AN OBJECTIVE VIEW OF FREEMASONRY (XXI) – PERSECUTION

By a blog reader

It did not take long for Freemasonry’s inherent principle to refuse to discuss politics or religion within its lodges to be construed by those who claimed exclusivity in matters of politics and religion as a danger to their supreme authority.

Freemasonry has managed to fall foul of both protestant fundamentalists and the Catholic Church. It has also been mercilessly persecuted by all forms of totalitarian regimes be they Fascist, Nazi, Marxist, or Islamist.

Apart from its stubbornness in refusing to unequivocally support one religion over the other or any particular ideology, its perceived secretive nature and global network also made it the perfect foil or scapegoat for demagogues.

While Freemasonry’s secrecy was primarily a product of a very long Western (perhaps universal) custom, like any oppressed minority it did not take too long for secrecy to become a very real necessity for its members.

Freemasonry originated in Britain, so it is hardly surprising that the first documented anti-Masonic document was a leaflet that was printed in 1698 by a Presbyterian minister who was named Winter. It reads:

TO ALL GODLY PEOPLE, In the Citie of London.

Having thought it needful to warn you of the Mischiefs and Evils practiced in the Sight of God by those called Freed Masons, I say take Care lest their Ceremonies and secret Swearings take hold of you; and be wary that none cause you to err from Godliness. For this devilish Sect of Men are Meeters in secret which swear against all without ther Following. They are the Anti Christ which was to come leading Men from Fear of God. For how should Men meet in secret Places and with secret Signs taking Care that none observed them to do the Work of GOD; are not these the Ways of Evil-doers?

Knowing how that God observeth privilly them that sit in Darkness they shall be smitten and the Secrets of their Hearts layed bare. Mingle not among this corrupt People lest you be found so at the World’s Conflagration.

One must remember that this was an age where Church and State were invariably intertwined, and any institution that was ecumenical in nature was deemed to be subversive of both.

It is therefore likewise unsurprising, that it was several Protestant states including Holland, Sweden and Geneva that were the first to ban Freemasonry following the formal founding of modern speculative Masonry in England in 1717.

In 1738, the Catholic Church followed suit, and for the same reasons issuing the first of several bulls condemning freemasonry whereby any Catholic joining a masonic lodge was to be automatically excommunicated and prosecuted for plotting to subvert both Church and state (and in the case of the Papal states these were literally one and the same). Bear in mind that at this time the custom of allowing Catholics and non-Catholics to meet together, was at the time punishable by excommunication.

Truth be told, the relationship between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry is a very complex one which has at least four distinct phases of which we will speak at length in a separate article or more. For the moment it suffices to state, that after 1738, Freemasons in Catholic countries became targets for the Inquisition. Even here on our little island, it is primarily (an irony of history) thanks to the Inquisition that we owe our knowledge of Masonic activity in the 18th century. We know that Freemasons were banished from the island particularly under Grand Master Pinto for being members of the craft while others were hauled in front of the Inquisitor and ‘encouraged’ to ‘recant’ in exchange for what were comparatively for the age rather lenient penalties. But more on that in yet another article which will deal specifically with the history of Freemasonry in Malta.

Despite all the prohibitions, excommunications, and social ostracization Freemasons experienced in the 18th and 19th centuries, which if anything reinforced the need for secrecy among the brotherhood rather than discouraged it, the persecution paled with what was to follow with the rise of totalitarian ideologies.

The first of these totalitarian regimes to ban Freemasonry and systematically persecute Freemasons was Marxism.  Among the first things it did after assuming power in the then-newly formed USSR, the Communist Party under Lenin outlawed Masonry, in 1918. At one of the Second International meetings, Grigory Zinoviev demanded to purge it of masons. The Soviet authorities took a firm stance as they considered it to be a tool of the radical bourgeoisie cabal incompatible with socialism.  Freemasonry was extinguished in the Soviet Union, China, and most other communist states. Post-war revivals of Freemasonry in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were suppressed in 1950. The only notable exception was Cuba, where it was allowed to continue to exist, apparently according to Cuban folklore, Fidel Castro is said to have “developed a soft spot for the Masons when they gave him refuge in a Masonic Lodge” in the 1950s. However, when in power, Castro was also said to have “kept them on a tight leash” as they were considered a subversive element in Cuban society for allegedly providing safe haven for dissidents.

Quick to follow in the USSR’s footsteps was Hungary: In 1919, Béla Kun proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat and Masonic properties were taken into public ownership. After the fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaders of the counter-revolution such as Miklós Horthy blamed the Hungarian Freemasons for their First World War defeat and for the revolution. Masonry was outlawed by a decree in 1920. This marked the start of raids by army officers on Masonic lodges along with theft, and sometimes destruction, of Masonic libraries, records, archives, paraphernalia, and works of art. Several Masonic buildings were seized and used for anti-Masonic exhibitions. The masonic documents were archived, preserved and may still be used for research.

In post-war Hungary, lodges were re-established, but after five years the government described them as “meeting places of the enemies of the people’s democratic republic, of capitalistic elements, and of the adherents of Western imperialism“. They were banned again in 1950.

In quick succession, Fascist Italy and Spain followed suit.

Benito Mussolini decreed in 1924 that every member of his Fascist Party who was a Mason must abandon either one or the other organization, and in 1925, he dissolved Freemasonry in Italy, claiming that it was a political organization. One of the most prominent Fascists, General Capello, who had also been Deputy Grand Master of the Grande Oriente, Italy’s leading Grand Lodge, gave up his membership in the Fascist Party rather than in Masonry. He was later arrested on false charges and sentenced to 30 years in jail.

In September 1928, one of the two Grand Lodges in Spain was closed by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and approximately two-hundred masons, were imprisoned for allegedly ‘plotting against the government’.

Following the military coup of 1936, many Freemasons trapped in areas under Nationalist control were arrested and summarily killed in the White Terror.  Masons were tortured, garroted, shot, and murdered by organized death squads in every town in Spain. At this time one of the most rabid opponents of Freemasonry, Father Juan Tusquets Terrats, began to work for the Nationalists with the task of exposing masons. One of his close associates was Franco’s personal chaplain, and over the next two years, these two men assembled a huge index of 80,000 suspected masons, even though there were little more than 5,000 masons in Spain. The lodge building in Cordoba was burnt, the Masonic Temple of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands was confiscated and transformed into the headquarters of the Falange, and another was shelled by artillery. In Salamanca thirty members of one lodge were shot, including a priest. Similar atrocities occurred across the country: fifteen masons were shot in Logrono, seventeen in Ceuta, thirty-three in Algeciras, and thirty in Valladolid, among them the Civil Governor. Few towns escaped the carnage as Freemasons in Lugo, Zamora, Cadiz and Granada were brutally rounded up and shot, and in Seville, the entire membership of several lodges was butchered. The slightest suspicion of being a mason was enough to earn a place in a firing squad, and the blood-letting was so fierce that, reportedly, some masons were even hurled into working engines of steam trains. By 16 December 1937, according to the annual masonic assembly held in Madrid, all masons that had not escaped from the areas under nationalist control had been murdered

A Freemason is shot by a firing squad

After the victory of General Francisco Franco, Freemasonry was officially outlawed in Spain on 2 March 1940. Being a mason was automatically punishable by a minimum jail term of 12 years. Masons of the 18º and above were deemed guilty of “Aggravated Circumstances“, and usually faced the death penalty.

According to Francoists, the Republican Regime which Franco overthrew had a strong Masonic presence but in reality, Spanish Masons were present in all sectors of politics and the armed forces. At least four of the Generals who supported Franco’s rebellion were Masons, although many lodges contained fervent but generally conservative Republicans. Freemasonry was formally outlawed in the Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism. After Franco’s decree outlawing masonry, Franco’s supporters were given two months to resign from any lodge they might be a member. Many masons chose to go into exile instead, including prominent monarchists who had wholeheartedly supported the Nationalist rebellion in 1936. The common components in Spanish Masonry seem to have been upper or middle class, of a conservative liberal disposition.

The Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism was not abrogated until 1963. References to a “Judeo-Masonic plot” are a standard component of Francoist speeches and propaganda and reveal the intense and paranoid obsession of the dictator with masonry. Franco produced at least 49 pseudonymous anti-masonic magazine articles and an anti-masonic book during his lifetime. According to Franco:

The whole secret of the campaigns unleashed against Spain can be explained in two words: masonry and communism… we have to extirpate these two evils from our land.

Are you following? According to the Communists, Freemasonry was a capitalist bourgeoisie cabal incompatible with socialism and according to Franco’s Fascists, Freemasonry was somehow communist and of course a Judaic plot.

It was therefore inevitable that Freemasons were also consistently considered an ideological foe of Nazism in their world perception (Weltauffassung). The Nazis claimed that high-degree Masons were willing members of the Jewish conspiracy and that Freemasonry was one of the causes of Germany’s defeat in World War I. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that Freemasonry has succumbed to the Jews and had become an excellent instrument to fight for their aims and to use their strings to pull the upper strata of society into their designs. He continued, “The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-preservation begun by Freemasonry” is then transmitted to the masses of society by the press. In 1933 Hermann Göring, the Reichstag President and one of the key figures in the process of Gleichschaltung (“synchronization”), stated “in National Socialist Germany, there is no place for Freemasonry“.

The Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz ) was passed by Germany’s parliament on March 23, 1933. Using the Act, on January 8, 1934, the German Ministry of the Interior ordered the disbandment of Freemasonry, and confiscation of the property of all Lodges; stating that those who had been members of Lodges when Hitler came to power, in January 1933, were prohibited from holding office in the Nazi party or its paramilitary arms, and were ineligible for appointment in public service. Consistently considered an ideological foe, special sections of the Security Service (SD) and later the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) were established to deal with Freemasonry. Masonic concentration camp inmates were graded as political prisoners, and wore an inverted (point down) red triangle.

On August 8, 1935, as Führer and Chancellor, Adolf Hitler announced in the Nazi Party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, the final dissolution of all Masonic Lodges in Germany. The article accused a conspiracy of the Fraternity and World Jewry of seeking to create a World Republic. In 1937 Joseph Goebbels inaugurated an “Anti-Masonic Exposition” to display objects seized by the state.

During the war, Freemasonry was banned by edict in all countries that were either allied with the Nazis or under Nazi control, including Norway and France. Anti-Masonic exhibitions were held in many occupied countries. Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus was conveniently denounced as a “High-grade Freemason” when he surrendered to the Soviet Union in 1943.

In 1943, the Propaganda Abteilung, a delegation of Nazi Germany’s propaganda ministry within occupied France, commissioned the propaganda film Forces occultes. The film virulently denounces Freemasonry, parliamentarianism, and Jews as part of Vichy’s drive against them and seeks to prove a Jewish-Masonic plot. Freemasons were accused of conspiring with Jews and Anglo-American nations to encourage France into a war with Germany.

The preserved records of the RSHA—i.e., the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or the Office of the High Command of Security Service, which pursued the racial objectives of the SS through the Race and Resettlement Office— document the persecution of Freemasons in typical NAZI detail. The number of Freemasons from Nazi-occupied countries who were killed is not accurately known, but it is estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 Freemasons were murdered under the Nazi regime alone. The Government of the United Kingdom established Holocaust Memorial Day to recognize all groups who were targets of the Nazi regime and counter Holocaust denial. Freemasons are listed as being among those who were targeted.

This is a huge subject that is never talked about in the sensationalist press. To the Nazis, Fascists and Marxists we can add the Imperial Japanese and the Muslim Islamists into the equation.

In 1938, a Japanese representative to the Welt-Dienst / World-Service congress hosted by Ulrich Fleischhauer stated, on behalf of Japan, that “Judeo-Masonry is forcing the Chinese to turn China into a spearhead for an attack on Japan, and thereby forcing Japan to defend itself against this threat. “Japan is at war not with China but with Freemasonry (Tiandihui)”, represented by General Chiang Kai-shek, the successor of his master, the Freemason Sun Yat-sen.”

In 1978, nearly 300 years after the institution of Freemasonry, the Islamic Jurisdictional College declared Freemasonry to be “dangerous” and “clandestine”.

Most of the Islamic anti-sentiment is attached to the conviction that Freemasonry supposedly works towards achieving the goals of Zionism and promotes the interests of Jews around the world.

After the 1958 revolution, Iraq was an example of the introduction of laws against any Masonic associations. Later, when Saddam Hussein took power, the position towards Freemasonry was reinforced. In his view, those who promoted Zionist principles or who associated themselves with Zionist organizations, faced the death penalty.

The Muslim Brotherhood and subsequent radical Islamic and Islamist movements, such as Hamas believe and argue that Freemasonry promotes the interests of the Jews around the world and that one of its aims is to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem after destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

As I said this is a huge subject, and I hope that in this briefest of summaries, one can quickly conclude why divergent religions and ideologies all conveniently declared Freemasonry as an enemy and sought to persecute it.

The reason is simple – Freemasonry in its belief that we are all brethren and children of the same God irrespective of our personal political and religious beliefs was and will always remain an obstacle that needs to be suppressed by all those who have claimed to be the supreme authority of either religious or political views.

Post WWII there has been a wide-ranging discussion among Freemasons about the continued need for secrecy, with many who seek to appease public opinion opining that in the modern ‘democratic’ world such a thing is anachronistic – but I don’t believe so. I believe it would be very foolish and naive if Freemasons let go of their ‘secrecy’ – for not only would they be joining the modern world in their failure to understand the concept of secrecy as a discipline but they would ultimately be painting a huge target on their backs.

Their belief that just because we currently live in a ‘democratic’ age would insulate them against any future prejudice or eventual persecution is naïve in the extreme and history contradicts them. Marxism, Fascism and Nazism were all preceded by a democratic and liberal interlude. Today’s optimism in a classically liberal society is likewise not warranted. Indeed all signs indicate we are once again sliding into a totalitarian era where Freemasons will once again – thanks to their refusal to give unequivocal support to any sect or ideology become prime victims.  

As for the modern-day critics of Freemasonry and wannabe Inquisitors – I ask them solely to reflect on how similar their language and logic are to the heinous totalitarian regimes I have briefly highlighted above.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C. S. Lewis