This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Behold a Pale Horse" by Milton William Cooper. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Who’s behind the New World Order? What, exactly, is their plan? Can they be stopped?
William Cooper believes that the Illuminati aim to establish a dystopian, authoritarian government known as the New World Order sometime in the 21st century. The only way to prevent their takeover is through popular armed resistance by American patriots.
Continue reading to discover Cooper’s ideas on how to stop the New World Order.
How to Stop the New World Order
One of the most influential conspiracy theory books ever written, Behold a Pale Horse lays out the roots and methods of a secret movement to topple the American government and establish a global totalitarian order. William Cooper argues that UFO sightings, the Illuminati, the Kennedy assassination, and various American think tanks are all interconnected in this effort to undermine the Constitution and ultimately enslave the human race. He ultimately discusses how to stop the New World Order in its tracks.
The Illuminati survives in the modern day through a number of disparate branches. Cooper argues that any internationalist or globally minded organization—such as the United Nations—is an arm of the Illuminati. Any apparent rivalries between organizations or their elite members, be they politicians or businessmen, are just for show. When the New World Order is established, they will all join together as the rulers of the human race.
When the Illuminati feel that the time is right to move—Cooper doesn’t give an exact timeline, though he suggests it will likely take place in the early 21st century—they will dissolve all of the world’s governments and form the New World Order, a single, centralized and socialist body led by a council of the politicians and businessmen who already control the Earth’s natural resources and armies. All private property will be seized and the masses will be electronically tagged and tracked before being forced into detention and slave labor. Physical force and mind control will be used to suppress resistance.
Cooper warns that the Illuminati’s plans can be avoided only by popular armed resistance from the American people. Like the American revolutionaries of the 18th century, the people must rise up to defend their rights and preserve the Constitution, which Cooper calls the closest thing to a perfect political document ever produced. When the Illuminati declare the New World Order and begin rounding people up, true patriots must be prepared to resist.
| The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing In the mid-1990s, Cooper would organize an informal militia, though its members were scattered across the US, communicated largely through the mail, and never took any violent action. Through his radio show, Cooper repeatedly pointed out instances of government corruption and called for listeners to make their displeasure known, either through votes, protest, or outright violence. In some cases, Cooper’s calls to action had consequences he didn’t endorse. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh explicitly named Cooper as one of his inspirations and timed the bombing—which killed over a hundred people—to coincide with the second anniversary of the deaths at Waco. Though Cooper reported on the bombing in depth, he refused to accept that he might have held some responsibility, arguing instead that the bombing was orchestrated by the government to demonize the patriot militia movement. Indeed, membership in the movement declined after the bombing, as there was a greater police crackdown on what was now seen as the threat of further domestic terrorism. |
While Cooper agrees with the Illuminati that the Earth is nearing a crisis point in international tensions, resource distribution, and the health of the climate, he rejects the belief that most of humanity is too unintelligent or weak to contribute. All of these problems can be solved, he argues, through the widespread application of American democratic ideals, in which every person is guaranteed a voice and the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Though these principles have not been applied in practice due to government corruption and Illuminati interference, Cooper believes that a second revolution and more direct involvement in government by the citizenry will realize the ideal America of the future.
(Shortform note: Cooper’s biographer Mark Jacobson has argued that Cooper’s calls to action reached not just right-wing populists but also more left-leaning Black activists. In the 1990s, Behold a Pale Horse was widely read in prisons, sold in bookstores alongside works of anti-racist and anti-colonialist literature by authors like Ralph Ellison and Marimba Ani, and memorialized in hip-hop by the Wu Tang Clan, Tupac Shakur, Jay-Z, and dozens of other artists. Jacobson suggests that Cooper’s popularity with this community has ensured that his ideas about the Illuminati and the NWO will continue to spread among younger generations, long past the memory of Cooper himself.)
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Here's what you'll find in our full Behold a Pale Horse summary:
- One of the most influential conspiracy theory books ever written
- Theories about UFOs, the Illuminati, the Kennedy assassination, and more
- How the 1991 book impacted different groups in society
