As a few recent threads in GreatDebates have shown us, people love their conspiracy theories. Most of us have hears about moon landing deniers, 9/11 theorists, the New World Order, JFK’s assassination, and some other big, popular ones.
What is the most obscure, strange theory you have run into?
Mine is the Canola Conspiracy:
To sum up: Canola oils is actual rape seed oil (this much is true) and is therefore evil. No good can come from rape!! It must be bad:
How bad is it? Well, not only does it cause “emphysema respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability and blindness in animals-and humans,” but it also the source of mustard gas and contains the same chemicals as Agent Orange!
And worst of all:
You hear that! It deprives us of our chi! How can we perform energy attacks when battling Freezer without our chi?
If you wondering why you have never heard about the terrible effects of Canola oil, it is because they are hiding them behind fake diseases such as Mad Cow Disease:
Where does she get this sensational information? From primary sources on the ground and in the know:
If you can’t trust a website who quotes an unnamed woman who saw a report on TV over 15 years before, who can you trust?
On the plus side, this site introduced me to the word “factological.”
So share your own little known CTs so we can all laugh and giggle.
My personal favorite is the one about the underground alien bases out west where the aliens are being fed with the “hundreds of thousands” of children who go missing every year.
Never mind that the vast majority of those missing kids are found within hours.
Or that we’d definitely notice HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of missing kids a year.
Or that there’d have to be a HUGE abduction, transportation and processing industry in order to support this, and that couldn’t be kept secret for so long.
Plus, why feed the aliens with children? Is it like veal to aliens or something? Surely it would be easier and more cost-efficient to feed the aliens with prisoners. “That’s right, guys, keep working those weights. Zarfrox is hungry.”
Among my peers in the evangelical Christian community, there are several who sincerely believe that thousands, nay tens of thousands of children are routinely sexually abused in Satanic rituals.
Then there was the guy who claimed that those children who were sent to live in the countryside during WWII (ostensibly to escape the bombing in the cities) were sent there on orders from Rome, with the cooperation of the Crown (who was secretly Catholic), so they could be sent to rural parishes to be molested by priests.
I can’t testify as to how obscure it is, but it’s not spoken of as much as 9/11, JFK, ET, and other coverups.
Snuff films. Supposedly, there’s a huge snuff film industry going on around the world under the noses of authorities in almost every country. (Cecil handled this question here, and I recall reading an article in an international version of a newspaper detailing the arrest of of hundreds of people involved in a snuff film network, though I can’t seem to find that article now.
I’ve always said that the snuff film industry would never prosper, not because there are not enough sick individuals out there, but because it faces way too much competition from your average daily news.
One of the strangest I have knowledge of concerns the Canadian airplane the Avro Arrow. The Arrow was a high tech interceptor aircraft with good performance that was produced in the 1960s. It’s mission was to shoot down Russian nuclear bombers flying over the North Pole. A change in Canadian governments cancelled the project and destroyed the prototypes. Since then it has been the subject of many conspiracy like stories such as: The USA ordered the plane destroyed because it was too good, that they were not destroyed but hidden in secret places across Canada. It seems very strange perhaps our Canadian dopers have some insights on the mystery Arrow.
I once heard that officials in the Catholic Church were made aware of priests all across America molesting little boys and girls and instead of punishing them or excommunicating them, they just covered it up and sent the priests to other churches, with many of the continuing to molest children. For, like, 40 years! Crazy!
During the first term of the Clinton administration, I was touring DC and saw a schizo with a placard outlining how Al Gore had been kidnapped and replaced with a Russian double with designs on destroying America. His sign was complete with before and after pictures outlining the changes in appearance.
The Gemstone File - This seems to be the grandaddy of conspiracy theories, tying together the Kennedy Assassination and multiple other fringe theories. For example, Aristotle Onasis was somehow in on it, and married Jackie to keep an eye on her.
The Hughes Glomar Explorer - The CIA, working with Howard Hughes, built a special ship to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine, with the cover story that they were doing undersea mining for manganese nodules. This CT does not get widely circulated because it has the disadvantage of being true.
Release of the Munich Terrorists - After the failed rescue attempt, and the death of the Israeli athletes, three of the terrorists survived and were captured by the police. They were released about two months later, to meet the demands of hijackers who took over a Lufthansa aircraft. In the movie One Day in September, it is suggested that the hijacking was done with the collaboration of the West German government, who didn’t want their handling of the rescue attempt to be exposed if the men were brought to trial. I’ve never found any other documentation of that.
I don’t know that it’s obscure, because I have seen it pop up repeatedly, but the one in which all the government bigwigs (I guess they’re all illuminati) are actually aliens or alien-human hybrids. Reptilian, to boot. You’d think V would have never made it on television if there really were reptilian alien-human hybrids in charge of the world.
The whole Canola = rape see oil at least has some basis in truth, albeit twisted, obscured and taken completely out of context. I don’t like the taste of Canola oil, so I don’t use it, preferring instead my EVOO.
Personally, I love conspiracy theories. Especially the ones that have some shred of truth to them. Those are the ones that are really fun to listen to/read about online.
Now, what I cannot believe never got morphed into a theory for the 9/11 attacks is how The Lone Gunmen could have predicted the government plot to crash a plane into the Twin Towers to create a reason for a war – in 2000, I think? Sorry, couldn’t remember the name of the episode, but it is mentioned on the Wiki page about TLG. I, for one, was freaked all the hell out when the planes crashed into the towers, remembering that episode (I also watched The X Files back when).
