The prince’s tell-all media blitz was meant to lift the lid on royal failings. Even more clearly, it shows the price Britain [and thus the whole (masonic) world, over (at least) the past five centuries] pays for monarchy
Must we, really? I’m afraid there is no avoiding the great crown soap opera as this finely crafted Prince Harry publicity spectacular engulfs the news. However nugatory the revelations about scenes of brotherly rivalry, beards, bridesmaids and broken dog bowls, it’s no use pretending it’s not happening or that the country and its households aren’t dividing into Harryites and Williamists.
Pollsters see a leave v remain rift – with leavers on the side of the monarchy and remainers inclined towards Meghan and Harry. While older people back the palace and the young lean more to Montecito, I doubt that last night’s angry and contrary ITV interview will restore Harry’s sliding ratings.
The interview landed as the next neatly choreographed step in the ace publicity machine of Prince Harry’s publishers. After the Oprah interview in 2021, six episodes of the Netflix series, teasers for his four TV interviews this week and the early leaking of his book, was there really anything new for him to say or for us to think? Nothing, beyond the painfully raw spectacle of his inchoate rage.
The palace, with its hordes of PR specialists, spent weeks war-gaming its response – it was prepared for devastating revelations, ready to break its silence if absolutely necessary. So far, its worst fears have “not come to light”, which tantalisingly suggests it thought Harry had more lethal missiles to unleash.
Of course, Harry’s words evoke some sympathy for an angry, damaged man. In what family is it psychologically acceptable to consign the younger son to service the elder for life? Few parental divorces are as horrible as the one these boys suffered, their schoolfriends snickering over the tampon tape and the James Gilbey recordings, everyone ogling Diana and Charles’s self-justifying TV interviews and books, capped by their mother’s horrific death. The monarchy teetered as the Queen misjudged the Diana moment, but then she held it together. If it could survive all that, the blow of a minor twig breaking from “the Firm” to seek his Californian revenge is hardly fatal – as he voices full support for the monarchy itself, condemning only its toxic relationship with certain portions of the press.
His one act of heroism is this dangerous duel with the tabloids that he blames for his mother’s death, as he pursues cases against the publisher of the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers and the owners of the Daily Mirror and the Sun, the Reach plc subsidiary MGN Ltd and Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, accusing them of phone-hacking or other breaches of privacy. His father warned that it was a suicide mission, but Harry says the royals have, in feeding the beast, made a pact with the devil. He rages at their failure to stand up to them: there was not a word from the palace in rebuke for Jeremy Clarkson’s disgusting hate attack on Meghan.
Everyone knows Harry is entirely right about the filthy, hypocritical, moralising amoral press [as well as social media and the internet] and its corrosive effect on national life. Yet in his mist of confusion and contradictions, he doesn’t see that publicity is the monarchy’s lifeblood. When Queen Victoria withdrew from the public eye for years, her popularity plummeted. That oxygen is how the royals make their pointless living as fantasy creatures: they need the press to justify their very existence, like any celebrities. Their only role is to entertain us, and Harry plays his part perfectly. Walter Bagehot was wrong: the royals were never the “dignified” part of the constitution, but undignified performers who reduce us to infantilism in following their small dramas. Bagehot wrote that the purpose of the monarchy is “to excite and preserve the reverence of the population”. Indeed, citizens are reduced to subjects in revering this family of nothingness. Nor was Bagehot right to claim the monarchy’s “mystery is its life” and “we must not let in daylight upon magic”. The public needs feeding constantly with each new royal episode.
Of course the press is retaliating with a sewage outflow of bile, the full firing squad of rightwing commentators hating the Sussexes’ “wokery”. It stays unspoken that “wokeness” means #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, race swirling around in their loathing of “victim culture”. Harry sounds ill-equipped intellectually to take them on, unfocused in his fury against them, unpolitical, tin-eared and clueless about how his Afghanistan kill-count angered other soldiers, giving fresh ammunition to the enemy press. Don’t expect him to examine the slavery sources of some royal riches: the future William IV made a pro-slavery speech in the Lords accusing William Wilberforce’s abolition campaign of misrepresenting the treatment of enslaved people in the British sugar colonies, whose good living conditions he could attest to himself.
With the battle to re-examine the legacy of empire and slavery barely begun, the royal family’s failure to prevent Meghan’s flight is a disaster for them. The Queen is gone. The monarchy’s popularity has declined for years: more 18- to 24-year-olds would now prefer to have an elected head of state, while only 53% of 25- to 49-year-olds are in its favour. As Graham Smith of Republic says, three white men in a row as kings stretching ahead for maybe the next 100 years looks singularly out of step with modern Britain.
Look at the Clarksonesque roll-call of Harry and Meghan haters and you might instinctively take Harry’s side, but no, let’s not be dragged into the psychodrama of this spin-off from The Crown. This country is braced for the deepest recession in the G7, so badly misgoverned that people can’t call an ambulance to a heart attack or police to a burglary, catch a train or stretch their shrinking wages to pay for food and heat, while public services are drained dry by austerity. Yet how easily we succumb to the great distraction of another instalment of the royal charivari, briefly diverting public anxiety and conveniently relieving pressure on the government.
Monarchy is a cast of mind that blocks reform, an unholy religion made of these remarkably unremarkable people. Despite the best education for generations, their most useful genetic function is to demonstrate that talent and intelligence is randomly assigned. Monarchy breeds in Britain a feudalism of the imagination that gives a stamp of approval to inheritance and to the inequality, risen rampantly in recent decades, that is at the root of our social and political malaise. Harry exhibits the epic unreality the royals inhabit when he imagines this: “I genuinely believe, and I hope, that reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect across the entire world.” The rest of the world, I fear, enjoys the show, but laughs at our absurdity.
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Five Secret Societies That Have Remained Shrouded in Mystery
Secret societies have flourished throughout history and count Founding Fathers and royals among their ranks. Members (most often men) have been tapped to join The Knights Templar, the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati, Skull and Bones and Bilderberg. The allure of secret societies is part mystery, part legend.
Conspiracy theories have surrounded them for centuries, with rumors of groups like the Illuminati being linked to everything from the French Revolution to the assassination of JFK. But it’s important to separate fact from fiction. Here are the real stories behind history’s most exclusive secret societies.
Click here to watch "Secret Societies" on HISTORY Vault
1. The Knights Templar
The first seal of the Knights Templar.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
The Knights Templar were warriors dedicated to protecting Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land during the Crusades. The military order was founded around 1118 when Hugues de Payens, a French knight, created the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon—or The Knights Templar for short. Headquartered at Temple Mount in Jerusalem, members pledged to live a life of chastity, obedience and poverty, abstaining from gambling, alcohol and even swearing.
The Knights Templar were known for more than their military prowess and moral lifestyle. They became one of the most wealthy and powerful forces in Europe after setting up a bank that allowed pilgrims to deposit money in their home countries and withdraw it in the Holy Land.
Their influence swelled to a new high in 1139, when Pope Innocent II issued a Papal Bull exempting them from paying taxes… and decreeing that the only authority they had to answer to was the Pope. At the apex of their power, the Knights Templar owned the island of Cyprus, a fleet of ships and lent money to kings. But not all kings were happy customers.
READ MORE: 10 Reasons Why the Knights Templar Were History's Fiercest Fighters
What Happened to the Knights Templar?
When the Crusades came to an end after the fall of Acre, the Knights Templar withdrew to Paris, where they focused on their banking endeavors. On October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France, whom the Knights Templar had denied additional loans, had a group of knights arrested and tortured until they made false confessions of depravity. In 1309, as the city of Paris watched, dozens of Knights Templar were burned at the stake for their alleged crimes.
Under pressure from the French crown, Pope Clement V formally dissolved the order in 1312 and redistributed their wealth. Rumors that the Knights Templar guarded artifacts like the Holy Grail and Shroud of Turin began bubbling up among conspiracy theorists. Popular books and films like The Da Vinci Code continue to inspire curiosity about the Knights Templar today.
WATCH: Full episodes of America's Book of Secrets online now.
Knights Templar Symbol: The Cross of Lorraine
A soldier of the Knights Templar, with the Cross of Lorraine pictured below.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Cross of Lorraine (Croix de Lorraine in French) is a double-barred cross that is featured prominently in the coat of arms of the Dukes of Lorraine. After Lorraine Nobleman Godfrey de Bouillon became the king of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the symbol became known as the “Jerusalem Cross.” When the Knights Templar arrived in the Holy Land, they adopted it as the symbol of their order.
During World War II, the Cross of Lorraine was a symbol of the French resistance to Nazi rule. Some eagle-eyed observers have claimed to spot the Cross of Lorraine in the Exxon and Nabisco logos and even stamped on Oreo cookies.
Read more: Who Were the Knights Templar?
2. The Freemasons
The steps of Freemasonry.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
The freemasons loom large in American history—after all, 13 of the 39 men who signed the U.S. Constitution were Masons. Founding Fathers like George Washington, James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Paul Revere all counted themselves as members of the fraternal order. But who are the freemasons?
The freemasons can trace their routes to the Middle Ages in Europe, a time when most craftsmen were organized into local guilds. Cathedral builders, by nature of their profession, had to travel from city to city. They identified one another via signs of their trade, like the builder’s square and compass in Freemasonry’s now-iconic symbol.
The earliest reference to masons is in the Regius Poem, or Halliwell Manuscript, which was published in 1390, but Freemasonry as we know it today was founded in 1717, when four London lodges merged to form England’s first Grand Lodge. Freemasonry quickly spread across Europe and to the American colonies.
Freemason Beliefs
Freemasonry is not a religion, though members are encouraged to believe in a Supreme Being, or "Grand Architect of the Universe.” Masonic temples and secret rituals have brought them into conflict with the Catholic Church. The Church first condemned the freemasons in 1738 and has gone on to issue around 20 decrees against them. In 1985, Roman Catholic Bishops restated over 200 years’ worth of these strictures in the face of an increased number of Catholics joining the order.
The Church wasn’t their only enemy; the secrecy of the masons garnered such distrust in early America that it inspired America’s first “third party”: The Anti-Masonic Party.
Are There Freemasons Today?
A depiction of a Masonic ritual taking place in a New York Masonic lodge, circa 1900.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Freemasons exist today, and their public image has been greatly influenced by the high-profile charity work of the Shriners, a subset of freemasons also known as “the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.” The Shriners were founded by freemasons in 1870 at New York City’s Knickerbocker College and continue their volunteer work today.
How Do You Become a Freemason?
The rituals around becoming a freemason are shrouded in secrecy, but have entered the public imagination in film and TV and were even parodied on an episode of “The Simpsons.” Membership is open to all males over the age of 21, and women can join an associated group known as “The Order of the Eastern Star.” According to the New York Times, aspiring members must ask to join and cannot be otherwise approached, as summed up in a recruiting slogan: “All you have to do is ask.”
If you do get in, you’ll be in good company: Famous freemasons include Mozart, Winston Churchill, Davy Crockett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Wayne.
Freemason Symbol: The Square and Compasses
The Freemason symbol for the Grand Loge de France, the third largest Masonic obedience in France.
Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
The most recognizable symbol of the freemasons is “The Square and Compasses.” The right angle of the builder’s square is joined by a compass, a central tool in geometry–which, according to some experts at MIT, is represented by the “G” at the heart of the symbol. Others have interpreted the “G” as representative of God, the “Grand Architect of the Universe.”
The Eye of Providence
The Eye of Providence is on the dollar bill.
Spyros Arsenis/EyeEm/Getty Images
The view of the All-Seeing Eye as a masonic symbol has been sharply debated. Long before the freemasons, Egyptians used the “Eye of Horus,” and the all-seeing eye appears repeatedly in Renaissance art as a symbol of Christianity and God’s watchfulness. But organizations like the Philadelphia Federal Reserve claim freemasons Henry Wallace and Franklin D. Roosevelt purposefully chose it when they redesigned the dollar bill in 1934.
According to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, the “All-Seeing Eye” is a masonic symbol of the “watchful care of the Supreme Architect” that began appearing in printed Masonic literature in the mid-1700s.
3. The Illuminati
The initiation of an Illuminatus.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
The Illuminati were founded by professor Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria on May 1, 1776. Weishaupt, chafing at the power of the conservative Catholic Church and the Bavarian monarchy, sought to cast aside organized religion in favor of a new form of “illumination” through reason. Inspired by the spread of the Enlightenment across Europe, he also drew upon ideas expressed by the Jesuits (he was a former member), the Mysteries of the Seven Sages of Memphis, the Kabbalah and freemasons. He recruited heavily from the latter group, infiltrating masonic lodges in his quest to recruit some of the wealthiest and most influential men in Europe.
Members of the Bavarian Illuminati, referred to as “Perfectibilists,” were broken into three tiers of increasing power and drawn from societal elites including noblemen like former freemason Baron von Knigge and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. All communication was in cipher and members were given classical nicknames (Weishaupt’s, for example, was Spartacus).
What Happened to the Illuminati?
The organization flourished before being stamped out by Karl Theodor of Bavaria, who issued an edict making membership in the Illuminati punishable by death in 1787. But the death of the Bavarian Illuminati did not quell gossip about their clandestine activities, and conspiracy theorists have linked the group to everything from the French Revolution to the assassination of JFK. The Illuminati served as inspiration for Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons and Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
4. Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones members from the class of 1861.
Manuscripts and Archives Digital Library/Yale University
The Order of Skull and Bones is a secret society founded at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut in 1832. Skull and Bones founder William Huntington Russell was inspired by an occult society he’d visited in Germany. His co-founder was Alphonso Taft, future Secretary of War under President Grant and father of president William Howard Taft… who would also be a member of Skull and Bones. The prominent list of Bonesman includes several presidents and modern-day power brokers.
How Do You Join Skull And Bones?
A postcard showing the Skull and Bones Society building known as "The Tomb."
Rykoff Collection/Corbis/Getty Images
Each year, 15 seniors at Yale are tapped to join Skull and Bones. Their names are published in Yale Rumpus, though what happens behind the closed doors of The Tomb, the windowless meeting space where Bonesmen gather twice a week, is under wraps: Members take an oath of secrecy. Graduate members are referred to as “patriarchs,” while those undergoing initiation are called “knights.” Outsiders of the group are “barbarians.”
Famous Skull and Bones members include Presidents William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush; founder of Time magazine Henry Luce; former secretary of state and presidential hopeful John Kerry; Fortune 500 elites and members of the CIA.
The controversial 1986 exposé America’s Secret Establishment by Anthony Sutton claimed that Skull and Bones was out to create a “new world order” run by Bonesmen, prompting myriad conspiracy theories.
Symbol: Skull And Bones
Manuscripts and Archives Digital Library/Yale University
The symbol of Skull and Bones is, appropriately, a skull with two crossbones. What’s less clear is the meaning of the number “322” beneath them. Yale Alumni Magazine points to a popular theory that it represents the year 322 B.C., when Alexander the Great died.
Watch: Was Geronimo’s Skull Stolen by Skull & Bones?
5. Bilderberg
The 1966 Bilderberg Conference took place in Wiesbaden, Germany, where leading American and Europeans met, including NATO Secretary General Manilo Brosio (left).
Roland Witschel/Picture Alliance/Getty Images
The first Bilderberg Meeting was in 1954 and held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands, from which the organization gets its name. Convened by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, it was a gathering of powerful politicians from North America and Europe designed to foster warmer relations between the two continents among fears of growing anti-Americanism in Europe.
While not strictly a secret society like the Illuminati or freemasons, Bilderberg’s high-profile attendees—previous guests have included Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger—and its use of the Chatham House Rule blocking attendees from sharing what actually happens in meetings gives the group an air of mystery. Journalists are barred from reporting on it. Meeting minutes are not released.
How Do You Get an Invite to the Bilderberg Meeting?
Bilderberg attendees are selected by a dedicated international committee. Every year, about 120-140 people are invited, with about two-thirds coming from Europe and one-third from North America. The Washington Post reports that while backgrounds in government and politics are the most common, attendees from fields like academia, finance and media have also been included.
Bilderberg Meeting Conspiracy Theories
A protester's sign reads "Stop The New World Order" near the venue of the 2016 Bilderberg Group conference on June 12, 2016 in Dresden, Germany.
Chad Buchanan/Getty Images
The level of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Meeting have given rise to many rumors, including unproven theories that Bilderberg attendees are behind the creation of the European Union, the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, reports the New York Times. Conspiracy theorists have painted the group as plotting a new world order. Their official website maintains, “Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions.”
Publicly known topics of conversation for this year’s Bilderberg Meeting are Brexit, cyber security and climate change.
What happens behind the closed doors of these secret societies has caused debate for centuries. What’s clear is that they continue to spark the imagination and curiosity of the public.
"In 1983 I became a Mason in the small community I had been raised in. This gave me a perspective of community dynamics involving the local families, business people and politics that made up our community. One of my biggest surprises in the lodge was to see our local business people, police, mayor and municipal judges who were Masons. I was proud to be a member of this organization involving the pillars of our community. My initial impression was that professional and successful people joined Freemasonry. It didn't occur to me that these people had become successful through a system providing mutual benefit to each other. It didn't occur to me that these people had access to the private affairs of every member of our community. The power this gives to Masons and how this power effects each of us at national levels is expanded upon in our article Freemasonry: Influence Peddler's of the World. With this power operating in municipal affairs we can see organized corruption beginning at the community level with those we know and live with
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Zahawi, Sunak, Johnson: this is rule by plutocrat. It’s like a stench that’s worse each day
The Tory chairman’s £5m tax ‘error’ shows how the other half lives it up, and the murkiness of politics run by and for the super-rich
“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. “They are different from you and me … Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.” For that reason they will always be an awkward fit in the world of democratic politics.
The past few days have provided ample reminders of what happens when the very rich take control. The stench emanating from this government reprises John Major’s last days of “sleaze”. But the sums of money back then look paltry compared to the extraordinary finances of the multimillionaires who now fill the Tory benches.
Nadhim Zahawi’s mysterious “error” in failing to pay capital gains tax landed him with a walloping 30% penalty; he agreed to repay an estimated £5m reportedly while chancellor, collecting everyone else’s taxes. No normal citizen could be “careless” about such a sum, so it’s time for Rishi Sunak to come clean about exactly what he knew about Zahawi’s tax affairs when appointing him party chair. Zahawi had been nominated for a gong in the new year honours list, but following the usual due diligence, his name did not appear, reports the Sun on Sunday.
Many will remember his startling expenses claim 10 years ago, when he was obliged to pay back money wrongly claimed for heating his horses’ stables. He declared himself “mortified” at that “error” concerning a £5,000 bill, so presumably he feels a thousand times more mortified over an error a thousand times greater. Since he claims that HMRC called his tax non-payments “careless and not deliberate”, let’s see the correspondence – as there was nothing “careless” about his multiple legal threats to Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates, who investigated his tax affairs.
Back in Major’s sleaze days, the “cash for questions” scandal saw MPs taking bribes in brown envelopes from Mohamed Al-Fayed for asking parliamentary questions. How much? A mere £2,000 a time.
By the time Owen Paterson resigned in 2021 for improper lobbying – he was facing a 30-day suspension amid a parliamentary investigation – cumulatively he had received at least £500,000 in payments. But that was small potatoes compared with the shock discovery at the time that Sunak was chancellor of the exchequer, his wife, Akshata Murty, may have avoided paying up to £20m in tax, with her non-dom status implying that her permanent residence was outside the UK; meanwhile Sunak held a US green card that implied he would be living in the US.
Then there was Sajid Javid’s former life as a £3m-a-year Deutsche Bank purveyor of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). It was reported in 2014 that he made use of the bank’s “dark blue” tax loophole in the Cayman Islands, which helped bankers to avoid tax on huge bonuses. A judge found the scheme to be “sophisticated attempts of the Houdini taxpayer to escape from the manacles of tax”. (Javid denied receiving any tax advantage from the scheme at the time.) It’s no surprise that Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is his favourite book – it’s a song for the survival of the fittest, in which individualism triumphs over collectivism. And it’s no surprise either that this former health secretary now calls for a debate about ending a “free at the point of delivery” NHS, writing approvingly about payments for GP and A&E visits.
Tax avoidance is legal, but the ranks of super-wealthy politicians never understand that standards of civic virtue for politicians are far higher than what is merely “legal”. Like Major’s “back to basics” drive, Sunak asked for trouble when he pledged: “This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.” Dithering over firing Zahawi shows that he has no idea what that means: the very rich really are different.
Nothing more about Boris Johnson can shock us, I thought, but the revelation that he put forward Richard Sharp as BBC chair only weeks after Sharp had helped to arrange a loan guarantee of £800,000 is breath-taking. Elsewhere, “a high-profile Tory MP has been reported to police over claims of expenses fraud”, relating to housing, reports the Sun.
This tide of money swirling around Tory benches contaminates all politics. And so it was good to hear Rachel Reeves tell the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that a Labour government would “clean up this mess, drain the swamp, because frankly, it stinks”. This revival of sleaze is Labour’s cue to purge all tax avoidance for the rich, a political licence to close loopholes and all the jiggery-pokery that is available to wealthy people but not to PAYE citizens. The party should grasp the example of these zillionaire Tory tax avoiders to show why capital gains and unearned income should be taxed at the same rate as hard-earned wages; Labour should clamp down on everything offshore for any public office-holder or company holding a government contract.
Evidence of tax distortions benefiting only the rich mount up by the week. The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ TaxLab lists an array of wasteful tax reliefs. The latest example comes from the Resolution Foundation thinktank, which has identified “five terrible tax breaks”, used by just 70,000 individuals, that deprive the public realm of £4bn.
It notes that the UK’s “myriad tax reliefs are hugely expensive and yet are rarely assessed for their efficacy or value for money”. Tax reliefs together cost £195bn in 2020-21. As for the five obscure tax reliefs, which concern business and agricultural inheritance: “There is little evidence that these policies have encouraged more people to save, and conclusive evidence that rich individuals have gained the lion’s share.” Tax Justice UK proposes the following reforms: equalising capital gains with income tax to raise £14bn a year; applying national insurance to unearned income, which would recoup £8.6bn per year; taxing wealth over £10m at 1% to raise £10bn per year; and cutting inheritance tax loopholes, which would raise £1.4bn. Labour’s promised end to non-dom relief yields £3.2bn.
Calls for taxing wealth are growing: Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz is the latest to argue for a 70% top tax rate on the super-rich, plus 2-3% on hyper-wealth (more than $50m) after the post-Covid wealth boom. Widening inequalities worsen in a society where inheritance, not talent, is becoming the main route to super-riches in what he calls “the sperm lottery”. Oxfam last week reported that two-thirds of the new post-pandemic surge in wealth had gone to the top 1%.
All this gives Labour the reason why, when in power, its first budget needs to scrape off the worst tax-relief barnacles. This wouldn’t be about “raising taxes” but simply setting the system to rights, and cleansing the memory of this country’s rule by plutocrat.
Look at how the 1% are doing right now, and tell me the system isn’t rigged
The world’s super-rich have amassed so much wealth since the pandemic that even a Tory minister can see something is amiss
You may have forgotten by now, but there was a brief moment during the pandemic when hopes were raised for a new “roaring 20s”. The Yale sociology professor Nicholas Christakis predicted that as in the 1920s, after the 1918 Spanish flu, society would embrace indulgence, with a rise in “sexual licentiousness” as well as a “reverse of religiosity”. We were poised to emerge from lockdown randy and flush. We certainly weren’t supposed to plunge, as we have in Britain, right into political crises and strikes, have three prime ministers in as many months, and sit at home too skint to turn on the heating or socialise.
But a roaring 20s is actually happening, just not for most of us. According to Oxfam’s annual inequality report, released to coincide with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, the richest 1% of people have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world combined since the pandemic. Their fortune soared by $26tn, increasing their share of new wealth from 50% to two-thirds.
The breakdown of these figures exposes how on a global basis, extreme wealth is accumulated not by innovating or increasing production, but by taking advantage of rising prices and exploiting labour. In this effort, wealthy people are enabled by lack of regulation and taxation. The result is a bonanza of plunder with no sheriff in town.
This has been happening for a while, but the pandemic accelerated the trend. Rich people benefited from everything – every positive intervention from the state and negative impact of the crisis somehow still ended up increasing their wealth. They benefited from rising costs by using them as an alibi to charge higher-than-inflation prices, then distributing the rewards as dividends instead of higher wages. Food and energy corporations made a killing, making $306bn in windfall profits in 2022, then distributing 84% to shareholders.
They benefited from stimulus packages that pushed up asset prices. They benefited from low interest rates that helped them to expand their property empires. According to Credit Suisse, lower interest rates and government support programmes resulted in “a huge transfer” of wealth from the public sector to private households, which saw their debts lowered and the value of their assets, shares and properties, rise.
The obscenity of the system is made possible by the dramatically diminished bargaining power of labour. Weak labour is cheap labour. More lucratively, the world’s workers can increasingly be mobilised according to employers’ precise needs, so not a penny is wasted. The purpose is to transform the human worker into a machine that can be switched off when not in use (although at least machines are tended with maintenance). In 2020, Amazon’s UK sales soared by half to £19.4bn. In 2021, an investigation in Britain found that the company was bypassing its own employment standards by hiring thousands of zero-hours workers through agencies. These workers have no employment protections, their shifts can be cancelled at the last minute, and there is no guarantee of tenure of employment.
But it is successful tax avoidance that is the strongest pillar propping up global inequality, and its dismantling would be the quickest solution. There is little chance of that happening soon. Tax regimes, like much of the conventional economic wisdom about the benefits of wealth creation to all, are increasingly out of step with not only the needs of poor people, but with what is required for the health of our economies. The political class has been captured by the outdated ideology of trickle-down economics. And if any of those politicians have dissenting thoughts and consider raising taxes, financial elites threaten to abscond with their wealth, or protest that their entrepreneurial ambitions will be extinguished. The media framing redistributive policies as radical or destructive is a powerful shock collar, too. Oxfam found that 143 of 161 countries actually froze tax rates for the rich during the pandemic, and 11 countries reduced them.
What’s most striking about the post-pandemic profit boom is the truly global nature of the problem. It’s not only the hope of a world recalibrated by Covid towards stronger public infrastructure that is turning to dust in our mouths. An older dream is dying too: of a post-cold-war globalisation that was supposed to bring us all closer, usher in a utopia of free trade, growth, employment and sustainable development. What this model of globalisation ended up achieving was standardising ways for wealthy people to pay as little as possible, concentrating economic activity on those with purchasing power and hanging the rest out to dry. Our lives are indeed becoming more similar across the world. In the global south, affluent people now all have access to the same consumer goods and services, from Netflix to Vitamix, and live in new-build developments with names like Beverly Hills (Cairo), and Bel Air (Nairobi). Poor people are pushed to the margins, the public services they depend on dismantled.
None of this has happened by accident, according to Peter Goodman, the author of Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World. “It’s not an accident,” he tells me, “that our economies have concentrated greater wealth in fewer hands. Quite simply, wealthy people have used their wealth to purchase democracy, to warp democracy in their own interests. They’ve done that through a global template that involves lowering taxes, privatising formerly public attempts to deal with common problems, liquidating the spending that went into things like social services, and then putting that money into their own pockets.” The main power of the billionaire class, Goodman says, is in their creation of values, not value, that maintain a friendly political climate. Davos, he says, is “a prophylactic against change, an elaborate reinforcement of the status quo served up as the pursuit of human progress”.
But the disparities are becoming too stark for these branding efforts to work as well as they used to. Even rightwing politicians are beginning to point out that the promise of social mobility no longer has purchase. Last week, in a speech that very much sounded like the observations of someone who has awoken from a decades-long slumber, UK cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt said that “many people think things don’t work, at least for them”, adding that “for those with the least, the whole system can seem rigged against them”.
So close and yet so far. The system doesn’t seem to be rigged. It is rigged. I guess it’s a step in the right direction that terms which in the past would have consigned a speaker to the pile of conspiracy theorists and commies are making their way into the mainstream. Mordaunt went further. “The very continuation and success of capitalism,” she said, “hangs in the balance.” But for the powerful tiny minority that owns half the world’s wealth, this sort of capitalism is succeeding better than ever before. What hangs in the balance, as the billionaires’ riches increase, is their ability to argue that it’s working for us too.
Our Heroes are Commie Traitors
I used to enjoy listening to Bruce Springsteen's music. Then I found out he donates money to leftist causes and actually campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now I can't listen to a single note he sings without feeling sick to my stomach.
The same with John Mellencamp, who used his music to help Bernie Sanders, an admitted communist, run for president in 2016. This is the guy who wrote "The Authority Song." Now he wants all of us to kowtow to the very authority he once rebelled against. I can't stand listening to his music anymore either.
Springsteen and Mellencamp aren't exceptions. Every musician you can think of turned out to be a commie puke.
It's the same with actors. Tom Cruise - commie puke. Johnny Depp - commie puke. Brad Pitt - commie puke in a dress. They all support leftist causes, they all shilled the virus hoax, they all towed the party line.
Outside of James Woods and that Hercules guy, neither of whom can get a job today, there isn't a single actor who hasn't turned out to be a flaming leftist commie puke. In fact, you can say that about everyone in the television, movie and theater business.
TERMINATOR TO TRAITOR
I started lifting weights in high school and for anyone who has ever hefted a barbell or performed any type of physical exercise, the name Arnold Schwarzenegger holds special significance. Sure, we all knew he was a steroid freak, but we didn't care. He represented a masculine ideal in terms of physicality and physique.
Well, guess what? As governor of California, he turned out to be a towel boy for the teachers' and prison guards' unions, and over the last three years he's shown himself to be the biggest pussy in the world; hiding behind a face diaper and ranting about those who didn't. "Screw your freedom," he cried, referring to anyone who chose not to wear a mask or take the deadly fake vaccine. Another commie puke.
Every sports hero you can name has turned out to be a commie puke. Look at today's NFL, today's NBA, today's MLB. They've all gone homo. They're all pushing trannyism, racism, and anti-white wokeism.
Joe Montana is shilling vaccines. How hard up is he?
Tom Brady was shilling FTX, a Democratic Party money laundering operation that was funnelling money sent to the Ukraine back to the Democratic Party to finance their fraudulent election races. Kylie Irving in the NBA took a stand and the entire sports industry came down on him. He ended up apologizing.
It's not just celebrities and public figures who turned out to be commie pukes, it's basically everyone in your life. Your old high school buddies, your co-workers, your customers . . . How many of them hid behind a face diaper? How many of them succumbed to the deadly fake vaccine? How many of them turned their backs on you for standing up for yourself?
FROM RESPECT TO LOATHING
Doctors used to be held in high regard in our country. They were celebrated as honest, hardworking professionals; heroes of a sort. There wasn't a mother in the country who wouldn't have beamed with pride if her son became a doctor or if her daughter married one. Not any more.
The last three years have shown us that doctors are some of the worst commie pukes of all, pushing the virus hoax for all they could. Today, no one respects doctors, no one celebrates them, and only the most brain-dead materialist wants to be one or marry one. They're loathed for the scum that they are. Anyone who visiting a doctor today, for any reason, needs to have their head examined.
Teachers and professors used to be respected. Today, they're at the forefront of pushing woke liberalism, trannyism, and every other degenerate and disgusting plank of the Communist Party. No one has any respect for them anymore, nor should they. Anyone sending their children off to be indoctrinated by these commie pukes needs to have their head examined.
Police officers used to be respected. But the last three years have shown them to be nothing more than commie puke enforcers of corrupt and illegitimate governments, arresting people for not wearing a mask. In some cases, forcibly injecting them with poison and/or locking them up in camps, while not lifting a finger to stop or arrest any of the BLM rioters looting and burning down businesses.
Every hero you used to have, every person and profession you used to respect - they all turned out to be commie pukes. So what are you going to do about it?
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Mike Stone is the author of "Reversing the Side Effects of the COVID-19 Vaccine: How to Heal Yourself from Adverse Reactions to the Trump Vaccine and Protect Yourself from Shedding," available here. "COVID-19 and the Mark of the Beast: What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Trump Vaccine" https://amzn.to/3DA8shu and COVID-19 and Kids: A Parent's Guide to the COVID-19 Pandemic: https://amzn.to/3b4M4Qr
Comments for "Mike Stone- Our Heroes are Commie Traitors"
Al Thompson said (January 22, 2023):
Mike Stone said: “So what are you going to do about it?”
Everyone should try to raise their moral standards to conform with the natural order which the real God created. Get rid of the Commie Pox. That’s the real pandemic.
https://verydumbgovernment.blogspot.com/2022/06/eternal-pandemic-commie-pox.html
Corruption blights the developing [/WHOLE] world but [GogMagog's/ Dajjal's/ Lucifer's/ Kabbalah's SSHIt-SSHIa-Massonic] US and Europe [and Vatican-Chabad-Swissrael/UNSC/Riba] are [engenderers, enablers and] accomplices!
Yawma Tubla As-Sara'ir! Psycho-Narc-Massonic [/Electronic-EMF/Occult] Oppression & Abuse [by luciferian-YajujMajuj-kabbalist-messianic/dajjalic-jew-nazi-SSHIt-SSHIa-mASSonic-Riba-Frankist-Zevite-NewAgeOccult-Witchcraft etc.] Will ALL Be Exposed/Punished to Death!
For each soul to FULLY comprehend (before Death): Who "they" are and their "agenda"! (1)For each soul to FULLY comprehend (before Death): Who "they" are and their "agenda"! (1)
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