FIVE OF TODAY’S WEIRDEST CONSPIRACY THEORIES

ACTORS WERE USED IN THE VIDEO OF GEORGE FLOYD’S DEATH

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis – over which white police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged – ignited demonstrations around the world, with over 50 countries participating in the Black Lives Matter protests. And with it has come a wealth of conspiracy theories, the main one being that everyone involved, including Floyd himself, are actors. Specifically, it’s what is dubbed a ‘false flag’ conspiracy, when an incident is staged by a group who want a reason to retaliate against the person or group they’ll later accuse of the attack.

POKEMON GO IS A GOVERNMENT SPYING PROGRAMME

Beyond this, the discovery that the game’s developer Niantic was headed up by a man called John Hanke only served to add fuel to this theory’s fire. Hanke started Keyhole, Inc – whose mapping platform eventually became Google Earth with help from the CIA’S venture capital arm, In-q-tel.

PRINCE CHARLES IS A VAMPIRE

Hospital – was ordered by the Obamas in retaliation for a comment Rivers made about the former president and first lady. Rivers had previously told a photographer that she believed Michelle was transgender and Obama was gay. Alex Jones, host of far-right website Infowars and regular peddler of off-the-wall conspiracy theories, said as a result of her comments Joan was ‘deader than a doornail’.

HILLARY CLINTON RAN A PAEDOPHILE RING OUT OF A PIZZA SHOP

The claim that Hillary Clinton was running a child-trafficking ring from the basement of a Washington, DC pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong first appeared on the internet messaging board 4chan. The story originated when users spotted recurring uses of the word ‘pizza’ in Hillary’s hacked emails (‘c.p.’ meaning cheese pizza is sometimes used on paedophile chatrooms to denote explicit images of children). So potent were the bogus claims that on 4 December 2016 a gunman named Edgar Maddison Welch entered the pizzeria and fired shots inside. The restaurant turned out not to even have a basement.

As soon as the hugely popular gaming app was launched in 2016, an avalanche of theories followed. The one that stuck was the claim that the game was a surveillance tool for the CIA (users had to offer up a swathe of personal information, including access to their Google accounts). According to genealogy records, Prince Charles is related to Vlad the Impaler, a 15th-century Romanian warlord and the inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This has given rise to theorists claiming that Charles shares more with his ancestor than a mere bloodline. The theory was bolstered by the claim that porphyria, an iron deficiency that makes the skin particularly sensitive to sunlight, has run in the Royal family for years.

When comedian Joan Rivers died in 2014 at the age of 81, the theorists got to work. They alleged that her death – during routine surgery in Mount Sinai