Far-Right COVID-19 Conspiracism: From a New World Order to Transhumanism

There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic: everything from the origins of the virus, the supposed use of 5G to spread the virus, to the pandemic being orchestrated by Big Pharma. Some conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic are more complex, however, and mask a more sinister ideology: particularly those espoused by the far right. One which gained more momentum through the pandemic was the New World Order theory, which suggests that the pandemic is part of some evil plan by a nefarious secret group of people to take over the world. The term 'New World Order' was popularised after former US President George Bush coined the term in his 1991 State of the Union Address, although it is unclear what he meant by it.

The pandemic was seen by many on the far right as a control mechanism for this powerful imagined secret group to implement their plan for world domination. The idea of a malevolent Jewish elite concocting corrupt plans to dominate the world is nothing new to the far right: already in the early Twentieth Century the widely translated and disseminated Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903) purported to uncover how a small Jewish cabal controlled national and international events.

COVID-19 and Far-Right Conspiracy Theories

The project Socially Distanced Solidarity: Far-Right Recruitment and Enrolment During the COVID-19 Pandemic, based at C-REX, did not originally set out to research COVID-19 conspiracy theories, but rather to look at how pandemic measures affected involvement in European far-right organisations. Through interviews conducted in Italy, Hungary, and Sweden with members of far-right organisations, it quickly became apparent that conspiracy theories ran rampant among participants. Some of these conspiracy theories were of a more generic variety, not uncommonly espoused by people from both ends of the political spectrum. For example, one Hungarian respondent explained that 'we’re talking about a laboratory virus, a biological weapon that, that they can use any time against society'. He also emphasised his concern about the virus, stating that 'you can’t protect yourself against this'.

Another, Italian, respondent believed the pandemic was fabricated: 'it was created by the WHO, the World Health Organisation. These are classic false pandemics that they have created tens of in the past to sell some vaccines, but this time they did a more detailed job that all the world believed'.

Most respondents, however, went further than these usual suspects of COVID-19 conspiracy theory. Some respondents used veiled language to discuss these ideas, but clearly alluded to the New World Order and Kalergi Plan conspiracy theories. Our Hungarian respondent explained that he was not sure who runs the world dictatorship, but it must be controlled by those who control 'economic power'. He explained these are people like

the Bilderberg Group, the Rothschilds, and then different lodges, Freemason lodges, people who, I don’t know, plan step-by-step for the next 100 years how things should happen. Or the leadership of the World Economic Forum, that Klaus Schwab, they talk about him… this is a group, you should imagine this as a council.

Clearly indicating people of known Jewish descent, he also claimed that 'the money is theirs, the firearms factories, pharmaceutical factories…those, those tech companies that now, right, got a huge profit from the Covid dictatorship'. Similar ideas were also found in Italy, where several respondents described obviously antisemitic conspiracy theories:

Well... initially the plan takes the name of its founder, Count Kalergi... the organisers let’s say they are... people with a hooked nose, that are circumcised, and that are hunchbacks... connect the dots you arrive to who they are. The surnames usually are Rothschild, Warburg, Oppenheimer, then there’s Soros... All connected by... a common intent.

Yet others were more straightforward about what they meant: 'They are the Jews, the reds, those people... Soros... all these people who make billions thanks to... this rubbish'. These examples show how the COVID-19 pandemic is used to reproduce older conspiracy theory narratives.

New Bottles for Old Wine: Transhumanism

These conspiracy theories, which all gained momentum through the COVID-19 pandemic, now appear to have combined with a transhumanist conspiracy narrative: the idea that an malicious financial elite is seeking to replace humanity with machines. Beyond conspiracism, the idea of transhumanism posits that humans can use technology to further enhance human cognition and bodily function, thereby increasing abilities and capacities beyond human constraints: in a way, making people posthuman. Human nature is a work in progress and ever-evolving, and can be controlled and moulded in desirable ways. The term transhumanism was  coined in 1957 by Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist and, incidentally, the brother of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley. The transhumanist movement began to gain momentum a few decades later in the mid-1980s.

Transhumanism can extend to many areas of the human condition. Some focus on the possibility of extending life, some on the possibility of combining robotics with the human body. One famous example of this is Neil Harbisson, who was born colour-blind. Neil had an antenna implanted onto his skull to allow him to see colour, which also allows him to sense infrareds and ultraviolets – normally beyond human perception. Neil self-identifies as a cyborg, and in 2010 founded the Cyborg Foundation to help defend cyborg rights and promote cyborg art.

The far right has increasingly of late latched on to the idea of transhumanism as a malicious conspiracy, specifically the idea that Jewish people are using transhumanism to achieve their plan for world domination. Believers in this conspiracy theory purport that Jewish people, or the nefarious Jewish orchestrators of transhumanism, do so in various ways. For example, by implanting microchips or nanorobots into people through vaccines, or by modifying birth rates and populations through the spread of LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender people. It seems the supposed purpose of this is to accelerate the achievement of the New World Order and reduce white birth rates by increasing the number of LGBTQ+ people. Furthermore, adherents believe that Jews hope to prompt the downfall of Western society by promoting 'sexual immorality' through total control of the media, academia, and government.

According to some far-right conspiracy theorists, the main orchestrator of this conspiracy is Yuval Noah Harari, historian and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and, crucially, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. In the latter book, Harari discusses what he sees as the future of humankind, including what could happen when technology and humanity are combined. Needless to say, the fact that Harari is Jewish and gay makes him a particularly attractive target for this far-right conspiracy theory.

Transhumanism Meets Antisemitic Conspiracism

Various figures on the far right have used this conspiracy theory to promote their own ideas. For example, Austrian news broadcaster Stefan Magnet claimed that transhumanism is a 'Satanist plan', executed by 'the globalists'. Magnet states that 'the Great Reset, the homosexual and transgender movement, scaremongering about the climate, media-led brainwashing, and [our] dependence on Microsoft and Google' will all help globalists to take control of the world.

In another example, leader of the Austrian Identitarian Movement Martin Sellner claims that transhumanism has one overarching goal: to generate the Great Reset or the New World Order. Like Magnet, Sellner also blames ‘globalists', who want to create a diverse society. Sellner believes that because of this, and because transhumanism still needs time to fully work, the Great Replacement is still the biggest risk at the moment. According to Sellner, the figure behind the Great Replacement and globalist threat is Hungarian-American Jewish Holocaust survivor and philanthropist George Soros. This idea of the Great Replacement is still a core issue in the Austrian far right today.

Just next door in Hungary, László Toroczkai, leader of the extreme-right Our Homeland (Mi Hazánk) Movement political party, has shared many videos on his personal YouTube channel outlining his ideas of various conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, particularly the New World Order. In one video he outlined how several rich and powerful members of the World Economic Forum – specifically Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg – believe that globalisation, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism will change the world. 'We’ll all', Toroczkai claims, 'become controlled cyborgs in a robot world'. Furthermore, this is all likely to happen by the year 2030. Toroczkai points to Harari as the leader of the group who will put this plan into action, claiming that Harari seeks to push his own identity onto the world, rendering blood relations and traditional modes of conception irrelevant – an obvious reference to Harari’s homosexuality, and the conspiracy theory that Jewish people push an LGBTQ+ agenda through transhumanism.

The far right has been no stranger to conspiracism, going back over a century. However, the antisemitic idea of the New World Order combined with conspiracy theories around transhumanism is particularly concerning, being able to appeal to those already anxious about vaccines, or who already adhere to 'milder' COVID-19 conspiracy theories. A century ago there were accusations that Jews conspired to 'pollute' the 'Aryan' race through interbreeding. Today, this conspiracism has been repackaged into the twenty-first-century belief that powerful Jews are attempting to control and 'pollute' humanity again from the inside – this time through robotics and gene manipulation.