Tragedy and Hope: The Conspirators Exposed

In 1966, a professor at Georgetown University published a long, scholarly tome entitled Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. This 1300 page volume would have been destined to collect dust on the shelves of university libraries but for one thing.

It seems that this Establishment scholar who trained aspiring foreign service appointees claimed that a secret international society played a large part in shaping the events of recent history. He claimed firsthand knowledge of the secret group, and he detailed its founding and organizational structure.

Here is a key passage that appeared in the books, pamphlets and newsletters of conspiratologists in the late 1960's and early 1970's:

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.

That era produced two influential right wing books that quoted extensively from Quigley's work: None Dare Call It Conspiracy (NDCC) by Gary Allen and The Naked Capitalist by W. Cleon Skousen. The strength of these books lay in their exposure of the inner workings of the power elite in America.

Knowledge alone will not defeat an adversary that wields unimaginable power and wealth. That knowledge must lead to the right kind of action.

The weakness of these books lay in their call to political action that pretty much confined itself to writing letters to congressmen and voting the rascals out. That's a naive approach to oust a group that controls the national candidate selection process for both political parties.

NDCC in particular blanketed the conservative movement of the early to mid-1970's, and I think led to the grassroots support for Ronald Reagan over the CIA, Trilateral Commission candidate, George Bush. Reagan punctuated his nomination by immediately choosing Bush as his running mate. (Under the present system, NO ONE gets to run as a major party presidential candidate without making deals.)