The modern conspiracy theory movement revolves around a small cadre of ultra-powerful families controlling political, social, and economic events.

Some of these families will be familiar to longtime conspiracy theory readers: the Rockefellers, the Kennedy’s, the Astors, George Soros, and of course, the Rothschilds (to whom I am not related.)

But deeper down, in the even danker and more shadowy parts of the “citizen researcher” movement is the name of another powerful and royal family, one passed around among a small number of woke anons, with its claws in every aspect of American society – banking, energy, transportation, manufacturing, communications, and food.

Yet even the deepest of research digs brings up almost nothing about them. And almost nobody knows who they are. That name: Payseur.

So who are the Payseurs? Nothing less than “one of the most secret and most powerful families in North America,” according to the influential book “Bloodlines of the Illuminati.” “They have been so powerful that they could hide their wealth and power, and use other Satanic families as proxies,” it continues.

Is it true that they are the real brains behind the Rothschild banking operation, that they have links to the French royal bloodline, and that toppling them will break the chains of control that the powerful cabal has had over us for centuries?

To start with, let’s examine what the conspiracy movement believes is the history of the Payseur family – and then what the real history is.

The short version (ie, the one that doesn’t go down a million different rabbit holes) does indeed begin in the French monarchy. As the story goes, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had a son named Louis-Charles, born in 1785. When Louis XVI was executed in 1793, Louis-Charles was elevated to the throne as Louis XVII. Except he wasn’t, because the monarchy had fallen, and both Louis’ were in prison.

Young Louis was smuggled out of prison, but didn’t live long, dying in 1795, likely of TB. He was buried in an unmarked grave, with his heart removed, as per the tradition of the French monarchy.

That would seem to be where poor Louis-Charles’ story ends, except in the conspiracy theory version, he escaped to America.

This isn’t without historical context, as in the decades after his death, over 100 people came forward claiming to be him – though recent DNA testing of the heart proved that it belongs to its former owner.

In the conspiracy theory, Louis-Charles was smuggled to North Carolina, and began a new life under the name “Daniel Payseur.” He managed to squirrel away quite a bit of wealth, and as the story goes, his grandson, Lewis Cass Payseur (also called LC Payseur), died an incredibly wealthy man, leaving behind a trust with a list of assets so long that it goes on for pages, all which was divided up between LC’s three children.

Oh, and the Payseurs had also hired agents of the Rothschild family at some point to help run their massive railroad empire. As written “Bloodlines of the Illuminati,” “It was
this Lewis Cass Payseur who hired the Rothschild bloodline […] to run a number of the Payseur’s companies. The Payseurs were one of the original big railroad families along with Issac Croom and William H. Beatty. Isaac Croom’s wife was a sister of William Beatty’s, so the reader can see how all these elite bloodlines intertwine.”

Unfortunately, if you start researching this for yourself, all you’re going to find are conspiracy theory websites and that book. There’s not a single major media publication that mentions the Payseur family in any significant way – ever. While you find tons of right wing conspiracy sites like “Truth Control” and “Anonymous Conservative,” they all pass around the same unsourced stories.

There’s also a genealogy website link for Daniel Payseur born in 1785, that lists his birthplace as “France,” but his parents are listed as Hannah and George Pasour (sic), and his birthday isn’t the same as Louis-Charles’. There’s also a Lewis Cass Payseur, 1850-1939, who appears to be the grandson of that Daniel Payseur.

But these websites are notoriously inaccurate, as evidenced by the page for Daniel containing a link to the “Bloodlines of the Illuminati” book. That book is sometimes used as proof that the CIA knows all about the Payseurs, because there’s a PDF of it on the CIA’s website. But that’s because Osama Bin Laden owned a copy, and it was found at his compound in Abbotabad. And you know, if Osama believed it, it has to be true.

And it’s that book, written in 1995 by a conspiracy theorist who later did a long stretch in prison for armed robbery, that appears to be the source of much of the lore about the Payseurs, because there’s nothing else out there that I could find. Maybe it’s buried so deep and is so secret that nobody knows about it, like the conspiracy theorists say. Or maybe because it’s all made up – the default for all un-evidenced allegations.

So why are conspiracy theorists obsessing about it now? Because of one QAnon post, where the anonymous grifter, sorry, Trump official, claimed:

Mess with the best, die like the rest.
[2] highly classified clown ops exposed.
[44] remaining.
Wizards & Warlocks.
Save the best for last.
[P]

and another (linked in an incredibly anti-Semitic meme), reading

The “Chair” serves the Master.
Who is the Master?
P = C.
Q

Nothing in those gibberish posts made any kind of testable claim, so a Q follower asked if [P] is actually “Payseur,” rather than “Pope,” which was the assumption. A thousand half-baked memes were launched from there, and it’s common knowledge among believers that the Payseurs control the Rothschilds, and everything else.

Except it’s not. There’s no evidence Louis-Charles escaped France, moved to North Carolina, changed his name, and had a grandson who amassed a giant fortune. There’s only dodgy historical evidence that people with those names existed, and that’s not enough evidence to prove a gigantic conspiracy theory.

In fact, we know through DNA evidence that Louis-Charles did NOT escape – or if he did, he did it missing his heart.