Fake quotes from American general and Freemason Albert Pike

 

A Facebook post shares false quotes from American general and Masonic leader Albert Pike, who allegedly planned world wars back in the 19^th century, the fall of the Tsar in Russia, the communist takeover of it, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the clash between Zionism and Islamism. This isn’t just about predicting future events, but the claim that Pike supposedly worked to make them happen, as if he was all-powerful

 

A Facebook post claims the following:

Albert Pyke’s (33^rd degree Freemason and US Civil War General) blueprint for how the final world war will unfold is realized.

The post includes images with added text, which are fake quotes from American Masonic leader Albert Pike (1809-1891), whose last name is actually spelled Pike.

According to the post, in the 19^th century Pike planned as many as three world wars (the third is “being realized” now), i.e. he contributed to them breaking out in the future, not that he merely predicted them. It is the conspiracy theory about the three world wars, which appears on the Internet under the abbreviation 3WWW, according to which Freemasons deliberately cause conflicts in order to control the world.

For this purpose, Pike allegedly planned to use various political movements and even invent new ones: communists, fascists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamists, but this cannot be seen in any serious biography of Pike (example link) and he was not as powerful and influential. In reality, he was a Freemason leader, which proves nothing. He was also a general in the US Civil War, but in the defeated Confederate Army and he was a lawyer and a publicist as well.

The genesis of those fake quotes is as follows. The French journalist Léo Taxil (1854-1907) was a critic of the Catholic Church, so wanting to toy with it, he declared that he repented and began to write in its favor. The church was against the Freemasons, so Taxil attributed to them Satanism, orgies and sacrifices, deliberately running into absurdity. His target was also Pike, who according to Taxil, created a dangerous anti-Catholic sect-the Palladists.

In his book “The Devil in the 19^th Century”(1894), Taxil claimed that on August 15, 1871 Pike presented a plan to the Palladists, which he made at the request of the Italian politician Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), with whom he corresponded. The plan called for the Palladists to infiltrate the governments of predominantly Catholic countries and attack Catholicism, whereby the Pope would flee to Russia and influence it to become a Catholic state, but the Palladists would then recruit revolutionaries to overthrow the Russian Tsar.

That text is completely absurd, because tsarist Russia was fanatically Orthodox, and when it comes to the revolutionaries, it is not some kind of plan for the February Revolution of 1917—as one might think. At the time of Taxil, there were already various socialists, anarchists and nihilists in Russia, who even assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

Such articles of Taxil became popular among believers, however, at a press conference on April 19, 1897, he admitted it was all just a joke. When he died in 1907, the Catholic press published an extremely negative review of his character and work.

However, not everyone found out about it, and some may have been confused by the fact that he wrote under pseudonyms, so his fabrications continued to spread. They were even quoted by the Chilean Cardinal Jose Caro Rodríguez (1866-1958) in his book “The Mystery of Freemasonry Unveiled” (1925). It reached the Canadian general and conspirator William Guy Carr (1895-1959), who added his own fabrications in his book “Pawns in the Game” (1955).

It was Carr who wrote that Pike planned the world wars, the fall of the Tsar in Russia, the communist takeover of it and the rise of fascism, Nazism, Zionism and Islamism, but Taxil, from whom this story began, had no such notions.

Most of those terms did not exist then, and communism is an important exception, because of “The Communist Manifesto” (1848). Fascism and Nazism appeared only between the two world wars, and Zionism really took off in 1897, although it took its initial steps somewhat earlier.

In his book, Carr referred to a letter from Pike to Mazzini dated August 15,1871, which is the date of the meeting between Pike and the Palladists—as we saw from Taxil’s notions. Rodríguez also mentioned the letter in his book, which was Carr’s inspiration. Carr misunderstood some details from it, so he claimed that the letter was kept in the British Museum Library in London, but when he contacted it, they replied they did not have such a letter. Recently, it was contacted by journalists and other people but the answer remained the same.

The story is based on fabrications and non-existent evidence and should have died out, but the conspiracy website threeworldwars.com, made by Michael Haupt in 2003, contributed to its revival.

The quotes in the post are not from Pike, but are based on Carr’s 1955 work. There are also factual errors in them, such as ones claiming the tsar in Russia was overthrown in order to establish communism in it, but the tsar was overthrown with the February Revolution, while communism took over after the October Revolution.

There is also an illogicality here. Even if Pike had created those political movements and mentioned them in a letter to Mazzini, how would Mazzini have understood that letter? In 1871 those Nazis, fascist and Zionists would sound like Klingons and Martians to him. The point of a letter is for the recipient to understand it.

Other authors have also dealt with the research of this conspiracy theory, e.g. here and here, whose writings are quite analytical.

Taking into account everything stated so far, we evaluate the post as untrue.

 

 

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