The French Revolution didn’t just shake thrones—it shattered the idea that God had chosen who ruled. In 1789, the poor, the working class, and the urban lumpen of Paris stormed into history with the knowledge that the crown wasn’t sacred—it was a parasite. And they didn’t ask for permission. They broke open the gates of power and dragged the corpse of divine right into the streets.

This wasn’t just rebellion—it was apocalypse for the ruling class. Kings and cardinals across Europe watched in horror as the oppressed rose up with secular slogans, radical pamphlets, and sharpened blades. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” wasn’t just a motto—it was the sound of an entire class awakening. A class in itself was becoming a class for itself.

But if you ask the reactionaries who lived through it, they’ll tell you a different story. They’ll say it wasn’t the people who rose up—it was the Illuminati. The Freemasons. The atheists. The devil himself. They couldn’t face the material reality of revolution, so they buried it beneath a pile of fictions. This is where the modern conspiracy gospel is born—not in evidence, but in fear of emancipation.

The Invention of the Illuminati Panic

In the 1790s, two men published books that would become scripture for the first modern counterrevolutionary conspiracy theory: Abbé Augustin Barruel and John Robison.

• Barruel, a French Jesuit priest, wrote Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, claiming the French Revolution was orchestrated by secret societies bent on destroying Christianity and monarchy.
• Robison, a Scottish physicist and royalist, echoed this in Proofs of a Conspiracy, claiming the Bavarian Illuminati had infiltrated Enlightenment thinkers and revolutionary groups to overthrow all governments and religions.

None of this was based in fact. It was pure projection: a theological response to a material crisis. Revolution was impossible in their minds unless it had been engineered by evil. So they gave it a name: Illuminati. They turned the people’s revolution into Satan’s plot.

The Political Function of the Myth

The conspiracy theory wasn’t created to explain the world—it was created to restore the old one. It served a political purpose:

• To justify repression of dissent
• To restore the authority of the church and monarchy
• To frame revolution as an unnatural, demonic aberration
• To erase the class struggle from memory

It worked because it was easy. The people were angry, scared, and disoriented. The ruling class gave them a scapegoat. Not aristocracy. Not feudalism. Not hunger or exploitation. No—they blamed symbols, secret handshakes, and invisible puppet masters. They gave the masses a mystery to chase instead of power to seize.

Exporting the Panic: America Joins the Theater

Across the Atlantic, America was forming its own empire—and it wasted no time importing the panic. In the early 1800s, U.S. politicians, clergy, and newspapers warned of “Illuminati plots” against the Republic. Preachers like Jedidiah Morse claimed European revolutionaries and freemasons were infiltrating the new nation to destroy Christianity.

This wasn’t paranoia—it was strategy. America’s founding elite were building a settler republic on stolen land and stolen labor. They needed a myth to justify their new world order. So they made “God” the protector of private property, whiteness, and empire. And the “Illuminati” became a placeholder for anyone who threatened it.

The Real Illuminati Was Revolution

The irony is brutal: the Illuminati never wielded power—but the fear of them did. And that fear became the cornerstone of reaction. It allowed kings to return. It gave churches new authority. It gave capitalism a holy mask.

Revolution didn’t fail. It was demonized. The first modern conspiracy theory wasn’t anti-elite. It was pro-empire. It didn’t liberate the people. It pacified them. It didn’t reveal truth. It buried it—beneath superstition, theology, and counterinsurgency masquerading as discernment.

In Part III, we’ll trace how these same lies were sharpened by colonialism, weaponized by Protestant revivalism, and recycled through American settler mythology. The gospel of the ruling class would evolve. But its mission remained the same:

To make sure the people never recognize themselves as the real threat to power.