What are conspiracies?

Me explaining my book to the cashier at Woolworths.

Our modern world has been created by genuine conspiracies. It is clear to see that the whims of the rich and powerful control our lives.

When I talk of genuine conspiracies, I mean ones that we have evidence of; mundane items like receipts and bills for services rendered by security services, physical evidence such as the prisons and torture chambers that are now museums, research notes on human experiments or minutes of a meeting where it is decided how to track and kill dissidents most effectively or spoken accounts of survivors.

This isn’t to say all conspiracies are written down but there is at least evidence, whether that is through unmarked graves, or the stories told by the survivors to their children.

The definition this book uses for conspiracy is ‘a covert or secretive program/action to manipulate or deceive the public or to commit or conceal a harmful activity’.

 The term ‘unlawful’ is excluded as many conspiracies occurred within the confines of the law. When I have talked about my book some people I have spoken to have talked to me about corruption or dodgy deals which while I feel is obviously terrible and a threat to democracy but is not the scope of the book, instead I have focused on seven conspiracies, truly massive efforts to disrupt and influence social movements. 

Another thing to note is that if we use my above definition of conspiracy then we could probably label most contemporary genocides as conspiracies. That is to say: a covert or secretive organisation (such as the military or government) manipulate or deceive the public (by hiding their crimes or propagating hatred) to commit or conceal a harmful activity (the extermination of a class or group of people).

This website isn’t a study of genocides (although Condor comes close to being one), and I don’t believe I could provide much more to a reader with a few short pages on the topic. Instead, I have chosen conspiracies that have shaped our way of thinking not only through violence but other means such as disinformation, sabotage and information warfare. To stress my point, this certainly isn’t an exhaustive list (in fact when I first considered a list I had 24 conspiracies on the page!) Instead, this website is intended as a primer to spur you the reader onto more research and consideration of how governments and organisations act covertly.

Finally, the word ‘conspiracy’ is often used interchangeably with the term ‘conspiracy theory’ throughout this website I use each term separately. I have made an effort to discuss conspiracy theories with a critical and reasonable eye, only after I have studied a theory and its evidence (or lack of) have I made the decision to label it conspiracy or conspiracy theory.