The Unreliable Chain of Conspiracy

Political and occult groups repeatedly accuse one another of the same secret plan, revealing a self-reproducing pattern that the protagonists mistake for proof.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Conflicting Accusations

Synarchy Changes Sides A shifting enemy De Angelis finds synarchy described as a leftist, rightist, Jesuit, Jewish, and technocratic plot. Each account assigns the same hidden power to a different opponent. An apparent system Casaubon sees that contradictory accusations may serve political needs rather than document one organization. He nevertheless adds the pattern to his growing archive.

The Protocols Reappear

A Forged Blueprint Recycled material The characters trace the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to earlier anti-Jesuit and political texts. The supposed plan migrates from one alleged conspirator to another. A story that copies itself Each retelling makes accusation look like confirmation. The archive's repetition creates the illusion of an unbroken secret tradition.

The Plan Becomes Real

A Fiction with Followers Belief supplies action The invented Plan attracts people who use it to organize their existing fears and ambitions. Their actions give the fiction effects that its authors did not intend. No stable author Casaubon recognizes that no single group controls the whole story. The conspiracy endures because every faction can reuse its structure against another.

From the early twentieth-century research

During the group's historical reconstruction

Near the end of the novel