The Story Behind ‘The Creature From Jekyll Island,’ the Anti-Fed Conspiracy Theory Bible
Asawin Suebsaeng
11.26.15 1:00 AM ET
Photo illustration by The Daily Beast, Photo by Jim Young/Reuters
It’s the kind of conspiracy theory so all-encompassing that it explains the very roots of all modern American wars, depression, economic boom, and (most importantly!) the darkest, best-kept secrets of international banking.
Typically, the Federal Reserve is a government entity that frustrated high schoolers in America are forced to learn about before entering adulthood and forgetting exactly what it is or why it exists. The Fed is our central banking system that was created at the tail end of 1913 as a response to a string of financial crises. It is responsible for implementing the United States’s monetary policy, and is routinely and aptly described as “boring.”
It’s all fairly mundane and unsexy (though hugely consequential) stuff. The Fed doesn’t bomb anything, invade anything, or even tax anything.
But!
If you’re a diehard libertarian or conservative activist, chances are decent that you’re gung-ho for scrapping the Federal Reserve entirely, or at least giving its employees a harder time. “END THE FED” is a popular refrain at libertarian summits. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015—sponsored by libertarian(-ish) senator and longshot Republican presidential contender Rand Paul—would “require a full audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve banks.”
But for a smaller subset of anti-Fed enthusiasts, the Fed isn’t just something to be scrutinized or shuttered—it is a tool of a cabal of blood-lusting, war-mongering, totalitarian bureaucrats who have helped shape the degradation of the 20th and 21st centuries.
And if you buy into that theory, you have one book, in particular, to thank. One of the most influential and popular documents pushing this tale is 1994’s 600-page The Creature from Jekyll Island, written by author and avid conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin. (You can read the full text here.) Building off decades-old theories on the Fed’s creation and its complicity in atrocity (financial or otherwise), the book soon enough took off as a best-seller. It recounts a secret meeting that took place in 1910 on Jekyll Island, a stretch of white-sand beaches and beautiful landscape off the coast of Georgia. It was an exclusive boys-club gathering of American financiers and politicians who wanted to shoot the shit on monetary policy.
The meeting spawned the draft legislation for the creation of the central bank. Griffin spins this trip to Jekyll Island as the birthplace of the nefarious, scary, all-powerful banking system that every decent American should want torn down immediately.
The whole thing reads like a thriller, as well as an amateur polemic. “The Fed has become an accomplice in the support of totalitarian regimes throughout the world,” he writes. “As stated at the beginning of this study, that is one of the reasons it should be abolished: It is an instrument of totalitarianism.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this stuff caught on in the political world. Ron Paul—libertarian rock star, godfather of the Tea Party movement—blurbed and praised the book. “A superb analysis deserving serious attention by all Americans,” Rand’s dad wrote. “Be prepared for one heck of a journey through time and mind.”
Back when now hipster-clothing salesman Glenn Beck had a show on Fox News, he hosted Griffin on one of his Friday episodes and highly recommended the “fascinating” book to the audience:
The real End the Fed book was written by Eustace Mullins.
I am aware of this. Eustace was a good egg. He went to St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital to visit Ezra Pound who was incarcerated there for treason. Pound was a propagandist for the Italians.
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