How the British Invented Globalism

by Richard Poe
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
8:47 am Eastern Time

MOST PATRIOTS agree that we’re fighting something called “globalism.”

But what is it?

First and foremost, it is a British invention.

Modern globalism was born in Victorian England, and later promoted by Britain’s Fabian socialists.

It is now the dominant belief system of today’s world.

George Orwell called it Ingsoc.

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell foretold a future in which the British Empire merges with the United States to form Oceania, a superstate driven by an evil ideology called Ingsoc (an abbreviation for English Socialism). (1)

Orwell’s dystopia was based on his knowledge of actual globalist plans.

“Federation of the World”

As British power expanded in the 19th century, global dominion seemed inevitable.

Imperial administrators laid plans for a world united under British rule.

The key to making it work was to join forces with the United States, just as Orwell described in his novel.

Many Anglophiles in the U.S. were more than eager to go along with this plan.

“We are a part, and a great part, of the Greater Britain which seems so plainly destined to dominate this planet…” enthused The New York Times in 1897, during the festivities for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. (2)

In 1842, Alfred Tennyson — soon to become Queen Victoria’s official poet laureate — wrote the poem “Locksley Hall.” It envisioned a golden age of peace, under “universal law,” a “Parliament of man” and a “Federation of the world.” (3)

Tennyson’s words foreshadowed the League of Nations and the UN. But Tennyson did not invent these concepts. He merely celebrated plans already underway among British elites.

Generations of British globalists have cherished Tennyson’s poem as if it were Holy Writ. Winston Churchill praised it in 1931 as “the most wonderful of all modern prophecies.” He called the League of Nations a fulfillment of Tennyson’s vision. (4)

Liberal Imperialism

Another British leader influenced by Tennyson’s poem was philosopher John Ruskin.

In his first lecture at Oxford in 1870, Ruskin electrified students by declaring it was Britain’s destiny to “Reign or Die” — to rule the world or be ruled by others. (5)

With these words, Ruskin gave birth to a doctrine that would soon come to be known as “liberal imperialism”—the notion that “liberal” countries should conquer barbarous ones in order to spread “liberal” values. (6)

A better name would be “socialist imperialism” as most of the people who promoted this concept were actually socialists.

Ruskin called himself a “Communist” before Marx had finished writing Das Kapital. (7)

In Ruskin’s view, the British Empire was the perfect vehicle for spreading socialism.

Ruskin’s socialism was strangely mixed with elitism. He extolled the superiority of the “northern” races, by which he meant the Normans, Celts and Anglo-Saxons who built England. He saw the aristocracy—not the common people —as the embodiment of British virtue. (8)

Ruskin was also an occultist and (according to some biographers) a pedophile. (9) In these respects, his eccentricities resembled those still fashionable in certain globalist circles today.

The Rhodes Trust

Ruskin’s teachings inspired a generation of British statesmen.

One of the most devoted Ruskinites was Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). As an undergraduate, Rhodes heard Ruskin’s inaugural lecture and wrote out a copy of it, which he kept for the rest of his life. (10)

As a statesman, Rhodes aggressively promoted British expansion. “The more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race,” he said. (11)

In his will, Rhodes left a fortune to promote “British rule throughout the world”; the consolidation of all English-speaking countries into a single federation; and — in Rhodes’s words — “the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.” (12)

All of this was supposed to lead to “the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity,” Rhodes concluded in his will. (13)

Thus, world peace would be attained through British hegemony.

By the 1890s, most British leaders agreed with Rhodes.

The Round Table

Following Rhodes’s death in 1902, Alfred Milner took over his movement, setting up secretive “Round Table” groups to propagandize for a worldwide federation of English-speaking countries. (14)

In each target country — including the U.S. — the Round Tablers recruited local leaders to act as “Judas goats.” A Judas goat is an animal trained to lead others to the slaughter.

In fact, the Round Table was leading people to a literal slaughter. War with Germany was expected. The Round Table sought commitments from each English-speaking colony to send troops when the time came. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa agreed. (15)

World War I pushed the world toward globalism, giving rise to the League of Nations.

This was by design. British design.

Generations of schoolchildren have learned that Woodrow Wilson was the father of globalism. But Wilson’s “ideals” were spoon-fed to him by British agents.

War to End War

On August 14, 1914 — only 10 days after England declared war — novelist H.G. Wells wrote an article headlined, “The War That Will End War.” “[T]his is now a war for peace…” he declared. “It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever.” (16)

Wells released a book version of “The War That Will End War” in October 1914. He wrote, “If Liberals throughout the world… will insist upon a World conference at the end of this conflict… they may… set up a Peace League that will control the globe.” (17)

Wells did not invent the idea of a “Peace League.” He was simply promoting official British policy. Wells was a secret operative for Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau (known as Wellington House). (18)

British Agents in the White House

British leaders understood that their Peace League would never work without U.S. support. For that reason, British intelligence made special efforts to penetrate the Wilson White House, which proved surprisingly easy.

Wilson’s closest advisor was “Colonel” Edward House, a Texan with strong family ties to England.

During the Civil War, House’s British-born father made a fortune as a blockade runner, trading cotton for British munitions, to arm rebel troops. (19)

Young Edward House and his brothers attended English boarding schools. (20)

While advising President Wilson, Colonel House worked closely with British spies, especially Sir William Wiseman, the US station chief for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). House, Wiseman, and Wilson became intimate friends, even vacationing together. (21)

The idea for a “League of Nations” came from Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary. In a letter of September 22, 1915, Grey asked Col. House if the President could be persuaded to propose a League of Nations, as the idea would be better received coming from a US president. (22)

When Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wiseman and House were close at hand, guiding his every move, along with a bevy of other British and U.S. officials, all committed to the globalist agenda, and many tied directly to the Round Table. (23)

The Special Relationship

Former SIS officer John Bruce Lockhart later called Wiseman “the most successful ‘agent of infuence’ the British ever had.” (24) British historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote that “He [Wiseman] and House made the ‘special relationship’ a reality.” (25)

Many historians hold that the US-UK “special relationship” began only after World War II, with the creation of NATO and the UN. However, Taylor correctly notes that the seeds of the “special relationship” were planted earlier, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

In Paris, US and UK officials secretly agreed to coordinate policy, so that both countries would act as one. Two think tanks were created to facilitate this, Chatham House (UK) and the Council on Foreign Relations (US). (26)

To the great distress of British globalists, the US Senate refused to join the League of Nations. It took another World War — and the persuasive talents of Winston Churchill — to finally draw the US into global government, via NATO and the UN.

Winston Churchill, Father of Modern Globalism

Churchill’s vision of global government was oddly similar to that of Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table. Churchill called for a “world organisation” backed by a “special relationship” between English-speaking countries.

On February 16, 1944, Churchill warned that, “unless Britain and the United States are joined in a Special Relationship… within the ambit of a world organisation — another destructive war will come to pass.” (27) Accordingly, the UN was founded on October 24, 1945.

However, the UN was not enough. Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table had always maintained that the true power behind any global government must be a union of English-speaking peoples. Churchill repeated this plan in his “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.

Churchill warned that the UN had no “international armed force” or atomic bombs. The US must therefore join with Britain and other English-speaking countries in a military alliance, Churchill argued. No other force could stop the Soviets.

“Fraternal Association of the English-Speaking Peoples”

Churchill stated that “world organisation” was useless without “the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.” (28)

Churchill’s words led to the 1949 NATO Treaty and the “Five Eyes” agreement which pooled intelligence efforts by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Step by step, Churchill drew us ever closer to the global superstate Orwell called Oceania.

A self-described “Tory anarchist,” Orwell hated Soviet Communism. If he wished, he could have written Nineteen Eighty-Four as a sort of British Red Dawn, with England groaning under Soviet occupation. But that was not Orwell’s message. (29)

Orwell warned of a danger closer to home. He warned of British globalists and their plan for a union of English-speaking countries driven by Ingsoc ideology.

In many respects, the world we inhabit today is the world Orwell foresaw.

Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. He co-wrote The Shadow Party with David Horowitz, and is presently writing a history of globalism.

FOOTNOTES

1. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York: New American Library/Signet Classics, 1961), pp 152-153, 246
2. New York Times, June 24, 1897; quoted in National Union Gleanings Vol. IX July-December, 1897 (London: National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations; 1897), p42
3. Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1869), pp 51-53
4. Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, “Fifty Years Hence,” Maclean’s, November 15, 1931, pp 66-67
5. John Ruskin, Lectures on Art Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870
(New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1893), pp 36-37
6. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), p 130
7. John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, Vol. I (London: George Allen, 1907), p116
8. Ruskin, 1893, p 35-37; Quigley, 1966, p 130
9. Philip Hoare, “John Ruskin: a Prophet for Our Troubled Times,” New Statesman, February 13, 2019; Candy Bedworth, “John Ruskin: Painter, Prophet, Pervert,” Daily Art Magazine, December 3, 2020
10. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p 130
11. The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, edited by W. T. Stead (London, “Review of Reviews” Office: 1902), page 58
12. Basil Williams, Cecil Rhodes, (New York, Henry Holt & Company: 1921), page 51
13. Williams, Cecil Rhodes, 1921, page 51
14. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (New York: Books in Focus, 1981), pp117-118; Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Company, 166), pp 146, 950
15. Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 1981, pp117-118; Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p 144
16. H.G. Wells, “The War That Will End War,” Daily News & Leader, August 14, 1914
17. H.G. Wells, The War That Will End War (London, U.K.: Frank & Cecil Palmer, October 1914), page 62
18. Peter Edgerly Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986), p114; Kenneth J. Calder, Britain and the Origins of the New Europe, 1914-1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, for the Center of International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1976), p54; Burton Yale Pines, America’s Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One (New York: RSD Press, 2013), p39
19. Charles E. Neu, Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson’s Silent Partner (United States: Oxford University Press, 2014), p 3-5, 8
20. Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson’s Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp 16-19; Neu, Colonel House, 2014, pp 3-8.
21. Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London: HarperCollins, 1995), p57; Keith Jeffrey, The Secret History of MI6 1909-1949, (New York: Penguin Press, 2010), p116
22. Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926), pp. 87-89, 92
23. Inderjeet Parmar, Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Role and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939-1945 (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2004), p26-27
24. John Bruce Lockhart, “Sir William Wiseman Bart — Agent of Influence,” RUSI Journal (Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies) (Great Britain), vol. 134, no. 2 (Summer 1989), pp.63-67
25. A. J. P. Taylor, Short Notices, The English Historical Review, Volume LXXXVI, Issue CCCXXXVIII, January 1971, p198 (A review of: W.B. Fowler, British-American Relations, 1917-1918: The Role of Sir William Wiseman (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1969)
26. Inderjeet Parmar, Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Role and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939-1945 (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 3, 19, 27, 29, 109
27. Herb Greer, “Amantium Irae — `Special’ No More: Anglo-American Relations: Rhetoric and Reality by John Dickie,” World Affairs, Washington, Vol. 157, Issue 2 (Fall 1994): 98
28. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, Harry S. Truman, The Sinews of Peace: A Speech by Winston Churchill to Westminster College Fulton, Missouri 5 March 1946 (United States: Halcyon-Commonwealth Foundation, 1965)
29. Peter Wilkin, “George Orwell: The English Dissident as Tory Anarchist,” Political Studies, Vol. 61, Issue 1, March 2013, pp 197-214