Student Movements (1960s)

The most striking result of the baby boom was the activism of college students during the 1960s. In the United States, the initial impetus for student activism came from the Civil Rights movement. As the decade wore on, students in the United States and elsewhere found more elements of the "establishment" that required political action: the Vietnam War, the draft, and charges that universities were complicit with the military.

The first major student protest organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was founded in 1960 by Ella Baker, who had organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for Martin Luther King, Jr. She believed that existing civil rights organizations were out of touch with African-American students who were willing to push the movement further. Also in 1960 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged from the Student League for Industrial Democracy, created in the 1930s to try to build a political left in Great Depression America.

SDS became the central institution of what would soon be called the New Left. In June 1962, 59 SDS members and sympathizers, including some SNCC members, assembled at an AFL-CIO camp in Port Huron, Michigan, to develop a political manifesto.


The resulting Port Huron Statement was written by student Tom Hayden. It suggested that U.S. universities should become the locus for a new movement concerned with empowering individuals and communities.

SNCC was the first of these organizations to achieve national prominence. Its members, who had initiated sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, took part in the Freedom Rides of 1961, testing federal court orders desegregating interstate bus terminals. They conducted voter registration programs in several southern cities and demonstrated against segregation.

In 1964 SNCC and CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) staged "Freedom Summer", during which white college students were invited to teach African-American children and assist with voter registration efforts in Mississippi.

During that summer, three student activists, whites Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman and African-American James Chaney, were murdered by white racists. The University of California, Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement began when students returning from Freedom Summer found their university restricting political activity on campus.

White resistance to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act led activists in both SDS and SNCC to see themselves as allies of revolutionaries in the rest of the world and to move further left.

Stokely Carmichael (later Kwami Ture), who became chairman of SNCC in 1966, coined the slogan "Black Power" to express African-American pride, which had the effect of driving white activists out of the organization.

SDS and other white-dominated activist groups had, by this time, become outraged at the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The first "teach-in" against the war took place at the University of Michigan during the spring of 1965. In April a march on Washington organized by SDS drew 20,000 protesters. It was the first of many.

Concentration on antiwar politics had an unforeseen consequence. In 1964 SNCC staffers Mary King and Casey Hayden anonymously circulated a position paper noting male dominance in movement organization.

Later, they publicly raised the importance of feminism in civil rights and antiwar groups. Some men in the movement saw women’s issues as a trivial distraction from their own concerns about the draft. King and Hayden’s work led to women’s caucuses.

In May 1968 youth uprisings in Paris nearly brought down the government of Charles de Gaulle. A general strike led by elite Sorbonne university students, joined by many French workers, decried France’s education system and its role in the Vietnam War.

That same year, Czechoslovakia’s "Prague Spring" tried to implement "socialism with a human face" in the teeth of Soviet domination. In August Warsaw Pact troops crushed the movement, while in the United States riots erupted between Chicago police and student activists during the Democratic National Convention.

Violence escalated in 1970 when National Guard units shot and killed students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, touching off protests on many other campuses. But by then SNCC and SDS were collapsing. SDS had splintered at its 1969 convention into a number of groups, the best known of which, the Weathermen, took its name from a Bob Dylan song.

Renamed the Weather Underground, this group is best remembered for a Greenwich Village explosion in which three members blew themselves up while assembling explosives. Broad-based student activism declined after the draft was discontinued in 1973.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

In 1989 eastern European countries of the Warsaw Pact, which had been beholden to the Soviet Union since the end of World War II, had their communist governments replaced with noncommunist governments. For the first time in over 30 years the borders between eastern and western Europe were opened.

The following year the Congress of People’s Deputies changed the Soviet constitution and removed the Communist Party’s monopoly from the constitution by allowing multiple parties. In March the Baltic States held elections and their national independence parties gained majorities in each of the republics. At this time Lithuania decided to declare its independence from the Soviet Union, the first republic to do so.

In June 1990 Russia declared its right to rule itself separate from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During the remainder of the summer the other republics also declared their right to self-rule. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to find a way to salvage the Soviet Union.


His efforts were to be put to a vote in August 1991, but hard-line communists launched an unsuccessful coup in Moscow. The failed coup brought the Communist Party down, and none of the republics was interested in trying to save the Soviet Union. On Christmas Day 1991 Gorbachev resigned, ending the Soviet Union.

Throughout 1989 Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, which had been under Soviet control since the end of World War II, established democratic governments and cut their ties with the Soviet Union.

Seeing these events, the Baltic countries started to voice their desire to be free of the Soviet Union also. The Baltic countries had been absorbed by the Soviet Union as part of a treaty (the Nazi-Soviet Pact) it had made with Nazi Germany in 1939.

Gorbachev did not care how a republic had come to be part of the Soviet Union; in his view none of the republics should be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Seeing the events in eastern Europe only encouraged the Baltic republics. Attempts to buy off the republics with token freedoms only encouraged them to continue to push for separation from the Soviet Union.

Following the Baltic republics’ lead was the Moldavian Republic. Originally part of Romania, Moldavia was given to the Soviet Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Independence movements also appeared in the Trans-Caucasian region of the Soviet Union, made up of the republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

In Armenia and Azerbaijan, the growth in nationalistic parties also led to a dispute between them over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In Georgia, the massacre of female protesters in the capital of Tbilisi in April 1989 only fueled the desire to be free of the Soviet Union.

In early February 1990, the Communist Party’s Central Committee met to consider a draft anjuran to allow multiple parties. The congress also created the office of the president of the Soviet Union and elected Gorbachev to the office.

After the congress, in April, Gorbachev announced the Law of Secession, which laid out the process that the republics would have to follow in order to gain their independence. The process was long and drawn out.

Lithuanian president: Vytautas Landsbergis

One of the first uses of the law was to pressure Lithuania to do as the Soviet government said or face the consequences. Lithuanian president Vytautas Landsbergis refused, saying that a foreign power had no right to make decisions about how his country should be run. On April 18, the Soviet government started an economic blockade of Lithuania.

The Soviets lifted the blockade on June 29 when the Lithuanian parliament suspended the independence decree. Latvia (May 4) and Estonia (May 8) followed Lithuania’s lead, and even though Gorbachev outlawed their decrees, they did not suffer the blockade as Lithuania did.

The Baltic republics were not the only ones moving toward independence. In Russia, the Russian Supreme Soviet elected Boris Yeltsin as chairman on May 29. Running against 13 other candidates, Yeltsin introduced a platform that pushed for Russian sovereignty in the Soviet Union, making Russian law take precedent over Soviet law; provided for multiparty democracy; and declared that Russia should conduct its own foreign policy with all other countries, including other republics of the Soviet Union. The actual declaration came on June 12, 1990, at which time Russia also declared its right to control the natural resources of its country. Other republics followed suit.

Through the end of 1990 Lithuania continued to try to work out a deal with the Soviet government, but the Soviets continued to stall. Therefore, on January 2, 1991, Landsbergis withdrew the suspension of the independence decree. In response to this action, paramilitary police in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) and Riga (the capital of Latvia) seized various buildings.

Then on January 7 the Soviet Ministry of Defense ordered troops into all three of the Baltic States as well as Moldavia, Georgia, and the Ukraine. The Soviet military continued to occupy buildings belonging to the Lithuanian government, and on January 13 it attacked the capital’s television center and in the process killed 14 people and wounded over 200.

At about the same time, Gorbachev was telling the Soviet government that force would not be used against the people of Lithuania. These contradictory actions and talk hurt Gorbachev, who claimed not to have had any advanced knowledge of what the military was going to do.

A few days later, on January 20, violence broke out in Latvia when Soviet paramilitary police stormed a government building in Latvia and killed two local police officers. The Baltic republics gained support from Russia when Yeltsin signed a document recognizing the independence of the Baltic States on behalf of Russia, which was exerting its right to conduct its own foreign policy separate from that of the Soviet Union.

Although the Baltic republics had started out leading the move toward independence from the Soviet Union, Russia now began to take a more prominent role. In January 1991 Gorbachev issued a decree that the Soviet army was to patrol the streets of the larger cities in the Soviet Union to help stop crime and control protests; Russia objected.

When Yeltsin attacked Gorbachev during a television interview, Yeltsin found himself under attack by various groups. Although Gorbachev’s actions might be decidedly anti-independence for the republics, he still had the support of many of the people in the Soviet Union and Western countries.

On March 17, 1991, the idea of maintaining a union of the republics was put to a vote of the people of the Soviet Union. The vote passed, although six of the republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldavia) did not participate in the referendum since they claimed that they were not part of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin claimed that the referendum was nothing more then an attempt by Gorbachev to generate support for his leadership. Gorbachev then called a conference and invited Yeltsin and the presidents of eight other republics to talk about a anjuran for a new Union Treaty and new Union Constitution. Gorbachev and the other presidents signed a declaration supporting the drafting of a new treaty and constitution.

May saw more changes as the republics continued to move away from the Soviet Union. On May 5 the Russian branch of the KGB separated itself from the Soviet Union’s institution. Moldavia changed its official name to the Moldavian Republic, dropping the words Soviet and Socialist. Then on May 26 Georgia had its first-ever direct presidential election.

The Coup

Coup to remove Gorbachev from power (1)

Gorbachev and Yeltsin continued to work out the details of the new Union Treaty. The treaty would keep the Soviet Union alive, but would limit the areas over which it could exercise control and make participation in the union voluntary. Before the treaty was enacted, a group of hard-line communists launched a coup to remove Gorbachev from power. The coup lasted for only three days.

The committee in charge of the coup announced a state of emergency and placed Gorbachev under house arrest, cutting off his ability to communicate with the outside world. They then tried to get him to sign a decree declaring a state of emergency, but he refused. With Gorbachev’s refusal to cooperate, the coup started to come unraveled.

The plotters had planned to arrest Yeltsin also, but missed their chance. Instead, Yeltsin went to the Russian Parliament building and appealed to the citizens of Moscow to ignore the unlawful coup. The military was unwilling to move against the civilians, and the coup ended on August 21.

Gorbachev returned to Moscow. Because of the coup, Yeltsin became the satria of the hour, and his popularity grew rapidly. Unfortunately for Gorbachev, his popularity plummeted and accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin forced Gorbachev to return control of the natural resources and enterprises on Russian territory back to Russia from the Soviet Union.

Coup to remove Gorbachev from power (2)

December saw the Soviet Union brought to an end. On December 1 the Ukraine held a referendum to allow the people to vote in support of or against the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. The referendum passed by a wide margin.

Then the leaders of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus met to determine the future of the Soviet Union and their republics. On December 8 they announced the end of the Soviet Union and the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Membership in the CIS was open to all former members of the Soviet Union and any other state interested in joining.

On December 12 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan joined the CIS. More meetings were held on December 21, and Moldavia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia joined. During this meeting the republics agreed to abolish the position of president of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev still held the position, but on December 25, he announced his resignation. With Gorbachev’s resignation the remaining members of the Soviet Parliament had the Soviet flag removed from the Kremlin, and at midnight on December 31, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Post Soviet Union states: Armenia(1), Azerbaijan(2), Belarus(3), Estonia(4),
Georgia(5), Kazakhstan(6), Kyrgyzstan(7), Latvia(8), Lithuania(9), Moldova(10),
Russia(11), Tajikistan(12), Turkmenistan(13), Ukraine(14), Uzbekistan(15)

Mind Control

Although paranoia has ordinarily been seen every bit the most of import aspect of conspiracy theory inwards damage of subjectivity as well as psychology, mind-control conspiracies contribute inwards important as well as complex ways to fears exactly about the command of the private at the hands of a hostile authorities or conspiracy group.

All conspiracy theories are based on a notion of hear command anyway, merely because they are based on a belief that a conspiracy is attempting to command people’s beliefs as well as actions. The term “sheeple,” used derogatorily past times conspiracy theorists to depict those who believe official authorities (dis)information, implies aspects of propaganda, brainwashing, as well as command of people’s thoughts.

Such a term is based on a binary opposition of “us” as well as “them” that dominates paranoid discourses of conspiracy where at that topographic point is, on the ane hand, an elite grouping that is on the within of mightiness as well as who have got truthful cognition of how reality functions while, on the other, at that topographic point is the “mass” who are on the exterior of mightiness as well as who only have got access to reality through the lies as well as disinformation disseminated past times the elite.

Mind command conspiracies have got this construction at their base, but problematize the notion of “inside” as well as “outside.” The paranoid private inwards conspiracy theory is relatively gratis from the command of the conspiracy (because she “recognizes” its existence as well as is hence able to detach him- or herself from it), creating an objective as well as meaningful individuality inwards opposition to the brainwashed “sheeple.”


Mind-control conspiracies have got a to a greater extent than complex set amongst regard to the notion of identity as well as the construction of the conspiracy that controls its victims, because the mind-control dependent area has an ambiguous status every bit to whether s/he is within or exterior the conspiracy.

On the ane hand, they are “inside” because they are doing the piece of job of the conspiracy grouping every bit a resultant of their conditioning, programming, or physical implant, but on the other hand, they are “outside” because they are doing so unwittingly every bit component of a conspiracy where they are a key element, but have got no command over their actions.

Hence, many of import conspiracy figures, such every bit Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, as well as Timothy McVeigh are presented inwards conspiracy theory inwards radically different ways, either every bit knowing participants within a larger conspiracy or every bit mind-controlled “patsies” who were used without their ain knowledge. Mind command is hence non easily understood every bit a conspiracy itself, because it does non have got a recognizable finish other than to ease the way for a larger conspiracy group.

As such, it is to a greater extent than a “sign” that a conspiracy is at piece of job inwards society, although inwards the works of Jim Keith, a seminal mind-control conspiracist, it has been imagined every bit the key shape of social command for groups such every bit the Nazis as well as the New World Order.

Anxieties as well as Concerns of Mind Control

The problematic nature of hear control, non to the lowest degree inwards the interrogation of whether it genuinely exists every bit a existent practise or every bit a meaningful psychological condition, despite the documented prove of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, leads to many issues that non only focus exactly about identity but also exactly about the body, reality, as well as knowledge. Mind-control conspiracies tin hold out understood inwards damage of half dozen key anxieties or cultural concerns:

• The decease of the self
• The decease of reality
• The “soulless” body
• The decease of the human
• Technophobia
• The terminate of “knowledge”

The decease of the self revolves exactly about the interrogation of whether mind-control subjects (should such people exist) deed according to their ain wishing or whether they are tools inwards someone else’s hands. The opposition tin hold out seen inwards damage of a split upwardly betwixt the witting self-willed private as well as the unconsciously driven puppet.

However, because conspiracy does non command the dependent area from outside, but from within his or her consciousness (either through hypnosis, brainwashing as well as behavioral modification, drugs, or implants), such an opposition becomes problematic. The conspiracy is both within as well as exterior the self at the same time, amongst the resultant that mind-control victims are never sure as shooting whether their thoughts as well as desires are their ain or someone else’s.

Such a province of affairs maps a cultural concern over the stability of the self that tin hold out aligned amongst modern as well as postmodern concerns over consciousness as well as the interrogation of how far identity is constructed within consciousness as well as how far it is a production of external reality systems such every bit the circulation of information as well as images inwards guild or the operations of cultural ideology.

Related to this is the concern over the “death of reality.” If reality cannot hold out observed objectively every bit an empirical fact as well as so guaranteed past times the sense-perceptions of the private (because it is unclear whether it is a production of cognitive experience or created past times a program, an implant, or a conditioning procedure generated past times hear control) so it becomes an unknowable as well as uncertain phenomenon.

Such a concern plays out twentieth-century anxieties over the nature of reality, but also revisits older philosophical debates betwixt empiricism as well as metaphysics most what exists as well as how nosotros come upwardly to know it (ontology as well as epistemology, respectively), but from a paranoid perspective.

Where empiricism tends to believe inwards a reality that is knowable only through observation (arguably a paranoid perspective inwards itself), metaphysics assumes that cognition of reality is pre-given (usually inwards shape of the soul) where observation merely confirms what is already intuitively known.

Mind-control conspiracies reenact such a belief inwards a secular form, within which the soul is replaced past times a stuff (and often industrial) agent such every bit a programme or an implant, that has a malign, rather than a benign, influence, non only because it displaces gratis will, but also because it displaces God.

When considering such a position, it is unsurprising that many contemporary mind-control conspiracy theorists, such every bit Texe Marrs or Ron Patton, have got a fundamentalist Christian outlook. The quondam sees hear command inwards the functioning of “Project L.U.C.I.D.” which he claims is a far-reaching conspiracy to command all individuals through invasive technologies, piece the latter concocts an occult as well as satanic conspiracy behind the mythical Nazi/CIA mind-control programme “Project Monarch.”

What both articulate inwards their conspiracies is a fearfulness of the soulless body, a dominant characteristic of many mind-control narratives, which come across the self-willed torso replaced past times ane that merely follows a program. Many recent conspiracy theories have got made connections amongst hear command inwards monastic enjoin to envisage a guild where people are merely bodies or pieces of meat.

Conspiracy theories that focus on alien experimentation on humans or the usage of implants past times governments stand upwardly for an anxiety that the human torso is exactly a matter or a functional unit of measurement (for example, inwards remote viewing conspiracies, where a someone merely becomes a duad of eyes designed to discover as well as transmit data).

Related to such concerns are notions of the decease of the human, something that is most obvious inwards those UFO narratives that focus on the probing of the human torso as well as its change for usage past times aliens. In such conspiracies, the human torso is altered so that it no longer operates past times human desires, feelings, or thoughts, but every bit an alien torso past times proxy (controlled past times an alien mind), performing “inhuman” activities past times unknowingly conspiring against the human species.

An extension of such concerns tin also hold out establish inwards mind-control narratives that have got their footing inwards governmental conspiracies, every bit for illustration inwards the stories Cathy O’Brien tells of her experiences every bit a CIA gender activity slave, during which George Bush, Sr., is said to have got transformed into a lizard alien inwards front end of her, an imaginative trope that is designed to demo the inhumanity of hear control. The evolution of telemetric implants as well as fictionalizations of cyborg engineering on celluloid have got also led to a concern amongst the decease of the human, but this fourth dimension at the hands of technology.

In both alien as well as technological mind-control conspiracies, at that topographic point is an anxiety that humans are becoming less than human as well as to a greater extent than similar Descartes’s “animal-machine,” which is governed past times its instinct (or program) rather than past times rationality as well as thought. There is also a related concern that the hear as well as torso have got move separated because the torso is merely a soulless slice of meat whose “mind” exists externally inwards the hear of its human, cybernetic, or alien controller.

Telemetric implant as well as cyborg mind-control narratives stand upwardly for such a procedure past times reference to the transformation of the human into the machine as well as articulate a pervasive technophobia or fearfulness of scientific discipline that tin hold out seen inwards many other mind-control conspiracies, whether this command occurs through hypnotism (with its connections to mesmerism), Pavlovian conditioning, electroshock therapy, the usage of laboratory-created LSD, or through the introduction of literal implants, such every bit the “stimoceiver” (see below), into the human body.

Finally, mind-control conspiracies tin hold out seen to articulate a really postmodern concern amongst the terminate of knowledge. The fact that mind-control victims do non know whether their thoughts are their ain or those of another, transmitted to them through conditioning, programming, or the telemetric transmission of signals, highlights a concern that information is no longer knowable every bit an objectively verifiable truth.

Knowledge has move untrustworthy, partly because the private is unable to legitimate cognition whatever to a greater extent than but primarily because the information received is either strategic (where the mind-control puppet only has a version of truth that volition enable him or her to send out the task, every bit amongst Sirhan Sirhan, according to Alex Constantine) or is composed of disinformation, designed to mislead the mind-control victim into believing that reality is other than it genuinely is.

The Origins of Mind-Control Conspiracies

Although the inwards a higher house ideas advise that hear command is paradigmatic of postmodern conspiracy theory (because of the radical unknowability it creates amongst regard to every aspect of contemporary culture), hear command has its origins inwards industrial modernity.

As amongst many conspiracy theories, the genealogy of hear command takes inwards both fiction as well as history, albeit an invented choice history where scientific experimentation is rewritten every bit a hole-and-corner cabalistic programme that involves human torture as well as social applied scientific discipline on a large scale.

In some respects, such a portrayal tin hold out said to hold out accurate when applied, for example, to the Victorian practise of lobotomizing woman someone inmates of mental institutions, which entailed an obvious as well as destructive shape of hear control. However, most conspiracy discourses on hear command inwards the menstruation of modernity are characterized past times a paranoid anxiety over scientific inquiry, notably inwards the writings of Jim Keith.

In several texts, Keith has traced a history of hear command that incorporates early on experiments amongst hypnotism, eugenics, Freudian as well as Jungian psychiatry, behavioral psychology, as well as John Dewey’s educational theories, that when imaginatively linked, past times Keith, to governmental tidings agencies through key figures such every bit Cecil Rhodes, H. G. Wells, as well as Aldous Huxley generates early on signs of what was to move the New World Order.

Such a history is typical of mind-control conspiracies as well as many of the same figures or ideas constantly recur. The eighteenth-century Austrian physician Friedrich Anton Mesmer, for example, is given a key role inwards early on mind-control narratives because “mesmerism,” which was genuinely the application of magnetism to animate beingness or human bodies, has move synonymous amongst hypnotism inwards pop as well as conspiracy consciousness every bit a resultant of the belief that the usage of magnetic induction creates involuntary bodily movements that advise command of the mind.

Other of import figures inwards the genealogy of hear command are Sigmund Freud as well as the behaviorists B. F. Skinner as well as I. P. Pavlov. The latter is key to mind-control conspiracies because his experiments to get dogs to salivate at the sounding of a bell (which indicated that nutrient was on its way) have got move a prototype for anxieties over the possibility of a similar conditioning beingness applied to human beings.

Although the origins of hear command tin hold out establish inwards a reinvented history of psychological as well as medical science, at that topographic point are also elements that are based exclusively on fiction. George du Maurier’s new of 1894, Trilby, amongst its representation of the figure of Svengali, introduces ane of the initiatory of all images of a puppet-master controlling his protegé, Trilby, past times agency of hypnotism as well as mesmeric induction.

The omnipotent master copy controlling a slave inwards this way has move ane of the dominant images of contemporary mind-control narratives as well as finds form, for example, inwards conspiracies surrounding Project Monarch as well as CIA sex slave stories.

Another fictional influence of mind-control conspiracies tin hold out establish inwards cinematic representations where the concern over the robotic or zombielike nature of mind-control victims indicates how far mind-control conspiracies are a production of scientific discipline fiction as well as horror film.

The unthinking robot, controlled past times its program, or the zombie of 1930s Hollywood cinema, who is given an monastic enjoin that it slavishly obeys, are dominant figurations of the mind-controlled puppet who similarly has no hear of his or her own. Specifically, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) has a important house inwards forming the discourses of hear control.

It has an omnipotent controller inwards the Svengali mould, inwards the figure of Rottwang, whose representation every bit a “mad scientist” has been applied inwards conspiracy theory to historical figures such every bit Sidney Gottlieb as well as Ewen Cameron of the MK-ULTRA programme as well as to John B. Watson, who attempted to apply Pavlov’s experiments to humans.

The most of import facet of hear command inwards the film, however, is Rottwang’s creation of a robot that tin hold out controlled as well as its subsequent usage every bit a replacement for the rebel heroine, Maria, a exchange of the human past times the machine that acts every bit a displaced figuration of the mind-controlled victim.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 farther aspect of the celluloid that is of banking company notation for hear command is the depiction of the worker-slaves, who are presented every bit no different from the robot Rottwang creates because they are already programmed to deed as well as piece of job inwards a regimented fashion.

These influences advise that mind-control conspiracy theories have got their rootage inwards anxieties over the evolution of industrialization as well as its concomitant technologization of guild inwards the menstruation of modernity. The 2 primary cultural forces that mind-control conspiracies response to are the rationalization of industrial production as well as social organization, as well as the evolution of a volume culture.

These are concerns that are articulated past times Metropolis, for example, as well as that are extended inwards the contemporary societies of advanced economies (and most particularly, inwards the United States) inwards the hyper-rationalization as well as bureaucratization of everyday life (by governments and, increasingly, corporations) as well as inwards the extension of volume production to volume consumption.

Fear of rationalization is non confined to mind-control conspiracies and, indeed, tin hold out seen to hold out a staple of whatever conspiracy theory’s fearfulness of a hidden scheme controlling everyday life, but ane characteristic that is specific to hear command is the identification of the Nazis every bit key players inwards the creation of postwar projects such every bit Project Monarch (as Patton claims) or the influential role their eugenic experiments as well as propaganda techniques have got plainly had on areas every bit various every bit MK-ULTRA’s claimed interest inwards social applied scientific discipline or on the evolution of subliminal advertising.

The Nazis, every bit proponents of a totalitarian shape of rationalized social command as well as every bit architects of a volume civilization based on propaganda, move the nightmare of modernity that generates much mind-control conspiracy theory. They are also ane of the reasons why eugenics is ofttimes mentioned inwards relation to hear control, although this is also component of a to a greater extent than full general distrust of scientific discipline that characterizes mind-control theories.

The location of the origins of hear command inwards modernity tin thus hold out seen inwards the fears of rationalization generated past times the creation of many national as well as global institutions inwards this period, every bit good every bit past times a fearfulness of the “mass” that accompanies processes of industrial production, especially every bit these are applied to guild inwards Nazi ideology.

Such concerns tin hold out identified inwards mind-control conspiracies’ anxieties over the volume programming of individuals inwards contemporary guild every bit component of a wider endeavor to command guild past times a conspiracy group.

Mind command thus represents non a conspiracy inwards itself but constitutes, for conspiracy theorists, a symptom of larger conspiratorial projects based on anxieties over social as well as cultural structures that developed at the start of the twentieth century as well as that have got been extended into contemporary culture.

The Mass Media as well as Subliminal Advertising

One of the initiatory of all mind-control conspiracy theories of the postwar menstruation is related to this full general sense of a hole-and-corner manipulation of consciousness every bit a sign of some unknown conspiracy at piece of job inwards society.

Fears over the volume media as well as its apparent brain-washing of the U.S. world were a pervasive anxiety inwards the 1950s when the evolution of television set inwards conjunction amongst a civilization of consumerism as well as visual advertising led to an unease over the application of volume as well as rationalized structures to the social scene.

Such anxieties had already been raised past times Theodor Adorno as well as Max Horkheimer inwards their Marxist analysis of media institutions such every bit the Hollywood studio scheme as well as national radio inwards the the States of the 1940s, which, piece predominantly a give-and-take of the operations of ideology inwards society, tin hold out seen every bit a paranoid response to volume civilization inwards their concerns amongst the way citizens’ active interest inwards social relations is replaced past times a to a greater extent than passive reception of social as well as cultural values as well as beliefs.

The concern over the influence of television set as well as the volume media that developed inwards the 1950s, every bit detailed past times Marling, follows such a structure, but stems from a liberal intellectual concern over the “dumbing down” of society.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than especial illustration of mass-media hear command tin hold out establish inwards ane of the founding mind-control texts, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, published inwards 1957. Here, Packard drew attending to the practices used past times the advertising manufacture to influence consumers inwards their selection of products, implying a shape of hear command inwards the process, but he also mentioned experiments amongst subliminal advertising.

During the 1950s an advertising executive, James Vicary, allegedly developed subliminal advertising when he flashed the words “Eat Popcorn” as well as “Drink Coke” onto a pic house hide over the course of written report of a six-week experiment.

He claimed that at that topographic point had been a large rising inwards sales of these products every bit a resultant of his campaign, claims that led to pop fears most subliminal advertising, their investigation past times the Federal Communications Commission, as well as their banning inwards U.K. as well as Australia.

Subliminal advertising has had a important comport upon on conspiracy theory’s distrust of official media institutions every bit a resultant of such claims, despite the fact that Vicary afterwards admitted that he had fabricated his findings.

As a consequence, fears most subliminal messages on television set have got continued to have got currency inwards a multifariousness of ways, every bit Dan Kelly notes, inwards his give-and-take of Wilson Bryan Key’s allegations that the volume media is corrupting guild past times inserting images of gender activity as well as decease into its televisual programming.

Similarly, Texe Marrs’s claims most the evolution of a cyber-conspiracy involving the tracking of individuals through their purchases aligns itself amongst a fearfulness of the practices of the volume media, inwards its corporate forms, as well as grows out of this early on subliminal-advertising conspiracy theory.

More specifically, the credence of subliminal transmissions has also led to the conspiracy belief that media institutions are an extension of governmental forces or a manifestation of larger conspiracies because of the implication of brainwashing that this alleged practise entails.

Such a belief is argued past times Alex Constantine, who claims that a hole-and-corner governmental projection called Operation Mockingbird was created inwards monastic enjoin to usage television set every bit a propaganda medium. He goes farther than this, however, as well as also alleges that at that topographic point was some other program, called Operation Octopus, begun inwards 1948, that was a surveillance projection designed to plough televisions into transmitters that would, inwards Big Brother fashion, send images or messages to as well as from people’s living rooms.

CIA Mind Control: MK-ULTRA, as well as Manchurian Candidates

At the same fourth dimension that subliminal advertising was allegedly brainwashing the consumers of the United States, an actual mind-control programme was inwards operation, run past times the CIA as well as military machine tidings nether a multifariousness of code names (Projects Chatter, Bluebird, as well as Artichoke) but which inwards 1953 developed into an umbrella projection called MK-ULTRA.

Documented prove of these mind-control experiments became to a greater extent than widely known next governmental investigations inwards the 1970s, which revealed that MK-ULTRA, nether the command of Sidney Gottlieb, had engaged inwards 149 projects as well as sub-projects betwixt 1953 as well as 1963 as well as had investigated a broad hit of areas including the usage of electroshock, sensory deprivation, hypnotism, radiation, as well as drugs such every bit LSD inwards monastic enjoin to effect behavioral modifications inwards the tested subjects.

Many of these experiments were carried out on CIA as well as other governmental employees, but at that topographic point were also LSD projects that involved tests on unwitting subjects either within the military machine (such every bit Frank Olsen, who committed suicide after a psychotic trauma, maybe every bit a resultant of having been given LSD without his knowledge), inwards hospitals or, inwards ane case, a prison house for people convicted of drugs offenses.

Although MK-ULTRA dealt amongst many areas of hear control, it is the evolution as well as testing of LSD that has attracted the most attending because, inwards the shape of Operation Midnight Climax, it was taken out of governmental institutions as well as applied to the full general American public. In this phase, members of Earth were tested inwards apartments inwards New York as well as San Francisco, piece their responses were filmed or recorded through two-way mirrors.

MK-ULTRA has likely had the most comport upon on mind-control conspiracy theory because it provides substantiated prove for authorities interest inwards attempts to command people’s behavior. What began every bit a response to military machine concerns that the Soviet Union as well as PRC had developed truth drugs as well as brainwashing techniques has become, inwards conspiracy theory, component of a large-scale endeavor past times the authorities or other groups, such every bit the New World Order, to exercise domination through social engineering.

For conspiracy theorists, the authorities declaration that MK-ULTRA was a response to Soviet brainwashing during the Korean War is a encompass to conceal the reality of the program: the usage of hear command against U.S. citizens.

Alex Constantine, for example, dates the start of Project Mockingbird, the government/media conspiracy to command people’s minds through propaganda, to 1963 inwards monastic enjoin to signal that the terminate of the internal MK-ULTRA experiments was only the start of their existent purpose, which was their external application to the people of the United States. MK-ULTRA has also spawned “Manchurian Candidate” conspiracies, which have got their rootage inwards John Marks’s The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.

Marks’s volume is predominantly an line organisation human relationship of the LSD experiments of MK-ULTRA, but includes many oft-quoted chapters toward the terminate on the piece of job of Dr. Ewen Cameron inwards Montreal as well as on CIA hypnosis programs that plainly dealt amongst the interrogation of whether it would hold out possible to programme a human beingness inwards the initiatory of all instance as well as so whether an private could hold out programmed to hold out a mind-controlled assassin. This hypothesis has gained much popularity inwards conspiracy theory, especially inwards relation to the assassinations or attempted assassinations of political figures or celebrities since the 1960s.

It has variously been claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Mark Chapman, as well as John Hinckley were all inwards some way programmed to perform deeds that they would otherwise hold out incapable of every bit witting human beings, but which they could perform if they were hypnotized past times governmental or conspiracy groups (Oswald as well as Sirhan) or brainwashed past times a conspiracy-controlled media (Chapman as well as Hinckley).

The latter set has move increasingly evident recently, amongst claims that the Columbine killers, Eric Harris as well as Dylan Klebold, were indoctrinated to deed every bit “Manchurian Candidates” past times a media civilization that volition create to a greater extent than of the same, a conspiracy theory that, similar Constantine’s Operation Mockingbird, sees the successful extension of CIA hear command into a programme of social applied scientific discipline on a national scale.

Project Monarch as well as CIA Sex Slaves

Project Mockingbird is only ane of several mind-control programs that has been imagined every bit a resultant of revelations most MK-ULTRA. One of the most important of these other mind-control conspiracies is Project Monarch, which originates amongst Cathy O’Brien’s volume most her experiences every bit a CIA mind-controlled sex slave, Trance Formation of America.

O’Brien relates how she was programmed nether Project Monarch, past times usage of the creation of a multiple personality disorder, hypnosis, as well as the usage of visual as well as auditory stimuli (such every bit Disney films) every bit good every bit occult training, to generate an choice personality that is able to perform degrading acts at the volition of a controller.

Such a conspiracy theory highlights the notion of the decease of the human that inheres within mind-control conspiracies, inwards that O’Brien develops a personality that tin hold out triggered so that it volition perform “inhuman” acts that her existent human self could non contemplate. Similar stories have got been offered past times Candy Jones, who, similar O’Brien, makes much of the her sensational revelations most gender activity amongst political figures as well as amongst celebrities.

Although fifty-fifty many conspiracy theorists (such every bit Keith) are skeptical of the sensational aspects of O’Brien’s story, many of her “revelations” most hear command inwards Project Monarch have got entered conspiracy culture.

As a resultant of her book, belief inwards satanic as well as occult practices every bit good every bit allegations of child abuse often accompany contemporary stories most Project Monarch, associations that, similar the before linking of eugenics amongst hear control, are designed to demonstrate how unnatural as well as inhuman a procedure it is to divorce someone from his or her existent identity past times creating a substitute personality that tin hold out triggered at will.

It is the Project Monarch conspiracy theory that has done much to spawn the notion of the mind-controlled puppet, as well as its usage of programs as well as “trigger” devices has move widely accepted every bit existent processes inwards the practise of hear control. Project Monarch conspiracy theories also listing inwards especial the code-names as well as levels of mind-controlled subjects that the CIA has operating for it:

• Alpha, which is full general programming
• Beta, sex-slave programming
• Gamma, programming to permit the dependent area to deceive as well as misdirect
• Theta, psychic programming designed to create assassins
• Omega, a self-destruct programming

Although these are alleged CIA designations, the types of programming they create have got also been applied beyond Project Monarch inwards areas such every bit cult brainwashing, although figures such every bit Keith as well as Patton both advise connections betwixt Project Monarch as well as religious cults; inwards the instance of the quondam past times tracing Jim Jones’s apparent links to the CIA, as well as inwards the instance of the latter past times a to a greater extent than full general association of cult as well as occult. In these forms, Project Monarch has move an all-purpose “umbrella” conspiracy that tin hold out applied to whatever grouping that is suspected of using mind-control techniques.

What such a sentiment also indicates is that, different other mind-control conspiracy theories, Project Monarch is no longer merely a functional way of getting people to do a conspiracy’s bidding or fifty-fifty a sign of a conspiracy at work, but has move a conspiracy inwards itself amongst its ain objectives, operations, as well as connections amongst other conspiracy groups, such every bit the Illuminati, Skull as well as Bones, or the New World Order.

The Molly Maguires

The Molly Maguires

Twenty immature Irishmen were hanged inwards the anthracite share of northeast Pennsylvania inwards the belatedly 1870s, convicted of a serial of killings stretching dorsum to the Civil War. The convicted men were members of an alleged surreptitious social club called the “Molly Maguires,” said to receive got been imported from the Irish Gaelic countryside, where a social club of the same shout out was active inwards the 1840s.

In Pennsylvania the Molly Maguires apparently acted behind the embrace of an ostensibly peaceful Irish Gaelic fraternal organisation called the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH). The representative was cracked yesteryear a Pinkerton detective, James McParlan, who spent almost 2 years inwards the coal district working undercover.

More than 50 Molly Maguires went on trial betwixt 1875 in addition to 1878; 20 were executed in addition to 20 to a greater extent than went to prison. The kickoff x Molly Maguires were hanged on a unmarried day, 21 June 1877, known to the people of the anthracite share e'er since equally “Black Thursday.”


The Molly Maguires stood accused of killing equally many equally 16 mine owners, superintendents, bosses, in addition to workers. Their trials, conducted inwards the midst of enormously hostile national publicity, were a travesty of justice. The defendants were arrested yesteryear the private police pull strength of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, whose ambitious president, Franklin B. Gowen, had financed the Pinkerton operation.

They were convicted on the prove of an undercover detective who was accused (somewhat half-heartedly) yesteryear the defence of beingness an agent provocateur, supplemented yesteryear the confessions of a serial of informers who had turned state’s prove to salvage their necks.

Irish Gaelic Catholics were excluded from the juries equally a affair of course. Most of the prosecuting attorneys worked for railroads in addition to mining companies. Remarkably, Franklin B. Gowen himself appeared equally the star prosecutor at several trials, amongst his courtroom speeches rushed into impress equally pop pamphlets.

In effect, the AOH itself was seat on trial: mere membership of that organisation was presented equally de facto membership of the Molly Maguires, in addition to membership of either was routinely presented yesteryear the prosecution equally prove of guilt—on charges non only of belonging to an oath-bound social club but of using that social club to computer programme in addition to execute diabolical crimes.

Viewed inwards retrospect, the representative of the Molly Maguires displayed many of the classic hallmarks of a U.S. conspiracy theory. Even yesteryear nineteenth-century standards the arrests, trials, in addition to executions were flagrant inwards their abuse of judicial physical care for in addition to their flaunting of corporate power. Yet only a handful of dissenting voices were to move heard, chiefly those of project radicals.

To explicate why something similar this could hap it is of import to empathise why the prosecution’s depiction of the Irish Gaelic defendants seemed hence convincing to contemporaries. The prosecution offered no plausible explanation of motive in addition to nor, it seems, was 1 expected.

The explanation of Irish Gaelic depravity was only that the Irish Gaelic were depraved yesteryear nature; they killed people because that’s the type of people they were. This argument, patch perfectly circular, was a surprisingly powerful 1 inwards the U.S. of the mid-nineteenth century.

Irish Gaelic American violence in addition to depravity, from the project upheavals in addition to urban rioting of the antebellum era to the draft riots of the Civil War in addition to the Orange in addition to Green riots of 1870–1871, were presented equally the logical transatlantic outgrowth of an alien immigrant culture.

In the United States, moreover, that civilisation was equipped amongst an international conspiratorial organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, whose tentacles were said to hit across both the North American continent in addition to the Atlantic Ocean.

The inherent savagery of the Irish Gaelic was the guiding premise inwards what passed for the kickoff moving ridge of interpretation of the Molly Maguires, a current of pamphlets, paper reports, in addition to histories produced yesteryear contemporaries.

Even a somewhat sympathetic observer similar Dewees (The Molly Maguires: The Origins, Growth, in addition to Character of the Organization, 1877) took the Irish Gaelic propensity for violence to a greater extent than or less for granted, patch the writer of the other measure contemporary history, Allan Pinkerton—founder of the famous detective agency—took Irish Gaelic depravity equally his key theme (The Molly Maguires in addition to the Detectives, 1877).

This highly pejorative in addition to highly conspiratorial perspective, which constituted the foundational myth of the Molly Maguires, remained dominant for the adjacent 2 generations, resurfacing, for example, inwards Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Valley of Fear (1904) in addition to providing a staple of dime novel fiction until the mid-twentieth century.

By the 1930s, however, the tide had begun to turn. Anthony Bimba, a Marxist historian, was the kickoff to offering a major revision (The Molly Maguires, 1932), placing the Molly Maguire affair firmly inwards the context of project in addition to capital.

So concerned was Bimba to overturn the prevailing myth of the Molly Maguires, however, that he turned it on its head, retaining its elements of circularity, tautology, in addition to conspiracy patch transferring the burden of evil from Irish Gaelic workers to their employers. Evil is non a real useful category of historical analysis, at to the lowest degree inwards cases similar this, for it freezes fourth dimension in addition to graphic symbol rather than trying to explicate causation in addition to motivation.

Why did the employers frame 20 innocent men? Because they were evil; or, seat roughly other way, because they were capitalist. At the same time, yesteryear collapsing all workers into a unmarried category, Bimba ignored the shape in addition to ethnic multifariousness amid them, a consideration that is directly crucial to our understanding.

J. Walter Coleman, inwards The Molly Maguire Riots: Industrial Conflict inwards the Pennsylvania Coal Region (1936), was the kickoff to opened upwards up this business of inquiry. Despite its apparently pejorative title, Coleman’s majority is amid the most sympathetic in addition to convincing accounts of the subject.

The Molly Maguires, he argued, represented a specifically Irish Gaelic shape of project protest, distinct from the British-inspired tradition of merchandise unionism inwards the anthracite region. If this multifariousness is 1 of the keys to agreement the Molly Maguires, roughly other is the inherent unreliability of the prove produced yesteryear James McParlan. He was, after all, a trained liar.

Both of these points were persuasively made yesteryear Coleman but largely ignored inwards Wayne G. Broehl’s The Molly Maguires (1964), which, yesteryear the standards of its time, seems curiously sympathetic to James McParlan, to his employer Allan Pinkerton, in addition to to the employer of both, Franklin B. Gowen.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 rendition of the land of study to a greater extent than inwards keeping amongst the radical ethic of the 1960s tin move found inwards the celluloid The Molly Maguires (dir. Martin Ritt 1970) starring Sean Connery equally the hero (alleged Molly ringleader John Kehoe) in addition to Richard Harris equally the anti-hero (turncoat James McParlan).

It is a revealing footnote to U.S. cultural history that the director, Walter Bernstein, had been blacklisted inwards the McCarthy era in addition to inwards business office saw his celluloid equally a response to Elia Kazan, who had notoriously “named names” inwards the 1950s, in addition to whose hero inwards On the Waterfront informs against his corrupt nuptials bosses.

How, then, is 1 to brand feel of the Molly Maguires? Clearly, what is needed is an explanation that tin interruption gratis of the 2 existing poles of interpretation: the Molly Maguires equally depraved killers in addition to the Molly Maguires equally innocent victims of oppression, whether economic, religious, or ethnic.

The Mollys themselves, beingness socially marginalized in addition to largely illiterate, left us virtually no evidence, which exposes the land of study to all mode of conspiracy theories, from both the Right in addition to the Left. We do, however, receive got enough of prove almost them left yesteryear other people: employers, Catholic clergymen, politicians, newspapermen, pamphleteers, census takers, authorities officials, in addition to contemporary historians.

Read carefully, these forms of prove tin yield at to the lowest degree roughly reliable information almost who the Mollys were. Equally important, they tin tell us a peachy grapple almost the aims in addition to motivations of those who laid out to destroy them. In the end, though, roughly fundamental historical questions demand at to the lowest degree a tentative answer: Who were the Molly Maguires, what did they do, in addition to why?

The starting house inwards seeking an reply to these questions is the terra firma where the Molly Maguires originated. To the historian familiar amongst Republic of Ireland equally good equally the United States, the most smasher appear of the activities inwards Pennsylvania is how clearly they conformed to a designing of fierce protestation evident inwards the Irish Gaelic countryside from the mid-eighteenth century onward.

The Molly Maguires, who emerged toward the goal of the Great Famine (1845–1851), were hence named because their members (invariably immature men) disguised themselves inwards women’s clothing, used pulverization or burnt cork on their faces, in addition to pledged their allegiance to a mythical adult woman who symbolized their scrap against injustice.

The American Mollys were plainly a rare transatlantic outgrowth of this designing of Irish Gaelic rural protest. Contrary to contemporary conspiracy theories, however, it is highly unlikely that in that location was whatsoever direct continuity of organisation or personnel betwixt Republic of Ireland in addition to Pennsylvania.

There is no prove at all that a conspiratorial organisation was somehow imported into the U.S. yesteryear Irish Gaelic immigrants, nor is in that location whatsoever prove that individuals convicted inwards Pennsylvania had been involved inwards fierce activities inwards Ireland.

The immigrants did arrive, however, amongst a cultural retention in addition to established social traditions. Faced amongst appalling weather condition inwards the mines of Pennsylvania, they responded yesteryear deploying a specifically Irish Gaelic shape of collective violence against their enemies, upwards to in addition to including assassination.

To that extent, the American Molly Maguires clearly did exist, fifty-fifty if they never existed equally the full-fledged diabolical organisation depicted yesteryear contemporaries. They were non purely a figment of the conspiratorial imagination; indeed the conspiracy theories almost them could receive got achieved piddling credibility if Irish Gaelic workers had non been engaged inwards collective violence of roughly sort.

There were 2 distinct waves of Molly Maguire action inwards Pennsylvania, 1 inwards the 1860s in addition to the other inwards the 1870s. The kickoff wave, which included half dozen assassinations, occurred during in addition to straight after the Civil War.

Nobody was convicted of these crimes at the time, although a mysterious grouping called the Molly Maguires was widely believed to move responsible. Only during the trials of the 1870s were the killings of the previous decade retrospectively traced to private members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

At the view of the violence inwards the 1860s was a combination of resistance to the armed services draft amongst roughly shape of rudimentary project organizing yesteryear a shadowy grouping known variously equally the “Committee,” the “Buckshots,” in addition to the “Molly Maguires.” During the crisis of the Civil War, all forms of project organizing were seen equally potentially seditious.

The minute moving ridge of violence did non occur until 1875, inwards business office because of the introduction of a to a greater extent than efficient policing in addition to judicial system, but mainly because of the emergence of a powerful novel merchandise union, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (WBA), which united Irish, British, in addition to U.S. workers across the lines of ethnicity in addition to skill.

The project displace of the anthracite share directly took 2 distinct but overlapping forms: a powerful in addition to inclusive merchandise nuptials movement, one-half of whose leaders were Irishborn; in addition to an alone Irish Gaelic in addition to largely unskilled grouping of workers called the Molly Maguires.

Favoring collective bargaining, strikes, in addition to peaceful reform, the leaders of the WBA publicly condemned violence, singling out the Molly Maguires specifically. Yet Franklin B. Gowen repeatedly insisted that the WBA was only a embrace for the Molly Maguires, who constituted the union’s terrorist arm.

Although this claim was manifestly false, it was highly effective; yesteryear collapsing the distinction betwixt the 2 organizations Gowen succeeded inwards destroying the might of both. Not only was the nuptials discredited yesteryear this strategy, the Molly Maguires were equipped amongst an institutional construction they never had. The defeat of 1 would directly entail the defeat of the other.

To get together information against both arms of the project movement, Gowen hired Allan Pinkerton inwards Oct 1873. Pinkerton dispatched James McParlan to the anthracite region. Several other agents would follow later. Shortly after McParlan fled the anthracite region, inwards outflow 1875, matters reached a climax. After a heroic six-month strike against Gowen in addition to his railroad, the WBA went downwardly to in conclusion defeat.

In the disarray that followed, the Molly Maguires stepped upwards their activities to a novel level: half dozen of the 16 assassinations attributed to them took house inwards the summertime of 1875, fifty-fifty equally the leaders of the now-defunct merchandise nuptials continued to vocalization their condemnation. In Jan 1876 the arrests began, in addition to that summertime the famous trials commenced.

With project utterly defeated, Franklin B. Gowen completed his conquest of the local economy, securing total command over production in addition to distribution inwards the lower anthracite region. This was the goal the merchandise nuptials in addition to the Molly Maguires had long threatened, in addition to it is quite clear that Gowen had been prepared to receive got all necessary way to eliminate that threat.

For almost a century nobody inwards the Pennsylvania anthracite share was willing to say much almost the Molly Maguires. The story was equally good painful, equally good divisive. Not the to the lowest degree remarkable appear of this ongoing story, however, has been a dramatic renewal of involvement inwards the anthracite share itself.

Every June 21 for the in conclusion half dozen years several hundred people receive got arrived inwards the mining share to commemorate the Molly Maguires. Descendants of the convicted men in addition to their alleged victims receive got sat downwardly together to eat, drink, in addition to talk.

The dominant banking company annotation of each year’s gathering has been how to include all sides in addition to perspectives. This ecumenical spirit, hence clearly lacking inwards the 1870s, provides the best run a peril today of agreement 1 of the to a greater extent than tragic tales inwards the history of U.S. labor.

Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Independence Movements

Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, as it was known until 1980, is a landlocked nation of 13 million people occupying the plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers, bordered by Zambia to the north, Botswana to the west, Mozambique to the east, and South Africa to the south.

While the rest of Britain’s African colonies, including two of Rhodesia’s neighbors—Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi)—gained independence as part of a wave of decolonization, Rhodesia remained a bastion of minority white rule because of its influential European population. Even after the country gained majority rule in 1980, white control of land continued to be a crucial issue in Zimbabwe.

At midcentury, mostly because of the country’s substantial mineral wealth and fertile soil for tobacco cultivation, Rhodesia’s white population enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world.


The country’s black residents, however, who made up over 95 percent of the population, possessed little political power and received just 5 percent of the nation’s income. Having gained control by force roughly a half-century earlier, whites made up one-twentieth of the population but held one-third of the land.

At the end of World War II the political winds began to change. Britain moved to grant independence to many of its colonies in Asia and Africa. Rhodesia, which had been a British-chartered corporate colony at the turn of the century and a self-governing British colony since 1923, took on a new political form in 1953 with the establishment of the Central African Federation. Southern Rhodesia dominated this confederation; it exploited the copper of Northern Rhodesia and the labor of Nyasaland.

The arrival of independent rule in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1964 brought considerable anxiety to the white population of Southern Rhodesia, who believed that Britain favored majority rule.

In response, in November of 1965, Ian Douglas Smith, an unabashed champion of white rule, announced the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which cut the country’s ties with Britain and established the independent nation of Rhodesia. In a referendum, overwhelming numbers of the white population supported Smith. Britain responded by imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions.

The cold war struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence around the world, including in the nations of Africa, complicated these developments. U.S. relations with Ian Smith’s white-ruled Rhodesia at the time shows the ambivalent position of the United States.

On the one hand the United States valued the support of Rhodesia, which contained vast reserves of strategic minerals, especially chromium, and adopted a strongly anticommunist stance. Yet, at the same time, the United States worried that support for Smith’s white supremacist government would cost it needed friends in rapidly decolonizing Africa.

In 1965 U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson condemned Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence and, following Britain’s lead, imposed economic sanctions. Although these sanctions could have been even stronger, U.S. trade there declined from $29 million in 1965 to $3.7 million in 1968, a real blow to the Rhodesian economy. At the same time, though, Rhodesia received substantial support from some within the United States.

The Byrd Amendment of 1971, which was enacted with the support of the Richard Nixon administration, punched a significant hole in the sanctions against Rhodesia. According to this law, the United States could not ban the importation from a non-communist nation any material needed for national defense if that same material would otherwise be purchased from a communist nation.

Since chromium, a key resource for many modern weapon systems, was also imported from the Soviet Union, the United States was forced to allow trade with Rhodesia. Imports of chromium grew from $500,000 in 1965, to $13 million in 1972, to $45 million in 1975.

Organized black resistance to white rule in Rhodesia took shape in the late 1950s, and the two main oppositional parties, parties that would dominate Zimbabwean politics well beyond independence, were established in the early 1960s.

In 1957 the African National Congress, based in Bulawayo, and the African National Youth League, based in Salisbury (present-day Harare), combined to form the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress under Joshua Nkomo. Banned in 1959, this group was succeeded by the National Democratic Party, which was itself banned in December 1961.

Shortly thereafter, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was established. A major split occurred in 1963, resulting in the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). ZAPU was mostly Ndebele and Chinese-leaning; ZANU was mostly Shona and Soviet-leaning.

ZAPU and ZANU adopted different strategies at different times. During the 1960s, as white Rhodesians like Ian Smith grew more extreme, African nationalist methods became more militant and confrontational.

Both ZANU and ZAPU began attacking white farms in 1964, but they quickly realized they were outmatched by the Rhodesian military. A more moderate group, the African National Council—organized by Bishop Abel Muzorewa—sprang up during the early 1970s. None of these groups had much success.

The situation began to shift during the late 1970s. In 1975, after long wars, two Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, Mozambique and Angola, gained their independence. Black-ruled Mozambique became a safe haven for many of the guerrilla groups opposing the white regime in Rhodesia. In 1975 the two most important of these groups—ZANU, under Robert Mugabe, and ZAPU, under Joshua Nkomo—joined forces to become the Patriotic Front.

Jimmy Carter’s victory in the U.S. presidential election of 1976 also played a role in shifting the context of Rhodesian politics. Concerned about the U.S. reputation in other parts of black Africa, the Carter administration began to push for a settlement to the conflict. In general, the United States supported majority rule with protection of white interests.

The British called the Lancaster House Conference in an attempt to broker a lasting solution. The resulting settlement guaranteed majority rule for Zimbabwe, a transitional period for whites, and a multiparty system.

At the center of the settlement was a new constitution, which gave the vote to all Africans 18 years and older, reserved 28 seats in the parliament for whites for 10 years, and guaranteed private property rights. In the election of February 1980, voting mostly followed ethnic lines. ZANU–Popular Front won a clear majority, making its leader, Robert Mugabe, the prime minister.

ZAPU–Popular Front, which had recently split from ZANU-PF, joined the white members of parliament in opposition. Taking its name from the 14th- and 15th-century stone city of Great Zimbabwe, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. The war for majority rule, which had cost over 25,000 lives, most of them black, was over.

Under Robert Mugabe’s rule, Zimbabwe in the 1980s pursued socialist-leaning policies not unlike those of many other countries in Africa. It expanded social programs that had been denied under white rule. And, although it claimed to want to redistribute land, in reality it moved slowly to break up successful white farms.

This cost the regime politically but it enabled Zimbabwe to continue to feed itself. Overall, during the early 1980s many Zimbabweans saw real improvements in the quality of their lives.

As the 1980s unfolded, Mugabe began to show authoritarian tendencies. Even early on he rounded up opponents, censored the press, and gave broad authority to security forces. At first he was able to get away with this because of his wide support, especially in rural areas.

Mugabe won the March 1996 election with 92.7 percent of the vote, but only a very small number of Zimbabweans bothered to vote. The decrease in voter participation revealed the growing discontent of Zimbabweans with Mugabe. On top of this, in the early 1980s a civil war that would last until 1987 broke out in Matabeleland, a stronghold of the ZAPU-PF.

In the late 1990s Mugabe initiated two very controversial programs. In 1997, he began seizing white-owned land without compensation and quietly encouraging landless blacks to move onto white farms. These farms had previously fed the nation and provided work for large numbers of people, mostly black.

In 2002 Mugabe appropriated the remaining white land and ordered white farmers to offer payments to former workers. Because many of the blacks who moved onto the white land had few farming skills, the nation soon faced a food crisis.

Critics, moreover, claimed that Mugabe handed out the best land to his family, friends, and close supporters. In another controversial move, in 1998 Mugabe deployed the military in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help its government fend off an armed rebellion.

The situation in Zimbabwe seems precarious. During the 2002 elections Mugabe rigged the voting and jailed opponents, especially the supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Neighboring nations supported Mugabe but other African nations, such as Kenya and Ghana, condemned his move.

Famine conditions persist in Zimbabwe, and the people struggle with skyrocketing prices and extremely high unemployment. That no system is in place to determine a successor to the aging Mugabe portends a divisive struggle to come.

Moon Landings

Project Apollo sent 6 two-man teams of astronauts to the surface of the Luna betwixt July 1969 in addition to Dec 1972. Roughly 10–20 per centum of Americans at nowadays believe, however, that no human has ever gear upwardly human foot on the moon, in addition to that all prove for the landings is constituent of an elaborate hoax staged yesteryear the National Aeronautics in addition to Space Administration (NASA).

Skepticism nigh the landings began to surface almost equally presently equally they took house in addition to has remained steady for iii decades since. Supporters of the hoax theory debate that careful scrutiny of silent pictures, films, in addition to radio transmissions reveals telltale signs of the deception.

Critics of the hoax theory dismiss the idea of a thirty-year-long conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of people equally plainly absurd. The “anomalies” inward lunar photographs are, they contend, products non of a shadowy conspiracy exactly of the volition to believe inward one.


Origins in addition to Context

Belief that the Luna missions were faked entails belief inward 2 dissever premises. The firstly is that it was possible, inward 1969, to imitate a lunar landing in addition to the “moonwalks” that accompanied it. The 2nd is that the U.S. regime deceived the populace nigh ane of the defining events of the century. Between 1968 in addition to 1973, events exterior the infinite computer program rendered both premises to a greater extent than plausible, to far to a greater extent than people, than they would remove hold been a decade earlier.

Stanley Kubrick’s celluloid 2001: Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Space Odyssey (1968) signaled a revolution inward motion painting special effects and, specifically, inward the simulation of infinite move on screen. John Sturges’s Marooned (1969) in addition to Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (1971) showed that 2001 was to a greater extent than than a brilliant fluke. All iii films stood equally far beyond Destination Moon (1950) equally that film, revolutionary inward its time, had stood beyond the unsmooth Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s. The novel films’ extraordinarily realistic “look” made it slow to believe that the simulated infinite flying could at nowadays live passed off equally real.

The 5 years betwixt 1968 in addition to 1973 also saw the rapid erosion of the U.S. public’s trust inward the federal government. The optimistic pronouncements of politicians in addition to generals nigh the state of war inward Vietnam were repeatedly undercut yesteryear the testimony of journalists in addition to returning veterans. The 1970 publication of the Pentagon Papers—the government’s ain “secret history” of the war—damaged regime credibility further, equally did the 1970 revelation of a hugger-mugger bombing receive against Cambodia.

The Watergate Scandal of 1973–1974 destroyed the Nixon management in addition to farther damaged the federal government’s credibility. The cognition that the president in addition to his advisors had systematically abused the mightiness of their offices for political gain, in addition to so systematically lied nigh their actions, permanently soured many Americans’ attitudes toward their elected officials.

The thought of a trip to the Luna had, equally belatedly equally the belatedly 1950s, seemed to many Americans a distant dream at best. Many continued, inward the early on 1970s, to uncovering the thought implausible. Disbelief inward the Luna landings coalesced unopen to those doubts.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 poll taken yesteryear Knight Newspapers inward July 1970, a twelvemonth afterward the firstly landing, revealed that 30 per centum of those polled doubted the landings had been real. Doubts ran especially high where trust inward the federal regime was especially low. In poor, dark neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., one-half of those polled believed that the landings had been a hoax.

Cynicism nigh the regime diminished trivial afterward the early on 1970s. The healing effects of fourth dimension in addition to fading memories were repeatedly offset yesteryear fresh scandals. Americans born since the mid-1960s hence remove hold solely vague, secondhand memories of the Apollo missions exactly vivid memories of regime duplicity. “I’d ever suspected something similar that” is a mutual reaction amid high schoolhouse in addition to college students encountering the hoax theory for the firstly time.

The Community of Believers

The hoax theory, fifty-fifty according to its critics, is accepted yesteryear tens of millions of Americans. It has been shaped in addition to promoted, however, yesteryear a much smaller grouping of nub believers. The members of this nub grouping are responsible for collecting, analyzing, in addition to publishing what they reckon equally compelling prove of regime deception amongst honour to Project Apollo.

They grip on what constitutes this torso of evidence, on how the private pieces of prove should live interpreted, in addition to on the thought that the populace tape of the Luna landings was falsified. They disagree nigh the extent of, in addition to the reasons for, that falsification.

Some hoax theorists, similar William Brian, debate that U.S. astronauts did dry soil on the Luna inward 1969–1972, exactly that they discovered prove of an alien culture that has been ruthlessly suppressed. Other theorists, similar David Percy, debate that the landings broadcast on tv set to worldwide audiences of millions were fakes. The existent Luna landings, they believe, were carried out inward full secrecy yesteryear a shadowy “black infinite program,” in addition to that in that place is no populace tape of it or them.

The most pop view—narrowly believed amid dedicated hoax theorists in addition to widely amid rank-and-file believers—is that humans never went to the Luna at all. NASA faked the landings, according to this view, because it was incapable of truly carrying them out yesteryear the halt of the 1960s, equally President Kennedy had challenged them to create inward 1961.

The leading advocate of this “mainstream” version of the hoax theory is Bill Kaysing, who has been promoting it since the early on 1970s. Ralph René’s majority NASA Mooned America (1994), James Collier’s video Was It Only a Paper Moon? (1997), in addition to Bart Sibrel’s video A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001) stake out positions similar to Kaysing’s, patch offering similar arguments in addition to evidence.

Kaysing’s forthrightly titled majority We Never Landed on the Luna (1974) was the firstly extended give-and-take of the hoax theory to appear inward print. It remains inward impress at this writing, having been expanded in addition to republished several times, in addition to spawned a series of videos that introduce its declaration visually.

Kaysing’s ideas were also featured prominently inward the Hollywood suspense celluloid Capricorn One (1978)—the storey of NASA’s endeavour to mistaken the firstly manned landing on Mars. Except for the alter of destination, the film’s fictional scenario is virtually identical to Kaysing’s purportedly existent one. Even the spaceships are identical to those used inward Project Apollo.

Kaysing has actively promoted the hoax theory on radio talk-shows and, inward 1997, achieved fleeting fame yesteryear suing ex-Apollo astronaut James Lovell for referring to him equally “a wacko” (a gauge dismissed the accommodate equally baseless). The Fox tv set network’s hour-long documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Go to the Moon? (2001) gave Kaysing’s ideas a thorough, in addition to thoroughly uncritical, airing.

The Case for the Hoax Theory

The mainstream version of the hoax theory is built unopen to iii fundamental ideas. The firstly is that NASA, incapable of truly sending anyone to the moon, never allowed the Apollo astronauts to teach beyond the Earth’s orbit. The 2nd is that official NASA photographs in addition to films from the Apollo missions demo telltale signs of their creation on an earth-bound audio stage.

The 3rd is that NASA, in addition to its coconspirators elsewhere inward the government, remove hold kept those amongst cognition of the conspiracy tranquillity for xxx years. The residuum of the hoax theory consists of a spider web of suppositions in addition to “likely stories” connecting those iii ideas.

Proof of NASA’s inability to demeanour off a existent lunar landing lies, believers argue, inward the contrast betwixt the space agency’s functioning before in addition to during the Apollo missions. NASA’s early on attempts at infinite flying inward the belatedly 1950s in addition to early on 1960s were oft spectacular failures.

They achieved a stair out of success amongst Earth-orbiting flights during the Mercury in addition to Gemini programs, exactly Apollo was plagued yesteryear problems amongst character control, amongst coming together deadlines, in addition to amongst spacecraft performance.

As belatedly equally Jan 1967, iii astronauts died on the launch pad when burn downward broke out inward the cabin of a poorly designed Apollo spacecraft during a test. Yet, get-go amongst the flying of Apollo 8 unopen to the Luna inward Dec 1968, mission followed flawless mission amongst solely ane (nonlethal) failure—Apollo 13.

Hoax theorists debate that real, successful lunar missions are far less plausible than faked ones inward which (according to ane scenario) empty Apollo spacecraft were launched in addition to and so “parked” inward footing ambit for the required number of days before beingness returned to footing nether remote control.

Proof that the Luna landings were staged on footing rests, according to believers, on clearly visible “anomalies.” Why, they ask, is the “moon rock” shown inward ane NASA photograph marked amongst the missive of the alphabet “C”? Why is the soil beneath the engine nozzle of the lunar module solely slightly disturbed? An engine so powerful should remove hold blasted out a crater deep plenty to live noticeable.

Why create photographs supposedly taken on the lunar surface demo objects lit from to a greater extent than than ane direction? There should live solely ane source of calorie-free on the moon: the sun. Why are the stars non visible inward the lunar sky? With no atmosphere to obscure them, they should smooth clearly.

Why, inward celluloid footage that shows an astronaut planting the U.S. flag, does the flag appear to moving ridge equally if inward a breeze? It should, on the airless lunar surface, hang limply from the rod that supports its top edge.

Proof of a post-Apollo conspiracy of quiet lies, believers argue, inward the fact that no ane connected to NASA has spoken out on the subject. They reckon it equally peculiarly meaning that Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo eleven in addition to the firstly someone to gear upwardly human foot on the moon, declines to give interviews in addition to that other astronauts remove hold specifically refused interviews amongst hoax theorists.

Some (including Bill Kaysing) teach further, suggesting that the iii astronauts who died inward the mid-1960s bird crashes, the iii who died inward the 1967 Apollo cabin fire, in addition to the vii who died inward the 1986 Challenger disaster were murdered yesteryear NASA to maintain them quiet.

The Case against a Hoax

The hoax theory, according to its critics, is a tissue of faulty assumptions, specious “evidence,” in addition to bad science. The Apollo flights to the moon, though successful, were far from the flawless exercises that Kaysing in addition to others suggest.

Apollo 11, the firstly to land, came inside seconds of crashing on the lunar surface. The explosion that crippled Apollo 13, in addition to many of the problems that resulted, were products of flawed or inefficient design—the same kinds of problems that NASA had faced throughout the 1960s.

The purported “anomalies” on which believers rely so heavily are, inward fact, readily explained without a hoax. The “C” appears solely inward a unmarried re-create of the photograph inward question, non on the master film.

The lunar module’s rocket engine fires solely briefly when the ship is unopen to the lunar surface, in addition to non at all for the terminal seconds of the descent. The shallow craters it leaves inward the lunar soil reverberate this. The rays of the Sun illuminate objects on the lunar surface directly, exactly also yesteryear reflecting off the soil, the lunar module, in addition to other light-colored objects.

The stars are non visible inward the dark lunar heaven for the same ground they are non visible to observers standing close a vivid street light: the street calorie-free (or, inward lunar photography, the sun) overwhelms them. The flag moves afterward its pole is planted non because of breeze exactly because of inertia. The deed of driving the pole into the footing shakes the stuff and, for a minute or two, it continues to shake.

No introduce or quondam NASA employee has “blown the whistle” on the hoax, critics argue, because in that place was no hoax. It defies belief that the hundreds or thousands of NASA employees who would remove hold been aware of some constituent of the hoax would all remove hold kept quiet for iii decades.

It is, on the other hand, far from surprising that astronauts would turn down to verbalize to hoax theorists who bill them of beingness brainwashed dupes at best in addition to bald-faced liars at worst. Neil Armstrong’s reticence nigh the firstly lunar landing mirrors his similar reticence nigh his fighting missions inward the Korean War in addition to his exam flights of the X-15 rocket plane.

Buzz Aldrin in addition to Michael Collins, who flew amongst him aboard Apollo 11, remove hold both written extensively nigh their experiences on the moon. Unless the existence of a hoax is assumed, critics betoken out, cypher nigh the expiry of 6 astronauts inward the mid-1960s or vii aboard Challenger suggests foul play. Space move is, equally fifty-fifty hoax theorists readily admit, a unsafe business.