Meme Watch: Agenda 21

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.
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.
Related articles
- Exposing the Influence Behind the Anti-Agenda 21 Anti-Sustainability Agenda (treehugger.com)
- Inside Agenda 21: The International Tyranny of Bike Lanes (theatlanticwire.com)
- Agenda 21 population control map for USA (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
- U.N. Out of Alabama! (washingtonmonthly.com)
- Agenda 21 for Lower Living Standards (pathwaytoascension.wordpress.com)
- The Dangers of Agenda 21: The Plans of the N.W.O. (panoffolin.wordpress.com)
- Alabama Leads the Rebellion Against UN Agenda 21 (aquariuschannelings.com)
- Alabama Becomes First State To Officially Adopt Anti-Agenda 21 Legislation (treehugger.com)
- Agenda 21 and Confederate Heritage (revisedhistory.wordpress.com)
- Agenda 21: How Globalist Domination Happens on a Local Level (theintelhub.com)
- Federal Horse Rustlers and the Agenda 21 Hustle (insomniacanonymous.wordpress.com)
- The New America Under Agenda 21 with Activist Rosa Koire — YouTube (2012indyinfo.com)
- Benjamin Fulford — Reader Update — 4 July 2012 (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
- Maurice Strong, Father of Agenda 21 (hwnsurf.me)
- Agenda 21: How Globalist Domination Happens on a Local Level (blacklistednews.com)









@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.