Invisible Empire

“ The “Invisible Empire” is under the control of one man who openly calls himself an “Emperor,” holds position for life, and exercises despotic control over the affairs of the organization.
Third: Candidates—designated as “aliens”—who are received into the organization, are not regarded as “members,” but as “citizens” of this “Invisible Empire,” and instead of being “initiated,” as is usually the case in fraternal orders, are “naturalized” and become “subjects” of the “Emperor.” ”

“ The United States has but lately emerged from the greatest war in the annals of the race. When we laid down our arms the might and power of the German Emperor was forever crushed. Having assisted materially in crushing a visible Empire in Europe, the American people should be able to make short work of exterminating an “Invisible Empire” at home. When this righteous task is accomplished, they should pause a little and reflect upon some of the conditions that exist in this country today—conditions that must be soberly and earnestly faced. ”

“ The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. ”

“ Its appeal is to group hatred and group prejudice; its organization, which is strictly secret, has, in some of its units, already followed the methods of the Vehmgericht; the title of its “wizard” comes from the “Wissende” or initiated of the German brotherhood; its structure is military; its aims are political; and, openly calling itself the “Invisible Empire,” it is an autocracy in government, ruled by an “Emperor” who has placed himself on the throne for life. ”

“ That oath on its face is an accessory before the fact to any and all kinds of crimes and outrages, and placing such an obligation indiscriminately in the hands of men of average intelligence is like giving dynamite to little children and expecting them not to be blown to pieces.
In summarizing the oath of the “Invisible Empire,” there are three salient things that stand out very prominently:
First: It binds men to obey unconditionally laws they know nothing about, and laws which will be enacted in the future, and to follow blindly an organization which is largely a one-man affair. ”

“ Never had he seen a human being so transformed by anger—eyes that a moment before had held him enraptured with their tender light had flashed cold points of steel. Hands, soft and warm and full of velvet feeling, had closed in rage as the claws of a tigress!
Suppose she refused to see him again? It was unthinkable. He seemed to have lived a century within the weeks since she had called him to her side. The life which had gone before grew dim. Four years of war and two years of daring secret revolution as a leader of the Invisible Empire faded from his consciousness. ”

“ Stella asked with sudden interest.
“That your father’s death was ordered by an inner circle of the Invisible Empire. He was probably executed by an individual who did not even know his name. The occasion of the masquerade ball was simply utilised for the purpose. Unless we know the name of the Chief of the Klan in this state no progress can be made. This man has the power of life and death over his men. ”

“ Civil law now affords ample protection to life, liberty and property; robbery and lawlessness are no longer unrebuked; the better elements of society are no longer in dread for the safety of their property, their persons, and their families. The Grand Wizard, being invested with power to determine questions of paramount importance, in the exercise of the power so conferred, now declares the Invisible Empire and all the subdivisions thereof dissolved and disbanded forever. ”

“ We have rescued our state from Negro rule. We dissolve this powerful secret order in time to save you from persecution, exile, imprisonment and death. The National Government is getting ready to strike. When the blow falls it will be on the vanished shadow of a ghost. There’s a time to fight, and a time to retreat. ”

“ Such will doubtless be observed down to the second century of Christian truth on earth, when there was no longer any thing great to think or act under the empire, and the only genial asylum for aspiring souls was the invisible world. ”

“ This is the paradox, the futility of conquest—the great illusion which the history of our own Empire so well illustrates. We British "own" our Empire by allowing its component parts to develop themselves in their own way, and in view of their own ends, and all the empires which have pursued any other policy have only ended by impoverishing their own populations and falling to pieces. ”

“ How proudly will the colored race honor that day, when, abandoning a policy which teaches them to cling to the skirts of the white people for support, they shall set themselves zealously at work to create a position of their own—an empire which shall challenge the admiration of the world, rivalling the glory of their historic ancestors, whose undying fame was chronicled by the everlasting pyramids at the dawn of civilization upon mankind. ”

“ To ponder too curiously the question why a State declines is like pondering too curiously the question why a man dies. In the vicissitudes of States we are on the threshold of the same Mystery as in the vicissitudes of nature and of human life. The tracts and regions governed by cause and effect are behind us. An empire, like a work of art, is an end in itself, but duration in the former is an integral portion or phase of that end. ”

“ Sometimes a creature is seen to start into imperial power, whom the world never knew before, or knew only for his infamy: Taken out of the stews or out of a dungeon, into a throne; and without knowing how to rule himself, he rules an empire; living a recluse, and seen by nobody, he governs all but the women or parasites, who govern him: Millions of men, and their properties, are at the sole discretion of one who has none; and a creature void of humanity disposes wantonly of a great part of human kind. ”

“ But he looks with suspicion upon any attempt to increase it, he encourages every transfer of control to local authorities, he insists that where races of an inferior civilization are incorporated their affairs shall be managed in their interest and not in that of the conquering race, and he views with constant apprehension the inclusion of such races because he knows that their despotic government must threaten the existence of his own free institutions. If the Empire is justified at all, it is justified by the ideals which it expresses, and by nothing else. ”

“ Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal, without which Civilization would collapse as surely as if it had been blasted out of existence. Without the power metal, no ship could move or even be built ”

“ You can overthrow every institution that was ever made, but you will never set up in its place a Government that will bring again the order you have destroyed. You can pull the Empire to pieces with dissensions and conspiracies, but—once down—you will never build it up again. ”

“ An enemy has got a footing in the heart of the Empire, and is causing this disturbance. He has evaded our fleet and our forts, and he has the power to destroy our power. The nation, like a dreamer awakening, is shaking itself as it becomes conscious of another danger than that of foreign fleets and armies. ”

“ Similarly, the past two centuries, and especially the past seventy-five years, have witnessed a marvellous onrush in man's intellectual apprehension of the universe and mastery over the latent energies of matter. But because moral and political development has lagged hopelessly behind material progress, the world is plunged into a war of unexampled magnitude and almost unexampled fury, wherein the heights of the air and depths of the sea are pressed into the service of slaughter. Where was the Invisible King in July, 1914? ”

“ No one who knows the solid framework of politics or the emphatic first principles of an Imperial people can suppose for a moment that there is any possible compromise to be made in such a matter; we must either fulfil our manifest racial destiny and crown the edifice of ages with the august figure of a Green Premier, or we must abandon our heritage, break our promise to the Empire, fling ourselves into final anarchy, and allow the flaming and demoniac image of a Red Premier to hover over our dissolution and our doom. ”

“ Popular government lies in the hopes and beliefs of the people. Empire is the servant of ambition and the shadow of greed. Popular government has been evolved by the human race at an immense sacrifice during centuries of struggle against the forms and ideas that underly imperialism. Since men have set their backs on the past and turned their faces with resolute hope to the future, empire has repelled them, while democracy has called and beckoned. ”

“ The many still say 'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism, does all that Republics do. Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident; true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally short-lived. When the People have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one. No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free spirit than the broad glare of the American eye. ”

“ Along the highroad that leads to empire moves the American people, in the heyday of its youth, sturdy, vigorous, energy-filled, replete with power and promise—conquerors who have swept aside the Indians, enslaved a race of black men, subdued a continent, and begun the extension of territorial control beyond their own borders. More than a hundred million Americans—fast losing their standards of individualism—fast slipping under the domination of a new-made ruling class of wealth-lords and plutocrats—journey, not discontentedly, along the imperial highroad. ”

“ But if ever our state institutions shall be overthrown, and the concentration of all the powers into one great central government shall mould this system of republics into one grand consolidated empire, then will the last and greatest evil which can befal our country have arrived. The wide extent of our territory, and the numbers of our population, which under a system of confederated republics, would awaken the genius and patriotism of the country, and call forth an almost resistless energy and enterprise in our citizens, would then be a blighting curse—the bane of our land. ”

“ They are free to move only in the circle which Imperial law-making leaves open to them. That circle does exist. It is delimited, but not wholly occupied, by the Empire.... In a certain sense it may be said that it is only by sufferance of the Empire that the states maintain their political rights at all, and that, at best, their tenure is precarious. ”

“ But in a period of turmoil, with men's hearts stirred, and their souls aflamed with conviction and idealism, there is always danger that the people may exercise their "unalienable right" to "alter or abolish" their form of government. Consequently, during a crisis, the imperial class takes temporary charge of popular liberties. Every great empire engaged in the recent war passed through such an experience. In each country the ruling class announced that the war was a matter of life and death. ”

“ This republic cannot but be great, if it is one; but there can be nothing but strife, weakness, and decay, if it be divided. The questions of peace, empire, national existence, liberty, prosperity, civilization—all these questions are one and inseparable. In the very nature of things, this republic must be great or it must die. There is no alternative. The great republican empire is there, it is within your grasp, if you only remain true to the idea. ”

“ By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs of government were administered; all authority to govern came from them. The emperors, kings and potentates all had commissions from these phantoms. Man was not considered as the source of any power whatever. To rebel against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper position to be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate were the good. Those who stood erect were infidels and traitors. ”

“ There are scores of such organizations.
I have managed to name, relatively, only a few of the influential individuals who are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, or of affiliated agencies, and who also occupy key jobs in the executive branch of government, including the Presidency.
I have asserted that the objective of the invisible government is to convert America into a socialist nation and then make it a unit in a one-world socialist system. ”

“ You are going to build up a magnificent empire, founded on—slavery. But I tell you, the ruin and desolation of our dear country—that will be your empire. And as for the institution you mean to perpetuate and strengthen, it will be crushed to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of the war you are bringing upon the nation. ”

“ If it be true that the citizen can only realize himself through the national State, if the whole course of human history is essentially a conflict of national States, and if the rich variety of civilization is made up of the rivalry of those national States, it logically follows that the expansion of any national State into a world empire must necessarily be baneful. ”