Category: Conspiracies

NBC News Runs Story Exposing Anti-Semitic Origins of Reptilian Conspiracy Theory

1/12/2021

Major news outlets are finally starting to notice that Jake Angeli (Jacob Chansley), the horned QAnon "shaman" who infiltrated the Capitol last Wednesday, is kind of weird. News reports said that Angeli claimed that Pres. Trump had invited him to attack the Capitol, and a judge ruled that Angeli was entitled to special organic food in jail because QAnon shamanism is his religion, and organic food is his sacred diet. Also, there were the rants about QAnon conspiracies of every stripe. So far, mainstream media haven't reported on his since-deleted YouTube videos claiming to be a government psychic space warrior battling Lovecraftian abominations from another dimension.

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Fashion Designer Creates Map of QAnon / History Channel History Conspiracies

1/10/2021

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In the wake of the Capitol insurrection and renewed interest in QAnon and its web of conspiracy theories, Q-believers have been trading images of a map of "hidden history" that, not coincidentally, maps exactly onto the fake history deployed by Ancient Aliens, Scott Wolter, and the History Channel, Science Channel, and Travel Channel band of speculators. To the best of my knowledge, the map was first developed in 2018 by fashion designer Dylan Louis Monroe, a Q-curious artist who displayed it at both the History Channel's AlienCon and a special 2018 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to conspiracies theories as art. The Met called it a way to "oppose political corruption, bureaucracy, and media manipulation." You know, by accusing all of history of being a Jewish-Catholic Satanic conspiracy. As you do. Seriously, how could the Met not have considered the consequences?

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Capitol Invader "Q-Shaman" Claims to Be Secret Military Psychic Space Warrior

1/7/2021

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It should surprise no one that yesterday’s siege of the United States Capitol by a pro-Trump right-wing mob included close connections to right-wing conspiracy theories, and not just the putative election fraud claim Pres. Donald Trump used to incite the violence at a rally yesterday afternoon. Many of the thugs who invaded the Capitol sported QAnon clothing, and at least one brandished a flag printed with a “Trump—JFK Jr.” slogan, a reference to a QAnon conspiracy theory imagining that the late son of John F. Kennedy is both secretly alive and about to become Trump’s second vice president. On Fox News Channel, Tucker Carlson spun a conspiracy theory that Antifa agitators had infiltrated the mob, while actual journalists identified several of its members as known white nationalist and right-wing extremists.

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"NH Union Leader" Newspaper: Cable TV Conspiracy Shows "Deserve Condemnation"

1/6/2021

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In cable television, as in politics, there is no shame, no depths that the purveyors of conspiracy theories won’t plumb in the endless quest to wring out just a little more money and power. The History Channel, though, must surely notice that the brand of anti-science, anti-fact, antisocial conspiracy that they have spun for years now has not only poisoned out democracy but is also getting some relatively heavy pushback. The question, of course, is whether they care. That answer is almost certainly no. In the nihilist marketplace of fracturing media, holding on to a small but loyal army of extremists is more important than either civic responsibility or mass appeal.

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The Year in Review: 2020 in Ancient Mysteries, Modern Conspiracies, and Aliens

12/28/2020

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For years now, I have ended each trip around the sun with a summary of the preceding twelve months in fringe history, space aliens, and the weird. Most years, these summaries run into the thousands of words because so much happened. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic and the American presidential election severely curtailed the number of extreme claims made about ancient history, as conspiracy theorists turned their attention toward disease and politics. Last year, I said I was ready for a long, difficult year to end, and now those look like the good old days. This year I published a new book and wrote two more, and I look forward to what I hope will be big things next year when publishers get a look at my newest manuscript. In the meantime, we can look back in sadness and anger.

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Police Tie Berlin Museum Artifacts Attack to Satanic Conspiracy Theory

10/22/2020

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At least seventy artifacts at Berlin's Museum Island museums, including paintings and Egyptian sarcophagi, were sprayed with an oily substance earlier this month in what officials describe as the largest attack on museum artifacts in postwar German history. The attack occurred on October 3 but was only made public this week. While the attacker is unknown, German police tied the attack to social media posts from Attila Hildmann, a conspiracy theorist with fringe ideas about COVID-19, who claimed that the famous Pergamon Altar of Zeus, on display at the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island, was the "throne of Satan." The altar is currently undergoing conservation and is not on display. A digital recreation of it was attacked, however.

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Time Magazine Wonders Where Voters' Demon Pedophile Fears Come From

9/11/2020

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Time magazine carried a disturbing article yesterday about conspiracy theories and their growing impact on the 2020 electorate. In the article, voters described a variety of beliefs derived from Q-Anon conspiracy theories as well as the occult fringe of YouTube, including a number of references to former Ancient Aliens star David Wilcock’s “cabal” of parasitic blood-drinking liberal extraterrestrial elites who have long been a staple of Q-Anon culture under other names. I hate saying I told you so, but how many years of warning did we have about this coming intellectual apocalypse from the History Channel’s parade of shows stoking panic about demons by other names? How many years of warning did we have watching Wilcock build an underground following of millions of believers absorbing his snake oil about secret government blood-drinking extraterrestrial liberals?

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Q-Anon Stealth Aesthetics Infiltrate Instagram Influencers

8/20/2020

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In the Atlantic on Monday, Kaitlyn Tiffany has an interesting article about the use of aesthetics to spread the Q-Anon conspiracy theory on Instagram. Tiffany typically associates radical, alien-inflected conspiracy theories with bad graphic design, masculine colors, and in-your-face visuals with large, loud typography. However, she was taken aback by the subtle inclusion of Q-Anon conspiracy references in more aesthetically pleasing and more feminine graphics associated with lifestyle influencers who more typically offer homemaking tips and fashion advice:

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Weekend Omnibus: Younger Dryas Volcano, Elon Musk's Ancient Astronaut Tweet, Steve Quayle's Plagiarism, and More!

8/1/2020

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Yesterday was an extraordinary day for news of interest to my readers. Let’s take a brief survey of just some of the things that happened.

I’ll put the science first. A new study in Science Advances concludes that the global cooling triggered during the Younger Dryas was not the work of a comet or meteor but was instead brought on by volcanic activity. From the press release announcing the study late yesterday:

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Review of Forbidden History S06E08: “The Vatican’s Book of Secrets”

5/26/2020

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The episode guide I consulted may have said that there were only seven episodes in this season of Forbidden History, but it turns out that more new episodes are still airing. So we’re stuck with it. As the show ages, it struggles to find new content, much like its current model, Ancient Aliens. Thus, the series has done multiple episodes on the Holy Grail, Hitler, etc. This episode, “The Vatican’s Book of Secrets,” is something of a sequel to season 4’s “The Secrets of the Vatican Archives,” moving from ancient conspiracies to more modern ones, albeit with more than a little overlap. Truth be told, none of this is very different from the anti-Catholic conspiracy theories that have swirled around the Roman church since the Protestant Reformation. Paranoid anti-papists think the Catholics are possessed of sinister secrets, other than the child molestation.

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