Success: Proofs of a Conspiracy...pp. 180-194

Robison is getting desperate, and I think the reason is that the events he's talking about are closer in proximity to him. It's a bit different for him to claim events, persons, and documents from Germany; but France is different. France is "right-over-there" and the revolution just happened. There are people that his readers could ask, "hey who in charge of the revolution was an Illuminati." This is a difficult problem for any conspiracy theorist and Robison, in the very beginning of the Illuminati conspiracy theory has to deal with this. So far, we've seen him hide the Illuminati in Masonry and in the German Union. In each case there is shield between the people that the average person would know and the Illuminati. 

This shield is important. It makes it harder to disprove Robison's claim even though Robison hasn't proven his claim yet. Sure, all of the Freemasons reading this work were probably a little confused because none of the Masons that they would know were a member of the Illuminati branch. Yet, Robison isn't necessarily wrong because there are lots of Masonic lodges and some of them are weird. Similarly with the German Union. The average printer is just taking money to publish books and then ship them. Maybe the printer reads the book for more than just mistakes and typos but maybe they do not. The printer would know who ordered the book but not know how that person got their money. Robison's claims are always just over the horizon, and you can never reach the horizon. It's so close to goal post shifting that I'm not sure what the correct term is.  

Here, Robison has made the claim that it is undoubtedly the Illuminati behind the revolution, but again, someone would know that--Robison adds another layer. He postulates a plurality beyond necessity and creates the Amis Reunis. This group Robison describes as being the "Brethren"--the Illuminati--but that they had to hide because someone had spooked the king about Mesmer's Animal Magnetism. 

Ok, this is a hell of coincidence, because I have just finished writing an article for the UK Skeptic Magazine where I had to research the investigation into Franz Mesmer's claims about animal magnetism. Mesmer was a charlatan who claimed that magnets possessed healing powers. A claim, which unfortunately still exists today to sell doodads to the credulous. Mesmer was selling galvanic baths to the French nobility as a treatment for whatever ailed the nobles in 18th century France. Patients would get into the tubs and thrash, convulse, while giving every indication that something was happening. They would also react if Mesmer used his galvanic rods on them as well. This concerned the King of France. Who commissioned an A-Team of investigators: Benjamin Franklin, Anton Lavoisier, Jean-Sylvan Bailley, and Joseph Ignace-Guillotin. They performed what could be considered the first double blind placebo-controlled study. They concluded that Mesmer was full of shit because the only time a patient would "improve" or even react to the treatments was when they knew that they were being treated. In other words, it was all a performance.

Why Mesmer's claims would cause the Illuminati to hide is a mystery to me. The opinion makers in France were all into Mesmer in the same way that there are CBD stores all over the place. It doesn't really do anything but that is not going to stop anyone from trying to sell it. If Robison was going to claim that the Illuminati had introduced Animal Magnetism to France, or that Franz Mesmer was an Illuminati that would be something. Yet there's not link between animal magnetism and the Illuminati that Robison is making. 

The Illuminati changed their name to the Chevaliers Beinfasiants. This name does not work though because it's somewhat related to the Templars, so they have to change the name again to Philalethes. This again, does not work because several schisms erupted in this group. Once those were amended, they united again under the Amis Reunis. 

This is where I get confused because he is at once claiming that they are the brethren but then claiming that they were a little behind the Illuminati in the promotion of the dreaded Enlightenment ideals that Robison so fears. Are you confused? Good, because that is ultimately the point. 

This is a tactic I called "proof by verbosity" in which the conspiracy theorist just begins listing things in the hope that you will be too exhausted to check. So far, he's given us four different names for the same organization then claimed that it was for a different organization than he's been discussing this entire time. The new one admires the old one and they proceeded to cause the rabble rousing and discontent. It surely could not have come from the natives of France. This claim is made because prior to the storming of the Bastille, the princes of France presented to the king a memorial which stated, "the effervescence of the public opinions had come to such a height that the most dangerous principles, imported from foreign parts, were avowed in print with perfect impunity..."

If it were not for those damn foreigners France wouldn't be so ruined. It seems that conspiracism is always about immigration somehow. 

So, we have four groups which is really one group that emulates the real power of Europe. So how do we know the Illuminati are responsible? Well, it's because we have the Jacobins in France, the Lodges in Germany, and the Illuminati is the connective tissue between them. How do we know this? Well, we don't really. All of the revolutionary committees in France were operated by the Illuminati (NOT the Jacobins). This is how they overthrew the world.

The entire conspiracy rests upon a proof by ignorance. Robison is always careful to add layers when the evidence doesn't fit his position. This is why the four groups as one group is important. Not every member of the Amis Reunis would be aware that they were actually the Philathes. Nor, could any of these people point to the Keyser Soze in charge of it all. As Robison explains, "But we know that all the Bavarian Brethren were not equally Illuminated, and it would be only copying their teachers if the cleverest of these their scholars would hold a sanctum sanctorum among themselves, without inviting all to the conference."

There is no possible arrest, trial, or exposure for these claims. Not because they are so competent at keeping secrets and the Illuminati's oaths so binding; but because none of it is real. Yet the proof for Robison is in the lack of proof. It's all innuendo, confirmation bias, and suspicion. The revolution did not, according to him, spring up everywhere overnight. They did not overthrow the world, because the world was not overthrown. We know how this story ends. The French revolutionary government lasts for a bit before an Italian man named Napolean Bonaparte becomes emperor. 

The chapter ends with block quote after block quote which proselytize the enlightenment's ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality. We must remember that these are bad things according to Robison. It proves nothing, only that these ideas spread the more people were able to read them. They took hold because it appealed to a populace that starved while they were told that such suffering was their place in the world as god had ordained it. It wasn't that someone orderd the people to revolt, it's that through the philosophy of the time, they woke up.