CONSPIRACY THEORIES — ANCIENT to MODERN
Conspiracy theories abound, from anti-vaxxers to Flat Earthers to Chemtrail proponents. Furthermore, the QAnon-led storming of Capitol Hill on January 6th highlights the danger of conspiracy theories spilling over into previously thought-to-be-safe sections of society and institutions. As we now know, QAnon is a right-wing conspiracy theory involving Donald Trump and a Cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic paedophiles. By giving places for like-minded believers to thrive and expand, social media has undoubtedly given gasoline to the flames of conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are not new, nor is their influence less lethal than that of the QAnon believers who stormed Capitol Hill.
The following sections discuss four lesser-known conspiracy theories from Ancient to Modern times, as well as their impact on civilizations.
ANCIENT ROME AND MANICHAEISM
It was one among the many faiths that grew and prospered in the first three decades of the Christian Era, starting in Persia in the third century A.D. A higher understanding of spiritual truth was promised as salvation in Manichaeism. By the third century AD, Manichaeism had spread from North Africa to China.
It entered Rome in 280 A.D., during the Imperial Crisis. Empire expansion and Roman imperial crises around Emperor Diocletian’s accession to the throne. Diocletian’s desire to bring order and stability to Rome prompted him to embrace severe measures. Rome’s strategy of accepting the proper religion meant the eradication of all other faiths that threatened order.
Julianus, proconsul of Africa, wrote Diocletian about the Manicheans in 302 A.D.
Julianus delivered a report claiming Manichean ideas threatened the Roman Empire’s order and security. He focused on the rise of Manicheanism in Persia, fabricating proof of a Persian plot to destroy Rome.
The Manichaeans posed as a peaceful, weak sect to achieve their objective of infecting the Roman people and empire with the Persians’ awful habits and wicked customs, the study concluded. Ex-Maichaenis who had converted described horrible activities including the ingestion of sperm and menstrual blood during Manichaeni's “cannibalistic” religious rites.
Mani, the founder of the Manicheans, died in 277 A.D. at Gundeshapur, the Sassanid Empire’s intellectual centre, after angering the Zoroastrian priesthood and awaiting execution by Persian Emperor Bahram I. Emperor Diocletian was so alarmed by the news that he proclaimed Manichaeans to be enemies of the Roman Empire in 302 AD, as follows:
“We command that their authors and heads be subjected to the harshest punishment; that is, to be consumed by the burning flames along with their condemnable writings. Furthermore, we direct that their adherents receive capital punishment, so long as they are troublesome, and we decree that their wealth be appropriated to our treasury. If any officeholder or individual of any standing or persons of great repute converts to this hitherto unheard-of, foul, and entirely disgraceful sect, or the religion of the Persians, you must make sure to transfer their property to our treasury and send them to the Phaenensian or Proconnesian mines.”
Diocletian would later persecute other religions, most notably Christians, for many of the same reasons he stated in the 302 AD edict.
THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN MOTHER OF THE WEST
By the third century BC, the once-mighty Western Han Dynasty was on the verge of extinction. In Changan’s capital, a series of weak emperors and decades of ruthless power struggles among aristocratic families had crippled the central authority’s ability to meet the needs of its people. Three BC was also a unique year for the dynasty’s Western region. By April of that year, an unusual weather pattern had produced numerous earthquakes and severe drought, terrifying the populace with the prospect of hunger and starvation. Along with the terrible natural disaster, a solar eclipse occurred, greatly alarming the populace.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty and upheaval, a startling religious movement erupted in the Kingdom’s northeast region, resulting in the first widespread religious movement in Ancient China. The religious movement was sparked by rumours of the Queen Mother of the West’s impending arrival ( Xiwangmu).
In early Chinese mythology, the Queen Mother of the West was the most renowned female divinity. Xiwangmu was the divine one who held the key to immortality. She was all-powerful, endowed with the ability to bless people with money and children, and particularly effective at supporting people in escaping from worldly difficulties. She was claimed to reside atop the eternal mountain Kunlun’s peak, where trees of immortality bloomed and water of immortality flowed.
The organization gathered hundreds of supporters within weeks, fueled by word of mouth about Queen of West’s reappearance. According to the historical literature of Han Shu, participants in this movement were observed clutching and exchanging hemp stalks, which were symbolic of the Queen Mother of the West’s holy sign, which represented her edicts. The text also describes the movement’s scale and frenzy:
“Thousands of people met on the roadside, some with messy hair and bare feet. Some participants broke down the barrier gates at night, while others clambered over walls to make their way into houses.”
The contestants arrived in Changan’s capital city after travelling through twenty-six commanderies and principalities. Several came to worship the goddess and perform singing and dance rituals. Others distributed auspicious inscriptions that purported to assure the bearer’s survival.
While the enormous movement exhibited incorrect and potentially immoral collective behaviour, the authorities saw no political or military danger and saw no cause to impose law and order by force. The religious movement, which began in 3BC, grew in popularity and reached unparalleled heights until the Western Han Dynasty ended in 9 BC. The Queen Mother of the West’s fame is largely due to the imperial court of the Western Han Dynasty and its masses’ yearning for immortality and the immortal mountain of Kunlun.
LEPER CONSPIRACY OF 1321
In the Middle Ages, life as a leper was harsh. One may argue that things couldn’t get much worse. Except that it may and did occur in 1321 in France.
The 1321 Lepers’ Plot charged lepers in France under the reign of King Philip V with planning to spread their sickness by poisoning water sources, particularly subterranean water supplies. Initially, it was alleged that lepers were planning this horrific act in order to elevate their prestige and fortune in society. The first charges were made in Aquitane, and the repercussions were swift. One of the senior inquisitors, Bernard Gui, wrote:
“There was detected and prevented an evil plan of the lepers against the healthy persons in the kingdom of France. Indeed, plotting against the safety of the people, these persons, unhealthy in body and insane in mind, had arranged to infect the waters of the rivers and fountains and wells everywhere by placing poison and infected matter in them and by mixing into the water prepared powders, so that healthy men drinking from them or using the water thus infected, would become lepers, or die, or almost die, and thus the number of the lepers would be increased and the healthy decreased.”
In 1316, King Philip V, a very superstitious guy, became King of France and Naravee. Given the instability and turbulence of King Philip V’s reign, it was only a matter of time until the King used the entire range of governmental powers against the lepers.
Lepers were hauled up and arrested throughout France on June 21, 1321. The consequences meted out to them were severe. Arrested lepers were tortured and burned after confessing to their crime. Their property and money were taken and deposited in the King of France’s coffers. Pregnant lepers were allowed to deliver, but once the infant was able to survive and thrive without their support,” they were also burnt.
As is the case with the majority of conspiracy theories, it did not end with the Lepers. By 1322, the lepers had formed associations with the Jews, the Muslim king of Granada, and Satan himself. The French Monarch and his Inquisitors contended that the lepers were the foot soldiers of the wicked trinity — Jews, Muslims, and Satan — and that they were given poison manufactured from urine, sanctified has, and blood, which they used to spread the disease over France.
Seventeen years after the Leper Conspiracy, Pope Benedict XII declared the lepers innocent in 1338. By professing Lepers to be God’s children sent to earth to face the same suffering as Christ, the Church attempted to transform society’s attitude toward them. However, the damage had already been done, and prejudices against Lepers had become entrenched.
In June 2015, 694 years after the Lepers Plot, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a resolution calling for the abolition of discrimination against leprosy patients and their family members.
BRITISH INTRIGUE IN PERSIA
The failure of Persia (now Iran) under the Qajar shahs, who reigned from 1785 to 1925, and the Persian Constitutional Revolution measures of 1905–11, which benefited from British assistance against Russian interests, aided in the formation of distrustful beliefs centred on foreign influences.
Although Persian conspiracy theories implicated all Western nations who fought in Persia, those involving the British gained the greatest popularity among the governing and middle classes in the early twentieth century.
The primary assumption of the conspiracy that developed during this era was that the British controlled the course of contemporary global history, including all significant events in Persia extending all the way back to the 17th Century Russo-Persian Wars. The British were portrayed as cold-blooded, foxy, and clever, capable of “cutting off their adversaries’ heads even with cotton” — that is, with near-miraculous abilities to accomplish their goals. They are said to have deceived and exploited the “naive Yankees” and “simple Russians.”
Since the 18th century, such beliefs have been inspired by conspiracy theories in France and Germany. It gained popularity in Persia toward the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in part as a result of Russian, German, and Ottoman propaganda against the British, which sowed suspicions among Persians about secret and diabolical British plans against Persia and the broader Islamic world.
Regrettably, the conspiracy theories’ grip on Iranian politics and culture persists unabated to this day, culminating in a paranoid style of politics.
In contemporary Iran, political vitriolic is rife with phrases like as tuteah (plot), jasouz (spy), khianat (treason), khatar-e kharejeh (foreign peril), and cummal-e kharejeh (foreign danger) (foreign hands). According to Ervand Abrahamian, the origins of this political anxiety date all the way back to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when imperial & foreign rule, first by Russia, then by Britain, and finally by the United States, shaped Iran’s political landscape.
The consolidation of conspiracy ideas and the emergence of the paranoid style, on the other hand, had far-reaching implications. Ervand Abrahamian makes the case:
“The premise that grand plots existed naturally led to the belief there were plotters everywhere — some obvious, others more devious. And if one were surrounded by plotters, one could conclude that those with views different from one’s own were members of this or that foreign conspiracy. Thus political activists tended to equate competition with treason, liberalism with weak-mindedness, honest differences of opinion with divisive alien conspiracies, and political toleration with permissiveness toward the enemy within. The result was detrimental to the development of political pluralism in Iran. Political coalitions were difficult to launch, and when in the rare cases they were launched, they could quickly be shipwrecked on the treacherous rocks of mutual distrust and widespread suspicion.”
FEDERAL RESERVE CONSPIRACY
The conspiracy of the Federal Reserve is one of the most pervasive conspiracy theories in the United States.
The Federal Reserve conspiracy formally began with Eustace Mullins, a flamboyant and aggressive conspiracy theorist and author of the 1952 book “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve.”
Mullins was also a denier of the Holocaust and a vehement anti-Semite.
According to Mullins, the Federal Reserve was established with the deliberate intent of depriving regular US residents of the value of their property by affluent individuals working behind the scenes in evil ways.
Mullin maintained that powerful persons in the United States were accountable to another foreign power — a force that had been steadily striving to expand its influence over the United States from the country’s creation: The centre of power of England’s financial power in the London Branch of the House of Rothschild.
According to Mullins, the Rothschild family’s evil twin purpose of plundering the poor and gaining control of the United States began in 1910, with the assistance of eleven significant bank holding firms in the United States, including JP Morgan and Brown Brother Harriman. Mullins's proof for the pernicious tie between US banks and Rothschild was based on the fact that many US banks maintained London branches.
Federal Reserve’s principal architects, therefore Mullin reasoned in his book was a cabal of English & Wall Street Bankers who were beholden to an English Jewish Banking family that controlled Internal Finance — The Rothschild Family.
The Rothschilds are an affluent financial family with its origins in Frankfurt. Mayer Amschel Rothschild founded the family conglomerate in the 18th century and gained prominence under the leadership of his five sons: Nathan Mayer, James Mayer, Salomon Mayer, Carl Mayer, and Amschel Mayer. The Rothschilds pioneered international finance by establishing subsidiaries in London, Paris, Vienna, and Naples, in addition to Frankfurt. Rothschild Family are also Jewish people.
Not to be outdone by his outlandish 1952 assertions, Mullins published a revised version of his book “Secrets of the Federal Reserve”, in 1993, adding the subtitle “The London Connection”. In the revised version, he not only reasserted his prior claims but affirmed that the Rothschild family continues to orchestrate the entire US Financial System:
“The controlling stock of the entire Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which sets the rate and scale of operations for the entire Federal Reserve System, is heavily influenced by banks directly controlled by the “London Connection”, the Rothschild controlled Bank of England.”
In spite of being rejected as crazy by economists and others who are familiar with the inner workings of Finance & Commerce, Mullins’ conspiracy theory has found a home in the propaganda created by Patriot Militia Groups and notable conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones.
CONCLUSION
Despite the fact that the aforementioned historical conspiracy ideas occurred at various times in history and in different continents and areas, they have a few commonalities:
A) Conspiracy theories arose during a period of social transition, disorder, uncertainty, and poor governance.
B) Conspiracy theories developed rapidly and widely because they presented simple solutions to complicated situations.
C) Conspiracy theories often implicate and single out an individual or group in order to explain a problem.
D) The most pervasive and lethal conspiracy theories have flourished with the assistance of people in power.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, a paranoid individual with an agenda may convert an apprehensive, disenfranchised community into a frenzied mob committed to supporting and perpetuating violence against other innocent members of their own society. While society will never be fully free of conspiracy theories, we must make it a priority to regulate them and prevent them from being used as a weapon of mass destruction.
