#2.The Illuminati and/or Freemasons "Is the Illuminati real? The answer is yes. Is AIDS man-made? I think you can guess."
-This informative rap video
Who Are They?
We've arrived at basically the master conspiracy theory that overrides them all. The Illuminati is an ill-defined group of, well, every single prominent person in the world, from Barack Obama to Tony Hawk.
What does this have to do with Freemasons? After all, isn't that just like a Rotary Club made up of old people who do charity stuff? Well, yes, but lots and lots of prominent people have been members, including most of the Founding Fathers. And, again, they meet in secret. So who knows what depravity goes on in their dark chambers?
These days the mythology behind both groups overlaps to the point that they are often referred to as being one and the same. That's why when conspiracy types talk about that one-eyed pyramid on the dollar bill, some will refer to it as a secret Freemason symbol and others as a secret Illuminati symbol, depending on which they think sounds more ominous.
Who Thinks They Control the World?
This is kind of the umbrella that all the above theories fell under. The CFR, Bildebergers, all are ultimately just tools of the Illuminati. Go to any sites spouting theories about the above and search for the word "Illuminati." You'll usually find it in there somewhere.
Why People Believe It:
The historical Illuminati (yes, there was an actual organization called that) was an 18th Century group of Bavarian humanists and free thinkers, basically the 18th Century's version of pothead college professors. In 1777, they were banned for totally being too real, man, after which nobody really knows what happened.
The modern-day fascination with the Illuminati is mainly due to a trilogy of books by pair of Playboy Editors called Illuminatus and then Mr. Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown started casting them as the villains in his novels.
As for the Freemasons, well, 14 American presidents were said to have been Freemasons, and there are claims that signs of the Freemasons were "left" across Washington D.C.
Oh, God! Someone took a geometric urban street grid and managed to find 14 interconnecting lines! WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?
Why It's Retarded:
First, all of those books we mentioned above, including Illuminatus, are fiction.
But more importantly, this seems to be the ultimate product of the paranoid mind, in that depending on who you talk to, the Illuminati includes everyone. Not just governments and corporations, but also Hollywood.
So every single ideological difference you think there is between political parties, competing companies and even the makers of your favorite TV shows, is fake. In reality, they all meet behind the scenes, with perfect secrecy, with perfect cooperation, to control everything. They're having round-table meetings in the penthouses of five-star hotels where they decide that America needs a terrorist attack this year while using their sinister connections to implant secret messages into Hannah Montana songs.
The interesting thing here is that cumulatively, they're talking about groups--politicians, bankers, big media--that do control the world. But they control it in the sense that a group of squirrels can "control" how that meatloaf they found the trash gets eaten. It'll get eaten, all right, but the organization is what's lacking.
And yet, this is still not the most retarded conspiracy theory out there...
#1.Lizard People
"SINCE I BEGAN TALKING ABOUT THE REPTILIAN CONNECTION, THE OPPOSITION HAS BEEN INCREASED SUBSTANTIALLY. WHY? IF I AND THE ENDLESS PEOPLE ANCIENT AND MODERN WHO HAVE SEEN THE SHAPE-SHIFTERS ARE SO MISGUIDED, WHY HAS THE OPPOSITION INCREASED SO MUCH SINCE THE BIGGEST SECRET WAS PUBLISHED AND NOT THE OPPOSITE?"
-David Icke
Who Are They?
People. Who are lizards.
You can't tell, though, because they're also shape-shifters.
Who Thinks They Control the World?
Meet David Icke. He is a fucking loon.
A former football player and sports announcer, David Icke became shithouse rat insane in 1994. For most of that decade he was lost in the crowd, talking about a group of "Global Elite" secretly controlling the world (by which he usually meant "the Jews"). Then one day in 1999, he published a book that revealed the greatest secret in human history: We're all secretly being controlled by alien lizards from the constellation Draco.
In case his word isn't enough, Icke offers up a convoluted theory about how the elite families in America and Europe interbreed not because of snobbery, but so they can preserve their alien lizard DNA. The British royal family, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers are all part of this alien collective. Never mind the fact that Joe Kennedy, Sr. was just some middle-class Irish guy before he built himself up via stock market scams and, possibly, bootlegging. And we don't know how he's going to integrate the horribly impoverished Kenyan Obama bloodline into that theory. Probably some drunken lizard uncle who went slumming for a spell.
ARE YOU STILL NOT CONVINCED!?!
Oh, and did we mention that lots of people agree with him?
Icke spends most of his time writing and traveling across the world giving crazy talks that draw surprisingly large crowds. Especially in Canada. We like to think that most of his "followers" just love him ironically, like Ed Wood fans, but unfortunately there's no way to tell.
Why People Believe It:
Icke basically took the concept of the Illuminati in his hand and fisted it deep into the bowels of crazy land. The element of V-style shape-shifting aliens adds a cool layer of sci-fi to the whole thing that's hard to resist.
These days, fans of the theory have dug up thousands of photos that claim to have caught world leaders dropping their disguise, from photos of George Bush, Sr. with reptilian slit pupils:
... to this video of George W. Bush accidentally displaying his serpent tongue, to TV reporters accidentally revealing reptilian dual eyelids.
Why It's Retarded:
Because it's too awesome to be true, damnit.
To see the people who did rule the world from the shadows, check out 6 People Who Secretly Ruled The World. Or find out about some nuthouse crazy theories that were actually true, in 7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened.
