Is Beyoncé In The Illuminati? Don't Ask The Republican Running For Congress In Northwest Illinois

Who even talks about the Illuminati but right-wing nut cases these days... and people on lunatic fringe websites? Illinois Republicans... meet your candidate in the 17th district-- Rockford, down along the Iowa border past Dubuque and Davenport to Burlington and over to Peoria, Kewanee and Galesburg, and as far south as Carlson and Swan lakes. Chicago Republicans have already nominated Art Jones, an actual Nazi, as their candidate in IL-03, famous for writing that "the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews. It's the blackest lie in history." He's proud to admit he's affiliated with the Nazi Party and says he votes for the Republican candidate "90% of the time." He has a very Trumpist anti-immigrant platform. Anyway, as if that wasn't enough, the Illinois GOP now has a conspiracy theory loon as crazy as Jones running on the other side of the state, Bill Fawell. So who is Republican Bill Fawell? He won the GOP nomination to oppose Cheri Bustos, a right-wing Democrat when the two other Republicans in the primary, Mark Kleine and Jon Schuh, withdrew. Kleine had raised (self-financed) $508,150 before withdrawing. Fawell hasn't raised the $5,000 that would trigger an FEC report.

Fawell, a real estate broker, pushed conspiracy theories in blogs and his 2012 book, New American Revolution.

In his book, Fawell pushed a conspiracy theory that 7 World Trade Center collapsed as part of a controlled demolition and the attacks were a plot to destroy documents.

"Go to YouTube and punch in 'Building #7' It's the third building that went down with the twin towers on 9/11," Fawell wrote. "Nothing hit this building, not a thing, and it fell entirely upon its own. If it looks like a standard commercial implosion demolition, it's because that is exactly what it is."

"It's interesting to note that the clandestine branch of the CIA was housed on the top floor," he added. "No personnel were lost, but any and all documents were destroyed, just like a giant shredder. The Pentagon was hit in a wing being remodeled (but few people), that held a mountain of paperwork regarding 1 trillion dollars which the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was having trouble accounting for. That mountain of paperwork became a pile of ash."

In a February 2013 post on the blog of a political action committee he established in 2012 called Elect a New Congress, Fawell said that Beyonce's husband, rapper Jay-Z, "has a long history of serving up the godless Illuminati" and shared a YouTube video that speculated that Beyonce's upcoming halftime performance at the Super Bowl would have Illuminati symbolism.

The Illuminati is a secret society that serves as the basis for a popular conspiracy theory that alleges that many of the world's leaders and celebrities are masterminding world events.

In the same blog post, Fawell said that the previous Super Bowl's halftime show, performed by Madonna, was satanic and influenced by the Illuminati. He also called Madonna a "narcissist skank with the crooked teeth."

In an interview with CNN, Fawell stood by his blog posts and the theories he espoused on them. He said that Jay-Z and Beyonce expressed their support for the Illuminati in their videos, and that singer Taylor Swift had as well.

There is no Illuminati now, except on Hate Talk Radio, but there was one, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power-- the Bavarian Illuminati founded in 1776. They were a boogey man to conservatives and were banned over and over again. It attracted progressives of the day but disappeared the 1780s. You can be sure anyone ranting and raving about the Illuminati today is mentally ill, as well as an extreme right-winger.

The internet is awash with theories about the Illuminati, a mysterious group that conspiracy theorists believe is seeking a 'New World Order' that would impose a totalitarian world government. Among the alleged members of the secret society are not just politicians and religious leaders, but actors and pop stars.

Echoing the anti-communist witch-hunts and black-listings of 1950s Hollywood, one of the core beliefs of Illuminati watchers is that the entire entertainment industry has been infiltrated and that Illuminati members are using the media to brainwash the masses.

So who are the Illuminati and who has the group apparently recruited from Tinseltown?

...In a recent interview with the BBC, David Bramwell, "a man who has dedicated himself to documenting the origins of the myth", claims the modern-day Illuminati legend was influenced not by Weishaupt but rather by LSD, the 1960s counter-culture, and specifically a text called Principia Discordia.

...One of the main proponents of this new ideology was a writer called Robert Anton Wilson who wanted to bring chaos back into society by "disseminating misinformation through all portals-- through counter culture, through the mainstream media," claims Bramwell.

He did this by sending fake letters to the men's magazine Playboy, where he worked, attributing cover-ups and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, to a secret elite organisation called the Illuminati.

...[T]he idea of a powerful modern Illuminati conspiring to rule the world remained a niche belief upheld by a handful of cranks until the 1990s. The spread of the internet changed all that, giving conspiracy theorists a global platform to expound their beliefs and present their evidence to a massive audience.

Theories about how the New World Order operates run from the faintly credible-- in light of the Davos summit, a cabal of politicians and business leaders getting together to decide global policies doesn't seem impossible-- to the outright bizarre.

Earlier this year, Canada’s respected former defence minister, Paul Hellyer, came out and claimed not only that the Illuminati is real, but that it does indeed control the world.

Speaking on the Lazarus Effect podcast, Hellyer said he believed the world’s elite has suppressed technology brought to Earth by aliens, which could reverse the effects of climate change and end our reliance on fossil fuels.

When asked why, he said many members of the Illuminati have stakes in oil and were therefore heavily invested in how well the industry did.

...At the other end of the believability spectrum is former TV presenter David Icke's claim that the world's leaders are actually super-intelligent lizards in human guise who control our reality from the Moon. Those who remember Icke from his days on Grandstand may be surprised to know his theories about our reptilian overlords-- who have included the Rothschilds, Bob Hope and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother-- have amassed a faithful following on the internet.

...As well as being king and queen of the charts, Beyonce and Jay Z are frequently depicted as lords of the New World Order. Beyonce's immense fame and popularity have long made her a favourite target for conspiracy theorists. Illuminati 'experts' seized upon her half-time performance at the 2013 Super Bowl as an example of her "devil-worshipping" choreography, even accusing her on-stage alter ego Sasha Fierce of being a "demonic entity."

Her recent performance at this year’s Coachella music festival sent conspiracy theorist tongues wagging again.

...[F]ormer MI6 agent John Coleman... claimed the Beatles' overwhelming transatlantic success was engineered by the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, a London-based social research group - or, as theorists would have it, a nefarious organisation dedicated to eroding the bedrock of US society.

To that end, argues the former special agent, the institute's Illuminati connections used the Fab Four to further its plan to promote "rock music and drugs" with the aim of "undermining and eventually destroying the family unit."

...When Prince died suddenly of an accidental overdose in April, a small but vocal corner of the internet accused the Illuminati of killing the singer-songwriter, who was famous for fiercely protecting his copyrights and artistic freedom from industry interference.

Proof?