The Gunpowder plot, 1605: A bunch of Catholic terrorists back from fighting in the Spanish netherlands plot to blow up parliament and install a Catholic monarch to the British throne. There are several conspiracies surrounding this, ranging from numerous members of the plot being spies/innocent, the plot being a false-flag to impose anti-catholic legislation, and gaps in the main narrative (like how did they get all that gunpowder?).
The death of Napoleon, Prince Imperial, 1879: After Napoleon the III was driven into exile to England after the disastrous Franco-Prussian war. His son, also growing up within Britain, was eagre to join the British Military and so ended up fighting in the Anglo-Zulu war. During the war Napoleon set out earlier than usual, without full troop escort, taking control from a senior officer and didn't post any lookouts. They were ambushed by 40 zulus and Napoleon's horse buggered off, leaving him rather buggered too. At this point Napoleon went down like a DF adventurer, kicking and fighting, and ultimately killed by ranged weapons (around 18 stabs and a spear to the brain). The British troops with him did not fight the zulus, instead returning to camp. At this point several people end up getting blamed for his death, from the British, to Queen Victoria, to French Republicans to Freemasons. The zulus to their credit gave the rather humorous reply that they would not have killed him if they knew who he was.
The Dreyfus affair, 1894: A French Jew and artillery officer named Alfred Dreyfus is falsely convicted of sending military secrets to the German embassy. When the French discover the real culprit, an army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, they acquit Ferdinand and accuse Dreyfus of further crimes based on falsified evidence. Supporters of Alfred Dreyfus become convinced that there is a conspiracy of people fearing for their jobs and the reputation of the army trying to keep an innocent man imprisoned, they are proven right. Still controversial to this day because of the persecution of Catholics post revolutionary france.
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 1914: the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne is assassinated by members of the black hand secret society, kickstarting the war to end all wars. Understandably, there are a lot of controversies surrounding this, too much to list.
Lead is fine for you, 1920: The makers of leaded gasoline, leaded cans, leaded paint - anyone who had a stake in lead manufacturing suppresses information about the risk effects associated with lead, even though human knowledge of the ill effects of lead dates back to Romans who observed that slaves in lead mines were of especially poor health, and cautioned a transition from lead water pipes to ceramic ones. "The story of how millions of tons of lead, a potent neurotoxin, were spewed into the environment and people's blood for 60 years ranks beside tobacco and the exploding gas tank of the Ford Pinto in the annals of corporate crime in America" said Jamie Kitman, who researched and wrote an article on the health risks of leaded gasoline.
Frankfurt school begins, 1923: Rather disappointed that the majority of the world had not undergone a marxist revolution, marxist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs tried to explain why. Their answer was that culture and religion blunted the proletariat’s desire to revolt, and the solution was that Marxists should carry out a “long march through the institutions” – universities and schools, government bureaucracies and the media – so that cultural values could be progressively changed from above. Adapting this, later thinkers of the Frankfurt School decided that the key to destroying capitalism was to mix up Marx with a bit of Freud, since workers were not only economically oppressed, but made orderly by sexual repression and other social conventions. The problem was not only capitalism as an economic system, but the family, gender hierarchies, normal sexuality – in short, the whole suite of traditional western values. They fled Europe during the rise of Nazism and eventually established themselves in America through New York, gaining a favourable reception amongst American and English academia. Their influence can be felt way into the modern age, where anyone studying a liberal arts course will find marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism as being the three standard 'alternative viewpoints,' modern progressive media rings and anything crazy anyone from tumblr says.
Asbestos causes cancer, amongst other things, 1930-1960: Asbestos manufacturers do everything they can to suppress or dilute any useful research and debate as to whether asbestos really has links to respiratory diseases and cancers. Turns out, it does. Bears a lot of striking similarities to the lead debacle, and will no doubt be brought up in future debates on Monsanto's roundup practices.
The Business Plot, 1933: The Business Plot was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler as leader of that organization. In 1934, Butler testified before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the "McCormack-Dickstein Committee") on these claims. No one was prosecuted. At the time of the incidents, news media dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax". While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.
Manhattan Project, 1939: Beginning small in 1939 the Manhattan project involved the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom, took place in over 30 sites across the USA and the British Empire, employed more than 130,000 people and cost the USA $2 billion dollars ($26 billion in today's terms). The conspiracy did not keep its secrets secret for long, as the world found out its purpose rather explosively, and soviet spies found out its secrets anyways.
Operation paperclip and Unit 731, 1942: With WWII drawing to a close there was an intense competition between the USA, USSR and British Empire to capture prominent German scientists. With the Germans fighting towards the Western front so they wouldn't have to surrender to the USSR, and the USA at this point the commanding force on the Western front, the USA inevitably caught the most German scientists, capturing 1,500 of them. The same scientists who worked on V2 rockets to bomb London worked on the Apollo spacecraft. Granted amnesty and new identities of course, even if they were involved in forced labour camps. Unit 731 is perhaps the most despicable, as they were given amnesty too in exchange for their medical notes. Their medical research put the Nazis to shame, involving life vivisection without anesthesia, removal and recombination of organs, intense biological weapons research... Ever wondered what happens when you put a human in a vacuum? They did that too. The full list is atrocious.
Rosenberg spy ring uncovered, 1949: the speed at which the Soviets produced their own atomic bomb was only possible with access to nuclear research, moreso than the Canadians and Brits who worked alongside the Americans to produce it. This was done through the Rosenberg spy ring, consisting of communist partisans, german refugees and american jews, passing information to the USSR through the KGB, worried that America was becoming increasingly reactionary. Amusingly one of the KGB's liaisons didn't take the Rosenberg spy ring seriously at first. Just one notable feature in a vibrant history of Soviet espionage and infiltration within the US government.
CIA has nothing better to do, 1950: it was often joked or rumoured that the CIA funded American abstractionist artists because no one else would, during a time where everyone saw abstract art as pieces of shit and scribbles. Faced with the Titan of French art or Soviet realism, the CIA decided America needed something which would deconstruct notions of what is art, as proof of the creative freedom of America. As idioitic as it sounds, it had a genuine purpose; communism despite its failures maintained an appeal to the intellectual elite of America, so creating this new art was a way of bringing them back to liberalism. Today we know through declassified documents that they actually did do this shit. Real life is more bizarre than our perception of it.
Operation Mockingbird begins, 1950: Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA. The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA. Its legacy lives on, as the reputation of American news corporations has plummeted across the Atlantic ocean the CIA continues to throw money and no doubt, advisers to the BBC to get the right message through the right channels.
Project MKUltra begins, 1950: The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at 80 institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement. As the US Supreme Court later noted, MKULTRA was: concerned with "the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior." The program consisted of some 149 subprojects which the Agency contracted out to various universities, research foundations, and similar institutions. At least 80 institutions and 185 private researchers participated. Because the Agency funded MKULTRA indirectly, many of the participating individuals were unaware that they were dealing with the Agency.
COINTELPRO begins, 1956: (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."
Gulf of Tonkin incident, 1964: An American warship is attacked by the vietnamese navy, this incident escalates and with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ends up growing into the Vietnam War. Only problem is, it's in dispute whether the Americans were attacked by anyone at all. In 1995, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara met with former Vietnam People's Army General Vő Nguyęn Giáp to ask what happened on 4 August 1964 in the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied. Giáp claimed that the attack had been imaginary. In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident of August 4.
USS liberty incident, 1967: An American warship aiding Israel in the 6 day war is attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats. The official narrative is that it was a case of friendly fire, with Israeli fighters mistaking the American warship for an Egyptian one. The conspiracy lies in accusations that the ship was deliberately sunk to cease American signals collecting, so the Americans did not know too much about its dispositions for attacking Syria. A third narrative also exists, where the attack was a false flag meant to get America into the war against Egypt, with a BBC documentary even saying that four bombers equipped with nuclear bombs were even sent to Cairo, recalled in time when it was discovered the attack was done by Israel. Several details still remain in controversy, too much to list here.
Watergate 1972: Everyone "knew" shady stuff was going on, but it wasn't until 1974 that evidence arose that Republican officials had spied on the Democrat HQ, forcing Nixon to resign. Also the reason why everything controversial now has a -gate suffix these days.
Church committee shocked by extent of intelligence agencies powers, 1975: "In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
Derp, no one listened
CIA drug running, 1980: On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published the first installment of a three-part series of articles concerning crack cocaine, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Nicaraguan Contra army. The introduction to the first installment of the series read: For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found. This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack" capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.
It is notable that the reporter who wrote that San Jose news article committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. With two bullets.
Monsanto likes money, 1986: A former CIA man becomes director of Monsanto, starting a long tradition of Monsanto swapping workers with branches of the American government going all the way to the FDA and even the Supreme Court. They also get caught using state police to steal roundup resistant bees and destroy research indicating that their crops and roundup are unsafe. Really, Monsanto are unfairly singled out, there are many GM companies like this. In 2011 a wikileaks article revealed that several US diplomats were working for several GM companies, and that their entreaties with European countries may have had interests other than the US and European nations at heart.
Tianmen square protests 1989: You're never going to make it past that great Chinese firewall.
The Nayirah testimony 1990: The Nayirah testimony was a testimony given before the non-governmental Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a woman who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and the American president in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign which was run by Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda. In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die. This was a lie.
Iraq war 2, electric boogaloo, 2003: Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and is invaded by the coalition. Turns out it didn't possess WMDs. Whoops.
Global economic conspiracies, started since the dawn of globalization, uncovered recently. On 12 November 2011, the nine Trans-Pacific Partnership countries announced that the TPP intended to "enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, to promote innovation, economic growth and development, and to support the creation and retention of jobs." Although the text of the treaty has not been made public, Wikileaks has published several documents since 2013. A number of global health professionals, internet freedom activists, environmentalists, organised labour, advocacy groups, and elected officials have criticised and protested against the treaty, in large part because of the secrecy of negotiations, the agreement's expansive scope, and controversial clauses in drafts leaked to the public.
The government is watching you, 2013: While this is literally true in Britain and has been for a long time, the year of 2013 is when Edward Snowden divulged the extent to which the government is collecting all of your data with the revelation of programs like PRISM. The conspiracy of mass data collection which had once been dismissed as the creation of paranoid and deluded anons had been grounded by evidence that government intelligence services including the US (NSA), Australia (ASD), Britain (GCHQ), Canada (CSEC), Denmark (PET), France (DGSE), Germany (BND), Italy (AISE), the Netherlands (AIVD), Norway (NIS), Spain (CNI), Switzerland (NDB), as well as Israel (ISNU) had all participated in mass surveillance in cooperation with many corporate partners of questionable willingness, ranging from Microsoft to Yahoo and Google.
Michael Hasting's crash, 2013: A reporter investingating into the US government's corruption dies when his car crashes and explodes, leading to allegations of foul play.
I'm done listing, there are more, so much more. If I've got time I may do a list of more modern conspiracies.
Real life is not small, nor sane. It is easy to throw an exclamation mark next to a conspiracy theory, misrepresent it, throw it alongside to a drunken buffoon who's convinced they're fisted an alien and dismiss it as fiction. That's why even when conspiracies are revealed, no one really believes them to be true - there are still people calling Edward Snowden a liar, spy and a traitor for example. Take the Pearl Harbour conspiracy, that one is not a conspiracy where FDR bombed Pearl Habour, it is a conspiracy that FDR knew in advance that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbour (and likewise Churchill knew in advance Singapore would be attacked by Japan) and they both allowed it because it would allow their grand strategy to unfold. America would be able to join the war at a time where the American people were just as likely to support isolation and neutrality, and tip WWII in favour of the allies. Far less outlandish than "muh jet fuel can't melt steel katanas." I don't subscribe to this theory, because efforts to save Singapore and warn of pearl harbour should detail enough that neither side truly wished to suffer such a tactical and strategic defeat, and though American and British intelligence personnel were aware of an impending attack, they were incapable of warning in time due to logistical reasons. I merely disagree with the notion that one should dismiss a conspiracy theory on the basis that it is a conspiracy theory without even looking at the evidence first. Any list of conspiracy theories which have become known as true should detail the folly in rejecting something because it sounds foolish or improbable. There is a reason why David Cameron considers conspiracy theorists to be 'non-violent extremists' just as dangerous as ISIS. Someone shitposting on the internet about suspicious activity raises alarm bells of misconduct amongst the plebs about powers that be, which in turn creates dissent. Uncritically follow all official narratives at your own peril, you will be no better than Slavs convinced that the shooting of Malaysia airlines flight was a false flag because the state media said so.
* Loud Whispers melts jet steel with fuel beams.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14954584 times)