Tom DeWeese
About Tom DeWeese
Tom DeWeese has built a career of issuing scary warnings about Agenda 21, a completely voluntary United Nations set of principles for sustainable resource management. Where others see sensible environmental guidelines, DeWeese finds sinister land-grabbing socialist UN initiatives that threaten national sovereignty, private property rights and freedom, not to mention turning our children into one-world government zombies.
In His Own Words
鈥淏ut citizens of European nations and the United States that express concern 鈥 鈥樷渘on-violent鈥欌 words 鈥 about the flood of immigrants rushing across their borders, especially an invasion of radical Islamists who seek to change their culture, rape their women, and dismantle their governments 鈥 that鈥檚 a threat to world peace.鈥
鈥擜merican Policy Center column, November 2015
鈥淔or the globalists, A/R [animal rights] is a perfect pawn. The globalists want to reduce the human population by up to 85%, what better ally to have than the A/Rists who hate humans; who want to erase humans from the face of the earth so the lion can lie down with the lamb (just don鈥檛 tell them that the lion is having lamb for dinner) and no human will be there to intervene.鈥
鈥擜merican Policy Center column, January 2011
鈥淪ustainable Development is code for a policy designed to transform human society, essentially eliminating individual life decisions and replacing them with top-down, one-size-fits-all government control. In steady fashion, the agenda for this new policy, designed at the international level, is put into place piece by piece with a new government council here, and new regulation there, each designed to appear as a 鈥榣ocal鈥 development program. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot, many Americans fail to notice the rise in government heat.鈥
鈥擜merican Policy Center column, April 2013
Background
Tom DeWeese spends months on the lecture circuit each year, warning of an imminent danger to liberty and freedom 鈥 sustainable resource management. His principal target is Agenda 21, a set of voluntary 鈥渟mart growth鈥 principles signed by then-President George H.W. Bush and 177 other world leaders at a 1992 United Nations conference. In reality, he claims, Agenda 21 is really 鈥渋nternational forces 鈥 turning [American] communities into little soviets.鈥
On the surface, Agenda 21 might seem an innocuous target. It is a completely non-binding guide for dealing with overpopulation, pollution, poverty and resource depletion. But it has been a deep 鈥 and lucrative 鈥 topic for DeWeese as he rails against threats to American national sovereignty. He has used it to build a career opposing alternative fuel sources, immigrants, climate change science, environmental regulation, affordable health care and education reform, among other things.
Obsessed with the impact of environmental policy on property rights and freedom, DeWeese charges that 鈥渟ustainabilists鈥 are conspiring to destroy America through creeping socialism. Ultimately, he says, the goal of Agenda 21 and the UN is to force the United States and other countries into a tyrannical, one-world government in which bicycle paths and wildlife refuges will be vastly more important than human beings. What is more, he says, our children are being used to hasten this future, through U.S. Department of Education-funded UN programs that turn them into little one-world government zombies.
鈥淚t sounds so friendly. So meaningful. So urgent,鈥 DeWeese wrote in a 2009 report. 鈥淏ut the devastation to our liberty and way of life is the same as if Lenin ordered it.鈥 The plan, he adds, is a 鈥渃omplete agenda of control鈥 that has been 鈥渨rapped in a green blanket, scaring us with horror stories about the destruction of the environment 鈥 and so we are now throwing our liberties on the bonfire like a good old fashioned book burning 鈥 all in the name of protecting the planet.鈥
The effects of this fearmongering by DeWeese and like-minded conspiracy theorists have been far-reaching. Not only have some counties passed resolutions opposing Agenda 21 (along with state legislatures in Kansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Virginia), but the Republican National Committee (RNC) in January 2012 passed one as well, decrying Agenda 21 as a 鈥渄estructive and insidious scheme鈥 meant to impose 鈥渟ocialist/communist redistribution of wealth.鈥 The RNC recommended that the resolution be adopted as part of the Republican platform at its August 2012 convention (in fact, a much watered down version of the resolution became part of the GOP presidential platform). In addition, Alabama passed a law aimed at outlawing any effects of the plan, and one chamber of the legislatures in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma have passed similar needless statutes.
Born and raised in Newark, Ohio, DeWeese graduated from Ohio State University with a journalism degree in聽1971. According to his biography, he has been the editor of two newspapers, a candidate for the Ohio legislature, and a campaign manager/field worker in a couple of congressional races. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1982, working as a fundraiser and PR man for legislative policy organizations. In 1985, he launched The DeWeese Company, a direct marketing and publishing company, which today is the newsletter arm of his principal concern, the American Policy Center.
Founded by DeWeese in 1988, the American Policy Center (APC) is a privately funded 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit with two broad goals: to promote free enterprise and to limit government restrictions of commerce and individuals. It advocates an unregulated trickle-down approach, flogging the notion that free market checks and balances and private property ownership will create wealth, employment, goods and services, and even protect the environment.
DeWeese has managed to spread his propaganda into Tea Party groups and various conspiracy theorists of the antigovernment 鈥淧atriot鈥 movement, from the John Birch Society and Texans for Accountable Government to off-the-rails media personalities such as Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. The APC website offers a variety of anti-Agenda 21 fact sheets, petitions and handouts for citizen activists, including documents intended for presentation to local public officials.
DeWeese works closely with the Koch brothers鈥 Americans for Prosperity group, speaking at many of its regional meetings as an expert on Agenda 21. A DeWeese appearance at the in 2012 was described like this: 鈥淭om DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, will explain the U.N.鈥檚 Agenda 21 initiative, and help you translate the vague terminology associated with Agenda 21. (Think 鈥榗ommunity visioning,鈥 鈥榮ustainable development,鈥 鈥榣ivable communities,鈥 etc.).鈥
A quick scan of DeWeese鈥檚 APC columns gives a sense of his worldview, carrying such menacing headlines as 鈥淚s the U.S. Being Colonized by Red China?鈥; 鈥淭he Alamo: Hallowed American Ground or UN Captive?鈥; 鈥淪ustainable Development: The Evil Facing America鈥; 鈥淭he Growing Threat of Smart Meters鈥; 鈥淪ustainability Marxism鈥; and 鈥淧rivate Property Ownership is the Only Way to Eradicate Poverty.鈥
In fact, just about any effort to address critical social and environmental issues facing society, particularly on a global scale, is smeared by DeWeese with the same broad brush: It represents the onset of tyranny and the loss of personal rights.
In an entitled 鈥淭he Principles of Freedom vs. Agenda 21,鈥 he elaborated: 鈥淭he basic principles of freedom are consistent with man鈥檚 nature and that鈥檚 why they work. When the principles of freedom are recognized and adhered to, there is prosperity, justice and happiness. When the principles have been ignored or rejected, men have suffered poverty, stagnation and political tyranny.鈥
Therefore, he concludes, climate change is a lie intended to bolster environmental restrictions; immigration protects Third World environments by transferring people to our regulated society; alternative energy research tilts the U.S. into 鈥渢he socialist, sustainable global noose鈥; education reform is a 鈥渟ustainabilist鈥 conspiracy to indoctrinate children; and health care reform ushers in death panels staffed by faceless bureaucrats.
Despite overwhelming consensus among scientists to the contrary, DeWeese claims that the idea of climate change 鈥渉as been so discredited in the true scientific community that proponents have become almost silly in their continued attempts to push it.鈥 The reason they do, he says, is that 鈥淎genda 21 policy is built on the premise that man is destroying the Earth. Climate Change is their 鈥楶roof.鈥 To eliminate that premise is to remove all credibility and purpose for their entire agenda. They are willing to go to any length, even lies, to keep the climate change foot on our throats.鈥
Environmentalists support immigration, DeWeese says, because 鈥淸t]hey argue that the US has a greater ability to control them [immigrants] and protect the environment than if we left them in third world countries. 鈥 That鈥檚 because the Greens have already strangled our nation and our industry with massive environmental regulations.鈥
And he argues that the real goal of Agenda 21 is to destroy the free market system. He claims that the UN, congressional representatives, the media, and Hollywood types have issued 鈥渟tatement after statement鈥 deriding the free market as evil, corrupt and a tool of the rich to hold down the poor. 鈥淣ow suddenly, they are worried about the poor 鈥 if it leads to their ability to raid our bank accounts,鈥 he adds. 鈥淪o, are they really worried about protecting the environment 鈥 or honoring the tactics of Jesse James? Redistribution of wealth is behind every policy that comes out of the UN, and now the Obama Administration as well.鈥
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, DeWeese continues, is an 鈥渁ttack dog鈥 with the goal of shutting down entire industries like coal, along with making it difficult to operate a manufacturing business in the U.S., let alone start a new one. On top of that, he says, green policies are 鈥渧igorously鈥 blocking fracking, oil drilling, coal mining and other traditional energy acquisition methods, while wasting billions of dollars on alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.
But here is his bottom line: 鈥淲hat is the motivation to put such shackles on the US economic engine? The excuse is that energy use drives up CO2 emissions and accelerates global warming 鈥 the excuse necessary to 鈥榟armonize鈥 the US into the socialist, sustainable global noose.鈥
Federal educational reform programs, such as Goals 2000, School-to-Work and Outcome Based Education are thinly disguised 鈥渂ehavior-modification programs, according to DeWeese: 鈥淭o reform a nation that has been created on the ideals of limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty into one that unquestioningly accepts government top down control 鈥 will take time,鈥 he says. 鈥淭hey must wait out those of us who were educated in the old system, we who were taught that we were born with our rights and that government鈥檚 job is to protect those rights. The sustainable system says government will grant us our rights. To enforce such a radical turn around of our society requires that the children be indoctrinated to accept it.鈥
Health care reform is yet another dangerous erosion of national sovereignty, DeWeese says. 鈥淪ustainable medicine makes decisions through visioning councils (usually bureaucrats with little or no medical knowledge) assigned the power to determine what shall be done or not done to each body in its 鈥榞roup鈥 in its 鈥榥ative habitat.鈥 Sustainable medicine experts do not refer to citizens in sovereign nations, but to 鈥榟umans鈥 in their 鈥榮ettlements.鈥 鈥
Serving on the APC board of directors are Bonner Cohen, who, according to Sourcewatch, once ran 鈥淓PA Watch,鈥 a Philip Morris-funded newsletter that accused the EPA of "everything from destroying the U.S. economy to trying to stop people from taking showers," and John Meredith, son of civil rights hero James Meredith. The center鈥檚 board of advisors includes Alan Caruba, the APC鈥檚 communications director and an adjunct policy analyst at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a similar organization. Caruba also blogs for Tea Party Nation, the only Tea Party group listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Another member of that board is Sam Rohrer, a former Pennsylvania state legislator.