Direction of history

There is a historical trend toward closer integration. Humanity has been integrating via ideas, trade and politics for thousands of years. Religions and ideologies unify diverse people under shared ideas. Trade and money enable cooperation between strangers. Empires govern several peoples with varying traditions.¹ We all benefit. New ideas, such as the scientific method, have transformed the world. States succeeded in dramatically reducing violent deaths within their borders. And without trade, you wouldn’t have most of the items you have now. On the other hand, there is the conspiratorial view. Groups in society support particular developments because they hope to gain from them:

• Priests and intellectuals benefit most from religion and ideology. They attempt to make you believe their ideas.
• Merchants and bankers benefit the most from trade and money. They try to make you believe you need their merchandise.
• Rulers and bureaucrats benefit the most from government. They attempt to make you believe you need their rule.

We need ideas, merchandise and authorities. Had that not been the case, we would have figured it out by now. Humans are political animals, so in principle, every political act is a conspiracy. Because we need fairy tales to make sense of the world, conspiracy theories have become an industry catering to that demand. The conspiratorial view is a model of reality that has limitations, but it also explains certain phenomena better than other approaches. A global elite of politicians, businesspeople, career bureaucrats, engineers, journalists, scientists, opinion-makers, writers, and artists runs the world. They have more in common with one another than with their compatriots.¹

It is the price we pay for complexity. Doing business is now a global affair, even for small businesses, as supply chains span multiple nations. The same applies to governments. Issues such as trade, global warming, disease control, organised crime, and economic management require international cooperation. Or not. The latter is the conspiratorial view. They make us believe that we do. But what is the alternative?

In the old world order, states were sovereign. In the New World Order, there will be no sovereign states. The New World Order conspiracy theory alleges that the elites conspire to make that happen. The elite’s actions are responses to situations. England established a central bank to promote confidence in the currency and financial markets and, after bankers introduced fractional reserve banking, to address the problems coming from it. England benefited. The Industrial Revolution took off there.

Bankers in the United States later conspired in secret to replicate the idea and established the Federal Reserve. In The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin depicts their actions as evil, undertaken to enrich themselves. To bankers, the Fed may have seemed necessary, and the public uninformed and uncooperative. Griffin was a conspiracy theorist, not a monetary theorist, and it shows. Bankers profited, but central banks manage the financial instability caused by interest-bearing debt or usury. Central banks give countries an edge. Previously, American banks depended on the Bank of England. Many conspiracies went hand in hand with a perceived necessity.

The Fed became a linchpin in the global US dollar-based usury financial system, which helped the United States to become a dominant power. That might have been impossible without a central bank. An empire rests on credit, and cheap credit helped the British build theirs. After World War II had ruined Europe, the elite promoted European cooperation. Their efforts led to the establishment of the European Union. Secret meetings at the Bilderberg Group helped the elites agree on it. Those making these efforts believed that they were doing something good. If you see the European Union as a meddlesome bureaucracy, you might disagree. But then you have to face the reality that more than half the Brits now regret Brexit, while only a third are still content with it.

The Fed became a linchpin in the global US dollar-based usury financial system, which helped the United States to become a dominant power. That might have been impossible without a central bank. An empire rests on credit, and cheap credit helped the British build theirs. After World War II had ruined Europe, the elite promoted European cooperation. Their efforts led to the establishment of the European Union. Secret meetings at the Bilderberg Group helped the elites agree on it. Those making these efforts believed that they were doing something good. If you see the European Union as a meddlesome bureaucracy, you might disagree. But then you have to face the reality that more than half the Brits now regret Brexit, while only a third are still content with it.

Globalisation

By 3,000 BC, there was already trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley involving spices, metals, and cloth. An even longer-distance trade, the silk trade, between China and Rome commenced 2,000 years ago. Later on, Arab traders brought spices from the Indies to Europe. Trade transcends borders and religions. In the Middle Ages, Muslim traders accepted gold coins from Christian states, invoking Christ and his virgin mother. Christian leaders would even mint coins with the Arab inscription, ‘There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.¹ Christian traders readily accepted them as well. Gold was the religion of traders, not Islam or Christianity.

Jesus said that you cannot serve both God and money. Money is more powerful than religion, unless there is a God. It is hard to build an order, and it is easy to corrupt it. Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver after having seen the proof that he was the Messiah, if we are to believe the scriptures. About 500 years ago, Portuguese explorers set sail for Africa to find new trade routes to the Indies. It was the beginning of a new phase of European colonisation and trade, integrating the world. With the Industrial Revolution, globalisation accelerated. Today, we are the servants of a system driven by money and trade. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

Because the bourgeoisie needs a constantly expanding market, it settles and establishes connections all over the globe. Production and consumption have taken on a cosmopolitan character in every country. That is true for materials and for intellectual production, as national sovereignty and isolationism become less and less possible to sustain. The bourgeoisie draws even the most barbaric nations into civilisation and compels all nations to adopt its mode of production. It creates a world after its own image.

In the 20th century, European nations fought two devastating world wars, thereby enabling the United States to become the West’s dominant power. At the same time, the Soviet Union, the utopian alternative of state planning, imposed its vision on the countries it occupied. It was the beginning of the Cold War, during which both sides supported armed groups and governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The United States promoted European integration and military cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The United Nations (UN) were another American initiative. Some of the most well-known UN agencies are the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank. These institutions were part of the US-dominated world order.

There was a plan behind it. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) played a crucial role. The CFR is a think tank of prominent figures in business, science and politics in the United States. The CFR began its work in 1921 when the US was isolationist and European colonial powers still dominated the world. In the 1930s, the CFR received funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. During World War II, the CFR, in cooperation with the US government, developed plans for a new world order after the war, which became an order dominated by US financial and political elites.

The planners of the CFR believed that protectionism had worsened the Great Depression and led to World War II. Prosperity was the key to political and economic stability in Europe. They argued that open markets would promote democracy and that the United States would benefit from prosperity elsewhere. After the war, European countries received loans to rebuild their economies. By helping other countries, the United States gained economic and political influence.

Under the guise of fighting communism, the CIA organised coups in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba and Chile, among others, and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. In several cases, they did so to protect the interests of big business. The Cold War also led to the build-up of the so-called Military-Industrial Complex, comprising the armed forces, military contractors, intelligence services, think tanks, and university research projects.

The US dollar reserve status, established at the Bretton Woods conference, underpinned the American-dominated post-war world order. US planners believed that stable exchange rates would promote trade and therefore implemented a fixed exchange-rate system. The gold-backed US dollar became the international reserve currency. This system remained in place until 1971, when the US dollar’s gold backing ended.

Market forces thereafter determined exchange rates, but the US dollar remained the primary reserve currency. The US dollar reserve status allowed the United States elites to harvest the productivity of other nations. That began in earnest when the United States started running deficits and kept the US dollar attractive through high interest rates, a policy known as Reaganomics. It allowed wealthy Americans to live well while American industries lost competitiveness due to the demand for the US dollar, thereby raising its value. The US empire gradually became a financial empire, supported by the US dollar’s status as a reserve currency.

Rules-based international order

The rules-based international order (RBIO), also called the liberal international order, is the system of political, legal, and economic agreements, norms, and institutions, such as the United Nations, that guides state interactions, promotes cooperation, stability, and predictability through international law, aiming to prevent conflict, foster trade, and uphold human rights. For eight decades, the order functioned to some extent, but it was a Western project, and several other nations viewed it as a tool of Western dominance and economic exploitation. Furthermore, might makes right. Powerful states such as the United States and the Soviet Union often acted as they pleased. Moreover, many countries aren’t democracies that respect human rights and are corrupt, but they do have influence. In 2024, Saudi Arabia’s election to chair the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was a particularly noteworthy low point in the UN’s record of integrity. In other words, corruption pervades the international institutions.

To a great extent, the postwar world order envisioned in Washington became a reality, a fact not lost on conspiracy theorists. It was a remarkable feat of geopolitical planning and another step in globalisation. It is the basis of the New World Order conspiracy theory. Globalisation switched into a higher gear in recent decades. The outcome was not primarily the result of a deliberate plan by the elites, even though they helped the process by promoting neoliberal reforms. The recent globalisation is the outcome of economic, political and technological developments:

• the rise of neoliberalism around 1980;
• the fall of communism around 1990;
• personal computers and digital data storage;
• optical fibre and the Internet, making it possible to connect people around the globe;
• global standards for data exchange, making it possible for every computer to exchange data with every other computer;
• software that enables cooperation between people and businesses worldwide.

Neoliberalism began to take shape in the 1970s and has dominated Western politics since the 1980s. In the 1970s, Western economies were stagnating. Unions had a lot of power. Foreign competition intensified and eroded corporate competitiveness. The welfare state became a burden on state finances. As a result, many businesses faltered. Meanwhile, the left dominated the intellectual climate. Business-sponsored think tanks began pressing for an intellectual counter-offensive, deregulation, lower taxes, and less welfare.

The 1971 Lewis Powell Memo became a watershed moment. It spoke of an attack by the left on the American system of free enterprise. It argued that businesses generate wealth, create employment, and pay taxes.² They felt they paid taxes to fund universities where anti-capitalists conspired against them. From then on, businesses organised themselves to exert political influence through think tanks, thereby changing the political climate and contributing to the Reagan Revolution. Governments left more to markets, curtailed labour rights, reduced welfare, and lowered taxes for corporations and wealthy people. Income inequality increased while jobs moved to low-wage countries.

The collapse of the Soviet empire further spurred globalisation. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A few years later, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the European Union enlarged. From then on, there seemed to be no alternative to capitalism.³ Countries, such as China, India, and Russia, realised that they had to compete in global markets and transformed their economies accordingly. India now specialises in services and information technology. China became the global industrial powerhouse. Russia has specialised in energy exports.

In the 1980s, personal computers entered our homes. Businesses also employed computers, but exchanging data between them was arduous. Computers weren’t interconnected, and software suppliers used different data formats.³ The Internet changed all that. Using a personal computer and an Internet connection, you can view any web page from anywhere using the standard language, HTML. Investors realised the Internet would change the world, and they could make enormous profits. It resulted in a massive over-investment in everything related to the Internet during the 2000 Internet bubble. One area of over-investment was in optical fibre, so the price of data transport dropped dramatically.³

Standards for data exchange emerged. Software suppliers began to focus on facilitating the interaction, competition, and cooperation of people around the globe, effectively enabling the world to become a global village in which people everywhere can participate. It transformed the way we cooperate. The traditional way of organising is top-down, via command-and-control. The new way of organising is through teams of people sharing responsibility for a task or product, enabling more complex forms of cooperation. China and India developed and integrated into the global economy.

As businesses used cheaper overseas labour, workers in developed nations experienced greater job insecurity and stagnant wages. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people in China and India experienced improved living standards. Globalisation may have been the best development aid ever. But
the real winners are the oligarchs all around the world. A 2019 Oxfam report points out that the world’s 26 wealthiest people own as much as the poorest 50%.⁴ A 2022 Credit Suisse Wealth Report states that 1.2% of adults own 47.8% of the world’s wealth, while 53.2% must do with 1.1%.

Global cooperation

Since World War II, Western elites have promoted the rules-based international order, both openly and secretly. Most elite members believe they act in the interests of humankind and aim for international cooperation. There is no denying that the alternative to a global government is warfare. The main problem is who will control that order? You can’t trust the elites to act in our interest. Conspiracy theorists claim that they operate behind the scenes in secret gatherings like the Bilderberg Conferences to create a global political economy in which they rule the world, and we will be serfs. The British politician Denis Healey, who attended these Bilderberg Conferences, told The Guardian,

To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing, killing people and rendering millions homeless. So, we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.⁵

The elite is, first and foremost, a social network. Those gathering at the Bilderberg Conferences have discussed the European Union in advance. It helped them agree on European cooperation and integration. And after two devastating world wars, that seemed a good plan. The American banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller also found himself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theorists. He worked for the Trilateral Commission, which promoted cooperation between Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. In response to the accusations, Rockefeller wrote in his memoirs,

Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure–one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.⁶

Internationalist liberal Western elites have cooperated to create a global order, believing that a single world order is preferable to national self-determination. Nationalism is a primary cause of war, a lesson Europeans learned the hard way during World War I and World War II. These were nationalist wars with an estimated combined death toll of 60 million. America was spared, which allowed Americans the luxury of indulging fantasies about these efforts as being evil. Few of us aspire to be at the mercy of the elites, but what are the alternatives? You can step out and live like a hermit or join a self-sufficient community like the Amish, but that does nothing to change the global political economy.

The rise of the non-West

The West consists of Europe, North America, and Australia. Today, about 15% of the world’s population lives in the West. The modernisation that began in the West has transformed the world, and today’s modern world is the legacy of that past. Until 1800, Asia had the largest share of the global economy. Asia’s share of world GDP declined from over 50% in 1800 to 17% by 1950. Today, Asia is back where it once was, and China has surpassed the United States on several fronts. The dominance of the West is ending. Vlad the Empirebuilder was the first to seize on the opportunity by invading Ukraine.

The post-war liberal world order dominated by Western elites is on its way to the dustbin of history. New powers have emerged, most notably China and India. Half the world’s population lives in Asia. The populations of India and China each exceed the combined populations of the European Union and the United States. As these countries develop and modernise, the West’s clout in the world declines. China is on its way to becoming the world’s leading nation, followed by India. These trends will likely persist, barring an apocalyptic event or an unexpected historical twist.

Progress or conspiracy

The European Enlightenment refers to the era from 1680 to 1820 during which Europeans’ worldview changed. With its emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Prominent European thinkers such as Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hume, Kant, and Voltaire led the movement that inspired the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. Conservatives were not keen on these developments that they believed were undermining traditional Christian values. The bloodshed during the French Revolution also shocked the conservatives.

In 1797 and 1798, a French Jesuit and a Scottish physicist published two remarkably similar books claiming that secret societies were undermining the social order and had organised the French Revolution. Both named the Freemasons and the Illuminati as the main culprits. It was the start of modern conspiracy thinking. The Illuminati were a secret society aiming to counter the influence of religion and the abuse of power, and promote an enlightened, rational society. It had a short existence. The Freemasons were another secret society with similar views, and they still exist. Several Freemasons have played a prominent role in the American and French Revolutions.

You can find Freemason symbols in a variety of places, including US dollar bills. Some see it as evidence that Freemasons run the world. Around 1900, the Russian secret services published another bestseller, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, about a fictional secret Jewish plot to achieve Jewish world domination, which, in hindsight, proved prophetic. Shortly thereafter, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian regime. The communist movement featured several Jews in prominent positions, which made conspiracy theory seem more credible. People like Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler fell for it.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel took an entirely different view. The schemer behind the scenes was God, our Creator. The Enlightenment revolutions were the means by which God’s plan would bring us closer to our ultimate destination, God’s Paradise. He then laid out the scheme of Hegelian dialectic, by which that progress was to take place. New ideas would replace old ones, and that might take revolutions and wars. The Marxists drew on Hegel’s ideas, and Marxism looks like Christianity without God:

• In the Christian view, the meek will inherit the Earth. The Marxists believed it would belong to the wretched of the earth, the proletariat.
• Christians believe that history unfolds according to God’s plan, whereas Marxists hold a similar view: history unfolds according to historical necessity.
• The Christians envision an end time with a battle between good and evil. The Marxists prophesied the coming of a proletarian revolution.
• According to the Christian view, we would enter God’s kingdom, while the Marxists believed we would enter a communist paradise.

Despite claiming to be rational and scientific, Marxism looks like a religion, with prophets such as Marx, holy books such as Capital, missionary zeal to spread communism, heresies like Trotskyism, and, of course, religious wars. Marxism has been the most successful cult in modern history by far. Even the Chinese, despite their proud heritage, abandoned Confucianism for it. After the Western working class had emancipated and come to live an affluent life, the Marxists sought to liberate new groups of wretched people, in an effort now known as Cultural Marxism or Woke.

The conspiracy view, held mainly by conservatives, is that progressive efforts to implement modern ideas, which include racial equality, equality of the sexes, and equality of LGBTQ people, are imposed social-engineering efforts aimed at undermining freedom and traditional Christian values and the family. The movement comes with racism, misogyny, and hatred of LGBTQ people. Cultural Marxism is Christianity in disguise. Woke has tried to curb hate speech and change our language. As Jesus taught us to love and not to hate, Woke sought to impose Jesus’ teachings on us. Conservative Christians try to do the same. That is a high point of irony. And it demonstrates the extent to which Jesus’ teachings have influenced Western culture. The conspiracy is that everything was planned in detail, because we live in a simulation that runs a story. The New World Order will be God’s Paradise. Hegel was right, and so was the Quran. The progressives schemed. The conservatives schemed as well. But God is the greatest schemer of all.

Latest revision: 10 January 2025

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
2. Powell Memorandum. Lewis F. Powell Jr. (1971).
3. The World Is Flat 3.0. Thomas Friedman (2007). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
4. World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam. The Guardian (2019).
5. Who pulls the strings? (part 3). The Guardian (2001).
6. Memoirs. David Rockefeller (2003).