operatives; the confiscation of privately owned guns; the incarceration of so-called patriots in concentration camps run by FEMA; the implantation of microchips and other advanced technology for surveillance and mind control; the replacement of Christianity with a New Age world religion; and, finally, the manipulation of the entire apparatus by a hidden hierarchy of conspirators operating through secret societies.
These concepts were, of course, far removed from what President George H. W. Bush had in mind when he popularized the phrase new world order at the time of the Gulf War of 1991. He drew on a quite different tradition, one which went back many decades and referred to a new and more stable international system associated with effective mechanisms for collective security. This distinction, however, is not one that New World Order writers have found persuasive. Indeed, considering Bush’s past associations with such organizations as Skull and Bones (a secret society at Yale University), the United Nations, and the CIA, it was easy for conspiracists to view his new-world-order references as messages to his fellow plotters. While Bush no doubt thought the phrase suggested a reassuring entry into a post–Cold War world, those who saw conspiracies everywhere saw his open use of the term as evidence of the cabal’s newfound brazenness.1
Thus, by the early 1990s, what most regarded as innocuous political rhetoric was seen by others as a sign of onrushing calamity. They did so not only because they distrusted Bush’s patrician origins but because, unbeknown to him, the New World Order was already a well-consolidated element in the thinking of both religious millenarians and those on the extreme political right. It is not clear how far back these sectarian usages go, but they certainly antedate Bush’s use by decades.
The idea of the New World Order as a sinister development draws on two distinct streams of ideas that evolved separately but eventually converged. One source is millenarian Christianity, embedded in fundamentalist Protestantism. Its speculations about the end-times, when history would reach its climax and termination, led to scenarios in which a diabolical figure—the Antichrist—would fasten his grip upon the world. The other, secular source, less easily categorized, consists of a body of historical and political pseudoscholarship that purported to explain major events in terms of the machinations of secret societies. They, rather than governments, were said to be the real holders of power. The eventual aim of these shadowy plotters was nothing less than world domination—the imposition of a New World Order.
THE REIGN OF THE ANTICHRIST
The term Antichrist itself appears only a few times in the New Testament, relegated to the First and Second Epistles of John. It is invoked almost in passing, but always with the sense that the person or persons referred to are “deceivers” and “false prophets” who will appear as adversaries in the last days. The sparse scriptural citations speak sometimes of a single Antichrist, and sometimes of many: “Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye heard that Antichrist cometh, even now have there arisen many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). Other than suggesting a capacity for deceiving the faithful, these passages say little about what such a person or persons will do. The vagueness of the concept, however, allowed it to be filled out with whatever content believers wished, particularly as time passed and it became evident that the Christ’s return was to be indefinitely delayed.2
Two strategies eventually developed for the elaboration of the concept. The most common was to seek the Antichrist’s identifying characteristics, the better to recognize him when the time came. Eventually, this quest produced a massive literature, especially among Anglo-American Protestants, aimed at determining who the Antichrist was, and always assuming that there was only one. The second strategy, which seems to have developed later, joined the figure of the Antichrist to an organization or institution through which he was to impose his will on the faithful.3
The Antichrist’s eschatological role was significantly increased by the rise of dispensational premillennialism in the late nineteenth century. The dispensational system, devised by British evangelical John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), quickly became the dominant form of millenarianism among Protestant fundamentalists, and remains so today. Premillennialists believe the millennium will not begin until after Christ’s return and the events associated with it. Postmillennialists, on the other hand, regard the Second Coming as an event that will not take place until the millennium itself has ended. As a result, premillennialists conceive the end-times in terms of high drama and the catastrophic demise of the present order, while postmillennialists are far more apt to view the millennium as a state to be achieved through the gradual perfection of the world. Darby produced an elaborated version of premillennialism, in which sacred history was divided into periods or “dispensations,” concluding with a complicated sequence immediately before the Second Coming. He argued that the end-times would commence with a seven-year period called the Tribulation. At the outset of the Tribulation, the saved would be Raptured, “caught up in the air” to be with Christ in heaven until his return. For the unsaved, however, the seven years of the Tribulation would be a time of increasing violence, persecution, and terror, much of it at the Antichrist’s hands.
According to Darby’s system, the Antichrist would become the leader of a global dictatorship after three and a half years, at the midpoint of the Tribulation, and seek to secure the world for Satan until the battle of Armageddon signaled Christ’s return. The leading dispensationalist theologian, John Walvoord, says of this period, “This man’s absolute control of the world politically, economically, and religiously will give him power such as no man has ever had in human history. His brilliance as a leader will be superhuman, for he will be dominated and directed by Satan himself.” This scenario might well be dismissed as merely idle speculation, were it not for the conviction of many contemporary millennialists that the Tribulation will begin soon. In keeping with Darby’s belief that the prophetic clock would begin to run only after scriptural prophecies concerning the Jews were fulfilled, Christian millennialists see in the creation and expansion of the State of Israel indisputable evidence that their end-time expectations are about to be fulfilled.4
While some millenarians concentrated on the Antichrist’s personal characteristics, the better to identify him, others began to speculate about his apparatus of control—for if, indeed, the second half of the Tribulation was to be dominated by a world dictatorship, then surely that would require a formidable governmental and administrative structure. Because his rule was to constitute a resuscitated Roman empire, there had to be an organizational as well as a personal component. This train of thought was evident as early as the 1920s, when some American millennialists regarded the new League of Nations as the institution awaiting the Antichrist’s controlling hand.5
The interwar period provided fertile ground for Antichrist speculation, not only because of the League but also because of the emergence of European dictators. Hitler and, especially, Mussolini lent themselves to the scenarios of millenarians. For once, Mussolini seemed to trump his German ally because—at least insofar as the Antichrist was concerned—his identification appeared to be firmer. He reached an agreement with the pope, he ruled from Rome, and he made no secret of his desire to revive the Roman empire. Among the most enthusiastic exponents of this theory was American Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite Gerald Winrod (1900–1957).6
Winrod was of two minds concerning the Antichrist. On the one hand, like many of his contemporaries, he saw Mussolini as a natural candidate. On the other, his intense anti-Semitism dictated that the Antichrist be a Jew. The two positions could be harmonized by making the Jews the Antichrist’s allies, or by manufacturing a Jewish ancestry for Mussolini. Unlike the typical dispensationalist, Winrod felt compelled to draw Jews into the Antichrist system. He did so most extensively in a 1936 pamphlet, Antichrist and the Tribe of Dan.7
In this pamphlet, Winrod brushed aside the issue of Mussolini’s family background. Indeed, it was not necessary to establish his Jewish roots in order to identify him as the
