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Today I want to tell you about the absolute WILDEST conspiracy theory with the MOST BORING name possible. Like, seriously, the chasm between the name of this thing and the shit adherents believe would dwarf the Grand Canyon. I just want you to be prepared. Okay, here’s what it’s called: The National Economic Security and Recovery Act. I know, you’re already bored. It doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory; it sounds like a piece of Congressional legislation designed to lower property taxes for Applebees. But, (Stefon voice) this conspiracy theory has EVERYTHING:
9/11
Aliens
Shapeshifting reptilians
Mormons
Sovereign Citizens
The illuminati
Pyramid schemes
New Age gurus who channel 40,000-year-old warrior spirits
Free energy
Cryptocurrency
Meatballs secretly made of Bigfoot testicles
Okay maybe not that last one but everything else? It’s here, under the ridiculously un-ridiculous title of the National Economic Security and Recovery Act, or “NESARA.” And I’m telling you about it now because two far right state representatives–Sen. Mark Finchem and Rep. Leo Biasiucci of Arizona–are going to be speaking at a NESARA conference next weekend. It’s called “Quantum Summit,” because of course it is. Oh, I guess that means I can add “quantum bullshit” to the list.
Okay. So, back in 1996, a regular guy named Harvey Francis Barnard decided that the best way for the US to improve the economy would be to get rid of income tax and compound interest in secured loans and institute a national sales tax and get back on the gold standard. He wrote up his ideas, titled it “Draining the Swamp: Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform,” and sent 1,000 copies to members of Congress, all of whom correctly ignored him.
In the 2000s, he put his bad idea on the internet, because that’s what the internet is for. He retitled his magnum opus and coined the name “National Economic Security and Recovery Act,” despite the fact that such a thing had never actually been introduced in Congress.
This is where Barnard exits the story. He had absolutely nothing to do with the incoming conspiracy theory and you can safely forget about him.
But let’s go back in time a bit, because while Barnard was perfecting his doomed economic plan, another man was finding great financial success. In 1994, Clyde Hood started telling his fellow Illinois churchgoers that he was an investment wizard and was starting a “prosperity program” called Omega. He offered them “units” they could purchase from Omega for just $100 each, and in 275 days each of those units would pay off at 50 to 1. At that point, they could either collect their $5,000 or “let it roll” for another 275 days, at which point it would pay off 50 to 1 again. They could “let it roll” just one more time if they chose, at which point they could cash out and live the good life with their millions of dollars.
This was, obviously, a big old grift. As people tried to cash out, Hood would come up with more and more excuses for why they had to wait just a little while longer. But people kept throwing money at him, to the point where he hired confederates to help bring in more and more money from across the country. He set up phone lines where “investors” could call and here prerecorded updates on how their investment was doing. He also had an online forum, where he would yell at anyone who expressed concern, telling them that by doing so they were jeopardizing the entire operation.
As the years passed with no payouts, Hood’s excuses got more and more ridiculous, to the point where he started blaming “entities” in the US government who wanted Omega to fail and were stopping him from paying the investors. The conspiracy talk worked, and the forum members confirmed that that’s what was happening. This was confirmed by Hood’s hired confederates, as well as copycat scammers who joined the forum to start fleecing their own victims with the same narrative.
When the US government actually did notice Hood’s scam around 2000, they prosecuted him for fraud. But while investigating how many people were conned, they noticed that a shockingly large number of victims were concentrated around a small town in the state of Washington called Yelm. What’s so special about Yelm? Well, that happens to be the hometown of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment.
Back in the ‘80s, a con artist who called herself “J.Z. Knight” claimed that she could channel the spirit of a 35,000 warrior from a sunken continent named Ramtha. Despite the fact that she was comically bad at it and mostly used “Ramtha” to shout homophobic and antisemitic rants, she got super famous, and idiots flocked to her “school” in Yelm to throw their money at her, which she mostly seemed to spend on wine, explaining that it was important to Ramtha because aliens brought wine grapes to Earth 450,000 years ago.
Guys, we aren’t even close to done. I warned you.
As I mentioned in a previous video, people who get scammed once are likely to get scammed again. So the Ramtha followers took the Omega bait, hook, line, and sinker. One of Ramtha’s former students who still lived nearby was a woman named Shaini Goodwin, who in the late ‘90s started putting out her own pre recorded phone messages promoting Omega’s prosperity program and urging people to join up, while helping to spread Hood’s increasingly desperate lies about why they weren’t paying out. According to the federal investigation, Goodwin was NOT one of Hood’s paid confederates, so she was either a victim who fully believed the lies, or else she was one of the copycats who was running her own “prosperity program” (which she later denied).
Goodwin adopted the pseudonym “Dove of Oneness,” made her own website, set up a PO Box, incorporated, and soon had a rabid following of information-starved Omega investors devouring her every update and sending her money and other gifts whenever she requested them. She claimed to be the only person authorized to speak on Omega and all other major prosperity plans, and she often did her own Ramtha-like “channeling” of ancient wise men.
When the government cracked down on Omega in 2000, Goodwin went into overdrive to convince her followers that everything was actually just fine. She instructed them to stay away from news about the federal investigation, and promised that it would all eventually go away because the Supreme Court was on their side. When one of Hood’s co-conspirators died from diabetes shortly after pleading guilty, Dove announced that he had been killed by their enemies. And finally, she announced that eventually, all the prosperity programs would pay off at once thanks to the National Economic Security and Recovery Act. NESARA.
She had somehow stumbled upon poor Harvey Barnard’s website, and used it as a basis for her new, ultimate explanation for why these scams were definitely not scams. NESARA, as “Dove” explained to her followers, wasn’t just about abolishing income tax and the few other ideas Barnard had. It was actually going to abolish the IRS entirely, an addition that I’m sure had nothing to do with Goodwin owing $12,000 in back taxes.
It was also going to eliminate all debt, entirely, and the best part was that this Act had already passed. It’s just that nobody in Congress could talk about it because the Supreme Court put in a gag order to prevent mass hysteria that would result when people discovered how much MONEY they were about to have. As soon as that gag order was lifted, the money would magically appear. To prove it, she sent them to Barnard’s website. For his part, Barnard was very confused about the increase in traffic and emails from people claiming NESARA had passed. He tried to explain to people that it hadn’t even made it to the floor of Congress but it was to no avail, because Dove told them that he was being forced to lie to them or else be put to death for treason.
In 2001, Hood and his remaining co-conspirators pled guilty to fraud and went to prison, but Dove explained that this was just the deep state working against “O.” When the federal investigators contacted Hood’s victims in order to repay them what they had lost, many of them refused the money or refused to even talk to them.
And then, September 11, 2001 happened. After the planes crashed into the towers, Dove wrote the message that would launch her into the conspiracy theory hall of fame: she claimed that this was NOT a terrorist attack, but rather a Deep State operation that aimed to cripple the big reveal of NESARA. It turns out, and you’re never gonna believe this, but it turns out that the morning of September 11th was when the International Monetary Fund was set to launch NESARA and start paying out prosperity funds, and their computers were inside the World Trade Center.
Sure enough, Dove’s popularity skyrocketed after then, and if you can believe it, her missives got crazier and crazier. She incorporated more ancient wise men, Egyptian gods, and also added in technologically advanced aliens who beamed people out of the World Trade Center before they died on 9/11. The aliens are on her side and will eventually intervene, but it’s complicated because they follow the Prime Directive from Star Trek, where they can’t interfere with less evolved civilizations like ours.
Her followers got so into it all that they moved offline, passing out flyers, protesting in front of government buildings, and starting monthly in-person meetings to discuss her posts and dream of the day they’d be millionaires, like a bunch of ex-Mormons in Salt Lake City who gathered under the name of “The Open Mind Forum,” meaning that their minds were so open their brains fell clear out of their skulls. They aren’t ex-Mormons because they realized that THAT was a cult and got out–no, they’re “ex” because they were excommunicated for believing that ancient spirits were communicating to them through a random lady in Washington.
But they managed to actually combine their Mormon beliefs with NESARA: Jesus is going to return in a spaceship. And eventually everyone will be raptured away by the aliens. And there are only two “races,” and one of them is evil. The Mormons thought that was black people but these ex-Mormons have decided it’s actually lizard people who work with the illuminati.
You’d think that at some point–five years? Ten years? Twenty? People would eventually accept the fact that there is no secret law that Congress can’t tell us they passed. You would be wrong. For some people, admitting they were conned is much, much harder than believing that eventually aliens will come down and write them a check for a gazillion dollars.
So instead of NESARA going away, it’s actually grown into GESARA. That’s right, GESARA: the GLOBAL Economic Security and Recovery Act. EVERY country has secretly passed a bill that will give everyone in the world pakillions of dollars, or whatever currency they use. One grifter has even convinced his Telegram followers to buy up Zimbabwean currency that no longer have any worth at all since Zimbabwe switched to the US dollar in 2009.
I’d be here all day if I described all the ways each country’s grifters are grifting, but Bellingcat has an excellent overview if you’re interested. They cover cryptocurrency rug pulls, a free energy machine, and of course, the inevitable overlap with NESARA’s spiritual successor: QAnon.
So there you have it: a completely batshit conspiracy theory that covers nearly every other bullshit conspiracy theory in existence. This hands down beats the former turducken of bullshit I discussed, Balance of Nature. And congrats to those of you who live in Arizona, because your state legislators are speaking at a NESARA conference.
Anyway, if you’d like to learn more about this bullshit, as always, links to everything I discuss can be found in the transcript, which is linked below and is on patreon.com/rebecca and skepchick.org. I highly recommend Zeb Haradon’s 2005 documentary about the ex-Mormons, which is available for free in full here on YouTube, and this profile of “Dove” written by Sean Robinson for the Tacoma News Tribune.
