10 – Bilderberg Group
If one was actually searching for a secret society that controls the banks, the financial sector and all world governments, then you wouldn’t have to look much further than the Bilderberg Group. They definitely exist, which makes them a step up on the Illuminati, and their membership reads like a who’s who of the powerful, the shady and the wealthy. What’s more, it was literally created with the intention of getting the world’s most influential people into one place with the intention of making the globe smaller and more amenable to business. If you were suspicious of a New World Order, then that one-world government came into existence in the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands in 1954.
Of course, that is just the most conspiracy-compatible version of events. When the group that founded the Bilderberg Group – which included a Prince of the Netherland, the head of the CIA, a former Prime Minister of Belgium and the chairman of Unilever – conceived the idea, their stated aim was to roll back what they perceived a wave of anti-American feeling in Western Europe. To that end, they convened a meeting of fifty leading figures from eleven of their European neighbors, plus another eleven Americans. The meeting was such a success that they decided to do it all over again the next year in the United States, and indeed, for every subsequent year in an ever-changing location.
What might have begun as a proto New World Order or pro-American meeting of friends, depending on your opinion, has certainly blossomed. Nowadays, it looks more like a summit of international leaders rather than a meeting of friends in a Dutch hotel. A steering committee decides on a location and invites the cream of political leaders, corporate heads, financiers and academics to a totally secret, heavily policed discussion of the world at large. With one of the most exclusive guest lists imaginable – just shy of 150 people are allowed to attend – and a rigid code of omerta surrounding goings-on, it isn’t hard to see why many consider the Bilderberg Group to be the living embodiment of the New World Order.
An interesting aspect of the myriad criticisms of the Bilderberg Group is that both right and left have wildly differing conspiracy theories about what the intentions of the group are. For the wing-nutted and swivel-eyed, the Bilderberg Group represents the triumph of the one world government, the unelected tyranny of the few and the crushing of the free market by the already monied corporations, while on the dreadlocked, hemp-shirted side of the argument, the Bilderberg Group is the ultimate capitalist stitch up, in which government and corporation become one and exist to maximize profit and shaft the working man. Or maybe it’s just a nice garden party for rich people. Who knows?