There is big money these days in perpetuating and inventing conspiracy theories. Sadly there is no money in refuting and debunking them. There is enough about phony conspiracy theories to fill a book and several have been written none of which has struck as big a chord as those offering misinformation.
Conspiracy theories have always filled a vacuum left by misunderstood fact and absence of known fact. Conspiracy theorists use facts to formulate their conjecture gradually losing track of which is which as they go. Conspiracy theories and the neuroses which create them are nothing new.
The secret society mythology is very much amongst these and generally ascribed to different associations including governments and banks which are presumed to operate as front for an elite cabal controlling everything or at least having disproportional influence to their numbers.
The Illuminati, portrayed as a sophisticated gang of evil and sadistic criminals (Like SPECTRE in the James Bond movies) in just about every conspiracy theory ever heard are almost never exposed for the phantom entity long extinguished that they really were. Sadly real criminal conspiracies got lost within the mythology. If there had never been an Illuminati the population would have to invent a new legend.
The gossips can take any successful person and tie them to the Illuminati via their respective paths to prominence. Hard work, intellect, personalism and guile just don’t figure in. If they did you’d be successful or more successful, right?
Where do conspiracy theories take root? What are they seemingly needed to explain?
Mysterious Deaths
Why did so and so have to die so young? Why do celebrities die in threes (they don’t)? Death is a side effect of living and we will all die in time. Life expectancy used to be 26. The plague once wiped out two-thirds of Europe. A flu outbreak killed almost 50,000,000 people between 1918 and 1920. Today we actually live long enough to question why. We also ask a lot of other weird questions.
Political Assassination
Vanilla Ice, whom some regard as the epitomy of prescience, lucidity, and astute political judgement put forth the suggestion that ‘Elvis Killed Kennedy’ (Dallas isn’t that far from Memphis and Elvis did have Army training – in Fort Hood, Texas no less) in a ‘tune’ he released about a decade after his 15 minutes in the spotlight. This goofy theory doesn’t even make as much sense as the weird theory about Jackie Kennedy having done it in the car but it is a lot more fun to explore.
Kennedy isn’t as special as people think. He was the first American president in over sixty years to be assassinated as well as the last one. But there have been five American presidents to be assassinated and countless failed attempts before and since. Believe it or not a rabbit (true story!) once tried to whack Jimmy Carter. Doubtless Thumper was programmed by the CIA.
Supposing there were a dark cabal at work in a vast conspiracy to control the machinations of the world. Would the Kennedy assassination have been a hit ordered by this group or would it have been a hit against this group? Was a group of politicians behind the scenes rubbing its hands together at the prospect? Or were they more terrified than anyone else that any one of them might be next?
If the Illuminati were as powerful and diabolically cunning as people say would they not avoid the type of incident that would invite more conjecture and investigation than any other in history?
Political Flip-Flopping
A politician discards previous stands on issues and perhaps even the party they first came to office on the ticket of. Times change and constituencies change. An elected official is always a public servant and must always adapt to a changing electorate. He or she must also try to govern for all their constituents including those that didn’t vote for them.
Yet some constituents can’t help but feel a sense of betrayal particularly if they voted for him or her. If they didn’t vote for him or her and never understood the appeal to other voters of him or her then it really becomes a mystery as to how they got elected in the first place.
People often see the very real sacrifice of ideology that countless politicians have made across centuries to attain and retain power and a high standard of living. Practical application of deep belief is properly exposed for what it is when a man or woman is in office and needs to make certain trade-offs to accomplish the possible. People will call it “utilitarian” and they’ll call it a number of other things too.
To the conspiracy theorist no change in policy is explicable unless dark forces are at work. To the realist the only constant is change.
Banking Policy
Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, World Bank etc. Credit is good when it pays for things but it becomes bad when the interest starts to pile up. Is the bank evil because you can’t pay back what you borrowed? Are they evil because they loaned to you in the first place?
The Scum Rises To the Top of the Pond
The incompetent coach of an underachieving sports team stays employed while other coaches with considerably better records get fired. A terrible actor has a hit movie. A no-talent musician is on top of the charts. A TV show with a dumb premise has high ratings. Simultaneously a movie with a good cast bombs. The band you grew up with can’t even get signed by a major label anymore. A show you think is fascinating is cancelled after six episodes.
To the conspiracy theorist no change in entertainment fads or deviations from personal taste is explicable unless dark forces are at work. To the realist the only constant is change and variety of personal taste and judgement.
Misinterpeted Historical Phenomena Feeds Paranoia
Malthusianism
Alarmist eighteenth and nineteenth century English economist Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus put forth the idea that population must be controlled to be kept at levels that the earth could sustain in his popular treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population. He believed that poverty and misery were caused by overpopulation.
In the 214 years since that 1798 treatise his thesis has been warped and misinterpreted into being a plot by the wealthy few to keep population levels low via war, disease and birth control.
The MK Ultra Project
Run by the CIA’s office of Scientific Intelligence this illegal experimentation on human beings is and has continually been a source of conspiracy conjecture more for what isn’t known about it than what is. CIA director Richard Helms ordered all agency files on the project destroyed in 1973.
Is brainwashing real? Of course it is. But the only people brainwashed by MK Ultra was the CIA and the government who poured millions of dollars in research grant money to roughly 150 sub projects. Helms had no choice but to destroy the files as they made the CIA look like idiots engaged in inept but also illegal activity.
Whether they were trying out Jedi mind tricks the main impetus for the growth of the program in the 1950s were cases of brainwashing discovered in returning servicemen from the Korean War. The techniques the Chinese had devised were successful enough to convince the CIA that there was an advantage they had to counter.
All they had to show for a couple of decades plus of illegal research was research which upheld previous scientific findings on the effectiveness of hypnosis, hard drugs, study of human behavior etc.
Of course conspiracy theorists tried to use it to explain why kids were growing their hair long and doing drugs.
JFK Speech on Secret Societies
If conspiracy lovers tell you that Kennedy made this speech before he died about a secretive element out to destroy America it suddenly has an eerie quality that confirms a lot of suspicions. Truncated versions of this speech which blew the whistle on an elite of secretive criminal groups are offered with the implicit suggestion that it was what got him assassinated.
Without all the necessary facts the impression can be drawn that JFK made this speech on the morning of the day in which he was killed and that he was murdered either to prevent him from giving this speech or to prevent him from acting upon its contents.
Listening to this speech in its entirety, context is suddenly shown its true importance. Knowing when and where JFK gave this speech tells the listener what it is really about.
This speech entitled “The President and the Press” was one that President Kennedy gave before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on April 27th, 1961.
He sought to limit political damage for the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco with a plea for unity against the threat of international communism which he accurately characterized as not having the check upon its actions of a free press.
Family Businesses/Who You Know
A plumber goes into business borrowing money from his father to start things up. He tells everyone in his extended family to call him if they need his services. So if they spring a leak who are they gonna call?
If this plumber needs an apprentice and he has a son who is old enough who do you think he’ll hire? If his son becomes any good at plumbing and starts his own family who is this plumber going to make his partner? Who are this plumber and his son going to work for besides family? Friends, nearby businesses, referrals right?
Who else? Well, let’s assume they have places to network and build social capital nurturing and maintaining relationships. So family ties and who you know and who they know mean everything, right? Actually they mean less than nothing if Plumber & Son can’t fix a leak or don’t employ someone that can. There is nothing diabolical here which is why no one accuses Plumber & Son of being Illuminati even if they own a chain of stores and try to make profits.
Let us then suppose that everything about Plumber & Son is the same as I just said except they aren’t plumbers. Let’s say they’re bankers or politicians or run independent oil companies. Does this suddenly make them diabolical?
The reader might argue there are significant differences between what bankers/politicians or oilmen do vs what plumbers do. Quite right. No one wants to see what plumbers are doing but everyone wants to see what bankers/politicians and oilmen are doing and the media are paid to keep them under surveillance 24/7. What a plumber does doesn’t affect the world markets.
