NeW WoRLd OrDeR

In conspiracy theory, the term "New World Order" (the capital letters are distinguishing) refers to the advent of a cryptocratic or totalitarian one-world government.

The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a powerful and secretive group of globalists is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an autonomous world government, which would replace sovereign states and other checks and balances in international power struggles. Significant occurrences in politics and finance are speculated to be caused by an extremely influential cabal operating through many front organizations. Numerous historical and current events are seen as steps in an on-going plot to achieve world domination through secret political gatherings and decision-making processes.

Prior to the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two subcultures, primarily the militantly antigovernment right, and secondarily Christian fundamentalists concerned with end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Social critics, such as political scientist Michael Barkun, have expressed concern that paranoid conspiracy theories about a New World Order have now not only been embraced by the far left but have seeped into popular culture, thereby inaugurating an unrivaled period of millenarian activity in the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They warn that this development may not only fuel lone-wolf terrorism but have devastating effects on American political life, such as producerist demagogy influencing elections as well as domestic and foreign policy.

During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H. W. Bush, used the term "new world order" to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic or liberal proposals for global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual states to solve. These proposals led to the creation of international organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, and international regimes, such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated both to maintain a balance of power as well as regularize cooperation between nations. These creations, however, would always be criticized and opposed by American paleoconservatives on isolationist grounds.^[7]

Progressives welcomed these new international organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. Activists around the globe formed a world federalist movement bent on creating a “real” new world order. A number of intellectuals of the reformist left, such as English writer H. G. Wells, adopted and redefined the term “new world order” as a synonym for the establishment of a full-fledged social democratic world government. In reaction, some conspiracy theorists of the American secular and religious right, whose paranoia was shaped by the Red Scares, began interpreting any use of term “new world order” by members of the Establishment, even when they were simply acknowledging a change in the international balance of power, as a call for the imposition of a state atheistic and bureaucratic collectivist world government, which controls the means of production, while the surplus ("profit") is distributed among a ruling class of bureaucrats, rather than among the working class.^[8]

In his 11 September 1990 "Toward a New World Order" speech (full text) to a joint session of the United States Congress, President George H. W. Bush described his administration's objectives for post-Cold-War global governance in cooperation with post-Soviet states:

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.

Chip Berlet, an investigative reporter specializing in the study of far-right movements in the U.S., writes:

When President Bush announced his new foreign policy would help build a New World Order, his phrasing surged through the Christian and secular hard right like an electric shock, since the phrase had been used to represent the dreaded collectivist One World Government for decades.^[8]

Observers note that the galvanization of right-wing conspiracy theorists into militancy and their use of viral propaganda on the Internet contributed to their political ideas about the New World Order finding their way into the previously apolitical literature of Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, occultists, and other subcultures, whose wide appeal transmitted these ideas to a large new audience of seekers of alternative views from the mid-1990s on.^[2]

After the turn of the century, specifically during the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown and Henry Kissinger, used the term “new world order” in their advocacy for a reform of the global financial system and their calls for a "New Bretton Woods".^[9][10] These declarations had the unintended consequence of providing fresh fodder for conspiracy theorists, and culminated in former Clinton administration adviser Dick Morris and conservative talk show host Sean Hannity arguing on one of his Fox News Channel programs that New World Order “conspiracy theorists were right”.^[11] Fox News has been repeatedly criticized by progressive media watchdog groups for not only mainstreaming the conspiracist rhetoric of the far right but possibly agitating its lone wolves into action.[