Death of Social Justice Via Corporate and Governmental Elites:
A Critical Approach
Fred Gransville
Fred Gransville
In 1984, George Orwell describes a book within the novel called "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein," which is said to be bound in red leather. The book is subversive--a means through which one might see a description of the Party's philosophy and mechanisms in the text, an essential tool Winston used in his rebellion against the totalitarian regime.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. With a rubber-stamped approved permit to do so.
Underneath the captivating rhetoric of media, academia, and activism in social justice, there lies a disheartening reality: the structures and agencies of this ideology are, at best, failing and, at worst, actively betraying its values. It is systemic co-option rather than an isolated missed opportunity. Global elites, with their web of foundations, think tanks, and closed clubs, hijack movements that should be a force against power structures. What was once considered an absolute radical critique of inequality and oppression has now been twisted to serve as the means of sustaining that very system.
This essay aims to critically discuss how influential institutions like the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the RAND Corporation co-opt not just social movements but also foster neoliberal agendas in service of global elites. We show proof that financial instability, ideological manipulation, and the ruinous impact of such forces are something the world cannot afford.
The Co-Optation of Political Rhetoric: Democrats, Republicans, and the Tea Party
The co-optation of social justice is not limited to the domain of obscure think tanks and secretive power brokers. Even the Tea Party, along with both the Democratic and Republican parties, has hijacked the language of freedom, democracy, and justice. They use these noble ideals to justify policies that only serve to reinforce the complex of technology, militarization, mind control, and corporate control, making the issue even more pervasive and urgent.
Democrats, who had once been considered the Party of the underdog, allied themselves with Silicon Valley giants and defense contractors. Put that way, leaders like Barack Obama promote progressive reform along with the unprecedented expansion of the surveillance state, the consolidation of tech giants, and continuing military interventions abroad. These actions, in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," were funded and supported by the very same corporations and military-industrial interests that benefit from surveillance, war, and the exploitation of the global south.
Meanwhile, Republicans--at least paying lip service to individual liberty and small government--have long been enabling such growth of the corporate-state apparatus--primarily by their support of military spending and the deregulation of Big Tech. Clothed in populist discontent with overreach, it was promptly hijacked by big money and morphed into a bullhorn for tax cuts for the rich, the deregulation of corporate industries, and military expansion. Here, the Tea Party's rhetorical use of freedom often masks an underlying reality whereby those self-same policies serve interests across its constituency--those they purport to rebel against corporate elites.
Even the rhetoric of social justice and freedom is sold to whoever pays the most in dollars for mere neoliberal continuance policies that decimate the very people they are claiming to serve, highlighting the significant economic impact of this co-optation.
The Trilateral Commission and CFR: Conspiring on Global Governance for the Elite
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others. It would propagandize and help coordinate the economic and political interests of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. It thus would be an international club serving the interests of the transnational elite. There is little doubt that the Commission has been in the vanguard promoting economic deregulation, military interventionism, and dismantling the post-Second World War welfare state. Of course, there is no doubt that commissioners have been pushing for a policy serving multinational corporations at the expense of national sovereignty, a de-democratization process serving an egoistic economic system. Indeed, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), founded in 1921, is said to be the actual policy-making arm of the American elite. Inherent in its membership, the CFR has created US foreign and domestic policy to enact corporate expansion via former presidents, joint chiefs of staff, and chief executive officers of some of the most powerful corporations. The Iraq War, the trade agreement known as NAFTA, along with a host of others foisted upon the American public by the CFR, had the dual consequence of strangling the American industrial base while spreading the interests of multinational corporations at the cost of labor rights and a slashing of social safety nets. Cloaked in justification to promote "global democracy" and "free trade," such policies have brought America's working-class citizenry to ruin.
The Bilderberg Group: A Shadow World Government of the Powerful Global Elite
Born in 1954, the Bilderberg Group became one of history's most secretive yet powerful groups. The group was a composition of the highest-ranked political heads, leading business executives and financiers, and royalty personalities, all put together to have a great institution of policy decisions on a global scale--to endeavor through international cooperation is the least concern to this group. They are much more for the privileged position within the global economic order. The Bilderberg Group was directly implicated in setting up the policies for the financial crisis of 2008, for austerity in Europe, and for the militarization of international relations. It's a shadow government: undemocratic, un-elected, self-selective, making decisions affecting the lives of billions with a system kept rigged in favor of the already rich.
The Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations represent neoliberalism wrapped in the mantle of social justice. It was established by Henry Ford in 1936, but since then, it has assumed more of the character of progressive pro-social justice. At least, that is, until its funding told a decidedly different story. From civil rights to international human rights, the Ford Foundation has been complicit in promoting neoliberal reforms in service of the interests of capital. It celebrates, if not categorically promotes, things such as the market-driven panacea of microfinance that entrenches inequality and ensnares people with low incomes in vicious debt cycles. Advanced and consolidated advocacy of privatization of public services transforms education, health, and housing into spheres of private profit. Thus, Ford stands in the way of any social justice. An example could be George Soros' Open Society Foundations: while parading as defenders of human rights and democracy, real agendas serve neoliberal objectives. Soros' funding of "open borders" movements, if superficially considered, advances US geopolitical interests as well as undermines local sovereignty in nations hostile to globalism. Through the funding of social movements, OSF funding has been used, country after country--from Hungary to Ukraine--to help advance the objectives of US military and economic policy and cement corporate hegemony and growing income inequality.
RAND Corporation: Think Tank of War and Corporate Expansion
Formed in 1948, the RAND Corporation has provided the think tank backbone for the US military-industrial complex. RAND has supported increased military spending to benefit defense contractors and promoted policies to justify military intervention worldwide. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, RAND supported the invasion along with the privatization of Iraq's national resources directly for the benefit of corporations from the United States. Cloaking itself in the mantle of "objectivity," RAND's recommendations often serve but one purpose: to further entrench the world in an uncomfortable reliance on its military-industrial complex, even while the latter presents itself as one protecting democracy as long as civilian populations remain subjugated under the war economy.
The Aspen Institute: Elite-Backed "Progressivism"
The Aspen Institute parades itself as a progressive think tank, connected corporately and conferencing exclusively. However, its policies are diametrically opposed to reinforcing neoliberalism by promoting market-driven solutions for social problems. Much of the work of the Aspen Institute on "social entrepreneurship" reinforces market-based solutions to systemic inequalities--solutions which, by design, favor the very corporations with which it is allied. All this is a form of "progressivism" that is no more than an elite-driven process of sanitizing corporate control of public life through social issues as a marketing tool to widen the reach of precisely those corporate interests that nurture inequality.
The Heritage Foundation and Carnegie Endowment: Watchdogs of Corporate Hegemony
It emanates from the two poles opposite of the political spectrum yet serving the same interests of world oligarchy:
The Heritage Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Heritage Foundation is conservative policy thoughtware serving mainly cuts for the rich, deregulation, and militarism masquerading behind so-called "conservative values." It is active in further building a military-industrial complex that helps the bourgeoisie subjugate the working class through the law.
The purportedly pro-peace Carnegie Endowment has constantly assumed roles in supporting United States foreign policy and military intervention. Carnegie's role in supporting such policies proves this, thus justifying US interventions under the cover of diplomacy and peacekeeping, first in the Middle East and, more recently, in Latin America.
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Human Rights Watch: Spreading Empire in the Name of Democracy
The NED is a US-government-funded organization and is supposedly working for the propagation of democracy across the world. In reality, it is one of the tools of US imperialism in funding political movements in countries that are resistant to the US hegemon, such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran. In that way, through its funding of NGOs and grassroots movements behind the veil of spreading democracy, the NED sees to it that the interests of US corporations are met.
In an equal vein, Human Rights Watch, true to its Orwellian name, promotes selected human rights causes in concert with US foreign policy and corporate interests. This, too, acts as a double standard, galloping toward human rights abuses committed by adversarial regimes while looking the other way at abuses committed by US allies in an act of reinforcement of the global capitalist order.
CIA-Linked Organizations and Fronts: The Hidden Hand of Empire
Wrapped in an aura of independence, the so-called think tanks, including the Atlantic Council, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), are interconnected by US intelligence and corporate structures. Such outfits promote the interests of the military-industrial complex and the multinational corporations with camouflage as the semblance of objectivity. They are the front organizations maintaining empire and corporate control over worldwide resources.
Death to Social Justice
Co-optation was not an accident. Through think tanks, foundations, and secretive power brokers concocted for that purpose, the global elite co-opted social justice movements that had existed for some decades to turn political reform and grassroots movements in the interest of their purviews. They, therefore, molded public discourse into the financing of specific movements and formulated policies to guard power, but they were dressed up as ones that ensured progress.
These institutions cannot yield to actual social justice. Justice can only be regained if it is instrumental to control, not transformational vehicles. It is now time to reclaim social justice, which has already been hijacked as it emanated from grassroots movements. Let us unmask the global elite.
The book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, for example, is attributed to Emmanuel Goldstein. In 1984, this has to be considered in that Goldstein is the real product of the Party's imagination. He was described as the greatest enemy of the Party; once a Party member, he supposedly became a traitor and now heads the resistance against the regime.
In the context of the novel, however, most likely, it was Goldstein's book written by the Party or at least highly influenced by party insiders; this forms part of the manipulation and control the Party exerts over truth and history. It performs the dual function of supplying the impression of intellectual opposition-thought-to-be emanating from Goldstein himself and, equally important, ensuring that the actual rebellion will be channeled into forms capable of being set under the control of the Party.
The figure of Goldstein provides the scapegoat on which the Party hangs all the arguments of their propaganda campaign to show an organized opposition. The book exists as some forbidden, subversive text; its existence would feed into the illusion of resistance when, in reality, all the stories--even the so-called rebellious ones--belong to the Party. The contents of the book are thus made to feed into the Party's overall mechanism of control, allowing the Party to produce opposition it can watch, suppress, and, where possible, utilize in reinforcing the power of the Party.
Therefore, although the book is ostensibly written by Emmanuel Goldstein, it is, in fact, a product of the Party, which means serving its needs.
The Co-optation of Resistance: The Corporatization of Dissidence
The co-optation of resistance, the corporatization of dissidence, and the manipulation of grassroots movements by powerful elites indeed denote a profound distortion of genuine political reform. As grassroots efforts toward change arise in the name of social justice, environmentalism, human rights, or economic equality, they more and more run the risk of being hijacked, diluted, or co-opted by powerful corporate, government, and intelligence agencies. To change perceptions and understanding, these sophisticated entities rebrand resistance into their agenda, often neutralizing movements or redirecting them from their beginnings. This is something that always brings critical questions over the validity of reforms, and real motives of funders and masters behind the particular reform movement.
Astroturfing: Public Sentiment Manipulation
Astroturfing is an intentionally and elaborately deceptive practice designed to give the impression of grassroots organizations and movements where, in reality, programs are initiated, sponsored, or manipulated by powerful interests. Through astroturfing, corporate entities, governments, and clandestine organizations sponsor fake or token "activist" movements that give the appearance of popular dissent while serving their own agendas. They frequently include watered-down reforms, deflecting attention from systemic change or framing the issues in a way that best serves the status quo.
For instance, take the case of climate change: the fossil fuel industry has funded think tanks and front groups to advocate for market-based solutions-like carbon trading-that do not disturb the core structures of environmental degradation. These watered-down solutions are presented as if they were grassroots organizing, thereby masking the real demands of the environmental justice movement, which are systemic economic and industrial reform rather than minor tweaks.
Astroturf campaigns do not happen only over environmental issues. In the context of human rights, for instance, organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, although many times genuinely concerned with human suffering, usually come under criticism for selective outrage and for factually being influenced or funded by Western governments or organizations with interests that are in essence imperialist. Thus, it serves to legitimize military interventions and economic policies that more often than not have done more harm than good and further embedded global inequality in place.
Corporate & Government Influence: Following the Money Trail
But there are some heavy interests behind those so apparently neutral or benevolent institutions. A sophisticated network of funding from powerful players, linked by vested interests in keeping things as they are, finances large philanthropic foundations, corporate entities, and government agencies. Such groups would come forward to ostensibly work for progressive transformation, while their latent mission and vision are actually hitched to the neoliberal or imperialist agenda.
The Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg Group are some of the most powerful organizations of the world's power elite in political and business circles. While these groups foster international cooperation and discuss issues of global governance, they have also been associated with shaping policy that benefits multinational corporations and Western governments. Their role in guiding political discourse and forming foreign policy decisions—most importantly, those based on economic globalization—puts in question their dedication to democratic values.
The Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations (George Soros), and others, purportedly support "civil society" endeavors that turn out to be designed for the political order to become more propitious for neoliberal policies. While these organizations finance progressive causes in the form of democracy promotion, freedom of speech, and anti-corruption efforts, their agendas often mirror interests espoused by Western powers, ranging from regime change operations to the implementation of austerity measures. For example, Soros' Open Society Foundations have been accused of influencing elections and policies around the world, from Eastern Europe to Africa, in ways that further Western economic interests under the cloak of "freedom" and "democracy."
RAND Corporation, The Aspen Institute, and The Heritage Foundation function as think tanks and policy influencers whose research and recommendations more often than not align with corporate and state power. These organizations often promote deregulation, free-market capitalism, and militarism while providing an intellectual veneer to policies that disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful. The RAND Corporation has been especially involved in military strategy, intelligence, and defense spending, often producing research supportive of U.S. hegemony and military interventionism.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, National Endowment for Democracy, and International Republican Institute have supported U.S.-backed democracy initiatives around the globe. However, while they say that their cause is to support democratic values, their actions are most often guided by US interests. The NED, for example, has been implicated in funding opposition groups and media in foreign countries, many times with the aim of undermining governments not particularly friendly to U.S. interests. This form of "democracy promotion" can undermine genuine democratic movements and instead serve as a tool for imperial intervention.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has become a key player in the global discussion around economic reform. But it increasingly has come under fire for convening meetings of the world's richest people and biggest corporations to make decisions that are reinforcing economic inequality. Every year, the Davos Summit is publicized as an opportunity for leaders of the elite class to talk about global problems, but actually, it is a venue where neoliberal economic policies are touted while policies that challenge corporate power are shunted aside.
Political and Social Movements Rebranded
Nowadays, with any political movement gaining prominence and being in the way of interests of the wealthy elite, there is every risk of getting discredited or co-opted. Movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), #MeToo, and even all varieties of environmental justice campaigns have been accused of being hijacked by corporate or governmental interests that often distort their core messages.
For example, BLM has been criticized for taking money from groups linked to the state for undermining its potential autonomy from corporate and state interests. Similarly, environmental organizations such as 350.org have been accused of advancing solutions that reinforce capitalist interests, like carbon offsets, rather than advocating for the more profound structural changes necessary to get at the roots of climate change.
The Role of Intelligence Agencies
Intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, have been surreptitiously playing an important role regarding the shaping of public opinion and political movements in the context of dissidence and political reform. From inspiring coups, influencing media to tell particular narratives, often under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom, and human rights, there is nothing for which the CIA has not undertaken everything through their front organizations or covert operations. These are considered front organizations which protect U.S. foreign policy and intelligence operations with intellectual veneer: the Atlantic Council, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
Many of these organizations are connected with interests in the military-industrial complex, which sustains war economies, corporate profiteering, and the global surveillance state. While their public roles may present them as neutral arbiters of policy and research, the reality is often that their policies protect the interests of the powerful, contributing to the corporatization of dissent.
Exposing the Web of Deception
These powerful groups have co-opted resistance and corporatized dissidence, in effect hollowing out much of what was once revolutionary or genuinely progressive. Movements that at one time were meant to challenge entrenched power structures are now often reshaped to perpetuate those same structures under the guise of reform.
Genuine political reform requires looking beneath the face value of such ostensibly neutral organizations and finding the vested interests lurking behind them. Following the money trail, true political and economic links, or intelligence links can help us to understand just how often resistance is manipulated and directed to serve the interests of the very people it should be opposing. True political reform will only be achieved when grassroots movements are independent of any corporate, state, and intelligence agency influence, and led by the people who are most affected by systemic injustice.
Statist Organs of Approved Safe-Thinking: Atlantic Council, Woodrow Wilson Center, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Bilderberg Group, RAND Corporation, Aspen Institute, Heritage Foundation, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations (George Soros), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, International Republican Institute, World Economic Forum (WEF), Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, 350.org, Black Lives Matter (BLM), #MeToo, The National Security Agency (NSA), Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Council (NSC). The Government Coporotacracy owns the revolution, a dissent and dissenters must be pre-approved and carrying state mandated permits and documents.
Resources:
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. Metropolitan Books.
Perkins, J. (2004). Confessions of an economic hitman. Plume.
Mills, C. W. (1956). The power elite. Oxford University Press.
Chossudovsky, M. (2003). The globalization of poverty and the new world order. Global Research.
Reports & Articles:
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (n.d.). Publications.
RAND Corporation. (n.d.). Research and publications.
Open Society Foundations. (n.d.). Annual reports.
Documentaries:
The Corporation. (2003). The Corporation [Film]. Big Picture Media Corporation.
Inside Job. (2010). Inside Job [Film]. Sony Pictures Classics.
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