Forewords and Intros: We Never Went to the Moon pp. 1-9

 We shall begin with the “who.” The author of this book is Bill Kaysing. He is not, as far as I know, a conspiracy theorist in the broad sense. He doesn’t appear to be an Illuminati believer, nor does he think the lizard people control everything. He has some other conspiracy beliefs about the CIA, privacy, and the federal reserve; and I get the impression that he is merely an anti-government theorist.

A little biographical information: Kaysing was a Naval Officer in WWII, and afterwards became a dime store writer. His books include “How to Eat Well on Less than a Dollar a Day (1970),” “The Robin Hood Handbook (1974),” and “Great Hot Springs of the West (1984).” He has a few books in the “How to eat…” category and according to rationalwiki he was actually a decent food writer. He died in April of 2005.

Kaysing claimed that he was originally approached to write this book as a satire. It was supposed to be a joke, here’s what the kooks believe, and let’s make it seem a little plausible. Somewhere in the writing of the book he seems to have started believing his own bullshit. This is not an unusual story. The original creators of the 9/11 documentary “Loose Change” made this claim as well. Director Dylan Avery claimed that the original version was made up as a trailer for a fictional movie—in which a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is conducted as a ruse in order to steal the gold bullion that is held underneath (basically ripping off the third Die Hard movie).

Now let’s move on to the what: the theory that Kaysing is going to allege is a little different than the ones that I’ve covered in the last few years. Those books “None Dare Call it Conspiracy,” “Proofs of a Conspiracy…”, and “Behold a Pale Horse;” were, what I (borrowing from political theorist Michael Barkun) label “Super Conspiracies.” They are conspiracy theories that involve all official bodies in government, entertainment, and business. Cooper’s theory is sometimes breaching the next level up—the Omni conspiracy because he does put aliens and the supernatural into his theory; but, given that it is so incoherent it’s difficult to determine the real thrust of his theory.

Kaysing is trying to expose an event conspiracy theory. This is a theory that only involves one specific event and is generally isolated to that event. By necessity some of this conspiracy theory is going to bleed into other areas of society. Kaysing’s thrust here is the Moon Landing and anything that touches is going to be collateral damage—but we are, for the length of this walkthrough, only touching on the Moon Landing.

Instead of a summary of the theory, we’ll just begin with the foreword. The foreword is unsigned, which is odd. Usually, in one of these books, the foreword is usually written by another conspiracy theorist or the author themselves. We have no idea who wrote this foreword, but it’s worth noting because it gives the summary of the conspiracy theory.

“It has been estimated that about 30 per cent of the adult population of the United States does not believe that this country landed astronauts on the Moon.”

It would be nice if the foreword told us “Who” estimated this. I wouldn’t care if that 30 percent was among UFOlogists, but here, it’s just a mystery…until we turn the page and the introduction (we assume this is written by Kaysing) explains that a July 1973 author David Wise writes, “Apparently a substantial number of Americans do not believe that their government landed men on the moon;” and then a Knight Newspaper article from 14 June 1970 interviewed 1721 people in six cities and asked them about the Moon Landing. I don’t know if Wise cites the article because the introduction isn’t clear, but what I do know is that the intro makes very clear that the news article was not attempting to establish a cross section of American society.

Back the foreword. The foreword is trying to establish an argument ad populum. Because a number of people believe it there must be something to it. This claim also serves to remind the believer that they aren’t as kooky as us “normies” would have them believe. Thirty percent is a huge number. The rest of the foreword tries to downplay the importance of this 30B dollar swindle, because there is also the “200 Billion Dollar Food Swindle!” and the “300 Billion Dollar Tax Swindle!” Plus all of the others as well: “defense spending, drugs, medicine, price rigging, social security, and on and on, ad infinitum.”

None of those claims are given context. However, we do know what kind of audience this book is being pitched to base those claims. These people will become sovereign citizens (freeman on the land), and drive police and judges crazy by talking about how they don’t owe taxes because their names were written in red ink. The intro lays out why people believe the conspiracy theory. If you are familiar with this conspiracy theory the motivation for the “big lie” will not surprise, you. Kaysing claims that the people asked said the reason for the conspiracy was “to fool the Russians and Chinese,” “to justify the great cost of the space program,” while a few thought “the government had a bread-and-circuses motive” to distract the people from the turbulent 60s and 70s. Lying to the Russians is the most common motive. In all my years of teaching a conspiracy theory course, this kept popping up. The US and the USSR were the great rivals in everything, and the space race was no different. In fact, until Neil Armstrong puts his foot on the Moon, the USSR had won at every possible milestone. The Chinese being tossed in is a nice addition that I have never seen before. It makes as much sense, especially considering that US-Chinese relations were completely isolated during the landing. The second motive is less common, and it is commonly believed by individuals who seek out anything that points to government waste.

“Government deception, supported by a pervasive system of official secrecy and an enormous public relations machine, has reaped a harvest of massive public distrust.” This is the conspiracist’s gambit: what we know as the bait and switch. In conspiracy circles, the theorist posits something true and then substitutes in their theory. This book has a publication date of 1976. This places it after Nixon and Watergate, after the counter-culture movement, and after the Vietnam War. Kaysing wants to imply that the government lying about the Moon Landing is why there is massive government distrust. Even if that 30% number is right, it still means that 70% of the population believes that it happened which doesn’t explain the massive mistrust.