The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or
Bilderberg Club is an annual invitation-only conference of
approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe,
most of whom are people of influence.[2][3]
About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from
finance, industry, labour, education and communications.[2]
Meetings are closed to the public.
Origin
The original conference was held at the
Hotel de Bilderberg in
Oosterbeek,
Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several
people, including
Polish
politician-in-exile
Józef Retinger, concerned about the growth of
anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international
conference at which leaders from European countries and the United
States would be brought together with the aim of promoting
Atlanticism – better understanding between the cultures of the
United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political,
economic, and defense issues.[4]
Retinger approached
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who agreed to promote the idea,
together with former
Belgian Prime Minister
Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of
Unilever at that time, Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn
contacted
Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the
CIA, who asked
Eisenhower adviser
Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion.[5]
The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each
nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of
view.[4]
Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first
conference, along with 11 Americans.[6]
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual
conference. A permanent steering committee was established, with
Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the
conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of
attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal
network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private
capacity.[citation
needed] Conferences were held in France, Germany,
and
Denmark over the following three years. In 1957 the first U.S.
conference was held on
St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the
Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the
1959 and 1963 conferences.[5]
Role
In his 1980 essay The Bilderberg and the West, researcher
Peter Thompson argues that the Bilderberg group is a meeting ground for
top executives from the world’s leading
multinational corporations and top national political figures to
consider jointly the immediate and long-term problems facing the West.
According to Thompson, Bilderberg itself is not an executive agency, but
when Bilderberg participants reach a form of consensus about what is to
be done they have at their disposal powerful transnational and national
instruments for bringing about what it is they want to come to pass.
That their consensus design is not always achieved, he concludes, is a
reflection of the strength of competing resisting forces outside the
capitalist
ruling class and within it.[7]
Organizational structure
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from
each of approximately 18 nations.[8]
Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary
General.[9]
There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the
group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering
Committee".[10]
In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory
group, though membership overlaps.[11]
Dutch economist
Ernst van der Beugel became permanent secretary in 1960, upon
Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's
chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the
Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General
has been held successively by
Joseph E. Johnson of the
Carnegie Endowment,
William Bundy of
Princeton,
Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and
Casimir A. Yost of
Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.[12]
A 2008 press release from the 'American Friends of Bilderberg' stated
that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the
meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy
statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available
to the press.[13]
The Bilderberg group's unofficial headquarters is the
University of Leiden in the
Netherlands.[14]
According to the 'American Friends of Bilderberg', the 2008 agenda
dealt "mainly with a
nuclear free world,
cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance,
protectionism, US-EU relations,
Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Islam and
Iran".[13]
Chairmen of the Steering Committee
Participants
Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards bankers,
politicians, and directors of large businesses.[17]
Heads of state, including
King
Juan Carlos I of Spain and
Queen
Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings.[9][18]
Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees.
In past years, board members from many large publicly traded
corporations have attended, including
IBM,
Xerox,
Royal Dutch Shell,
Nokia and
Daimler.[9]
The 2009 meeting participants in
Greece
included:
Greek prime minister
Kostas Karamanlis;
Finnish prime minister
Matti Vanhanen;[19]
Swedish foreign minister
Carl Bildt;
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
James Steinberg;
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
Timothy Geithner;
World Bank president
Robert Zoellick;
President of the European Commission
José Manuel Barroso;
Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen
Beatrix of the Netherlands.[20]
In 2009 the group hosted a dinner meeting at
Castle of the Valley of the Duchess in Brussels on 12 November to
promote the candidacy of
Herman Van Rompuy for
President of the European Council.[21]
The membership of the Bilderberg group is drawn largely from West
European and North American countries.[22]
Journalist
Caroline Moorehead, in a 1977 article critical of the Bilderberg
group's membership, quoted an unnamed member of the group: "No
invitations go out to representatives of the developing countries.
'Otherwise you simply turn us into a mini-United-Nations,' said one
person. And, 'we are looking for like-thinking people and compatible
people. It would be worse to have a club of dopes.'" In her article,
Moorehead characterized the group as "heavily biased towards politics of
moderate conservatism and big business" and claims that the "farthest
left is represented by a scattering of central social democrats".[17]
Recent meetings
- 2012 (31 May – 3 June) at Westfields Marriott hotel in
Chantilly, Virginia, USA
- 2011 (9–12 June) at the Suvretta House in
St. Moritz, Switzerland
- 2010 (3–7 June) at the Hotel Dolce in
Sitges,
Spain[23]
- 2009 (14–17 May) at the Astir Palace resort in
Vouliagmeni, Greece[24][25]
- 2008 (5–8 June) at the Westfields Marriott in
Chantilly, Virginia, USA[13][26]
- 2007 (31 May – 3 June) at the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel,[27]
in Şişli,
Istanbul, Turkey.
- 2006 (8–11 June) at the
Brookstreet Hotel in
Kanata,
Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada[28]
- 2005 (5–8 May) at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in
Rottach-Egern, Germany[29]
Privacy
The meeting hotels are inaccessible for any other guest for the full
period of the conferences and sentineled by private security staffs as
well as by local police authorities. During the Bilderberg Meeting at
Vouliagmeni (Greece)
in 2009, for instance, the British
Guardian reporter
Charlie Skelton was arrested twice after having taken pictures of
vehicles.[30]
Conspiracy theory
According to chairman
Étienne Davignon, a major attraction of Bilderberg group meetings is
that they provide an opportunity for participants to speak and debate
candidly and to find out what major figures really think, without the
risk of off-the-cuff comments becoming fodder for controversy in the
media.[31]
However, partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy,
the Bilderberg group is accused of conspiracies.[31][32]
This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the
political spectrum, even if they disagree on what the group wants to
do. Some on the left accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose
capitalist domination,[33]
while some on the right have accused the group of conspiring to impose a
world government and
planned economy.[34]
Politico journalist Kenneth P. Vogel reports that it is the
"exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the
interest of an international network of conspiracists," who for decades
have seen the Bilderberg meetings as a "corporate-globalist scheme", and
are convinced
powerful elites are moving the planet toward an oligarchic "new
world order".[35]
He goes on to state that these conspiracists' "populist
paranoid worldview", characterized by a suspicion of the
ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological
affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and
numerous Internet websites.[35]
In 2001,
Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a
steering committee member, said: "To say we were striving for a
one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us
in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for
nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt
that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."[36]
In 2005 Davignon discussed these accusations with the
BBC: "It is
unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who
believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent
fashion... When people say this is a secret government of the world I
say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody
ashamed of ourselves."[32]
In a 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by the
Political Research Associates, investigative journalist
Chip Berlet argued that
right-wing populist conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group
date back as early as 1964 and can be found in Schlafly's self-published
book A Choice, Not an Echo,[37]
which promoted a conspiracy theory in which the
Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals
dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose
internationalist policies would pave the way for
world communism.[38]
Paradoxically, in August 2010 former Cuban president
Fidel Castro wrote a controversial article for the Cuban Communist
Party newspaper
Granma in which he cited
Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,[39]
which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the
Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world
government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but
its own self."[33]
G. William Domhoff, a research professor in
psychology and
sociology who studies theories of
power,[40]
sees the role of
international relations forums and
social clubs such as the Bilderberg group as a place to share ideas,
reach
consensus, and create
social cohesion within a
power elite.[41]
He adds that this understanding of forums and clubs such as the
Bilderberg group fits with the perceptions of the members of the elite.
Domhoff warns
progressives against getting distracted by conspiracy theories which
demonize and
scapegoat such forums and clubs.[41]
He argues that the opponents of progressivism in the United States are
conservatives within the
corporate elite and the
Republican Party.[41]
It is more or less the same people who belong to forums and clubs such
as the Bilderberg group, but it puts them in their most important roles,
as capitalists and political leaders, which are visible and therefore
easier to fight.[41]
Author James McConnachie comments that conspiracy theorists have a
point, but that they fail to communicate it effectively.[42]
He argues that the Bilderberg group acts in a manner consistent with a
global conspiracy, but does so without the same "degree of
nefariousness", a difference not appreciated by conspiracy theorists,
who "tend to see this cabal as outright evil."[2]
McConnachie concludes: "Occasionally you have to give credit to
conspiracy theorists who raise issues that the mainstream press has
ignored. It's only recently that the media has picked up on the
Bilderbergers. Would the media be running stories if there weren't these
wild allegations flying around?"[2]
Proponents of Bilderberg
conspiracy theories in the United States include individuals and
groups such as the
John Birch Society,[34][43]
political activist
Phyllis Schlafly,[43]
writer
Jim Tucker,[44]
political activist
Lyndon LaRouche,[45]
radio host
Alex Jones,[2]
and politician
Jesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009
episode of his
TruTV
series
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.[46]
Non-American proponents include
Russian-Canadian writer
Daniel Estulin.[47]
See also
-