The result was that the representative system was deprived of the very essence of representation: the ability of the government to act in the interests of the people who voted for it. How was this done? By keeping tight in the clutches of the ruling class the areas in society where real decisions were made and acted upon. Industrialists who in a day could decide the real fate of thousands if not millions of workers were not affected by the elections. They remained in charge of their industries. So did the banks, which by a flick of the wrist could transfer billions of pounds and ‘bankrupt Britain’. The media moguls were free after the election as well as before it to blabber on incessantly about the Red Menace. Judges and civil servants gloried in the fact that they were not elected. Army officers and police chiefs were rarely threatened by a change of government, even when they were openly hostile to that government. All these people came from the same class. They had real power, and were prepared to use it to protect their class against any elected government. Thus the parliaments (which were quickly set up all over the world as soon as the success of the British experiment became obvious to other rulers) became, in Lenin’s phrase, ‘mere talking shops’. Paul Foot, article November 1991 ‘Will Labour Make a Difference?’
The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people. Tom Clancy
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. Hannah Arendt
Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite’s sense of realpolitik but also with the American public’s own sense of American values. Mohsin Hamid
We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world. Hugo Chavez
Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up. Dana Spiotta
An elite class that is free to operate without limits – whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behaviour – is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power. Glenn Greenwald
Embedded in The New York Times’ institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times by design or otherwise has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Glenn Greenwald
Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions? Camille Paglia
Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite. John Berger
When you reach that elite level, 90% is mental and 10% is physical. You are competing against yourself. Not against the other athlete. Dick Fosbury
Knowledge is not just the preserve of the educated elite. Just because someone has not had a formal education, that does not mean he does not have wisdom and common sense. Vikas Swarup
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good. George Will
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavour. Steven Pinker
he Left Elite only pretend to be concerned about what’s best for everyone else because it is the most effective way to manipulate you and your children into their abyss. Tammy Bruce
You can’t destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America’s elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite, and about half the time, you’re doing us a favour. P J O’Rourke
It is interesting – you find in the United States, there is a kind of anti-education hostility. It’s the sort of Sarah Palin constituency which does seem to actually be hostile to the New York, Boston, San Francisco educated elite. You know – we good plain folks from the middle of the country are just as good as you pointy-headed intellectuals. Richard Dawkins
A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production. Robert Anton Wilson
It means that, in fact, it’s – whether fascist is the right word I don’t know – more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite. Peter Singer
What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers. Nawal el Saadawi
Elites are once again invoking Reagan, dropping their Gs and saying things in a folksy sort of way that’s meant to capture the hearts of people. And it’s all fraud. It’s all stagecraft. And people are falling for a great deal of elite behaviour in this country packaged as if it’s proletariat behaviour. Eugene Jarecki
The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers – its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks – are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power. Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefits. Here is the Achilles’ heel of armies, police and bureaucracies. Frank Herbert, The White Plague
Yeah, I’m not comfortable with that at all. Who elected these guys to run the planet? Pat Martin, NDP Manitoba, televised news interview
Every year the Bilderberg group meets for a few days in five-star accommodation amid ten-star security. The Bilderbergers held their first meeting in 1954 in a small Dutch town in the Bilderberg Hotel. Since then their annual meetings have attracted many of the most powerful men and women on the planet. Illuminati: Our Secret Master
The aristocracy of purpose: a very small and very powerful small clique of the leading individuals of the Western Elite who try from behind the scenes to manage the planet. Daniel Estulin, interview ‘Coast to Coast, author The True Story of the Bilderberg Group’
Every year since 1954 the secretive Bilderberg Group (named after the hotel they first met in the Netherlands) comprising elite powerbrokers from Europe and North America, has met to discuss, and influence, the changing global, political, economic and social landscape. Secret Societies of the Illuminati NWO: The Hidden Power of the World
I’m Jim Tucker. I’ve chased Bilderberg for thirty years. I’ll never give up the chase. Bilderberg’s plans for the whole world is nothing less than world government. They are the elitists. They feel they should run the world for their own selfish interests. We are the unwashed multitudes ... Bilderberg is making great progress towards a world government and only an educated form of public can stop them in their tracks. Jim Tucker
Bilderberg’s motivation is to control the entire world. They’re drunk with power. And they see themselves as masters of the globe. It’s their plantation. We’re their slaves. Jim Tucker
If a hundred and twenty film stars or a hundred and twenty NFL football players met behind locked and guarded doors in a remote location for three days you’d try very hard to penetrate and try to find out what those movie stars or football players are doing. Why no curiosity at all when a hundred and twenty of the world’s most powerful financial leaders and political leaders meet for three days at a remote location behind armed guards and a complete black-out? Why no curiosity? Jim Tucker
I have just discovered that a shadowy cabal of global luminaries, including Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Prince Charles, Peter Mandelson, Lord Carrington, David Cameron, Queen Beatrix of Holland and the chairman of Barclays Bank, have been plotting to overthrow national governments and form a fascist one-world empire.
Going by the name of the Bilderberg Group, these puppet-masters made and broke the career of Margaret Thatcher, triggered the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic and, this year, are planning to bomb Iran.