Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies

Author: Arthur Goldwag
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307456668
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
Did you know? • Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members. • The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers. • Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, “The Box,” are all names for Area 51. An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar—the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate—and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies For Dummies

Author: Christopher Hodapp
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118052021
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Entering the world of conspiracy theories and secret societies is like stepping into a distant, parallel universe where the laws of physics have completely changed: black means white, up is down, and if you want to understand what’s really going on, you need a good reference book. That’s where Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies comes in. Whether you’re a skeptic or a true believer, this fascinating guide, packed with the latest information, walks you through some of the most infamous conspiracy theories — such as Area 51 and the assassination of JFK — and introduces you to such mysterious organizations as the Freemasons, the Ninjas, the Mafia, and Rosicrucians. This behind-the-curtain guide helps you separate fact from fiction and helps you the global impact of these mysterious events and groups on our modern world. Discover how to: Test a conspiracy theory Spot a sinister secret society Assess the Internet’s role in fueling conspiracy theories Explore world domination schemes Evaluate 9/11 conspiracy theories Figure out who “they” are Grasp the model on which conspiracy theories are built Figure out whether what “everybody knows” is true Distinguish on assassination brotherhood from another Understand why there’s no such thing as a “lone assassin” Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, while buns come in eight-packs? Everybody knows its a conspiracy, right? Find out in Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies.

Secret Societies

Author: John Lawrence Reynolds
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 161145042X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
Provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world's most notorious secret societies, chronicling their origins, history, initiations, rituals, beliefs, activities, secret signs, members, and influence.

Cults and Conspiracies

Author: Theodore Ziolkowski
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421422433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco's notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact "a secret without content."

The Secret Society

Author: Robin Brown
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1770229213
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Book Description
Cecil John Rhodes made a fortune from diamonds and gold, became prime minister of the Cape, and had a country named after him, but his ambitions were far greater than that. When he was still in his twenties, after a meeting with General Gordon of Khartoum, Rhodes set up a Secret Society with the aim of establishing a new world order. The society, disciplined on Jesuit-style rules, became Rhodes’s lifelong obsession, and after his death it lived on and grew under the leadership of his executor, Lord Alfred Milner. The society played a key role in the governance of Britain during the Great War and the peace terms to end it, and it was linked to appeasement initiatives involving Hitler, the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson before World War II. Echoes of the Secret Society survive in different guises to this day, including the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the Rhodes Scholarships. In The Secret Society, Robin Brown unpacks this astonishing and largely unknown history. He brings Rhodes, his companions and his successors to life by drawing from diaries and letters, and sheds new light on Rhodes’s homosexuality. Ranging from the diamond mines of Kimberley to the halls of power in Westminster, and peopled with characters such as General Gordon, Leander Starr Jameson, W.T. Stead, Olive Schreiner, the Princess Radziwill, Joséph Chamberlain and David Lloyd George, this book is a page-turner that will make you see the world, both past and present, in a different light.

The New Hate

Author: Arthur Goldwag
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307907074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
From “Birthers” who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States to counter-jihadists who believe that the Constitution is in imminent danger of being replaced with Sharia law, conspiratorial beliefs have become an increasingly common feature of our public discourse. In this deeply researched, fascinating exploration of the ideas and rhetoric that have animated extreme, mostly right-wing movements throughout American history, Arthur Goldwag reveals the disturbing pattern of fear-mongering and demagoguery that runs through the American grain. The New Hate takes readers on a surprising, often shocking, sometimes bizarrely amusing tour through the swamps of nativism, racism, and paranoid speculations about money that have long thrived on the American fringe. Goldwag shows us the parallels between the hysteria about the Illuminati that wracked the new American Republic in the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the 1950s, and he discusses the similarities between the anti–New Deal forces of the 1930s and the Tea Party movement today. He traces Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism and the John Birch Society’s “Insiders” back to the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he relates white supremacist nightmares about racial pollution to nineteenth-century fears of papal plots. “The most salient feature of what I have come to call the New Hate,” Goldwag writes, “is its sameness across time and space. The most depressing thing about the demagogues who tirelessly exploit it—in pamphlets and books and partisan newspapers two centuries ago, on Web sites, electronic social networks, and twenty-four-hour cable news today—is how much alike they all turn out to be.”

Handbook of Conspiracy Theory and Contemporary Religion

Author: Asbjørn Dyrendal
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900438202X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Book Description
Conspiracy theories are a ubiquitous feature of our times. The Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion is the first reference work to offer a comprehensive, transnational overview of this phenomenon along with in-depth discussions of how conspiracy theories relate to religion(s). Bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines, from psychology and philosophy to political science and the history of religions, the book sets the standard for the interdisciplinary study of religion and conspiracy theories.

Secret Societies of America's Elite

Author: Steven Sora
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594778671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
An expose of the dark and critical role secret societies play within the ruling families in America and their influence on American democracy, current events, and world history. • Reveals the enormous influence secret societies still have on contemporary American life. • Shows how the secret Masonic cells that smuggled in the democratic ideals inspiring the American Revolution also enabled the future elite of the new society to build huge fortunes. Elite and secret societies have always been a major force in the history of Western civilization. The alliances formed in secret societies such as the Knights Templar, the Knights of Christ, and the Freemasons transcended patriotism and religious beliefs and had a powerful influence on the establishment of the United States of America. While these secret associations of merchants, smugglers, occultists, gamblers, spies, and slavers succeeded in freeing the United States from foreign domination, the dark side is that the elite used their secret connections to further their own wealth and power. These secret cells did not hesitate to sponsor the assassination of a president and even attempted to break up the union on several occasions when it was deemed expedient. From the Sons of Liberty and the Essex Junto to the Ku Klux Klan, secret societies have played critical roles in building the fortunes of America's elite. Now Steven Sora reveals in alarming detail how secretive societies continue to wield power even today as organizations such as Yale's Skull & Bones unite America's modern ruling families as strongly as Masonic Lodges once connected the Astors, Livingstons, and Roosevelts. Their immense power and wealth allow this elite to control America to an even greater degree than the Templars once dominated Europe.

Isms and Ologies

Author: Arthur Goldwag
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849167753
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
What's the difference between an anarchist and an anarcho-syndicalist, a Platonist and a Neo-Platonist? And how modern can Modernism really be if all the famous modernists are dead? To those who've been humiliated by a knowing reference to Wahhabism at a dinner party, caught short by a casual allusion to Orphism at a private view, or flummoxed by a smug mention of post-structuralism by a fellow member of a suburban book group, Isms and Ologies offers hope and enlightenment. Crackpot convictions, perplexing philosophies, tricky tenets, and wacky Weltanschauungs - Isms and Ologies lists them all, and explains their salient features clearly and accessibly. So, if you're genuinely curious to know the crucial characteristics of phenomenology or just want to lend a veneer of intellectual rigour to your small talk, Isms and Ologies could be just the book you are looking for.

The Illuminati

Author: Robert Howells
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1780289839
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
WikiLeaks and Anonymous are driven by the same ideals and aims as the Illuminati were 250 years ago, and the next counter culture revolution has already begun online. Throughout history governments, dictators and religious leaders have fought to cling to power by either force or manipulation. To counter these there have always been secret societies and groups working in the shadows for the emancipation of humanity. The Illuminati formed in 1776 among European Freemasons and academics with the intention of liberating humanity from physical, mental and spiritual bondage. This brought them into conflict with the ruling elite and religion, but during their brief incarnation they encapsulated the entire ethos of counter-culture into a single system of organized dissent that is still relevant today. The term Illuminati has since become usurped by the idea of a New World Order, but their principles live on through counter-culture and the connected communities of the internet age. Hacktivits and cultural movements like Anonymous and WikiLeaks currently wage war against corrupt corporations and government agencies that try to oppress and exploit society. This book is a wake up call for all who value their liberty and privacy to join the battle to protect counter-culture before it is too late.