H.G. Wells, "New World Order"
Most people know H.G. Wells primarily as one of the early luminaries of the sci-fi world, as the mind behind The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Though that alone would represent a career that any author would feel pretty good about, H.G. Wells wrote so much more than the “famous stuff.”
From the very beginning of his career in science fiction, and actually predating it by a few years, Wells had a very diversified writing portfolio. Two years before The Time Machine was published, Wells put out a text book teaching Biology. In 1913, he published Little Wars, a book that served to lay out rules for children to use when playing with toy soldiers, predating the first publication of Dungeons and Dragons by 61 years (Gary Gygax even said in a forward he wrote for the 2004 reprint that, “Little Wars influenced my development of both the Chainmail miniatures rules and the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game”).
Honestly, looking back on his career, it would be difficult to say what was his primary occupation, and what constituted extra-curricular activities. He is most famous for the science fiction work, but all along the way, he was writing philosophy, as well as political tracts in defense of socialism. That last part is where Alex Jones’ ears perk up.
Alex’s formative political mentors were pretty much all John Birch Society anti-communist propagandists, so from a very early age, he has believed that Communism only exists as a way for a government to assert Authoritarian control over a population, and Socialism doesn’t even really exist, it is just the appealing public face that is used to sell a population Communism, which is really secretly just Authoritarianism. He leaves no room for nuance, and as such, any time anyone is advocating for Socialism, Alex believes them to be at best a useful idiot, and at worst a committed salesman for the “Globalists” who are trying to enslave the population.
This is a very effective life-hack, in as much as it frees you up to never really discuss the ideas or the arguments that someone is putting forward, and allows you to immediately disqualify any ideas that fit into one box you don’t want to open.
Since at least 1907, Wells published non-fiction books where he would discuss the merits of Socialism, and the increasingly obvious downsides of Capitalism run amok. A quick glance through his bibliography makes it plain as day that he was a committed Socialist from the jump:
Will Socialism Destroy The Home? (1907) [Note: the conclusion is that it will not]
New Worlds For Old (1908) [Note: in this book, Wells even makes the important distinction that Socialism is not, in his conception, a political movement at all. It is instead a moral and intellectual process that the individual undertakes. He says, “only secondarily and incidentally does it sway the world of politics. It is not a political movement; it may engender political movements, but it can never become a political movement.”]
The War and Socialism (1915)
The Salvaging of Civilization (1921)
There are plenty of other examples with less overt titles (“The Misery Of Boots,” for example), but this should demonstrate that when Alex Jones wants to take aim at H.G. Wells for being a Socialist, he should have an overabundance of ammo. That makes it particularly disappointing that there is really only one example that Alex ever uses when attacking Wells:
This is a “quotation” that Alex Jones uses to open his “documentary” film Endgame. And it is the very definition of deception and propaganda.
You can find the complete text of Wells’ New World Order here, and if you do follow that link and try to find the quote that Alex is using, you will very quickly see a pretty sizable problem:
“Countless people, from maharajas to millionaires and from pukkha sahibs to pretty ladies, will hate the new world order, be rendered unhappy by frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it.”
The first indication that Alex Jones is using deception here is that he does not admit in his use of the quote that he has cut out parts of it, which is supposed to be done with an ellipsis. This is a very basic matter of editorial ethics, and to not follow that convention is to change the words you are quoting and hope your viewers don’t notice.
He is absolutely doing this intentionally. Alex’s use of the quote is in service of reinforcing his argument that the “Globalists” want to bring in a New World Order that will rule over/kill all of the peasants and lower/middle class, like you and me. He is using this “quote” to imply that Wells is saying that people like you and me are going to be unhappy with the New World Order, and we will end up dying fighting against it, but the “Globalists” don’t care, that’s just the way it has to go.
In reality, H.G. Wells is actually making the opposite point.
Maharajas are kings, a Millionaire in 1940 would have 17 million dollars today.
Pukka Sahib is a colonialist term that the British made the colonized Burmese people call them to indicate that the colonized thought that their colonizer was honest, decent, incorruptible in their deeds, and a “pure white gentleman.”
“Pretty ladies” is meant to mean very rich women, but unfortunately does still rely a little on the entrenched sexism of the day. Wells’ implication here is that the rich ladies, although they may be pretty, are still complicit in the acts of the Maharajas, Millionaires, and Pukka Sahibs, and would similarly be scared of the coming New World Order and would likely die fighting against it, to maintain their social standing.
But, there is a very important distinction to make here: H.G. Wells is emphatically not talking about a political revolution, or even something that will happen in any sort of actual revolt:
“There will be no day of days then when a new world order comes into being. Step by step and here and there it will arrive, and even as it comes into being it will develop fresh perspectives, discover unsuspected problems and go on to new adventures. No man, no group of men, will ever be singled out as its father or founder. For its maker will be not this man nor that man nor any man but Man, that being who is in some measure in every one of us. World order will be, like science, like most inventions, a social product, an innumerable number of personalities will have lived fine lives, pouring their best into the collective achievement.”
The Socialism that H.G. Wells advocates for is an internalized enlightenment of sorts, not a storming of the castles. When he says that these Maharajas and Millionaires will die fighting against it, it is not because this Socialist New World Order will kill them, and Wells makes very clear why he believes that will be the case.
It is because he believes that what motivates the people in power to maintain the exploitative system as it exists is their fundamental desire to feel “glory over his fellows,” to be seen as better than others, an impulse that leads to “avarice, hoarding, and endless ungainful cheating and treachery.”
It is a part of the unchecked ego that we all possess to varying degrees, and Wells feels that, in a just society, we all make a compromise to control that impulse to crush others in exchange for others also agreeing not to crush us:
“Law is essentially an adjustment of that craving to glory over other living things, to the needs of social life, and it is more necessary in a collectivist society than in any other. It is a bargain, it is a social contract, to do as we would be done by and to repress our extravagant egotisms in return for reciprocal concessions. And in the face of these considerations we have advanced about the true nature of the beast we have to deal with, it is plain that the politics of the sane man as we have reasoned them out, must anticipate a strenuous opposition to this primary vital implement for bringing about the new world order.”
The New World Order that Wells is talking about is one where individuals have chosen, of free will, to live in ways that are more conducive to collective good, recognizing that will sometimes mean making individual sacrifices. The Maharajas and Millionaires, Wells probably correctly predicts, will not want that kind of a world to form, because their entire place in the world is predicated upon them being in “a position of glory” over others, which is antithetical to making personal sacrifices for the public good.
When he says they will “die protesting against” the New World Order, Wells is not saying that anyone is going to kill them; he is expressing, again probably correctly, that these people are so invested in their own ego and social position that they would sooner die than give it up.
All of this is abundantly clear from the text, if a person actually reads it.
If Alex Jones has ever read this book, he knows fully well what this passage means, and he is intentionally lying about it, cutting out a few key words to make a sentence appear to mean the exact opposite of what it really does. It’s possible he’s never read the book, but it doesn’t matter; either way he’s a liar.