Part Two: The Prophecy/Conspiracy Genre
God TV was launched in 1995 from the U.K. by South African couple Rory and Wendy Alec. The network claims to reach a half billion people in North America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. Broadcast from Jerusalem since 2002, the founders claim they have a "divine mandate to win one billion souls." Wendy Alec is the author of Journal of the Unknown Prophet and claims to have had a visitation from Jesus through which she was shown visions of the future. She is also author of the ongoing series of fiction books titled the Chronicle of Brothers. The books are published by Warboys Publishing, Ltd., in London, founded in 2001 and thus far publishing only Wendy Alec's books. The series juxtaposes narratives of modern times with Lucifer's fall from heaven and biblical-based stories. When Lucifer realizes that humans are being given God's DNA, he goes into a rage of envy and finds a way to pollute the human race with his own DNA. An array of demonic characters including the Dread Warlocks of Ishtar, Black Magi, Demon Witches of Babylon, Shaman Kings and interact with the "Race of Humans" in both biblical times and the present. The narrative parallels widespread New World Order conspiracy theories. The following passage is from the closing pages of Messiah: The First Judgment and introduces the next book in the series, Son of Perdition. The scene takes place on September 10, 2001 as the Jesuit priest Lorcan DeMolay contemplates the events planned for 9/11. De Molay is looking over the Council of 13 Illuminati:
"He surveyed the men seated before him. The Council of Thirteen, the highest orders of the Committee of 300, the Black Nobility of Venice. The Supreme Mother Council of the of the thirty-third-degree masons of the Scottish Rite. Note that the wording is slightly different in Son of Peridition than the preview at the end of Messiah: The First Judgement. In hardcore anti-Semitic literature, like Fritz Springmeier's 13 Bloodlines of the Illuminati, the Illuminati families are Jews, including the Rothschilds, and those the author claims are crypto-Jews, including the Rockefellers. In overt anti-Semitic literature the Rockefellers are claimed to have infiltrated Mainline Protestant denominations in order to destroy Christianity from the inside. Similar narratives claim Jews as the plotters behind Jesuits and Freemasons. The 13 Bloodlines of the Illuminati is still marketed by The Prophecy Club and these 1990s videos and similar narratives are now all over the internet. One YouTube segment of Springmeier speaking for the Prophecy Club on the 13 bloodlines has been viewed almost 300,000 times. This same motif of 13 satanic bloodlines is also used in conspiracy theories about U.S. currency in which it is claimed that the symbols on bills including groups of 13 stars, etc. indicate that America is controlled by this Jewish/Freemasonry/Illuminati cabal. (The symbols are in quantities of 13 because they represent the 13 colonies.) The Son of Perdition continues with the meeting of the Council of 13 Illuminati:
...De Molay spoke softly, his voice low and cultured. His accent was distinctly British, London W1K to be precise, but it carried a subtle exotic inflection that was indefinable.
Jaylin Alexander, former Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency continues, explaining that the hijackers have been tricked into believe that they will return to airports where planes will be waiting to take them and the hostages away. He adds, 'They will die unwilling martyrs of the Brotherhood. Textbook black-ops scapegoats.' Then the conspirators map out their plans for after 9/11.
`In the Fall of 2008, we will crash the market . . .' Werner Drechsler, president of the World Bank, said very softly. 'Plunge the dollar. There will be a deliberate contraction of Julius De Vere continues,
'By 2025 we finish the job. During the run on the banks, we intentionally collapse the Federal Reserve and replace it with our One World Central Bank. They will cry out to us to do anything to stop their pain.'
The book continues with a laundry list of issues common to New World Order conspiracy theories. -American sovereignty will be eliminated. Following this, the chief of British Intelligence Services states,
`We eradicate resisters. Patriots. Constitutionalists.' Read more from the online preview of Son of Peridition. American history is rewritten, as seen in this book series, as controlled by these demonic forces. Lucifer explains that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated because of his resistance to a central bank. At the core of the prophecy/conspiracy genre is the theme seen above, and also vocalized on God TV and throughout much of the Religious Right, that the Illuminati are preparing concentration camps in which to imprison resistors. Some versions claim that these concentration camps are being prepared with gas and/or guillotines for the persecution of the "new Jews" - Christian Patriots. Dramatizations of this persecution of Christians can be seen throughout the prophecy/conspiracy genre including John Hagee's video "Vanished: In the Twinkling of an Eye" produced with Cloud Ten Productions and subsequent "documentaries" and videos by Cloud Ten. Nesta Webster and Early 20th Century Conspiracy Theories Nesta Webster, a member of the British Union of Fascists, wrote about the Illuminati and secret societies in the early 1900s. She authored several books and pamphlets including "World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization" (1922), "Secret Societies and Subversive Movements" (1924), and "The Need for Fascism in Great Britain" (1926). Webster contributed to a series of articles in the London Morning Post in 1920 following the paper's publishing of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion under the title "The Jewish Peril." Webster claimed that the French Revolution was masterminded by a Illuminati/Jewish/Freemasonry/Jesuit conspiracy. Interest in her work was later revived in the U.S. by the John Birch Society. Pat Robertson, in his 1991 book The New World Order, quoted Webster and repeated her claims that the French Revolution was instigated by Illuminati who infiltrated the French government. Robertson merged historical conspiracy theories with end times prophecy, much like American Fundamentalist leaders of the 1920s and 1930s who merged their Dispensational narrative with anti-Semitic conspiracies of the period. When end times prophecy is added to the conspiratorial stew, the conspirators become not only centrally organized, but minions of the devil leading a war against Christianity. In some versions, the villains are portrayed as descending from a demonic bloodline. From Robertson's The New World Order:
"In earlier chapters, we have traced the infiltration of Continental Freemasonry by the new world philosophy of the Order of the Illuminati, and its subsequent role in the French Revolution. We then were able to find clear documentation of the occultic-oriented secret societies claiming descent from Illuminism and the French Revolution played a seminal role in the thinking of Marx and Lenin."-page 177 Note that in overt anti-Semitic media the "Mystery Babylon" religion is claimed to have been passed on to the Hebrews during the biblical Babylonian captivity and is the source of occult powers used to manipulate financial markets. Another elaborate version of the "Mystery Babylon" narrative has been used against the Roman Catholic Church. Alexander Hislop popularized this conspiracy narrative in 1853 in a pamphlet called The Two Babylons, in which he claimed that the Catholic Church veered from Christianity during the reign of Constantine to embrace the occult worship of Mystery Babylon initiated by Nimrod and Semiramis. John Hagee tells a similar narrative of the history of Catholicism and describes the destruction of Rome and "Romanism" in the end times. Another overt anti-Semitic conspiracist sourced by Robertson in New World Order was Eustace Mullins, author of several books including Secrets of the Federal Reserve, which Glenn Beck has promoted on his Fox News show. Mullins explains in the reprint of another of his books, The World Order: Our Secret Rulers, that he did not think to call it "New World Order" at the time because he had traced the conspiracy back over 5000 years. This volume starts with the Rothschilds, and includes Walter Rathenau as a major leader of the Illuminati world conspiracy. Mullins credits Rathenau as the source of the ideas for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. (Rathenau was also Jewish and the Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic until assassinated in 1922.) A ploy that is used by conspiracy theorist writers is to claim that many innocents were duped by the Illuminati and therefore there is nothing anti-Semitic, anti-Jesuit, or anti-Mason about the stories. Others claim these narratives can't possibly be anti-Semitic because they're being told by "pro-Israel" Christian Zionists. Regardless similar narratives have historically had serious consequences. Whether those marketing these conspiracy theories are doing it out of ignorance or with malicious intent, fear mongering and scapegoating can result in horrific real world consequences. The Dangers of Scapegoating The cartoon in the graphic is from the May 1935 Der Heidelberger Student. By 1935, the student newspaper had become a Nazi mouthpiece. The cartoon shows a Freemason, a Jew, and a Jesuit conspiring in secret against Germany, with the caption "Sie Sind Entlarvt!" or "Found At Last!"
Wendy Alec's series Chronicle of Brothers books are fiction and one could argue that they should be viewed simply as provocative entertainment, something like Dan Brown's fictional novels with religious themes. (Dan Brown's portrayal of the Illuminati in The DaVinci Code and other books has surprisingly little in common with rampant New World Order narratives.) However, like the Left Behind series, Chronicle of Brothers is being marketed as authored by a "prophet" with secret biblical knowledge, and in this case, someone who claims to have received visions directly from Jesus. As described in Part One of this article, God TV has regularly featured end times prophecy experts who promote similar conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the New World Order. Son of Perdition is marketed on God TV with a selection of other end times prophecy books presented as non-fiction as a package for $79.95 in order to "help you with a much greater understanding of the end times." The Chronicle of Brothers is advertised as a "masterpiece of ancient hidden truths" and her fans send comments like, "Your visions of heaven and hell can only come because God has given them to you." The books interweave scenes like the one above with dramatically rewritten biblical events, presenting a continuity in the demonic powers that manipulated the earth in biblical times and in the present. The same demonic figures that control the earth in the modern scenes (through the year 2021) were portrayed as manipulating Jews in the New Testament as Pontius Pilate contemplated what to do with Jesus. From The First Judgment, page 311:
The youth's incessant roar rose through Jerusalem's reddening dawn skies. "We want Jesus!" they cried. "Give us Jesus." I haven't finished reading all of the books published in the series thus far, but it is apparent that the Antichrist figure in the stories is Adrian De Vere, one of three earthly brothers whose lives parallel the brother angels in the story - Gabriel, Commander in Chief of the First Heaven's Armies; Michael, Lord Chief Justice of Angelic Revelators; and Lucifer, Sovereign Ruler of the Race of Men. Both Gabriel and Michael also have the titles of Chief Princes of the Royal House of Yehovah. Adrian De Vere is the youngest ever Prime Minister of England, president of the United States of Europe and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. In Son of Perdition he brokers a peace treaty and nuclear disarmament pact between Russian, the Arab nations, the U.N., the E.U., and Israel called the "Ishtar Accords." Demonization of the U.N. and the E.U., and any Middle East peace process, is not unusual in end times prophecy media. John Hagee claims the Antichrist will emerge from the European Union, and in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series the Antichrist is Secretary General of the United Nations. As described in hundreds of other end times prophecy media products, peace accords and nuclear disarmament are claimed to be a trick of the Antichrist. Both Dispensationalist and end times evangelists who reject the pre-Tribulation Rapture teach that the Tribulation period will begin when Israel signs a peace treaty with the Arab and Islamic nations of the Middle East (a peace treaty that supposedly can only be brokered by the Antichrist). Wendy Alec's Antichrist figure, Adrian De Vere, promotes the "Ishtar Accords" quoting John F. Kennedy,
"Next month - in Babylon - a pact between Russia, the Arab nations, the United Nations, the European Union and Israel will be signed. A nuclear disarmament pact that will last for forty years. The first phase - the seven-year Ishtar Accord - to be signed in Babylon." As in the Left Behind series, the political insinuations and attacks in Chronicle of Brothers are clear. However, Wendy Alec's books and end times experts interviewed on God TV's programming are cautious in the way they present the villains of New World Order conspiracy theories. They do not include overt references to Jews or Jewish sounding names, at least not while on God TV. There are claims that this brand of New World Order conspiracy theory is not anti-Semitic, and could not be since many of the end times "experts" are also prominent Christian Zionists. I find this disingenuous on the part of those promoting the prophecy/conspiracy narratives, since all of their prophecy timelines require the end of Judaism as the prerequisite for the Millennium or 1000-year millennial Kingdom on earth. It may not be couched in typical anti-Semitic terminology, but teaching fantasies of a imminent utopia on earth that can be achieved once Rabbinic Judaism is terminated is anti-Semitic, regardless if there are Jewish and Israeli leaders who will look the other way while accepting support from some of the same people marketing these narratives. Simply removing overt references to Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, or whomever, does not mean that the conspiracy theories become benign. You can change the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" to anything - a bear, a shark, or the abominable snowman. When the story is told, those hearing it will still envision a wolf. These scapegoating narratives have a long and sordid history.
The next segment of this article will be an examination of possible reasons why we're not seeing more outrage about New World Order conspiracy theories despite the impact they are having on political discourse and society.
Part Two: The Prophecy/Conspiracy Genre | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
Part Two: The Prophecy/Conspiracy Genre | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
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