By Richard Seymour At the origin of modern political conspiracism lies a myth of subversive power, first fabricated in response to the French revolution. In 1797, two books appeared simultaneously. These were Abbé Barruel’s five-volume Mémoire pour servietterr à l’histoire du jacobinisme, and John Robison’s Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati and Reading Societies. Both attributed the revolution to a centuries-old conspiracy of secret societies (from the Order of Templars to the Freemasons), responsible for an assault on religion and political authority. This theory of totalitarianism avanta la laettere is the template from which modern conspiracy narratives – from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the ‘New World Order’ – are cut. Conspiracy theory today, says Fredric Jameson, is an attempt to represent the ‘social totality’ at the level of fantasy in a way that evades ‘liberal an...