Globalism or Americanism: Which is the Bigger Threat to National Sovereignty?

Fake threats have been conjured as cover for real threats

Americanism is Globalism

First we heard this in April of 2016: “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. Americanism, not Globalism, will be our credo”. That was Donald Trump, running for the nomination of his party, and in his speech Americanism and “globalism” were diametrically opposed. Just one year later, almost to the day, and Trump sang a different tune: “Hey, I’m a nationalist and a globalist. I’m both”.

Can one be both? Barack Obama would probably answer in the affirmative. In 2010, Obama declared that, “no nation should be better positioned to lead in an era of globalization than America—the Nation that helped bring globalization about”.

This is a basic fact of globalization: it has been entirely the creation of state action, but not the action of every state on the planet. For globalization to take place, there had to be international agreements; treaties; trade deals; new conventions and standards; meetings between heads of government; investments; infrastructure; and, the ideological work needed to justify it all. The state which led the globalizing process was, from the start, the United States.

Globalization did not start at the UN. Globalization did not come out of either Brussels or Geneva. Even less was globalization a product of the globe as a whole. In that sense, globalization was never global. It has been an American-led initiative, projected onto the world as a whole, that took hold only once the Soviet Union had collapsed.

The “New World Order” was not declared by any secret “globalist cabal”. It did not come from “the Illuminati” or the Bilderberg Group. It was not the product of some Masonic lodge. It came straight from the mouth of US President George H.W. Bush in an address to Congress on September 11, 1990. That concept of a “New World Order” is not what many right-wing alarmists claim it to be: it surely was about international cooperation (after the end of the Cold War), but it was always to be under US leadership, not guided by the dictates of some imagined “Blue Helmets”.

The real divide in US foreign policy, for decades now, has not been between “isolationists” and “internationalists”. Instead, the divide is between unilateralists versus multilateralists—none of them are against “foreign entanglements”. Trump is a unilateralist and annexationist, who believes that all others should follow American dictates, defer to the US, and respect US sovereignty more than their own—that is decidedly not any sort of isolationism.

Americanization and the Global Power Elite

At the time that Trump said he was both a nationalist/Americanist and a globalist, Peter Phillips pointed out the following in his 2018 book, Giants: The Global Power Elite:

“The top six billionaires in 2017, with their country of citizenship and estimated net worth, were Bill Gates (US, $88.8 billion), Amancio Ortega (Spain, $84.6 billion), Jeff Bezos (US, $82.2 billion), Warren Buffett (US, $76.2 billion), Mark Zuckerberg (US, $56 billion), and Carlos Slim Helú (Mexico, $54.5 billion). Forbes’s billionaire list contained 2,047 names in 2017”. (p. 21)

Thus of the top six billionaires at that time, four were American. As for the Forbes list, in 2019, seven of the top 10 billionaires listed were American. In fact, the list has become increasingly American since circa 2012, according to this compilation of annual rankings, returning to the situation that was observed from before 2005. In total, 14 of the world’s richest 20 persons are American. Overall, 607 of the world’s 2,153 billionaires in 2019 are American—or just over 28%, which still reflects a disproportionately large American presence.

The earliest movements against globalization were primarily left-wing. Among the condemnations of globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, was that it was merely cover for Americanization: globalization was American cultural imperialism that threatened to swallow up and homogenize whole cultures and nations.

Among academics, and particularly anthropologists/sociologists such as Neil Smith, Bruce Kapferer, and Pierre Bourdieu, it was very well established that globalization was an American project. In his 2005 book, The Endgame of Globalization, Neil Smith spelled out in clear historical terms how the ideology of Americanism evolved from the 1800s to the present—and globalism was the highest phase of development of Americanism, and its last. Anthropologist Bruce Kapferer made the point that, “the concept of globalization disguises the emergence to unchallenged (if momentary) global imperial dominance of the USA, whose own claim to international sovereignty reduces the sovereignty of many nation-states” (Kapferer, 2005, p. 286. emphases added). The 1999 paper by Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” published in Theory, Culture and Society, was a scathing rebuke of what was purported to be “globalization”. They argued that globalization was a thin cover for the universalization of American values. Anthropologist Jonathan Friedman decades ago outlined how those at the top of the system, even when drawn from different parts of the world, are socialized and enculturated in common locations: universities, clubs, resorts—they receive similar training and develop similar tastes, and the US plays the dominant role in shaping that transnational class.

A real, serious critique of globalism would have to come to terms with its American base and superstructure. An anti-globalism that attempts to separate the US from its construction, and even goes as far as painting the US as a victim of globalism, is a monumental fraud.

A Scary Conference Organization is Coming to Get Us!

What do you notice about the above analyses and explanations of globalism (however brief)? One thing should be that there is no mention of any World Economic Forum (WEF). And why would there be? Why should one conference organization occupy a disproportionate amount of space in any discussions of globalization? The reason why it has—and this is true about right-wing commentators almost exclusively—is that the WEF allows an outlet for an age-old American knee-jerk reaction: Americans playing the victim. The Myth of American Innocence always demands that there must be an external enemy (or an internal one, that is allied to, or in the service of the external enemy). The problem must always be deflected and displaced, projected onto someone or something somewhere else. Instead, globalism, is very much their own creature. It is all of us, outside of the US, who have been prey to their expansionist projects.

The WEF is the centrepiece of so many self-fashioned and delusional “red pilled” ways of thinking. To be polite, theories featuring the WEF as a main player range from the comical to utterly crackpot material. Some make it even worse by adding on more layers of delusion, of ignorance and incoherence bred inside airtight echo chambers. One of those added layers has to do with the notion that nation-states, like Canada, are “corporations,” and that they were founded under “maritime law”. You can see an example at this very point of a video titled “Canada the Illusion,” posted by a YouTube account calling itself “The Myth is Canada”. What a conveniently timed release too: just as Trump threatens Canada’s very existence as sovereign nation-state, here is the fifth column preaching bizarre, psychedelic ideological jeremiad about Canada not even existing in the first place, because it’s a “corporation” and it has a “Charter”...like a boat can be chartered, therefore Canada is just a ship at see. I am not kidding the reader.

The WEF is a favourite especially with a particular class of ultra-right-wing thinker, those of the upper middle class, or millionaire podcasters—and to the WEF they attach a particular basket of plans and projects which they dread the most. These include: central bank digital currencies; digital ID; and, 15-minute cities. In many countries, these would be welcome: digital currency prevents one being robbed every night when returning from a day selling in a Nigerian market; a digital ID allows one to avoid famously long lines in the sweltering heat, outside of dysfunctional government agencies staffed by sleepy-eyed bureaucrats; a 15-minute city means finally having all the conveniences nearby. It takes a very well-off First World person to be fretting about monetary theory to begin with. The ultimate conclusion is that “the elites” will “crash the economy” as part of a “controlled demolition” so that they can then implement “total control” and everyone will “own nothing and be happy”. You can almost put it to music.

Every single point is problematic to the point of disrepair. It is ideology, masked as analysis, creating a house of cards. Which “elites”? Why would the wealthy crash the economy that generates and preserves their own wealth? When has total control ever been possible? How do you perpetrate total, compulsory confiscation and not have massive social upheavals and civil war? None of these science-fiction fantasies would ever happen, because: a) they make no sense for the interests that are allegedly meant to benefit from such actions; b) they do not need to happen (because they are either unnecessary or counterproductive); and, c) people will not let them happen.

Yet, the ultra-right echo chambers persist in the most obdurate denial of reality. It was the Brownstone Institute itself (which has since degenerated into upholding regime dogma under Trump), that published an article explaining that the WEF is just a toothless conference organization—here are some key points from the article:

The gossip implies that the WEF is secretly plotting to take over the world by means of a secret collaboration between government and big business, as if rich and powerful people needed a vehicle like the WEF for that....

The WEF, they claim, is the coordinating platform for all the secret deals that make the rich richer and the entrenched heads of government more powerful, while national and local sovereignty is being clandestinely forfeited, leaving the ordinary person to rot away slowly with neither resources nor rights.

These accusations against the WEF are accompanied by misrepresentation and outright fakery....

The basic model of a WEF conference session is to subsidize smart people (the presenters) to say smart things to rich people (the audience), who themselves pay the exorbitant conference registration fees in order to network with each other and have smart people pretend to take them seriously for a few days.

In a word, Klaus Schwab is a glorified and very talented conference planner selling flattery. He pretends that $60,000 provides the attending customer with access to crucial world decisions, all made in 4 days. The hordes paying the entry fee schmooze together, down vast quantities of wine and canapes, and participate in panel discussions that purport to solve problems associated with the world’s economy, environment, and society in end-on-end blocks of 45 minutes each....

...But at heart, this is business. Klaus Schwab’s business....

But what about the smoking gun represented in the many top politicians of today’s world who graduated from the WEF’s Young Leaders program? What about the creepy 2019 WEF conference about what to do in a pandemic?

On the Young Leaders program, it is undoubtedly true that the WEF has become a very successful job networking organization. But it did not invent networking. Networking societies for the rich and powerful have existed for centuries. Think of the Freemasons, the Rotary society, Chatham House, private high schools, Oxbridge, or the Ivy League. The rich and powerful will network with each other, come hell or high water, WEF or no WEF…

OK, but what about that 2019 pandemic simulation conference? Again, you can read all about it online, a level of publicity for their plans that is surely not what you would expect of Bond villains. In these simulations, the WEF folks came to the conclusion that during a pandemic, movement and trade should not be disrupted because of the high costs to society. Yes, you read that right. Once again, this is the very opposite of what was actually done….

The WEF, in sum, is hot air all the way. It is led by a man who epitomizes pomp, which is nothing new in the circles of the rich and powerful. WEF-approved hot air is no different to the regular variety.

Sure, it’s a place where schmoozing and coordination happen, but the WEF invented neither schmoozing nor the idea of an old-boys club. It is simply the current clubhouse. The real culprits will find another venue the day after the WEF’s shingle is taken down.

Looking for Power

Speaking to the last point, the WEF itself is neither singular nor original. To begin with, it’s not original: it is the outgrowth of a CIA-funded program at Harvard University that was led by Henry Kissinger, Herman Kahn, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Klaus Schwab was a mere acolyte, and the program was fully American—not UN-controlled or orchestrated by some dingy cabal of European Dracula characters. The WEF is an American creation: again, globalism that is in fact Americanism writ large.

We learn this about the WEF founder, the Harvard-trained Professor Schwab:

“The evidence points to Klaus Schwab having been recruited by Kissinger into his circle of ‛Round Table’ imperialists via a CIA funded program at Harvard University. In addition, the year he graduated would also be the year in which it was revealed to have been a CIA-funded program. This CIA-funded seminar would introduce Schwab to the extremely well-connected American policy-makers who would help him create what would become the most powerful European public policy institute, the World Economic Forum”.

Far from the WEF trying to exercise hegemony over the whole world, the primary purpose of the conferences and seminars was to exercise American influence over European affairs—the opposite direction of what the “anti-globalists” normally imagine.

The WEF has not brought about any system of global rule, or rule by globalists. It is an expensive talk-shop, that encompasses a wide variety of actors including avowedly anti-globalist ones (Trump and Milei recently addressed the WEF). It has no power to impose or enforce the desires of its leadership. Much of what has actually been done by governments in reality, has been the opposite of what is advocated in WEF books, videos, and pamphlets.

If one were to look for actual centres of power, that have proven track records of imposing transformational policies, and have the power to enforce their decisions, one would have to look instead at the US government itself and its military, intelligence, diplomatic, and financial arms. Looking further afield, we would need to look at NATO, the US-dominated International Monetary Fund and the US-controlled World Bank. Organizations that have been far more influential than the WEF, and have been responsible for training government cadres from all over the world, are Harvard University and the other Ivy League universities. US think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the RAND Corporation, plus a cluster of US philanthropic foundations, have all exercised deeper and wider influence than the WEF.

The WEF is an Easy Target—and It’s the Wrong Target

But the WEF captures the imagination of certain groups of ultra-right “theorists” because it is relatively easy to grasp and visualize, and is easily caricatured. “Do your own research,” when you have far less material to work with (and no insight), allows you to impress others by sounding smart when you actually did very little homework. Since the WEF is prolific in producing video clips and online papers, they make research an easy task—but try doing the same with the Rockefeller Foundation, which is far less open, and much older (thus requiring much more work, skill, and insight to dig through its history).

Every January at Davos these past few years, a crew from Rebel News travels there, where they run up beside certain well-known, prominent public figures, and breathlessly pester them with loaded and incriminating questions, sarcastic fake questions, and comments laced with snide innuendo. They then feign surprise that they get no answer, as if anyone accosted by a gang of pests would feel enticed to enter into dialogue. Rebel News thinks they are doing guerrilla journalism, but their work trivializes what real guerrillas do, and it’s mock journalism that they offer. The WEF provides the terrain for this kind of entertainment, and the junk theories that go with it.

At present, tirades by Canadian ultra-right types invoke the WEF as a convenient counterweight, to deflect and displace attention away from the very obvious threat to Canadian sovereignty: the United States. Thus these Maple MAGA sorts, particularly in Twitter, point everywhere but at the US: look at China...except China never threatened to cancel Canadian sovereignty and absorb the entire country, against its will. Look at the WEF...but the WEF has not threatened Canada with economic war, coercion, and annexation. The ultra-right needs an imaginary, bogus enemy because that way they do not have to deal with the consequences of their alignment with and support for the actual enemy.

Finally, to illustrate just how much of a distraction is the WEF, let’s compare its history of attacking sovereignty, with the history of the US:

To conclude, let me just say that if someone offers you either a “blue pill” or a “red pill,” the answer ought to be take neither: just don’t do “drugs”. Also, don’t pretend that you are “doing your own research” when you are unwilling to put in the many years needed to acquire sufficient familiarity, depth, and insight into all of the necessary information, when you need to know how to process that information, and when the adventure requires you to consult with specialists that you refuse to even recognize. Anything less makes independent research look foolish and rather crazy. As with the WEF, I have seen this same set of problems with those pushing the bizarre thesis that nations are really just corporations, founded under “maritime law” (admiralty law). I happened to have studied international law, with a special focus on the Law of the Sea—but I did not even need that much to spot the utterly wild notions at play on the right, and the sheer conceptual and historical illiteracy that shone right through their assertions, which in some cases hinge on something as basic as not using a dictionary to look up key terms. Next thing you know these people will hear of the existence of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and start claiming that is the true source of the power of the cabal. The WEF is likewise just a distraction. People speaking obsessively about the WEF have next to nothing to offer in explaining what is happening at present.

In short, forget the WEF, and learn about the history of US imperialism.

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