5 Insane Conspiracy Theories That Went Viral Before The Internet
It’s easy to think that conspiracy theories are a recent phenomenon -- after all, there are no chemtrails without jets, no QAnon without 4chan, and aliens only started visiting after we had advanced enough technologically to invent the ShamWow. But crazy, convoluted stories about what’s really going on in the world are not new, and even before the internet allowed us to share them with impunity, some of these dumb ideas spread way further than they should have. Kind of like ...
The Vril Society: A Literally Underground, Hitler-Empowering, Advanced Aryan Race
In the 1870s, while America was attempting to figure out Reconstruction after a brutal civil war, Germany was trying to get a handle on this whole being a nation thing. Also during that time, some anonymous guy (later revealed to be Edward Bulwer-Lytton) wrote a book with the highfalutin title The Coming Race. It was later reprinted as Vril: The Power of the Coming Race; The New Utopia, because titles are always better when you make them three times as long and give them all the colons they can handle.
The book was typical of the sci-fi you might expect to find at the time, relaying the tale of an underground world where an advanced race harnessed the power of Vril energy for things like sustaining life. It was kind of like Darwin fan-fic, but swapping out evolution for the Force. It didn’t have much of a plot, other than describing how sexy it would be to sex these evolved, sexy women, because of course it did. Still, it was fairly popular throughout the West, including the newly-formed Germany. But again, it was very much a fictional novel.
In a more sane world, this book would’ve been barely remembered, and nobody would have written about it in a comedy article 150 years later. But we don’t live in that world, which is why in the 1960s, two French authors, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, wrote The Morning of the Magicians, a conspiracy theory so great the only thing missing was lizards.
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And maybe fancy outfits.
They claimed that The Coming Race inspired an actual conspiracy, and that The Vril Society was very real and very responsible for Adolf Hitler's rise to power. They figured the Vril were behind the Thule Society, a thing that really did exist, although it was more of a weirdly racist study group than it was a portent of world-ruining doom. But alas, that simple reference to the existence of a political organization was the book’s only connection to reality.
The crazy train ran mostly off the rails with assertions that the Vril people were totally real, you guys, and just the BFFiest of buddies with Hitler. This meant the Nazis were able to use Vril technology to build UFOs ... but only after they had made initial contact with them underground, of course. Wait, are we skipping around too much? Look, it's complicated, but the important part is that the Fuhrer became chums with an advanced subterranean race which resulted in spaceships that put Nazi astronauts (Nazinauts?) on the moon in 1942. Which is weird -- you’d think the Reich Marketing Office would’ve gotten around to mentioning something like that at some point.
Anyway, the theory went that instead of being, you know, ground to dust in a world war, the Nazis went underground with their new ancient Vril-powered chums to wait until they could rise again, hiding out in Antarctica and, of course, on the moon. Why they didn't use their superior Vril gadgets to win the war right then, nobody knows. Mostly because they don’t teach the plot of Wolfenstein in history books, a stance we should absolutely reexamine as a society given the imminent threat of Nazi Sith Lords that could be upon us any day now.
Samuel Morse: Telegraph Inventor, Catholic Hater
You probably know Samuel Morse as the guy who invented Morse code and the telegraph, both transforming communication itself and inadvertently planting the seed that would grow to become internet commenters. What your high school history textbook might have left out about this man, however, was his incredible skill at conspiracy theories, something he likely inherited from his father's sermons on the Illuminati.
After making beaucoup bucks from the invention of the telegraph, Morse ran for office on the Native American ticket in New York. He lost badly, probably because New York in 1830 was a terrible place to be rabidly anti-Catholic, which he very much was.
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He was also rabidly anti-having a decent haircut.
Instead of trying again to get elected, Morse realized that it was easier, and far more profitable, to just print whatever lunacy popped into his head. So he wrote, and he wrote a lot. He actually ended up with enough material to publish a book: Foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States: the numbers of Brutus. To his credit, it is a bold title, but bold in a very specific way that manages to tell you exactly what it's about before abruptly doing the opposite.
The conspiracy itself imagined the nefarious deeds of the highly secretive St. Leopold Foundation, a sort of junior varsity version of the Illuminati, and how they were secretly dispatching Jesuits to forcibly convert the entire nation from fine Protestant stock to evil, smelly, good-food-having Catholics. The conspirators were of the high-ranking variety and included some dastardly Austrian diplomats, the Hungarian emperor, and of course, the Pope. And their sect was taking over.
Amazingly, the book was such a hit that it actually became the organizing force behind the Know-Nothing party, an aptly named nativist party that flourished before the Civil War. Funded by Morse’s sweet, sweet telegraph dollars and a bit of book scratch, the party had enough clout in 1856 to field a presidential candidate on the national ticket: Millard Filmore. And this wasn’t just some flash in the nativist-pan either; a quarter of all votes cast nationally were Know-Nothing votes. Sure, they only carried one state and had less than a score of representatives in Congress, but that means they did better than every other third party in the history of third parties.
If this all sounds bonkers, keep in mind that this Catholic takeover idea was coming from the guy who decided the first message sent over the telegraph should be ”What hath God wrought?“ Sure, he was changing the world in that moment, but that still sounds pretty dramatic. Dramatic like a conspiracy involving the aggressive religious appropriation of an entire country that isn't actually happening, we guess.
Lord Kitchener's Death: The Swiss Army Knife Of Conspiracy Theories
Lord Kitchener was the most famous British general of World War I. In fact, the very first British soldiers that went over to France were called Kitchener’s Army, because the top brass used his image and name to recruit said army. He was a living legend who’d fought all over the empire; a rockstar of wartime shenanigans.
So when he died on the HMS Hampshire in a freak case of naval-mine-in-the-ocean, conspiracy theories started popping out of the ground like weeds nourished by composted bigotry, libel, and insanity.
Lord Alfred Douglas, former lover of Oscar Wilde, claimed that a group of Jews and Winston Churchill conspired to assassinate Kitchener. That didn't happen, of course, and Churchill sued him for libel which resulted in Douglas serving a prison sentence. More plausible was the idea that the Irish nationalists were behind the sinking, because centuries of oppression and subjugation tends to make people chard-levels of bitter.
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Which is a pretty advanced level.
There was also a shady-as-hell journalist, Frank Power, who claimed that Kitchener had been sent to his death on purpose by the government but survived the sinking of the Hampshire, but then was shot by a British agent while paddling his way to shore. Then Norwegian sailors found his body and brought a coffin back to England, which after a coroner's inquest revealed nothing but a box full of tar, putting Kitchener who the hell knows where.
And we can't forget about the Boer Abwehr agent, Frederick Duquesne, who claimed to have taken Kitchener down through sabotage. For a long time this was accepted; there was even a biography written about him in 1932 called The Man Who Killed Kitchener, despite the fact that nobody knew if he’d actually done anything to deserve that title. He did go on to start a spy ring in the U.S. during World War II before the Feds took him down in 1942, so that's ... something.
The saddest theory is the most recent one, that Kitchener actually committed suicide days before the ship sinking because the war effort was failing at the time, and the British military covered it up to make their beloved Secretary of State for War the hero in death. That seems unlikely, given his reputation, but we weren't there, so we don't know. What we do know is that if the guy who's famous for war things is on a warship doing war stuff, getting blown up by a mine doesn't seem all that suspicious.
Titus Oates: An Anti-Catholic Crusade That Left Many Dead
If Titus Oates didn’t have a supreme talent for lying his ass off, he would’ve been a normal Anglican priest, living a quiet life and probably dying of tuberculosis. But he was damn good at manufacturing bullcrap, so much so that one of the most famous conspiracy theories to come out of England emanated directly from his “work,” like the wettest of farts in the elevator of history.
You see, in the 17th century there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment in England, what with the country being mostly Protestant with an annoyingly persistent population of Catholics. Oates was on Team Protestant, probably because Catholics ran the schools he was kicked out of for being an ass.
Along with his co-conspiracy theorist, Israel Tonge, he created the Popish Plot out of thin air. The supposed conspiracy was a plot by nefarious Jesuits to kill king Charles II, restore the Catholic monarchy to England, put the whole country under the control of the French, and force England to explain the eventuality of prawn cocktail crisps. Oates himself named over 100 prominent Catholics, including the king’s brother, the Duke of York, as part of the conspiracy. It was so sensational that news of the plot actually became a fairly profitable topic to cover in London for the newly established printing industry.
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Shortly thereafter, selling outrage became its very own, dedicated industry.
Of course, this didn’t work out too well for the accused. Scores of Jesuits were killed outright, many more died in jail, and tons of them just fled the ridiculous murder frenzy. It actually became a not-insignificant part of a wider anti-Catholic hysteria that gripped England during that time, at least until everybody started to calm down and realized that Oates was just a douchebag that was spinning a tale of utterly magnificent nonsense.
Eventually he was tried for perjury, found guilty, and was put on a pillory multiple times. He was also whipped and dragged through the streets of London. One judge even called him “a shame to mankind,” which is about as “damn, son” as one can get in a perjury trial. His last known act was hitting a woman with a cane, proof that even by 16th century standards, Oates was the absolute worst.
The Anti-Masons: A Conspiracy Theory Turned Political Party That Gets Accused Of A Pro-Mason Conspiracy
Freemasons are no strangers to conspiracy theory accusations, probably because they meet in secret, have cool symbols, and manage to get your crazy uncle drunk on the cheap. In America, though, Masonic conspiracies took a weird turn on a corner named William Morgan.
Morgan was a ne’er do well bricklayer who was involved with the Freemasons in Batavia, New York. It’s not clear whether he was actually a Mason or even a reliable dude; what was abundantly clear was that he intended to write a book about the secret rituals and rites of the Freemasons. Which we know because he talked about his book to anyone who would listen, and probably lots of people who wouldn't but it didn't matter because he told them anyway.
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“Have I told you yet about the book I’m writing? I have? Well, it gets better. You see …”
According to the conspiracy theory, the Masons really didn’t want Morgan spilling their secrets, so they threatened his publisher, arrested Morgan on spurious charges, then led him away from jail while he screamed, “Murder! Murder!” and eventually disappeared. Supposedly, the Masons killed him and dumped his body in Lake Ontario. Of course, this conveniently meant that nobody could prove Morgan had actually been murdered, or that he wasn’t alive nursing a hangover somewhere near Buffalo.
Morgan’s “death” whipped the public up into a frenzy, directly leading to the founding of the Anti-Masonic party in 1828. Four years later, in the 1832 election, the Anti-Masons fielded William Wirt for president against Democrat (and known psycho-dueler) Andrew Jackson and Republican Henry Clay. But in a move that raised quite a few eyebrows and produced many harrumphs, the Anti-Masons allied with the Republicans in New York, even though they had their own presidential candidate.
Like a conspiracy turducken, the Anti-Masons themselves became the target of a conspiracy theory too, with Democrats howling that Anti-Masons were actually running a pro-Mason interference play by making sure Andrew Jackson didn’t get elected. Oh yeah, and it's probably worth mentioning that Jackson himself was a Mason, which means- we're not really sure what that means, honestly. That the Masons were controlling the Anti-Masonic Party and the Republicans to deny the election of a candidate who was a Mason himself? How ... what's the end game for a plan like that?
Who knows -- maybe everyone just got so caught up in all the excitement of creating an elaborate story for an imaginary enemy that nobody bothered to verify if it made any goddamn sense. Which, come to think of it, probably explains every conspiracy theory ever.
