Back in reality, it is true that the group was cofounded by two controversial figures: Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Polish political adviser Józef Retinger.
Bernhard, the former German prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld, was an SS intelligence officer attached to the main industrial supporter of the Nazi regime, I G Farben. The prince resigned from the Nazi Party in 1934 and married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands.
Józef Retinger was thought to be an agent of the Vatican. According to British political commentator Rodney Atkinson, he was expelled from the Allied countries during World War I on suspicion of helping the superior-general of the Jesuits, Wlodimir Ledóchowski, plot the creation of a Central Europe Catholic federation. Retinger founded the European Movement in 1947, leading to the establishment of the Council of Europe in 1949.
Prince Bernhard and Retinger founded the Bilderberg Group primarily to create trans-Atlantic support for the idea of a United States of Europe.
Richard Aldrich, a professor at the University of Warwick, wrote in 1997 that the three groups most responsible for the European Union are: the Bilderberg Group, Retinger’s European Movement and Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for a United States of Europe. ‘Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1952 in response to the rise of anti-Americanism in Western Europe and was designed to define some sort of Atlantic consensus amid diverging European and American outlooks’, he wrote in Diplomacy and Statecraft. ‘It brought leading European and American personalities together once a year for an informal discussion of their differences’.
Belgian viscount and former Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon bragged in the 1990s that the Bilderberg Group helped create the euro currency.
While the Bilderberg Group may not be the secret world government of conspiracy theory lore, it is still a highly influential group. ‘[T]his group is not a tight-knit group of conspirators setting out to destroy nations,’ explained Rodney Atkinson in a 2001 interview with Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry and late Trumpet columnist Ron Fraser. ‘They’re the kind of people selected on the basis that they might say yes to international supernational corporatism, which is the foundation, of course, of the modern European Union …’ The Trumpet online article Andrew Miller 30 May 2019
It’s a forum held every year where the rich and powerful can meet and exchange ideas in complete secrecy. Almost 130 politicians, bankers and industrialists are attending this year’s Bilderberg Group conference in the German city of Dresden. Inside Story: How Powerful is the Bilderberg Group? Youtube 25.10, Al Jazeera 2016
‘A global tyranny that would have made George Orwell wince.’ Decoded: What is the Bilderberg Group? David Icke, Youtube 16.02, Al Jazeera 2022
Is the Bilderberg Group the true elite that rules the world? Do they manipulate presidents and economies to their advantage, and manipulate us to believe that we have a voice and a choice? ibid.
There is one group that many people believe is the board of directors of the world: the Bilderberg Group. ibid.
If the Bilderberg Group is indeed the shadow world government, they are doing a terrible job. ibid.
‘They have no interest in democracy. They never did.’ ibid. Dr Richard Wolff
2023 Bilderberg group meeting is underway at Lisbon, Portugal, at a secret location off limits to reporters. Grayzone: 2023 Bilderberg, Youtube short 11.38