>>443875Yeah. The Freemasons emerged from medieval guilds in the Western world where apprenticeship is very important. Young people would choose a "master" in a particular field, and professionals would group up in guilds to protect themselves, like for carpenters and… masons. That was the basis for what became these secret societies of bourgeoisie in England in the 1700s. When it came to America, it was a secret society for bankers, judges, wealthy businessmen, and politicians.
>>443868>They are filled with conspiracy theories all over the net. Yes. I think ultra-conservatives dislike the Freemasons because they see them as spinning powerful webs to spark revolutions.
Today, I suppose the Freemasons are pretty old-fashioned now. It's like old men who want to get away from their wives, while the upper bourgeoisie today have the World Economic Forum and so forth. The right-wing conspiracy theories don't really talk about the "New World Order" either anymore but the "Great Reset." And this is viewed in highly Manichean terms, like an "evil" plot to enslave the world. But the people at the top of the capitalist world don't see themselves as evil. They think they're doing good for the world, or doing things that will benefit everyone, whether that's the reality or not.
But I'd almost say the Freemasons in the 1700s-1800s were like the Protestant bourgeoise's alternative to the Catholic Church's upper crust of priests and cardinals. And they were at odds with each other, because the Freemasons discouraged Catholics from joining, and the Catholic Church issued injunctions against the Freemasons. There are ultra-conservative Catholics who also feared a Masonic-Judaic alliance. Jewish bankers and merchants worked with the Anglo capitalists who were part of the Freemasons and so forth. I imagine that's why Franco banned the Freemasons. He was an ultra-conservative Catholic leader. The Nazis of course banned Freemasonry as they were reactionary ultra-nationalists.
>China banned themThey kicked them out of the mainland. The Chinese freemasons were tied up with the British and the KMT and are apparently still allowed today to exist in Hong Kong. And they have lodges in Taiwan. The early patriotic Chinese revolutionaries in 1911 also had help from Chinese secret societies like the Heaven and Earth Society, part of what's known as "triads." They might be kinda similar.
Doing some searching tells me that the most famous Chinese Freemason was Chiang Wei-kuo, a KMT general, and Chiang Kai-shek's adopted son. Ironically, he also served in the Wehrmacht in Germany in the 1930s because Chiang sent him there for training, and he was a tank commander when the German army rolled into Austria in 1938. Then later became a top ROC military official. The KMT had friendly relations with Nazi Germany and received a lot of weapons and equipment from them until the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 when Hitler picked sides.