Ever since becoming a believer in the flat earth, I’ve always had, or been given, an uneasy feeling about the “Flat Earth Society”.
Are they some kind of “secret society”?
They have always been portrayed as “controlled opposition”. The government “psyop” (psychological operation) to be the “gatekeeper” – to make sure the movement is never taken seriously.
Or I’ve heard that they are designed to “make us look foolish”. They discredit the Flat Earth community by discrediting the movement with ridiculous arguments, stances and opinions.
From what I’ve investigated, they don’t seem to have ever been anything much more than a private mailing list, or recently, a couple of bickering web forums.
Let’s take a quick look at the history of “The Society”.
English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884) is the “father” of modern flat earth thinking. Based on conclusions derived from the Bedford Level experiment, Rowbotham published a pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy. He later expanded into a book Earth Not a Globe, proposing the Earth is a flat disc centered at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, Antarctica. Rowbotham further held that the Sun and Moon were 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above Earth and that the “cosmos” was 3,100 miles (5,000 km) above the Earth.
Rowbotham created a the first Zetetic Society in England.
His work was picked up by Lady Elizabeth Blount. She went on to establish a Universal Zetetic Society, whose objective was “the propagation of knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation”.
In 1956, Samuel Shenton created the International Flat Earth Research Society as a successor to the Universal Zetetic Society, running it as “organising secretary” from his home in Dover, England. Shenton was know for his interest in alternative science and technology. The emphasis on religious arguments was less than in the predecessor society.
In 1969, Shenton persuaded Ellis Hillman, a Polytechnic of East London lecturer, to become president of the Flat Earth Society. Hillman did nothing with it. Shenton died in 1971
Charles K. Johnson inherited part of Shenton’s library from Shenton’s wife, and established and became president of the International Flat Earth Research Society of America, together with the Covenant People’s Church in California, through the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s.
Johnson cited the Bible for his beliefs, and he saw scientists as pulling a hoax which would replace religion with science.
According to Charles K. Johnson, the membership of the group rose to 3,500 under his leadership, but began to decline after a fire at his house in 1997 which destroyed all of the records and contacts of the society’s members. Johnson died in March 2001.
The name lied dormant for several years, until a couple of different web forums started up, using this name. Nothing unified. It all seems to be very “grassroots” – for better or worse. Basically just a hodgepodge of self-promoters.
Currently, two different website claim to be “The Flat Earth Society”. https://theflatearthsociety.org/ and https://www.tfes.org/ – the latter broke off from the former in 2013.
So how did this mishmash of junior league self promoters become important enough that President Obama mentioned it BY NAME…?
Tomorrow we will examine this name “Flat Earth Society” from a new, hopefully different perspective AND WHO we REALLY need to be wary of.
Russell Dibird
