Not to get into the flame wars...this is more for the less hostile folks who might read this.<br><br>proldic's idea was that freemasonry is being pushed as a smokescreen. He admits they are often part of corrupt establishments, but thinks the real power structure is not run by them or are they necessarily central to it.<br><br>He also suggests that people attracted to masonic conspiracy theory are often those drawn into anti-Semitic theory.<br><br>Let's start with the second, first. I think the second part is demonstrably true. A simple perusal of the internet will show this to be the case. And this is true REGARDLESS of the merits of the case against Freemasonry. Whether they are simply theatrical "bit part" players or whether they are central to the whole power structure, it is objectively true that much of the attack on them emanates from such sources. <br><br>Here is the entire first page of a google search on "freemasons jews":<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What is the connection between Judaism and Freemasonry?<br>Jews were actively involved in the beginnings of Freemasonry in America. ...<br>Many Jews viewed joining Freemasonry as part of their "emancipation" from the ...<br>www.sullivan-county.com/id3/fm_jews.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br> Deist Masons are Jewish<br> Prior to Freemasonry, Jews were forbidden from participation in almost all ...<br> After Freemasons allowed Jews into the movement, or rather, after Jews ...<br>
www.sullivan-county.com/id3/dmj.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages <br><br>Freemasonry<br>The Freemasons are controlled by the Jews. Already discussed that. Hitler, The<br>Protocols, etc. Contributing to the sinister reputation are all of their ...<br>www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/freemasonry/ - 19k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>Social Objections<br>There's a secret cabal in which Freemasons and Jews have been plotting to take<br>... And if it isn't the Freemasons, Jews, and/or Illuminati, it's the 33rd ...<br>www.masonicinfo.com/social_objections.htm - 35k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br> Nazism and its hatred of Freemasonry<br> Former Freemasons had many 'social relations' with Jew, 'oppositional Church<br> circles' and 'reactionary associations' so that 'cross connections of a ...<br>
www.masonicinfo.com/nazism.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages <br><br>The Secret of the Masons and the Jews<br>Not until the eighteenth century, when the Freemasons began to take over the<br>governments of Europe, did the Jews really come into their own. ...<br>www.catholicism.org/pages/masonjews.htm - 10k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>Freemasons<br>formed to persecute the Nazis that killed the Jews, but to get even with the<br>Nazis who persecuted Freemasons, and the Jewish issue was just another ...<br>www.freedomdomain.com/freemason.html - 79k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>Masonic Jews Plot to Control World—Zionist Secret Society Conducts ...<br>The Jews are beset with an unbridled ambition—a consuming desire to ...<br>Freemasonry is Jewish Magic. One of the unheralded and least known facts about ...<br>www.texemarrs.com/042003/masonic_jews_plot_world_control.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>Holocaust Memorial Day and Freemasonry. 80000 Freemasons died as a ...<br>Tens of thousands of Freemasons were executed simply because they were Freemason.<br>... Holocaust Memorial Day, Gestapo, SS, Holocaust, Genocide, Jews, ...<br>www.grandlodgescotland.com/glos/Holocaust_Memorial_Day/ - 17k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>NAZI PERSECUTION OF FREEMASONRY<br>Abtl. II 11 (religion, Freemasonry, and Jews) and II 12 (Gegnerformen), 1 April -<br>15 April 1937, SD Oberabschnitte Rhein, Nord, Elbe, Ost, Sued, Sued-West, ...<br>www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ushmm.html - 34k - Cached - Similar pages<br><br>Try searching for freemasons jews<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I am not going back over anyone's old posts right now...that's not my point. My point is that, a serious researcher into elite and "deep politics" would be aware of the more half-baked theories out there. If nothing else, they are almost certainly being used for disinformation. (And, historically speaking, I find the number of references to "Jewish-Masonic" conspiracies to be rather strange.). <br><br>So, proldic's comment did not need to be taken as a flame war starter. It is objectively true. <br><br>That said, surely there must be roles played by many of these "secret societies." Skull and Bones is an easy example. I think the Freemasons are surely another. And from them come folks like Crowley which then brings in Jack Parsons and even for a time L Ron Hubbard. This does tend to move away from the small town insurance salesman. We also can be sure there was some Freemason/KKK overlap in the south...so the "Black Legion (which spawned form KKK) example cuts both ways. And the role of the p-2 lodge in Italy suggests not just low level functionaries but higher level involvement, to give just one example.<br><br>The problem is that, because they are secret and still do a good job of keeping a lot of their secrets, the Freemason "conspiracy" is like a blank slate. Whatever perspectives someone has going in often turn out to be the results coming out. <br><br>Or take another example: The Illuminati. I was fascinated by the stories of the Illuminati and I started to research them. Due to bad luck and a plethora of such sites, for a long time all I ever found was such unsubstantiated, illogical and unlikely theories (often involving Jewish Luciferians at the core) that I simply assumed the Illuminati had never even existed. Turns out...they had. They were a real offshoot of Freemasonry and are as easy to find verify historically as George Washington (once you weed out the extraneous stuff). <br><br>So, whatever they were up to, they were up to. And it was secret and gained some steam till they were made illegal (like the Templars, the legend of the Illuminati depends on the organization having somehow survived it's outlawing. )<br><br>But what happened next is that practically EVERY social movement that was threatening to the monarchy or ruling class was blamed not on genuine discontent of the oppressed masses, but on the Illuminati, or Freemasons, or Jews. You can see such accusations all the time, such as the ones proldic posted from the start of the movement for American independence from Britain. <br><br>Here in the US, communism served equally well. If it hadn't been for "outside agitators" goes the thinking, the Southern "Negroes" would never have been discontented. <br><br> Eustace Mullins, often quoted on this forum, says on his website that the slaves themselves would have been happy had it not been for Rockefeller. He's quite clear on this point. Well, there's not a single person on this board...not ONE..who would argue that Rockefeller is NOT at the center of the power structure and is NOT involved in all kinds of covert stuff to keep the world safe for his interests. He's a big, powerful and scary man....I should say "men" and I should say that "Rockefeller" now stands for a huge megacorporate complex. But the point is the same. And yet, there is also not one person on this site (I hope) who would suggest that slaves would have been better off under slavery or that their only problem was being manipulated by Rockefeller.<br><br>Wait...someone's gonna challenge the Mullins quote. Let me go get it:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Under the able leadership of Rockefeller's Council of State Governments, the Old South has been re-created as "The Plantation." No longer do contented blacks pick cotton. Every slave now works fulltime to pay for the daily increasing tax burdens on the Old Plantation, and State legislators cry out each day for more in-<br>creases in taxation. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>From his "Lament for the Old South" cached here:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:QqWOTgP247MJ:www.eustacemullins.com/print.php%3Farticle_id%3D2%26PHPSESSID%3Dac717d3021a7a35b816dc7d19b78fc27+%22eustace+mullins%22+slaves+rockefeller+plantation&hl=en&client=firefox">64.233.161.104/search?q=c...nt=firefox</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>And for the record, it is true that when slaves were freed, their tax rate was higher.<br><br>So, Rockefeller is a real bad guy...does that mean that we must believe every anti-Rockefeller conspiracy that comes along? <br><br>In fact, we who bother to try to find out what's really going on in the world fall for disinformation all the time. ALL of us. It's impossible not to. These guys are smart, and they've been doing this, if you just count CIA/OSS disinformation techniques, since World War 2. They have sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, PR people, neurologists and all sorts of other academics showing them exactly how best to accomplish these goals. They can experiment on prisoners and on entire populations. <br><br>They have learned how to manipulate our fears. (Don't remember what post it was, but really interesting stuff about how the CIA would use a culture's fear of vampires to scare them into retreat. (I think this was in the Phillipines?) They even killed people and drained the bodies of blood and then left the bodies hanging to be discovered by the villagers.)<br><br>This brings up another point. They are ruthless and have no moral qualms about any of this. They hang "friends" out to dry as often as they do their laundry. All in a day's work<br><br>Think they can't pull the same stuff here? <br><br>So how do we know what's disinfo and what isn't (and what's just hateful B.S.). <br><br>We can't always be sure, of course. For me, tracking so many of these anti-Semitic theories is a way to help find a way through this maze. There are words and phrases that pop up again and again. So, it's not that banks have not been important forces in shaping capitalist oppression, it's that there is a specific WAY of talking about banks that has its roots in these theories. For example, simply focusing on banks and letting all other mega-rich, uberpowerful corporations off the hook is a clue to me that, at best, there is some simplistic analysis going on. The fact that the distinction between finance capitalists and industrial capitalists was so important to the Nazi movement is a clue. The Nazis BENEFITTED the industrial capitalists. Many industrial capitalists in this country, such as Henry Ford, openly discussed fascism as a viable and necessary next step in the evolution of America. So one should be SUSPICIOUS of theories that focus only on financial capitalists (and as Qutb points out, the distinction is almost irrelevant these days.) <br><br><br>"End of the world" (from societal collapse or imminent catastrophe as opposed to the "second coming") themes are, for me, another indication...but we've been over all that in other threads.<br><br><br>Using myself as an example, I am really into UFO's. Have been since I was a kid. I believe there's a real phenomenon there. <br><br>However, I've learned that, for whatever reason, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have their hands ALL OVER the UFO research field: from infiltrating NICAP back in the 50's to "monitoring" UFO cults to deliberately providing disinformation about alien/human alliances to earnest researchers. I'm not completely sure what their agenda is, but it's clear they have one. As such, I find that MUCH of what I thought was true about UFO's I no longer believe. I'm in a suspended agnostic state, primarily because of the EXTREME amount of disinfo I've read about.<br><br>And also, within UFO's you get fascist threads as well. From one of the early contactees, George Adamski, through the "Nine" and up to the present day, you have an unbroken and relatively unchanged "message" from the space brothers, consistently promoted. That message tends to center around racial theory and the importance of "Aryans" in history. The fact that intelligence agencies and the military are part of promoting these ideas, frees me from any illusion that this is a result of harmless cranks.<br><br>Now I know it's already hopeless to save this thread. "fucking scumbag" will get a thread disappeared into the firepit rather quickly. And since Fourthbase sent a letter to Jeff, he'll be here soon to do just that, I'm sure. I'm equally sure that dealing with that sort of thing is high on his list of favorite things to do.<br><br>But to me, two things are clear. One: high level conspiracies have played an important role in history. Conspiracy is simply politics by other means. And two: Conspiracy theory as an area of inquiry is also heavily contaminated with disinformation, poor research, illogical conclusions, unfounded assumptions, unsourced documentation, and outright fascist propaganda. In fact, fascist movements in general use fears of secret conspiracies as an ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. To create fear of the "other" and the "outsider", can both motivate the footsoldiers and divert attention from the real criminals. This in no means implies that the real criminals do not engage in conspiracies themselves. <p></p><i></i>
by FourthBase » Sat Dec 03, 2005 11:57 pm 