America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones   Import  Single ASIN  Import  Multiple ASIN

Antony Sutton’s book, America’s Secret Establishment, is about a secret society that has been on the campus of Yale University since 1833. Sutton’s contention is that this secret society, Skull and Bones, has been extremely influential in American government, economics, and culture for many generations. Rich and powerful families have direct connections to Skull and Bones. Members support each other as they collectively work to promote a sinister program. The implication is that Skull and Bones is at the center of what is commonly referred to as the Deep State, or, as Sutton prefers, the Secret Elite. Skull and Bones has a strong foundation in Germany and German philosophy.Its co-founder, William Russell, had been a student in Germany in 1831-2. He founded Skull and Bones as Chapter 322, a chapter of a German society. Later in the 19th century members of the society, or individuals associated with members, found their way to Germany and were influenced by prevailing attitudes there. Skull and bones is said to deny German origins and influence, but a main theme of Sutton’s book is that such influence is quite demonstrable. Nineteenth century German intellectual thought, Sutton asserts, was largely taken up with the works and ideas of philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Sutton argues that it was German Hegelianism that heavily influenced thinking in German institutions of higher education, and that it in turn influenced the intellectual orientation of Skull and Bones. There are two basic ideas that are said to come from Hegel which are paramount in the context of the Skull and Bones worldview. The first is that the state is sovereign and the individual citizen owes absolute allegiance to it. The individual can only find fulfillment and freedom, of sorts, in conformity and service to the all powerful State. The individual only has rights as they are afforded to him or her by the State. This notion contrasts to that of the American Constitution which says that human beings are created with inalienable rights; that rights aren’t afforded by the State but are endowed by nature or God. It is in this fundamental idea that the agenda of Skull and Bones is at odds with the most central of traditional American values. The second idea that comes from Hegelian thought is that of the dialectic. The notion is that progress only comes about through conflict. A thesis is confronted by an antithesis and a synthesis of the two results. Dialectics are typically found, according to adherents of this view, in the political realm, both nationally and internationally. One can see this play out in the conflict between Capitalism and Communism, for example. Through conflict, and especially violent conflict, history moves forward and fundamental change comes about. The charge is that this secret society, armed with the understanding of dialectics, influences the course of events in order to shape a future of their own liking. They fund both sides of a political divide – right and left, Republican and Democrat, Communist and Capitalist – in order to facilitate and influence political conflict. Indeed, they work to make both sides extreme in order to increase the likelihood of conflicts becoming violent. At its worst, the facilitating of these conflicts leads to war. Skull and Bones – also referred to internally as The Order – works to place members in high places in business, government, education, journalism and other fields. They like to place members onto the boards of big Foundations. By controlling large sums of money and by placing members in high places they can leverage their influence in various institutions.In some of Sutton’s earlier works, notably Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, he details how the west supported both fascism and communism. Without Western bankers and industrialists supporting the Bolsheviks and Nazis, their respective rises to power probably never come about. It is a dangerous game they play. And Sutton argues that the ultimate goal is to create a New World Order – one in which the State is supremely and absolutely dominant. This explains their preference for totalitarian regimes and ideologies. In his Wall Street series, Sutton asserted that the secret elite had no ideology, but that it used ideology merely as a tool to divide populations – and that the only motivations for the actions of the secret elite were power and greed. In America’s Secret Establishment, Sutton comes close to identifying an underlying ideology for this secret elite and its secret club, Skull and Bones. In its promotion of a New World Order it would seem a Hegelian philosophy underpins their ideological goals and methods. In this book Sutton suggests that based on this neo-Hegelian framework a consortium of wealthy and influential families pursue an agenda that would do away with individual rights and promote a tyrannical, global regime that would establish complete dependence of the individual on the State. In the 21st century as human rights and access to the truth continue to erode, this sort of analysis is becoming more and more plausible.

Anthony Sutton identifies the Yale senior society, Skull and Bones, as “America’s Secret Establishment.” Numerous sons of the wealthy and influential, many of whom became wealthy and influential themselves (e.g., both Presidents Bush), have belonged to this secretive fraternity. As the old joke had a professor saying of his student’s term paper, it can be said that Sutton’s book contains much that is good and much that is original. Unfortunately, much of what is good is not original, and much of what is original is not good.The best part of Sutton’s book is the extensive reprinting of nineteenth-century exposés and criticisms of the Yale senior society, some based on a breaching of its “tomb” by members of “The Order of File and Claw.” One of these docuents states that “Bones is a chapter of a corps in a German University… General R—— (Russell), its founder, was in Germany before Senior Year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member of a German society. He brought back with him to college, authority to found a chapter here. Thus was Bones founded.”Based on this, Sutton erects a wild superstructure of conspiracy theory beginning with that perennial bogey, the Bavarian Illuminati. Since this is the first in a series of many conclusions to which he jumps, it is worth some examination. There were (and are) many collegiate corps or societies (Burschenschaften) in Germany. Why must anything connected with Germany necessarily trace back to the short-lived creation of Weishaupt? Would not a reputable historian have investigated the German travels of Gen. Russell, perhaps found which universities he visited, and looked there for the origins of Skull and Bones?The skull and crossbones is an age-old memento mori and not necessarily connected to the Illuminati at all. Skulls and skeletons were used in the ritualistic hugger-mugger of a number of fraternal orders. A German example was the proto-Rosicrucian Orden der Unzertrennlichen, founded in 1577. According to Christopher McIntosh (“The Rosicrucians”), “[i]n their meetings, a bible, skull, and hour glass stood on a table.” From the Unzertrennlichen was conceivably descended (as McIntosh relates) the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, the most politically powerful of the eighteenth-century German secret societies (Wöllner and von Bischoffswerder, its leaders, were chief advisors to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, who was himself a member). In both the Unzertrennlichen and the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, the members took “decknamen,” also a feature of Skull and Bones ritual. Ritual use of the skull is found in masonic Templarism, which is descended from von Hund’s Strikte Observanz. The candidate’s lying in a coffin is a familiar masonic theme. It is equally, if not more, likely that the content of Skull and Bones ritual was derived from one of these sources, than from the Illuminati. It is also likelier that the young Russell, a Protestant, spent time at one of the universities in the Protestant part of Germany, like Heidelberg or Göttingen, than at Ingolstadt in Catholic Bavaria, where Weishaupt held forth. These things attract no attention from Sutton, either out of ignorance, or more likely, because they do not press a hot button amongst conspiracy theorists the way any mention of the Illuminati will.Large sections of Sutton’s book deal with things like theories of educational psychology, or the manipulations and misdeeds of international financiers. While these details are interesting in themselves, Sutton’s effort to tie all of them back to Skull and Bones, Hegelian philosophy, and Illuminism is unconvincing.The liberal journalist Ron Rosenbaum has published a number of articles about Skull and Bones, amongst them one containing details, purportedly obtained by sophisticated electronic eavesdropping, of a recent initiation. If true, they reveal nothing more than the sort of crude and prank-like character associated with many college fraternities. In view of this, and also of the public personæ of the country’s two most prominent Bonesmen, Bush père et fils, it is hard to imagine that the particular Yalies in question spend much time in rarefied discussion of Hegel’s theory of history, or the psychology of Wilhelm Wundt.It is interesting to contrast Skull and Bones, which Sutton attempts to portray as a devious and destructive conspiracy, with the Cambridge Apostles, a society which produced two documented traitors (Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt). Richard Deacon’s book on the Apostles is a much more successful indictment of that society than Sutton’s is of Skull and Bones. But even more tellingly, Deacon describes a group of men who were thoroughgoingly intellectual, and thus capable of being corrupted by ideas that were bad. One does not sense that Bonesmen are particularly interested in any ideas, nor that intellectuality is high on the list of criteria for selection of members (this is in some ways a comment on the difference between British and American universities!). If the conspiratorial, and indeed criminal or treasonable behavior alleged by Sutton has taken placer amongst members of Skull and Bones, it is more likely so merely because social élites naturally move mostly in their own restricted circles. Sutton’s book appeals to the long-standing egalitarian distaste for élites that has been a feature of American society since the days when Aedanus Burke objected to the Society of the Cincinnati, or that sanctimonious old hypocrite John Quincy Adams lent his name to the Anti-masonic movement. So what else is new?

Wow! Having just read Antony Sutton’s work, why haven’t I known about this book before? As a product of the 60’s with an early interest in our political process and keeping abreast of current events (or so I thought), I realize now I had been intentionally trapped and kept in the dark for most of my life. Mr. Sutton approaches his thesis with meticulous detail and historical facts that shuts the door on conspiracy “theory.” This book is all about conspiracy fact, backed by hard evidence, taking the reader deep into the mysterious operations inside the rabbit hole and exposing what has been taking place all around us hidden in plain site. Fully documented and expertly constructed in an easy to read and comprehend manner, he blows the lid off the New World Order agenda and how it has slowly but surely led to where we are today, a process in the making for over 180 years. If you’ve ever thought that there was something wrong with this country but couldn’t quite put your finger on it, I highly recommend you take the time and absorb the valuable and well researched information that this book has to offer. It will forever change the way you view our world and modern day America (education, the media, politics, perpetual war and our government), also answering the questions as to why and how this kind of information is largely kept under wraps and unbeknownst to the average citizen!

I found it to be a good book to help me understand how corrupt our government has become and why. Some would call this Conspiracy Theory and to them it probably is but after reading, if you were to stand back and look at what is happening in our society, our government and in particular the less than 1% who control the world and the money, it all starts to make sense. I believe I have purchased 4-5 books along this lie an they all fit together in support and to provide 360 degree coverage of the subject. If you think that you are in control then this probably isn’t for you. Would I become a monk and hide because of what it shows me, no, but it just gives me a better understanding of why and has helped me to be alert and wise in who I put into office.

This book is based on solid research and is well written. For anyone interested in understanding how members of a relatively small but powerful, secret cultic organization affects this world in order to accomplish their evil goal, I recommend this book. The roots of the American chapter of The Order of Skull & Bones at Yale University, once known as The Brotherhood of Death and more commonly called The Order, can be traced back to the period when Germany was dominated by the Hegelian philosophical ferment. Hegelian theory believes the State is superior to the individual. In this State the individual finds freedom only in obedience to the State. Both Marx and Hitler have their philosophical roots in Hegel. Skull & Bones is not American. It is a branch of a foreign secret society. The Order has penetrated just about every significant research, policy, and opinion-making organization in the United States. I appreciate Antony Sutton for writing this book.