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by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
February 12, 2013

In this Eyeopener series we have been examining those organizations of influence that wield power over our countries from behind the scenes. Groups such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Zionist Organization of America, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Common Purpose. We could go on to detail thousands of similar organizations working in similar ways to direct the processes of government from the shadows: the Club of Rome, the Pilgrims Society, the Bohemian Grove, the Knights of Malta, Le Cercle. The list is nearly inexhaustible.

As we have seen so far in this series, many of these groups are public organizations that allow public scrutiny and even public participation. Others are openly acknowledged lobby groups that make no secret of their intention to direct government policy toward their own agenda. Still others are completely secretive, preferring to give out little or no details about their membership, activities or intentions.

In the first episode of this series, researcher and author G. Edward Griffin outlined that system of organization which unites these disparate groups. Known as “rings within rings,” the technique is to cultivate a core inner group which directs the policy and aims of the larger organization. In such a system, a large, seemingly public group like the Royal Institute of International Affairs can hold public forums and maintain a publicly accessible website while still working toward the secretive goals of an inner clique that the group’s larger membership may or may not even know exists.

Although a relatively small percentage of the population knows (or indeed cares) about the specific groups that are directing their governments from behind the scenes, a vast majority are aware that there is an insidious influence at work in the so-called system of “democracy” that has been sold to them. Election after election, the public goes to the polls hoping to “kick the bums out” and instead receive more of the same. Whether it be an endless series of wars against an all-pervasive, never vanquished “terrorist” boogeyman or an ever-increasing, inextinguishable mountain of debt racked up through bailout after bailout of the financial system, few are any longer under the illusion that their vote will do anything to seriously derail the drive toward increasing government corruption and tyranny. The end result is a steadily increasing feeling of cynicism and apathy that leads to disengagement. Who among us does not know someone who, when confronted by the startling abuses of power in our current day and age and merely shrug, muttering some variation of the excuse that “that’s just how the system works.”

In direct contradiction to this attitude, however, there are a growing body of activists, informed by the alternative media, united in their opposition to this drive toward global government, who are increasingly working on innovative ways to counter, sidestep, and undermine the influence of these secret societies and their inner cliques. After all is said and done, the problem is not one of finding a way to abolish the current status quo, but choosing from the hundreds of ideas that are already being worked out by similarly concerned individuals all around the world.

One of those options has been suggested by G. Edward Griffin himself: to use the idea of infiltration and subversion that the secret societies have been using against our governments to our own ends. To this end, he has proposed the creation of a group called “Freedom Force International” which aims to unite the public around the idea of placing freedom-minded individuals in the positions of power that are currently being occupied by the tyrants. When Griffin appeared on The Corbett Report in 2009, I had the chance to talk to him about Freedom Force, and what he hopes to accomplish with this organization.

In some ways, an organization like Freedom Force seems to be the obvious choice for “taking back” control of the government from the secret societies and their elite controllers. After all, the idea has worked so well for them, why couldn’t it work for those interested in promoting a philosophy of liberty?

Unfortunately, as organizations like the “Campaign for Liberty” has shown, it is exceedingly difficult to know just who is generally interested in liberty, and who is merely interested in furthering their own political careers, regardless of the cost to society. Sometimes, the most principled and articulate spokesman for freedom and the most deceptive backroom dealers can be found in the very same family.

The real trick, opine others committed to the cause, is to abandon the institutions of government that have fostered these moves toward tyranny in the first place. After all, playing politics in a system that relies on debt-based fiat money is always going to devolve back to the same place, regardless of the intentions of those in political power. The real secret, argue these groups, is to create an alternative system of governance, one based on common law and representing a return to constitutional government. These groups, like Lawful Rebellion in the UK, are gaining in numbers every day as they put forward a persuasive argument for the replacement of existing courts, banks, and governments.

The arguments of groups like Freedom Force and Lawful Rebellion rely for their force on the concept of just government. These groups believe that it is possible to institute some sort of government that corresponds to the will of the people and derives its authority from the consent of the governed, or at the very least to conceive of such a government.

A yet more radical, and more fundamental, critique of “government” as we know it today is to question the concept of government itself. Why precisely do we need government at all? Is it possible to conceive of a stateless world, in which positions of power and authority do not exist to be abused, corrupted, or infiltrated in the first place?

This is an idea that has been flirted with for centuries by eminent philosophers, lawyers, scholars and independent thinkers, although it has generally been dismissed as “too radical” for polite conversation. Versions of anarchical thought are increasingly coming back into vogue however, repopularized by an increasingly informed and aware group of activists who are energized by the ability to engage in such philosophical conversations in growing online communities.

Recently, I had the chance to talk to Gary Chartier of the Center for a Stateless Society about classical American anarchist Lysander Spooner and his work questioning the legitimacy of the constitution itself by undermining the concept of the “consent of the governed.”

To be sure, we are still some ways off from having a larger societal conversation about the possibility of stateless society, but that the conversation is growing, and stands in need of further articulation and promotion, cannot be disputed.

There are many many more such groups at work all around the world, currently fighting against the status quo in a variety of innovative ways. Groups like the Council of Canadians have had remarkable success naming and shaming the secretive international agreements like the SPP and the TPP that the organizations of influence have invested so much in promoting. Other groups like We Are Change continue to inspire citizens in dozens of countries around the globe to pick up a camera and become part of the citizens media movement that is transforming the power relations that have allowed groups like the CFR and the RIIA such inordinate sway over our governments.

In the final summation, the only question is: if you are aware of, and opposed to, the hidden influence over government that exists in the world today, will you commit yourself to find a way to engage in this solutions-based conversation? Or will you, like so many others, merely shrug your shoulders and mutter to yourself “that’s just the way the system is”?