Conspiracy Theories Revisited

by Tyler Durden

Sunday, Aug 24, 2025 – 10:20 PM

Authored by Niall McRae via Off-Guardian.org,

Parked continually at a cliff-top near my town in Sussex is a dormobile, its windows covered in posters about conspiracy theories, particularly QAnon. Recently I had a chat with the owner, giving him a copy of the Light newpaper, a publication that focuses on powerful forces conspiring against the masses.

QAnon, however, is discredited by critical thinkers as a CIA trap, a fabricated paedophile extortion ring to divert attention from the real paedophile extortion ring (Jeffery Epstein and his ‘Lolita Express’). Middle-class moralists often complain, demanding that the authorities move this man in a van (they would not be so fussed if he was displaying Extinction Rebellion prophecies of doom).

How to understand what’s happening in our tumultuous world?

Coincidence theory is the most common perspective – incidents happen randomly, as reported on ‘the news’. A thorn in the sides of the establishment dies in a car accident (Epstein victim Victoria Giuffre, for example), and it is nothing but misfortune. This is lazy thinking, but another outlook on events is more cerebral.

Cock-up theory, as posited by Private Eye and commentators such as Toby Young, lampoons councils spending money on rainbow crossings instead of repairing the ruts on nearby roads, or responding to a coronavirus with a draconian lockdown, as bureaucratic folly. But I don’t regard the likes of health minister Matt Hancock as idiots; indeed, in some cases it is reasonable to suspect conspirators.

Having awakened to malevolent misrule during the covid-19 debacle, I am looking back as well as forward at major events. Did they really happen as presented at the time? I pulled from my bookcase the compendium Conspiracy Theories by Jamie King (2010; first published 1998). This guide covers 104 conspiracies, briefly summarising the official and alternative stories. King tends to reserve judgment, leaving intrigued readers to explore further. His introduction states:

One can argue that obsession with conspiracy theories serves only to demonstrate the lunatic paranoia running rife in today’s society. But in reality, history has proved all too well that politicians lie, presidents lie and bureaucrats lie. If we continue to be gullible and believe everything that is presented to us, the truth will never come out. It becomes not only interesting and revealing but an absolute priority to question authority, and, more specifically, the authoritarians

That’s a retort I’d like to use for hecklers, when distributing the Light paper to the public. ‘It’s all conspiracy theory’, is a typical heckle by arrested-development intellectuals who are doing fine with the status quo. But they rarely allow me to challenge their outright denial of any ulterior motives in the cloisters of power.

The term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is a smear, deployed by mainstream media to undermine independent journalism and dissent. One of the tactics is to take the most extreme idea from conspiracy speculators to tar then all with the same brush. For example, if you don’t believe the covid-19 narrative you must believe that 5G masts were erected to spread the virus.

Here, I have chosen six conspiracies from King’s book to reconsider.

1. AIDS

Auto-immune deficiency syndrome emerged in the 1980s in the homosexual communities of New York and Los Angeles. Some Christians regarded AIDS as divine retribution for a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. It was also rife in southern Africa, and the conspiracy theory was that the disease was introduced by the US military to cull black people. Such thinking was useful to the establishment, as it primed the public for the potential of a deadly pandemic caused by a hostile power.

The link between AIDS and the HIV virus has been contested, initially by Peter Duesberg, with suggestions that the syndrome is the result of prolonged illicit drug use and sexual promiscuity in gay men. All of this is relevant to covid-19, for which a common conspiracy theory attributes the outbreak to release (accidental or deliberate) by the Institute of Virology at Wuhan in China, where the disease first appeared. Many sceptics, however, believe that the lab-leak notion is a trap, manipulating people into validating the existence of the virus. The same may be said of cynics who asserted that HIV vaccines were actually spreading HIV.

Indeed, a niche of medical dissidents argues that the whole concept of viruses is a scam. Covid-19 was presented to the public as a virion in the form of a sphere with protruding rods (like a naval mine), as if this is seen under a microscope. Whatever the truth about viruses, clearly they have been exploited for fear, control and radically destructive interventions.

2. Vaccines and autism

According to King, ‘most people accept that childhood vaccinations are a necessary part of growing up’. He does not dismiss the putative link between the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the surging incidence of autism, but he perpetuates simplistic rebuttals of Andrew Wakefield’s thesis. In fact, Wakefield was not found to have falsified the research, which was published by the Lancet, with sixteen fellow investigators (quite a conspiracy!). Wakefield’s wrongdoing was acting on behalf of research participants in a court case, which was a conflict of interest.

On MMR allegedly causing autism, King notes ‘Wakefield himself admitting that it was not based on any solid evidence’. That was merely stating the obvious. Wakefield and team had produced indicative findings, and that is how science works: begin with a hypothesis that can then be tested rigorously. Wakefield never got to pursue the research, because Big Pharma and the medical establishment stepped in, and media dutifully denounced him as a crank.

3. Peak oil

In the 1990s we were told of impending disaster for an oil-dependent world, because the ‘black gold’ was running out. Looking back, this scare was simultaneous to the launch of mass propaganda on anthropogenic climate change caused by burning of fossil fuels.

We now know that ’peak oil’ was artificial scarcity, pushed by an unholy alliance of political leaders and oligarchs to boost their power and profits. Some sceptics believe that oil is not a finite pool from decaying matter but an abiotic resource, as suggested by natural refilling of intensively drilled oil fields (e.g. at Eugene Island in the Gulf of Mexico).

The purpose of the OPEC cartel is to curtail supply, to protect price and profit. The goal of technocracy, as pushed by the World Economic Forum’s ‘great reset’, is to wield total control over resources, and this is never for the benefit of ordinary people.

4. Chemtrails

‘Overpopulation is becoming an increasingly serious problem, with living space and natural resources dwindling fast’, asserts King. The idea of chemtrails, using aeroplanes to drop heavy metals on people and crops below, seemed far-fetched until recent years.

Although the majority of the populace remain like cattle, never looking upwards, more people are alert to the troubling patterns in the sky. In the past, aircraft emitted thin vapour trails that soon dissipated, but now these often linger and spread, merging with other contrails to form clouds. Often a sunny morning is followed by a grey noon.

Chemtrails would be a form of geonegineering, an enterprise that is secretive but officially stated. For example, the British government recently announced funding for a project to dim sunlight by spraying particles high in the sky. Not only meteorological but also geological effects are possible, with suspicion that earthquakes have been caused by covert military operations.

There is no doubt that rainfall, and thus water distribution, are being manipulated. A recent flood in Dubai was caused, on official admission, by excessive cloud-seeding. The technology has existed for decades, and the deadly deluge at Lynmouth in Devon in the 1950s was probably the result of an early trial. Truth typically comes out decades after a suspected activity begins, maintained by a conspiracy of silence.

5. Moon landings

This is perhaps the most debated conspiracy theory in modern history. You may believe or disbelieve the official narrative, and there is also the possibility that astronauts completed their mission but that imagery was staged for greater impact. The live telephone call to the US president from the lunar surface was stretching the technological boundaries in 1969. Movie director Stanley Kubrick was working on Space Odyssey 2001, and his filming in the New Mexico desert would have been useful to NASA.

There are many signs of fakery, alongside scientific obstacles to the moon landings. Buzz Aldrin, in old age, told a school girl that ‘we didn’t go’. Why have no further visits to our satellite been attempted since 1972? NASA claimed that the technology has been lost, having been accidentally wiped from tapes.

The space show goes on. Two years ago an Indian mission to the moon was achieved with what appeared as amateur computer graphics. Singer Katy Perry and fellow ‘wonder women’ went into space this year, landing in a capsule that would hardly withstand a windy day on the beach. They are trolling us.

I believe that the two post-war achievements of space exploration and nuclear armament were planned, the latter following agreement at the Potsdam conference in 1945 on the new world order. The Soviet Union and the USA would compete, to a schedule.

6. 9/11 terror attack

Some conspiracies have become accepted truth, such as the Reichstag fire in 1933. That was a ‘false flag’ by Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists, justifying severe repression of communists. Similarly, the World Trade Center attack in 2001 was blamed on the extreme Islamists of al-Qaeda, licensing George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

King asks ‘could it be that the attacks were allowed to happen to create public clamour for a war that would otherwise have been inconceivable?’ American forces returned to Iraq, and then went into Afghanistan, with other countries targeted as an ‘axis of evil’. Like the moon landings, King’s question hints at a third option, that the act of terror happened but with state knowledge, facilitation and graphic embellishments.

For King, ‘the most likely explanation is that the attacks were planned by Osama bin Laden’, as an ‘inside job’ would have been too elaborate for the the government and its agencies. Yet covid-19 showed how widely and deeply a hoax can be orchestrated, supported by a managerial-professional class oiled by pay, perks and pensions. The bureaucrat’s job is not to ask questions.

There are many signs that 9/11 was not an unanticipated terrorist incident. The Saudi perpetrators’ passports found intact near the Manhattan site, where all other material (including human bodies) was pulverised to dust. For a large passenger plane to fly into the low-level Pentagon building was highly dubious. The collapse of Building Seven, after a BBC reporter stated that it had already fallen.

More controversially, were the Twin Towers really stuck by aeroplanes? If 9/11 happened today there would be hundreds of videos, at least of the second aircraft flying into the skyscraper. Back in 2001 there were no mobile phones with cameras. Imagery of the event could have been produced by computer graphic imaging, as increasingly used by Hollywood for blockbuster movies.

Far-fetched, maybe, but consider the aftermath of 9/11, and the emergence of the security state.

*  *  *

A conspiracy theory missing from King’s pages is that of demographic replacement. The daily sight of dinghies full of fighting-age African and Asian males crossing the English Channel is not, as some describe it, an invasion. These men are clearly being allowed and encouraged to come here. For what purpose, we can only speculate, because we are never told the truth by our leaders.

The UN Migration Pact was not accidentally signed by Theresa May, and the inflatable boats are not accidentally sent back across the Channel for reuse. Yet many critics of immigration blame only the incomers themselves.

Some mad ideas proliferate, but it has become more rational to be a conspiracy theorist than a conspiracy denier.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

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