User:Jondel/Cabal

A cabal is a number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community by intrigue. Cabals are secret organizations composed of a few designing persons; a political cabal is often called a junta. The term can also be used to refer to the designs of such persons. The term also holds a general meaning of intrigue and conspiracy. Its usage carries strong connotations of shadowy corners and occult influence; a cabal is more evil and selective than, say, a faction, which is simply selfish. Because of this negative connotation, few organizations use the term to refer to themselves or their internal subdivisions. Among the exceptions is Discordianism, in which the term is used to refer to an identifiable group within the Discordian tradition.

The term cabal derives from Kabbalah (which has numerous spelling variations), the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew scripture, and originally meant either an occult doctrine or a secret.

The term took on its present insidious meaning from a group of ministers of King Charles II of England (Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and Lord Lauderdale), whose initial letters coincidentally spelled Cabal, and who were the signers of the public Treaty of Dover which allied England to France in a prospective war against the Dutch. It must be said, however, that the so-called Cabal Ministry can hardly be seen as such - the Scot Lauderdale was not much involved in English governance at all; while the Catholic ministers of the Cabal, Clifford and Arlington, were never much in sympathy with the Protestants, Buckingham and Ashley, nor did Buckingham and Ashley get on very well among themselves. Thus, the "Cabal Ministry," never very unified in its members' aims and sympathies, fell apart by 1672; Lord Ashley, who became Earl of Shaftesbury, still later even became one of Charles II's fiercest opponents. The explanation that the word originated as an acronym from the names of the group of ministers is a folk etymology, although the coincidence was noted at the time. The group, who came to prominence after the fall of Charles's first prime minister, Lord Clarendon, in 1667, was rather called the Cabal because of its secretiveness and lack of responsibility to the "Country party" then out of power.

In 1777 a supposed conspiracy, known as the "Conway Cabal," took place. A series of criticisms of General George Washington's leadership abilities as commander-in-chief during the American Revolution has been taught as a cabal, but little evidence exists for it being an actual conspiracy.

During the rise of Usenet, the term gained great notice as a semi-ironic description of the efforts of people to maintain some order over the chaotic, anarchic Usenet community; see backbone cabal, There is no Cabal. As in this specific case, references to an alleged cabal often fall within the realm of the conspiracy theory.

One recent example of the use of the word Cabal came in an accusation by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, who claimed that the Bush administration's foreign policy is run by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" (See [1]).

See also