188 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
188 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12 Num. 41
|
|
=======================================
|
|
("Quid coniuratio est?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
IGNATIUS DONNELLY & "CAESAR'S COLUMN"
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
Hard-to-find books include
|
|
(1) *Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the
|
|
American People* by S.E.V. Emery.
|
|
(2) *The Problem of Civilization Solved* by Mary E. Lease.
|
|
(3) *The Populist Movement* by Frank L. McVey.
|
|
(4) *Shylock: As Banker, Bondholder, Corruptionist, Conspirator*
|
|
by Gordon Clark.
|
|
|
|
My thanks to author Richard Hofstadter, author of *The Age of
|
|
Reform*, for tipping me to the above books by including them in
|
|
the source notes of his book.
|
|
|
|
Also included in source notes in Hofstadter's above-mentioned
|
|
book is mention of the book *Caesar's Column* by Ignatius
|
|
Donnelly. Donnelly's book =was= findable by me, not through the
|
|
local citizens' library, however, but through the University of
|
|
Illinois library located in the town where I live. BUT, the
|
|
above-mentioned hard-to-find books, numbered 1-4 above, are
|
|
VANISHED!! They (1-4 above) are tentatively assigned the status
|
|
of BANNED BOOKS.
|
|
|
|
-+- Ignatius Donnelly -+-
|
|
|
|
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), though he lived in the late 19th
|
|
century, was not a gunfighter. Since late-19th century America
|
|
is portrayed as if it were only gunfights in popular romance, you
|
|
might be surprised to know that there was this thing called
|
|
"populism" going on back then. Maybe you heard that word,
|
|
"populism," in 1996, when Pat Buchanan was scaring the bejeezus
|
|
out of the East Coast Demo-Publicans when the upstart
|
|
presidential candidate came from nowhere and scored major primary
|
|
victories. About then, those "nicey-nice boys" in their suits
|
|
and ties -- Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter "Waylon" Jennings
|
|
-- looked gravely into the cameras and "asked": "What is
|
|
populism?"
|
|
|
|
Ignatius Donnelly was one of those dreaded "populists" back in
|
|
the 19th century, back when it all began. Referred to in his
|
|
time as, "The Prince of Cranks," Donnelly now is totally
|
|
forgotten. But back in the 1850s, Donnelly then made the radical
|
|
move of joining the Republican party. (Back then, the Republican
|
|
party was radical.) He served three terms as a congressman, but
|
|
by then Donnelly had become too radical even for the Republicans
|
|
and they gave him the heave-ho. Donnelly battled "the railroads,
|
|
the banks, the traditional political parties, [and] the spreading
|
|
industrial trusts." [1].
|
|
|
|
At the People's Party convention at Omaha, on July 4, 1892,
|
|
Donnelly gave voice to popular discontent:
|
|
|
|
We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of
|
|
moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates
|
|
the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches
|
|
even the ermine on the bench [the judges]... The
|
|
newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public
|
|
opinion silenced... and the land concentrating in the hands
|
|
of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right
|
|
of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized
|
|
labor beats down their wages; a hireling army, unrecognized
|
|
by our laws, is established to shoot them down...
|
|
|
|
...A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on
|
|
two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the
|
|
world. If not met and overthrown at once it forbodes...
|
|
the establishment of an absolute despotism.
|
|
|
|
Among Ignatius Donnelly's books are included:
|
|
-- *Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World* (1882). Attempts to prove
|
|
that Plato's Atlantis is a "veritable history."
|
|
-- *Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel* (1883). A "worthy
|
|
predecessor of Immanuel Velikovsky's... *World's in Collision*,
|
|
which it in some ways anticipates." [2]
|
|
-- *The Great Cryptogram* (1888). Asserts that "Sir Francis
|
|
Bacon was the author of the plays usually attributed to
|
|
Shakespeare, and... that the plays themselves contain an
|
|
elaborate cipher devised by Bacon to establish his authorship to
|
|
future generations." [3]
|
|
-- *The American People's Money* (1895).
|
|
-- *The Cipher in the Plays, and on the Tombstone* (1899). A
|
|
further defense of his "Bacon is Shakespeare" theory.
|
|
|
|
-+- "Caesar's Column" -+-
|
|
|
|
Donnelly's book, *Caesar's Column* (1890), is one of the former
|
|
congressman's attempts to exposit his ideas through a work of
|
|
fiction. Walter B. Rideout, in his introduction to the 1960
|
|
reprinting of Donnelly's book, compares it to Aldous Huxley's
|
|
*Brave New World* and George Orwell's *1984*. From the artistic
|
|
standpoint, Donnelly's book does not equal either Huxley's or
|
|
Orwell's later masterpieces. Yet there are times in Donnelly's
|
|
book where he shows surprising (for a former congressman)
|
|
artistic talent. The book is uneven, yet succeeds in hitting
|
|
home intermittently. For example, Donnelly, writing circa 1890:
|
|
|
|
== Our courts, judges and juries are the merest tools of
|
|
the rich. The image of justice has slipped the bandage
|
|
from one eye, and now uses her scales to weigh the bribes
|
|
she receives. An ordinary citizen has no more prospect of
|
|
fair treatment in our courts, contending with a
|
|
millionaire, than a new-born infant would have of life in
|
|
the den of a wolf.
|
|
|
|
== ...the very assertions, constantly dinned in our ears by
|
|
the hireling newspapers, that we are the freest people on
|
|
earth, serve only to make our slavery more bitter and
|
|
unbearable.
|
|
|
|
== ["Rudolph" enters a great hall, inside the home of an
|
|
ultra-wealthy citizen] ...this is where they meet. This is
|
|
the real center of government of the American continent;
|
|
all the rest is sham and form. The men who meet here
|
|
determine the condition of all the hundreds of millions...
|
|
Here political parties, courts, juries, governors,
|
|
legislatures, congresses, presidents are made and unmade...
|
|
The decrees formulated here are echoed by a hundred
|
|
thousand newspapers, and many thousands of orators; and
|
|
they are enforced by an uncountable army of soldiers,
|
|
servants, tools, spies, and even assassins. He who stands
|
|
in the way of the men who assemble here perishes.
|
|
|
|
Donnelly also has an interesting theory on why it became
|
|
important that American children receive a public education: so
|
|
that they will be able to read the newspapers, the propaganda
|
|
sheets of the ruling elite. (Note also how, with the advent of
|
|
radio and television, the public schools' role of ensuring that
|
|
all of us can read the newspapers became less important.) Writes
|
|
Donnelly, circa 1890:
|
|
|
|
== The rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers
|
|
owned their readers... If [the public] had not been able
|
|
to read and write they would have talked with one another
|
|
upon public affairs, and have formed some correct ideas;
|
|
their education simply facilitated their mental
|
|
subjugation...
|
|
|
|
Enjoyable in Donnelly's book, *Caesar's Column*, is its intrinsic
|
|
innocence. The former congressman, writing in a less harried
|
|
age, tries to imagine the awful future, how it will be in 1988.
|
|
(Rideout, in his introduction, points out how Donnelly's
|
|
time-frame, 1988, is quite close to Orwell's: 1984.) Yet
|
|
Donnelly's horse-and-buggy world cannot come close to foreseeing
|
|
how bad things were to become during the 20th century. Even
|
|
Donnelly's villains honor such things as oral contracts. The
|
|
flavor of *Caesar's Column* is Neapolitan; even the villains have
|
|
a touch of vanilla.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
|
|
[1] From the Introduction, by Wallace R. Rideout, to the 1960
|
|
re-issue of Donnelly's book, *Caesar's Column*. Cambridge, Mass:
|
|
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960.
|
|
[2] Ibid.
|
|
[3] Ibid.
|
|
|
|
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
|
|
|
|
For related stories, visit:
|
|
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those
|
|
of Conspiracy Nation, nor of its Editor in Chief.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
New mailing list: leave message in the old hollow tree stump.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
|
|
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
|
|
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
|
|
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|