Secret Societies and Government Power: A Historical Relationship

Few historical questions generate more heat than the relationship between secret societies and the actual exercise of governmental power. The topic encompasses centuries of documented history, from the political role of the Bavarian Illuminati in the 1780s to the contemporary discussion of the Bilderberg Group and the alleged deep state. The challenge for the serious student is to hold several distinct claims in tension. Some of them are well supported. Some are unsupported. And some occupy a genuine middle ground, in which the documented behavior of real institutions is real but does not necessarily support the conspiratorial conclusions often drawn from it.

This overview surveys the historical record, identifies the recurring patterns, and distinguishes between claims that the evidence supports and claims that the evidence does not. It draws on the broader history of secret societies and the discussion of the New World Order for additional context.

The Eighteenth-Century Foundations

Freemasonry in the American and European Enlightenment

The modern discussion of secret societies and government power begins in the eighteenth century, when Freemasonry reached the height of its political influence. The eighteenth-century lodges were unusual in their openness to members from different religious and political backgrounds, and they functioned as a kind of parallel civil society in which figures who could not have associated in the official institutions of their respective countries could meet on equal terms.

In the American colonies, Masonic lodges were meeting places for many of the leading figures of the Revolution. George Washington was a lifelong Mason, as were Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, and many other signers of the Declaration of Independence. The lodges are not, on the documentary record, the cause of the Revolution, but they are part of the social network in which the revolutionary movement was organized. The first President of the United States was inaugurated while wearing a Masonic apron, and the ceremony included a Masonic ritual of laying the cornerstone of the Capitol. In France, the lodges were equally central to the Enlightenment. Many of the leading figures of the French Revolution were Masons. The strong claim that the Revolution was a Masonic plot is not supported; the weaker claim that the lodges provided a venue in which revolutionary ideas could be discussed and disseminated is.

The Bavarian Illuminati and the 1784 Suppression

The Bavarian Illuminati were a small rationalist reform group founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. The group was, in its original conception, a kind of philosophical society, modeled in part on the Masonic lodges of the period. Its members were drawn from the university and from the lower ranks of the Bavarian civil service.

In 1784 the Bavarian government, alarmed by rumors about the group’s activities, issued a series of edicts banning all secret societies. The Illuminati were specifically targeted, and the group’s papers were seized and partly published. The historical significance of the Illuminati for the present discussion is twofold. First, the group’s actual membership list includes only a few thousand names, the great majority of them minor figures. The strong claim that the Illuminati were the secret masters of European politics is not supported by the membership list. Second, the reaction of the Bavarian government set a precedent for the political treatment of secret societies that has been repeated many times since: a real but small organization was alleged to be a serious political threat, and the resulting official response was disproportionate to the actual evidence.

The Nineteenth Century

Carbonari and the European Revolutions

The pattern established in the eighteenth century continued in the nineteenth. The Carbonari, an Italian secret society with cells in Naples, Piedmont, and other parts of the Italian peninsula, played a documented role in the political upheavals of the 1820s and 1830s. Giuseppe Mazzini, the central figure of the Italian Risorgimento, founded a different secret society, Young Italy, in 1831, and used its cells as a parallel political structure. The Decembrist revolt in Russia in 1825 was organized through small conspiratorial cells, marking the beginning of a long history of secret political organization in Imperial Russia. In each of these cases, the secret societies functioned less as parallel governments than as instruments of political mobilization in political systems that did not permit open political activity. The strong claim that the secret societies were the actual authors of the political changes is not supported by the historical record.

American College Societies

The American case in the nineteenth century developed differently. College secret societies such as Skull and Bones at Yale, founded in 1832, and the various societies at Harvard, Princeton, and other major universities, played a real role in the formation of political and business networks that would prove influential in the twentieth century. The Skull and Bones Society is the most documented case, in part because the Society has preserved its membership records and in part because its most famous members, including the Bush family, have been the subject of extensive journalistic attention. The strong claim that Skull and Bones controls American foreign policy is not supported. The weaker claim that Skull and Bones has produced an unusually large number of senior political figures, and that membership has functioned as a useful credential in the formation of political networks, is supported.

The Twentieth-Century American Establishment

The Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921, partly out of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, and partly out of a group of American foreign policy specialists. The CFR’s subsequent history is extensively documented. The organization has produced a large body of policy reports, hosted a long list of senior political figures, and served as a kind of recruiting ground for the American foreign policy establishment. Many senior American foreign policy figures have been CFR members, and the CFR has functioned as one of the venues in which the American foreign policy consensus is formed. The strong claim that the CFR is a shadow government is not supported. The weaker claim that the CFR is one of the institutions through which a relatively small group of like-minded foreign policy specialists has exercised considerable influence on American foreign policy is supported. The CFR’s membership lists and the contents of its journal, Foreign Affairs, are public. There is no evidence of secret proceedings, no evidence of binding decisions, and no evidence of the kind of coordinated policy implementation that would be required to support the strong version of the conspiracy theory.

The Trilateral Commission

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, on the explicit premise that the United States, Western Europe, and Japan faced common challenges that could be addressed more effectively through coordinated policy. The Commission brought together senior figures from the three regions. Its reports on topics including energy policy, monetary coordination, and democratic governance are publicly available and have been influential in shaping the policy debate in the three regions. The strong claim that the Commission is a secret world government is not supported. The weaker claim that the Commission has been an important venue for the formation of policy consensus among senior figures from the three regions is supported.

Rhodes Scholars and the British Establishment

The Rhodes Scholarship, founded at Oxford in 1902 by the will of the South African mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, has produced an extraordinary list of alumni, including several heads of state, numerous senators and members of Congress, and a long list of senior figures in business, media, and academia. The scholarship’s stated purpose was to identify future leaders and to bind them together through the experience of study at Oxford. The strong claim that the Rhodes Scholarship is a deliberate instrument of elite formation is, in a sense, true, since that is its explicit purpose. The stronger claim that the scholarship functions as a coordinated political project is not supported by the evidence. The alumni network is real, the alumni are well placed, and the network is a useful channel of communication. None of this is evidence of a coordinated conspiracy.

The Deep State and Modern American Politics

What the Term Denotes

The term “deep state” has been used in American political discourse since the 2010s to refer to several distinct phenomena. In its most modest sense, the term denotes the permanent institutions of national security and intelligence that continue to function across changes of elected government. In a stronger sense, the term denotes alleged covert networks within those institutions that pursue goals opposed to the publicly stated policy of elected officials. The deeper treatment of the topic is in the deep state and secret societies overview, but the relevant point for the present account is that the concept bridges legitimate academic debate about bureaucratic politics and more speculative conspiracy claims.

Documented Cases of Bureaucratic Resistance

There are well documented cases in which senior American officials have pursued policies at variance with the publicly stated positions of elected leaders. The intelligence community’s assessments of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in 2002 and 2003 have been the subject of extensive investigation. The relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and various presidential administrations has been the subject of serious historical scholarship. The phenomenon is real, and the political science literature on bureaucratic politics provides a framework for understanding it that does not require reference to a secret conspiracy. The strong version of the deep state claim, in which a coordinated network within the American national security apparatus is alleged to pursue a coherent political agenda against the will of the elected government, is not supported. The weaker version, in which the permanent institutions of the national security state have their own interests and their own influence, is supported.

The Bohemian Grove and Republican Presidents

The Bohemian Grove, an annual gathering of political, business, and cultural leaders at a private camp in Monte Rio, California, has been a documented feature of American elite life since 1872. The Grove’s attendees have included numerous Republican presidents, including Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and both George Bushes. The annual Cremation of Care ceremony, in which a mock sacrifice is enacted in front of a large owl statue, has been the subject of conspiracy attention. The strong claim that the Grove is a secret government is not supported. The weaker claim that the Grove has functioned as a venue for the formation of relationships among Republican political and business leaders is supported. The Cremation of Care ceremony is a real theatrical performance with pagan and pseudo-religious elements, and is best understood as an example of the kind of elaborate ritual that has been a feature of fraternal life since the ancient mystery cults.

Elite Networks in Comparative Perspective

The Case That They Are Normal

The case that elite networks are a normal feature of modern politics is straightforward. Every modern democracy has a small number of institutions in which the political, business, and intellectual elites meet. In the United States, these include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bohemian Grove, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and similar institutions. In the United Kingdom, they include the Bullingdon Club, the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall, the Rhodes Trust, and a number of similar bodies. In France, they include the École nationale d’administration and the grandes écoles more generally. The pattern is universal.

The strong claim that the existence of these networks is evidence of a coordinated conspiracy is, on the face of it, implausible. The networks are too numerous, too various, and too internally divided to function as a single coordinated project. The institutions disagree with one another on major questions of policy.

The Case That They Are Not Normal

The case that elite networks are not entirely normal, and that their existence raises real questions about democratic accountability, is also real. The documented influence of a small number of institutions on major questions of policy is a serious matter. The fact that the participants are drawn from a relatively narrow segment of the population is also a serious matter. The soft coordination that takes place at Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, the Bohemian Grove, and similar institutions is a real phenomenon.

The challenge is to acknowledge the real influence of these networks without overstating their coordination. The soft coordination of policy positions across institutions is a normal feature of any well-connected community, and is not by itself evidence of a conspiracy. The institutions can, however, be criticized for the narrowness of their membership, for the lack of democratic accountability in their proceedings, and for the limited extent to which their conclusions are subject to public scrutiny.

The Use of Evidence

The Strong Version of the Argument

The strong version holds that the documented existence of elite networks, together with the documented patterns of overlapping membership and the documented instances of coordinated policy positions, constitutes evidence of a coordinated conspiracy. The strong version typically identifies a small number of institutions as the central nodes of the alleged network, and a small number of policy outcomes as the alleged products of the network. The strong version is the version most often advanced in conspiracy literature.

The Weaker Version of the Argument

The weaker version holds that the documented existence of elite networks is real and politically significant, but does not constitute evidence of a coordinated conspiracy. The weaker version describes the networks in terms of soft coordination, common socialization, and the kind of policy convergence that is normal among people who have been educated and trained in similar institutions. The weaker version is broadly consistent with the academic literature on transnational policy networks.

The Distinction

The distinction between the strong and the weaker versions is the most important distinction in the entire field. The strong version is not supported by the available evidence. The weaker version is supported and is a legitimate subject of public discussion. Conflating the two is a common rhetorical move, both by conspiracy theorists who use the weaker evidence to support the stronger conclusion, and by defenders of the establishment who treat the strong version as a straw man. The proper response to the strong version is careful evidence-based refutation; the proper response to the weaker version is engagement with the real questions of democratic accountability, transparency, and elite accountability that the documented networks raise. The two responses are not the same, and the difference between them is one of the most important things a reader of conspiracy literature can keep in mind.

Sources and Further Reading

The standard scholarly references for the individual institutions are: on Freemasonry and the American founding, Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment (1991); on the CFR, Michael W. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (1987); on the Trilateral Commission, Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism (1980); on the Rhodes Scholarship, Philip Ziegler, Legacy: Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships (2008); on the deep state, Michael J. Glennon, National Security and Double Government (2014). For the political-sociology framework, G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (multiple editions). For the documentary record on Bilderberg, David G. Haglund, “The NATO-Warsaw Pact Competition and the Origins of the Bilderberg Group, 1952–1954” in International History Review (2005). For the comparison to Continental Europe, the relevant essays in The Cambridge History of the Second World War (2015) vol. 2.

The conspiracy theories and hidden power pillar, Bavarian Illuminati, Bilderberg Group, and New World Order overviews treat the surrounding context. The deep state and secret societies and who really rules the world long-tail pages answer the most common specific questions.