Collectivism 135, Part 3: Secret Societies, Dead Horses, and the Equality of the Guillotine
Revised 2021
Hey, and welcome back to Safe White Space!
This is Part 3 of my review for Collectivism 135, a PACE in the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum (ACE). All of these PACEs were written by a fascist goon named Donald Howard. If you don’t know what PACEs are, and need context for the scope of these reviews, check out Collectivism 133, Part 1 posted below:
Today we are getting ACE’s version of the role those “totally evil” secret societies like the Illuminati and the Jacobin Clubs had on the revolution. We’ll also look at the two main characters (by ACE’s telling) in this conspiratorial buildup, Adam Weishaupt and Denis Diderot. ACE’s primary position is that these two social circles and these two figures were operating under the direct control of Satan to cause the French Revolution.
Before we begin, let’s recall ACE’s objectives for this PACE and section. For the PACE overall, they’re aiming to create more intelligent American citizens. Specifically in this section, we’re supposed to be receiving the “overwhelming bulk of evidence,” which apparently will counter the global historical consensus. So far, we’ve got jack shit, and that doesn’t change.
Let’s take this in the order ACE presents them, starting with Denis Diderot. For the record, below, ACE doesn’t explain what/who/which “shadowy group” is being referenced here. I think the student is suppose to assume “the Illuminati,” but that hasn’t yet been introduced:
Exhibit 148
The shadowy group of revolutionaries hired the utterly immoral political extremist and self-styled philosopher, Denis Diderot to be editor-in-chief of the momentous project. Diderot had absolutely no qualifications for the job and, like many future writers in the communist movement, was simply a hired hack fronting for others who wished to remain anonymous…
By means of innuendo, reversal, and out-right prevarication; Diderot and the other contributors to the Encyclopedia (including Rousseau, Condillac, Helvetius, Quesnay, Turgot, d’Alembert, Voltaire, and others) mercilessly attackec accepted religious, social, philosophical, and political thought.
Collectivism 135, page 26
Diderot was not hired by a “shadowy group of revolutionaries” to contribute to the Encyclopedia, but specifically by André Le Breton. He was also Breton’s third pick as opposed to being some specially selected evil minion. Further, Diderot was the editor-in-chief, it’s not like he even wrote a majority of the Encyclopedia’s articles.
It is common knowledge that Diderot was a “hired hack,” for various unknown people, but as a sort of ghost writer. It’s not like what he was actually writing was a secret.
Further Diderot was actually quite qualified for the job: “From 1729 to 1732 he studied in Paris at the Collège d’Harcourt or at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand or possibly at both these institutions, and he was awarded the degree of master of arts in the University of Paris on September 2, 1732. He then studied law as an articled clerk in the office of Clément de Ris but was more interested in languages, literature, philosophy, and higher mathematics.”
I thought this was fascinating: “In 1749 Diderot published the Lettre sur les aveugles (An Essay on Blindness), remarkable for its proposal to teach the blind to read through the sense of touch, along lines that Louis Braille was to follow in the 19th century,”.
It blows my mind how Donald can call someone else unqualified to write education. The loser who graduated from Bob Jones University and wrote a curriculum that my dumbass can deconstruct. Contrast Donald’s resume with what Diderot’s qualifications meant in the 1700s. Shit, even for most of the 1900s in most places, this would be an impressive resume.
Welp! That’s all we get about Denis Diderot from ACE. There are biographies on Diderot that are waaaay more detailed than this one paragraph garbage, if you want to learn more about him. The man was (supposedly) a primary suspect in the fomenting of the French Revolution through the Encyclopedia, and yet, this is all ACE has on him. Again, I’m not convinced that we’re receiving the “overwhelming bulk of evidence,” that disproves global historical consensus about the French Revolution.
Maybe I’m being impatient…
Adam Weishaupt
We’re, again, only going to get one paragraph that is specifically about this supremely evil man. Here is ACE’s biography of Adam Weishaupt:
Exhibit 149
Collectivism 135, page 27
For this section, I included the questions because I want you to see just how stupid easy this PACE is. What kind of questions are those?? It’s no wonder I didn’t retain anything from these PACEs. I also want to draw attention to this editorializing, “one of the most incredibly evil personalities the world has ever seen.”
Calm down, pal. Five pages ago you were whitewashing a genocidal slave trader (the King). I’m soo down to discuss “ incredibly evil.”
The Illuminati
I’ve been dreading getting into the Illuminati. Here are ACE’s version of events:
Exhibit 150
Adam Weishaupt founded his secret Order of the Illuminati (the “illuminated” or “enlightened ones”). As the French Encyclopedists provided the propaganda for the communist revolution, so the Illuminati provided the apparatus, i.e. the secret communistic cell.
…
The upper grades (or degrees) were opened only to those hand-picked individuals who showed some natural proclivity toward the Illuminati’s secret aims. These upper degrees were totally secret, completely conspiratorial, and lacked any vestige of the humanitarianism espoused by the lower degrees.
Collectivism 135, page 27
In the top paragraph is a common trick Donald employs in both his manifestos and in the ACE curriculum. Because he previously taught his students about the evil machinations of the “French Encyclopedists,” he can now explain the Illuminati’s role in the French Revolution in one sentence, by simply comparing them to the “Encyclopedists.” Done. Eezie Peezie.
Weaving throughout all of these paragraphs is this awful editorializing, like how the Illuminati was “altered to serve Weishaupt’s more sinister purposes,” or, “thus were masked the true nature and purpose of Weishaupt’s evil Order.” That way, when the student reads “These upper degrees were totally secret, completely conspiratorial,” they naturally draw the conclusion for themselves that the reason for this secrecy could only have been for evil purposes.
My question is, if “totally secret,” how do you know that they’re evil?? What are you basing this on? ACE goes on to claim:
Exhibit 151
The majority of those individuals who joined the Illuminati were good, moral, and even godly men who had simply been misled and were totally unaware of any other than the seemingly humanitarian aspects of the Order.
Collectivism 135, page 27
Okay, if the majority were “good, moral, and even godly men,” the fuck have we been doing here? By Donald’s own accounting, the only known Illumanists, other their Weishaupt, were “godly men,” with Godly goals. Why assume they are evil?
I’ll remind you that at no time does a primary or even secondary source get listed or quoted in this section of the PACE. So when he describes everything as “totally secret,” and then writes this next bit, you know he’s just making this up:
Exhibit 152
Compare the sevenfold, totally communistic, program of the Order of the Illuminati with its two previously discussed predecessors:
the overthrow of all established governments,
the abolition of all private property and inheritance,
the destruction of all natural loyalty and the creation of a sense of “one-worldism,”
The repudiation of the family as the basic social unit—to include the abolition of marriage and the institution of state adoption of children,
the deification of man, and
the renunciation of all morality.
Collectivism 135, page 28
I laughed out loud at “the renunciation of all morality.” Kay, dude. I can’t find a list like this anywhere. Not one, and it’s not even close.
Another reason this is wholly stupid, there is NO evidence that the Illuminati survived the imprisonment of the society’s leaders and the diaspora of it’s members in 1785. Conspiracy theorists, however, rely on planting this seed of doubt in order to make the entire story work. All they have is a circumstantial insinuation. Here is the PACE version:
Exhibit 153
In July of 1785, an Illuminist emissary named Lanz, who was carrying secret correspondence to other initiates in Silesia, was struck by lightning and killed. The government of Bavaria, upon investigation of the incident, discovered the incriminating clandestine papers. The information learned from these letters prompted the authorities to launch surprise raids on the houses of two high-ranking German Illuminists. These raids secured further evidence about the Order’s evil conspiracy. The Order of the Illuminati was thoroughly exposed, and many key leaders were imprisoned. The intelligence gathered concerning the conspiracy was transmitted to all the governments of Europe. Arch conspirator—Adam Weishaupt—and his evil Order of the Illuminati disappeared from view, but not necessarily from existence! Most of the chief conspirators either fled to, or were exiled to, foreign countries.
Collectivism 135, page 29
You really cast your seeds of doubt on infertile ground when you tell me that everyone in this conspiracy was caught, the perpetrators “thoroughly exposed,” and all the governments were informed of the situation, AND that the majority of these people were “good men.” In an era when people were regularly tortured and burned to death for having “dangerous ideas,” I don’t think these “foreign countries” would have been tolerant of these immigrants if they posed an actual threat to anyone.
I read this webpage titled A Bavarian Illuminati primer Compiled by Trevor W. McKeown:
“Evidence would suggest that the Bavarian Illuminati was nothing more than a curious historical footnote. Certainly, this is the opinion of masonic writers. Conspiracy theorists though, are not noted for applying Occam’s razor and have decided that there are connections between the Illuminati, Freemasonry, the Trilateral Commission, British Emperialism, International Zionism and communism (if you read the writings of Alberto Rivera and Jack T. Chick of Chino California), that all lead back to the Vatican (or if David Icke is to be believed, the British house of Windsor and extra-terrestrial lizard people) in a bid for world domination. Believe what you will but there is no evidence that any Illuminati survived its founders.” Their list of sources at the bottom is extensive.
This webpage by Massimo Introvigne on bitterwinter.org explains how thoroughly the Illuminati was exposed:
“The worst, for the Illuminati, came in October 1786. The Bavarian police finally raided the house of Zwack in Munich. Zwack had been warned in time and had left Bavaria. However, he had no time to hide or destroy an extensive documentation on the Illuminati, from which the police learned who founded and directed them, a subject on which the authorities had until then fairly vague information. The police also seized several letters from Weishaupt to Zwack and an incomplete, but extensive, collection of notebooks and instructions from the Order.
The inventory compiled by the Bavarian police also included documents that were quite compromising for Zwack, including notes praising suicide and atheism, the plan for founding a women’s initiatory order, instructions on how to prepare invisible ink, false seals, and poisons.”
This to me is the smoking gun. If the Illuminati were really still around, in the way this PACE claims, you should be swimming in primary source material that proves your point, but they don’t, because they can’t.
The Jacobin Clubs
Another conspiracy theory, one proffered on the next page of this PACE, is that if the Illuminati got broken up, they were intentionally absorbed by Freemasons and essentially still run the world. Supposedly, the Freemasons then repurposed these little minions to do their bidding and created the Jacobins. That’s how Donald, through a string of extremely loose associations, accuses figures like Maximilien Robespierre and Mirabeau of being “Illuminists.”
I find this argument to be hollow and cheap. For one, you could write (and some have) an entire book on just the Jacobin Clubs. Instead, we get a paragraph of conspiracy about Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the Stuart House, and the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t worry, none of that should mean anything to you.
When Donald finally explains who the Jacobins are, this is all that we get:
Exhibit 154
By 1789, the communistic, revolutionary Jacobins had organized themselves into a full-fledged political party, dominated by the diabolical Comte de Mirabeau and Maximilien[sic] Robespierre. The Jacobins, in a very real sense, may be thought of as the first bona fide “communist party” in history. It must also not be overlooked that the majority of the French Jacobins, including Mirabeau and Robespierre, were also Illuminists!
Collectivism 135, page 30
I found an article that came close to corroborating this theory about Robespierre and Mirabeau. It was on BibleEvidence.com and they start their essay this way:
“The Bible prophecy of Revelation 11 centers around events that took place in France during the French Revolution. The power that ruled in France during the Revolution, is symbolized by the "beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit" (Rev. 11:7).”
No thanks.
The PACE credits the “The Wesleyan revivals” with preventing the Jacobin “cancer” from coming to England:
Exhibit 155
The preaching of God’s Word produced in England a Christian climate which refused to foster the cancer of communistic Jacobism imported to England from France during and after the French Revolution of 1789.
Collectivism 135, page 37
Whatever.
He goes on to kiss the asses of figures in the Christian “Great Awakenings,” - Theodore Frelinghuysen, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield. The PACE goes so far as to conclude that these ministers saved England and America from the Jacobins by saving souls for Christ:
Exhibit 156
In the same manner, the preaching of Whitefield and the Wesley brothers in England kept those same excesses from crossing the English Channel from France and destroying England. Likewise, in an era when America was in even greater danger of being swept along with the Jacobin propaganda imported to this country from revolutionary France, the preaching of the Gospel in the Second Great Awakening stemmed the tide of communism.
Collectivism 135, page 41
There isn’t much else to say on this topic. I’ve made Swiss cheese of Donald’s/ACE’s version of events leading up to the Revolution, so I’ll briefly summarize the end of this PACE so we can finish up. The student goes on to learn about the events of the French Revolution in 9 paragraphs over 5 pages. You can tell how full of crap this historical analysis is when topics, in order, go:
“The Revolution Begins” - 1 paragraph
“Legislative Assembly” - 1 paragraph
“National Convention” - 1 paragraph, but it’s long enough to count as 2
“The Reign of Terror” - 6 paragraphs…
Guys, the French Revolution lasted 10 years, and the Reign of Terror lasted just one, and it was in the middle. You’d never know that as a student, however, because the Terror is by far the main focus of the PACE. This same energy is carried through the PACE’s explanation of the second and third French Revolutions. No interest in honesty, just an agenda to push. At the very least, if we pretend this PACE was created in good faith, God is undoubtedly very very disappointed in Donald.
There is one last thing I want to say before we put this PACE to bed. While the French Revolution undoubtedly had it’s faults, to include moral faults, I learned that what the guillotine represented to a large portion of the French population is completely different than the interpretations we Americans have. When we think of the guillotine, we think of the Terror. It’s the lowest point for the Revolution, and that’s all we Americans tend to know. However, the guillotine was created as an effort to further equalize the classes.
Hear me out.
As brief as possible: Rich people would (generally) be put to death by the sword, or some other clean method that didn’t require too much suffering on the part of the victim. Poor people, however, were often burned to death, drawn and quartered, broken on the wheel, or tortured to death in some other way. The guillotine was created in order to make executions more humane. While it was a terrifying time for some, the guillotine wasn’t this grotesque thing.
It represented to the people that at least they could achieve an equality in death, even if they couldn’t in life. I think there is something to that. At the very least, cut my head off. Don’t burn me. Sheeeesh.
Below I’m going to leave you with the PACE’s conclusion about the French Revolution and the American Revolutions. It’s exactly the bullshit you expect. Thank you all for reading, and keep your millstones handy:
Exhibit 157
Collectivism 135, page 41
Dumb.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6