QAnon in Religious and Historical Perspective: We’re All Illuminati and Satanists

Recently, the editorial board of OpEdNews (OEN) — where I’m a senior editor — opened an on-line thread about QAnon and similar right-wing political movements.  In the course of the exchanges, editors criticized the latter simply as “conspiracy nuts” whose screeds should be banned from OEN.

After all, conspiratorial political analysis (often supported by odd mythologies, cosmologies and spiritualities) centralizes reptilian aliens. It ends up holding that the world is controlled by a cabal of pedophiles up to their necks in the business of human trafficking. The cabal is somehow associated with the “illuminati,” and with Luciferian Satan worship connected with the consumption of the adrenalized blood of trafficked children. For many, such references raise the specter of anti-Semitism.  

Moreover, the conspiratorialists in question support President Trump as a champion of children victimized by such commerce. His actions on their behalf is demonstrated, they say, by his 20 executive orders intended to inhibit such traffic. His border wall is largely responsible for restraining it dramatically. All of this, they observe, is ignored by the corrupt mainstream media. 

Additionally, QAnon and others of their stripe dismiss Covid-19 as a “plandemic” fabricated to “reset” the world economy even more in favor of its controlling one-percenters while intensifying their already oppressive management of the remaining 99%. Accordingly, mask mandates and social distancing measures should be resisted in the name of common sense and personal liberty.

Without enumerating them all, OEN editors wondered, what’s not to reject in such apparently unhinged allegations?

This Essay

The point of the following is to answer that question. In fact, it will argue that in religious and historical perspective, the QAnon conspiracy theorists speak more truth than perhaps even they intuit. As we’ll see, the world has indeed been controlled for millennia by a Luciferian Satanic cabal headed by groups of Illuminati with many deeply engaged in the practice of worldwide pedophilia. What’s more, allegations of anti-Semitism though worrisome, often have the effect of protecting pedophiles and deflecting attention from the major business interest that the vice represents.

The values of those involved their opponents say, are so alien to decent people that the guilty ones might as well be invaders from another planet. They seem completely controlled by what psychologists call the primitive reptilian brain. Excluding higher brain functions, it fosters pathological obsession with money, power, pleasure and social status; it excludes empathy and compassion. Reptilian aliens indeed.

We’ll also see that none of the terms many find off-putting – not Lucifer, Satan or illuminati – is sinister, much less evil or self-evidently crazy. And there’s a certain sense in which both Satan and Lucifer have long been undeniably worshipped especially by all westerners including Christians and Jews. And finally, the existence of a controlling unelected cabal and a huge worldwide pedophilia ring is itself beyond question – as is the fact that the already rich are benefitting spectacularly from the coronavirus pandemic.

I want to make this case because realizing the elements of sanity in movements like QAnon opens the door to dialog and cooperation with those on the right whom progressives can too easily dismiss as one-dimensional conspiracy fanatics. Again, they’re not crazy. They’re mostly working-class people who like the rest of us know something’s deeply wrong with the world. They correctly grasp that what’s wrong involves the elite, widespread child abuse and human trafficking largely ignored by the mainstream media.

Worldwide Pedophilia

For starters, QAnon’s allegations of globally organized pedophilia reflect an undeniable fact. Personally, I know what I’m talking about, because as a former priest, it turns out that I was unwittingly inducted into what everyone now sees as a de facto global pedophilic ring impacting more than 1.2 billion people. I’m referring to the Roman Catholic child rapists systematically protected by colleagues, bishops and popes. Think about it: the phenomenon is worldwide; it’s pedophilic; its coverup constitutes a conspiracy. Saying so is not insane.

Additionally, as shown in the recently released McCarrick Report, the Catholic ring had connections to an even wider pedophilic practices among the world’s elite. Its iceberg tip as suggested (in the Epstein scandal) enjoyed connections with the CIA, mi5, mi6, Mossad, and mafias of various types throughout the world. It’s arguably linked to Hollywood, academia and governments across the planet.

Again, all of that is just the tip of a huge iceberg whose gargantuan proportions simply stand to reason. The case of the Catholic Church shows that the pedophilic appetite is there. And, of course, it’s not confined to the clergy. This means that there is big money to be made in the trafficking of children connected with general prostitution, massage parlors, pornography, stripping, live-sex shows, mail-order brides, the foster child system, military prostitution, sex tourism, body organ harvesting, and associated money laundering and blackmail operations.

(Just a microcosmic example. . . One trafficked girl can be forced to have sex with 10 to 15 men each day. A 2003 study in the Netherlands found that on average, a single sex slave like that can earn her procurers at least $250,00 a year. Needless to say, business models involving that kind of money are highly attractive to organized crime and others.)

And it is by no means a stretch to argue that government officials are involved in the traffic – not any more than to allege that they profit from and protect the drug trade and ancillary money-laundering. We know too much to deny that. We know about the CIA’s direct role in the Central American drug trade during the 1980s (and beyond), as well as the connections between Mexico’s drug cartels and police and government officials in Mexico.

Relatedly, ex-NSA officer and whistle blower, Bill Binney, has maintained in pubic interviews that employing his former bosses’ unprecedented surveillance technology, the NSA could easily keep track of, reveal, and take legal measures against the entire human trafficking network. He says that with ten people, he himself could within thirty days identify not only domestic enemies, but every traitor, every elite child molester, and every money-laundering white-collar criminal in the world.   

So, it’s not unduly conspiratorial to allege that members of the world’s elite get together to conceive, plan and protect the operations involving children just listed. Again, we know too much about J. Edgar Hoover and his deals with mafia kingpins. In addition, the Epstein scandal itself and its implications of government officials, royals from various countries, the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, Catholic Church officials, and bankers for purposes of money-laundering, reveals a level of criminal planning that fulfills the very definition of conspiracy.

For instance, what do you think the world’s financial elite are doing during G7 and similar conferences? If it’s true that human trafficking is among the fastest growing enterprises in the world yielding billions to trillions in revenue each year, do you think they can avoid its discussion? If not involved in its day-to-day activities, bankers simply can’t avoid involvement in its money-laundering schemes? It would be insanely naïve to think otherwise.

Instead, it is perfectly sensible to affirm that a powerful faction of the world’s elite (if you don’t like the word “cabal”) is deeply involved in pedophilic and associated operations that are fostered, protected, and extended virtual immunity from prosecution. Their processes, procedures and crimes go virtually unreported in the mainstream media. (Think of how little we’ve heard from Ghislaine Maxwell since her arrest).

The Illuminati

And it’s all connected with the “illuminati,” secret societies and conservative rejection of the same. Everything in the modern world is. That’s especially true in the United States whose very founders were children of the Enlightenment; they were illuminati. And in the 18^th century, people like them had to form secret societies such as the Free Masons complete with identifying handshakes and passwords. They needed them simply to protect themselves from the Catholic Church establishment and their royal antagonists. 

Additionally, and despite the spirit of the French Revolution, the illuminati worldwide had not yet entirely jettisoned belief in God. Instead, they were deists. They had largely rejected the Bible in favor of a “watchmaker divinity” who had created a self-governing, clock-like universe, set it spinning according to Newton’s laws and had not been heard from since. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were all illuminati in that sense.

Ironically and to this day, Christian fundamentalists find that kind of Founding Father secularism highly objectionable. They continue to mistrust science, evolution, psychotherapy, Marxist criticism, and modern biblical scholarship. No wonder the term “illuminati” retains sinister overtones for Republicans whose most powerful wing is comprised of white Christian evangelicals.

No wonder the latter can overlook the moral failings of Donald Trump and even see him as a messiah. Such apparent contradiction survives as one of our nation’s anti-intellectual cornerstones. 

Satanic, Luciferian Cults

As for Lucifer and Satan . . . The Constantinian betrayal of the authentic Jesus tradition (during the 4^th century CE) turned Christians generally into Satan worshippers. Paradoxically, it also had them vilifying Jesus who was originally identified as the Great Bearer of Light (Lucifer) for his liberating message that contradicted the world’s self-serving imperial morality.

To be more specific, the book of Job shows that the being called “Satan” was in Hebrew lore a prominent member of God’s heavenly court. In fact, Satan was originally the representative of the Persian Empire in those celestial precincts. (Evidently, it was impossible for the ancient biblical authors to believe that an entity as powerful as Persia could not find representation in the ultimate seat of power.) As the imperial advisor of Yahweh, Satan was the defender of empire’s law and order.

It was precisely this Satan whom Jesus repeatedly repudiated in the gospel accounts of his words and deeds (see Matthew 4:10 and Mark 8:33). In his tale about Jesus’ temptation in the desert, Luke (4:6) has Satan (now identified with the devil) showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and telling him “I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” In other words, according to early Christian tradition, attainment of imperial power is dependent on Satan worship.

Jesus’ rejection of Satan’s offer was a rebuff to empire that reached its apotheosis in the Book of Revelation where (according to Apocalypse mythology) Satan and his imperial legions were expelled definitively from Yahweh’s heavenly realm (Revelation 12: 7-12).

Such rejection in the atmosphere of hated imperial Rome, led Jewish Christians to imagine Jesus as “Lucifer,” the bearer of light – the ancient world’s avatar consistently associated with the morning star, the planet Venus, and with human wisdom and liberation.

The point is that all of this was reversed when under Constantine a prevailing faction of church leaders agreed to exercise condominium with Rome over its vast empire. To do so, they had to in effect deify Satan and call him “God” while vilifying Jesus’ revolutionary spirit by demonizing Lucifer. Thus, Jesus’ antinomian, anti-imperial stance became heresy, while obedience to law and empire became orthodoxy.

So, even according to biblical texts, there is truth to the contemporary conspiratorial position that the world is run by worshippers of Satan.

Anti-Semitism

Standard articles about QAnon and anti-Semitism begin by observing that the movement is not doctrinally anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, because of its denunciations of a world-controlling elite including figures such as George Soros and the Rothschilds, QAnon is often accused of that bigotry. Moreover, as we’ve seen, it and similar groups allege that the elite in question are connected to criminal enterprises that sometimes include the consumption of adrenalized blood by the so-called Satanists just referenced.

In the eyes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and others, such criticisms and allegations, understandably evoke “anti-Semitic tropes” that are considered enough to justify labeling and dismissing those using them as basically anti-Semitic. However, (again, though understandable in the light of the Holocaust’s unspeakable horrors) the charges ignore at least six important factors:

• Because of its frequent misapplication, the term “anti-Semitism” has been politicized almost to the point of meaninglessness. It has been used to discredit supporters of Palestinian rights, upholders of international law, members of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement as well as Jewish leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky. The term has even been used to characterize those who do not completely endorse the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu.
• In fact, Alan Dershowitz, longtime colleague of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, has already played the anti-Semite card.
• Nevertheless, according to the Anti-Defamanation League, anti-Semitism is not a specific plank in Q-anon’s platform. Instead, while noting the earlier referenced trope allusions, the League has said “the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism.” 
• George Soros and the Rothschilds are integral parts of the one percent criticized by virtually all progressives without anti-Semitic overtones.
• Anti-Semites can be found in almost any group one cares to name. Offending tropes (e.g. “eating of blood”) actually originated with the Roman Catholic Church, were shockingly given voice by Martin Luther, and were reprised by Lutherans and Catholics in Nazi Germany. Yet neither Luther nor most of the groups just mentioned are routinely dismissed as anti-Semitic.
• The charge of anti-Semitism is frequently stretched to discredit allegations of worldwide trafficking in children as “conspiracy theory” thus protecting the traffickers involved.

In summary, all of this impedes honest discussion of human trafficking in general and pedophilia in particular. Such prevention has arguably been an important factor enabling individuals like Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and Ghislaine Maxwell to spend decades freely engaging in the traffic of underage females. 

Conclusion 

None of the foregoing is meant to endorse QAnon or related so-called conspiracy theories. It is however to say that their adherents should not be dismissed out of hand. In fact, they occupy terrain that is largely friendly to progressives – despite their support of Donald Trump. For instance:

• They are not our class enemies; we all belong to the working class
• They are sworn enemies of the one percent.
• They correctly recognize the alien, reptilian, and pathological nature of the world’s elite controllers
• They call us to recognize our own identities as illuminati and as satanic insofar as we support empire
• They absolutely and correctly distrust the mainstream media.
• They are similarly and justifiably suspicious of government officials.
• They specifically recognize that official responses to the pandemic are deeply unfair and therefore highly suspicious
• Their moral concern for children, child abuse and human trafficking is completely admirable.

Realizing such areas of convergence makes dialog and cooperation possible. That in turn helps us overcome the divide and conquer strategies of our keepers who would have us believe that potential allies are irredeemable deplorables who should be excluded even from the revolutionary pages of OpEdNews.