The Global Goliath

Dr. Luke Kemp’s sweeping analysis of 5,000 years of civilization in his 2025 book frames history as a story of organized crime, where small, powerful groups monopolize resources through violence and domination, creating fragile societies prone to collapse. His concept of “Goliaths”—empires and kingdoms built on inequality, fueled by surplus resources, monopolized weaponry, and trapped populations—offers a lens to understand contemporary threats to global stability. Today’s interconnected world, marked by unprecedented inequality and existential risks like climate change, nuclear weapons, and authoritarian militarization, faces a potential collapse far worse than historical precedents.

Kemp’s central thesis is that “History is best told as a story of organised crime. It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.” He rejects the term “civilization” as ruler propaganda, arguing that early societies in the Near East, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes were marked by war, patriarchy, and human sacrifice—far from civilized conduct. Instead, he labels these societies “Goliaths,” defined by domination: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave, and men over women. Emerging in the Bronze Age, Goliaths relied on three fuels: surplus grain that could be “seen, stolen, and stored,” advanced weaponry monopolized by elites, and “caged land” where geographical barriers prevented escape from tyrants. For example, in Cahokia around the 11th century, maize and bean farming enabled elite control and human sacrifice, while in ancient Egypt, the Nile and Red Sea trapped populations under pharaohs.

These Goliaths, Kemp argues, are inherently fragile due to inequality. Unlike egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies that shared resources and thrived for millennia, Goliaths foster corruption, infighting, and environmental degradation. Historical collapses, such as those of the Classical Lowland Maya, Han dynasty, and Western Roman Empire, were preceded by rising wealth disparities driven by elites exhibiting dark-triad traits—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Yet, these regional collapses often benefited ordinary citizens, freeing them from taxation and domination. For instance, after Rome’s fall, people became taller and healthier, returning to subsistence farming.

Today’s global civilization, however, is a single, interconnected Goliath, operating within a capitalist system marked by extreme inequality. Kemp warns that a collapse now would be catastrophic, not regional, due to three factors: modern violence involves nuclear weapons, not swords; populations depend on global infrastructure, not self-sufficient farming; and existential threats like 3°C global warming, AI, and engineered pandemics dwarf past challenges. He attributes these risks to “agents of doom”—dark-triad leaders and psychopathic corporations like the military-industrial complex and fossil fuel industry—that amplify humanity’s worst impulses for profit and power.

Kemp’s framework finds resonance in modern elite networks, such as the Mayfair Set, a group of British businessmen in the 1960s and 1970s who exploited postwar economic decline to seize control through ruthless financial strategies like asset stripping and hostile takeovers. Operating from the Clermont Club in Mayfair, figures like Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, and James Goldsmith, alongside later actors like Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, leveraged financial clout and intelligence ties to manipulate institutions. This cabal, intertwined with organized crime and intelligence agencies, including connections to figures like Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, used covert tactics to shape global policies, bypassing democratic accountability. Their influence, as described in a 2025 analysis, ensured elite agendas superseded public interest, perpetuating systemic control over vulnerable populations and weaker nations through economic dominance and exploitation.

This network’s tactics mirror Kemp’s organized-crime model. The Mayfair Set’s financial maneuvers, akin to stealing surplus grain, concentrated wealth and power, while their intelligence connections served as modern weaponry, enabling coercion and manipulation. Their global reach, exploiting lax regulations and international markets, reflects Kemp’s “caged land,” trapping populations within economic systems they cannot escape. The result is a cycle of control and suppression, where elites extract resources—wealth, influence, and power—at the expense of marginalized groups, echoing Kemp’s warning of inequality-driven fragility.

U.S. Militarization: A Modern Goliath in Action

The Trump administration’s 2025 militarization of domestic policy, as detailed in a New Republic report, exemplifies Kemp’s Goliath dynamics. A leaked DHS memo outlines a strategy to embed military forces in immigration enforcement across U.S. cities, framing legal immigrants as threats comparable to Al Qaeda or ISIS. This follows Trump’s deployment of 4,000 federalized National Guard troops and 700 combat-trained Marines to Los Angeles in June and July 2025, ostensibly to support ICE raids but effectively intimidating pro-democracy protesters. Smaller units are now prepping for deployment in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, signaling a broader plan to normalize military presence in civilian life. The memo’s call for “minimal written policy” reveals an awareness of its legal and moral dubiousness, aligning with Kemp’s depiction of secretive elite operations.This militarization reflects Kemp’s organized-crime paradigm. The Trump administration, led by a figure Kemp identifies as a “textbook narcissist,” uses violence—here, militarized force—to monopolize power over U.S. citizens. The framing of immigrants as national security threats mirrors the “us vs. them” tactics of historical Goliaths, fostering division to justify control. By federalizing the California National Guard against Governor Newsom’s wishes, Trump undermines state sovereignty, violating the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits military use in domestic law enforcement. This power grab, as Thom Hartmann notes, follows a dictator’s playbook, seen in authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary, where fear of minorities and dissent justifies occupation.

The memo’s push to integrate military personnel with ICE and CBP, treating immigration as a “homeland defense mission,” creates a “domestic Forever War,” as warned by Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center. This erases the line between foreign combat and domestic suppression, a deliberate design to subdue opposition. Carrie Lee of the German Marshall Fund compares this to Japanese internment during World War II, a stark reminder of historical abuses. The Founders’ fear of standing armies, encoded in the Second Amendment and constitutional limits on military funding, aimed to prevent such scenarios, yet these guardrails are unraveling, echoing Kemp’s warning of elite-driven fragility.

Fascist Tendencies and Psychological Projection

The Mayfair Set’s influence extends to U.S. political developments, reflecting fascist tendencies that align with Kemp’s dark-triad leadership. A 2025 report details JD Vance’s Republican strategy dinner on August 6, addressing Trump’s alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s files, reportedly scrubbed in exchange for pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell. This maneuver shields elites from accountability, mirroring Kemp’s description of corruption and elite capture. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s visit to Israel with red heifers to fulfill apocalyptic prophecies further illustrates extremist ideologies driving policy, fueling Middle Eastern conflicts under the guise of divine mandate. These actions reflect Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow, where monotheistic worldviews project evil onto external enemies, as seen in ancient Israelite conquests of the Amalekites and modern geopolitical divisions.Project 2025, led by the Heritage Foundation, accelerates this by promoting Christian nationalism, mandating Bible teachings in states like Oklahoma and Louisiana, and diverting public funds to religious institutions. Plans to integrate the U.S. military with ICE and build “black site” prisons on military bases, each holding over a thousand prisoners, signal a descent into fascism. These policies, rooted in tribalistic projection, target immigrants and dissidents as “others,” echoing Kemp’s warning of elites using violence to reassert dominance during crises.

Kemp’s global Goliath, a single, interconnected capitalist system, faces unprecedented risks due to its scale and inequality. Past collapses were regional, allowing survivors to revert to farming, but today’s dependence on global infrastructure means a collapse would be catastrophic. Nuclear weapons, a 3°C global temperature rise, AI, and engineered pandemics amplify these risks, driven by secretive groups like the military-industrial complex and big tech. The Mayfair Set’s global influence, manipulating policies through financial and intelligence networks, exemplifies these “agents of doom.” Trump’s militarization and the Epstein cover-up reflect the same elite-driven dynamics, prioritizing power over public welfare.The U.S.’s fascist drift, from militarized ICE to apocalyptic religious agendas, aligns with Kemp’s fear of violence surges during collapse. The Mayfair Set’s historical tactics—asset stripping, hostile takeovers, and intelligence operations—parallel modern efforts to control political and economic systems, rendering democratic governance irrelevant. This interconnected network, spanning the U.S., Israel, and beyond, exploits inequality to maintain dominance, risking a global collapse that could dwarf past events.

Solutions and Defiance

Kemp proposes escaping collapse through genuine democracy, wealth caps, and individual defiance. Citizen assemblies and juries, enabled by digital technologies, could counter elite capture, as they would likely reject disinformation campaigns by fossil fuel companies or cover-ups like the Epstein case. Capping wealth at $10 million, as Kemp suggests, would limit elites’ ability to rig systems, addressing the inequality that fuels fragility. He urges individuals to reject domination-based roles in industries like big tech or the military-industrial complex, to resist fascist policies like militarized ICE or black-site prisons.

Kemp’s optimism about human nature—our egalitarian, altruistic instincts—contrasts with his pessimism about reversing 5,000 years of Goliath dominance. The Mayfair Set’s entrenched power and Trump’s authoritarian moves suggest systemic barriers, yet defiance remains possible. Exposing elite networks, as journalists and whistleblowers have done, resists organized crime. Restoring constitutional guardrails, as Hartmann advocates, counters militarization, while challenging religious extremism and Project 2025’s agenda protects secular democracy.

Elites use violence, manipulation, and inequality to monopolize power. The Trump administration’s militarization, Epstein cover-ups, and fascist policies reflect the same dynamics that drove historical collapses, now amplified by global interconnectedness and existential risks. While Kemp’s solutions—democracy, wealth caps, and defiance—offer hope, the entrenched power of modern Goliaths makes transformation difficult. Yet, resisting elite control, from exposing covert networks to rejecting authoritarianism, is crucial to averting catastrophic collapse and ensuring history does not end in self-termination.