Two (non-Amazon) Reviews of Perfectibilists

Originally Published at Conspiracy Archive on 2010/03/14

Charles Burris at the Lew Rockwell blog:

“The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle Social, which in the middle of its course had as its chief representatives Leclerc and Roux, and which finally with Babeuf’s conspiracy was temporarily defeated, gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf’s friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution in 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.”

This quote (found here in full context) is from The Holy Family, the first joint collaboration volume of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was written several years before their more celebrated (and originally anonymous) 1848 work, The Communist Manifesto.

So from Marx and Engels — the founding fathers of modern communism — we have it boldly stated: the communist idea = the new world order.

OK — David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama, ad nauseam — how do you explain away this one? Conspiracy fact or conspiracy theory?

I found this extremely revealing quote in Perfectibilists: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati by Terry Melanson. I just received this wonderful book a couple of days ago from Amazon.com. In that time I have only begun to scratch the surface of its encyclopedic amassing of factual information concerning its controversial subject, yet it is fast becoming one of my favorite books. I have not been this impressed with a new book for a very long time. The carefully detailed scholarship is evident throughout this handsome, beautifully executed volume.

Melanson’s work deserves to be placed on the same reference shelf as James Billington’s Fire in the Minds of Men, and Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, for its scholastic integrity and dedication to truth-telling without tabloid sensation or hyperbole.

While this will be the definitive English-language history of the Bavarian Illuminati, there is so much more to its remarkable contents. Melanson’s intriguing discussion of how Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, and the Jesuits relate to the Illuminati within the milieu of the Aufklarung (the German Enlightenment) is particularly fascinating and dispels much prior pseudo-scholarship and hot house theorizing by supposed authorities on these topics.

From Marco Di Luchetti’s “Illuminati of Bavaria” site:

Terry Melanson, Perfectibilists (2009).

This is a superb, insightful and intelligent history of the Order of the Illuminati of Bavaria. It is the foundation stone upon which any modern proper understanding of the Illuminati should be based. Mr. Melanson treats his subject objectively and with precise care, never exaggerating but instead providing all the essential details. The thoroughness of his research is self-evident. Because I have read many of the books upon which he relies, I can confirm his accuracy. I read carefully to find even a single error, and found none. Mr. Melanson’s book will therefore for a long time to come fill in the dark gaps in history regarding the Illuminati, and hopefully bring to a close the current chapter where hype and conjecture are taken as a factual account.