The John Birch Society and the NGC Strategy
About 48 years ago I happened across a small collection of journals published quarterly by the John Birch Society, universally slatted in the USA as an ultra-right-wing kooks peddling conspiracy theories. As an 18 year old I knew none of this and simply read the journal articles, taking them at face value.
From there I went on to read a number of books the JBS recommended, such as None Dare Call it Conspiracy by Gary Allen and Leon Skousen’s Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. I took the material in these books and the journals seriously. Much of it was drawn directly from financial, academic and political sources from within the elite the JBS accused of conspiring to form a new world order; destroying democracy and freedom in the process. Chief among these sources was a 1500 page tome entitled Tragedy and Hope, written by an elite ‘insider’, Professor Carrol Quigley. According to the JBS the new world order corporate-political elite are quite open about their plans because they take the view that if they heralded their intentions it absolved them of any responsibility if they succeeded – a sort of rite of absolution.
You can tell my early dabble in these conspiracy theories made quite an impact on me because I can still remember the names of the books. In fact I think I still have the books, although the journals have long gone. I naively began to share my new found knowledge with friends and work colleagues, only to be confronted with scepticism. Then I discovered the JBS was treated as a radical fringe group with wacky ideas. I decided, with some reluctance, to drop any further interest in the society and conspiracy theories. I went on with my life.
But it wasn’t to end there. With the advent of the internet and my introduction to You Tube about 8 years ago I found myself running into material that smacked of the conspiracy theories and new world order warnings I had dropped decades earlier. Then, serendipitously, I was surfing You Tube about three weeks ago and happened on a speaker addressing, you guessed it, a recent JBS society conference. Memories of past interest came flooding back as did the realisation that my research that went into the writing of my books actually criss-crossed JBS territory. I realised the Society had been more correct than it had been wrong. Forty years ago it had been warning about the rise of debt and wealth inequality well before it happened. It also majored on issues around the rise of big government, socialism and the constriction of human rights. It may still be regarded as far right by the left but mainstream people are now openly accepting that political and business elites are a threat to their liberties and prosperity. Without realising it I had, while writing the books that led to the NGC Strategy been steering much closer to the JBS than I had ever intended. That was because I had done my best to follow the evidence to be found in actual events and trends. Whether or not the JBS is right about the Illuminati and conspiracies going back to the eighteenth century is of little real concern to me. It is the times in which we live that matter.
I might have come at what is happening in our times from a completely different direction to the JBS but we have ended up in much the same space. Of course, the Society is not a Christian organisation per se and so their recommended responses will no doubt be political, whereas the NGC Strategy is concerned principally with the salvation of souls. However, the 12 Reforms do take on the same enemies identified by the JBS. I call them the two giants - liberalism and corporatism. The Society probably refers to them as the cultural Marxists, far left or Bilderbergers (the financial and business elite). Some allude to the ‘party of Davos’, referring to the annual world elite’s meeting at Davos. The so called populist movements springing up across the West are a conscious and direct response to the activities of the two giants. That is why it is so important the western Church comes out of its pietistic wilderness and takes advantage of the current situation. Vast numbers are now alive to what the JBS might call the deep state and the feudal corporate barons, like Soros. What were once the wacky ideas I ran from in the seventies are now mainstream and largely correct. The NGC strategy is founded on the understanding that there are huge opportunities for evangelism in all that is happening in our times, because so many are feeling disempowered and threatened by it all. The Western Church will continue to ignore this fact at great cost to the cause of Christ.