William James Guy Carr (R.D. Commander R.C.N. (R)) (2 June 1895 – 2 October 1959) was an English-born Canadian naval officer, author, and conspiracy theorist.
Though he first came to notice with books about his military experiences as a submariner, Carr later turned to writing about a vast conspiracy, which he alleged to have uncovered. He was described as "the most influential source in creating the American Illuminati demonology", according to the American folklorist Bill Ellis.
In the 1950s, he was the leader of the anticommunist National Federation of Christian Laymen of Toronto, Ontario. He was also one of the directors of the Naval Club of Toronto.
Early life
Born in Formby (Lancashire, England), Carr was educated in Scotland and went to sea at the age of 14.
Government career
Navy
He served as navigating officer of Her Majesty's Ship Submarines during World War I.
In World War II, he was naval control officer for the St. Lawrence, staff officer operations at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and 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 22 Royal Canadian Naval Training Divisions.
Intelligence
Carr also worked for the Canadian Intelligence Service during World War II, and in 1944 he published Checkmate in the North, a book about an invasion by the Axis forces to take place in the area of the CFB Goose Bay.
Political activism
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," stating that both were being controlled by the Illuminati and what he called the "international bankers." The last, according to Carr, are represented mainly by the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families.
In the 1950s, after he retired from the Navy, Carr's writings turned essentially to conspiracy themes from a firmly Christian standpoint.
According to Political Research Associates, a group studying right-wing extremism:
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 influenced by the writings of Nesta Webster and the French hoaxer Léo Taxil (see Taxil hoax). He also referred to the theories of Augustin Barruel and John Robison, who both explained the French Revolution as a plot by Freemasonry and linked to the German Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt, who is frequently associated to the conspiracy theory of the New World Order. According to the French philosopher and historian Pierre-André Taguieff, Carr's works, 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."
Dan Brown, although he probably had his information from a different source, includes in his novel Angels & Demons an interpretation of the Illuminati by a US$1 bill and repeats the main arguments of Carr in Pawns in the Game.
Most of the first editions of Carr's book were published by the Federation of Christian Laymen (Toronto) of which he actually was the president. He directed the monthly anti-masonic newsletter of the association: News Behind the News (Willowdale, Toronto, Vol. 1, # 1, 1956-) in which he published numerous articles discussing the power of the Illuminati in US and world affairs. In that paper, Carr defended the strong anticommunism of Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin senator.
The political ideas of the 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 that 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.
In the 1950s, both organisations fought communism and were involved in a campaign against water fluoridation.
Death
Carr died in Ontario in 1959.