Real conspiracies by capital are routine while conspiracy theory distorts them

Evidence

Understanding how capitalism in its latest stage shapes and distorts our world can offer some stability. It does not, however, preclude the presence of real-world, provable conspiracies. If we define “conspiracy” as an agreement among members of a group to pull off some kind of nefarious plot in the shadows, then representatives of capital—in government and the corporate sector—engage in conspiracies as a matter of course. There most certainly was a CIA-backed conspiracy in the early 1970s to overthrow the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, after he nationalized the copper mines, as there was in 1953 to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he moved to nationalize the oil company that would become British Petroleum. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 772

Categorization

• XREF: Klein’s method of differentiating real conspiracies from the Mirror World’s paranoid mythology — echoes the diagonalism frame central to the book’s argument. — connects to: Conspiracy theories are often more complex than official accounts. — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 194; Real past government conspiracies make continued belief in secret plots rational — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 80; Conspiracies involving over a thousand people mathematically fall apart quickly — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 174