MENSTRUAL SHOW
They laid in Their Own urine and excrement, singing Their woes in menstrual shows
Now a Mother shudders as another Mother's Daughter's youngest Brother stepped to HeR littlest Daughter's oldest Brother, now HiS blood runs cold
As if the experiments sanctioned by this garbagement with malice intent isn't meant for Our genocidal interment and if all else fails, well there's always the gestapopo
That menstrual flow in the boughs of those boats was the signal We weren't going to acquiesce Our survival
That saltwater period was serious biznizz, traced back to the first disobedience in The Garden of Eden and ever since then We've been procreatin' children sleeping with Angels, demons and Aliens to produce strange and evil offspring
They've formed their own Hells on Earth like the kkk, Illuminati and other clandestine secret societies
Time to get this Revolutionary show on the road but put down the weapons and fellas pick up Your guns, tap a snow bunny and have some fun, deposit dominant genes between her buns and ween out the infestation and put' em on the run
The Revolution won't be televised taking place between the thighs and in time they'll all see through the veil of the nwo's lies that a menstrual show was the weapon of choice to finally Darken their sky
scene from The Birth of a Nation
Blackface minstrelsy was the first theatrical form that was distinctly American and was at the epicenter of the American music industry for much of the 19th century. White theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to Shakepear's "Othello," even before the English settlement at Jameston, Virginia, but characters in blackface began appearing on American stages by the late 18th century, mainly to provide comic relief, and the stereotypical "tall-tale-telling Yankee" and "frontiersman" caricatures were joined by "Sambo." As early as the 1820s, blackface performers called themselves "Ethiopian delineators." However, Thomas Dartmouth Rice's song-and-dance number, "Jump Jim Crow", which he claimed to have been inspired by an old, limping black stable hand, brought blackface performance to prominence in the early 1830s, to the extent that the "Boston Post" claimed, "The two most popular characters in the world ... are [Queen] Victoria and Jim Crow." In 1843, Dan Emmett, the abolitionist author of "Dixie," the unofficial Southern national anthem, and three other performers billed as the Virginia Minstrels staged a complete concert at the New York Bowery Amphitheatre, and thus was born the minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment. Soon afterwards Edwin Pearce Christy formed Christy's Minstrels, combining the Virginia Minstrels' bawdy schtick with the refined singing of the Ethiopian Serenaders (who featured the work of Christy's own composer Stephen Foster) and established the genre's three-act template. Minstrelsy featured stock characters such as the slave (Jim Crow), the dandy (Zip Coon), the mammy (Aunt Dinah Roh), her counterpart the old darky (Old Uncle Ned), the provocative mulatto wench (Lucy Long, almost always played by men in drag), and the black soldier. Though minstrels claimed that their songs and dances were authentically black, nearly all of the performers and songwriters were white. (All-black troupes appeared by 1855, though they also performed in blackface.) Minstrelsy's reaction to "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly" is indicative of white American attitudes toward race. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 antislavery work was the best-selling novel (and, behind the Bible, the 2nd-best-selling book) of the century; it did not take long before slapstick "Tom" acts supplanted other plantation narratives, in which Uncle Tom himself was portrayed as a harmless bootlicker to be ridiculed (hence the current "uncle Tom" epithet), and "Tommer" companies actually specialized in these burlesques. Despite the pro-plantation attitudes, however, minstrelsy was banned in many Southern cities because of its association with the North and its focus on "black" lifestyles. Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass described blackface performers as "the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens."
ReplyDeleteIt was not until the 1870s, when jubilees (spirituals) entered the repertoire that genuinely black music was performed. Charles Callender bought Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels in 1872; renamed Callender's Georgia Minstrels, they became the most popular black troupe in America, and 6 years later they were purchased by J. H. Haverly, who turned the variety acts into spectaculars, with lavish scenery and as many as 19 performers on stage at once, and applied promoter P.T. Barnum's tactics of relentless advertising and sensationalism. His United Mastodon Minstrels had over 100 members. When his company was away on a European tour, Gustave and Charles Frohman promoted their own "Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels," then bought up Haverly's group; their merged troupe had a virtual monopoly on the black minstrel market. In content, black minstrelsy differed little from its white counterpart, though they placed a new emphasis on plantation subjects even as white troupes drifted from them; they also added religious themes, and commonly closed their opening act with a high-stepping military brass band burlesque (an innovation by Callender's Minstrels). In the South, black performers had to stay in character off stage, dressed in ragged "slave clothes" and perpetually smiling, and troupes left town quickly after each performance; they had so much trouble securing lodging that they hired whole trains or had custom sleeping cars built, complete with hidden compartments to hide in. Meanwhile, other troupes also tried to adapt to changing American tastes in entertainment; for instance, Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels began performing in skimpy costumes and tights in 1970, leading to at least 11 all-female troupes by 1871; eventually, these revolved into the separate genre of "girlie shows," and mainstream minstrelsy began to employ female impersonators. By the turn of the 20th century, the minstrel shows began to lose their popularity, though they survived as professional entertainment until about 1910. But blackface performers continued in vaudeville; the most famous of them was Al Jolson, the first genuine entertainment superstar, whose film "The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first "talkie." The minstrels' varied structure of songs, gags, "hokum" and dramatic pieces continued into vaudeville, variety shows, and sketch comedy shows on TV such as "Hee Haw," and the endless barrage of gags and puns was perpetuated in the work of the Marx Brothers and the films of David and Jerry Zucker. The hokum blues genre carried over the simple-minded stock characters (sometimes rendered as rustic white "rubes") into early blues and country music, and many of the legendary black entertainers of the early 20th century began in black minstrelsy, including W. C. Handy, Ida Cox, and Ethel Waters, while white minstrels such as Uncle Dave Macon helped popularize the banjo and fiddle in modern country music. The Rabbit's Foot Company was a variety troupe founded in 1900 by Pat Chappelle that updated the minstrel tradition and promoted genuinely black musical styles as late as 1950; at various times the "Foots" included Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Louis Jordan, Brownie McGhee, and Rufus Thomas. The traditional "stump speech" became an important precursor to modern stand-up comedy. Many minstrel tunes have come to be thought of as popular folk songs. "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" was Virginia's state song until 1997, and "My Old Kentucky Home" remains the state song of Kentucky. However, popular entertainment also perpetuated the racist minstrel stereotype of the uneducated, ever-cheerful, and highly musical African-American.
ReplyDeleteThe Ku Klux Klan (KKK, or simply "the Klan") is the name of three distinct organizations in the US that have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration via terrorism aimed at groups or individuals they opposed. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society. The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in December 1865 by six former Confederate soldiers, probably as a fraternal social club modeled after the Sons of Malta. Members invented the name "Ku Klux Klan" as a punning satire on the Greek letters commonly used by college fraternities, using the Greek word "kuklos" (circle) as the base, and they made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities. But whatever their first intent may have been, they quickly transformed into a terroristic resistance group against Northern occupation, Southern collaboration, and African-American freedman under the leadership of former cavalry general (and before that, slave trader) Nathan Bedford Forrest, who boasted that the Klan was an "invisible" nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice; but in 1969 he called for the Klan to disband, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace." Although there was little organizational structure above the local level, similar groups rose across the South and adopted the same name and methods of murder and flagrant intimidation, including the assassinations of Arkansas congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several members of the new state constitutional conventions that sought to regain autonomy by satisfying Northern conditions. In the Carolinas, from January 1866 to June 1867, the Klan committed at least 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, and otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the 1868 elections. In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed Enforcement Acts, which president Ulysses S, Grant enforced in prosecuting and suppressing Klan crimes, and the movement quickly faded.
ReplyDeleteIn 1915 William Joseph Simmons held a meeting to revive the Klan in Georgia, but it attracted only two aging former members. However, inspired by the success of the first American full-length movie "The Birth of a Nation," directed and co-written by D. W. Griffith, adapted from the novel and play "The Clansman" by Thomas Dixon, Jr., he founded the second Klan at Stone Mountain, outside Atlanta, Georgis, with 15 "charter members," again with pretensions of being a fraternal order. This second organization adopted a standard white costume and added cross burnings (both of which were derived from the movie) and mass parades as agitprop techniques, while also creating a formal organization and colorful titles for its officers, including Klabee (treasurer), Kligrapp (secretary), Kloreroe (delegate), and Imperial Kludd (chaplain) -- the only titles to carry over from the first Klan were "Wizard" for the overall leader of the Klan and "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of security). In 1917 Simmons published "ABC of the Invisible Empire," which identified the Klan's goals:"to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism." In 1920 Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke, who adopted a modern business system of using full-time paid recruiters ("Kleagles"), who took it to every state (and Canada, where it targeted Eastern European immigrants). The national headquarters had a monopoly on regalia (costume) sales, and the Kleagles were paid via initiation fees (Klecktoken). At its peak in the mid-1920s, it claimed about 15% of eligible Americans, some 4–5 million men, particularly in urban areas of the Midwest and West, with its densest per capita membership in Indiana (nearly 1 of 5 eligible citizens). But internal divisions, criminal behavior, and external opposition brought proved to be its downfall, and membership dropped to about 30,000 by 1930, though it survived into the 40s. In the 1950s numerous independent, unconnected, local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and racial desegregation called themselves the "Ku Klux Klan." They often forged effective alliances with Southern police departments, politicians, and churches, and frequently employed violence and murder against its foes. Today, there are perhaps 150 "Klan" chapters (Klaverns), with at least 5,000 members nationwide. Perhaps 2/3 of them are in the South and most of the rest in the lower Midwest. Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis, and have become increasingly "nazified," adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Zinc, Arkansas, claims to be the biggest Klan organization in America today, but most experts believet that the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a North Carolina–based group, is the largest.
ReplyDeleteThe Illuminati (Latin plural for "enlightened") is a name given to several groups, real and imaginary. A look at the history of the actual Illuminati may shed light on why many subsequent groups, either claiming or being purported to have links to the original organization, have often been alleged to conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations, in order to gain political power and influence and to establish a New World Order ("NWO"). Johann Adam Weishaupt was raised by his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt, who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, as well as a proponent of the rationalist philosophy of Christian Wolff. At seven Weishaupt began his formal education at a Jesuit school and graduated from the University of Ingolstadt at age 20 with a doctorate of law. Four years later he became a professor of law at his alma mater. After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, he became a professor of canon law, a position that had been held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 he was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Feder of the University of Göttingen, and they would both eventually be critics of Kantian idealism. Believing that the Jesuits continued to exert authority to control his course materials, he became deeply anti-clerical and, with four law students, founded the Bund der Perfektibilisten (Covenant of Perfectibility) in 1776 to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power, taking the Owl of Minerva as their symbol. As he wrote, "At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices." The five Perfectibilists adopted aliases -- Weishaupt became Spartakus, and the others were Ajax, Agathon, Tiberius, and Erasmus Roterodamus. Ajax, the group's most active charter member, while studying in Munich shortly after the formation of the order,
ReplyDeleterecruited one of Spartacus' former students, the head of the Bavarian National Lottery, Xavier von Zwack, who soon took charge of the Munich "command." A system of mutual espionage, in which each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior whom they did not know, kept Spartakus informed of the activities and character of the members, and he elevated his favorites to Areopagus, the ruling council, and the order prescribed in great detail everything which the members had to read and believe. However, he soon became disenchanted with Ajax, who at first too eagerly tried to recruit unsuitable candidates and then became neglectful due to an erratic love-life; Spartakus suspected him of misappropriating subscription funds and intercepting his correspondence with Zwack. In 1778, Ajax graduated and took a post outside Bavaria, taking no further interest in the order, and Zwack started recruiting people who were older and more important; by the end of the summer the order had grown from 12 to 27 members in 5 commands: Munich ("Athens"), Ingolstadt ("Eleusis"), Ravensberg ("Sparta"), Freysingen ("Thebes"), and Eichstaedt ("Erzurum," which formed an autonomous province in July 1780). During this early period, the order had three grades (Novice, Minerval, and Illuminated Minerval), but only the Minerval grade involved a complicated ceremony, in which the candidate was given secret signs and a password. Some novices were permitted to recruit, becoming Insinuants. Christians of good character who were rich, docile, willing to learn, and between 18–30 years were sought, but Jews, pagans, monks, women, and members of other secret societies were specifically excluded.
Spartakus had once contemplated joining the older order of Freemasons but thought membership was too expensive and incompatible with his own goals, and he continued to have difficulty dissuading his followers from joining them, but in 1777, in order to acquire material to expand his own ritual, he joined Lodge "Prudence" of the Rite of Strict Observance, a new Scottish Rite which baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund had introduced to Germany, which he renamed "Rectified Masonry" and, after 1764, the "Strict Observance" (while referring to the English system of Freemasonry as the "Late Observance"). The Rite appealed to German national pride, attracted the non-nobility, and was allegedly directed by "Unknown Superiors." The Strict Observance was particularly devoted to the reform of Masonry, with special reference to the elimination of the occult sciences and the establishment of cohesion and homogeneity in Masonic through strict discipline, the regulation of functions, and so forth. Spartakus' progress through the three degrees of "blue lodge" Masonry taught him nothing of the higher degrees he sought to exploit; nevertheless, in 1778, after contemplating a name change to the Bees, he renamed his society Illuminatenorden (Order of Illuminati). Zwack came to believe that the inner secrets of the Masons rested on knowledge of older religious rites and the primitive church and persuaded Spartakus that, in order to obtain the Masonic secrets, their own order should enter into friendly relations with Freemasonry and obtain dispensation to set up their own, independent, lodge. They obtained a warrant from the Grand Lodge of Prussia (the Royal York for Friendship), and a new lodge was founded in Munich in 1779, Theodor zum guten Rath ("Theodore of the Good Council," so named to flatter the new prince-elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria, who as Prince Elector Palatine, had cheered liberal reformers by founding an academy of science, stocking up museum collections, and supporting the arts. But the new elector wanted territory he could bequeath to his illegitimate children, so he signed an agreement with kaiser Josef II to exchange southern Bavaria for part of the Austrian Netherlands. The widow of his predecessor, his heir apparent (his cousin, duke Karl II August of Zweibrücken), king Friedrich II of Prussia, and most of the German minor states opposed the deal, leading to the War of the Bavarian Succession, which ended with the 1779 Peace of Teschen. Karl Theodor finally accepted the Bavarian succession, but agreed that his illegitimate descendants could not inherit; Austria acquired the Innviertel, a part of Bavaria in the basin of the Inn river.
ReplyDeleteThe new lodge was quickly packed with Illuminati, who staged a coup and took it over. A member, Costanzo Marchese di Costanza, wrote to the Royal York pointing out the discrepancy between the fees dispatched to their new Grand Lodge and the service they had received in return. The Royal York, unwilling to lose the revenue, offered to confer the "higher" secrets of Freemasonry on a representative that their Munich brethren would dispatch to Berlin, so Costanza set off for Prussia in April 1780, with instructions also to negotiate a reduction in Theodore's fees. On the way quarreled with a Frenchman over a woman with whom the shared a carriage, and the Frenchman sent a message ahead to Berlin, denouncing Costanza as a spy. He was arrested and only freed from prison with the help of the Grand Master of Royal York. Meanwhile Lodge Theodore established masonic relations with the Union Lodge in Frankfurt, affiliated with the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the oldest Masonic grand lodge, thus gaining independent recognition, and severed its dependence on the Grand Lodge of Prussia. As a new mother lodge, it could now spawn new Illuminated Freemasonry lodges on its own. However, the Illuminati only had one member in the chapter of "Elect Masters" attached to Lodge Theodore, and they retained constitutional superiority. A treaty of alliance between the order and the chapter was signed, and four daughter lodges were created, but friction continued. Late in 1780, Adolph Freiherr Knigge, the young chamberlain of the Weimar court, attended a convention of the Rite of Strict Observance to present his plans for its reform but found no support for his scheme. Costanzo told him that the order that he sought to create already existed and showed him material relating to the Minerval grade. Then Spartakus contacted him and even promised to support his interest in alchemy and the "higher sciences" of the occult, but as a precondition for being admitted to the Illuminati higher grades he had to recruit new members. Knigge actively worked his fellow Masons, targeting the masters and wardens who ran the lodges and had the power to place the entire membership at the disposal of the Illuminati if they wished. In this way, the order expanded rapidly in central and southern Germany and obtained a foothold in Austria.
ReplyDeleteSpartakus finally had to confess that the "Most Serene Superiors" which he claimed to serve, and the supposed antiquity of his order, were fictions, and that the higher degrees had yet to be written (though the Illuminatus Minor grade was being drafted); he promised Knigge a free hand in their creation. In 1782, Knigge tabulated his new system of grades, arranged in three classes: The nursery (the Noviciate, the Minerval, and Illuminatus minor), the Masonic grades (the three "blue lodge" grades of Apprentice, Companion, and Master were separated from the higher "Scottish" grades of Scottish Novice and Scottish Knight), and he Mysteries (the lesser mysteries, Priest and Prince, and the greater mysteries, Mage and King, but the rituals for the greater mysteries were probably never written). Knigge also mediated between Spartakus and the the Areopagus, which found the leader to be stubborn, dictatorial, and inconsistent. Knigge identified two areas of concern: the emphasis which Spartakus placed on recruiting university students (which had swelled to about 300) meant that senior positions were filled by young men with little practical experience, and the order's anti-Jesuit ethos had become a general anti-religious sentiment, which Knigge knew would be a problem in recruiting the senior Freemasons that the order now sought to attract. Knigge also wanted to obtain a constitution from London, but the Illuminati leaders realized that the chapter would block that move, so, until such time as they could take over other Masonic lodges that their chapter could not control, they had to be content to rewrite the three degrees for the lodges which they administered. In Munich, however, the first half of 1782 saw huge changes in the government of Lodge Theodore. In February, Spartakus had offered to split the lodge, with the Illuminati going their own way and the chapter taking the remaining traditionalists into their own continuation of Theodore, but the chapter unexpectedly capitulated, and the Illuminati gained complete control. In June, lodge and chapter both sent letters severing relations with Royal York, citing their own faithfulness in paying for their recognition and Royal York's failure to provide any instruction into the higher grades. Its neglect of Costanza, its failure to defend him from malicious charges or prevent his expulsion from Prussia, were also cited. It had made no effort to provide Costanza with the promised secrets, and the Munich Masons suspected that their brethren in Berlin now relied on the mystical French higher grades which they sought to avoid.
ReplyDeleteMartinism is a form of Christian mysticism and esoteric Christianity concerned with the fall of the first man, his state of material privation from his divine source, and the process of his return, called "Reintegration" or illumination. It was first transmitted through a masonic high-degree system established around 1740 in France by Martinez de Pasqually, who founded the Order of the Elus-Cohens. ["Elus" means "the elect" or "the chosen;" Cohen is Hebrew for "priest."] In the Shrine, the highest of its three degrees, which is subdivided into three sub-degrees of which the highest was the Master Reau-Crois, evocation of entities belonging to the Divine Plane was carried out. The chief evocation was that of the "Mender,", Jehoshua, and the basic methods were those of the Key of Solomon, including the use of circles, names of angels, planetary hours, and symbols. The magical operations of the lower degrees were intended to establish contact between the operator and the Invisible World. There were also exorcisms intended to strangle demonic influence in the universe and thwart its power over men. His student Jean-Baptiste Willermoz founded the Scottish Rectified Rite (Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité-Sainte, the Good Knights of the Holy City), a reformed variant of the Rite of Strict Observance; its highest degrees demonstrated the philosophy underlying the practices of the Elus-Cohens. The Rite of Strict Observance was in a critical state. Its nominal leader was prince Carl of Södermanland (later Charles XIII of Sweden), openly suspected of trying to absorb the rite into the Swedish Rite, which he already controlled. Suspicion turned to open contempt when it was learned that Carl regarded the Stuart heir as the true Grand Master, and the lodges of the Strict Observance all but ignored their Grand Master. The German lodges looked to duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel for leadership.
ReplyDeleteAfter months of delay, a 35-member convent finally opened in July 1782 in the spa town of Wilhelmsbad on the outskirts of Hanau, ostensibly to discuss the future of the order but actually a struggle between the German mystics, under duke Ferdinand and their host Prince Karl of Hesse-Kassel, and the Martinists under Jean-Baptiste Willermoz. Knigge had wanted to ally the Illuminati and the Rite of Strict Observance, but Spartakus saw no point in an alliance with a dying order. So Knigge was given full authority to recruit the Masons who opposed the "Templar" higher degree of the Strict Observance. The lack of any coherent alternative to the two strains of mysticism allowed the Illuminati to present themselves as a credible option, since the only dissenting voices to mystical higher grades were Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, who was horrified by Martinism but had not yet formed any alternatives, and Franz Dietrich von Ditfurth, a judge who was the master of the Joseph of the Three Helmets lodge in Wezlar and already a member of the Illuminati. Ditfurth campaigned for a return to the basic three degrees of Freemasonry, which was the least likely outcome of the convention since the mystics already had coherent plans to replace the higher degrees, and to replace all of the higher degrees with a single fourth degree, with no pretensions to further Masonic revelations. At the convent, Ditfurth blocked the attempts of Willermoz and prince Karl to introduce their own higher grades by insisting that their full be revealed to the delegates. In frustration, the German mystics enrolled count Leopold Kollowrat with the Illuminati with a view to affiliate later. Finding no support, Ditfurth left the convent, telling the Areopagus that he expected nothing good of it. In the end, in an attempt to satisfy everybody, the Convent of Wilhelmsbad renounced the Templar origins of their ritual while retaining the Templar titles, trappings, and administrative structure. The Germans also adopted the French name of the order and imported some Martinist mysticism into the first three degrees, which were now the only essential degrees of Freemasonry. The new "Scottish Grade" introduced with the Lyon ritual of Willermoz was not compulsory, and each province and prefecture was free to decide what, if anything, happened after the three craft degrees. Prince Karl and duke Ferdinand remained at the head of the order, but in practice the lodges were essentially independent, and individual lodges were allowed to fraternize with lodges of other systems. Finally, in an effort to show that something had been achieved, the convent, at great length, regulated etiquette, titles, and a new numbering for the provinces. What the Convent of Wilhelmsbad actually achieved was the demise of the Strict Observance: It renounced its own origin myth, along with the higher degrees which bound its highest and most influential members, it abolished the strict control which had kept the order united, and it alienated many Germans who mistrusted Martinism. In response, Bode, immediately entered into negotiations with Knigge and joined the Illuminati; prince Karl joined the following month.
ReplyDeleteSpartakus proposed a new federation of Grand Lodges which would practice an agreed-upon, unified system of the three essential degrees of Freemasonry and be able to practice any system of higher degrees they wished to pursue; members would be free to visit any of the "blue" lodges, in any jurisdiction; all lodge masters would be elected, and no fees would be paid to any central authority; groups of lodges would be subject to a "Scottish Directorate," composed of members delegated by the lodges, to audit finances, settle disputes, and authorize new lodges, which in turn would elect provincial directorates which would elect inspectors who would elect the national director. This system, in his view, would correct the current imbalance in German Freemasonry, in which Masonic ideals of equality were preserved only in the lower three "symbolic" degrees, while the various higher degrees were dominated by the elite, who could afford research in alchemy and mysticism. To Spartakus and Knigge, the proposed federation was also a vehicle to propagate Illuminism throughout German Freemasonry. Their intention was to use the new federation, with its emphasis on the fundamental degrees, to remove all allegiance to Strict Observance, thus allowing the "eclectic" system of the Illuminati to take its place. Having advocated the deregulation of the higher grades of the German lodges, the Illuminati then announced their own, acquired from their "unknown Superiors." Lodge Theodore, newly independent from Royal York, set itself up as a provincial Grand Lodge. Knigge, in a letter to all the Royal York lodges, denounced the decadence of that Grand Lodge, claiming their Freemasonry had been corrupted by the Jesuits. Strict Observance was attacked as a creation of the Stuarts, devoid of all moral virtue. The Zinnendorf rite of the Grand Landlodge of the Freemasons of Germany was suspect as well, because its author was in league with the Swedes. This direct attack, however, offended many of its readers. The Grand Lodge of the Grand Orient of Warsaw, which controlled Freemasonry in Poland and Lithuania, was happy to participate in the federation, but only as far as the first three degrees. Its insistence on independence had kept it from Strict Observance and now would keep it from the Illuminati, whose plan to annex Freemasonry rested on its own higher degrees. The Freemasons most likely to be attracted to the federation saw the Illuminati as an ally against the mystics and Martinists but valued their own freedom too highly to be caught in another restrictive organization. By the end of January 1783 the Illuminati's Masonic contingent only had seven lodges. The non-mystical Frankfurt lodges created an "Eclectic Alliance," which was almost indistinguishable in constitution and aims from the Illuminati's federation, and the Illuminati lodges simply joined the new alliance, and three Illuminati became members of the were committee charged with writing the new Masonic statutes. But the creation of the Eclectic Alliance had undermined all of the subtle plans of the Illuminati to spread their own doctrine through Freemasonry, though they continued to recruit well at an individual level, especially after Karl Theodore reversed his initial reforms and resumed Bavaria's old repression of liberal thought, leading to a general resentment of the monarch and the church among the educated classes and provided the Illuminati a perfect recruiting ground.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Illuminati circles elsewhere expanded. Reaction to state Catholicism led to gains in Austria, and footholds were obtained in Warsaw, Pressburg (Bratislava), Tyrol, Milan, and Switzerland. The circle in Mainz almost doubled from 31 to 61 members. Several Freemasons from Prudence lodge, disaffected by the Martinist rites, joined Lodge Theodore, which set itself up in a gardened mansion that contained its library of liberal literature. The number of verifiable members at the end of 1784 was around 650, though Spartakus later claimed 2,500 by including members of Masonic lodges that the Illuminati claimed to control. The importance of the order was its successful recruitment of the professional classes, churchmen, academics, doctors, and lawyers, and its acquisition of powerful benefactors. Grand duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, his brother and successor August, governor Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg of Erfurt, duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his chief assistant in Masonic matters Johann Friedrich von Schwarz, and Count Metternich of Koblenz, count Brigido, governor of Galicia, count Kolowrat, chancellor of Bohemia, his vice-chancellor baron Kressel, count Pálffy von Erdöd, chancellor of Hungary, count Banffy, governor and provincial grand master of Transylvania, count Stadion, Austria's ambassador to London, and baron von Swieten, minister of public education, all joined. Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, the Berlin writer and bookseller, became disillusioned after joining, believing its aims were chimeric and that the use of "Jesuistic" methods to achieve them was dangerous; the Swiss poet-theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater refused to join, not believing the order's humanitarian and rationalist aims were achievable by secret means and that its society's drive for members would ultimately submerge its founding ideals.
ReplyDeleteAt all costs, Spartakus wished to keep the existence of the order secret from the Rosicrucians, who already had a considerable foothold in German Freemasonry. Kolowrat was already a high ranking Rosicrucian. An Areopagite joined the Rosicrucians, and he was promptly informed that he could not be a member of both organizations; in his letter of resignation he insisted that the Rosicrucians did not possess secret knowledge and specifically identified Lodge Theodore as an Illuminati lodge. While clearly Protestant, the Rosicrucians were pro-monarchic, pro-clerical, opposed to the Illuminati vision of a rationalist state run by philosophers and scientists, and not above promoting their own brand of mysticism with fraudulent seances, and a conflict became inevitable as Knigge began recruiting prominent Rosicrucians and mystics with Rosicrucian sympathies. The Prussian Rosicrucians, under Johann Christoph von Wöllner, who had acquired effective control of the Three Globes and its attached lodges, used them to launch a sustained attack on the Illuminati, accusing them of atheism and revolutionary tendencies. In November 1783 the Three Globes described the Illuminati as a sect that sought to undermine Christianity and turn Freemasonry into a political system, and a year later it refused to recognize any Illuminati as Freemasons. The Rosicrucians spied on suspected Illuminati and completely shut down Illuminati recruitment in Tyrol.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Spartakus replaced the council of the Areopagites with an ineffective "Council of Provincials" and he sought to regain some of the considerable power he had ceded to Knigge, who felt that his contributions were under-appreciated, and that Spartakus' continuing anti-clericalism clashed with his own mysticism. Matters came to a head over the grade of Priest. The consensus among many of the Illuminati was that the ritual was florid and ill-conceived, and the regalia puerile and expensive; some refused to use it, while others edited it. Spartakus demanded that Knigge rewrite it, but Knigge pointed out that it was already circulated as ancient, with Spartakus' blessing. Spartacus told other Illuminati that the Priest ritual was flawed because Knigge had invented it, and Knigge threatened to tell the world how much of the Illuminati ritual he had made up. Knigge stated that he could no longer endure Spartakus' pedantic domineering, which frequently assumed offensive forms, and accused him of "Jesuitism." -- "And was I to labor under his banner for mankind, to lead men under the yoke of so stiff-necked a fellow? —- Never!" In July 1784 Knigge left the order and returned all relevant papers, while Spartakus published a retraction of all the slanders against him. But Knigge's involvement with the Illuminati, his championship of human rights, and a period of serious illness led to the loss of his support from his aristocratic sponsors. He found some measure of financial stability again with a position in Bremen in 1790, where he died in 1796. But he is best remembered for his book "Über den Umgang mit Menschen" (On Human Relations), an authoritative guide to proper behavior, politeness, and etiquette. Though the work is more of a sociological and philosophical treatise on the basis of human relations than a how-to advice book, the German word “Knigge” has come to mean books on etiquette or is simply a synonym for "good manners." But in forcing Knigge out, Spartakus deprived the order of its best theoretician, recruiter, and apologist.
ReplyDeleteThe final decline of the Illuminati was brought about by the indiscretions of their own Minervals in Bavaria, and especially in Munich. In spite of efforts by their superiors to curb loose talk, politically dangerous boasts of power and criticism of monarchy caused the existence of the "secret" order to become common knowledge, along with the names of many important members. Small numbers of Illuminati had positions in many civic and state governing bodies, and the fate of legal disputes were rumored to depend on the litigants' standing with the order. The Illuminati were blamed for several anti-religious tracts. Two of them were on the Ecclesiastical Council (one of them was even elected treasurer), and their opposition to Jesuits resulted in the banned order losing key academic and church positions. In Ingolstat, the Jesuit department heads were replaced by Illuminati. In response, Karl Theodor banned the Illuminati and all other secret societies in 1784, 1785, 1787 and 1790. The home of Zwack, the second-in-command, was searched, and much of the group's literature was disclosed; in 1787 the government published documents and internal correspondence it had seized. Spartakus lost his university position and fled to Gotha, where he was protected by duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. He wrote a series of books on the Illuminati before his death in 1830, but otherwise the order left behind no enduring traces of influence, not even on its own erstwhile members. Between 1797 and 1798, Augustin Barruel's "Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism" and John Robison's "Proofs of a Conspiracy" publicized the theory that the Illuminati had actually survived and represented an ongoing international conspiracy, including the claim that it was behind the French Revolution. Both books spurred many reprints and paraphrases by others, and in New England preachers such as Jedidiah Morse gave sermons against the Illuminati which were printed and reported in newspapers, becoming key documents for the Anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s and 30s. Several recent and present-day fraternal organizations claim to be descended from the original Illuminati and openly use the name "Illuminati" or a variant, while others, such as the Ordo Templi Orientis, have "Illuminati" as a level within their organizational hierarchy. Weishaupt himself has also survived in popular culture. In "The Illuminatus! Trilogy,", Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson claim that he killed George Washington and took his place as the first president of the United States. Dave Sim also has a Weishaupt-Washington character in his comic book novel series "Cerebus the Aardvark," where he is involved in attempts to republican confederalize the city-states of Estarcion and accumulate capital unencumbered by government or church. He is also mentioned by rapper Cage in El-P's "Accidents Don't Happen" ("Bush got a ouija to talk to Adam Weishaupt").
ReplyDelete"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. He first recorded it for his 1970 album "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox," on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongos. He re-recorded it with a full band as the B-side to his first single, from the album "Pieces of a Man."
ReplyDeleteYou will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Mendel Rivers to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
on reports from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the right occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so god damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally screwed
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash or Englebert Humperdink.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
In 2011 Lupe Fiasco released a poem dedicated to the late Gil Scott-Heron entitled "The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized." The song's title was originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power movements in the United States. Its lyrics either mention or allude to several television series, advertising slogans, and icons of entertainment and news coverage that served as examples of what "the revolution will not" be or do. Roy Clark responded in 1972 with his song, "The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka." (Scott-Heron had accurately predicted that as part of the revolution, several TV shows that were popular with rural audiences (which he mentioned by name in the lyrics) would no longer be relevant; all but one of them were canceled by 1971 as part of the programming strategy known as the "rural purge." Two such shows were the subjects of Clark's response, though Scott-Heron had not mentioned them; they survived by going into syndication. Since then Many artists have incorporated the title: for example, Public Enemy's song "Countdown to Armageddon" from the album, "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," and Snoop Dogg's "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach" on the Gorillaz' album "Plastic Beach." Others have used it for their own ends: Common ("The 6th Sense" from the album, "Like Water for Chocolate)" says, "The revolution will not be televised, the revolution is here." Elvis Costello ("Invasion Hit Parade" from "Mighty Like a Rose"): "Incidentally the revolution will be televised/With one head for business and another for good looks/Until they started arriving with their rubber aprons and their butcher's hooks." Criticizing misogyny in mainstream hip hop, Sarah Jones sang a feminist interpretation, "Your Revolution," with the line, "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs." KRS-One re-imagined the song, using different lyrics by Stacy Wall, for a Nike commercial. Molotov translated it into Spanish, with different cultural referents ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (La Revo)" from "Con Todo Respeto"); Genaside II also changed the referents ("The Genaside Will Not Be Televised" on "Ad Finité." Rayden sang "La revolución nunca será televisada" (The revolution never will be televised) in "No nacimos ayer." The last track on Pulp's album "This Is Hardcore" has the line, "The revolution was televised, now it's over, bye bye." Prince's band The New Power Generation employed the hook, "One, two; the revolution will be colorized..." ('The War"). Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain used the title for their documentary on the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt. Artist Tom Burns produced a T-shirt entitled "The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized." In June 2013 a sign in Greek quoting the poem's title was posted on a window inside Greece's state-run broadcaster ERT, as employees resisted its closure by the government under pressure from the EU, ECB, and IMF to cut public spending.
ReplyDelete"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex" was published in 2009 by South End Press.
getapopo is a combination of the derogatory slang word for police ("popo") and the common abbreviation of the Nazi "Geheime Staatspolizei," the Secret State Police, created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by joining the executive and the judicial branches into one authority, but from 1934 it was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the The Schutzstaffel (SS, "Protection Squad"), the paramilitary unit responsible for enforcing racial policy and operating the concentration and extermination camps. The Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the state, the neutralization of opposition, the policing of the people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and the provision of domestic and foreign intelligence.
ReplyDelete