Rick Spence: evaluation

Transcript context

…It’s one of those things that often comes out of revolutionary situations. Revolutions always seek to make things better. Don’t they? “We’re going to take a bad old regime. The Sultan is…” And the Sultan was bad, I think it’s fair to say. Abdul Hamid II wasn’t called a red sultan because of his favorite color type of thing. And, the idea is that they were going to improve. The Ottoman Empire was a multinational empire. They were going to try to equalize and bring in the different groups. And, none of that happened. It became worse, in the same way that you could argue that the goal of Russian revolutionaries was to get rid of the bad old, incompetent, medieval Tsarist regime and to bring in a new great shining future. And it became even more authoritarian. And, the crimes of the Imperial Russian regime pale in significance of what would follow, in the same way that the crimes of Abdul Hamid pale when you get to the Young Turks. But, that wasn’t necessarily the intention. But, von Sebottendorff is a German businessman who’s working in this period. And the whole point here is that the Ottoman Empire in this period is a hotbed of political intrigue and all kinds of interesting things about it. The Young Turk Revolution is essentially a military coup, but it is plotted in Masonic lodges. Okay? I know, technically Masonic lodges are never supposed to be involved in politics, but they are. Or, the lodge meeting breaks up, and then you plot the revolution. So, same group of people, but it’s not technically. But yes. And there’s the Macedonia Resorcia Lodge in Thessaloniki was ground zero for plotting this military coup that was supposed to improve the Empire. Sebottendorff is, in one way or another, mixed up in all of this, or at least he’s an observer. Plus, he’s initiated into the Masonic lodges. And interestingly enough, the fellow initiates him into one of these eastern lodges is a Jewish merchant by the name of Termoodi, and who’s also a Kabbalist. And, Sebottendorff is very, very interested in the occult. He’s initiated into eastern Masonic lodges and a period when those same lodges are being used as a center for political intrigue. He also apparently is involved in gunrunning, which in revolutionary periods is there’s a lot of money to be made off of that. So he’s connected to various dark businesses in a tumultuous time with connections to politicized freemasonry and the occult. Now, in the course of the first World War, he returns to Germany. He just shows up. And, it would be my operative suspicion or theory that Sebottendorff was working for someone. I don’t think he just pops up in Munich on his own accord. Why does he leave the Ottoman Empire and return to that place? Who’s behind him? Now, maybe no one, but maybe someone, because he does seem to have money at his disposal. And he comes into Munich and he basically takes over this small occult study group. t place? Who’s behind him? Now, maybe no one, but maybe someone, because he does seem to have money at his disposal. And he comes into Munich and he basically takes over this small occult study group. Now, the interesting thing is that The Thule Society is really just a branch of another existing, what’s called, an Areosophist order, a thing called the German order, or the Germanic order, which is centered in Berlin. But for some reason, he doesn’t want his group to be connected by name with the Germanic order. So, Thule Society, Thule in this case, is a reference to supposedly a mythical Arctic homeland of the Aryan race. Apparently, they were all snow people who wander out of the snow at some point. It’s a frozen Atlantis. So I mentioned these people, the Areosophists, which, you have to practice saying that. So, what are they? Well, they’re a racist Germanic offshoot of Theosophy. And, I know I’m explaining one thing to explain something, but there’s no other way to do this. So, Theosophy was 19th century very popular and widely modeled occult belief that was founded by a Russian woman by the name of Helena Blavatsky. She was a medium psychic, supposedly got channelings from the ascended masters. The basic story there, they’re all of the ascended masters, which are mystical beings that may or may not have once been human. They live inside the Himalayas or they float among them on a cloud, and they guide the spiritual evolution of humanity. What Blavatsky did was to take Western esotericism and blend it with Hindu and Buddhist esotericism, which became very, very sexy in the West, still is. Buddhism attracts a lot of people, because, well, it’s Buddhism, it’s different, see? So, the Mahatmas, the ascended masters were sending her messages, despite the fact that she was later proven pretty much to be a fraud and writing the letters herself. Nevertheless, people still went along with this doctrine, and it’s been widely modified and copied since then. So, an idea in Theosophy was that human spiritual evolution was tied to physical evolution. In the case of Blavatsky, Blavatsky never said that Aryans, white people, anything out this superior. She talked about the different root races, but their version of it’s just gobbledygook that seems to include everyone in. I’d defy you to make much sense out of it. But, in the early 20th century, there were different… One of the things that became fashionable, not terribly popular, these are small movements, was the idea that, well, Germany is a new upcoming country, and part of this I think was really trying to define who the Germans were, because remember, the German Empire, Germany as a political state, doesn’t come until existence until 1871. Prior to that, Germany was a geographic expression, a vaguen, which described a large area in Central Europe where a lot of people who wore leather shorts or something like that and spoke similar German dialects were nominally Germans, but they might be Prussians or Bavarians. They came in all sorts of varieties in religion. There was no German identity. r something like that and spoke similar German dialects were nominally Germans, but they might be Prussians or Bavarians. They came in all sorts of varieties in religion. There was no German identity. Something very similar happened in Italy in this same period. I mean, there weren’t Italians, there were Sardinians, and there were Romans, and there were Sicilians. Umbrians spoke, again, dialects of a similar language, but had never lived, not since the Roman Empire under a single state and really didn’t think of themselves as the same. So you have to create this artificial thing. You have to create Germans. “There is now a Germany with an emperor. And so, we’re all going to be Germans.” Well, exactly what is that? Much of it is an artificial creation. You have to decide upon some standard dialect. Okay, we’ll decide what that is. Often dialect that only a few people actually speak, and then they will be drilled into children’s heads through state schooling programs. So I think this is the milieu that it comes out of. People were trying to figure out what on earth Germans actually were. And, the need for some common identity. And, that leads to everything like Wagnerian Opera. Richard Wagner wanted to create a German mythical music. So he went back and strip mined old German myths and cobbled them together into a lot of people standing on stage singing. And, that was his purpose. He was a nationalist. He was in many ways a racialist nationalist. And this was his idea of trying to create out of bits and pieces of the past, a newfangled form of German identity. So, on the more mystical end of this, you had the ideas that, well, Germany must have been created for some special purpose, because the Germans must be very special people and we must have some particular destiny. And then, out of this, the direction this is heading, well, we’re all part of some master race with some ties to some great civilization in the past, call it Thule, call it whatever you want to be. They basically just invent things and try to attach those to the past. And so, Areosophy was the Areonized version of Theosophy. And what this did was to take the idea that spiritual and physical evolution had led to the most advanced form of human beings, which were the Aryans, and the most advanced group of them were, of course, the Germans. And, this attracted appeal. Keep in mind, again, this was not a mass movement. This was very much a fringe movement. Most people weren’t aware of it and weren’t particularly interested in it, but it had an appeal for those who already had a esoteric bent in some form or another. And, this is where things like the Germanin order or the German order and their other groups, it was only one of many, grew out of. And, what it was that the Thule Society as a branch, The Thule Gesellschaft was supposed to do, was to study this. It was an esoteric study group. And so, people would get together and they’d talk about things, probably make more stuff up and all work around this idea of German Aryans as the most advanced human beings, and all the wonderful things that the future would hold.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.