Crisis actors are individuals who portray disaster victims in first responder training exercises. Conspiracy theories allege that mass shooting and similar traumatic events are actually staged, with victims and their families being portrayed by covert crisis actors.

After seven years, the daycare owners were eventually acquitted or had the charges dismissed. One was jailed for five years while awaiting trials and retrials. In the meantime, similar accusations spread through daycares around the country. Most were spurred on by now-discredited methods of questioning small children, methods that often led to children making sensational accusations because they wanted to please the authority figures questioning them. Research sugg A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a pejorative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence. Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it, are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth, and the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than proof.Numerous theories pertain to real or alleged weather-controlling projects. Theories include the debunked assertion that HAARP, a radio-technology research program funded by the US government, is a secret weather-controlling system. Some theorists have blamed 2005's Hurricane Katrina on HAARP. [326] HAARP has also been suggested to have somehow caused earthquakes, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami or the 2013 Saravan earthquake. [327] Some HAARP-related claims refer to mind-control technology. [328]

Conspiracy theories concerning the Illuminati, a short-lived 18th-century Enlightenment-era secret society, appear to have originated in the late 19th century, when some Catholic conservatives in Europe came to believe that the group had been responsible for the French Revolution of 1789–1799. [195] Hoaxes about the Illuminati were later spread in the 1960s by a group of American practical jokers known as the Discordians who wrote a series of fake letters about the Illuminati to Playboy. [196] False flag operations The World Trade Center towers prior to 9/11 Ray, Ashis (10 February 2018). "It's time to end the many conspiracy theories over Subhash Chandra Bose's death". The Print. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021 . Retrieved 22 July 2021. The pinnacle was Geraldo Rivera's infamous NBC special "Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground," which aired on Oct. 28, 1988. Rivera relied on self-proclaimed "Satanism experts," misleading and inaccurate statistics, crimes with only tenuous links to Satanism, and sensationalized media reports. It was the most-viewed documentary in television history. "There are over one million Satanists in this country," Rivera said, adding that "The odds are, [they] are in your town."Main article: John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories John F. Kennedy in the presidential limousine shortly before his assassination The conspiracy theory originated in the United Kingdom and was originally promoted by "Yes" voters in the unsuccessful 2014 Scottish independence referendum, with supports of Scottish independence (who usually lean to the left of the political spectrum) claiming that electoral fraud was the reason the referendum failed. However, the theory was later adopted by supporters of the "Leave" vote in the successful 2016 Brexit referendum (who usually lean to the right of the political spectrum). [247] The conspiracy theory has since spread to Australia, with right-wing politician Pauline Hanson, a Queensland Senator who is the founder and leader of the One Nation party, promoted the conspiracy theory in the lead-up to the 2022 Australian federal election. [248]

Psychologists sometimes attribute proclivities toward conspiracy theories to a number of psychopathological conditions such as paranoia, schizotypy, narcissism, and insecure attachment, [4] or to a form of cognitive bias called " illusory pattern perception". [5] [6] However, the current scientific consensus holds that most conspiracy theorists are not pathological, but merely exaggerate certain cognitive tendencies that are universal in the human brain and probably have deep evolutionary origins, such as natural inclinations towards anxiety and agent detection. [4] Aviation Mahanta, Siddhartha (5 September 2014). "India's Fake 'Love Jihad' ". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 24 November 2015 . Retrieved 24 November 2015. This is where MH370 crashed': Fisherman claims he saw Malaysian Airlines plane go down". NZ Herald. 16 January 2019. Event occurs at 6:43am.Mina, Mikhail (30 April 1998). "In retrospect by Mikhail Mina". Nature. 392 (6679): 884. Bibcode: 1998Natur.392..884M. doi: 10.1038/31855. ISSN 1476-4687. S2CID 35300944. The idea that the U.S. government (or perhaps the entire world government) is run by reptilian humanoids is … out there, to say the least. And yet, people holding this belief have done real damage. For example, a man who detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on Christmas Day 2020 had written a friend about his belief that lizard people walked the planet, disguised as humans. Warner killed himself, damaged 41 buildings, and injured three in the bombing. Anna Gooding-Call is a librarian and writer originally from rural central New York. She got her BA in the city that inspired "The Twilight Zone" and confirms that the hitchhikers really are weird there. Today, she lives in Massachusetts with her wife and two cats. Malala Yousafzai is a hero to many, but has few fans in her homeland". The Sydney Morning Herald. 18 August 2017. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017 . Retrieved 24 November 2017.