i'm sure many people wanted him dead he had a lot of information on a lot of people a lot of black male videos and pictures welcome to watch mojo and today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 conspiracy theories of all time because i don't believe in the kovit i don't believe it's true for this list we'll be looking at the conspiracy theories that loom largest in popular culture and the public imagination whether thanks to their popularity or improbability did we leave any out let us know in the comments number 20 national hidden treasure it's a very poorly kept secret that there's a hidden room behind mount rushmore in south dakota it's actually true this has led some to theorize that it houses proof of alien life or treasure the intent behind the area is anything but sinister though believe me i know the original sculptor of the monument gutzon borlam wanted to create something he called the hall of records to house the recorded history of the united states for generations to come although borlam only finished a tunnel during his lifetime his daughter collaborated with the mount rushmore society to build a vault with a visual history of the us told through 16 porcelain enamel panels it's sealed off and not open to the public number 19 illuminati at the denver airport the design of the denver international airport is certainly unique and a bit well strange exactly have you heard about the horse [Music] we're talking about a blue horse with glowing red eyes intense murals and a gargoyle that greets guests hey i'm talking to you can i borrow some pants oh and did we mention a time capsule with a free mason symbol on the granite seal conspiracy theorists argue that the freemasons have ties to the illuminati and a new world order the new airport was dedicated in 1994 and rumors persist to this day about how the area isn't only a hub for passengers and travel but for the illuminati and other secret organizations number 18 shakespeare didn't write all his plays could it be true that the greatest writer in the english language was as fictional as his plays did the most famous playwright of all time even exist well yes he did but according to this theory he didn't write his plays at least not all of them some people claim that william shakespeare was just a pen name used by various different writers i want to thank my actors it was a great great acton has um uh brought my words to life then there are others who hold to the oxfordian theory of shakespeare authorship which claims that the 17th earl of oxford edward de vere actually wrote the bard's work promise me you'll keep our secrets safe that you won't expose shakespeare these alternative authorship theories have gained some traction due to the lack of biographical information about shakespeare's life but are generally disregarded by english historians [Applause] number 17 lost cosmonauts are you from another planet eska garden gagarin went into space soviet cosmonaut yuri gagarin was the first human to journey to outer space or was he according to the lost or phantom cosmonauts conspiracy theory gagarin was the first human to survive the journey but he was not the first sent to space rumors of lost cosmonauts have been around since at least 1965. allegedly the soviet union launched at least two unsuccessful manned space flights before gagarins however any information about these flights was concealed from the public because of the ongoing cold war although most of the state's formerly restricted information has become available since the collapse of the ussr there has been little uncovered to support this particular theory while the lost cosmonaut theory itself may not hold up to scrutiny one thing's for sure when it comes to soviet russia there's plenty of stuff they don't want you to know number 16 paul is dead if you're a die-hard fan of the beatles then you're probably quite familiar with this conspiracy theory that beatles bassist paul mccartney is actually dead and was replaced in the band with a double according to the story paul mccartney died on november 9 1966 after his car skated off an icy road according to the theory the beatles replaced him with an imposter a look alike named billy shears those who believe this theory often claim that the beatles hid subliminal and back masked messages in their songs as proof in songs like strawberry fields forever there's a line where john lennon supposedly says i buried paul then there's revolution 9 a song from the band's white album that when played backwards is supposed to say turn me on dead man is it there maybe but spoiler alert paul mccartney is very much alive i think you've been doing this for longer you know than i've even been alive and you've been doing it so incredibly well and the fact that you're still here today in 2013. number 15 hiv aids created by the cia it's human nature to look for someone to blame in horrible situations the hiv aids crisis was just one of those moments in american history some nurses feared this unknown unnamed disease so much they wouldn't even go near someone with aids the fear was pervasive conspiracy theories persisted that the cia invented the virus intentionally to attack homosexual and african-american communities although this wasn't true it does possess links to a real disinformation campaign propagated by the soviet union in the 1980s known as operation infection the intention was to implicate the united states as purveyors of biowarfare by claiming they'd developed hiv aids in fort detrick maryland it's a crazy allegation printed in a small newspaper no big deal right but fast forward just a couple of years and look what's happening the story is spreading today operation infection is seen largely as a way to deflect similar accusations against the ussr over their own bio-warfare operations number 14 satanic panic in the 1980s a moral panic swept through the u.
s spread by now discredited psychological practices and false accusations there were terrifying tales of secret satanic cults bent on tormenting and corrupting the young many people became convinced that satan worshippers were all around them practicing ritual abuse on hapless victims a lot of the hysteria came from conservative religious reactions to the popularity of heavy metal music and role-playing games like dungeons and dragons the panic led to numerous accusations of ritual abuse and daycare centers culminating in the infamous mcmartin preschool trial there's never been any proof that there was any kind of satanic ritual abuse or satanic at cult activity in a daycare center when i first got involved in these cases i'll be very honest with you i tended to believe that this was going on but eventually the number of cases just kept growing today it lives on in new forms such as the far-right q anon movement which targets celebrities and democrats instead well i don't know much about the movement other than i understand they like me very much number 13 james earl ray was framed the death of civil rights activist martin luther king jr was a devastating loss that left many questions unanswered on april 4 1968 he was assassinated in a memphis motel purportedly by james earl ray however rey's motivations have always remained hazy now there are mixed reports about his motivations james earl ray was certainly a super racist but it looks like greed may have also played a factor now rey was under the impression that he was going to be able to collect bounties from a cabal of rich southerners for killing dr king this has led to theories that someone else was involved for example the fbi who were running a smear campaign against king ray later recanted his confession leading some to question whether he was even the shooter at all including king's family given the number of enemies king had we may never know the truth for sure well i don't know what there's any penalty for extraditing someone fraudulently or not but i think i can see their legal point where they've got to stick with their story number 12 water fluoridation for mind control guys how do my teeth look pretty good okay great fluoride in the water might be helping that but it might also be doing other things fluoride helps make human teeth stronger but some people believe that the government is putting fluoride in drinking water for another reason to sap away our mental strength and control the population the telegraph points out a epidemiological study that was done there they say fluoride in drinking water may trigger depression and weight gain in the 1940s many conspiracy theorists became convinced that fluoride was part of a communist plot to take over america proponents have since claimed that the nazis used fluoride to pacify people in concentration camps during world war ii while a minority of scientists do oppose water fluoridation it isn't based on any of these wild claims which lack any evidence countries and states are going to continue being on board with fluoridation until someone finds damning evidence that they shouldn't be which in 70 years no one has yet found number 11. zionist occupation government conspiracy theory the idea that a jewish cabal runs the world goes all the way back to a fabricated document the protocols of the elders of zion which outlined a fake plan for global domination it was a hoax but anti-semitism has kept the idea alive the theory achieved new popularity in the mid 90s in part thanks to the efforts of the aryan nations a white supremacist group from idaho the hate first blossomed in 1974 when richard butler moved to hayden and established the aryan nation's world headquarters for decades butler shared his dream of a white-only homeland with recruits who came to his 20-acre compound it comes in many forms from claiming that jewish people run the entertainment industry to denying the horrors of world war ii it's a strange but tragically true glimpse into the darkest recesses of the human mind number 10. advance warning of pearl harbor the u.
s government has been the target of several conspiracy theories throughout its history with one of the biggest revolving around pearl harbor fdr certainly did have a motivation to deliberately withhold vital intelligence from pearl harbor this theory suggests that franklin d roosevelt knew about the planned japanese attack in december 1941 but decided not to act because he needed an excuse to get the americans into the second world war to overcome this premeditated invasion the american people in their righteous might will win through to absolute pictures the theory gained some traction because the american public and congress were overwhelmingly against joining the conflict at the time but it has largely been dismissed by historians everyone who worked on it at the time has said then and since that we simply were not far enough along to read any of these japanese naval messages for intelligence number nine the earth is flat the world is of course round something that even the ancient greeks figured out there's plenty of proof commercial airline flights time zones images from space and so many more however a small but vocal minority of people still believe the earth is flat spreading their ideas on social media platforms my reality my senses tell me that the earth is flat and stationary while the flat earth society has flourished online its first iteration was founded back in 1956 by samuel shenton a sign writer who created his own cosmology partly based on the bible today some proponents even argue that australia doesn't exist we guess hugh jackman really is one hell of an actor number eight the stolen election after joe biden won the 2020 u. s election donald trump and allies campaigned to overturn the results as everybody saw we won by historic numbers and the pollsters got it knowingly wrong they got it knowingly wrong we had polls it was so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time alleging widespread fraud trump claimed that biden was staging a coup his legal team filed dozens of lawsuits which were dismissed and claimed that voting machines had been rigged an accusation contradicted by hand recounts some of trump's allies even recommended that he suspend the constitution and declare martial law q anon fueled the fires arguing that the deep state was backing biden but that trump would be re-inaugurated in march 2021. the movement now leaping from echo chambers of social media to headlines in the news the campaign culminated in the 2021 united states capital attack when rioters stormed the capital leaving five dead it was a dark lesson in how deadly disinformation can be number seven adolf hitler escaped to argentina it became pretty obvious that the death in the bunker was nothing but well fiction or maybe somebody died in the bunker but it wasn't adolf hitler a number of conspiracy theories are attached to famous figures in history and adolf hitler is no different with the allies closing in and the war all but over hitler took his own life in his bunker with his wife eva braun british authors simon dunstan and gerard williams have a different theory about hitler's end however they believed that the fuhrer didn't actually kill himself but rather escaped argentina with ava and body doubles were shot instead of history they investigated according to their book grey wolf the escape of adolf hitler the married couple settled down and had two daughters in south america before dying in 1962.
this was during 1947 [Music] this idea has been widely dismissed by historians who claim that the theory has no substance we got to the edge of information where the truth should be out there so let's get it out that's what we're trying to do number six roswell and area 51. many of us are anxious for more information about life beyond the stars and some conspiracy theories think we can find answers in the roswell incident and u. s air force base area 51.
they believe that an actual flying saucer crash landed in roswell new mexico back in 1947 and not a surveillance balloon as the us army claims right away rumors spread that alien bodies had been found in the spacecraft roswell is really the ground zero of the ufo phenomena there's also a widespread belief that area 51 holds the remains of the crashed aliens as well as alien tech the theories have gotten traction in part thanks to the fact that area 51 is a highly classified air force facility with the testing training and development that occurs inside kept secret from the public 50 years after the incident the air force released a report admitting that the wreckage was part of a secret system of atomic espionage but for real believers this is just another cover-up number five world leaders are lizard people also known as reptilians in simple terms there is a predator race which take a reptile reptilian form they're feeding off humanity they've turned humanity into a slave race who runs the world lizards at least according to english former footballer and sports broadcaster david ike after he visited a psychic he decided that he was the son of the godhead predicted natural disasters that never happened dove headfirst into anti-semitic conspiracies and most famously proclaimed that the world was being run by shape-shifting lizards i have talked to hundreds and hundreds of people all over the world i've been to more than 40 countries researching this who have told me the same basic recurring story of seeing people often in positions of power but not always change from a human into a reptilian form and then and then go back again sometimes it's for a few seconds many of these reptiles are supposedly people in positions of power including the entire royal family they are 7 to 12 feet tall and come from a different planet number four global warming is a hoax it's a statistical anomaly it's meaningless and they actually admit this in previous nasa press releases but they're not announcing that today a scientific consensus around climate change began to form back in the 1980s in part thanks to discoveries by researchers working for fossil fuel companies since then fossil fuel companies have spent billions of dollars on climate-related lobbying and have been accused by activists of manufacturing doubt about scientific research the problem is this thin layer of atmosphere is being thickened by all of the global warming pollution that's being put up there today the scientific consensus that human activities are warming the climate is greater than 99 but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from arguing that it's all a trick one that involves basically all the world's climate scientists playing along according to climate change skeptic myra nobel global warming is a hoax created by the european union to damage the us economy the theory takes various forms with some arguing that it's a liberal plot to introduce socialism others that it's linked to a bid for global dominance and others that china is behind it all number three the assassination of john f kennedy the murder of the 35th u.
