5 Truly Outrageous Conspiracies Promoted By Celebrities

4The Bassist For Rage Against The Machine Doesn't Believe In ISIS Or The Moon Landing

With police-car-flipping ballads like "Killing In The Name Of" and "Bulls On Parade," vocalist Zack de la Rocha made it perfectly clear which machine in particular he was raging against, even if Paul Ryan missed the message. The other members of the band, however, might have had some slightly different machines in mind.

RATM bassist Tim Commerford believes that the U.S. government invented ISIS, and not in the "stirred unrest in the region which led to its rise" sense. He believes that the terrorist organization is a fictional entity created to justify the bombing of the Middle East. Said Commerford: "I don't believe ISIS is real ... That's a bunch of shit. I don't believe the Jihadi John beheading video. Go look at those videos and study them, and see if you don't think they're fake." The beheading clips in particular are a sticking point for Commerford, who doesn't believe that ISIS would be capable of producing videos in high definition or with soundtracks. After all, they'd need literally any generation of iPhone to pull off that sort of production, and it's not like those are easy to obtain.

3Professor Griff Was All About Antisemitic Conspiracies, Now He's All About JAY-Z And The Illuminati

Public Enemy is one of the most influential rap groups in history, and as their name would suggest, they've been known to flirt with controversy on occasion. The award for public-est enemy has to go to Professor Griff, the group's Minister of Information, Supreme Allied Chief of Community Relations, and the only one to be (briefly) kicked out of the band for ghastly antisemitism.

Asking a hip-hop group to wade into the Israel-Palestine conflict might be a strange journalistic tactic, but The Washington Times got a hell of an answer from Griff in a 1989 interview, during which he announced that "Jews are responsible for the majority of wickedness in the world." Later on, he defended his viewpoint with some foolproof logic: "Is it a coincidence that Jews run the jewelry business, and it's named 'jewelry'?"

Airtight case, Professor.

To their credit, the band issued an apology, and Griff later recanted his statements. To their discredit, they immediately rehired him, and his recantation amounted to acknowledging that he can't blame Jews for all the wickedness in the world, because he doesn't know about all of it. Some of it might be Justin Bieber's fault. Who's to say?

2M.I.A. Believes The CIA Created Facebook And Google

Mathangi Arulpragasam, better-known by her stage name M.I.A., has taken one of the more reasonable beliefs out there -- that social media companies are evil and making the world a worse place -- and rendered it outlandish by tacking on a bunch of needless, bizarre, narcissistic details. She took the very real threat of data mining and manipulation and made it all about her, as if she's the Neo to Mark Zuckerberg's Agent Smith.

M.I.A. reasons that, "All governments are connected to Google, and all governments can shift their search engines so only what they want you to see comes up." An argument that sort of falls apart under scrutiny, unless the governments of the world have a serious interest in spreading erotic Sonic the Hedgehog fan art. She's probably right when she says "everyone is fucking you up behind the screens," but she's a bit more off the mark when she suggests that "the CIA invented Facebook and Google." As if the federal government was capable of building a working website.

1Marion Cotillard Believes 9/11 Was A Scheme To Save On Renovation Costs

In a 2007 interview on French television, actress Marion Cotillard casually explained that 9/11 was the result of a conspiracy ... to avoid paying for expensive renovations.