The Real History Behind the Illuminati

Dan Snow (0:00)

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It's time for the Illuminati. If you were the founder of a secret order, hell-bent on infiltrating every level of European society, what would you name it? It's a tough brief. It needs to sound discreet yet ominous. You need a name that sounds good when spoken in a hushed whisper. You can't call yourselves the guys who control the world. That just gives the game away. In the late 18th century, a Bavarian professor named Adam Weishaupt faced this exact problem.

First, he pitched the League of Perfectibilists, which sounds less like an elite shadowy cabal and more like an after-school club for neat freaks. When that didn't stick, he briefly championed the Society of the Bees, because nothing strikes fear into the heart of the global rich elite, like a handful of enlightenment nerds buzzing around in dank Bavarian cellars. Eventually, though, he settled on the Order of the Illuminati, which, to be fair, is a solid name. And while Weishaupt's grand experiment was completely stamped out less than a decade and really came to nothing, somehow the ghost of his short-lived society managed to achieve immortality, morphing into the master blueprint for every modern conspiracy theory. So today, we're separating 18th century reality from 250 years of wild pop culture paranoia. What's the real history of the obscure order? And how did it become the most pernicious and persistent conspiracy theory of the modern era? Here to break it all down for us is Michael Taylor, historian and author of Illuminati, The History of a Conspiracy Theory. Strap in, folks, it's time to talk Illuminati.

Michael, thanks so much for coming on.

Michael Taylor (2:24)

Thank you, Dan. I'm delighted to be here.

Dan Snow (2:27)

Is there a hard beginning of the Illuminati? Do they come into being on a certain day at a certain time?

Michael Taylor (2:32)

There is. You can actually pinpoint it to the 1st of May 1776 It's a very, very precise beginning.

In the spring of 1776, the Founding Fathers are not the only cabal of people apparently plotting rebellion. The very same time in Bavaria, in Ingolstadt, which is a university city on the Danube, the legal professor Adam Weishaupt has gathered four of his most loyal and capable students around him.

They form the Secret Society. The purpose of the Secret Society is to propagate enlightenment values. And that sounds pretty milk toast, but really what they are planning to do, because in Bavaria there is no print culture, there's no representative democratic political culture, there's not even the kind of salon that's flourishing in Paris. They have adopted the Secret Society as the vehicle for their political ambitions. So they are going to bring people into their society, teach them enlightenment values, and assume that over time they will rise to positions of influence within the state, and then change the direction of state as they go. Wow.

Dan Snow (3:40)

I mean, that is the deep state for you. They want to be the deep state. Anyway, they're aspirant deep staters.

Is the 1796 important? You mentioned, you said there at the beginning, as they're meeting in Philadelphia to abolish the link between Britain and its North American colonies. Are they influenced by that same revolutionary wave, do you think?

Michael Taylor (4:02)

Not directly by the Americans, although they are very much aware of what's going on across the Atlantic, but these are arguably the high points, the salad days of the Enlightenment itself. Weisaupt is an Enlightenment scholar, and he is vastly frustrated, not only by the general conservatism that is inherent in Bavaria where the Catholic Church is absolutely dominant and the Vittelsbach dukes of Bavaria are extremely conservative themselves.

His main problem is with the university, which is populated and controlled by ex-Jesuits, who are really unhelpful when it comes to bringing in new literature or new teaching methods and propagating the kind of ideas that Weisaupt has been reading in private and that are available elsewhere in Europe.

Dan Snow (4:50)

Like Edinburgh, it's all happening.

Michael Taylor (4:52)

It is.

Dan Snow (4:53)

We want to be more like Edinburgh, basically. We're meant to be a university, for Christ sakes.