Today marks the fourth time that a little-known city in Virginia will host the controversial Bilderberg meeting of world leaders and power brokers. Why here?

Named after an obscure association with the French town, chateau and dessert topping, this “census-designated place” of 25,000 people in Fairfax County on the fringes of Washington DC is about to welcome a more controversial kind of cream: the secretive annual meeting of world leaders, CEOs, financiers and power brokers known as the Bilderberg Group.

In fact, Chantilly’s Westfields Marriott hotel, hosting this year’s meeting from 1-4 June, has become the Bilderberg’s home from home in recent times, having also served as the conference’s venue in 2002, 2008 and 2012. Sure to be in attendance are the scrum of protesters, alt-media, conspiracy theorists, Illuminati watchers and anyone else keen to see the world elite turn into lizards after supping blood out of the Holy Grail at midnight..

Silent runnings

Despite the critical mass of movers and shakers either benignly spitballing global policy or carving up the future between themselves (depending on your paranoia levels), Bilderberg flies beneath the radar in Chantilly. Gregg MacDonald, editor of the local Fairfax Times, says most residents remain largely oblivious to proceedings: “I do get a small smattering of letters from people saying, ‘Are you aware of the significance of this?’ But it is a small number.”

The high level of security in Washington DC and Fairfax County’s status as retirement home for prominent public officials (Dick Cheney is a regular at nearby Dulles Airport), allows the conference to keep a low profile. MacDonald believes Chantilly in particular has been carefully selected: “It was very intelligent on someone’s part to have it here because it’s not a village or a town or a city, with its own government. It is simply a census-designated place within Fairfax County. Should they have had it in a town with a provincial government, then they’d have had a whole other layer of governance and bureaucracy [to deal with].”

Chantilly in numbers

46 percentage by which the cost of living in Chantilly is above the US average. Fairfax is the US’ third richest county, behind two other Virginia counties.

10.3bn annual budget in dollars of the National Reconnaissance Office, headquartered here and one of the US’s 16 intelligence agencies

16 kilotonnage equivalent of TNT of the Hiroshima atomic bomb dropped by the Enola Gay, now displayed at the town’s National Air and Space Museum

30,000 sq ft of Chantilly’s forthcoming Lidl, part of the German company’s attempt to break into the US market



… and pictures

Eero Saarinen’s swooping modernist 1958 terminal at Dulles airport, on Chantilly’s fringes, is pure golden age of aviation glam.

History in 100 words

The Virginia fields 25 miles west of the US capital were mostly tobacco plantations in the early 19th century. The Sully Plantation – situated close to the Little River Turnpike toll road – was a neighbour, pioneering modern farming techniques that were more forgiving than the local tobacco monoculture. Until the mid-19th century, the Sully was in the hands of the influential Lee family – whose famous scion Robert E later instigated the Battle of Chantilly on 1 September 1862 when he ordered “Stonewall” Jackson to cut off a Union retreat. By the 20th century, creeping suburbanisation was pulling Chantilly inescapably into DC’s orbit; its local affluence further swelled by proximity to the north of the Dulles Technology Corridor, a furrow of major tech and aerospace companies stretching from the edge of the capital to Dulles airport. AOL was founded here, and it’s estimated that 70% of the world’s internet traffic passes through servers in the area.

Chantilly in sound and vision

The Westfields Marriott is a bit of a step up from the Holiday Inn. Let Rev Lance Orndoff (who officiates at weddings there) give you the tour.

DC’s punk and hardcore heritage is well known, but Chantilly’s a bit too well-groomed to have produced much of it. Local outfit Textbook Fascist could serve as house band for the Bilderberg protests.

What’s everyone talking about?

The Trump National Golf Club a few kilometres to the north in Sterling, Virginia, is being used by the new president as a bolthole almost as much as Mar-a-Lago. All eyes have been on the procession of meetings and fundraisers being held out there, not to mention how many hours Trump has been putting in on the greens. “Fairfax is very wealthy, but in a strange juxtaposition it’s also very liberal,” says MacDonald. “So what you have are traditional ‘limousine liberals’ who live here, and Trump’s goings-on annoy them no end.” Last weekend, protesters interrupted the Senior PGA Championship there to make their feelings known.

What’s next for the city?

With the $6.2bn extension of DC’s Silver metro line out to Dulles airport due to be completed in 2019, it seems Chantilly, with the rest of Fairfax County, is being sucked into the capital. Not so, MacDonald says: “The economic developers of the area say that rather than getting pulled into the DC area, we are pulling DC into Fairfax County.”

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The presence of one of the country’s largest current infrastructure projects testifies to the economic heft out here. The Tysons Corner area, another part of the Dulles Technology Corridor, is a particular powerhouse, attracting new business and conferences with the dense concentration of office space in this “edge city”. Neighbouring areas like Chantilly are benefitting from the money that tech brings in and, less predictably, from the greater ethnic diversity. With Indian and Pakistani IT workers moving into Fairfax in droves, it’s not quite the Wasp stronghold you might expect: the Asian population accounts for 26%, five times the state average.

Close zoom

The Fairfax Times is the local journal. For more on Bilderberg, you’ll have to rely on the shaggier outposts of alternative media – like YouTube channel Press for Truth, who produced this documentary last time Bilderberg was in Virginia.

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