In episode 1810 of the Tom Woods Show (TWS), Tom Woods and his guest, Antony Sammeroff, talk about what they call the “grand global conspiracy,” the plot to usher in world government (see https://odysee.com/@TomWoodsTV:e/ep.-1810-the-idea-of-a-grand-conspiracy:2).
Citing a recent post by Sammeroff, Woods begins by expressing his concern about the “conspiratorial mindset.” (Woods does not name the post in question, but it appears to be Sammeroff’s Mises.org article of 12/16/2020: https://mises.org/wire/why-people-dont-trust-pfizers-covid-vaccine.) Woods argues that the conspiratorial mindset tends to oversimplify the problems we face. He then asks Sammeroff to elaborate on this idea of a grand global conspiracy (GGC).
In response, Sammeroff makes a distinction between “individual conspiracies,” some of which are verifiable, on the one hand, and GGC, on the other. He defines GGC as the belief that all conspiracies are interconnected and perpetrated by the same group of people sharing the same goal, i.e., a world state. Curiously, Sammeroff says that he would not be surprised if GGC turns out to be true. He also says he would not be surprised if the September 11th attacks were really an inside job. Why would this not surprise him? He does not say.
Moving on, Sammeroff recounts his own intellectual journey from believing in GGC to no longer believing in it. What caused Sammeroff to change his mind? It was his learning about economics, he says. Sammeroff argues that learning about economics tends to undermine belief in conspiracies, because the idea that people respond to incentives can account for events that routinely become the subject of conspiracy theories. For instance, economic incentives can lead people to demand government intervention in the economy. (I should add that economic incentives can also lead people to oppose government intervention. I talk more about the explanatory power of economic incentives below.)
Believing that his understanding of economic incentives succeeds where GGC fails, Sammeroff proceeds to psychologize people who believe in GGC. He asserts that the appeal of GGC is the comfort one gets in believing that destructive government policies and transformations of society are attributable to a group of identifiable conspirators. Here, comfort is to be found in the attendant belief that we now have a silver bullet for dealing with this menace. The solution becomes a simple matter of exposing the conspirators and removing them from power. If only solving the world’s problems were that simple, Sammeroff laments.
However, back in reality, the menace we face is more frightening. It’s a problem that typically goes unaddressed in the world of GGC believers: the fact that we are surrounded by statists in our daily lives. The frightening reality is that most of our friends, family members, neighbors, colleagues, etc. remain under the spell of the state. These people simply cannot imagine a society without this peculiar institution. It never occurs to the statist to question the state’s existence as a matter of moral principle (or even as a practical matter), even though the statist might question the legitimacy of some of the state’s interventions—the ones we know about, at least.
Woods asserts that, in this context, GGC becomes an excuse for those who believe in it not to learn anything—especially economics. Rather than attempting to draw connections between conspiratorial groups and unmasking the perpetrators, we should take on the more important task of explaining to people around us why government policies are doomed to fail. (Woods’ statement, however, is somewhat at odds with an observation made earlier by Sammeroff, who tells us that he was drawn to conspiracy theories in the first place because the people who held such theories seemed to be more knowledgeable than those who dismissed them out of hand. It is not so obvious, then, that the “conspiratorial mindset” implies profound and willful ignorance.)
Woods ponders the absurdities of the ongoing pandemic response. “I wish it were a grand conspiracy,” he says, “because then at least it would make sense.” He, of course, refers to the goings-on which have generated a tremendous amount of theorizing as of late (e.g., state officials contradicting themselves, censoring dissidents, moving the goalposts, etc.). Woods says he understands why, under these circumstances, people would entertain conspiracy theories, if only to make sense of all the nonsense.
In this case, even if we were to arrest the bad actors, the people who take their place in the government and elsewhere are likely to be just as bad, if not worse, because probably they hold the same statist views. In other words, without a fundamental change in culture, which is upstream of politics, a mere changing of the guard can only produce similar results.
Woods illustrates the point by noting the tendency among “conspiracy theorists” to focus on the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to discussing foreign policy issues:
“There’s a lot of emphasis placed on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the United States and look at all these people who are in the CFR—like that’s a place where they all get together to conspire. But I think that has it reversed. The sorts of people who are invited to join the CFR are the people who already think a certain way. They don’t have to get together and conspire; they are already all the same person. So, I think that’s the wrong emphasis. I would rather just say these people have extremely destructive ideas and they may as well all be clones of each other. But it’s mere happenstance that they belong to the CFR. …If there were no CFR tomorrow, *ZIP* [nothing] would be improved in U.S. foreign policy—nothing!
Woods and Sammeroff agree. Belief in GGC is not only too simple, but also “too optimistic,” because in the mind of the true believer we need only expose the conspirators and remove them from power in order to save the day. But this conspiratorial mindset does nothing to address the statist ideas at the root of our most pressing problems—ideas which transcend any conspiratorial group, real or imaginary.
Woods concludes that, while undoubtedly there are bad actors in the world, attempting to understand what these people are really up to distracts us from more fruitful endeavors. We make better use of our time by learning economics and sharing this knowledge with others.
Woods, however, appears to be of two minds. At one point, he weakens the case against the conspiratorial mindset by reminding us of a point made by another TWS guest, John McManus. McManus said, “If there were no global conspiracy, then we should expect the powers-that-be to do the right thing on occasion, if only by accident” [my paraphrase]. But that never seems to happen, does it?
Woods agrees. (So do I.) McManus makes a good point. And by conceding this point, Woods suggests he is open to being convinced otherwise. (Indeed, the “coincidence theory” of recent events—especially the globally coordinated response to the pandemic—grows more implausible by the day.)
Having entertained the possibility of a global conspiracy, Woods ends the discussion by embracing Sammeroff’s “man-in-the-mirror” perspective: “…we have met the enemy, and he is us.” (I should add that Wood’s views may have evolved since this interview.)
There is a lot of food for thought here. However, I find this exchange of ideas, particularly the conclusions reached, disappointing—if not perplexing. That Sammeroff would choose to focus on GGC (a conspiracy theory that virtually no one believes) reminds me of a ploy used by the corporate press to discredit anyone who doubts official narratives. (More on this below.) Sammeroff, in fact, claims to have been a GGC believer. But here I think he exaggerates his former position in order to make his point against conspiracy theorizing in general, and to make a case for his version of economic reasoning. After all, many conspiracy theories contradict one another. Consider, for instance, the many contradictory theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. No one holds all these mutually exclusive allegations to be true. Likewise, virtually no one believes that all such criminal enterprises emanate from a single, monolithic group. It is highly doubtful that anyone really believes in GGC, as Sammeroff describes it. In his denunciation of GGC, Sammeroff attacks a straw man.
In what follows, I take issue with Sammeroff’s formulation of the problem and his solution, as well as his attempt to psychologize people who believe there is indeed a global conspiracy afoot. In the process I advance what I prefer to call conspiracy realism, which steers a middle course between the nonsensical extremes of GGC, on the one hand, and the idea that major global conspiracies are impossible, on the other. As such, conspiracy realism is consistent with the logic of human action (praxeology) and methodological individualism.
I want to stress at the outset that when it comes to independent learning I agree with Woods and Sammeroff. Yes, of course, learning economics is important. It is important to understand that government intervention has unseen opportunity costs and counterproductive effects on the economy. However, it is not obvious that belief in a global conspiracy becomes an excuse not to read, say Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson—as if learning economics and learning about a global conspiracy are mutually exclusive. In fact, the two pursuits can be complementary and mutually reinforcing.
In support of this contention, I offer Exhibit A: Murray N. Rothbard, who in the course of explaining the practice of central banking, in a very learned manner, devotes considerable space to the origins of the Federal Reserve System—the details of which fulfill all the requirements of a classic political conspiracy (see Rothbard’s The Progressive Era, Chapter 14: “The Federal Reserve as Cartelization Device”). The consequences of this conspiracy have literally been earth-shattering and global in scope.
Exhibit B: Hans Hermann Hoppe, who in his essay “Nation States, Banking, and International Politics” characterizes the push toward global government as the result of international power cliques, such as David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, working in concert with governments around the world, or, as Hoppe puts it, “the banking and business elite’s conspiracy with the state.” (Unlike most political commentators, Hoppe is not afraid to call a spade a spade.)
Sammeroff is most unconvincing when he recounts his intellectual journey from believing in a global conspiracy to not believing in a global conspiracy. As mentioned above, he stresses the importance of economic incentives in explaining historical trends and events that frequently become fodder for conspiracy theories. Here, I presume that Sammeroff never really believed in something as implausible as GGC, as he describes it, but that he formerly subscribed to something approximating what I call conspiracy realism, for which there is evidence. As it stands, it remains unclear how exactly his learning economics caused him to abandon conspiracy theorizing as a matter of principle.
Here is where I part ways with Sammeroff. That people respond to incentives does not have as much explanatory power as Sammeroff seems to think. Yes, it is true that people respond to incentives. But how exactly does our understanding of incentives rule out the possibility of a global conspiracy? Isn’t responding to incentives an aspect of human nature? Without incentives, would there be any human action to speak of, conspiratorial or otherwise?
Sammeroff’s application of this idea reminds me of someone who, after inquiring about a plane crash, is somehow satisfied when he is told that the plane crashed due to gravity—to borrow an analogy. Who would be satisfied with this so-called explanation? While it is true that gravity plays a role in every plane crash, the observation is beside the point. It tells us nothing about what we really want to know: the mechanical failure that precipitated this particular crash and what caused that failure. Was there foul play involved, or was this an accident due to negligence or some other factor?
Likewise, that people respond to incentives is a general observation of human nature. It tells us nothing about what we really want to know: the particular incentive structures in place and, more importantly, who created these structures and whose interests are ultimately being served. That people respond to incentives hardly rules out the possibility of conspiracy. Conspirators respond to incentives too.
Furthermore, it seems logical that the people who occupy the command posts of government and the corporate world—people who tend to share the same ideology, move in the same circles, and whose interests align more often than not—would work together on occasion to set up incentive structures that “nudge” people in a certain direction. These incentives would be designed to get people to act in ways that disproportionately benefit this inner ring of elites.
Consider, for example, the findings of the Special Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations, also known as the Reece Committee. In his book Foundations: Their Power and Influence, Rene A. Wormser, general counsel to the Committee, summarizes the Committee’s findings. According to Wormser, the Committee documented, among other things, the extent to which certain tax-exempt foundations have used their grant-making powers to promote socialism in institutions of higher learning. Committee investigators also found an anti-American internationalism or globalism to be a recurring theme in several publications funded and distributed by the Carnegie Endowment, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others, whose boards of trustees are interlocking to a high degree.
Wormser quotes from the Committee findings:
“It may well be said that a majority of the ‘experts’ in the international field are on the side of globalism. It would be amazing if this were otherwise, after so many years of gigantic expenditure by foundations in virtually sole support of the globalist point of view. Professors and researchers have to eat and raise families. They cannot themselves spend the money to finance research and publications. The road to eminence in international areas, therefore, just as in the case of the social sciences generally, is by way of foundation grants and support” (Reece Committee Report, p. 182 [quoted in Wormser, Foundations, pp. 213-14]).
Here, we see a structure of incentives has been set up by the trustees of tax-exempt foundations. This incentive structure has the effect of promoting a particular ideology and making adherence to it a prerequisite for advancement within the fields of study receiving foundation funds. These expenditures, with strings attached —i.e., incentives—have functioned to redirect the institutions receiving them towards certain goals that the trustees have in mind—goals which, until the time of the Reece Committee hearings, had not been shared with the public. The story told by the Reece Committee thus sheds light on one aspect of a vast conspiracy, whose tentacles have now spread into institutions of higher education and scientific research. (Still, to this day, probably not one in a thousand Americans has even heard of the Reece Committee.)
A more recent example of this kind of manipulation, involving many of the same groups exposed by the Reece Committee, is the creation of the ESG Index, presented by members of the World Economic Forum as a way of promoting “social justice” and “saving” the planet from global warming. As Michael Rectenwald points out in another TWS episode, ESG is essentially a cartelizing device, much like the Federal Reserve System, as described by Rothbard. As such, it is designed to concentrate capital and resources into a cartel of “woke” financial firms and businesses, while denying resources to the non-compliant. ESG thus represents one of the more visible aspects of a global conspiracy to usher in world government.
All of this seems lost on Sammeroff, as he stakes out his position in conversation with Woods. It is this partial blindness which dooms the conversation to proceed in a tiresome, conventional manner. For instance, the distinction Sammeroff draws between verifiable, individual conspiracies, on the one hand, and GGC, on the other, corresponds to that made by court historian Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter stated: “There is a great difference between locating conspiracies in history and saying that history is, in effect, a conspiracy” (Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, pp. 71-2 [quoted in Mills, The Power Elite, p. 294]). Of course, one would be hard pressed to find anyone who seriously believes that human history is one ginormous conspiracy, just as the number of true GGC believers is probably next to zero. Again, we are dealing with an extreme position that amounts to a straw man.
This brings to mind a ploy used by mainstream journalists to smear anyone who dissents from official narratives. They take an extreme position that only a vanishingly small number of people entertain, knock it down, and then claim victory over a much larger group of people who hold more tenable positions. The larger group is on to something, but that something is deemed politically unacceptable by establishment mouthpieces. Here, they conflate what is politically unacceptable (yet tenable) with what is easily discredited and worthy of ridicule. Critical thinkers who point out inconsistencies in official narratives, who ask obvious questions that the corporate press somehow fails to ask, get tarred and feathered as akin to those who believe lizard people secretly rule the flat-earth. The corporate press thus marginalizes critical thinkers by associating them with discredited (and largely imaginary) “extremists” who believe outlandish theories. In doing so, the corporate press sidesteps more plausible, evidence-based allegations.
In the same vein, Sammeroff’s formulation of the problem suggests that the only verifiable conspiracies are individual conspiracies (“those that can be located in history”). They tend to be small in scope and of little geopolitical significance. Meanwhile, people who believe there is a vast conspiracy to bring about world government are akin to people who believe that all of history is one big conspiracy (i.e., a conspiracy theory that no one really believes). The problem with this formulation is that it leaves no room for a more nuanced and rational position between the two extremes. In other words, there is no room for conspiracy realism.
(A quick word on this middle position before we return to the conversation. Conspiracy realism, in the Anglo-American context, stresses the importance of certain large tax-exempt foundations, with specific emphasis on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and its sister organization, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, also known as Chatham House. In light of its origins and well-documented history of guiding American foreign policy, not to mention the revelations of the Reece Committee mentioned above, there is nothing irrational or outlandish in focusing on the machinations of the CFR and other politically connected organizations. I’ll have more to say about conspiracy realism below. Now back to the conversation.)
While listening to Sammeroff and Woods, you will notice that the conversation begins with the irrationality of GGC believers, but eventually pot shots get fired at people who emphasize the role of the CFR, as if these people are on par with GGC true believers. This maneuver fits the pattern in the corporate press. There, whenever proponents of an outlandish theory get brought in for ridicule, a much larger group of people who do not necessarily hold this view, but who nevertheless see holes in the official narrative, gets implicated and thus tainted by association.
The conversation would have been more interesting and enlightening if Woods and Sammeroff had explored the fruitful middle ground between the two extreme positions. I believe this third way of viewing the world more closely corresponds to reality. I hence use the label conspiracy realism to refer to this middle ground.
The middle ground goes something like this: There is a global conspiracy, grand in scope and ambition; but it is certainly not all-powerful, monolithic, or entirely secretive about what it hopes to achieve. The conspiracy comprises an international network of financial, industrial, and political elites who are in basic agreement about the necessity and desirability of global governance. Despite being united in their lust for power, this coalition of elites is characterized by a number of centrifugal forces: shifting alliances, rivalry, backstabbing, palace intrigue, disagreements on strategy, tactics, rhetoric, etc.—problems that would beset any group of power-tripping control freaks jockeying for position.
Members of the network often refer to themselves as “internationalists,” and many have been quite open about their agenda and ultimate goals. Yet there remain hidden aspects of the globalist project, for the actors involved are much less open about the means by which they hope to achieve their goals.
War, for instance, has been instrumental in advancing the globalist agenda. But do not expect members of the network to reveal the extent to which they themselves (or their agents) deliberately bring about wars for the purpose of exploiting them—just as we would not expect a member of the mafia to come forward voluntarily and confess his crimes to the public. Instead, they spin false narratives about the causes of war, which are promoted and sold to the public by friendly academics and news journalists, not to mention Hollywood movies that reinforce the propaganda (for instance, see https://areamanonfire.com/?p=997). Consequently, consumers of the official narrative (the public) would hardly suspect that a cabal of well-placed Machiavellian plotters is largely responsible for the conflict in question.
It is possible, of course, that members of the network see themselves as noble liars devoted to what they believe to be the “Greater Good.” As such, they are willing to sacrifice historical truth to this Greater Good—not to mention the sacrificing of soldiers as so much “cannon fodder” and innocent civilians as mere “collateral damage.” They thus rationalize their recklessness with the lives of other people, saying things like, it was worth it. The public has been conditioned to believe many things that are simply not true. And where there is conditioning, there are Conditioners: people in the know and who know better.
For instance, conveniently rejecting methodological individualism in favor methodological holism, the Conditioners would have us believe that the war resulted from abstract historical or economic forces—e.g., a crisis of “Modernity” or “overproduction,” Capitalism’s search for new markets, etc.—in which case, no one in particular is to blame (everyone is to blame); or, beyond that line of reasoning, it must have been the work of a madman—a Kaiser or Hitler—who forced the hand of the Good Guys; or, on a more sophisticated level, war resulted from a constellation of factors: misunderstandings, miscalculation, and incompetence on the part of national leaders and diplomats who genuinely wanted to avoid war.
Those are some of the myths you are likely to encounter in standard, textbook recitations of the causes of the first and second world wars of the twentieth century. They represent the intellectual fruits of a global conspiracy that requires a world crisis in order to bring about a “new world order” (or a “great reset”)—that is, world government. Coming out of the rubble of World War I, the ill-fated League of Nations was the globalists’ first stab at a viable world state. In the context of WWII and the subsequent Cold War (which is now being reheated), the globalists were more successful with the Bretton Woods agreement and the establishment of the United Nations and its offshoots, including the World Health Organization.
We catch glimpses of this conspiracy (which, unlike Sammeroff’s GGC, actually exists) in several books, including, in no particular order, 1) David Rockefeller’s Memoirs; in which the former chairman of the CFR openly boasts about being an internationalist dedicated to undermining America’s political sovereignty in favor of global governance; 2) Peter Grose’s Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996; 3) Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, a collection of historical essays edited by Harry Elmer Barnes, who exposes the attempts by “court historians” funded by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller Foundation to smear anyone who endeavors to set the historical record straight on the true causes of the world wars; 4) Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley, which exposes the existence and “far-reaching aims” of what Quigley calls “the network”; 5) John V. Denson’s A Century of War, particularly Chapter Four, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the First Shot”; 6) the aforementioned Foundations: Their Power and Influence by Rene Wormser, which summarizes the results of a derailed Congressional investigation into large, tax-exempt foundations (e.g., The Council on Foreign Relations, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Endowment, etc.). The book is especially revealing in helping the reader understand how American institutions of higher education and scientific research have been infiltrated and corrupted by members of “the network.” It tells the story of how scientific inquiry, in many institutional settings, congealed into “The Science,” which cannot be questioned. In this way, the book helps explain many striking features of the COVID pandemic response and the global warming crisis narrative.
Contra Sammeroff, there is no psychological comfort in any of this book learnin’. I’m reminded of a scene in the film Rosemary’s Baby, when it finally dawns on Rosemary that she has been the target of a sinister plot, and she can no longer trust the people closest to her—her husband, her doctor, her smiling next door neighbors. They have all combined against her and lied to her. It is a horrifying realization, followed by disillusionment and demoralization.
One gets a similar feeling of betrayal when plumbing the depths of government corruption; for example, when one learns that the highest banking regulator in the country is actually the head of a banking cartel bent on robbing you of your savings and purchasing power; when one realizes that the public health establishment functions primarily as an advertising arm of pharmaceutical companies whose executives have no qualms about “lying with statistics” and experimenting on people without their informed consent; when one realizes that nearly everything taught in sixth-grade social studies class is 180 degrees opposite the truth; that government officials have misled the country into war after war on the basis of lies and propaganda, leaving a trail of death and destruction, grieving mothers and fathers, broken lives and shattered dreams, creating hell on earth.
Who in the world finds comfort in waking up to this nightmare-reality?
Yet Sammeroff repeats the well-worn charge peddled by Psychology Today, Scientific American, and other establishment mouthpieces. The charge is that people who believe in a global conspiracy somehow derive comfort from this idea and are thus emotionally driven to accept it as true—as if no one could possibly have a rational basis for believing that a global conspiracy bent on world domination exists. According to Sammeroff, people who believe there is a global conspiracy find comfort in believing they now have a silver bullet. They believe that all they have to do is unmask the evildoers and remove them from power. Problem solved.
But Sammeroff overlooks the fact that, in most cases, the legal processes by which someone is removed from office are presided over by the very people who ought to be removed—or, if they are not the ones in charge, their friends, appointees, or agents are well-placed to ensure that they are shielded from full accountability. Indeed, it is hard to be “too optimistic” when the playing field is tilted in favor of the criminals.
How else can we explain the fact that when the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the murder of President John F. Kennedy was probably the result of a conspiracy, and then referred the matter to the Justice Department, absolutely nothing was done to identify the conspirators and bring them to justice? One would think that Kennedy’s successors in the Oval Office would have a keen interest in knowing how this could ever happen to a sitting president, if only to take measures to protect themselves from meeting the same end. Yet a conspicuous lack of interest prevails to this day, as many documents related to the investigation of the assassination remain classified and hidden from public view nearly sixty years after the murder. (Could it be any more obvious what’s going on here? The cover up is part of the conspiracy. It is as important as the assassination itself. The conspirators presumably would not have gone through with it unless they believed they had a good chance of getting away with it.)
The prospect of removing the conspirators from power, then, is just as daunting as teaching Austrian business cycle theory to our next-door neighbor—if not more daunting. After all, who among us believes that the state can be an impartial judge in cases in which it has an interest? Statists believe this, of course. But consistent libertarians like Sammeroff certainly do not. This point somehow escapes Sammeroff.
Having an interest in outreach strategy, I might add that perhaps one way of getting our friends and neighbors interested in questioning their ideology is to jar loose their statist conditioning by inviting them to contemplate the implications of a proven, real-life conspiracy. For instance, if not the Kennedy assassination, take the international human trafficking and prostitution ring managed by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Drawing out the implications of this conspiracy and the extent to which government officials allowed this ring to operate for as long as it did could be a point of departure for asking more penetrating questions about the nature of the state and the sociopaths who run it.
Think about it, neighbor. Why hasn’t Epstein’s client list been disclosed? Why haven’t other co-conspirators been identified and held accountable? Why did government officials treat Epstein with kid gloves when he got busted in Florida? Why was he then released and allowed to resume his business of prostituting young women and minors? And, finally, what does this say about the state and its supposed concerns about justice and protecting vulnerable people?
You can see where all this might lead.
This is a point of strategy that many libertarians seem to overlook in their efforts to appear respectable by never seriously considering (in public, at least) the idea of a global conspiracy. (To his credit, Woods did have Whitney Webb on his show to discuss Jeffrey Epstein’s exploits [see TWS episode 2247].) I suspect, however, that learning about an international conspiracy and pondering such questions that naturally arise might cause some people to reexamine their cherished assumptions about the state. It might even cause people to open their minds to libertarianism. In many cases, a great shock to the system is required to get people to rethink their ideology and thus clear the way for new ideas.
Take Michael Rectenwald, for instance. It came as a great shock to Rectenwald when he was persecuted for the thought-crime of dissenting from the “woke” narrative that had come to possess his former friends and colleagues. It was this shock of suddenly becoming an outcast on campus that prepared him to rethink everything he thought he knew. Eventually, it caused him to abandon his neo-Marxism entirely and embrace libertarian ideas.
By the way, I have a signed copy of Rectenwald’s new book, The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty. In this book, Rectenwald gathers a mass of evidence indicating that the woke “social justice” narrative is the ideological aspect of… precisely the thing we are supposed to think is unthinkable: a global conspiracy to bring about world government. It is a conspiracy involving the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its Great Reset agenda. Yet Rectenwald is no more of a “conspiracy theorist” than, say Thomas Jefferson, who, along with other founding fathers, railed against “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object [that evinces] a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.” (Yes, America’s founding fathers—conspiracy theorists, all of them.)
Speaking of long trains of abuses, would we be any more irrational than Jefferson in suggesting that the long train of abuses (and absurdities) we have witnessed over the past three years of COVID hysteria evinces a similar design to reduce people under absolute despotism? Before you answer the question, dear reader, be sure to read Rectenwald’s book.
To be clear, I do not believe there is a single, monolithic power center located in the WEF. I believe that what Carrol Quigley calls “the network” comprises factions and rivalries between morally compromised, back-stabbing control freaks. There is definitely infighting among the globalists, Old Money versus New Money, Yankees versus Cowboys (in America), etc. This internecine feuding undoubtedly slows the “progressive” march toward world government.
On this basis, a wishful thinker might conclude that this friction among global elites shows that there is no shared purpose or underlying unity. In that case, there is no effective global conspiracy to speak of. But the fact that such “progress” might be impeded by centrifugal forces is hardly evidence that there is no underlying unity. Without unity of purpose or the shared goal of a world state, global elites could scarcely have gotten as far as they have in terms of consolidating political power via the establishment of Round Table groups, national central banks working in concert, the Bretton Woods agreement, and the United Nations (to name just a few of the globalists’s greatest hits), not to mention the globally coordinated response to the recent pandemic.
With all this in mind, I have to look askance at the conclusion reached by Woods and Sammeroff, “…we have the met the enemy and he is us.” (As I mentioned, Woods’s thinking may have changed on this issue.) I think we can make finer distinctions here. For instance, we should be able to tell the difference between someone like our misinformed next-door neighbor, who is basically a good person, on the one hand, and a person like Alan Greenspan, on the other. Yes, it is true that our friend is not well versed in Austrian economics and probably has never heard of such a thing and consequently supports bad policies. But his ignorance is far less consequential than the feigned ignorance and corruption of a prominent member of the “network” who was for several years the most powerful regulator of the U.S. financial system and who was furthermore largely responsible for 2008 housing market collapse that affected millions of people.
As power becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of reckless people like Greenspan—people who occupy what C. Wright Mills calls the “command posts” of society and who are in a position to make history-making decisions—we would do well to pay attention to what these people are up to (if only to set the historical record straight after the fact). Doing so puts us in a better position to see what is coming down the pike and to resist what is being foisted on us. Good, conscientious people can do this while also learning and teaching economics, as demonstrated by Rothbard, Hoppe, Rectenwald, and other scholars.
We have met the enemy indeed. But he is not “us.” We must look up to see the enemy, not across the street at our neighbors, our fellow victims.