Conspiracy Theories

Anyone who knows how difficult it is to keep a secret among three men—particularly if they are married—knows how absurd is the idea of a worldwide secret conspiracy consciously controlling all mankind by its financial power….  —Sir Oswald Mosley

In his 1994 book Humanity’s Extraterrestrial Origins: ET Influences on Humankind’s Biological and Cultural Evolution, Arthur Horn proposed that the Annunaki were a race of blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien reptiles. This theory was adapted and elaborated on by British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who maintains that the Bush family, Margaret Thatcher, Bob Hope, and the British Royal Family, among others, are or were such creatures, or have been under their control. —from Wikipedia

History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy.  —Zbigniew Brzezinski

     I have been exposed to a veritable shit-ton of conspiracy theories lately, most of it—though not all—on that merciless onslaught of information known as the Internet. For example, some of you may have seen some of the videos posted recently in which I am interviewed by Brian Ruhe, sometimes referred to as “the Nazi Buddhist”; and if you have seen them you may know that Herr Ruhe makes no secret of the fact that he believes reptilian space aliens have infiltrated this world, and are working in league with the Rothschilds, who themselves may be reptilians, and with globalist Jews in general, in a globalist Zionist Talmudist conspiracy to enslave the people of the earth.

     Another example: One of the few western people I have met over the past several months was a young American man who, in all seriousness, informed me that he really believes that the earth is flat. When I pointed out that from 40,000 feet, in an airplane, one can see the curvature of the earth, all it elicited from him was a blank look. When I asked him what would possibly be the point of the governments of many nations, over the course of many centuries, conspiring and lying about the fact that the earth is flat, he opined that it’s all about territory.

     I should point out here that I’m not necessarily using the term “conspiracy theory” in a negative sense. Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. (For example, most of us will feel pretty silly if a Rothschild publicly shapeshifts into his reptilian form and decrees that we are all now his thralls.) Also I should point out that conspiracy theories aren’t something new. There have probably always been conspiracy theories, at least since people learned to talk and think. Example: Og and Thag both want to take the fair Oona as a mate, and there is some rivalry and hard feelings between them. One day Og, Thag, and two of Oona’s brothers go hunting. Thag is good friends with Oona’s brothers. They come back without Og, claiming that he was eaten by a cave bear (alternative version: disintegrated by an evil wizard), and look very uneasy, often meeting together away from the campfire whispering. Oona, who liked Og better, naturally develops a conspiracy theory that Thag and her brothers hit Og on head with big club, hit hard, break head. The conspiracy theory circulates especially among the women of the tribe until chief Ruk threatens to have them all beaten if they don’t shut up about it. Also, somehow Ruk has acquired Og’s best spear, and also his good aurochs pelt cloak.

     I should further point out that people have always believed all kinds of weird stuff that isn’t conspiratorial in nature. To give just one obvious example, for hundreds of years most people in western civilization, including the most brilliant scholars and scientists, sincerely believed that all the suffering in the world was caused by a man made of soil and a woman made from a bone being tricked by a snake into eating a certain kind of fruit. Even Isaac Newton believed this. Millions of people in this world still believe it. A lot of the stuff that most people believe now will likely be seen as pretty damned stupid by future generations, assuming that there will indeed be future generations. If there won’t be, it will probably be because of our stupid beliefs. Sometimes when I think about this stuff I just want to shake my head and blasphemously mutter “Fuck me all to hell.”

     Anyway, in order to give you, the reader, a better feel for the kind of stuff I’m talking about, I include a longish list of conspiracy theories, some of them dating all the way back to ancient times. This list, I assure you, is nowhere near to being comprehensive. I just list some of the better-known ones, and some of the ones I consider to be otherwise interesting or important.

     

~Alexander the Great was murdered with poison, and didn’t simply die of a fever complicated by alcoholism. (Lately I heard one theory that his doctors accidentally poisoned him with too much hellebore in an attempt to cure him of his fever more quickly.)

~There are quite a few conspiracy theories associated with Roman Emperors, including alleged assassinations of some Augusti like Carus and, in a separate incident, his son Numerian. Another conspiracy involves the Emperor Domitian’s alleged persecution of Christians, which some historians are now claiming never happened. Another common one among ancient Christians was that Nero wasn’t dead, but was lying in wait to return as Antichrist, possibly disguised as Domitian.

~The Christian religion is partly based on the conspiracy theory that “the Jews” conspired to kill Jesus of Nazareth, ostensibly for political reasons but also out of jealousy and spite.

~An alleged conspiracy even more vital to the Christian religion involves early Christians deliberately doctoring the details of Jesus’s biography to make them fit the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah, in order, of course, to make it look like Jesus was the man. Even many Christian academics are now constrained to admit the likelihood of this theory.

~An ancient Roman conspiracy theory that was once fairly common among Pagans was that Jesus was not born of a virgin and the god Jehovah, but rather was born of a Hebrew prostitute named Pantera and a Roman soldier. The alleged conspiracy was the Christians’ coverup of this embarrassing scandal and falsely insisting on his divinity.

~One theory involving Jesus is that he was secretly married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a son, and that after the crucifixion of Jesus Mary and Jesus Jr. secretly moved to Europe and were somehow instrumental in the origins of the Illuminati. The theory has been around for centuries, although it became well known only after the publication of The DaVinci Code.

~Another Roman one was that the great fire of Rome in July 0064 was caused by Nero Augustus himself because he wanted some land cleared for a new palace, or some such. When this theory became widespread enough that Nero was inconvenienced by it, he started a counter conspiracy theory that the Christians started the fire, and had some Christians publicly executed in retaliation.

~An increasingly common conspiracy theory is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed at all. Some say he was an invention of the Roman Flavian dynasty with the purpose of weakening rebellious Jewish nationalists, some say he was a myth based on other dead-and-reborn deities in classical mythology, further confused with details of the life of Julius Caesar, or of Caesar’s son Caesarion. Some have other theories to account for the alleged nonexistence of Jesus. I may as well add that there are some old western theories that the Buddha also never existed, but was a kind of garbled sun myth.

~Another Buddhist conspiracy theory involves the 6th Patriarch of Zen, the Chinese monk Hui Neng. The theory goes that he wasn’t really the 6th Patriarch at all, but that he was posthumously awarded the honor after the real 6th Patriarch’s lineage died out. (Anyone interested may find details of the theory in the introduction to Yampolsky’s translation of The Platform Sutra.) Either way, even if the official tale is the true one—in which Hui Neng was secretly declared the 5th Patriarch’s successor by #5 himself and fled into the wilderness, etc.—his succession involves a secret conspiracy of some sort or another.

~There were plenty of medieval conspiracies involving Jews causing epidemics of plague and other diseases by poisoning wells or practicing black arts. These theories were backed up by the “evidence” of Jews tortured until they confessed. Similar conspiracy theories involved devil-worshiping witches causing epidemics and so forth, especially in places where Jews were unavailable.

~The Knights Templar also were the subject of conspiracy theories, for instance claims that they were secretly devil worshippers and/or Muslims. They were ultimately destroyed as the result of such claims, by order of a French king who owed them a huge amount of money.

~One conspiracy theory that a good friend of mine favors is that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare—that is, that he wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. There have been other theories put forward claiming that someone other than Shakespeare or Bacon was Shakespeare. Mainly these are all based on the assumption that William Shakespeare was an uneducated actor who couldn’t have written his own plays.

~For centuries a conspiracy theory favored by Greek Orthodox Christians and Protestants is that the Roman Catholic Church is a patently Satanic organization bent on world conquest in the name of the Devil. There are similar theories about the Jesuits in particular, even among some Catholics.

~I won’t even attempt to do justice to the huge number of still prevalent conspiracy theories involving “the Jews.” There are a bewildering multitude of sub-conspiracies associated with them, including the Rothschilds (some claim that the Rothschilds were even involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln), George Soros, Marxism, neo-Marxism, control of the media, Hollywood, and the educational systems, white genocide, shape-shifting reptilians, etc. etc. There are too, too many to list. There are lots and lots of them, not the least of which being theories claiming that Jews caused both world wars, and are still instigating a socialized globalist takeover of the entire world, especially of the global economy.

~There are similar conspiracy theories in which some other group, such as Freemasons, the Illuminati, Mormons, or any of various elite secret societies are the ones orchestrating the New World Order.

~One conspiracy theory popular among Turks is that the Armenian Genocide never happened, and is simply part of a scheme for defrauding western Christians of billions of dollars in pity donations, plus an excuse for hating Turks.

~Then there are the assertions that the Holocaust never happened, and that the very idea of it is a propaganda weapon exploited by Jews to cow westerners into total dread of antisemitism.

~A theory I have encountered many times on the Internet can be conveniently summarized as “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.” The Führer was allegedly a peace-loving fellow forced into war against his will by the belligerent, aggressive Poles, French, and British. Then they twisted it all around to make it look like his fault.

~Hitler allegedly made use of his own conspiracy theories, including the aggressive Poles invading Germany and the Reichstag fire of 1933 being set by a Marxist cabal. Plus there was something about the Jews.

~One conspiracy that has struck some traction is the idea that Hitler actually died a few years before the end of the war and was replaced by a double. Another, almost similar one is that he was possessed by some kind of demonic entity, especially when delivering speeches—people who knew him allegedly claimed that his entire demeanor would change under certain circumstances, clearly indicating possession. This latter theory was urged upon me be a senior Burmese Buddhist monk who had previously read a book on the subject. There are plenty more about Hitler, including the idea that he had syphilis, and that he hated Jews largely because he contracted the disease from a Jewish prostitute in Vienna during his starving artist phase.

~One of the best-known, most mainstream conspiracy theories is that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was not the work of a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald. Various versions involve the CIA, the Mafia, the Vice President, the USSR, Marxists in general, probably the Jews, etc. etc. This is one of those conspiracies that has become generally accepted as true in some form, even officially endorsed by the US Congress.

~A similar one is that Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by the US government, or at least blackmailed over some of his alleged sexual perversions.

~Also, there is the belief that Marilyn Monroe was killed at the command of, or at least with the knowledge of, President Kennedy, because both he and his brother Bobby had bedded down with her (and hundreds of other women) and grunted state secrets to her in the heat of passion, or some such. She knew too much.

~A conspiracy theory orchestrated as a publicity stunt was the supposed death of Paul McCartney of the Beatles in 1966, and his replacement with a lookalike double. All sorts of clues to this were supposedly found on their albums, including his barefoot appearance on the cover of Abbey Road, and “Number Nine” from the White Album allegedly saying, when played backwards, “Turn me on dead man.”

~Another “genre” of conspiracy theories that has spawned a bewildering variety of variants is UFOlogy.  Aliens have allegedly been watching us, landing on earth, and systematically taking human samples since prehistoric times. Some believe that they built the pyramids, or at least provided the technological knowledge that was required to build them. Some believe that they built the human species. No doubt a significant percentage of Americans believe that there is some sort of government coverup involving, say, Area 51, the Roswell incident, or at least the idea that the US government knows a hell of a lot more about UFOs than they are admitting publicly. There’s even an old theory that President Eisenhower signed a treaty with Greys back in the 1950s.

~The US government, and presumably many other governments, are likewise allegedly concealing the evidence proving the existence of technologically highly advanced civilizations many thousands or even millions of years ago.

~Likewise the governments of the world are conspiring, and have conspired for centuries, to keep secret the fact that the earth is as flat as a freaking dinner plate, except with mountains and valleys and so forth.

~Another one that appears to have become increasingly popular due to Internet information spamming is the theory that men never landed on the moon. One version has it that the movie director Stanley Kubrick was put in charge of creating the fake video footage of the landings. This one as well as the flat earth conspiracy have huge masses of seemingly intelligent information backing them up, which can be viewed on YouTube videos, unless they were taken down in a recent censorship purge.

~Yet another similar-ish one is predominantly Christian in origin, and that is that the government, academia, or whoever have been deliberately faking the evidence in favor of organic evolution. This conspiracy theory especially has entire organizations dedicated to fighting tooth and nail against the very idea of Darwinian evolution, because of course the Bible says everything is here because God created it that way, in six days, around 6000 years ago. Some say it’s all part of a Jewish plot to promote atheism and spiritual blindness among the goyim.

~NASA and the US government are similarly alleged to be covering up the existence of Nibiru, alias Planet X, which will collide with earth and destroy us all, possibly soon.

~Another nefarious scheme of the Establishment is to keep secret the technology, already allegedly developed, for extracting free energy out of nothing, or at worst, dirt-cheap energy out of water, or some such. Presumably in this case the conspirators are greedy mega-capitalist forces determined to maintain their huge profits from fossil fuels and so forth. One of the leading champions of this theory is a wealthy heir of the Procter & Gamble Company.

~A conspiracy theory of relatively recent origin is the idea that the National Security Agency of the USA, plus probably the DHS, Facebook, Google, Asian hackers, et al. are using our own computers, cell phones, etc. to surveil us. This is undoubtedly true to some extent; and a lot of tech people who ought to know about such things consequently keep the little camera on their laptops covered with tape.

~A wide spectrum of theories exist involving health issues, such as vaccines, fluoride in the drinking water, the planned, artificial origin of AIDS or other diseases, and so-called chemtrails. I don’t worry or even care about health issues much, so I don’t know much about them. Nevertheless to some degree exposure to the theories are as unavoidable as exposure to fluoridated water.

~A very big one since 2001 has been the theory that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were not simply Islamist terrorist attacks. Masses of information have been assembled and examined, and many sane people, including reputable building engineers and architects, are convinced that it wasn’t simply a case of two highjacked airplanes knocking down the World Trade Center. Building 7 notoriously collapsed without being hit, the buildings collapsed quickly and uniformly as though by controlled demolition, explosive residue was allegedly found in the wreckage, the black boxes of the planes were apparently destroyed, the fire was claimed not to be hot enough to melt steel, the steel wreckage was quickly sold to China and gotten rid of, etc. etc. A common theme is that the CIA or some other branch of the US government conspired with Mossad to cause the disaster, for reasons I don’t recall.

~A notorious conspiracy theory that got good old Alex Jones into some hot water is the idea that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax or false flag. In fact many mass shootings, maybe most of them, are claimed by some people to be false flag operations, employed mainly by members of the Democratic Party, allegedly, to distract attention away from something sleazy that they had done recently. The recent mosque shooting in New Zealand has also been declared by some to be deliberately staged by whomever for whatever reasons.

~One of my personal favorite conspiracy theories involves the “Clinton crime family” assassinating more than fifty people (thus far) who were soon to testify against or otherwise inconvenience Bill and Hillary. One case allegedly involved a guy being shot twice in the back of the head which was reported as a “suicide”; and my favorite case in this favorite conspiracy is the guy who was soon to testify against the Clintons and then died in a freak weightlifting accident, in which he was doing bench presses and dropped the bar directly onto his own throat.

~A huge one that is gradually coming to light lately is the whole conspiracy theory, promoted vehemently by the leftist mainstream media, that Donald Trump conspired with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election. Now that that theory has been determined to be false, another, counter theory is looming, in which the Democratic Party, the Obama administration, the bureaucratic “Deep State,” and hysterical leftists and Never Trumpers in general conspired to prevent Trump from winning the presidency (partly by promulgating the collusion conspiracy theory), and when that failed, they conspired to remove him from office in a kind of bloodless coup. If that conspiracy theory is true, and it may very well be, then it may become the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States.

~A kind of sub-conspiracy branching off of the previous one is that the Russians did not in fact hack the emails of the DNC server, but that it was an inside job perpetrated by a staffer named Seth Rich, who was subsequently assassinated in retribution (and to keep him very silent) by someone paid by high-ranking Democrats. Thus the whole Russian hacking claim was to some degree begun as a smokescreen to cover for the political assassination.

~There are several more conspiracy theories involving former President Obama and/or his administration, for example that the Benghazi attacks in 2012 were covered up and then lied about; that Obama was born in Kenya and thereby disqualified from being President; that he is gay and his wife is a shemale, etc.; but they all pale in comparison with the alleged Russia collusion hoax just mentioned.

~Because President Trump is friendly with Israel and with Jews in general (in fact his elder daughter, her husband, and her children are all Jewish), many people on the alt-right have theorized in disgust that Trump is just controlled opposition, allowed to pretend to be a nationalist by the Establishment and “the Jews.”

~A very common theory, considered to be painfully obvious by tens of millions of Americans, is that the mainstream media is little more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, or even that the DNC is doing the bidding of (((whoever is running the media))), with Fox News being essentially controlled opposition.

~Another one that is looming large recently is that anthropogenic global warming or “climate change” is a deliberate hoax, or at best an unproven theory, exploited to promote socialized globalism and/or to line the pockets of climate scientists.

     As I’ve already said, this is nowhere near to being a complete list. It does, however point out some of the rampant distrust of official narratives among the common people that has existed since ancient times and is in full flower today. And some of the theories, no doubt, are empirically true. Sometimes the Establishment really does want to keep the common people unaware of some of its more Machiavellian or diabolical activities. I am a little worried that some people prone to following such theories may now follow some new ones because of the list.

     But despite the fact that some (nowhere near to most, but some) conspiracy theories turn out to be true, it is astonishing to me, really astonishing, how eager some people are, not only to doubt official narratives, but to reject them out of hand in favor of narratives that usually have infinitely flimsier evidence backing them up. For example, the idea that Darwinian evolution is a deliberate hoax perpetrated by whomever for nefarious reasons, or that the earth is flat, must be believed and supported by ignoring most of the immense mass of data collected over the past couple of centuries, and cherry-picking anomalies, and considering the small amount of anomalous data to be more important than the 99.8% which isn’t anomalous. Of course part of the theory is that some kind of Establishment is deliberately hiding most of the key data; but of course there is precious little evidence of this also. Some conspiracy theories (though of course not all) require totally stupendous hoaxes perpetrated by countless thousands of people and hundreds of governments over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years—yet seemingly otherwise intelligent people still believe that they are more true than what appears straightforward and fairly obvious to almost everyone else around them. Considering that the side with the most evidence backing it up is usually the correct side, and that Occam’s Razor usually cuts true, I really do not get this.

     It seems to me that there are two approaches to take with regard to accepting conspiracy theories, maybe even with regard to the ones that are almost certain to be utter bullshit. One is to believe them. Going with statistical probabilities and the idea that the preponderance of evidence usually supports the correct theory, this approach makes it likely that one is not only wrong, but actually deluded. (Of course everybody is deluded to some extent; and a person who believes all official narratives is bound to be wrong sometimes also.) And we may as well just ignore, for the sake of convenience and sanity, the postmodernist idea that truth is just a cultural construct, because then everything could be true and untrue at the same time, and the whole situation degenerates into a big silly mess.

     The other approach, which I recommend, is to consider such theories as a just cause for skepticism—in the classical sense of suspension of judgement, not outright disbelief. Seeing that there is more than one possible explanation of the evidence leads to reasonable doubt and maybe a little humility, some acknowledgement that we are blind worms, very fallible creatures who are quite literally infinitely ignorant. The number of facts that we do not know, even with regard to what is right in front of us, will always be infinite. Rejecting most of the evidence in favor of clinging to fringe theories is usually (but not always) a dumb mistake; but skepticism, agnosticism, realizing that ultimately we can’t be totally certain, is the wisest philosophical position one can hold. Anyway, the choice is yours.

a proposed compromise between the flat earth and round earth theories