Frederick William Engdahl (born August 9, 1944) is an American writer based in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. He identifies himself as an "economic researcher, historian and freelance journalist."
Early life and education
Born in
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
,
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff). Engdahl grew up in
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
and earned a degree in politics from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1966 (
BA) followed by graduate study in comparative economics at the
University of Stockholm
Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, soci ...
from 1969 to 1970. He then worked as an economist and freelance journalist in New York and in Europe.
Career
Engdahl began writing about
oil politics with the
first oil shock in the early 1970s. He has also been a long-time associate of the
LaRouche movement
The LaRouche movement is a political and cultural network promoting the late Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included many organizations and companies around the world, which campaign, gather information and publish books and periodicals ...
and served as an economics editor for LaRouche's ''
Executive Intelligence Review
''Executive Intelligence Review'' (''EIR'') is a weekly newsmagazine founded in 1974 by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Based in Leesburg, Virginia, it maintains offices in a number of countries, according to its masthead, incl ...
''.
His first book, entitled ''A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order'', discusses the alleged roles of
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter' ...
and
George Ball and
of the USA in the
1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which was meant to manipulate oil prices and to stop Soviet expansion. Engdahl says that Brzezinski and Ball used the Islamic
Balkanization
Balkanization is the fragmentation of a larger region or state into smaller regions or states, which may be hostile or uncooperative with one another. It is usually caused by differences of ethnicity, culture, and religion and some other factor ...
model proposed by
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...
. In 2007, he completed ''
Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation'', in which he criticized
Monsanto
The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...
's strategy with GMO seeds, such as
Roundup Ready soybeans. He has also written for newsmagazines such as the ''
Asia Times
''Asia Times'' (), formerly known as ''Asia Times Online'', is a Hong Kong-based English language news media publishing group, covering politics, economics, business, and culture from an Asian perspective. ''Asia Times'' publishes in English and ...
''.
Engdahl is a contributor to the Global Research website of the conspiracist
Centre for Research on Globalization, the Russian website ''
New Eastern Outlook'', and ''
Veterans Today'' (on whose advisory board he sits).
He is a regular contributor to
RT (formerly Russia Today) and
Voice of Russia
Voice of Russia ( rus, Голос России, r=Golos Rossii), commonly abbreviated VOR, was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 2014, when it was reorganised as Radio Sputnik. Its interval signal w ...
.
He is on the scientific committee of the journals ''Geopolitica'', alongside
Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky (born 1946) is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website global ...
and others, and ''Eurasia'', alongside
Aleksandr Dugin
Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin ( rus, Александр Гельевич Дугин; born 7 January 1962) is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, who has been widely characterized as a fascist.
Born into a military intelligen ...
and others.
He was a keynote speaker at the conference "Geopolitics of Multipolarity", held at
Moscow State University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
in 2011, alongside Dugin.
Personal life
William Engdahl has been married since 1987 and has been living for more than two decades near
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
, Germany.
Beliefs
George Soros conspiracies
Engdahl has written of the alleged secret power of Jewish financiers such as
George Soros
George Soros ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...
and the
Rothschilds. Author Michael Wohlraich identifies Engdahl as the first US populariser of Soros conspiracy theories: In 1996, he wrote in the ''Executive Intelligence Review'' that "The most important of such 'Jews who are not Jews,' are the Rothschilds, who launched Soros’s career. Soros is American only in his passport,"
which has been described by the anti-fascist group
Unicorn Riot
Unicorn Riot is a decentralized, nonprofit, left-wing media collective that originated online in 2015. The group is known for reporting on far-right organizations and sources of racial and economic injustice in the US. The non-hierarchical me ...
as "an example of the anti-Semitic "
rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan () was a pejorative Soviet epithet which referred mostly to Jewish intellectuals as an accusation of their lack of allegiance to the Soviet Union, especially during the antisemitic campaign of 1948–1953. This campaign ...
" trope.
Abiogenic petroleum
Engdahl stated in 2007 that he had come to believe that
petroleum
Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...
is of geological origin, a view contrary to the scientific understanding that it is of biological origin. He believes oil to be produced from carbon, by forces of heat and pressure deep underground. Engdahl calls himself an "ex
peak oil
Peak oil is the hypothetical point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which it is argued that production will begin an irreversible decline. It is related to the distinct concept of oil depletion; whil ...
believer", stating that peak oil is actually a political phenomenon known as
petrodollar warfare
Petrodollar recycling is the international spending or investment of a country's revenues from petroleum exports ("petrodollars"). It generally refers to the phenomenon of major petroleum-exporting states, mainly the OPEC members plus Russia ...
.
Skepticism of global warming
Engdahl argued that the problem of global warming is much exaggerated.
He claims that
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
is merely a "scare" and a "thinly veiled attempt to misuse climate to argue for a new
Malthusian
Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, ...
reduction of living standards for the majority of the world while a tiny elite gains more power."
Greater Middle East Project theories
According to Engdahl, the ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia.
CIA role in global politics
''
Al-Monitor'' has described how in August 2016 Engdahl told a right-wing Russian think tank that "Former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council of the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
,
Graham E. Fuller
Graham E. Fuller (born November 28, 1937) is an American author and political analyst, specializing in Islamist extremism. Formerly vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, he also served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA. A "thin ...
, was on
Princes' Islands
The Princes' Islands ( tr, Prens Adaları; the word "princes" is plural, because the name means "Islands of the Princes", el, Πριγκηπονήσια, ''Pringiponisia''), officially just Adalar ( en, Islands); alternatively the Princes' Arch ...
, 20 minutes from
Istanbul
)
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code = 34000 to 34990
, area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side)
, registration_plate = 34
, blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD
, blank_i ...
, the entire night of the
coup, monitoring developments until the coup collapsed" - when in fact Fuller was in Washington. ''Al-Monitor'' describe Engdahl's intervention as part of a collaborative Russian-Turkish disinformation campaign.
Selected publications
* ''A Classical KGB Disinformation Campaign: Who Killed Olof Palme?'', with Goran Haglund, William Jones, and Paolo Serri.
EIR
In Norse mythology, Eir (Old Norse: , "protection, help, mercy"Orchard (1997:36).) is a goddess or valkyrie associated with medical skill. Eir is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; th ...
Special Report (1986).
''A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order''.London:
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...
(2004), revised ed. ; Progressive Press (2012). .
* ''
Seeds of Destruction. The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation''.
Centre for Research on Globalization (2007). .
''Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order''.Boxboro, Mass.: Third Millennium Press (2009). ; Progressive Press (2011). .
''Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century.''Wiesbaden: edition.engdahl (2010). ; Progressive Press (2011). .
''Myths, Lies and Oil Wars''.Wiesbaden: edition.engdahl (2012). .
* ''Target: China -- How Washington and Wall Street Plan to Cage the Asian Dragon''. San Diego, Calif.: Progressive Press (2014). German and Chinese editions (2013).
* ''The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy''. Wiesbaden: mine.books (2016).
* ''Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance''. Wiesbaden: mine.books (2018). .
See also
* ''
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation''
References
External links
Official siteWilliam Engdahlat
IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
Video interviews with Engdahlon
The Real News
The Real News Network (TRNN) is an independent, nonprofit news organization based in Baltimore, MD that covers both national and international news.
History
TRNN was founded by documentary producer Paul Jay and Mishuk Munier in September 2 ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Engdahl, F. William
1944 births
American economics writers
American emigrants to Germany
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
LaRouche movement
Living people
Princeton University alumni
Stockholm University alumni
American conspiracy theorists