title: Rogue One

text: Principal photography on the film began at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, on August 8, 2015. Much of the other photography was completed near Pinewood Studios at Buckinghamshire, UK where huge sets were built to complement scenes filmed elsewhere in the world. The film was shot using Ultra Panavision 70 lenses with Arri Alexa 65 large format digital 6K cameras.


title: Rogue One

text: Filming locations were used around the world. In Iceland, the crew shot in Reynisfjara, and around the mountains of Hjörleifshöfði and Hafursey at Mýrdalssandur, which were used to represent Lah'mu and Eadu. Also used were the Krafla area with its volcanic crater and around Lake Mývatn's rock formations. The islands of Gan and Baresdhoo of the Laamu Atoll in the Maldives, as well as the former RAF Bovingdon airfield, were used to represent Scarif. Wadi Rum in Jordan was used to represent Jedha. Pymmes Park in Edmonton, London was also used for location filming, and scenes set on Yavin 4 were filmed at Cardington Airfield. Gareth Edwards selected the London Underground's Canary Wharf station as a location for a chase scene in an Imperial base; the location shoot took place between midnight and 4 am, when the station was closed to the public.


title: Rogue One

text: The film spent an estimated total of $265 million and received a $45.5 million subsidy from the United Kingdom's film incentive program.


title: Rogue One

text: On February 11, 2016, Disney executives stated the film was "virtually completed." Several weeks of pre-scheduled reshoots began in June 2016. Tony Gilroy, who was an uncredited writer on the film at the time, was hired to direct the reshoots and rework aspects of the film, earning him a screenwriting credit. It was created solely using digital tools.


title: Rogue One

text: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) produced the film's visual effects. ILM used CGI and digitally altered archive footage to insert Peter Cushing's likeness over the body of actor Guy Henry. Lucasfilm secured permission from the late actor's estate to include him in the film. The team reportedly searched through countless hours of Cushing footage in order to find suitable reference material, and Henry provided the motion capture and voice work. A digital model of Cushing was mapped over Henry's performance like a digital body mask. Cushing's mannerisms, including his manner of speaking, were studied by the creative team and applied to the digital Tarkin model. Cushing's estate was heavily involved with the creation and had input right down to "small, subtle adjustments." A similar process was used in the portrayal of Princess Leia; Carrie Fisher's appearance as Leia in the first film was superimposed over the face of Norwegian actress Ingvild Deila and archival audio of Fisher saying "hope" was used to voice the character.


title: Rogue One

text: In March 2015, it was reported that Alexandre Desplat who had worked with Edwards on "Godzilla", would compose the score for "Rogue One", and had confirmed it in an April 2016 interview. As the film's reshooting affected the post-production process, Desplat opted out from the project due to his commitments for scoring "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" (2017), and was replaced by Michael Giacchino in September 2016. Giacchino only had four and a half weeks to compose the music for the film, beginning almost immediately after finishing production on "Doctor Strange". In addition to composing the original themes, Giacchino had incorporated John Williams' themes from previous films into the score. The official soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on December 16, 2016. An extended version of the soundtrack was released on February 11, 2022, which includes additional demos composed for the film score, and cues that were not included in the album, or being un-edited. A vinyl edition was further released by Mondo in March 2022.


title: Rogue One

text: Promotion of "Rogue One" was initially delayed by the release of the film "" in July 2015, because the titles are similar. Paramount Pictures registered and cleared the title with the Motion Picture Association of America in January 2015, well before Disney announced the title of its forthcoming "Star Wars" spinoff. Disney and LucasFilm had to reach an agreement with Paramount over promotion in order to avoid any confusion in the public mind. Disney agreed to embargo promotion on "Rogue One" until after mid-2015, with the exception of a very short teaser which was screened at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim that year.


title: Rogue One

text: A teaser trailer for "Rogue One", released by Lucasfilm on April 7, 2016, was praised by reviewers for its portrayal of strong female characters. "The Daily Telegraph" described Jyn Erso's character as "a roguish, Han Solo-style heroine," calling the film "progressive," while noting its painstaking faithfulness to the production design style of the original "Star Wars" trilogy. "The Hollywood Reporter" also noted the visual nods to the original trilogy, and examined the film's possible narrative direction, considering that the outcome is to some extent already revealed in the opening crawl of "A New Hope". "The Atlantic" writer David Sims stated that the trailer brought "back some memorable pieces of architecture, from the lumbering AT-AT walkers to the Death Star itself, not to mention the glorious 70s costuming of "Star Wars"." He added that the trailer has "the look," blending the old with the new. The trailer was viewed close to 30 million times in its first 29 hours, at a rate of 800,000 views per hour, from Facebook and YouTube, which is 200,000 views shy of what the first teaser trailer for "" was receiving in November 2014.


title: Rogue One

text: In June 2016, "Rogue One" was promoted at the "Star Wars" Celebration Europe III event in London. During the event, a new official poster was unveiled, which depicts a battle taking place on the tropical planet Scarif, with the Death Star looming large in a blue sky, above which is printed the tagline "A Rebellion Built on Hope". A second teaser trailer was also unveiled, screened exclusively for the Celebration audience, and not streamed online. This new trailer was reviewed favorably by critics; "The Daily Telegraph" noted that the trailer revealed new locations such as the planets Jedha and Scarif, and that its most significant revelation came in the final seconds of the teaser, with the appearance of Darth Vader, reflected in a computer screen and accompanied by his classic breathing sound effect. "Variety" also hailed the Vader reveal, and noted that the emphasis of the production was much more on the kinetic depiction of large battle sequences and full-on warfare, comparing it to Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic "Apocalypse Now". A showreel was also shown during the event, which featured footage from the film, cut with behind-the-scenes shots and interviews with the director and cast members. The second trailer was shown publicly during a broadcast of the 2016 Summer Olympics and received positive responses; "Wired" stated that the trailer was "littered with nostalgic throwbacks to the original trilogy," while "Rolling Stone" described the CGI landscape shots seen in the footage as "eye-poppingly gorgeous."


title: Rogue One

text: A further trailer released in October 2016 prompted "The Hollywood Reporter" to comment that the newly revealed footage looked like "a trailer to a different movie than the one advertised earlier," remarking that Jyn Erso appeared to be portrayed as a more vulnerable character, and highlighting the appearance of Galen Erso as a protective father figure. "Vanity Fair" also commented on the emphasis given to Jyn's relationship with her father, suggesting that "Rogue One" was drawing on "the "Star Wars" franchise's greatest natural resource: daddy issues."


title: Rogue One

text: In Asia, Disney focused marketing efforts on Donnie Yen, where his individual poster is used for marketing in territories including Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The official "Star Wars" Facebook page of the respective Asian countries also featured clips and videos of Donnie Yen speaking various languages, greeting fans and telling them to support the film. In addition, Disney also released various versions of international trailers with more footage of Yen.


title: Rogue One

text: A tie-in novel to the film, "", was released on November 15, 2016. Written by veteran "Star Wars" novelist James Luceno, the story is set some years before the events of "Rogue One", and provides a backstory to the 2016 film. The was written by Alexander Freed, and released on December 16, 2016.


title: Rogue One

text: Months after the film was released, Disney | Lucasfilm Press published another novel titled "Star Wars: Rebel Rising" on May 2, 2017. Written by Beth Revis, the novel explains what happened to Jyn Erso between the time her mother died and the day when Rebel agents freed her from an Imperial labor camp, a time period that the film skips over in its opening minutes.


title: Rogue One

text: On the same day "Rebel Rising" was released, the novel "Guardians of the Whills" was released as well by Disney | Lucasfilm Press. Written by novelist and comic writer Greg Rucka, it focused on the characters Chirrut and Baze, telling their backstories as well as giving more context to the events that happened on Jedha prior to the film and even the Imperial occupation.


title: Rogue One

text: Months after the film was released, Marvel Comics adapted the film into a six-part comic book miniseries, which adds extra content. The miniseries' complete collection was released on December 12, 2017.


title: Rogue One

text: In August 2017, IDW Publishing announced that it would make a one-shot graphic novel adaptation of the film, which was released one day after the Marvel miniseries' collection was released. Unlike the Marvel miniseries, this graphic novel will have slightly more cartoonish visuals.


title: Rogue One

text: In the same month, Marvel Comics released the "Star Wars: Rogue One – Cassian & K-2SO Special", a 40-page one-shot comic focusing on the first meeting between Cassian Andor and K-2SO. The comic was written by Duane Swierczynski and pencilled by Fernando Blanco.


title: Rogue One

text: A downloadable expansion pack for the 2015 "Star Wars Battlefront" game, titled "Rogue One: Scarif", was released in December 2016, and added content based on the film, including new game modes, a map based on the planet Scarif, and Jyn Erso and Orson Krennic as playable characters. A free virtual reality mission for PlayStation 4 was also released alongside the expansion. A free update for the 2017 game "Star Wars Battlefront II", released in April 2020, added a different Scarif map and other "Rogue One"-inspired content. Several characters and concepts from the film were also included in the mobile games "", "Star Wars Commander", and "".


title: Rogue One

text: "Rogue One" premiered at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles on December 10, 2016. The film was released in certain European countries on December 14, 2016, and was released in North America on December 16, with China getting the film on January 6, 2017.


title: Rogue One

text: "Rogue One" was released on Digital HD on March 24, 2017, and by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD on April 4, 2017.


title: Rogue One

text: It was released in 4K for the first time through the launch of Disney+ and was made available on Digital Ultra HD at the same time. It was released for Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 31, 2020, whilst also being reissued on Blu-ray and DVD.


title: Rogue One

text: "Rogue One" grossed $534.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $523.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $1.057 billion. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the film's net profit as $319.6 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participation, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it third on their list of 2016's "Most Valuable Blockbusters."


title: Rogue One

text: In late November 2016, box office projections for the United States and Canada had the film grossing $100–150 million during its opening weekend. Disney chairman Bob Iger noted that Disney and Lucasfilm did not expect "Rogue One" to match "The Force Awakens" total gross of $2.1 billion, nor its $248 million opening. Pre-sale tickets for the film went on sale at 12:01 AM EST on November 28, 2016. Within 10 minutes, ticket sale sites such as Fandango crashed, much like they had in advance of "The Force Awakens" the year prior. In its first 24 hours, the film had the second-highest number of pre-sale tickets ever sold, behind only "The Force Awakens". Worldwide, the film was expected to gross $280–350 million in its opening weekend.


title: Rogue One

text: In the United States, the film made $29 million from its Thursday night previews, making it the highest-grossing Thursday opening of 2016. On Friday, the film grossed $71.1 million, and $46.3 million the next day, securing a total of $155.1 million in its opening weekend, the third-biggest debut of 2016. It topped the box office once again in its second weekend, grossing $64 million (down 58.7%) over the three day weekend, and $96.1 million over the four day weekend. On Christmas Day, it grossed $25.9 million. It finished first at the box office again in its third weekend, grossing $49.6 million (−22.5%) over the three-day weekend and $65.5 million over the four-day weekend. In its fourth weekend, Sunday projections had the film grossing $22 million, besting newcomer "Hidden Figures" $21.8 million. However, final figures the following day revealed the film tallied a weekend total of $21.9 million, falling to second place behind "Hidden Figures" $22.8 million. To promote the upcoming release of the prequel series "Andor", Disney re-released "Rogue One" into 255 IMAX theaters on August 26, 2022. It made $1.1 million over the weekend, bringing its running IMAX total to $105 million, 10th all-time.


title: Rogue One

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Rogue One" draws deep on "Star Wars" mythology while breaking new narrative and aesthetic ground and suggesting a bright blockbuster future for the franchise." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score 65 out of 100, based on 51 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported film goers gave the film a 91% overall positive score.


title: Rogue One

text: "IGN" reviewer Eric Goldman gave the film 9/10, saying, ""Rogue One" is a movie crammed with fan service, but when fan service is done this well, there's little to complain about and much to adore." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing, "this spin-off/prequel has the same primitive, lived-in, emotional, loopy, let's-put-on-a-show spirit that made us fall in love with the original trilogy." /Film gave "Rogue One" 8/10, writing that the film is enjoyable but does not have the emotional weight of "The Force Awakens", because "no character in "Rogue One" was strongly compelling." "PopMatters" wrote, ""Rogue One" seems to enjoy spending time on a whole new batch of moons and planets we haven't seen before, reveling in the clutter and clamor of far-flung settlements where anti-Imperial sentiments fester. But the film is bogged down in engineering the complex maneuverings of spy games, dogfights, and the most sprawling Rebel-versus-Empire land battle scene since the opening of "The Empire Strikes Back"." Justin Chang, writing for the "Los Angeles Times", called "Rogue One" "a swiftly paced, rough-and-ready entertainment."


title: Rogue One

text: "The New York Times" wrote, "All the pieces are there, in other words, like Lego figures in a box. The problem is that the filmmakers haven't really bothered to think of anything very interesting to do with them. A couple of 9-year-olds on a screen-free rainy afternoon would come up with better adventures, and probably also better dialogue." Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" called the film "lobotomized and "depersonalized," and wrote it "isn't so much a movie as a feature-length promotional film for itself; it's a movie that is still waiting to be made." "The Washington Post" wrote ""Rogue One" represents an unobjectionable exercise in franchise extension. It's fine. It'll do. For now."


title: Rogue One

text: IndieWire's David Ehrlich gave the film a C+ rating, calling it "a spirited but agonizingly safe attempt to expand cinema's most holy blockbuster franchise and keep the wheels greased between proper installments ... just a glorified excuse to retcon some sense into one of the silliest things about the original." While he praised the set design and visuals, calling them "gorgeous," he criticized a lack of interesting character development and a script that felt "completely constricted by its purpose."


title: Rogue One

text: Peter Bradshaw, film critic of "The Guardian" said: ""Rogue One" doesn't really go rogue at any stage, and it isn't a pop culture event like "The Force Awakens", in whose slipstream this appears; part of its charm resides in the eerie, almost dreamlike effect of continually producing familiar elements, reshuffled and reconfigured, a reaching back to the past and hinting at a preordained future. There are some truly spectacular cameos from much-loved personae, involving next-level digital effects—almost creepily exact, so that watching feels at various stages like going into a time machine, back to the 80s and 70s."


title: Rogue One

text: George Lucas was reported to have enjoyed the film more than "The Force Awakens"; upon hearing this, Gareth Edwards said, "I can die happy now."


title: Rogue One

text: The film was praised for its exploration of ethics in engineering; in a reviewer's words, "the core ethical arc of the film is one man's decision to engineer the Death Star in such a way as to prevent its use for galactic domination. One could fairly re-title the movie to 'Rogue One: an Engineering Ethics Story.'"


title: Rogue One

text: A writer for the military news website "Task & Purpose" lauded "Rogue One" as the "Star Wars" film that best reflects real military experience. Many details, James Seddon writes, resonate with his own 21 years of service in the U.S. Navy:


title: Rogue One

text: He also pointed to aspects beyond the film's production design, like Rebel Lt. Sefla's muzzle discipline, the "bitter stoicism" predominant among characters who "spend most of their time wet, uncomfortable, afraid, and bickering" even as they work diligently to complete their mission, and the moral ambiguity of some of the Rebel's actions.


title: Rogue One

text: While much of the computer-generated imagery (CGI) received praise, some news organizations published criticism about certain aspects, including the visual effects (VFX) that were used to revive Peter Cushing, who had died in 1994, as Grand Moff Tarkin. "The Guardian"s Catherine Shoard described the "resurrection" as a "digital indignity." Joseph Walsh of "The Guardian" raised legal and ethical issues about bringing a long-dead actor to life. Lucasfilm had obtained permission from Cushing's estate before deciding to use his likeness. "The Washington Times" Eric Althoff rejected the entire concept of using CGI to recreate a deceased actor: "Alas, what we get is, basically, not a simulation, but an approximation of a simulation—a dead character portrayed by a living actor inhabiting not the character, but imitating the dead actor."


title: Rogue One

text: Some journalists also criticized the quality of the CGI that was used to represent a younger Carrie Fisher in order to portray Princess Leia at an earlier time, as well as its suitability in movie-making. Eliana Dockterman of "Time" wrote that "there was something particularly plastic about this version of the young Carrie Fisher—so smooth and so perfect it couldn't be real—that pulled me out of the moment." Kelly Lawler of "USA Today" said: "... while Tarkin is merely unnerving, the Leia cameo is so jarring as to take the audience completely out of the film at its most emotional moment. Leia's appearance was meant to help the film end on a hopeful note (quite literally, as 'hope' is her line), but instead it ends on a weird and unsettling one." Michael Cavna of "The Washington Post" described the facial effect as feeling "distractingly artificial and nearly alien, like a plastered death mask robbed of authentic actorly effect, well beyond the usual artifice of Botox." For her part, Fisher was shown the CGI rendition of her younger self for the film by Kathleen Kennedy and "loved it."


title: Rogue One

text: On November 8, 2018, it was announced that a live-action prequel series was officially in development and set to air on Disney's streaming service, Disney+. The series takes place five years before the events in "Rogue One" and focuses on Cassian Andor with Diego Luna reprising the role. It was released on September 21, 2022.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Last Night in Soho is a 2021 British-American psychological horror film directed by Edgar Wright and co-written by Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns. It stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg. It marks the final film appearances of Rigg and Margaret Nolan, who both died in 2020. The film is dedicated to the memories of Rigg and Nolan.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: It premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2021, had its UK premiere on 9 October 2021 at the BFI London Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the UK and the US on 29 October 2021 by Universal Pictures and Focus Features, respectively. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its production design, cinematography, costume design, direction and performances, while its writing received some criticism. Despite this, the film performed poorly at the box office, grossing $23 million worldwide on a budget of $43 million; the COVID-19 pandemic was still suppressing total box office revenues, with theatres in the United States and Canada bringing in 60% less box office revenue in 2021 than in pre-pandemic 2019. The film was nominated for two BAFTA Film Awards, including Outstanding British Film and Best Sound.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Eloise "Ellie" Turner loves the music and fashion of the Swinging Sixties and dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Her mother, also a fashion designer, killed herself in her childhood so Ellie was raised by her maternal grandmother. She occasionally sees her mother's ghost in mirrors, something her grandmother is aware of.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Ellie moves from her rural home near Redruth, Cornwall to London to study at the London College of Fashion, where she has trouble fitting in with her peers. Only John, another student, is sympathetic to her. Unhappy in the dormitory, she moves into a bedsit owned by the elderly Ms Collins.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: That night, Ellie has a vivid dream where she is transported back to the 1960s. At the Café de Paris, she observes a confident young blonde woman, Sandie, inquire about becoming a singer at the club. Sandie begins a relationship with the charming Mod manager, Jack. The next morning, Ellie designs a dress inspired by Sandie and discovers a love bite on her neck.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Ellie has another dream in which Sandie successfully auditions at a Soho nightclub, arranged by Jack, before returning to the same bedsit that Ellie has rented. Inspired by these visions, Ellie dyes her hair blonde, changes her fashion style to match Sandie's, and gets a job at a pub. She is observed by a silver-haired man who recognises her similarities to Sandie. In further dreams, Ellie discovers Sandie is not living the life she had hoped for, now being pimped out by Jack to his male business associates.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: In her waking life, Ellie is disturbed by increasingly menacing apparitions that resemble Jack and the men who exploited and used Sandie. After she has a vision of Jack murdering Sandie, she decides to track down the silver-haired man, who she believes is Jack. She goes to the police, but is not taken seriously so she tries to find newspaper reports about Sandie's murder. Instead, she finds stories of local men who vanished without a trace. Believing she must avenge Sandie, Ellie confronts the silver-haired man. He denies killing Sandie and leaves the pub, but is struck by a taxi and killed. Ellie's boss reveals that the man's name was Lindsey, not Jack. Ellie recalls encountering him in her dreams; he was an undercover vice officer who tried to encourage Sandie to escape her life of prostitution.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Panicked, Ellie goes to inform Ms Collins that she is leaving London. Ms Collins then reveals that she is actually Sandie. Ellie's vision of Sandie's death was actually a vision of Sandie killing Jack when he threatened her with a knife. Sandie then lured the men she was pimped to back to her room and killed them, hiding their bodies in the house's floorboards and walls. Ms Collins has drugged Ellie's tea with the intention of killing her to ensure her silence.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: In the ensuing scuffle, Ellie knocks over an ashtray and starts a fire. John comes to Ellie's aid, but Ms Collins stabs him and continues after Ellie, who hallucinates Ms Collins as the younger Sandie, and that they are ascending a glass staircase. Ellie kicks Ms Collins, sending her down the stairs. She flees to her room, where the spirits of Sandie's victims plead with her to avenge them, but she refuses. Ms Collins enters Ellie's room, where she also sees the spirits and is struck by 'Jack'. With the police outside, she attempts suicide but Ellie stops her, understanding why she did what she did. Sandie tells Ellie to save John and herself, remaining in the building as it burns.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Ellie enjoys success as her designs are showcased at her end-of-year fashion show and is congratulated by her grandmother and John. Ellie sees her mother and a vision of Sandie in a mirror. Her mother smiles at her, and Sandie blows her a kiss.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: In addition, Sam Claflin plays young vice squad officer Lindsey (credited as Punter #5), while Beth Singh portrays English 60s hit singer Cilla Black.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Edgar Wright first conceived the idea for "Last Night in Soho" in 2007. He pitched the plot, as a "dark valentine" to London and the Soho neighbourhood, to producers Nira Park and Rachel Prior before the start of filming for "The World's End" (2013).


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Growing up in Somerset, Wright listened to his parents' stories of coming of age in the 1960s, which contributed to his becoming enamoured with the era. He nurtured his obsession through their 1960s record collection, saying he would "sort of almost just disappear into that decade through the music". But he recalled that his mother's memories of Swinging Sixties London were not always fond ones, and that she once said: "I went to Soho once with my friend and we got harassed by a man and chased out. And that's the end of the story."


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Wright's obsession with 1960s London helped shape the themes of "Last Night in Soho". "Something that I find truly nightmarish — and I guess there's an element where I'm sort of giving a sharp rebuke to myself — is the danger of being overly nostalgic about previous decades. In a way, the film is about romanticizing the past and why it's ... wrong to do that."


title: Last Night in Soho

text: British films of the 1960s were also inspirations for Wright, who said: "A lot of films of that period are about the darker side of Soho or of show business. You still have to question where they're coming from, because there's a lot of them, which are more the sensationalistic ones, that take this kind of punitive approach to the female characters. There's a lot of movies where it seems that the genre is 'Girl comes to London to make it big and is roundly punished for her efforts.'"


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Filmmaker Sam Mendes first introduced Wright to screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who later co-wrote "1917" (2019) with Mendes. Wilson-Cairns told Wright in passing that she had worked as a bartender at The Toucan in Soho for five years and lived around the corner, above The Sunset Strip on Dean Street. On the night of the Brexit vote in 2016, they went on a bar crawl through the basement bars of Soho, ending up at one called Trisha's, where Wright pitched her the story of "Last Night In Soho".


title: Last Night in Soho

text: In December 2017, after the press tour for "Baby Driver" concluded, Wright felt pressure to begin working on a sequel immediately, but decided instead to go in "a radically different direction" for his next film. He phoned Wilson-Cairns and asked if she wanted to co-write the screenplay for "Last Night In Soho". They rented an office in Soho to work on the script, consulting a folder of research collected by Lucy Pardee, a BAFTA Award-winning casting director and researcher who had interviewed people who lived and worked in Soho in the 1960s and the present day. Wright wanted to be "true to the history of the area".


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Wright and Wilson-Cairns wrote the first draft of the script in six weeks, before she had to leave to begin "1917" with Mendes. Wright originally wanted the 1960s scenes to have no dialogue or only be accompanied by music, "that they should be like dreams". Wilson-Cairns suggested the character of Sandie have dialogue, saying, "We have to fall in love with Sandie. And I think it's difficult to fall in love with [her] if she doesn't say anything." Wilson-Cairns also proposed a scene where Sandie auditions at a Soho nightclub called the Rialto. As soon as she suggested it, Wright knew that Sandie should sing Petula Clark's song "Downtown".


title: Last Night in Soho

text: "Last Night in Soho" was originally titled "Red Light Area", then "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes". The final title originates from a 1968 hit single by the English pop band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich and a conversation Wright had with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who was told by Allison Anders that "Last Night in Soho" was the "best title music for a film that's never been made".


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Wright became aware of Anya Taylor-Joy when he was on the US Dramatic Jury at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where "The Witch" premiered. He met Taylor-Joy in Los Angeles shortly afterward, where he pitched her the story for "Last Night in Soho". He initially had Taylor-Joy in mind for the role of Eloise but later came around to the idea of her playing Sandie, and she agreed after reading a draft of the script. Taylor-Joy's casting was announced in February 2019, and Thomasin McKenzie and Matt Smith were cast shortly thereafter. McKenzie got Wright's attention with what he described as her naturalistic performance in the film "Leave No Trace" (2018).


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao and Synnøve Karlsen rounded out the rest of the cast in June. Rigg died shortly after production ended. Wright said that he was filming with Rigg "right up until the end", and described working with her as "a beautiful experience". It is also the last film appearance of Margaret Nolan, who died in October 2020.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Filming began on 23 May 2019 and was completed on 30 August 2019. Wright posted several photographs on his Instagram account showing that additional filming had commenced on 24 June 2020 and concluded on 5 August 2020. Reshoots took place at Pinewood Studios.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Some of the songs inspired sequences in the film. When Wright heard a cover version of "Wade In The Water" by the Graham Bond Organisation, he "would just start imagining that first dream". Cilla Black's "You're My World" with its dramatic strings conjured up "the sort of the tone and the mood". Most of the songs selected were from the 1960s. Wright also chose "Happy House" by Siouxsie and the Banshees from the 1980s, because "the production on that song is incredible" and it fits a "scene in the movie where they are at a student union Halloween dance". Wright also said "I like songs that become famous in a different realm. Like the use of "Got My Mind Set on You" the original by James Ray, which most people know as the George Harrison cover. And a lot of people know "Happy House" because the Weeknd sampled it." Taylor-Joy performed "Downtown" by Petula Clark in the film, saying "It's not every day you're asked to record several versions of an iconic song. The sounds of the '60s was what first made me fall in love with music so I was overjoyed when Edgar asked me to give it a go". The soundtrack was released on double vinyl.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: "Last Night in Soho" had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2021. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021 and at the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival on 10 September 2021. Its UK premiere was on 9 October 2021 at the BFI London Film Festival, prior to its general release in the UK on 29 October 2021. It was originally scheduled to be released on 25 September 2020, but was delayed to 23 April 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before being delayed again to 22 October, then again to the following weekend.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: On 20 October 2021, Universal Pictures released a music video of Anya Taylor-Joy's cover of "Downtown" from the film's soundtrack, featuring scenes from the film.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: The film was released on video on demand on 19 November 2021 in the US and Canada. It was released physically on optical media, including Blu-ray, DVD and Ultra HD Blu-ray, on 18 January 2022 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Antlers" and the expansion of "The French Dispatch", and was projected to gross around $5 million from 3,016 cinemas in its opening weekend. It made $1.9 million on its first day and went on to debut to $4.2 million, finishing sixth at the box office. In its second weekend it dropped 57% to gross $1.8 million, finishing tenth.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes sampled 338 critics and judged 76% of the reviews to be positive, with an average rating of . The site states "Although it struggles to maintain its thrilling early momentum, "Last Night in Soho" shows flashes of Edgar Wright at his most stylish and ambitious." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it a 73% positive score, with 56% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the film a score of 4/5 stars, describing it as "a riotous, rascally hybrid of a thing: part glittering love-letter to the disreputable nightlife district in which it takes place, part darting psychological thriller that rips up the letter as soon as it's written before tearfully torching the scraps". He also praised the cinematography and the "spellbinding recreation of the West End of the '60s". Reviewing for "The Wall Street Journal", Joe Morgenstern also praised the cinematography, writing "And how gorgeous it is. The cinematographer, Chung-hoon Chung, should have been given star billing too". Xan Brooks of "The Guardian" gave the film 4/5 stars, describing it as "a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed outside our fevered cultural imagination", and called it "thoroughly silly and stupidly enjoyable". David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" described the film as "immensely pleasurable" and said that it "delights in playing with genre, morphing from time-travel fantasy to dark fairy tale, from mystery to nightmarish horror". Rooney also praised the film's sets, costume design and McKenzie's performance, describing her as "enchanting". Linda Marric of "The Jewish Chronicle" gave the film 4/5 stars, deeming it "a thrilling, gorgeously acted offering from a filmmaker who is at the top of his craft and knows exactly what he wants from his performers". Tom Shone, writing for "The Times", criticised the writing, saying there were "one too many jump scares involving a cab screeching to a halt, and two too many scenes of Eloise sitting up in bed and realising it-was-just-a-dream", although he considers that Taylor-Joy's performance "shines". Morgenstern also highlights Taylor-Joy, saying she acts "with a dazzling sense of purpose". Richard Schertzer of "Sportskeeda" wrote, "The one thing that stands out about this movie is the fact that it blends horror movie macabre with 1960s glossy style".


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Writing for "Variety", Guy Lodge criticised aspects of the film, observing "Wright's particular affections for B-movies, British Invasion pop and a fast-fading pocket of urban London may be written all over the film, but they aren't compellingly written into it, ultimately swamping the thin supernatural sleuth story at its heart". Lodge praised McKenzie's performance, describing her as "never one to let an underwritten character thwart her best efforts, and whose sweetly open, porous, persistently worry-etched features couldn't be more ideally suited to Eloise's ingenuous, new-in-town outlook". Jake Coyle of "Associated Press" also praises McKenzie and Taylor-Joy performance, writing "While neither of their characters gets enough depth, McKenzie and Taylor-Joy sustain "Last Night in Soho", a movie filled with reflections to both past fiction horrors ... and today's #MeToo terrors.


title: Last Night in Soho

text: Brad Wheeler of "The Globe and Mail" gave the film a score of 2.5/4 stars, writing "Though visually sumptuous and a bunch of fun early on, Edgar Wright's take on sixties and seventies horror eventually devolves into unsatisfying spoof." Richard Lawson of "Vanity Fair" was more critical of the film, describing it as a "clumsy horror pastiche" and writing, "perhaps the film's thematic intentions are noble. But its execution is glib, never finding the right balance between compassion and leering." Robert Daniels of "RogerEbert.com" gave the film a score of 1.5/4 stars, writing that it "is funny and chaotic, slick and stylish, and falls apart in its confounding second half". David Sims of "The Atlantic" wrote "While Wright remains exceptionally gifted at mashing up genres to create moments of real cinematic lightning, by and large, "Last Night in Soho" is all flash, no impact." The review by Radhika Seth for "Vogue" focused on the costume design, which Seth called "sensational, not to mention crucial to the narrative". Rosalind Jana, writing in "The Daily Telegraph", also praised the costume design and its importance to the plot, and concluded that "the storytelling becomes overly heavy handed, but the costumes never falter". The film's production design was praised by some critics, including by Yasmin Omar for "Harper's Bazaar", who found it "tremendous"; Jaden S. Thompson, writing in "The Harvard Crimson" thought the design was "sleek, saturated".


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The New World Order (NWO) is a conspiracy theory which hypothesizes a secretly emerging totalitarian world government.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history's progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been alleged to be part of a cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Before the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily the part of fundamentalist Christianity concerned with the end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Academics who study conspiracy theories and religious extremism, such as Michael Barkun and Chip Berlet, observed that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about a New World Order had not only been embraced by many seekers of stigmatized knowledge but had seeped into popular culture, thereby inaugurating a period during the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States where people are actively preparing for apocalyptic millenarian scenarios. Those political scientists are concerned that mass hysteria over New World Order conspiracy theories could eventually have devastating effects on American political life, ranging from escalating lone-wolf terrorism to the rise to power of authoritarian ultranationalist demagogues.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: During the 20th century, political figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill used the term "new world order" to refer to a new period of history characterized by a dramatic change in world political thought and in the global balance of power after World War I and World War II. The interwar and post-World War II period were seen as opportunities to implement idealistic proposals for global governance by collective efforts to address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to resolve, while nevertheless respecting the right of nations to self-determination. Such collective initiatives manifested in the formation of intergovernmental organizations such as the League of Nations in 1920, the United Nations (UN) in 1945, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, along with international regimes such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), implemented to maintain a cooperative balance of power and facilitate reconciliation between nations to prevent the prospect of another global conflict. These cosmopolitan efforts to instill liberal internationalism were regularly criticized and opposed by American paleoconservative business nationalists from the 1930s on.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Progressives welcomed international organizations and regimes such as the United Nations in the aftermath of the two World Wars, but argued that these initiatives suffered from a democratic deficit and were therefore inadequate not only to prevent another world war but to foster global justice, as the UN was chartered to be a free association of sovereign nation-states rather than a transition to democratic world government. Thus, cosmopolitan activists around the globe, perceiving the IGOs as too ineffectual for global change, formed a world federalist movement.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: British writer and futurist H. G. Wells went further than progressives in the 1940s, by appropriating and redefining the term "new world order" as a synonym for the establishment of a technocratic world state and of a planned economy, garnering popularity in state socialist circles.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: During the Second Red Scare, both secular and Christian right American agitators, largely influenced by the work of Canadian conspiracy theorist William Guy Carr, increasingly embraced and spread dubious fears of Freemasons, Illuminati and Jews as the alleged driving forces behind an "international communist conspiracy." The threat of "Godless communism", in the form of an atheistic, bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as the "Red Menace", became the focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The Red Scare came to shape one of the core ideas of the political right in the United States, which is that liberals and progressives, with their welfare-state policies and international cooperation programs such as foreign aid, supposedly contribute to a gradual process of global collectivism that will inevitably lead to nations being replaced with a communistic/collectivist one-world government. James Warburg, appearing before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1950, famously stated: "We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest."


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Right-wing populist advocacy groups with a paleoconservative world-view, such as the John Birch Society, disseminated a multitude of conspiracy theories in the 1960s claiming that the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union were controlled by a cabal of corporate internationalists, "greedy" bankers and corrupt politicians who were intent on using the UN as the vehicle to create a "One World Government". This anti-globalist conspiracism fueled the campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the UN. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet "The Profound Revolution", traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the establishment of the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1913 by international bankers, whom she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as a shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, many readers would have interpreted "international bankers" as a reference to a postulated "international Jewish banking conspiracy" masterminded by the Rothschild family.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Arguing that the term "New World Order" is used by a secretive global elite dedicated to the eradication of the sovereignty of the world's nations, American writer Gary Allen—in his books "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" (1971), "Rockefeller: Campaigning for the New World Order" (1974), and " Say "No!" to the New World Order" (1987)—articulated the anti-globalist theme of contemporary right-wing conspiracism in the U.S. After the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the "de facto" subject of New World Order conspiracism shifted from crypto-communists, perceived to be plotting to establish an atheistic world communist government, to globalists, perceived to be plotting to implement a collectivist generally, unified world government ultimately controlled by an untouchable oligarchy of international bankers, corrupt politicians, and corporatists, or the United Nations itself. The shift in perception was inspired by growing opposition to corporate internationalism on the American right in the 1990s.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In his speech, "", delivered on 11 September 1990 during a joint session of the US Congress, President George H. W. Bush described his objectives for post-Cold War global governance in cooperation with post-Soviet states. He stated:


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: "The New York Times" observed that progressives were denouncing this new world order as a rationalization of American imperial ambitions in the Middle East at the time. At the same time conservatives rejected any new security arrangements altogether and fulminated about any possibility of a UN revival. Chip Berlet, an American investigative reporter specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the U.S., wrote that the Christian and secular far-right were especially terrified by Bush's speech. Fundamentalist Christian groups interpreted Bush's words as signaling the End Times. At the same time, more secular theorists approached it from an anti-communist and anti-collectivist standpoint and feared for hegemony over all countries by the United Nations.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: American televangelist Pat Robertson, with his 1991 best-selling book "The New World Order", became the most prominent Christian disseminator of conspiracy theories about recent American history. He describes a scenario where Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from behind the scenes, constantly nudging people covertly in the direction of world government for the Antichrist.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: It has been observed that, throughout the 1990s, the galvanizing language used by conspiracy theorists such as Linda Thompson, Mark Koernke and Robert K. Spear led to militancy and the rise of the American militia movement. The militia movement's anti-government ideology was spread through speeches at rallies and meetings, books and videotapes sold at gun shows, shortwave and satellite radio, fax networks, and computer bulletin boards. It has been argued that it was overnight AM radio shows and propagandistic viral content on the internet that most effectively contributed to more extremist responses to the perceived threat of the New World Order. This led to the substantial growth of New World Order conspiracism, with it retroactively finding its way into the previously apolitical literature of numerous Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, lost land theorists and—partially inspired by fears surrounding the "Satanic panic"—occultists. From the mid-1990s onward, the amorphous appeal of those subcultures transmitted New World Order conspiracism to a larger audience of seekers of stigmatized knowledge, with the common characteristic of disillusionment of political efficacy.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Hollywood conspiracy-thriller television shows and films also played a role in introducing a general audience to various fringe, esoteric theories related to New World Order conspiracism—which by that point had developed to include black helicopters, FEMA "concentration camps", etc.—theories which for decades previously were confined to largely right-wing subcultures. The 1993–2002 television series "The X-Files", the 1997 film "Conspiracy Theory" and the 1998 film "The X-Files: Fight the Future" are often cited as notable examples.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Following the start of the 21st century, and specifically during the late-2000s financial crisis, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown and Henry Kissinger, used the term "new world order" in their advocacy for a comprehensive reform of the global financial system and their calls for a "New Bretton Woods" taking into account emerging markets such as China and India. These public declarations reinvigorated New World Order conspiracism, culminating in talk-show host Sean Hannity stating on his Fox News program "Hannity" that the "conspiracy theorists were right". Progressive media-watchdog groups have repeatedly criticized Fox News in general, and its now-defunct opinion show "Glenn Beck" in particular, for not only disseminating New World Order conspiracy theories to mainstream audiences, but possibly agitating so-called "lone wolf" extremism, particularly from the radical right.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released "New World Order", a critically acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists—such as American radio host Alex Jones—who vigorously oppose what they perceive as an emerging New World Order. The growing dissemination and popularity of conspiracy theories has also created an alliance between right-wing agitators and hip hop music's left-wing rappers (such as KRS-One, Professor Griff of Public Enemy and Immortal Technique), illustrating how anti-elitist conspiracism can create unlikely political allies in efforts to oppose a political system.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: There are numerous systemic conspiracy theories through which the concept of a New World Order is viewed. The following is a list of the major ones in roughly chronological order:


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Since the 19th century, many apocalyptic millennial Christian eschatologists, starting with John Nelson Darby, have predicted a globalist conspiracy to impose a tyrannical New World Order governing structure as the fulfillment of prophecies about the "end time" in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel, the Olivet discourse found in the Synoptic Gospels, 2 Esdras 11:32 and Revelation 13:7. They claim that people who have made a deal with the Devil to gain wealth and power have become pawns in a supernatural chess game to move humanity into accepting a utopian world government that rests on the spiritual foundations of a syncretic-messianic world religion, which will later reveal itself to be a dystopian world empire that imposes the imperial cult of an “Unholy Trinity” of Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet. In many contemporary Christian conspiracy theories, the False Prophet will be either the last pope of the Catholic Church (groomed and installed by an Alta Vendita or Jesuit conspiracy), a guru from the New Age movement, or even the leader of an elite fundamentalist Christian organization like the Fellowship, while the Antichrist will be either the President of the European Union, the Caliph of a pan-Islamic state, or even the Secretary-General of the United Nations.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Some of the most vocal critics of end-time conspiracy theories come from within Christianity. In 1993, historian Bruce Barron wrote a stern rebuke of apocalyptic Christian conspiracism in the "Christian Research Journal", when reviewing Robertson's 1991 book "The New World Order". Another critique can be found in historian Gregory S. Camp's 1997 book "Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia". Religious studies scholar Richard T. Hughes argues that "New World Order" rhetoric libels the Christian faith, since the "New World Order" as defined by Christian conspiracy theorists has no basis in the Bible whatsoever. Furthermore, he argues that not only is this idea unbiblical, it is positively anti-biblical and fundamentally anti-Christian, because by misinterpreting key passages in the Book of Revelation, it turns a comforting message about the coming kingdom of God into one of fear, panic and despair in the face of an allegedly approaching one-world government. Progressive Christians, such as preacher-theologian Peter J. Gomes, caution Christian fundamentalists that a "spirit of fear" can distort scripture and history through dangerously combining biblical literalism, apocalyptic timetables, demonization and oppressive prejudices, while Camp warns of the "very real danger that Christians could pick up some extra spiritual baggage" by credulously embracing conspiracy theories. They therefore call on Christians who indulge in conspiracism to repent.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Freemasonry is one of the world's oldest secular fraternal organizations and arose in Great Britain during the 18th century. Over the years, several allegations and conspiracy theories have been directed towards Freemasonry, including the allegation that Freemasons have a hidden political agenda and are conspiring to bring about a New World Order, a world government organized according to Masonic principles or governed only by Freemasons.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The esoteric nature of Masonic symbolism and rites led to Freemasons first being accused of secretly practicing Satanism in the late 18th century. The original allegation of a conspiracy within Freemasonry to subvert religions and governments to take over the world traces back to Scottish author John Robison, whose reactionary conspiracy theories crossed the Atlantic and influenced outbreaks of Protestant anti-Masonry in the United States during the 19th century. In the 1890s, French writer Léo Taxil wrote a series of pamphlets and books denouncing Freemasonry and charging their lodges with worshiping Lucifer as the Supreme Being and Great Architect of the Universe. Despite the fact that Taxil admitted that his claims were all a hoax, they were and still are believed and repeated by numerous conspiracy theorists and had a huge influence on subsequent anti-Masonic claims about Freemasonry.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Some conspiracy theorists eventually speculated that some Founding Fathers of the United States, such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were having Masonic sacred geometric designs interwoven into American society, particularly in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States one-dollar bill, the architecture of National Mall landmarks and the streets and highways of Washington, D.C., as part of a master plan to create the first "Masonic government" as a model for the coming New World Order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Freemasons rebut these claims of a Masonic conspiracy. Freemasonry, which promotes rationalism, places no power in occult symbols themselves, and it is not a part of its principles to view the drawing of symbols, no matter how large, as an act of consolidating or controlling power. Furthermore, there is no published information establishing the Masonic membership of the men responsible for the design of the Great Seal. While conspiracy theorists assert that there are elements of Masonic influence on the Great Seal of the United States and that these elements were intentionally or unintentionally used because the creators were familiar with the symbols, in fact, the all-seeing Eye of Providence and the unfinished pyramid were symbols used as much outside Masonic lodges as within them in the late 18th century. Therefore, the designers were drawing from common esoteric symbols. The Latin phrase ""novus ordo seclorum"", appearing on the reverse side of the Great Seal since 1782 and the back of the one-dollar bill since 1935, translates to "New Order of the Ages", and alludes to the beginning of an era where the United States of America is an independent nation-state; conspiracy theorists often mistranslate it as "New World Order".


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Although the European continental branch of Freemasonry has organizations that allow political discussion within their Masonic Lodges, Masonic researcher Trevor W. McKeown argues that the accusations ignore several facts. Firstly, the many Grand Lodges are independent and sovereign, meaning they act independently and do not have a common agenda. The points of belief of the various lodges often differ. Secondly, famous Freemasons have always held views that span the political spectrum and show no particular pattern or preference. As such, the term "Masonic government" is erroneous; there is no consensus among Freemasons about what an ideal government would look like.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded by university professor Adam Weishaupt on 1 May 1776, in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The movement consisted of advocates of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism, and gender equality, recruited from the German Masonic Lodges, who sought to teach rationalism through mystery schools. In 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken up, and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion, Roman Catholicism. There is no evidence that the Bavarian Illuminati survived its suppression in 1785.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati had survived their suppression and become the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were accused of being subversives who were attempting to orchestrate a revolutionary wave secretly in Europe and the rest of the world to spread the most radical ideas and movements of the Enlightenment—anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism, and anti-patriarchalism—and to create a world noocracy and cult of reason. During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of the European ruling classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very revolutions they sought to prevent.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: During the interwar period of the 20th century, fascist propagandists, such as British revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster and American socialite Edith Starr Miller, not only popularized the myth of an Illuminati conspiracy but claimed that it was a subversive secret society which served the Jewish elites that supposedly propped up both finance capitalism and Soviet communism in order to divide and rule the world. American evangelist Gerald Burton Winrod and other conspiracy theorists within the fundamentalist Christian movement in the United States—which emerged in the 1910s as a backlash against the principles of Enlightenment secular humanism, modernism, and liberalism—became the main channel of dissemination of Illuminati conspiracy theories in the U.S.. Right-wing populists, such as members of the John Birch Society, subsequently began speculating that some collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen's clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission) of the American upper class are front organizations of the Illuminati, which they accuse of plotting to create a New World Order through a one-world government.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is an antisemitic canard, originally published in Russian in 1903, alleging a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. The text purports to be the minutes of the secret meetings of a cabal of Jewish masterminds, which has co-opted Freemasonry and is plotting to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because they believe themselves to be the chosen people of God. "The Protocols" incorporate many of the core conspiracist themes outlined in the Robison and Barruel attacks on the Freemasons and overlay them with antisemitic allegations about anti-Tsarist movements in Russia. "The Protocols" reflect themes similar to more general critiques of Enlightenment liberalism by conservative aristocrats who support monarchies and state religions. The interpretation intended by the publication of "The Protocols" is that if one peels away the layers of the Masonic conspiracy, past the Illuminati, one finds the rotten Jewish core.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Numerous polemicists, such as Irish journalist Philip Graves in a 1921 article in "The Times", and British academic Norman Cohn in his 1967 book "Warrant for Genocide", have proven "The Protocols" to be both a hoax and a clear case of plagiarism. There is general agreement that Russian-French writer and political activist Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary propaganda prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, by plagiarizing, almost word for word in some passages, from "The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu", a 19th-century satire against Napoleon III of France written by French political satirist and Legitimist militant Maurice Joly.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Responsible for feeding many antisemitic and anti-Masonic mass hysterias of the 20th century, "The Protocols" has been influential in the development of some conspiracy theories, including some New World Order theories, and repeatedly appears in certain contemporary conspiracy literature. For example, the authors of the 1982 controversial book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" concluded that "The Protocols" was the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion. They speculated that this secret society was working behind the scenes to establish a theocratic "United States of Europe". Politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian Great Monarch—supposedly descended from a Jesus bloodline—who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See, this "Holy European Empire" would become the hyperpower of the 21st century. Although the Priory of Sion itself has been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as a hoax, some apocalyptic millenarian Christian eschatologists who believe "The Protocols" is authentic became convinced that the Priory of Sion was a fulfillment of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions signaling the imminence of a New World Order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that the current gambit of contemporary conspiracy theorists who use "The Protocols" is to claim that they "really" come from some group other than the Jews, such as fallen angels or alien invaders. Although it is hard to determine whether the conspiracy-minded actually believe this or are simply trying to sanitize a discredited text, skeptics argue that it does not make much difference, since they leave the actual, antisemitic text unchanged. The result is to give "The Protocols" credibility and circulation.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: During the second half of Britain's "imperial century" between 1815 and 1914, English-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated the British Empire reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, written in 1877 at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal:


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In 1890, thirteen years after "his now-famous will," Rhodes elaborated on the same idea: establishment of "England everywhere," which would "ultimately lead to the cessation of all wars, and one language throughout the world." "The only thing feasible to carry out this idea is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world ["and human minds of the higher-order"] to be devoted to such an object."


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Rhodes also concentrated on the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book "The Commonwealth of God", began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support. The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949, but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner, and Curtis.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period. Originally envisioned as a group of American and British scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers, and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state Elihu Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council's projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called "Foreign Affairs". The Trilateral Commission was founded in July 1973, at the initiative of American banker David Rockefeller, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. It is a private organization established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe, and Japan. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals and groups with a paleoconservative worldview, such as members of the John Birch Society, were the first to combine and spread a business nationalist critique of corporate internationalists networked through think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations with a grand conspiracy theory casting them as front organizations for the Round Table of the "Anglo-American Establishment", which are financed by an "international banking cabal" that has supposedly been plotting from the late 19th century on to impose an oligarchic new world order through a global financial system. Anti-globalist conspiracy theorists therefore fear that international bankers are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book "Tragedy and Hope", are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (W. Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though Quigley argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today the Round Table is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition. Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Larry McDonald, the second president of the John Birch Society and a conservative Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives who represented the 7th congressional district of Georgia, wrote a foreword for Allen's 1976 book "The Rockefeller File", wherein he claimed that the Rockefellers and their allies were driven by a desire to create a one-world government that combined "super-capitalism" with communism and would be fully under their control. He saw a conspiracy plot that was "international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" and "treason") and partly serious—the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan; for example — an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party (known as "Rockefeller Republicans" in honor of Nelson Rockefeller) when there was an internationalist wing. The statement, however, is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order in the form of a one-world government.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered that he felt no need for a world government and wished for the world's governments to work together and collaborate. He also stated that it seemed neither likely nor desirable to have only one elected government rule worldwide. He criticized accusations of him being "ruler of the world" as nonsensical.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign Relations is an "imperial brain trust" which has, for decades, played a central behind-the-scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post-World War II international order and the Cold War by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table; others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a mere policy discussion forum which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy planning. Domhoff argues that "[i]t has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to be kept within the group. All the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates, and speakers. As far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its historical archives." However, all these critics agree that "[h]istorical studies of the CFR show that it has a very different role in the overall power structure than what is claimed by conspiracy theorists."


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In his 1928 book "The Open Conspiracy" British writer and futurist H. G. Wells promoted cosmopolitanism and offered blueprints for a world revolution and world brain to establish a technocratic world state and planned economy. Wells warned, however, in his 1940 book "The New World Order" that:


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Wells's books were influential in giving a second meaning to the term "new world order", which would only be used by state socialist supporters and anti-communist opponents for generations to come. However, despite the popularity and notoriety of his ideas, Wells failed to exert a deeper and more lasting influence because he was unable to concentrate his energies on a direct appeal to intelligentsias who would, ultimately, have to coordinate the Wellsian new world order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: British neo-Theosophical occultist Alice Bailey, one of the founders of the so-called New Age movement, prophesied in 1940 the eventual victory of the Allies of World War II over the Axis powers (which occurred in 1945) and the establishment by the Allies of a political and religious New World Order. She saw a federal world government as the culmination of Wells' Open Conspiracy but favorably argued that it would be synarchist because it was guided by the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, intent on preparing humanity for the mystical second coming of Christ, and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. According to Bailey, a group of ascended masters called the Great White Brotherhood works on the "inner planes" to oversee the transition to the New World Order but, for now, the members of this Spiritual Hierarchy are only known to a few occult scientists, with whom they communicate telepathically, but as the need for their personal involvement in the plan increases, there will be an "Externalization of the Hierarchy" and everyone will know of their presence on Earth.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Bailey's writings, along with American writer Marilyn Ferguson's 1980 book "The Aquarian Conspiracy", contributed to conspiracy theorists of the Christian right viewing the New Age movement as the "false religion" that would supersede Christianity in a New World Order. Skeptics argue that the term "New Age movement" is a misnomer, generally used by conspiracy theorists as a catch-all rubric for any new religious movement that is not fundamentalist Christian. By this logic, anything that is not Christian is by definition actively and willfully anti-Christian.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Paradoxically, since the first decade of the 21st century, New World Order conspiracism is increasingly being embraced and propagandized by New Age occultists, who are people bored by rationalism and drawn to stigmatized knowledge—such as alternative medicine, astrology, quantum mysticism, spiritualism, and theosophy. Thus, New Age conspiracy theorists, such as the makers of documentary films like "Esoteric Agenda", claim that globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order are simply misusing occultism for Machiavellian ends, such as adopting 21 December 2012 as the exact date for the establishment of the New World Order to take advantage of the growing 2012 phenomenon, which has its origins in the fringe Mayanist theories of New Age writers José Argüelles, Terence McKenna, and Daniel Pinchbeck.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that the connection of conspiracy theorists and occultists follows from their common fallacious premises. First, any widely accepted belief must necessarily be false. Second, stigmatized knowledge—what the Establishment spurns—must be true. The result is a large, self-referential network in which, for example, some UFO religionists promote anti-Jewish phobias while some antisemites practice Peruvian shamanism.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists often use the term "Fourth Reich" simply as a pejorative synonym for the "New World Order" to imply that its state ideology and government will be similar to Germany's Third Reich.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists, such as American writer Jim Marrs, claim that some ex-Nazis, who survived the fall of the Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, has been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some principles of Nazism (e.g., militarism, imperialism, widespread spying on citizens, corporatism, the use of propaganda to manufacture a national consensus) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the U.S. They cite the influence of ex-Nazi scientists brought in under Operation Paperclip to help advance aerospace manufacturing in the U.S. with technological principles from Nazi UFOs, and the acquisition and creation of conglomerates by ex-Nazis and their sympathizers after the war, in both Europe and the U.S.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: This neo-Nazi conspiracy is said to be animated by an "Iron Dream" in which the American Empire, having thwarted the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and overthrown its Zionist Occupation Government, gradually establishes a Fourth Reich formerly known as the "Western Imperium"—a pan-Aryan world empire modeled after Adolf Hitler's New Order—which reverses the "decline of the West" and ushers a golden age of white supremacy.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that conspiracy theorists grossly overestimate the influence of ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis on American society and point out that political repression at home and imperialism abroad have a long history in the United States that predates the 20th century. Some political scientists, such as Sheldon Wolin, have expressed concern that the twin forces of democratic deficit and superpower status have paved the way in the U.S. for the emergence of an inverted totalitarianism which contradicts many principles of Nazism.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Since the late 1970s, extraterrestrials from other habitable planets or parallel dimensions (such as "Greys") and intraterrestrials from Hollow Earth (such as "Reptilians") have been included in the New World Order conspiracy, in more or less dominant roles, as in the theories put forward by American writers Stan Deyo and Milton William Cooper, and British writer David Icke.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: The common theme in these conspiracy theories is that aliens have been among us for decades, centuries or millennia. Still, a government cover-up enforced by "Men in Black" has shielded the public from knowledge of a secret alien invasion. Motivated by speciesism and imperialism, these aliens have been and are secretly manipulating developments and changes in human society to more efficiently control and exploit human beings. In some theories, alien infiltrators have shapeshifted into human form and move freely throughout human society, even to the point of taking control of command positions in governmental, corporate, and religious institutions, and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the world. A mythical covert government agency of the United States code-named Majestic 12 is often imagined being the shadow government which collaborates with the alien occupation and permits alien abductions, in exchange for assistance in the development and testing of military "flying saucers" at Area 51, in order for United States armed forces to achieve full-spectrum dominance.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics, who adhere to the psychosocial hypothesis for unidentified flying objects, argue that the convergence of New World Order conspiracy theory and UFO conspiracy theory is a product of not only the era's widespread mistrust of governments and the popularity of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs but of the far right and ufologists joining forces. Barkun notes that the only positive side to this development is that, if conspirators plotting to rule the world are believed to be aliens, traditional human scapegoats (Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews, etc.) are downgraded or exonerated.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Antiscience and neo-Luddite conspiracy theorists emphasize technology forecasting in their New World Order conspiracy theories. They speculate that the global power elite are reactionary modernists pursuing a transhumanist plan to develop and use human enhancement technologies to become a "posthuman ruling caste", while change accelerates toward a technological singularity—a theorized future point of discontinuity when events will accelerate at such a pace that normal unenhanced humans will be unable to predict or even understand the rapid changes occurring in the world around them. Conspiracy theorists fear the outcome will either be the emergence of a "Brave New World"-like dystopia—a "Brave New World Order"—or the extinction of the human species.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Democratic transhumanists, such as American sociologist James Hughes, counter that many influential members of the United States establishment are bioconservatives strongly opposed to human enhancement, as demonstrated by President Bush's Council on Bioethics's proposed international treaty prohibiting human cloning and germline engineering. Furthermore, he argues that conspiracy theorists underestimate how fringe the transhumanist movement really is.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Just as there are several overlapping or conflicting theories among conspiracists about the nature of the New World Order, so are there several beliefs about how its architects and planners will implement it:


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists generally speculate that the New World Order is being implemented gradually, citing the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913; the League of Nations in 1919; the International Monetary Fund in 1944; the United Nations in 1945; the World Bank in 1945; the World Health Organization in 1948; the European Union and the Euro in 1993; the World Trade Organization in 1998; the African Union in 2002, and the Union of South American Nations in 2008 as major milestones.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: An increasingly popular conspiracy theory among American right-wing populists is that the hypothetical North American Union and the amero currency, proposed by the Council on Foreign Relations and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada, will be the next milestone in the implementation of the New World Order. The theory holds that a group of shadowy and mostly nameless international elites is planning to replace the federal government of the United States with a transnational government. Therefore, conspiracy theorists believe the borders between Mexico, Canada, and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group of globalists whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in Washington, D.C., Ottawa, and Mexico City with a European-style political union and a bloated E.U.-style bureaucracy.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that the North American Union exists only as a proposal contained in one of a thousand academic and policy papers published each year that advocate all manner of idealistic but ultimately unrealistic approaches to social, economic, and political problems. Most of these are passed around in their circles and eventually filed away and forgotten by junior staffers in congressional offices. However, some of these papers become touchstones for the conspiracy-minded and form the basis of all kinds of unfounded xenophobic fears, especially during times of economic anxiety.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: For example, in March 2009, as a result of the late-2000s financial crisis, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation pressed for urgent consideration of a new international reserve currency and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed greatly expanding the I.M.F.'s special drawing rights. Conspiracy theorists fear these proposals are a call for the U.S. to adopt a single global currency for a New World Order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Judging that both national governments and global institutions have proven ineffective in addressing global problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve, some political scientists critical of New World Order conspiracism, such as Mark C. Partridge, argue that regionalism will be the major force in the coming decades, pockets of power around regional centers: Western Europe around Brussels, the Western Hemisphere around Washington, D.C., East Asia around Beijing, and Eastern Europe around Moscow. As such, the E.U., the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the G-20 will likely become more influential as time progresses. The question then is not whether global governance is gradually emerging, but rather how will these regional powers interact with one another.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: American right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, especially those who joined the militia movement in the United States, speculate that the New World Order will be implemented through a dramatic coup d'état by a "secret team", using black helicopters, in the U.S. and other nation-states to bring about a totalitarian world government controlled by the United Nations and enforced by troops of foreign U.N. peacekeepers. Following the Rex 84 and Operation Garden Plot plans, this military coup would involve the suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, and the appointment of military commanders to head state and local governments and to detain dissidents.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: These conspiracy theorists, who are all strong believers in a right to keep and bear arms, are extremely fearful that the passing of any gun control legislation will be later followed by the abolishment of personal gun ownership and a campaign of gun confiscation, and that the refugee camps of emergency management agencies such as FEMA will be used for the internment of suspected subversives, making little effort to distinguish true threats to the New World Order from pacifist dissidents.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Before 2000, some survivalists wrongly believed this process would be set in motion by the predicted Y2K problem causing societal collapse. Since many left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists believe that the 11 September attacks were a false flag operation carried out by the United States intelligence community, as part of a strategy of tension to justify political repression at home and preemptive war abroad, they have become convinced that a more catastrophic terrorist incident will be responsible for triggering Executive Directive 51 in order to complete the transition to a police state.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that unfounded fears about an imminent or eventual gun ban, military coup, internment, or U.N. invasion and occupation are rooted in the siege mentality of the American militia movement but also an apocalyptic millenarianism which provides a basic narrative within the political right in the U.S., claiming that the idealized society (i.e., constitutional republic, Jeffersonian democracy, "Christian nation", "white nation") is thwarted by subversive conspiracies of liberal secular humanists who want "Big Government" and globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists concerned with surveillance abuse believe that the New World Order is being implemented by the cult of intelligence at the core of the surveillance-industrial complex through mass surveillance and the use of Social Security numbers, the bar-coding of retail goods with Universal Product Code markings, and, most recently, RFID tagging by microchip implants.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Claiming that corporations and government are planning to track every move of consumers and citizens with RFID as the latest step toward a "1984"-like surveillance state, consumer privacy advocates, such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, have become Christian conspiracy theorists who believe spychips must be resisted because they argue that modern database and communications technologies, coupled with point of sale data-capture equipment and sophisticated ID and authentication systems, now make it possible to require a biometrically associated number or mark to make purchases. They fear that the ability to implement such a system closely resembles the Number of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: In January 2002, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security. Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by the United States Congress in 2003. The second source of controversy involved IAO's original logo, which depicted the "all-seeing" Eye of Providence atop of a pyramid looking down over the globe, accompanied by the Latin phrase "scientia est potentia" (knowledge is power). Although DARPA eventually removed the logo from its website, it left a lasting impression on privacy advocates. It also inflamed conspiracy theorists, who misinterpret the "eye and pyramid" as the Masonic symbol of the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society they speculate continues to exist and is plotting on behalf of a New World Order.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: American historian Richard Landes, who specialized in the history of apocalypticism and was co-founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, argues that new and emerging technologies often trigger alarmism among millenarians. Even the introduction of Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 caused waves of apocalyptic thinking. The Year 2000 problem, bar codes, and Social Security numbers all triggered end-time warnings which either proved to be false or were no longer taken seriously once the public became accustomed to these technological changes. Civil libertarians argue that the privatization of surveillance and the rise of the surveillance-industrial complex in the United States does raise legitimate concerns about the erosion of privacy. However, skeptics of mass surveillance conspiracism caution that such concerns should be disentangled from secular paranoia about Big Brother or religious hysteria about the Antichrist.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists of the Christian right, starting with British revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster, believe there is an ancient occult conspiracy—started by the first mystagogues of Gnosticism and perpetuated by their alleged esoteric successors, such as the Kabbalists, Cathars, Knights Templar, Hermeticists, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and, ultimately, the Illuminati—which seeks to subvert the Judeo-Christian foundations of the Western world and implement the New World Order through a one-world religion that prepares the masses to embrace the imperial cult of the Antichrist. More broadly, they speculate that globalists who plot on behalf of a New World Order are directed by occult agencies of some sort: unknown superiors, spiritual hierarchies, demons, fallen angels or Lucifer. They believe that these conspirators use the power of occult sciences (numerology), symbols (Eye of Providence), rituals (Masonic degrees), monuments (National Mall landmarks), buildings (Manitoba Legislative Building) and facilities (Denver International Airport) to advance their plot to rule the world.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: For example, in June 1979, an unknown benefactor under the pseudonym "R. C. Christian" had a huge granite megalith built in the U.S. state of Georgia, which acts like a compass, calendar, and clock. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the occult structure in many languages to serve as instructions for survivors of a doomsday event to establish a more enlightened and sustainable civilization than the destroyed one. The "Georgia Guidestones" has subsequently become a spiritual and political Rorschach test onto which any number of ideas can be imposed. Some New Agers and neo-pagans revere it as a ley-line power nexus while a few conspiracy theorists are convinced that they are engraved with the New World Order's anti-Christian "Ten Commandments." Should the Guidestones survive for centuries as their creators intended, many more meanings could arise, equally unrelated to the designer's original intention.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Skeptics argue that the demonization of Western esotericism by conspiracy theorists is rooted in religious intolerance but also in the same moral panics that have fueled witch trials in the Early Modern period, and satanic ritual abuse allegations in the United States.


title: New World Order (conspiracy theory)

text: Conspiracy theorists believe that the New World Order will also be implemented through human population control to more easily monitor and control the movement of individuals. The means range from stopping the growth of human societies through reproductive health and family planning programs, which promote abstinence, contraception and abortion, or intentionally reducing the bulk of the world population through genocides by mongering unnecessary wars, through plagues by engineering emergent viruses and tainting vaccines, and through environmental disasters by controlling the weather (HAARP, chemtrails), etc. Conspiracy theorists argue that globalists plotting on behalf of a New World Order are neo-Malthusians who engage in overpopulation and climate change alarmism to create public support for coercive population control and ultimately world government. United Nations Agenda 21 is condemned as "reconcentrating" people into urban areas and depopulating rural ones, even generating a dystopian novel by Glenn Beck where single-family homes are a distant memory.