Why is Truth Often Disregarded as a Conspiracy Theory? This is an important question because a society that can’t distinguish between truth and untrue conspiracy will inevitably suffer a breakdown in its economic, political, and social systems. As a former Cryptological Linguist and Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Government with a Top-Secret security clearance, I have a unique perspective on government and corporate manipulation and propaganda. I also have some insights that may help citizens avoid being manipulated and deceived by governments and corporations.
Most Major Conspiracy Theories Are (Partially or Totally) True. Over the years, I’ve analyzed dozens of major government and corporate scandals and conspiracies both professionally and for my own personal curiosity. Many conspiracy theories contain substantial elements of truth. And a significant majority of persistent major conspiracy theories are either substantially true or have a high probability of being true after all the corporate and/or government documents associated to them are declassified and released to the public. If you’re not convinced yet, stay with me for a few more minutes; you will be convinced by the end of this article.
We All Want Proof. I could include dozens of fully documented “conspiracy theories” that are actually true to make this point, but for the sake of brevity, let’s start with the following government atrocities, abuses, and corporate scandals. As you read, remember this important point: Every one of these events was dismissed by “the majority” or “the consensus” or “the experts” or “the government” as a “conspiracy theory” for years (often decades) until it was finally publicly revealed to be true. So here we go. . . .
The Nazi Holocaust. Everybody knows about this holocaust today, but most people living today don’t know that it was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” for many years by the mainstream media, American politicians, and Nazi sympathizers. Due to a near-total media blackout about the holocaust, most Americans assumed the Nazi Holocaust was a “conspiracy theory” until the end of World War II—over 10 years after Hitler began persecuting and murdering his victims. By that time, approximately 11 million humans (including 6 million Jews) were already exterminated in Hitler’s death camps and gas chambers.
The Victorian Holocaust (British Government Murdered Millions). Recently declassified British Government archives (shorter summary here and more here and here and here), nonpartisan scholars, and archaeologists have revealed that British gentlemen between the 1800s all the way to the 1950s rampaged throughout Africa and Asia, proudly waved the severed heads of innocent humans atop their bayonets, perpetrated atrocious crimes against humanity, which directly resulted in 60 to 100 million (possibly more) dead Indians, Africans, Chinese, and Southeast Asians.[i] [ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] The British Government has tried to systematically destroy and obscure the evidence of its history of “civilizing” Africa, India, and Asia, which is ironic since all three regions had sophisticated civilizations that preceded Britain by thousands of years. Very few people know anything about this “conspiracy theory”; and even fewer people understand that this is the direct cause of virtually all the cultural, economic, and political problems in Africa and the Middle East today.
CIA Operation Mockingbird (Government Media Control). This “conspiracy theory” was the CIA’s ongoing mission to co-opt American and foreign journalists, use them to collect intelligence on American citizens, and use the American press to spread U.S. Government propaganda domestically and abroad. The propaganda covered virtually everything that has been important to U.S. foreign and domestic policy since the 1950s until at least the 1980s (and likely continues today under a different program name). This deeply embedded government propaganda has influenced American public opinion on every salient aspect of the Cold War, Vietnam War, Korean War, OPEC, the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Iran, Panama, Guatemala, Grenada, Nicaragua, Chile, NATO and dozens of other major U.S. interventions, conflicts, geopolitical and socioeconomic events.
The declassified U.S. Government archives and congressional reports (very large document: 672 pages) reveal that the extent of Operation Mockingbird was truly massive and global in scope. It includes colluding with the mainstream media (including several Pulitzer Prize winners) to share their information and sources with the CIA and publish “news” that was editorially manipulated by the U.S. Government; prominent foreign correspondents were bribed to allow the CIA to distort and manipulate their reporting; and full‑time CIA employees masqueraded as journalists with senior executive support from America’s most elite mainstream news organizations.
Government Lies to Sell the Vietnam War. U.S. President Johnson lied to the American people and said a U.S. naval ship was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese in 1964. He said this to convince the American people that the U.S. needed to enter the Vietnam War. This lie resulted in the worst economic, political, and cultural disaster in American history since the Civil War and it’s still negatively impacting the world to this day. Just a few of the consequences: Vietnam caused Nixon to abandon the Gold Standard in 1971 because of the unprecedented torrent of US Dollars flooding the world due to an orgy of military spending. This directly caused the inflation, oil shocks, and chaos of the 1970s, which directly caused the Latin American economic collapses of the 1980s and the structural monetary system problems that allowed the 2008 Financial Crisis to occur . . . and many more crises are still to come from Vietnam Era government lies. Nobody believed this “conspiracy theory” until 40 years later when the evidence and internal NSA reports were finally declassified in 2004 (the National Archives summary here).
Government Lies to Sell the Iraq War. This has been well-documented and publicized in recent years.
CIA Operation AJAX (Overthrowing Iran’s Government). Nobody believed this “conspiracy theory” for decades until dozens of declassified CIA records (and this top-secret primary source) 60 years later revealed that Operation AJAX was very real. The operation systematically manipulated Iran’s government, destroyed its democracy, and resulted in the assassination of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh. He was one of the most respected and beloved statesmen of his generation, comparable to America’s FDR or Abraham Lincoln. This event is the historical epicenter of America’s problems in the Middle East today. Every Arab and Iranian throughout the world knows about this event, it is taught in their history books, used as a powerful recruiting tool in jihadi literature, and they are justifiably outraged that the U.S. Government has such a long and continuous history of manipulating Arab and Persian governments and cultures.
CIA Smuggled Crack Cocaine into U.S. Cities for Years. Most people can’t believe this “conspiracy theory” is true until they have read the evidence and declassified government archives and congressional records. This government operation has directly contributed to the crack cocaine epidemic in major U.S. cities, which has destroyed families, communities, perpetuates generational poverty, and exacerbates racial conflicts and widespread distrust of government and law enforcement officials nationwide.
CIA Project MKULTRA. Between the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA systematically tortured, in some cases killed, and experimented on many American and Canadian citizens (probably other nationalities, too) against their will to test mind-control drugs and techniques. The CIA’s explicit objective was to create an army of human robots that could be deployed into important areas of government, industry, the media, and international relations, which would have enabled the U.S. Government to control literally every aspect of human civilization. Until the CIA archives and congressional reports were declassified decades later, “experts” and “the consensus” assumed it was just a “conspiracy theory.” (If you don’t have time to read the entire congressional report, here’s a good summary.)
Madoff’s $65 Billion Ponzi Scheme. Madoff’s scheme was suspected for many years and federal authorities received repeated warnings, but regulatory irregulates appear to have suppressed the investigation. Madoff’s bank knew about the scheme for years, too, but somehow, everybody who heard the accusations against Madoff assumed they were just baseless “conspiracy theories.”
Dozens of Multibillion-Dollar Corporate Scandals. Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Tyco, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Barclays, Wells Fargo (numerous other major bank scandals), and dozens of other multibillion-dollar corporate scandals were each originally dismissed for years as “conspiracy theories” by Wall Street analysts, politicians, investors, and the mainstream media. In each case, only a major crisis could convince these people that these corporations were manipulating them and feeding them total fantasies. The collective impact of these scandals on retirement funds, pension funds, labor market, corporate culture, and global trust in the U.S. financial system has been catastrophic.
Counter-Intelligence Program (“COINTELPRO”). This “conspiracy theory” was a secret FBI program launched to harass numerous private sector groups, individuals, and civil rights activists by spreading defamatory rumors about them in the press, sabotaging their careers, breaking up their marriages, sending them death threats and ominously-worded anonymous letters, and all manner of vicious, politically-motivated personal attacks. Of course, this kind of abuse by the federal government against private citizens has occurred on many other occasions throughout modern American history. But for some reason, many people still think these are just “conspiracy theories” because they’re too lazy to spend 10 minutes researching the facts.
CIA Operation Northwoods (Kill Americans and Blame it on Cuba). This was the U.S. Government’s actual plan (detailed declassified report)—officially approved by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—to murder American citizens and blame it on Cuba so that the American people would become outraged and support an attack on Cuba. Nobody believed this “conspiracy theory” until the documents were declassified decades later.
JFK’s Assassination. Based on recently declassified CIA documents (here’s a shorter summary), the CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by respected JFK assassination historian Jefferson Morley, the well-documented book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, and a clear understanding of the importance of the remaining official documents that CIA has refused to release, there is no question that CIA was directly responsible for either orchestrating or actually executing JFK’s assassination. The declassified documents confirm that CIA:
- Explicitly admitted that former CIA Director John McCone deceived Congress (the Warren Commission) about CIA’s knowledge (declassified report: “McCone may be regarded as a ‘co-conspirator’ in the JFK assassination ‘cover-up.’”).
- Concealed critical information about CIA’s involvement.
- Monitored Lee-Harvey Oswald’s movements and illegally opened his mail for about four years before the 1963 assassination (This was part of a much broader illegal domestic surveillance program called “HTLINGUAL”.); so they knew exactly where Oswald was at all times.
- Confirmed that former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who was controlling the Warren Commission investigation) would “work to keep the commission from pursuing provocative lines of investigation.”
- Confirmed that President Lyndon Johnson interfered with the investigation and withheld information from the Commission, among many other smoking gun clues.
The next batch of classified JFK assassination records is officially scheduled to be declassified in 2017. Those records will likely be heavily redacted, but at this point, there is virtually no question that CIA was directly involved. The only question that really matters at this point is whether CIA pulled the trigger directly or gave Fidel Castro access to JFK in Dallas so that Castro could pull the trigger for CIA, which would give CIA plausible deniability. After over 50 years of government secrecy, there is a high probability that this “conspiracy theory,” like all the others, will reveal even more atrocious U.S. Government behavior.
The Sugar & Diet Scandals. For decades, several well-respected and independent scientists (i.e., scientists not paid by big food companies) have provided scientific evidence (and a more technical overview) demonstrating that dietary cholesterol and fat do not cause heart disease and stroke; and in fact, the real culprit is sugar and high-carbohydrate diets. Despite these warnings, the FDA and USDA disregarded the evidence and allowed the food industry’s propaganda to hijack federal dietary guidelines. The result has been 100s of millions of Americans brainwashed with the federal “Food Pyramid” and “MyPlate” nutrition guidelines that represent the interests of the largest food industry corporations, not the interests of American citizens.
The human impact of this “conspiracy theory” has been catastrophic: nearly 1 million Americans die every year from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, obesity, Metabolic Syndrome, liver and kidney damage, and other diet-related diseases that were virtually non-existent before the 1970s advent of high-fructose corn syrup and the heavily processed foods that dominate the U.S. food supply today. Finally, after years of denial by the mainstream media, politicians, and food corporations (of course), this issue is no longer being dismissed as a “conspiracy theory.”
Continue to: “The Mind of a Corrupt Organization”.
Notes:
[i] Johann Hari: The truth? Our empire killed millions, 2006. Retrieved December 02, 2016, from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-truth-our-empire-killed-millions-404631.html
[ii] Davidson, Basil, Magnificent African Cake, The, (How the Europeans Divided Up Africa), 1983. Accessed October 5, 2016. https://youtu.be/wJ1uo5jvpe8?t=408
[iii] Davis, M. (2001). Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the third world. London: Verso.
[iv] Elkins, C. (2005). Imperial reckoning: The untold story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt.
[v] Anderson, D. (2005). Histories of the hanged: The dirty war in Kenya and the end of empire. New York: W.W. Norton.
[vi] Cobain, I., Bowcott, O., & Norton-Taylor, R. (2012). Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes. Retrieved December 02, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes
[vii] Mukerjee, M. (2010). Churchill’s secret war: The British empire and the ravaging of India during World War II. New York: Basic Books.
[viii] Britain: The World’s Worst Mass Murderer. (2013). Retrieved November 14, 2016, from http://worldsworstmassmurderer.blogspot.ca. Note: By itself this is not considered a “high-quality” source, but I include it here because it is one of the most comprehensive, succinct, and digestible summaries of the British Empire’s atrocities with hundreds of high-quality references listed throughout. Additionally, this source and the references listed therein are consistent with other more authoritative sources that I have seen in recent years that have emerged from newly declassified archives from the U.K Government. And my other sources herein substantiate most of the those listed atrocities in much greater detail. Thus, this source should not be evaluated based on the “quality” factor because it serves only as a brief summary and guide to hundreds of other sources.
[ix] Of course, the Belgians, French, Germans, and Italians all joined the brutal colonial party in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Collectively, they dominated and oppressed all of Africa and most of Asia, but the scale of British oppression and atrocities is unmatched by any other imperial power in human history.