During the era of feudalism, there were three elites. There was the church hierarchy, there was the landed aristocracy/nobility, and there were the royal families, who might also be seen as the topmost layer of the aristocracy. As feudalism ended, there was the rise of an additional elite - the business wealthy - who gained their status and influence through trade and manufacture, with or without benefit of inherited title. These elite groups competed for power, and different accommodations occurred from time to time and from place to place.

From the point of view of the general population, these elites represented security or tyranny, depending perhaps on ones perspective - but it was obvious to everyone that the elites ran society - no one pretended that society was democratic. With the advent of "democratic republics", beginning with the USA, the older elites were removed from power, but the wealthy business elite, which had evolved into the capitalist elite, remained relatively undisturbed.

Did this transformation bring about democracy, in any genuine sense, or was it merely the monopolization of power into the hands of the single remaining elite? This is a question that remains open - and it is a question that can be asked also of most of today's modern "democracies", which have each to some degree been modeled on the American precedent.
 

Although sentiment for independence in the American colonies was minimal prior to the latter half of the 18th century, there were objective conditions which made independence a natural, and comparatively non-disruptive step. The colonies were already largely self-governing, had their own social identity, had considerable natural resources, were mostly self-sufficient economically, and had their own extensive trading fleet. Boston was the third-busiest port in the British Empire.

The colonies were seen by Britain as economic investments, more than as administered territories. Some colonies, such as Pennsylvania, were privately-owned corporations, and in general the colonies were expected to take care of themselves. The colonies paid taxes to the Crown, lived under restrictions such as a prohibition on industrialization, and received in return the protection of the Crown and access to British markets. But in fact the benefits of being subject to Britain were questionable. When frontier war with French-backed natives occurred, for example, help from Britain was slow in coming and the colonies were then taxed for the troop expenditures.

There were many vocal advocates for independence, and there was widespread popular resentment of certain royal measures, such as the stamp tax. Nonetheless, until nearly the eve of revolution, most colonists wanted to remain subjects of the Crown, and sought reform of British policies toward the colonies, not independence. Even with the stamp tax, it is noteworthy that the tax burden of a typical colonist was less than that of someone of similar circumstances living in England.

In any case, it was independence that was at issue, not a social or political revolution. The existing colonial assemblies would presumably continue if independence occurred, with more or less the same people stepping forward as leaders, and with land ownership and economic activity continuing more or less as before (but without Royal interference).

As mentioned above, independence didn't promise most colonists that much of a change. But for the elite - who possessed a highly-disproportionate concentration of wealth, land ownership, and influence in local affairs - there were more compelling economic considerations.

With independence, industrial development would be possible and international trade wouldn't be directly limited by the vagaries of British imperial entanglements. The resources of the new continent could be developed without sharing the spoils with England. For the elite, a divorce from the empire represented profound and immediate economic opportunities.

The turning point in radical consciousness, when a majority of the populace came to favor independence, occurred in the form of a single earth-shaking essay: Tom Paine's Common Sense. This essay, written in an unprecedented popular style that anyone could understand, broke all existing publication records and was read aloud in villages and towns everywhere, and not only in America.

Common Sense created in the popular Western mind, for the first time, perhaps, since the early  Roman republic, the notion that government arises from the consent of the governed - that the people are the state. It marked the beginning of the popular concept of nationalism - the notion that citizens find their identity in their nation and its interests, rather than in their role as subjects of a domain belonging to royalty and nobility.

Paine was popularizing - and expanding the scope of - some of the radical ideas that had been developed by Enlightenment thinkers generally. He was concerned with promoting personal freedom, popular sovereignty, and - most particularly - creating an ironclad case for the legitimacy of a government based on the will of the people rather than on divine right or inherited dominion.

Paine was much less concerned with the other major thread of Enlightenment thinking, regarding market forces, the "invisible hand", and laissez-faire economics. Paine was so little motivated by economic gain, in fact, that he refused to accept royalties for his all-time best seller. He was, by personal disposition, much more interested in ending tyranny than he was in opening up opportunities for capitalist development.

The wealthy, and literate, elite did not need Paine to tell them about Enlightenment thinking. Nor were they as focused as Paine was on only the anti-tyranny ideas. They were at least as much taken with the laissez-faire thread, which justified their natural eagerness to pursue unfettered their economic opportunities. Many of them, in fact, were so afraid of the possibility of "mob rule", that they preferred that an American monarchy be established following independence, rather than a democracy.

Thus the War of Independence had different shades of meaning for two different constituencies. In both cases the rallying cry was "Freedom!" - but to the populace, this meant primarily personal freedom and popular democratic sovereignty, while to the business elite the emphasis was more on commercial freedom and the ability to pursue capital investment unfettered by the old regime's elites.

In the end, the spectrum of visions for the new nation had to be pinned down into a single Constitution. This was a task that fell, as one would expect, to members of the elite. The resulting document was a compromise that included elements of democracy, but that included sufficient buffering mechanisms to insure that the elite, if diligent, could control the government sufficiently for their purposes.

The rule of Crown, Nobility, and Church was definitely ended, and the principle of popular sovereignty was definitely established - as an ideal. But, to repeat our earlier question, had the old tyrants been in effect traded for new tyrants, namely the capitalist elite?

In partial answer to the question, it seems fair to say that the new constitutional regime provided aforum in which the elite and the people could peacefully vie for control, and in which checks and balances attempted to prevent either side from fully dominating the other. And all would agree, presumably, that the new regime offered better opportunities for genuine democracy than the one it superseded.

Whatever one might think about the intentions of the (mostly elite) Founding Fathers - or of the theory of the Constitution - the actual fact is that American history has been characterized by a see-saw battle for control between the people and the capitalist elite.

At times, as in the late nineteenth century robber-baron era, the elite have brazenly ruled - J. D. Rockefeller bragged about how many government officials were "in his pocket". At other times, as during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, government policy seemed more responsive, instead, to the needs and wishes of the general population.

One can debate whether the elite exert influence through secret conspiracies, or whether they simply act straightforwardly in their own perceived interest. The answer, surely, is that both mechanisms are and have always have been at work. Numerous conspiratorial "scandals" can be found throughout American history, but few would argue that without those episodes the elite would have been without major influence.

Propaganda played a pivotal role in the birth of America and has been part of the American scene ever since. It was the elite, in pursuit of commercial self-interest, who were the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, while the populace was stirred up by high-sounding democratic principles and sensationalized rabble-rousing around the issues of Royal oppression and taxation.

Propaganda is by no means unique to the American experience - all governments and elites employ propaganda - but propaganda has played a uniquely intimate role in the American experience. Because America is endowed with democratic mechanisms - the government is elected, after all - such propaganda has been essential from the beginning in order for the elite to exert the influence to which it feels entitled. Propaganda is one of the elite's primary antidotes to the dreaded disease of actual democracy.

America is the land of Hollywood, advertising, public relations, sugar-coated fairy tails, cult religions, the "Defense" Department, Disneyland, and "progress". It was of Americans that it was said "A fool is born every minute", "You can fool all the people some of the time", and "You can never underestimate the intelligence of the public". Certainly not all Americans can be so characterized, but in a land where majority rules, the effect is not much different.

The rhetoric of liberation and democracy captured the imagination not only of Americans, but of the whole world. America became an almost mystical symbol, spoken of in fable-like imagery: "the land of freedom", "the land of opportunity", "the American Dream", "streets paved with gold", "bastion of democracy". America was something people everywhere yearned to believe in - it seemed (and claimed) to be the fairy tale kingdom of everyone's childhood dreams.

America was born out of a war it initiated and it has achieved its growth through periodic warfare ever since. There has been a significant war approximately every thirty years, often initiated (overtly or covertly) by America and more often than not achieving a new stage in the growth of American power and the expansion of American-based elite interests. Such aggressiveness is not particularly unusual among nations; what is unusual is the propaganda mythology that would have America acting always in "self defense", and in defense of "freedom and democracy".

A common scenario typically underlies American involvement in wars: there is usually an incident which is perceived as an outrage against America, and the populace then rallies to the common defense with a characteristic ferocity and self-righteousness. America's contribution to causing a war is seldom acknowledged.

The incidents may be provoked, as with the Mexican War, arranged, as with the Lusitania, or fabricated, as in the Gulf of Tonkin - but they are always deftly exploited and enable the elite expansionist agenda to be further advanced, under cover of yet another crusade for "freedom and democracy". The elite is always well-prepared for the incident, has a plan ready for execution and its propaganda machinery goes into full gear as the incident unfolds.

The use of outrage-incidents to launch elite-planned military campaigns accomplishes several objectives. It triggers the in-built American war spirit, and channels the resulting righteous wrath toward the nominated enemy. It also concentrates power in the executive branch, where elite control is usually most undiluted by popular influence. Congress - where popular will is most likely to find expression - is then relegated to the role of loyal stores-supplier for the duration of the crusade.

This process is exemplified by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which enabled full-scale U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The incident itself was faked, but Congress promptly issued its usual knee-jerk Resolution, authorizing the President to "act in defense". The "authorized actions" werethen incrementally escalated into a full-scale war, with Congress having minimal additional influence and popular will finding expression only in the streets.

The eventual scope of the war was completely beyond anything authorized by the original Congressional Resolution, but once America is on the warpath, its war-culture ethic does not include room for official dissent or reconsideration - it would be "betraying the boys at the front". Even when the fake incident was exposed, it was too late to put the war genie back in the bottle.

While immigration to America has been heralded as "welcoming the huddled masses" - inspired presumably by humanitarian concern - the effect was to provide a constantly renewed pool of exploitable cheap labor. Instead of Britain's static class system of tiered exploitation, America evolved a dynamic class ladder system (the Melting Pot), where new (ethnically identifiable) lower classes were continually placed on the bottom rung, willingly trading their home-country cultural identity to struggle for acceptance as bona fide Americans.

Ethnic rivalries helped divide-and-conquer the masses, preventing democratic solidarity. Each segment of the American socioeconomic ladder seemed willing to see lower rungs suppressed, while it viewed higher rungs as its future opportunity. Thus the prisoners of the class ladder system were motivated to embrace their own exploitation and the elite was spared the development of a general popular socioeconomic consciousness.

The Horatio Alger myth was born, of the poor immigrant who achieves immense wealth in one lifetime. Thus was fostered a "lottery" mentality regarding economics - attention is focused on therare individuals who win big, distracting attention from the overall pattern of systematic subjugationand exploitation. The victim takes the blame for his own predicament: if he isn't well-off, it's only because he's not clever enough. The question of why most things are owned or controlled by the elite goes unasked.

Capitalism has only one goal: the increasing of a pot of gold into a larger pot of gold. National economic development, back when such was typical government policy, had the touted goal of providing general prosperity, but it also facilitated the growth of elite capitalist wealth. Now that the elite prefers global investment as a way to grow wealth, national economic development seems, significantly, no longer to be an objective of governmental programs.

Progress, says the myth, is about improving the quality of people's lives. But from a capitalist perspective, progress is about continually scrapping one infrastructure (or product portfolio) for another - thereby allowing capital to go through another cycle of re-investment and profit-taking. Thus rail is superseded by highways, coal by oil and electricity, home-made by store-bought clothes, ovens by microwaves, main streets by shopping centers, small farms by agribusiness, family doctors by medical corporations, home remedies by high-priced pharmaceuticals, etc.

In most cases, people willingly go along with such "progress" because of perceived or actual advantage. In some cases, however, implementation of "progress" requires covert elite intervention. Functioning intra-city light rail systems, for example, were purchased (in Los Angeles and other urban areas) and dismantled, by automobile-related interests, to be replaced by far less efficient, more polluting, oil-hungry bus and auto traffic.
 
 

The rise of communist and socialist movements, following World War One, created considerable fear in elite capitalist circles. Marxist ideology emphasized the tyrannical aspects of the capitalist elite, and issued a strident call for solidarity among common workers, who Marx credited with creating all real wealth. This ideology, which was simplistic and one-sided, had nonetheless takenfirm root in Russia and seemed poised to spread further.

In German, Italy, and Spain, in particular, anti-elite movements gained popular strength under the banners of socialism, communism, or anarchism. It is not surprising that the elite in those and other countries welcomed and encouraged the rise of fascist movements. Fascism was virulently anti- communist, pro-capitalist, and fully willing to brutally suppress any who opposed its agenda.

Hitler began his political career as an operative of German military intelligence and received funding and support from elite Western industrialists. While in prison, writing Mein Kampf, he kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk. During the Spanish Civil War, the Western elite kept the anti-fascist opposition disarmed, while it approvingly observed the efficiency of Hitler's growing war machine. American volunteers who fought against Franco found their patriotism questioned when they returned home.

Mein Kampf made it unambiguous that the primary strategic objective in Hitler's mind was the subjugation and economic exploitation of Russia. By ignoring their own prohibition on German re-armament, and providing loans, the Western elite were in fact collaborating with Hitler in the development of an invasion force targeted on Russia - socialism's bastion.

Meanwhile, the West was watching with discomfort Japan's growing economic power and imperial scope. Japan was building a formidable Asian economic zone backed up by a large, modern navy.

This was a significant threat to Western, and especially American, elite interests and designs. Not only would markets and investment opportunities in populous Asia be highly curtailed, but Japan would be dislodging the West from its accustomed role as collective master of the seas and arbiter of global imperial arrangements. And who knew what would be the bounds of this Asian empire? The aggressive expansionism of Japan seemed destined to force a war with the West, sooner or later.

America handled this complex situation with all the finesse and subtlety of a skilled martial-arts expert, guided by a strategic vision unsurpassed by the imperial masterminds of any previous age.

America Orchestrates Global Domination
 
 

Many articles on the so-called 'New World Order' has been published over the years. Disinformation and the numerous myths surround the New World Order, many originating from 'alternative' sources. These have only served to confuse and divert attention from the real issue. Informed observers are aware that the so-called 'New World Order' is simply the old world order wrapped up in a new form.

The first person to use the term 'New World Order' in the modern era was George Bush, in a speech during the Gulf War. Subsequently, think-tank plutocrats at the Council on Foreign Relations criticised Bush, knowing full well this terminology might become the catchcry to describe post-Cold War developments. They were right. The world's media quickly latched onto the 'New World Order', and it almost became a household term -- at least for awhile. They told us the end of the Cold War would lead to the establishment of a new era of peace, freedom and democracy. The 'New World Order', to most people, was a new order in which all of humanity would peacefully co-exist and prosper.

For some in the power structures of the world, the wonderful 'New World Order' was a convenient myth to tell the masses -- to comfort the masses after the finish of the Cold War 'game' -- that everything was going to be ok.

Unfortunately for the power structures of the world, the myth was quickly exposed as a con. Opposing forces like Third World independence fighters and revolutionaries, patriotic and progressive groups, and anti-Establishment activists, vehemently denounced the 'New World Order' as a sham. In fact, instead of humanity heading towards a wonderful new era, it was heading into a nightmare.

For all the opposing forces, the 'New World Order' is simply a term that describes the power structure's control and exploitation of the entire planet. It is a new era, only in the sense that financial capitalism may now access, exploit and destroy all the Earth's resources and people.

This page is devoted to exposing the 'New World Order' for what it is. We will place any articles, news or information that serves to inform the reader of new developments.
 

About Richard K. Moore (USA Citizen)

PO Box 26 - Wexford, Ireland
rkmoore@iol.ie
Cyberlib: ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib
 

"After a career in software development and research in Silicon Valley, I decided to take an extended sabbatical to pursue writing and political analysis. I moved to Ireland, started some email conferences, and developed some themes that have been subsequently published in print media. My basic thesis, whose validity is being confirmed at alarming speed, is that our 200-year-old democratic institutions are being scrapped in favor of a feudalistic global corporatist regime. What I find most alarming is the success enjoyed by media propaganda in convincing people of the inevitability and desirability of this new Dark Ages."