A conspiracy to debank

Society is not directly run by cultural elites. It is run by their wind-up toys who are chosen for loyalty not competence.

Nigel Farage is a popular political figure in the UK. He is most famous for leading the Brexit campaign to extricate Britain from the European Union.

He has since left politics and joined the media with his own TV show focusing on current affairs. He also has a sideline in highlighting the record levels of illegal immigration into the UK. Farage has embarrassed the British Government on many occasions, even filming footage of illegals casually walking into the country from the south coast of England, inviting unwelcome scrutiny to a subject important to most Britons.

He recently informed the public his bank had made the decision to close his accounts which he has held since the 1980s. No explanation was given although when pressured they eventually revealed he did not qualify to keep his banking with the exclusive Coutts bank who operate a minimum financial threshold to access their services.

Further investigation yielded documentary evidence that the decision to debank Farage was based on his political views. Internal discussions revealed he was perceived as racist and xenophobic because of his opposition to illegal immigration. The financial industry’s hostility to the Brexit vote was mentioned throughout. Farage was deemed to not align with the institution’s values, so he had to go.

The decision seemed to be made exclusively by the bank in question. Yet when Farage attempted to open alternative accounts elsewhere six other financial institutions declined. This triggered immediate speculation on conspiracy theories. A secret cabal calling the shots and targeting their enemies.

Is this the case? Are we witnessing the Establishment clamping down on those who threaten their interests? Or is something more mundane at play?

The appearance of conspiracy

The face that launched a thousand conspiracy theories.

It is easy to imagine conspiracies when we see events like this unfold. In the popular imagination orders are issued by some shadowy group from their underground bunker. Lieutenants then execute those orders and a threat is neutralized.

However this often ignores structural elements in a complex society, each with their part to play. Everything from large institutions, public sector organizations, major corporations and NGOs. In particular conspiracy theories ignore how difficult it is to control anything, especially whole societies.

We also overlook the tendency for systems to take on a life of their own. Bureaucracies famously grow to become lumbering beasts, devouring anything standing in the way of expansion. Along the way organizations of all types develop distinct internal cultures to further this insatiable drive to expand. Big banks are no exception.

Importantly, senior decision makers are senior precisely because they understand how the world works. They are increasingly chosen for loyalty to the elite preoccupations governing Western nations, not competency. When appointed to her position the CEO of the banking group involved with Farage announced the number one priority for the bank was to combat climate change. No one in the mainstream media challenged this pronouncement or asked how it related to retail banking services.

Secret conspiracies are a constant source of speculation, although many have no real evidence to support their existence. What is visible however are the people operating in plain sight.

Movers, shakers and wind-up toys

True believers.

Society is complex, but we can understand things using three broad layers.

1. The elites

The Establishment elite are at the top. They provide the vision for society and are often influenced by dreamers in academia. Their goals are typically utopian; net zero, a harmonious multicultural society or normalizing deviant behaviour that disturbs ordinary people, all sold as an exercise in tolerance.

An elite often sets the tone of acceptable discourse. They are the powerful and make decisions that can affect how a society is shaped and governed. Some of the elite are well known but many shun publicity. Most of us give little thought to the elites in society because they are rarely visible but they do exist.

2. The lieutenants

The second layer are the decision makers in society, often in important and influential positions. They make things happen. This layer is not part of the elite but are incentivized to act, partly to demonstrate compliance with the prevailing vision. Some dream of elevation to elite circles which provides an inherent drive to conform to grand schemes established by the powerful.

Needless to say this attracts the unscrupulous, the psychopaths and the delusional. Plenty of narcissists eager to shore up their fake personas with validation from the top. Nonetheless these are the people we find in senior positions in the media, politics and industry. Some exist in the major universities which helps enact elite goals within education. There is a natural tendency to choose people based on their willingness to toe the line and do whatever needs done. This loyalty over competence quotient plays a role in how decisions are made.

3. Street-level minions

These are the normal people caught up in whatever fad is currently in vogue. The true believers, often unaware of elites or exclusive clubs. They populate society’s institutions and organizations, from lowly clerks to senior managers and even prominent media figures.

Their chief characteristic is an inability to think critically. They are averse to deep analysis, and quick to condemn scrutiny of their motives and decisions as conspiracy. They are resistant to facts and data that may dispute cherished beliefs. We witnessed this class of being during the Covid pandemic. All those minor functionaries rigidly enforcing bizarre rules someone had mentioned on TV, completely indifferent to the absurdity of it all.

It is important to emphasize the above outline is a gross simplification of real life. The three layers are a kind of heuristic to help us understand how a bad idea generated at the top can be enacted by an employee of a corporation or a distant council worker without the need for a conspiratorial plan to direct things.

Each layer below is essentially a wind-up toy to the layer above. Some energy can be provided in the form of enthusiasm or endorsement, but that is about it. They quickly lose control. Visions don’t always resolve into clear strategies, and strategies can be misunderstood.

A culture can look like a hierarchy

He finds your lack of faith disturbing.

Wielding power is difficult. It can be challenging to ensure orders are executed efficiently even in overtly hierarchical structures as every new army general quickly finds out.

It is even worse if the serious players tend to skulk in the shadows. The opacity needed to obscure the mechanisms of power, to maintain the illusion of a democratically controlled society, hinders progress.

Real power at the top often dissipates into the more ephemeral notion of influence. You can get your placeman into a position of authority, but will he misinterpret your goals once there? Will he lose interest? An occupational hazard when promoting psychopaths and narcissists, their cognitive limitations doing little to help transmit the clarity complex plans need.

Then there are the goals themselves, often wrapped up in a fog of propaganda to convince the unthinking. Hoarding hydrocarbons to fuel your private jets must be sold as some great crusade to save the planet. What happens when your wind-up toy misunderstands the purpose of carbon taxes or subsidized wind farms?

Mid-level operators understand these societal ambitions are nonsense but they make it to senior levels because they don’t care. That can be a shaky foundation on which to manage an empire. The selfish, after all, have plans of their own.

Much of the mid-level don’t need direct orders. They understand the direction of travel and what is expected. So there is always room for interpretation as the system seems to be based on this aspirational drive. Psychopaths willing to do anything to get on and maybe even join the Big Shots themselves one day.

Similarly, narcissists are drawn to anything that makes them feel superior. Psychotic plans to enslave the masses or questionable initiatives that harm people for some ostensible supergoal the rabble cannot grasp is practically guaranteed to feed a narcissist with the brief flare of God-like megavision they imagine they possess.

We sometimes catch glimpses of this in action. Wealthy people like media personalities or successful entrepreneurs, individuals with plenty of money yet they endorse some nonsensical goal like mandatory vaccinations during a pandemic or suicidal energy policies they themselves will be harmed by. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why this happens it is a function of power. These are not the top dogs. They aspire to inclusion into elite layers of society most of us are oblivious to. Everyone wants to belong to something, and the higher up the totem pole you suppose yourself to be the more exclusive the club you want to join.

It is easy to ridicule minions as obvious followers of trends and not their instigators, however so are many decision makers. They can appear to be drivers of ideas but they are really followers too, adhering to fads, visions and signals that originate elsewhere even when in obvious leadership positions. Far from being conspiratorial schemers they are tuned in to the zeitgeist and their success is often a consequence of their ability to discern trends useful to the truly powerful.

We have to assume the self-appointed elites are probably the same. They may trigger actions in the layers of society below them, but they are just as prone to embracing poor ideas as anyone else. One of the most consistent observations of the elites made by those who occasionally mix in their circles is how unimpressive they often seem up close. They tend to live in rarefied bubbles populated by the like-minded. It is not unreasonable to assume they may be even more prone to the hypnotizing power of utopian ideas than most given their track record. Groupthink is an ever present danger to the isolated.

In this sense the system is more akin to a culture than a rigid hierarchy with generals at the top issuing orders to captains. The people who pick up the culture’s values and aspirations understand what needs done and they seek opportunities to do things that impress those higher up the chain.

No one can accurately map how this operates in detail. It is really a metaculture made up of many cultures, each with distinct subcultures. Incentives to feel superior or simply advance in life emerge within different domains. Disincentives in the form of taboos also emerge and exploit social sensitivities. When entering a culture for the first time we quickly pick up what can and can’t be said. This autopropagation can be powerful, and it can be seen everywhere.

Orange man bad

This is what they imagine.

An example of how culture can drive similar responses from disparate groups was reflected in the widespread loathing of Donald Trump once he became President of the United States. The Establishment were famously unhappy at this show of populism, and it came hot on the heels of the seismic Brexit vote that so rattled Europe’s elites. All those plebs asserting their views was anathema to people who expect to rule without question.

With the election of Trump the Left immediately lost their minds, unable to cope with this arch-capitalist in a position of power. The media responded with disturbing levels of venom, a phenomenon eventually labelled as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Much of this was spontaneous, then reinforced by everyone else joining in. It became acceptable to accuse a sitting president of any number of heinous acts, including collusion with foreign governments.

None of those people needed to be told to condemn him. Most were under the influence of an established set of norms within their own domain’s culture. The populism harnessed by Trump was seen as a threat to people who could not openly state their contempt for a huge swathe of the American population, although over time this restraint eventually eroded. All those deplorables were pilloried relentlessly when Trump maintained his popularity.

The people in media, politics and academia as well as major corporations all understood the approved line. Trump was an outsider, a serious threat to the status quo. It is worth noting that those in the media are usually minions not mid-level lieutenants. They are not making decisions about anything. Many are true believers not cynical operators gaming the system.

Trump Derangement Syndrome illustrated how ideas can propagate. It is not a hierarchy as such. The minions don’t necessarily take orders from lieutenants. Most minions are just idiots who respond to societal signals in an uncritical way. The kind of people who can believe church-going conservatives are probably domestic terrorists. The mid-level are the exact opposite; they don’t believe a word of whatever fad is sweeping through society but understand it helps them get on.

Similarly, elites cannot possibly believe the causes they champion. Most seem to be plausible nonsense to disguise less palatable ambitions. It is doubtful they believe the climate change narrative, but they may believe the plebs should consume less energy and reduce their consumption. Their condemnation of Trump as a racist because of his determination to limit illegal immigration is not credible either, but it did act as a successful rallying call for those who needed a quick method to discredit the President with an emotive label easy to throw around.

It can be hard to differentiate these layers and what they may or may not actually believe, but it doesn’t matter. The key point that Trump’s time in office demonstrated was even despair emanating from the Establishment will find a willing army of people to act on it without the need for instruction to the extent it looks more coordinated than it really is.

Debanking Farage

All too true.

Nigel Farage’s legal team requested all information held on him by Coutts bank. This ultimately included the conversations prior to his attempted debanking. There is no evidence this was anything other than a decision by bank employees. The meetings were literally recorded and archived then duly sent on by the bank’s efficient compliance team.

Far from being a heinous plot it was every bit as mundane as it seems. Mid-level people, in full wind-up toy mode, made a decision quite in keeping with the times and the circles they aspire to join. Farage is beyond the pale. His fascism included Brexit. He is a pal of Donald Trump. What else is there to say?

Senior employees acted solo. We certainly have no evidence to accuse them of wrongdoing or of following some elaborate plan hatched by globalists. It is their bank after all.

Institutional capture is just that, an organization taken over by those with ambitions that may differ from the overt purpose in their mission statements. Once encaptured the organization itself does the pushing of the agenda; no orders needed, no conspiracy required. Just a steering committee tuned in to some brilliant plan they imagine eludes the rest of us, a grand vision to rule them all.

Conspiracies no doubt exist, but the reality is we live in a complex system ran by flawed human beings with ideas of their own and limitations that blind them. It is unexciting, even boring. But there it is.

The revelation that six other banks refused to work with Farage could be taken as evidence of a conspiracy or perhaps a controlled hierarchy. But it is just as likely the same kinds of people within an industry with its own unique culture respond in a similar fashion to the same incentives and disincentives. Culture matters and navigating it successfully determines who gets on and who gets left behind.

The culture in Western societies is increasingly defined by a powerful elite and maintained by the media, politicians and large corporations, all of them to varying degrees dependent on government to operate. This culture is aggressively hostile to anything other than approved narratives and promotes those who support the status quo while damning those who question it. Everyone who is anyone knows the direction of travel. Their survival and promotion relies on this awareness. No conspiracy required.

When we see events unfold that trigger discussion about conspiracies we sometimes need to pause and take a step back. In particular we must examine the organizations these things emanate from. Public health bodies, major financial institutions and of course government itself as well as the myriad of NGOs most of us are unaware of.

What at first appears to be a coordinated effect triggered by orders from above is often just a consequence of internal incentive structures inherent in many large organizations. Everyone who matters understands what is important. Throw in ruthless psychopaths and narcissists and we can often catch sight of a toxic hellsoup of mental distortion, blind ambition and the promise of greatness to the kinds of people who fall for that kind of thing. What we rarely see are actual orders conspiracy theorists are convinced must exist, or even a hint of them.

What does exist in the real world are societal juggernauts unable to make effective decisions populated by people whose actions can range from foolish to bizarre. Companies alienating their own customers to burnish their woke credentials. Public sector bodies indifferent to serving the public but enthusiastic about rainbow flags or distant climate goals. Even members of the legal profession well aware of what decisions ought to be made and the subtle interstitial elbow room to interpret laws we are told are universal. It all adds up and it often looks more coordinated than it really is.

The actual effect of crazy ideas seeping into a loose cultural hierarchy with a thick layer of lunatics calling the shots is not seamless control of society but rather institutional dysfunction. Nothing really works. Nothing can work well. Factor in the street-level minions, lost in some pseudo-religious fervour to save the planet or celebrate private sexual mores, and we have a recipe for comedy not totalitarianism.

That is not to say this lacks danger. The dysfunction itself will damn us. But it does help to remind ourselves that those who would be our rulers aren’t very adept at ruling. They rely on others to do their bidding.

Wind-up toys can misinterpret even clear guidelines. Imagine then what they do with really vague ideas and notions like saving a whole planet or condemning political mavericks the real elites actually fear. And remember much of what they actually fear is open discussion, not armed insurrection. That’s the problem with bad ideas, they can be toppled by widespread exposure.

The mid-level types don’t care about any of that. They operate in a moral void. They are ambitious. The signals emanating from the great and the good are clear. They provide narratives to act upon so they can get on in life. The really sharp ones understand exactly what is expected of them and are on the lookout for opportunities to demonstrate their adherence to the elite in the hope of being noticed.

The street-level are prone to going completely off the reservation. It is difficult to believe some machiavellian overlord ordered libraries in small towns to book drag queens to read to the kids. That happens because they are interpreting an already vague set of loose goals.

Minions get some nominal social capital from celebrating a party line they can’t even articulate. Not that it matters. They too inherit the soft glow of smugness from the mid-level lieutenants, that unshakeable belief they see further than the masses. When they occasionally hit the jackpot and trigger some evil conservative parents incensed at the state of their local library they get to imagine everyone else is a backward uneducated yokel, which probably feels great for them. That’s why they are minions stuck in a provincial library.

Managing all this is a game of Chinese whispers. Whatever grand vision an illuminati class want they must execute it through multiple layers of wind-up toys, with the serious decision makers already chosen for their willingness to cut throats on the way up and the lack of humanity that implies.

With the debanking of Farage we see some of this inefficiency of transmission. A popular figure, one of the few who appeals to both traditional conservatives and working class patriots. A real danger to people who imagine those groups can be shoved aside and replaced with more compliant voting units.

Whatever the truly powerful think of him he makes for an uncomfortably prominent target. It seems unlikely this was anything other than actual bank employees misreading the tea leaves and hoping to score some psychopathic brownie points. They were in a position to act, so they did. Now it is plastered all over the place.

Even the mainstream media were forced to report on it given the prominence of Farage. In recent days the bank’s CEO was forced to resign. As conspiracies go this wasn’t a very good one thanks to the backlash and the exposure. If it was planned the elite are even more incompetent than we have been told.

If it is true that no orders are necessarily issued, and lackeys spontaneously respond to signals emanating from the top, then perhaps it is a kind of conspiracy. Maybe what people sense is this animating drive the decision makers respond to as elites wind them up and let them go. Ordinary people detect this energy and know something is not quite right, then misattribute these activities to a directed plan. Maybe what we call a conspiracy theory is just people noticing something, the very first step to understanding anything.

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