The History Behind: The New World Order
By: Michael East
Tags: Conspiracy Theories, Politics, History, Religion, Racism

In 1877, the British imperialist, businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated for the British Empire reannexing the United States. Seeing the US as a rising superpower, Rhodes believed that a union between the two would bring about a state so powerful that all others must fall under its sway, leading to essential one world government and world peace by consequence. To bring about this plan, Rhodes wished to start his own secret society to promote “the extension of British rule throughout the world” and “the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.”

Rhodes would go on to promote ideas of British exceptionalism throughout his life. He claimed that the imposition of British hegemony throughout the world would lead to “the cessation of all wars, and one language”. The best way of ensuring those goals was met would be the retention of enormous wealth in the hands of a secret elite.

“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.” Cecil Rhodes

A 1934 imprint of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion | Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

In 1903, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were first published in Russia. The book took the themes of secret cabals that had been made famous by the likes of Barruel and Robison and put them in an antisemitic context, suggesting that it was, in fact, Jews who were behind everything, including Freemasonry and the Illuminati. The book, supposedly the minutes of a meeting between prominent Jewish figures, was debunked as a fraud. It was written by the Russian-French writer, journalist and political activist Matvei Golovinski at the behest of the Okhrana, the secret police force of Imperial Russia. It largely plagiarised The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu which had satirised Napoleon III. As Barruel and Robison’s work had sought to undermine the values of the French Revolution, the Okhrana intended their own propaganda to undermine the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Not to be confused with the victorious Russian Revolution of 1917, the 1905 rising instead set the board for what was to come, allowing Bolshevism to take centre stage as the opposing force to the tyranny of the House of Romanov. Lenin would describe events as “The Great Dress Rehearsal” for the revolution of 1917 and believed that without the events of 1905 “victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible.”

Jews had long been marginalised and made scapegoats for the ills of society throughout Europe, with pogroms and other antisemitic violence being commonplace for centuries. In Russia, 4% of the population was Jewish yet they were not allowed to acquire land outside of cities and towns, had legal restrictions on education, were essentially barred from many professions and were denied the right to vote for municipal councillors. Over 3,000 Jews would be killed in massacres by forces loyal to the Tsar during the events of 1905.

Despite being debunked as a fake, it was too late to stop The Protocols of the Elders of Zion spreading throughout Europe. The book fed into existing prejudices about Jews and reinforced belief that the chaos of world events was, in fact, being controlled with unseen hands. The blame for the misfortune of readers in the 1920s and 1930s was directed at minorities, socialists and “deviants”, not governments and institutions. The book was seized upon by the rising fascist movement, with far-right conspiracy theorists such as Nesta Helen Webster and Edith Starr Miller pushing the ideas in Britain and America.

Joseph Goebbels was a leading proponent of the New World Order conspiracy | Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

These fascist theorists suggested that the unseen hands of Freemasons and the Illuminati , controlled by Jews, had pulled the strings of world events to create chaos. They were deeply ingrained in the leadership of Western democracy and Russian Bolshevism, setting the two powers against each other so that the Jews might remain in control no matter what happened. With many prominent communists being Jewish and the West already engaged in the first Red Scare as they tried to quell their own Bolshevist movements, the claims rang true with many. Fascist movements saw a swell of support across Europe, and few readers will need to be told what happened next.

The carnage of the Holocaust meant that it was no longer socially acceptable to blame the Jews for the world’s problems in polite society and the New World Order theory developed new boogeymen. From aliens to shapeshifting lizards standing as euphemisms and new ideas surrounding Muslims, immigrants, “white genocide” and a “gay agenda”, the ethos of the theory remains the same — to blame shadowy others for the world’s problems. Of course, that is not to say that the millennia-old tradition blaming the Jews doesn’t yet still thrive, with white supremacist groups frequently replacing the entire Jewish people with stand-in accusations against the likes of the Rothschild family and George Soros.

Into the mix comes the rise of evangelical Protestantism as a political force in the United States, coupled with increasingly right-wing rhetoric both in the American media and online spaces. The likes of David Icke in the UK and Alex Jones in the US have merely taken ideas that have been circulating for centuries and spun them for new audiences, making a lot of money in the process. The rise of the QAnon cult shows that these ideas remain a deadly threat to human life.