[Restorer]

I have been running across these nutjob conspiracy theories for years.

Never before have I seen the claim that the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are one and the same.

The Illuminati are more often lumped in with the Masons and/or Bilderbergers.

I wonder if anybody has put together a chart illustrating the connections between these different (largely imaginary) groups?

[NHResident]

If the author thinks most Christians haven't heard about these absurd, inane, crackpot, Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories - I hope he is sadly mistaken. These racist rants have been publicized, condemned, exposed as so much Barbra Streisand and intellectual garbage decada after decade. Paranoid, crackpot tinfoil hatters may still embrace this trash but I would hope any rational Christian would distance themselves from this crap. I can only hope his Christian 'friends' were only participating in a joke that was in very poor taste and displayed extremely poor judgement.

[inquest]

The Bilderbergers aren't largely imaginary. To what extent they actually control anything may be a subject of debate, but they're real. Here's a Wikipedia article on them.

[rogue yam]

People always overlook the reverse vampires.

[DugwayDuke]

"I wonder if anybody has put together a chart illustrating the connections between these different (largely imaginary) groups?"

You really don't need a chart, as long as you remember that the Queen of England is the linchpin holding all these groups together and rules the world thru these groups. I'd explain it all to you but those guys in the white suits say it's time to take my medication and go back to my room...

[sixstringer]

This never gets old even though it has been debunked countless times...

[SJackson]

Never before have I seen the claim that the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are one and the same.

You could find dozens of conspiracy sites and occasional books making the connection, maybe that's where he got it from. It's hard to prove or disprove the connections of a fictional group.

In a more historical vein, among the major forerunners of the Protocols was Abbe Barruel’s Memory to Serve the History of Jacobinism published in the late 19th century blaming the French Revolutin on a Freemason-Illuminati conspiracy. Some time after the books publication, Barruel "uncovered" the connection to a Jewish conspiracy to control the world through a widely publicised letter from a French or Italian officer who discovered evidence of the plot", later found to be a forgery of the French police.

[rmlew]

The Bilderbergers are a real group.
The Illuminati are supposedly the Illuminated Masons, a special subgroup.
The protocols draws on Illuminati conspiracy theories.