Biweekly Discussion - Neoliberals, Neocons & NWO 2.0
Details
We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City, just across the street from Washington Square Park. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.
Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside.
The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.
NEOLIBERALS, NEOCONS & NWO 2.0: UNPACKING SOME 21st-CENTURY POLITICAL BUZZWORDS
INTRODUCTION - HOW THE "NEW WORLD ORDER" CONCEPT CHANGED IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA:
In our previous meetup, we discussed the meaning & history of the term "New World Order" (NWO). Throughout the 20th century, foreign policy experts often used it in a mundane fashion to indicate a new era after World War II in which international organizations like the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO & World Court mediated disputes between nation-states in an effort to foster economic development & prevent armed conflict. However, our discussion focused on how conspiracy theorists use the term "New World Order" to indicate something much more sinister - i.e. left-wing activists see it as a secret plan by bankers & corporations to advance American imperialism & predatory capitalism, whereas right-wing activists see the NWO as a secret plan by globalists & communists to advance crypto-socialism & a erect one-world government. To review the discussion outline from that meetup, go here:
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/nfbkqqyzhbqb/
In this discussion, we'll pick up where our previous meetup left off and explore how the "New World Order" concept changed in the wake of the fall of the USSR in 1991. We'll examine how conspiracy theories merged with the economic debates surrounding the spread of free market capitalism & globalization and the foreign policy debates surrounding U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Perhaps the best place to start to understand the intersection of the NWO conspiracy theories and mainstream political debates is with a speech that president George H.W. Bush made in 1990, at the height of the Gulf War. He revived the term "new world order" to represent his vision of a post-Cold War era in which "the principles of justice and fair play... protect the weak against the strong... A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders." At the time, the New York Times observed that the American left called the new world order a "rationalization for imperial ambitions" in the Middle East while the right rejected new security arrangements altogether and fulminated about any possibility of a UN revival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world_order_(politics)#Gulf_War_and_Bush's_formulation
The televangelist Pat Robertson added fuel to the fire by alleging in his 1991 best-seller, The New World Order, that the Illuminati were behind an evil conspiracy to use international bodies to erect a one-world government for the Antichrist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)#Post-Cold_War_usage
During Bill Clinton's presidency, the Clintons became embroiled in a series of controveries (e.g. Troopergate, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky scandal), and became the subject of a variety of right-wing conspiracy theories about the deaths of Vince Foster & Ron Brown, the Waco siege, and the Oklahoma City bombing. The right-wing militia movement that arose in the 1990s was deeply suspicious of Bill Clinton and played a big part in tying his administration to conspiracy theories about the ATF illegally seizing Americans' guns & "black helicopters" patrolling American skies in service to the UN.
While we won't delve into those controversies & conspiracy theories in this discussion, we will address allegations from Bill Clinton's fellow Democrats & left-wing activists that he intentionally subverted the traditional progressive economic platform of the Democratic Party by adopting elements of "Reaganomics". These accusations sometimes took the form of run-of-the-mill political critique, but they also sometimes veer into something similar to conspiracy theories. This is especially true when the motive for Clinton's policy shift is attributed to his shady business deals, the backroom influence of the cynical pollster Dick Morris, and suspicious donations to the Clinton legal defense fund & the nascent Clinton Foundation.
Over time, Bill Clinton's rightward shift on economic policies has been compared to Tony Blair in the UK, and these policies were referred to as "Third Way liberalism". Clinton's left-wing critics pointed to all kinds of negative effects his policies allegedly caused for America, and over time they began to see this as part of an overarching, international ideology they called "neoliberalism". Some left-wing activists saw neoliberalism as an "enemy within" scenario where certain politicians & special interest groups corrupted the left-wing political parties of the US & Europe. Others saw neoliberalism more as an "enemy outside" scenario where bureaucrats at the IMF & WTO & heads of multinational corporations who meet at conferences like Bilderberg & Davos conspired to subject the world economy to hyper-globalization & crony capitalism. We'll explore these two conspiracy theories in Parts 1 & 2 of our discussion.
During George W. Bush's presidency, the beliefs about a sinister New World Order got a significant boost from the spectacular & shocking nature of the 9/11 attacks, which resulted in the proliferation of online conspiracy theories about an "inside job" orchestrated by a shadowy cabal within the U.S. government. After the 2003 Iraq invasion revealed that Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMDs as Bush had claimed, this led to further online speculation that a secret cabal was pushing the US into needless wars.
While some conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones thought the Bush administration was being controlled by the fabled "Illuminati", many journalists & scholars alleged that the military interventionism of the Bush administration was orchestrated by a faction within the GOP known as the "neoconservatives", based around a think tank called the "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC). Allegations that the "neocons" hijacked the Republican Party & betrayed the principles of traditional conservatism fits the "enemy within" scenario and thus has some interesting parallels with the "Clinton betrayed the Democrats" allegations described above. Other critics of the Iraq War alleged that it was actually the "Israel lobby" that had distorted American foreign policy to suit Israel's strategic interests in the Middle East. This is interesting because it fits the "enemy outside" scenario described above. We'll explore these two conspiracy scenarios in Parts 3 & 4 of our discussion.
RANGE OF TERMS SIMILAR TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES:
In the Introduction section to our last meetup, I noted that I identified a range of NWO conspiracy theories that fall into roughly 5 categories, which I ranked in order of increasing plausibility of the claims they make.
In this meetup, some of the terms we'll discuss are occasionally similar to conspiracy theories but are too vague to actually qualify as "theories", since (with the exception of the last two) they don't involve specific claims. These terms can be sorted into 6 general categories, ranked in order of increasing specificity:
- Buzzword: a fashionable term that is so vague it's virtually meaningless, or a term used so casually by the speaker that it suggests he/she doesn't know what it means.
- Dog-whistle: a form of coded language that appears to fairly innocuous & uncontroversial to the general population but has a different, more sinister connotation for a targeted audience.
- Snarl Word/Slur: a term that carries a very negative connotation & is used to invoke stereotypes and/or insult someone, but often doesn't make specific allegations.
- Dominant Ideology: a term that denotes the beliefs & values of the majority of the people in a given society, or the consensus view among the ruling class, often conceived of in an abstract manner (similar to "zeitgeist").
- Interest Group: a term that denotes a specific group of people that share a common political interest and try to advance their goals through overt/legal means.
- Conspiracy: a term that denotes a specific group of people that share a common interest and advance their goals through covert/illegal means.