We all have unconventional beliefs, but some of them are more conventional than others. Most people would not fault you for admitting to a belief in a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, and many Americans believe that the US government has actively tried to prevent knowledge about UFOs and extra-terrestrials from reaching the public. There are some beliefs, however, that you will probably always get a strange look for, and I will guide you along a humorous romp through ten of the best. Make sure you have your tinfoil hat on for this!
10. David Icke’s Reptilian Overlords.
David Icke was formerly a somewhat respectable fellow. He was a soccer player for one of Britain’s best teams, and also became a national sportscaster with the BBC, and a leading speaker for the British Green Party. All of this began to unravel in the early nineties, however, when he announced that he was the “Son of God,” and a “channel for the Christ spirit.”
Since those halcyon days, Icke has become a spokesperson for the wackiest of weirdos. He has garnered praise from all spectrums of extremity – few people can say that they have earned respect from both New Age environmental extremists and racist right-wing militias, but Icke can.
The thing about Icke is that he believes in a global conspiracy of enormous proportions, very much like the New World Order that the American Far Right warns about. While he admits that certain Jewish families are in charge of the whole operation, he refutes and apparently resents the implication that he is an anti-Semite for noting this ‘fact.’
This is because, naturally, they are not Jews at all. Like most other powerful people, these wealthy Jews are members of a secret blood-drinking shape-changing alien race that has infiltrated humanity, and enslaved it with lies and manipulations. The usual suspects are rounded up into the reptilian shapeshifter camp – G.W. Bush is said to be a member of this elusive species, as is Queen Elizabeth and the rest of her Royal Family. Oddly, even Boxcar Willie, the country-singing hobo, is implicated.
Surprisingly, Icke is very well published, having written over twenty books on the subjects of extremist conspiracy, environmental apocalypse, and New Age theology. If you are a glutton for punishment, or if you’re very gullible and looking for a new belief system, you can check him out here.
9.Black Helicopters of Impending Doom.
Speaking of Far-Right militia groups as we were, it would be remiss of me not to mention a favorite fascination among certain American organizations. These groups, as noted, tend to believe in a world-wide conspiracy that our government is a willing part of – but they also have a strange fascination with unmarked black helicopters. The claim originated from an interview with “Mark from Michigan,” on Tom Valentine’s radio show. Mark, and others after him, claimed that these unmarked black helicopters were flying low over American cities in training missions, to prime them for their role in assisting foreign occupiers (particularly, the UN) with subduing fellow citizens when the time comes for total world domination.
This idea has shown up time and time again since those early days, and even made a surprise appearance on the Congressional floor when Idaho Republican Helen Chenoweth claimed that Idahoan ranchers were being visited by unmarked black helicopters manned by the Environmental Protection Agency, who were there to enforce the Endangered Species Act. The EPA, for its part, responded by noting that it doesn’t own any agency helicopters, and further, that it had never operated any in the state of Idaho.
Anti-authoritarian extremists aren’t the only ones that see these phantom black helicopters, however. Numerous other sightings exist, and the explanations range from the spiritual to the extra-terrestrial. On a particularly bizzarre note, many instances of ominous helicopters have been reported along with cases of cattle mutilation – a link that is rather hard to explain.
8.New Orleans Levies Were Intentionally Destroyed During Hurricane Katrina.
In case anyone was afraid I would focus all of my attention on the Far Right, here’s a truly spectacular gem from the Far Left. According to this theory, FEMA and the Army colluded to dynamite New Orleans’ levies in an attempt to both kill African Americans, and to make Louisiana into a solid Republican red state. As all such theories, blame apparently lies at the feet of Karl Rove, the arch-villain of American liberals. Ignore the fact that Louisiana has been red for quite some time now, if you would.
Instead of the more ‘conventional’ idea that TNT was used to rupture the dam and that the hurricane was a natural occurrence exploited for maximum horror, there is also a belief among some groups that the Hurricane was engineered by greedy energy companies who have managed to harness the very power of Mother Nature herself, and are using it in such mundane applications as increasing the price of oil.
7.Kentucky Fried Chicken Is Owned by the KKK! Fast food chains seem to get a lot of bizzarre theories attached to them. For instance, it’s long been claimed that Domino’s Pizza supports an anti-abortion group, and that Fanta was invented by the Nazis. But the story about KFC takes this brand of urban legend to a new level, probably because of the sleek Southern gentility of its spokesperson, the ‘Colonel’ Sanders.
Legend has it that Colonel Sanders wrote a will that went into effect after his death in 1980, and that one of the clauses in this document was a demand that 10% of KFC’s profits be turned over to the Ku Klux Klan. Others go right to the source, and claim that the current owners of KFC are a secret front for the Klan itself, and so that (largely defunct) racist organization gets a majority share of the profits. The truth is that KFC is owned by the Yum! Corporation, which also owns such brands as Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, and A&W.; If they are a front group for the KKK, then they have a lot of people fooled!
6.Satanic Ritual Abuse.
This one is particularly fun, because a lot of actual, real-world hysteria has been sparked from it. The idea is that there is a nationwide network of evil Satanists who abduct, brainwash, and abuse children as part of their infernal religious rituals. Tales of SRA were particularly prevalent in the 1980s, when Americans over-reacted to various sensationalistic media reports. One in particular claimed that 40,000-60,000 people are murdered ritually in the US every year – the truth is that the number for ALL types of murder is much lower (only 16,500 in 2003).
Various organizations, including police forces, religious authorities, sociologists, and even the FBI, have organized the supposed claims of widespread organized ritual Satanic abuse, and they have found absolutely no evidence to support the theory after many years of searching. One of the reasons for this widespread moral panic seems to have been a reliance on children as witnesses. Like in the day-care center molestation scare that happened almost concurrently, many of the techniques used to interrogate these young ‘victims’ produced false results. As children are very easily influenced and readily do things to please adults in authority, they answered various ‘yes and no’ questions in ways that the investigators hoped they would.
The SRA panic also had a profound impact on things like the roleplaying game industry, and that aspect of it still remains. Many religious people are reluctant to allow their children to play games like D&D;, because of the idea that it is a recruitment tool used by dark forces to make kids into future Satanists. Some of the more extreme say that the rule books have secret instructions on witchcraft, and compel those who play them toward suicide. In my opinion, D&D; will produce few things other than a tendency towards rules-lawyering, and a hobby of collecting oddly shaped dice.
5.AIDS in the Vaccine!
This is a surprisingly common conspiracy theory in the third world, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, where western NGOs distribute food and medicinal aid on a regular basis. The idea is that nefarious parties in these organizations, or in the governments that support them, have intentionally introduced AIDS and other viruses into the populations they were supposedly treating, in an effort to commit biological genocide.
This epidemic of bad beliefs has been so pervasive that some Islamic clerics have ordered their followers not to undergo treatment or vaccination. This has had tragic consequences for the people of the regions affected, where polio (the disease most often vaccinated against) has resurfaced and is spreading quickly. Because of the lack of adequate protection for the young, a newer strand of the disease is also beginning to spread around.
4.The Indian Ocean Tsunami Was Caused by Indian Nuclear Weapons.
While I have already touched on the idea of a natural disaster not being so natural with Katrina, this particular theory is too hard to pass up. Shortly after the earthquake and its subsequent tsunami, an Egyptian newspaper alleged that it was caused by a secret submarine explosion created by newly nuclear India.
The usual suspects, the United States and Israel, were also implicated. It is said that India was testing a new super-powered atomic weapon that was recently shared by the other two states, to help protect it from Islamic Pakistan. While it is a well documented phenomena that small earthquakes follow subterranean detonations, there is no known nuclear weapon (even if you combined all of them, globally) that could unleash an earthquake of such enormous power.
3.Flouride in Our Water Is Deliberate Poison!
This conspiracy theory, unlike many of the others, has been around for almost a hundred years, so I am quite well assured of its lasting power. While the effectiveness and importance of flouride in our water supply is, perhaps, open to some scientific debate, the belief that it is a government conspiracy is rather out there.
Particularly when one realizes that the government is meant only as a minor player in this cautionary tale. The real enemy is corporate America. Surprisingly, this was not a left-wing theory, but predominated on the far-right, as a supposedly communist conspiracy. The idea is that flouride is an unusable waste product in industrial processes, and it is very expensive to dispose of in safe way. With permission of the United States government, these companies pump citizens’ water supplies full of the caustic stuff, just to save themselves a few million dollars.
Others don’t buy that, however. Some say it is a plot hatched by nefarious Masonic dentists (exactly 26 thousand of them). This particular strand of the theory revolves around ‘Delta Sigma Delta,’ dentistry’s secret society (and fraternity). The reason for their poisoning us is unknown, but a secret coven of Masonic dentists can’t be up to any good, can they?
2.The Montauk Project – Time Travel for the Everyman
The Montauk Project is yet another secret government conspiracy, this time centered around the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. It is said that numerous people were abducted and experimented upon, and the theories abound as to what sorts of activities went on there. For instance, one story says that the government’s scientists were experimenting with mind control, and created a way to make a person schizophrenic with the push of a button. It didn’t stop there, however. Other reports claim that the center was organized to enhance psionic abilities and other psychic phenomena. One ‘graduate’ from the program claims to have had his inherent ESP enhanced, at the cost of numerous pschological disorders in later life.
More interestingly, the Montauk Project was said to have unlocked a time tunnel, through which scientists could travel anywhere through time and space. Things got out of hand, however, when an alien monster travelled through the tunnel and devoured researchers and equipment alike. What became of the time tunnel (and the monster it spawned) after that is unknown. Perhaps one was devoured by the other.
1.The Worldwide Islamic-Fascist Alliance!
Last, but not least, is the theory that the Nazi regime never died, and that it is involved in a worldwide conspiracy with Islamic nations to create a different sort of New World Order than what we were all expecting. Spawned from the rantings of another radio talk show host, this time David Emory, the Islamic Fascist Alliance is said to have been born when Nazi leader Martin Bormann faked his own death.
After this fabulous feat, he was able to build a secret global empire bridging the gap between proto-fascists and Islamists. Among others, Emory points out connections between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal Family, between the CIA and Pakistan’s arms proliferator Khan, and between Nazi Germany and Palestinian religious leaders. The reason for this alliance are none too clear from his rants, but Emory mentions a worldwide alliance of racist anti-semites. Nevermind that most neo-nazis I know denigrate Muslims as readily as they denigrate anyone else.
