What the heck is the Tartarian Empire

I like to keep an eye on some of the more weird and wacky conspiracy theorists in New Zealand, as well as some of the more dangerous ones - I'm not sure why, but it feels like a disproportionate number of them come from overseas. Whether it be Lee Williams from the UK, who is ironically worried about immigrants coming to this country and the UN's secret agenda, or Damien De Ment from America, who thinks we should overthrow the government, these are some of the most vocal “alternative” voices in New Zealand.

Another interesting personality is Karen Brewer, from Australia. From what I can tell, she's currently in New Zealand trying to avoid paying $875,000 in damages from a case where she accused an MP in Australia of being part of a paedophile network in a series of Facebook posts. The MP, Anne Webster, rather than just ignoring Karen took her to court and accused her of defaming them. It's not surprising that the judge found in favour of the MP, given that Karen Brewer appears to be a fantasist who likes to accuse all and sundry of being a part of a shadowy network.

Sadly Karen hasn't stopped this nonsense since she came over here - she can often be found outside the Governor General's residence with a megaphone shouting about how Dame Cindy is a part of the evil Freemasons (and we may look into this some more in a week or two).

I recently watched a funny video Karen recorded where she talks about the invention of sewing machines, and how hard it must have been before they were invented. Her point seems to be that people were spending all of their time making red bricks, so how did they have time to sew anything, let alone the kinds of dresses people wore hundreds of years ago.

These red bricks are part of a conspiracy theory about an ancient empire called the Tartarian Empire, and although this is not the first time I've heard talk of this idea I'd never bothered to read into it until I watched Karen's video. And, as usual with this kind of extreme conspiracy theory (like the Mandela effect, Black Knight Satellite or hollow moon), I was in for a treat!

The basic idea is that much of our recorded history is wrong, and that for many centuries the Tartars (from central Asia) ruled the entire world, peacefully During their rule these Tartars built many of the old buildings we see in cities around the world, and if you look closely at some of the architectural themes used, you can spot similarities between the pyramids in Egypt, say, and the Taj Mahal, as well as the Empire State Building. These are all old, grand structures that have stood the test of time, with ornate carvings that we don't really add to buildings today. And many of them are built with the red bricks that Karen Brewer seems so obsessed with.

(In reality, Tartar was a catch-all term used by Europeans mapping the world a few hundred years ago to denote several nomadic groups in central Asia, such as Mongols and Turks)

Star forts are a particular example of Tartar architecture, where the star shape of forts built around the world in many different countries supposedly being evidence that they were all the work of this single group. The Tartars may also have been giants, which explains their need for high ceilings in these old buildings. And they also apparently had access to technology that far surpasses our own (this is a popular theme in these alternative histories).

One nice touch to this theory is that any below ground level windows are evidence of the demise of this once grand global empire. Supposedly their civilisation was lost to a mud flood, and any buildings that appear to go below ground level are evidence that this flood moved the ground level up. Some even believe that these buildings go much deeper, with many now subterranean levels that used to be above ground before the flood.

Source: https://neverwasmag.com/2021/10/lost-empire-of-tartaria/

There's also a “theory” that the mud which caused the flooding was made from the melted red bricks of thousands of destroyed buildings, possibly melted by someone using the Tartars' free energy weapons against them. According to this part of the theory, mountains are just some of the largest buildings they had created, and they have been melted into these large formations.

Locally, Tartarian architecture includes the Northern Club Rooms in Auckland (which is gorgeously covered in ivy), the Dunedin railway station, the entirety of Napier, and even Luna Park.

Here's David Obeda (known on YouTube as King Dave, with his channel Self-Taught NZ) talking about a “Tartarian” building on the opposite side of the street to where I work in Wellington, the Old Bank Arcade:

David seems to have got stuck on this idea that it doesn't make sense for a basement level to have windows, but as a great Bloomberg article on this theory points out, older buildings were built before we had electric lighting, and so basement windows were often a much easier way of getting light into a basement than using candles or lanterns.

According to the theory, this version of history is being deliberately hidden from us, and much of what we're taught is our history either didn't happen, or happened in a much shorter timespan than we've been led to believe - these events have been stretched out to cover over the centuries that the Tartarian Empire existed, hiding them from us.

It's interesting to see that this conspiracy theory has really taken off in popularity, presumably fueled by the fact that many cities around the world have held onto some of these older heritage buildings - and to the casual observer they are very much juxtaposed with the modern steel and glass behemoths that have grown up around them. I guess when viewed in this way, it's easy to imagine a connection between these buildings that unites them all.

Plus, as an immigrant myself from the UK, I have a guilty feeling that some of these similarities are probably due to the influence of the British Empire - which at its height was the largest empire the world has ever seen, covering a quarter of the world's land mass and a quarter of its population. So it might well be that what these people are seeing is not some mythical Asian empire that disappeared without a trace under a deluge of mud, but a very real British empire (and to an extent other empires, such as the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese) whose architects borrowed ideas from ancient monuments they found in the countries they imposed themselves on.