Who's the New Illuminati?
November 13, 2014 2:18 PM   Subscribe

The Bavarian lodges. The Rothschilds. The Trilateral Commission. It's all so dated. Who are the new people behind the curtain running things? The gay mafia? Google? Some shadowy NSA subgroup? I'm trying to make a list.
posted by rileyray3000 to Society & Culture (31 answers total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Bilderbergers?
posted by slkinsey at 2:26 PM on November 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Renaissance Weekend folks.
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:26 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


Bohemian Grove?
posted by straw at 2:41 PM on November 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


Skull & Bones?
posted by Rock Steady at 2:44 PM on November 13, 2014


The Black Crusaders.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:47 PM on November 13, 2014


Goldman Sachs?
posted by peep at 2:48 PM on November 13, 2014


That creepy secret gathering of eminent writers that Jeff Bezos runs once a year.
posted by dontjumplarry at 2:49 PM on November 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


No one - just chaos and human nature, in the form of rich people with conflicting goals. But, an xkcd comic has a list of organizations who didn't stop last year's Government shutdown.
posted by sninctown at 2:50 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


abstergo
posted by poffin boffin at 2:59 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]




The billionaire "hippies" at Burning Man.
posted by rada at 3:12 PM on November 13, 2014


There seems to still be a surprising amount of traction for the media being run by the "Hollywood liberal elite", often with homophobic and/or Anti-Semitic overtones.

The GamerGate folks have some pretty elaborate conspiracy theories involving games journalism being run by some kind of corrupt evil newsgroup, though obviously beware going down that rabbit hole if you don't want to read a lot of amazingly hateful and misogynistic bullshit.

The Freemasons are a classic that really seems to have stuck around.

Some more: oil companies, Dick Cheney, HYDRA, the MetaFilter cabal. See also the Wikipedia Secret Society category.
posted by NoraReed at 3:30 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


Borman Capital Network
posted by hortense at 3:36 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


The lizard people in their secret base under Denver International Airport.
posted by sexyrobot at 3:40 PM on November 13, 2014 [3 favorites]


Jon Ronson's book Them talks about how he went and hung out with a bunch of conspiracy theorists and extremists of various ilks. This includes the KKK, some British Islamic terrorists, some Bilderberg / Bohemian Grove conspiracy theorists, and some of David Ickes's lizard people believers. It's a very interesting book, and it's not fiction, but Jon Ronson is also a humorist, and it's pretty fun to read.
posted by aubilenon at 3:53 PM on November 13, 2014 [4 favorites]


The Military-Industrial Complex (who maintain their grip on humanity via technologies gained via Dulce Base).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:18 PM on November 13, 2014


Honestly the Kochs are the ones that spring to mind. After that, follow the money. If you've never heard of them before, they're probably illuminati.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:22 PM on November 13, 2014 [3 favorites]


Steve Jackson Games has a list of groups that could be The New Illuminati. Fnord.
posted by Rob Rockets at 5:30 PM on November 13, 2014


The Koch Brothers
posted by ghostpony at 5:43 PM on November 13, 2014


The lizard people.
posted by joan_holloway at 6:36 PM on November 13, 2014


The Fellowship (The Family) comes to mind. Also voting for the Koch brothers.
posted by stray thoughts at 6:46 PM on November 13, 2014


The United Nations. Look up "Agenda 21," a set of sustainable development goals passed by the UN, which has become a focus of nutbar far-right conspiracy theorizing in recent years.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:54 PM on November 13, 2014


George Soros
Shelden Adelson
Karl Rove
Blackwater
Cultural Marxists
Creeping Sharia
Flash Traders
National Reconnaissance Office
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:18 PM on November 13, 2014


Beyoncé and Jay Z
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:11 PM on November 13, 2014


The World Economic Forum (aka "Davos")
posted by mumkin at 11:14 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


Whoever the Koch Bros answer to and whose directions they follow. Follow the money is always the way to see who's pulling the strings.
posted by aryma at 12:00 AM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


On a regional level in St. Louis: Rex Sinquefield and Paul McKee, a.k.a. rich white dudes with enough money to repeatedly get things on state ballot initiatives or corner the market on entire swaths of real estate and then get the legislature to change laws to make them viable investments. On a national level, check out the NFL owners for more of this general sort of shenanigans. Also, there's a whole world of shadowy PACs out there.
posted by limeonaire at 1:53 AM on November 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh right, also: racist people in power who are driven by forces and desires beyond their conscious recognition and/or people who donate to their campaigns (e.g., some huge percentage of people in office across the U.S.). And some of the people who run law-enforcement training seminars and conferences and sell police products. The seedy underbelly of that world: shadowy ex-cops who hang out on police message boards and "investigate" people and/or whoever pays people to troll and spam Twitter and influence discussions like #Ferguson. Oh, and Palantir. (Even though these things are real, people think you're a conspiracy theorist if you talk about them, sooo...)
posted by limeonaire at 2:08 AM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


NFL owners, Augusta National, and the US Senate are the go-to list of the best three elite clubs.

The small number of people in entertainment who can greenlight a high budget feature or series.

The comparably small number of VCs who can sign off on large capital rounds.

Folks who have the President's email address and the number of the cell phone his body man carries.
posted by MattD at 5:17 AM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anonymous?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:54 AM on November 14, 2014


Oh, and Palantir.

The guy who named that company either hasn't read the books or has a really dark sense of humor.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:28 AM on November 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


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