Dear Editor,

Perhaps one of the most vexing facts of political life is the realisation by the masses that, no matter who they vote for, the same type of people always seem to come out of elections as winners.

The flavour of a nation’s political ideology does little to change the power dynamics of the nation, who is elected to office, and the way in which wealth is concentrated. Even in countries that preach socialism and the overthrow of the capitalist class, power and wealth are still concentrated in the hands of an elite few.

There is also the widespread belief that our elected or selected leaders answer to a more secretive cabal that pulls their strings and sets their agendas, inclusive of the fiscal and monetary policies to be pursued. If there are powerful shadows lurking behind the political curtain, controlling and manipulating our leaders, then the obvious concern would be the identity of this secret cabal of shadow leaders.

The answer to the question of who runs this global town that we call our world ranges from the sublime to the hysterically outrageous. Perhaps the most widespread answer to the question of who runs the world comes from within the bowels of Judeo-Christian spirituality. According to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, mankind is caught in the middle of a cosmic conflict between extraterrestrial intelligences. Most people who adhere to this belief systems advance the idea that extraterrestrials have set up their base camp on Earth and it is they who make up the real cabal of hidden puppeteers.

For the less spiritually inclined, it is basically open season for ideas and speculations. The name David Icke has become synonymous with the reptilian agenda. Icke and his aficionados take the extraterrestrial concept to another level. According to him, many of the political leaders of the world are nothing more than a species of intelligent, shape-shifting reptiles that were genetically created by extraterrestrials. The extraterrestrials and their genetically engineered shape-shifting reptiles are the true rulers of the world, according to Icke.

Men and women who subscribe to the Aryan charm of Adolf Hitler and his Caucasian supremacy ideology are far more germane and down to earth than David Icke. According to this school of thought, the real vampires of the global system are those issued from the loins of Abraham, the progenitor of the Jewish ethnic group. Adolf Hitler was so convinced that Jews were the hidden hand behind the curtain of global affairs that he envisaged a world without Jews.

Another view which gained traction among Christian groups that followed Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other reformers in their revolt against Catholicism cast the spotlight of infamy on Catholics. The Catholic Church was presented as the great anti-Christ system, the whore of Babylon and the beast of the Apocalypse. The anti-Catholic school of thought affirmed that the Vicar of Christ in Rome and his minions were in bed with the kings and queens of the Earth, dictating their every move. This perspective seems to have fallen on hard times, even among Seventh-day Adventists, one of the Protestant groups that was most strident in promoting this viewpoint.

People of African ancestry, long accustomed to looking for Caucasian shadows behind black politics, in recent times have jumped on the who-done-it bandwagon and have started pointing fingers at the global elite of the super wealthy. Names like Bill Gates and George Soros have become popular punching bags for Africans and people of African ancestry in the diaspora. Bill Gates, in his critically assigned role of health czar of the world, has been blamed for global depopulation through vaccination programmes, the development of dangerous, genetically-created crops and a host of other supposedly unsavoury and inhumane projects.

One hundred years from now the human family will still be speculating about who really runs the world. By then, new theories and new personalities will have emerged to replace ideas that are no longer tenable and people who are no longer breathing. Hopefully, in 100 years, people of African ancestry would have got their act together and would have sufficiently learnt how to play the game of power politics so that their exploits would be noteworthy enough to inspire new theories about who runs the world.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka

Founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center

rodneynimrod2@gmail.com