Order, order!

I’ve said over and over again that I don’t, generally, believe in global conspiracy theories. For a start the level of both secrecy and cooperation they require are beyond the ability of most humans to maintain. If you don’t believe me, how often have you heard the words, “Don’t tell anybody, but…” shortly preceding information about to become common knowledge? But at least one of those conspiracy pre-requisites has rapidly been dispensed with since the coming of the Internet. Why be secret, when the world wide gossip board can be used to spread your disinformation openly? Instead of closely guarding your alliances why not do the opposite and exaggerate them to the point of absurdity?

I’ve just been watching the Dimbleby Lecture and Christine Lagarde’s frightening vision of the future. With cool and authoritative and yes, slightly sexy tones she delivered a calm appraisal of how grandiose schemes and globalisation have led to disparity, disaster, poverty, inequality and climate change and how only even more globalisation of effort can get us out of this mess they had gotten us into. You want a conspiracy theory? This was New World Order hiding in plain sight. Clever move; out and proud and look – nothing to be scared of, silly.

And it’s happening all over: Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has spoken out against ‘petty nationalism’ or what we used to refer to as ‘democracy’. Across Europe, committed and concerned citizens, bewildered by their being sold out to a project none of them voted for, demand to be heard. “Tut, tut, tut” say the soothing voices, “Hush now. You have nothing to worry about.”  And then they simply continue to ignore the wishes of majorities while massaging the statistics for consent. Realising that if the vox populi can’t be silenced it must be discredited, the EU propaganda machine expends enormous effort to do just that. And it works.

Behind the shadowy organisations who wield undue influence over national governments are generations of back-room deal-making and a nexus of consortia, committees, think tanks and opinion formers whose job is to manipulate the information from which we, the people, are expected to assemble our world view. Thus Lagarde’s lecture was peppered through with plenty of headline ‘truths’ supplied by armies of ‘experts’, presented as simple matters of fact. And what she was telling us was that despite how incredibly difficult and apparently insurmountable our problems were, committed world-savers like the IMF were dedicated to only one thing – our salvation.

But why would they be? I seriously question anybody who does not put their own interests first, followed by their neighbours and then expanding out as far as their largesse and influence allows. And the more life you live the more you see how the greatest schemes often end in disaster and even the smallest pebble causes ripples to spread far from the point of impact. Anybody with true compassion for the world would probably instinctively want to reverse the process of globalisation and actively limit their individual effect on anybody they couldn’t apologise personally to.  

But no, Madame Lagarde likes to think much bigger and in her big thinking out loud she let slip that in her view there was nothing more deeply satisfying than to be able to influence world events and effect change. Simple power, then. And in the case of her new world vision, power to change even the way people think and feel. Because as all governments know, the little people really don’t understand what is good for them, do they? How dare you petty-minded Little Englanders worry about jobs when gender dysphoria and intersectionality are problems affecting dozens? Smoke and mirrors and misdirection.

I only speak for myself, but I want a government to defend our basic freedoms, protect us from harm, keep order and fight for our national interests in the wider world. So far as I can tell even these relatively simple ambitions have proved beyond the ability of any government in the history of the known world. I was always warned about trying to run before learning to walk. In my view the only thing the world needs saving from is government barely able to stand its own two feet.