Fake Illuminati Exposed!

Salon has an article up today about "Illuminati symbolism" in popular music, and how essentially it's just a big publicity stunt on the part of stars who exploit conspiracy theorists to generate more press for their songs and albums. From a cynical standpoint this makes a lot of sense - the "Illuminati symbols" that show up in music videos are so well-known at this point that they've gone from esoteric to obvious, but they nonetheless generate breathless condemnation by crackpots obsessed with the group's supposed ongoing plan for world domination. But here's a clue - if you're really part of a secret conspiracy, I imagine that the worst thing you could possibly do is broadcast to the entire Internet a video that pretty much announces, "Hey everybody, check out my secret conspiracy!"

The fear of the entity known as the Illuminati is neither unique — Bey and Jay join Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Kanye West, and practically every prominent banker and politician on Earth is under conspiracy theorists’ microscope — nor novel. The original Bavarian Illuminati, a short-lived Enlightenment group devoted to overthrowing the local government, would likely have been forgotten, said “Occult America” author Mitch Horowitz, had Scottish physicist John Robison not speciously alleged in 1797 that the group had infiltrated the Freemasons and instigated the French Revolution.

“The Illuminati can be understood as the most radical edge of the marriage of avant-garde religious views and political views that sometimes found expression within Freemasonry,” said Horowitz. The movement, as redefined ex post facto to include practically every threatening and new development in American life, went on to resurface in rumors from the anti-Masonry fervor of the 1830s to the election of a Catholic president in 1960 to (did you need to ask?) the Obama presidency. Though the political goals of the Illuminati in Bavaria were locally minded, the avant-garde aspect lives on. Horowitz listed certain motifs: “skulls, serpents, eyes and pyramids, pentagrams. These were from a religious culture that had vanished after the Dark Ages; they’re alluring, dangerous, sinister.”

The funny thing is that there really is a global elite. The international finance establishment is intertwined with governments around the world and and its wealthy members certainly have a disproportionate influence on policy. However, the source of their power has nothing to do with shape-shifting aliens or secret occult rituals or fringe Masonic groups that died out by the nineteenth century, and everything to do with big money. Many of the musicians who have been accused of Illuminati ties don't even write their own songs; rather, they are composed by a collection of producers who understand what sells and what generates publicity. Does it really make any sense that a secret society would sanction a music video such as that for a recent Rihanna track, in which the words "Princess of the Illuminati" flash across the screen? That strikes me as a different definition of "secret" than what any reasonable person would employ. On the other hand, such speculation sure cranks up the views.