Shadowy elites in the USA

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By Gui Rochat, Senior Editor

David Rockefeller

I have always had difficulties to understand exactly who the elite and the establishment are in the US, despite having come across them often enough. Unlike in Europe, where the titled elites and the large industrialists, many times inter-married for prestige, are easier to identify because they form a smaller and denser group. In the US the establishment is far more amorphous, diffuse, porous, changeable and different from region to region. The elite groups in the US are mostly not even in agreement with each other and as Chomksy says they are like the Camorra in fierce competition.

IT EXPLAINS I think, the constant instability of purpose in foreign and local policies mainly because of the tug of war between the state-capitalist inclined Eastern establishments and the South-Western starkly individualistic ‘free enterprise’ adherents. The Bush regime, being beholden to the South-Western plutocracy favored of course lesser indulgence in social entitlements with a dismantling of the federal government. The Obama administration pretends to adhere to state intervention in poverty, health care and other social problems.

I think that one should not underestimate the forces of this uneven balance of the elite powers where the innermost workings are in harsh competition with each other. It is different from the two party system with seemingly opposite poles, where the cosmetic propaganda shield actually hides a monolithic purpose, namely to guarantee support for big business interests and to stabilize a heterogeneous population. Of course the goal of economic domination is the same within all establishment groups, but the means are different and therefore it is much tougher to survive here as a member of the ruling classes than elsewhere. One notices it in the indoctrination at the elite schools and the punishments dealt out to those who become apostates. But the establishment is much more fluid than the British one ever was and certainly far more permeable than the Italian, Spanish or French elites. Moreover though the US economic upper classes are very sensitive to infinitesimally small behavior patterns, such as speech, dress and parentage, they miss the outward security of titles as a permanent hedge against the hoi polloi.

To countenance these fairly amorphous power groups is very difficult indeed and so one is left tackling the highly-placed managerial classes that serve and hide them. The managerial classes are in fact more unified than their overlords, imitating them as well as they can in habits, dress and customs while they are conveniently being used by the elites as the focus of attention for all financial and sexual scandals. They screen with their behavior of conspicuous venery and corruption the true power holders from the public. These do of course abandon from time to time incorrigible elements and pension them off as so-called remittance men or women, kept at a distance with or without keepers but with sufficient funds to remain in the background or they do away with them altogether. But a well integrated and depersonalized member of a local elite group follows rigorously the command to stay in the shadows where decisions are made and where a reliable upstart will be accepted as long as he or she contributes to the protection of power.

These circles within circles make it therefore impossible for the public at large to recognize who it is that decides against their interests. The invisibility and diversity of the true establishment strengthen a more stable continuation of the present social system in the US than abroad and it is consequently much easier to keep the myth of democracy alive. The public is easily geared towards consent, where no adversary is to be seen except the managerial classes who appear to be in command, indulge in excesses and thus can be blamed and demoted. The modern structure of control is in essence Kafkaesque without the feeling of dread or threat and it exercises a form of pseudo-rational persuasion towards common acquiescence.

As simple illustration may serve the hidden role of David Rockefeller, the chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank which had done a great deal of business with the former Shah of Iran. When the Shah was deposed and fell ill with cancer, Rockefeller forced the Carter administration to offer the Shah a refuge in America for treatment and residence, despite dire warnings from the Iranian regime. Subsequently the Americans from the embassy, who were resident in Teheran, were taken hostage. This was never publicized nor discussed except for the calumny heaped on the Iranian government for the hostage taking and President Carter was blamed afterwards for his inability to have the hostages released. This is a small example how policies are determined and who gets then blamed for their failure. Rockefeller is a member of the exclusive Bilderberg conference, periodically held in The Netherlands for Western power holders to discuss the state of the world.

—G.R.