#2165: Michael Rivero

What Really Happened (WRH) is a website run by one Michael Rivero. The website, which sports the tagline “Putting America First, Second, And Third!” claims to be telling you “what really happened,” which is rarely what really happened. Rivero credulously endorses more or less any conspiracy theory he comes across, and the website is particularly heavy on 9/11 conspiracy theories, Jewish banker conspiracies, JFK assassination conspiracies, Bin-Laden-is-alive conspiracy theories, the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory, global warming conspiracy theories (dominated by a large number of links to articles about days with cold weather and snow), as well as a range of conspiracy theories and nonsense related to various types of pseudohistory and survivalism. He also has a podcast – until recently on a shortwave radio and carried by the Genesis Communications Network – and a wiki. 

As for his climate change denialism, Rivero thinks you should take his collection of weather reports seriously since “I come from a science background myself” (he does not), and knows that science is corrupt and arrogant. “Why should you not trust science?” Well, according to Rivero, science was wrong before: “Alchemy, for one [which is decidedly pre-scientific]. Phlogiston Chemistry, for another.” Moreover, “[p]rior to the 14th Century Astronomers thought the Earth was the center of the universe, because, well, that’s what the church wanted,” which would count as an instance of the science-was-wrong-before fallacy only if you count church-appointed theologians living before the discovery of scientific methodology as “scientists” (one would think that Rivero, an unrelenting atheist, would be observant of that difference). Indeed, “18th Century Geologists thought the Earth was 6000,” which they did not, and “[P]rior to the 1950s, scientists thought proteins carried our heredity,” until the hypothesis was falsified by … independent conspiracy theorists? In any case, the main gist is that because science is wrong you should reject the scientific consensus about climate change because Rivero can show you news articles about cold days in North Carolina and climategate.

Rivero claims to have started the website as well as his radio show as a result of wondering (i.e. blindly endorsing a conspiracy perspective on) what happened to Vince Foster. Of course, Foster was not the only troublesome character assassinated by the Clintons, and WRH website dutifully keeps records.

Diagnosis: At least his rants tend to be grammatical and internally mostly coherent. Which is more than one can say about a lot of people pushing the kind of nonsense Rivero pushes. His website has been called “a poor man’s version of Infowars, which sums it up pretty well.

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki