This is what always sucks me in. I always have to ask “What is it exactly they’re going to do with all that money and power?” The last answer I got was to the effect of consolidate it and pass it on to the next generation. What? Are you sure you’re not confusing this topic with a South Park episode?
Melanson is kind of whacko conspiraist too, though, and I’d take some of his conclusions with a grain of salt.
Yeah, and when they go there it just comes off as undirected class hatred. Illuminati becomes just another word for oligarchy, and then the source of all their (the conspiratrialist) problems is that some people are rich and have dynastic wealth.
Try to show them any outlines from a grad student’s thesis in sociology about how dynastic wealth breaks down over time or how the newly powerful are assimilated by the establishment and they just gloss right over it.
In all fairness are there any authors who write about such topics that are not immediately considered conspiratorialists by dint of having written that work?
Like Mom always said: just because you’re batshit crazy doesn’t mean there aren’t invisible flying telekinetic leprechauns out to get you.
Yes…I believe he is an actual person, and not a simulation. There is some question if he’s a real HUMAN, of course, but speculation that he’s in fact a mutant space squirrel are, IMHO, overblown.
Hmm…well, that’s a bit more difficult to be honest. This would require one to be able to delve into his (supposed) mind to tease out his real motives. Does he ACTUALLY and fully believe all of the non-sense he spouts? Most? Some? Really, it’s doubtful one could ever really know.
Personally, I think he’s a deranged space lizard who is really just here to eat your soul…but, I’m possibly and probably and totally biased. (…!…)
-XT
Sure. Jasper Ridley, the author of “The Freemasons: The History of the World’s Most Powerful Secret Society”, was a serious historian. for instance.
Freemasonry isn’t a conspiracy theory though. Yes it’s a bete noir of conspiracy theorists but there are thousands of books written by credible historians and Masons would be more than happy to tell you all about it over a pint at the pub. They’ll even talk to you about the Morgan Affair and the Anti-Masonic party. Much of the works about Masonry available for public consumption are written by Masons themselves.
So I would say we have to preclude works on Masonry from the topic as it’s too easy to find credible works on Masonry.
The “Super-Rich” don’t even live in the same world as the rest of us, so what makes us think they want the same things ‘normal’ people want?
It surprises me that people are so quick to dismiss the idea of an ''inner cadre" who benefit no matter which side is in power, and is quite happy to play influences off each other, knowing they are still pulling the strings.
It hasn’t been dismissed quickly. It has been thoroughly discredited because it isn’t a sustainable model, as mswas pointed out. The idea has been discussed ad nauseum.
I don’t, that’s precisely what I am saying.
I’m personally not dismissive of such a notion. People talk about the ‘wise men of Washington’ the lawyers who have clients in both parties and are involved in political deals regardless of which party is in power. I completely believe in that. I believe the Bilderberg organization is really real, that it’s basically a trade convention for wealthy industrialists. I believe that Augusta National is a very exclusive club where people get together to do business.
I have no problem with the idea that there is a power elite that knows how to make money and power in a variety of political conditions. It’s just that I don’t buy into Alex Jones’s telling of it that their entire desire is to make slaves of us all on a ‘Prison Planet’.
I’ve had dealings with some and they are surprisingly like the rest of us. They just have enough money that they can do fucking cool things the rest of us wishe we could do.
Check out Propaganda Due. Sort of the Mafia meets the Illuminati.
True, but the Illuminati aren’t a conspiracy theory either. They were an actual group in the 18th century of radical Masons. So somebody could write about them and not be a conspiracy theorist.
But that’s not Terry Melanson. Melanson believes that the Masons and Illuminati are behind a secret plot to control American currency. He believes that Michael Richards’ racist outburst was because he’s a Shriner, and that Jeffery Toobin’s criticism of Ron Paul after the Republican debate was because of secret orders from the Council on Foreign Relations.
There are far many of the initiatives that we don’t know about but also, quite a number of those that we do know about. However, seems to me that people, in their eagerness to chastise and lethargy of middle-class boredom, are finding it much more easier to target likes of Alex Jones and thus avoid discussing, for example, their own leaders or leaders of “friendly” countries conspiring to attack or destabilize some country for whatever reason.
I would add that, for the OP sake, that I don’t think he is crazy at all. His agenda may elude us, but crazy he is not.
I’d be more concerned about them eventually wanting to remove “the unwashed masses” from the equation, in order to start their own “Brave New World(Order)”!
Alex Jones is only a ‘target’ in his own head. Most people haven’t even heard of him.
From what I can tell, there is plenty of discussion of our own leaders and those of other nations. I will say what I say to every conspiracy theorist who claims I’m wrapping myself in my comfortable suburban existence and not “seeing”: show me some tangible evidence that has not been debunked to death and I’ll listen.
Which side do you think is doing the fooling? I mean seriously. When you start with a given that: Secret societies exist and they have a conspiracy to take over the world and any other evidence that rebuts their claims just means that THAT is even a part of the conspiracy… that they are just exoteric explanations to throw us off, well where does that leave us? It leaves us in a no-win situation where we are forced to accept delusion as reality. We could just as well say that gravity is also an exoteric explanation for the real secret that Masonic Luciferian Suck Monsters are pulling us down. When alternative explanations and evidence gets to be tossed aside because ALL of it is exoteric, we have crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
There’s a reason none of these claims have ever made the 6 o’clock news or the MSM, and it has nothing to do with suppressing information. Think about it. We live in a society that has not been able to keep the secret of a cross dressing FBI chief. And he controlled intel. The most secretive administration ever was brought down as a house of cards because an ex-true believer was disillusioned and wrote a book. The most salacious, unsavory, unflattering secrets in our national history have made their way to the surface one way or another. It’s almost unthinkable that a secret society could possibly keep itself from being found out and plastered all over the place. Enron couldn’t even manage to keep it secret, and they had a US President on their side. The world is watching. Always. Things always surface. Yet there are those still insisting a secret society has managed to keep itself so for centuries? Please.
I’ve always thought a movie about Propaganda Due would be amazing, it’d blow the Da Vinci Code out of the water.
I never heard of them being Masons. And any secret society that has an agenda to reorder society is a conspiracy, by definition.
Masonry at different times and in different societies could be considered a conspiracy, in western/anglo nations they are a part of the establishment and thus cannot rightly be considered to be subversive.
Heh, nutter. Michael Richards talked trash cuz he’s a Shriner? What the hell would being a Shriner have to do with being a racist? I have met many black Shriners BTW.
Well then you and Alex Jones have a common cause. I think the idea is ludicrous. What makes you think the super rich like each other more than they like the lower classes?
Weishaupt was a Mason, and the Illuminati’s tactics were to infiltrate and radicalize Masonic lodges.
You’ve met many Shriners?
Do they accept Prince Hall Masons?