Wednesday, July 10, 2019

#2215. Bert Schlossberg

Bert Schlossberg is an internet crank and conspiracy theorist, primarily (well, exclusively) associated with conspiracies surrounding the 1983 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 incident. Schlossberg describes himself as “[t]he son-in-law of one of the passengers of the ill-fated Korean Air Lines Flight 007, shot down by a Russian air-to-air missile in 1983” and director of The International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors, Inc. He has even written a self-published book detailing his views on the matter and is principal author of Conservapedia’s rather substantial article – including 16 supplemental articles – on the issue (he is also a Wikipedia editor, but appears to have received less acceptance for his views there – a separate article on “Wikipedia prejudice on KAL 007” has more recently popped up on Conservapedia). Wingnut conspiracy outlets, such as Accuracy in Media and the magazine of the John Birch Society, have covered Schlossberg’s views.

According to Schlossberg KAL 007, having been missed by one of the missiles, managed to land with the passengers and crew surviving; these were then abducted and put into prison camps by the Soviet authorities; this, of course, is why his organization works to free them. Supplementally, he suggests that KAL 007 might have been used as “bait” by the US to test Soviet response to a flight intrusion into their borders, or that it was a targeted assassination of John Birch Society president Larry McDonald, who was a passenger on the flight (why anyone would bother with that is an open question). University of Georgia Law Professor Donald Wilkes considers Schlossberg’s theory to be “even more preposterous” than Michel Brun's theory of a Japanese locale for the shootdown and an air battle having taken place between Soviet and American aircrafts.

Diagnosis: Ok, so in themselves Schlossberg's conspiracy theories are presumably innocuous, but he also makes his own small contributions to polluting the internet with conspiracy nonsense, and deserves a brief mention.

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

1 comment:

  1. Back when Flight 007 occurred, the Reader's Digest went along the lines of this guy, with a cover painting of the 747 floating in the water. Even though the wreckage had already been found.
    Nowadays, the Reader's Digest is mostly quackery.

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