Chinese history writing is more conspiratorial then our own.

You have the great Point Deer Make Horse story, which Nathaniel Givens summarizes this way:

A Chinese minister named Zhao Gao helps Huhai usurp the throne and then assassinates a whole bunch of potential rivals to secure Huhai’s claim as emperor. But then Huhai starts to be difficult to manage. . . . Zhao Gao didn’t like that. He started to think that maybe they should have a change of emperor, but he couldn’t be sure he could pull it off.

So Zhao Gao brings a deer into the palace. Grabs it from the horns, calls the emperor to come out, and says “look your majesty, I brought you a fine horse.” The Emperor, not amused, says “Surely you are mistaken, calling a deer a horse. Right?”. Then the emperor looks around at all the ministers. Some didn’t say a word, just sweating nervously. Some others loudly proclaimed what a fine horse this was. Great horse. Look at this tail! These fine legs. Great horse, naturally prime minister Zhao Gao has the best of tastes.

A small bunch did protest that this was a deer, not a horse. Those were soon after summarily executed. And the Second Emperor himself was murdered some time later.

You also have the Chinese story of Handles. As I’ve heard it, the story started off in a strategy debate during the Three Kingdoms period. One proposal got rejected as ‘handing over our swords handle first,’ i.e., a really bad idea, and the idiom stuck.

But eventually it changed its meaning. It eventually came to mean something more in line with a story from the Warring States period:

The winning state is ready to finish off its final rival and has assembled a massive army.  General Wang Jian leads the biggest army perhaps in the history of mankind, and goes to attack Chu. The King escorts him personally to the border. Wang Jian asks him for lots of money, good farmland, mansions, women and treasure. It’s for my children, you see. I want to secure their future. The King laughed heartily. Of course, old Wang. Whatever you want. Just win this war. While on campaign Wang Jian send a messenger to the court every single day, reminding the king that he wanted lots of good farmland, gold, women and treasure. For his children. His entourage was getting embarrassed already. Come on general, since when are you so corrupt? Even if you are, just try to be subtle, this is ridiculous, you’re making us all feel bad. “You don’t get it”, says General Wang. “The emperor is a suspicious man. He doesn’t trust anyone. Right now I have under my command 600,000 men, the entire army of the country. Every once in a while he must be asking himself: “What if this Wang Jian guy rebels against me?”. And even if he doesn’t ask himself, there’s always an annoying eunuch paid by a rival general trying to backstab me, saying that I am famous and honorable, and that the opposition might rally around me, that I’m too powerful and must be killed sooner rather than later. Only by openly displaying that I am a vile, corrupt character who only cares about money, can I make the king trust that I have no higher ambition.” And so Wang Jian kept sending messenger asking for stuff, and the King never suspected his loyalty. He liked his pettiness. Wang Jian went forward to invade Chu, destroy its armies, capture his king, and annexed the country into the soon to be Qin Empire. He went back home, and very unusual in a famous general, died a peaceful death.

In the conspiratorial mindset, it can be a good thing to be corrupt.  Wickedness = trust.

This is akin to the concept of the dark sacrament.  Real life conspiracies often have some kind of evil initiation rite.  Like Mafiosis who have to have blood on their hands to be ‘made,’ or gangs that only allow felons.  The initiation rite can be informal: druggies often won’t trust somebody they haven’t seen using drugs, and undercover cops have to work at it to get around that shibboleth.  The initiation rite can also be something that isn’t a crime at all.  As in That Hideous Strength, where Mark is asked to trample on a crucifix, ostensibly as an exercise in increasing his objectivity.

(As an aside, whatever the authoress thought she was writing about in Those Who Walk Away from Omelas, this is what the story is really about. Seeing the suffering child is a dark sacrament. People who are strong-willed and moralistic expose themselves and self-exile. Those who remain have more social cohesion, because they share a shameful secret.)

Telling lies can be a form of the dark sacrament.  This explains a curious thing: why conspiracies not only lie to outsiders, but among themselves.  Some obvious falsehood that every insider is forced to bow to is a social bond.  Like Point Deer Make Horse. Everyone who says horse knows they are a mealy-mouthed lying coward. This isn’t comfortable knowledge. It creates a bond between you and the other guys. The same bond as other rituals, shared experience that allows for empathy, but also you know that they are no better than you so you don’t feel as shameful around them, plus they can be relied on not to mock you or tactlessly bring up awkward subjects, and they form a community, with you, of excuse making and ideological justification for what you did (you know the kind of thing–“ordinary people just don’t understand the kinds of hard choices you have to make at this level”).

The Book of Mormon is conspiracy-minded.  This is one of its most embarrassing features.  It isn’t a respectable subject.

Even so, it seems that the Book of Mormon gets conspiracy right.  Because the Book of Mormon conspiracies not only lie to outsiders, they lie to themselves.  They told lies that everyone knew to be false.

And behold now, I am a bold Lamanite; behold, this war hath been waged to avenge their wrongs, and to maintain and to obtain their rights to the government; and I close my epistle to Moroni.

or

And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction