The Rambling Begins: None Dare Call It...part IV Pg. 16-end of Chapter 1

We left off last week discussing the person that is supposed to be an intellectual bulwark for the claims that Allen is making in this book (the book has two authors but it listed everywhere as just being Allen's work--I'm just going with that from now on). We ended with a quote by Prof. Carroll Quigley, the intellectual in question, where he discusses how Allen and people like him, misquote and fail to understand his work. Conspiracy theorists claim that Quigley is the one that exposed the secret cabal, and to some extent he did...but not in the way that Allen thinks. 

What Quigley claims, to repeat from last week, is that a group of rich people exerted influence on public policy in the UK and then began extending that influence into the US. Taken broadly Quigley is warning us against the dangers of allowing the ultra-rich to exert this kind of influence--this is literally the same type of thing that Adam Smith warned about in 1776's Wealth of Nations, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." Smith writes that businesses should not be allowed to make their own laws, taxation, or regulations. As they will undoubtedly frame all of those to their benefit and to the detriment of the public. 

Quigley calls this group "the round table" and this moniker has stuck within the confines of the conspiracy circles. Yet Quigley has this as primarily a financial system that is working within capitalism that seems to be subverting the free market to reintroduce a mercantile system that it will run itself, through the exact kind of thing that Smith and later Milton Friedman warned about. Allen calls them pro-Communists and then pretends that he's summarizing from Quigley's huge book claiming that he says the secret groups have no qualms about starting wars and world domination. Allen then tosses Quigley into the fire by claiming that he approves of these wars and the group's ultimate goal. Why? Because Quigley did approve of their work (minus some things they did before 1940--and if you know anything about Rhodes and where the support of the rich in the 1930s was directed you'd understand*). Also, Quigley is a liberal and Allen can't have that. 

To finally wrap this idea up, Quigley's ultimate problem with the round table members was that they kept themselves secret. They didn't want the world to know, which he felt was wrong because there was nothing illegal about what they were doing. By keeping themselves secret they were acting like the public would demand something be done about such unelected influence. They were probably right about that. My problem is that by keeping secret they only grew the conspiracy theories about them. Allen, claims that the "Insiders," people who know about them and keep quiet, do so because of the shunning they will receive--he knows this because he's talked to them. This is utter bullshit, because A) it's a false claim. Quigley knew them and wasn't shunned for exposing them, but also because Allen should be naming them but he can't; because he, like Jones and Trump, are just making this up to pretend that they know something the rest of us don't and it's quite depressing to know that this tactic works. 

It's not just academics though, Allen cites Fr. Pedro Arrupe, who claimed on 27 December 1965 that,

  "This new godless society operates in an extremely efficient manner, at least in its higher levels of leadership. It makes use of every possible means at its disposal, be it scientific, technical, social, or economic. It follows a perfectly mapped-out strategy. It holds almost complete sway in international organizations, in financial circles, in the field of mass communications: press, cinema, radio and television."--pg. 16

This is taken as proof that Allen and his readers aren't insane and devoid of context this seems to justify that assertion. The context of this speech is that Fr. Arrupe is talking about the decline of the Catholic church (the paragraph ends with an observation that Catholics only make up 2% of the world) and the encroachment of atheism. He's not talking about a cabal of bankers seeking world domination. One must also keep in mind that the "atheism" for a 1960s Catholic, is anyone that isn't Catholic. Protestants were members of a godless religion to a 1960s Catholic (it's not until Roe v. Wade that all Christians began considering themselves members of the same religion against a common enemy). 

The chapter ends on a weird rambling note. The first thing it does is attempt a normal conclusion by reminding us that the Insiders hide everything like the boy, the cart, and the donkey--the children's puzzle that Allen admitted he couldn't solve. The author shifts to asking the reader if they've ever been to an event, then read the report and noticed that the entire story wasn't told. Who, they ask, is hiding the story behind the story? 

This is a fair question in this genre, but they have included sports events in their example. What the hell could possibly be the story behind the story in a sporting event that doesn't sound like the pretentious ramblings of an uber-fan trying to pretend that the failed playoff run was the greatest achievement in the history of history (I'm from Buffalo, there was a lot of this last year). 

The final pivot is based on how the world perceived Columbus when he tried to claim that the world is round in a society that believed it was flat. Fucking hell. This tips us off that the authors are writing off the cuff and only cherry-picking sources when they need to inflate a page count or sound smart. Allen writes, "the intellectuals scoffed at Columbus" when he said this. No, they didn't. No one outside of strict religious literalists believed that the world was flat. The only reason that Columbus was given hesitancy is that the world was believed to be much larger than it was, and there was complete ignorance of a continent on the other side. Dante's Divine Comedy was written in 1302 and his Purgatory is on the other side of the world. Nearly two hundred years prior to Columbus's voyage and the most important work in the Italian language has an Earth with hemispheres. 

Yet if people were willing to, the authors then whine to end the chapter, they would see that they were right and those snooty intellectuals were wrong. Just like they were wrong about Columbus, even though they weren't. They won't because they're mean and if those meanies admit that the conspiracy theory of history is correct they'll lose their status. Which is true, but not for the reason the book thinks. 

*Hint: it was the Fucking Nazis, they supported the Nazis.