For decades, the masses have been in the dark about the identities of the puppet masters [dark money] pulling the strings of their acolytes “chosen” to run the world’s powerful institutions. People thought, with much instruction from “official” channels, that public officeholders themselves were in charge.

Futurist authors from George Orwell to Ayn Rand (and many science fiction writers) have warned of the dangers of centralized power, which tends to end up in the wrong hands. But few paid attention, and as with Audrey in “Little Shop of Horrors,” they kept feeding the humanity-eating monster until it grew big enough to dominate their lives.

Poets, too, like W.B. Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming,” have warned that unkempt civilization can get out of control:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. 

So have songwriters like Barry McGuire:

You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’? And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin’

Just last month, noted historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote that, “For the first time in a millennium, Europe no longer plays a critical role in promoting Western civilization nor in world history at large.”

Hanson says that, after surrendering its security to the United States at the end of World War II, European nations opted for a postmodern, pacifist, utopian socialism focused on redistributive entitlements, open borders, and radical green policies that together hastened Europe’s declining influence on world affairs. Europe was thus unprepared for the Russia-Ukraine war.

According to French journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, twenty retired French generals, backed by over 100 officers, wrote an open letter in 2021 warning President Emmanuel Macron that the divisions between communities in France and increasing “violence and nihilism” were moving the country toward a social breakdown, with a risk of “chaos” leading to a “civil war” that would then “require” a military “intervention.”

Some wonder it the U.S. might face a similar fate.

Less than a month ago, French cabinet spokesperson Olivier Vȇran warned that France might be at a “tipping point” because of the same policy errors identified by Hanson. The result, said Moutet, is that trust between the “ruling” classes and the French public has declined in lockstep with France’s economic and social decline.

The problem with most public protests, says Seamus Bruner in his blockbuster book, Controligarchs, is that the real targets – the puppet masters – have long been hidden, not even recognized by a public that is fed, from the right and the left, to focus on celebrities (effectively, the sales reps and public faces of the “controligarchs”).

In the chapter “The Great Reset,” Bruner shows how the Rockefellers and World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, the inventor of “stakeholder capitalism” and popularizer of “environmental and social governance,” persuaded China to turn from agrarian Maoism to the amoral technocratic state it is today. And it is this Chinese governance model that many Western progressives and corporate executives seek to emulate.

Schwab also partnered with the Rockefellers to tout the philosophy of “The Limits to Growth,” whose crude computer models predicted dire outcomes for the planet barring drastic action. When their fear mongering over resource depletion was exposed by new discoveries, they switched the mantra to the more easily manipulated “global warming.”

Bruner points to an admission in the 1991 Club of Rome report that, “We came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine, and the like, would fit the bill … The real enemy then is humanity itself.”

Al Gore, in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, argued that “the rescue of the environment must become the central organizing principle of civilization.” While the 1970 Clean Air Act’s list of “criteria pollutants” did not include carbon dioxide, the initial six had already been significantly brought under control. Thus, regulators were eager to add carbon dioxide – emitted by every living animal and vital to nearly every plant – as an evil that they must curtail.

The focus on carbon dioxide was a brilliant coup that provided an excuse for controlling transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, etc. It “justified” the absolute need for a centralized global government. Earth cannot be safe until the Saviors control everything – and everyone. And wouldn’t you know it? The controlling technology, and the data, was already emerging.

Thirty years later, “global warming” had morphed into “climate change,” and Gore had replaced “rescue of the environment” with “decarbonization,” signaling that “the environment” no longer matters. In today’s climate-crazed matrix, right and humpback whales are nuisances whose demise can be tolerated to build the controlling infrastructure of an all-electric society.

But so are people. People who dare oppose giant solar arrays and wind farms; people who balk at surrendering reliable transportation and appliances for more expensive, less efficient models forced on them by the government; people who cannot accept the convoluted logic by which intermittent streams are labeled as “navigable waters.” But most of all, people whose voices might stir up opposition to their grandiose goals.

And that’s where “social credit” comes in. Under the plan, financial institutions, media, and even licensing boards can either shadow-ban or outright cancel effective enemies. Better yet, coerce, cajole, or even sweet talk companies and dissidents into the sort of “confessions” elicited from captured soldiers.

Schwab disciple and protégé Yuval Noah Harari glowingly speaks of brain microchips, “happy-pill” complacency drugs, and virtual reality experiences as ways to placate the populace in the short run – and a world in which elites can purchase immortality through biotechnical upgrades.

With artificial intelligence aiding in the creation of a “superhuman” class, the bulk of humanity lacking such access becomes “useless,” says Harari. The tough decision, then, is “what to do with all these useless people.”

Back in 2012, Mitt Romney bemoaned the “47%,” “useless” people on the government dole and thus (in his mind) captive to government benefactors. In 2016, Hillary Clinton decried “irredeemable deplorables” – anyone who did opposed her agenda. To both (losing) candidates, such people were expendable.

For at least three decades Al Gore, speaking for the “ruling classes,” has proclaimed that people are far less important than “the environment.” Yet not that many grasped the import of his proclamation. Today, however, most of Africa and many even in the developed world have caught on to the elite’s plans for their futures. And they are increasingly vocal.

Perhaps it was the COVID pandemic, and the bullying tactics used by governments and regulators to force mostly first-world people to submit to injections of untested vaccines. But many among the sleeping masses awoke to the idea, expressed long ago by President Reagan, that the government is NOT “here to help.”

For the masses to prevent the controllers from consigning them to the trash heap of history, they will need champions as noble and committed as the legendary William Wallace, Rosa Parks, and Joan of Arc. Among the first fruits of the “anti-controligarch” revolt are the elections of Meloni in Italy, Milei in Argentina, and Luxon in New Zealand.

But more even than leaders, those who cherish their humanity and freedoms must name and confront the deceivers who have used the smokescreen of “climate change” to strip away even our “unalienable rights.”

Time is short, but the masks are off. We know who they are.

And they are Legion. Or maybe Rumpelstiltskin.

This piece originally appeared at RealClearEnergy.com and has been republished here with permission.