Conspiracy 101, Part I: Conspiracy Defined; Secret Groups

To define "conspiracy theory," I like the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's little summary: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.

In science you're told a theory is a carefully tested concept proven through rounds of countless experiments and proven hypotheses, a major effort constructed using the scientific method.

That isn't the case necessarily with conspiracy theory. Many of the sites throw massive amounts of facts at you and scream loudly about the diabolical Masons/Illuminati/Rockefellers/Rothschilds/aliens/reptile-human hybrids are trying to enslave us all and mwah-hah-hah ... rule the world!

But conspiracy theory can be summed up by another Merriam-Webster entry for just the word "theory": the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another. A lot of the Web site articles do try, amongst the rhetoric and fury against the Forces of Satan and other secret leaders, to figure out what the facts are and how they connect. Some are hampered by the ridiculous sounding theories or guesses at who is really ruling the earth, such as previously mentioned repitile-humans and other creatures from outer space who want to control us.

Conspiracy theorists (CT's) don't accept the official version of history, and they distrust the media's report on current events. The media, they say, are simply an extension of the secret world leaders and print/broadcast/post online whatever these dominators tell them to. The leaders' firm control of the press, banks, oil supply, major corporations and governments around the globe is how they are enslaving us. Some theorists say the plot has patiently been unfolding for centuries, as Secret Leaders (SL's) pass on the enslavement plan from father to son or old members to new members.

The theorists are surprisingly diverse, though politically they lean toward extreme left or right. Theorists also can be divided into secular and religious, with the latter often seeing Satan as the underlying cause for everything and possibly tying into the prophecies of the Book of Revelation. The non-religious theorists range from those who try to rationally claim bankers and other SL's pull all the strings, all the way to those who sound like something out of The X-Files: elite humans have joined up with aliens who want to conquer earth.

One of the more disturbing aspects of conspiracy theorists, most often to the Jews, is the accusation that some are anti-Semitic and fascist. The theory that Jews and/or Zionists are either the leaders of global domination or are a major part of it may mainly be traced back to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a pamphlet that appeared in 1905 and contained in 24 parts a plan for Jews to completely take over. Many today believe Protocols was actually written not by Jews, but by the Russian czar's secret police in the 1890s.

Just to give an example out of the Protocols:

The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove. It is this possibility of replacing the representatives of the people which has placed them at our disposal, and, as it were, given us the power of appointment.

Zion is the Biblical name for the Israel of the Old Testament; it is derived from Hebrew for "highest point." That ties in with Mount Zion, on whicih there once was a Canaanite fortress that King David defeated and established his own city.

Zionists are people who wanted to re-establish a Jewish state in Palestine in the Middle East. The modern Zionist movement is credited to Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jew who called for forming a Jewish state in the 1890s. Herzl was covering the court trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish captain accused of spying for Germany. Dreyfus was acquited, and Herzl believed his accusation in the first place was caused by anti-Jewish sentiment in France. Herzl believed the only way to get away from anti-Semitism in Europe was for Jews to create their own country in Palestine.

More recent example of Jewish involvement was cited on a number of sites of the 9/11 truth movement, whose stories may have appeared either once in the media or simply in those endlessly forwarded emails. One example was a report that someone saw agents from Mossad, the Israeli security agency, cheering on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River as the World Trade Center towers fell. Another claimed that all of the Jews who worked at the WTC were warned a couple days before 9/11 not to go to work that day because something was coming. A third accuses Larry Silverstein, owner of the WTC property, of using terrorist attacks as a cover for actually blowing up the buildings so he could get multi-billion dollar insurance settlements.

(Speaking of the 9/11 truth movement, I also will be doing a series of posts discussing the conspiracy theories around this terrorist attack and the sites and people who do not believe the official "al Qaeda did it--the jets hit the towers and collapsed them--a jet hit the Pentagon" version of history.)

Though there are the theorists who do include the Jews and/or Israelis in their writings, there are actually Jewish CT's as well. Their interpretations are often similar to other theorists about a band of secret societies; they just don't include Israel, Zionists or similar.

The two most commonly cited non-Jewish groups cited as SL's are the Masons and the Illuminati (sometimes they are cited as Jewish creations, other times as born from secret, ancient families). The former is famous as a "fraternal" society, with lodges all around the world and degrees of membership to which a man can attain (women join Order of the Eastern Star). Masons appeared in the 1500s or 1600s and have always had some set of secret rituals and beliefs. Nine signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence were Masons, as were 14 U.S. presidents, including George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Gerald Ford.

CT's have accused many of the world's leaders of being high-degree Masons who engage in Satanic ritual and physical and sexual abuse of women and chlidren, and Masons in general are part of the Great Overall Plot.

The Iluminati movement grew out of the Enlightenment in the 1700s, a movement that looked to reason, scientific method and questioning of the metaphysical. Adam Weishaupt is credited with founding the Illuminati in Bavaria in the 1770s. His chapter was supposed to have a huge cache of books on the occult, witchcraft and other "forbidden" subjects and were trying to either overthrow or infiltrate governments. The Bavarian government banned all Illuminati chapters by the mid-1780s, and CT's will say that organization didn't die, it simply went underground.

In my next entry, I will introduce you to even more Secret Leaders of the world domination and aspects of conspiracy theory.