When I call something a "conspiracy theory" I don't just mean that I think that thing is false. I also don't mean that it is simply something that two or more people conspired about. When I call something a "conspiracy theory" what I mean specifically is that it is a grand conspiracy that would absolutely require the full complicity of thousands of people, and that within the necessary population of conspirators there are significantly divergent interests and ideologies that would make their working together on such a delicate and precarious endeavor with the type of discipline said endeavor would demand essentially impossible. Further, that for the "conspiracy theory" to be accurate would require not just that people are mistaken or professing false information through misjudgment, ignorance or misplaced faith, but instead that they are acting with malicious intent, spreading lies that they are fully aware are lies.
I could keep going, but I think that get's the basic idea across and why it is so incredibly frustrating when people fall for these ridiculous stories.
Well, I think your statement here is about 100% factual. I have seen that line of reasoning in most of your comments on the genre.
I don't believe there is any such thing in all human history, and probably not even The American Revolution could measure up as a conspiracy theory, nor even the Constitutional Convention. Pretty sure British loyalists saw the active minority of Americans as spoilers conspiring to throw the British government out. But even that minority of Americans were pretty diverse. They differed widely on their reasons. Some were practical men resenting restricrtions and taxes. Some were more philosophical educated believers in advant garde philosophical notions of Liberty and Human Rights.
Hillary once referred to "The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" of opponents to her husband, and perhaps to the "deplorable" opponents of her poliical agenda. I don't think she meant it as defined as you use the term. It was the whole basket of problematic people who didn't support her. All kinds of people, with all kinds of reasons, whom she asserted were more or less ignoramuses for not just loving everything about her. She was not the first totalitarian, and will not be the last, to claim such superiority over common folk who for whatever reasons, might rise in opposition.
I see a problem with the Book of Mormon in the assertion there that "secret combinations" bound by oaths and covenants with the Devil himself are endemic to all human societies throughout history. This is a religious argument that the Devil rules the world. Even in the Bible, the assertion is there at the story of Jesus being taken up to the pinnacle of the Temple and tempted by Satan One of the temptations was Jesus being shown, by the Devil, all the kingdoms of the earth and being offered a place of power or rule over them all, if only Jesus would worship the Devil. Jesus replied quoting Moses: "it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord Jehovah., and Him only shalt thou serve." I'd have to go to the bible to get the exact words of Jesus and the First of the Ten Commandments.
Christians believe that with the atonement of Jesus, Christ won the victory and the contest is actually decided. Daniel says Jesus will be brought before the "Ancient of Days" at the last judgment. The Ancient of Days is generally taken to be Adam, and in this vision it is Adam sitting as Jehovah on the judgment seat. At that time, according to Daniel, Jesus will be given the crown for this world, and will be directly our Lord.
Most Christians simplify the case to refer to Jesus as Lord, as Jehovah, as everything already. One of my disputes with Christianity and Mormons today.
My frame of reference for conspiracy is human nature, in the characteristic we naturally have for privacy and for pursuing our plans discreetly. Forming cliques or sets of like-minded operatives working on the same project, however well-intended. It is sometimes not well-intended, and that is where we need to check our facts and improve our information.
I refer to various organizational schema people can use for cooperative efforts. Open schemes of all kinds are less objectionable generally than tightly controlled and multi-layered plans where information is controlled to the point of need to know. Some of these use methods of gangsters, sorta developing a set of "made Men" who have to fear the consequences of not performing as expected. I suppose these sorts of things might be "Book of Mormon- class" secret combinations.
The United Nations is an open format thatj publishes meetings and speeches and policy decisions and all kinds of objectives, and it is those public stated things that many conservatives believe are inconsistent with our Constitution and our human rights under the Bill of Rights.
I look at people like Bill Barr as being so committed to the institutions of governance that he is too constrained and adverse to prosecuting institutional figures as criminals for their criminal deeds.
I really like human cooperatives of various kinds that operate on the good will and common interests of members under no coercion just mutual benefits. We still have these. I am a member of some. Credit Unions, power and water utilities, farmers and cattlemen cooperatives. Working together for shared benefits.
I bemoan politicians who won't tell us what they are doing, or what they intend to do, or who is paying them or supporting them or contributing to their campaigns. I think we have problems with not only elected officials but all government classes of workers. Not all workers, just the ones who fundamentally are not serving the general public honestly. Or openly.
We also have a broad problem in human nature of expansively talking about things we know nothing about, and speculation on various persons or sets of persons being up to something.
I don't know how to discuss anything starting with no information and trying to reason productively to obtain necessary facts.
Bottom line, I'm moving on. Even the Book of Mormon descriptions of secret combinations don't inform us well enough on all the ways we humans can mess things up, with or without the Devil.
A number of my forays into this topic in these threads have pretty much gone to the point that what I'm talking about is "The Way Things Are" as well as "The way Things Have Always Been." At that level, my critics are saying essentially the same thing as the Book of Mormon, without the Devil being the main actor.
This goes right with the adage from the comics....."We have met the Enemy, and They is us."
Philosophically, this is the same territory as seeing humans as the creators of both God and the Devil, trying to mark the lines between good and evil in themselves.