Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies For Dummies E-Book

Christopher Hodapp

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 748

Beschreibung

What do Skull and Bones, the Kennedys, and UFOs all have in common? They're all shrouded in mystery and conspiracies Entering the world of conspiracy theories and secret societies is like stepping into a distant, parallel universe where the laws of physics don't apply and everything you know is wrong: black is white, up is down. If you want to understand what's really going on -- from fluoridated water and chemtrails to alien autopsies, free electricity, and more -- you need a good reference book, and that's where Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies comes in. Whether you're a skeptic or a true believer, this fascinating guide, packed with the latest information, walks you through some of the most infamous conspiracy theories -- such as Area 51, the assassination of JFK, and reptilian humanoids -- and introduces you to such mysterious organizations as the Freemasons, the Ninjas, the Illuminati, the Mafia, and Rosicrucians. This behind-the-curtain guide helps you separate fact from fiction and provides insight into the global impact these mysterious events and groups have had on our modern world. Discover how to: * Test a conspiracy theory * Spot a sinister secret society * Assess the Internet's role in fueling conspiracy theories * Explore world domination schemes * Evaluate 9/11 conspiracy theories * Figure out who "they" are * Grasp the model on which conspiracy theories are built * Figure out whether what "everybody knows" is true * Distinguish one assassination brotherhood from another * Understand why there's no such thing as a "lone assassin" Additionally, you can read about some conspiracy theories that turned out to be true (like the CIA's LSD experiments), theories that seem beyond the pale (such as the deliberate destruction of the space shuttle Columbia), and truly weird secret societies (Worshippers of the Onion and nine more). Grab your own copy of Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies and decide for yourself what is fact and what is a conspiracy.

Leseprobe

Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies

by Christopher Hodapp

Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Authors

Christopher Hodapp is a 32° Freemason and a member of the Masonic order of the Knights Templar. His first book, Freemasons For Dummies, has quickly become the most popular modern guide to the ancient and accepted fraternity of Freemasonry. He’s also the author of Solomon’s Builders: Freemasons, Founding Fathers and the Secrets of Washington D.C., and co-author of The Templar Code For Dummies. He attended Indiana University, the University of Southern California, Los Angeles Valley Community College, and California State University Northridge. In 2006, Chris received the Duane E. Anderson Excellence in Masonic Education Award from the Grand Lodge of Minnesota. He has written for Templar History Magazine, Masonic Magazine, The Scottish Rite Journal, The Indiana Freemason, and Indianapolis Monthly, and he’s a monthly columnist for Living Naturally First magazine. Chris has also spent more than 20 years as a commercial filmmaker.

Alice Von Kannon has been an advertising executive, a teacher, a writer, and even a greedy and villainous landlord. A history junkie beyond the help of an intervention since the age of 14, her studies of Near Eastern religious cults and sects led to her first book, The Templar Code For Dummies, co-written with Chris Hodapp. She’s studied film production at Los Angeles Valley Community College and history at California State University Northridge, and she’s worked for many years in advertising as a writer and broadcast producer. Alice has traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East and written on the subject of the Barbary Wars and the birth of the U.S. Navy. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America and the Order of the Grail, the fraternal body of the International College of Esoteric Studies.

Both authors live in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dedication

To Norma for her boundless help, support, confidence, and love.

To Charlie who was at Roswell before the aliens took over.

And to Bob and Vera, who somehow always knew.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

Our deepest appreciation goes to the many friends and authors who unselfishly shared their knowledge with us.

To the unrelenting Ed King of www.masonicinfo.comfor his kind assistance; and to Trevor McKeown and others who make the vast Web site of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon such an invaluable resource.

To Nathan Brindle, Jim Dillman, Jeffrey Naylor, Eric Schmitz, R.J. Hayes, Stephen Dafoe, and all the “Knights of the North” for their constant support and input, and to Phillip A. Garver for his incredible knowledge of Gnosticism, Martinism, Catharism, and all things esoteric.

To Tom Atkins for making the Federal Reserve seem like a simple concept to understand. To Dr. William Moore for pointing us in directions we may not have otherwise looked; and to Mark Tabbert for pointing us at William. To Dave Pruett who graciously (and bravely) acted as the Technical Editor of this volume. To Carolyn Steele and Rex DeLawter for caring for our business when we weren’t able to be there.

To Norma Winkler, without whose love and support our lives would be a much lonelier place.

To Tracy Boggier at Wiley Publishing for being a tireless champion of this book, and those that preceded it, through a long and sometimes tortured route to completion; to our patient and eternally unflappable editor Natalie Harris; to Carrie Burchfield for helping us cram a 500-page book into 348 pages; to Jack Bussell for his cheerful assistance, usually at the last minute with absolutely no notice whatsoever; to Rich Tennant, the great unsung hero of the For Dummies world; and to the entire For Dummies team that works behind the scenes to make this process simple.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

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Introduction

Napoleon said, “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” Of course, what nobody seems to remember is that Napoleon said a whole bunch of really questionable things. What’s wrong with it is that it implies that history is just a matter of opinion.

Entering the world of conspiracy theories and secret societies is like stepping into another dimension — a distant, parallel, alternate universe where the images, words, and names that surround you are vaguely familiar, but where the laws of physics have completely changed: Black means white; up is down; do-gooders are really Beelzebub’s Satanic waterboys; and the world seems to be viewed through a giant funhouse mirror.

We stepped into this alternate universe while Chris was working on Freemasons For Dummies (Wiley). In the alternate universe of conspiracy theories, the fraternity that he wrote about bore no resemblance whatsoever to the version found in stacks of conspiracy books and endless Internet information of anti-Masonic accusations.

Our exploration of the world of conspiracies and secret societies after working on the book about Freemasons led to extended discussions with Wiley’s For Dummies folks, and the proposal for this book grew and grew as our research became more extensive.

Researching a book about conspiracy theories and secret societies is a frustrating experience, most notably because it’s all supposed to be a secret. But it’s a balancing act, as well. Too little skepticism risks falling down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole into a twisted wonderland of circular logic, but too much skepticism risks overlooking something critical that may become tomorrow’s tragic headline. We talk a lot in this book about secretive and suspicious groups that are at the center of conspiracy theories around the world, but we also let you know what you can do to spot truly malevolent secret societies and tell the real conspiracies from the fakes.

About This Book

For the millions of people who are true believers in their own favorite conspiracy theories, the type of information we cover in this book is all very important. Of course we feel that the material is important, but you don’t have to read it in order. This book is intended to be a reference for you, so you don’t need to read the chapters in order from front cover to back (even though we suggest it). So if you want to read about all the secret societies before you read about the conspiracy theories, or vice versa, that’s fine with us. It’s all interesting stuff!

Moreover, just because you may not believe the overwhelming majority of the conspiracies cited in this book, it doesn’t make them all wrong. There have been real conspiracies in the world, as well as real secret societies that were seeking to accomplish real evil. Or amass power. Or money. Or both. We try to separate fluff, fear, and fantasy from the facts, and we endeavor to present them with a minimum of personal commentary so you can decide for yourself.

But there’s a much more vital reason we’ve come to feel this book is important, and it’s not because we believe the world is about to end in an ultimate showdown between the forces of Good and Evil. No, it’s a lot simpler than that. It’s a question of what can happen when the lit match of a fiery, professional conspiracist touches off the powder keg of a susceptible believer.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book is unconventional in a whole lot of ways, but we do follow a few rules:

We italicize new terms, closely followed by an easy-to-understand definition. You also see names secret societies in italics.

We bold important keywords in bulleted lists as well as the action parts of numbered lists.

We use monofont for all Web addresses.

What You’re Not To Read

This is a reference book, which means no one is going to whack your hands with a ruler if they catch you skipping ahead. In particular, anything marked with a Technical Stuff icon (more about those below) may make your eyes glaze over from information overload. Not that it isn’t interesting, but feel free to skip ahead if you find yourself getting woozy.

Foolish Assumptions

We don’t know most of you, but we make a few assumptions about you and why you picked up this book:

You’re confused and want the unvarnished scoop on secret societies and conspiracy theories. You’ve watched the History Channel documentaries on codes, conspiracies, and secret societies until your eyes have swollen shut. This book puts it all together for you. It gives you the tools to tell the difference between the big players, the small fries, the truly scary stuff, and the piles of pernicious piffle.

You’re a complete skeptic. All the rumors about the Illuminati, UFOs, and underground government bunkers beneath the Denver Airport strike you as balderdash from a weak X-Files episode. We separate fact from fiction and let you know when to really put on your tinfoil helmet.

You’re a true believer. You just know that at any minute black helicopters are going to land on your lawn and the Men In Black will bash down your door. We’re here to help you sort through all the conspiracies. We’ll help you come to grips with what’s real, what’s made up, who made it up, and why.

You’re a member of what the rest of the world calls a “secret society” and you want to know why everyone is talking behind your back. Does everybody shut up when you walk into the room? Is your daughter asking why people on the Internet claim you’re the spawn of Satan. We examine the origins of secret societies and the more benign groups that have become the major suspects in the New World Order.

How This Book Is Organized

If you just plowed in here without bothering to look at the neatly organized Table of Contents, we don’t mind. We prefer you to start at the top, but we won’t call out the black helicopter guys if you don’t. We’re about to tell you all the important stuff about the way this book is laid out. It’s chopped up into four neatly packaged parts, and you can read them in any order.

Part I: Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies: The Improbable Wedded to the Inscrutable

About 99.9 percent of all respectable conspiracy theories are tied hand and foot to some sort of secret society or organization. This part lays out easy-to-understand models, with no cryptic double talk about all the “theys” out there, and all the dark conspiracies behind them. Chapter 1 is an overview of the world of conspiracies and secret societies, while Chapters 2 and 3 get down to the nuts and bolts of defining and identifying them.

Part II: A Colossal Compilation of Conspiracy Theories

This part covers the best and the brightest in terms of conspiracy theories — from the sublime to the ridiculous. Chapter 4 discusses some of the most common theories, the conspiracies so secret that everybody knows about them. Chapter 5 is the hit parade of, well, hits — conspiracies related to famous assassinations. Chapter 6 covers the range of race, genocide, and apocalyptic doom, just to bring a little cheerlessness to your humdrum life. Chapter 7 covers conspiracies not of this Earth — from Roswell to the Moon-landing hoaxes. And finally, Chapter 8 covers the unsettling growth of the ever-wilder 9/11 conspiracies.

Part III: Secret Societies and Societies with Secrets

You can’t tell the players without a program. This part exposes the major secret societies of the last century and a half — the ones that still haunt every conspiracist cubbyhole in the bookstore and on the Internet. Chapter 9 discusses the Freemasons, the world’s least kept secret society, and Chapter 10 ventures into the world of Rosicrucian and occult groups, while Chapter 11 explores the origin and modern incarnations of the Illuminati. Chapter 12 delves into the tales of secret societies of assassins like the, well, Assassins, along with the Invisible Empire, the Ku Klux Klan, and other hate groups. In Chapter 13 you find a gallery of both frivolous and frightening secret societies, from the golden age of fraternalism and college groups, to a lineup of military and revolutionary cabals. And Chapter 14 rounds out the list with the criminal underground and the godfather of all secret societies, the Mafia.

Part IV: The Part of Tens

A For Dummies book wouldn’t feel right without the Part of Tens — chapters divided into quaint lists of ten items of importance. In this part, we serve you ten conspiracy theories that skirted the edge of madness; ten conspiracy theories that really turned out to be true; ten secret societies with the goofiest names; and ten of the drop-dead weirdest secret societies of all time.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, you spot certain icons hanging around in the margins. They’re there to help you navigate the conspiracies, conspiracists, and conspiratorial plots.

This icon indicates little-known or “unusual” information or facts that were originally kept secret. Consider the info in these icons to come from a legendary group or inner circle of an all-seeing, all-knowing Master within any number of secret societies. Think of him as the Mister Know It All on all things secret or conspiratorial.

This icon marks key points that are vital to understanding truly important topics. Don’t skip them!

This icon highlights stuff like additional data or side trips with more detail than you may be interested in. They can be ruthlessly skipped without missing the really important topics of the chapters.

This icon gives you handy tidbits and helpful advice.

This book stinks with conspiracies. It’s loaded with them. They’re all over the place. This icon points out the ones that are the bedrock of conspiracy thinking — either the most important allegations, the best known, or in some cases, the most ridiculous.

Where to Go from Here

The best part of a For Dummies book is that you can start at page 1, or you can go all the way to the Part of Tens and read the book backwards. So, start with any chapter you want. Each chapter and section is pretty much self-contained, and if we think there’s stuff you should’ve read about in order, we warn you and cross-reference other chapters as those instances pop up.

A ForDummies book isn’t supposed to be the last book you pick up on a subject — it should be the first. But we hope that what you ultimately say about this book is that we’ve lifted the veil on topics you may have only vaguely heard of and presented you with enough facts to make up your own mind, or to study further. Or to just creep out your relatives.

Part I

Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies: The Improbable Wedded to the Inscrutable

In this part . . .

About 99.9 percent of all respectable conspiracy theories are tied hand and foot to some sort of secret society or organization. This secret society or organization is the they, as in “they hid the wrecked alien spacecraft in Roswell in 1947.” This section lays out easy-to-understand models, with no cryptic double talk, about all the “theys” out there, and all the dark conspiracies behind them.

Chapter 1

Everything You Know Is Wrong

In This Chapter

Believing the unbelievable: The age of conspiracy theories and secret societies

Figuring out what’s worth believing

Touring the world, one conspiracy at a time

Journalist H. L. Mencken once said, “The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”

A conspiracy theory is the idea that someone, or a group of someones, acts secretly, with the goal of achieving power, wealth, influence, or other benefit. It can be as small as two petty thugs conspiring to stickup a liquor store, or as big as a group of revolutionaries conspiring to take over their country’s government. Individuals, corporations, churches, politicians, military leaders, and entire governments can all be conspirators, in plots as evil as secretly developing nuclear weapons, as creepy as smuggling stolen human transplant organs, or as annoying as cornering the market on neighborhood $4-coffee joints.

The conspiracy theory is absolutely inseparable from the secret society. They go together like Minneapolis and St. Paul. Face it: Everyone hates secrets. You didn’t like it when the kids kept secrets from you in gym class, and you’ve never gotten over it. Neither have we.

Secret societies are the repositories of the hidden knowledge that spins the conspiracy theory. But the term secret society covers a lot of ground — everything from college fraternities and the lodge your grandpa belonged to, to the lesser known, powerful groups that stay out of the eyes of the press, like the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the legendary Illuminati (if they really exist at all).

This chapter begins the process of teaching you how to tell the truth from the manure, at least where conspiracy theories and secret societies are concerned. Throughout this book, we also set out to simplify what at least sounds staggeringly confusing. We clarify conspiracy theories that are coming at you from all sides nowadays on everything from the Mafia running the Vatican to aliens landing in New Mexico (or is it the aliens in the Vatican and the Mafia in New Jersey?). Consider this chapter your warm-up exercise!

Living in the Age of Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies

The popularity of the conspiracy theory as a way of explaining society and world events is a pretty recent phenomena, a product of the time since the French Revolution of 1789, which was the first real marriage of paranoia and the printing press. But it’s just within the last 40 years that the philosophy of conspiracism has become like a wall of noise, an assault on the collective consciousness, and the most common way to explain complex world events. In many respects, conspiracies are a way of simplifying history into good and bad, right and wrong.

A conspiracy theory is a way of looking at a single event and postulating that maybe there’s a lot more to it than can be seen on the surface, with darker forces behind the whole thing. Conspiracism expands on this, becoming an entire philosophy, as a way of viewing the world. For the professional conspiracist, a person who studies the conspiracies, there isn’t much going on in the world that doesn’t have darker forces behind it, from the price of a gallon of gasoline to the three ounces of hand lotion you can’t ever seem to extract from the bottom of a 16-ounce bottle. Of course, in a way, even the term conspiracism is too respectable to apply to much of what is floating around the Internet and the tabloids these days. Since the middle of the last century, academic, postmodernist researchers have found it fashionable to refer to all psychological states and moods in German. It’s a Sigmund Freud thing. Author Thom Burnett in the Conspiracy Encyclopedia (2005, Chamberlain Bros.) points out that the Germans have a great term, Verschworungsmythos, which means Conspiracy Myth, and in many ways, it has lots to recommend it as a descriptive label.

“Perhaps the conspiracy world is an updated version of ancient myths,” Burnett says, “where monsters and the gods of Olympus and Valhalla have been replaced by aliens and the Illuminati of Washington and Buckingham Palace.” In other words, the new wave of jitters over conspiracies and secret societies has beaten up the zeitgeist with their weltschmerz over weltpolitik (the spirit of our times has had the crap kicked out of it by anxiety over global domination). See, we can do the German thing too. Gesundheit.

What makes the study of conspiracy theories and secret societies unusual is, when boiled down to their most common elements, the overwhelming majority have grown or been adapted from the same few original sources. Historian Daniel Pipes has said that almost all conspiracy theories have as their origin the same two boogeymen — Jews and secret societies, most notably the Freemasons. They have simply been recycled and renamed, again and again, as events have transpired over the last 250 years.

For example, if you take almost any conspiracy about the Jews from the 19th century, and erase “Jews” and substitute “military-industrial complex” or “neocons,” you find that very same theory in dozens of books and on hundreds of Web sites about the sinister forces behind the 9/11 “conspiracy.” In many ways, it shows a criminal lack of originality. On the other hand, conspiracists would claim, plots around the world and the evildoers who engage in them haven’t changed much over the centuries. They’ve only gotten more ambitious.

What’s Worth Scrutinizing, and What’s Not

Between books, the Internet, and cable television, the average American comes into contact with a lot of ideas that are no longer sifted through “established media.” A bigger and bigger chunk of these ideas challenges the status quo — the beliefs of stodgy academics and of society in general. Such thoughts also assert that organizations, from the government to the Illuminati (see Chapter 11), are in cahoots to make sure that no one yet knows the truth. But just because an appealing idea comes from the “alternative’ media instead of the mouths of TV anchors or White House spokesmen doesn’t always make it true.

As professional conspiracists write book after book, raking in the money faster than they can count it, most care very little about the confusion and fear they leave behind. Internet Web-meisters who peddle this stuff care even less. But we care about it, a lot. Don’t fear — you can acquire the skills you need to digest it all and discern the information. In Chapter 2, in particular, we help you decide between information that’s worth paying attention to and information you should ignore, and why.

Connecting the dots

There’s a very important point about exploring conspiracy theories. It is not enough to just lay out facts or events, like dots on a page, and scream “aha!” at the mere “fact,” for example, that over 100 people “involved” in the assassination of John F. Kennedy are dead. “Involved” often meaning as little as they were standing in the crowd in Dallas. It’s been almost 40 years, and of the thousands of people peripherally involved in the case, it’s not a big shock for more than 100 of them to have died. Now, if 75 of them had been wrapped in plastic and duct tape and dumped into a Dallas reservoir, you might have something.

The point we are making is that a box full of random dots is meaningless. To be a true theory worth considering, the dots have to be connected. And to be taken seriously, a conspiracy theory has to connect those dots convincingly and with some irrefutable proof.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Three may keep a secret when two are dead.” When you’re confronted by a conspiracy that requires the military or the government or literally thousands of covert insiders around the world to keep a Very Big Secret for tens, or hundreds, of years, and just one lone “courageous” warrior steps forward with an outlandish tale that no one else backs up, it’s time to turn on your alarm system again. Courage could be vanity, and honesty merely accusation or sour grapes or revenge.

What is proof?

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. Since about 24 hours afterwards, the world has been trying to find out the details about the conspiracy behind it. (And there was a conspiracy — for more on that, see Chapter 5.) Interest in the plot has come and gone over the years, most recently in the 2007 film National Treasure II: The Book of Secrets, which prominently featured the discovery of the missing pages of assassin John Wilkes Booth’s diary. And there really are missing pages — historians just aren’t sure why.

One of the hundreds of books we consulted during this project was a bit nostalgic —The Lincoln Conspiracy (Schick Sun Classic Books) by David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier. (This book was parent to the Sunn Classics film of the same name that did remarkably well in theaters in 1977.)

Like most conspiracy books, The Lincoln Conspiracy has many footnotes and an impressively long bibliography. But, also like most conspiracy literature, it’s a circular citing process, with conspiracists endlessly referring to one another’s work (see Chapter 2 for more on this phenomenon). Despite their abundant cribbing from an earlier conspiracist work from the 1930s by an Austrian chemist named Otto Eisenschiml, the authors claimed to be the only investigators in history who’d ever gotten the story of Lincoln’s assassination right. They also seemed to have connected with an amazing number of documents to back up their version of events, papers, and diaries that had slipped past mere mortal historians.

The book’s opening pages were touting these various miraculous discoveries, as well as the severe scientific methodology they had put to use in their quest. They claimed this was especially true of their discovery of the missing pages of Booth’s diary, a set of documents “worth up to $1 million dollars.” Wow! But when you read on carefully, you come across the following astonishing statement:

The authors acquired a full transcript of the contents of the missing pages and had the contents evaluated by historical experts, but have not been able to acquire copies of the actual pages to authenticate the handwriting.

What these guys are saying is that they haven’t even seen copies of the actual “million dollar” diary pages on which they’ve built just about the entire thesis of their book. It is this typical amateur detective work, backed up with hearsay, innuendo, and rumor that makes so many conspiracists so hard to take seriously.

Being skeptical about speculative thinking

Most theories, from the Kennedy assassination to Jesus-having-a-wife books, share the title of “alternative” histories, or “speculative” works. The word speculative is the key point here. Because once people start speculating, it becomes your job, to a great degree, to speculate, as well.

For example, in the mental gymnastics of the folks who love to tell you that ancient space aliens were responsible for the Egyptian Sphinx, or that the huge carvings called the Nazca Lines in Peru had to have been done by someone able to fly over the countryside, there’s just a wisp of contempt for that most amazing of all tools, the human mind. There’s an attitude that ancient man was just too, well, primitive (for primitive, read stupid) to have been able to build something on that scale.

The same sort of “speculative” thinking goes into more modern creations, like crop circles (see Chapter 7). Admittedly, many crop circles are astonishing as well as dramatic. But are they the watermarks of alien spaceships or superior extraterrestrial technology? All that’s required to make a crop circle is a two-by-four and a rudimentary understanding of mathematics and geometry. Just as we were writing this chapter, a “crop circle” was discovered in New Jersey in the shape of a swastika. Somehow we doubt it was a message left to us from visitors from Alpha Centauri.

The Conspiracism World Tour

Where conspiracy theories are concerned, there’s nothing particularly weird about our own time when you take a look back at history. Consider, for example, these items from the early years of U.S. history:

George Washington, a Freemason, was edgy about the possible infiltration of the Illuminati (see Chapter 11) during his presidency.

Many people believed Thomas Jefferson was secretly a member of the Illuminati.

After killing former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel, Vice President Aaron Burr really did hatch a conspiracy to wrestle control of the western territories away from the U.S. so he could be king of a new empire in the West (see Chapter 17).

Economists and people nervous about financial dealings on a global scale have been shoveling grim and prophetic jeremiads about the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank, since its very creation, as being a hotbed of chicanery controlled by capitalist titans.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Chapter 5) resulted in a nationwide search for conspirators, both real and imagined, a lot of whom were hanged.

But, while there have been conspiracists throughout history, the 20th century seems to have been the biggest incubator for them. As we show you in the next sections, the 20th century was a particularly intense period that led to clammy hands over secret societies, coverups, and intrigues.

The birth of 20th-century U.S. conspiracism

During World War II, the U.S. government routinely hid secret missions and programs (along with military failures) as part of the war effort. It was vital to keep the national mood focused on winning. And the general belief of Americans was that government secrecy was a good thing: “Loose lips sink ships.” Secrecy was patriotic. The government and the military were supposed to be keeping secrets.

After the war, the U.S. engaged in a nuclear stare-down with the Soviets, who were devouring countries all over Eastern Europe and had sworn to get around to us eventually. The stakes were very high.

Most Americans don’t know how close the U.S. came to getting nuked by the Axis powers during WWII, when a sub with a dirty nuclear bomb, a joint German-Japanese endeavor, was literally on its way to San Francisco when the war ended. Then, less than five years after the explosion of the atomic bombs over Japan, Soviet scientists had their own full-blown nuclear bombs, and much of the technology had been stolen from U.S. laboratories and developed in Russia by former Nazi scientists.

While the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the bombastic Senator Joe McCarthy made headlines in the 1950s peering under the sheets for Commies in Hollywood, ferreting out the deep political thoughts of Gary Cooper, the truth was that there really were Communist agents across the United States, funding subversive anti-American groups, spying on military and scientific installations, and infiltrating U.S. intelligence organizations like the CIA.

The Communist Party of the United States was no independent organization of starry-eyed idealists. By the 1970s they were receiving $3 million a year from the Soviet Union and had aided the Soviet Secret Police (KGB) throughout the 1940s and ’50s in recruiting spies.

High-profile spying trials, such as the trials of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Alger Hiss (who were, in spite of claims to the contrary, all guilty of Soviet espionage), kept Americans looking outward for conspiracies. But that was about to change, drastically, and the threat to our way of life suddenly seemed to be from within.

JFK on secrecy

One of the most commonly printed quotes about secrecy and secret societies in the U.S. was made by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. It is frequently used by conspiracists to show that Americans distrust secret societies:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.

Of course, like any sound bite, the part that gets left out is that Kennedy was actually giving a Cold War–era speech in favor of secrecy. He was asking a ballroom filled with newspaper publishers to keep their mouths shut about U.S. government activities and to not print anything in their papers that might give “our enemies” an advantage. On the one hand, he blasted the Soviet Union for controlling its press with an iron hand. On the other hand, he sounded pretty envious of their power to do it.

The psychedelic ’70s: Conspiracism peaks

To understand the explosion of conspiracism that has happened over the last four decades, you need to understand just a little of why the 1970s were the turning point.

While famous conspiracies were alleged in the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, most sociologists hang the modern growth and acceptance of conspiracy theories on the Vietnam War era and the Watergate-related events under President Richard Nixon. The government was starting to get caught engaging in old-fashioned, WWII-type secrecy to cover up military blunders in Cuba under President Kennedy and in Vietnam under President Lyndon Johnson.

Distrust peaked during the second term of Richard Nixon, stoked by his own infamous antagonism over the press and what he regarded as “subversive elements.”

The Pentagon Papers

In 1971, The New York Times published a stack of reports leaked from the Defense Department, famously known as The Pentagon Papers. The top-secret reports were written in 1967 and outlined how the Johnson administration secretly expanded the Vietnam War, while lying to the public and pretending to seek strategic advice from diplomats, as well as engaging in “false flag” operations — staged raids supposedly from the Viet Cong.

The revelations came three years after Johnson had left office, but they helped turn the tide of public opinion against the war. This bitterness only worsened under his successor, Richard Nixon.

None dare call it conspiracy

Gary Allen and Larry Abraham’s 1971 book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, was a watermark for conspiracy “literature.” Closely associated with the right-wing John Birch Society, they trace world events, from the Russian Revolution up through the Nixon administration and purport that history has been controlled by an elite cabal of international bankers.

This was the book that put the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderbergers on the conspiracists’ map (see Chapter 15). All the suspects that have dominated the genre ever since were collected in this book — the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Jewish bankers, Cecil Rhodes, and the Rockefellers. It also raises the alarm over the printing of worthless paper money, fears over gun control, and puppet presidential candidates who are the willing stooges of the New World Order regardless of party affiliation.

In search of . . . conspiracies

After the Watergate scandals erupted in 1973, the general consensus of a once-trusting American public changed, drastically. The nation had seen their president spying on the opposition party and lying about it, and the military engaging in maneuvering war to their own ends. The vice president and the attorney general had been proven to be liars and crooks. The Vietnam War limped to an end, and U.S. troops were pulled out without achieving victory — the first loss of a war in American history. Suddenly, and sadly, the Leave It To Beaver TV universe of only 15 years before seemed absurd to a newly cynical nation.

Influenced by this almost universal sense of suspicion, the 1970s saw an explosion of books, movies, and TV shows about conspiracies. The first books about the purported UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1946 appeared in the mid-1970s (see Chapter 7), 30 years after the fact. The filmmakers at Sunn Classic Pictures were raking it in with over a dozen conspiracist films in that decade.

Even television got into the act, and the series In Search Of . . . covered similar topics, narrated by the most trusted, logical, and world-famous scientist of our time, Star Trek’s Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy). It was the generation that grew up with these influences that went on to create shows like The X-Files in the 1990s and to fashion for conspiracism an aura of brave and indefatigable truth in the face of powerful, dangerous enemies.

Conspiracy theories aren’t limited to the USA!

America doesn’t have the corner on the paranoia market when it comes to distrust of secret groups and the creation of conspiracy theories. Take a taste off the international menu:

Canada has its own Roswell (see Chapter 7), called Shag Harbor.

Israel has its own Kennedy assassination (see Chapter 5) in the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The British believe that everyone from Princess Diana to UN weapons inspector David Kelly was murdered by the government.

The Italians have their own Bilderbergers (see Chapter 15) in their Club of Rome.

The French believe that the Freemasons (see Chapter 9) are behind everything.

Throughout Central Asia and in parts of South America it is commonly believed that children are stolen from orphanages to harvest their internal organs for sale to the highest bidders in a bizarre medical “black market.” Variations of the tale in India claim “thousands” of stolen human kidneys are shipped each year to rich patients in the Middle East.

In some Islamic nations, conspiracy theories about Jews poisoning kids’ bubble gum or tainting vaccines get printed on the front page of major metropolitan newspapers (see Chapter 6).

Such nervousness does seem to flourish best in democracies and free societies. Tyrants, fascist dictatorships, and totalitarian regimes lock down all information sources because they really are controlled by internal conspiracies and secret government agencies.

Writer Christopher Hitchens calls conspiracy theories “the exhaust fumes of democracy,” and that’s as good a phrase as any. It’s the bad part of the free use of information, and that’s the abuse of information.

A Word About Skepticism

There’s an old bit of bumper sticker philosophy that says “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” In a post-9/11 world, conspiracies don’t seem to be so far-fetched anymore. This real-life conspiracy played itself out on our TV screens. The result was the death of thousands of innocent civilians, and in the aftermath, everyone saw terrorist madman Osama Bin Laden take credit for it and the evidence unfold of the planning by his suicidal henchmen.

Then the conspiracy theorists stepped in and told everyone not to believe the evidence or common sense. The 9/11 conspiracy books started to come out, and dark hints of conspiracy showed up on various TV and radio commentaries. Somehow, right under our noses, the entire tone of the debate had changed.

In the world of the conspiracy theorist, loose bands of like-minded terrorists like Al-Qaeda can’t possibly be smart enough, rich enough, devious enough, organized enough, or big enough to pull off such an attack, right? Besides, who’s Al-Qaeda, anyway? No one had ever heard of them.

Many people thought someone else must be behind the 9/11 attacks, someone in the wings, someone bigger, someone pulling the strings as part of a vast, worldwide plan for global “control.” So, according to the conspiracy theorists, why waste the most dramatic event of the century on a bunch of terrorists armed with 89-cent box cutters or on their handlers hiding out in a cave half a world away? It had to have really been the CIA. Or the president. Or the military-industrial complex. Or the Freemasons. Or the reptilian aliens of the ancient Babylonian Bloodline. . . .

Of course, there really are conspiracies out there. It’s just human nature, the same human nature Chapter 3 discusses, that yearns to form secret societies. It’s also human nature that some bully boy in Iraq, some artist in Vienna, or some revolutionary in Chile believes that he was destined to rule the biggest chunk of the world he can lay his hands on, or at least enthrall masses of adoring followers. In the hands of a dictator, conspiracies are great for blinding people while you grab power. It’s like pointing and shouting, “Look over there!” while you steal all the poker chips. Yet, all the real conspiracies in the world may not have the potential for damage to culture that lies in believing that everything is a conspiracy. It’s not a healthy world view.

Chapter 2

Conspiracism and the Origin of Modern Conspiracy Theories

In This Chapter

Discovering the world of conspiracy

Figuring out conspiratorial names

Classifying conspiracy types

Detecting the lies in theories

In London’s Hyde Park, there’s a place called Speaker’s Corner, where anyone can preach or shriek anything they like, as long as they keep it clean. There have been some famous and brilliant people who’ve made speeches there, and there have been an awful lot of cranks, wackos, and madmen in the park, too. Aye, there’s the rub. How do you tell the difference between a cautionary reporter of impending calamity from a madman off his meds?

At one time, conspiracists, those who saw the dark hand of conspiracy in just about everything, were dressed in a white jacket that laced up the back with really, really long sleeves. Now, they have become respectable, even influential — or at least New York Times best-selling authors. There’s no doubt that, apart from simply being a facet of human nature, conspiracy theories rise and fall in volume along with national tension.

This chapter examines the anatomy of conspiracy theories and the history of the first conspiracy theories to really catch on in a big way, and it delves into the tactics used by half-baked conspiracists to lead you to a conclusion that just isn’t so. After reading this chapter, when some guy on TV tells you to just “connect the dots,” in order to sell you his book, you should be able to determine whether this gentleman has oatmeal where his brains should be.

Defining and Recognizing Conspiracism

Simply put, a conspiracy theory is the notion that someone, or an organized group of people, is acting secretly with evil intent. Police and courts often charge criminals with conspiracy to commit a crime — a bad guy or a group of his buddies meet and plan to commit theft, kidnapping, havoc, or mayhem against other citizens. Conspiracy is a crime in and of itself.

The word conspire comes from the Latin word, conspirare, which literally means “to breathe together,” and probably grew out of the idea of plotters whispering together — there were plenty of plots to go around in ancient Rome.

Boiled down to their simplest ingredients, conspiracy theories attempt to identify a struggle between good and evil, but on a much grander, and often worldwide, scale. Like bad guys in a James Bond movie, conspiracy theories can and often do go global and involve supercriminals, evil geniuses, megalomaniacal trillionaires, satanic demons, or even alien invaders who are hell-bent on owning everything or controlling everything or destroying everything (society, religion, economics, racial groups, or a combination of all of them).

Conspiracies are thought to exist so a small class or category of schemers can create a situation — politically, militarily, economically, or just through sheer snobbery — that works solely to serve their own self interests.

One small point on terminology before going any further: Many writers have written books about conspiracy theories, and for many of them, the very term conspiracy theory is a put-down, as is calling someone a conspiracytheorist. We don’t feel that way. “Tinfoil hat-wearing moon bat” is more our idea of a put-down. When we use the terms conspiracism or, when speaking of a single person, a conspiracist, we’re talking about people who claim to identify conspiracies. The terms themselves don’t imply whether we believe them or not.

Just what is conspiracism?

In the last two centuries, and particularly in the last 50 years or so, people the world over have embraced conspiracism. When we refer to a conspiracy, we mean an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned conspiracy, as defined by the dictionary — a plot by some dark and nefarious characters to do something sinister or evil.

In its milder forms, conspiracism isn’t too bad. You know what we mean — the kind of guy who’s perfectly sane, yet he’s absolutely convinced that the price of everything he buys is controlled by some tiny cartel of bankers in New York or Geneva. Or maybe he thinks that the United Nations wants to take over the U.S. government. Or that National Security Agency spies are tracking his movements through a microchip in his neck inserted when he had his tonsils out.

The problem is that, as this sort of thinking has become more and more common, it’s spawned a new sort of social commentator and a new sort of world view, seeing every major world event through the dark filter of conspiracism.

The universe of conspiracism isn’t a random place where things happen for no reason. As Michael Barkun puts it in his book, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (University of California Press):

Nothing happens by accident: Everything that happens in the world is intentional, by someone’s (or something’s) Grand Design.

Nothing is as it seems: Whoever or whatever is in control disguises their role and their identity. In fact, they go out of their way to look innocent, deflect blame, or just plain hide.

Everything is connected: Because of an intricate, evil design that allows for no accidents, there’s no such thing as a coincidence, and the patterns of evil forces are all interconnected with each other. Therefore, the right type of person can see these patterns of numbers, designs, events, or activities everywhere, once they know what to look for (see the sidebar “Fnord”).

This last bit is important, because in most conspiracy theories a thread of insistence exists that only certain, truly enlightened people can see the truth behind the secret plots. Most conspiracies are, so the thinking goes, invisible to the vast majority of sheeplike citizens who go grazing through the pasture of life, never suspecting the evil wolves lurking behind the rocks of everyday occurrences.

In a way, conspiracism can be comforting to true believers, because it removes the scary notion of randomness from the universe. For some, conspiracies can seem like an extension of religious faith, with God and Satan locked in a struggle for supremacy on Earth. In fact, many conspiracists are strongly connected to a belief in the coming of the end of the world. After a specific series of world events happens, these “millenialists” believe, those events will usher in Armageddon, the final battle between the forces of good and evil on earth (more on this in Chapter 6).

Conspiracism and secret societies

Something else that’s bound up hand and foot with conspiracism is, of course, the secret society. In fact, most of the popular conspiracy theories aren’t as new as you may think, and they can be traced back either to a fear of the Jews or a fear of secret societies. We go into more detail about generalities involving these groups in Chapter 3.

It’s important here to bring up secret societies’ role in the majority of conspiracy theories, because wherever there’s conspiracism, there’s always the fear of some tightknit group of “theys” who really know the score. These groups can be anyone — the World Bank, the Bilderbergers, the Freemasons (all of whom have their own sections in this book — see the index). These groups are the very breath of life to conspiracism, and the one can’t exist without the other.

Understanding How Conspiracists Think

In its most virulent forms, the fever of conspiracism can turn reality upside down. Dealing with the conspiracist, amateur or professional, is a lot like dealing with somebody who’s part of a religious cult. In fact, if you keep it up, they’ll probably accuse you of being part of the conspiracy.

A big part of the mindset of conspiracism is that all facts are malleable, all of them changeable in the right hands, none of them to be trusted. Like the cult member, conspiracists believe what they believe because they believe it, and they don’t like to be challenged. In fact, challenges to this sort of thinking tend to bring out the worst in the conspiracist, which is why there’s so little difference between a “conspiracist” and someone who’s just plain paranoid.

To the conspiracy theorist, the world is locked in a battle between a good Us and a bad Them, whoever They happen to be. The battle may be spiritual, physical, economic, or philosophical — or a combination of all of them. The worst part is, Them is often portrayed as a small group, a tight group, who really knows what’s going on, and Us takes the part of a herd of mindless cattle, being manipulated and too stupid to know they’re being duped. Being a conspiracist doesn’t require a love of mankind. In fact, the position is made to order for people who hate or mistrust humankind (called misanthropes).

As Daniel Pipes points out in his book Conspiracy, someone who indulges in conspiracism doesn’t necessarily go off the deep end, but it happens often enough to give one pause. Question reality often enough, and you have no sense of it left at all. This loss of reality, combined with mild to severe paranoia, can make you see enemies everywhere. British conspiracist and anti-Semite Nesta Webster took a gun with her every time she answered the door; Joseph Stalin, by the end of his days in absolute power, had people shot just for looking at him the wrong way.

Oliver Stone, director of the 1991 film JFK (see Chapter 5), once said, “Paranoids have the facts.” But he also said, “Who owns reality? Who owns your mind? I’ve come to have severe doubts about Columbus, about Washington, about the Civil War being fought over slavery, about World War I, about World War II and the supposed fight against Nazism and Japanese control of resources . . . I don’t even know if I was born or who my parents were.”

Shall we dance to the left or the right?

Conspiracists cross the political spectrum, and, in the process, sort of create their own party. In other words, from Holocaust deniers to Oliver Stone, they have the same process in their thinking. Now, Holocaust deniers tend to be right-wing and anti-Semitic, and would probably be deeply offended to be told they had anything at all in common with left-wing Hollywood director Stone. Yet, in the paranoid pattern of their thinking, they’re one and the same.

Hates are justifiable and grudges eternal, evil embodied by anyone who denies the shining light of the truth they hold. For conspiracists, conspiracies are behind most of history’s major events, even conspiracies involving so many people that they could fill the Seattle Kingdome. This, combined with an absolute allergic reaction to facts, is a dangerous combination. They trust no one apart from fellow travelers, and little enough in them.

Lack of proof is the proof

For the conspiracist, evidence is the hobgoblin of little minds. Looking for evidence is an annoyance, because for the true believer, the lack of proof is the proof of the conspiracy itself.

Lack of evidence proves that powerful forces are seeing to it that evidence never sees the light of day. But if evidence does come to light and refutes the claims of a professional conspiracist, he can turn it around to his advantage.

Such evidence is simply more proof that the conspirators are frightened of the conspiracists and are working overtime to cover their tracks by creating plausible, but utterly false, data. After all, so the argument goes, these evil forces control the media, business, banks, universities, governments, and all-you-can-eat buffets; obviously, the real truth will never come out. They will invent and plant new evidence to make their accusers look discredited — or ridiculous — which is a waste of time, because they can do that all on their own.

What the behaviorists say

Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other people who study the pathology of conspiracy theorists have come up with a raft of behavior categories:

Apophenia: