Depopulation conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theories about depopulation of the Earth come in a number of flavors. The general theme running through these theories is either that there is an imminent plan to reduce population using an overpopulation crisis as the pretext, or a secret eugenics plan cover-up. The elite thus need to kill off the "useless eaters" so, in the first case, they survive the crisis and, in the second, they can create either enough robots to replace them, or a new race of obedient super-humans.

"Useless eaters"
"Useless eaters" is a term often bandied about by conspiracy theorists. This is supposedly what the heads of the New World Order/Illuminati/Bilderbergs/Reptoids/whatever call us in their meetings in smoke-filled rooms while they light their cigars with $100 bills. It is also sometimes used by survivalists and wrongly attributed to Henry Kissinger. It is also commonly ascribed to Ted Turner, Adolf Hitler, and Thomas Malthus. Apparently, the term originated in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust as "nutzlose Fresser," translating to "useless eaters." It was first used in reference to the T4 program which targeted the terminally ill, the disabled (both physical and mental), mentally ill, and elderly people for "euthanasia".

Means of execution
The genocidal depopulation plan generally involves poisoning or sterilizing people through the use of chemtrails, water fluoridation, or vaccinations secretly full of toxins. Agribusiness transnationals like Monsanto are often implicated in some sort of scheme to monopolize the world's food supply so it can be easily tainted with deadly toxins. Just about anything that can be said to involve "chemicals" can be implicated in this nefarious scheme: vaccines, alleged covert geo-engineering schemes, genetically modified food, etc. Variants of the theory include those with an anti-abortion tinge who incorporate conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, and AIDS conspiracy theorists who believe AIDS was concocted in a laboratory for the purpose of reducing the population. Another variant, largely attributable to Lyndon LaRouche, has worldwide nuclear war as part of the conspirators' alleged plan along with a deliberate economic collapse and de-industrialization to force the world back into a "new dark age."

Anti-environmentalist theories
A number of these theories have an anti-environmentalist bent. They posit that environmentalists are conspiring as some kind of mass Gaia cult to kill off the useless eaters. There is a very tiny grain of truth here when it comes to the really nutty ecoterrorists, Pentti Linkola, or movements like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which provide generous amounts of fodder for conspiracy sites to use as a means to paint the entire environmental movement as a mass conspiracy. This usually ties into some form of a global warming conspiracy theory or the idea that fears of overpopulation are being used as a tactic to implement the depopulation scheme. The and their book The Limits to Growth, and Paul R. Ehrlich and his book The Population Bomb are the convenient punching bags here.

Negative effects
Supporters of this theory often fail to understand the negative effects of depopulation and low populations. Fewer people will mean a smaller work force, strengthening the hand of those remaining, resulting in friction between labour and management. There will be fewer soldiers to have a strong military, meaning it will become harder to adequately maintain the safety of society. Above all, though, is that with fewer people, the structure of government would grow unstable, and would eventually collapse.

Economically there would be consequences as well. This is provably true in places like Japan whose negative population growth is contributing to its current economic woes.

These effects pose a big question: why would a government seek to heavily depopulate the planet when doing so is provably harmful to its interests and a healthy existence? If they really do desire this, then the answer would have to be that they're gluttons for punishment.

Arguments against depopulation conspiracy theories
Governments (intelligent ones) have implemented policies and practices to encourage population growth or discourage it. In America, for example, the more children people have, the more benefits the parents are entitled to. That makes one wonder why a government that's supposedly involved in some grand plot to depopulation is trying to get people to have more children and not fewer. Conspiracy theorists are commonly reticent in trying to explain that or wave it off saying it's some kind of cover.

China's one-child policy
As for places that discourage it, theorists are more passionate in demeaning places like China, citing their policies as central to the depopulation plot. In China's case, their attempts to curtail the population were caused, rather humorously, by the government of Mao Zedong in encouraging its citizens to have as many children as possible. Their strategies often included discouraging the use of birth control to the point they banned the import of contraceptives into their country. The eventual baby boom naturally resulted in overpopulation. By the 1960s, China's food supply was struggling to maintain the influx of new children. This, together with failures in crop management, is one of the main reasons behind the infamous 1962 famine that resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 million people.

In a desperate attempt to get the population back down to a stable, healthy level that they could handle, the government began to use propaganda urging citizens to limit the number of children they had. The government, desperate to end its overpopulation problem, enacted the one-child policy to forcefully bring its population back down to a stable level. This desperate move was met with very negative consequences for the population, resulting in the birth rate falling to a below stable level. Further problems emerged once the first generation born under the one-child policy came of age, such as a lack of a stable workforce and an imbalanced ratio of men to women; able to have only one child, families were likely to favor boys as future breadwinners who could provide for their parents, with girls either aborted, abandoned, or put up for adoption in the West. These problems resulted in the one-child policy being revised to grant more leeway to encourage more births. When this didn't work, the Chinese government at last relented and raised the maximum amount of children to an even number of two. And when that didn't work either, they are now raising the number to three.

This change of mind raises a question: if places like China wanted to depopulate the planet so badly, why wouldn't they remain adamant in not changing their policies? Such actions show that governments definitely do not want overpopulation or underpopulation. They need a stable population if they are to survive.

Still not convinced governments want balanced populations?
Governments have taken other extreme measures to combat low populations as well. A notable example is Russia's infamous tax on childless persons enacted during the reign of Joseph Stalin — yes, you read that right, that Stalin — to financially strong-arm people to procreate to boost its low birthrate. The government even went so far as to give medals and honorary titles to women for having large families. The policy, despite its unpopularity amongst an already miserable populace, was a resounding success. It was so successful that it caused Russia's birthrate to exceed the government's initial expectations. Satisfied that the population was stable once more, the government phased out the tax, not to mention many of the benefits that came with having lots of children.

The currently deteriorating conditions after the fall of the Soviet Union have caused birthrates to plunge again. The idea of bringing back the tax was again put on the table in 2006 with Vladimir Putin, adding that women should be paid more money to have a second child. To the relief of the childless and childfree in the country, these plans have not been put into effect. They are in a holding pattern, however, given the still-decreasing birthrate.

Other governments have gone even further in their attempts to have stable populations. Nazi Germany began a campaign to quell the low birthrate that preceded its rise to power and which existed during its infancy. Besides giving out benefits to people who gave birth, the government banned and heavily punished abortion, homosexuality, and the use of contraception. Death was one of the most extreme punishments delivered. Women's rights were heavily curtailed in order to push them into the role of mother and homemaker, and the rights and benefits of childless people were greatly diminished, resulting in people, especially women, being legally bullied to have children. Those who did comply often got tremendous benefits, including, like in the Soviet Union, medals for raising large families.

And if these past examples aren't evidence enough that governments don't want populations getting too small, the government of Iran previously encouraged people to have less children starting around 1989 to combat a boom in their population lasting from 1976-1996. The policies have until now been successful, resulting in a noticeably smaller birthrate. The government has since been cutting funding to the programs to facilitate lower birthrates to boost what they feel is a population too small for their liking. For example: vasectomies, once free, have ended due to the government cutting moneyflow. The government plans to go even further, showing very keen interest in banning vasectomies altogether and making it tougher, if not near-impossible, for women to get abortions and people to use contraceptives.

Japan's birthrate reached an all-time low in 2005, prompting the creation of a ministerial bureau in the Cabinet Office to specifically address the issue. The Ministry of State for Declining Birthrate and Gender Equality believes greater gender equality in the workplace to be the most effective method of encouraging births, and promotes tax reductions and longer periods of paid leave following the birth of a child.

So what does that all mean?
That isn't the kind of behavior that governments display if they are intent on depopulation. Many of the aforementioned governments specifically are infamous for being authoritarian states, yet they always strove to have stable populations rather than engage in depopulation. This brings us back full circle to the previously established fact that, without a stable population, governments will suffer. But it shows that they do have one provably real agenda going on, and that is a stable population agenda.

A depopulation plot, all things considered, doesn't seem at all likely.

Historical cases of rapid population collapse
During the years 1346 to 1353, the Black Death claimed the lives of 75 to 200 million people in Europe and the Mediterranean, reducing populations by 30-60%. Such a scenario would be to the benefit of the ruling elites, right? Instead, it marked the death knell for the feudal system. The massive labor shortage caused by the plague meant that peasants had more land, craftsmen had fewer competitors, new labor-saving technologies spread to compensate for the loss of so much of the labor force, and feudal lords had to compete for peasants' loyalty lest they switch allegiance to a new lord offering a better deal, while the Roman Catholic Church faced a severe crisis in confidence as prayer seemed wholly ineffective at stopping the ravages of the plague. The Europe that emerged from the Black Death was not the old one that had been dominated by the elites of the medieval era, but conversely, one with a leveled playing field where the elites' power was sharply curtailed, and where agricultural, industrial, economic, religious, and intellectual revolutions loomed around the bend.

Huh… you'd think that, instead of depopulation, the elites would instead want overpopulation so as to create a world where the teeming masses are too busy fighting each other for what little scrap of the world's finite resources they can in order to put up any serious resistance to their masters… oh my God, Alex Jones has got it all wrong! The elites aren't trying to kill us, they want more of us! They want a massive pool of slave labor that competes against itself so that it can't press a united front! And they spread false conspiracy theories to blind truth-seekers and get them to swallow their agenda without realizing it! Oh my God, it's the perfect plan! Everybody, remove your blinders! Protect contraception and abortion rights! Support education, sanitation, health care, urbanization, and stability in the developing world so that families don't feel like they're forced to have ten kids in order to see two survive to adulthood! Smash the patriarchy so that women aren't treated as brood-mares and forced to pump out more slaves! Do your part to fight the NWO's overpopulation agenda, where we'll all be herded into pens like cattle and force-fed Soylent Green as our meager ration for our labor!

WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!!!

But what if there's really a plan?
If there's an evil plot, then the governments involved are obviously quite happy to commit suicide. People are the greatest and most invaluable resources governments depend upon. As already established, too many or too few human beings are devastating, given the numerous ill-effects both scenarios have, which is why governments do whatever they can to ensure birthrates remain normal. Furthermore, as governments have grown in size in reflection of growing populations, lowering populations would naturally have an inverse effect. There would be less people to run the government and keep it running smoothly. Hardly the situation people in positions of authority want, considering their power diminishes too.

So even supposing they are involved in plans to enact depopulation, it's a guarantee that the nation they end up with once successful will be a damn small one lacking power and clout.

Possible origins
Fears of this sort may have been stoked by science fiction such as the 1973 film Soylent Green, the 1976 film Logan's Run, by Garrett Hardin proposing rich Western nations practice "lifeboat ethics" in refusing immigration (not a very liberal view, eh?), and by real examples of governments which put radical depopulation into practice, such as Pol Pot's Cambodia between 1975-1979. However, as a conspiracy theory, the scope of the depopulation plan is global, with various conspirators (the Rockefellers, the Club of Rome, the Jews, Henry Kissinger, British royalty) claimed to be secretly working to reduce the world population by as much as 80 percent.