The New World Order or NWO is claimed to be
an emerging clandestine totalitarian world
government by various conspiracy theories.The
common theme in conspiracy theories about
a New World Order is that a secretive power
elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring
to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian
world government—which will replace sovereign
nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda
whose ideology hails the establishment of
the New World Order as the culmination of
history's progress. Many influential historical
and contemporary figures have therefore been
purported to be part of a cabal that operates
through many front organizations to orchestrate
significant political and financial events,
ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing
through controversial policies, at both national
and international levels, as steps in an ongoing
plot to achieve world domination.Before the
early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism
was limited to two American countercultures,
primarily the militantly anti-government right
and secondarily that part of fundamentalist
Christianity concerned with the end-time emergence
of the Antichrist. Skeptics such as Michael
Barkun and Chip Berlet observed that right-wing
populist conspiracy theories about a New World
Order had not only been embraced by many seekers
of stigmatized knowledge but had seeped into
popular culture, thereby inaugurating a period
during the late 20th and early 21st centuries
in the United States where people are actively
preparing for apocalyptic millenarian scenarios.
Those political scientists are concerned that
mass hysteria over New World Order conspiracy
theories could eventually have devastating
effects on American political life, ranging
from escalating lone-wolf terrorism to the
rise to power of authoritarian ultranationalist
demagogues.
== History of the term ==
During the 20th century many politicians,
such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill,
used the term "new world order" to refer to
a new period of history characterised by a
dramatic change in world political thought
and in the balance of power after World War
I and World War II. They all saw the period
as an opportunity to implement idealistic
proposals for global governance in the sense
of new collective efforts to address worldwide
problems that go beyond the capacity of individual
nation-states to solve, while always respecting
the right of nations to self-determination.
These proposals led to the formation of international
organizations (such as the UN in 1945 and
NATO in 1949), and international regimes (such
as the Bretton Woods system (1944-1971) and
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT, 1947-1994)), which were calculated
both to maintain a balance of power and to
regularize cooperation between nations, in
order to achieve a peaceful phase of capitalism.
These creations in particular and liberal
internationalism in general, however, were
regularly criticized and opposed by American
paleoconservative business nationalists from
the 1930s on.Progressives welcomed these new
international organizations and regimes in
the aftermath of the two World Wars, but argued
that they suffered from a democratic deficit
and were therefore inadequate not only to
prevent another global war but to foster global
justice. The United Nations was always intended
to remain a free association of sovereign
nation-states, not a transition to democratic
world government. Thus, activists around the
globe formed a world federalist movement.British
writer and futurist H. G. Wells went further
than progressives in the 1940s, by appropriating
and redefining the term "new world order"
as a synonym for the establishment of a technocratic
world state and of a planned economy. Despite
the popularity of his ideas in some state-socialist
circles, Wells failed to exert a deeper and
more lasting influence because he was unable
to concentrate his energies on a direct appeal
to the intelligentsias who would ultimately
have to coordinate a Wellsian new world order.During
the Red Scare of 1947–1957, agitators of
the American secular and Christian right,
influenced by the work of Canadian conspiracy
theorist William Guy Carr, increasingly embraced
and spread unfounded fears of Freemasons,
Illuminati and Jews as the alleged driving
forces behind an "international communist
conspiracy". The threat of "Godless communism",
in the form of a state atheistic and bureaucratic
collectivist world government, demonized as
the "Red Menace", therefore became the focus
of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The
Red Scare came to shape one of the core ideas
of the political right in the United States,
which is that liberals and progressives, with
their welfare-state policies and international
cooperation programs such as foreign aid,
supposedly contribute to a gradual process
of collectivism that will inevitably lead
to nations being replaced with a communist
one-world government.Right-wing populist advocacy
groups with a paleoconservative world-view,
such as the John Birch Society, disseminated
a multitude of conspiracy theories in the
1960s claiming that the governments of both
the United States and the Soviet Union were
controlled by a cabal of corporate internationalists,
greedy bankers and corrupt politicians who
were intent on using the U.N. as the vehicle
to create a "One World Government". This right-wing
anti-globalist conspiracism fuelled the Bircher
campaign for US withdrawal from the UN. American
writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet
The Profound Revolution, traced the alleged
New World Order conspiracy to the establishment
of the US Federal Reserve in 1913 by international
bankers, whom she claimed later formed the
Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as a
shadow government. At the time the booklet
was published, many readers would have interpreted
"international bankers" as a reference to
a postulated "international Jewish banking
conspiracy" masterminded by the Rothschilds.Claiming
that the term "New World Order" is used by
a secretive elite dedicated to the destruction
of all national sovereignties, American writer
Gary Allen—in his books None Dare Call It
Conspiracy (1971), Rockefeller: Campaigning
for the New World Order (1974), and Say "No!"
to the New World Order (1987)—articulated
the anti-globalist theme of much current right-wing
populist conspiracism in the US. Thus, after
the fall of communism in the early 1990s,
the main demonized scapegoat of the American
far right shifted seamlessly from crypto-communists,
who plotted on behalf of the Red Menace, to
globalists, plotting on behalf of the New
World Order. The relatively painless nature
of the shift was due to growing right-wing
populist opposition to corporate internationalism,
but also in part to the basic underlying apocalyptic
millenarian paradigm, which fed the Cold War
(ca 1947-1991) and the witch-hunts of the
McCarthy period (1950s).
In his speech, Toward a New World Order, delivered
on 11 September 1990 during a joint session
of the US Congress, President George H. W.
Bush described his objectives for post-Cold
War global governance in cooperation with
post-Soviet states. He stated:
Until now, the world we've known has been
a world divided—a world of barbed wire and
concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now,
we can see a new world coming into view. A
world in which there is the very real prospect
of a new world order. In the words of Winston
Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles
of justice and fair play ... protect the weak
against the strong ..." A world where the
United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate,
is poised to fulfill the historic vision of
its founders. A world in which freedom and
respect for human rights find a home among
all nations.
The New York Times observed that progressives
were denouncing this new world order as a
rationalization of American imperial ambitions
in the Middle East, while conservatives rejected
any new security arrangements altogether and
fulminated about any possibility of a UN revival.
Chip Berlet, an American investigative reporter
specializing in the study of right-wing movements
in the US, wrote that the Christian and secular
hard right were especially terrified by the
speech. Fundamentalist Christian groups interpreted
Bush's words as signaling the End Times, while
secular theorists approached it from an anti-communist
and anti-collectivist standpoint and feared
for a hegemony over all countries by the United
Nations.
American televangelist Pat Robertson, with
his 1991 best-selling book The New World Order,
became the most prominent Christian popularizer
of conspiracy theories about recent American
history. He describes a scenario where Wall
Street, the Federal Reserve System, the Council
on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group
and the Trilateral Commission control the
flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging
people constantly and covertly in the direction
of world government for the Antichrist.Observers
note that the galvanizing of right-wing populist
conspiracy theorists such as Linda Thompson,
Mark Koernke and Robert K. Spear into militancy
led to the rise of the militia movement though
the 1990's. The movement's anti-government
ideology was (and is) spread through speeches
at rallies and meetings, books and videotapes
sold at gun shows, shortwave and satellite
radio, fax networks and computer bulletin
boards. However, it is overnight AM radio
shows and viral propaganda on the Internet
that have most effectively contributed to
their extremist political ideas about the
New World Order finding their way into the
previously apolitical literature of numerous
Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, lost
land theorists and, most recently, occultists.
From the mid–1990s on, the worldwide appeal
of those subcultures transmitted New World
Order conspiracism like a "mind virus" to
a large new audience of seekers of stigmatized
knowledge.Hollywood conspiracy-thriller television
shows and films also played a role in introducing
a vast popular audience to various fringe
theories related to New World Order conspiracism—black
helicopters, FEMA "concentration camps", etc.—theories
which for decades previously were confined
to radical right-wing subcultures. The 1993–2002
television series The X-Files, the 1997 film
Conspiracy Theory and the 1998 film The X-Files:
Fight the Future are often cited as notable
examples.Following the start of the 21st century,
and specifically during the late-2000s financial
crisis, many politicians and pundits, such
as Gordon Brown and Henry Kissinger, used
the term "new world order" in their advocacy
for a comprehensive reform of the global financial
system and their calls for a "New Bretton
Woods" taking into account emerging markets
such as China and India. These declarations
had the unintended consequence of providing
fresh fodder for New World Order conspiracism,
which culminated in talk-show host Sean Hannity
stating on his Fox News Channel program Hannity
that the "conspiracy theorists were right".
Progressive media-watchdog groups have repeatedly
criticized Fox News in general and its opinion
show Glenn Beck in particular for not only
mainstreaming the New World Order conspiracy
theories of the radical right, but possibly
agitating its lone wolves into action.In 2009
American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew
Neel released New World Order, a critically
acclaimed documentary film which explores
the world of conspiracy theorists—such as
American radio host Alex Jones—who consistently
expose and vigorously oppose what they perceive
as an emerging New World Order. The growing
dissemination and popularity of conspiracy
theories has also created an alliance between
right-wing populist agitators (such as Alex
Jones) and hip hop music's left-wing populist
rappers (such as KRS-One, Professor Griff
of Public Enemy and Immortal Technique), thus
illustrating how anti-elitist conspiracism
can create unlikely political allies in efforts
to oppose a political system.
== Conspiracy theories ==
There are numerous systemic conspiracy theories
through which the concept of a New World Order
is viewed. The following is a list of the
major ones in roughly chronological order:
=== End time ===
Since the 19th century, many apocalyptic millennial
Christian eschatologists, starting with John
Nelson Darby, have predicted a globalist conspiracy
to impose a tyrannical New World Order governing
structure as the fulfillment of prophecies
about the "end time" in the Bible, specifically
in the Book of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel,
the Olivet discourse found in the Synoptic
Gospels and the Book of Revelation. They claim
that people who have made a deal with the
Devil to gain wealth and power have become
pawns in a supernatural chess game to move
humanity into accepting a utopian world government
that rests on the spiritual foundations of
a syncretic-messianic world religion, which
will later reveal itself to be a dystopian
world empire that imposes the imperial cult
of an “Unholy Trinity” of Satan, the Antichrist
and the False Prophet. In many contemporary
Christian conspiracy theories, the False Prophet
will be either the last pope of the Catholic
Church (groomed and installed by an Alta Vendita
or Jesuit conspiracy), a guru from the New
Age movement, or even the leader of an elite
fundamentalist Christian organization like
the Fellowship, while the Antichrist will
be either the President of the European Union,
the Secretary-General of the United Nations,
or even the Caliph of a pan-Islamic state.Some
of the most vocal critics of end-time conspiracy
theories come from within Christianity. In
1993, historian Bruce Barron wrote a stern
rebuke of apocalyptic Christian conspiracism
in the Christian Research Journal, when reviewing
Robertson's 1991 book The New World Order.
Another critique can be found in historian
Gregory S. Camp's 1997 book Selling Fear:
Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia.
Religious studies scholar Richard T. Hughes
argues that "New World Order" rhetoric libels
the Christian faith, since the "New World
Order" as defined by Christian conspiracy
theorists has no basis in the Bible whatsoever.
Furthermore, he argues that not only is this
idea unbiblical, it is positively anti-biblical
and fundamentally anti-Christian, because
by misinterpreting key passages in the Book
of Revelation, it turns a comforting message
about the coming kingdom of God into one of
fear, panic and despair in the face of an
allegedly approaching one-world government.
Progressive Christians, such as preacher-theologian
Peter J. Gomes, caution Christian fundamentalists
that a "spirit of fear" can distort scripture
and history through dangerously combining
biblical literalism, apocalyptic timetables,
demonization and oppressive prejudices, while
Camp warns of the "very real danger that Christians
could pick up some extra spiritual baggage"
by credulously embracing conspiracy theories.
They therefore call on Christians who indulge
in conspiracism to repent.
=== Freemasonry ===
Freemasonry is one of the world's oldest secular
fraternal organizations and arose during late
16th–early 17th century Britain. Over the
years a number of allegations and conspiracy
theories have been directed towards Freemasonry,
including the allegation that Freemasons have
a hidden political agenda and are conspiring
to bring about a New World Order, a world
government organized according to Masonic
principles or governed only by Freemasons.The
esoteric nature of Masonic symbolism and rites
led to Freemasons first being accused of secretly
practising Satanism in the late 18th century.
The original allegation of a conspiracy within
Freemasonry to subvert religions and governments
in order to take over the world traces back
to Scottish author John Robison, whose reactionary
conspiracy theories crossed the Atlantic and
influenced outbreaks of Protestant anti-Masonry
in the United States during the 19th century.
In the 1890s, French writer Léo Taxil wrote
a series of pamphlets and books denouncing
Freemasonry and charging their lodges with
worshiping Lucifer as the Supreme Being and
Great Architect of the Universe. Despite the
fact that Taxil admitted that his claims were
all a hoax, they were and still are believed
and repeated by numerous conspiracy theorists
and had a huge influence on subsequent anti-Masonic
claims about Freemasonry.Some conspiracy theorists
eventually speculated that some Founding Fathers
of the United States, such as George Washington
and Benjamin Franklin, were having Masonic
sacred geometric designs interwoven into American
society, particularly in the Great Seal of
the United States, the United States one-dollar
bill, the architecture of National Mall landmarks
and the streets and highways of Washington,
D.C., as part of a master plan to create the
first "Masonic government" as a model for
the coming New World Order.
Freemasons rebut these claims of a Masonic
conspiracy. Freemasonry, which promotes rationalism,
places no power in occult symbols themselves,
and it is not a part of its principles to
view the drawing of symbols, no matter how
large, as an act of consolidating or controlling
power. Furthermore, there is no published
information establishing the Masonic membership
of the men responsible for the design of the
Great Seal. While conspiracy theorists assert
that there are elements of Masonic influence
on the Great Seal of the United States, and
that these elements were intentionally or
unintentionally used because the creators
were familiar with the symbols, in fact, the
all-seeing Eye of Providence and the unfinished
pyramid were symbols used as much outside
Masonic lodges as within them in the late
18th century, therefore the designers were
drawing from common esoteric symbols. The
Latin phrase "novus ordo seclorum", appearing
on the reverse side of the Great Seal since
1782 and on the back of the one-dollar bill
since 1935, translates to "New Order of the
Ages", and alludes to the beginning of an
era where the United States of America is
an independent nation-state; it is often mistranslated
by conspiracy theorists as "New World Order".Although
the European continental branch of Freemasonry
has organizations that allow political discussion
within their Masonic Lodges, Masonic researcher
Trevor W. McKeown argues that the accusations
ignore several facts. Firstly, the many Grand
Lodges are independent and sovereign, meaning
they act on their own and do not have a common
agenda. The points of belief of the various
lodges often differ. Secondly, famous individual
Freemasons have always held views that span
the political spectrum and show no particular
pattern or preference. As such, the term "Masonic
government" is erroneous; there is no consensus
among Freemasons about what an ideal government
would look like.
=== Illuminati ===
The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age
secret society founded by university professor
Adam Weishaupt on 1 May 1776, in Upper Bavaria,
Germany. The movement consisted of advocates
of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism,
and gender equality, recruited from the German
Masonic Lodges, who sought to teach rationalism
through mystery schools. In 1785, the order
was infiltrated, broken up and suppressed
by the government agents of Charles Theodore,
Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign
to neutralize the threat of secret societies
ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow
the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion,
Roman Catholicism. There is no evidence that
the Bavarian Illuminati survived its suppression
in 1785.In the late 18th century, reactionary
conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist
John Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin
Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati
had survived their suppression and become
the masterminds behind the French Revolution
and the Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were
accused of being subversives who were attempting
to secretly orchestrate a revolutionary wave
in Europe and the rest of the world in order
to spread the most radical ideas and movements
of the Enlightenment—anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism,
and anti-patriarchalism—and to create a
world noocracy and cult of reason. During
the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy
was a real concern of the European ruling
classes, and their oppressive reactions to
this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very
revolutions they sought to prevent.During
the interwar period of the 20th century, fascist
propagandists, such as British revisionist
historian Nesta Helen Webster and American
socialite Edith Starr Miller, not only popularized
the myth of an Illuminati conspiracy but claimed
that it was a subversive secret society which
served the Jewish elites that supposedly propped
up both finance capitalism and Soviet communism
in order to divide and rule the world. American
evangelist Gerald Burton Winrod and other
conspiracy theorists within the fundamentalist
Christian movement in the United States—which
emerged in the 1910s as a backlash against
the principles of Enlightenment secular humanism,
modernism, and liberalism—became the main
channel of dissemination of Illuminati conspiracy
theories in the U.S.. Right-wing populists,
such as members of the John Birch Society,
subsequently began speculating that some collegiate
fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen's
clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council
on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission)
of the American upper class are front organizations
of the Illuminati, which they accuse of plotting
to create a New World Order through a one-world
government.
=== The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ===
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an
antisemitic canard, originally published in
Russian in 1903, alleging a Judeo-Masonic
conspiracy to achieve world domination. The
text purports to be the minutes of the secret
meetings of a cabal of Jewish masterminds,
which has co-opted Freemasonry and is plotting
to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because
they believe themselves to be the chosen people
of God. The Protocols incorporate many of
the core conspiracist themes outlined in the
Robison and Barruel attacks on the Freemasons,
and overlay them with antisemitic allegations
about anti-Tsarist movements in Russia. The
Protocols reflect themes similar to more general
critiques of Enlightenment liberalism by conservative
aristocrats who support monarchies and state
religions. The interpretation intended by
the publication of The Protocols is that if
one peels away the layers of the Masonic conspiracy,
past the Illuminati, one finds the rotten
Jewish core.
Numerous polemicists, such as Irish journalist
Philip Graves in a 1921 article in The Times,
and British academic Norman Cohn in his 1967
book Warrant for Genocide, have proven The
Protocols to be both a hoax and a clear case
of plagiarism. There is general agreement
that Russian-French writer and political activist
Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for
Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian
Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary
propaganda prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution,
by plagiarizing, almost word for word in some
passages, from The Dialogue in Hell Between
Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th-century
satire against Napoleon III of France written
by French political satirist and Legitimist
militant Maurice Joly.Responsible for feeding
many antisemitic and anti-Masonic mass hysterias
of the 20th century, The Protocols has been
influential in the development of some conspiracy
theories, including some New World Order theories,
and appears repeatedly in certain contemporary
conspiracy literature. For example, the authors
of the 1982 controversial book The Holy Blood
and the Holy Grail concluded that The Protocols
was the most persuasive piece of evidence
for the existence and activities of the Priory
of Sion. They speculated that this secret
society was working behind the scenes to establish
a theocratic "United States of Europe". Politically
and religiously unified through the imperial
cult of a Merovingian Great Monarch—supposedly
descended from a Jesus bloodline—who occupies
both the throne of Europe and the Holy See,
this "Holy European Empire" would become the
hyperpower of the 21st century. Although the
Priory of Sion itself has been exhaustively
debunked by journalists and scholars as a
hoax, some apocalyptic millenarian Christian
eschatologists who believe The Protocols is
authentic became convinced that the Priory
of Sion was a fulfillment of prophecies found
in the Book of Revelation and further proof
of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions
signaling the imminence of a New World Order.Skeptics
argue that the current gambit of contemporary
conspiracy theorists who use The Protocols
is to claim that they "really" come from some
group other than the Jews, such as fallen
angels or alien invaders. Although it is hard
to determine whether the conspiracy-minded
actually believe this or are simply trying
to sanitize a discredited text, skeptics argue
that it does not make much difference, since
they leave the actual, antisemitic text unchanged.
The result is to give The Protocols credibility
and circulation.
=== Round Table ===
During the second half of Britain's "imperial
century" between 1815 and 1914, English-born
South African businessman, mining magnate
and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated the
British Empire reannexing the United States
of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial
Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and
lasting world peace. In his first will, written
in 1877 at the age of 23, he expressed his
wish to fund a secret society (known as the
Society of the Elect) that would advance this
goal:
To and for the establishment, promotion and
development of a Secret Society, the true
aim and object whereof shall be for the extension
of British rule throughout the world, the
perfecting of a system of emigration from
the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by
British subjects of all lands where the means
of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour
and enterprise, and especially the occupation
by British settlers of the entire Continent
of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the
Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia,
the whole of South America, the Islands of
the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great
Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago,
the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate
recovery of the United States of America as
an integral part of the British Empire, the
inauguration of a system of Colonial representation
in the Imperial Parliament which may tend
to weld together the disjointed members of
the Empire and, finally, the foundation of
so great a Power as to render wars impossible,
and promote the best interests of humanity.
In 1890, thirteen years after "his now famous
will," Rhodes elaborated on the same idea:
establishment of "England everywhere," which
would "ultimately lead to the cessation of
all wars, and one language throughout the
world." "The only thing feasible to carry
out this idea is a secret society gradually
absorbing the wealth of the world ["and human
minds of the higher order"] to be devoted
to such an object."Rhodes also concentrated
on the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British
statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees.
Established in 1902, the original goal of
the trust fund was to foster peace among the
great powers by creating a sense of fraternity
and a shared world view among future British,
American, and German leaders by having enabled
them to study for free at the University of
Oxford.Milner and British official Lionel
George Curtis were the architects of the Round
Table movement, a network of organizations
promoting closer union between Britain and
its self-governing colonies. To this end,
Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book
The Commonwealth of God, began advocating
for the creation of an imperial federation
that eventually reannexes the U.S., which
would be presented to Protestant churches
as being the work of the Christian God to
elicit their support. The Commonwealth of
Nations was created in 1949 but it would only
be a free association of independent states
rather than the powerful imperial federation
imagined by Rhodes, Milner and Curtis.
The Council on Foreign Relations began in
1917 with a group of New York academics who
were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to
offer options for the foreign policy of the
United States in the interwar period. Originally
envisioned as a group of American and British
scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging
to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent
group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers
and international lawyers organized in June
1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S.
secretary of state Elihu Root, that became
the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July
1921. The first of the council’s projects
was a quarterly journal launched in September
1922, called Foreign Affairs. The Trilateral
Commission was founded in July 1973, at the
initiative of American banker David Rockefeller,
who was chairman of the Council on Foreign
Relations at that time. It is a private organization
established to foster closer cooperation among
the United States, Europe and Japan. The Trilateral
Commission is widely seen as a counterpart
to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals
and groups with a paleoconservative worldview,
such as members of the John Birch Society,
were the first to combine and spread a business
nationalist critique of corporate internationalists
networked through think tanks such as the
Council on Foreign Relations with a grand
conspiracy theory casting them as front organizations
for the Round Table of the "Anglo-American
Establishment", which are financed by an "international
banking cabal" that has supposedly been plotting
from the late 19th century on to impose an
oligarchic new world order through a global
financial system. Anti-globalist conspiracy
theorists therefore fear that international
bankers are planning to eventually subvert
the independence of the U.S. by subordinating
national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank
for International Settlements.The research
findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author
of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken
by both conspiracy theorists of the American
Old Right (W. Cleon Skousen) and New Left
(Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view,
even though Quigley argued that the Establishment
is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world
government but rather British and American
benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual
interests of economic elites in the United
Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also
argued that, although the Round Table still
exists today, its position in influencing
the policies of world leaders has been much
reduced from its heyday during World War I
and slowly waned after the end of World War
II and the Suez Crisis. Today the Round Table
is largely a ginger group, designed to consider
and gradually influence the policies of the
Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong
opposition. Furthermore, in American society
after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley,
was that no elite was in charge and acting
responsibly.Larry McDonald, the second president
of the John Birch Society and a conservative
Democratic member of the United States House
of Representatives who represented the 7th
congressional district of Georgia, wrote a
foreword for Allen's 1976 book The Rockefeller
File, wherein he claimed that the Rockefellers
and their allies were driven by a desire to
create a one-world government that combined
"super-capitalism" with communism and would
be fully under their control. He saw a conspiracy
plot that was "international in scope, generations
old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."In
his 2002 autobiography Memoirs, David Rockefeller
wrote:
For more than a century ideological extremists
at either end of the political spectrum have
seized upon well-publicized incidents ... to
attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate
influence they claim we wield over American
political and economic institutions. Some
even believe we are part of a secret cabal
working against the best interests of the
United States, characterizing my family and
me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring
with others around the world to build a more
integrated global political and economic structure—one
world, if you will. If that's the charge,
I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
Barkun argues that this statement is partly
facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" and "treason")
and partly serious—the desire to encourage
trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe,
and Japan, for example—an ideal that used
to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing
of the Republican Party (known as "Rockefeller
Republicans" in honor of Nelson Rockefeller)
when there was an internationalist wing. The
statement, however, is taken at face value
and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as
proof that the Council on Foreign Relations
uses its role as the brain trust of American
presidents, senators and representatives to
manipulate them into supporting a New World
Order in the form of a one-world government.
In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian
journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered
that he felt no need for a world government
and wished for the governments of the world
to work together and collaborate. He also
stated that it seemed neither likely nor desirable
to have only one elected government rule the
whole world. He criticized accusations of
him being "ruler of the world" as nonsensical.Some
American social critics, such as Laurence
H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign
Relations is an "imperial brain trust" which
has, for decades, played a central behind-the-scenes
role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices
for the post-World War II international order
and the Cold War by determining what options
show up on the agenda and what options do
not even make it to the table; others, such
as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in
fact a mere policy discussion forum which
provides the business input to U.S. foreign
policy planning. Domhoff argues that "[i]t
has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for
secret plans to be kept within the group.
All the council does is sponsor discussion
groups, debates and speakers. As far as being
secretive, it issues annual reports and allows
access to its historical archives." However,
all these critics agree that "[h]istorical
studies of the CFR show that it has a very
different role in the overall power structure
than what is claimed by conspiracy theorists."
=== The Open Conspiracy ===
In his 1928 book The Open Conspiracy British
writer and futurist H. G. Wells promoted cosmopolitanism
and offered blueprints for a world revolution
and world brain to establish a technocratic
world state and planned economy. Wells warned,
however, in his 1940 book The New World Order
that:
... when the struggle seems to be drifting
definitely towards a world social democracy,
there may still be very great delays and disappointments
before it becomes an efficient and beneficent
world system. Countless people ... will hate
the new world order, be rendered unhappy by
the frustration of their passions and ambitions
through its advent and will die protesting
against it. When we attempt to evaluate its
promise, we have to bear in mind the distress
of a generation or so of malcontents, many
of them quite gallant and graceful-looking
people.
Wells's books were influential in giving a
second meaning to the term "new world order",
which would only be used by state socialist
supporters and anti-communist opponents for
generations to come. However, despite the
popularity and notoriety of his ideas, Wells
failed to exert a deeper and more lasting
influence because he was unable to concentrate
his energies on a direct appeal to intelligentsias
who would, ultimately, have to coordinate
the Wellsian new world order.
=== New Age ===
British neo-Theosophical occultist Alice Bailey,
one of the founders of the so-called New Age
movement, prophesied in 1940 the eventual
victory of the Allies of World War II over
the Axis powers (which occurred in 1945) and
the establishment by the Allies of a political
and religious New World Order. She saw a federal
world government as the culmination of Wells'
Open Conspiracy but favorably argued that
it would be synarchist because it was guided
by the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, intent
on preparing humanity for the mystical second
coming of Christ, and the dawning of the Age
of Aquarius. According to Bailey, a group
of ascended masters called the Great White
Brotherhood works on the "inner planes" to
oversee the transition to the New World Order
but, for now, the members of this Spiritual
Hierarchy are only known to a few occult scientists,
with whom they communicate telepathically,
but as the need for their personal involvement
in the plan increases, there will be an "Externalization
of the Hierarchy" and everyone will know of
their presence on Earth.
Bailey's writings, along with American writer
Marilyn Ferguson's 1980 book The Aquarian
Conspiracy, contributed to conspiracy theorists
of the Christian right viewing the New Age
movement as the "false religion" that would
supersede Christianity in a New World Order.
Skeptics argue that the term "New Age movement"
is a misnomer, generally used by conspiracy
theorists as a catch-all rubric for any new
religious movement that is not fundamentalist
Christian. By this logic, anything that is
not Christian is by definition actively and
willfully anti-Christian.Paradoxically, since
the first decade of the 21st century, New
World Order conspiracism is increasingly being
embraced and propagandized by New Age occultists,
who are people bored by rationalism and drawn
to stigmatized knowledge—such as alternative
medicine, astrology, quantum mysticism, spiritualism,
and theosophy. Thus, New Age conspiracy theorists,
such as the makers of documentary films like
Esoteric Agenda, claim that globalists who
plot on behalf of the New World Order are
simply misusing occultism for Machiavellian
ends, such as adopting 21 December 2012 as
the exact date for the establishment of the
New World Order for the purpose of taking
advantage of the growing 2012 phenomenon,
which has its origins in the fringe Mayanist
theories of New Age writers José Argüelles,
Terence McKenna, and Daniel Pinchbeck.
Skeptics argue that the connection of conspiracy
theorists and occultists follows from their
common fallacious premises. First, any widely
accepted belief must necessarily be false.
Second, stigmatized knowledge—what the Establishment
spurns—must be true. The result is a large,
self-referential network in which, for example,
some UFO religionists promote anti-Jewish
phobias while some antisemites practice Peruvian
shamanism.
=== Fourth Reich ===
Conspiracy theorists often use the term "Fourth
Reich" simply as a pejorative synonym for
the "New World Order" to imply that its state
ideology and government will be similar to
Germany's Third Reich.Conspiracy theorists,
such as American writer Jim Marrs, claim that
some ex-Nazis, who survived the fall of the
Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers
in the United States and elsewhere, given
haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die
Spinne, have been working behind the scenes
since the end of World War II to enact at
least some principles of Nazism (e.g., militarism,
imperialism, widespread spying on citizens,
corporatism, the use of propaganda to manufacture
a national consensus) into culture, government,
and business worldwide, but primarily in the
U.S. They cite the influence of ex-Nazi scientists
brought in under Operation Paperclip to help
advance aerospace manufacturing in the U.S.
with technological principles from Nazi UFOs,
and the acquisition and creation of conglomerates
by ex-Nazis and their sympathizers after the
war, in both Europe and the U.S.This neo-Nazi
conspiracy is said to be animated by an "Iron
Dream" in which the American Empire, having
thwarted the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and
overthrown its Zionist Occupation Government,
gradually establishes a Fourth Reich formerly
known as the "Western Imperium"—a pan-Aryan
world empire modeled after Adolf Hitler's
New Order—which reverses the "decline of
the West" and ushers a golden age of white
supremacy.Skeptics argue that conspiracy theorists
grossly overestimate the influence of ex-Nazis
and neo-Nazis on American society, and point
out that political repression at home and
imperialism abroad have a long history in
the United States that predates the 20th century.
Some political scientists, such as Sheldon
Wolin, have expressed concern that the twin
forces of democratic deficit and superpower
status have paved the way in the U.S. for
the emergence of an inverted totalitarianism
which contradicts many principles of Nazism.
=== Alien invasion ===
Since the late 1970s, extraterrestrials from
other habitable planets or parallel dimensions
(such as "Greys") and intraterrestrials from
Hollow Earth (such as "Reptilians") have been
included in the New World Order conspiracy,
in more or less dominant roles, as in the
theories put forward by American writers Stan
Deyo and Milton William Cooper, and British
writer David Icke.
The common theme in these conspiracy theories
is that aliens have been among us for decades,
centuries or millennia, but a government cover-up
enforced by "Men in Black" has shielded the
public from knowledge of a secret alien invasion.
Motivated by speciesism and imperialism, these
aliens have been and are secretly manipulating
developments and changes in human society
in order to more efficiently control and exploit
human beings. In some theories, alien infiltrators
have shapeshifted into human form and move
freely throughout human society, even to the
point of taking control of command positions
in governmental, corporate, and religious
institutions, and are now in the final stages
of their plan to take over the world. A mythical
covert government agency of the United States
code-named Majestic 12 is often imagined being
the shadow government which collaborates with
the alien occupation and permits alien abductions,
in exchange for assistance in the development
and testing of military "flying saucers" at
Area 51, in order for United States armed
forces to achieve full-spectrum dominance.Skeptics,
who adhere to the psychosocial hypothesis
for unidentified flying objects, argue that
the convergence of New World Order conspiracy
theory and UFO conspiracy theory is a product
of not only the era's widespread mistrust
of governments and the popularity of the extraterrestrial
hypothesis for UFOs but of the far right and
ufologists actually joining forces. Barkun
notes that the only positive side to this
development is that, if conspirators plotting
to rule the world are believed to be aliens,
traditional human scapegoats (Freemasons,
Illuminati, Jews, etc.) are downgraded or
exonerated.
=== Brave New World ===
Antiscience and neo-Luddite conspiracy theorists
emphasize technology forecasting in their
New World Order conspiracy theories. They
speculate that the global power elite are
reactionary modernists pursuing a transhumanist
agenda to develop and use human enhancement
technologies in order to become a "posthuman
ruling caste", while change accelerates toward
a technological singularity—a theorized
future point of discontinuity when events
will accelerate at such a pace that normal
unenhanced humans will be unable to predict
or even understand the rapid changes occurring
in the world around them. Conspiracy theorists
fear the outcome will either be the emergence
of a Brave New World-like dystopia—a "Brave
New World Order"—or the extinction of the
human species.Democratic transhumanists, such
as American sociologist James Hughes, counter
that many influential members of the United
States Establishment are bioconservatives
strongly opposed to human enhancement, as
demonstrated by President Bush's Council on
Bioethics's proposed international treaty
prohibiting human cloning and germline engineering.
Furthermore, he argues that conspiracy theorists
underestimate how fringe the transhumanist
movement really is.
== Postulated implementations ==
Just as there are several overlapping or conflicting
theories among conspiracists about the nature
of the New World Order, so are there several
beliefs about how its architects and planners
will implement it:
=== Gradualism ===
Conspiracy theorists generally speculate that
the New World Order is being implemented gradually,
citing the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve
System in 1913; the League of Nations in 1919;
the International Monetary Fund in 1944; the
United Nations in 1945; the World Bank in
1945; the World Health Organization in 1948;
the European Union and the euro currency in
1993; the World Trade Organization in 1998;
the African Union in 2002; and the Union of
South American Nations in 2008 as major milestones.An
increasingly popular conspiracy theory among
American right-wing populists is that the
hypothetical North American Union and the
amero currency, proposed by the Council on
Foreign Relations and its counterparts in
Mexico and Canada, will be the next milestone
in the implementation of the New World Order.
The theory holds that a group of shadowy and
mostly nameless international elites are planning
to replace the federal government of the United
States with a transnational government. Therefore,
conspiracy theorists believe the borders between
Mexico, Canada and the United States are in
the process of being erased, covertly, by
a group of globalists whose ultimate goal
is to replace national governments in Washington,
D.C., Ottawa and Mexico City with a European-style
political union and a bloated E.U.-style bureaucracy.Skeptics
argue that the North American Union exists
only as a proposal contained in one of a thousand
academic and policy papers published each
year that advocate all manner of idealistic
but ultimately unrealistic approaches to social,
economic and political problems. Most of these
are passed around in their own circles and
eventually filed away and forgotten by junior
staffers in congressional offices. Some of
these papers, however, become touchstones
for the conspiracy-minded and form the basis
of all kinds of unfounded xenophobic fears
especially during times of economic anxiety.For
example, in March 2009, as a result of the
late-2000s financial crisis, the People's
Republic of China and the Russian Federation
pressed for urgent consideration of a new
international reserve currency and the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development
proposed greatly expanding the I.M.F.'s special
drawing rights. Conspiracy theorists fear
these proposals are a call for the U.S. to
adopt a single global currency for a New World
Order.Judging that both national governments
and global institutions have proven ineffective
in addressing worldwide problems that go beyond
the capacity of individual nation-states to
solve, some political scientists critical
of New World Order conspiracism, such as Mark
C. Partridge, argue that regionalism will
be the major force in the coming decades,
pockets of power around regional centers:
Western Europe around Brussels, the Western
Hemisphere around Washington, D.C., East Asia
around Beijing, and Eastern Europe around
Moscow. As such, the E.U., the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation, and the G-20 will likely become
more influential as time progresses. The question
then is not whether global governance is gradually
emerging, but rather how will these regional
powers interact with one another.
=== Coup d'état ===
American right-wing populist conspiracy theorists,
especially those who joined the militia movement
in the United States, speculate that the New
World Order will be implemented through a
dramatic coup d'état by a "secret team",
using black helicopters, in the U.S. and other
nation-states to bring about a totalitarian
world government controlled by the United
Nations and enforced by troops of foreign
U.N. peacekeepers. Following the Rex 84 and
Operation Garden Plot plans, this military
coup would involve the suspension of the Constitution,
the imposition of martial law, and the appointment
of military commanders to head state and local
governments and to detain dissidents.These
conspiracy theorists, who are all strong believers
in a right to keep and bear arms, are extremely
fearful that the passing of any gun control
legislation will be later followed by the
abolishment of personal gun ownership and
a campaign of gun confiscation, and that the
refugee camps of emergency management agencies
such as FEMA will be used for the internment
of suspected subversives, making little effort
to distinguish true threats to the New World
Order from pacifist dissidents.Before year
2000 some survivalists wrongly believed this
process would be set in motion by the predicted
Y2K problem causing societal collapse. Since
many left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists
believe that the 11 September attacks were
a false flag operation carried out by the
United States intelligence community, as part
of a strategy of tension to justify political
repression at home and preemptive war abroad,
they have become convinced that a more catastrophic
terrorist incident will be responsible for
triggering Executive Directive 51 in order
to complete the transition to a police state.Skeptics
argue that unfounded fears about an imminent
or eventual gun ban, military coup, internment,
or U.N. invasion and occupation are rooted
in the siege mentality of the American militia
movement but also an apocalyptic millenarianism
which provides a basic narrative within the
political right in the U.S., claiming that
the idealized society (i.e., constitutional
republic, Jeffersonian democracy, "Christian
nation", "white nation") is thwarted by subversive
conspiracies of liberal secular humanists
who want "Big Government" and globalists who
plot on behalf of the New World Order.
=== Mass surveillance ===
Conspiracy theorists concerned with surveillance
abuse believe that the New World Order is
being implemented by the cult of intelligence
at the core of the surveillance-industrial
complex through mass surveillance and the
use of Social Security numbers, the bar-coding
of retail goods with Universal Product Code
markings, and, most recently, RFID tagging
by microchip implants.Claiming that corporations
and government are planning to track every
move of consumers and citizens with RFID as
the latest step toward a 1984-like surveillance
state, consumer privacy advocates, such as
Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, have
become Christian conspiracy theorists who
believe spychips must be resisted because
they argue that modern database and communications
technologies, coupled with point of sale data-capture
equipment and sophisticated ID and authentication
systems, now make it possible to require a
biometrically associated number or mark to
make purchases. They fear that the ability
to implement such a system closely resembles
the Number of the Beast prophesied in the
Book of Revelation.In January 2002, the Information
Awareness Office (IAO) was established by
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) to bring together several DARPA projects
focused on applying information technology
to counter asymmetric threats to national
security. Following public criticism that
the development and deployment of these technologies
could potentially lead to a mass surveillance
system, the IAO was defunded by the United
States Congress in 2003. The second source
of controversy involved IAO’s original logo,
which depicted the "all-seeing" Eye of Providence
atop of a pyramid looking down over the globe,
accompanied by the Latin phrase scientia est
potentia (knowledge is power). Although DARPA
eventually removed the logo from its website,
it left a lasting impression on privacy advocates.
It also inflamed conspiracy theorists, who
misinterpret the "eye and pyramid" as the
Masonic symbol of the Illuminati, an 18th-century
secret society they speculate continues to
exist and is plotting on behalf of a New World
Order.American historian Richard Landes, who
specializes in the history of apocalypticism
and was co-founder and director of the Center
for Millennial Studies at Boston University,
argues that new and emerging technologies
often trigger alarmism among millenarians
and even the introduction of Gutenberg's printing
press in 1436 caused waves of apocalyptic
thinking. The Year 2000 problem, bar codes
and Social Security numbers all triggered
end-time warnings which either proved to be
false or simply were no longer taken seriously
once the public became accustomed to these
technological changes. Civil libertarians
argue that the privatization of surveillance
and the rise of the surveillance-industrial
complex in the United States does raise legitimate
concerns about the erosion of privacy. However,
skeptics of mass surveillance conspiracism
caution that such concerns should be disentangled
from secular paranoia about Big Brother or
religious hysteria about the Antichrist.
=== Occultism ===
Conspiracy theorists of the Christian right,
starting with British revisionist historian
Nesta Helen Webster, believe there is an ancient
occult conspiracy—started by the first mystagogues
of Gnosticism and perpetuated by their alleged
esoteric successors, such as the Kabbalists,
Cathars, Knights Templar, Hermeticists, Rosicrucians,
Freemasons, and, ultimately, the Illuminati—which
seeks to subvert the Judeo-Christian foundations
of the Western world and implement the New
World Order through a one-world religion that
prepares the masses to embrace the imperial
cult of the Antichrist. More broadly, they
speculate that globalists who plot on behalf
of a New World Order are directed by occult
agencies of some sort: unknown superiors,
spiritual hierarchies, demons, fallen angels
or Lucifer. They believe that these conspirators
use the power of occult sciences (numerology),
symbols (Eye of Providence), rituals (Masonic
degrees), monuments (National Mall landmarks),
buildings (Manitoba Legislative Building)
and facilities (Denver International Airport)
to advance their plot to rule the world.For
example, in June 1979, an unknown benefactor
under the pseudonym "R. C. Christian" had
a huge granite megalith built in the U.S.
state of Georgia, which acts like a compass,
calendar, and clock. A message comprising
ten guides is inscribed on the occult structure
in many languages to serve as instructions
for survivors of a doomsday event to establish
a more enlightened and sustainable civilization
than the one which was destroyed. The "Georgia
Guidestones" have subsequently become a spiritual
and political Rorschach test onto which any
number of ideas can be imposed. Some New Agers
and neo-pagans revere it as a ley-line power
nexus while a few conspiracy theorists are
convinced that they are engraved with the
New World Order's anti-Christian "Ten Commandments."
Should the Guidestones survive for centuries
as their creators intended, many more meanings
could arise, equally unrelated to the designer’s
original intention.Skeptics argue that the
demonization of Western esotericism by conspiracy
theorists is rooted in religious intolerance
but also in the same moral panics that have
fueled witch trials in the Early Modern period,
and satanic ritual abuse allegations in the
United States.
=== Population control ===
Conspiracy theorists believe that the New
World Order will also be implemented through
the use of human population control in order
to more easily monitor and control the movement
of individuals. The means range from stopping
the growth of human societies through reproductive
health and family planning programs, which
promote abstinence, contraception and abortion,
or intentionally reducing the bulk of the
world population through genocides by mongering
unnecessary wars, through plagues by engineering
emergent viruses and tainting vaccines, and
through environmental disasters by controlling
the weather (HAARP, chemtrails), etc. Conspiracy
theorists argue that globalists plotting on
behalf of a New World Order are neo-Malthusians
who engage in overpopulation and climate change
alarmism in order to create public support
for coercive population control and ultimately
world government. Agenda 21 is condemned as
"reconcentrating" people into urban areas
and depopulating rural ones, even generating
a dystopian novel by Glenn Beck where single-family
homes are a distant memory.
Skeptics argue that fears of population control
can be traced back to the traumatic legacy
of the eugenics movement's "war against the
weak" in the United States during the first
decades of the 20th century but also the Second
Red Scare in the U.S. during the late 1940s
and 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s,
when activists on the far right of American
politics routinely opposed public health programs,
notably water fluoridation, mass vaccination
and mental health services, by asserting they
were all part of a far-reaching plot to impose
a socialist or communist regime. Their views
were influenced by opposition to a number
of major social and political changes that
had happened in recent years: the growth of
internationalism, particularly the United
Nations and its programs; the introduction
of social welfare provisions, particularly
the various programs established by the New
Deal; and government efforts to reduce inequalities
in the social structure of the U.S..
=== Mind control ===
Social critics accuse governments, corporations,
and the mass media of being involved in the
manufacturing of a national consensus and,
paradoxically, a culture of fear due to the
potential for increased social control that
a mistrustful and mutually fearing population
might offer to those in power. The worst fear
of some conspiracy theorists, however, is
that the New World Order will be implemented
through the use of mind control—a broad
range of tactics able to subvert an individual's
control of his or her own thinking, behavior,
emotions, or decisions. These tactics are
said to include everything from Manchurian
candidate-style brainwashing of sleeper agents
(Project MKULTRA, "Project Monarch") to engineering
psychological operations (water fluoridation,
subliminal advertising, "Silent Sound Spread
Spectrum", MEDUSA) and parapsychological operations
(Stargate Project) to influence the masses.
The concept of wearing a tin foil hat for
protection from such threats has become a
popular stereotype and term of derision; the
phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and
is associated with conspiracy theorists.
Skeptics argue that the paranoia behind a
conspiracy theorist's obsession with mind
control, population control, occultism, surveillance
abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization
arises from a combination of two factors,
when he or she: 1) holds strong individualist
values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute
refers to people who care deeply about an
individual's right to make their own choices
and direct their own lives without interference
or obligations to a larger system (like the
government), but combine this with a sense
of powerlessness in one's own life, and one
gets what some psychologists call "agency
panic," intense anxiety about an apparent
loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators.
When fervent individualists feel that they
cannot exercise their independence, they experience
a crisis and assume that larger forces are
to blame for usurping this freedom.
== Alleged conspirators ==
According to Domhoff, many people seem to
believe that the United States is ruled from
behind the scenes by a conspiratorial elite
with secret desires, i.e., by a small secretive
group that wants to change the government
system or put the country under the control
of a world government. In the past the conspirators
were usually said to be crypto-communists
who were intent upon bringing the United States
under a common world government with the Soviet
Union, but the dissolution of the USSR in
1991 undercut that theory. Domhoff notes that
most conspiracy theorists changed their focus
to the United Nations as the likely controlling
force in a New World Order, an idea which
is undermined by the powerlessness of the
U.N. and the unwillingness of even moderates
within the American Establishment to give
it anything but a limited role.Although skeptical
of New World Order conspiracism, political
scientist David Rothkopf argues, in the 2008
book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and
the World They Are Making, that the world
population of 6 billion people is governed
by an elite of 6,000 individuals. Until the
late 20th century, governments of the great
powers provided most of the superclass, accompanied
by a few heads of international movements
(i.e., the Pope of the Catholic Church) and
entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers).
According to Rothkopf, in the early 21st century,
economic clout—fueled by the explosive expansion
of international trade, travel and communication—rules;
the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking
politicians to minority power broker status;
leaders in international business, finance
and the defense industry not only dominate
the superclass, they move freely into high
positions in their nations' governments and
back to private life largely beyond the notice
of elected legislatures (including the U.S.
Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant
of affairs beyond their borders. He asserts
that the superclass' disproportionate influence
over national policy is constructive but always
self-interested, and that across the world,
few object to corruption and oppressive governments
provided they can do business in these countries.Viewing
the history of the world as the history of
warfare between secret societies, conspiracy
theorists go further than Rothkopf, and other
scholars who have studied the global power
elite, by claiming that established upper-class
families with "old money" who founded and
finance the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club,
Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations,
Rhodes Trust, Skull and Bones, Trilateral
Commission, and similar think tanks and private
clubs, are illuminated conspirators plotting
to impose a totalitarian New World Order—the
implementation of an authoritarian world government
controlled by the United Nations and a global
central bank, which maintains political power
through the financialization of the economy,
regulation and restriction of speech through
the concentration of media ownership, mass
surveillance, widespread use of state terrorism,
and an all-encompassing propaganda that creates
a cult of personality around a puppet world
leader and ideologizes world government as
the culmination of history's progress.Marxists,
who are skeptical of right-wing populist conspiracy
theories, also accuse the global power elite
of not having the best interests of all at
heart, and many intergovernmental organizations
of suffering from a democratic deficit, but
they argue that the superclass are plutocrats
only interested in brazenly imposing a neoliberal
or neoconservative new world order—the implementation
of global capitalism through economic and
military coercion to protect the interests
of transnational corporations—which systematically
undermines the possibility of a socialist
one-world government. Arguing that the world
is in the middle of a transition from the
American Empire to the rule of a global ruling
class that has emerged from within the American
Empire, they point out that right-wing populist
conspiracy theorists, blinded by their anti-communism,
fail to see is that what they demonize as
the "New World Order" is, ironically, the
highest stage of the very capitalist economic
system they defend.
== Criticism ==
Skeptics of New World Order conspiracy theories
accuse its proponents of indulging in the
furtive fallacy, a belief that significant
facts of history are necessarily sinister;
conspiracism, a world view that centrally
places conspiracy theories in the unfolding
of history, rather than social and economic
forces; and fusion paranoia, a promiscuous
absorption of fears from any source whatsoever.Domhoff,
a research professor in psychology and sociology
who studies theories of power, wrote in 2005
an essay entitled There Are No Conspiracies.
He says that for this theory to be true it
required several "wealthy and highly educated
people" to do things that don't "fit with
what we know about power structures". Claims
that this will happen goes back decades and
have always been proved wrong.
Partridge, a contributing editor to the global
affairs magazine Diplomatic Courier, wrote
a 2008 article entitled One World Government:
Conspiracy Theory or Inevitable Future? He
says that if anything nationalism, which is
the opposite of a global government, is rising.
He also says that attempts at creating global
governments or global agreements "have been
categorical failures" and where "supranational
governance exist they are noted for their
bureaucracy and inefficiency."
Although some cultural critics see superconspiracy
theories about a New World Order as "postmodern
metanarratives" that may be politically empowering,
a way of giving ordinary people a narrative
structure with which to question what they
see around them, skeptics argue that conspiracism
leads people into cynicism, convoluted thinking,
and a tendency to feel it is hopeless even
as they denounce the alleged conspirators.Alexander
Zaitchik from the Southern Poverty Law Center
wrote a report titled "'Patriot' Paranoia:
A Look at the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories",
in which he personally condemns such conspiracies
as an effort of the radical right to undermine
society.Concerned that the improvisational
millennialism of most conspiracy theories
about a New World Order might motivate lone
wolves to engage in leaderless resistance
leading to domestic terrorist incidents like
the Oklahoma City bombing, Barkun writes that
"the danger lies less in such beliefs themselves
... than in the behavior they might stimulate
or justify" and warns "should they believe
that the prophesied evil day had in fact arrived,
their behavior would become far more difficult
to predict."
Warning of the threat to American democracy
posed by right-wing populist movements led
by demagogues who mobilize support for mob
rule or even a fascist revolution by exploiting
the fear of conspiracies, Berlet writes that
"Right-wing populist movements can cause serious
damage to a society because they often popularize
xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating,
and conspiracism. This can lure mainstream
politicians to adopt these themes to attract
voters, legitimize acts of discrimination
(or even violence), and open the door for
revolutionary right-wing populist movements,
such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist
populist movements."
Hughes, a professor of religion, warns that
no religious idea has greater potential for
shaping global politics in profoundly negative
ways than "the new world order". He writes
in a February 2011 article entitled Revelation,
Revolutions, and the Tyrannical New World
Order that "the crucial piece of this puzzle
is the identity of the Antichrist, the tyrannical
figure who both leads and inspires the new
world order". This has in turn been the Soviet
Union and the Arab world. He says that inspires
believers to "welcome war with the Islamic
world" and opens the door to nuclear holocaust."
Criticisms of New World Order conspiracy theorists
also come from within their own community.
Despite believing themselves to be "freedom
fighters", many right-wing populist conspiracy
theorists hold views that are incompatible
with their professed libertarianism, such
as dominionism, white supremacism, and even
eliminationism. This paradox has led Icke,
who argues that Christian Patriots are the
only Americans who understand the truth about
the New World Order (which he believes is
controlled by a race of reptilians known as
the "Babylonian Brotherhood"), to reportedly
tell a Christian Patriot group, "I don't know
which I dislike more, the world controlled
by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to
replace it with."
== 
See also ==
Anti-globalization movement
Criticisms of globalization
