The End of an Era

Death may be an inevitable fact of life, but there are always ripples when a public figure sheds his or her mortal coil. Music fans the world over were especially distraught after 2016 seemingly claimed a musician for all seasons: David Bowie in the winter, Prince in the spring, Sandy Pearlman (the legendary Blue Oyster Cult producer/songwriter who was addressed before here) in the summer and Leonard Cohen departing during the fall.

Thus far 2017 seems to be marked by the deaths of major deep state players just as the American deep state itself is under its most intense scrutiny ever by the general public. February 17, 2017 witnessed the death of Douglas Coe, the longtime leader of the Christian fundamentalist network variously known as "The Family" or "The Fellowship" (covered at length on this blog before here). Emerging during the 1930s as a union busting organization, The Family would eventually achieve vast power in the American deep state and beyond. Every president since Eisenhower has attended its National Prayer Breakfast dutifully. Under the Trump regime, The Family has gained unprecedented power, with various key officials (including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Vice-President Mike Pence) claiming membership in this shadowy network.

longtime Family head Douglas Coe

Coe thus departed the earthly stage just as his longstanding ambition of control over the American political system was closer than ever of being an actuality. On the other end of spectrum, the notorious David Rockefeller died on March 20 (the first day of spring). No doubt many of the conspiratorial right have long wondered if this day would ever come. The 101 year old Rockefeller at times seemed immortal, leading to a host of wild theories to explain his longevity (including speculations that he is some type of reptilian alien, or that he subsisted on human blood, among many others). Others, such as Peter Beter, believed he had died long ago and has been replaced by a clone for decades. Still others no doubt question whether he has actually died, or merely retreated to some "Breakaway Civilization" where the elites have conquered death.

Regardless of where one falls concerning David Rockefeller's death (or lack therefore of), there is no doubt that his departure from the world stage will have profound ramifications. His death comes at a time when the global system that he, probably more than any other one individual, crafted is under an assault on various fronts and may not even survive till the end of the current decade.

But not only was David Rockefeller the chief architect of the current globalist system, he was also a key mediator during previous eras of crisis among the nation's elite. He came of age during such a period and later played a leading role in managing the un-declared civil war that unfolded among the nation's elite during the turbulent period that unfolded between 1960-1980.

FDR and the Fall of the House of Morgan

As to the former, I am of course referring to the election Franklin D. Roosevelt, which had profound implications for the power dynamics of the United States. Contrary to much of what you read on conspiracy blogs, FDR always had a rather strained relationship with the banking interests that comprise what Carroll Quigley referred to as the "Anglo-American Establishment" and what rogue historians such as Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould have dubbed the "traditional conservative establishment." This network included the Ivy Leagues, many of the major banking houses of Europe and America and a network of NGOs known as the "Round Table groups," the most notorious of which being the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

In the years leading up to FDR's election this network was firmly under the domination of the highly Anglophilic House of Morgan.

"In the 1920's this system of economic and political power formed a hierarchy headed by the Morgan interests and played a principal role both in political and business life. Morgan, operating on the international level in cooperation with his allies abroad, especially in England, influenced the events of history to degree which cannot be specified in detail but which certainly was tremendous. Nevertheless, the slow developments of business life which we have mentioned were making investment bankers like Morgan obsolete, and the deflationary financial policies on which these bankers insisted were laying the foundation of the economic collapse which ended their rule in general social disaster by 1940."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 532)

J.P. Morgan

As indicated above, the policies favored by Morgan directly led to the Great Depression. And this in turn led to Roosevelt, who was initially elected by a coalition deeply opposed to the financial interests of Morgan and his ilk.

"The shift of the farm block, light industry, commercial interests (notably department stores), real estate, professional people, and mass, unskilled, labor to the Democratic Party in 1932 resulted in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. The new administration sought to curtail the power of the two opposition and exploiting groups (bankers and heavy industry) and to reward and help the groups which had elected it... 

"The New Deal's actions against finance and heavy industry were chiefly aimed at preventing those two from ever repeating their actions of the 1920-1933 period...."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 533)

FDR

Over the years, indications have emerged that opposition to FDR and the New Deal amongst the traditional conservative establishment was quite radical throughout the 1930s and that at least one coup was planned. This was of course the highly controversial Business Plot, first revealed to the public at large by the highly decorated General Smedley Butler in 1934. Reportedly this was not the only plot, however, and elements of the traditional conservative establishment close to the Morgan interests continued to plot FDR's removal all the way up to 1940.

This turmoil continued at least into Roosevelt's second term. But as war in Europe became inevitable, the Rockefellers appear to have buried the hatchet with FDR. However, FDR had no love lost of the Morgan interests and this was most beneficial to the Rockefeller faction.

"When Roosevelt first campaigned for president, he did attack 'money changers' and financial elites, but in truth he was only attacking a small segment of them – those associated with the bank of JP Morgan and its holding companies who had agents in the Federal Reserve, which mismanaged interest rate policy during the 1920s, which in turn helped create the stock market bubble that crashed in 1929. Roosevelt had the support of the Rockefeller family, which owned Chase Bank, and the bank's managers, who were rivals of JP Morgan..."

(The War State, Michael Swanson, pg. 50)

The Rockefellers, or at least those among the "Brothers Generation" (which included David), were among the more progressive members of the traditional conservative establishment, and as such were less offended by the New Deal than many of their contemporaries. It probably helped that there business interests would be little effected by the policies of the New Deal as well. What's more, they were also far less Anglophilic than the Morgan interests, and were thus not especially concerned with preserving the British Empire.

As such, the Rockefellers emerged as the most powerful dynasty in the United States after World War II and were also the driving force behind a far more American-centric foreign policy. They used their new found political capital to erect the IMF/World Bank structure that would dominate the world economic order throughout the Cold War and into the twenty-first century.

The Rise of the Trilateral Commission

This order was severely challenged by events that unfolded in the United States from roughly 1960 until 1980. Effectively an undeclared civil war broke out between the traditional conservative establishment and the emerging far right, which included elements of the old pre-WWII "isolationist" camp, the emerging neo-cons and Christian Right and especially the military-industrial complex.

The conflict had been building since the Kennedy administration and finally came to ahead in 1968 when the Council on Foreign Relations became divided among two competing camps: the traders and the Prussians. The latter ultimately broke with the traditional conservative establishment and rallied around the revived Committee on the Present Danger. (CPD). By the late 1970s the CPD was firmly aligned with the American Security Council (ASC), the most powerful think tank among the American far right throughout the Cold War.

Rockefeller himself had become disillusioned with the CFR by the late 1960s as well. He viewed its commitment to Containment Militarism as increasingly less relevant to the emerging world order. He also likely viewed the extremely Anglophilic nature of the CFR as alienating to key partners in Western Europe and Asia. This spurred him to found the Trilateral Commission in the early 1970s to bring a focus back to international trade, the longstanding obsession of the financial elite, and to further integrate the economies of the major capitalist powers.

"With the interlocking transformations in East-West, North-South, and United States-Japanese-Western European relations threatening collapse of Pax Americana and little to take its place but the shuttle diplomacy of a peripatetic Secretary of State, Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller brought together Wall Street investment bankers, multinational corporate directors, and members of the foreign-policy establishment identified with its liberal flank to develop a blueprint for a new world order. These elite figures were joined by their counterparts from Japan and Western Europe, hence the organization's christening as the Trilateral Commission. As one observer reported after an early meeting of the Commission, 'It was, in short, a remarkable cross-section of the interlocking establishments of the world's leading industrial nations.' Only four senators were extended membership in the elite group; one of these was Walter Mondale of Minnesota. One governor, Daniel Evans of Washington, was invited to participate as was one former governor, listed as James E. Carter Jr. of Georgia. Carter had recently appeared on the cover of Time's special issue on the 'New South' and was recommended for Trilateral membership by Time editor and Trilateralist Hedley Donovan.

"As noted above, Foreign Policy began its first issue with the proclamation that 'an era in American foreign policy which began in the late 1940's, has ended.' The same might be said of David Rockefeller and his Trilateral colleagues' view of the Council on Foreign Relations as an organization. It was bound to closely to the Cold War and Containment Militarism, a policy many of its members still insisted on trying to justify, as evident from the bitter debate within the Council over the lessons of Vietnam. The Trilateral Commission would start anew, incorporating the liberal wing of the Council on Foreign Relations but without the burden of the 'institutional memory,' to develop the kind of consensus that the Council had furnished for Containment Militarism in the Cold War years. This time, however, the consensus will be built around 'the management of interdependence' which a Trilateral position paper identified as 'the central problem of world order for the coming years' – as opposed to the containment of communism which had dominated elite thinking for the previous quarter century."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry W. Sanders, pgs. 176-176)

the logo of the Trilateral Commission

It was against this backdrop that Rockefeller began his epic push for detente with the Soviet Union. It would unfold throughout the 1970s and would be perused by three different administrations via proxies such as Nixon National Security Advisor and later Ford Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Advisor.

While Rockefeller's actions would gain some traction in the mid-1970s, they ultimately collapsed by the end of the decade. The oil crisis that unfolded throughout that decade and had deeply unsettled various factions of the elite and any prospect of peace was dashed after the Iranian revolution.

This laid the foundation for the Reagan Revolution of 1980 that brought to power a foreign policy establishment dominated by far right think tanks such as the Committee on the Present Danger, the American Security Council and the Heritage Foundation. Rockefeller and his Trilateralists found themselves largely on the outside looking in, with a few exceptions such as Secretary of State George Schultz. Rockefeller was not especially resistant to this change of fortunes, however.

During the 1970s he had been involved with Le Cercle, a European network that is somewhat akin to the far right's answer to Bilderberg (noted before here). He eventually broke with the group over their radicalism, but was not entirely uncomfortable with some of the members. His brother Nelson had maintained similar contacts with the ASC for years as well.

David Rockefeller (center left) with several other luminaries of the far right Le Cercle network that he later broke with, including Antoine Pinay (who I believe is on the far left) and the infamous Benoit de Bonvoisin (far right)

Rockefeller thus bided his time and waited for a more favorable political climate to emerge. The end of the Cold War brought about that change. The collapse of the Soviet Union and thus international communism shattered the Cold War consensus of the far right.  With the Soviet menace that had brought together the Old Right, neo-cons, the Christian right, libertarians and militarists gone, the internal disputes that had been on the back burner during the Cold War came to the surface in a series of divisions.

The path was thus clear for the Rockefeller project of Globalism, which at its heart sought to reduce the world to one giant free trade zone in which national governments were subservient to multinational corporations, was now free to proceed unopposed. The neo-cons, Christian right and to some extent the militarists would eventually form a new coalition that would bring Bush II to the White House in 2000, but the Rockefeller policy of globalization had become institutionalized by this point.

The New Global Chaos?

But in the second decade of the twenty first century, the longstanding assumptions concerning Globalization are under fire as never before. The national security state has grown vast and powerful during the War on Terror, far surpassing the not inconsiderate power it wielded during the Cold War. But increasingly this ascension threatens to turn to ash in the mouth of the Pentagon with the rise of the BRICS nations, but most especially China. Decades of free trade have made China wealthy and powerful while threatening the ability of the Pentagon to wage war against other major world powers (noted before here). What's more, there's the glacier size headache of dealing with technological espionage, with has thrived in the era of neo-liberalism. Those super secret weapons that Pentagon is reputed to have may not remain super secret for much longer.

And David Rockefeller is as responsible for this state of affairs as anyone. He and his close partner, Henry Kissinger, laid the foundation for the opening of the global to American corporations in the 1970s with their push for detente with the Soviet Union. As a result, Russia, China and many other formerly closed economies were opened up to extensive US investment during that decade, paving the way for the rise of the BRICS as major industrial powers in the next century.

"Nixon's and Kissinger's arrival in the White House in 1969 coincided with David Rockefeller's becoming CEO of the Chase Manhattan Bank. The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy of detente was highly congruous with Rockefeller's push to internationalize Chase Manhattan banking operations. Thus in 1973 Chase became the first American bank to open an office in Moscow. A few months later, thanks to an invitation arranged by Kissinger, Rockefeller became the first U.S. banker to talk with Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing. Rockefeller also served as intermediary between the White House and other foreign leaders, such as Gamel Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat in Egypt, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and the leaders of Oman."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 38)

Henry Kissinger

But now an ever growing number of the American elite are becoming disillusioned with these policies. For much of the past two decades the United States has been falling behind while our principal rivals are rapidly closing the gap. Throughout the 1990s and early 00s this was not especially concerning when China seemed committed to the New World Order. But with the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) China has effectively established its own global economic order as a direct challenge to US-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.

It would seem that the Chinese elite are not content to play second fiddle to their counterparts in Europe and the US indefinitely and this, along with their massive military build up, are the first salvos in a quest for a new international order.

With such pressures coming to bare against the current globalist world order, Rockefeller's death couldn't have come at a worse time. For years he was the rallying point for the globalists of the United States and Europe. But with his death and the extreme age of his closet colleagues, there should be real questions arising as to how long this system can survive its founder's death. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics already considered these implications several years ago, noting:

"One thing that should be taken into account is that the average age of the Rockefeller clique at the top of ISGP's Superclass Index is about 86. David Rockefeller is a solid century old, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger are in their 90s and a lot of their closest friends and proteges aren't lagging behind very far. There's no clear heir to David Rockefeller either, who, along with his family, built almost the complete worldwide network of NGOs in the post-World War II era. His son, Dr. Richard Rockefeller, died in a plane crash in 2014. While respected in the medical world, Dr. Richard Rockefeller had no influence in the world of business, politics, or think tanks. The same goes for David Rockefeller, Jr., or the rest of David Rockefeller's children (all daughters): they have been involved in various philanthropic projects, maybe a think tank here and there, but they have virtually no political influence and do not possess the vast riches anymore the Rockefeller family acquired in the late 19th and early 20th century through the oil business.

"Apart from David Rockefeller and Laurance Rockefeller, the only member of the Rockefeller family with any political influence heading into the 1990s was Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia's senator from 1985 to 2015, who served as vice chairman and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the years after 9/11. A son of David's brother, Nelson Rockefeller, Jay Rockefeller has been involved in a number of NGOs - including Bilderberg 1971-1972, the CFR, Alfalfa, Trilateral Commission, Japan Society and Asia Society - but his influence on national or international politics never even remotely compared to that of the Henry Kissinger-David Rockefeller duo. Jay is getting into his 80s, so chances are we won't be hearing much from him anymore. And while his son Justin has been active in the NGO world, this also has been at a rather low level, similar to the children of David Rockefeller. 

"Thus, it will be interesting to see how the liberal establishment, which for almost a century has had the Rockefeller family to rally around, will adapt to this new situation, especially in a world with dwindling national resources, a recalcitrant Russia, an emerging China, rapidly rising CO2 and methane levels, and other global challenges."

Jay Rockefeller

Thus, it would appear that the Rockefeller family is poised to fade away from the halls of power just as their long time rivals the Morgans did over half a century ago. And with globalism's longstanding "Rock of Ages" now gone, these challenges are only going to become more pronounced. It is likely that the infighting and fractures within the American elite will only become more extreme, which may lead to desperation as their status is threatened both from without (i.e. China and Russia) and within (primarily from the far right).

As such, the prospect of another major war was likely increased even more with Rockefeller's death. While he was able to maintain some semblance of order through sheer force of personality in the twenty-first century, the collapse of the post-WWII order was already inevitable and with it will come another era of chaos and instability. Rockefeller was a monstrous figure on any number of level to be sure, but he was also the product of a generation of elites that had witnessed modern warfare among superpowers first hand. As such, he and many of the elites of that generation seemed to realize that there was a line that should never be crossed.

Those now in the driver's seat do not appear to have such qualms. And that is most distressing.

some may even believe they are fulfilling prophecy...