Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, LSD, and The Unabomber

“A "conspiracy theory" can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State's ideological propaganda.” ~Murray Rothbard.

I came across this quote in “What the State is not” in The Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard and I found it very interesting. Conspiracy theories instantly remind me of crazy people claiming to be kidnapped and brainwashed by aliens in Roswell, New Mexico. They are completely contrived and based on the stories of delusional people who probably have a long history of mental illness. However, some might say that this is exactly what the government wants you to think.

I did some further research on conspiracies and naturally fixated on the creepiest one I could find. MKULTRA was a secret CIA experiment on mental health patients, prison inmates, and US citizens without consent. Drugs, hypnosis, torture, sexual molestation, and many other techniques were tested on patients to research human behavior and mind control. In one experiment, patients were given LSD for 77 days in row . There have been several connections with MKULTRA and notorious killers like Theodore Kaczynski, “The Unabomber,” at Harvard University in the 1960s.

CIA director Richard Helms ordered the records of MKULTRA to be destroyed in 1973, but 20,000 files remained because they were stored in an unusual location and forgotten. In 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA conducted experiments on patients without asking for consent. This prompted an investigation by both the US Congress and a presidential committee, which reached the conclusion that these experiments were illegally conducted and used a variety of torture methods, drugs, and radiation to explore mind control. It is possible that MKULTRA has not been disbanded and experiments on mind control continue to go on.

Rothbard writes, “It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any "conspiracy theory of history;" for a search for "conspiracies" means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds” (5). Government agencies can break the law and hurt citizens. MKULTRA is proof. Conspiracies are not just fabricated stories from mental hospital patients, but that is what they want you to think.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/06/chase.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

http://newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/980/33-Conspiracy-Theories-That-Turned-Out-To-Be-True-What-Every-Person-Should-Know-Updated-Revised-and-Extended.aspx

http://mises.org/pdf/anatomy.pdf