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Well packed: an emergency hospital for those affected by the Spanish flu in Camp Funston, Kansas, USA. Image: www.imago-images.de
Crown, plague, HIV: humanity always falls for the same lies
Means to establish a dictatorship and emerged from the laboratory? Numerous fairy tales circulate about the corona pandemic. A look at history reveals the scam behind it.
In the fall of 1918, coffins were running out in the United States. An epidemic struck the world, in Switzerland the writer Stefan Zweig noted: “20,000 to 40,000 people are eaten every day.” There is talk of the Spanish flu, the most devastating pandemic flu ever to hit humanity.
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The pathogen is a tiny virus, but this discovery was not supposed to materialize until the 1930s. In 1918, many Americans suspected a completely different cause of the epidemic: the Germans. The Americans had been at war with these since 1917.
Death from the aspirin pack?
Conspiracy theories were on the rise. At that time, many people were uncomfortable just looking at a packet of aspirin from the German manufacturer Bayer. Was it really about the drug? Or did the Germans also hide the pathogen that caused such dire consequences?
Or even worse: had German submarines quietly introduced deadly pathogens into America? One was very confident in the opponent of the war. In 1915, the Germans were the first nation at war to use poison gas as a weapon of mass destruction near Ypres.
Those who do something like this could resort to very similar insidious means against the civilian population, so it was thought. “The Germans caused epidemics in Europe,” claimed a high-ranking American official in 1918, as Laura Spinney put it in her book, “1918.” The world in fever “he quoted. “There is no reason why they should handle America with child gloves.”
An advertisement for aspirin from 1918. Image: www.imago-images.de
Initially, the Spanish flu was also called “German poison”. Only gradually was the understanding that the enemy had nothing to do with the development of the pandemic was accepted. Because the Germans also suffered and died from influenza.
Disbelief for centuries
Almost a hundred years after the Spanish flu, the coronavirus is causing fear and uncertainty in our present. And like 100 years ago, conspiracy myths are emerging. Corona comes from the laboratory, it is said, for example, that Covid-19 should be used to subjugate the Germans in particular and humanity in general. Bill Gates is described as the main culprit who wants to use vaccines and the World Health Organization (WHO) to fulfill his supposedly sinister plans.
But all the conspiracy myths surrounding the terrible epidemics of human history suffer from one simple fact: They are completely unfounded and cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. In times of uncertainty, however, some people occasionally look to seemingly simple explanations for extremely complex problems, a breeding ground for conspiracy myths.
Around 1348 Europe was hit by another epidemic, this time a bacterium was the cause. Yersinia pestis is its name, it is the causative agent of the plague. The so-called Black Death depopulated Europe, people did not know what could be the reason for this mass death. Was it a divine judgment?
Masks since 1918: three farm workers in Toronta, Canada. Image: www.imago-images.de
In the logic of the time, that would have meant that the people themselves were to blame for the plague. Instead, some survivors and forgiven gave an entirely different explanation: In a very short time Jews were said to be the culprit. This lie was promoted and triggered by many authorities. Wells, for example, was poisoned by the Jews and they spread the plague like a scourge of humanity.
This was all fictitious and yet it turned out to be a murderer. The Jewish people were massacred in numerous cities; these crimes were murder and robbery at the same time. Because with the murdered Jews many Christians lost their creditors at the same time, whose assets they also appropriated. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed after excesses of anti-Jewish violence.
AIDS as a KGB Propaganda Weapon
As in the fourteenth century, epidemics caused panic and hysteria in our contemporary history. In 1982, the news magazine “Spiegel” reported on the so-called “shock from there.” “There,” which means the United States, where a mysterious disease initially caused horror, especially among homosexuals. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), triggered by the human immunodeficiency virus, was quickly and stigmatically described as the “gay epidemic”.
But the virus does not share human prejudices, it does not matter if its host is heterosexual or homosexual, HIV does not care about skin color and religion. The so-called “gay cancer” spread rapidly, also outside of the homosexual and drug scene.
1987: A demonstration takes place in Munich against measures taken by the Bavarian state government to contain HIV. Image: imago stock & people
While scientists were researching the virus and disease, some people preferred to believe conspiracy theories. As with Corona today, the misconception quickly emerged that HIV had emerged from a laboratory, as a weapon used by the US military, rather than from monkeys, as is the case.
During the Cold War, emerging conspiracy myths were at the mill of the KGB. The Soviet secret service launched a disinformation campaign to harm the class enemy in the West. The body supporting the KGB’s efforts was the Enlightenment Headquarters, the GDR’s foreign intelligence service, which was subordinate to the Ministry of State Security.
HIV? From the lab, of course …
Jakob Segal and his wife Lilli, a pair of RDA researchers, provided support. Biologist Segal identified Fort Detrick in Maryland, a US military base, which – of course – has a laboratory, as the alleged site of HIV development. The HIV created in Segal’s imagination was later tested on inmates. These, in turn, who became homosexual behind bars and were later released, had spread the virus. Nonsense from front to back.
The fact that the RDA biologist had never examined the pathogen himself did not challenge him in any way. However, Segal released his claims, without any scientific support, to the world. With consequences to the present: Conspiracy theory has made AIDS education and treatment difficult in some African countries. Especially when the United States is involved in some way.
Using the example of immunodeficiency disease, it becomes extremely clear what harm conspiracy myths surrounding epidemics can cause. Better to trust science. The coronavirus is not an attempt by anyone to subjugate humanity. “Complex power plans are rarely hidden and rarely successful,” Yuval Noah Harari, one of the world’s leading historians, said in an interview with t-online. “To think now that a few power-hungry billionaires could take over the world with the help of a virus is ridiculous.”
