Islamist conspiracy theories act as the ideological fuel for the actions of many terrorist groups and their supporters, but not all. Anti-capitalism is another major conspiracy theory. It is behind the actions of Maoist terrorists in Nepal. Their conspiracy theory holds that economically successful people are responsible (in some never-quite-specified way) for all of the world's ills. Their “solution” is to use violence to impose a communist dictatorship in Nepal, whereupon they will kill all the rich people, thus making everything turn out for the best.

The Nepalese government is pursuing an ominously ill-conceived “peace process” with these terrorists. Naturally the BBC supports this because “there is a real concern that Washington is nourishing the belief that this war is winnable”, and that would never do. As everyone knows, the only winnable wars are those against America and/or its values.

The difference between this and, say, the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is that there is nothing to negotiate about. It is one thing to say that the Palestinians can have a state if they cease to support terrorism and negotiate about borders, but no civilised country can support any measure of communist tyranny. The only peace terms that the Nepalese government should offer are that the terrorist movement must be disbanded and the future of the country decided by politics not revolutionary violence.