Conspiracy Theorists Get Christmas Present from Secretive Group
It’s a Christmas present every conspiracy theorist will welcome–or think is part of an elaborate plot.
A European politician from (where else?) the military-industrial complex will soon lead the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group.
The clandestine group, which holds annual meetings previously attended by figures like Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, and the Clintons, announced that Jens Stoltenberg will soon co-chair its “steering committee.”
Stoltenberg, 65, is fresh off a decade-long stint as NATO Secretary General, which was dominated by his handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He will now help lead a secretive conference that has long been accused of orchestrating a “new world order” in its off-the-record meetings that are held in private homes and five-star hotels across Europe.
Stoltenberg had been an advocate of increased budgets for Europe’s military, which made him an ally of Trump in his first term. The Norwegian proudly declared last year that NATO “defense spending is on an upward trajectory across the Alliance.”
The Bilderberg Conference was started in 1954 in hopes of preventing another world war, but has since become an annual meeting that promotes capitalism and a strong relationship between Europe and North America. Its approximately 140 attendees vary by year, but often include politicians, titans of industry, billionaires, and defense executives.
The Guardian noted that “several” of the group’s 31-member steering committee have senior roles in the defense industry. That includes the former Google boss Eric Schmidt—who hopes a kamikaze drone company will balloon his $26.3 billion net worth—and Marcus Wallenberg, who is chair of the defense manufacturer Saab that has seen its order numbers spike since war broke out in Ukraine.
The secrecy behind the Bilderberg meetings—and the wealth of those who attend them—have led conspiracists to accuse the group of being a cabal that secretly pulls the strings on society to further their personal wealth and power.
Their meetings are conducted without minutes being taken and attendees are tight-lipped. The conference uses the “Chatham House Rule,” which allows participants to speak publicly about information shared in the meetings as long as they do not disclose the source of what they learned.
The practice leaves plenty of space for a curious public–and particularly those prone to conspiratorial thinking–to fill in the gaps. The group does release a general list of talking points ahead of their springtime meetings, however, with the most-recent edition including discussions on AI, European economic challenges, Russia, China, the Middle East, and, of course, the “future of warfare.”
Also discussed at the conference’s latest edition was the “U.S. political landscape.” A lot has happened in the U.S. since those June meetings in Madrid, however. That includes Joe Biden’s disaster of a debate against Trump on June 27, his bowing out of the race three weeks later, and Trump’s comfortable election win in November that came on the heels of him surviving a pair of assassination attempts.
The next Bilderberg Conference will be hosted by billionaire industrialist Marcus Wallenberg in Stockholm. It will be the first conference since Trump’s return to power and will “likely center on defense spending and transatlantic cooperation in an era of renewed great-power competition,” the Daily Mail reported.
There have been no reports of Trump attending the conference in previous years, but he has a fair share of direct lines to the people who do, including billionaire Peter Thiel, who sits on the group’s steering committee and was one of the first Silicon Valley advocates for Trump.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Bildeberg Group for comment.
