Agreement: None Dare...pp. 68-69

We're back with no more interruptions. Grading is done and I can certainly carve out the time to write these updates...until the next grading season that is. 

We come back with Allen focusing on a familiar target to 90s era conspiracy theorists: the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers are one of those people/families that are so wealthy that the word "wealth" doesn't apply anymore. They aren't rich, they are beyond it. So this makes them a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, anarchists, socialists, and a bunch of other people that normally wouldn't agree on anything. The central idea that all of these groups agree on is: someone like them shouldn't have that much influence when they are largely unaccountable. Nelson Rockefeller was accountable when he was NY governor, but that's not what people like Allen mean. He means overall they have so much money that nothing can happen to them which is a bad thing. 

And I, agree. Pre-Covid, I worked as a valet for private events. One event we worked on was a Billionaire's granddaughter's wedding. A few of the guys and I were discussing what would happen if this Billionaire walked out of the party, approached one of us, and shot us dead. I answered, "not a damn thing." Sure, the police would show up, an ambulance would come, the press would be there. This billionaire would never see the inside of even a holding cell. Not in the United States anyway, probably not anywhere. The amount of money that could be used by this person would just squash any notion of justice. This billionaire, you wouldn't recognize by name, he's got much less clout than the Rockefeller center Rockefellers. 

However, this is a problem that I have as well, but I don't care about what really bothers Allen. What bothers Allen is that the Rockefeller family doesn't pass the "conservative test." This is the same problem that people like Alex Jones have with George Soros. They don't care that he's rich, they care that he's rich and liberal. If they cared they'd lump Soros in with the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. Money should only be spent the one way according to them, and Rockefeller--even though he was critical of Eisenhower--wasn't conservative enough therefore Gov. Nelson Rockefeller might as well be Stalin. 

This brings me to a question. Does Gary Allen want socialism? He keeps bringing up the problem that David Rockefeller took a trip to the Kremlin. The book characterizes this as a "vacation" but other sources call this for what it was, "a business trip." Rightly, Allen does segregate the two brothers. Nelson was the political one while David ran the bank. So why does David go to Russia during the height of the cold war? To make money. Conspiracy theorists always make this mistake (if it is indeed a mistake)--in which they find an odd thing and then apply to the most unreasonable explanation for it. If you are the head of a bank and want an edge over the competition, going to a country that no other bank operates in and trying to establish a branch is a bold move. Allen also leaves out the fact that he wasn't the only person to visit the Kremlin, Rockefeller was part of the Dartmouth conferences which were a dialogue between the US and the USSR until 1990. 

Should an ultra-wealthy banker be part of the decision-making processes regarding foreign policy? No, I don't think so, but I'm willing to chalk that up to the unrestrained wealth that these people have and that some Socialism would probably help with that. I don't feel, and this is an important difference, that he secretly controls the USSR. 

After all, a week after the meeting Kruschev was removed from office. Does this mean that Rockefeller dictates the leadership of the USSR? That's what Allen wants us to think, but his knowledge of Soviet politics is even less strong than his knowledge of US domestic politics. I'm not going to spend a thousand words discussing Kruschev's premiership and ouster from the head of the USSR. I am going to say that the party and was unhappy with his workaround of the bureaucracy. There were also the massive food shortages, but we never let that stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory (see: the Illuminati and the French Revolution). 

The operation of the Soviet Government was so Byzantine that we should stop using the word Byzantine. Allen doesn't get it, and this pronouncement is just to his howler monkey readers that will point out that this visit happened then Kruschev was removed from office. They absolutely will not listen to the actual explanation.

This brings me back to my earlier question: does Allen think that the Rockefellers should be Socialists? He's clearly against both socialism and SOCIALISM, but he keeps talking about the mega-rich Rockefellers who should be anti-Socialist because of their wealth but aren't? Is it the hypocrisy that bothers him? The proper answer is that he doesn't know what anything described as "socialist" actually is. 

Finally, we get to that liberal Richard Nixon. I don't know if Allen feels personally slighted by Richard M. Nixon but he has circled back to this several times. This tie however it is Nelson Rockefeller ordering Nixon around. This isn't exactly untrue. In 1960 Richard Nixon is running for the GOP nominee. The convention was in Chicago and Nixon left to fly to New York City to discuss the upcoming election with Nelson Rockefeller. Ok, that is true. What resulted was an agreement that resulted in an adjustment of the GOP platform for the 1960 election. 

Rockefeller knew he wasn't going to be president, but it was still a contested nomination. Things would be easier if he could drop out, but again, his wealth could certainly make it more difficult for everyone involved so they adjusted the platform to something less conservative to appease Rockefeller and his liberal wing of the GOP. It's standard horse-trading during a nomination convention: the kind of thing that was certainly done to get Clinton to step aside for Obama back in 2008. Yet Allen wants us to believe in the nefariousness because the "Treaty of 5th Avenue" was so liberal. 

We are treated to a series of op-ed quotes that question why this happened at all. Nixon was not in danger of losing the election so why make this deal? Nixon's win is obvious after the fact, but ask every NFL coach who decided to punt on 4 and 1, about how things look on the ground at the time. The treaty isn't that liberal either. It calls for an increase of the military budget, a retaliatory strike capability for the nuclear arsenal, the removal of any kind of ceiling for military expenditure, and greater cooperation with the free world (this one is clearly antithetical to Allen). Domestically it calls for: the creation of a couple of new cabinet positions on domestic and foreign affairs, a goal of 5% economic growth, a tax cushion of 10B, more support for farming and agriculture (Allen is probably against this). Then it calls for programs that support education, labor, and anti-segregation--these are likely the liberal policies that Allen despises. 

I'll close by repeating the mantra of this series: none of this needs to be true, it only needs to anger up the reader. I have the advantage of the internet, I can look all of this stuff up, but when Allen says that we are unlikely to ever know the story of the 5th Avenue meeting--he was right for his time. What is the average John Birch Society member going to do: travel to the library and look up this stuff? The Council on Foreign Relations would have already censored those books.