Machiavelli, Alinsky, the Criminal Mind, & FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901. 

The next President, Theodore Roosevelt wanted the government to track anarchist groups, as well as stop sex-trafficking. 

This led to the creation of the Bureau of Investigation in 1908, though some Congressmen feared it might become politicized or evolve into a deep-state secret police. 

Anarchists continued their threatening activities by shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, beginning World War I. 

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed J. Edgar Hoover as the director of the Bureau of Investigation. 

In 1935, the name was changed to Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI. 

For 48 years, under eight Presidents, J. Edgar Hoover oversaw the Federal Bureau of Investigation till his death, May 2, 1972. 

The FBI became famous for dramatic campaigns to stop organized crime and gangsters such as “Machine Gun” Kelly and John Dillinger. 

Hoover established the use of fingerprints in law enforcement and successfully tracked down well-known criminals. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Hoover the task of investigating foreign espionage, specifically left-wing socialist and communist activists who were infiltrating the country and recruiting followers. 

Hoover stated: 

“The communist threat from without must not blind us to the communist threat from within. 

“The latter is reaching into the very heart of America through its espionage agents and a cunning, defiant, and lawless communist party, which is fanatically dedicated to the Marxist cause of world enslavement and destruction of the foundations of our republic.” 

J. Edgar Hoover identified the root cause of crime: 

“The criminal is the product of spiritual starvation. 

“Someone failed miserably to bring him to know God, love Him and serve Him.” 

Commenting on how crime increases where people forget God, Chuck Colson stated in 1981: 

“Imprisonment as a primary means of criminal punishment is a relatively modern concept. 

“It was turned to as a humane alternative to the older patterns of harsh physical penalties for nearly all crimes. 

“Quakers introduced the concept in Pennsylvania…” 

Colson continued: 

“The first American prison was established in Philadelphia when the Walnut Street Jail was converted into a series of solitary cells where offenders were kept in solitary confinement. 

“The theory was that they would become ‘penitents,’ confessing their crimes before God and thereby gaining a spiritual rehabilitation. 

“Hence, the name ‘penitentiary’ — as a place for penitents.” 

J. Edgar Hoover wrote: 

• “No amount of law enforcement can solve a problem that goes back to the family.” 

• “A child who has been taught the laws of God, should have little trouble respecting the laws of men.” 

J. Edgar Hoover is quoted in the introduction to Edward L.R. Elson’s book, America’s Spiritual Recovery, 1954: 

“We can see all too clearly the devastating effects of secularism on our Christian way of life. 

“The period when it was smart to ‘debunk’ our traditions undermined… high standards of conduct. 

“A rising emphasis on materialism caused a decline of ‘God-centered’ deeds and thoughts.” 

Hoover continued: 

“The American home… ceased to be a school of moral and spiritual education. 

“When spiritual guidance is at a low ebb, moral principles are in a state of deterioration. 

“Secularism advances when men forget God.”

Forgetting God results in lawlessness was the theme of Russian author Dostoevsky, who wrote The Brothers Karamazov, 1880. 

In it, one of the characters, Ivan Karamazov, contended that if there is no God, “everything is permitted.” 

“Everything is permitted” not only gives license to criminals on the street, but it also to gives license to criminals in the government, deep state individuals who seek to subvert from the inside. 

This was the attitude of the Jacobins, a left-wing anarchist movement during the French Revolution. 

Yale President Timothy Dwight described their subversive tactics to overthrow France’s government in “The Duty of Americans at the Present Crisis,” July 4, 1798: 

“Adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of the like infernal nature, were taught as lawful… provided the ‘end was ‘good’… 

“The ‘good ends’ proposed… are the overthrow of religion, government, and human society, civil and domestic. 

“These they pronounce to be so ‘good’ that murder, butchery, and war, however extended and dreadful, are declared by them to be completely justifiable.” 

Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, Germany, proposed using Jacobin tactics worldwide, secretly inciting anarchist dissension within countries, and between countries, to create wars, after which power could be usurped under the pretense of restoring order, ultimately resulting in a global government. 

The University of Berlin had students organize into the Young Hegelians. 

Members included Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who prescribed anarchist organizing (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 318): 

“Conspirators… organizing the revolutionary proletariat. 

“Their business consists in… spurring it in to artificial crises… They are the alchemists of the revolution.” 

David Horowitz explained the communist use of anarchist tactics to mobilize followers: 

“An SDS radical once wrote, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’ 

“In other words… civil rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, blacks… are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power. 

“Battles over rights and other issues, according to Alinsky, should never be seen as more than occasions to advance the real agenda, which is the accumulation of power… in radical hands.” 

Machiavelli advised: 

• “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”

• “One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.”

• “I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”

Friedrich Engels wrote (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844): 

“Every new crisis must be more serious and more universal than the last… must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor. 

“This will increase the number of the unemployed… 

“Commercial crises will lead to a social revolution.” 

Anarchist tactics are listed in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: 

• “The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step.” 

• “The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.” 

• “Search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.” 

• “The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems… An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.” 

• “The organizer… polarizes the issue… The organizer helps to lead his forces into conflict… The real arena is corrupt and bloody… In war the end justifies almost any means.” 

• “In the arena of action a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication.” 

The “ends justifies the means” and “everything is permitted” were amoral political tactics explained by Niccolo Machiavelli in his book, The Prince, 1515. 

Five hundred years ago, Italy consisted of many independent city-states: 

Venice, Genoa, Naples, Florence, Sienna, Amalfi, Milan, Corsica, Pisa, San Marino, Cospaia, Gaeta, Lucca, Noli, Trani and Papal States.

These were primarily noblemen’s republics, each with their own armies and navies, and they continually fought. 

Machiavelli thought that if one prince could control all of Italy, it would stop the in-fighting. 

Machiavelli observed the ruthless tactics of Cesare Borgia (1475-1507), who reputedly used intrigue, deceit, seduction, incest, poisoning and assassination to usurp power. 

He wrote that in politics, “one must consider the final result,” a phrase more succinctly remembered as “the end justifies the means,” an adage which dates back to Ovid’s Heroides, 10 BC. 

Called “consequentialism,” it replaces absolute standards of right and wrong with subjective reasoning that the rightness of an action is based on whether the consequence or end result is good. 

But since every criminal and ambitious politician defines “good” as benefiting themselves or advancing their agenda, it gives them license to lie under oath, deceitfully usurp freedoms, and commit the most reprehensible injustices and atrocities. 

The “end,” of one prince controlling all of Italy, was such a good end that any “means” necessary to get there was justified. 

According to Machiavelli, if a prince wanted to conquer a city, in his quest to unify Italy, the people would hate him. 

But if the prince secretly paid criminals under the table to burn barns, kill cows, smash windows and set buildings on fire, thus creating crises and terror in the streets, the people would cry out for help. 

The prince would come in, get rid of the “useful idiot” criminals he paid, and nobody would know the better for it. 

The naive people, unaware of his subterfuge, would praise the prince as a hero. 

It is good marketing, create the need and fill it: go around the back of a house and set it on fire, then go around to the front door and sell them a fire extinguisher — they will pay anything for it and thank you for being there. 

Hitler used “Brownshirts” to create crises by disrupting the meetings of his opponents, then once in power, Hitler had the Brownshirts killed in the Night of the Long Knives, and the people praised Hitler for cracking down on crime. 

The term “Machiavellianism” is a reference to creating or capitalizing on a crisis to consolidate control. 

A crisis could be anything from organizing riots, to an orchestrated financial collapse; or a virus, as depicted in movies: Mission Impossible II (2000); Twelve Monkeys (1995); Outbreak (1995); The Hot Zone (2019 mini-series); Pandemic (mini-series 2020); Contagion (2011). 

Journalist Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) wrote: 

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

But whether a crisis is coincidental or conspired, the consistent consequence is concentration of control. 

Hillary Clinton considered the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to advance Democrat politics, April 28, 2020: 

“This is a high-stakes time, because of the pandemic. But this is also a really high-stakes election. 

And every form of health care should continue to be available, including reproductive health care… part of a much larger system that eventually gets us to universal health care… 

So I can only say, ‘Amen,’ to everything you’re saying, but also to, again, enlist people that this would be a terrible crisis to waste, as the old saying goes.” 

The old saying came from Rahm Emmanuel, November 7, 2008: 

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” 

Machiavelli gave his maleficent counsel: 

• “No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.”

• “Politics have no relation to morals.”

Many politicians have studied Machiavelli. 

Washington Post reporter David Broder wrote, May 16, 1994: 

“A year ago last week, President Bill Clinton gave an interview to several of us from The Washington Post… 

At the end of the interview, he stood before the fireplace in the Oval Office and recited to us a passage from Machiavelli’s The Prince.” 

Machiavelli explained how people actually want to believe a lie: 

• “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

• “Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.”

• “Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.”

• “It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.”

• “A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.”

• “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.”

• “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

This is similar to the Talleyrand, the French Foreign Minister who demanded millions in bribes and infamously spoke out of all sides of his mouth, stating: 

“We were given speech to hide our thoughts.”

Machiavelli continued his baleful remarks: 

• “It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.”

• “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

• “Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.”

• “Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.”

Machiavelli’s counsel was ruthless: 

• “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

• “Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed out drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.”

• “The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.”

• “Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.”

• “Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries –- for heavy ones they cannot.”

• “Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.”

Who will fall victim to Machiavelli’s ungodly stratagems? 

How can a community or society survive such evil intentions?

William Holmes McGuffey warned in his Newly Revised Rhetorical Guide, 1853: 

“If you can induce a community to doubt the… authenticity of the Scriptures… 

whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the flood-gates of immorality and crime.” 

Samuel Adams stated January 17, 1794: 

“A virtuous education is calculated to reach… the heart, and to prevent crimes… 

“Such an education, which leads the youth beyond mere outside show, will impress their minds with a profound reverence of the Deity.” 

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in Essays-Literary, Moral, and Philosophical

“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them… 

“We neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.” 

Noah Webster wrote in his History of the United States, 1832: 

“All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.” 

U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen wrote: 

“The Bible… Seal up this one Volume and in a half century all these hopes would wither and these prospects perish forever. 

These sacred temples would crumble or become the receptacles of pollution and crime.” 

President James Buchanan proclaimed a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer, December 14, 1860: 

“In this the hour of our calamity and peril to whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our fathers. 

His Omnipotent Arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes.” 

What is the answer? 

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover admonished: 

“What we need in America today is a vigorous return to the God of our Fathers, and a most vigorous defense against the minion of godlessness and atheism.” 

From Bill Federer’s American Minute for May 4, 2020. 

William J. Federer is accomplished historian, speaker and the author of the best-selling books Prayers and Presidents – Inspiring Faith from Leaders of the Past, America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, American Minute—Notable Events of American Significance, Three Secular Reasons Why America Should Be Under God, Treasury of Presidential Quotations, and What Every American Needs to Know About the Quran: A History of Islam & the United States

American Minute is a registered trademark. Permission is granted to forward, reprint or duplicate with acknowledgement to AmericanMinute.com.

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