When I was in college years ago, I was part of a campus conservative group called Undergraduates for a Stable America. (USA, get it?) Being wise-guy college boys, we used to liven up our monthly meetings by inviting local John Birch Society members to give talks, show recruiting films, etc.
While we were outwardly polite and respectful to the Birchers, inwardly we were laughing at their absurd theories and claims. (What is tactfully called “the conspiratorial view of history” is really just a euphemism for a paranoid world view.)
Anyone who has spent any time in grass roots politics knows all the myths and folk lore that have arisen over the years in this regard. (What’s surprising is that if you go out far enough on the fringes, left or right, you actually achieve a convergence of paranoia as far as who the bogey-men are!)
All of the last 240 years of Western Civilization has been controlled (supposedly) by a shadowy elite of international financiers.
This conspiracy originated in Bavaria in 1776 (no coincidence!) as a Masonic plot, whose members were known as the “Illuminati.” Nowadays the nerve center of the cabal goes by the name of the Council on Foreign Relations, or the Trilateral Commission, or Bilderbergers.
These plotters arrived at a scheme of world domination that has unfolded exactly as they envisioned, carried out by such unlikely masterminds as the Queen of England and the Rothschild banking family. The whole elaborate web of supposed connections and manipulation is set out in such classic tomes as Gary Allen’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” and the John Birch Society Blue Book, by JBS founder Robert Welch.
On those happy occasions where we j.v. William F. Buckleys would stop in at the Yankee Doodle Tap Room before the meetings, one of us would ask a question of the JBS “presenters.” For example, it didn’t seem particularly rude or churlish to inquire why arch-capitalists like the Rockefellers would bankroll the International Communist Movement. Nor did it seem out of line to ask if it wasn’t against the obvious self-interest of banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, to work toward the destruction of the US financial system, both of which were articles of faith of Bircher theology.
The answer would always be; “It’s in the book! Just read the literature we’ve brought or which you can order from our headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts. You’ll see, it all ties together!”
I thought immediately of that kind of conspiracy mentality when I heard former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich speak at the Plaza Branch of the K.C. MO. Public Library in October about his book, “Saving Capitalism.” Continue reading
