16 Reader Responses

1. Nate Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 3:10 am

   I’d be interested to put dates and sources to the vector myself. I don’t recally seeing it in wide pop culture distribution before the 1990s. My family were conspiracy buffs back in the 1980s, mostly coming at it from the right-wing / fundamentalist Christian angle but also intersecting with UFOlogy. I remember reading/glancing-at all of: “The Philadelphia Experiment”, Stan Deyo’s “Cosmic Conspiracy”, “The Antigravity Handbook”, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy”, Constance Cumbey’s “The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow”, Jack Chick, Mary Stuart Relfe’s “The New Money System” and a zine from an odd Indian fundamentalist Christian cult-watch group with a particular focus on the Benjamin Creme “Meitreya” mythos. (Share International are active in Christchurch, NZ, btw - they turned up on the Social Forum scene a few years back. They strike me as dodgy and cultish in the Scientology vein, but I suspect their vaguely Communist economics is what really put them on the right-wing hit list. Though the Moonies were Evil Incarnate too, and that hasn’t stopped Tim LaHaye from shacking up with them).

   The main buzzword from the Christian-Right “eeagh Mark of the Beast” crowd was “One World Government”, not “New World Order”, but I seem to recall NWO being linked to “black helicopters” and the “FEMA internment camps” meme. Black Helicopters seemed to be partly linked with UFO stories but mainly with”UN as Antichrist” and “blue helmets to invade the USA” memes. (A stock theme of far right Christian paranoia which has since been recycled in the Left Behind mythos). The Illuminati (variously and vaguely defined, sometimes linked with the Society of Jesus, sometimes with Masons, sometimes with ) played a key role, however. (No Opus Dei back then, though, which is curious.)

   I mainly started noticing it from a very different vector in the late 1980s and early 1990s when getting into the BBS / Fidonet / early Usenet text file and RPG scene, which was mostly secular / cyber-libertarian paranoia. Discordia, Church of the Subgenius, Robert Anton Wilson, Steve Jackson Games, Scientology, Call of Cthulhu, Illuminati/NWO. Riding a wave just before Clinton-phobia, the Clipper Chip and Communications Decency Act, and the birth of the X-Files.

   I might take a guess and suggest Robert Anton Wilson as a prime vector, but I’ve not read the Illuminatus! trilogy. And I suspect his Illuminati are a different beast from the right-wing sort. If not him, then perhaps None Dare Call It Conspiracy?

   Something to work on.

2. Nate Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 3:14 am

   Oh, and of course the banknote thing, ‘Novus Ordo Seculorum’, which was linked with Masons and barcodes and “the cashless society” by Relfe et al, which was the other Mark of the Beast buzzword. So NWO links there, again, not sure if the exact phrase was used, but definitely, the whole eye-in-pyramid thing was part of the mythos.

3. JP Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 10:44 am

   there are some good leads in the skeptic’s dictionary (treated with typical disdain, of course):

   http://www.skepdic.com/illuminati.html

   have you considered dropping in on Jeff Wells’ BBS? Or writing him directly? Dollars to donuts he’d have some good words for you.

4. prnsqlr Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 12:10 pm

   I remember kids at school drawing symbols and saying, “Look out if you ever see this, it’s a symbol of the NWO” (as plausible as Bloody Mary!) and family members with books saying that Rainbow Bright was a new-age propaganda initiative luring children into satanic practices.

   I know a guy who was at Waco during the notorious events, he’ll tell you that there were “black unmarked helicopters” overhead the whole time. The whole American conspiracy milieu is very interesting, regardless of your credulity. I love seeing how the themes evolve over time, adapting to different contexts.

   What has blown my mind is how the rightwing militia groups and fundie conspiracists who, in the 80s-90s, were scared to death of the US Gov, have, under Bush, suddenly become Minutemen and cheer on every new police state initiative. Part of this may have to do with the perception that Bush “stood up” to the UN, which was always supposed to be the central political body of the NWO.

5. Rev Max Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

   AFAIK a lot of this comes from Tex Marrs “Death Rides a Pale Horse” and similar, Rightwing Christain fundamentalist conspiracy Buffs.

   amazon review:

   “I became interested in Marrs’ series of “conspiracy theory” works after reading some of the work of David Icke. David Icke (see for instance “The Biggest Secret”) attributes the rise of key political leaders around the world to the work of a handful of extremely wealthy, malevolent individuals who are the most recent offspring of certain ancient bloodlines that can be traced back to the “Babylonian Brotherhood” or “Illuminati”, and beyond. Marrs makes similar points from a somewhat different perspective in his book “Circle of Intrigue”. What made me give up on his book, however, is that Marrs is one of the Christian extremists — so, from his perspective, the chain of corruption among world leaders is mainly an anti-Christian plot rather than an anti-humanity operation. So Marrs spends a good bit of time showing not only that political leaders are corrupt, but also that they aren’t actually Christians either. If you’re a devout Christian, this approach may well be just what you’re looking for. I personally found David Icke’s insight that all the major religions were also the creation of the Babylonian Brotherhood to be more revealing (though I can’t say that I can swallow Icke’s work entirely either).”

   Marrs has been at it for a lot longer than Icke though.

   Jack Chick has been illustrating this in his comics for decades time too - the “satanic, global new age conspiracy”

   here’s an amazon review of one of Salem Kirban’s books:
   

   It’s unfortunate that many of Kirban’s books are either out-of-print or hard to get. Many Christians familiar with Grant Jeffrey’s or Hal Lindsey’s works would find much familiar ground in Kirban’s books. A born-again Arab, Kirban uses many examples from the Bible and then explains what they mean to us today.

   The good news is that if you want a book that really explains the possibility of how a single person could essentially become King of Earth then this is it. Although not as good as Kirban’s other books - I’d recommend “Guide to Survival” or “Revelation Visualized” for a starter book, “Rise of Antichrist” just how easy it will be to create a one world government.

   The bad news is that there are several inaccuracies in this book - including Kirban’s “predictions” that we would have custom genetically designed children within five years, (the book was published in June of 1978), mind control by outside sources in 10 years, memory transfer to live embryos in 10 years, how elderly people will “disappear” in so-called “retirement farms” in 15 years, how your ability to produce children will be licensed by the government, and how head transplants will become a reality. Many if not all of these advances are still years away, assuming they ever arrive at all.

   Pat Roberston had a novel about the anti-christain illuminati plot about 10 or 15 years ago - so too Hal Lindsey and Grant R Jeffries, as early as the late 1970s IIRC

   ‘course a lot kicked into gear when GW the first used the phrase “new world order” in one of his speeches, and then that was sampled by minitry for the song NWO around 1991 or so

   since then it seems to have shifted from a “Biblical Prophecy” issue into a much broader based conspiracy, also featuring icke, aliens, phenom like globalism are now more widely understood, etc

6. N.M Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 1:38 pm

   I would say that the origin of this NWO narrative as you would say Tim, is the story of the Rothschild family leading into the battle of Waterloo.

   Hope that helps.

7. Alec Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

   The other day I watched a video of a two-and-a-half hour lecture called “The Light Behind Masonry,” given by self-proclaimed former Grand Satanic Poobah (or whatever) Bill Schnoebelen (Wikipedia, where it’s noted that he was born again after reading a Jack Chick comic, which I find hilarious). I got it off Usenet, but I just noticed it’s available at Google video.

   I recommend it. It has an evangelical bent, and he gives a few anecdotes that remind me of rock music/Satanism paranoia, but for the most part the presentation feels surprisingly objective, and the information presented seems pretty much in line with the conspiracy consensus (if not the “truth”). He’s not just making shit up, in other words.

   Anyway, he goes into the whole Great Seal of the United States (back of the dollar bill) thing, mistranslating Novus Ordo Seclorum as “New World Order” in the process, which is common. “New World Order” in Latin is Novus Ordo Mundi, but it might be possible that Seclorum on the Seal spawned the “New World Order” English phrase, right? It sounds better than “New Order of the Ages”, at any rate, and it has pretty much the same meaning in spirit.

   Schnoebelen makes a lot of hay out of the fact that 1776 (enscribed on the Seal in Roman numerals) was the year of the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati, which I first heard about in Illuminatus!. It’s kind of a weak part of the lecture, because he just omits the fact that 1776 was the year of the Declaration of Independence, too, though it is kind of interesting how we never question that the date of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence should be our big day of national pride and not the end of the Revolutionary War or the adoption of the Constitution or anything like that.

   One thing I didn’t know that Schnoebelen brought up was the fact that the Seal was put on the dollar bill in 1935, under FDR (a Freemason, naturally). I guess I thought it’d always been there.

   There’s definitely a lot of New World Order-type stuff in Illuminatus!, but it’s largely satire. I don’t know where Robert Anton Wilson got it from. Maybe somewhere in Anti-Masonry literature?

8. alistair Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 3:14 pm

   look to the work of albert pike, aldous huxley and a modern commentator alan watt, a scotsman living in canada who who`s website i will link in my next post. these people shed light on an emerging attitude of some “elites” to the idea of useless eaters that transcends country boundaries.
   if we accept for a moment that we are a genetically engineered species made to do physical work then it would make sense that we are to be put to work in the most efficient way possible. any accountant will explain efficiencies of effort, as will an engineer or physicist.

9. Tim Boucher Says:
   June 6th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

   Wow, some good info… The X-Files didn’t really ever actually use the term “NWO” did they?

   It’s also interesting how at one point it seems like conspiracy theory was more typically right-wing than it tends to be today. But then, right/left have become all but meaningless politically nowadays…

10. alistair Says:
    June 6th, 2006 at 3:34 pm

    http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com/

    is alan watt`s site.

    anyone who is willing to look at how our society is working realises that there is a force at work to enslave us to productivity. i have clients who are millionaires…………..you would think that these people are happy, but they are as focussed on what they don`t have yet as the guy greeting you at wal-mart who wants to be a lawyer.
    this is a conditioned response.
    if i had a million dollars, i`d rent a small office and do some advertising and see clients and be happy. if i had $50,000 i would do the same thing.
    most who have any money have it tied up in a mortgage and work for it…….!
    we have enslaved ourselves.
    this is a conditioned response.
    who controls the mechanisms of conditioning?
    therein lies your answer to where the conspiracy lies.

11. Tim Boucher Says:
    June 6th, 2006 at 5:43 pm

    therein lies your answer to where the conspiracy lies.

    That’s not what I’m after right now though. I want to know where the author of the conspiracy theory is.

12. hebrides Says:
    June 7th, 2006 at 10:29 am

    Illuminatus cites all its sources, that’s one of the great things about that classic. If you wanna pick up a copy and flip through, Wison and Shea footnote the sources or namecheck them all throughout the book.

    As far as New World Order the phrase or conspiracy theory…I remember the big freak out about Bush the Elder saying it is that the last politician to previously talk about creating a new world order was HItler. Somewhere I had also read that the phrase was actually the name of a book or speech of his, but haven’t really seen that mentioned ever since…A possibility might be this book (if I remember correctly) called The Thousand Year Conspiracy, which I saw in a used book store in Madison, Wi back in the 9-zeroes. It was from the 40’s and tied Hitler’s third reich into some German elite order that sprang out of the Inquisition or some such. Maybe (and it’s a shot in the dark), the original reference might have come from there?

13. CookTing Says:
    June 7th, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    Well, my first reaction would’ve been to answer with the whole Protocols thing, but I’m no historian. The ‘conspiracy theory’ can only reach so far back in time, though. After a point, you’ll find that people like you and me didn’t really care to ask the questions. They were the peasants and serfs who were essentially the property of whatever King or Duke or whoever the `PTB` decided. But, of course, the PTB were always conspiring against one another (isn’t that right, Crassus?). Seems to me that a ‘conspiracy theory’ can only grow out of a culture which feels entitled to (regardless of whether they actually have) some control over their governance.

    Which brings me to my larger point. I’m sure conspiracy theories have been around forever. They don’t require a tinfoil hat. Hell, a US circuit court judge just came out of the closet and admitted his belief in conspiracy theories. The question I’d like to ask is, when and how did the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ become elevated to a symbol for the notion that critical thinking about the bigger picture is for the mentally imbalanced?

14. alistair Says:
    June 7th, 2006 at 5:16 pm

    plato`s book, the republic.

15. Terry Says:
    June 9th, 2006 at 7:48 am

    There is a specific beginning for the phrase. The following (a short excerpt from my forthcoming book) traces its beginning, then lists specific instances up until Bush’s 1991 speech.

    The term “New World Order” was first coined by the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, Mírzá Husayn-’Alí [Bahá’u’lláh] (1817-1892), around 1860. According to Bahá’u’lláh, a genuine “New World Order” required the establishment of a World Government, World Parliament, World Code Of Law, World Tribunal, World Police Force, World Language; a permanent single currency, an international uniform tax, and unity of all the world’s religions under the umbrella of the Bahá’í Faith.

    The concept of a “New World Order”—as a call to action for the implementation of a One-World Government—has subsequently been used by historian F. S. Marvin, in a 1932 book entitled The New-World Order, wherein he wrote about the importance of the League of Nations as an unparalleled symbol of a “new world order movement towards world unity and decreased nationality/sovereignty” (See the paper Bush’s New World Order: The Meaning Behind the Words, by Maj. Bart R. Kessler, URL: http://4acloserlook.com/ADANWOPaper.pdf); occult Theosophist Alice Anne Bailey (1880-1949) began using the term in print (as early as I have been able to pinpoint) in 1937, with the publication of From Bethlehem to Calvary; Fabian socialist and science fiction writer, H. G. Wells, in his book The New World Order, January 1940; eleven months later, Minnesota Representative John G. Alexander (1893-1971) in The Congressional Record (December 12); Sir Harold Butler (1921-1998) in the Council on Foreign Relations’ 1948 issue of the magazine, Foreign Affairs; in a 1959 Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project report, The mid-century challenge to U.S. foreign policy; The Future of Federalism, by Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) in 1959; Richard Nixon (1913–1994) in the October, 1967 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine; Nelson Rockefeller again, in an Associated Press story, dated 26 July, 1968; Ian Baldwin, Jr., Thinking About A New World Order for the Decade 1990, in 1970; President Nixon on a visit to China in 1972; A 1974 report, We Can Achieve a New World Order, by Canadian politician Douglas Roche (b. 1929), presented to The World Conference of Religion for Peace; the 1975 report, A New World Order, published by the Center of International Studies, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Studies, and Princeton University; in the 1975, A Declaration of Interdependence, by Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998)—signed by 32 Senators and 92 Representatives during a session in Congress; Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), at a December 7, 1988 U.N. address; and President George Herbert Walker Bush (b. 1924), during a nationally televised speech before Congress entitled Toward a New World Order, on 11 September, 1990. (For further details and a thorough overview with revealing excerpts, see Dennis Cuddy, “A Chronological History: The New World Order,” Koinonia House, 1997, URL: http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/90/)

    This, from an official Bahá’í statement:

    Throughout His writings, Bahá’u'lláh consistently uses the terms “order”, “world order” and “new world order” to describe the ongoing and momentous series of changes in the political, social and religious life of the world. In the late 1860s, He wrote: “The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System - the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” - Bahá’u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Translated by Shoghi Effendi and a Committee at the Bahá’í World Centre. (quoted from Baha’i World: Turning Point For All Nations)

16. Jon Phillips Says:
    June 10th, 2006 at 9:08 am

    I would suggest Robert Anton Wilsons book Everything is Under Control.It is an alphabatized refrence book that covers most of the major theories out there.It also includes web site adresses.The intro is also a good eye opener into the psycology of conspiracy theory.