Jacques Attali & the Anatomy of our Global Elite
What makes them flock together, while things fall apart?
Penned by the IAA Librarian
Things have been ticking along here at the IAA UK Headquarters. The world may be burning, with bombs raining down in Palestine, Navalny being assassinated, Tucker running wild in Russia, and Saltburn flooding the world of pop culture. But still, here I am just quietly enjoying my books by the fireside in the IAA library (… and keeping up Bucklander’s Lecture Series, of course…).
As I was walking home the other day, I also noticed some election leaflets on the ground (where they’re known to end up on occasion). It was a dreary reminder to me that the world was indeed still running along its course. But then it got me to wondering: who was actually running it? You see, we speak a lot about the ‘what’ and the ‘how’: the conceptual frameworks, the philosophical ideas, and the abstract theories. But what about the ‘who’, as in who are the ruling elite of our times? Behind all of the politicking and philosophy, what are their names and what do their faces look like?
I have been doing a lot of thinking since Henry Kissinger died. It feels like the elites are often so obscure; like monsters in a horror movie, or the boogeymen under our beds (we all have one or two), but Kissinger was a real face and presence, and he lived in our time. So then it got me thinking, who is alive now and still pulling the strings on this current global regime?… And also, what could they reveal to us about how the regime operates?
Going through my notes, I then quickly realised that there was one man who stood out… Jacques Attali. What is odd about Attali is that there are many similarities between him and Kissinger. But once you start digging beneath the surface, you then also realise that it is not as odd as you first might have thought. It is almost as though the regime selects for a certain type of individual, and if you match the profile, then you’re likely to be groomed for the position (of real-life international Bond villain). So, what then are these similarities that make Kissinger and Attali ‘birds of a feather’?
Well, much like dear old Kissinger, Attali’s early life was marked by political upheaval and violence. He was born in Algeria in 1943 to a Jewish family (speaking of “early life”), and in 1956, because of their Jewish roots, Attali’s family fled persecution during the Algerian War of Independence, landing in Paris in 1956. Again, much like Kissinger, Attali excelled in his schooling, and would then go on to study economics at some of France’s finest universities. It would be in the 1970s when Attali would hit the political big-time, becoming a key advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand, and helping to forge the economic policies of the socialist government. But the similarities that connect Attali and Kissinger go much deeper than mere biography.
Over the decades, Attali had secured himself the reputation of being an influential polymath. He has published approximately 86 books in 54 years, ranging on topics from economics to music, politics, history, and philosophy. But perhaps most importantly, Attali has held several key positions at internationalist organisations. Attali was President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1991-1993 (making him the first person to ever hold the position), and throughout the early-2000s he helped both French presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, form their economic policies. He then even introduced future French president, Emmanuel Macron to Hollande, and got Macron a job in Hollande’s government. Attali has played no small part in shaping the economic and political direction of Europe, and by extension, the world as we know it. But how exactly does a man from humble beginnings end up as a global elite?
To understand this, we must consider Attali’s first important role as an economic advisor to President Francois Mitterrand (in the 1980s). Mitterrand made history by becoming France’s first left-wing president of the Fifth Republic. He had close ties with the Communist Party. It is most important to note, however, that Mitterrand liberalised from his communist sympathies during his years in office, and decided to shift his focus from left-wing economic policies to social liberalism. But he remained a globalist, becoming the Fifth Republics first “pro-Europe” president. It is on these latter points that we discover why Attali had been pushed into prominence by Mitterrand. Attali had always had globalist leanings, even as a student. His PhD thesis was supervised by Alain Cotta, who is a proud ‘pan-European’ and a member of the Trilateral Commission. With a strong education and grasp of economics, Attali would then be a natural fit for a political regime that sought to expand liberal globalism (… or global liberalism). Attali’s rise to the top then was a combination of sheer dumb luck (as he was of the boomer generation, where social climbing for smart people was a lot easier), combined with the fact that his views were already oven-ready for globalism. In a country and continent where its ruling class was looking to expand its global progressive vision, he was a figure that could be easily nurtured and influenced from an early age, and then slotted into the ruling apparatus wherever his talents would serve best. But what exactly were those views and talents in Attali that the ruling class found so useful? How did they develop?
The book I want to focus on is one of the newer volumes on the shelf here at the IAA library. It is A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the twenty-first Century, in which Attali offers us a detailed view of where he thinks history is heading, and how we should try to shape its direction. Again, just like Kissinger, Attali is obsessed with the potential for instability and political turmoil, since chaos leads to change… Attali believes that the world is on a collision course, but in the long-run, he thinks we must view this positively. Attali also shares the prevailing globalist viewpoint that “things will get worse before they get better”. He believes that as technology advances beyond the understanding of most ordinary people, and things like climate change cause political crisis after political crisis, that we will inevitably see bursts of civil unrest, populism, and crime. The bleakest of Attali’s prediction is that the world will become something of an urbanised Mad Max scenario, with the severe breakdown of social and political order, resulting in large parts of society being run by gangsters and pirates (a future that sounds eerily similar to the one that [some] libertarians and preppers often [gleefully] anticipate…).
But Attali does not think we should despair. All of the above, he says, is a ‘necessary evil’ to achieve what he calls ‘hyperdemocracy’. Hyperdemocracy will only happen, Attali argues, if we then embrace globalisation. If we reject all of the so-called ‘nasty stuff’ like tribalism and nationalism, then hyperdemocracy will be cemented as a permanent (Utopian) societal state, rather than a mere blip in the history of progress. Attali describes hyperdemocracy as being the direct involvement of ordinary citizens in political decisions. Citizens will be able to “bypass” traditional political institutions, and instead influence political decision-making via things like online referendums and participatory budget-making. The idea is wholly technocratic; relying on advancements in networking technology and data collection to allow people to partake directly in politics. Politics will be “decentralised”, and you will be able to influence policy-making decisions from your iPhone…
I probably don’t need to tell you loyal IAA followers the problems with this… Not only could the elites utilize and manipulate all of this ubiquitous mass-communication technology to get the outcomes that they want, but there is also the likelihood that the sort of internet-obsessed normies who would be happy to run their country (or even the entire world) from a computer, would probably be the type to make very questionable, self-centered, and liberally-inclined decisions. Politics would be replaced by a dictatorship of furry social media accounts; voting endlessly in favor of social libertinism and “free” government handouts (… so, kind of like democracy today, only more “hyper”).
But Attali then anticipates that a powerful global empire with a hegemonic political, economic, and cultural, influence over the world (the U.S., probably), will then try to prevent hyperdemocracy from forming, in order to suit its own interests… As if hyperdemocracy wouldn’t actually serve the very interests of the kind of global hegemonic government that is being promoted by the very circles of elites that he runs in!… But nonetheless, for Attali, hyperdemocracy will ultimately prevail for two core reasons.
Firstly, Attali thinks that hyperdemocracy will triumph over populism and piracy because it will offer better political solutions. Like various other globalist mouthpieces of our day, Attali claims that this hyperdemocracy will make political processes more accountable, more equal, and more economically fruitful (bold claims, to say the least). Secondly, Attali thinks that it will offer the individual what he calls ‘good times’: people will live free, for longer, and with more individual freedom. Our collective intelligence will increase with hyperdemocracy, with greater access to information and data. The more intelligent we become, the more “good times” we can enjoy. This is a common Jedi mind-trick of liberals: the notion that the more you agree with them, the more intelligent you likely are, and that the more consensus there is around certain opinions, the more certain that we can be of them being the “correct opinions”. What we witness from Attali here is an epistemological shift; he equates knowing, as well as general intelligence, to adherence to liberal principles and democratic systems. If you do not agree with Attali, then it is probably because you are “not very intelligent”, and disagree with the “established consensus”…
But perhaps the most harrowing of Attali’s predictions is exactly how order will be restored to the turbulent world, via the implementation of a ‘socialised marketplace’. By this, Attali means that insurance and surveillance companies will effectively take over economic markets and our general ways of life, which will in turn create a stable and healthy world. Attali says that surveillance will be used to implement social changes. Your heath choices, such as whether you smoke or enjoy the occasional Bucklander Ale, will be logged by electronic surveillance, which in turn will generate how much you have to pay for health insurance. The healthier your health choices, the “better” your life decisions, the less money you will have to pay for things like health insurance. Of course it will be the global elites that define what the “right” choices are. You can think of this like the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit system, only it is a network of capitalist conglomerates that decide what your “score” will be, instead of the Communist State… Technocracy, or Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Society of Control’, at its finest.
The aforementioned theory gains even more relevance and applicability when contextualized within the backdrop of the COVID-19 “pandemic”. Despite its initial publication in 2006, Attali's prophetic insights have harbored eerie resemblances to the political events of the pandemic era. This period witnessed a concerted effort by the global elite, particularly spearheaded by organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), in pushing for the implementation of measures such as vaccine passports to dictate access to various mundane social venues like restaurants, nightclubs, and concerts. Effectively, individuals were coerced into aligning their health choices with the agendas propagated by the WEF and its allied entities, in exchange for the semblance of a typical normie "good time".
The overarching ethos of the WEF mirrors Attali's paradigm, encapsulating a paternalistic inclination where the elites position themselves as shepherds, shielding their sheep from potential social upheavals, whether stemming from crime or viruses. This paternalistic guardianship encompasses extending the aforementioned kind of technocratic ‘soft control’ to oversee all facets of every individuals' life, all in the name of their own “health and welfare”.
Another notable parallel between Kissinger and Attali lies in their adoption of a Hegelian-Dialectic framework within their own ideological outlooks. Attali's historical analysis of liberal democracy underscores the perpetual clashes and conflicts arising from opposing ideologies—ranging from aristocracy versus market capitalism, to religious divides such as Catholicism versus Protestantism, and ideological confrontations like liberalism versus populism. Within this narrative, Attali delineates the concept of hyperdemocracy, envisaging a synthesis emerging from the various societal conflicts.
Central to Attali's thesis is the notion that hyperdemocracy is engendered by a state of societal fatigue characterized by rampant crime, political discord, and economic turbulence, prompting a collective yearning for reconciliation and social harmony. Paradoxically, rather than trying to resolve these conflicts on any scale, Attali advocates for embracing the turbulence as an indispensable catalyst for forging a future characterized by peace, prosperity, and societal advancement (he was the original ‘collapsitarian accelerationist’…). To reject this prophetic vision of the future would then entail a form of bigoted reactionary nationalism, and therefore, in Attali’s eyes, any alternative simply could not be entertained. This necessitates then that we, the ‘unwashed masses’, must embark on the tumultuous journey towards a Utopian vision of a diverse, egalitarian, and liberally-enlightened society… A journey on which we’ll be asked to sacrifice as much of our own privacy, property, and particularity, as deemed “necessary” by our technocratic overseers, I’m sure…
And at the root of Attali’s vision, just like many other globalists, is a desire to transcend human nature itself. Instead of a Man made in the image of a Creator, they long for a Man remade in the image of his own creation. For those of you Iron-Agers who have been keeping an eye on your humble Librarian’s updates, you will have noticed that this is a reoccurring theme in my research. This is because it is an idea that unifies many of the world’s global elites. Their emphasis upon dialectical clashes, both within history and the future, is a testament to this way of thinking. They seek to discover an all-encompassing theory of history that not only makes sense of the past through a completely mechanistic naturalist lens, but also allows them to both predict and shape the future, using technology and the power of the human—at least, for now—will.
By placing technology and the will-to-power at the centre of history, Attali and his friends are able to justify their elitist globalist politics—not to mention their delirious predictions about the future, and how they’ll reshape the very essence of what it means to be human (Homo Deus, anyone?). Not only do they see themselves as the heralds and the soothsayers of an all-encompassing technocratic machine that is destined (in its own twisted way) to become ‘all in all’, but they also merely see us as cogs in that machine; ready to be refit, reshaped, and replaced, as deemed necessary (in the name of ‘progress’).
But this is also all a part of what makes them the very exclusive circle of elites at the top of society that they are. Among themselves, they will find mutual commonalities in their upbringings, their educational backgrounds, their intellectual mentors/influences, their overlapping career paths, and perhaps most importantly, their visions for a future in which society is ordered like clockwork; a flawless machine in which even human conflicts, and the misalignment of wills between individuals and collectives, will be dealt with in the most precise and technical manner. Hence, when it comes to the collective will of a future global and technocratic human race, that no longer needs to contend with ‘outdated’ traditions, tribal conflicts, and competing group interests (and can then, in-theory, turn its efforts towards remaking mankind by pushing its identity to new limits), the global elites of our time are now forming the corporate body, or anatomy, that will attempt to bring about such an ambitious revolution… As for how far they’ll get, only God knows and time will tell…
It is easy, dear reader, to be black-pilled, having read Attali’s work, and knowing that him, and hundreds of other thinkers who are cut from the very same cloth, have held positions of the utmost power and influence within our lifetime. They have been given the power to direct policy and advance their dystopian agenda, with only minor and temporary resistance in their way. But we must not despair. Though our enemy is great, our God is far greater, and if they have chosen God Himself as their adversary, then it is truly they then who have much to fear. No man, not even one as powerful as a Kissinger or an Attali, can remake Man in a new image—whether it be a transhumanist image, a Promethean image, or a techno-collectivist image like that of Brave New World. All of these towering projects are doomed to fail… For the One who created and redeemed human nature “shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; Whose Kingdom shall have no end.”