Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff). Engdahl grew up in Texas and earned a degree in politics from Princeton University in 1966 (BA) followed by graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm from 1969 to 1970. He then worked as an economist and freelance journalist in New York and in Europe.[citation needed]
Engdahl has written of the alleged secret power of Jewish financiers such as George Soros and the Rothschilds. Author Michael Wohlraich identifies Engdahl as the first US populariser of Soros conspiracy theories, noting that he wrote in the Executive Intelligence Review in 1996 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."[17][18] This has been described by the anti-fascist group Unicorn Riot as "an example of the anti-Semitic "rootless cosmopolitan" trope.[6] Similarly, historian Ivan Kalmar writes that it is "not clear where the Soros Myth began... A likely candidate for the dubious honour of originating it is the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR)... An article [written by Engdahl] in the 1 November 1996 edition accuses the financier of manipulating the world’s finances in partnership with the Rothschilds, who ‘launched Soros’s career’".[19]
In 2008, Engdahl alleged in GlobalResearch that the 2008 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule was engineered by the Soros family and US government - "the American government, specifically the US State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the ‘CIA's Freedom House’ and the Trace Foundation, run by Andrea Soros Colombel, daughter of the financier George Soros, orchestrated an ‘ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet’ through Tibetan NGOs in exile" - an analysis taken up by Chinese media but derided as "‘insinuations’ and ‘simplistic arguments based on “guilt by association”'" by Tibet expert Tsering Shakya.[20][2] More recently, the geography lecturer Alexander Reid Ross wrote that Engdahl had posited a conspiracy theory that Soros' “oily hands” were involved in the Serbian political group Otpor.[21] Engdahl also alleged that the Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine was the well-orchestrated work of a US-funded organization with its origins in Belgrade.[14]
Engdahl stated in 2007 that he had come to believe that petroleum is of geological origin, a view contrary to the scientific understanding that it is of biological origin.[22] He believes oil to be produced from carbon, by forces of heat and pressure deep underground. Engdahl calls himself an "ex peak oil believer", stating that peak oil is actually a political phenomenon known as petrodollar warfare.[23][non-primary source needed]
Skepticism of global warming
Engdahl argued in 2009 that the problem of global warming is much exaggerated.[24] He claims that global warming is merely a "scare" and a "thinly veiled attempt to misuse climate to argue for a new Malthusian reduction of living standards for the majority of the world while a tiny elite gains more power."[24][non-primary source needed]
A 2010 article by Engdahl, published by websites including Prison Planet and Voltaire Network and later cited by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Alex Jones, was key to the spread of conspiracy theories about Bill Gates promoting vaccines as part of a secret programme to control population: "it avers that Gates, Buffett, and Turner are driving a ‘Global Eugenics agenda,’ while Gates himself ‘expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth.’"[25]
Greater Middle East Project theories
According to Engdahl in 2014, the ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia.[26][non-primary source needed]
Turkey and the CIA role in global politics
Engdahl believes that the CIA is behind several historical revolutions, including the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.[4] In 2016 an article by Engdahl circulated widely in Turkey which alleged that the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt was engineered by Zbigniew Brzezinski, based on an article in by Brzezinki supposedly published in The National Interest but in fact fabricated by Engdahl.[3][27]Al-Monitor 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, Graham E. Fuller, was on Princes' Islands, 20 minutes from Istanbul, 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.[28]
Selected publications
A Classical KGB Disinformation Campaign: Who Killed Olof Palme?, with Goran Haglund, William Jones, and Paolo Serri. EIR Special Report (1986).
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). ISBN978-3981723731.
^"Archived copy"(PDF). larouchepub.com. Archived from the original(PDF) on 31 May 2015. Retrieved 12 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Wolraich, Michael (2010). Blowing smoke : why the right keeps serving up whack-job fantasies about the plot to euthanize grandma, outlaw Christmas, and turn junior into a raging homosexual. Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press. ISBN978-0-306-81937-7. OCLC668208755.
^Kalmar, Ivan (14 March 2020). "Islamophobia and anti-antisemitism: the case of Hungary and the 'Soros plot'". Patterns of Prejudice. 54 (1–2): 182–198. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2019.1705014. ISSN0031-322X.
^Topgyal, Tsering (2011). "Insecurity Dilemma and the Tibetan Uprising in 2008". Journal of Contemporary China. 20 (69): 183–203. doi:10.1080/10670564.2011.541627. ISSN1067-0564. William Engdahl, 'Why Washington plays "Tibet roulette" with China', China Daily, (16 April 2008). This article was originally posted on the website of the Canadian Think Tank 'Centre for Research on Globalisation' (CRG). Immediately, it was splashed all over the Chinese media. Well-known Chinese journalist Ching Cheong peddled this argument, almost verbatim in: Ching Cheong, 'The crimson revolution's true colours', Straits Times, (22 April 2008). Engdahl's original piece has since been taken off both his personal and CRG websites, possibly due to Tsering Shakya's detailed refutation in: Tsering Shakya, 'The gulf between Tibet and its exiles', Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), (2 May 2008).
^Siraki, Arby Ted; Mohammad, Malek H. (3 April 2023). "Bill Gates and the 'new normal' COVID-19 conspiracy theories: 'it's a new thing' or nothing new under the sun?". Journal for Cultural Research. 27 (2): 136–153. doi:10.1080/14797585.2023.2207129. ISSN1479-7585.