Chapter 9. “Frameworks of Orientation”: Creating Enemies for the Masses

The Inquisitions of the Middle Ages

The Inquisitions of the Middle Ages were, and the Inquisitions of today still are, to prevent democratic choice. The Roman emperors Constantine and Theodosius I, in the early 4th-Century AD, along with Justinian I, essentially made the Catholic Church the state religion. Just as the wealth of today migrates toward tax shelters, over the next 700 years aristocracy migrated towards positions of power in the higher offices of the church—those of bishops, cardinals, and pope. Where the church and its people were once one, the church hierarchy (First Estate) and aristocracy (Second Estate) were now one; there was now a distinct division between the church leaders and the common people. From their new power base running the church, the combined First and Second Estates sold indulgencies and salvations. The common people were terrified of Purgatory and the last bit of wealth could be extracted from those who hoped to be saved and go straight to heaven. Edward Burman, in The Inquisition, from which this chronology is taken, explains that with the returning Crusaders in the late 11th and early 12th centuries came various unorthodox Christian beliefs filtering into Europe from Jerusalem.

Some of these beliefs permitted each person to find his or her own way to heaven and (primarily the well-organized and rapidly expanding Cathars and Waldensians) openly frowned on a wealthy, licentious church. Others were drawing away church members by competing claims of miraculous cures. All powerbrokers fear the expansion of the political powers of others while their own power shrinks.

Such was the Church’s fear of these competing beliefs. The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) was organized by Pope Innocent III to destroy the Cathars of southern France with their threatening doctrines and parallel organization of dioceses headed by bishops. This was only the largest of various efforts to suppress heresies since the middle of the 10th-Century. As with all crusades (the crusade of the Cold War is a good example), this required a massive “framework of orientation;” a strategy-of-tension portraying the Cathars as a dangerous enemy, in this case as infidels and heretics, to justify their slaughter and the theft of their wealth.

The burning of heretics at the stake for 200 years coalesced between 1123 and 1206 into the formal Inquisition. In 1206 and 1210 Pope Innocent III founded the Franciscan and Dominican Mendicant Orders to preach against heresy; and in 1215 the Latern Council was held which listed “clause by clause” heretical interpretations of the faith, the removal from office of heretics, confiscation of their property, excommunication, and their referral to the feudal lords for punishment.

With the Cathars fleeing to other sections of Europe to escape certain death from zealous inquisitors and secular lords, between 1227 and 1252 Pope Gregory IX and Pope Innocent IV issued several bulls that further encoded and formalized the form of the Inquisition.

“The Inquisition was ready to start work on a grand scale shortly after the mid-point of the thirteenth Century” and, as the Christian sects went underground, Popes Alexander IX, Urban IV, Clement IV, and Boniface VIII issued bulls to maintain that momentum and root out the last vestiges of threat to their power.

Franciscan and Dominican priests organized to lead heretics back to the fold evolved into a few zealous priests becoming inquisitors and torturers. They condemned hundreds of thousands of heretics to burn at the stake over a period of 700 years, the majority being Cathars, Waldensians, Jews, and Muslims. As those religious competitors disappeared, Freemasons, alleged witches, midwives, and personal enemies were targeted.

“Only the fear of losing power acquired over a period of a thousand years can satisfactorily explain such violent reactions.”1 Because they did not believe in buying one’s way out of salvation and would draw people from the state church, the Cathars were headed for extinction. They, the Waldensians, and smaller sects in most of Europe were suppressed by 1270 but Jews and Muslims survived as a political force on an ever-shrinking part of the Iberian Peninsula.

We learn Roman pagans tortured Christians. But in reality the alliance between Church and state extinguished both paganism and competing Christian sects through extreme violence and “the number of Christians executed by other Christians in a single province during the reign of Charles V [alone] far exceeded that of all the martyrs who perished at the hands of the pagans throughout the Roman Empire in the space of three centuries.”2

The Spanish Inquisition

With the inquisitorial pattern well established, starting in 1478 the Christian secular powers of Spain proceeded to eradicate Jews and Muslims from their territory. The choice was between leaving Spain, converting to Christianity, or being burnt at the stake. It is only because the power of the Spanish empire was a threat to British and other empires that the world knows so much about the Spanish Inquisition and so little about the French, Italian, and British Inquisitions. Although all were equally violent, the history of each culture suppressed the exposure of their inquisitorial violence and emphasized the violence in their archenemy Spain. This is the “creation of enemies” through a strategy-of-tension to protect a power-structure as it has functioned throughout history.

The Inquisitorial Suppression of the Templars

The Knights Templar were industrious, faithful servants of Christianity. Their history began in 1119 when nine knights formed an association to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. They fought so valiantly that

gifts in abundance flowed in on the Order, large possessions were bestowed on it in all countries of the west…. By the Bull, Omne datum optimum, granted by Pope Alexander III in 1162, the Order of the Templars acquired great importance, and from this time forth, it may be regarded as totally independent, acknowledging no authority but that … of the supreme pontiff.3

The Templars fought many battles for Christianity, and by 1302 they had spread over much of Europe and were enormously wealthy and powerful. Much of the land owned by the Templars had been given to their forebears by the grateful ancestors of local aristocracy (in trade for the slaughter of non-Christian or heretical Christian populations) and by a Church whose successors resented and feared the power of this great order. Local bishops and clergy made many complaints to the pope about the Templars’ refusal to recognize local religious authority.

When a French pope was consecrated in 1305, he rewarded King Philip IV of France and other nobles by supporting an intrigue against the respected Templars. The French secret service created a strategy-of-tension to protect the power-structure as they destroyed the Templars and stole their wealth. They spread vicious rumors and

on the night of the 13th of October, [1307], all the Templars in the French dominions were simultaneously arrested…. They were accused of worshipping an idol covered with an old skin, embalmed, having the appearance of a piece of polished oil-cloth. “In this idol,” we are assured, “there were two carbuncles for eyes, bright as the brightness of heaven, and it is certain that all hope of the Templars was placed in it: it was their sovereign god, and they trusted in it with all their heart.” They are accused of burning the bodies of the deceased brethren, and making the ashes into a powder, which they administered to the younger brethren in their food and drink, to make them hold fast their faith and idolatry; of cooking and roasting infants, and anointing their idols with the fat; of celebrating hidden rites and mysteries, to which the young and tender virgins were introduced, and of a variety of abominations too absurd and horrible to be named.4

Like all inquisition charges, the fabrications of this social-control-paradigm (system of beliefs, or “framework of orientation”) could not be defended against and confessions were obtained by torture. King Philip then sent the findings to other European countries. These preposterous accusations were at first rejected, but by 1314 the Templars were totally discredited and destroyed; over 2,000 of them confessed under torture and were quartered or burned at the stake. In only nine years the Templars, who had been perceived for centuries as elite warriors and builders of the Christian world, and who commanded both large resources and respect, were labeled enemies and cast into oblivion. The First and Second Estates had acted together to reclaim their wealth and power.5

Winding Down the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages

As the Inquisition wound down in Europe in the 18th-Century (except in Spain), its dying flame, now picked up by Protestant evangelists, reached America in the form of the Salem witch trials. Small inquisitorial flames in Peru and Columbia died out in the 17th-Century but in Spain and Mexico it was a primary political tool well into the 19th-Century.

Although under a different name (changed twice, in 1908 and 1965), the Inquisition still exists as “The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” the conservative political arm which suppresses liberal elements within the Church and whose leader became Pope in April 2005.6

The world will never know the true number slaughtered. Some authors claim reliable estimates of between 200,000 and 1-million burned at the stake in the witchcraft craze of the 16th and 17th centuries alone. Others claim 500,000 burned at the stake over a period of 400 years before the witchcraft craze even started.

There was a far greater number killed in the sweeps of military forces organized specifically to slaughter entire communities of Cathars, Waldensians, Jews, and Muslims. And Templar and Hospitaler knights gained much of their land through local Christian feudal lords giving them free rein to slaughter heretical populations and sharing with them the spoils.

So, when one includes those killed other than by burning at the stake—which is by far the greater number—deaths at the hands of inquisitors to increase the power of the already powerful throughout the full 700 year inquisition history is truly massive.

The Inquisitorial Suppression of the Illuminati

In 1776 Professor Adam Weishaupt of the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria (Germany) established the Bavarian Illuminati (“enlightened ones”), a secret group to expand the rights of the people. Thirteen years later, the French Revolution’s promise of more extensive rights created even greater fear in the First and Second Estates.

The Third Estate, bourgeoisie with the support of the common people, now ruled France. The potential for full rights for everybody could have become contagious. The Illuminati supported those increased rights. In a replay of earlier inquisitions, managers of the religious state immediately asserted their control by frightening the population into a witch hunt. A “framework of orientation” of an imminent enemy was put into place. The war cry went out that in effect said, “Look out for the Illuminati! Look out for the Illuminati! They want to take over your country! Your church! The world!”7 Note that no one today will dispute that it was the king, aristocracy, and church (those who created those strategies-of-tension) that then controlled the so-called civilized world.

That the Illuminati are active today and a threat to freedom is a fiction kept alive by the far right wing, whose politics are too extreme even for most of those who do hold the reins of power. It was the ruling powers who created these social-control paradigms to control the masses to protect their wealth and power. It is ironic to note that when people without sufficient education—or of radical bend— dig up those old writings about the Illuminati (the “framework of orientation” at that time), they point to the current organizations of the powerful (such as the Trilateralists) as being the Illuminati attempting to rule the world. Poetic justice!

However, the forward march of history could not be stopped. The intense efforts of the Church and aristocracy to overthrow the French Revolution resulted in Napoleon Bonaparte taking the reins of power in France. Through the conquest of many of the nations which had conspired to overthrow the French Revolution and were conspiring to overthrow this latest upstart, Napoleon spread throughout Europe many of the rights declared for all men by that revolution. Known as the Napoleonic Codes, “they are the basis for the law of over thirty nations today.”8

The twin threats of loss of trading rights in Europe (Napoleon’s Continental System) and the threat of replacing aristocratic privilege with rights for all people led to a “Holy Alliance” (sometimes called a “Monarchical Alliance” but the church was always a crucial ally) between European monarchies and the church to reclaim their aristocratic rights.

Though Napoleon freed most of Europe, he was ultimately defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Aristocracy and European monarchies immediately convened the Congress of Vienna to abrogate the newly gained rights of the masses. However, “Napoleon’s omelet couldn’t be unscrambled…. It was a force destined to destroy the dynastic system.”9

History teaches of Napoleon’s desire to be a world dictator, when he was really destroying the power of the First and Second Estates who did rule the world. Because Napoleon was such a threat to the powerful, the secret services and state departments of the European monarchies guided the writing and publication of books depicting Napoleon as a megalomaniac and tyrannical dictator. These concepts saturated the literature of the time and still saturate the literature of today. In a replay of the Illuminati nonsense, once Napoleon was demonized as an enemy of the people, the masses remained, and still are, unaware that Napoleon really stood for reclaiming their rights.

Czarist Secret Police Demonize the Jews

Another example of a strategy-of-tension (a “framework of orientation”) to justify assault on a specific people to destroy their power and steal their wealth was The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Czarist (Russian) secret police created this alleged Jewish/Zionist master plan for world domination out of thin air in 1903 to condition the population for pogroms (government-sponsored riots) against the created enemy, the Jews.

English and French translations appeared in 1920, but in 1921 a correspondent for the Times, Philip Graves, proved they were forgeries. With the cooperation of a Russian refugee who had helped create the deception, it was shown that the forgers “plagiarized paraphrases from a satire on Napoleon.”10 That satire was no doubt a previous creation intended, as explained above, to demonize Napoleon because his egalitarian concepts of justice were a threat to the privileged groups.

Though the fraud of the Protocols of Zion is well known, there are many instances of such hoaxes that are recorded in history and accepted as fact. Those tens of thousands of CIA-created fraudulent articles and thousands of fraudulent books put out by compliant professors and reporters addressed above are good examples. As intelligence services of all imperial centers do this, one society will have its created version of history and another society a different history favorable to its desired view of the world. The holocaust of WWII was the climactic finale of over 1,000 years of hate rhetoric against the Jews, preached from the pulpit, supposedly for killing Jesus. Just as the power of right-wing extremists in U.S. society ebb and flow, the power of church right-wing extremists ebb and flow.

Where it was once common to persecute the Jews openly, the horrors of the holocaust made it no longer acceptable. All who would advocate such a thing are now outside the permitted parameters of political or religious debate. Today most Christians are supportive of the rights of Jewish people. This stems from the positive statements of church leaders as opposed to the previous violent rhetoric of the right-wing minority creating tensions of an imminent enemy so as to gain followers for their agenda.

Barnet Litvinoff, in his masterly work on the 2,000 years of Jewish persecution, The Burning Bush, points out that the persecutors and supporters of the Jews have periodically changed sides.11 Each of these changes required the targeted population to be programmed either as an enemy or a friend. That change is the necessary paradigm shift to gain a following that telegraphs the intentions of the managers-of-state.

The World starts Breaking Free from Imperial Centers

Fear gripped the powerful when Russia broke free in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, with the support of the common people, had revolted and taken the reins of power from the 1st and 2nd Estates. As WWI ground to a halt, Communist revolutionaries were taking over railroads and factories as Germany collapsed. The disillusioned German navy and much of the army were hoisting the red flag. Only an alliance between Social Democrats and the socialist wing of labor gave private armies called “free corps” enough time to wrestle those railroads, factories, and disaffected military from the Communists.12 That Social Democrat/Socialist alliance was broken when the old powerbrokers reclaimed control through the installation of Hitler and his fascists.

The managers-of-state of the old imperial nations knew how close the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia came to spilling over into Poland, Austria, Germany, and even Italy. They knew that, if those major nations were lost, the rest of Europe was sure to follow. A firewall to prevent that threatening philosophy from sweeping them from power had to be built. The scourge of Bolshevism (Communism) was created as the primary “framework of orientation.” Copied from the old Illuminati and Zionist scare, the message, increasing the level of tension so the masses could be controlled, was the same, “Communism! Communism! They want to take over your country! Your church! The world!” Under that call to arms between the two world wars, most of the governments of Europe were turned over to fascists.

In the United States, in 1920, the suppression of American political rights took the form of the Palmer Raids, in which thousands, mostly labor unionists suspected of Soviet sympathies, were arrested in the middle of the night. Hundreds were deported, and hundreds more were sent to prison.13 Again take note that most of the world was still under the control of the managers-of-state of those countries sounding the warning. The country that had broken away from capitalism’s control was, by comparison, extremely weak.a

What the managers-of-state really feared was the failure of the 14-nation attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik Revolution, the governing of that country by the common people, and how close Germany, Italy, and a few other countries had come to being lost to the same revolutionary forces. Lest taking democracy seriously would spread and destroy the power-structure of the imperial nations operating under representative democracy (a limited democracy at best) the masses of these “free” countries had to be inoculated against the ideology of that revolution through creation of the Bolshevik (Communist) “enemy.”

But during the crisis of the Great Depression that soon followed, the inoculation was quickly wearing off. The managers-of-state of European countries knew that the leaders of labor would govern if honest elections were permitted, so they turned the governments over to fascists. Managers-of-state all over Europe acted to avoid a ballot-box revolution such as occurred in Spain. The fascist takeovers of the governments of Europe were a sham to suppress the democratic voice of the people:

Hitler was eventually put in power by the feudalist clique around President Hindenburg, just as Mussolini and Primo de Rivera were ushered into office by their respective sovereigns…. In no case was an actual revolution against constituted authority launched; fascist tactics were those of a sham rebellion arranged with the tacit approval of the authorities who pretended to have been overwhelmed by force.14

Note how the fascists were put in power by back-room political deals, specifically for the protection of power and wealth and to avoid democratic solutions, yet are recorded in history as only fascism and that only in Germany and Italy; ignoring all other such states. The preceding quotation was from economic historian Karl Polanyi, who recognized that desperate powerbrokers used the violence of fascism to suppress democracy.

Hitler was a German intelligence officer throughout Germany’s post-WWI crisis and it is highly likely his rise to power was orchestrated by German intelligence specifically to protect a power-structure that was crumbling.15 That these realities can be found only by in-depth reading, or by chance, is because much of history has been written, and is being written, to protect a power-structure.

The famed march of the Black Shirts that supposedly put Mussolini in power took place three days after Italy had been effectively handed over to fascist control. Germany’s famous Reichstag fire was almost a month after Hitler had been given power in a secret January meeting of German powerbrokers.16 Those acts were a part of that “framework of orientation” depicting the opposition as terrorists and enemies and thus weakening them politically before the national election that legitimized Hitler’s rule.

Only in Spain were free elections permitted and, to the horror of the captains of capitalism, labor won the right to govern. The connection between the powerbrokers, fascism, and the fear of ballot-box revolutions was evident when troops from Germany and Italy (with unspoken but real support from America, Britain, and France) supported the dictator Franco, and, in a bloody foreshadow of WWII, overthrew that election.b

The real target of the back-room political deal in Germany was labor that was poised to take over the reins of the German government by the vote. When Hitler seized power in 1933, police were ordered to shoot key labor leaders on sight and within a year 100,000 politically aware persons were in prison.17 Witness the comments of a member of Hitler’s cabinet, Colonel Walther von Reichenau. His analysis of the crisis in Germany could be used almost without changing a word to describe labor’s position in America since 1980, in the collapsed economies on the periphery of empire since 1997, and in the U.S. after the Patriot Act:

The trade unions have been smashed, the communists driven into a corner and provisionally neutralized, the Reichstag has surrendered its rights with the Enabling Law. The workers are keeping their heads down and, after the previous slump, their wage packets will be more important to them than any politics.18

Although there had previously been much rhetoric against, and individual persecution of, the Jews within Germany, organized attacks against them did not start until November 9, 1938—-Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass).19 The onslaught against the Jews by fascists was undertaken to repay the super-secret Thule Society (surely now rebuilding in Europe and closely related to America’s Aryan Nations) for their early financial support of Hitler. The Thule Society organized Hitler’s German Workers’ Party and supported it financially. Their symbol was the swastika, and this became the symbol of German fascism. It is reasonable to assume that Hitler put these fanatics into positions of power because they were the power behind him.20

When the original targets of the Inquisition (Christian Cathars and Waldensians) were eliminated, the inquisitors turned towards searching for witches and satanic cults to justify their existence and maintain their power.21 Those first accused of practicing the “black arts” and burned at the stake were rather defenseless people. However, as the hysteria continued, the accusatory finger pointed higher and higher and eventually pointed towards those in power. When these powerful became the target, the hysteria died down. After a respite, the witch hunts would start again.

The same pattern was observed when McCarthy’s “witch-hunts” started destroying those in power, the powerful turned and destroyed him and the hysteria died down. Whenever the personal risk to leaders is high, they are motivated to defend themselves. This demonstrates that the process can be controlled and the public protected if the leaders ever decide they wish to do so.

Footnotes

1. How close the world came to breaking free from monopolists time after time is hidden history. Besides the imminent loss of control within the imperial centers addressed here, all across South America, Asia, and Africa throughout the Cold War (50 years) maintaining control of the impoverished world was nip and tuck. When the Soviet Union collapsed it was assumed the battle was won. But Latin America is suddenly closer to breaking free than ever (keywords: Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, China, Russia), Asia and Russia have the technology to establish totally new trade patterns, and such an alliance would quickly bring in Africa. Back to text
2. The wrongly titled Spanish Civil War is a textbook study how the battle cry of communism has been used to motivate populations to support the overthrow of some of the world’s most democratic elections. The competing parties in Spain’s election “consisted of two Republican parties with 126 representatives in the Cortez, ninety-nine socialists, thirty-five Catalan Separatists, and just seventeen Communists” (George Seldes, “The Roman Church and Franco,” The Human Quest, March-April, 1994, pp. 16-18). George Seldes, Even the Gods can’t Change History (Secaucus, N.J: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1976), part II, Chapter 3). Likewise, due to the CIA’s Mighty Wurlitzer propaganda tagging them as communist, Americans were unaware that the Communist Party was one of the smallest of 14 political parties in the 1984 Nicaraguan election that legitimized the Sandinista government. Back to text

Endnotes

1. Edward Burman, The Inquisition: Hammer of Heresy (New York: Dorset Press, 1992), p. 39. Back to text
2. Michael Parenti, History as Mystery (San Francisco, City Lights Books, 1999), p. 38. Back to text
3. James Burnes, The Knights Templar (London: Paybe and Foss, 1840), pp. 12-14. See also Stephen Howarth’s Knights Templar (New York: Dorset Press, 1982). Back to text
4. Charles G. Addison, The Knights Templar (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1842), pp. 194-203, especially p. 203. See also Burman, Inquisition, pp. 95-99. Back to text
5. Burman, Inquisition, pp. 95-99. Back to text
6. Ibid, pp. 213-14. Back to text
7. David Caute, The Great Fear (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 18-19; Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 10-11; Arkon Daraul, A History of Secret Societies (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1961); James and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler? (New York: Dial Press, 1978); Barnet Litvinoff, The Burning Bush (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988); Heiko Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); David H. Bennet, The Party of Fear (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 23-26, 205-06. Back to text
8. Daniel J. Boorstin, “History’s Hidden Turning Points,” U.S. News & World Report, April 22, 1991, cover story. Back to text
9. Ibid, p. 61. Back to text
10. David Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace (New York: Avon Books, 1989), pp. 468-69; Michael Kettle, The Allies and the Russian Collapse (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1981), p. 17. For how the Protocols evolved further to support Fascism in Europe read F.L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 24, 29, 118. 184. The Thule Society’s efforts to promote anti-Semitism through Hitler would likely have not had much effect on the world except for Henry Ford, through his Dearborn Independent newspaper, spreading those Protocols to every corner of the world, and imprinting anti-Semitism into the world’s mind (Pool and Pool, Who Financed Hitler, pp. 3, 23, Chapter 3). Back to text
11. Litvinoff, Burning Bush. Back to text
12. Edmond Taylor, The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order, 1905-1922 (New York: Dorset Press, 1989), Chapters 17-19.Back to text
13. Bennet, Party of Fear, pp. 191-98, 205-206. Back to text
14. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), pp. 237-241; see also F. L. Carsten, Britain and the Weimar Republic (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), especially Chapter 8; Carsten, Rise of Fascism.Back to text
15. Taylor, Fall of the Dynasties, p. 366. Back to text
16. Carsten, Rise of Fascism, pp.150-55. Back to text
17. Carsten, Weimar Republic, especially Chapter 8; also Michael N. Dobbowski and Isodor Wallimann, Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), especially pp. 194-209.Back to text
18. J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919 – 1945, vol. 2 (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), p. 626. Back to text
19. Ibid Back to text
20. Pool and Pool, Who Financed Hitler? pp. 7-8, 19-21. Back to text
21. Burman, Inquisition; Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York: Citadel Press, 1954), a condensation of his 1887 three-volume monumental work, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Back to text

This is a chapter from the book, Economic Democracy; The Political Struggle for the 21st Century. Visit that link for more information about the book.