Bombing of controversial Georgia Guidestones fuels online conspiracy theories

Some called the Georgia Guidestones monument "America’s Stonehenge." Others called it "satanic."

In May, a conservative gubernatorial candidate in Georgia said she would turn the mystifying structure "into dust" if elected. 

A little after 4 a.m. on July 6, someone did just that, using explosives to reduce one of the Guidestones’ four vertical granite panels to rubble. Authorities later demolished the rest of the monument "for safety reasons," because the explosion had destroyed one of the slabs holding up the structure.

(3/3) For safety reasons, the structure has been completely demolished. pic.twitter.com/hrpqN2Sphr

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— GA Bureau of Investigation (@GBI_GA) July 6, 2022

News of the demolition spread quickly on social media, with some chatter focused on conspiracy theories around the mysterious origins of the Elberton, Georgia, monument.

"The Georgia Guidestones, an infamous set of ‘commandments’ for the ‘New World Order,’ have been demolished after an explosion early this morning damaged them," read one such July 6 Facebook post. "The most well known ‘commandment’ on the stones was to keep the world population at 500 million." 

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Other posts tied the monument to the "New World Order Illuminati." Proponents of the "New World Order" theory believe that a group or "cabal" of powerful elites are working secretly to establish an international government that will let them control global populations. The theory has antisemitic origins, and believers often allege Jewish people are orchestrating crises in pursuit of global control.

Researchers say this unproven theory has been spreading since the 1990s, intensified by increasing globalization and online spread of conspiracy rhetoric. 

Legend has it that exactly one person — a bank president named Wyatt Martin — knows the true identity of the man who, under the pseudonym R.C. Christian, commissioned the monument on behalf of "a small group of loyal Americans." 

Martin acted as an intermediary while the granite project was completed. He promised to keep Christian’s identity secret and said he plans to take what he knows to the grave. The monument offers no further information about its benefactors, saying only, "Sponsors: A Small Group of Americans Who Seek The Age Of Reason."

The Guidestones, erected in 1980, comprise four vertical granite slabs and a central pillar, each nearly 20 feet tall, topped with a smaller granite slab. The structure was meant to be an astronomical device similar to Stonehenge that functioned as a compass, calendar and clock, according to Wired.  

The sides of the stone slab atop the monument were engraved with the phrase ​​"Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason" in Egyptian hieroglyphics, classical Greek, Sanskrit and Babylonian cuneiform. The four vertical granite slabs were engraved with identical sets of instructions in eight different languages, including Arabic, English, Hindi and Swahili. 

Many of the instructions are benign and uncontroversial:

• "Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts."

• "Balance personal rights with social duties."

• "Prize truth — beauty — loves — seeking harmony with the infinite."

The first two proved contentious and fueled conspiracies:

• "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

• "Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity." 

Critics of the Guidestones argued that these instructions promoted genocide by suggesting a global population reduction from about 4.4 billion in 1980 to just 500 million and championed eugenics.

In 2009 the stones were defaced with red paint reading: "Death to the new world order." 

Security cameras were later installed that captured footage of the recent bombing. The investigation continues and a motive has not been identified. Parks White, the Northern Judicial Circuit district attorney, announced plans to prosecute the explosive device’s detonator.

"Regardless of your feelings about the origin of the Guidestones, their meaning, or the intention of the person who commissioned and erected them, they are a historical landmark, and this destructive act was an assault upon our community," he said, emphasizing that the explosives used were powerful and dangerous.

Katie McCarthy, an associate investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center On Extremism, said that despite the unknowns surrounding the monument, the Guidestones’ had an ordinary function.

"The Guidestones really served primarily as a tourist attraction for Elbert County," she said. "I think people need to realize that there’s all these theories surrounding them — but they’re conspiracy theories. There’s nothing to prove that whoever put these monuments up, whoever they were, was a satanist or some member of the New World Order or the Illuminati."

She said the conspiracy theories about the monument were a way of trying to "explain things that have no other explanation."