THE ONLY PEOPLE in the world, it seems, who believe in the conspiracy theory of history are those of us who have studied it. While Franklin D. Roosevelt might have exaggerated when he said “Nothing happens in politics by accident; if it happens, it was planned that way,” Carroll Quigley – Bill Clinton’s favourite professor at Georgetown University – boldly admitted in his Tragedy & Hope (1966) that (a) the multitudes were already under the control of a small but powerful group bent on world domination and (b) Quigley himself was a part of that group.
Internet conspiracy sites strive to identify the conspiratorial factions. We get pieces here and pieces there. The world is run by Freemasons, some say. Other say Skull & Bones, and a loose confederation of secret societies. CIA gets lots of votes, along with Mossad (though I suspect these factions are merely tools) and, of course, “the British.” A major front runner is the International Banking Cartel. When Victor Marsden published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1906, which purported to be a Jewish plan to take over the world, Jewish writers denied responsibility, charging a Catholic plot to defame Jewry. Whose side was Marsden on? You can get so deep into conspiracies that the suspects start cancelling each other out. It can become frustrating.