Fact Check: Illuminati Conspiracy on the One Dollar Bill?
If there’s one thing we folks at Irregular Times can depend on, it’s interesting correspondence. In this morning’s inbox, I found this analysis of the One Dollar bill, rife with references to diabolical Illuminati influence:
You can find this image and its claims at various places around the Internet, too. My favorite is web page that also finds Illuminati influence in the Batman TV cartoon series.
A quick fact check reveals the analysis of the dollar bill to be full of errors. A check of Latin reveals that Annuit Coeptis doesn’t mean “announcing conception,” but rather “endeavors are favored.” “Novus Ordo Seculorum” has nothing to do with the word “secular”; the word means “of the Ages.” While it is true that the Roman numeral MDCCLXXVI does refer to “666” if you remove an M, a C and an X, there’s no reason why a person would do that; “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” at the top of the dollar bill refers the notion that TUNIS ATE ERIC if you remove some letters there. Poor Eric. I hope for Tunis’ sake that he’s digestible.
The “72 bricks of the pyramid” are said here to refer to the 72 powers of the name of God but in other conspiratorial musings are said to refer to the “72 demons of Goetia” and a sacred reference to the Tower of Babel. There’s just a little problem with that. I encourage you to find yourself a dollar bill and look at it. How many bricks do you count?
I spend about 10 minutes trying over and over to count the “bricks” of the pyramid, and I just can’t come up with a consistent number. In one attempt I arrived at 52 bricks, and in another I came to 63. I challenge you to give it a shot: how many bricks do you count? I imagine you’ll come up with a different total, because there simply aren’t enough clear brick lines to arrive at any definitive count of bricks. You can’t even take a representative brick and try to intuit how many of that brick would fit in the space, because some of the clearly delineated bricks are narrower than others. Why would the grand conspiracy of the Illuminati be trying to send a message about its existence through an image on which the number of bricks involved can’t be counted?
The analysis of the one dollar bill has so many errors and flaws in it that I can’t take its claim seriously. That’s just what the Illuminati would want. For the conspiracy theorist, there is no better proof of the existence of the Illuminati than shoddy evidence. Clearly the Illuminati disseminated the dollar-bill theory in order to discredit the idea that the Illuminati exist, making it that much easier for the shadowy group to stay out of view.