Top Ten Conspiracy Theories in the World

[The Week] They range from the absurd to the intriguing, but these conspiracy theories have proved remarkably resilient, some of them for decades. Regardless of their improbability, they provide an unsettling glimpse of human curiosity and gullibility – and, paradoxically, our reluctance to trust authority.

10. Obama’s birthplace

As far back as 2008, some Americans began to claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, but in Kenya. These claims have been promoted by fringe theorists, known as ‘birthers’, some of whom have sought court rulings to prove that Obama is ineligible to be the president. None of these attempts has been successful. Obama has released the full version of his birth certificate, which shows he was born in Hawaii.

The maths equation threatening to disprove conspiracy theories

MH370 conspiracy theories: What happened to the missing plane?

However, birthers claim it is a forgery. There has been what the Daily Telegraph describes as “a persistent campaign of misinformation on the subject”, led at one stage by Donald Trump, the property mogul and current frontrunner in the race to become the Republican’s presidential nominee. According to a recent poll by New York Daily News, 61 per cent of self-identified Trump supporters said they believed the president was not born in the US. Obama has nevertheless made light of the conspiracy and in 2011, during an address at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, even went so far as to release his “birth video”: a scene from Disney’s The Lion King.

9. MH370 and MH17 are the same plane

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 and has yet to be found despite an extensive search operation. Just over four months later, on 17 July 2014, another Malaysia Airlines flight, MH17, crashed in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border after apparently having been shot down by a missile. To most people the two tragedies looked like a terrible coincidence, but to conspiracy theorists there are no coincidences – and MH370 and MH17 were in fact the same plane. Worldtruth.tv is one of the many sites that argues that MH370 was hijacked and flown to US military base Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The “US propaganda machine” then staged the shooting down of MH17 so that the Russians would lose credibility. The theory fails to explain why the same propaganda victory could not have been achieved, assuming it was desired, simply by shooting down any passenger aircraft over the Ukraine-Russia border. Read our in-depth article on MH370 conspiracies here.

8. Project MKUltra: the CIA’s Mind Control Program

Although initially seen as another fanciful conspiracy theory, this one turned out to be true. The CIA really did run secret mind-control experiments on American citizens from the 1950s until 1973, using “electronics, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and verbal and sexual abuse”. In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology for Project MKUltra, as it was known. It is believed that ‘Unabomber’ Theodore Kaczynski was part of these experiments, although that detail has yet to be confirmed.

7. Reptilian Elite

The ‘reptoid hypothesis’ is a conspiracy theory which advances the argument that reptilian humanoids live among us with the intention of enslaving the human race. It has been championed by former BBC sports presenter David Icke who believes that deceased American comedian Bob Hope, members of the Royal Family and former US Presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton are part of the “Anunnaki” race who came to earth for “monatomic gold”. Some critics accused Icke of anti-Semitism, alleging that his talk of reptiles was code for Jews – but he clarified that the lizards to which he referred were literal, not metaphorical.

6. Beyonce is a clone

Remember the classic Paul is Dead conspiracy? The theory that Paul McCartney was killed in a car accident at the height of the Beatles’s fame and replaced by a lookalike? Well, the 21^st century music industry now has its own twist on the tale. And in keeping with its modern origin, it’s a little more tech-savvy.

In recent years, a small but vocal subculture has argued that the Beyonce we all remember from the days when she was lead singer with Destiny’s Child has been replaced by a clone. The outlandish theory was first spotted by The Root, which shared the following screenshot of a Facebook post showing the supposedly clear physical difference between the ‘old’ Beyonce and her cyborg replacement.

It’s far from the first conspiracy theory to involve Queen Bey, who was accused of faking her pregnancy, and is frequently identified by Illuminati enthusiasts as one of the leading players in the so-called New World Order. But as far as we can tell, it’s easily the wackiest.

5. Area 51

In 1947 claims that an “alien spacecraft” had landed in Roswell, New Mexico, were dismissed by the US military, which said the alien craft was merely a weather balloon. Ufologists believe that the spacecraft was taken into Area 51 – a division of Edwards Air Force Base – and the US government has been researching alien technology and life forms on the site ever since. Video footage of an alleged “alien autopsy” has been shown to be fake, but Area 51 is known to be a secretive and heavily guarded base. The reasons, however, may be more earthly than the conspiracy theories suggest: the U-2 spy plane, and several other top-secret aircraft, were developed and tested here.

4. 9/11

On 11 September 2001, four planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda and two of them were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing 2,996 people. However, some people believe that the attack was an inside job, orchestrated in order to cement America’s place as the top global power or to secure the oil reserves in the Middle East. Another theory is that the building’s owners were responsible for the event (they stood to gain $500m in insurance profits). For more detail, read our feature on the top ten 9/11 conspiracy theories.

3. Moon landings

Neil Armstrong’s giant leap kicked off one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of the 20th century. The sceptics claim that the 1969 landings – and all those which followed – were faked by Nasa and that no human being has ever set foot on the surface of the Moon. Even though there is substantial evidence to the contrary (including Moon rocks brought back to Earth and manmade objects left on the Moon) some people remain adamant that film director Stanley Kubrick was hired to produce the footage after his experience on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2. JFK

In November 1963, John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to America, was accused of the crime but was shot dead before he could stand trial. But was he just a scapegoat? Did the real killers get away with murder? No official investigation has turned up evidence of a conspiracy, but theories implicating everyone from the KGB to Jackie Kennedy continue to circulate. Read more about the JFK conspiracy theory here.

1. Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory

To the most dedicated conspiracy theorists, none of these plots on their own is sufficient to explain the sustained malevolence of the world in which we live. Instead, each one is a manifestation of what Rational Wiki describes as “an interlocking hierarchy of conspiracies”, in which all the world’s events are controlled by a single evil entity. It is a complex and self-reflexive premise: if it is correct, then it must be the case that awareness of the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory is itself a part of the conspirators plan – and so, of course, is this list.

Why do so many people believe in them?

Even the most rational people buy into conspiracy theories as a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness in the modern world, says the New York Times. “Believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular,” the paper says citing a 2010 study.

US psychologist Rob Brotherton, the author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, says many as 90 per cent of people acknowledge entertaining one conspiracy theory or another. “Given a handful of dots, our pattern-seeking brains can’t resist trying to connect them,” he says.

But Brotherton also suggests we shouldn’t be so quick to reject even the stranger notions. “Dismissing all conspiracy theories (and theorists) as crazy is just as intellectually lazy as credulously accepting every wild allegation,” he writes in the Los Angeles Times.

“If you had claimed, in the early 1970s, that a hotel burglary was, in fact, a plot by White House officials to illegally spy on political rivals and ensure President Nixon’s re-election, you might have been accused of conspiracy theorising,” he says.

Dismantle anyone of these “Conspiracies” if you have the mental capacity to do so, but we are putting it all out there to clear our own record. Bring yourself to account, before you are brought to account. Let the record show we tried our best to explain things to those who refused to reason or understand or listen, but it was all there if they so choose to acquire knowledge. Don’t say later we did not Know and Nobody told us anything.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/conspiracy-theories/62926/the-top-ten-conspiracy-theories-in-the-world