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Home→Books→Analysis: Letters of Marshall McLuhan – Part 5 – Bad Boy at Bilderberg

Analysis: Letters of Marshall McLuhan – Part 5 – Bad Boy at Bilderberg

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Series Contents
Series in Progress: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Part 5: October 8, 2017

Unless otherwise mentioned, page numbers are from Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) [1]

McLuhan at 1969 Bilderberg Conference

In a May 14, 1969 letter to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands [2], Marshall McLuhan [3] writes that he was “honoured to have been a participant” at Bilderberg. For the most part however, this letter is scathing (p. 372-373).

In a much later letter (May 30, 1977), he writes to Bilderberg researcher Robert H. Eringer [4] who had asked him about a story that McLuhan had not been invited back because of his “foul language” (editor’s footnote, p. 531). McLuhan writes about their “banality and irrelevance” and says that his “foul language” amounted to telling “Bob MacNamara (sic) [5], George Ball [6], Dean Rusk [7], and many from the U.K.” that they were clueless about “a world in which information moved at the speed of light.” He considered them “nineteenth-century minds (p. 531).”

Returning to the 1969 letter, Bernhard had sponsored the Bilderberg Conference at Elsinore, Denmark on May 9-11, 1969, and McLuhan attended the conference with Dr. Claude Bissell [8] (editor’s footnote, p. 372). Elsinore is the English name for the city of Helsingør, which includes the district of Marienlyst [9]. The Bilderberg Meetings website [10] lists the 1969 conference as taking place at Marienlyst, and also mentions two themes: The first is

Elements of instability in Western society

and the second is

Conflicting attitudes within the Western world towards relations with the U.S.S.R. and the other Communist states of Eastern Europe in the light of recent events [11].

The website [12] refers to Bernhard of the Netherlands as a former Steering Committee Chairman. Former Steering Committee members include notable personalities like David Rockefeller [13], Edmond de Rothschild [14], and Bill Moyers [15], to mention a few who supposedly attended in 1969. The full participant list, event location and a more detailed summary of the matters discussed are confirmed by the Bilderberg Conference Report for 1969, which is available online [16].

In his letter to Bernhard, McLuhan admits to being a “bad boy at Bilderberg (p. 372).”

He suggested that Bernhard fix the “space arrangements” that interfered with dialogue. McLuhan was frustrated by the lack of interaction with his audience.

He explained his apparent rudeness as due to the issues being of “great urgency.”

McLuhan accuses the Bilderberg participants of having a “very low level of awareness” of the modern world. He claims that they were men of “a few simple old-fashioned concepts.”

He refers to the Bilderbergers as “embalmers (embombers) of a dead past.”

They’re supposed to be “coping with a changing world,” but instead they are “scurrying for cover in the opposite direction of the changes that we have released.”

I believe he is referring to the technological changes in media, but perhaps especially to the effects of the new media in changing our attitudes and perceptions.

His “disillusion was total” because even the Europeans present were not aware of the “the contemporary arts as necessary guides to change.”

What kind of guidance does he expect from the arts? Are the arts to guide us about how to preserve our natural identities and cultures as his hero Chesterton or his friend Wyndham Lewis allegedly attempted to do, or do we just follow whatever messages are expressed through the arts?

Are we to put the artist on a pedestal and absorb whatever message is downloaded from the corporate and government agencies who fund and control that artist? I think McLuhan’s weak point is that he seems to downplay the importance of content while seeing his role as studying the special influence of different media technologies on the human being–but I think both of these are important.

He quotes Wyndham Lewis referring to artists as the only ones who live “in the present” so that they are capable of “writing a detailed history of the future.” However, the Bilderberg attendees had “no perceptual training.”

McLuhan asserts that without

“knowledge of all the poets, and painters and artists from Baudelaire to Joyce, it is futile to attempt any appraisal of the formal or efficient causes initiated by the evolutionary extensions of our bodies which we call technology (p. 372).

In some of his Letters, despite impressions to the contrary, McLuhan warns about the effects of new media technologies and defends the value of the old printed word culture that nurtured individual identity and privacy. He is trying to do an objective analysis of the effects of new media in order to convey a better understanding to the public (as in “great urgency”). The other side of McLuhan, however, is the public relations guru who at least seems to be unreservedly promoting modern media technology and the “global village” that goes with it.

In this one letter, I think we see the two sides of McLuhan.

On the one hand he beats up his audience (of powerful movers and shakers) for supposedly being backwards, Luddite “paper readers” while repeating this idea of technology being an evolutionary extension of the body, which seems like a very non-Catholic, non-traditional concept and more like the transhumanist beliefs of Julian Huxley, who also promoted the Catholic heretic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [17].

On the other hand, in the same letter, McLuhan states that television causes a loss of identity:

Today the entire TV generation has been deprived of its identity by the new image (cf. Hertz law). “The consequences of the images will be the image of the consequences.”

I don’t know if he said it at the meeting (see conference report for more details [16]), but in this letter, McLuhan claims that he realized how the true meaning of “class war” is “people deprived of identity.” He says the “affluent young” are the “deprived proletariat of our world. It is they who are fighting the new class war. Marxism is quite unable to cope with any 20th-century problem. The so-called “Communist” countries are merely trying to have a 19th century of consumer goods . . . (p. 373).”

Loss of identity must be an example of what he was referring to with respect to the result of causes which are initiated by the technology. In the context of what he was saying about artists and perceptual awareness, McLuhan must be referring to causes of particular effects on the senses and minds of a human audience.

Based on McLuhan’s background in Aristotelian philosophy, the reference to “causes” is likely not being used in a conventional modern sense but instead refers to Aristotle’s framework of every thing–natural or artificial– having Four Causes:

In chapter 3 [of Physics, Book II], Aristotle presents his theory of the four causes (material, efficient, formal, and final). Material cause explains what something is made of (for example, the wood of a house), formal cause explains the form which a thing follows to become that thing (the plans of an architect to build a house), efficient cause is the actual source of the change (the physical building of the house), and final cause is the intended purpose of the change (the final product of the house and its purpose as a shelter and home) [18]

McLuhan also complains that he challenged them to think of an historical example of a community predicting the “consequences of any innovation” but they didn’t have an answer. This is relevant to his overall message that people should study the consequences of a new media technology rather than assume it is only a more efficient method of delivering the same information.

Also, relating to a theme in his writings of modern media technology creating a communal, pre-literate, tribal sense of a “global village,” McLuhan claimed at the meeting that even England in 1830 had “achieved Communism” with respect to “services available to the ordinary man.” Furthermore, in today’s world,

with the multi-billion dollar service environments available to everybody, almost for free, (these include the massive educational and information world of advertising) it means that we have plunged very deep into tribal Communism on a scale unknown in human history.

So he challenged the Bilderbergers,

“What are we fighting Communism for? We are the most Communist people in world history.”

I think there was no answer because they would have had to explain to him all the other contradictions apparent (if you look) in the simplistic story we have been told about the Soviet Union and the Cold War (contradictions include releasing Trotsky, supplying wheat, etc., see Antony C. Sutton’s writings). Also, how could they have been sincerely “fighting Communism” while also funding social “changes” via their foundations? [19]

I believe that his accusations of their being ignorant and unaware, which dominate both letters, are nonsensical. Possibly McLuhan didn’t understand his Bilderberg audience, which included people who kept secrets and didn’t explain the real reasons for their policies to outsiders. It included people who must have been involved in the development of the early Internet and computer technology and who very likely knew more than he would expect about the impacts of new technologies as well as about the realities behind the war on Communism.

Rockefeller and others were closely associated with foundations who funded academic research such as McLuhan’s, so why would he think they knew very little about the modern world and new media? It seems far-fetched to accuse men like Rockefeller and Robert McNamara of not knowing what’s going on.

Bilderberg invited him to speak, so it’s more than likely they really wanted to hear what he had to say. It’s not surprising to me they did not want to share their thoughts and secrets with him.

Another source of frustration may have been the Chatham House Rule that prevented participants from disclosing who said what. According to bilderbergmeetings.org:

The meeting is a forum for informal discussions about megatrends and major issues facing the world. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed. [20]

I would speculate there is something deeper that is disturbing McLuhan about the meeting. Just as he would prefer to focus on the medium rather than the message–(the more technical and philosophical issues rather than the content, e.g. propaganda, pornography, violence)–in the same way he is unable or unwilling to moralize or focus on the more emotional and down-to-earth concerns that he and others might have about the policies of those in attendance. Instead, his hostility towards them is expressed by characterizing them as backwards.

Nevertheless, what seem to be some genuine concerns come through in this letter.

Why are we at war with Communism when we are already so communist in terms of certain services? Why are we so concerned about Marxism when it can’t even cope with the 20th century?

He ambivalently refers to them as “em-BOMB-ers” in the context of “embalming” a “dead past” when he should know that Rockefeller and other globalists have no interest in preserving the past. The truth might be coming out here–they love bombing the past along with everything else they want to get rid of.

Wasn’t the past of value to McLuhan? In his Letters, he doesn’t sound like a blind cheerleader for the new media and the global society that goes with it. Right here in this letter, he points out the destruction of identity caused by TV. Possibly television is one of the “elements of instability” discussed at the conference.

Did McLuhan see the new media just accidentally, without design, depriving people of their identity? Or, does he believe there was an intended design to do this, a “final cause” for the new media? Is new media part of the “bombing” campaign?

Loss of identity might be a good thing to globalists. Bilderberg has always discussed issues in a globalist context, so I do not believe they ever wanted to preserve national, cultural and religious identities at all. For example, they state the following points at their website:

In the context of a globalised world, it is hard to think of any issue in either Europe or North America that could be tackled unilaterally. [21]

A theme at the 1957 conference:

Nationalism and neutralism as disruptive factors inside the Western Alliance [22]

A theme at the 2013 conference:

Nationalism and Populism [23]

In the descriptions of other meetings, you can see references to “global governance” and “globalisation” [24].

Additional Information and References

Note: unless otherwise mentioned, web references in this post are cited as accessed on or before October 8, 2017.


[1] Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987). Selected and Edited by: Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, William Toye. Oxford University Press, 1987.


[2] Biographical information about Prince Bernhard:


[3] Google Ngrams: “Marshall McLuhan”
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Marshall+McLuhan&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CMarshall%20McLuhan%3B%2Cc0


[4] The editor of Letters (p. 531) refers to Eringer as a London School of Economics student, but maybe this is incorrect.


[5] Robert McNamara:


[6] George Ball:


[7] Dean Rusk:


[8] Claude Bissell:


[9]


[10]


[11] http://bilderbergmeetings.org/conferences/1960.html


[12] http://bilderbergmeetings.org/former-steering-committee-members.html

The current Steering Committee is listed also: http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/steering-committee.html.


[13] David Rockefeller:


[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Adolphe_de_Rothschild


[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Moyers


[16] Bilderberg Meetings Conference Reports include details about who attended and details of the discussions. Many have been uploaded to scribd.com, including the one for 1969: https://www.scribd.com/document/169393728/Bilderberg-Meetings-Conference-Report-1969, which confirms those in attendance, the location (Marienlyst Hotel) and details of the subject matter discussed. This report can be read for free in a browser.


[17] http://powerandreality.com/policy-themes-of-brave-new-world-religion-public-relations-drugs-transhumanism-evolution-doctrine-implies-inevitability-of-developments-instead-of-their-being-the-result-of-planning/


[18]


[19]

  • Information on Antony C. Sutton: https://canadianliberty.com/?s=Sutton
  • On foundations: https://canadianliberty.com/?tag=reece-committee
  • Ford Foundation and social change: http://powerandreality.com/analysis-letters-of-marshall-mcluhan-part-4-the-role-of-foundations-men-as-machines-enemies-of-society/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky provides a (lame and shameful) story that attempts to explain the release of Trotsky in terms of the Russian government being pressured to ask for it by revolutionary forces in Russia. Even if this is part of an explanation for his release (it can’t be the whole story), I think it becomes evidence that the pre-Bolshevik Russian politicians were going along with a bigger, oligarchical revolutionary agenda. The story is worth exploring further (I have some more information to post), but the bottom line is that he was released against the best interests of the Canadian, British and other Commonwealth forces, who ended up losing their Russian ally against Germany, and that’s the point. This is evidence of a conspiracy.
  • https://www.joc.com/canada-us-make-large-wheat-sales-soviet-union_19911023.html
    Journal of Commerce, “CANADA, US MAKE LARGE WHEAT SALES TO SOVIET UNION” by LEO RYAN | Oct 23, 1991
    This is just a later example of this. I’m sure the people appreciated having wheat, but what about the pretense of being in some kind of “war” with them while you are actually propping up their system? According to Sutton’s research, these examples are just the tip of an iceberg of Western support for the Soviet Union. These contradictions are very serious in conventional moral terms because there were real wars with real soldiers dying on one side or the other (sometimes Americans, sometimes Russians, always third parties).


[20] http://bilderbergmeetings.org/ “About Bilderberg Meetings”


[21] http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/brief-history.html


[22] http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/conferences/1950.html


[23] http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/conferences/2010.html


[24] http://bilderbergmeetings.org/conferences/1990.html and http://bilderbergmeetings.org/conferences/2010.html

End of Part 5

Continued: Part 6.1

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