Dr Kerry Chant said around 2500 words at Thursday’s New South Wales Covid-19 press conference. But it took just three of them for her to go global.
An innocent slip of the tongue from the state’s chief health officer has sent some corners of the internet into a spin, led to furious commentary by fringe commentators and pricked up the ears of conspiracy theorists everywhere.
It’s also led to articles appearing in newspapers around the world.
Those three short words were: “new world order”.
Dr Chant’s said them during Thursday’s mammoth press conference when Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the state’s pathway to exiting some lockdown restrictions.
That will see pubs and retailers, among others, reopen the Monday after 70 per cent of the NSW population are double vaccinated. The milestone is expected to occur sometime in October.
A full 51 minutes into the exhaustive press conference, Dr Chant was asked if NSW will start listing casual contact locations again once the reopening occurs.
“We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the new world order,” she said.
And that was it. The uttering of the phrase “new world order” was confirmation from some that Covid-19 is all a very complex plot involving millions of people, including public servants, all dedicated to installing a nefarious totalitarian government.
Dr Chant’s comments made headlines worldwide from Britain to Canada and the US.
On Twitter, “new world order” became a top trending term in both Australia and the UK yesterday.
The social media firm even took to posting a statement about Dr Chant’s comments saying spurious new world order claims were “unfounded” and the “phrase is commonly used to describe times of change or cultural shift”. The clip has also appeared on far right social media site Gab.
British actor turned anti-Covid-19 restrictions campaigner Laurence Fox shared a clip of Dr Chant to his near 400,000 followers on Twitter.
In the Netherlands, one Twitter user posted the clip alongside the words “Australië heeft de term ‘new world order’ reeds genormaliseerd!” – translated as “Australia has normalised the term ‘new world order’”.
In the US, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party posted a heavily edited video of Dr Chant repeating the phrase over and over calling it “insanity”.
“Is the Australian government trying to rile everyone up or do they just want everyone to know that they no longer care about keeping their ambitions secret?” asked Amy Tarkanian.
In Australia, conservative far right campaigner Kirralie Smith posted on social media “but yeah, we are the conspirasy (sic) theorists”, referring to Dr Chant’s comments.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison even had to contend with comments on the subject during a Facebook Live video on Thursday.
“Dr Kerry Chant lets the secret slip and confirms the new world order is Australia’s true agenda behind their Covid-19 restrictions,” wrote one.
A number of Australia journalists also noted the comments but mostly in exasperation at the conspiracy theories it would, and did, unleash.
‘New world order’ phrase taken over by conspiracy theorists
The term “new world order” has been used by leaders since at least World War I to communicate a turning point in history.
Often it was a hope for more peaceful times ahead but often it was used by various politicians to recognise that longstanding power structures had changed – such as the waning influence and eventual break-up of the Soviet Union following the Cold War.
But more recently the term has been jumped on by conspiracy theorists who have said it actually refers to a secret elite that wants to impose global rule without anyone noticing until it’s all too late.
However, not everyone seems to have been convinced Dr Chant is actually part of said evil plot.
“Turn of phrase, albeit a foolish one. Conspiracy is just conspiracy,” said one reply on Laurence Fox’s Twitter post.
“Because when the Illuminati were deciding on the most powerful people in the world to bring into their cabal and give the inside track on their plans for a new world order, top of their list was (checks notes) the chief medical officer for NSW,” wrote another.
Not the first time phrase was used
Further fuelling the conspiracy theories, however, is the fact it’s not the first time “new world order” has cropped up at NSW covid press conference.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard also uttered the three-word phrase a few months ago.
“We’re in a pandemic, a one on 100 year event, so you can expect that we will have transmission from time to time and that’s just the way it is - we’ve got accept that this is the new world order,” he said on July 30.
But if Mr Hazzard and Dr Chant were indeed part of a project to impose global totalitarian rule against the wishes of Australians, it would be sloppy of them to keep mentioning its existence on live TV directed at the very people they hope to secretly subjugate.
While theories about a new world order may be overblown, the continuing restrictions in Australia are being noted overseas.
Much of Europe and North America have now dialled back restrictions following high vaccination rates even with – in some cases – rising case numbers and some deaths.
Last week, Britain’s The Times newspaper slammed Australia across its front page as being a “covid prison”.
“After a year celebrating pandemic death rates that were infinitesimal compared with those in the UK and the US, and lecturing the world on the superiority of its Covid-19 elimination strategy, Australia’s success was shattered by the mid-June arrival of the Delta variant. It snuck in with an American flight crew,” The Times article stated.
“As they watched those in the UK flock to weddings and festivals last weekend, the 5.3 million residents of greater Sydney entered their tenth consecutive week of lockdown, unable to stray further than 5km from their house for outdoor recreation.”
It‘s not the first time newspapers overseas have expressed shock at the situation Australia has found itself in. In July, The Washington Post ran a news story titled: “We’re prisoners”: Australia locks out thousands more citizens as virus slip-ups mount.
“Facing outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant and a floundering vaccination campaign, Australia moved Friday to further seal itself off from the world as its earlier success in tackling the coronavirus continued to unravel,” it stated.