Demonic Theories

How Conspiracy Theories Morph and Proliferate

In the fifth-century Devi Mahatmya (The Goddess’ Greatness), Raktabeeja is a demon whom it is almost impossible to kill because a replica of himself springs up from every drop of his blood that falls on the ground. Goddess Kali finally kills him by drinking his blood before it can touch the ground. The Hydra in Greek religious narrative is similar. He is a multi-headed serpentine monster who grows two heads for every one that is cut off. Heracles kills him by having each head stump cauterised after the head is cut off.

The English word “hydra-headed” refers to a problem that proliferates instead of diminishing when it is attacked. This is a fit description for conspiracy theories. Whenever a conspiracy theory is debunked, many people read or hear of it for the first time, and some start believing it if it happens to dovetail with their prejudices.

About a month ago, a retired professor in India sent me a text message alleging that the Illuminati and the Freemasons control the world. Another Indian retired professor attributed the Iran war to Israel’s need to keep “stirring the pot.” This second idea is a somewhat milder conspiracy theory which alleges that Israel must keep the middle east in turmoil in order to survive or to deflect attention from its internal problems and retain American support.

I had vaguely heard about the Illuminati theory before but had no idea of its details or of how it had reached India. Most conspiracy theories originate in the West but are now finding fertile ground in Asia too although as yet amongst a very small minority because there is no pre-existing prejudice against Jews in countries like India. In the West, conspiracy theories encompass all classes of people, from Xuequin Jiang, a researcher and influencer at Harvard, to semi-literate people who follow the likes of Candace Owens.

Since this particular theory seems to begin with the Freemasons, let me begin with them. Freemasons are the oldest all-male fraternity still in existence. Freemasonry arose out of medieval stonemasons’ guilds. Guilds were professional associations of craftsmen and merchants.

The Catholic Church persecuted Freemasons for many centuries because Freemasons require only a belief in a supreme being, not a belief in Christianity. Any man can join, so long as he is not an atheist. Freemasonry emphasises good moral character, philosophical enquiry, and commitment to human progress. Their main activity is supporting charitable work. My father’s older brother, a pipe-smoking, twinkly-eyed, and witty man, was a member in Hyderabad, South India.

Freemasons engage in pageantry, dressing up, and elaborate rituals, a form of play that updates the secret clubs that children delight in. Modern men, whose everyday dress has been denuded of colour, and whose everyday life is devoted to work and money, enjoy this kind of camaraderie and playfulness.

The Catholic Church accused Freemasons of mysticism, occultism, and witchcraft, accusations also levelled at many other dissenting groups. Despite this, Freemasonry survived, and was successful, attracting powerful men as members, and now has six million members worldwide.

In 1917, the Catholic Church excommunicated Freemasons and banned books favouring them. In 2023, the supposedly liberal Pope Francis confirmed the ban on Catholics becoming Freemasons. The Orthodox Church of Greece also considers Freemasons apostates, calling them a secret organization.

But Freemasons are far from a secret organization. They have large buildings in most big cities. They require members to keep their rituals confidential, but this, of course, is no longer possible. The rituals have been revealed in many books.

Both far-right regimes, like Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, and far-left regimes, such as the former Communist states, have persecuted Freemasons. There are many Muslim Freemasons even though the Caliph outlawed them in 1748, Pakistan banned them in 1972, and Saddam Hussein proclaimed the death penalty for those who “promote or acclaim Zionist principles, including freemasonry.”

Here, we come to the heart of the matter. All conspiracy theories in the West and the Middle East, sooner or later blame the Jews. Like Freemasons, but for a much longer time, Jews have survived persecution and are still flourishing. Success always breeds envy. No surprise, then, that Hamas, in article 28 of its Covenant, states that Freemasonry, Rotary Club, and similar groups “work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions ...”

This was also the reason for hostility to the Illuminati, a short-lived society founded in Bavaria, Germany, in 1776, to promote Enlightenment ideals like secularism, reason, and gender equality, and to oppose superstition and government abuse. The word Illuminati means “Enlightened.” Its founder was the only non-clerical Professor in a Jesuit institution. The Catholic Church opposed the Illuminati because of its doctrines, and the government, under Catholic influence, banned it in 1785. The Illuminati lasted only a decade but it became a convenient peg on which to hang conspiracy theories.

From 1798 onwards, a series of books appeared, claiming that the Illuminati had gone underground and become a powerful international conspiracy. In 1802, Augustin Barruel published a book claiming that Jews, Freemasons, and Illuminati wanted to demolish all monarchies and the Vatican, in order to establish a World Republic. This theory keeps popping up over time and all kinds of violent events, from the French Revolution to the assassination of President Kennedy, have been blamed on the Illuminati.

These nonsensical theories pale before the ones invented by David Icke. In 1999, he claimed that gigantic lizards from other planets have taken human form and become world leaders. Many of these lizard-people are Jews and they engage in child sacrifice. Icke seems to have based his ideas on science fiction works by writers like Lovecraft and Robert Howard.

Icke’s 1994 book, The Robots’ Rebellion, repeatedly refers to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but calls them the “Illuminati Protocols,” and defines the Illuminati as the “Brotherhood elite at the top of the pyramid of secret societies world-wide.” Icke claims the Freemasons are part of the reptilian elite and the Illuminati.

Icke uses the now popular strategy of blaming not Jews but “Zionists” for the Protocols. The Protocols in fact are a forgery fabricated in Russia around 1902, to accuse Jews of plotting to dominate the world. The Iranian government has used the Protocols to propagate this conspiracy theory against the Jews.

Icke denies the Holocaust and claims that the Rothschilds, a Jewish family, funded Hitler. Icke’s books have been translated into 11 languages and have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He has spoken in 25 countries and even addressed the Oxford Union. Alice Walker, whose novel, The Color Purple, is taught in schools and colleges worldwide, is a follower of Icke and says that Israel and the Talmud are demonic. In 2018, she listed Icke among her favourite authors.

All that remained after these absurd but horrifying developments was for a work of fiction, marketed as fiction (unlike the Protocols), to spread a conspiracy theory. This happened when American novelist Dan Brown published his badly written novel, The Da Vinci Code, in 2003, claiming that the Catholic Church had covered up Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene and his biological descendants up to the present day. In 2006, the film appeared, starring Tom Hanks.

Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons (2000; film 2009), depicts the Illuminati as still existing and practising ritual murders, especially of officials of the Catholic Church. However, he depicts the Freemasons as a benign organization. Many of Brown’s readers cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. This is a common characteristic of believers in conspiracy theories. I will shortly publish an essay on how this confusion works in other matters, for example, films about Shakespeare’s life.

Jeffrey Epstein became the perfect eye of the conspiracy theory storm. Since he was Jewish, every possible crime, including that of eating babies, could be piled not just on his head without evidence, but on the heads of Mossad, the Illuminati, everyone Epstein ever knew (and he knew everyone who was anyone, from right to left and everything in-between), and of course, Israel, the Jews, and Satan. The internet is now rife with people expressing the absolute conviction that Epstein was a tool of the Zionist-led Illuminati and of an elite Satanic society that eats babies, practices incest, and engineered 9/11. Candace Owens (who converted to Catholicism in 2024) and Nick Fuentes, who was raised Catholic, are merely the tip of this iceberg.

These wild theories would be somewhat amusing if they did not encourage multiple attacks worldwide on Jewish individuals and associations, such as Chabad. One website labels Chabad “the Satanic Jewish cult behind Illuminati.” Tucker Carlson has just accused Chabad of being behind the Iran war. At this point, history and chronology and facts matter not at all.

It doesn’t matter that the Illuminati, for the single decade that they existed, excluded Jews from membership. All of the targets - Illuminati, Freemasons, Knights Templar, lizard-people, gay people, or any other individuals and groups you don’t like on right or left – are somehow connected to Jews (or Zionists if you prefer that) and definitely to the Mossad and Israel.

Even though the Catholic Church has, historically, been the most powerful opponent of Freemasons and of the Illuminati, Xuequin Jiang can claim that the world is controlled by the Illuminati who are composed of three groups – the Jesuits who control the Vatican, the Sabbatean Frankists who control Israel, and the Freemasons who control the U.S. He can do this because almost none of his followers knows anything about the history of these groups. And, of course, he claims that these secret societies will ultimately control the world from Jerusalem.

I had never heard of the Sabbatean Frankists. It turns out they were an 18^th-century group that broke away from Judaism and deliberately broke Jewish law. Today, there are only about 2000 of them left, living in Turkey. But these facts do not deter the likes of Jiang or Candace Owens. She claims that the Frankists are Jews and that they control Israel.

Since children are seen as the ultimate innocents, they must be the ultimate targets of this Satanic world-controlling force. But not any children. Most definitely not Jewish children. There is a straight line from the medieval accusations that Jews killed Christian children and drank their blood to the present-day lie that Israel deliberately kills “Palestinian,” that is, Muslim children and steals their organs.

A variant of this is the gloating lie that members of the shadowy cabal which constitutes the “global deep state” are all pedophiles. I say “gloating” because its proponents seem to especially enjoy dwelling on pedophilia. Owens has called Judaism a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons...[and] child sacrifice ...” (for more details of Owens’ demonic lies, see https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/375800/my-letter-to-candace-owens/ )

No evidence is needed, any more than it was needed in 1144 when Jews in Norwich, England, were accused of torturing and ritually murdering 11-year-old William in 1144 or nine-year-old Hugh of Lincoln in 1255. The latter case resulted in the execution of 19 Jews and these and other cases exacerbated the persecution of Jews until they were expelled from England in 1290. Today, Nick Fuentes laughs while threatening that his sentiments are mild compared to what is going to happen to American Jews in future.

The sentimental but equally lethal version of these hateful accusations is many people’s performative hand-wringing on social media about Gazan and Iranian children killed in war. These people maintain complete silence about Israeli children (whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian or Druze), who were killed on October 7 or in suicide bombings and rocket attacks before and after that date.

Conspiracy theories may be hydra-headed and spring back up faster than they can be knocked down. But their multiple tentacles all connect to one centre. This centre is the idea that the world is controlled by a single force. That force is the opposite of the Christian or Muslim God. It is Satan and it has a Jewish face. This is no surprise as many medieval Christians and Muslims believed Jews were Satanic.

These theories may be impossible to kill. But like Heracles or like Goddess Kali, we have to keep trying.