The Trouble With Freemasons

The next very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made before with such care or in such detail is ready to hit the shelves soon:

He also wheels out the novel claim that he's being attacked because he's "hit something real," a defensive gesture I'll be sure to remember when my new project, Freemasons Rule the World, hits bookstores next month. I expect to take some knocks for my argument -- which essentially exposes the fact that Freemasons control the world -- but I'm pretty sure my anti-Masonic friends will understand that I'm actually making a very cautious, thoughtful argument. In spite of what the title suggests -- it comes from an episode of The Simpsons, an allusion my Masonic critics are bound to miss -- I don't argue that contemporary Freemasons actually control the world. Instead, I'm interested in the ways that important Freemasons around the world exert control over lots of things that are in the world, like governments, the global economy, science, and those sorts of things. It's a work of political theory.

Sounds provocative! (I actually live near a Masonic temple on 10th and U which a few months ago started renting out its first floor to CVS, a company that I think really might control the world)

Comments

I once planed to write an essay about the genuine contribution Freemason have made towards creating a secular culture in Europe and North America. I think a case can be made that the big difference between the West and the Islamic world didn't take place on the level of high-culture (Islam had some secular minded elites as well) but rather on the ground. The Freemasons created space for a vernacular secularism, which allowed for the eventual divorce between church and state in Western Europe and North America. It's one of those flaky ideas that might make a good blog post.

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 23, 2008 3:12 PM

Interestingly, the young Leon Trotsky wrote a book on the history of the Freemasons. The manuscript was seized by the Czarist police after one of his arests and disappeared, never to be seen again. It belongs on any short list of great lost books.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 23, 2008 3:12 PM

the masonic temple on 16th, around P or so, is one of the more impressive buildings in the district (assuming it too hasn't become a CVS).

Posted by dj superflat | January 23, 2008 3:14 PM

Oh yeah? One of the Sadly No!sians announces she plans to outdo Jo'berg's super-awesome never before in such detail brilliance with Conservative Communism: The Collectivist Temptation from the Hoover Institute to Mao Zedong.

Subtitles not guaranteed.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8571.html

Posted by El Cid | January 23, 2008 3:20 PM

Jeet-

That was supposedly one of the themes of the lost Trotsky volume....

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 23, 2008 3:52 PM

My lack of God! It's Trotsky!

Posted by Desk Clerk | January 23, 2008 4:01 PM

Great minds et cetera. Is their any book that discusses the Trotsky volume? I don't recall it from Deutscher's biography (but I could have easily forgotten it).

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 23, 2008 4:01 PM

Conservative Communism: The Collectivist Temptation from the Hoover Institute to Mao Zedong.

That should be a no brainer. Here is a start:

From page 161 of Orlando Figes’ “The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia”:

Within the home the Stalinist regime promoted a return to traditional family relations. Marriage became glamorous. Registration offices were smartened up. Marriage certificates were issued on high-quality paper (from Vishlag) instead of on the wrapping paper used before. Wedding rings, which had been banned as Christian relics in 1928, reappeared in Soviet shops after 1936. A series of decrees aimed to strengthen the Soviet family: the divorce laws were tightened; fees for divorce were raised substantially, leading to a sudden fall in the divorce rate; child support was raised; homosexuality and abortion were outlawed. Among the Soviet elite there was a return to conventional and even rather prudish sexual attitudes. The good Stalinist was expected to be mono­gamous, and devoted to his family, as Stalin was himself, according to the propaganda of his cult. * The conduct of the Bolshevik in his intimate relations was closely scrutinized. It was not unusual for a Bolshevik to be expelled from the Party because he was judged to be a bad father or husband. The wives of Party members were expected to return to the traditional role of raising children in the home.

Sounds a lot like the Focus on the Family wing of the Republican party to me...

Posted by calipygian | January 23, 2008 4:02 PM

And if anybody needs a researcher for the Freemason project, I live really close to The George Washington Masonic National Memorial.

I could pop in and rustle up a treatise on how the wearing of the fez affected Volker's response to stagflation in the 70s.

Posted by calipygian | January 23, 2008 4:06 PM

Can the backlash against excessive snark begin sometime soon?

Posted by R. Totale | January 23, 2008 4:23 PM

Yeah, calipygian is right. Go visit The George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, and all will be revealed. :-) Warning: you may end up being the next Masonic memorabilia collector on ebay.

Posted by artappraiser | January 23, 2008 4:24 PM

p.s. There is no lack of scholarship on the Masons. And there's a gazillion results on The Bildberg Group on google. What I want to know more about is The Shriners. Everyone just thinks they are benign, with their zany grins, fezzes and little go-carts. I've always sensed something sinister going on there.

Posted by artappraiser | January 23, 2008 4:27 PM

Jeet-

Trotsy describes the Freemason book in his autobiography My Life.

Calipygian-

These things need to be kept in perspective, though. Even under high Stalinism divorce was far more acceptable in the Soviet Union than in any Western country at the time, and women were far more likely to work full-time and in the professions.

I just finished Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, the great novel about the World War II-era Soviet Union. One minor but striking feature of the book is how many of the characters have divorced and remarried as a matter of course.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 23, 2008 4:38 PM

the masonic temple on 16th, around P or so, is one of the more impressive buildings in the district

That's at 16th and S. It's impressive in a stunningly wacky way. It was designed by John Russell Pope, who also designed the original (west) building of the National Gallery and the Jefferson Memorial, among other landmarks. It is said to house the largest collection of Burnsiana outside of Scotland. Oh, and the Masons run the world out of it.

Posted by Herschel | January 23, 2008 5:21 PM

Remember the Masonic P2 Lodge in Italy that was exposed around 1980 as a right-wing government-in-waiting that would take power after a coup? I believe Berlusconi was a member.

The point is that while Masons in the U.S. are benign and bland, like the Shriners, in much of Europe during the 18th Centuries into the 20th Centuries, they were a locus of conspiracy. It was too much work for police spies to rise up through all the ranks, so the top members could discuss freely amongst themselves.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 23, 2008 5:36 PM

But where's the racial angle, Steve?

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2008 5:39 PM

they were a locus of conspiracy.

Like the American Conservative, Taki, VDARE, etc?

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 23, 2008 5:59 PM

If you're ever in San Francisco, take a walk down to South Park (the in district of the 1860's) and look for the Gran Oriente Filipino Masonic Temple. Quite a sight, and few buildings have ever made me more curious about just what went on inside them.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | January 23, 2008 6:19 PM

Who are in league with the KKK, Stormfront, the Michigan Militia and Free Republic.

Posted by LoCalDressing | January 23, 2008 6:22 PM

Ya' gotta love this review from a serious conservative:
The trouble begins with a matter of basic definitions

Posted by blindjoedeath | January 23, 2008 6:23 PM

I believe the actual Simpsons quote is "Freemasons run the country."

Posted by Moral Panicker | January 23, 2008 7:12 PM

Freemasons are omniscient.

When I was a young kid, and a burgeoning juvenile delinquent, a few friends and I vandalized a Masonic temple.

Not good.

A week later, all of our parents got calls from the Masons telling them what we did. I have no idea how they found out who it was. We didn't get caught at the time. They really had no way of knowing.

And the creepiest thing?

They didn't want to be repaid for the damages. They weren't going to turn us in to the police.

They just wanted us to know that they knew.

Posted by Jason C. | January 23, 2008 8:04 PM

CVS doesn't even rule Cambridge any longer.

Posted by bob | January 23, 2008 8:24 PM

From Wikipedia:

"Propaganda Due or P2 was a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1877 to 1976 (when its charter was withdrawn), and a pseudo-Masonic or "black" or "covert" lodge operating illegally from 1976 to 1981. During the 1980s, when the lodge was headed by Licio Gelli, P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries, including the nationwide bribe scandal Tangentopoli, the collapse of the Vatican-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano, and the murders of journalist Mino Pecorelli and banker Roberto Calvi. P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire.[1]

"P2 was sometimes referred to as a "state within a state"[2] or a "shadow government".[3] The lodge had among its members prominent journalists, parliamentarians, industrialists, and military leaders -- including the then-future Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; the Savoy pretender to the Italian throne Victor Emmanuel; and the heads of all three Italian intelligence services.

"When searching Licio Gelli's villa, the police found a document called the "Plan for Democratic Rebirth", which called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.[4]"

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 23, 2008 9:34 PM

The P2 Masonic lodge was somewhat unusual on the European continent in being right-wing. Traditionally, politically conspiratorial Masonic lodges were progressive or revolutionary -- for example, the Young Turks uprising against the traditional government of the Ottoman Empire was fomented in Masonic lodges in places like Salonika, which the Sultan's informants found difficult to penetrate. Likewise, the Catholic Church hated the Masons since they tended to be effective activists against the old order.

In contrast, Masons have typically been noncontroversial in America since the aristocratic old order was overthrown in 1776, in part by Masons such as Washington and Franklin.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 23, 2008 9:43 PM

As a former member of the Order of DeMolay (that's the Masonic young-ens for those of you not in the know) and knower of not only the secret handshakes but also - possibly - the location of Illuminati meeting hall I have to discourage the anti-Masonic diss.

Posted by Linus | January 23, 2008 9:51 PM

The Nazis sent Freemasons to the camps, along with the Jews, Gays, Gypsies, Communists, etc.

In 1983, the Catholic Church, speaking through a certain Cardinal Ratzinger, reaffirmed that for a Catholic to become a Freemason is grounds for excommunication.

Posted by rea | January 23, 2008 9:51 PM

Moving away from the Masons to the topic that was originally being satirized, here's a hell of a takedown of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism from a former trustee of National Review and a staunch conservative:

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/review.html

That's gonna leave a mark.

Posted by Mark in Houston | January 23, 2008 9:57 PM

Jeet Heer is correct that Masonic lodges played a much larger role in history than is currently fashionable to assign to them. Indeed, in the most famously secular Islamic country, Turkey, Masonic lodges were highly involved in the creation of the secular state.

Here's the Wikipedia list of famous Freemasons and it's pretty impressive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Freemasons

Mozart, Churchill, Kipling, Ataturk, Pushkin, Schiller, etc.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 23, 2008 10:02 PM

Steve: That's an interesting point about the Turkish Freemasons. It's something I should know more about.

I always thought that if we wanted to really promote democracy and secularism in the Middle East, the best thing is not to invade a bunch of countries but rather to encourage the Freemasons to set up shop there.

The Hungarian Freemasons were interesting because they took female members, who became the vangard of Central European feminism.

It is also true that as a secret society the Masons sometimes lend themselves to takeover by extremists, as in Italy. That's unfortunate. But I think on the whole the Masons have been a force for freedom in history.

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 23, 2008 11:10 PM

What does it say about our world that the American Conservative is more willing to forthrightly critize Goldberg than the New York Times?

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 23, 2008 11:13 PM

Jeet Heer~

Speaking of the AC, how much will you bet me that JG will dismiss Bramwell's review as just so much ax grinding? (cf., http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_11_20/cover.html)

Perhaps M. Ledeen is the only man alive with pure enough intentions (in the movement conservative world, that is) to criticize LF. If you look in the comments section to Ledeen's post about LF, you will find this:

He [Goldberg] didn't need to consult me [M.L.] at all, but he would have written a better book if he had read some of the basic works on fascism.

To my mind, that is case closed. So perhaps we can move on.

Posted by bramble | January 24, 2008 12:10 AM

Jeet:

Yes, I would encourage you to write about the Masons: they helped pioneer the kind of masculine pragmatic public-spirited camaraderie that has done much good in the world. The movie "The Man Who Would Be King" might help get you in the mood, with its depiction of the romance of Masonry.

Of course, the critics of secret societies have their points, too, especially in liberal countries where the basic goals of the Masons had already been achieved, and Masons had moved from the opposition to the establishment. For example, much of 19th Century French politics was driven by rivalries between Masonic lodges.

It's similar to the links between Skull & Bones and the CIA.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 24, 2008 1:04 AM

The movie "The Man Who Would Be King" might help get you in the mood, with its depiction of the romance of Masonry

The same could be said for the opera, "The Magic Flute."

Posted by rea | January 24, 2008 10:53 AM

Yes, Kipling does give us the best window into the Masonic mindset, at least as it existed in the late 19th and early 20th century (and Mozart into an earlier form of Masonry).

I tried to evoke this mindset once in a discussion of what Robert Heinlein learned from Kipling: "the dialogue rich in banter and slang, the sprightly narrative pace, the evocation of an exotic environment through unexplained foreign (or alien) words and inexplicable background details, the anti-modernist faith that the world is fully knowable and conquerable, the didactic insistence on the importance of willpower (as against intelligence) in overcoming adversity, the clipped manly tone that hides a sentimental self-pity, the plebian distrust of intellectuals and other soft guardians of cultural authority, the celebration of engineers, soldiers and other competent men who get the job done without dawdle or time-consuming introspection. "

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 24, 2008 11:34 AM

Lionel Trilling has an interesting paragraph in "The Liberal Imagination" on Kipling as a Mason.

calipygian

ever the pragmatist, Stalin saw the need to bolster the family in an attempt to preserve order & provide foder for the war effort. Especially during the war years, even official atheism was suspended & the crucifixes and relics got dusted off as the Germans army approached Saint Petersburg.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) by Fredrick Engels.
Engels portrays the prehistory (what he calls the “original state”) of sexual life & procreation as something of a golden age –- lots of free sex for anyone who wanted it, little if any sexual jealousy “every women belonged equally to every man and, similarly, every man to every woman”, social harmony, equality between the sexes, kinship ties determined by and through women (in part because paternity was seldom clearly established) and women acting as strong and even dominate social leaders.1

Then a terrible thing happened: Private property and capitalism were born; the ancient “mother right” was overturned; and men both took over the family and created the state to protect their newly gained privileges. According to Engel’s, “the overthrow of the mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex” The man seized the reigns of the house also; the woman was degraded, enthralled, the slave of the man’s lust, a mere instrument for breeding children.”

History had begun. In the new order, paternal authority was total and ruthless: “In order to guarantee the fidelity of the wife, that is, the paternity of the children, the woman is placed in mans absolute power; if he kills her he is but exercising his right.” 2

Marriage laws enforcing monogamy took hold during this transitional period, not because of individual of “individual sex love” says Engel’s, but in order for males to appropriate wealth and transfer it to their sons. A “wife” in the new marriage-based order is someone who “differs from the ordinary courtesan only in that she does not hire out her body, like a wageworker, on piecework, but sells it into once and for all.” Marriage thus makes its appearance in history not as “the reconciliation of man & woman,” but instead as “the victory of private property” and as “the proclamation of a conflict between the sexes entirely unknown hitherto in prehistoric times”.3 Engels, quoting Marx, argues that marriage as it actually emerged in human history “contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state” 4

Footnotes

1,2,3,4 - The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) by Fredrick Engel’s. See also J.J. Bachenof, “Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings of J.J. Bachenof” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University press, 1973)

Posted by Fitz | January 24, 2008 2:13 PM

CVS?

Feh, they're nothing.

Duane Reade: that's where the real power lies.

Posted by jeet | January 24, 2008 4:24 PM

Fitz,

True, Marx and Engels (Engles more than Marx) were skeptical of the institution of the bourgeois family. However, they weren't what modern liberals would think of as 'social liberals either'. See the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_LGBT_rights

"Marx condemned the sexual freedom advocated by Fourier and Saint-Simon as a relapse into a "bestial" state of "universal prostitution".[4]
...... During the 1860s, Ulrichs wrote to Karl Marx and sent him a number of books on Uranian (homosexual/transgender) emancipation, and in 1869 Marx passed one of Ulrich's books on to Engels.[6] Engels responded with disgust to Marx in a private letter, lashing out at "pederasts" who are "extremely against nature", and described Ulrichs' platform of homosexual rights as "turning smut into theory". He worried that things would go badly for heterosexuals like himself and Marx should homosexual rights be gained.[7]

"Engels condemned homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two separate passages of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, describing it as "morally deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading".[10] Marx apparently shared Engels' views, writing that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being"[11] and describing the author of a text promoting sexual freedoms[12] as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen").[13] According to the socialist writers Hekma, Oosterhuis and Steakley, Marx and Engels saw any form of sexuality outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage as a kind of degeneracy fostered by capitalism, which could be cured by socialism. According to Engels, "natural moral principles" would flourish in the socialist future, when (heterosexual) "monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality — for the man as well,"[14] and homosexuality would simply disappear.

Posted by Hector | January 24, 2008 9:55 PM