Shadow Governments and the Bilderberg Group

Readers of my columns are no strangers to “theories” about Secret Societies, Shadow Governments and “The New World Order.” The Bilderberg Group is one such organization that has been at the heart of such theories for many years.

Every year since 1954 The Group brings together about 120 leading business people and politicians in an annual meeting. Attendees in the past have included: the heads of the World Bank and European Central Bank, Chairmen or Chief Executives from Nokia, BP, Unilever, Daimler-Chrysler and Pepsi, the editors of many major newspapers, members of parliament, ministers, European commissioners … and the queen of the Netherlands.

In 2018, the meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group gathered in Turin, Italy for its annual meeting. The list of attendees included, among many others: Henry Kissinger, John Hickenlooper, Governor of Colorado, and current Democratic presidential hopeful, former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, James Baker, José M. Durão Barroso, Chairman, Goldman Sachs International, Peter Thiel, President, Thiel Capital and Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General, NATO. The complete list of over 100 participants can be found here.

As has been the case for the past few years, the meeting in Turin in 2018 was met with protesters who believe the Bilderbergers represent a “shadow world government.” The Bilderberg protesters say people take part in these meetings in order to influence the way the world works, but attendees insist the group is simply a debating society in a place where they can be “outside the glare of the political spotlight.” Indeed the media rarely reports on the conference, the list of the attendees is not made public until just days before the annual meeting takes place, and there are never any pictures or videos released of the conference, in fact insiders say that even minutes are never recorded.

For Bilderberg’s critics, all of this secrecy is “proof” that they are up to no good.

Origins of the Bilderberg Group

The Bilderberg Group take their name from the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, where its members first convened on May 29,1954 at the invitation of Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld.

Its founders – including exiled Polish politician Jozef Retinger, ex-Belgian prime minister Paul van Zeeland and Paul Rijkens, former head of consumer goods giant Unilever – were concerned about a prevailing atmosphere of anti-American sentiment in post-war Europe in a moment when the US was enjoying a consumer boom while holding the fate of the recovering continent in its hands through the Marshall Plan. The group had hoped to revive a spirit of transatlantic brotherhood based on political, economic and military cooperation, necessary during the Cold War, as the USSR tightened its iron grip on its eastern satellites.

The Bilderberg Group’s primary goal has reportedly since been expanded to take in a more all-encompassing endorsement of Western free market capitalism over the years, although it’s detractors – most notably Alex Jones, of InfoWars, believe their agenda is either to impose pan-global fascism or totalitarian Marxism.

Jones appeared on Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics show in 2013 to discuss the Bilderberg Group’s meeting at a hotel in Watford, unflatteringly painting them as “puppeteers above the major parties” and insisting on their role in the founding of the EU, which is “A Nazi plan”, according to Mr. Jones.

He has more recently attended protest camps, sent InfoWars pundit Owen Shroyer to try and invade their 2017 gathering in Chantilly, Virginia, and accused them of plotting to overthrow US president Donald Trump.

Although members do not as a rule discuss what goes on within its conferences, UK Labour Party Member of Parliament and onetime party deputy leader Denis Healey, who was a member of the Group’s steering committee for more than 30 years, did offer a clear statement of its intentions when quizzed by journalist Jon Ronson for his book Them in 2001.

“To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair,” he said.