Meme Watch: Agenda 21

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The all-​​seeing eye is more malev­o­lent than we thought. Still from the video “Agenda 21 for Dummies”.

Belief in a shad­owy con­spir­acy of pow­er­ful men and women who are try­ing to take over the world is a meme that won’t die. My first expe­ri­ence with this brand of polit­i­cal belief was in a men’s bath­room stall in the Nor­lin Library at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado, Boul­der. There, I first learned of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion’s plan to vapor­ize my cher­ished Amer­i­can freedoms.

Fear of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion peaked 30 years ago, and now it’s mostly a quasi-​​historical odd­ity, but that doesn’t mean they’ve given up try­ing to con­trol you.

The lat­est ver­sion of this ever­green meme is the cur­rent brouhaha over Agenda 21 which has inflamed the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee and sev­eral state par­ties, includ­ing Georgia’s.

Agenda 21 is a non-​​binding tooth­less state­ment of fairly gen­eral prin­ci­ples for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment adopted by the United Nations in 1992. The “21” in the title refers to the 21st century.

The peo­ple who wrote Agenda 21 are tricky. This may sound like the usual admin­is­tra­tive pablum to you, but buddy, it’s packed with all sorts of action items:

Sci­en­tific knowl­edge should be applied to artic­u­late and sup­port the goals of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, through sci­en­tific assess­ments of cur­rent con­di­tions and future prospects for the Earth sys­tem. Such assess­ments, based on exist­ing and emerg­ing inno­va­tions within the sci­ences, should be used in the decision-​​making process and in the inter­ac­tive processes between the sci­ences and policy-​​making. There needs to be an increased out­put from the sci­ences in order to enhance under­stand­ing and facil­i­tate inter­ac­tion between sci­ence and society.

A stir­ring call to arms, rem­i­nis­cent of Shake­speare chan­nel­ing Henry V’s St. Crispin’s day speech to the troops at Agin­court. “Should be! Needs to be!” Makes the pulse race, doesn’t it?

That’s because you’re not see­ing the larger pic­ture. From the first linked video:

Sus­tain­able devel­op­ment is the phi­los­o­phy designed to bring human beings across the globe under the full con­trol of a nar­row human élite.

Or take this quote, from a res­o­lu­tion adopted by the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee in Jan­u­ary and to be intro­duced as a plat­form plank at the Repub­li­can National Convention:

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is a com­pre­hen­sive plan of extreme envi­ron­men­tal­ism, social engi­neer­ing, and global polit­i­cal con­trol that was ini­ti­ated at the United Nations Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­ment and Devel­op­ment (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992; and,

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local com­mu­ni­ties through­out the United States of Amer­ica through the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil of Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives (ICLEI) through local “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” poli­cies such as Smart Growth, Wild­lands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Vision­ing Projects, and other “Green” or “Alter­na­tive” projects; and

WHEREAS, this United Nations Agenda 21 plan of rad­i­cal so-​​called “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” views the Amer­i­can way of life of pri­vate prop­erty own­er­ship, sin­gle fam­ily homes, pri­vate car own­er­ship and indi­vid­ual travel choices, and pri­vately owned farms; all as destruc­tive to the environment…

It’s like the shad­owy attempt to impose sharia law. The brave citizen-​​legislators of Okla­homa tried to fight it, but the Fed­eral courts over­turned that mea­sure and sided with the Mus­lims try­ing to take over the domain of civil law in this country.

Like the brave leg­is­la­ture of Okla­homa, fight­ing an implaca­ble foe, law­mak­ers of the State of Alabama have rec­og­nized this threat and begun the fight against it. Sen­ate Bill 477, passed through a Repub­li­can leg­is­la­ture and signed into law by Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Robert Bent­ley, states:

The State of Alabama and all polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sions may not adopt or imple­ment pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions that delib­er­ately or inad­ver­tently infringe or restrict pri­vate prop­erty rights with­out due process, as may be required by pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions orig­i­nat­ing in, or trace­able to “Agenda 21″…

(And note that the words “Agenda 21″ fall on the 21st line of the bill. Puz­zling evi­dence.)

As The Econ­o­mist’s “Democ­racy in Amer­ica” blog puts it,

Agenda 21 was rous­ingly con­demned at the state Repub­li­can con­fer­ence last month as “an encroach­ment on our sov­er­eignty” (which it might be if it were enforce­able, bind­ing, or actu­ally did any­thing). And [Bill Byrne], a for­mer can­di­date for gov­er­nor now run­ning for com­mis­sioner of Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, con­demned plans to build a jog­ging and bik­ing trail along­side a high­way because, “That’s Agenda 21. Bicy­cles and pedes­trian traf­fic as an alter­na­tive form of trans­porta­tion to the auto­mo­bile.” Hear that, hip­pies? Every time you walk or bike some­where instead of dri­ving your car, U Thant wins.

Google Trends graph of searches for the term “Agenda 21″

The Agenda 21 meme gained its pop­u­lar­ity in mid-​​2011, accord­ing to a graph of Google searches. It’s also inter­est­ing to spec­u­late on the geo­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion: Ster­ling, VA and Mil­pi­tas, CA are the #1 and #2 cities search­ing for Agenda 21.

The #1 state for “Agenda 21″ searches is Mon­tana, by a wide mar­gin. Ten­nessee is #2, but states rank­ing 2 through 10 are in a vir­tual tie.

The Agenda 21 con­spir­acy meme is really not much dif­fer­ent that the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion meme, which is not much dif­fer­ent than the Bilderberg/​Illuminati meme which is not much dif­fer­ent than the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion meme.

Agenda 21 fears (eikosieino­pho­bia?) seem to be a smooth con­tin­u­a­tion of this ever­green idea, con­sis­tently pro­moted by the John Birch Soci­ety and other groups, warn­ing us of impend­ing doom.

This graph com­pares the num­ber of “Agenda 21″ searches to the num­ber of “Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion”, “Bilder­berg” and “Illu­mi­nati” searches.

The Illu­mi­nati win. So far, it has been the only thing they’ve won. Since these sup­pos­edly pow­er­ful groups have been at it for so long, you think they’d have achieved their desired objec­tive, The One World Order, long before now.

Cecil Adams said about the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion con­spir­acy the­ory in his “Straight Dope” col­umn:

Among true believ­ers, opin­ions about what the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is up to fall roughly into two cat­e­gories: the merely dubi­ous and the totally insane.

It reminds me of my father’s favorite joke. A man is stand­ing on a street cor­ner in a busy U.S. city, scream­ing at the top of his lungs. A police­man asks him, “Why are you stand­ing on a street cor­ner in this busy U.S. city, scream­ing at the top of your lungs?” The man says, “To keep the tigers away.” The police­man replies, “That’s silly, sir. There are no tigers for thou­sands of miles.” To which the scream­ing man replies, glee­fully, “See what a good job I’m doing!”

I, for one, appre­ci­ate the won­der­ful job the John Birch Soci­ety is doing at keep­ing the tigers (and sharia law and Agenda 21) at bay.

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  1. @Monotreme

    Just read­ing the New Amer­i­can arti­cle about the new Atlanta law made my head hurt. I can under­stand the para­noia about “one world order” as iso­la­tion­ism becomes less and less ten­able in our more glob­al­ized soci­ety, espe­cially for busi­nesses. Peo­ple don’t like change, and they don’t like admit­ting that what hap­pens in other coun­tries affects us here. How­ever, I fail to see how an ini­tia­tive aimed at mak­ing sure we still exist in the future amounts to a world takeover by anyone.

    It’s like these peo­ple are say­ing that we must main­tain our extreme depen­dence on for­eign oil, because reduc­ing our oil deficit would risk the takeover of our nation by for­eign­ers, espe­cially those Agenda 21 glob­al­ists from the UN. So, mak­ing our­selves less depen­dent on other nations would make us part of the Agenda 21 World Order. It makes no sense.

    But inter­nal log­i­cal con­sis­tency has never been a par­tic­u­lar hall­mark of con­spir­acy theories.

  2. Con­spir­acy the­o­ries sim­ply fas­ci­nate me. I think maybe they are proof that every­body is at heart a nov­el­ist, and we all just want to cre­ate a  nar­ra­tive more com­plex and com­pelling than the the sim­ple truth of any mat­ter. Or maybe we want to salve our egos by believ­ing our fail­ures are because of vastly pow­er­ful sin­is­ter forces arrayed against us, and not because our own posi­tion is weak, unpop­u­lar, screwed-​​up. etc.

    You should see the manic pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­spir­acy the­o­ries at Freep­erville these days. They spend their days spin­ning con­vo­luted webs of global takeover, double-​​dealing, deep machi­na­tions and Manchurian candidates.

    And (not all that promis­ing for Repub­li­can hopes this year) they firmly believe their own party is “in on it” and prof­it­ing from the decep­tions, which is why all the high-​​ups in the GOP refuse to expose Obama for the lying, ille­git­i­mate, non-​​citizen fraud that he really is and “take their coun­try back.”

    Here is yesterday’s thread on the var­i­ous con­spir­acy issues sur­round­ing the birther issue. If your stom­ach isn’t strong enough to read right to the end, the most cur­rent the­ory is that Ann Dunham’s father (Barack’s grand­fa­ther) con­sorted with black pros­ti­tutes, and fathered Barack Obama with one of them on a secret trip to Kenya. He returned to Kenya when the child was born, brought it home and  foisted the mulatto baby on his daugh­ter to claim as her own so the fam­ily would not be shamed or blackmailed.

    His wife Made­lyn, Obama’s grand­mother, who worked in a mid-​​level gov­ern­ment posi­tion in Hawaii, was obvi­ously in on the plot and forged the birth doc­u­ments, then planted them in the state archives and sent birth announce­ments to the newspapers.

     

  3. Con­spir­acy the­o­ries sim­ply fas­ci­nate me.

    birther issue

    Con­ser­v­a­tives hating/​despising Barack Hus­sein Obama = ad nau­seam Obama mis­in­for­ma­tion aside, it comes down to low infor­ma­tion vot­ers, as always.

    The prob­lem for Reps, after (4) years as pres­i­dent, Obama is already clearly defined to inde­pen­dent swing voters.

    >

    Before the 2008 elec­tion there was a DVD in most national newspapers:

    Obses­sion ~ Rad­i­cal Islam’s War Against The West hop­ing to link Hus­sein Obama to rad­i­cal Islam.

    Also work­ing against Republicans/​turdblossom et al, true then as it is now, Amer­i­can vot­ers have the atten­tion span of a peanut! :D

    Did I men­tion Obama has been pres­i­dent for four years, whereas mit­tens and his Mor­mon magic under­where is still a mys­tery lol.

    that is all

  4. I am curi­ous what caused the rel­a­tively large spike in “Agenda 21″ inter­est in early June 2011. I have searched for some prox­i­mal cause, and can’t find any. It doesn’t appear to have been a FOXNews report or a blog post that Google can find. 

    Any­one have any guesses?

  5. @Monotreme

    It prob­a­bly started with Mike Opelka of The Blaze who pub­lished an arti­cle insin­u­at­ing that UN Agenda 21 is a Soros plot for World Gov­ern­ment on June 14. I’m guess­ing that the con­spir­acy heated up when Mr. Opelka’s June 21 arti­cle linked Agenda 21 to Obama’s June 9th sign­ing of Exec­u­tive Order # 13575 which cre­ated the White House Rural Coun­cil (WHRC).

    Warn­ing bells should have been sound­ing all across rural Amer­ica when the phrase “sus­tain­able rural com­mu­ni­ties” came up. As we know from research­ing the UN plan for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment known as Agenda 21, these are code words for the true fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion America.

    The com­ments under the arti­cles are par­tic­u­larly enter­tain­ing for those with strong stom­achs for “anti-​​socialist” paranoia.

  7. @fili

    Well, read­ing the linked com­ment thread, I did get the word “nuga­tory” out of it, which made the whole read­ing (and the Lysol shower I had to take after) all worth it.

  8. My guess is that as soon as some­one linked Agenda 21 to WHRC on June
    9th, that that trig­gered the ensu­ing inter­est. The Blaze might not have
    been the absolute start of the Agenda 21 furor, but it shows that it was
    prop­a­gat­ing through the con­ser­v­a­tive blo­gos­phere by mid-​​June as a
    reac­tion to Obama’s EO #13575.

  10. It always amazes me that George Soros is con­sid­ered to be so fright­en­ingly rich, when the Koch broth­ers could own a cou­ple hun­dred Soroses. Seems to me the Kochs would be much bet­ter can­di­dates for being Secret Over­lords. But maybe that’s just me.

  11. Roth­schild, hmmm. Clearly the Illu­mi­nati agenda is to under­mine the UN for their own pur­poses in attain­ing a New World Order for themselves.

    ;-)

  12. “I think maybe they are proof that every­body is at heart a [lit­tle paranoid].…”

    There, fixed it for ya. 

    “It always amazes me that George Soros is con­sid­ered to be so fright­en­ingly rich, when the Koch broth­ers could own a cou­ple hun­dred Soroses.”

    Umm, no. 

    http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#p_1_s_a0_All%20industries_All%20countries_All%20states_​

    Among the world’s wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als, Charles and David Koch are tied at 12th with $25 bil­lion apiece.  George Soros is 22nd at $20 bil­lion.  Look­ing at them indi­vid­u­ally, they are vir­tu­ally indis­tin­guish­able, though if you com­bine the Koch broth­ers’ wealth, they would have about 2.5 times what Soros has. 

  13. Mule,

    “I think maybe they are proof that every­body is at heart a [lit­tle paranoid]…”

    Per­haps. The human mind is well-​​suited to fill in gaps with one’s own imag­i­na­tion. Some gaps come from inabil­ity to know, while oth­ers come from unwill­ing­ness to know. Regard­less, what we fill those gaps with comes from our own view of the world. Cou­pled with the Lake Wobe­gon effect, con­spir­acy the­o­ries and a degree of para­noia are pretty much inevitable.

    At that point, what’s the real dif­fer­ence between “nov­el­ist” and “lit­tle para­noid”? Both come from the cre­ations of fic­tions. They merely serve dif­fer­ent purposes.

  14. Mule, thanks for the cor­rec­tion. Okay, $50 bil­lion total for the two Kochs, $20 B for Soros. Pok­ing at the Inter­nets for a bit, I agree, these are the num­bers I am also finding.

    On a side note, the Koch “job cre­ators” increased their net worth from 2007 to 2011, from about $34 B to about $50 B. Dur­ing the same period, accord­ing to pub­li­ca­tions from Koch Indus­tries, they shrank the num­ber of peo­ple they employed from about 80,000 to around 67,000.  Not really so much about “job cre­ation” I guess. But that’s way off-​​topic, unless we can tie to it the Rothchild con­spir­acy to undo the U.N.…

  15. But Michael, just yes­ter­day you said “none is so blind as he who will not see.”  I under­stand that “a fool­ish con­sis­tency is …” but I would have thought you’d be a bit more consistent.

  17. Michael,

    One person’s wish­ful think­ing is another person’s imag­i­na­tion fill­ing in the gaps in their knowl­edge.  One person’s para­noia is another person’s obvi­ous and incon­tro­vert­ible pat­tern. One per­son doesn’t want to see some­thing — and another per­son sees some­thing they want to see, even when it isn’t there.  Does that clear things up for you?  It’s all the same phe­nom­e­non, just turned this way or that.
    Yes­ter­day you directed “none is so blind as he who will not see” at my com­ments. Today you are basi­cally argu­ing that the human mind fills in a pat­tern where none is there.

  19. Michael,
    Since you seem to want to know, do you con­sider it con­sis­tent to say one day to some­one, “none is so blind as he who will not see” (evi­dently imply­ing they can­not see some­thing) and the next day to point out how — and why — peo­ple see things that aren’t there?  If you do, then I can say no more.

  20. “Mule, thanks for the cor­rec­tion. Okay, $50 bil­lion total for the two Kochs, $20 B for Soros. Pok­ing at the Inter­nets for a bit, I agree, these are the num­bers I am also finding.”

    To be per­fectly hon­est, I didn’t real­ize the Kochs were that wealthy.  But I knew that Soros was some­where in that 11-​​figure range, behind guys like Slim/​Gates/​Buffet, but more than enough spare change lying around.  And for them to have even a “hun­dred times” what Soros has, that would put their com­bined net worth at more than $1 tril­lion, and I knew that wasn’r right .

  21. Short­chain,
    Yes, I do. Both involve people’s per­cep­tions dif­fer­ing from real­ity. Some­times it’s out of desire, oth­ers out of need.

  22. short­chain,
    I believe I under­stand the source of con­fu­sion. I wrote

    none is so blind as he who will not see

    yet you inter­preted it as

    none is so blind as he who can­not see

    What I wrote, and what I meant with that, is that one chooses not to see it, not that they are inca­pable of doing so.

  23. Michael,
    No, I inter­preted it as “will not see” — as in, doesn’t want to.  That is, I was wish­fully not want­ing to see … something…for rea­sons that were not clearly explained.  Today you are say­ing, and I quote: “what we fill those gaps with comes from our own view of the world”.  In other words, peo­ple are prone to see what they want to see.

    So — fine, peo­ple are prone to see things they want to see that aren’t there, and peo­ple are also prone to not see things that are there (and some of us are sadly unable to see things that aren’t there–no doubt a per­sonal short­com­ing, no need to rub it in).  Which raises the ques­tion:  how do we deter­mine which is the case?  How do we estab­lish ground truth?  Or is there no ground truth?

    After all, for all we know, there are schem­ing UN offi­cials just itch­ing to take over the world (and let us not dis­count The Brain).   In fact, given that there are thou­sands of UN offi­cials, it sur­passes believ­abil­ity that all are hum­ble, demo­c­ra­tic, and honest.

  24. short­chain,

    Which raises the ques­tion: how do we deter­mine which is the case? How do we estab­lish ground truth? Or is there no ground truth?

    Not to be flip, but it depends on who “we” is. There’s a rea­son that juries have 12 peo­ple on them, instead of merely one. Cer­tainly a pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence can help, but look at how many peo­ple still dis­be­lieve in the exis­tence of global cli­mate change, let alone the anthro­pogenic nature of it. Look at how many peo­ple still believe Obama was born in Kenya, or Indone­sia, or anywhere-​​but-​​the-​​US. Look at how many peo­ple believe that rais­ing taxes by x per­cent will gen­er­ate x per­cent more tax rev­enues. The evi­dence to the con­trary on all of these is pretty substantial.

    So it really does depend on who “we” is.

    After all, for all we know, there are schem­ing UN offi­cials just itch­ing to take over the world

    There prob­a­bly are. But the UN is so inca­pable of actu­ally doing much that, absent some amaz­ing coör­di­na­tion among many peo­ple whose inter­ests diverge, they won’t be able to achieve those goals. At least, not within the struc­ture of the UN. So, really, it doesn’t mat­ter if there are such people.

  25. Michael,
    Juries don’t deter­mine the “truth” except in fic­tion.  In real life, they deter­mine the out­come of a case, and per­haps guilt.    The truth, unless it relates to whether peo­ple believe some­thing or not, does not depend on whether peo­ple believe it.

  26. Mule,

    To be per­fectly hon­est, I didn’t real­ize the Kochs were that
    wealthy.  But I knew that Soros was some­where in that 11-​​​​figure range

    And my error was in the oppo­site direc­tion, putting Soros under $10 B and roughly dou­bling the amount the Kochs have. Inter­est­ing to see pre­con­cep­tions play out, and find the truth between them, eh? (Plus, you did actual math.)

  27. short­chain,

    Juries don’t deter­mine the “truth” except in fic­tion. In real life, they deter­mine the out­come of a case, and per­haps guilt.

    Of course. That’s actu­ally closely related to my arti­cle for tomor­row. But your obser­va­tion there is the rea­son there is no truth that is absolute to every­one on earth. A skep­tic can find a flaw in any evi­dence. So there may well be an absolute truth, but its exis­tence is some­what irrel­e­vant except in an abstract sense; humans’ per­cep­tion of the truth is all that can truly mat­ter to humans…though some may be unable to dis­cern the difference.

    Exis­ten­tial enough for ya?

  28. It appears to me that he had more to add, but you weren’t recep­tive to it. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

    Exis­ten­tial notwith­stand­ing, I took it at face value and since MW did not give any specifics re: what shilo­h­buster was “try­ing” to say, his bib­li­cal ref­er­ence was just a deflec­tion as to shilohbuster’s post. Basi­cally mean­ing­less jib­ber­ish from MW, unless he wants to expand on said discussion.

    This of course applies to the pre­vi­ous thread.

    >

    btw, under­wear, not under­where lol as the emperor may have no clothes, but at least …

  29. “Basi­cally mean­ing­less jib­ber­ish from MW.…”

    Must be tough hav­ing to, at times, defend both your right and left flank?

  31. Must be tough hav­ing to, at times, defend both your right and left flank?

    Actu­ally shilo­h­buster, MW’s bib­li­cal ref­er­ence deflec­tion was “try­ing” to defend you as he must have a soft spot, eh. Which is fine, again lib­eral empa­thy. My beef was he didn’t give any specifics.

    And the obvi­ous: MW, dc et al lib­er­als are quite fair, indeed they bend over back­wards try­ing to appease dis­grun­tled chil­dren. Oth­er­wise you would have been banned instantly (4) years ago by Nate, another moderate.

    You should be eter­nally grate­ful for their impar­tial­ity and belief in giv­ing peeps sec­ond, third, fourth etc. chances lol.

    Yes, MW has infi­nite patience! :)

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