What Is the New World Order?

The phrase “New World Order” has been used so widely and for so many different purposes that it can be difficult to know what anyone means by it. In some contexts, it is a neutral description of the post-Cold War international system. In others, it is a code phrase for a conspiracy theory about a small group of insiders, often identified with the Illuminati, working to abolish national sovereignty and impose a single world government. Understanding the various uses of the phrase, and the ways in which the Illuminati have come to be associated with it, is essential to making sense of one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of the modern era.

A Working Definition

In its most neutral sense, a “New World Order” is simply a major reorganisation of the international system. The phrase was used in this loose diplomatic sense throughout the 20th century, by Woodrow Wilson, by Franklin Roosevelt, by George H. W. Bush, and by countless foreign policy commentators. Any new treaty system, any new alliance, any major shift in the balance of power could be described as a new world order in this neutral sense.

In its conspiratorial sense, the phrase is something quite different. The New World Order, capitalised and treated as a proper noun, refers to a specific alleged conspiracy: a small group of ultra-wealthy internationalists, often described as Illuminati, working in secret to centralise political, economic, and cultural power in a single global government. This conspiracy is usually presented as a centuries-old project, with roots in the Bavarian Illuminati, in the Freemasons, in various occult traditions, and in the international banking system.

The difference between these two senses is not just a matter of capitalisation. It is a difference between a useful but vague diplomatic phrase and a specific historical claim with very different implications.

The Term’s 20th-Century History

The phrase “New World Order” was popularised in the early 1990s by President George H. W. Bush, who used it in a September 1990 speech to Congress to describe the post-Cold War international settlement. In that speech, Bush spoke of “a new world order” that would be “freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.” The phrase was widely repeated, and the speech was widely interpreted as a major statement of American foreign policy.

Bush was not the first to use the phrase, of course. Woodrow Wilson had used it in 1918 to describe his vision of the League of Nations, and Franklin Roosevelt had used it during the Second World War. The phrase was, in the diplomatic register, a fairly common way of describing a major international reorganisation.

What changed in the 1990s was the speed with which the phrase was adopted by conspiracy theorists. Pat Robertson’s 1991 book The New World Order drew on the conspiratorial reading of the phrase, as did a number of other writers. The end of the Cold War, the first Gulf War, and the apparent unipolar moment of American power all combined to produce a wave of speculation about hidden global agendas. The Illuminati, already a well-established part of American conspiracy culture, were a natural fit for this speculation.

How It Became Tied to the Illuminati

The connection between the New World Order and the Illuminati is largely the work of two writers: William Guy Carr, whose 1958 book Pawns in the Game presented a sweeping conspiracy theory involving the Illuminati, international bankers, and the United Nations; and Gary Allen, whose 1971 book None Dare Call It Conspiracy argued that a small group of insiders was working to impose a collectivist world government.

Carr’s work was particularly important because it provided a template for later conspiracy literature. He drew on a wide range of earlier writers, including the 18th-century Jesuit Augustin Barruel, the 19th-century French occultist Léo Taxil, and various anti-Masonic and anti-Semitic tracts. The result was a synthesis that combined a true historical claim — the existence of the Bavarian Illuminati — with a long series of speculative connections to later events. The actual Bavarian Illuminati had long since been crushed, but in Carr’s hands they became the secret authors of everything that followed.

Gary Allen and his successors extended the template into American politics. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, and various philanthropic foundations all became, in this reading, fronts for a single hidden agenda. The Illuminati, in this version, are no longer a specific historical order but a placeholder for a vague but allegedly coherent conspiracy.

Common Variations

The New World Order conspiracy comes in many variations. The most common include the financial conspiracy, in which a small group of international bankers controls the world’s money supply; the political conspiracy, in which a similar group has infiltrated governments and international organisations; the cultural conspiracy, in which the same group controls media, education, and entertainment; and the religious conspiracy, in which a hidden elite is working to destroy Christianity and replace it with a single world religion.

These variations are not mutually exclusive. Most New World Order conspiracy literature combines several of them, sometimes with striking ingenuity. The United Nations, the Federal Reserve, the entertainment industry, and the major philanthropic foundations can all be presented as parts of a single coordinated project.

A Balanced View

The right way to think about the New World Order is to keep two things in mind. The first is that the international system really has changed dramatically in the past century, in ways that are worth studying seriously. The growth of international institutions, the integration of the world economy, the role of multinational corporations, the influence of international finance, and the changing nature of national sovereignty are all real and important developments. They do not require a conspiracy theory to be understood or criticised.

The second is that the New World Order conspiracy theory, whatever else it is, is itself a significant cultural phenomenon. It tells us something real about the anxieties of modern political life, about the difficulty of understanding complex international institutions, and about the human appetite for narrative. Studying the conspiracy theory is, in this sense, a way of studying the world in which it circulates, rather than the world it claims to describe.