List of political conspiracies

This is a list of political conspiracies. In a political context, a conspiracy refers to a group of people united in the goal of damaging, 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 can also be used for infiltration of the governing system.

For unrelated topic of conspiracy theories, see List of conspiracy theories.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

List

• 1552 BCE - Apophis Kush Alliance against Egypt as attested to in the second Kamose stele[1]
• 63 BCE - First Catilinarian conspiracy and the Second Catilinarian conspiracy[2]
• 44 BCE - Liberatores plot assassination of Julius Caesar to restore Roman Republic[3]
• 65 CE - Pisonian conspiracy[4]
• 1478 Pazzi conspiracy, a plot by Pope Sixtus IV and the Pazzi family to depose the House of Medici in the Republic of Florence[5]
• 1506 - Conspiracy against the life of the brothers Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in the Duchy of Ferrara, coordinated by their half brother Giulio d'Este and full brother Ferrante d'Este[6]
• 1569 - 1569 Plot against John III of Sweden.[7]
• 1570 - Ridolfi plot against Elizabeth I of England[8]
• 1574 - Mornay Plot against John III of Sweden.[9]
• 1583 - Throckmorton Plot by English Catholics led by Sir Francis Throckmorton to coordinate an invasion of England led by Henry I, Duke of Guise, to murder Elizabeth, and replace her with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots[10]
• 1586 - Babington Plot, plot by Anthony Babington and John Ballard to assassinate Elizabeth and coordinate an invasion of England by King Philip II of Spain and the Holy League. Discovered by Sir Francis Walsingham and led to execution of Mary, Queen of Scots[11][12]
• 1603 - Main Plot to remove James I of England and enthrone Arbella Stuart allegedly led by Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, and sponsored by Spain.[13]
• 1603 - Bye Plot, leads to the execution of Sir George Brooke[14]
• 1605 - Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords by 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; foiled after a letter to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, and the discovery and arrest of Guy Fawkes. Often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot; origin of Guy Fawkes Day[15]
• 1718-1720 The Pontcallec conspiracy during the minority of Louis XV to overthrow the Regent Philippe II, Duke of Orléans in favour of Philip V of Spain
• 1749 - Conspiracy of the Slaves by Muslim slaves in Hospitaller-ruled Malta to kill Grand Master Manuel Pinto da Fonseca and take over the island with the help of the Barbary states.[16]
• 1756 - Coup of 1756 was an attempted coup d'état planned by Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden to abolish the rule of the Riksdag of the Estates and reinstate absolute monarchy in Sweden. [17]
• 1788 - Anjala conspiracy[18]
• 1789 - 1789 Conspiracy (Sweden) against Gustav III of Sweden.[19]
• 1793 - Armfelt Conspiracy against Charles XIII of Sweden.[20]
• 1832 - Georgian plot, assassination of the Russian imperial administration and restoration of the Georgian monarchy[21]
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln assassination plot, to include assassination of cabinet members.[22] It had originated as a plot by Confederate sympathizers to kidnap Lincoln and force the Union to negotiate for either a release of prisoners of war or an end to the American Civil War.[23]
• 1898 - The Dreyfus Affair, a coordinated attempt to falsely accuse Alfred Dreyfus of treason[24]
• 1914 - The Black Hand helps Young Bosnia assassinate Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne in Austria-Hungary, thus launching the July Crisis that ended with World War I.[25]
• 1924 - The Zinoviev letter, published in the Daily Mail in London before the 1924 general election, is a forgery that impacted the vote. It was signed with the name of Grigory Zinoviev, a politician in the Soviet Union and the leader of the Communist International, and called on violent action by the Communist Party of Great Britain. It was devised by anti-Communist White Russian émigrés in Paris and the Labour Party blamed it for its defeat.[26]
• 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[27]
• 1939 - Operation Himmler and its Gleiwitz incident - false-flag attacks, including on a radio station in Gleiwitz, by Nazi Germany and SS officers disguised as Polish Armed Forces personnel as a pretext for the invasion of Poland
• 1939 - Shelling of Mainila - false-flag artillery attack by the Red Army to provide the Soviet Union with a pretext for the Winter War against Finland.
• 1943 - Bomb on Hitler's aircraft, an attempt on Adolf Hitler[28]
• 1944 - July 20 Plot - attempt to assassinate Hitler with suitcase bomb at a conference at the Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia, and then use Operation Valkyrie to grab power[29][30]
• 1945 - The Soviet Union's infiltration of the Manhattan Project through atomic spies such as George Koval and Klaus Fuchs. Soviet intelligence was eventually confirmed by a declassified U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report and the Venona project, and assisted the Soviet atomic bomb project.[31][32]
• 1951 - Rawalpindi conspiracy - failed coup against Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan.[33]
• 1953 - Iranian coup d'état - The Imperial Iranian Armed Forces restores the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and overthrows Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh with approval of US and Britain.[34]
• 1954 - Lavon affair Operation Susannah, "False Flag" terrorism by Mossad[35]
• 1972 - Watergate scandal - The burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex by CREEP and subsequent cover-up scandals that forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.[36]
• 1984 - Brighton hotel bombing - attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet by the Provisional IRA at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, resulted in the death of Deputy Chief Whip Anthony Berry.[37]
• 1984 - Rajneeshee bioterror attack[38]
• 1987 - Iran-Contra Affair - sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua by Reagan Administration officials to circumvent the Boland Amendment[39][40]
• 1990 - Nayirah testimony, a false testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus organized by public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government
• 2001 - September 11 attacks - Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a planned fourth target in Washington D.C. using hijacked airplanes by al-Qaeda.[41]
• 2003 - Plame affair - publication of Valerie Plame's employment as a covert CIA officer by Robert Novak, who learned it from Richard Armitage, after her husband Joseph C. Wilson published a New York Times op-ed expressing doubt that Saddam Hussein purchased uranium from Niger. Lead to conviction of Scooter Libby for obstruction of justice and perjury.
• 2015 - November 2015 Paris attacks - attacks on targets in Paris, including an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre and the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, conducted by coordinated teams of Islamic terrorists affiliated with ISIS.[42]

See also

• List of conspiracy theories
• Conspiracy theory
• Seditious conspiracy

References

1. Hawass, Zahi, The Mysteries of Abu Simbel: Ramesses II and the Temples of the Rising Sun, The American University in Cairo Press, 2001, ISBN 977-424-623-3, p. 12
2. "The Catilinarian Conspiracy". ancienthistory.about.com.
3. "The assassination of Julius Caesar, 44 BC". eyewitnesstohistory.com. 2004.
4. "The Pisonian Conspiracy". nazoreans.com.
5. "The pazzi conspiracy". palazzo-medici.it.
6. "The year of Lucretia d'Este, Duchess of Ferrara". mmdtkw.org.
7. Sture Arnell (1951). Karin Månsdotter. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. ISBN
8. "Plots against Elizabeth I". elizabethfiles.com. 29 January 2010.
9. Charles de Mornay, urn:sbl:17458, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (art av Ingvar Andersson.), hämtad 2020-08-01.
10. "Queen Elisabeth I". englishhistory.net. 2015-02-08.
11. "The Babington Plot". history-magazine.com.
12. "Anthony Babington and the Babington Plot". luminarium.org.
13. Francis Edwards, The succession, bye and main plots of 1601-1603 (2006).
14. "Conspiracy". alienscientist.com.
15. "The Gunpowder plot of 1605". historylearningsite.co.uk.
16. Sciberras, Sandro. "Maltese History - E. The Decline of the Order of St John In the 18th Century" (PDF). St. Benedict College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 June 2015.
17. Jägerskiöld, Olof (1945). Lovisa Ulrika. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Libris 8074766
18. "Anjala Manor". spottinghistory.com.
19. My Hellsing (2013). Hovpolitik. Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte som politisk aktör vid det gustavianska hovet (Court Politics. Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte as a political actor at the Gustavian court) Örebro: Örebro universitet. ISBN 978-91-7668-964-6 (in Swedish)
20. Lilly Lindwall (1917). Magdalena Rudenschöld. Stockholm: Förlag Åhlén & Åkerlund. (in Swedish)
21. Stephen F. Jones, "Russian imperial administration and the Georgian nobility: the Georgian conspiracy of 1832." Slavonic and East European Review 65.1 (1987): 53-76. Online
22. "The Death of President Lincoln, 1865". eyewitnesstohistory.com.
23. "The Family Plot to Kill Lincoln". Smithsonian. Retrieved 2019-04-14.
24. "Emile Zola writes to Alfred Dreyfus at the height of the Dreyfus affair". shapell.org.
25. Vladimir Dedijer, The road to Sarajevo (1966) pp 285-315.
26. Heaven, Will (2013-10-08). "Top political conspiracy theories".
27. 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
28. "The Valkyrie Conspiracy". valkyrie-plot.com.
29. "The 20 July bomb plot - a summary". historyinanhour.com. 20 July 2010.
30. "The July bomb plot". historylearningsite.co.uk.
31. Roberts, Sam (2014-09-29). "Espionage Threatened the Manhattan Project, Declassified Report Says". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-04-14.
32. "Spies Who Spilled Atomic Bomb Secrets". Smithsonian. Retrieved 2019-04-14.
33. Hasan Zaheer, The times and trial of the Rawalpindi conspiracy 1951: the first coup attempt in Pakistan (1998)
34. Mark J. Gasiorowski, "The 1953 coup d'etat in Iran." International Journal of Middle East Studies 19.3 (1987): 261-286.
35. "Israel Military Intelligence: The Lavon Affair". jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
36. "What was the Watergate Scandal?". uspolitics.about.com.
37. "Hunger strikes and the Brighton bomb". news.bbc.co.uk. 18 March 1999.
38. "A strange but true tale of voter fraud and bioterrorism". theatlantic.com. 10 June 2014.
39. "The Iran Contra Affair 1986–1987". washingtonpost.com.
40. "Iran contra affair". infoplease.com.
41. "Chapter 1.1: 'We Have Some Planes': Inside the Four Flights" (PDF), 9/11 Commission Report, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004
42. Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada, and Evangelos Koutronas. "Terrorist attack assessment: Paris November 2015 and Brussels March *2016." Journal of Policy Modeling 38.3 (2016): 553-571. online

Further reading

• Burnett, Thom. Conspiracy Encyclopedia: The Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories (2006)
• Critchlow, Donald T., John Korasick, Matthew C. Sherman, eds. Political Conspiracies in America: A Reader (2008) online
• Coward, Barry, and Julian Swann. Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in early modern Europe: from the Waldensians to the French revolution (Routledge, 2017).
• Dean, Jodi. Aliens in America: Conspiracy Culture from Outerspace to Cyberspace(Cornell University Press, 1998).
• Knight, Peter, ed. Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia (2003)
• Lewis, Jon E. The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups: The 100 Most Terrifying Conspiracies of All Time (2008) excerpt
• Newton, Michael, ed. Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia (2 vol ABC-CLIO, 2014), covers 266 assassinations and attempted assassinations of world political leaders from 465 BCE to 2012.
• Newton, Michael, ed. The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories (2005)
• Sifakis, Carl. Encyclopedia of Assassinations (Facts on File 2001),
• Wood, Gordon. “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century.” William and Mary Quarterly 39 (1982): 401–41. online US history