Zeitgeist is a series of three documentary films released between 2007 and 2011 that present a number of conspiracy theories, as well as proposals for broad social and economic changes.

[3] According to Peter Joseph, the original Zeitgeist was not presented in a film format, but was a "performance piece consisting of a vaudevillian, multimedia style event using recorded music, live instruments, and video".

[3] The film's introduction features animations, footage of war, explosions, and the September 11 attacks and audio quotes from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Jordan Maxwell, and George Carlin.

It asserts that the U.S. government had advance knowledge of the attacks, that the military deliberately allowed the planes to reach their targets, and that World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, and 7 underwent a controlled demolition.

Part III states that the Federal Reserve System is controlled by a small cabal of international bankers who conspire to create global calamities to enrich themselves.

[2] Three wars involving the United States during the twentieth century are highlighted as part of this alleged agenda, started by specifically engineered events, including the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

The film asserts that such wars serve to sustain conflict in general and force the U.S. government to borrow money, thereby increasing the profits of the international bankers.

Part III also alleges a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union as a step toward the creation of a single world government.

[6] A review in The Irish Times wrote that "these are surreal perversions of genuine issues and debates, and they tarnish all criticism of faith, the Bush administration, and globalization—there are more than enough factual injustices in this world to be going around without having to invent fictional ones".

[2]Filipe Feio, reflecting upon the film's Internet popularity in Diário de Notícias, stated that "[f]iction or not, Zeitgeist: The Movie threatens to become the champion of conspiracy theories of today".

He argues that this belief, coupled with a "clicker culture of mass media," results in a multitude of various truth claims packaged in "infotainment units", in the form of films such as Zeitgeist and Loose Change.

[8] Jane Chapman, a film producer and reader in media studies at the University of Lincoln, called Zeitgeist "a fast-paced assemblage of agitprop," an example of "unethical film-making".

She finishes her analysis with the comment: "Thus, legitimate questions about what happened on 9/11, and about corruption in religious and financial organizations, are all undermined by the film's determined effort to maximize an emotional response at the expense of reasoned argument."

[13] In Tablet magazine, journalist Michelle Goldberg criticized Zeitgeist: The Movie as being "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories," writing that the film borrowed from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and radio host Alex Jones, and that it portrays a cabal of international bankers purportedly ruling the world.

The remainder of the film is narrated by Peter Joseph and divided into four parts, which are prefaced by on-screen quotations from Krishnamurti, John Adams, Bernard Lietaer, and Thomas Paine, respectively.

The film suggests that society is manipulated into economic slavery through debt-based monetary policies by requiring individuals to submit for employment to pay off their debt.

[19] Alan Feuer of The New York Times noted that while the first film was famous for alleging that the attacks of September 11 were an inside job, the second, "was all but empty of such conspiratorial notions, directing its rhetoric and high production values toward posing a replacement for the evils of the banking system and a perilous economy of scarcity and debt".

[24] In an article, in Tablet magazine, Michelle Goldberg described the film as "silly enough that at times [she] suspected it was [a] sly satire about new-age techno-utopianism instead of an example of it".

VC Reporter's Shane Cohn summarized the movement's charter as: "Our greatest social problems are the direct results of our economic system".