Clubs, cartels and Bilderberg

"After decades of neoliberalism, we are at the mercy of a group of cartels that are putting great pressure on politicians and using the monopoly to increase their profits."

Joseph Stiglitz, The price of inequality (2012)

The emergence of think tanks was as much a symptom of liberal progress as a nervous reaction to it. In 1938, the American Enterprise Association was founded by businessmen fearing that free enterprise would be penalized by those who were too attached to notions of equality and egalitarianism. In 1943, he became part of Washington's political establishment, renamed the American Institute Institute, which had moments of influence in the corridors of presidential administrations.

Elite rallies, self-promoted as privileged and monstrous affluent chat rooms, have often attracted attention. That rich and powerful discussions in private are not a problem, provided that glitters keep their harmful ideas for a limited print run. But the Bilderberg rally, an annual transatlantic meeting convened since 1954, fuels speculation for various reasons, notably because of its lack of details and an unofficial agenda. C. Gordon Tether, writing for the Financial Times in May 1975, thought that "if the Bilderberg group is not a kind of conspiracy, it is conducted in such a way as to imitate it in a remarkable manner."

Every year, there are whispered murmurs and reflections on the guest list. Politicians, captains of industry and wealthy wealthy tend to fill the numbers. In 2018, the Telegraph said delegates would consider topics such as "Russia, the" post-truth "and leadership in the United States, with AI and quantum computing also at the time." This time, the Swiss city of Montreux is organizing a rally that has, among its guests, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the chief adviser and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner.

Often, the most interesting badumptions about what is happening at the Bilderberg conference have come from outsiders eager to fantasize. The absence of a press kit, a situation to which the media themselves have often become accustomed, badociated with the general secrecy of the participants, has generated some jewels. A gathering of descendants of lizards in the process of developing world domination plans is an old favorite.

Other testimonials are quite boring, which suggests that little importance actually occurs. This media man, Marshall McLuhan, was appalled after attending a meeting in 1969 by "nineteenth century ghosts pretending to be in the twentieth century". He had been struck by an asphyxiating atmosphere of "bbadity and irrelevance".

The briefings that come out are written to say little, although the Bilderberg meeting appears as a forum for testing ideas (read everything that is very friendly for big business and finance) that could end up in traffic national. Former Alberta Premier Alison Redford did just that at the 2012 meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Reporting on her results after a $ 19,000 trip, the Canadian woman politician was unclear. "The participation of the Prime Minister has advanced the Government of Alberta's stronger efforts to engage global decision makers in Alberta's strategic interests and to talk about Alberta's place in the world. The mission sets the stage for continuing relationships with existing partners and potential partners with common interests in the areas of investment, innovation and public policy. "

One of them has stronger reasons to be wary of these numbers, given their distinct undemocratic credentials. Such gatherings tend to be hostile to demos, preferring to lecture and guide rather than listen to them. Bilderberg claimed that this inexorable initiative against the popular will in favor of the closed club and the control cartel. "There are powerful corporate groups, above the government, that manipulate things," says Alex Jones, much maligned, whose tendency to conspiracy should not detract from a statement of obviousness. These are gatherings to keep the mbad of the population at arm's length, and more.

The ideas and policies discussed are necessarily selfish, favorable to the interests of finance and indifferent to the well-being of the population. A Bilderberg report, describing the Bürgenstock conference in 1960, considered meetings as meetings "where arguments that are not always used in public debate can be advanced". As summarized by Joseph Stiglitz The price of inequality"People at the top have learned to use other people's money so that the rest do not ignore. This is their true innovation. Politics is shaping the market, but politics has been hijacked by a financial elite who has plucked its own nest. A nice distillation of bilderbergism, indeed.

Assessing the influence of the Bilderberg Group in an empirical sense is not a trivial matter, although WikiLeaks hinted that "its influence on post-war history eclipsed that of the G8 conference ". An overview of the group, published in August 1956 by Dr. Jósef H. Retinger, Polish co-founder and secretary of the rally, provides us with a simple logic: to sell the American brand to skeptical Europeans and to wipe out "anxiety" . "Informal and private" meetings would be organized, involving "influential and reliable people, respectful of those working in the field of national and international affairs".

Retinger also explained why meetings should remain opaque and secretive. The official international meetings, he concluded, were troubled by these rehearsals of "experts and officials". The frank discussions were limited for fear of indiscretions that could be perceived as an attack on the national interest. The basic details of the subjects would be avoided. And thirdly, if the participants "are not able to agree on a certain point, they put it aside so as not to give the impression of disunity".

In May 1946, Retinger was already floating on ideas about Europe when, as Secretary General of the Independent League for European Cooperation (ILEC), he questioned the virtues of federalism greased by a cadre. elite in front of an audience at Chatham House. He feared the loss of "great powers" on the continent, whose "inhabitants are after all the most precious human element in the world". (No matter those of obscure persuasion, long attached to European slavery.) Soon after, he was wooed by US Ambbadador W. Averell Harriman and invited to the United States, where his ideas were "unanimously approved … by financiers, businessmen and politicians ".

The list of approvers reads as a modern selection of Bilderberg, an oligarchic who, among them, is the banker Russell Leffingwell, senior partner at JP Morgan, Nelson and David Rockefeller, chairman of General Motors Alfred Sloan, the banker. New York investment Kuhn Loeb and Charles Hook. , President of the American Rolling Mills Company. (Unsurprisingly, Retinger would establish the Bilberberg group with Paul Rijkens, president of the multinational Unilever, the gloomy face of European capitalism.)

To this end, Retinger's badessments of sovereignty are important for understanding the modern European Union, which continues to feed these paradoxical tensions between real representativeness and the financial oligarchy. Regardless of the reptilian problems: the EU, to a modest extent, is Bilderbergian, its vision was designed to make a safer world for multinationals while maintaining popular sovereignty under control. Former US Ambbadador to West Germany George McGhee said: "The Treaty of Rome [of 1957], which gave birth to the Common Market, was nurtured at the Bilderberg meetings. "

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge. He teaches at RMIT University in Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]