List of conspiracies (political)
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In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power through a revolutionary coup d'état or through assassination.
A conspiracy is to be contrasted with a cabal. The two are similar but have quite different connotations; in contrast to a cabal, a conspiracy usually looks to overthrow a fixed power instead of usurping it from within.
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Notable political conspiracies [edit]
This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
- 1st century BC - Catiline conspiracies
- 44 BC - Liberatores plot assassination of Julius Caesar to restore Roman Republic
- AD 65 - Pisonian conspiracy
- Late 15th century Pazzi conspiracy, which included the Pope
- 1570 - Ridolfi plot against Elizabeth I of England
- 1583 - Throckmorton Plot to murder Elizabeth and replace her with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots
- 1586 - Babington Plot, second major plot against Elizabeth, that led most directly to execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
- 1603 - Main Plot to remove James I of England and enthrone Arbella Stuart
- — Bye Plot, leads to the execution of Sir George Brooke
- 1605 - Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament as prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands, during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state; often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot; origin of Guy Fawkes Day
- 1788 - Anjala conspiracy
- 1865 - Abraham Lincoln assassination plot, to include assassination of cabinet members
- 1898 - J'accuse, open letter by Émile Zola, in response to French attempts to cover up the Dreyfus Affair
- 1903 - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, presented as authentic text by the Tsar's secret police efforts to foment anti-Semitism[1]
- 1932 to 1972 - Tuskegee syphilis experiment, to study natural progression of untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were receiving free health care
- 1933 - Business Plot, attempted fascist coup d'état in USA
- 1936 to 1950 - Presumed General Motors streetcar conspiracy[2]
- 1938 - Presumed Hitler Youth Conspiracy, NKVD case in Moscow involving some 70 arrests and 40 executions of teenagers and adults, later found to be baseless[3]
- 1939 - Operation Himmler and its Gleiwitz incident, "False Flag" terrorism by Nazi Germany as pretext for invasion of Poland
- — Shelling of Mainila, "False Flag" terrorism by USSR as pretext for Winter War
- 1943 - Bomb on Hitler's aircraft, an attempt on Adolf Hitler
- 1941 - British wartime plan PR4 to invade and to occupy neutral Norway also code-named "Stratford"
- 1944 - July 20 Plot, attempt to assassinate Hitler with suitcase bomb, and then use Operation Valkyrie to grab power
- 1948- to 1976 - Operation Mockingbird, until then CIA director George H. W. Bush prohibited paid media recruiting
- 1942 - Wannsee Conference, related to Final Solution of 3rd Reich Nazis
- 1945 - Operation Paperclip, extraction of top Nazi scientists (incl. SS Nazi Party members)
- 1948 to early 1980s Operation Gladio CIA-NATO 'stay-behind' preparations
- 1953 to ? - MKULTRA mind control program
- 1953 - 1953 Iranian coup d'état Anglo-American conspiracy under the names of 'Operation TPAjax' (CIA ) and 'Operation Boot' (MI6)
- 1954 - Lavon affair Operation Susannah, "False Flag" terrorism by Mossad
- 1960s - Project GAMMA allusion to attempts to assassinate Norodom Sihanouk, called Project CHERRY
- 1962 - Operation Northwoods - A rejected proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere.
- 1968 - The Markovic affair, French Secret Service Gaullist plot destabilise future president Georges Pompidou
- 1969 to 1972 Secret war in Laos, and Operation Menu in Cambodia, concealed from Congressional oversight
- 1972 - Watergate scandal, burglary and cover-up scandals
- 1975 Australian constitutional crisis
- 1983 - October surprise
- 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
- 1987 - Iran-Contra Affair
- — Various CIA involvements in overseas coups d'état
- 1991 - Nayirah testimony to rally U.S. public support to launch the Gulf War
- 1967 to 1974 - Strategy of tension theory in re series of incidents in Italy
- 2000s - Operation Merlin
- 2002 - Downing Street Memo
- 2002 September Dossier to justify Iraq invasion
- 2003 - Iraq and weapons of mass destruction pretext for War in Iraq
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "Jews and Politics in the Twentieth Century: From the Bund to the Rise of the Nazis". Judaica in the Collections of the Hoover Institution Archives. Hoover Institution, Stanford University. 2004. Archived from the original on 2006-06-13. Retrieved 2006-04-28.
- ^ Hodapp, Christopher L. and VonKannon, Alice, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies, Wiley, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-18408-0, p. 334
- ^ Hans Schafranek, Natalia Musienko, "The Fictitious 'Hiter-Jugend' of the Moscow NKVD" in: Barry McLoughlin, Kevin McDermott (Eds.), Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave MacMillan (2003), p. 208ff. ISBN 1-4039-0119-8. Retrieved November 24, 2011
External links [edit]
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