'Conspiracy theory' is now a widely familiar term, albeit generally referred to with sarcasm and scorn. Yet 'criminal conspiracies' are heard before law courts. The Mafia, the Thuggee in India, and Triads in China are all recognised criminal conspiracies that have ritualistic and religious elements. During the Cold War there were government investigations into a 'communist conspiracy'.

President Dwight Eisenhower in his 'Farewell Address' referred to a wide-ranging conspiracy he called the 'military-industrial complex'. However, if political conspiracies are referred to that involve...

One of the greatest fallacies of the ‘modern world’ is the notion of ‘progress’. We imagine the entirety of history as culminating in a Darwinian march toward Western Civilisation. We think of our ‘progressive values’ of liberalism, self-indulgence, materialism, universal human rights, multiculturalism… to be uniquely ‘enlightened’. What we are going through is nothing new. Civilisations have gone through the same processes over millennia, recorded by the sages of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Arabia, Aztec America, India  - the features...