The belief that unseen elites secretly govern the United States has become one of the most enduring themes in American political life. While the recent controversy surrounding the Epstein files has once again intensified claims that unelected networks wield extraordinary influence, the underlying suspicion is far older than any single scandal. As explored in an analysis published by Die Zeit, accusations that wealth, political authority and private interests operate behind the façade of democracy have repeatedly resurfaced throughout American history, evolving with changing political and economic circumstances.
The story begins not in the United States but in Europe. In 1909, the Jewish writer, economist and industrialist Walther Rathenau wrote a letter to the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna containing a sentence that would outlive its original context. “Three hundred men, each of whom knows every other, direct the economic destiny of the continent and choose their successors from their own circle,” he wrote. Although Rathenau repeatedly clarified that his words had been misunderstood, opponents seized upon the quotation as supposed proof that financiers and industrialists secretly controlled Europe. Anti-Semitic groups and staunch monarchists embraced the phrase, while Rathenau’s attempts to explain his meaning failed to halt its spread. On 24 June 1922, the future foreign minister of the Weimar Republic was assassinated by monarchists while travelling to the Foreign Office.
More than a century later, Rathenau’s words continue to circulate among conspiracy theorists, particularly in the United States. The phrase found renewed life in the 1992 publication Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, whose author claimed that governments were controlled by an unelected group of three hundred powerful individuals plotting a “New World Order” and the “Great Reset”. The American edition carried an afterword by radio host Alex Jones, who later became a prominent figure within the MAGA movement. In the previous year, Jones was ordered to pay almost US$1.4 billion in damages after falsely claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting had been staged by the Obama administration.
Such claims may appear extraordinary, yet Die Zeit argues that suspicion towards hidden elites has been woven into American political culture since the nation’s earliest years. Historian Richard Hofstadter famously described this tendency in his 1964 essay on the “Paranoid Style”, warning of increasingly extreme political rhetoric. But even before the United States had established its constitutional order, many critics accused the country’s founders of pursuing their own interests under the language of liberty and self-government.
Debates surrounding the drafting of the Constitution revealed how central questions of property were to the new republic. Thomas Jefferson repeatedly argued that differences in human abilities gave rise to property rights and that protecting both those abilities and the resulting property should remain a principal objective of government. Alexander Hamilton, despite disagreeing with Jefferson on many other issues, shared the belief that commerce, banking and industry deserved strong protection. Hamilton also expressed deep scepticism towards the political judgement of the broader public, arguing that manufacturers and merchants were best equipped to represent national interests because eloquence and experience were not qualities he associated with ordinary citizens.
Those concerns were sharpened by the unrest that followed the American Revolution. In late 1786, approximately 800 war veterans in Massachusetts, led by former captain Daniel Shays, took up arms after believing they had been denied their rightful pay. The rebellion alarmed many of the country’s political leaders. Henry Knox warned George Washington that the rebels resented the wealth of the rich, recognised their own strength and appeared determined to eliminate both affluent citizens and their property. In his view, government had to be strengthened to preserve life and property.
To opponents of a stronger central government, however, such proposals represented the emergence of an elite conspiracy. Patrick Henry denounced the constitutional project as an attempt by privileged figures born with “golden spoons” to establish what he regarded as a monarchy disguised as democracy, designed primarily to protect their own privileges from the rightful demands of ordinary citizens.
Questions about the relationship between democracy and wealth continued well beyond the country’s founding. Historian Charles A. Beard’s influential 1913 work An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States argued that the architects of the Constitution were committed republicans while simultaneously protecting their own property, status and, in many cases, ownership of enslaved people. Beard described the Constitutional Convention as a “House of Dollars” and characterised the Constitution as a bulwark protecting national injustices ranging from slavery to monopoly. His arguments drew upon numerous contemporary criticisms asserting that the Constitution had been crafted to advance commercial interests rather than the interests of the wider population.
The economic inequalities that emerged during the Gilded Age reinforced these anxieties. According to the analysis, the wealthiest one per cent of Americans controlled more than half of all assets, while the poorest 44 per cent owned less than two per cent. The era combined rapid industrial growth with extraordinary concentrations of wealth, extensive corporate influence and widespread poverty. John Rockefeller controlled approximately 90 per cent of American oil production by 1877, while cooperation between major financial institutions, trusts and insurance companies became commonplace. Allegations of bribery involving members of Congress accompanied large infrastructure projects, and labour disputes often ended with workers facing imprisonment or even being shot by the US Army. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis later criticised the concentration of financial power by declaring that powerful interests controlled the people using the people’s own money.
Against this backdrop, the Populist Party emerged as a powerful political force. Among its most prominent voices was Mary Lease, who condemned what she described as a new form of feudalism benefiting a privileged few at the expense of ordinary citizens. Declaring that “This country belongs to Wall Street”, she argued that government had ceased to serve the people and instead existed for the interests of powerful financial institutions. Her rhetoric reflected broader frustrations over the growing relationship between economic power and political authority.
The New Deal reforms of the 1930s temporarily reduced public suspicion that the federal government itself formed part of an elite conspiracy. Yet following the Second World War, distrust resurfaced in different forms. Sociologist Leo Löwenthal observed the emergence of self-proclaimed prophets alleging that Soviet agents had infiltrated the American government, while Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist investigations institutionalised fears of hidden enemies operating within the state.
In more recent decades, similar concerns have appeared across the political spectrum. Political scientist Sheldon Wolin argued in 2008 that an alliance between corporate interests, politics and media had transformed American democracy into what he described as “inverted totalitarianism”, replacing public servants with corporate-style managers. Former Richard Nixon adviser Kevin Phillips, despite his conservative background, likewise warned that an unelected aristocracy composed of bankers, hedge fund managers, economists and financial institutions had steered the country towards plutocracy. Phillips also predicted that economic crisis might eventually create conditions for the emergence of a presidential “saviour” capable of forging an alliance between politics and religion.
According to Die Zeit, recent developments have once again intensified long-standing anxieties. Revelations surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and reports concerning private “Dialogue” meetings involving investor Peter Thiel have revived claims that influential networks spanning politics, business, media and the judiciary exercise power beyond democratic accountability. The article notes that the Epstein affair involved genuine allegations of influence, privilege and personal misconduct, while also warning that such realities can create fertile ground for broader conspiracy theories in which facts and speculation become increasingly difficult to distinguish. Sociologist Jean Baudrillard described this condition as the “agony of the real”, a state in which emotionally compelling narratives can appear more convincing than complex realities.
The analysis concludes by arguing that systems generating sustained public distrust rarely remain unchanged indefinitely. During the Progressive Era, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson pursued reforms that challenged monopolies, raised taxes, abolished child labour and expanded democratic participation, demonstrating that concentrated economic power could be confronted through political action. Roosevelt himself insisted in 1912 that the Constitution should not frustrate the absolute will of the people but secure it.
Whether similar transformations are possible today remains uncertain. Die Zeit draws a historical parallel with the anonymous pamphlets that circulated before the French Revolution, attacking aristocratic privilege and fuelling public anger before the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The comparison is presented not as a prediction but as a reminder that periods marked by widening inequality, growing distrust and allegations of hidden power have repeatedly shaped political history. As debates surrounding elite influence continue in the aftermath of the Epstein revelations, the enduring tension between democratic ideals and concentrated wealth remains at the centre of America’s political conversation.
