TheBilderberg Meeting (also known as the "Bilderberg Group", "Bilderberg Conference" or "Bilderberg Club") is an annual off-the-record forum established in 1954 to foster dialogue betweenEurope andNorth America. The group's agenda, originally to prevent anotherworld war, is now defined as bolstering a consensus aroundfree market Westerncapitalism and its interests around the globe. Participants includepolitical leaders,experts, captains ofindustry,finance,academia, numbering between 120 and 150. Attendees are entitled to use information gained at meetings, but not attribute it to a named speaker (known as theChatham House Rule). The group states that the purpose of this is to encourage candid debate while at the same time maintaining privacy, but critics from a wide range of viewpoints have called it into question, and it has provokedconspiracy theories from both theleft andright.
The first conference holds its name from the location where it was first held from the 29th to the 31st of May 1954; the Bilderberg Hotel (Hotel De Bilderberg) inOosterbeek,Netherlands.[4][5] The hotel also gave its name to the attendees of the conference, the "Bilderbergers". The hotel is situated in a quiet location, approximately 7 kilometers west of the city ofArnhem.[6] It is owned and operated by the Bilderberg hotel chain, which runs 12 hotels and an event location in the Netherlands and one hotel inGermany.[7] At the time of the 1954 conference, it was a medium-sized family-run hotel.[6]
The conference was initiated by several people, includingPolish politician-in-exileJózef Retinger who, concerned about the growth ofanti-Americanism in Western Europe, proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promotingAtlanticism—better understanding between the cultures of the United States andWestern Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues.[8][9]
The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity.[13] Conferences were held inFrance, Germany, andDenmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first U.S. conference was held onSt. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from theFord Foundation. The foundation also supplied funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.[11]
The Swedish banker and industrialistMarcus Wallenberg Jr. was a member of the steering committee and attended the meeting twenty-two times from the 1950s to 1981, a year prior to his death. His grandsonMarcus Wallenberg has attended it eight times and his other grandson,Jacob Wallenberg, seventeen times.[18]
The group's original goal of promotingAtlanticism, strengthening US-European relations, and preventing another world war has grown. According to Andrew Kakabadse, the Bilderberg Group's theme is to "bolster a consensus aroundfree-market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe".[5] In 2001,Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and a steering committee member for 30 years, said, "To say we were striving for aone-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."[19]
According to the web page of the group, the meetings are conducted under theChatham House Rule, allowing the participants to use any information they gained during the meeting, but not to disclose the names of the speakers or any other participants. According to former chairmanÉtienne Davignon in 2011, a major attraction of Bilderberg group meetings is that they provide an opportunity for participants to speak and debate candidly and to find out what major figures really think, without the risk of off-the-cuff comments becoming fodder for controversy in the media.[20] A 2008 press release from the "American Friends of Bilderberg" stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference and that at the meetings, no resolutions were proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued."[21] However, in November 2009, the group hosted a dinner meeting at theChâteau of Val-Duchesse in Brussels outside its annual conference to promote the candidacy ofHerman Van Rompuy forPresident of the European Council.[22]
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations.[23] Official posts include a chairman and an Honorary Secretary General.[15] The group's rules do not contain a membership category but former participants receive the annual conference reports.[24] The only category that exists is "member of the steering committee".[25] Besides the committee, there is a separate advisory group with overlapping membership.[26]
According to James A. Bill, the "steering committee usually met twice a year to plan programs and to discuss the participant list".[28]
In 2002, inThem: Adventures with Extremists, authorJon Ronson wrote that the group has a small central office in Holland which each year decides what country will host the forthcoming meeting. The host country then has to book an entire hotel for four days, plus arrange catering, transport and security. To fund this, the host solicits donations from sympathetic corporations such asBarclays,Fiat Automobiles,GlaxoSmithKline,Heinz,Nokia andXerox.[29]
There have been long standing concerns aboutlobbying,[38][39] since senior policymakers meet with corporate lobbyists, and in the case of the 2015 meeting even with senior figures atTransparency International.[40]
Partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy and secrecy,[41] the Bilderberg Group has been criticised for its lack of transparency and accountability.[42] Ian Richardson sees Bilderberg as the transnationalpower elite, "an integral, and to some extent critical, part of the existing system ofglobal governance", that is "not acting in the interests of the whole". Many of these critics have emphasized that they do not accept or do not believe that there is enough evidence to support the diversity of conspiracy theories that have arisen in regard to the group and that they disapprove of what they regard as their unpleasant associations and connotations.[43] For example, an article by the English commentator Charlie Skelton inThe Guardian in June 2017 criticized the world view expressed in an agenda published by the Bilderberg group without engaging in speculation about conspiratorial activities.[44]
The secrecy of the proceedings has led not only to varied criticism of the group and its activities from across the political spectrum but also to a number ofconspiracy theories,[45][20][46] which have grown especially popular within certain political movements, although the different factions of theorists often disagree about the exact nature of the group's intentions and use different sources and levels of evidentiary rigor to back up their conjectures. Some on the left, or of less specific political affiliations, accuse the Bilderberg group either of covertly imposing or generally propping up capitalist domination and corporate power,[47] while some on the right have accused the group of imposing or helping to prepare the way for aworld government and a globalplanned economy. The right-wing theorists tend to treat the group as the central directorate or planning arm of the conspiracy or at least attribute considerable importance to its role, whereas most of the left-wing and more loosely-affiliated or apolitical theorists treat it as just one of a set of institutions that help to advance international corporate interests and ideology.[48]
In 2005, Davignon discussed accusations of the group striving for a one-world government with theBBC: "It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion. ... When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."[46]
In August 2010, former Cuban presidentFidel Castro wrote an article for theCuban Communist Party newspaperGranma in which he citedDaniel Estulin's 2006 bookThe Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,[51] which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."[47]
Proponents of Bilderberg conspiracy theories in the United States include such groups and individuals such as theJohn Birch Society,[48][52] political activist Phyllis Schlafly,[52] writerJim Tucker,[53] political activistLyndon LaRouche,[54] conspiracy theoristAlex Jones,[5][55][56] and politicianJesse Ventura, who made the Bilderberg group a topic of a 2009 episode of hisTruTV seriesConspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.[57] Although conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg Group have gained the most widespread credence by far in the United States, some high-profile non-American proponents have raised them as well, including Lithuanian writerDaniel Estulin[58] and British politicianNigel Farage.[59]
^abGijswijt, Thomas, W.,Informal Alliance: The Bilderberg Group and Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, 1952–1968 (2018), Routledge. "The Hotel de Bilderberg was a medium-sized family-run hotel, chosen mainly for its quiet and remote location in the forests of the eastern Netherlands. It was not a particularly fancy hotel...but security was relatively easy to maintain since there was only one access road."
^abHatch, Alden (1962). "The Hôtel de Bilderberg".HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An authorized biography. London: Harrap.OCLC2359663.The idea was to get two people from each country who would give the conservative and liberal slant
^"Japan–US Relations – Past, Present and Future".Daily Yomiuri. 8 December 1991.Rockefeller: The idea (of creating the Trilateral Commission) was incorporated in a speech that I made in the spring of 1972 for the benefit of some industrial forums that the Chase held in different cities around Europe, … Then Zbig (Zbig Brzezinski) and I both attended a meeting of the Bilderberg Group … and was shot down in flames. There was very little enthusiasm for the idea. I think they felt that they had a very congenial group, and they didn't want to have it interfered with by another element that would—I don't know what they thought, but in any case, they were not in favor.
^abAubourg, Valerie (June 2003). "Organizing Atlanticism: the Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute 1952–63".Intelligence & National Security.18 (2):92–105.doi:10.1080/02684520412331306760.S2CID153892953.
^Hatch, Alden (1962). "The Hôtel de Bilderberg".HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An authorized biography. London: Harrap.OCLC2359663.anybody who has ever been to a Bilderberg Conference should be able to feel that he can, in a private capacity, call on any former member he has met
^Moorehead, Caroline (18 April 1977). "An exclusive club, perhaps without power, but certainly with influence: The Bilderberg group".The Times. London.
Gijswijt, Thomas W. (2019).Informal Alliance: The Bilderberg Group And Transatlantic Relations During The Cold War, 1952–1968. London: Routledgey.ISBN978-0815396741.
Richardson, Ian N.; Andrew P. Kakabadse; Nada K. Kakabadse (2011).Bilderberg People: Elite power and consensus in world affairs. Hoboken, NJ: Routledge.ISBN978-0415576352.
