I've been trying to figure out the same thing for years myself.
You end up feeling kind of like a rat gnawing on a beached whale. The scope and magnitude of the movement(s) is just too big to sink a tooth into.
Here's a place to start:
http://www.hevanet.com/nitehawk/nwo23.html
Here's my take:
The essentials of the NWO are the same combinations that we've seen throughout history. I'm talking Old Testament here. The interplay of Money, Political Power, Force and Religion (now science) to attain an end beneficial to those who are "in". In that respect, the nature of the movement is pretty traditional: get power to get more money to get more power and so on with a few utopian Socialists thrown in for good measure.
Why? Powerful people like power, so they seek it. Wealthy people like wealth, so they get together with the power people and figure out how to generate more of it. Nothing new there. Utopianists are motivated by who knows what (God complex?) and they also seek to consolidate power/wealth (Can't have a utopia with everyone running around doing their own thing, can you? In the utopianist view of the world, we would all be fine if we would just think like they did. Utopianists are egomaniacal and almost always Socialist, even Hitler fit this category).
So, somewhere around the beginning of this century (maybe sooner) utopianists like Cecil Rhodes (of Rhodes Scholar fame - Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar) envisioned a World Govt. His writings are pretty much public info, so don't let people tell you this is just wild "conspiracy theory." The Rhodes Scholarship exists to bring about World Govt and train the future leaders. This is well documented.
About the same time, industrialists and bankers set up Central Banks (essentially monopolies on money/capital. Our own Federal Reserve is just that. We really have only ONE bank in this country) and International Monetary Funds as well as international organizations and secret societies. Basically these institutions served to make the rich richer and control the flow of capital.
Witness how today a loud fart from Greenspan can shake the stock market. Do you wonder why that is? Well, its because he controls the flow of capital through the Fed Reserve. By the way, he is NOT a govt employee. Who does Greenspan work for, anyway???
Then WWI scared the hell out of everybody and it was decided that we needed a League of Nations. I think this was really the galvanizing organization that pulled all of these power-seekers together. They now had a World Organization that could help them attain their objectives.
Now I'm going to say some things that will make some of you angry. I'm used to it. WWII was more about dominance and establishing NWO hierarchy than anything else. Hitler wanted his own NWO as did Stalin. The Japanese wanted to carve out thier own chunk similar to what the Western Europeans and U.S. did with thier colonies in the Far East. An objective perspective of WWII shows us that the Japanese emulated the Colonial powers in their quest for power and dominance. The Japanese are great imitators and they just copied and improved on what they saw the world's great powers doing. Decades later they did the same thing and took over the auto industry.
We were pretty content to sit it out on the sidelines until Dec 7 1941. Similarly, we were happy to sit it out in WWI until the sinking of the Lusitania. Not to diminish the atrocities committed by the Nazis and Japanese, or to apologize in any way, but we didn't have too much concern until attacked. For the record, I think we HAD to fight WWII. Our interests were directly threatened on many fronts.
Did we really care that Hitler and Tojo were invading sovereign nations, destroying entire populations, killing millions of innocents? Well, let's just say that Stalin did the same thing on an even larger scale and we just sort of shrugged it off.
Why did Hitler's invasion of half of Poland prompt Britian and France to declare war, when Stalin simultaneously invaded the OTHER half of Poland and nobody made a squeek? How is it that 13 million Ukranians were intentionally starved to death in the 30's by Stalin and nobody made an issue of it (even today, with the evidence uncovered in the Soviet archives, nobody will make a big stink about this)? Why did the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians cheer when the Nazis entered their countries? Why did Finland side with the Nazis? Ever hear of the Ukranians that helped the Nazis? The answer is that for those who had to choose between the Nazis and Stalin, the choice to support Hitler obviously wasn't too difficult. (disclaimer: I am not a Nazi and hate everything he stood for).
For those of you who are already fuming and calling me an apologist and believe WWII was a great crusade to rid the world of evil and make safe for Democracy, yadda yadda yadda, well let me just say that I think you need to re-examine history. Yes, part of WWII was about defeating evil and protecting democracy and all that. Now put away the flag and look at the economics involved. Beneath the battlefields of WWII are some of the richest natural resources on earth. Get out your map, I dare you. Its not a coincedence. To get the monopoly on the NWO, all parties involved needed those resources and they knew it.
Since WWII we've seen the consolidation of power and the implementation of a framework for World Govt. Its complex and subtle, but the seeds of the NWO planted a century ago are sprouting now. On the social side, we've seen the destruction of traditional belief systems worldwide (not just in the West). In order to consolidate power, you've got to get rid of all of those pesky traditions that tie people to old systems of govt and economies.
On the political side, we've seen the marriage of big gubmint and big capital. Wonder how NAFTA passed when it does more harm than good for the American people? HMMM, just who benefited from that anyway? The World Trade Organization is right now passing international trade rules WE THE PEOPLE are bound to. Who's YOUR representative to the WTO? What are the goals? Do they have a political agenda as well? Is it one you would support? How would a block of voters go about influencing the decisions of the WTO? Try thinking along these lines.
The NWO is big, but probably not as organized as we think. Lots of competitors who see a future with a dominant central power structure which they can use to thier own advantage. Lots of companies, organizations and individuals with different motives but the same goal. I doubt the Masons have anything to do with it.
They've collectively affected social change, controlled capital and even managed to convince millions that they have their best interests at heart. Science (the new religion) has become a prostitute to the forces of Globalism and now we see the "objective" scientists advancing the cause as well.
The last piece of the puzzle for them is Monopoly of Force. When they have that its GAME OVER (one reason why the UN is so concerned about YOUR guns is that U.S. Citizens have a substatial pool of small arms. What other possible reason does the UN have to stick its nose into our domestic policy issues? Do you think Kofi Annan has the interests of "the children" at heart? Then why the near silence on the killing of MILLIONS of children in the Sudan?)
Take it or leave it, this is how I see it playing out. The next step is going to have to be a big one. The attacks on Serbia were just a warm up for the big showdown between nations that want to maintain sovereignty and those who seek to eliminate the concept of sovereignty altogether. You will have to join the team or be subjugated. Don't get me wrong, there were no good guys in the Kosovo war, but you have to wonder what prompted the full force of the U.S. military to be brought to bear on what amounted to a small regional ethnic conflict when there are dozens of similar conflicts going on all over the world.
Just my .02. Good luck in your search for the NWO.
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"Put a rifle in the hands of a Subject, and he immediately becomes a Citizen." -- Jeff Cooper
"The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies." -- H.L. Mencken, February 12, 1923, Baltimore Evening Sun