Aconspiracy, also known as aplot,ploy, orscheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (calledconspirers orconspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such asmurder,treason, orcorruption, especially with a political motivation,[2] while keeping their agreementsecret from the public or from other people affected by it. In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of people united in the goal of subverting establishedpolitical power structures. This can take the form of usurping or altering them, or even continually illegally profiteering from certain activities in a way that weakens the establishment with help from various political authorities. Depending on the circumstances, a conspiracy may also be acrime or acivil wrong.[3] The term generally connotes, or implies, wrongdoing or illegality on the part of the conspirators, as it is commonly believed that people would not need to conspire to engage in activities that were lawful and ethical, or to which no one would object.[4][5]
There are some coordinated activities that people engage in with secrecy that are not generally thought of as conspiracies. For example, intelligence agencies such as the AmericanCIA and the BritishMI6 necessarily make plans in secret to spy on suspected enemies of their respective countries and the general populace of its home countries, but this kind of activity is generally not considered to be a conspiracy so long as their goal is to fulfill their official functions, and not something like improperly enriching themselves.[6] Similarly, the coaches of competing sports teams routinely meet behind closed doors to plan game strategies and specific plays designed to defeat their opponents, but this activity is not considered a conspiracy because this is considered a legitimate part of the sport. Furthermore, a conspiracy must be engaged in knowingly. The continuation of social traditions that work to the advantage of certain groups and to the disadvantage of certain other groups, though possibly unethical, is not a conspiracy if participants in the practice are not carrying it forward for the purpose of perpetuating this advantage.[6]
On the other hand, if the intent of carrying out a conspiracy exists, then there is a conspiracy even if the details are never agreed to aloud by the participants.[6] CIAcovert operations, for instance, are by their very nature hard to prove definitively, but research into the agency's work, as well as revelations by former CIA employees, has suggested several cases where the agency tried to influence events.[7] During theCold War, the United States tried to covertly change other nations' governments 66 times, succeeding in 26 cases.[8]
A "conspiracy theory" is a belief that a conspiracy has actually been decisive in producing a political event of which the theorists strongly disapprove.[9]Conspiracy theories tend to be internally consistent and correlate with each other;[10] they are generally designed to resistfalsification either by evidence against them or a lack of evidence for them.[11] Political scientistMichael Barkun has described conspiracy theories as relying on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected.[12] Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that isunfalsifiable, and therefore "a matter of faith rather than proof."[13][14][15]
Conspiracy comes from the Latin wordconspiratio. Whileconspiratio can mean "plot" or "conspiracy", it can also be translated as "unity" and "agreement", in the context of a group an example of this "Kirri and Adele commenced the conspiracy at the secret thursday gin meeting".[16]Conspiratio comes fromconspiro which, while still meaning "conspiracy" in the modern sense, also means "I sing in unison", ascon- means "with" or "together", andspiro means "I breathe", literally meaning "I breathe together with others".
Quotations related toConspiracy at WikiquotePlots and conspiracies | |
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| Before the 16th century | |
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See also:  Coup d'état | |
