Sabtu, 01 Agustus 2015

CONSPIRACY RISING Chapter 3 From Conspiracy to Superconspiracy, from Europe to America: Nesta Webster and Modern Conspiracy Thinking Part 2

CONSPIRACY RISING
Chapter 3
From Conspiracy to
Superconspiracy, from
Europe to America: Nesta
Webster and Modern
Conspiracy Thinking






Nesta Webster



Nesta Helen Bevan was born on August 14, 1876, at Trent Park, her family’s estate in Hertfordshire, England. Her father was Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, a great-grandson of the founders of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, and Co. (later Barclays Bank), and her mother, Frances Shuttleworth, was the daughter of the bishop of Chichester. The Bevans were therefore wealthy, but Webster wrote in her autobiography that her father’s religious beliefs he had “devoted his life to the service of God” did not allow for luxury. She expressed the feeling, however, that her father, his religious faith, and his appreciation for the community were never fully appreciated by his banking colleagues. She was puzzled by this, for in her view, Barclays’ success “was made . . . by the known integrity and good faith of the men who used the wealth it brought them for the service of the community” [emphasis added]. While many conspiracy theorists (including Queenborough) identify international finance as one component of attempts at world domination, this connection is not immediately apparent in Webster’s work. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of wealth as a way to safeguard the British community. What one might take from this connection, however, is her implicit recognition of the way in which economic wealth was an essential component of that community’s well-being. It suggests, too, that British Christianity is also somehow part of this equation.

When Nesta was 13, her father died, and the family home passed to her eldest half-brother; she therefore lived out the remainder of her youth in Europe, a period that she later described with all the regret the term implies, as an “exile” from Britain. At the age of 17, she returned to England to finish her education. Her mother forbadeher to attend Cambridge or Oxford (believing both institutions to be too liberal), and as a result, she attended Westfield College in Hampstead, where she initially entered a degree program in Classics and Mental and Moral Science. Frustrated by its required algebra courses, however, she eventually chose to continue her studies as a nondegree student, attending lectures in which she had an interest, primarily, as she records it, in English literature, Greek, and Mental and Moral Science.

Nesta left college in 1897 with only a partial degree. She turned 21 that year, and inherited her share of Robert Bevan’s estate. Her reflection on that experience left her frustrated and unsure of what do with her life.  She wrote:

I had lived long enough now amongst women working for a purpose to despise an idle life and long to embark on some useful career. But what careers were open to women at that date? I might train to become a High School teacher like most of my college companions, but would it be right to take the bread out of the mouth of someone who needed it?.

Instead of immediately embarking on a career, she therefore opted instead to take an extended tour around the world that included Africa, India, Ceylon, Japan and Canada. In addition to the experience of world travel, Nesta recounts that this journey also fostered within her a respect for the world’s many religion faiths, and she concluded that “behind all great religions there lies a central truth, which might be compared to a lamp with many coloured sides.” Her open-mindedness on the subject of religion was also reflected in the fact that she developed an ongoing interest in Buddhism, which led her to spend an extended period of time in Burma, a place she was “heartbroken” to leave.

As a female member of the “educated class,” Webster felt that she had only three career options: nurse, school teacher, or district visitor, and none of these appealed to her. In 1903, she was still uncertain as to which career to follow but increasingly convinced that her true vocation was writing. In part to discover herself and her vocation, she then embarked on a second trip to Egypt, and an extended trip to Australia, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon),  and India. During the latter part of this trip she was introduced to Arthur Webster, a district superintendent of police. They were engaged within three weeks, and married on May 14, 1904. Nesta reports very few events between 1904 and 1914. As explanation, she comments that it may well be true that a happy woman has no history, a remark that suggests that she had a developing feminist consciousness. During those years she gave birth to two daughters, Marjorie and Rosalind, and began her writing career.

Nesta’s first novel, The Sheep Track,appeared in 1914 and chronicles the life of a young woman who leaves her sheltered home in Nice to travel to London to come out in society. Loosely autobiographical, it reflects her frustration at the limited opportunities open to women. The central character determines, however, that London society is a “sheep track.” It is a world wherein “girls married amidst the applause of their friends to men they merely regarded as the inevitable accompaniment of substantial incomes . . . [a]  system  of  pretended  virtue.” In that world, to live according to one’s own moral sense and convictions was tremendously diffi cult. Webster’s heroine dabbles in “bohemian” society, eventually leaves London, and travels to Burma, Siam, and Japan. She concludes that it is not on the sheep track that the solutions to life’s problems are to be found. The origins of Webster’s title reveal the moral of her story. It is drawn directly from Seneca: “Let us not, therefore, follow like sheep, but rather govern ourselves by reason than by other men’s fashions” [emphasis in original].

The Sheep Track parallels Webster’s own life: her sheltered existence in Cannes, her education and difficult experiences in London, and her decision to embark on extended world travel. Despite its popularity, the book is not particularly compelling reading for the modern reader. It does, however, condemn the nature of women’s lives in early 20th-century society and forcefully argues that they should pursue meaningful careers. The novel received generally favorable reviews (the New York Timesreferred to it as “delightful”),and within six months it was in its fourth printing. Webster clearly had a talent for writing.

In the autumn of 1914 she published her first overtly political tract, Britain’s Call to Arms, An Appeal to our Women.In it, she calls on British women to encourage men to join the war effort. Webster argues that for every “one man who has answered the call to arms a dozen women have responded . . . needlework and nursing remain so far almost the only ways by which, at this critical hour, the great majority of women can . . . serve their country. ”Britain’s Call to Arms suggests that women are both more willing to serve their country in the war effort than men and more capable of understanding the implications of German victory, which would result in “an iron government such as they have never dreamt of, . . . all personal liberty would be done away with.” From her standpoint, it is therefore incumbent upon British women to make British men aware of the gravity of the situation and to rally them to action.

Webster’s faith in women’s political capabilities is echoed in a later article “Women and Civilisation” (1920). There she argues that men are wholly ignorant of women’s true nature; the only type of women they know anything about, she writes, are “Primitive Women,” who live to serve only the material needs of men and their offspring. Webster writes that these women, whose horizons are “entirely bounded” by men, do not seek their own individual development, and are therefore “inevitably the inferior” of men. When women are left so “uneducated, uncultivated, unenlightened, [they are] too often the foolish, futile creature[s]” that ignorant men believe all women to be. Webster suggests that women are best served when they are “cultivated,” well-educated, and refined. She writes that in her experience, women’s education is so different and inferior to that of men, and their life experiences so circumscribed, that it is impossible to know how great their minds and abilities might truly be. When this situation is rectified, she implies, women and men may well be true equals. Webster’s conclusion of this argument is curious, and its significance appears in her later conspiracy writing. She concludes that the golden era of women’s supremacy was prerevolutionary France, when powerful women never attempted to compete directly with men but instead drew strength from other areas where they excelled, in particular, “the power of organisation and the power of inspiration.”

In this way, they extended a powerful influence over their society. In a repetition of her earlier argument in Britain’s Call to Arms,the article closes with what is again a call forwomen’s political action. Women’s power, she writes, must be exerted in order to preserve “civilisation” in the postwar era.

Webster’s work concerning women’s rights reflects many of the themes and contradictions of her age. Her pleas for the recognition of women are in part an argument for women to exert a “civilizing infl uence” on society. At the same time, however, she calls upon them to abandon the life of the “primitive woman” and demands that all women receive a better education and greater opportunities. In her later writings, however, these themes are absent. She does not abandon these beliefs, but what is for her a greater cause takes precedence. An experience she had four years before writingThe Sheep Trackcame to dominate her political agenda. Indeed, it marked the remainder of her life.

Webster proves false the assumption that all conspiracy theorists are of lower socioeconomic standing, poorly educated, and intolerant of difference (both cultural and religious). She was a member of the British upper class, reasonably well-educated and well-traveled, and open-minded with respect to her religious faith. She even anticipated the late 20th-century Western fascination with Buddhism. In broad terms, she was also what could loosely be described as feminist in her outlook. At the same time, however, she was also increasingly uncomfortable with the profound social, economic, and political changes occurring in Britain, and she began to search for explanations as to why the world around her was in such a state of upheaval. An experience she had earlier in her life helped to answer that question.

In the winter of 1910, while she was living in Switzerland, Webster came across Portraits de Grandes Dames, a volume of essays by Imbert de SaintAmand. Its discovery was pure chance. On a snowy day, she discovered it in the library of her hotel. The story of the Comtesse de Sabran and her lover, the Chevalier de Bouffl ers, aristocrats whose lives were entwined with the French Revolution, enthralled her. Upon her return to London, she acquired a compilation of their letters, Correspondance de la Comtesse de Sabran et du Chevalier de Boufflers (1875). Webster immersed herself in their story and became convinced that much of it was familiar to her. Eventually, she developed the sense that she had personally lived through the French Revolution. In light of this realization, she reflected on and reinterpreted much of her life. She wrote of the experience, “Now all the memories of my childhood came flooding back to me, the sense of apartness from the family circle in the old days at Trent, that first journey to Paris, the arrival at the Gare du Nord. . . . Walking through the streets, especially in the Rue Saint-HonorĂ©, I would say to myself, “I have seen these streets running with blood.” Webster’s Buddhist leanings inclined her to believe that she was the reincarnation of a French aristocrat, and possibly even Madame de Sabran herself. This inclination, a result of Webster’s personal affection for Buddhism, and her choice of reading on a winter afternoon, became the motivating force for 20th-century conspiracy theory.

In 1916, Webster published The Chevalier de Boufflers,which recounted the Chevalier’s and Madame Sabran’s lengthy romance. The book received reasonable reviews and was popular with the general public: ultimately it was reprinted 15 times. Indeed, the scholar Richard Thurlow suggests that the quality of Webster’s early books suggest that she could have become “a fine popular historian,” for her work evidences strong literary skills and a “meticulous attention to detail.” In researching this book, however, Webster came to the conclusion that most histories of the French Revolution were inaccurate. She therefore continued her study of the French Revolution through the last two years of the First World War, driven by what she characterized as an “impelling force” to present the truth to the world. The result of that effort, The French Revolution, A Study in Democracy was published in 1920. The work embodies the coming together of her personal interest in the Revolution and her developing political ideology.

Nesta Webster’s great empathy for the Chevalier de Boufflers and Madame Sabran extended to the French aristocracy as a whole, and reviewers commented on what they felt was her “unsympathetic attitude toward democracy,” as well as her reliance on royalist and antirepublican sources. Webster believed that the Revolution and democracy destroyed much of what was good in French society, and by the conclusion of her research, she had determined that it was impossible that the masses created such an upheaval themselves. It was therefore reasonable to question “by whom was it made?”

The French Revolution, like many significant political events, was the result of a number of economic and political forces that aligned at a particular moment to yield change. In the case of the French Revolution, these forces included such factors as a series of European wars, French debt, taxation, food shortages and famine, and the emergence of ideology as an organizing force in political organization and activity. Webster, however, concluded that a conspiracy of secret societies had created it in order to further their plan to control the world. While she acknowledged there were specific conditions that might make the country ripe for a revolution, she argued that “kindling” the flame of revolution required the action of interested conspirators. In order to understand it, “we must examine the intrigues at work amongst the people; these and these alone explain the gigantic misunderstanding that arose between the King and his subjects, and that plunged the country on the brink of regeneration into the black abyss of anarchy.” Indeed, she concluded that the Illuminati’s “dark design” was behind a multipronged conspiracy operating across many states that included four critical conspiracies, “the OrlĂ©aniste intrigue for a change of dynasty, the Prussian scheme for breaking the Franco-Austrian Alliance, the gradually evolved conception of a Republic, finally of a Socialist State . . . working for world revolution and the destruction of Christian civilization.”

The French Revolution was not entirely well received by the mainstream press. By the time of its publication, Webster was an established author, and her stature was such that her work was reviewed in both the popular press and academic journals. Critics attacked her royalist sympathies and her focus on conspiracies. In The American Historical Review,Fred Fling wrote that the book could have been written by Marie Antoinette had she “possessed the industry to accomplish the large amount of reading,” and in the American Political Science Review,Sidney Fay commented that it “reads like an anti-bolshevist account of the Russian Revolution.

By the time of The French Revolution’s publication, Webster was convinced that from the time of Baron Weishaupt, through the Illuminati and Freemasons, secret societies had influenced the direction of human history. Their power was now exerted through many agencies but particularly those in the political left. Internationally, Webster identified the Soviet Union, and Bolsheviks, as particular threats. This “alien conspiracy” had now invaded Britain, the “greatest stronghold of Christian Civilisation.” Within the United Kingdom, efforts to unionize workers, the British Communist Party, and Sinn Fein (an organization she believed was directed by the “International Communist Movement”) were working for revolution.

In World Revolution, The Plot Against Civilization (1921), Webster continues this theme, writing that the world is in crisis, as evidenced by the spread of socialism and anarchism, and that her intent is to connect systematically secret societies’ activities to the history of revolution. She writes, “The revolution through which we are now passing is not local but universal, it is not political but social, and its causes must be sought not in popular discontent, but in a deep-laid conspiracy that uses the people to their own undoing.”

According to Webster, the origins of this conspiracy are in the link between Grand Orient Freemasonry with the Illuminati (recreated by Adam Weishaupt in 1776). Webster claims that at meetings in 1782, the two organizations formed an association that undertook a “definite revolutionary campaign” aimed at transforming human societies. Their goals included the creation of general mayhem and the destruction of all governments and religion. Through this, human beings could regain “primitive liberty,” an idealized state of existence that existed before the chains of civilization limited human behavior and potential. These organizations now work in secret, according to Webster, and animate some of the most influential political forces of the day, including “Bolshevism.”

For Webster, the conspirators have the capacity to manipulate all those who are unaware of their scheme, for their powers are “terrible, unchanging, relentless, and wholly destructive . . . [they are] the greatest menace that has ever confronted the human race.” In World Revolution,she therefore traces the history of secret societies from the French Revolution through the Russian Revolution; her aim is not just to educate British citizens but also to inspire them to protect their state. She closes the book by linking these themes and emphasizing Britain’s special role, suggesting that “this little island of ours [may] fi nally stem the tide of World Revolution and save not only herself, but Christian civilization.” Included in this book is her complex “Chart of the World Revolution,” which provides a graphic representation of the complex links that Webster argued existed (both secretly and in public) among secret societies and revolutionary movements of her age (see Figure 1). The complex web of connections reflects the profound change that Webster initiated in conspiracy thinking. Instead of individual agents working to achieve limited goals, she understood conspirators as working together to control the entire political world.

In 1924, Webster published what became her most influential work, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. She remarks in the preface that she would prefer to return to her study of the French Revolution but implies that it is her duty to further elucidate the origins of the current “revolutionary movement” that is “gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but on all social and moral order.” The majority of this book focuses on the early history of forces that Webster has identified elsewhere: Pan-Germanism, Freemasonry, and Illuminism. In this work, however, she also develops her arguments concerning the role of the Jewish people in this worldwide conspiracy.

Webster’s assessment of the Jewish role in secret societies deserves particular attention, as it is an important element of her popularity among modern far-right political movements. Throughout the book, Webster discusses the role of Jews in specifi c secret societies. In her concluding chapter, “The Jewish Peril,” however, she draws these points together, stating that “the immense problem of the Jewish Power [is] perhaps the most important problem with which the modern world is confronted.” Webster argues that it is clear that the Cabala (a Jewish mystical doctrine) and other sources clearly indicate that “the hope for world-domination” is not an idea attributed to Jews by anti-Semites, “but a very real and essential part of their traditions.”

Webster maintains that this tradition has developed since the time of Jesus; at its theological core, it is a desire to overthrow Christianity and Christian civilization. Jews have been effective, Webster notes, at utilizing secret societies for their own purposes. She writes, “The influence of the Jews in all the five great powers at work in the world—Grand Orient Masonry, Theosophy, Pan-Germanism, International Finance, and Social Revolution—is not a matter of surmise but of fact.” Likewise, she argues, they play a role in the world’s “minor subversive movements”: psychoanalysis, “degenerate art,” the cinema world, and drug trafficking. According to Webster, their influence in British politics is also clear. They promote Bolshevism through the Labour Party, and although Conservatism (because of its patriotic traditions) has typically been free of Jewish influence, it was “precisely at a moment when Conservative organization had passed largely into Jewish hands that Conservatism met with the most astounding disaster in the whole of its history.”Webster concludes this chapter by noting that the real danger to Britain (and Christian civilization) springs from the unity of the Jewish people, “Far more potent than the sign of distress that summons Freemasons to each other’s aid at moments of peril is the call of the blood that rallies the most divergent elements in Jewry to the defence of the Jewish cause.”

Webster argues that it is this solidarity that is the real cause of anti-Semitism. Even if it might be true that the Jewish people are not the central force behind all secret societies, their threat comes at a moment when Britain and “Christian civilization” are being “systematically destroyed by the doctrines of International Socialism.” Secret Societies and Subversive Movements thus suggests that she believes that the Jewish people are an integral part of the conspiratorial forces that threaten civilization. Webster concludes that the only way to save Britain from this imminent destruction is through a “great national movement,” much like Italian Fascism. It triumphed, she claims, because it was democratic and progressive, and appealed to the most noble human instincts, patriotism and self-sacrifice.

Webster’s theories about Jews and their role in secret societies fell on willing ears. As Holmes points out, while extremist anti-Semites were relatively rare, there existed a generalized low level of anti-Semitic sentiment in post World War I Britain. There is perhaps no better example of this than Winston Churchill’s 1920 speech, “Zionism and Bolshevism,” reprinted in the Illustrated Sunday Herald.Churchill addresses the issue of Jewish loyalty to Britain and identifi es a “sinister confederacy” of internationalist Jews that was behind every subversive movement from the 19th century onward through the Russian Revolution, “From the days of SpartacusWeishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kim (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.” The speech, a curious combination of anti-Semitism and praise for Europe’s Jewish population, advocates a homeland for Europe’s Jewish population in Palestine. Churchill’s source for this conspiratorial history and his political plan is none other than Nesta Webster, evidence not only of the widespread popularity of her ideas but also of her growing political influence.

The tremendous success of Webster’s Secret Societies therefore helped to determine the future direction of the author’s life. First, her conclusions moved her to become more directly politically active. Second, the book’s success determined that despite her efforts to become a respectable historian of the French Revolution (and she published two more lengthy books on the topic), her lasting impact was to be as a conspiracy theorist. Indeed, the book’s success made her a minor celebrity. She quickly became a recognized “authority” on secret societies, and with that status, became a frequent contributor to the right-wing newspaper The Patriot. She published columns and engaged in debates relating to various conspiracy theories, and the paper’s editors publicized her books and public appearances. Occasionally, she also published long-running series on conspiracy-related topics (for example, “Anti Revolutionary Organisation,” which ran in seven parts, through January and early February of 1926). Her work was also frequently the subject of articles and commentary within the paper.

During this time, too, Webster also became politically active in the British Fascists Ltd., a movement that was not immediately concerned with Fascist ideology, but instead, focused its political program on the fear of a Communist uprising, a concern dear to Webster’s heart.In joining the Fascists, Webster was not unusual. Recent analyses make clear that the movement and its ideology were animated by women. Her role was different, however, because she was politically prominent before she joined the movement. Indeed, some scholars speculate that Webster was drawn to the Fascist movement more as “avehicle to disseminate her opinions rather than as a philosophy to be embraced.” In 1927, she became a member of its leadership, the Grand Council, and during her tenure spoke at their public meetings and wrote articles for the group’s publications, the Fascist Bulletin and the British Lion. The British Fascists afforded Webster increased political visibility, but she abandoned the party in mid-1927 and instead embarked upon her own, related political project, which she called “The Patriots’ Inquiry Centre.”

Webster believed that Communism was making inroads in British society, and as evidence, she cited the fact that the Labour Party appeared to be strengthening its hold on the lower classes. Although it had officially repudiated Communism, Webster believed this move was superficial and intended to placate concerned Britons. She argued that the party admitted Communists through its support of Trade Unionists. In an effort to counter their influence, she proposed a “bureau of information” that would serve as a clearing house for all workers in the “anti-Socialist cause,” and she offered her own collection of research as a starting point for the Centre’s library. In October of 1927 she fi rst advertised the Centre in The Patriot. Although she noted that the financial support of “a few patriotic persons” had been obtained, and an office in central London secured, she also asked for further financial contributions. The Centre would contribute to the anti- Communist cause through coordinating the work of organizations and individuals “in every part of the world.”

As Markku Ruotsila points out, the Patriots Inquiry Centre was effectively an agency for anti-Socialist and anti-Semitic speakers. In addition,  its mission was shaped by an underlying conviction that it was essential to defend and propagate Christianity. These endeavors would sustain the battle against the conspirators. The Patriots’ Inquiry Centre was a viable operation for a number of years, but evidence of its activities disappeared from the pages of The Patriot early in the 1930s. So too did original articles by Webster (although she did contribute a four-part series, “The Past History of World Revolution”) in 1932. It was not until the late 1940s that she wrote for The Patriotagain (a seven-part series, “Where Are We Going?,” which focused on socialism and the threat it posed to Great Britain). Gauging by the number and variety of her publications, Webster appears to have abandoned practical politics to once again pursue a full-time writing career.

During the 1930s, she published four books. The Surrender of an Empire continued her campaign to warn Britons of the various conspiracies that threatened the state while The Secret of the Zodiac,written under the pseudonym Julian Sterne, was a deliberate work of fiction. By now a well-known conspiracy theorist, Webster perhaps chose this pseudonym to suggest that the book was authored by a Jewish man who would have an insider’s knowledge of the world conspiracy; the name Sterne is also a composite of the last four letters of Webster and the fi rst two letters of Nesta. It told the story of “sinister unseen forces” that aimed to undermine civilization. Indeed, it is almost a summation of all the conspiracy theories she had suggested in her nonfiction works, mixed with suggestions about the occult. One of the characters in the book remarks, for example:

I do think it possible that there have been and still are people who have in some way mastered the art of projecting thought and floating ideas in a way unknown to the rest of the world . . . the political side of the movement is run on the same lines as the occult side, that is to say, on the old secret society system. The Communist Party in each country is in reality a secret society few members know who are the real heads or where the direction comes from . . . in the secret communications of leading Communists . . . the phraseology used is absolutely that of the secret conspirators known as the Illuminati.

To this mix, Webster even manages to throw in the French Revolution and suggest that the Communists intend to copy the French Republican calendar. Although entertaining as a curiosity, the book is of dubious value as literature. Like her other conspiracy-related works, however, it remains in print.

Webster’s two other major publications of the decade in fact marked a return to her other favorite topic, the French Revolution. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Before the Revolution,and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, During the Revolutionwere lengthy tomes published within a year of each other in 1936 and 1937, respectively. These works presented a sympathetic picture of the French monarch and Marie Antoinette, combined with Webster’s argument that the French Revolution was devised and carried out by the Freemasons. The books were widely reviewed, and most commentators criticized Webster’s argument but praised her skills as an historian.

Webster’s final pre World War II political publication was a revised reprint of a series of articles she wrote for The Patriot,“Germany and England” (1938). The lengthy pamphlet criticized Britain’s response to events in Europe, and it argued that Nazism was not as great a threat to Britain as “Bolshevism.” Webster argued that Hitler’s emphasis on “the superiority of the German race” was “only logical, since the essence of Fascismo and Nazi-ism is Nationalism, whilst that of Bolshevism is Internationalism.”91Webster therefore argued that Britain should not fear Hitler or Nazism. Indeed, she argues:

In his strictures on pre-Nazi Germany, Hitler is undeniably justified; it was a matter of common knowledge just before and after the War that Berlin became a centre of iniquity, its night life worse in some respects than that of Paris; vice of an unspeakable kind was flaunted with impunity, nude midnight orgies took place in the West End of the city . . . Whether Hitler is right in attributing all this to the Jews we cannot tell;  there are depraved elements of every nation which need no inciting to vice. The fact remains, however, that since Hitler started to purge town life in Germany, pornographic books and pictures have disappeared from the shops, the Youth movements have become clean and healthy, the cult of nudity has been suppressed. And all this has coincided with the expulsion or voluntary departure of a number of Jews from Germany.

Webster does argue that she is “no blind admirer of Hitler,” complaining that like most Britons, she prefers a regime of greater freedom. In addition, she argues that his policies have had a generally detrimental effect on Britain and have in some ways expanded the power of the worldwide conspirators. She writes, Hitler is:

driving out the Communists and Jews into other countries in such a way to enlist sympathy for them, instead of keeping them humanely under control in his own, he disregards the fact that he is helping to spread Bolshevism abroad and actually to strengthen the Jewish power.

It is not Hitler who threatens Britain but instead the grand conspiracy that poses the most serious danger to Britain. Indeed, just as Churchill argued nearly 20 years earlier, Webster concludes that “the Jewish problem” could best be solved by creating a homeland for the Jews in “the vast unpeopled spaces of Soviet Russia,” and that the “fabulous wealth of rich Jews all over the world could be used to settle them there.” For Webster, the cloud of war hanging over England is one that can easily be lifted. It requires recognition that war might bring about the end of civilization and that the real threat to Britain are the alien forces of the conspiracy.

Webster published much less frequently following the outbreak of World War II. Because the details of the final two decades of her life are largely unknown, however, it is diffi cult to assess whether personal reasons were responsible for this decline in output (in the spring of 1942, her husband, Arthur Webster, died), or whether Hitler’s role in World War II prompted her to revise her views on Fascism. She wrote a limited number of articles for The Patriotuntil its demise in 1950 and following that published only her final book, the autobiography Spacious Days(1950). Nesta Webster  died in May of 1960.

Webster wrote during a period of intense social and political change in Great Britain, and it is these types of eras that most typically produce conspiracy theory. Individuals are driven to explain the upheaval that surrounds them. As Moscovici writes, conspiracy theories are an attempt to integrate “one’s image of society in one cause.” They are one way of eliminating cognitive dissonance, a situation where personal beliefs and reality conflict. A conspiracy theory allows one’s own interpretation of the world to remain intact, and not require fundamental shift, when all threats to it are explained by a single omnipresent force.

Nesta Webster was threatened by challenges to the British Empire and its social hierarchy. Although her beliefs about the capabilities of women and her own political activism were nontraditional and would have been appropriate for a more modern Britain—she was primarily concerned about the preservation of traditional society. As a result, she neglected her more feminist beliefs in order to pursue what she believed was a greater cause: warning the world of the conspiracy that threatened British civilization. Thus, like women of the left who participate in activism for a larger cause (for example, nationalist movements), Webster chose to put her feminism  second.

Three major themes dominate Webster’s life and work: the desire to protect British civilization (as she defined it), the fear of those who threatened British civilization, and the conviction that forces beyond the control of average citizens control politics and its outcomes. For Webster, these beliefs helped provide an explanation for the political change that occurred during her lifetime.

Webster’s assessment of the 20th-century political landscape, however, moved her to reconceptualize how people thought about conspiracy. It was evident to her that the relevant political world extended far beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. She realized, indeed celebrated, Britain’s colonization of Africa and Asia; she believed that it was part of her country’s mission to bring Christian civilization to the world. At the same time, however, that realization also expanded the range of Britain’s enemies, and therefore the legion of conspirators who were working against her country and its purposes.

In some ways, Webster’s conceptualization was visionary. The scholarly discipline of international relations did not begin in its modern form until the publication of E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis in the mid-1930s. She realized the significance of a globalized world before many scholars. For Webster, however, that international world was clearly divided between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which were in conflict in a multitude of ways and places around the globe. From this perspective, it no longer made sense to talk about a single conspiracy. Taking a page from Adam Weishaupt, she argued that there may be some evil force directing the plan but that its will was expressed in diverse ways. She argued that there were therefore invisible links between a multitude of different (and in her view sometimes superficially opposed) organizations who were all working toward the same purpose. In short, the conspiracy was everywhere.Webster’s reformulation of conspiracy theory was revolutionary. In response to a globalizing political environment, she transformed how conspiracy thinkers understood the world. In some ways, her innovations were inevitable. In an era where events occurring on the other side of the globe can affect our daily lives, conspiracy theory was destined to likewise expand. It was Nesta Webster who first effected this revolutionary change in conspiracy thinking. She created the fi rst superconspiracy theory. It is small wonder that in the world of conspiracists, her work remains so popular today.

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