Category File
False Flag Theory
2 documented theories filed under this subject.
- Ku Klux Klan as a Catholic False FlagThe Ku Klux Klan as a Catholic False Flag theory was a reciprocal accusation structure in which opponents on each side of America’s religious and nativist conflicts claimed that the Klan’s violence and bigotry had been engineered by the other. One version held that Catholics created or manipulated the Klan in order to disgrace Protestants and discredit anti-Catholic activism. The reverse version held that Catholics falsely portrayed the Klan’s nature or magnified it to damage Protestant public legitimacy. The theory took shape because the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was overtly anti-Catholic while also presenting itself as defender of white Protestant America. That explicit anti-Catholicism made the movement both a real threat and a perfect object for inversion theories.
- The Reichstag Fire Inside JobThe Reichstag Fire Inside Job theory held that the Nazi regime, or Nazi elements acting with its knowledge, set the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 and then blamed Communists in order to justify emergency rule, mass arrests, and the destruction of political opposition. This theory began almost immediately, in part because the Nazis exploited the fire with such speed and ferocity. Historians have long debated the exact mechanics of the arson, and the single-culprit explanation centered on Marinus van der Lubbe has never fully silenced arguments for Nazi complicity. In the strongest version, van der Lubbe was either assisted, manipulated, or used as the visible culprit in a preplanned authoritarian seizure.