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Some dare call it Conspiracy
Conspiracy theories: They're just fairy tales adults tell each other on YouTube.
-John Oliver
- Conspiracy (civil)
- an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage
- Conspiracy (criminal)
- an agreement between persons to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement
- Conspiracy (political)
- an agreement between persons with the goal of gaining political power or meeting a political objective
- Conspiracy theory
- an explanatory or speculative hypothesis suggesting that two or more persons or an organization have conspired to cause or to cover up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an event or situation typically regarded as illegal or harmful. Since the mid-1960s, the phrase has denoted explanations that invoke conspiracies without warrant, often producing hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of historical events or simple facts
In his book Culture of Conspiracy, Michael Barkun (a political scientist specializing in conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs) defines three types of conspiracy theories:
- Event conspiracy: In which a conspiracy is thought to be responsible for a single event or brief series of events, e.g. JFK assassination conspiracies.
- Systemic conspiracy: A broad conspiracy perpetrated by a specific group in an attempt to subvert government or societal organizations, e.g. Freemasonry.
- Super-conspiracy: Hierarchical conspiracies combining systemic and event conspiracies in which a supremely powerful organization controls numerous conspiratorial actors, e.g. the New World Order or Reptoids controlling a number of interlocking conspiracies.