Many conspiracists believe that the Rothschilds financed the Rockefeller oil empire. While it is an attractive idea to lump all of the plutocrats into a monolithic league of evil, the facts do not support an affirmative answer to our question.
Regular readers of this blog will recognize Will Banyan as a writer whose works we have consulted before, and again, he provides the excellent research relevant to our thesis. He points out that the theory of a Rothschild-Rockefeller connection is old but has two of its strongest supporters in the persons of David Icke and Eustace Mullins, both well known for their varying brands of conspiracy theory.
The line of argument is that National City Bank of Cleveland was a Rothschild owned bank from which John Rockefeller borrowed substantial sums to propel his oil business to meteoric heights. What the better biographies reveal is that Rockefeller borrowed first from family and then a man named Truman Handy and later William Otis and Stillman Witt. When his appetite for capital grew further, he turned to Henry Flagler who was able to bring in the substantial sums Rockefeller required to fuel his rapid business growth. The Rothschilds are not to be found.
Banyan proceeds to describe other banking relationships which Rockefeller fostered and nurtured, especially in Cleveland during the early years of his business development. However, one bank, National City Bank of Cleveland, caught the attention of Mullins. Its interest stems from a House Banking Committee report from May 1976 which showed that a Rothschild firm held an interest in this bank in the 1970s. Nowhere is there any evidence that any of the far-flung family held any interest in the bank in the 19th century. In fact, August Belmont, an agent for the family, lamented his client’s lack of interest in the important American market.
It is thus highly unlikely – though not proven – that there is any factual basis to implicate the Rothschilds in John Rockefeller’s phenomenal oil success. But Banyan does not stop there. He further points out that there is no credible evidence linking the Rothschilds to any globalist scheme. In fact, he quotes Cecil Rhodes as deploring Lord Nathaniel Rothschild as “absolutely incapable” of understanding his dream of an Anglo-American world government.
We should also note that it is impossible to intelligently speak of the Rothschilds as though they were a homogenous lot of Illuminati. The family is simply too diverse and large for sweeping accusations to be made. While we believe that conspiracies exist, we should not become peddlers of false and mischievous ones. We have troubles enough handling that truth that we do not need to traduce our cause with fake conspiracies.
Reference
The Invisible Man of the New World Order: Raymond B. Fosdick (1883-1972), Will Banyan
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