Debunked Myths
Myth:
The Illuminati secretly rules the world.
The Truth Is:
The real Illuminati lasted just 9 years! This 1776 Bavarian group was banned and dissolved—modern conspiracies are fiction.
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What We Know Now:
The modern Illuminati myth combines historical fact with paranoid fiction. The real Illuminati was a Bavarian secret society founded in 1776 by professor Adam Weishaupt. This Enlightenment-era group advocated reason, secularism, and reducing religious power—not world domination. It was infiltrated and banned by the Bavarian government in 1785, dissolving completely.
The conspiracy theory was resurrected in the 1960s-70s through books and pop culture. The myth thrives because it offers simple explanations for complex world events—a hidden hand guiding everything. It taps into our desire to find patterns behind chaos and misfortune.
The truth is far less dramatic: the original Illuminati were intellectuals discussing philosophy, not puppet masters controlling governments. Their greatest legacy isn't secret power but the sprawling conspiracy theories they accidentally inspired centuries after their demise.
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