Evidence: 4 (Real organization) / 2 (Still exists and controls things)
| Fact vs. Fiction | Detail |
|---|---|
| REAL: Founded May 1, 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, professor of law at University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria | Anti-monarchist, anti-clerical, pro-Enlightenment rationalism. Recruited from Masonic lodges |
| REAL: Infiltrated Masonic lodges | Weishaupt deliberately embedded Illuminati cells within existing Freemasonry structures |
| REAL: Suppressed in 1785 | Bavarian government banned all secret societies. Weishaupt fled. Documents seized and published. The organization effectively ended |
| REAL: ~2,000 members at peak | Included Goethe, several German dukes, and prominent intellectuals |
| FICTION: Still exists and controls world governments | No evidence of survival past the 1780s. The modern “Illuminati” conspiracy is a 20th-century construction built on the real 18th-century group |
| The leap: How did a dead 18th-century group become the modern boogeyman? | Abbe Barruel’s Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797) blamed the Illuminati for the French Revolution. Nesta Webster (1920s) connected them to Bolshevism. From there, the theory grew to encompass all global power |