a pretty lucid rant about how the
existence of private property where one guy owns the means
of production and other people work for that guy, creates
an unequal society.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Just like heard of it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, totally makes sense when you put it that way.
And they remain hierarchical and pyramid shaped, all of these
fucking groups. This serves the precursor to twentieth century cell
structure of revolutions, the whole thing where you're like, you know,
like there's this whole normal people spend a lot of
time in reading twentieth century revolutionary organizational structure. I'm sure
(40:45):
where you have like cell structures where you know, you
only know the guy above your cell, and maybe only
one person in your cell knows the guy above your cell,
and he only knows the guy above him. And it's
probably all men because it's twentieth century. Actually unfair, they're Marxist.
That's actually probably decent, like pretty good gender parody in
this cell structure. And anyway, this is the precursor of that,
(41:09):
because in this secret society structure, people only know their
immediate superiors, so if someone snitches out, it doesn't fuck
up the whole thing, is the idea. I don't know
if that's really true, because a snitch brought down the
entire Illuminati, and by the end of the twentieth century,
the traditional cell structure was largely replaced with leaderless resistance
by both the left and right wing. And that's besides
(41:31):
the point. Meanwhile, you've got the Masons right during all
of this shit, and they are and aren't part of
this new diffuse network. Every Mason lodge is a little
bit different, and some are revolutionary as hell, and some
of them aren't. One group. I love the names that
these people come up with. Yeah, a group called the
(41:53):
Sublime Perfect Masters.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh my god, so good, I know.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And these are the people who are going to kind
of like basically do Leninism. Oh, the Sublime Perfect Masters
join a bunch of lodges and convert them to become
more revolutionary. And who joins these lodges but a guy
who's obviously a household name to my household and almost
know on others is Louis August Blonkey. You ever heard
of Blonkey? I don't think so. This is one of
(42:24):
these things that there's no reason why you should have.
But in my mind I was like, oh, shit, Blonkey.
And then I'm like, oh, that's not a self explanatory thing.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I think I'm thinking of Harold broad Key. It's a
different person.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Blonkiy is sort of the proto Bolshevik. He's not even
a Marxist. Is before Marx gets any kind of traction,
But he's really into the kind of revolution where like
it's authoritarian and led by a leader, right, And he
spends a lot of his time in prison for trying
to overthrow the government, because again, governments don't like being overthrown,
most of them. Obviously the Democratic Republic of the United
(43:00):
States wanted to be overthrown because no one put up
any kind of fuss when that happened. But you know whatever,
But he's not up against democrats. He's up against people
with spines, so they throw in prison. Sorry I'm being salty.
The Blankiest were some of the most radical factions during
the Pairs Commune and whatever. The Pairs Commune is the
crucible in which modern leftism is formed, as I've covered
(43:22):
a bunch of times in the show, So all my
red strings that are all coming together.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Oh yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
And the revolutionaries in earliest nineteenth century are super underground
because and they're organizing these secret societies. But the government,
the various governments, are like, oh fuck, we got all
these secret societies. What are we going to do? And
one thing that's come up when I talk about twentyth
century shit is that all the bosses will get together
and form a union. When the workers form a union,
(43:50):
all the bosses of all the different industries will form
a counter revolutionary union. And you'll see this in like
the Newsies episode where like the newspapers, who were ostensibly
against each other, we're like, well, wants to be crushed
these small children? Yeah, we who built our empire for us.
Then we can go back to arguing with each other.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Oh yeah, you gotta crush the children.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Because the rich have class solidarity, so so should we.
God yeah, And nineteenth century Europe had a version of
that too. This is the real, fucking If you want
the actual thing that people claim that the Illuminati is,
it's called the fucking Holy Alliance. And they didn't hide
it because they don't have to because they are the
(44:33):
kings of every fucking country and the goddamn Catholic Church working.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Togay, right, which I feel like, yeah, you've been saying
this this whole time, like if you're actually controlling the government,
then you don't have to keep it a secret and
you just be like, hey, you can't do anything to me.
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, totally the rules. Yeah, and with the Holy Alliance
is the origin of international policing and to keep track
of these secret societies, which is funny because I had
read for a long time that the origin of international
policing was the early twentieth century trying to crack down
(45:10):
on anarchists in the bureau. But that was the Republic's
doing it, where it was the royalties the kingdoms were
doing it.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Before that, huh.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
And the secret societies were like, all right, one of
them said to another one, for example, quote, the conspiracy
of kings must be answered with the conspiracy of peoples.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, heck, yes, it must.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
So they tried to do one, and they created the
first International aka the International Workingmen's Association, uspiciously like a union. Yeah. God,
I actually you know, it's funny as I can't map
I feel like I shouldn't be able to map the
(45:56):
rise of unionism much more about unionism starting like the
eighteen eighties or is this gonna be the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah, but they I don't know either.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
But the IWA is like a federation of workers, and
it's all men at first, and then later you're like, well,
what what that's an annoying name. What about women? Well,
don't worry. The anarchists agree, and they're going to later
start the International Working People's Association instead, which is funny
because they could have just gone with workers whatever.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
They want to differentiate themselves from working you know, horses
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, and the first international Sorry, I just I was
like paying attention. I was about to read, so I
was like, oh, yeah, yeah, and I think no, no, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah, horses down the hall, down the hall, second door
on the left, that's your group.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, that's the International Horses Associated Working Horses Association. And
so this is the thing that modern Marxism and anarchism
and all of these things come out of, is the IWA.
And literally there's like pissing matches between anarchists and communists
in it, and all of the usual, all the bad
shit that we're used to about the left too, also
comes out of this, you know, like people arguing about
(47:09):
all the shit endlessly. But when they get together eighteen
sixty two, they're like, we want to have preliminary meetings
to come up with our thing. We're going to start
in eighteen sixty four, but eighteen sixty two, we're gonna
start planning. Where are we going to meet? And the
answer is in Masonic lodges.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I was gonna say Cabo, but yeah, that's much better.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
And specifically there are these Memphite lodges, which is named
after what they think is like some Egyptian shit. And
these are the like French exiled prudentists from France who
are over there and.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
They they love to cook the from the Paul Prudom cookbook.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Oh, I don't know another prudal.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
This is a Prudom and not a Prudeom, but he's like,
he's a Cajane chef who has had many great cookbooks.
And one of them has a recipe for tradecan that
I actually made one time and it.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Came shit really good. You've got it to duck and
to come out.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, because it's I think it's actually easier than a
regular turkey because when you think about it, like you've
stuffed it with the duck, like what does a turkey
need to be full of something oily?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Okay, yeah, I don't know how to cook meat. I
I agree with.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
That's not true, Sarah. Okay, thank you made it for Duncan.
I did, but only the one time.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
I like you.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Magpie can do a project. Yeah, yeah, Sophie and I
have Sophie can also make a great stake for the record.
I think that people need to know that it's true.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It is important. Yeah, it is known, Okay. And so
the final thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to tie in. So they all meet at this Masonic lodge.
Is a bunch of Masons are the people who start it.
And he's like French anarchists who come over. Prudhon's the
first guy to be like, oh, I'm an anarchist, but
he's actually not really like modern anarchists. He's a different
kind of guy. But anyway, and he's also a misogynist,
(48:56):
but he is also I think he probably was gay
and didn't know it, but that doesn't really excuse it,
and actually really early on other leftist anarchists were like, hey, Pudmin,
we kind of like someone what you said, but fuck you.
What about women? You piece of shit? Like literally within
a couple of years people are like, yeah, we're done
with you guy. Uh into the dustbin of history. I know,
I know, totally canceled. And the thing that is interesting
(49:19):
about them coming out of Masonic shit is, you know,
people are like, they see various symbols and they're like,
that's secretly the fucking Illuminati and Masonic seals. Sometimes they're running, Mmm,
I love it. The red star of communism the second
order in mason Masonry. At the time, I don't know
(49:41):
about it. Currently, I don't know shit about modern masonry.
You were called a comrade. So that's where fucking comrade
comes from, what I think. And the symbol of that,
that second thing was a fucking five pointed star. And
that is, at least according to one author, where the
communists star comes from. And so it why not is
(50:03):
an occultist reference, then.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It's not the kind of occultism we're imagining.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, no, totally exactly. It's it's working class, an artisan like.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Thing in the world, the working class. We've come full circle.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, the ghosts, the specter of the taunting Europe, and
then the other one that this one caught me by
surprise because I never knew the answer to this, the
circle A of anarchism. It's usually people are like, oh,
it means order and anarchy. That's like the main thing
people will tell you.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I never wondered about it. I just thought it looked cool.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I know, it's really easy to graffiti, is That's why
I'm stuck around. Easier to graffiti than a hammer and sickle,
although I will say overall a hammer and sickle is
like a pretty beautiful symbol. I don't I'm not a
I'm not a I'm not a believer in but like,
it's it's a good symbol. I credit where it's due.
The circle A probably originates from the logo of the
(51:02):
Spanish branch of the International Workingsmen in Association, which was anarchist.
Because a lot of the different branches were largely the
like Latin countries were anarchists, and then the like German,
like England, and you're literally yawning is explained this part.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I'm so sorry, Oh, no, it's just the hour. I yeah, no,
this is great.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
And the more Germanic speaking like England and Germany were
more Marxists, and the further south to go, the more anarchist.
It was, Oh that's interesting and there, and the logo
of the Spanish one was basically a circle A with
a little bit of Masonic flare. It was like kind
(51:43):
of a little bit it looks like a mason's tool,
even with a little dangly bit at the bottom to
figure out if your plum, you know.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
And it was a plumbob. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah, it has a fucking plumb bob on it. That's
the word. And that's where the goddamn circle a come from.
Some Masonic influence. Shit.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
I love that. It's like kind of as with a
lot of other stuff, you know, that we've talked about
in the past couple episodes, it's like, yeah, it's real.
It's just the stuff that idiots have projected onto it
aren't true, and they're not made more true by, you know,
by the symbolism appearing elsewhere. Yeah, And I guess it's like, yeah,
(52:25):
I think it is much scarier to accept that, like
the people who decide what happens in the world and
have a stranglehold on us. Don't have to be secretive
about it because they know that they're nobody can do
anything about it, or at least they are very confident
about that. But perhaps they don't they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
They do seem to get really really scared when they
suddenly realize that people got really excited. Like, not the
actions of the people doing the really let's say, very
direct stuff that's happened in the past couple past year
or so, yeah, but the reaction where people were like,
(53:06):
oh see, you know, got got that's cool, and when
they were like, wait, people think that's cool.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I bet Sacho and Vanzetti were pretty attractive too, you know, yeah,
yeah aliens. No, yeah, it's another scary time for oligarchs
of leftist girls loving Italians in jail. You know, no,
it's a scary times. It feels nice to be able
to inspire just a little bit of fear in section
(53:35):
oppressive force. I don't think there's anything wrong with that totally.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And it's solidarity between people that scares them. It is
people saying like we all have each other's backs, including
the people who are doing things that we wouldn't do.
But we have class solidarity against they have class solidarity
against us. We need class solidarity against them, and that's
what fucking scares them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
And also, as we've been talking about, I think if
you have people who have no sense of loyalty to
each other, because that's just not what they're about, there's
something scary about seeing people who have genuine solidarity and
loyalty and belief in a cause, Because if you believe
in nothing and you have loyalty to nothing aside from yourself,
(54:19):
then like that's a power that you can't even comprehend,
let alone use totally, and it must be fucking lonely.
Oh god, Yeah, I don't feel bad for them, but like,
happy people don't call up Fox and Friends and hold
them hostage for an hour. They just don't.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah, happy people don't disinherit their trans daughter and then
go on a massive campaign to destroy trans people everywhere,
because you.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Know, I've never seen a happy person do that, you know,
I really haven't. No.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, and there's even like there's regular as transphobic parents
of trans kids everywhere that don't do that, you know,
that are like I don't get it, But you're still
mo or whatever.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yeah, I'm going to go down to the Applebee's and complain,
yeah to Kaylee, but I still he makes me another mudslide.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
But I'll also probably get fucking angry if anyone talks
shit on you, because you're a goddamn kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
And also even if you're just like, if you're at
the level where you're gonna, you know, where you're not
able to get past that, then like you still probably
aren't taking it to a national scaler making it your
whole job. You know, it's being a bigot in your
free time, and even that's much better.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Yeah, volunteer bigot. Yeah for sake, Sarah. Yes, God, well
that's what I got with the When the right wing
accuses the left wing of being a secret of all conspiracy,
they are presenting it upside down truth. The real masters
of the world are not secret because they don't have
to be. They fucking known everything and are in charge
(55:53):
of everything. And sometimes we have to be secret. But
largely these days that's not how people organize. People tend
to organize in labor unions, in mutual aid societies. People
tend to organize in the open because it has a
lot of strategic advantages.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
So don't don't more in organize. I'm sorry, I said
don't more in organize where you're about to say that
exact thing.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Love it? Yeah, so I don't know, Uh, you guys
thing you want plug? Oh? Yeah, you have a podcast
coming out of October twentieth, I do.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Yeah, I have a mini series coming out from CBC
Podcasts that's called The Devil. You know it really it
gets into a lot of these themes, right, because it's
about exploring the satanic panic, you know that we're repeating now,
but looking at the eighties specifically and the kind of
lingering shadow of it really throughout the nineties, and trying
(56:50):
to just learn from some people who experienced it that
go around and who got caught up in it in
some of the worst ways possible. And yet we're so
amazing to talk to and to. I don't know, I
think through these stories we can see a lot of
what we've been talking about today, which is that the
more you project onto marginalized groups, the more you reveal
(57:15):
what you're really up to as the mainstream or the
ruling class and as society.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, the like every accusation is a confession thing.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, And it's and I feel like
it's one of the things that history can do for
us is to I give us a sense of solidarity
with people through time. Right, because these things recur, moral
panics recur, the need for solidarity remains pretty evergreen. And
for the same reasons. And also because if we study
(57:46):
the past, we have a better sense of how to
maintain some balance in the present. And you know, it
gives you the ability to say, oh, I know, I
know this one, I know this one. Sometimes that really helps.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
It does when they're like, fool me once or fool
someone I read about once, you know.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, Like we have a saying in Texas, fool me once,
shame on you. Fool me twice, won't get fooled again.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Ah, that wacky president who looks like an angel in comparison,
what a terrible world.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I don't know. He seems he's friends with Ellen Degeneress.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
You know, the world to be so much better if
we just encourage certain people to only paint and not
get into politics.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Oh my god, Like Sylvester Stallone could really take that
advice about now to stick to the paintings. Sly for
God's sake, they're really pretty good paintings.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Oh all right, all right, lot of.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
Boxers you know. Anyway, So yeah, I have that podcast
coming out, The Devil. You know, Sophie has talked me
through the whole process as I was making it, because
journalism is very hard, hagag journalist. And when the work
and the people are wonderful, it's still hard because there's
(59:07):
you know, it's a lot of witnessing to be done
of the things that we have done to people in
this country. But yeah, it's out October twentieth. It's a
mini series. There's going to be eight episodes. There's going
to be bonus episodes as well, and I'm just so
happy to be able to bring it out and to
share just the testimony of some of the really truly
(59:28):
amazing people who I got to talk to for it
and who made me feel pretty proud of human beings
in addition to everything else.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Ock.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm excited about all am I right.
Speaker 2 (59:39):
Yeah, I'm excited about I'm going to listen to it
pretty much soon as it comes out.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
I'm so excited all the way.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Is it like it's going to come out slowly? It's
going to be an episode of.
Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah, it's going to come out serially, although we do
night dingeons.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, I might, I might.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Wait, we're going to find out wait until Xmas.
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Yeah, I'm going to see whether I can wait. But
I do like binging on these things.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
So you got anything you want to plug? Season two
of sad oligarc is out now. Hell yeah, what I
want to plug? Hopefully this is last week's news and
not this week's news, but I want you to look
and find out if it's still this week's news is
last week, in addition to other times, the Israeli government
kidnapped a bunch of people on international waters from an
(01:00:24):
AID flotilla, and some people, as I record this, are
still in captivity. And there's a campaign you can go
to Mutual ad Disaster Relief on Instagram or other places
that people are tracking this stuff with the AID flotillas.
And there's a campaign to put pressure on senators and
like people to protect their constituents because there's American citizens
(01:00:45):
among the people who are currently in Israeli captivity. And
I am not a I'll be honest, no one's gonna
be surprised by this. Based on what I talk about.
I'm not a call your senator's activist as a general thing.
That is not my default mode, but I did, and
I it would mean a lot to me personally that
if those people are still in captivity, you put pressure
(01:01:09):
to try and get them the list, and if they're
already free, then fuck yeah. And I'm sure there's still
a lot to be done. You all in the future
know better about what happened at the ceasefire than we
do as we record this. Good I don't. We'll find out,
all right. Thanks everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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