Empower the People: Overthrow The Conspiracy That Is Stealing Your Money And FreedomTony Brown | 1999-06-02 00:00:00 | Harper Paperbacks | 400 | Conspiracy Theories
In the follow-up to his very successful
Black Lies, White Lies, controversial talk-show host and radio commentator Tony Brown presents a practical plan to reclaim our resources and institutions from a selfish and exclusive power elite.
At the start of the twentieth century, argues Tony Brown, the world's economy was hijacked. In capitalist and communist countries alike, elitist groups took control of international trade and national banks, with dire results for the ordinary citizen. Ever since, capital has moved toward a single inner circle -- the Ruling Class Conspiracy -- who monopolize the world's markets and even its governments for personal profit. Their stratagems range from the "war" against drugs to deliberately induced racial conflict among ethnic groups in America -- none in earnest, all carefully designed to preserve a pernicious status quo.
But Tony Brown has a remedy. His provocative and empowering seven-step plan offers an opportunity to break free once and for all from the constricting control of the wealthy and powerful who have run the world for far too long -- including a point-by-point program for radical reform of the income tax and a proposal to muzzle the Federal Reserve Bank, which exerts unconscionable influence over the lives of every American.
Incendiary and persuasive, this book reaches beyond race to claim the high ground of historical, logical, and moral analysis. For nearly half a century of Cold War, America and the Free World were defined by opposition to Communism...but was this merely a red herring to ensure the domination of the haves over the have-nots? Read Empower the People, form your own conclusions...and hit the brakes!
Reviews
The first time I heard the word Illuminati, fifteen years ago, was from Tony Brown. I owe my initial understanding of conspiracy theories to him.
He has done monumental researches in writing this book. In that respect, he is an impressive scholar, but as to the thoroughness of the researches, some is found wanting.
For instance, he casts Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god, as some kind of devil. That is outright wrong. Most of his ideas are right on the mark though.
I find it amusing how the Freemasons here are aghast at the unwelcome publicity he has given them. They rant and call his book "rubbish!"
Overall, the book is readable. I learned a lot from it.
Reviews
Toney Brown has written some good stuff over the course of his stellar public career: as a first-class Journalist, Talk show host, public speaker, Psychiatric Counselor and author, but arguably this book is not one of them.
Here it appears he has attempted to grapple with a "systemic beast" larger than are his theoretical abilities to grapple. To compensate for this missing ability, it seems he has proceeded to throw as many conspiracy theories as he can up against the wall in the hope that some of them might eventually stick and form a coherent theoretical mosaic. And while none quite ever do, normally, this fact and his meandering conspiratorial concoction would in themselves be sufficient reason to dismiss them and the book out of hand (as some reviewers mercilessly have done). However, in the U.S. at least, these are anything but normal times. Conspiracy theories have virtually become the Rorschach test for American political sanity. Throw enough of them up against the wall and everyone is likely to see the shadow of his own truth framed by one conspiracy theory or another. The problem with conspiracy theories is that all of them tend to have a seed of truth within them. But all to often these "seeds of truth" are only partial truths that cannot withstand serious scrutiny and without being able to do so, they can never quite amount to anything more than minor details, seldom becoming full stories or full theories.
However, with a backdrop of a number of rash high level political assassinations, the history of an incestuous relationship between intelligence, the government and all forms of organized crime, especially assassinations, wars of choice and drug trafficking -- with ever newer and more frequent economic bust-out schemes that rob the taxpayer of trillions of his hard earned dollars, and the corresponding virtual "strangle hold" the corporate class has over our political system, the odor of conspiracy always hangs heavily in the air in the U.S. Under such circumstances, one would be remiss to dismiss out of hand all but the most cockamamie of conspiratorial schemes. And since the author hits every one of America's sensitive conspiracies with new revealing information (even if sometime from very dubious sources), this book cannot be safely or easily tossed aside. I have seen and know cockamamie conspiratorial schemes, and while many of the sources upon which the author makes his claims are dubious to the point of being cockamamie, his theory is not altogether one of them. The author's story it seems is this:
America, certainly since the invention of the Federal Reserve System, but most likely from its very inception, has been a manipulated economy and country. The grand manipulator is some nefarious ill-defined secret cabal he calls the Illuminati (devil worshiping) Freemason Ruling Class Conspiracy, centered at Buckingham Palace. In this sense, Brown's grand conspiracy theory is very much like the man in the clock of the Wizard of Oz, where, somehow, the small greedy cabal that lives inside the clock and operates it, is always just clever enough to stay one step ahead of the "naïve and dense" American people. According to Brown, this ruling-class conspiracy was hatched long ago by a group of JINOs (Jews in name only, who conveniently, counted among their members, no less than Karl Marx himself) but who were themselves later taken over and manipulated by Freemason Wasps, among which are included the British monarchy. Curiously, somehow, down through the ages, until the present day, this oddball anti-Semitic arrangement has served the greedy interests of both parties, who have used wars of choice and international drug trafficking as their primary modus operandi for taking over and maintaining control of the world -- but especially control over its main funding source, the U.S. economy. In defense of his theory, Brown carefully musters a prodigious bibliography, which allows him to cite chapter and verse down through history (from the theories about the birth and death of Christ to Bill Clinton's attachment to cocaine trafficking in Mena, Ark) of all the conspiracies that explain why his grand theory about Masonic control of the world through the British monarchy makes eminent good sense. And those who dismiss Brown because his theory, (at least on the surface, appears to be a thinly disguised anti-Semite tract) are those who actually have failed to provisionally give his scheme the benefit of the doubt. In failing to do this, they have missed his larger point:
Brown's framework is actually independent of who may sit in the clock at the Palace Tower. The author's conspiratorial framework is actually a very feeble attempt at a more general theory of how power and economic influence is accumulated and maintained in the U.S. in particular, but in the international system more generally. Under this more general understanding, the reader is compelled (indeed, would be remiss not) to see Brown's weak concoction of a "patriotic god-fearing counter-theory that will eventually save the world from all its enforced divisions, " on par with other macro theories of political science and international relations such as Marxism, Republican Democracy, and Fascism. That it never quite fully rises to the level of a true grand theory, does not mean the author's attempt is an abject failure, or that the book itself is entirely worthless -- far from it in fact. Others who have tried to grapple with this same beast along similar lines have done only slightly better. See for instance, Amy Chua's "The World on Fire." (My favorite is Peter Dale Scott's "Deep Politics and the Assassination of JFK.") Plus, Brown's analysis of America's monetary policies, and his analysis of the racial situation in general, and affirmative action in particular, are actually very well thought out -- as are many other aspects of the book.
The very fact that he accurately predicted (in 1996 when this book went to press) the economic collapse that we are currently experiencing with deadly accuracy, should give any reader willing to dismiss it out of hand, cause to pause. Surely, Brown is on to something. And in this one instance alone, one cannot merely throw the baby out with the bath water.
Put simply, one does not have to accept the thinly veiled anti-Semitism to see that Brown is on to something much larger despite himself and despite his facile mostly rightwing religious preachments. If a reader provisionally accepts the author's sources at face value (admittedly a very large concession to the truth), then the author's theory certainly has its own weird kind of internal logic and makes a certain amount of sense in the current framework of American "slash-and-burn" "take-no-prisoners" politics. Which in a way, is all that one can really ask of an author and his theory. Of course in the end, there is no way that a reasonable person can square the circle Mr. Brown is trying to square, or accept many of the sources he uses, at face value, since, they are mostly recycled "hearsay and often borderline nonsense," some of which have been investigated, and roundly discredited.
The part of the book that interested me most is how Brown "unconsciously backs" into his own methodology. He does this almost as unwittingly and as unconsciously as he seems to have backed into the "grand theory," which is buried beneath the barrage of conspiracy theories he so casually tosses up against the wall. Rather curiously, he actually ends up using to prove his own grand theory the very methods he so much claims to detest: the Hegelian dialectic of "thesis," "anti-thesis" and "synthesis." That is, the same methodology used by his nemesis, Karl Marx, (and Bill Clinton's mentor (and according to Brown, an admitted member of the Illuminati Ruling Class Conspiracy), Georgetown U's own, Charles Quigley).
Restated in its implicit formulation, Brown's own Hegelian dialectic goes somewhat as follows: The world is currently controlled by a loose but greedy and secret cabal (Brown's thesis). This arrangement, while more stable than its counterpart of either a leftwing or a rightwing takeover of power (Brown's antithesis), it is nevertheless true that the proper solution to this problem of power accumulation and maximization in the U.S. (and by extension, in the world) is for power to always be distributed equally and fairly through a God-fearing Christian Democratic Capitalist People's Revolution and economy (Brown's synthesis).
Rather oddly, but unsurprisingly, existing evidence (anecdotal as well as theoretical) does not seem to back up Brown's synthesis, although many democrats (small "d") have claimed otherwise. Rather it would suggest that all such arrangements (right, left or center; conservative, reactionary or radical; Communist, democratic or Fascist), and including Brown's own highly touted God-fearing Christian Democratic Capitalist Revolution, no matter how they begin: at least in theory, all eventually devolve into insidious, unstable cabals resulting in power maximization that eventually evolves, shifts and inexorably reverts back to a single greedy and highly motivated "power maximizing" subgroup.
Brown's own anecdotal data (of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome) strongly suggests this to be the case. Amy Chua came to this same conclusion, but for different reasons than did Brown's conspiratorial approach. Peter Dale Scott, using a similar conspiracy approach, dispelled the artificially erected boundaries that excluded the corruption of power maximization that is always implicit and always below the surface in democarcies. Andrew Smookler, on the other hand, I believe has solved this problem once and for all in a beautiful systemic analysis in his book called "The Parable of the Tribes." There he explains why this unsettling outcome must always ensue. (I have reviewed all three books elsewhere here on Amazon.com.)
Thus it is easy enough to conclude that on balance, Brown's own Hegelian dialectic, which is itself a kind of weak (but implicit) Critical Theory, proves exactly nothing: but that Brown has gotten his tail caught up in a systemic rule way over his head. All of the schemes for power acquisition and maximization he alludes to are bad (or, are morally irrelevant) and no matter what group is in charge (Jews, JINOs, Illuminati Freemasons, or Jew-controlling Wasps, or just plain Wasps); or under what ideological banner their appeals are made (Nazism, Communism, Fascist or just plain god-fearing Christian Capitalist Democracy -- and everything in between), all eventually, inevitably and inexorably succumb to a higher systemic law called the "ways of power" best identified by Andrew Smookler in his beautiful systemic allegory, the Parable of the Tribes." According to Smookler, it does not matter what group acquires power, or even how they go about it, or who their coalition partners may be, or even how noble and morally chaste they may or not be, they all must inevitably succumb to the systemic rule called "the ways of power" as dictated by the Parable of the Tribes.
As a result of this systemic rule, it seems to me, that the second part of this book, Brown's pseudo religious preachments based on his preferred but flawed solution, is thus also flawed, because it is basically an empty moral basis for making a systemic claim on how power in the international system is to be maximized. Again, in coming to his conclusions, the author unwittingly takes his methodology from the Hegelian, Illuminati "divide and conquer" playbook. Only this time he does so in the name of his own admitted "benevolent but irrational God."
However, it seems that what Brown fails to take into account is that the problem in all societies, not just Capitalist societies, is that those who "produce wealth" and who appear to "create value" in the economy, "the true power maximizers," always consider themselves (and are treated by everyone else as such), a protected and superior class. As a result, the primarily ideology of capitalism is a lassez- faire "keep your hands off of business" kind of appeal to power maximization. This "implicit rule of power maximization" elevates wealth producers onto the plane of the status of demi-gods. The result is that they are allowed to act and operate in a completely unmolested, deregulated, lassez- faire manner: meaning, often above and beyond existing laws of corruption, and always beyond the reach of laws that apply to other ordinary citizens. They are allowed to operate on a kind of quasi meta-level, slightly above the domain of ordinary rules of society and above the level of ordinary people. And at its extremes, these "implicit power maximizers," are allowed free reign, and unmolested freedom to "game" our democratic processes - and are allowed to do so in the interest of their own private financial and power maximizing gains, as a proxy for the "common good" as "added value wealth producers."
Thus Brown's, own god-fearing "moral world" defanged of its power maximizing aspects, is colonized morality that splits the moral baby in half: into its "God-fearing irrational half" and its "rational but evil secular humanism, half." But even if "power maximization" had a moral component that mattered (and it seldom does), there is no room for moral grays in Brown schemata. His thus reduces to a "moral scorched earth war for God" all the way down into the center of the inhuman abyss.
In Brown's new morally bisected, pristine Cosmology, God and rationality, as well as good and evil, do not mix, or indeed ever even intersect. They are seen as two entirely separate dichotomous mutually exclusive universes. Power maximization, the only important variable, for obvious moral reasons, remains the only "hidden variable." Yet, Brown knows as well as I do, that this is not the world that Jesus knew and bequeath to us. Brown's artificially partitioned mythical world has made God's job much too unrealistically easy. Jesus did not run from either power maximization (the Romans for instance) or from moral grayness. Not only did he deal with them both, he also lived within them, and apparently gave up his life as a result of them.
Brown's "easier God," on the other hand, is the same one with which we are already all too familiar. It is the Tele-evangelist God, and the "Illuminati god in drag, the 2000-year old anti-Semitic God:" the same one that got us into this trap in the first place. It is the "good God as non-power maximizing Capitalist," replacing the "evil power-maximizing Communist God."
In closing, may I ask: What is the difference between Brown's "morally superior, self-righteous power avoidance God," and the Illuminati's intellectual, racist, anti-Semitic, devil-worshiping and class superiority god? It seems to me they are logical cellmates: moral mirror images of each other, and thus, staking ones claim on either is just another recycle around the same old 2000-year old wheel and back to the future.
Five Stars.
Reviews
This book is the most ridiculous collection of foolishness which I have ever taken the time to read. I am appalled that Mr. Brown did not employ adequate resources to verify many of the allegations made in this book. For example, I found it totally unacceptable that Mr. Brown alleged that three past U.S. Presidents were Freemasons, when they definitely are not. Although this is quite an easy area in which to find proof, Mr. Brown calls Presidents Clinton, Carter and Reagan Freemasons, when none of them were so affiliated. I am persuaded to believe that he knew of these falsehoods when he wrote them, because whenever he mentions anyone who actually is a Mason, he is careful to mention which Masonic Lodge they were a part of ... not so with Clinton, Carter or Reagan, because NONE OF THEM WERE MASONS!
He also spent much of his time criticizing the Freemasons, which is obviously an organization that he doesn't understand. More specifically he miss-understands the fact that each Masonic lodge is independent and beholden only to it's own Grand Lodge, such that there would not be much if any cooperation or communication between the various Grand Lodges to the effect that you could get all Freemasons to "conspire" in any complicated effort. He has obviously taken every negative rumor against Masonry to heart, and synthesized them into this book ... even though the book is not actually "about" Masonry. It appears to me that Brown's real problem with Masonry is that it is not a "Christian" organization, which they don't purport to be, even though the majority of Masons are Christians.
The book is also garbage where he actual writing is concerned. The number of times Mr. Brown uses the phrase "illuminati ruling class conspiracy," is sickening, and he makes up words like agentur(s), which he uses synonymously with the word "agent." Every person of any stature is an "agentur of the illuminati ruling class conspiracy" to Mr. Brown. This is the first book I have read which I have disliked to such a degree to write a bad review, and I would dissuade any person from reading this book who does not already have a basis in the reality of the subjects of which Mr. Brown speaks, or else knows when to go to Google or Wikipedia to double check the numerous false allegations or look up the words that this guy has created. I was thoroughly disappointed, don't waste your time, this is one for the trash heap!
Reviews
First off let me say that I think Tony Brown is a man of extraordinary intelligence. He is a man that I listed to for years on WLS(chicago radio) and with whom I agreed with on most important political issues. I have to say, in defense on this book, that the writing is phenomenal, the research is well-intentioned, and quite thorough, but I feel that Mr. Brown missed a few pieces of research, not by oversight but because they did not fit in with the overall theme of the book.
That is my problem with books that deal with conspiracies; the author normally has his own views about the various groups and, try as he might, he cannot hide them from the attentive reader. I, along with many of the intelligent reviewers here on Amazon, have noticed some inconsistencies with his research, some mistakes he made in the book, etc, but I will not judge the book by that.
I will, however, judge the book on it's intellectual value. One of the common descriptions I was given for this book was it's ability to open your eyes and look at the world in a new light. My eyes were always open. I could have done the same research as Mr. Brown and produced a similar result if I had been inspired to do so. For this book, however well written, is just that- unverified and sometimes boring facts covered in a candy-coated shell of good writing.
Reviews
Tony Brown's book isn't backed up by any facts, just "conspiracies" he's heard. I'm convinced Mr. Brown is a Lyndon Larouche supporter who is a paraniod schizophrenic. Though some parts where interesting to read, which is why I gave it two stars, I found it hard to follow one-accusation to another. I didn't believe anything he wrote.
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