Conspiracy theories are the beliefs that the entire course of history has been determined by an hereditary group of hidden plotters, whose purpose is to destroy all the civilized institutions and values which block their path towards world-domination. Conspiracy theory emerges in the sometimes paranoid perspectives of secret services, political parties, religious fundamentalists, tabloid newspapers, specialist publishers and daily conversations.
The conspirators have been identified in various guises, with the common element being the promotion of international and cosmopolitan, as distinct from national, values. They include Freemasons, Catholics (or “Papists”), Jews, Muslims, Communists, Socialists and Fabians. International organisations such as the United Nations are especially suspect – seen as agents of a “New World Order”. Climate scientists and environmentalists, with their proliferation of international treaties, have become major targets in recent years.
Conspiracy theory was pioneered and popularized in the UK by Nesta Webster. She was a natural mystic with a fascination for the occult, but brought up as a strict Protestant she had a distrust of cults and secret societies. The true purpose of these organizations, as she saw it, was to undermine religion and bring about the downfall of civilization. She researched the conspiracy by the Illuminati sect which underlay the French Revolution, and claimed that the underground sects which succeed it have been responsible for every subsequent revolution, for the spread of atheism, rationalism, communism and capitalism, and for all other plagues and problems of the modern world. It was responsible she believed, for example, for sending Lenin to Russia as "the agent of the great German-Jewish conspiracy that hopes to rule the world" and her views influenced Winston Churchill in his belief in an international Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. She also identified occult powers at work behind international finance, theosophy and grand orient masonry.
The CIA re-activated the use of the term “conspiracy theory” in a 1967 dispatch – #1035-960 – in order to disparage those questioning The Warren Commission and its cover-up of the CIA’s role in President John F Kennedy’s assassination, while implying that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK.
Bomb attacks during the Italian "Clean Hands" corruption investigation in 1993 were seen as a signal that there was some hidden group behind the exercise of political power which expected to continue to be able to operate. Its preoccupations were considered primarily financial rather than ideological, linking political dimensions, the freemasons and other deviant groups to organized crime.
The New World Order conspiracy theory holds that the United Nations (UN) will lead a military coup against the nations of the world to form a socialist or One World Government. UN troops, consisting mostly of foreign armies, will commence a military takeover of America. The UN will mainly use foreign troops on American soil because foreigners will have fewer reservations about killing American citizens. U.S. armed forces will not attempt to stop this invasion by UN troops and, in fact, the U.S. military may be "deputized" as a branch of the UN armed forces. The American military contingent overseas will also play a large part in this elaborate conspiracy theory, as they will be used to help conquer the rest of the world. The rationale for this part of the theory is that American soldiers will also have less qualms about killing foreigners, as opposed to killing their own citizens.
Under the New World Order/One World Government conspiracy theory, the following events are to take place: 1) private property rights and private gun ownership will be abolished; 2) all national, state and local elections will become meaningless, since they will be controlled by the UN; 3) the U.S. Constitution will be supplanted by the UN charter; 4) only approved churches and other places of worship will be permitted to operate and will become appendages of the One World Religion, which will be the only legitimate doctrine of religious beliefs and ethical values; 5) home schooling will be outlawed and all school curriculum will need to be approved by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and 6) American military bases and other federal facilities will be used as concentration camps by the UN to confine those patriots, including the militias, who defy the NWO. Other groups beside the UN that are often mentioned as being part of the NWO conspiracy theory are Jews, Communists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission.
Members of the World Church of the Creator in the US, similar to many Christian Identity groups, share the conviction that there is a Jewish conspiracy in control of the US government, international banking, and the media. They also dictate that RAHOWA, a racial holy war, is destined to ensue to rid the world of Jews and "mud races." In the early 1990s, there was a dramatic increase in membership due to the growing belief in the Apocalypse and that RAHOWA was imminent.
Within the USA, the state of Oklahoma, passed a resolution in 1994 ordering the US Congress to cease any support for the establishment of a new world order or for any form of global government.
Considerable attention has been given to theories focused on a small secret society known as the Order of Iluminati that allegedly gained control of freemasonry and proceeded through the agency of Jewish bankers to set in motion both the French and Russian revolutions. Their control is extended to imply that the Cold War, the collapse of Communism and regional wars have all been engineered by such a group.
A vast international conspiracy is the motivating force in historical events, whole political orders, and whole systems of human values.
The notions of sinister aliens in our midst, secretly plotting the downfall of society, is an illusion that can lead to madness and has been the cause throughout history of innumerable witch-hunts, pogroms, lynchings and mass murders. Conspiracy theory is a figment of perverted imagination and belief in conspirators is both a symptom and a cause of insanity.
A small dose of conspiracy theory is the best prophylactic against infection by them, and also serves as a useful corrective to the fatalistic worldview.