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Claim A says Playboy ran a fake Illuminati letter in 1969. Claim B says Hugh Hefner wrote a fake Illuminati letter in 1964. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.
In the April 1969 Playboy Advisor column, a long letter signed "R.S., Kansas City, Missouri" asked whether the Illuminati were behind the wave of assassinations. It was cooked up by Robert Anton Wilson, who worked on the magazine's letters page, and possibly with Kerry Thornley.
The letter, about 300 words, described a Berkeley campus group claiming to control finance and media. It asked whether the Illuminati were part of the Masons, whether the Aga Khan led them, and whether they owned all the banks and TV stations. Then came the kicker: "who have they killed lately?"
Wilson also wrote Playboy's reply, about 350 words, which kept the mystery rolling. The goal was a prank with a purpose: Wilson later said he wanted "so many alternative paranoias that everybody could pick a favorite."
It was part of a Discordian project nicknamed Operation Mindfuck. Wilson recalled, "We accused everybody of being in the Illuminati," including Nixon, Johnson and Buckley. In 1975, Wilson and Robert Shea turned the idea into the novel Illuminatus!, which helped carry it into pop culture.
Claim B is wrong because the famous letter appeared in 1969, not 1964, and it was a pseudonymous reader letter written by Wilson. Hugh Hefner did not write it.
Think you'd have spotted the prank? Share this with a friend and see if they would have fallen for it.
