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Catholic Conspiracies
43 Plays6 years ago
In this episode resident (lapsed) Catholic M and (dubiously) recently baptised Catholic Josh discuss a few Catholic conspiracy theories, the Know Nothings, and fake popes. They also catch us up on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, those suspicious packages in the US, and the never-ending saga that is the disappearance of MH370.
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
and learn more about their academic work at:
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Transcript
Opening Jokes and Catholic Trivia
00:00:00
Speaker
This week, resident Papist scum, Dr. M.R.X.Tenteth, is going to take us through all the conspiracies the dreadful ilk have been engaged in. You do realise I'm a lapsed Catholic, right? The Catholic Church isn't particularly fond of atheists. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic?
00:00:16
Speaker
Didn't your partner work for a Catholic school? Isn't she the real Catholic mole in all of this? Nonsense. You, you, were sprinkled with the holy water of Roman Catholicism. And that's all you say is lies and infamy designed to deceive.
00:00:31
Speaker
Now here's a handy fact for listeners and viewers. In Catholicism, you don't need to be a priest to baptise anyone. You can just sprinkle people with water and hey presto, instant Catholic. Um, what are you doing with that bowl of water? Oh, just a little induction! Ah, big aura of fiddly-dee. I'm a Catholic. Hee hee hee.
00:00:54
Speaker
Apparently it also makes you Irish.
Catholicism and Conspiracies
00:00:56
Speaker
After a fashion, this week we'll be looking at all the great things the Catholic Church is said to be doing behind the scenes, and asking, why are Protestants so prudish? That, and a whole lot less. The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, the Gorham.
00:01:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy as ever. I am Josh Addison and sitting directly next to me is
Doctor Who Fandom and Catholic Debates
00:01:25
Speaker
Dr. M. R.X. Denter. That's true. I am sitting right here. Not there. Here. That actually is how both time and space work.
00:01:34
Speaker
Don't talk to me about time and space, although talk to me about Doctor Who. Now, there's a good show about time and space. Yes, I'm enjoying the latest Doctor Who. Yeah, and I was a bit worried that the episode about Rosa Parks was going to be a bit problematic, but kind of seemed to skirt all those issues and be a decent educational romp. Yes, no, it was a jolly good jape.
00:01:55
Speaker
But we're not here to talk about time or space or Doctor Who, although we could, at length. And indeed, the reason why I even got a doctorate was because I wanted to be known as The Doctor. Yes. But instead we're going to be talking about Catholicism. Roman Catholics, Irish Catholics, how many other kinds of Catholics are there?
00:02:14
Speaker
Now, I am a lapsed Catholic, but as a Roman Catholic, there is only one true church, Joshua. Yeah, but that's what it is. And it is the Roman Catholic Church, which is in communion with the Patriarch of Rome, the Pontiff, the Pontiff is Maximus, and I will not tolerate this talk about there being other kinds of Catholics.
The Know Nothing Movement Explored
00:02:34
Speaker
I've baptised you once, I will baptise you again if you're not careful. Right. There's no other kinds of Catholicism
00:02:42
Speaker
Except for the ones that they're... No, sorry, let's see the first one. Yep, yep. Third time's the charm. Ah, the good old Pope. Holy Pope. Although of course I am actually the good old Pope. I'm the Pope of the Neocatholic Church, but that is the story.
00:02:59
Speaker
for another time. In fact, actually, you are, you're one of the high rank, I can't even remember my status. Where is your copy of the Manifesto self revocator? Oh, it's sitting around. I've got it on a flash drive or something. I'm sure the PDF exists somewhere.
00:03:14
Speaker
This is a real thing. You can look out the Manifesto self-revocation and find it online. And you can see what I wasted a large chunk of the second year of my MA working on when I should have been working on an MA thesis. But that is a matter for another time. Yes, another matter for this time.
00:03:31
Speaker
Is the Catholic Church and conspiracy theories swirling all around it? Conspiracy theories about it? Conspiracy theories by it? Conspiracy theories adjacent to it? Yes. I think we'll probably leave the whole child molestation thing alone just because it's... Which isn't a conspiracy. That actually happened.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah well but there was a conspiracy theory there as the church denying it occurred and then saying it did occur but not on the scale that it occurred and then just going we're just going to try and make people avoid. We need to actually whenever I think about child abuse.
00:04:07
Speaker
Ooh, this is a weird sentence. I always think of that scene in Father Ted, where Father Ted is talking about the child abuse scandal. This was back before Graham Linham became an awful tirth, and you go, well, you know, imagine, I can't do Father Ted's Irish accent, I was going to do a really bad Irish, I'm just going to do the accent.
00:04:27
Speaker
Imagine there are, you know, a million priests and I mean maybe only 1% of those priests are actually abusers. That would only mean there's 10 and then he immediately changes the subject because any number of abusers in an organisation is too many. Yes, but the point is A, they're fairly well known these particular conspiracy theories and B, it's not really pleasant to talk about.
00:04:55
Speaker
We've tried to try not to get too depressing in this podcast, even though it does happen from time to time. And I've got us a segue that gets us to the main topic. Good. Hit me. I'm going to quote Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. I know nothing!
00:05:11
Speaker
How's that a segue? What's the... Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that will make sense once we get into the main topic. He not only wrote the notes, he claims to read them before the episode starts. I wrote them. I didn't say I read these ones.
00:05:27
Speaker
I read the bits that you wrote, but I didn't read the bits that I wrote. So you write the bits that you do, and you don't remember them, but you do read the bits that I write. I write everything with that sort of psychic ghost writing where you go into a trance, and isn't that what you do? That's next week's episode of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. Is this entire show actually written by ghosts? And if so, why have we not admitted to it for four years? But until then, Catholicism.
00:05:56
Speaker
Now, I have to assume there's such a thing as cat-thalicism, given the nature of the internet. Well, there's cat-alcoholism, which is a course of kind of cat-thalicism. And yes, there are going to be cats in pot of hats.
Religious Conflicts and Historical Contexts
00:06:10
Speaker
Sorry, that's completely irrelevant. I just said the word Catholic slightly strangely before the... Well, so this is the thing which I discovered whilst I was in Europe. Most Europeans don't say Catholic, they say Catholic.
00:06:24
Speaker
Well I suppose they would, yes. So it is in Europe, it really is the Catholic Church. Excellent. But just filled with cats. But yes, so I mean, it's probably no big surprise to you to learn that religions don't always get on. And indeed certain factions within religions
00:06:47
Speaker
often don't quite get on with each other. I am absolutely... I mean, so you have to give me an example. Give me an example of a religion that doesn't get on with another religion. I would point you towards the entirety of human history, really. Can you be more specific? Well, you have your sort of your Christianity and your Judaism and sometimes they don't like each other so much. Yeah, I have heard there's a bit of antagonism, but that's just one example.
00:07:12
Speaker
And then within Christianity you have the Catholics and the Protestants and they've been at odds from time to time. You're so naive. Protestants aren't Christian. Well, there we go. That's kind of what it comes down to a little bit. Well, and that's exactly what they say also about the Catholics. And indeed, because that's kind of where we're going to start.
00:07:36
Speaker
A lot of the history of anti-Catholicism that we're going to be talking about is kind of, is America based? America being quite the Protestant.
00:07:46
Speaker
country. And also quite a religious country when it comes to politics, or at least it has become in the late 20th century. But I mean, reading back over the history of anti-Catholicism in the States, a lot of the things you hear do strike a chord. There do seem to be parallels. So as you wisely hinted at beforehand, which I wasn't quite on the money enough to pick up on, the Know Nothing movement
00:08:13
Speaker
was a thing in the States in the sort of the mid 1850s before the before the Civil War. It was the Know Nothing movement is called the Know Nothing movement because it began as a secret society whose members when asked about it were supposed to say knew nothing because I knew nothing but
00:08:33
Speaker
That didn't make sense with the way you phrased the sentence. But I said that's what they're gonna say. Anyway, so yes, they were supposed to know nothing about it because it was a secret society, but it fairly quickly became- It was a society filled with Sergeant Schultz everywhere. It fairly quickly became non-secret.
00:08:50
Speaker
dated reference now. I mean the reason why we know about Hogan's Heroes is because in the 80s all of our TV was repeats from the 60s from the UK and the US. So we got up-to-date episodes of Hogan's Heroes because they were playing for the first time on TV in the 80s for us. But for most people in the northern hemisphere I suspect you need to be old to even know about them
00:09:16
Speaker
or watch those channels aimed at old people. It's a bit of a cultural touchstone, isn't it? The fact that a country managed to make a sitcom set in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. That was quite an achievement. Where all of the high ranking Nazi officers were Jewish internees during World War II. Yes, yes.
00:09:40
Speaker
The Know Nothing Party, actually, sorry, the Know Nothing Movement, which spawned the American Party, originally called itself the Native American Party. I don't know if Native American meant back then what it means these days. I'm assuming not. I'm assuming it meant it was the whole natural citizen. We were born in the US. We are Native Americans. We're not part of the British Empire or part of old Europe. We're Native. We're American.
00:10:09
Speaker
We're just not Native Americans in the sense that people know it today. Yes, but that is basically the point because it was very much an anti-immigrant, xenophobic and very anti-Catholic organization. Because a large number of the immigrants they were opposed to were coming from Ireland or Italy. Yes. They were the wrong kind of white people to come to America. Well, they weren't even white people back then, were they?
00:10:34
Speaker
There you go. Actually, when it comes to talking about the Italians, yes, that is a tricky issue when it comes to race debates in the US in particular as to whether Italians are in fact white at all. But yes, so they basically
00:10:53
Speaker
They believed that Roman Catholics were essentially conspiring to undermine the American way of life, the values that they hold dear, the blah blah blah blah, the depressingly exactly the same sort of shit you seem to hear these days from the Moor.
00:11:10
Speaker
conservative organizations. And it's based around the idea that Catholics are meant to be more obedient to the Pope than they are to their own government. The idea that Catholics have a special relationship with the pontiff of Rome and thus for that reason they can't be trusted for the sheer fact that given a choice between state and religion they will take religion every time. At least that was the kind of
00:11:37
Speaker
Notion behind things like the no-nothing movement.
00:11:41
Speaker
But eventually they went public with it, and they did fairly well. Now, I don't know an awful lot about the history of American politics in the mid-1850s, but apparently you had the Democrats and you had the Whig Party, which was the right-wing one. And then due to events that I'm not entirely clear about, there was the passing of a certain act and some such. The Whig Party went away. Do you know exactly what happened to the Whig Party?
00:12:10
Speaker
assuming they took off their wigs and went to work. Yes, no, this of course is Whig, the W-H-I-G like they had in England. But basically the major right-wing party disappeared, leaving no strong opposition to the Democrats. So there was space for another right-wing party to jump into. And in 1854, that was kind of the American party.
00:12:31
Speaker
They did very well, apparently they did especially well in Massachusetts, so I'm assuming 1854 must have been the midterms, because they sort of managed to elect senators in Boston and in the other major cities in Massachusetts, basically went to the American party.
00:12:50
Speaker
Fortunately or unfortunately for them, they didn't last much longer than that. So in 1856, you had the round of the presidential elections. And then following that in the lead up to the Civil War, you'll be surprised again to learn that people were quite divided.
00:13:08
Speaker
along cultural issues in the lead up to the civil war of America. And so apparently there were divisions within the American party, basically around slavery, some people who were violently for it and others who were violently against it. And due to that, the party just collapsed. The divisions within it became too big. But while they were big, while they were the in thing,
00:13:37
Speaker
Things, you know, it wasn't just, it wasn't sort of shaking your fist at the Catholics and going, oh, we don't like you. There was violence, there was protests, there were riots, there were rallies, there were deaths. According to my notes here, in Louisville and Kentucky, the race for governor was being contested in 1855, 22 people were killed in riots and many were injured.
00:14:05
Speaker
In Baltimore the mayoral elections of 56, 57 and 58 were all marred by violence and accusations of ballot rigging which according to the article I was reading were quote well founded so I'm not sure if they meant on both sides or not. In Maine no nothings were associated with the tiring and feathering of a Catholic priest, Father Johan Barpst in the coastal town of Ellsworth and apparently a Catholic church was also been down in 1854 so I mean this wasn't
00:14:33
Speaker
This wasn't just rhetoric. It was backed up with violence. And indeed, if you've seen the film Gangs of New York, which I have not... I have, unfortunately. Daniel Day-Lewis's character was based on Billy the Butcher.
00:14:50
Speaker
was based on the Know Nothing leader, William Poole, who also I think was called Bill LaBocher or something like that. A slightly different surname, so he wasn't actually, he wasn't being a fictional version of that guy, he was being a new fictional character based on that guy. But if you want to know what things were like, apparently go see Gangs of New York.
00:15:09
Speaker
or don't because it's a really long, boring film. Yeah, I was never that motivated to go and see it.
JFK and Catholic Leadership Challenges
00:15:18
Speaker
But the demise of the Know Nothing movement in the American Party was not the demise of anti-Catholicism in the US, though. No, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your views on Catholicism, anti-Catholic views have continued to persist in the American policy over time. It continues to be a throughput. I mean, as you point out in the notes,
00:15:39
Speaker
The election of John F Kennedy, an incredibly Catholic man as president of the US, presumably had a fair number of rumblings around it, and it did. People were really, really concerned that a Catholic who became American president, where would his loyalties lie? Would he be loyal to the American people that he serves?
00:16:03
Speaker
Or would he be taking orders from the Catholic Church? Yes, I mean I wasn't around obviously during the Kennedy administration, but I understand it was... Josh definitely didn't, it was not part of a problem to assassinate JFK. Definitely not, there's no evidence. That dossier you might have in your hand is completely fake. Utterly, utterly. But
00:16:26
Speaker
America's first Catholic president was almost as big a deal as America's first black president. I mean, I wasn't around to compare Kennedy and Obama, but from what I hear, they were almost similarly big deals. But in terms of the anti-Catholicism, after the Know Nothings, there was the American Protective Association.
00:16:47
Speaker
who was basically another organisation with similar things. They swore never to vote for a Catholic, hire a Catholic, or join Catholics on organised labour. A wacky bunch of near-duels going by the name of the Ku Klux Klan. Again, something I'm not overly familiar with the history of. They wear funny hats, don't they? They wear the funny hats and they dress up like ghosts for some reason, even when it's not Halloween.
00:17:13
Speaker
But apparently they had waned a little bit following World War I, resurged, it says here, I don't know the history, but apparently when the KKK became a thing again after World War I, they took up a lot of the anti-Catholic rhetoric that previous societies had been bandying about.
00:17:29
Speaker
And it sort of continues to this day because obviously society at large has become more tolerant of things like Catholicism. But that just means that the anti-Catholics now have a lot more to worry about. People, you know, you had JFK. These days apparently people were worried about the number of Catholics on the Supreme Court.
00:17:47
Speaker
I'm not super familiar with the religious affiliations of the current members. Yes, there have been worries about the Catholicism of particular prominent members of the Supreme Court who are on both the left and the right, once again as to whether they're going to follow the Constitution, or whether they're going to be guided by church dogma when it comes to making decisions.
00:18:10
Speaker
and of course I mean it's the mixture of course as well of as good old-fashioned anti-immigration xenophobia as you say Catholicism was the religion of a lot of the a lot of immigrants and it's the whole changing the makeup of society blah blah blah blah blah not our kind of people and so on and so forth so you've got the overtly religious worries and also Catholicism as a signifier of the other of not our kind of people.
00:18:39
Speaker
I think that's all I have in my notes about the anti-Catholic conspiracies, at least as the history of them in the States. Do you have anything more to say before we move on to the interesting case of Cardinal Seri? Ah yes, yes. The Cardinal, so famous, Apple named an entire AI after him.
00:19:01
Speaker
No, I mean, the thing about Catholicism in the US, or Catholicism actually in the UK and in the Commonwealth as well, is that there is this worry that Catholics are somehow more subservient to their religious leaders than members of other Christian denominations. And of course that's amusing for those of us who grew up Catholic.
00:19:25
Speaker
even as a lapsed Catholic, you're kind of aware that what your parish priest says or what the Pope in Rome says isn't necessarily what Catholics do in their home lives. So one of the startling statistics we find in the West is that Catholics are more likely to use birth control than Protestants.
00:19:44
Speaker
Now, most Protestant denominations think that birth control is fine, it's a bit skeevy, but you can do it. Well, Catholics are not meant to use it at all. There was a Monty Python routine about it and everything. There was. With a song. Catholics sing. Everybody's sacred. Classic.
00:20:04
Speaker
But Catholics seem to really, really, really like sex, and at some point worked out that maybe having a lot of children wasn't ideal, whilst Protestants don't seem to like sex at all. And thus, when they have to have it, have to have a baby as well. So yes, this idea that Catholics are now subservient to the Pope and Rome.
00:20:27
Speaker
doesn't actually seem to be reflected by actual practice, but when has bigotry ever been rational? Exactly. And sorry, yes, that was one last point, was the fact that even today, issues like birth control and abortion and euthanasia, areas where sort of religion at times, or if nothing else, spirituality, sort of come into things that
00:20:49
Speaker
Those are times where you can see a bit of the old anti-Catholicism come up because even if, as you say, Catholics use birth control more, the stereotype is that they don't, is that they hate it. And so anti-abortionism, well, sorry, anti-anti-abortionism can be anti-Catholicism sometimes for people who, if you want to get a bit of anti-Catholicism in there, issues like abortion, euthanasia, birth control, give you a good way to shoehorn a little bit in.
00:21:18
Speaker
and indeed misconceptions about Catholics are everywhere when I had my 21st people turned up to my house assuming there would be no booze because I came from a Catholic family but you recall Joshua there was an entire garage of alcohol because Irish Roman Catholic and there's nothing there's nothing better than Roman Catholicism and Irishness combining for a bit of a blarney
Cardinal Siri Conspiracy Theory
00:21:47
Speaker
But anyway, the interesting case of Cardinal Ciri, so this is not... Now, this is the point where I'm glad that my phone isn't around here, because if we say Ciri often enough, it's going to think, oh, you're saying, hey, Ciri, how can I help you, it will say.
00:22:02
Speaker
Hey Siri, that could have been an interesting running gag, but probably better that you don't. So now we're into the area, not of anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, but conspiracy theories promoted by Catholics themselves. Now, we've devoted an entire episode to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and from some Catholic quarters, once again, don't want to blow your brain, but Catholics and Jews don't get on sometimes.
00:22:30
Speaker
and some Catholics who aren't so fond of the Jewish religion spread conspiracy theories saying that Jewish people aren't very nice. But we have talked about that in the past. We have, yes, and it's deplorable. Yes, and not nearly as entertaining as the story of one Giuseppe Seri. He was an arch-conservative Cardinal from Genoa
00:22:53
Speaker
And the claim is that he was elected Pope in 1958, in conclave with all the votes, and yet Jewish, Freemasonic and Jesuit forces moved against him to elect someone else's Pope and to remove all record of that conclave vote. And that's how we got Pope John XXIII.
00:23:19
Speaker
So yeah supposedly Siri was given the boot and replaced with Cardinal Angelo Roncali who became John XXIII and according to this conspiracy theory the first false pope. So the theory basically goes that we have not had a legitimate pope since 1958 because it should have been Giuseppe Siri and he was
00:23:41
Speaker
He was, what's the word, ousted. He was, I'm sure there's a specific word I'm looking for, for getting given the boot in favour of someone else. But he was done, they did that to him. Allegedly. Allegedly, yes. And in fact, not just once, but twice, because... Yes, the next conclave occurs. And in the next conclave, Surrey once again is elected to the highest throne in Catholicism.
00:24:04
Speaker
And then apparently those Jews, those Freemasons and those Jesuits once again perverted the vote, removed the records and we got Pope Paul VI. Actually not a particularly remarkable Pope.
00:24:20
Speaker
No, no, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, who then became Paul VI, which is not nearly so much fun. And supposedly at that point, Seri was then exiled essentially to a monastery and told to keep his mouth shut. Yes, you keep quiet about those two times you became Pope, but we took it away from you.
00:24:40
Speaker
And the major problem with this conspiracy theory is that Cardinal Ciri remained in full communion with the church throughout his life. And not just that, but promoted the Vatican II reforms as well. So yes, I mean for someone who is
00:24:59
Speaker
the victim of or at the very least sort of in some way opposed to all the goings-on you'd think he would at the very least just not not have much to say but instead there he was appearing to actively support the papacy and the religion that had apparently given him the shaft and this must have been difficult for the promoters of this conspiracy theory because presumably the actual motivation behind the claim
00:25:25
Speaker
that Siri was the real Pope, and John XXIII was not the real Pope, was that John XXIII was the pontiff who engaged in a fairly liberal reform of the Roman Catholic Church with the Vatican II conventions.
00:25:43
Speaker
And the fact that actually, Siri, who was a arch-conservative, as you noted, ended up going, well, if that's what the Pope says, then I'm going to support it, must have been quite dissonant to promoters of the Siri conspiracy theory.
00:26:00
Speaker
There was a little bit, I didn't see a lot of detail when I was reading up on this, but supposedly in the 1958 conclave, there was the white smoke, which is meant to symbolise when the Pope's been chosen, went up. And then supposedly they said, oh, that was a mistake, that someone had accidentally activated whatever it is that sends the smoke up.
00:26:22
Speaker
and then it went up again properly once John XXIII had been in-poparised, is that the correct verb? It is now. Popified. Made poply.
00:26:36
Speaker
I basically read one sentence that essentially said, he was made Pope, the smoke went up, but then people said, oh no, no, that was an accident. And that was taken as evidence of... Of found doings inside. But I didn't see much else to say whether or not that's actually true or what really happened. But that was the one sort of bit of physical evidence, I think. And yet the evidence against is fairly damning.
00:27:01
Speaker
And of course, now, we can't talk about conspiracy theories and popes without briefly mentioning, of course, John Paul I. After Paul VI, we got Pope John Paul I. And after Pope John Paul I, we got John Paul II in very quick order. Oh, yes. 100 days? No, 33, according to my notes. Oh, you're right. That was, yes.
00:27:27
Speaker
No, so basically, Pope John Paul I was Pope for 33 days before he's apparently died in his sleep, and we got John Paul II. And frankly, I think we better save this for another episode because the conspiracy theories around the death of John Paul I are many and various. Oh, yes. I mean, there are conspiracy theories around the demise of Pope John XXIII as well, with the notion that
00:27:56
Speaker
His death is mysterious, and was due to conservative forces within the Roman Catholic Church, not wanting to tolerate a liberal pope. So yes, an episode around... pontifical conspiracy theories seems right up our alley, especially since you have just been baptized. I have, yep. So that would be a great horror film title, you've just been baptized. Or a reality TV show?
00:28:24
Speaker
We're just wacky pranksters. Go around forcing people into the Catholic Church at inopportune moments. Yes, so we couldn't not mention the death of Pope John Paul I, but we really don't have time to go into, to give it the treatment it deserves, so I think that'd best wait for another episode. That might be next week's episode.
00:28:49
Speaker
or something on what happens in the next seven days because as we're going to find with the news segment there's been news there has been news and probably I guess maybe perhaps now would be the time to talk about that news yes let's go now to the news breaking breaking conspiracy theories in the news
False Flag Theories and Suspicious Packages
00:29:14
Speaker
This week's news is brought to you by Dr. M.R. Extension's new YouTube series, Conspiracism, which takes a look at conspiracy theory through the lens of recent academic work on the subject. Find it on YouTube under the name Conspiracism. Conspiracism! Thank you! We start with the big news that suspicious packages have been intercepted en route to former US President Barack Obama
00:29:38
Speaker
both of the Clintons, Maxine Walters, George Soros, CNN, and at last count four other individuals and organizations. Yes, people have been quick to note that these suspicious packages have been sent to people and organizations US President Trump has attacked. Rhetorically, not literally body slam. Yes, in the recent past.
00:30:02
Speaker
At this stage we do not know who the sender or senders of the suspicious packages are, just that they are suspicious and some of the packages reportedly contained explosives. None of the packages actually got to their intended recipients as they were intercepted by security on delivery.
00:30:22
Speaker
Now this is conspiratorial enough as it stands, as if two or more people were involved we have attempts on the lives of prominent individuals. However the spectre of our old friend the false flag hangs over these events. Yes it turns out the time between an event and someone saying false flag is approaching and maybe even breaking the speed of light.
00:30:44
Speaker
Fox News, Candace Owen, Frank Gaffney and more have all publicly stated that they think this is not a conservative plot against Trump's purported enemies, but rather a left-wing or democratic or anti-far plot designed to get people out to vote by making it look as if the left is under attack.
00:31:04
Speaker
Now, US politics is so, frankly, fucked up at the moment that it is no longer out of the question that people would engage in stupid things. Indeed, President Trump does five stupid things before breakfast every day. However, the idea that this is a left-wing false flag event designed to engineer a fake threat is a pretty extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.
00:31:27
Speaker
Which is part and parcel of unthinking false flag claims. We've covered false flags on this podcast before. We did an entire series on real false flag events, so we happily admit false flags happen, and a lot more than people actually think. But the kind of reasoning behind this claim of false flag reads more like the appeal to purity fallacy.
00:31:49
Speaker
in which people like Owens, Gaffney and Fox News are saying no true conservative would resort to an act like this, so it has to be someone on the left. Now, leaving aside the dubious claim that it's the left which is currently uncivil and the right are just lovely people,
00:32:05
Speaker
Ooh, sometimes just undilibrately run over people in cars during rallies. Thinking that your side can't have done this just because it's damaging to your side is not reason to then say it's a conspiracy by the left. It's certainly possible, but the question is not whether it's possible, but whether it's probable.
00:32:23
Speaker
Now, given the targets of these suspicious packages of all people, Donald Trump has verbally abused or assaulted in recent months, it seems that the likeliest story here is a MAGA wearing hat fan taking the President's remarks to heart. This might be a case where the right have to own the fact
00:32:41
Speaker
they aren't quite as civil as maybe they make themselves out to be. Meanwhile, what would a news update be without our old friend MH370?
Current Events: MH370 and Khashoggi
00:32:51
Speaker
Yes, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was one of the first stories we covered on this show, and it seems that all these years later we are in no danger of running out of news about it. As reported earlier this week, French investigators have uncovered a mysterious third entity
00:33:09
Speaker
that may be withholding technical data about the flight path taken by the plane. This news comes to us from Gislan Witrilos, who lost his wife and two children when MH370 disappeared. He met with the Gendarmerie Air Transport Investigation team, who told him there were inconsistencies in the official report issued by Malaysia, which suggested the existence of quote-unquote curious passengers.
00:33:34
Speaker
Among them was a Malaysian aeronautic specialist who was seated directly under MH370's SATCOM module and who might have had the technical know-how to hack the plane's communication systems and thus disguise its route.
00:33:49
Speaker
According to Mr. Wachrilos, the French investigators identified a, quote-unquote, third entity in possession of information and or data relating to the movements of the missing plane, which led him to say that, again quoting, We are a little angry and now we want to say stop. It is time that the United States really cooperate on this issue, unquote.
00:34:09
Speaker
which suggests the third entity is Boeing, the manufacturer of the aircraft. Investigators looking into the disappearance of MH370 have wanted to look at the aircraft simulator one of the pilots used, in the hope that the raw data might shed some light on what the pilot did or did not do when MH370 disappeared.
00:34:31
Speaker
But Boeing has somewhat stymied the investigation due to demanding confidentiality agreements be signed in order to protect industries' secrets about the plan. Now, whether this is because Boeing are covering something up or are simply protecting their patents is unknown. The problem for Boeing is that a public report which contains sensitive information might serve their business rivals.
00:34:54
Speaker
and a public report which shows they knew more about where the plane crashed or landed would be a bad look. So two motives, one plane, one possible conspiracy. And now a quick update on the death of Jamal Khashoggi. He's definitely did the found body parts. But more importantly the story of Khashoggi's death has seen quite a lot of
00:35:18
Speaker
How would you put it? Flexibility? Saudi Arabian officials initially said he didn't even enter the embassy. Then he did enter but also left. Then he had a fight with the security guard and died as a result. Then that it was a questioning that went wrong. Then it was an interrogation gone wrong. Then that he was killed by rogue agents. Then that he was killed but by agents not working on orders of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yes, when it comes to producing cover stories, Saudi Arabia has a lot of them. And that's not usually a virtue in these situations.
00:35:56
Speaker
Turkey, which has been leading the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Washington Post journalist Death, has issued a statement. It stops short of saying the Crown Prince ordered the murder, but it does point the finger at senior members of the Royal Court, saying that the savage murder did not happen instantly, but was planned.
00:36:18
Speaker
According to President Erdogan, a 15-member team of Saudi officials arrived in Istanbul in stages to carry out the killing. This included generals, senior intelligence officers, and forensic officials. These agents also conducted reconnaissance in rural areas outside the city in order to work out where to dispose of the body.
00:36:38
Speaker
All in all, the question now is who ordered the assassination? A particularly vexing issue, given the fact Saudi Arabia is technically still ruled by its king, but is currently largely governed by the Crown Prince. As such, the question of whether the Crown Prince is behind the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi is the big question.
00:37:01
Speaker
President Erdogan did not mention bin Salman by name in his address, but the crown prince has just been appointed head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, where he's not only leading an investigation into Khashoggi's death, but also a restructure of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services in order to make sure this kind of shocking thing never happens again.
00:37:23
Speaker
Is the fox in charge of the hen house? Is there a conspiracy to cover up Bin Salman's responsibility?
Support and Outro
00:37:30
Speaker
I guess we'll be coming back to this again and again and again in the coming week. But before we settle into our own version of the doctrine of Eterna recurrence, it's time to remind everyone that patrons get even more news for just a couple of dollars a month.
00:37:46
Speaker
Yep, for less than a cup of joe a month, or indeed a cup of coffee. You can hear us discuss even more news about botany MP Jamie Lee Ross, that caravan from Honduras with all those pesky Middle Eastern infiltrators, and the riots in Californian sanctuary cities no one wants you to know about. What a bargain. Plus, if you order now, you get a set of free steak knives. Actually, no. No, you don't.
00:38:10
Speaker
After the Hungarian incident, we're no longer shipping knives overseas. Damn those health and safety regulations! Indeed. But because of those aforementioned regulations, we now have to say goodbye in order that we do our regulation stretches and post-podcast cooldown routines. So as usual, it's goodbye!
00:38:31
Speaker
from me, and it's goodbye from him. You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. It is written, researched, and performed by Josh Addison, aka monkeyfluids, and MRXtenteth, aka Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean, and Stitcher.
00:39:00
Speaker
It can also be watched on YouTube. Just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, or, if you happen to be technophobic, consult the auguries. You can support the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy via our Patreon page, as listed in the podcast description, or just by searching for us on Patreon.
00:39:22
Speaker
You can also support us via the Podbean patronage system, if that is more your style. You do you. If you want to get in contact with us, why not email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com, or find us on Facebook. And remember, the truth is out there, but not quite where you think you left it.