“Joe Biden According to Internet Conspiracy Theorists” (Daily Mail)
X users have devised an outrageous new set of conspiracy theories - including claims that President Joe Biden has been secretly replaced by an imposter.
Reminds me of Dr. Peter Beter, from the 1970s, who claimed that David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger were replaced by “Soviet-made robotoids”—and who’s alarmist reports caused a West Virginia sheriff, Harlan Mooney, to drain a lake in search of “nuclear weapons planted by the Russians.” Oops!
Over 40 years ago I authored a pamphlet for Loompanics Unlimited titled The Conspiracy Peddlers, which reviewed conspiracy media in the USA.
Back then, the term conspiracy theory wasn’t so freely bantered about.
“Conspiratorialists,” as they were called in the UK, traditionally subscribed to a grand conspiracy of history.
I broke them down into four categories:
Those who preach conspiracy theory to promote political or religious ends.
Those who preach conspiracy theory for monetary gain.
Those who preach conspiracy theory to spread the “truth” (as they see it)—as a service, they say, to humankind.
Paranoid schizophrenics.
Most conspiracy-preaching organizations, I discovered, were more secretive and conspiratorial than those they targeted in their publications.
Here is a thumb sketch:
The Assassination Information Committee (New York, NY)
Bill Depperman, self-proclaimed “Communist-Leninist-Marxist-Trotsky-ite,” pasted conspiracy-theorizing posters onto street signs, mailboxes and phone booths throughout NYC’s five boroughs.
The New York Times dubbed him “the master graffiti writer.” (He was also known as “Diaper Man.”)
One of Bill’s themes was “AIDS is germ warfare by the U.S. government.”
When I stopped by 10 East 16th Street to chat, Depperman refused to open his multi-bolted door and screamed from the other side about my involvement in the plot to assassinate him.
(He suffered a stroke at age 80 in 2021 and died a few days later.)
Campaigner Publications (New York, NY)
The parent of various publications put out by conspiracy theory kingpin Lyndon LaRouche.
Campaigner Publications published New Solidarity and Executive Intelligence Review.
LaRouche was founder and chairman of the U.S. Labor Party. In his more modest moments, Lyndon described himself as the “American Lenin”—and ran for U.S. president in several elections.
The Queen of England, he claimed, was head of a vast conspiracy calling for his head. Hare Krishna, he said, was a British Intelligence operation—and the Ku Klux Klan was created by the Brits to sell narcotics in the South. (Lyndon wasn’t fond of the UK.)
Conspiracies Unlimited (St. Paul, MN)
“Cranks are great,” Robert Hertz told me, “You need one to get things started.”
His thesis: “Someone profits from everything, and if there is no limited to power, then there is no limit to conspiracy.”
Conspiracy Digest (Dearborn, MI)
Peter McAlpine, a plumber and self-styled anarchist, subscribed to the Conspiracy of the British Empire. “The American Establishment is thoroughly Anglophile,” he told me. “It’s the closest thing to a one-world government.”
Dr. Peter Beter Audio Letter (Washington, D.C.)
Dr. Beter claimed that his one-hour cassette tapes were heard by 4.5 million listeners.
“Hello my friend, this is Dr. Beter in Washington,” began a typical audio letter. “One way or another,” he boomed in baritone, “it will all be over soon. It will be a nuclear war and we can’t stop it.”
(That was 1975.)
The Gary Allen Books (‘76 Press, Seal Beach, CA)
Gary’s best known shocker was the 138-page None Dare Call it Conspiracy, which became a bible of sorts to those on the Radical Right.
It’s main points:
How the “great conspiracy” evolved from the Illuminati (1776) to the current Council on Foreign Relations.
The Rothschild Family bankrolls all wars.
The Federal Reserve Board (central bank) was hatched by Wall Street to hijack monetary policy from the U.S. Government. (Actually true.)
Wall Street bankrolled the Bolshevik Revolution.
To substantiate his numerous points, Gary Allen referenced Dr. Carroll Quigley, head of the history department at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service for 28 years.
Based on 25 years of meticulous research, Quigley authored Tragedy & Hope, a 1310-page history of the world since 1895, which he used as a textbook for his popular course on Western Civilization. Published in 1966 by MacMillan, the book devoted about 25 pages to the Anglo-American Round Table groups of the early 1900s.
In his scholarly tome, Quigley pointed out how influential semi-secret groups, with the assistance of international bankers, federated the English-speaking world. Their objective, Quigley wrote, was to establish a three-power world: Britain and the USA (the Atlantic Alliance), Hitler’s Germany and Soviet Russia. (Which main explain conspiracy theories about Wall Street bankrolling not only the Bolsheviks but also Nazi Germany.)
Gary Allen interpreted Quigley’s prose as revealing “the existence of the conspiratorial network.”
Consequently, Quigley shot to fame (in some circles) as “the Joe Malachi of political conspiracies.”
The professor’s response to the voluminous mail he received (and to me when I met him at Georgetown U): “I am a professional historian. I am not a political agitator. The two activities are directly opposed to one another and are incompatible. The historian tries to find out what happened in the past, while the political agitator tries to influence the future. The conspiracy theory of history is nonsense.”
Mark Lane (Memphis, TN)
Lawyer Mark Lane started off respectably. He penned one of the earliest books—Rush to Judgement, 1966—on the JFK assassination, in which he rubbished the Warren Commission (which richly deserved rubbishing).
Thereafter, he unabashedly cashed in.
“How may one contact Mark Lane?” I asked Charles Garry, a San Francisco lawyer who had worked with Mark for Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple cult in Guyana.
“My recommendation,” replied Garry, “is wait until he gets into hell, the dirty sonofabitch.”
Garry blamed Lane for the tragedy in Guyana, where 900 persons took their lives. It was Lane, Garry insisted, who drove Jim Jones crazy with paranoia over imagined CIA plots and conspiracies. “He was working behind my back and got all those people worked up with his bullshit on conspiracies. He’s the catalyst for the death of all those people.”
World Watchers International (Carmel CA)
Mae Brussel was considered the “Queen of Conspiracy.”
A philosophy major at Stanford University and a “typical California housewife” (her words)… she got motivated by the JFK assassination.
“I could not accept that the case would be closed in 12 hours,” Mae told me.
Her forum was a radio show/recorded on cassettes sent to subscribers in 30 states and 4 foreign countries (said she).
Mae reported on a world filled with sodium morphate-induced heart attacks, whose victims (she claimed) included J. Edgar Hoover and Nelson Rockefeller; a world where Charles Manson (and others) were programmed by the CIA—and in which the NSA planned to “vaporize” all black people.
The Spotlight (Washington, D.C.)
This tabloid was a Radical Right version of the National Enquirer with headlines like “Rockefeller Named Dope Overlord” and “The Diary of Anne Frank is a Fraud.”
The Spotlight was published by Liberty Lobby, a neo-Nazi outfit (located a stone’s throw from Capitol Hill) that masqueraded as “populist.”
Behind Liberty Lobby was Willis Carto, who founded the Institute for Historical Review, created to convince people that the Holocaust was the invention of Jewish propaganda.
Even Far Right-wingers could not stomach Willis.
Scott Stanley, Jr., editor of American Opinion (published by the John Birch Society), told me, “Whenever you find anti-semitic literature coming out from some little fly-by-night front, it always seems to be associated with the Carto network.”
And this from National Review: Willis Carto “delights in secrecy, conspiracy and power.”
In September 1981, a short-lived magazine called The Investigator, created by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, published my in-depth investigation of Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto.
The article exposed Willis Carto as the mysterious figure behind Liberty Lobby and The Spotlight.
Carto took umbrage and sued The Investigator and Jack Anderson for defamation. That case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Liberty Lobby on the basis that the plaintiff “had not provided clear and convincing evidence.” (Apparently, this case is now required reading in law schools across the nation.)
Liberty Lobby—some called it Liberty Lobotomy—could not name me as a Defendant even though I was the true author, having researched, investigated and written the piece.
This was because The Investigator’s editor improperly gave the byline to a magazine staffer, Charles Bermant, who had conducted supplemental research.
I have not, until now (over 40 years later), refuted the nonsense spewed by all parties.
I, of course, had evidence in my possession to back up every aspect of my story, including tape-recordings and transcripts of interviews conducted with ex-Liberty Lobby employees, among others who’d had unpleasant dealings with Carto.
Oddly, these extensive notes/recordings/transcripts were never requested for review, either before the piece was published or after the lawsuit was filed.
Jack Anderson's attorney, David Branson of White & Case, flew to London to meet me. We had tea at Inn on the Park. When I asked Branson what he needed from me, he whimsically stated that he just needed to be able to tell the Court that he had met me in person and I that truly exist. (I had been labeled “mysterious” by Liberty Lobby attorney Mark Lane—yes, the same Mark Lane who incited Jim Jones.)
The assertion (in Liberty Lobby’s lawsuit) that "Carto often observes interviews of prospective employees through a mirror" came from a former senior Liberty Lobby employee who claimed (to me directly) that he had personally witnessed this behavior.
A second source, also an ex-Liberty Lobby employee, corroborated that point (to me directly, no duplicate sourcing). This was old-fashioned, by-the-book investigative reporting (remember that?) as taught to me on Fleet Street.
As for "a drawing of a Hitleresque person, allegedly Carto": The draft I submitted to The Investigator was a typescript without illustrations of any kind. Hence, this drawing did not come from me, as Charles Bermant erroneously testified, but most likely was created by The Investigator's art department.
That said, I have no doubt, based on my investigation, that Willis Carto admired Adolph Hitler; that the illustration truly reflected his leanings.
Every other point in my story that Liberty Lobby alleged to be "defamatory" was similarly sourced and documented as true. Neither Bermant nor Joseph Spears—a key lieutenant to Jack Anderson who negotiated my fee—ever asked me about my sources nor asked to see evidence that supported my story.
Had I been a named Defendant in the action, all of my files would have been "discovered" and Liberty Lobby would have been sent packing long before their case reached the Supreme Court.
Lesson to publications: Don't steal credit/bylines from freelance journalists.
As usual, those who benefitted most were lawyers.