Nesta H. Webster

Nesta Helen Webster (Mrs Arthur Webster) (August 24, 1876 - May 16, 1960) was a far right activist, an historian , occultist, and aristocratic author who revived conspiracy theories about the Illuminati.. She argued that the secret society’s members were occultists, plotting communist world domination , using the idea of a Jewish cabal, the Masons and Jesuits as a smokescreen. According to her, their international subversion included the French Revolution, 1848 Revolution, the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

In 1920, Webster wrote the The Jewish Peril, a series of articles in the London Morning Post, centered on the Protocols of Zion. These articles were subsequently compiled and published in the same year, in book form under the title of the The Cause of World Unrest. She was cited respectfully by Winston Churchill, "This movement among the Jews ... as Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, [played] a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution"

Webster also claimed that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were authentic. She also believed she was a countess in a previous life, who was guillotined by French revolutionaries. At one time she was a member of the British Union of Fascists..

Early years

She was born Nesta Bevan in the stately home Trent Park. She was the youngest daughter of Robert Bevan, a close friend of Cardinal Manning. Her mother was the daughter of Bishop Shuttleworth of Chichester. She was educated at Westfield College (now part of Queen Mary, University of London). On coming of age she travelled around the world visiting to India, Burma, Singapore, and Japan. In India she married Captain Arthur Webster, the Superintendent of the English Police.

Obsession with French Revolution

Returning to England she started writing, and was overcome by a strong literary obsession that she had lived in eighteenth-century France. The more she read about the French Revolution the more she felt she remembered. Her first serious book on this subject was The Chevalier de Boufflers, which Lord Cromer gave a long review in The Spectator. She sank deeper into the literature of the Revolution, spending over three years at the British Museum and Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

Reactionary

Following the First World War she gave a lecture on the Origin and Progress of World Revolution to the officers of the Royal Artillery at Woolwich. By special request she repeated the lecture to the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Brigade of Guards in Whitehall, and then she was asked to repeat it a third time to the officers of the Secret Service. It was at their special request that she wrote the World Revolutions: The Plot Against Civilisation, based on these lectures. Her charisma helped her to captivate some the leading literary, political and military minds of her day. Lord Kitchener in India described her as the "foremost opponent of subversion".

In 1919 Webster published The French Revolution: a Study in Democracy where she claimed that a secret conspiracy had prepared and carried out the French Revolution. Winston Churchill was convinced by this theory and in 1920 wrote: "This conspiracy against civilization dates from the days of Weishaupt ... as a modern historian Mrs. Webster has so ably shown, it played a recognizable role on the French Revolution." In her autobiography, Spacious Days, she argued that there was an "attempt to boycott my books in those quarters where the plan of world revolution was secretly entertained."

Webster also published Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, The Need for Fascism in Great Britain and The Origin and Progress of the World Revolution. In the latter book, published in 1921, she wrote: “What mysteries of iniquity would be revealed if the Jew, like the mole, did not make a point of working in the dark! Jews have never been more Jews than when we tried to make them men and citizens.”

In her books, Webster argued that Bolshevism was part of a much older and more secret, self-perpetuating conspiracy. She described three possible sources for this conspiracy: Zionism, Pan-Germanism, or "the occult power." She stated that she leaned towards Zionism as the most likely culprit of the three. She also claimed that even if the “Protocols” were fake, they still describe how Jews behave.

Fascist involvement

Webster became involved in several right-wing groups including the British Fascists, The Link, and the British Union of Fascists. She was also the leading writer of the anti-Semitic "The Patriot", where she supported the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. She later published Germany and England in which she suggested that Adolf Hitler had successfully halted the Jewish attempt to control the world.

Works

• The Chevalier De Boufflers. A Romance of the French Revolution, London, John Murray, 1910. Reprints : 1916 ; 1920 ; 1924 ; 1925 ; E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1926.
• Britain’s Call to Arms : an appeal to our women, London, Hugh Rees, 1914.
• The Sheep Track. An aspect of London society, London, John Murray, 1914.
• The French Revolution. A Study in Democracy, London, Constable & Co., 1919. Reprints : 1921 ; 1922 ; 1926 ; Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, 1969.
• The French terror and Russian bolshevism, London, Boswell Printing & Publbishing Co., 1920 [?]. OCLC: 22692582
• World revolution. The plot against civilization, London, Constable & Co., 1921. Reptints : Constable, 1922 ; Chawleigh, The Britons Publishing Co., 1971 ; Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, [1990?].
• The Past History of the World Revolution. A lecture, Woolwich, Royal Artillery Institution, 1921.
• with Kurt Kerlen, Boche and Bolshevik, being a series of articles from the Morning post of London, reprinted for distribution in the United States, New York, Beckwith, 1923. Reprint : Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, [1990?]. ISBN 1-4179-7949-6
• Secret societies and Subversive Movements, London, Boswell Printing & Publishing Co. London, 1924. Reprints : Boswell, 1928 and 1936 ; London, The Britons Publishing Co., London, 1955 and 1964 ; Palmdale, Christian Book Club of America and Sudbury and Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, 198[?] ; Kessinger Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7661-3066-5
• The Socialist Network, London, Boswell Printing & Publishing Co., 1926. Reprint : Boswell, 1933 ; Sudbury, Bloomfield, [1989?] ; Noontide Press, 2000. ISBN 0-913022-06-3
• The Surrender of an Empire, London, Boswell Printing & Publishing Co., 1931. Reprint : Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, [1990?].
• The Origin and Progress of the World Revolution, London, Boswell Printing & Publishing Co., [1932].
• (with the pseudonym of Julian Sterne), The Secret of the Zodiac, London, Boswell Printing & Publishing Co., 1933.
• Germany and England, (reprinted from The Patriot and revised), London, Boswell Publishing Co., [1938].
• Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before the Revolution, London, Constable & Co., 1936. Reprint : Constable, 1937 ; G.P. Putnam's sons, 1937.
• Spacious days : an autobiography, London, Hutchinson, 1949 and 1950.
• Marie-Antoinette intime, Paris, La Table ronde, 1981 (french translation). ISBN 2-7103-0061-3
• The Revolution of 1848, [ed. and date unknown]. ISBN 1-4253-7315-1

Bibliography

• Richard M. Gilman, Behind "World revolution" : the strange career of Nesta H. Webster, Ann Arbor, Insights Books, 1982.

References and links

External links

• Nesta H. Webster, a biography by a Freemasonry site

• Nesta H. Webster obituary

• LibertyPost.org [1]

• Secret Societies and Subversive Movements