Customer Reviews

Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control

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The thesis of E. Michael Jones's "Libido Dominandi" is that, far from really liberating anyone, "sexual liberation" has served to deliver powerful means of social and political manipulation and control into the hands of our ruling élite. He marshals some impressive evidence. Here we read about Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and the founding father of the public relations industry, who was among the first to realize how sexual imagery could be employed in advertising. Long before the infamous "Virginia Slims" ad campaign, Bernays used the suggestion that cigarette smoking was an act of feminist independence to sell Lucky Strikes to women. Here we see the origins of the Planned Parenthood organization in the hope that birth control and abortion would reduce the numbers of the poor (especially ethnic Catholics and blacks), and resolve the dilemma of the welfare state. Here we learn of the fraudulent methodology of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, the sordid character of much of his "research," and the way in which Kinsey manipulated his academic superiors and his chief sources of funding through an implicit threat of blackmail, because these people had been foolish enough to give him their "sexual histories." The rôle of the Rockefeller Foundation in both the Planned Parenthood and Kinsey enterprises was motivated by the obsaession of John D. Rockefeller III with eugenics, the pseudo-science of "race improvement." We learn also of the profound antipathy of the eugenicists and sex researchers towards Roman Catholicism, which they viewed as their principal adversary. Jones exposes the origins of "Americans United for the Separation of Church and State" in the anti-Catholic bigotry of Paul Blanshard. The organizations described here present a façade of respectability to the public that would not be so easy for them to maintain if their backgrounds were better publicized.

Jones's case would be more persuasive had this book come under a firmer editorial hand. It is lengthy, but also repetitive. Some material is duplicated almost verbatim in several parts of the book; also, Jones repeats, again almost verbatim, material from his other books, "Dionysos Rising," "Decadent Moderns," and "Monsters from the Id." This book might have been cut to half its length with as good or better effect than it now has. The work also fails in its efforts to tie the all-too-genuine mischief wrought by the sexual revolution together as the result of some sort of "Illuminist" conspiracy. Jones is a Roman Catholic polemicist of the old-fashioned type, for whom no Roman prelate (at least before Vatican II) ever did wrong, and no Protestant ever did right. He writes with the vehemence of a pamphleteer in the time of the sixteenth-century French wars of religion, and would probably have been perfectly happy under the patronage of the third duke of Guise. While many conservative Catholics, his intended audience, will be undisturbed by this tone, it is likely to put off many others who might otherwise be interested in Jones's factual reportage and sympathetic to his conclusions. This is unfortunate, since both deserve to be more widely known.

This is the long version of Jones' mature thesis about the sexual revolution. Liberally notated with references to original works, some in the original languages, Jones' magnum opus is hard, perhaps even impossible, to refute on its own terms. Only a hardcore fan of the sexual revolution or Enlightenment will take issue with Jones' argument.

The idea that disordered sex issues in violence is not new, nor is it restricted to the musings of counter-revolutionary academics like Jones. One can find it in the 10 p.m. newscast of any large city: Miranda, Scott's live-in, dumps Scott and Scott kills Miranda.

Still, few authors have had the tenacity of Jones, who traces the sexual revolution back to its Enlightenment roots, and as carefully as anyone can desire shows the dependency of Sade and Shelley on Weishaupt's infamous Illuminati techniques. Not content with that coup, Jones pulls in Freud and Jung, damning them with their own words. Advertising and other forms of social control get their own skewers as well.

In short, Libido Dominandi (note the serious pun in the title) is what everyone needs to know about how the power elite keeps the little guy under control, materially impoverished, and spiritually destitute.

If you can't find the time to read 600 pages, get the short version, Monsters of the Id, which is less well documented, but somewhat more entertaining.

This book is simply brilliant.

Jones has a strong, clear style and is in complete control of his subject matter. He has thought through what so many others have only hinted at. He is a Catholic Nietzsche - he philosophizes with a hammer; and how much more sane and deliberate than Nietzsche himself.

This is a revolutionary book. It exposes the horror lurking beneath the make-up caked suface of the modern world. It deserves as wide a reading as possible.

I'm impressed with Jone's work. He is truly gifted. He sees things for what they are. He is largely untainted by modern peer pressures, misinformation, and the apathy infecting the zombies of today.

This is not a simple read. I could only consume it in small doses. Contemplating, weighing the meaning, and putting it (his take of events) into context 'that makes sense to me' severely taxed my small brain.

Furthermore, I find that his thoughts run parallel with mine. Too bad it'll never get the acclaim it deserves on a mass scale because those that have the power to make it so, I'm certain, do not share his perspective. Yes, among others, you Oprah Winfrey.

Besides those who would benefit mostly from this book are likely incapable of comprehending its relativity.

To Dr. David Donelson, "Thank you for recommending this book".

V/R,

Robert

I have read most of what Mr.Jones has written to date, and find each book compelling. This one takes the cake - a long read and one which requires concentration, but opens the eyes to a cultural concept that is not at all understood when we review the history of our culture. What we have inherited, the sins of the father, has polluted our culture to its core. Read this and pass it around - it ties nicely into Degerate Moderns, and syncs with Johnson's Intellectuals.

One review speaks of typos - and a poorly proofed manuscript. Unfortunately this is true. It didn't reduce the impact of this great work to me, but it really should be corrected - before I buy the hardcover for my library.

E. Michael Jones is one of the best critics of the French Revolution since Edmund Burke. Perhaps he is a better critic if far less well known, because he does not just attack la Revolution itself but also the theoretical and causal underpinnings for it.

Marx missed the boat on his analysis of history. Class conflict is a factor. At times it is just a tool. Likewise the collapse of sexual mores can be a tool in the hands of the powerful, for other ends besides the usual explicit goal of social "liberation" and its frequent companion "equality." Of course in later works by Jones we find out that maybe Marx did not miss the boat, rather, he miss-stated the boat, so that other fools would fall into it and the control of his collaborators. A pattern that takes an earlier form in the esoteric group machinations revealed in this book.

Jones deconstructs the deconstructionists. He aptly shows how the criticism and attack on traditional and Roman Catholic sexual mores is less a form of patriarchal oppression, than a new sort of oppression being readied for the gullible masses.

In a way Jones' world-view is deeply classical. There are cycles of political change and social changes often preceed those of constitutional structure. Problems of government come down to man's nature, which does not really change from generation to generation, so the patterns of governmental change will repeat themselves. Contrast that to the Enlightenment notion of "progress." A fiction that suggests "things are gradually getting better." In my mind, more of a fiction, and the reality is that social problems emerge from man's fallen nature. That nature is going to stay the same so to some extent social problems will always be with us, just as Christ said of the impoverished, and so we perhaps might be better off working on fixing our own internal fallen natures than always trying to fiddle with "improving" this or that cause celebre du jour.

This physically impressive book does not live up to the promise implicit in the author's quirky, but interesting, previous works. Problems start at a low level. Typographical errors of a sort impossible to miss (e.g., missing or superfluous words) appear every two or three pages and suggest that the manuscript was not carefully proofread. I could live with Jones' discursive style in his earlier books, but in this one entire paragraphs are repeated verbatim. (Compare page 368 to page 522.)
The most serious problems in this book involve content. I am sympathetic with the author's thesis that modern society is harmed by sexual promiscuity and that nowadays sex is frequently used as a tool to manipulate others. Jones' criticism of Kinsey appears, in particular, to be on target. But in an effort to tie together the various vignettes that make up this book, Jones seems to lend undue credence to various conspiracy theories and to overreach in the conclusions he draws from the available evidence. The author's denial of the reality of mental illness is not the only part of this book in which he comes across as more Catholic than the Pope. (See John Paul II's 11/30/96 address to the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health-Care Workers.)

Michael E. Jones, publisher of the right or left or centre or up and down and, oh, possibly even diagonal journal Culture Wars, publishes this Summa of the summum malum perennially confused these days with the summum bonum.

If saying that almost an entire order of nuns was destroyed, as they were, due to the activities of a psychologist utilising them as an experiment, as they were; a psychologist who may even have been outrightly anti-catholic, which he probably was; if all that is a conspiracy then it's one of true ones; live with it, they do crop up from time to time. Anyhow, it gives Jones' book some _eclat_, as otherwise it would be rather heavy going. This is due to the fact that, unlike, say, Willis in Structures of Deceit, it doesn't rely on the idiocy of the reader, on knowing that he or she would know nothing of the history of the Church and even then, if they did, only secondary sources in English - you can always trust the Americans and English to be only able to speak one language - Jones at least argues with some assumption that the reader might wish for more than a paranoid screed ( Willis again!), which has the added benefit, apart form its honesty, of giving the reader something to argue against and intelligently reject.

Meaning, of course, that Jones should not be thought 'right'. Or that his argument is faultness, and ought to be simply accepted or, even more simplistically, rejected. It isn't faultless. Possibly not as a whole and certainly as regards details; his consuming interest in secret societies for example. One would have many points to halt him on and ask him to justify himself. As one can say this of almost any book, this can hardly be called a criticism.

A truly 'worthwhile' book....

CGH