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Speaker 1: From wherever you are around the world, around the world.

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Welcome to the Circle of Insight, a show that explores

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the many facets of human behavior and the wonders of

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the human mind. And now here's your host, doctor Carlos.

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Speaker 2: Welcome everyone. We have a great episode for you today.

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We're going to be talking to doctor Richard Spence about

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the real history of secret societies. We talked about the Illuminati,

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the Rosie Crucians, Freemasons, and we even got to talk

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a little bit about the protocols of the others of Zion.

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So if you've heard of any of these groups, this

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probably be a fascinating interview today. Now we have to

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make we did have some technical difficulties in regards to

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your audio and video, so I try to do a

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lot of editing to try to help it out. So

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hopefully it wasn't too bad, and hopefully you're still able

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to see it and hear it and enjoy the video.

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I think it's great information, very fascinating stuff. So without

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further ado, let's go ahead and watch this interview. Welcome

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everyone with me today is emeritus Professor of the University

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of Idaho, Richard Spence, and he's got a great series

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on the great courses.

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Speaker 3: So let's get started.

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Speaker 2: He's got the great series called The Real History of

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Secret Societies, and it's not waste any more time.

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Speaker 3: And welcome to the.

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Speaker 2: Show, Professor Richard Spence. Welcome, sir, Hey, it's great to

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be on.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much for doing this.

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Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about the real

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history of secret societies?

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Speaker 3: Is it all about? Well, real history is as opposed

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to the fake history. I guess that's the idea. If

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you say it's the real history. Uh, well, let's let's

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sort of start at the beginning.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 3: Secret societies exist, all right, they've they've always. I guess

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One of the main points I try to make in

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the course is in some ways to I guess the

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term is to demystify secret societies because the general you know,

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the general picture that people get about them is that

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well they must involve you know, rogued cultists doing something nefarious. Right.

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If somebody has a secret society, e, they're up to

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something no good, it's something sneaky, underhanded, criminal, diabolical about

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it in that sense. Now that being said, sometimes it

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is right there there There are secret societies can be

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many different things. So it's it's really describes a type

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of organization. It's a way that people work together. The

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things that I start out with in the course, I

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think in the initial episode is that I try to

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define what it is that we're talking about, and you

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that a secret society has four basic characteristics. So these

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are the things that you would want to watch for

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the first one and maybe the vote. Membership is by invitation,

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so keep in by One of the things about secret

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societies is that there's nothing democratic or egalitarious, selective. You

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get chosen. That's that is the key part of this.

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You are chosen to be a member of this organ

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and that is considered to be a privilege. It's one

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of the things that you get that other people don't.

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So membership is by invitation and recruitably based upon some

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kind of specific criteria. That is, you're invited to be

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part of a secret society because you meet certain criteria.

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He has that itself is often secret. The second thing

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is that one show chosen. It requires of initiation that

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can be very elaborate, It can go through different stages,

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or it can be very simple. But the initiation is

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generally takes one of the things that's involved in that

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almost always are oaths of secrecy. So, for instance, if

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you go out and you look at Masonic initiations in

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any of the levels, and those are things, by the way,

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you can find online. Even though they're supposed to be secret,

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they're really not. But if you look at them, you'll

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find out that a candidate for membership is over and

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over again carries out these oaths of see that I

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will never divulge any of the secrets of the order.

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I will never say anything about what happens. And that's

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where the secret part comes. And this is why, for instance,

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you'll have many Freemasons who will argue that we're not

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a secret society or a society with secrets, right because

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we don't hide our existence. It really it doesn't. You know,

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just about any American town you drive into. As you

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drive into town, there'll be generally a little bulletin board

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that will tell you whether or not there's a Masonic

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lodge in town, or whether there's an Odd Fellow's lodge.

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So they're not hiding their existence. The secret part becomes

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in what actually takes place within the lodge, within the organization,

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the rights in rituals, which which take place, those are,

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especially the initiates. There was though I remember asking a

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friend of mine who is who had been a Freemason

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for many years, and I'll have here, I am not

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a member of any secret society and I've never wanted

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to be. And we can come back later as to point.

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That's the case. See, that's what makes them interesting to me.

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That's why they're kind of a bug under a microscope

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to me. That's why I'm kind of interested in studying them,

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because I'll tell you, at a certain level, I don't

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quite get it, Okay. I mean I can see the

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kind of networking and the rest of it, but it's

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it's my own curiosity about them.

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Speaker 2: SI.

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Speaker 3: But I said, I said to this fellow, I said, look,

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if I want to, I'm not a freemason. I can

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go out and with very little trouble, I can basically

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find a complete script to the initiation of the three

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different levels. I can find it. So the secrets are there.

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He goes, well, that's not the point. So the point

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isn't the secrets can't be found. The point is is

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that when you are through the initiation, when you were

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brought in, you swhere, you as an initiatives where you

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will never divulge them. And that's the key point. You

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are and your personal integrity, that you will never divulge

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to anyone outside of the order. What its secrets are,

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the fact that out them out on their own, that

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doesn't really matter, because this whole thing is really about

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a test of character and honesty of the person who's

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been recruited. But while outsiders can find the secrets of

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Freemasonry if they really want to without much trouble, the

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point is they're not supposed to find those out from

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other Masons, so you're small to oaths of secrecy. The

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third element you find in secret societies is well, what

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do you get out of this? Okay, you get recruited.

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You know, you swear that you will suffer a horrible,

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grisly death if you ever reveal the secrets of the organization. Well,

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the thing that you get is that you're promised some

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kind of special knowledge that other people wouldn't have, some

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sort of powers or advantages which members have. So let's

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take the whole thing down and notched. Remember I said

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that secret societies come in many forms. Well, here's one

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that many people can't even realize as a secret society,

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a college fraternity, or a sorority, they are remember exactly

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the things I've described fit them. You are chosen to

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belong or you are not chosen. It's selective. There are

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then rituals of initiation. They can be simple or they

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can be elaborate. What goes on within the fraternity is

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supposed to stay within the fraternity and the skill. The

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other thing you will find commonplace, a kind of marker

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for secret societies is that they're sort of ersatz families.

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Because notice that the terminology which is almost always used

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for fellow members are brothers and sisters. So when you

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are admitted to a fraternity, which is a brotherhood, that's

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all that. It means. All the other members become in

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a symbolic sense, but in some way an important sense,

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your brothers. That is, there's a kind of artificial family

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which is created. So the question comes back to you,

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why do people join fraternities? What do you expect to

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get out of it? Well, you can argue, you know,

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fellowship establish friendships, but also think of it this way.

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It's really a form of networking, isn't It sounds like

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you're going to meet people in colin among your brothers.

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And the whole point is that, remember, you're not forming

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just a relationship that will last those four years. That's

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not what it's about. It is going to be a

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lifetime relationship, not only with the people who were members

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of your particular fraternity, but with the whole larger body

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of it. Because if you join a fraternity, you know,

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if you join Delta Delta, delta's not just the guys

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that are in your house on campus. You're now part

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of this of this larger order. They're all your brothers.

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You've never met them, but you're all bound by being

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selected and by being initiated and being being sworn into

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this select brotherhood, you know. And the simplest way it

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boils down to is that maybe in the future that's

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going to help you get a job or promotion or

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to know the right people. That's generally not you know,

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I don't want to reduce belonging to a fraternal order

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down to purely mercenary elements, but let's face it, that

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generally has has much to do with it in some way.

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So that's the same type of thing that you can

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find in other secret societies. Is that joining it is

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partly about the fellowship or the community that you become

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part of, but it's also about the advantages that the

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organization will give its members through networking. And I guess

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the final thing that you find, We'll go ahead.

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Speaker 2: I was gonna say it kind of reminds me of

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the Skull and Bones from Yale Bush Family.

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Speaker 4: I think it was, yeah, well you know the Bush

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there's one, but yeah, And you tend to find that

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people are often selected on the.

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Speaker 3: Basis of family membership. You know, having relatives in the

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organization is often an advantage in membership. So if memory

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serves me correctly, for instance, if your father was a

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freemason or is a freemason, and I think the term

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which he's used in some cases is that you are

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a Lewis, which means that you're the son of a Freemason,

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which doesn't entitle you to membership, but it helps others

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see if other members of your family have already been

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chosen for this August position, then that advantages you. It's

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what in other cases is called a legacy in some

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way because it becomes part of a family tradition in

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that regard. So the odd thing is is that I

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think I'm actually in that sense a Lewis. But see,

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I have no interest because a lot of people on

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one side of my family were in Masonic lodges. But yeah,

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just never had any interest for me, never went in

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that direction. The final thing you'll often find is that

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you're supposed to have a certain special loyalty to people

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who because these people are are your brothers, this is

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the community which you've been chosen, which you have been

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honored to be chosen to be a part of, and

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therefore you owe them. There is a particular form of

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personal loyalty that you owe to other members of the

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organization that you would not necessarily owe to others. The

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thing is is that's open to a lot of interpretations

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to how far that goes, how far does that loyalty

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actually extend its becoming in any ways, it's a kind

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of individual choice. Well yeah, I mean it's another thing

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I try to demystify to some degree is what conspiracies are,

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which is simple explanation is all you need are two

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or more people. Can't do it on your own, got

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to have at least two people to have a conspiracy.

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But that's all it takes. It's two or more people

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working together secretly. There's the key point. You have to

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be working together in secretly, not openly, working together secretly

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to attain a common end. Now, I think in legal terminology,

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a criminal conspiracy is two or more people working together

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to attain an unlawful end, or to attain a lawful

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end through unlawful means. But that's a criminal conspiracy, and

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it doesn't have to be criminal. One can conspire without

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there being anything criminal about it. You know, it can

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be unethical or underhanded, you know, sneaky, but it's not

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necessarily not necessarily criminal. Give you a very kind of

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limited against, kind of a low walk example of what

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I mean by that. Let's say you have three people

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who are friends or and two of them get together

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on their own and decide that they're going to do something,

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but they're not going to involve the like, I don't know.

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Let's go to Vegas, but let's not bring Bob along.

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All right, Let's let's give him some other story that

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you know, sort of and we're going to go off

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and do these things, but we're going to leave them

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out of it in some way. Well, the two of

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you have just conspired against Bob. You you to achieve

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a common aim, which is going off to Vegas by

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yourself and not have to drag Bob along. Now that's

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not much of a conspiracy. It's what's been done. And

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that's the thing. When you look at it that way,

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you know that these things happen all the time. See,

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this is one of the main things in the course

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I wanted to make about secret societies is that there's

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nothing really sort of weird or you know, on the

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fringes of human activity. They are a basic form of

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human organization. To understand what they are, you'll begin to

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see that they're everywhere, That fraternities and sororities are secret societies,

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that freemasons are secret societies. I don't know the diabolical

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plot of difficultists to run the world. If there is

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one is a secret society, they can take many, many

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different forms. And in the same way that conspiracy is

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just two or more people working secretly to attain a

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common end, which can be criminal or can be entirely personal.

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And people do that all the time. So there's nothing

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really extraordinary about much of this. And I suppose that's

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in many ways what I meant about the real history

253
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of secret societies is to understand how you know, groups

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like the Illuminati are what people tend to think of this,

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it's very mysterious, supposedly all powerful controlling organization or thinks

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it is. But they can be things that are just

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so garden variety. So every day so next door neighbor

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that you don't even notice them. Is that something that

259
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gives them the powers?

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Speaker 5: So well, I think of it as experience because somebody

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out there is going to find what what you mean by.

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Speaker 3: By power. So are there ever secret societies that decided

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they get plots to rule the world? Sure there were?

264
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Why not? I mean, that's that's nothing terribly unusual about that.

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And so let's let's take what we were just talking about.

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You know, one of the most infamous secret societies is

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the Illuminati. So what we're really talking about here visibly

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if you want to say, okay, where where was there

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something actually called the Illuminati? Well, when you start looking,

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you'll find out that there were a lot of them. Okay,

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there's not just one, there were many. Because all the

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term illuminati means is enlighten those who have received the light. So,

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for instance, if you went back into the early centuries

274
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of Christianity, when it was basically a semi underground religious

275
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cult in the religious in the Roman Empire. One of

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the terms that was used to a Latin term by

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Christians for each other, or illuminati, why because they have

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been illuminated, they have received the light. That's all the

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term itself means. So an illuminatus is a person who

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has been illuminated. The question then becomes what was the

281
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light you received into what had been illuminated? So you see,

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the term seems to describe something, but it really doesn't.

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It's just a kind of general description of having been

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illuminated into some kind of particular knowledge. So the organization

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that generally gets historically cited as an illuminati occurred in

286
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Germany in Bavaria in the late eighteenth century. In fact,

287
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it formally came into being in seventeen seventy six. So

288
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the appearance of the Bavarian Illuminati directly coincides with the

289
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American Revolution, which is an interesting coincidence. Okay, yeah, well

290
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it's probably not more than that, but you just never

291
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know in terms of these things, but it gives you

292
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ideas what was going on, all right, So again, let's

293
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let's put there something else I do in the courses.

294
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I always try to put these things in context. So

295
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the real connection between the Bavarian Illuminati coming into being

296
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in seventeen seventy six and the American Revolution getting underway

297
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in that period is that it all has to do

298
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with this context of what we call the Enlightenment. So

299
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the eighteenth century is the period of the adlance, strangely enough,

300
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the period of illumination. And what was the Enlightenment. Well,

301
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that's where things like the American Revolution, the French Revolution,

302
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the concepts of democracy, the kind of intellectual and political

303
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challenge to traditional absolute monarchy. Yeah, this is what we

304
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think of We tend to think of them the eighteenth century.

305
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Somehow a lot of people drank a bunch of coffee

306
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and decided they were going to overthrow the king. That's

307
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the French Revolution in nutshell, Okay, frenchmen became over caffeinated

308
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and the next step was a ute starbucks fall. Yeah

309
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it is, you know, but there is that element, So

310
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we associate that with learning and expanse. So that's the

311
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key between them. So one way to think of it

312
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is that the ideas the sort of enlightenment ideas that

313
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were influencing the founding fathers of the American Republic were

314
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elsewhere across the pond in Germany, influencing different types of organization.

315
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And there those those insane Enlightenment ideas influenced a professor

316
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of Catholic canon law at the University of Ingolstadt, and

317
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his name was Adam Weisshaupt. So weiss Haupt is a

318
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he's not a member of the clergy, but he was

319
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a Jesuit educated professor of law teaching it at a

320
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Catholic universitys too. Yes, well, there again, you know, that's often.

321
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I mean, the Jesuits are in a sense a kind

322
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of secret order within the Catholic Church. They have their

323
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own particular leadership, their own methods for recruitment, and there's

324
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that's you know. One of the things you'll find is

325
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that in that period, in fact, it's a good example,

326
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in the period of the late eighteenth century, the Jesuit

327
00:22:03,079 --> 00:22:08,880
order was actually banned by the Catholic Church. So the

328
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Jesuits were banned, and then they weren't brought, they weren't

329
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re legitimized until I think the eighteen twenties, nearly eighteen

330
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hundreds so for years. And why were they banned Because

331
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the argument was that they had achieved too much power

332
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with it. They had they had become a kind of

333
00:22:28,519 --> 00:22:32,200
rogue organization within the body of the church, kind of

334
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like the Templars what they were doing. Yeah, similar to that,

335
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but the Jesuits in some sense actually did what the

336
00:22:40,839 --> 00:22:43,480
Templars were accused of doing, but as far as I

337
00:22:43,519 --> 00:22:46,519
can see, didn't do. But it's a similar sort of

338
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idea that you know. The fear was that the Jesuits

339
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were very powerful, a very powerful order. They controlled a

340
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lot of land and property. They tended to have a

341
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great deal of influence over education. That's why if you

342
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:03,720
look around to this day you notice how many Catholic

343
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universities are run by the prominent they are in that regard.

344
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They sort of had their own rules and regulations, They

345
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had their own sort of grand master of the order,

346
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which the criticism was that Jesuits obeyed their leader and

347
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not the pope, and the Vatican in the late eighteenth

348
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century was sufficiently sufficiently convinced of that that they banned them,

349
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but then eventually brought them back. So you see, one

350
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of the things that weiss Hoft was trained by His

351
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,480
whole sort of legal and educational training was by a

352
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secret society. And while he was very opposed to the

353
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Catholic Church, he nevertheless admired the way that Jesuits did things.

354
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So there's an interesting argument to be made is that

355
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weiss Hoft modeled his whole Illuminati on the Jesuits. I mean,

356
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:08,119
you know, you can see you can trust them. You

357
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,119
don't have to believe what an organization does to see

358
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that it has a very effective organization. I guess if

359
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:17,279
I was going to give a more modern example of that,

360
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I'd say Communist Party back in its heyday in the

361
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early twentieth century. Now, you might detest what Communism stood for,

362
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but you got to give them credit for this. They

363
00:24:29,319 --> 00:24:36,079
put together a formidable organization and they created in intense

364
00:24:36,279 --> 00:24:41,799
loyalty among their members because one of the things as

365
00:24:41,839 --> 00:24:45,200
a as a as a loyal Communist, you were supposed

366
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:47,279
to do wherever you were, if you were a member

367
00:24:47,319 --> 00:24:51,359
of the Communist Party, what were you most loyal to you?

368
00:24:51,519 --> 00:24:54,000
It's already important too you did what the party told

369
00:24:54,039 --> 00:24:54,240
you to.

370
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:58,839
Speaker 2: That's really important to Professor because there's a lot of

371
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:05,519
implications to national security in regards to the safety of society,

372
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:09,960
understanding their strategies per se of what they're doing.

373
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:17,920
Speaker 3: Well. It comes back to those basic criterion of a

374
00:25:18,079 --> 00:25:22,920
secret society that I mentioned earlier, and it is really

375
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,000
one of the reasons that in one of the lectures

376
00:25:25,039 --> 00:25:26,559
I tell you that one of the lectures is in

377
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:29,079
the series is called the Red Octopus, and it's essentially

378
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,640
about the early history of the Communist Party and how

379
00:25:32,759 --> 00:25:38,480
it functioned practically as a secret society. It didn't hide

380
00:25:38,519 --> 00:25:41,680
its existence, but it would often hide who members were.

381
00:25:43,319 --> 00:25:47,599
So one of the highest forms of membership was to

382
00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:49,400
be a member of the party, but to be a

383
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:53,359
secret member, which meant that publicly you never acknowledged your membership,

384
00:25:54,279 --> 00:25:56,200
and in fact, you were never supposed to do that,

385
00:25:56,599 --> 00:25:58,559
and you were even allowed to go out and say

386
00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:01,599
nasty things about the party publicly, you could pose as

387
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:07,079
being a militant anti communist. You were never supposed to

388
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,519
acknowledge that if that's what the party wanted you to do.

389
00:26:10,839 --> 00:26:15,200
But your real loyalty was to the party itself. That's

390
00:26:15,279 --> 00:26:19,160
how you would get people to betray their country, because

391
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:24,079
your country, if you are a true member of the party,

392
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,880
is not a fund is not as important a loyalty

393
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:29,920
as your loyalty is to the party. Everything had to

394
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:33,400
be sacrificed to that. So when the party asked you

395
00:26:33,519 --> 00:26:36,160
to do something, you do it. And if that's to

396
00:26:36,279 --> 00:26:41,359
betray your country, if it's to abandon your family, you know,

397
00:26:41,599 --> 00:26:43,880
if it's to kill another party member who has betrayed

398
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:45,839
their oaths and gotten out of blind, that's what you're

399
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:50,200
supposed to do without question. And as long as that

400
00:26:50,519 --> 00:26:54,559
kind of discipline could be imposed, as long as you

401
00:26:54,599 --> 00:26:57,519
could inspire people that way, it made it a very

402
00:26:57,759 --> 00:27:02,359
formidable organization. So if you were looking, you know, if

403
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:04,920
you're looking around as to how to sort of build it,

404
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:06,759
that that's the kind of model. And I think that's

405
00:27:06,799 --> 00:27:11,000
what weiss Healt saw about the Jesuits. The Jesuits were

406
00:27:11,039 --> 00:27:15,880
a tough organization. They had this very powerful internal discipline,

407
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:20,640
and that's what he wanted to take, and he wanted

408
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:25,720
to build a new order that would destroy the one

409
00:27:26,039 --> 00:27:30,960
that it was modeled on, because wece Hou's declared ambition

410
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:38,960
was to use his order to obliterate every existing political

411
00:27:39,079 --> 00:27:42,839
and religious system on earth and to replace it with

412
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:50,079
a new universal order rule by an enlightened elite, because

413
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:54,440
that's what members of the Bavarian illuminati were ultimately promised.

414
00:27:54,519 --> 00:27:56,720
You are going to be founding members of what will

415
00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:00,160
be a new elite that will rule the world. That's

416
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,319
what you're being chosen into. This is why he could

417
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,279
recruit noblemen into that. Because the curious thing, this is

418
00:28:07,319 --> 00:28:08,799
something else if you tend to look at a lot

419
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:12,039
of secret societies, is that they almost never recruit the poor.

420
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:22,000
Societies are usually organizations that are built upon the middle

421
00:28:22,039 --> 00:28:24,440
class or the upper classes. That's who they recruit from

422
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:27,839
first of the people who already have money and position. Right,

423
00:28:29,759 --> 00:28:31,599
So if you were gonna build if you're gonna build

424
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,480
up your brother, who would you want in it? You

425
00:28:33,559 --> 00:28:37,759
want people who have no money or propertation, or would

426
00:28:37,799 --> 00:28:40,079
you rather have one filled with people who have money

427
00:28:40,279 --> 00:28:46,559
and influence and education, people from the right families, with

428
00:28:46,799 --> 00:28:49,440
all who are already who people are already part of

429
00:28:49,519 --> 00:28:52,759
the establishment who want to become more. So the question

430
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:57,119
then becomes, how could the ba very aluminum one who was,

431
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,400
let's say, a minor German prince, Why would it prince

432
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:04,200
who rules his own little territory ever want to become

433
00:29:04,319 --> 00:29:08,359
part of an organization whose avowed goal was to destroy

434
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:13,240
aristocracy and monarchy because it offered him to become something else,

435
00:29:14,079 --> 00:29:17,039
to become something greater. What do you want to be?

436
00:29:18,039 --> 00:29:20,319
You want to be a petty prince over some tiny

437
00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:23,599
little territory in southern Germany, or do you want to

438
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:29,279
be elected to become part of a new enlightened elite

439
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,279
that will govern the entire world? Now that you can

440
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,759
sell and that's something that weissoff knew that he could do.

441
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:40,039
And so what he recruits is he goes out and

442
00:29:40,119 --> 00:29:43,319
he largely recruits people from the upper from the most

443
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:48,079
educated and already from the existing elites of society to

444
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:52,279
construct them into another one. Now, the thing about the

445
00:29:52,319 --> 00:29:56,079
Bavarian Illuminati, though, is that it visibly lasted for only

446
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,799
about ten years. Really, it's around from around seventeen seventy

447
00:29:59,799 --> 00:30:02,839
six eighteen seventeen eighty six. That's it. It's only around

448
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:07,519
for about a decade. It attracted somewhere between one thousand

449
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:12,640
and two thousand members that we know of, which isn't

450
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:17,680
isn't a lot, So he didn't become massive in some scale.

451
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:22,640
And then what happened is that around seventeen eighty five

452
00:30:23,359 --> 00:30:27,960
its secret internal documents were essentially leaked. Okay, it's kind

453
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:32,000
of like an early wiki leaks. What actually happened was

454
00:30:32,039 --> 00:30:35,599
that a disaffected member, see this stuff has been going

455
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:42,599
on for a disaffected member really ratted them out to

456
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,440
the Bavarian government. They went to the Royal They are

457
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:47,599
different stories told behind it, but if you really break

458
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:49,920
it down, what happened is that one fellow, a fellow

459
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:51,759
with the name of Baron Fone can you get see

460
00:30:51,759 --> 00:30:57,039
he's a baron, objected to Vice House what he thought

461
00:30:57,119 --> 00:31:00,400
was Vice House sort of dictatorial control, and so he

462
00:31:00,519 --> 00:31:02,519
went to the King's men and he said, here's this

463
00:31:02,599 --> 00:31:05,480
whole organization and we're a plodding to overthe overthrough you

464
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,799
and everything else. And all of their documents were published,

465
00:31:10,279 --> 00:31:14,359
all of their grand plans for infiltrating other organizations that

466
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:16,799
are bringing all of this about. So that, yeah, what

467
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,319
you can argue is that, well, here's some guy who

468
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,200
comes up with some unrealistic grand scheme. It lasts for

469
00:31:23,319 --> 00:31:27,319
about ten years, he gets, you know, several hundred to

470
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:30,200
a couple of thousand gullible people to join it, and

471
00:31:30,279 --> 00:31:34,440
then the whole thing goes belly up and visibly that's

472
00:31:34,519 --> 00:31:39,759
what happens. On the other hand, here's the follow through

473
00:31:39,839 --> 00:31:44,680
of that. The organization is never destroyed. Weisshelpt is never arrested,

474
00:31:45,279 --> 00:31:47,799
he escapes to another German state where the prince gives

475
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:53,279
him refuge. He lives until I think eighteen thirty, and

476
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:58,400
none of the other members of the illuminat era. So

477
00:31:58,519 --> 00:32:02,240
the organization is never destroyed. It is revealed, but it's

478
00:32:02,319 --> 00:32:08,160
not destroyed, which then raises the positibility then well did

479
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:11,039
they all just stop doing this? Did everybody get bored

480
00:32:11,119 --> 00:32:17,119
and quit being Illuminati? Or did it just continue? Because

481
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:18,960
one of the things we don't even know about it

482
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:23,240
is that, remember, Illuminati wasn't really the name of the organization.

483
00:32:23,559 --> 00:32:28,839
Vish Heft called it the Order of Perfectibilists. But one

484
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:30,559
of the things that he would actually say is that

485
00:32:32,079 --> 00:32:34,200
one of the things our order must never be known

486
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:39,240
publicly under its real name. It's not even clear that

487
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:45,000
it had a name. Why do you need one? So

488
00:32:45,079 --> 00:32:48,079
I remember, Illuminati simply means those who have been enlightened.

489
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:51,000
It doesn't necessarily tell you what it was. So if

490
00:32:51,039 --> 00:32:53,519
you don't even know what the name of the organization is,

491
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:58,279
and how do you know, you've destroyed it. The other

492
00:32:58,359 --> 00:33:01,119
thing about vice health is that he said, look, what

493
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:03,680
we're going to do is we're not going to operate openly.

494
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,920
We're going to infiltrate other secret societies, and we're going

495
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,720
to use them as recruiting grounds, and we're going to

496
00:33:11,839 --> 00:33:15,720
use them cover for our activities. Now what secret society

497
00:33:15,759 --> 00:33:21,599
did he choose as being the most effective to do that? Yes,

498
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:26,599
so it's one that was all the Freemasons. And his

499
00:33:26,759 --> 00:33:30,200
argument was, look, there are lots of Masonic lodges around,

500
00:33:30,319 --> 00:33:32,519
and he goes, nobody pays that much attention to them,

501
00:33:32,559 --> 00:33:37,200
do they? I mean, they've become almost kind of commonplace. Also,

502
00:33:37,359 --> 00:33:40,519
they tend to attract again people from the existing elites.

503
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,640
So what we'll do is that And what he ordered

504
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:47,480
all of his members to do was to go out

505
00:33:47,599 --> 00:33:53,519
and join Masonic lodges, attain positions of authority and influence

506
00:33:53,599 --> 00:33:58,039
within those lodges, and turn them into vehicles through which

507
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:03,799
our order can operate. Therefore, no one will ever see us.

508
00:34:04,599 --> 00:34:08,960
They'll only see the Masonic lodges which we are operating through,

509
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,480
and even most of the Masons within them will never

510
00:34:12,679 --> 00:34:17,639
know what it is that we're doing. And you know,

511
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,800
I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call that diabolical,

512
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,760
but I would call that rather smart organizing, so that

513
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:34,639
your group never actually appears visibly, but it uses other

514
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:39,960
organizations as a cover for its activity. Now, by that,

515
00:34:40,079 --> 00:34:42,719
keep in mind, I'm not arguing that the Illuminati went

516
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,800
on to take over this and that and continues to

517
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,639
expand you can't prove that, but neither can you disprove it.

518
00:34:50,519 --> 00:34:53,719
I don't know what happened. I know that weishoft had

519
00:34:53,760 --> 00:35:00,239
a plan and plan into effect, but you know they

520
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:04,400
still be out there. Sure they could. Why not? I

521
00:35:04,519 --> 00:35:08,519
either want to believe that, you don't want to believe again. Yeah,

522
00:35:09,639 --> 00:35:11,719
so it can get I mean, this is this is

523
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,199
where things can get pretty pretty sneaky, and it's it's

524
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:18,559
one of the things that you're not always sure what

525
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:24,159
it is that you're looking at. In terms of one organization.

526
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,400
It's a bit like those Russian nesting dolls. You know,

527
00:35:28,599 --> 00:35:30,519
you open up one and there's another one inside that,

528
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:35,159
there's another one inside that another inside that. Well, sometimes

529
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:39,239
that's what you'll find, that there's one more secret society

530
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:46,119
in another less secret society, or that secret societies will

531
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:50,280
will generate more secretive or it's not secret enough, and

532
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:54,400
therefore you have to create a new issue. You've been okay,

533
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,519
you've been chosen for the first level, but now, because

534
00:35:57,599 --> 00:35:59,880
you're really special, we're going to choose you for something

535
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,880
that's a secret order within a secret order, but only

536
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,440
for special people. See. That's one of the things these

537
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:11,320
things do to me again as an outsider, is that

538
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,719
you're special. If you've been chosen, you're special. If you

539
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:20,840
have been chosen, whether it's a member of the whether

540
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,079
you're being chosen for the Illuminati, or whether you're being

541
00:36:23,159 --> 00:36:27,280
chosen for Delta Delta Delta, you have been chosen where

542
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,079
others have not, and that makes you special. And you know,

543
00:36:31,599 --> 00:36:33,840
what more do we want in life than to be special?

544
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,159
You know, Professor, do you be chosen translates? Do you

545
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:42,199
think it translates over into the people who just believe

546
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:46,719
in them? Because if they have this special knowledge of

547
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,760
all these groups and most society.

548
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 2: Doesn't have, they feel special. Now you've studied it, so

549
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:54,360
it's different. You're actually focusing on it. But I mean

550
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:58,119
under the other individuals who we'll start talking about all

551
00:36:58,119 --> 00:36:59,960
these secret groups and what they've done in the building.

552
00:37:00,119 --> 00:37:02,039
Burgers and all this other stuff, and everybody's kind of like,

553
00:37:02,199 --> 00:37:04,719
I never heard of that before, and it gives them a.

554
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,559
Speaker 3: Lot of attention. And I'm not saying it's bad or good.

555
00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:10,199
Speaker 2: It's just interesting to see how this kind of satisfies

556
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,480
some kind of need to feel special.

557
00:37:16,079 --> 00:37:22,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's what strikes me. You know, I'm

558
00:37:22,599 --> 00:37:25,079
not a psychologist. I don't know, but it just strikes

559
00:37:25,159 --> 00:37:27,639
me that one of the things that makes this appealing

560
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,320
is that it does it appeals to the ego of

561
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:36,119
the person who's been chosen. Okay, you've been picked for this,

562
00:37:37,559 --> 00:37:42,320
and you now have knowledge or you have a position

563
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,920
that other people don't have. I'm not sure that works

564
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:50,360
with everybody. I don't know. Apparently it hasn't worked with

565
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,480
me particularly well because I've never found that attractive rough,

566
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:58,840
but that just be good. There's something who knows. But

567
00:38:00,199 --> 00:38:04,639
it certainly can work with others. I've I've seen it work.

568
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:09,559
I've seen it around me who've been attracted into these things,

569
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:16,159
and that I think is is a huge part of

570
00:38:16,639 --> 00:38:19,239
what it comes. Also, this going back to this thing

571
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:23,639
about the creation of a kind of imitation family. You know,

572
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:28,880
people want to belong to things, you know, and let's

573
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:33,079
you know, let's face it, sometimes an artificial family can

574
00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:34,719
be preferable to your real one.

575
00:38:36,599 --> 00:38:36,760
Speaker 2: You know.

576
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 3: I'm sure we all have wonderful families, but not everybody does.

577
00:38:40,079 --> 00:38:42,679
You know. Families can be can you They can also

578
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:50,400
be abusive and manipulative and unpleasant. You know, not all

579
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:55,119
siblings get along. Yeah, that's that's the sad reality of

580
00:38:55,199 --> 00:38:59,519
human existence is that families can be very problematic, you know,

581
00:38:59,639 --> 00:39:03,480
and you can't choose them. Here's a way to think

582
00:39:03,519 --> 00:39:06,320
of it. Your family is a kind of secret society

583
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:13,960
that you're born into, and it's a I've sometimes half

584
00:39:14,079 --> 00:39:16,360
jokingly said that every family is a kind of cult

585
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:21,159
and you know, I use this in the case of

586
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:23,880
my My wife comes from a rather large family. Okay,

587
00:39:24,039 --> 00:39:27,000
I come from a very small one, and she comes

588
00:39:27,039 --> 00:39:29,320
from a large family, and they're all wonderful people, but

589
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:32,000
you know, for my aspect, it is kind of cultish sometimes.

590
00:39:32,559 --> 00:39:34,960
You know, they have their own little particular rituals and

591
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:38,639
there are ways of doing things, and you know, it's

592
00:39:38,679 --> 00:39:40,840
the in law type of thing. You meet these people

593
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:43,119
and you go, what earth are they doing? You know,

594
00:39:43,199 --> 00:39:45,239
I mean, this is you know, it's not what it

595
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:48,119
is that you're so they're all of these little individual customs,

596
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:52,960
and then the whole set of complicated relationships between siblings

597
00:39:53,559 --> 00:39:58,719
that are often difficult to to h to establish each other. So,

598
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:02,559
you know, in some cases, if you could escape your

599
00:40:02,639 --> 00:40:07,199
biological family and then join another family that chooses you

600
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:11,840
and rewards you just because you're you, then that's something

601
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:14,079
that many people, I think would go for. It's a

602
00:40:14,119 --> 00:40:18,079
way of belonging, the sense of being part of some organization.

603
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:20,480
It's interesting.

604
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:22,760
Speaker 2: It's almost like we're all kind of mini Ivie hops

605
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,679
in a way, obliterating.

606
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:30,360
Speaker 3: Our own cold to going through another world. I don't

607
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:32,400
know how many people at some point or another heaven.

608
00:40:32,519 --> 00:40:34,440
You know, imagine, you know, the world would be so

609
00:40:34,559 --> 00:40:38,159
much a better place if only I could run it.

610
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,519
If I could run, things that would work out. Well.

611
00:40:43,599 --> 00:40:45,920
You know, I can realize that there's probably a huge

612
00:40:46,079 --> 00:40:51,320
logical somewhere, but nevertheless I don't. I guess your choice

613
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:53,440
is this, would you rather live in a world that

614
00:40:53,599 --> 00:40:58,360
you run or the reality is living people run not

615
00:40:58,559 --> 00:41:03,239
thinking about your best interest at all. And so the

616
00:41:03,639 --> 00:41:08,719
idea of rather than be you know, a tiny little

617
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,199
cog in a gigantic machine controlled by someone else, would

618
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:16,719
you rather be the person controlling the machine? You would

619
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:19,480
at least like to fantasize that in some way, And

620
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,199
so something, you know, what Weishut was sort of offering

621
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,079
to his followers was to make them that to elevate

622
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:31,960
them of importance and control beyond anything that they had

623
00:41:32,039 --> 00:41:35,239
at the time. And that is for a lot of people,

624
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:39,719
that's a tremendously deductive idea. I think in some cases

625
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,920
it's almost irresistible for them to have. I know, we

626
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:44,239
only have a few minutes left.

627
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 2: I wanted to know, is it possible to cover the

628
00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:50,679
rosy Crucians and the protocols of the Elders of Zion.

629
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:52,719
I know, the rosy Crusians are kind of an interesting

630
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,039
group to me because you don't know much about them,

631
00:41:55,079 --> 00:41:57,719
and everybody's always trying to figure out who they are.

632
00:41:58,559 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 3: And a lot of times because we don't know much

633
00:42:00,119 --> 00:42:02,760
about them, they make more out of them. Yeah, the

634
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,360
raw Secrusions, it's all connected there. Again, there are many

635
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:09,719
different orders of raw Secrucions. So there's number one. So

636
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,079
the one that you'll hear most about today is the

637
00:42:12,159 --> 00:42:15,960
one that I think is still headquartered in San Jose, California.

638
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:19,920
But that was a version of the Raw Secrucians that

639
00:42:20,199 --> 00:42:28,719
was really founded in the early nineteen fifteen by enterprising Americans,

640
00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:31,800
you know, based upon older orders. One of the ways

641
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,599
I describe it in the Real History of Secret Society's

642
00:42:35,639 --> 00:42:37,960
courses that raws Secrucionism is one of those things is

643
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,519
about everything and nothing, and it means that it's in

644
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:45,760
order that basically promises to sell you the secrets of

645
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:47,679
the universe. So if you want to know all the

646
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,719
secrets of the universe, the secrets of mental power, of reincarnation,

647
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:55,000
of arcane knowledge, you know, all of this really cool

648
00:42:55,079 --> 00:42:58,800
stuff that will make you a that will illuminate you

649
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,559
then and that's what raw Accrucianism can offer. It's a

650
00:43:02,639 --> 00:43:09,760
kind of one stop shopping place for enlightenment mystical doctrine.

651
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,679
But you have to join in order to get those

652
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:18,480
secrets revealed. But you're never really but they're quite good

653
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,320
at the fact of never sort of revealing precisely what

654
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:27,639
it is that you learn. That's the problem. But you

655
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:31,800
can't do that, you know, if it's like a mystery

656
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,840
grab bag, there you go, So, okay, here's here's the

657
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,800
mystery grab bag that you have all the knowledge secret

658
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:40,480
knowledge of the universe is in here, but you have

659
00:43:40,599 --> 00:43:43,400
to join the order and be admitted and go through training.

660
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:46,480
The way you did it in the sort of you know,

661
00:43:46,679 --> 00:43:50,719
modern American twentieth century mass market raws, Accrucianism is that

662
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,239
you answered an ad or the back of a magazine

663
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:55,760
and you sent in a dollar for these various lessons

664
00:43:56,039 --> 00:43:58,480
that would gradually reveal it to you. It was a

665
00:43:58,519 --> 00:44:01,960
money making scheme. I don't know, it was probably maybe

666
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,360
you learned the secrets of the universe, but you had

667
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:06,599
to pay for them a dollar at a time, So

668
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,159
that was one way to do it, or you know

669
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:11,639
you could do that. What would you rather do? Pay

670
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:14,239
for them a dollar at a time a correspondence course

671
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:16,480
to enlightenment, or do you want to go to Tibet

672
00:44:16,599 --> 00:44:19,960
and spend five years in contemplation and then go see

673
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,679
the Dalai Lama? Okay? Which is easier to do to

674
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,199
afford in this case, So there are different methods to it.

675
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:31,239
Ross Accrucianism, again is based on the idea that there

676
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:36,519
is there is a mystical doctrine that people who have

677
00:44:36,679 --> 00:44:42,199
the mental and spiritual qualifications can achieve if you are chosen.

678
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:46,199
And here's one of the first places it really appeared.

679
00:44:48,079 --> 00:44:55,960
In the early sixteen hundreds in Paris. Placards just showed

680
00:44:56,039 --> 00:44:59,000
up around town. You know, people put up bills on

681
00:44:59,159 --> 00:45:02,960
walls saying basically that the Raw Secrusi Order has appeared

682
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:08,519
and we are looking for eligible members. Okay, if you

683
00:45:08,559 --> 00:45:11,239
want to know the secrets of the universe, if you

684
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:15,039
want the mysteries of time and space reveal to you,

685
00:45:16,119 --> 00:45:20,760
then you want to become a Raw Secrucier, so they advertised.

686
00:45:21,159 --> 00:45:22,880
Now the point is, as far as I can tell,

687
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,920
they never told you where you were supposed to apply.

688
00:45:26,599 --> 00:45:29,639
How do you do that? Then, now we're here, we

689
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:34,039
are among you, and we're looking for new brothers. Well,

690
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:36,519
the only way you did it issues just began to

691
00:45:36,639 --> 00:45:39,480
express You began to advertise it for them. Mill you

692
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:41,639
go to someone you had a coffee shop and go

693
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,039
You're seeing these placards about the Raw Secrusis. I'd really

694
00:45:45,159 --> 00:45:47,320
like to know the secrets of the universe. I wish

695
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:49,480
they would come and talk to me. Well, maybe they did,

696
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:52,559
so you would never really know. And then, of course,

697
00:45:52,639 --> 00:45:58,079
once you're admitted, you're immediately sworn to secrecy. So someone

698
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:03,639
was putting up the placards, maybe somebody was advertising, but

699
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:08,800
how many people actually answered the ads? What the organization became.

700
00:46:10,199 --> 00:46:13,719
I mean, the raw Secrucion, those roseecutions were very opaque.

701
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:17,400
You never see them. They never appear publicly other than

702
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:19,719
to say that we are here and we're looking to

703
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:24,599
recruit more people. So there's this whole the element of

704
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:27,719
mystery which is still included in that. But that's one

705
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:30,280
of the things that then into the you know, into

706
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,599
the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth allowed many

707
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:36,880
other people to come along and essentially found what were

708
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,039
called ross Accrucian orders and start the whole thing over

709
00:46:40,119 --> 00:46:45,559
and over again. So it's a kind of it's a

710
00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:51,480
kind of generic term as opposed to a trademark, you know,

711
00:46:51,559 --> 00:46:53,559
the same thing. By the way, it's true for freemasonry,

712
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:58,039
nobody owned there's no form of freemasonry that owns the

713
00:46:58,159 --> 00:47:00,519
rights to the name. Anybody can call them that if

714
00:47:00,559 --> 00:47:03,000
they want to. You can go out right now. I'm

715
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:05,119
not suggesting that you do, but you can go out

716
00:47:05,159 --> 00:47:08,800
and you can form your own rows Acicrucian order. Nobody

717
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:12,559
owns the name. Nobody can can stop you from from

718
00:47:12,679 --> 00:47:16,119
doing that. The other thing you'll last about before you've

719
00:47:16,159 --> 00:47:18,920
run out of time is, you know, one of the

720
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:23,840
most insidious and also one of the most persistent secret

721
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:29,079
society stories is are the the Elders of Zion? Okay,

722
00:47:29,199 --> 00:47:32,119
what that boils down to is, you know what's generally

723
00:47:32,159 --> 00:47:36,719
called the international Jewish conspiracy, Right, I just never got

724
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,719
the idea that there are there's some sort of Jewish

725
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:45,719
plot in order to rule the world. In other words,

726
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:48,440
it's it's a it's the idea of a Jewish illuminati.

727
00:47:48,559 --> 00:47:51,000
That's what it comes to see. It's just using it's

728
00:47:51,079 --> 00:47:55,280
recycling the stuff that Visovs came up with. Now, the

729
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:58,760
interesting thing about this is that this whole story that

730
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:03,000
there's some sort of order of the Elders of Zion

731
00:48:05,039 --> 00:48:08,760
appears I in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century,

732
00:48:09,519 --> 00:48:11,760
and there are lots of stories about how it appears,

733
00:48:12,079 --> 00:48:16,280
most of them wrong. So what you'll generally hear about

734
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:19,519
and again I also have a there's an episode in

735
00:48:19,559 --> 00:48:22,119
the course where I go and I try to deconstruct

736
00:48:22,159 --> 00:48:26,039
the background of this. So what you'll generally hear is that, well,

737
00:48:26,199 --> 00:48:28,840
there was this kind of you know, crazy Russian mystic

738
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,400
named Saragei Nilas and he wrote the story, or he

739
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:34,400
got it, or it was written. The most common one

740
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:36,360
is that it was the creation of the Tsarist Russian

741
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:39,800
secret police. And you'll get this, you know, you'll actually

742
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:42,400
get these descriptions of you know, someone comes in. There's

743
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:44,480
a woman who claims she went in and saw the

744
00:48:44,559 --> 00:48:47,599
head of the of the Zara's secret police in Paris

745
00:48:47,679 --> 00:48:49,840
with another guy, and they were writing on a piece

746
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:52,039
of paper with a blue stain, and they were coppering

747
00:48:52,119 --> 00:48:55,360
from one book to another. And that is the simplest

748
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:59,599
way I can put it. Total bs right, which is

749
00:48:59,599 --> 00:49:02,079
another thing you run across a lot of this stuff.

750
00:49:03,639 --> 00:49:08,039
It didn't happen because those people weren't even in that

751
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,159
place at the time. And the woman who told the

752
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:15,119
story was a pathological liar. Okay, all right, wow, so

753
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:20,039
she just made it up with that story. But it

754
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:24,360
leaves this mystery. The first version, which describes the interesting

755
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:28,559
thing is that what is actually described if you look

756
00:49:28,639 --> 00:49:31,360
at the protocols, the various forms of what are called

757
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,920
the notes of a meeting of the Elders of Zion,

758
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:38,679
that's what that's supposed to describe. So the protocols of

759
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:42,480
the Elders of Zion are supposedly the notes that were

760
00:49:42,559 --> 00:49:45,719
taken at a meeting of this secret society and its

761
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:50,599
plan to rule the world. Question number one, Why do

762
00:49:50,679 --> 00:49:53,400
you take written notes of a plan to rule the

763
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:57,679
world if you're a secret society. I mean, the basic

764
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:02,000
rule here is you never write things, and they just

765
00:50:02,079 --> 00:50:05,719
don't take notes. They take notes which are like these, bah,

766
00:50:06,079 --> 00:50:07,960
and this is how we're going to do this. Oh,

767
00:50:08,159 --> 00:50:10,119
and then we're going to get them this way. Why

768
00:50:10,159 --> 00:50:14,000
would you do that? It makes no sense. That's one

769
00:50:14,039 --> 00:50:17,119
of the big problems you look out there. If you

770
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:19,519
got your plan to rule the world, keep it a secret,

771
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:25,480
don't write it down. But where this appears, So you've

772
00:50:25,559 --> 00:50:28,719
got this what purports to be the notes of a

773
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,639
meeting of a secret society and his planned for world domination.

774
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:37,920
It first appears in an obscure right wing Russian newspaper

775
00:50:38,519 --> 00:50:46,039
in nineteen oh three, and nobody paid much attention to

776
00:50:46,159 --> 00:50:49,199
it at the time. It's kind of serialized in this newspaper.

777
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,079
And it's also very clear if you look at it

778
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,159
that what is being described here is very clear is

779
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:02,480
a Judeo Masonic plot. I mean, that's still in fact.

780
00:51:03,159 --> 00:51:05,320
If you even look into later versions of this, you'll

781
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:10,119
always notice that we're going to use freemasonry as a

782
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:13,199
vehicle to spread or kids. What does that sound like

783
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,920
what we were just talking about. That's exactly what it

784
00:51:16,079 --> 00:51:21,000
was that Adam Weisshaupt wanted his Bavarian Illuminati to do

785
00:51:21,519 --> 00:51:25,960
back in the eighteenth century. So what you have at

786
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,159
the beginning of the twentieth century are the purported notes

787
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:33,559
of a secret society which is using a method identical

788
00:51:33,679 --> 00:51:36,320
to what had happened before. Now does that mean it's

789
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,039
the same organization or does it just mean that somebody

790
00:51:39,199 --> 00:51:44,079
read about the Bavarian Illuminati and copied That could be

791
00:51:44,199 --> 00:51:48,480
either one. But the mystery in this to me is

792
00:51:48,559 --> 00:51:50,599
that we still do not know in this day who

793
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:55,760
came up with this original story. Where did that story

794
00:51:55,840 --> 00:52:02,639
that appeared in this Russian newspaper come from? And that's

795
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:06,159
still unknown. It's not the story. It wasn't written by

796
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:10,840
members of the Russian Secret Police, because that whole story

797
00:52:11,039 --> 00:52:13,199
was supposed to have taken place in nineteen oh four

798
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,880
and nineteen oh five, And you can't invent something that

799
00:52:17,039 --> 00:52:22,199
already existed a year before you supposedly invented it. So

800
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:25,840
here it was, and it changed at the time, little

801
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,519
bits and pieces, but no one knows where it came from.

802
00:52:32,039 --> 00:52:35,440
Well giving too much way, I have a theory about

803
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:39,119
its origins, and I think those basically go back to France,

804
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:47,480
and it's connected. If you go back to France in

805
00:52:47,559 --> 00:52:49,760
the eighteen nineties, there are a lot of interesting things

806
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:51,519
that are going on. One of the things, you have

807
00:52:51,599 --> 00:52:56,039
the Dreyfust case, all day Jewish army officer that was

808
00:52:56,079 --> 00:52:58,039
accused of trees, you know, that goes into the whole

809
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:02,280
Dreyfus case Devil's Island, and he's convicted of trees and

810
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:06,880
the eventually he's all right. But the other thing that

811
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:10,079
was happening was a thing called the Taxil Hoax t

812
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:14,719
A x I. L. Bill Hoax was this kind of

813
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,440
big deal because it was a series of books that

814
00:53:18,519 --> 00:53:21,880
had been published over years that alleged that there was

815
00:53:22,039 --> 00:53:29,239
a Semsonic conspiracy. All right, so Freemasons, devil worshipers, okay,

816
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:34,960
And the guy who supposedly is that his pen name

817
00:53:35,119 --> 00:53:39,960
was Leo Taxil, wasn't his real name. But and what

818
00:53:40,119 --> 00:53:43,280
Taxil did is he created this whole sort of you know,

819
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:49,280
literature story about Satanic Freemasons, who, by the way, were

820
00:53:49,599 --> 00:53:55,639
headquartered in South Carolina, so they were like devil worshiping

821
00:53:55,719 --> 00:53:59,320
Freemasons are out to the world. And he built this

822
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:01,679
up into such a big deal, and then eventually what

823
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,599
he revealed is that it's a hoax. He publicly revealed

824
00:54:05,719 --> 00:54:09,920
all of his work as a hoax and basically said that,

825
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:13,039
you know, I just did this to make fools out

826
00:54:13,039 --> 00:54:15,599
of the Catholic Church, who of course gombed on to this,

827
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:17,480
and everybody else who believed it, and you're all a

828
00:54:17,519 --> 00:54:21,920
bunch of idiots for believing this story to begin with. Now.

829
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,880
The thing about it, though, what you noticed is that

830
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:31,760
it worked very well because what did taxl what made

831
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:35,840
his story saleable. It was saleable because it told a

832
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:41,960
lot of people what they were already willing to believe. So,

833
00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:45,079
just in case any of you out there want to

834
00:54:45,119 --> 00:54:48,039
start your own conspiracies or this is the way you

835
00:54:48,119 --> 00:54:50,320
have to do it. You have to kind of sell

836
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:56,519
something that already touches a nerve. You know, people are

837
00:54:56,559 --> 00:54:59,480
kind of halfway to believing this already. What you're now

838
00:54:59,599 --> 00:55:01,840
going to do is given the whole story and to

839
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,559
frame it up. So the point was is that in

840
00:55:04,639 --> 00:55:07,199
France of the eighteen nineties, a lot of people mistrusted

841
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:12,159
Freemasons and a lot of people were afraid of devil cultists,

842
00:55:12,679 --> 00:55:16,239
and all he did was to combine them together, and

843
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:19,480
it worked. And that's why it took off. Because he

844
00:55:19,599 --> 00:55:23,199
was telling people what it was they already halfway believed.

845
00:55:24,519 --> 00:55:29,679
So here's what I think happened. Someone, some mysterious person

846
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:35,639
or persons took Taxel's idea and they just tweaked it

847
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:41,440
a little bit. So instead of having a Satanic Masonic conspiracy,

848
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:46,280
they turned it into a Jewish Masonic conspiracy, and they

849
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:49,239
spun it the same way, and it worked exactly the

850
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:54,920
same way because there was already widespread prejudice and mistrust

851
00:55:55,079 --> 00:55:58,880
of those two groups, and that worked together. So the

852
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:02,400
Taxil hoax simply taken and it was turned into the

853
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:06,800
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But by who still

854
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:13,320
don't know. Fascinating stories. Fascin stories, I can see you'd

855
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:18,679
be a lot of fun and a part. It's well,

856
00:56:23,039 --> 00:56:27,519
thank you so much, professor. It's like Reddit, It's the

857
00:56:27,679 --> 00:56:30,000
rabbit hole. It's how far down this rabbit hole do

858
00:56:30,079 --> 00:56:32,639
you want to go, because that's often what you find.

859
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:35,039
You go down and then there's another on something else

860
00:56:35,119 --> 00:56:38,599
takes off, and something else takes off, you know, and

861
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:42,519
pretty soon well sometimes it's you know, it's not all

862
00:56:42,559 --> 00:56:52,679
that complicated. There are cases it is maddeningly complicated, and

863
00:56:53,599 --> 00:56:55,719
in many cases ever knowing what you're looking at is

864
00:56:55,920 --> 00:57:01,440
real or whether it's fabrication. That's the other thing that

865
00:57:01,599 --> 00:57:05,920
you know. I've come across in yes, generally as an historian,

866
00:57:07,159 --> 00:57:08,880
also in a lot of the of the topics other

867
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,599
than the secret societies I work on. Here's a mental

868
00:57:11,679 --> 00:57:16,880
fundamental thing is that people lie all the time. I mean,

869
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:22,559
we don't admitted that we can do and repeatedly, and

870
00:57:22,639 --> 00:57:25,280
some people lie habitually, and some people lie much better

871
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:28,360
than other ones. And this is why you know, this

872
00:57:28,519 --> 00:57:31,719
is today we call this fake news or disinformation, but

873
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:37,679
that's what it is. It's lies. But lies can often

874
00:57:39,119 --> 00:57:44,119
be better than the truth. You know, probably most people

875
00:57:44,159 --> 00:57:47,400
have had some experience with this. If you told the truth,

876
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:50,480
they never believe you. See, the truth can be messy

877
00:57:50,559 --> 00:57:54,880
and it cannot make any particular sense. The truth can

878
00:57:54,920 --> 00:57:58,760
in many cases be fundamentally unnew. But you see, a

879
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,840
lie is a story constructed for a particular purpose so

880
00:58:03,320 --> 00:58:06,960
it can be more believable and more palatable than the truth.

881
00:58:07,039 --> 00:58:11,920
Is that's why we tell people lies when telling them

882
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:16,400
the truth would be painful. And I think most people,

883
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:18,320
if you admit it, you've done that at some point

884
00:58:18,920 --> 00:58:21,800
you have told someone a lie because to tell them

885
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:25,000
the truth would simply be painful, and the lie is

886
00:58:25,079 --> 00:58:30,440
easier for them to swallow. A quote about it, you know,

887
00:58:33,719 --> 00:58:34,960
needs you had a quote about that.

888
00:58:35,679 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 2: People don't want to destroy their illusions because then they

889
00:58:38,039 --> 00:58:39,960
have to face the truth or something of that nature.

890
00:58:41,639 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 3: Maybe not a lot of the same lines, but yeah, true,

891
00:58:44,119 --> 00:58:48,559
you know it's you know, you know, did your dog?

892
00:58:48,719 --> 00:58:50,039
You know you're going to tell the kid did the

893
00:58:50,119 --> 00:58:51,880
dog died? Or you're going to tell them they went

894
00:58:52,039 --> 00:58:55,159
somewhere else. Okay, they went to they went to a

895
00:58:55,199 --> 00:59:00,400
special place. And you see, it served presumably a youth

896
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,480
of this and but that's that's the thing that becomes

897
00:59:04,559 --> 00:59:06,960
so insidious about lies in a way, is that they

898
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:10,360
can function so well. And then what you have, as

899
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:14,400
people begin to construct whole movements and whole organizations around

900
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:18,360
these things, it's going always going to be and also

901
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:22,599
the idea of a greater good. I mean the type

902
00:59:22,639 --> 00:59:25,960
of thing again. You know what what international communism was

903
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:30,039
always selling was a future world that would be a paradise, right,

904
00:59:31,239 --> 00:59:35,480
paradise on earth where there would be no no utopia.

905
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:37,880
But to get to that utopia, you know, we're going

906
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:40,400
to have to you know, there's going to be some

907
00:59:40,559 --> 00:59:43,920
tough times. So you know, people will have to be killed,

908
00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:46,559
Oaths will have to be broken, countries will have to

909
00:59:46,639 --> 00:59:50,119
be betrayed, the existing order will have to be destroyed ruthlessly.

910
00:59:50,519 --> 00:59:53,440
But once all that's done, comrade, you see, the end

911
00:59:53,559 --> 00:59:58,239
result will be paradise for everyone. But in the meantime,

912
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:03,280
you're gonna have to murder this person. Yeah, and it's

913
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:09,519
funny how people would give or or is it simply

914
01:00:09,559 --> 01:00:11,920
the great lie which is told to justify all of

915
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:13,360
these other crimes in the meantime.

916
01:00:15,679 --> 01:00:17,079
Speaker 2: That's interesting because I know, I wrote a book a

917
01:00:17,079 --> 01:00:19,800
couple of years ago on isis the terrorist group and

918
01:00:19,840 --> 01:00:22,159
their recruitment strategies, and I mean it just resembles it

919
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:25,719
so much. You're part of the secret group with you're

920
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:27,639
you're the one who's got this secret knowledge about the

921
01:00:27,719 --> 01:00:29,159
prophecy and all this other stuff.

922
01:00:29,199 --> 01:00:35,039
Speaker 3: It was fascinating. Then you've been chosen, you know, and

923
01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:38,480
you're even more chosen if you're chosen to become a

924
01:00:38,519 --> 01:00:43,920
suicide bomber. You you have been chosen for a great role.

925
01:00:44,079 --> 01:00:47,679
And this will gain you admittance into paradise immediately, and

926
01:00:47,719 --> 01:00:50,000
you know you would have to wait in line, you'll

927
01:00:50,079 --> 01:00:53,199
be able to to go ahead. All of these wonderful

928
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:56,360
things will be available to you because you have been

929
01:00:56,440 --> 01:00:58,840
chosen for this purpose. And the thing is is that

930
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:00,920
it works. It doesn't work work on everybody, but it

931
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:03,519
works on a lot of people. That's all you need.

932
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 5: That's all you need.

933
01:01:05,639 --> 01:01:08,519
Speaker 2: Professor Spence, thank you so much. That's why a secret

934
01:01:08,599 --> 01:01:13,440
society there you go. Absolutely, thank you so much for

935
01:01:13,559 --> 01:01:15,039
doing this. We truly appreciate it.

936
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:22,519
Speaker 3: It's been my pleasure and I hope it's it's enlightening

937
01:01:22,599 --> 01:01:26,039
in some way at leasy mystifying enough so that people

938
01:01:26,079 --> 01:01:27,000
will try to find out more.

939
01:01:28,480 --> 01:01:30,639
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and folks make sure to check out the Great

940
01:01:30,719 --> 01:01:33,639
Courses of the Real History of Secret Societies with Doctor

941
01:01:33,719 --> 01:01:36,440
Richard Spence. It's a great series. I highly recommend it,

942
01:01:36,639 --> 01:01:39,400
lots of fun. Thanks again everyone for joining us.