5 of the Most Ridiculous -- and Widely Believed Anti-Government Conspiracy Theories Today

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/5-most-ridiculous-and-widely-believed-anti-government-conspiracy-theories-today

1. The Obama administration has stockpiled 30,000 guillotines. The Obama administration is supposedly up to some really horrible things using the President’s executive powers. One, which began circulating last year is starting to compete with the old FEMA concentration camp conspiracy, which began around 2009.

***SNIP

2. The feds can steal the contents of all safe deposit boxes. Over the past year, dozens of investment and conspiracy websites have claimed that the Department of Homeland Security has informed banks they can raid the contents of safe deposit boxes without warrant and confiscate any valuables they find. Again, like many conspiracy theories, this one has many versions, including one that says the executive order was originally given in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

***SNIP

3. The government and medical industry are hiding a cure for cancer. More than a third of Americans believe that the U.S. government just wants us all to get sick and die, according a recent survey by the University of Chicago. When asked if they believe the Food and Drug Administration purposely conceals information on natural, alternative treatments for cancer, 37% said yes. Fewer respondents said they disagreed with this conspiracy theory.

***SNIP

4. The feds blanketed the South with fake, plastic snow. After uncharacteristically Arctic-like conditions in the South early this year, several websites and YouTube videos pushed a conspiracy theory that the white stuff falling from the sky was not snow, but a plastic impostor that was engineered by the federal government for nefarious reasons that were never explained.

[pipoman]

1. #2 isn't all that far fetched if one considers the extraconstitutional

(I believe unconstitutional) asset forfeiture laws in this country.

[yellerpup]

2. I heard a conspiracy theory in the supermarket parking lot

that was so detailed and convoluted, I don't know how anyone could believe it. A nice old fellow who looks like Santa Claus (a recent Bulgarian immigrant, btw) tells me that the world is being fooled because Obama was programmed and installed with a brain chip when he was a child in Malaysia. Our president is secretly a world-destroying, Muslim robot created by liberals!

I told him I was a liberal. We debated over the veracity of his information, but he explained that his degree in engineering made him superior in intelligence, etc. He told me that it might take another 10 years, but by then everyone would know that they had been ruined by the Black American robot president and that he would be proven right.

[djean111]

3. I don't think there is a cure for all cancer being hidden.

I do think that some cures for individual types of cancer and other diseases are not pursued because it would not be worth the money to bring them to market.

[demwing]

4. #3: Snopes rates as "Mixture"

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/cancercure.asp

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. "pharm companies not interested in 1 drug" is not the same as "govt hiding cure for cancer"

The Snopes article is about whether DCA can 'cure all cancer' (it can't), and whether drug companies are investing in it (they aren't; but anyone can, since it's not patentable, and there are many non-profit research groups around the world that can pursue it if they think it has promise; those research groups tend to lead cancer research anyway, not the drug companies). It's nothing like "when asked if they believe the Food and Drug Administration purposely conceals information on natural, alternative treatments for cancer, 37% said yes."

[demwing]

6. #1 - It's just an amusing article, so I'm not overly invested in my point

#2 - the actual "conspiracy theory" being ridiculed is that the government and medical industry are hiding a cure for cancer due to profitability.

The Snopes article I cited speaks directly to that theory. Who will invest the funds required to usher this drug through the required testing when another company can then come along and take advantage?

Not entirely the same, but not entirely different, either. I assume that's why Snopes rates the theory as mixed.

[WinkyDink]

7. "Remember the 'Maine'!" And JFK, MLK, RFK, Tonkin Gulf, and more recently WMDs. Sometimes the

"ridiculous" is posited to make us ignore the real.