William Guy Carr - Biography

Biography

Born in Formby (Lancashire, England), Carr was educated in Scotland, and went to sea at the age of fourteen. He served as Navigating Officer of H.M.S. Submarines during World War I (see : Royal Navy Submarine Service) and as Naval Control Officer and Senior Naval Officer in World War II. In World War II he was Naval Control Officer for the St. Lawrence, then Staff Officer Operations at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, then Senior Naval Officer at Goose Bay, Labrador. As an Officer on the staff of Commodore Reginald W. Brock he organized the 7th Victory Loan for the twenty-two Royal Canadian Naval Training Divisions.

His experiences in the submarine fleet in the First World War became the subject of By Guess and By God (1930), prefaced by his superior, Admiral S.S. Hall of the Submarine Service. Going through several printings, it was followed by sequels, including Hell's Angels of the Deep (1932). In 1931, he started giving conferences in different Canadian clubs on the topic of "International conspiracy" which was subdivided in two main subjects: "International communism" and "International capitalism", both controlled by the Illuminati and what he called the "International bankers" which, according to Carr, are represented mainly by the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families.

After working for the Canadian Intelligence Service during World War II (he was a Senior Naval Officer at Goose Bay, Labrador) he wrote Checkmate in the North (1944), a book where he wrote (according to secret documents) that an invasion of the Axis forces was supposed to take place in the area of the Goose Bay Air base. During 1944 and 1945 he gave other conferences on world conspiracies.

In the 1950s, after he retired from the Navy, Carr's writings turned essentially to conspiracy themes from a firmly Christian standpoint. With his Pawns in the Game (1955) and Red Fog over America (1955) he became one of the most famous post-war conspiracy theorists (500 000 copies sold of Pawns in the Game before his death). This success of Carr is closely linked to the fear of communism and the Cold War atmosphere.

According to the Political Research Associates :

"Carr promoted the anti-Semitic variant on conspiracism with books such as Pawns in the Game and Red Fog over America. Carr Believes that an age-old Jewish Illuminati banking conspiracy used radio-transmitted mind control on behalf of Lucifer to construct a one world government. The secret nexus of the plot was supposedly the international Bilderberger meetings on banking policy. The anti-Semitic Noontide Press distributed Pawns in the Game for many years".

Carr's works were notably influenced by the writings of Nesta Webster and the well known French hoaxer Léo Taxil (see Taxil hoax). He also refers to the theories of l'abbé Augustin Barruel and John Robison who explained the French Revolution as a Freemasonic plot linked to the German Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt (frequently associated to the conspiracy theory of the New World Order). One of Carr's books published after his death, The Conspiracy to destroy all existing Governments and Religions clearly refers to Robison's main work: Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies (1798).

According to the French philosopher and historian Pierre-André Taguieff, the works of Carr (especially Pawns in the game), "largely contributed to popularise the themes of anti-Masonic conspiracism in the United States and in Canada; first, it reached the Christian fundamentalist milieu (mainly concerned with his "Luciferian" conspiracies), then the whole far-right movement and the new generations of conspiracy theorists". Even Dan Brown - although he probably had his information from a different source - includes in his novel Angels & Demons an interpretation of the Illuminati through an American 1$ bill that repeats the main arguments of Carr in Pawns in the game.

The first editions of Carr's book were mainly published by the Federation of Christian Laymen. Carr was actually the President of the Federation of Christian Laymen (Toronto). He directed the monthly anti-Masonic newsletter of the association: News Behind The News (Willowdale, Toronto, Vol. 1, # 1, 1956-) where he published numerous articles discussing the power of the Illuminati in U.S. and world affairs. In that paper, Carr defends the politics of the Wisconsin anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The political ideas of this Christian association were close to those of John Horne Blackmore the first leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada and Ron Gostick, another important member of the same party. Carr's Federation was closely linked with the Californian Council of Christian Laymen (1949–1964), especially with Alfred Kohlberg, Edward Geary Lansdale and Stan Steiner. The council also distributed Carr's New's Behind The News ; its president was Verne Paul Kaub who was also known for being an anti-Communist and a conspiracy theory author. During the fifties, both organisations fought Communism and were involved in a campaign against water fluoridation (brochure, 1956 ; articles about this topic were also published in News behind the News in 1958). The historian Daniel Pipes studied this particular case and he mentions that "in the 1950s, the National Federation of Christian Laymen portrayed fluorine as the 'devil's poison'" and considered its addition to drinking water (to prevent tooth decay) "one of the most dastardly plots ever attempted against the human race".

Carr died in Ontario.