(This book review contains a discussion of violent sexual abuse. I’ve kept descriptions as brief as possible, but this will be hard to read and discretion is advised. You can purchase this book through this Amazon affiliate link. Doing so helps support this website.)

Do pedophiles run the world? Do the global elite use sexual abuse as a method of control? Are the world’s social engineers in the media and academia trying to normalize sexual abuse of children as a way to destroy normal family support systems — perhaps as part of some devious divide and conquer plan? If you answered definitively, “No,” then author Jasun Horsley says “Don’t be so sure.”

Horsley’s newest book, The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse, examines the intersections between these seemingly unconnected topics. Horsely never commits fully to the conspiratorial story line, but he argues the connections are too numerous to ignore. He suggest instead that these fields flow naturally into one another.

Child sexual abuse is a topic that has scarred Horsley deeply. As a member of the wealthy upper-class, his dysfunctional family had close relations with Britain’s power elite which he argues put him in a vulnerable position.

Child sexual abuse is difficult to read about and even harder to write about, especially for someone who thinks that he may have been abused as a baby, as Horsley suspects, perhaps even by his famous older brother, Sebastian Horsley. Horsley is almost certain that his brother himself was a victim of sexual abuse, his flamboyant public persona, praised in the media as a pioneer of sexual freedom, was merely a cover for someone reaching out for help. This book serves in part to uncover the secret history of his family, it’s connections to elite power in the UK, and how it ties into the agenda’s of the world’s leaders.

In one of the largest scientific studies ever on the topic, the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry wrote that child sexual abusers “are found in all professions and, they sexually abuse children, some in ways that are almost unimaginably extreme.” They note that these abuses likely have always existed and that academics are only now compiling adequate statistics to study the phenomenon scientifically. 

UK television personality and “friend” of the Royal Family Jimmy Savile is said to have sexually abused over 500 people, mostly children, during a roughly sixty year reign of terror. Most damning however was that he was able to do it so long, apparently being repeatedly protected by the government and media, who (at a minimum) buried criminal complaints and ignored Savile’s own veiled confessions which would occasionally arise.

This is not the only connection between child sex trafficking and British elites. The now deceased Prime Minister Edward Heath was rumored to have raped a 12-year-old just a few years before becoming the Conservative Party leader. More recently, a woman claimed to have been sex trafficked by Jeffery Epstein to Prince Andrew when she was 17.

In the United States, the situation similarly as bad. In 2016, Dennis Hastert, the longest ever serving Republican Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency, molested at least four boys during his time as a high school wresting coach. The revelations came to light years later when Hastert improperly reported bank withdraws while trying to payoff blackmailers. Are we to believe that the CIA and other intelligence agencies didn’t know about Hastert’s past?

And of course there is Jeffery Epstein, who had numerous connections to powerful people, with swirling rumors that Epstein had tapes made to compromise these people. According to former U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, he was told to back off prosecuting Epstein because he “belonged to intelligence.”

Child pornography is a huge problem within the US government. Hundreds of individuals in the Defense Department were recently identified as suspects. In 2018, DOD computers were among the top networks in the US sharing pornographic images of minors, and not as part of some legal honeypot operation.

These revelations exposed what conspiracy theorists have long argued: The government, for its own reasons, mostly to do with intelligence operations, has protected or even enabled serial child abusers. Perhaps its because they are abusers themselves, entwined with a kind of shared damnation necessary to run a giant conspiracy, or more likely, it’s just the most effective form of blackmail that could ever be devised.

The Fabian Socialists

The belief that society should be engineered rather than simply being allowed to exist has always been an occupation of kings, but it reached new intensity in the 19th century as mass media, psychological manipulation, and manufacturing practices brought about both a need and a way forward.

Horsely describes the machinations of the 19th century globalists, the Fabian Socialists. Their name comes from the Roman general Fabius, whose tactics involved gradually wearing down their enemies’ ability to fight. Their ultimate goal was to create a highly regimented, global society, with them as the elite directors of human evolution.

In the 19th century, this was intended to be done gradually through eugenics, steadily strengthening their own intelligence and degrading that of the masses. They would also create parallel systems of education, media, and art that would erode the independence of the lower classes, over time making them more malleable to socializing.

This would be done gradually and through subterfuge, pretending to endorse the Bernie Sanders style of socialism, which is egalitarian and pro-labor, while steadily centralizing power and undermining the groups they claimed to serve. One of the Fabian Society’s original logos was that of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, later abandoned for being too menacing and obvious. Notable members from this time include George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Annie Besant.

Sexual Depravity as a form of Social Control

Horsley argues that steadily expanding sexual abuse could be an effective tool for elite rulers of our society. Psychologist Wilhelm Reich argued that as sexual liberation increased, fascist tendencies would fade away and eventually disappear as he and his admirers believed violence was the result of sexual repression by society.

Horsely argues that instead by expanding social freedoms to increasingly wild degrees would eventually result in calls for more authoritarian control. Selective reading of Freudian psychology promoting childhood sexual freedom helped to usher in a period of a satisfied superego, but a frustrated id rebels, resulting in steadily increasing violence. Movements previously concerned with liberation morph into authoritarian movements interested in regulating sexual behavior at the most micro level.

Horsley speculates that in order to institute a totalitarian society, pushing first for total liberation and social anarchy can help pave the way by prompting a reactionary force that pleas for a return to normalcy. This phenomenon can be observed broadly in the “peace and harmony” values of the 1960s against the “capitalists feeding frenzy” of the 1980s when the youth “wised-up.” I’m sure you can think of more contemporary examples.

Horsley spends much of the book arguing that these components are manifested most clearly in Aleister Crowley. Active during the early part of the 20th century, Crowley was a rapacious drug addict, occultist, and aspiring social engineer with connections to British intelligence. He goes further, arguing that despite his follower’s objections, Crowley’s was a child rapist.

Horsley pulls no punches, arguing that despite Crowely’s reveling in his anti-Christ persona, he was as depraved as his orthodox critics claimed, participating in child rape, as well as animal sacrifice (and possibly child sacrifice) in pursuit of his magickal goals.

Crowley’s more lauded characteristics promoting sexual liberty also promoted sexual violence against children. Worshiped as a kind of popular anti-hero, his ideas gained a following among certain intellectual and artistic classes during the 1960s.

In Germany, the progressive left created schools that taught children to have sex with adults for “political reasons” (i.e. social liberation). In the US, Charles Manson read Crowley and encouraged group sex with children. Alfred Kinsey a so called “pioneer of sexual research” was a fan of Crowley. He is credited as “the father of the sexual revolution.” Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, he had his team “stimulate” at least 188 infants and young children while recording their “groaning, sobbing, or more violent cries…” Further, he shielded serial child abusers from the authorities as they helped him with his research. This list could go on for pages.

Horsley points to his brother’s public pronouncement that denied the existence of sex trafficking (an indisputable reality). “It was the equivalent of insisting that all prostitutes are such by choice. This is similar to child molesters denying that children are victims… but rather ‘hustlers sending signals.’ It is a way to justify ones behavior by denying the humanity of ones victims, blotting out their inner experience with the force of one’s own desires. Because [Child molesters] lusted after children they saw a green light… It takes a modicum of innocence to recognize innocence.”

The more depraved the acts Crowley committed, the more he believed he could divorce himself from his social conditioning. Horsley suggests that this is the intent of our societies would be social planners: eliminate moral judgement as a prelude to more effective social control.

This thesis fits the facts as presented, but as anyone who has put together a puzzle knows, just because the pieces fit doesn’t mean it’s the right picture. But taking a 10,000 foot view of the issues, it does seem coldly rational.

Conclusion

The connections between these three worlds is not as concrete as an investigator would hope, but in the world of government power and manipulation, they all support one another. Horsley presents the evidence for an organized conspiracy, mostly circumstantial, and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

If Horsley’s writing has a major oversight, the issue is his organization, which is a bit scattered. Even this review covers topics which are wide ranging and difficult to connect. His inability to say definitively what he believes is going on is also part of the problem. Looking at his other books, his area of interest includes topics which are as yet hard to define.

Still, readers with an interest in elite socialism, the occult, or abuse scandals (especially ones centered in the UK) should find plenty of material to mull over in The Vice of Kings.