G. Edward Griffin

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G. Edward Griffin
Born
George Edward Griffin

(1931-11-07) November 7, 1931 (age 92)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Michigan
(BA)
Occupation(s)Author, lecturer, filmmaker
Known forConspiracy theories
SpousePatricia Irving Griffin

George Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of right-wing views[citation needed] and conspiracy theories regarding political, defense and health care. In his book World Without Cancer, he argued in favor of a pseudo-scientific theory that asserted cancer to be a nutritional deficiency curable by consuming amygdalin.[1][2] He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994),[1] which advances debunked conspiracy theories[3] about the Federal Reserve System. He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports the specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory that Oswald was not the assassin.[1] He also believes that the Biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.[4]

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Griffin was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 7, 1931, and became a child voice actor on local radio from 1942 to 1947. He later emceed at WJR (CBS), and continued as an assistant announcer at the public radio station WUOM. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1953, majoring in speech and communications. In 1954, he served in the United States Army, and in 1956 was Honorably Discharged as a Sergeant.[5]

Griffin worked as a writer for Curtis LeMay, vice presidential running mate for George Wallace during his 1968 United States Presidential campaign.[5]

Publishing[edit]

Griffin wrote and produced a number of documentary-style videos covering controversial topics similar in theme to his books. His films covered a wide range of topics including communism, espionage, the historical authenticity of Noah's Ark, the Federal Reserve System, the Supreme Court of the United States, terrorism, subversion, foreign policy, electronic voting fraud, cancer, and the chemtrail conspiracy theory.

Griffin created and ran a number of organizations that published a variety of print and audiovisual media, such as American Media[6] and Reality Zone,[7] in Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village, California.[6]

Many of Griffin's books and films were published by other organizations such as Robert Welch's American Opinion in Belmont, Massachusetts, and Western Islands in Boston. Griffin also produced printed works and films with Major General John K. Singlaub, publisher and national security journalist John H. Rees, and U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald at the Western Goals Foundation, a private domestic intelligence agency active in the United States beginning in 1979.[8]

The Creature from Jekyll Island[edit]

Griffin's 1994 book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, draws parallels between the Federal Reserve and a bird of prey.

Griffin presented his views on the U.S. money system and opposition to the Federal Reserve system in his 1993 movie and 1994 book, The Creature from Jekyll Island.[5][a] In it, he presents his argument that the central banking system of the United States constitutes a banking cartel and an instrument of war and totalitarianism.[9][11] The book was a business-topic bestseller,[12][13] and influenced Ron Paul when he wrote a chapter on money and the Federal Reserve in his New York Times bestseller, The Revolution: A Manifesto.[14]

Criticism[edit]

Edward Flaherty, an academic economist writing for Political Research Associates, characterized Griffin's description of the secret meeting on Jekyll Island as "amateurish" and "highly suspect".[15] Jesse Walker, the books editor for Reason magazine, says the book has grains of truth but "reduce[s] things too much to a certain narrative, where the mustache-twirlers are behind everything."[9] Peter Conti-Brown of The Wharton School and The Brookings Institution identifies the book as "the leading popular account of the conspiracists", noting that "while [they] hit their target in noting the existence and significance of the Jekyll Island meeting, [...] the 'creature' established [...] bore little relationship, from a governance standpoint, to the Federal Reserve System." In his words, the book should be referenced "for entertainment but not information".[16] In a movie review for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote that the book "has been debunked".[17]

Political advocacy[edit]

In 1964, Griffin wrote his first book, The Fearful Master, on the United Nations, a topic that recurs throughout his writings. While he describes his work as the output of "a plain vanilla researcher," Griffin also agrees with the Los Angeles Daily News's characterization of him as "Crusader Rabbit".[18]

Griffin has been a member and officer of the John Birch Society (JBS) for much of his life[19] and a contributing editor to its magazine, The New American.[20] Since the 1960s, Griffin has spoken and written about the Society's theory of history involving "communist and capitalist conspiracies" over banking systems (including the Federal Reserve System), international banking, United States foreign policy, the U.S. military–industrial complex, the American news and entertainment media as propaganda, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the United Nations.[21][22] From 1962 to 1975, he completed nine books and seven film productions; Griffin's 1969 video lecture, More Deadly Than War: The Communist Revolution in America, was printed in English and Dutch. In 1974, he published World Without Cancer, and in 1975, he wrote a sympathetic biography of JBS founder Robert W. Welch.[23][24]

In May 2009, Griffin helped Robert L. Schulz and Edwin Vieira organize a meeting at Jekyll Island of thirty people which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, included tax protesters, militiamen, nativists, anti-Obama 'birthers,' libertarians, conspiracy-minded individuals with theories about FEMA death camps, and even an anti-Semite named Edgar Steele.[25] Speakers at the meeting "warned of 'increasing national instability,' worried about a coming 'New World Order', denounced schemes to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States, and attacked the new president's 'socialized' policies and failure to end illegal immigration", and attendees made plans for a "continental congress" that occurred in November 2009 that was hosted by the We the People Foundation.[25] Griffin was the first to speak at the Jekyll Island meeting and he "told conferees that merely putting 'large numbers of people in the street' was not enough. 'We must,' he said, 'achieve power.'"[25]

Griffin founded the Freedom Force International, host of an annual convention called "Red Pill Expo", beginning with the first event in Bozeman, Montana in 2017. According to Rachel Carroll Rivas, co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network, this event was "an 'alt-right' recruiting attempt."[26] Later he founded an organization titled Red Pilled University, which claimed to offer various courses and mentorship related to his popular conspiracy theories. [27]

Conspiracy theories and fringe science[edit]

Cancer and laetrile[edit]

In 1973, Griffin wrote and self-published the book World Without Cancer and released it as a video;[28][29] its second edition appeared in 1997. In the book and the video, Griffin asserts that cancer is a metabolic disease like a vitamin deficiency facilitated by the insufficient dietary consumption of amygdalin. He contends that "eliminating cancer through a nondrug therapy has not been accepted because of the hidden economic and power agendas of those who dominate the medical establishment"[30] and he wrote, "at the very top of the world's economic and political pyramid of power there is a grouping of financial, political, and industrial interests that, by the very nature of their goals, are the natural enemies of the nutritional approaches to health."[31]

Since the 1970s, the use of laetrile (a semi-synthetic version of amygdalin) to treat cancer has been identified in the scientific literature as a canonical example of quackery and has never been shown to be effective in the treatment or prevention of cancer.[32][33][34] Emanuel Landau, then a Project Director for the APHA, wrote a book review for the American Journal of Public Health, which noted that Griffin "accepts the 'conspiracy' theory ... that policy-makers in the medical, pharmaceutical, research and fund-raising organizations deliberately or unconsciously strive not to prevent or cure cancer in order to perpetuate their functions". Landau concludes that although World Without Cancer "is an emotional plea for the unrestricted use of the Laetrile as an anti-tumor agent, the scientific evidence to justify such a policy does not appear within it."[35]

AIDS and chemtrails[edit]

In 2010, Griffin engaged in HIV/AIDS denialism, claiming that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) "doesn't exist" and that antiretroviral medications (rather than HIV) cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).[1]

In a 2012 video titled "What in the World Are They Spraying?", Griffin asserts that airplanes leave a permanent grid of chemtrails hanging over cities like Los Angeles.[36]

Noah's Ark search[edit]

In 1992, Griffin wrote and narrated The Discovery of Noah's Ark, based on David Fasold's 1988 book, The Ark of Noah.[4] Griffin's film said that the original Noah's Ark continued to exist in fossil form at the Durupınar site, about 17 miles (27 km) from Mount Ararat in Turkey, based on photographic, radar, and metal detector evidence. Griffin also said that towns in the area had names that resembled terms from the Biblical story of the Great Flood. He endorsed the historicity of the Biblical account of the flood, and speculated that the flood was the byproduct of massive tides caused by a gravitational interaction between Earth and a large celestial body coming close to it.[18]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ The title refers to a 1910 meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia, of six bankers and economic policymakers, which did occur.[9][10]

Bibliography[edit]

  • The Creature from Jekyll Island, 1994

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Easter, Sean (March 26, 2011). "Who is G. Edward Griffin, Beck's Expert on The Federal Reserve?". Media Matters for America. Retrieved 2015-03-10. On his Fox News show, Glenn Beck presented Griffin as an authority on the history of the Federal Reserve System. Griffin has a history of holding and promoting various conspiracy hypotheses that include notions that question the very existence of HIV/AIDS, as well as the view that the origin of cancer has to do with a specific dietary deficiency, and correspondingly, that cancer can be effectively cured with an 'essential food compound'.
  2. ^ Lerner IJ (February 1984). "The whys of cancer quackery". Cancer. 53 (3 Suppl): 815–9. doi:10.1002/1097-0142(19840201)53:3+<815::aid-cncr2820531334>3.0.co;2-u. PMID 6362828. S2CID 36332694.
  3. ^ McLeod, Kembrew (2014). Pranksters : making mischief in the modern world. New York: New York University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-8147-6436-7. OCLC 895709009.
  4. ^ a b "The Discovery of Noah's Ark". Reality Zone. Archived from the original on 2008-03-17. Retrieved 2008-03-06. This program was written and narrated by G. Edward Griffin.
  5. ^ a b c Who's Who in America 1994 (48th ed.). Marquis Who's Who. December 1993.
  6. ^ a b Stuart, Scott (Oct. 24, 1984). "John Birch Rolls Higher." The Des Moines Register. p. 6N-LC.
  7. ^ Staff writer (Aug. 4, 2005). "Invisible Ballots (Reality Zone, 2004)." Hartford Courant. p. 20.
  8. ^ Staff writer (Jan. 2, 1989). "Western Goals Foundation." Interhemispheric Resource Center/International Relations Center. Archived from the original.
  9. ^ a b c Suebsaeng, Asawin (26 November 2015). "The Story Behind 'The Creature From Jekyll Island,' the Anti-Fed Conspiracy Theory Bible". The Daily Beast.
  10. ^ Ryssdal, Kai; Bodnar, Bridget (October 20, 2015). "How a secret meeting on Jekyll Island led to the Fed". MarketPlace.
  11. ^ Thomas, Kenn (2002). Popular Paranoia: A Steamshovel Press Anthology. Adventures Unlimited Press. p. 298. ISBN 1-931882-06-1.
  12. ^ "Bestselling business books". Calgary Herald. 2006-07-04. p. F5.
  13. ^ "Best-selling business books, April 14". Rocky Mountain News. 2007-04-14. Archived from the original on 2008-09-27. Retrieved 2008-02-29. 10. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve: G. Edward Griffin. American Media. $24.50. ...
  14. ^ Paul listed Griffin's book on his "Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America". See: Paul, Ron (2007-04-30). The Revolution: A Manifesto. New York City, NY: Grand Central Publishing. pp. 169–70. ISBN 978-0-446-53751-3.
  15. ^ Flaherty, Edward. "Debunking the Federal Reserve Conspiracy Theories: Myth #1: The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was crafted by Wall Street bankers and a few senators in a secret meeting". Somerville, Massachusetts: Political Research Associates. Retrieved 2008-05-10. G. Edward Griffin lays out this conspiratorial version of history in his book The Creature from Jekyll Island. Mainstream-approved academics have viscerally criticized the very nature of his research as "highly suspect", his methods of research as "amateurish, and his controversial historical conclusions by referring to them as "utterly preposterous" however. ... ...
  16. ^ Conti-Brown, Peter (2015-03-02). "The Twelve Federal Reserve Banks: Governance and Accountability in the 21st Century". Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working Paper Series. Rochester, NY: SSRN. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2574309. S2CID 154661368. SSRN 2574309.
  17. ^ Catsoulis, Jeannette (2012-12-20). "Paranoia From Both Left and Right". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  18. ^ a b Giraud, Victoria (May 22, 1995). "T.O.'s Griffin All Booked Up With Writing, Film Projects". Daily News of Los Angeles. G. Edward Griffin, author and documentary film producer, calls himself 'a plain vanilla researcher and writer.' But the projects he has completed don't deal with 'vanilla' subjects. They concern the Federal Reserve, the Supreme Court, cancer and even Noah's ark. Perhaps a better description of Griffin is one he also admits to - 'Crusader Rabbit.' ...
  19. ^ Aune, James Arnt (2001). Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness. Guilford Press. pp. 140–1. ISBN 1-57230-757-9.
  20. ^ Steele, Karen Dorn; Morlin, Bill (2000-09-02). "Get-rich pitch 'bogus': Seven states have determined Global Prosperity is an illegal pyramid scheme". The Spokesman Review. At age 65, 90 percent of Americans are broke, author G. Edward Griffin writes. He's a contributing editor of The New American Magazine, published by the John Birch Society. The United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Bank are plotting a system of world military and financial control to destroy American sovereignty, he writes. The book warns about the dangers of the New World Order and preaches that the United States should get out of the United Nations....There's little that's accurate in Griffin's book, says journalist [David] Marchant.
  21. ^ Sayre, Nora (1996). Sixties Going on Seventies. Rutgers University Press. p. 98. ISBN 0-8135-2193-9. In a wonderful lecture by G. Edward Griffin, slides and diagrams of triangles and arrows and circles show how the Conspiracy learned its techniques from the 18th Century Freemasons of Europe. ...
  22. ^ Stone, Barbara S. (February 1974). "The John Birch Society: A Profile". The Journal of Politics. 36 (1): 184–197. doi:10.2307/2129115. JSTOR 2129115. S2CID 153530664.
  23. ^ Bourgoin, Suzanne Michele; Byers, Paula K. (1998). Encyclopedia of World Biography. Gale. ISBN 0-7876-2556-6.
  24. ^ Thornton, James (1993-12-13). "Remembering Robert Welch". John Birch Society. Archived from the original on 2008-11-27. Retrieved 2008-03-06. We invite you to learn more about him by reading The Life and Words of Robert Welch by G. Edward Griffin. ...
  25. ^ a b c Heidi Beirich. "Midwifing the Militias: Jekyll Island Gathering Recalls Another". No. Spring 2010, Issue 137. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2015-03-11. G. Edward Griffin, who helped organize the Jekyll Island gathering, may have been more revealing. Griffin, who wrote a scathing 1994 attack on the Fed published by the anti-communist John Birch Society and also a sympathetic biography of the group's founder, was the first to speak at the meeting.
  26. ^ Monares, Freddy (June 24, 2017). "Activists: Convention in Bozeman is 'alt-right' recruitment effort". Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 3, 2017.
  27. ^ Barrera, Jorge. "Chaos Agent". CBC Canada. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  28. ^ Lagnado, Lucette (2000-03-22). "Laetrile Makes a Comeback Selling to Patients Online". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  29. ^ "Controversial Cancer Drug Laetrile Enters Political Realms". Middlesboro Daily News. 1977-08-10. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  30. ^ "New Library Books". Books. Grand Forks Herald. 2003-07-13. p. 4. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  31. ^ Kenadjian, Berdj (2006). From Darkness to Light. Zakarian, Martin, illus. (2d ed.). Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-933538-24-2. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  32. ^ Milazzo, Stefania; Horneber, Markus (2015-04-28). "Laetrile treatment for cancer". The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2018 (4): CD005476. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD005476.pub4. ISSN 1469-493X. PMC 6513327. PMID 25918920.
  33. ^ Herbert V (May 1979). "Laetrile: the cult of cyanide. Promoting poison for profit". Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 32 (5): 1121–58. doi:10.1093/ajcn/32.5.1121. PMID 219680.
  34. ^ Nightingale SL (1984). "Laetrile: the regulatory challenge of an unproven remedy". Public Health Rep. 99 (4): 333–8. PMC 1424606. PMID 6431478.
  35. ^ Landau, Emanuel (July 1976). "World without Cancer; the Story of Vitamin B17". American Journal of Public Health. 66 (7): 696. doi:10.2105/AJPH.66.7.696-a. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 1653400. The author maintains that the missing food nutrient is part of the nitriloside family which is found particularly in the seeds of the fruit family containing bitter almond ...
  36. ^ Burnes, Kelly (December 28, 2012). "Chemtrails – Conspiracy Theory?". AustralianScience.com.au. Retrieved 2015-03-11. The filmmakers bring in advocate and conspiracist G. Edward Griffin to join this chemtrail crusade. He talks about how chemtrails don't dissipate; that a permanent grid hangs over cities like Los Angeles.

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