According to the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory there once existed a massive, advanced regime that stretched over much of the Asian continent. This Empire’s power was so great that they built structures all over the world, including in Africa, North America and South America. Buildings such as the White House in Washington D.C. and the Great Pyramids in Egypt were built by the great, globe spanning Tartarian empire. They were able to accomplish this in part thanks to advanced technology that is lost to time, like batteries powered by the Earth which distributed electricity wirelessly.
This theory has spawned a community of people who pour through old European maps and pictures of 19th century buildings in search of evidence for this lost empire, then post their findings on Reddit and Tik tok.
But was there really a lost empire called “Tartaria?” Or have conspiracy theorists on the internet misinterpreted an archaic European term for parts of Asia then proceeded to desperately search for evidence of a better world that was lost to time?
REFERENCES
Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory
Shaoxin, Dong. "The Tartars in European Missionary Writings of the Seventeenth Century." In Foreign Devils and Philosophers, pp. 82-103. Brill, 2020.
Graff, Rebecca S. "Dream City, Plaster City: Worlds’ Fairs and the Gilding of American Material Culture." International Journal of Historical Archaeology 16 (2012): 696-716.
Greenhalgh, Paul. "Ephemeral Vistas: Great Exhibitions, Expositions Universelles and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939." (1989)
CIA Document: National Cultural Development Under Communism
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02771R000200090002-6.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walhalla_(memorial)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmenhaus_(Burggarten)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Hall_Post_Office_and_Courthouse_(New_York_City)
The Singer Building
https://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/singer-building/
Welcome, listener, to the 273rd chapter of the QAA Podcast, the Tartarian Empire episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Tartaria, an ancient land where the birds chirp and people are building amazing things.
Coming through a light mist upon this dewy morning rides a lone traveler.
It is, of course, the night gallant Travis View.
Second Prince of Tartaria and he's looking a little wild-eyed folks.
His hair is unkempt.
He has red eyes.
He's drooling.
I don't think he's okay.
I believe that the Tartarians had already invented YouTube and it looks like Travis has spent all his entire royal night On it, just watching videos of people reinforcing the idea that he exists, his empire is true and real, and that we have misunderstood history and perhaps all of technological development.
So here to bring us a truly cursed community and one that I've seen kind of infused in almost every conspiracy theory community that I've explored is Travis View, second prince of the Tartarian Revolution.
How's it going, buddy?
You don't look so good.
It's going, yeah, going good.
Yeah, I am a little scrambled.
I did lose a little bit of sleep watching hours of baking videos of people who are trying to claim that there's evidence of a false history or something like that.
Well, the Tartarian amphetamine salts have long since run out, and it turns out that they've invented Rockstaria.
Yeah.
Or Monster... Monsterio.
The tonic, the tonic drink.
Halt!
Halt Julian!
You have been banished to the Tartarian mines!
This is, uh, but yeah, this was a nice throwback episode to work on.
It reminded me of like, you know, pre-January 6, pre-pandemic when we just, you know, dive into wild communities on the internet and before it became quite so obviously dangerous and serious.
So this is interesting.
So yeah, today we're going to talk about the conspiracy theory of the Tartarian Empire.
And this is sometimes called the QAnon of Architecture.
I think that name came from a Bloomberg article about it.
But honestly, I think it's more accurate to describe the Tartarian Empire Conspiracy Theory as a crossbreed between QAnon and Fomenko's New Chronology.
Now, I understand why people don't describe it that way, because people would go, you know, what the hell is New Chronology?
So we covered the New Chronology back in Premium Episode 155, but it's essentially like a Russian ethno-nationalist conspiracy theory which claims that
ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, and Egypt actually occurred during the Middle Ages
and that we're all being lied about this in order to cover up the true history which is
supposedly about a global empire called the Russian Horde. I want to sit a Tartaria guy down with a Lemuria
guy and just see what happens.
Like, I love all the kind of competing lost civilizations that actually are history-defining.
Maybe it's just a question of, hey, we were the first floor and they were the basement.
Julian, I think that would be extremely bad.
Well, is it a hollow earth or a hollow moon, Jake?
I just need to know.
I need to know!
So, I think that the lineage between New Chronology and the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory is more conceptual than direct.
They seem more fixated on history in the 19th century than the Middle Ages.
But, like, the broad, you know, ideas about, like, you know, there's the cover-up, massive cover-up about history is basically there.
So, the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory combines these false ideas about history with crowdsource efforts to dig up evidence about this falsified history.
And because of the crowdsource elements, you know, with many people online spinning their own conspiracy theories based on old maps or pictures of old buildings, there isn't really a single coherent narrative, much like in QAnon.
Unlike mud fossils, which has long beaten Tartaria, is a much more fun thing to bake.
You don't just have architecture.
You have all statues being real people.
You have a rock being the head of a goose.
You have whatever you want.
And this one, it's like, hey, maybe you're stuck in the city a little bit more.
Maybe you don't like to walk through nature like Travis does, you know, on his pilgrimages.
But yeah, maybe you're just at a cafe, but you still want to bake.
You still want to bake the shapes.
So the broad strokes of the conspiracy theory are this.
Hundreds of years ago, there existed a vast, sophisticated regime that stretched over much of the Asian continent.
This is the Tartarian Empire.
And this empire's power was so great that they built structures all over the world, including in Africa, North America, and South America, and in some instances even in Australia and New Zealand.
Buildings such as the White House in Washington, D.C.
and the Great Pyramids in Egypt were built by this great globe-spanning Tartarian empire.
Wow, there was really different schools of construction, you know?
Between the White House and the fucking pyramids.
Although I would like to bury- every president we should bury with like all of the like deep state assistants that run around them.
Like we should cut those tongues out and bury them together, I think.
So we need to learn from that aspect of Tartaria.
The Egyptian aspect.
I mean, are they dead when you bury them?
No, you just cut their tongues and you just lock them in there and they do their thing.
The deep state, the intelligence apparatus will carry the presence on to heaven.
Yeah, I like it.
Imagine David Axelrod opening his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
His tongue, long since cut.
As soon as you say that, I just imagine like Brendan Fraser, you know, fighting these guys in like, you know, 1930s adventurer gear.
Yeah.
Brendan Fraser plays Donald Rumsfeld in Ancient Egypt.
So the conspiracy theory says that they are able to accomplish all of this, in part, thanks to advanced technology that has lost to time, like batteries powered by the earth, which distributed electricity wirelessly.
Oh, man.
I'm going to bring up like everything that this offends, you know, I mean, right here, we've got a Nikola Tesla erasure.
So we're going to have a lot of conspiracy theorists angry about this claim.
So why, you might ask, is the existence of this empire not common knowledge?
Now surely an empire so vast and so great would leave behind just an incredible amount of undeniable archaeological evidence of its existence.
They say at some point there was a mud flood event.
This was a cataclysm that destroyed the empire and its creations.
cover them up. However, there were Tartarian structures that survived the event, but they've been dismantled. Many
of them, not all of them, but a lot of them have been dismantled and destroyed by governments so that we can
never know about this empire and its wonders.
So that's a pretty succinct way of describing it. But one online promoter of the Tartarian conspiracy theory was even
more succinct.
Okay.
Yeah, that's it.
Yep.
Now, what is the truth about the Tartarians?
in history, intentionally destroyed by the satanic cabal.
Okay.
Yeah, that's it.
Yep.
Now, what is the truth about the Tartarians?
Now, it was never a, like, real specific place, or it's never been a group of people who
called themselves the Tartarians.
The name Tartar or Tartary was just a name that Europeans gave to parts of Asia or some
populations in Asia from the 13th to the 18th centuries mostly.
This name was always vague and the meaning of Tartar or Tartary in European texts changed from century to century and eventually fell out of favor as Europeans got a more complete and sophisticated understanding of the nations and people in the Asian continent.
I read a couple of different accounts regarding the etymology of Tartar, and so the term probably derived from the word Tatar, without that first R, which means mounted messenger in both Turkish and Persian language traditions.
However, Europeans seem to have added an extra R in the middle, changing Tatar to Tartar.
This was done to make a connection to the word to the lowest level of the underworld in Greek mythology, which was called Tartarus.
And also, of course, beef tartare, which is a very tasty way to consume beef.
And of course, tartar sauce.
Of course.
Actual evidence of this wordplay comes from a letter sent to King Louis IX of France in 1270 A.D.
1270 AD, which says this, "In the present danger of the Tartars, either we shall push
them back into the Tartarus whence they are come, or they will bring us all into heaven."
So this is a reference to probably the Mongolian people, and it's basically saying like,
"Oh, the Tartars, we're going to push them, they're going to push them back into
hell from whence they came."
It's very, very xenophobic.
Very 300, you know?
Yeah, I get it.
Genghis Khan, he was fucking, he was cool, man.
Like, he chopped some people up.
So Tartar may have been a pun to denote, you know, that hellish place or those people from the hellish place.
One of the first texts referred to the Tartars was written by an Italian explorer and Catholic archbishop named Giovanni de Pian del Carpine in the 1240s.
And the text that he brought back to Europe in exploring these lands was called this.
So that means History of the Mongols, which we call Tartars.
So yeah, already being like, yeah, we're... Listen, we're... I love that the racism is baked into the title of the book.
And now I present to you our sacred text, the slur that we will use from now on.
Okay, I got a new bit.
Woke Genghis Khan.
The T-word is ours.
You actually can't use it.
Yeah, so apparently in the text he actually mentions like, well, they don't like it when we call them the Tartars.
That's really what you want out of a slur is like the group of people to really just dislike it.
That's like the subheader of the book.
It's like the slur we will use, and they don't like it.
But I feel like this is really important to note.
So this is the oldest European account of the Mongols.
It says right in the title, it says, which we call the Tartars.
Does it claim to have discovered a people or a nation called the Tartars?
It's very explicit.
That's just we, the Italians in this case, call these people.
History of the Italians, which we call WAPs.
They don't like it.
They do not like it very much.
Now, there were other accounts of people that were called Tartars over the century.
For example, in the 16th century, the Portuguese apothecary and diplomat Tomé Pires wrote a book known as Soma Oriental, but its full translated name is An Account of the East from the Red Sea to China.
It was the first comprehensive European account of Asia to the east of India, a region that was basically totally unknown to Europe at the time.
That's awesome.
Portuguese apothecary Nick Mullen gave us some nice drawings to go with the language in his book.
So that account describes some land called Tartary and people called Tartars, but he doesn't claim to have met these Tartars firsthand.
Rather, he's repeating some hearsay.
So this is what this 500-year-old book had to say about the Tartars in China.
They say that there are people from Tartary in the land of China, and they call them Tartars.
And these people are very white with red beards.
They ride on horseback.
They are warlike.
And they say that they go from China to the land of the Tartars in two months, and that in Tartary, they have horses shod with copper shoes.
In the mid-17th century, the Italian writer Martino Martini wrote a book called I wonder if he, him and Richard Martini are related.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's such a deep cut, but I remember him, man.
I love him.
So he wrote a book called De Bello Tutorico about his travels in China.
And this work was translated into a bunch of other languages, it was read across Europe, and it helped vaguely apply the term Tartar to a wider region of people than just the Mongols.
Eventually, as Europeans gained a slightly better understanding of geography, they divided Tartar into sections like Siberia, which was called Great Tartar, or the Russian Tartar, and Manchuria, which was called the Chinese Tartar.
In 2020, the historian Dongxiao Jin at the University of Exeter published a description of how the use of the term Tartar changed over time.
Generally speaking, the term Tartar was applied to the people living in the northern parts of Eurasia.
In the 13th century, the name Tartar was used in Europe for the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, while Marco Polo's term, Tartary, mainly refers to the Mongols.
Later, the word was applied to the different Turkic or Mongolic-speaking peoples who were encountered by the Russians.
Before 1600, Europeans had not known about the Jurchen, so the term Tartary in European literature before the 16th century does not include them.
Only by the 17th century, the word Tartar in European texts usually refers to the Manchus.
So it's like inconsistent over time.
And like each time the Europeans learned more about Asia and they just, they would just like name a chunk of Tartar after the people they encountered.
Here's where things get a little bit complicated.
Currently within the Russian Federation, there's a Republic called Tatarstan, which is occasionally called Tartaria.
It's pretty small.
It takes up about 26,000 square miles.
It has a population of about 4 million people.
And it's named after the Turkish ethnic group who are the Tatars or the Volga Tatars who predominantly practice Sunni Islam and their native language is called Tatar.
But in the Western texts, these specific people in this region were sometimes called Tataria or the Tartars well into the 20th century.
So that's kind of messy and confusing, but it's just an issue of like naming conventions.
Yeah, it's just an issue of they basically just thought, oh, there's all those people over there, that whole continent of weird people.
These facts about the origin of the concept of Tartary or the Tartarian Empire are basically everything you need to know to debunk the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory.
These terms, Tartar, Tartary, Tartarian, they're just used inconsistently in European texts revert to various people in regions in Asia, and they just fell out of favor over time.
But in the 20th century, the term Tartars might have been used to refer to the Volga Tatars in Russia.
So that's it.
But if you approach these old texts without that context, it might seem like Europeans were constantly discussing this country called Tartary.
And then at one point in history, they just stopped.
You could believe that European writers were simply, you know, started using new, more precise terms to discuss the nations and people of Asia, or you could believe that it's evidence that there was once a nation called Tartary whose existence has been covered up.
As one Tartarian Empire conspiracist put it when discussing the history of the concept of the Tartars, I don't know who it is, and I don't know why, but somebody is telling a lie.
You're trying to tell me that Tartaria was the name given by Europeans for an unknown region?
Come on, brother!
That don't even make no sense.
Well, I mean, that's true.
That's the case.
You got it.
Yeah.
I mean, there's nothing to argue with there.
That's just truth.
OK, but where did the conspiracy theory originate?
So its precise origins are a little fuzzy.
The earliest known appearance on the English Internet comes in early 2018 on the forum StolenHistory.org.
Stolen History, like the name implies, is mostly a forum dedicated to uncovering, you know, sort of unconventional, unorthodox theories about history.
Yeah, there's the Tartarian board, there's the Fomenko board, there's the Lemurian board, there's all the Atlantean board.
So there are some claims I was bouncing around the Russian internet for a few years prior to that.
I'm obviously not able to verify that, but it wouldn't be surprising given that a significant chunk of the Russian population are very fond of alternate history theories.
So the first known comprehensive outline of the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theory comes from a stolen history post made in April of 2018 from a user named Corbin Dallas.
So the user, of course, got his name from a character played by Bruce Willis in the film Fifth Element.
Of course, I could have told you that!
This basically means that, you know, that at least on the English internet, the Tartarian conspiracy theory is younger than QAnon.
Yeah, well, and it's also interesting because the whole sort of like, you know, premise of Fifth Element was that these ancient aliens built the pyramids and had been in contact with human beings, you know, that were passing down their secret for centuries.
So there's a little bit of bleed over.
I can see why he chose that name.
Yeah.
So the post title is Tartary, an empire hidden in history.
It was bigger than Russia once.
So this text is often the basis for a lot of the claims made by other Tartarian conspiracy theorists who came afterwards, so I think it's worth going over some of the statements made in this post specifically.
The first piece of evidence in this post is an entry from the 1771 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.
That encyclopedia entry discusses Tartary and specifically mentions that it is a country.
Tartary, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west.
This is called Great Tartary.
The Tartars who lie south of Muscovy and Siberia are those of Astrakhan, Circassia and Dagestan.
Situated northwest of the Caspian Sea.
The Kalmuk Tartars, who lie between Siberia and the Caspian Sea.
The Uzbek Tartars and Mughals, who lie north of Persia and India.
And lastly, those of Tibet, who lie northwest of China.
Were they trying to say Mongols and wrote Mughals?
Yeah.
That's awesome!
It's already just busted!
It's that thing where, like, the names and spellings of things were very inconsistent, you know, in this era.
That's all.
So the post on stolen history later specifically says Tartary was not a tract.
It was a country because it says Tartary, a vast country.
So here's the problem with that.
The word country is not synonymous with nation.
The word country can refer to a general area, which is clearly what's going on with this encyclopedia entry.
So it's pretty, it's not, it's not evidence that there was an actual nation called Tartary.
Another piece of evidence is a declassified 1957 report by the CIA titled National Cultural Development Under Communism.
This report was made public in 1999.
The report essentially says that while the Soviet Russian leaders claimed to respect the beliefs and right to self-determination of the Muslim minority population of Russia, they were in fact I wasn't going to say nothing.
in the country. So that's just what the CIA document says.
I'm not going to bother attempting to unpack what's actually known about the relations between
Soviets and Russian Muslims, because that would be a detour, Julian, from the actual
main topic of this episode.
Julian: I wasn't going to say nothing. I wasn't going to draw any, like,
modern equivalents or anything like that.
Tavis: Right. But within that document, as Corbin Dallas of StolenHistory.org points out,
there is a passage which claims that the Russian government was attempting to
rewrite the history of the Tartars.
Here's what that document says.
For example, on 9 August 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, sitting in Moscow, issued a directive ordering the party's Tartar Provincial Committee, quote, to proceed to a scientific revolution of the history of Tartaria, to liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalistic character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history.
In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten.
Let it be frank, was to be falsified in order to eliminate references to great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar-Russian relations.
So a lot of Tartarian Empire conspiracists, they take this document and go, oh my God, the CIA, the 1950s, in a document that was secret for 40 years, admitted that the Tartarians were real and that this history was being covered up.
But in context, the CIA in this document is accusing the Soviets of rewriting the history of relations between Russia and the Tatars, not people from some ancient lost republic, rather the Volga Tatars, the mostly Muslim ethnic minority.
Who currently exists and whose existence is not in doubt, was never in doubt.
And obviously this document should not be considered a reliable source of information about relations between Russian government and minorities in Russia, regardless of what the truth may be.
But again, this is just a instance in which they kind of like, they read the literal words, they eliminate, you know, ethnic, geographical, historical context, and then they take it to mean something they would like it to mean.
I've watched a few videos in which Tartarian Empire believers will read this passage from the CIA document and go, well, there you go.
That's all they say.
They just move on.
No, there's more to learn.
Just search for the terms being used in this document.
You could learn some context.
The Stolen History post also claims that there was evidence of Tartarian royalty.
To that effect, he posts an image of an 18th century French map and family tree, and it's titled, Genealogy of the Ancient Tartan Emperors.
And it shows this massive branching family tree that includes dozens of people.
So if you don't bother thinking very much, this seems very convincing.
So here's a 300-year-old document that makes references to Tartan emperors.
And you can't have emperors without an empire.
Ergo, the argument goes, the Tartarian Empire existed.
That's if you don't read the very next line.
This is the funniest part.
This is the funniest part.
It's like, there's this big word that says, Genealogy of the Ancient.
And you're right.
The very next line, it says in slightly smaller text, still very large and readable text, it says in slightly smaller text, it says, Descendants of Genghis Khan.
Okay.
So that means when this text refers to the Tartars, it's just an archaic way to refer to the Mongol Empire, not any sort of like secret empire.
Yeah, it was just the French being kind of racist.
What's new?
So just about all of the textual evidence in favor of the existence of the Tartarian Empire is like this.
So the Tartarian Empire proponent will go, so this old document seems to make reference to the Tartarian Empire, and it'll just be an archaic way of referring to a region or a people in that region.
And they'll go, but this other old document also refers to some Tartan country.
And you can respond in the same way as basically just as good of a debunk.
And since there are thousands of old documents that refer to Tartan or, you know, Tartaria in some way, they can basically do this forever.
And some people do go on for a very long time.
There are videos on YouTube that go on for hours, poring over just dozens of old documents that make reference to the Tartars and just ignoring the broader context of how that term was used.
That StolenHistory.org post ends this way. But this is just the base conspiracy theory. No,
You notice what's missing from that post.
It's like any claims that the Tartarian Empire built buildings all over the world, or the claim that they used advanced technology, or the claim that the civilization was destroyed in a mud flood.
These claims were developed later by the wider Tartarian Empire conspiracy theorists, who heeded Corbin Dallas's call to take a deeper look into Tartary.
Corbin, my main man!
So one of the hottest hubs of activity for crowdsourced conspiracy theorizing is the subreddit rtardery, which was formed in December of 2018, just a few months after that stolen history post.
One of the most important orders of business for this conspiracy theory is explaining where the civilization went.
Because even if there was some sort of, you know, real conspiracy to stop talking about the Tartarian Empire, or even if the textual records were, like, destroyed in the cover-up, there would still be archaeological evidence.
There would still be lots of evidence of the cities and structures that the civilization built.
So, where are the Tartarian cities?
Where are the Tartarian buildings?
Well, according to the Tartarian conspiracy theorists, they're everywhere, but also possibly beneath our feet, because they claim that all the buildings were covered by dirt in a cataclysmic mud-flood event.
They sometimes refer to this global deluge as the Last Great Reset.
Now obviously mudslides do happen and very old buildings do get covered by dirt if they've been abandoned for a long time.
But the Tartarian Empire conspiracy theorists are proposing something like on the scale of Noah's Flood that just covered up buildings of the Tartarian Empire all over the world.
Well, the Noah's Flood believers usually claim that this flood happened like, you know, 4,000 years ago.
The Tartarian people, they usually claim that this flood happened somewhere like the 19th century.
In fact, there are people who believe in both the Tartarian Mud Flood and the literal Noah's Flood and claim that they are, you know, they're similar but separate floods.
I'm a firm believer of the world flood, the great flood of Noah.
But unless they had factories at the time of Noah, I think this is a separate yet linked event.
The mud flood was just the most recent event.
Which seemed to happen in the last 200 or so years.
And you see this reflected in the age of structures.
The more modern looking structures if it was built around the 1800s.
Chances are it's mud flooded.
They're just showing construction sites sometimes.
I don't know how that relates to mud flooding.
Is it just because you see a bunch of mud when they do an excavation for a construction site?
So what they're showing, so there are lots of clips of basically, they're showing the foundations of these buildings.
And they're very confused and they think that when the foundation of a building is exposed,
and that's not actually the foundation of a building, that's a partially excavated lower
level of the building that was covered by the mud flood.
Incredible.
And so, the Tartarian Empire conspiracists claim, civilizations didn't build their most notable buildings.
They actually dug them out of the earth and claimed that they built them.
Thus all these modern civilizations are taking credit for the achievements of the Tartarian Empire.
Right.
So you might think that can't be true because like people over the world would like to right about this event if it happened, there would also be
like geological evidence? Well, today I say, yeah, it's thoughtless. It's like, it doesn't
make any sense. The evidence is super flimsy. So here's how one Tartarian conspiracy theorist on
Instagram who goes by the name "The Star Child" explained it. "The mud flood theory
describes the idea that a couple of hundred years ago, mankind was almost completely wiped out by a cataclysm
that put mud and dirt over all the buildings and streets that were actually not built by us,
but the global civilization that lived before this event."
And we just ducked those buildings out and are now reusing them.
Man, white European twinks are really calling themselves Da Star Child.
So, let's talk a little bit about the evidence that The Star Child presents.
So, he first discusses the presence of insane asylums in 19th century America, which were often in low-population areas.
Just have a look at these insane, insane asylums.
They were everywhere in the young USA, the new world.
But besides them looking as good as any European castle out there, Why would a city that doesn't have that many people living in it build an insane asylum that could basically fit their entire city in it?
Check out these insane insane asylums.
Next up we've got the wildest wild dogs.
So it's like the argument was, is basically that, well, you know, these insane asylums, why were they built in these, like these low population areas?
Well, obviously a country that forcibly interned some of their citizens wants to place those, you know, those facilities away from the populated centers.
It's not, I don't think it has that much of a riddle to solve.
Plus, I mean, the writing's on the wall.
I mean, clearly they were looking at where things were going and saying, well, we think a lot of people are going to be going insane, so we better make enough rooms to handle the high demand.
So, okay, let's see what else he has to offer.
So, the Starchild is bewildered about, like, why government buildings all over the world would look similar.
Why do government buildings look very similar all over the world?
I mean, I personally doubt that China and the U.S.
would just hire the same architect.
Why does Chicago look like Rome in 1893?
Rome in 1893.
So they didn't have the same architect.
It was built in the same style that was designed to like, you know, draw inspiration from the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome.
It's not, again, not that complicated.
Why are underwear in a similar shape in both China and the United States?
So he has one last point in this short video, so let's hear it.
Why are domes that feature metal on the top everywhere in the world and even on many different religious buildings like churches, mosques, temples?
What's the point to it?
Is a dome with metal on the top just a connection to God in every religion?
At the end it just says Tesla or free electricity!
Could be that!
Yeah.
This guy literally behind him has kind of like a watered-down version of the meme from Always Sunny of the photos taped to the wall with yarn going between them.
So obviously like domes on buildings are just generally these are like one of the oldest architectural features.
There were domed buildings in ancient Mesopotamia and when civilization got good at working with metal they started making some of those domes metal.
So pretty straightforward on this one but like he's trying he's trying to imply that there's some sort of like secret technological global sort of reason for these metal domed buildings.
Yeah, we made a hat, we made hats, and they were shaped to our skulls.
Then the hat and a bowl, those are both things.
And then when we flipped the hat, no, we kept the hat the right way up, we flipped the bowl, boom!
Your buildings have a hat bowl.
Other evidence that the Tartarian conspiracists will cite will be like, if you look at old landscape photographs of cities from the 19th century, the entire city looks empty.
You know, the implication is that these were actually abandoned Tartarian cities, and they were later repopulated more recently.
Well, let me tell you something, my friend, about photography back then.
If there were people, they would have fucking made blurs.
So they tried to probably tell everyone, okay, we're doing the photo.
Everybody stay inside for like two hours.
Well, I think it's even dumber than that.
So here's one woman looking at a 19th century photograph of Paris, and she zooms in and out of different parts of the photo to show that despite the fact that it's obviously this, you know, extensively constructed, beautiful city, there aren't any people in the photograph.
So once again, we see that there's nobody.
Nobody on the streets.
Nobody on the bridges.
There's just nobody.
See plenty of boats, plenty of buildings.
But it's like these cities are empty.
And this is from France, but we can look all over.
It's like playing Where's Waldo?
Except you never find him.
You don't find anybody.
That's a lot like Where's Waldo.
You know, when I think of Where's Waldo, I think of a picture full of people.
And what is this picture?
Empty of people.
My brain works.
There's so many people, you can't find Waldo.
That's the whole point.
But in this one, there's no people.
So if Waldo were here, he'd be really easy to spot.
But I don't see Waldo anywhere.
But I don't see him.
I don't see him.
I'm looking for the book.
I'm looking for the cane.
I'm looking for the hat.
Nothing there.
Jake, okay, you have permission to do Trump saying, where is Waldo?
Where's Waldo?
Everybody's looking for Waldo, but he's not there.
Okay.
And we look at the picture, there's a lot of people.
There's a lot of people from a lot of different civilizations.
Some not so good.
Some very good.
But we're not finding Waldo, okay?
We're seeing his book, we're seeing his hat, and we're seeing his cane, okay folks?
But we're not finding Waldo.
Waldo nowhere to be found.
Where's Waldo?
Everybody's asking.
Nobody knows.
So, like Julian mentioned, the explanation for why there are no people in this photograph is pretty straightforward.
It's just related to how photography works.
So, primitive photographic technology required a very long exposure time in order to get enough light to make the photograph.
The shutter had to be open for like a few minutes depending on how much natural light there was.
And when you have a long exposure time, you can only photograph things that are standing perfectly still, like buildings or docked boats.
So the people or even maybe the horses that are moving across the street, they're just moving too fast.
And so the camera will only photograph the street behind them and not, you know, the people themselves.
Now, apparently this woman has heard this explanation before, but she is unconvinced by it.
Well, I know a lot of people will say, well, that's just how the cameras were, you know, that the cameras were a certain way that they didn't catch people if they didn't stand still for 10 minutes.
But I think that's pretty absurd.
Um, for a lot of reasons.
You can clearly see the tracks made by wagons.
You can literally see the traces of the people who were like fucking making their way through that dirt before and after the photo.
Jesus Christ.
This is, this is pretty disturbing.
I mean, like in the video, um, I cut it off, but she didn't elaborate on what those reasons were.
She just didn't agree.
It's like, I think it's just absurd for a bunch of reasons.
And then she moved on to looking at another photo.
Too many to list.
That's the whole like, seems kind of weird thing that they love doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't agree.
And this thing is like, it's weird.
It's like, this isn't just a quirk of like how old cameras work.
This is just how photography technology works.
You could test it by yourself.
You're so inclined.
It's like, if you took a modern DSLR camera and you captured like a low light photo that required like a, like a 30 second exposure time, and you walked across the frame while the photograph is being taken, the resulting photograph would pick up the background, but not you, because you're just moving too quickly.
And she could test it, if she was so inclined, but she just, there's something in her brain that just says, I heard this, and I don't want to think about whether or not that explains what I'm seeing, so I'm just going to dismiss it as absurd.
Now, despite all that, she insists that the pictures of empty cities are unexplainable.
Um, but I think as you can see from a lot of these panoramas, uh, is that's just clearly not true.
But these cities were made to hold hundreds of thousands of people and there's barely anybody.
Explain it.
You can't.
I see like 15 wagons in that photo.
Am I am I are my eyes deceiving me or?
Yeah.
No, I think she's I think she's just sort of like filtering them out in her brain because she's attracted to this idea that all the great cities of the world were at some point in the last couple hundred years or just sitting totally empty because they were built by some sort of previous great empire and they're only merely discovered by modern people.
Oh, look at this.
A perfectly good, thousands-of-year-old wagon.
Hey, Frank.
Hey, come on up over the hill.
You gotta see this.
It's a completely empty city.
Nobody's living there.
Think we should move in?
I think this lady's, um, like, archetype of what cities should look like, I think she got it from the Where's Waldo books.
I think that she's, you know, when you see a picture of a city, it's gotta be packed.
It's gotta look like the Running of the Bulls or something.
Another frequently cited piece of supposed evidence of the mud flood theory is urban buildings with basement windows.
So when Tartarian Empire conspiracists encounter a building with a partially sunk floor, like windows peeking above the ground, They don't go, oh, I guess the people who constructed this building must have dug down in order to increase the total floor space.
Or, you know, it's possible like in some areas that are near a body of water, like in Seattle, the building appears to be sunk because the city streets were elevated in the past.
Instead, they think that these buildings were once covered by the mud flood, but they were dug up later.
But for some reason, the people who dug up the buildings didn't dig up the whole building.
They just kind of stopped at one point.
So here's one Tartarian conspiracy theorist showing off a building with sunken windows near him.
Here, this is my humble hometown, 15 minutes outside of Pennsylvania, where you see the windows coming out of the ground.
Now, these windows coming out of the ground, it's almost like southeastern Pennsylvania being mostly clay, had a mud flood, and when it settled, these windows that were on the second story, third story, who knows, are now subfloor windows.
Or, it was built that way.
You be the judge, don't kill the messenger.
So, I mean, what's neat about the Tartarian Conspiracy Theory is that it doesn't just involve baking things you see on the internet.
It can also involve walking around to buildings near you and snapping pictures of the buildings and baking that.
I'll say that's a lot better.
At least when you're baking the buildings near you, you're getting some exercise, you're getting to know the neighborhood, maybe you meet a few people.
It's preferable to just baking Q-drops.
They're both bad, but if I had to pick one, this one's better.
Yeah, it's true.
You don't need Google Maps, like with mud fossil stuff.
So here's another Tartarian Empire promoter who goes by the name OneFalWow on TikTok, where he has 1.3 million followers.
I don't know how to explain that, but this particular video was viewed 34,000 times and has over 500 comments.
All over the world, you can find these buried structures.
and we literally had to dig them out from the mud and every now and then we stumbled across sinkholes uncovering buried buildings and this is the reason why so many buildings have windows partly buried in the ground if you notice with this one the windows get smaller and smaller and sometimes you see buildings with windows like this Trust me, that's not a basement.
Because if you keep digging, you will see the original front door.
Oh my days.
So anytime you come across buildings like this, you're dealing with mud flood.
So as the story goes, all the great cities that appeared in the 19th century were not built.
They were just discovered, and then the populations that discovered them took credit for building them.
So another Tartaria explainer put it this way.
The history of the world is a lie.
A complete fabrication, and everything we know is wrong.
In the 1800s, something happened.
The population was reset, and a new population began.
The oldest photos are of people finding these grand cities, finding these unbelievable towns, and then passing it off as their own.
Narrator, too good.
Backtrack, too good.
I believe.
Yeah, I know.
It's very, it's very hypnotic.
I feel like this is the best way to experience the Tartarian Conspiracy Theory.
You watch hours and hours and hours of video with hypnotic background music and turn off your mind and just accept and just, you know, allow yourself to believe.
Because you start, you know, thinking too much, then it will stop making sense.
What I like is that he's picked photos where there are dirigibles visible.
So he clearly also thinks dirigibles are like a Tartarian technology of some sort.
Yeah, that's another big element is that like they had much more advanced, sophisticated sort of like, you know, travel balloon technology than we had.
And this was also covered up.
These people, they built these amazing cities.
They traveled by balloon.
It's unimaginable that the world governments would cover up these people.
So this brings me to the next major piece of supposed evidence for the Tartarian Empire, which is Tartarian architecture.
There's even a special subreddit that is separate from rTartaria called rTartarianArchitecture.
Now, when you say Tartarian architecture, they're not referring to a particular recognizable style.
You know how, like, ancient alien theorists, they'll claim that, like, hey, you know, the ancient Egyptians built pyramids, and also the Mesoamericans built pyramids.
Therefore, these two civilizations, which did not have contact with each other, must have had the same inspiration.
For some reason, this inspiration has to be extraterrestrials.
Obviously, that doesn't make any sense.
It seems like more sensible that the pyramids were just a natural kind of building to make out of stone.
But even that, as false and incoherent as it is, is more sensible than the Tartarian architecture theory.
So, when they say Tartarian architecture, they just mean any building that looks beautiful or cool or out of place in some way, and then the conspiracists will simply assume that it was built by this ancient lost civilization.
Now, to show you what I'm talking about, I'm going to play a clip from the most popular Tartarian conspiracy theorist on YouTube, who goes by the name John Levi.
And he has over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, and he has made nearly 300 videos, which are in the neighborhood of like 20 to 30 minutes long each.
In this clip, John Levi marvels at a few buildings he has seen on the Tartarian Architecture subreddit.
He shows a neoclassical building in Germany called the Valhalla.
This building serves as a hall of fame and honors notable people in German history.
Then John Levi takes a look at the Look at this.
Amazing.
which is a massive greenhouse in Vienna, Austria that was built in 1882.
And then he takes a look at a since demolished City Hall post office and courthouse in New York City,
which was completed in 1880.
And what he's implying by being wowed by these buildings, that they're so wonderful and beautiful
that they could not have been constructed by any modern civilization,
but they must have been built by some sort of elevated civilization that has since lost.
Look at this amazing, amazing Greek Roman Parthenon style building in Germany.
Beautiful.
Vienna, Austria.
Now this was a fascinating thing, and we see this style in all parts of the world.
And, you know, we don't build like this anymore, and this is just an amazing building.
To me, it's like a greenhouse.
It's like utilizing, you know, the sun, and you can have an atrium in here, and it's just super futuristic.
And we don't see it anymore, and most of them had been torn down.
Now here's my favorite designations.
The post offices.
You know, how many stamps did you sell to build yourself a post office like this?
Absolutely ridiculous.
And, you know, I think we all knew.
We really all did know.
But I think we needed permission in some way to believe it.
Again, how many stamps would they have to sell to build a building like this?
Well, let's take these one by one.
So the Valhalla in Germany.
So it's not weird for buildings in Europe to be made in the neoclassical style.
This one in particular is explicitly modeled after the Parthenon.
It was built under the supervision of the architect Leo von Klenz, who was the court architect of Ludwig I of Bavaria and was completed in 1842.
And he talks about like, well, these buildings are torn down.
This one still exists.
You can go visit it.
The Palmenhaus in Austria was constructed by the architect Friedrich Ohmann, and it is an old, beautiful greenhouse that also still exists.
He talks about buildings being torn down.
It kind of implies that it was.
It wasn't.
You can go visit if you're so inclined and you're in the area.
So it's not even the largest greenhouse in Vienna.
There's a larger and more famous one called Palmenhaus Schoenbrunn, which is at the Schoenbrunn Palace.
This whole thing is such a good example of just reality not being enough.
Like, why wouldn't you just honor the actual people who built the building and go into the history of, you know, how it came to be, or whatever, if you're enjoying the architecture?
The idea that it has to have come from, it's so beautiful that it must have come from like a wiped out, covered up civilization and these are the relics left over.
It's like everything has to have this kind of like Indiana Jones sort of undertone and I just wonder why couldn't you just appreciate the architecture for what it really is?
Yeah, I don't know either because it's like this information about like when it was constructed and who constructed it and who the architects were was very easy information to come across.
But John Levi, he seemed, you know, he sort of postures as this admirer of architecture, but he doesn't do any actual research into the buildings he's marveling at.
He just likes the pictures.
They just seem beautiful to him.
He just marvels at them.
And then he creates this fictional story in his head about how they came to be.
Yeah, because it's not like this thing where there are, like, ancient drawings of the pictures and they're not there, or nobody knows who actually built the buildings, and so there's space for conspiracy theory to come in and create a narrative or explain.
But these things seem to be all easily researchable, and if that's what it's about, if it's about actually appreciating the architecture and appreciating the craftsmanship of these, you know, admittedly gorgeous buildings, why wouldn't you celebrate the reality of This one is so weird to me because it seems like the space for where a conspiracy theory can sort of squeak in is very slim.
It's very slim.
You almost have to force it.
Finally in that video, he talks about the City Hall Post Office and Courthouse, which was designed by the architect Alfred B. Mullet in an architectural style called the Second Empire style, which is also called the Napoleon III style.
And the way that John Levi talks about this building, you get the idea that it was merely a post office, and you get the idea that it was like, wow, that's larger and fancier than the post office of my hometown.
You know, he says like, you know, how many stamps would you need to sell as if the post office needs to get a return on investment?
It's not just like a public service.
But what he does mention is that this was a multifunction building.
In its five floors, it housed the main New York post office and also housed courtrooms and federal offices.
So this was a building that serves multiple government functions.
And you know, courthouses, they frequently have like interesting architecture.
Now, this building was demolished.
It was demolished in 1939.
And Tartarian conspiracy theorists, they often, like, point to old, beautiful buildings, or buildings they consider to be beautiful, that were demolished.
You know, why would you destroy it if it, like, took so much time and effort to build?
In this case, it wasn't because of any secret project to destroy beauty or cover up its connection to any lost civilization, but rather because it was universally deemed to be a hideous building, and according to the people who used it, it didn't serve its functions very well.
In fact, while the building existed, it was frequently referred to as Mullet's Monstrosity.
The New York Times wrote this about the building in 1912.
But John Levi doesn't bother looking up any actual information about the history of these buildings.
an architectural eyesore and has, from the first, been unsatisfactory to the Postal Service and the federal courts beneath its
roof.
But John Levi doesn't bother looking up any actual information about the history of these buildings.
He just looks at pictures of them and then gets wowed and then moves on to the next one.
On the Tartarian Architecture subreddit, they frequently post a picture of a building that
was built in the 19th century and ask, "Does anyone have a photograph of this building being built?"
And the implication being that if there's no photograph of the construction, then the official story of how the building was constructed is a lie, and therefore the building was actually discovered.
And not that, you know, in the 19th century, you know, photography was a rare, expensive thing, and maybe they didn't want to waste it on a construction zone.
This is like that tweet that was making the rounds about like, you never see pregnant women anymore.
It's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
It's like the baby pigeon conspiracy theory.
I think this, yeah, it's sort of based on this, this modern belief that every moment of everyone's life and everything that happens all the time needs to be documented and surveilled so we can all see it.
Guys, do you see any TikToks by the guys, the people who built this building?
Yeah, if it doesn't exist on TikTok, I mean... Show me the emails they were sending around.
Okay?
You can't.
Tartarian conspiracy theories are especially fixated on old buildings that have been demolished.
The most significant one is the Singer Building in New York City.
It opened in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
It stood at 612 feet tall, which made it the tallest skyscraper in the world for about a year when it was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower.
Now, the problem with the building is that it became outdated as the decades passed and the land it sat on became too valuable.
In the 1960s, the Singer Sewing Machine Company sold the building and its eventual owner, the United States Steel Company, demolished it piece by piece in 1967 in order to make way for a more updated 50-story building.
The Singer Building is the tallest building to ever be peacefully demolished.
Now, this is a genuine loss of architectural history.
Why wasn't it preserved and made a landmark?
A 1967 New York Times article about the destruction of the building said that the economics at the time didn't make landmark status practical.
Alan Burnham, the executive director of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, was quoted as saying this in that report.
If a building were made a landmark, we would have to find a buyer for it, or the city would have to acquire it.
The city is not that wealthy, and the commission doesn't have a big enough staff to be a real estate broker for a skyscraper.
But for people who believe in the Tartarian conspiracy theory, there's something more nefarious going on than merely financial incentives leading to the Singer Building being demolished.
They believe it was a Tartarian building that had to be destroyed so that we can't know our true history.
Now, the funny thing about this one is that there actually are a few photographs of the Singer Building being constructed in the early 20th century.
There's a post on the Tartarian subreddit which addresses this.
It's titled, Photos of the Singer Building, which some claim to be Tartarian in New York being under construction.
And this seems to refute the idea that it was merely discovered.
There's actual photographic evidence of being built in New York.
And the comments from the redditors are full of skepticism that the photographs are real, like this one.
Looks suspicious to me.
These pictures were allegedly taken in 1907.
The weather looks clear and warm.
The pictures seem to be taken in the middle of the day.
Where are the people?
Where are the workers?
I'm not buying these pictures.
Another comment says this.
Could also be a Photoshop.
There's some blurry parts in the pic.
I have seen clear Photoshops with the same kind of blur.
Okay, so you know that 1907 photography probably was not perfect.
There wasn't 4k yet.
I'm gonna say that much.
God, for people who like architecture, they're doing a lot of explaining away to ensure that whoever actually built this thing doesn't get the proper credit.
miniature buildings like in the original Godzilla movie.
God, for people who like architecture, they're doing a lot of explaining away to ensure that
whoever actually built this thing doesn't get the proper credit.
I really don't understand this one.
Yeah, Jake wants ethics in architecture.
It seems to me that, like, essentially all it boils down to is, like, government shouldn't be trusted.
They're covering up everything.
Even this.
Oh, you don't think the government is covering up stuff?
Let me find, like, the most esoteric, bizarre thing and tell you how the government is covering it up.
Like this society.
Like this ancient civilization of architects.
Well, I think it's because they don't really care about architecture.
Their interest in architecture is incidental.
What they want to prove is that there was a great, wonderful civilization, that everything figured out.
It was beautiful, and they had all this free energy, and they had advanced technology, but it was covered up.
And their interest in architecture only stems from that presumptive belief.
Tartarian conspiracy theories are also fixated on the world's fairs, which are also called Universal Expositions or just Expos.
So these are events that have been held since the 19th century, which are designed to showcase the achievements of nations.
So the people, the, you know, the organizers of these events, they constructed these impressive seeming buildings and statues that showed off the latest technology or, you know, technology of the future.
But the fairs and structures were mostly designed to be temporary.
They were often made of, like, cheap material, but there were exceptions.
For example, the Eiffel Tower was constructed for the 1889 World's Fair, and even though that was constructed with wrought iron, and it was actually supposed to be temporary, it was later permitted to remain permanently.
Paul Greenhalgh, in his 1988 book "Ephemeral Vistas,"
described the World Fairs this way, "Imagine an area the size of a small city center, bristling
with dozens of vast buildings set in beautiful gardens.
Fill the buildings with every conceivable type of commodity and activity known, in the largest possible quantities.
Surround them with miraculous pieces of engineering technology, with tribes of primitive peoples,
reconstructions of ancient and exotic streets, restaurants, theaters, sports stadiums, and bandstands.
Spare no expense.
Invite all nations on Earth to take part by sending objects for display and by erecting buildings of their own.
After six months, raze this city to the ground and leave nothing behind, save one or two permanent landmarks.
Boy, would he be disappointed with Burning Man, which is like the modern equivalent, I think, of the World's Fair nowadays.
So the construction of these World Fairs, you know, were similar to the construction of an Olympic City.
You know, when the city hosts the Olympics, they build all this infrastructure in order to allow the athletes to compete and show off to the world.
And perhaps most of it just gets dismantled after the Olympics are over.
But let's not miss that Jake just did one of the best This Is Not That by bringing up Burning Man.
Incredible.
He's like, no, no, this is that.
They build and then they unbuild.
It must be like Burning Man.
No, this is that because Burning Man, they go out into the desert.
They erect these elaborate structures.
It's art.
It's technology.
It's all of these people.
They dress up as, you know, older civilizations.
They do all this.
And then after a month, or whatever or however long,
they take the city back down, save one or two landmarks.
It's the same thing.
People are gonna have to write it and say if this is that, but I would say
if Burning Man were an event held inside a city that generated monuments and that then was
partially taken down, leaving some of these monuments and landmarks, you might be correct, but I'm gonna let--
We don't have that anymore.
We don't have that, all we have is Burning Man.
I'm gonna let the people decide.
Is this that?
Which you gotta go to, man.
Actually, you gotta go.
Is this that?
You have to go to Burning Man.
It's, oh man, dude, out in the desert on our bike.
No, Jake, you can't escape through this.
Imitating a Burning Man guy cornering you at a party.
An old Jake trope.
Nope, nope.
Right in, right in.
Is this that?
Is this that?
That is the question that I pose you today.
So, the designers of these World's Fairs would be tasked with creating something impressive looking that could stay up from, you know, in the neighborhood of five to eight months, and this sometimes led them to literally use plaster in their constructions.
This is described in a 2012 article published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology called, Dream City, Plaster City, World's Fairs, and the Gilding of the American Material Culture.
In this passage, the author, Rebecca S. Graff, describes how A kind of plaster material called staff was used to create structures that had the appearance of marble.
The temporary nature, coupled with the monumental scale of fairs, created the conditions for the development of both innovative and spectacular buildings, where builders were forced to quote, solve awkward architectural problems.
Well, at the same time keeping the public entertained.
Moreover, as in the case of the Chicago 1873 Interstate Exposition, financial considerations forced fair architects to use the cheapest materials and employ the most cost-effective solutions in creating their dream city.
The solution to this dilemma lay in an unassuming construction material called staff.
Alternatively described as counterfeit marble, plaster mixtures like staff were employed to form the marble-like facades of exposition buildings at least by 1883.
But for some Tartarian conspiracy theorists, the World's Fairs are actually uncovered buildings from the world of Tartaria.
What's good, world?
The World's Fairs were one last time for the people to see the old world of Tartaria.
After the World's Fairs, they were destroyed, never to be seen again except for in pictures.
It is the Great Reset.
Interesting, now it's been folded into the Great Reset.
Well, no, here's the thing, is that they often talk about, like, they call it the Last Great Reset.
They call this event in which the populations of the world sort of recapture these cities and sometimes destroy the Tartarian buildings, the Great Reset.
And it was, you know, they do connect it to the modern concept of the Great Reset, but they think it's the separate 19th century event that happened.
In one video on TikTok, a Tartarian conspiracy theorist watches footage of the 1915 World's Fair in San Francisco and marvels at the structures that were built.
And what we see here is absolutely breathtaking.
The San Francisco World's Fair of 1915.
Tell me anybody's building that tower.
with plywood and stucco, or any of these buildings. In less than two years, all the fully grown trees
and shrubbery, the over-the-top architecture, all to be torn down in six months. Except for the ones
they decided to keep around, of course. Perhaps a trophy of the old world.
Dude, okay, let me explain how this works.
We extract the wealth of the rest of the world, then we bring it to the core of Empire to have a big fancy party where we blow shit tons of money to make the most racist human zoo you've ever fucking seen.
It's not that hard.
They were literally like, oh and here's the African area and they would have literally enslaved black people and brought them over to play savages for them for some months.
Like many people that were using these exhibits died.
Oh man.
Also, in many cases, you know, the structures and statues that you're being impressed by were literally, you know, crumbling plaster.
The design to, you know, be destroyed is certainly as soon as it was no longer useful.
The plaster, it crumbles like your belief system.
It's me, Travis View.
I'm the debunker.
I'm the debunker.
And castles made of sand, let me tell you, they sink into the sea eventually.
I love also that these videos, instead of using your sort of the standard like TikTok conspiracy theory background song, like we've now heard two that use Adagio, which is so funny that they're like, well, when discussing such elegant architecture.
We must use this well-known classical piece, which I'm not complaining.
I think that's much nicer than your average sort of, like, whatever that kind of weird whistle tune is.
It's kind of like an off-brand X-Files theme music that every other conspiracy TikTok video uses.
You know, I'm glad to see some classics making their way into the soundtrack, but it's funny that, like, these guys are like, no, we are a cut above the flat earthers.
We use classical tunes.
God, I can't wait.
In 200 years, they're going to look back and be like, hmm, the Olympics, like signs that actually the real civilization were Olympic villagers?
Look, perhaps a trophy has been left behind, a soccer stadium.
Yeah, that's how you do it.
If you blow this much fucking money, the least you can do is leave behind some usable architecture, which is often not the case.
It's often useless.
In college, I lived in a building that was constructed for the, I think it was the 86 Olympics that took place in Los Angeles, and it was a fucking dump.
There were things that were constantly going wrong with it.
It probably should have been condemned, but yet they kept it, and I lived there.
I'd love to hear the stories of, yeah, like people going through like the World's Fair and being like, dude, I live right down the street from this.
It just turned my life into hell for six to eight months.
I think, no, I think actually life was generally hell for them.
And so the World's Fair might have been a much, a much needed respite.
Yeah.
You think the human zoo is cool for like three months.
Then, then...
Then you start to go, well, okay now, when are we clearing this up?
The plaster dust is everywhere.
Yeah, there's the real conspiracy.
Let's see how much asbestos was breathed in, you know, over the course of all of the world fairs.
No asbestos was in existence back then, but that's... Oh, well, whatever the 1800s equivalent was, I'm sure they had something.
Yeah.
That video maker also mentions his belief that these World's Fairs were a way for the Conquerors, the people who supposedly covered up the Tartarian Empire, to show off.
Almost there!
You're almost there!
It was a way for the colonial conquerors to show off, like, the world they had mapped out and fucking taken control of.
Even if it was temporary, to what purpose?
Why would you go through such scales to tear something down shortly after?
And why can't we do it today?
That statue alone, there's nothing temporary about that.
I believe these world's fairs to be the parades of the conquerors showing off the lands inherited.
God, if we do this now, it'd be like, we left behind the Pepsi house.
It would suck shit.
Don't bring this guy to South by Southwest.
He's gonna have a fucking aneurysm.
He's like, I don't get it.
You're telling me that it's not always like this here?
He's like, but look at the construction of this spicy pie booth.
The Wienerschnitzel and Vodafone Pagoda is still standing.
Oh my god.
I was thinking about taking the family to see the monster energy drink hut.
God damn it.
We do live in a shittier world.
Rumor is once you step in the booth you get a short amount of energy and then a headache shortly thereafter.
There's also a claim amongst Tartarian Empire conspiracists that some architectural features of these old buildings, especially like the spires, are sources of free energy.
So this is just a way to claim that the old Tartarian Empire was more than just aesthetically or architecturally more advanced than us, they were also technologically advanced.
Why do we see no wires on the pylons of the old world?
Today our streets are filled with these pylons with wires.
But the ancients seemed to have no wires.
In fact, they were harnessing free energy.
Have you ever noticed the metal balls which are on all of the ancient buildings?
You probably still have them now.
These metal balls were filled with mercury and on top of them was an antenna which was harnessing the electromagnetic energy.
This energy was then sent to the mercury and watch what happens with mercury.
This would cause the mercury to spin and create free energy.
The word cathedral comes from cathodral.
Anode and the cathode because it's creating electricity.
All of these buildings around the world all have the same antennas.
This is because it was the great Tartarian Empire.
Cathodral!
The well-known cathodral.
Cathodral, son of Grimbley.
This motherfucker is pointing to wires saying, why don't you see wires?
There are wires right where your finger is!
This is also my least fav- I ranted about this in the other episode, but this is my least favorite TikTok trend.
If people just appearing in green screen at the bottom of their shit, and they're not saying anything, but they're just pointing like... Like it makes you some kind of authority by pointing to a picture that's not even behind you.
God!
I don't know why that just makes me so lazy, and it's so... You think you're so cool, but you're not!
You're just pointing!
Oh, here we go.
Old man yells at clouds.
I do.
I do.
I do like how it's like that crappy, like, you know, simulated green screen effect around him.
And then he just bends over and kind of disappears like he's going to repack a bowl like off screen.
He can't even sit through like 40 seconds of pointing up.
So first off, obviously, you can't make free energy by spitting mercury.
There's no evidence that the spires of old buildings contain mercury.
And free energy isn't real.
It's not a thing that can happen.
You ever feel like you're getting dragged down in the mud here, being a debunker for spitting mercury being free energy?
I mean, yeah, this is some pretty chintzy shit.
This is not the prestige job, I'll say.
I don't feel good about this.
I do like it when we fuck you over like this.
So, second of all, I looked up the etymology of cathedral and cathode and discovered that their origins are very different.
So, cathedral comes from a specific early Christian use of the classical Latin word cathedra, meaning a teacher or professor's chair, and cathode comes from the Greek kathodos, meaning a way down.
So, just absolute nonsense that these two words are somehow related.
They just kind of sound similar.
But this theory about free energy also encourages people to, like, walk around their towns and point out architectural features which they falsely claim are energy-gathering devices.
And again, we see Tartarian design.
But look at this one.
Let me cross the street.
Again, a very ancient design.
And this is the free energy device.
Let's zoom in so you can see it.
Family, there was an ancient civilization, and they are not telling us about it.
But the evidences are everywhere around us.
He is standing in front of a building that has a flagpole.
You've got to be a little more selective here.
You've got to at least pick something a little more esoteric.
No.
Yeah.
It's like literally pointing at flagpoles and claiming that they're secret free energy devices from an ancient lost civilization.
But again, he's out.
If you're going to be baking and conspiracy theorizing, at least get some fresh air, get some exercise, get your legs moving.
If there's any good way to do it, this is it.
This is the same approach my mom had to me when I was reading Stephen King when I was 10.
It's like, is this really appropriate?
I don't know, but at least you're reading.
You know, in every fringe community, there is, you know, the fringe of the fringe.
And this exists in the Tartarian Empire community, too, because there is a section of that community who believes that the Tartarian Empire had giants in it.
And sometimes the evidence of this belief comes in the form of the existence of giant doors, which they assume must have been used by these giants, or very often they'll present straight up Photoshop images of stuff like giant skulls.
This is like, you know, the JFK Jr.
Lives kind of community of the Tartarian Empire community.
So here's one Tartarian believer talking about the supposed giants of our forgotten past.
Giants were very much real, and they walked this realm with us.
The evidence can be found all around us.
You just have to open your eyes and stop listening to the mainstream lies.
It's hard for some to imagine.
Why would they lie about giants?
But the problem is, it's not just giants they've lied to us about.
That is just one link, a small link in the much larger chain of lies.
Yep, we make big stuff sometimes.
our history, our true history. To find out where a lot of this cover-up began,
research the mud flood and fall of Tartaria.
Yep, we make big stuff sometimes.
And sometimes we just Photoshop it if we don't have actual pictures of it.
*laughter* I was wondering which one of those were Photoshopped.
Oh really?
You mean like the giant human skull on display in a big official looking museum?
I was like, I think that's an AI drawing.
Or the Charlie Chaplin looking guy who was three times the size of a Volkswagen Beetle?
So, I mean, this is the risk of a crowdsourced conspiracy theory, is that when you give people permission to just bake and make connections that don't exist and just let their imagination go wherever they want, there are going to be some people who take it way farther than most of the other community.
And also, look, giants still exist.
I just saw a video on TikTok the other day of like an 8 foot 8 guy playing basketball.
He's like some high school kid who's like 8'8".
So they do.
I mean, the conspiracy is that they've gone away.
I mean, shit.
Jake's accused me of being a giant just for being over 6 foot.
I mean, the man is 5'2".
Yeah.
I mean, I'm 5 and a half.
I mean, I'm five and a half, so...
(laughing)
Years old.
(laughing)
So that's really all there is to the Tartarian conspiracy theory.
It's based on a misunderstanding of an archaic term used in old European texts about Asia, and then baking these documents and pictures of buildings on the assumption that there was some sort of glorious old world which has been covered up from us.
But there's just this massive community who, like I said, spent hours and hours and Hours showing these documents and talking about these pictures and building and lamenting some sort of, you know, glorious past that never existed.
Well, you could argue that they're wasting their time, or you could argue that, collectively, they are demoralizing Travis View.
Now, your belief that that is a good project will vary.
Yeah.
But there's nothing worse for Travis than diving into a somewhat interesting architectural ancient civilization conspiracy like this and finding out that it's just so stupid.
And finding out that they're a giant's boy.
Surely, Travis, it can't be that stupid.
So, I think that underlying the Tartarian conspiracy theory, as stupid as it is, there are a few very sympathetic impulses.
Firstly, is this notion that there's something very wrong with civilization as it is.
Within the Tartarian empire conspiracy theory community, there's this general refusal to believe that this, as we live now, is actually the best way that human civilization has ever functioned.
I would say to them, check out the 10th wonder of the world, the Taco Bell Live Moss Porta Potties.
So because they're dissatisfied, they look to the past and construct this fictional civilization, which must have done it right.
They must have constructed a beautiful, abundant, advanced world that has powers that are beyond what we could possibly know about.
And we don't know about it just because the powers that be don't want us to know how good we could have it.
I'm going to start a conspiracy theory that like 700 years ago, the video games were way better.
You know, it's very weird.
One of the weirdest things about this community is that I kept waiting for them.
I watched, I watched a lot.
I kept waiting for them to, you know, blame the Jews for the cover up.
Because whenever you dive into a community, a conspiracist community, That happens.
It just happens every time.
So, like, I brace myself.
But for some reason, I didn't... I'm not saying it... I haven't... I didn't watch every single video.
I'm not saying it never, ever happens.
But it's very weird, because it always skirts towards sort of, like, fascist idealism, in the sense of, like, idealization of a past that wasn't real, and this focus on aesthetics.
Like, oh, the past is so much beautiful, and we are, like, an uglier, degenerate society.
But, you know, fortunately, from videos I saw, they don't...
Yeah, maybe it is good to hold a few of these fascists in a state of ketamine-doubt pareidolia.
You know, it's actually good.
Actually, let's start our own.
I mean, you said that there wasn't any anti-Semitic elements really that prevalent.
Why not start it?
The Khazarian Mafia is covering up the Tartarian Empire, guys.
Let's go!
No, but I sort of agree that this is a good- it's like, um, you know, in ancient folklore, you know, they would say to ward off ghosts, you know, you would have to bury a jar of salt or sugar, something that would- the ghosts would sort of feel compelled to count the grains.
And this Tartarian conspiracy theory, I think, is like that.
Let's bake the architecture, bake the world's fairs, bake the old photographs, ignore the wires.
If that keeps you from going further extreme to the right, you know what?
What's the harm?
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast.
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Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
The world around you is a lie, and the history of us has been covered up.
We are the new population of the world, and a one world, unified race of people used to exist all across.
The Tartarians.
They built all these buildings that you see, and they designed them in order to obtain the free energy from the atmosphere.
No matter where you look, you'll find the same thing.
People attribute that to design styles and architecture.
And the story has been greatly falsified, most likely by artificial intelligence that we know nothing about.
But it's clear that if you look around long enough, you'll see that there is much more to this story.
What happened?
If we did build these, how have we gone so far downhill?
