It was while I was going over these stories that I realized for the first time just how important a part of the communist movement in America the teachers were. They touched practically every phase of Party work. They were not used only as teachers in Party education, where they gave their services free of charge, but in the summer they traveled and visited Party figures in other countries. Most of them were an idealistic, selfless lot who manned the front committees and were the backbone of the Party’s strength in the labor Party and later in the Progressive Party. Even in the inner Party apparatus they performed invaluable services.

Bella Dodd[i]

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Brazil is falling to the communists. America is only a few steps behind. Here is the process: You capture the public schools. You capture the colleges. You indoctrinate and capture the elite. At the same time, you infiltrate the seminaries and corrupt the churches. You take over the tax-exempt foundations. You enter the intelligence community, the government, and the media. You get control of the money spigot. You make and break careers. You finance false fronts. You shape the larger culture. You conquer society itself. There is one thing you must be careful of, however. When your tyranny becomes effective, and society collapses under your destructive policies, and freedom evaporates, the masses will come after you with their guns (if they have any). Perhaps they will come after you with their bare hands. So, it is advisable that you misdirect the masses. You must get them to blame someone else for your crimes. Even more to the point, if you decide to devastate society with a biological attack, you must convince your victims that someone else was behind it. You must maintain your innocence to the end, even as you are taking over the world in plain view.     

Ask yourself why nobody frets over communism’s advance to power in Brazil. How has this happened?  Nobody sounds the alarm? NOBODY!? That Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was a friend of Fidel Castro, and a comrade in the communist movement, is well known. Yet nobody mentions this. And nobody finds it curious that Russian President Vladimir Putin supports Lula da Silva, and supports the “little rocket man” in North Korea, and is close friends with President Xi of the Chinese Communist Party, and supports the communist regimes Cuba and Nicaragua. President Putin has even given military support to the communist regime in Venezuela.[ii]  Does Putin sound like a good Christian boy, or a communist who pretends to be a Christian? There is a red elephant in the room, and everyone fails to see it. What? Are you seeing elephants? Only anticommunist dinosaurs see communists “under the bed.” But I am not pointing under the bed. I am pointing to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and now Brazil. These are places that can be seen from the moon! But then, our deluded pundits and politicos do not want to notice vast regions that are falling to communism – in the Western Hemisphere. So, it bears repeating: Brazil is falling to the communists. America is only a few steps behind.

Yes, the Kremlin has pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, making us think that the communist bloc split apart decades ago and ceased to exist with the fall of the Soviet Union. The best alibi is when nobody thinks you exist. But even so, in communism’s war against humanity, somebody must be blamed for the bad things that are beginning to happen – the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the food shortages, the energy shortages, the economic collapse, etc. The global movement that put Lula da Silva in power in Brazil, that put Joseph Biden in the White House, that unleashed COVID-19 on the world using Big Pharma as its cat’s paw – needs patsies aplenty, and scapegoats, and dupes, and false narratives galore.

The key to redirecting blame for all the bad that is coming is found in something called ideology – a thing that evolves over time as it disorients and misdirects. Ideology is a political formula that does not require much study. The masses are drawn to ideology because it is easy to understand. The manipulators of humanity see ideology as a weapon. As Mao Zedong once said, “Marxism-Leninism is better than a machine gun.” The bullets in this machine gun are lies. They are fired in a steady stream against those targeted for conquest. The first target is the anticommunist, the person who resists communism, who recognizes its formations and themes – who understands communist subterfuge and misdirection.

The relationship between communism and ideology is not easy to understand. Exoteric communism is a changing set of outward dogmas and causes, linked together beneath the surface by esoteric communist practice; that is to say, by what Lenin called “the scientific management of human affairs” in the Machiavellian sense. Therefore, Chinese communism emphasizes its Chinese characteristics even as Venezuelan communism is “Bolivarian.” The communist practitioner conforms to the “laws” of history – of time and place. If he must pretend to be a liberal or a nationalist or a Christian to advance the Revolution, then he pretends. But underneath, he remains what he is. Esoteric Marxism is about global conquest through the inversion of all symbols and existing principles, as modeled by Karl Marx. Marxism in this sense is not a dogma, said Lenin. It is a living and evolving system for destroying everything. Marx’s favorite quote, in this regard, was from Goethe’s Faust, where Mephistopheles says, “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” The full quote is,

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything found in your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent –
That is my proper element.

Here is the anti-metaphysics, the anti-religion, the anti-philosophy of esoteric communism. Under Lenin’s guidance and Stalin’s helmsmanship, the communists built up a global system of power aiming at the destruction of the Old Order – an order based on ancient principles carried forward from generation to generation, through religious traditions and philosophic explanations. Only a small number of thinkers have noticed the true face – the wicked esoteric face – of communism. It is only by understanding esoteric communism that a person sees the real meaning of exoteric communism (which consists of flexible ideologic themes which may or may not self-advertise as “communist”). Unlike the Western ideologue, who stupidly believes in his ideology, the esoteric Marxist does not believe his own ideology. In fact, as Robert Payne tells us in his biography of Marx, the Founding Father of Marxism laughed at those who believed in “that class shit.”[iii] In his malevolence, Marx had developed intellectual weapons for destroying mankind. As Lenin realized, these weapons could be improved upon.

Of course, Marx was not the first to fashion intellectual weapons. Such weapons have been continually fashioned throughout history. And they continue to be fashioned today. The general rule, in fashioning an ideology (i.e., a political weapon) is to envision your enemy. Ideology, therefore, always demonizes someone.  For example, Nazi ideology demonizes the Jews while the communists (who call their ideology a “science”) demonize the bourgeoisie. Cultural Marxism (which is the latest and most refined version of Marxism’s exoteric iteration) demonizes white males. At the same time, on the right, conspiracy ideology demonizes a hidden cabal of actors who have allegedly controlled history since the dawn of time. Stalin, in his turn, more modestly spoke of a series of conspiracies involving Trotskyites, saboteurs, spies, and wreckers (around which Stalin built the narrative of his famous show trials).

To demonize is to generate hatred – an important feature of ideologies. Julien Benda, in his famous book La Trahison des Clercs, said that our age is the “age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And the biggest hatred that now appears, ominously, is hatred of the West, especially in the form of anti-Americanism. This hatred has been fostered with such success, that many Westerners (especially Americans of white European extraction) hate themselves. Consider the example of Critical Race Theory, which says that all white people are racist. We should not be surprised to learn that Critical Race Theory is fashionable in American universities, and is even taught within the U.S. military. We know from the history of antisemitism the phenomenon of self-hating Jews (who have succumbed to their enemy’s propaganda). Now we have the phenomenon of self-hating Americans and Europeans. All of this is helpful to the communists, especially since their objective is to destroy Western civilization (which, as Mephistopheles said, “deserves to perish wretchedly”).

In the war of ideas, which is fought all around us, we are continuously attacked by those who would subdue us with their intellectual weapons. One of these weapons consists in the argument that we do indeed deserve to perish, as Mephistopheles said, “wretchedly.” Stalin famously boiled this down to a simple sentence: “If our enemies accuse us of crimes, then we blame them for the crimes.” In other words, communism teaches its acolytes to “blame the victim” of communism’s atrocities. That America is the chief intended victim should be obvious. Thus, we find the following themes continuously pounded home: the CIA killed Kennedy; America bombed and invaded Cambodia; Bush lied and people died; America is “destroying the planet,” etc. All of these slogans, spread far and wide by the communists and their dupes, are distortions of reality that blame the intended target for everything bad that has ever happened. The sad fact is, many Americans believe one or all of these ideologically-loaded slogans.

As an aside, a reader recently objected to my suggestion that all ideologies are inevitably untrue. He had probably looked up the dictionary definition of ideology, where it is described innocuously as “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.” This definition is problematic because theory, policy and ideals are items too distinct to be subsumed under such a referent (which yet remains undefined by this supposed definition). These items can never be reconciled in a “system.” After studying hundreds of ideologues over a period of many years, Eric Voegelin realized that all ideologues were system-builders. But truth cannot be encapsulated in a “system.” In fact, all systems falsify the truth because life itself is a process of questing for the truth. It is a process by which we discover ideas and learn their meaning by direct experience. What a system pretends to be, inevitably, is a final and decisive answer of some kind – a shortcut that removes the very reason for living (i.e., discovery). Mortal man does not know the full truth. He therefore cannot devise a system of truth that is true. Here is an intellectual impertinence, a usurpation, an impersonation of God by man. Furthermore, could anything be more disastrous for a man than abandoning his quest for truth in favor of a formula that pretends to be the truth? This counterfeit would cheat a man of his very life; for Voegelin implies that once you have adopted an ideology you are no longer in life. By adopting an ideology, a human being becomes the stuffed thing of an intellectual taxidermist.[iv]

What about ideologies that claim to be “scientific”? Are they not searching for the truth? Here one must distinguish a real quest from a fraudulent one. When ideologists talk of class theory or race theory, or conspiracy theory, or global warming theory, they are lying. A theory is suggestive of a scientific approach, but ideologists have no real interest in science or methods leading to the truth. Remember that they must establish their system as truth, with all its answers. The word theory, therefore, coming out of their mouths, is the biggest lie of all. It is bluff pseudo-science. All incidents, all documents, etc., are taken out of context by these “theorists” who regularly misuse language to pile one fallacy upon another. Their objective is to persuade the reader that their “system” is the truth.

The most alluring ideology posing as “theory” – for most Americans – is “conspiracy theory.” Many patriots, who would save their country, are caught up in false notions of a history-spanning and all-encompassing conspiracy that regularly diverts their attention from flesh-and-blood enemies who are running circles around them. More than other ideologists, the ideologists who believe in THE ONE GRAND OMNIPOTENT CABAL, are always boxing with shadows. But when have they ever landed a blow? As ideology, conspiracy theory uses the wrong methodologies, mixing fact with metaphor – mistaking paranoia for a sensory organ. The research that is presented by conspiracy theorists knows nothing of the “falsifiability Principle,” expounded by Karl Popper in his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Smugly using a figure of speech as the subject of their sentences, conspiracy theorists follow the same failed practice as President George W. Bush in his “War on Terror.” They would prosecute a “War on Conspiracy” with a similarly futile outcome.

The most striking example of bad methodology in a conspiracy ideologist can be found in Anthony Sutton’s book, America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. “Now in scientific methodology,” wrote Sutton, “a hypothesis can be proven. It cannot be disproven.”^[v] In other words, Sutton refused to accept the falsifiability principle. Perhaps he unconsciously realized that his work would have crumbled into dust once his many omissions – factual and contextual – were brought to light. It was convenient then, that his “theory” could not be questioned but only affirmed. One ought to ask, then: what kind of theorist could Sutton’s have been? Here is why I have never taken Anthony Sutton’s work seriously.

Another kind of conspiracy “theory” attaches to the ideology of antisemitism – the crudest ideology of all (and sometimes referred to as “the stupid man’s Marxism”). For example, conspiracist antisemitism believes that Jewish black magicians rule the world through the masonic lodges and the banks. What happens, indeed, when you show an antisemite that his beloved conspiracy theory, based on The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was plagiarized from Maurice Joly’s book, The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu? Does the antisemite say, “Oops I goofed”? Does he do as Anthony Sutton did, and offer a perverted scientific methodology? Being simpler, the antisemite’s reaction is more earthy. Even if he is shown a copy of Joly’s book, he will say that the book itself is part of the larger deception. He will say to your face that you have been duped by the Jews.  And if you persist in arguing against his hobby horse, you will eventually find yourself denounced as an agent of the Zionist conspiracy.[vi]

Those who have adopted an ideology usually seem sincere in their beliefs. But this sincerity is not at all innocent. “Ideologies, whether Positivist, or Marxist, or National Socialist, indulge in constructions that are not intellectually tenable,” wrote the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. “That raises the question of why people who otherwise are not quite stupid, and who have the secondary virtues of being quite honest in their daily affairs, indulge in intellectual dishonesty as soon as they touch science.”[vii]

Intellectual dishonesty in this case, noted Voegelin, arises from the ideologist’s “persistent state of alienation.” To better understand what alienation means in this context, it is worth remembering that psychiatrists were once called “alienists.” That is to say, alienation is the root cause of madness (provided the patient’s symptoms owe nothing to a disease of the brain). In ancient and medieval times alienation signified estrangement from God or the divine ground of being (i.e., ultimate reality). Secular modernity uses the word alienation differently, referring to estrangement from society. Thus, modernity has adopted a peculiar view; for if God is the ultimate reality, and if insanity is estrangement from God, then reconciling a crazy person to a Godless society must also be crazy. On the other hand, if God does not exist, and reality is “other people,” then we have assuredlly come closer to validating Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea that “Hell is other people.” For any fool can see that our socially mediated secular reality is turning into Hell.[viii]

We should not be afraid, at this late hour, to call things by their proper names. So here is the bottom line: The modern world is gradually going to hell as it goes insane, and ideology is a symptom of that insanity. We should not be surprised, therefore, that our institutions are weighed down, more and more, by more and more ideological baggage, making us crazier and crazier. All around us people are offering false narratives, fake news, and facts out of context. When Tucker Carlson presented supposed evidence that “the CIA” was behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination we ought to ask whether all three letters in CIA were directly or indirectly involved? Was the C on the grassy knoll, the I in the book depository building? Where, then, was A positioned? This is not serious, of course, and neither is blaming an entire organization, made up of thousands of patriotic individuals, for murdering the President of the United States. But the purpose is clear, even if Carlson cannot see it. To reproduce Soviet KGB themes on FOX NEWS, without realizing what you have done, is a kind of madness.

Naturally, the worst kind of insanity is what we are seeing in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in threats of nuclear war, and in China’s threats to invade Taiwan. This is the blood-soaked kind of insanity which will reach the shores of America one day. But for the present, the dominant political insanity in America takes the form of an all-encompassing political clown show – with spectacular pratfalls involving senile or orange-haired Bozos, special counsels, impeachments, fake news, and action-packed politics-as-sports & entertainment. It is great fun until you realize that the joke is always on us.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with clowns? The late Brazilian philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho, once said, “Never trust uncultured people.” A clown, in this context, is an uncultured person who has risen – inexplicably – to high office. Olavo understood that uncultured people are bound to fall in line with the first silly thing that captivates their otherwise flagging attention. A political clown is the first to believe in a conspiracy theory or false narrative that eventually promises to bring him into alignment with his country’s enemies. The thing about political clowns is their readiness to side against you and even themselves at the drop of a hat. A clown’s allegiance is always up for grabs. He will vote a communist into the White House because she smiles sweetly, talks about God, and pretends to be a conservative.

What makes for a clown is a readiness to over-simplify, to avoid anything serious, to say what is true without knowing anything at all. How can a serious thought exist out of nothing? And what is between a clown’s ears? Very little to nothing. Clowns are incurious and uncultured folks who know very little history or philosophy, and therefore have no context for judging politics. Yet they are loaded to the gills with judgments and certainties. This is a problem that generally afflicts our political discourse today, on the right and left.  

Ideology and Strategy

From the standpoint of global strategy, ideology has great importance; for an enemy sees your ideological stupidities better than you do, and he will play games based on these stupidities. Our friends and colleagues, sharing many of our preconceptions, add to the problem by joining with us in an intellectual phalanx of error, which Irving Janis called “groupthink.” Janis defined groupthink as “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.”[ix] Human beings tend to be stuck in their own respective echo chambers, constantly seeking reassurance, blotting out anyone who disagrees. Of course, when you are dealing with an enemy this sort of thing is very dangerous.

The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and its successor state have been studying America and Western Europe for the past century. They are well acquainted with our wishful thinking and our various misconceptions. In fact, they would like to foster as many misconceptions in us as they can; for good strategists make their own opportunities. Agents of influence, carrying out the instructions of Moscow Center, are meant to operate in the shadows; yet the most important shadows in which they operate are produced in minds beclouded by ignorance and ideology. In fact, Russian and Chinese agents of influence have used our own ideological preconceptions against us at every turn. For example, our economic conservatives and libertarians have always said that “communism does not work.” So the communists condescended to flatter them in the late 1980s, turning openly to capitalism. In this way the communists made inroads into the libertarian right. After 1991, when Russia pretended to become a Christian conservative country, paleoconservatives were romanced. Given the proprietary vanity which ideologists feel with regard to their ideas, who is so firm that he cannot be seduced? Ideological agreement can be a form of flattery, and flattery is an agent-recruiter’s most important tool.        

This leads us to consider the great success that Communism Incognito has had, behind the scenes, in American and European politics since 1991. The grandiose deception strategy adopted by the communist bloc in 1960,[x] which was predicated on organizing a false liberalization in Russia as well as market-oriented reforms in both Russia and China, appeared absurdly ambitious and optimistic on its face. To properly grasp the strategy’s ingenuity, one must see its psychological depth. The communists had done well insofar as they knew their enemy. They knew that the West wanted to be fooled. Especially, the West wanted to believe that the threat of nuclear world war was a thing of the past. Thus, the communist and post-communist theater productions of 1989-94 were successful. Those who were paying attention could see the transparently sloppy stagecraft, especially in Czechoslovakia and Romania; yet, the whole thing came off easily; except that the communists had deceived themselves about the unpopularity of their own system. Here, they might have known their enemy but not themselves (for this is always the hardest thing of all). Where it came to the reactions of the West, the strategists in Moscow were masterful. Where it came to the reactions of Poles and Ukrainians and certain other peoples, they blundered badly. But that is a story for another time.

What made the deception work was in the strategist’s understanding of what the West wanted to believe ideologically, and, in fact, psychologically needed to believe. The collapse of the Soviet Union served to validate liberalism, market hedonism, and democratism. All doubts regarding these ideologies were instantly removed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. If the West had been blinded by its ideological assumptions before 1991, the West was blind and deaf and stupid ever afterward; for the West had won a great and painless victory. Heaven help anyone who came along to say otherwise.

The Advance of COmmunisM

In 1958 the American lawyer Robert Morris, who had worked as counsel to the Senate subcommittee on internal security, warned about the infiltration of the communists. “My friends tell me I take these things too seriously,” Morris wrote. “But what I see is an encirclement that has its goal my own five children.” Morris then said there was a connection between the advance of communism abroad and its advance within our country. “Whether it is the Congo, Laos or Berlin, these are mere stepping stones, in Khrushchev’s eye, to the real target, the United States. We are the only obstacle to his goal of world dominion. If we fail, our whole civilization is lost.”[xi]

Morris’s book, which chronicles his legal and intelligence battles against communism in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, is long forgotten now; yet it was a brilliant little history, full of shocking details and unpalatable truth-telling. Morris wrote, “The treachery, the credulity, the ineptitude and the complacency, seem so fantastic. And beholding them, it is no wonder we are losing.”[xii] Morris wrote those words in 1958. Indeed, what would he say now that Brazil is falling to Fidel’s friend, Lula? Of course, despite his many disappointments Morris was not inclined to give up. He said our inability to defeat communism had to do with human weakness, and that these weaknesses could be overcome. He wrote, “perhaps we can effect a stirring reversal.” So far, the most striking moves against communism have occurred in places like Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine is the only country in Europe that presently bans its Communist Party. (Hungary and Moldova had bans at one time.) In 2015 the Ukrainians legally prohibited communist symbols and barred the Communist Party from participating in elections. Of course, Moscow did not take this lying down.

With the war in Ukraine and the communist takeover in Brazil, we can see America’s peril with greater clarity. The government of the United States, under President Joseph Biden, supports the rise to power in Brazil of a convicted criminal, friend of Fidel Castro, and communist conspirator – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In fact, the U.S. Secretary of State has threatened the Brazilian military should it block Lula’s presidency. Here is a bit of that insanity we were discussing earlier; for President Bolsonaro, who is routinely vilified by American Democrats and leftists, is a pro-American politician. He is friendly to American values, while Lula da Silva hates the United States, being friendly to Cuba and China and Russia. In 2019 Bolsonaro offered the United States the possibility of having military bases on Brazilian soil to counter the Russian threat emerging out of Venezuela.[xiii] But this never materialized, and the Biden Administration’s concerns about Russian infiltration of the Western Hemisphere are not anywhere visible. In fact, the Biden Administration will do nothing to prevent Russian military units from deploying to Nicaragua (as announced last year).

We can only understand what is happening in terms of profound ideological changes that have taken place within the United States since the supposed end of the Cold War. Socialism is becoming acceptable in the United States for the first time. This would have been inconceivable fifty years ago. Consider how Washington reacted when a communist came to power in a South American country 53 years ago, when Chile elected Salvador Allende as their president. The CIA bunglingly pressured reluctant Chilean generals to overthrow Allende.[xiv] Now U.S. policy has swung to the opposite position – welcoming communists into power throughout Latin America, threatening those who might oppose communism with force of arms.

This is tragic for millions in Brazil who know their country will be looted by Lula and his communist gangster friends. Millions in Brazil are in the streets, protesting for their deliverance. But President Biden is one of those clowns discussed earlier, who does not know on what side his bread is buttered. – Or does he? At this late hour nobody should be naïve. A time of troubles is beginning for Brazil. The leading institutions of the country no longer belong to the Brazilian people.

In his farewell address, before leaving Brazil, President Bolsonaro said “violence will return to Brazil.” Then he predicted, amid mixed signals, what lies in store:

[They will] stop the economic wheel from spinning and there will be no money for public services. It won’t happen like the pandemic, when you received your full paycheck. With no economy there will be no resources. Everyone will suffer. But I am sure, it won’t take long. Brazil will come back to normal, to prosperity, to order and progress, to respect, love for our flag. Brazil won’t succumb.

Sadly, these hopeful words ring hollow in the wake of what is happening in Brazil. Hundreds are being arrested, including anticommunist journalists. I understand why Bolsonaro fled his country, since nobody wants to be tortured in a communist jail. But was not Bolsonaro like the captain of a ship? Was he not obliged, in some sense, to go down with that ship – to fight to the end? I cannot judge a man for saving his own life. But then, I think of the millions he left behind – the 1,700 Brazilian patriots arrested. The only hope Brazil had was in Bolsonaro. Now the Brazilian people will have to do what the Ukrainian people did; that is, distrust their leaders and mock them – to the point of settling on a comedian as president; for if one must have clowns, then have a real one. It is a choice that has proven satisfactory in Ukraine.

And what does the vile American press have to say about the Brazilian patriots? The vile American media slanders the Brazilian patriots as “right wing extremists.” Earlier in his farewell speech, Bolsonaro said that peace required guns and that peace required war preparations. But then, tearfully, he turned everything upside down, telling his followers, “Always seek peace, harmony – not just talk about it. How important this is, in this quick journey here on earth, to live in peace.” As a blubbering subtext, we can hear someone mumbling –

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a wimper.

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Links and Notes

[i] Bella Dodd, School of Darkness (Kindle Edition), p. 263 at 46 percent. Dodd was a Communist Party lawyer who had worked for communist control of the leading teachers’ unions, which captured the education system in the state of New York by 1939. For further details the takeover of America’s schools in New York and New Jersey: Robert Morris, No Wonder We Are Losing (New York, The Bookmailer, 1958).

[ii] https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/russia-venezuela-military-partnership-a-threat-to-latin-america/#.Y8GWdHbMK3A

[iii] https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Biography-Robert-PAYNE/dp/B0006D7CAW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ZYTPFZRHV0QA&keywords=Marx+by+Robert+Payne&qid=1673635095&sprefix=marx+by+robert+payne%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1

[iv] In France, during the eighteenth century, the term ideology was first used to describe the scientific study of ideas. But through common usage, during the turbulence of the French Revolution, it became what it is today; that is, a byword for various political belief systems. Napoleon Bonaparte was astute enough to realize that ideology represented something negative; for he used the word ideology as term of abuse, depicting his opponents as “ideologues.” The correctness of this usage was also recognized by Karl Marx, who knew exactly what he was doing when he concocted his own ideological system – disguised as philosophy (i.e., dialectical materialism). Unlike Marx, who said ideologies were mere byproducts of “material life conditions,” Eric Voegelin suggested that ideologies were the result of man’s spiritual estrangement from the “divine ground” of being. The key point is that ideologists do not begin with God and advance to an ordered understanding. They begin estranged from the “divine ground of being,” and invent their own truth – which is hardly propitious.

[v] Anthony C. Sutton, America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones (Oregon: TrineDay LLC, 2002), p. 2.

[vi] Conspiracy theorists who believe I am an agent of the conspiracy, however, need to explain my relative poverty and underemployment over the past thirty years. If I am somehow supporting Doctor Evil and his crew, why didn’t they get me on Fox News? – or, at least, a better book deal!

[vii] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 45.

[viii]

[ix] https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/groupthink#:~:text=According%20to%20psychologist%20Irving%20Janis,the%20group’s%20competence%20and%20morality.

[x] See KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1984).

[xi] Morris, p. 213.

[xii] Ibid, p. 216.

[xiii] https://apnews.com/article/44fab22af15b45b2846778e9c922adeb

[xiv] The Chilean generals refused to do the CIA’s bidding, but overthrew Allende on their own initiative when he violated the Constitution by attempting to raise his own troops.

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