Frank Olito's "35 of the most popular conspiracy theories in the US": a critique, by Riz Koross

To say that, at this point in my life, I am familiar with so-called “conspiracy theories” would be an understatement. (I use the modifier “so-called”, by the way, because the very concept is itself the product of a conspiracy, having been cooked up by the CIA in 1967 to discredit—by ridicule and social ostracization—those people who questioned the official narrative that JFK was killed by bullets fired at him by Lee Harvey Oswald only.)

When I was eleven, in 1971 or 1972, my father—who was hardly a political radical—explained to me the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the event that the United States government surreptitiously used to lie itself into a full-scale war in southeast Asia. At that point, I had been reading Mad Magazine for a few years—which, in its raucous and uncompromising, yet humorous and satiric, ways exposed society’s truths beneath its mediated veneer. A year or so later I gravitated to The National Lampoon, which was comedic as well but which delved deeper into exposing the culture’s deceptions. About the same time, the Watergate break-in and cover-up—a conspiracy—was all over the news, and I did a book report for my ninth-grade class on All the President’s Men—a best-seller by the two Washington Post investigative journalists who broke the story with the help of a well-placed but unnamed insider. It was unsurprising, then, that I should choose, in the tenth-grade, as the topic for my first proper research paper, the question as to whether John F. Kennedy was killed by more than one individual, and, if it was likely that he was, who those assassins might have been and what their possible motives were.

Believe it or not, despite my predilections towards the widespread existence of conspiracies—which are defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “agreements to perform together illegal, wrongful, or subversive acts”—I believe that my experiences and observations have made me extremely open-minded about the subject, because my background has trained me to view and think about all situations with an extremely critical bent. For me to accept something as true, I require valid corroboration, as should everyone when confronted with information about which she or he is not familiar. I assert that, as a result, my claims are more valid than those of most people with respect to the subject, however, for several reasons—one being longevity.

As I have explained, I was introduced to the existence of conspiracies as a child, when I was, as children tend to be, wildly idealistic. Having been exposed to societal truths at a young age, I naturally grew up expecting and knowing (1) that the truths are out there and (2) that there are powers who are going to do everything they can to hide them from the public. It was impressed upon me early that the mass electronic media and corporate-funded news outlets are not the impartial beacons of truth that most people think they are; lessons as important as this one was are imprinted so deeply and often permanently at that age. It certainly was true for me.

Knowing that I would have to find sources that are more trustworthy than the usual ones, I learned where to look and how to test them for validity and reliability—having been confronted much earlier than most people with having to do so. Moreover, people who came of age after the 1970s likely do not realize the extent to which the flow of truthful information has been compromised by the spate of media consolidations and an almost complete takeover of all levels of government by multinational corporations—which have gradually instituted a de facto and mostly covert fascistic stranglehold in order that any agendas other than their own be suppressed.

My history of widely and deeply searching for sources has helped to hone my critical thinking skills at a time in which those skills have been rapidly declining, due in large part to the deliberate shift, over the years, of the dissemination of information and current events to electronic media, where it can be more effectively managed and consent manufactured.

Similarly, the breadth of my experience over many years, in conjunction with having kept an open mind, has allowed me to see historical patterns—not just about how the media are virtually controlled but how they and the government and related institutions (such as corporations, “charitable” foundations and organizations, and many “non-profit” organizations) conspire to keep the public in the dark viz-a-viz their real agendas. For many years, I have subscribed to the rule of thumb—borne of personal experience—that if a piece of information originates from one of those sources and is released by the corporate media, there is a high probability that it is either wholly untrue or has been manipulated to appear different than what it really means. When I am confronted with (or assaulted by) information like this, my course of action is to never accept it on face value; after researching the issue using independent sources, my initial gut-level skepticism almost always is confirmed.

How, then, does all this relate to Frank Olito’s seemingly lighthearted article on 35 of what he—or his editors—consider to be “the most popular conspiracy theories in the US”? [

*] After looking through the entire list, it is my contention that the article was written and placed for reasons other than innocent lightheartedness.

I first became suspicious when, reviewing his choices initially, I noticed that relatively few of them were all that well-known except to people who might be avid students of UFOs and alien phenomena. Delving more deeply, I classified each “theory” as belonging to one of four categories:

In addition, he chose not to include several of the “conspiracy theories” that are actively researched by huge numbers of people in comparison with most of his inclusions, which, if found to have merit, would be catastrophically destructive to the oligarchical powers mentioned above. These include

Two-fifths are not conspiracy theories at all (although many, including the alien stories, are clearly controversial—which is not the same thing). I would consider only one-third of his choices to be even moderately “popular”, and only five—less than 15%—to be worthy of inclusion in an article about the 35 most popular conspiracy theories. The theories concerning John Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s assassinations are well-known in mainstream circles (thus needed to be included) but occurred in the relatively distant past—making them unthreatening. Others, such as the Georgia Guidestones and chemtrails, are deliberately minimized so as to appear much less threatening to the oligarchical powers than they have the potential of being. These important issues are interspersed among entries that are inconsequential or silly (or not conspiracies at all)—delegitimizing, in the minds of many, the entire lot of them by association.

A look at the ownership of the Website on which the article was published (Insider Inc., formerly called Business Insider Inc.) and the date that the article was published (May 4, 2020) provide clues as to why the author probably included those he did while ignoring (or minimizing) others. Jeff Bezos—the founder and CEO of Amazon and the richest person on the planet—was instrumental in helping the Business Insider find solid footing. Although he, until year before last, owned only three percent of the company, its concerns—the primacy of the status quo with respect to the corporate capitalist system and the governmental policies that support and promulgate it—are shared by him as well. Implicit or not (although I am certain that it is the latter), they espouse a specific philosophical agenda and use their forum to advocate for it.

It would be illogical to believe that its editors would publish a report on something that could be detrimental to the well-being of the organization and the paradigm it espouses. Surely they understand fully that widespread dissemination of any of the missing theories above has the potential of bringing down the ruling elite’s carefully constructed house of cards, which explains their attempts at suppression. Written at the height of the current health “crisis” (which has been entirely manufactured, and if discovered by the mostly ignorant masses, will without doubt, precipitate the collapse of the entire illegitimate system), the article was designed as one small effort to obfuscate the existence of these larger issues for a bit longer, in hopes that they will be able to consolidate their position of control indefinitely. (

Perhaps more to come on this.

) From my studies of what I like to call “conspiracy realities”, I am confident that they will not be able to sustain their evil agenda for very much longer.

I have found that we will rarely go wrong if we ask ourselves, when confronted with an issue that appears complex on the surface, “What would Ockham think?”. More often than not, the simplest explanation really is the correct one. For reasons that are too involved to get into here, why most people who disavow what is obvious to many of us (and which we can back up with evidence) boils down to cognitive dissonance on their part—which has been actively cultivated for over a century by psychopaths such as Edward Bernays and his ilk. If we are to move beyond the cultural programming with which we have been inculcated from our earliest days, we must first see things as they are and not shrink from them, regardless of the perceived consequences. At that point, our cognitive dissonances will no longer veil what is right in front of us, and many conspiracy “theories” will be seen for what they are: the truth.