Other 'nutty' and 'extremist' ideas from my youth that are now almost universally accepted:
- rogue elements in the British secret service were conspiring to overthrow the elected Labour government during the 1970s (and put Mountbatten into power)
- a future conservative government would sell off the British water supply to private ownership
- the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six were innocent and their confessions obtained under duress
- the CIA runs secret torture camps
- the American gov't channelled illegal money to right-wing death squads in the 3rd world
- the police were taking kick-backs from the sex trade in Soho
- Harold Wilson had Alzheimer's
- the record companies were manipulating the charts
More recently there was the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction thing, for example.
Loads of stuff like that. And when you are young you think 'one day they'll have to admit we were right'. But of course that never happens. We were always at war with Eurasia.