Joe Biden created a furore on social media with choice wording, referring to a “New World Order” in a speech.
The 46th US president delivered his remarks at the Business Roundtable’s CEO quarterly meeting on Monday, with Amazon and Apple leaders in attendance.
He said: “We are at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy - not just in the world economy but in the world, that occurs every three or four generations.
“Now is a time when things are shifting. There’s going to be a new world order and we have got to lead it and we have got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”
The awkward phrasing of a “New World Order” roused smug droves on the internet, claiming that Biden’s speech confirmed an age old government collusion.
What is the ‘New World Order’?
A New World Order – or NWO as it’s known online – has a layered history as it refers politically to a shift in geopolitical power outside of individual nation states.
The NWO conspiracy theory is the belief that a secretive totalitarian cabal of world governments are attempting to establish an international order that would see the people suppressed under a globalist regime.
The common theme is that a secretive elite (for example, the “Illuminati”) is conspiring to rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government, which would replace sovereign nation-states.
Belief in such a group plotting a rebellion to realise its “New World Order” first gained real prominence in the US among anti-government extremists in the 1990s, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The benefits of the vague theory are such that allow it to be moulded to any purported villain of the week by theorists.
Recently it has been used online to refer to uncertainty in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing turmoil across Europe.
The renaissance of the conspiracy theory now connects the NWO to Ukraine, as the supposed centre of a technocratic cabal, to discredit Western support of the suffering nation.
Twitter and QAnon users quickly chimed in to vaunt their suspicions – including several elected US officials.
QAnon is a political conspiracy theory that later evolved into a political movement, originating in the American far-right political sphere.
Skyrocketing inflation & price of oil, combined with workers not returning to the workplace after Congress decided to pay people to stay home.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) March 22, 2022
Stagflation is dawning.
It’s like the 1970’s again.
But this time, we’re on the verge of WW3 and globalists want the new world order.
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, well-known promoter of QAnon conspiracy theories before her days in Congress, said on Twitter: “Stagflation is dawning. It’s like the 1970’s again. But this time, we’re on the verge of WW3 and globalists want the new world order.”
Jack Posobiec, alt-right conspiracy theorist, said: “If there is a new world order I guarantee you no one thinks Joe Biden is in charge of it.”
While another user wrote: “We’ve reached peak Orwell when the establishment is telling you there is no ‘New World Order’ while you’re watching Biden say ‘New World Order’.”
In his speech, Biden quite clearly used the phrase in context of the Ukrainian conflict, among growing fears of cyberattacks and chemical weapons being used in this drawn out conflict.
Biden’s use of the term was in line with historical usage by previous presidents George HW Bush and Woodrow Wilson – as well as Sir Winston Churchill in post-combat speeches of both World Wars.
Bush coined the phrase in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In an address to a joint session of Congress on 11 September 1990, the first President Bush delivered a speech actually entitled “Toward a New World Order” in which he directly quoted Churchill.
