They Rule the World: A Shadowy Organization Is in Power, and It’s Made Up of the Very, Very Rich
May 27th, 2008This is core lunatic fringe stuff, wrapped in tinfoil. It’s also The Washington Post.
What’s your take on the Them’s coming out party?
As someone who has followed this type of information for about twenty years, I don’t know what to make of the mainstreaming of this… area of inquiry. You might think that all of us foilheads would be smug and chortling our I-told-you-soes into our beer.
Not me.
I’m thinking, “Oh for f*&@’$ sake, now what!?”
Via: Washington Post:
SUPERCLASS The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
By David Rothkopf
Reviewed by Anne-Marie Slaughter
Go to www.theyrule.net. A white page appears with a deliberately shadowy image of a boardroom table and chairs. Sentences materialize: “They sit on the boards of the largest companies in America.” “Many sit on government committees.” “They make decisions that affect our lives.” Finally, “They rule.” The site allows visitors to trace the connections between individuals who serve on the boards of top corporations, universities, think thanks, foundations and other elite institutions. Created by the presumably pseudonymous Josh On, “They Rule” can be dismissed as classic conspiracy theory. Or it can be viewed, along with David Rothkopf’s Superclass, as a map of how the world really works.
In Superclass, Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates and an international trade official in the Clinton Administration, has identified roughly 6,000 individuals who have “the ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide.” They are the “superclass” of the 21st century, spreading across borders in an ever thickening web, with a growing allegiance, Rothkopf argues, to each other rather than to any particular nation.
Rothkopf’s archetypal member of the superclass is Blackstone Group executive Stephen Schwarzman, who is not only fabulously wealthy, but also chairman of the Kennedy Center, a board member of the New York Public Library, the New York City Ballet, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the New York City Partnership. These boards, along with the over 100 businesses Blackstone has invested in, the other business councils and advisory boards he sits on, and his Yale and Harvard education, mean that Schwarzman is only one or two affiliations away from any center of power in the world. Rothkopf actually traces the “daisy chain” of Schwarzman’s connections through his board memberships — linking him to Ratan Tata, one of India’s richest men, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and many others. It is these links that create access that translates to influence and determines how the levers of power are pulled.
Fame alone doesn’t get you into the global power elite: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are out while Angelina Jolie and Bono are in. High office is generally enough for politicians and even their spouses, but membership in the superclass can be fleeting — Mikhail Gorbachev and Cherie Blair are now out, while Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton are still in. Rothkopf harps on the Pareto principle of distribution, or the “80/20 rule,” whereby 20 percent of the causes of anything are responsible for 80 percent of the consequences. That means 20 percent of the money-makers make 80 percent of the money and 20 percent of the politicians make 80 percent of the important decisions. That 20 percent belongs to the superclass.
On closer inspection, however, Rothkopf has no actual methodology for determining who is in and who is out. Each chapter identifies individuals who are said to count in a field, conclusions backed up by trendspotting and anecdotes about Rothkopf’s encounters at Davos and New York dinner parties that make the reader feel vaguely voyeuristic. When Rothkopf ventures away from his core expertise in politics and finance, and into such subjects as asymmetrical warfare, mega-churches and freemasonry, the pastiche-like quality of his research becomes evident.
Still, Superclass is often thought-provoking. For one thing, it is as much about who is not part of the superclass as who is. As I read Rothkopf’s chronicles of elite gatherings — Davos, Bilderberg, the Bohemian Grove (all male), Fathers and Sons (all male) — I was repeatedly struck by the near absence of women. Fortune magazine’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit, the only elite gathering I know of that is restricted to women, didn’t even rate a mention. And indeed, when Rothkopf summarizes “how to become a member of the superclass,” his first rule is “be born a man.” Only 6 percent of the superclass is female.
Superclass is written in part as a consciousness-raising exercise for members of the superclass themselves. Rothkopf worries that “the world they are making” is deeply unequal and ultimately unstable. He hopes that the current global elite will use their power to do more than egg each other on to high-profile philanthropy. Elites in radically unequal countries such as Chile, for instance, might decide to open their cozy circles of power to allow the emergence of a genuine middle class. New York bankers might realize that they can no longer peddle loans to developing countries in good times but then pressure the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund to bail out those same governments when they suddenly default on their debts (ensuring, of course, that the bankers get paid). The agribusinesses that reap billions from domestic subsidies in developed countries might consider the longer-term value of trade rather than aid for countries at the bottom of the global food chain.
Perhaps. But it’s likely to take more than exhortation. In the words of former Navy Secretary John Lehman, “Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.” Why would the superclass want to give it up?
I also read another mainstream article about it (can’t remember where… NYTimes?), and it mentioned Jon Stewart as a member, as this one mentions Angelina Jolie. This strikes me as an indication that this book is the baby-food version of the kinds of topics/agents we see here on cryptogon (for example). It could just be the fact that the reviewers have to keep it light, lest they become suspected of being closet tinfoil-hat-wearers. But my first impression is, I doubt much tinfoil — if any — will be required while/after reading it.
Look’s like the objects for middle class
hate have been patsified and thrown onto
the altar for sacrifice.Why there is no mention
of that particular newspapers archenemy the Rev.Moon is beyond me.
You could figure Mr.Cruise has been targeted
for Obliteration due to when he spoke
out against PharmaCorp.& Brooke Shields
a couple years ago.
I for one don’t doubt that his star is waning just because of that.
I am the one, orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant and revel in you pain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician, and I decide your fate
I march before a martyred world, an army for the fight
I speak of great heroic deed’s, of victory and might
I hold a banner drenched in blood, I urge you to be brave
I lead you to your destiny, I lead you to your grave
Your bones will build my palaces, your eyes will stud my crown
For I am mars, the God of war, and I will cut you down.
meanwhile…
there are those who now eschew any news source whatsoever.
there are those whose news sources are CBS and/or foxnews.
there are those whose online news sources are mainly Google.
there are those who glean the headlines at crooksandliars or huffpo.
there are those alex jones tinfoil types.
…and then there are those real weirdos who, no matter what their news sources are, still stubbornly, irrationally, believe that, to a very great and fulsome degree, they are not getting all the news.
***
thank you john doh for that poem. who wrote it?
@ Zuma: The answer is Motörhead, a british band.
Very disturbing trend, this public unmasking: my personal theory, Kevin, is that there is war in heaven … in the end, after all, there can be only one. (i owe everything i am to The Highlander )
cybele
It’s because the real ‘controllers’ work in hyper space, can de-materialize and have vast mining and resource extraction colonies throughout our local galaxy and beyond. The gears are shifting upward planetwide, the windows have gone down and the vehicle is speeding up. The cultural informants recognize the subtleties of perceptual change in segments of the population, there are even technologies to sense discrepancies in the ‘field’. These field discrepancies are increasing and thus the appearance of higher information flows to herd consciousness away from a real contextual orientation.
Cheers,