FT263

One of the striking effects of the current financial crisis has been the interest from some of the mainstream media in areas previously regarded as the province of conspiracy theorists.

Take The Economist, leading flag-waver for the financial sector on this side of the Atlantic. It ran a piece called “The global ruling class”, which described a new global “superclass” who “…attend the same universities… belong to the same clubs – the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a particular favourite… meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or – for the crème de la crème – the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California.” [1]

The online financial analysts Bloomberg carried its columnist David Reilly’s comments on some of the detail of the great bank bailout in America:

“The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are [sic] a given among conspiracy theor­ists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all. Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favoured banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.” [2]

Bilderberg… the Council on Foreign Relations… Trilateral… secret banking cabals – this has been the territory of the Anglo-American nationalist right since the 1960s. You can see it in National Front co-founder AK Chesterton’s New Unhappy Lords (1965), and John Birch Society member Gary Allen’s American best-seller None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1972).

In the late 1970s, this area also became of interest to a section of the American left. When hitherto obscure Governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter became president in 1976, his association with the Trilateral Commission was noted, provoking some interest in the elite management groups of global capitalism, Bilderberg et al. [3] But in 1980 Ronald Reagan became president, and the CFR-Tri-Bilderberg-Bohemian nexus was forgotten by the American left and has never returned to its agenda (not least because it is “contaminated” by the interest shown in it by the right).

There is a final ironic postscript to all this. In his New Unhappy Lords, Chester­ton wrote of the “New York money power”, a euphemism for the hoary old Jewish banking conspiracy theory. The financial crisis of the last three years has shown that to a large extent it is indeed the New York money power pulling the strings. Not for some hidden Jewish conspiracy, but simply for itself.




Notes
1 Economist, 24 April 2008. Online at grassrootsnetroots.org.
2 'Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows', Bloomberg.com. “Little oversight” is generous: by his own account there was no oversight.
3 This produced one large book of essays, Trilateralism, ed. Holly Sklar (South End Press, Boston, 1980).