I know this is going to come as a shock to a lot of Australians. It did to me when I first read it. We are either actors paid by NASA to keep the deception rolling on, or, more worryingly, we are CGI replicants having no physical form beyond sketchy images on the net.
Tourists who come to the ersatz wide brown land are dumped off on Pacific Islands or South America and told they have arrived in Australia. Commercial aviation pilots are in on the scam. Everyone is in on it.
It is the sort of conceptual enigma that kept Kafka awake at night and would have furrowed the brow of Camus.
Welcome to the silliest conspiracy theory I’ve come across to date.
Shelley Floryd is a flat earther with an 11,000 strong following on Facebook. She’s part of an expanding group of idiots who believe Australia is an elaborate fantasy. Her posts on social media go back several years and continue to be discussed in dark corners of the internet to nodding acceptance that Australia is a great, big porkie.
One of her posts, in part, reads, “Australia is one of the biggest hoaxes ever created, and you have all been tricked … Make it known that this has all just been a cover-up. The things these “Australian” says (sic) to be doing, all these swear words and actions based on alcoholism, MDMA and bad decisions, are all ways to distract you from the ugly truth that is one of the greatest genocides in history. 162,000 people was (sic) said to have been transported to this imaginary land during a mere 80 years, and they are all long dead by now. They never reached that promised land.”
Dear-oh-dear. Not only do Australians not exist but in our shadow fictitious life, we remain ugly.
Anyone with a sense of logic can debunk flat Earth theory, not least of all because we haven’t received a cent from NASA. That is, unless we count all that space junk that lands in remote Australia as a medium of exchange.
In 240BC, Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes observed that on a midwinter’s day, in an Egyptian city now known as Aswan, the reflection of the sun could be seen in a deep well, meaning that it was directly overhead.
But in Alexandria, around 800 kilometres away and almost directly north of Aswan, at the exact same time on the very same day, the angle of the sun was about seven degrees – or one-50th of a circle.
If the Earth was flat, the angle would be identical in both places. Eratosthenes then went on to measure the circumference of the Earth and got to within a few kilometres of what it actually is. It’s called science. Well done, that man.
Is flat Earth theory merely a case of harmless idiocy? Are flat earthers the dumbest people on the planet and that now, having formed into a society, we can at least keep an eye on them and send them corks to place on their forks, so they won’t come to any physical harm while feeding or dispatch baby wipes to them in case they ‘forget’ to go to the toilet?
Well, yes and no.
The problem with flat earthers is not just that they promote pseudoscience to the world in increasingly lurid conspiracies. Want to know the flat Earth take on the assassination of JFK? Well, flat earthers believe the 35th POTUS, having said that a man, indeed an American man, would walk on the moon, had to be killed because if a man did walk on the moon, the entire planetary oblate spheroid conspiracy would be rumbled. Thus, it became standing room only on the grassy knoll.
The problem is not even that flat earthers are growing in number around the world and argue the world is run by the UN and NASA.
Incidentally, one Argentinian flat earther speaks of an elaborate conspiracy where the United Nations when viewed through a Spanish language lens translates as ONU and when reversed is UNO which is Spanish for one. One world government, get it?
But UN in French is one. So why the convolution? Conspiracists can’t see the bleeding obvious and instead twist themselves into knots to come up with their bizarre conclusions.
The rational view is that, generally speaking, the UN couldn’t organise a tipple at a brewery because it represents almost every nation on Earth with all the myriad conflicting geopolitical, social and cultural interests and that a body of this type accepts its futility and lurches into corruption. But never mind the rational explanation because flat earthers have already turned their eyes to the UN logo which is a projection of the globe viewed from above the Arctic Circle to avoid placing any nation or continent in its centre.
To flat earthers that two-dimensional expression of the planet is further proof and the UN is having a laugh. In their weird heliocentric world, Antarctica surrounds the flat Earth to the east, north, south and west and according to some including the addled-brained Floryd, Australia becomes a geographical inconvenience best explained by flinging its existence in the bin.
The real problem is that once flat earthers are backed into a logical corner, they start referring to the Elders of the Protocols of Zion, a crude textual fabrication designed to promote anti-Semitism and blame all the world’s ills at the feet of Jewish people.
Just whether flat earthers were a bunch of harmless idiots who lapsed into anti-Semitism or if anti-Semitism is at its core, is a chicken and egg paradox. But the simple fact is if you believe the Earth really is flat then you will pretty much believe anything, including that the world is run by a cabal of Jewish bankers.
And that’s where the harm lies. When flat earthers get together and feast on a range of complicated and irrational conspiracies, anti-Semitism is presented to them and not one of their number will raise an eyebrow.
But what do I know? I don’t exist. More to the point, neither do you.
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Australia is a lie and Australians are a cruel hoax upon the world. The continent nation is a fabrication. The 7.7 million square kilometre landmass known as Australia does not exist. It is a geographical sham created by the New World Order.