The story you're portraying doesn't need any kind of imagination, Hanlon's razor works perfectly well there.
Religion shaping culture, and thus the decisions of countless people to go out and actually kill each other is a thing. Divine? I think so.
Culture is programming for the masses. Is culture a conspiracy? Our intel agencies have caught onto this, color revolutions are a conspiracies, but the victims of such revolutions would hardly consider their own deeply held beliefs and subsequent actions to be conspiratorial.
Culture shaping happens now at an insane speed with everything from the search engines we use, to the radio, tv, music, advertisements, and so on. If you can pull those levers, people will act accordingly. Pfizer has advertising dollars everywhere. Is it a conspiracy that people will literally stake their professions on defending Pfizer vaccines?
This.
I have problem organizing 2 intelligent people to place dirty laundry in the laundry box or to do their homework on time or to place dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
But there's a mastermind somewhere who can organize something so complex, with so many variables where each depends on a human being of varying intellect and skillset and the plan is so intricate that out of 100,000 possibilities - all of them play in the hand of the mastermind. And the plan includes the two from above, who can barely get a cup of water when they're thirsty!
If such mastermind existed, I wouldn't even be angry for being manipulated - in fact, I would like to continue to be manipulated because if such a person (or group) existed - please, continue! Creating order out of chaos is a divine ability.