The Rest Is History - 12. Conspiracy Theories

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

History is littered with conspiracy theories, from Popish plots to JFK’s assassination. But what makes people believe in them and how do they gain currency? As strange stories continue to swirl around the coronavirus vaccine, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook examine conspiracy theories through the ages. Oh and Dominic finally solves the question of who did kill JFK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is. First up, a confession. This podcast is actually paid for by a consortium of the Knights Templar and Lizards from Outer Space. Our job is to change the mindset of you, our listeners, by overwhelming you with tendentious historical parallels, thereby softening you up for a global takeover led by George Soros and Elvis. Actually, Dominic Sandbrook, my co-conspirator with me here, that's not actually true, is it? That's nonsense.

Well, some of it's true. The tendentious historical parallels, that's true enough. Yes, that is actually true. I mean, maybe if we encouraged a few influencers on social media to suggest that this is in fact the case how long before some people actually believed it to be true do you think well that's a good i mean the thought that we could influence anybody um it's frankly beyond the realm of the imagination but um yes so today we thought we would do conspiracy theories. And a great subject to me had an amazing response on Twitter when we put this out, which just shows the appetite that people have for believing that, you know, tiny groups of highly influential people like Tom and me control the world.

So obviously JFK, the Templars, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Popish Plot, you know, was Barack Obama actually a Russian sleeper agent born in Kenya? I mean, the statistics, Tom, are amazing. So to kick off, a recent poll by NPR, the American National Public Radio, asked Americans if they believe that a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media so that's the allegation at the heart of q anon and 17 17 said it was true that they they thought these satan worshipping elites were trying to control the media and 37 said they didn't know so in other words you've got more than half who either believe it or are sort of

ambivalent um that's extraordinary, isn't it? But not unprecedented. I think that's the interesting thing. Not unprecedented. And you can see the way that conspiracy theories take root at the moment with the rollout of vaccines. And obviously there are all kinds of conspiracy theories about vaccines. So there's the idea that COVID-19 vaccines will alter our DNA, that they're going to implant microchips into

people, that volunteers in the trials died and it's being covered up, that Bill Gates is somehow involved, that vaccines for the Spanish flu were responsible for the 50 million deaths. And this has an actual knock-on effect because I think in France, I think over 50% of people are saying that they don't want to take the vaccine. So that's not good news at all. So I think, I mean, the key thing about this episode is not just to look at, you know, conspiracy theories in and of themselves, but to explore the way in which they hold a mirror up to the times and also the way that they have actually influenced the course of events and often the broad sweep sweep of history i think it's a very very fertile idea i mean dominic you um you you write mainly about um the modern period and you've particularly

you know your early field of study was nixon yeah i guess what's interesting about nixon you know he's brought down by watergate Nixon. Yeah. I guess what's interesting about Nixon, you know, he's brought down by Watergate and Watergate actually, I mean, that's a conspiracy theory that turns out to be true, isn't it? It is. The fascinating thing about Watergate is that it's, well, it's like all these things. It's really a saga of incompetence rather than sort of an elite that's controlling everything. So in in Watergate for people who don't remember the Nixon campaign the re-election campaign they tried they bugged their um they bugged their opposition the Democrats uh but in a very incompetent way um they broke into the Watergate building and they tried to plant wiretaps and it all came out and and the interesting thing about

that Tom which bears out what you were saying earlier on, is that the reason they did it is because Nixon himself was a conspiracy theorist. So Nixon believed that there was a conspiracy out to get him. He had always believed it. He believed that the Kennedys, that people who'd gone to Harvard, that the big sort of northeastern intellectual political establishment were plotting against him, that they were bugging him. And he constantly said to his aides, we have to do to them what they're doing to us. So he basically orchestrates this conspiracy because he thinks he needs to tool up to fight the existing conspiracy against him, which, you know, didn't really exist. And he is operating against the the paranoid style in american politics so two i mean two massive conspiracy theories that are presumably floating around um while nixon is president who shot jfk is yeah is the whopper and i think already um by the time of nixon's presidency you know the years that immediately followed the moon landings, already people are starting to speculate that that is a fake as well. Yeah, I think the JFK one is the bigger one. So the moon landings is a mad one that I think gained traction slightly later.

The JFK one though, I mean, the JFK one is a classic one because it's that classic instance of people taking a seismic event that seems to come out of the blue and i mean one of the we'll talk about this no doubt but one of the perennial appeals of conspiracy theory is that it allows people to explain the the inexplicable so the president was shot apparently by a lone gunman but but people find that hard to handle they don't like the idea that of the random the contingent element in history. And so they try to fit it into these sort of existing, as you say, the paranoid style in America, which is, if you think about America, America was set up as a rebellion against an out-of-touch elite on the other side of the Atlantic. But also America is set up as a sort of Puritan shining city on a hill surrounded by corruption.

So there's always this sense of sort of being embattled and sort of shadowy forces moving against the American Republic. And the people tried to fit the JFK assassination into that. They said, well, it must be the CIA or the mafia or the Cubans or whoever it might be. And they do the same with Watergate and the moon land moon landings as well so that's definitely an american tradition that kind of what richard hofstadter called the paranoid style well it's it's a very unfair question but i just wanted to ask you as someone who really knows his modern american history who do you think who shot jfk i mean was it just a random guy The answer is so blindingly obvious. It's obviously Lee Harvey Oswald.

And the key thing... But he wasn't brainwashed by the Russians or the mafia or... He wasn't, Tom. And I always think the giveaway, the single fact that the conspiracy theorists never address is the fact that if you employed Lee Harvey Oswald, even as your patsy, why would you not provide him with a getaway car?

Why would you allow him to roam the streets after shooting a police... Because that's what they want. That's precisely the fiendish cunning of it. He shoots a policeman, the fiendish cunning, I mean, come on. You know, he was brainwashed by the KGB. I mean, you know, anyway. Yes. But you're right, aren't you, that of course it provides a kind by the KGB I mean you know anyway yes but you're right aren't you that of course it provides a kind of reassurance I mean that's that's the unspoken truth about conspiracy theory is that it enables people to think that even though they may be kind of

blood-sucking lizards behind it at least that gives you some reassurance that people know what they're doing even if it's for the most malign purposes but also makes you feel good right because you've seen through it so you're one of the forces of light and you're part of the resistance you have seen through the the evil plan so that gives you a bit of an advantage you're surrounded by the sheep who haven't and that's much more comforting than thinking you live in an entirely random world where a big you know stone block might fall on your head at any moment and kill you and it has no meaning i think that's a terrifying thing, isn't it, for people? The lack of meaning.

There must be a meaning in history, and conspiracy theories provide one. And what they also can do, of course, is provide a political weapon. Because if you can accuse your enemies of being embroiled in a conspiracy, and then you cast yourself as the person who has exposed that conspiracy,

then you become the hero of the hour. And you will- I can see where this is going with Tom. Yes. So we're seamlessly moving from 1960s America to 60s BC Rome. Very nice. With really the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories, which is the Catilinarium conspiracy, a conspiracy conducted by a shady Roman aristocrat called Catiline, supposedly, who was going to take over Rome, employ gangs of Gauls to murder his enemies in the Senate. is exposed by the great orator Cicero whose speeches provide a template for political rhetoric

that people have studied essentially ever since and floating around Cicero's exposure of this Catilinarian conspiracy has always been right from the very time that he gave these speeches the dark suspicion that perhaps Cicero was over-egging it. And it's still a problem today to work that out because, of course, we only have Cicero's accounts. So we don't have, you know, we don't have any counterblast from Catiline. So we only have Cicero's speeches. And in a sense, that provides the template, precisely because Cicero's speeches are so influential they kind

of provide a model of how to write Latin so throughout the 16th and then into the 17th century this is being studied and I guess that then has an impact on the readiness of people say in in 17th century England to suspect dark conspiracies which had and the obvious I suppose the kind of glaring example of that is the Popish Plot. Yeah, the Popish Plot is a fascinating thing, isn't it? I mean, obviously that was an age, the 17th century is an age rich with conspiracies. I mean, we talked about the 17th century a few weeks ago.

But the Popish Plot is the granddaddy, because in a way it's the foundation of British politics. So, just for the listeners, that's the end of Charles II's reign. Yes. As you say, it comes against a background actually of course of conspiracies that are proven to be true which guy fawkes um yeah guy fawkes is the classic one isn't it yeah it's the classic one so so you have you you've noted actually conspiracies are possible yeah and titus oats who is this catholic fellow, who says he has inside knowledge. He has been to training schools.

He has mixed with Jesuits. He's been on the continent. So then he's recanted. He's come back to England. And he says, I know. And he has all these details. He appears to have all these details. He says, you know, and this is always the way that with conspiracy theories,

that they have an inside man who has since repented who returns and says well you know i've seen the light i was a sinner but i now know all the ins and outs of the conspiracy i mean this is how you know anti-communism in 1950s america often where mccarthyism people would say i was a communist in the 30s i know how evil they are and i know that all university professors are communists well this is sort of how titus oates works he says i have this tremendous amount of knowledge i know there's a plot to kill the king um catholics are poised any moment to rise up over england um the jesuits have been plotting the whole thing and it falls on very fertile ground and because he seems to have this level of expertise, this inside knowledge, people believe it. And then there's this, he says, James, Duke of York, who is a Catholic,

who is Charles II's brother and heir, he says, they're going to put him on the throne, make him king, he's a Catholic. And you have that creates this sort of big political crisis where you have the Tories and the Whigs, the Whigs who want to kick James out of the line of succession, the Tories who want to keep him. So in a sense, you can trace all British politics back to the, I mean, it's slightly sort of tangential, but you can trace it all back to the sort of paranoia of the Popish plot. But I mean, it gets exposed, doesn't it? I mean, Charles II never really believes it. And in due course, I mean, Titus Oates is condemned as a fraud. He's made to stand on the pillory every year, whipped through the

streets. But the effects of it linger. I mean, I think it's during this period, during the kind of scare that Titus Oates has whipped up, that Catholics get banned from both the Houses of Parliament. And that's something that lasts right the way up to the early 19th century so this has measurable effects oh it did charles didn't really believe it he asked you know people asked sometimes asked questions that he got wrong and charles kind of knew he hadn't been in such and such a place at such and such a time and he could he could spot some of the the the mistakes but he's in But he was in a difficult position. He wasn't in really a position to sort of expose it straight away. And it actually took a long, as you say, it did get exposed,

but it took a few years. And it also, as you say, had measurable effects. So conspiracy theories really matter. I mean, the fact that all politics in Britain, you can argue, stems from a conspiracy theory tells you, I think, something about politics as well, that there's always an element of conspiracy theory in politics. No matter how democratic and sane, there's always this...

Don't you think that people always are talking about elites and corruption and shadowy networks that i mean you've seen this so much recently well yes i mean i suppose essentially at an election what the electorate is being asked to decide is which which shadowy organization do you want to get rid of yeah i mean essentially that's what it comes down to you you you know you decide to vote for one party or the other based on on your conviction that that when one party says the other party will ruin the country that's right yeah yeah you're basically buying to a narrative don't you the two part the two main parties give you a narrative in which they are the representatives of the people and the other guys are the cruel malevolent

um callous elite who are plotting with their friends in the media to destroy britain i mean you see this my god you've seen this so much in the last 10 years well yes we absolutely with brexit absolutely um both sides completely kind of manufacturing the notion that their enemies are ranked in yeah there'll be lines of conspiracies and funded by foreign governments and all kinds yes i mean complete and i guess that that a further corollary of that is um something that is made play with in i guess the great novel about conspiracy theories fuko's pendulum by um alberto echo which essentially takes every great conspiracy theory

in history, so the Knight's Temper and the Rosicrucians and everybody, and bundles it up into one super conspiracy theory, just for fun, really. I mean, it's a kind of a group of professors who do it, and journalists, and then they discover that they've actually, that what they've created as a fantasy comes true. And I think it it's so interesting because you do see that again and again through history um that people project fears onto their enemies and it can happen that their enemies will ultimately take on the lineaments of what is being projected onto them well that's the watergate example isn't it you know people yes yes yes but i mean i think the the most fascinating example of that is with the albigensian crusade in okay the early 13th century which we would now tend to call the

cathars although the word cathars is only applied to the al Albigensians in the late 19th century, which shows how long these conspiracy theories take to work out. But essentially, the idea is that, and again, Foucault's pendulum makes play with this, that there is in the south of France, there is a shadowy heretical church, which is modelled on the Catholic Church. And it is a dualist, so it believes that there are, you know, there is a God who is good and there is a God who is evil and they have rival powers, equal powers. And the Albigensian Crusade is launched to extirpate, supposedly, this fantastical church that exists. And it brings devastation and bloodshed kind of beyond compare into the heart of this rich civilisation of southern France. It essentially turbocharges the Inquisition. It establishes a template for heresy that runs throughout medieval history. And yet, as far as we can tell, actually, this idea of the shadowy chair did not you know it was a fantasy it was made up

and the potency of conspiracy theories to change the course of history is so dramatically illustrated by that not least in the way that people still tend to think that you know that there were such things as catharsis so the catharsis didn't exist that's what you're basically saying no uh that there were people who who held um attitudes towards their christian faith that had been absolutely orthodox a couple of centuries before are they not bogomils tom no they're not oh this is very disappointing no so so all of those figures um kind of the the idea that there are shadowy networks of of heretics conspiring and and and meeting up and spreading their conspiracy across Europe.

It's a complete fantasy of the church. But basically what they're dealing with with Albigensians is the equivalent of deplorables. It's people who've been left behind by the way that in elite circles in the church, orth notions of orthodoxy notions of what is right and wrong has developed and so essentially they're going into white people who know a lot who who are clinging to outdated right understanding of what christianity is but it's it's but it's so appealing that it continues to structure novels and yeah films and and in fact the entire tourist industry i was just about to say two years ago ago we went to the Languedoc on holiday and we went to all the Cathar castles.

I mean, the one that sticks in my mind is when they've got a huge exhibition about the last Cathar who was a man called Bellybast. Very slightly unfortunate name, I think, for somebody with such a sort of heroic sort of martyrdom role in history. And they had all this stuff about the cathars and you're telling me that their long dock tourist board is peddling a lie i think they're peddling a fantasy it's quite a lucrative fantasy we're losing listeners in long dot by the you know by the thousand and which of course does have elements of truth i mean as we've said conspiracy theories have to weave in

things that people kind of know is true but also i think what's fascinating about that when the inquisition start to move in and they start to interrogate um people that they're accusing of this heresy people who are accused of it starts okay yeah all right yes i am guilty of it and so that's interesting that's kind of how it works so they're sort of imposing a pattern so that's actually not unlike this is a very weird comparison but that's a this is a the what that reminds me of is after the ottoman empire fell apart and people would go around the balkans and they would say to people are you a bulgarian a macedonian a serbian or whatever and people often didn't know they didn't have an answer and they would sort of impose an identity

on them which people basically put up with because they'd be shot if they didn't know, they didn't have an answer and they would sort of impose an identity on them which people basically put up with because they'd be shot if they didn't. And then they became those things. So you're basically, and that's often how these things work, isn't it? That people project an identity onto something, they project a pattern and then people end up living up to it. So people imposed the sort of Catharism model on the south-west of France

and now the south-west of France happily embraces it. So people buying into conspiracy theories becoming the very conspiracy that people dread. Well, a thrilling note, I think, on which to just have a short pause. While Dominic and I recalibrate the mini cameras on your phones and the microchips in your blood, we'll be back after this break.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. the microchips in your blood.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history the podcast paid for by a shadowy cabal committed to bringing about who knows what terrible events, or indeed not. Now, the topic of conspiracy theories is obviously one that people are incredibly interested in, because you've sent us a vast number of tweets when we mentioned on Twitter the subject for this podcast. So let's take a look at just a few of them. And obviously, we're only going to be able to look at a few of them. And the ones that we're not looking at, we're binning them because we're only going to be able to look at a few of them um and the ones that we're not looking at we're we're binning them for because we're part of a sinister conspiracy yeah it's a plot yes it's a plot it's a plot so um okay so the first one is from bill jones

um and i think it's actually in a way it's, it's historically the darkest and most significant conspiracy theory of the lot, the one that just refuses to die. Bill James writes, a long strand of anti-Semitism in past and present conspiracy theories, blood libel, protocols of the elders of Zion, Dreyfus, linkages to historical plagues, COVID mad stuff about Soros. It goes on and on. That is mournfully true, is it not, Dominic? Yeah, it's the ultimate conspiracy theory, isn't it? It's this sort of ur-conspiracy theory, although I think it's changed over time. So medieval anti-Semitism and that sort of blood libel and stuff, it didn't quite have the element that it has had since the late 19th century and particularly the 20th century which is the idea that so the jews went from being as it were bottom dog to top dog in the sort of in the the demonology so they were

outsiders obviously in you know medieval period when they suffered pogroms or whatever but in the 20th century you know they're obviously the classic nazi conspiracy theory is that the jews are not outsiders they are the ultimate insiders who are you know controlling the media and finance and big business and all this kind of thing and they've orchestrated the stab in the back and all the rest of it so anti-semitism has been has adapted over time and that's one reason it's been so successful sad to say and as we see it hasn't gone away i mean it's an extraordinary thing i remember about 20 years ago somebody saying to me um about anti-semitism in britain about a book they were they were my agent said he was

representing a guy called anthony julius who had written this big book about anti-semitism in britain and he'd had meetings with publishers at which publishers had said, well, there is no anti-Semitism in Britain. So why publish this book on something that doesn't exist? And at the time, I thought, you know what, there probably isn't really much anti-Semitism in Britain. I mean, how wrong could I have been? You know, I would never have anticipated the resurgence in the last 10 years or so. It's unbelievably depressing. It's kind of like a hydra. And I wonder actually whether one of the things that Jews historically, the role that they've played is to offer a kind of, a bit like with the Catholic Church,

a grotesque parody of the control of where power authentically is. So the blood libel, the idea that Jews are seizing Christian children and murdering them and mixing their blood up for a kind of grotesque parody of the mass is obviously in a way a kind of commentary on the power of the church, which is the dominant institution in the Middle Ages.

And in a way, there is a kind of similar way that that in the in the late 19th century into the 20th century and you know still in the 21st century the idea that jews control international finance is in a way a commentary about people's anxieties about finance yeah it's it's it's the anxiety that um we are controlled by terrifying screens of figures that we don't understand, by algorithms, by vast anonymous institutions. And in a way, if we can associate that with Jews or with whoever, we can put a face to these blank screens. Then in a way, we're kind of humanizing it right exactly and i think that's why i mean that's obviously one of the reasons that anti-semitism was so successful in germany after the first world war is that if you're you know let's say

a lower middle class german who maybe owns a small shop or something you have seen your world destroyed by the first world war by the revolution at the end of the war the hyper inflation of the 1920s then the shock of the great depression these massive forces global forces that you don't really understand and can't control and you know anti-semitism gives you a way of making sense of that it gives you scapegoats which is what people always want in you know that will never die the search for scapegoats. And the Jews are the oldest and most sort of persistent scapegoats of all. And so there is a case for describing Nazism as a kind of conspiracy theory that takes power and weaponises itself. Yeah, absolutely. So I think Nazism, I mean, you read Mein Kampf, Mein Kampf

is a massive conspiracy theory, isn't it? And the appeal of Nazism, which is that, you know, Germany has been betrayed, that it has been undermined from within. I mean, it is a colossal conspiracy theory. And that's probably why it's bred so many conspiracy theories, why you have people who believed that, you know, Rudolf Hess was flying to Britain as a secret mission to make peace, authorised by Hitler, or that Hitler survived the bunker, or that Angela Merkel is Hitler's descendant and plotting to bring about a fourth Reich. I mean, those things have grown in very fertile assault

because Nazism was a conspiracy theory. As a lot of very passionate, slightly extreme, or slightly extreme, very extreme political movements are, I think there's always, as we said before, there's always that danger with any form of politics that it turns into conspiracy theory. Right. And that's true of kind of liberal centrism as well, isn't it? The nervousness that Nazis are kind of lurking in the winds,

waiting to take over. I mean, that's also an expression of the paranoid style, isn't it? I think it is, actually. I don't think there's any area of politics that is immune from that kind of paranoid style. I mean, how often, you know, how often have you been in a conversation where somebody has said to you, the election was rigged, the election was stolen, the Tories or Labour or whoever it might be, and their powerful friends in the media are lying to the public and brainwashing the public. I mean, you'll hear that, you know, if you have conversations about

politics, you will hear that week in, week out, and it never goes away. Right, Tom, let's move on before we betray our listeners completely to Ollie Simpson. Ollie Simpson says, Titus Oates claimed Mary of Modena's secretary, that's the, Mary of Modena was the wife of James, the future James II, Oates claimed her secretary was in cahoots with the French Jesuits. He was spouting BS off the top of his head, but was right. Well, this is true. So Oates did get some things right. And that's often the way with conspiracy theories is that there are grains of truth. There are sort of little elements that they do get right. And that seem to then suggest that everything else is right. And I think that's the interesting thing,

that if you argue with a conspiracy theorist, by definition, because they're obsessive, they will know more about the subject than you will. And they'll always sort of run rings around you and say, ah, but look at this, look at that, look at the other. But obviously for Oates, this was, you know, this was a gift, basically. One of his guesses turned out to be correct.

And the Jesuits, I suppose, were plotting against England in a way. I mean, there were plots against the life of Elizabeth I and James I and so on. Maybe for a conspiracy theory to kind of go viral, as it were, and actually have a measurable impact on the politics of the day, it does need that leavening of fact. There is no evidence at all that the royal family are lizards, for instance. And so that's why it just remains a kind of thing people laugh at. Whereas the idea that the Russians influenced the Brexit vote, there's enough evidence for that, that it's actually had kind of political traction and therefore a measurable political impact on discourse.

Or the JFK. This would be an example of it, yes. The JFK assassination, the CIA did have assassination plots, not against American presidents, but against foreign leaders. So, you know, it's not also that Oswald was in he was in Russia I mean that is quite odd yeah I mean I know that you just counted it with your ragged skepticism but I mean that is quite odd yeah and of course you know um all these things and it's like any political narrative a political narrative only takes hold if if people can recognise some things in it. And the Popish plot, say, would not have taken hold unless there was some element of truth,

that there were Catholic powers that didn't like England, and there were people in the Catholic Church who wanted to re-Catholicise England and all the rest of it. Against that, we must say that there are certain conspiracy theories that are clearly not true, but develop because people have a stake in them and we come back to the blood libel with one from Daniel Pearl who talks about William of Norwich and the blood libel an evil conspiracy theory that still affects people to this day through Chaucer etc so the monk in his tale talks about it now William of Norwich, this is the origins of the blood libel. And he is, um, a young boy who vanishes in a wood outside Norwich in 1144. And then he gets hyped up as a martyr, someone

who's been murdered by the Jews as a Christian. And the thing that's interesting about this, clearly it's not true he wasn't murdered the Jews were not interested in using his blood or anything like that but it gets hyped up because there is a need in Norwich Cathedral for a martyr or a saint and they don't really have one and so this guy Thomas of Monmouth who essentially writes the hagiography of William of Norwich, he has a huge stake. I mean, he's interested in doing it because this will then provide for pilgrims coming to the shrine of the murdered saint. And that is also a crucial part of conspiracy theories, isn't it? That they take off when they fill maybe uh yeah people's

needs it's you know you've got a gap you need to fill it with something and this is the most baneful example of a lot because in a way i mean this is kind of the most shameful english invention um it it begins with william of norwich and then it gets kind of turbocharged with them with hugh of lincoln who's this again this little boy who vanishes and supposedly is murdered a century later. And it's kind of the most shameful English invention of all time. Wow, that's a big claim. But Tom, you know what? It's such an interesting thing there is that conspiracy, which I hadn't thought of until you mentioned this about Norwich needing a martyr. Conspiracy theories are lucrative.

I mean, the JFK conspiracy theory has generated so much income for so many writers, and indeed, you know, Oliver Stone and his film, that conspiracy theories are an industry in and of themselves. I mean, they generate, they literally generate merchandise. And that's an interesting element to it. Now let's move on to the next one, because I think there's a couple of things I want to say about this. It's from a fellow called Michael Taylor, who has written a book called The Interest,

which is all about the defence of slavery. So he's actually, although he doesn't mention this in his tweet, he's written a book about a network that did exist, a network of slave owners who are a network of slave owners who place articles in magazines like The Spectator and do influence votes in the House of Commons. He doesn't call them a conspiracy. I mean, he calls them a lobby. And his book is actually a model of how to write about a network

without succumbing to conspiracy theory. But anyway, he says the illuminati so this is a sort of slightly freemasons-ish group um uh very popular in germany and he says conservatives in england in 1790s were convinced they caused the french revolution one behind the 1798 irish rebellion we even stopped reading kant for five years immanuel kant the german philosopher because he was suspected of being one in brackets he says i have published on all this and actually it's not just the illuminati that people blame it's also the freemasons there's a huge thing of people blaming the french revolution on the freemasons and again there's a slight

element of truth in it and that the masons the illuminati and people like that were kind of progressive that they were the kind of high-minded secularists of their day. And some of them did play roles in these events. And then the whole apparatus of kind of conspiracy theories cranked up around, particularly the Masons, why the Freemasonry was banned, for example, in Franco's Spain, because they were seen as plotting against the Catholic Church and the established order and all the rest of it. And even now, of course, you know, anti-Masonic conspiracy theories are incredibly popular, aren't they? Yes. And I think I mean, the French Revolution is such a kind of explosion.

It's such a kind of a shock to the system, I guess, particularly in England, where you've got all the the aristocrats fleeing there i just before christmas i read um tale of two cities for the first time since school yeah what what was really interesting about that was that dickens explains the coming of the french revolution as a kind of conspiracy so he he casts um people in the slums of paris as preparing uh the french revolution and it's like they know exactly what is going to happen. And so obviously, Dickens is kind of projecting his own knowledge of what's going to happen onto these supposed conspirators. But it kind of answers a need that when an event happens that is so unexpected, so seemingly extraordinary, in a way, the idea that there are a bunch of conspirators, be it in a French wine shop in Paris or in a salon in Vienna or whatever, it cuts through a lot of

the need to explain it. People write entire books about what caused the French Revolution. But if you can say, well, it was all organised by the Illuminati, that makes it a lot simpler, much easier to get a handle on. And you know, another great example of that, Tom, if you ever read any of those books published in the 1920s by people like Agatha Christie, or the Bulldog Drummond books, there's often scenes in them where there's a group of people who are meeting in a shadowy room somewhere. And they're a kind of Jewish financier, an American businessman, a communist, and somebody else. And they talk about how they brought about the First World War, the Russian Revolution, all these cataclysms.

And it's exactly the same thing that you get with the French Revolution, this search for the network that will explain this seismic, you know, geopolitical convulsion. I don't know if you remember the opening to the film Naked Gun. Fidel Castro and the Ayatollah, and they're all kind of gathered around a table, convulsion i don't know if you remember the opening to the film naked gum fidel castro and the ayatollah and they're all kind of gathered around a table clearly plotting the overthrow of american civilization and leslie nelson but this is the sort of spectral organization james bond isn't it that's what the james bond they have representatives in every country yeah yeah yeah

okay right um here's one from thoughtfullyfully Catholic, who is indeed a very thoughtful Catholic. And he has a clearly mad theory. There's a theory that the Vatican conspired to create Islam through the medium of Cardiger, the Catholic first wife of the founder of Islam, all of which is clearly rubbish. That's not true, surely? No, that's of course not true.

Of course it's not remotely true um although um i don't want to get us into too much trouble here but the um the beginnings of of islam um i was just about to say yeah there was a conspiracy theory about that right well it's not really a conspiracy it's an academic theory where does it come from um can we trust the um the the muslim sources for it um maybe the muslim sources are themselves in a way um a kind of um if not a conspiracy theory an attempt to explain something that happened in a way that makes sense for people by the time they're writing about it but i won't go into that because i've written an entire book on that and it has the scope to generate all kinds of um of blowback so let's uh leave that one let's part that one let's do a let's move on to yeah yeah so don't worry about the next one

so pat roberts has basically pointed us to the theory um which i hadn't heard before the theory that finland doesn't exist that finland is a myth. Apologies to our Finnish listeners, but you are part of the, you're obviously actors playing the part of, yeah, playing a part of Finns. That Finland doesn't exist, that the space where Finland purports to be is actually a giant fishing ground. Is that right, Tom, a giant fishing ground for the Norwegians? Yes, for Japanese, for Japanese fishermen. I think it's a Russian-Japanese conspiracy.

And this originated kind of three years ago, four years ago. And it's kind of taken off in the darker regions of the internet. And I guess it's kind of fun. I mean, actually, it would be quite fun to just come up with a really insane conspiracy theory and see how long it takes to get traction and i guess again that's the plot of fuko's pendulum um yeah okay would you know he was essentially writing before the internet and and obviously the internet is completely turbocharged but it's also the plot of um our man in havana so yes in in graham green's novel the agent basically invents it to justify his fee same as the tailor of panama but john lecaris take on it later on the agent basically

invents a conspiracy where none exists which then comes true yeah so it's albigensian crusade territory yeah but i mean i think the thing about the about the Finland one is that it was clearly, I mean, I imagine it must have been invented as a farm, as a joke. And as these jokes tend to, it seems to have slightly run out of control. It's got legs. Yeah. Anyway, well, now we come to a tweet that just has so many conspiracy theories in it. And tellingly, it's from someone called Nemo. Wow, that's sinister.

So who knows who this could be? I mean, it might be Prince Philip. It might be the CIA. Who knows who it might be? Anyway, he's the faked moon landing. Prince Philip killed Diana. The US government assassinated John Lennon. The CIA killed Bob Marley.

Well, we've... Which of these is the maddest? Why would the CIA kill Bob Marley don't know I'm not familiar with that one why would the Reagan government assassinate John Lennon again it's not the Reagan government it's Jimmy Carter

it's the Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter Mr Human Rights can you see him signing that off is there not a link between Mark David Chapman killing John Lennon and whoever it was that then shot reagan hinkley john hinkley that hinkley was inspired by chapman shooting uh i don't know whether he was inspired by mark chapman he was definitely inspired by the film

taxi driver um yeah in which which has the um uh robert, Travis Bickle character. I think he was because it was only a few, it was kind of a couple of months, two or three months after John Lennon was shot. What is certainly true is that there is a personality type. There are people who feel victimised and they're outsiders and all the rest of it. And it's often the case that people who've assassinated American political figures will have had scrapbooks or something of previous assassins and they want to be as famous as Lee Harvey Oswald

or the guy who shot George Wallace or the guy who shot Robert Kennedy or, you know, that this is a sort of pattern that they then want to live up to themselves. I mean, there are two, there's a much better Beatles conspiracy, of course, which is Paul McCartney never died. Paul McCartney died in 1966.

Yeah, Paul McCartney died in 1966, got replaced, and this replacement of many things was able to write H.E.D. Yeah. Let it be. I know that that conspiracy is not true because Paul McCartney once saw me

shouting at my son when he was small for throwing gravel. This was my counter. This was my real brush for greatness. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you'd say that, Dominic. Of course you'd say that. I do that thing that you should never do as a parent, which is basically really lose it in public

over what appears to be the smallest thing, but is actually unknown to the rest of everybody who's watching the thousandth in a series of incidents i've told you a thousand times about throwing gravel stop throwing gravel and i looked up and there was paul mccartney who gave me this sort of this sort of avuncular wink and then moved on you didn't do a thumbs up no but i thought you know this isn't how it was meant to go my my meeting with Paul McCartney. Come on. But the other one that kind of – every time there is a mention, every time some famous star gets killed or dies – so Elvis is the classic, but it's been said of John Lennon as well.

It's been said of Bob Marley. It's been said of Jim Morrison. I guess it's been said of Marilyn as well. Did they really die? Are they – Yeah. Are they all somewhere? So is that because they're kind of saints to their followers

and their followers can't believe that they could ever die? I mean, what's all that about? Something like that. I don't know. I don't know. But it's a kind of interesting meme. And there's also this weird thing, isn't there, that the US government is always the perpetrator,

that the US government is staffed by people who hate rock and roll and even now you know 50 or 60 years on have never come to terms with bill haley in the comments and are determined to wipe out a succession of big stars yeah i mean the elvis one i guess isn't i guess because elvis becomes uh he gets a badge from Nixon, doesn't he? He is. Great pals with Nixon. So maybe the sense that Elvis vanishes because actually he's working for the American government, but clearly with John Lennon, because the American government wanted to deport him. Yeah. I'm sure that's what feeds into that.

The idea that the people in the CIA had a kind of desire to get rid of him. And essentially that's what then feeds into the X-Files. Yeah, well, the X-Files obviously builds on all this sort of stuff. All that kind of stuff, and it also has aliens and things. So I reckon of those, I reckon the most plausible, Prince Philip killed Diana. I don't think Prince Philip... I can't believe you said that.

Of all of those, of all of those... Tom destroys his credibility. Tom believes that Prince Philip killed Diana. You've heard it here first. Just for destroys his credibility. Tom believes that Prince Philip killed Diana. You've heard it here first. Just for the record, I don't think Prince Philip killed Diana. But of all of those, I think the Diana death is kind of the one that perhaps... I'd be interested to see how they play that on The Crown. Oh, God almighty, don't go there.

But you, Dominic, as an expert, I'll look forward to your thoughts on that. And as such a huge fan of The Crown, as is well known. Anyway, that is all we've got time for today. Dominic and I are both due in Moscow this afternoon. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, please do rate and review us, although obviously only if you like it. Until next time, bye. Watch out for the lizards.

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