How the Diddy Conspiracy duped America Satanic hysteria has gone mainstream

By contrast, the scandal has sent the far-Right conspiratorial crowd into a tizzy of “I-told-you-so” Satanic hysteria. The truthers now possess what they believe is positive proof that what they have been saying all along is true: there is a cabal of subversive elites whose stock in trade is trafficked children. The age-old idea has been given fresh life within the imagination of those individuals that FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver and Ipsos can never quite manage to get their minds around, the men and women who’ve suspected all along that Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion and every other rock star who has ever dressed in red are members of the diabolical Illuminati — along with Tom Hanks, Beyoncé and the British Royals.

Facts are facts: the Illuminati were a real thing. Its first meeting was on 1 May 1776, in the tiny Bavarian town of Ingolstadt, led by an obscure university professor of law named Adam Weishaupt. Within a matter of years, he would become one of the most reviled men in Europe, accused of adultery, murder, rape and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Unlike Diddy, Weishaupt wasn’t much of a criminal. He created the Illuminati because he couldn’t afford the dues to be a Freemason. He kept his society a secret because the Enlightenment ideas he professed were unpopular among the Jesuits then in power: that women might possess intelligence equal to men; that a human from Africa might be as human as one from Europe; that there might not be an orthodox Catholic god.

These were not only widely palatable but popular liberal ideals, and in a few years the ranks of the Illuminati would expand to more than 2,000 members of the social elite — aristocrats, bankers, barons, diplomats, doctors, writers and wits. Had Adam Weishaupt lived in America, we might revere his name alongside Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Instead, the Jesuits convinced Karl Theodor, the Duke of Bavaria, to declare the Illuminati a subversive organisation. A tranche of government-sponsored pamphlets proliferated, declaring that the Illuminati were debauched sodomites, that they ran prostitution rings, that they drank the blood of trafficked children and were working under the auspices of the Angel of Death.

The barrage of sensational media horrified the reading public of Germany, France and Britain, then crossed the Atlantic to the United States, where Illuminati hysteria soon ignited waves of political fear and eventually energised Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign. None of which is news to anyone who’s been following conspiratorial social media accounts dedicated to the Omniwar, the Clinton murders, the goings on at Epstein Island, or raw milk. Clearly, Diddy had joined the ranks of the Diabolicals who populate the IMF and World Economic Forum. This is obvious to everyone.

Everyone, that is, except the so-called “mainstream media” who continue to ignore the salient fact of the alternative facts:

Exhibit A: The memoirs of Diddy’s ex-wife, Kim Porter, recently salvaged from the dung heap of discarded digi-trash, which recently topped the Amazon charts — despite concerns that they are fake, and despite the fact that Porter is dead. Discovering the hidden logic and rhetoric of conspiracy within these pages is a no-brainer for the inflamed wingnuts poring over subreddits and Parler.

Exhibit B: Ashton Kutcher, darling of the tech entrepreneurs and erstwhile bosom buddy of the notorious Did, who has been widely quoted as saying he can’t be quoted about some of the things that went on. Which leads the red-pilled crowd to believe that the freaks offs delivered something far freakier than the run-of-the-mill Wall Street launch-the-midget-from-a-cannon bacchanal.

Exhibits C, D, E, and F: Snaps of Kamala and Diddy, Oprah and Diddy, Taylor Swift and Diddy, Prince Harry and Diddy…

Then there’s the unsettling matter of Justin Bieber, images of whom crowd the postings of the Q crowd. Here he is shirtless, more than likely wasted, clearly subservient to Diddy, who holds the since-traumatised star in what can only be described as a loved-up headlock. In the years since, Bieber has retreated to the manifold comforts of Jesus, although he did emerge tearfully seeking to “protect” Billie Eilish from evil. Nothing to see here, nor in the ever-creepier videos that have been surfacing on a daily basis, such as the long-neglected 10-year-old segment of Keeping Up featuring Khloé Kardashian bubbling about the Biebs at a naked Freak Off — although Khloe, too, has decided to say no more about it and simply hope the whole thing will go away. Which it won’t.

Typical of the feverish response among the theorists has been the feed of the infamous American celebrity journalist, O’Reilly Factor alumni and shit-poster, Liz Crokin, who took the opportunity to amplify Vladimir Putin’s accusation of cannibalism among American elites: “Putin has been calling out the elite Satanic pedophile cabal for years,” she wrote on X.

“I wonder if Hunter ever went to [a] Diddy party,” posted Jake Angeli-Chansley, the Viking-horned Q-Anon Shaman who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

To be sure, Diddy’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo (whose previous clients include a bevy of convicted Satanic cabal members, such as sex trafficking NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere) has promised that Combs will take the stand and tell his side of the story (“It’s a human story. It’s a story of love.”), which of course will do nothing to convince anyone of anything, as the narrative has metastasised to the point that the public at large now accepts the man who insists we call him “Ye” as a reliable witness to the fact that Diddy was, among other things, a Fed — thus bringing the Illuminati to the highest echelons of power.

Still, the editors scratch their heads, wondering who, what, when, where, and how such fictions could ever be embraced. Aside from personal tragedy and triage, what’s sad is that the rumblings of the Diddy Conspiracy present the last, best opportunity for traditional network television and the print establishment to help to save their industry from extinction, not to mention democracy itself, by admitting to the prevalence and power of conspiracy theory.

If they haven’t learned from Donald Trump, QAnon and January 6, conspiracy theory possesses a powerful and persuasive logic and rhetoric. On the strictly empirical level, the tale of Diddy’s malfeasance has been delivering to the purveyors of conspiracy theory precisely what the philosophers call “objective reality”. The critique of conspiracy theory falters here, as inductive and deductive reasoning both lead the sober “independent researcher” (aka, digital bottom feeder) to the same conclusion: it’s the Illuminati. And people believe it. Lots of people believe it.

Instead of ignoring the Diddy Conspiracy, the mainstream media should admit its power and presence as an artefact of our suspicious and sorry moment. It should examine its history, consider its reasoning, count its adherents. The editors will be shocked to discover that the story of the story is somewhat different to rock and roll’s “Me Too moment”, as The New York Times recently concluded. They will have to admit how mainstream conspiracy has become.

Of course, for establishment media to face up to the Illuminati version of the story would not only mean dragging themselves through the mud of popular mythology, but entail a great deal of discomfort for Hollywood and the music industry, not to mention walking the tightrope of the morass of racial and sexual politics that helped to enable Diddy in the first place. But to do otherwise at this fraught moment would be political malpractice. The Diddy Conspiracy explains a great deal about the way the world outside the mainstream media bubble thinks. The New York Times and the Washington Post and the Atlantic and the New Yorker and CNN and MSNBC and all the rest can ignore the siren song of conspiracy for as long as they like — but then they should not wonder where all those Trump votes come from.

We liberals like to shake our heads at the unfortunate circumstance, sigh, and leave it at that. Which is a mistake we’ve made before. For if there’s one thing the last few centuries should have taught us, it’s that what we refuse to acknowledge can bite us in the ass. That said, traditional outlets will no doubt remain content to stand above the fray and ignore the rustlings of the conspiracists — which is yet another reason why Donald Trump will most likely re-settle into the Oval Office, nuclear codes nestled between his Diet Coke and McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, phone in hand, poised to post.

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Frederick Kaufman is a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and a professor of English and Journalism at the College of Staten Island. His next project is a book about the world’s first political reactionary.

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