Helen Keller wrote 14 books, met 12 presidents, helped found the ACLU, got surveilled by the FBI, and somehow, according to TikTok commenters with anime avatars, she was also lying about all of it.
Cool. Sure. Totally reasonable.
In this episode of Stupiracy - presented by CARSTAR - Scott Rizzuto and Tim McKernan ask the question that feels illegal to even say out loud: Was Helen Keller a fraud? Not because we believe it — but because the internet absolutely does and is very confident about it. Confident in the way only someone who learned history exclusively through obscure web forums and short-form video can be.
Rizzuto and McKernan break down where this modern conspiracy theory came from, why it keeps popping up in weird history threads and Reddit comments, and how a woman who became the most famous deafblind person in history somehow turned into a punchline meme about airplanes and handwriting. Because yes, apparently the fact that Helen Keller “flew a plane” in 1946 is now considered iron-clad proof that the entire 20th century was lying to us.
So we rewind. Back to Alabama. Back to the mysterious childhood illness. Back to the Miracle Worker water pump moment that everyone remembers but no one actually understands. Then we keep going — past the inspirational poster version of Helen Keller and straight into the stuff you definitely didn’t learn in school. The socialism. The labor activism. The IWW membership. The FBI file. The part where she was a full-on political menace while also being treated like a porcelain doll by history textbooks.
From there, we put on the tinfoil hats and examine the “evidence.”
The books were too well written.
The handwriting was too neat.
The airplane thing. Oh god, the airplane thing.
We explain how Helen Keller actually wrote, how assistive technology worked in the early 1900s, why Anne Sullivan wasn’t some shadowy puppet master running a long con, and how a 20-minute supervised flight turned into the dumbest gotcha in conspiracy history. Along the way, we talk ableism, internet brain rot, and why people seem deeply uncomfortable accepting that disabled people can be brilliant without it being a trick.
This is weird history, stupid history, and a perfect example of history you didn’t learn in school, mostly because your teacher didn’t have time to say, “By the way, someday people on the internet will accuse this woman of being fake.”
So no, Helen Keller was not a fraud. But the conspiracy claiming she was? Absolute hall-of-fame Stupiracy - Presented by CARSTAR – your auto body repair experts – locally owned with a nationwide guarantee.
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