His son, William Howard Taft (1887) was elected to the U.S. attorney general, then secretary of war, ambassador to Austria, and ambassador to Russia. William Russell (1833) rose to the military rank of general and became a state legislator in Connecticut. The initiates’ vows have to do with support of one another in the achievement of worldly and highly material success after graduation. Skull and Bones is not your typical beer-swilling, goof-off fraternity. Each fortunate initiate is gifted with $15,000 and a grandfather clock. The society, which Russell formed with Alphonso Taft (class of 1833), exists only at Yale, and only fifteen juniors are selected by senior members to be initiated into the next year’s membership. He called it the “Order of Scull and Bones,” later changed to Skull and Bones. Russell also returned to Yale with the notion of establishing a chapter of a corps in Germany. Neither Hitler’s fascism nor Lenin’s communism would quarrel with the precepts of Hegelianism. The state has supreme rights over individuals, and individuals must recognize that their supreme duty is to the state. In Hegel’s worldview, the state is Absolute Reason and individuals must give their total obedience to it. When William Huntington Russell returned to Yale from his studies in Germany in 1832, his head was filled with the philosophy of reason as taught by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at the University of Berlin. Its members assure outsiders that Skull and Bones is simply a college fraternity that taps fifteen rich boys each year to undergo an initiation that’s nothing but “mumbo-jumbo.” Conspiracists are certain that the occult-based secret society worships the absolute power of the state and the New World Order. It is a summary of a conspiracy theory, not a statement of fact. In other words, you can find COVID-19 media reports citing any number in that range.The following article is from Conspiracies and Secret Societies. We’ll spare you another set of bullets, but searches with the word "deaths" in place of "cases" yields the same type of results. "320 cases" AND COVID - 8,660 results (larger, since many reports round off the numbers) Here’s what we found as of about noon on June 16, 2020. Then we did the same with the numbers around 322. We ran a Google News search using the terms "322 cases" AND COVID, to find online references to where "322 cases" appeared as a unit on a page that also referenced COVID. Beyond that, there are nearly 20,000 incorporated places (primarily cities, towns, villages, boroughs), about 3,000 of which have at least 10,000 people.Īdd that to the 50 states and, well, the entire rest of the world, and you’ve got a lot of places tallying COVID data that could potentially add up to 322.īut in case you’re somehow not convinced yet, we’ll follow the advice of one poster and Google this. "How is it that an additional 322 cases of Covid have been reported in Massachusetts, South Korea, Philippines, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Equador, Thailand, Oklahoma, China, Colorado, Armenia, Oman (Middle East), Onondaga (NY), Kerala (India), Simerset (NJ), Kentucky, Wyoming, Borders (UK), Amritsar (India), Thane (India), Camden County (NJ), Iraq, Khaleej (Dubai), and Dakota County (Nebraska)!"Īcross the nation you’ll find more than 3,000 counties. "Google 322 Covid! Why is 322 a magic number!?!" screamed another post from the same day. "Nothing to see here except synchronized cases all over the world," said one post from June 15, 2020. In a social media landscape rife with claims about manufactured COVID case and death tallies, and conspiracies related to vaccines, 5G cell towers and whatever else, the clear implication is there’s something nefarious going on. Turns out, many also can’t resist one that’s exceptionally easy to disprove.Īn array of Facebook posts recently surfaced singling out the number 322 and a purported connection to COVID-19. Some people can’t resist a good conspiracy.