Zbigniew Brzezinski ... He is a protegé of the Rockefellers and a founder of the Trilateral Commission. He’s the guy who identified Jimmy Carter, and introduced Jimmy Carter to the Rockefellers. The Rockefellers funded Jimmy Carter’s run for president. Now, he was out of favour during the Clinton years so he went back into Academia. But during the Clinton years while he was back in Academia he was doing something else: he was nurturing one of his students at Columbia University. And that student was a guy called Barack Obama. Ian R Crane, presentation History Cannot Be Permanently Falsified
There are several problems with a conspiratorial view that don’t fit with what we know about power structures. First, it assumes that a small handful of wealthy and highly educated people somehow develop an extreme psychological desire for power that leads them to do things that don’t fit with the roles they seem to have. For example, that rich capitalists are no longer out to make a profit, but to create a one-world government. Or that elected officials are trying to get the constitution suspended so they can assume dictatorial powers. These kinds of claims go back many decades now, and it is always said that it is really going to happen this time, but it never does. Since these claims have proved wrong dozens of times by now, it makes more sense to assume that leaders act for their usual reasons, such as profit-seeking motives and institutionalized roles as elected officials. Of course they want to make as much money as they can, and be elected by huge margins every time, and that can lead them to do many unsavoury things, but nothing in the ballpark of creating a one-world government or suspending the constitution. William G Domhoff, There Are No Conspiracies
There is something extremely dangerous and alluring about the combination of secrecy and world ambition. What could be more threatening than a group that it is the shadows and trying to dominate your life? Daniel Pipes, author Conspiracy
Fort Knox, Hanger 18 ... They are some of America’s most infamous top-secret facilities. Conspiracy Files Unsealed s1e20: Secret Government Warehouses, 2012
No-one has seen the gold in decades. ibid.
10) Moon Landing Hoax
9) M K Ultra
8) Area 51
7) HAARP
6) Chemtrails
5) New World Order
4) Was Jesus Married?
3) Roswell
2) The Death of Adolf Hitler
1) JFK Assassination. Conspiracy Files Unsealed: Top 10 Conspiracies of All Time
Once power is achieved many will go to any length to achieve it. Terrorists and tyrants utilise body doubles to fool enemies and allies alike. Conspiracy Files Unsealed: Fake World Leaders, H2 2014
Sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Dan Rather, interview Oswald’s Ghost
One of the ways you can trap criminals in the United States is with complete unoriginality. I mean for the last forty or fifty years it’s always been the Lee Harvey Oswald; if anybody who gets assassinated it’s the lone-gun killer. A lone crazed killer communist. A lone crazed killer ... These murders have almost always been plots – oh no, you’re a conspiracy theorist! Oh nut! You must believe in flying saucers. Well everything in the United States is a conspiracy. Haven’t we figured that out yet? ... I mean everyone conspires to cheat the people and conspires to seize power. What is a political party? A conspiracy to seize the power of the state. Any child can work that one out. Gore Vidal
I’m not a conspiracy theorist – I’m a conspiracy analyst. Gore Vidal, cited The Guardian 5 May 2007
O conspiracy,
Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? O then by day
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage? William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar II i 77-81, Brutus to self
All is not well:
I doubt some foul play. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iii 253-254, Hamlet to Horatio
As I confess it is my nature’s plague
To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy
Shapes faults that are not. William Shakespeare, Othello III iii 151-153, Iago
Gloucester (reads): If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar. Hum, conspiracy! William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear I ii @51
While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take. William Shakespeare, The Tempest II i Ariel
I had forgot that foul conspiracy
Of the beast Caliban and his confederates
Against my life. ibid. IV i 139-141, Prospero
A conspiracy theory is in a sense a self-fulfilling narrative: once you start to tell it in order to explain why there is no evidence you have to keep expanding it. Professor Elaine Showalter, author Hystories, Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media
The assassination of Julius Caesar was the fruit of a conspiracy like no other. It was headed by men who were his closest friends and allies. Men who owed him everything – their lives, their fortunes, their careers, their honours. Yet for months some of the best and brightest of Rome conspired to commit what became known as one of the most infamous assassinations in history. Valerio Manfredi, Caesar: A Roman Murder
Sixty men took part in the plot to assassinate Caesar. History has only recorded the more famous names in this extraordinary conspiracy. ibid.
Given the pervasiveness of the faith in our country, and especially in the public sphere controlled by mass media, it is easy to marginalise those of us who question the official story about 9/11. The chief method other than ignoring us involves the label Conspiracy Theorist. This label lets people know that we are irrational, that our claims are simply products of fevered minds. So that even examining our claims to refute them would be a waste of time. From a purely rational and empirical point of view, the effectiveness of this label is remarkable. A conspiracy according to my dictionary is simply, An agreement to perform together in a legal, treacherous or illegal act. Professor David Ray Griffin, interview Guns and Butter 27th January 2009
In a time of emotional rupture, in a time of tragedy, conspiracy theories offer purpose and meaning. Purpose and meaning that make tragedy more than simple twist of fate. Robert Goldberg, author Enemies Within
The desire to have a story always that is better than reality. We demand the story. It completes something in us. Conspiracy theory is an improvement upon reality. Somebody has designed the whole thing to happen exactly like that. There are no accidents. There are no contingencies ... We are never on our own, because there is always some form of intelligence organising the events of the world into some kind of shape or pattern. But suppose there is no shape or pattern. That’s the thing that is really intolerable. David Aaronovitch, author Voodoo Histories
One of the things that I think motivates us to want conspiracy theories is that we have a huge desire for what we might call narrative, stories. Look at the structure of the stories we prefer; look at the structures of fairy stories – they are made in a very particular kind of a way. Conspiracy theories are fairy story-realities. They are a narrative that improves on reality itself. David Aaronovitch, interview 9/11 Conspiracies
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglass
It is not simply against future conspiracies of evil men which we have to guard ourselves ... but the weaknesses and faults in our own social order, in our own ways of living ... against which we have to be on continual guard. Dr Ewen Cameron
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. John Updike
Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil; it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction and a tacit conspiracy. Martin Amis, Money
If I give an analysis of say the economic system and I point out that General Motors tries to maximise profit and market share, that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s an institutional analysis. It’s nothing to do with conspiracies. And that’s precisely the sense in which we’re talking about the media. The phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ is one of those that’s constantly brought up – and I think it’s effect is to discourage institutional analyses. Professor Noam Chomsky
Conspiracies don’t need ten thousand people. They just need a few people to be carried out. But what they need also is hundreds of millions of people out there who don’t want to assume the risk and the responsibility for getting to the root causes. Webster Tarpley