Context: Behold a Pale Horse pg. 72

 "...there is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."--President Woodrow Wilson

If I had to take a guess, I would say that this quote is one of the most cited in conspiracy literature from a major political figure. This is a competitive field too: we have the fake quote from Hitler concerning gun control, lots of fake quotes from Clinton and Obama, Obama's real but entirely out of context "You didn't build that," and Trump's "the storm..." comment that gave Q-anon a reason to exist. Wilson's quote here is one for serious conspiracy theorists, not these current hacks that live off of memes and tweets. 

The only quote that I can think of that is more popular amongst conspiracy literature was taken from a speech given by George H. W. Bush on September 11th, 1991, this is where he utters the phrase "new world order." The full phrase is "a new world order" and even then it is completely out of context. Bush was discussing a world led by the powers of the West and Russia as a unified body. 

The Wilson quote is oft-quoted because it looks like a confession. Whereas even the Bush line requires some mental gymnastics to take it out of the entire speech, the Wilson quote appears to be a confession. Cooper places this line at the beginning of chapter 2 titled "Secret Societies and the New World Order."  

The impression that Cooper is giving here is that even the president of the United States is aware of these powers and is fearful of them. You'll notice that Wilson's line does not name who this power is or even who is afraid of it. Surely, this is frightening stuff. 

The "..." at the beginning of the line is glaring but what is most important is what follows Wilson's quote. For context, Wilson's quote comes from the book "The New Freedom" which is a 1913 book that compiled Wilson's speeches and served as a summary of his 1912 campaign platform. 

Here is what the ellipses cover: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know..."

Then the Cooper part begins. The ellipses fast forwards through the introduction to the juicy bit that Cooper wants us to pay attention to. It is important though that we understand who Wilson is talking about. As president he is hearing confessions from people in various industries who are afraid, we do not know, and probably can never know whether these conversations ever took place, though we shall assume that they did. Is this still a confirmation of Cooper's point? We aren't given the "who" that the line refers to in Cooper's version, but now we know it is business leaders who have confided in him. The revelation here makes a pivotal difference: the confidences only derive from the business world. Yet, this is still a revelation that even the leaders of the business world are afraid of something. Cooper wants us to think that it's the New World Order and the Illuminati, but the rest of the next paragraph tells us exactly what is going on.

"They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new man's wares." 

The issue that Wilson is discussing is that even business leaders cannot pursue their goals freely. If a banker wants to expand into a different business, the banker knows he is subject to those in control of the new business and that he better know his place. It's hard to feel pity for the poor banker but let's put the entire speech from 1912 in context. This is the era of the Robber Barons of the near total monopolies on entire industries. Wilson could very well be describing someone who is attempting to start their own oil company but then runs into the power of Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Even if that person can start their business, they won't be able to secure equipment because Standard Oil will influence those manufacturers to not sell to the new company. They'll do this by refusing to buy from that supply company in the future. This is the power that business leaders fear mentioning, the dreaded word "monopoly."

There is no mystery here, there is no supernatural element, no alien force. In context, the line is merely a motive for Wilson's progressive economic platform where he wants to return the United States to a land where the ambitious need not fear the utter squashing of their ambitions by powers fearful of competition. 

Instead of this reasonable fear of economic dictatorship, Cooper wants us to believe that it is something more malicious than greed. It is "they" who pull the puppet strings, "them" who run the silent war with the quiet weapons, not someone who bought an entire industry and then strangled the rest of us with it. Yes, the robber barons of the gilded age were a public menace, and monopolies are not contributive to a free enterprise system; but this is a far cry from claiming a shadow cabal directing human civilization. People do not speak of these powers because they fear them, that much is true, but they fear them economically. They fear them because the coal magnates will literally have this president send in the army to quell a miner's strike. 

The trouble with Cooper using this line is that it also implies that this power operates in secret. In 1912 it does not. An iron mining concern will be reluctant to criticize Carnegie because Carnegie is the only buyer of his raw material in 1899, and all of this is known to anyone with an interest. The other trouble is that Cooper again makes the mistake of attributing a very real problem as being the responsibility of a fictional villain. 

The US economy should not allow any single company to become that powerful. It is, as even Adam Smith observed in 1776, antithetical to the idea of a capitalist economy. The fact that 10 companies control the entirety of the US food market is a huge problem. There are only three media companies, four cellular companies, and only four banking companies. One company controls all the eyewear while only two companies produce the beer. Wilson's speech here is not proposing to stop it, it is proposing to shed light on it. A small private business could operate as it wanted, but a larger firm needs to allow the public to examine it. I'm not an economist or a business historian so I do not have the ability to judge whether this would be effective but it would at least be something. 

Cooper and his readers, would have the effect of stopping any kind of progress on this front in order to look for demons. This is a problem with conspiracy theorizing as a worldview. The believers will overlook real problems in order to find the devil (sometimes they are doing this literally).