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Conspiracy file · Since 1990 · the phrase since 1940

New World Order

The theory that a small, secretive elite is steering the world toward a single global government. The phrase itself is real and perfectly respectable: H. G. Wells used it for a 1940 book, and President George H. W. Bush made it famous in 1990.

Also known as NWO · One World Government · The Globalist Agenda

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

New World Order, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Time Samplers #5

The story

"New world order" began as a statesman's phrase for what should come after a great war. Woodrow Wilson pushed a League of Nations after World War I. H. G. Wells called his 1940 book on world government The New World Order. And on September 11, 1990, with Iraq occupying Kuwait, George H. W. Bush told Congress that "a new world order" could emerge from the crisis.

To a lot of listeners that sounded like an announcement. It landed on decades of groundwork: since the 1960s the John Birch Society had warned that the United Nations was a vehicle for one-world government, and the motto on the back of the dollar bill, Novus ordo seclorum, was already being read as "New World Order". It actually means "a new order of the ages", and it dates from 1782.

The theory took off in 1991 with Pat Robertson's best-seller The New World Order and Milton William Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse. The usual suspects are the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg meetings: real organizations that meet in private, though their members are largely public. Historians also trace parts of the story to older Illuminati myths and to the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: New World Order

On the record

  1. H. G. Wells published The New World Order in January 1940, arguing for a world government to end war.
  2. On September 11, 1990, George H. W. Bush told a joint session of Congress that "a new world order" could emerge from the Gulf crisis: "Today that new world is struggling to be born."
  3. Bush returned to the theme after the Gulf War, in his address to Congress on March 6, 1991.
  4. Novus ordo seclorum ("a new order of the ages", adapted from Virgil) has been on the Great Seal since 1782 and on the one-dollar bill since 1935.
  5. The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921, the Bilderberg meetings began in 1954, and the Trilateral Commission followed in 1973.
  6. Woodrow Wilson called for a League of Nations after World War I. The U.S. Senate refused to join it.
  7. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia in 1903, was exposed as a plagiarized forgery by The Times of London in 1921.

The theory

  • A small circle of bankers, royals and politicians meets in private and decides world events in advance.
  • Wars, crashes and other crises are created or exploited to push nations toward one world government (Pat Robertson, The New World Order, 1991).
  • The UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group are the machinery (the John Birch Society; Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, 1971).
  • Bush's 1990 speech was the moment the plan was said out loud.
  • Some versions fold in the Illuminati and UFOs (Milton William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse, 1991); 1990s militia lore added black helicopters and FEMA detention camps.

Timeline

  1. 1776Adam Weishaupt founds the Bavarian Illuminati (suppressed by 1785)
  2. 1782Congress adopts the Great Seal, with the motto Novus ordo seclorum
  3. 1903The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is published in Russia
  4. 1918Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points call for an association of nations
  5. 1921The Council on Foreign Relations is founded
  6. 1935The pyramid and its motto appear on the one-dollar bill
  7. 1940H. G. Wells publishes The New World Order
  8. 1954The first Bilderberg meeting, in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands
  9. 1958Robert Welch founds the John Birch Society
  10. 1973The Trilateral Commission is founded
  11. 1990George H. W. Bush's "new world order" speech to Congress (September 11)
  12. 1991Pat Robertson's The New World Order and Milton William Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Time Samplers #5: The Falling Star · Pages 8-9

The Council Convenes

Zarota's backers check in by video: a wall of presidents, royals, billionaires and TV faces, all caricatured, all on the same call. That is the New World Order theory in one picture. The comic plays it for laughs; the theory does not.

The Council Convenes, 1 of 5 The Council Convenes, 2 of 5
The Council Convenes, 3 of 5 The Council Convenes, 4 of 5 The Council Convenes, 5 of 5
  1. The council: real-world NWO lore points at private gatherings that do exist, like the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921), the Bilderberg meetings (since 1954) and the Trilateral Commission (1973). Their meetings are closed; their member and guest lists are largely public.
  2. "Our countries run themselves": the core claim of the theory, that elected governments are a front and the real decisions are made above them.

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