Welcome to "Meet the Conspiracies", a devlog series in which I'll be introducing the six playable factions of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. I'll be discussing the history of the real-world conspiracy theory, how they'll be depicted in the game itself, and how reasonable I personally think it is to believe in the underlying conspiracy theory.

Meet the Conspiracies, Part 4:

The Illuminati

Here it is, the big one. Arguably, the true first modern conspiracy theory. Freemason, Jesuit, and Jewish conspiracy theories all predate it, but while those all posit that an actually existing group within society are secretly coordinating to advance their interests, the Illuminati are the first example of this mode of thought being applied to an entity which is, for all intents and purposes, completely fictional. Of course, if you've been reading these posts, you'll know that the Illuminati aren't entirely fictional, or more accurately, weren't. To cover how this conspiracy theory made the leap from reality into delusion, we'll need to start at the start.

The Real Illuminati

The story of the Bavarian Illuminati is fascinating and darkly hilarious. I'll try not to get into too much detail here, because there is a lot of detail to get into, and other people (Robert Evans) have told the story better than I can, so I'll restrict myself to the important parts. 

Our story begins in Bavaria, at the close of the 18th century. New liberal ideas are exploding in popularity, America has broken out into revolution, France is in turmoil; the Enlightenment is in full bloom - but not in Bavaria. While Germany, as a cultural-linguistic region, is a hotbed of religious diversity, that doesn't mean that every part of Germany is. Bavaria remained steadfastly Catholic throughout the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. It's a region with a conservative temperament, which would continue well into the twentieth century: Bavaria was an early hotbed of Nazism. The universities in Bavaria are dominated by Jesuits, who outright ban any books promoting Enlightenment ideals. But of course, there are always people who go against the grain of their society. In 1776, one of those people in Bavaria was Adam Weishaupt.

Adam Weishaupt was, in modern parlance, an Enlightenment fan. He'd heard of all the exciting ideas being discussed in America, western Europe, and northern Germany, and wanted to read about them. But, by edict of the Catholic authorities, those texts could not be legally imported into Bavaria. And so, the Illuminati was born as a secret society out of pragmatism; they weren't just having invite-only parties, they were breaking the law. The Illuminati began not as a social club, but as a book-smuggling operation. Things jumped the rails almost immediately.

Weishaupt wanted to see an Enlightenment revolution in Bavaria, but he knew it would never happen, at least the way that it had in America: by a violent revolt. The people of Bavaria were not going to overthrow the repressive Catholic government - they were fine with it. They liked things that way, and more importantly, the bourgeoise did too. Not content to merely read about revolution, Weishaupt began seeing his illegal book club as the vector for a whole new kind of revolution. He had one of the worst ideas in all of human history, one that would have consequences for centuries to come: he decided to create The Illuminati.

His grand vision was almost precisely what you imagine when you think of The Illuminati. The plan was to infiltrate the government, to manipulate it from the shadows rather than overthrow it by force. He wanted to destroy Catholicism, not just as an institution, but as a concept, like the more radical elements of the French Revolution would later try to do. 

What needs to be made clear, immediately, is just how utterly his plan failed. The Illuminati did not infiltrate the government. They barely managed to infiltrate the Freemasons, and even then, only managed to do that because their infiltrators and converts didn't actually know about the whole "take over the government" plan. Hardly anyone who was a "member of the Illuminati" did. In other words, Weishaupt was barely successful at infiltrating the organization he himself created.

The secret society also didn't stay secret for very long. Through a variety of blunders, the Illuminati quickly became known to the Catholic authorities, who instantly banned the organization from Bavaria. Things fell apart immediately, Weishaupt went into exile in northern Germany, and the Illuminati crumbled into history, having achieved nothing but giving the world a cool name for a secret society. But then, a few years later in France, a king and a queen were separated from their heads, and everybody lost their minds.

And this is where the conspiracy theory takes a leap from real history into the realm of wild speculation and outright fiction. As discussed in previous entries, early French and British conspiracy theories would blame the Freemasons and/or the Jews for inciting the French Revolution, groups which, at the very least, literally did exist in pre-Revolutionary France. But in Germany, people who had heard of the Illuminati debacle began to believe that the organization hadn't crumbled at all, it had just relocated. The theories began to spread, and by the end of the 1790's, they reached an America that had only just inaugurated its second president.

In the 19th century, the Illuminati would become what it is today: the glue that can hold together the most disparate conspiracy theories. Illuminati conspiracy theories freely mingled with Masonic conspiracy theories and Jesuit conspiracy theories, despite how those three organizations, in the real world, all despised each other. And of course, once you've tied everything into a universal Illuminati conspiracy, it's a very simple leap to full-throated antisemitism. 

Now, in the early decades of the 21st century, the Illuminati have taken on a strange new element, which was, naturally, the contribution of Bill Cooper: the idea that the Illuminati have not just completely infiltrated the entertainment industry, but insert clues and hints of this into pop culture. I shouldn't need to say outright that this is a preposterous notion, although it makes slightly more sense in the original Cooper formulation: the idea is that the Illuminati are a Satanic cult (naturally) who partake in blood magic rituals, and their magic can only work if they leave these clues (it's up to your personal interpretation as to whether they truly do possess magic powers which work this way, or if they merely believe that they do).

This clue-leaving Riddler-ass Illuminati has led to a revival in the popularity of the theory in the age of YouTube. It's very easy to put together a video of, say, trippy background visuals at a concert, and use freeze-frames to try to spot hidden satanic imagery. It also doesn't help when celebrities like Jay-Z outright lean into this concept because they think it's cool, but I'll discuss this at length later in the "Plausibility" section.

The Illuminati in SILENT WEAPONS FOR QUIET WARS

My intention is for the Illuminati to be the "Mario" faction of SWfQW, that is, to fill the same role that Mario does in Mario Kart or Smash Bros: the no-frills newbie-friendly character, with no serious weaknesses but no real strengths. The closest thing they have to a specialty is Psionics, and even then their endgame makes Psionics much more easily available to all other factions as well.

In terms of their portrayal in the game's lore, I can actually get pretty close to the classic theories (largely because I decided that the Illuminati get to keep all of the overlap with the Freemasons, who wind up being much more of my own invention). 

In Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, the Illuminati represent an "enlightened despot" ideology. They advance liberal, even progressive ideals, while being wildly antidemocratic. They believe in meritocracy, by which they mean that because they're the ones in charge, it must surely because they deserve to be. They are, in short, Clinton Democrats as viewed from the left.

Plausibility Rating: 3/10

I'm giving this one an unusually high plausibility rating because there probably are some powerful and influential people who believe they are in "the Illuminati", and Jeffree Star believes that too. There are probably a lot of Illuminatis, all around the world, who think that they are the Illuminati. 

However, the Illuminati conspiracy theory is not that there is a secret club of elites. The existence of secret clubs of elites is, well, not a secret. The Bohemian Grove is real. The Skull and Bones is real. What the Illuminati conspiracy theory posits is that effectively everyone everywhere with a modicum of hard or soft power is involved in a single perfectly-coordinated scheme to rule the world, which keeps its existence a total secret to the public, except that everybody's heard of the Illuminati and also they have to put Blue's Clues everywhere for unclear reasons.

In short, because the Illuminati are, in modern society, the archetypal conspiracy theory, the Illuminati is a dumb conspiracy theory for the same reason that all conspiracy theories are dumb. It posits the existence of an organization which is effectively omnipotent and wishes to remain secret, but all of the stupidest people on YouTube have figured it all out. And, like all conspiracy theories, it ultimately only deflects from the very real systems, agreements, and arrangements by which the elite truly do maintain their status.