James Corbett’s Reportage: Review of Globalism, Bilderberg, and the Illusion of Left vs. Right Explore James Corbett’s Reportage, a sharp essay collection on global elites, Bilderberg, BIS, and the illusion of democracy. This review highlights strengths, weaknesses, and key primary sources, with Turabian-style references.

Review of Reportage: Essays on the New World Order by James Corbett

James Corbett’s Reportage: Essays on the New World Order is a polemical collection that aims to reframe contemporary politics as “up vs. down”—elite centralizers versus ordinary people—rather than left vs. right. Corbett writes with verve and an eye for historical connective tissue, and he anchors many claims in documentary sources. The book’s strongest chapters synthesize archival material on post-war transatlantic policy networks, regional integration in Europe, and the post-2008 global regulatory build-out. The weaker moments arrive when secondary or contested claims are allowed to carry too much argumentative weight. Still, as a thematically coherent primer on anti-centralist critique, Reportage is engaging and—at points—convincing. Reportage

Corbett’s treatment of Bilderberg and European integration is harder to dismiss than its caricatures. He cites the 1955 Bilderberg conference report—now publicly accessible—which explicitly discussed arriving “in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.” That language is real, and it clearly precedes the Treaty of Rome (1957), which established the EEC. The causal weight one assigns is debatable; the documentary trail is not. WikiLeaks+2THE UNSECRET SOCIETY+2

He then contrasts the failed “EU Constitution” project with the Treaty of Lisbon—substantively similar reforms enacted through a conventional treaty path—underscoring the politically sensitive re-run of Ireland’s referendum (No in 2008; Yes in 2009 after guarantees). That’s a fair summary of the record and helps his broader thesis about technocratic persistence despite democratic friction. Encyclopedia Britannica

On global finance, Reportage argues that real power congregates in unelected venues such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Here, too, Corbett’s scaffolding is solid: the BIS openly defines itself as “a bank for central banks” and a forum for policy coordination; the FSB’s Key Attributes—endorsed by G20 leaders—became the post-crisis global template for resolution regimes, including creditor “bail-in” tools. The Mark Carney chairmanship illustrates how national central bankers straddle these global standard-setting roles. Corbett’s point is not that these institutions are occult, but that they are structurally upstream of domestic lawmaking. That is accurate as far as institutional design goes. Financial Stability Board+4Bank for International Settlements+4Financial Stability Board+4

Where Reportage is most contentious is its foray into 9/11 finance and securities-market anomalies. Corbett highlights peer-reviewed work finding abnormal option activity prior to the attacks (e.g., Poteshman 2006; Chesney–Reshetar–Karaman 2011). Those papers do report statistically unusual trading patterns; that’s a matter of public record. He contrasts this with the 9/11 Commission’s notorious line that tracking ultimate funding sources was “of little practical significance,” an official posture that understandably fuels skepticism. The scholarship does not, however, identify who traded or prove foreknowledge beyond doubt; readers should distinguish “evidence of anomalies” from “evidence of culpability.” Corbett acknowledges that evidentiary gap, but the book’s rhetoric sometimes blurs it. 9/11 Commission

Corbett also revisits Stratesec/Securacom—the security contractor with clients including Washington Dulles International Airport, United Airlines, and the World Trade Center—and notes its board links to Marvin P. Bush and Wirt D. Walker III. Those client relationships and directors are verifiable in SEC filings; they are unusual enough to merit mention, though they are not dispositive of anything by themselves. Again, the evidentiary posture is “curious overlap,” not a proven chain of causation. EDGAR+1

Methodologically, the collection’s virtues are synthesis and citation density. Corbett is at his best when he triangulates primary documents (conference reports, treaties, filings) with institutional histories. Readers new to the terrain will appreciate the way he yokes the EU’s incrementalism to the post-2008 consolidation of global financial standards: in both cases, political authority flows toward bodies that are deliberately insulated from retail politics. The frame is provocative but not fabricated.

Two cautions for scholarly readers:

1. Attribution creep. Quotations widely ascribed to Carroll Quigley circulate online in meme form. Corbett’s broader engagement with Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope thesis is legitimate, but reviewers should insist on page-exact citations for direct quotes from that work (or avoid quotation marks and paraphrase with proper reference). (See Endnote 10.)

2. Category errors. It’s tempting to glide from “forums for policy coordination exist” to “covert command structures control outcomes.” Reportage sometimes implies more than it proves. In places where the book leans on contested secondary sources, the argument would be stronger if it foregrounded the best-available primary documents and clearly labeled inference as inference.

Even with those caveats, Reportage succeeds as an accessible entry point into the political economy of supranational governance. Readers who already suspect that “up vs. down” better explains the last quarter-century than “left vs. right” will find corroboration; skeptics will at least find enough documentary tethering to engage the case on the merits. The book’s closing chapters—advocating “voluntarist” bottom-up community building—are more normative than empirical, but they give the project a constructive horizon that keeps it from collapsing into cynicism. Reportage

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Notes 

1. James Corbett, Reportage: Essays on the New World Order (Osaka: Editions Shukutou, 2025), official site and publication details at ReportageBook.com. Reportage

2. “Bilderberg meeting report, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1955,” leaked conference report (text/PDF), esp. summary language on “the highest degree of integration … beginning with a common European market.” WikiLeaks+1

3. “Treaty of Rome (EEC) — Summary,” EUR-Lex (European Union law portal); see also archival summary at CVCE. EUR-Lex+1

4. “The Treaty of Lisbon,” European Parliament Fact Sheet; see also Britannica overview and EUR-Lex summary. European Parliament+2Encyclopedia Britannica+2

5. “Ireland rejects EU Lisbon Treaty,” BBC News, June 13, 2008; “Ireland backs EU’s Lisbon Treaty,” BBC News, Oct. 3, 2009.

6. BIS mission statement; BIS governance overview. Bank for International Settlements+1

7. Financial Stability Board, Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions (2011; rev. 2014); BIS Financial Stability Institute executive summary; FSB “Crisis Management and Resolution” page. Financial Stability Board+2Bank for International Settlements+2

8. FSB press release, “Appointment of Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Financial Stability Board,” Nov. 4, 2011; Government of Canada notice confirming Mark Carney’s appointment. Financial Stability Board+1

9. The 9/11 Commission Report, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004), p. 172: financing “of little practical significance.” 911commission.gov

10. Carroll Quigley’s argument about party convergence is developed in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Because the widely circulated “two parties should be almost identical” sentence often lacks page-exact verification in the 1966 edition, quotes should be verified against a physical copy or authoritative scan before use; reviewers may prefer to paraphrase and cite the relevant chapters. (Advisory note.)

11. Allen M. Poteshman, “Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” Journal of Business 79, no. 4 (2006): 1703–1726 (published version and indexing); Marc Chesney, Ganna Reshetar, and Mustafa Karaman, “The Impact of Terrorism on Financial Markets: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Banking & Finance 35, no. 2 (2011): 253–267 (paper and supplementary appendix). IDEAS/RePEc+2ScienceDirect+2

12. SEC filings for Securacom/Stratesec: Prospectus listing clients (Washington Dulles International Airport, United Airlines, World Trade Center); company filings noting corporate history. These primary filings confirm client scope and corporate officers (including Marvin P. Bush and Wirt D. Walker III). EDGAR+1

13. G20 London Summit, Leaders’ Statement (April 2, 2009) for the formal post-crisis cooperation mandate; contemporaneous coverage of “new world order” rhetoric is widely reported but secondary to the official communiqués. IMF

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Verdict

Recommended—with scholarly caution. Read it for the documentation-rich tour of post-war integration and the post-2008 rule-making superstructure. When the book crosses from documents to inference—especially on pre-9/11 market activity—for scholarly purposes keep the distinction between anomaly and attribution firmly in view, even though the dots connect.