Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier / Edition 2

Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier / Edition 2

ISBN-10:
1578593689
ISBN-13:
9781578593682
Pub. Date:
06/01/2012
Publisher:
Visible Ink Press
ISBN-10:
1578593689
ISBN-13:
9781578593682
Pub. Date:
06/01/2012
Publisher:
Visible Ink Press
Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier / Edition 2

Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier / Edition 2

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Overview

The invisible world of influence and power revealed. Hidden agendas uncovered. Examines 250 current and historical conspiracies, secret cabals, and powerful groups.

Startling allegations. Suppressed evidence. Missing witnesses. Assassinations. Cover-ups and threats. Documented connections to an even deeper intrigue. Allusions to the New World Order. Coincidences? Too many to be mere coincidence? American history is replete with warnings of hidden plots by the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Zionists, the Roman Catholics, the Communists, World Bankers, the Secret Government, and Extra-Terrestrial Invaders, to name a few.

Separating fact from fiction, this compelling work provides gripping details and presents the information without bias, including hundreds of individuals, organizations, and events where official claims and standard explanations of actions and events remain shrouded in mystery. Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier examines the most common subjects among conspiracy theorists, probing and thoroughly examining cases of conspiracies and dark doings of secret societies. Bring yourself up-to-date with the latest research and findings into historical topics plus current issues, including:

  • Historical riddles—the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, Noah’s Ark, the Sphinx, alchemy, the true relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the churches dedicated to the Black Madonna.
  • Classified background on U.S. Presidents—Lincoln, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Obama, Reagan, their advisers, and more.
  • Powerful secret societies and groups—the Knights Templar, Freemasons, Illuminati, the Triads, the Rosicrucians, the Skull and Bones Society, Scientology, the Falun Gong, the New World Order, and Lightning from the East.
  • Government cover-ups—electronic spying, MKUltra, the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, Area 51, extraterrestrial invaders, black helicopters, satellite snooping, FEMA, the Global Bank, and the Trilateral Commission.
  • Terrible secrets—the BP oil spill, Unit 731 and germ experiments, the 2011 tsunami in Japan, and Hurricane Katrina.
  • Science mysteries—biochip implants, genetic manipulation, weather control, mad cow disease, AIDS/HIV, West Nile virus, and the bizarre Morgellons disease.

    The only way to crush these secret plots is to bring the facts to light. Don't let history repeat itself! Knowledge is our best weapon against these people, groups, and their nefarious schemes.


  • Product Details

    ISBN-13: 9781578593682
    Publisher: Visible Ink Press
    Publication date: 06/01/2012
    Series: Treachery & Intrigue
    Edition description: Second Edition, Second edition
    Pages: 592
    Product dimensions: 7.14(w) x 9.06(h) x 1.24(d)

    About the Author

    For five decades, award-winning writer Brad Steiger was devoted to exploring and examining unusual, hidden, secret, and otherwise strange occurrences. He wrote over 2,000 articles and more than 180 titles, with over 17 million copies in print. His titles include Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Houses; Real Encounters, Different Dimensions and Otherworldy Beings; Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds; Real Visitors, Voices from Beyond, and Parallel Dimensions; Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside; The Werewolf Book; and Conspiracies and Secret Societies. Steiger was a former high school and college teacher and a veteran of broadcast news magazines. From 1970-73, his weekly newspaper column, "The Strange World of Brad Steiger", was carried domestically in over 80 newspapers and overseas from Bombay to Tokyo. He was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on February 19, 1936. Steiger was married to Sherry Hansen Steiger. He died on May 6, 2018.

    Read an Excerpt

    Anarchists

    Whether they are feared, admired, or misunderstood, there are always those individuals who oppose forms of government that they consider tyrannical, oppressive, and unjust.

    Depending upon the historical period in which they conducted their protests, certain individuals have been called anarchists, libertarians, socialists, Marxists, syndicalists, and revolutionaries. Regardless of labeling, these men and women have opposed through pacifism, militancy, or civil disobedience actions of the government that they considered to be tyrannical, oppressive, and socially, politically, or economically unjust. Here are some of the individuals who have been called “anarchists” and a summary of their beliefs:

    • Mikhail Bakunin: When Bakunin, son of a landowner and military officer, left his unit in the Russian Army in 1835, he set himself on a trajectory of anti-authoritarianism that would inspire people for centuries. He studied philosophers, consorted with socialists, published pamphlets on the cause of social revolution, called for the abolition of privilege, and broke with Karl Marx by preaching a creed of collectivist anarchism where workers controlled the means of production. He actively supported the wave of revolt that swept over Europe in 1848 and the 1871 Paris Commune uprising, started numerous, semi-secret, socialist, and/or revolutionary anarchist groups across Europe.

    • Noam Chomsky: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise,” Noam Chomsky has said, “we don’t believe in it at all.” Chomsky, a renowned linguistic expert who posits that the acquisition of language is part of the innate structure of the human brain, became well known to the nonacademic public as an anarchist and libertarian socialist who vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. Ever vigilant against any abuses of power, Chomsky remains a perceptive critic of U.S. foreign policy.

    • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Born in New Hampshire to an Irish family that was passionate about union, socialist, and anticolonial struggles, Elizabeth would become one of the greatest twentieth-century labor speakers and organizers. The inspiration for Joe Hill’s union song “The Rebel Girl,” Flynn stirred countless thousands of workers with her feisty spirit. In 1920 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. During the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950s, Flynn served twenty-eight months in prison because of her membership in the Communist Party. Her published works include Sabotage and My Life as a Political Prisoner.

    • William Godwin: Godwin, an English political philosopher and Calvinist minister, was the first writer to espouse anarchist ideals. Godwin’s utopia was equalitarian and completely anarchistic. In his opinion, a sound education and proper social conditioning were the chief elements in forming good character. Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice argues that humans are capable of genuine benevolence. The French Revolution inspired his major work, Political Justice, completed in 1793. His novel Caleb Williams has a theme of social reform.

    • Emma Goldman: As a young girl in Kovno, Russia, Emma Goldman witnessed the savage beating of a peasant by his master, a cruel memory that never left her and inspired her to become a social activist. In 1886 she came to the United States. She settled in Rochester, New York, experienced an unhappy marriage that ended in divorce, and relocated to New York City, where she became involved with anarchist circles. Emma, a gifted orator, also championed women’s rights and, along with the pioneering Margaret Sanger, fought for freer access to birth-control methods. Her efforts on behalf of the anarchist movement caused her deportation to Russia. Eventually she made her way back to America after spending years in England, Canada, and Spain. Always agitating for her ideals, Emma was imprisoned several times. Among her published works are Anarchism and Other Essays and The Social Significance of the Modern Drama.

    • Big Bill Haywood: William Dudley Haywood, known as “Big Bill,” led the Western Federation of Miners from 1900 to 1905 and in 1905 helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which sought to organize all laborers into one big union. In 1906 Haywood and other alleged conspirators were brought to trial for the murder of a former governor of Idaho. The famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was able to win their acquittal. In 1918 Big Bill and 165 other IWW leaders were convicted of sedition for opposing the U.S. involvement in World War I. In 1921 he jumped bail and sought refuge in the USSR, where he lived until his death.

    • Joe Hill: Born Joel Hagglund in Sweden, Hill became an American labor organizer for the radical Industrial Workers of the World and a famous writer of union songs, such as “Casey Jones—The Union Scab,” a parody of the popular ballad about the legendary train engineer. Charged, upon cloudy evidence, with murder in Salt Lake City, Hill was convicted and sentenced to death. Attempts by President Woodrow Wilson, the government of Sweden, and many prominent Americans could not win him a new trial. On the eve of his execution Hill telegraphed Big Bill Haywood the words that would later be immortalized in labor lore: “Don’t mourn, organize.” The next morning Joe Hill became a martyr for American labor upon his execution by a Utah firing squad.

    • Mother Jones: After losing her husband and children to an epidemic, Mary Harris Jones, later known as Mother Jones, found an outlet for her love and compassion in the labor movement. Working with the steelworkers and the miners of West Virginia and Colorado, she became a picturesque and forceful figure—a born crusader and a powerful speaker. Her work on behalf of child textile-mill workers was instrumental in reforming the child labor laws. “Mother Jones” died in 1930, the progressive magazine named in her honor was founded 46 years later.

    • Lucy Parsons: Lucy Parsons was an enslaved Texan woman who claimed to be the daughter of a Mexican woman and a Creek Indian. After she married Albert Parsons, a Confederate Civil War veteran, in 1873, the couple moved to Chicago and became involved in the labor movement. Lucy also became a tireless champion for the rights of African Americans, maintaining they were primarily victimized due to poverty. Racism, she argued, would disappear with the destruction of capitalism. In 1886 Albert was implicated in the Haymarket Square bombing where several police officers were killed and sentenced to death by hanging. In 1892 Lucy published a short-lived journal called Freedom. She helped found the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), and in 1905 she participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1939, fearing that anarchism could not effectively combat the advance of capitalism and fascism throughout the world, she joined the Communist Party.

    • Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Sacco and Vanzetti are joined forever in the public mind as the principals in one of the most controversial and best-known cases in American jurisprudence. They were arrested on charges of murdering a shoe factory paymaster and guard at South Braintree, Massachusetts. Tried and convicted on July 14, 1921, in a time of antiradical fervor, they were sentenced to death. During the years of their imprisonment, worldwide protests were raised by those who doubted their guilt, but they were electrocuted August 23, 1927. Periodically pressure is brought to have the state of Massachusetts officially clear Sacco and Vanzetti of the charges against them, but this has not happened.

    • Max Stirner: A German social philosopher, Stirner is the spiritual forefather of individualistic anarchism. Stirner rejected all political and moral ties of the individual, emphasizing that the individual entity comprises the overriding reality. In his opinion, egotism determines everything. Stirner’s concept of individualistic egotism was very democratic, and in The Ego and Its Own he encouraged everyone to become a liberated individualist.

    • Henry David Thoreau: Thoreau wrote the influential “Civil Disobedience” as a lecture 1848. Its call for standing up to frequently anti-democratic institutions (“Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine”) inspired Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, as well contemporary activists in the civil rights, antiwar, and radical environmentalist movement.

    Sources

    ”Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth century.” http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/macan/introduction.html.

    ”A People’s Libertarian Index.” http://flag.blackened.net/liberty.

    Antichrist

    For many Christians, the greatest conspiracy of all will be the one that the antichrist conducts against the followers of the returning Christ.

    Although commonly associated with the apocalyptic New Testament book of Revelation, the word antichrist is nowhere to be found within that text. In 1 John 2:18 the epistle writer declares that the “enemy of Christ” has manifested and that many false teachers have infiltrated the Christian ranks. In verse 22, John names as the antichrist anyone who would deny Jesus as the Christ and the Father and the Son, and in 2 John 7 he declares there are many deceivers already at work among the faithful.

    In Matthew 24:3–44 Jesus speaks to his disciples at great length concerning false messiahs and prophets who will deceive many people with rumors about the end of the world. He refers to the prophet Daniel and his warnings concerning the end times, and he admonishes the disciples not to follow false teachers who will produce great miracles and signs to trick God’s chosen ones. No one knows when the Son of Man shall appear again coming on the clouds of heaven, Jesus tells them, not even the angels.

    The earliest form of the antichrist is probably the warrior king Gog, who appears in the book of Ezekiel and reappears in Revelation along with his kingdom of Magog, representing those earthly minions of Satan who will attack the people of God in a final great battle of good versus evil. Jewish writings about the “end of days” state that the armies of Gog and Magog will eventually be defeated, and the world will finally be at peace.

    Throughout the Bible the antichrist bears many titles: Son of Perdition, Man of Sin, Man of Lawlessness, Prince of Destruction, and Beast. In the prophecies of both Daniel and John the Revelator, the evil king, the antichrist, is associated with ten rulers who give their power and allegiance to him in order to form a short-lived empire of bloodshed and destruction.

    Although Jesus makes it clear no one will know the hour or day of his Second Coming, Christian scholars have steadfastly viewed the rise of the antichrist to earthly power as a kind of catalyst that will set in motion Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil, the ultimate clash between the armies of Jesus Christ and Satan. Throughout the centuries, Christians have attempted to determine the antichrist from among the powerful and ruthless leaders of their day, such men as Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Nominations for the role have often been influenced by politics or religious prejudices: ever since the Protestant Reformation, the pope has been a favorite of evangelicals for the ignominious title.

    The association of the number 666 with the antichrist is derived from Revelation 13:18, which states that the number of the Beast is 666 and that this number stands for a person. In John the Revelator’s world of the first century, the Beast who ruled the earth would have been the emperor, the Caesar, of the Roman Empire, Nero. Using the Hebrew alphabet, the numerical value of “Caesar Nero,” the merciless persecutor of the early Christians, works out to 666.

    On May 1, 2005, scholars revealed that a newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating from the third century, indicates that later copyists got it wrong: the number of the Beast is 616. David Parker, professor of New Testament textual criticism and paleography at the University of Birmingham, England, says that the numerical value of 616 refers to another nemesis of the early Christians, the emperor Caligula.

    However, those who maintain that the number 666 is still a potent predictor of the antichrist will continue to name their contemporary candidates for the role. The numerical value of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s name reportedly added up to 666, and since he held the office of president of the United States for twelve years—and during the Great Depression and World War II—many of his conservative Christian critics began thinking of him as the antichrist. Even Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed significant support from right-wing Christians, had certain dissenters calling attention to the fact that he had six letters in each of his three names: 666.

    In recent decades, the term antichrist has been applied to so many individuals in popular culture that it has lost much of its meaning and sense of menace. However, those fundamentalist Christians who believe strongly in the coming time of the Tribulation, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, and the great final battle of good versus evil at Armageddon firmly believe that the title of antichrist maintains its fear factor and that we must pay serious heed to those signs and warnings of the Beast as prophesied in the book of Revelation.

    Sources

    Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly. New Age Almanac. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1991.

    Shepherd, A. P. Rudolf Steiner: Scientist of the Invisible. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1983.

    Antifa

    Although this network says they are organized around fighting fascists, others see a cabal of subversive agents intent on undermining the United States.

    When fascism was on the march in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s, its growth did not go unnoticed by those who opposed the authoritarian, nationalist, and racist ideologies. Because the danger represented by fascism was seen as so extreme, loose confederations of not-always-aligned groups on the left of the political spectrum—from socialists to trade unionists, anarchists, and Communists—began banding together to shut down fascists whenever they gathered for speeches or marches. The result was often pitched street fighting fueled by the passions of diametrically opposed viewpoints, neither of which was interested in giving any quarter.

    One of the first anti-fascist groups began in Italy in the early 1920s. They were known as Arditi del Popolo (“The People’s Daring Ones”). In 1936, when Oswald Mosley and his fascist Blackshirts marched through London’s heavily Jewish East End neighborhood, anti-fascists turned out to fight them in a riot that was later called the Battle of Cable Street. In Germany, anti-fascists organized under the name Antifaschistische Aktion, also referred to as “Antifa.” These groups, for the most part, did not outlast World War II, due both to the military defeat of fascist regimes and the splintering of leftist alliances due to new lines being drawn by the Cold War.

    Starting in the 1980s, antifa groups like Anti-Racist Action sprang up in Europe and America to fight neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and other fringe xenophobes. Unlike pre-war anti-fascists, newer antifa groups were not part of larger mass movements but tended to be smaller disconnected cells of activists who believed mainstream leftists were too passive and that neo-Nazi rhetoric and violence needed a harsher response. Excepting some larger clashes like the thousands of anti-fascists who blocked an annual Nazi march in Dresden in 2010, the antifa-fascist conflicts were often small street skirmishes that took place out of the media spotlight.

    That changed in 2017, when a more sizable coalition of antifa, anarchists, and other leftist protestors massed in Charlottesville, North Carolina, to push back against the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally. As white supremacist and authoritarian groups like the Proud Boys grew in numbers, boldness, and visibility during the Donald Trump presidency, increasingly groups like Portland, Oregon’s Rose City Antifa turned out to fight them.

    During the protests that spread across America after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, antifa groups took part in fierce clashes not just with the pro-Trump far right but with law enforcement (who they saw as protecting or turning a blind eye to groups they deemed fascist). From that point on, and especially after some protests were marked by looting and burning of buildings, rumors flew on social media throughout the summer of 2020 about vague threats posed by groups of antifa supposedly massing around the country by the thousands to assault suburban neighborhoods and small towns.

    In June 2020, a family on a camping trip in a rural part of Washington state was harassed by armed men who believed they were antifa. There were attempts to have antifa designated a terror network. Trump and some of his supporters believed that planeloads of black-uniformed antifa were flying around the country to wreak havoc. George Soros was accused of funding antifa, despite his organization’s denial. Wildfires that hit Oregon in September 2020 were blamed on antifa, who some believed were attempting to sow chaos by any means necessary. The theories continued into the following year. Following the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, a theory spread through right-wing circles that in fact the rioters were antifa looking to shift blame.

    Although many antifascists tried to fight the image of their movement as being destructive anarchists, the loose and decentralized nature of their networks likely made it easier for theories to quickly spread.

    Sources

    Bray, Mark. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. New York: Melville House, 2017.

    Stout, James. “A Brief History of Anti-Fascism.” Smithsonian, June 24, 2020.

    Anonymous

    Is this network of “hacktivists” aiming to champion the cause of justice or to undermine modern society?

    The first time most people heard of Anonymous was likely in early 2008. That January, a YouTube video featuring a backdrop of stormy skies and a flat robotic voice identifying as “We are Anonymous” accused the Church of Scientology “campaigns of misinformation” and “malign influence.” The video matter-of-factly declared that they had “decided that your organization should be destroyed.” It concluded with a recitation of what was essentially the Anonymous creed: “Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” While as with most hacker-led campaigns, there was an element of tongue-in-cheek humor, there were real-world results in addition to the expected online assaults on Scientology’s web sites. Thousands protested outside Scientology centers around the world, most of them protecting their identities by wearing the grinning Guy Fawkes mask popularized in the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta.

    Anonymous started around 2004. Building on the prankster antiauthoritarian ethos of earlier “hacktivist” collectives like Cult of the Dead Cow and merging it with the boundary-pushing shock humor proliferating on websites like 4chan, Anonymous was credited with campaigns like one in which hackers helped entrap a suspected pedophile. After 2008, Anonymous took on a wide range of causes—from aiding anti-democracy activists during the Arab Spring to attacking critics of Wikileaks (before later turning on Wikileaks) and harassing a neo-Nazi radio host—with relatively little ideological linkage outside of a generally left-wing and somewhat libertarian ethos. Typical Anonymous campaigns involved denial-of-service attacks on websites and dumping of previously secret information online.

    FBI arrests of numerous members in 2012 fractured the sprawling collective and in 2020 one of its key founders was identified as Canadian hacker Aubrey Cottle. Every so often, hacker vigilantes claiming Anonymous affiliation and using their now-infamous refrain (“We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us”) will make claims of responsibility for online attack on individuals or groups that are, for obvious reasons, difficult to prove.

    Sources

    Beran, Dale. “The Return of Anonymous.” The Atlantic, August 11, 2020.

    Kushner, David. “The Masked Avengers.” New Yorker, September 1, 2014.

    McCormick, Ty. “Hacktivism: A Short History.” Foreign Policy, April 29, 2013.

    Apocalyptic Millennialism

    The end times are coming. Beware of false messiahs, ranting prophets, and the antichrist—and prepare to be taken aloft by the Rapture.

    To some Christians, the profound meaning of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ will return in the Last Days and prompt the resurrection of the dead and the Final Judgment. The heart of the gospels is eschatological, end-oriented. The essential theme of Jesus’s teaching is that the last stage of history, the end times, was being entered into with his appearance on Earth. In Matthew 24:3–44, Jesus speaks to his disciples at great length concerning false messiahs and prophets who will deceive many people with their rumors about the end of the world. He refers to the prophet Daniel and his warnings concerning the end times and the antichrist, and he admonishes the disciples not to chase after false teachers who will produce great miracles and signs to trick God’s chosen ones.

    No one knows when the Son of Man shall appear again coming on the clouds of heaven, Jesus tells them, not even the angels. However, the prophets of apocalypticism believe that they have received visions that allow them to see ahead to the end time and predict when Christ will return.

    Among the most famous of the end times prophets was William Miller, who founded the Millerite movement about 1831. Miller believed that he had discovered the exact date of Christ’s return by calculating two thousand years from 457 b.c.e., when Ezra was allowed to return to Jerusalem to reestablish the Temple. Based on his studies, Miller concluded that the Second Coming would transpire in 1843, although he later revised this prediction to include the period between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When the latter date embarrassingly passed without notable event, he refined his calculations and finally settled on October 22, 1844, as the day that Jesus would return in all his glory. The Millerites, who numbered at least fifty thousand, were dealt the “Great Disappointment” when Christ failed to arrive on that date either. Then one of Miller’s followers, Hiram Edson, had a vision revealing that the divinely inspired date had not been incorrect, merely misinterpreted. What Miller had seen, according to Edson, was the date when Jesus would begin to cleanse the heavenly sanctuary in preparation for the gathering of his earthly followers.

    Another follower, Ellen G. White, author of The Desire of Ages and The Great Controversy, had visions which told the Adventists, as some of the Millerites were now calling themselves, that they were God’s special end times remnant. She also concluded that they should begin to keep the original Sabbath, Saturday, as their day of worship. The Millerite apocalyptic revelations had evolved into the Seventh-day Adventists. Later, the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, seeking to reform the church, broke away and formed their own interpretation of Millerite doctrine.

    In the Jewish tradition, apocalyptic thought presupposes a universal history in which the Divine Author of that history will reveal and manifest his secrets in a dramatic end time that with finality will establish the God of Israel as the one true God. The “end of days” (acharit ha-yamin) is bound up with the coming of the Messiah, but before his appearance governments will become increasingly corrupt, religious schools will become heretical, the wisdom of the scribes and teachers will become blasphemous, young people will shame their elders, and members of families will turn upon one another. Then, just prior to the arrival of the Messiah, the righteous of Israel will defeat the armies of evil that have gathered under the banner of Gog and Magog, and the exiles will return to the Holy Land. The world will be at peace and all people will recognize the one true God. With the advent of the Messiah there will come the great Day of Judgment in which the dead shall rise from their graves to begin a new life. During the period known as the World to Come (Olam Haba), the righteous will join the Messiah in partaking of a great banquet in which all foods, even those previously judged impure, will be declared kosher. All the many nations of the world will communicate in one language; the Angel of Death will be slain by God; trees and crops will produce fresh harvests each month; the warmth of the sun will heal the sick; and the righteous will be nourished forever by the radiance of God.

    According to ancient Jewish teachings, only the ashes of a flawless red heifer could purify worshippers who went into the Temple in Jerusalem. The First Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 b.c.e. and the Romans demolished the Second Temple in 70 c.e. Without a flawless red heifer to sacrifice to purify the Temple Mount, the Third Temple could not be built and the Messiah could not come. In modern times, some rabbits have forbidden Jews from setting foot on the Temple Mount.

    Fundamentalist Christians believe that after Jesus Christ has returned and defeated the forces of evil at the great battle of Armageddon, he will begin his millennial reign from the Third Temple. Muslims revere the Temple Mount as the place where Muhammad ascended into heaven; and in 685, followers of the Prophet began constructing the thirty-five-acre site known as the Noble Sanctuary, which today includes the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe that Jesus will return as a Muslim prophet and conduct the day of final judgment in the valley just below the Noble Sanctuary.

    Many Christians who believe in the end times also envision an event they call the “Rapture,” in which born-again Christians will be taken up into the air to meet Christ. Many believe that the Rapture will happen unexpectedly. Those Christians of special merit will be lifted suddenly from their homes, their automobiles, even from their passenger seats on airliners. Most of humankind will be left behind, including those Christians whose faith requires strengthening. To fundamentalist Christians, the Rapture will be a literal, physical occurrence, rather than a spiritual transformation. Those who are taken up by Christ may leave their clothing on the streets and their cars crashing into trees, but they will be lifted body and soul into the sky.

    Although Christians who believe in the Rapture are certain that it will occur in association with the time of Tribulation (the seven-year period of disasters, famine, and illness during which the antichrist will be in power), opinions differ as to whether it will come about just before the Tribulation begins, midway through the seven-year reign of the antichrist, or at the very end of the Tribulation. There is, however, general agreement that when this awful time of lawlessness and corruption has passed, Christ will return to Earth with his army of angels and destroy the forces of darkness at Armageddon in the final battle of good versus evil. Babylon, the False Prophet, and the Beast (the antichrist) will be dispatched to their doom, and Satan, the Dragon, will be bound in a pit for a thousand years. With Satan imprisoned and chained, the Millennium, the thousand years of peace and harmony, will begin.

    Not all Christians accept the scenario of the Rapture, but many Christians and non-Christians alike find the premise intriguing and read the books in the Rapture-inspired Left Behind series as exciting science fiction. Authored by fundamentalist minister Tim LaHaye and professional writer Jerry Jenkins, the sixteen books in the series, based on the events of the Rapture, sold tens of millions of copies and also inspired movies and computer games. They also contain a significant amount of violent anti-Semitism and link modern apocalyptic Christianity with conspiracy theories that propagated in the late 20th century, particularly about the United Nations as a false front for an anti-Christian One World Government.

    From 1958 until his retirement in 2011, Christian broadcaster Harold Egbert Camping was president of Family Radio, a California-based radio group that broadcasts to 150 markets in the United States. Camping sometimes applied numerology to his interpretation of Bible passages that he believed predicted the end times. In 1988, Camping prophesied that the end of the world would occur on May 21 of that year. Undaunted by the sunrise on May 22, Camping went back to the Bible and his numerological computations, waiting until 1994 to make another doomsday prophecy that the world would end on September 6 of that year.

    Somewhat chastened by another miscalculation, Camping was content to remain a fiery Christian broadcaster until his Bible interpretations moved him to receive another prediction for 2011. This time, he worked in some elements of the Rapture that were popular with certain evangelicals. On May 21, 2011, he predicted, Christ would return to Earth, elevating the righteous to Heaven. For all others, there would follow five months of terrible plagues on Earth, killing millions of people each day.

    His predictions for 1988 and 1994 had come and gone without gathering too much notice, but Family Radio was more media savvy by 2011, and they launched a massive publicity campaign that brought international attention to Camping’s prophetic utterances. Major media outlets carried stories that announced the approaching Judgment Day to believers and skeptics alike.

    When May 21 left thousands of true believers disillusioned and even more unbelievers amused, Camping defended his power of prophecy by proclaiming his revelation that a great spiritual judgment did occur on that date and that the great physical Rapture would happen on October 21. But the responsibility of serving as an apocalyptic spokesperson proved too much for Camping and he suffered a stroke in June. On October 16, 2011, he retired from his presidency of Family Radio. When October 21 once again came and went without people rising to Heaven and the physical universe being destroyed, Camping conceded in a private interview that he guessed no one could know the actual time that the world would come to an end.

    Sources

    Abanes, Richard. End-Time Visions. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1998.

    Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

    Dreher, Rod. “Red-Heifer Days.” National Review Online, April 11, 2002. https://www.onenation.org/opinion/red-heifer-days/.

    Lindsey, Hal, with C. C. Carlson. The Late Great Planet Earth. New York: Bantam, 1978.

    Goetz, William R. Apocalypse Next. Camp Hill, PA: Horizon, 1996.

    ”Judgment Day Is Coming May 21, 2011—The Bible Says No Such Thing.” Christian News Today. http://www.christiannewstoday.com/Christian_News Report_6024.html.

    Shaw, Eva. Eve of Destruction: Prophecies, Theories, and Preparations for the End of the World. Chicago: Contemporary, 1995.

    Unterman, Alan. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

    Stevens, John, “You can come out now Harold! Doomsday prophet remains in hiding as world survives Rapture... AGAIN.” The Daily Mail. October 22, 2011.

    Wheeler, John, Jr. Earth’s Two-Minute Warning: Today’s Bible-Predicted Signs of the End Times. North Canton, OH: Leader, 1996.

    Table of Contents

    About the Author

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    A

    Agenda 21 … AIDS/HIV … Airship of 1897 … Alchemy … Alien Abductions … Alien Autopsy … Al-Qaeda … Alternative 3 … American Nazi Party … American Protective Association … Anarchists … Anthroposophy … Antichrist … Antifa … Anonymous … Apocalyptic Millennialism … Area 51 and Reverse Engineering … Ark of the Covenant … Army of God … Aryan Nations … Asian Tsunami 2004 … Atlantis … Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) … Aztlan

    B

    B-52 Ghost Bomber … Barcode … Louis Beam … Dr. Fred Bell, a Mysterious Death … Berenstain Bears … Bible Code … Big Brother … Bilderbergers… Osama bin Laden … Biochip Implants … Biomagnetic Weapons … Black Helicopters … Black Sun … Bohemian Grove … Boogaloo Bois … British Petroleum Oil Spill … Ron Brown Murder … Mae Brussell … George H. W. Bush … George W. Bush and the Missing WMDs … The Business Plot

    C

    Cathars … Cattle Mutilations … Central Intelligence Agency … Christian Identity … Church of the Lamb of God … Clinton Body Count … Club of Rome … Cointelpro: The FBI’s Covert War against America … The Constitution … Contrails and Chemtrails … William Cooper … Father Charles Coughlin … Council on Foreign Relations … Council for National Policy … Crack Cocaine and the CIA … Creativity Movement … Crédit Mobilier … Crop Circles

    D

    The Da Vinci Code … Dead Musicians … Dead Sea Scrolls … Decided Ones of Jupiter … Deep State … Denver International Airport … Department of the Unorthodox … Diana, Princess of Wales … Dominion Theology

    E

    Ira Einhorn … Eisenhower and the Extraterrestrials … Electronics Spying, Hacking, and Harassment … ELF … Jeffrey Epstein … Exopolitics and Obama’s Trips to Mars

    F

    Face on Mars … Falun Gong, the Wheel of Law … The Family … Federal Emergency Management Agency … Federal Reserve System … Fish and Bird Kills on Massive Scale … Flat Earth … Fluoridation … Henry Ford and His Great Jewish Conspiracy … Vincent Foster: Murder or Suicide? … Fountain of the World … Free and Accepted Order of Freemasons… Fukushima and HAARP

    G

    Garduna … Jim Garrison … Bill Gates … Gemstone File … Genetically Modified Foods … Germ and Biological Warfare … Gold … Great Pyramid of Cheops … The Great Reset … Gulf War Syndrome … Gun Control

    H

    HAARP … Hadron Collider … Fred Hampton … Hangar 18 … Hashhashin … Haymarket Bombing … Heaven’s Gate … Hellfire Club … Adolph Hitler … Jimmy Hoffa … Hollow Earth … Holocaust Revisionists … Holy Grail … Holy Vehm … Howard Hughes … Hurricane Katrina … Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda Connection … Hypnosis, False Memories, and the New World Order

    I

    David Icke—The Reptilian Conspiracy … Illuminati … Internet—A Tool of the New World Order … Iran-Contra

    J

    HRH Jack the Ripper … Jacobinism … January 6 … Jesuits: The Vatican’s Chief Assassins … John Birch Society … Alex Jones

    K

    John F. Kennedy, Assassination of … Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of … John F. Kennedy Jr., Death of … Kennedy Death List … Martin Luther King Jr., Assassination of … Knights of the Golden Circle … Knights Templar … Know-Nothing Movement … Ku Klux Klan

    L

    Mark Lane … Lyndon H. Larouche Jr. … Lavender Mafia … League of the South … John Lennon, Assassination of … Leopard Men … Liberty Lobby … Lightning from the East … Abraham Lincoln, Assassination of … Lusitania

    M

    USS Maine … Majestic-12 … Malcolm X, Assassination of … Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 … Manchurian Candidate … Manson Family … Jim Marrs … The Matrix … Mau Mau … Men in Black (MIB) … MK-ULTRA … Molly Maguires … Marilyn Monroe … Montauk Project … Moon Mysteries … Morgellons Disease … Mothman Death List … Mystery Schools … Mystery Societies and Altered States of Consciousness

    N

    Nation of Islam … Nativism … Nazi UFOs … New Age Movement … New World Order/One World Government … 9/11 … Richard M. Nixon—The Conspiracy President … Noah’s Ark … North American Union

    O

    Obama Conspiracies … The Octopus … Oklahoma City Bombing … Operation Gladio … Operation Midnight Climax … Operation Northwoods … Operation Paperclip … Operation Resurrection … Order of the Golden Dawn … Order of the Solar Temple

    P

    Patriot Act/Homeland Security … George Patton and Operation Unthinkable … Pearl Harbor and FDR … Pentagon Papers … Peoples Temple … Philadelphia Experiment … William Pierce, The Turner Diaries, and the National Alliance … The Popes … Posse Comitatus … Project Monarch … Project Silverbug … Project Spellbinder … Propaganda Assets Inventory … Propaganda Due (P2) … Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion … Psychedelics and the CIA … Psychic Spies … Psywar

    Q–R

    QAnon … Raelians … Ronald Reagan, Attempted Assassination of … Wilhelm Reich … Replacement Theory … Report from Iron Mountain … Restoration of the Ten Commandments …Rockefeller Family’s Alien Conspiracy … Roman Catholic Church’s Sexual Conspiracy of Silence … Rosicrucians … Roswell, New Mexico, UFO Crash … Ruby Ridge

    S

    Sandy Hook … Satanic Cults … Satellites and Snooping… Richard Mellon Scaife … Scientists’ Suspicious Deaths … Scientology … Shroud of Turin … Skull and Bones … George Soros … Sphinx … Stolen election … Students for a Democratic Society … Subliminal messaging … Subproject 94 … Suppressed Medical Cures and Technologies

    T

    Nikola Tesla: The Genius and the Aliens … Thuggee … Thule Society … Tonkin Gulf Incident … Triads and Tongs … Trilateral Commission … Donald Trump … TWA Flight 800

    U

    UFO Cover-ups by the Government … UFO Researchers’ Mysterious Deaths … Unabomber and the Harvard Drug Experiments… Underground UFO Bases … Undersea UFO Bases … Unit 731 … U.S. Government’s Secret Experiments on Its Citizens

    V–Z

    Vaccines … Vodun/Voudou/Voodoo … Vril Society … Waco … Weather Control and Manipulation … Watergate Death List … Weathermen … Paul Wellstone, Murder Of … Werewolves of der Führer … West Nile Virus … Wicca … Witchcraft … Woodpecker … X-Files … Y2K … Francis Parker Yockey … Zionism … Zionist Occupation Government


    Bibliography

    Index 

    What People are Saying About This

    From the Publisher

    "If you're not already paranoid, you may be after reading this book. This primer hits the highlights of murder plots, suicides, extraterrestrials, government cover-ups, and religious mysteries throughout the centuries." —Booklist (August 2012)

    "The Steigers' present in this massive book a truly wide and fascinating range of material dealing with an endless array of startling scenarios of conspiracy and secret societies. There's virtually everything here." —Alternate Perceptions (July 2012)

    "Riveting tome. . . . Written in an accessible, entertaining style. . . . Chock-full of engrossing and provocative articles. . . . While this work may offend, enrage, and even frighten some, it's sure to be a hit with conspiracy enthusiasts." —School Library Journal (June 2012)

    "You won't find a clearer, more encyclopedic, or more honest look at conspiracies and secret societies.... I highly recommend this to all of my listeners."  —Erskine, host, Erskine Overnight

    "This is truly an astonishing encyclopedia of conspiracies of every kind and secret societies of every dark shade, from antiquity right up to the present day. . . . It's another must-have." —www.about.com

    "I predict this book will come to be the standard by which all efforts at codifying the world's hidden - and inextricably linked - power mechanisms will be judged. It is a true geopolitical, historical classic . . . a marvel by any measure . . . and will be read decades from now as the ultimate window back into a world seemingly gone mad."  —Jeff Rense, Editor-in-Chief, www.rense.com

    "Well worth adding to any library . . . but be forewarned: reading this work may just change your outlook on life, and for that matter, the entire world you thought you knew . . . radical shifts in your accepted reality may await!" —www.GralienReport.com

    "If you could only own one book on conspiracies, this is it. It's the culmination of meticulous, balanced research, seasoned storytelling, and a sense for the reader's needs, earned over decades by the Steigers' submersion in this field. Whenever I need information on conspiracies, whether personally or for show preparation, this is the book I will grab from the shelf."  —Joshua P. Warren, author and host, Speaking of Strange

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