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We need to stop calling super-wealthy people ‘the elite’. They are not better than us. Let’s call them deadly parasites or the predator class. Sir Norman of Nowhere tweet 17th September 2024
If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs.
Communism, or more accurately socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite. Gary Allen, author
It is an interesting observation to note how seemingly unknown personalities magically appear on the scene as presidential candidates. Then, before you know it, somehow you are left to choose from a small group of extremely wealthy people, who suspiciously have the same broad social view. Obviously it’s a joke. The people placed on the ballot are done so because they have been pre-decided to be acceptable by the established financial powers who actually run the show. Yet many who understand this illusion of democracy often think – if only we could just get our honest ethical politicians in power, then we would be OK ... Unfortunately, another fallacy. Zeitgeist addendum, 2008
We can either have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Judge
Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interest, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class. Giuseppe Prezzolini
The Elite who occupy the commanding heights or digital reality are suicidal nihilists.
Suicidal nihilists know that there is no longer any substantive purpose to their willing. But they would always prefer to go on willing than not to act at all.
They can very happily ally themselves with a notion of a nuclear holocaust or perfect extremism. Arthur Crocker
I realised that this was part of a bigger project: a project that the British political elite were engaged in along with the elites from the other European countries – and that was to take something that we’d been told was common market – the European Economic Community – but actually, surreptitiously, without ever telling the truth or giving anyone a say, to turn that into a political union ... We have a political class across the world that are basically aiming for a form of global governance. Nigel Farage, interview Alex Jones December 2009
With so much money comes incredible power. And exclusive access into the most elite circles. But just how much influence does this tiny group really have on America? And is there an ultimate plan? America’s Book of Secrets s3e7: Billionaire Agenda, History 2014
Secrecy is a very very powerful tool of the elite power. Trevor Paglen, author Blank Spot on the Map
When Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke recently about his government’s devotion to the United States, ‘founded on the values we share’, he was echoing his Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, who was preparing to welcome the Saudi dictator to Britain with effusions of ‘shared values’. The meaning was the same in both cases. The values shared are those of rapacious power and wealth, with democracy and human rights irrelevant, as the bloodbath in Iraq and the suffering of the Palestinians attest, to name only two examples.
The ‘values we share’ are celebrated by a shadowy organisation that has just held its annual conference. This is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), set up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long history of supporting right-wing causes. Although the BAP does not publicly acknowledge this origin, the source of its inspiration was a call by President Reagan in 1983 for ‘successor generations’ on both sides of the Atlantic to ‘work together in the future on defence and security matters’. He made numerous references to ‘shared values’. Attending this ceremony in the White House Situation Room were the ideologues Rupert Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.
As Reagan made clear, the need for the BAP arose from Washington’s anxiety about the growing opposition in Britain to nuclear weapons, especially the stationing of cruise missiles in Europe. ‘A special concern,’ he said, ‘will be the successor generations, as these younger people are the ones who will have to work together in the future on defence and security issues.’ A new, preferably young elite – journalists, academics, economists, ‘civil society’ and liberal community leaders of one sort or another - would offset the growing ‘anti-Americanism’.
The aims of this latter-day network, according to David Willetts, the former director of studies at Britain’s right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, now a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, are simply to ‘help reinforce Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do or will occupy positions of influence’. A former British ambassador to Washington, Sir John Kerr, was more direct. In a speech to BAP members, he said the organisation’s ‘powerful combination of eminent Fellows and close Atlantic links threatened to put the embassy out of a job.’ An American BAP organiser describes the BAP network as committed to ‘grooming leaders’ while promoting ‘the leading global role that [the US and Britain] continue to play’.
The BAP’s British ‘alumni’ are drawn largely from new Labour and its court. No fewer than four BAP ‘fellows’ and one advisory board member became ministers in the first Blair government. The new Labour names include Peter Mandelson, George Robertson, Baroness Symons, Jonathan Powell (Blair’s chief of staff), Baroness Scotland, Douglas Alexander, Geoff Mulgan, Matthew Taylor and David Miliband. Some are Fabian Society members and describe themselves as being ‘on the left’. Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is another member. They object to whispers of ‘a conspiracy’. The mutuality of class or aspiration is merely assured, unspoken, and the warm embrace of power flattering and often productive.
BAP conferences are held alternately in the US and Britain. This year’s was in Newcastle, with the theme ‘Faith and Justice’. On the US board is Diana Negroponte, the wife of John Negroponte, Bush’s former national security chief notorious for his associations with death-squad politics in central America. He follows another leading Neo-Con, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the invasion of Iraq and discredited head of the World Bank. Since 1985, BAP ‘alumni’ and ‘fellows’ have been brought together courtesy of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Saatchi & Saatchi, Philip Morris and British Airways, among other multinationals. Nick Butler, formerly a top dog at BP, has been a leading light.
For many, the conferences have the revivalist pleasures honed by American PR techniques, with management games, personal presentations, and a closing jolly revue to lighten the serious business. The 2002 conference report noted: ‘Many BAP alumni are directly involved with US and UK military and defence establishments’.
The BAP rarely gets publicity, which may have something to do with the high proportion of journalists who are alumni. Prominent BAP journalists are David Lipsey, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and assorted Murdochites. The BBC is well represented. On the popular Today programme, James Naughtie, whose broadcasting has long reflected his own transatlantic interests, has been an alumnus since 1989. Today’s newest voice, Evan Davis, formerly the BBC’s zealous economics editor, is a member. And at the top of the BAP website home page is a photograph of the famous BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and his endorsement. ‘A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends,’ says he. John Pilger, article December 2007, ‘How the Anglo-American Elite Share Its Values’; viz also website
Welcome to Wall Street, the epicentre of financial power in America. Perhaps the money capital of the world … These financial firms are trying to undo the regulations and new laws governing them imposed by the Congress. Who Rules America? I, Amazon 2012
The focus is on political personalities not the forces they represent. ibid.
‘A power elite: an interlocking set of connections of people in business, in politics, in the military, who pretty much determine the parameters of possible change.’ ibid. Eric Foner, Columbia University
There seems to be corporate forces in addition to Wall Street that essentially help guide our political and economic direction. ibid.
A complex system that’s evolved over the years. ibid.