Beyond Fear & Loathing: Distrust Is a Vicious Cycle

Before 2001, opposition to unaccountable groups like the IMF was on the rise. Since then, anti-government sentiments have evolved, fueled by frustration and resentment.

Part One:

From privatization and corporate globalization to grassroots resistance and 9/11

Looking at the behavior of many leaders, it’s easy to conclude that governments just can’t be trusted. Whether the men (and occasionally women) in charge are opportunist politicians, military officers, or ethically-challenged bureaucrats, they rarely inspire much faith that the State will promote fairness and protect individual rights in exchange for the power it assumes and pain it can impose.

In the US, this suspicion dates back to the colonial secession from England — a primal rejection of illegitimate central authority. Since then, distrust of government has fueled many episodes of resistance – from Daniel Shays’ 1786 tax revolt and Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building to the US capital assault in 2021. But as Gary Wills argued in his study of government distrust, A Necessary Evil, the real victims of this attitude "are the millions of poor or shelterless or medically indigent who have been told, over the years, that they must lack care or life support in the name of their very own freedom. Better for them to starve than to be enslaved by ‘big government.’ That is the real cost of our anti-government values."

Such suspicion creates a vicious circle, leading to actions that further erode trust, and perpetuating a cycle of negativity that can undermine democracy and social cohesion. When citizens lack confidence in their government they’re less likely to cooperate, and more susceptible to misinformation. Over time, they stop talking to one another. The cycle can lead to political instability and reduced effectiveness in facing challenges. Even the truth, when revealed through media, courts, science and schools, can become a threat.

In the late 20th century, public distrust — often buttressed by specious arguments about state’s rights, personal freedom, and the sanctity of private enterprise — fueled a global crusade to privatize services, shred safety nets, and turn management of the planet over to corporate and bureaucratic insiders with their own rules. After Ronald Reagan redefined the US federal government as "the problem, not the solution," Americans were repeatedly told that it was wasteful and ineffective — if not crooked — while private enterprise was dynamic and effective, the best way to protect liberty and produce wealth. 

As I warned during those years, anti-government attitudes were making people susceptible to reactionary, often isolationist appeals. Even though they might realize that no single nation can control violence, reverse environmental destruction, or protect basic rights around the world, many citizens assumed that any form of "global management" was either a naive fantasy or a potential nightmare.

In a sense, however, it was already happening, through groups operating behind closed doors and accountable only to those managing obscure administrative agencies. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) virtually ran the economies of many countries, primarily in the interest of transnational industries and global financial interests. The UN played a small role, primarily as a forum for dialogue and a convenient place to dump problems. But even there, the real power rested with the five permanent members of the Security Council — the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia. 

Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization (WTO) pursued a transfer of economic decision-making to the global level, turning human beings and the environment into tools for expanding trade and commerce. Rather than worrying about secular humanists or black helicopters, those concerned about a New World Order should have paid more attention to the open conspiracy to create a Corporate World Order. 

Some suspicion about the potential for abuse of power by governments was certainly legitimate and deserved. Yet, the form of centralized power that most threatened society then (and still does) isn’t public, it’s private: the destructive power of big business, wealthy individuals and elite financial institutions. Influencing and sometimes even determining the actions of governments, these ought to be the main focus of scrutiny and action. Conveniently, the same interests have often led campaigns to convince us that freedom means "me against the world" or "me against the government." Appealing to fears of public intrusions into our personal lives is a convenient way to derail attempts to reign in the so-called "right" to profit at the expense of the general health and well-being, and exploit in the name of freedom.

One promising step in the right direction at the end of the 20th century was a grassroots movement to challenge the de facto world government, a "mobilization against globalization" that opposed groups like the WTO. More accountability, as well as serious consideration of environment, labor, and human rights impacts, were some of its demands. I thought it could go even further, moving beyond suspicion of governments to work for democracy at the world level. 

As the new millenium began, I was still optimistic. But shortly after the election of George W. Bush, an upheaval began.

In early 2001, uprisings challenging privatization, low wages, structural adjustment, and other globalization policies were growing throughout Central and South America. When leaders from the Western Hemisphere gathered in Quebec City to iron out details for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), massive protests on the street combined with widespread dissent inside the summit to derail the negotiations.

Unable to continue ignoring demands for change, the establishment was forced to respond. In June, at a G8 summit in Genoa, leaders professed new concern about poverty, debt, and environmental threats. It was less than believable, but there was growing apprehension in corridors of power. During the first six months of the Bush administration, Europe broke with the US on missile defense, trade rules, the “war on drugs” in Colombia, and climate change. In the UN, it was ejected from the Human Rights Commission. Global trade deals were going nowhere and NATO’s future was up for discussion.

A serious challenge to the prevailing world order was gaining ground. In most media, the coverage was spotty, biased, and incomplete — as usual. But the essence of the argument was breaking through. As summer waned, events suggested that the next months would be crucial. In late September, the anti-globalization movement was planning to converge in Washington, DC during a meeting of the IMF and World Bank. 

But as history often illustrates, when elites feel they are under effective attack and can find a convincing pretext, they don’t hesitate to use extreme tactics, from disinformation and provocateurs to repression and premeditated violence, in order to recapture hearts and minds. Such tactics are often a desperate resort of groups that know they lack illegitimacy, or else presage a break that pulls away the mask, beginning a process of real change.

And then, like a volcanic eruption, predictable and inevitable, murderous assaults on symbols of US power shattered the landscape, rocked institutions, and altered how we would respond for years to come. Some compared the September 11 attacks to Pearl Harbor. Others pointed to the date itself — 9/11 — and called it an emergency wake up call.

Part Two: 

From the war on terror, tea party and militias to the Hoax administration and imagining a way out

Even before the 9/11 attacks, behind a calm facade, the world was entering a time of chronic crisis. Yet millions remained oblivious, dancing on the Titanic, denying signs of weakness, chronic anxiety and cynicism. Among the obvious symptoms were a preoccupation with disasters and scandals, nagging feelings of emptiness, repressed rage that too often led to explosions of violence, and insatiable appetites. Despite doubts about the legitimacy of many institutions, not to mention the recent US presidential election, a defensive complacency allowed millions to ignore reality.

As the US entered World War I in 1917, US Senator Hiram Johnson had issued a warning that went to the heart of the predicament. “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” he explained. Although he didn’t mention it, the second casualty was also obvious — freedom. After 9/11, both were surrendered as the media stoked primal fears, setting the stage for the most dangerous rollback of basic rights since the 1950s.

When it came to distorting reality, the tactics and objectives in regard to the anti-globalization movement were obvious. As in other political scares over more than 200 years, the attacks began with promoting the idea that dissent was a threat to security and “order.” Despite denials, many regimes were ready, even eager to classify opponents as potential terrorists or accomplices. Similar to the presidential junta’s rhetoric these days, critics were labeled communists, extremists and anarchists. Public anxiety was weaponized to override freedom of speech and assembly, privacy, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. The spin began even before the Twin Towers fell, with thinly veiled suggestions that “stability” was threatened by “enemies within” and abroad. 

Rampant speculation and predictions about looming catastrophes kept mass audiences in a permanent state of anxiety, and glued to their screens for the next live installment. The fact that truth would take a back seat wasn’t even disguised. As TV talking head Brit Hume told The New York Times, neutrality was fine as a general principle, but not when the threats were coming from “murdering barbarians.” Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer warned that, in times like these, “people have to watch what they say and watch what they do.”

The global war on terror prosecuted over the next years ended the momentum of the anti-globalization movement. What replaced it for a while was an anti-war movement, resisted at first by many Democrats. A majority supported the Bush administration’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Afghanistan, although some Democrats did oppose its extension to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq regime — on the basis of false charges that it was developing “weapons of mass destruction.”

By the time Barack Obama became president, mass protests against global corporate power were rare, although they were rekindled briefly in 2011. In the US, the nascent movement was called Occupy Wall Street. In the Middle East and North Africa, it was known as the Arab Spring. Although different, they had themes in common — anger about economic inequality, government corruption, and unaccountable private interests.

But the momentum was shifting toward a new reactionary uprising. One wing was known as the Tea Party, which opposed government spending and alleged federal overreach. In contrast to the Occupy movement, leaders of this new right-wing crusade didn’t hesitate to participate in elections and began to replace so-called “moderates” and RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) with more extreme “true believers.” The other wing featured various militia groups, which combined anti-government and conspiratorial thinking with paramilitary organizing. Formations like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters emerged and grew, seeding the ground for the militant cadres that ultimately helped lead the 2021 assault on the US Capital. 

Both wings were zealous backers of Donald Hoax, a more accurate name for the current President. In 2025 they are experiencing cognitive dissonance as safety net cuts, bizarre tariff talk, and doublespeak about the long-awaited release of explosive documents make the second Hoax administration look incompetent or complicit.

As economic nationalism — with roots dating back to the 19th century — re-emerged, the emphasis and tactics of the anti-globalization movement changed. Rather than taking aim at international institutions like the WTO and IMF, it focused on impacts within specific countries. Large protests were less common, and criticism of corporate power gave way to concern about national sovereignty and economic protectionism. Though the movement didn’t completely disappear, it became fragmented.

Meanwhile, new conservative thinkers have supported an "America First" approach, with protectionist trade policies similar to those advocated by left-wing figures like Bernie Sanders. There are still debates about corporate-friendly, multi-national trade agreements, but also about supply chains and unchecked global integration. 

Anti-government sentiments are more widespread than ever, fueled by frustration and resentment and ranging from deep skepticism to violent hostility. Conspiracy theories are often in the mix. The first quarter of the 21st century has been a period of increased polarization and economic inequality. Social bonds have weakened, disagreement quickly turns into anger and alienation, and feelings of disconnection leave people with little faith that any institutions or authorities can be trusted. 

The incoherence and incompetence of the Hoax administration ensures that trust won’t soon return. Before deep suspicion can be overcome, we need to better understand its roots. And that requires more candor and mutually respectful discussion than has recently been possible, plus leaders more willing to listen and admit errors. We also must find new ways to reward educated skepticism and innovation rather than conformity. 

What some forget is that democracy is fundamentally a conversation. No one group, even one that has the support of a majority, has the right to exclude others from fully participating.

Humanity continues to need realistic, tolerant, planet-level guidance, bold proposals that help ensure health and freedom for all, and practical plans to deal with arms proliferation, malnutrition, toxic materials, drug (and digital) addiction, and artificial intelligence, among other challenges. As John Lennon wrote in Imagine, his haunting anthem, “Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” 

Lennon’s lyrics, an inspiring call to unity, are about imagining a peaceful world, one free from the divisions created by nationalism and materialism. In this time of markets, transactional relationships, and amoral self-interest, that can sound like pie-in-the-sky idealism. But the belief that governments are inherently evil is just as extreme, a toxic projection of our worst possibilities.

Rather than a Hobbesian view — that humans are inherently selfish, driven by a desire for power that leads to a “war of all against all” — let’s presume instead that a harmonious and participatory approach to planetary management can still be developed, a movement beyond nationalism that nurtures children, helps poor regions develop along sustainable lines, mitigates the effects of climate change, and truly respects human rights. Rather than remain trapped in a cycle of distrust, as the slogan popularized by the World Social Forum puts it, we can instead assume that “another world is possible.”

This essay includes material originally published by Toward Freedom in December 1999 and the book Uneasy Empire, published in 2003.

Questioning Nationalism, Globalism and the UN

Imagine living through 1945. As World War II ended 75 years ago, the UN was born and two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan. To commemorate and reflect on these pivotal events, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has created a timeline. Ever since 1945 people, their governments and civilization itself have been faced with a momentous dilemma: how to choose law and cooperation over power and domination. Check out the WILPF timeline,  follow the history of that momentous year, and start local discussions of the events that changed our world. For example, release of The Franck Report on June 11, 1945...

You might not recognize the name, since the report was kept secret at the time, one of many WWII documents whose un-censored versions only became public decades later.  Signed by several prominent nuclear physicists who worked on development of an atomic bomb, the Franck Report recommended that the US not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan. 

Here are some thoughts on a related topic: Can the UN be reformed? 
World Order and Cultivating Community

The liberal international order is currently being challenged by populism in nations that built and long supported it. It is also being tested by rising powers, particularly China, and other states that hope to restore their prominence. Some go so far as to say the old order is fractured at the core, which makes a major conflict more likely. At the same time, the world faces a growing number of global challenges that cannot be managed effectively by national governments alone. 

The United Nations is still considered by many people as the key feature of this fragile World Order, and is certainly treated as one of its major institutions. When nations don’t abide by its resolutions, they are often accused of violating international norms or even law. In short, the UN is assumed to be a global democratic government. But this is at best aspirational, and, in some serious respects, misleading. 

The UN Security Council certainly isn’t democratic or liberal. Veto power is held by the winners of World War II; large parts of the world have no say. A handful of nations can impose sanctions, with immunity from counterclaims. And even if all other nations acted together, they could not impose sanctions on the Big Five.

So isn’t calling the UN General Assembly “the most democratic and representative body” a bit misleading? Beyond the power imbalance already described, India (1.3 billion people) and Luxembourg (613,000) each have one vote! And although the General Assembly passes all manner of resolutions, its members know there is no credible way to enforce them. Is it democratic when most of the votes are cast by representatives of authoritarian regimes, with leaders who couldn’t care less what their people feel? Is it accurate to call the UN liberal when representatives of brazen human rights violators have for years led its human rights bodies?

Given all of this, do nationalists have a valid point when they charge that the UN violates national sovereignty? Shouldn’t it at least be more representative? And how about all the international governance carried out by other international organizations, and through informal bodies like the G7, G8, and G20? Their decisions aren’t binding on those who dissent, but at least they try to operate by consensus, Is this a more viable way to go? 

The world obviously needs stronger, more effective forms of global governance. But it doesn’t look ready at the moment to be governed like a liberal democracy. Instead, premature attempts to overcome nationalism have fed populism. 

One of the problems may be insufficient community building. People have a basic need for recognition and respect, and these are linked to a sense of identity and community. Since the 1980s the US has tilted too far toward individualism and lost a sense of communal values. If that is part of the problem, does it also point toward a solution? 

At the same time we have lost a sense of shared values we have experienced rising alienation, resurgent populism, institutional breakdown, and Donald Trump. It is not a coincidence. But perhaps we can cultivate a greater shared sense of community, even in supranational forums, and eventually extend it to their governing bodies. The trick is how to do it without creating more alienation and pushback.

Dark Horizons: Navigating Change in Uncertain Times

By Greg Guma
      We're in uncharted territory. On some days, as the West's domination of world affairs winds down, you can feel the wheels of history turning. A multi-polar world seems to be emerging. But so far it looks as polarized, unstable and dangerous as the one it replaces.

      The Trump presidency is meanwhile turning out be even more surreal than the campaign. If you doubt that the foreign policy establishment is concerned, Richard Haass offers a comprehensive, "insider's" corrective in A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order (2017, Penguin, 352 pages). The message from Haass, who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, is that global rules and institutions that have kept the world relatively stable since World War II are at serious risk of being abandoned. 

      Written during the recent presidential race, Haass makes a convincing case for growing global instability. But he sidesteps a direct critique of Trump, calling instead for continued active engagement (defining it as a "sovereign obligation") over narrow nationalism. It's a sobering viewpoint that reflects the priorities of the internationalists who have controlled US foreign policy for most of the last 70 years.

      Unprecedented. We hear the word so often that it's become a cliche. But have we been here before? And is what we're experiencing an authoritarian surge or something else? In The Anatomy of Fascism (Vintage, 2004, 321 pages) , Robert O. Paxton illustrates the differences between the two isms, and how modern anxieties - from immigration and economic insecurity to urban "decadence" and national decline -- create conditions for mass-based, populist nationalist movements. Fortunately, not many have taken power, or lasted for long.

     Written before the recent surge of nationalist propaganda, hate crimes and "strongman" regimes in places like Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines and the US, Paxton's concise study outlines how fascists gain and exercise power. It also identifies the obvious warning signs: political deadlock in the face of domestic crisis, threatened conservatives desperate for tough allies and ready to abandon the rule of law, and charismatic leaders ready to "mobilize passions" through race-tinged demagoguery.

    On the other hand, he also advises that most real capitalists, even if they view democracy as a nuisance, would prefer an authoritarian to a fascist. The former usually wants a passive, disengaged public. But fascists, who have such contempt for people and reason that they don't bother to justify their excesses, tend to get people excited and engaged. And not just their blame-shifting supporters.   

***

      European powers ruled 84 percent of the land and 100 percent of the seas in 1914, and the US was the world's largest economy. What a difference a century has made. Now three of the four biggest economies are China, India and Japan. In Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline from Obama to Trump and Beyond (Other Press, 2016, 307 pages), Gideon Rachman makes a persuasive case that China is poised to dominate the next century. But he also reveals why no "Eastern alliance" is apt to replace the crumbling "West."

    As a top financial commentator for the UK's Financial Times, Rachman has hobnobbed with ministers and business leaders worldwide, and brings some revealing encounters into his analysis and forecasts. The main issue, he explains, is whether the US and China can avoid the Thucydides Trap -- the type of rivalry between an established and rising power that can lead to war. It has happened in 12 out of 16 cases since 1500. 

     Location could be a decisive factor, explains Tim Marshall in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything about the World (Scribner, 2015, 305 pages). For Russia, the largest country in the world, it has made power difficult to defend and provoked leaders like Putin to compensate by pushing outward. For China, in contrast, geographical features have often provided security, and now set the stage for it to become a two-ocean power (Pacific and Indian) and claim most of the South China Sea. 

      Marshall's book is well-organized, fast-paced and reads like a travelogue, observing history, politics and environmental dynamics from a high altitude. The maps in the paperback could be better and the text certainly does not explain "everything." But this is an engaging refresher and does illustrate why, despite having a great location, even America is constrained by geography's rule. 

 ***

     Long before the digital age, the US government used scientists and psychics to locate hostages and penetrate secret military bases. Sometimes it even worked. This is just one of the mind-blowing revelations in Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (Little Brown, 2017, 527 pages). For decades, such research was publicly ridiculed as science fiction fantasy. But Annie Jacobsen has assembled the facts, from once-classified documents, former officials, and government psychics who explored this frontier.

     Did you know, for instance, that the US military used dowsers during the Vietnam War to locate Viet Cong tunnels? Or that Uri Geller, the famous psychic "spoon bender" who set the CIA's psychic research program in motion, also worked for Israeli intelligence, and later became wealthy locating ancient Middle East artifacts, oil, and minerals for mining corporations? 

     The difficulty with paranormal abilities was often reliability. Even when techniques were refined and endlessly practiced, only a few psychic warriors had the right stuff. Yet the research continues. The Office of Naval Research is currently exploring what it calls premonition or "Spidey sense," while the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) looks into "synthetic telepathy," a brain-computer interface that may someday enable soldiers to "communicate by thought alone." 

     During the same period, with more success, various governments have also been developing cyber capabilities. As Fred Kaplan notes in his riveting new book Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Simon & Schuster, 2016, 342 pages), at least twenty nations are already in the game, led by Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the US. The focus is currently on Russia's "hybrid warfare," the weaponizing of hacked documents to influence the presidential race. But keep in mind that information war began with the US-NATO campaign against Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. And the first significant cyber attack, a US-Israeli operation called Olympic Games, was directed at Iran's nuclear program. Later known as Stuxnet, it involved a cyber worm that destroyed a quarter of Iran's centrifuges and set back its nuclear program by several years. 

     The trouble with waging cyber war, warns Kaplan, is that "what we can do to them, they can someday do to us." It's a type of blowback. In an afterword written since the 2016 election, he also points beyond the Russia-Trump operation to the next threat -- denial-of-service attacks executed by thousands of household devices. It happened on October 21, 2016, when an Internet switchboard was flooded, shutting down Twitter, Spotify, Netflix and other sites. 

     "There are now about 10 billion Iot (Internet of Things) devices in the world," Kaplan concludes. "Some estimate that, by 2020, there will be 50 billion. That's a lot of bots to be enslaved for a cyber war."

-- First printed in Burlington's Peace & Justice News (July 2017)

Living with Conspiracies: From the Illuminati to Kennedy

Uncovering a secret plot can quickly become a dead-end trip, guided by the researcher's paranoid half-fantasies and the eerie vibration that everything is under hidden control. Yet you don't have to be paranoid to realize that history isn't only what scholars write, and that newspapers often edit -- and sometimes even alter -- the facts that they report. 
     Secret societies do exist, conspiracies both above and below ground; so do groups with manipulative and often deadly game plans. But not all of them are bent on control: some are aimed at altruistic goals, and others are just plain stupid. No one group as yet has humanity under its thumb. On the other hand, conspiracies are quite real and not to be underestimated. 

I. THE BILDERBERGERS

A top secret group with the name Bilderberg is hard enough to swallow. But if you add that it used to meet annually, with no press coverage, and make major international policy decisions, the usual reaction is an arched eyebrow. "Poor guy," friends will likely say. "He's finally gone off the deep end. Bilderbergers? Pretty weird."
     The name actually came from the hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland used for the first session in 1954. After that, meetings were held around the globe, including a 1971 gathering in Woodstock, Vermont. "The purpose of the conference," said Prince Bernhard, the Dutch aristocrat who promoted the group and chaired meetings for more than 30 years, "is that eminent persons in every field get the opportunity to speak freely without being hindered by the knowledge that their words and ideas will be analyzed, commented upon and eventually criticized in the press." At the time, Bernhard, who had married Holland's Princess Juliana, was a spokesman for NATO as well as Dutch interests in South America.
     Nevertheless, U.S. Senator James Buckley wrote in 1974 that, "I don't subscribe to the theory that there exists an organization of international bankers called the Bilderbergers." A strange reaction since his brother, William F. Buckley, was on the guest list that year.
     Or consider this oddity. In response to an inquiry in 1975 a U.S. Justice Department official said the White House knew nothing about the Bilderbergers. Yet President Ford attended meetings of the group throughout the 1960s, and Donald Rumsfeld, then the president's assistant, knew the group as "an open forum for the exchange of ideas."
     After the Woodstock, Vermont session, one hotel employee put it succinctly: "They get together once a year to talk about what is going to happen in the world."
     Officially, the meeting in Woodstock, convening April 23, 1971, was billed as "an international peace conference." U.S. State Department officials had conferred about security arrangements with Vermont State Police. The state supplied 30 men in plain clothes to support a private, armed security force, the FBI and Secret Service, even though Vermont officials said they knew nothing about the event. One-hundred-fifty guards and officers blanketed the sleepy town of 1,600, sealing off Laurence Rockefeller's hotel and estate. Everything was set for the arrival of 85 leaders from around the world. Limousines brought them from Lebanon, New Hampshire, where an air shuttle from Boston had been arranged.
     Although Bernhard issued a terse press statement when his plane touched ground at Boston's Logan Airport, one participant, Francois Duchene of the London Institute of Strategic Studies, who attended with then British Defense Minister Denis Healey, later explained that, "America must face a Western Europe and Japan that are more independent." That fit, since one scheduled topic was, "A change in the U.S. role in the world."
     To Major Glenn Davis of the Vermont State Police it was "a hairy scene. No one seemed to know just who was in charge of what." But in the conference room, once all employees had been cleared from the building, order reigned. Seating was arranged alphabetically with Bernhard at the head of the table. Remarks were normally limited to five minutes, with two "working papers" as discussion foci.
     Henry Kissinger, then Nixon's National Security Advisor, missed the first session, but became the main event when he delivered a briefing on U.S. plans. Months later, he was charged by conservatives with "leaking" plans for Nixon's China trip and a devaluation of the dollar. After the 1971 Bilderberg conference banks and major corporations shifted capital out of the U.S., mainly to West Germany. Nixon's China initiative eventually became public information. And in December, the dollar was devalued, resulting in gains for people who had already converted to European currency. A "change in the U.S. role" was under way, and the Bilderbergers may have helped make it happen.
     Private groups like the Bilderbergers, which have helped to build our current system of de facto global management, don't actually discuss peace. Rather, their concern is managing the world economy. Originally, Bilderberg meetings served to strengthen the Atlantic alliance, and gradually became an "open conspiracy" to develop consensus among political and business leaders beyond the power of nation-states. In the early 1950s, Prince Bernhard brought the idea to the CIA, and with its assistance nabbed support from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. The money flowed through the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whose director, Joseph Johnson, coordinated U.S. Bilderberg activities.
     Over the years the group became a model for transnational diplomacy, lending support to European integration and oil company policies. Its steering committee was virtually a who's who of international finance; David Rockefeller, Gabriel Hauge (Manufacturer's Hanover Trust), Emilio Collado (Standard Oil, later Exxon) international lawyers such as Arthur Dean and George Ball. All U.S. steering committee members were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which dominated US foreign policy planning after World War II.
     Take George Ball, for example. A long-time CFR member, director of the Trilateral Commission, Undersecretary of State, and lawyer with Lehman Brothers. Or Arthur Dean. CFR member, partner in Sullivan and Cromwell law firm, whose partners included John Foster and Allen Dulles. Before World War II Sullivan and Cromwell worked with German chemical and steel monopolies. By the time the Bilderbergers began to meet, attorney Allen Dulles had become CIA director. Small world.

II. WAR AND PEACE WITH THE CIA

Evidence of conspiracy can begin with questions like this: What group has financial ties to the megabuck empires of Rockefeller, Rothschild and Morgan, philosophical roots in Fabian Socialism, and was instrumental in creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund? If you haven't guessed, it also publishes a monthly journal called Foreign Affairs. Its resident members and "international citizens" form an aristocracy of financiers, academics, lawyers, journalists and public officials that has planned US foreign policy since the 1940s.
     Columnist Joseph Kraft, a member at the time, once called this semi- secret elite a "school for statesmen." If you haven't figured it out yet, the answer is the Council on Foreign Relations, or CFR. And its objective for half a century has been nothing less than to "create a new international order." To most leftists that reads like US imperialism; to right-wingers it translates roughly as world government. You know, the invisible government. The establishment. The people who brought us the Vietnam War and offspring like the Trilateral Commission, all in the name of "peace."
     The CFR began rolling at the Majestic Hotel in Paris, May 19, 1919, just as the World War I peace talks were winding down. The meeting to create an international planning group was called by "Colonel" Edward Mandell House, Texas oil man, power broker and presidential advisor, whom Wilson called his "alter ego." The Colonel's Paris conference was geared to generate support from finance czars (the gold-dollars alliance of Rothschild and Rockefeller) and liberal internationalists. And so it did.
     By 1950 the CFR controlled most American cabinet posts, and its members were a new nobility: Nelson Rockefeller, Averill Harriman, Dean Rusk, Walter Lippman, and Allen Dulles, to name but a few.

The Hitler Connection 

When Allen Dulles died in 1969, President Nixon said, "In the nature of his task, his achievements were known to only a few." Dulles' task from the 1940s on was intelligence gathering, disinformation and covert operations. Dulles viewed it as a craft, and managed to elevate espionage to "professional" status. As much the architect as the prosecutor of the Cold War in the 1950s, he handled the CFR's "dirty tricks."
     Back in 1919 Dulles had attended the Paris talks with Colonel House, then joined the U.S. State Department. By the late 1920s he had become a partner in the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which worked with Adolph Hitler's financial agent to acquire the largest German monopolies, steel and chemicals, as clients. Dulles joined the board of the Henry Schroeder Trust banking group in the 1930s, while Schroeder bankrolled the Nazis.
     But allegiances changed when the war began. Dulles left the firm and began spying at a high level in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a new U.S. intelligence and subversion network. In 1944 the spymaster got to work on two covert missions: liquidating the Fuhrer and working out peace terms with other Nazis without letting Russia find out.

A Network of Agents

Espionage is the business of secrecy, manipulation and deception. It breeds conspiracies, including hidden networks of mercenaries that transcend national interests. In the summer of 1944 such a network blanketed Europe as the Allies broke into German territory.
     One spy on the job was George deMohrenschildt, a career agent who knew German intelligence well from work with the Abwehr 2 (Nazi spies within the U.S.) before the war. In the 1940s he shot film in Poland, built ties with French and German agents, and scouted for oil interests.
     Allen Dulles was running OSS operations in Switzerland, while another agent, Joseph Retinger, promoted Polish liberation from Germany. Like deMohrenschildt, Retinger also had oil contacts; his were Mexican, dating back to the 1920s. He had worked in London with the exiled Polish government. In August 1944, at age 58, he parachuted into Nazi territory near Warsaw just before liberation, bringing cash to Polish nationalists.
     Meanwhile, Allen Dulles, who had urged U.S. entry into the war on grounds of "enlightened selfishness," was handling other parts of the plan. With German Abwehr and diplomats he tried to assassinate Hitler, and although the plots fizzled, Hitler soon died -- presumably a suicide. A year later, following Retinger's lead, Dulles sparked the Cold War by scheming to cut Russia out of the surrender negotiations.
     What's the point of recounting all this cloak-and-dagger stuff? Simply that the old networks never die, and this one led to President Kennedy's death and beyond.
     The daring Joseph Retinger went on to become the philosophical father of a united Europe, as well as the man who urged Prince Bernhard to launch the Bilderberg conferences. Allen Dulles, of course, went well beyond the OSS, which amassed a $75 million budget and developed a worldwide network by the time Truman disbanded it.
     Dulles attended Bilderberg sessions, drafted the master plan for the CIA, and ran the agency for nine years, beating back legislative drives to crack the web of secrecy. His friends said he had a "zest for conspiracy." Be that as it may, he believed that, "We cannot safely limit our response to the Communist strategy of take-over solely to those cases where we are invited in by a government still in power."
     He felt so strongly about taking the initiative that the CIA overthrew a leftist regime in Guatemala in 1954. But five years later the CIA saw new trouble: Fidel Castro.
     And that's where deMohrenschildt fits in. After the war, he resettled in Dallas, renewing his ties with other anti-Communist Russians. He worked on contract with both the CIA and oil companies, his cover occupation "petroleum geologist." His walking tour from Dallas to Panama in 1961 landed him in Guatemala City, where he made contact with anti-Castro Cubans and mercenaries revving up for an invasion called the Bay of Pigs.
     Two years later, working with money from right-wing Dallas oil baron H.L. Hunt, a core of CIA agents unhappy with Kennedy's crackdown on "the company," and some bitter Bay of Pigs survivors, deMohrenschildt had found a new mission: helping to arrange the assassination of a president. Coordinating things for him locally was an FBI informer -- Jack Ruby.

III. CONSPIRACIES ILLUMINATED

When John Kennedy visited Dallas in November, 1963 the American dream was shattered and Camelot died. Ever since then we've been looking for the how and why of his assassination. Was it Oswald alone, or a conspiracy? Was Cuba involved, and what role did Jack Ruby and others play?
     Ex-agent Robert Morrow told his version to the House Assassination Committee in 1976. The assassination team, he claimed, combined CIA agents and anti-Castro Cubans with whom he had worked on schemes to run guns and pump bogus money into Cuba. On November 22, 1963, according to Morrow, it went this way:
     Three teams were in place by 12:30, linked via walkie-talkie to Guy Bannister, a former Chicago FBI chief who subsequently handled anti-Castro operations in New Orleans. Two men were stationed behind a stockade fence near the grassy knoll, with another two inside the county court building overlooking Dealey Plaza -- one of them Jack Ruby.
     Ruby had also worked in Chicago in the 1950s, a mafia "soldier" accused at the time of murdering the treasurer of the Waste Handlers Union. In Dallas Ruby built ties with police while running a bar, and ran guns to Cuban exiles under orders from CIA agent Clay Shaw. Ruby also worked with George deMohrenschildt, the veteran spy with ties to H.L. Hunt.
     Lee Oswald, the apparent fall guy, was in the Texas Book Depository that day, according to Morrow, but probably on the second floor -- while a "second Oswald" fired from the sixth-floor window.
     Ruby's police contacts came in handy after the job. In The Assassination Tapes, researcher George O'Toole reveals that Ruby knew Sgt. Gerry Hill, who not only found the rifle shells but had arrived early at the shooting of Officer Tippit and helped to arrest Oswald. He may have arranged evidence to implicate Oswald before the investigation began.
     The coverup was almost instinctive. Hoover and the FBI were embarrassed at having used Oswald as an informer. The CIA was directly implicated, since several conspirators had worked on covert Cuban projects -- even after the Bay of Pigs. False trails threw investigators off the scent, the most insidious of these promoted by a newsman, Lonnie Hudkins, shortly after Kennedy's death. Hudkins said that the President was killed in retaliation by Cuban agents, including Oswald, when they learned about US plots to assassinate Castro. But Hudkins was a friend of Jack Ruby's, working with him in gun smuggling days. He was also a former employee of both the CIA and H.L. Hunt.
     Morrow claims that it wasn't Cubans, but rather a group within the CIA that wanted to stop Kennedy's drive to subordinate "the company" to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They and Cuban exiles also had a specific grudge -- namely, that Kennedy had held back on naval support during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Oil interests and organized crime also had something to gain: a "liberated" Cuba open to investments and an independent CIA.
     Since the 1960s many conspiracy "theories" have been advanced. One that received especially favorable press coverage was the work of Edward Jay Epstein, He nabbed $500,000 from Reader's Digest for his tale of Oswald the Marxist, who gave U-2 spy plane secrets to Russia and then worked through the FBI, yet killed Kennedy on his own. It was Lonnie Hudkins' story all over again. (Epstein was back at it in 2016 with a similar take on Edward Snowden, straining credulity to make the case that Snowden isn't merely a traitor but also a spy.)
     In the 1960s, when New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison was starting to break open the Kennedy conspiracy, Epstein attacked Garrison in print. That drew praise from CIA honcho Richard Helms, a friend of Clay Shaw's, who circulated the writing as a model debunking of the conspiracy theory. While Epstein prepared his book, Legend, in the late 1970s, several important sources died suddenly, either shortly before or after meeting him. In March 1977, deMohrenschildt talked with Epstein, and within minutes was found dead of gunshot wounds. The old spy had just agreed to testify on his part in Kennedy's death.
     Kerry Thornley, who was in the Marines with Oswald and later founded the "Discordian" religion, developed another theory. He believed the culprits were the Bavarian Illuminati, a 200-year-old secret society. Oddly enough, Jim Garrison thought for a while that Thornley was the "second Oswald." In time, Thornley came to think that Garrison, and even his own friends, were Illuminati agents.
     "All conspiracy buffs are persecuted eventually," wrote Robert Anton Wilson, author of the epic conspiracy trilogy, Illuminatus. Wilson actually knew Thornley and watched his obsession consume him. But Wilson managed to transcend paranoia, transforming the strange, divergent theories surrounding Kennedy's death -- and other conspiracies -- into satire.
     In Illuminatus the death of Kennedy is part of a fact-and-speculation history which begins in Atlantis and extends into politics, mythology, and the realm of the occult. The central mystery is the true identity of the Illuminati: Are they defunct, as the Encyclopedia Brittanica claimed, a secret society founded in 1776 and suppressed by the Bavarian government within 10 years? Was the eye-in-the-Pyramid an Illuminati symbol given to Thomas Jefferson by a stranger in a black cloak?
     Is the Council on Foreign Relations the latest manifestation of the original Illuminati? Are they controlled by bankers or anarchists, Jesuits or Satanists? Were they revived by the nazis, or are they, instead, extraterrestrial visitors who want to help humanity evolve?
     Wilson argued that the world has room for many competing conspiracies, the sacred and profane. And he had the good sense to consider and question all of them.
     Pursuit of hidden knowledge leads naturally to one conspiracy or another. Personally, my theory is that global chaos, being generated by some "conspirators" in their quest for political and economic power, is a prologue to man's next evolutionary step. This doesn't lessen the pain or oppressive power of elites. But it can help to point the way. If humans are ever  to reach higher intelligence, the power of conspiracy must be broken at its roots -- the ethic of secrecy and deception. This calls for something difficult: eyes-open trust and positive energy to combat the negativity inherent in the lust for power.
     "Positive energy is as real as gravity," argued Wilson. If so, the antidote to negativity -- and conspiracy -- is to "come back with all the positive energy you have." He called that the final secret of the Illuminati.

This essay was originally published in February 1998 in Upstart Magazine and Toward Freedom.