Francis Richard Conolly's well-reasoned documentary chronicles the rise of the moneyed elite and the means employed to control history and undermine democratic institutions since WWI. It is a long film - three and half hours - and worth every minute.

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Francis Richard Conolly's well-reasoned documentary JFK to 911 Everything Is A Rich Man's Trick chronicles the rise of the moneyed elite and the means employed to control history and undermine democratic institutions since WWI. It is a long film - three and half hours - and worth every minute. The first hour details the rise of the Nazi party via the support of western industrialists terrified of the possible spread of the workers' revolution in Russia; the second hour analyzes the coup d'etat by the shadow government that planned and executed the assassination of JFK and effectively ended democracy in the United States; the third hour takes us into recent history and the creation of Arab terrorists as the new "bogeymen" necessary to keep the masses in a state of fear and maintain the supremacy of the elites through war profiteering.

There are several books out on this subject, but Conolly connects the dots in ways that are current and revelatory. His film puts the bogeyman du jour of Putin and Russia in a very clear context; the natural connection between the American & European fascists/bankers/royalty who supported Hitler and those who now despise Putin could not be more obvious. It is, as always, about power & money, and the rabbit hole is very deep. I have always been curious to know the actual worth of the Rothschilds, which Conolly puts at 100 trillion pounds sterling, dwarfing that of Queen Elizabeth at 22 trillion.

The most important segment of the film is footage of a speech by Smedley Butler in which he states that he was set up to lead a fascist coup in 1934 and blew the whistle instead. Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, and the Dulles Bros. using funds donated by leading industrialists - the Colgates, Rockefellers, and the Duponts - plotted the overthrow of American democracy by a private army of 500,000 and the imposition of a fascist dictatorship. FDR could have hanged them all for treason but declined to do so because he was afraid it would throw the country back into Depression. Had he prosecuted them, JFK would not have been assassinated, and the entire shadow government that now controls the US would not exist. The name Bush would have been as repellent as that of Benedict Arnold for all of time.

To those who would argue that Conolly's arguments stretch credulity, I would counter that truth is indeed often stranger than fiction. In the last moments of the film, Conolly summarizes as follows:

"It is very difficult for the general public to accept that the super-rich leaders of their Western world can possibly be as mad and deranged as they actually are." When I tell colleagues that neo-con think tanks in Washington are now arguing that a nuclear war is "winnable" they inevitably refuse to believe it and call me 'alarmist'. Mad and deranged indeed.

Here is Conolly again:

"All terrorism is fake. It is a military deception practiced by the rich upon the poor in an ongoing class war. Their most important weapon in this class war are television presenters. The BBC has actually become The Ministry of Truth of George Orwell's 1984....Why is this happening right now? It's happening because we no longer have an enemy. We have an unprecedented situation in which there is only one super state: the Anglo-American alliance.....The ruling group maintain their position in society by controlling the masses through fear. In order to make us believe that we must live in fear, the rich had to provide us with a new foreign enemy, a "bogeyman" who wants to conquer the world. The moment you have a world at peace, the keystone in the arch of ruling class power is gone. Every year America's oligarchs take three trillion dollars out of America's economy. This is how the rich have rigged the system - so that it benefits them at the expense of everyone else all of the time. To keep this fraud going, the public must be convinced of the need for military expenditure, and this is where all of the phony terror attacks come in. Here is Orwell's definition of totalitarianism: ' A society living by and for continuous warfare in which the ruling caste have ceased to have any real function but succeed in clinging to power through force and fraud.'

It ought to be obvious by now that our seemingly endless economic recessions are being deliberately orchestrated.... What are we to do about all of this? For Americans, it is obvious that we must honor the memory of JFK by finishing his work and finally ending the CIA. The only way to change our corrupt system is through revolution. Americans must march on Washington as they did for Obama's inauguration, but this time to remove all corrupt men and women from positions of power. "

Conolly's 'solution', simply stated, would be monumentally difficult to execute. That does not mean we shouldn't try. What is the alternative?

Francis Conolly is British and a former St. Peter's School history teacher.