In 1976 Jimmy Carter was elected the president. Seven month before, the Democratic convention the Gallop poll reported less than 4% of registered Democrats favoured Carter for president. Outside Georgia where he was governor few people knew who he was. What happened? Carter received a media blitz including adulatory pieces in The New York Times and a Wall Street Journal editorial declaring him the best Democratic candidate. The TV networks inundated the public with his image. Before the nominating Convention his picture appeared on Time cover three times and Newsweek cover twice. ibid.
At the dawn of the twentieth century a new international order was emerging: one founded on oil. And by the end of the twentieth century that order was firmly established. The Corbett Report: Why Big Oil Conquered the World, 2017
The power that came with their near total-monopoly on the world’s most important commodity was enormous … The impact of the oligarchs has been breathtaking. ibid.
John D Rockefeller III: He was on a mission to do something about the problem of over-population. Rockefeller approached that mission as a representative of the Population Council … The Eugenics Society under another name. ibid.
Henry Herbert Goddard: The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. ibid.
It is no longer about oil. It never was. It is about control. ibid.
The technocrats had sketched the outlines of a completely ordered and controlled society, one in which energy is the fundamental measure of value. ibid.
November 11th 1918: All across the Western Front the clocks that were lucky enough to escape the four years of shelling chimed the eleventh hour. And with that, the First World War came to an end. The Corbett Report: The WWI Conspiracy, James Corbett online 2018
World War I was an explosion, a breaking point in history. In the smouldering shell-hole of that cataclysm lay the industrial era optimism of never-ending progress. ibid.
What was World War I about? How did it start? Who won? And what did they win? ibid.
Three of the most important men of the age …. the group that springs from this meeting will go on to leverage the wealth and power of its members to shape the course of history, and 23 years later will drive the world into the first truly global war. Their plan reads like outlandish historical fiction: they will form a secret organisation dedicated to the ‘extension of British rule throughout the world’ … William T Stead … Reginald Brett … and Cecil Rhodes … This secret society was not a secret at all. ibid.
It is to this clique, not to the doings of any conspiracy in Sarajevo, that we can attribute the real origins of the First World War … For this cabal, 1914 was just the start of the story. The Corbett Report: The WWI Conspiracy II: The American Front
Across the Atlantic, the next chapter in this hidden history was just getting underway … The Secret Society’s years-long campaign to draw the United States into World War I. ibid.
House, the Milner Group, the Pilgrims, the Wall Street financiers and all of those who had worked so diligently for so many years to bring Uncle Sam into the War had got their wish. The Corbett Report: The WWI Conspiracy III: A New World Order
The First World War tore apart all the verities of the Old World leaving a smouldering wasteland in its wake, a wasteland that could be shaped into a New World Order. ibid.
Control of the economy, control of populations, control of territory, control of information, World War I was a boon for all of those who wanted to consolidate the control of the many in the hands of the few. ibid.
The very same conspirators that had brought about this nightmare were already converging in Paris for the next stage of their conspiracy: there, behind closed doors, they would begin their process of carving up the world to suit their interests, laying the ground work and preparing the public consciousness for a new international order, setting the stage for even more conflict in the future. ibid.
Our corporate coup d’etat and failed democracy has freed the oligarchic elite from all legal and moral constraints. Chris Hedges, lecture New York Sanctuary for Independent Media 2018, ‘American Anomie’, Youtube 2.01.07
The irony is that Barack Obama would not even be president if it were not for the courage of persecuted dissidents such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X spied upon by their own government. But Obama understands where power lies. It does not lie with the citizen. It lies with Wall Street and our corporate boardrooms, which have carried out a slow motion coup d’etat. And a system of mass surveillance is designed to keep these elites in these boardrooms powerful and the rest of us powerless. Chris Hedges, Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion, 2014
Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity – the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests – are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life. Chris Hedges, lecture Truthdig March 2020 ‘Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget’
The oligarchs are happy to talk about race. They are happy to talk about sexual identity and gender. They are happy to talk about patriotism. They are happy to talk about religion. They are happy to talk about immigration. They are happy to talk about abortion. They are happy to talk about gun control. They are happy to talk about cultural degeneracy or cultural freedom. They are not happy to talk about class. Race, gender, religion, abortion, immigration, gun control, culture and patriotism are issues used to divide the public, to turn neighbour against neighbour, to fuel virulent hatreds and antagonisms. The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other. Once oligarchs seize power, Aristotle wrote, a society must either accept tyranny or choose revolution. ibid.
We’re sold a story about how to do well in life. If you get a good degree from one of the best universities, you can make it to the top. Turns out that’s a bit of a lie. New research is revealing the subtle ways young people from poorer background are excluded from Britain’s top professions. You need something else to break into the elite, something they don’t teach you about in school. So what are the rules of the game? How to Break into the Elite, Amol Rajan reporting, BBC 2019
Just how easy is it for today’s kids to make the journey I did [Oxbridge]? ibid.
10% of working class people will make it into elite occupations. ibid.
‘When we look at those who went to Russell Group universities, those from a privileged background who get 2:2 degrees, second class degrees, are still more likely to go into a top occupation than those from working class backgrounds who got to the same universities and got a first.’ ibid. researcher
The dashed hopes of an entire generation. ibid.
‘If you have a parent who works in film or television, you are twelve times more likely to go into film or television.’ ibid. researcher
‘I don’t think the elite will ever give way.’ ibid. Matthew Wright
In a lot of elite professions, prejudice about class goes completely unchallenged. ibid.
‘The real work is invisible. And it is invisibly spreading. The more you can make your organisation invisible, the more influence it will have.’ The Family I: Submersion, opening commentary, Netflix 2019
It took a long while before I realised just who The Family was and the influence they have had on the leadership of our country. ibid. Jeff Sharlet, author
An invisible organisation who have been hiding in plain sight for eighty years. ibid.
A breathtaking enmeshment of church and state. ibid. woman
We would pray to be broken. We would pray to be nothing. We would pray to learn how to obey. ibid.
We are the new chosen. ibid.
The Cedars is this big white-pillared mansion … The seat of their power. ibid.
‘You guys are here to learn how to rule the world.’ ibid.
Jesus + Nothing: simultaneously banal and authoritarian. ibid.
Let’s be influential but let’s do it quietly. ibid.
What kind of influence did they want to have in the world? ibid.
So you had the hierarchy, the concentric rings. ibid.
A fundamentally anti-democratic movement … This organisation that denied it was an organisation was really one of the greatest networks of powerful figures in the world. ibid.