A co-worker and I were having a laugh over Alex Jones’ Endgame, and I wondered, what did conspiracy nutjobs and other wackos obsess about in the 19th century? The 18th? The old days in general?
Jews were often seen as a state-within a state and often charged with looking to take over from Xexres ~490 B.C.
Then Haman said [to Xexres],* “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not for the king’s profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.”*
to 1095
*
The abbot of Cluny asked why Christians should travel to "the ends of the world to fight the Sarcens, when we permit among us other infidels a thousand times more guilty toward Christ than the Mohammedans?”*
to Hitler, to today and especially in the 20th Century similar themes were anti-semitically echoed about dual loyalties
:smack: D’oh!
Of course, I forgot. The Jews.
Also, the Jesuits.
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews
There was a whole entire political party for a while in 19th century America based on opposition to the Freemasons. The aforementioned Jesuits, and “Papists” in general, were also often the subject of conspiracy theories and rumor-mongering (from “the Pope is gonna Take Over” to “What Really Goes On in nunneries”). Oddly enough, I believe 19th century Catholic conservatives and/or reactionaries sometimes espoused conspiracy theories about godless radical Freemasons as well.
Oh! I’d forgotten about Maria Monk!
In 1836, a booklet came out by an alleged former nun, Maria Monk, about scandals in the Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal. It was a SENSATION in the US…it made our modern-day Britney-obsession look like nothing.
Not bad for a Jew, Tom.
For 19th century America, Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics is still famous.
For the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Mythology of the Secret Societies by John Roberts has just been reissued as the classic history of the widespread paranoia about secret conspiracies in that period.
Going back even further, there was the Inquisition, with people claiming that THE DEVIL was trying to take over the world. And before that, the Crusades.
Sea serpents, lost civilizations, boogers, haints, ghost ships, and the old witch widow on the corner, revenuers, pirates will steal the children, shape shifters killing the herds, Britain will take over the world, Chinese will take over the world, people disappear while being watched, the devil leaving footprints on house tops yards and whatever for miles one night, devil seen dancing on a roof top, stones thrown by ghosts, mediums, pictures of fairies, giant snakes and other unheard of animals in the woods outside the settlement, gypsies will steal the children, the hoodoo woman put a curse on people, druids sacrificing people, Aztec gold and the lost ones that entered a mountain, Egyptian giants in a tomb in the Grand Canyon being covered up by the Smithsonian, trolls are eating the children, little folks stealing the babies, she has an evil eye and makes the milk sour, and Spring Heeled Jack.
The Spanish Inquisition was nasty and might be out to get them, but they only had power over Catholics.
Read Jules Verne such as 20000 Leagues Below the Sea. He writes about the upcoming energy crisis due to the world running out of coal. From the text it sounds like this was a response to then current concerrns not his personal rant.
You also had your pretenders - they were always good for drawing a crowd.
The Lost Dauphins
The Pseudo Neroes
The False Dimitries: 1 2 and 3
Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck
Arthur Orton
Princess Caraboo
I’ve read a lot of and about Verne and this is the first time I heard this. A cite please?
There were other books about the coal running out. Many about England because they were written during the Victorian era.
Everyone KNEW the world was round. It was just a conspiracy by the European princes and their lackeys, the mapmakers to make us think otherwise.
Not exactly. Over Christians. Protestants, in particular, were happily included as Christian heretics.
RADIO! Y’know, if you can hear them, THEY CAN HEAR YOU! It just STANDS TO REASON!
There was also this thing about Earth being round, or some such nonsense 
Don’t forget the witches! And the succubi and concubi…