Conspiracies: Extremely Old And Just As Bad
Do you know who loved a conspiracy theory? Medieval burghers and kings.
Example: The Leper’s Plot of 1321
In 1321, the French king, Phillip V, and the French courts accused lepers of poisoning wells. This plot was supposed to make the lepers richer and more powerful, somehow.
At least, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui, said this was their motive after torturing a few into confessing to the plot and calling them, ‘unhealthy in body and insane in mind.’ And then he got confessions from lepers that roped Jews and Muslims into mix as the criminal masterminds.
The accused people were burnt at the stake.
This had beneficiaries. Lepers often owned nice houses on the edge of town, where they were allowed to run their own affairs and work the land. Local councils could take the valuable land if they could claim that the lepers were plotting against them.
The same councils would, once they burned the lepers, make the same accusations against the local Jews to the same end.
Example: The Knights Templar
Phillip V’s predecessor, Phillip the Fair, was deeply in debt to the Knights Templar, and they were refusing to loan him more money.
Under these circumstances, he accused the Templars of worshipping demons and ritually committing blasphemous acts.
Perhaps not coincidentally, he had made the same accusations against a pope who he owed money.
He rounded up the Knights Templar, even though he invited the head of the Templars as a pall bearer the day before he issued the warrants for their arrest.
The leaders were burnt at the stake, chunks of their treasure was transferred to French government coffers, and the remaining knights joined other, similar, groups like the Teutonic Brotherhood of the Sword.
Conclusions
People in power need a fig leaf to hide blatant theft, even if they are able to get away with it legally. Ironically, there is a conspiracy here: a conspiracy to steal from the helpless.
The conspiracy accusations are very copy-paste, too. Once the well-poisoning or heresy story gets out, you just have to swap one group with another one to make a whole new conspiracy. Saves time when you want to steal.
So, maybe next time someone is insisting that there is a plot against us, we should ask who benefits from this accusation.