Conspiracy

A common aspect to FET is the presence of a conspiracy. There are several possibilities as to the extent of it. By its nature, a lot of the intricacies are not public knowledge.

There are two basic forms of this in FET.

A Conspiracy as a Scientific Statement
It is not true that conspiracies are the sign of a flawed point of view. Throughout history, ancient and recent, there have been examples of smaller groups seeking to deceive the populace that were eventually made public knowledge. This is no different.

One claim is that a conspiracy is unfalsifiable, or does not rely on evidence. This is not true. There are differences between what serves the motives of those keeping a secret and what would truly happen, and these departures provide an avenue for investigation. There are also likely to be instances where there are errors in the realisation of the cover-up.

Conspiracy is not a dirty word. It is a descriptor that can and has been applied to multiple events, and can be applied to yet more.

Small-Scale Conspiracy
The first form the conspiracy may take in FET is that of a smaller-scale conspiracy. Here the governments of the world are not even aware of the true shape of the Earth and instead make simple scientific errors.

It began in the cold war. The race to develop space travel had become the focal point of the political ambitions of the USA and Russia. Each country was failing, finding that doing so was significantly harder than they expected with their calculations, even impossible.

In 1957, Russia claimed to have sent up Sputnik 1 and the ripple effect this sent around the world is well-established. In 1961 they claimed to have sent the first man Yuri Gagarin into space. The prestige this gave Russia as a technological superpower encouraged the USA to claim the same, and soon the two feuding nations were focused on one-upping each other. This culminated in 1969 with the USA claiming to have performed the moon landing, seven years after John F Kennedy in 1962 promised to land a man on the moon.

When the cold war quietened down, space travel had become too ingrained in popular culture to admit that it was mere propaganda, and the effects were devastating to scientific research. Round Earth Theory had gone from being something that could be questioned (The original International Flat Earth Research Society being founded as late as 1956) to something believed firmly as fact simply because it was the belief of the time, and so the manufactured footage created by NASA and the Soviet Space Programme reflected it. Neither nation could be the first to back down.

The problem became apparent to each other nation that attempted space travel. They failed to achieve it but, so convinced it was real, resorted to faking their claims. As reflected in John F Kennedy's speech, space travel was treated as reflective of the fundamental American spirit, creating a patriotic fervor, the excitement of which spread worldwide rendering space travel as above reproach, unlike any scientific theory should be.

This is as far as the small-scale conspiracy stretches.

It is easy to keep a secret in this fashion. Even when someone is asked to do something quietly, their knowledge of the overall picture would be limited. Even if they decided to go public, there is nothing they could truly reveal. There are NASA whistleblowers but even their knowledge will be limited.

For example, even Neil Armstrong might be unaware of the true nature of the moon landings. If he was told that the people selected for the moon landing did not wish to have their identities made public and face the subsequent fame and life in the public eye (and potentially as targets of the Soviets), he would know that he personally did not go to the moon, but would have a reason to claim to do so that in no way invalidates the belief that man went there.

In a similar fashion, the crew that filmed the moon landing would be told that it is simply to gather supplementary footage for public consumption as the cameras onboard were grainy.

This view was developed for those that favor minimizing the reach of the conspiracy.

Large-Scale Conspiracy
Here, the true shape of the Earth is well-documented to certain members of the elite. For reasons of social control the knowledge of the Earth's shape (among other things) is withheld, and discussion on the subject is attempted to be quashed. This is most often observed online where shills, individuals paid to distribute disinformation, infiltrate forums and groups meant to talk about FET.

The true map of the world is displayed in the United Nations logo.