Description
The invisible world of influence and power revealed. Hidden agendas uncovered. An examination of over 250 current and historical conspiracies, secret cabals, and powerful groups.
Separating fact from fiction, this compelling work provides gripping details and presents the information without bias, including facts about hundreds of individuals, organizations, and events in which official claims and standard explanations of actions and events remain shrouded in mystery. Sifting through the evidence, weighing competing narratives in a search for the truth, Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier of Hidden Plots and Schemes examines the many subjects discussed by conspiracy theorists, probing and analyzing the dark doings of secret societies. Bring yourself up to date with the latest research and findings into historical topics plus current issues, including:
Originally published in 2006, Brad and Sherry Steiger’s masterwork gets an update, with more than 50 new entries, and a complete review and revision by a panel of experts to incorporate the latest developments and newly uncovered conspiracies. Whether confirming or debunking a conspiracy or secret group, Conspiracies and Secret Societies cites sources to let you do your own research and draw your own conclusions. This important book brings the facts to light and provides insights into conspiracies and the world of conspiracy theorists. Knowledge is our best weapon against these people, groups, and their nefarious schemes. When some of the nation's highest leaders, their wives, and followers promote—and even believe—false conspiracies, knowing which conspiracies are actually real and which you should not trust is more important than ever!
Whether they are feared, admired, or misunderstood, there are always those individuals who oppose forms of government that they consider tyrannical, oppressive, and unjust.
Depending upon the historical period in which they conducted their protests, certain individuals have been called anarchists, libertarians, socialists, Marxists, syndicalists, and revolutionaries. Regardless of labeling, these men and women have opposed through pacifism, militancy, or civil disobedience actions of the government that they considered to be tyrannical, oppressive, and socially, politically, or economically unjust. Here are some of the individuals who have been called “anarchists” and a summary of their beliefs:
Sources
”Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth century.” http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/macan/introduction.html. ”A People’s Libertarian Index.” http://flag.blackened.net/liberty.
Antichrist
For many Christians, the greatest conspiracy of all will be the one that the antichrist conducts against the followers of the returning Christ.
Although commonly associated with the apocalyptic New Testament book of Revelation, the word antichrist is nowhere to be found within that text. In 1 John 2:18 the epistle writer declares that the “enemy of Christ” has manifested and that many false teachers have infiltrated the Christian ranks. In verse 22, John names as the antichrist anyone who would deny Jesus as the Christ and the Father and the Son, and in 2 John 7 he declares there are many deceivers already at work among the faithful. In Matthew 24:3–44 Jesus speaks to his disciples at great length concerning false messiahs and prophets who will deceive many people with rumors about the end of the world. He refers to the prophet Daniel and his warnings concerning the end times, and he admonishes the disciples not to follow false teachers who will produce great miracles and signs to trick God’s chosen ones. No one knows when the Son of Man shall appear again coming on the clouds of heaven, Jesus tells them, not even the angels.
The earliest form of the antichrist is probably the warrior king Gog, who appears in the book of Ezekiel and reappears in Revelation along with his kingdom of Magog, representing those earthly minions of Satan who will attack the people of God in a final great battle of good versus evil. Jewish writings about the “end of days” state that the armies of Gog and Magog will eventually be defeated, and the world will finally be at peace.
Throughout the Bible the antichrist bears many titles: Son of Perdition, Man of Sin, Man of Lawlessness, Prince of Destruction, and Beast. In the prophecies of both Daniel and John the Revelator, the evil king, the antichrist, is associated with ten rulers who give their power and allegiance to him in order to form a short-lived empire of bloodshed and destruction.
Although Jesus makes it clear no one will know the hour or day of his Second Coming, Christian scholars have steadfastly viewed the rise of the antichrist to earthly power as a kind of catalyst that will set in motion Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, the ultimate clash between the armies of Jesus Christ and Satan. Throughout the centuries, Christians have attempted to determine the antichrist from among the powerful and ruthless leaders of their day, such men as Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Nominations for the role have often been influenced by politics or religious prejudices: ever since the Protestant Reformation, the pope has been a favorite of evangelicals for the ignominious title.
The association of the number 666 with the antichrist is derived from Revelation 13:18, which states that the number of the Beast is 666 and that this number stands for a person. In John the Revelator’s world of the first century, the Beast who ruled the earth would have been the emperor, the Caesar, of the Roman Empire, Nero. Using the Hebrew alphabet, the numerical value of “Caesar Nero,” the merciless persecutor of the early Christians, works out to 666.
On May 1, 2005, scholars revealed that a newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating from the third century, indicates that later copyists got it wrong: the number of the Beast is 616. David Parker, professor of New Testament textual criticism and paleography at the University of Birmingham, England, says that the numerical value of 616 refers to another nemesis of the early Christians, the emperor Caligula.
However, those who maintain that the number 666 is still a potent predictor of the antichrist will continue to name their contemporary candidates for the role. The numerical value of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s name reportedly added up to 666, and since he held the office of president of the United States for twelve years—and during the Great Depression and World War II—many of his conservative Christian critics began thinking of him as the antichrist. Even Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed significant support from right-wing Christians, had certain dissenters calling attention to the fact that he had six letters in each of his three names: 666.
In recent decades, the term antichrist has been applied to so many individuals in popular culture that it has lost much of its meaning and sense of menace. However, those fundamentalist Christians who believe strongly in the coming time of the Tribulation, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, and the great final battle of good versus evil at Armageddon firmly believe that the title of antichrist maintains its fear factor and that we must pay serious heed to those signs and warnings of the Beast as prophesied in the book of Revelation.
Sources
Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly. New Age Almanac. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1991. Shepherd, A. P. Rudolf Steiner: Scientist of the Invisible. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1983.
Antifa
Although this network says they are organized around fighting fascists, others see a cabal of subversive agents intent on undermining the United States.
When fascism was on the march in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s, its growth did not go unnoticed by those who opposed the authoritarian, nationalist, and racist ideologies. Because the danger represented by fascism was seen as so extreme, loose confederations of not-always-aligned groups on the left of the political spectrum—from socialists to trade unionists, anarchists, and Communists—began banding together to shut down fascists whenever they gathered for speeches or marches. The result was often pitched street fighting fueled by the passions of diametrically opposed viewpoints, neither of which was interested in giving any quarter.
One of the first anti-fascist groups began in Italy in the early 1920s. They were known as Arditi del Popolo (“The People’s Daring Ones”). In 1936, when Oswald Mosley and his fascist Blackshirts marched through London’s heavily Jewish East End neighborhood, anti-fascists turned out to fight them in a riot that was later called the Battle of Cable Street. In Germany, anti-fascists organized under the name Antifaschistische Aktion, also referred to as “Antifa.” These groups, for the most part, did not outlast World War II, due both to the military defeat of fascist regimes and the splintering of leftist alliances due to new lines being drawn by the Cold War.
Starting in the 1980s, antifa groups like Anti-Racist Action sprang up in Europe and America to fight neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and other fringe xenophobes. Unlike pre-war anti-fascists, newer antifa groups were not part of larger mass movements but tended to be smaller disconnected cells of activists who believed mainstream leftists were too passive and that neo-Nazi rhetoric and violence needed a harsher response. Excepting some larger clashes like the thousands of anti-fascists who blocked an annual Nazi march in Dresden in 2010, the antifa-fascist conflicts were often small street skirmishes that took place out of the media spotlight.
That changed in 2017, when a more sizable coalition of antifa, anarchists, and other leftist protestors massed in Charlottesville, North Carolina, to push back against the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally. As white supremacist and authoritarian groups like the Proud Boys grew in numbers, boldness, and visibility during the Donald Trump presidency, increasingly groups like Portland, Oregon’s Rose City Antifa turned out to fight them.
During the protests that spread across America after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, antifa groups took part in fierce clashes not just with the pro-Trump far right but with law enforcement (who they saw as protecting or turning a blind eye to groups they deemed fascist). From that point on, and especially after some protests were marked by looting and burning of buildings, rumors flew on social media throughout the summer of 2020 about vague threats posed by groups of antifa supposedly massing around the country by the thousands to assault suburban neighborhoods and small towns.
In June 2020, a family on a camping trip in a rural part of Washington state was harassed by armed men who believed they were antifa. There were attempts to have antifa designated a terror network. Trump and some of his supporters believed that planeloads of black-uniformed antifa were flying around the country to wreak havoc. George Soros was accused of funding antifa, despite his organization’s denial. Wildfires that hit Oregon in September 2020 were blamed on antifa, who some believed were attempting to sow chaos by any means necessary. The theories continued into the following year.
Following the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, a theory spread through right-wing circles that in fact the rioters were antifa looking to shift blame.
Although many antifascists tried to fight the image of their movement as being destructive anarchists, the loose and decentralized nature of their networks likely made it easier for theories to quickly spread.
Sources Bray, Mark. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. New York: Melville House, 2017. Stout, James. “A Brief History of Anti-Fascism.” Smithsonian, June 24, 2020.
Anonymous
Is this network of “hacktivists” aiming to champion the cause of justice or to undermine modern society?
The first time most people heard of Anonymous was likely in early 2008. That January, a YouTube video featuring a backdrop of stormy skies and a flat robotic voice identifying as “We are Anonymous” accused the Church of Scientology “campaigns of misinformation” and “malign influence.” The video matter-of-factly declared that they had “decided that your organization should be destroyed.” It concluded with a recitation of what was essentially the Anonymous creed: “Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” While as with most hacker-led campaigns, there was an element of tongue-in-cheek humor, there were real-world results in addition to the expected online assaults on Scientology’s web sites. Thousands protested outside Scientology centers around the world, most of them protecting their identities by wearing the grinning Guy Fawkes mask popularized in the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta.
Anonymous started around 2004. Building on the prankster antiauthoritarian ethos of earlier “hacktivist” collectives like Cult of the Dead Cow and merging it with the boundary-pushing shock humor proliferating on websites like 4chan, Anonymous was credited with campaigns like one in which hackers helped entrap a suspected pedophile. After 2008, Anonymous took on a wide range of causes—from aiding anti-democracy activists during the Arab Spring to attacking critics of Wikileaks (before later turning on Wikileaks) and harassing a neo-Nazi radio host—with relatively little ideological linkage outside of a generally left-wing and somewhat libertarian ethos. Typical Anonymous campaigns involved denial-of-service attacks on websites and dumping of previously secret information online.
FBI arrests of numerous members in 2012 fractured the sprawling collective and in 2020 one of its key founders was identified as Canadian hacker Aubrey Cottle. Every so often, hacker vigilantes claiming Anonymous affiliation and using their now-infamous refrain (“We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us”) will make claims of responsibility for online attack on individuals or groups that are, for obvious reasons, difficult to prove.
Sources
Beran, Dale. “The Return of Anonymous.” The Atlantic, August 11, 2020. Kushner, David. “The Masked Avengers.” New Yorker, September 1, 2014. McCormick, Ty. “Hacktivism: A Short History.” Foreign Policy, April 29, 2013.
Apocalyptic Millennialism
The end times are coming. Beware of false messiahs, ranting prophets, and the antichrist—and prepare to be taken aloft by the Rapture.
To some Christians, the profound meaning of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ will return in the Last Days and prompt the resurrection of the dead and the Final Judgment. The heart of the gospels is eschatological, end-oriented. The essential theme of Jesus’s teaching is that the last stage of history, the end times, was being entered into with his appearance on Earth. In Matthew 24:3–44, Jesus speaks to his disciples at great length concerning false messiahs and prophets who will deceive many people with their rumors about the end of the world. He refers to the prophet Daniel and his warnings concerning the end times and the antichrist, and he admonishes the disciples not to chase after false teachers who will produce great miracles and signs to trick God’s chosen ones.
No one knows when the Son of Man shall appear again coming on the clouds of heaven, Jesus tells them, not even the angels. However, the prophets of apocalypticism believe that they have received visions that allow them to see ahead to the end time and predict when Christ will return.
Among the most famous of the end times prophets was William Miller, who founded the Millerite movement about 1831. Miller believed that he had discovered the exact date of Christ’s return by calculating two thousand years from 457 b.c.e., when Ezra was allowed to return to Jerusalem to reestablish the Temple. Based on his studies, Miller concluded that the Second Coming would transpire in 1843, although he later revised this prediction to include the period between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When the latter date embarrassingly passed without notable event, he refined his calculations and finally settled on October 22, 1844, as the day that Jesus would return in all his glory. The Millerites, who numbered at least fifty thousand, were dealt the “Great Disappointment” when Christ failed to arrive on that date either. Then one of Miller’s followers, Hiram Edson, had a vision revealing that the divinely inspired date had not been incorrect, merely misinterpreted. What Miller had seen, according to Edson, was the date when Jesus would begin to cleanse the heavenly sanctuary in preparation for the gathering of his earthly followers.
Another follower, Ellen G. White, author of The Desire of Ages and The Great Controversy, had visions which told the Adventists, as some of the Millerites were now calling themselves, that they were God’s special end times remnant. She also concluded that they should begin to keep the original Sabbath, Saturday, as their day of worship. The Millerite apocalyptic revelations had evolved into the Seventh-day Adventists. Later, the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, seeking to reform the church, broke away and formed their own interpretation of Millerite doctrine.
In the Jewish tradition, apocalyptic thought presupposes a universal history in which the Divine Author of that history will reveal and manifest his secrets in a dramatic end time that with finality will establish the God of Israel as the one true God. The “end of days” (acharit ha-yamin) is bound up with the coming of the Messiah, but before his appearance governments will become increasingly corrupt, religious schools will become heretical, the wisdom of the scribes and teachers will become blasphemous, young people will shame their elders, and members of families will turn upon one another. Then, just prior to the arrival of the Messiah, the righteous of Israel will defeat the armies of evil that have gathered under the banner of Gog and Magog, and the exiles will return to the Holy Land. The world will be at peace and all people will recognize the one true God. With the advent of the Messiah there will come the great Day of Judgment in which the dead shall rise from their graves to begin a new life. During the period known as the World to Come (Olam Haba), the righteous will join the Messiah in partaking of a great banquet in which all foods, even those previously judged impure, will be declared kosher. All the many nations of the world will communicate in one language; the Angel of Death will be slain by God; trees and crops will produce fresh harvests each month; the warmth of the sun will heal the sick; and the righteous will be nourished forever by the radiance of God.
According to ancient Jewish teachings, only the ashes of a flawless red heifer could purify worshippers who went into the Temple in Jerusalem. The First Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 b.c.e. and the Romans demolished the Second Temple in 70 c.e. Without a flawless red heifer to sacrifice to purify the Temple Mount, the Third Temple could not be built and the Messiah could not come. In modern times, some rabbits have forbidden Jews from setting foot on the Temple Mount. Fundamentalist Christians believe that after Jesus Christ has returned and defeated the forces of evil at the great battle of Armageddon, he will begin his millennial reign from the Third Temple. Muslims revere the Temple Mount as the place where Muhammad ascended into heaven; and in 685, followers of the Prophet began constructing the thirty-five-acre site known as the Noble Sanctuary, which today includes the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe that Jesus will return as a Muslim prophet and conduct the day of final judgment in the valley just below the Noble Sanctuary. Many Christians who believe in the end times also envision an event they call the “Rapture,” in which born-again Christians will be taken up into the air to meet Christ. Many believe that the Rapture will happen unexpectedly. Those Christians of special merit will be lifted suddenly from their homes, their automobiles, even from their passenger seats on airliners. Most of humankind will be left behind, including those Christians whose faith requires strengthening. To fundamentalist Christians, the Rapture will be a literal, physical occurrence, rather than a spiritual transformation. Those who are taken up by Christ may leave their clothing on the streets and their cars crashing into trees, but they will be lifted body and soul into the sky.
Although Christians who believe in the Rapture are certain that it will occur in association with the time of Tribulation (the seven-year period of disasters, famine, and illness during which the antichrist will be in power), opinions differ as to whether it will come about just before the Tribulation begins, midway through the seven-year reign of the antichrist, or at the very end of the Tribulation. There is, however, general agreement that when this awful time of lawlessness and corruption has passed, Christ will return to Earth with his army of angels and destroy the forces of darkness at Armageddon in the final battle of good versus evil. Babylon, the False Prophet, and the Beast (the antichrist) will be dispatched to their doom, and Satan, the Dragon, will be bound in a pit for a thousand years. With Satan imprisoned and chained, the Millennium, the thousand years of peace and harmony, will begin.
Not all Christians accept the scenario of the Rapture, but many Christians and non-Christians alike find the premise intriguing and read the books in the Rapture-inspired Left Behind series as exciting science fiction. Authored by fundamentalist minister Tim LaHaye and professional writer Jerry Jenkins, the sixteen books in the series, based on the events of the Rapture, sold tens of millions of copies and also inspired movies and computer games. They also contain a significant amount of violent anti-Semitism and link modern apocalyptic Christianity with conspiracy theories that propagated in the late 20th century, particularly about the United Nations as a false front for an anti-Christian One World Government.
From 1958 until his retirement in 2011, Christian broadcaster Harold Egbert Camping was president of Family Radio, a California-based radio group that broadcasts to 150 markets in the United States. Camping sometimes applied numerology to his interpretation of Bible passages that he believed predicted the end times. In 1988, Camping prophesied that the end of the world would occur on May 21 of that year. Undaunted by the sunrise on May 22, Camping went back to the Bible and his numerological computations, waiting until 1994 to make another doomsday prophecy that the world would end on September 6 of that year.
Somewhat chastened by another miscalculation, Camping was content to remain a fiery Christian broadcaster until his Bible interpretations moved him to receive another prediction for 2011. This time, he worked in some elements of the Rapture that were popular with certain evangelicals. On May 21, 2011, he predicted, Christ would return to Earth, elevating the righteous to Heaven. For all others, there would follow five months of terrible plagues on Earth, killing millions of people each day. His predictions for 1988 and 1994 had come and gone without gathering too much notice, but Family Radio was more media savvy by 2011, and they launched a massive publicity campaign that brought international attention to Camping’s prophetic utterances. Major media outlets carried stories that announced the approaching Judgment Day to believers and skeptics alike.
When May 21 left thousands of true believers disillusioned and even more unbelievers amused, Camping defended his power of prophecy by proclaiming his revelation that a great spiritual judgment did occur on that date and that the great physical Rapture would happen on October 21. But the responsibility of serving as an apocalyptic spokesperson proved too much for Camping and he suffered a stroke in June. On October 16, 2011, he retired from his presidency of Family Radio. When October 21 once again came and went without people rising to Heaven and the physical universe being destroyed, Camping conceded in a private interview that he guessed no one could know the actual time that the world would come to an end.
Sources
Abanes, Richard. End-Time Visions. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1998.
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Dreher, Rod. “Red-Heifer Days.” National Review Online, April 11, 2002. https://www.onenation.org/opinion/red-heifer-days/.
Lindsey, Hal, with C. C. Carlson. The Late Great Planet Earth. New York: Bantam, 1978.
Goetz, William R. Apocalypse Next. Camp Hill, PA: Horizon, 1996.
”Judgment Day Is Coming May 21, 2011—The Bible Says No Such Thing.” Christian News Today. http://www.christiannewstoday.com/Christian_News Report_6024.html.
Shaw, Eva. Eve of Destruction: Prophecies, Theories, and Preparations for the End of the World. Chicago: Contemporary, 1995.
Unterman, Alan. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Stevens, John, “You can come out now Harold! Doomsday prophet remains in hiding as world survives Rapture... AGAIN.” The Daily Mail. October 22, 2011.
Wheeler, John, Jr. Earth’s Two-Minute Warning: Today’s Bible-Predicted Signs of the End Times. North Canton, OH: Leader, 1996.
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Publié par | Visible Ink Press |
Date de parution | 27 septembre 2022 |
Nombre de lectures | 3 |
EAN13 | 9781578598038 |
Langue | English |
Poids de l'ouvrage | 8 Mo |
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