In the late 1960s, a spotlight cast upon some of the CIA’s more questionable activities in the subcontinent had a profound and enduring impact on Indian perceptions of the United States’ government and its external intelligence service. In the wake of the Ramparts scandal, the CIA came to occupy a prominent place in mainstream Indo–U.S. cultural and political discourse. For the remainder of the twentieth-century, and beyond, anti-American elements in India drew repeatedly upon the spectre of CIA subversion as a means of undermining New Delhi’s relationship with Washington. The blanket exposure given by the world’s press to CIA indiscretions, exemplified by the international media circus surrounding Congressional probes into the U.S. intelligence community, made a deep psychological impression in South Asia. This chapter traces the socio-political impact of Indira Gandhi’s assertions that the malevolent hand of the CIA lay behind India’s problems, foreign and domestic. It recovers South Asian agency in intelligence terms by interrogating the utility of Gandhi’s policy of exploiting the CIA’s reputation as a socio-political malefactor to court popular legitimacy.

Spying in South Asia’s conclusion addresses the impact of the end of the Cold War, and the onset of a ‘war on terror’, on British and American intelligence relationships with India. It explores the rationale behind Indian governments’ softening of anti-CIA rhetoric from the mid-1980s, and the implications for New Delhi’s intelligence agencies of the precipitous collapse of the USSR, and the abrupt conclusion of the Cold War. It assesses factors underlying the post-Cold War recovery of Western secret services from the position of public pariahs in India to that of New Delhi’s principal partners in intelligence and security matters. In 1947, as the Cold War dawned and the newly independent subcontinent confronted formidable threats to its stability and security, New Delhi turned to London and Washington for covert support. Some half-a-century later, after decades of what might best be described as circumscribed cooperation compromised by conflict and conspiracism, the intelligence services of India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, once more found compelling reasons to put their differences aside, and work together as close partners in a new secret war.

This chapter discusses general principles of liability as they apply across the various offences and provide for the doctrines by which a person may commit, participate in, or otherwise be found responsible for those crimes. They include forms of liability such as aiding and abetting, which are familiar to all domestic criminal lawyers, as well as principles like command responsibility, which are specific to international criminal law.

We consider changes (Persianizing one) that Alexander made to his court from mid-330 BCE onwards, as well as opposition to it (and him) in the form of conspiracies and other clashes. Discussion is framed by a brief look at changes introduced by previous kings, as well as at new evidence from archaeology in north Greece that alters our understanding of early Macedon. It also takes into account the Greco-Roman literary topoi that overlay our sources, particularly with regard to major conspiracies, conflict, and the ‘mutiny’ at Opis – all in an effort to excavate the original underlying Macedonian perspective, insofar as we can.

Emotions have profound consequences for human functioning. Their influences can be adaptive, guiding people through life and ensuring effective functionality within society, but emotions can also result in irrationality and bias. This chapter focuses on the role of emotion in conspiratorial beliefs, using the QAnon conspiracy theory as an example. Within the chapter, we discuss affective factors that make QAnon appealing to its followers and the role of discrete emotions in the spread of misinformation and conspiratorial beliefs. The chapter also examines the influence of emotions on information processing. Given QAnon supporters’ strong emotional involvement in the movement, we discuss affective influences on information processing through the lens of affective polarization. In addition, we explain how emotions, particularly anger, influence the propensity towards extreme and sometimes violent action that has been on the rise among the followers of QAnon. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential mitigating variables and strategies that might curb proliferation of QAnon.

Over the course of 2020, QAnon has repeatedly captured the news media’s attention more than ever as the group starts to move their activities from online chat boards into the offline world. With increased public attention, so too political commentators (expert and lay) increasingly refer to QAnon as a “cult” (Blazakis, 2021; Hassan, 2021). What is missing in the growing literature on QAnon is: (1) an examination of the movement within the context of the substantial academic literature on new religious movements and (2) use of this research to see whether labeling QAnon a “cult” or “new religious movement” makes sense in a comparative context. This is of particular importance not only because the use of these terms by the public is usually divorced from academic research on the topic, but also because the terms are often used as weapons to tarnish a movement that is considered to be deviant in some way. We argue that QAnon indeed has elements of a new religious movement, and note that treating it as such reveals insights for how the movement will evolve and develop over time.

The COVID-19 pandemic altered people’s lifestyle and caused them to have newfound free time with less ability to socialize. This ample time, and the polarizing influence of Trump’s presidency, likely facilitated the popularization of the conspiracy group QAnon. QAnon’s popularity partly can be attributed to the shift toward Conservative values, explained by Parasite Stress Theory, Moral Foundations Theory, and Terror Management Theory. As QAnon grew in prevalence, which subsequently increased social and aggressive acts from these groups, supporters justified the group’s actions using moral disengagement mechanisms. These acts include physical acts of violence, verbal threats of violence, and the spread of harmful misinformation. The purpose of this chapter is to apply the above-mentioned theories to understand the growth of QAnon, which can be used to garner a broader understanding of the cognitive processes of other conspiracy groups in general.

An interpretation of Machiavellis play Mandragola, showing that the most ridiculous figure in the play is also its master conspirator, and represents Machiavelli himself.

Machiavelli creates the modern world of necessities that can be understood and controlled. He invented a world in the modern sense of a whole by itself, not explained by ideas or essences, and not followed by the next world.

Chapter 4 addresses the rising civil costs of dissent. It examines the various costs and liabilities that apply to protest organizers, participants, and supporters. These include permit fees, damages resulting from personal injury lawsuits, statutory penalty enhancements, and loss of public benefits. The chapter makes the case for stricter First Amendment scrutiny of these costs and argues that certain fee-shifting arrangements and civil causes of action violate the First Amendment. It encourages public officials to commit to reducing rather than piling on the costs of dissent.

This chapter revisits the classic issue of the origins of Latin American independence and questions a set of prevailing historiographic assumptions. From a review of political conspiracies and mobilizations in eighteenth-century Latin America, it argues that Spanish and Portuguese colonial sovereignty faced significant challenges well before the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807; that the role of popular sectors was crucial to revolutionary and counterrevolutionary politics in the eighteenth century; and that the conflicts in Iberian American territory were linked to wider political dynamics in the Atlantic world. Without adopting a determinist argument that Bourbon reform or American identity explains Latin American independence in the nineteenth century, the chapter disputes the idea that a stable and legitimate “old regime” only unraveled after 1808. It also suggests that significant patterns of political contestation in the late colonial period found new expression in the novel context of the early nineteenth century.

In September 1961, Munu Sipalo circulated a conspiracy pamphlet at the founding conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade. Chapter 5 thinks through the motif of conspiracy to ask how this cohort responded to the challenges of the global Cold War, particularly in the context of the Congo Crisis of 1960–1961. Congo had a particular resonance for this regional cohort, laying bare the high stakes of ‘nominal’ political independence in a time of Cold War neo-colonialism. In London, the Committee of African Organisations commented on the unfolding crisis and its implications for decolonising knowledge production, as Chango Machyo and Dennis Phombeah launched pamphlet ventures in the aftermath of an All-African Students Conference. For many in this cohort, engagement with the contours of the Cold War happened through youth and student internationals. Samuel Kajunjumele attended the 1959 Vienna World Youth Festival with the International Union of Socialist Youth at a pivotal moment: just as these organisations increased their contacts in the region, the uncertainty of independence negotiations made students abroad appear a liability – in notable contrast to the early 1950s.

Chapter 4 argues that the nascent community of international criminal law practice coalesced around the judgments issued by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg and International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo after the end of the Second World War. The United Nations (UN) tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), established in the 1990s, significantly developed the legal rules regulating the attribution of individual criminal responsibility for mass atrocities, further consolidating the international criminal justice field. Chapter 4 argues that, from the perspective of intersubjective legalism, both the post-Second World War tribunals and the UN tribunals displayed sound legal reasoning in the assessment of criminal responsibility for two reasons: Firstly, they followed a consistent normative logic, namely that morality was the animating force behind legality. Secondly, many judges and outside legal commentators shared that normative logic. Nevertheless, over time the UN tribunals polarized the international criminal justice community of practice on questions concerning the scope and requirements of criminal responsibility rules.

Democracy requires factual information and an attentive electorate. The electorate are a key part of a functioning democracy, where they choose between candidates, parties, and policies based on their own political beliefs, which are influenced by information. Because the world of politics is complex, human beings are bounded in their capabilities for decision making and must develop strategies to navigate through an overwhelming amount of political information to form beliefs and make decisions. Political belief systems – or “ideologies” – help people organize this complex political world. However, a large portion of the American public do not have a coherent political belief system, and instead rely on cues and elites to make decisions and form attitudes on the issues of the day. This kind of reliance is efficient, but can also lead people to become vulnerable to mis- and disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, and extreme polarization, which can have detrimental consequences for democracy.

Most of the textual sources concerning the imperial court are relatively short; many recount anecdotes illuminating a single moment, a memorable saying, or a specific practice. The surviving works of history and biography do, however, contain a few longer narratives of connected sequences of events at court. Such narratives most commonly occur when historians and biographers describe crises, when events at court had wider implications for the political history of the Principate. Prompted by this observation, this chapter presents a selection of the richest crisis narratives. The narratives presented relate to: the fall of Claudius’ wife, Messalina; the loss of position at court suffered by Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, and her ensuing murder by her son; and the assassinations of the emperors Domitian and Commodus.