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Bilderberg Meeting

Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands, eponymous location of the first conference in 1954
Formation	29 May 1954; 64 years ago (1954-05-29)
Membership	c. 150 invitees, smaller core group
Chairman of the Steering Committee	Henri de Castries
Website	bilderbergmeetings.org

The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual conference established in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands^[1] "to foster dialogue between Europe and North America".^[2] Participants are European and North American political leaders, experts from industry, finance, academia, and the media.^[2] The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule.^[2] The Bilderberg meetings are also unofficially called the "Bilderberg Group", "Bilderberg conference" or "Bilderberg Club".

Origin

The first conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954.^[3] It was initiated by several people, including Polish politician-in-exile Józef Retinger who, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, 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 then-head of Unilever, Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, the 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.^[7] 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 also supplied funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.^[5]

Participants

The participants are between 120 and 150 people composed of political leaders, experts from industry, finance, academia and the media.^[2] About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields.^[2][3] Historically, attendee lists have been weighted toward bankers, politicians, directors of large businesses^[8] and board members from large publicly traded corporations, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.^[9] Heads of state, including former King Juan Carlos I of Spain and former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings.^[9][10] A source connected to the group told The Daily Telegraph in 2013 that other individuals, whose names are not publicly issued, sometimes turn up "just for the day" at the group's meetings.^[11]

Meetings

Activities and goals

The group's original goal of promoting Atlanticism, of strengthening U.S.–European relations and preventing another world war has grown; the Bilderberg Group's theme is to "bolster a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe" according to Andrew Kakabadse.^[3] In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and a steering committee member for 30 years, 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."^[12]

According to the web page of the group, the meetings are conducted under the Chatham House Rule, allowing the participants to use any information they gained during the meeting, but not to disclose the names of the speakers or any other participants. According to former chairman Étienne Davignon in 2011, 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.^[13] A 2008 press release from the "American Friends of Bilderberg" stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference and that at the meetings, no resolutions were proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued."^[14] However, in November 2009, the group hosted a dinner meeting at the Château of Val-Duchesse in Brussels outside its annual conference to promote the candidacy of Herman Van Rompuy for President of the European Council.^[15]

Organizational structure

Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations.^[16] Official posts include a chairman and an Honorary Secretary General.^[9] The group's rules do not contain a membership category but former participants receive the annual conference reports.^[17] The only category that exists is "member of the steering committee."^[18] Besides the committee, there is a separate advisory group with overlapping membership.^[19]

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 University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.^[20]

According to James A. Bill, the "steering committee usually met twice a year to plan programs and to discuss the participant list."^[21]

In 2002, author Jon Ronson wrote that the group has a small central office in Holland [sic] which each year decides what country will host the forthcoming meeting. The host country then has to book an entire hotel for four days, plus arrange catering, transport and security. To fund this, the host solicits donations from sympathetic corporations such as Barclays, Fiat Automobiles, GlaxoSmithKline, Heinz, Nokia and Xerox.^[22]

Chairmen of the Steering Committee

Chairmen of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings			Tenure as Chairman	Country	Office(s)
		Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (1911–2004)	29 May 1954 – 29 September 1976 (22 years, 123 days) [23]	Netherlands	Prince consort of the Netherlands (1948–1980) Inspector general of the Armed forces of the Netherlands (1970–1976) Inspector general of the Royal Netherlands Air Force (1953–1970) Inspector general of the Royal Netherlands Navy (1946–1970) Inspector general of the Royal Netherlands Army (1945–1970) Commander-in-chief of the Armed forces of the Netherlands (1944–1945)
		Alec Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel (1903–1995)	22 April 1977 – 20 April 1980 (2 years, 364 days) [23]	United Kingdom	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1963–1964) Leader of the Conservative Party (1963–1965) Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1960–1963, 1970–1974) Lord President of the Council (1957, 1959–1960) Leader of the House of Lords (1957–1960) Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1955–1960) Member of the House of Lords (1951–1963, 1974–1995) Member of Parliament (1931–1945, 1950–1951, 1963–1974)
		Walter Scheel (1919–2016)	15 May 1981 – 12 May 1985 (3 years, 362 days) [24][25]	Germany	President of Germany (1974–1979) (Acting) Chancellor of Germany (1974) Vice-Chancellor (1969–1974) Minister of Foreign Affairs (1969–1974) Leader of the Free Democratic Party (1968–1974) Minister of Economic Cooperation (1961–1969) Member of the European Parliament (1956–1961) Member of the Bundestag (1953–1974)
		Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005)	25 April 1986 – 14 May 1989 (3 years, 19 days) [26]	United Kingdom	Member of the House of Lords (1977–2005)
		Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington (1919–2018)	11 May 1990 – 17 May 1998 (8 years, 6 days) [6][27]	United Kingdom	Secretary General of NATO (1984–1988) Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1979–1982) Secretary of State for Energy (1974) Chairman of the Conservative Party (1972–1974) Secretary of State for Defence (1970–1974) Leader of the House of Lords (1963–1964) Minister without portfolio (1963–1964) First Lord of the Admiralty (1959–1963) High Commissioner to Australia (1956–1959) Member of the House of Lords (1941–2018)
		Étienne Davignon, Viscount Davignon (born 1932)	3 June 1999 – 12 June 2011 (12 years, 9 days) [16][28][29]	Belgium	European Commissioner for Industrial Affairs and Energy (1981–1985) European Commissioner for Internal Market, Customs Union and Industrial Affairs (1977–1981)
		Henri de Castries, 5th Count of Castries (born 1954)	31 May 2012 – present (6 years, 263 days) [30]	France	Chairman and CEO of AXA (2000–2016)

Criticisms and conspiracy theories

Partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy, the Bilderberg Group has been criticised for its lack of transparency and accountability.^[31] The undisclosed nature of the proceedings gave rise to several conspiracy theories.^[32][13][33] This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the political spectrum, even if they disagree about the exact nature of the group's intentions. Some on the left accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose capitalist domination,^[34] while some on the right have accused the group of conspiring to impose a world government and planned economy.^[35]

In 2005, Davignon discussed accusations of the group striving for a one-world government 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."^[33]

One of the most concise academic papers critical of Bilderberg's 'Deep State' role in influencing geopolitical events out of the public spotlight was written in 1996 by Prof. Mike Peters of Leeds Metropolitan University and published in Lobster. Entitled "The Bilderberg Group and the Project for European Unification", Peters expresses incredulity that so few academics have examined the Bilderberg Group's international financial and political lobbying clout but closely examines links between the post-war effort for a united Europe and specific individuals connected with the Bilderberg Group.

To anticipate what will be said later, I believe that one of the key assumptions often made by structural Marxists, namely that the capitalist class is always divided into competing fractions which have no mechanisms for co-ordination other than the state, is not empirically sustainable. Part of this misconception, it could be said, derives from an over-literal understanding of the concept of the 'market' as constituting the only social relation amongst different fractions of capital. At least as far as the very large, and above all, the international (or as we would say in today's jargon, the 'global') corporations are concerned, this is definitely not the case: very sophisticated organs do exist whereby these capitalist interests can and do hammer out common lines of strategy. Bilderberg is one of these mechanisms.^[36]

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 Phyllis 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 Bilderberg group, whose internationalist policies would pave the way for world communism.^[38]

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."^[34]

Proponents of Bilderberg conspiracy theories in the United States include individuals and groups such as the John Birch Society,^[35][40] political activist Phyllis Schlafly,^[40] writer Jim Tucker,^[41] political activist Lyndon LaRouche,^[42] conspiracy theorist Alex Jones,^[3][43][44] and politician Jesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009 episode of his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.^[45] Non-American proponents include Lithuanian writer Daniel Estulin.^[46]

Concerns about lobbying have arisen.^[47][48] Ian Richardson sees Bilderberg as the transnational power elite, "an integral, and to some extent critical, part of the existing system of global governance", that is "not acting in the interests of the whole".^[49] An article in The Guardian in June 2017 criticized the world view expressed in an agenda published by the Bilderberg group.^[50]

See also

• List of Bilderberg participants


• Trilateral Commission


• 
  Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs)


• Council on Foreign Relations


• World Economic Forum


• Bohemian Club


• Le Cercle


• Valdai Discussion Club

References

Further reading

External links

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