A fictitious world conspiracy ideologically suits totalitarian claims to world rule.

Evidence

It now became startlingly clear how deep an impression this mainstay of Nazi ideology must have made on Stalin—the first indications of this had been in evidence ever since the Hitler-Stalin pact—partly, to be sure, because of its obvious propaganda value in Russia as in all of the satellite countries, where anti-Jewish feeling was widespread and anti-Jewish propaganda had always enjoyed great popularity, but partly also because this type of a fictitious world conspiracy provided an ideologically more suitable background for totalitarian claims to world rule than Wall Street, capitalism, and imperialism. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 55

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the functional role of the invented enemy in totalitarian ideology: it must be able to explain opposition everywhere in the world, making it portable beyond any single economic system.
• XREF: This mechanism — the fabricated enemy that scales to justify planetary domination — prefigures the construction of ‘the Other’ in postcolonial and Islamophobia theory. — connects to: The capitalist world’s essence is abomination yet its lying appearance stands in for truth. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 142; Conspiracism in power simultaneously denigrates institutions and enlists them to validate claims. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 172