Because conspiracists are lazy. They can’t even get past the flat earth stuff.
I am one if you want to AMA
Hi, I notice you’ve not been active in three weeks, but I’ve really been enraptured with Manly Hall and Lon Duquette (gringa here), especially on their explanations of The Magic Flute, and political activities of Austria, France and the United States around that time. I have lots of questions, some I should probably ask off -list. I’ve begun the great work as best I can on my own but lack any kind of social support, and I’d greatly appreciate any time you’d be willing and able to spare. Thanks so much in advance, either way.
I wonder if it’s only in my country, that they are told to protect israel? I read that in a freemasons documents, that I found on his computer in a totally legal way…
Did your organisation also have to change opsec these past 10 years?
Uuh and are you also encouraged to do business with other masons, to keep accumulating wealth?
Protect Israel? Never heard of that anywhere, it seems ridiculous. Also no one is encouraged to do business with anyone. It’s a personal spiritual thing, not a club (at least in liberal lodges).
I wonder if it’s only in my country, that they are told to protect israel? I read that in a freemasons documents, that I found on his computer in a totally legal way…
Uhmmm two of my lodge members have been bombed by Israel during their military service hahaha. We are not fans.
Did your organisation also have to change opsec these past 10 years?
I haven’t been in it 10 years.
Uuh and are you also encouraged to do business with other masons, to keep accumulating wealth?
No. Although one can only do business with people one knows, and I know Masons.
How does one become a Mason?
To be one, ask one
Lots of important and influential people were members and used their private little club to conduct business and make plans. That planning and business got called “conspiracy” because it happened behind secretive closed doors and involved rituals even though that same planning and dealing continued on outside the Masons when the club was no longer as popular among the well heeled.
They never shook off the image of importance even though the club is nowhere near the numbers it used to be.
In 1738 the Pope forbid all Catholics from joining a Masonic lodge (open to men of any religion, and secretive, no doubt to avoid Inquisition), and called them ‘depraved and perverted’ (unlike the Church, of course). No doubt the faithful kept the rumor-mills turning.
Because they control the British crown
and keep the metric system down.Because conspiracy theorists are idiots who can’t or won’t face the facts of reality.
Which facts. How does the world work, in your estimation.
Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, “spontaneous order” and “orchestrated order”. You look at the U.S./Western empire, with its totally hierarchical command structure, and a big “?” at the top above SCOTUS, Congress and the Presidency, who all inexplicably follow the same agendas opposed to the will and benefit of the people, it seems to me a perfectly reasonable conclusion that somebody is in control. I don’t think it’s the Freemasons - this was kind of an old trope throughout American history (see the early 1800s Anti-Masonic Party), but knocking out individual dumb theories for who’s in charge doesn’t disprove all of them.
IMO, “conspiracy theories” are a natural attempt to explain observed reality (inequality, mass conditioning/brainwashing, global militarism and empire, etc.). They can be informed by falsehoods and/or manipulated into harmful movements (MAGA for example), but again, doesn’t disprove the entire idea of society being controlled. The only way you get to such a disproof is by an exhaustive analysis of every social institution demonstrating it’s not being controlled. Going, “these things just happen on their own” without any further detail is hand-wavey.
Have you considered you can really accuse anyone you disagree with of “being idiots who can’t or won’t face the facts of reality”? Maybe reality is as hideous and our society as controlled as they say, and you’re the one can’t or won’t face the facts of it. That kind of discourse doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
You’re attacking a straw man. There are groups vying for control. The question is whether or not there is one group controlling everything, and I think that’s highly unlikely.
Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, “spontaneous order” and “orchestrated order”.
I see a lot of chaos, too. Conspiracy theorists will look at something that I regard as chaos (say, the Sandy Hook massacre) and say, “Oh, yeah, that was planned (by a conspiracy).” There seems to be an unwillingness to accept that there is a lot of chaos on the world, and while some things are controlled, much of it is not.
Not attacking a strawman, I asked him to clarify and then talked about the context.
“Conspiracy theorists” often look at an event that’s heavily covered by the media, that serves a perceived state interest, and investigate it further. Particularly if it receives disproportionate emphasis, like the various mass casualty events that were referenced so often they’re just referred to by dates (“9/11”, “7/7”, “Oct. 7”, etc.). Sandy Hook served a perceived state interest (popular disarmament), and people perceived “weird things about it”, so to speak, so interpretations of the event differed. Sometimes people try to explain the formation of these theories in terms of fulfillment of an emotional need (“they can’t accept this would just happen so they need to pretend someone is in control”), which is just inaccurate. They have a mental model, whether accurate in a given case or not, where there’s an antagonistic power structure of some kind orchestrating events or narratives for its own benefit, and are simply applying that lens to understand new events and narratives.
At the end of the day, it is a fact that the U.S. government does things like this in general. You look at declassified CIA documents from the past, they are very open about overthrowing governments, manipulating public perception, and all sorts of other shady behavior. But they’re not open about them as they’re doing them. So we’re left with the difficulty of figuring it out for ourselves.
This is the straw man:
Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, “spontaneous order” and “orchestrated order”.
You’re assuming that there is order and working backwards.
Sometimes people try to explain the formation of these theories in terms of fulfillment of an emotional need (“they can’t accept this would just happen so they need to pretend someone is in control”), which is just inaccurate.
You didn’t explain how that was inaccurate. You just said they were using a “mental model”. Why are they using that mental model, though? It’s because they need somebody to be in control.
This has actually been studied. Sociologists have studied conspiracy theorists, and they are often people with control issues.
I’d say that depends. Mkultra and Gulf of Tonkin absolutely happened. Pnac/project 2025 have likely been planned since Nixon or before.
I like how you responded almost 3 months later and the content of your response has nothing to do with what I said.
While true, this doesn’t explain why specifically the freemasons are targeted.
Any time anything is secret, the nutters and fanatics talk trash. And if public, they’re persecuted by orthodoxy. My best guess.
Idk but as one there is no way a bunch slightly racist old white Christian men can organize anything beyond the local and maybe state level.
Masonry is really cool and used to be highly influential for all levels of society but it’s not that anymore. It’s really sad. My grandparents generations were joiners. After the war everyone joined a society. My parents joined some. But nowadays that’s very rare. Everyone in my lodge was 50-80.
I think the propaganda comes from a similar place of earlier Jesuit propaganda. A bunch of men meeting in secret, seeking education away from church and state, highly involved in the community. Now it’s just having meals, meetings, and planning which charity event to do.
This also makes me sad. I wish we could revive it and o think I understand why women aren’t permitted, but it’s hypothetical. I think we are in sore need of the sort of the original lot.
The sub-60 crowd is much more interested in digging into the symbolism of the work. I think pushing for more education is the key to revitalization. What’s the point of purging to go over budget readings?
Agreed! That was my interest and they just were pushing to end the meeting. Boring!
Seems like the older crowd is 90% there for the socializing. I think as the 30-50 crowd climbs the steps we’ll see the philosophical side shift into focus. I have an optimistic outlook on the next few decades.
I hope so.
The Masons are secretive. Many very high level historic figures have been Masons. It’s a good old boys club to get in you need to be sponsored by another Mason. You don’t hear a lot about their accomplishments. And you would expect that a social group that contained many of the important men in history wouldn’t just be sitting around doing nothing in secret.
The Shriners are 33° (highest) Masons and they have free children’s hospitals. They once helped a family member from the time they were a toddler until grown, so whenever I see them fundraising, I pretty much empty my pockets, even if it’s just a few coins. St. Jude’s too.
To my personal knowledge of them, just a bunch of businessmen who jerk each other off basically.
If one freemason owns a business, and another finds out they do and they also have a business - there will be some sort of service from one company or the other so they can make each other money. Basically, they just support members and will give them preferential treatment over someone they don’t know.
It’s just a frat for grown men. College fraternities can be similarly secretive and try to appear “fancy”, but at the end of the day it’s all just dudes hanging out in a clubhouse.
Not supposed to be. They are supposed to be active in public service.
I can’t really provide much insight, but I was once contracted by a local Masonic lodge to install new windows. I had unsupervised access to pretty much any room that had a window in it, and I was even permitted to look around in the windowless chamber where they performed many of their rituals. They were actually pretty excited to show me around. I can’t imagine that they would allow a perfect stranger into their secret lair if they really had anything to hide. But, ya know, take what I say with a pinch of salt as it’s just one anecdote about one lodge in Nowhere, Ohio.
That’s their strategy, let some laymen in to look around, show them some fake ‘secret’ rims to show they aren’t really that special, while the clevery hidden real secret doors are quietly moved as you leave and enter each room. You end up being just one boring anecdote on the Internet, but over centuries it adds up to hundreds of ‘eh’ accounts to hide the real story… It’s brilliant!
That was a nice chuckle. Thanks.
Meh. I lived in an old Mosanic Temple in my 20s. They had moved the lodge to another part of the city and kept this place there. They have lofts upstairs and I rented one.
It was cool in an old type of way. But there weren’t any hidden places we found in the 3 years we lived there.
Because they won’t tell people what they do in their ceremonies. It’s really not all that interesting, to be honest.
That is another misconception. The ceremonies are in books and on the internet. The only real secret is the means-of-identification.
A secret fraternal order with invite-only membership?… perfect scapegoat by the real perpetrators of evils.
It is not invite-only membership; that is disinformation. You can apply to join today if you choose.
It used to be. In fact ideally you were descended from a freemason and also vouched for.
Times change.
They used to wield real power or influence in protestant Midwestern and East coast areas in the 1800 to early 1900s.
It is not disinformation. My comment’s context was about the founding days and not today. When the lies about Freemasons/Illuminati were first being spread, it was invite-only. Now, it’s ASK12B1 and you still must undergo an interview process. Including, months worth of training before the first degree.
Read up on their founding and history, they brought it upon themselves. They wanted to be the mysterious Boogeyman from their inception because the founders thought it would be cool and fun.
Honestly, he’s not wrong, it does look cool and fun. I wish there were non-religious secret sects.
If I recall, Masons don’t require you to worship any specific God, just believe in a higher power or something like that.
Because they’re secretive fucks.
The halls are visible to the public. Our friends and family know we are Masons. We have registered charities and bank accounts. The only real secrets are the passwords and handshakes.
I suppose you’re based in the US? In most EU countries it’s all more secretive. But yeah, Freemasons got murdered during WWII so they aren’t to blame.
Most EU countries weren’t in the Axis.
Search ‘freemason hall [city]’ if you don’t believe me: it’s all out in the open.
I’m from Belgium. We were occupied and freemasons were deported.
A few years ago they tried to make MP’s who were freemasons to make it public and lots of MP’s objected.
I know about the freemasons halls in my surroundings they are listed in the internet, indeed.
To be fair, I was kind of joking but I see how you don’t find it funny. I didn’t mean to troll.
