The triumph of nationalism destroyed the multi-ethnic Ottoman political and social order and replaced it by nation-states. Many explanations attributed the mass violence to a devious conspiracy between (crypto-) Jews, Freemasons, and Turks against Greeks and Armenians. Ugur Ungor argues that these pseudo-explanations are a product of two processes: one of competition between victim groups, and another of intellectual secularization. Lecture given 13 November 2008 for the Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism.